Durzan Malakim

Aw, man...but dissonating cognitives is my part time job! I guess I've failed yet again.
 

A new Here There Be Monsters character...dubbed "old lady Cthulhu face" by a certain player, a creepy possible addition to a party of Monster Hunters.
 
Melissa is descended from one of the various Elder Thing tainted bloodlines. She physically appears normal from the outside (most of the time), but an autopsy would reveal that her physiology is inhuman and disturbing. Those with supernatural senses also recognize her as being of Elder Thing origins. From a practical perspective she is incredibly durable, not invulnerable but very difficult to injure, and her mind and body are resistant to external manipulation. When her true nature is revelead, one or more high-tensile strength tentacles can emerge from her body, primarily from her mouth. This effect is disturbing, and causes psychological damage to many who observe it.
 
http://www.killershrike.com/HereThereBeMonsters/Characters/GMsVault/Killer Shrike/Melissa McBrien.HTML
 

 

I could imagine something like that happened with Beretta in her origin story.
 
Incident #1, Section M agent: No, those weren't really zombies, Ms. Colt. They were actually the unfortunate victims of a bioterrorism incident that the government would prefer you keep quiet about due to national security concerns.
 
Incident #2, Section M agent: Magic? Aztec curses? Come now, Ms. Colt. Your ex-boyfriend was actually doped to the gills on a mix of PCP, steroids and amphetamines that we found in his apartment when we searched it. That's why he was able to ignore being thrown off the roof of a three-story building, getting hit across the face with a crowbar and being shot twice in the chest at point-blank range with the .38 revolver your fiancé was using before he was murdered. The bullets that went through your ex's body must have somehow managed to miss his vital organs. You don't want to sound like a crazy person and keep talking about cursed knives, now do you?
 
Incident #3, Section M agent: There are no such things as vampires, Ms. Colt.
Beretta Colt: That's the best you've got? You were far more eloquent in our past encounters.
Section M agent: It's been a very long night, Ms. Colt. So just be a good girl and don't talk about this incident, for your own safety.

Absolutely. So here's how it works:
 
If there's a vamp already running around killing people / being obviously supernatural, from an infosec perspective the witnesses of that event are compromised. If you UV beam that vamp and that vamp burns to death where they stand the already compromised witnesses may or may not have seen something (depending on where they are looking, range, line of sight, lighting penalties, having generally low PER to begin with) but in the face of the rampaging vamp, small beans...if you happen to be pointing a "UV flashlight" at the time whatever visible light spills out of the  UV spectrum from your blast can be explained away...the compromised witnesses may now know there are vampires (or maybe it's just...y'know...one of those crazy LARPers who like to PRETEND they are vampires high on something or experiencing a psychotic break)...but they don't know there are also freaking WIZARDS and all the other stuff...and they also don't know that you, specifically, are a wizard. Compartmentalization. 
 
On the other hand if you arcane blast the vamp with a fully visible ray of magical energy...different story. Greater information leakage. It also might be MORE visible from further away and more remarkable (being a bright energy beam) than the vamp...for observers at a great enough distance the eventually forthcoming explanation of "the perp was on meth and bath salts and started attacking people" is still believable for the distant witnesses, but that doesn't square with the magical beam you shot him with. With the UV version, dude lit on fire? Must have been all those chemicals from his meth lab saturating his clothing, a stray spark was all that was necessary to set him off. The flashlight? Don't be ridiculous, flashlights don't light people on fire. Crazy nonsense.
 
Different scenario...you walk into a night club and spot a vamp just hanging out at the bar eyeing the herd. You whip out your "UV flashlight" and also blast him with your UV ring and he catches on fire. This is tricky business...technically you are wrong...you took a situation where there was no supernatural activity to cover up and introduced supernatural activity to cover up.  Technically, vampires are permanently sanctioned so you MIGHT be able to song and dance your way out of it ("he spotted me in the crowd and was trying to dominate me! self defense, honest!") but if the situation goes pear shaped you will probably be in hot water as the instigator...the smarter play would be to try to lure the vamp away from people, or get the people to leave somehow. 
 
Same situation but you blast the vamp with your normal ring; you're definitely in serious trouble because that is overtly supernatural, and creates an outright Secrecy Accord violation which will now have to be contained where there wasn't one.
 
 
The main takeaway is, this is not a binary concept...there are nuances. When in doubt, don't be the first one to open up with obvious supernatural effects. Things that are more covert and explainable offer wiggle room where you otherwise might not have any. If you make a best-attempt to respect the Accord of Secrecy and  maintain  the illusion of mundanity that most people live under, that is taken into consideration, whereas flagrant disregard will draw punitive measures to not just solve the problem but to make an example out of the offender.

The iconics are pretty well covered, though there is always room for more. We're a little thin on the bench for supernatural opposition, and there are some gaps in the vignettes...notably while we have an iconic (weak / starting power level) werewolf we don't have an adventure about lycanthropes which are one of the more common types of supernaturals relatively speaking. 
 
I have a norse themed vignette that was about 1/4 formed back in the day that I plan to blow the dust off soon, and I was starting to gather source material and ideas for a diabolist oriented vignette but had not actually laid out an outline for it. I was going to borrow an interesting plot idea from a comic book i read years ago, file off the serial numbers, add some HtbM anchoring...typical repackaging type stuff.
 
I have some marginalia I had been aggregating for some kind of tome of forbidden knowledge based vignette.
 
I also have a couple of notions I've been noodling around with to do role inversions...one of them is the idea of a mundane corporation secretly exploiting supernaturals to produce some must-have product and  the hunters somehow get involved to _save_ the enslaved supernats.
 
The other inversion tale is the discovery of some kind of Otherworld along the lines of Tír na nÓg and something like an Underground Railroad for supernats who are sanctioned or at risk of being sanctioned and just want to escape...posing a moral quandary for the hunters...supernats who are not evil or dangerous per se but are obviously supernatural and thus violate the Accord of Secrecy just by existing...persecute them or let them / help them escape to this Otherworld?  My current group of players are mostly still in the "shoot everything that moves" category, but I think they'll grow out of it. Even if not, something like this plotline would be a good fill for the mood of the setting. It might also tie in with the Morrigan and the Trouble with Banshees vignette.
 
If any of that sounded interesting to you or if you had other ideas I'm as always open to collaborating (co-authoring or just serving as editor as preferred). I've said it before @Panpiper, and I'll say it again...I consider you to be a co-author of the setting.
 

Now, now my snark is worse than my bite, which is why I need capable warriors to do my biting for me, but since I'm playing a wizard, the good news is I can teach you all defense against the snark arts. Once you've mastered it, I'm sure each of you will leave your snark on the game. In fact, I fully expect us all to be Raiders of the Lost Snark by next session.

Now, now my snark is worse than my bite, which is why I need capable warriors to do my biting for me, but since I'm playing a wizard, the good news is I can teach you all defense against the snark arts. Once you've mastered it, I'm sure each of you will leave your snark on the game. In fact, I fully expect us all to be Raiders of the Lost Snark by next session.

Now, now my snark is worse than my bite, which is why I need capable warriors to do my biting for me, but since I'm playing a wizard, the good news is I can teach you all defense against the snark arts. Once you've mastered it, I'm sure each of you will leave your snark on the game. In fact, I fully expect us all to be Raiders of the Lost Snark by next session.

@Panpiper, I have seen many of your characters and they all have cool concepts. It's shame that you have never played in this setting because I've you are one of the founding fathers of Here There Be Monsters. 

I finally got around to actually reading all the threads here. I do want to thank especially KS for making the effort to post the writeups. As much as I was invested in the development of the Here There Be Monsters setting, I have never had the opportunity to run it, let alone play in it. (I have brought up the notion to my existing gaming group, but at least a couple of them have a hard enough time grasping D&D and find Hero too intimidating.) Anyway, reading the threads here allows me the ability to at least vicariously experience it.

It's been an interesting journey so far. I don't think we are heading towards becoming murder hobos, or at least I don't think I am. 😮
 
Between this campaign and the last one, I've been discovering how much I missed being a player, but I'm sure my world-building GM urges will start hitting me again eventually. I regret having to miss the next game session in a couple of weeks while I roast in the desert.
 
Murgatroyd has certainly been proving to be an excellent vehicle for giving voice to Durzan's strong streak of snarkiness that I've come to appreciate in gaming with you for a while. The character has also been quite useful in two story arcs now.

Yes, there's config options for currency symbol and # of decimal places on one of the campaign rule tabs. I have a clear memory of seeing it before. Not yet had  a reason to change the defaults.
 
I'll play with that later tonight; overloading the cost field would be better than having to rely on Notes, for my purposes.

Ok...I'll adjust things next time I'm in HD and repost.

I also like the bond that Murgatroyd and Drew are developing, and the same thing goes for Beretta and Killroy too. I enjoy the relationships between characters because it adds a more fun role playing aspect to the game. Some of our characters used the abilities they just got, or ones that they hadn't used before in this session which I thought was cool as well. On the combat side, I feel like everyone who got a chance to fight did their job, and nobody has taken body yet. Overall, after looking at the overall session, I believe we all played our roles in the expected and unexpected ways which just allows our characters to show their true colors. Had Lots of Fun!

Murgatroyd's UV attack was pretty freaking awesome, and his confident personality was too. I'm glad @Durzan Malakim decided to keep playing him because he provides a fun aspect to the sessions.

You could do that, but IPE would be more direct. If you upgraded Variable SFX to Variable Advantage w/ Arcane Blasts over time, you could swap out for whatever was most useful in the moment...IPE, 0END, AoE, Variable SFX, whatever...it's in the future at any rate, so we can figure it out when / if it becomes relevant. I wouldn't worry about it in the meantime.

Nope, its not a spell...it's a learned ability. You can use the ring normally OR as a full phase action and +2 END you can use the ring w/ Variable SFX applied.
 
As a side note, I let you get away with a free Invisible Power Effects with the UV is not visible to the human eye bit as it was fun in the moment, but it isn't completely invisible to sight...the black light effect on everything in its path is visible. However, it is certainly much less visible and "wow that's obviously supernatural" than a ray of magical energy would normally be, so it also offers a sort of stealthy ghetto IPE in a pinch...particularly in daylight and particularly particularly in California where most people wear sunglasses with UV filters during the day...even vs targets that are not vulnerable to UV.

@Durzan Malakim If you are looking for something to spend your 4 XP on, you might consider buying an ability something like this...
 
Ring Mastery:  Variable Special Effects (Limited Group of SFX; UV, Fire; +1/4) for up to 45 Active Points of Blast (11 Active Points); OIF (Ring; -1/2), Increased Endurance Cost (x2 END; -1/2), Linked (Ring of Arcane Blasts; -1/2); Real Cost: 4
 
That would save you the hassle of wasting VPP space and action econ to cast a spell to get that effect. As time elapses, you could even dump more XP into that and upgrade it from Variable SFX to Variable Advantage.
 
 
It would look something like this (quick pass):
 
http://www.killershrike.com/HereThereBeMonsters/Characters/durzan/Murgatroyd/159/Murgatroyd.HTML
 
 
 
 

I'm using this thread to track the character's progress,  I'll be starting up a separate topic for the adventure itself. As people tell me what they want to spend their XP from last night on, I'll be using this post to keep track of the updated sheets...WilyQ and Scything told me what they wanted on the drive home after the session, so I've updated Joey and Drew.
 
After recalling that lack of  light penalties are a pain, WilyQ wanted Drew to have a flashlight or two, so we bumped up Drew's gear pool a bit to accommodate a cop-style flashlight and also an under-barrel mounted flashlight attachment for his pistol. He also recognized the threat of the pouncey-grabby behavior of the vampires thus far encountered, and thus Drew also recollected some old grappling training he hasn't had to use in a while but "used to be good at" (we added an escape maneuver to his CQB martial art, which he's "always known" but not yet had reason to demonstrate knowing...nothing to see here, just a bush, move along citizens... ). We also swapped a maneuver he's never used (Nelson!) for a very similar maneuver which traded 1D6 NND for Target Falls (Ground & Cuff) which suits Drew's style better as actually played. Future XP will likely see Drew starting to carry zip ties or cuffs, but no room in the budget currently. @WilyQuixote
 
Scything was happy with finding a niche of being "the tech-savvy" member of the group, so he fleshed out Joey's Computer Programming skill. @Scything
 
Murgatroyd  mastered a new trick with his Ring of Arcane Blasts, tuning the beam of energy to take on other properties...such as emulating UV light for the pragmatic purpose of giving vampires sunburns. @Durzan Malakim
 
Baretta has a new fitness trick that allows her to push herself to a heightened response time, but it tires her out (limited SPD). {still under negotiation, so subject to change prior to her next appearance} @Steve

EXCERPT FROM CLASSIFIED INTERVIEW OF HUNTER MURGATROYD
 
Murgatroyd: "Surviving the supernatural requires finding and exploiting just the right amount of stupid."
Interviewer: "Not all supernatural foes are stupid."
Murgatroyd: "Not all survival strategies are aimed at foes."
Interviewer. "Oh. [long pause] I see."
 

Keep in mind vs some threats, he's the _most_ survivable. 

Yes, that would make sense.
 
I actually thought Murgatroyd would be toast in one or two sessions, and he's held on pretty successfully so far, except for needing a change of pants or two. We'll see how things go for him and the others that the Elder Things now have their collective eyes on.

You can list the real point cost in the Cost field and Hero Designer will total up the cost for you. Yes, there is some cognitive dissonance seeing dollar signs in front of the numbers, but you can learn to ignore it or if you're really upset by it, build an export format to remove it.
 

And, we have Steve's new character, Baretta Colt. A Professional of the Survivor variety, this once seemingly helpless cheerleader was the last survivor of several monster related events. Setting aside her former cush existence as eye candy, she has gotten hard and trained herself Sarah Conner style to contend with the ugly truths of the world. Now she wields her gun enthusiast dead father's customized Colt 1911's against the forces of evil...all while rocking a halter top and pony tail. 
 

 

Apologies for the long silence, but I've been trying to decide if I want to continue playing Murgatroyd (FYI I learned the name comes from the phrase "Moor Gate Road"). On the plus side, I've got a VPP that can in theory handle anything as long as I have time to prepare and can build spells that fit the campaign. Also, Murgatroyd fills the support damage buffer and damage negation role, which was useful in our last adventure. Lastly, in theory at least our future adventures may require knowledge skills that the pure combat-monkeys don't have, but Murgatroyd does or can have.
 
On the minus side, building a spell in-game is dull time-consuming work. I'd prefer to build a library of acceptable spells to speed up game play rather than make everyone wait for me to crunch the numbers and get approval. Perhaps if I have the group's help in creating my "spell book" we can focus on playing the game rather than having to take rules-breaks. The other down-side with Murgatroyd is his unreliability. He is essentially Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Good for a laugh, but potentially a TPK causer if he freezes up at the wrong moment and doesn't perform in a crunch. I'm worried that this combat paralysis makes him ill-suited to combat-heavy missions, which I suspect we will run quite often given how much of the party is DPS-focused. I'm tempted to spend XP to reduce the frequency of "Losing His Cool", which is currently at 11 or less to activate and 11 or less to recover. @Killer Shrike can I spend 5 XP to change the activation frequency to 8 or less?
 
The other possibility I'm considering is playing Ezra the holy-sword-wielding disciple. He's a straight-forward DPS, which our party already has plenty of. I'd prefer to save Ezra as a backup character if/when Murgatroyd meets his end.