Making a kung-fu style in Lone Wolf Fists PART DUEX

  

Development of Lone Wolf Fists has resulted in a complete game available at drivethrurpg in pdf form

Yeah it's a plug. But hey; you can play LWF now! So that's somethin'!

Now that I'm on the other side of not only making all of the styles I originally envisioned but ALSO co-creating a bunch with backers, I have an even more refined idea of how to make functional styles for the game. So I present you with the emergent step 4:

Step 4: Benchmark

So we've got a lot of skeletal Techniques and inspiration from the proceeding steps, and that leaves us with this need to link THIS style (whichever one we're working on) to the greater body of styles which compose the tactical arena of the game.

Here's what we've got, and what they're close to in the existing techniques:

Kai shout: scream big, pushes and scares motherfuckers. Breaks stuff

Benchmark: Most of the element-controllers share similarity with this move. A close analog exists in the Unearthly Gift style's Psychic Shockwave Technique.

Invisible energy shield: deflects ranged attacks, energy, environmental effect 

Benchmark: Creature of the sands stance makes you categorically immune to a type of energy/elemental attack, so that's the clear benchmark here

Power puke: energy-projectile, no limbs required

Benchmark: Naraka's Fury is my default energy-blast technique, so well use that as the basis of comparison here

Power stream: Kamehameha if you use 2 hands, but you can do it with 1 hand and risk losing control of it

Benchmark: Turtle-crushing tsunami is the current standard for kamehameha-like

Boring power thing: Cheap, boosts power, maybe also a grab

Benchmark: Throat-crushing grasp is a good one here. I think there's a few grabs in other styles I'll look at as well

Swole AF: Boost your Effortless Power, gives you Ferocity, makes you just huge as shit

Benchmark: This one is pretty innovative. There's a soft rule from the techniques that grant Ferocity that every 2 Ferocity is worth roughly 1 Effort, though. So that's useful

Jaw-Breaking Kick

Gut-Buster Punch

Bone-Ripper Grip

Bullet-Catching Finger

Benchmarks: Almost every style has a "bedrock" of 3-5 one-die attacks, defenses and tricks that fill up their Novice tier of Techniques., I'll use those here, no need to reinvent the wheel unless inspiration strikes

Fist of God: Just a big motherfuckin' punch

Benchmarks: Most of the "big booms" core around a large single attack and a "fallout" effect that hits a bigger area, and a high-level skill-booster. This is going to follow that general trend. Again, there's really no need to reinvent the wheel here; the raw functionality of that capability is really enough to carry even a very straightforward supreme tech.

...

Let's take a few examples so I can show you how this process works

Power Puke

Let's begin with our benchmark move:

Naraka’s Fury

Attack

Requires: (Arm or Weapon, Awakened Hell Chakra)

Cost: 12

Rank: 3

Facing: 6-9

Effect: You unleash a throbbing neon beam of thundering

evil at the foe. It moves in a straight line, splitting earth and

stone and destroying anything in its path. It reaches the

length of a Field, striking any foe in an Area it passes over.

Enemies struck take an additional 3d10 Physical

Aggravation as their fragile mortal bodies are dissolved.

Skill: Spirit

Keywords: Energy, Ranged, Unholy

The first advantage PP is going to have over it's forebear is that it won't require a sword. This tells me that it needs to either be more expensive or weaker. There's also no specific reason for it to be tied to the Hell chakra; so any chakra would probably do, giving it another advantage. It also probably doesn't need to be unholy, so we can omit that.

Because I don't like disrupting costs, my default for balancing a tech like this would be to lower it's facings. Bumping it down to 0-3 would remove the default offensive advantage. You could also remove the Skill boost if you're feeling particularly sadistic, which will make it exclusively a combat option.

If I wanted an easier balance, I would simply omit the additional Aggravation generated by the original attack, which helps to bring this one into line with it power-wise quite nicely.

The issue with all of these changes are that I'm not giving this move a lot of identity. Its balanced, both on paper and in play, and it does grant a distinct tactical option, so that's enough to justify it in my eyes. But I  would vastly prefer that it have some unique thing that belongs wholly to it, and here we have to deviate from thinking about the move numerically and begin to think about it creatively.

Let's feed ourselves a little inspiration:

Man, I love Broly's big, wavy blast at the end. That's like the ideal one, uncontrolled, destructive, visually impressive. Actually Broly is a great kernel for this style in general:

Something that leaps out to me as appealing and distinct when it comes to this mouth-blast is how powerful it is. It's direct and scary and a huge deal if it hits; like some kind of jaw-mounted bazooka. I want to capture that feeling with the design, which means we're going to need to get creative.

Let's pack a lot of "oomph" into the hit, and keep it's low accuracy. That'll help it to feel inelegant and easy to dodge, but heavy and dangerous as well. We're going to zero in on the effect and give it a "mortar" aspect, like so:

Effect: This fiery blast of raw Prana vomits out from the mouth; clumsy and brutal, it explodes on impact in a thunderous shockwave. Hits one target at (Achieved Rank+1) and explodes, damaging the surrounding Area at (Technique Rank).

We'll add Destructive to it's Keywords to really drive home it's impact. That gives us this:

Power Puke

Attack

Requires: (Any Awakened Chakra)

Cost: 12

Rank: 3

Facing:0-3

Effect: This fiery blast of raw Prana vomits out from the mouth; clumsy and brutal, it explodes on impact in a thunderous shockwave. Hits one target at (Achieved Rank+1) and explodes, damaging the surrounding Area at (Technique Rank).

Skill: N/A

Keywords: Energy, Ranged, Destructive

Note that we're keeping an aspect of the first Technique's long-range environment destruction, further increasing their parity and justifying its cost. We've also added something unprecedented with "Technique Rank +1"; this shouldn't be too much of a balance issue, because we're not straying far from the overall effectiveness of our benchmark Technique. Removing the versatility of the skill boost should make up for this (if anything, it probably over-balances it, but I maintain its better to over than under-balance).

We'll follow a similar procedure for the remaining skeletal Techniques, and then we've just got to fill in any gaps.

...

Step 5: The Style's Style

 We're back to considering the aesthetic of the style in this step. But, importantly, we're considering it's aesthetic in terms of its unique strategic advantages. In other words, we want the style to look and feel different because it's doing something unique here. We've left ourselves some room for new ideas in the Form, and in a single Novice and Master Technique.

That's actually probably enough.

I don't think it's wise to go TOO experimental with a style. For the most part, styles should be broadly comparable, because minor difference feel big in play, and because people often choose new Techniques based on aesthetic and not strategic considerations and we don't want to handicap anyone unduly for following this method (nor over-reward anyone for the opposite).

Mind you, there is SOME inescapable handicap to ignoring optimization in Technique selection, just as there's an unavoidable (and desirable!) advantage in selecting one's Techniques intelligently. What we want is for the overall power curve not to bow so far in either direction that a meeting between the extremes is a foregone conclusion; otherwise, we sacrifice the emergent circumstance of the fight on the altar of metagaming, and I'll be goddamned if style should not on occasion triumph over substance.

I'm meandering, but the point I'm making is at least related to the topic; style. The aesthetic not just in description but in gameplay differentiation. I recommend you keep it a rare spice, but I would require of yourself that you use this spice each time you make a new style. It keeps you from growing stagnant and it gives your new style a justification for its existence that reaches beyond the merely differentiated; it makes it a work of art, YOUR art, and that is the sole reason that you should craft a new style.

It also of course makes any linear explanation of this process essentially impossible; I can't describe for you why I draw the inspiration I do from the stuff that gets my gears turning, nor would I ever recommend attempting to replicate it. Each spark is unique, and YOUR sparks are untouchable to me, so I'm not really certain how to tell you how to game-ify them.

I can show you a bit, though. Perhaps that will serve where explanation fails.

The Form

The Form is where you lay down the raw essence of a style; it's thesis, if you will. When I think about this style, I think about big, muscly punching, bestial yelling, power radiating off of flexing muscles; this is all very visual, I get a very "Asura's Wrath" vibe off the entire affair. 

Which tells me that I want to capture that raw fury that the image above conveys. So something fury-based is on the list. I also want that "I don't care how much I injure myself, as long as I get to kick your ass" element, so something trading health for damage or attacks. I also want the enemy to feel like they're on the receiving end of a raw ass whuppin', so doubling down on attacks and offense at the cost of defense feels in-theme. Here's my fist attempt:

Form: Wrath Eruption Sutra

Flesh-Immolating Drive: Suffer 1d10 damage to add 1d10 damage to an attack that has struck the enemy. Each time you damage the enemy, you may invoke a number of dice up to your Degree. 

I Am The Weapon: Facing 8-9, + 1 to an Attack

No Mercy: Suffer 1d10 damage: You may attack an additional time with a 1-die Set. you may use this power as many times as you wish per round, limited only by your own masochism

Right away, this form grabs your face and slams it over and over into a cinder block. Whoever takes this is dedicating themselves to the berserk; there are no defensive options, but you get an unrivaled suite of offensive moves. The self-damaging aspect keeps them in check and allows you to take measured risks, without precluding the possibility of total self-burnout to achieve extreme levels of ass-kicking. Finally, the use of dice rather than set numbers keeps it from being discretely calculable (admittedly you can still get a range, but the extremes have you trading health levels for the smallest factions of enemy damage and that's a calculus that will make it resistant to prudent consideration but vulnerable to passionate deployment)

Let's keep it rolling.  

We have a Novice and a Master-level Tech left to populate, and once again I want to get artsy with it. If we additionally had a free Expert-level, I'd recommend finding a uniting theme to add cohesion to the style. But since we've already got our bases covered, I'd rather see this broken set of moves as an opportunity to think of some novel concepts for the style.

A Brief Note on Keywords

I'd like to take a second to demystify keywords. If I were going to invent a keyword, I would likely have done it at an earlier step. I find it's best to lead with a concept, THEN make a keyword if it's called for (like there's a repeated mechanical novelty which needs a unified cohesive rule at its center to make it more approachable). Two Techs really isn't enough for a keyword; I would want to have it present at least once per power tier, and ideally more than once. This leads necessarily to a more rules-first style of design, but you'd still have opportunities like these to inject true novelty and I'd recommend taking them. Reference the Unearthly Gift style for some great examples of this; it's a keyword-first style that nevertheless has some of the most creative and unique powers in the game.

And now back to our regularly scheduled ass kicking

Looking over our Techniques so far, I notice that a recurrent and cool theme is being too tough to need to defend. It reminds me of one of my favorite fights in DBZ (unsurprisingly); the foregone conclusion beat-down between Frieza and Nail.

Haha, wrecked

My favorite bit is when Nail chops him in the neck and it just does nothing. Damn man, that is savage. Clearly we need a move that does that, and it needs a name that drives that point home:

Nice Try

Defense

Requires: (A desire to kill the enemy which outweighs your survival instinct)

Cost: 40

Rank: 5

Facing:0-3

Effect: You don't bother to dodge or block; attacks break on your invulnerable form. While protected by this persistent defense, if your defense exceeds the opponent's attack and you would take no damage form it, you may select any attack from this style and immediately launch an attack with it. This out-of-sequence strike otherwise follows all the normal rules for an attack, requiring a Set and any Cost for the Technique.

Skill: Endurance

Keywords:  Sustainable

This move doesn't have the comprehensive defensive protection of moves like Indestructible Master Meditation, so strictly speaking its an inferior defense option. But the ability to reply to attacks is really powerful, because it's optional and you can select a Technique which hits the enemy where they're weak. It also acts as scrub-repellent, because if some Nail steps to you with his weak-ass chop and you're ready for him, you rip off his arm. I wouldn't consider that a tactically wise decision, but just something doesn't need to be likely for it to be a possibility, and we're not engineering circumstance here, merely opportunity.

That leaves our last Novice tech, and it looks like we could use ooooone more "I'm invincible fuck you!" style move to round out that tier. I've got just the thing.

Enough!

Defense

Requires: (2 limbs)

Cost: 4

Rank: 1

Facing: 0-3

Effect: After you have suffered more than one attack from the same foe during their action, or while engaged in a Grab that you either did not originate or are currently losing, this Technique allows you to take an out-of-sequence attack with any of your Sets which can throw the enemy.

After the resolution of the triggering attack/state but prior to your opponent's next action, you may activate this Technique and launch the attack. It is "between" the enemy's actions.

If your counter-strike hits, it counts as a Throw and doesn't require you to be Grabbing the foe.

Skill: Agility

Keywords: Throw

This one is an unprecedented Technique (pretty sure? I'm tired, I don't want to re-read all of my Techniques again). As a result, I pushed up the cost to keep it out of the hands of early round, low-powered characters. It's low-enough Rank that most defenses should be able to prevent it's "combo breaker" element, but that means tactically that it's used to absorb a potentially dangerous attack anyway, so it's always got a really high utility as a defense. I'd likely not make this Technique at a higher level because it is really powerful and tactically unique

Wrapping up

I haven't compiled this style yet, but I don't want to delay releasing this post any longer. The next steps will just be repeating the design techniques from above, mostly benchmarking to reduce my overall workload.

Once it's first draft is finished, I find an overall review of the style against a few comparable and incomparable styles is called for. This is to make certain that the trade-offs between Techniques at different levels don't lead to any obvious "no-brainer" tactical moves. If none of those jump out, one last pass to clean up any awkward wording and massage costs will leave me with a finalized style, ready for playtesting.

I hope you've enjoyed peaking behind the curtain at how the kung-fu sausage is made. I hope it didn't leave you too terribly scarred.

Next time; jerking myself off a bunch about how the final game came together, and giving you a reason to justify buying it if you're on the fence but it's on your radar. Stay tuned.

What the hell motivates people in Call of Cthulhu?

So I treated myself to the seventh edition Keeper's Tome for Call of Cthulhu, the legendary OG of horror-mystery TTRPGS. Quick review: there are too many rules for machine guns and I have no idea what the monsters want. But let's only unpack that second one. So here's the thing; my girlfriend doesn't like my dungeoncrawls. She's a very story-first, listens-to-podcasts kind of chick, and I don't think it need to be beleaborored that she's much smarter and more responsible than me and I'm quite into her.

Pictured: Me

But I've been on a crusade of ideological purity ever since discovering the glories of old-school, game-first gaming and so it's been a hot and surly minute since I've written anything like a plot for a game. I used to do this shit all the time, to my endless frustration and the chagrin of my players. It feels like regression going back to doing what I already mastered by learning how to hate it. Unless of course, I do the stupidest thing imaginable and un-learn ALL of my old style and re-build it from the fucking ground up OOPS I DID THAT THANKS JUSTIN (No but for real everything in my current design-thinking is Justin Alexander's fault, blame him also read his blog) 

 So I made not a plot, but a scenario which the players get to explore and try to solve. And to keep it fresh, it even has a "men with guns break down the door" mechanism embedded in it which I stole from another one of my inspirational designers. 

The basics is that you have two kinda prongs; 

 1. The mystery. This is just a brief outline of the actual mystery and revelations, NPCs, places, and other stuff that I will reference in play 

2. A timeline of the badguys getting what they want in stages that the whole scenario into a pressure-cooker, complete with ways that is telegraphed to the investigators.

Where I'm struggling is point 2; but first, let's talk about my Cthulhu plot. The idea came to me in a dream (after watching a bunch of Twin Peaks); "what if somebody was wanted for their own murder?" Naturally my rational mind clung onto that bit of subconscious flotsam and tried to pin it down into a sensible waking-world explanation (this by the way is an outstanding process for coming up with really cool ideas). 

So here's my premise; an eccentric scientist (does Lovecraft have another variety?) is snet a mysterious artifact from an even more mysterious benefactor. Using the device and his fathomless brilliance, he creates a clone of himself. Turns out its evil because of fucking course it is, and it makes another clone and escapes from the lab. He pursues, shoots, and kills clone 2, but clone 1 is still on the loose. To muddy the trail, clone 1 creates clone 3 and leaves him naked and amnesiac'd in an alleyway.

Because god knows *this* is way too straightforward 

Enter the players, of course. The scientist has been pegged as the killer, but the body is a john doe. During the investigation, one of the revelations is that the john doe of course... Is the scientist. Who at this point they've encountered a minimum of one time (as either him or one of the clones) and possibly several times. The evil clone knows enough mythos magic to pull a Houdini and vanish from custody if caught early, making him a formidable villain. And the original scientist's hands aren't exactly clean either, further muddying the situation and blurring the allies with enemies in a wonderful stroke of noir-ism. 

Here's my issue; I was original gonna have the mi-go behind this whole thing, since fucking with human physiology is kinda their thing, but... Their entry doesn't really give one much to work with. It says they sometimes reformat favored human servants into brains in jars so they can traverse the gulfs between worlds, which is wonderful, and it says they mine rare metals on earth which is a.... Serviceable, motive, I guess. But I really don't get an otherworldly vibe out of that second motive. It's lame, reducing them to outer-space prospectors is so wretchedly mundane and just. Dull. It's boring. 

 And what does evil clone want, anyway? I originally thought to give him a truncated lifespan like the replicants in blade runner ("I want more life, fucker!") but that doesn't actually strike me an "evil" motive, really; wanting to not die is pretty relatable, after all. And it also has the problem of being just a smidge too.... Comprehensible? There's simply nothing otherwordly or uncanny about it. "I want some metal!" or "I don't want to die!" are just too human, too tidy to work.

Fuckin'.... Cliche. Get back to me when you're original! 

 I guess my problem isn't "what motivates these strange beings" its... That I don't want to really know what motivates them. I want their actions to appear to be leading to.... Something. But I want that something to be vast, thematic rather than concrete. I don't want to reduce something as truly otherwordly as the mi-go or a doppelganger to sci-fi bad-guy dreck. 

I guess that's the line, scifi. In scifi, the fantastic is made mundane, and we grapple with it in literal terms. In a horror mystery, even the mundane is often rendered strange, and our battles are more abstract and psychological. The mi-go of stargate would want to mine metals; I want the mi-go of the mythos to abduct people and do unspeakable things to them for no clear or comprehensible purpose. 

So, what motivates this doppelganger? Certainly the pasty-clone just thinks he's the original, so he can be kinda comprehensible. But what about the twisted enlightenment of the alter-ego? What's his plan, what doe she want? For that matter, what the hell is motivating the original, what does he want with his newfound powers of self-multiplication? 

 Here's what I think; I think the good doctor and his evil clone both want the same thing; they want to become sorcerers and bend the universe to their whims. There should be a difference of outlook and method; the original ostensibly wants forbidden power to do good, while his twin wants it to do evil. Original is all about obsessive research, while clone is a sadistic serial killer. But if you strip away the courtesy and social acceptability, you have two men forged from the same raw nerve, who are brilliant and vain and ultimately want a power than people should not have. 

 Fuck yeah, that'll do. Okay, I'm going to go prep a campaign with a nonzero chance of getting me laid.

Working on the Lores: The Silver Phoenix and Rising Sun City

 

Howdy all! 

This isn't the follow-up I had initially planned here (life got a bit complicated and I went back to focusing on designing the actual, y'know, game). We'll conclude our discussion on Mystic Martial Arts design another time!

BUT MEANWHILE, I want to talk about the FINAL chapter of the game and share with ya'll some wonderfully free content!

Lores

Ah, the Lores. The Loresheet mechanics from Weapons of the Gods and Legends of the Wulin were universally praised bits of game design, allowing players the opportunity to purchase (with experience points) to dictate their entanglement with different aspects of the setting. They were a neat, novel way to introduce things like yet-unmentioned relationships, allegiances, complicated backstories, and things magic weapons and access to training. They were flexible too, most especially in LotW where you got a special pool of XP just for entangling yourself in the many factions and destinies floating around in the Jianghu.

I really couldn't innovate on them myself, and as I designed deeper and became more familiar with the kind of game I was making, I recognized that my approach to character competency and setting entanglement made their existing design redundant. You could, after all, simply walk over to a give faction and start causing trouble if you wanted to get involved with them. You couldn't reach back in time with this method (as Loresheets allowed you to "retcon" things that had not yet been defined), but that wasn't such a terrible loss for eschewing the additional bookkeeping that Loresheets seemed to demand.

Couple this design void with my own extreme distaste for meticulously defined settings, and you get my compromise design: Lores. They're more GM-facing, primarily used for creating content that players can then interact with through the medium of play. But they're "soft" in this regard, also offering a smorgasbord of options for players to flesh out and contextualize their characters.

Rather than being descriptive bricks of text, they follow the method found in the fantastic Yoon-Suin and present the majority of their flavor and identity through game-usable charts. There is SOME purely descriptive text, but it's brutally minimal so as to present something at once concrete in its identity yet flexible in its details.

Below is one I literally just finished writing prior to writing this post. I'm putting it here because the bulk of the chapter is exclusively available to backers and patrons in the living playtest document to which they have access (so they're getting their money's worth. Thanks all!). But I do want to put more of the design out there for the general public's viewing pleasure as we get so razor-close to release!

Note: The Phoenix do some pretty rotten and clandestine things, but in searching for grist for all the fun political intrigues, I realize that I've inadvertently recreated some recent regrettably stupid real-world headlines. This is, amazingly, a complete coincidence, and is in no way a condemnation for, nor support of, any moronic political talking-point whatsoever. Leave that shit out of my idiot punch game and leave the propaganda to the morally dubious psychics, okay?

...

Rising Sun City and Chrome Galaxy Laboratory

In the grim final decades of the ancient world, a remarkable event changed the destiny of its greatest nation: Smiling Boy awakened and a city vanished. The cruel rulers of that nation vanished the miraculous disaster into a city-sized laboratory. Years later, their own psychic weapons emerged in the form of frail blue-skinned children to fight in the final wars.

The ultimate fate of their progenitor is unknown, but those tormented children banded together and annihilated their masters, seizing the capital city for themselves. There, they waited out the burning times and learned the forgotten ways of scholars, gentlemen and scientists, constructing a cabal who sought out their far-flung sibling psychics to induct into their ranks.

The city above remained empty and foreboding for many generations, the primitive tribes outside its borders considering it cursed. The hidden Phoenix, however, realized that they could test their theories of utopian societies with a populated city. Each elder Phoenix drew their own followers on invisible puppet strings, filling the city with hundreds of micronations, cults and guilds. Within a generation, those promising heroes of the upper tribes were being instructed in lost martial arts and inducted into the Phoenix’s ranks.

The Phoenix have cultivated an intense secrecy around themselves in their quest to craft the emerging nations of the post-apocalypse from the shadows. Their signs are everywhere; an open eye, a spiral, a hand with a flowering palm. Few know their meaning, but the Phoenix and their champions know the signs of their benefactors.

The vast megalopolis sprawls above and below, divided into three segments. The sunken city lies below the glittering waves of the ocean and is home to barge-cities, traders and fishermen. The old city bustles with barbarian life; simple and divided into countless eclectic micro-societies by the machinations and experimentation of the Phoenix. Far beneath the surface in hidden tunnels lies the city-spanning Chrome Galaxy Laboratory, secret hyperscience stronghold of the Phoenix.

The prosperity of Rising Sun City and the destruction of the Five Star Spirits has convinced the Phoenix that the time for subtlety is waning. Their dreams and philosophies direct them to overt action and their subjects have begun militarizing without their direct influence, which many regard as a sign. How will the Phoenix shape the emerging world, and can the benefit of their meddling extend past their tiny borders?

Region Volatility: 5+

Region Stability: 9+

The wild experimentations of the Phoenix and the dangerous psychic residues of the past mean that their territories remain dangerous outside of tightly policed areas. But the Phoenix’s reach is long and their eyes are everywhere, so their agents and heroes are a consistent presence within the city.

Dooms

Titan: Smiling Boy, the True Demiurge

Disaster: The Nightmare Carnival

Army: Yellow Turban Tech-Rebels 

Master Encounter List

d10	Encounter
1	Mutant Cannibal: People-eating freaks, what’s not to love?
2	Atomic Jiangshi: Radiation-poisoned corpses, returned to hideous life by having a single note of a world-ending song lodged in their distended, putrid chakras. Intelligent, but utterly ravenous and ruthless
3	Twisted Servitor: Cheaply produced genetic servants; big dumb and ugly
4	A.I. Ghost: An computer program with an ax to grind and a body of digital matter
5	Ancient Robot Servant: Weird, bulky, but unfailingly loyal and useful; machines from a less indecorous age
6	Ancient War Robot: Hulking, death-puking artifact of war
7	Failed Experiment: Horrible amalgam of man, machine, animal or something wholly and unwholesomely unique. Eat meat, lots of it
8	Spirit/ Demon trapped in technological prison: Always want free, that would always be the worst possible scenario. Will absolutely make it worth your while
9	Psychic Vision/Quest: A vision, dream or other hallucination that roils over your consciousness and won’t leave until it’s dilemma has been resolved
10	Ersatz Demiurge: A failed god, horrifying in appearance and power. Look like giant, malformed humans with extraneous bodily growths emerging and roiling across their tortured, near-divine physique. Incalculably powerful psychics.

Region Terrain

Rising Sun City

Half-sunken in the ocean, Rising Sun City is still one of the most impressive megalopolis on the planet. It’s towers are largely empty as its primitive populace prefers their own constructions for homes and businesses; their horse-drawn carts travel its imperishable blacktop highways. The sunken city is home to town-barges and fleets of primitive vessels fills its waters and dive below for treasures from the ancient world.

Chrome Galaxy Laboratory

Accessible by secret and heavily-guarded passages, the Chrome Galaxy Laboratory is the Phoenix’s stronghold. An inverted city of glistening metal, powered by eternal Prana engines and operating with a life of its own. It has some variety of sentience, its manifold camera-eyes and pressure-locked doors responding to some edicts from within its miles of printed circuits. Its size, sentience and strangeness keep it from ever becoming familiar, and even the eldest Phoenix regard it as a mysterious and dangerous place.

Tract & Field List (10)

d10	Tract	Field 1	Field 2	Field 3
1	Barge-town	Above-deck fishing village	Below-deck factory-apartments	Captain’s steering palace
2	Microsciety Village	Bustling, primitive town-square	Half-inhabited ancient building	Shrine to a totem god
3	Research Outpost	Watchtowers disguised as derelict ruins	Barracks of repurposed ancient buildings	Maximum security laboratory-complex
4	Hyperscience Stronghold	Blast-door and turret-defended parameter	Maze of scaffolding, catwalks, and metal corridors filled with wires	Nerve center of processors, screens and power sources
5	Hazard Zone	Echoing, empty streets filled with ancient concrete buildings	Massive arena filled with archaic markings and bleachers	Site of an ancient urban disaster with fallen buildings and uneven concrete ground

Society List

d10	Society Type	Leader	Status Quo/ Culture
1	Secret Society	Master	Guard the Phoenix’s secrets. Spy for and recruit new worthy members. Expand and deepen their knowledge. Viciously climb the internal pecking order.
2	Mad Science Laboratory	Chief Scientist	Expand the borders of human knowledge, no matter the cost. Deepen their personal and team knowledge and competence. Use science to bring their visions and passions into the world.
3	Secret Police	Commissioner	Enforce the secret decrees of the Phoenix. Silence and “vanish” enemies of the secret rulers. Spy on and monitor potential enemies within and without their society.
4	Ecstasy Cult	High Priest	Pursue the state of religious ecstasy. Offer libation and ceremony before their godhead. Dance and recruit in the streets.
5	Boating Guild Family	Matriarch/Patriarch	Practice their humble trade (fishing or a related field). Recite and look for songs and stories. Show difference and obedience towards their elders. Protect the family interests.
6	Psychic Commune	Seer Council	Protect their circle of brother and sister psychics. Find new psychics to bring into the fold. Share minds and memories with one another.
7	Traveling Merchants	Guildmaster	Seek profit through mostly legitimate means. Bargain, haggle and trade. Enjoy the well-earned fruits of your labor with wine, music and dance.
8	Government Bureau	Chief Administrator	Attend to and reinforce their specific function. Perform paperwork and issue licenses appropriately. Collect fees, taxes and tariffs.
9	Ruin Explorers	Chief Archeologist	Hunt for lost artifacts, places and knowledge. Discuss and publish their knowledge for the benefit of society. Live lives of adventure and excitement between lectures.
10	Librarian Cult	Chief Librarian	Protect the precious knowledge contained within their tomes. Seek and add new books to their library. Deepen their knowledge and understanding as a religious devotion.

Strengths (d10)

1. Hyperscience Laboratory: Counts as sophisticated workshop and database when crafting anything of Magical Technology or lesser complexity.

2. Clean Power Plant: Hydroelectric, connected to d5 distant factories which pay for the power it supplies.

3. Hydroponic Gardens: Counts as a Rich Consumables Node

4. A.I. Guardian:  An A.I.Ghost, programmed to protect the area and its people

5. Sophisticated Infrastructure: Rank 4 Market with 10,000 Wealth invested in infrastructure

6. Cabal of Psychics: A group of 10 nascent psychics (as Minor Heroes) who lead and defend their society

7. Arceo-Library: A source of knowledge from the ancient world; can teach the Art of the Artisan, Courtier, and Sage and acts as a source of blueprints for Space-Age technology. 

8. Elite Secret Police Force: 150 elite secret police, equipped with modern military-grade weapons, body armor and communication equipment

9. Secret Master Patron: A 7th Degree Mystic Martial Artists considers the local area their protectorate and guides its destiny from the shadows

10. Well-patrolled Trade Route: Connected to a Market of +1 Rank over the local one and patrolled by 50 well-trained and well-equipped mounted soldiers.

Struggles (d10)

1. Deadly Ruins: The ruins inhabited by the civilization are violently guarding a pristine natural treasure

NPCs: A conquest-hungry prince/princess. An old but legendary warrior. A young mechanical genius, swept up in the conflict. A malfunctioning mechanical guard, grown gentle by their emergent nature. A properly functioning, malicious A.I. awakened from dormancy. An innocent and important youth, imperiled by one of the factions.

Hooks: The conquering faction invades the area while the party is staying there. The party encounters and recognizes the legendary old mentor, who tells them of the situation and requests their aid. The party recovers a keystone artifact which grants them access to the ruins.

Things: Bodies of innocents, sensely slain in the petty conflict. An unexpected artifact emerging from the ruin’s architecture. An ancient  tapestry depicting history or prophecy.

2. Powers That Be: The local leadership has become corrupted by greed and nepotism and their policies are turning society into a nightmare.

NPCS: An elder statesman, beyond reproach but rotten to the core. A politically  indispensable but useless public functionary. A rabble-rouser who coasts on outrage to sway public opinion, but has no actual skills. A clear-headed commissioner who’s reaching their breaking point.

Hooks: The party is harassed by local authorities enforcing some ridiculous law. The party is caught in a crossfire between militarized police and violent anarchists. As the party gets involved with the society, a military coup breaks out.

Things: A politician fleeing with a briefcase filled with money. Riots and tactical police crackdowns. Graffiti, crime and poverty.

3. The Doom that Came to Utopia: A local population of indolent, spoiled sophisticates is threatened by a terrible new enemy.

NPCS: Utopian leader, soft and urbane but overwhelmed by the crisis. A deadly and ruthless enemy warlord. An innocent youth who desires to be a hero but is just a liability. A frustrated Silver Phoenix struggling to save their society without revealing themselves

Hooks: The party witnesses the beginning of a slaughter. The party notices the Phoenix failing to fix a desperate situation without being obvious about it. The party is approached by a dying emissary from the utopians who begs the heroes to save them.

Things: A field of soft, dismembered utopian bodies. Casual, shocking cruelty from the invaders. A long-dormant weapon roaring into horrible life.

4. Influx of Refugees: The local society is overwhelmed under a wave of immigrants from a troubled neighboring civilization.

NPCS: A leader of the refugees, strict but humanitarian. A sympathetic local leader, struggling to adapt to the situation. A scheming military leader, using local unrest to begin a xenophobic war.

Hooks: The party is stopped by militarized border patrol when trying to enter the area and violence breaks out. A demonstration devolves into a teargas-filled riot. The military leader attempts to recruit the Party to start their war. 

Things: An imposing and newly-constructed border wall. Tear gas canisters being fired into a packed crowd. Jingoistic propaganda.

5. Mutagenic Plague: A plague breaks out that leaves its victims warped husks of their former selves.

NPCS: A brilliant doctor, struggling to find a cure. A panic-stricken local celebrity, making the situation worse. A cult leader who vehemently denies the plague.

Hooks: A member of the party or a beloved NPC contracts the illness and only the doctor has a hope of finding a cure. A place the party needs to go is locked down due to an outbreak. 

Things: Gas masks and hazmat suits. Yellow caution tape segmenting a place into safe and unsafe zones. A deformed face, glimpsed through a dirty hospital window.

NPC generator

d100	Male Name	Female Name	Quirk	Motive
1-5	Shōta	Misaki	Chain-smokes	Protecting their child
6-10	Daiki	Ai	Wears reflective glasses	Doing their job
11-15	Hiroto	Aoi	Always dressed in business clothes	Gain fodder for bragging
16-20	Takuya	Yuina	Abbreviates words and uses acronyms	Kicks
21-25	Shō	Asuka	Neurotic and nebbish	Profit
26-30	Ren	Rin	Chews gum and blows bubbles	To get their next fix
31-35	Kenta	Yua	Secretly carries a gun	Free-spirited, going where the wind takes them
36-40	Shun	Yui	Has a weird accent	To gain knowledge of the lost world
41-45	Riku	Yuzuki	Swears frequently	To find their destiny
46-50	Yūma	Narumi	Stutters	Danger and thrills
51-55	Jyouji	Anna	Is impeccably groomed	Upholding the law
56-60	Ken	Ema	Stands too close when talking	Breaking the rules
61-65	Noa	Nina	Always muttering under their breath	Secretly a serial killer
66-70	Niko	An	Works as a government official	To become important
71-75	Yugo	Naomi		To gain reward without responsibility
76-80	Asa	Mei	Secretly a psychic	Find an outlet for their pain
81-85	Aran	Hana		Find peace
86-90	Dan	Kairi	Secret police member	Serve their distant masters
91-95	Jin	Mari		Uncover the Phoenix’s conspiracy
96-100	Reon	Ami		Grow their cult of personality

Archeotech Trinket

d10	Appearance	Activated by	Effect
1	Crystal orb in circuitry	A secret command word in a dead language	Filters an person-sized orb of air (of Rank4 or less Hazard) so that it is breathable and pure
2	Large and awkward digital watch	A hidden switch
3	Glove made of inflexible-looking plastic	A specific sustained note of sound	Senses Prana Flare within the same Tract like a compass
4	Metal bracelet bristling with mechanical nodes	When cooled below freezing
5	Small glittering metal and glass ring	When heated over water’s boiling point	Shines a bright light unidirectionally
6	Weird spiral of metal and plastic	When electrocuted
7	Mirrored disk	When struck with metal
8	Prismatic amulet with visible circuitry	When drenched with liquid	Launches a Ranged, Rank 2 Laser 1/round
9	Crown of artfully shaped green metal	When a certain image is held in mind by the wielder
10	Smooth metal rod with three inviting buttons	A complex series of hand and finger movements across its surface	Emits a loud, directed sound (Rank 4 Hazard or the target must clap both hands over their ears)

Seeds

Integrating the Silver Phoenix into an Ongoing Campaign

The Phoenix have been getting their sticky fingers into the entire martial world over the last decade, and their agents are cropping up everywhere. Infiltration and manipulation is the name of the game. To integrate them into any ongoing campaign outside their borders, create a Secret Plot and reveal that they’ve been there the entire time.

Secret Plots

d6	The Plot	Current Methods	Assets
1	Insinuate societal influencers into key organizations	Mind-control and brainwash existing citizens to use as pawns	A cultural tour-de-force that bends opinion to their advantage
2	Instal a puppet government	Use well-placed bribes and threats from the shadows	A law-maker agent that creates or changes one law per Campaign Arc
3	Eliminate/discredit a troublesome person of interest	Use hired proxies to hide motive and identity	A 3rd degree Mystic Martial Artists assassin
4	Use the target society to wage war on an enemy	Propaganda and false-flag campaigns	Control of the second-highest Rank Domain Action through a puppet official
5	Weaken the cohesion of the targeted society	Sabotage and instigating social unrest and  riots	A Platoon of 200 sleeper agents
6	Make certain values mainstream in the culture	Persuasive literature and well-trained sleeper agents that promote it	A 300-person, flourishing subculture of Populace that shares identical values