Thursday, June 12, 2014

List of New DCC Project Races etc

Scrappler/Tofukin - give of yourself to heal the other party members!  Find a charcuterie or sous chef to heal - watch out for spoilage in this damnable heat (Doug's prompt)

80s Metal Kid - epic Tunes and Air Guitar saves the day. Law/Chaos/Balance is really on your side and this has some drawbacks (also Doug's prompt)

Antiquated Sword - a conceptual leftover of my participation in Stoutfellas, and the worship of slimy and unwholesome gods (I owe a debt of gratitude to Wayne, Doug, James, and the other Stoutfellas)

Sun Worshipping Reptiloids - environmentally affected dangerous/sleepy/poisonous/scaly (Jurgen's prompt)

Verminous Mass (there's a Cif- something or other in the Fiend Folio 1e) edit: CIFAL (Daniel's prompt)

Phlogiston-Displaced Moon Dweller - nice suggestion, David

Ape-Man Mind-Bender - thanks to James

Maybe a Thark - but I don't want to get torn to legal shreds. Martian Nomad?  Green Tusker? (Daniel's Prompt, I realize that my friend and co-conspirator +Darien Mason posted this already)

These prior are inspired by the good folks listed, namely +James V West , +Jürgen Mayer , +David Brawley , and my own personal Illuminati of DCC +Daniel Bishop and +Doug Kovacs.  All of these guys what whom are winners of semi-tangible things (Edit: Crawljammer #3 when it arrives unless you guys already do that thing in which case let me know) and also my esteem for inspiring me when I need a break from something else.  Maybe I can get you in touch with my man +Sam Schultz who can work on some printable paper minis for us to honor this meeting of minds

Also on the Docket:

Cloud Shoggoth - sort of a vaporous Dralasite - impervious to most damage but only solid for short times, prone to adopt the forms of nearby objects

Crafted Sentience/Golem - finite hit points, compelled to save the meek as long as possible (alternately highly limited functioning in some areas but impervious to some kinds of damage entirely)

'Loon (Oz thing) - patch up those leaks with string/bubble gum/innertubes - float/levitate, malleable, no damage from blunt attacks but highly susceptible to blades/piercing

Daniel beat me to sentient semi -anthropomorphic animal so that's good. The idea for all of these is to work within the spirit of DCC and tweak mechanics slightly but in a balanced fashion so as to get away from the old elf/dwarf/hobbit thing which to my mind has a certain charm but really strangles possibility in the crib, if you get my bad but to my mind apt metaphor

The spirit of the things I have been reading suggests the need for a variant of the Rolled-Over/Ruin rules, in which horrible consequences to the integrity of the character BESIDES death are heaped on for dropping to 0 HP, but with the perk that the same character can develop the narrative with the party after a rest and rotation back in. Death - permanent stat loss of varying types, madness, corruption , compulsions, quests, added mechanics, dubiously beneficial patronage, acquisition of terrible artefacts, doppleganger-age

Of course you may prefer death

I'm stalled on progress of the Big Project - partly legitimate and partly procrastinating. I figure GenCon is gonna keep GG busybusy until after the summer so I can coast through, refine, give early drafts to friends for edits and then submit a highly polished thing at the end of summer

I'm going to be a wreck at work in a couple of hours

(I just wrote this for the sake of getting it out of my noggin - names and identities filled in tomorrow)

After the Mower Living Document

Not so much a game or system as a framework for narrative, inspired by Nimh and Watership Down and Oz and Peter Rabbit and some other things I've been thinking and pondering on, and reading to my kid

A progression from orderly idyllic light hearted exploration downward into dangerous and consecutively more harrowing escapes/problems, culminating with a cataclysm and rebirth. Like Akira but with Mice or something.

Set it human suburbia, with PCs as cute little animals, menaced by one or more predators. As the game/campaign progresses, more playable races 'unlock' depending upon making friends and doing favors, whereas negative actions add to predators list. Faeries and magic as an optional plug-in, and the alternating corrupting and purifying effects of the humans decided upon by group consent. Does it look like a dry summer?  Is there a hurricane?  Is Mr McGregor having a hard time with his wife and so disposed to be cruel, or is he playing too much WoW and awaiting DnD 5e so the garden is unguarded or going to seed?

Rules light, 2d6 best-of for resolutions

Birds, bees, mice, rats, praying mantises, butterflies as PCs

snakes, dogs, foxes, coyotes, etc. for antagonists

Pixies, Nimh Rats, Goblins, Faeries, for the optional plug ins.

Maybe each turn two players nominated to act out human aspects of the story. Truck broke down in the field?  It's an obstacle for the plow so Ms Brisby can move the kids across the way with a rattlesnake in pursuit. Why did the truck break down?  The faeries sabotaged the distributor after Ms Brisby got them a set of keys from McGregor's house so they can doppelgang the new baby...

Anyway, just a placeholder since I can't sleep. What are the effects of the relentless hacking back of the wilderness upon the characters of the characters?

More later.

Saturday, June 7, 2014

New Races for DCC Prompts - I Double Dungeon Crawl Dare You

In a last-ditch effort to procrastinate on my own publishable project, I hereby call you out, reader.  You have a twinklin' of an idea for a playable race?  Fingers too tied up with legerdemain, or possibly you already build dangerous wooden and brass Lamentation Configurations in your spare time?  Engaged in high treason, or listlessly wooing a stunning enchantress from the time in Earth's future right before the Beetle People arise?

Spellvexitus knows the Vancian Operation of Clone Vats - at Skill Level 7, and how to paste an image URL
Well, worry no longer!  We here at The Hapless Henchman can take those unused and abused alpha- and beta-waves and put them into our cogitators on site, giving you real, 3rd dimensional (possibly plus or minus a dimension with a 22 percent alpha) access to your own idea, on paper, and in-game.

Submit in the comments your own feeble whispers of an idea for a NEW PLAYER CHARACTER RACE OR CLASS, and me and my own shoulder imp Spellvexitus can do the hard thinkin' for you!  He's mildly dyslexic, but he knows the Dewey Decimal System inside and out, so he's good for helping in library research when we're jaunting around in the early 1990's before they pulled all the skin-bound codices from the Widener...

As a gesture of goodwill, I offer the first 5.75 people or entities who/that post an idea for a new class or race in the comments here a copy of my very own thing when it comes out.  That would be the DCC Solo Module THE HOUNDS OF HALTHRAG KEEP - shooting for late summer, still.  The first three (3 - an integer) people to post a thing, I'll get them a copy of either Crawljammer #1, or Crawling Under a Broken Moon #1 as a downloadable PDF from RPGNow and we can compare notes.  If you already have it, then good - but maybe we can figure something out.  Don't try to canoodle me, either.  I've got a thousand wyrd spirits imbued in my fridge, just waiting to be set plaintively loose to spite someone/something

BE WARY!  For those who post a thing that exists ALREADY will be harshly dealt with and derided, and Spellvexitus will have first crack at your plainly withered soul when you're done with it, soon.  How will you know? Well, look at the sidebar on your right and it'll show you a way to see what's been elucidated and illuminated before you, you conniving gong-farmer, you...

Take that interwebs!  Spellvexitus, get your Mystical Third Eye and crowquill all revved up!

Don't let me down, you malicious little hobgoblins!  Maybe when I'm done I can make it into a sweet little PDF and give it freely to the cold and unfeeling universe to stave off inevitable heat death.  If more than I can use at the start arrive, then I will do my best to trickle them out as I can - absolutely no promises implied, BTW

Psionic Moon Man - received!

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Missing a goal

Owing to this illness and general sloth and neglect - I'm not going to make my submission date for my thing.

It's cool - it'll be submitted.

End of summer. No question.

Monday, May 12, 2014

DCC Rogue's Gallery 1 : Henchpersons and Hirelings

Screwing around with Excel 2003 and InDesign CS4, I offer you a thing.

You ever need hirelings, schmucks, schmendricks, red-shirts, paeons, or the hoi polloi?

In a jiffy?

I threw this thing together while the baby was watching this Sesame Street thing that I no longer have the capacity to keep from playing in my head THANK YOU ERNIE YOU ORANGE BASTARD



Anyways, it's a 50-person Rogue's Gallery of DCC Henchmen/-women or Hirelings, or "Funnel Characters Who have not yet/will never graduate" but who might one day ascend into usefulness or be merely chopped into smithereens. Nobody sports HP better than 4, since I lack the wherewithal to learn how to do that in Excel since I have no technical juju but only a limited ability to immediately find what I need

Two characters are close approximations of some I have played as funnels, and one is just a wink wink

There was a column on the right in the original draft labelled "Condition" for when they were killed but it's not necessary.  Kill them, cross them off.  Print it again, change the names.  Who cares?  Meat for the grinder, grist for the mill.

These are Hapless Henchmen for you.  Maybe I'll make a bunch at a time going forward.

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