Tuesday, April 11, 2017

DramaScape April Week Two Release City Hall with 33% off link good till Sunday April 16th, 2017

City Hall includes a single level interior map of a city hall with a podium and a larger room with 32 chairs set up for an audience for the mayor’s speech. This room also has security measures including stanchions to guide movement to a metal detector and X-ray machine.

City Hall is intended for use in modern and supers games. It could also see use in horror games where the citizens meet up to discuss strange happenings in the town.

Here is a link for 33% off, the link expires on Sunday April16th

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?discount=9f208241d5

Product Link

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/209458/City-Hall?affiliate_id=12615

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

DramaScape April Week One Release Desert Biosphere w/33% off coupon link good till 4/9/2017

Desert Biosphere is a single level interior map of a temperate biome garden contrasting with metallic floors and encased in a near sphere by concrete walls that is surrounded by an exterior of barren desert bluffs. A tunnel to the outside leads to a ladder. Ascending the ladder leads to a cliff plateau with a collection of solar panels that powers the biosphere below.

Desert Biosphere is intended for use in near or far-future science fiction games. It makes an excellent superhero or supervillain base in a supers or spy game (for the supervillain's lair). It can be a high-tech scientific facility in a modern game. It can also be an oasis in a post-apocalyptic world. It's isolated location also makes it a good map for a horror game starting to what happened to the scientists that used to live inside the sphere. 
Here is the link for 33% off, the link expires on Sunday 9th April

Product Link

Monday, April 3, 2017

First Time use Mutation Deck thoughts

The first thing that springs to mind about the Mutation Deck by Just Insert Imagination is that four Jokers just changes the dynamic quite a bit. For one thing, there is added value to Initiative Edges and Joker Edges and more triggers on the Joker's Wild setting rule.

I found myself using the deck in Necessary Evil 25 for the first time. I had a card flip for an encounter possibility and got 3 of Spades: Cold Affinity. This was interesting. First of all, it's not a Face card, so doesn't imply opposition. The cold affinity was a useful quality as the group was looking for a police van to steal. So they found a police van with a cold engine that hadn't been run recently.

So the card qualities themselves can be useful to use when drawing encounters. Like if drawing for an encounter, rather than just determining an encounter on a face card's qualities all the time, you could draw a second card to determine the quality of that encounter. The cold affinity above might help guide what kind of creature is encountered. A mage that uses cold spells? A cold terrain monster? An ice creature like a dragon or drake with ice breath? These can also extend to the other three different categories like psychic, bestial, and physical changes. Like drawing a card with sticky skin might be a slime encounter, a psychometry card might be encounter with a kleptomaniac thief who also has a psychic power to see into the power and history of items he touches and prizes only those items that trigger his ability, and spider limbs might be an encounter with giant spiders, a giant praying mantis with wallwalking, etc.  

The one thing I think that might be the most useful part of the Mutation Deck in regards to Necessary Evil is the Death and Defeat Table. Those extra Jokers mean a much higher chance of the Transformed condition. But the Marked condition on 3-5 has some more interesting applications. Like if I drew 3 of Spades for Marked, you might end up with the Cold Weakness [Major] as your Marked-based Hindrance based on your card draw from the mutation deck. The player could always take the hindrance based on the Injury Table 2d6 roll instead, but this gives an additional option to the player for that Major Hindrance they gain as the part of the price for coming back to life. You could be highly sensitive to cold or lose an arm? Which Hindrance [Major] do you want? 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/190609/The-Mutation-Deck-plastic-case?affiliate_i
d=12615

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Return to 50 Fathoms Recap 11

March 31, 2017 @ 8:00-11:00 P.M.

< WARNING SPOILERS FOR 50 FATHOMS AHEAD MATEY!>

DAY 69
PLACE:
AZY CAY 
TIME: MORNING 
WEATHER: RAIN

The group dropped off Stumpy Pete and Lorlo off at Azy Cay. Stumpy Pete bought the group a round at The Shipwreck Surprise. He toasted to Jesus, lost to the Razor Wings the previous day, for helping him get back home. He apologized to Red Pirate Roberts about Redbeard Rufus. He surmised that perhaps one of the relics that they had obtained was attracting Redbeard Rufus to them.  Lorlo (a Doreen) left the group, refusing to travel with the group anymore with Stripe (a Kehana) aboard. Lorlo as a former British East India Company scout was also fed up with Unk for murdering people in Baltimus and with the group for failing to help him get aid for Vittoria in Torath-Ka.

DAY 70-72
PLACE: THE PIRATE SEA
WEATHER: RAIN 

The group traveled from Azy Cay to Bluff's Crown. Travel was mostly uneventful although some provisions rotted away.  

DAY 72
PLACE: BLUFF's CROWN
TIME: DUSK
WEATHER: RAIN

The group traveled to Bluff's Crown and was met by Manuel Domingo on the beach shore. He requested that they help him free his brother, Luis, from the Kieran Empire mines in the Coaker Mountains in exchange for L'Espada de Vampiro, a magical sword. 

"Well we have to go there anyway for Pars Portri, so sure!"--Red Pirate Roberts 

Manuel entered the ship and made ready his cabin. 

The group exchanged a gold ingot from the Kehana Flumes for 1,500 pieces of eight and a Bleeding Heart Potion and Night Vision Potion (an inky black potion that Horventerous identified). Horventerous removed the wax from the scrolls and ink vial they found at the Lost Library beneath the waves. He identified the scrolls as a Storm, Settle Storm, Fly, and Light/Obscure master scrolls and paid Pars Portri 200 pieces of eight to identify the other two scrolls as another Fly scroll and Farsight. Pars Portri explained that these master scrolls take more time to cast, but they guide the user's hand gestures and speech in casting them before being consumed. The ink they had gained was master ink and with the ink pen of a master could be used to make scrolls. Horventerous wanted to know if he could use the scrolls. Pars Portri explained that much like potions, scrolls took up a user's magical power until they were cast. So a spell like healing would take away a portion of the user's magical power that would not regenerate until the scroll was cast. The group after Horventerous decided he didn't like that outcome as a price for making scrolls sold Pars Portri the ink and pen they had found for 900 pieces of eight.   Pars had no idea about what the runes on the golden triangle depicted. 

The group consulted an apprentice French mage called Gaston Dupui about the golden triangle. He couldn't tell them what the sigils meant but he could tell that they were incomplete. He seemed to believe that this triangle could be linked with other triangles or other geometric patterns but had a clear break line in the pattern along the sides where the glyphs were torn in parts.  

DAY 74
PLACE: THE PIRATE SEA
TIME: NIGHT
WEATHER: HEAVY FOG  

The spirit of Captain Iago Alfonso de Toledo snuck up on Unk in the crow's nest. When Unk turned around and saw his rotting, ethereal form, he had a heart attack and nearly died. Iago explained that he needed a locket that his wife gave to him that was submerged in his sunken galleon, the Black Prince, to break the curse keeping him tethered to Caribdus. 

DAY 75
PLACE: THE PIRATE SEA
TIME: AFTERNOON
WEATHER: OVERCAST

 

[The Rojo Cazadora, a sloop, depicted by DramaScape's Above Decks Volume II: Smuggler's Sloop and The Wave Cutter. Iago is the zombie in the crow's nest.]

 
Iago touched Unk and he started to cry, but the tears bounced off his cheek and made him cry even more.  Horventerous went up to the crow's nest and was also touched by Iago. The pair leaped off the Rojo Cazadora and submerged into the sea. Unk found that he could breathe underwater, somehow protected from the effects of drowning. He could even speak and move freely. 


As they dived, they were approached by four maneater sharks. Two each closed on Unk and Horventerous, but missed their attacks. 


Unk countered by ripping out the throat of one of the maneater sharks. With blood in the water, the remaining sharks frenzied and shook. Unk punched the other one in the belly to no effect. Horventerous used a water bolt to rip apart one of the maneater sharks with a supersonic wave and hit the other maneater shark across the nose with the pommel of his bone sword.

  
Horventerous attempted a back swing on the shark but it dodged out of the way. The maneater sharks attacked ferociously, but Unk ripped out teeth with his hook to prevent a bite from striking and Horventerous used his sword with two hands to prevent the shark's jaws from closing on him. Unk used his hook to rip open the stomach of the maneater shark on him and punched the other maneater shark in the nose. Horventerous removed his sword from the jaw of the maneater shark and then thrusted the blade down its gullet to finish off the last shark.

Twenty one minutes had elapsed since the pair had submerged and they finally found the wreck of the Black Prince, twenty fathoms deep. 





[I almost had enough zombie figures, only two off, but apparently I need to make some more considering some scenarios (29 is not enough? lol).  I used the bottom of the cargo ship from DramaScape's River Barge Print on Demand map for the sunken Black Prince. If I had prepared this Savage Tale in advance, I would have printed out the bottom of DramaScape's The Light Cutter, which has an actual slave ship bottom for this scenario. Not that it mattered too much as you shall soon read.]

The pair entered the Black Prince from a gaping hole in its midsection. They looked right and saw the remains of a kitchen with a barnacled iron pot and crew quarters including tattered cots. To the left they saw a slave pen holding over thirty corpses in manacles attached to the hull. They went right and grabbed a chest out of Iago's Captain Quarters. The two corpses in his room animated and both Horventerous and Unk panicked. 

[Seriously they fled that sunken ship so fast even Scooby and Shaggy would have been proud of their pace.]
 

Horventerous and Unk watched as the hull shook as the force of over thirty zombies trying to free their manacles sent shock waves throughout the water. The unshackled zombies pursued them but could not keep up with them in a prolonged chase. Unk and Horventerous reached the surface first and Iago demanded the locket with his hand held out. Horventerous opened the chest and grabbed the locket as the persistent zombies started to climb up the hull of the skiff after them. Horventerous gave the locket to Iago. Iago vanished and the zombies fell off the bulwark becoming nothing more than floating corpses on the surface of the water.

The chest contained a portrait, a map of North and South America, charts and papers, and 500 pieces of eight.


DAY 76
PLACE: THE PIRATE SEA
TIME: NIGHT
WEATHER: FOGGY

The crew saw the visage of The Flying Dutchman, an ill-omen promising terrible luck in the near future. 

DAY 79
PLACE: THE PIRATE SEA
TIME: DUSK
WEATHER: OVERCAST

"Did ye think you had seen the last of me? It's about time to show you why my ship is called The Incinerator! Fire!"--Redbeard Rufus

Redbeard Rufus' crew fired but missed the Rojo Cazadora at long range.  Manuel fired a cannon but the cannonball simply passed through The Incinerator's holes in the hull. 

Red Pirate Roberts barely managed to avoid a shoal that would have ripped apart the lower hull as The Incinerator fired a second volley that missed as the gave chase at a distance. But, Redbeard Rufus seized the opportunity to do a Hard About to flip his ship 180 degrees as the zombies moved to the cannons on the other side of the ship followed by Crossing the T to get into a perfect short range attack position, firing six guns at the group. 


[Note that it's six instead of eight possible on that side because of 2 Zombies per Hero, or 6 Zombies total that could fire cannons.]

The hull was hit and caught fire. Unk got together a team to fight the fire, but it spread before his team could quench the flames and the fire further damaged the ship's hull. Red Pirate Roberts then turned towards the shoals, navigating them towards a small island. Redbeard Rufus gave up the chase as they headed towards land and into shallow water where The Incinerator seemed to have trouble maneuvering.  

DAY 80-82
 PLACE: ISLAND NEAR TORATH-KA
WEATHER: SUNNY

Joseph managed to harvest enough timber from a small island near Torath-Ka to repair the hull fully. Unk got a very bad case of gastrointestinal problems from eating plant food on the island. From then on they ate only fish and rations.

[Chessie played Convenient Repairs which made this process take only a few days with Joe's expertise.]




[I found it kind of funny how close an island was for their Convenient Repairs maneuver. Like one in 15 miles and slightly to the northwest even. I prefer the grayscale map to the color ones as pencil marks can be seen easier and then be erased to keep using the same map. Being made of cardstock, the map might even make it the whole campaign through.]

PICTURES:

I used the blue tablecloth for sea this week on the tabletop. I used DramaScape's print on demand (POD) maps from Above Decks Volume II: The Smuggler's Sloop and The Wave Cutter, Smuggler's Sloop side, for the Rojo Cazadora and the River Barge for the sunken below deck of the Black Prince. 

Tri-folds used are from the 50 Fathoms Figure Flat Pack PDF and a metal 50 Fathoms miniature by Pinnacle Entertainment Group. The figure flat for Unk is from Deadly Missions Mercenaries by Grey Matter Games. 

RIVER BARGE: 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/102117/River-Barge?affiliate_id=12615