Anomaly - Updated Timelines

Image (c) Rockfish Games

I've been suffering from a bit of a writing block of late; well, maybe it's more of a writing slump. I'm juggling two (well, technically three) Star Wars campaigns currently and I'm not happy with the results of my adventure writing. I look at what I get down for session notes and I get hit with a feeling of "this isn't Star Wars enough." There are a lot of things that could be factoring into my creative difficulties; they'll get worked through in time, meanwhile I've got a couple sessions coming up in the next few weeks that deserve my best.

I'm just not sure they're going to get it.

So what should I do; keep throwing words at the screen and home that something magical appears? Take a break from Star Wars? Stop gaming all together?

Hey, let's not talk crazy here; it's writer's block, not cancer (not this time, anyway). 

Still, a break from Star Wars might be in order. I've been running Star Wars campaigns exclusively for the last ten years, at least. Not including a few one-shot endeavors into alternate settings such as Fallout, Harry Potter, and City of Heroes, all of my storytelling has been in the galaxy far, far away, and why not? I'm good at it, it's what I'm most known for, but after a decade of slamming Star Wars stories down on the table week after week and month after month, it may be time to shift gears and do something else for a while. I know I've got a Fallout campaign in me, and it might finally be time to get my Anomaly setting off the ground.

Prompted by a friend of mine, I've gone back and reread my notes for the setting. Originally called "Trinary", I worked on it in October of 2016 as part of the "30 Days of World Building" exercise. I was fairly pleased with much of what I wrote, and feel it's a good place to start. Last September I wrote a few updates (which are now listed as Adventure Logs on the ObPortal site). I've been tweaking the historical timeline based on those two posts, as well as updating some of the names. 

CS -112: Drachon warships begin to raid Garden worlds, beginning the Garden Conflicts

CS -111: Republic of Kel forces clash with ships from the Granos Territories while pursuing Drachon raiders.

CS -109: Allef Domains invades and conquers thee worlds in the N'guli Empire. Armies of the Uranar Reaches engage the forces of the Narasheem Concordat

CS -92: Mineral deposits discovered in the Giant Nebula, prospectors and corporations rush to stake claims and secure them for their respective empires.

CS -86: Giant Nebula prospectors fight corporations over mining claims, escalates into open conflict. Because of cutthroat practices and lawlessness of the region, becomes known as The Blood Nebula.

CS -84: Destruction of Tasaran City in the Narasheem Concordat by the Granos; loss of life 120,000.

CS -82: Corporations begin physically removing asteroids and stellar debris from the Blood Nebula for mining at facilities within nearby systems. Prospectors begin arming mining ships to prevent or raid these mineral convoys. First Blood Nebula Pirate Gangs appear.

CS -70: Battle of Tovar; Republic warships, led by Admiral Karlson Hask, engage the combined forces of the Granos Territories and the Allef Domains. Republic wins the engagement, destroying 2,300 enemy ships while losing 793 of their own. Fallout from the engagement causes the Territories to go to war with the Domains.

CS -38: Unarar first deploy Gesalin Gas on the Republic city of Iasalo, killing 84,000 humans.

CS -37: Republic of Kel, Narasheem Concordat, and the Granos Territories form a non-aggression treaty and begin to attack the Uranar Reaches.

CS -22: Drachon's Infernus Clan raiders destroys the city of Zabross on Kel, killing 65,000 humans and injuring tens of thousands more. Zabross is reduced to rubble.

CS -21: 500 raiders from Drachon's Arctus Clan seize the nesting broods in the N'guli city of Kakarakas and use them as bait to fight the best warriors of the N'guli. They hold out for 16 days. The nesting brood complex is destroyed by the last few surviving Drachon; almost an entire generation of N'guli are lost (320,000 N'guli eggs)

CS -19: In response to the growing threat of the Drachon clans, the Republic, Granos, and Narasheem form the StarCorps; the first multi-national military force with a dedicated purpose of stopping the raids by the Drachon Clans.

CS -14: Allef Domains being to suffer significant losses to the N'guli Reaches, losing every world they had conquered over the decades and many of their colony worlds as well.

CS -12: Allef homeworld suffers a catastrophic extinction-level-event while being invaded. The Allef used a Gravity Singularity Bomb to destroy the N'guli fleet massing in orbit, but the experimental weapon interacts with the jump field of an incoming N'guli command ship. The resulting singularity annihilates 60% of the planet’s core mass.  Allef begins to shake itself apart as it bleeds off it's remaining atmosphere. News of the planet's destruction shakes every Garden nation to their core. Rescue ships from every nation arrive in Allef space to try and save as many lives as they can. Even with the unified assistance, only 0.3% of total Allef population survives, either rescued before the remains of Allef shook itself apart or were off-world at time of event.

CS -10 (0 AE): The destruction of the Allef homeworld ends the Garden Conflicts and prompts the nations to begin to negotiate for peace. After months of debate and compromise, the League of Allied Worlds is formed. All nations except the Drachon Clans join the Union. All invitations by the League to the Clans are rebuked.

CS -9 (1 AE): Membership in the StarCorps expanded to all League member worlds. StarCorps is now tasked with interstellar peacekeeping as well as their previous role of defense against Drachon raiders.

CS -8 (2 AE): After several months without finding new mineral sources, the last of the Blood Nebula mining corporations folds. Mining operations within the Blood Nebula cease. The Blood Nebula pirate gangs begin to raid convoys in nearby systems.

CS -4 (6 AE): Citizens of the planet Danal vote to leave the League, but the motion denied by League Council (and the Republic of Kel). Danal's exclusive source ku'jai (an animal who's excrement is a super-charger for jump drives) makes them too important a world for the League to lose. The denial leads to weeks of riots and eventually armed uprising by the populace against League interests on Danal.  Revolutionary War of Danal begins.

CS -2 (8 AE): After two years of brutal warfare, the Revolutionary War of Danal ends with the capture and public execution of the rebel leaders. Danal is now a world under martial law and controlled by a military governor. Collection and distribution of ku'jai excrement is overseen by the League Military.

CS -1 (9 AE): First non-human Prime elected in the League; Aararastavos of the Narasheem Concordat. Primary Aararastavos vows to stabilize the League, end the raids by the Drachon clans, and bring peace to the Stellar Garden. In response, the Drachon clans step up their attacks on N'guli, Republic, and Granos worlds.

CS 0 (10 AE): Campaign starts

I'm fairly pleased with this timeline. There are plenty of gaps where I can fill in more information at a later date, but there's enough here to give readers (and players) an idea of what the galactic situation is. I want the League to be new and unstable; there are factions within it that want the League to work, but there are also factions with long, bitter memories that long to finally defeat their hated foes. PCs are likely to be contacted by several factions and empires throughout a campaign, and they get to choose to help them, hinder them, or fight them.

And then we throw the Bathal Host in on top of that and watch chaos ensue.

I really need to make a better stellar map, something that's easier to read and defines where all these empires are. I also need to come up with a "player's guide"; something that details all the information players need to make characters that fit into the world. I suppose the PCs could be StarCorps, but that's too limiting for my initial game. Maybe if one or two PCs are StarCorps, that could be fun. They'd be compelled to investigate any alerts for Drakon Raiders in their area. But what about the other PCs; they need a reason to come together. Possibly salvagers, or explorers; there are still uncharted planets out there that need surveying for mining or colonization. An independent crew could make some serious coin if they find another "garden world" where a colony could thrive, or one so filled with mineral rights that they could retire on their own moon.

Yeah, I think that might be a place to start. Let's see where this goes.

Game on, people.

May the dice be with you.

Down and Out in Paragon City

After several aborted attempts, I'm finally making some headway on my City of Heroes theme for Genesys. For those who have forgotten, I've been working on a CoH theme for a couple months now. At first I was thinking of just using the Magic rules for Super Powers, but that ended up being too limiting. I've settled on a progressive power path or tree for each power in the game. It's going to be a long process, as each hero can have two super power sets (Primary and Secondary) and each Power Set is a 7-step build tree in and of itself. When this theme "launches", I might not be able to have all the "core" power sets done, but I'll at least have enough to play the game.

That being said, it's seemingly going well. I'm working on power sets for the 6 heroes who will be the PCs in the module I'm writing for GamernationCon 5. After that I will give it my all to map out the power sets for all archetypes as of "Issue 1" (the version of the game at game launch). The theme will be available to backers of the GNC 5 kickstarter first (which was in October), then made available to the public sometime in late 2018.

Here's a preview for all you Tankers out there...

Invulnerability (Primary Power Set)

• Resist Physical Damage - Perform the Resist maneuver, character increases their Soak by 1 until the end of their next turn. If this power is active at the beginning of their turn, the character can maintain this power by spending 1 strain, which extends the effects of this power until the end of their next turn. Psionic damage ignores this increase to Soak.
• Increase Strength (x3): Increase Soak gained from Resist Physical Damage by +1
• Dull Pain - Spend a story point to heal an amount of wounds equal to character’s ranks in Power (a new skill)
• Unyielding - Immune to Knockdown while Resist Physical Damage is in effect. Additionally; may spend 2 Strain as a maneuver to end any Disorient, Immobilize, or Stagger effects currently affecting the character.
• Unstoppable - Once per encounter as an Incidental action, character can render themselves immune to Pierce and Breach effects for 2 turns. During this time they also ignore the effects of any Critical Injuries they have.

Energy Melee (Secondary Power Set)

• Energy Punch - The character gains the following attack: Brawl, Damage +1, Range (Engaged), Crit 4, Disorient 1
• Increase Strength (x2) - Energy Punch damage increased by +1
• Increase Magnitude (x2) - Energy Punch Disorient increased by +1
• Stun - Character may choose to add the Stunning Damage quality to Energy Punch.
• Whirling Hands - Spend a maneuver to add Blast to next Energy Punch, with a rating equal to the character’s ranks in Power.

Fallout Genesys - Chems and Radiation Healing Rules Now Available

Hey Wastelanders! My rules for Radiation Healing and Chems are now available on the D20Radio site!

• Healing Radiation
• Fallout Genesys DLC - Chems

A full article will be up on the D20 Radio blog in a few days, but for those who follow me here the content is available for you now.

Enjoy, keep that rad-count down, and watch out for chem addiction!

And for anyone who needs it, you can find the original Fallout Theme document here!

May the dice be with you.

Fallout Genesys - Chems, Radiation, and Perks

I've been working on several projects for Genesys lately (in between the usual insanity of the holiday season). Most of them are for Fallout, but some are for my City of Heroes theme, as well as the Wizarding World module I'll be running at GamernationCon 5 in April. For Fallout, I've done some work on Chems, finally wrote up the rules to heal radiation damage with the Medicine skill, and started to outline some new talents tht are taken from Fallout 4's Perks list.

The Chems document is done, sort of. I'm basically considering them a Beta test, as I'm not really certain how some of them are going to play out. The most well-known chems are in the document; Buffout, Jet, Med-X, Mentats, Psycho, and Rad-X. I haven't gone into the extensive list of chems in  Fallout 4 quite yet, because I need to see how these basic ones play out in the game. I'm most curious/concerned with Jet...

Using Jet will grant the character an extra turn at the end of the round. This additional turn does not count as the character's next turn for the purposes of talents and effects. 

I'm worried this could be game breaking, but it might not be depending on how easy Jet is to obtain. Also there are some pretty heavy side effects to being addicted to chems. Jet in particular has some nasty ones when not affected by Jet

Characters addicted to Jet increase the strain cost of any non-free maneuver by +1 and suffer a setback die to all Agility checks when not under the effects of Jet.

I'm hoping that the downside and one-shot nature makes chems useful in certain situations, but not game breaking. Feedback will be necessary and updates may occur.

The Chems document and the Healing Radiation rules are published and ready to go, and should be up on D20Radio.com shortly. In the meantime, I'm looking at making some new talents with names and effects inspired by the Perks list from Fallout 4. Thus far, here's what I'm looking at:

• Iron Fist - Bonus Brawl Damage (Ranked)
• Big Leagues - Bonus Melee Damage (Ranked)
• Heavy Gunner - Add Stagger to Gunnery checks
• Strong Back - Increase Encumbrance Threshold (Ranked)
• Pain Train - Bonus brawling damage while in Power Armor when moving
• Demolition Expert - Bonus damage with Blast weapons
• Sniper - “Sniper Shot” from Star Wars RPG
• Penetrator - Maneuver to add Pierce to an attack. (Ranked)
• Chem Resistant - Upgrade Resilience checks to avoid Addiction once
• Rad Resistant - Reduce Radiation damage from all sources by 1 (Ranked)
• Medic - Improved use from Stimpacks and RadAway
• Gunslinger - Bonus Ranged (Light) damage (Ranked)
• Rifleman - Bonus Ranged (Heavy) damage (Ranked)
• Commando - Maneuver to remove the increase difficulty from Autofire attacks
• Blitz - Make melee attacks against targets at Short range
• Bloody Mess - ????
• Better Criticals - Bonus to Crit Rolls (Ranked)

I love the idea of Bloody Mess, but I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what it could do in Genesys, other than just "MOAR DAMAGE". It's going to require some additional thought. As far as what else is coming for the Fallout Theme, I have more weapons and equipment coming, along with more adversaries, attachments, rules for establishing settlements, and scrapping/crafting rules. Some of these will be pretty direct adaptations from similar rules in the Star Wars RPG, but there will be some differences. They can't port over directly, and do need some tweaking to fit into the Fallout world.

I figure these tasks should keep me pretty occupied over the winter months. It should hopefully distract me from starting some more Theme adaptations. A Rifts theme is really itching to get some attention, but so is a Battletech theme. A poster on the FFG forums is working on one but it feels too much like he's trying to make the Battletech rules fit into Genesys; which is not a direction I would take with it. If I work on one, my direction will be "how to play Genesys in the Battletech universe"; trying to capture the essence of the setting without it getting too bogged down in complex rule adaptations.

...and now my brain is working over how I'd do it; I'm hopeless.

Ah well. Something to toss on the growing pile of stuff to work on later.

May the dice be with you.

Genesys - Fallout Theme

It's November 30th, the official release date for Fantasy Flight Game's newest game, Genesys. I've been raving about this system since it was announced, and am excited and pleased that this date has finally arrived. Not only because it means I'll soon have my hands on a physical copy of this wonderful game, but also because I can finally share my latest evolution of "Edge of the Wasteland", my Fallout hack for Edge of the Empire that I wrote back in 2015.

Over on the D20 Radio blog is my latest article along with a link to my 20 page Fallout Theme for Genesys. Head on over to D20 Radio and check out the article there, and be sure to download a copy of the theme for your personal use.

I've been working on this document for months, testing it and tweaking it. I'm pretty proud of the final product, and look forward to adding to the material over the next few months. More importantly, I'm interested in hearing back from folks who use the theme and their experiences with it.

Naturally, I'm eager to throw this down in front of my own gaming group and get more adventures in the wasteland going.

So here's to Genesys and a big congratulations to Sam Stewart and his team at FFG! Thank you so much for this game and I'm looking forward to running many adventures with this tool-set.

May the dice be with you.

Paragons of Virtue

Some folks know that I was a playtester for FFG's Genesys RPG system. Heck, it was my Fallout hack for Edge of the Empire at GamerNationCon 2016 that helped kickstart the idea in Sam Stewart's brain in the first place. 

Since the playtest, and having access to the Beta Rules and formats for these things, I've updated my Fallout: Edge of the Wasteland rules to conform with the Themes format in Genesys. That theme is 99% ready to go, and will be shared to the masses the moment the book starts falling into the hands of it's fanatical followers. Since Genesys was updated to "at the printers" on FFG's "Upcoming Releases" website, it seems like we might get the book before Christmas. Hopefully January at the latest. When it does drop, my Fallout Theme will be accessible here and on the D20 Radio Blog for everyone's enjoyment.

With that project just about done, I've been pondering other themes to work on and hopefully have ready for "the gamer nation" when Genesys hits. I'm helping out with a Dresden Files and Wizarding Worlds theme, but I wanted another project for myself as I undergo cancer treatments and recovery. Some of the current frontrunners are G.I. Joe, MASK, Rifts, and Robotech. I'll probably get to those eventually, but there was one theme that has risen above all others and begs to happen sooner than later.

So, hopefully by the time Genesys drops in December (January?), gamers will be able to adventure not only in the wastelands of the Commonwealth or the Capitol Wastes, but also speed, soar, or swing through the urban canyons of Paragon City, dispatching villains and criminals of all four-colored flavors.

Yup; my next Genesys Theme is going to be...

Stay tuned, and may the dice be with you.

Review of "The Haunted City"

This August I had the opportunity to go to GenCon 50. Not just to attend, but also to run games for Fantasy Flight Games. It was a wonderful time and an amazing experience; "10/10 would do again" to use the phrase. With one exception, every session I ran was for Genesys, FFG's new generic rulebook based on their Narrative Dice system. It occurs to me that I never did any sort of post-GenCon commentary or review of the module, the system as presented, and my thoughts on it all.

The adventure is called "The Haunted City", and was written by one of the many "Tims" of FFG (Tim Cox if I remember correctly). The adventure is set within FFG's Runebound setting of Terrinoth. It involves a murder investigation that ends in Nerekhal, a fortified city with a sordid past of being a nexus of infernal power. There's a possibility of folks to play this module in the future, so for now I won't go into too many details about the plotline so as best not to spoil it.

First up are the characters; they're a motley bunch of named heroes from Runebound; Alys Raine, Syndrael, Leoric of the Book, Thaiden Mistpeak, Pathfinder Durik, and Ulma Grimstone. Experience-wise, these were some advanced characters; they had 190-210 XP in addition to their starting XP. This gave them a host of skill ranks, a bevy of Talents, and each of them had a Heroic Ability (something that's akin to Signature Abilities for those familiar with the Star Wars RPG, but not quite as powerful). Most of the characters were seemingly really fun to play, I didn't have anyone who came up to me afterwards with comments that their character felt lacking.

My only real criticism about the characters are that they had a huge amount of abilities and options to choose from. Since the system is still technically in closed Beta, it doesn't allow for anyone to really have any familiarity with the talents presented. I know that only one person ever used Thaiden's "Wraithbane" talent, preferring to use his crossbow in just about all situations. Several players mentioned that they forgot or didn't realize they had certain options, probably due to the wide variety of them. However, I can say that pretty much everyone did find the "intended combos" for each character; Alys is able to absolutely smash eveything with her Warhammer, and then layer on even more damage with her "Justice of the Citadel" talent.

Each character also has Strengths, Flaws, Desires, and Fears. The idea behind those mechanics are for situations where these qualities would be a benefit, they add Boost Dice to the roll. For situations where they would be a detriment, they add a Setback die to the roll. Since this was a new mechanic and concept even for me, I actually missed having that come into play more often. Also, unlike the Obligation/Duty/Morality mechanics in Star Wars, every character has 4 of these qualities to keep track of. It was a little daunting, and I probably missed several opportunities to influence the game with these abilities. Still, it was handy to have them, and just about every player of Durik was shying away from the truly supernatural threats and challenges in the module.

As I mentioned before, each character had a Heroic Ability, something new that looks a lot like Signature Abilities in Star Wars. The ability is spelled out with a few descriptors such as Name, Origin, Ability, Upgrades, and Effect. There also seems to be a tracking for Total Ability Points earned, and Ability Points available. Presumably, one will be able to earn Heroic Ability Points and spend them on a variety of effects. I really like Ulma's ability to simply activate (for 2 Story Points) and take an Incidental action to defeat an entire minion group within short range. Every group had her use this to great effect in the module. It basically lasts for 2 rounds, which seems appropriate.

One of the biggest questions before and after GenCon was how magic was going to work. Is it skill based? Do you buy spells like you do Force Powers in Star Wars? How are spells cast? How are they designed? Is there a list or something? The public got their first glimpse at Spells thanks to Alys and Leoric.

Spells are, in fact, skill based, with 5 different schools to chose from; Arcane, Divine, Primal, Runes, and Verse. We only got to see Arcane and Divine in play with this module. Alys was limited to one spell per encounter, while Leoric could toss spells all day long as long as his Strain holds out. Casing any spell costs 2 strain, which is a pretty good balance point to help reign in mages. Leoric's signature spell can hammer an opponent for 9 damage at medium range, and crit them for a +30 on the Critical Injury table for only 2 advantage; and he could do that every round. I did have one player nearly knock himself unconscious during one particularly nasty fight thanks to taking a lot of strain, so it works pretty well.

Each caster has a few spells to play with, with no real insight as to how spells are acquired (yet). The spell outlines the effect, and the difficulty to cast it. With the exception of Leoric's signature spell, each spell has a list of additional effects they can layer on to the spell at the cost of increasing the casting difficulty. Some spells can take additional targets, or increased range. I really like the way the Developers handled this, it makes the bigger flashier spells able to be cast at all levels, but you definitely want to be a skilled (or Intellectual) caster if you're going to increase the difficulty of the spell to 5 purple difficulty dice (a Formidable difficulty).

The last details that were included were updates to how Defense works. It used to be a complex chore to figure out if certain effects or qualities added to defense. In Genesys they simplify it to "granting Defense" or "adding to Defense". Some armor grants Defense, a new base line for other effects to add on top of. Cover also grants Defense, so it doesn't stack with armor. The Defensive weapon quality adds to defense, and there's no limitation on how many sources of Defensive you can benefit from. This meant that Syndrael became a true tank, able to get a Defense of 3 thanks to her Sword (Defensive 1) and her Large Shield (Defensive 2).

Aside from this, the rules played pretty much the same as Star Wars.

"The Haunted City" was a fun module to run, full of twists and turns and unique, well thought out characters for the heroes to interact with. It's a somewhat rail-roady adventure, but for a convention module that's supposed to fit into a 4-hour time slot, it's understandable and forgivable. Even so, if you're not careful the players could turn the adventure into a 5 or 6 hour adventure, which is great if FFG releases this for others to play in their own homes.

Sam Stewart and his team have made a winner here. I'm really looking forward to Genesys hitting the shelves, and finally being able to talk about all the things I can't talk about right now. Until then, we at least have these bits of insight into Genesys to gnaw on.

May the dice be with you.

Sam Stewart meeting his appreciative public