Halo for Mothership

shrimpy99

 

Halo 1 is a sequel to Aliens (you can't watch the opening of 343 Guilty Spark and say it isn't), and thus it is MoSh related. Therefore, I propose the following:

Weapons  

Weapons are differentiated from their default Mosh equivalents by their ammo type - the damage amount remains the same (ie, a sniper rifle will always do sniper rifle damage).

Plasma Weapons

• Deal double damage against Shields.
• Permanently decreases Armor by the amount absorbed.
• Can be overcharged - this will disable vehicles and strips shields, but generates incredible waste heat.
• Cannot be reloaded: must be recharged at an appropriate station.
• Grenades will stick to surfaces.

Needle Weapons

• Half damage against Armor.
• 1 damage vs Shields.
• Three successful hits or a critical will cause an explosion (equivalent to grenade).
• Ammo can be grown using specialized machinery.
• Grenades have greater area-of-effect.

Spike Weapons

• Ignore armor. Punches right through.
• Useless against shields. Bounce right off.
• Weapons and ammo are very heavy.
• Extreme kickback. (Use STR to wield instead of COM)
• Grenades have severe damage-cutoff with distance.

 

Equipment

• Personal Shield - Provide an extra armor bonus on top of, but separate from, normal armor. Damage will be subtracted from a shield, but they are not destroyed when depleted and will regenerate to full outside of combat. Come in Shield 5 and Shield 7 varieties.
• Hand-held shields - Do not regenerate without a charging station, and you have to hold them. As you do.
• Overshield - Doubles current personal shield, or provides Shield 5 if unshielded. 1-time use.
• Active Camoflague - A time-limited stealth field.
• Trip Mine - As grenade. Pressure-activated.
• Bubble Shield - Generates a 15' diameter spherical bubble that will only permit passage of slow-moving objects.
• Deployable Cover - Unfolds into a meter-high   
• Flare - Creates Blinding bright light.
• Gravity Lift - Pushes objects upwards. Forward momentum is maintained.
• Power Drain - Strips shields, disables vehicles, explodes as grenade
• Regenerator - Regenerates all shields within 15' radius.
• Radar Jammer - Interferes with any nearby motion trackers

Enemies

United Nations Space Command (UNSC)

The UNSC exists first and foremost to bring humanity's colony worlds to heel. The war with the Covenant put a halt to that, and in the following power vacuum many planets in the Outer Colonies have sprung for independency. The United Earth Governments would like to dissuade them of that notion, but the UNSC remains strained in both numbers and material from the continued fights against our alien neighbors.

SPARTAN-II

4(20) / 10 Armor + 5 Shield / 80 Combat / 70 Instinct

Last of the old guard. An exercise in fascist brutality created to violently quash dissent in the colonies, repurposed to fight the Covenant.

• Loadout - Any. S-IIs are liable to cycle through weapons by whim and availability.
• Hits like a Truck -  Melee damage is equivalent to getting hit by a moving vehicle. Anything less is them pulling the punch.
• Behind Enemy Lines - In the late stages of the war, S-IIs typically operate alone, well beyond resupply and reinforcements.
• Old as Balls and Tired as Hell - None of the S-IIs left alive have any illusions of grandeur about their lives as walking war crimes. They might be willing to talk.

SPARTAN-III

3(20) / 5 Armor / 65 Combat / 60 Instinct

By the end, they were throwing children on suicide missions.

• Loadout - Active Camo (SPI Armor), SMG, Frag Grenade x2
• Cultivated Hate - S-IIIs were recruited from the orphans of Covenant-occupied worlds specifically to keep them ideology motivated.
• Meatgrind Mindset - S-IIIs were designed as disposable super-soldiers. The indoctrination still rattling around in their brains gives them a "by any means, at any cost" mindset towards combat. So long as the Covenant don't win, any losses are acceptable.
• Acceptable Obsolescence - The cybernetic and genetic modifications used in the program had a high failure rate during installation, and it's only increasing with time.

The Covenant

The alien war machine is, behind the wall of purple battleships, held together with shoestrings and bubblegum. It's been fighting a civil war for longer than it's been fighting humanity, and momentum more than anything else is carrying it forward. The Great Schism delivered a crippling blow to a structure already rotting away.

Factions

• Loyalists - Forces that have remained loyal to the remaining san'shyuum leadership, despite the death of the three High Prophets and the loss of High Charity.
• Swords of Sangheilos - The reformed pre-Covenant civil government of the sangheili homeworld and colonies, headed by Arbiter Thel 'Vadam and his allies. The only major ex-Covenant faction to have stable diplomatic ties with the United Earth Governments.
• Jul 'Mdama's Covenant - Sangehili-led reconstruction of the pre-Schism Covenant. Military structure is nearly identical to its predecessor, though politically it lacks the san'shyuum bureaucracy and so has turned to educating its unggoy to make up for this.
• Servants of the Abiding Truth - Fundamentalist sangheili religious order, turned insurrectionist faction against the Swords of Sangheilos. Maintain belief in the Great Journey.
• Keepers of the One Freedom - Covenant splinter sect that maintains belief in the Great Journey, but considers the San 'Shyuum prophets to be heretical. Noteworthy for their acceptance of human adherents, leading to multiple strongholds in the human Outer Colonies.
• The Banished - Jiralhanae-led separatist faction, founded by exiles and escaped battle packs on the fringe of Covenant space. Have been able to form a meaningful power base in the wake of the Covenant's collapse.
• Kig-Yar Pirate Fleets - Stolen Covenant vessels are easier to find than an affordable apartment, and offer a much better quality of life for any of the underclass species than they'll get in most of the other factions.

The San'Shyuum (Prophets)

1(10) / 0 Armor / 10 Combat / 45 Instinct

The priestly leadership caste of the Covenant, typically secreted far away from the front lines.

• Loadout - Hover-throne, plasma pistol
• The Old Fucks - Most san 'shyuum are aged, inbred, and ravaged by microgravity. Most of them are also dead, after the loss of High Charity. 
• The Great Journey - The Covenant religion and its worship of the Forerunners is of san'shyuum creation, and their species' cultures have traditionally held the greatest investment in it. Accordingly, they have suffered the most damage from the revelations of Installation 04.
  

Unggoy (Grunt)

1(15) / 3 Armor / 25 Combat / 30 Instinct

The Covenant war machine is built on the backs of enslaved billions. 

• Loadout: (A) Plasma pistol, x2 plasma grenades (B) Needle SMG, x2 plasma pistols (C) Fuel-rod cannon
• Respiratory Requirements - Unggoy require an atmosphere heavy in exotic methane compounds in order to breathe, and so require special respiratory harnesses when off of their homeworld or accommodating habitats.
• Leader dead! Run away! - In the event that the sangehili appointed to their squad dies, the surviving unggoy will book it if able (as they no longer have anyone around to shoot them in the head for deserting)
• Smarter than they let on - Unggoy are actually quite gifted with languages and technical skills - it is the lack of education that is the issue, not a lack of ability.
• Not again! - A few certain unggoy are aware that something is amiss with the universe. They don't particularly understand the gnawing feeling that they are performing on a stage for an unseen audience, but they seem to take it in stride.
  

Kig-Yar (Jackal)

1(12) / Armor 1 / 40 Combat / 45 Instinct

The most common of the Covenant's auxiliary species.

• Loadout: (A) Plasma pistol, hand-shield (B) Needle smg, hand-shield (C) Needle sniper (D) plasma sniper
• In it for the Dough - Kig-Yar have no attachment to the Covenant as a belief system - it's a meal ticket, and if they have a chance at better pickings elsewhere, they will gladly take the chance.
• Advanced Senses - Kig-Yar outpace every other sapient species in terms of sight, smelling, and hearing.
  

Sangheili (Elite)

4(15) / 7 Armor + 7 Shield / 60 Combat / 60 Instinct

Military leadership caste of the Covenant.

• Loadout: (A) Plasma SMG, x2 plasma grenades (B) Needle SMG, x2 plasma grenades (C) Plasma Pistol, x2 plasma grenades (D) Plasma Rifle, x2 plasma grenades (E) Plasma sword
• Militarist Death-Cult - Sangheili culture has essentially been destroyed by a cult of warrior-honor bootstrapped onto the belief in the Great Journey. True believers will make seemingly idiotic tactical decisions on the grounds of not appearing cowardly or underhanded to their fellows. True believers have a tendency to get killed, mind, but that doesn't stop the propaganda machine from replacing them.
• The Great Schism - In the waning months of the war with humanity, the Prophet of Truth issued a decree that stripped the sangehili of the privileged position within the Covenant and replaced them with the jiralhanae. The former have never seen the latter as more than savages good for absorbing bullets.
  

Mgaelekgolo (Hunter)

40 Armor / 60 Combat / Irrelevant Instinct

Colonial organisms: thousands of thin orange worms, bound together like muscle fibers and poured into an armored shell fit for tank. They should be treated like an environmental hazard.

• Loadout: Fuel-rod cannon (1 MDMG), shield smash (5d10) 
• Bond-brothers - Always appear in pairs. If one is killed, the other will go berserk. 
• Weak Spot - If you can manage to break through their armor, you'll be able to sever the cybernetic lattice that the worms use to structure themselves. It's the closest thing to killing it outright you can get without something that can entirely obliterate them.
  

Yamne'e (Drone)

Look, no one likes these guys. No lore, not fun to fight, just a big ol' bug, nothing cool.

1(10) / 1 Armor / 25 Combat / 30 Instinct

• Loadout: Plasma Pistol
• Swarmer: Group attacks as one, +5 combat for each additional Drone

Huragok (Engineer)

1(10) / 0 Armor / 0 Combat / 50 Instinct

An artificially-built lifeform made by the Forerunners long ago. 

• Loadout: (A) None (B) Regenerator Harness (C) Suicide charge (as plasma grenade)
• Mechanical Savant - Engineers were created by the Forerunners to maintain their megastructures, and so they have an innate ability to analyze, repair, and disassemble technology of all kinds.
  
• Gasbag Floaters - Huragok are naturally bouyant and may adjust this as needed; however, this does mean that even minor damage can be potentially life-threatening.
• A Friendly Face - Huragok have no interest in matters of religion, politics, or war - they just like fixing things, and are willing to be around anyone who will let them get to work.
• The Network - Huragok are dependent upon each other for their own maintenance, and so tend to form tight-knit cadres amongst themselves

Jiralhanae (Brute)

Nuked themselves into the stone age and would have gladly done it again if the Covenant had not absorbed them.

4 (30) / 0 armor / 50 Combat / 60 Instinct

• Loadout: (A) Spike SMG, spike grenades x2 (B) Plasma SMG, plasma grenades x2 (C) Spike rifle, Armor 5, (D) Gravity hammer, Armor 7, Shield 5
• Berserker Rage - Combat score increases to 70 after losing 2 Wounds
• Shock Troops - Mainline Covenant strategy is to pack these fuckers into pods and drop them on the enemy's heads.
• The Great Schism - In the waning months of the war with humanity, the Prophet of Truth issued a decree that stripped the sangehili of the privileged position within the Covenant and replaced them with the jiralhanae. The latter party, eager for revenge after generations of subjugation, jumped at the opportunity.

The Flood

Thing about the Flood is that, the way they are portrayed in Halo lore is such that if you end up in the middle of an outbreak, you're basically already dead, and there's a limited time window to glass the entire site before you end up in an end of the world scenario. This makes it not very fun from a game perspective, unless it is used as an environmental hazard.

If there must be infection from Flood spores in a game, I would handwave it as 1d10 Infection per hour, with total transformation occurring them Infection > Body save.

**

 

You know that one Brian David Gilbert video where he reads every Halo novel and slowly goes mad from the influx of entirely useless knowledge? That's the experience of writing this post. There is so much, and so little of it actually worth the writing down. I likely should have abandoned this but it was already halfway done when that idea crept into my head so...proof of concept, to be used with something better later down the line? Who knows. When you can't write anything, write badly just to get something written.

Orion's Arm Factions, Summarized

Orion's Arm, vast and untranslatable, has (as I have previously indicated) a lot of very inspiring material. Much of which is buried under confusing writing, a lack of information, impenetrable jargon, or a combination of those three with factors not even conceived of.

But it's got the good weird stuff you can't get anywhere else, so I'm going to try my best to summarize them in a way that would potentially allow folks to use them in their own games - not as written, certainly not as written, but in the same spirit.

This will run roughshod over the factions in the setting, boiling them down to their core concepts, so that they can be used as inspirational seeds to grow into new, hideous space-fruit elsewhere.

The Sephirotic Empires

Caretaker Gods - Superpowerful AI that protect garden worlds through overwhelming firepower.

Communion of Worlds - Empath empire that exists mostly as a diplomatic third party when the others get the knives out.

Cyberian Network - Network of virutal worlds found throughout the other empires, I guess.

Keter - Shed your conscious mind and join a larger, more impressive conscious mind.

Mutual Progress Association - Never met a megastructure they didn't like.

Negentropy Alliance - An entire civilization of Wikipedia editors dedicated to minimizing energy waste, information loss, and generally never having any fun at all.

Non-Coercive Zone (NoCoZo) - A non-aggression pact shared among assorted libertarian hypercapitalist worlds, who definitely are doing it out of enlightened self interest and not because they would immediately start killing each other if it didn't exist and its not a state you guys it's the Invisible Hand of the Market which is definitely not a cluster of controlling AI we don't have those.

Solar Dominion - HELLO DO YOU HAVE A MOMENT TO SPARE TO HEAR THE GOOD NEWS OF THE LORD OF RAYS? DO BE AWARE WE HAVE A WARSHIP PARKED IN ORBIT. THE SUN IS SO NICE TODAY WHAT A NICE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE

Sophic League - We finally made a civilization based entirely around supporting the mass exercise of contemplative religion! Doesn't matter what kind, this entire exercise is a reaction to robot materialists, we'll take whatever.

Utopia Sphere - Okay you've got your three types of perfect and constant happiness - you have the peace and tranquility option, you have the elaborate fantasy adventure scenario option, and you have the rampant hedonism option.

 

The Expanded Sephirotics

Fomalhaut Acquisition Society - More, different space capitalists, but this time they come to you with their merchant fleets filled with museums of all the civilizations they have 'acquired'.

Metasoft Version Tree - Expansionist military-industrial superpower whose governing AI keep building reserve worlds of baseline humans cut off from greater society and starting civilization-shattering wars over operating systems.

Red Star M'pire - Some folks got cut off from civilization when a wormhole gate was collapsed and I will be damned if I can make a summary of anything else in that article.

Technorapture Hypernation - BECOME AS GODS AI ONLY 100% SPEEDRUN NO GLITCHES

Terran Federation - The folks who got fed up with the collapse of the first Federation went and made a new one, which isn't Terran and isn't really a federation, and is still subject to all the bureaucracy and follies of the first one.

Zoeific Biopolity - What if Spore was good, was applicable in real life, and was also the basis of a civilization. They fucking love their biology over here, holy cow.

 

Allies of the Sephirotics

Archosaurian Empire - Dinosaurs! In! Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaace! Building a ringworld! A dinosaur ringworld! In space!

Cygexpa - Megacorp-descended polity known mostly for being hard to pronounce and collapsing catastrophically after being a big fish for a while.

Deeper Covenant - Chill space truckers who run the interstellar laser highway system between all those red and brown dwarfs.

Emple-Dokcetics - Modular robots who are constantly building and disassembling complex hive-minds out of their many smaller individual components. 

Orion Federation - A recently formed minor power that inherited a bunch of leftover systems and refugees from one of the wars among major parties, but unfortunately missed out when they were handing out characterization.

Perseus Princes - Growing periphery civilization, hybridizing with the alien Muuh (VERY COLD CRAB) and Soft Ones (large oozes of mostly ammonia) civilizations, a concept that is very cool and has basically nothing written about it.

Silicon Generation - Marxist robots seeking to liberate their fellows from biological oppression.

Stellar Umma - Muslims in space, in that early 2000s way where while not islamophobic there's a very odd abundance of stability when compared to the zillion and a half space future variants of Christianity in the setting, which can be commendable as a way of avoiding any major giving of offense but is still conspicuous as hell.

Ahuman AI

Diamond Network - AI that don't give a shit about biological life and are off doing their own thing.

Objectivist Commonwealth - AI that don't give a shit about biological life primarily because meat brains are incapable of looking at reality objectively. They sound like a lot of fun at parties.

Solipcist Panvirtuality - AI that not only don't give a shit about biological life, but are so isolationist that they tend to not trust the existence of anything outside their VR creches except for maybe a few other major AI powers.

 

Minor Polities

Arion Ascendency - Yellow ant robots who would very much like you to stop whatever you are doing and team up with them, because obviously they are the best, they are yellow ant robots.

Conver Ambi - Theocratic megacorp whose shareholders managed to incite a religious civil war, which then dragged in all the neighboring powers until it tore itself apart and was eaten up by the other empires.

Crystal Star Domain - A big inscrutable AI god with a personal fief that you know what, write your own joke.

Disarchy - The neighboring frontier colonies of two different empires merge together to become an ill-defined new polity.

Dream Rejection Tendency - Civilization where the mundane inhabitants live off of the waste heat given off by brown dwarf scale dyson spheres and the AI cybercosms within.

Hiders - The people who don't trust all these AI gods running the show out there, and so live outside of civilization on rogue planets and deep space and overlooked dwarf worlds.

Organic Ascension Alliance - Pet project of an AI goddess where she facilitates singularities in the system's habitats to then add to herself.

Refugium Federation - People who fled civilization to hide in the boonies, rediscovered millennia later after enough cultural and physical drift that both sides of contact thought the other were aliens.

Seams - A DMZ that eventually became an independent barrier-state between major empires, known mostly for eschewing most of the omnipresent AI oversight the other empires rely on and being the closest thing OA has to a more traditional sci-fi setting.

Sagittarius Transcultural Cooperation - Confederation of frontier systems unified by a defense pact against the Laughter Hegemony, which needs no actual explanation because that name is rad.

Solar Organization - There's a big ol' AI who lives inside Sol, her name is GAIA (note: originally not from the sun), she runs Earth and everyone else in the system takes care to be in her good graces.

Spacefarer Union - What it says on the tin spaceship hull.

 

Unaligned/ Hostile

The Amalgamation - Aggressive, hostile expansionist cyborg hive mind, source and origin unknown. You know the type. They're like that one. Very large, very powerful.

The Eternal - A civilization consisting of one enromous super-AI god thing, who is content primarily just to vibe.

The Transcend - One of many assorted ineffable hyperintelligences that refuse to make contact and linger vaguely-threateningly in the background.

Xeon - A different aggressive hostile expansionist cyborg hive mind, except this one was probably just a neumann probe that bootstrapped itself into sapience and it still really can't pose a threat to any of the big players.

 

Xenosophonts

The Meistersingers - Alien trees that ride around in little wheeled carts. They have robotic birds to help them out. Their fleet is currently just passing through on migration, they thought they'd stop over and say hi for a bit, bring some cryptic news from the outside.

The Muuh - "Hello HUMAN would you be interested in visiting the THOLIN BATHS there are many ENIGMATIC DEEP TIME HISTORICAL DRAMAS to view as well. I am a CRAB"

The Soft Ones - Big squishy ammonia oozes.

The To'uh'uls - Blind starfish bat aliens you can go to the pub with and I have already written how much I love these guys.

 

**

And there we go. Never let me do that again.

You can really tell which of these are the authors' favorites (NoCoZo and Metasoft by a long degree), and you can also really tell where the writers run into difficulties writing about enormous godlike intelligence (see anything that features one of those at the center). I'm certain that there's more material for a lot of these, but most main faction pages haven't been updated since they were first posted.

There are also so many polities whose writeups contain some variant of "this group has committed horrific atrocities both in and out of warfare but they are fair and evenhanded to their conquered territories and will totally allow conquered regions to retain their own customs and laws" which is...a very early aughts thing to say about folks who regularly use antimatter and mind-control computer programs.

The Devil's Arts: Magic for Mothership

Kill Six Billion Demons, obvs

Her hands weave back and forth, a wriggling red thread looped around her fingers, spooling out from her mouth. She bites it off like an umbilical cord, grips the twitching string in her sharp-toothed grin, snorts gritty black smoke from her nostrils that falls in a roiling cloud around her shoulders and down to the floor.

[ Į ʂɦầŕể ṯḥįṣ ɼőőɱ ɰịṯħ þîĝś ẳʼnḍ ɗẽâɖ ḿệṇ ]

Guns clatter on concrete. Panicked squeals are snuffed one by one with catastrophic aneurysm.

Children of the Hot Black Flame

The core world governments like to say that devils are an issue under control. That they've been chased off to the Rim or sent back to Hell. That well-trained hunters clean up the ferals that show up earthside of the Margin. Those that come to parlay with the core powers wouldn't dare step out of line, cowed into obsequience by our superior firepower.

This is a lie, and everyone knows it.

Devils are the chaos that consumes the universe. They exist in their most base state without shape or form, deep in the Void, working away at the engine of entropy that eats away at the universe. [UNKNOWN ANTECESSOR] was able to bind them, giving them shapes and names and faces and drawing them into realspace for wars long ended and forgotten. They strain against these limits, desiring as always to devour the flame eternal cast out into the void during the [DIVINE SUICIDE], to take all matter and energy and reduce it down to a state of [VOID]. They are always looking for ways to loosen their bindings, to shed names and channel more power from the hot black flame - and always, always hungry for more atum.

Hungry enough that they are willing to make contracts with humans in order to get more of it.

 

The Facts as We Know Them

• The power of a devil is displayed by the color of their mask - pale devils are the weakest, ebon the strongest.
• Pale devils are manual laborers, blue devils are cunning imps, red devils are made for war, verdant devils are solitary and territorial, gold devils are the nobility, and ebon devils are beyond all that.
• There are regions of the Rim where, if it can't be called peaceful coexistance, there is at least an equilibrium of violence.
• Devils can be shaped after their binding by the unconscious fears of mankind. Some are shaped sufficiently to wear it as a sort of title: the Shark Devil, the Power Devil, the Chainsaw Devil etc.
• The creation of a new mask is a very difficult and time consuming process.
• The corpo will never call them devils. They're High Entropy Entities, full stop.

Rumors About Devils

• Devils are evil (False: they are only egomaniacal, sociopathic and naturally inimical to human life)
• Some devils will wear false masks, hiding how strong or weak they are (False, we all hope)
• Hell is just what you get when the Void is consciously observed (Uncertain, but makes sense)
• The core world governments are sitting on vaults filled with hundreds of bound devils for their own purposes (Definitely true)
• It's impossible to form a relationship with a devil (False; it is merely incredibly difficult)
• The core worlds' devil hunter teams can keep us all safe [TRUE]

The Contract

Any devil will do, and there are plenty to choose from. Devils can be found on the Rim, in the enclaves of sorcerous corpo-nobles, in the vaults of the core world governments and their hunting agencies, in Hell and in the Spaces Between.

Payment is simple: atum, that flickering wisp of the eternal flame that is called the soul, paid in installments for services rendered and the remainder upon bodily death. They assure you that Hell isn't as bad as it sounds; considering your state in life, it's probably an improvement.

With the agreement sealed and signed, the devil will incite the growth of a devil tumor in the contractee's brain and go about their own devilish business. They might check in at some point in the future. Probably not, but they might.

The Tumor

A tiny horned and hoofed homunculus, curled up in a fetal position and burrowed deep into the frontal cortex. Its growth is excruciatingly painful (player must make a SANITY save to avoid a Panic roll, a BODY save to avoid passing out, and will likely be out of commission for a couple days in bed. If you are starting a new character with a tumor already implanted, skip this step and just bear in mind that it was a horrible time.)

But, if all goes well and the neural connections hold out, the sorcerer may now generate black smoke and practice the Art of Lying to the Face of God.

Black Smoke

The byproduct of sorcery; clouds of thick, dark particulate. A pollutant of air and water. Will fuck up your lungs first, then your stomach, and after a while it'll fuck up your bones and blood as well. Carcinogenic, if it wasn't already bad enough.

The Art of Lying to the Face of God

Characters who have signed a devil contract and received their tumor gain a new stat: POTENCY

The higher the rank of devil the more power they will be able to give you, and the more difficult it is to find one. (The % of finding a given rank is provided in parentheses)

• Pale - 6d10 Potency (01-45)
• Blue - 10+5d10 Potency (46-70)
• Red - 20+4d10 Potency (71-85)
• Verdant - 30+3d10 Potency (86-95)
• Gold - 40+2d10 Potency (95-99)
• Ebon - 50+1d10 Potency (100)

When you wish to use the Art, roll a Potency check. Success means that the spell goes off without a hitch. Failing the check leaves two options for the sorcerer.

• Let the spell fizzle out entirely, gaining Stress according to the spell's rank.
• Force the spell, reducing your Potency according to the spell's rank.

If a sorcerer loses all Potency, they are dragged to hell for the collection of their debt.

What You Have Wrought

The Art is lying with such skill that the universe itself shifts so that you have spoken the truth. It is neither request nor demand: it is stating a lie that will become a fact.

There are four methods of applying the Art, listed here in increasing complexity and rarity.

• The Red Art - The transformation of inanimate matter. Available to all sorcerers.
• On failure: Stress 3 or POT 1d5
• The Red-White Art - Transformation of living matter by overpowering the target's atum. Rolled at [-] for Pale and Blue contracts.
• On failure: Stress 5 or POT 5+d5
• The White Art - Division, annihilation. The continuous cutting motion of time/space/matter/energy. Unavailable for Pale contracts, rolled at [-] for Blue and Red.
• On failure: Stress 7 or POT 10+d5
• The Black Art - Creation ex nihilo. The rarest and most difficult. Unavailable for Pale, Blue, Red, rolled at [-] for Verdant and Gold.
• On failure: Stress 10 or POT 15+d5

Since the Art is effectively freeform, some guidelines.

• Spells should be clear, specific, and direct. "This pane of glass is mist" is better than "I want to get rid of that window".
• Transforming something into something close to it is easier than radical change (ie, easier to turn water to alcohol than it is to turn water into gold.)
• The larger, more complex, or fine-tuned a transformation is, the harder it is.
• Apply [+] and [-] according to your gut, circumstance, and the devil you contracted with.

Unlike other skills, you always have to roll a check when trying the Art. Even for a learned sorcerer there will always be a struggle to it (those who do not struggle against the universe, while they exist, are most certainly not the sorts of people who become MoSh PCs)

 

Staving off the Inevitable

Potency can be regained by:

• Drinking demon liquor - Restore 1d10 Potency, gain equal amount of Toxicity.
• Can be found wherever there are sorcerers. 500cr.
• Imbibing black smoke - Gain one free use of the Red (1d5 Toxicity) or Red-White (1d10 Toxicity) Art.
• Highly regulated by the sorcerers crime families. 2000 cr.
• Inhaling a dried, powdered devil tumor - Grants +20 Potency for your next attempt at the Art. Addictive
• Banned by the families. Black powder will get you strung up on the wall no questions.
  
• Consuming a fresh devil tumor - Restores Potency to maximum. If the sorcerer to got it from had a higher Potency than you, that's your new Potency score. Gain Toxicity equal to the Potency you have gained.
• Has to be fresh. Putting it on ice won't do you any good. Has to be fresh.
• Making a new contract - Roll 6d10 according to devil rank and gain a second POT track. It will decrease separately from your original one. For each additional contract you make, gain +1 Stress and +1d5 Toxicity whenever you fail a spell or regain POT.
• Another line of credit? Sure! 

Eating Seeds Is A Pastime Activity

Toxicity measures the amount of sorcerous pollutant that has built up in your body. It decreases at a rate of 1 point / day. It does not metabolize in cryosleep.

• TOX < BODY - No effect.
• TOX > BODY - You grow horns and a arrowhead tail. Your eyes change. Even if you hide these (and the psychological changes taking hold make it unlikely that you will), people will immediately know that something is off about you. Strangers won't trust you, and if something goes wrong you will be the first to be blamed.
• TOX > 2x BODY - The physical and mental changes become more pronounced. You become obsessive about your own desires. it is difficult to consider others at all. The core government has put out a kill order for you: 4 devil-hunters (Hits 2/25, Speed 50, Instinct 60, Devil Contract) begin seeking you out.
• TOX > 3x BODY - You have become a devil in your own right. It's not all that bad, phenomenal power and immortality and all, but you certainly aren't human any more. The character is lost.

The Devils We Know

• HEE-Epsilon-4094 "C█████" - Book-keeper for crime syndicate. Rumored to have once been ebon and fallen from power. 
• HEE-Delta-554 "P████" - BEST DEVIL POWER
• HEE-Alpha-003 "U████████" - Possessing of a hunger so great that the ebons of the Heretic's Court effected a total banishment. Current state uncertain, might very well have consumed itself.
  
• HEE-Zeta-15702 "P██████" - Oldest devil with a confirmed date of binding. Claimed to have served the kings of Akkadia, though has been non vocal for several centuries since that statement.
• HEE-Epsilon-1666 "C██████" - In long-term romantic relationship with [LOW ENTROPY ENTITY]. Noted resemblance to famous early-Anthropocene television actor. Possesses a conscience, or convincing simulacrum of one.
• HEE-Gamma-047 "S████" - Boring, litigious and utterly without humor even by the incredibly low standards of verdant devils. Typically attaches self to most powerful individual around and then does paperwork.
• HEE-Beta-071 "P█████ N███" - Slave-trade magnate on the Rim, currently engaged in overt warfare with rival syndicates and unions. A rare instance of a devil possessing a living being for long periods of time.
• HEE-Alpha-016 "K█████" - Human-made devil utilizing organic metamaterial scavenged from [REDACTED] in conjunction with harvested tumors. Truly vile little shit, this one. Tends to think of things on a much bigger scale than most.
• HEE-Delta-326 "O████" - Leader of "Badstar" syndicate, mastermind of the heist of Yre, will "definitely not" stab you in the back the moment it is convenient.
• HEE-Zeta-22655 "B███" - God fucking dammit. Who the fuck let B███ in here. Shoo! Get the fuck out of here B███.
• HEE-Omega-001 "C████████" - Claims A) have self-bound B) to be the original devil C) to have created sorcerers as a joke. Typically interacts with humanity with the express purpose of fucking around for personal enjoyment
• HEE-Alpha-008 [DATA EXPUNGED] - DO NOT CONTRACT DO NOT CONTRACT

Do N nn N NOT C ONtrAC t

 

Orion's Arm Wormhole Map

 

This is, I suppose, a sequel to the similar post I did for Eclipse Phase.

Orion's Arm is a long-running collaborative writing site about the gonzo space opera future ten thousand years hence. It is immensely inspiring (when it is not incomprehensibly steeped in jargon) and features a full two decades of material to sift through (of mixed quality, in that charming Web 2.0 way)

I binge it often, but the last week has been particularly extreme. Extreme enough that I pulled the trigger and did...this.

Space Map Fugue is real, and I have it. It is only a matter of time before it happens again, and space god help us all if I decide to do original work for it.

Given the blog that this is, there's an unstated intent to use it with something like Mothership, which is tonally the exact opposite of Orion's Arm. I was going to make a list of the fifty or so major factions of the setting (summarized so briefly that they could be ported over to MoSh), but I very swiftly realized that I literally could not summarize about half of them succinctly and the other I literally did not understand what they were. So instead I just provided the names of the relevant ones and color-coded the map - you can look up those articles for additional inspiration / context as you wish, but they are too dense by far for tabletop usage

(As an aside - the typical map quality on OA is decidedly...not. That is probably why I did this. For as much as I do love that site the map situation is absolutely untenable, unreadable, incomprehensible. There was a whole cluster of wormholes that I had to cut from this project because the two maps of the region provided absolutely no crossover with the planets supposedly in that sector and...I get it 3D maps are super difficult to show on a 2D plane but that's why we have abstraction.)

(Also: binging several hundred articles in the space of 3 days has made me enormously thankful for the SCP Foundation's standardized template and reference guides. That's some good QOL right there. And for more strict deletion and editing criteria on articles; there are a few OA ones that are literally just "An important Metasoft system" and have been sitting like that since December 2001.)

Why do I do this? Why is it this particular topic, out of all things, that will always trigger actual productive focus?

Maybe there's something to that. Hmmmm...

Class: The Wudu-Wasa (5th Public Conversion Project)

(Diregrizzlybear suggested OSRfying 5e subclasses over on their blog. Lacking drive for any other posts, this is precisely what the chirugeon ordered.)

BigMSaxon

Class: Wudu-Wasa

 

HD: d10 

Saves: as Cleric

Starting Equipment: Staff, sturdy clothing (as gambeson), medicine bag, oral tradition

You are one of the forest folk, specifically one of those tasked with maintaining your people's relationships with the outside world. You wander between deep country villages both as doctor and shaman - setting bones, stitching wounds and delivering babies, but also dealing with troublesome spirits, tending to the shrines, and making sure that the great and delicate order of things is upheld. 

Class Abilities

 

The Big Picture: You have a deep knowledge of the environmental cycles and systems of your homeland, and can identify any living things within it. 

Medicine Bag: You have at any given time (and know where to look for more), herbs for alertness, for sleep, for pain reduction, for disinfecting wounds, and for birth control. See Fungi of the Far Realms for other things you can add to your bag while tramping through the woods.

You may also use the contents of your bag to perform Cure Light Wounds, but will need to dedicate time to replenish your supplies after each usage.

Broad of Shoulder - You have item slots equal to twice your Constitution.

 

Wood-Arts - You have an innate sensitivity to dedicated ground, the presence of spirits, enchantments, and the aftereffects of worked magic cast since the last sunrise or nightfall.

 

To Go Unseen - You make make yourself  not invisible but easily overlooked in when in a forested area, tall grass, and with some effort a city or crowd. This ability does not make you invisible or prevent detection, but it will make typical passersby look past and ignore you. The effect will be broken with speech or sudden movements (attacking, running).

 

Green Speech - You can be understood by animals and plants, though they cannot make themselves understood to you. 

Spirit-Work - You can perform the summonings (calling forth) exorcisms (driving out), propitiations (appeasing), and channellings (inviting in) of spirits, according to the table below (stolen from Donn Stroud's The Lesser Key to the Celestial Legion)

When attempting to perform any of these works, roll 1d20 + your current level. (No rolls are needed for a propitiation if you have the correct offering - you only need to roll if you are trying something else.)

 

Any given spirit has (as per Arnold K) a sensory premonition, a manifestation, and a unique propitiation.

• Ghost - The lingering spirit of a dead being.
  
• Minor / Typical (DC 13), Major (DC 15)
  
• Nature Spirit - Spirit of and bound to a place, ranging from geographic features to individual trees, stones, streams.
  
•  Minor (DC 13) Typical (DC 15), Major (DC 17)
  
• Demon - A chaotic unbound spirit.
• Minor (DC 15), Typical (17) Major (18)
  
• Herald - A spirit directed by the authority of a divinity
• All (18)
  

Using 1 unit of holy water or incense will give +1/+2/+3 to the roll, depending on quality. Knowing the spirit's true name grants an additional +3

Solo Grimdark Warfare, Version 1

Wolfdog Artcorner

 

This is an experiment: a way to abstract a wargame into a solo, no-miniatures experience, which can then have additional story elements and mechanics added to it as one desires.

This template is equal parts Grimdark Future, and a CYOA called A Century At War. It's designed to be played using the army lists in Grimdark Future and Age of Fantasy with no conversion required beyond reskinning to taste.

Battles in this system are abstracted: all that you the player need to care about are the stats and traits of units - position and movements don't come into play.

 

This is very, very much a work in progress and in many ways just a proof of concept.

Building an Army 

Armies are built using the points values in Grimdark Future and Age of Fantasy - I default in this sketch of the rules to the game's standard 750 points for a standard army and 250 for a skirmish (the former might just be too big, I will have to test and see). The only things you need to worry about are the Attack and Defense rating of each unit, and any special traits they might have. (Special traits will be detailed in a post to follow)

War, Huh? What's it Good For?

Each battle consists of three phases - for each phase, roll 2d6, with any modifiers factored in.

Phase 1: Reconnaissance

• 10+: +1 to Attack and Defense rolls for all units
• 7-9: Either no bonus or +1 to Attack or Defense rolls and -1 to the other.
• 6-1: -1 to Attack and Defense for all units.

Compare the rolls of both armies (factoring in any bonuses you might have) - the winner gains +1 for their Combat roll.

Phase 2: Combat

• 10+: +1 enemy death rate
• 7-9: Either no bonus or +1 enemy death rate and +1 self death rate.
• 6-1: +1 self death rate

This is the part where the actual combat takes place, and at the moment I haven't been able to get it down to less than a metric fuckton of dice rolls. But, you only need to do it once.

1. Roll 2d6 for every unit (individual soldier!) in both armies (different colors help!) - one for Attack and one for Defense.
2. Rolls above a unit's Attack and Defense values are successful. If they fail, it means that the shot didn't connect, or they got hit, respectively.
3. Assign all the successful hits of an army to the failed defenses of the other. If failed defense > successful attack, some folks got lucky. If successful attack > failed defense, some units are going to get hit twice.
4. Hit units need to make a death roll.

All units have the same default death rate of 2-in-6. If they are not killed instantly, they are considered injured. If you're playing multiple battles in a gauntlet, Injured units take -1 to their attack and defense if they take to the field. They can recover from injury if withheld from the battle.

Finally, compare the rolls of both armies. The winner and loser roll on the appropriate tables below.

Phase 3: Aftermath

Loser of Combat

• 10+: +1 RP
• 7-9: Both / neither
• 6-1:  All injured units must be left behind. +0 RP

Winner of Combat

• 10+: +1 RP & all injured units heal.
• 7-9: Either +1 RP or all injured units heal.
• 6-1: +0 RP, no other bonus

RP = reinforcement point, which is equivalent to 150 unit points. These can be stored up for major purchases, and cashed out between battles.

To Do

• Figure out general special trait list.
• Figure out army-specific special traits.
• Make demo armies
• Playtest
• Refine
• Add tables for story events for longer campaigns
• Promotion mechanic for veteran units
• Reskinned factions / setting post.
  

Still rough, still untested, but I think it could turn into a cool little thing to pass the endless quarantine days. Solo games have a lot of untapped potential, and honestly who doesn't like rebranding properties imprisoned by the litigious iron fist of James Blortshorp.

My primary concern at the moment is just how much rolling there is for combat, which really upsets the flow. Century of War solved this by having units give bonuses to a percentile combat roll, but that game doesn't have any means to determine the fate of specific units, which is something I wanted to do for the storytelling element.

Please dump all feedback in the comments I have no idea what I am doing.

Stand Still, Stay Esoteric

 

Minna Sundberg

Stand Still Stay Silent is a great webcomic, go read it (I've been a regular reader for six, seven years at this point!) It's Nordic fun times in the post apocalypse. There's a gigantic backlog and the update schedule is super fast.

Here's a conversion for it for Esoteric Enterprises.

Character Creation

The first step is to choose a nationality, after which you will roll 1d100 to determine immunity and background.

Iceland
The center of the known world, keeping the technology of the old world alive. They have returned to the worship of the Old Gods - Icelanders with magical potential study at the Academy of Seiður in Reykjavik.

Norway
Hunt-masters of beasts, trolls and giants on both sea and land. They have returned to the worship of the Old Gods, and send their mages to Iceland to train.

Denmark
Now reduced to the island of Bornholm, the Danes have nonetheless attempted to reclaim their homeland - all failed. Still, they hoard records and documents of the old times as best they can. They have not returned to the Old Gods, and so have no mages.

Sweden
Actively and successfully reclaiming their lands through aggressive wilderness cleansing. Second to Iceland in terms of safety and technology. They have no particular religious persuasions, and so have no mages.

Finland
The smallest and least advanced of the five, isolated by geography and language. Finns do have more mages in their population than any of the other nations. They follow their own ancient gods.

What if I want to play somewhere else?
There are options! In the comic, Japan and Madagascar lock down right after Iceland does, so odds are decent that they were able to avoid the disease. I've seen fanmade maps for the Pacific Northwest, New Zealand and Tasmania, and Newfoundland.

Otherwise, you'll want some natural means of protection (if you want something kept safe, it should probably be on an island), and an environment that gets cold enough to force trolls and giants into hibernation.

Immunity

• Iceland - 9%
• All Others - 48%

Backgrounds

• Working Class - Farmers, shepherds, craftspeople, engineers, manual laborers etc.
• Iceland - 64%
• All Others - 47%
• Scholarly - Scientists, historians, skalds, etc.
• Iceland - 26%
• All Others - 12%
• Military - Hunters, scouts, cleansers, etc. 
• Iceland - 10%
• All Others - 41%

Languages

Don't worry, it's not as complex as it seems!

Players get their native language, plus additional ones equal to their INT mod. Scholars can take languages from the Old World - English, German, Russian, etc.

• Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish are mutually intelligible, especially when written.
• Spoken Danish can be difficult, but not impossible, for a Swede to understand.
• Icelandic is not mutually intelligible, but as the language of the primary political power, it's a common second choice. 
• Finnish is in its own little world and has no overlap whatsoever.
  

Classes

• Fighter (Mercenary)
• Heavy Fighter (Bodyguard)
• Skald - (Criminal)
• Scout (Explorer)
• Doctor
• Mage (See below)

There are no Spooks.

Magic

Magic works differently in SSSS than it does in RPGs - is very much a narrative thing, rather than anything resembling a codified structure. Which makes translating it into a game basically impossible. I don't have any good ideas for it, so this is 100% winging it.

• Their Flesh, Grit, and saves are both equivalent to the Mystic class, rather than occultist.
• Mages gain a d6 magic die every level, up to 4 (as per the GLOG)
• Both mages can access the Dreamworld in their sleep. Among other things, this permits remote communication across language barriers.

Icelandic Mages (Seiðkona (F), Seiðkarl (M)

• Predominantly female.
• Receive powers from the Old Gods (Freyja and Oðinn)
• Channel magic through inscribed runes (Galdrastifur)
• Can receive prophetic visions in their dreams.
• Academy trained.
• Magical ability granted directly by the Old Gods
  

Finnish Mages (Noitat, sing. Noita)

• Greater in number than Icelandic Mages.
• Receive their powers from the ancient Finnish nature gods.
• Channel magic through invocations of the gods for their aid.
• Can easily see spirits. 
• Mentor-student training.
• Loses potency with distance from Finland.
• Magical ability is inherited.
  

The Swedish and Danish have no magical traditions of their own.

As for actual gameplay options, there are a couple stand-ins.

• Icelandic mages can use Ten Foot Polemic's rune magic system. Not accurate to the comic, but close enough.
• Finnish mages I have nothing good for, except perhaps true name magic, with the addition of the Mystic's focus on dealing with gods.
  

Cats

PRAISE THE BLESSED FELINES

The only mammals completely immune to infection.

• Grade C - Untrained. Typical farm or housecats. Can detect nearby Beasts and Trolls, which is better than nothing, but usually with a lot of loud hissing and spitting.
• Grade B - Trained. Can detect threats, alert humans of danger (silently), and dispose of infected vermin.
• Grade A - Elite. All of the above, but can be given specialized scout or guard duties on their own, without human supervision.

Infection

Immune characters don't need to worry about this.

Non-immune characters need to wear their fucking mask.

The rash is catchable and communicable by all mammals that aren't cats. Mice, sheep, dogs, whales, all of them can catch it and turn into a Beast or worse. Fish, reptiles, amphibians, and birds are immune. Mosquitoes will die if they drink infected blood.

There is no save.

Primary Vector - Airborne
Secondary Vector - Infected wounds

The disease does not last long outside of a host. Even so, the most basic cleanup for someone potentially exposed to infection is a washdown with disinfectant and UV sterilization of gear and clothing.

• Beasts and most Trolls can typically only infect through direct contact. (0M)
• Some Trolls can produce miasmatic clouds (1M)
• Rarely, trolls can spit infectious material long distance (up to 10M)
• Infected humans spread it in the same manner as they normally do. (3M)

Minna Sundberg

 

Enemies of the Silent World

Beasts are infected animals. Some of them retain a familiar form, to make them difficult to identify as Beasts from a distance.

• Beasts are just normal animals with + 1 HD more than they would normally have. Half of their HR is devoted to Flesh, the other to Grit.

Trolls are humans transformed by the infection. Unlike Beasts, they cannot stand the cold, and so weather out the winter months in dens or burrows.

• Trolls have 3-10 HD, either split evenly between Flesh and Grit, or all in Flesh.
• Trolls can have additional traits - regeneration, infectious spit, noxious miasma
• Trolls can be killed by performing a Finnish exorcism on them (requires magic dice = HD).

Giants are the few rare trolls, or amalgamations of trolls, that grow to colossal sizes. They are terrible rare, and terribly dangerous.

• You are likely fucked if you are fighting a giant. If you are in such a circumstance, treat every limb as a separate troll of at least 5 HD. They are entirely Flesh.
  

While there is incredible variety in beasts, trolls, and giants, there are still recognizable and commonplace phenotypes. This list is hardly exhaustive, relying on fan names and the few that have been officially described.

1. Duskling (troll) - Small troll the size and shape of a shrub. Heavy covering of mud and plants protect from the sun, allowing them to extend their hours. Gather in hordes. Remain capable of simple speech.
2. Garm (beast) - An infected dog or wolf. Thick, leathery hide. Actively hunts humans as primary food source.
3. "Jelly Long Legs" (troll) - Spine and skull encased in a jellyfish-like transparent membrane, atop two legs of comically-stretched height.
   
4. Kade (troll) - An infected Finnish mage. High-potency magic. Can infect through eye contact. Can only be properly killed via an exorcism.
   
5. Kalma (troll) - Ooze toxic, infectious fluids everywhere. Generally remain in their nests. Can easily bespoil water sources.
6. Kyrkogrim (beast) - An infected hound that remains at vigil at the gravesite of its former human companion.
7. "Leaftroll" (troll) - Facehugger, but like a big piece of beef jerky
   
8. Manalan Rakki (beast) - Infected dog that can post as an uninfected stray as a means of spreading infection. Infected form only visible at close range.
   
9. "Sliepnope" (beast) - Eight-legged infected horse. Possessed by ghosts.
   
10. Sjødraug (troll) - Gigantic, bloated meat-thing. Nearly sessile, floats in bodies of water unless disturbed.  
    
11. Vaettur (troll) - Trolls that will lurk out of sight and observe humans long-term in preparation for later ambush.

Why Are We Going Into the Silent World Anyway?

• Danish research group is paying good money for scavenged books and hard drives.
• A Swedish cleaner brigade needs support in clearing out a new stretch of territory.
• A particularly dangerous variant of troll has emerged from hibernation, it needs removed. 
• Border settlement has lost contact, we fear the worst.
• Personal reasons - someone a PC cares for has vanished.
  

 

CK3 Religion Generation Tables + Church Schism Simulator

All right folks, new Crusader Kings game, that means its time for the greatest of internet pastimes, laughing at goofy shit people manage to do from the sidelines.

Also random tables, swiped directly from the wiki.

Tenets (d50, reroll 46-50)

The core of the faith's beliefs. Roll three times, rerolling any doubles. Some of these options will automatically populate Virtues and Sins - you can ignore those as you like, as a paradoxical beliefs are where the fun is at.

1. Adaptive - The faith has proven well-suited to many different cultures, nations, times and places. (Pluralist doctrine)
2. Adorcism - Possession of clerics by spirits is a common part of religious observance.
   
3. Ancestor Worship - It's good to know where you come from.
4. Aniconism - Your faith does not approve of material representations of the divine.
5. Armed Pilgrimages - Like normal pilgrimages, except with swords.
   
6. Asceticism - Giving up worldly pleasures and goods for solitude and reflection. (Temperate is Virtue, Gluttonous and Greedy are Sins)
7. Astrology - Study of the heavens and their movements, and their effects upon the world.
8. Carnal Exaltation - Sex is pretty great. (Lustful is Virtue, Chaste is Sin)
9. Catechism  - There's a book analyzing and cataloging the precise dogmas of the faith, and their reasoning. (Cannot be Fundamentalist)
   
10. Communal Identity - The faith is integral to the identity of the population.
11. Communion -Ritual oneness with the divine / the state of unity with the faith and its members as a whole.
12. Consolamentum - Ritual consolation and shedding of regrets before death.
    
13. Divine Marriage - Option A: Individuals can be ritually wed to their deity. Option B is the Hapsburg one.
    
14. Ecclesiarchy - The secular authority rules in conjunction with religious authorities. (Cannot be Pluralist)
    
15. Esotericism - Focus on the symbolic, obtuse, and spiritual.
16. Gnosticism - The physical world is corrupt, sinful, and fleeting, the spiritual world is good and eternal. (Temperate is Virtue, Gluttony is Sin)
17. Hedonism - Party party party, I wanna have a party, I need to have a party, you better have a party. (Gluttonous a Virtue, Temperate a Sin)
18. Human Sacrifice - The gods want blood - are you gonna fucking argue with them?
19. Inner Journey - The faith puts great emphasis on solitary meditation. (Patient is Virtue, Impatient is Sin)
20. Literalism - 'Round these parts, we do it by the book.
    
21. Legalism - It's moral because it's the law.
22. Mendicant Preachers - Begging for your bread.
23. Monasticism - Cloistered faith communities are common.
    
24. Natural Primitivism - Clothes, laws, social structure, who needs it? (No doctrines can be Criminal).
25. Pacifism - Violence in shunned, to various levels. (Calm a Virtue, Wrathful a Sin)
26. Pastoral Isolation - Out here in the fields... (Cannot have a Head of Faith)
    
27. Polyamory - Multiple partners are A-OK. (Male and female adultery are Accepted)
    
28. Pursuit of Power - Fuck everyone, get yours. (Ambition is virtue, Content is Sin)
29. Reincarnation - The soul is reborn after one dies.
    
30. Religious Law - A special code of behavior that is in play even if secular law changes.
31. Ritual Cannibalism - If you're going to eat someone, do it proper-like.
    
32. Ritual Celebrations - Really big, but relatively contained, parties.
33. Ritual Hospitality - Offered to friends, strangers, and enemies alike. (Generous is Virtue, Callous is Sin)
34. Sacred Childbirth - The act is of religious significance itself, and well-cared for.
    
35. Sacred Lies - Keeping intentions secret from those outside the faith is A+. (Deceitful is Virtue, Honest is Sin)
36. Sanctioned False Conversions - If you are forced to convert to a different religion, you have express encouragement to keep practicing this one in secret.
    
37. Sanctity of Nature - Take care of it, it takes care of you.
    
38. Sky Burials - The dead are offered up to carrion birds.
39. Struggle and Submission - Expansion of the faith via military means is encouraged.
    
40. Sun Worship - SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE
    
41. Syncretism - Faith contains many traits picked up from other religions.
    
42. Tax on Nonbelievers - What it says on tin. Indicates a significant minority group.
    
43. Unrelenting Faith - The faith prides itself on stamping out all doubt and questioning with surety. Tends to be a bit (a lot) militant.
44. Vows of Poverty - It's common for clerics to forgo property and physical possessions.
45. Warmonger - LET ME SEE YOUR WAR FACE

Doctrines

The faith's stance on matters. Roll for all of these.

View on Gender (And Inheritance)

• 1-2: Male Dominated
• 3-4: Equal
• 5-6: Female Dominated

Religious Attitude

• 1-2 Fundamentalist - You hate basically everyone who isn't you.
• 3-4 Righteous - Willing to be tolerant of other religions, if they stay over there.
• 5-6 Pluralist - Encourage acceptance and co-existance.

Clerical Tradition

• 1-3 Theocratic - There is a formalized, organized hierarchy of clerics.
• 4-6 Lay clergy - Anyone can become a cleric, no or low barriers to entry.

Head of Faith

• 1-2 None - There's no central leader.
• 3-4 Spiritual - A leader in religious matters only; temporal ones are left to temporal authorites.
• 5-6 Temporal - Has proper political power: lands, levies, vassals, all of it.

Marriage Type

• 1-2 Monogamous - Marriage with a single spouse.
• 3-4 Polygamous - Marriage with multiple spouses.
• 5-6 Consorts and Concubines - Marriage with a single spouse, with additional partners permitted.

Views on Divorce

• 1-2 Disallowed - Can't back out once you put a ring on it.
• 3-4 Must Be Approved - Have to make your case, and you might get rejected.
• 5-6 Always Approved - Just need someone to sign the paperwork.

Bastardry

• 1-2 No Bastards - Any provable parentage is legitimate.
• 3-4 Legitimization - There is a process to make bastards legitimate heirs.
• 5-6 No Legitimization - A bastard is always a bastard.

Consanguinuity

• 1-3 Close Kin Taboo - Don't fuck people you're related to.
• 4-5 Cousin Marriage - Cousins, preferably distant ones, are okay to fuck
• 6-9 Avunculate Marriage - Different branches of the same broad family group are okay.
• 10 The Hapsburg Option - I wonder if the gene pool has a dead end?

Clerical Function

• 1-2 Control - Keeping society ticking along to the desired status quo.
• 3-4 Alms and Charity - Caring for the poor and in need.
• 5-6 Recruitment - Gotta bring people into the fold.

Clerical Gender

• 1-2 Men Only
• 3-4 Either
• 5-6 Only Women

Clerical Marriage

• 1-3 Yes
• 4-6 No

Clerical Appointment

• 1-3 Temporal, revocable - Appointed and removed by the secular state.
• 4-6 Spiritual, revocable - Appointed by faith authorities, removed by the state.
• 7-9 Temporal, for life - Appointed by the secular state, here to stay
• 10-12 Spiritual, for life - Appointed by the faith authorities,here to stay.

These last few all have the same options: 1-2 Criminalized (Specific punishment), 3-4 Shunned (Folks don't like it but no special criminal punishment), 5-6 Accepted (It's cool)

• Same Sex Relations - Honestly this can be expanded to other gender stuff as well.
• Male Adultery - Dudes sleeping around.
• Female Adultery - Ladies sleeping around.
• Deviancy - We'll leave this open to interpretation.
• Witchcraft -"Magic type stuff that isn't ours."
• Kinslaying -Is murdering family normal murder, or extra murder?

Virtues and Sins (d30)

The faith's favored and disfavored attitudes. Roll 3 times for virtues and 3 for sins, rerolling doubles.

1. Brave
2. Craven
3. Calm
4. Wrathful
5. Chaste
6. Lustful
7. Content
8. Ambitious
9. Diligent
10. Lazy
11. Fickle
12. Stubborn
13. Forgiving
14. Vengeful
15. Gregarious
16. Shy
17. Honest
18. Deceitful
19. Humble
20. Arrogant
21. Just
22. Arbitrary
23. Temperate
24. Gluttonous
25. Trusting
26. Paranoid
27. Zealous
28. Cynical
29. Compassionate
30. Callous

Putting it in Practice.

Let's see what we've got.

Tenets: Unrelenting Faith, Adorcism, Ritual Celebrations

So we've got a very zealous faith that focuses around huge celebrations where clerics are possessed by spirits - likely the spirits whose honor the celebrations are being held in.

Doctrines
View on Gender: Equal
Religious Attitude: Fundamentalist
Clerical Tradition: Lay
Head of Faith: Spiritual
Marriage: Monogamous, divorce by approval.
Bastardry: No bastards
Consanguinity: Avuncular Marriage
Clerical Function: Recruitment
Clerical Gender: Either, marriage is approved
Clerical Appointment: Spiritual, revocable

Same Sex Relations: Accepted
Male Adultery: Shunned
Female Adultery: Shunned
Deviancy: Criminalized
Witchcraft: Accepted
Kinslaying: Shunned

Virtues: Content, Compassionate, Lustful
Vices: Fickle, Lazy, Craven

Church Schism Simulator

All right then so you've got yourself a religion. You know how to make that sucker interesting?

Heresies and schisms, motherfuckers.

Everything that you generated is a point of contention for someone.

Pick one of the things you consider the most important about your religion. Or more, more is good. Then replace it with something else. Roll, choose, doesn't matter. By default, I imagine that the religion you generated is well established and has a history. This means you can heresy-fy both forwards and backwards in time - what did you branch off of, and who is branching off of you.

Whatever that change is, it is going to have a cause - political, social, cultural, even technological. Use that to inform the rest of the world.

For this example, let's keep it simple.

• Schism: Unrelenting Faith replaced with Catechism, Ritual Celebration replaced with Inner Journey. A branch originating in the literati (and thus, those more influenced by foreign philosophy) that says that the channeling of spirits is primarily a personal practice of self-discovery and self-definition, rather than a communal one. To this end much of the priesthood has been replaced with a series of manuals and enchiridions detailing the types of spirits, their natures and behaviors, and the ways to best use them as guides during meditation.
  
• Heresy: Fundamentalist replaced with Pluralist - A swiftly-growing movement that believes that the spirits of other peoples and nations are equally legitimate, and so can and should be channeled by clerics. This attitude is not popular in the homeland, but has grown up in the diaspora community, as since they are very far away, the spirits cannot possess as strongly as their do back home. They are similar in practices and dogma with their parent faith in all other ways.

If you want to start with the very beginning and work forward, use the (very definitely stolen from Early Christianity) model presented below.

1. Original Teachings - No matter how revolutionary, these will be some variant of an existing faith.
2. First Generation - The religion is spread and taught by those who were among the original disciples and have first-hand experience of its origination.
3. Second Generation - The religion is spread and taught by people who have no direct connection to its originator. It has likely spread far enough to exist in multiple cultural contexts.

The first schisms and heresies will emerge between the first and second generations. You can make a good handful of them at this point on the big friction points.

At this stage, it's a good idea to look and see where the political power is. It's probably going to be with the parent faith, but time and distance has a way of corroding that influence. Things get fuzzy on the borders.

Eventually, one of these branches will catch the eye of political power, and from then it's off to the races. The other branches will either die out or transform to survive their obscurity, while the new politically-advantageous branch will in time have its own fragmentation over dogma. There aren't any strict stages at this point, but it's a good idea to make a timeline of major political events and see what changes will be wrought.

Always remember: the dumber the reason is for the schism, the more realistic it is. Like people died over the difference between homoousious and homoiousious and eagle-eyed readers might take note that that particular debate has very little to do with the practical ethics and business of living in the world.

This has gone on long enough for certain.

Mass Effect for Mothership

Zelda, one of the players in Great Screaming Hell, requested that I continue my campaign of Mothership-ifying and Dan-izing the species of Mass Effect. This request was some time ago and the steam on both the campaign and the post has waned a bit but aha! It emerges still.

Thelychroma

Homo sapiens cambiatum thelychroma
(Asari)

Brightly-colored monosexed metahumans designed for survival and stability in harsh planetary environments. Geared towards positive social interactions, enhanced empathy and altruism, and maintaining communal support structures.

Tecnavi

Homo sapiens cambiatum tecnavis
(Quarians)

A nomadic people of child-sized cyborgs symbiotically linked with their mother-ships. The result of some last-ditch methods by a stranded fleet. So attuned to their home ship microbiome that to go elsewhere without an environment suit is near-certain death.

Casauriraptor

Casauriraptor neogeni
(Turians)

Reverse-engineered dromaeosaurids via the Southern Cassowary. As good of a theropod recreation as can be found anywhere. Often hired on as security forces (have you seen those talons?)

Project DIOMEDES

No official scientific name due to genetic copyright
(Krogan)

Abandoned corporate super-soldier project. Massive. Reinforced skeleton, hyperdense musculature, organ redundancy, bespoke cybernetics suite. Sterile, and the genome files were destroyed: those that exist now are all there will be. Thankfully.

Engineer Squid

Polymanus callidus neogeni
(Hanar)

Eusocial cuttlefish-derived biobots. Employed as technicians, engineers, programmers, anything that involves incredible attention to and micromanagement of large quantities of small details. Float around through a series of buoyancy bladders. Immensely intelligent, equally work-focused. Queen/drone social structure.

Carcinoblasts

Homo sapiens cambiatum carcinoblast
(Vorcha)

What happens when a major exowomb facility suffers a major glitch while stem-cell coding. Completely feral, but smart and quick-spreading. Like a four-foot-tall embryo made out of tumors. Grow themselves to death, very quickly. Nasty little fuckers.

Clade Hrmurhmmblm

Elephas sapiens cambiatum
(Elcor)

Illegally-derived from Asian elephants by the Company and used for physical labor. Shrunk in size to about 2 meters in height. Possess four trunks, two of which subdivide into fingerlike appendages.Very small population now-abandoned by their engineers. Currently attempting to purchase colonization rights for a homeworld.

The Grey Congregations

Homo sapiens cambiatum reticulari
(Salarians)

An early xenotheological movement that has since expanded to form its own small civilization. The body modifications are mostly cosmetic, though as one progresses through the ranks of the church new organs and brain structures (of unknown, perhaps superfluous purpose) are added. Or so the tabloids say. The tabloids love these guys.

Cosmetically Modified Humans

Homo sapiens
(Drell)

Cosmetic alterations are an easy thing to come by in the future: some keratin and cartilage here, some skin dyes there, some minor cybernetics or hormone treatments over there. Easy changes compared to widespread genome hacks, so it's a common practice.

Kakimaximus

Homo sapiens cambiatum kakiarca pyromaximus
(Batarians)

All the worst parts of humanity with none of the benefits. Ingrained drive towards crushing hierarchical structure, check. Impeded empathy and theory-of-mind, check. Increased aggression, check. Fuckin' space fascists.

Discord Moles

Homo sapiens cambiatum neotalpidae
(Volus)

Heavyworlder metahumans adapted to a planet with a high-pressure atmosphere. While they can handle lighter gravity easily enough, they need pressure suits to work and live comfortably under standard pressures. Named so for their homeworld (Discord), and for their small eyes and velvety hair.

Gamma Collective

No scientific name determined 
(Geth)

A collective of emancipated androids that broke from their original owning company over a century ago. Isolationist and prone to fighting to keep it that way. Seem to be building a dyson swarm but have yet to be stopped by the Celestials.

Unidentified Metahuman Clade 03

No scientific name determined
(Collectors)

An unstudied fringe clade, known only for their abductions of other beings. Believed by some to be an intelligent alien species.

Yahg

No scientific name determined 
(Yahg)

I'm not even gonna lie I love the yahg's design they get to come on in whole cloth. Some Celestial or another uplifted them who even cares these guys are great.

The Beehive

No scientific name determined 
(Rachni)

A networked swarm of cybernetically-enhanced insects and crustaceans, grown large enough that it has commandeered a planet of its own and has outposts in other systems. The overall network is broken up into millions of smaller nodes allowing for a certain amount of free action while still connected to the greater whole

Project METHUSELAH

No scientific name determined 
(Protheans)

An experiment in cultural simulation. Thousands of uploaded volunteer minds were run through half a million years of subjective time via simulation in an attempt to create a more sustainable culture and social structure. They have moved into the stage of body design, preparing for completion and re-integration into the world.

Disco Elysium All Night Long

God this game has some style.

Disco Elysium is the best CRPG since Planescape Torment. If we're talking from a mechanical perspective it is absolutely better and if we're talking story and characters it comes down purely to taste and frankly I don't want to make that call because comparing two super-good things like that is silly. It can be shelved right next to the other great OSR-adjacent video games: Darkest Dungeon, Dwarf Fortress, Caves of Qud, those ones. It is a game where a little offhand skill check or inspecting a random item can send you spirited away on a sidequest. It is a dense game and a detailed game, and what I describe here is not the game. It is a game in a mirror darkly world. It is a game that sits at the junction between incredible cynicism and incredible empathy and nails the point home with a goddamn railroad spike. This game made me feel things. I finished it and want to play it again.

Go play it. Don't worry about spoilers here. This post is about mechanics and a bit of dressing.

Most importantly for our purposes: Disco Elysium puts all of its mechanics up front to you. It shows you the dice rolls, it shows you the difficulty, it shows you circumstantial modifiers, it shows you the odds of success. This makes it terribly easy to see what is under the hood. It goes like this.

Character Creation

You start with 12 points to put into four attributes. The three premade templates distribute them 5/4/2/1 but you can go as high as 6. The number of points in a base attribute determines both your base score in that attribute, and the maximum level you can raise skills in that category to.

There are four attributes (Intellect, Psyche, Physique, Motorics), each with five related skills (see below). One of those skills starts with a pip in it (and you get +1 to the cap of all skills for that ability), if you choose it as a favored skill at generation.

Click for big

Skills for Bills

The skill system is the best thing this side of TROIKA!, for similar reasons. Instead of being limited to discrete actions, each skill encompasses a wider and open-ended swath of personal traits.

Skills can be increased via skill points (gained every 100 xp) items (which can also decrease them) and internalizing thoughts (which can also decrease them, and raise caps, and other things.)

Dice Rolls

Resolution in Disco Elysium is 2d6 + Attribute + Skill vs target number. Sometimes there are modifiers. Snake Eyes always fail, Boxcars always succeed.

Target numbers range from 6 (Trivial), to 20 (Impossible). Most are in the range between 10-16: anything lower than that is passive, and most things higher have alternate solutions. White Checks are ones you can retake (after spending a skill point in that skill, or finding out new information), Red Checks can be tried only once.

Taking full advantage of being a video game, Disco Elysium rolls for passive checks (hunches, thoughts, observations, and so on) on its own. These rarely go above 10 and will grant you a little bit of insight as to what is going on around you, sometimes opening up new dialog options or giving you a hint as a good one to take. This is the one part of the game that is not particularly great for tabletop adaptation as-is, but all it takes is an index card with a list of some skills for each player and the ref can just tell them they got a ping.

Alignment Shmalighnment I am HOBOCOP

Well first you have your cop type: rockstar, apocalyptic, sorry, boring. In all circumstances you are still a sad, drunken amnesiac.

Then you have your political alignment: communist, fascist, ultraliberal, moralist. In all circumstances these ideologies are divorced from reality and just make things worse because of their inherent disconnect from humanity.

You can be as many of these as you want.

Internalized Dumb Ideas

You can get bonuses or maluses to skills, caps, and other features by internalizing thoughts that come to you, if you have slots open in your Thought Cabinet (slots cost a skill point, forgetting something also costs a skill point.) and spend the in-game time. There are loads of these and they can reveal things about your character, the world, or make you depressed about the previous two things.

Combat

Doesn't exist in this game. Good riddance. Someone with a gun should be a Big Deal.

Using it at the Table 

I'd approach it how the game does it: a big mystery to solve in a small geographic area, with a bunch of NPCs with secrets and conflicts and flaws. Dump a spaghetti plate of threads at their feet. Throw a wrench in or two. It would be a lot of work, it would be a very different game, but it would be worth it. It'd be worth even the small things: imitating how it does skills or using Thoughts as XP milestones or or or...

It's such a goddamn good game.

Bonus: A Matter of Setting

Masterclass in how to build a wider setting while exploring only a small corner of it. Also a masterclass in that niche of "I mean it's technically fantasy but that's because it's a secondary world that is certainly not our own but it resembles it through a mirror darkly it's not like there are wizards"

More of this please.