Showing posts with label cards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cards. Show all posts

Thursday, 12 October 2017

Terrible Campaign Ideas: Octopus Princesses





































Sample Princesses

http://elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/octopus-princess-mania-pt-1.html
Sample Questhttp://elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/octopus-princess-mania-pt-2.html

So ive considered doing a sequel to this but why not a mini game simple dnd based rpg zine. It can be run for kids or for adults who might wish to be more ironic and horrible or humorously inept dealing with humans

Basically you play a magical octopus princess (or possibly prince) who goes on magical quests for Papa Dagon and GranPaPa Cthulhu or King Neptune or the Faerie King of The Sea or whatever.

Main types of missions are quests to the surface world like rescue a octopus or find a magic thing
or
Seeking knowledge of human world by magical disguise or spying on them or spells
or
Helping the humans in secret involves spying on them and see who can do the nicest wish for filling they can of some poor common but good human. Or who can  help the most humans. Sometimes to punish naughty humans they might play pranks on them till the humans sacrifice to the sea gods. The local human church frowns on this. These are common faerie contests.
or
Possibly once the octopi know the local humans they might be sent to make official contact with human leaders, make a colony or a embassy or start a trade post.

Humans can be mean or misunderstanding of octopi or try and eat them so be careful. Humans spread horrible rumors about octopi but often they are based on mistakes of the past or octopi help that was misinterpreted. Some humans dont like octopi moving to the surface, stealing their land. resources, women and prestigious school places. But a dutiful octopus princess knows that humans cant be blamed for idiocy and stupidity.

Octopi also like to explore surface or subsurface ruins, dungeons and caverns. They are driven by curiosity and a like of shiny things. Some have a contest to find the biggest shiniest thing or a magic thing.

Possibly I could make up cards for everything too like loot, spells, etc

Might do better digital map of squidjag village

Thursday, 17 April 2014

Lazy Cthulhu Prop Post

A quick sample of yet more pregen and prop stuff for tommorrows EYECON.

Made to slap on Byakee software character sheets.

Just gotta finalize my Long Stairs pc gen stuff and perhaps some maps.

Also doing personal secret cards for Cthulhu Metropolis game. Random pick for terrible personal secret. Actually will help me get characters united otherwise would never be near each other.

4.8mm square - the template I can use again.

Have a good Easter everyone  and blood for the blood goddess!!!

Monday, 18 March 2013

TORG WAR2 Ideas Revisited




http://elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/dungeons-dimensions-and-torg.html
previous post on topic

I may have original TORG invader worlds attempt to re- invade and even help core earth
I also forgot Carcosa so that can be invading Australia too
Would be funny to have Warhammer/40k chaos and space troops appear everywhere
and some super heroes invade too - New York!

This map indicates basic claim for low level influence in early days to total saturation towards TORG WAR2

Thule
Frozen land where Giant and troll armies assemble in the magical glacier ciradel of the Frost Giants king and god. Lots of vikings. Some areas settled with fairy tale villages.

DnD
Various editions and dungeon zones invading and competing, vikings, Templars and pagan Slav holy men and sorcerers

The Night Land
A horror sunless realm of vulcanism, evil mutant freaks, evil dwarfs, ogres and giants, ancient ruins and several mile high arcologies of psionic armoured knights - Tharkold cross over here too due to some shared axioms

Cvberpunk
Highly industrialized corporate lords with with AIs, private armies and fanatic security troops versus punks, rebels, terrorists and rogue replicates

Shadow Run
Mash up of cyberpunk, Native shamanic magic returns and DnD

Hard Times
Dark conspiracy, car wars and dark future mash up - probably evolving into judge dredd

Pirates of Atlantis
Voodoo priests, gods and zombies with carribean pirates and city of ancient evil Clark Ashton Smith type evil sorcerers and occasional prehuman elder races. Artist who did ghost in shell did some (adult) art like this.

Lost World
Aztecs, aliens and dinosaurs with 20s colonial explorers on coastal cities

Steam Age
Steampunk europe at war with monsters or dark europe

World of Darkness

Vampires, werewolves, slayers and cyberpunk

Mythic Babylon
Enchanted armies of Babylon with power of Marduk invading everybody

Spacegods
Hindu mythology, cyberpunk, espionage, psychedelia and ancient space god tech. Jerry Cornelius would be at home here. Rogan Gosh uk comic a good reference.

Shambala
Hidden underground kingdom of psionics, mystics and wonder workers here to save world with enlightenment.

Leng
A frozen plateau linked to dreamlands, inhabited by evil subhuman and inhuman hybrids who serve cults of the old ones. Spread unspeakable evil

Bug Wars
A hostile invading ecosystem of flora, fauna, micro organisms and monsters killing and hybridising everything - Armoured aliens sometimes appear to destroy spawn points. Was with Chtorr, Arachnids and space marines from starship troopers, Mecha, Tyranids.

Gamma Oz
Gamma world - 25th century space colony tech remnants in ruins with stone age mutants, androids, sentient animals and other weirdness. Mutant Cane  Toads and feral hordes battle natives animals. Orungs, Casawaries, CusCus and tree kangaroos up north.

Melnibone
The new Dragon Island with army of cloned Maurois. Breeding dragons and flesh eating moa birds and kia for riding in army. Building massive invasion ships with thousands of oars and demon hulls

Ashanti Empire
Michael Moorcock's the Land leviathan. African empire ruled from a mighty mobile war ziggarutt by the so called Black Attila. Early WW2 tech, mostly WW1 and late steampunk

Mountains of Madness
Old ones and the shoggoths and deep ones are arising, ancient sunken cities are sunlit again.

Monday, 28 January 2013

Dungeons, Dimensions and TORG



All based on the following 2 blogs

Tales of the grotesque and dungeonesque

http://talesofthegrotesqueanddungeonesque.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/diy-torg.html?zx=2cbaa50d3a44872e


Dark Corners of role playing
http://darkcornersofrpging.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/diy-grind-house-torg-and-oasis-of.html

TORG
One of the most interesting games ever in the reality mash up days of the early 90s. Basicly other realities invade our cosm. I stole so much from it but couldn't have run as presented. I would have used marvel with karma tied to possibility energy, or BRP with links of magic points to probability energy. Depend on how gritty a feel. Even just using worlds as straight campaigns or alternate worlds for other games these books are great.

Where it was awesome

Reality source books
were awesome - better than the basic game and were all more interesting for the other side world rather than the their-and-our-world-mash-ups

Art - Daniel R Horne and some tech illustrations that i will use forever

Card Deck - i didn't use but inspired my own deck - especially players get to intervene in narrative

Cosm conquering mechanics - while i didn't go for all the details, the basic way invading colums placed stelae to expand in a triangular grid was great. The Darkness devices were great villains too

Villains - Highlords of the invading worlds and an emphasis on a hierachy of villains. Down to gang of thugs to the ruler of a dimension.

Rules - While i disliked them as a whole there were innovative titbits i loved

Characters - Lots of interesting archetypes, aliens, any kind of character really, storm knights sounded cool

Monsters - lotsa good ideas

Cosm laws - local moral laws effected actions and made strange consequences for tech too


Where it displeased me

Game start point -
setting with the war underway and weird stuff accepted was a sad loss of discovery and innovation.

Id started party at ground-zero in a shopping mall that has had dinosaur reality overlap and millitary trying to stop. When they escaped to core earth one player was a nudist lizard hippie cultist learning spells. The others had kept their identites but were changed by trauma and experience. While they were lost the world had gone to war.

My other start would be espionage based with agents finding anomalies in diferent countries and fighting x-phenomena till plot of invasion and plane travel revealed then start ground zero in the home cosm mid campaign. Of course my DnD long stair is about a dimensional battle of modern military vs oldschool DnD modules so isnt a big leap.

Adventures - all a mish mash of stuff - id prefer whole modules on alternate earths

Core earth vs invaders - too gonzo for start, needed to happen over years, i just never got the feel. Id rather be more gonzo - cosms invade superhero world, or more gritty like chaosium mechanics. Now id consider DnD but classes might be too limiting. Perhaps easier class shifting rules for plane hoppers.

Invading Cosms

Core Earth - boring mess

Living Land - dinosaur men hippies invade west coast USA, plant monsters of highlord cool


Aysle - dnd world, a bit average but cover is awesome, i probably least used this one

The Cyberpapacy - french medival papacy meets the matrix and cyberpunk - godnet was cool - weapons and vehichle art some of the best ever in a game book - steal for any near future game or even traveller.

Nippon Tech - a slightly better tech world of japan dominated corporate - feudal Japanese stuff. Corporate warfare rules - great for any cyberpunk game, martial arts vs tech

The New Nile Empire - pulp indiana jones vs ancient egyptian despot - good pulp fun

Orrorsh - Victorian englishmen unwittingly bringing demonic horror with indonesian and asian territories. Modern tech would fail in zone so 1890s staemships could wipe out non functional nuclear vessels. Good asian horror stuff. Killer video recorders. Amazing art. Like most games its version of Australia and Indonesia a bit strange.

Land Below pulp and dinosaur realities merged in subterranean lost world.  Idea of mashing realities like this should have been bigger.

Space Gods aztech space gods with psionics and biological weapons - really interesting for many games - only one i never bought but really wanted

Tharkold failed to attack russia and repelled. Psionic tech gargoyle demons. Lotsa 80s Clive Barker -esque masochism and flesh shredding torture and pain. Humans in bunkers with psionics, battlesuits, miniguns with plasma ammo, microfactories in suitcases that could refit guns and build custom ammo, or autosurgeon in a briefcase. Recyclers bots staving LA for invaders. Really fun book with really some of best cyberpunk art and tech anywhere.

The point of all this...
So the two links on the top of this article asks what games/genres would you invade your core earth with. With possibility of using your old underplayed game supplements. I kinda dont want to be replacing world with just fantasy honkeys either.

North America
- Dark Conspiracy/Car Wars/Dark future for West coast, shadowrun for seattle and Canada, Superheroes in New York (probably more like wildcards and black ops than Marvel), Cadilcs and Dinosaurs for southern states and mexico

South America - Starship troopers/war against the Chtorr/Tyranids - biological invasion with armoured cyborg spacemen recruiting locals for resistance

Europe & Russia - World of darkness - vamps, witches, werewolves, horror, faerie tales and supernaturalism - some DnD and medieval leaking in too

Australia - Gamma World,will get onto gamma oz game anyhow

Asia
- Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong all cyberpunk/martial arts. Some areas over run by kaiju. Folk monsters haunt rural areas. India - psychadelic espionage and psionics and hindu gods afoot (Rogan Gosh comic to blame). Leng has reappeared in Hymalayas and is spreading influence - mythos vs martial arts.

Antarctica - Lost world, sorcery and science, dinosaurs

Iceland - overrun by giants and vikings and trolls

Africa - Oswald Bastable stories of Micheal moorcock - Steampunk post colonial Africa with new warlord out to unite africa and rule the world.

Middle East - Assyrian Empire reborn with monster troops and sorcerors

Central Asia - The night Land by William Hope Hodgson - spilling out into russia, china, afganistan, pakistan

Melnibone, Atlantis, Cthulhu all possible

Saturday, 1 December 2012

Cards and Hero points in FRP



The amazing Jeff Dee on old school gamers FB group,  proclaimed his dislike for point systems to help survive (to be fair he said it made senses in starwars).

I used a booster card set - which is funny because i hate what some card games have done to industry, Games with actual speculative trading and gambling for profit pisses me off too (one of my buddies lived off magic). But my welsh-estonian-adelaidian upbringing probably made me that way or something.

TORG was inspirational and probably being a dr Dr Who fan as well. TORG was to me unplayable but had some of the last rpg books i kept for a while - tharkoldu and space gods, all the realm books were great. My RQ game had only divine magic for about 4 years probably my best game. I used this card system to help players pull a few heroic miracles. My BRP game in space did this too. Some of most memorable moments. Marvel had karma too but that's another story.

I normally dont like cards. casinos, either but for my deck i used a standard deck of playing cards cos they are cheap and so am i. And some odd notes for my old RQ world.

RPG Booster Cards  Christopher Tamm (1996)
CARD       Clubs                 Hearts            Spades           Diamonds
10 - 7        Fleshwound      Parley             Second Try    Treasure  
                  1d4 dam only    Talk                Re-roll            Cash bonus  
 6 - 4         Mighty Blow     Friend             Success           Equipment
                  +6 dam mod      Ally                Auto                Useful find
 3 - 2         Surprise!            Monologue     Special            Transport
                   0 Strike Rank    Speech           Auto                Travel opportunity  
 ACE          Trick Shot         Rally             Critical            Passage
                   Perfect shot      Call Ally         Auto                 Move freely  
                   special move     followers                                 without obstacle
JACK         Nemesis            Intrigue           Support            Card Theif
                   Foil an enemy   Aids plots       Give  ally         Swap cards with others
                   escape               and schemes   auto success     hands or discard deck
Queen         Champion         Romance         Rescue            Artifact
                    Ignore one        Overcomes      Help arrives    Obtain a valuable
                    attack                with love         help problem   or unique object
King            Martyr               Glory              Mastery            Illumination
                    Defeat foe        Gain glory      Gives bonus to  Find an answer
                    die in attempt   for a deed       improvements   to a mystery


Joker- Saved From Death Miraculously avoid death from any source by an amazing feat. Goes great with king of clubs.

heroes and villains can hold up to 3 cards and may draw one per session to replace a spent card or swap with your least favorite in hand

important flunkies and npcs can hold up to one card

an arch villain may lend his cards to important subordinates

I would consider doing a DnD version and make cards held = Wis Bonus

DnD has different issues - but this could be better than healing and huge HP scores

Some other fragments

Spoken Languages                  Written Languages
Dutanian (Low Common)       Dutanian  (Common)
Volnir (North)                          Runes (Used by Vikings)
Thulian (Lost land)                  Agonian (Used by East Church)
Agonian (East)                         Lamnutainian (Used by West Church)
Permian (Far north)                  Kurtian (Used by Infidel)

1RQ penny = 1 piece of silver = 10 pieces of copper =1/40th a piece of gold
1gp=40sp=400cp    500 coins = 1kg mass