Category: RPGS

Creature Seed: Oso, the God of Cocaine.

Oso, the God of Cocaine – Google Docs

Oso, the God of Cocaine

 

Unholy Symbol: a Grateful Dead-style dancing bear, with white paws, and white lines descending from its nose and mouth.

 

Why does he take the form of a black bear?  Because when you’re a dark theurgic engineer, you work with what you have.  If you have a bear that died from eating 40 kilos of cocaine, got stuffed, put in a museum, stolen, pawned off, bought by Waylon Jennings — hold on, it gets weirder — gifted to a friend of the guy who originally accidentally gave the bear the cocaine (not to mention posthumously, as the cocaine’s owner had ejected the cocaine just before he died in a tragic, yet somewhat satisfying, combination skydiving/drug-running incident), displayed in a Reno mansion for a decade, then sold to a Chinese-American apothecary who needed a display for his traditional medicine shop — look, you apotheosize the damned bear into the God of Cocaine, all right?  The mystical charge on this one was so strong that the woman who nominally owned the bear couldn’t stand it, and wasn’t able to throw it out.  It was almost irresponsible not to turn it into a god.

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Dug Two Graves [Unknown Armies]

Dug Two Graves [Unknown Armies] – Google Docs

Dug Two Graves [Unknown Armies]

Power: Significant

Description: A gravedigger’s shovel, old, hard-used, but still sound.  It smells faintly of sun, mud, and blood.

Effect: You activate Dug Two Graves in just the way you’d imagine: you dig two graves, complete with markers. One for you, and one for the person that you’re going to kill. Dug Two Graves won’t work if you’re not truly ready to kill somebody in particular, by the way.  You’ll know if it won’t work: more than one person who has held the artifact has dug the graves, and then discovered (usually to their secret relief) that they’re not really ready to go through with it.

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So, you know that RPG world for Patreon I’ve been thinking of for the last six months?

Yeah.  I’m delaying it at the last minute, because I had an entire new campaign world just drop into my head this morning. It’s a combination of D&D and Space Colonization: various fantasy races settling an alien world.  There will be magic, there will be active deities, and there will be technology (there just won’t be much in the way of electronics, because the industries needed haven’t been built yet). Throw in a helpful colony-wide disaster or two, and the world will be at just the right enlightened early-Renaissance level that I’ll need to sustain this.

Plus, I know just the OGL I can use to, you know, sell this puppy under. It’s time I started thinking about how to sell stuff.

Creature seed: Canursines.

[UPDATE: Today is a good day.]

Canursines – Google Docs

Canursines

(Blame Penny Arcade.)

 

Wolves. That turn into bears.  As has been said in the aftermath of many a catastrophe: “It seemed a good idea at the time.” Or “Well, the principle was sound.” That’s a popular one, too.

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Item Seed: Boozerang

Boozerang – Google Docs

Boozerang

 

A Boozerang is a magically enhanced, hollowed out boomerang (typically filled with blessed wine or beer, although any watery liquid can do in a pinch) designed to be thrown in a very tight (18 foot radius) circle, then returned to the user’s hand. Part of the enchantment enables the tight radius and return; the rest of the magic handles the controlled spray-release (as a fine mist) of the liquid inside the artifact. You do not have to be a mage to operate a Boozerang.

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Location Seed: Foster Park Gazebo.

Foster Park Gazebo – Google Docs

Foster Park Gazebo

 

The Foster Park Gazebo is located in Le Mars, Iowa; it is mundanely located in the Foster Park Historic District, and is considered to be a historical site of some local note.  Esoterically speaking, it is easily the single most occultly-charged location in the Midwest between Chicago and Rapid City, South Dakota. It’s so potent that novice spellcasters are advised to cast no spells within two hundred feet of the gazebo itself, particularly including ones involving fertility.

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Creature seed: Spikehorn Armadillos.

I saw a picture of an armadillo with longhorns somewhere on Facebook today.

Spikehorn Armadillos – Google Docs

Spikehorn Armadillos

 

When the nuclear tests of the 1950s produced giant ants, it also promptly produced creatures that could eat the giant ants.  Well, not the giant ants the size of buildings.  No, the smaller giant ants; the ones that are just the size of humans.  That’s what Spikehorn Armadillos eat.  And other giant bugs.

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Gymnaste (16/18) [GURPS 4e]

Gymnaste – Google Docs

Gymnaste (16/18)

 

This martial art clearly derives from the antics of clowns, acrobats, tumblers, and other physical entertainers.  It’s a rather showy martial art, but one that should not be discounted; in combat, a Gymnaste practitioner can thoroughly confuse an opponent simply by moving in ways that trained swordsmen find unfamiliar. And certainly anyone who is skilled in Gymnaste will have excellent hand-eye coordination, fine motor control, and a thorough familiarity with knives.

 

A cinematic Gymnaste adept will have Weapon Master, extremely high DX, and the ability to more or less turn anything into a thrown weapon.  Also: while not strictly cinematic, many mages who specialize in entertainment also learn this style.

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