Nightcrawlers Revised Design Diary - Characters

Welcome to the first entry into a new design diaries series for Nightcrawlers - but this time, it's for a revised edition!

The revised edition has no set release date, but it is intended to be a revision/expansion of existing material. It also has no set name, but I'm throwing some around.

Anyway, I'm going to go through each chapter and talk about the changes I have made/are going to make. First up: Characters!

As far as the actual character creation goes, there is one change - the crew can create a crew goal that gives everyone a level if it is accomplished.

The more significant changes are in the broods, but most are minor. The exception is the addition of two new broods: the Ghoul and the Mutant! These are cutting room floor broods that I had considered for the original edition, but now they have been worked out and are ready for daylight (or moonlight, as it were)

Created: Mostly the same, except I have clarified their power regain slightly 

Demon: No major changes

Faerie: No major changes

Ghost: Ghosts can be damaged by salt even if they are incorporeal

Ghoul: The first new brood! Ghouls are your classic flesh-eating undead, the original source material for modern zombie myths. The Ghoul is fairly animalistic, gaining bonuses for attacking in swarms and navigating underground. They hunger for flesh and are weak to strong acids and solvents.

Gillman: Made some clarifications that they gain power through destroying things OUTSIDE of combat. Their starting edge has also changed to the new Amphibious, and they gain a new ability called Frenzy

Mortal: No major changes 

Mutant: The second new brood! Mutants are meant to fill the role of Jekyll and Hyde, the Invisible Man, and so on. They're good at maintaining a low profile but fairly unstable and easy to rattle. They also start out with a random edge, which I think is cool.

Revenant: They get a slightly updated description saying they are "preserved undead", just to make it a little more clear that a Revenant can be a mummy just as much as an Eric Draven-type

Vampire: No major changes 

Warlock: The Familiar ability has been slightly clarified and expanded on, as is The Paths drawback

Werewolf: Their Lunacy drawback has been revised, and now they DO change at the sight of a full moon. That was a drawback I always felt I didn't do justice, so now it's there. It still does not mean time needs to be tracked through lunar cycles, but it can make for dramatic moments.

Nightcrawlers Designer Diary Pt. 1 - Characters and Broods

Hello all, and welcome to my first part of a post-mortem design diary for my splatterpunk game, Nightcrawlers! If you haven't picked it up, get it here or here or here in print.

I wanted to write this series to give an insight into my design process and why I did things a certain way. I've thankfully gotten many kind words for the game, but I just want to show everyone what goes into making a game. I hope you enjoy!

Why Black Hack?

Nightcrawlers uses the game Black Hack as its main engine, but it wasn't originally that way. It started as a World of Dungeons hack that never saw the light of day, then over to a Swords & Wizardry White Box game that didn't see much development beyond some notes.

I chose Black Hack eventually for a few reasons - it's simplicity, it's wide amount of support material to crib and take inspiration from, and the small-but-mighty nature of the game. I worked on Nightcrawlers for literally almost three years, but my dev cycle when I changed to Black Hack took maybe 6 months.

Why Nightcrawlers?

I love monsters, man. Ghouls, ghosts, horror movies of all stripes, whatever. My problem is I don't love most play-as-monsters games. The juggernaut, World of Darkness, is too brooding and too unfocused. I wanted violence, aggressive music, sex and drugs - I wanted mixed monster crews! I felt that WoD and similar games were becoming power politics with magic, which is ok for some but not for me.

I also wanted a game of punks and optimism. Monsters are an easy stand-in for oppressed groups, and I wanted the game to be about finding brotherhood, power, support, and solidarity among outcasts. Punks fight for a better world even with the odds stacked against them, and I wanted my monsters to do the same.

Nightcrawlers is a modern love letter to those WoD heartbreakers of the 90s, where shedding blood while listening to Alice in Chains was all you could ask for - games like The Everlasting, Nightbreed, and the proto-WoD Nightlife. Nightcrawlers actually started as a retroclone of Nightlife, and I owe Nightcralwer's creation to it still.

Character

Most of what is in the Character chapter is expected: stats, classes (in this case, Broods), backgrounds as skills, etc. However, there are two aspects of Characters that I think make Nightcrawlers stand out from other Black Hack-derived games.

The first, though it seems minor, is Nature. I struggled to figure out how to include features inherent to undead and spiritual beings for each Brood without overtaking their drawbacks and abilities. My answer was simply adding another character aspect: Nature. It's not a complicated rules rider, but it shows that sometimes adding a rule can simplify everything.

The second important aspect is the Goals. Experience in any RPG can go many different ways, but Black Hack mostly goes by the "progress when the GM says approach." This is totally valid, but I wanted players to be more engaged in what their characters did. Goals accomplish this by not only implying a character's backstory but also setting the course for what they want the game to focus on. The Goals mechanics mainly were taken from Dancing With Bullets Under A Neon Sun, which is a great game.

Broods

The Broods themselves probably had the most work done to them in design. I see classes and character options as the real bottlenecks for RPGs - they define what a character can and can't do more than stats, skills, etc. I'd like to do a shout out to Karl Stjernberg and his game Rad Hack, which informed a lot of my design decisions

The first big hurdle was just what Broods to cover. I obviously wanted the horror classics and and an even number to fit over the spreads. For a long time, I was going to have 12 Broods - the Revenant was going to be more like a zombie, and I would have added a Mummy and a Jekyll and Hyde-type Mutant. They got scrapped because I couldn't get the design how I wanted, but they may make a return sooner rather than later.

The next hurdle was defining what the brood could do and what it was weak against. This wasn't just a mechanical thing, but a narrative thing. For example, vampires have many variations in popular culture, so I had to decide what Nightcrawlers' vampires were like. I tried to keep to the common denominators of weaknesses and powers (vampires being weak to the sun, demons being weak to holy objects, etc), and I looked at other "play as monster" type games for ideas. 

The scaling of the brood was also important. I wanted characters to be defined by their Edges rather than whatever inherent abilities they have for being a werewolf or ghost or whatever. Most of the scaling is in Edges and Spells, not in Special Features or Drawbacks. Health and damage were similar - I didn't want anyone significantly outclassed, so they mathematically stick close together.

Naga for OSE

Another quick OSE post for you - decided to stat out some Naga for your slaying pleasure. Pretty basic enemies, but nice to have around

Naga

Creatures with large snake bodies and human heads. They have various temperaments, but they are all intelligent and magical.

Guardian Naga

AC 3, HD 11*** (44hp), Att 1 x bite (1d6 + poison + constriction), THAC0 11[+8], MV 150’ (50’), SV D6 W7 P8 B8 S10 (11), ML 11, AL Lawful, XP 3,500, NA 1d2 (0), TT A

• Constriction: When a bite attack is successful, the guardian naga wraps around the victim and begins to squeeze, inflicting 2d4 automatic damage immediately and on each subsequent round.
• Poison Spit: Causes death (save vs poison). Can spit up to 30’
• Spellcasting: Can cast spells as a 6th level cleric. 

Spirit Naga

AC 4, HD 9*** (36hp), Att 1 x bite (1d3 + poison), THAC0 11[+8], MV 120’ (40’), SV D8 W9 P10 B10 S12 (9), ML 8, AL Chaotic, XP 3,000, NA 1d3 (0), TT B

• Charming Gaze: Save versus spells at –2 or be charmed: move towards the naga (resisting those who try to prevent it); defend the naga; obey the naga’s commands (if understood); unable to cast spells or use magic items; unable to harm the naga. Killing the naga breaks the charm.
• Poison: Causes death (save vs poison). 
• Spellcasting: Can cast spells as a 3rd level magic-user and a 2nd level cleric

Water Naga

AC 5, HD 7** (28hp), Att 1 x bite (1d4 + poison), THAC0 12[+7], MV 90’ (30’)/180’ (60’) swimming, SV D8 W9 P10 B10 S12 (7), ML 8, AL Neutral, XP 1,250, NA 1d4 (0), TT D

• Poison: Causes death (save vs poison). 
• Spellcasting: Can cast spells as a 5th level magic-user

Wilderness of OSE: Barren, Hills and Mountains

I have been reading Old School Essentials lately, and I was curious how the encounter tables in the game kind of illustrate the world implied within OSE. This is inspired by the great set of articles from James Mishler called "The Original D&D Setting" (link). I'm going to go through OSE's encounter tables (using the Advanced Fantasy Referee's Tome) and see just what the tables imply.

Today, we are going to start off with the first entry: Barren, Hills and Mountains. Though Hills and Mountains are self-explanatory, Barrens seem to me to be more like dry mountains or badlands.

Initial Encounters
The initial encounter list is interesting: both dragons and humanoids are more encountered in these highland areas than any other terrain. There is also no chance to encounter the undead.

Animals
The animals entry has a lot of what you would expect: cave bears, mountain lions, hawks, wolves and so on. There are also some oddities: gorillas - which exist on mountains, but only in Africa - lots of snakes, rock babboons, and white apes. This gives me a vibe similar to a mountain range like the Rockies - dry at the bottom before becoming more alpine at the peaks. The apes are a bit of an outlier, and give a bit of a prehistoric vibe.

Humans
Bandits and brigands make up a quarter of human encounters here - bandits are normal thieves, while brigands are more vicious outlaws. There are also entries for neanderthals, going back to the prehistoric bent. Berserkers, which I always equate with vikings, are common too. Strangely, no basic adventurer parties are found in the mountains - only experienced ones.

Humanoids
A preponderance of giants exists in the mountains - in fact, you can encounter any giant save for fire giants. Ettins, dwarves, titans and gnomes are also common, with no real surprises. An interesting thing is the appearance of both scorpionfolk and yetis - I think this again backs up the more Rockies type range.

Monsters
The through-line with the monsters of the mountains is that most of them can fly - in fact, I think only the xorn and leucrocotta can't fly. There is a further fusion of desert and alpine creatures here with the sphinx, but it may also just be because this is also the barrens table.

Summary
Overall, the mountains of OSE are a little less savage than their OD&D counterparts. They are still dangerous and home to berserkers, cavemen and giants, but very few prehistoric animals. Using the prehistoric table, however, could inject more of that lost world feeling into them.

Next time, we'll go over the City and Settled Areas table!