4th Edition and WoW in a nutshell:

Rethinking Shadow Gates

Back to a gaming subject, a break from dreary politics and policy.

1) The name. I'm not satisfied with Shadow Gates as a title for the project. It doesn't have enough menace. I'm thinking Nemesis Gates not only rolls of the tongue better but is at the same time more ominous. Also it brings in connotations of destruction via the Nemesis Hypothesis and the Harbinger of the Old Ones; Ghroth. Much better suited for a post apocalyptic project.

2) Historical Inspiration. I already knew that I wanted the campaign to take place in the ruins of a once great Human Empire. This has naturally lead to seeking inspiration in similar historical periods like, for example, the Dark Ages. The Confederation (my setting's nod to everyone's favorite Coalition Sates) was originally going to be largely based on the Holy Roman Empire.

Now I see I haven't gone back far enough. Instead I will be using the Frankish Empire of the Merovingian kings and Carolingian Emperors as my main inspiration. Instead of Franks crossing the Rhine into the Roman Empire we will have Yanks, ugly American exiles who left the great sprawling cities of Columbia and San Angeles to live in Coventry, basically a great reservation in flyover country. Now they are picking up the pieces after the Joachite Wreckers have leveled the cities of the ancien regime. Of course the Joachites also (knowingly?) completed a ritual to summon forth powers vastly older than Man and opened the Gates.

While the Cheyenne Commanderie will be modeled after the Exarchate of Ravenna, a last military outpostof the Eastern Empire of Terra Nova. Also there will be winks and nods to the Enclave of Fallout fame.

The Xothians of Mu, Kali, Atlantis, and Lemuria will stand in nicely for the ominously rising Moors. Their hordes of Barracuda fish-men and Gargoyle star-spawn chanting 'there are no Gods but the Old Ones and Lord Cthulhu is the prophet of their return.'

And from the frozen farthest north sweep baying packs of Gnophkeh warriors thirsty for blood and hungry for warm flesh. From the fury of the Northmen, oh Lord, preserve us.

I must stop myself from going on and on, there are so many possibilities; Pendragon of Mars, Serpent Men of the southron jungles, the Risen Empire of the vile Nephren Ka, the fungus from Yuggoth, Dinosaur Swamps...

3) Anyway play will initially focus on adventurous Yankish warriors questing forth into the ruins of ancient cities looking for lost technology or striking deep into the quisling Sorcerous Federation to destroy some nascent threat to the free peoples of Earth.

Independence Day

Freedom is not Free.
Liberty is Purchased with Blood.
Rights grow from the barrel of a Gun.

The best way to celebrate is to go and buy a firearm. Doc Savage out.

Ancient Battles on the Tabletop

Ok, Ulot (my roomate, he's not much of a blogger) and I might be getting into ancients miniatures gaming, depending on if we like the local commuity and can find time. We've settled on Field of Glory in 15mm. I'll be playing my idealized late Principate (193-211) Romans (Septimus Severus) and Ulot will take a late 100's year war free company, (pikes, longbows, bilmen, men-at-arms cavalry).

If this project comes off it should be interesting. I remain curious to see how heavy armored 'Dacian Wars' legionaries and clibinarii 'boiler-makers' will fair against bow, pollax, and chivalry.

Battle!!

Shadow Gates Combat

Ok, here's how combat is going to work in this campaign.

As in RAW BRP, combat runs on % dice. However I'm tweaking this slightly. Firstly, the results of a d% roll are read as 00-99, not 01-00. Secondly, instead of success, special success, critical success etc running off of fractions of your skill I will be using a margin of success system. This will be a simple 'blackjack' roll high but don't bust framework; your margin of success is the tens digit of your d% roll. For example; your skill is 53% and you roll 29, your margin is 2. This MOS will function as a direct damage bonus to attacks in combat, higher skills tend to result in deadlier attacks. Critical successes will remain; any roll that exactly equals your effective skill level is a critical success. While a roll of 99 is always a failure and a fumble.

Parrying, dodging, and other opposed actions will be resolved by comparing margins of success. An attack with a MOS of 3 beats a dodge with a MOS of 2. A critical dodge always succeeds, although a critical strike will still deal 1/2 damage.

I will be using strike ranks pretty much as written. Automatic weapons fire I'm still thinking on. Currently I think I'll have short bursts/semi auto add a bonus to strike (also effectively a damage bonus remember), long burst/semi auto fusillades be area effect, and having an option for suppressive fire to force a willpower test or stay in cover.

Science fiction and Meaning

Bitpig has an interesting rant on why he like Japanese written SF. It still has people in it.

I agree. I like my SF to be operatic. Stories must be about people. And rayguns and rockets :)

Let's talk Characters (Shadow Gates)

Ok I'm thinking of tweaking BRP as written in the handy-dandy, oh so shiny new BRP book. I'm going to be adding a handful of WHFRP/Dark Heresy, a pinch of GORE, maybe even a dash of Palladium...

Anyway, I'm thinking of eight or nine broad classes that determine what Jobs (professions) you can enter and what activities benefit from an experience bonus.

Jobs determine what skills and Talents/Feats/Perks (whatever) one has acces too, and increase in 'Job Rank', which opens up new character advances (skills, attributes, abilites, so on).

So here's a quick sekeleton I've put together;


Fighter 'Man at Arms'

• Boomer (Combat 'Borg; Robocop, Briareos Hecatonchires)
• Samsonite (Augmented Soldier; performance enhancing drugs, organs, prosthetics)
  
• Powered Trooper (Powered Armor operator)
  
• Land Warrior (generalist warrior)
  
• Armored Crew (armored vehicle crewman; tanks, APCs, IFVs, walkers)
  
• Flyboy (combat aviator)
  
• Scout (wilderness path finding, tracking, survival, light infantry)
  
• Assassin (infiltrate, kill, exfiltrate)
  

Skilled Support, tech 'Technical Specialist'

• Field Medic (healer, paramedic)
  
• Tech-Spec (item repair and item craft)
  
• Hacker (opens doors, gets the info, spoofs sensors, etc)
  
• Drone Rigger (gathers intel, fun with remotely controlled robots)
  
• Scavenger (jury rigger and forager)
  
• City Rat? Ganger? (not sure where I'm going with this idea, streetwise maybe)
  

Skilled Support, expert 'Academic Expert'

• Field Scientist (smart guy, TONS of skills)
  
• Field Surgeon (medical doctor, sometimes, you need one)
  
• Field Researcher (three words; research, monster lore, weakness)
  
• Genius Spark (mad scientist! makes gadgets that shouldn't work, but do)
  

Charisma/Persuasion 'Negotiator'

• Face Man (confidence trickster)
  
• Diplomat (negotiator)
  
• Spy (secret agent man)
  
• Fixer (Mr. Connections)
  
• Entertainer (traveling performer)
  

Mystical Support 'Mystics'

• Mystic (dabbler in Magyck and ESP)
  
• Summoner (Evocation Mage; summon and bind)
  
• Lesser Talent (minor ESPer; more skills fewer powers)
  
• Greater Talent (major ESPer; fewer skills, more powers)
  
• Sorcerer (Invoker of Alien Gods)
  
• Enchanter (Enchantment Mage; buff, debuff, control)
  
• Cleric (Invoker of the Gods of Men)
  

Fighter/Tech 'Military Speicialist'

• Special Forces (skilled warrior and leader of men)
  
• Combat Hacker (warrior with electronic war capability)
  
• Military Engineer (construct or tear down defenses)
  
• Field Armorer (warrior jury-rigger)
  
• Road Warrior (wheel-man, speed-demon, transporter)
  
• Tek Paladin (power trooper with scavenging, jury rigging and science!)
  

Fighter/Mystic 'ParaSwords'

• Psi Knight (not a jedi)
  
• Spell Sword (classic fighter-mage)
  
• Spell 'Slinger (battle-mage)
  
• Warrior Nun (fighter-cleric, female)
  
• Battle Brother (fighter-cleric, male)
  

Fighter/Persuasion 'setting appropriate name here'

• Smuggler (Han Solo, Jack Burton)
  
• Six String Samurai (Bard; with a sword, and a steel guitar)
  
• Black Operative (James Bond; wetworks, sabotage, high action, plausible deniability )
  

Mystic/Tech 'MagiTech'

• Techno-Mage (Mad Spark inventor-mage)
  
• Alchymist (transmuter of matter)
  
• Churigeon (bio-wizardry)
  
• Meta-Physician (scientist-mage researcher)
  
• PsychoScientist (psi-scientist)
  
• Psi-Comp. (psychic hacker)
  

Shadow Gates: NA pt III

Further thoughts on the CSA, SG:NA, and post-apoc. in general.

The Confederated States in this setting are obviously intended to be the great power of the North American continent, but lets look at what we mean by that. In a post-apocalyptic setting (especially this one), even the great (human) powers struggle to survive. Nor should one consider the CSA to be a monolithic, or even fully settled society. It is feudal in nature, and much of the territory claimed is still untamed wilderness or crumbling ruins. One of my problems with many Post-Apoc games and stories is that they are quickly filled with so many new powers and principalities, each a modern nation-state, that adventuring in a good ole' frpg sense is almost impossible. I'm trying to avoid this with Shadow Gates, and leave even the major player on the continent barely controlling its own territory and no more centralized than the Holy Roman Empire of the Hapsburg's.

Unlike its first main inspiration (the Coalition States from a certain other game) adventuring is quite possible in Confed territory. The local lord doesn't have the man-power to waste sending search parties after the beast rumored to be attacking his Vaki's livestock, nor search the ruins for rumored artifacts. And the State Guard and Confed Army units in the general area have much more important things to do. Also this Confed isn't quite as automatically murderous towards 'undesirables' nor as obviously inspired by the worst excesses of the early twentieth century with its gulags and einsatzgruppen.

This Confed. is willing to give 'demi-humans' a chance. What are 'demi-humans'? Any vaguely humanoid entity that the local, on the scene, authority decides to tolerate. The more you look like a base-line pure human the more likely you are to be tolerated, especially if you can provide a useful service to the local community. Obviously this varies greatly, Le 'estate du Nord is the most open and tolerant, while Little Dixie is much less so. Anything with tentacles, rotational symetry, or an odd number of appendages is likely to be shot on site wherever you are in the Confed. Psykers are also tolerated within the confed, as long as they are members of either the Confederate Army Psi-Corps, or the Mentalist's Guild, and don't get on the wrong side of a vengful feudal lord when on his property, or get lynched as a wytch by superstitious vakis...

Magyck is a special case. Unlicensed magyck, which is to say virtually all of it, is punishable by death. Magyck is equated with contact with ruinous powers, and the Confed is mostly right. Although not all, or even most sorcerers have dealings with vast an alien intelligences, all forms of what humanity ignorantly labels as magyck are inherently hazardous to human health, spirit, and sanity. There is not much functional difference between a a sorcerous rampage on behalf of hidden masters, or one brought on by sheer murderous lunacy.

There are some forms of magyck that are more controllable however. Non-Euclidean Meta-Physical Engineering, aka tekno-magery is one. Another licensed, bonded, and guilded path to the mysteries is Para-Combinatorial Chemistry, also known to the layman as Alchymy. Additionally, clerics of the Elder Gods of Man, and even the servants of Apostolic Palace, have been known to exercise gifts and boons of their lords, creating effects quite similar to that of a rogue sorcerer, but with tacit approval of the Confed. Emperor Rothschild isn't concerened that a Catholic Theurgist or a Cleric of Mars uses techniques similar to sorcerers, only that they have shown no threat to himself or his people.

Rough history of powered armor

Frame, Powered, Load Bearing (LBPF 'el-be-pif')
[powered frame]

Frame, Powered, Combat (CPF 'cee-pee-eff' or cee-pef')
[combat frame]

Exoskeleton, Powered (PEx 'pex' or 'pexo')
[combat exoskeleton]

Suit, Powered, Combat (CAS 'cas' or 'cassie')

[powered armor]

Infantry Fighting Armor, Airmobile (IFAA 'eye-fah')
[humanoid combat vehicle]

Quick Image Roundup

Confed Propaganda























Public Art, Service Announcement, Propaganda.

All are one within the Confed. Vakis and City dwellers are admonished that starvation is a bad harvest away, and there is no room for shirkers or malingerers.

Freeholders are taught that they are pride of the Confed and better than Vaki scum.

Land-lords are encouraged to spur their properties to increased production and efficiency, and to keep their military retainers fully trained and equipped.

Everyone is constantly reminded that the lands outside the Confed are wild, untamed, and dangerous. Full of nebulous evil monsters. Humanity against a world gone mad!

























Chiopolis



































Chiopolis is an island of advanced technology in a post-apocalyptic world.

A cyberpunk sprawl of high rise tenaments surrounding a cyclopean armored acrology where the rich and pwerfull direct plans within plans.

In the canyons of plasteel, admantine, and rocrete it is always twilight and raining.



D-Town


















D-Town is an industrial dieselpunk city, but also the capitol of the largest single Human State on the North American continent. It is a study in contrasts; dirty smoke belching coal fired factories and sweeping parks, avenues and epic statuary and architecture.




















The people of the city are proud of the world they have built, and confident that with the guidance of the Emperor, there's nothing an Iowan can't do.


























The City is relatively clean, and of new construction because in large parts it is a new creation, a phoenix rising from the ashes of the ruined old world.

Provisional Republic of Iowa














The greatest economic fact of North America



































Stitching together the Confederacy with plasteel rails and adamantine armour

Federation of Sorcery































Rumors abound that the inhuman princes and lord-mages of the Ohio river Valley have banded together...

Confederate Army

















Advanced elements of the First Armored Grenadiers scout outside of the ruins of Little Rock.

Seen here with a Mk IV 'ironfist' half track mounting a 'ma-deuce' pattern phased plasma machine gun.
























A Confed Strider-jock strikes a pose for the camera. Humanity's Champion.

























The hidden, hardened bunkers that house the General Products emergency assembly plants are just coming on line. Already General Mills breads and cereals are dominating department store sales all over the Confederacy and beyond.


General Dynamics tanks, aircraft, and even space-craft are still in testing.