In the Mail: THE BORELLUS CONNECTION (THE FALL OF DELTA GREEN)

I had forgotten that I had ordered THE BORELLUS CONNECTION, honestly. It’s a linked set of eight adventures for the THE FALL OF DELTA GREEN RPG. Also, it is pretty, it is big, and it is based around THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD. Note the authors, in fact: Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Kenneth Hite. So you know it’s gonna be good…

Anyway, check it out.

#commissionearned

The D6 System: Second Edition Kickstarter.

If you played West End Games’ D6 games at all, back in the day, Gallant Knight Games is bringing it back in the D6 System: Second Edition Kickstarter. Checked with the publishers: they don’t use AI, and haven’t finalized a printer location yet. However, digital fulfilment is definitely going to be through DriveThruRPG, and a PoD option will be available there as well. That satisfies my ethical concerns enough to recommend and digitally back the project*. I have still recommended to the company that they avoid using the PRC for this one. Or, you know, ever.

*It’s impossible to avoid PRC-made goods in this country entirely, unfortunately. So if I at least have the option to avoid it, I’ll take it. We live in an imperfect universe, alas.

The SPIRIT OF ’77 Bundle of Holding.

I meant to put up something about SPIRIT OF ’77 earlier this evening, but while trying to find out more about it, I ended up looking at a TV Tropes article. …You pretty much can guess what happened then, huh? Anyway, this game looks like it’s going down the same route as DAMNATION DECADE: to wit, 1970s roleplaying, but with more 1970s funky TV and fewer disaster flicks. It’s also a Powered by the Apocalypse game, so your mileage will vary.

Still, there’s a lot of stuff to mine from the 1970s, game-wise. Still trying to decide whether to pick up this particular Bundle of Holding, though. I don’t play the games I already have.

#commissionearned

A reminder: you should not buy books with AI-generated covers.

Whether they be fiction books, or TTRPG supplements. You should be particularly disinclined to do that if they are not forthright about using AI prompts. Those people know perfectly well what they are doing.

No names because I don’t have confirmation. But if my suspicions are correct, then I am profoundly disappointed in the company in question. And it will certainly be a consideration when it comes to my future purchases.

In the Mail: GURPS Meta-Tech (plus added temptation).

GURPS Meta-Tech is in itself a handy little guide for turning Advantages into equipment that player-characters could buy with in-game money – and either that’s incomprehensible to you, or tickling the gearhead section of your brain. Sorry about that if the former. Anyway, Christopher Rice is an all right dude and he probably wouldn’t mind a few sales, so knock yourself out.

That’s what I got in the mail.

Continue reading In the Mail: GURPS Meta-Tech (plus added temptation).

Typhoid Paradox [TimeWatch]

Yup, more Timewatch.

Typhoid Paradox
(This writeup is meant for use with the TimeWatch RPG.)

Some entities (and some objects) have a parasitic relationship with time. They are known as Typhoid Paradoxes, and they typically form when a person or item is present at both a radical change to the timestream, and its equally-radical change back. ‘Radical’ in this case means ‘something that TimeWatch has to drop everything to fix, right now,’ not ‘the wrong country won the war’ or even ‘a mutant form of smallpox just wiped out Eurasia.’ Anything that threatens the ability of TimeWatch itself to function (or exist) would qualify. 

Thankfully, the above means that the conditions to create a Typhoid Paradox are rare. And even then, most of the time nothing happens. But every so often someone or something gets temporally permanently warped. Typhoid Paradoxes who can talk about the experience have reported that the warping feels like their skin is slightly but perpetually covered in goosebumps, and all Typhoid Paradoxes are slightly warmer to the touch than expected.

Those are just symptoms, though. The problem is that Typhoid Paradoxes drain Chronal Stability all around them, constantly, and reflexively. In game terms: even at rest, all Paradox tests for those around them are at +1 to Difficulty, including Travel tests. Typhoid Paradoxes can also spend a point of Tempus to increase the Difficulty of a test by another +1. For every six points of Chronal Stability lost that way, the Typhoid Paradox increases her Tempus pool by 1.

TimeWatch actually does not attack Typhoid Paradoxes on sight, as they are extremely annoying to fight at best, and fairly dangerous at worst. The conditions that create them do not appear to also cause emotional instability, which means that some Typhoid Paradoxes can be bribed, persuaded, or reasoned with. 

And some cannot.

Defense: Hit threshold 4, Armor 1 (Paradox), Health 8
Offense: Scuffling +1, Shooting +1, Damage Modifier +0
Abilities: Tempus 20
Special Abilities: Awareness, Chronal Drain, Destabilize, Embrace Instability, Help Yourself, Restabilize
Misc: Alertness Modifier +2, Stealth Modifier +2

The Great Syndicate [Timewatch], Part 1.

Something that I’m working on.

The Great Syndicate [Timewatch]
(This writeup is meant for use with the TimeWatch RPG.)

Strictly speaking, it should be ‘Il Grande Sindacato,’ since that’s what its members call themselves. The Great Syndicate particularly loathes both English and English-speakers, and particularly resents being referred to using that language. Which is why TimeWatch keeps doing it. The war between the two groups may be relatively minor (despite the Syndicate’s best efforts), but it’s exceedingly nasty. Using deliberately inflammatory names are among the least objectionable things that happen during it.

Origins: The Great Syndicate is a product of the main timeline, unfortunately. Time travel research in Fascist Italy was pseudoscientific, even by the flexible standards of totalitarian regimes, and never received more than the most cursory amounts of patronage and support. Unfortunately, even the smallest amounts of money can be useful if the theory was sound, and the theory that Professore Gianmarco Francone came up with was particularly sound. On his own, Francone developed a functional, if primitive version of an autochron in September of 1943… just in time for the Allied invasion of Italy.

The lessons Francone and his cronies learned in their doomed attempt to fight that invasion have informed the Great Syndicate’s thinking ever since. Francone was an absolutely committed Fascist who loathed the Nazi regime for their bizarre Teutonic race-superstitions (and their ancestors’ invasions of the Roman Empire). Accordingly, he recruited solely from other Italian fascist groups, trying at first to reverse battles on the tactical level by putting the right person in the right place at the right time. 

He soon discovered that the flow of time was hard to divert, and harder to keep diverted. His autochrons were also short-ranged in both space, and time. The first generation of them could manage, at best, a day in time, and twenty kilometers in space, and did not have elaborate safety interlocks to avoid jumps into solid objects. While disasters coming from those could be rewritten after the fact, in the long run Francone’s interventions had no appreciable effect on the invasion. Interestingly, that also saved his nascent organization from getting Timewatch’s attention. World War II is a popular destination for time travelers, most of whom had better gear than the Syndicate’s, and more extravagant goals. 

Francone did not succeed in stopping the Allied invasion, but the eight months he spent frantically trying allowed him to rapidly develop the autochrons into something like state of the art, mature gear. The struggle also taught the Syndicate to be patient, which was probably a more unfortunate lesson. The organization eventually abandoned the twentieth century entirely, deciding to recreate itself as a cell structure, scattered throughout history. 

Their goal? Well, obviously the greatest empire in history was Rome’s. The true one, the one centered on the Eternal City herself. With enough heroic labor and direct action, Rome could be made even stronger yet… and never, ever fall at all. But there is a decadent and effete group opposing them. It is more powerful, for now, so the Great Syndicate must be careful, and insinuate itself in history, gaining power and influence for the day of the General Strike. With supreme Will and sheer Spirit they will seize Destiny, and create the perfect State in a lightning-flash of Glory.

At least, that’s the plan. Implementing it is proving more difficult. The Great Syndicate spends most of its time hiding from Timewatch, encouraging bad economic policy, and being generally nasty to the local poor and downtrodden. Unfortunately, that last part is par for the course for most of recorded history, so it’s hard for outside observers to notice that there’s anything ‘wrong.’

Purchased: GURPS Meta-Tech.

GURPS Meta-Tech is… honestly, it’s pretty hardcore gearhead. It’s a GM tool, not a worldbook or adventure. Still, Christopher is an all right dude, and… despite what feels like SJG’s best efforts sometimes, I’m still a gearhead GURPSer at heart. Check it out.

I’m thinking about what to do with the world book GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND is based off of.

This is not a 2024 project; for that matter, it’s not likely to be a 2025 project, unless the cash flow increases around here. But GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND is based off of my Unfiltered setting, and I could do something with it. Specifically, I could easily adapt it to the GUMSHOE ASHEN STARS system, which is pretty much the game system I had in the back of my head to begin with. I’d split any revenues with Pelgrane, under their Community Content program, but that’s not actually a hardship.

Hrm. It might not actually cost that much to do. Will have to think about it more.

#commissionearned