Crappy World of Xoth Character Sheet

An idle scribble. I will post it on the Summonings page for those who like it ragged.

BRP World of Xoth

If I ever run another group of PC's through a Sword & Sorcery campaign I think I'm going to go with Chaosium's Elric!. I'm sure I would modify it with mechanics from the BRP Gold Book, mostly with defining the magic system, but for the rest of it; gritty combat, incredible stunts, fearless dimension hopping, etc., I think the rules set gets the job done.

I could recycle my World of Xoth campaign material for any Heavy Metal minded troop of PC's who want to turn their sword swinging savagery up to eleven. The flexibility of Chaosium's mechanics makes it possible to craft your own brand of Sword & Sorcery. You really can conjure any world of post-apocalyptic or pre-cataclysmic savagery and super science your imagination can devise.

Sailing Vessels for USR

For sailing vessels commonly found during the age of Sword & Sorcery pulp fiction adventures I have turned to Elric!'s Sailing on the Seas of Fate supplement from Chaosium for basic seafaring statistics.


There is a nice spread of different types of sailing vessels to be found in its pages; from simple canoe to two-masted brigs and war galleys. It also provides a nice guide of terminology you will find when describing characteristics of sailing vessels.

Having a ready made terminology for adjudicating sea adventures I find immensely useful when I'm trying to provide a nautical setting, and Chaosium does provide enough of this bedrock information.

The book is also useful for providing basic answers to everyday mechanical questions one would encounter plying your fantasy seas regardless of the game system to be used. The most important of these being movement speeds.

One topic the book does not cover are costs of purchasing and maintaining a sailing vessel ins a fantasy world. A sailing vessel naturally occurs as a likely resource sink for adventurers who have looted their fair share of moldering crypts. That and land holdings, estates would likely come up as possible uses for the PC's ill-gotten gains. Mercenary forces too. With enough gold any barbarian dog can put together a band of desperate sell swords, but how much gold is that really? How do you come up with a sensible economic scale for these above mentioned enterprises?

I'm not saying the Elric! supplement should have addressed all these topics, but if you have costs on ships and what it takes in men and material to maintain them on a monthly basis you should be able to extrapolate out all these other concerns for your campaign world.

In the spirit of the USR rules set I have had to approach the Chaosium BRP system with an eye towards stripping game elements and mechanics to a minimum. Seaworthiness, Hull Quality, Structure Points, these all become your USR Hits, Armor, Stats... Specialisms can be used to detail characteristics to differentiate say a war ship from a merchant cog. For example;

The Moebius; a Ghazorian merchant cog, 15 crew members.
Hull Quality: 4         Length: 70'   Beam: 18'  Draft: 7'
Seaworthiness: 22

The Sailing on the Seas of Fate descriptions and uses of the few game statistics for the boat are easily understood, and can be taken out and used on their own in most fantasy settings. The Sailing on the Seas of Fate ship record sheet provides a great compass heading for "stat'ing" up a sailing vessel in USR game terms and can be adequately shoehorned into USR's simple format.

From my experience with D&D, Champions, GURPS, BRP, etc. vehicles in general become overly complex character sheets and their utility gets buried under the time heavy bookkeeping and cost calculating. For both the player and the GM. And vehicles in a campaign world, at some level become a commodity and therefore must be able to generated in large numbers.Through USR I am trying to reduce the paperwork so everyone can spend more time courting adventurous death. Unless your players want a crunchy sea battle. I think these rules can be used with battle maps and detailed turn sequences if everyone wants to game out a tactical simulation.

I found Zach S.'s Wavecrawl Kit a useful tool as well for random encounters at sea. Combined with the Sailing on the Seas of Fate event tables I have plenty of material to game out fantastic Sword & Sorcery sailing adventures. If the supplementary rules I'm hacking into my Sword & Sorcery game are lacking in any area I would say I don't have rules for flying creatures and vehicles. At some point I will search the web for useful rules to hack and add them in.

Pulp PDF's

This seems to be a site where you can download a pdf of old pulp magazines available in the public domain.

This type of original source material should be of keen interest to the harried Game Master desperate for plot hooks, npc's, adventure seeds, world info, items, etc.

Thanks to +Rob Garitta for pointing this site out.

Cracking the Nut

How do you all handle NPC actions in a "hotbed of political intrigue" interactions with the PC's? Do you heavily script the encounter, randomly roll, or rely on tables? How about the ever cascading complications from the PC's actions and gauging NPC's reactions? Specifically any behind the scenes info that the PC's would not be aware of? 

While in an average dungeon crawl monsters are prepared to act in rather well defined roles in the immediate tactical situation, providing a dynamic stage within the greater "world",and when to present antagonistic forces full on into the faces of the PC's  and make it a believable, logical  occurrence... I've always found a challenge. 

The old addage "if it makes for a better story, just do it" makes me feel good all over, it isn't the fine grain detail of some type of "method" I seem to be fumbling for.

Lately I rely on random tables for immediate, in game encounters than ruminate endlessly in between game dates on what to do with the situation. 

Seduction, Wagering and Drinking: more than reaction rolls

The following are suggest steps for resolving all three of the different game activities with the USR game system, it should point the CK in the right direction for adventure excitement.

The character makes a contested attribute roll against the people involved.

Relevant situational modifiers and specialism bonuses are factored. Critical success and fumbles are in effect.

The CK adjudicates what a win and a loss looks like.

The CK decides how many checks should be made but the idea is to focus on describing the results of a die roll, not to roll many dice.

Usually no more than two or three attempts at an individual contest can be attempted.

Seduction Example;

The seducer and the victim roll a contested attribute roll against Ego to find out if the victim resists the seduction. The unwilling victim and the seducer can modify their roll with apt Specialism, such as Diplomacy, Seduction, Charm, Court Etiquette, etc. If the victim fails to beat the seducer’s roll, the seducer is doing well and may continue. Otherwise, the victim realizes what’s going on.  Willing participants need not make checks to resist a seduction attempt, but simply give in to their aggressor's advances.

If the victim’s roll succeeds, it means that they realizes what is going on and lose interest, become angry, find amusement in the seducer’s efforts, etc.

The seducer can try again, but must subtract 2 from their roll each time the victim beats their roll. 

This penalty is cumulative, with a duration of 24 hours.                

USR Gunslinger Character Sheet

I've gone and made up a character sheet for USR Gunslinger with the idea of writing up a rules hack of TSR's Boot Hill. I've posted it to my Summonings page here at The Vanishing Tower.

So this means I will actually have to write up these rules some time soon or I'll just have characters running around with no rules to govern their behavior. Now that sounds like the Wild West...

USR Sword & Sorcery Play Aids

The Summonings page now has links to download your USR Sword & Sorcery Character Sheet, and USR Sword & Sorcery Campaign Notepad pages... sweet!

LotFP Language Rules for USR Sword & Sorcery

My players came upon a book, and, after a year of play, for the first time I had to know if any these motley louts could read. True to their sword and sorcery roots these adventuring heroes have yet to approach any task without crushing blows, and flashing blades. Illiteracy among them all was a real possibility, so I ruled that none of them could read. But that didn't feel complete. I mean, what is the chance that they are all illiterate?


I needed a mechanism to decide an unknown question such as this and James Raggi's LotFP rules for language is the only one which ever struck me as a functional, in-game method for literacy and language questions. So the following is how I've hacked them to suit my USR Sword & Sorcery game.

Language Rules for USR Sword & Sorcery

Most PCs are assumed to begin play being fully fluent in their native tongue.

They are literate as well if they can pass a 6+ difficulty roll against their Wits.

Any specialism which can modify the results, good or bad, should be applied. Any specialism which implies literacy (scribe for example) would confer automatic literacy in the PC's native language. Any other modifier the CK wishes to impose can be added to this initial literacy roll.

When a PC comes into contact with another language their chance of speaking the language is determined by passing a 6+ difficulty roll against their Wits. Did they make it? If they did then you need to determine if they are literate too. Make another Wits roll against a 7+ difficulty.

To learn an unknown language takes six months of full immersion, fluent in two years. A language can be taught by a tutor, but that takes two years of at least five lessons a week (at 3sp a lesson) to become comfortably conversant, and fluency does not come until being immersed in the language.

USR Sword & Sorcery Critical Hits and Dramatic Fumbles

+James Young wrote up a great Critical Hit and Fumble table for his LotFP game and I have adapted it for my USR game.

While most games, including USR, structure combat around an attacker and a defender, I've taken the plunge with simultaneous action in combat. This means any critical hit or fumble mechanic which catches my fancy will have to be modified to account for any one of the combat participants receiving an extraordinary result based on both participants roll.

Also, each actor in the drama does not necessarily use the same dice so I have to consider how to determine critical and fumble results which account for this variable as well. For the raw mechanic I considered how Chaosium's Elric (as well as their BRP system) handled criticals and fumbles. But I don't have the luxury of a generous d100 point spread to move around in and I was concerned that, with combat dice ranging from d4 to d10, a natural 1 is going to come up more often than I or my players are going to want.

Here is how I structured the mechanic; If you roll a natural  1 or natural  high #, you compare against opponents roll. If your opponent has also rolled a natural 1 or natural high # it is time to check for Critical Hits and Dramatic Fumbles.

Here is the link to the Crypt Keeper's Screen where the current Critical Hit and Fumble Tables can be found.

For hit location just use your favorite chart. I'm using my hit location chart from Chaosium's BRP system, but really any one will do. I think FGU's Aftermath has several which covers humanoids and animals large and small, for example.

All my rules for the game so far can be found on the Summoning page of my blog.

Hard scrabble Times in the Zorab Mountains

My players have made their way from the harsh ranges and stony adventures against bestial hillmen of the Zorab Mountains to once again retire among the wine shops and money lenders in the city of the Grand Inquisitor, Dipur.

They left behind in the flinty peaks high hopes of renown, valor, treasure, a hireling and not much of a pay day. They also left behind a dead, corrupt Count of Castle Highfrost, but instead of glory have been painted with the traitor's brush.

And now I have to get all the prep done for a wide open, sandbox style sword and sorcery opportunity in a sprawling city for tomorrow night. I'm putting on a pot o coffee, pulling out my Conan paperbacks and listening to some Black Mountain.

Anyone is also encouraged to throw me some ideas on generating a pile of adventure hooks and adventure seeds to send these scurrilous heroes into the mouth of hell!

S&S in the World of Xoth

My USR Sword & Sorcery campaign soldiers on and I now have enough game material cobbled together to post them here. Since many of the tools I used are not my own this post serves to recognize the authors of the material I use for my

Campaign Resources;

U.S.R (Unbelievably Simple Roleplaying) is Scott Malthouse's rules lite game mechanics. It is what my game rules are based on. I have just taken Scott's text and hacked it to my tastes.

Character Background's have been lifted from the Elric! rulebook from Chaosium. Same for the basic equipment table.

Campaign Background is from this guy Thulsa who created his own Sword & Sorcery setting he calls the world of Xoth.

Ben Ball's Random Sword & Sorcery Adventure Generator for use with Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea is something I also rely on to populate the land with adventure seeds.

The USR character record sheet is by Charlie Warren of The Semi-retired Gamer blog.

Another foray into the world of Sword & Sorcery

The Hunter, Blacksmith, and Man-Servant were joined by a hard scrabble Farmer of the Zorab mountains to try and finish off exploring the tomb of Rakoss the Undying.

First they had to try and heal up from their current wounds which put them short of rations to last the week. If there is one condition which cannot be overlooked in the gritty world of Sword and Sorcery is where your food, wine, and water is to come from. The heroes of pulp literature were always on the edge of thirst from trekking across endless wastes, or being nailed to a tree, or left to rot in some subterranean dungeon.

With the hills teeming with degenerate hill-men a confrontation is most assured. As far as game to be had, well, the party does consist of a hunter so bagging a mountain goat was assured also. The hunter and the farmer survived their encounter with the three hill-men on the narrow mountain trail and returned to their encampment with meat enough to last a many day.

The tomb itself was clear of overtly malignant forces outside of acid dripping giant ants. The Farmer had purchased a jar of honey during his initial character creation, and he was wise enough to use it in a simple plan to neutralize the animal threat. Unfortunately once again an encounter with the ants left a party member grievously wounded. In this instance, the Blacksmith. Undeterred they proceeded to loot the sarcophagi found in what appeared to be the final resting place of Rakoss, and his lieutenants. The players may have been surprised the mummified remains did not rise to choke the life out of those who defiled them, but they stuffed their bags with their loot, and made all speed back to the city of Dipur.

Concluding their business with Avant the Failed, the party searched out a merchant who would be interested in gems and jewelry from a long dead necromancer. An exchange which Avant warned them to be careful about. The Grand Inquisitor's men would look dimly on items tainted with dark history to be openly traded in the markets of Dipur. But of course such a merchant was found, and after trading the smaller trinkets for more gold then they had ever seen the party revealed the most mysterious object in their possession. This was an artifact of significant blasphemous origins. So much so that the merchant refused to trade with the party then and there. No, the transaction must be concluded in utmost secrecy, discrete arrangements must surely be made. The merchant assured the party he would call for them in a few days time when all such arrangements had been secured.

This left the party free to commence a classic debauch, and banter about future tasks and adventures in which they could involve themselves. The Blacksmith desired to purchase his trade shop back from the corrupt tax collector, while the Farmer mused about assembling a mercenary force or perhaps purchasing a high commission with the Grand Inquisitor's guards. The Hunter, well, he was satisfied with endless wine, wenches, and joints of meat. I decided this traditional approach was well worth an immediate health bump for they all still had wounds from their previous adventure.

I was also determined to start applying the pace of sword and sorcery adventure. The simple elements which keep the players on the go. When it came time to pay for the nights romp in the wine shop one of the player's fat coin purse came up empty. The swarthy gentleman who had purloined it was sauntering out the door pleased with his luck. Of course the players had to pursue. Of course they were to lose the thief in the twisted warrens of the cities slums, and of course horrible screams would lead them to the thief, now dead and absent the fat money purse. A passing sergeant of the guard advised the party to consider the money as good as gone for it was obvious mad cultists had done the poor wretch in. They were in front of the Shrine of the Seekers, and the open gate before them told the tale plainly to the drunken sergeant. Leave it be he spoke once again as he hurried on to safer parts of the city.

While the Farmer and the Blacksmith debated the wisdom of penetrating the evil shrine in the dead of night, the Hunter was obviously wise to the cannon and declared his intent to win back his gold, and win it before the morning sun gilded the spires of the Grand Inquisitor's city! So onward and inward they went...

USR Sword & Sorcery After Action Report

I DM'ed my second game in over twenty years via Google+ Hangouts. It was a Sword & Sorcery game using Scott Malthouse's USR rpg rules. True to all rules-lite systems, the DM is required to embellish the sparse rules with the flavor of the genre you wish to play. For my game I modified character creation by limiting players to human characters. They cannot start with magic capabilities, though this may be acquired through game play. Random rolls on a background table are also required, but the players are free to choose the arrangement of their attribute dice, and their three specialisms. My two players ended up with a Hunter/Hunting Site, and Craftsman(Blacksmith)/Poverty. I encourage the players to embellish these sketchy details, and come up for a reason they find themselves together in the desert city of Dipur mingling with the wine sellers, lotus peddlers, dancing girls, and thieves which are found in the busy South Bazaar. To explain the Blacksmith's poverty the player stated he once had a blacksmith shop in the city, but his competitor had run him out of business by bribing the tax collector to close him down. The Hunter was coming from his prized hunting site in the Zorab mountains with a mountain lion skin to trade for silver. The Blacksmith is a friend who he usually visits to have his hand axes sharpened. 

The story hook revolved around a cairn the Hunter had discovered near his hunting site. Wrought with undecipherable glyphs, the Hunter hopes the Blacksmith knows someone in the city who could explain these strange signs. Of course a city dweller such as the Blacksmith would know that Avant the Failed, an aged scholar, might be able to shed light on such archaic symbols. Another story hook I floated was that the Game Master of the gladiator arenas was paying a princeley sum for exotic animals from the "Spires" found northwest of the city deep in the unholy Ash Plains. I was prepared to pepper the group with other prepared rumors, and story hooks if they spent more time in the city, but they were happy with the scholar's grim tale of Rakoss the Undying, and his supposed tomb sealed and forgotten in the Zorab Mts. Could this cairn with the long ago defeated necromantic lord's symbol indicate the location of this tomb? The aged scholar was most anxious to confirm such a discovery. Such a historical discovery would revive his dim reputation among his peers. The party negotiates for additional muscle, some expedition supplies, and strike a deal; treasure and loot for the players, relics which prove the place is the last resting place of Rakoss for the scholar.

In the morning the party heads due east towards the towering mountains with Gomar the man-servant, and a compliant donkey loaded with supplies in tow. The trek is not uneventful. A wandering monster check brings the degenerate hill men of Zorab down upon them in the night. Since this is the first combat I had run in a dogs age I only sent three of these desperate savages at them. The man-servant was grievously wounded while the ax wielding Hunter chopped all in front of him down. He chased down the last fleeing hill man, and split his skull with ease. In the morning the small group pushes on to the Hunter's prized hunting site to rest, and heal.

Inspection of the weird cairn by Avant's man-servant suggests that the writings are a warning, and indicate the location of the tomb is due east against the towering walls of the mountains a short distance away. After hours of exploration the Hunter locates a narrow ravine which opens up into a large chamber, and behold, at the end of the chamber is a large sturdy door! While the door is locked with no visible means of opening it does help to have a Blacksmith, and a donkey in your group. It takes some time, but the group is able to pry the door open enough to slide on in. 

So far the party has survived the initial horrors found within, but they have just scratched the surface. What terrors lay withing the unexplored chambers, well, we shall see!

USR Hard Boiled Combat System...

For all your Two Fisted combat needs!

Combat Turn Order; 

1. Declare Intent.
2. Roll for Initiative.
3. Resolve declared intent in order of initiative.


1. Declare Intent: Here all players get an opportunity tell the GM what they plan on doing for the upcoming Combat Turn. If someone declines to declare their intent, that is fine. The only penalty for not declaring intent in this phase is the GM may rule your intended action a failure for various reasons, such as the influence of other actions which have already occurred in the combat turn.

2. Roll for Initiative: This will most likely be every one's Action die. The combat turn is resolved one player at a time in order of initiative score from highest to lowest. For such Ego based powers such as psionics, magic, etc. an Ego die may be asked for to resolve the players initiative score. The player whose turn it is is the attacker.

3. Resolve declared intent in order of initiative: Moving, Attacking, and Other Activities are the three broad categories PC's will find themselves involved in on any given combat turn. Usually moving in for an attack, or moving in an attempt to defend, or moving to escape confrontation are routine examples players can expect to see in any given encounter. How are you going to resolve all this shit? 

With USR, Scott Malthouse's free rules-lite RPG,  it comes down to an Attribute die roll with all modifiers factored in and affecting the final total to resolve all actions. 

Melee attacks, and other activities pitting the PC against any active agent (pirates, robots, apes, etc.) are Contested Attribute rolls. The attacker totals all specialism bonuses, and any situational modifiers. Likewise the defender does the same. Both attacker and defender roll their attribute die, and the defender's combat total is subtracted from the attacker's combat total.

If this number is positive this is the amount of damage, or "hits" the defender takes. If the total is a tie or negative the defender is unaffected. What about Armor? As in the USR basic rules, Armor is added into the defender's combat total. What about Weapons? Weapon bonuses are able to be added by both the attacker, and the defender to their respective combat totals. As the GM you will have to use whatever bonuses for weapons used seems most reasonable. Effects on initiative, and first strike should be considered as well with weapons, such as spears vs someone armed only with a dagger, or bare-fisted.

Critical Hits & Fumbles; If the attacker rolls a natural high number (ie; 0 on a d10), and the defender rolls a natural 1 the attacker has an opportunity to scored a critical hit. The attacker rolls an additional 1d10, and on a score of 0 the critical hit is achieved. A critical hit ignores any armor the defender may have or finds a weakness in a creature's natural defenses. A critical hit does not negate any other effects which may prevent damage, such as magical protection, enhanced immunities, etc. A critical hit indicates only a well placed blow by the attacker. 

If the action is something other than a melee attack a critical "hit" represents more of a critical "success". Whatever the attacker was attempting to accomplish succeeded beyond expectation.

A fumble is merely the reverse. The attacker has rolled a natural 1 while the defender has rolled their natural high number on their attribute die. The attacker rolls an additional 1d10, and on a score of 1 the attacker has fumbled his attack/action. What the exact fumble result is to be will be declared by the GM. Having some of your favorite fumble tables from any of your games will be useful here.

Nonlethal Combat & Nonlethal Damage; I've decided that there really isn't such a thing as "nonlethal" damage. But there are certainly degrees of severity of damage. The damage received by a gunshot is much different than the damage sustained from a sprained knee, or a tazer. Therefore I've decided on damaged received by getting pummeled by fists, and other brawling actions is recorded as normal, but only half the total damage is applied directly to Hit Points. For example; Joe Bruno lands a meaty haymaker inflicting 8 points of damage. Paulie Newman sees stars for the moment, and deducts 4 Hit Points. What about getting knocked unconscious? Whenever a character receives half their total Hit Points in real damage in one combat turn then the character is out. Seriously wrecked, groaning, and writhing. Now this is the character total max Hit Points, not their current, wounded Hit Point total.

Ranged Combat; Attacking at distance is an attribute roll vs. an assigned difficulty number. This difficulty number is based on the range of the attack. Once the difficulty number has been established any situational modifiers and/or specialism bonus need be applied. For example, leaning against the bar cradling your Walther PPK 9mm at close range is a much different shot then diving for cover over the same bar squeezing off three rounds as you go at close range. 

Difficulty Rating based on Range; 

Point Blank, Easy-02 (The weapon is very close or actually touching the target. It will almost always hit doing maximum damage)
 
Close, Medium-04 (The weapon is attacking at one quarter the listed range)
 
Medium, Difficult-07 (The weapon is attacking at one half the listed range)
 
Long, Hard-10 (The weapon is attacking at the listed range)
 
Extreme, Extremely Difficult-14 (The weapon is attacking at twice the listed range)

Damage in ranged combat is augmented by the particular firearm in use. Using your preferred Weapons Table of choice just add the Damage dice as an additional factor to the total damage achieved. 

For example; Joe Bruno fires his .45 automatic pistol at an intruder and achieves a hit. The pistol does +6 additional damage per shot which hits. This is in addition to the amount of damage derived from the initial Contested Attribute Roll for the attack.

The first step in applying damage is to figure out where to apply it. Most  combat attacks are just barely aimed; you're looking for an opening, your opponent slips up, and you take it. This means that unless you attempt to aim your shot at a specific location (and take the an increased difficulty target number), you will have to determine where you hit on a random basis.

Hit Location is rolled on a 1d10; 

1. Head, 2-4. Torso, 5. Right Arm, 6. Left Arm, 7-8. Right Leg, 9-10. Left Leg

If the Hit Location rolled is a part of the body which is behind cover, the shot hits the cover instead of the intended target. This will usually negate all damage unless the weapon used is capable of penetrating the protective cover.

Any armor worn on the Hit Location will reduce the damage amount by the protection given, including for called shots. You will have to come up with your own appropriate armor table and each types stopping power. This is the amount of damage reduced by any hit delivered.

For additional realistic detail you may apply debilitating effects for certain amounts of damage. Generally though, a well place gunshot will wipe you or your opponent out with one shot. So keep your head down! 

Second Wind

To simulate the cinematic nature of your Pulp hero bouncing back from terrible blows a player has a Second Wind value equal to 1/4 their maximum Hit Points. Characters can use their Second Wind to add that value to their current Hit Points once per game (not once per encounter!) and they can only do this in combat immediately after having been struck by a foe. Additionally, a player must role-play what their character does to gain their Second Wind; pithy one-liners, profanity-soaked oaths, and emphatic demonstrations of bloodlust are highly encouraged.

Time Travel... The Ultimate Cross Over for your Genre Tree

If there is a genre on the menu which immediately doesn't grab the players, then perhaps the Time Travel option of the Espionage branch of the RPG Genre Tree will give them the exotic pallet which to paint their rpg masterpiece! Whether a dedicated agent of some "Time Patrol", a victim of a scientific experiment, or an unwilling pawn in temporal battles, time travel adventures literally cover the entire spectrum of time and space. A Time Travel or Cross Dimension campaign allows for the widest possible variety of player characters and NPCs. Characters can be drawn from any world in any time!

Typical Character Types; Adventurer, Agent, Criminal, Expatriate, Fanatic, Ghost Chaser, Historian, Hunter, Investigator, Inventor, Journalist, Merchant, Native, Scientist, Soldier, Student, Tourist, Technician, etc. These traditional time hopping character types can all be supplemented by character types of any other game world as well. Superhero, sci-fi, western, fantasy, whatever! All the genre choices available.

Planetary Romance campaign worlds are a natural for players craving time travel adventures. A desire to explore historical times and places, accidental displacement from the players current campaign world. The choices are numerous. The wise GM with vision will find opportunity to introduce a time travel adventure in any players current campaign world, generating wonder and excitement afresh.

For my RPG Genre Tree Time Travel Branch I would give my prospective players the following two options; Time Corp or Accidental Tourists.

3.3 Time Travel branch of the RPG Genre Tree

3.3.1 Time Corp; a tight knit group of jumpers dragging a string of windows through time. Some Absolute Now is maintained to avoid Crunch Time, while your group pursues its mission dictate.

3.3.2 Accidental Tourists; besides being able to utilize any other campaign world I've designed for the RPG Genre Tree to fulfill my players whimsy, thereby recycling already prepared material, here I can also put forth any compelling visions I have for an intriguing campaign world.

Underpinning my Time Travel campaign I will rely on my USR/Cyberpunk homebrew rules set. Actually, a revised version of the Cyberpunk rules as I continually tinker with how I plan on running combat. Specifically how do I address ranged vs melee, and deadly vs non lethal damage. Pulp era stories and movies offer a nice touchstone for adaption of the mechanics for all sorts of game genres. Here can be found a garden of cinematic action which can be lifted whole cloth into any campaign as long as you know how you plan to house rule it.

Hard Boiled Pulp Fiction

A simple retooling of your Cyberpunk/USR rule set hack for pulp era equipment, and weapons should get your eager adventurers out into the campaign world quickly. For your Pulp Fiction option on your genre tree I have decided to make Miami '38 the PC's opening sandbox. Any warm blooded GM should be able to take such an exotic, new urbane locale and create story hooks aplenty promising to hit tried and true high notes of pulp adventure. Colorful villains, bizarre crimes and mystery, weird science, etc.

In some ways, the story of Greater Miami is a classic American tale of displacement, entrepreneurship, refugee hopes and desperate innovation. But don’t forget the footnotes: corruption, neglect, and bloody community divisions. The end product is hardly perfect. But it’s also continuously resurrecting itself, as new immigrants push into low-rise tenements, and the nouveau riche reinvent the glittering Miami skyline.

Using the intriguing Abulafia Random Generators for this exercise I get a cocky reporter needing to make his parents proud, a silver tongued mobster with an unrequited love, and a humble archaeologist bent on thwarting a sinister secret cult. I used the USR system to flesh out these characters with their stats, abilities, and gear. From there it would be time to pitch your players with the eternal GM question, "What do you do?"

Two Fisted Tales for the Genre Tree

Hard Boiled is not simply a genre or era fixed in stone. It is really a state of mind. Fast paced and energetic adventures. Exotic locales, and two fisted action. A wistful and nostalgic glimpse of an era that seems familiar; but simpler, innocent, and daring.

Hard Boiled is all these and more. Some features of the Hard Boiled genre include its simple morality of good versus evil, masked and cloaked heroes and heroines, devious villains and their schemes, gun-wielding desperados, cliffhanger endings, weird science, and a world still lush with unexplored places and lost races. Understanding the nostalgic elements, and the stylistic conventions of the material help squeeze the most enjoyment out of this rip snorting and adrenaline laced gaming genre.

Genres covered were Detective-mystery, Flying, Jungle, War, Western, Sports, Horror, Science Fiction, Romance, "Spicy", Adventure, Spy, and Fantasy of all types. Sometimes these genres were crossbred to produce such unlikely genres as Weird-Menace, War-Horror, Space-Western and Jungle-Detective. Even bizarre niche subjects as "Racketeer", "Financial-Wizardry" and "Zeppelin" found a brief life during this period, providing magazine titles that are highly sought by collectors today.

The "single character" or "Hero" appeared early in these genre magazines. Certain characters were so popular with readers that they had appearances in many issues, and even different magazines. Examples of these included the detective-mystery pulp Black Mask where Dashiell Hammett's "Sam Spade" and Raymond Chandler's "Philip Marlowe" hard-boiled fiction first appeared. If fantasy and horror was more to your taste, the magazine Weird Tales had both, being home to the very popular Conan sword and sorcery stories of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft's terrifying Cthulhu mythos cycle of tales, and Seabury Quinn's ghost-breaking stories about occult detective Jules de Grandin. 

USR for Hard Boiled Gaming

The furious-paced thrills, deadly perils, exotic globe-spanning adventures, and rough-and-tumble excitement of the Hard Boiled are a natural topic for role-playing adventures. While there has in the past been a few RPGs devoted entirely to the pulps or some aspect of this genre, games such as Justice Inc., Daredevils, Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes, etc., these systems are all out of print or have not been supported with additional supplements or scenarios. Unbelievable Simple Roleplaying rules will have you up and running quickly with your own favorite source material.

GAMESMASTERING THE PULP GENRE: RECIPES FOR PULP ADVENTURING

No matter which game system is used, all pulp RPG adventures rest on mixing many of the following adventure ingredients;

·        Larger than Life Heroes.

·        Reduced Hero Deaths.

·        Colorful Villains.

·        Gadgets and Weird Science.

·        Bizarre Crimes and Mystery.

·        Exotic Settings and Locations.

·        Lost Worlds.

·        Cliffhangers

·        Deathtraps.

3.2 Espionage; Hard Boiled
3.2.1. Pulp Fiction	3.2.2 Espionage International

The above two choices represent the two campaign worlds available to the PC’s. “Pulp Fiction” campaign world will be set in the up and coming city of Miami, FL 1937. Here players should expect to find traditional two fisted opportunities. “Espionage International” will put the players in post WWII cold war geopolitics.

If players are struggling to capture the fever of a thrilling character concept just reload the Pulp Character Concept page @ Abulfia. If the GM is reaching for adventure hooks to dangle in front of the PC's, the web site Abulfia will deliver again with their B-Movie Title generator. Certainly if you reload this page enough something is bound to come.

Cross-Over for your Genre Tree

Those who read comics should be familiar with the cross-over.

Espionage; Cyberpunk is a perfect choice for a cross-over opportunity within this stylized branch of the genre tree. By porting over the adventure setting 2.1.3 Highway Holocaust from my Space Opera; Post Apocalypse branch I am able to cut down on the Game Master workload. Highway Holocaust works well for a group who wants to take on the roles of nomads or cops, for example. The whole Mad Max series of highway violence is your touchstone here.

Cyberpunk 2020 is a cyberpunk role-playing game written by Mike Pondsmith and published by R. Talsorian Games.

Cyberpunk 2020 claims to lend itself to play in the street level, dark film noir genre with a high body-count, 1980s action movie style.

Each player must choose a character class or "role" from the ten given in the basic rules. There is enough variation in the skill system so that no two members of the same class are alike. Because Cyberpunk 2020 is skill-based, the choice of skills around the class-specific special ability allows a wide range of character development choices including non-combatants.

It does not take much retooling to place these career packages into the Specialism mechanics of the USR rules set I plan to use for the game mechanics.

Cyberpunk 2020 is a natural fit for re hanging the material onto USR’s rules set. The rules lite approach of USR allows you to plug in the game mechanics you wish to keep, and jettison the elements of the game you do not like. As can be reviewed in the following post; http://www.rpg.net/sites/sprite/cybrpunk.html, there are parts of the game which some see as problematic. These game issues should easily be addressed with smart use of the USR game mechanics.

Once there you will need to place your protagonists (PC's) on the hostile highways of the future west striving for survival. Transportation will be a sought after tactical edge desired by most surviving cultures. The conservation, and production of potable water would be prized, medicine to offset radiation poisoning would be highly sought after. No one could fault you for busting out Steve Jackson's Car Wars Deluxe!

Come to think of it, there is no reason why the Night City campaign setting found in the original Cyberpunk2020 rule book couldn't set down right in Judge Dredd's Mega City One. The whole of Night City could be converted into a single block of this future sprawling megalopolis!

3.1 Espionage; Cyberpunk

3.1.1 Highway Holocaust
3.1.2 Night City Block in Mega City One

Espionage Branch of my Genre Tree

Another opportunity rife with wide adventure swings is the Espionage branch of my genre tree. The act or practice of spying is fraught with the edible tension we all crave when we set down face to face around the game table. This branch of the genre tree should speak loudly with tantalizing titles promising rich role playing rewards for players comfortable with public speaking, and relevant acting skills.

Whether flinty Boogy types or sexualized dimensional tramps character is king, style is substance, and the well is deep and dark. Therefore I do adopt the following three broad catagories in which to offer my gathered players to chose from;

3. Espionage;  3.1 Cyberpunk, 3.2 Hard Boiled, 3.3 Time Travel.

Holy sh$t, many places one can go off of the above three. Get your free flowing narrative style ready for this gas fueled adventure combination! For Cyberpunk I suggest grabbing a soft bound copy of R. Talsorian’s Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook. It will easily strip down for use with the simple rules found in Trollish Delver’s USR role playing system.

Hard Boiled, now you have got some range here. Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, these are some of the usual tropes. These turn of the century Sherlock Holmes styled intrigues are all ripe for the Cthulhu mythos to be thrown at them. Elliot Ness, and his band of Untouchables run into werewolves? Play some Warren Zevon, how can you miss!

How about finding inspiration from one of Fiasco’s great playsets like Havana 1953? Spies, mobsters, whores, rebels, players, tourists.

Time Travel opens up all dimensional opportunities for your players to wander into paradox bending adventures. Whether you draw your inspiration from Zelazney’s Amber series, the serial television programs of Dr. Who, or horrible movies such as Looper there is plenty of material available to throw at your players. In the next few posts I will show you the detailed campaign settings I would plan to use.