How to Die in a Psionic Wasteland

Here hath the earth been raped.

It may be a world, or a country, or a strip of land. It may be far away or instead cutting through the place of your birth. Sand and stone and soured water dot the landscape; Sin-Kings and Disciples of Intellect are the ponds by which we wretched curs huddle by.

The Wasteland is BLED. That is to say, magic has stripped her of nutrients and soul alike.

The Wasteland is DRUGGED. Some force has addled the minds of many, and through them psychedelia dances 'long the burning horizon.

See it now: two women painted in ocher and red insect with one of them having neither lips nor nose while also blessed with eyes the color of the once-blue sky that lets her see water no matter how deep or far away it may be and holding a club of bronze looms over the other woman who is screaming in rage and crying for mercy and her face is caved in and her eyes are broken and leak out of her head and then she screams and screams and screams into the thoughts of this noseless woman and eats he memories so that her face rebuilds and rebuild it does as she takes the identity and personality of this now nameless creature and leaves it here on the sands drained and broken while she instead feasts over their original prize--a foot of some man who died months ago and had already been nearly picked clean.

This barbarism fills the wasteland. When asked whether one decides on civilization vs barbarism, the answer is unclear. Slavery or brutality? Whips or clubbed faces? The anger of gods or the riddles of sphinxes?

Your choice was made. You wander off into the night to see whatever City-States there are to serve, and to do as all life must do: steal to live.

PRE-GAME GENERATION

Every one, including the Referee, rolls 1d6. If you have more than 4 total people, each person additional person rolls on another table and the Referee chooses which option to go with.

WHO WE WERE

1. Slaves who toiled in dying fields and hot mines.
2. Gladiators who fought beast and man in arenas.
3. Freefolk who were abused and blackmailed by others.
4. Criminals exiled for the crimes of heresy, water addiction, and thought crime.
5. Servants of the Sin-King or Master-Disciple sent into the wasteland to find treasures.
6. Dead men brought back to life and without memory.

WHAT WE SEEK

1. Water, trees, and stones with which to defend it all.
2. A new band to join.
3. A city lost, so that you may hide from the hell around you.
4. Death at the hands of the greatest creature one could find.
5. A Master-Disciple to protect and train you in the Arts of Psychedelia.
6. The Sphinx, to solve its riddle and to become Sin-Kings yourselves.

WHAT WE LACK

1. Water & Food.
2. Weapons & Armor.
3. Basic supplies, such as cloth or flint.
4. Goods to trade with, or to barter for our lives.
5. Direction, for we are lost.
6. Health, for we are all near death; everyone starts the game at 1 HP.

WHAT WE FLEE

1. A warlord whose slave-wives we saved.
2. A Sinner whose lapis lazuli spellslab we stole.
3. A Disciple whose child-disciple we killed in order to eat.
4. A nightmare that wants our dreams and memories.
5. A mob of dying hunters whose waterskins we stole.
6. The enforcers of a Sinner-King or Master-Disciple we wounded.

Once the above is generated, do the following individually if you are a player.

1. Roll for stats. 2d6+6 down the line.
2. Choose your class. Anything that is demi-human or magic is considered a Sinner or someone possessed by nightmares.
3. Roll for your equipment 1d4+1 times.
4. Roll 1d4-1; this is how many hit points you have lost at the start of Session 1. If you all start at 1 HP, this is how many days its been since you last rested peacefully.
5. Choose your rule set, or use the micro-rules (in a blog post coming soon).

EQUIPMENT

1. Waterskin with 1d4-1 gulps of water left in it.
2. 1d4 rations.
3. Tarps and rolls of cloth.
4. Pieces of armor; AC increases by +3 and incoming damage is reduced by 1.
5. 1d6 torches.
6. Flint.
7. Half a map leading to what you seek. You have the beginning and end but not the middle.
8. Two clubs made of dead wood or ivory that deal d6 damage.
9. A handful of gemstones or a sack of gold dust.
10. The preserved brain of a Master-Disciple. Drink the fluid to be reduced to 1 hit point and to use a random psionic power.
11. The heart of a Sinner. Eat to gain 1d8 hit points or to cast 1 spell, draining 1d8 hit points from the nearest living creature in 1 mile.
12. A bow with 1d20 arrows dealing 1d8 damage.
13. Bread from a race of dead ubermen. Eat it to regain all hit points.
14. Bronze earrings that let you hear the blood flowing in the veins of living creatures within 100 feet.
15. Needle and thread and 100' of rope.
16. A single slave.
17. A tamed creature; the Referee and the player each choose one from the bestiary (coming soon) and flip a coin to see which it is.
18. Dyes and paints that can be applied 1d6 times before running out. Wearing it makes one immune to Intellect, Sin, and thirst.
19. A looking glass.
20. A sword of iron and bronze dealing 2d6 damage and that literally everyone wants.

An Essay on Race-As-Class for 5th Edition and Other Modern Games

On Race-As-Class (this is a long essay):

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TL;DR: Classes are too vague right now for Race-As-Class to work in 5E; redefining classes for humans to be about skills and races to be about inherent abilities solves this issue. READ BELOW FOR MORE.

So I been thinking on it. A lot of people ask me things like "Why can't an elf be a wizard?" or "Why can only humans be thieves?" In certain rivers of thought, these people are right, but I've been thinking back to my times before gaming, back when I was all about that fantasy lit, and it made me wonder.

In the Lord of the Rings, elves aren't wizards or sorcerers. They aren't fighters either. Magic and war come to them like breath does to a human--for them, weaving a spell is no different then us swinging a sword or talking shit. Yeah it might still take effort, but it's a virtually effortless process. Dwarves, on the otherhand, can create magical objects with no problem, but no dwarf can cast a spell--it is beyond their reckoning to do so, because as a creature they are not spellcasters.

This, I think, is the reasoning I use for Race-as-Class for being a thing. An Elf is a natural born warrior and spellcaster. A Dwarf is a naturally hardy creature with the ability to create magical objects. Thee are things that change and evolve for the individual as they grow; Legolas clearly focuses on his martial side, while someone like Galadriel is clearly spending her eons mastering her magic.

HOWEVER there is a problem with this, and that is the idea of Classes.

What a Class is, is not written in stone. For some people, classes are real things in world--people refer to others as clerics and bards and what not. To others, they're just an idea represented differently in their world, like skalds or chosen priests. The only thing these two share in common is that there is a bundle of mechanical features called a class that players can choose from. By making this separate from race, you can both create more classes, and also streamline things, making the game still have moving parts but ultimately easier to pick up and play.

This is mainly because of what the classes are. Wizard, fighter, rogue, bard, warlock--these are things that have been made universal or otherwise cobbled together just for the sake of making 5E easier to manage. This is not a bad thing; it has worked, given how popular the game is.

In order to make Race-As-Class work, the classes have to be different. There can't just be a Fighter class; the Wizard class can't be something you can multi-class into; things have to be one step more defined, and that means sacrificing a bit of the genericness in order to compensate for having Race-As-Class function.

This leaves one question unaddressed; why is there no human class? I've thought about this too, and my ultimate answer is: humans aren't special enough to have a class built around them. To be human is to be the baseline--it's where all points of reference both in game and out of game start and end. Humans aren't defined but what innate powers they can cultivate and master, but instead by what skills they can pick up. You can almost make this argument for Elves, who master many things in their near infinite lifespans, but ultimately I feel that the things Elves most focus on are the things unique to them, and the other skills (poetry, smithing, etc) aren't the same skills a human has to master (thievery, animal handling) because Elves are magical and already have these inherent abilities.

To put it another way, Elves are to thieves as humans are to pixies; they are totally different in all ways, and don't share the same mindset biologically or spiritually for there to be a cross between the two. This road goes two ways; there are things the Elf will learn that the human never will or never wanted too.

So, in modern games, I propose that for Race-As-Class to work, in the terms of the ubiquitous 5E, you have to redesign the classes from the ground up as something different. Classes for humans need to be focused on the skills they pick up; classes for races are focused on the skills they're mastering. Your Elf character, over their adventure, is mastering the magic inside of them and their own natural abilities and also learning some new things over this relatively short period of time. But for a human, for who this period of time is more significant as they are not immortal, they are trying desperately to polish their skills in order to survive and overcome the next challenge. This slight nuance creates an interesting dynamic in the party, in the roleplay it spawns, and in the mechanics themselves, and helps diversify things without adding any burdening complexity and instead creates a different type of game altogether. Maybe--I have to test it out first.

So then, how do I plan to apply this?

My goal is to make classes that work on this paradigm. 4 Race-As-Classes, 4 Human-Skill classes.

The 3 Race-As-Classes I want to explore right now are:

- Elf

- Medusa

- Tiefling

- Dwarf

There are only three Human-Skill Classes I think I need to make. The reason for this is because the ROGUE class in base 5E is probably the game's best designed class for what I want to do.

So in addition to ROGUE, I want to make:

- Warlord

- Witch

- Narcosa

A lot of this I already put a lot of work into; my Warlord, I think, is done and relatively balanced, and my Witch and Narcosa are written and in need of playtesting. The race-as-classes I haven't touched.

In theory, if this works, I'll probably just make like a 5.5E or something in the way I envision it. But if it doesn't, either because I fail as a game designer or because no one wants to play this, well at least I learned a lot from it.

Thus, Race-As-Class.

Cursed-Gods are Demons in Revelations of the Mononoke-Hime

All stories start with a demon.

Perhaps it raged its way East until it found you, and you bear the curse of its touch.

Or maybe you were the one who wounded this god, turned it into one of rage and hate.

Still yet, it could be a passing thing--you meet a stranger whose encountered this wretched thing, and now your fates are linked.

All stories start with a demon, and all demons are the same.

When a god is scorned and hated...

When a god refuses to die...

When a god is poisoned by sin...

When a god eats the flesh of man...

These were the old ways a demon could be born. But now, with iron balls and explosive mines, the fear and pain the gods feel as they are driven out of their forests hits a crescendo evilly unmatched. Their blood steams and turns viscous and takes on a life of its own. Hot worms burn out of their flesh. Death possesses the ground they touch and a second time must they be killed lest they rage forever.

When creating a demon, roll 5d10 and refer to the Kami-God generators. Then, roll a 6th d10 to determine what it hates.

CURSED-GOD DEMONS

HD: 20

AC: As unarmored

SPEED: x4 Human

MORALE: 12

ATTACK: Demon Worms +10 to hit ranged 300' for 2d6 damage

SPECIAL:

• Any creature touching the demon must make a Save vs Magic or become attached to the demon. A third-party is required to find and pull the creature off.
• Any creature specifically attacked by the demon is cursed if it takes damage.
• The demon takes the maximum amount of damage possible whenever it suffers damage from any source.
• For every 5 hit points the demon loses, it gains an additional Demon Worms attack.
• The first round a demon stands in open sunlight it is paralyzed until its next turn.
• Any plant life the demon touches dies instantly; any stone the demon touches is broken.
• The Demon has no Harmony and maximum Ambition. Should it ever gain a single point of Harmony, it will die.

Hatred

This is what drives the demon to curse the world.

1. Its clan has been decimated, yet it has survived to bring its brothers back from the dead.
2. It failed its role, and now wishes to flee its shame.
3. The Great Forest Spirit denied it healing, and now it seeks to consume it whole.
4. Humans have poisoned it and the forest and now it will poison them.
5. Someone has killed it in battle and the hatred for that someone has driven it into curses.
6. A loved one became a demon and passed its hatred on to this Cursed-God.
7. Upon devouring humans, it grew to hate itself, and is now a demon.
8. A large part of the forest has been destroyed; it will destroy the rest, as if to prove a point.
9. Humans have murdered many clans. The demon hates its own weakness and seeks death.
10. Feeling wronged by other Kami-Gods, the Cursed-God seeks to prove their foolishness.

Kami-Gods in Revelations of the Mononoke-HIme

Previously...

• Project Introduction
• Great Forest Spirit Generator
• Curses/Curse Mechanics
• Harmony/Ambition Alignment System

Ancient are the gods, but immortal they are not.

All beasts descend from them. If these beasts have neither Forest Spirit or god to guide them they become small and stupid. A beast cursed in this way has neither ambition nor harmony; it is a slathering creature to be treated as game and nothing else.

Gods, though, gods are something different. Their voices are echoed by some primeval soul and wisdom greater than any monk or nun guides their hunts. They can speak in your language and theirs; they can read and they can mark but neither will they do for they are not human.

Below is the generic stat block for a Kami-God in your OSR-adjacent games. Grab 5d10, roll them, and then reference the tables below the stat block for your personal god.

KAMI-GODS

People love this Mononoke pose.

HD: 5 (if young) ; 10 (if matured) ; 20 (if clan-leader)

AC: As chain ; as chain + shield ; as plate + shield (natural hides)

SPEED: x2 Human ; x4 human ; x6 human

MORALE: 8 ; 10 ; 12

ATTACK: Method decided by clan, but: d4/d4/d6 ; d4/d4/d10 ; d8/d8/2d6

SPECIAL:

• Kami-Gods with 20 HD can regain 1 hit point at any point after they've died. That hit point disappears the moment they've made a successful attack against another creature.
• Any beasts within 50 miles of the Kami-God belonging to their clan gain intelligence equal to humans, +2 HD, and +2 to their AC. This effect reverses over the course of a year if the Kami-God dies.
• A Kami-God whose Ambition grows to double their Harmony turns into a Demon.
• When a rifleball is lodged into a Kami-God, it deals 1d20 points of damage to it at the beginning of every day. The Kami-God cannot regain hit points while the rifleball is inside of them.
• Kami-Gods can summon 1d4+1 members of their clan. It takes 1d4 rounds for their clan members to reach them.
• Kami-Gods can speak with all manners of beasts, with forests, and with curses.

GENERATORS

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Beastial Clan

Determines the shape, method of attack, and beast associated.

1. Wolf (pounce/claw/bite)
2. Boar (charge/hoof/tusk)
3. Ape (rocks, debris, consume)
4. Owl (talon/talon/talon)
5. Deer (horn/horn/hoof)
6. Salamander (bite/hand/tail)
7. Lion-dog (bite/claw/flame)
8. White snake (bite/poison/constrict)
9. Butterfly (pollen/acid/drink)
10. Dragon (bite/tail/breath)

Wisdom

Something mystic the Kami-God knows. Roll +1 times for every tier above young.

1. How to purge curses.
2. Where to find healing springs.
3. How to kill after death.
4. How to prevent one's self from becoming a demon.
5. War, and how to wage it.
6. How to consume human flesh to become a demon.
7. How to raise Mononoke-Hime.
8. What the weather will be within the day.
9. The intentions of any human smelled.
10. Of traps, and how to break them.

Ambition

The Kami-God's ambition.

1. To drive humans out of the forest.
2. To get revenge on humans for killing a fellow god.
3. To punish the humans for taking from the forest.
4. To convince the gods to leave, so that they do not become demons.
5. To ensure that their children live.
6. To ensure that their children do not become small and stupid.
7. To replant the forest destroyed by humans.
8. To become the Great Forest Spirit.
9. To kill someone or something in particular.
10. To die before the humans burn everything.

Role

The role the Kami-God plays in their forest.

1. Sword of the Great Forest Spirit.
2. Protector of the Great Forest Spirit.
3. Foreigner god looking for war.
4. The planting of trees and flowers.
5. Protection of the smaller spirits, such as the Kodama.
6. To lead those strong in Harmony through the forest.
7. To kill trespassers in the forest.
8. Prevent the forest from being destroyed.
9. Kill demons that manifest inside the forest.
10. Roleless--lost, confused, possessed by ambition.

Additional Bonuses

Roll the last d10. Add that number either to its raw hit points, AC, or it becomes a 4th attack for the Kami-God.