http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2014-11-10-16.43.51.jpg http://goo.gl/goJdNq
Multiple Dermosian and Andacian units will clash between the trenches this weekend in the Battle of Bronx Park.
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Bubbles4-Feat-Img.png http://goo.gl/XBpQ9W
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/NumeneraFeatPic.png http://goo.gl/4RFK8x
Click Here for Part 1
Click Here for Part 2
Click Here for Part 3
I’m sorry. The things we saw that day… they come back to me in my dreams. Dreams that sometimes overtake my waking mind. Like that poor, tortured creature that we… we just…
Like I was saying, we reached the bottom of the ladder and found ourselves in a chamber that was emanating a vacillating, greenish purple light. It was hard to think, and at the edges of my vision I thought I could see… things… but when I tried to look at them directly, there was nothing there. The light seemed to come from strange writings that covered the entirety of the domed vestibule. Leve tried to read the words written in those horrific hieroglyphs, and threw up. He said he couldn’t understand the writing quite yet, but he was on the verge. There was something terrible, yet beautiful… enticing… and very, very wrong about them.
Leve failed to read the writing, rolling against a Difficulty 5 (Challenging) intellect check, even after spending 2 intellect points to reduce the difficulty to 4 (Difficult).
Whether that awful skittering sound was in our imagination or not, we decided to keep moving, quickly delving further into the ancient complex to get further away from the ladder room. We went on, minute after minute, trying to keep our minds focused. The psychological muck that this place seemed to be giving off, made wading through your own thoughts and perceptions difficult… exhausting… like carrying a heavy pack through a bog. Occasionally, our thought processes would speed up jarringly, and our senses would perceive the cavern around us in startling detail and deafening volume. We heard a noise that was something between growl and scraping sound, coming from down a darkened side passage. Drawing our weapons, we went to investigate.
As we walked, we began to see something moving in the dark. We stopped when we saw, in terrible detail, an intelligent abhuman called a murden, caught in glistening, wormlike tendrils. They appeared to have the murden restrained, with their ends penetrating the murden’s body, pumping fluid in, and taking fluid out. Its eyes… I’ll see its eyes in my dreams for the rest of my life. And the thing is… the AWFUL thing is… murden are psychic, leaking their thoughts out around them. When we got close, we were given flashes of sensory input. Terrible images. Feelings. Pain. Terror. It was screaming. Screaming into our minds the taste of a madness born of a terror unthinkable.
Murden are villainous, deceitful, opportunistic creatures topside, but the creature we found here was no villain anymore. It was just a tortured sentient screaming to be saved, released from the hell of its current existence in that nest of horror, wormy tendrils reaching down its throat… its nose… ear holes… everywhere. This is where I lost my soul. Where we all lost our souls. We didn’t know how far out the tendrils could reach. We didn’t know if the tendrils felt our presence yet. We were scared. Terrified.
We left that poor thing there in the web of glistening tendrils. We left it there screaming, alone in the dark.
There was no roll involved here, ladies and gents. The decision to leave the creature in the clutches of the awful tendrils, alive, was one made unanimously by the players, in character, through role-playing. The bystanders watching us play appeared to both agree with, and loathe the decision. The players spent minutes trying to justify the decision, more to themselves than anyone else, methinks. The decision to explore the dark side-passage to see what was there, even though it was obvious that the way forward was the way onward, earned them XPs for discovery. When you’re playing Numenera, your GM will throw you little hints and clues that something is there to discover. Keep your wits about you while you’re playing or you could miss an opportunity like this.
Unexpectedly, it looks like there’s going to be more than four parts to this, based on how the scenes in the adventure played out. So…
…To be continued….
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/RPGK-14_Feat_Img.jpg http://goo.gl/IODRA8
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/RPGK-13-FeatImg.png http://goo.gl/3HUwkE
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Bubbles3FeatImg.png http://goo.gl/2ElPXR
http://img.youtube.com/vi/ZTzA_xesrL8/0.jpg http://goo.gl/xOzir9
It’s almost time for Halloween, Central Canada Comic Con, and JimCon. That means it’s the end of the convention year for Shared Weave Games. This time of year always feels like new-years to me, as I’m sure it does for many others who count the passage of time by convention seasons.
For me, this year has been one of change, introspection, nostalgia, and creative endeavour.
We saw the launch of a new (and somehow old) edition of Dungeons & Dragons. We’ve seen incredible new RPGs like Numenera, and 13th Age come into their own. Feng Shui is getting a new edition <https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atlasgames/feng-shui-2-action-movie-roleplaying-game-by-robin>, and Battletech is making a comeback on the table. It’s a renaissance on the tabletop that, like the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons, is both invigoratingly new, yet comfortingly familiar.
This renaissance isn’t only happening on the tabletop. We’ve also been watching a resurgence of beloved genres on the digital platform thanks to the phenomena of Crowd Funding, that we’ve been told were long dead by “industry insiders”, and corporate executives, due to what they claimed was “a lack of fan interest”.
We’ve seen fantastically successful campaigns by inXile Entertainment <https://www.inxile-entertainment.com/> which have fed a resurgence of the classic CRPG with titles like Wasteland 2, and Torment: Tides of Numenera.
inExile is still taking pledges directly so they can add even MORE content to torment. The current stretch is to fund the re-addition of “The Gullet”. Go on over and get in on that. In on pledging. Not into the gullet.
The Space Sim genre (in my opinion, the best digital role-playing platform on the planet) is being outright resurrected thanks to the legendary Chris Roberts, and the his company Roberts Space Industries. They had an unimaginably successful crowd funding campaign for it’s drool-inducing game, Star Citizen.
I’ve reminisced on the past, and realized that major mundane life events, changes, and milestones have coincided with major changes in my Gaming Life. Moving through elementary school to junior high, junior high to high school, and high school to adult life led to changes in gaming groups, and introduction to new games. Financial hardship led to me needing to develop games, and/or to repurpose games I already had.
Clue: The RPG anyone?
Since my extended brush with death that my family calls the dark period (2008-2011), I’ve reevaluated every priority I’ve ever held. The disease is currently in remission, but it may come back at any time and do me in, slow and painful. I got to thinking… if that happens, none of the games I created when I was poor will ever be able to be enjoyed by anyone else. My children will never know the kinds of things that their dad made. I will have left nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTzA_xesrL8
In 2010, I started frantically working on writing down all of the games, systems, and worlds that I have in my head, desperately trying to get them out. While none of them are ready to be released yet, I feel better for having writ them into a place where my work can at least be continued, should the disease rise from its torpor. Over da’ Boards is the closest to my heart, as it’s the first game I ever created (I was 11 years old), but it’s the most complex of the games to release, and still needs rigorous testing. It’s going to be Shared Weave’s flagship, and after playing it constantly over the last four years, I can honestly say that you’re in for a treat when the first whistle blows.
In the process of getting the games out of my head, I think something came loose, like the cap of a fire hydrant. I started this blog, a doodle page, three comics (The Sacred Ice, RPG Knights, Bubbles!), a vlog, and I’ve been busy rewriting famous songs into gaming filk. All of this on top of writing and running a 13th Age campaign, a Pathfinder campaign, various one-shots to run demos for Numenera and other RPGs, AND write enough down to be an entertaining panel guest, when I’m invited to speak.
While the site and the company were launched as a platform to sell games, ironically, it’s the blog, the comics, and the appearances that have garnered the site the vast majority of its regular readership. If you’d asked me a year ago if I’d have a thousand regular readers for this kind of thing, I’d have told you that you were a few sanity points short of a cultist.
All in all, 2014 has been a great year. I’ve met hundreds of amazing people, in this vast family we call the gaming community. While we’ve heard some terrible, hateful things come out of the vocal, psychotic fringe of our community, I am proud to say that I never saw anyone treat anyone else with disrespect or unkindness in all of my travels. The people around me welcomed me, and everyone else around them with open arms and open minds, regardless of differences.
When I wrote the dedication for JimCon last year, I celebrated all of you, and thanked you for the life I’ve had. I’d like to thank you again, and ask that you help heal our community by spreading welcoming acceptance, kindness, and love to our brothers and sisters of gaming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cEdqWZi13I
Game on!
Doc
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/RPGK-12_Feature.png http://goo.gl/5hSM7j
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SWG-FeatureImage.jpg http://goo.gl/dsg4vw
It’s been a year since I began this grand experiment, and it’s expanded well beyond its original purpose. I’d originally started the site as a place to sell the games that we’re making, but perfection in game design is a painstaking and protracted process. It became clear that it was going to take a lot longer to perfect Over da’ Boards than I thought, so I was paying for domains and hosting for a site that wasn’t actually doing anything.
It was when I was out on the ice helping teach my sons how to play hockey, that a thought came into my head:
If I was a player in a bloodsport hockey league like the one in Over da’ Boards, how would I feel about being a little league hockey coach, let alone the coach of a team that my sons were on?
It was then, out on the ice during the frigid cold of a rural Manitoba winter, that The Sacred Ice was conceived. I brought the idea to Ben, and he was enthusiastic about the project. I designed the scenes and wrote the story, Ben took what was in my head and put it into pictures, and we brought Chantal in do do backgrounds and shading. Soon the first panel was up, and sharedweave.ca was on its way to becoming what it is today.
Since then I’ve imported Doc’s Box from Blogspot, shot and edited some silly talking-head videos with Ben and called it Ben Over and Doc I.T., added 2 more comics and a doodle page, and gave Ben a page to show off his Warmachine mini-mods, Iron Kingdoms fan fiction, and whatever else he wants to do.
Even with a long hiatus in the middle that forced a complete re-launch of the site, we’ve managed to garner a regular readership of over a thousand, with 2500 new visitors a month:
I’d like to take a moment to thank all of our regular readers for coming by and reading what we write, and checking out the things we make. I’d also like to thank everyone who came by the site to check us out and give us a chance. It’s nice to know that people are appreciating what we make. It keeps us going.
I’d like to take a moment to ask a favour of our fans:
We are tiny organization, with no more than three people, so we can only yell so loud. If you like what we’re doing here, make some noise. Spread the word. Share the links. Talk about us. Come by our social media groups and talk about whatever nerdy thing crosses your mind. Participate in our forums. Visit us at the conventions.
Above all, let us know what YOU want, and how we can do better.
Time out’s over. Game on! 
Doc
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Screenshot_2014-09-15-16-33-54-1-713x1024.png http://goo.gl/6OTrza
Apparently, patch weekend went well.
Doc Wilson
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Bubbles-2-FI.png http://goo.gl/0DVTve
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Bubbles-2-FI.png http://goo.gl/0DVTve
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Game-Designers-Nightmare_21-1024x263.jpg http://goo.gl/7WMyW4
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2014-09-11-21.34.13.jpg http://goo.gl/TtJNce
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2014-09-09-21.52.49-1024x576.jpg http://goo.gl/tDCTfR
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/2014-09-09-21.52.49-1024x576.jpg http://goo.gl/CELhRD
Bubbles, the Biclops Beholder
Doc Wilson
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/NumeneraFeatPic.png http://goo.gl/3CtXrb
(Click Here for Part 1)
(Click Here for Part 2)
“Wait a second Hawmett… there’s something here.”
Benthre’s player succeeded a level 3 (demanding) Intellect roll, getting a 12.
I’d noticed that there was a barely visible seam on the edges of the front of the rostrum, on which stood the great statue of the disturbing hooved and tentacled thing. I tapped the stone with a small crafting hammer from my kit, and sure enough, there was a hidden compartment inside. As I looked for a way to open the hidden compartment, I kept my eyes averted from the statue, for my head swam, and bile rose in my throat every time I looked at it. It seemed there were faces, eyes, limbs, and other body parts in the statue that were there, but were replaced by some other disturbing thing as my eyes moved over the statue’s surface.
As I moved around the side of the rostrum, I noticed that one of the statue’s tentacles reached down farther than the rest. As I placed my hand on it to examine its surface, I heard a “Schick!”, and a round section of stone opened at the end of the tentacle, leaving a suppurating sphincter. I looked over at Leve, and he immediately said, “No. NO. HELLS no. Just… no.”
Hawmett said with a smirk, “You’re the Jack Ben. Get Jackin’.”
“Tragg ME. Fine. You’re both windstripped traggers, you know that?”
It bears mentioning that I ran this game on the main sales floor at our local FLGS, Game Knight Games and Cool Stuff, and at this point people had started gathering to watch us play. Everyone at the table was going “Ewwww” and cringing when I described the sphincter, and so was our impromptu audience. Benthre’s player started looking around the table, and at the bystanders, contemplating doing the unthinkable. “Well… uh… I…. I….”
Everyone was saying “No… no man… don’t do it… oh GOD don’t do it…”
“…… I shove my arm into the sphincter.”
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH!”
Everyone, player and bystander alike, cried out in unison. They cringed, and shuddered, and laughed in glorious disgust. We’d now grabbed the attention of everyone who hadn’t yet gathered at the table.
Incidentally, this was originally a 1 XP discovery moment. I bumped it to 2.
I rooted around in the… canal… for a bit, and found recessed places in the… flesh?… where my fingers could get into. It was difficult, but I contorted my digits into a position where all four of the recessions were filled by a finger. It was at this point I heard a “Click!”, and the front panel popped out a bit. As I withdrew my arm from that horrible place, the slime that I expected to stay on my hand withdrew itself from my arm and back into the sphincter, like when you dangle spit from your mouth and then suck it back in. I think it would have nauseated me less had the slime remained on my arm.
I set the difficulty level of the Speed check to open the lock at Level 5 (Challenging), so Benthre needed a 15 or better. He lowered it one difficulty level by convincing me that his hand, being partly mechanical could bend in ways his fingers couldn’t. He then lowered the difficulty one more step by spending 3 speed points to reduce the difficulty another step. He rolled an 11 against the new target number of 9, and picked the lock.
In the compartment we liberated a good bunch of shins, and some bizarre looking s. One of them seemed to glow, but a point in the middle of it seemed to draw the light toward it. It also had an ominous red switch. We gave that item to Leve. There was a tube with a claw on it, and Leve said that he believed the device to be mounted on the shoulder. We gave that one to Hawmett, and when he put it on his shoulder, it snapped closed, digging into his skin. A cable shot out of it and attached itself painfully to the back of his head, dropping the big man to his knees. Leve rushed to his side, concerned for his lifebound companion. Hawmett gave Leve a reassuring look, and stood up. Wherever Hawmett looked, the tube looked, and he said he could feel in his mind that the tube was some sort of beam weapon, similar to the beams of the trap we’d encountered earlier.
“Ben, you’d better not make us regret joining you in this insane pastime of yours.”
“Passtime?”, I said. “I’m in this to get rich.”
It was only partly a lie. I took the three vials of viscous liquids. Leve said they might have some regenerative properties if applied directly to wounds and lesions.
This is one of the most fun parts of being a GM in numenera. You can make up ANYTHING and hand it to the players. Sure, you CAN do this in other systems, but Numenera is designed to let you do it and not break your players’ suspension of disbelief, and with it their mindset and sense of immersion. Not only that, but as I intimated on Reddit, Numenera = Inspiration. If you’re running dry on creative juice, read you some Numenera. It’s dream food.
We went out to the outer walls of the room to check for some sort of egress. As we found a hallway out of this room, we heard the distinctive scratching skittering of the things we’d just fought off, but from a larger number of them. MUCH larger.
We began to run down the hallway as fast as we could, but we knew we’d never be able to outrun them. It was then that the hallway ended in a hole, and an ancient ladder made of some sort of rope descended down into the darkness. We started racing down the ladder for our lives.
Everyone succeeded in a speed check, but I handed 2 experience points to Leve’s character, and told them that they could hear the rope above them starting to snap, and the bottom was still nowhere in sight. He gave the extra point to Hawmett’s player… and they began to frantically discuss how to get themselves out of this mess. It was then that Bethre’s player saw that he had the Numenera equivalent of an uber immovable rod, called a “Reality Spike”. This thing not only anchors in space, but in time, dimension, and reality. You could anchor something on the event horizon of a black hole if you wanted to.
We heard the ancient rope ladder starting to snap and unravel at a weakened point some place above us. I drove my Reality Spike into the wall, and tied the rope ladder to the Reality spike. We then continued racing down to the bottom of the shaft, and when we got to the bottom, we could no longer hear the skittering of the creatures above. Here, deep in the hollow mountain, under an unfathomable volume of rock, we were bathed in a sickly purplish-green light, surrounded by horrific carvings and a language etched by minds un-sane. Into what kind of nightmare has the Order of Truth sent us, and for what purpose?
To be continued…
http://goo.gl/ZRrznb
Greetings Weavers!
I am posting part 3 of the story style review of Numrnera tomorrow, and I think Ben has more content on the way as well.
Shared Weave’s manga series “The Sacred Ice” is coming out of hiatus for hockey season as well, so stay tuned.
For those of you waiting for Over da’ Boards (the game that “The Sacred Ice” is based on):
The rules are done.
We’re now working on making the rulebook the best teaching aid possible, and we are developing instruction videos to make learning the game even easier.
If anyone is in Winnipeg and surrounding areas who wants to join the OdB Franchise Owner Rules beta, please send an email to doc@sharedweave.ca to get in on the pre-season.
Good night, and game on!
Doc
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/RPGK-10_1-e1409720505676-1024x576.jpg http://goo.gl/SlWs6b
RPG Knights: Newbie Nightmares #1
Doc Wilson
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/2014-08-28-14.47.17-1024x576.jpg http://goo.gl/DyVIJh
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/LHotP-PloughKill_1-e1408679293384-1024x576.jpg http://goo.gl/vwe2Wi
Little House on the Prairie: What Happened To The Blind Sister?
Doc Wilson
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/RPGK-9-444x1024.jpg http://goo.gl/d1yA2r
RPG Knights - Salting the Wound
Doc Wilson
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Goodbye-loyal-friend._2-576x1024.jpg http://goo.gl/Hn22Gq
Goodbye, old friend.
Doc Wilson
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/NumeneraFeatPic.png http://goo.gl/zLAF5U
Sorry about that. Had to take a swig to wet the warblemeat.
Where was I?
Ah yes… I was falling…
…until Leve took a chance and took his foot back. The floor snapped shut, and Leve had timed it so that the beam ports only flickered open, then shut again as I hit the floor. Apparently, the trigger zone of the trap didn’t extend for the entire length of the trap. I was alive, but my underthings were a lot less tidy.
I clung to the wall again, and Leve tested the trigger zone to see how far along the floor it went. A challenging jump… for someone who isn’t me. I sailed over with little effort. Leve made the first jump on his end with no difficulty, but he misjudged the distance of the second jump. The floor opened, and he just barely grabbed the ledge with his fingertips. Hawmett and I dove to the edge of the pit just in time to catch Leve’s arms as he lost his grip. Once we were all safe on the other side of the trap, we took a deep breath, smiled, and carried on into the black.
Ben had the Jumping skill, the difficulty 5 (challenging) jump was reduced to 4 (difficult). He rolled an 18, and got past the trigger zone with ease. Leve’s player rolled a 17, then a 16 to get past the trap triggers. I was actually surprised that he didn’t spend effort on one or both of the jumps, against advice from the other players. I used an intervention to make the situation more interesting on the second jump, and Leve’s player gave Ben’s player the second XP. Leve succeeded in clearing the distance, but I complicated things by saying he only got far enough to grab the ledge with his fingertips. His compatriots had to succeed on a 2 (standard) Speed task to get to their friend before he fell, which they did.
It wasn’t long until the hallway opened into a cavernous room. It was large enough that our torch’s light couldn’t illuminate to the ceiling, or distant walls. I took a glow globe out of my pack, and rolled it as far as I could. The floor had no obstructions to impede its progress, so when it hit the gargantuan three-hoofed, tentacled giant, we all gasped in fear and almost ran the other way, but we realized quickly that it didn’t move… just a statue. We made our way toward the colossal effigy, and about halfway there we noticed that the scuttling noises weren’t intermittent anymore. They were constant, and getting closer. Fast.
Things skittered into the torchlight from the blackness. Perhaps mechanical, as the exoskeleton gave a telltale glint of metal. There was a disturbingly organic nature to the way they moved, however, that made the wrongness of the jittery, scratching skitter of their gait even more unnerving, and the alien way the vaguely arachnoid joints legs bent made our flesh want to crawl free from our bones. Our breath caught in our throats, and tears of terror blurred our vision as two billion years of evolved instinct screamed, “RUN!!!”
Running proved not to be an option. They were coming at us from all sides, and they were a lot quicker than us. It was fight, or die.
Leve powered up and blasted the first with an esoteric wave that he calls “Onslaught”, throwing it back. At that moment, all of the creatures appeared to change direction and vector straight toward him. Hawmett took a mighty swing at the first to reach us, smashing it to the side with his sword. We heard the clang of metal-on-metal, but also the splatter of blood and viscera. The three that made it past Hawmett leapt at Leve. Leve managed to dodge two of them, but one latched on to him, so I bashed it off of him with my mace. As it came free, it tore off chunks of Leve’s flesh and clothing.
Leve blasted one before it could set itself to jump again, taking off a couple of its legs and denting its body. Hawmett crumpled the one he was fighting with a powerful blow, spraying its pseudo-organic juice and innards in an arc. The two wounded Skitterclaws (as I called them afterward in my research notes) missed Leve, but the third, undamaged one latched on. I swung, but Leve was thrashing around, screaming, panicked, so I missed my mark.
The Skitterclaw that was latched on to Leve tried to sting him with some kind of proboscis. It made it through his esoteric ward, but not all the way to his skin. The proboscis then ejaculated a fluid filled with squirming larvae all over the front of Leve’s shirt. Screaming with disgust and terror, Leve managed to blast it, sending it spinning through the air, ripping off more chunks of skin. Hawmett, brutal and efficient, cleaved it in half in midair, spraying sickly, yellowish gore everywhere. I smashed the one I’d hit before, crushing it, and then the three of us made short work of the last one. Leve and I were wide-eyed and half mad with fear, yet shuddering in relief. Hawmett, shaken, but in better shape than Leve and I, wiped off his sword and said, ”We need to keep moving chums. I think the hallway we came though just collapsed.”
To be continued…
The preceding battle was with a group of four Skitterclaws (stats below). The players succeeded a difficult check against fear, then combat went pretty straightforward, with the players rolling exceptionally well most times, and using experience to re-roll when necessary. Since this was a one-shot, they were liberal with its use. In future, I’m going to separate the two types of experience into two types: Session, which are gained through intervention and spent on rerolls, cancelling interventions, and whatnot; and Story, which are given after the session to be used for character advancement.
Designing creatures for Numenera is easier than in any other system I’ve ever played. You decide on a level for that creature, and that gives you a base number of hit points and how difficult it is to hit. Decide how hard the creature hits, if it has any cool abilities, how it behaves in combat, and what it’s primary motivation in life is, and presto! Instant creature. The system is so simple that you can even do it on the fly with very little effort. Again, a boon for GMs who like to improvise.
Skitterclaw
Skitterclaws are a twisted creation of biomechanics that resemble giant, metallic, daddy long legs spiders that have too many legs that growing out of all the wrong places. Even more disturbing is the face, frozen in a rictus of pain and terror, on its thorax. They move with a jittery, unnatural, skittering motion, and their legs bend at unnatural angles. The wrongness of their movement is so disturbing to witness that it triggers phobia-like behaviour. This gets the victim to turn its back to run, which proves futile against this lightning fast abomination. The Skitterclaw can then latch itself onto the unprotected back of its quarry, and inject its larvae into it. The moment the host dies, fleshy Skitterclaw nymphs with faces resembling the victim’s, erupt from the host body and disperse into the wild.
Motive: Procreate
Environment: Anywhere, but mostly in ruins specific to one specific prior civilization in particular.
Health: 9
Armor: 1
Damage: Fear – Difficult check to resist, or flee at best speed away from the Skitterclaw for 3 rounds. Latch (none, but 2 damage if ripped off)
Inject (automatic if latched, challenging might roll once per day to fight off impregnated parasites which do 2 un-healable damage per day. The difficulty can be reduced by 2 levels if a medicine is created with the blood of the Skitterclaw that injected the victim. When the character dies, their body erupts tiny, disgusting, naked Skitterclaws, which scurry away into basements, caves, forests, and other dark places to feed, and grow…)
Movement: long
Combat: Skitterclaws move into their victim’s line of sight, moving in a way that causes fear in their quarry. They then move into melee as fast as possible, and attempt to latch onto a target. If they are latched on, they inject their target automatically without a roll, then scurry off to hide, and replenish their genetic material.
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/RPGK-8_4-576x1024.jpg http://goo.gl/eVYRrh
RPG Knights: Not At GenCon Blues
Doc Wilson
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SWG-FeatureImage.jpg http://goo.gl/2L6RON
A new page for the enigmatic force known as Ben has been added to Shared Weave. Art, Warmachine mini mods, musings, and fanfic are on the menu, in Ben’s Bin!
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/SWG-cv3.jpg http://goo.gl/4FOJMd
Shared Weave fans who are Shaw customers will not be able to get to the site. You may also be having issues with other sites.
Shaw is having routing issues, and they’re currently working on it.
For more information:
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/RPGK-7_4-576x1024.jpg http://goo.gl/zydWfh
RPG Knights: Stupid Space Knight Tricks
Doc Wilson
http://goo.gl/mP24dV
To jet cereal, coffee, or other substance out of one’s nose while laughing.
http://sharedweave.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/NumeneraFeatPic.png http://goo.gl/ghozOl
My name is Benthre, but most just call me Ben.
I’m a Jack. That means I can get through most tight spots with nothing more than a slick tongue, or deft hands. My chums tend to look to me for guidance, so even though we don’t have a leader as such, I’m it when it comes to crunch.
The big man is Hawmett. He’s one of them Glaive types. He’s quiet, and apart from glaring at people, he’s not much for social graces. He’s also obsessively superstitious, which gives him a million reasons to start swinging his Earthshakers at ya’. Still, he’s got some useful abilities because “the numenera sing in his presence”, whatever that means, and there’s a warm and squishy heart buried not so deep inside of the big man.
The one fidgeting over by the bar is Leve. Even for a Nano he’s an odd bird. He’s extremely stubborn, and apparently has a thing for clothing that went out of style years ago, in colours that assault the eye. He has focus issues on anything that doesn’t involve his interests, so he’s useless in problem solving situations, and NEVER rely on him to remember anything. What makes Leve special, and an effective member of my team, is his limitless well of willpower reserves. It’s gotten us out of some spots, and makes his esotera (magic, for the less edjamasticated folk) devastating.
For the Wednesday one shot, the players chose from the pre-generated characters in Vortex. Per the design of the characters’ backgrounds, Benthre chose Hawmett to know his secret, Hawmett’s player chose Benthre to be the one he accidentally levitated, and Leve chose Benthre to be immune to his esotera. It was decided during pre-gaming that all three know each other beforehand, because they’re working for the Order of Truth, as Seekers. They’ve been on a few low-danger missions and wild goose chases until this adventure. Their current assignment has taken them to the bleak landscape of Malevich, on the edge of The Black Range. They’re assignment is to look for a significant cache of numenera located somewhere around a hamlet called Manya. What sets Numenera apart from its peers is the setting. There is more story potential in the Ninth World than in any other setting I’ve ever read. Period. Any style, any genre, can tell its tale here, and skimming the gorgeous rulebook was enough to inspire me to write TWO adventures for the Wednesday one shot.
We’d been travelling for a long time to get to Manya, a little Hamlet on the edge of The Black Range. I swear, if our world needed an enema, Malevich is where they’d insert it. It’s dangerous, the people are dour, and the landscape is bleak. We’d been looking forward to beds and an ale when we got here, but no such luck. We were greeted by raggedy huts made of sticks, mud, and the bone and hide of the herdbeasts that sustain this tiny community. It seems that everyone in Manya is covered in at least one layer of grime, and they look at us with a mixture of fear, hostility, and… hope? As we get closer, everyone bolts into their huts, leaving a single grizzled old man in the centre of the hamlet, cooking skewered meat over a fire. Trying to talk to him was difficult, as the language of The Truth out here appears to have taken a life of its own… the consonants harsh, the vowels held too long, and the “R” appears to have taken on a soft roll. It was like they were trying to sing with a mouth full of mush. After spending a while trying to figure out how they grouped numbers here (some bizarre arbitrary method based on herds and sticks), I found out that over 40 people had gone missing in the mountain passes over the years.
The first challenge I threw at them was social. I gave it a difficulty level of 3 – Demanding. In Numenera, each level adds three to the target number that a player has to roll equal to or higher than. Ben’s player rolled a 19, which in Numenera is an extraordinary success that adds a minor positive effect to the intended effect. I decided that the hamlet threw them a hero’s welcome, built them a hut, and would provide guides. This got them around some of the mountain pass dangers I was going to throw at them later, but role-playing the party, and the discussions in the hut afterward was a lot of fun.
After the party last night (which saw us well fed, and introduced to the most potent alcohol I’d ever tasted), we slept surprisingly comfortably in the hut they built for us. The blanket-beds were so warm and soft, I almost didn’t want to get to work the next morning. Our young guides were already awake and prepared, and the whole town was out to see us off. Funny thing is, it felt… off. Leve put words to the feeling once we were outside of town, whispering it into my ear so our guides wouldn’t hear. He said that he felt like we were being honoured more like sacrifices, than as heroes. There was little to
I had them make a level 2 – Standard) difficulty check as they were leaving. Hawmett failed, Ben succeeded, and Leve rolled a 19. Assigning difficulty is easy. It’s not relative to the skill of the character, but based instead on how hard the task is for the average person. The skill of the character reduces the difficulty of the task. Numenera’s elegance allows a skilled Game Master to run an entire session from a simple difficulty chart, which is handy for a more improvisational GM like me.
The guides helped us climb a particularly treacherous mountain pass. We saw corpses along the way, probably some of the missing people that the elder spoke of. After about four hours, the pass became claustrophobically narrow. After another twenty minutes, the pass opened into a huge cylindrical cup of rock, the sides of it hundreds of feet high. Carved into the side of it was a huge archway, with writings carved around the edge that I wasn’t able to decipher. After bidding our guides farewell, we thoroughly checked the archway for traps and deadly esotera fields.
GM Hint – If you present your players with a mysterious archway, they will spend a half hour of real-time checking it. Try to figure out a way to get them moving without sounding suspicious, or they’ll spend another half hour making sure you’re not trying to murder their characters.
When we were sure it was safe to pass through the archway, we began walking down a huge corridor. It was readily apparent from the creaking and groaning that this structure wasn’t in good shape, and could come down around our ears at any moment. Worse, there were no lights, and it got dark as pitch as we journeyed farther down the hallway. I lit a torch to allow us to see. The eerie orange light of the torch flickered off of the walls, floor, and ceiling, and we could hear things skittering in the dark. Hawmett made an eldritch sign to ward us against evil, and said that the spirits in this place were restless, and possibly insane. They felt wrong.
All of a sudden, the floor of the hallway split in half length-wise, and retreated instantly into the walls. I would have fallen, if it weren’t for Hawmett’s quick reflexes.
Everyone failed a level 5 (challenging) Intellect check to detect the trap, then Ben’s player failed a demanding Speed check to avoid falling. Thankfully, Hawmett’s character succeeded a difficult speed check to catch him.
When he pulled me back from the abyss, the floor returned to its original position. Leve tested the floor with his foot, and found that when you step on the floor, it retreats, and when you remove your foot away from it, the floor returns. Hawmett had a brilliant idea to get past this trap: he would run as fast as he could, jump, activate his ability to levitate, and hopefully his momentum would carry him over the length of the pit. Like I said, useful.
Hawmett went back a ways, then came at the pit area at a dead sprint. He jumped just before what Leve called the “drop zone”. He floated through the air, and had more than enough momentum to carry him over the far side of the pit. The floor stayed in place, and as he gave us a thumbs-up, holes opened on the walls and started shooting beams of light at him. He pin wheeled clumsily in the air trying to avoid them, but through some sort of miracle, managed to avoid getting fried by one or more of the beams. As he passed near the end of the pit, the ports closed and the lasers stopped firing.
I couldn’t let them get by this trap so easily, so I utilized one of the best aspects of Numenera’s system: The GM Intrusion. To make this encounter more interesting, I gave Hawmett’s player 2 experience, one to keep and one to give away, which in this case went to Ben’s player. Doing this allows the GM to complicate the situation. What I chose to do, was modify the trap to detect beings attempting to float over the floor when it’s closed, and shoot lasers at them. This forced him to make a level 5 (challenging) speed check to avoid taking 6 damage. Since he didn’t have zero-g training, the check wasn’t able to be reduced. He rolled a 16, allowing him to avoid being shot.
Well. That was less than ideal.
I had an idea this time. Leve would use his foot to hold open the pit, while I climbed past the trap on the wall. Halfway across the pit, everything seemed to be going well. While the floor was open, the beam ports stayed closed.
And that’s when a piece of the wall gave way, and I fell…
Ben’s player failed his speed check, even while it was reduced a step by the climbing skill that he chose to use his Flex Skill ability on. He gave me the experience point that Hawmett’s player just gave him, and failed the roll again…
To be continued…
Doc
