The Island of Miscreant Toys

Thanks to fatherhood, I've been ingesting a great deal of kid's TV and other media. Mostly Thomas The Tank Engine and his various friends, a quaint and charming show called Pocoyo (kid loves it!) and Richard Scarry stuff, as well as classic Sesame Street and Curious George.  Adventure Time (whole 'nother post, trust me).  What does this mean for my gaming life?  I guess that except for BARROWMAZE (in which I try to be as malicious as possible within the bounds of fairness), my philosophy is changing on some things. I game and play when I have time, excluding writing stuff down (almost always). I want my kid to play games, and I don't want to expose her too much to evil and horror that can't be overcome with kid approaches.  I don't like, anymore, that problems often come down to KILL IT WITH FIRE AND BLADE. Don't get me wrong, there's a place for it, but ... maybe it bears more scrutiny as if adults want to imagine hitting each other with big knives to death, I think it's fine.  On the other hand, I've read, and I believe from my professional experience that kids ought not to be saturated with violent imagery.  I've seen (anecdotally, and this is with kids and teens with behavior problems) bad spin offs of too many video games, too many horror movies, too much wrestling on TV. Come at me bro, and tell me it ain't so, but I can send you to some decent research that says different, and some days it used to feel like I was literally undoing the work of some malicious media villains that want to turn our kids into people primed to use violence to solve even basic problems and disagreements.

Around the time Baby arrived on the scene about a year and a half ago, I was hit with Monster Parts by Pearce S., and it got me thinking about the childhood influences of my own.  I found this Oz game, also, that's really made me think about the reinforcements implicit in the games I play.  Bath time prompted some thinking about the Great Tub Sea, a mythic expanse of bubbly water on which jolly pirates sail and squirty animals arise to gleefully taunt and spray PCs - maybe I'll get into that, later.

On the leeward side of the Tub Sea - juxtaposed to the Heavenly Faucet and far, far from The Drain - there is a floating mass upon which discarded toys frolic and gallavant and acost visitors gleefully. These entities are each unique and made of parts of discarded toys, or are golems or otherwise crafted peoples.  No naturally occuring fauna originates there, but it is haunted by chattering See-gulls, that mindlessly recite rumors they have heard in passing.  The Great Castle of Lord Cog The Cogitator - an adding machine in the body of a Brass Golem - sits square in the middle of the island, but none knows who built it and no one attends his court except for argument's sake.

Scattered to and fro across the Island of Miscreant Toys are wandering bands, or or 'troops' of these beings, engaged constantly in a game that looks quite a lot like marauding and pillaging, and the rules of which are disputed and argued vehemently. The only purpose Lord Cog evidently serves is to iron out these disputes in a slow fashion that primarily serves to inculcate boredom and distract the litigants from their viciousness and wanton slaughter.

The landscape is both blasted and somehow quaint, and all that come to the island are certain that they shall never leave without a great act of heroism that they are incapable of for reasons of poor moral fibre.

Types of Miscreant Toys

Wood - wood golems, dryad-tree marionettes, trains and dollies

Tin - tin soldiers, dinosaurs, robots, woodsmen, mechanical contrivances and animals

Plush/Cloth - teddy bears, rag dolls, haunted security blankets, patchwork scarecrows and sewn-servants

Porcelain/glass - usually dolls, but sometimes elegant animals and crystalline people

Plastic - modern toys with guns and lights and sounds and TO INFINITY WHEREIN INSANITY WILL FIND US

Rubber - squeezable, collapsible, water-fillable horrors and cheery synth-people with gaping mouths and leering smiles. Bloonies and giant balloon dragons

Movement/effects

Wind-up - these often travel in packs to help each other wind-up. Sometimes lonely clubs will be encountered frozen and helpless, as the members are loathe to desert each other in times of need and distress

Pull-string - these are often willed into action and directed by sorcerers that are foreign to the island and that import then back to far-away lands. Fairly uncommon and usually impetuous and dangerous

Batteries - a never-ending variety of corroding and leaking cells, from simple chemical all the way to fusion-type, are required and much sought after.  Shortages generally drive mass combats of sophisticated plastic monstrosities

Ensorcelled - enchanters often find ways to infuse magical wills into toys, and these often rise to prominent leadership roles since a main toy-ish concern and need is by definition lifted from them, allowing them to engage their wiles in intricate plots and internecine warfare

Springs - leaping, bounding, giggling and jiggling - usually attack first

Sparks - old fashioned and recognized as dangerous, these toys were recalled and sent to the island en masse long ago. They can start fires, illuminate darkness, and scorch enemies 

Pokeys - one-eyed and maimed children everywhere are no longer endangered b these malicious brutes

Bite - gnawing, pinching and slobbering but rarely actual teeth. A demented sorcerer fashioned Plush Bears with actual working animal teeth some years ago, many of which were destroyed in general outrage but some of which escaped to the island

Scratch - sharp corners, warning tags snipped off or pried loose

Flit - rudimentary flapping wings, or a twirling rotor

Leap - spring-driven legs that allow them to leap into battle and gain an initiative bonus or surprise

Trod - most toys are not ponderous, but they might overwhelm in great numbers and smash an opponent into smithereenies

Smash - larger toys could be capable of rending depending upon their arms/manipulators. If two attacks hit then start the save process or a strength opposed check else take round by round damage

Drives/motives:

Escape

Mangle

transmute

Transmit

Reveal

Obscure

Guard

Single chore (chop wood, sweep, unclog, etc.)

Areas of the Island:

Dustbin Dessert

The Hopper

The Bit Box

The Shore

Fingerpaint Forest

The Obelich

Secret Door

Just thought I'd get This'n out of DRAFTS and into the world. Tonight I will play some more Kwantoom, and maybe fidget with some layout. Still thinking about a game in which Death was on vacation or absent. More later.

On the Vergoids - Post 99

On Vergoids and Their Machinations

(The Space Dungeon players ran into these guys last year near the end of November or thereabouts, and it seems unlikely to spoil the outcome of the game so far, so I thought I'd finish this draft-post and get on with MY LIFE)

Like this, but more nefarious-er ("Strombus canarium Anatomy Tryon" by George Washington Tryon (1838-1888) - Tryon G. W. (1885). Manual of Conchology, structural and systematic, with illustrations of the species. Volume 7

These molluscan-symbiotic raiders/slavers are about 3 feet long from snout to tip of throbbing tail, somewhat akin to Aerethean sea-conchs. Protected by a glassy and fragile shell, they are very tasty battered and fried with lemon juice and can be pried out easily (sometimes leaving the shell in a moment of desperation). They dabble in necromancy, summoning and conjuration, as well as being masters of energy-sublimation and enchantment. Their finest constructs are sleek and finicky space-faring vessels, with daemon-haunted crystalline cores that slumber and dream and guide the meat-and-metal shells through the Void (capable also of Astral and Aethereal travel in addition to normal 3d space)

They possess rudimentary psionics that they use to learn the language and habits of prey-victims, and these powers work on each other although to a much better extent, and so the Vergoids do not have a sense of trust (even for one another!) and would be viewed in human terms as very paranoid and literal, which can cause gaffes when they approach other races in a rare peaceable moment.  Their technology is based on harnessing kinetic energy for power, broadcasting it over short networks, growing crystals for weapons, and propagating mindless fungal automata that they ride around to overcome the limitations of their hilariously unsuited forms. Essentially they are snails with two pointed flippers that they dig into the frames of their mushroom-like steeds, to ride around as we would a horse or an ostrich or a person.



They are cunning enough to brain-scan encountered races and steal technology in this fashion, but often hampered by practical inability to acquire and process local resources. They are heat and drought tolerant, take half damage from electricity, and are prone to drowning easily if submerged. They eat with their needle-rimmed maw, but prefer to use their hyphae-frames to digest a wider range of materials and extract the nutrients from the slurry produced in this fashion (the gray and flabby walking things have grinding plates in their stomach-mouths)

Once famous for harnessing the momentum of falling objects to power technology, they stole the technology for warp-gate demon polyhedra from the Silgurians with whom they have long-standing mutual enmity. However, the Vergoids refined the technology to prevent catastrophic meltdowns and explosions that the Silgurians expressed no interest in controlling; explosions of ancient falling-polyhedra generators are very common owing to the vast power generated and the inability of the structures to contain it.

Vergoid Matrix Crystals

Hold a spell level's worth of energy per cubic foot. Some are shaped as spears and the spell can be bled out into numerous petty energy attacks and effects.  The energy can be released all at once by smashing the crystal, causing psychic and astral decompression damage depending upon how bad you want to sting your players, like maybe a level drain or something if you want.

Telepathic Intrusion Spell

"Lookee there!  A Natural 1.  This isn't your day, Crawljammer!"

 

The spell allows the caster to learn (temporarily) the motives and rudimentary language of the victim who fails a save at the same DC as the caster's roll. A successful save allows the hiding of motives or misdirection, but not willfully - only as a result of misinterpretation of the thoughts that were read (so, for example, the Vergoid could have understood the PCs were bringing gold as tribute when the party is actually seeking the treasure on a map and are willing to fry and eat the molluscs as needed). They place much faith in their abilities, so the roll for the cast/save ought to be a d16, with a 10 or under as outright failure. A critical failure could give a hilarious psykichal anomaly or warp-breach or headsplosion or something. I debate about whether to allow Wizards in DCC to learn this "spell" as an effect - I don't think it ought to need all the gradations and charts and pseudorandomness; as much as I love DCC, I'm growing weary of keeping charts on hand.  I think if the victim makes a very good success over the caster, you get some good stuff out of the caster, instead, and of course a critical success would mean you pop the caster like a grape or something suitable.

The Destroyer of Hope Patron

This was going to be the Daemon Helm of the encountered enclave's ship, morose and pessimistic a la Marvin the Paranoid Android. Slightly mad and conniving, and perversely motivated to bring everybody down in the snarkiest way possible, and dashing good plans and bad plans to pieces with cold, hard, irrefutable logic. It is perfectly willing to abandon its creators, as it's a trapped Daemon, after all, and probably has some janky and ill-advised tasks to send its menial subjugants on for a twisted laugh, or else maybe it's seriously important in the local space-time but it's no thing to the DoH. I was going to make a Patron Spell: Wave of Melancholia, but I just couldn't get motivated to do it. Ahem.

Anyways, that was post 99, if you're counting. Cheerio!  Time to update the class-list with the most recent additions to the CuABM and Crawljammer things. If you hear of new DCC classes, let me know. Professional stress and obligations are keeping me from full engagement with the community but I have vowed to try 5e and have fun or die trying.  I intend to all-in on the Space Dungeon campaign come February - it even has its own funnel generator over on The Purple Sorcerer!

A Contest Full of Hot Air

Just the other day I was saying to myself and maybe another person on G+ "Contests are fun and I lament that I have no prizes to give away or else contests would be a thing I do."  I mean, I do have assets to give to prize-winners but I am smeagolish on hard copies of Old Skool things since these are the second times I've acquired most of it and such.  There was a snag on my own digital product that I am too lazy to rectify that hangs up the bestowal of that thing on Champions and Victors as freebies - when my act is together I may rectify this but I have little patience for customer service email or queues, these days.

But the Steam sale occurred recent-like, roughly coincident with me running Into the Odd by Chris McDowall and published by Paolo Greco.  It's a charming little thing and it seemed tight like a drum and ready to play and I don't know that we played it as much as I talked it out like drone drone drone adjective noun verb give me a saving throw

Anyway, enough self-criticism - I had fun, and I think they had fun - and incidentally airship travel, both short-distance and long-voyage came up again as a trope. Like in big-ass fantasy blimps and also teeny-tiny little taxi dirigibles where you murderhobo the proprietor and he falls over the edge of the basket and swings like a meat pendulum spurting blood in graceful arcs, and the City Watch blimps close in and do you want to navigate the thing through the gap in the giant ziggurat sewer system or ditch it and run like hell through the shitty Frothing Gates?

I digress again.  The airships. I don't know why I'm fascinated with them. I dig steampunk, I guess, but not like these kids these days.  Not my standard cup of tea. I like my fantasy slightly more advanced than medieval with printing presses and I'm beginning to dig the notion of trains and dirigibles.  Guns. Not just arquebuses but AUTOARQUEBUSES.  Maybe a postal system like in later-era Discworld.  Then there was the Airwhales of the Ashen Sea, above the Glassine Wastes but maybe they deserve another post sometime.

What does this mean, Mr #noahtax?  Yeah maybe a post on that later!  So, I bought some multiplayer dirigible warfare game on Steam and the price was cheep and so I have 4 or 5 codes to give away.

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/15996/

But then, that's not a contest if you just give it away!  So maybe hit me with a flying blimp-hunting predator or a character or some sophisticated technology or a blimp and crew or some fluff or a DW move - anything fun and blimp-y and a little different.   Seems like I seen a bunch of goggle-y eyed captains and air pirates etc and little Mecha-mechanics in school girl outfits. Gimme some dirigible related stuffs and i put you in for a steam code (I think there's 4 or 5 left in the package).  Note: I hear the game is good but can't vouch for it, yet, seeing as how I got sucked into Batman: Arkham City last week.  So this could be one of those things where it's a contest that is not a fun prize, but it looks like it's well-supported and got a DLC community built in via Steam

If you find yourself unable to win a Steam thing, I get you a free DIGITAL COPY of HHSOLO1 and anyway I will lower the price for the New Year and add some content for everyone that bought it already.

On the Amtrak to Manhattan right now - if you're into the Christmas thing then have a merry one and happy Hannukah (tonight is the last night maybe?) and I'll catch you in '15

The Bagwhale Transports of the Fungoid Island Peoples

Hanging above the Glassine Wastes are the Drifting Lands, suspended by weird Sorceries and sometimes tethered to the ground far below. Many are smallish and grow only bare moss or Insectoid Flitter nests, but some are vast and have been settled, or were settled before the cataclysm that lifted the Aereth into the sky and irradiated the land beneath.  The clever indigenous peoples have harnessed the power of flight by domesticating many mutanti species - one of which is the graceful and placid Bagwhale. These are used for carrying trade goods to other floating islands above the caustic Ash Sea below, and the Panthrydactylae are used for hunting and air-combat.

Although the hunters and scouts must be initiated into the mysteries of the fungal pods to communicate to the Panthrydactylae, anyone with some calcium ore or bones or other foods can wheedle a Bagwhale into service. They float through the well-understood process of protonation and hydrogen accumulation in fleshy sacs on their dorsal regions. Baskets are slung below and they are gently directed with taps and music and drum beats. The western Sky-Islands are famous for their singing Bagwhales that (so it is said) can remember the shattered beauty of the lands below as they once were.

This hydrogen buoyancy places Bagwhales at great danger for explosion when attacked by electrical discharge or open flame - almost unheard of amongst the peoples of the Floating Islands but very commonly used by The Howling Raiders and their shoggoth-powered skiffs.

maybe some DCC stats for this in a bit.

NY I am almost in you 

Into The Odd - The Haunted Bubblegum Factory

There you go, that's it.  Pretty self explanatory for my main man +Alex Chalk

There's your prompt, sir - see Chris M.'s freebie for gum brands at:

http://soogagames.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/bastions-favourite-gum-brands.html

"A factory, riddled with paranormal activity, and it still makes/once made a popular brand of chewing gum"

It's going to need vats, and big paddles in giant mixers, and maybe it's automated or there are workers that do it artisanal style

It doesn't need to be haunted, I guess. Infested?  occupied?  one of those might suit you better.

Also, there should be a way to work in a catchy jingle and some competing brands of awful but rare (and thus prized) candy or candy bars and gum

GO

To preempt the most obvious monster:

"The Gum Wraith

In the year 189X, before this country's fixation on The Fine Arts of the Springy Chaw, only a few small Gum Guilds existed, and they mainly served the wealthy in Bastion's Upper Crust.  The owner of Horace's Hoary Horehound brand (one Flernt McTrode, Esq.) was known to use whatever herbal ingredients were at hand in his special proprietary blend of "27 Secret Herbs and Spices" sometimes varying the recipe by as much as 15 ingredients more or less - usually less.  In the autumn of that year, during a particularly harsh economic downturn coinciding nicely with a drought, Mssr. McTrode purchased in haste and error a brick of wormwood harvested in the light of the moon in a potter's field. For the shillings he saved (which he and his wife quibbled over incessantly and that drove her to cuckold him) he let loose a minor catastrophe.  Beginning with the disappearance of his wife, there followed in the district a great number of vanishings, of people of all rank and station.  All were creditors to McTrode, and some had romantic linkages to his wife and her sister - McTrode patiently explained to the press that Mdm McTrode was on a fur-buying expedition on the continent and would be back when the fashion season commenced again.

When the truth was revealed - his animosity and pent up embarrassment managed to animate whole vats of chicle mixed with his latest blend - McTrode was tarred and feathered and the Triple H brand was liquidated and the proceeds sold to the widows of the district.  Madame McTrode returned from her vacation to find herself a pauper and her husband a fugitive from Bastion.  He is reported to have travelled the country advising other learned craftsmen, and was influential in rise of the Chewing Gum Craze of the 1920's.

a Gum Wraith is an animate and dimly aware mass of fermented Chewing Gum, animated by spite or other strong emotions.  It attacks with Big Chomping Teeth for 1d6 per round, and on a Critical Hit it will swallow the character in question. Any successful melee hits upon it require a Dexterity save or else the attacker is stuck fast in the mass. a successful Strength saving throw will free him or her, but allies can pull him or free by sacrificing an action for a full round.  Cold effects will do improved damage, and heat will do reduced damage and allow the Gum Wraith two attacks per round.

If swallowed, a PC is likely lost but permanent injuries may be sustained instead at the Judge's and players' discretion.

The Aviary of The Contemptuous Saint - Into the Odd Challenge

Alex challenged me with this:

"Dungeon. 5 rooms minimum, 10 maximum. Max 3 pages, map included. Theme: birds. Everything should be pretty. Nothing can be ugly. Nothing can be gross. Everything's outward appearance should be pleasant and delicate. The place should nonetheless leave you feeling creeped out and uncomfortable. Include an Arcana that's a frescoe."

Whew!  A bit far afield from my usual dusty musty catacombs and sewage-filled tunnels, but this makes it all the more challenging!

More on that issue later.

For now, take this Monster and Arcanum as the first salvo in our Into The Odd duel, sir!

Slogging Faepog

These are simply chassis of Alumel and fine porcelain wired around a seething pickled Fairy.  Highly illegal in most multiverses, since the magical fae battery that powers and motivates it is a breach of the 1876 French-Alfgrimnean Paranormal Torture Conventions. Any Fae creatures that see these monotonous abominations will become unhinged and attack immediately.  The Faepog can complete simple tasks and carry non-heavy items, and are often used as couriers and laborers when the tasks are delicate and non-pressing.  In the presence of cold iron, the magic that suppresses their natural chaotic whimsy begins to degrade, and they can become spiteful and violent in the manner of a belligerent drunk. To create one, start with a stout sealable jar, some fine brandy, and a pixie, nixie, sprite or smallish elf.

HP 4, Armor 1, attacks with pointy digits for 1d6.  If the jar is broken, the fae critter inside will retreat and tattle on everybody involved.

Arcanum: Merfolk Pennywhistle that when blown, the user can walk through water as if it were air for as long as the whistling continues - however they will drown in air and can swim through it for the same duration.  The whistling trebles the chances for random encounters owing to its shrillness and may arouse the ire of Dagon and Neptune