Monday 26 June 2017

Shift Vampire - In Darkest Warrens


Once a Shift Vampire has sated its ravenous hunger on fey blood, it may reach Haeomozenith where its body phases through time, both past and future.

Sometimes it can be merely a day while other times it can be years - sometimes centuries. As a result older Shift Vampires may have knowledge of the world beyond their ken - knowing the future - though one that tends to shift like the mist.

Victims of this vampire find their souls lost in time - constantly flowing like a river through the ages - back and forth. Rarely a soul will fall back into its original body, which in most cases breaks the mind of that individual. In the rarest of cases these become what the Warlocks of Echontha called Sagetouched. These are said to be the wisest and most knowledgeable people of all time, but few know where they reside.

Shift Vampire 4+
Wounds: 9
Special action: After a successful melee attack, the victim must Test Brawn. If they fail, they are pinned. Future attacks the vampire makes against the victim do not require an attack roll. If the victim is an elf, they take 2 damage instead of 1.





Sunday 25 June 2017

What's next for Quill?


Quill remains one of my favourite creations in tabletop gaming, but I've not put anything out since last year. What gives?

I've been working on a cosmic horror campaign for a while, figuring out how it's going to work and what kind of experience I can give the player in a series of scenarios. I've got ideas flying around and I started writing the thing, but I wasn't quite happy with it, and when I'm not happy I tend to go back to the drawing board.

Depths of Madness will show its face, but I need to find out how to make it a better experience than just playing some scenarios. I'm playing with the idea of including puzzles and printable artefacts because at the end of the campaign you end up being left with this really cool collection of letters, photos, maps and other documents that you can store in a shoebox and come back to with fond memories. Depending on your score I want the game to reveal more clues to the story, opening up the world a bit more, rewarding savvy play.

The ultimate thing would be to release a physical boxed game full of goodies, but at the moment it's beyond my budget and I don't want the stress of running a Kickstarter.

So that's where I am. Rest assured, those waiting for more Quill will be rewarded.

Saturday 24 June 2017

Wired Neon Cities - Necrowretch


Even florescent cyber cities have graveyards, or more specifically Necrospace.

Necrospace is, in part, a sprawling mass of chalk land where the dead are put to rest, drilled out holes in the earth holding millions of capsules in turn harbouring the flesh body of the deceased.

Only the rich few get to be buried, but as with Glow City itself, there's a fine line between physical and digital. Necrospace is also the term used for the graveyard of online avatars that haunts the comms relays in physical Necrospace. Billions upon billions are digitally buried here.

But shit goes wrong.

Sometimes augmentations spring back to life, or a virus somehow crosses the boundary between the two Necrospaces, fizzing a corpse back into existence.

The warped beings that bust out of their capsules are Necrowretches - corpses kept alive by electronics. Their mind is fractured and dangerous. They feel no pain, require no sustenance and never rest.

Necrowretch 4+
Wounds 6
Special action: you activate an augmentation. Roll 1d3. Each can only be used once per day. 1) arm blades - inflict and extra wound in combat. 2) warp armour - increase wounds by 2. 3) flamethrower - you now hit on 3+ in ranged combat.

The longer the Necrowretch is in battle, the more augments it has access to. While rare, they can be devastating when unleashed into the public.

Once, before better security was added to the cyber Necrospace, a Corpsetrash virus hit, releasing more than a hundred Necrowretches simultaneously. They were eventually put down by private Pink Cat military, but not before causing a wave of death and destruction that hasn't been seen since.