Dworkin the Barimen, and my Tinfoil Unicorn Hat

 Weird Amber DRPG thing, well, actually a weird Amber novel thing, that I figured out today, and have never seen posted anywhere. 

**SPOILERS for some novels from the 1970s**

**Also: WARNING if you're a "young earth creationist", something I'm going to say below might offend you.**

 I have a theory on why the character of Dworkin in the Amber novels is at one point given the name "Dworkin Barimen", without any explanation.  It's weird that Dworkin has this random last name, given that all the other major characters he's related to don't have last names at all. Nowhere in Zelazny's novels or short stories have I seen anything that explains this, or even points it out, but it's something that has often bounced through my head as being weird. 

But first, other theories/explanations I've seen for this name:

1. House Barimen is sometimes trotted out by fans and GMs as a Great House of the Courts of Chaos. But that's not in the books anywhere. I just did a search on the text of all 10 novels, and "Barimen" appears exactly once, and in that paragraph we are told that Dworkin Barimen was an artist, priest, wizard or psychiatrist that Oberon hired from some Shadow, not Chaos.  That paragraph is obviously intentionally misleading, but when the character eventually shows up in the plot, we're never told by Zelazny there's a House Barimen. Corwin and most of his siblings seem to be pretty ignorant that the Great Houses of Chaos are even a thing.

2. The other obvious explanation that does get thrown around  is that "Barimen" is an Anagram of "In Amber". Roger Zelazny liked wordplay and clever nods, so maybe it's intended as an Easter Egg. If so, I'd say this egg is really more of a Red Herring. I mean, Dworkin's not from or in Amber, so much as Amber is in him. We eventually learn his origin lies in Chaos, not Amber (even if there's no evidence for a Great House by that name). Where this falls short is that it doesn't explain why the name is not used by anyone else in the series. If it means roughly "of Amber", why doesn't Oberon, King of Amber, use it? Why don't most of Corwin's generation act like that's a family name, nor do they know Dworkin's relation to their lineage? It's weird. (Also, just as a sidenote: I suspect concealing a revealing anagram in your name is not the sort of thing that will work out so well when the people you're hiding your mysteries from have lifespans measured in millenia.)

3. There's also apparently a magic artifact in a Philip Jose Farmer series called "the Horn of Shambarimen" but I've never read those Farmer books, so I don't know if it's an intentional reference, or even which came first and which might be referencing the other. 

Speaking of which came first, I was watching a youtube video today that debunked some horrible "young earth creationist" ideas. One of those ideas was for something called a "Baramin".  Coined (by creationists) by blending the Hebrew words for "created" ("bara") and "kind" ("min"), a baramin is a term they use to denote the groupings of creatures that God bid Noah to put in his ark.  As in: the ark didn't need to have 2 lions, and 2 tigers, and 2 cheetahs, and 2 pumas, and 2 leopards, and 2 lynxes, and 2 housecats etc, because obviously there's no way to fit 2 of every species on earth in a boat that's only 300 cubits long. So instead the kind in "2 of every kind" has to mean something other than species, if you're a biblical-literalist who doesn't accept the scientific consensus on evolution, but are still aware that there are many millions of species on earth today and that a cubit is not very big.

The neat little trick of interpretation of the words "2 of each kind" means the ark could instead just have 2 of the ur-example of cats, and somehow, magically* without evolution existing, those two cats were the archetype (now called a "baramin") from whose pairing all the extant species are produced, again somehow magically without evolution*. The video really tore the concept up and pointed out how silly and scientifically useless the Baramin concept was, and how all the scientific data supports speciation by way of evolution over time. I agree. Really not my area of expertise, being just a guy who watched one rather critical video on the topic of baramins, but I'm sure someone will stumble across this post and try to fight me over it in the comments section. Have fun with that.

*: I will grant you that what I'm presenting is almost certainly a straw-man of what actual biblical literalists and creationists believe. I do that because I'm not here to argue politics or religion, I'm here to acknowledge that an obscure term relating to Noah's Ark and religious philosophy is absolutely the sort of thing that Zelazny would love to allude to when writing the Amber books. 

Roger Zelazny loved mythological references. There's a ton of them in the Amber novels. There's a magical king named Oberon. A murderous brother named Caine. A magic tree named Yig and a thoughtful crow named Hugi. 

Those are myth-references are obvious, but sometimes Roger's a good bit subtler. Here's an example: in his ride to the apocalypse, Corwin is visited by a jackal and two birds (one made of blood and screeching like a bird of prey as it approaches, and the other the aforementioned talking crow). These 3 animals following him are a loose but definitely intentional riff on the "beasts of battle" trope from Old Norse and Old English poetry (Beowulf, etc). In such works, soldiers headed to war would be followed by a wolf, an eagle, and a raven: three animals that feed upon the bodies of the dead strewn about a battlefield, thereby foretelling the grim scene these men are headed into. If you see 3 such animals (a canine and two birds) in close succession, that's Ye Olde Narrator warning you that things are about to get real. (Or, at least that's my understanding: I am not nearly as well-read as Zelazny was.)

But despite all that Mythological riffing, there's really no Flood Myth to be found in the Amber books. There's storms that seem apocalyptic, sure, but no flooding, no boat-building, and they don't deluge for prophetically-long times. Which is kind of weird, given how much hay mythologists and conspiracy theorists alike make about the commonality of Flood Myths in nearly every culture. That motif should be Zelazny's bread and butter.

Not only are obscure religious and mythological references scattered all though out the Amber books, but the dialogues of Corwin's hellride to the end of the universe are packed full of Freshman Philosophy topics. The core concept of Amber casting Shadows is a cheeky riff on Plato's cave. 

So the idea that he might have chosen to slide in a subtle Easter Egg nod to a controversial stance on scientific and philosophical issues, which comes with a built-in connection to Noah's Ark, well, let's just say it just seems very Roger to me.

Which is why I think it's possible that Dworkin Barimen might be an intentional nod to the baramin concept in young earth creationism. Zelazny, being well-read and quite thinky, may have stumbled across the term -- it was coined in a creationist book from the 1940s, so the timeline works. If so "Barimen" is not only an anagram of "In Amber", it's also a homophone for a word that refers to creationist concepts. Zelazny did like his word play. 

Dworkin created the universe, and is the ancestor of every character in the books -- except the Unicorn, which according to jewish folklore (and Shel Silverstein) didn't get onto Noah's Ark. (Why didn't the Unicorn get on the Ark? Because it ran off with a fellow Ur-example, the First Man. I started typing that as a joke, but on reflection, that may well be the crazy idea that inspired Roger Z in the first place, for all I know.)

All of which means Dworkin Barimen may well be a title, something akin to "Dworkin the Progenitor" or "Dworkin the Archetype", rather than a family name. In which case, this title only belongs to Dworkin, not his descendants. 

At least, that's the crazy nonsense I'll be going with the next time I start up a new Amber DRPG campaign.

Side note: Wow, I went nearly a year without posting on this blog. 2023 was hella busy, and sometimes kinda awful. More on that some other post, perhaps? 

Toe-Eating Mechano-Crabs

Posting those sketches my players did at the last game reminded me that Devon had requested I put up on the web a photo of the drawing I'd made of the toe-eating mechano-crabs that attacked us in a game she ran a few months ago.

Our weekly one-shot group sure runs some interesting games.

Petrified PCs

I killed a character this weekend. I haven't done so in a while - at least not to a character that wasn't in a one-shot. Every so often we head down to Portland for the weekend to visit friends, and recently that's involved some D&D-esque gaming. We've been using Savage Worlds instead of D&D, but working to make it feel like an old school 1st Ed AD&D campaign. While starting Savage Worlds characters are pretty robust (especially compared to 1st-level D&D characters), I feel it's necessary to have PC death loom as a serious specter in a game that's mostly dungeon a romp. I play the monsters to their abilities and intelligence, never fudge the dice and rarely pull my punches. It's mostly balanced for the player's stats, but there's some sandbox elements and the players ran smack into them this Saturday.

Long story short, the PCs ended up in a significant battle. I'd statted it out, but didn't expect to actually have them encounter the big bad (a Medusa) until the next session - I was just dropping some foreshadowing. The players, bless their heroic little hearts, dove right in and chased after those hints. They found the back door escape route that the Medusa would have otherwise used if she were badly pressed, and cut straight to the big encounter. They traipsed in, using polished shields as mirrors, and making zero efforts at stealth or concealment.

Out pops the Medusa, her mate (based on the Maedar from an old issue of Dragon magazine) and two blind Grimlock bodyguards. They caught the PCs on a bit of narrow terrain in the old sandbox. The good news was that view to the Medusa was partially eclipsed by the guards. The bad news was that the PCs couldn't flee (or get to her) without taking opportunity hits. Things went south pretty quickly. First I thought it was going to be a TPK. Then I thought one PC would escape. Then that PC went back into the fight, and it looked like a TPK again. In the end, though, the big armored fighter held his ground and made every roll he needed to resist poison and petrification, so only one of the three PCs died. Not that there weren't ramifications for the other two, however - one PC ended up with a permanent -1 Charisma disfigurement - her facial muscles frozen in a horrified expression.

Instead of making up whole new rules for petrifying gaze, I just used the existing Terror / Fright Table rules, but suspended the "Becoming Jaded" portion. Everytime they attacked her, they'd have to make a Guts check. Averting your eyes could give you a bonus on the guts check, at the cost of the same penalty to your other actions and parry. Partial cover (on either end) also provided a bonus on the PCs rolls. It was simple and easy, amounting to just applying "trappings" to the guts check - if you died of a heart attack (a roll of 21+ on the Fright Chart) you'd turn to stone, the "Mark of Terror" result was a partial petrification, etc. It worked like a charm - constant danger, plenty of guts checks (which is an otherwise underutilized skill), drained several bennies, and yet was never actually lethal.

The actual kill ended up being when the Medusa got close enough to do poison bites - which I treated as a single mundane venomous snake attack but with +2 on the Fighting Roll to represent that there were a dozen snakes. A bad vigor roll took down the PCs healer. Let that be a warning to those who play Savage Worlds - the venomous snake entry is surprisingly potent.

The Red Right Hand (vs The Adventure Deck)

Yesterday's Deadlands game ran long, but it was well worth it. The PCs caught up with Cobb and "possed up" with him, ostensibly to capture his fugitive wife. So, having a moment to talk, I turned on fanaticism and symbolism nobs to 11.

The party had 4 horses and a flying machine. As part of their approach plan, though, they left one of the two white horses behind. (Legos keep being a real boon. Everyone had, several sessions ago, chosen between three colors of horse.)

Cobb had a red right hand, just as Belial describes God possessing in Book II of Paradise Lost. This started significant theological debate. Cobb indicated that between his horse, and the three the PCs brought, they had four horseman, and exactly one horse was pale. He confessed a recent crisis of faith, but that their arrival and joining up with him now convinced him that he was indeed following the correct path. He'd been just a touch worried that he was unwittingly serving the devil, but now, thanks to the PCs, he was certain that all the signs were right and he was God's punishment for the wickedness of man. The debate raged for several scenes, the two blessed in the group arguing quite vehemently against him, while the least moral PC negotiated a power deal with him. Eventually, it ended with an understanding that the Blessed would lead him to the river and baptize him.

Turns out the water they blessed was like acid to him, and thus the fight began.

It was the nastiest battle I'd run in a while. Cobb's very first action was to rip the face off one PC. One character in particular was saved from death three times. Two cards from the Action Deck were used on him: Lucky Break and Out Of The Frying Pan, both of which cancel an entire attack. The third time he was shot by The Gun, he spent every bennie he had to soak up the wounds. Two PCs sat at three wounds for most of the fight (and one of them had some fatigue as well). Several characters had to take cover in the blessed river. They went to all sorts of trouble to reach Cobb's wife and get her help in the fight, too, and she died.

They blew off Cobb's head, and he kept fighting (it's good to be a Liche). In fact, he put on the face he'd stolen from a PC at the start of the fight. The PCs spent every power point available to them, then played cards for more. The two blessed used miracles every round. 4 out of 5 PCs ran out of Bennies at one point or another, and all 5 spent their Adventure Deck cards. The Mad Scientist wrecked his flying machine taking Cobb out. They fired quite a few magic bullets. In the end, all that was left of Cobb was his red right hand, still clutching the cursed pistol. The hand spent most of its remaining power points to escape and regrow his body. They did kill "Skin'n'Ash" his mount / familiar / boneless horse husk. There's also a pile of demon corpses in the Rio Grande.

The PCs now have the Necronomicon. It'll only take 7 hours of work to get the flying machine mobile again, but 120 hours for Cobb to get back all the power points he spent. They have breathing room, a couple leads on more effective weapons against him, and a window of opportunity if they figure out what to do with it. Wish 'em luck.

Monster Summoning VII

One of the blogs I read fairly often mentioned a post on different blog that said:

The otherfun discovery was the spell Monster Summoning VII. Nowadays it's just one link on the great chain of Monster Summoning spells. But when Greyhawk came out the monster charts only had six levels. MS VII buried the needle on the system and referees were supposed to come up with their own list of beloved and wicked monsters that this mighty ninth level magic summoned. I love that.
...
So here's my challenge to all you refs out there: share either in the comments here or on your own blog a custom Ultimate Monster Summoning chart for your campaign. Note that all monsters don't have to be uber-lethal. Packs of Hell Hounds and Displacer Beasts are listed as examples, seemingly just because the authors dig those critters.

My chart, though I'm not sure what campaign this is for...

1. 1 Slaad of each color, and a very disgusted Princess
2. 2d8 Orky Madboyz, + 2d12 Goblins, + 2d30 Snotlings/Squigs/Boars, + More Dakka
3. 2d6 Booster Gangers, each with unique Chrome. They're holding a copy of Morton's List.
   
4. 1d8 Mutant Narwhals (if only 1 appears, he's wearing a parachute)
5. 1d6 Magi, bearing gifts.
   
6. A close blood relative of the PC. If none are known to exist, then Brand is family. And he probably won.
   
7. Ratatosk, the Gossipy Squirrel, riding on (or pursued by) Nidhogg
8. Gemini Incident: One spanner, and 1d10 of his Elders.
9. Brown Jenkins, perched atop the Necronomicon, which is held in the bloody hands of Keziah Mason. Gnarly Hotep is optional.
   
10. An ogre riding an OGRE. Not the other way around - that'd be messy.
    
11. The Clock Tower.
    
12. Roll again, but play the part as if Jack Nance were cast in the role.

Paaaaaaaaaan

Last night, Malachi ran a game he called Deospora. It was technically a InSpectres derivative, but didn't feel a bit like the game whose system it used. We were all Gods - and we could choose to be traditional Mythological figures, or make up our own Divine personages. A comet passed near the earth, and we hitched a ride. It took us two a primitive little planet where primitive little people worshiped what seemed like a primitive little deity to us. Turns out it was basically Cthulhu. We whupped his but, anyway.

I played Pan, or rather Paaaaaaan, since I gave him a proper Goatboy voice. I ran around lusting after things - mostly womenfolk, but ya never know with Pan. You know all those Greek myths where Pan chases after various Nymphs until they turn themselves into a tree to escape him? We discovered it's not actually an ability inherent to Nymphs and Dryads. Instead, it's a universal property. Anything, and I mean anything, being lusted after by Pan has the potential to turn itself into a tree in an attempt to dissuade his passions.

The game had a lot of fun moments, many of which had nothing to do with me - while I was the most depraved member of our group, we were pretty much all raucus party gods. The group included Pan and Raven and two made-up Gods (one was God of Beer, the other God of Drunk Driving) and the fifth player started off intending to be God of Sex, Drugs, and Rock'n'Roll, and instead landed on being Arlo Guthrie. All those radio stations that still play "Alice's Restaurant" once every Thanksgiving is close enough to worship for him to get invited to the Divine parties.

The plot:

• We decide to party on a passing comet, which eventually collides on a crappy little planet somewhere, stranding us. The natives worship some nasty dark cthonian Titan, and so we decide to subvert that. With booze, drugs, music, and orgiastic reverie, we convert the local tribes.
• 100 years pass, and I father all sorts of Satyrs and Paniskoi. The formerly barren world now has all sorts of trees - prior to my lusty arrival it was just mushrooms and lichen.
• Tribes of seafaring raiders attack us, bearing marks that they are the favored ones of the Cthulhoid monstrosity. A great Panic descends upon thier beached fleet, and they are stranded on our shores. (I take a bow). With the attack fleet in shambles, the rest of the group sets about converting the stranded raiders.
• Another 100 years pass, and Raven, Arlo and Pan got the urge to take a road trip. Little did we realize, the enemy was still out there and prepping to invade again. While we're off probing the enemy territory, our continent was attacked by a mutant critter very reminiscent of Cloverfield. The Gods who stayed behind managed to handle it, luckily. On the road trip, we bumbled into the dark dank cave that was the center of Cthulhu worship. Arlo and Raven were captured by demi-titans and hauled down to the cavernous orifice of the great evil.
• Now, since this is a mostly family-friendly blog, I won't go into detail on how Pan rescued them. Suffice it to say, it weren't pretty. The entire continent turned into a big ol giant tree, and then got pregnant anyway. There was a quick round of jokes about how I'd just proven true the theory of Panspermia. Somewhere in all the excitement, Cthulhu went missing.
• 9 months later, our child, Shub-Niggurath, was born. This became the creation myth of how this planet got a moon. Pan decided he needed to settle down at that, since he finally had a kid worthy of his being a respectible parent, and the love of a good world tree.
• Another 100 years passed, and by this point we'd set up a ridiculously complex stratified caste system for our chosen people, mostly fueled by the trade of beer, rock-folk music, and pornography. Such were the gleaming pillars of our society. Due to various Godly acts of miscegenation, the population involved little gray people, little tie-dyed people, goat-headed people, tentacled people, tree people, and various cloven-hooved hybrids of the above.
• Then one day, a spaceship landed. It had a US flag with little cthulhoid tentacle clusters instead of stars, to answer Arlo's question of "Hello, America, how are ya?" Apparently, the big bad had decided to do to earth what we'd done to his planet. They came to invade and colonize, but didn't stand a chance. Serotonin, God of Drunk Driving, had a plan to deal with it.
  
• He stole the spaceship (in a hurry, too, like he thought I was going to do something nasty to it if he didn't act quickly) and headed back to earth with all our chief exports. He landed in Japan, where tie-dyed-goat-headed-tentacle-tree porn would be most quickly accepted. Somehow, this resulted in peace between the worlds and the defeat of the big bad. I'm a little unclear on the details, but it mostly made sense at the time.

I'm sure there's plenty I missed there, but you get the idea. All things considered, this summary was quite tastefully inexplicit.

Cop-Out on page 173

Savage Worlds is a great system, and Deadlands is a great setting, and both are great games. In general, they're very well written. That said, the sidebar on page 173 of Deadlands Reloaded is an egregious cop-out. I'm gonna give 'em some hell here, because that sidebar really got under my skin. It's the most frustrating part of the Deadlands Reloaded rulebook.

The first three paragraphs of said sidebar explain how they won't make any efforts to indicate what rank of PC while find any particular monster / NPC appropriately challenging. The game has this nice ranking structure for characters, Novice/Seasoned/Veteran/Heroic/Legendary, which corresponds to how many XP advances you've had, and dictates what level of Powers and Edges you have access to. Sure, two Veteran characters are gonna be very different, but they'll both be serious badasses at whatever it is they chose to specialize in, and they certainly won't have a Parry of 2. So the framework is there to have given monsters a ballpark rating. They chose not to use it for the monster section.

They claim it's for mostly philosophical reasons. They say it's more realistic for the Weird West to be populated by variable threats that don't conveniently correspond to the experience level of the party. They thumb their noses at D&D's challenge ratings and balanced encounters. Sometimes the PCs will massacre the baddies, and sometimes the PCs better just turn tales and run.

On one level, I agree with this sand-box approach, as it leads to far greater verisimilitude - the world is unfair and some challenges have no easy solutions. On the other hand, it seems kinda out of place - since so much of Deadlands is about capturing the feel of Western movies (admittedly, flavored with some supernatural evil) and random encounters of variable power is antithetical to that genre. Nearly every damn Western I've ever seen escalates to a gloriously violent climax. The heroes do sometimes get left for dead in scene one, but that's always set up for a revenge tale that ends with a fairer (but still challenging) fight in the final reel. It's never "That random encounter nearly killed us, we'd better not go back for round two!" No Western hero would ever do that.

But, if they really meant to go full-blown-oldschool-sandbox-and-random-encounter mode, I could respect it. Instead, come paragraph four, the sidebar undoes itself:

"All that said, the GM should tweak encounters to fit the nature of his party. You'll have a good handle on what your party can manage after a few sessions, without the need for some sort of formula."

WTF? So, realism trumps balance, except really you should balance it after all, and we aren't gonna help. I suspect the truth is that laziness trumps realism and balance both.

Oh, sure, I'll get the hang of it, at the cost of my first few sessions being clumsy and poorly balanced. Great. If this preceeded a 4-page monster section, I'd understand that you could eyeball the easier encounters quickly, and something akin to Challenge Rating isn't necessary. But no, the antagonist section it heads up is 77 pages long. Sure, there's several things in there I can push off till later in the campaign by means o' knee jerk reaction to their stat line, but I really don't want to have to read 77 pages in order to start planning my first session.

Why not include a short list of, say, the 6 monsters most appropriate to Novice characters. That would have saved the new GM a lot of trouble, and been pretty damn easy to fit in the book. Off the top of my head, I can think of 3 or 4 paragraphs they could have taken out to shoehorn it in.

McCain rocks the troll vote

Trolls - universally reviled by everyone that's ever legitimately logged in to a forum, message board, or blog - have finally found a candidate who represents their interests. In fact, Republican Presidential Nominee John McCain doesn't just represent Trolls, he encourages them. Here's the latest news on McCain's strategy in courting the Troll voting block, via Wired.

McCain Asks Supporters to Invade Liberal Blogs, But Few Respond

...
The McCain campaign in late May launched a new blogger outreach section on its website that encourages supporters to lobby for their candidate across 94 blogs
...
The strategy reinforces the central role that blogs have come to play in shaping and framing the issues in the 2008 presidential election. The question is whether sending supporters to do grassroots lobbying in the comments section of activist blogs like DailyKos, whose membership is dedicated to defeating the Republicans in the general election, will really benefit McCain's campaign.

No, it will just piss people off. But that's the point. Recent polls of Trolls have found that "pissing people off" is one of the key issues most likely to win the Troll vote.

According to a special gallup poll, here's what Trollish-Americans are most looking for in a Presidential Nominee:
95% of Trolls want a President who "Pisses people off, just 'cause he can."
82% seek a White House that will "defend our constitutional right to eat Dwarves."
63% of Trolls indicate the quality they value most in a political candidate is "Regeneration: 5".

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign has announced it's intention to appeal to Trollish Americans by selecting a running mate with neon hair that stands on end when you comb it.

If any portion of this went over your head, read the comments.

Sissy-Phus

You'd think 2,000 years of rolling a boulder up a steep mountain would result something above Strength, Stamina, and Athletics all at 3 out of 5 dots*. Guess I'll be writing some corrections in the margins of my book.

*: Especially since he's a (Legend 8) immortal Son of God, and thus his maximums on those would actually be 8, 8 and 5, respectively.

BrewerBarrow and the old ghosts

An hour ago, I posted this as part of another file, but since then I've decided it's better to have it separate so I can reference/link to it directly if I want to. It was part of an Everway Realm called BrewerBarrow that I created.

The Barrows: Those who tread upon the barrows shall have to deal with the Old Ghosts.

Old Ghosts of the Barrow Downs: Dark and nasty life-leeches. These sinister shadows foretell the second death of the universe, and look forward to it with sickening glee.
Air: 7 Earth: 1 Fire: 1 Water: 3
Breathstealing: 1 pt, Major: This attack compares the Air Scores of the Old Ghost and its victim - it’s the only attack they have. The nature of the attack is that it sucks the wind right out of the target. Lungs collapse, the weak suffocate, and it can take days to get your voice back. To make the attack the Old Ghost must surround you, and whether successful or not they become fatigued by the effort and retreat to their crypt afterwards.
Darkening Touch: 1pt, Frequent: Anything touched or surrounded by an Old Ghost loses some of it’s color, turning black or dark grey depending on length of contact and the original color. It’s not harmful or damaging, just a little creepy.

Note that the campaign this was written for was a follow-up to an Amber campaign where Eric rewrote the universe. The old ghosts of BrewerBarrow are the ghostlike afterimages of those who fell upon the black road before Eric’s rewrite.

CornDale Threats & Encounters

Stuff the players never got to see, a file of encounters and NPC stats for the Everway Realm of CornDale.

GM Full Disclosure: CornDale Threats & Encounters
Usurper Force: Public Assembly
Normal: Working Together Towards A Common Goal Inverted: Violent Mass Hysteria

---

Hyenaweres: The village of Laughter is entirely populated by these giggling monsters.
Air: 4 Earth: 2 Fire: 3 Water: 2
Taunt: 5 Nurse Wounds: 3 Ankle Bite: 4 Tracking: 3
Hyenaskin: 1 Major: By donning a ritually prepared Hyenaskin Coat, the villager can take the form of a wild yapping hyena with an oversized head. In such a form, the Hyenawere is immune to attacks by weapons that aren’t made of Gold or in some way magically enhanced. Transforming to or from Hyena form takes better than a minute, and is a very noisy yappy process.
Truescent: 1 Versatile: Given a good whiff of a person, a Hyenawere in any form can deduce several things about the character, such as... 1) are they a shapeshifter? what animal forms can they take? 2) are they a mage? what element is their magic tied to? 3) what emotion are they currently experiencing?

---

Ogre: The hulking Brutes are swift, strong and range from 8 to 12 feet tall. Most have foul body odor.
Air: 1 Earth: 5 Fire: 4 Water: 2
Smell Food: 2 Sleep Through Anything: 6 Throw: 5 Splash Mud: 3
Throw Anything: 1 Frequent: An ogre may hurl anything they can lift as a weapon - and they’re really dangerous when they do so. Objects they pick up tend to hold shape better than logic dictates they would, and fly more aerodynamically than you’d expect. For example, an Ogre could rip the roof off a house and hurl it whole as a weapon - it wouldn’t break up until impact. This power doesn’t grant any accuracy, just enthusiasm and the ability to throw entire hillsides at people.


Ham Leg, Ogre Mercenary Commander: Ham Leg is huge, even for his kind. He stands nearly 18 feet tall and can smush a man beneath his grapefruit sized toes. (Yes, this means his feet are disproportionately large. That’s intentional.)
Air: 2 Earth: 8 Fire: 6 Water: 3
Appraise Strength: 3 Lift: 9 Stomp: 7 Sense Lies: 4
Throw Anything: 1 Frequent: Per Ogres, above.
Gate Roast: 1 Major: Ham Leg knows a special ritual that can be performed while roasting a pig. Anyone who eats of the roast when its done (ritual + cooking takes 4-6 hours) will be able to Spherewalk until they completely digest the meal in a day or two. Using this power he lead his ogre band to this village.

Opal Golems (NPCs, Monsters, Tool)

Everway NPCs by Rolfe

GM Full Disclosure file on Opal Golems (NPCs, Monsters, Tool)

Here’s some brief stats for a few common forms of Golem:

Patagea Golem: A huge (but thin) Pteradactyl made of sown flesh over a wooden frame.
They serve as taxis and light cargolifters in Above and Westcliff.
Air: 1 Earth: 4 Fire: 2 Water: 1
Flight: 2 Frequent, Major. Despite looking fragile and having miserable stats, the Patagea Golem is able to catch wind currents and hover, fly and soar in ways you’d never expect. It can carry several times its own weight when doing so. 2 passengers and a bit of luggage is the most they can carry at once, however.


Climbing Golem: The main service for travelling between Above and Westcliff is these 7-limbed steam-belching automatons.
Air: 1 Earth: 7 Fire: 4 Water: 3
Surefooted: 1 Frequent. As long as 2 of a Climbing Golems 6 legs are clasping the rockface, it cannot be knocked loose short of pulverizing the stone its affixed to. If it is carrying more than 1 passenger, each additional man-wieght requires 1 more leg to be rooted to activate this effect. As a result, the more people it’s carrying the slower the Golem travels.
Spikefruit Picker: 0 pt. The 7th (and smallest) limb on the Climbing Golem is automated to pick Spikefruit berries as it passes them. A small olfactory sensor detects the fragrance of the Spikefruit Rose and sends the arm telescoping in that direction. Passengers may help themselves to the berries, but will be charged per berry at the end of the trip.


Constable Opal: This very complex Golem is the chief police enforcer in the city of Above. He has broad white-steel shoulders, quicksilver joints, beady dark opal eyes, and huge wrought-iron hands. His head is formed of layered metals, and a constant shower of tiny sparks course between his oversized copper elf ears.
Air: 2 Earth: 8 Fire: 6 Water: 4
Law: 3 Hold His Ground: 9 Grapple: 7 Sense Lies: 5
Locking Fists: 0 pt. Each of Constable Opals two huge fists has the ability to lock itself. Once wrapped around a suspects waist (limb if they’re exceptionally large) the hand can seal itself closed. A locked fist can only be opened by a special magic key that is kept in back at the Police station.
His typical tactic is to grab 2 offenders and seal them in. If there’s more criminals on-scene than two, he’ll use the first two as human shields or flesh clubs. He has no conscience after all.


Undead Butler: Ogre-sized flesh puppets cobbled together from multiple corpses. Most undead butlers have 4 or more arms, the idea of their form being stolen from needle demons.
Air: 1 Earth: 5 Fire: 2 Water: 1
Seen But Not Heard: 0 pt. The typical Undead Butler has no vocal chords, but does have a 2-way mental link to it’s creator, owner or master, as the case may be. No verbal instructions need be given, the butler knows its masters desires instinctively. This can be dangerous for the flighty or quick-tempered master.

Lovecraft, Houdini, and the Hundred-Handed-Ones

In my most recent Scion session, the plot demanded a big nasty the PCs couldn't hurt, but could circumvent via trickery. I chose a Hekatonakhiere, partly because it gave me an opportunity to steal a bit from a story HP Lovecraft once ghostwrote for Harry Houdini. If you haven't read the story "Imprisoned With The Pharaohs", stop reading now and follow the link. Either that or live with having the short story being spoiled a bit first.

---

And so I describe it (the hundred handed one) as 40 feet tall, multi-limbed and multi-headed, with a long serpentine tail twisting and disappearing over the ridge. It's trundling along the top of the ravine, decimating an army, shapeshifting new limbs and attack modes as it needs them. Overall, it was being very colorful, and stunting spectacularly.

The PCs debate strategy for a moment, and then one shouts out an Overt Order at the thing, telling it to leave here as fast as it can.

In response, it springs back on it's tail, no doubt coiling just behind the ridge the way a cobra might. The "body" they'd been observing towers above the battlefield for a moment, and then it becomes apparent that the tail is but a wrist and forearm. The thing they'd watched assault their forward lines was but a single hand of the beast.

It's two-mile long body climbs out of the ravine, and marches off - for an action or so. The characters now had a mere 5 ticks to brainstorm a much more creative solution to a much larger problem than they'd anticipated. It was fun watching them sweat.

Legend, Willpower, Avatar, and Titan

Trying to post something at the Scion Forum today, I nearly ran afoul of trying to distinguish temporary Legend points from permanent Legend rating.

• A character, with a Legend rating of X, has X-squared temporary Legend points.
• Many powers grant Legend, and others charge Legend. In most cases this means points, but there are a few things that temporarily boost Legend rating instead.
• However, it's terribly easy to accidentally not specify "points" or "rating" and those vague moments can get a little painful or confusing sometimes.

A similar problem sometimes occurs with Willpower.

• There are things (mostly powers) that trigger based on permanent Willpower rating.
• Other things (powers again, but also non-power mechanics) care about temporary Willpower points.
• Distinguishing between the two can sometimes be tricky.

Then there's the word Avatar, which can mean:

1. The top Boon of a Purview - the ultimate level of a field of godly power. (Note: sometimes players and forumites refer to the Ultimate epics as Avatars, but technically this is incorrect)
   
2. A character currently using such a Boon.
3. A birthright that allows a god to manifest with lower Legend (rating) for fewer Legend (points).
4. The sentient embodiment of one of the Titans, who can have 2 out of 3 of the above.
5. The words standard english-language meaning gets used occassionally, which in Scion would be roughly the earthly manifestation of a god, regardless of whether or not they used the birthright to manifest it, and regardless of whether they have and ultimate boons (in other words, it's still their avatar regardless of whether they have Avatar or any Avatars).
6. The physical body manifested from ichor by a god to be their earthly manifestation.
   

And, of course, the word Titan has similar issues. It can be:

• The world-sized embodiment of a primal concept. (Also sometimes known as a Greater Titan)
• Any of the many simultaneous Avatars (primarily 4th meaning, but also potentially the 1st, 2nd and 5th) of a Greater Titan.
• It's mythology-specific meaning, the primal beings from which the greco-roman gods were birthed. These would be just the Greco-Roman Avatars of the Greater Titans: Cronus, Ouranos, Gaia, etc. This is rarely used by the books, but it's hard to avoid when discussing the myths and characters that inspired the game.
  

---

Wouldn't all of the above be easier if they'd just used a thesaurus?

• Legend Rating could have determined "Myth Points".
• Willpower Rating could have associated temporary "Ego Points".
• "Primals", of which greco "Titans" are but a subgroup, could have "Avatars" (4th meaning only). Gods would instead have "Manifestations", with the option of purchasing the "Mortal Coil" (or perhaps even "Humility"?) birthright.
• The apex of Powers could be "Ultimate Boons" to compliment the games existing Ultimate Epics, though perhaps "Ultimates" and "Pinnacles" would preserve a distinction between them.

I think choosing to use multiple different terms would strengthen the game and remove much of the ambiguity and confusion of the rules. I fail to see what possible advantage all these duplicate terms and alternate meanings have. Does anyone have insight into why such decisions were not made?

Liveblogging pt3: Antagonists section of Scion God

What the heck? Not like I've got other things I need to do right now. I'll start skimming the antagonists and sharing my insights.

1. The don't stat out all the Gods, just those likely to be in conflict with Scions. Efficient use of space, and it leaves a lot to the GM's imagination. Well done.
   
2. The list of statted Gods includes obvious baddies like Set and Loki, but also "good guys" who may just be at cross-purposes to PCs, such as Hera and Imhotep. This is also smart.
   
3. I find the nature of the boon listings in the NPC stats annoying. It's the same format as the previous two books, but it didn't matter much there since most characters had only a couple Purviews. Here, a God may have 8-11 powers from each of 4 to 8 Purviews. Rather than listing "Sky 1-8, Moon and Sun 1-9, Heku 1-10" they list each Boon by it's individual name, in a big long alphabetical list that doesn't seperate them by Purview. Instead of making a simple summary that would empower the GM's improvisations, they give a dense list that requires memorizing 150+ power names to be even remotely useful. Yuck.
4. It wasn't till reading the Wayland Smith entry here that I finally got the patronymic reference in The Company from Aliens. Thank you! Now I just gotta figure out what "Yutani" means/references.
5. Hernan Cortes Pizarro's backstory is perfect. Dark and Ironic.
   
6. What is the God of Soldiers holding in that picture on pg 282? Is that a shield of a recently disarmed foe, balanced on the blade of a crooked dagger? Or the world's least believable battleaxe?
7. I like the Titan stats. Simple. Elegant. Easy to improvise. Very harrowing, yet weaker than the strongest PCs in a single important way. Well done, White Wolf.
8. I'll say it again: I Love the Titan stats. Point #3 (above) doesn't apply to them.
9. Nu/Nuanet and Tethys perfectly match the groundwork I've been laying. So happy. Lucky little developments like this boost verisimilitude significantly.
10. Forgot to mention these two words that should be point 2.5: "Nemean Peacock". That made me laugh.
11. Sinmore, wife of Surtur, will be making an appearance in my campaign soon. She's a hottie. :)
12. The various titanic templates are fun. They are not of equal power. I think that's a plus.
13. I wish this game had a CR system. People complain about the inaccuracy/fallibility of the CR system in D&D 3.x, but at least it got you somewhere in the ball-park. Legend rating only tells the maximum level of the single best power the creature can have, but it speaks nothing about over-all powerlevel, what danger it presents to PCs, or how fast it will go down. CR at least gives you a rough idea on 2 out of 3 of those qualifiers.
14. Griffins! Creature 4 = Sweet. Amy bought some at the Demigod upgrade, and we've been winging their stats ever since. This at least gives me a good starting point.
15. The general rule of "claws and bite do +2L" is getting old. On the plus side it's easy to remember and apply to anything. On the downside, it's utterly pitiful at high Legend. Better would be "claws and bite do +x to accuracy, +x lethal damage, where x=legend rating." That way monsters wouldn't be better off carrying a katana.
16. The "Hundred-Handed Ones" are not at all what I expected them to be. Not sure if I like them.
17. There are several things in this book that can spend 5 legend to make a single attack do Aggravated damage. If Divine Wrath had that cost, I think it would be balanced.
18. "War Peacock of Shu" it's like a running joke that gets funnier the more you hear it. "Each nemean peacock possesses the aerial template."
19. Clearly, the folks at White Wolf get the joke. I flipped the page to discover that the Nemean Peacock is the last in-character element of the book.
    

It all ends with an Afterword by John Chambers. I'd like to quote it, as it explains the source of various gripes and weaknesses that myself and others have pointed out:

"The whole thing sprung from a pitch I made over five years ago. It was already called Scion, and the general concept of children of both God and man fighting a war against the Titans was there too. Then it was brought forth from and condemned to development hell a number of times, having at one time or another a different developer, a post-apocalyptic flavor, a skew toward a younger demographic, a different game-mechanics system -- all sorts of craziness-- before finally settling back with me, its originator, and becoming the game it did, one surprisingly close to its original pitch from years prior."

Well done, John. The concept of the game is phenomenal, and the flaws in execution no doubt stem from all that revising and editorial meddling. While I bitch and moan the fiddly little inconsistencies of the rules, I must say that the reason it even matters to me is because I love the ideas of this setting so much. Scion: God appears to live up to all my expectations.

Mystery-Cult Etymology

When I was a kid, I read tales of Centaurs (half-horse, half-man) and Minotaurs (half-bull, half-man) and assumed they had something (other than Greece) in common. Foolishly, all throughout my youngness, I assumed "-taur" must mean "half-man". How very silly of me.

These days, I understand the Harryhausenian tales of my youth a bit better. I know that the Minotaurs roots are "Minos" and "Taurus" - it was, after all, the Bull in the labyrinth of King Minos.

Yet, applying the same logic to the other creature just didn't seem to work. Centaurs aren't bulls, they're horses! Then I realized, it's just a case of the doubled "t" being dropped. Cent-taur. I now see that the name was intended to let us know that the original story was merely a parable or metaphor. It wasn't a true tale about real creatures. Instead, it was 100% bull.


P.S.: Don't confuse Etymology with Entomology. They sound similar, but mean totally different things. One's about bull-centipede crossbreeds, the other is about those tree-guys in Lord of the Rings.

Chupacabra and Luchacabra

Here's the little troublemakers that, well, made so much trouble in my game a few weeks ago...

Chupacabra
The Chupacabra are a minor Minion race in servitude to the Titans. It is still unclear how or why they were created, but they first appeared in central america around the time of the Titan's escape from Tarterus.

In appearance, a Chupacabra is strange blend of kangaroo, lizard, rat and coyote, with spines running down their backs. They have large hypnotic eyes, capable of holding a human captivated and unable to scream. If confronted, Chupacabra make a horrible droning screech, much worse than anything every unleashed upon the world by a bagpipe. If cornered, they leap impressively away to safety. Beyond that, eye witness accounts are very different, so there may be multiple breeds of Chupacabra. A quick google search or visit to wikipedia will provide pictures and further documentation for those who need it.

Chupacabra Statistics

Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 4 +Epic Dexterity 1, Stamina 3, Charisma 1, Manipulation 2, Appearance 3 +Epic Appearance (Ugliness) 1, Perception 3, Intelligence 1, Wits 3

Abilities: Animal Ken 3, Athletics 2, Awareness 1, Brawl 3, Command 1, Fortitude 1, Larceny 1, Medicine 1, Occult 2, Presence 3, Stealth 4, Survival 3

Knacks:
Serpent's Gaze,
Holy Bound (normally, Holy Bound is a Strength knack, but Chupacabra get it as a Dexterity knack instead)

Other Powers
Made You Look. A chupacabra may spend a legend to interrupt themselves whenever someone is spying on them or taking an Aim action. They may only interrupt their action this way to use their Serpent's Gaze power. All other normal restrictions of Serpent's Gaze apply, including the restriction of only being able to use it on one victim at a time.

Hiss & Screech: Anyone who hears at least 1 chupacabra screeching, gets a penalty of -2 to thier DV and all their dice pools. This lasts as long as at least one chupacabra is actively screeching, or until the victim can no longer hear it. Screeching is a Speed:5 miscellaneous action. It does not break the Serpent's Gaze of a chupacabra. Chupacabra are immune to this power from themselves or other chupacabra.

Suck: Treat the exsanguination of the target as an environmental hazard. Damage is lethal, and amounts to dice per action equal to the Chupacabra's Stamina. The Trauma rating is equal to the Chupacabra's Strength + Stamina. This is a speed 5 action, and the Chupacabra may only drain the blood of one foe at a time. This power can only be used on an Inactive Foe. It doesn’t break Serpent’s Gaze. A chupacabra's bite includes a natural anesthetic that makes it painless.

Claw or Bite. A chupacabra may also use fang or nail to attack more conventionally. Treat these as standard unarmed attacks, but with +2 dice of Lethal damage added.


Legend: 2

Willpower: 4, Rapacity: 4

Health Levels: 0 -1 -1 -2 -2 -4 Inc

Trophy: Spines from it’s back can be hollowed out and made into a dreadful-sounding panpipe. This gives a -2 Penalty to anyone hearing it, as if a live Chupacabra were using their hiss & screech power.

Purpose: Chupacabra are quirky and fun. They do a good job of illustrating the point that myth is not dead in the modern world. They're a decent mystery element, possibly making your players suspect vampires or nemean bats.

They can be a very dangerous challenge to individual low-Legend scions. Be careful with this, as players rarely enjoy being rendered inactive by Serpent's Gaze. But as long as you don't overdo it, their powers are very good at forcing players to find a way to deal with them that doesn't involve direct assault.

However, they are little more than extras to be slaughtered when facing Scions of Legend 4+. So, you could use a small number of chupacabra to devestating effect early in a chronicle, then bring them back in mass when the PCs are high enough legend to be immune to their gaze. Your players will get a good rush from wiping the floor with badguys who used to be so dangerous and annoying.

Luchacabra
It is unclear whether the Luchacabra is a distinct sub-breed of Chupacabra, or merely a social or societal role. Luchacabra serve as leaders and heroes to their smaller chupacabra brethren. They can be identified amidst chupacabra by their slightly larger size, as well as the colorful Lucha Libre masks they wear.

Luchacabra are always at least Legend 3. They may have increased Epic Attributes due to this, and may also have Epic Strength and/or Epic Stamina.

They are very good wrestlers, and gain +1 die on all grapple-related rolls they make, including damage. In addition, they often have higher ratings in Strength, Stamina, Athletics and Brawl then the average chupacabra.

Trophy: Each luchacabra wears a magical wrestling mask. A PC who takes the mask from a Luchacabra may don it, gaining +1 die on all grappling rolls they make. It also adds +1 to their static value derived from Strength+Athletics for determining how much they can lift.

Purpose: Luchacabra serve much the same role as their smaller cousins. They are simultaneously more dangerous, and more humorous.

The Market

So, I'm rambling on in my other blog about how much I love this city, and it leads to a tiny little comment about the maze that is The Market. Since that's not my gaming blog, I figured I should talk about the maze here, instead.

So, there's this place called The Pike Market. It's that place with flying fish and the big neon sign that shows up repeatedly in any movie or tv show set in Seattle. Not as well known as the space needle, but still not exactly unheard of.

It's a produce market, it's the coolest strip mall in the world, it's a historical district, and it's an underground maze. In my Scion campaign, it was built by Dwarves, who were forced to do so by Giants, after they'd burnt down the city as part of a plan 100 years ago to break an Ogdoad out of prison. Current occupants include the above, plus Frozen Flying Fish, a Minotaur, and a fey named Puck'O'Pike.

It's a big complicated, convoluted maze. And it's clearly enchanted - both in reality and in my campaign. The stores are strange, and not just because of funky products, clientele, or employees. Stores move, changing their floors, swapping their places. Signs on doors say "enter this shop by the second stairway to the right". Multiple buildings are connected underground. Certain sections on the same floor are only connected by going up or down stairs and then coming back by a different route. Maps posted on the walls and pillars are intentionally incorrect, and often upside down. The further down you get the more random things become. There's a wall covered with about a million pieces of previously chewed bubblegum. You can literally set out to discover a new shop every visit, and you will. Good luck finding them again next time. There's an exit where the Sanitary Market is two stories higher than it is from any other angle - like entire floors only exist when observed from certain directions. Words can't describe it.

Two days ago, in the real world, Sarah and I got into an elevator there. The buttons were labeled "I", "PA" and "-1". We pushed "PA". It let us out on an alleyway. and then locked us out. I'm not kidding. Seriously, dumped out on the street. Had to walk around the building to get back in.

In my campaign I supplemented the existing shops of every description, oddity and ethnicity with a Egypto-Roman Slave Market, a humidor run by an animated wooden Indian, "Gettysburg Submarine Sandwiches and Civil War Souvenirs", an all-Lovecraft bookstore, a dwarven mine, and a place called Cyclopean Cutlery. The further down you get, the more supernatural the stores become. To defeat the mind-altering enchantment of the place and successfully get to the lowest levels requires a really good Wits + Survival roll and/or the Psychopomp Purview.