Immortal Athkan, take 2

I've already written about Immortal Athkan here. But for a quick refresher: Ancient warrior turned god, giant gold-covered skeleton sleeping deep inside a massive tomb. This here is my attempt to make that a self-contained class that works better with how I've been running my games these days.

I bring you...

THE ATHKANITE

This is the only permitted representation of Immortal Athkan. All others are sacrilege.

Prime Requisite Charisma
HD d6
Saves As Cleric
Attacks as Cleric
Weapons and Armour Athkanites may way wear Light or Medium armour, shields, and swords. Any other weapon is considered profane to Immortal Athkan, and any character wielding such a weapon should be treated as if they were not carrying a Holy Symbol (see below). Ranged weapons are the tools of cowards, sneaks, and foot-soldiers, and have no place in the hands of an Athkanite.
Special Conditions An Athkanite must carry a Holy Symbol to Immortal Athkan – a skull encrusted in gold – at all times, or lose the use of all special abilities granted by this class until such a time as they retrieve the Symbol or acquire a new one.
The use of poisons is a coward’s gambit, and any Athkanite doing so is immediately excommunicated.



Features

Level 1: Detect Lies – When someone is speaking to you, you may press your gold-encrusted skull against your ears. It will whisper to you whether the person speaking is a liar. The DM rolls a Wisdom Save (or whatever save you'd use against illusions) for you in secret. If you pass, the DM will tell you whether the target is a liar. If you fail, you are certain they are.

Level 1: Warrior’s Blessing – During combat, you may raise your holy symbol to bless the faithful to Athkan. Any ally who glorifies the name of Athkan (as a free action) during that round gains +1 to Attack Rolls and AC for a number of rounds equal to your level. Clerics of other faiths fall from grace if they accept this blessing. Once used, this feature may not be used again until you spend 1 hour giving funeral rites to a fallen soldier, dethroned a false king, or bathed your holy symbol in blood from liar’s severed head (takes 1 Turn. The liar must have died from decapitation).

Level 2: Whispers of Battle – By spending 1 hour meditating and performing a rite to Athkan in a place where a great battle has occurred, you will hear the echoes of the dead, and learn of violence that happened there.

Level 3: Immortal Athkan’s Liturgies – A number of times per day equal to your level, you may cast one of the following spells:

• Animate Dead (affects a number of corpses equal to your level, for a number of hours equal to your level, always produces skeletons)
• Cure Moderate Wounds (may only be cast one someone who has received a Warrior’s Blessing from you since the last sunrise)
• Enlarge Person (lasts a number of Turns equal to your level. Can also be used on skeletons.)
• Mending (only works on weapons and armour or gear damaged in battle)
• Remove Poison
• Speak With Dead

Level 4: Immortal Athkan’s Favour – Whenever you would regain the use of your Warrior’s Blessing, you may also regain the use of a spell under Immortal Athkan’s Liturgies.

Level 5: Immortal Athkan’s Faithful – When a soldier dies in battle while receiving the benefit of your Warrior’s Blessing, their skeleton bursts from their body and joins you in combat. The skeleton remains animated for a number of Turns equal to your level.

Level 5: Supplication - In a time of need, you may prostrate yourself before your Holy Symbol and beg for the aid of Immortal Athkan. Immortal Athkan will send what help He can (generally in the form of skeletons, giants, or giant skeletons - but can also perform miracles like reviving the dead and removing curses, although anyone so blessed will receive His mark). He will never help a liar, a false king, or a coward, and asking Him to do so will have you punished. Unless the supplication is impossible or offensive to Immortal Athkan, it will be fulfilled. Once a supplication has been made, no more will be fulfilled until you prove your devotion by slaying a false king.

Level 9 [if DM uses domain rules]: Establish Stronghold – If you have funds, you may rally an army of Immortal Athkan’s faithful to build a religious stronghold / fortified cathedral in His honour. A massive, empty throne adorns its center, and the soldiers who helped build the structure are faithful to you.

Level 9: Athkan’s Revelation – All kings are false who are not Immortal Athkan.

Level 13: The Lord’s Awakening – Perform a mass sacrifice of 100 liars to awaken the sleeping bones of Immortal Athkan.




Notes

Decapitations - a party travelling with an Athkanite spends a lot of time trying to decapitate liars. To pull off a decapitation in combat, the attacker must be using a slashing weapon. and declare before rolling that they are swinging for the neck. An attack that reduces the target to 0 HP and beats its AC by a margin of 4 or more (or a margin of 2 if using a two-handed weapon) successfully cuts of the head. Otherwise, the target is simply killed and its head may not be used in Athkanite rites.

False Kings - A false king is any sovereign (male or female, despite the terminology) who: Came to power through usurping or false succession (an inheritor of either is also false), rules with cowardice, lies to their subjects, or infringes on the legitimate sovereignty of other kings.

Before receiving Athkan's Revelation (Athkanites below level 9 do not know it's coming), it is important to establish the falsehood of a king before punishing them. Until such time they will not be false in the eyes of Immortal Athkan.

Liars - Anyone who lies in the presence of your Holy Symbol.

False Kings & Liars - These terms have little to do with objectivity and much more to do with your own knowledge. The exception being a failed Saving Throw to Detect Lies, in which case the DM may decide whether the subject is actually a liar or not.

Passive-Aggressive Wizard Generator, or, d12 Alternatives to Geas

The Wizard wants you to do something! How's he gonna make you do it?

1. Invites you over for tea and crumpets. They both taste a little yeasty. That's actually the eggs of long, horrible worms that will coil around your spleen and nibble at it until you complete the quest, at which point they will leave peacefully through a randomly-determined orifice.
2. Knows the true name of a violent, terrible storm. Will instruct the storm to follow you around and ruin anything you try to do that isn't complete the quest. The storm hates the wizard and obeys him out of necessity, but can be coerced into joining forces to take revenge if you can learn its language.
3. Has been spying on you. Polymorphs an NPC essential to a quest you were just about to complete, into a speechless newt. Then kidnaps them. Will return them upon successful completion of the quest.
4. This is basically just a crueler geas. Magic Missiles shoot painfully out of your posterior, dealing 1 damage and striking a random target, whenever you stray from the quest.
5. Steals your true name. You become a 0-level schmuck and your XP resets to 0. At 500 XP, you may take a level in any class available to a member of your race. Upon completing the quest, you may regain your original class and XP total or keep the new one. In case of the latter, you get a new true name.
6. Transforms into a malignant tumour at the base of your neck. Insults you constantly, seizes control of your nervous system and has you smack yourself in the head whenever you stray from the quest. If they die, you die. If you die, the tumour pops off and transforms back into the wizard.
7. He gives just a little too much exposition as to how he's going to destroy the world/ruin your day/whatever, then teleports away. The only way to stop him is to do the thing he described first. Except he was never going to do it.
8. Invades your dreams one night and sneaks the quest in as a "prophetic vision." Dreams will get more and more dire if you don't comply.
9. As geas, but a random possession of yours turns into a snake at every sunset until the quest is complete.
10. Sends mooks to kill your loved ones, shifts the blame in such a way that you would complete the quest.
11. Traps you and your friends in really awesome powerful enchanted armour that refuses to do anything not related to completing the quest. Including lying down, or opening up so you can eat. Also the suits of armour can fuse into a super-armour robot hero. He'll want the armour back when you're done.
12. Polymorphs you all into animals, your animal forms will be instrumental in completing the quest. He'll offer to change you back when you're done but like hey this is kinda cool.

Books

(Thanks Jack Shear for getting me thinking in this direction.)

So my dungeons tend to be full of books. Books are worth Money but that's about it. Most books on a shelf need to be conveniently ruined or illegible or it's like why am I describing all these 2 sp paperbacks.

Pictured: Not exactly a 2 sp paperback

Here's why.

First, get a random book generator. Vornheim's is good, but if you don't have Vornheim, this one plus a d8 and a d6 will probably do in a pinch.

Decide how insightful or informative the book is on the following scale, or roll 3d6 as if rolling an ability score modifier.

-3. Polemical screed.
-2. Poorly articulated garbage.
-1. Undersubstantiated but has a couple decent thoughts
0. It's got some decent ideas.
1. Solid piece of writing
2. Exceptionally smart
3. Essential text on the subject

N.B. Even fiction can contain very useful information! You might have to be a bit more creative about it though.

Reading Books

Whenever PCs have a few hours to kill, they can study a book in their possession. Make an Int check.

You know how in Dungeon World you can "hold" questions and spend them to be like "oh I already know about this" and get information about a subject? This is like that.

If you succeed on the Int check, roll 1d6+the book's usefulness (if usefulness is greater than 0, don't bother rolling). If the result is a modified 1 or lower, the book has nothing left to teach you, and can no longer be used. Otherwise, subtract 1 from the book's usefulness and hold one question.(Not sure whether usefulness attrition should be per-character or across the board. I'm inclined to say per-character but your call.)

You can spend the question to remember you totally know something about the book's subject whenever you want and ask the DM a question about the book. The DM should base the accuracy and quality of the answer on the book's initial usefulness, though even a polemical screed should have a hint of truth, even if that's what it's railing against. You can hold a total number of questions (across all books) equal to 4 + your int Modifier. PCs who already have all their questions attributed may drop one upon earning a new one.

The DM should also adjust the quality of their answer based whether you can refer back to the book and how much time you have to do so. Raising a question in combat will get you a much shittier answer than raising a question in a safe place where you can pull the book out and refresh your memory. That said, you can never earn new questions if you're reading in a hurry.

Further thoughts

I like the idea of high-Int characters carrying books around, having an interest in books they find on adventures, and wanting to read them when they get the chance instead of rushing to find a collector so they can get the damn thing off their hands. Handling books this way might also lead to particularly useful books getting passed around the party. This little subsystem also plays nicely with my Camping Actions, and characters may even look forward to downtime as a chance to take another look at a book they have.

In Jack's post there's this cool thing where books all provide special bonuses, which is a fantastic thing to do for very rare or unique books, but this system lets your PCs grab a bunch of shit off a shelf and makes it usable with minimal work. You could have both systems in the same game.

Also kind of digging the idea that maybe instead of a question, a natural 6 on the 1d6 roll provides a special bonus, adventure hook, or maybe the beginnings of a spell formula for the DM to declare immediately.

SCRAPS

SCRAPS

this game is about PSHYWAR

she is young and she is out for adventure

no, she is looking for something

it's okay that i'm not sure what

MOVE: recollect

this is a game about remembering

Can everyone recollect? No. Only PSHYWAR.

But everyone takes turns being PSHYWAR.

PSHYWAR is building a past.

Everything around her has a past, and her companions know it.

GAALGON is a part of every past.

The GM is GAALGON.

GAALGON is an the antagonist.

Their identity is unfixed but takes on character as players take turns being them.

Maybe certain GM moves require/allow the revelation of information?

They are always a step ahead of PSHYWAR.

Perhaps they are a shapeshifter.

The world is sad and gray. It has pockets of colour.

Other PCs are supporting characters. They come and go. They are the colour of the world.

Their job is to build a world for PSHYWAR to explore, and for GAALGON to ruin.

They include MOLUCK, the dead wizard's homunculus.

CALC, the red robot seeking a heart.

RADA, the froggish swordswoman of the swamp, who wants to woo PSHYWAR.

GRANDMOTHER ESTIVELLE, from Castle XXXXX, who seeks to bring PSHYWAR home.

FRAMOR the tigress, who wants to honour her debt to PSHYWAR. She does so by her own means.

OLANON the witch, who wishes to steal PSHYWAR's heart -- literally

Found this lying around my harddrive. I typed this up about a year ago and never really followed up on it but I'm thinking it was actually kind of a cool idea. Copied directly from the file, pretentious caps and all.

So the idea was an RPG where the players swap around roles in between session, So the "main character" - Pshywar, it played and developed by everyone. Gaalgon and the supporting cast switch hands every session, and you get different supporting characters from session to session.

I think my mental image for this game was Samurai Jack as drawn by Yoskitaka Amano with some Miyazaki feels thrown in. I mean Gaalgon is pretty much Aku.

Also implicit in the writing is that I was intending to base the rules off Apocalypse World and its ilk - hence the references to Moves. It would be cool if the GM had a playbook for Gaalgon indicating how they are able to manifest their influence. The idea being Gaalgon advances like any other PC.

Thinking about it now it would be cool if the supporting characters determine what kind of things Pshywar can recollect. So, like, if Flamor is injured defending Pshywar, Flamor's player gets to invent a detail about her and Pshywar's shared past - their first encounter, the last time they saw each other, the reason for Flamor's dept, etc. (Flamor, being a tiget, can't talk, so she can't just explain these things.)

Rada might be good at fighting and her bravado recalls past loves. Grandmother Estivelle brings back memories of Pshywar's childhood. Maybe Olanon helped Gaalgon rise to power?

Pshywar needs a clearer goal. Obviously her primary goal is to rid herself of Gaalgon - whether that means killing them or simply getting away I'm undecided on. But, what brings her from place to place? Maybe she doesn't know yet. That's why she's the center of every session. Really the idea is to create her by playing as/with her. The establishment of clearer goals might be tied to advancement?

Tentatively, let's say her goal is to "find colour".

I'm still not sure where I'm going with this but I really like the idea. This will be seeing more work.

One of Gaalgon's lieutenants?

This seems like a good candidate for a supporting character

This is there, but there's no one is looking at it and it's never going to be finished

Possible ally or assassin sent by Gaalgon

Gaalgon is behind this somehow

This too

That's Pshywar in there

A place of colour?

Lunch-hour D&D

Okay so I was just doing my thang being on Google+ when Daniel Davis (who also does a D&D Actual Play podcast) asked this very interesting question:

Click the picture to go to the thread.

This sent my mind reeling and here's where it went.

Essentially the question at hand is How can I provide an interesting D&D session within very tight time constraints?

I am reading in the following assumptions:

• Each session is part of a longer campaign.
• A session should provide at least one very interesting decision, the outcome of which has a bearing on the unfolding of the campaign.

Furthermore I propose the following principles as a matter of personal taste:

• A session should be planned and executed in such a way that maximizes the amount of time spent engaging in interesting decision-making.
• The structure of the campaign respects player agency and allows players a significant degree of agency in directing its development.
• A session should be compact and run smoothly and swiftly. Frequent backtracking is undesirable; each session should at least offer at least one novel possibility.

So here's a lunch-hour campaign I came up with, assuming 30-60 minute sessions:

Journey to the Center of the Earth

In the depths of an ancient mine is a tunnel that goes on for miles. It is rumoured to lead to a massive dungeon complex that reaches to the Center of the Earth, where the treasure-laden city of the First Ones is fabled to hold riches unimaginable. A bold group of adventurers has decided to delve into the tunnel and see if the stories are true.

This gigadungeon is made up to two types of part: Nodes and passages. Nodes are small- to medium-sized adventure areas, containing the usual dungeon fare. Passages lead between two or more nodes, but are extremely long - they take hours, sometimes days, to cross. The difference between nodes and passages is usually very clearly demarcated and unmistakable; the party will know when they find a new passage. Furthermore, passages are often covered with very visible hints about where they lead (eg., a passage leading to a dragon's would be lined with images of treasure and fire. Or maybe even just drawings of a dragon). A passage may not be explored in the same session in which it is discovered but offers new options for future sessions. A single node should take about 1-3 sessions to clear.

The party travels with several detachments* of hirelings; scouts, men-at-arms, perhaps a sage. These can be deployed in between session to perform their various services: Scouts will provide partial maps and information on a node's inhabitants but will not engage in combat; men-at-arms will patrol previously cleared areas to keep out intruders and stand guard at night; sages will attempt to decipher coded documents, follow up on clues, and are assumed to have researched the dungeon extensively. And so on. New detachments can be enlisted through play, but also lost (scouts abducted, men-at-arms zombified, sages driven mad, etc.). Dispatching a detachment always requires some form of compensation for its services.

The party advances by exploring and clearing nodes. XP is awarded for each node cleared, depending on how deep it is, and a cleared node is generally safe to camp out in for at least a few days, until some new thing comes to claim it. Some nodes are just plain safe. The party always ends the session by heading to a nearby safe node or passage.

Food, light, water, and other consumable resources are tracked rigorously. The party will have to find new sources of these resources as they explore, and will have to maintain a decent stockpile of treasure to keep their detachments paid and happy.

A session goes as follows: During the first 5-10 minutes, the DM tells the results of the previous session's detachment dispaches, if any, and tells the PCs what nodes are attached to their current position and what they know about them. The players choose a node to explore. This decision is binding: This is what they're doing this session. The next 20-50 minutes are spent exploring the node. In the last 5-10 minutes of the session, the PC leave the current node and choose a safe location nearby in which to rest. Rations and water are consumed. The players decide how to assign their detachments and the session ends. The DM will determine the outcome of the detachment's activities and prepare accordingly before the next session.

Note that the detachments actually serve to guide a DM's prep. Passages contain hints about where they lead, which should inform the players' decision about where to scout. This in turn tells the DM which nodes to prep. You may even have a meta-rule that the DM is not beholden to prep unscouted nodes, or that a node must be scouted before the party can explore it.

*Thanks to Chris McDowall for the detachment idea. Except oops I just noticed he calls them delegations. Whatever. More on these here.

Two session reports from San Serafin (as hastily mashed out on Facebook)

So I've been sick this weekend which should mean I'm miserable but instead I've been playing in Mateo's San Serafin games. This is how I told it to my boyfriend via facebook chat:

also this game i played in last night was so much fun

What happened?

ok so it was one of mat diaz's games

and he hacked red and pleasant land into this massive undead city where beasts, the dead, and the living are at war

i was playing as a 14 year-old witch boy with morty's voice

who can do a dance to turn into small animals and tie knots that people become obsessed with untying

none of which actually helped me

but anyway it was mostly ordinary d&d stuff, we decided to explore this huge opera house guarded by a 25-foot caiman

but then we went to the opera and the vampire in our party started booing the singer and the semi-intelligent zombies in the audience got up and started trying to kill him

so i got up and told the audience that we were actors in a new form of experimental theatre that involved audience participation and actors hidden in the crowd

and then like weaved this whole narrative

the vampire gotten eaten anyway but the rest of us got away alive and with a standing ovation

and we got a coat with a map to a manor and stole a witchy coat from the cloakroom and there was a letter in the pocket signed by the king of lepers, who's a powerful NPC guy and witch patron I can learn spells from

we got almost 0 XP

it was great

Hahaha sounds like fun

I should join this game more

What happened to Jessica? [Talking about Jessica Nobletush the Vampire, my Perfidious Albion PC]

well this was mostly his friends from home

okay so he also ran the setting friday night with g+ people

and jessica is already knee-deep in the shit in some other part of the city so I figured I wanted to keep that separate

Oh lol

jessica's having a hard time

he had a turtle that had a ring on it containing the soul of a slain rival

the idea being to punish him forever by trapping him in the body of a turtle

but like

then there were some zombies guarding a gate and they asked me to impress them

so I showed them the turtle

and they bit off its head

and then when i tried to take the ring back they punched me really hard in the face and we ran away

then - remember Mr. Crushmore, his thrall? he was there too

well okay first we run into this terrifying funeral procession thing and the leader gets angry at us for blocking his way

and tells us we have to bring him a living victim

which is fine for me cause i needed to drink some blood

(in retrospect I could have drank Mr. Crushmore's)

Anyway we eventually run into a child with broken legs crying in the road

so anyway obvi it's an ambush and two jaguars attack us and the kid pulls a shiv

so the jaguars were tearing mr crushmore to pieces and there was clearly no saving him so I went into a bloodlust and ate the boy

so I'm down a rival's soul, which might be anywhere by now, a faithful thrall, and there's a funeral procession waiting for us to bring it a living soul

the session ended when we found a human camp

oh and i came up with this plan

where okay so I need to feed but I also need to rest and the jaguars destroyed my coffin while they were mauling Mr. Crushmore

so we dressed up half of mr crushmore in different clothes (he was in pieces anyway) so we're going to ask for two coffins for our "two dead friends" but really we're going to bury mr. crushmore in one and I'll sleep in the other and they'll never know I'm a vampire.

great times in mateo's game lately

Lol not a bad plan

Yeah sounds like it

Let me know when the next game is