Enter The Child

Just because I’m at a hotel in Bellevue for OrcaCon, doesn’t mean work stops on our upcoming games. I just got an amazing set the sketches for The Child for The Sun Below: That’s How the Light Gets In. Are they creepy enough? These are from the talented artist Chloe Wenz.

The Child is a creepy NPC that haunts one of the three dimensions of the transdimensional ship Gravitas Mislaid.

Meanwhile at the con, I’m running two adventures The Ripper of Shriveport (13th Age) and Journey to the Sun Below (Numenera). I’ll be playing in a few other games, and in my spare time writing and planning new products.

Coming Attractions

What’s Next from Dread Unicorn Games?    You should always be able to see what’s for sale here: https://dreadunicorngames.com/shop-for-games/

• Right now we are working on The Gods Have Spoken, a 5E supplement full of gods, creatures, factions, magic, and more. If you missed the Kickstarter it should be available for sale soon. https://dreadunicorngames.com/games/the-gods-have-spoken/
• Our 5E intro adventure that shows off The Gods Have Spoken is The Gray World. This one-shot is the perfect tool to introduce players and GMs to our new content. https://dreadunicorngames.com/games/the-gray-world/
• Part of The Gods Have Spoken Kickstarter is the Gods and Icons Upgrade Pack for the 13^th Age Roleplaying Game. More divine art and creatures that tie in with the gods. As writers roll off of The Gods Have Spoken, some will roll onto the Upgrade Pack.
• Then we have That’s How the Light Gets in, a Numenera adventure for all tiers. The Sun Below is failing, and it’s up to the players to get it back on line. Which involves visiting more than a few dimensions. https://dreadunicorngames.com/games/thats-how-the-light-gets-in/
• After that will be an adventure (name TBD) in two versions. One for 5E, and one for 13^th This will be the start of a number of linked adventures. One link between these adventures is intrigue. If you can’t win a straight up fight with everyone, you’ll need to win some allies and maybe run a few con games. This will be Kickstarted, so watch for it!

Who Wants a Cypher-Kiss?

Good News! CypherCaster issue 5 is Out!

Cypher Caster Magazine, issue 5. With ton of great content, including and interview with Bruce R. Cordell, Shanna Germain, and Dennis Detwiller.

Plus an instant adventure by yours truly, Kiss of Death! Kiss of Death, a Numenera adventure, which takes place in Branu's Kiss, a watery world floating in space found in Into the Night from Monte Cook Games.

You see Numenera fans, I haven't forgotten you.

Plus an article on cypher limits by Marc Plourde, another Into the Night instant adventure, this one by James Walls, and a Strange recursion by Rustin Coones & Scott Robinson.

Check it out at DriveThruRPG.

Art for Art's Sake

A little preview of the icon Baron Von Vorlatch for Gods and Icons. The baron rules the barony of Borgostnya for Emperor Roland. He likes the night.

And here's the new art for The Sun Below Bundle: City on the Edge and Sleeping Lady. Eventually That's How the Light Gets In will be there as well.

Happy New Year from Dread Unicorn Games!!!

Dread Unicorn Games in 2016

Are you going to OrcaCon? I am, please say hi! I'll be running a few 13th Age games for Fire Opal and attending as much gaming goodness as I can.

Our first products are sister titles: Gods and Icons for 13th Age and The Gods Have Spoken: Deities and Domains for 5E. Why two? It turns out most of the writing and art will work in both products, so why not?

Here's where we are now with Gods and Icons and The Gods Have Spoken:

• The writing is 75.09% done (+ or -). Vanessa has done a great job with three pantheons, and I'm excited to plug in their relationship to the icons for Gods and Icons. There will be holy swords for paladins and religious items for all the divine classes.
• I've been playtesting Gods and Icons for a few months now. Soon I'll give it to the real playtesters to try out.
• We're going to Kickstart the gods! You'll be able to pick either or both titles as your rewards.
• Since this is our first kickstarter, we're going to be cautious. We don't want to promise what we can't deliver! For example, we're not going to do our own printing and shipping. For physical copies, we'll use Drive Thru's Print on Demand and let them do the shipping.
• But we will have lots of great stretch goals: more content and more art!
• Speaking of art, we have a great cover artist! Justin Wyatt has agreed to do our cover art, which will include three gods and three icons. Yay! Gaming art fans will recognize Justin from The Sun Below: City on the Edge where he did interior art and The Sun Below: Sleeping Lady, where he did the amazing cover and interior art.
• Some of Justin's work:

After the Kickstarter, our next title will be a return to Numenera with another adventure: The Sun Below: That's How the Light Gets In. There the players will confront what happens to the underground world when The Sun Below starts to fail!

After that? We're not telling! There is so much going on in roleplaying right now. We've got a lot of great ideas, but first, let's get these three products out the door.

Happy New Year!

John

Instant Adventures, Part III -- GM Intrusions

Let's return to the subject of Instant Adventures. In part I we took them apart and saw how to build our own. In part II we had an example using Numenera, complete with toadling queens. Today let's talk about GM Intrusions. You need to have GM Intrusions for your players to get xp and to keep the game interesting. We want to be sure to use GM Intrusions in our own Instant Adventures.

Many GMs new to the cypher system say they forget to do GM Intrusions. Hint: pass out physical objects for xp when you do a GM Intrusion. Use cards, poker chips, dragon tears, whatever.  The deck/pile of xp objects in front of you will remind you to keep on doing it.

Monte Cook Games sells xp decks; I like them, but anything will do.

Almost all creatures for Cypher System games come with a built in GM Intrusions. (All of the creatures from Dread Unicorn Games' Cypher System books do.) I like to start combat with a GM Intrusion. It shows off a cool ability and I can do it again if the players roll 1s.

Now if you just made up a bunch of creatures, like my toadlings in the example Instant Adventure, you can make up GM Intrusions for them. Let's go!

• Margrs and Nibovian Wives are from the Core book, and already have GM Intrusions in their callouts. See pages 244 and 249. The Nibovian Wife's GM Intrusion is an escape, which is great for avoiding combat, particularly if time is running short.
• Toadling GM Intrusion: a swarm frenzies, attacking at 2 levels higher (6) and doing 12 points of damage.
• Toadling Queen GM Intrusion: She spits a glob of acidic poison at a character's face. Level 6 attack for 4 points of ambient damage, plus the character has to make a Level 6 Might defense check or take another 4 points of poison damage.
• Toadling King GM Intrusion: He hops into the air and lands on a character. This is a level 7 attack which does 5 points of ambient damage and dazes them for one round.

Note: these attack GM Intrusions are extra attacks, so the creature can follow up with it's normal attack.

Now, let's make up some social GM Intrusions:

• Uncle Liskal GM Intrusion: a character in Liskal's chamber must make a level 6 Intellect defense roll or for the next 28 hours refer to the AI as "Uncle Liskal" and feel compelled to impress the machine. "When Uncle Liskal hears how I dealt with this problem, he'll really be impressed." (Probably not.)
• The Song of Love GM Intrusion: if none of the male characters are falling for Klaru's charms, use a GM Intrusion to change one of their minds. "Despite you better judgement, there is something about her that makes you throw your caution (and clothing) to the wind."
• Faux pas with the Queen GM Intrusion: the slimy floor is too much for a character, causing them to slip and fall, right onto one of the queen's offspring. The little toadling croaks in pain!
• Jealous King GM Intrusion: If the characters fixed the moon pool to gain the queen's help, she plants a slimy kiss on a character before they go to see the king. He sniffs the character "You've been fooling around with one of my queens! I can smell her on you!"

You get the idea. Things to make the game a little more interesting, to keep the story exciting, and to give everyone at the table a good laugh. And xp.

John WS Marvin Interview Part II

Lex Starwalker, of Game Master Journey podcast fame, released the second half of his interview with me. We talk about Instant Adventures (here's my Part I and Part II) and other support for improv adventures, Gods and Icons for 13th Age, intrigue in 13th Age, The Sun Below: Sleeping Lady, and more. Give it a listen. You can hear part one of the interview here, where we talk about montages, fronts, and The Sun Below: Sleeping Lady.

Talk to the Fish: Instant Adventure -- Part II

Last time in Planning to Improv: Make Your Own Instant Adventure, Part I, we looked at what goes into an Instant Adventure. In Part III, we look at GM Intrusions for your Instant Adventures. Here's the example using Numenera. 

Notes:

Ignore the references to mooks in Numenera unless you have Dread Unicorn Game's The Sun Below: City on the Edge, or The Sun Below: Sleeping Lady. If you don't know how to run an rpg montage, see the Sun Below adventures, or the Blogger’s Roundtable of Doom: The Montage.

Summary

Liskal is a stunted machine intelligence that would like to repair itself. Its mind is truncated by being forced to exist in our dimension. In the past its mind was transdimensional, but that was a long time ago. Liskal needs a sphere from Le Temple De Toadue to start to reclaim its own mind. It can’t go itself, but it can teleport people. Which is where the players come in.

Details

• Liskal wants the sphere of night.
• The sphere is at Le Temple De Toadue.
• The Toad King regards this sphere as a prized possession. The Toad King can’t remember his own name.
• Klaru, a Nibovian Wife is in the temple. The Toad King fell for her tricks once, not again. Yet he lets her stay.
• There are 3 Toad Queens. Queens Deepi, Onea, and Sloomah.
• Sloomah wants the moon pool fixed. If the PCs do that, she can help convince The Toad King to give up the sphere of night.

Starting Point

The PCs have heard of the giant stone fish, high in the mountains. As they approach, they see blinking lights inside the mouth. Inside is a busted up synth column with 2 shins per PC strewn about.

Wrap Up

The PCs acquire the sphere of night, either through force of arms or by enlisting Queen Sloomah’s help. They bring it back to Liskal, who awards them each 15 shins and a cypher.

Future adventures: If you like, Liskal is not done, and you can use the machine mind to teleport the PCs all over the ninth world and beyond as it slowly builds itself up, piece by hard to get piece.

Keys

1. Toadling servant of Queen Sloomah. Will try to take PCs to the Queen.
2. Moon Pool Power device. It’s a head-sized green gelatinous egg that glows.
3. Dead explorer with a detonation (desiccating) cypher. Journal’s last entry: “I got away from the Toad King, now I just have to survive his damned poison.” If found in the fish, it will mention teleporting on “a fool’s errand for a machine.”

Making Instant Adventure Notes:

Each node should have a way for the PCs to interact with it. A person is either at a place or will find the PCs. A location should have something to do there.

What Not To Do

I ran an Instant Adventure using 13th Age rules, and had three "people" (a nasty cultist and two devils) that could find the PCs. And an item that could summon a really nasty devil as a key. I put all four in the secret temple location, and it was a mess. Not every person who wants to find the PCs has to show up at the same time. Doh!

March Playtesting

If you are interested in playtesting The Sun Below: Sleeping Lady, email me. System: Numenera Author: John WS Marvin Deadline: April 30th Description: As the explorers investigate disturbing goings on in the numenera mines of Orb Mountain, in the world of The Sun Below, the dangers start to escalate fast. Can the players stop not one, but two apocalypses? Or should they choose one? A Numenera adventure for all tiers.