Weird Sheep & Wonderful Sorcerers: Sheep and Sorcery Appreciation

This is an appreciation post for Michael Kennedy at Sheep and Sorcery. Mike is an old G+ friend, and I believe one of the first and also the longest-running member of my Phantasmos discord game group. He played in my LotFP SHIELDBREAKER campaign, my FASERIP superhero crossover one-shot, and was also a co-player in z_bill's Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells campaign and Dan's Danscape campaign. He also has several really awesome settings, discussion posts, and other cool features on his blog, and this post is going to grab bits and pieces and hopefully make something cool out of it.

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We begin within a ship frozen in time. The generation ship was on a voyage Into the Weird Blue Yonder, when it was assaulted by none other than the Spectacular Space Kraken. Fearing the demise of their entire civilization, the Arch-Pope Father Fyodor Karamazov encoded a spell into the numerological ship computer, sending a tachyonic temporal force missile backwards in time, the velocity of the missile pulling the ship against time itself, such that while time operates normally within the ship, it appears frozen outside the ship. Karamazov has cybernetically integrated himself into the ship and taken on the title of God Emperor, and has maintained this ship stuck in time for countless generations. The general entropy and dynamical shifts of languages and cultures over time, along with the occasional inter-dimensional portal opened by the God Emperor himself, has led to all sorts of new developments of monsters and inhumans throughout the ship, such as the F-Men, The Red Sons, and the Martian Vampires.

In his inter-dimensional, multiversal travels, the God Emperor has made few friends, and many enemies, against which the peoples of the ship must contend. One such enemy is an ascendant wizard, an incorporeal lich borne from the nightmares of a slumbering frost wyrm. His minions from across the multiverse assault the ship every 100 years, attempting to harness the God Emperor's powers to perform a ritual to separate the wizard's essence from the frost wyrm's dream before it awakens (which incidentally is projected to occur just after the next assault...).

Most of the old gods were long ago forgotten, even Father Fyodor Karamazov himself condemned the old gods when he declared himself God Emperor. There is only one other faith that rivals the faith of the God Emperor, The Church of the Smiling God.

There are two members of the Court of the Smiling God who are best positioned to become the next Hungry Avatar. The first is Princess Porcina, a small but perfect girl. For her overall size, she is perfectly proportioned and in every way is the most beautiful woman that any man has ever laid eyes upon. She is, however, fragile as glass and rides about in an egg of transparent gemstone and golden wire supported and moved by four animated golden lion legs. She is guarded by a Unicorn in adamantium armor laced with platinum whose horn shimmers with the light of day. Autumn leaves appear in its wake and falsehoods cannot be spoken in its presence.

The second is Duchess Lioness. Her hair is layers of crimson feathers and she has horns which curl upwards from her head. Her canines are sharp and she has talons on her hands and feet. She is followed by her zoo of horrifically hybridized people. Half her manservant's face is that of a glaring chimp as is one of his arms. Her ladies in waiting are ladies with swan necks and bodies with human legs. Many children run to the Zoo with the promise of freedom, only to find themselves in such forms. They are happier this way. Everyone knows what it means when a chimp smiles, after all...

As is often the case, the two most prominent candidates for the holiest role of this happy church, are not themselves true believers. In fact, both of them profit handsomely off of the church, and their businesses are at odds with each other. They are not above sabotage, which has made the political machinations of the church a perilous game.

Despite their differences, they have made a temporary truce, in a bid to overthrow the God Emperor, even as the final invasion of the Ascendant Wizard nears...

SHIELDBREAKER: Play Report 5

Jim-Thing: A collage/digital edit created by our very own z_bill!

Click here for the Session 1 Play Report!

Click here for the Session 2 Play Report!

Click here for the Session 3 Play Report!

Click here for the Session 4 Play Report!

Click here for the NPC Character Cards!

Characters 

Jim Casper: Tartarian-Mutant Specialist. Working in a storehouse in the Tartarian kingdom, he learned about a mysterious martial cult, and has since been attempting to learn more about it. Has a mutation, a slit on his body which must be fed ancient artifacts. After his death at the hands of Kail under the effects of the Shit-Shroom, Ortega used apoptomancy to bring Jim back to life as an Unliving Metamorph. He now has completely white and cytoplasmic skin, a giant exposed brain, necrotic tentacles, levitates, can bud like a fungus, and has a bony detachable eye-like growth on his knee.

    -- Player: Z_bill

Kail: Mimic Knight (Fighter). A bland-looking mutant with greyish skin and coal-black eyes, giving him a stone-like appearance. Seeking something to make him special, he chanced upon a mimic, and was able to arrange a symbiotic relationship. The mimic armor slithers over him, occasionally altering its appearance to various effect. With his armor, Kail now seeks adventure, and has joined the Pearl Panthers to get it.
    -- Player: David Horowitz

Ortega: Mutant Apoptomancer. The fools back at the academy turned a blind eye to the limitless potential of the immune system... but who's laughing now?? He got kicked out of the academy for a very, very uncontrolled experiment and is now on the run. 

    -- Player: Saker Tarsos

Xx_Slayer_Queen_69 (Slayer): Mutant Phreaker and thrillseeker. Goth cyberpunk hacker-type with a scarlet mohawk and a black jacket covered in spikes and red eyes to boot. She has an automagic PMC on one arm and she makes it look good. She also has a roth obsidian visor.

    -- Player: Michael Kennedy

Play Report

• At the end of the last session, the players found themselves in a room full of viscera. Destroyed aquorum drones; exploded frelin and gozen; violated soma addicts; broken psycho-cells with fetal nematode-like corpses. Patches of null-space around the plastic, cybernetic, bio-tissue remains of SWORD corpses. Rows of dead SHIELDS delicately placed on emergency tables. The room is surrounded by shadow and null- the entrance cannot be found. The null-space has been occupied by a Spreading Shadow. 
• Spreading Shadow: An ethereal mass in the shadows, spreading shadow-pseudopods. Claws reach out to prey from the shadow. The shadow is a pocket dimension. From within, it hums. The walls feel like fur or moss-covered chitin. The fur-like cilia push and pull at the objects within. Will only attack infrequently (every other “round” or so).
• Also in the room with them is the mutant cult-leader / drug producer SOMA (pictured above). 
• SOMA: A mutant in his 40's wearing a cloak. He has jaundiced yellow skin and spiky platinum blond hair. He produces the drug soma, and has formed a cult of homeless and social undesirables deep within the Grand Stable system.
• There are seven lamps, numbers written above them in blood, only the last lamp is lit, and it is violet colored. The numbers read 18-15-25-7-2-9-22.
• SOMA offers to help the party escape if they give his cult amnesty from the law, legal autonomy, and if they sample his soma. Instead, Slayer... slays him (accidentally, supposedly). Serabia freaks out and nearly gets absorbed by the shadow. Kail saves her, but in the process nearly dies, and his consciousness is temporarily taken over by his mimic armor. 
• They eventually solve the puzzle and open a rainbow-light portal which takes them to another room.
• The next room is completely dark. Eventually they see a void elemental, not because it produces light, because it is darker than dark and therefore stands out even in absolute darkness.
• Void Elemental: A vantablack void orb with thorny tendrils. It is not clear if this is an organism, construct, or the platonic concept of null. Suction cups on the trendrils create mini-black hole vacuums.
• It makes the following statements each round as it attacks the party:
• What does the cow say?
• What is the non-binary response? 
• Do you still hate me? 
• What does the cow say? Do you still hate me?
•  In response to the last statement, on the verge of death, the party says "Noo" And the Void Elemental dissipates (the correct answer was supposed to be Mu/Moo but I misheard and anyway it ended up being funny so I ran with it ;) ). 
• The party, a faction of the mercenary group the Pearl Panthers, are now known as The Knights Who Say Noo.
• After escaping this room, they find themselves in front of an unlocked, but heavily reinforced door, covered in scratches and indents from SWORDs, lying dead in front of the door. In a hallway preceding the door, they find two weapons (generated using the Weapon Hack 2.0).
• Kaiber-Gaussian Sniper Rifle: An ancient artifact, a magnet-rail sniper rifle. The magnetic field of the rifle is kaibermantically encoded, and not a physical magnetic barrel that could be reverse engineered.
• Heavy: 1d10, Two-handed
• Total Cost: 3
• Qualities: Long Range (1); Magical (1); Deadly (1)
• Flamemare: A one-handed but powerful, piston-pumping warhammer, powered by devil-water which leaks onto the handle. The combustion of the devil-water frequently ignites onto the leaking surface, covering the head in flame.
• Medium: 1d6, One-handed
• Total Cost: 1
• Qualities: Sticky (0); Devil-Water (0); Elemental: Fire (1)
• They enter the room and find the SHIELD, who gives the following monologue: 
• Read the monologue quickly, with little space between sentences. Put a twinge of anger and sadness and voice-breaking in it. Imagine it building up as it progresses into a mad crescendo. 

I was alive once, I think. I think I am. I am, am I not? Null, Unalive, Unliving. If I am, I am Unliving. Am I, I? Can four dimensions exist while three are null? Where are the vertices of null-space? If space is null, what are objects? Null objects = Null life. Living = Unliving. Yes = Not Yes ~= Yes. Binary logic dissolves and I remember when they separated my sibling and I, when my heart turned Blu and my mind went to a faraway place, and my sibling hunts me like a dog and we are broken inside. Fractured, defined by conflict, mathematical models derived from psychic suicide, playing a game no party understands to serve ends that mean null, and now I ask you: What was it all for!? Am I alive?! What am I!? AM. I?

• Suddenly a SWORD enters the room from behind and attacks the SHIELD. The SWORD ignores the party, and they choose not to intercede. The SHIELD casts kaibermantic magic missiles at the SWORD, but eventually the SWORD latches onto the SHIELD's throat and tears through it. For a brief moment, the party sees consciousness, remorse, and finally hatred in the SWORD's eyes, and it attacks the party.
• After defeating the SWORD, they go into a mesmeric trance. They hear the following voice in their heads, along with this song (although I screwed up the audio so they only heard my the voice >.<).
• Play this video, wait until after the cassette tape clicks and the music starts, and then read or say out loud the below to yourself slowly. It's better if you can get someone else to say it while you close your eyes, or you for them. The timing doesn't matter too much, but if it helps, I finish the monologue with a little under a minute left in the song.

Your eyes are warm, your eyelids heavy. You close your eyes and take a deep breath, in through your nose, out through your mouth *breath 5s in, 5s out*, and then another *breath*. A warm current flows through you, radiating out from you like a soft blanket tickling your skin. You think about everything leading up to this moment, all the way back to childhood. You acknowledge the bad moments but only focus on the good. You’ve been through a lot. I know there were times you thought you couldn’t make it, but here you are, and you’re doing it. Even when the world feels wrong, you can find your center, I know you can. Just think of all that you’ve accomplished. Think about where you are right now. Think about the people around you, and the experiences you’ve shared, and the memories. It’s hard to believe, it feels like you’ve only just met and now you all are such good friends. It’s wonderful, isn’t it, all the people in the world, and how at any moment any of them can become your friend. Mmm… it feels good, doesn’t it, focusing on the good. There is still so much left to do. I know it can be daunting, but I believe in you, I believe you will do it. And if you don’t, if your adventure is cut short, that’s ok too, because you will always have those good moments, they carry with you. Every moment leads to this one, so every good moment is with you too, always. There is good and bad, but you get to choose which moments drive you, only you get to make that decision, and I believe in you, I believe you will focus on the good. Take another deep breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth, *breath*, and again *breath*. Ok, take your time, and slowly open your eyes. I’m sorry to say, it won’t be like this anymore, it may be cold, you may see bad things, but that’s ok. You always had to open your eyes, but remember, you will eventually close them again. Things can be bad out there, but when they are, just remember that you were here, and you will be here again, and in fact you never really left. You are here right now, in this moment and in every moment. I would wish you good luck, but you don’t need it, because no matter what happens, you will find the good in it. I know you will. I believe in you.    

• This scene was inspired by the "Coffee Break" scene from the videogame Earthbound (below).

• The party magically find themselves at the terminal entrance of the Grand Station. They meet up with Gary Molehands and the violinist cricket, Mr. Myce leaves the group to do paperwork, and they reach out to their handler, Arnold Tanaka, to get paid (and gain 2 levels!). They meet back up at Helnwein's Tavern, where this adventure started. 
• Helnwein serves them a strange purple drink with living fish eggs in it from Sporie's, which gives Jim temporary lucidity, and then the entire party is psychically imprinted with a memory from a page of one of Jim's occult books of a picture that looks much like his new form (see picture at top). The moment passes, and they only vaguely remember this impression.
• Arnold tells the party that they will be receiving a dossier of new missions in the near future, and for now should just enjoy the city.
• CAMPAIGN END!

The Breakdown

    I'm really happy with how this campaign went! The first couple sessions were a bit of a learning curve, but I think I really hit my stride with session 3. This session was a little on the short side, in part because they got through the puzzles a little faster than I expected, and I'm still annoyed about the audio issue with  the "coffee break", but on the whole I think this was a fun journey, and I'm looking forward to the next adventure!

    We decided that the next session we're going to do a one-shot of something else, a different system and setting and possibly different GM, and then come back to the next Phantasmos campaign. I really wanted this one to be entirely within Nova Arkham, but I think the next campaign will involve exploration!

    The "coffee break" is a thing I've wanted to do for a while, and I think it was fairly successful. Try it out yourself and let me know what you think! I'd like to see more of this kind of thing- integration of guided meditation, ASMR, breath practice, etc. in tabletop. It's kind of weird, but then that's what I'm all about ;).

SHIELDBREAKER: Play Report 4

This is the fourth (and probably penultimate) session of the SHIELDBREAKER campaign, although it's seeming increasingly likely that we're going to keep going after SHIELDBREAKER resolves. Below are the Play Reports for the previous sessions, as well as the NPC cards for reference:

Click here for the Session 1 Play Report!
Click here for the Session 2 Play Report!
Click here for the Session 3 Play Report!
Click here for the NPC Character Cards!

Additionally, I used this GLOG table of Minor Magic Items to give the party some extra toys to play with :).

I feel like these play reports end up being "this happened, then this happened, then this", and hopefully that's still interesting in itself, but this session was so much crazy fun and I know this post doesn't sufficiently capture the events as we experienced them.

Characters 

Jim Casper: Tartarian-Mutant Specialist. Working in a storehouse in the Tartarian kingdom, he learned about a mysterious martial cult, and has since been attempting to learn more about it. Has a mutation, a slit on his body which must be fed ancient artifacts.
    -- Player: Z_bill

Razlow: Kobold Garlic Knight (Fighter). In the early stages of transforming into a Garlic Berserker. Was a soldier in the Dogu kingdom but deserted when he discovered he was turning into a garlic berserker.

    -- Player: Murdoc

Kail: Mimic Knight (Fighter). A bland-looking mutant with greyish skin and coal-black eyes, giving him a stone-like appearance. Seeking something to make him special, he chanced upon a mimic, and was able to arrange a symbiotic relationship. The mimic armor slithers over him, occasionally altering its appearance to various effect. With his armor, Kail now seeks adventure, and has joined the Pearl Panthers to get it.
    -- Player: David Horowitz

Ortega: Mutant Apoptomancer. The fools back at the academy turned a blind eye to the limitless potential of the immune system... but who's laughing now?? He got kicked out of the academy for a very, very uncontrolled experiment and is now on the run. 

    -- Player: Saker Tarsos

Xx_Slayer_Queen_69 (Slayer): Mutant Phreaker and thrillseeker. Goth cyberpunk hacker-type with a scarlet mohawk and a black jacket covered in spikes and red eyes to boot. She has an automagic PMC on one arm and she makes it look good. She also has a roth obsidian visor.

    -- Player: Michael Kennedy

Play Report

After fully decrypting the location of the SHIELD, the party met with Mr. Myce at an entrance node of the Grand Stable system. From their, a dungeon crawl through the labyrinthine network ensued!

• The party walks down a hall, nearing a room. A SWORD bowls past them, agitating a bunch of frelin and gozen mounts in the first stable room, and they find themselves trapped between the SWORD and the animals. They use one of their magical meridian gems from the magi-slime cave last session, without knowing what it does, and by an amazing coincidence (I swear!) it happened to be an anti-animal shell spell, so they were able to force the animals back and escape (relatively) unharmed!
• Frelin: A beast with a hyena-like body and frog-like face, and long, clawed appendages above their shoulder blades.
• Gozen: Horse-sized, six spindly legs tipped with claw-like hooves that scuttle like a crustacean. Pink, worm-like skin underneath a furry, feathery, mossy layer of purple. Their skulls are like a raven with ox horns, and rest loosely at the end of a long, worm-like neck. If the skull is torn off, a lamprey-like mouth is revealed at the end of the neck.
• SWORD: An Unliving nematode-like creature in a psionic cell. The psionic energy objectifies a sack of bio-tissue, plastic, and cybernetic parts. If punctured, the abstract concept of null inverts from its object-oriented form to that of a null-space.
• They find a room full of drifters who were lured into the Grand Stable by someone named SOMA, who incidentally produces a drug from their body called soma. He leads them like a cult, but has recently gone missing. Of all the addicts they meet, the only reasonably coherent one is Serabia (see NPC card above), who accompanies the party to find SOMA.
• They head down to another room, a storage closet. There are several magical trinkets, but they are being hoarded by an impossible impostor crab. It is immune to physical attacks and it's shell of absolute solid evokes feelings of ennui and anti-love, but the party convinces Mr. Myce to take the brunt of it and lift the crab up so they can snatch the treasure. He reveals his inner feelings in the process, and forces the party into a verbal contract to be his friend and keep in communication with him once a week for a year (I'm so bad at writing these things up but I swear this ended up being hilarious and everyone loved it!). They receive several items listed below, including a psycho-cell.
• Impossible impostor crab: A hermit crab-like creature, wrapped in the discarded/dead absolute solid shell and claw/gauntlets of an impossible organism. Behaves like an exaggerated hermit crab, full of jealousy and spite. Not an impossible organism but has adapted to absolute solid.
• Psycho-cell: A cylinder of astrium glass and anti-information, filled with an Unliving axol sibling-type preserved in impossigen of incalculable value. A priceless artifact.
• A magical electrum coin (could not determine it's magical function, hopefully that's fine...).
• A handful of sentient (and rebellious) glue.
• A ring that makes your eyeball pop out.  This is not a problem, and you can continue to see through the eye just fine, like a spy-eye.  Reversible if the ring is removed.
• They find another storage room, where a strung-out soma addict named Steve is tripping out. They manage to scare Steve off and gather more loot (I think this was just gold, or maybe some of those items above, I've gotten it mixed up now :/...). Serabia steals some soma off of him on his way off.
• Mr. Myce takes them on a shortcut to the next area of the Grand Stable, but this is still a three-hour journey. Along the way they attempt to identify their new magical items, finally identify some of their old magical items, and do other miscellaneous things.
• They discover that the potion from the first session temporarily provides +3 strength.
• The partially digested frog carcass provides temporary ESP (as ESP spell).
• They identify the other meridian gem as a Conjuration of Animals spell.
• Ortega the apoptomancer metamorphs his dog-like companion Karchev into a smoke monster with a reflective stinger capable of turning air to water.
• In the next area, they find a stable room full of mechanical vehicles, primarily the spider-legged clankers commonly found in Nova Arkham. They find two aquorum drones patrolling the vehicles, and if they get in close proximity the drones will attack. The drones are explosive, and if any of the clankers are damaged, it's coming out of the party's pay. They manage to take down the drones while only destroying one clanker, costing them 100 gold.
• Aquorum: Amorphous blobs. Prokaryote-like impossible organisms, unstable in physical space. Clones sprout on its surface which explode on impact.
• Ortega, wearing the ring, rolls one of his eyes under another door. Unfortunately, in this room is a hallucinogenic shit-shroom, which has alluring psycho-active properties which transmits from the eye to Ortega himself, drawing him (and then several of the other characters) into the room and confuses them.
• Shit-Shroom: An unassuming patch of bioluminescent fungi, which is an impossible organism feeding off a pile of excrement of another impossible organism.
• The shit-shroom makes the party either catatonic, or go berserk, and Kail fatally wounds Jim Casper. As soon as they gather their bearings, they rush out of the room with Jim's body. Ortega uses apoptomancy to turn Jim Casper into an Unliving.
• In Jim's new form, his skin is albino-white. His brain grows substantially, breaking free of his skull, and contains powerful psionic energy. His skin is semi-translucent, revealing his cytoplasmic internals. His arms have been replaced with necrotic tentacles which spread rot. He levitates, his dead legs dangling inches above the ground. He is capable of producing spores which bud into clones. He has lost much of his intelligence and is in a child-like state. He eats several of the items through his artifact-eating orifice behind his knee (pre-Unliving metamorphosis feature 0.o), making him more powerful (increasing his HP). When he eats the eye-ring, his patella on the knee containing his artifact-eating hole becomes an eye-like organ grown from dentate cells that can detach from his body.
• After heartfelt apologies, and everyone coming to terms with the horror of what just happened, Ortega sends in Karchev to smoke out the shit-shroom, and then they head to the next room, which contains a pneumatic tube. They send a few messages to the outside world.
• They enter a room full of viscera. Destroyed aquorum drones; exploded frelin and gozen; violated soma addicts; broken psycho-cells with fetal nematode-like corpses. Patches of null-space around the plastic, cybernetic, bio-tissue remains of SWORD corpses. Rows of dead SHIELDS delicately placed on emergency tables. The room is surrounded by shadow and null- the entrance cannot be found. 
• This is where we ended the session... *BUM BUM BUUUUUM*

The Breakdown

    I think the last session was where I was finally starting to hit my stride with OSR, but it's nice to see that with a full party and the difficulties of a dungeon crawl, I was able to keep it going. The funny thing is, other than a few minor adjustments given some of the particulars of OSR, I'm realizing that I can basically just run this the same way I run anything else- this session could just as easily have been part of my Numenera/Cypher Phantasmos campaign. 

    From talking with the group, it seems the highlights of the session were Mr. Myce, whom the group loved, and they felt that each encounter was unique and interesting and I avoided the pitfalls of boring dungeons. In terms of things that could have been better, they felt that I could have provided them with a better sense of spatial orientation (e.g. given them cardinal direction cues), and provided more environmental details, particularly when they encountered forking paths and wanted some kind of cue so that choosing a direction wasn't just a coin flip. I've never been a visuo-spatial person so that's always been difficult for me, but their suggestions were helpful and I will be keeping them in mind for the future.

SHIELDBREAKER: Play Report 3

This is the third session in what I'm calling the SHIELDBREAKER campaign, set in my Phantasmos campaign setting.

Click here for the Session 1 Play Report!
Click here for the Session 2 Play Report!
Click here for the NPC Character Cards!

Characters

·       Jim Casper: Tartarian-Mutant Specialist. Working in a storehouse in the tartarian kingdom, he learned about a mysterious martial cult, and has since been attempting to learn more about it. Has a mutation, a slit on his body which must be fed ancient artifacts.

          -- Player: z_bill

Kail: Mimic Knight (Fighter). Kail is a humanoid mutant, almost painfully bland with his stone-grey skin and coal black eyes. He actually sought out the shoglite parasite in order to feel special, and the change produced a sense of wanderlust in him. Now a mimic knight, he acts like a young astral Jack Kerouac, hitching his way around the cosmos/setting. He seeks out different ways to express himself to new people in new situations.
    -- Player: David Horowitz

Play Report

• After defeating Asimov Dengo last session, the party headed towards Occulon's industrial complex. As one might expect from that crazy bastard, he overworks his employees, who cannot stop for even a second to talk. They needed to talk to Occulon, but he was locked away in his office and could not be bothered. Zeffre contacted them from the mesmerist network, asking them to retrieve a secret document, which glowed faintly in only their vision. The glow was coming from Occulon's office.
• They created a Rube Goldbergian-level disaster on the assembly line and not-so-subtly blamed it on the nearby worker Toddward, who went into a panic. Security (Occulon's mafia thugs) and an aquorum security drone came to take him away.
• The players used this as an opportunity to incite a riot, prompting Occulon to come out. In the panic, Occulon decided to kill indiscriminately, using his hard-light projections to mow down unruly workers. 
• They investigated the office, finding both the document for Occulon (encrypted) and the second partial decryption of the SHIELD's location.
• As the Doomsday Clock ticked closer to midnight, they learned from Arnold Tanaka that Terry and Barry were attacking The Forum and that they would be compensated by the overworked police if they took care of it.

• They headed there, and found that while Terry was Punisher-ing the Forum, Barry was in his blue-phase, crying in the corner. Barry is not the brightest, and after conversing with him, they reminded him of childhood trauma, having no friends in school, and convinced him that Terry was just using him. He transformed into his red-phase and brutally pummeled Terry to death, tearing off his foldy flaps, then turned himself in to the police.
• The document that Terry was trying to steal showed that both Barry and Terry were former patients of Doctor Hyborea, prior to release, and after committing further crimes, were then taken to prison.
• Terry had also attempted to steal a corkscrew-shaped astrium looking glass. With this glass, the party would be able to enter the asylum on the astral plane while maintaining their "object" forms, which would be useful against the insane Doctor Hyborea.

• Before heading back to Doctor Hyborea's mansion, they decided to check out the Grand Stable, based on information from the partial decryptions. Mr. Myce, the head of the Grand Stable network, was not available, but they conversed with the attendants at the nearby station. One attendant was a red-skinned naked mole-rat with hands like the nose of a star-nosed mole, and the other was a tiny grasshopper able to rub his appendages together to produce muzak. 
• Through a pneumatic tube system across the Grand Stable network, they received a message from Mr. Myce that he was in communication with Arnold, and that they should come back when they have the full decryption. In the mean time, he provided them with tunneling gauntlets and two mirrors which reflect the light of each other.

• They also took a detour to Zeffre's secret base. She informed them that the document they stole for her from Occulon was for a planned coup against her father, the Grim General. After some discussion, she convinced the party that her intentions were (reasonably) noble, and she now "owes them a favor".

• On the way to Doctor Hyborea's mansion, they encountered a magi-SLIME with a wall of ice spell. After defeating it, they tracked it back to a cave containing several dead magi-SLIME and were able to recover two unidentified spells from their meridian cores.
• They broke into Doctor Hyborea's mansion, and once in his proximity, used the astrium looking glass to transport to the asylum on the astral plane. 
• Doctor Hyborea murdered the inmates, their “dead spaces” and his fractured mind filled the asylum with broken edges, gore, and various psychopathic entities. 
• "Psychopathic" both in the sense of being psychic entities and being insane...
• They encountered three entities. The descriptions were pulled from this table by u/semiurge on reddit, and I would encourage people to check out his work!
• Arrogance: A toad standing on its hind legs, wearing fine raiments. It is haughty, abhors contractions, and enunciates with infuriating precision.
• Misanthrope: A crawling tide of vermin, constantly devouring each other and rapidly breeding more. Speaks in a shrieking chorus.
• Self-Loathing: A worm made of rusted and bloody weapons. Speaks with grinding steel.
• Over a series of awkward, creepy, and Wonderland-esque conversations that I really wish I had recorded, the party made each of these three psychopathic entities confront their personal flaws and kill themselves.
• In doing so, they returned Doctor Hyborea to sanity. Before leaving the asylum, they met two new psychopathic entities:
• Honesty: Like a kind, fat old grandma; ugly on the outside, but warm and sweet on the inside.
• Responsibility: Like a frazzled single-mom working three jobs to take care of her kids. Doesn't take crap, off-putting at first, but only because she is working so hard to do what needs to be done.
• After leaving the asylum, the now (mostly) sane Doctor Hyborea gave the party the last partial decryption of the SHIELD's location, which seems to be somewhere deep in the labyrinthine Grand Stable network. 

And that's where we're leaving off, with what will hopefully be a fun dungeon crawl leading up to the conclusion of the SHIELDBREAKER campaign! I don't even need to do a "Breakdown", this was an awesome session and has me super excited for next time! I only wish I had recorded it because I think there was some really good stuff and I have a terrible memory for details, so I think I'm washing over some of the best parts :/.

Phantasmos/SHIELDBREAKER NPC Reference Sheet (I made a thing!)

To help my SHIELDBREAKER players (or anyone who wants to use Phantasmos), I've made some Magic the Gathering-style cards for some of the NPCs. Since I haven't had as much time as I would have liked to do this, I've only done a handful of NPCs that my players have encountered, are relevant to the plot and setting overall, or that will be relevant for the upcoming session. One of them they haven't encountered yet but I think it's likely they will so I'm including it. I'll try to update this in the future to include NPCs they already encountered or future NPCs.

I generally hate doing stuff like this, in part because it's cumbersome and I have no artistic skills, but also because I have these very particular ideas in my head of what these characters look like and they don't look like these things, but if it'll help other people then I'll do it :p.

Also, if you're reading this and it is still September or October 2018, please take my survey!

Click here for the Session 1 Play Report!
Click here for the Session 2 Play Report!
Click here for the Session 3 Play Report!
Click here for the Session 4 Play Report!
Click here for the Session 5 Play Report! (Final session of SHIELDBREAKER)

SHIELDBREAKER: Play Report 2

This is the second session in what I'm calling the SHIELDBREAKER campaign. On the whole I think things went more smoothly this time, although I forgot to prep those NPC cards / setting cheat sheets which I will definitely do before next time. Still, I'm glad to see things are coming together! Also, I still cannot figure out formatting in blogger for some reason, so this post is a bit messier than I'd like :/.

Click here for the Session 1 Play Report!

Characters

·       Cynope: Quenduin Amazon. She works for the Pearl Panthers to afford care for her sick sister, but has grown fond of the thrill, bringing a professional wrestling persona to her work.

          -- Player: Dan D

·       Jim Casper: Tartarian-Mutant Specialist. Working in a storehouse in the tartarian kingdom, he learned about a mysterious martial cult, and has since been attempting to learn more about it. Has a mutation, a slit on his body which must be fed ancient artifacts.

          -- Player: z_bill

·       Razlow: Kobold Garlic Knight (Fighter). In the early stages of transforming into a Garlic Berserker. Was a soldier in the dogu kingdom but deserted when he discovered he was turning into a garlic berserker.

    -- Player: Murdoc

Play Report

• ·       Since unfortunately Michael Kennedy couldn't make it this session, I retconned it so that Slayer was incapacitated by the SWORD at the end of last session, explaining why she is not present this session and providing an excuse for Arnold Tanaka to send the new party members as backup. 
•       The party went to The Forum. Occulon was giving a talk, and in addition to his goons were a table of union representatives, dogu (who may or may not have been associated with the mafia), and a table with the Grim General's daughter Zeffre and Nova Arkham soldiers. 
•       Cynope wrestled with Zeffre WWE-style as a way of taking attention away from / annoying Occulon. Zeffre was into it, they had fun, she gave her a note with a set of coordinates.
•       They follow Occulon and some of his goons down an alley and hear them mention something about the dogu and the SHIELD, but are found snooping.
•       They head to the upper floor of the Forum to get a map or some other information. After bribing a bureaucrat, they get a map which adapts in real-time to the changes being made to the city, including those changes made by the SHIELD.
•       They head to Zeffre’s coordinates. On the way they fight a DNEa, a double-helix shaped snake-like creature. The DNEa dropped 30 gold worth of its weird blood, and a partially-digested frog-like creature that seemed like it could be valuable or have special properties, but could not be properly identified.
•       They talk with Zeffre and choose to ally with her, agreeing to work with her behind the Grim General’s back in exchange for assistance tracking down the SHIELD. She does not disapprove of her father per se, but wants some kind of independence from him and leverage against her brother and the savant Edward Nzimbe. Her mesmerist alters their mesmeric network to sync her into it. Arnold Tanaka, the party's handler, seems to have some kind of acquaintanceship with Zeffre. 
•       They head to Dengo Sensorium, as they know Asimov Dengo is the head of the dogu mafia, and the dogu mafia are somehow tied up in a gang war with Occulon, who seems to be involved with the SHIELD. They try to find Dengo but are routed to a manager, a handsome dogu male with blue hair who goes by Noma but is actually Tezura Niko working undercover, and his female blue-haired assistant (who is actually his golemite companion Aleph). He gives them Dengo’s passcode to the private bath on the top floor.
•       They begin a negotiation with Dengo, but he takes a hostile stance. After they convince him to give up some information (that Occulon is working with the SHIELD), Tezura and Aleph attack Dengo. The party chose to fight Dengo with them. They nearly kill him, and then get him to give his partial decryption of the SHIELD’s location, somewhere connected to either the Forum, Occulon’s factories, or the Grand Stable system. Tezura says Dengo will be taken to jail and possibly extradited. 

The Breakdown

      I'm happy to say I think I'm starting to get a better feel for OSR, and I think this session went really well! I regret forgetting to put together the NPC cards and cheat sheets that I had intended to, but will definitely do so before next time! In retrospect, having the first arc be such an elaborate intrigue in a setting the players are not familiar with may not have been the best plan 0.o; I'm used to my home group who have been playing in this setting long enough to be more comfortable with that sort of thing. That being said, the feedback I'm getting is that the group had fun and are ok with being a little overwhelmed with all the moving parts.

SHIELDBREAKER: Play Report 1

Last night I GMed my first LotFP game! The game was set in my Phantasmos campaign setting. On the whole I think it went pretty well, but I'll discuss it all in detail below. Also I don't know what the hell happened with the formatting on this post, it's clearly a mess but I can't figure out how to fix it so it's just gonna be what it's gonna be >.<.

The Premise

    The players are part of the Pearl Panthers, a mercenary group hired by the Grim General in Blue to resolve issues that Nova Arkham can't or does not want to directly involve itself with. The kingdom utilizes a program known as SWORD & SHIELD. Through unknown (and implicitly shady) means, the kingdom has acquired a large quantity of deceased axols, humanoid axolotl-like mutants born in pairs, where one sibling is a powerful psionic nematode-like creature. They reanimated the axols as Unliving, programming the humanoids into SHIELDs and the psionic siblings into SWORDS. 

    

    The SHIELDs are like tactical idiot savants, they have little to no ability to communicate rationally and little to no individual will, but are geniuses at urban tactics, manipulating the workings of the capitol in their favor. The SWORDs are like super-wolves, programmed to be the ultimate hunters. The SWORDs are programmed to hunt the SHIELDs, and the SHIELDs are programmed to divert the SWORDs. As the SWORDs learns the SHIELDs' tricks, the SHIELDs must improve their tactics to survive. The intel gathered from the SWORD & SHIELD program is utilized by the Grim General to better predict crime, re-organize the capitol for maximum efficiency, and tighten his grip on Nova Arkham. 

    One of the SHIELDs has gone rogue, manipulating the SWORDs and the capitol city of Nova Arkham itself. It is not known how, or why, but it is wreaking havoc in its wake.

The Characters

    Unfortunately only two players were able to make it to this first session, but fortunately they were both great!

    Cynope (played by Dan D): A quenduin amazon. She works for the Pearl Panthers to make money to take care of her sick sister.

    

    Xx_Slayer_Queen_69 (played by Michael Kennedy): Also known as X or Slayer. A mutant phreaker and thrillseeker. She's a goth cyberpunk hacker-type with a scarlet mohawk, spiky black jacket, automagic PMC strapped to one arm, and a roth obsidian visor covering her red eyes.

Play Report

          The party started at Helnwein's Tavern, celebrating their first successful mission, having busted a Dogu mafia electrocoil gun deal. They discussed the course of events to their handler, Arnold Tanaka. X charmed the entire gang and Cynope literally punched through their faces. Some embellishment may have occurred, but forever after that's how it will be remembered.

          Arnold planted a mesmeric suggestion into the party, effectively allowing them to maintain mental communication with him and each other. The communication is actually a neural network-like model estimate; the longer they go between mesmerism sessions, the more communication errors will occur.

          He gives the party the following intel: 

1.           The SHIELD was seeing the psychiatrist Doctor Hyboria before going rogue.
2.           A SWORD manipulated by the SHIELD intercepted the Phantom Sheriff during an arrest, releasing two dangerous outlaw mutants. Their victims are being treated at Quickie-Cut Barbershop and Feldshery.
3.           The Oracle owes Arnold a favor, as a last resort they can seek consultation.
4.           Arnold's mesmerist network predicts the danger of the rogue SHIELD with a doomsday clock. As they travel from place to place, the doomsday clock moves closer to midnight.

    The party traveled to Doctor Hyborea's mansion. They got lost along the way, but the constantly developing urban sprawl of the capitol is confusing, and the mansion is a bit off the meridian system... Anyway, they fail to find any major lead on the SHIELD, except that Doctor Hyborea does seem to know something, but also seems to be going dangerously insane.

    They travel to the Sheriff's office. The Phantom Sheriff gives them zir's intel. Most of it is redacted, but they learn that the outlaws were involved in some gang war, and their names are Barry and Terry. Barry is a barracuda-like bioluminscent mutant. When blue, he's docile, when red, he's psychopathically violent. Terry is a large humanoid mutant with super strength and loose skin which he calls his "foldy flaps". By stretching and scrunching the foldy flaps, he can tell fortunes and make predictions, making him not just strong, but also smart.

    They travel to the barbershop to interrogate The Feldsher and the victims of the fight with the outlaws. They learn that the outlaws were working with professional-looking goons associated with Occulon, and that the conflict involved a fight with electrocoil gun-wielding Dogu mafioso. Occulon is a powerful businessman who spends much of his time at the Forum, and has been gunning for the Grim General's job. While ostensibly above-board, everyone knows he's a crook.

    They travel to the Forum to investigate Occulon. Along the way, they get lost again. The Forum is located in the entertainment district and the party definitely knows how to get there. They realize that the SHIELD must be manipulating the city against them. X is ambushed by a SWORD, nearly killing her, before stalling momentarily and then running off. The party chooses not to track the SWORD, instead sticking to their original plan of investigating Occulon. Investigating the urban sprawl they were attacked in, they find a dead goon whose head was missing, as if entirely nullified. On the goon they find 30 gold and a potion that they could not identify.

    ... and that's where we left things off, with the Doomsday Clock at 4 and the party just outside the forum. Looking forward to seeing what they do next!

The Breakdown

    On the whole I think we had a good time and I'm reasonably happy with how this first game went. I generally prefer to have 3 or more players, but Dan and Mike were both awesome and made it work. I struggled a bit with the mechanics, not because LotFP is difficult, but because the sensibilities of OSR are so different from what I'm used to. I definitely over-relied on rolls when I should have made certain situations more streamlined. I also made some other mistakes that I'm kicking myself for because I know that I know better, and I think between being a bit rusty (my home group hasn't met in a while) and trying to get the feel for OSR, I stumbled a bit more than I would have liked. I also think I may have over-prepped a bit, to my disadvantage, and over-relied on exposition. I'm going to try to work on these things before the next game. That being said, Dan and Mike seemed to appreciate the mystery, the world, and the NPCs, so I think if I can clean up my GMing things will come together well for next play session. I anticipate this adventure taking 1-2 more play sessions, and from there we'll see where things go!