Solo Gaming Using Mythras Part 2: The Character and the Oracle

Yesterday was all about the setting and system. Today, you'll get to see the character and the oracle, as well as get some good background on some of the cultures in Anacaona.

Mucario, the Young Fisherman

Mucario is the character I'm running in my solo Mythras game. He fifteen years old and is a short, lithe young man at 5'4" and 103 pounds. His skin and eyes are a dark brown and his wind beaten hair is wavy and wild, covering his ears but not quite to his shoulders. Personality-wise, he was born under the Bat star sign with an ascendant Carrack sign, so Mucario is clever and wary, but has the demeanor of a driven and reckless youth. The personality chart I use is one I've made, linking the world's zodiac to different personalities. You roll twice, once for the main personality traits (the sign you were born under) and once for their demeanor (the ascendant sign on the east horizon), the mask they put on for the outside world. I'll have to post these one day.

One thing veterans of Mythras will notice is that despite Mucario being a sorcerer, he doesn't have the Shaping skill. I decided that since he is still a teenager, he hasn't quite mastered all of the ins and outs of sorcery. So while he learned two spells, he has no idea how to master them and change them. One of the rewards I plan for him is to find a tutor to teach him more about shaping. Maybe even join the ranks of the legendary mages in the Bulgaoya, an ancient college of sorcerers in the floating capital of Locanigua, Uraya.

Here is his bio:

"Mucario is a young Sulano native from the shattered island chain of Locanigua. Like his forefathers, he is a nomadic fisherman that travels between the small islands, trawling for sea creatures aboard small canoes and living in semi-permanent shelters on the islands during the hurricane season. Mucario is an only child, living with a single father named Guabano, but a huge extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins. His mother was killed by the Blood Phage at the end of the war 6 years ago, so he has been raised by his father and his mother's eldest brother, Suyono. While Guabano has shown Mucario the family trade of fishing, Suyono has taught the lad about fighting with a fishing spear and shield to defend against pirates and slavers, an all too common hazard in Anacaona. 

When Mucario was 11, he fished up a set of protected scrolls. Instead of discarding them, curiosity took over and the young fisherman opened them. He revealed them to be a series of sorcery scrolls that showed how to cast two spells in the Spirit of the Ocean School of Magic. It took months of learning, but Mucario learned to cast Might of Waves and Call Lak-Lak, a friendly water elemental that can heal and entertain the lonely trawler. Despite knowing basic magic, Mucario never learned how to shape and enhance his cantrips and hopes to find a tutor that can show him how. 

Mucario enters his fifteenth year and passed through his rites into manhood. Tired of life as a fisherman and consumed with a desire to both fight barbary and learn more magic, Mucario took his canoe, some of his uncle's old armor, and left to make a name for himself as an adventurer. Patient and thoughtful, but naive and innocent, Mucario sailed to the harbor city of Puerto Oro and took a job as a bodyguard to a Captain Abraham Spalding of the carrrack Fortune. The pay seems good and a merchant like Spalding should have some good connections to the arcane tutors of the islands."

And his stats

Mucario

Nomadic Free Fisherman

                                                                                      AP/HP
STR: 12       Action Points: 3                 1–3 Right Leg 0/4
CON: 10      Damage Modifier: +0        4–6 Left Leg 0/4
SIZ: 10        Magic Points: 13                7–9 Abdomen 0/5
DEX: 13      Movement: 6 metres         10–12 Chest 3/6
INT: 13        Initiative: +13                   13–15 Right Arm 0/3
POW: 13      Armour: Linen Armor      16–18 Left Arm 0/3
CHA: 9                                                  19–20 Head 3/4

Skills:
Standard: 

Athletics 45%, Boating 42%, Brawn 32%, Conceal 26%, Customs 26%, Dance 22%, Deceit 22%, Drive 26%, Endurance 50%, Evade 36%, First Aid 31%, Influence 18%, Insight 26%, Locale 31%, Perception 56%, Ride 26%, Sing 22%, Stealth 41%, Swim 32%, Unarmed 25%, Willpower 36%

Professional:
Lore (Trawling) 41%, Musician (Wind) 27%, Navigation 61%, Seamanship 33%, Survival 43%

Magic:
Sorcery: Invocation 36%; Spells (Enhance Strength, Summon Water Elemental)

Combat Style: Locinaguan Sea Reaver 45% (Spear/Harpoon, Shield, Dagger, Bow; Excellent Footwork)

Passions:
Hates Injustice 56%, Desires Arcane Knowledge 56%

Weapons:
Spear
Knife
Buckler Shield

Armor:
Linen breastplate and brass helmet

The Oracle

The Oracle I am using is a modified version of the one found at Tiny Solitary Solider's website. I roll 2d6 and 1d3, all different colors. The first d6 is simply Yes and No. Generally it's 50/50, but I change the odds depending on whether I have a good or bad chance of the answer. So sometimes, I'll have a 2/3 chance of a yes or a 1/6 chance of a no. The d3 is And, But, and Neutral. That one stays simple. The last is a twist die, where if I roll a 6, a twist in the scene happens. I either roll for it on his table, or use a tarot card or Tangent Zero's image dice for the twist. Every time I don't roll a 6 on this, I add a cumulative plus 1 to the Twist die until I eventually roll a 6 or higher.

Beyond that, since I'm running a canned adventure, I probably won't edit it too much with twists from tarot cards and Tangent Zero's story cubes. I am looking forward to sharing the adventure later this week.

Bound in Ruin

"This post is inspired by the Pan-Dungeonism belief discussed over at Hill Cantons. The blog has some great stuff that has really inspired my hexcrawls. Lots of good stuff here to look at, but the Pan-Dungeonism has really struck a cord in my meat noodle, so here we go!"

All things die in the end. People, animals, even the gods themselves will fade away into the afterlife. This has been the way of the world for eons upon countless eons. Though we ourselves have never set foot upon the blessed paradise of Heaven nor the blasted halls of Hell, we know well that our souls make their long trek home with the guidance of grim, sullen-eyed psychopomps.

And yet, who says that creatures and man are the only ones that descend to oblivion?

There is a tablet from an ancient age when men huddled in mud huts for warmth, and the riddle of steel still hung unanswered in the minds of artificers. Written by pressed reeds is a tale of a world of ruins. An entire universe containing the spiritual remnants of civilization. Ancient ziggurats and step pyramids litter the world as testaments to the ephemeral nature of man. Sullen-eyed spirits troll the blackened wasteland, scavenging for information, architecture, or souls hiding in the rubble from damnation.

There is much to pick from the carcass of civilization. Pieces of broken technology can be found and with the right knowledge, refurbished and reused. Lost knowledge can be discovered and traded for the right price. True names, missing people from one's lineage, architecture secrets, lost treasure... the realm of Ruin is the multiverse's landfill. And if someone could find a way to travel there like the ancients were able to, then they can truly make one man's trash into their own treasure.

But how does one make it into the World of Ruin?

There is the current belief that all places of ruin in our world can lead to the World of Ruin.  Places of decay and destruction... like a dungeon. Ruined temples and keeps, old forts from wars long done, steadings razed to the ground, and crypts and tombs can all take us to the World of Ruin with the knowledge of the right ritual to open up a sinkhole in reality. Entering the World of Ruin through these sinkholes is believed to take you to a mirror image of the dungeon you were in, as it sinks further and further into oblivion. From there, it is theorized that you can travel to other sinking dungeons and come back to the real world in its mirror image. You could start your adventure in a ruined temple in a desert and end it at an ancient alien city frozen in the South Pole. All dungeons in the world are connected by the World of Ruin as a sort of network of crumbling dungeons. The implications of travel are incredible to those looking to exploit it. Colonization, military mobilization, trade. All can be improved if these sinkholes were mapped and the ritual was discovered.

Even without the ritual, dungeons can, after a time, have natural sinkholes form. The older the dungeon is, the further it has sunk into the World of Ruin and the greater a chance that one or even more sinkholes into the World have spawned inside. There have been tales of adventures that have traversed between two dungeons in completely separate continents via these portals. But when taken back to the dungeon, the sinkholes have disappeared. Do they only appear for a small amount of time before vanishing? Do these portals change locations for each adventurer that enters the dungeon? Or is this just another case of adventurers telling tall tales?

First Map in Years

It's been a good couple of years since I've done any kind of D&D mapping on the computer. With the move into a bigger home, I am able to carve out my own little space for work on art, D&D, and writing. With that, here is my first map in three years. I present The Ruined Keep. The concept and layout was done with my random dungeon dice generator, then I simply embellished and drew it out.

A link to the full sized version is here. Looking for any and all critiques from viewers. I hope to get back into drawing again.

Sunder and Rust

Last month, I made a post about Weapon Degradation here. I wanted to expand a little bit and talk about sundering items.

Sunder

To sunder a weapon or shield, you must roll an attack against the item. Small items like daggers or potions would be harder to hit (-4), medium items like swords and bucklers take a -2 to hit, and larger items like armor, staves and tower shields are much easier to hit and take no penalties.After the attack, roll a Strength check. On a success, the weapon is brought down a die level. On a natural 20, the die is brought down two levels. Depending on the item die below will depend on what you need to beat to bring it down a die level

Weapon Quality Die    Strength to Bring it Down

d4                                 6+

d6                                 10+

d8                                 14+

d10                               18+

d12                               22+

This makes high quality weapons harder to destroy. It also hopefully makes it a good tactic to weaken an enemy's weapon or armor, especially if they are hard to kill and do a lot of damage. Of course, this leads me to my next idea...

Rust Monster

DM's love him, the PC's worst nightmare is back, ready to oxidize your weapons until they crumble. When a rust monster uses it's feelers to destroy a metal item, roll a Blast/Breath saving throw. Failure means it drops a die step. A natural 1 means it drops two die steps. If your item is at a d4, it breaks.

I wanted to make the rust monster still dangerous, but a little more forgiving with its oxidation ability. That way it increases the tension that your weapon/armor is degrading, but you can still use it to fight it off while you think of something else to use on.

Killing PCs? Evil. Destroying their gear? Downright despicable! (3.5 Forgotten Realms)

Dice Dungeon Generator

So in an attempt to do more mechanical exercises for D&D, I made a quick and dirty dungeon generator. I've given it a couple of tries, ran through some, and am running my girlfriend through a solo ACKS adventure through one. After some much needed tweaks, here we are. It doesn't take very long to generate, even with larger rooms. You can make some pretty big sprawling dungeons with this. And like with all things, you aren't beholden to the rules. If you want a secret passage to bypass half of the dungeon, you should do it. Make that dungeon yours! This just lays out the barest of bones. So grab some d6s and a d10 and let's get ready to generate!

Dungeon Generator

First, you have to decide how many rooms you want in your dungeon. You can simply roll a dice (I rolled a d30 and got an 11), pick a number, or just do the steps below until you feel like you have enough rooms.

Draw your starting room. I draw everything like a flowchart, with rooms being circles and hallways being lines. Next you can roll how many rooms connect into your current room. For each room, roll for their location, what stands in the way of them, and which vertical level the other room is. You can pick which ones to roll and which ones to leave out. If you want everything on the same level, simply ignore the second table and for the third table, use a d8 instead of the d10. If you want something that uses only the cardinal directions, like a building, then for the third table, use a d4 instead of a d10.

1d6 # of Rooms Connected

1-3   One

4-5   Two

6      Three

1d6 Vertical Level of Next Room

1      Above Current Level

2-5  On Same Level

6      Below Current Level

1d10 Location of the Hallway

1      North

2      East

3      South

4      West

5      Northeast

6      Southeast

7      Southwest

8      Northwest

9      Straight Up

10    Straight Down

1d6 State of the Hallway

1      Open

2      Closed

3      Locked

4      Blocked

5      Trapped

6      Hidden

From here, you interpret the dungeon results. Sometimes you get weird results, but they often lead to cooler rooms. If you have a set amount of rooms and you ever roll more Rooms Connected than you have rooms, those hallways are simply dead ends. Getting a room on the same level as your current one but with an entrance going straight up/down means the room is simply bigger and has a second level.

And that's it. You can use several dungeon stocking and dressing generators from various D&D retroclones. I've been using the ACKS one and that seems to work out really well in the solo game I'm running. Some point this week, I want to post up some game reports of those games. Let me know if there are any additions or changes you'd make to this. I'll see if I can scan and post up an example of usage with this.