Aldeus - The God War: an H&H blog series

I've got hyper-focused of late on binging the Super Robot Wars series, as well as Space Battleship Yamato, and thus inspired, I have been kicking around the possibility of a mecha themed expansion/setting/game thing for the H&H system. 

Shortage in time and energy has been making it quite difficult of late to commit to anything long-form like a new book, so instead I thought I might try my hand at breaking it up and developing it piecemeal over a series of blog posts, similar to what I have done in the past with the FTL material, or my fiction project A Chip's Edge.

Thus allow me to kick off this blog series by announcing Aldeus - The God War, a setting about alien gods waging war on humanity with powerful super robots, and the trans real robot pilots who fight them.

I've got some interesting ideas for the basic setting backdrop and themes, as well as some kinda SRW-inspired rules for customizable mechs without quite so much of the usual mechanical crunch that goes with that. The next post will kick off with the setting introduction most likely, just like my books do, but after that it may meander a bit as I work through ideas for different parts of the thing.

If there's enough interest, eventually this might actually get assembled into an actual book, and maybe I will even look into an art budget or god forbid even Kickstarter, but I am not committing to anything yet because I am still kind of in chaos mode after the move.

Hopefully my H&H fans are still out there, and I also have been desperate to do something with some queer flavor too, maybe bring in a few of my fellow trans into the fold.

I hope y'all enjoy!

The Assassin: A new class for Arcana Rising

Assassins are those who resort to the bloodiest means to protect humanity from the unholy and the despotic. Masters of the kill, they apply their instruments to cut out any who would threaten the freedom and survival of mankind.

Assassins follow the traditions of the Lepides, an ancient order that served the Alliance during the war against the Atlanteans. Even as Atlantis fell, the Lepides swore to continue their work, passing down the skills of their order to successive generations carefully chosen. The Lepides conspire to assure that mankind can forever live free of the tyranny of the unholy and those who would use magic to control human destiny as Atlantis once did. Over the years the order's descendants have scattered and even been lost, but the ways of the blade survive and a new generation has quickly armed themselves to face the threat of magic's return to the world.

Assassins train extensively to improve their agility, perception, and combat skill to almost preternatural levels. Some say that only those who still contain a trace of the mystical bloodline of the original Lepides can truly master the techniques, and it does at times seem as if those whose destiny lies in the ways of the assassin learn as if their very instincts were already tuned to them.

High STR is a must for an assassin, as is a decent DEX score, and their WIS tends to be high as well, owing to their unique perceptive abilities.

	Melee To-Hit	Ranged To-Hit	Hit Dice	Saving Throws	Assassinate
1	+1	+0	1d8	+1 DEX	+1d6
2	+2	+1	2d8
3	+3	+1	3d8	+1 WIS	+2d6
4	+4	+2	4d8
5	+5	+2	5d8
6	+6	+3	6d8	+2 DEX	+3d6
7	+6	+3	6d8+2
8	+7	+4	6d8+4
9	+7	+4	6d8+6	+2 WIS	+4d6
10	+8	+5	6d8+8
11	+8	+5	6d8+10
12	+9	+6	6d8+12	+3 DEX	+5d6

Stat Requirement: STR 7+

Weapons: Short Blades, Long Blades, Archaic Ranged, Handguns, Long Arms

Armor: Light

Special Abilities

Freedom of Movement: The assassin is a master climber and acrobat, able to move freely across the rooftops of an urban environment as easily as running along a paved track. Assassins may forgo stat checks to climb buildings and other vertical surfaces, provided sufficient handholds, as well as to leap distances of no greater than 5 meters. Their skill even applies to safe falling: an assassin can survive a leap of up to 25m provided there is sufficient cushion to break their fall, such as water or even piles of leaves or hay.

Heightened Senses: Assassins hone their senses, the better to avoid enemies and pick their targets out in a crowd. They gain a +1 to WIS for the purpose of surprise checks and perception checks, and can mentally track enemies within 50m even if they break line-of-sight.

Assassination: The assassin is an expert killer, and given the element of surprise knows exactly where to strike with a blade to best insure an immediate death for their target. So long as the assassin remains unobserved until the moment they strike, they deal extra damage according to the table above. Regardless of damage dealt, the target must make a massive damage save against the attack. Should the assassin be observed with apparent hostile intent (ie. appear armed), the assassination attempt cannot succeed. It is for this reason that the assassins wear the secret blade (see below).

Twin-Blade Technique: Should the strike go ill, or the assassin be forced to defend themselves against those who protect their target, the assassin must be able to hold their own against multiple targets. An assassin wielding a melee weapon in each hand takes no penalty for attacking once with each weapon, and when attempting an assassination can apply the damage from both secret blades (if wearing two).

The Secret Blade

A unique weapon of the Lepides passed down for centuries, the secret blade is a spring-loaded blade concealed almost invisibly within a bracer worn about the wrist. This allows the assassin to appear visibly unarmed, the better to approach their target without suspicion before thrusting the blade home. The weapon does 1d6 damage, costs 100 Astra, and takes a day to construct. Two secret blades may be worn, one on either wrist, and when attempting to assassinate a target, both can be used at once.

[Expanding the Game #5] H&H: The Moderators

The galaxy is a big place. While not all of it is yet settled, even the settled space of the known sentient races is still vast, and while the subspace engine brings things far closer together than they might otherwise be, this distance still imposes some practicality issues on certain things, for instance, law enforcement.

The process of enforcing the law can become quite difficult when a criminal can simply flee to a sector light years away from where he committed his crimes, and the difficulty involved in capturing such a suspect and then managing to get them all the way back to the appropriate jurisdiction for trial and incarceration raises further issues of time, cost, and practicality. As a result, the enforcement of the law became more and more a matter of cost-benefit analysis rather than justice, and evading punishment was often as simple as just leaving the system, as limited budgets and manpower shortages made the tracking and capture of fugitives of limited priority for most planetary and solar level authorities. Thus, in order to address this shortage, and further discourage criminals from fleeing justice, the Moderators were formed.

[Expanding the Game #4] Pepper Pots

A requested companion to the Lords of Time. See if you can recognize who these are supposed to be.

Pepper Pot

Hit Dice: 6D12 (37)
To-Hit: +6
TAACO: 11
Armor Class: AC-2 (AC2 against energy weapons)
Initiative: 13
Save: 14
Attacks: Death Ray 1 Kill/3d12 (R), Face Grasp 2d12 (M)
# Appearing: 1d3
Behavior: Killer (+4)

Description:

The Pepper Pots' origin is shrouded in mystery and conflicting legend, but one thing that isn't is their sheer genocidal malevolence. The appearance of Pepper Pots is no mere monster hunt, but a planet-wide emergency. Their nearly indestructible armored shell, total lack of any emotion other than hatred and bloodlust, and the deadliness of their inbuilt weapons, makes even a single Pepper Pot a threat to entire military batallions. It is believed that the Pepper Pots may possess the capacity for time travel, and their appearance almost always seems to be followed by that of a Lord of Time, their sworn enemies and who some say have waged a war across all of time and space for a span immeasurable by that of non-temporal species.
Death Ray: The Pepper Pot's energy weapon is a lethal and powerful one, and deals 1 Kill of damage to living species, instantly killing any biological lifeform. A successful CON save will reduce this damage to 3d12, and non-biological entities such as robots or androids similarly take only 3d12.
Face Grasp: The Pepper Pot's manipulator arm can grasp the face of a victim, sealing around its face and suffocating it. On a successful grapple, the creature may automatically deal 2d12 damage to the victim per round.
Piperium Armor: The Pot's armor is virtually impenetrable by traditional physical weaponry. It possesses AC-2 against any non-energy based weaponry, attack, or damage source, and ignores the first 5 points of damage from any such assault.

[Expanding the Game #3] The Lords of Time

Inspired by a certain classic British sci-fi show currently back on the air, and to take a break from bashing my head against this puzzling day job system for Arcana Rising, I've knocked out a fun little treat for fans of the flying blue box and the odd man inside of it, for use in your Hulks and Horrors games.

The Lords of Time are a mysterious race of time travellers, who've popped up from time to time throughout galactic history, though very little is known of them. Travelling through time and space in their dimensionally transcendant TUDORs, and possessed of unique regenerative powers and a knack for the sciences, the Lords have a strange habit of popping up at key points all throughout history.

The rules are far too long, and for some reason refuse to properly format for, a blog post, so you may instead find them at Google Drive.

[Expanding the Game] FTL #2: Shields

Energy shields provide an added layer of protection against enemy attacks, though their effectiveness varies depending on the nature of the incoming assault. The shields absorb most kinds of physical and energy damage so long as they do not fall below a certain velocity, and because they are an energy field, can self repair in combat, provided they have not been damaged.

Energy shields work as a pool of damage points against which certain kinds of weapon damage are automatically applied before resolving them against the armor and hull below. In addition, each level of shield has a regeneration rate, which is the number of damage points it gains back every round of combat so long as the system is still functioning properly and undamaged, and the engines are still providing power. If a shield is completely drained, however, it takes a round for the system to generate sufficient power to begin regenerating again.

When purchasing shields, handle them as an add-on system, requiring 40 tons of cargo space within the hull in order to install. The types and costs of the shield levels are as follows:

	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4
Damage Capacity	20	40	60	80
Regeneration Rate	5	10	15	20
Cost	50,000	75,000	100,000	150,000

In combat, shields react differently to each weapon type, as follows:

• Beam Weapons: Shields completely absorb the damage from a beam weapon, talking only half-damage from the beam, and allowing no damage through even if the beam does sufficient damage to drain the shield.
• Burst Weapons and Mass Drivers: These weapons strike the shield first, doing normal damage, and should the shield be drained by the attack, any remaining damage carries over to the hull and armor below as normal.
• Ion Weapons: These deal double damage against shields, and temporarily disable their recharge ability for 1d6 rounds.  
• Missiles: These relatively slow moving projectiles are unaffected by energy shields, and ignore them completely. 

When attacking a ship with shields, simply roll and resolve the attack as normal, but subtract any damage absorbed by the shield first.

Zoltan Shield

Zoltan have an additional type of shield they employ on their ships. Zoltan shields can be equipped in addition to regular shields, and provide an added layer of temporary protection against all forms of attack. Zoltan shields have a damage capacity of 100, but do not regenerate in combat, and will in fact only regenerate by capturing power from subspace, requiring an FTL jump in order to recharge. 

Zoltan shields soak all forms of damage, though they still take double damage from ion weapons. 

Adding a Zoltan shield to a ship requires an additional 20 tons of cargo space and costs 200,000 credits.

[Expanding the Game] FTL #1: Characters

FTL: Faster than Light is a space exploration and combat game of the roguelike persuasion for PCs by Subset Games. It is a personal favorite of mine; I was actually a beta level backer during their Kickstarter, and it was the first KS I ever contributed to.

FTL puts players in control of a lone vessel, fleeing the oncoming rebel fleet as it makes haste to prepare itself for a coming battle and notify its superiors of the impending threat. It also happens to make a riproaring concept for a Hulks and Horrors game.

And so, in the first of a new blog series at BWP, I'll be presenting a series of posts detailing some house rules for running FTL on the tabletop. Each week I'll release a new chunk covering the salient details needed to modify H&H to fit FTL, and thus also in the process provide new systems and add-ons that you can even use in your regular H&H games. Once the series is completed, the posts will be compiled into a PDF and posted in the Downloads section. We'll begin with some important character rules.

Alternate Concepts: the Vigilante.

Greetings BWP fans!

Some quick updates first, then I'll get to something fun, I promise. The fixed printing of H&H has been received by the printers, and proof copies are on the way to me shortly to make sure everything went fine. There was a bit of a hangup with the shipping (my fault, never do business at 8'o'clock in the morning on 5 hours' sleep), so it sadly may be a couple of weeks yet before I can once again approve Hulks and Horrors for sale in print, unless I can get the shipping upgraded. The good news is that because of this unfortunate delay, as a gesture of thanks and apology for the inconvenience, everyone who downloaded Hulks and Horrors during the sale period and is signed up to receive special discounts from DTRPG will receive a coupon to give you one more chance to pick it up at the introductory price for a limited time.

You can also see above that BWP finally has a proper logo of it's own! It's a simple design, aiming to evoke classic computer and sports car badges. Let us know what you think!

On to the fun stuff: Alternate Concepts. Tonight I was playing a bit of Batman and Tropico, and between my love of the Bat and the Vigilante character in Tropico 4, it put me in mind to make a little demonstration of the flexibility of the H&H rules system. Sure, H&H is a great SF dungeon crawler, but it's also an old school style game with a very simple class system, simple enough that expanding the rules to cover wildly different concepts should be easier than it sounds. I've been puttering away at a cyberpunk game powered by it for my next commercial release, but tonight I wanted to take a step way out of concept and see about a pulp-style Vigilante class, as well as demonstrate how one might introduce a touch of customization to a class.  Take a look after the jump and tell me how I did.