On the Subject of Werewolves

My home group are currently playing the new SWADE Deadlands.  It's going well.  For the first time ever I'm actually enjoying the Savage Worlds system rather than enjoying the setting in spite of it.  In the most recent game, we were rather surprised when one of the people we'd just rescued (who, for ease of tokens, consisted of a small group of Chuck Norris clones) turned into a wolf.  Which meant that someone was going to have to make an Occult skill roll to know stuff about werewolves.

This was concerning, because nobody ever in the history of this gaming group has ever managed to succeed on a roll to learn things about werewolves.

It doesn't matter what system we're using, or what setting we're playing in.  Any time we encounter werewolves, the result is the same.  In everything from Dungeons & Dragons to The Dresden Files, we find that our collective sum of knowledge of werewolves is that they turn into wolves and don't like silver.

The in-game explanation we had for this is that everywhere in the gaming multiverse there exists only one book on the subject of werewolves, which is a children's picture book that we call The Penguin Book of Werewolves.

Then one day in a game of Pathfinder, one of the PCs actually became a werewolf.  This opportunity was too good to pass up.  After a prolonged period of experimentation that perhaps bordered on the inhumane, a new work was written, expanding considerably on the original Penguin Book of Werewolves.  It contained much that was inaccurate (due to the PC in question being an aasimar,) but was nevertheless hailed as a significant improvement over the original work.  It was published as The Sungrass-Vade Basic Werewolf Primer, after its two authors, Sephone Sungrass and Shavaros Vade.  Alas, its distribution was not particularly widespread, and many characters were still obliged to fall back on the earlier, less detailed work.

And so, we return to our tense Deadlands moment.  The werewolf was preparing to attack.  Without the knowledge of how to defeat such a creature, we were all but defenseless.  The nearest thing we had to an occult expert made his roll, and much to everyone's amazement, pulled out a copy of the Sungrass-Vade Basic Werewolf Primer, and informed us all that werewolves could turn into wolves, and they didn't like silver or magic.

Which wasn't overly helpful, given that that meant only one out of four PCs could actually do magic or silver damage, and he promptly rolled a double one on his spellcasting.  The rest of us flailed ineffectively, unable to hurt it in any way, while barely escaping being ripped to shreds.

But as it turned out, there's one more things werewolves don't like, and that's being yeeted into the sea.

The Path to Eden, episode 6: Into The Woods

Chronicler Venno was gratified to find his audience already waiting for him.  No need for introductions this time.

"As I was saying, the devourer was approaching Lenny with its jaws open wide.  But as it did so, Katin drew her bow and loosed an arrow into it, while Zippo shouted and waved to draw its attention.  The monster turned its attention away from Lenny to chase Zippo, who was able to fend off its enormous teeth with his chitinous carapace.  Lenny crawled his way to Silas, who gave him a quite massage to get him back on his feet.  Seeing Katin in danger, Lenny charged in with his spiked bat, but it bounced off, dealing more damage to him than to the devourer.  Silas's attempt to punch it was completely ineffective, but finally another of Katin's arrows found its mark and felled the foul beast."

The release of tension in the room was audible, as everyone who'd been holding their breath exhaled in unison.

"What to do next?  It would be dark soon, and they were all injured after the fight.  Should they stop and make camp in the forest, or should they push on to their intended destination of Alexandra's Tower in the hope of finding shelter?  Not knowing if there were more devourers in the forest, they decided to continue.

"Katin lead the way once more, and found them a route out of the trees.  The remains of the old city buildings once again appeared before them, and much to their surprise, as they approached the building, voices called out to them.  They seemed friendly, and invited them to join them for dinner.  Having foregone eating the devourer, suspecting it to be rot contaminated, they were all hungry.

"Silas was suspicious, however.  There seemed to be something not quite right about this.  Their motivations in inviting them to a meal seemed less than wholesome.  He shared his suspicions.  Boss Johammed wouldn't be that friendly if strange people came to the Seven Sisters ark.  But before they could turn around, there was a sudden smell of metal in the air, and their hair stood on end.  Moments later, lightning began to strike, and they all ran for the only source of shelter - the building before them.

"Inside they found themselves in a great hall.  It had once been full of chairs, and had a raised platform at one ended, but the centre had been cleared of chairs and a firepit built in the middle.  Four people sat around the fire, where they were cooking some kind of food.  Katin couldn't help but notice that one of them held a weapon that was clearly an ancient artefact like her own, but of a very different style.

"Lenny suspected that these might be trolls, and they wondered if the meat stew they were given might in fact be hobbit.  Not that this stopped the very hungry Zippo from eating.  Once the strangers assured them that the meat was from some animals they'd found here and killed, and that one of them had cooked the rot out of it, everyone tucked in.

"The strangers wanted to know where they came from.  Silas, still suspicious, claimed they came from Zanzibar.  The strangers said they came from the ark, which was confusing, as they clearly weren't from the Seven Sisters.  Their ark was a boat, but it must have been a much bigger one than Zippo's canoe.  Zippo asked them if they'd seen a big red cross on a building anywhere, and they not only had seen one, but said they could take them there in the morning.

"With everyone tired and injured, they decided to get some sleep.  Still a little suspicious, Silas stayed awake to stay on watch and chat with the strangers.  He spun a long tale about the wonderful sunny land of Zanzibar.  And it was lucky he did stay awake, for he suddenly realised that their leader was about to attack.  The truth had come out.  The strangers were cannibals, and were planning on making Silas and the others their next meal.

"Silas loosed an arrow into the leader, but as he did so the end of the bow shattered, rendering it unusable.  The bolt from the leader's bow slammed into him, and the other strangers stood up - they'd only been pretending to sleep.  Silas threw himself out of the way, waking up the others, who joined the fight.

"The battle was brutal.  Katin loaned her spare bow to Silas, but it wasn't long before a desparate attempt to help a seriously injured Lenny caused her to break her own bow.  Silas took out one of their attackers, but knocked himself out in the process.  But it was Zippo who was the hero of the fight, sacrificing precious bullets to kill one of them, and when the remaining attackers decided to flee, taking down the leader so that his precious artefact bow could be retrieved."

Another sigh of relief from the audience.  While the group were hardly out of danger, at least for the moment they could rest easy.

---

If you'd like to watch us playing this game, we play on Sunday evenings on Twitch and you can also catch up on past games on YouTube.

The Owlbear and Wizard's Staff 3

I missed the 2019 Owlbear and Wizard's Staff convention due to only finding out about it the day before the event - particularly annoying as it was in Leamington Spa, an entirely commutable distance from my house.  Not wanting to miss out on the following event, and knowing the organiser was keen to have more female GMs next time, I got myself on Twitter to ensure I'd be all set for 2020.  Which actually worked out OK in the end.

The event began with the Mitchester Arms getting temporarily taken over for the Owlbar.  I'm thoroughly in favour of out-of-game socialising at online RPGs, so would have enthusiastically taken part - had I not been playing the final session of a Call of Cthulhu one-shot.  Ahh well.  Next time.

Game 1

Things kicked off on Saturday at the thoroughly unreasonable hour of 10am for The Late Shift, a fantasy police procedural set in the city of Sigil using the Dungeon World rules.  While it's a bit of an odd time to be playing police (and the GM did note that he wrote the adventure before everything kicked off in America) this felt a lot more Discworld City Watch in tone.  RPGs let us play out all our wildest fantasies, and right now my wildest fantasies include going to the pub with friends and having police who actually care about the law.

Planescape: Torment was one of my first introductions to CRPGs and this was the first time I've actually played a tabletop game set in Sigil.  It's remarkable how much I remember from a game I played in 2003.  The bizarre setting was perfect for the game, with the potential for all kinds of strange things going on for our guardspeople to deal with.  Crimes ranged from an exceptionally unpleasant kidnapping to transporting dangeous magical items without a permit.

The Dungeon World system worked really well in Sigil.  We had normal D&D style archetypes like an elf ranger, but also more out there things like a salamander immolater, and having played Planescape: Torment, a wizard based heavily around setting things on fire made a lot of sense to me.  I played the elf ranger, with my pet lynx, Constable Floof, and I really liked how the rules meant he was useful without slowing down combat by being an extra piece on the board.  For a one-shot game I thought it was an excellent choice for playing high fantasy without the crunch of D&D or Pathfinder.

Game 2

In the afternoon I played The Cthulhu Hack, with Paul Baldowski as the GM.  The scenario, Forgotten Duty, was enormously fun, with my only complaint being that we couldn't fit it all into the session and had to rush things at the end.  (This was including overrunning by an hour, after which we absolutely had to stop because a lot of us had other games to get to.)  An intriguing investigation, and one I'm thinking of picking up to run myself - I think it would work as well as a Delta Green scenario as it did for The Cthulhu Hack.

One change to the normal Cthulhu Hack rules was that instead of the various talents my character had last time I played, there were a list of specials at the top of the sheet that we could pick from twice per game.  This change was because of players in Paul's previous games entirely failing to use their talents.  Mechanically this worked well, but for me I found I lost some of the feel of what my character could do.  System-wise I felt like I was somewhere between The Cthulhu Hack and Cthulhu Dark, and losing the strong points of both of them.

It was a clear demonstration of the difference a GM can make to a game.  Despite using the same system, this game felt very different to the game I played at Virtually Expo.  That game felt 'Call of Cthulhu, but streamlined' while this one felt 'OSR, but Cthulhu'.  Both of which are fine, but as someone who's a lot more into Call of Cthulhu than OSR games, I preferred the former.

I enjoyed it enough that I'm feeling motivated to finish reading The Cthulhu Hack and try running it myself.

Game 3

Another outing for my Liminal game, Mother Said I Never Should.  My decision not to name the paranormal investigation business the PCs work for continues to pay off.  This time it was Spooktacular Solutions who set off in search of a missing teenager.

Rather than talk about this game yet again, I'll just share my top tip for running online convention games: you should always have a plan, and a backup plan, for your AV platform, neither of which should be Roll20.  This time I planned to run the whole thing on Discord as usual, but one player's audio wasn't working well (weird robotic sounds) so I switched over to Google Meet.

I'm looking into Jitsi as my replacement backup for once Google Meet gets the one hour limit on free accounts.  The only issue I've had with gaming in Jitsi is that I often stretch out the window to be really wide or tall so I can have everyone's video visible while still getting a decent view of a VTT.  Zoom, Meet and Discord all change the tiled display to a row or stack when I do that, but Jitsi keeps trying to make a rectangular tile, which is less than helpful when it turns everyone tiny.

I'd love to see a VTT where the AV actually works, but nobody seems to have got there yet.

Post-game

Sunday morning brought us a panel discussion with people from Pelgrane Press and  Modiphius.  Once again I really appreciate a panel that isn't all white men.  It's so easy to feel like an outsider in a hobby where so few of the participants look like me, and representation like this really matters to me.  There was a lively discussion over Zoom, plus the audience chat was hilarious.

Reflections

I did wonder if GMing in the evening slot after playing two games was a bad idea, as I was likely to be tired by then.  As it turns out, running that game energised me.  Worth remembering that for future conventions.

What a brilliant event.  I only hope we can do it in person next year.

The Path to Eden, episode 5: Heresy

Chronicler Venno's audience stared in rapt attention.  With his previous tale having gone down well, he felt confident to experiment a bit.

"Remember when we finished the croplands?"  A sea of nods.  The day of the first harvest when everyone got to eat something other than sourdough starter was etched on many of the people's memories.  "And work began on the sundial, despite some difficulty interpreting the instructions of the great prophet Ikea.  It seemed like the Ark was entering a new phase of enlightenment when the dreadful news arrived that the temple had been vandalised."

A susurrus moved through the crowd, but was silenced by a raise of Venno's hand.  "Not only had someone destroyed all the work done on the temple so far, but they had defiled the sacred carriage by writing the word 'heretic' all over it.  And worse still, they didn't even spell 'heretic' correctly!"

He paused for the inevitable gasp of shock.  "No, they wrote it with a k on the end!  And that's not the end of it.  To write it, they stole a sacred artefact, the rattling can!"  The gasps got louder.  "Boss Briktoria initially blamed Zippo, who had stopped working on the temple in order to lend his expertise to the sundial, but as a loyal follower of the Seven Sisters, he had no idea what had happened."

"Zippo being dragged away was noticed by Lenny and Katin, who'd been out working on the croplands, and Silas, the chronicler who had been attempting to interpret the word of Ikea at the sundial.  The three of them went to investigate, and concluded that the best thing for Zippo would be to find out who was really responsible so they could be properly blamed.  They searched the carriage until Katin caught the scent of chemicals in the paint and set off to follow the trail.

Katin led them on a roundabout journey through the Ark, until they arrived outside the corrugated iron building that served as Boss Johammed's headquarters.  Lenny persuaded the two enforcers outside the door to let them in, and a heated discussion followed.  It was clear Johammed was not happy about having his plans for a slave market disrupted, and his words suggested that he and his people might in fact be heretics.

There was no use starting a fight while so heavily outnumbered, however, so the four of them left, tipped off Briktoria about the heretics, and then went to talk to the elf about hospitals.

The elf still couldn't remember anything before being brought to the Ark, but she was able to draw them a symbol that she said meant hospital - a large cross, which she then tore out of the paper, and held up to the Sign of the Seven Sisters to show that it should be red.  With something to go on at last, the team stocked up on supplies and headed out into the zone.

The journey started quickly, taking the familiar path through the marshy grounds where they found the elf, but when the continued further, they found the terrain very different.  Here, nature had returned to the land, and trees had grown, destroying the buildings.  This all made sense, because the elf had come from this directions, and as the sacred texts tell us, elves live in forests.

Katin reminded everyone to be on the look out for giant spiders, trolls and unfriendly elves, but the creature she spotted was none of these things.  There was some speculation that it might be a warg, but Silas recognised it as a devourer, a terrifying beast with huge jaws that could swallow someone whole.  Lenny was ready to fight it, but the others were cautious and Katin suggested sneaking past it instead.

That might have worked, had Lenny not immediately fallen flat on his face and attracted the creature's attention.  It leaped at him at once, its huge jaws open wide..."

There was a sigh as the audience realised Venno had stopped.  He grinned.  Nothing like a cliffhanger to bring people back next time.

---

If you'd like to watch us playing this game, we play on Sunday evenings on Twitch and you can also catch up on past games on YouTube.

GrimCon 2020

 This weekend should have been Concrete Cow 20.5 but thanks to... <gestures at entire planet> it had to be cancelled.  Fortunately, the lovely people at Go Play Manchester had picked that weekend for GrimCon, an online convention focussed on dark fantasy and horror.

Friday night was a celebrity interview with Lynne Hardy from Chaosium, talking about Call of Cthulhu of course, and also the upcoming Rivers of London game.  Interesting stuff, and I only wish I could have thought of some questions to ask - although there was no shortage of things to talk about.  Also really nice to spotlight a woman in the RPG industry.  While the people I interact with in the hobby certainly aren't the gatekeeping type, it's still good to see someone else who looks like me.

Game 1

Saturday meant an early start to play Dead of Night.  Only the second time I'd played this rules-light horror game, and just as much fun as the first.  While characters have stats in this game, to really get the full experience you need to lean into playing the tropes of the genre - in this case, 80s teen horror movies.  We piled into the Delorean, headed out on a road trip, ignored the warnings of the harbinger and eventually found ourselves thwarting demonic entities armed with only propane and the ability to read.

Game 2

A quick break for lunch and then another dive into the horrors of planet JWL-5 for the next outing of my Alien scenario, The Toxic Jewel.  Unfortunately one person who'd signed up had to drop out due to being double booked, but I advertised the free place to the Good Friends of Jackson Elias discord group, and with a bit of encouragement from another player we got our fifth person.

I think the reason I was previously a bit apprehensive of running this scenario is the feeling that there's a lot of work involved.  And there is, but it's almost entirely pre-game: creating the characters, coming up with their secret agendas, preparing the map and the handouts and so forth.  Once it comes to actually running the game, everything is pretty smooth.  With the exception of timing: this was a 3.5 hour slot rather than the 4 hours I was expecting.  Fortunately everyone was free to stick around until the end of the story.

I'm running Liminal at my next three conventions (wow, September/October is busy) but I really should give Alien more outings as it's so much fun.  My players were brilliant, leaning into their conflicting agendas and keeping me constantly entertained.  Each time I run this I'm worried that the characters don't have enough stress by the end of the first act (this time I think they were all entirely stress-free) but by the end it always works out, with running and screaming in all the right places.

Post-Games

The Saturday evening was a social, but since this was the first opportunity we'd had to get the Symbaroum group back together since July, I had to skip that part.

Sunday morning was a slightly less early start, for a panel on British folklore in RPGs with Paul Mitchener and Paul Baldowski, and when I complain that I struggle to remember people at RPG conventions because they're all called Paul, this is exactly the kind of thing I mean.  We got some great discussions, some entertaining snark in the text chat, and a lot of book recommendations.

There was talk of a GMs' post-event zoom chat, but unfortunately real life intervened.

One other feature of the weekend was Radio GrimCon, a YouTube playlist of suitable music as suggested by the GMs.  I had a lovely time listening to it after my Saturday evening game finished.

Reflections

I'm used to game sign-up either being via Warhorn or by the giant spreadsheet and randomiser method used by Furnace and associated conventions.  This was a bit different - despite there being two slots, people only had the ability to select a first and second choice of game.  As a GM this was no problem as I just picked my top two from the morning session, but I'm not sure what approach I would have taken as a player.  Getting the timetable out sooner would have been good, although I know there were some scheduling issues that delayed things.

That said, I got two awesome games, and the other events I was able to get to were good fun.  From my GM point of view, it was easy to get involved and get my players on board.  The social evening was a really nice idea to recreate a little of what's missing from online conventions and I wish I could have been there.  Themed conventions really work for me, and this event's horror and dark fantasy theme was great and definitely has a wide appeal.

Manchester's a long way for me to go for a convention, so I don't know if I could be tempted to attend in real life, but if further online GrimCons happen, I'll definitely be there.

Dolphin and Octopus: Ride

And just like that, fate gives me a brand new episode...

GM: It's a moray eel.
Dolphin: Oh no!  Those can kill you in one bite!
Octopus: I don't want to fight that!  Wait...can I grapple it?
GM: Bonus per tentacle.  Go for it.
Octopus: <rolls dice> Critical success!  I grab onto the back of its head so I'm out of reach of its mouth.
GM: It thrashes about, trying to shake you off.  Make a ride check.
Octopus: Oh dear, I really didn't think this through.  No ranks in ride...wait, my per tentacle bonus applies to ride as well.  <rolls dice>  Hell yeah!
GM: <sighs> You effortlessly ride the moray.  Now what?
Octopus: I'm going to have to get away somehow.
Dolphin: How about your jet propulsion feat?
Octopus: Perfect!  And I can add my ink cloud ability to that as a free action to prevent the moray's attack of opportunity and gain a stealth bonus as I escape.
Dolphin: <singing> When you learn you can ride and your ink lets you hide, that's a moray.
GM: I hate you both.

Incredible footage of an octopus riding a moray eel to avoid its attack and then escaping in a cloud of ink. https://t.co/0Wt7vTMpIn pic.twitter.com/tOZooQcZBr

— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) September 1, 2020

Dolphin and Octopus: Exotic Weapon Proficiency

Back in the days of Google+ I used to write up news stories involving certain sea creatures as if they were playing an RPG. Since its demise I've written one more of these...

GM: So your new level gets you an exotic weapon proficiency. What are you going to take?
Octopus: Jellyfish.
GM: ...
Octopus: The damage isn't very good but the poison save is horrific.

The first account of a scientist getting slapped by a jellyfish-wielding octopus occurred in the prestigious journal Science in 1963 when a young blanket octopus used a man-o-war to sting the author, resulting in the paper below. https://t.co/HqTnI9hfwa pic.twitter.com/oh2aaLjvtJ

— Open Ocean Exploration (@RebeccaRHelm) June 18, 2020

GM: I could argue that that's a siphonophore, not a jelly, but fine. Dolphin, have you picked your new perform skill yet? Dolphin? Dolphin!
Dolphin: Oh, uh, yeah, uh, I pick jellyfish.
GM: You weren't paying attention, were you?
Dolphin: I was!
GM: So you really want a perfom skill of jellyfish?
Dolphin: Yes! Yes...I'm...I'm going to juggle them.