#intragalactic-brain-bubbles | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

alastairdragovich · 9 years ago

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So, a friend of mine has been working on a Tabletop RPG for a while now. He goes by intragalatic-brain-bubbles here on Tumblr, and he’s been working hard at Age of Starmetal, the game in question.For the last year and a half, I believe, he’s been crafting the setting and system for the game. It’s still not complete, with an mighty need for some playtesting and feedback especially, but as far as the world itself it’s come along immensely.

Recently, I’ve been asked by him to do a series of reviews on the enemies of the game from a fluff/setting standpoint, since the mechanics still need to be ironed out. Since he’s my friend and I’ve been helping edit out some of the grammatical mistakes and misspellings, I naturally agreed. So I’ll do my best to go over them down below the read more.

Since it takes a while to notice the broad strokes/themes, I’ll start off by going over them one by one. While not every enemy may be covered extensively, I do hope to give them all a fair shake based on their own merits before giving the whole lot of them a goof throttling. I’ll start off with the ‘common animal’ group, which is pretty much the depiction of a few real life animals that survived to the current setting.

Rat Swarm: Of the normal creatures, it’s the most unique and gimmicky. Instead of being just one creature whose difficulty ranges from being less than mob trash to fairly challenging if caught unprepared, it’s a mini mob in a single creature package. Its high evasion and accuracy due to it being a swarm of multiple creatures also makes up for its low health, with only 1 wound per rat.

If someone wanted to start slow, then maybe after facing a couple of normal creatures, this would be a good, but ultimately safe wake up call for players. The two lessons this fight teaches both ultimately are foundations for the more difficult fights, regardless of their origin: Having a variety of ways to deal with the problem, and thinking outside of the ‘hit them till they die’ mentality. To properly deal with them, you’d either need to pull a move off that ultimately cripples their advantages, or have/be willing to use an AOE weapon or move like a low tier grenade.

That said, since they are ultimately just normal creatures, they are ultimately inconsequential. Like I said, a good roll on a grenade usage, or an appropriate spell, or a decent plan and they pose no challenge. They probably don’t pose any significant challenge even with the hit them till they die strategy, though it’ll incur needless damages and costs because of their boosts. Still, you can’t expect too much from this tier of enemies.

Dog: There’s not much to say here. You can probably easily take this enemy down as long as it isn’t in a pack, and even then a group of professional adventurers can probably take care of them with ease. that said, they are dogs. A person who decides to take on a more ‘tamer’ role or act as a pacifist social character can probably befriend these with a bit of bribery and patience. Dog Lovers without a Taming bent probably will hate coming across this enemy.

Boar: While it is a normal animal, they probably would make up the higher tiers of common enemies. In fact, judging from the description, they’d probably make for a decent encounter if the player encounters a group of them... and if weren’t so far down on the totem pole. If the person running the game follows their description properly, they will probably serve as a wake up call encounter like the rats, but more dangerous. Still, considering it’s an ordinary animal, it probably doesn’t require much more than proper equipment, which can be challenging to find in the era, and a some form of strategy going in outside of ‘hit them until they die’.

Wolf: The description for these creatures makes you feel both a little guilty for trying to kill them for their previous endangerment status (in universe), but absolves you of it with how common they are meant to be. Other than that, they probably work like real life wolves- work in packs and are like dogs but significantly cooler, tougher, and more unfriendly. Being related to dogs, though, they probably are much easier to tame than other animals. Not by much though.

Bear: There isn’t much on the bear yet, but... It’s a BEAR. Boars WISH they had shit on these guys. Still, like all of the other normal animals, they are meant to be as dangerous as real life encounters- not too horrible if you’re properly prepared and willing to be cautious.

Wild Geese: From their description, they’re meant to be the lethal joke character- unexpectedly frightening and likely to cause the most damage while they ambush you mid-laughter. Either getting the jump on them or not being fooled will probably negate their threat fairly easily, since they’re still mundane geese.

These animals are hard to review because there’s not much on them. Most of what I have to say mostly involves things that COULD be done with them. It’s natural, because they are things that, to some degree or another, we’re familiar with. They exist in our natural, real world. A lot of information on these creatures is already on the internet, and probably has made its way to us enough to paint all of the relevant information on them for us.

It seems a bit pointless to include them as enemies aside from set dressing, but there’s an underlying theme to their descriptions for those that have more than one line of dialogue. They aren’t to be underestimated just because they’re familiar. Just because they’re mundane doesn’t mean they are harmless or not worth considering as a potential threat.

Sure, you know that in real life, bears are dangerous, geese are MEAN, and strange dogs or other wild animals can be unpredictably dangerous. Some animals, like boars and the aforementioned bears, have sometimes legendary tales about hunting and killing them, ranging from local family tall tales to literal legends and myths. Yet in games, they’re considered beginning game fodder at BEST. While this is inevitable, given the presence of human enemies and the supernatural, what this game and the world it is based in is trying to impress is an unsettling sense of reality to it.

The setting for Age of Starmetal is meant to be post-apocalyptic and somewhere between low fantasy and Lofcraftian fantasy. While I can’t say why this is with accuracy, I do believe that those qualities and the history of the setting relies on and is enhanced by a sense of reality despite the fact that normality has long since left the reservation. By having the mundane creatures and trying to treat them as a legitimate threat, it helps cement this world of escalating dangers, threats, and madness in something that is more relateable, understandable, and, as stated multiple time before, something real.

Since this post took much, MUCH longer than I wished to, I’ll be splitting the review of the creatures into multiple parts. Each part refers to a different section of the Enemies, all of which can be found in this document, in addition to the rules and hard mechanics of the game. Just note that the due to certain things outside of the control of the creator, there may be grammatical oddities or typos. It’d be appreciated if you point them out by commenting on them if you read through the document, as well as your thoughts on the mechanics and the lore in general.

EDIT: BUT IN THE INTEREST OF NOT BEING A PONCE AND SHOWING YOU GUYS SOMETHING INTERESTING, I’LL BE ADDING ONTO THIS THE NOT SO SUPERNATURAL BUT STILL NOT NATURAL CREATURES OF THE SETTING.

Steel Boar: This creature is an evolutionary offshoot of the regular boar that we all know about. Their claim to fame is their incredible defenses, with their tusks and hide being used as a tier of armor. That said, these armor bonuses also apply to the living Steel Boar. Given how tough Boars are in real life and how tough they are meant to be in the game, a particularly large one or a decently sized group can be a tense encounter even with proper equipment and strategy. Still, considering their use in a post-apocalypse as a steel/iron substitute for armor and tools, this probably will be useful as an introductory mercenary encounter.

Dire Wolves: These things are bad news when it comes to wolves. As a literally giant mutant wolf, they are also a bit tougher than their normal counterparts. From the description, they also can have normal wolf packmates and roam in groups of up to six dire wolves, which evokes a very ‘boss’ or ‘mid-boss’ like feel when imagining a setup against them. With this and the Steel Boar, they are a good means of measuring just how much tougher the mutant enemies are and how the real world counterparts measure up to the supernatural monsters and how much of a threat the monsters are from their comaprisons to the real world creatures.

Neoraptor: Because dinosaurs, that’s why. That aside, they’re actually an offshoot of chickens, relating it to some evolutionary theories about dinosaurs and birds. That aside, it looks like they’re meant to be used in groups, considering they’re supposed to be found in groups of 40-60 raptors. Just think of a feathery, larger version of those dinosaurs from that one scene in Jurassic Park (where that one guy bites it from the tiny dinosaurs, and you probably have an appropriately frightening mental image.

Wait a second, I forgot to mention they have some flight capability, though limited. Now you can be terrified of them.

Wild Diomedes Horse: In this world, you should look the gift horse in the mouth, but from a distance. For people with a fear of horses or have been unfortunate enough to be bit by one, these things are probably just a blatant version of what they already know. For everyone else, they are carnivorous, man eating horses. This is one of the more mundane instances of bait and switch that this setting likes to pull on people. Which is pretty terrifying, considering that they are already designed to run long distances and can outspeed ordinary people.

Black Omen Crow: These guys are the reason crows are considered bad omens in this setting. Not only are they the size of people’s heads, but their flocks are known for eating literally everything in their paths, from crops to the villagers to their livestock. They are a bane of travelers and have wiped out entire villages. These things are probably the reason why you have things like shotguns and AOE equipment that can be triggered in the air.

Ratant Swarm: So... how do you feel about ants? Because these things are swarms of ants the size of rats. The good news is that they don’t have venom, so if you encounter only one or two stray ones, you could kill them like the nuisances they should be. However, like several other entries, their true terror comes in the form of swarms. In fact, outside of the explicitly supernatural, and even among the supernatural, there are a lot of enemies that rely on numbers to go from a nuisance or dangerous to full on terror.

Ratant Soldier: Soldier Ants wish they could be these guys. Unlike their ‘normal’ versions, these ratants, unfortunately, do have venomous pincers. They are also much larger, being the size of housecats, and have internal skeletons on top of their armorish exoskeletons. They also now have shield-like heads and some other mammilian traits. Considering how different some insects can be based on biological sex, it isn’t as strange as it may seem at first. It makes a world of difference, though between taking on the nest of ratants and stray swarms.

Hellhound: These things, despite their names, are less like demonic looking dogs and more like ghoulish looking werewolves. Like other wolf mutants, they are extremely vicious and primitive, but they are actually also noted for having considerable intelligence and cleverness when it comes to their actions, even though they use it crudely. That said, they are not true werewolves or ghouls, despite ghouls being their nickname. They are humanoid, though, so be careful not to leave anything they could use near them.

Gecko Dragon: These are the first creatures that are explicitly more region specific than the USA region, found in the southwest. They seem to be based off of lizards that can spit acid, which is described as a burning acid in this case, and, like several other creatures, got a size upgrade, putting them at the size of a large dog.

Tunnel Crawlers: This one is one of the more radical in changed creatures that didn’t have a fantasy inspiration. They take cue not only from scorpions, but also creatures of the deep sea, sporting bioluminesence. Additionally, their pincers have been completely replaced with sharp fingered claws for digging through stone. They are known for doing so in minutes, so people who are forced to live in or navigate tunnels in the post-apocalypse naturally fear these things. Thankfully, the lights they sport seem to have replaced their stingers, so it’s probably meant to be a combination of a lure and a warning sign for any would-be predators.

Malevolent Herald: THEY ARE GIANT WASPS THAT BURROW AND MAKE NESTS IN STONE. THEY ARE THE SIZE OF A CHILD’S SHOE. WHY IS THIS EVEN IN A LOVECRAFTIAN HORROR SETT- oh wait a second.

Goula: Once more, these things leave the realm of just ‘creature X but larger and scarier’ and dive a bit more into the more creative ‘mutants’/’natural’ creatures. While a first glance makes it vaguely shaped like a mantis, it completely lacks a face and looks like it had evolved a mantis based set of bat wings. They also have 6 extra limbs, which look insect-like at first, but turn out to act more like tentacles. Sadly not much more is known, but they are fascinating.

Lurc: These things are what happens when squids and ticks get together. They are also the first enemies to rely on ambush tactics despite their size, preferring swampy regions or underground lakes to wait for their prey. Naturally, they take after the ticks, but also suck out fat and marrow, and since they’re large, they do this until they have made fully grown people into husks. These guys are why you need the survival traits, and also help install the necessary low-level paranoia you need for supernatural beasts later on down the line.

Creep: While most of the previous creative entries deal with how they stray from the normal designs and shapes of the enemies, this makes a departure in how you deal with it, like the Lurc and its ambush hunting.

This monster is actually a plant/animal hybrid. While it looks like a pitcher plant/vase covered in eyes, they also have tentacles which they use to move around. It prefers enclosed spaces, where they can achor themselves as they wait for their prey. Also unlike the blood glutton, they don’t use brute force, but rather hallucinogenics and relaxants produced by vines they grow around the rooms they have anchored themselves in. They then produce pods for the thing to digest you with.

That said, even with a gas mask they’re not defenseless. Their cores also sport pores that shoot out acid at high speeds. Again, these guys instill a necessary amount of paranoia and a need for preparation and caution, a theme that becomes more and more prevalent as the difficulty increases.

Blood Gluttons: You know the blob monsters in old sci-fi horror movies? These are those. Thankfully, there’s a common counter to these things: FIRE. They’re flammable, so you can burn these non-newtonian liquid creatures if you find them. Interestingly, they also seem to have a built in prey attractor, since they are described as sweet smelling.

Devourer Parasites: The last of the ‘natural mutants’, these critters are body snatchers. Using flight as their primary means of locomotion, they use hallucinogenics to subdue a host and burrow their way into the subjects brain. Like other insects and insidious creatures, they then use the meat-puppet/corpse to consume and lay eggs for further propagation of its species. All the while, it’s protected in the skull by both the boney shell and its own shell that it lines on the inside of it while it does its normal process. No word, strangely, on whether or not it can pilot the victim once it devours the brain of its victim.

EDIT3: As it turns out, they actually do, in fact, pilot the body. They don’t just eat the host, but use the host to gather more food to eat. Lazy bum.

Now, the creatures here are meant as a natural scale of difficulty. Already, they clearly up the game in the setting, introducing new predators to the world and creating creatures that could not exist without the Stella radiation brought by the apocalypse. Stella radiation that is essentially the side effect of it’s own brand of magic. Even so, that is for a later installment.

Here, we start to see some muscles start to get flexed as far as creativity and ideaology. While the fluff is not fleshed out into full fledged biology reports, they give clear and concise ways they interact with the world and players. They also begin to try and encourage patterns in behavior that require thought. Mst of the time, aside from elemental type matchups or obvious weak point targeting, most encounters in my tabletop experiences have been straightforward fights, with no real strategy needed. It wasn’t until a particularly bad encounter in a FATE campaign that doing anything other than repeatedly attacking seemed intelligent, much less something that wasn’t inherently suicidal.

Here, though, a pattern is starting to emerge. Slowly, but surely, there are encounters being made to encourage combat experiences outside of the attack slog. For some, it’s a deadly cat and mouse game that goes to the person who is both prepared and wary. In others, they require traps or targeted efforts to bypass otherwise tough defenses. And others still, the hunted can easily become the hunted, with unseen depths to them that wouldn’t be expected of their kind until it becomes too late. And things only become trickier from here.

That, however, is for part 2 and onwards. EDIT 2: THE ANTS ARE NOT THE SIZE OF ANTS. THEY ARE THE SIZE OF RATS. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE AND YOU’RE WELCOME FOR THE HILARITY.

#Age of Starmetal #Tabletop #Tabletop Rpg #intragalactic-brain-bubbles #review part 1

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