Fantasy Religion?

I have never been convinced by advice that when building a D&D-esque game world, a Referee should model their fantasy religions on those in the real world. Sure, draw on them for inspiration and motifs, etc. But when a D&D-esque fantasy world have a multitude of very real gods (or Immortals), each granting countless miracles each day to their priests, I wonder what room there is for some of the *best* bits of real world religion.

Well, it is a *best* bit when it is a fantasy world and you are hundreds of years removed...

In particular, what room is there for the corrupt priest? Or the secret heretic?

Of course, in a fantasy game world in which the gods are distant and inactive there is room for secret heretical cults with a church and worldly priests who abuse their robes. And distant, inactive gods are one answer, but they're not the answer for the assumed D&D game world. If the gods are active, intervening in human life, if there are unmistakable signs of divine favour (spells, for instance), these sinners and unbelievers will struggle to masquerade as blessed members of the church of the god who they offend.

Note: In Hammerstein!, my own game world (even though we're currently exploring Titan again), I have tried to give the schisms and heresies that are so interesting in real life (at least when you are removed by several hundred years) a fantasy analogue by having humans reject the 'Gods' (a race a cosmic superhuman beings) and instead worship 'Saints'. These are something like the Immortals of Mentzer D&D - humans who, by great deeds, magic, or the veneration of a community, have achieved some kind of intercessionary afterlife. This means that there are a multitude of Saints, some worshipped across the known world, others, such as the heroic ancestors of a single tribe, unknown beyond a single valley or town. This allows me as the Referee to create an endless number of [not-]gods, each with overlapping portfolios and rival interests. It also allows me to plug in all manner of localised real world pantheons by recasting them as heroic ancestors. At the same time - as they reject the Gods - they are all nominally part of the (Lawful) Church of Man, a civilising, unifying project that has a number of rival anti-popes. This gives me room for 'internal' religious conflicts that can range from bloodless doctrinal disputes (hopefully something more 'adventuresome' than to which of the competing Saints should the cobblers of Byzantium offer their devotion) to priests wading in gore as nations clash in war, rallying under the ikons and relics of their heroic ancestors. 

Anyway, do you have corrupt priests and heresies in your game? And what does their (watchful) god do about the bastards?

The Builders of Byzantia

As we reconvene the gaming group after Christmas, we decided to continue the campaign by having the party return from the mountains empty handed - driven down by bad weather, perhaps. The Beastmasters of Byzantia were disappointed; it is a very competitive calling, with each man judged on the quality and exoticism of his menagerie. But there would be no Hippogriff eggs hatching in their halls this coming spring. Maybe next autumn the party can launch another expedition in search of Hippogriff eggs. The party overwinter in Gateways, brooding on their failure and drinking away the eyes of D'namnas.

The below is what I wrote for the players, presenting some options for adventure.

Your winter passes in a fug of drink and smoke and salted meat. The weather never turns cold enough to freeze the lake, and while the groans of the undead are unnerving, there was, thankfully, no danger of the shambling remnants of the Second Empire of Humanity crossing from the ruins of the Castle of Gaskell the Black to Gateways. Nevertheless, the snow and cold slows life in Gateways down to a crawl... people huddle at home, little news or novelty enter the town. The party enjoys the Festival of Lights during Frostbite, and watch with grim faces as the Baron and the assembled vicars of the churches symbolically bury the world at the end of Earthdeath. They then spend a full week indoors during the storms (and worse) of the Howls of Chaos, when the Intelligences Beyond realise that they have been tricked and the world yet lives.

When the new year begins with the month of Ashunmoon (named after an ancient Alysian shepherd 'saint'), you are keen to leave town. The religious practice Abstention - from anything and everything pleasurable - between the 7th and the 14th, so as to not enrage any malign entities disappointed that the world did not die. There are enough who are devout in town to make this practice all but compulsory.

The first news that comes into Gateways is bad. Goblins, it is reported, have been putting homesteads and farms to the torch. While drinking away the winter, the party made friends with Stephan, a member of a horsetrading clan, he asks that you help his family transport a herd of (very rare) white horses to the Elven market at Rivalyn. Acting as the agent for his brother Pyotr, the head of the clan, he offers 400SP for the party (who have a reasonable reputation now, even if just for the amount of treasure they have squandered) to act as insurance against Goblin horse thieves.

The ruins of Gaskell's Castle are quieter, the [un]dead presumably returning to their restless sleep, but still sits across the water, a black, brooding ruin.

There has been no more news from Abelorn regarding 'the Rahib', but then there has been no more news of anything much. Likewise, there has been nothing new heard of Elwyn, the renegade cleric, though when Abstention is over the Bishop's court is expected to begin it's 'Circle' of the Duchy.

You also hear of agents for the Gnome King of Underhill, who is seeking men and women of repute to protect the the trade caravan containing a winter's worth of industry as it works its way south to Mirror Bay. Mirror Bay is the seat of the Duke and the only 'city' in the Duchy and, therefore, doorway to the rest of the Known World.

The party chose the investigate the ruins of Gaskell's Castle. I decided to place the pyramid of B4 The Lost City in the middle of the ruins of a castle modelled on a Roman fort - the Second Empire of Humanity had a distinctly Roman styling. The style of the pyramid, however, suggests a remnant of an older civilization. I changed much of the details, while keeping the maps and the distribution of encounters (if not the encounters themselves). Major changes had to be made to the different factions in the dungeon; mine are the Builders, the Judges, and the Maidens. The first faction the party met in their delve were the Builder of Byzantia:

The Builders of Byzantia are a human, all-male semi-secret society; almost everyone knows that they exist, but details of their membership, rituals, and purpose are not known with any certainty. Common understanding of the organization runs from the mundane to the fantastical. Many see it as a guild-like network of elite men, some extend this idea and see the Builders as the shadow government of Byzantia, even a cult dedicated to restoring the glories of the First Empire of Humanity[1]. Some will say in public that the Builders are global conspiracy in the service of powerful supernatural patrons. A Demon of Law, they suggest, given the Builders’ emphasis on the virtues of order and planning. There are, though, whispers that the Builders are a hidden cult of Chaos, searching for the secrets of Escherean architecture.

Sample Titles: Grand Planner, Architects, Surveyors, Builders
Alignment: Law
Values: Civilization, Order, Planning, Labour
Patron (publicly, anyway): Saints Constant and Stankov – the founder of Byzantia and a (mythic?) heroic builder. They represent the duality of human achievement and the taming of the world.
Symbol: A pyramid, over which rests a hinged ruler. At the middle of the pyramid is an eye.

The Builders encountered in the ruins of the Castle of Gaskell the Black wear heavy leather aprons marked with the symbol of the Builders. They carry a variety of tools and measuring equipment, and tend to favour warhammers as weapons. Most are NM, others are Level 1 Specialists. Their Leader is Isoclesus, who is a Level 3 Specialist. Classed Builders tend to have skill points in Architecture and Tinkering. Of course, NM Builders will also be proficient in their trade skills (but will be less competent in other aspects of adventuring).

Goal: The Builders in the ruins are looking for technology that pre-dates the Second Empire. So far, they have found a few (inoperable) bits and pieces, and a keen to recover whatever may lie unfound in the depths.

Demeanour: The Builders are friendly towards parties that are friendly towards mostly human (and male) parties, though some heterodox Builders see Dwarfs as admirable fellow men. In general, they see adventurers as the first, crude wave of civilizers; they clear the wilderness of monsters and barbaric humanoids. They are sexists, and disparage the Maidens of Symmetry in vulgar terms. Valuing function over form, they regard the Maidens as the embodiment of their views on women; decorative rather than productive. They fear and despise the Judges, whose adherence to laws as well as Law, and the bloody purges they are wont to engage in, makes them an enemy of progress and human achievement.

Isoclesus is a plump man, generous with his hospitality – such that is possible in ruins. He is fascinated by ants (and other social insects); by their ordered society and prowess as builders. He keeps a glass ant farm in his quarters, and has brought several rare books on entymology with him to the ruins. The distillation of ant scent that keeps the Builders safe from the vicious Black Ants that infest the upper reaches of the ruins is a result of his own research. The Builders ability to move safely among the Black Ants protects them from the other factions.

The party (4 players, 8 PCs of Level 1 and 2) ended the first session deep in the pyramid, having just defeated a handful of Skeletons. That was the only combat encounter in two-plus hours of play, such was the caution of the players, and their intention to find ways down without delay[2]. I also think that they might think that I am a 'dick' DM; at one point I had to say, "If there was writing on the door I would tell you outright, you don't need to keep asking. I'm not going to say, 'Aha, the door said 'trap' and now you're all dead. Ha ha!' Trust me, I will tell you of anything significant unless it is actually hidden." I'll write a play report once they have completed their delve - with a game due tonight (possibly), before I run a different group through  my version of U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh using DCC RPG tomorrow! And I plan to submit a revised version of an academic paper this week too - busy times!

[1] The First Empire of Humanity fought a war against the Gods and won, driving them into the Heavens. This victory was won at great cost. The war tore through the fabric of reality and allowed the Intelligences Beyond (of Law and Chaos) into the world, and Humanity fell into a long dark age as the other races of mankind came into being.

[2] For all their tactical caution (opening doors, investigating tombs, etc. - to the extent that the lead PC was roped to the rest of the party, to be hauled clear of any pit traps, falling blocks etc. [I'd give a bonus to the appropriate Saving Throw, I guess]), strategically this party can be very reckless, in previous sessions plunging deeper into a dungeon when there are the sounds of angry humanoids behind them (ending in a TPK), and following an evil Mire Sprite (a Mixie) as it beckoned them down a narrow path (which nearly ended in a TPK), for example. So, trying to not be a dick DM, I think I might have to warn them (remind them) that, generally, the deeper you go, the more dangerous things get, and then let the party live or die by their own decisions.

Disease and Disaster in Hammerstein!

There is plenty of death in Hammerstein! But there are no mundane diseases or natural disasters. That’s not because I am after a game world completely lacking the knee-deep in syphilitic shit vibe of WFRP (our next game will involve revisiting the WFRP1e rules to run a slightly higher-fantasy sandbox game [i.e. Hammerstein!]). It’s because there is just no need for mundane disease and disaster – in fact, there is no place for them – in a world in which diseases can be caused by plague demons, curses and warpstone, and in which natural disasters can result from the whims of supernatural entities, from local nature spirits to weather gods, and the intervention of sorcerers. Who needs chaotic weather patterns when you have Chaos?

In a world of gods, demons, and magic, the evils of the world are deliberate. Darwin’s reaction to the reproductive cycle of the ichneumon wasp was to question his theism; what manner of benevolent deity would produce a world that included a creature whose existence depended on such a vile process. But in Hammerstein!, of course, the world did not arise out of the operation of the amoral laws of nature, and it was not created by a single, benevolent deity. Rather, it was the creation of a pantheon of self-interested supernatural beings (and these gods made men, they are not man-made gods), and has been shaped by the actions of all manner of supernatural forces, from the unknowable extra-dimensional whims of the many-angled demons and angels, to the more human, and humanely cruel, passions of wizards and warlocks. In this world, something like the ichneumon wasp would not cause anyone to question their belief in the supernatural; it would be quite correctly understood as the creation of a cruel god, vile demon, or even the invention of a powerful, wicked mortal. 

So, in Hammerstein! there are plagues and floods, crop blights, droughts, and earthquakes – but these are always fantastical in origin. The physics of the world is just… different. The gaming side effect of this is that PCs can always intervene heroically. Or at least, die trying. When the city is riddled with plague, the PCs can root out the Cult of the Weeping Pustule. If the Abby of St Albrax has been reduced to rubble by an earthquake, the PCs can investigate the reason why the Earth Elementals are angry. That’s a more adventuresome world than one in which end up playing Dr John Snow in Middenheim, or quiz professors of seismology at the universities of Genezia before recommending changes to the planning regulations. That might be a game, but it isn’t one of fantasy adventure. 

In Hammerstein!, this picture isn’t an artistic representation of the horrors of plague. It’s nigh-on documentary! 

Does YOUR fantasy world have mundane disease, ordinary famines, and the like? Does it also have monsters, curses, warlocks, and the stalking undead? How on Titan do your mock-medieval settlements survive the threat of the fantastical AND the mundane? Do your mock-medieval populations survive the increased death rate with significantly higher fertility rates than would be the case in a ‘realistic’ setting? Does ‘good’ magic reduce the death rate from the mundane to the degree that the fantastical is required just to prevent a population explosion? Is the fantastical so marginal that is simply does not intrude on the lives of the ordinary people, being the stuff of the frontier, so that the terrors of heroes and villains is just legend to the smallfolk?

[This post brought to you in line with the principles set out in Titanic Bullet Points] 

Dwarfs and Gnomes

The idea is that this picture, from Mentzer Basic, is still a valid representation of demi-humans in Hammerstein! or My-stara. What we understand is going on in all those pointy-eared heads however, is quite different. 

DWARFS: Obsessive compulsive trainspotters with a fascist tendency

Dwarfs were created after the first Empire of Humanity challenged the Gods. Demi-humans, they embody the concept of LAW, and are a conservative force. They have a love of order for its own sake, of maps, records, archives, and collections. It is their intent to track and record all the moving parts of history, and, for the sake of their sanity, arrest, or at least slow, the movement of these parts. They are great scholars and master bureaucrats, but are agents of reaction. 

Dwarfs have a reputation as having a lust for gold and other precious things, but this is a misconception. That it is such a common view is the result of two things. First, all Dwarfs are natural collectors, using their obsessions to order the world. Not all Dwarves collect gold coins, or jewellery of the First Empire, or other treasures, but enough adventuring Dwarves do. That is why they are adventuring Dwarves. Other Dwarves collect butterflies, leaves, or perfumes, but these tend not to develop the ‘rock star’ reputation that comes with being a dungeon delving adventurer. Second, the Hard Core Dwarfs and the Royal Casts (yes, Casts, not Castes) of Iron Mountain and other Vaults, have an interest in accumulating gold and gems (and whatever else Humans might use as currency). By controlling the money supply, the Dwarfs believe that they can control, or at least restrain, the change and progress driven by rapid movements of money. A Dwarf King will go to war for gold, as will a Human King, but their motivations are vastly different.

Hard Core Dwarfs are the Dwarfs who rarely, if ever, leave the Vaults. Hard Core Dwarfs live entirely ritualised lives, ordering their time and their space according to their interpretations of the Plan. Of course, such an obsession with order means that Dwarven history has included more than one schism. The causes of these schisms appear utterly inconsequential to anyone who is not a Dwarf.

Dwarfs do reproduce biologically, whatever the jokes might say. However, the Dwarven saying ‘True Dwarfs are made, not born’, can be interpreted literally as well as metaphorically. It is not for nothing that the Royal class of Dwarfs are called The Cast.  

GNOMES: Amoral, eccentric inventors with little ability to see the big picture.

Gnomes, on the other hand, are degenerate Dwarfs, or so the legends go. Emerging (or created?) at some time during or shortly after the Second Empire of Humanity, these were Dwarfs who rejected the tyranny of Law. Taking their lead from Humanity – some even taking to the worship of the trickster God Humaman – the Gnomes applied the Dwarven interest in understanding the moving parts of a system to make NEW things. Master inventors, their skill is not in constructing the plausible but the implausible – fantasy inventions. For instance, where Humans might devise a new system of rigging, Gnomes build submarines. For this I’ll be taking a lead from PC2 Top Ballista!, using it to make a Gnome class for my LotFP/Lab Lord hybrid. The Dwarfs are probably not wrong in seeing the Gnomes as tainted by Chaos; Gnomish inventions have a tendency to both cause disorder and become disordered. Most Gnome heroes die not only with their boots on, but their goggles and apron and work gloves too. Thank the Saints that Gnomes are a rare race.

With a Third Empire of Humanity just a twinkle in the eye of any number of would be Tyrants – though Byzantia formally, but impotently, claims to be the seat of the Third Empire – there has been some reconciliation between some of the more adventurous Dwarfs and the Gnomes. Who knows how an automatic counting machine might aid Dwarven record keeping? These adventurous, less rigidly-minded Dwarfs view Gnomes are childish deviants. Hard Core Dwarfs, however, would happily eliminate the whole Gnome race. 

Having the ‘demi-humans’ of Hammerstein! (and My-stara) as derivations from and exaggerations of the elder race – Humanity, grants a licence to make them one-dimensional. This is a good thing. It prevents demi-humans just being short or pointy eared Humans. There is an in-game reason by Humans are a race of great variety, while demi-human personalities have a much more restricted palette. One-dimensional demi-humans also justify race-as-class, incidentally. 

Obviously, these Dwarfs are at least a little inspired by Glorantha’s Mostali, with their descent from the original moulds and their concern with the working of the World Machine. There’s also a little of James M’s Dwarfs in there too – if I remember right, Dwarfs in Dwimmmermount reproduce by sculpting their own children.  

None of these ideas are particularly original, but that's part of the point. When I'm making my game of D&D, I'm not trying to radically inverts the D&D tropes. I just want to play around the edges. I want to mix the good bits of the fantasy games that has shaped my view of fantasy gaming. If that recombination produces the littlest bit of novelty will be enough.

Gods on the Moon

That the old gods of Hammerstein! (and My-Stara) are exiled on the Moon is an idea that draws on a number of sources. Of course, the Moon has been associated with one god or another, or with the supernatural, in most human cultures. That something lives on the Moon isn't a particularly Modern myth either; Lucian of Samosata, in the second century AD, wrote a story of Ulysses' journey to the Moon. Flying boats, eh? I told you that they were cool.

Mystara has its own Moon dwellers, the samurai cats of Myoshima. Not the Samurai Pizza Cats (my wife refused to believe such a thing ever existed, until I showed her the YouTube video [warning: awaful theme tune]). But the real superhumans on the Moon that I'm referencing are these:

Kirby also drew The Mighty Thor (and the rest of the Asgardians), and characters such as Hercules also find a home in the Marvel Universe, and so the idea that the once Gods of the world of Hammerstein! exiled on the Moon is meant to evoke these kind of characters. Superhumans, immortals (some of THE Immortals of Mystara, perhaps), but diminished greatly since the era in which they made the world from clay, now trapped in their Olympian domain. Some still worship them, for sure (some of the Vikings of the Northern Reaches are confirmed Lunatics), but the main religious focus in the Modern Age is the Church of Humanity, and its myriad saintly cults.

P.S. My vision of extra-planar travel has always been VERY Kirby...   

Hammerstein! Demihumans

In the world of Hammerstein! (and in what I’m calling My-Stara, the heavily modified version of Mystara that our group is currently exploring), Humans are the oldest sentient race. They were created by the by the trickster god Humaman. They were made in the in image of the Gods, and they shared their passions and vices, though on a mortal scale. At first, the Gods were amused, and congratulated Humaman. They walked amongst the humans and played with them, damaged them, and disposed of them as a spoiled child does with his toys. 

But Humaman’s joke wasn’t intended to offer the Gods amusements to idle away the eons. It was a vicious satire that built to a terrible punchline. While the Gods played at being Emperors and basked in worship, Humans got on with making History. Without an eternity to while away, mortal Humans are creatures of action and progress. Ages passed, countless generations, but eventually Humans built a civilization that rivalled the power of the Gods – the First Empire of Humanity – that wielded great magic and constructed enormously powerful machines. Having mastered the world, the First Empire made war on Heaven.

The war destroyed the world spanning Human Empire, buried cities, rent great wounds in the landscape, and left magical residue that brought into being all manner of Men-Kinds; Beastmen, Goblins, etc. and the proliferation of monstrous creatures. 

The war also damaged the Gods terribly, and they fled the world to their city on the Moon. But before they left, they created the Elves and the Dwarves. The twin gods of Time, Moment and Eternity, took the Man Rune, first carved by Humaman, and used it to create races that were meant to hold Humans forever in check. 

The Gods were alarmed by the ability of Humanity to create History. Moment, created the Elves in order to distract Humanity. Moment set the Elves down on the back of a LEVIATHAN, upon which they built their homeland, ELVENBONE (in My-Stara these Melnibonean Elves replace Alphatia). Moment gave the Elves the impulse to explore every sensation that can be experienced in mortal life. Experiments in food, art, sex, drugs, and violence fill their lives, and the lives of the Humans that they live among, with anything and everything other than the drive of History. They are agents of CHAOS.

Face it. He's a Elf. An urban/e one.

And this guy is an Elf too. My-stara's version of Alfheim will be a bit more... punk.

Eternity created the Dwarfs as a conservative check on Humanity. Eternity set the Dwarfs down within IRON MOUNTAIN, and gave them a complaining, suspicious character. The Dwarfs took the task of recording all of History within their great mountain vaults. Eternity ensured that the Dwarves would be a force for LAW. If there is one thing a Dwarf dislikes more than change, it is progress. If things must change, they should change slowly. That is the Truth every Dwarf is taught.

Unfortunately for the Gods, and for all the Men-Kinds of the world of Hammerstein!, some Dwarves became ever more extreme in their pursuit of Law, in ordering the world, while whole communities of Elves took to the worship of Chaos itself. The very essence of the world had been damaged during the war between Humans and Gods, and through these wounds crept the alien intelligences of primal Law and Chaos. Under the influence of an Angel of Law, the Human’s built a Second Empire of Humanity, a terrible continent spanning death cult, which only ended when the barbarian king, Hammerstein Heartbreaker, stormed the Ziggurat of Permanent Order and killed the demon, bringing into being the current era of free men and petty kingdoms. 

'Advanced' Skills in Hammerstein!

Hammerstein! is [going to be] a d100 skills-based game. My first draft of the Hammerstein! 'Skills' chapter, obviously built on the equivalent OpenQuest and Renaissance chapters, renames 'common skills' as 'aptitudes' : "those skills in which everyone, by dint of natural capacity or commonality of human socialisation, has some ability."

Here's my first attempt to describe 'Advanced Skills':

"In Hammerstein!, skills beyond the list of aptitudes are classed as Languages, Lores, and Crafts. These are skills that require training or experience in order to have any grasp of the basics. While the Hammerstein! basic game provides a range of examples of skills of these kinds, there are, potentially, a vast number of these skills – a GM (and players) with a taste for granularity could decide that each craft specialism, no matter how obscure, should have its own Craft skill, that all dialects deserve their own Language skill, and that every minute field of knowledge is defined by differentiated Lore skills. Hammerstein! does not recommend this approach. Keeping the Language, Lore and Craft skills broadly defined ensures that players can develop competent, rounded characters with skills that benefit adventuring. If it becomes necessary to differentiate the abilities of a character with Craft (Farming), whose background is in arable farming, from those of a character with Craft (Farming), whose background is in dairy farming, the GM might want to consider just what kind of fantasy adventure role-playing game that he is running. If there is still a need to differentiate, use difficulty modifiers and common sense."

Bandits and Farmers... might have high % skills but they're not the 'rock star' adventurers of Hammerstein!

Of course, the chapter then continues for [too] many thousands of words describing just the kind of skills that I consider are appropriate for fantasy adventure roleplaying. Lately, though, I've been thinking about collapsing these skills further still. First, Languages, Lores, and Crafts are all the same kind of thing - bodies of knowledge and capacities for action that require some specific training or experience not covered by basic human socialisation.

Second, I've been thinking of adopting the ideas that I'd been using to deal with 'advanced' combat abilities to cover 'advanced' or granulated forms of the basic aptitudes. Here's what I mean: I've always been disatisfied with the tendency in d100 games to allow a character to have 100% skill using a sword but only 20% skill using a dagger, or 80% in Influence but just 15% in Seduction (or whatever). So OpenQuest, with its collapsed skill list, really appeals (as does Legend / 'new' Runequest with its combat styles). Nevertheless, I like the individualisation and characterfulness of the differentiated skill system, as an idea, even if I don't like it in play.

So, with regard to combat I have been taking my lead from WFRP1e - most weapons are covered by the Close Combat or Ranged Combat skills, and basic unarmed combat is covered by the Unarmed Combat skill. Some weapons or advanced techniques, however, need more training. In Renaissance, these are given their own % skill rating. In Hammerstein!, these will be learned as 'proficiencies' - if you have been trained to use a polearm in combat, you can use it at your Close Combat skill %. If you have not, it is going to be Hard (-40%). As well as specialist weapons, there are also advanced techniques such as two weapon fighting - including sword and shield - and unarmed combat techniques. Most of these weapons and techniques provide those skilled in their use with options in combat that go beyond simply 'add X% points'. Learning one of these proficiencies, if not provided in the archetype, requires training and improvment rolls (two, three, more? I've not decided) and a roll against the relevant skill, with rolling under being a success - it is easier to learn new techniques the more advanced your ability in the basic skill.

I have already adopted this system to deal with literacy (related to the appropriate Language skill , but a high % does not necessarily = literacy), and the ability to swim (related to the Athletics skill). I had been musing over just where to draw the line with other skills. As with advanced combat techniques falling under the umbrella of the three combat skills, so do many advanced skills seem to be subdivisions of other aptitudes - particularly, but not limited to, Influence and specific Regional Lores. Does Hammerstein! need an Etiquette / Courtesy advanced skill, for example? I am leaning towards treating all those advanced skills for which an aptitude could be used as substitute as 'proficiences'. This allows two characters, both with Influence 80%, to have very different ways of putting the skill to use; one could have the Seduction proficiency, the other the Leadership proficiency. These would have the effect of altering the difficulty of tasks by one(?) step - i.e. a 20% bonus - for skill use in those narrow areas. This prevents skills such as Influence being an undifferentiated mixed bag, while also avoiding the sitiuation in which high Influence is for nought as advanced skills eat away at its niche, producing a skill proliferation that breaks the advancement system.
In short:

Aptititudes - everyone has got 'em, ability = %.

Languages, Lores and Crafts - skills for which an aptitude cannot act as a substitute, which need training or experience to learn, ability = %.

Proficiencies - the ability to use the above skills in specific ways, which need training or experience to learn, ability = you've either got it or you don't.

Yet more complications to a wonderfully elegant system. Why do I persist in breaking OpenQuest?

Mystaran Bullet Points

So, I have established the key concepts that I am borrowing from Titan. As I wrote, these are the sort of things that I must continually remind myself of when building the world of Hammerstein!, else it degenerate into pseudo-historical beige, unfit for adventure. But what about Mystara – the D&D world so lovingly detailed in the Gazetteer and Creature Crucible supplements, and the Voyage of the Princess Ark? What can I take from this world, and what must I rule out?

For more Mystaran goodies, including Thorfs wonderful recreations of the classic hex-maps, see the Vaults of Pandius.

1. Pseudo-Vikings as neighbours to mock-Arabia, which is right by fantasy Rome, is a feature not a bug. Variety is the spice of play. Every place should have a strong ‘theme’ – who wants to trek through umpteen ‘realistic’, barely distinguishable medieval towns? – and there need not be a ‘realistic’ logic to their arrangement [All the Gazetteers, essentially]. This complements onto point 3, 4 and 5 of the Titanic Lesson Plan.

2. The world is post-apocalyptic, and conceals hidden cities [B4 The Lost City] and lost valleys [B10 Night’s Dark Terror]. There were once powerful civilizations, and their treasures and secrets are waiting to be discovered, as well as their twisted, degenerate remnants [see also the DA Blackmoor series, and the Azcan, Oltecs, Nithians etc. of the Gazetteer prehistories and the Hollow World]. In Titan we have the War of the Wizards, Carseopolis, etc., but the more thoroughgoing the apocalyptic prehistory, the more dungeons there are in the world. See point 1 of the Titanic Lesson Plan.

3. Ships are cool. When, thousands of years ago, I moved on from the dungeon bashes of the D&D Basic Set and opened the blue box of the Expert Set, I was immediately excited by the idea that adventurers could not only explore the forests between the town and the dungeon, but they could buy, hire, or steal a boat and journey to the Isle of Dread. Or the Island of the Lizard King. Or explore the Seas of Blood. Sea travel, especially to islands, presents the possibility of filling the world with unexplored areas, and with cities and cultures that are radically thematically different. Again, this can keep the world small, varied, and civilization isolated (points 3, 4 and 5 of the Titanic Lesson Plan). Also, pirates.

4. If ships are cool, flying ships are cooler (but rare) [the Voyage of the Princess Ark, PC1 Top Ballista!]. These are present in Titan, too; there is at least one, the Galleykeep [Creature of Havoc, The Trolltooth Wars].

5. Mageocracies are fascinating. In small measures. Thus, Glantri > Alphatia. In a world of magic, at least some places will be the domain of wizards and sorcerers. Not all of these powerful magic users will be one of the multiple big bads of Titan. Indeed, given that the world is inherently fantastical, magic plays an important role in all societies, even those that are not ruled by magicians.

6. And finally, for now, adventurers are rock stars (see point 8 of the Titanic Lesson Plan). The only way I can fit something like GAZ 4 The Kingdom of Ierendi into a world that I could comfortably run is to combine Ierendi with Titan’s Fang [Deathtrap Dungeon and Trial of the Champions], maybe with a dash of Blood Bowl. Many adventurers are motivated by fame, more than they are by power, or even money. They are psychologically different from normal people, even ‘normally’ powerful people, the kings, generals, merchant-princes, thaumaturgic professors and bishops of the world. As an aside, in a world of magic, gods, and demons, it is entirely right that these non-adventuring powerful people are more often than not ‘high level’ (or game equivalent) people in their own right. The D&D standard of having all bishops  be level 9+ clerics, all kings as level 9+ fighters, etc. makes more sense (see counter-lesson 2, below) in this kind of world (while it certainly doesn’t in settings that attempt to emulate a historical period with a bit of magic glossed on top), as long as there is the XP mechanism for advancement other than by adventure. This path of non-adventuring advancement could be just for NPCs, though I dislike systems that mechanically differentiate PCs from NPCs, or from monsters even.

There are, however, two things that I cannot take from Mystara when building the world of Hammerstein!

1. Nations. The whole of the Known World is covered by nations. With borders, routes of communication, standing armies, etc., it is difficult to envisage that civilization exists as points of light amid fantastical peril, or that the world is small world but fantastical threats make travel perilous [points 3 and 5 of the Titanic Lesson Plan]. Cities might cast a civilizing shadow on the nearby countryside, but actual nations should be unusual and/or loosely bound.

2. A preponderance of high-level characters. “What? You’ve just written that high-level characters are justified.” Yes, I suppose this is a system rather than setting problem. It depends on the power scaling of the game. The power scaling of D&D works better in world where almost no-one is name level (which is always the impression that I got from AD&D1e, with the low demi-human level caps implying, to me, that even though humans could go further, only the superheroic did so). In Mystara, there are thousands of 36th level magic-users, and that’s just for starters. In a game world in which there are tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people with high-level adventuring skills, what is a PC to actually do? However, in a game where even ‘high-level’ characters are vulnerable (WFRP, AFF2e, or a BRP/RuneQuest game, somewhat like OpenQuest, say…), having 150% in close combat or knowing a vast array of sorcery spells is all well and good, but you’d much rather those crazy adventurers dealt with the dragon than risk your 15 hit points…

I’ll get round to what I want to borrow from the world of Warhammer soon.  

Titanic Lesson Plan

In order that my game world / PC graveyard doesn't meander off into boring quasi-historical mundanity, I thought I'd best make sure that I was clear in my own head what I am pinching from my influences when thinking about Hammerstein! I'm doing this in order to keep my imagination active and on message. Here's the lessons that I am taking from the first ten Fighting Fantasy books.

1. The [under]world has dungeons, lots of them. They are more than mere monster lairs, filled with a rich variety, including things that *appear* to make little sense - old dwarfs playing cards, random benches for weary travellers, ferrymen, and animated tools. [Warlock of Firetop Mountain] However, even though evil wizards build towers and populate them with a strange array of creatures and objects, there is a 'dungeon ecology', but it the rationale for and interaction between elements of the dungeon is fantastical rather than mundane [Citadel of Chaos].

 

2. The wilderness should be full of encounters that are mini-adventures in themselves. Stop thinking about mundane ecologies and economics - these forests are full of adventure. Indeed, the wilderness can be structured like a non-linear dungeon [Forest of Doom and Scorpion Swamp].

3.The 'world' can be small because travel is perilous. This peril is fantastical rather than grim.  Bandits should NOT make up the majority of random wilderness encounters [Forest of Doom and Scorpion Swamp].

4.The 'world' is geographically small; tropical islands are a short journey from temperate grasslands, and from there you can reach the icy mountains. All manner of adventures can be crammed into a small space. Mundane distance is not the problem - the fantastic is [Forest of Doom, Island of the Lizard King, and Caverns of the Snow Witch].

5. Pay no attention to real medieval settlement patterns. Civilisation exists as pockets of light amid the fantastical peril. Culture can vary tremendously within a short distance - European inspired fantasy can sit alongside fantastical names inspired by a trip to Thailand [Deathtrap Dungeon].

6. Urban life is no less fantastically adventuresome than the wilderness. Cities are great big dangerous dungeons. If you want a quiet life, live in a modest sized town. [City of Thieves].

7. The big bads of the game world are magically powerful. They cannot be defeated simply by saying 'I ht him with my sword', but require a quest in order to identify and exploit his weakness. Unicorn tattoos are optional [City of Thieves].

8. This world contains famous professional adventurers. Adventurers (that survive) are rock stars [Deathtrap Dungeon].

9. Horror is as good a source of inspiration as its sibling genre, sword and sorcery [House of Hell].    

10. Sci-fi gaming, despite all its promise, doesn't hold my imagination in the way fantasy gaming does [Starship Traveller].

Plenary: Forget subtlety - exaggerate! Don't drain the magic, the fantastic, and the adventure from the world by thinking about 'realism'.

[Addendum: an indiegogo campaign for a new edition of Blacksand? That is well worth £30]

Folk Magic in Hammerstein!

It is too easy to allow magic in D&D become bland. There is no casting roll, no consequences for magic use, and spells occur instantly (if you win the initiative roll). I did like AD&D2e's casting times and material components, but never actually used them in play. The 2e schools of magic and specialist wizards were a good idea, even if they didn't work that well [to my mind, Brendan at Untimately has a much better way of handling 'specialist' magic in D&D]. RuneQuest magic can play pretty vanilla too, especially Common Magic, though the attempt by RuneQuest to embed magic in the cultures of the fantasy world - into the very fabric of the world, in the case of Glorantha - sets it apart. WFRP1e gives you magic with material components, and promises a world in which magic is a dangerous force, but unless a character opts for the dead-ends of Necromancy or Demonology, it is actually quite a low risk pursuit. What I am attempting to do with Hammerstein! is to tinker with the OpenQuest magic systems to produce some appropriately flavourful effects. First, by way of the RuneQuest lineage, magic is easily tied to the social organisation of the world - cultures and cults, guilds and grimoires, etc. Second, while magic will be ubiquitous, most people will have little magical power - Folk Magic (Common Magic/Battle Magic in Hammerstein!) is increasingly harder to learn at higher magnitudes. It is the magic of simple charms and curses, ritualised gestures and chants, echoes of lost knowledge. Third, other, more powerful forms of magic - supernatural intercession and thaumaturgic sorcery - carry risks. Communing with the supernatural is exhausting - so we're talking Resilience tests with Fatigue and even Hit Point penalties. Understanding the magical nature or reality is mindbending - so we're talking Persistence tests with Insanity Points. Or somesuch - I've yet to decide whether to use OpenQuest's elegantly simple rules, or build something pointlessly complex on top...

It's enough to drive you mad!

Anyway, there's more to it than that. With Folk Magic, I'm adding in 'material foci'. Below, I try to explain what these are, and suggest material foci for the OpenQuest spells that I'm including in Folk Magic. Of course, players will be free to suggest that their character comes from a tradition in which object X is used to cast folk magic spell Y. But the examples will set the tone. Unfortunately, the material foci that I've come up with are boringly literal. Suggestions for other material foci are welcome. Very welcome.

[6.2.3.1] Material Foci

Casting folk magic spells usually involves the use of a material focus. These foci are as variable as the traditions through which this form of magic is passed from generation to generation. More often than not, the material focus of a spell is not consumed by its casting; it is simply a prop around which the ritual has been taught. A character casting a folk magic spell without the material focus used in the tradition he was taught does so with a Difficult (-20%) modifier to his Folk Magic skill score. Characters with very high Folk Magic skill scores are able to dispense with material foci as their mastery of the ritual is sufficient, but for the day-to-day practitioners, holy symbols, pinches of salt, feathers and the like are essential elements of magic. 

[…]

Befuddle 

A small pouch of tiles or pebbles painted or carved with letters. 

Clear Path 

An ordinary knife.  

Co-ordination 

A toy top, a feather, an accurate set of weights, or extract of monkey brains.

Countermagic 

A necklace, a bracelet, or a ring of other warding charm.  

Darkwall 

A pot of tar, a falconry hood, or a candle snuffer. 

Demoralise 

A toy mask with exaggeratedly fearful facial features or a small bag of live spiders. 

Detect (X) 

A small piece of the substance to be detected, a compass with the needle removed, or a dowsing rod. 

Dispel Magic 

A bag of salt, a pinch of which is tossed into the air when the spell is cast. 

Disruption 

A strip of leather, squeezed or pulled, as the spell is cast.

Dull Weapon

Two pebbles, ground together in the hand as the spell is cast.

Enhance (Skill)

The material foci for these spells are highly variable, ranging from trade tools to guild symbols, to material with a symbolic of mythic resonance with the skill being enhanced.

Extinguish 

An ordinary container of water.

Fanaticism 

The teeth or claws of a vicious beast.

Firearrow

A piece of amber, touched against the missile.

Fireblade 

A piece of amber, slid against the blade. 

Heal 

Heal spells are unusual in that they often do not require a material foci, though some traditions build their rituals around the use of a holy symbol.

Hinder (Skill)

The material foci for these spells are highly variable. Guild symbols are often used, though many guilds deny that they teach such magic to their members.   

Examples:

Hinder Perception – a pinch of dust blown in the direction of the target.

Hinder Trade – common material foci include counterfeit coins, rigged weights, and other symbolically fraudulent measures.

Hinder Persistence – spilling strong drink or a sedative drug onto the floor often serves as the material focus.

Ignite 

Pieces of flint or a small pouch of ashes.

Light 

This spell needs no other material foci other than the object to be illuminated. 

Mindspeech 

A small piece of paper covered in writing, which the caster swallows. 

Mobility 

A feather.

Multimissile 

Archers using this spell often use a bag of down as the material focus of this spell. Cultures that use slings often use a handful of sand. The javelin wielding tribesmen of Inner Pogotania use a small bundle of reeds. Interestingly, though these traditions reflect the missile weapons of the culture, a Pogotanian tribesman can cast Multimissile on the crossbow bolt used by a Genezian mercenary perfectly well.   

Pierce 

A steel or bone needle.

Protection 

The material foci of these spells are often simply the clothing, armour, weapon or shield of the target. The Allmeny barbarians, who eschew armour, often smear themselves in Frazetta oil when casting this spell.  

Second Sight 

The material focus of this spell is often a ring, to be looked through when casting the spell. 

Slow 

A pouch of stones or lead shot, or a jar or treacle.

Speedart 

Tools for measuring distance, such a ruler or a knotted string. 

Strength 

The knuckle bones of Trolls and other large humanoids or a mouthful of bull’s blood. In some barbarian tribes, the passage to manhood involves receiving a thick leather belt that acts as the focus of this spell.

Vigour 

Strong liquor or hot spices.

Water Breath 

Traditional material foci among the fishing villages along the Dragon’s Back include swallowing dried fish gills, while the Pearl Islanders take a small breath from a pouch made out of a swim bladder.  

Weapon Enhance

Blood from a man or woman who died in combat. Soldiers in the armies of Genezia are trained to use the gold doubloon that they received when being commissioned or conscripted.

Bounty Hunter - a Hammerstein! Archetype

Perhaps in order to demonstrate my gamer ADD, I'll keep posting my archetypes for Hammerstein! The purpose of these is to not only add flavour to the character creation process, but also to speed up character creation by assigning all skill points and equipment at the roll of a dice. When we recently played classic D&D - which we'll be playing even as Hammerstein! is rumbling away in the background - reminded me just how important it is that the players are able to roll up characters and have an adventure (and roll up replacement characters) in a single, short session. I'll probably post on player character mortality later this week, but as far as the last session of D&D goes, if 6 starting PCs can kill 11 goblins in a stand up fight without any fatalities, then combat isn't risky enough to be perilous. Never mind grim. And adventure without real risk may as well be a ride on a ghost train.

Anyway - Hammerstein! archetype number two (there's another 28 posts in this, sorry):

1.4.1.2Bounty Hunter

Bounty hunters make their living tracking down criminals, outlaws, and other wanted men. In the world of Hammerstein!, bounty hunters will never be out of work. Some bounty hunters specialise in tracking their targets through the underworld of the wretched cities of Hammerstein!, while others can track an escaped criminal across hundreds of leagues of twisted weirderland.

A self-written legend in his own lifetime, Canis Olahu is the most feared bounty hunter in the world of Hammerstein! Hailing from the Pearl Islands of the Boiling Sea, his leering, sun-browned face is the stuff of outlaws’ nightmares. He wears several necklaces of teeth, reputedly one from each bounty collected. His wealth means that he has no need for the petty rewards of bounty hunting, but his extraordinary vanity keeps him at the heels of wanted men, so long as fame might be the reward.

Bounty Hunter Aptitudes

Combat Skills

Brawl +20

Close Combat +30 

Ranged Combat +10 

Resistances

Dodge +30 

Resilience +20 

Common Skills

Athletics +10

Influence +20 

Insight +20 

Perception +20 

Stealth +10 

Bounty Hunter Languages, Lores, and Crafts

Craft (Track) +10

Lore (Law)

Lore (Streetwise) +10

Bounty Hunter Advanced Techniques

Combat Proficiency – Net 

Bounty Hunter Folk Magic

Bearing Witness 2

Demoralise 2

Endurance 2

Bounty Hunter Equipment

Armour: Hard Leather Jack (2pts)

Weapons: War Sword, Dagger, Crossbow

10 Quarrels

Well Worn Travelling Clothes and Riding Boots

Poor Quality Riding Horse and Tack

Face Black

Rope

3 Pairs of Leg Irons

3 Hoods and Gags

Purse (XZ silver shillings) [Poor Wealth]

[These archetypes obviously need a bit more tweaking.  For one, their starting money - XZ is not some strange numerical system found in the world of Hammerstein! In addition, as I work through the 'Thinkers', I'm thinking of cutting the levels of magic - even folk magic/cantrips - for the archetypes for whom magic is not a central aspect. So rather than every character starting with 6 points of magnitude in folk magic, as now, the base level would be 2 or 3 points of magnitude, with extra points of magnitude eating into the points that are spent on skills and so on. There also needs to be a bit of fiddling with the resistances - as I'm thinking of capping Resilience and Persistence at CONx5 and POWx5, the number of points that can be automatically allocated to these 'skills' could take some starting characters right up to, and beyond these caps.]

The Arch-Bigot and the Cult of Divine Form

What with the football and the rugby, I haven't done much Hammerstein! work (much less played) during the past few weeks. Luckily, I couldn't care less about Wimbledon or the Olympics, so...

In the meantime, I'll post up a short snippet from the world of Hammerstein! This was inspired by 1) a misreading of Plato's Allegory of the Cave, 2) Torquemada and Termight from Nemesis the Warlock in 2000AD, 4) a miserable melange of real bigotry throughout history, mostly via fiction such as Q (by 'Luther Blisset', which deals with the horrors of the Reformation), and, unashamedly, Horrible Histories on CBBC, and 4) the lost opportunity in WFRP1e to make the Gods of Law  as big a threat to humanity as the Gods of Chaos (mixed in, of course, with traces of Moorcockian fantasy - I'm currently [re]reading the Elric stories in the 'ultimate fantasy' collection).

Not quite a Dyson Logos dungeon... but maybe location in a heroquest-style journey into the otherworld for PC bigots.

The Arch Bigot and the Cult of Divine Form

Opalt Kakanka is the current Arch-Bigot, head of the Cult of Divine Form. The Cult of Divine Form believes that the Gods of Law created every object in its perfect form, and that all actually existing forms are deviations from this perfection. They seek to eradicate these imperfections, beginning with the most grievous and offensive. In their eschatology, those who have been ‘true servants’ to the Gods of Law will regain their perfection at the Ordering. Being a ‘true servant’ requires good works. Which tend to involve a lot of killing.

The Cult of Divine Form is based in the Citadel of Utherland. Utherland was once a lively metropolis, and the Arch-Bigot was just one of several theological viziers to the Duke. However, the fallout from the explosive destruction of the magical Tower of Heroes allowed the Arch-Bigot to seize power. The people of Utherland suddenly found themselves on the edge of the newly formed Weirderlands, and the zeal with which the Bigots opposed the mutants and monsters won much support. The people of Utherland were perhaps not expecting the city to be razed to the ground and reorganised in a perfect geometric form, nor to the harsh laws that limit men and women to one mode of dress – a bare cassock – or one hairstyle – a bowl cut. But such is life and survival on the edge of the Weirderlands.

Cult of Divine Form
Virtues: Intolerant, Vengeful, Chaste, Suspicious 
Cult Skills: Lore (Divine Form), Insight, Perception
Folk Magic: Detect Mutant, Fanaticism, Light
Divine Magic: Call Angel, and all the common spells: Consecrate, Create Blessed Item, Dismiss Magic, Divination, Excommunicate, Exorcism, Extension, Find Mutant, Mindlink, Soul Sight, Spirit Block, Spiritual Journey.

Call Angel
Magnitude 1, Permanent, Progressive
This spell summons and binds to the service of the caster an Angel from the Courts of the Gods of Law, of a power dependant on the Magnitude of the spell.
1 = Cherub, 2 = Lawspeaker, 3 = Lawbringer, and 4 = Demon of Law (for more details on Angels see Chapter XZ Bestiary).
The Angel stays under the control of the priest until it is killed or the Call Angel spell is dispelled.
To be successfully cast, this spell requires that the priest has the means to create a channel to the Courts of the Gods of Law. The body of an executed criminal is the usual focus for this channel. Cherubs can be summoned with nothing more than the teeth of a condemned man. Summoning a Lawspeaker requires a severed hand, while a severed head is needed to call a Lawbringer. Demons of Law require that the whole body of a recently executed criminal is available as a doorway between the planes, while at higher magnitudes ever larger Demons of Law, even the Named Ones, can be called (and bound) with the use of exponentially greater numbers of the condemned.

The spell Call Angel is simply the OpenQuest Call Elemental spell reskinned ever so slightly.

Lenk the Sour

Rather than simply putting up pictures of whatever I have managed to paint, I thought it a good idea to write them into my campaign as NPCs or encounters, even if the miniatures themselves won’t necessarily be used in play. I've statted them out for Hammerstein!, which is simply OpenQuest/Renaissance/Legend with a few tweaks.

Lenk the Sour is a Captain in the forces of the 2nd Centurion of the Half Clock*. 

Lenk the Sour [Brugelburg Miniature]

The 2nd Centurion is a brutal overlord. Refugees from his underpopulated Shadow can be found in Wilderhaven, living in crowded Docktown tenements. The 2nd Centurion will burn villages in reprisal for some slight, or simply to clear land for his great passions, the noble pursuits of hunting and tournament. The 2nd Shadow abounds with ruined villages and overgrown copses, providing a home for Faerie and worse. 

The 2nd Centurion has little need to maintain a population of agricultural peasants, and has even less inclination to meet his feudal obligations to them. He controls the Fort-agin-the-Moors. The Fort is a staging post for Adventurers into the Craggen Moors, and as such is home to trade in exotic pre-Cataclysm artefacts and relics, with ‘liberated’ abhuman treasure hordes inflating the prices of everything from ordinary provisions to weapons and armour. There is also a woollen mill and monthly textile market, as the luxuriously fine wool from the Ogre shepherds enters civilised lands through the Fort. 

Lenk is the 2nd Centurion’s prime thug. The 2nd Centurion despises Lenk for his crude manners and low birth, and Lenk responds with ever greater servility and renewed attempts at ingratiation. Lenk, therefore, has erased any conscience that he may once have had. He feels no doubt or remorse when he dispossess peasants, mutilates poachers, or cuts off the thumbs of militant wool workers. There is nothing Lenk will not do to his own people, if he thinks it will win favour from his ‘betters’.

Lenk is a tall, powerful man in his 40s. His small, alert eyes are set in angular features. Even as his face is mean, it takes on a pathetic cast when interacting with those of noble birth, or who otherwise hold power; from weasel-cruel to grovelling-mouse. 

Lenk the Cruel

STR: 15 CON: 14 SIZ: 15 INT: 11 POW: 8 DEX: 9 CHA: 6

Damage Modifier: +1d2


Weapons: Coward's Falchion (1d6+2, M), many daggers (1d4+1, S)

Armour: Breastplate and backplate, helmet (4 AP)

Combat Skills: Close Combat 70%, Ranged Combat 50%, Unarmed Combat 50%

Notable Skills: Athletics 60%, Dodge 50%, Influence 70%, Insight 50%, Perception 40%, Persistence 40%, Resilience 50%, Ride 40%, Stealth 30%.

Magic Points: 8

Cantrips: Demoralise (2), Ignite 2, Strength 1, Weapon Enhance 1 

Cantrip Casting: 30%

Among Lenk’s weapons is a COWARD’S FALCHION. Lenk knows that it is a powerful magical weapon, but he does not know its true nature. Forged by a sorcerer for his orc general, the brutal looking weapon has a vestigial intelligence, and seeks to be in the possession of the strongest warrior it can. When fighting an opponent with an inferior combat skill (use the opponent’s highest skill, even if it is not the one being used), the Coward’s Falchion grants a two step increase in the wielder’s Damage Modifier. This means that Lenk often has a +1d6 Damage Modifier. However, when the Coward’s Falchion is used to attack someone with a superior combat skill it betrays its wielder inflicting a -20% penalty to both attacks and parries.

[The Coward’s Falchion impresses its own primal personality onto the wielder. You might want to resolve this by using ‘experience’ checks against Pendragon-like personality traits. The owner of the Coward’s Falchion gains a check against Cruel, Arbitrary, and Cowardly at the end of each game year. This is IN ADDITION to any checks against these traits that may have been gained for the cruel, arbitrary, and cowardly acts that the character might have performed using the weapon. If the character hasn’t carried or handled the Coward’s Falchion for any significant period of time during that year – for example, if it has been locked in an armoury, no checks are necessary. However, even if the character primarily fights with another weapon, or does little fighting at all, so long as he or she carries the Coward’s Falchion it will warp their personality. A simpler option is to impose Persistence tests that increase in difficulty over the years, each time the wielder is presented with an opportunity to be cruel, and especially to cut down the weak. If the test is failed, the personality of the Coward's Falchion will assert itself.] 

*Wilderhaven is built on the site of the Classical city of Kallipolis. During the Cataclysm, Kallipolis burned, its buildings fell, and much sank into the bubbling tar of the Belch. During the Classical Era, the countryside was controlled by six forts arranged in an even semi-circle – a half-clock – to the east. Each of these controlled a ‘Shadow’ of Kallipolis, with the city itself conceived of as the hand of a sundial. After the Cataclysm, the commanders of these six forts used what was left of the legions under their command to carve out hereditary baronies. They have retained some of the Kallipolian stylings – Classical history is the source of their legitimacy – so tin-pot barons call themselves centurions and their brute squads are their legions. They currently owe their feudal loyalty to the Pirate King, their power inextricably tied to the economy of Wilderhaven.     

Archetypes for Hammerstein!

Hammerstein!, is my OpenQuest/Renaissance/Legend work-in-very-early-progress hack that attempts to build a simple(ish) OGL d100 game that evokes WFRP1e with the 'adventuresome' turned up and the 'grimdark' turned down (but not off). Basically, WFRP1e in Fighting Fantasy's Titan... hmm, perhaps I should just do that rather than write my own game... No, I need my own 'heartbreaker'.

Anyhow, when I think about running WFRP1e in Titan, I think about stripping out all the non-adventuring professions, to ensure everyone has combat, magic, or other specialist skills that would help them adventure rather than scrabble in the mud, pushing their own guts back inside. WFRP1e does adventuring well, if everyone rolls a combat profession (which tend to come well equipped and highly skilled) and someone rolls a wizard's apprentice. If, as has happened when we've played, everyone rolls characters whose chief skill is the ability to dance, you have a troupe of poor, ill-equipped buskers*, and any dungeoneering will get grimdark indeed. However, I play RPGs with people who have no intention of poring over lists of skills or equipment. Even OpenQuest character generation turns my players off the game, as they take a long time to assign skill points and buy equipment, have little fun doing so, but then have invested so much time into the character that killing them off early would be a real enthusiasm drainer. WFRP character generation was easy. Players chose three things; their race, their career category, and their name. Everything else was settled by random rolls, but nevertheless produced interestingly shaped bones on which to build a character. The oracular power of the dice demonstrated right at the outset.

With Hammerstein!, one thing that I've been doing is building archetypes that assign all the skill points and select the equipment of starting characters in order to make d100 character generation a quick, easy process. It's one step up from using pre-generated characters, as the players still get a feel of the system in character creation, and get to roll dice even if they don't make too many choices. Here's part of the work-in-progress, from the chapter on character creation. Why the bombardier archetype? Because it is alphabetically the first of the fighter archetypes.     

1.4     Archetypes

Though their earlier, mundane lives might have been dangerous, player characters now delve deep into the undercities, the faerie forests, and the Chaos wastelands of the world of Hammerstein! Every adventurer in Hammerstein! begins the game with an ‘archetype’. Players should choose whether their starting character is a fighter, a scoundrel, or a thinker. Characters need a STR of 9 to be a fighter, a DEX of 9 to be a scoundrel, and an INT of 13 to be a thinker. A generous GM may allow a player to re-roll a character who does not meet the requirement for any of these backgrounds, ruling that the player has rolled a normal person, not an adventurer^[1]. For the hardcore Hammerstein! experience, however, players may add points to STR, DEX, or INT to transform these mediocre characters into adventurers, but each point increase deducts two points from another characteristic.

Players may choose their archetype within these broad classes, but should be encouraged to roll 1d100 and consult Table 1.4. Adventurers in the world of Hammerstein! rarely reach middle age, and so players should be encouraged to roll up and get playing.

These archetypes grant characters bonuses to aptitudes, specific languages, lores, and crafts, and advanced techniques. In cases in which the archetype grants the character a knowledge or craft skill the character already possesses by virtue of their culture and class background, the character gains a +10% bonus to the skill. In cases where the archetype grants the character an advanced technique that he already possesses, the character should add +10% a plausibly related skill. For example, in the Hammerstein! basic game, the Literate advanced technique can be granted by an educated class background or by several of the archetypes. In these cases, add +10% to a Lore, Language, or appropriate Craft skill, or to a common skill such as Evaluate.

Table 1.4 the Archetypes

1d100 Roll	Fighters	Scoundrels	Thinkers
01-15	Enforcer	Burglar	Cleric
16-30	Highwayman	Confidence Trickster	Herbalist
31-45	Marine	Gambler	Lawyer
46-60	Soldier	Pickpocket	Wizard
61-70	Bounty Hunter	Forger	Alchemist
71-80	Highwayman	Smuggler	Doctor
81-85	Bombardier	Assassin	Professor
86-90	Duellist	Bard	Elementalist
91-95	Gladiator	Revolutionary	Necromancer
96-00	Witch Hunter	Spy	Warlock

1.4.1 The Fighters – The Bloody Handed

The fighters are the brawn of an adventuring party. They brawl, fight, kill, and are often the first to be killed. Fighters, whatever their profession, specialise in putting bits of metal into the bodies of other people. There are a surprising number of ways of doing this.

All fighters, regardless of profession, start with some basic skills that have helped them to survive so far in the bloody world of Hammerstein!

Fighter Aptitudes

Combat Skills

Unarmed Combat +10%

Close Combat +10%

Resistances

Dodge +10%

Resilience +10%

Common Skills

Athletics +10%

First Aid +10%

1.4.1.1             Bombardier              

The bombardier is a military specialist skilled in the use of explosives. In Hammerstein!, cannons and bombs are unreliable weapons, capable of inflicting devastating carnage on even the best armoured and fortified opponents, as well as tearing great rents in the bombardier’s own lines. Bombardier careers often end in ways that are viscerally messy even by the standards of the brutal and cruel world of Hammerstein!

Ianto Hoppenhouse is the most famous bombardier in the world of Hammerstein! A mercenary who styles himself the Professor of Saltpeter, Hoppenhouse was responsible for the explosive undermining of the walls of the Citadel of Heroes. The explosion not only brought down the walls, but scattered the ensorcelled masonry across several square miles, leaving a wasteland blighted by creatures of Chaos.  

Bombardier Aptitudes

Combat Skills

Close Combat +10

Ranged Combat +30

Resistances

Dodge +30

Persistence +20

Resilience +20

Common Skills

Athletics +10

Influence +10

Perception +30

Bombardier Languages, Lores, and Crafts

Craft (Bombardier) +20

Craft (Engineer) +20

Bombardier Advanced Techniques

Literate

Combat Proficiency – Blackpowder

Combat Proficiency – Bombs

Bombardier Cantrips

Extinguish 2

Heal 2

Ignite 2

Bombardier Equipment

Armour: Hard Leather Apron and Gauntlets (2pts)

Weapons: War Sword, Dagger, Musket, Pistol, 2 Grenados

Powder and Shot (20)

Good Quality Clothes and Boots

Telescope

Hoppenhouse’s Tome of Demolition

Purse (XZ silver shillings) [Average Wealth]

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[1] In the world of Hammerstein!, there are soldiers with a STR of less than 9 (though they tend to end up crippled or dead), pickpockets with a DEX of less than 9 (though they tend to rot in dungeons or hang), and doctors with an INT of less than 13 (though the Gods must protect their patients). Only player characters, as adventurers, are bound by these minimum scores. 

I've pretty much finished my first draft rewrites of the character creation, skills, and combat chapters, taking the best bits from OpenQuest, Renaissance, and Legend. There won't be many changes for the examples set in these (related) rulesets. Some skills have been merged or rationalised, I've adopted large parts of the Renaissance Serious/Grave Wound system, there'll be some changes to the magic systems, but not much. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But I do believe in tweaking what ain't broke, so bits here and bits there have minor changes. Hammerstein! will be using the OpenQuest/Renaissance combat system rather than Legend's beautiful system simply, because that much complexity is wrong for our group. Rather than have specialist combat skills, as Renaissance does, unusual weapons or advanced styles are dealt with by 'combat proficiencies' - the core skill remains Unarmed Combat, Close Combat or Ranged Combat, but the combat proficiency allows them to use the weapon without penalty and/or use it in mechanically distinct ways. There will be madness rules, and while I always want to add in Pendragon-esque personality traits and passions, I think I might be able to stay my hand this time.


*Actually, by the rules, busking is one of the best ways to make money in the cities of the Old World. It's certainly better than much low-skilled labouring, which barely pays well enough to keep a character fed and housed. 42 shillings to support a character for an 8 day week. That's just over 5/- per day. It's 2/- per night to sleep on the floor in a common room of an inn, and 3/- is the minimum a character can spend on (pre-prepared) food and remain healthy. Okay, so you might be able to live even more cheaply than that, of you are not renting a patch of floor and have the space and equipment to prepare your own food. But still, it is realistically (for a grimdark game) hand to mouth. Buskers, however, so long as they make a Fel test, make 1d4+1 GOLD CROWNS every hour. If they fail, they still make 1d6 pennies. Why, in the name of Sigmar, would our characters even think of battling Chaos when they could prance in the street and live like dancing kings?