Tuesday, 28 June 2016

d10 Supervillains

from doom patrol
  1. HOT MINUTE. Can move at supersonic speeds between 9:00 and 9:01 in the morning. Is robbing every bank in the city one by one. Stop her by finding her lair and identity, but be prepared for retaliation if she discovers you're investigating her. She could probably just instantly kill you the next morning, depending on how harshly you want to run this.
  2. STOPLIGHT. Robot with glowing green globe for a head. When the globe turns yellow, that's a warning it's about to turn red. When the globe turns red, everyone in the vicinity is frozen in time until it turns green again. Hijacks armoured cars in tandem with gang of armed robbers.
  3. HITBOX. Exerts telekinetic control over the size and shape of everything's hitbox. Can shrink her own so your attacks pass right through everything but her abdomen or expand yours so she can blow up your head by shooting the air to your left. Highly-paid assassin.
  4. LAMPREY LAD. An abandoned child raised by lampreys in the East Anglian fens. Now in command of an amphibious army of lampreys, he intends to take back the seas from the human intruders, starting by draining the blood from lone swimmers and ending with a fullscale assault on the city of London. Twelve years old.
  5. CHIAROSCURO. Can enter any painting and bring stuff out from inside. Steals key items from masterpieces - Magritte's apple, Dali's watch, Vermeer's earring, etc. Can also move between adjacent paintings like the people in the portraits on the walls of Hogwarts. Can't do photographs.
  6. CROWN-OF-THORNS. Any severed part of her contains her whole personality and memory and will grow a new her if left alone for long enough. Covered in poisonous spines. Will sell you fingers as grow-it-yourself goons in exchange for delicious coral.
  7. HOAX. Has the power to make any lie become true. Queen of a fictional island created by a newspaper as a joke, populated by furred trout, tree octopi, jackalopes and Fiji mermaids. Courtiers are exiled royalty from Formosa, Abyssinia and the South Seas. Eats the fruit of spaghetti trees. Playful. Kidnaps children.
  8. BIRD LORD. Believes they can talk to birds and have control over birds. This is false. Fights on behalf of the birds. Lives on a roof. A successful investment banker until their mind was broken by a glancing encounter with the Simurgh.
  9. APE-X. Brilliant physicist from a distant future in which apes rule the Earth. Cast out from the Science Council for his irresponsible experiments with Time Itself, he escaped into the past, where he plans to conquer the planet with advanced technology and make it into the capital of a trans-temporal empire. Hunted by the superteam PRIME-8.
  10. POWDER MONKEY. Monkey with a blunderbuss and a pirate hat. Highly-paid assassin.

Saturday, 25 June 2016

d10 Superheroes



  1. BLACKMOLD. Infected with a fungus that compels her to fight crime. Can exhale a paralyzing spore-cloud that cuts ten years off your life-span and gives you weekly migraines till you die, at which point mushrooms will grow from your body. Anything that eats the mushrooms becomes compelled to fight crime. Convinced that fighting crime was her own idea, will resist any suggestion to the contrary. Looks like Catwoman as played by Janeane Garofalo.
  2. THE RED MESSAGE. Hipster grandchild of Communists who left China in the thirties to proselytise to the American tongs. Equipped with jet-powered rollerblades, a grappling hook and a Mao suit, he plans to spread his radical red message to the funky streets of Brooklyn. Listens to Kasabian. Fights crime, insofar as all property is theft. 
  3. STROBE. Flickers in and out of reality at a frequency of her choosing, giving you headaches with a look and seizures with a touch. Can be invisible to video cameras or under halogen lights. Archnemesis is criminal mastermind with epilepsy.
  4. THE GREEN FEDORA. Learned katana mastery on the internet. Years of training against watermelons and Pepsi bottles in his parents' basement has prepared him to combat the forces of oppression and injustice everywhere they rear their ugly heads. Sidekick is a pillow.
  5. THE MONOCLE. Gentleman thief who stole an experimental utility monocle from the people who make gadgets for James Bond. X-Ray vision, heat vision, augmented reality. Would never look at your dick with the X-Ray vision because he is a gentleman.
  6. SINKHOLE. Can transform at will into a sinkhole. Wherever they're standing, now a sinkhole is there. Anything that falls inside her will be carried around until she chooses to vomit it up, which she can do in both human and sinkhole form.
  7. DOC POSITIVE. Physically springy. Bullets bounce off his chest. Bad guys hit by him go flying across the room with comical noises like they've been whacked with a piston-powered trampoline. Can leap tall buildings in a single bound and do that jumping coin punch Mario does in Smash Bros. Relentlessly upbeat and immune to sour vibes. Had all his bad energy sucked out of him by a scientist and put in a bottle somewhere.
  8. DOC TOPICAL. Has powers based on whatever's been in the news most recently. Brexit grants power to sever bonds between things, weed legalisation grants power to control smoke and fire, etc. Actually a secret experiment by Twitter to weaponise hashtags and harness the power of meme magic.
  9. GOATSONG. Owns a phone directory of Hell. Each demon owes her a favour. When all seventy-two favours are used up, gets dragged screaming into Hell.
  10. BOGMAN. A Neolithic superhero who was hurled into a Scottish peat bog by the legions of his enemy, the Bronze Wizard, after having dealt that foul sorcerer what seemed to be a mortal blow. He was preserved in a state of suspended animation for thousands of years by the mammoth-bone amulet that gave him his powers before being dug up by people constructing a golf course. Now he is a friendly bog mummy with super strength. The Bronze Wizard has also come back to life and is a rich property developer.
Additional bonus superteam: OCTOPUS SQUAD. Eight people, each of whom has one of the powers of the octopus. In emergencies they all hold hands to fuse like Captain Planet into a giant octopus. Inspired by Finding Dory.
  1. Flexible and rubbery. Can squeeze through tiny gaps.
  2. Four extra arms. Knows kung fu.
  3. Changes colour and skin texture to blend with her surroundings.
  4. Releases clouds of mystifying, lighter-than-air ink.
  5. Sucker cups on limbs. Can climb anything.
  6. Wrist siphons. Propels self around, knocks down enemies with jets of pressurised water.
  7. Paralysing touch, poisonous saliva.
  8. Can psychically predict the result of football matches.

Wednesday, 22 June 2016

Dandelion Men

Dandelion men have slender flexible stalklike bodies and a variety of limb configurations, most of them within one standard deviation of human. When they're young their heads are yellow rosettes. As they grow older their florets shrivel and are replaced with bristly white seeds.

Younger dandelion men wear colourful skintight patchwork harlequin suits. Older dandelion men wear long flapping raggedy robes consisting of many layers of translucent cloth. This is to inform them of the slightest change in the wind.

Younger dandelion men are fearless bravados who leap from adventure to adventure, never tiring as long as they have a supply of water and sunshine. They sing ballads, fight duels, woo beautiful ladies and lords. (Of other races: dandelion men are genderless and reproduce asexually. It doesn't make sense that they would pursue romance, but it doesn't make sense that they would willingly seek out danger, either.). Older dandelion men are grizzled, cautious, regretful and wise. They write epic poetry, command armies and settle down in polygamous friend-marriages with small groups of other dandelion men. They dwell either in the dandelion city of Taraxacum, which has very crooked streets, very high walls and windsocks everywhere, or in foreign dandelion ghettos that reproduce this architecture in miniature. They're a bit like medieval Jews, holding down "clever" jobs like lending money or advising the king but generally distrusted and always on the look-out for the next pogrom. The wildness of the younger dandelion men can hurt them here, like if one seduces the wrong prince or whatever, but it can also make them more relatable.

The green stalkflesh of dandelion men is bitter but healthful, and can be used to make a delicious and medicinal liqueur. Dandelion men are also knows as blowballs, clocks, lion's teeth, milkwitches, cankerworts, priestcrowns and puffballs, some of which are derogatory and some of which they have ironically reclaimed.

When all of a dandelion man's bristly white seeds are blown away, it will die. Only a small percentage of the seeds will take root somewhere that a young dandelion man can grow. Whether or not it's moral to uproot a young dandelion man should you find it sprouting in your garden, still in the pre-sentient, attached-to-the-earth stage, is a hotly debated moral question, but most people will just do it anyway. If you are nice to a dandelion man while it grows, watering it and protecting it from bugs, it will be your friend when it begins to bloom. They take about a year to go from being planted to full intellectual maturity. They live about ten years, on average.

from the tv show pushing daisies

Here is where the rules for playing as a dandelion man should go but I can't be bothered to figure it out. Strong wind removes your seeds, keep track of how many you have, get some kind of dex and int bonus to compensate. They make good rogues and warlords if anyone is still doing warlords. I can't really see them using that much magic, definitely not fire magic, but I can imagine there might be such a thing as a dandelion man's curse.

have you seen the stellaris aliens. you should

Sunday, 29 May 2016

Goblin Knights

Sir

The
Steed
Weapon
  1. Jab
  2. Rib
  3. Hop
  4. Lump
  5. Grab
  6. Heap
  7. Shab
  8. Toad
  9. Crab
  10. Gut
  11. Trot
  12. Spit
  13. Squid
  14. Turd
  15. Mud
  16. Grit
  17. Pop
  18. Cob
  19. Sad
  20. Cold
  1. shank
  2. snatch
  3. catch
  4. grind
  5. grope
  6. creep
  7. spine
  8. snarl
  9. rank
  10. stench
  11. reek
  12. moil
  13. nard
  14. nork
  15. muddle
  16. scare
  17. leech
  18. clench
  19. kin
  20. sy
  1. Mutinous
  2. Cankerous
  3. Squinty
  4. Sly
  5. Purple
  6. Morbid
  7. Sensible
  8. Glutinous
  9. Hungry
  10. Putrid
  11. Terrible
  12. Cunning
  13. Bold
  14. Lucky
  15. Magnificent
  16. Foul
  17. Drab
  18. Backwards
  19. Pigfucker
  20. Sour
  1. Frog
  2. Hog
  3. Dog
  4. Centipede
  5. Rat
  6. Cat
  7. Human
  8. Spider
  9. Goat
  10. Snail
  11. Roach
  12. Gorilla
  13. Rabbit
  14. Ibis
  15. Bat
  16. Tick
  17. Chicken
  18. Worm
  19. Camel
  20. Broomstick
  1. Snailflail
  2. Biting axe
  3. Clawhammer
  4. Rusty hooks
  5. Huge fish
  6. Rotten lance
  7. Snake bunch
  8. Magic sword
  9. Shit musket
  10. Toothed mace
  11. Mancatcher
  12. Epic katana
  13. Umbrella
  14. Pumpkin bombs
  15. Giant’s penis
  16. Claymore
  17. Broken halberd
  18. Book on chain
  19. Shillelagh
  20. Macuahuitl

The role of goblin knights is to defend the innocent from the tyranny of adventurers, desecrate all things humans consider sacred and uphold the laws of goblin chivalry, which is basically the same as human chivalry. Goblin knights are brave, honest, generous and unstinting in their pursuit of goblin justice. They keep oaths and will always insist on a fair fight. Otherwise they have the same value system as normal goblins. The ultimate ambition of every goblin knight is to find the Holy Grail and take a shit in it.

Goblin knight encounters:
  1. A goblin knight has sworn not to let anyone cross a particular bridge. The townsfolk built a second bridge next to them and use it all the time.
  2. A goblin knight has fallen in love with you and now follows you around wooing you with songs from its awful guitar.
  3. A goblin knight seeks your aid to slay a terrible giant with club of wood and hat of white. He leads you to a bakery. The baker has been eaten by a terrible giant.
  4. A goblin knight seeks to avenge the death of a bunch of normal goblins you killed at some point without really thinking about it.
  5. A goblin knight has saved your life and now it believes you owe it a debt of service.
  6. A goblin knight, its heart broken by a perfidious lover, aims to die in glorious combat by picking a fight it knows it cannot win.

Saturday, 14 May 2016

Transhuman Classes

  • The Repatterned. Artificial cycling of day and night combined with heavy adenosine control during first two years of life force adaption to state of permanent sleep walk. Heavily retarded for first decade and a half of life before dual wake/sleep halves of brain develop. Patients now exist in dream state, basic functions like feeding, breeding, conversation performed automatically. Somewhat clumsy but incredibly intuitive, adaptive thinkers. Reports of telekinesis likely unfounded. Those of telepathy may bear some investigation.
    Key Manifestations:
    • Lie-Detection
    • Heightened Empathy
    • Uncanny Accuracy

  • Lizards. Psychosurgery on the cerebral cortex is possible at any point after the development of speech skills and before inducing puberty. It is recommended that major body-modifications be installed during the puberty period, but small adjustments to the patient may be performed at any time. Patients will operate a greatly enhanced 'lizard brain', piloting their own bodies. IQ and emotional intelligence are somewhat stunted, but high-speed and precision activities are performed with minimal effort; endurance and control of bodily functions vastly increased.
    Possible Modifications:
    • Bioweapon Integration
    • Cerebral Overclocking Systems
    • Extrasensory Interface Module

  • Plug-Ins. Key sections of hind-brain are removed and replaced with highly-parellelised circuitry, the skull port providing machine interfacing. Learning time for new interfaces is minimal, regular updates to hardware are recommended to assist bug-fixing. Patient now communicates all needs through the on-board AI. Some basic functions may be performed autonomously. Reports of 'inhumane behaviour' unverified. No AI takeover has been confirmed in a laboratory. Subjects, though more expensive than conventional computers, are incredible proficient at adaptive algorithmic solutions; useful for high-speed navigation, database searches, strategic planning.
    Available Upgrades:
    • Mechasuit Guidance I/O Bus
    • Eidetic Memory Store
    • Advanced Hacking Protocols

  • Clouders. Additional sensory input channels must be installed prior to puberty. Mental conditioning should be maintained throughout lifetime, endorphin drip monitored from birth. Client is now a viable node in an ad-hoc cloudhive network. When connected to a cloudhive, mindshare with other members is available over local comms as well as via the central hub. It is recommended that clients avoid over-exposure to new environments to minimise risk of lethal culture shock. Mass consumption of information in safe environments is heavily encouraged. Ownership of firearms is strictly prohibited, as is membership of political parties.
    Benefits of Membership:
    • Mindshare with other Clients
    • Direct-Download Access to Central Infostore
    • Temporary Skill Imprinting

  • Second Lifers. Subject should be monitored after installation of headjack and spinal taps to ensure permanent paralysis has been achieved. Nutritional supplements must be supported by direct stimulation of smooth muscle to prevent atrophy, illness. Subjects connected to V12.6.0.1 equipment or older should be 'woken' every few months to prevent disassociation from their unused body. The subject is now capable of piloting almost any android, drone or vehicle, though repeated transitions between host bodies and occupation of non-humanoid hosts has been shown to have long-term psychological effects.
    Common Host Configurations:
    • 'Wolf' Combat Android
    • 'Raven' Scouting Drone
    • Fursuit


Wednesday, 4 May 2016

Oracles

Somewhere, on a hill or in a cave or sealed in a temple, is a huge, slow creature. It is slow because it perceives reality more in its memories than in its senses. It is huge because it must live a very, very long time. You cannot talk to it. Not really. It will likely speak, but it will only be guessing at what you will say. It doesn't know you, but it predicts you well, because it remembers everyone, everything, that was ever like you.

Oracles don't see the future perfectly. They don't predict things they haven't seen before. This makes older Oracles more valuable, and also ensures no-one can control the known world for very long with one. Sometimes they live in mosques or monasteries, palaces or prisons; are used and revered by the people that listen to them and study their riddles. But they do just as well in forests, mountains, savannahs, the seas. Oracles come in many shapes.


You're going to need to talk to the people that maintain it. Maybe they're captors psychologically torturing it with randomness, or priestesses worshiping and overfeeding it. Maybe they're wolves, a flock of several thousand starlings. Many things will be fiercely territorial around an Oracle, a sympathy carried in genetics or memetics that ensures their sleight advantage. Things that protect an Oracle are always a little advantaged, in the long run.

In the wild Oracles wander between areas of greatest bounty. They can predict rain, tides, natural disasters. For this reason they are sometimes thought, erroneously, to be bringers of good luck. A wild Oracle is curious, cautiously probing the edges of its knowledge, standing in a river and staring at the sky for days on end. To be used in the machinations of civilisation they must be fed news. Any data is useful; whether they understand it or not they grow to see the patterns within it. Battle plans, crop yields, share prices, the latest court gossip, everything that is fed to an Oracle will shape its mood. Interpreting its response, its moods, its wandering, is the simplest way to tap into its power.

size of a god damn truck

Killing young Oracles is not terribly hard. They are strong and large and tough but they cannot fight randomness, new tactics, surprise. Their attack bonus is inversely proportional to how surprised they are. Older Oracles are harder. They have seen your tricks before, and remember them precisely. They rarely miss, but are usually simply not where you want them to be. They called the guards before you thought you'd shown your hand, before you even turned up.

eyes as big as your head no fucking clue what they're looking at

The bit below is an informal analysis of this post, as it stands as a kind of standard layout for a monster manual entry in terms of flow of information.