Posts
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Who is that One-Eyed Man?
Say you’re a GURPS player who’s inspired to make a dashing pirate, a badass veteran soldier with a cool eyepatch, or maybe even a cyclops knight. Then you look up the One Eye disadvantage and notice that it gives you major penalties in combat.
While this is realistic, the type of story that likely inspired you is quite cinematic, which makes seeing those penalties a bit disappointing. One-eyed movie and game protagonists never seem to be inconvenienced by their disability. In fact, it’s often turned into an asset, as it makes enemies underestimate them. Here’s a new disadvantage to emulate that.
One Eye, Cinematic (-5 points)
You may have only one eye, but that doesn’t even slow you down! You do not suffer from the DX and skill penalties from the realistic version of this advantage, and may generally behave as if you had perfect depth perception and a full field of view. This is typical of action heroes, and naturally one-eyed aliens or fantasy creatures.
This is worth points as a disadvantage because you still do have only one eye! If that eye is crippled, you’re blind. You also suffer any other consequences that might be attached ot the condition in your setting, such as social penalties or bonuses for other people to recognize you.
This disadvantage is also still worth points in Dungeon Fantasy. Its implied setting might not attach any social penalties to the condition, but it does make losing an eye something far more likely to happen than in other settings, which puts you at an increased risk of going blind.
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Review: The Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game
Some of the covers fit together! I’ll begin this review by saying I’m really not the best person to review the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game (DFRPG). It’s not that dislike it: in fact, I loved it! However, I’m really bad at reading through the text in detail and spotting all the differences between the game and the GURPS supplements that originated it. I know these differences exist, and I know they make the game better, but I’ll probably only internalize them when I reference the text in play enough times.
Fortunately, it seems I’m late to the party when it comes to reviewing the DFRPG, so I can point you to lots of other reviews by other people who are better at this than me! Just Roll 3d6 has very detailed reviews of the Adventurers and Exploits books. Let’s GURPS is reviewing all the recently-released books too. And I’m sure many other reviews will pop up in time.
What I’ll do in this article is something only I can do: give you my own opinion on the game. Whether that is of any value is left as an exercise for the reader.
TL; DR
The Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game is my favorite edition of D&D. Go out and buy it as soon as it comes out.
Wait, What?
Technically, my favorite edition of D&D is 4th, but it occupies that position for very specific reasons. It allows me to run cool, flashy battles in the style of turn-based tactical RPGs such as Disgaea, Fire Emblem, or Final Fantasy Tactics. If I want a campaign that feels like that, I reach for D&D 4.
If I don’t want to run a campaign that feels like that, my tastes get a bit fiddlier. I will play D&D 5th edition if no other alternative presents itself, but it doesn’t look very exciting to GM. Earlier editions add to that an elaborate list of varied complaints that I’m sure anyone familiar with them can guess, and I’m not one of those enlightened souls who can forget about them for long enough to enjoy a session.
The Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game has a premise that’s exactly like that of Basic D&D (one of the most popular OSR darlings), married to a ruleset that does everything most editions of D&D do in a way I find better. It’s point-based! It has a unified mechanic! It has a good skill system! Warrior-types are actually better at combat than spellcasters!
You can of course also run flashy set-piece battles with it, and they’ll tend to have a feel that’s closer to that of the old-school editions.
It takes all of that from GURPS. Its rules are a specialized version of GURPS 4th Edition, with everything that’s not relevant to dungeon-crawling fantasy campaigns stripped out and the rest adapted to the purpose. Some parts are simpler than in the original rules, some are not, but they’re all useful. A lot of those things which usually lead to heated arguments between players and DMs are given proper rules and effects here. Want to stab that ogre in the eye? Perform some unlikely feat of parkour? Check to see if that dead monster has valuable body parts? The system has you covered.
Dungeon Fantasy gives you 11 “professional templates” that are roughly equivalent to some of the most popular D&D classes, and which can be humans or one of a selection of 8 racial templates that includes all the usual suspects plus the Catfolk1.
While the game focuses very heavily on dungeon-delving, it’s certainly possible to use it for fantasy campaigns that go beyond the dungeon. It has more support for social interaction than Basic D&D does2, and bringing in more detailed rules from GURPS is extremely easy, if the GM thinks it’s necessary.
So yes, if I was planning on running a D&D-ish campaign and wasn’t after the very specific feel of D&D 4 combat, I would use Dungeon Fantasy in preference to any other actual edition of D&D. In fact, I have been doing just that for years using the previous iteration of these rules, and will gladly switch to the new one now that I have it in my hands.
Dungeon Fantasy isn’t yet available to the public as of this writing, but the Kickstarter backers have already begun receiving their copies. Both the printed and PDF versions should appear on Warehouse 23 in October.
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Skynet's Avengers: The Damaxuri Deception, Part 1
Having finished our characters, we gathered ‘round in the second “gap” weekend to play through The Damaxuri Deception. We started one hour later than usual, due to some uncertainty over whether I would be able to make it and due to one other player having spent the previous night at a party. Everyone else, including me, was able to make it at the usual time of 9 AM, so we spent that hour finishing up our fireteams.
Now, the players were well-aware of their company’s financial dire straits, and from the skills they had chosen it was clear that they expected to get into fights early and often. So I told then this adventure started in a dangerous and unfamiliar place fraught with tension and itchy trigger fingers… a mercenary convention! The quotes below are freely translated from Portuguese, since that was the language we played in.
Scene 1: MercCon 713
Welcome to the 713th edition of Merc-Con! Taking place in a quaint historical habitat above scenic Damaxuri, and partly sponsored by the city of Mellsen-Anlied (located on the surface under the station). And if you believe the habitat is quaint or the planet is scenic, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. This flating hunk of junk they call a station was the only place that would consent to hosting an event for 2000 mercenaries.
Into it go the officers of Skynet’s Avengers, accompanied by a small drone projecting the unblinking red eye that is the avatar of Skynet herself1. Why are they going to a conference when the company is in the red? Skynet paid for it ages ago and the fee is non-refundable, so they might as well make the most of it. And hey, someone there might be hiring!
The station is quite hot and stinky because its creaky life support systems can’t keep up with the body heat and body odor of 2000 sweaty mercs and the assorted vendors who set up shop here for the event. Fortunatly, most of the PCs are wearing their climate-controlled suits of armor. The sole exception is poor Orangus, whose armor is a bit too heavy (and illegal!) to be acceptable attire for anything that’s not a firefight. He’s wearing a respirator for the smell, but his civvies and thick fur don’t help against the heat. The player’s vivid description of his suffering earned him the game’s first RiPP.
The PCs linger for a while at the booth of an Unioc named Banjo Tabberlin2 as they watch an O’benn customer of his try out a Phubhar Shurikannon3 and cover every inch of the shooting gallery’s back wall with metal stars, leaving the paper target at the center untouched. Banjo comments that the Phubhar lot he received today is quite above-average in quality. Only two weapons exploded so far!
They talked with Banjo a bit and were interested in the capabilities of the M3 Incapacitator he showed them… but gave up on it whey they heard it cost twice what they paid for the company APC. They ended up trading comm numbers, and went to the food court.
There, Leto socialized a bit with Fulda Purrgathor, the medic of all-Ursumari company Icewall Security. She and some of her buddies were ear-deep into large bowls of shaved ice. Fulda was a bit insensitive in her comments that working on any patient smaller than an ursumari was much too fiddly for her tastes, but Leto assured her it was good practice.
After a while Skynet reminded the group that the keynote would start in 15 minutes. The speaker was Colonel Drake Pranger, the leader of one of the galaxy’s top mercenary companies. Skynet paid a fortune for her officers to hear this blowhard speak, and she didn’t want them to waste the money.
Before heading to the keynote the PCs decided to mingle and try to look for contracts in the con by looking for anyone who seemed to be tied to one of the galaxy’s major ongoing conflicts. A task at which they failed miserably due to their lack of relevant skills. The only conflict that came to their minds was the biggest of them all - the war between the godlike AIs of the Plenipotent Dominion and the dark matter entities of Andromeda.
Orangus: Hey, Cap’n, you’re an AI! Can’t you talk to the PD?
Skynet: No. I do not wish to be assimilated.
Orangus: Then can’t we work for the other guys?
Skynet: No. I do not wish to destroy all baryonic life in the galaxy4.
Orangus here was the recipient of the game’s first Mayhem card: “Spin Control”. He now felt extremely driven to make the company look good, and his efforts would result in a +1 increase in Reputation for every RiPP he had left at the end of the session.
Rufus decided to appeal to a higher authority and ask Skynet if she knew of someone who was hiring. The AI reminded him he had just acquired the contact information of a known arms dealer. Rufus asked her to call him, and she delegated the duty right back to him.
It turns out Banjo did have a hot tip for them! A big bounty was going to be posted to the local hypernet during the keynote, so they should keep an ear out for it. So forewarned, they moved on.
Scene 2: The Keynote, and What Came After
The PCs found their seats in the improvised lecture hall. Orangus put his feet up on a chair in the row ahead of him, only to have the tiny Esspererin seated there take a perch on his feet instead. “Hey man, thanks for the lift!” Leto has brought a tub of ice cream and is paying more attention to it than to the hall.
Rufus scans the crowd, trying to spot competing companies. He fails to recognize any, but deduces that the huge group of Esspererin in the two rows in front of them probably belong to the same company, as does a group of humanoids further away wearing matching uniforms.
Pranger enters the stage and swaggers up to his podium like the high-level NPC he is5. He takes a deep breath, opens his mouth to speak… and is interrupted by a deafening chime as every monitor in the hall, and every handbrain in the room, flashes the alert that a very substantial bounty has been posted for a human arms dealer named Kostavi, who has been sighted in Mellsen-Anlied.
The players don’t need to roll to figure out who she is: Kostavi is quite infamous for selling weapons to the sort of people who should never have them, and causing lots of civilian casualties in the process. Sooner or later something like this was bound to happen, and since the bounty is equivalent to 5 Resources, it’s just what the Avengers need to make payroll for the next few months.
A lot of the keynote audience thinks the same, and everyone begins getting up and rushing to their ships. At this point all players begin talking, and I begin to employ the game’s initiative system: whoever speaks first, goes first. This time, it’s Rufus, who engages his Supersuit’s flight mode and tries to carry Max with him. He rolls a natural 18 on 3d6, which is a critical success.
Me: Pick one other PC to carry along with you.
Rufus: I choose the bear!
So there he goes, carrying Max over one shoulder and Leto by the scruff of the neck as the bear roars as loud as he can to clear a path. Orangus runs after them, and meets his powered armor suit on the way so he can fly too.
With Banjo’s forewarning and their impressive die rolls, the party manages to leave the hangar first, and is almost immediately fired upon by the Esspererin vessel Neoshka Kree, crewed by an Esspee merc outfit based out of a piratical cluster. Behind them is a crew of human piratical mercs, and behind them is the huge, lumbering Icewall Security vessel Advancing Ice.
Time for some starship combat! I tell my players they’re all controlling the actions of Skynet as she pilots the Star Destroyer. Their PCs are cowering in their crash seats inside.
Leto’s player is very tempted to fire on the Advancing Ice, but gives up when I specify how much bigger the other ship is. The group ends up engaging the Neoshka Kree and firing to disable. The Star Destroyer takes a missile hit, but it’s not enough to put it out of commision. The other ship is disabled, and drifts down to the planetary surface. The PCs land on Mellsen-Anlied on their flying APC.
Scene 3: Search and Destroy
I ask for Perception rolls to abstract the initial search for Kostavi. They know she’s in the city, but not exactly where. Rufus and Leto beat the TN of 15, and both Rufus and Max draw Mayhem. Rufus gets a good card that allows him to declare a failed roll by someone else is actually a critical success as long as he can explain how. Max gets “Friendly Fire”.
Me: For your information, you can always pay a RiPP to negate a card.
Max: Screw that, I want to see what happens!
So I narrate that they learn that Kostavi’s hideout is in an abandoned warehouse in the lower levels of the city. There’s a transit elevator that should bring them very close to it… but it’s old, rusted, and alarmingly creaky. Due to the effect of the card, Max assures all of them the elevator is perfectly safe. As the company engineer, he knows machines, so they all should believe him!
The whole party (which numbers 20 with the fireteams) walks into the elevator. The thing’s cables snap halfway to their destination, so now every PC must explain how they avoid taking 2d6 points of armor-ignoring damage when they hit the bottom of the shaft6.
Orangus speaks first: he wants to use his UNS I-CC powered armor to fly through the elevator’s ceiling and hold the elevator up to slow its fall! I ask him to make an Aerial Vehicles and an Athlethics roll. Both succeed by lots, and the Athletics roll draws Mayhem!
The card is simply hilarious given the situation. Orangus is overcome with the need to stop what he’s doing and tell a story the situation reminded him of. Since what he’s doing is saving the lives of half the company, the player wisely decides to spend a RiPP to negate this, as soon as he can stop laughing for long enough to talk.
Orangus: But man, was that going to be one heck of a story!
Shaken but mostly intact, the party heads to the warehouse where Kostavi is hiding. Rufus scouts ahead stealthily along with his unit, and draws a Mayhem card that he immediately uses to turn the following Perception roll into a critical success, allowing him to find the mooks waiting in ambush and relay their position to the rest of the unit.
Leto speaks first, and gets the drop on a mook not by being stealthy, but by walking up to him and saying:
Leto: Hello, good sir. I’m a doctor, and I couldn’t help but notice your unhealthy pallor. Do you have a history of heart disease in your family?
I had him roll Deception, and the result was so high I ruled the guy lost an action in surprise. So Leto sat on him.
The other mooks spring into action. One of them manages to shoot Leto for some damage, and is vaporized by Orangus in return.
Me: You have a BH-209, right? The fusion reactor makes this ominous hummmmm sound and a jet of plasma shoots forth. Where the enemy stood is now a little pile of ash and a pair of smoking boots.
Orangus: I LOVE MY JOB!!!7
The two remaining guards suffer similar fates at the hands of the PCs’ fireteams, and once the survivor is interrogated he shows them the address of the real hideout stored in his handbrain.
The group sends a picture of the guy to Skynet. Is he worth anything?
Skynet: What you see here is a typical specimen of the common thug.
They tie him up and leave him for the police, which Skynet will call as soon as the party is far enough away no one can pin this on them. They now know Kostavi is on another warehouse on an even lower level of the city. Time to bag a bounty!
That’s All, Folks!
That’s where we stopped, since it was already noon. It’s fair to say everyone had a blast. The “shout first, go first” initiative mechanic worked a lot better than I thought it would, and the timing marks for the adventure were mostly spot-on.
The Mayhem Deck was fun beyond all my expectations. The group got really lucky with it too, drawing mostly good cards this time around. The bad cards did a lot more to reshape the game and make everyone laugh, though. Let’s see how funny they make the next session.
When will that be? I’m still not sure. We’re back to D&D next week. We might alternate the two games, or wait until there’s another “gap”. I do know the group wants to finish this adventure at some point. Orangus’ player bought the corebook after this session, and we’ve been discussing the game online.
And yeah, the “Spin Control” effect happened here, giving the company +3 Reputation. We explained it as Orangus’ heroic stunt with the falling elevator getting caught by various security cameras. Which he posed for.
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Skynet doesn’t care what pronouns you use to refer to him/her/them/it as long as you stay consistent. Players used male pronouns, I used female ones because she speaks with the voice of GlaDoS. ↩
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Originally “Benjo”, but the joke was too good to pass up. ↩
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My subtle nudgings to try to get the PCs to buy a shurikannon in character creation came to naught. Once they learned what the Failure-Prone quality did for weapons, Skynet’s Avengers became a Strohl shop. ↩
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This might come as a surprise, but Skynet is not actually evil despite being a living reference to every evil AI in fiction. ↩
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Those were my literal words. ↩
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I would have to toss a lot of coins for the fireteam NPCs, too. ↩
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Friends, I think we have a natural. ↩
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Planet Mercenary Actual Play: Character Creation
This last weekend I finally got to GM in real time again! It wasn’t exactly an in-person game, seeing as it happened over Google Hangouts, but it was the next best thing.
I’ve been playing a bit of D&D 5th Edition with this particular group every Sunday morning, also over Hangouts. It so happened that the habitual GM wouldn’t have the materials handy for a couple of weeks due to a trip, so I proposed a session of Planet Mercenary to fill the gap and keep our momentum going. I had just gotten the book (read my review [here][1]) and this would be a perfect opportunity to try it out.
Character and Company Creation
Since everyone was new to the system, I decided to set one of our two “gap” sessions aside for creating characters. I started with a very basic overview of the setting, and proceeded to use screen sharing to show the possible choices for Command Package, Background and Sophont Type. The sophont type illustrations were a big hit, particularly those of the Earth-born species.
I banned AI and Amorph PCs to start with, since those were marked as “Advanced” and no one had much in the way of system experience. I’m glad I did, because in my experience with science fiction games is that someone always wants to play a robot. We ended up with an all-Earthling crew, whom we’ll get to meet shortly.
Point distribution was done simultaneously: I screen-shared the character sheet for reference and answered questions along the way. Company creation was very easy to explain: since most of the group was familiar with Ars Magica, I just had to say it worked more or less like a Covenant. We took the suggested starting stats to speed things up, because I knew that the next step there was going to eat up most our time. Yes, I’m talking about shopping.
Starship selection was surprisingly quick, simply because the Dragon-class Interdiction Cruiser looks like a Star Destroyer. It’s also pretty good for its class, mechanically, and one of the most versatile designs they could afford. So I was pretty happy to let them choose it as their ship. The players named it Star Destroyer, of course. It has the optional gun package and an add-on set of light shields that I let them buy. When I told them startships were piloted by powerful AI, they promptly named their ship AI Skynet.
Buying personal equipment was… less than quick, which is something I already expected. Using Hangouts screen-sharing to show the lists to everyone at the same time did make it a lot faster than it would have been if I had to keep passing a physical book or PDF-in-a-device around. The group got an APC so that all players and their fireteams could ride around on the same vehicle, and spent all the time I saved with the screen share trying to make their remaining Supplies buy armor and weapons for all PCs after a couple of them blew mountains of cash on expensive flying suits.
The finishing touches of character creation actually stretched into some Whatsapp messaging over the week and the first hour of session 2. Here are our results.
Company: Skynet’s Avengers
No one wanted to be the captain, so I was free to make one. Looking at the mountain of pop-culture references thrown around both during general chatter and in naming the ship and its AI, I decided that the AI itself would be the Captain.
Skynet is a ship-scale AI whose past is a bit of a secret. It’s completely addicted to old (or, in other words, comtemporary) Earth pop culture. All those jokes the players made? They’re canon. Skynet named itself after the evil AI from Terminator, named the ship Star Destroyer because it resembles a star destroyer, and speaks like GlaDoS because it likes GlaDoS. How it managed to liberate itself and its ship from the UNS military is still a bit of a mystery, but it currently runs a small mercenary company (named after the Avengers). Few other people in the galaxy (aside from the Gavs) get all the jokes.
The company has the default attributes of AI Rating 3, Starting Resources 9, and Reputation 4. Players spent 10 Resources on their ship, turned the remainder into 70 supplies, and spent every last penny of that in personal gear, which means Skynet’s Avengers are desperate to find a job, any job, or else they won’t be able to make payroll next month. And we all know how bad that is.
Player Characters
Our PCs make up the officer corps for Skynet’s Avengers, and all of them hail from Earth. I messed up a bit during fireteam creation, and they each ended up with fireteams made up of 4 grunts. I’m leaving that as it is for now.
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Max, Human/Engineer/Driver. His fireteam is the most diverse, with a Neophant, a Ursumari, an O’benn and an Oth, all of varying specialties. The O’benn and the Oth are the two named company members who are not from Earth. Carries a Strohl G/G 1000 sniper rifle and wears Blue Collar armor (which is standard for company grunts, too).
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Kerchak “Orangus” Strongheart, Rilla/Quartermaster/Infantry Grunt. Promoted to officer status when the gorilla in front of him got blown up. An enthusiastic Heavy Weapons Guy(rilla), he carries around a BH-209 plasma cannon and wears a suit of USMF I-CC power armor. His fireteam is similarly all-Rillas, all-Heavies.
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Leto “Master of Puppets”, Ursumari/Medic/Crime Boss. Like Walter White, but a polar bear1. Leto is a highly skilled medic and a surprisingly good liar. He also has a BH-209 plasgun, though his armor is a standard Blue Collar suit. His fireteam is made up of four identical pink-haired human women from the same clone family, all Medics, all named Joy. Yes, it’s a Pokemon reference, but my mind immediately went to the Honokas of Sidonia2 (which are also clones, but fightier).
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Rufuz Leet, Purp/Ops Commander/Military Officer. Hails from a proud lineage of decorated soldiers, wields a G/G 511 carbine and wears an EX Supersuit, the most expensive suit of armor in the entire company. Completely ignores how much he looks like Master Chef from HALO3. His fireteam is composed of three Purp Infantry named after actors from Expendables and one neophant named Babar who acts as the voice of wisdom in the unit. Fairly sneaky and skilled with nearly every weapon in the book.
All of them are very good at fighting in addition to being skilled at what their command package implies. None of them have much in the way of social or mental skills, with the exception of Leto who has Deception 8.
Coming Up Next: The Damaxuri Deception
Damaxuri Deception is the adventure that comes in the corebook, and it’s intended to be an introduction to both the game’s mechanics and its philosophy of adventure design. It laid out as a succession of scenes, each accompanied by an estimate of how long it should take to run. I found that extremely useful, as it allowed me to direct my efforts somewhat to keep things moving as they should and to better fit our limited 9:00-12:00 time slots.
We’ll see how Skynet’s Avengers handled this mission in the next post!
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Dreams of Ruin Whodunnit: A Stroll Through AD&D's Deities and Demigods
Art by Melissa Uran. The Dreams of Ruin aren’t a natural phenomenon - they were created by someone (or someones) who wanted the multiverse to get a little more Chaotic Evil. In my X-COM campaign it was all the work of the Ebon Masters,who make no particular effort to hide that fact as they use the Dreams as a weapon of conquest and a tool of terraforming. But in the original text the identity of the people who created the Dreams is supposed to be a mystery.
Geoff C. Grabowski, the book’s author, mentioned in a thread over at the RPG.net forums that you could find the real culprit from clues present in the book by looking at the Deities and Demigods supplement for AD&D 1st Edition. He couldn’t mention that in the book itself because it would violate the OGL, and was apparently reluctant to point fingers explicitly for the same reason.
Well, I got Deities & Demigods during a recent DTRPG sale, and I have no legal ties to the Dreams of Ruin, so let’s try to figure out who’s to blame for this mess!
Clues in Dreams of Ruin
Anyone trying to look into this mystery directly will eventually come across a vision of the Malediction that opens the book - you know, the bit with Old Woman Crow and and the Wind. That vision was put in place to hide the true identities of the perpetrator(s) of the Dreams, but it does make some allegories to the actual process. Investigating the process itself yields more clues, which are listed in a section near the end of the book. All of them are stated in AD&D 1st Edition terms:
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Creating the Dreams requires the abilities of a 20th-level Magic User, a 20th-level Illusionist, a 14th-level Cleric, and a 14th-level Druid. Those are minimum levels - the perpetrators either had plenty of time or lots of extra power. If one of them was a god of some sort they could even fulfill multiple prerequisites.
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The Illusionist was likely the mastermind, as Illusionist spells are the basis on which the system was built.
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The Druid was largely responsible for designing the ecology of the Dreams and might have used this expertise as a bargaining chip to get included.
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The work involved a truly ridiculous amount of wishes and limited wishes, among many other spell effects.
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Four cards from the Deck of Many Things were involved. One of them was the Moon, which grants a wish, which means the perpetrators might have found a way to cheat the Deck and draw as many Moons as they wanted.
The result of the process was a single spore, created by a final limited wish cast by the illusionist which brought all the other factors together. This spore then multiplied on its own and brought forth all the other horrors in the book.
What’s In Deities and Demigods
Knowing old D&D supplements were “quirky” and actually experiencing it are two different things. A lot of modern books try to emulate this style, but this thing here is the genuine article. The layout and typography are readable enough, but they give me this feeling of being amateurish. It’s not something the authors were trying to do on purpose either, like in the Dungeon Crawl Classics line - this really was the best they could do at the time. The introduction also has Gary Gygax boasting about how writing the book involved extensive consultations with himself, which is, uh, something.
I’ve heard a lot about how this book was nothing but a jumped-up bestiary, but the introduction says exactly the opposite! It advises the GM to use the information as reference for roleplaying and to not treat the deities as just a collection of stats. I guess the reason they get full stat writeups is that the concept that you didn’t need to stat everything up hadn’t yet become popular. Which is kinda ironic considering the complaints about “games these days” from hardline old-school adepts.
Anyway, the book presents several different pantheons here. Each one begins with a very brief description of how their mortal religions operate, and follows up with full stat blocks for what Gygax considered to be their main figures. Each one has an illustration and a very brief description of the being in question, usually focusing more on physical appearance and any special abilities than in mythological information.
The stat blocks are different from your usual monster writeup, unless the entity in question is an actual monster. This writeup includes ability scores as well as a list of classes and levels that acts as a shorthand for what sort of PC-like abilities the being in question possesses. Heroes get a similar writeup to gods, and monsters get Ye Olde Monster Statblock.
Most pantheons are drawn from real-world mythology as filtered by Gygax in his extensive consultations with himself, but my copy of the PDF also has the pantheon of the Farfhd and The Grey Mouser stories and a bunch of original nonhuman deities that would proceed to become fixtures in every future edition of D&D, like Moradin, Corellon and Gruumsh. Earlier printings of the book also had writeups for Melniboné and the Cthulhu Mythos, which were taken out to avoid copyright troubles.
The Suspect Line-Up
We’re looking here for an entity or group of entities who fulfills the following criteria:
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Chaotic Evil alignment, or as close to it as possible. The mastermind is most likely CE, accomplices might be NE or CN depending on their individual personalities.
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Is or contains at least a 20th-level Magic User, a 20th-level Illusionist, a 14th-level Cleric and a 14th-level Druid.
I’m assuming the information on Deities & Demigods is basically correct, which probably wouldn’t be true in a campaign which cared even a bit about real-world accuracy. I’ll consider a credible suspect any listed entity that has the requisite alignment and fulfills at least one of the level requirements. Any pantheon from the book not mentioned here lacks a listed entity who could be a credible suspect.
The Native American Mythos
Coyote has the requisite Druid and Cleric levels and is Chaotic Neutral, so he could theoretically be convinced to aid in the creation of the Dreams… but that sounds a bit too actively malicious for him.
The Babylonian Mythos
We have two suspects, but they’d need help from outside the pantheon.
Anshar the god of darkness is CE and can play the role of the Cleric. His ability to “catch” and store arcane spells is powerful, but I’m not sure it would allow him to play the MU or Illusionist role, so he would need co-conspirators.
Nergal is NE and both a 25th-level Cleric and a 20th-level Magic User. He sounds like he’d be on board as a helper.
Central American Mythos
Plenty of suspects to go around here!
Quetzalcoatl seems like an unlikely suspect at first, but power-wise he’s a single druid level short of being able to do the whole thing himself. That’s a rounding error when it comes to greater deities. And despite being listed as Lawful Neutral, even Gygax acknowledges it’s hard to fit him into the alignment system, as you have several stories where he acts in a Chaotic or Evil manner. If this was one of those times, then you can see why there would be unbreakable measures in place to prevent others from figuring out who did it.
If you take inspiration from those bits of real-world Aztec mythology that say Tetzcatlipoca is comparable to Quetzalcoatl in power, he becomes an even likelier suspect than the Big Q, because his behavior is consistent enough to be rated as Chaotic Evil in the book. Simply going by the supplement, though, he lacks the levels.
Camazotz the bat god is CE and has the necessary MU and Illusionist levels. He’d need some help to fulfill the other roles.
Tlazolteotl the goddess of vice is also CE and can almost do the whole thing herself, lacking only a few levels of Magic User.
This leaves us with a very strong chance of the Dreams being the fault of these Aztec deities! Maybe Tzazolteotl enlisted Camazotz as an accomplice; maybe it was one of Quetzalcoatl’s Chaotic Evil moments; or maybe it was just Tetzcatlipoca being himself. The Dreams certainly look bad enough to be the thing that ends the Fifth Sun.
Chinese Mythos
Lu Yueh the god of pestilence is CE, has 20 cleric levels and 19 MU/Illusionist levels. I’m sure he could compensate for the two missing arcane caster levels by being the god of pestilence, and he could create the Dreams if he recruited a high-level druid. No likely druid presents himself in the pantheon, though.
Egyptian Mythos
Set might be listed as Lawful Evil, but the Dreams sound right up his alley. He’s a 30th-level illusionist, which might compensate for his lack of Magic User levels… Or he could probably recruit a powerful enough wizard and druid through his infectious alignment change ability. Or you could stick by the alignment restriction and have him look at the Dreams and go “not even I would do that”.
Finnish Mythos
The cast of the Kalevala gives us our second group of suspects who could have done it without help from outside the pantheon.
Tuonetar the goddess of the underworld looks like a prime suspect, being CE and only lacking Druid levels. If she did it, then her husband Tuoni was likely involved as the Cleric.
Kiputtyto the demigoddess of sickness has the necessary Druidic expertise, so she would complete Team Evil for the Finnish Dreams of Ruin.
Greek Mythos
Surprisingly few ideal candidates present themselves here, but a couple of them make for a really tempting picture.
Hecate is listed as Lawful Evil… but she has the requisite arcane power and can cast arcane spells without limit, making her the only deity in the book who could produce unlimited wishes without cheating the Deck of Many Things. She’s also powerful enough as a Cleric to fill that role too, and would need only a Druid helper.
Circe is labeled as Chaotic Evil and has the requisite Druid levels, so she would be the ideal henchwoman.
A NE or CE Hecate teaming up with Circe make an awfully evocative Team Evil for a Greek version of the Dreams.
Nehwon Mythos
These are the deities of the Farfhd & Grey Mouser stories. Most of them tend to the Neutral, but if the CE Gods of Trouble teamed up with the CE Nehwon Earth God they’d have all they need to unleash the Dreams.
Norse Mythos
Loki certainly has the inclination, but by himself he can only fill the Illusionist role. Hel can fill the Cleric role, but they’d need outside help for the Druid and MU slots.
And the Culprit Is…
Gee, we ended up with quite a big list of suspects there, didn’t we? Who should we finger in this lineup of cosmic evil?
Personally, I’m disinclined to consider mythological crossovers, so let’s strike out any pantheon who doesn’t have enough listed suspects to produce the Dreams without outside help. That leaves only the Aztec, Greek, Finnish and Newhon Gods as possible culprits. Mr. Grabowski has made use of plenty of Aztec and Sword and Sorcery influences on his work before, so I think I’m on to something here.
Let us next consider the base traits of the Dreams. They spread like a disease; and they thin the barriers between the targeted plane and the “evil astral”, which is to say the underworlds where demons and other horrors come from. They are as opposed to Law as they are to Good; A Lawful Evil interloper is as likely to be considered an enemy of the forest as a Chaotic Good one.
With all of that in mind I have to say my choice for culprits goes to the Finnish Gods - more specifically, Tuonetar, Tuoni and Kiputtyto working in concert. The first two are Greater Gods of an evil underworld. Kiputtyto is a demigoddess of sickness and has Druid levels, which fits the clue about the druid being at the start of this article. The Kalevala pantheon also has a history of being a source of D&D deities, with Loviatar and Mielikki being from there originally.
The Aztec gods come in at a close second, with the most probable cause there being a collaboration between Tzazolteotl and Camazotz due to their compatible alignment and stats. It’s not hard to fit the Dreams as an attempt to end the Fifth Sun if you read up on Aztec Mythology on Wikipedia, with more reliable sources likely providing better material, and the imagery of Aztec-influenced Dreams of Ruin sure does seem evocative. But going from just Deities & Demigods, the two deities in question seem to lack the “pestilence” portfolio, which puts a slight dent in their credibility.
The Hecate/Circe team lost out because Hecate is listed as Lawful and the notes don’t contradict it like they do with the Big Q. And the Nehwon gods lost out because while the Gods of Trouble seem to be perfect fits the Earth God wants to return the earth to a molten state, which doesn’t seem to be very much in line with how the Dreams work. I’m sure someone interested in using that pantheon as the source could scare up a suitably evil druid from the setting, though.
So did I get close, Mr. Grabowski?
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