Planet Bosch

Exciting session of 3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars this week. Here's a summary:

Planet Name: Bosch
Planet Description: Heavy Gravity
Alien Description: Felines
Alien Special Ability: Flee

I ended up with a really low AA for this planet, and knew the aliens were gonna be creamed. Especially since "Flee" is a really wimpy special power. Once the PCs were aware of it, they just started every combat at Close Range. Since you get to adjust your range after a successful FA roll, as long as they succeeded at one roll in the first two rounds of combat, they'd never fall out of the combat. It may have slightly reduced their kill count, but not by much.

So, given the wimpiness of my aliens, I made them sympathetic. Cute little cat-guys, who'd be receiving transmissions of old b&w shows from Terra. "Humans!" their village elder exclaimed ecstatically upon seeing them. "We've been looking forward to meeting you." Then he was chopped apart with a power blade. Others quoted I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, and old game shows at them, before being blown apart.

The aliens went down fast, though not without twinges of guilt along the way. (Very brief twinges of guilt. Like, "I felt bad... until one of them mentioned The Price Is Right. It's a mercy killing.") Knowing there'd be little planetary resistance, I decided to move along various other sub-plots.

Captain DeMolay (a PC) has treated several of his NPC Lt's with contempt and scorn, and really not done anything to convince them he has any power to back it up. So, there was a bit of friendly fire, and an avalanche that he refuses to believe was caused by the High Gravity.

But the real show-stopper was the visit by Major Schwimmer.

Now, the real Schwimmer, Captain Schwimmer, was found by the PCs tied up in an air duct in the previous session. They'd been hunting through the ventilation system and jeffries tubes in search of possible infiltration by one or more shape-shifting aliens. Capt. Schwimmer says he's been replaced by said aliens, and that Major Schwimmer who'd recently been promoted was a fake. So they tried to lure fake Schwimmer to pay them an inspection, and since their efforts were good ones (and the aliens pushovers) I decided to give them their opportunity. What surprised me was the gusto with which they approached it. They lured him into an APC, dropped a TPK bomb in a hatch, and the blew up the APC from outside, just to be safe. I was thrilled to death with this.

Their cleverness didn't end there, either. They also managed to track down Watkins (an NPC who'd gone AWOL back in session 2, and been helping the aliens ever since) and capture him and his invisible alien ship. Victories all around.

...unless they killed the wrong damn Schwimmer. But what's the odds of that?

Planet Hans Holbein the Younger

Summary of my most recent session of 3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars...

Planet Name: Holbein
Planet Description: High Humidity
Alien Description: Rays, Sharks, or Fish
Alien Special Ability: Reduced Visibility

We started the session thinking we were going to be down a player. Mark, who plays Captain DeMolay, had a prior engagement in the real world at his Mason's Lodge - or as close to the real world as one can consider a Mason's Lodge to be. :)   Anyhow, he wasn't going to be at the game, so I didn't need to come up with a detailed dossier of the planet. He was off taking an officer's training course (since he started the campaign as a Corporal)... and Major Schwimmer at the Battalion HQ had ordered the troops onto the planet.  With Mark at the game, as a Captain, it's all about the whole Company. But with him absent, and the next highest-ranked PC merely a Sergeant, we were back on a Platoon-level dynamic.

They were deployed with Lt. Courson, a timid, largely incompetent junior officer who seemed much less interested in fighting the enemy than in illuminating the platoon with art-history factoids about Hans Holbein the Younger. (My wife and I had recently watched the Tudors, which had jogged my memory of Hans "Photographer of Henry VIII" Holbein from art school all those years ago, so this was a decidely simple and wicked improvisation on my part.)

We were just finishing up the first fight when there was a knock at the door. Mark's Lodge event ended early. So, a drop-pod lands as the fight is petering out, and the Captain and his APC roll out of it.

Suddenly I'm looking at having to morph back to the Company level, but I've got nothing prepped about what the other Platoons are doing. Keeping in Trope, I described it as your typical military SNAFU. Their sticks were scattered, and High Command hadn't given anyone the whole picture of what was going on. Boy was the Captain pissed. The plot just created itself, I barely needed to do a thing.

---

The aliens were big three-tailed flying manta rays with tubular mouths that could swallow a man's head. Their tails had electrical / plasma discharge capabilities.

There were also tall alien plants that grew in triple-clusters and had similar fronds to the tail-ends of the mantas. I intentionally used similar terminology in describing the plants and the mantas. I was prepping to reveal that the plants were actually super-large mantas half-submerged and hibernating. As is the nature of improvised games, however, sometimes you don't get to follow up on the trails you blaze. My bread-crumbs turned out to be red herrings, largely by virtue of the fact the PCs never followed up on the hints.

Players did ask about what the mantas ate when they weren't trying to suck the helmets off of Troopers in the 3:16th. So, I improvised some large three-legged gilled bunny rabbits. Gills (and mantas) because the atmosphere here was thick and watery. So thick and watery, you couldn't hit a target at far range.

The Special Ability of "Reduced Visibility" was next-to-worthless. It's not like PCs ever want to be at Far Range anyhow. It's total affect was to deprive one PC of one possible roll from her Rocket Pod once. Lame. Only one PC ever took any serious injuries, and I handed out fewer purple hearts than ever before.

Planet-side, the aliens went down super-fast.  That did leave us with time to work out some plot elements back on the ship, though.

---

In previous sessions, the PCs had been almost haunted by a fellow Trooper named Watkins. Watkins was an NPC goof-off in the first session, who went AWOL in the second and had tried to lead the PCs away from their platoon a la //Going After Cacciato//. It didn't really work, and the PCs ended up leaving him to his fate. There'd been sightings of him ever since. He stole an alien ship with cloaking technology, and tries contacting his old unit from time to time. When the PCs struggled against shape-shifting aliens ("Sirens" with "Induce Weakness" from "Planet Klimt"), Watkins ended up falling in with the shape-shifting survivor(s). And recently, on planet Caravaggio, he'd sent them a message indicating that these shape-shifters had replaced Major Schwimmer (their own former Company Commander, who'd given the orders this session that scattered the Company and pissed off PC Captain DeMolay). If this was true, then the real Major Schwimmer would be hidden, starving, in the air ducts or engineering bowels of their own troop ship.

So they get back to the ship, and DeMolay orders a couple of his closest Non-Coms into the air ducts to hunt for the real Schwimmer. An amusing set of failed NFA rolls followed, and I eventually narrated that 24 hours had passed since the NCOs had been sent on their task, and they still hadn't checked back in. So MPs were sent into the ducts to find them, but they didn't immediately succeed, either. Must be a real maze in the old girl. Eventually, the PCs find Schwimmer, and the MPs find the PCs and Schwimmer. They all get back out with only a little bit of engine radiation poisoning, and only a few instances of having to defecate inside a jeffries tube. Guess you had to be there.

They've tested his DNA and are certain that this Schwimmer is the genuine article. So, I expect my next session will start a little differently than normal. It'll play out like a "Caper" film, with the PCs kidnapping and executing the shape-shifter so the real Schwimmer can take his rightful place. It'll take some stealth and cleverness to set things right without exposing the fact that they've all been playing kinda loose with that whole "no fraternizing with the enemy" rule. Should be fun.

Dynamic Form

Here's another version of shapeshifting I used in one Amber campaign. It's a slightly more detailed version than in my Chaotic Vs Orderly Shapeshifting post, but it's slightly less elegant as a result.

Dynamic Form: 5 Points
You may have from 2 to 12 forms, your choice. More forms allows great versatility, but at the cost of individual forms being weaker.

Dynamic Form is the base Power of Chaos. It’s unpredictable and uncontrollable, but most of the shapes should be surreal or mythological. Think Salvador Dali, Hieronymous Bosch, HR Gieger, and Grimm’s Fairytales. A goat-headed man, a faceless witch, and a shadowy hound are far better Forms than a potted petunia, a salad fork and a killer virus.
Also note that there are no normal humans in Chaos - everyone is a bit distorted and sinister out at the end of the Universe.

Each form must have at least 1 Trigger (see below) and some of your forms will have special bonus Qualities, similar to those on the Artifact & Creature Worksheet. In addition, one of your forms must be designated as your True Form, the others become designated as Alternate Forms.. Full details can be found below.

Triggers: A Trigger is the circumstance that causes you to assume a given form. Most Triggers fall into one of the following categories:
Chemical Trigger: An allergic reaction to certain substances causes you to take this form.
Emotional Trigger: There is a particular emotion that causes you to take this form.
Celestial Trigger: Certain astological or meteorlogical circumstances will cause you to take this form.
Power Trigger: Exposure to (or the use of) a certain power causes you to take this form.
Karmic Trigger: Count on your Good Stuff or Bad Stuff to put you in this form at the dramatically appropriate moment.
* It is important to note that free choice is not a possible Trigger. That is to say the Dynamic Form Power does not allow you to merely shift from shape to shape as you see fit. It is beyond your power to totally control this gift.

3 examples of Chemical Triggers, drawn from films, novels, comics or RPGs....
1)The werewolf who reverts to human form when struck by silver.
2)The vampire who becomes a ferocious monster when they taste blood, but becomes a cowering wretch at the scent of garlic.
3) The scrawny little sailor who fights to the finish when he eats his spinach.

3 examples of Emotional Triggers, drawn from films, novels, comics or RPGs....
1) The irradiated scientist who turns green and bulky whenever someone hurts him.
2) The Viking Berserker who works himself into a rage and becomes a rabid bear.
3) The research subject whose alien-engineered DNA only makes itself pronounced when they are frightened or sexually aroused.

3 examples of Celestial Triggers, drawn from films, novels, comics or RPGs....
1) The werewolf whose form is dictated by the phase of the moon.
2) The alien hero who becomes able to leap tall buildings when transplanted to a world with a different-colored sun.
3) The demon who shows his horns, hooves and tail only when back in the damnable environs of hell, but looks like any other Lawyer when on earth.

True Form: The form you were born in has all your normal Attributes and Powers, but no bonus qualities at all. Your True Form has two default triggers, listed here:
Death/Incapacitation: In the case of Death or Paralysis, or should your soul leave your body, your body will return to your True Form.
Order Exposure: Advanced Pattern and certain Power Words can be used by others to make you take your True Form.
You must create at least 1 extra trigger that returns your character to their True Form.

Bonus Qualities: Individual forms may integrate Qualities from the Artifact & Creature Worksheet. You may select up to 8 points of Qualities from that worksheet, with these restrictions:
1) Your True Form may not have any Qualities, it uses just your normal stats.
2) Each Form may have 0 to 3 points of Qualities, up to 8 Qualities total between all your Forms.

Bemoaning the Loss of Lamarck

Sadly, I cannot seem to find any surviving internet mirrors of my old Lamarckian Shapeshifting system for Amber, and I don't seem to have it as a file on this computer. It may be lost forever.

Bounded in a nutshell, the system was roughly that each lineage or house of chaos had developed it's own unique version of shapeshifting. I think they were dirt cheap, like 5 or 15 points. They gave you access to forms related to the themes of your House. Bullheaded desire (and a few points) could broaden this for you and future generations.

So if you were from a House of trackers and investigators, you'd have forms based on bloodhounds and stealthy ambush predators. Possibly extra sensory organs.

A sorcerous house might draw from familiars and ephemeral pixie forms, perhaps with a tendency to multi-limbed and large-brained bodies.

Each House's version of shapeshifting resulted in a unique pool of forms to be taken, along with the ocassional minor power, if memory serves correctly. But you couldn't mimic a specific individual, couldn't knit-closed wounds, and only the House of Barimen could take a wholly human form.

For that campaign, we (for my co-GM also crafted several houses, and the players filled in some holes) worked up a complex of web of 20+ houses, each with their own specialties. A nice benefit was all the flavor it gave to the courts of chaos.

This was a limited-Logrus universe, but would have worked even better in a logrusless setting.

Chaotic vs Orderly Shapeshifting

This was one of the aforementioned old Amber pages that has long since vanished from the net...

"Chaotic Shapeshifting
Vs.
Orderly Shapeshifting
A study in Static Form, Dynamic Form and the nature of True Shapeshifting

It seems odd to me that a place so random and crazy that it’s commonly known as the Courts Of Chaos should be the part of the universe where the average folks have the most control over their physiology and anatomy. Shapeshifting as it exists in the rulebooks is a fluid, versatile power all about mastering and controlling the complex chemical reactions and physical structure of your body. So isn’t it a little odd that creatures of Chaos have this highly disciplined skill?
And when you think about it, what kind of shapeshifting do we see in the books? In the first five novels (Corwin’s Saga) there really is precious little shapeshifting done. Let’s count it out:

1. Dara shapeshifts uncontrollably while walking the Pattern.
2. Dworkin, embodiment of the Pattern, intentionally shapeshifts to look like Corwin.
3. Dworkin, as a result of the cyclical nature of his wounds (from the black spots on the pattern) loses control and shapeshifts in to something scary just as Corwin is trumping away.
4. Oberon, one of the greatest initiates of Pattern and order, shapeshifts into Ganelon.
5. Oberon, standing near the Primal Pattern, creates a bird from Corwin’s blood.

Only five major instances, barely one per book. Let's examine them for trends. What’s present in each of those examples? The Pattern. And what's missing that you might expect to find? Lords of Chaos with no Amber blood. Kinda makes me wonder...

Sure, Dara does say that her shapeshifting is a natural talent, a part of her birthright as a Lady of Chaos. But what’s funny is, we never see the various Chaosites in the first 5 books make full use of their shapeshifting. All the tricks that players use in the game - knitting closed wounds, growing wings to escape, taking better forms for combat - none of that stuff is done by Chaos Lords in Corwin’s Saga, and boy does it cost them.

Maybe this means that Chaosites don’t have control of their shapeshifting. After all, what could be more Chaotic? So here’s an alternate system for shapeshifters:

Static Form: 0 points:
This is the default for natives of Amber and most of shadow. Just like you and me in real life, a character with Static Form can’t change what they are shaped like.

Dynamic Form: 0 points:
This is the default for Lords and Ladies of Chaos, the creatures who serve them, and such beasts out of shadow as Werewolves. Any such character will have a large slate of forms they can assume, but little to no control over which shape they are in at any given moment. One you make a character with Dynamic Form, describe roughly a dozen different shapes you want them to be capable of, along with the triggers that send them into that shape. Your GM will have ultimate approval of the shapes and triggers, but here’s a few possibilities…
Emotional Triggers: You could have a form you take when you become angry, and another when you are sad, frightened, proud, aroused, or laughing.
Celestial Triggers: You change with the phases of the moon, the color of the sky, the arrangement of the stars or your proximity to Amber or to the Logrus.
Chemical Triggers: Your forms are determined by your diet, and/or what drugs you imbibe. Watch out for allergic reactions.
Magical Triggers: It’s possible that spells could be created to transform you into a shape of your choice, or hold you in that form once you’ve achieved it. Alternately, perhaps you could have specific Power Words whose purpose is to invoke specific shapes. Check with your GM to get their ruling on the limits of magic to affect shapeshifters.

So which of these [trigger] methods is supported by Corwin’s saga? We really don’t have enough information. Dara’s walk on the pattern could be an example of emotional triggers being struck by the memories that a Pattern walk brings to the surface, but on the other hand, Dara runs a wide range of emotions in the books without ever losing her shape.
I’d figure probably a complex mix of different triggers is involved, more than the casual observer is likely to be able to catalog or decipher. GM's and players will have to work out amongst themselves what sorts of triggers are active in their game, and how complex they want it to be.
In any event, this is a possible explanation of shapeshifting as Corwin describes it: when a Lord of Chaos chooses a battle it’s usually at the time and place that brings out their best form. If not, then they pay dearly for the mistake, like the cats in Guns of Avalon or Merlin’s friend on the skinless horse in Sign of the Unicorn.

Dynamic Form probably doesn’t confer any regeneration on its own since the shifting is so uncontrolled. However, a kind GM might let you give certain artifact powers and qualities to some of your shapes for free, provided you counter-balance them with drawbacks or only put them on forms that are rare for you to enter. Work it out with your GM.

True (Orderly) Shapeshifting: 35 points.
This is the power that Dworkin and Oberon use, and behaves just like in the rulebooks. The pre-requisite for this power is at least 50 points of Pattern. Once you have mastery over primal order, you may learn to develop mastery over your own body. Advanced Orderly Shapeshifting is possible too, with the cost and abilities listed in the rulebooks.

Dynamic Form and the Logrus:
Under this system, there’s no reason why the Logrus even has to exist, especially if you let shapes incorporate powers. Should you choose to keep the Logrus in your campaign, please bear in mind that invoking the Logrus is sure to trigger a flurry of Dynamic shapeshifting in the user.

All text © 2000 by Rolfe Bergstrom, with inspiration drawn from Roger Zelazny, Eric Wujcik, and others - thanks, Collin!"