5E – Ranger Archtype – The Ranger Knight

Ranger Knight

The epitome of the wandering “knight errant” of the wilderness, the Ranger Knight is actually quite comfortable with civilization and will move from rural, to urban, and then to wilderness with nary a concern save for the most effective way they can protect their charges and combat their enemies. Their presence, both open and hidden, has proven the deciding factor in the survival of many a settlement in the face of invading goblin hordes and rampaging troll warbands.

Stalwart Foe

At 3rd level, the Ranger Knight is able to add their Proficiency Modifier to the damage from successful weapon attacks against Favored Enemies.

Staunch Defender

When reaching 7th level, the Ranger Knight gains Advantage all Attacks and Saving Throws when defending the weak and the helpless from immediate danger or threat. This includes the defense of fortifications where innocents are not in the direct line of fire but does not include situations where the Ranger Knight has sought out their opponent. This would also include a rearguard defense while wounded of a group flee the site of battle.

Inspiring Presence

For Ranger Knights of 11th level and greater, their mere presence grants companions and allies Advantage on Saving Throws against Fear and similar effects. They also have Advantage on attempts to rally troops or other related activities.

Implacable Enemy

Finally, at 15th level, when fighting a Favored Enemy, a Ranger Knight will make a Critical Attack on a 19 or 20.

—-

This is an attempt to create a “Ranger that feels like a Ranger” because I’m not a huge fan of either Beastmaster Rangers as the default or that thing they call a “Hunter” in the Player’s Handbook. So with this I think we get a bit closer to my idea of a Ranger, a bit more Aragorn, a hint more of 1e rather than 2e or later. I expect that I should come up with an “”official list” of potential Favored Enemies for my game world as well, given the changes in commonality of some creatures.

Dwarven Bardic Spell List

So, I’ve been in the midst of trying to figure how a Ilda, the Dwarven Bard, successfully made a “God-call” to get her out of a seriously nasty jam. In the process I was taking a serious look at the Bardic spell list in the Player’s Handbook as was struck at how odd some of the spells were for dwarves in my game world. The nice thing about 5E is that there is a unified set of levels for spells – spellcasters get nine, lesser spellcasters get five, and the quasi-casters (archtypes) get four. Also unlike 1E, spells don’t change level depending upon what class they are.

So, looking at the list, and thinking about Dwarves, here is their modified spell list:

• Cantrips
  • Remove Dancing Lights, Minor Illusion
  • Add Produce Flame, Magic Stone
• First Level
  • Remove Longstrider, Silent Image, Unseen Servant
  • Add Absorb Elements, Bless, Earth Tremor
• Second Level
  • Remove Phantasmal Force
  • Add Arcane Lock
• Third Level
  • Remove Leomund’s Tiny Hut, Major Image
  • Add Glyph of Warding, Meld Into Stone
• Fourth Level
  • Remove Dimension Door, Hallucinatory Terrain, Polymorph
  • Add Conjure Minor Elementals, Stone Shape, Stoneskin
• Fifth Level
  • Remove Dominate Person, Teleportation Circle
  • Add Passwall, Wall of Stone
• Sixth Level
  • Remove Programmed Illusion
  • Add Move Earth
• Seventh Level
  • Remove Etherealness, Mirage Arcane, Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion, Project Image, Teleport
  • Add Antimagic Field, Antipathy/Sympathy, Reverse Gravity, Sequester, Symbol
• Eighth Level
  • Remove Dominate Monster
  • Add Earthquake
• Ninth Level
  • Remove True Polymorph
  • Add Imprisonment

So, as you can see, less illusion and transport spells, more spells with a rune or earth focus. I also pulled out the Dominate spells because they didn’t fit either.

TTFN!

D.

The Song of Samael

Of course, the other joy (and Lovecraftian tradition) of Call of Cthulhu is making up your own eldritch tomes full of mind-shattering cosmic horror. The following is what I came up with as an alternative to the Necronomicon for a multivalent “ultimate tome of horror” – I generally prefer a game that is more focused on the Elder Gods rather than the Great Old Ones, and even when I focus on the GOO’s I shy away from Cthulhu because he tends to be done to death.  In any case, as with the Oer Linda Book, part of the fun with doing this sort of thing is detailing out the various versions of the book through the ages. With a Necronomicon-like book this is (as you see below) much more than the simple editions (which is essentially what the Oer Linda Book was written up as). This is a collection of closely related tomes which all deal with the same eldritch mystery across both time and cultures. I actually have notes on three or four more related texts (including at least two more modern ones, this was originally written for a Classic Era campaign) that I haven’t detailed yet, those will form a new post in the future.

The Song of Samael

Song of Samael is a complex allegory poem that is considered one of the great lost Gnostic source materials. It discusses the great song of creation and destruction that the Demiurge, the great blind God, sings as surrounded by his servants at the center of Creation – in the chaos that comes without awareness or wisdom. Portions deal with the place of humanity in creation, the nature of the four-fold world, and the multiple emanations of the Demiuge that both plague and inspire humanity, through the Fall of Man as well as the hope of his Apotheosis. Some scholars have recently questioned a possible connection between the Song of Samael and the Massa di Requiem per Shuggay though no definitive proof has ever been unearthed. Similar relationships have been posited with the Dhol Chants.

Singing Across the Centuries: A Historical Analysis of the Song of Samael.

Produced shortly before the Great War in 1911, this text was derived from the doctoral thesis of Dr. Samuel J. Wight, who is currently associated with the newly created Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Obscure in nature, it is generally only found on the shelves of university libraries, though a few have found their way into private hands.

• (English: Sanity: -1d3, Unnatural: +1/+2, Occult, Anthropology, & History Checks, 3 Weeks – Mythos Rating: 9)
• No Spells

Joachim Feery’s Notes on the Canticum Yaldabaoth:

One of Mr. Feery’s last pamphlets, this was published in English in 1903. Similar to his Notes on the Necronomicon, this consists primarily of translated portions of the Latin text with a series of annotations and footnotes.

• (English: Sanity: -1d6, Unnatural: +1/+3, Occult: +2, 6 Weeks – Mythos Rating: 12)
• No Spells

The Song of the Creator

Translated in 1900 from the Greek Āisma Dēmiourgos by Dr. W. J. Spencer-Knowles, it was the culmination of a twenty project on his part at the end of his career. Considered a brilliant and accurate translation, though often disturbing due to bleak projections on the nature of the universe, a freak fire destroyed most of the copies at the printers and there has been little demand for another printing run. Thirteen copies are thought to have survived, which are found in university libraries for the most part.

• (English: Sanity: -2d6, Unnatural: +2/+3, Occult: +2, 12 Weeks – Mythos Rating: 15)
• Spells: Call/Dismiss Daoloth, Contact Azathoth, Contact Daoloth, Contact Vorvados, Summon/Bind Dimensional Shambler, Dread Curse of Azathoth, Shrivelling

The Song of Bind God Sammael – Hear the Roar of the Lion-Faced Serpent

Privately published in London in 1898, the author remains unknown. The run of one-hundred and one volumes bound in black leather and printed in a curious silver ink is difficult to read and a comparison of the different volumes shows subtle differences. It is unknown if this is purposeful or if it is a printing error. Given the generally high quality of the printing it is thought that there is some meaning to the differences though no-one has ever managed to gather to enough of different volumes together to manage viable a textual analysis. This translation seems to derive from a combination of the Greek and Latin texts, and there is little else in the text other than a somewhat terse introduction and some fragmentary footnotes.

• (English: Sanity: -1d6, Unnatural: +2/+6, Occult: +5, 12 Weeks – Mythos Rating: 24)
• Spells: Contact Azathoth, Contact Daoloth, Contact Nyarlathotep, Contact Vorvados, Dread Curse of Azathoth, Shrivelling, Elder Sign, Voorish Sign

Ballade du Dieu Aveugle

Transcribed in 1354 by the Comte de Montange, the “Ballad of the Blind God” during the terrible times of the Black Death after listening to cries of the dying in the rural regions around Langeudoc. This octavo was barely published before being denounced by the church, with all copies banned and then many burned. A significant number survived however in the hands of the Inquisition as they searched out similar sources of heresy, and a similar number remained in private hands as well.

• (French: Sanity: -2d4, Unnatural: +1/+2, Occult: +3, 20 Weeks – Mythos Rating: 9)
• Spells: Contact Azathoth, Contact Daoloth, Contact Nyarlathotep, Summon/Bind Servitor of the Outer Gods, Dread Curse of Azathoth, Shrivelling

Canticle Iberica

The Canticle Iberica is a manuscript of 117 poems and dramatic texts mostly from the 11th or 12th century, although some are from the 13th century that was found in the Diaz library and now is part of the Castronegro Collection in the library of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, IL. The pieces are mostly bawdy, irreverent, and satirical. They were written principally in Medieval Latin, mixed in with several in Galician-Portuguese and a handful that are macaronic, a mixture of Latin and Galician-Portuguese vernacular. They were written by students and clergy when Latin was the lingua franca throughout Italy and western Europe for travelling scholars, universities, and theologians. Most of the poems and songs appear to be the work of Goliards, clergy (mostly students) who satirized the Catholic Church. The collection preserves a variety of otherwise unknown songs and is noteworthy in that several that are derived from the dreaded Song of Samael and seem to have come from soldiers and clergy that had returned from various Crusades.

• (Latin and Galician-Portuguese: Sanity -1d4, Unnatural 0/+1, Music: +1, History: +, 9 Weeks – Mythos Rating: 9)
• Spells: Contact Azathoth, Contact Daoloth

Testament des Zeichens der Löwe-Gesicht Schlange

This 917 version is a handmade copy of a now lost version that dated from the time of Charlemagne. The “Testament of the Sign of the Lion-Face Serpent” was ordered by the Holy Roman Emperor himself. It records the tale of the destruction of a pagan cult of blind singers by the warriors of Charlemagne and the interrogation of the few survivors. Replete with details of human sacrifice, sexual perversity, and bestiality it has always had an unsavory reputation. Only three copies are known to exist, one in private hands and one each in library of the University of Munich and Heidelberg. Rumors persist that the original is contained within the Z Collection of the Vatican Library.

• (Old High German: Sanity: -2d4 Unnatural: +2/+4, Occult +6, 30 Weeks – Mythos Rating: 18)
• Spells: Call/Dismiss Nyarlathotep, Contact Azathoth, Contact Daoloth, Contact Nyarlathotep, Contact Tzulscha, Contact Yog-Sothoth, Summon/Bind Dimensional Shambler, Summon/Bind Servitor of the Outer Gods, Dread Curse of Azathoth, Shrivelling

Canticum Yaldabaoth

This version, the “Song of the Son of Chaos” dates to the Crisis of the Third century, and was recorded by members of Imperial Cult who saw the changes and chaos of Imperial Rome and its court as endemic of the Emperors. It’s authorship is attributed to Vibius Lartius Priscus, a black magician and sorcerer of that time period. The earliest known manuscript has been dated to the reign of Philip the Arab (244-249 C.E.), and is usually dated to 248. Speculation remains rampant among scholars as to the possible association of the Philip the Arab in the establishment of the Yaldabaoth Cult. Secret and hidden, some scholars suggest that it is a resurgence or survivor of the Imperial Cults associated with Caligula and Nero while others insist that Philip brought it to Rome from Persia. The British Museum and the Huntington Library in California are known to have copies, as does the Z Collection of the Vatican. At least two copies are known to be held in private collections. There was an excellent copy at the University of Prague prior to the Great War but it disappeared during the conflict.

• (Latin: Sanity: -2d6, Unnatural: +3/+6, Occult: +4, 36 Weeks – Mythos Rating: 27)
• Spells: Call/Dismiss Daoloth, Call/Dismiss Nyarlathotep, Call/Dismiss Azathoth, Contact Azathoth, Contact Daoloth, Contact Nyarlathotep, Contact Tzulscha, Contact Yog-Sothoth, Summon/Bind Dimensional Shambler, Summon/Bind Servitor of the Outer Gods, Dread Curse of Azathoth, Shrivelling

Āisma Dēmiourgos

Fragments of this version, which translates as the “Song of the Demiurge” date to the chaos of the Persian invasions around 500 B.C.E. Contemporary accounts speak of the hymns of damned priests from Persia in the vanguard of some of the Persian armies, as well as their unholy rites and orgiastic frenzies that they indulged in. Written and recorded by scholar Argyros the Delian with a series of commentaries on the Greco-Persian Wars, this work is a gigantic and complex text that includes a significant alternate history of the Delian League and elements of the Persian Court. Hints at terrible alliances within the Greeks and foul bloodlines among the Persians run concurrent with the Argyros’ rendition of the Song of the Demiurge. Copes of this are exceedingly rare, the only complete one known being held at the British Museum.

• (Ancient Greek: Sanity: -2d6, Unnatural: +3/+7, Occult: +5, 52 Weeks, History Check – Mythos Rating: 30)
• Spells: Call/Dismiss Daoloth, Call/Dismiss Nyarlathotep, Call Vorvados, Call/Dismiss Yog-Sothoth, Contact Azathoth, Contact Daoloth, Contact Nyarlathotep, Contact Tzulscha, Contact Vorvados, Contact Yog-Sothoth, Summon/Bind Dimensional Shambler, Summon/Bind Servitor of the Outer Gods, Dread Curse of Azathoth, Shrivelling, Elder Sign, Eye of Light and Darkness, Vach-Viraj Incantation, Voorish Sign

Shir Ha-Samael

The original and lost version of the Song of Samael, there are several scholars who are positive that this version is forever lost though fragments have been found that confirm its existence. There are obscure references to this song throughout many obscure texts and it scholars believe that the original Shir Ha Samael dates to roughly 1000 B.C.E. Abd al-Azrad mentions in the Kitab Al-Azif to listening to a choir of 666 blind monks and nuns who sang “hymns to the daemon sultan” accompanied by unseen flautists who piped with maddening monotony in the nights of the Empty Quarter. Knowledgeable occultists agree that this is a reference to the dreaded Song of Samael.

• (Ancient Aramaic: Sanity: -2d8, Unnatural: +4/+9, Occult: +6, 64 Weeks – Mythos Rating: 42)
• Spells: Call/Dismiss Azathoth, Call/Dismiss Daoloth, Call/Dismiss Nyarlathotep, Call/Dismiss Tulzscha, Call/Dismiss Yog-Sothoth, Contact Azathoth, Contact Daoloth, Contact Nyarlathotep, Contact Tzulscha, Contact Yog-Sothoth, Summon/Bind Dimensional Shambler, Summon/Bind Servitor of the Outer Gods, Dread Curse of Azathoth, Shrivelling

Ship Computers, Generate Programs, and Jump Cassettes

So, I had a thought because there has been an ongoing discussion on the COTI Forum (“Citizens of the Imperium” – the official Traveller forum) regarding a bit of Classic Traveller electronics, the Jump Cassette. It part of the ongoing discussion regarding ProtoTraveller and RAW Traveller, all of which is has been informing my own internal thoughts regarding what I want my Traveller universe to look like next time around.

Building off of the other discussion, it is worth noting that “engine-wise” you could build a ship that does Jump-6 the moment you discover Jump Drive. The limit comes in to two ways – you can build ships of a limited size, and you can only build a computer of limited power.

1. So as ship size increases, it gets “slower” with the same size drive. Rather than “slower” it is “limited to the jumpspace it can penetrate” – and the jumpspace determines how far the ship travels in the week spent there. So, an A-Drive can move a 100dton ship Jump-2, and a 200dton ship Jump-1, while a D-Drive can move a 100dton ship Jump-6 and an 800dton ship Jump-1 – at the other end of the scale, a few hundred years of development later, is the Z-Drive which can move an 800dton ship Jump-6 and a 5000dton ship Jump-2. With the “extrapolation” I talked about earlier, I moved that size up to 10,000dtons for Jump-1 with a z-Drive.
2. At the same time as Jump Drive is invented, computers reach small size and enough power that you can fit into a ship that can use (and potentially calculate) Jump Coordinates. The limit here is that the best that they can do is Jump-2. So while you can build a 800dton hull, the biggest ship you can build that can do is 400dtons – all despite the fact that if you were able to buy and install a more powerful computer later, you could install that D-Drive on a 100dton ship and get deep enough to travel Jump-6.

Now, “computers” are one of those parts of Traveller that have been horribly and justifiably ridiculed over the years. Their sizes and capabilities are, well, based on 1970’s mainframes – the cutting edge of technology when the game was first written. Over time, “ship computer” has been retconned into including sensors and a certain amount of C3 (Command, Control, Communications) but it can still be hard to swallow some of the numbers used. They also date from the time when, yes, oh younger readers, people used cassettes to record and save data, and when computers often weren’t able to do very many things at a one time…

So a ship’s computer could be equipped with a “Generate” program, which is what allowed a Navigator (or Astrogator is you prefer) uses to calculate and “generate” the plot of the Jump route. However, especially with those “early computers” that might be the only thing the computer was able to run, no Gunnery, no Maneuver, heck maybe not even Jump itself.

Plus, the players might not even be able to afford the Generate program to start off with! The computers and programs were talking about are “enterprise-level” technology, not a laptop hooking up to a network (more like mainframes). So, what they were able to do was a buy a one-shot “Jump Cassette” that gave them one-way plotted coordinates to a single system. I haven’t checked, but I think these somewhat disappeared in MegaTraveller and Traveller: The New Era, and Mongoose Traveller, but in T5 they were back – with the ability to use them multiple times (just making the Jump more difficult each time until on the 6th use it was an automatic misjump).

I like this because it dovetails with the idea of the “Jump Rutter” – perhaps there is some way to model very, very slow calculations that don’t use the Generate program but instead involve laborious calculations with the normal computational power of the ship’s computer but sans the specific algorithms and database that the Generate program contains. It also suggests the existence of a psychic talent that allows instantaneous Jump Calculations ala the Pilgrims from Wing Commander.

Given the default anti-psionic attitudes inherent in the RAW, this creates a couple of interesting potential plot points immediately…

So, using a Generate program, creating a Jump Plot normally takes 10-60 minutes, we could simply say that going by hand, using a Jump Rutter, takes two time increments of time slower, or that it takes 6-24 hours (hmmm… I that table might mean 6-36 hours instead….) instead and is a Formidable task (an additional -6 to the roll). So, you can pay for a Jump Cassette, or pray that the Astrogator is as good as he promised when you hired him…

TTFN!

D.

 

 

 

Jumping, Jump Masking, and Jump Shadowing

So, as I delve into ProtoTraveller I am confronted by the issue of Jumping – and will ignore (for the moment) Mongoose Traveller’s introduction of Warp Travel and Hyperspace.

Jumping is the Traveller term for Interstellar travel. Ships use Jumpspace to travel faster-than-light, with certain strictures.

1. All Jumps last roughly one week in length (with variance measured in hours, rather than days). Anything else is a sign of a Misjump.
   • Okay, one quick diversion to Warp Travel and Hyperdrive from Mongoose Traveller. These both, as per the MgT RAW, speed up travel to be measured in days rather than weeks.
2. Jumps are limited in distance, with the distance being determined by the tech level of the ship.
   • The original game and all editions up to T5 limited travel to Jump-6, this meant that in one week, the ship will travel six parsecs. Jump-1, the ships travels one parsec in one week. This was probably ignored in house rules as much as it was rigorously enforced – gamers being gamers.
   • In T5 (the much maligned Traveller 5th Edition, though not nearly as maligned as Traveller: The New Era) Jump goes up to 9, and Hop and Skip are introduced which scale up by factors of 10x and 100x respectively. These both, as well as the post-6 Jump numbers, occur only at much higher technological levels.
   • Misjumps can be up to Jump-36 in distance (or even longer with Referee fiat), rolled 1d6x1d6 when it is determined that a Misjump has occurred.
   • This suggested different levels or dimensions of Jumpspace, mostly by making sense of the Small Ship Universe ship construction system as compared to the Big Ship Universe.
3. Entering or leaving Jumpspace is impacted by gravity wells -often causing Misjumps or a violent exit from Jumpspace.
   • In the game this meant that you had to travel “100 Diameters” from a planets surface before you could safely Jump. Technically you could Jump 10 Diameters out from the surface, but it was more difficult and dangerous.
   • Technically speaking, as people have extrapolated across the years (and editions) this also means that gravity wells of ships and stars. For ships, the distances are generally too miniscule to worry about (but the question is inevitably raised when someone wants to Jump a ship that is in larger ship’s hold, usually because they are captured by pirates). While stars… well that just tends to get ignored – unless you (like me) tend towards the OCD.
     • A professor of mine in grad school said that in order to be successful in grad school you had to at least a touch OCD. The key, as he put it, was to keep in on the Obsessive side instead of the Compulsive.
   • Some argument has existed as to if Jumps needed to start and end in a star system (essentially that ships used the gravity well of a system to “catch themselves” out of Jumpspace). This came from the old Imperium boardgame where this was the case, and is evidently a canon bit of history. But technology evidently allows this to change – with scattered references to deep space refueling stations or other forms of calibration points.
4. Starships must be at least 100 dtons in size.
   • An issue raised by the now utterly non-canon, but once (and still) questionable existence of “Jump Torps” – something that I love, but that seriously conflict with the canon OTU despite being listed in the old (and much loved) Adventure 4: Leviathan.
   • As an additional note, in standard Traveller Jump Fuel requires 10% of the ships volume per Jump Number – as a one-time expenditure. So Jump-6, that’s 60% of the ship allocated to a one-way trip.

That gets us to Jump Shadowing and Jump Masking, which were only explicitly described in Traveller: The New Era (in their search for gritty realism). Later, in the GURPS: Traveller Far Trader supplement is the first (and only to my recollection) rules for actually incorporating them into play.

Jump Masking is when significant interstellar body intersects the path of a ship in Jumpspace. Jump Shadowing is when the destination point of a Jump-travelling ship lies within a gravity well of an interstellar body.

It doesn’t seem to me to be that hard to do an idiot simple tweak to the Jump rules to handle both Jump Masking and Jump Shadowing – as well as incorporate a old idea into what also feels like a very ProtoTraveller setting.

In Mongoose Traveller, using the Astrogation skill to plot a Jump is normally an Easy (+4) Education check, modified by the Jump distance (so, -1 to -6). It effect this means that unless the attempt is rushed along it is probably always going to succeed. In ProtoTraveller the idea is that travel is somewhat dangerous. Think more like world travel before the advent of flight – maybe not as dangerous as the Middle Ages, but more in the nature of the 18th or 19th century.

So, let’s say that those rules (mostly) apply to well-mapped trade routes (we’ll get to that in a moment). It still doesn’t cover Masking and Shadowing – and here is the simple fix. For Jump Shadowing add a -1 Modifier for every star in the system while for Jump Masking, when plotting the Jump simply add a -1 modifier for every system that the route intersects.

Normally, Jump takes 148+6d6 hours. In the event of Jump Shadowing, if the navigator doesn’t wish to take the Difficulty penalty then instead add +6d6 hours of travel for every modifier for the Jump Shadowing that they wish to avoid. This represents them targeting a point further and further out to avoid the Jump Shadow – though at the expense of longer and longer in-system transit time.

Now we can also say that plotting a Jump to a Backwater system (off the Trade Routes)in the Core Worlds is a Routine Education check the same as Frontier systems on Trade Routes. Backwater systems in the Frontier are a Difficult Education check while truly unknown systems are Very Difficult Education checks to plot a course to.

This also has the effect of channeling travel around “dangerous systems” and towards “safer systems” – essentially “rocks, shoals, and reefs” for the Traveller system. That’s before we add in other potential effects for nebula, black holes, etc. It also means that you can really create “hidden bases” or “protected systems” because certain systems are just a huge pain in the ass to get to.

Now, in the “real world” navigators had “rutters” which were their private (and secret) notes and charts for navigational hazards. Anyone who has read or watched Shogun should be able to recall the discussion around the existence and the secrecy of these things. When we add in these sort of navigational hazards and complications the use and desirability of a “jump rutter” become apparent.

So, we could simply suggest that ship navigators keep and maintain “jump rutters” which they create (and pass on to apprentices, or family members in the case of Free Traders). Through experience in Jumping to various systems navigators can essentially create their Trade Routes, even their own “Core Worlds” with enough time and enough Jumps.

This also explains why (or how) the small Free Traders and Tramp Freighters maintain a viable economic presence. They are the only ones that know the safe routes to the Backwater and Frontier worlds. Similarly, it also explains how pirates manage to exist and remain viable – they haunt the long spaces where ships avoiding Jump Shadow travel, and have found “secret asteroid or nebula bases” where they can hide in safety.

TTFN!

D.

 

 

 

The Small Ship Universe…

One of the great debates (among many debates, both great and not-so-great…) in the Traveller RPG universe is the Small Ship vs Big Ship universe.

The original Traveller rules (and a selection of “basic rules” since then) have a methodology for ship construction that caps ship sizes at around 5000 “displacement tons” (the volume of 1000kg of liquid hydrogen, or 14 cubic meters). That’s about, either, twice the size of a WW2 “Liberty” ship, or about half the size of the Titanic, roughly the size of the USS Arizona, or about 10 Los Angeles-class submarines, or about 500 tractor-trailers.

This is also known as the “Adventure Class Ships” in some quarters. It is based on roughly fixed (but easy to extrapolate) hull sizes, and fixed size engines and power plants, that become available at various tech levels, in conjunction with computers. Smaller ships can go faster, but this is also limited by computers – which provide the real limitation on interstellar speed. The drives can move ships faster than the computers can calculate at lower technological levels.

When then Book 5: High Guard came, it gave a radically new design and construction paradigm. Most notably, ships could be up to a million tons in displacement. Plus, engines and power plants are a percentage of space depending upon the performance desired, and interstellar speed is directly linked to tech level, not computer performance per se.

As can imagine, these are largely incompatible. The canon Traveller universe clearly converted over to a “Big Ship Universe” while keeping “Adventure Class Ships” around for the PC’s. There are reasons – the BSU model is far more thorough, and covers vastly more options for construction and wargaming. It also more closely parallels “real world” naval construction in that ships became bigger and bigger as materials science and propulsion technology has allowed.

One of the quirks of the SSU is that while larger sizes of ships became available with increased technological development, and faster interstellar travel, but faster came with a decrease in hull displacement – e.g. the ships get smaller when you want them to travel faster, with significant differences. This actually suggests some differences in a SSU version of Traveller from the BSU version.

The big one, in my mind, is that ship size is limited because by some other factor of the interstellar medium. Additionally, that this limiting factor is not merely a function or characteristic of interstellar travel (“Jump Space”) because the same size limitations apply to boats (non-starships) as well. Either that there is some life-sustaining quality of terrestrial existence that is lacking, or there is some additional threat that has not yet appeared in our (real-world) explorations of space. I tend to run with the idea that the starships in Traveller also maintain some sort of magnetic or biotic field that protects the inhabitants from prolonged exposure to dark matter (along with perhaps acting as a deflector for space dust and micrometeors).

Now, many of us that prefer a SSU would also prefer ships a bit bigger than 5000 dtons (that’s “displacement tons”) in size. Luckily there are some interesting extrapolations of the SSU ship construction rules that suggest that ships could get up to a 10,000 dtons. There is also a methodology in the Mongoose Traveller High Guard supplement that creates ships with up to six “sections” (for better damage tracking). I like using these both in conjunction with an additional idea that was meant to create faster “big ships” (on a SSU scale) but that I instead tweaked to allow these larger, multisectional ships that merely operate like the original SSU ships. The end result is ships IMTU (“In My Traveller Universe” as opposed to the “OTU” or “Official Traveller Universe”) up to 60,000 dtons in size (though they are, slow, slow, slow…).

But this lets me build ships big enough to transport an entire battalion of troops at a single time (important for campaign-related, flavor text reasons), as well as warships that are both impressive in size and utterly overpowering without being utterly ridiculous when compared to whatever ship the player group is likely to be travelling around in. Player-character types ships tend to be in the 100 dton to 400 dton (perhaps a bit larger if they are lucky), and this puts Corvettes in at around 300 dtons, Frigates around 700 dtons, Destroyers around 1000 dtons, and Cruisers in the 2000 to 3000 dton range.

Yeah, ok, I know… I know… get around to catching up on game logs…

Plus, rules for Shades for 5E.

Plus, I promised my players some guidelines about multiclassing.

TTFN!

D.

 

 

A different or additional resource management for magical items

I’ve been reading the new Dr. Strange comic (which I highly recommend if people like either comics or Dr. Strange) and then saw a splash panel elsewhere of the comic book character Ilyana Rasputin holding the Eye of Agamatto and thought about how many magic items are described as having a cost, or are exhausting to use. Now, currently D&D uses some combination of the X/uses between a Short/Long rest to describe this and that’s certainly a reasonable way to do so, but it also doesn’t capture the sense of “exhausting” that I’m thinking of.

One way to do this is by activations or uses casting Hit Points. The problem with this is that there is also a trope about some magic or magical items needed blood or wounds to be used and for all the talk about Hit Points representing more than physical damage, they are still closely linked to that in most players minds. So again, the flavor is off.

So, how about Exhaustion? There is actually a condition mechanic for this in 5E – my problem with this is that the Exhaustion condition is very debilitating to characters and with six levels of it you simply die. So while this is a valid use of the Exhaustion condition, I would want to save it for the most powerful (or cursed) of artifacts or effects because the penalties are likely to cause many players from using the item or effect in question.

What I had actually thought of was using Hit Dice!

This makes Hit Dice a multi-use resource (always a good thing in my mind) that forces a player to choose between “useful effect now” and “healing later”. It increases as levels go up (so high level characters have more uses, something that I’m a fan of). I also think that Hit Dice as a concept is removed enough from Hit Points in that it can be equated to “endurance” or “exhaustion” as opposed to damage – especially since Hit Dice are regained through Long Rests.

Hit Dice are also generic enough to conceptually valid for Arcane Magic, Divine Magic, and Psionics. The cost can even be scaled if the DM desires so that smaller effect costs 1HD while a large one might cost 5HD or whatever (also neatly creating a minimum level for certain uses). This also opens up the idea that some items might allow (or even require) multiple characters to contribute HD to create an effect (especially for those big and flashy ones).

There is also nothing preventing a DM from using both Hit Dice and Exhaustion for really powerful items – or simply as the limiting factor in low magic campaigns. One could create items that have a Hit Die cost over multiple Long Rests. Something like a 1HD cost each day while a multi-day effect is running, or a 5HD cost that decreases by one after each Rest (or Long Rest).

In any case, I hope someone out there can get some use out of this. I’m certainly going to experiment with it myself!

D.

The Knifefighter Feat

So, watching the ads and the reveals for the new AMC show Into the Badlands has me wanting there to be a feat that creates the sort of crazy, knife-wielding warrior that bristles with sharp pointy things and who is yet not entirely unbalanced. It actually calls to mind the movie Exposure – which is well worth watching if you are interested in that sort of thing. One of the more accurate depictions of knife-fighting in a film that I’ve seen. 

Knifefighter:

The character has learned the “grand art” of the “Persevs” (street assassins), the skill to “perforate and sever” with smaller and more maneuverable weapons that are easily concealed and carried. This skill only works in melee combat, and only with weapons that have the Light or the Finesse qualities.

• If attacking with Advantage, and the attack succeeds, then they gain an additional, Standard attack with that same weapon.
• Upon making a successful Strike, but before rolling damage, the character may decide to embed the blade in their target. This means that the blade is left in the body of the target until after combat (it requires an Action, Reaction, or Bonus Action plus an Average Strength check to retrieve during combat), but does an additional +10 damage.

For anyone who has never studied knife-fighting, or never seen a video of a knife attack, the sheer speed and violence of one is rather horrifically amazing. The first ability represents this, as well as the sorts of “filleting” moves that you can find in some knife forms. The second ability is a bit more cinematic, but is also a bit of a nod to the idea that even a smaller weapon can be dramatically effective in the right hands – and that vital areas are often protected behind bone that weapons can be lodged in.

It also, incidentally, allows for the creation of a fantastic two-handed, cut & thrust (rapier and dagger) duelist character…

Another Fun Piece of old Cthulhu Lore – The Oera Linda Book

There is a long and proud history of using real-world occult texts (and mystery texts, and plain old cypher texts) in the Call of Cthulhu RPG – as well as people using the titles of Lovecraftian tomes for real world texts in return. What this means is that it is actually relatively hard to find a book that hasn’t been used already. I stumbled over the Oer Linda Book years ago and found it perfect for a game I was running at the time. Links are included at the bottom for more information on the real-world editions.

The Oera Linda Book

An ancient manuscript that was held in the family of Over de Linden family for generations, its existence was revealed in 1867 by the master shipwright Cornelis Over de Linden who inherited it from his grandfather via his aunt. The book describes the destruction of Atland (Atlantis) in 2194 BCE, and the subsequent history of the Frisian people.

The book describes the history of a matriarchal culture of folk-mothers who rule over celibate priestesses of goddess Frya. This goddess generated through a series of virgin births twelve men and twelve women who formed the progenitors of the Fresian race. After living with the Fresians for seven generations and giving them a series of laws to live by, Fyra ascended to the stars of heaven while a terrible flood and nearly wiped out humanity and civilization. Favored by Heinrich Himmler, and sometimes referred to as “Himmler’s Bible” it posits a Northern European origin for several Middle-Eastern civilizations and includes a doctrine of racial purity.

The complete known text is comprised of three primary parts, the letter of Hidde Oera Linda (dating to 1256), The Book of Adela’s Followers (dating to the 6th Century BCE) which is compiled of contemporary and ancient writings, and Frya’s Tex (dating to 2194 BCE), which gives the laws as set down by the Goddess Fyra. Two additional sections are included towards the end of the book, the writings of Konered and Beden, but these are often incomplete and the book itself breaks off mid-sentence.

The Various Editions:

The Lost and Complete Version: A collection of loose pages in a folio, it is written in the same Old Fresian cipher as the 1256 Manuscript. Suitable to be found and used in Cthulhu: Dark Ages game…

• (-1d6 Sanity; +0/+2 Unnatural, +5 Occult, 21 weeks – Mythos Rating: 6)
• Contains: Contact Fryra (Yidhra), Fryra’s Blessing (Perfection), Fryya’s Mead (Brew Dream Drug), Fryya’s Message (Dream Vision)

Thet Oera Linda Bok (1256): The original manuscript consists of a series of loose pages, written in a cipher of Old Fresian. It is currently held in Tresoar, Frisian Historical and Literary Center in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands.

• (-1d4 Sanity; +0/+1 Unnatural, +5 Occult, 16 weeks – Mythos Rating: 3)
• Contains: Contact Fryra (Yidhra)

In 1872 the book was first translated and edited in Dutch as Thet Oera Linda Bok. Naar een uit de handwriting dertiende Eeuw by Dr. J.G Ottman, a prominent member of the Frisian Society for History and Culture, after being rejected by Eelco Verwijs, the provincial librarian of Friesland. It was published by H. Kuipers.

• (-1d3 Sanity; +0 Unnatural, +4 Occult, no spells, 2 weeks – Mythos Rating: N/A)

Shortly thereafter, in 1876, William Sandbach translated the book into English, The Oera Linda Book: From a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, but worked strictly from the Dutch translation by Ottema, evidently never referring to the original, and having some heavy Christian biases. It was published by Trübner & Co.

• (-1d2 Sanity; +0/+1 Unnatural, +3 Occult, no spells, 2 weeks – Mythos Rating: 3)

In 1933, Herman Wirth translated a version of the book into German, Die Ura-Linda-Chronik. Übersetzt und mit einer einführenden geschichtlichen Untersuchung. More propaganda than scholarship, this version is rife with additions and interpretations to support his already existing theories of Atlantis and Aryan origins. It was published by Koehler & Amelang. Note that rumors abound regarding the personalized and annotated copies of Wirth, Himmler, and other Nazi leadership.

• (-1d4 Sanity; +0/+1 Unnatural, +5 Occult, no spells, 1 week – Mythos Rating: 3)

In the aftermath of World War II, the work was largely left alone until Robert Scutton translated a new abridged version in 1977, The Other Atlantis: Astounding revelations of the secrets of Atland, long-lost imperial capital of the North. In English with a lengthy commentary and introduction.

• (-1d2 Sanity; +0 Unnatural, +2 Occult, no spells, 1 week – Mythos Rating: N/A)

Finally, since 1983, there has been a cheap and easy to find translation by Frank H. Pierce IV, commonly found and used by various and sundry occultists and Neo-Aryans as a research tool and support as it supposedly a complete and unbiased translation of the original. The Oera Linda Book: Translated from the Frisian –

• (-1d2 Sanity; +0 Unnatural, +2 Occult, no spells, 1 week – Mythos Rating: N/A)

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The Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oera_Linda_Book

Excellent site, with pictures of the entire original manuscript: http://www.oeralindaboek.nl/

The 1872 version: http://japicx.com/aisp/frisii/books/frisia/open_frisia.htm

Interesting site with pictures of the 1933 Wirth edition – and with an amusing bit of DGML connection…

http://www.od43.com/1933_Ura_Linda_SS-Ahnenerbe.html

A belated Halloween post in celebration of the Delta Green Kickstart!

has been sitting on my hard-drive for (as I check the document properties)… 11 years, since about this time in 2004. It might have been inspired, in part, by the Black Sands comic by Blair Reynolds. I can’t remember if it has ever seen the light of day before, I don’t remember posting it on the DGML, but it was my idea of an additional adversary or patron for a Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green game. The really interesting part is that with the publication of the additional CoC “eras” (Invictus and Dark Ages) it is a concept that could span all of the eras for a very cool multi-stage campaign.

It certainly wasn’t or isn’t the basis of my current, though dormant, Call of the Cthulhu campaign. But looking back I have to say that I’d don’t think it’s that bad of a kernel for something!

So, without further ado and only a couple of minor tweaks!

…The Lodge…

The Lodge has its formal beginnings in the middle of the 19th century with expansion of the British Empire into the Far East. Informally, the Lodge has antecedents that stretch to Atlantis, where what has become the Lodge was born in blood, fire, and the end of a civilization.

The Lodge knows about Delta-Green, they know about PISCES, they know about SUV-7, they suspect what is behind MJ-12, and they are all too aware of the Starkweather-Moore expedition uncovered in 1934. They are all, as far as the Lodge is concerned, misguided amateurs.

The Lodge numbers accomplished sorcerers, psychics, dreamers, a family of were-jaguars, a single very old vampire among its ranks, and five… Others.

The Lodge has members within the highest levels of the British and Japanese governments, and many other nations, including the United Nations.

The Lodge hides it’s members within other occult and fraternal organizations.

The Lodge is the second oldest surviving organization that hunts the Mythos.

The Lodge knows what Stephan Alziz is, and they don’t care about the Fate.

The Lodge and the Cult of Transcendence carefully ignore one another.

The Lodge has been both hunter and hunted for it’s entire existence.

The Lodge hates the Mythos and what most of it represents.

The Lodge has contacts in groups throughout the world.

The Lodge has no morals, as we understand them.

The Lodge wants the human race to survive.

The Lodge demands secrecy.

The Lodge values loyalty.

The Lodge has no mercy.

To understand the Lodge is to understand that everything you ever learned is absolutely correct, to a point. It is the Truth behind the facts that is inspiring. It is the Reality beyond the Truth that in damning.

The Lodge is completely insane.

The Others are five individuals who survived the Fall of Atlantis. They merged with an Force that has allowed them to survive to this day. In order to kill one you would have to kill them all, at the same time. No-one has managed to do this yet. Perhaps this is because no-one has tried hard enough, or perhaps it is because they don’t care. The Others don’t really care that the world is going to eventually be overrun again my Cthulhu and his brethren, they just want to make sure that humanity survives.

Somewhere else.

Safe.

Until we have to move again.

It’s that “we” that keeps giving them problems.

The Others have no illusions about the eventual triumph of the Great Old One’s. They understand the reality of the Elder Gods.  They have journeyed the Dreamlands. They have seen Azathoth and conversed with Nodens, Vorvadoss, and others just as powerful that have never come close to the orbit of the Earth. The Others understand these things and accept the reality of the Universe. The Others don’t really care what happens to the majority of humanity because they know that the majority is damned to become fodder. The Others want to insure that humanity survives the end of the earth, just as they survived the Fall.

It’s just that there is no way to duplicate Them.

So They must find a way to bring a sustainable population elsewhere.

The premise is simple, the execution difficult.

They almost have an answer.

The Lodge fights because they hate the Mythos. The fight so that there will be humans to survive. Not ghouls, not Tcho-Tcho half-breeds, not minor spawn of some GOO. Other races have survived, the Shan, the Mi-Go, the Byakhee. There are dimensions and worlds far removed from earth that humans could move to, inhabit, take over. The rules of the universe are simple.

Rule or be Ruled.

Evolve or die.

At the greatest level, you cannot rule. There are Powers that are far beyond that of humans who will never be disposed without ending that which Is. And to gain the ability to depose these Powers would transform humanity into something… Else. So accept that we must be Ruled.

Evolution is a slow process, and there are many, many branches that must be pruned to get a tree to bear proper fruit. The Others have almost achieved their goal. When they do, they can Leave.