Dollar Store Dungeons: Lamprey Centipede

The centipede pictured above was one of a number of bugs in a $1 package of Creatures purchased at the dollar store. Full details on the contents of the package are available on our sister blog, The Everwayan. 

The Lamprey Centipede 

One of the post-apocalyptic horrors found in The Alwyn Campaign, the Lamprey Centipede is a subterranean threat on the post-apocalyptic future Earth of Babylon 5. It is one of a number of horrific monsters that can be found while exploring ruins from the age before the Great Burn. Whether it is one of the atomic children of the Great Burn, or is simply something that escaped from a laboratory or zoo during that disaster is one of the many mysteries lost in time. Perhaps one of the learned souls in the great monasteries of the South knows the truth...

Lamprey Centipedes range in length from 2-3 meters. They live in underground caves and tunnels, emerging at night to hunt game. Favorite prey include deer and wild pigs, but humans are all too often on their menu. The centipedes often stalk along tunnels, sewers, and wells, infiltrating the cellars of human dwellings in search of an easy meal.

The most horrifying feature of the Lamprey Centipede is how it eats. It has a circular maw flanked by two huge pincers. When the centipede senses its prey, the pincers become coated with a white frothy a paralytic poison. The Lamprey Centipede will first try to paralyze its prey with the pincers. Then its circular mouth will project outward for up to two decimeters, and begin chewing its way into the body of its victim. Our PCs killed a Lamprey Centipede in the second episode of The Alwyn Campaign. They found an interesting signet ring in its guts, along with some human finger bones.

When attacking humans, the Lamprey Centipede goes in the hard way.  It prefers to bite through the sternum and then consume the victim's heart and lungs first. Once it has cleaned out the victim's chest cavity, it begins eating downward and consumes the soft and calorie-rich organs in the abdomen. Miraculously, the victim often remains in a semi-conscious state during part or all of this two course meal. It's a horrible last meal.

Chirurgeons and torturers will pay delvers top dollar when they return with samples of the Lamprey Centipede's venom. Its armored segments are also valuable; they can also be used to fashion lamellar armor. Its teeth are exceptionally strong and sharp, and can be mounted for use as the blades on a macuahuitl.

http://www.michtoy.com/item-MRN-AZT042-
Aztec_Eagle_Warrior_Defending_with_Macuahuitl.html

OGL MECHANICS

Lamprey Centipede
Giant centipedes (neutral)

ASPECTS:

• High Concept: Mutant centipedes with a taste for human flesh
• Trouble:  Fears light and fire  
• Aspect: "Did you just see something?"
• Aspect: Frothy poison fangs
• Aspect: There's never just one

APPROACHES

• Careful: +1
• Clever: +1
• Flashy: 0
• Forceful: +2
• Quick: +3
• Sneaky: +2

STUNTS:

• Bone Saw: The creature takes a +2 to its Forceful Attack when biting through leather/cloth armor or a victim's ribcage to get to the tasty soft meat.
• Paralytic Fangs: When the creature Succeeds with Style on a Forceful Attack, it injects its victim with a paralytic venom. The victim gains the Aspect Paralyzed for the remainder of the Scene. The venom also does +2 stress per turn until an anti-venom or some other healing measure occurs. 

REFRESH: 3

There's A Centipede On My Dollar Store!

What can a GM buy for their games in a Dollar Store if they have ten bucks? My friend Rachel Kronick proposed we explore this question back when there wasn't snow on the ground in Minnesota (hint: no earlier than May 2013). It took a while for us to set up a time shopping expedition in which we would each spend $10 on gaming supplies, but we finally did that last weekend. The result will be a series of posts on our blogs about what we each purchased, and how we might use those items in our gaming.

We used a very specific methodology in shopping:

• The goal was to purchase $10 items each, and to do multiple posts each featuring an item
• We agreed on an NTE ("Not to Exceed" amount in managed care parlance) of $10 for each of us (excluding tax)
• Anything in the store could be purchased, as long as the purchaser thought it had some utility at the gaming table
• We would browse and make our selections independently of each other while in the store together, so that we did not influence each others' purchasing decisions 

Rachel did her first post today, which you can see here.

I will start individual item posts tomorrow, but we're starting today with the gallery of what we purchased for our $10:

Sure, we're being a little bit coy with such a blurry photo. We want you to come back! Ten items, ten posts. Come back tomorrow to see the mysterious reveal begin in earnest.

You can join this project too! Here's details.

Rotwang's Unheimlich Haven

Rotwang's house in Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" (1927)

Rotwang's Unheimlich Haven (Evocation, Cost, Per Scenario, Permanent): Almost invisible, this house might huddle at the base of any great city, hardly noticeable among the giant girders and foundation blocks that surround it. A nondescript and not-quite-symmetrical structure - perhaps partially melted by radiation or other-planar energies - its roof and walls have no doubt settled a bit over the years. When someone passes by this house, they usually think it is abandoned, having been no doubt seized by the city under eminent domain, then slated for demolition, and then promptly forgotten. That's one of the conveniences provided by Rotwang's Unheimlich Haven: it's hard to notice, the eyes can't settle on it for long, and the house doesn't persevere in the memory of those who do see it.

It's the perfect place to hide. And work.

Rotwang's Unheimlich Haven is a summonable sanctuary for alchemists, steampunks, sorcerer-scientists, and etherites. Once summoned, the Haven provides a laboratory, library, kitchen, bath, and sleeping quarters suitable for up to five people. The kitchen and icebox are not stocked; those who would live in the Haven must venture out to find food.

What it is well-stocked with are scientific and magical supplies necessary for complex investigations and rituals.  It is a failsafe place to bring a robot to full consciousness or sentience, or to stitch together the parts of dead men to create a new body suitable for reanimation. The technology level of the laboratory is positively futuristic when compared to the best laboratories in the London or Berlin of the 1930s, but is quaint by modern standards.

The spell Greater Pass Turing Test can be performed within the Haven at No Cost.

Once summoned, the Haven connects immediately to the city's plumbing, sewer, gas, and electrical systems. These connections are impossible to trace to the Haven, providing an additional level of anonymity for the Haven's summoner, and adding to the impression that the Haven is abandoned.

The Haven also connects physically with the hidden areas beneath cities. There is a hatch in the basement floor of the Haven which connects to the labyrinth of cellars, tunnels, bunkers, vaults, sewers, and passageways under the city where it is summoned. When a city lacks extensive underground systems, a new network begins to spontaneously develop once the Haven is summoned. These spread out like a spiderweb fracture radiating from the Haven's location; the tunnels and substructures will remain in the city even after the Haven departs. They are entirely random in character, an expression of the inner chaos propelling any cutting edge scientific endeavor.

There's a walled-in yard attached to the house. The wall itself is too high for someone standing outside to peer over. What might be back there? Trash, broken or abandoned furniture, an old pig pen? Chickens? Feral cats? Iron Pigs? Buried things? Probably all of the above, and more. For with each new summoning, the Haven "upgrades" to reflect changes made to its environment by its previous occupants. If the police ever start nosing around, they will find incriminating evidence of many varieties...

Finally, the Haven can be readily barred against physical intrusion, and cannot be penetrated by Mind or Divination spells. The roof is wooden, however, and can be burned.

Obscure Simulations Roundup: Metamorphosis Alpha

Today's FATE SF post is our contribution to the Obscure Simulations Roundup, a community blog hop dedicated to forgotten or under-appreciated RPGs. As regular readers of FATE SF know, I have a forthcoming generation ship RPG of my own called Project Generations. So it shouldn't be a big surprise that my OSR post is an appreciation for Jim Ward's original generation ship SF RPG, Metamorphosis Alpha (TSR, 1976).

Metamorphosis Alpha isn't the most obscure or forgotten RPG. After all, it was the first SF RPG published. It's not even out-of-print. You can buy Metamorphosis Alpha in PDF here, or pick up a hard copy from Lulu here.

I'm writing about Metamorphosis Alpha today because it has a special place in my heart. It was one of the first RPGs I purchased, shortly after the first edition of Traveller and around the same time that I picked up Whitebox D&D.

Cover of the Dell edition of Heinlein's "Universe"

One of the first SF novels I read as a kid was Robert A. Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky. It was an SF novel about a population of humans and mutants (you can see the mutant Joe-Jim standing in the picture above) living on a slower-than-light interstellar generation ship many generations after the ship's launch. Over that time, successive generations had 1) forgotten that they were on a star ship, and 2) had lost the skills to pilot and maintain their vessel. They were essentially lost in space, facing eventual doom unless a group of heroes rediscovered that they were on a ship that had a destination in mind. A small band of humans and mutants - two communities usually at each others' throats - made this discovery and set about to bring things to right.

Generation ship stories often involve an epistemological break from ignorance, to (re)discovery, to setting things right. Such a discovery is common in SF stories but particularly important in traditional generation ship narratives. For example, you see it in the very title of the classic Star Trek episode about the generation ship Yonada, "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched The Sky".

While scientific and cosmological discoveries made by characters in the Cthulhu Mythos stories are ultimately disempowering, underscoring the futility of human effort and of irrelevance of the human scale, discoveries made in generation ship stories are ultimately liberating and empowering. People learn that the world is not what it seems, that it needs to be fixed or improved in some way, and that the means to fix the generation ship and set its course right are within the characters' reach - if they know where to look, and what to make of things! The characters may have to struggle or sacrifice, but their efforts aren't ultimately in vain. That's hopeful, and a call to responsibility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Starlost_-_intro.jpg

Of course, my encounter with the generation ship in Orphans of the Sky was quickly followed by watching the early '70s SF generation ship TV series, The Starlost. Ed Bryant and Harlan Ellison wrote the screenplay (and a novel, "Phoenix Without Ashes") for this Canadian TV series, and Ellison quickly turned against his series very vocally, deriding laughable plots, implausible SF terms, and rotten dialogue.  In 2011, "Phoenix Without Ashes" was also published by IDW as a graphic novel.

Oh well.  I loved the show as a kid. The ship model was wonderful and there was some interesting tech on the ship, such as the the habitat hemispheres, the iris doors, the small cassettes and devices used to control access to different parts of the ship through the iris doors, the bounce tubes that helped people get around the non-habitat parts of the ship quickly, and of course the librarian AI.

Silent Running also comes to mind as a generation ship eco-narrative of the '70s - even if those ships weren't really going anywhere.

Silent Running (1972)

They also had cute maintenance and gardening droids. Every generation ship needs maintenance drones of some kind. Somebody needs to continue working and repairing things while the humans busy themselves with killing each other.

Silent Running

So anyway, back to Metamorphosis Alpha. It's an extremely simple system by contemporary standards, but it does the job. There are six Abilities, rolled randomly using 3d6: Radiation Resistance (pretty important, as the generation ship Warden in the default setting was damaged by a cloud of interstellar radiation and is still contaminated with radiation), Mental Resistance (defense against psionic mental attacks, as well as the intelligence skill that helps characters understand the ship's now ancient, mysterious, and often deadly tech), Dexterity, Strength, Leadership Potential (only pure humans can attract followers; human and animal mutants don't even get this Ability), and Constitution (determines how many d6 of hit dice you get, as well as your ability to survive poisoning). If after reading the Constitution bit you're saying "Hello, Carcossa" you should be, although in Metamorphosis Alpha you only roll the dice for hit points when you create your character - not every encounter.

If you are a pure human, you are pretty much done at this point. Take clothes and weapons typical of your community. If you are going to play a mutant human or mutant animal, you roll 1d4 to determine the number of physical mutations you get, and 1d4 for the number of mental mutations. You pick your mutations from the lists for each type. Then the GM gets to roll to determine randomly what physical and mental mutational defects you get; the GM rolls either once (if the player has 4 or less mutations) or twice (i.e., once on each list, if the PC has 5 or more mutations). Mutants get no equipment.

Then you are ready to play. The core mechanic is d20 based and there won't be huge surprises to people who have played other OSR d20 games.

The GM needs to have at least part of one level of the Warden detailed before play begins. This is good as it enables sandbox play, but there's nothing to stop the GM from detailing as much of the ship upfront as they'd like to do. Like building a dungeon, this is a game in itself.

The book tells you what the general details of each deck of the ship should be, as well as the kinds of technologies found on the ship, and their relative complexity; PCs roll their Mental Resistance vs. an item's complexity in order to figure out if their character knows what to do with it and can handle it without risk of injury. There's guidance to help the GM build mutated animals, plants, and humans, as well as guidance for robots and androids (i.e., chemical life - essentially, replicants).

There's no experience system, so (all things being equal) characters will keep the abilities that they have until death or the end of the campaign. I think that's good, as it keeps play focused on exploration and problem-solving, and not on monster hunting and treasure seeking as ends in themselves. All the treasure in the world won't do you a bit of good if your ship burns up in an alien sun, crashes into an uninhabitable planet, or runs out of gas between the stars.

Here's a few campaign ideas for Metamorphosis Alpha:

Metamorphosis Moonbase Alpha: The sudden departure of Earth's rogue moon caused a disaster at home, and a very long, strange trip for the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha. The Alphans are used to sudden transitions. One moment, their moon is travelling along in the depths of interstellar space; a few days or weeks or months later, it is careening into another solar system entirely.

So imagine the Alphans' surprise when they receive an automated distress signal from a ship they are approaching. A signal in English. It's a vast ship. It's an Earth ship: the hull says: "Warden." Moonbase Alpha's computer (there is only one!) has no record of any such launch. Was the vessel launched after the moon ripped itself out of Earth orbit?

A ship this big could have many things of value on board: replacement technology, hydroponic supplies and seeds, medicines, astrogational records, news from Earth - many things. The ship is crawling with radiation. It's too risky to send more than one Eagle to investigate. The Commander calls for volunteers.

[The GM should secretly roll 1d6. That is how many days the Eagle crew will have to explore the Warden before the moon begins to accelerate away from the Warden forever.]

An Eagle from Space:1999

Return to Yonada: The  U.S.S. Enterprise is called back to the asteroid generation ship of Yonada. A civil war has broken out on the vessel, even as it has settled into a stable orbit around a habitable world. A restorationist cult called The Most Devoted to the Oracle have declared that it is heresy to leave Yonada. They have tapped into the central computer of the ancient space ark, and have appropriated the medical secrets of the Fabrini (the Yonadan's distant ancestors who built the ship), unleashing a mutogenic viral plague which has wreaked havoc on the People of Yonada. Worse still, the High Priestess of the People, Natira, has gone missing. She must be rescued, as Natira is the Yonadan leader with the greatest interest in helping the People of Yonada complete their ancestors' long journey to colonize a new world.

Play a native Yonadan loyal to Natira, or a Federation officer! Find Yonada's rightful ruler! Defeat the cult and its mutant menace!

Yonada

Ark of the Shunned Ones: A reconnaissance starship far beyond the borders of the Humanspace Empire discovers an ancient generation ship: a vessel of the hideous and inimical Shunned Ones. The Ship's Telepath reports the presence of human minds on-board the generation ship, as well as the minds of a great many other alien races. The Shunned Ones' ship is in a terrible state of disrepair, leaking radiation and strange other-planar energies; it may not survive much longer. It would be desirable to rescue the humans on-board, and to explore this great vessel before its imminent demise. The Captain orders a team of scientists and marines to board the ship.

Hideous Inimical Alien From "This Island Earth"

Beneath the Pyramid of the Sun: The great hexagonal Sun crosses the sky every day. Every day, your temple feeds it a live human heart, ensuring that it will return from the Underworld at the end of the night to bring the next day. Yet today, just before the sacrifice, a strange creature appeared from the Underworld beneath the temple, and stole the mid-day sacrifice. A group of brave warriors and priests must descend into the Underworld and find this monster.

"Chariots of the Gods?", anyone? Aztecs, mutants, and more on a generation ship with many different habitat compartments, each containing a different ancient human culture.  (Check out Harry Harrison's Captive Universe for even more inspiration!)

"Captive Universe" cover art by Alan Guttierez

Also, be sure to check out Brett Slocum's idea for a Paranoia-Metamorphosis Alpha mash-up over at The Eye of Joyful Sitting Amongst Friends blog.

Finally, we leave you with a rather evocative piece from near the end of the Metamorphosis Alpha book. The artist is David Sutherland, who was not only responsible for the art in Metamorphosis Alpha, but also did many of the illustrations for Empire of the Petal Throne.

Art by David Sutherland! 

Deck Of Fridays 8: Opposing Forces

http://bi-radialmatrixtutorial.weebly.com/

Welcome back to DECK OF FRIDAYS, our weekly feature here at FATE SF. We make a draw from the Deck of Fate, RPG Inspiration Cards, or another Aspect-generative randomizer. Then we do something interesting with it, using the Aspect as inspiration for a campaign or scenario seed, a situation, scene, location, NPC, thingie, etc.

This week's draw from the Deck of Fate is a card with the Aspect: Opposing Forces. The card has a zero value - truly balanced. Today's post for Deck of Fridays is a spell that creates this condition.


The Mirrored Nexus of Opposing Forces (The Planes, Cost, Persistent/Permanent): A favorite combat and assassination formula of the Nexialists, The Mirrored Nexus of Opposing Forces summons a living being from a mirror dimension who is in all respects but one identical a targeted person within three Zones of the summoner. The essential difference is that the being summoned follows an ethical alignment opposed to that of the target. Except for this difference, the summoned double will have the same (or very similar) appearance, personality, dress, aspects, skills, stunts, and equipment as the spell's target.

The summoner must have a sample of the target's DNA or a digital record of their genetic code in order for the formula to acquire the proper target. The target's genetic material must be actively being scanned by the summoner. For this reason, Nexialist casters often wear a heads-up display while casting the formula.

Without this DNA sample, the being summoned will invariably be a double of the summoner. The records of Nexialist formulae always exclude this important detail; it is one of the many unpleasant surprises left for those who would steal their secrets.

The summoned double will immediately attempt to kill the target. If the double fails, it is returned at the end of the Scene to its mirror dimension of origin. On the other hand, if the target is Taken Out, it is shifted to the mirror dimension from which its double came. (Concessions should create very interesting ongoing complications for the target.) The double will take the place of the target, and remains on the summoner's plane indefinitely.

The summoned double has no particular disposition with respect to its summoner. Its immediate focus is the elimination of the target. The GM may secretly roll 4DF to determine the double's disposition toward the summoner. The more negative the roll, the more negative the disposition; the more favorable the roll, the more favorable the disposition.

Pass Turing Test

http://www.computerconservationsociety.org/20120517.htm

The Fate Freeport Companion provides an excellent framework for spell-creation for Fate. We will be posting new spells here at FATE SF, including science-fictional ones, conversions of old school spells (probably using Swords & Wizardry as our reference material), as well as some unique spells that will be useful in a variety of settings, both SFnal and otherwise.

Our first couple of spells will focus on artificial intelligence, and the simulacra thereof.

As the list grows and feedback comes in, we'll be revising the spells and eventually indexing them. For the moment, you'll be able to find spells using the Label SPELLS.

Lesser Pass Turing Test (Illusion, Cost, Persistent): This spell imbues an ordinary machine with the semblance of intelligence. As long as the machine has a display or speaker system (or some other means of communicating) it has the ability to feign Intelligence (Mundane 0) with any observer(s) present. Observers roll their Intelligence vs. the caster's Charisma +2 (caster makes one roll for all observers). Caster chooses an aspect that all observers who fail their roll are affected by, such as PERSUADED, DISTRACTED, or CONFUSED.

Greater Pass Turing Test (Enchantment, Cost, Persistent): A machine with some form of processor (no matter how rudimentary) is uplifted to full intelligence for one scene. The machine may be as small as a tablet computer, a robot or android, a mainframe computer, or a towering mecha. This is a Create an Advantage action based on the caster's Charisma. If a +2 is achieved on the result, a temporary aspect such as INTELLIGENT, CONSCIOUS, or SENTIENT is placed on the machine, with a starting Intelligence of 0. Each shift in excess of +2 moves the Intelligence of the machine up by +1. Uplifting a machine to intelligence does not guarantee a specific disposition of the machine with respect to the caster, once the machine has been awakened. Intelligence falls off precipitously at the end of a Scene, but not so quickly that the uplifted intelligence will not notice its rapid decline. If Corruption rules are being used in your game, this precipitous decline means that casting the spell is a minor infraction.

What's Inside That Stasis Box?

Fresh meat! A Kzin examines the contents of a stasis box

Stasis boxes are featherweight storage devices of the ancients. When active, a stasis box encloses its contents within a stasis field which suspends the passage of time. Items put into a stasis box can remain in their "present" state unchanged for millions - even billions - of years. Stasis boxes are therefore a unique window onto the very remote past.

And you have to have one to find one: a stasis box will begin to glow when it is within a few light years of another stasis box. Once in-system, deep radar (using compressed neutrinos) can then be used to "ping" the specific location of the stasis box. This is the only way to find one.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Stasis_box

"What's Inside That Stasis Box?" Table

Roll 1d30.

1. Hundreds of Eyes, each no more than 1 cm in diameter.
2. A ring with an unfaceted ruby gem.
3. A machine-bug typewriter.
4. You hear a loud shrieking whine; it's phaser set on overload.
5. Space-time is folded inside the box into several Psychic Scrolls.
6. An octagonal pendant on a chain. One face of the pendant depicts an open mouth with its curled tongue protruding.
7. A small tablet device (apparently uncharged) and without a charger.
8. Three large (10 cm in diameter) soft-shelled eggs.
9. Five hundred loose sheets of paper, each apparently blank. One sheet, midway through the stack of leaves, has a hand-drawn map and numerous notations in an alien script.
10. The head of a robot.
11. The head of an android.
12. A robot hand or heavy metal gauntlet. The "knuckles" on each finger have very fine inscriptions. 
13. A writhing mass of tentacles.
14. A fine mist which clings to the interior of the box.
15. Several dozen crumbs.
16. A wooden stake covered in some grue or ichor.
17. A doll-sized mummy of roughly human proportions; it is 30 cm tall.
18. A set of keys.
19. Eight cuboctahedrons, approximately 10 cm from side-to-side. Each item is composed of a predominantly white, grainy material (rather like granular laundry detergent) with flecks of light blue and brown matter within its matrix. If squeezed, the cuboctahedrons collapse into piles of the granular material.
20. Dozens of capsules containing unknown substances.
21. A small bound journal filled with notes in an alien language.
22. Several ampules, each containing a colored viscous fluid.
23. A knife composed of a white ceramic material. The hilt is of a polished black stone. The blade is covered with inscriptions.
24. Data crystals containing star charts.
25. Several hand-painted figurines. These appear to be very ancient representations of several well-known Star-Saints.
26. Sonic screwdriver or machine phallus? Further investigation required.
27. Data crystals with numerous DNA sequences.
28. Strips of paper with hand-written quotations from ancient religious texts; the paper strips have a strong psychic residue.
29. A device with a "hilt" or grip, and a round softball-sized module above the grip. The module is covered with numerous physical push-buttons.
30. A matrix composed of numerous glowing gems.  

The "Stasis Box" concept was invented by Larry Niven. I first encountered it in his Known Space short story, "The Soft Weapon", which served as the basis for the Star Trek animated series script for "The Slaver Weapon".