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.

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.

Assault on Blackrock Manor and Baron Mordrek's Vault

I made a couple more adventures for Hero Quest.

click to download

They're both written with new characters in mind especially the first one, so if you've already played through the main quest or any expansions you may wanna add in a few dread warriors and mummies.

click to download

Enterprise Justice Solutions #15: He Who Lives by the Deathgun...

click to zoom

This week's crew:
Letter of the Law (impossibly wealthy masked vigilante, owns the team's HQ)
Deathgun (supersoldier from a future dystopia) 
Mr. Fox (superspy from a more distant future in which humans are extinct)

NPC Allies:
Singularity (the first and only true general AI)
Tara Byte (the world's greatest computer scientist and Singularity's mother)

Mr. Fox and Deathgun had just learned that PenalCorp's warden was another clone of Dr. Sarah Tonin, and were in serious trouble by the time their most hated ally, Letter of the Law, showed up to the scene in his L-icopter.

Deathgun moves the boat closer to the cellhouse where Singularity had located Tara Byte's cell, thinking this would be an easier extraction point. The guard in the nearby tower immediately starts spraying the boat with machine gun fire, heavily damaging it.

On the other side of the island, Mr. Fox was trying to reach the cellhouse on foot, while zigging and zagging to avoid being shot by guards in two more towers. He somehow made it up the hill and around the corner without dying, though he did lose some fur when a bullet grazed his tail. Letter of the Law flew straight past the towers, drawing fire but no hits, to land on the roof of the cellhouse.

The fishing boat Deathgun was piloting fared less well. Approaching shore under heavy fire, it exploded as Deathgun leapt from the bow, propelled to shore by the explosion in an epic splash page-worthy scene. Hell, maybe even a two-page spread.

At this point the End of Round token came up, and Artillery was activated. Artillery is a giant combat robot (the one pictured near the bottom of the conspiracy board) that, when destroyed, rebuilds itself stronger than it was. The team has already destroyed it once.

Deathgun tries shooting it, but his gun does little damage against the robot's thick armor. He switches to a harpoon from the fishing boat, hoping to leverage his Superstrength to do more damage. He scores a pretty substantial hit, but Artillery releases tear gas, temporarily disabling the future warrior. It then deployed a trio of combat drones, released from a compartment in its back, before trying to catch Deathgun in an electrified net of steel cables.

Meanwhile, Mr. Fox made contact with Singularity, who has just figured out to reactivate the drones that tried to kill Mr. Fox last session. These drones were sent to engage the ones controlled by Artillery, while Singularity accessed the electronic lock system and cleared a path to Tara Byte's cell block on the top floor.

On the verge of death and unable to breathe, Deathgun tries to escape the tear gas and fight, but Artillery finishes him off with its flamethrower. Leaving the charred skeleton where it lay, the robot sprinted up the hill and leapt to the roof of the 4-story cellhouse, where Letter of the Law was still trying to get in through a maintenance door. He put his tools away and drew his twin laser tonfas.

A squad of armed guards entered the cellhouse with Mr. Fox halfway up the stairwell. Taking fire, Fox asked Singularity to release all the prisoners on the lower levels, and the guards were overrun before they got to do much else.

On the roof, Artillery fired a rocket propelled grenade at Letter, but missed. Letter struck at a key point on the already-damaged robot, which collapsed into a sparking heap.

After a fairly awkward introduction, Mr. Fox convinces Tara Byte to follow him up to the roof, where Letter is still beating on the broken robot, screaming "I! HATE! YOU! DAD!". Apparently he's got some things he needs to work through. Leaving the ashy remains of their fallen companion behind, Mr. Fox, Letter, and Tara Byte escaped the island and the ensuing prison riot in the L-icopter. 

Enterprise Justice Solutions #14

click to embiggen

This session's crew:

Mr. Fox (a superspy from a distant future in which humans are extinct)

Deathgun (a supersoldier from a different future in which A.I. has enslaved humanity)

Zachary Tooth (a size-changing test pilot who hates Chance Ryder for fucking up his family fortune)

I'm skipping a play report for #13 because the first half of the session was planning a prison break and the second half was "acquiring" a fishing boat. The less said about how that part went down the better honestly.

So this session began with Zachary turning on the news to see a high-speed nautical chase underway, with several police boats in pursuit of a fishing boat that looked exactly like the Orca from Jaws. 

The helicopter-borne news camera zoomed in on one of the suspects and pointed out that he appeared to be wearing a quite elaborate fursuit. Zachary didn't know who Mr. Fox was, but he did have reason to suspect that Fox was somehow involved with Dr. Sarah Tonin, an underling of Chance Ryder. His interest piqued, Tooth jumped into his helicopter (he's still rich, just not RICH rich anymore) and headed toward the harbor.

Meanwhile, rather than engage the police in a firefight, Fox and Deathgun decided to try to lie their way out of it. They allowed themselves to be boarded and told the cops that they were ATF agents tracking down a source of powerful and highly illegal energy weapons. When there turned out to be a laser pistol (Mr. Fox's) hidden below decks (where Mr. Fox had hidden it), the cops let the pair go but confiscated the weapon itself.

Once the cops had dispersed, Zachary Tooth approached in his helicopter, set it to hover a good distance above the fishing boat, and jumped down onto the deck. He grew to twice his size as he fell and landed ready to fight. Once Deathgun and Fox explained that they don't work with Sarah Tonin and in fact have been actively fucking up her operations (and those of her many clones), Tooth decided to help them with the prison break instead.

They approached PenalCorp Island from the direction of open ocean. The boat's CB radio crackled to life, warning them that they would be fired upon if they did not reverse course. The team claimed they had a life threatening medical emergency on board, and the only hospital they had any chance of getting the patient to in time was the prison hospital on the island. 

After a brief pause they were instructed to approach shore and drop anchor. There was a squad of armed guards covering them from the beach as a pair of drones carrying a stretcher picked up the "patient" (Mr. Fox, with a shrunken Zachary Tooth hiding in his clothes).

Fox ran off when the nurses started trying to take off his "fursuit" and realized there was nothing wrong with him. The guards on the beach tried to arrest Deathgun, who of course opened fire. Several airborne combat drones were launched to pursue Mr. Fox. Zachary, pretty much left to his own devices in the confusion, emerged from the pile of Mr. Fox's clothes with a thumbdrive which contained a copy of Singularity, the first true generalized A.I., on whose behalf the team was here trying to free his mother/creator Tara Byte.

Tooth quickly uploaded Singularity at the nearest terminal and the boy quickly spread throughout the island-wide network, deactivating combat drones and searching through records to find Tara's cell. He discovered that the prisoners were being shuffled around in a way consistent with some biological experiment, and revealed that the warden was none other than Dr. Sarah Tonin. (well one of her anyway)

To be continued…

Hero Quest 1

There were three kinds of games I got into as a youngin that were adjacent to traditional TRPGs before I ever heard of D&D. CYOA books and the slightly more advanced (as in they had game stats) Lone Wolf Series. Interactive Fiction games like Zork and the other text-based adventures produced by Infocom in the 70s and 80s. And a board game called Hero Quest.

If you aren’t familiar, this guy will tell you all about why it's great:

This is the recent cash-in Hasbro used to launch their own crowdfunding system:

And a couple bootlegs people made:

source

source

There’s also dozens of crafters on etsy selling custom and replacement components of the game, from the board, cards and funky dice to the furniture and minis. So really there’s no great reason to keep giving Hasbro your money over this.

(i have the reboot version because i am a hypocrite and a fraud).

Anyway, someone built an in-browser map editor for Hero Quest and I’ve been making quests for it. There’s also no reason you couldn’t use this adventure with DCC or some other version of D&D.

click me for the pdf

If you’re already into HQ you might have noticed that I’m using terminology from the reboot (abomination instead of fimir) and the map tileset from the original game. Congratulations, have a cookie.