Month: April 2021

Thinking Up New Mobs from Philippine Fauna

by goobernuts

I need new mobs for the old-school D&D setting I want to make based on the Precolonial Philippines. Mobs are important because they threaten normal people and tribes’ way of life, giving players and their characters a logical threat to go after. Monsters like goblins, kobolds, and orcs are a great example. They usually only have 1 hit die, but they roam around in groups. Maybe they’d have a higher ranked guy that’s harder to kill with them, but their true strength lies in their numbers. A camp of them would be a threat to villages and low leveled players, and armies of them would be a threat to anyone.

Goblins, kobolds, and orcs are so overused in fantasy, though. Imagine making a setting based on the Philippines in a time before heavy handed outside influences and using monsters from western literature. It could be symbolic, but the setting I want to make doesn’t have that kind of baggage… yet. The question is still unanswered though; what would work as mobs in the Philippines?

One of the first things I thought of was something that would threaten rice fields and farms. So insects, bugs, pests. Although, anthropomorphic insects remind me of Bug’s Life, so I would have to think of a way they would be… not that. Or make them just giant versions of their normal selves, which would probably just be a monster rather than a mob, specifically. They would be constant trouble for farmers, which would mean making magical pesticide is probably a common part of the job for the village albularyo or babaylan.

While on this stream of thought, the hateful mosquito popped in my mind. Imagine anthropomorphic mosquitoes, all tall and lanky. Horrific. What if they wielded spears? What if their attacks had a chance to infect you with a disease?

But the problem with these insects in particular is that they are not really social insects. I don’t think they’re the type to make camps and forts or populate a dungeon or cave in large numbers.

Okay, what about rodents? Rats are everywhere, and they are consistently the kind of animal you least want in your house. They are absolutely ubiquitous and some countries have such a problem with them as an invasive species that they have seasonal rat plagues. Now imagine a horde of them, 3 feet tall, wearing patchworks of armor and rudimentary weaponry. Warhammer Fantasy was right, rats are perfect as a mob.

Brown and black rats are an invasive species in the Philippines, however we do have a number of species of rats native to the islands. Them being native means we probably won’t have uncontrollable hordes of them, but I think having various tribes of ratmen pop up near human settlements is reasonable. They don’t even have to be completely bloodthirsty, humans having stocks of food to steal would probably be good enough of an incentive to attack villages.

How would villages react to this? Maybe the albularyo and babaylan has some kind of magic Racumin? Rats can be smart and wily about traps, though. Would villages have some kind of patrol every night to prevent rats from getting into their rice fields? I think that’s reasonable.

I thought about how if slaying ratmen would be a regular occurrence, what prevents villages from hunting them for food? I shot that idea down quick, though. Ratmen raiding villages for their food would make them partially dependent on human agriculture. Villages abandoning farming in favor of hunting would dwindle down the ratmen population, making it unsustainable. Ratmen would be a consequence of human progress we would have no choice but to accept.

I’d probably need look up more about the subject, but this is a good start. I hope people will enjoy this trail-of-thought kind of blog, because putting them in writing helps me unpack and organize stuff in my head. If anyone has suggestions for Philippines-flavored mobs or just any kind of monster based on our fauna, I would love to hear it.

Thousand Year Old Vampire (Recommendation + Actual Play)

by goobernuts

Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings is a beautiful but cruel game. It’s a solo RPG where you write the journal of a vampire, from before their undeath, through the twists and turns of their immortal life while resisting or indulging in the urge to feed, until their inevitable destruction. It’s a deeply emotional and personal game, and I want recommend it to anyone who’s reading this.

To give you a clear idea of how the game plays, I will start a new run of the game and inevitably get my heart broken again. Seriously, this game is excellent at doing that.

The Rules

The main elements of the game are Traits in the form of Skills, Resources, Characters, Marks, and Memories. Skills are something your vampire can do, or something like a characteristic. Resources are any asset your vampire has, which can range from, but is not limited to, a physical item, a place, or a whole institution. Characters are any mortal or immortal being that your vampire has some sort of relationship with. Marks are physical traits your vampire has developed that make it obvious they are not human.

Memories and Experiences are your main way of playing this game. Experiences are sentence-long responses to prompts that the game gives you. You group three Experiences that have some sort of connection or similarity in theme to make a Memory, organically creating story arcs.

However, your vampire can only keep 5 Memories in his mind. To make room for new Experiences, you have to erase pre-existing Memories. Your vampire then forgets these Memories, and you cannot go back to read them again. This is one of the most heartbreaking elements of the game. In my first playthrough, I tore off the pages the Memories are written on, which made the feeling worse but also enhanced the game.

Your Vampire could keep a Diary in which they can store 4 Memories they particularly don’t want to forget, but Diaries are a physical Resource that they can potentially lose.

Starting The Game

I have to think of a concept for my soon-to-be vampire. They can be from any historical time period, from any part of the globe, but I think I’m gonna start as a guy from pre-colonnial Philippines, so I will be forced to research about it.

I am Makisig, born into a tribe in a tropical island; I want to finish my apprenticeship in making tattoos despite my father’s disapproval.

It seems uncharacteristic for Makisig to call his home the Philippine islands since the Philippines doesn’t even exist at this point, so I opted for a vague answer. Let’s say he’s probably somewhere in Luzon.

Now to create three mortal Characters that Makisig is associated with before he became a vampire. Tala is Makisig’s younger sister, Datu Magtanggol is his father and chieftain of the tribe, and Malumanay is his tattoo teacher. Next is to create three resources. Makisig has a spear that he received from his dad, a balete tree some ways away from the tribe village where escapes to, and an agimat shaped like a pawikan.

I have to write three experiences, each connected to a character and a resource.

I showed Tala my home away from home; I enjoyed climbing up and down the giant trunk of the balete tree with her.

My father handed me a decorated spear when I came of age; he said no words but I know what he’s trying to say, and I don’t know if I can meet his expectations.

Malumanay gave me an agimat shaped like a pawikan; it was old and weathered but I didn’t mind accepting it.

Lastly, I have to create an immortal Character, the vampire that turns Makisig into another like them. After creating a Mark and writing an Experience about these new elements, I will now be ready to play.

I awake from my balete tree nap under Mandurukot, who has my neck in his jaws; I escaped but her venom changed my body.

Mandurukot is a wandering Aswang, which is kinda like the vampire equivalent in Philippine folklore. Let’s say he’s a village boogieman story come to life. After Makisig’s encounter with him, his body develops a Mark: A scale-like pattern across the right side of his torso which glows red with his heartbeat. He wraps a malong around his torso to hide it.

And with that, I have five Experiences that start five Memories, and the story of Makisig’s unlife begins.

Bloodied Hands

After the rules are pages and pages of prompts. I am to subtract the rolls of a d10 and d6, take the result and count from page 1 of the prompts. My d10 rolled a 4, and my d6 rolled a 6, giving me a -2. I can’t really count down from page 1, so page 1 it is.

  • In your blood-hunger you destroy someone close to you. Kill a mortal Character. Create a mortal if none are available. Take the skill Bloodthirsty

Murder, right off the bat. I’m not sure getting a skill is enough of a consolation. If I were to choose who to kill, of course I’d refrain from killing Tala and Malumanay, because they have better relations with Makisig. So I’ll leave it to the dice.

I rolled a d3 and landed on 3. Malumanay is the third Character to be introduced. Why is the world so cruel?

A hunger I can’t fathom grows within me; I only realized what quenches it when I’ve drained the life out of Malumanay.

Oh great, now I’m sad. I add Bloodthirsty to my skills, and I put this Experience under the Mandurukot Memory. I roll for another prompt. The d10 landed on 6 and the d6 on 5, meaning I advance 1 page to page 2.

  • Horrified at your new nature, you withdraw from society. Where do you hide? How do you feed? Create a stationary Resource which shelters you.

I do not want anyone else to get hurt so I retreated to the mountain of Pulag; I subsisted on the blood of the beasts there, but the same fate befalls the rare hunter or traveler.

Yes, Makisig, we don’t want Tala to die by your hands! We must protect her, even if it means drinking animal blood, Cullen-style.

I’m not sure if this Experience fits with any of Makisig’s existing Memories but I also don’t want to lose any yet, so I’ll move the Mandurukot Memory to a Diary for now. Mandurukot’s Diary is a piece of bamboo that Makisig scratches characters on with a pointed object.

It’s time to roll for another prompt. The d10 landed on 3 and the d6 on 6, giving me a difference of -3, so I go back to page 1. The second prompt on page 1 reads like this:

  • You are overcome by panic and maul someone close to you. Accidentally turning them into a monster like yourself. Convert a beloved mortal Character into an enemy immortal. Take the Skill Ashamed.

Oh no. I roll to see who my victim is, and the dice chose… Datu Magtanggol.

I preyed on another unsuspecting traveler, not knowing it was my father who was looking for me; in a panic, I turned him into one like me, and he cursed my name.

Now this dad-son drama can persist for millennia! I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. I think that’s a good place to end this session, though. I will definitely be continuing this, because wanna see where Makisig’s tragedy will go.

After-Session Stuff

Do note that for the sake of blogging and showcasing this wonderful game, I am playing Thousand Year Old Vampire wrong. Just as Makisig forgets about Memories and Experiences, I also have to let them go. But I can’t really write a coherent blog and actual-play with missing memories, so… shrug.

If you enjoyed what you read and want to play Thousand Year Old Vampire the right way, I really recommend you visit its itch.io page. It seems the author replenishes the community copies so everyone can get the game for free, which is good news to anyone who has a tight budget. If you want to buy the game and support the author, it’s only 15 dollars. Go get it and tell me about your vampires’ stories!

EDIT: Next chapter is here!

Mining For Ideas: Karanduun

by goobernuts

I want to make an old-school Dungeons and Dragons setting based on the pre-colonial Philippine islands. I have a few vague ideas but nothing concrete, so I thought I should get some reading done. So I started with Karanduun, an RPG made by our kababayan, Joaquin Kyle Saavedra (@makapatag).

Karanduun is a heroic fantasy RPG about heroes rebelling against the Holy Trinity that killed God and enslaved your people. The feel it’s going for is emulating Filipino epics and folklore. Think Biag ni Lam-ang. It is said to be inspired by a number of other RPGs, three of which I’ve read before. Those three are Dungeon World, Godbound, and The Black Hack. I felt the influence of the first two the most; Dungeon World in its rules, and Godbound in its themes and state of the setting.

Just an FYI, I own version 1.6 of the core rulebook, which might already be outdated.

The Core Rules

I want to talk a bit about the core rules, because I think it also has merit. The core of the rules is based on a dicepool. Traits are assigned a number of D6’s and actions are made by rolling the number d6’s of two appropriate Traits. For example, I would need to roll my character’s VIOLENCE and REBELLION traits to attack. A dice rolling 1-3 is a miss, while 4-6 is a hit. You take the number of hits you have and compare them to the threat level or difficulty of your action or situation. If your number of hits is less than the threat level, your action fails. If it’s equal to the threat level, you get a partial success. If it exceeds the threat level, you fully succeed.

Let’s say I’m engaged in combat with a malicious demon, the Greed Sitan. Its threat level is 3. If I add my VIOLENCE and REBELLION traits together to attack, let’s say I would have a total of 5 d6’s to roll. I rolled a 2, 6, 4, 6, and 3, meaning I have 3 hits. This is equal to the Greed Sitan’s threat level, which means my attack succeeds, but I suffer a setback of some kind. I may have left myself open to an attack or made someone else vulnerable, for example.

This system reminds me a lot of Dungeon World, down to the failures, partial successes, and full successes. The big difference is the use of a dicepool rather than Dungeon World’s 2d6, but I think having a dicepool works for systematizing epic struggles and heroics.

My complaint is that it’s hard to read the rules sometimes. I think the main reason is that it’s very heavily themed. A character’s Act (or Move) would be entitled something like “Struggle Unafraid Against God” or “Devour The Souls That Are Rightfully Yours”, which sounds metal AF, but when it’s referenced in some other part of the book, it’s hard to remember what the Act does.

Maybe I just have bad reading comprehension. The rules are filled with very cool ideas, though I most enjoyed reading about Karanduun’s setting, the Sansinukob.

The Setting And What I Can Use From It

The Sansinukob is the all of the realities, so basically a multiverse. The map provided in the game only has the Perlesensya Archipelago, the sea surrounding it, and the continent in its borders. But beyond that continent is an endless mangrove forest. It’s said that other universes can be found in this expanse. It reminded me of Godbound, where Night Roads can lead you to other worlds.

As for my world, I’m not sure if a completely open multiverse is completely appropriate. However, I love the idea of exploring a seemingly unending mangrove forest. Old-school D&D settings need some sort of megadungeon or an expansive area that characters can raid for a sure (but deadly) payday. I really like the concept of Valnwall from the Duchy of Valnwall setting (which is free on DriveThruRPG, go read it). It’s this thousand-mile-long wall with shifting interiors where you can insert a different dungeon every time your players enter.

The equivalent of that in my world could be a mangrove forest cursed with magic of the engkanto, making it ever-shifting, impossible to map, and a catalyst to a lot of weird stuff. How cool would that be?

The major antagonists in Karanduun’s setting is the Holy Trinity, which are unapologetic metaphors for the three nations that colonized the Philippines in its history. The Ysparanzan Empire, with its abusive use of religion and social castes, stands for Spain. The Gunmetal Kingdom, with its superior military technology, stands for the USA. The Kikuyurei Empire, with its undead army that follows any order from its god-king, stands for Japan. They each enslaved the Perlesensya Archipelago, installed a puppet government, and killed god, Batalang Maykapal. I feel this is also heavily influenced by Godbound, where humans raided the heavens, only to find the throne of god empty.

One of the ideas I have for my D&D setting is that it’ll slowly get invaded by fantasy analogues for our historical colonizers, and Karanduun’s concepts for them are amazing and distinct from each other. I especially love that the Kikuyurei Empire uses undead that they fully control. WW2 Japan’s fanaticism was whack. I’m definitely using these concepts, maybe with little tweaks to fit the more grounded nature of old-school D&D.

Besides these, the book also has other really good material. The history of Batalang Maykapal and his family is a fantastic myth story. Tables for adventures and encounters always appreciated by me. I also appreciate the agimat and blessing table! I adore magic items, but I wish there were more utility or tool-like magic items, rather than magic items focused on combat.

Conclusion

Aside from the comprehensiveness issue I had, my only other nitpick is that the PDF doesn’t have bookmarks for the contents, making it hard to navigate. Otherwise, I really enjoyed reading Karanduun. It might not be a rule system I’ll run anytime soon, but it got the creative juices flowing and gave me a lot of material to work with. Oh, and the art is amazing!

Check it out on itch.io, maybe you’ll be able to snag a free community copy. Better yet, buy a copy and support the writer!