Saturday, October 29, 2011

Giant Robotic Zombie Fly Trap - Eating The Walking Dead So You Don't Worry

File:Venus Fly trap.jpg

Giant Robotic Zombie Fly Trap 
Large

No. Enc.: 1d4 heads 
Alignment: Neutral (Inimical)
Move: 120'(40’)
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 7
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d8 (plus special) per head 
Morale: 9

Fast growing mobile & semi biological the Giant Robotic Zombie Fly Trap  is a solution to a zombie infestation problem. These "plants" are dropped from orbit & within a few weeks have even the worst zombie problems under control. The planets are self replicating machines that use the bodies of their victims for fuel.
The creature is 15 foot high & uses a variety of local chemicals, items & what have you to create the queen. The monster then produces a scent of fresh brains which attracts any zombie or undead in the area.
The first zombie is captured by the plant machine & as the bio acid breaks down the first corpse any remaining brain cells are stripped of memories. The machine creates a rough outline of infected areas. The creature breaks down the body partially using it for fuel & partially for the memory banks of the next fly trap.
The creature can store upwards of 15 to 20 bodies a day depending on cluster of zombie infection. 

File:PSM V02 D304 Venus fly trap.jpg
The science of macro robotic engineering has given the Human Empire a reputation of highly efficient killing machines. The fly traps can create 4 or 5 plants a day. The fly trap can crush a man sized creature in moments as the application of pressure causes the release of the bio acid itself .
As the body is broken down the creature readies a machine seed bundle which it quickly launches to a new area for the clearing of more zombies. 
After the removal of all the infected the machines breakdown into a handy soil enriching bio mulch. There are no truth to the rumors that these disposal tools have been developed for use on humans & near humans!



Zombie Alien Animals Urban & Country Table 1d10


Zombie Alien Animals Urban & Country Table 1d10 
Urban 

  1. Horde of Zombie Squirrels
  2. Pack of 1d6 house cats various breeds 
  3. 1d10 dogs mixed breeds 
  4. Coyote pack 1d10 individuals 
  5. Murder of  Crows 1d10 
  6. Pack of Alien animals (group mind) or Pack of Primates 
  7. Exotic Pet - Tentacled Horror mutant slug thing 
  8. Giant Snake  undead full hit points 
  9. Cloned Dinosaur pack 1d6 individuals 
  10. Large Mammal or Dinosaur individual max. hit points 


Country Table  Roll 1d10 
  1. Pack of wolves 1d10 
  2. Coyote pack 1d10 individuals 
  3. Murder of Crowlike bird creatures 
  4. Herd of Cows or Herbivore dinosaurs 1d10 creatures 
  5. Undead bear max hit points choose climate 
  6. Horde of zombie squirrels or monkey like creatures 
  7. Pack of dog reptiles  1d10 
  8. Alien undead insect birds 1d10 
  9. Alien horn ape pack 1d6 
  10. 1d10 horse like things  max hit points 

Friday, October 28, 2011

Zombie tiger doesn't give a sh-t!

Poster

Zombie Tiger Large

No. Enc.: 1d4
Alignment: Neutral (Inimical)
Move: 120'(40’)
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 4 due to rot & decay 
Attacks: 3
Damage: 2-5 /2-5/1d8 (plus special)Rear claws for 2-8/2-8 
Morale: 9

These monsters are one of the most feared of all infected undead. They move with absolutely no fear & attack with out exception. These creatures may be found in the wild or in urban areas in private zoos.  They are immune to all mind effecting super science powers & move very quickly retaining much of their agility, quickness, & hunting skills.
They climb very well & can leap upward to 10 feet & 30'  to 50' ahead. When they score 2 forepaw hits in a melee tigers also get 2 additional rear claw attacks each doing 2-8 points of damage that round. Only surprised on a one! 
All attacks will spread the negative planar zombie infection. Only expensive super science treatments will prevent the infected from becoming a zombie in 1d6 hours.
 

Monster created by the Asylum for their new  post zombie movie. Story found Here
Plot: 
In the Halloween-themed Zombie Apocalypse, a zombie plague has wiped out 90 percent of the world's population. A small group of survivors, led by Rhames, fight their way across the United States to a rumored refuge on the island of Catalina. The movie also features Taryn Manning (Hawaii Five-O, Sons of Anarchy). Zombie Apocalypse is a production of The Asylum (Mega Python Vs. Gatoroid).I'm throwing this at my players  soon!

Free Monster Resource! Monstrous Tome Vol 1&2


A Dungeon Master can never have too many monsters or too many options! Sometimes you need something that the players simply have forgotten about or don't even know about such is the case with
 Monstrous Tome Vol 1&2
Volume 1

Put some new depth into your Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game with one of the new Acid Vampires or the ever-so sweet and cuddly Eh-Oh; ah! Those sharp rows of teeth! – Not to mention the Ethereal Stalker, the wonderfully dangerous Gnome Fisher – oh and never underestimate that Spider Plant in the corner of the garden! And try not to have nightmares about Werebadgers!In all 32 NEW monsters for your enjoyment!
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Over a hundred new monsters to add to your AD&D games, drive fear into the hearts of your players with new demons, dragons, giants and other original monsters
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Plenty of these creatures have a science fantasy element too them. I've literally used these hundreds of times. They work fantastic for AD&D 1st edition, OSRIC & many other retro clones

Optional Encounter - Signal From Nowhere



The characters are to hook up with a deep space survey ship -The Phoenix's Wings. This deep space survey ship detected a FTL signal from planet. It was traced back to a remote island compound. There were traces of negative planar energy*






A Note On The Negative Plane ! 

Thew negative plane in my games is a rolling plane of black energy, changing locations, & a toxic waste dump of the multiverse. Its a place of billowing energies & rolling clouds of anti death. It provides a quick way to power but ultimately destroys those it touches. Only the highest users of super science powers can access it safely & even then there is a risk

 The crew Of The Phoenix's Wings might as well be given red shirts. The Dungeon Master can kill them, tear them up, grind them to bits, it doesn't matter!
Act 1 
The signal came from one of the smaller argo plantation compound settled by the original colonist families. It can't can't compete with the larger operations like the one the characters encountered earlier.
Dr. Victor Sangre is a most genteel host & will provide for the characters every need. They must stay for a couple of days & he will provide  for them in style. Any mention of the undead & he will be slightly upset. Mentioning "native superstitions", quaint customs, & so forth. Dr. Victor Sangre is retired & seems to run things with a fair if ironed hand. 
The characters will notice several odd things when they land on the Island.
Random Odd Events Table 1d6 
  1. Plant life is strange twisted & slightly mutated. Yet the crops are healthy & robust 
  2. Technology breaks down randomly 20% of  the time 
  3. Strange colored lights are seen along with the stars in the night sky 
  4. Weird cat calls of creatures can be heard echoing throughout the jungle of the island 
  5. Puddles of oddly greasy liquids that glow appear here & there only to disappear 
  6. Strange masses of alien insects gather in piles here & there appear dead on the ground
    Act II 
    The party is introduced to the Doctor's wife. A victim of some terrible unknown disease. The doctor is determined to cure her. She is actually the victim of the planar energies employed by the doctor. She exists in a state lost someplace between life & undeath ! As the evening wears on & the party retires to their rooms. Several distant rumbles shake the house!
    Exploring, the  party will stumble upon a weird  ritual being conducted in the cellar, where the doctor is trying to acquire war intelligence from a captured Human Space Empire military official. But the interruption causes the zombies to turn on their master.




Conclusion
 

The party has come in the middle of a critical time when the stars are right. The doctor (4th level scientist) was  a rival to the gentleman encountered in the first adventure & used a very risky super science power to act as a short cut to the negative plane. He has very little finesse & control that his rival did. Instead he has awakened a horror from beyond the great darkness that was imprisoned eons before man walked the Earth!
Give the characters a chance to escape the island & destroy the thing from beyond time & space!
 

Thursday, October 27, 2011

May Day,May Day! An Encounter For Human Space Empires!

File:Whitezombie.jpg

 

Lewton Major 
STAR DATE : 20,0000 A.D.
CIVILIZATION CODE: # 250018
TECH LEVEL: 3-4
CAPTAIN'S LOG: Civil unrest continues on colony J45Z71 where local workers continue as the dictator scientist holds the entire planet within his sway.  He continues his reign of terror unabated. Our away team has been missing for 48 planetary hours & the Emperor's finest marines are standing by  as a last resort the mason cannons are charging for planetary bombardment!  
A Distress Call From Hell 
The planetary governor  & his aid confronting a local priest 



The character's ship gets  a distress call from the Caliph's Dream a ship that has been missing for more then 100 days out in the Lewton System. Lewton Major is an agro world of no small importance. The Dream was investigating the continuing civil unrest between the new colonists & original colonists. The colony produces close to three times the average for an agricultural world! The violence between the two factions was up sharply at the time of the Dream's investigation. 
The Characters will be met by the governor of the colony & his attache. They will discuss the comes & goings of the quiet little colony & its production of sugar cane, etc.
They will report that  the Caliph's Dream was hit by a meteor & crashed into a local moon & it was an unfortunate event. Since this is such a small colony there is very little in the way of a FTL communication's device. Actually this is true! 
The civil unrest has not been a problem since because of the intervention of a local wise man who was able to negotiate a peace between the factions.

The characters meet him on their way out of the office of the governor.  Legendre is a genteel man & somewhat refined & invites the characters to his estate.
The party may recognize the man's body guard as being the Captain of the Dream!
The locals are completely terrified of the place & will try to warn the party at every opportunity! Strange signs are seen in the surrounding towns as well 
Random strange events table Roll 1d6 
  1. Mystery lights in the sky that don't show up on sensors 
  2. Locals make weird signs with their hands as the character pass 
  3. Pets die when the characters pass 
  4. Strange storms blow up out of a clear green sky with red lightning 
  5. Neighbor hoods are effected by strange sleeping plagues 
  6. There are odd presences that seemly watch the characters!

    The characters learn the fate of the crew of the Dream once they visit  Legendre's compound & operation! 
     Legendre is a scientist/ priest of the Ebony Fleet . There are over 70+ Greater Guardian Zombies at the compound. Legendre(6th level scientist)  will be quite competent that there are more then enough foes to take out the party. He will reveal his total control over the planet & even the secret to his power. A rare formula from a hidden valley on the planet. One where a craft of the Ebony Fleet is sleeping!
     Part II coming up tomorrow along with stats for the Greater Guardian Zombies! 
Stay tuned! 

Blood On The Game Dice! This Film Might Save Your Life!

Meanwhile someplace near Australia on a remote island where they filmed Lord of the Rings this is happening! Remember they make battery powered tea lights for a reason! 

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Things To Come Or How To Screw With Your Players Using A Classic







Raymond Passworthy: Oh, God, is there ever to be any age of happiness? Is there never to be any rest?
Oswald Cabal: Rest enough for the individual man - too much, and too soon - and we call it death. But for Man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet with its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning. 



Things To Come - Here's a film right up the Mutant Future crowd's alley. Recently a post over at The Savage Afterworld  Here  got me thinking about this film.Sniderman's post about the Last American got me thinking about Things To Come.  The film's screen play is by HG Well's & its pretty dark stuff. The movie has been panned in some circles & raised to highest esteem in others.  The plot is a skip through history, now alternative history about  the future.
The plot : Things to Come sets out a future history from 1940 to 2036. It is set in the fictional British city of 'Everytown' (based on London; a facsimile of St Paul's Cathedral is in the background).
Successful businessman John Cabal (Raymond Massey) cannot enjoy Christmas Day, 1940, with the ominous news of possible war. His guest Harding (Maurice Braddell) shares his worries, but over-optimistic friend Passworthy (Edward Chapman) believes it will not come to pass, or even if it does, it will do good by accelerating technological progress. A bombing raid on the city that night results in general mobilization and global war.
Some time later, Cabal, now piloting a biplane, shoots down a one-man enemy bomber. He lands and pulls the badly injured enemy (John Clements) from the wreckage. As they dwell on the madness of war, they have to put on their gas masks, as poison gas drifts in their direction. When a little girl runs towards them, the wounded man insists she take his mask, saying he is done for anyway. Cabal takes the girl to his aeroplane, pausing to leave the doomed man a revolver. The man dwells on the irony that he may have gassed the child's family and yet he has saved her. He then shoots himself.
The war continues for decades, long enough for the survivors to have forgotten why they are fighting in the first place. Humanity enters a new Dark Age. The world is in ruins and there is little technology left apart from the firearms used to wage war. In 1966, a plague called the "wandering sickness" is spread by the unnamed enemy using its last few remaining aircraft. Dr. Harding and his daughter Mary struggle to find a cure, but with little equipment, it is hopeless.
By 1970, a local warlord called the "Chief" or the "Boss" (Ralph Richardson) has risen to power in the south of England and eradicated the sickness by shooting the infected. He dreams of conquering the "hill people" to obtain coal and shale to render into oil so his biplanes can fly again.
On May Day 1970, a futuristic aeroplane lands outside the town. The sole pilot, John Cabal, emerges and proclaims that the last surviving band of "engineers and mechanics" have formed a civilization called "Wings Over the World". They are based in BasraIraq, and have renounced war and outlawed independent nations. The Boss takes the pilot prisoner and forces him to work for Gordon, a mechanic working on repairing the few remaining aeroplanes. Together, they manage to fix a plane. When Gordon takes it up for a test flight, he flees to alert Cabal's friends.
Wings Over the World attacks Everytown with gigantic aeroplanes and drops sleeping gas bombs on the town. The Boss orders his biplanes to attack but they are shot down. The people of Everytown awaken shortly thereafter, to find it occupied by the Airmen and the Boss dead.
montage follows, showing decades of technological progress, beginning with Cabal explaining plans for global consolidation by Wings Over the World. By 2036, mankind lives in modern underground cities, including the new Everytown.
However, all is not well. The sculptor Theotocopulos (Cedric Hardwicke) incites the populace to demand a "rest" from the rush of progress, symbolized by the first manned flight around the Moon. The modern-day Luddites are opposed by Oswald Cabal (Massey again), the head of the governing council and great grandson of John Cabal. Cabal's daughter Catherine (Pearl Argyle) and her boyfriend Horrie Passworthy insist on flying the spaceship. When a mob rushes to destroy the space gun used to propel the spacecraft, Cabal launches the ship ahead of schedule.
Cabal then delivers a speech about Progress and humanity's quest for knowledge, asking, "And if we’re no more than animals, we must snatch each little scrap of happiness, and live, and suffer, and pass, mattering no more than all the other animals do or have done. It is this, or that. All the universe or nothing. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?"
 
The Things To Come as social commentary is well odd & as a lens through viewing history its just as odd. 
 Here why according to Wiki: 
The film, written throughout 1934, is notable for predicting World War II, being only 16 months off by having it start on Christmas 1940, rather than 1 September 1939. Its graphic depiction of strategic bombing in the scenes in which Everytown is flattened by air attack and society collapses into barbarism, echo pre-war concerns about the threat of the bomber and the apocalyptic pronouncements of air power prophets. Wells was an air power prophet of sorts, having described aerial warfare in Anticipations (1901) and The War in the Air (1908).
The use of gas bombs is very much part of the film, from the poison gas used early in the war to the sleeping gas used by the airmen of Wings Over the World. In real life, in the build-up to the Second World War, there was much concern that the Germans would use poison gas, which was used by France, Germany and Great Britain during the Great War. Civilians were required to carry gas masks and were trained in their use. When war did break out, however, the Germans did not use gas for military purposes.
Wings Over the World is based in Basra, in southern Iraq, from where it begins a new civilisation. Southern Iraq was also the home of one of the world's first known civilisations, Sumer, which began about 6,000 B.C. and invented the wheel, among a host of other things.
The single world government having engineers, scientists and inventors as the rulers mimics the ideology of the concept of Technocracy where those of the greatest skill and intellect in various vocations would be the leaders.
So does the film hold up today? A bit too well I'm afraid. There are some things in the book that this is based on about religion that I'm not going even touch it with a 50 foot calibrator.
Mining Things To Come 
  1. The mysterious wandering sickness - The perfect little plague that doesn't exist, this might be used as the "red death" of your campaign. Talked about but seldom seen or seen from a distance in NPCs etc. 
  2. John Cabal, emerges and proclaims that the last surviving band of "engineers and mechanics" have formed a civilization called "Wings Over the World"- Is it me or does Wings over the world sound like an outfit the Knights of Genetic purity might form or they might be the good guys? Could they be a mysterious force during the Shadow Years 
  3. New Everytown By 2036, mankind lives in modern underground cities. This might well be the vaults often talked about & seldom seen in post apocalypse role playing games. 
  4. The alternative history of the movie & novel's dates can be used to screw with players heads. The wars of the 1960s etc. 
  5. The entire movie could be used as simply another planet created by Hodgekin's Law of Planetary Parallel Development. 
  6. The evolution of Everytown might be used in a time traveling game to show progress & might be used as an alternative time line. 

The Kipling connection

Wells's "Air and Sea Control", the association of pilots and technicians which controls the world's communications and eventually develops into a world government, seems a clear literary descendant of an institution called the Aerial Board of Control (A.B.C.) in the short stories "With the Night Mail" and "Easy as A.B.C.", by Rudyard Kipling, with which Wells was certainly familiar. The Kipling stories are set in a post-apocalyptic world where airships are commonly used both for freight and passenger service, as well as for preventing civil unrest through use of powerful sonic weapons:
The A.B.C., that semi-elected, semi-nominated body of a few score persons, controls the Planet. Transportation is Civilisation, our motto runs. Theoretically we do what we please, so long as we do not interfere with the traffic and all it implies. Practically, the A.B.C. confirms or annuls all international arrangements, and, to judge from its last report, finds our tolerant, humorous, lazy little Planet only too ready to shift the whole burden of public administration on its shoulders.
The above description, from Kipling's "With the Night Mail", seems very applicable to the worldwide institution depicted by Wells. However, Kipling's stories contain dystopian elements.
Wells's book might have also been influenced by George Griffith's 1893 The Angel of the Revolution in which a band of revolutionaries known as 'The Brotherhood of Freedom' masters the technology of flight and eventually establishes a pax aeronautica over the earth.
Freedom' masters the technology of flight and eventually establishes a pax aeronautica over the earth.

The Mutant Future  & Gamma World Connection

File:Kiplingwiththenightmail.jpg

Imagine if you will the power that group of pilots, technicians, engineers etc. would have a in a post apocalype world. Pax aeronautica indeed. they would virtually control every single aspect of air transportation in the planet. The above group could make the perfect cryptic alliance for the players to belong to. A mix of the corps from Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow & the A- Team. The whole thing might even be played in the Shadow Years of Gamma World with little problems. The ideas for encounters could be endless given all of the fauna & flora of the sky.  Finally if your really interested in doing your homework with the Kipling connect someone has already done it for you from the creative mind of Marcus Rowland in His Forgotten Futures Rpg  Here
I highly recommend you check them out!
 A more recent entry into something a bit more pulp D&D oriented would be my friend Trey's efforts Here 
Trey's efforts are very cool & very much in keeping with D&D's pulp roots in an alternative universe of fun!