Create accountLogin

Recent searches

No recent searches

Search options

Not available on dice.camp.
dice.camp is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A Mastodon server for RPG folks to hang out and talk. Not owned by a billionaire.

Administered by:

Server stats:

1.7K
active users

dice.camp: AboutProfiles directoryPrivacy policy

Mastodon: AboutGet the appKeyboard shortcutsView source codev4.3.7

Public
mx. mark argent

science-fantasy is my true genre love. while poring over my brother's at the tender age of ten, i saw a section titled "Mutants and Magic" with rules for converting things between D&D and something called , and i was like, goddamn, i want to play THAT game

Readers of THE DRAGON might already be familiar with the concept of mixing science fantasy and heroic fantasy from reading my previous article about the adventures of a group of AD&D characters transported via a curse scroll to another continuum and ending up amidst the androids and mutants aboard the Starship Warden of METAMORPHOSIS ALPHA. Rather than go back over that ground again, it seems more profitable to discuss instead the many possibilities for the DM if he or she includes a gateway to a post-atomic war earth a la GAMMA WORLD. The two game systems are not alien, and interfacing them is not difficult. The challenges are very interesting for AD&D characters, and it might get one of the participants interested enough to get a separate GAMMA WORLD campaign going, thus giving all of you a new field for gaming, and most important give you a break from DMing continually.
Saving Throws: As noted, GW characters get no save against magic (spells), although some mental mutations will modify this rule (see below). Likewise, AD&D characters are not allowed any radiation resistance. Poison saves should use the GW matrix in a GAMMA WORLD area, otherwise the AD&D system is used. All other saving throws are as per AD&D, with GW characters being considered as fighters (those with mental mutations approximating spell abilities should gain the benefit of saving as a 1st-5th level magic-user if the saving throw category therefore is superior to that of fighters). Level of ability is based on the number of experience points the GW character has earned, each step equalling 1 level, i.e. 0 – 2,999 = 1st level, 3,000 – 5,999 = 2nd level, 6,000 – 11,999 = 3rd level, 12,000 – 24,999 = 4th level, etc.
Artifacts: The GW “artifacts” (except those with chemical bases which could be reproduced) will operate in the AD&D world, just as most magic items will function in a GW setting. AD&D characters are limited in ability with regard to GW “artifacts” to those operable under Chart A. Furthermore, they receive a +1 on their die rolls. Clerics and magic-users with an intelligence of 15 or better may negate this restriction, and the penalty to dice rolls as well, through practice or research. Each successful operation of an “artifact” allows a 10% cumulative chance of negating the penalty. Research on the object will allow a 1% cumulative chance of operating Charts B and C items as follows: Each day of research on type B objects, with a 100 g.p. per day expenditure, each week of research on C objects with a 1,000 gold piece per week cost. (Naturally, such study and research must be uninterrupted and undisturbed.)
guy in shiny powered armor or maybe a robot carrying some sort of future gun, riding a cyborged-out battle beast perched on top of some rocks
mx. mark argent

is the game i always imagined could be, back then, with an extensive line of beautifully-illustrated books supporting play across, above, within, and adjacent to an alien Earth over a billion years in the future. if hadn't come out the same year, Numenera would be My Game.

the cover to the original Numenera corebook. various science-fantasy characters and creatures orbit an amber monolith, above a scene of gliding beast and its rider pursue a red-caped sky-surfer over orange dunes.
the cover to Numenera: Discovery, one of two updated corebooks. various science-fantasy characters and creatures orbit an amber monolith, amidst a scene of two riders, one on a futuristic jet ski, the other riding a giant goldfish, skimming the watery surface between angular stone pylons.
the cover to Numenera: Destiny, one of two updated corebooks. various science-fantasy characters and creatures orbit a spherical machine surrounded by floating metallic shards. in the foreground, two humanoid figures survey a cloudy, greenish skyscape from a rocky outcrop.
Aug 13, 2023, 01:59 PM·Public·Ivory for iOS
1boost·5favorites
Public *
mx. mark argent

but last year i found , which uses an -based ruleset and a slew of random tables to paint endless blue-tinged far future vistas while expending a bare fraction of 's word count to deeply satisfy my science-fantasy itch. grab it for pwyw at graculusdroog.itch.io or get the gorgeous deluxe hardcover at Exalted Funeral or one of the usual alt- suspects

The sun is dying and the wreckage of countless eons litters the parched wastes of Vaarn, the desolate country that common folk call the blue ruin. It is said that these sky-coloured sands hide the graves of the Autarchs; have swallowed the buried arcologies in which the true seed of humankind was preserved through the Great Collapse; conceal forgotten crypts of memory, decaying crystalline lattices of ancient ego-engines upon which the dusk-blue dunes encroach without pity. From the New Hegemony to the south come drifters and dreamers, desecraters of the tech-tombs that lie sunken beneath the azure wastes. Light-years overhead, aurum-hulled craft ply their tender routes between the spheres, and miles below a pilgrim’s feet, strange wombs are kindled once more with life undreamed of. These are the hinterlands, where humanity’s great works have fallen to everlasting decay, where machine and animal and fungus think to crown themselves our equal. The phthalo-sands, where newbeasts hunt proudly with boots upon their hind paws and chromepriests chant unending binary devotions to their nameless synthetic god. Only the desperate or the mad would seek to make a life here, to roam the blue desert in search of the secret VAULTS OF VAARN.
Gnomon, the city of shaded markets, at first appears to be this dream made solid. There are taverns with cushioned alcoves, as the traveller sought; also he will find learned conversation and hookah smoke, wide avenues flanked by lemon trees, public fountains and smiling maidens and strangers who greet him as brother. There are many sights in Gnomon, sights beyond the traveller’s dreams: glittering mezzanine gardens and parades of masked hierophants, guild halls where cone-hatted clerks ponder their ledgers of debt, babbling souks where the merchants mutter their bargains like mantras and even memories may be bought for the right price. Truly this was what he sought in a city. So bewitched is our traveller, he scarcely notices that the merchants’ smiles do not reach their eyes, that the women who wave from passion-house windows have faces brittle as porcelain, that each stranger calling him brother has an accomplice reaching into his pocket. It is only as he leaves under cover of darkness, with a head ringing from cheap wine and a purse empty as his stomach, that the traveller begins to curse Gnomon, the undreamed-of city, the gilded trap.
Vaarn! I curse each letter of the name. I curse the blue sand that infiltrates every pore of my body, the creeping sand, which each night swallows a little more of the final camp we have erected upon the face of this pitiless azure desolation. I curse the red sun that rises each morning to scorch the skin from our scalps; that great and gory globe, which the sages tell us is dying, yet seems to me, hanging above the lapis wastelands, to be full of malevolent life. Vaarn! I curse you! I curse this land that has stolen the tears from its peoples’ eyes, this land that swallows armies and poets and aeons as if they all, every work of every man, were but one more grain of mazarine sand. Vaarn! Three times I curse you, for I fear I will see no other land again. - Final testament of Idris Ida-Null, Hegemony Cartographer.
a Faa nomad makes their way across the trackless blue wastes on the cover of the deluxe edition of Vaults of Vaarn.
Public
mx. mark argent

while the two systems fit different niches of play -- PCs are big damn heroes with a slew of weird and wild abilities, while PCs are more likely to get mugged by squiboons for their hyper-greaves at a fouled oasis -- could easily fit in some corner of the .

ExploreLive feeds
About