Wiskaria

  The two prisoners were brought before the Lord, bound at the hands, and thrust to their knees before him. He looked down at the pair, the rough hewn edges of the ancient desk offsetting the understated elegance of his office. The prisoners, for their part, merely looked back at the aged figure before them.

“Karzent and Wisendon,” the Lord began. “Fomenting rebellion amongst your fellow slaves again?” Many would have quailed before this gaze, but these two, frequent visitors to this august presence, did not. “It has become apparent that the standard punishments are no impediment to the two of you, so I believe something different may be in order. We may even be able to get some use out of you.” The Lord smiled at this last.

The prisoners exchanged a look. Nothing that pleased the Lord boded well for them and their fellows.

The small band crouched at the lip of the ridge overlooking the valley. They had started on this adventure with ten, but now there were only eight, as two of their number now shared a common grave with the fell beast that had ended them. It had been distasteful to most of the band, but those in charge had decided that mere slaves deserved no better.

Karzent lowered the spyglass and handed it over to Wisendon. “I don’t see anything living, but some of the markings are fresh.” Wisendon looked through the glass, but not having the tracking skills of his partner just nodded in agreement. “I’ll go tell their Highnesses.” Wisendon snorted, but kept looking through the glass.

Karzent scrambled down the backslope, to where the horses and pack animals waited, along with Karzent’s minders. Despite her comment, the two minders were not royalty, but they were pure bloods, sent to mind their half breed slaves and make sure of their completion of mission. The slaves had not slipped blades into their backs, despite many opportunities, as the two did have their uses, and the mission was grim enough to require all the help they could get their hands on.

“We are there,” Karzent announced.

“And? Speak up, slave.”

“There’s something there, the signs are clear.” Karzent was used to being addressed as such, and had long stopped reacting to it. “Not sure how many, but it does not look like more than two or three.”

“Well, let us go see.” They deigned to dismount and climb the hill. Karzent would have demanded they keep low, approach the top below the brow and but peek over the top of it, but she was more than sure that whatever resided below had either already detected the band, or had no need of forewarning.

The castle was ancient, a legend and a nightmare. Built into the side of a now inactive volcano by the tyrants that once ruled the entire land, its current resident or residents were purported to have cast them down, long ago when the flow of lava had stopped and the fields of fire had died to ember and then to ash. Even though it had been generations, the area was still a blight in the heart of the land, for all who traveled through it were never seen again. All expeditions to find the missing never returned themselves. Eventually all of the surrounding city states learned to avoid the area entirely, counting the extra travel time spent going around a small price to pay.

Built to massive, nay gigantic proportions, the defensive works of the keep dominated the landscape. The lush greenery feeding off of the plain of volcanic residue would have overwhelmed and hidden works built by the smaller races, but here the towering giants of the forest just served to show how massive the walls and towers truly were. Even surrounded by the undisturbed vegetation of generations, it dominated the landscape.

“Should we wait until night?” asked Wisendon. They all looked to Karzent, her years of experience tracking and hunting in the wild making her a natural leader of the band.

“No point,” she answered immediately. “Whatever is down there already knows we’re here.” She turned down the hill towards the horses. “Or they don’t care.”

It was nothing more than luck that had saved them. The tyrant at the heart of the fortress had let the party come deep into his lair and played with them for most of a day, all the while killing them one at a time. Only when Karzent and Wisendon were left did he stop the games, and confront them directly. The dark giant, his skin covered in runes of power, was ancient beyond measure. The last of his tribe, they had defeated the former masters of the keep and enslaved them. They had lost control of the once great kingdom the previous masters had, but they cared not. Their slaves had served them as long as they could, but their new masters, more powerful than they had even imagined, ground their entire tribe to dust, and then themselves had succumbed to the vagaries of time. Until there was just one left.

He had gloated as he chased them, telling them of the vast expanse of history he and his tribe had been witness to. How insignificant the half-breeds were, how only because he had nothing to occupy his time and had no one else to speak to in a long while was he deigning to speak with such lower beings. One does not hold conversations with rats, one merely kills them, do they not? Karzent’s arrows and blade had bounced off the steel-like hide. Wisendon’s best magics slid off of the giant like so much water. The rest of the party, slave and master alike, their efforts had been similarly futile. He had laughed, time and again, at their impotence, and continued to hound them in and around buildings built at a scale almost beyond their comprehension.

In the end, age and luck, bad luck, had done the tyrant in. Karzent had managed to trip the tyrant and it had fallen against an aging wall, and its protective spells, weakened by time, had reacted with the monster’s own runes, bringing enough weight down to crush the tyrant. The last of the party, they had not survived without wounds of their own. Only by searching the body of the fallen giant and drinking deeply of several healing draughts they had found did they manage to survive. They both had lost parts of themselves, but they still lived and huddled in the still ruins to gather themselves.

“We won,” said Wisendon, his remaining eye closed against the pain. “But for what? So our pure blood masters can expand their control and grind us further under their heels?”

“Yes, Wis, that’s exactly why I came here, to lose half my leg and watch you hover near death just so that goblin’s dung heap of a Lord can clamp down on trade with the south even more,” Karzent said. They were tucked into a corner of a long cold hearth, many times the size of the shacks they and their fellow slaves enjoyed back home. A small fire crackled before them, the wood hacked off of a chair that had towered above them both. “Though I have to admit, watching that monster squish those two uppity bastards like so many mice under his sandal, that was almost worth all of this.” They were quiet for a little while. “What do you suggest we do, Wis? We barely made it here with ten of us, and everyone had all of their legs and hands.”

“Don’t forget eyes,” said Wisendon. “The hand was bad enough, but at least I don’t appear to need it to manipulate magic.”

“I’m sorry, Wis, I am,” said Karzent, and sat silently for a long, miserable while. “You know, we could just build a home here. If we didn’t tell anyone all the giants are dead, who’d come looking for us here? We could settle down, stop the constant moving, raise a family…”

“Karz, I’ve told you, while our people live under the lash…”

“...of pure-blood hatred and oppression, you do not have the time nor the interest in any type of relationship,” Karzent quoted at Wisendon, having heard the sentiment far too many times. “I know, but I’m on the old side of middle-aged, Wis, and a girl won’t wait for…”

“Wait,” he said, “what did you say about building a home here?”

“We could build a house here. Only we know the giants are all dead, and since everyone avoids the area out of fear, we’d get at least a couple of years alone. Just you and me and...” She stopped and looked at him intently. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Wis?”

“I think you’re right,” he said, his eye open and staring intently at the ceiling of the hearth, many feet above him. “I think we could build a home here.”

The journey back had been harrowing, but they made it, and more importantly, without running into any of their masters or their minions. They slipped into the slave slums and word spread quickly through all of the camps, for fear of their masters catching word from one of their many spies. The word was such a shock to the community that several such spies revealed themselves in trying to run to their masters, a boon to the slaves as it allowed them to eliminate those leaks and gain more time. The slower, more careful spies were too cautious, and by the time the slaves made their move, it was too late.

The slaves revolted, along with many of their former guards. Even in a land of slave and master, many of the so-called masters were treated not much better than the slaves they guarded. They escaped into the night, half of the land on fire and in chaos, Karzent and her fellow trackers obscuring the trail and misleading the pursuers in many different directions. Tens of thousands of slaves, from the old to the newborn, all vanished into the wilderness.

They could have left years ago, generations ago, but they had nowhere to go to. Bastard half breeds of two proud races, unwanted by one and enslaved by the other, they had tried going to the other races in the surrounding lands, but beyond weapons and equipment, supplied more to twist the nose of their masters than out of a sense to help them with their plight, no one was willing to open up their own lands to these unwanted children. Now, with an entire fortress, the most recent owner dead at the hands of their own with no one else the wiser, they had that somewhere to go, somewhere to call their own. And took it they did.

The fortress, built to the scale of giants three times the size of its new occupants, had been crafted by masters of stonework and magic, protective energies woven into the near seamless stonework to make it as indestructible as anything else worked by mere mortals. As such, the new inhabitants could not alter the structure, they had not the skill nor the equipment to rework the bones of the fortress, bring it down and build it back to suit their size. So they left the stone as it was, and built everything else to their scale. Hallways became two story dorms and apartment blocks. Kitchen ovens became smithies and forges. Extra steps added onto every staircase made them accessible, while the unused portions of the stairs were used for market stalls. The mighty forest that had grown up in the nutrient rich volcanic ash was quickly cleared, first to provide lumber for all of the projects, and second to provide planting area to grow crops. Used to the hard labor under the lash of their former masters, the people worked even harder to build and grow what was now theirs.

The delegation from the Lords Under the Mountain entered into the grand hall of the new nation. The hall had been built into the old inhabitant’s own great hall, but with so much extra space, much of the upper areas of it and the sides of the hall were being walled off and made into offices and apartments. The delegation was met by the council of the new city state and quickly escorted into the feast hall for a welcoming meal. The grizzled head of the delegation’s guard excused himself from the meal, and with two of his guards left the hall for one particular, newly-built apartment overlooking the hall. He knocked and stood with his hands tucked into the belt under his prodigious gut.

“Yes?” asked the face behind the door.

“I would like to talk with the Lady Karzent and the Lord Wisendon, if they are not indisposed,” the grizzled veteran said pleasantly.

“I’m sorry, they don’t live…” he tried, before the man before him snorted and gently, but inexorably, moved him and the door out of the way and walked into the cozy domicile. The man attempted to protest but stopped when a voice from the next room stopped him.

“Let them in, Lenet.”

Lenet bowed the grizzled veteran in, while he motioned for his own men to stand in the hall outside.

“Stay here, boys, I’m sure if they wished me harm, you couldn’t stop them anyway,” he smiled at his men and motioned for Lenet to accompany them. “You too, kind sir, I hold no harm in my heart for your master nor your mistress, and I assure you they will have no trouble from me, as I don’t wish to perish anymore than you do.” Lenet bowed at the grizzled man’s sincerity, and left. When Lenet had secured the door behind them, he walked into the next room to find a very pregnant Karzent reclined, with her foot and jewel-bedecked wooden leg propped up.

“Lady Karzent, I presume?”

“I’m not a Lady of anything, in this nation or the next,” she said, her eyes peeking out from under a damp cloth. “The council runs things, we did our part, igniting the revolution and bringing our people here, and they honor us by letting us work for our new country.” 

“Nor am I a Lord,” said Wisendon, coming down the staircase, “but you are, aren’t you? Not some mere guard from the Under Mountain, are you?” Wisendon stopped behind his wife and began to massage her shoulders.

“You have me there,” he said, setting his bulk down gently upon a plain, but comfortable chair. “May I? The wife and I have ten of our own, adopted more than a few, and have more grandchildren and great-grandchildren than I care to think about, and even starting to get some great-great-grandchildren.” He began to massage her remaining foot and ankle, his massive callused fingers gentle on the swollen appendage. “But you are correct, I am no mere guard. I am Hlerzod.”

“Hlerzod? One of the Five Lords Under the Mountain?”

“Aye, that I am,” he continued to massage, even though both Wisendon and Karzent had stopped and stared with intent. “Let the delegations talk and look pretty to each other, I wanted to come out here, see this new nation for myself.”

“But, your Lordship…” began Wisendon.

“Please, if you both are neither Lord nor Lady, then here, in this time, I am not Lord anything either,” he smiled, continued to knead away. “We Under the Mountain, we may live in darkness, surrounded by those who hate us, inwardly focused on our mine works and projects, but we hear things even still. You are bastard children unwanted by both of your parent races, except to be slaves to your former masters. Your leaving has crippled one of the largest and oldest countries, upset trade, and nearly started three separate wars. The whole western half of the continent is in an uproar thanks to your little revolution, which is the only reason no one has shown up to see exactly how impenetrable this ancient fortress really is.”

“We just wanted to be our own people, have our own place,” Wisendon said. “It’s been almost ten generations since any ‘slaves’ were born due to infidelity between the races. My parents, Karzent’s parents, almost every parent of the half-children in this place were half-breeds themself. We aren’t bastards, merely Master Hlerzod, we are a new race, a new people that have bred true. We are not mules, unable to reproduce, we are a people!” Wisendon’s face was suffused now, the fervor that fired the entire revolution shining through.

“It matters not whether or not you are a race, not-a-Lord Wisendon,” Hlerzod said, “that is not the question. No, the question at the heart of the matter, is whether or not you are a country and can remain a country.” He stood, slapping at his vast belly. “Can the other nations trust you, can they count on you, to keep and hold any treaties with you a generation from now? Two generations? Three generations? Three years? Three months?” He paced around the room, studying the items the pair had gathered over the years. “It’s not that we, the other countries around you, that we care not for your plight, but we have our own problems and issues and enemies, and the most any of us can do is sit back and watch.” He turned to the pair. “Well, most of the countries in the area can only watch. We Under the Mountain can possibly do more than just watch, but you can’t expect us to sacrifice our own country, own safety and stability, just to prop yours up. We can provide instructors and weapons to build up your army and defenses, markets to trade your goods for, and I think, most importantly, someone to recognize your legitimacy, confirm to the whole continent that you are indeed a nation in your own right.” He sat again and looked at the two younger leaders.

“I don’t know which promises any of us can give you, sir,” Karzent said, “all we can do is try.”

“Well, you have a better start than I did,” Hlerzod said. “What? That surprises you, that I struggled and had a start? How do you think I became one of,” and here his voice swelled, “The Five Lords Under the Mountain?” He smiled at that. “No, I certainly was not born into it, and while it seems a long time to you and yours, it has not been all that long when me and mine moved and settled a new mine away from our home shafts.”

“What now? Where do we go from here?” Wisendon asked after a few moments of silence.

“I go back to acting like a guard, for form’s sake, and once my delegation returns home, the Five Lords will decide to extend you the copper nugget of friendship.” Hlerzod stood, creaking and groaning, and slapped his ample belly. “We may not be able to keep you safe, but for nothing else, tweaking your former masters’ collective noses is worth the help we can give. And,” he continued, “we need every friend we can get. It doesn’t hurt that this will open trade with you and your very skillful craftsmen, but will also open up another trade route and byway to us. Until you two killed the tyrant in this keep, we had despaired of ever using the old lava tubes on this side of the peak.”

“Pretty quiet trip up into our deepest basement, was it?” The delegation had indeed come up into the lowest levels of the keep, as the original builders had tapped directly into a lava flow underneath their keep, possibly to use the lava in their workings, or to commune directly with fire elementals who had lived in the volcano. As both the volcano and the original builders were long dead, the current occupants did not know for sure, but the lava tubes underneath the dead volcano proved to lead almost directly to the caverns of the Under Mountain.

“Pretty quiet, aye,” Hlerzod said, rubbing his face, “and it will get quieter still the more we travel it and clean it up. There are a few chasms that we will need to fortify to keep the very deep ones from using, especially now that they don’t have the tyrant of the keep to fear.”

“That’s what my trackers told me,” said Karzent. “Do you really think we have a chance?”

“My dear lady,” Hlerzod said, smiling, “if any of us have a chance of giving our children, and their children, and their children, a better world than the one we were born into, it is you, here.” He paused, thoughtful for a moment. “By the by, what are you going to call it, this new country of yours?”

“They want to call it Wiskaria, for Wis and me, but…”

“Wiskaria, hmmm. Yes, I think you should let them give you that honor. It may just serve as a warning to not attempt to enslave your people ever again.”

WISKARIA: LAND OF BASTARDS AND HALF-BREEDS

When I originally wrote about Wiskaria, I had just grown tired of always finding that half-elves (long my favorite race, pretty much thanks to Weis and Hickman’s Tanis Half-Elven) were the bastards, the unwanted children of the world, despised by most and ignored by the rest. I wanted these half-breeds to have their own place in the wider world, and roughly at the same time that was percolating through my brain, another idea of a city built into the ruins of a castle built into the ruins of a giant’s castle was also rustling through my subconscious (too many sources to cite them all here, though Terry Pratchett - the Nomes books and the Carpet People - comes immediately to mind), and Wiskaria was born.

I kept the history above as vague as possible so that you could pick just about any half-breed race to be the base Wiskarian, any race to be their new allies Under the Mountain, and modify the rest of the background as you see fit. In my version of Wiskaria, the people are half-elves, who have recently escaped their elven slavemasters, and settled halfway between the elven lands and the human lands. The humans, of course, care little for the half-elven slaves, mostly because the half breeds have been slaves for so long, their human parents have all died out and they have been breeding true amongst themselves for several generations now. Once they are free, they settle in the now abandoned castle, former center of a fairly large fire giant kingdom that had fallen, after the volcano had gone dormant and deprived the fire giants of a lot of their power, to the depredations of a tribe of rune giants. The rune giants (yes, completely stolen from Pathfinder, you're welcome Paizo) in turn had slowly died out over the centuries, until the last one fell to Wisendon and Karzent. The Five Lords Under the Mountain are dwarves that have recently (in their terms) settled a new mine under the mountain range the castle’s cinder cone is a part of.

Invincible in SWADE Super Powers

I have been trying for most of this past year to get a SWADE game going, SWADE being the current edition of the Savage Worlds universal tabletop roleplaying game, Savage Worlds Adventure Edition. Of course, you can't just say "hey, let's play some SWADE!" like you can say "hey, let's play some D&D!" and have folks understand what's going on, there are just too many settings and genres you can play around with in an RPG like SWADE, you've left out some vital information to your potential playing group. For my own planned SWADE campaign, I have the thought to Game Master (GM) 3 rotating settings (which I have been calling The Revolver in my head, in honor of The Beatles album of the same name) - the classic Deadlands setting that started it all and I played all the way back in the 1990s when it first came out; a super secret setting that I want to use to introduce my players to both SWADE and this world setting (trust me, this being a secret fits this particular setting so well); and last, I want to play the Super Powers Companion. By the title of this post, I'm hoping you realize that I'm going to be talking about that last setting, but first some background.

My own personal history with comic book super heroes RPGs started with the venerable Champions, more than 20 years ago as I type this. Champions is known for being able to create most anything you will find in a comic book, but that same modularity makes the game very complicated and very hard to get into for new players. But I had a really good group that knew the system very well, and I was not a new player to RPGs at that time, just new to Champions, so we played some epic campaigns (which is what you hope for when playing a comic book super hero RPG). Huge cinematic action scenes, bombastic monologues from evil overlords, fantastic costumes - everything you have come to expect from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and the better parts of the DC Extended Universe) and comic books of the past 100 years or so. Whatever we found cool, in TV or movies or comic books, we played it. We played a sci-fi setting where I had found an action figure where someone had crossed Marvel's Venom with the xenomorph from the Alien movies. I wish I had saved that image, as all I can find now is this action figure, but it doesn't seem right. Anyway, for this sci-fi Champions game, that is what I played, this creepy alien with teeth and claws and faster than thought. And it was a ton of fun.

Which brings us to today and the new Super Powers Companion (or SPC for ease of typing). SPC, much like Champions before it, is merely a set of rules with a generic comic book setting because neither the folks behind Champions nor Savage Worlds/SPC could afford to pay the copywrite for any of the big, well known universes. Instead, in addition to the generic settings that are like an amalgamation of all the well known comic book universes, both rule sets give you the tools to file the numbers off your own preferred comic book setting and play however you want. You want to have a team up between Polverine (with his high healing factor and hyper-titanium skeleton and claws) and Stuperman (with every superpower known to comic book reading fans) facing off against the forces of H.U.D.R.A., who has infiltrated the government and every facet of normal life? Given enough time and interest, you can make that happen, and as long as you don't try to sell your creations to the public at large, no one from the parent corporations are going to show up at your doorstep with offensive legal instruments. Offensive, not as in "I am offended" but as in "attack" or the opposite of "defensive". 

I've been thinking about what setting I would run for quite a while now, even writing another post here on the blog long before the latest version of SPC came out, and while that other super heroes setting I came up is interesting as a mental exercise (or a setting I would use if I were to start writing my own comic books... yes, writing, as I have the same drawing skills that the Universe gave to doorknobs), but not something that I think a group of players would find terribly entertaining to be dealing with. So, the answer is, then which set of caped super heroes - because that is what I want to play in SPC, caped (or no capes) super heroes, and more in the vein of the Modern Era (or late Bronze Age) of comics, with a grittier, more realistic sandbox to play around in. I could use the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is pretty easy to relay to your players, you can tell them to watch all of the movie trailers (as intimated by many episodes of the Savage Interludes podcast, including the most recent one (at least, that I've listened to), which has got me thinking of what I would do with SPC) and that will give them all the in-universe setting information you need to know. You could do the same with the DC Extended Universe, if you want to use that setting and characters more. Or you could do the same with the comic books, if you don't like how the movies portrayed those stories. Do you like The Boys or Jupiter's Legacy or Sweet Tooth or Paper Girls or Walking Dead or one of the hundred others of comic book inspired/adjacent TV and streaming shows that have come out in the past 2 decades. Or to put it a different way, do you want to run a caped super hero BIF BAM WHAMMO fest? Or a murder mystery? Or a zombie apocalypse survival horror? Or a sci-fi alien bug hunt? Or anime mechas flying across an alien solar system? Or fighting the demons of Hell as a holy agent of Mother Church? You can play a wide variety of settings and story types, and find examples of them in comics and other popular media. Now, if you have a setting/story combo that already has a Savage Worlds setting book (like steampunk meets magic in the Wild West, otherwise known as Deadlands) or other popular tabletop RPG (like a medieval fantasy as seen in The Legend of Vox Machina - yes, world, Dungeons & Dragons has long cornered that market, no need to keep messing with the formula), save yourself the struggle and just play that game or SWADE setting instead. 

What have I been thinking of going? Definitely been wanting a caped/un-caped super heroes in the classic vein of the big team books (Justice League, Avengers, X-Men, The Authority) but whose world and stories am I wanting to dip my toes into? I have been watching and reading a lot of Invincible lately, and I really like the world setting and the big story twist (don't know what that twist is? if so, and you like comic books, then you are the only person on the planet who doesn't know the twist in this tale... and I won't spoil it for you, but really, it's one of the best I've seen in any form of modern media) but I got to thinking about what I like from the book/show and how I would use that in my SPC game. Obviously, the twist is the big draw... but if my players know what the twist is, and I introduce them to the characters direct from Invincible, will there be any surprise or will they groan the minute I set the stage for them, first session in the campaign? That's what I'm afraid of, the twist in the story is great, but if you know it, it's hard to ignore and pretend like you don't know it, and it's just not as entertaining. 

My options, as I see them, are i can use the characters of the setting, minus a couple of the key players directly involved in the twist, and play around with them. Or, I can take some of the other stories and plots from the series that don't intersect the twist, and put them on completely different characters so the party members who are familiar with the comics won't peg to it just by an NPC's name. That last one would mean I would have to come up with characters that are new and don't come from the Invincible universe, but I am okay with that. Part of what made Invincible so popular with readers and then viewers is how familiar it feels, like the creators worked hard to make all of the characters vaguely familiar, all the normal archetypes you've been reading in comics forever, just with the serial numbers filed off of them. That does mean there are not a lot of memorable characters in Invincible, but it does mean I can use the generic set of supers and villains the come in the SPC, just rename them a bit and start playing with them how I want. 

I think the biggest theme I'd like to appropriate is starting the party in high school, possibly even a Hogwarts-like boarding school for budding/potential supers. Or maybe not a high school, that may be too young for my tastes - other than my knees working again, I would loathe going back to high school - maybe instead go for a college for supers experience. I could steal ideas from Strixhaven and East Texas University (ETU), as they're more collegiate, though if I stick with high school I could also use parts of PS-238 and My Hero Academia.

Another theme or group I want to use comes direct from the comic book (we haven't seen them in the cartoon, maybe just a passing mention) is the Lizard League. Think Cobra from G.I. Joe, except with a lizard theme and some super powered villains at the top of the hierarchy. I could go with either group name or come up with my own, but they'd make a great arch-villain group at many of the lower levels of the campaign, and they can expand their powers and numbers as necessary.

I also really like the Martian/Sequid problem seen in both the cartoon and the comic - basically there are people living on Mars, well, underneath Mars' surface, and these Martians are super-powered beings compared to us mere mortal humans. They can change their shapes, assume the shapes of other beings like doppelgangers, even stretch themselves out like Mr Fantastic and Plastic Man. The Sequids are an alien race that crashed onto Mars generations ago. They are race that share a hive mind, but can only connect to each other when they are attached to the neural pathways (nerves, spinal columns, and brains) of another being, which they dominate and use to augment their own mental powers and as vehicles. Fortunately for the Martians, due to their shapechanging powers, the Sequids can't interface with them, so the Martians have enslaved them for physical labor ever since the Sequids arrived. That is until the United States gets it into their head to send a manned mission to Mars, because of course the Martians on Earth haven't told anybody what is going on back on Mars, and the Sequids take over one of the astronauts... and all hell breaks loose. Reskin the pertinent details - they're not on Mars, they're on Europa, and the Sequids don't look like calamari, they look like cockroaches drawn by HR Giger and called, I don't know, Skrixlings. Whatever you want to paint it up as, the base idea is still the same and you get to play with it so your players don't see it coming... but when they realize what you're "stealing", they feel pretty smart and they're still enjoying the game.

Of course, if you feed your players something familiar, and they think they know what source material you're copying, it's so much sweeter when you show them something else that seems like it's from that same source. But then, when they get that "ah-ha! I know what this is!" look in their eyes, you show the twist and go a completely different direction with it. The subversion I'm pondering has to do with the big twist in the Invincible setting, and, without spoiling it, I want to show my players what they think is that very twist... but then change it so goes completely different. That change in the familiar, that subversion of the expected, that is where the payoff lies, where you give your players what they think is inevitable, and then make it something else. Trying not to spoil the big twist in Invincible but still making it understandable for those of you who know what said twist is - first off, the father and son don't exist in this version of the setting, or even the "dab of paint and a new name" alternate version, that's too close and anyone who knows the twist will spot it quick. Second, turn the twist around - the father (or his people, you could do it without him ever showing up) isn't the bad guy, so when the good guys from Invincible do show up, they give the same warning about the father, but only to lull the world into a false sense of security, because they're actually the bad guys. Or another option is to set up the world exactly as it appears in Invincible (minus the father and son), and instead of the good guys coming forward with their deceit, have the father (or one of his people) come forward and give the good guy "we're here to save you" speech, same names as in the comic/cartoon. Remember, bad guys think they are doing good deeds, so even though they give the good guy speech, the players (at least one at the table will have realized what setting we're playing in, and will recognize the father and his people) will be convinced they're the bad guys and try to fight them. And either lose to them, or drive them away. At which point the "good guys" show up, oh, here, let me help you up... PSYCH!! We just conquered Earth! At which point it either becomes a guerilla war type struggle, the rebels versus the evil empire, or go straight into the classic Necessary Evil campaign.

So many good ideas to steal, er, appropriate, no, still not right, pay homage to, that's the ticket! Pay homage to, so many good ideas to honor and hold up and admire... and twist and abuse for my own sick little entertainments. What? That last bit was out loud? Crap, gotta put a volume know on that inside voice control... 

Last Minute Preparations

Here we are. As I type this, we are under two weeks from my first game of what I am dubbing in my head, the Rotation. The second Saturday from today (again, as I type this), I will sit down and introduce a new group of players to the world of 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. I cannot tell you how excited I am this is finally happening. And then, at the end of the following month, we are having our Session Zero for Cyberpunk Red.  

It has been a long time since I have DM'd/GM'd any game, looking back on my posts here, it has been almost a full year. But we are almost there. I had a job change that killed all of my extra free time, and while the pay was good, it was not quite good enough to put up with no free time to speak of, and so another job change occurred. There, free time! I can run games as I had been hoping to! Wait, no, another snag - our dining room chairs, veterans of my last weekly campaign, were in dire need of repair and reupholstering. Seriously, carpentry and sewing were holding up my game. Fortunately the repairs to the chairs were not too difficult and well within the scope of the tools I possess and skills I have attained. The chairs that need repairing have been repaired, and reupholstering has begun, but that does not need to be completed in its entirety, and can be done in between sessions. The repairs did need to be done, as some of the chairs were literally falling apart and not safe to sit in. Strange what has kept me from starting a campaign back up, but sometimes you have no control over what decides whether you can do something or not.

Speaking of, my other major problem was having enough players. I have found that scheduling, the reason my last D&D campaign folded, is still a major issue, to the point that even going to a one session a month schedule that three out of six from that last group are completely unable to join in and a fourth that is still on the fence on if he wants to give up one weekend afternoon a month or not. Out of six previous players, only two of them have committed to one or more of the games in the Rotation, where all six had professed an interest in playing something with me as the GM again. But this just shows why that group perished - when I decided what days and times worked for me, and would not budge, three players were no longer interested. Gosh, I wonder why that last campaign crumbled? I get it, other things come first, as this is just a hobby, but if you are not paying your game master and your schedules are too far away from each other, you are just going to have to find a new table to play at. Would I like to get that last group back together? Yes, but as many scheduling conflicts as we had in that group, and no one is willing to change their own situation even now, that tells me that group will never exist as it once did. 

So I went to the Book of Faces, and posted on many local RPG, nerdy, and tabletop wargaming groups what I was doing and got responses. Oh, I had a few friends here and there that were interested in getting into one or more of my games, but definitely not enough for what I wanted to do. Luckily, I managed to catch a few interested folks who could meet on the established day and time, enough to max out my D&D game at six, and enough to get my CPRed to the minimum of four to get it rolling. Yes, I want just five in any RPG I am running, but six is better, as inevitably someone has to bow out of the session come game day, and so I get the optimal five I wanted in the first place. And I am okay with just four for CPRed, this campaign will eventually roll into a long term arc, but for the beginning, to get everyone (including me!) used to the rules and the world. It also allows for other players to join at later points and not feel like they have missed out on much. Very nice.

The third game in the Rotation, Savage Worlds, is still shy a few players, but as you cannot find the core rulebook in print, and only one of the three settings I want to play (a rotation inside the Rotation) are currently in print, I am not in a huge hurry to get it rolling. It will be my least accessory intensive game, because while I am an admitted tactical combat junkie, with maps and all the minis, I recently decided my SW games were going to be the true palate cleanser for me and my players - theater of the mind, beer and pretzels, sitting on the couch instead of at a table, and just enjoying a relaxing game once a month. Yes, I am sticking with 15mm miniatures and and my patented (okay, stolen idea) grid under plexiglass map for both D&D and CPRed, I already have some wonderful minis (body bags!!!) and found so many more out there. I wish I was a better mini painter as there are so many fantastic sculpts out there that deserve better attention than what I can give them.

I almost have everything ready. Binders are almost done - I splurge and get 3- ring binders for each player and fill it with handy info, character sheets, blank paper for note taking, even graph paper for mapping out those dungeons (I am an admitted old school kind of DM) or abandoned warehouses deep in the combat zone - got most of the minis I need for the first session ready, I am tidying up a few other details... running RPG campaigns is as hard as a real job. But here we are, not too long now and I will be back to describing musty holes in the ground and slinging duce. This is the fun stuff.

Starting a New RPG Campaign

I am looking at starting up three separate campaigns in the near future, and wanted to share my process. This may work for you, this may not, just understand that if this process does not work for you that does not mean I am wrong, nor does it mean you are wrong. But maybe something you see in here will help you, or strike a bit of inspiration. Whatever works for you and your group is the important part. 

Starting a new RPG campaign for me starts with the rules and the setting. What rules do I want to play with? And yes, it does matter, as there are some rules out there that are just... ugh. Like Palladium's Rifts - do not mistake me, I love the Rifts setting, the history, the lore, but cannot bring myself to play it because the rules are way too complicated. And while I love the setting, the power creep that was in every successive Rifts book was way out of control. While there are a bunch of folks out there who will claim every set of RPG rules is equal, they are completely wrong. Does that mean you should ignore all of the rules that I do not like? Only play the rules that I do like? No. Rifts does not work for me, and these others that I am about to talk about do, but that does not mean Rifts cannot work for you, or that these other systems will absolutely work for you. You have to be willing to peruse rules that are out there, give them a try, and see for yourself if they do or do not work for you. So, rules - obviously Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, as my last 5e campaign died a while back and I need to start a new one, at some point, and with the new Eberron book just taunting me with all the tasty lore, I know what particular D&D setting I want to run; I have talked a bit about Cyberpunk Red since it came out (before it came out, to be honest), and I really want to throw some cyberpsychos, some corporate security types, and maybe even some plague-ridden puppies (thank you, Uncle Mike) at a bunch of edgerunners and see how they handle it; and a new interest, Savage Worlds universal role-playing system. The others I have talked about, because the internet needs another old gamer grumbling about the good old games that never were, but Savage Worlds is not quite as new an interest of mine as I mentioned, I have actually been thinking about using that ruleset for a little project of mine for more than a few years. That project, well, I will save that for later, but I have a new interest that uses the Savage Worlds rules - Monster Hunter International. Yep, an RPG based on a bubblegum pop series of action/adventure novels. What can I say, I am a fan of the novels and, well, I will talk about the idea I had for the game in just a bit.

What story do I want to tell? That is the usual thing you see from those aspiring creative types, trying to convince themselves and the world they are five seconds away from writing that next great Lord of the Rings style epic, but for me, asking this question is simpler. For D&D and specifically Eberron, the story I want to tell is Indiana Jones with magic, swords, and airships. Trips into the Mournland to retrieve ancient artifacts, discussions with warforged on what the meaning of life is, chasing rivals across the air bridges and passages of Sharn. What pieces of fiction have I seen or read lately that feel like this? Red Notice on Netflix, that heist kind of movie (it was okay, but not worth getting Netflx just to watch) with the humor and the action beats. For Savage Worlds and Monster Hunter International, the books the world setting is based on are what I want to emulate - hunting monsters, getting paid lots of money from the government (you have to be familiar with MHI, it makes sense), and generally trying to fight the forces of evil while retaining what sanity PTSD allows. For Cyberpunk Red (CPRed), it is shows like Altered Carbon (at least the first season, which is worth getting Netflix for) and movies like Johnny Mnemonic and Blade Runner 2049, and books like Neuromancer by William Gibson and Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan (the book series is excellent, if you like the show, read the books). But for story, just surviving in Night City after the Time of the Red is usually enough. Or maybe I want to visit my old CP2020 playground and take the edgerunners to Kansas City in 2045. Story wise, a bunch of street rats trying to accomplish edgeruns just so they can pay the bills, get that next meal, pay for their flop, and maybe get some new cyberware. 

Okay, so I have an idea of what rules I want to play, what worlds and settings I want to play in, and a "story" (theme, really) I want to tell. What else do I want to throw in on top of this? Do I want to play in real life or virtually? IRL is my choice, but could I go virtual in case this global pandemic springs back up? Yes, but seriously folks, go get vaccinated for COVID (and all the rest of your vaccines updated, in case you have not had a chance to get them updated in a bit while you are at it), and quit making it about politics. *feh* So, IRL, which then begs the question of logistics, something near and dear to my former military heart (amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics). Which books do I need to run these games? What books do the players need? As you probably well know, I like using miniatures and a grid under plexiglass for my tactical combats, am I using that for this? For my three games, I need the classic D&D DM books - PHB, DMG, MM, XGtE, TCoE, and then the base Eberron: Rising from the Last War book. Do I need anything beyond those? At this point, no, but I am always on the lookout for new things to toss into the mix of my D&D games. Can I use Matt Colville's Strongholds & Followers or Kingdoms & Warfare in this campaign? I have not had an excuse to pick up Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, do I need to acquire it? These are all things I am thinking of as I type out the campaign document (more on this in a bit). As for the players, they will need their own copy of the PHB (I require my players to have a physical copy, D&D Beyond is neat and all, but hard to quickly find the info you want, and electronic devices are flaky at the best of times) and E:RftLW, plus any other supplement (specifically XGtE and TCoE) they want to use classes, subclasses, spells, equipment, whatever. CPRed is easier, mostly because there is basically the core rulebook available. R Talsorian Games does have a new book that just got published, and I will grab that shortly, but I doubt my players will need it, just the core book. RTG has been teasing a Chrome book for CPRed (the Chrome series were where all the fancy gear for CP2020 that did not show up in the core book appeared) but with the pandemic (GET VACCINATED! GET A JOB!) the whole dead tree publishing industry is in slow down mode, so no telling when Chrome will be out. For now, then, CPRed core rulebooks for everyone. Savage Worlds is also easy - Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWADE, the latest edition of the Savage Worlds rules) and the MHI world book for myself, and both for the players, but not at first. Why? The nature of the game - I want to gather a group of five players who are interested in playing SWADE and a modern action/adventure setting, and then run an intro game, sight unseen. One of the cool things I like about the MHI books and world setting is that most folks who get into the monster hunting business do so because they were attacked, as the governments of the world keep the existence of monsters a secret from the populace at large. I want to do that for the players, give them some pregenerated characters and then spring a monster attack on them, to introduce the world and the rules to the players. After the intro, if the players want to continue playing MHI, they can pick up SWADE and the MHI book, even create new characters or keep the pregens, but this one I want to be a surprise.

Miniatures. For the longest time in my D&D 5e campaign, this was yes or no question, a set schedule of supplies that I would divide out the necessary ones from the pool, ready for that session, rinse and repeat. But now I have to be difficult and different and change everything up - for all three games, I am going to 15mm scale. Practically half the size of the traditional 28mm (which has been known to stretch all the way to 32mm scale, depending on the sculptor), 15mm is smaller and less expensive, and your battle grids automatically double in size. I am already working on 3d printed terrain to place atop the grid, and have begun collecting minis. Yes, I know, I have built up quite a collection of paper standees and 3d printed terrain for my 28mm game, and I do feel a bit guilty for setting all of that aside to switch my whole operation to a different scale, but I have a tentative plan to get some use out of those in a different project. Anyway, I am still making the jump. Why? I like big, sprawling battle fields with lots of room to maneuver, plenty of bad guys out there to deal with, and I could care less about looking fantastic on the gaming table. Yes, the downside of smaller miniatures is you do not get as good looking a paintjob as you do with bigger minis, but painting minis is my least favorite portion of the hobby, and I would gladly play with bare metal and plastic minis for the rest of my days, so I am not disappointed by that downside. One of the bonuses is that, since I do not have a lot of minis or 3d prints for modern or sci-fi cyberpunk settings, I am not really replacing a bunch of stuff for two of my three games. And the another bonus is that a few of the models I am getting for MHI work for D&D, and some others work for CPRed. Hey, I try to be efficient, especially when I luck into it on accident.

While all of the above is going on, because let me be honest, all of the above is happening at the same time, odd thoughts rumbling through my head at all hours of the day and night, this is not a process I can provide a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP, and yes, the Army really does write them for EVERYTHING) for, it just kind of happens. Anyway, once enough of the above has happened, I create a Google folder in my Google Drive for the game I am thinking about playing and a folder inside the first folder that is where I will toss all the things I am going to provide to my players. Why Google Drive and Docs? Many folks have smart phones and some internet access (and I spend enough on a monthly basis for my own 'net access that I provide my players with my wifi password, so they at least have internet when they are at my house for the game session) and can access Google Drive. Is that the best option out there? For me, yes, well, maybe. I do have an Obsidian Portal account, and I have long toyed with the idea of actually using it as it was intended, but even with my last campaign that lasted most of three years long, I do not trust that I can get players (or even stick with, myself) who can last in a campaign long enough that OP would get properly used, even the basic free version. If you are looking for a Wiki-style campaign management tool, that you can share with your party and they can submit articles and notes and maps and images to, OP is pretty good and one of the first of these aimed specifically at TTRPGs to come out. But I do not use it, because I can barely get players to show up to sessions on time and regularly, and OP is definitely for those whose gaming groups are very invested in the campaign. No, I am not bitter at all, why would you ask that? I have also used Facebook, by creating a private Group and inviting all of the members into the Group, and that is how I organize my Team Yankee in 6mm Escalation League, which you may read about more here on my internet journal (I hate the word blog... hate it, hate it, hate hate hate it). But FB is good as it does provide a communication channel, somewhere to post announcements, great for scheduling sessions, but not so good at sharing documents that multiple people can work on collaboratively. For my RPG campaigns where the sessions are held at my house, I like having the file sharing that Google Drive provides more than the scheduling and communications that FB offers, but nothing saying I cannot combine them together and use both. Back from the detour, I create a Google Doc (specifically a Sheet, which is a word processing document) and start typing all the information I want to pass to the players in the document - this is the world, here is the rules we are using, here are the classes and races you can use, here are the books that are acceptable to use stuff out of, that sort of thing. And much like this post, I just start typing whatever comes to my brain first, total stream of consciousness type of info dump. Before I share this document with any players, I for sure go through and sort everything out into sections, and give it a very real editing pass, actually several passes like I was planning on putting this out for the public at large to view, and I am updating this document throughout the campaign and discussing those changes with my players whenever I do them. Also into this folder goes anything I think the players will need - if I am allowing a certain Unearthed Arcana from WotC, in it goes, but mostly maps and any other computer file I think the party can use. That is all in the players' folder, and in the primary folder, the one that does not get shared with the players, goes all my notes and files that I think I will need for the game - a main document where I type in any notes, or if I am using a pregenerated campaign, my conversion of that campaign, plus anything else I might need, like digital copies of the rules and campaign so I can review them anytime I have a thought about the campaign.

Next I start looking for players. I post on local Facebook Groups, local gaming store internet LFG/LFP forums, and even just talking to old players to see if they are interested or know someone who is looking.  At least, that is what I try to do, there are so many ways to get players out there these days - Reddit has an entire sub dedicated to locating groups and players; there is an app called GameFor (at least there was, then the COVID hit, and they still have not turned it back on) (again, GET VACCINATED!!) that was, as the Penny Arcade guys portrayed it, like AirBnB except for D&D (which I think we have needed since PA posted that comic, over six years ago); and I am sure there are more options out there that I, as a crotchety old bastard, do not know about. Did we have these when I was a younger man and wanted to get into more games? No, we were lucky if we had friends who played or were close enough to a gaming store that we could check out their cork board, and that was all the choices we had. Even after the internet came out in 1994, it was a long time before anyone was organized enough to make it easier to find games and people to play them with. So I hope you young 'uns appreciate the slog we had a mere two decades ago and before, so you could be enjoying finding players and games with all of these tools today. Why go through all of the trouble, why not just ask my current group if they want to play a new game or games? If your current group of players is up for it, then you can skip the party creation stage, but as it sits right now, I cannot do that. You see, besides some guys who show up once a month to push tiny tanks around a table, I do not have a current gaming group. And no, my last party did not stop because they lost interest in the game, but because everyone in the group had such wildly divergent schedules that it was good the game or kick half the group out to be replaced (and I was not going to play favorites and choose which half to keep and which half to say goodbye to, so we stopped altogether).

Which brings me to a related item I am cogitating on - when and where will we play? I am, by dint of the sweat on my brow, a homeowner so I tend to run my games out of my home, but you may not be that far along in your life journey and do not have enough room in your living space to have the size of party you want. If that is the case, start making plans on where you can play. I have thought on this a bit, and I do have some options to share with you. Local gaming stores are an option, but do they charge a fee for the space that your group can afford (and is willing to pay), and do they have an opening in their schedule that matches up with your schedule? How about your local library, do they have meeting rooms available to use? Does the group have a local restaurant that they like that does not see a lot of business the night your party meets, and would they mind having a regular group in, as long as you do not disturb the other customers and you get all your food and drink there and leave an extra big tip? Does anyone in the group belong to or work for an organization (school, charitable organization like the Elks or VFW, even a church) that has unused meeting space the party could use? My dad was a minister for most of my life, and I had a key to one of the churches he ministered, and it was empty most afternoons and evenings (though this was still during the Satanic Panic, that would have been fun explaining what we were doing in the church after hours). One of my local geek-centric groups that organizes over Facebook meets regularly at our local Mall's food court and plays board games. If you live somewhere that the weather is generally nice and you plan on playing Theater of the Mind instead of with minis, try a shelter at the local public park. There are tons of options out there, you just have to look around and not be afraid to ask (worst they can do is say "no"). Do not forget to define for yourself what times you want to be running this game. If you already have a group and a place to play, then you probably have a time as well, but if you do not have a time, remember that if the time is difficult for you, the game master, then it is not conducive for you to run that game for very long. Take into account your work schedule - unless you are charging your players (if you are, I am so jealous), gaming will not pay your bills, so make sure you still have a job. If some of your players cannot make the session time that works for you, you generally can find a replacement. Trust me, it is far better to set a session time that fits your schedule the best and then see who is available at that time. Yes, our players are generally our friends, but if you have to adjust just to make a small portion of the group happy, then no one will be happy (yes, even the one(s) you adjusted for will not be happy because it will spread from everyone else) and the group will fold prematurely. You want to make your friends happy and play games with them, but you are the one running the game - players can be replaced but the GM is harder (especially if the game is at their house). You are better off setting a schedule you can keep, with a bit of wiggle room to help those just on the edge of being fully able to play at your optimal time, instead of adjusting to try and meet a happy middle ground that just does not exist. Short term, some of your friends will be miffed, but overall your game(s) will last longer. This does not take into account if any of the players' or even your own schedule changes mid-campaign - that is going to happen and you have no control over it, and cannot even plan for it at this point in the process, all you can do is discuss with your players what will happen to the session schedule and the group when the question comes up, because either or both will have to change. 

That is about it, to be honest, but that is merely the beginning. Some of the things I dig deeply into you will barely have to skim, depending on what type of game you want to play, who is going to be in your group, and how long you plan on playing (each session and for the entirety of the campaign), while other aspects you will need to dive much deeper into than I did. Or not at all. Every game is different, and so is every group and every game master. Hopefully this helps someone out there. Keep rolling dice and having fun with your friends!