Making Species in Edge of the Empire and Genesys

Now for Star Wars.

As a demonstration of how to make playable species in FFG’s Genesys or FFG/Edge Studio’s Edge of the Empire RPGs. In preparation for me to dump a great big pile of them here on my blog.

This involves somewhat tedious calculations and rummaging between many books/PDFs/wikis.

We’ll do something a bit out there. Destiny’s Fallen, or Eliksni as they come to be known as.

This draws from three sources, a blogpost from one of the EotE writers, where he explained how he started from a 120 or 130 XP base as most species have 20 to 40 XP worth of abilities and a decent pile of starting XP. Brawn + WT and Will + ST are added together, so if they are both of a pair is up or both of a pair is down, generally factor in an extra -/+5XP due to the compounding.

The Genesys Keyforge book, which gave XP values for building custom species and archetypes. And a fan-guide where they reverse engineered the various species to come up with the XP numbers.
All of these are needed because abilities are custom-made and adjusted at the whims of the writer.

Starting from a basis of 130XP
I needed to give the Fallen the standard array of one stat at 3 and one stat at 1, for a net XP cost of -10.

Fallen can get big and strong, but they are also agile, even when weak. So, Agility got the +1. Now they are hostile bug aliens, so Presence might be up for the drop, but their culture of brutal piracy and bulling means their resistance to it must be low. It’s more interesting to give them a -1 to Willpower.

We will skip Dregs, they can just be minion group foes.

Fallen are normally over around 9 feet/2.7m tall. But most of them are stunted and “only” Wookie-sized. And from there I start going through their wiki entry to get all their traits from the Keyforge book.

They are good climbers, which is a trait (Climbers -5XP). They are decently tough so +2 WT (-5XP x2), They have Extra Limbs for their normal troops and pre-fallen state, so that is in (-15XP). They are noted for resisting many hostile environments without suits so a choice of Arctic, Desert Dweller, Dark Dweller and Insulated (-10, -5, -5 and 0XP).

9 feet is about Silhouette 2, compared to all normal human and bigger Silhouette 1. Now Silhouette 2 on its own is -5 XP, but the ability to choose between Vandal (Silhouette 1) and Captain (Silhouette 2) is similar to the Dowutin from Knights of Fate, trait Large: Dowutins have a silhouette of 1 or 2, chosen at character creation.

But that has no XP cost, so I must reverse engineer it by going through the Dowutin write-up and hoping it adds up to 130 minus the Large Trait to find its cost. I eventually find it’s 5 XP and so irrelevant.

Going to silhouette 2 in Keyforge also increases the Wound threshold by +2. So that needs to be accounted for and the cost supplant the generic +2 WT I was going to give them.

And since the Fallen have some sort of gaseous liquid they need to live called Ether, that needs to be represented. Air Supply (+10XP) represents all the aliens with gas masks because they don’t breathe oxygen. Without it, they treat oxygen/the air as an 8 damage toxin. Fallen still breathe oxygen, so this needs to be toned down. Changing it to a +5XP trait where they need the ether and mask to heal wounds.

That gives us a complete package for the Fallen/Eliksni

Species Abilities

Brawn 2 Agility 3 Intellect 2 Cunning 2 Willpower 1 Presence 2 (-10)

WT 12 ST 10 (should be -10 but ambiguously associated with Large via Keyforge)

Starting Experience: 90 (Remaining XP)

Starting Skills: A Fallen starts with a single rank in Coercion during character creation. They obtain this rank before spending experience points, and Coercion may not be increased above rank 2 during character creation. (-10)

Climber: Fallen can climb surfaces with plentiful holds without making an Athletics check. Generally, these surfaces count as difficult terrain. Fallen may need to make a check to scale sheer surfaces, at the GM’s discretion. (-5)

Ether Dependent: A Fallen needs a supply of gaseous liquid called Ether to live, without it and a rebreather to keep it circulating, they cannot heal Wounds. (+5)

Extra Limbs: Fallen can perform a second manoeuvre during their turn without suffering strain or giving up their action, but they can never perform more than two manoeuvres during their turn. (-15)

Insulated: Hardy exoskeletons give 1 Boost Die to checks made to resist extreme temperatures. (+0)

Large: Fallen have a silhouette of 1 or 2, chosen at character creation. (-5)

This is a good representation of the Fallen in Genesys. But runs into a problem that we were making this for the three Star Wars RPGs, where most species have at most two positive and one negative trait. If we want to bring this to the baseline, we need to trim it down.

The ambiguity for WT is a good place to start. Is it 12 because they have a silhouette of 2, even if they choose 1, like the Dowutin? Since that doesn’t change for them.

We can move the Large rule into a subspecies trait, like with how Aqualish subspecies work.

From there we can also trim back the starting WT and move some of that to the same subspecies. Really avoid the problem that a silhouette 2 creature is “merely” as tough as a Wookie and the Vandal (the silhouette 1 types) are a bit leaner than Chewbacca.

Climbing really represents the ability of the Falllen to drop from the ceiling and roofs during the first and never matched mission in Destiny. So, I guess Coercion can be replaced with Athletics and the Climber trait removed.

Following the rules from Keyforge, a Captain has a starting XP of 90, 5 less than normal. This doesn’t seem right though it is consistent with the rules. In game tweaking might adjust it to 85 XP, so they are at a disadvantage compared to the species which can use their 90XP to pump up their characteristics.

Species Abilities

Brawn 2 Agility 3 Intellect 2 Cunning 2 Willpower 1 Presence 2

WT 11 ST 10

Starting Experience 95

Starting Skills: A Fallen starts with a single rank in Athletics during character creation. They obtain this rank before spending experience points, and Athletics may not be increased above rank 2 during character creation.

Ether Dependent: A Fallen needs a supply of gaseous liquid called Ether to live, without it and a rebreather to keep it circulating, they cannot heal Wounds.

Extra Limbs: Fallen can perform a second manoeuvre during their turn without suffering strain or giving up their action, but they can never perform more than two manoeuvres during their turn.

Insulated: Hardy exoskeletons give 1 Boost Die to checks made to resist extreme temperatures.

Captain: Fallen who have achieved their true size have a Silhouette of 2, +2 Wound Threshold and Starting Experience of 90.

One Shot Microlite D20 5E Write-Up

There is not really much to say about my one-shot. So I’ll combine this and make another post with an explanation of how I comb and use FFG’s Star Wars and Genesys rules to build playable alien species.

So, I decided a good palate cleanser after the end of my Stormbringer/Wolves Upon the Coast campaign would be a Microlite D20 5E-based game.

MicroliteD20 being an extremely cut down RPG based on D&D 3E and Adamantine Edition is a complete 5E-based clone. Coming to about 17 pages.

So it took a bit longer than I thought it should to make characters. The players seemed tied to the tyranny of the Character Sheet. That is, even in a book that was less than 20 pages long, they started with the character sheet and worked down from there, never being able to find different sections in the rules because they were skipping from section to section, ignoring text that didn’t have the keyword and so never understood the rules. When reading from the beginning to the end would have taught them how to play and fill out the character sheet.

The module was from GM Binder, a well-received five room dungeon called The Delian Tomb, for 1^st level players. I used my setting from my Worldbuild24 writing, so all the references are from the Adventia section.

The party was:

Death - Dragonborn - Fighter - Soldier - Drinking to forget the Anarchy

Fabian - Human - Bard - Magic Student - Sanctaphrax-trained and not doing well there

Face-eater - Elf - Druid - Hermit - Infiltrate and destroy human society

Joy Blithe - Tiefling - Mage - Positivity coordinator emphasizing peaceful state for other mages

Yers-Tuah - Dwarf - Fighter - Hermit - Seek the Holy Grail (Turned up late)

While drinking in the Green Dragon Inn, the party were interrupted by the blacksmith running in and shouting that the goblins have kidnapped his daughter. Death was being anti-social while everyone was smirking at Face-Eater failing to disguise himself as a 0 CR Human Commoner (a humorous misinterpretation of Wildshape).

Exploring the smithy and tracking the goblins through the Boar Wood and to a bare patch of hills. Attacking two goblins on patrol revealed that Sleep was as always, a good spell but Microlite D20 Adamantine Edition doesn’t properly list the specifics. Which was a black mark against it because I had to look it up.

They attacked two more goblins guarding an entrance to a tomb, one managed to get inside before dying so the next room contains some 6 goblins who were ready.

Sleep dealt with many but amid the hacking and slashing, a critical hit sliced Death, well, almost to death. He didn’t need to pass a Death Save because the Face-Eater cast cure wounds. They were a little warier then.

Next, they came to a pressure plate and by studying it, they realised it could be lifted and disarmed. But only Death had a sword, so only he tried to disarm it and failed. More damage.

Busting into the shrine, they saw the goblin shaman preparing to sacrifice the little girl to desecrate the shrine and reconsecrate it to the goblin gods. They also saw the bugbear in the corner and an extra goblin because the last player was nearly done creating a character. While the shaman went down quickly, Fabian the Bard had his head pulped by the bugbear. So much damage that it triggered 5E’s instant death rule. The other goblin sent Death back to death saves again, though he got through them. After slaying the monsters (sleeping the bugbear) rescuing the girl and looting the place. The last goblin flees and is killed by Yers-Tuah who was following the trail in. They realised there was a riddle on the statue of the deceased knight, whose tomb this is. Unable to immediately comprehend the riddle they go back to the village.

They are feted and rewarded. A petty dispute causes Death to declare that another party member did nothing and was a big coward. This started legal proceedings where no one backed Death’s version of events, followed by a Reeve deciding that they could just fight it out for being disgraceful. This somehow ended in Death committing ritual suicide so the opponent wouldn’t win.

The sort of disruption is not uncommon to the player but amplified by the one-shot nature of the session.

No one really wanted to keep going and since everyone was more comfortable with BRP. I decided to play Dragonbane next game. After umming and ahhing over adapting D&D adventures, I decided to just play Dragonbane’s Misty Vale campaign, as it was written and has art.

40K System - Chiron

Probably my longest one as it was the second one I came up with and originally didn't have a cohesive theme.

Chiron

Hiveworld suddenly having to shoulder all the burdens

A small dim red star maintains only two rocky planets. Breathable Chirona and airless Chirob. Chirona is the main hiveworld of the subsector, some 30,000,000,000 estimated inhabitants places it in the lower middle range of the 30,000+ listed hiveworlds.

With the almost complete destruction of Kastor’s Folly, Chirona has suddenly found itself in the awkward potion of being the major supplier of both taxes and manpower tithes for the subsector, with Vito unrelenting in maintaining the dues to demonstrate the continual strength of the region in the face of Orkish aggression.

A hundred hives line the planet in long looping lines, linked by great via-rails, each which is a narrow city in their own right. One cannot count the numbers of gangs, noble houses, guilds and sump-tribes which form the concrete bees.

Tribes of roving nomads and tailing-oasis purifiers eke out a living in between, avoiding the dust storms and transporting cargo between the via-rail lines. As the technology to build them has supposedly been lost. Rumors say their trade routes follow pre-Hive highways and so the unnamed cultures might be descendants of the ancient motor gangs of the 37^th millennia. Such rumors are near-heresy to the lorry-guilds as it implies that they were unable to successfully pursue their ancient but local crusades. They insist with all the wealth and threats they can muster that the nomads are descendants of lower-hive exiles, who couldn’t achieve their anointed fates of dying in the wastes.

The spaceport of Cenorbi is an anomaly. Once a vast landing zone, it has the capacity to house 40,000,000 people, or the estimated complement of daily spaceship traffic if need be. What it does house is 200,000,000 refugees from Kastor’s Folly, crammed into fleeing chartist ships during the WAAGH!! Working their way to only other hiveworld in the sub-sector. They were dumped here, forming a vast camp on the plain that chokes and disassembles the hangers, terminals, maintenance bays and storage pits with their lean-tos and tents. Who knows how many of the recorded have perished or fled to join some hive in upheval?

The 2,000,000 workers of the skeleton crew-settlement feel overwhelmed and have turned to their traditional foes, the nomads to maintain order. Among the new generation of increasingly feral Kastorians, who know nothing but the invisible boundaries of old gangs and the cruelty of the winds, the nomads cultivate the most vicious for their warbands. To move them back is a lesser priority that will cost yet more and could see them spill away into the wastes.

The interlocking combination of power players is proving to be a real headache for the planetary government. The increased extractive burden seems to slip from each group, deferred to another by cunning law-speakers, bribes and informing. No one wants to give up more wealth and personnel in case rivals pounce upon them. In such a closed system of power, there is only one form of advancement, the eventual disposal of the governor and assumption of the throne. Even the most benevolent of leaders see it as the final achievement.

Desperate to make up the numbers, the government has turned to a more extreme form of trog regiments. Normally trogs are “recruited” from the lower hive scum, barely a more than several gangs and prisoners, grouped into a paper regiment through press gangs and religious zeal. But now the governor seeks to press-gang mutant slave levies and worse send them to Ajax. Total outrage has been the result, mutant levies are only for the most desperate defenses. Had not the mutants of Kastor’s Folly achieved purgatory by their sacrifice holding back the Orks?

Such naysayers are headed by the Arcbishop, who as per the agreement with the Cardinal of Vito, is also the Archbureaucrat of the planetary Adeptus Administratum. A position wrangled by the higher Sector Cardinal in exchange for the deployment of the Sisters of Battle in far-flung wars, centuries ago. Such a potent combination denies the governor the official approval to deploy such forces, but the governor refuses to back down, imprisoning untold number of mutants in lightless cavern domes to train them into an army fit to die.

More complications can be found on the Sagi Gun Moon, the first moon that guards the system with cannons capable of hitting the halo belt. In order to sure up the defenses, the government has commanded more shifts and more crews from the proud Bastioners. The first decade was met satisfactorily, but as Vito remains increasingly fortified and Warworld Ajax absorbs more warriors, the paranoia has grown. With not enough Gunfalones, the governor has commanded the transportation of loyal people to establish new bastions.

This is a cultural clash that is seen as threatening the very fabric of the moon. The Bastioners have lived in watchful patience for 4000 years and cultural traits have diverged slowly but inevitably from the medley of hive-defenders. Who in turn, amid their own cultures, cling to their loyalty to the governor, commonly seen as the appointed hand of the Emperor. No Hive would let its defenders go without great payment, straining the vaults even more and upending the social contract.

Subjects serve as a responsibility, the quotas from above set by custom and justified by faith. But if money is now exchangeable for loyalty, then any assumed hierarchy is now at risk. Noble titles might be meaningless, gang leaders cannot rely on strength alone and fears of heretics paying those told to believe without question. Throne-Fever has gripped some hives, with loyalties changing daily as tiny fractions of money are offered. This “Nova-Rich” lifestyle has fueled the ascendancy of lower-hive gangs and traders, who have fewer social strictures and in turn encouraged gang warfare and new economic dynamism. New brutal slave-factories grow, old domes are purged for refurbishment and gladiator voxcasts echo. Pretensions to nobility and so mastery of society entice gang-lords.

War has gripped these places, hardening fears against the governor’s extractions. The governor has moved to the position that the divine order is unchangeable but the Social Wars are simply another means in which the Imperium clears away the impure and reveals the innate nobility of the pure human genome amid the dross. Taking a percentage of wealth and war-captives.

The Governor is reaching deep into his own family’s treasury to fund the press-gangers, the new gunners and the bribes to the Administratum. For deep in the holy records are the promises and exceptions made by millions of organizations that the governor can ply for the needed tithes. Rumbles of family tensions grow as in-laws press their own dissatisfactions.

The financial woes do not stop there. On the Mining World of the Ile Moon and in the Belt Mines of the Halo, the Guilds are unable to properly respond to the buck-shifting of Chirona. Increasingly, providing more of the new quotas for the last two decades, the guilds have decided enough is enough and declared the Ile Moon and belt to be an independent mining world. Such a world might still be subject to the authority of the System capital and may have to provide its own tithes of unaffordable manpower, so negotiations continue.

Chirob remains an outlier. While Chirona professes, as much is possible among a hiveworld to be a proponent of the Holy Body Sect, Chirob is a Mining world of many faiths. The claustrophobic galleries repurposed into pit-cites are home to the biggest monasteries of the Tech-priests in the system. Millions of Holy Body Sect worshippers descend from prior transportation and yet this world and this world alone is the cradle of the Emperor’s Divine Specter sect, the official sect of Kastor’s Folly and Agsuit. Spread by the unrecognized saint Arzarimus, the lavishly decorated shrines and ecstatic visions to him were considered an annoyance to the regular purity rites until the arrival of Kastorian refugees. Some 300,000,000 have swelled the population by a quarter and found common cause with the few guilds and cities governed by sect members. Uniquely the void-merchants, waste-reprocessors and elevator-guilds are descendants from the mining world Four, and so are Three Holy Ministry sect.

Rights are being asserted, and boundary areas are being pushed to establish new areas for the sect to grow. The followers of the Omnissiah and increasingly finding themselves as ill-equipped mediators, air-plant guards and gate wardens. The governor sees this as a self-fixing problem, the more hands there are, the faster the galleries will be depleted and so the more can be opened for settlement. And more digging is needed as shipments from Eytry decline. It will just take time Chirob doesn’t have.

Champions of the Spheres, Vikings and Irish Blarney – A Campaign Retrospective

This was one of my longer campaigns, with only a FFG Star Wars Edge of the Empire campaign and an AD&D Temple of Elemental Evil campaign running at least as long.

Cons:

The players didn’t seem to feel all that motivated to engage with the setting, even with the map, they were laser-focused on their divine objectives and keenly aware they had been dumped here by their patrons.

-          Maybe in the future, set it entirely within the setting, the initial planar jump being a genre-approved way of mixing the rules assumptions with the setting.

The demon axe dominated all the combat once it kicked into gear. While this is normal for demon weapons in Stormbringer and I could have not gifted it, the fact remains that there is no downside to investing a big chunk of the initial points into the STR Absorption power and starting with a lower STR. STR never drains out of the axe Rules as Written.

-          I should have either copied the power ebbing as the description of Stormbringer (the sword) or made more about Scarsbad getting greedy with all the powers not being released.

The players were very hesitant to use their marines, knowing they cost X5 more per day if they did.

-          Really the only thing I could of done was emphasis how many hands make light work.

The players didn’t like how monsters and armor meant most attack plinked off foes or went straight through on a critical.

-          That is three problems, the nature of Basic Role-Playing favors heavy armor. Even Runequest 2E/Classic has an issue where it’s a race to 6+ AP for most warriors. Parries slow everything down too, but's normal.

-          The second issue was that I decided that Supernatural AC meant an additional +6 AP, turning most monsters from a d6/d8/10-1 into a high number. I could have come up with a better solution, but I had already used half-damage somewhere else. Perhaps I should have not.

-          Critical are lethal no doubt, but that blame lies on me using Google Dice, which reuses the random seed if you click too often and too fast. Meaning one critical in a big group become several critical. And the high roll for damage becomes many high damage attacks which compound. As seen in the last fight when each player was fighting 5 iron-blooded at a time.

A small number of players dominated the game, they struck first, argued first and roleplayed first. Even when I tried to engage the others, they could be a bit non-committal.

-          Maybe it was simply they weren’t that into it or they kept coming in late and so were never up to full speed. I could have had a round-table system where each player needed to contribute and got a separate talking turn outside of the combat.

I decided to throw The Isle in the game as a spur of the moment thing, based on the reavers zine. That was a mistake as it bogged down the sessions and derailed the momentum. Though the momentum was flagging fast anyway.

-         I simply could not have done it.

-          Every encounter took longer, had more exposition and more debating methods that didn’t work because the players tried something, and the natural course of the game went against it or they wanted to wait something out. Like stringing up a net in the entrance and not disguising it or expecting the berry juice to last against a through soaking. I should say yes more often or have the successful character rolls explicitly disallow certain ideas as unworkable.

Pros

They loved exploration, at first a little hesitant, once they got the map, they were actively seeking adventure and monsters to fight. And every opportunity to expand their weird and wonderful powers and reputations was embraced. The karvi was their best and most coveted resource.

Battles were tense and violent fun. Critical hits and hewing of bodies were a lot better than saying I Attack each round. Though the lower starting skills and aggressive pigeonholing of professions meant some were innately better suited. Everyone got at least one moment of epic heroism.

 Stormbringer does a good job in simplifying Runequest 2E and the start of RQ 3E. Very much fast and fun, with dodges, parries and not as much lookup than a D&D variant.

The conversion process made the game low powered. While this is probably a Con for many, the outdated 90s adaptation website I used pegged HD to HP as HP = 10 + HD, meaning no monster could survive more than a few good whacks, like the PCs and mostly did 1d4/1d6+1d6 damage back. Enough to do the same and made the armor perhaps too important. But it meant that monster slaying and triumph were never out of reach for the players.

-           This reinforced the theme of this low-magic, iron-age world better than describing the weird monsters or accents.

-             They did like the &Monster descriptions though and a bunch of the freakish stuff from the Isle.

Wolves Upon the Coast magic was easy to acquire once they got the Flagstone yet was never used. Mainly because the strange descriptions kept the players always looking out for some reagent or loophole, they could use. Eager to see what wacky things were needed for the next supernatural yet minor power. What magical items they remembered to use served them well. The more elementally charged magic from The Isle meshed well with the elemental controls from Stormbringer.

They were eager for more, the game ended because we found a point to stop, however unwilling. Not because half the players slowly stopped turning up. That told me they were engaged, even if some were beginning to express dissatisfaction with schedules.

Stormbringer Wolves Upon the Coast Session 13

The party started where they stopped, about to charge the ruined tower.

Hrafknel lie still beneath it, barely moving. He wasn’t hurt enough to be unconscious as it turned out, but his player was delayed at work and didn’t make it till it was all over.

Step one was to rescue him, but the players were wary of the rain of arrows and javelins. Sigmar flew up and over to land on the tower roof. Her weight wasn’t enough to make the mud and reed plaster collapsed so she had to hew at it, causing it to unexpectantly collapse. In the top tower, she confronted 5 iron-blooded who would not come into the morning light. They threw rocks to no effect. Sigmar grappled one into the light and it screamed as it blistered. The other four made a desperate charge and Sigmar realized she could not fight back, though she dodged twice. Sigmar fled into the air and back to the rest of the group.

Meanwhile, Althrow Tams passes a Move Quietly roll to sneak up to Hrafknel while covered in mud and drag him back to the group. They stand around and debate what to do, some want to sail back, others want to attack as the iron-blooded are stuck inside their tower during the day. Sigmar inquired with her red pearl eye to see what happened to the iron-blood she had grappled. To her and the group’s disturbance, they saw it chewing on what looked like a fetus that had an adult arm growing out of it.

They debated everyone marrying Sigmar to achieve the permenant Flight spell. But they decided the limited flight might leave them in the air when it ran out. I gave them the descriptions of what consituted flying monsters from &Monster. Harpies came from the Reaver zine. I had been describing all descriptions as translated non-rhyming poetry.

They agree to attack. They order the rowers to advance, fighting as marines. The rowers argue it would be better to have Sigmar march in front of everyone due to her high-AP platemail. Sigmar marched in the front.

The arrows and javelins took a heavy toll on the marines. One fell to a critical wound to the gut, he perished soon after the whole fight was over, having lost more CON than remaining HP. Another was badly struck in the right leg for -4 DEX. Five in total were injured to varying levels. The charge took them inside the tower’s first floor where some 30 iron-bloods awaited them. Bloody was the battle, first Althrow Tams died, from critical hits of some 14 damage straight through the armor. Althrow Tams called out to the Chaos gods, but they replied they already owned Althrow Tams soul. Althrow Tams instead demanded an elemental death and was obliged with a pillar of fire upon death. Setting the second-story floor ablaze. 2 more marines fell. Sigmar was done in by another critical hit, the 14 damage too much with her prior wounds. This is a point of contention for the retrospective. Though the dead were even on both sides, it was 25 to 8. With the upper story on fire and the panicked masses fleeing down the stairs into the crush.

Miklas Domonkos and the seven surviving marines exited the tower and watched as the tower toppled from the warping of the interior and the panicked movement. They saw the iron-blooded digging into the peat bogs, trying to bury themselves to escape the sun. Once they were done, the surviving party tore open the heaps and killed all the iron-blooded one by one. The treasure was bittersweet compensation. As much of it was in trade goods and a treasure map to claim. Fortunately, close by ship or land.

About this time Hrafknel and Yrestor’s players arrived. Yerstor suggested trying to take Hrafknel ‘s axe as we were presuming Hrafknel might be dead. The demon inside it, Scarsabad  made a roll to see if it could dominate him, which was easily passed as it had twice Yerstor’s INT. Failing he Spirit of Wisdim roll meant Yerstor was fully and gleefully prepared to hew into his comrades and anything else still alive and set off on a quest of violence when Hrafknel’splayer arrived and remarked that the weapon cannot be removed from his possession while he is conscious, which is was.

Hrafknel’s player was particularly incensed by the session happening while absent due to unavoidable work. With the campaign over, everyone felt a bit unsatisfied, so I laid out what the next steps would have been.
A journey to Pyorra with an attack by a seas god along the way, which had something to do with the whale they rescued. In Pyorra they would have been given a set of tasks by the Deathless One, who was not a nice fellow or they would have a chance to kill him. Either would complete the objective of the Powers That Be.

Sigmar's player wanted to know what would have happened if Sigmar took the ring off, and I decribed them dying instantly. They realised that Sigmar could have been still alive under the rubble but decided the ring had come off or been taken off by the survivors.

A random typo triggered the Star Wars FFG Discord bot. 5 Failures 5 Setbacks and 1 Lightside Point was agreed to suit the party well. Having mostly perished but freed Ruislip from every monster bar the undead of the barrow and those were stuck in one place.

Hrafknel’s player agreed in principle that the character would have tried to get the Deathless in a single strike of his demon axe. Even after I described the Deathless One’s powers. For Hrafknel would have slain at least have the iron-blooded here. Attention was drawn to the dragon on the island south of Ruislip, and I discussed my toss up between choosing to adapt the WUtC-adapted dragon or use the Stormbringer dragon.

A comparison of Scarsabad the Axe theoretically after clearing the tower (3 STR from half the iron-blooded equals 90 or 9d6 more) and the Stormbringer dragon revealed it would have taken only two hits to slay such a beast.

I laid out my final plot twist in that I would have had Scarsabad spring free from the axe should they have killed the Deathless One too easily. With all the STR, Scarsabad could have redistributed the points and still have been an extremely lethal final boss. They agreed that would have been cool.

We debated what to play, two liked the idea of Star Wars d6, one said Mutants in the Now would have been interesting. That brought a deep objection from my regular, who had sat through 2 sessions of character creation the last time we played that.

I decided that since some had never played D&D 5E, that Microlite D20 Fifth - Adamantine Edition Revised, the 17-page cut down of D&D 5E and a well-regarded 5 room dungeon would go down as a one-shot.

Generic Bungie Foes for Mothership

 A while ago now, I binged a bunch of old Bungie lets plays
Halo 1-4 (4 was a bad move), Myth 1 & 2, Marathon, Destiny 1 & 2 and Descent into Darkness.
Besides looking at all the hidden references, reused concepts and traces of a connective universe they stopped bothering wiith after a while. I realised that all the scifi games they made used the same pool of enemies.
Now Mothership, the RPG seemed like a perfect place for such an universal set, even if the default setting tended to eschew extraterrestrial intelligence. Ultimately, my work was superseeded by the generic bunch in the back of Unknown Contact Report.

But these guys still can easily sub in for aliens or Human raiders. Comes as 4 enemies + 1 from the higher tier who leads them. 

Smalls: Your Grunts, Psions, Hive Thralls, Drones and Jackals

Page: 1(10) C30 I25 Attacks 1 (1d10)

Squire: 1(15) C40 I40 Attacks 2 (2d10)

Knight: 2(20) C50 I55 Attacks 2 (3d10) AP3

Mediums: Your Fallen, Hive Acolytes and Phor

Page: 1(15) C35 I30 Attacks 1 (2d10)

Squire: 2(20) C45 I45 Attacks 2 (3d10) AP1

Knight: 3(25) C55 I60 Attacks 2 (1 Wound) AP5

Bigs: Your Elites, Brutes, Hive Knight and Cabal

Page: 2(20) C45 I40 Attacks 1 (3d10) AP1

Squire: 3(25) C55 I50 Attacks 2 (1 Wound) AP3

Knight: 4(30) C65 I60 Attacks 2 (1d100) AP7

Heavy: Hunters, Ogres, Hulks

Rooks: 5(20) C50 I40 Attacks 1 Melee (2 Wound) and/or Grenade Launcher (1d5-1 Wounds) AP7

Mystic: S'pht, Hive Wizards

Cleric: 2(10) C30 I50 Attacks 1 (1d10), roll twice on Special Table

Bishop: 3(15) C45 I65 Attacks 2 (3d10), roll twice on Special Table

So, what makes these guys special?

The:

1-3 Leader is replaced with Mystic or Heavy, roll 1d10: Evens Mystic, Odds Heavy

4-6 Common Troops have

7-9 Leaders have

10 Each Individual uniquely has (reroll duplicate results)

2 Smart Rifle

3 Invisible until first attack (cannot be spotted unless an INT Check is passed)

4 1 Frag Grenade

5 +2 AP

6 Sniper Rifle (Combat Shotgun that switches Close and Long Range)

7 Suicidally charge with a primed Frag Grenade or melee weapon when in Short range

8 Melee Damage has [+]

9 Big Hats which give +10 to all stats

10 A Grenade Launcher attachment with 3 Frag Grenades (this is 1 per total squad)

11 Flies now

12 Flamethrower

13 Automatically applies a Stim Pack to ally in Close Range when attacking

14 Rigging Gun

15 Teleports to a location in Close Range

16 Laser Sword, a Laser Cutter with Adjacent Range, cannot be recharged

17 Deploys from unreasonable closed space

18 Deducts 2AP from target before damage

19 Dual wield Revolvers and can attack twice with them if not able already

20 Resurrects with 1 Wound once

And for Mothership 0E

Page: 1(15) C35 I30 Attacks 1 (2d10)

Squire: 2(20) C45 I45 Attacks 2 (3d10) AP1

Knight: 3(25) C55 I60 Attacks 2 (1 Wound) AP5

Smalls: Your Grunts, Psions and Jackals

Page: 1(10) C30 I25 Attacks 1 (1d10)

Squire: 1(15) C40 I40 Attacks 2 (2d10)

Knight: 2(20) C50 I55 Attacks 2 (3d10) AP3

Bigs: Your Elites, Brutes and Cabal

Page: 2(20) C45 I40 Attacks 1 (3d10) AP1

Squire: 3(25) C55 I50 Attacks 2 (1 Wound) AP3

Knight: 4(30) C65 I60 Attacks 2 (1d100) AP7

Unisystem Conversions

 This was going to be a post reiterating the rpocess to convert GURPS 3E into Unisystem. The RPG (like FUDGE) which was designed to cover the percieved flaws in GURPS and had a long line of supplements.

Unfortunately, I cannot find the site for the GURPS conversion anymore and that sort of mirrors how Unisystem can't be found either. it being reliant on you sifting out the zombies from their zombie + genre books and readapting their Buffy game. Unisystem's generic book remaining in development hell and Eden Studios retreating back to just being a games store.

So I'm going to reiterate a different site instead and hope anyone who still cares about Unisystem goes through and downloads anything nthye find useful before time erases it.

https://patchlord.com/patchworld/unisystem/index.html

For a site that hasn't been updated since 2020, it has had quite a life of constant updates since 2001. I particularly enjoy using this site to compose mash-up properties where I can use the adaptions as extra enemeis or as translation keys to mix system.

And while I am under no delusion that boolstering this site on my blog will bring it no more traffic than punching in "Unisystem to BLANK conversion" into Google, I hope it inspires someone else.

I especially like mashing Star Wars with other settings as the used-future meets fairy-tale fantasy nature of the Galaxy is flexible enough to include anything so long as you can sufficiently obscure it's origins.