Federation-Apocalypse Session Log Index III

Here’s an updated index for the Federation-Apocalpse Session Logs to date, since there are so many that it’s rather hard to keep track of them otherwise. Session 1: Gathering the group, mission briefing, and setting out. Session 2: Gating to Greenwald, first Praetorian encounter. Session 3: Debriefings and Madness Memes. Session 4: The search for Singular, [...]

Eclipse d20 – Rahne Diende

Rahne Diende Level Four Human Healer Rahne is an idealistic young woman who feels that her magical talents are a gift that she is meant to use to make people’s lives better – a quest that she combines with her personal quest to see the world. Unfortunately, the world is proving unexpectedly difficult; her tendency [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 141 – Of Plasma, Penguins, and Puffins

Kevin and Marty’s return to Kadia had started off with a bit of an explanation for Gelman. Kevin had been about 60% of the way along in rebuilding himself – but that still meant a seething cloud of glowing molecular fragments being assembled. (Gelman) “All right… what’s with the vaguely-person shaped ball of fire?” (Marty) [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 140d – The Last Report

Kevin, meanwhile, had recovered enough to handle a few things. Rationally or not, the first item on the agenda – at least as far as he was concerned – was Thralls. More specifically, some of the ones that Limey had wound up recruiting. It wasn’t that the boy had claimed a harem. Limey was perfectly [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 140c – A Family Connection

Nadyenka and Dr Parson had a more specific source in mind for their next stop. They shared a distant family relationship through Lilian Ardanel – and Temerin, Lilian’s youngest daughter, had opted to stay in Kadia – and was currently supposed to be one of Kevin’s Thralls. Lillian was pretty worried about her, although she [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 48

Alys wondered how they’d reached a position where most of their allies were insane Sith, but didn’t have the time to consider it in depth. She was still holding nearly four hundred war droids – and eighteen hundred bounty hunter ships – in reserve, and that was heartbreaking. There was so much that needed doing, [...]

System Inventory

Thanks to a special request – “what could we play?” here’s a quick survey of the games currently on my shelves. There are probably a few more buried in boxes and things, and there are quite a lot more on PDF – but it’s hard to hand a PDF to someone at the table and [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 47

As usual, here we have Kira’s player log with information on the rest of the characters added so it can serve as a general session log as well. With Xiang – and her cargo of antimatter missiles – rushing suicidally towards the orbiting Sith fleet, Alys focused on coordinating the various resistance, hacker, governmental, and [...]

Exalted – Wonderworker’s Mantle (Artifact ***)

A Wonderworker’s Mantle – sometimes known as a Girding of Autochthon – is intangible outside of spiritual domains such as Yu-Shan or divine sanctums. In such locations, or to the senses of essence-users, it appears at a glance to be a simple length of cloth. Close inspection will reveal it to be composed of countless [...]

Eclipse and Skill Enhancements, part II

Skills in a fantasy world are always a bit of an odd subject. Skills, like other technologies, are just ways of taking advantage of the way that the world works. In reality, an expert fire-builder and tender will know how to carry hot coals in a canister, how to waterproof matches, how to make and [...]

Champions – Superheroic Wealth

“Money is the greatest super-power of all!” Wealth in Champion is normally just a minor perk – it costs a mere fifteen points to be a multi-billionaire. Of course, that’s because in Champions (as in many other superhero games) money can’t buy anything that really matters. Things that matter have to be purchased with points, [...]

RPG Design – What Rules Are For

Role-playing games don’t actually need to have rules. “Lets Pretend!” has been around for a very long time indeed. All you need to do is to imagine that you’re a person different from yourself, occupying a different environment, and interacting with people who aren’t there – and then try to react as that person would. [...]

Eclipse – Magic and Metamagic Part II

And here we have the last couple of Alzrius’s current questions. How can I make a spell last a truly long time in a sort of “stasis” until I activate it? I know that Persistent metamagic will extend a spell’s duration for a varying length of time depending on the increase in spell level, but [...]

Eclipse – Magic and Metamagic

Today we have some questions from Alzrius – and a set of responses long enough that I’m going to have to split this response into two parts… I’m playing a utility mage in my current Pathfinder group, I wanted to ask about feats and spells or other special (Eclipse) abilities that would let me bend [...]

Eclipse and Skill Enhancements, part I

The question of special tricks that go with particular skills in Eclipse has come up a number of times. Unfortunately, the abilities being inquired about are not open game license material. That doesn’t mean that you can’t build identical abilities in Eclipse – you certainly can, especially since Eclipse and the necessary mechanics were published [...]

Eclipse d20 – Ability Exchange

Something that comes up fairly often – especially with inexperienced players making characters – is the desire to drop old abilities and replace them with new ones. Now that’s not unreasonable; unpracticed skills and abilities often become rusty over time, and – eventually – are forgotten or atrophy into near-uselessness. They rarely go away entirely [...]

The High Frontier

Civilization lies at the roots of mountains, beneath the hills, and in dangerous outposts by the sea – nestled as deeply within the sheltering depths of the atmosphere as possible. Men dig deep, and seal their doors with stone and iron, or else forsake advancement to live in small, tribal, groups, scattered in the wilderness. [...]

RPG and Character Design – Combat Styles

A recent request was for a look at two-weapon fighting techniques. For that, it’s best to start with some basics. This article addresses the biomechanics behind designing practical melee weapons – but the basic melee styles for humans (and, by extension, humanoids) really haven’t changed a lot since Homo became Sapiens. Well-designed melee weapons allow [...]

Champions – The Red Scarf, Mystic Adept (154 CP)

The Red Scarf’s roles allow him to add up to sixty points worth of attributes, abilities, and skills to his basic suite of abilities – although each role takes time to build and is subject to game-master approval: The Red Scarf’s final prepared role is as a mystic – albeit as a relatively inexperienced one. [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 140b – Interviews

It was a bit of a risk – but they agreed over breakfast that the next logical person to talk to was this “Fred Gelman”. He was one of the few accessible non-Thralls who’d had extensive contact with Kevin, he could help them reach more obscure sources, he’d already provided a good deal of useful [...]