Survivor Series I: Weather Forecasting

Fun fact, before I decided to be a chef and go to culinary school, I went to college to be a meteorologist. I have always been enamored by the weather and decided I wanted to do that for a living. Sadly, I wasn't the best at it, mostly the math sections. You'd be surprised how much math we had to take. I think only the mathematicians beat us. But enough about that.

I've always loved tornadoes and got to chase them! (Source: Wikipedia)

When I started DMing 3.5 and later Pathfinder, I would incorporate a lot of OSR survival stuff into my games. I always focused a lot more on the Man vs. Nature battles as players would deal with wildlife, natural disasters, disease, and weather. Weather is awesome and a game changer, and most players don't expect to deal with the blistering heat or cold, let alone storms and tornadoes. One of the most memorable moments in a game was when a PC tied himself to a pole and survived a tornado going over them, all while screaming and shouting obscenities. This earned him a place of honor among the tribes of kobolds that saw what he accomplished and he became a hero to them.

Of course, when adding more survival stuff into your game, it helps to know a little bit about the rules as well as how it works in real life, especially in a world very different from our modern world. For today. it's weather forecasting. In Pathfinder, one can forecast the weather using the Survival skill. And I use this in my ACKS game too, with a 16+ roll to do it, but those with Survival gain a +4 to it. However, many of my players have wondered how, without modern equipment, did our ancestors divine the weather?

We have to remember that people didn't use the scientific methods that we use today. A lot of weather forecasting was pattern recognition, based on astronomy, observing animal behavior, and simply looking at patterns in the sky. This would be compiled into almanacs as weather lore. You can see a pretty good list of them on the Wikipedia article about it. You can use these or have them as inspiration to make up your own weather lore for your game. Remember, it's all based on observations, not rigorous testing. If a bunch of crows gather the night before a rainstorm, you can bet that people will assume that a murder of crows brings the rain. And with running a magical fantasy setting, maybe that is actually the case! There are more magic methods of forecasting the weather, Dowsing and haruspicy are some real world examples. The classical definitions of pyromancy and aeromancy are also good to use for divining the weather (among other things).

Forecasting the weather is an important tool if you make weather a decent obstacle. Players dealing with torrential rainstorms and the flash floods that come with them will value a survivalist's prediction in the future. Or, the players trap an enemy army in a terrible thunderstorm to weaken and gain an advantage on them. Anything is possible! The more you use weather, the more of an impact it will have. I generally use the Pathfinder rules for weather, since they are pretty robust, but use or make up whatever you like! For a generator, I like to use the Dodeca Generator here. I find it is a good weather generator that takes into account the previous day's weather as well as the climate.

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)

Card Game Haul from FLGS

Went to the Adventure Gaming Store in Davie and boy, did my girlfriend and I get quite the haul

I've really enjoyed Sentinels of the Multiverse and I'm happy to have the latest expansion. Boss Monster was something new, but we've played a couple games of it and it is very fun.

For more RPG related news, Wednesday is the big tournament PPV for the World Wide Wrestling RPG I run on the VGCW boards. I'll definitely do a blog post about it in the coming days. Last week was a physically and mentally exhausting one at work, so I apologize for the sparse updates.

20 Man Royal Rumble Main Event? Oh Yeah!

So in addition to running an ACKS game, I also run a World Wide Wrestling game with seven people from a forum I frequent. The link to the RPG is here, while the link to the forum post about my game is here. Over all, it has been a very enjoyable experience, both as a fan of wrestling and a fan of RPGs. Many of the people have really enjoyed it as well, whether they are wrestling fans or first timers. I think that's one of the cool things about adding wrestling in an RPG format. Wrestling already supports the gonzo and beer & pretzel style of gaming. It's a natural fit. And while there's roleplaying and talking involved (as per any *World game), you can always just have a manager be your mouthpiece if you aren't so great at talking, just like in real wrestling. It's an amazing game and I think people really should give this a spin.

Anyways, a while back, I bought some funky dice and I've been wondering what I can use them for. Well, now that I have the go home show before our game's PPV event, I think I've figured it out. The PPV is called King of Kings, a bracket style tournament where seven people go in and the winner gets a title shot of their choice, when and where they want it, no matter the title. It's essentially like King of the Ring mixed with Money in the Bank for those that watch WWE.

Now I bet you are wondering why seven people instead of eight in a tournament? Well, that's where the main event of the show preceding our PPV comes in. It's going to be a 20 man Royal Rumble, where one person will be called in at a time to come into the ring and wrestle, until we exhaust the list of 20 entrants. To win, you have to eliminate another wrestle by throwing them over the top rope and having their two feet touch the ground outside. You do this until there is a last man standing. That winner will be getting a by in the tournament on the following game and go straight to the semi finals. The next six people will be put in the tournament and it'll go from there.

I plan on using the Funky Dice to do the random rolling for the Royal Rumble. I'll roll a d20 on the list of wrestlers and as I put more wrestlers out there in the ring, I'll step the die down. So if we have 11 people left to be called out, I'll roll a d11 to see who is next. I could use a deck of cards, but where is the fun in that?

I'll have to do a session recap for this come Wednesday. But, I am looking forward to it greatly.

A Corpse Relinquished: Undead in My Setting

In the setting I run, people aren't quite sure what causes undeath, only that it happens. Theosophists, clergymen, and arcane scholars all have their theories. It is true that undead creatures, such as zombies, wraiths, and vampires, have a dark vital energy that flows through their body, much like ki courses throughout the bodies of the living. But that is the only point where people seem to come to an agreement.

Courtesy of Dark Souls I

One theory is that the negative energy is an animating and corrupting force. Once that isn't sentient or necessarily evil. It just simply is a force, like the wind or gravity. Others apply more of a anthropomorphic, evil personality to this energy of oblivion that wishes to disrupt the natural order and unravel reality. It is true that undead descend into madness and violence the longer they are allowed to roam. Even intelligent undead become so disconnected from humanity and sociopathic that they too become uncaring and violent towards mortals. This theory is common among the clergy, and traditionalists. It plays off of a classic good vs evil bit and keeps many of the clergymen relevant.

Some philosophers apply a different explanation to undead and their relationship with dark energy. The negative energy is attracted to the dead, but the true animating force is the abandoned corpse. After a person dies, their soul leaves their body to move on, as if the corpse were an old child's toy. Abandoned after years of faithful duty to the soul, the corpse becomes rightfully angry at its role in the cycle of life and death. Fueled by a psychic echo of hate and betrayal, undead rebel against the gods that put them in this role. They are metaphysical anarchists that feed on souls out of vengeance and to fight the powers that be. As you can imagine, this line of thinking is very popular among necromancers. 

A corollary of the second theory is that the bodies are naturally evil. The mortal vessels contain inside them the capacity to do terrible and horrible things, and these urges infect our souls when we are alive. Selfishness and sadism are the default settings of a mortal body, with acts of genuine kindness and empathy an anomaly of the soul. Once a corpse is free, it becomes uninhibited and using negative energy, acts on its primal desires against the world. This line of thinking explains the more sentient undead with corrupted souls, like vampires and liches. A more nihilistic view on undead, but one that has gained much more support after the last 80 years of endemic warfare in my setting.

With these and other ways of thinking about undead in my setting, it means undead are treated in different ways. Some are seen as monsters to be destroyed, much like normal, More often, there is a feeling of pity, of seeing a trapped and tortured body or soul and most clerics believe in giving them a final, peaceful rest. I want to get into this more in another blog post, but the thing I am thinking of most is that to defeat undead, I want it to take more than just turning and smashing with a mace. I haven't quite settled on what I want, but I think I have an idea. Until next time.

Weapon Degradation and Repair

I've been playing a lot of Dark Souls 3 and The Witcher 3, which both have weapon degradation and repair. So I wanted to put a simplified mechanic into my ACKS games. Here's what I've got.

Weapon Quality

Weapons all have a quality attached to them that signifies how well crafted they are. This is represented by a weapon quality die. Standard quality weapons are a d8 quality, with masterwork/Hattori Hanzo/Damascus Steel weapons at a d10-d12 and poorer quality weapons at a d4-d6 range.

After using your weapon, roll your quality die. On a result of a 1, the quality drops a die step and the weapon gains a -1 to damage rolls. Minimum damage is still 1. When you roll a result of a 1 on a d4 quality die, the weapon is broken and only does 1d2 damage. 

Different factors can make the quality roll more difficult. If a character doesn't take a turn to clean and hone the blade with a maintenance kit, then the quality roll will reduce a die step on a result of a 1 or 2. This is cumulative with using a weapon constantly without maintenance. Using a sword for three battles without maintenance would make the roll a 1-3. Other factors that can increase the difficulty include hitting a very hard object (stone, a dragon turtle's shell), leaving a bow strung constantly, or sunder attempts.

ACKS Optional Rule: Instead of the -1 to damage, you can roll on the Scavenging Treasure table on page 210 of ACKS each time your weapon goes down in quality, I'd roll a d16 to ignore the Shoddy Construct and Roll Twice results, since you won't want this weapon breaking so early. 

Weapon Maintenance and Repair

Maintenance can be oiling and honing your sword, waxing and unstringing your bow, cleaning your musket out, etc. You can use a repair kit to bring up your weapon's quality die by one step, up to the maximum quality for its type. A repair kit is 7 gold and comes with the tools needed to repair the weapon it's for out in the field one time. Repairing your dinged weapon back to its maximum quality die using a blacksmith is simply equal to half the cost of the weapon. Repairing a broken weapon is just the cost of the weapon.

A maintenance kit is 20 gold. These help to keep the difficulty low when making a weapon quality roll. They are good for five uses, then must be restocked for 5 gold, representing buying more oil or wax or other consumable items.

Other Items

You could also do this with armor and shields, with the negatives being a loss of AC or Initiative (or just using the Scavenging Treasure table, which I do prefer). Magic items probably won't need to be honed, or maybe they don't need to make the rolls at all. Haven't decided yet, but I think I prefer the former. These rules are meant to add some more depth to my wilderness survival games, where a broken sword can really mean the difference between life and death. But, I still want to keep it simple for myself and my players

Of Bats, Moths, and Cicadas: Undeath in My Setting

In the island chain that calls itself Anacaona, death and undeath play a big part in the every day lives of the natives. There are two main ethnicities. The Sulano are a tawny island people and are the true locals of the islands, having been there for centuries. The Okulek are they darker neighbors from the southern continent, leaving behind their ancestral rain forests to raid and conquer the island folk. Years of warring, conquering, rebellion, and alliance against the incoming colonists have made cultural exchange and assimilation a big thing between these two people. And none has been greater than their similar ideas about death and undeath.

The world is steeped in magic and spirits, but the mortal soul is an interesting creature. It is a larvae, without the same power as an angel, a zemi, or a demon. But within it holds a great potential for growth and enlightenment, that which can awe and frighten the greatest of immortals. A soul that works hard to gain experiences gets closer and closer to reaching their full potential and ultimately reaching enlightenment. It's no wonder, then, that most souls reincarnate to truly know the human experience. Most simply aren't ready to move on.

There's your soul

The soul is a larvae, like a cicada nymph. It has layers around it called subtle bodies. These are vehicles of your soul and of the different energies that course throughout your body. When you die, your soul sheds its physical body like a cicada molting for the first time. As you rise through the higher planes of existence, you shed more and more of your subtle bodies until you have reached your afterlife. But, these spiritual molts don't simply just lie around. No, they can come back.

Your soul shedding its body to move on

Your physical body is the first vehicle to be shed when you die, and it lays rotting into the earth. The physical body is naturally a prison, so things can get trapped in there. Things like evil spirits or negative energy from outside of creation can reanimate the dead. Most of the time, they simply come to 'life' on their own, using negative energy as their replacement for vital energy (or ki), Zombies and skeletons are the most common ones. They don't have souls in them, though raising them before their soul has had a chance to be judged will pull the soul back into our world and trap them in their rotten husk of their former body. These creatures are mindless, save for an unending desire to spread oblivion. The soul that gets trapped in them becomes tortured by the curse of undeath until they too are mindless drones trapped in the world. These become the wraiths you see tormenting the living. What's curious to many shamans and philosophers in Anacaona is how the default actions of the mortal's body are always malicious and violent.

The undead molt

Ghosts share a lot of characteristics with spirits and undead. They are the souls trapped in the spirit world, unable to shed their etheric body and move on. They don't have the negative energy corruption like other undead, but do eventually become angry and highly volatile from being denied their place in paradise. Any number of things can keep a ghost trapped, from an improper burial to unfinished business to vengeance. The only thing that can free a ghost from its etheric body is finding peace with its death. Of course, even with them moving on, they leave behind their etheric body in the spirit world, which, like the physical body, can come to unlife on its own. It feeds off of negative energy and eventually creates a cocoon of ectoplasm. Its psychic chrysalis will hatch and reveal the end of its metamorphosis; the phantom.

Phantoms are the molts of a soul's ethereal vessel and like the physical body, is prone to violence. A phantom is more sinister and methodical in its hate, and many can extend their psychic powers into the environment around them. One must be wary when dealing with a haunting of a phantom, as they flutter towards mortal lives like moths to a flame, eventually snuffing the embers out and claiming a victim. In Anacaona, seeing a swarm of moths is a portent of a phantom in the area. It isn't uncommon for a phantom to take the form of a swarm of moths to surround and suffocate their victims after emotionally torturing them.

Witch moths are bad omens

The bats that flutter in the evening sky can be spirits. These creatures are hupia (oo-piya), souls of those that have reached the site of judgement, but instead of staying to be judged or reincarnated, they run away back to the lives. They are like ghosts, but they made it to the land of the dead and out of fear of their judgement, fled back to the world of the living. They have no belly button as they no longer have a human mother, and an hupia can take the shape of how they looked like in life (except for the lack of a navel). They can read the minds of a person, but only to extract imaged of loved ones in that person's life. Using their shape-shifting powers, an hupia can look like a person's loved one. An hupia can also shape-shift into a bat for the day time, which protects them from being destroyed by the sun. The hupia is closely associated with bats, as bats walk the twilight, a realm of both life and death in their religion. Bats also crave the guava, a symbol of life and health, while hunting moths, the symbol of phantoms. It is true that many hunt and devour these spiritual beings. And yet, like bats escaping the light of the morning sun, hupia are always trying to hide from their final judgement.

A ghost face bat has a very fitting name

Many try to go back to their everyday lives and a select few do eke out an existence with their loved ones. Others are shunned and forced to go back to the land of the dead. Those that are banished from their old towns make their own hupia villages or become hermits. Hermitage is dangerous though. An hupia is an actual soul that has molted almost all of its subtle bodies, so they have to be around mortal life to remain normal. Being away from life is a full corruption of the soul that cannot be reversed save by the most powerful magics. The hermits become naturally more violent as they succumb to the curse of undeath. The most interesting thing about this is that to the native Sulano, hupias are a stage in the life cycle of reincarnation. Instead of attacking the hupia, many try and console it, hoping to send them off to the land of the dead to be judged. A common method is to keep the hupia in the village and treating everything as normal, giving a psychopomp enough time to find the hupia and take them back.

Undeath is essentially a metaphysical disease that slowly turns the soul into a shell. A mortal soul and body uses the negative energies of oblivion, the abyss that lies outside of our world, as their vital energy. This energy naturally pools and bleeds into areas of death and destruction. It is a corrupting energy that curses its victims, but all that suffer from undeath aren't evil. A disciplined mind can live in relative peace for a time as an undead, but eventually they will succumb to the base, violent instincts of their brethren. Some say it's the corrupting energies of the abyss, while others say it's the denial of a proper afterlife that does it. But until the undead creature is freed, it remains forever tormented in a state of being a walking spiritual molt. At least until someone frees it. Casting a spell like raise dead or something similar will 'kill' an undead, breaking its curse and sending it off to the afterlife. With an hupia, casting a reincarnation spell will actually act as a judgement and bring the hupia back as a newborn child, furthering the theory that they are a part of the reincarnation cycle.

How people treat undead is something I'll get into in another blog post, but it is definitely going to be different than in other settings. I also do want to get more into how subtle bodies play a role in my setting in another blog post. I suppose the take away here is that human souls are pretty much the Pokemon Nincada and undead are Shedinja

I guess when you put it that way, it seems a lot less cool and spiritual