The Mushroom Press Design Blog

Y’know I promised myself that I was going to update this blog twice a week.

Anyway, good news everyone! We just had another successful playtest of Brahamanda!!! The report from this one is awesome. It was ran by David Ramirez, and man did he elevate my material. I’ll let you guys check out his comments from the report he sent me:

“Now, a brief synopsis of the adventure.

- First Sun Wukong and Monk Tripitaka arrived at the Lord Androsphinx’s City of Vice. Like many thousands of new arrivals, they had to wait outside the massive gates and pass. Here we find our friend Pigsy, who also a player character, he had recently been demoted by Lord A, into being basically being middle management in the city, and he was not happy about it.

- At the gate, I described how some animal-people, were being mistreated, and that generally they were a lower class of people living as servants and slaves. Sun Wukong did not like this, I must add that I just mentioned that to add flavor to the scenery but it ended up driving the whole adventure. Again, it was great to be able to improvise within the module. 

-Basically, Wukong didn't like seeing his people like that and started rousing them. The Monk also thought that the animal people were being abused so he didn't do anything to stop the rebellious monkey and stood back. Pigsy arrived on a flying platform and tried to calm things down like an asshole, by activating some ultrasonic device that would affect only Animal-people. 

-Again Wukong was not happy and he trashed the flying vehicle, Pigsy ran away and into the city and called the guards, which I modeled using the bandit minions, I described them as some sort of low-level automatons.  Wukong decided to storm the city, so he destroyed the giant gates with his Power Pole. The animal people went into a frenzy and stormed the market.

- Pigsy realized that the cheeky monkey at the gate was no other than The Monkey King, someone even his boss, a demi-god talked highly about. So he tried contacting his boss, but the lord was inside his pleasure chambers in a massive demi god orgy, there was no way to reach him and nothing that happened outside would affect him until he decided to come out. Since the chamber was basically its own dimension.

-By the way, Pigsy had an explosive collar that prevented him from ever leaving the city without the deity's permit. But there was a guy inside the pleasure barracks that could deactivate such devices. Wukong entered the city followed by the animal people that had killed their masters, as well as other disenfranchised like robots, other types of slaves, and people who just wanted to fuck things up. The Holy Monk just followed them calmly and didn't do anything; this was the natural result of their bad karma.

- Wukong went straight after Pigsy, seeing him as the slaver of his people. Pigsy did what he does best: negotiate. He told the Simian King that he was simply middle management, that if he kept him alive and followed him he could take them with the one that could free them all from their controlling devices, including freeing Wukong from his crown. And so the Monkey King accepted and followed Pigsy into the pleasure chambers. Along the way they met up with the swordsman Iron Star, who was also a PC. He was a swordsman obsessed with death. He realized that if he followed the Monkey he would find an epic death so decided to join them for the time being.

- Meanwhile, the mysterious yet honorable gunslinger Red Herald came after the Holy Monk. I added some stuff to Red Herald, first, I made her a woman, although no one would be able to tell unless she would take off the mask as her costume covered her whole body and she spoke with a distorted electronic voice. I also gave her a motivation, she was very sick, almost dying (her costume was also a life support system, a la Vader) by harvesting the DNA or organs or whatever from the Monk she could save herself. But I made her super polite and honorable, so she challenged the Monk to a duel. I also gave her flute with which she would play a Sergio Leone style sad tune.

- So they start their duel on the main street. The Monkey King felt an intense pain, it was the crown’s way of letting him know the monk was in danger. So he rushed to help with Pigsy and Iron Star in tow. Monkey and Iron Star both attacked Red Herald without even saying a word. The Monk stopped them and told them this was an honorable duel, but now Red Herald had something against both of them because they humiliated her.

- The Monk and Red Herald continued their duel uninterrupted and we really got to use the system here. The fight was fast and fluid, it was really fun, both of them got some really good hits, we used the health system and conditions. In the end, the fight ended up in a kind of draw as the Monk took off her mask with one hit and saw she was in very bad health. Both decided to continue some other time.

- Meanwhile, in the pleasure quarters, our pseudo heroes found all sorts of bizarre sexual situations. Both Pigsy and especially Monkey, who had a thousand years of blue balls were… very distracted. But Iron Star wanted nothing to do with the pleasures of the flesh. Then he was contacted by an evil presence that both the Monk and the Monkey had sensed since they arrived in the city but that neither could pinpoint.

-This evil was the Void Servant, which I decided to use a sort of sinister presence manipulating everything instead of a physical adversary. This being which presented itself as an Anti-Buddha of sorts told Iron Star that the only way to bring absolute peace to the galaxy was to kill everything in it. It was the only true way to stop suffering, and so Iron Star had to find the Buddha and Kill the Buddha and also if possible bring Wukong, the avatar of chaos, to their side.

- For this, I gave Iron Star a Legends of the Wulin style imbalance. Basically as long as he acted like a man with a dark purpose and was actively conspiring or attacking the monk he would get an extra two points of recovery. The Monkey King got the same offer than IS but he told the Anti-Buddha to fuck off.

- They found the guy who could deactivate the collar at an S&M chamber. He was a disgusting worm, literally, he was a worm-like Preta, a hungry "ghost", a lowly being controlled by its own desires and vices. The Monkey and Pigsy roughed him up a bit but he seemed to enjoy it too much. Pigsy showed him what was happening in the city and then he freaked out, he knew that when Lord A would come out everything would be effed. He could not do anything with Monkey's Crown or with the animal people's devices (there was no master control or anything like it, he would have to deactivate each device individually). He created a smoke screen natural attack to run away. Monkey and Iron Star were hit by the attack but Pigsy defended successfully. He struck a deal with the worm: he would let him escape, meet him on his workshop and the worm would deactivate his device if Pigsy promised to protect him (this also created an imbalance on Pigsy, if he failed to protect the worm he would suffer a penalty, I don't remember what).

At the end, they all converged at the techno pagoda. Before we continue I have to point something out, we kind of broke the rules in one thing. I was basically allowing them to keep recovering chakra even in non-combat rounds. So all of them, especially Monkey, had a lot of juice.

-So they all converged in the Pagoda. Monkey believed he would find the worm who betrayed them, Pigsy, and the literal worm there. Iron Star knew he would find the Monk there. The Monk thought he had to go the center of the whole city and confront the demi-god or something, I don't know and Pigsy was meeting the worm at his workshop inside the Pagoda. Outside the pagoda there was chaos. All the rebels were trying to break in but there was some sort of spirit seal. The mechanic guards had formed a sort of Voltron and were trying to defend the gate. Then this demon jumped from inside the pagoda, did a super hero landing and challenged Monkey (I used the Red Demon stats, but described him as an elephant demon from Jade Empire).

-Monkey fought the demon and it was cool, Iron Star attacked the monk who was very weak from his previous fight with Red Herald and Pigsy used his "everyone ignore me, I'm no one" to sneak into the Pagoda undetected (since he was management he was allowed in by the seal).

- Since the Monk was in danger, the crown gave Monkey a massive headache again, so he had to leave the fight against the demon to save his master's bacon. Here I allowed the demon to use one of his unused sets for an attack of opportunity, so he basically attacked twice in a round, which I wasn't allowing until then. Instead of attacking Monkey Iron Star tried to convince him to take his side. He also tried to convince the Monk to kill himself as it would be best for everyone. It didn't work out.

- The techno pagoda was in chaos but Pigsy managed to find worm. He deactivated the collar and both made a beeline for the transports. Then Lord Androsphinx came out from his orgy. The feline god descended from above breaking through every floor of the Pagoda. The only people that worked for him that he could find were Pigsy, whom he immediately assumed had something to do with the chaos in his city, and worm. So he started giving them some shit.

- The god came out of the Pagoda by the roof with Pigsy and Worm in tow. He saw the chaos, and in a fit of anger flattened the whole pagoda with one palm. The argument-fight between Monk, Monkey and Iron Star was interrupted. The god calmed down and still wanted to find a peaceful solution, so his city could still be saved. So he sent Pigsy to convince Monkey to leave without causing further trouble.

- Monkey went all Mosses and said that he would go if the lord let all his people go. Pigsy told him that, and Lord A said that if he let Monkey come to his city and cause such a riot and then let him have everything he wanted, he would be the laughing stock of the gods, so he would just let him leave with half his people and of course he would kill the other half. Pigsy was almost ready to relay this message when Monkey got tired of waiting and decided to fuck everything up.

- He cashed in all of his chakra and turned giant. I know, I know, he shouldn't have been able to do it without opening at least another chakra. But I basically ignored chi limits and opening chakra rules on that session, because I really wanted to see him turn giant. He also used an amazing roll, in conjunction with Focus and a tech to get a 7 Rank set, plus being giant added a rank so he did an 8 Rank attack on Androsphinx. Basically an atomic bomb level of destruction on the city.

- This is where our first session ended.

-Now for the one from yesterday.

- Wukong was Kaiju size and was literally going ape shit on the city (what was left of it). Most of his followers were dead. Most of everyone was dead. Androsphinx came out of the rubble totally pissed. Since he only had one power I gave him the technique set called Katriyana Duty. In this session I also gave Pigsy the Trickster Monkey build power set and Iron Star, now calling himself Ascending Black Star, the Devil Star technique set and Red Herald, who I gave to yet another player that arrived late to the session I gave his full set on techniques.

- So the fight between Androsphinx and Wukong was epic. At first the god had the upper hand, even while in regular size, but then Wukong scored a massive blow and sent him flying with the Knockback feature of the Power Pole (while also doing like 30 damage or so). Then the Monk did a “Black Widow on the Hulk” lullaby and calmed Wukong so he returned to normal size. He saw he had killed the same people he wanted to free, and that had been his problem his whole life: that he basically lost his temper and fucked shit up. But what can you do?

- Then, The Ascending Black Star attacked the Monk, but between him and Pigsy they managed to kill him. (Because we had another game scheduled last night, we did not used the advanced wound health system, so basically we just went up to point 4 in the health rules. Once you were done with all your health boxes you were done for good, no second round of health). Then Red Herald appeared and attacked the Monkey with a really good attack, but he got an even better defense and tanked it. The Monk and the Gunslinger continued their duel and surprisingly Red Herald killed the Monk (he was already weakened from the fight with Ascending Black Star, by the way, on the second session I resent all health, but it was a session that was mostly combat and had very powerful techs). The Monkey was about to attack Red Herald when Lord Androsphinx flew back.

Then the most unexpected thing happened. Freaking Pigsy made a great attack (6 Rank) a mix of a good roll, focus, and one of the trickster techniques and he basically killed LA. But he couldn't go just like that, so I had him do his Eye of Ra attack (I cheated a little bit there, giving him the roll he needed to make the attack, but he had to go out with a bang. I always cheat with bosses, and I think this should be suggested in the game, like bosses have an advantage, like they may already have Focus filled with whatever number the GM may need, and/or a partially filled Chakra Pool, things like that to give them an edge) Monkey King was hit hard but he was still standing without much of an issue. Pigsy survived with four HP and Red Herald with 2, so they were pretty beaten up. The game ended with me declaring the Monk was not the dead, but needed medical attention urgently and the four of them escaping the desolation of Androsphinx in a space ship (The adventure right now seem to happen in a single planet, I want to make it so that each scenario is a planet).

 In the after credits, Ascending Dark Star was revived by the Anti-Buddha as something else.”

So that’s the report. I could not be happier about how much fun everybody had. Again I have to stress how much awesome badassery was added to the module I wrote (which was bare bones) by David. That guy knows his stuff when it comes to Wuxia!

His crew seemed pretty rad too. One of our other designers, Victor Andrade, was playing in this one too. I know that guy is awesome from personal experience!

So, talks are shifting from the core design to the release. Good news for everybody who’s anticipating the game!

Also, although I am currently in the process of uploading this module to the Patreon site for certain backer levels, there is some talk about a general release with quick start rules. So, looks like you guys will have some options for picking it up here in the very near future!