Suitable powers for a French-Indian War scenario

[bpmasher]

I don't have the Pulp Hero book, but I was wondering whether it would have stuff/character powers for a colonial America game based in the FIW period?

 

I have this idea for a mixed fantasy and historical game based on my reading of the Crucible of War book by Fred Anderson. It covers the Seven Years War from the American perspective and gives tremendous setting materials for a game to be based on it.

I don't know what style to run the game in yet, but I'm fascinated by the period, and the concept of Wilderness War. Maybe I'll throw in some werewolves and goblins.

[IndianaJoe3]

It's not going to be able to help with the history or the equipment, but I'm sure there are power builds that might be useful.

[bpmasher]

I'm going with the pulp approach, include some pirates, outlaws, savage men and possibly werewolves and vampires into the mix. The metaplot will revolve around Templars vs. Assassins from the Assassin's Creed game line.

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

@bpmasher, off hand I’d say some ninja like abilities comes to mind for Native Americans. Leave no Trace Power, Super Climbing, Super Stealth/Concealment off the top of my head. Also weapon tricks (mainly hth weapons) would be some other ones.

[Tjack]

  I’d start by checking out the reference materials for characters.  Start with comic book characters like DC comics Tomahawk, then progress to movie stuff like The Patriot and Last of the Mohicans, then TV with a Fess Parker double feature of Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone.  
  A lot of these are pretty identical on paper so you’ll have to go out of your way to make them more individual with backstory and disads.  
  You might also have some luck with varying the nationalities of the PC’s.  An ex-slave from Africa or the Caribbean could give some magical help.  (Although it may be culturally insensitive for someone not of that race to play.)

  Stealing a Slayer from Joss Whedon, or a “Shadow Slayer” as they call ‘em in D20 Urban Arcana could do the same thing.

[bpmasher]

Yeah I bounced around some concepts in my head (on paper).

Character options:

•  (TEMPLARS) Politician/orator, agent, inquisitor, soldier/officer, occultist
•  (ASSASSINS) Pirate, woodland indian, half-blood, savage, criminal, shaman
•  Werewolf, Vampire

Combat will be melee-focused with muskets firing at the beginning of combat. I wrote up some weapons stats (muskets, flintlock pistols, tomahawks, swords).

I might use a spell memorization system if I don't come up with something more interesting.

Hit locations, disabling, endurance all in use.

Some way to deal with harsh environmental conditions like frost and storms.

[JmOz]

One faith based magic system I always liked was a VPP with a limitation that the GM controls it based on prayer, with the more precise prayer often not being answered

 

So Praying that your friends would is healed might be extra REC or healing power, etc...

[Opal]

Maybe check out Gullivers Travels, Jekyl/Hyde, and any of the Gothic and Orientalist novels of the period.

 

IIRC, you won't find vampires.

[bpmasher]

On 4/24/2021 at 10:08 PM, Opal said:

Maybe check out Gullivers Travels, Jekyl/Hyde, and any of the Gothic and Orientalist novels of the period.

 

IIRC, you won't find vampires.

 

Yep. 

 

I was on a vampire and werewolf kick while devising this design document at first. Now the cooler option seems to be to keep it strictly human-oriented. 

[Ninja-Bear]

Rapid Fire Archery and Rapid Fire Throwing knives.  Beast Friend could be another one. Did you check out any Iroquois myths? Perhaps instead of a common werewolf, you could have Humans that are skin changer varieties?

[DentArthurDent]

Any updates?

The concepts sounded awesome.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Powers suitable for Pathfinder: Or, the Inland Sea, you say? This is what I comb out of the Leatherstockings Cycle (and Wyandote and Wept of Wish-ton-Wish, just for extras).

 

i) Most of our heroes (Leatherstockings himself, Chingachgook, and Oliver  [Spoiler]) appear out of the woods pursuing a stag for Christmas dinner at the beginning of Pioneers. The party in the sled have no idea that they're there, and Judge Temple shoots and wounds the stag and Oliver with his blunderbuss before Leatherstocking downs the stag with Killdeer, his Pennsylvania rifle. Hector the Dog is there, and Hector is cool:

 

--Tracking, Pass without Trace (Environmental movement through undergrowth, snow);

--Invisibility (Sight, Sound, only in woodland/prairie setting; Fringe (those darn snapping twigs);

--WF rifle, +OCV for accuracy and pretty much the whole suite of firearm skills from Dark Champions;

--Some kind of Life Support (wilderness);

--Animal Companion. Note that the Cycle gets pretty mythopoeic by the time of Deerslayer, much to Mark Twain's baffled rage, so you might want to go large with this, up to and including a limited shape change ability --Tom Hutter isn't just called Muskrat. He is the Earth Diver/Muskrat, and it wouldn't be out of line, if you're going to go fantastic, to allow the hero to turn into an aquatic mammal, at least. I'd advice against overpowered bird forms in a wilderness setting;

--I would have to take a completely justified tour through the Cycle all the way to the end to support this fully, but Killdeer is the American Excalibur. Any powers appropriately bought through a Holy Avenger focus should be buyable through Killdeer. I'm specifically thinking of Smite Evil and the magic weapon bonus versus monsters. So if you have vampires and zombies or their Cooper-appropriate Western Hemisphere counterparts (cannibal spirits, mostly), Killdeer's bullets should be as good as silver bullets (totally a thing in this era, with snipers saving silver bullets for, among others, Blue Max and Bonnie Dundee) and wooden stakes. 

 

iii) Chingachgook shows up at Temple Hall and cures Oliver with a magical salve. Plenty of other curative and "Medicine" applications through the Cycle and in Wyandotte, so Healing. 

 

iv) Oliver takes over the sled on the way down to steer it away from a precipice. I think he does something similar with a bateau later on, but I was a bit checked out by then. Transport Familiarity, Animal Handling.

 

v) Leatherstocking wrassles a painter. I know, I know, cougars don't sound that scary, and the Cycle is defined by one of the heroes losing a hand-to-hand fight, but Magua is a pretty badass character in his own right. Some kind of hand to hand combat bonusses are appropriate. 

 

vi) Assorted shooting tricks through this novel and others to follow. A fairly high OCV bonus with firearms, again. Bows and arrows maybe too, but the heroes never shoot bows in the Cycle, as far as I can recall. Also, to repeat myself a bit perhaps, canoe racing and Tracking skills at a very high level. Arbitration skill (Tamanend). 

 

vii) In Prairie, and in every other novel but especially Prairie, a miraculous escape from fire; ED versus fire and versus other environmental fire damage like smoke inhalation. 

 

So, basically, some kind of Paladin/Ranger/Druid amalgam. 

 

viii) The Puritan scares off the Mohegan (Narragansett? Checked out a bit, again) attackers in  Wept; PRE bonus.

 

ix) Speedster, some degree of Usable by Others (Hurry Marsh in Deerslayer, but especially Old Nick/Wyandote in Wyandote. I'm going to stop and emphasise this one, because at least by Wyandote, Cooper heroes are pretty clearly modelled on False Face Society Dancers, and their "Marching" and "Healing" abilities are spiritually and symbolically important. I admit, so is their "gatekeeping" ability, but I have no idea how to model that.

 

x) Life Support (Extended Lifespan) Leatherstocking is having wilderness adventures into his 90s.  

 

[AlHazred]

For Hero System stuff for the period, I recommend @Susano's book Larger Than Life. He's got "pirates and soldiers, lumberjacks and steel drivers, mountain men and lawmen, cowboys, Indians, inventors, and eccentrics," including sample characters for each type; for instance, the sample lumberjack is, of course, Paul Bunyan. Among the archetypes, he has several appropriate for colonial games, each with a package deal and a discussion of the archetype. It doesn't exactly have a magic system in it, but a lot of the folkloric or "Tall Tales" abilities are basically magic.

[Susano]

1 hour ago, AlHazred said:

For Hero System stuff for the period, I recommend @Susano's book Larger Than Life. He's got "pirates and soldiers, lumberjacks and steel drivers, mountain men and lawmen, cowboys, Indians, inventors, and eccentrics," including sample characters for each type; for instance, the sample lumberjack is, of course, Paul Bunyan. Among the archetypes, he has several appropriate for colonial games, each with a package deal and a discussion of the archetype. It doesn't exactly have a magic system in it, but a lot of the folkloric or "Tall Tales" abilities are basically magic.

 

What he said.