10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"

Bear with me, my computer died last week, hence the lack of significant updates.

(Not that I'm promising significant updates when my new thinking machine arrives, but you get what I mean.)

I'll be back in a few days. I hope.

Five Alive!

In a fearsome feedback loop that threatens the very fabric of not much at all, Adam at Barking Alien followed up on my first five role-playing games post with a post about the five rpgs he's thinking about most right now. Or then, when he wrote the post. That seems like an excellent idea. Let's have at it!

• 13th Age. I'm often thinking about 13th Age because I think it's an excellent game and I very much enjoyed running it in the past. I read 13th Age Glorantha the other day -- I backed as a Kickstarter in 1873 or thereabouts and never got around to reading -- and while it's massively incomplete, it has a lot of very good ideas. It's another layer of complexity on top of the base game -- I refer to it as Advanced 13th Age to no one because there's no one else here -- so I don't know if I'd run it, but it did make me excited to play 13A again, in some form.
• Break!! I've got an idea for subverting the bright and cheery feel of Break!! with an apocalyptic horror campaign influenced by The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Kingdom Death, and few other bleak and depressing things. I can't quite decide if this is a terrible idea, or bold and exciting. Perhaps I will play it to find out!
• Call of Cthulhu. I am almost always thinking about Call of Cthulhu. It has been too long since I last played.
• Lamentations of the Flame Princess. This is a bit of a cheat as I'm working on a couple of books, but I am thinking about it and it is an rpg, so...
• Star Wars d6. I've got a rough idea for a pirate campaign, a mix of original content and some published adventures I've got lying around that would fit well with a bit of bodging. This also ties in with another post I really need to get around to publishing one day. This day? No.

Very Very Frightening, Me

Bearing in mind that (1) the Sentry has always been a terrible concept, and (b) the whole "there are no Avengers" premise doesn't really convince given that we've seen at least one working version of the Avengers since Endgame, Thunderbolts* is really quite good!

It's interesting and (very) weird and funny and sad and it's about something, depression mainly. David Harbour, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Wyatt Russell are pretty good, but the standout is Florence Pugh, who is excellent and very nearly steals the film and turns it into Black Widow II Plus Some Supporting Guys I Guess.

It's a shame it didn't do better in cinemas, but I can sort of see why it didn't. It's almost like an anti-Marvel movie, a sometimes low-key, almost "small", film about a bunch of really quite rubbish "heroes" who accidentally become a team; in that way it's perhaps more accurate to call them the Defenders.

(Ha ha. Comics joke.)

Yes, the comic Thunderbolts have a better, more clever, origin, but I can see why we didn't, perhaps couldn't*, get that in the MCU.

I liked it! A lot!

(Except for Sentry, he's still terrible.)

M People

I was noodling around with a project yesterday and realised that a lot of my favourite D&D-type monsters begin with the letter "M". So in the spirit of those old "make a campaign from only ten monsters" or "only use the Fiend Folio" posts of yore, let's see what's brought to us today by the letter "M"!

We will be using the AD&D2 Monstrous Manual, of course, for it is the best of the D&D monster books that isn't the Fiend Folio. Onward!

Mammal. An inauspicious start, but we have Ape, Carnivorous and Gorilla in there, so there's some pulpy potential.

Manscorpion. Not bad. Monstrous creepy hybrid bastards. Intelligent enough to have a society, and with manscorpion wizards! Nice and pulpy. I'd perhaps give them a tendency towards aggressive mansplaining and other forms of misogyny, just for the pun.

Not from the Monstrous Manual, obviously, but we must always make time for Iain McCaig!

Manticore. These have long been a favourite monster of mine. Lion-bat-scorpion-man monstrosities that are really angry, probably because they are lion-bat-scorpion-man monstrosities. Glorious.

Medusa. Another classic and another favourite. Can't go wrong with snake haired women with stone gaze powers. In the AD&D2 MM we also get the male version, the maedar, who are aggressively dull even by AD&D2 standards, and I will probably ignore them.

Merman. Fine, I suppose. I would probably blur them into sirens and play up elements of capricious horror, maybe even bring in some Deep One aspects.

Mimic. Great. Everyone loves mimics. Of course, I would have them be able to disguise themselves as anything, including people, probably. Imagine if the village blacksmith splits down the middle into a giant mouth and tries to eat you. Imagine!

Mind Flayer. Classic D&D enemies, but I've never much liked them, despite my Cthulhoid proclivities. Maybe I'd include one as a Big Bad type villain, squatting in a dungeon somewhere.

Minotaur. Another classic, literally. I've always liked minotaurs as a player-character option, so I'd include that too.

Mist, Crimson Death. I'm not a big fan of malevolent weather, but perhaps you could make this the centrepiece of an adventure and get away with only including one of them.

Mist, Vampiric. See above. Maybe the crimson death has these as its henchmen. Henchmists.

Mongrelman. Great! Horrific and sad. Monstrous but not necessarily monsters. They also fit into that Low Hit Dice Humanoid niche that every campaign needs. I love these guys.

Morkoth. Weird undersea hybrid thing with a very specific environmental effect, I wouldn't imagine lots of these in an M Campaign, but like the crimson death and mind flayer I could see them as the focal point of a one-off adventure. I'd probably put them into some sort of uneasy alliance with the mermen too.

Mould. Terrifying to me in real life because of a severe allergy, somewhat boring in game terms. They feel like a Gotcha! monster from the old days and if I drop anything it'll be these.

Mould Men. Fine, but we've got a similar and more visually interesting monster coming up, so I'd probably quietly fold these into them and hope no one notices.

Muckdweller. I would probably never use these in a standard campaign, as there are too many other Low Hit Dice Humanoids that would get used instead, but limiting myself to M-monsters gives them a way in and you know, I quite like them. They are Lawful Evil but I'd still put them into a sort of cute little guy role like a sort of amphibious Moogle, just a cute little guy with a burning hatred of land-dwellers.

Mudman. Great visual, boring monster. Another one that I'd probably use as the central idea in an adventure, rather than a common creature. Perhaps there would be some quest to return a mudman to human(oid) form, or at least find out where it came from and what created it.

Mummy. Yes, absolutely. Grade A superstar monsters.

Myconid. Mushroom people make for a great visual, and they are different and weird enough to feel alien, despite their intelligence and society. Like Groot but even stranger. I love them.

---

There's a desert or wilderness theme emerging with some of these monsters, with a bit of mythic Greece in there, and quite a few aquatic, or at least damp, creatures. A coastal desert perhaps, or a series or barren, hostile islands, with a swampy jungle area and some damp caves too. The number of hybrids suggest some sort of curse or experiments or cursed experiments, and I quite like the idea of a blasted "hot zone" that is home to the mists and rumoured to be full of treasure, Roadside Picnic style.

(Maybe the Zone produced the mutant hybrids?)

You've probably got the mind flayer, morkoth, and at least one mummy as "villains", maybe the crimson death and medusa too. Factions include the manscorpions, mermen, mongrelmen, muckdwellers, and the myconids; maybe there are enough manticores and medusas to form groups, maybe not. I like the idea of apes as a faction, although that's perhaps stretching the rules of the exercise a bit.

In terms of player-character options, although "Man" is technically there as an option, we are listed under "Human" in the MM, so I think I would limit players to the intelligent species above. And maybe the apes too. For fun.

Your turn. Pick a letter -- the first letter of your name, or roll a d26 if you have one -- and create a campaign from the monsters beginning with that latter. If you want.

My Dirty Secret (Defenders)

Calvin, I did not resist the temptation.

I even read it! The most surprising thing is that it's not terrible. It's not good either, but by the standards of 1990's Marvel it could be much, much worse. Both writing and art are solid but unimpressive. The storytelling is clear but never dramatic. It's competent, if dull. That said, there's a halfway interesting central mystery.

There are a couple of clumsy, weird moments, like Spider-Woman almost fumbling an investigation just so Wolverine can tell her off in the next panel, or whatever the creative decision was behind this panel:

After some arbitrary fighting with random costumed villains, the issue ends with the introduction of a new character! We don't know if they are hero or villain, which I think was probably the intent. I hope.

(It's impossible for any of these characters to be standing where they are based on their positions in the previous panel, by the way.)

I don't have #2 so I don't know why this character is called Dreadlox, but I'm hoping it's something to do with liquid oxygen related powers. I did look the character up to see if they had appeared again, as they are just the sort of obscure rando who would get used in an Al Ewing or Jed McKay comic, but alas they only seemed to appear in this one storyline.

Anyway, that's Secret Defenders #1. Not terrible, not good either. I give it two Cables out of five.

Fantastic Five(ish)

Over at Tower of Zenopus, Blacksteel lists the first five role-playing games they played. I like rpgs. I like lists. Let's have at it!

The first rpg I played was Fighting Fantasy, except I don't always count it because my friend Gareth and I didn't properly grasp what what we were supposed to do, so we read through it together as a sort of collaborative solo Fighting Fantasy adventure. Still, we made choices and rolled dice and fought battles, and it is an rpg, so I'm counting it. Today, anyway.

Then there was a gap of a few years until around 1994 or 1995 when my friend Tim saw that I was a big Warhammer 40,000 fan and said something along the lines of "If you like orks with guns, then you'll love this" and...

We did love it. We played the heck out of Shadowrun for the next three or four years, until our group broke up as everyone headed off to university or went off to work or went travelling. Tim was a massive Shadowrun fan and had pretty much all of the splatbooks so he ran most of the games but occasionally wanted to play something too, and somehow we met Dave and Dave was a keeper of eldritch lore...

That was me done for. We played the heck out of Call of Cthulhu too and, unlike Shadowrun, that love survived "growing up" and has lasted through the years decades.

After that, it's a bit fuzzy and I'm not certain what my fourth or fifth rpgs were. We were teenagers with a lot of spare time, we were new to the hobby, and we played a ton of games between huge, sprawling Call of Cthulhu and Shadowrun campaigns. I know Dave introduced us to Cyberpunk 2020, RuneQuest, and d6 Star Wars, and Tim encouraged me to get and run Traveller: The New Era, and Tim also ran a bizarre sleep-deprived game of Basic Dungeons and Dragons -- the Black Box -- in there too, so those are all likely candidates, but my gut feeling -- based on Star Trek: Voyager being on the telly at Dave's house when we went over to play -- is that RuneQuest was fourth, specifically the Games Workshop third edition:

My friends and I still remember this game as "the Battle of the Left Arm" because for some reason the hit location dice were wonky that day and all of the player-characters had their left arms either injured or severed in a battle with some broo.

Fifth though? No idea. Roll 1d4:

1. Black Box D&D
2. Cyberpunk 2020
3. Star Wars d6
4. Traveller: The New Era

Update: Adam at Barking Alien has also weighed in with a First Five!

BRUTICUS COMPROMISED

I am 45ish. My ambition*, before I vanish into cosmic dust, is to own a complete Bruticus.

This is Bruticus:

I owned two-fifths of him when I was a child. I had Onslaught, a fantastic toy and the main body, and I had Blast Off, one of the limbs -- usually an arm -- and a neat little space shuttle. Alas, I did not have the rest of the Combaticons. I did have a couple of other combiners -- Blot and Nautilator -- so I could assemble most of a hybrid, mutated Bruticus, missing a limb. Probably an arm.

At least they were all Decepticons, but it was Bruticus Compromised, at best, and it always niggled at me.

Later, in 2001, I was surprised to discover that the toys had been re-released with different colours and under different names, so flush with student loan money -- ha ha -- I bought them all and at last could assemble Bruticus.

Except it wasn't Bruticus. It was Ruination. This shouldn't matter, but it did, and anyway, I have somehow since lost Rollbar/Swindle, so even if it didn't matter I'm back to four-fifths.

I missed out on the various revamps and reimaginings of the toys -- including this beast -- but just a few weeks ago they released a new Vortex toy. Here he is:

(That's his 2001 incarnation there, "Ro-Tor".)

We will be getting his team-mates Blast Off and Brawl -- probably a leg -- and leader Onslaught in 2026. Maybe I will have a complete Bruticus before I'm 50.

*(I do have other ambitions. I'm not a total loser. Of course, those ambitions include such lofty goals as "finish painting my Eldar army" so...)

Kriegshacker II

(I know.)

This is part two of a modification of Gregor Vuga's excellent sort-of-WFRP Kriegsmesser. You will need a copy of Kriegsmesser.

Part one covered general rules. Part two is all about Sorcery!

---

Sorcery!

Sorcery! -- yes, the exclamation point is essential -- is a special skill that does anything the player wants it to do. It can open doors, cause blindness, hit orcs with bolts of energy, cause the dead to speak. It is general purpose and very powerful. Sorcerers are however distrusted at best and hunted and exterminated at worst. Also, sorcery! can go wrong.

Sorcery! rolls are made as normal Kriegsmesser skill rolls. LUCK and Corruption dice can be added as normal. If any dice results match, whether the roll succeeds or not, then a Chaotic Manifestation occurs!

If there is a double it is a Minor Manifestation, if it is a triple it is a Major Manifestation, and if it is a quadruple -- or worse! -- it is a Catastrophic Manifestation. The sorcerer takes a point of Corruption and then rolls on the relevant table, below.

Sorcerous Careers

Of the existing Kriegsmesser careers, Alchemist, Initiate, and Witch may have a point of Sorcery! in place of one of their normal skills.

But let's also add an Apprentice Wizard. This can be an extra career, perhaps one that can only be entered by choice rather than a random roll, or you could replace one of the random Kriegsmesser careers; I suggest replacing one of the double results, as that's a nice thematic tie in with the Chaotic Manifestation rules.

Apprentice Wizard
Skills

• Sorcery! 2
• Sense Sorcery! 2
• Read/Write 2
• Sleight of Hand 2
• Flee! 1
• Notice 1

Possessions

• Staff
• Pouch
• "Spellbook" (more a collection of scribbled formulas and notes, really.)
• Some minor prop for illusions. Cups and ball, a pack of cards, a set of rings, that sort of thing.

Chaotic Manifestation Tables!

(Most effect durations are given as real-world, rather than in-game, times because it feels like magic should break the "rules" somehow. Feel free to swap them for in-game times if you prefer.)

2d6	Minor Manifestation
2	You got away with it! Except for the Corruption point, obviously.
3	A flash of sorcerous energy shoots through your body, giving you a nasty shock and a Wound.
4	Food in the immediate area spoils, milk curdles, and so on.
5	You get a terrible nosebleed that just won't stop. At least for a real world hour.
6-8	A cold and mysterious wind blows through the local area.
9	Spectral voices whisper in everyone's ears.
10	All animals in the local area flee from you in terror. Characters with animal handling skills may be able to keep them at heel.
11	Your hair stands on end and crackles with magical energy. If you had no hair, you do now.
12	Roll on the Major Manifestation table!

2d6	Major Manifestation
2	You got lucky! Roll on the Minor Manifestation table.
3	You are burned by sorcerous flames! Take a Terrible Injury (see part one).
4	Your bones twist and pop. Take two Wounds (see part one).
5	Some sort of minor daemon pops into existence and tries to eat your face. You will probably have to fight it.
6	Your eyes turn into little glowing balls of flame. You can still see as normal, but it looks very odd. They return to normal at dawn. Dawn in the real world.
7	You are drained of vitality and are left enfeebled! -1d to all rolls for the next real world hour.
8	Your tongue vanishes. After a real world hour it returns, but it doesn't just reappear. No, it grows back over a few icky moments.
9	Terrifying Chaotic visions assail you. You gain +1 Chaos Lore as a new skill.
10	You are shocked and numbed as the power travels through you. You are at -1d to all rolls for 24 real world hours.
11	You are possessed by a Chaotic spirit for the next five real world minutes. Your character is controlled by the Referee until then. I hope you bought them pizza!
12	Oh dear. Roll on the Catastrophic Manifestation table.

2d6	Catastrophic Manifestation
2	You got really lucky. Roll on the Major Manifestation table, and thank your ancestors.
3	Your sorcery almost tears you apart! You are Maimed (see part one).
4	Your sorcery blows back and gives you a Terrible Injury (see part one).
5	Everyone in the immediate area, friends and foes, takes a Wound (see part one) as your magical energies burst out like a post-2005 Doctor Who regeneration.
6-8	You are utterly drained of all sorcerous power. Your Sorcery! drops to 0 -- and Corruption and LUCK cannot be used either -- but returns at one point per full real world day.
9	You receive a Mark of Chaos, which is quite visible, difficult to disguise, and impossible to remove. It also counts as a Terrible Injury. If you receive a certain number of Marks, a Chaos God comes to claim you as its Champion; make a Corruption test (Kriegsmesser p29) and if this is a "failure" you are claimed, probably to return as a villain later on. Slaanesh claims characters with six Marks, Nurgle claims those with seven, Khorne those with eight, and Tzeentch claims characters with nine. Characters with ten or more Marks go on to be generic non-denominational Chaos Warriors. If the Horned Rat existed, he would claim those with 13 Marks, but he doesn't so he doesn't.
10	Every time you close your eyes you see visions of the Realms of Chaos. Sleeping is difficult. +1 Dark Lore.
11	You are blasted by your own out-of-control powers and are knocked unconscious for an in-game hour. Mundane medicine cannot wake you but maybe magical healing can. Maybe.
12	With a sucking, popping sound, you are sucked into the Realm of Chaos, never to be seen again, probably.

---

I may expand this at some point to include the Colleges of Magic, dwarf, elf, and goblin magic, hedge wizards, and so on. This will do for now.

Kriegshacker I

(I know.)

This is a two-part modification of Gregor Vuga's excellent sort-of-WFRP Kriegsmesser. You will need a copy of Kriegsmesser.

Part one covers general rules. Part two will cover Sorcery!

(Also note: Kriegsmesser is itself a hack of Troika! but does also come with its own basic standalone system. Kriegshacker is a hack of this standalone system.)

---

Players Roll Everything

I think this is sort of implied by Kriegsmesser anyway, but let's state it for Kriegshacker: players make all rolls, even if a non-player-character or monster or other hazard is acting against them; in these cases the players will roll to "resist" the action.

Fighting

Players can use any appropriate skill in a combat situation. This need not be an actual fighting skill. A character could Flee! to escape the fight, Sneak to hide until the coast is clear, or even Provoke to cause infighting amongst the opponents. As long as it makes sense, it can be used. If no skill applies, then the player can use LUCK as normal.

All players involved in the fight roll dice. If anyone gets a success (4+) then the fight is avoided or won or otherwise resolved in the players' favour, although there may be complications. Anyone who fails (1-3) or succeeds with a complication (4-5) suffers those consequences, even if the fight is won.

If no player rolls higher than a 3 then the fight is not resolved, and may even continue, if the Referee decides.

Difficult Fights

The Referee may decide that some fights are more challenging, perhaps because of tougher opposition, an environmental effect, non-combatants getting in the way, and so on. In these cases all involved players have a -1 dice (-1d) or higher penalty.

Generous Referees may allow players to receive a +1d bonus for superior equipment, numbers, position, tactics, and so on. This seems very un-WFRPish, but it's your game.

Damage

Anyone who rolls 4-5 as their highest dice takes a Wound. Mark this on the character sheet in pencil so it can be erased later. For each wound, the player has a -1d penalty. If a player receives a third Wound, then they also take a Terrible Injury (see below).

Anyone who rolls 1-3 as their highest dice takes a Terrible Injury; they should roll on the tables on Kriegsmesser pp30-31. They also suffer a Wound. Terrible Injuries should be noted in ink as they are permanent. If a player takes a sixth Terrible Injury then they are Maimed and take a permanent -1d penalty. Write "Maimed!" on the character sheet, in big red letters if you can. If they are Maimed again, they take an additional -1d permanent penalty, and so on. I recommend adding an extra exclamation point for every Maimed result.

Healing

One wound is healed after a rest period, which should probably be at least a day. When a Wound is healed, the -1d penalty is removed.

Terrible Injuries and Maiming probably shouldn't be able to be healed, except perhaps by sorcery, and in that case I'd probably say that the injuries are hidden rather than healed. Seems more WFRPish.

---

Kriegsmesser is very robust and elegant as is, so these are just tweaks to make it more to my liking. Next: Sorcery!

Bunch of Jackasses, Standing in a Circle

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is weird. It's clear that these are the versions of the characters from the 2014 film, all snark and I AM GROOT and personal stereos with classic tunes, except... they aren't. They all look a bit different, they all have different backgrounds and histories, Star-Lord has very different taste in music -- but still isn't a murderous psychopath, boooo! -- and they are all Canadian. It's all a bit off-kilter and almost feels like you're playing an unlicensed knock-off.

(Although computer-Groot is more or less identical to film-Groot, and if he's Canadian, I can't tell.)




I know why it's like this and why they aren't the comic versions or even brand new computer game incarnations of the characters, but it does slap a big old identity crisis right into the middle of the game and while said crisis doesn't hurt the game, as such, it does make it feel, as I say, weird.

But weird as it is -- and it is weird, did I mention that? -- it is also good fun. It feels a bit like the film tie-in games of the olden days; I'm thinking of stuff like Ocean's Batman: The Movie or RoboCop 2, with a jumble of play styles in one game. Most of MGotG is a generic but solid action adventure, with a bit of running, a bit of jumping, and some light puzzling, now and then interrupted with set-piece fights -- of which more below -- but there are also a couple of short spaceship sections, and far too many -- prepare thyself -- quick time event sequences.

QTEs! Oh how I have not missed those cursed things. To see them popping up in a game from 2021, long after everyone had agreed they were a terrible idea, is an unwelcome surprise. They add nothing to the game, and are often plonked down at the exact distance from the most recent save to guarantee maximum annoyance. I turned them off after the second or third instance.

(And thank you to the developers for allowing us to turn off some of the more annoying gameplay elements. I was very pleased to see that there's a very comprehensive set of options for customising gameplay.)

I like the team based combat, which is a little bit standard action game and a little bit real-time strategy. You have direct control over Star-Lord, jumping, punching, and shooting while the rest of the Guardians run about doing their own thing, but you can issue orders for them to use their special abilities -- which change and improve as they earn experience, because of course there's an rpg-light experience system -- from a mostly-slick radial menu thingy, and you can also -- most of the time by accident if you're anything like me -- call them in for a team talk huddle that sets up a minigame in which you have to deliver the right sort of inspirational speech by picking words from a floating word cloud that only Star-Lord can see. This team huddle feature is a little strange and underdeveloped, and I switched it to automatic after the first couple of instances, but it leads to the Guardians all getting supercharged and, more important by far, the fight music changing to one of a selection of perhaps predictable but nonetheless uplifting 1980's pop hits.

(Beating up alien soldiers to Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" is oh so silly, but oh so great, and it never gets old.)



It's a good system that works well most of the time, and makes combat -- of which there is a lot -- always compelling. It also helps distract from the part of battles that you control, which alas is quite loose and slippery, and never really feels like you're in full, well, control of Star-Lord. I do wonder if it would have been better to take direct input away from the player during fights and instead run the entire team, including Star-Lord, from the orders menu. This is more or less what I ended up doing in my playthroughs anyway, keeping Star-Lord out of the fight and issuing commands from the sideline like some sort of football manager. In space.

The writing, in general, is okaaaaaay. There are no real surprises in a tale of a scrappy sort-of-family pulling together in the face of certain doom, and while it lacks the emotional punches of the films -- no Nebula, and no (sob!) Yondu -- there is a decent stab at doing something with Star-Lord being forced into parent responsibilities despite deeming himself unsuitable because of his own upbringing, or lack of.

The only other major issue with the game is perhaps a case of it's-not-you-it's-me. There is a point in the story, which up until then has been linear, where it looks like the whole thing is going to open up and let you zip about space doing jobs to earn money to pay a Nova Corps fine, and then... the Guardians all decide no, they'll just go and do one big paying job instead, and off we go to the next level, all those other possibilities abandoned and ignored.

(Sad trombone sounds.)

In all fairness, the game never says it's going to go open world, but my gosh it suggests and teases it, and that it doesn't feels like a huge missed opportunity. Where the game goes from there is fine, it really is, but it could have leaned into the cosmic side of the Marvel Cinematic Computer Game Universe and -- literally -- explored the wider setting that, as it is, we only get hints of.

Still, even if Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy isn't as much fun as it could have been with just a couple of tweaks -- and okay, a massively expanded middle section -- it is still a lot of fun. Much better than a film tie-in should be, even if it's not really a film tie-in. Weird.

Arbitrary score: 2021 out of 2014.