PROJECT IS SAVIOUR

Camelot Cosmos: Magic & Loss

Technology as magic is hardly a new idea and it turns up all over the place one way or the other. Either with technology being as powerful as magic, indistinguishable from it or the fusion of the two.

Technology & magic are really one and the same in Camelot Cosmos but the technology such as remains, is opaque. That is, most people don’t understand how it works so to someone from the agricultural areas of a lower tech world will see no real difference between someone pointing a stick at them and chanting, or pointing a scanning device (except that one will actually work while the other simply scares them).

In many ways this is like the real world. Very few of us understand how much of the technology we use every day works and it lacks wondrous impact only because it’s so ubiquitous and familiarity breeds contempt. In Camelot Cosmos the technology is similarly ‘invisible’ but also a lot more rare. Few people have access to it, fewer people understand how it works, but it is still there, present, important and powerful. Particularly for the players.

Camelot Cosmos: An Introductory Excerpt

What is the Camelot Kosmos?

“King Gawain XXIII is a good and wise ruler, for he looks as a King should to the best examples of the past in order to guide his own actions. He knows the deeds of the Round Table better than any man living, I warrant, save the Arch-Bishop himself.”
- General Perudur Sweetwater, Camelot

The second chapter of the Player’s Book details the Camelot Cosmos. A section of space containing a collection of planets which have been very heavily influenced by the Arthurian legends of King Arthur, Merlin, Uther Pendragon, Lancelot and all the characters familiar to us from the literature of Sir Thomas Mallory and the romances of the Middle Ages. These legends have, however, been confused with real people and events in the imagined history of the setting, so that the understanding of the deeds of King Arthur held by a well-informed reader today may differ markedly from the legend as presented in the book.

Imagine a world where the loyal knights of King Gawain XXIII fight an endless battle against the android soldiers of an undying Morgan le Fay.

Imagine a world where magical Doors transport spies and armies between distant planets in the blink of an eye and where thousands of humans from a lost technological civilisation sleep in cryogenic stasis, deep beneath the surface of a green and pleasant land.

Imagine a future that sees our own time as a lost golden age, and that is slowly rebuilding human civilisation after its near extinction.

Imagine a world where monks pick through irradiated shopping centres for the secrets of the ancients, and where skill in the joust can decide a man’s social status.

Imagine Arthurian knights in space, and you have some sense of what the Camelot Kosmos is intended to be.

Within the books you will find descriptions of the various planets which exist within the Camelot Cosmos, together with all the rules necessary to play characters and run adventures in this setting. Players should note, though, that all of the information about the setting is written twice. Once, in the Players Guide, in a way that represents the common understanding of an average person living in the time of the Camelot Cosmos, and once more, in the GM’s Guide, in a way that reflects knowledge of the secrets and truths available only to those ‘in the know’. For a proper enjoyment of the setting, it is recommended that players do not read the GM’s Guide as so much enjoyment can come from the uncovering of secrets.

Camelot Cosmos: Sample Character

Characters in Camelot Cosmos can be generated randomly or by making choices. Characters are normally defined by:

A physical or psychological aspect

A racial or regional aspect

A professional aspect

There are also other aspects available for NPCs or with the GM’s discretion, villainous attributes, heroic attributes and so on.

Camelot Cosmos starts out much lower powered than normal FATE games with much more potential for character growth. Aspects start out weaker, but can become stronger over the course of play. Aspects are also much more defined, in keeping with the more rigid roles of class and societal structure in the Cosmos.

For my example character I’m going to go with the random method, because that can throw up some interesting quandaries and ideas that you have to reconcile in working out who and what this character is.

I choose a physical aspect first, I want the character to be more defined by what he does than who he ‘is’. I roll ‘Slow’ as my aspect, which can be both good and bad, but which can also be taken to mean methodical. This gives me access to the following skills: Academics, Appraise, Craft, Endurance, Resolve, Search.

I choose a racial aspect next. I want to tie into the setting closely and give my character a connection to place and people. I roll a Mordredder. Mordred is a wasteland, hellhole of a world which indicates a tough, dangerous life. Perhaps a reason for being slow and methodical? Being a Mordredder gives me access to the following skills: Alertness, Ambush, Danger Sense, Recall, Scavenge, Stealth.

Lastly I roll my professional aspect and get a Druid. That’s going to be tricky to fit with being a Mordredder but perhaps I can work something out. Being a Druid gives me access to Animal Handling, Herbs, Hunting, Stonedweller Lore, Survival and Weather Sense.

Each aspect also gives me some suggested equipment. In this case, heavy shoes, herbs and a staff, and a lucky charm to wad off evil.

I read up on the description of Mordred (the planet) and its people and jot down a description of my character ‘Knum the Wanderer’ as a tall, lanky man with large, piercing, flint-grey eyes. I ask the GM if I can have a sun hat as extra equipment, and he agrees.

I finalise the character by choosing where to spend my skill points (6 in each skill set of each Aspect) and adding a ‘phase’ description for each aspect, describing how I came to be each one.

Character:

Name: Knum the Wanderer
Concept: Wandering healer

Aspects:
A). Slow, Rank 1: “Measure twice, cut once.”
B). Mordredder, Rank 1: “Surrounded by death, I try to bring life.”
C). Druid, Rank 1: “In the harshest land, life springs anew.”

Level/Skill/Aspect
1 Academics A
2 Alertness B
- Ambush B
- Animal Handling C
- Appraise A
- Craft A
2 Danger Sense B
2 Endurance A
3 Herbs C
1 Hunting C
1 Recall B
1 Resolve A
1 Scavenge B
1 Search A
1 Stealth B
- Stndwller Lore C
1 Survival C
1 Weather Sense C

Gear:
Heavy boots, staff, herb pouch, hat, lucky charm.

Description:

Knum grew up in the harsh landscape of Mordred and around Asylum City, as an orphaned street brat. Here he learned to be careful. He was eventually taken under the wing of an off-world Druid who taught him a few things before cutting short Knum’s apprenticeship. Since them Knum has wandered the wastes around Asylum city, picking Mordred’s scant herbs and doing what he can to help Asylum city’s underclass, battered, torn, sore and abused as so many of their bodies are through indentured servitude to the dead of the world.

Imminent Release: Gosh, Spies!

Gosh, Spies! will be out tomorrow, so I thought it might be an idea to tell you what it’s about, what’s in it and why I think it’s a good buy.

Gosh, Spies! is 120 pages of information for your Agents of SWING games, expanding the scope of the game into the realms of Saturday Morning Adventure cartoons with a particular emphasis on girl’s adventures.

The book has information and ideas on running SWING games for children and particularly for girls. While the book itself is not necessarily for kids and younger teens, it should help you create and run games for them.

More generally Gosh, Spies! contains rules for creating child characters, some new child/teen oriented stunts, background for two boarding schools, information on the teen subcultures of the 60s and 70s and an introductory, Saturday Morning style adventure called ‘Field Trip’

Here’s an incomplete inspiration list:

• All New Shmoo
• Bad Machinery
• Ben Ten
• Big Six
• Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels
• Dexter’s Lab / Dial M for Monkey
• Famous Five
• Flipper
• Freakangels
• Generator Rex
• Godzilla (The animated series)
• Hardy Boys
• Johnny Test
• Jonny Quest
• Lassie
• Midwich Cuckoos
• Mystery Solving Teens
• Nancy Drew
• Red Hand Gang
• Scooby Doo
• Secret Saturdays
• Secret Seven
• Totally Spies
• Venture Brothers

Gosh, Spies! Preview – Alex the Tomboy

Alex (Member of the Prying Pentad)

Alex is thirteen years old and very much a tomboy, so much so that she often gets mistaken for a boy and that’s something that makes her enormously happy. Fierce, fiery, almost perpetually scowling Alex is – nonetheless – a loyal friend and very protective of those she cares about, especially her dog, Jimmy. Alex is very athletic and physical and cares not a jot for academics despite the scientific bent of her father.

Concept: Fierce tomboy.

“No, I’m a BOY.”
“You leave my dog alone, you prig!”
Stubborn as two mules in an argument with each other.
Terribly fierce.

+1 Cool: Alertness, Athletics, Endurance, Fists, Intimidation, Investigation, Might, Resolve, Stealth, Survival.

Boys will be Boys – You can spend a FATE point to unquestionably get away with convincing someone that something you were up to was simple, boyish hijinx.

Secret Club (Prying Pentad) – The characters with this Stunt share a special, communal pool of FATE points that any of them can tap into. Whenever a character from the team gains a FATE point they can, instead, choose to donate it to the group fund.

Physical Stress: OOOOOO
Composure Stress: OOOOOO
Social Stress: OOOOO
FATE: OOOOOOOO

Prying Pentad FATE: OOOOO

Refresh: 8

First Look: Irrepressible!

 

Cthentacle Preview: Spankham Asylum

Spankham Asylum for the Deranged sits close to the banks of the Friskatonic river, a sprawling, cancerous growth upon the side of Spankham City. The townspeople glower when they talk about that place, disapproving of their ‘modern methods’ and the ‘immoral and unnatural’ goings on beneath the eaves of that benighted institution. As one of the few places in the civilised world that still takes ‘Female Hysteria’ seriously they see a great deal of business and their researches into more… esoteric cures for that condition have lead to some strange places indeed…

Ace Slamm – Space Bastard

Nothing to do with a game, though a future release will fit nicely with the theme… still, I thought you might enjoy this art for a fiction project, made for me by Rowena Aitken.

The short story it goes with can currently be found HERE but will soon be found with the rest of my fiction writing posts HERE.

ImagiNation Preview/Discussion

So, I have a new game that uses the same system as Neverwhere. That system never really had a name but the way it works is based upon a descriptive paragraph. A character might, then, be described:

Taylor is thin and wan, she looks tired much of the time and as though she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. Quiet and thoughtful she takes her time before answering any questions or executing any plan of action. Since the loss of the mainland she’s been forced to get fit and has learned to trust her intuition. She was a professional estate agent before everything went bad but she always had a great talent for poetry.

When you come to try to do something you go up against the description of your opponent or the challenge, work out what applies and roll off against it. This works a lot like Aspects in FATE or the traits in 6D6, even though it pre-dates both and took its initial inspiration from Vampire LARP and specialities.

ImagiNation goes beyond the existing Neverwhere game by allowing characters to directly interface with the descriptive system via their special abilities. Using these powers you will be able to play directly with descriptions, add to them, remove them, change them and thus to shift the world around you.

The premise of ImagiNation is one where the barrier between reality and fantasy, the physical and the imaginary, law and chaos, order and madness has broken down. A sort of psychic, memetic virus has spread throughout the population on the British mainland and reality has warped and twisted according to the whims and imaginations of those caught up in it.

Britain has all but vanished as a nation beneath this psychic cloud (The Monad) and all that remains is an isolated and quarantined rump of the lost nation, huddled on islands surrounding the mainland, cut off from the rest of the world by aerial and naval blockade.

Only those who were already damaged or creative are immune to the psychic effects and are used to venture into the madness to try and understand it, disarm it, deal with it and find a cure, supplies, information or useful samples, or just to deal with the worst imaginings of the lost populace.

Those who are able to venture ‘safely’ into the insane wonderland are able to manipulate the plastic reality of the nation according to their artistic talent and temperament or their pre-existing insanity.

A poet, for example, might be able to exchange words in a description for ones that rhyme with them or are alliterative. An artist might be able to draw something on a wall and make it real (a door for example). Someone with a controlled level of schizophrenia might find that their voices become real and offer insight and advice that is actually useful.

On my old blog I ran a poll game called ‘Patient Zero’ and many of these ideas stem from that same thought process and set of ideas.

I’m looking forward to showing it to you, especially with Aaron’s excellent art.