Hit Dice Dungeons Initial Playtest - Version 0.1.1

What's going on here?

 I'm writing an RPG that spun out of the idea of using Usage Dice to track HP.

What changed from the original blog post?

Following on from my blog post where I outlined the basic idea, I developed it into an actual RPG system. Compared with that original idea, I fully abandoned any effects that modify the range of  numbers that cause the Die to step down, and locked it at 1-3 for all situations.

Where weapons in that original version shifted the range that stepped down, weapons for my first playtest instead dealt a static amount of damage to their target. For each point of damage, you roll your Hit Die once, stepping down for each failure. This also solves the problem that the original idea had of Hit Dice capping the worst case scenario of a powerful attack to stepping down a single time. With damage causing individual rolls, a powerful attack can now step down your die multiple times and kill you outright.

Armor also had to be changed (it could no longer shrink the 'threat range') and now lets you reroll a number of failed "damage rolls".

I wrote up a small handful of backgrounds, in the style of Electric Bastionland's failed careers or Troika! backgrounds, to run a playtest with one of my usual groups. My original intention was to also have GLOG style classes, but I both didn't finish them in time and also wanted to test the core systems before I started layering things on top.

The Playtest

My players rolled (off of my expansive d8 table) an Exiled Neriad, a Rat Catcher, and a Traveling Salesman. Very early on in the night the Traveling Salesman player asked if he could be a Minotaur, which seemed like an excellent idea and was immediately added to the background itself.

For the module, I ran Tomb of the Last Tyrant from Dissident Whispers (technically now the 7th Dissident Whispers module I've run, although this won't get the whole micro review treatment I usually do) with the possibility of spinning it out into a sandbox hexcrawl to keep testing the system as it develops.

I won't give a whole play report here, than than to highlight a few fun moments:

• Yeeting "serpent guards" off of rain slick cliffs.
• Taking advantage of thunder to pick off guards from the back of the group.
• Interrogating terrified cultists as to why they were called the Serpent Guard if none of them were actually snakes.

The main takeaways I got from running the game, and talking with the players afterwards, is that although none of us like "to hit" rolls having no roll when you make an attack and just waiting for the GM to roll the enemy's Hit Die to see how it went is pretty unsatisfying.

Changes Made

I've made two changes to the system I intend to test to try and address this. First, instead of weapons dealing a static number of damage, they have damage dice that get put through a filter. This is soft of halfway between Troika! damage tables, and the Scarlet Heroes damage system.

 This adds a bit of fiddly-ness to the game I would have liked to avoid, but it adds some agency to attacks and hopefully doesn't cause much frustration. One other benefit of this damage dice system is that it let me add my Living Grimoires magic system almost unchanged to Hit Dice Dungeons, which is nice.

The second thing being changed isn't actually a rule change as such, simply that when you attack an enemy you are the one to roll their Hit Die to see if they get injured. This is really just a perception thing, but I'm hoping it makes players feel more connected to the results of their actions.

A couple also small changes were made:

• Added a temporary advancement system (until I get those GLOG style classes off the ground) based on collecting accomplishments that would go into your Eulogy.
• Allowed clever, fun, or daring attacks to be "enhanced" (similar to Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland) by stepping up the die that would be rolled for the attack. I may switch this from stepping up the die to giving a +2 to the damage die roll, but we'll see how it feels in play.
• Added some guidance for how to track different equipment (the cowardly way of presenting three systems and letting the GM choose, hopefully I'll zero in on what works well to make a definitive statement).
• Added the concept of "Clock Dice" which is a blend of Macchiato Monsters encounter usage dice, BitD clocks, and Dungeon World fronts.

The Game Itself

 https://awkwardturtle.itch.io/hit-dice-dungeons

Check it out if you're interested, it's even got a character sheet! Expect things to change a ton as I get more playtesting and development in though.

Living Grimoires - Freeform (but closed ended) Whitehack Magic for Into the Odd

Spell Lists or Freeform Magic?

Although I find spell list style magic fun, running Macchiato Monsters has showed me how much I enjoy the flexibility and open ended-ness that comes with more freeform magic systems. And because I appear to make a habit of taking whatever my most recent RPG obsession and hacking it for Into the Odd (I previously adapted GLOG magic into a cassette tape system for Electric Bastionland), here's my attempt at find a way to take a freeform system like Whitehack's miracles (or Macchiato Monsters spells) and fit it into the largely item based world of Into the Odd or Electric Bastionland. 

Something I specifically wanted to avoid in crafting this sytem was making it so flexible as to nullify other methods of approach. A lot of the fun of rules light games is finding new and interesting ways to apply the resources you have, so I didn't want to create a system that replaced that gameplay with more rules.

Another factor in finding a way to limit the freeform casting is that although I enjoy working with players to create unique spells and effects, doing so every single time a spell is cast can be somewhat laborious (which is why I wrote this flowchart for Macchiato Monsters). Additionally, some of the fun of magic comes from finding new ways to apply niche existing spells in clever ways, so I wanted a system where players would have a set spells they could keep going back to.

The Whitehack does this to some degree by requiring spell effects thematically match the overall name of the "miracle", and narrow miracle wordings are encouraged with a discount on casting cost. I took it a step further, by setting a limit for how many different spells can fit within a single Grimoire. In some sense, this is a "write your own spell list" system, and if a player wants more spells they'd better find a way to get more Grimoires (probably by way of murdering some wizards).

With ITO rules, depending on HP levels and spell cost, many spells will be essentially “free” to cast outside of combat or other perilous situations. That’s as intended, and if an effect seems like it would cause problems if it were able to be cast over and over just apply some unique restriction or requirement to it.

One benefit of this "system" is that it doesn't have to be added to a game wholesale. It's entirely contained within an item, so letting players find a single Grimoire means you can add a dash of magic to the game without fully committing to a whole system.

All that being said, it’s entirely unplaytested so who knows.

Living Grimoires

Grimoires tomes of stored knowledge and magic. They're alive and want to be used, but only in a way pleasing to their nature.

MTG has a lot of good magic book artwork.

Each Grimoire has a title indicating its contents and personality, and can hold 6 spells; those containing 4 or more spells are Bulky (due to the weight of unearthly knowledge). Some Grimoires may come with prewritten spells, but most will just have blank space ready for new spells to be inked. Each Grimoire has a specific way in which spells may be added related to its title.

When stolen or recovered from a former owner, roll a Luck die to see which (if any) spells remain intact.

If you are playing a more traditional game, instead of having players write their own spells a Grimoire might come pre-written.  Access to each spell would only be granted when the current owner has performed certain tasks or paid appropriate respect to the tome.

Casting Spells

To cast a spell, hold the Grimoire in both hands and speak the incantation aloud.

Casting the spell deals damage to you (ignoring armor) equal to its cost (from a d4 to a d12).

Excess damage is dealt to WIS/CHA, and a failed WIS/CHA save results in unconsciousness (or rolling on your favorite spell misfire table).

Spellcrafting

To write a spell, declare what you wish for the spell to do. The effects must be within the scope of the Grimoire's title.

To set the cost, start at a d4 to get one of:

• A fleeting moderate effect
• d6 damage
• A lasting minor effect
  

Step up die for:

• Improved effect (more powerful, more useful, more specific, etc)
• More damage
• Additional Targets
• Longer duration
  

Step it up again for lots of one of those things. For example step up once for second target, and twice for Blast/Area.

Step down die for:

• Narrow effects
• Significant drawbacks
• Negative side effects
• Complicated or lengthy casting
• Specific requirements

If you need a higher die size than d12 it's either not within the scope of the spellbook, or will require additional drawbacks, requirements, or steps.

Spells that seem like a poor fit for the Grimoire's title are either impossible, or require a significant drawback or limitation that makes them more suitable.

Make a note of the spell’s name, effects, and cost. Remember each Grimoire can only store a certain number of spells.

Make the spells interesting! Spells with very direct, useful effects will be expensive, and boring spells will piss off the Grimoire. If you have to jump through a few hoops to make it work, that’ll lower the cost to manageable levels. 

Honestly you could do worse than just stealing Grimoire names from MTG.

Scrolls

Individual spells might be found (or created) as scrolls. Depending on the limitations of your world, scrolls might be single use. Or they might be reusable, but have the option to be destroyed during casting in order to negate the cost.

Examples

The Path of Flame -  New spells must be burned into the Grimoire using a heated piece of metal.

1. Flame Friend - d4 - Summon a orb of flame that will follow the caster for a day and provide illumination.
2. Salamander's Lockpick - d6 - Superheat a small piece of metal to weaken or melt it.
3. Purifying Flame - d6 - With a touch purge a poison, disease, or enchantment from a target. Deals 1d4 damage directly to STR and leaves a hand print burn.
4. Oathkeeper's Light - d8 -  Ignite a small white flame as an oath is sworn. The flame will internally ignite any who breaks the oath, dealing them d6 damage directly to STR every sunrise.
   
5. Circle of Protecting Flame - d10 - Trace a closed loop with a flammable material. As long as you stay within the enclosed space, anything attempting to cross will cause the loop to erupt into flame dealing 1d12 damage.
6. The Classic - d12 - Shoot a spark of flame that explodes to deal 1d10 Blast damage.

The Catalog of Lesser Spirits - New spells may be added by requesting them from the spirit of the Grimoire itself, along with a suitable gift (it likes fresh flowers to press within its pages).

1. Loyal Lock - d4 - Animate a lock and command it to open or close. It will do so and remain in that state until someone with a higher CHA countermands the order.
2. The Devil’s in the Dust-Trails - d6 - Blow dust at a mark on a surface (scratch, scuff, footprint, etc). The dust will briefly animate to show you what caused the mark.
3. If These Walls Could Talk - d6 - Draw a mouth on a wall with saliva. Using that mouth the wall will answer one question to the best of its ability (walls know about things that occurred near them, as well as things that support them or that they support).
4.  Bleeding Edge - d4 - Awaken bloodthirst in a bladed weapon. Its next strike deals max damage, but if that hit does not cause Critical Damage it will deal 1d4 STR damage to its wielder.
5. Threshold Sentinel - d8 - Take 10 minutes to awaken the spirit of a doorway (or similar space) and choose a pass code. The spirit will prevent anyone from passing through the doorway unless they know the pass code (dealing 1d12 damage to anyone that forces their way through). Lasts a day, but if cast every day for a week becomes permanent.
6. Spectral Courier - d4 - Press a minor spirit into service to deliver a message to a named person. Most spirits travel only as fast as a walk, although they do so in a straight line.
   

Atlas of Flesh & Bone - New spells must be inked in blood, using a pen carved from bone.

1. Indefinite Loan - d6 - Restore 1d4 STR or DEX by transference between two creatures you touch.
2. Maximize Minimize - d4 - Touch a creature to set one of STR or DEX to 18 for 10 minutes. That stat is then set to 3 for another 10 minutes.
3. Bonus Limbs - d6 - Grant a creature d4 extra limbs (of your choice). After 10 minutes they dry out and fall off.
4. Bone Sense - d4 - You know the exact location of every bone within a 50 foot radius for 10 minutes.
5. No Mask? No Mask! - d8 - Reshape a person's face as though it were putty (a reference will likely be needed to aid the artist if the goal is disguise). Lasts until sunrise.
   
6. Monstrous Melding - d12 - Transplant a monster's organ or limb into a willing subject, they gain some aspect of the power or abilities of the donor. Will last for a week, but if this spell is cast again within that duration the effect becomes permanent (some side effects may occur).
   

Hit Dice Dungeons!

While running Macchiato Monsters the other night, one of my players joked about how we should be tracking hit points with a Risk Die, since everything else in the game uses those.

But then we stopped, thought about it, and realized that it actually sounded like a good idea.

So here's a combat system using only a usage/risk die for tracking harm. It's designed to slot into something like ITO, but I included some potential ways to expand this into a full system at the bottom (or just go use Jason Tocci’s 2400 which is better than whatever I'll come up with).

Hit Dice Combat

Combat occurs simultaneously. Everyone involved declares their intent for the turn (usually moving a short distance + attacking, taking an action). The GM declares NPC actions first, but everything is resolved simultaneously.

Attackers do not roll dice to resolve attacks, instead every attacked creature rolls their Hit Die to avoid harm for each attack.

If the Hit Die rolls a 1-3 (the Threat Range) the Hit Die steps down in size. If the die cannot step down (i.e. it's a d4) the creature is incapacitated. They're bleeding out and will die in an hour if left unattended.

Armor and Weapons

Deadly attacks expand the Threat Range (e.g. if attacked with a +1 Sword take harm when rolling 1-4). This is written as +X, where X is the amount the Threat Range is expanded.

Armor shrinks the Threat Range, written as -X where X is the amount by which the Threat Range is reduced (e.g. wearing Scale Mail (Armor -1) means you take harm only when rolling a 1-2).

The Threat Range cannot be smaller than 1.

Example Items

Poison, apply to a weapon for +2 to the next attack.
Great Axe, two handed, +1.
Firebomb, blast, +1
Crossbow, slow, +2

Chain Mail (Armor -1)

Helmet (Armor -1)

Plate Armor, bulky, clumsy, (Armor -2)

Shield, sunder to prevent stepping down Hit Die when hit.

 (This doesn't read wonderfully. Positive numbers always increase the Threat Range, while negative numbers always decrease it. However it's sorta messy that +1 on weapons is good, but +1 on armor would mean it's easier to hit you.)

Healing

If you took harm during a combat, a few minutes and a drink of water lets you roll the Hit Die. A result of 4+ will restore one Hit Die level (e.g. d6->d8). This only works once per combat, and only if you were damaged during that combat.

Resting overnight with food and drink automatically restores one Hit Die level, then you may roll to restore a second level (as above).

Your Hit Die cannot exceed its original size through healing.

Example Enemies

Goblin Guard, d4, Dull Stick -1
Lizard Bugcatcher, d6, Spear, Net Throw +1 (On hit tangles rather than reducing Hit Die size)
Fungal Warrior, d6, Spore Cloud +1
Giant Toad, d8, Thick Skin (Armor -1), Tongue +2 (On hit the target is grabbed and swallowed).
Crystal Mimic, d4, Fragile (Armor +1), Shard Stab (+2 if attacking from hiding)
Iron Golem, d10, Iron Construction (Armor +2), 2 x Pneumatic Fists +2
Werewolf, d8, Bite+2, 2 x Claws +1, silver weapons force Hit Rolls at disadvantage.

Ideas for Expansion

Death and Dying

Look at the final Hit Die roll to see what happens when someone goes down:

1: Dead
2: Bleeding out with minutes to live.
3: Bleeding out with an hour to live.
4: Knocked out.

Morale

Roll an NPC’s hit die for morale, on a 1-3 they flee or surrender. Enemies roll Morale whenever their Hit Die steps down (in addition to the usual times). This is basically just how Macchiato Monsters morale works.

Everything’s a Hit Die!

Treat any risky thing as an “attack”. Expand the Threat Range (as with weapons) if it’s particularly dangerous or difficult. Equipment acts like Armor does and reduces the threat range. Rolling inside the Threat Range means failure or harm, rolling above it means success or avoiding the harm.

This has the benefit of folding the entire game into a single mechanic, and means characters are just one die and some equipment.

A downside to this is that reducing the Hit Die doesn’t always make sense for every risk. This could be solved by making failure consequences more diverse when out of combat (or even when in combat!). Reduce the Hit Die when the thing at risk is bodily harm, but other risks could be lost or broken equipment, being separated, being put into a bad position, or really anything that makes fictional sense.

Another downside is that this will tend to make characters death spiral, because they’re entirely represented by one dwindling die. Every failure makes future failures more likely.

More Hit Dice?

Characters have the Hit Die as described above, which represents combat prowess and physical durability. They also have a Skill Die (representing training, talents and dexterity) and a Will Die (representing mental fortitude and magical aptitude).

Use these dice as described in the previous section, but now there’s more flexibility and characters are less likely to death spiral since harm can be spread out.

This also gives a little bit of room for mechanically distinguishing characters.

Advantage and Disadvantage?

It’d be very easy to add Advantage and Disadvantage to this. A clever attack from a good position means the enemy must roll their die at disadvantage.

However, that’s an extra mechanic and this is already something you could handle by giving situational bonuses and penalties to Threat Ranges.

Parting Thoughts

This is entirely unplaytested, just a neat idea I wanted to poke at for a bit. I’d welcome anyone’s thoughts on it, or if anyone has seen it show up in another system.

The Dissident Maze, Part 6: The Incident at Muto Station

It's been a while since the last entry in this series, and will likely be quite a while before the next entry in this series. The group I've been running these with wants to return to our prior Scum and Villainy game, which I'm excited for but means I will have to convince some other group of people to play a year's worth of one shots.

If anyone is curious, the modules that were next up in the hopper were Grace Dynamics, The Dream of Nia Wen, and The Tomb of the Last Tyrant.

I'll get through all of Dissident Whispers, by hell or high water!

Rather than try to find a new way to phrase this each time, I'm going to copy and paste the intro from the prior entry:

Some background on this whole thing: I'm attempting to play through every module in Dissident Whispers with the same players, and the same characters (or at least alternate universe versions of them). I don't really expect to actually accomplish this, but I think it'll be fun to see how far I can get. Dissident Whispers is a community created collection of one page RPG adventures to raise money for Black Lives Matter, I personally wrote a Troika! adventure, and a Mausritter adventure location for the project.

See Week 1 for more background on Dissident Whispers, as well as the setup for how I'm running a single party of adventurers through wildly different modules and systems. I will admit, now that we're 5 sessions in, my original framework of an interplanar maze, with soul points and such, has almost entirely been tossed by the wayside. As I very often do, I underestimated how much players will self motivate to explore modules and find their own fun, so I really didn't need to set up an elaborate system to encourage them.

Last week the players were beating the odds and exacting an improbable revenge against Flails Akimbo in MÖRK BORK. This week they're investigating what went wrong on a black market research station, in The Incident at Muto Station.

Disclaimer: I contributed to Dissident Whispers. I realized I didn't explicitly say that in this post, although I have in all the prior ones.

The Module

The Incident at Muto Station is a module for Mothership written by Brian Stauffer (website). The layout was done by Sean McCoy (the creator of Mothership himself), the spooky monster artwork is by David Hoskins, and editing by Matthew Getch, Jarrett Crader and Sam Zeigler.

The System

The system used was for Muto Station was (as designed) used Mothership RPG, created by Sean McCoy. I have a decent amount of experience with Mothership, I've run a bunch of one shots and one lengthier campaign with my players attempting to escape the Dead Planet.

The Characters

Seven of Nine, the naive Android.

Red Washburn, the opportunistic Teamster.

Tenzin Smith-Glaxo-Kline-Monsanto, a corporate Scientist with some regrets.

Play Report

I used the terminal and map screens created by the module's author (linked from his own play report)  to visual aids during this game.

I also tweaked the intro to the module to give the players a specific goal inside the station (beyond simply not dying).

Instead of the station being a mystery, the players were aware that it was a Xeno Poacher dropoff station, and (being xeno smugglers themselves) they'd done business with Muto Station in the past. In this case, they were hired to transport the head Xenobiologist Dr. Gallagher from Muto Station to Prospero's Dream, with maybe a little side smuggling gig from their contact.

Being very careful of their location, Muto Station sent encrypted jump coordinates, so the Crew wouldn't know where they were jumping to. Then, to leave, they had to get a second set encrypted jump coordinates since they didn't know where they were jumping from.

This meant that when they arrived, and picked up a distress beacon from a station that ostensibly runs dark, they knew they couldn't just turn around and leave. Random warp jumps tend to go badly.

After failing to raise anyone on the comms, they initially decided to try and enter through the Xeno Dropoff docking bay, rather than the standard one. They docked their ship (the Leaky Pete) at the Xeno Dropoff Bay, but found the airlock refused to cycle as long as their ship was docked. 

A halfhearted attempt to hack through the door's terminal failed, and after a discussion they decided that they probably shouldn't start bashing/cutting down doors until they knew for certain what was going on. So they undocked, flew the 100 or so feet to the other bay, and redocked.

They get through the proper airlock without issue and find a hallway filled with blood, smashed lights, bullet holes and hear a noise akin to flesh dragging on metal although it almost immediately disappears. Tenzin runs a scan on the blood, and finds it to be human. Very on edge, they move forward into the station and into the first room they find: the Mess Hall. Inside the tables and chairs are smashed and thrown about, while streaks of blood lead to and from various doors.

While Red is poking behind a pile of tables and chairs with a flashlight, the players suddenly hear the sounds of muffled voices from somewhere outside the room. Spooked, Red startles and knocks over the chairs making an enormous clattering noise, and by the time the racket stops the strange muffled voices are nowhere to be heard.

They leave the Mess Hall trying to find the source of the noise. Seeing nothing they head into the Crew Quarters. Seven of Nine and Tenzin start digging through Gallagher's quarters, while Red rapidly looks through the other rooms looking for a map of the station which he eventually finds in the maintenance man's room.

Tenzin finds a locked datapad in Gallagher's quarters, and with Seven of Nine's help is able to bypass the password revealing a set of notes about a xeno life form recently brought to the station. It seemed to be a mass of different creatures mashed together, with some sort of biomass connecting the brains. With this new information Tenzin resamples the blood and, knowing what to look for, finds that although it's human blood it contains nine different DNA patterns.

The three meet back up in the common area of the crew quarters, but are interrupted by Dr. Gallagher herself appearing in the doorway, begging them to run before screaming and disappearing from sight!

Seven of Nine has a minor breakdown and sprints after her, but upon turning the corner finds no trace of the Xenobiologist. The android doesn't stop sprinting and runs all the way to the Science Lab, where upon opening the door she sees something wriggling on the ground and immediately closes the door again. At this point the other two have caught up and together they manage to break into the Control Room despite not having the access key card.

Inside the Control Room the scientist manages to extract the station's location data, meaning they can actually warp out of this place! Seven of Nine notices someone had entered half of the self destruct sequence before being interrupted by something that left blood and brains on the keyboard, but just wipes the keys clean in order to hack the computers to transfer all funds the station had on hand to their ship. Red finds a surveillance video of Dr. Nedry carelessly handling the xeno life form mentioned in the notes, and the three watch as the video captures the xeno's leap into the doctor's head. On video Nedry then turns to attack a nearby scientist, before screams and gunfire erupt as the action moves off screen.

Thoroughly stressed, but with a way out, they exit the Control Room to make their way back to their ship.  Unfortunately Dr. Gallagher waiting for them at the end of a hallway. She alternates between begging them to save her and imploring them to run, but Seven of Nine is no longer having any of this and immediately shoots her with a rigging gun, pinning her to a wall. 

Tenzin walks down the hallway to her to point blank tranq her, and put her out of her pain and misery, but while doing so notices too late the thin tendril leading from the back of her skull around the corner of the hallway. Looking in that direction, Tenzin has time to see the Amalgam only a fraction of a second before it grabs him.

The Amalgam is a horrible conglomeration of the entire crew of Muto Station, melted and molded together with faces still visible and trying to communicate. With a tendril it keeps Dr. Gallagher separate, but controlled, acting as a lure like some sort of eldritch angler fish.

All three characters immediately panic. 

Tenzin completely loses his mind and welcomes the Amalgam as it begins to absorb him into the mass. Red panics and feels his heart being to beat erratically, and knows that if he takes any damage or fails any save before he gets medical attention his heart will stop (using a slightly altered panic table to avoid the common and instant "death by heart attack result). Seven of Nine's circuits begin to act erratically, and if any player fails a save nearby she will panic again.

It is at this point that I give Tenzin's player control of the Amalgam as his character is consumed.

Seven of Nine, realizing their only hope of escape lies in the set of coordinates sitting in Tenzin's pocket, dashes forward and manages to grab the datapad. She sprints past the Amalgam which tries to grab her and misses by inches.

GM's Note: If you've read other entries in this series, you'll know I often poke fun at how unreasonably lucky this group of players is. Well, what follows is the Amalgam's player (formally of Tenzin) losing a coin flip roll 6 times in a row. The one time a player's luck fails, it's when that player is working against the others. There is no hope against such monstrous fortune.

A chase ensues, as the Amalgam lurches after Seven of Nine who desperately sprints through the hallways to make it back to the ship.

Red, meanwhile, is running in the opposite direction with the plan to bust through the Science Lab and make his way to the Xeno Drop-Off Bay.

Willfully ignoring the wriggling tendril in the Science Lab, he uses his laser cutter to smash through the glass barrier and clambers through into the Clean room. Not stopping for anything, he runs through the Clean Room, then Specimen Storage, and into the Xeno Drop-Off Bay before realizing he doesn't have a space suit. Luckily (I do 50% luck rolls to see if something plausible falls in the player's favor) he finds a sealed hazmat suit, which he over-inflates with a tank of oxygen before yeeting himself into space.

Simultaneously Seven of Nine reaches the docking bay, and cycles through the airlock into the ship just ahead of the Amalgam (the Amalgam's player got one extra secret roll to try and sneak the parasite onto the ship, but sadly failed that as well).

Seven of Nine quickly undocks and heads out into space and, seeing Red floating towards the ship, through space tries to open the cargo doors to catch him. After a very close miss, Red vents the remainder of his oxygen tank to send himself tumbling into the Leaky Pete. Finally safe, and only missing one crew member, they enter the jump coordinates and leave Muto Station behind.

Unbeknownst to them, as they enter warp space the station's distress beacon turns back on, hoping to lure any future visitors.

Thoughts on the Module

First of all, this module was run by TheBardCommunityCollege/TheDnDMom and streamed on twitch, so if you want to see another run through of this check out the VOD on youtube. A very different crew and some different decisions made by the GM made for a pretty different experience, so it's interesting to see how flexible the module is.

My players and I all had a really good time in this module. A black site xeno smuggling outpost is an excellent location for things to go wrong in a sci fi universe, and lends itself really well to a sort of built in story. The premise of the location makes enough intrinsic sense that it's easy to fill in details, or invent new things as needed. An evocative setting is much preferred to one packed with specific details I need to remember while running.

The monster at the core of the module, the Amalgam, is a horrifying and unpleasant creature; the conglomeration of the crew who are still alive and conscious, but far beyond saving. The crew's good regard for their leader means Dr. Gallagher was "spared" absorption, but in return she has the probably more horrifying role of being the lure to bring more beings into the mass. It's technically possible for Dr. Gallagher to be freed from the Amalgam and rescued, but I honestly cannot imagine the band of Mothership characters who would be both inclined to make the attempt and capable of pulling it off. 

An upshot of all this horror is that the Amalgam is specifically said to have all the knowledge and skills of anyone it has subsumed, so this isn't some mindless monster. It knows the station inside and out, and can likely predict what the players are going to do next. A smart monster that can actually operate station controls, doors, and computers isn't something the players are likely to expect right off the bat.

The Amalgam, up until open conflict breaks out, is controlled by a behavior table not totally dissimilar to the one used for the Alpha Gaunt in the Screaming of the Alexis (from Dead Planet), but with one significant difference. This encounter table is rolled with a 1d5 + the number of rooms visited. That means the behavior will continue to escalate as the players spend more time in the station, eventually leading to the Amalgam being all but guaranteed to lay an ambush for the players and force a confrontation. This is a really cool way to keep the behavior somewhat random, but slowly crank up the dial until all hell breaks loose.

Muto Station lays down a reasonable path for the players to take (learning about the xeno, finding the video, getting a keycard, figuring out the self destruct sequence) but as evidenced by my table it's flexible enough for players to forge their own path. There are also a handful of small details I think are really fun even if they're not likely to make a big impact on your game, like how the items left in each crew member's bunk tell a tiny story about who they were.

There are a few places I think the module could use a little bit of work. First, unless your players are naturally inquisitive, it is left to the GM to find a good reason to force the players onto the station in the first place. This is by no means unique to Muto Station, and is something I often find to be a problem in the first party modules as well, but it's worth pointing out.

Second, the layout of the ship combined with the amalgam behavior sometimes requires some creative interpretation by the GM to make things make sense. Particularly where this comes up is when the Amalgam needs to move around, there's often no immediately obvious way for it to move from place to place without being immediately found by the players. An easy fix for this is to add ventilation shafts, and to time encounters such that the Amalgam shows up behind players to ensure movement makes sense, but it's still something the GM needs to keep in mind while running the system.

The layout is as excellent as you'd expect from Sean McCoy himself, and I can't finish this section without mentioning the bone chilling, almost psychedelic rendering of the Amalgam by David Hoskins prominently featured in the spread.

Thoughts on the System

I'd be very surprised if this blog post were anyone's first exposure to it so I won't give an overview of Mothership RPG, and instead I'll just give my nitpicky issues with the system. I've run a 10 session Dead Planet campaign, and a handful of one shots prior to Muto Station so the system was a known quantity to me going in. I really like Mothership and I keep running more games with it for a reason, so take my complaints with a grain of salt.

The stress system is functional at providing a building tension and pressure for the players, without dictating behavior from them until things get very bad. However, I dislike that panic rolls are 2d10 roll under, and not percentile like everything else in the game. Mothership is extremely straightforward and easy to teach, so having one system that works entirely unlike everything else is a speed bump that requires re-explaining almost every time it comes up.

Mothership stats feel largely arbitrary to me. Creatures don't feel appreciably different from one another based on stats, and looking at the laconic stat block doesn't give me a good feel for what a given monster is really capable of. This isn't a huge problem, since much of the time players will try as hard as possible to not interact with a monster's stats, and monster description carries the majority of the weight, but it still rubs me the wrong way.

I also both like, and dislike the hit/hp system. By design it prevents massive damage from immediately wiping out enemies, but that also runs directly counter to my intuition for how something should react to massive damage. It didn't come up in Muto Station at all (the players made no attempt to fight the Amalgam) but when running Dead Planet I often found myself letting a single attack burn away several hits, particularly when explosives were used against relatively small and soft targets. My preference would be for multiple hits to be reserved only for the beefiest, most durable creatures. I understand rulings over rules so I can run the game how I like, but I don't believe the system as currently implemented carries enough weight on its own (although, technically it's not currently in the rulebook, so who knows).

Mothership is still a fantastic system, and I don't think there's anything better around for this particular brand of sci fi horror roleplaying.

Final Thoughts

Muto Station is an excellent Mothership adventure with a great layout, a really cool escalating monster behavior table, and a monster that's horrifying on both practical and existential levels. It takes a bit of extra work from the GM to really make it sing, but as shown by TheDnDMom's playthrough it can serve as an excellent introduction to Mothership RPG.

As mentioned at the top, I'm unfortunately going to be putting the series on hold for a bit. The playgroup I was doing this with wants to pick up our older Scum and Villainy campaign, so until we switch it up from that or I find another group to keep this going this is on hiatus.

In the mean time, please go pick up the book and try out some of these modules yourself! Dissident Whispers is full of fantastic modules like this; no matter if you're looking for one shots, places to populate a hex crawl with, or just great ideas to pillage for your campaign you'll find it within these pages.

Shit Wizards - Gastrointestinal Spell Casting

 "Malazarich the Great? He's a shit wizard, right?"

"What? No, he's a great wizard, it's in the name."

"No no, a shit wizard."

Written for Electric Bastionland/Into the Odd, but applicable to whatever game you'd like. Taken from conversation in the Electric Bastionland discord (special thanks to CosmicOrrery for their part in crafting this abomination).

Check out another take on this idea here.

What's a Shit Wizard?

A Shit Wizard (colloquial term, they prefer Excremancer) is a magic user who performs their magic by consuming spellstones, spells in physical form.

What are Spellstones?

Bezoar stones taken from the stomachs of magical beasts.

The residue of their magical abilities are accumulated in these stones, and once removed can be tapped into by a Shit Wizard's highly trained digestive system.

How's it work?

The Wizard consumes the spellstone and immediately gains the effect of the spell. Then, some number of hours later they pass the spellstone the usual way (hopefully behind a bush or around the corner) and after suitable cleaning the spellstone is ready to be used again.

Passing a spellstone will usually happen the next time the Shit Wizard makes camp, so long as at least 8 hours have passed. (Technically speaking it probably takes a 1-2 days to pass a solid object, so adjust to your desired level of "realism".)

Gross

Yup. Power at any cost.

Example

Malazarich chokes down an oversized spellstone recovered from the gut of a red dragon. His eyes begin to glow, and he belches a huge gout of fire before him dealing d12 Blast damage to everyone in the area. 

Some time later, he is heard grunting behind a tree and cursing the gods for the size of a dragon's lower intestine.

Optional Rules

Slippery Spells - Spellstones don't like being inside a wizard's digestive tract, and will hasten their exit. Spellstones are passed in 1d6 hours. 

Bonus, the number of hours is secretly rolled by the GM, although the wizard likely gets at least a few minutes warning.

Indigestion - Having more than a single spellstone in your body at once gives an awful stomach ache. You're deprived and cannot regain HP until all but one are passed.

Laxatives - Certain drugs and substances are known to wizards for speeding the passage of a spellstone through their systems. Consuming a laxative reduces the amount of time before passing by 1d4 hours. If the duration is reduced to less than zero, the spellstone is passed immediately with dramatic and explosive consequences.

Getting more Spells

Hunt down magical beasts, slay them, and extract the bezoars from their intestines. Any suitably magical beast will have a 1 in 6 chance of containing a bezoar stone, granting a spell related to the abilities of the creature. A given creature might have more than one potential spell.

Alternatively just find (or create) a dead Wizard and recover some spellstones from within their guts.

Failed Career

Excremancer's Apprentice

You thought you'd be studying under a distinguished and learned wizard, unlocking secrets to bend the universe to your will. Instead, you're spending all your time guzzling prune juice and uncomfortably squatting behind bushes.

You start with a bottle of prune juice and a Gutting Knife (d6).

How does the Bezoar stone did you managed to recover from your master's remains feel going down?

1. Uncomfortably large - Dragon: Deals d12 Blast damage.
2. Uncomfortably scaley - Basilisk: Shoot a petrifying ray, d6 STR damage and critical damage turns to stone.
3. Uncomfortably sticky - Giant Spider: Spray sticky webs over a large area.
4. Uncomfortably cold - Banshee: Unleash a horrific scream dealing d4 Blast CHA damage, critical damage stuns.
   
5. Uncomfortably fuzzy - Blink Dog: Teleport to any location you can see.
6. Uncomfortably moving - Mimic: Change your shape into any similarly sized object, lasts until the spellstone is passed.
   

What have the consequences on your gut been?

1. Iron Constitution - You have 1 Armor if you have a spellstone currently inside you.
   
2. Highly Absorptive - You can use a very minor version of the effect of any spellstone currently inside you.
   
3. Extremely Regular - Spellstones always pass in exactly 3 hours.
4. Magic Intolerance - The first time you consume a new spellstone you have 3 CHA until it passes.
   
5. Irritable Bowels - If you take critical damage, immediately void any spellstones within you. Their effects activate immediately and in random directions.
6. Chronic Constipation - Passing a spellstone takes 24 hours without assistance.
   

DUEL AT HIGH NOON - Simple Duel Procedure for Into the Odd or Electric Bastionland.

Stare down the opposition in a dusty street under a burning sun, then...

DRAW!

Both duelists make a DEX save to draw their weapons.

AIM!

If one duelist succeeded and the other failed, the duelist who succeeded is the WINNER.

If both duelists succeeded, whoever rolled the higher number is the WINNER.

If neither duelist succeeded, there is no WINNER. 

FIRE!

Anyone who succeeded has their attack ENHANCED (+1d12 Bonus).

If there is a WINNER they shoot FIRST. 

The other duelist can then take their shot if they’re still standing.

If there is no WINNER, both duelists shoot simultaneously.

Learning to Jam with ELECTRIC WIZARDS! - Eclectic Bastion Jam Post Mortem

 

I recently participated in the Eclectic Bastion Jam, an RPG game jam centered around Electric Bastionland. Hacks, modules, items, adventures, and more were accepted so long as they were at least tangentially related to Electric Bastionland or Into the Odd.

ELECTRIC WIZARDS! was my entry into the jam, and I'm honestly pretty pleased with how it came out.

I wanted to get down "on paper" my process for the design, writing, and layout of the module,  collect the specific resources I used to put everything together, and talk through some things I learned along the way.

This ended up being much more meandering and unfocused than I'd originally envisioned, but hopefully someone else finds this info useful! If you'd rather skip me blathering on about my "process" and just want the resources I used, scroll to the bottom.

Game Jams?

Something I've learned about myself and writing is that without deadlines, I'll never get anything done. I mostly learned this in academia (research papers, proposals, conference submissions, even my friggin dissertation) but it has stayed very true in RPG writing. The first piece of RPG writing I actually finished (outside of stuff for personal use) was for Dissident Whispers, where I wrote and laid out one module, and wrote another (and then people much more talented than me created art and layout for it). During that project, the time from starting to when the writing was due was 72 hours. My first module (The Mechanical Menagerie of Michael Moreau, MD) was something I'd been working on prior to joining Dissident Whispers, but once I was in a position where things had to get done I was somehow able to actually do it. And then do it a second time, because I finished earlier than expected and wrote another module, The Crumbling Carmine Ruins, for Mausritter.

After Dissident Whispers was done, I went back to fiddling with a bunch of different projects and not really making any progress on things.

Which is all a long way to say, I need deadlines and specific goals to actually finish things. If you have similar problems I highly recommend joining game jams As far as I can tell they are designed specifically to give you a deadline to get you to finish things.

(Dissident Whispers is a community collection of one page RPG modules published and sold to raise money for the National Bail Fund. Get it here (it's incredible) or read play reports for my playthroughs of several of the modules here).

Module Goals

So deadline ahead of me, I decided to pull up an old blog post of mine about using the Goblin Laws of Gaming wizard magic (as filtered through Masuritter) in Electric Bastionland. Electric Bastionland is all about items and objects, rather than innate power, so cassette tapes containing magic spells was my plan to fit both the mechanics and the aesthetic of the game. 

What I wanted to do was go a bit deeper with the mechanics than I did in the original blog post, and flesh it out into an actual module.

I went through a spectrum of different options for what I wanted in the module: starting with simply the rules adapting GLOG magic plus a handful of spells, all the way to a huge module with an entire borough including 8 wizard towers each of which would be a fleshed out adventure location ready for running heists to steal ætheric technology. There was going to be a faction war between the litigious Royal Thaumaturgical Society trying to keep magic locked down, and the FLOSS (Free Legerdemain and Open Sorcery Society) trying to spread it to the masses.

In the end I managed to fight back the feature creep and created the following goals:

• Rules for Cassette Tape GLOG magic integrated into existing Electric Bastionland rules.
• 6 "GAUNTLETS", the devices used to cast Cassette Tape spells.
• 18 total spells, suitably "Bastionland-y".
  
• 6 GAUNTLET mods to customize the above GAUNTLETS.
• 2 Failed Careers, as a way to communicate the tiny slice of setting, and as a quick way for people to start with a GAUNTLET and SPELL.
  

Once I got into the writing and layout, it ended up shifting a bit. One failed career got cut and I added 6 oddities to go alongside the 6 GAUNTLET mods. But this is what I had in mind once I sat down to start working on the module in earnest.

Making Magic

I'm not going to restate the full set of rules here, but to briefly explain: it's GLOG magic. contained in physical items, combined with Electric Bastionland's HP system. If you want the full explanation, just go download my module, it's free!

To bring magic into Electric Bastionland I had a few goals to help it mesh together nicely:

Goal 1: It had to be very rules light.

Electric Bastionland has very few rules so adding any new ones has to be done carefully. GLOG magic is pretty straightforward and lightweight, so no trouble there, but the main trick was stopping myself from layering even more rules on top.

Starting with Mausritter's version of GLOG magic, I had originally been tracking charges per spell (or per cassette in my case) with unique recharge conditions. This is very fun, and I like it a lot (it works great in Mausritter) but for the scale and pace of how I run Electric Bastionland I found it unwieldy. Making the GAUNTLET holding the charges meant only one number was tracked, and it played more nicely with creating different GAUNTLET variants.

The next thing to handle was saving throws or hitting moving targets. Originally I just had nothing, spells simply did what they said. That restricted possible spell designs too much, as lots of potentially fun effects would also become instant kill spells if used on enemies.

The simple solution was to just let enemies make a DEX or CHA save to avoid a spell's effects, but I dislike that sort of binary resolution when handling things like spells. If you've sunk resources into something, it's frustrating when the outcome is just "nothing happens".

The solution I ended up sticking with was to tie the magic directly into the usual Hit Protection system for Electric Bastionland. HP in Electric Bastionland is already explicitly the ability to avoid harm, so if casting a spell is treated mechanically like an attack it works perfectly.

When you case a spell it is treated as an attack(using the highest die rolled as "damage" and only if it gets past their Hit Protection will it effect the enemy. Now even on a miss, you're still exhausting their ability to avoid further spells or attacks. It encourages teamwork in combat, since you might need your party to keep an enemy pinned down with normal attacks in order to get your spell through. Plus I get to take advantage of Bonus Damage (Enhanced in ITO) and Impaired attacks without any further complication on my part. Any time rules can do double duty it's a win.

At one point rewinding a cassette safely took time, a full 10 minutes, but you could rush the process by manually (maybe with a pencil) at risk of things going wrong. I eventually realized the main reason I had included this was just to make the pencil rewinding joke, and that wasn't worth the extra rules baggage. After a couple more iterations, I ended up dropping rewinding tapes altogether.

In the end I like where the systems landed, although I am probably just about doubling the total rules word count. Electric Bastionland is so pared down it's very hard to add extra systems without everything seeming unwieldy or heavy.

Goal 2: It had to be item based. 

It should be something anyone could pick up and use. It had to be a physical item that could be traded, bought, or stolen. Magic being a tangible thing you could hold was important, and Mausritter provided a great starting place. 

Cassette tapes are a fun, eminently tangible thing to use. The nice "cachunk" they make as you slot them into a player is permanently burned into my brain.

Using power glove type things as the requirement for casting is also great, because who doesn't want to run around shooting fireballs out of a power glove?

Goal 3: It had to have a high "shenanigan coefficient". 

 By which I mean straightforward spells with an obvious, useful purpose are boring. Weird, obscure spells that lend themselves to several convoluted purposes are better. I want players to be initially confused or amused by a spell's description and then start scheming. Spells shouldt lend themselves to odd uses, or encourage players to come at a problem sideways. 

Just imagine the goofs players would get into using this.

There are already literally hundreds of GLOG spells out there, and I don't think anyone benefits by a few more reskins of standard DnD spells being thrown onto the pile. I don't think I was entirely successful in this, but I'm generally pretty happy with my final spell lists.

This same process is also what went into the design of the Oddities and GAUNTLET Mods. The Troika! spell list was also a great source of inspiration, showing that you can make traditional effects interesting again with strange enough trappings (see the Invisibility spell for my favorite example).

Layout

I'm very much a novice at layout, but wanted to try to do something that would be visually exciting to look at. This ended up turning into doing a different visually exciting thing on every single spread, which in retrospect was probably a bit over the top and also makes the entire module a bit incoherent to read through. I do like where it ended though, so I'm not too down on myself for this.

I used Affinity Publisher (technically the free trial of it) for doing the layout (with a bit of Affinity Photo for editing).

I approached the layout by trying to make each page resemble a specific thing. Layout was much easier when I had an end result in mind, so aiming for something real I could look at to reference helped a ton. I could usually figure out how to mimic the layout of something, but struggled much more with making the layout both easy to read and visually interesting on its own without there being any "gimmick" to the look. Evocative is easier than original, at least for me.

In order, after the intro and rules page, the visuals I was attempting to replicate are:

• Patent Document
• Cassette Tape Insert
• Dot Matrix Printout
• Government Form
• Comic Book Advertisement Pages

For specific aspects of layout details I highly recommend finding things made by people who are actually good at layout, and shamelessly stealing their ideas. The first thing I tried to lay out myself was my Troika! module in Dissident Whispers, where I used a flowchart style "map" which I borrowed from Sean McCoy's layout in the Ypsilon-14 Mothership Module.

The rest of Dissident Whispers (i.e. the parts that I didn't do layout for) is an amazing exhibition of tons of different layout styles and techniques. It's a fantastic smorgasbord of excellent ideas to borrow from.

One layout "trick" I used that's is worth highlighting, if only because it's on nearly every page, is how to apply a texture to an entire spread to give it a "used" feel. I'd find an appropriate texture stock image, set it as the bottom layer of the spread, and then set the layers above it to "multiply" which translates that texture through all the elements on top of it. For black or very dark elements, like text, I used "pin light" or "hard light" blending, although I think simply lowering the opacity would accomplish something similar.

Paper texture blending. I didn't blend the "4. EPOXY" text particularly well, but you get the idea.

 Beyond that, desaturated colors made things more visually easy to look at, and a more "authentic" feel in a lot of cases (specifically the Oddities spread).

Tipping text a slight angles can be visually striking (look at MÖRK BORG, or a bunch of the Dissident Whispers modules for examples) but I mostly used it in ELECTRIC WIZARDS! when I was trying to make something look hand written. 

It's perhaps too subtle here, but looking at the whole page the slight misalignment between each desctipion sells the feel I was going for.

An Affinity specific goof I made was while using mixam's booklet templates, I did all of my layout using a single "page" within the software for each two page spread. What this meant was when I finished, I had no way to split each spread into individual pages for export (or at least, I couldn't figure out how to do so). What I should have done from the beginning is to use the single page templates then under Document Setup checking "Facing Pages". This lets you edit in two page spreads, but export as either spreads or singles.

The last piece of advice I'd give is that there are tons of really cool and interesting fonts out there, absolutely use them but don't forget that people should actually be able to read the thing at the end of the day.

Final Product

You can find the final ELECTRIC WIZARDS! at itch.io. It's totally free, and I'd love for anyone to give it a look and tell me what they think. While you're over there check out the rest of the incredible entries into the Eclectic Bastion Jam.

A friend of mine got the module printed and shipped to me for my birthday, for which I'm incredibly grateful. I recorded a video of a flip through so you can see what it would look like in print:

I'm very thankful for the Eclectic Bastion Jam giving me the framework and impetus to produce something I'm actually quite proud of. I highly recommend joining a jam just to get the experience of working on, and finishing a project.

For the curious, at time of writing the module has been downloaded 119 times, although some of those are people downloading both the singles and spreads pdfs. I don't have a following of any kind to try and market this to, plus it's a very niche crossover module connecting two relatively niche RPGs so the potential audience is pretty limited to begin with.

Resources Used

Fonts

Google Fonts

League of Movable Type

Misprinted Type

Moonbase Press - Specifically for the Dot Matrix style font.

Images

British Library Flickr - All the old timey images came from here. Searching for specific things can be a bit wonky, but digging around will provide a bounty of excellent stuff. A lot of my ideas came from things I accidentally found while looking for something else.

Unsplash - The large background images of cassettes all came from here.

photos-public-domain.com - Used for paper images to provide texture to backgrounds.

The US Patent Office - So it turns out most patent art is public domain. All of the images on the gauntlet page came from here.