Lemuria Space Station, first bounty

I played my first bounty hunt in Lemuria Space Station today. I was Belasco, a robot hunter of gloomy disposition who just hates robots.

Armed with a rather poor Snub-E station-safe pistol, and a frying pan (hey don't judge its practically armour and packs quite a wallop if you give it a good swing). Checking the bounty board, I spotted there was one of those horrid B3AR-BOTs on the loose. The furry little bastards!

I headed out and started the hunt. It was not a good time, people were either lying to me or just plain stupid. I was wandering all over the place even ended up on the observation deck. Wouldn't you know it, I spotted both Argent-6 and Dexio, two unluckier moons do not exist (-2 in combat).  Despite that bad luck I popped into the deck security office and my buddy Deckard was on duty. He let me use the security cams, and I found my target toddling around the cryo-deck peeking at the sleepers. I promised Deckard a beer and headed down to cryo.

I spotted the shit-rig before it saw me., but my shot went wild. It rushed me but I only got grazed as I jumped up onto a cryobed. My next shot took out the bot's control centre.  It started running around randomly, and I missed it with all three capture bolt. I smacked it with the pan. That stopped it, but with the head crushed I'd be lucky to get half the bounty. Fekkin robots.

Review - Operation Solo Endeavor

I picked up this supplement for Operation Whitebox for two reasons. Firstly I'm a huge fan of Operation WhiteBox and I've written a few scenarios for the system too. I thought I might have some fun solo-ing a team through one of my own scenarios.

I like what I found in here. An intro to solo playing, then a straight into a useful table for determining a mission objective. This table is short but it gives a nice variety of mission types. It then guides you into generating some VIPs for your mission. They might be NPCs, officers, targets, or otherwise. There are tables for theatre of operation and then significant places for the mission. 

Next we move into "Planning" which takes you the player through the design process of what you want to do when playing, and what sort of NPC you might want to prepare. 

It also introduces a mechanic called "Tension". This is a great idea. Its a ticking timebomb for a disaster. As you play it ticks down to something very bad happening. You never quite know when this bomb will go off or what form of DOOM it will take.

Then there's a guide on how to ask/answer the questions that drive the game, and gives you simple "oracle" to get your answers. It's a simple D10 mechanism ... but ... its variable, and you you can tailor it to the situation, ... and ... it drives that Tension mechanism.

Another great set of tables provide you inspiration and flavour for answering questions and feeding into your story. Talking of which, there is an nice set of NPC names tables, tailored to various nations involved. Beyond these, the book gives you plenty of advice on story telling and handling a team of players rather than a single character. 

To sum up, I'm really happy with this product, its a perfect fit for Operation Whitebox, and I'm going to be using it tonight! My only gripe, is that I'd like to own this as physical book.

Second playtest of "Adventure Path"

In my first playtest my test got wasted in a couple of encounters. So I spent some time thinking about how I played and wondering if I did anything wrong. The result of this pondering is the realisation that I didn't really use the Melee Defence skill to its optimum. So in the following play through, I made a point of using it when I could. I also took another four classes of character with different skills, and it went much better, as you'll see...

My characters:

• Bowman, HP 11, Missile Fire +1, Ambush +1
• Draygon, HP 15, Melee Defence +1, Fireball +1
• Toadun, HP 9, Spot Hidden +1, Tracking +1
• Nephellin, HP 6, Darts +1, Charm +1

Move 1, Moving into the +0 Zone

Toadun makes tracking roll to get a peak at the Helmet location to see what's there, but he fails

We move into the Helmet location and reveal the encounter to be 2 Orcs

• Orc, Melee Attack +1, Damage Bonus +2

Bowman Attempts an Ambush, but fails.

Round ~1~

• Nelphellin Melee Attacks Orc1 doing 3HP
• Orc2 Melee Attacks Draygon doing 9HP
• Draygon Melee Defence blocks 5HP of damage
• Bowman Missile Attacks Orc2 killing it
• Toadun Melee Attacks Orc1 for 2 damage
• Orc1 Melee Defence blocks incoming damage

Round ~2~

• Bowman Missile Attacks Orc1 Killing it.

4 treasure have been earned!

Move 2, Moving into the +1 Zone

Encounter a Werewolf, HP 22, Melee Attack +1, Melee Defence +1, Damage Bonus 1D4.

Bowman attempts Ambush, fails.

Round ~1~

• Bowman Missile Fire for 3HP damage
• Toadun Melee Attacks for 1HP damage
• Werewolf attacks nephellin 8HP damage (kill?)
• Draygon Melee Attacks for 6HP damage
• Nephellin Melee Defence for 3 reduces damage to 5HP

Round ~2~

• Draygon Melee Attacks for 2HP damage
• Toadun Melee Attacks for 1HP damage
• Nephellin Melee Attacks for 4HP damage
• Bowman Missile fires for 7HP damage killing werewolf

Earned 6 Treasure (10 total)

Move 3, +2 band 

Encounter Village, 

Draygon visits the Blacksmith and spends all the party Treasure to gain a +1 Sword (Melee Attack bonus)

Move 4, +3 band, to a "?" space 

Roll 1D6 to determine encounter category, result =Helmet Category

Constrictor, HP 12, Melee Attack +2, Damage Bonus +1

Round ~1~

• Nephellin melee attacks 5HP damage
• Bowman Missile Fires for 5HP damage
• Constrictor Melee Attacks Draygon for 6HP damage
• Draygon Melee Defence 7HP (so no damage)
• Toadun Melee Attacks 5HP damage killing constrictor

No Treasure :(

Move 5, +4 band 

Toadun makes a Tracking attempt on the Helmet encounter success "There be spiders ahead". Toadun suggests we go to the Cave encounter instead

Iron Eater HP 12, Melee Attack +3, Melee Defence +1, Damage Bonus +1

Round ~1~

• Draygon Melee Attacks 8HP Damage
• Toadun Melee Attacks 2HP Damage
• Bowman Missile Attacks 6HP Damage
• Nephellin Melee Attacks 3HP Damage
• Iron Eater Melee Defence, still dies.
• The Iron Eater destroyed Draygon's sword :(

Move 6, +5 band, to a "?" space  

Roll 1D6 to determine encounter category, Helmet Attack

OwlBear,HP 18, Initiative +2, Melee Attack +3, Melee Defence +2,  Damage Bonus 1D6

Bowman Attempts an Ambush, Success.

Round ~0 (Ambush)~

• Bowman Missile Fire does 3HP Damage
• Draygon Melee Attack does 6HP
• Toadun Melee Attack does 3HP
• Nephellin Melee Attack does 5HP Damage 

Round ~1~

• Toadun Melee Attack does 3 Hit Points
• Dragon Melee Attack does 5 Hit Points
• The Owlbear will not be able to fend off both attacks, so the Owlbear is killed

10 Treasure!

Move 7, +6 band 

Campfire, 

• Bowman takes the Stash Action saving 5 Treaure
• Draygon and Nephellin take the Rest option and heal 2HP

Move 8, +7 band, The Lair 

Nightmare HP14, Melee Attack +2, Melee Defence +1, Damage bonus 1D6

5 x DarkElves HP 8, Melee Attack +4, Melee Defence +2

Bowman attempts Ambush, fails

Round ~1~

• Toadun Melee Attacks DE1 doing 1HP damage
• Nephellin casts Darts, fails
• DE4 melee attacks Toadun doing 7HP damage
• Bowman Missile at DE4 doing 7HP damage
• DE1 melee attacks Toadun doing 7HP killing him
• DE2 melee attacks Bowman doing 6HP 
• Draygon Melee attacks DE4 doing 3HP damage killing
• DE5 Melee  attacks Draygon doing 7HP damage
• Nephellin Melee attacks DE1 doing 3HP damage
• Nightmare Melee attacks Nephellin doing 5HP damage

Round ~2~

• DE1 Melee attacks Bowman doing 6HP
• Nightmare Melee attacks Draygon doing 3HP
• Draygon melee attacks DE1 doing 2HP
• DE3 Melee attacks Nephellin doing 6HP
• DE5 Melee attacks Nephellin doing 10HP killing
• DE2 Attacks Draygon doing 6HP killing
• Bowman does Melee defence stopping 4HP (2hp damage)

Round ~3~

Concede, because 4 melee attacks on last character that he could not fend off

Summary: Killed by the End Boss' but did manager to stash 5 treasure for use in next run. Got much further in this run than the last. I put this down to some lucky rolls, but mostly down to some very good skills. Melee Defence was critical, and Ambush proved very powerful. Spells at first level seem pretty low power which is appropriate. I'm happy with how it went.

Playtesting "Adventure Path"

I've spent the last few weeks writing up a new solo RPG which takes inspiration from "Four Against Darkness" and the digital card game "Slay the Spire". With the first draft of the rules complete it was time to do my first playtest. The following are my notes from the far too short game.

My characters

• Soldier Hp(14) Melee Attack +1 Melee Defence +1
• Bandit Hp(10)  Melee Attack +1 Initiative +1
• Elementalist Hp(8)  Danger Sense +1 Earth Shield +1
• Acrobat Hp(9)  Dexterity +1 Initiative +1

So with my party ready to go, I started my first move up the map. I had a choice of overland or underground encounter, I opted for the slightly easier overland encounter.

Move 1 -----

Move to Helmet Encounter, Difficulty mod +0

Encounter (4) Constrictor, attacks character with most hit points

• HP (12) Melee Attack+2 Damage Bonus +1, no treasure

I rolled initiative for characters and monster.  Monster rolled a 1.

Acrobat melee attack +0 > 4, Constrictor reduced HP to 8

Soldier melee attack +1 > 3, Constrictor reduced HP to 5

Bandit Melee attach +1 > 6, Constrictor reduced to 0 HP

A win for my heroes, but alas the constrictor has no treasure.

Move 2 -----

Move to Helmet Encounter, Difficulty mod +1

Encounter (10+1) Wererats # App (1d4+1) 5 ,Melee Attack +2, Melee Defence +1 8HP each.

~Round 1~

WR1 Hits Soldier doing 4HP damage

WR4 Hits Bandit doing 3HP damage

Acrobat hit WR1 doing 1HP damage

WR5 Hits Elementalist doing 6HP damage

Soldier Hits WR1 doing 4HP damage 

WR3 its Acrobat doing 8HP damage

Bandit Hits WR1 doing 4HP damage

Elementalist Hits WR2 doing 6HP damage

WR2 Hits attacks soldier doing 5HP

~Round 2~

Soldier Hits WR2 doing 5HP damage

Elementalist casts "Earth Shield"

WR4 Hits Bandit Doing 1HP of Damage

Bandit Hits WR3 doing 4HP damage

Acrobat Hits WR3 doing 5HP damage

WR5 Hits Bandit doing 1HP damage

~Round 3~

Bandit attacks WR4 doing 5HP damage

Acrobat attacks WR4 doing 1HP damage

WR4 attacks Acrobat killing him

WR5 attacks Elementalist killing him

Soldier attacks WR4 doing 2HP damage

~Round 4~

Soldier attacks WR5 doing 3HP damage

Bandit attacks WR4 doing doing 3HP damage

WR5 attacks soldier killing him

~Round 5~

WR5 attacks Bandit killing him.

... and so ended my party of adventurers. I expect the game to be swingy because it does use random die rolls to determine encounters. I even think it was back luck to roll 10+1 on the second encounter (were rats) and then to roll the maximum number of enemies 1D4+1 (5). My first inclination is to "harden" the characters, perhaps by giving them armour/shield to act as damage reduction. However I'm not sure if one single play test attempt is a good place to make changes. After all, solo games have to have extreme challenge.

Edit, I'm definitely going to make another playtest before changing anything.

Cloistered, an adventure space for Old School Essentials

Cloistered is an adventure location for the Old School Essentials RPG. This booklet provides a map of a

working monastery, with NPCs including the Abbot who can act as a patron. Details are given of the monastic rituals and the religion at it core. 

The nearby town of "Nasty" is mapped out with NPCs, along with details on the surrounding villages and adventure locations.

The monastery is detailed along with its NPCs so you can have your PCS stay in there for a while, and even use it as a base and place to recoup. To help with that, the area surrounding the monastery is mapped out terrain, villages, and adventure spaces on the map. Customised encounter tables for the area keep it themed appropriately.

There's a scenario seed generator inside so provide adventures that the Abbot can provide to the players.

Two dungeons are mapped out and populated along with some new monsters.

Grab it from DriveThruRPG .

Operation Green Angel

Operation Green Angel is a one-shot scenario written by yourself, for use with the Operation WhiteBox

WWII RPG. In this scenario the players have to penetrate deep into the Burmese jungle and Japanese held territory to rescue a scientist from the slave camp where he and thousands of allied POWs are working and dying on the "Death Railway".

I wrote this scenario, and was clearly inspired the real world history of the Burma railway that the Japanese drove through the jungle using POWs and local slaves. I always base my WWII scenario of the heroic stories and events of true history, this approach means I never run out of ideas. The real historic  soldiers of WWII were real heroes.

"Trail of the Behemoth"

Trail of the Behemoth is an RPG fills a void that I'd pondered filling myself. In fact I'd even started making notes in preparation to writing into this gap in the RPG market. I put those notes aside to work on other products. And now, I don't have to write a "Monster Hunter" RPG as Dan Felder has done a wonderful job.

The game has some really neat tricks. Its a D6-only system which I love, and the monster...is the map! What a cool idea. Another cool feature is that at 0 Health you can choose to flee or stay, If you stay you get half your Health back...but if you hit zero again you die.

The two PDF set comes as a 15 page player-manual, and 50ish page referees manual that gives you guidance on how to structure the between-fight phase, how to build big bad boss monsters to be defeated, and a hint or two on campaign play.

The game is almost entirely boss-monster-fighting, with the between-fight segments being very limited from a mechanical viewpoint. Indeed, your characters are really only defined in terms of fighting ability, there are not the 6-stats you might see in an OSR game, nor any armor-class or to-hit charts, and no long list of skills. Money? That's for lesser games! This game is mechanically bare bones. 

Your character will start with a kick-ass weapon, maybe a one-shot spell, special class ability, and a trinket that gives you something special, and a limited Health.

If you survive a fight you get to take powerful loot (body parts) from the monster and use them in future fights or burn them for XP. And that XP can get you some more class based abilities.

I'm really looking forward getting this game to the table. The theme excites me, the art inspires me,

Operation Grand Slam

Operation Grand Slam is my first scenario for "Operation White Box". Its a one-shot, suitable for a single session and three to four players. The PCs are working in collaboration with "The Dam Busters", trying to mark a target for the flyers.

In real-world history The Dam Busters had to fly multiple missions to bring down the Nielefeld viaduct, because even they were struggling to bring down this very small target using the Grand Slam bomb (another invention by Barnes Wallis of bouncing bomb fame). In this fictional scenario the PCs are dropped behind the lines with a mission to mark the target with fire.

Get the scenario

Monk-Herbalist class for OSE

Inspired by the classic monk-ish stories featuring the detective monk Cadfael, I crafted a new class for Old School Essentials, if you like the sound of that please check out my Monk-Herbalist.

Pondering Exhaustion

I love the simplicity of most OSR games, and spend quite a lot of time thinking about them and their rules in quiet moments. You know, waiting for someone to pick up the phone, on the toilette, in the queue at the post office. Anyway these random thought often lead me into coming up with ways of complicating the simple and making the quick slower. 

So with that in mind I was pondering how people get puffed out when fighting, worn down by the effort expended. I was wondering how you might replicate that in an OSR fight and here's what I came up with.

• You track the number of rounds your character is in the fight. 
• Once the number of rounds equals the characters CON, you make a save throw (roll D20 vs CON). 
• If you fail the save you take a -1 on all future combat attacks. 
• Fail or succeed, you reset the count.  
• A success after a failure does not undo the penalty. 
• Multiple failed saves accumulate penalties. 
• Once combat ends, and the character gets a chance for a breather, you stop counting and discard any penalties.

Thus a character with CON:9 would attempt the save every 9 rounds. 

Hold Portal potion

In OSR games it can be very advantageous for thieves and adventurers in general, but mostly thieves, to have a potion of "Hold Portal". The idea, being that the thief can be making it away with his ill-gotten gains, dodge through a doorway, splash the doorway with the potion and seal it against any that pursue.

It would also be handy for sealing pockets, panniers, and trunks I suspect. Not to mention closing that bottle of wine against your friend that's drunk too much already.

So, how do you get the potions?

The thieves guild sometimes have them for sale, 2 in 6 for availability, and then a cost of 150gp.

Magical stores have them on a 3 in 6, and charge 200gp.

My First "Operation Whitebox" Character

A couple of posts back I rolled up a "Whitebox" character, that was for a fantasy RPG, however "Operation Whitebox" is a WWII RPG that is itself a completely separate and self contained game derived from that fantasy game.

I started by rolling 3D6 six times. I got into the fudging business right away. I rolled double 1's twice, and each time rerolled all three dice. The end results were, 10, 7, 11, 9, 15, and 12. Not great, but thanks to the fudging, not awful either.

I allocated the stats as follows:

• STR 15
• INT 10
• WIS 11
• CON 12
• DEX 7
• CHR 9

I slotted the 15 into STR because I wanted to play the "Grunt" class, and STR is a prime requisit for the class. In fact the only stat that earned a modifier was STR, on which I gained a +1, which comes into play during melee combat.

Rolling for nationality I got British (of course!) and as a pre-war profession Academic. My rolled rank was PFC, which I don't think is a British designation, but would be "Private".

Clearly I got English as a language, and I picked French as a secondary.

Rolled 2D6 for HP and managed to get 10 without any fudging!

Basic to-hit bonus, was +1, and Armour Class 11, and Saving Throw 14.

The only thing then to do was make a note of my level 1 abilities. 

• Get one extra attack against level 1 enemies.
• Uncanny Toughness (bonus +1 AC)
• +2 to Saving throws against explosives and suppressive fire.

There's no equipment to be bought or noted as that will be given out when the mission briefings take place.

I really liked this process, simple straight forward and quick, meaning no session-zero needed, just roll-up and play.

OSR Bleeding

It occurred to me the other day that bleeding could be a factor in OSR games, and that it could change the dynamic of combat in an interesting ways. My first thoughts were:

• Blunt damage does normal damage.
• Blade/puncture damage does normal damage + 1HP per combat round, until bandaged. Each would requires separate bandaging.
• Bandaging takes 1-3 combat rounds

The idea behind this suggestion is not to slide the scale towards realism, but rather to create an ongoing problem that can probably be ignored for a round or two but becoming more important as each round goes by. This would change the thought processes of the player. 

Instead of limiting the mental calculation to "I can take one more hit" during combat, it adds the threat of accumulating damage that "could" outweigh the damage die of the monster.

There are plenty of variations that you might use instead or in addition, such as only bleeding on a crit', or different levels of bleeding.

My First "White Box" Character

 Last night I decided to roll up a character having just completed reading through "White Box". I started with the statistic rolls running top to bottom.

• STR: 10
• DEX: 9
• CON: 9
• INT: 13
• WIS: 9
• CHA: 17

I was quite happy with that start, I don't think I've ever rolled as high as 17 for stats in a straight 3D6 game in my thirty years of playing! Alas, a quick look at the available classes Fighter, Wizard, Cleric showed that none of them used CHA as the prime stat. However, you can move points between stats if its towards you prime stat. The least amount of fiddling I could do here was move some points to INT which would make the stats best suited as a Wizard. 

I took them from CHA which still left me with two stats in the 15+ range. It felt like a shame to reduce my bestest evar(!) stat but needs must. That gained me a +1 on both INT and CHA rolls, and a 5% bonus on XP.

• STR: 10
• DEX: 9
• CON: 9
• INT: 15 (+1, +5%xp)
• WIS: 9
• CHA: 15 (+1)

As a Wizard you can be any alignment, so I went for Lawful. I also got a +2 on magical saving throws because Wizards know their way around the spheres. Alas, wizards do not use armour so I ended on the default armour class. 

The Hit Die for a first level wizard is 1D6, I "of course" rolled a 1. Time for that "fudge factor", I cheated, and rerolled getting a 3. I've never played a 1HP character, I just hate the idea of having to play ultra-level coward.

• XP: 0
• AC: 9
• HP: 3

White Box gives you two ways of doing Saving Throws, either a single target number or the classic 6 options, I went with the 6.

• Death Poison: 13 (+2 vs magic)
• Wands Rays: 14 (+2 vs magic)
• Paralysis Stone: 13 (+2 vs magic)
• Dragon Breath: 16 (+2 vs magic)
• Spells Staffs: 15 (+2 vs magic)

I rolled up 120gp for starting gold, luckily enough this turned out to be enough for a spell book. Would have been a pretty poor wizard without that! To the shopping mall...

• Staff
• Spellbook
• Flint/Steel
• Lantern
• Flask Oil
• 2 days trail rations

That left this penniless wizard without even a few coppers for a drink, let alone ink and quill. Anyway, the last thing to do was note the first level spells in his book, and in this I'm assuming the wizard knows all the first level spells.

Finally a quick internet search for a name generator and I named my wizard:

Ovior the Meddlesome

2nd playtest of my Cyberpunk game

I just ran a fresh new team through the second mission of my in-progress cyberpunk game, and it went down this way...

The team was hired to recover a personal comm' unit which was currently in the possession of corp exec. He had the comm in a safe on his private estate.

My team was made up of an Engineer, a Heavy, and a Netlogger.

The team started at the manor gates and easily wired a bypass on the alarm and slipped through the gates, closing them once through. Unfortunately they were almost immediately spotted by the three guards in the gate house. Heavy was the nearest to a face man they had, so he stepped forwards and tried to talk his way passed them. Sadly they were not having any of it, they slapped the alarm button and... BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Seconds later there were three dead guards, and our team's Engineer was lying down there with them.

The team ran into the manor grounds, and took cover in a briar patch. Guards were everywhere, they swept right past the team without seeing them.

Moving out of the briars they came to open ground surrounding a small lake. The mist coming off the water highlighted a bunch of alarm-linked lasers sweeping the grass. The team danced their way across the grass leaping over the lasers and not giving away their position.

Unfortunately they then found themselves by some willows which appeared to be a temporary hub of the ongoing search of the grounds. Bad luck was hounding the team and they were spotted. The guns came out again. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Four guards lay dead and Netlogger had more holes in himself than he was happy with.

They moved on towards the house which was surrounded by a moat. With a grapnel thrown across the water, Heavy crosses without getting wet, but the injured Netlogger slips and unfortunately shouts in dismay.  The shout brings three guards, and only Heavy is able to fight them as Netlogger is swiming the rest of the way across. Fortunately the guards seemed to have been hired for their muscles rather than shooting skills, and Heavy soon puts them down.

The team ran to the nearest window, but that bad luck kept running. As they were fiddling with the window security four guard dogs came yapping for them, the dogs jumped into the moat and started swimming across. The team opened fire at the dogs in the water but missed and then it was a confused melee that ended up with four dead dogs and Heavy bleeding from a bad bite.

They busted through the window and found themselves in the library. The team looked around at the stuff in glass cases thinking it was probably worth a mint, but the alarm blaring meant there was no time to loot.

Exiting the library they came to the stairs but a guard had taken a good defensive position behind the stone balustrade with a machine pistol. With no cover at the bottom of the stairs, the team rushed the guard straight up the stairs. They managed to get up without dying, and mobbed the guard, but in the scuffle both the guard and Heavy ended up bleeding out on the floor.

Netlogger's knees went weak, injured and alone, he decided he couldn't go on, and bailed on the mission.