Invocations to a Flame

First ally to man and the enabler of thought, Mother Fire dances in the mind and veins.

Those born in or travelling to the uttermost East where the land is flat and the wind has teeth of frost still remember how to speak to Fire.

Those with the kenning may ask a fire to be born in their palm, may ask a fire to increase in size, allow passage, to jump incredible distances or to die.

When asking Fire for something, roll for Reaction. Modify this roll accordingly:

• Requests to increase, multiply, jump and dance are at +1.
• Requests to decrease, recoil and abstain are at -1.
• Requests to be born or die are unmodified.

Offerings can be made to a Fire. Only one of these may apply - a greater gift renders the lesser insignificant.

• +1 for a 1 HD sacrifice.
• +2 for 5 HD sacrifice.
• +1 for a sacrifice worth 500sp.
• +2 for a sacrifice worth 2000sp.

A Hostile reaction is a violent rejection, the Fire likely to bite or actively do the opposite.
A Negative reaction is a non-committal rejection. Further attempts are at -2 with this Fire.
A Disinterested reaction requires a Sacrifice, but no further roll.
A Positive reaction is an agreement to the request.
A Friendly reaction is eager acceptance. Further requests are at +2 with this Fire.

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Night’s Black(pill) Agents

During my ongoing game of Night’s Black Agents (NBA) we had a realisation. One of the player character’s strategies is the ironically termed ‘vamp-pilling’ of potential allies - giving them knowledge of the vampiric conspiracy as they understand it at that point. They’ve previously brought eco-terrorists aboard after their leader was turned into a vampire and went on a rampage immediately - they just had to explain what happened, the nature of the conspiracy came after.
The target of this specific conversion was an Academic, studying early Saxon culture. The target, and the player character, had both been born and grown up in Germany - and the conversation was happening on a German university campus. As the now-practised spiel began, it hit me - the allusions to a secret manipulator group, hidden in plain sight - using the good, noble institutions for their own dark deeds to subvert and control. The acquisition of human blood for their own, unspeakable rites.

It sounded like Nazi shit - the PCs inadvertently trotting out anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and substituting the slurs with ‘vampires’. Blood libel and infiltrators insinuating themselves into established power structures map nearly 1:1 with the vampires modus operandi.

Obviously, the NPC recoiled - but once proof of the very literal and real conspiracy was demonstrated, they joined the PCs in trying to defeat the conspiracy. This is a process they’ve repeated a few times, albeit in less detail in subsequent efforts, as they’ve worked out effective strategies for recruitment. The number of parallels felt uncomfortable with the explicit ‘real world’ setting of the game. I don’t think this is a bad thing as such, but given the political climate was a lot ‘realer’ than you’d expect for a game of super-spies vs vampires.

The obvious monstrousness of the vampires ¹ is a cause for just war. Published in 2012, the consequences of ‘just’ and ‘good’ and ‘humanitarian’ wars is not a fringe topic - the very real abuse of POWs by the DoD and the abuses of the CIA (explicitly one of the previous PC employers in the book) before, during and after the Iraq war were in the public consciousness. In media following this period, we can see examples of ‘justified’ torture - Zero Dark Thirty, or the electrocution scene in Taken ² - and ignorance of the realities of the incredibly low value of information gained through ‘enhanced interrogation’ - not the mention the radicalising effect torture has upon its victims and their families. One of the possible PC skills is Interrogation, and similarly makes no mention of the quality of intelligence gained this way.

NBA posits itself as a work of genre emulation and mash-up - but the uncritical reproduction of justified war against a monstrous foe, the ‘gloves coming off’ - a fantasy of total freedom to engage in any act against a foe so evil as to ensure your acts become permissible. You are even explicitly vigilantes, freed from governmental oversight.

I do not think PCs need to be good guys. I do not think they need to be protagonists - my favourite games have been about people in a world rather than protagonists in a story. But the framing of the book and the playing of the game have not felt like an examination of bad people, nor as a confrontation of such acts as they occur in the real world - it has felt like a morally pure playground for repugnant action, historically perpetrated by the intelligence apparatus of militaristic states.

To be clear, this isn’t a “cancel Ken Hite” post or something.

Wolves Upon the Coast Grand Campaign Updated

Now featuring ~150 hex fills!

SRD

Behold:

On the face of it, there is nothing here. Flat, boring encounters with the basic, obvious enemies. Previously, I’ve written about adding extra dimensions to the encounter table. I don’t think I was right.

Instead use Surprise, Reaction and Distance - often overlooked, but essential to the variability and interest of encounters.

Surprise
On a roll of 5-6, a party is surprised. Roll for each party unaware of the other.

Reaction

Distance
If either party is surprised, an encounter occurs at 10-60’ - otherwise 20-120’.

Applying this procedure, a ‘flat’ encounter becomes something very different.

40 bandits, unaware of you - out at 60ft. Hide, encounter, call out? They seem jovial.
2 orcs, watching you closely without your knowledge. They’re uncertain - what does that mean?
12 ants, 120’ away and forming a phalanx.

Of course, using more ‘interesting’ monsters is no bad thing. I think the focus around it comes partially from a desire to sell products as novel, as well as to demonstrate the unique taste and talent of the GM/designer. Applying SRD to these encounters also gives great results - but demonstrates the ability to use anything as a point of interest. There’s a subtle distinction between something interesting in-itself and something interesting due to it’s position and relation.

This isn’t something I came up with, but it’s something easily neglected with an outsized impact on play.

I’ve made an automated thing to do this for you

28.16 Dead Godling

The trees on Hlesey grow perversely thick, forming corded walls of bark and wood. Fleshy leaves droop, eager to stroke exposed heads. Without a map, entrance deeper into the isle is impossible, the passages hidden as if by cunning cultivation. The beaches are lifeless.

Armed with a map, a single winding corridor of wood leads to a decaying garden. Rotted flower heads, swollen to the size of watermelons, lie upon the floor, contorting the too-delicate stems. Thorned plants coil and grip one another, locked in battle. Stone paths are barely visible.

For every Turn spent exploring the gardens, consult the following chart for an encounter. The geography is nonsensical - the area should be easily searchable in 30 minutes, but somehow loops back upon itself.

A warty structure of black and green glass sits at the centre of the garden. A 20’ lifeless zone surrounds it, the barren earth worn by wind. In front of the structure, on the stone patio, a corpse. Something like a rigid, upright squid, hacked apart with three blows. It has not rotted, and it’s black-green ichor contains flecks of gold. Behind it, an open passage into the structure. Touching the ichor is fatal, causing flesh to lose coherency - those passing a Reflex Save are able to cut off the body part touching the ichor before they are lost forever.

Within, light warps and becomes burnt umber, emerging like blood from the glass no matter the time of day. It illuminates low furniture built of strange geometries. Amongst these, pedestals display the hoard of a divine pretender (Magic User IV):

• 329 Atlantean Coins, worth 20sp each. Designs feature formulae and bearded figures, unlabelled.
• A stockpile of vellum scrolls, all written in Atlantean. They detail how to find Atlantis, and warn of the sorcery of Dread Lemuria. Worth 50000sp, to one who could pay. They are more likely to kill you for it.
• A Fragment of Chaos, frozen in glacier-heart ice.
• The gnarled, bitter horn of a 8HD demon.
• A tiny fragment of the Outer Dark in a velvet-lined jar.
• 3 Salamander Hearts in cooking oil.
• 3 Fingers-worth of Cloud Giant ash.
• A charm made of Golden Arrowheads.
• 3 Wisdom Teeth (&T)
• A Mirror of Negation (&T)
• Hugo (&T)
• 6 applications of The Sculptors Medium (&T)
• 1 application of the Reviled Ointment (&T)
• 30 draughts of the Batrachians Prize (&T)
• 3 ink-bottles of Inviolability (&T)
• A Seeking Dark (&T)
• Tooth of Hunger (&T)

The Unmade
Unable to live or die, the failed apotheosis of failed divinity forced. Half-dissolved humans, animals and plants, often fused into amalgams of miserable flesh. If any is slain in combat, they reform in 1d6 Rounds. They will not enter the structure at the centre of the island - but will lay in ambush nearby. There are 269 on the island.

1HD (Supernatural HP) / AC as Unarmoured / Damage 1d6

This is just a snippet from the upcoming update to Wolves Upon the Coast Grand Campaign.

No Rules No Rulings

When running Wolves Upon the Coast, a situation arose - the players wanted to train the griffon chicks they had adopted (stolen). There is nothing in rules for this. In most retro-clones and ‘comprehensive’ adventure game systems, you could use some of the existing attributes as a “fallback” - usually falling on Intelligence or Wisdom in my experience, although Charisma would be a possible candidate here.

Wolves has no such attribute* - and as such, I was forced to come up with something. I think this is notable outside of the normal mantra of “rulings not rules” as this isn’t a reusable solution which becomes part of the ‘house rules’ - this is a bespoke, one-off thing for this exact situation. The exact specifics don’t matter so much as the process of evaluation and development on-the-fly, using the techniques of player consensus to get agreement before actually putting it into practice. Additionally, we can consider non-attribute elements such as prior training (as indicated by starting equipment) and general conduct. This isn’t unique to operating in this way, but is always worth pointing out.

(As it happens, I did a simple d20 roll - 1 or 2 representing disaster, 19 or 20 representing incredible progress. The players were able to dial these in - giving more freedom increasing the risk of disaster and the chances of success. Additionally, they were able to suggest ways to mitigate some of the risk. This gave them real ownership of the roll and it’s results. This only made it funnier when one of the griffons became a good boy and the other one ate two dogs.)

*It only has Strength, Constitution and Dexterity.