Instruments of Om - Modern Occult Setting Overview

So I thought I'd start off this modern occult setting by giving you a broad overview of the setting. It cribs a bunch of ideas from WoD Mage (mostly Awakening), but I feel like I made it my own and is cool/metaphysical enough to stand by itself.

The basic idea is that the universe is sentient, kind of. It's more like the fabric of the universe is all powerful and somewhat knowing, and the term for this power is "Om" (after the 'noise of the universe' of a lot of Eastern religions).

The Om is the entire universe, but it can't really influence anything; it's just there. So the Om created the Councils and the Fundaments.

The Fundaments are inherently 'human' realms, related to the four classical elements. The Fundaments are really the 'make up' of Om, and these Fundaments created humanity. These are the most basic building blocks of reality, with Om representing a kind of 'quintessence'.

The Councils control the more fringe, but still important, aspects of reality. There are three Councils, each ruled by an Arcana. The Arcana are indeed based off the Major Tarot, but the actual Arcana existed before their labels did. Each Council (named The Court, The Forum and The Judge) has three Houses underneath them, each of which is ruled by two more Arcana. Thus, each Council has seven Arcana.

Each House also controls a Realm Beyond, a metaphysical realm where their chosen aspect derives from. Those will come in later when I describe each Council in turn.

So for millions of years, this worked. Then humans gained sentience, and things went to pot really quickly. The Fundaments grew much more powerful than the Arcana, and they became capricious and jealous. They basically fractured off and started an all-out war versus Om and its Fundaments. This war was staged both on the cosmic arena and on Earth. The Arcana released all manner of terrible creatures, fell magic and disasters across the universe.

The Om was losing, so to remedy this, it invested some of its power in both chosen humans and rebellious creatures of the Arcana. These champions became known as Instruments, but there was inevtiable infighting both within the factions and between the humans and the otherworlders (their factions called the Order and the Cabal, respectively)

The Instruments needed humanity for one reason or another, so though they often fought during lulls in Arcana attacks, they would still band together in unlikely teams to stave off these cosmic threats to humanity. What's worse is these attacks came in waves, and many Instrument leaders fear the largest attack ever is just around the corner.

So that's where the game starts. You are a human/monster/mage/whatever, who get together in ragtag groups to fight the Arcana for the good of the Earth and the good of the universe. Ideally, you start off with only knowing that you are fighting creatures from other worlds; as your characters reach higher levels, you learn more about the 'truth' of Om and the Arcana.

Expect Settings Soon

Good news, everyone! (Hope you read that in Prof. Farnsworth's voice)

I'll be churning out some setting stuff soon for some excellent games. I'll have two settings in Blacky the Blackball's upcoming FASERIP game (I'm also drawing an alternate cover, which rules), and I'm also going to be banging out a modern occult setting using the game Sigil and Shadow, which is still in beta but is based on the same system as Barebones Fantasy and Covert Ops.

All three are very cool and its nice to write/think about this stuff again. I am actually going to chronicle the occult setting here, which should be a good bit of content

Thanks for sticking around, everyone!

Blood and Justice - Character Creation

I'm currently working on a Google Doc (private at the moment) laying out the bare changes and mechanics of Blood and Justice: Superheroic Roleplaying Game, so I thought I'd take you as I go along.

For those of you that don't know, Mutants and Masterminds, the game B&J will be based on (Yes, I'm aware of the risque acronym, but I like the title Blood and Justice too much to give it up), uses a point buy system to build your characters. M&M calls them Power Points, but since that term is not OGL, I have renamed them into Justice Points.

You get an amount of JP based on the Power Level of the campaign, which at the standard Level 10 is 150 JP. These points can be spent to increase your attributes, buy skills, feats and powers, and attack and defense bonuses.

I'm changing some stuff around, though. In M&M, improving your saves (Fort, Reflex and Will) was a power, which is very silly to me. Instead, I've made increasing your save bonus part of the core JP purchase.

I've also added the Soak value, which was originally Amazing Save (Defense). Since I plan to use damage dice in B&J, this Soak value is basically a passive defense that will eat up damage inflicted on you. 1 JP will give you two points in Soak, meaning if you spend 8 JP on Soak, you'll have 16 Soak (ignoring the first 16 points of any attack).

Most of the JP costs have remained the same from M&M, but I am currently trying to figure out skills. Instead of the 40 skills in M&M 1e, I am going to use 14 skills from the 3rd edition of M&M (not including the combat skills). This means that less skills do more, so I'm altering the JP cost for 1 point of skill rank to either cost 2 or 3 JP (leaning more towards 3)

Anyway, this will all come out in testing, but it seems fairly solid to me. Next up I'll talk about attributes, which aren't too different

Blood and Justice - Planning

So like I said, I am starting some preliminary work on a rules-lite hack of Mutants and Masterminds 1e for Blood & Treasure, and though try as I might, some things in B&T just can't work on the levels that M&M can escalate too.

So what's staying in B&T?

- All of the combat system, including movement, encumbrance and so on
- Status and environmental effects
- Advantage/Disadvantage

And what's not

- Reverting to 3.5 skill ranks
- Reverting to 3.5 saves

And what's new!

- A full adaptation of the HP damage rules from M&M, including Soak rules and better integration of knockback
- Possibly a sample setting
- Hopefully reduced feats as well
- Removal of Amazing Save as a power and being a core component (ala M&M 2e)

I tried hard to keep ranks and saves and rolls as is, but it's not really feasible, especially at higher levels. So really, I'm just standardizing skill rolls, which I don't feel is a large issue

For feats, I'm going to do away with pure skill bonus feats, as the system can already hit high levels without them. I'll also knock out any feats that don't apply by being too specific (like Blind Fight)

Stay tuned as I figure out more

What Do You Get...

When you combine Blood and Treasure with Mutants and Masterminds 1e?

A little something called Blood and Justice.

Keep your eyes peeled to this space for more

Silent Legions Region Creation Pt. 1 - The Fell Gods

"Excuse me, ma'am. Which way to the
 local Silver Twilight Lodge?"

Kevin Crawford, the mad genius behind Stars Without Number, Other Dust and other awesome stuff just released a Kickstarter for Silent Legions, a Lovecraftian sandbox game. How awesome! I backed instantly, and I am in the process of rolling up a region thanks to the beta. I thought I would chronicle that process here.

The Fell Gods

The first step is to make up your Lovecraftian pantheon. I rolled up one that includes two pantheons, one of three gods and the other of two. The three god pantheon has the aspect of Monotheistic, meaning the three gods are really an aspect of one god. The second pantheon is Dualistic, meaning that the two gods war with each other.

The Monotheistic god has the aspects of Controller of Time, Controller of Plants and Controller of Thirst. The Dualistic gods are a Controller of Decay and a Creator of Corpses, After some brainstorming, here is what I came up with

Monotheistic Pantheon

Though seeming as three seperate deities by cultists, Rnaao, Huak and E'dhurthalelo are all aspects of Yata, the Albaster Silken Eye.

His aspect of Rnaao, the Ashen Lord of Dusk, is focused on the dim hours of night where it seems the night comes alive. Rnaao feeds on the fears of those at these hours, stretching these hours cosmically. Those aware of the Deep Black now that midnight doesn't stretch for an hour, but days at a time.

The Huak aspect, also called the Living Lust of Thorns, represents an almost sexual devotion to plants, a complete surrendering of body and soul. Plants are stalwart in time, simple yet always active, and Huak admires this, spawning terrible mutated, half-sentient plants who feed on, and even mate with, worshipers

Finally, E'dhurthalelo, the Writhing Tyrant of Sorrow, is the less dominant aspect, and represents the eventual drying out of the cosmos, as stretched time and demented foliage absorb the lifeforce of the universe. E'dhurthalelo is inevitability itself.

Dualistic Pantheon

Kelzabhar, the Pontifex of the Hungry Mouth, seems to endlessly hunger for the sick and the rotting. Infecting his followers with terrible gangrene and rot, he feeds off their pain and life force as they writh. However, their suffering is his lifeblood, so he makes sure they live in agony.

Itha-glaq hates Kelzabhar for this reason. Called the Emerald Deviser of Smoke, his shrewd method of conjuring the undead into massive armies herded by servitors requires the bodies that Kelzabhar keeps alive. What the undead are for or where they are is a mystery, but this secret war is all too real.


Pretty neat stuff so far! Up next is alien races, so stay tuned

Hell on Earth Reloaded Alternatives

So you may be saying, "Oh Tanner, those mechanics are super awesome, but what if I don't have the Sci-fi Companion."

Well I've come to answer your question!

Power Armor

In all honesty, the three suits of power armor in the Savage Worlds Deluxe book hew pretty close to HoE power armor minus all the bookkeeping headache. The Scout, Battle and Heavy Suit are all builds I would not be surprised to see most often in the Wasted West, and you can do small finagles to add variation. I'd reduce cost, though (Scout is $8,000, Battle $9,000 and Heavy $10,000). You'd probably only find power armor with the Steel Knights though. I'd also probably just do 1 pound of ghost rock can power up the armor, and I'd keep the sealing-in-from-elements.

This may show up in play for me, actually, but the answer is there.

Bionics

Like HoE: Reloaded says, you can rip the mechanics straight from the Smith & Robard's supplement. You won't be getting some things like skill chips, but that's not too big of a concern. I would keep most of those mechanics, though, in terms of installing bionics and etc. Also, scrappers don't suffer the normal Charisma loss that "augers" in the Weird West do.

Both edges I created are also still appropriate, I think.

Addendum: http://www.peginc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37153

There is a good post by Clint of Pinnacle Games explaining why they went a more archaic approach with suggesting Augur tech rather than Scrapper tech, and it makes sense to me. But do what you will!