Sunday, December 8, 2024

Survivors of the Core Wars

click me 

Hi! Been a minute. That’s not unusual around here.

I wrote a 50 postcard (4" x 6") deck of PCs/NPCs for Mothership that is still on backerkit for 42 short hours! Should I have posted about this a month ago? Absolutely! Oh well.


On one side of each card you’ll find a character illustration by Boson Au, who did all the greyscale art in Longshot City and has been excited to do full color this time. The other side has stats and a short Personal History entry. They’ve all been through terrible shit. Most have done terrible shit. Many regret nothing.


I'm honestly just as excited for the stretch goal adventure, a one-warden-one-player adventure about hungry trees called Absence by Jarrett Crader of Space Penguin Ink. We've already unlocked a digital version of it, and if we (somehow) hit $15,000 we also get it printed.


Anyway, here's a few sample cards:





Monday, March 25, 2024

Longshot City Pregens

I'm writing an adventure that hopefully will come out this spring or summer. I wrote some pregens for it, and I'm posting them here so my playtesters can find them. Enjoy.

Swamp Spider
You ran away from home when your powers manifested at the age of 9. You found yourself in the wetland preserve, where your powers made surviving alone pretty easy.

Advanced Skills: 

4 Bushcraft

2 Athletics

2 Power—Invisibility (2 stamina)

2 Power—Superstrength

2 Power—Wall Crawling

2 Power—Web Spinning (3 stamina)

2 Power—Web Swinging

-1 Etiquette—All


Wealth: Struggling (-3)

Possessions:

Swiss Army Knife

Tinderbox

4 Provisions (fish)




Creature

The ghosts of the past lay heavy on this land. You were born of the hateful memories of all those murdered here. Your physical form is of the land itself, a hulking plant-creature.


Advanced Skills: 

5 Power—Absorb Damage

4 Power—Shapeshift (4 stamina)

3 Power—Superstrength

2 Enlightenment


Wealth: Struggling (-3)

Possessions:

9 Provisions (rotting animal carcass)


Special:

You can spontaneously form your body into melee weapons, tools, or extra limbs. You cannot use Superstrength or Absorb Damage while in a normal human form. You take double damage from heat attacks.




Isekai

You were sucked into a Pick Your Own Fantasy gamebook. Your luck manipulation powers stem from understanding the medium and how to cheat in it.


Advanced Skills: 

4 Power—Adjust Roll

3 Power—Precognition (4 stamina)

2 Power—Energy Blast (Entropic, 3 stamina)

1 Power—Shape Reality (8 stamina)


Wealth: Struggling (-3)

Possessions:

Multitool

Smartphone

Backpack

Mostly blank PYOF book

3 Provisions (toaster pastries)


Special:

When you use a power, you may subtract its cost from your stamina or your luck. When confronted with something unfamiliar to the group, you can test luck to see if you remember something useful from the gamebook series.




Starchild & Spaceknight VII 

A kid growing up in poverty in Dogtown, you recently found a star-emblem summon/command ring keyed to the last SK7 model combat robot, which is only slightly smaller than your house. Spaceknight either doesn’t know or won’t tell you how the ring ended up on this planet.


Advanced Skills (Spaceknight):

4 Athletics

4 Power—Energy Blast (laser eyes, 3 stamina)

4 Power—Superstrength


Wealth: Struggling (-3)

Possessions:

Summon/command ring

Slingshot

Flip Phone

8 Provisions (chocolate bars)


Special:

Starchild has 4 Skill and 14 Stamina. Roll Spaceknight's stats as normal.




Delta Wave

A psychic robot who escaped your creator’s lab before he was aware that you’d achieved sentience. His files indicated that you were meant to become a training aid at Cop City.


Advanced Skills:

4 Power—Energy Strike (psychic)

3 Athletics

3 Hand to Hand Fighting

1 Power—Telekinesis (4 stamina)

1 Power—Telepathy (3 stamina)


Wealth: Struggling (-3)

Possessions:

Subdermal plating (2 Armor)

8 Provisions (batteries)




Capitaine Maraude 

Your first learned of your functional immortality during the 30 Years War, but have never come to understand its source. You spent nearly 500 years fighting for the highest bidder without much thought about who you were killing or why, but have been trying to make up for it for the past decade by being more selective.


Advanced Skills: 

4 Power—Fast Healing

3 Athletics

3 Ranged Fighting

2 Power—Enhanced Senses


Wealth: Disposable Income (0)

Possessions:

Multitool

Burner Phone

Customized Rifle (+2 Damage)

Pistol

Body Armor (+2 Armor)

8 Provisions (chili mac & hot sauce)




Insectoid

You were a research fellow at Krieger University until a lab accident transformed you into a monster. Feared and hated for your appearance, you now survive at the edges of civilization. You have re-learned to speak well enough to be understood.


Advanced Skills: 

4 Ranged Fighting

3 Power—Fly

2 Power—Superstrength

2 Genetics

1 Power—Enhanced Senses

1 Power—Energy Blast (chemical, 3 stamina)

1 Ettiquette—Academia


Wealth: Struggling (-3)

Possessions:

Exoskeleton (4 Armor)

Shredded Lab Coat

Multitool

Pocket Protector w/ Marker

3 Provisions (raw meat)


Special:

Claws that damage as Knife on unarmed strike. 




Tempest

You are the mortal avatar of an angry climate deity. You were unwittingly called here by the Forest Defenders when they performed a ritual to ask nature for strength.


Advanced Skills: 

3 Power—Energy Blast (Electric, 3 stamina or 1 stamina if in elemental form)

3 Power—Elemental Form (4 stamina)

2 Secret Signs—Occult

2 Power—Command Element (Weather, 4 stamina)

2 Power—Fly


Wealth: Disposable Income (0)

Possessions:

Smartphone

Pocketknife

5 Provisions (PB&J)


Special:

Your elemental form is a sphere of raging winds that carry you. While in your elemental form, your elemental attack costs 1 stamina instead of 3.

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Prime Time Mime Time and an Update

So the preorder page is still up for Longshot City, even though March 6 is listed as the release date. Fulfillment isn't complete for Kickstarter backers yet—when it is, the page will change to a regular store page.

The upshot of this is that the book will continue to be set to its pre-order sale price for an indeterminate amount of time. If you missed the crowdfunding campaign, this is your chance to get it at a reduced price before it's too late! Hurry hurry! Buy Buy!

Here's a new villain for you:

Greasepaint

A.K.A. Jack Maraud


Skill 8

Stamina 20

Initiative 4


Jack has telekinetic abilities that first manifested in Franklin College, where he was frustrated in his quest to become the greatest mime the world has ever known. After an accident led to his expulsion, he turned to a life of crime. He holds vindictive grudges against everyone who refused to take him seriously enough to laugh at him.


His control over his power is quite limited, as he must mime an object to visualize it clearly enough to manifest a telekinetic analogue of it. If his Stamina drops below 14, he unzips a portal to his hideout, steps through it to escape, and zips it up behind himself.


Telekinetic Manifestations

  1. Invisible shield around himself. Jack cannot take damage until the shield takes 4d6 stamina damage. Jack can only maintain one shield around himself at a time. He always does this before anything else.
  2. Invisible box around PC. Lasts until the PC makes a successful strength or energy attack to escape.
  3. Invisible maul. Dissipates immediately after use.
  4. Invisible rope tied around PC, used to pull the PC toward Jack (especially off ledges or into hazards). 
  5. Invisible tommygun. Jack discards it at the end of the round. 
  6. Invisible chainsaw that can cut through almost any physical material.


Motives

  1. To get paid.
  2. To establish his own gang.
  3. To settle a score.
  4. To amuse himself.
  5. To build notoriety as a criminal.
  6. To bring his art to the world.