OSR Commentary - H.G. Wells' iconic Martian war material tailored for The Burrows & Borderlands Rpg

Here  is a conversion of H.G. Wells' iconic Martian war material tailored for Burrows & Borderlands (a standard fantasy tabletop roleplaying framework utilizing classic six-attribute blocks and d20-style mechanics).

1. The Fighting Machine (The Tripod)

The crown jewel of the Martian vanguard. This massive, 100-foot-tall engines of glittering metal parodies the human gait with a terrifying, rhythmic, three-legged stride. It is propelled by intricate electromagnetic muscular systems rather than wheels, emitting puffs of green vapor from its flexible joints.

Size: Gargantuan (100 ft tall)
Type: Construct / Alien Warmachine
Attributes:
  STR: 26 (+8)   DEX: 14 (+2)   CON: 22 (+6)
  INT: 10 (+0)   WIS: 14 (+2)   CHA: 08 (-1)

Armor Class: 20 (Heavy Martian Alloy plating)
Hit Points: 210
Speed: 60 ft (Ignores difficult terrain under 15 ft high)

Traits & Senses

• Brazen Hood (Panoramic Cockpit): The pilot sits in a swiveling brass cowl at the apex, granting immunity to being flanked and blindsight up to 120 feet.

• All-Terrain Strider: The tripod can wade through deep coastal waters and step cleanly over structures, trees, or defensive walls up to 30 feet high without slowing down.

• Iron Cage / Collector's Basket: A large, mesh white-metal basket hangs from the rear of the main chassis. Up to 10 Medium-sized creatures can be held captive inside.

Actions

• Multiattack: The Tripod makes two Tentacle attacks and uses either its Heat-Ray or fires a Black Smoke Canister.

• Articulate Steel Tentacles: Melee Weapon Attack: +12 to hit, reach 30 ft. Hit: 18 ($2d10 + 8$) bludgeoning damage. The target is grappled (escape DC 18). While grappled, the target can be placed into the rear collection basket as a bonus action.

• The Heat-Ray (Recharge 5–6): A jointed metallic arm aims a polished parabolic mirror, projecting a beam of pure, invisible thermal energy in a 150-foot line (5 feet wide). Each creature in the line must make a DC 18 Dexterity saving throw.

  • Failure: 55 ($10d10$) fire damage. Combustibles ignite, water vaporizes instantly, and targets reduced to 0 HP turn to ash.

  • Success: Half damage.

• Black Smoke Canister (2/Day): Fires a canister from a gun-like tube up to 300 feet away. Upon impact, it releases an inky, heavy poisonous gas in a 40-foot radius. The smoke clings to the ground, contours to the landscape, and sinks into valleys or trenches.
  
  

  • Any breathing creature that starts its turn in the smoke takes 22 ($4d10$) poison damage and is blinded.

  • The Martians can discharge built-in steam nozzles to instantly clear and neutralize the smoke when they wish to advance.

2. The Handling Machine

A low-profile, highly dexterous workhorse. Looking like a cross between a metallic spider and a glinting crab, it stands roughly 7 to 8 feet tall. It is used primarily for excavation, building other warmachines, and direct resource processing. It possesses an unsettling, near-organic fluidity.

Size: Large (8 ft tall, wide base)
Type: Construct / Alien Labor Unit
Attributes:
  STR: 18 (+4)   DEX: 16 (+3)   CON: 18 (+4)
  INT: 10 (+0)   WIS: 12 (+1)   CHA: 05 (-3)

Armor Class: 17 (Reinforced Shell)
Hit Points: 85
Speed: 40 ft, Climb 30 ft

Traits & Senses

• Complex Articulation: Features 5 agile, jointed legs and an array of levers, bars, and reaching levers. It has advantage on checks made to grapple, disarm, or manipulate objects.

• Cerebral Sync: The machine mimics the movements of its pilot perfectly. It suffers no penalties to dexterity or precision despite its heavy mechanical nature.

Actions

• Multiattack: The Handling Machine makes three attacks: two with its Clutches/Levers and one with its Grasping Tentacles.

• Jointed Levers / Metal Claws: Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft. Hit: 11 ($2d6 + 4$) slashing or bludgeoning damage.

• Grasping Tentacles: Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 15 ft. Hit: 9 ($1d10 + 4$) bludgeoning damage and the target is grappled (escape DC 14).

• Blood Extraction (Grappled Target Only): The machine drives an direct feeding apparatus into a living creature grappled by it. The target must make a DC 15 Constitution saving throw, taking 27 ($6d8$) necrotic damage on a failure, or half as much on a success. The pilot Martian is nourished by this extraction.

3. The Flying Machine

Built toward the end of the campaign as the Martians adjusted to Earth's thick atmosphere. It is described vaguely as a flat, broad, and very large shape. It acts as an aerial transport and carpet-bombing platform, flying silently through the cloud cover to rain down darkness.

Size: Huge
Type: Construct / Alien Aircraft
Attributes:
  STR: 20 (+5)   DEX: 12 (+1)   CON: 16 (+3)
  INT: 10 (+0)   WIS: 14 (+2)   CHA: 05 (-3)

Armor Class: 16 (Lightweight Alloy)
Hit Points: 115
Speed: 0 ft, Fly 90 ft (Hover)

Traits & Senses

• Aerodynamic Mastery: The machine does not rely on wings or loud combustion; it glides with a quiet, ominous hum, giving it advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks while flying at night or inside heavy weather.

Actions

• Aerial Heat-Ray: Ranged Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, range 100/300 ft, one target. Hit: 27 ($5d10$) fire damage.

• Rained Darkness (Recharge 5–6): The Flying Machine releases a specialized payload of Black Smoke canisters directly beneath it. It coats a 60-foot square area directly under its flight path in a dense cloud of toxic black vapor (identical properties to the Tripod's Black Smoke).
  
  

Here is the entry for the Martians themselves, designed to pilot the war machines and terrorize the woodland defenders of Burrows & Borderlands.

The Martians

The Martians are a chilling testament to pure, intellect-driven evolution stripped of emotion, empathy, or physical beauty. They are sluggish and physically vulnerable under the heavy gravity of the mortal realms, yet they possess a terrifying telepathic malice and a completely alien biology.

An individual Martian is essentially an enormous, fleshy head roughly four feet across, dominated by a pair of massive, dark, unblinking eyes. Instead of a body, a cluster of sixteen thin, whip-like tentacles projects directly from the base of the head, arranged in two groups of eight. They have no internal nostrils (smelling via their skin), no ears, and no complex digestive tract. Because they cannot digest solid food, they sustain themselves by directly injecting the fresh, living blood of captured creatures into their own veins.

Size: Medium
Type: Aberration / Alien
Attributes:
  STR: 06 (-2)   DEX: 08 (-1)   CON: 10 (+0)
  INT: 22 (+6)   WIS: 16 (+3)   CHA: 12 (+1)

Armor Class: 11 (Natural unarmored sluggishness)
Hit Points: 32 (5d8 + 10)
Speed: 10 ft. (Crawling/dragging)

Traits & Senses

• Vulnerability to Earthly Flora/Fauna: The Martians have no immune system. They have disadvantage on saving throws against diseases, blights, and infections native to the setting.

• Telepathic Unity: Martians do not speak. They communicate with each other instantaneously and silently via telepathy up to a range of 1 mile. They can project a crushing, wordless sense of dread into the minds of non-Martians within 60 feet.

• Overwhelming Intellect: The Martian adds its Intelligence modifier (+6) to any saving throws made against magical illusions, charms, or psychic attacks.

• Senses: Darkvision 120 ft., Passive Perception 13.

Actions

• Tentacle Slap: Melee Weapon Attack: +1 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 1 bludgeoning damage. (The Martian rarely fights physically outside of its machines due to its profound weakness).

• Psychic Static (Recharge 5–6): The Martian unleashes a wave of raw mental energy. Each non-Martian creature within a 30-foot radius must make a DC 16 Intelligence saving throw.

  • Failure: 18 ($4d8$) psychic damage, and the creature is Frightened for 1 minute.

  • Success: Half damage and is not frightened.

• Vampiric Transfusion: Melee Weapon Attack: +1 to hit, reach 5 ft., one incapacitated or grappled creature. Hit: 9 ($2d8$) necrotic damage. The Martian regains hit points equal to the damage dealt. This represents the Martian using a needle-like tube to harvest and inject the target's blood.

Behavior & Strategy

Outside of their warmachines, Martians are nearly helpless, dragging themselves slowly across the ground with wet, heavy gasps. Consequently, they are almost never encountered unprotected. They spend 99% of their time sealed within the pressurized cockpits of Tripods or Handling Machines. If a player manages to breach a warmachine's hull and expose the pilot, a single well-placed arrow or sword stroke from a brave badger or mouse knight can easily dispatch the alien mastermind.

Manifestation of the Yellow Stone Horror - A Mini Campaign Idea Using The Victorious Rpg & Wreched Eqoque Session Eight - The Devil Is In The Details

 
Lord Malakor appeared before the PC's and offered them a way out of their situation with the Dark Martians! He simply wanted them to pick up a bauble from another Yellow Stone park. Nothing too dangerous at all?! Tick tok my party of heroes?! This session picks right up from Sunday November 2's session here. 

The party didn't heistate with the vile villain and agreed. Secretly they would make sure that the bauble wouldn't fall into his evil hands. They'd dealt with 'The Plane Despoiler' before a few times in London. These ended with the party of adventurers almost always beating him. The party exited the narrow ruined alleyways into another reality just as two Martian handling machines came around the corner! 

A Handling-Machine from War of the Worlds: Goliath.

Lord Malakor, "The Planar Despoiler"

Lord Malakor is a pulp-era reality-hopping villain who exploits the delicate boundaries between dimensions. Driven by a desire for power and resources, he doesn't just conquer worlds; he drains them, moving to the next plane of existence once his current domain is barren. He appears as a man of refined taste in 1930s fashion, but with subtly unnatural features—perhaps eyes that shift color uncontrollably, or skin that is always slightly too cold. He is always accompanied by a shimmering, unstable rift in space, a doorway to the terrifying Void where he draws his power.

Description

Malakor is an imposing figure in an immaculate charcoal-gray pinstripe suit and matching fedora, a sharp contrast to his bizarre powers. He carries a cane that appears to be made of solidified void energy. His voice is smooth and charismatic, easily convincing others that his reality-warping experiments are for the greater good—until it is too late.

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Stats for Victorious RPG

Victorious (published by Troll Lord Games) uses a 2d10 roll-under system based on attributes, with an emphasis on narrative control and pulp-style heroics using VPs (Victorious Points).

Attributes (Target Number to Roll Under)

Attribute	Score
Brawn	8
Grace	12
Mind	14
Will	16

Capabilities & Skills

• Punches: 1 (Damage modifier for physical attacks)
• Brains: 2 (Intelligence modifier)
• Saves:
  • Soak: 3 (Reduces physical damage)
  • Dodge: 2
  • Mental: 4 (High resistance to mental effects)

Skills: Malakor is highly skilled in areas that aid his manipulation and planar travel. (Roll 2d10 under the relevant Attribute + Skill Level).

• Occult Lore (Mind + 3): Extensive knowledge of different dimensions, magical artifacts, and planar weaknesses.
• Manipulation (Will + 4): A master manipulator and liar.
• Science/Mad Science (Mind + 2): Knowledge of exotic energy and pseudo-scientific theories used for his dimensional engine.
• Persuasion (Will + 3): Can talk his way into high society or out of immediate danger.

Powers (Uses VPs for effect)

Malakor uses his unique powers sparingly but devastatingly, often forcing heroes to use their own VPs to counter him.

• Void Step (Dimensional Teleportation): Malakor can instantly teleport within line of sight, appearing or disappearing in a crackle of reality-bending energy. He can spend 1 VP to bring one other person or object with him.
• Reality Anchor: As a defense, Malakor can spend 1 VP to force a hero's attack (physical or mental) to "miss" as a localized reality shift occurs, making the hero briefly strike nothingness or forget their action.
• Planar Drain (Signature Attack): Malakor focuses energy through his cane (a Will check). If successful, he drains vitality directly from the target's "home reality anchor."
  • Effect: Deals mental damage (using his Brains modifier + 1 punch die for damage) that bypasses standard Soak. If he spends 1 VP on this attack, the target must also spend 1 VP or be temporarily stunned, their connection to their own reality wavering.
• Summon Minions (The Void Stalkers): Malakor spends 1 VP to pull 1-2 minor henchmen (use Thug stats) or a single, small, reality-warped monstrosity into the current plane through his stable rift.

Role in a Campaign

Lord Malakor is a recurring villain who pops up in major cities around the globe. He is never focused on a single battle; he is focused on his escape plan and his long-term goals.

• The Hook: He appears in 1930s New York City or London, disguised as a wealthy industrialist or mystic. He begins subtly stealing rare artifacts or powerful individuals required to fuel his Dimensional Engine, a massive machine hidden in an abandoned warehouse or deep beneath a subway line.
• The Conflict: Heroes must figure out his true nature, stop his initial nefarious scheme, and chase him through the unstable rift as he jumps to a new reality (or the next chapter of the campaign).
• The Ongoing Threat: Malakor is the kind of villain who always returns, having escaped at the last second, leaving the heroes to deal with the chaotic effects of his reality-warping engine.

 The party found itself staring across the Yellow Stone vista and all seemed right?! But the air tasted off and there was a slight buzzing in the air. Here and there were wrecked tracked vechicles over grown with weeds. Giant wasps and bees flew around the party! Malakor stood nearby enjoying the party taking in the local sights. 'Breath taking isn't it! The air, the ruins, the mutated animals that want to kill us?! Errm you I should say. I want the locket of my dead wife which is in the ruins below. When you find the cameo then give me a call. Here's a device to do exactly that. Good luck heroes'  

We're using a modified Siege engine rpg system using the Victorious rpg system  & the Belle Epogue rpg from the Red Room  This gives the players a range of PC options. 

Manifestation of the Yellow Stone Horror - A Mini Campaign Idea Using The Victorious Rpg & Wreched Eqoque Session Eight - Martian Capture

 The PC's were captured by the Martians! The PC's got in over their heads after the  alien Otyugh telepathically called in the Martians! They arrived within 10 minutes because they were looking for the PC's. They had power neutralizing collars for em! 

A Handling-Machine from War of the Worlds: Goliath.

The aliens made life a bit of a Hell after hitting the PC's with stun beams (actually modified heat rays) and overwhelming numbers. This leg of the campaign picks up from October 22's session here on the blog!  The players are going to have to think their way out of this situation after the Resistance turned tail and ran! 

The PC's were handed over to several war machines with baskets after the power damping collars had been applied. They were going to be taken to a human processing facility near the edge of London. The PC's were not happy at all. But they had a plan and it involved Sir Tristan because his enchanted sword!  And the arcanists of the party didn't have any effect on their magic or items by the collars of the Black Martians! 

During a lull the party cut their way free from the Martian cages and fire balled one of the war machines!  They escaped! And they almost got heat rayed by the war machine but managed to escape the war machine with a scroll of fire ball that had been prepared ages ago to deal with the Yellow Stone horrors! 

They heard the honking signal of the last war machine calling others to it! They heard another squeal back from another nearby warmachine! The party needed to generate a way to escape the Martians! They did this  by creating a steam cloud with the fire and water powers of two of the heroes! 

Manifestation of the Yellow Stone Horror - A Mini Campaign Idea Using The Victorious Rpg & Wreched Eqoque Session Eight - Martian Attack!

The player's PC's were raiding the Justifier's HG below the streets of London. But they are not alone at all! 

 We raided the Justifier's Hall for equipment and weaponry to upgrade the party of adventurers. This session picks right up from the last session. The Justifier's Hall was mostly in ruins but the underground space was mostly intact. Something didn't feel right to the group. 

We looked at the weapons vault and heard shifting rock from deeper down in the vault's tunnels. And that's when the Dark Martian handling machine's pilot vehicles came into view! These pilot vehicles each had a Martian engineer/warrior within. 

A Handling-Machine from War of the Worlds: Goliath.

They started blasting the second they came into view and we engaged them the second they came into view. And our adventurers went fully on the attack taking out the handling machine's pilot vehicles by taking out a large section of walls and ceiling. We didn't want these alien bastards by calling in a three tier Dark Martian set of war machines! We did enough damage with the full group of seven PC's taking out the pilot machines. 

 We don't want to encounter any more of the Dark Martians and a voice from the dark call us deeper into the darkness. That proved both fortunate and bad as we encountered a group of other adventurers including Resistance fighters and other heroes who are operating in the shadows. We were told to 'Hurry' and left the head quarter's ruins and ran into the London sewers! And this is when we came face to face with an alien Otyugh brought to Earth by the Martians! 

And of course it attacks our little party because we stumbled into it's nest! Now it's a fight to not die in the offal of the sewers! The party wasn't expecting one of these alien horrors! The Resistance fighters and other heroes leaned into the encounter and we still had our hands full! The horror blasted out raw sewage toward our party. And we ended deep into the melee! 

Manifestation of the Yellow Stone Horror - A Mini Campaign Idea Using The Victorious Rpg & Wreched Eqoque Session Seven - Deep In The Red Zone

 We pick right up from last session and find ourselves deep on the road to London but a quite alien one! 

London has been choked out by the Red Weed of HG Well's War of the Worlds novel. And the PC's were none too happy to be here. In this timeline the Dark Martians won and were going about terriforming the Earth. 

Red Weed from the 2005 War of the Worlds film with Tom Cruise 

This wasn't the first time visiting this timeline and it took 5 weeks of campaign time to escape this branch of time. And during that game the party of adventurers encountered tripods, dealt with Martian blood farms, and saved the resistence's lives countless times. They also encountered several Martian brains and dealt with the Martian collective several times. 

 Immediately, the party were reaching for ray guns, hiding, and sneaking around. The began to make their way toward London and it was evident that they saw several ruined tripods as they went. The PC's came across a Handling Machine assembling more tripods. The adventurers made note of it for later on but had no desire to tangle with such a horror and alerting the Martians to their presence. 

We also saw a Martian power station that had been made from a converted Victorian factory. Knowing full well of the horrors that were inside we had no wish to tangle with the Martians so we moved on. We were looking for the secret  entrance to 'The Justifier's Hall'. Everywhere we went was choked by vine after vine of the Red Weed. But we did manage to find the secret door  to the lair of the Justifiers. 
We found Brenda Banks aka Lady Luck half outta of her mind but Dr. Zoltan our Mesmerist was able to snap her out of her temporary insanity. And she told us about the invasion and she was the last Justifier left on duty. Dr. Zoltan let her talk but put her under for a good night's rest. We've got to contact the rest of the heroes of Britain. 

Manifestation of the Yellow Stone Horror - A Mini Campaign Idea Using The Victorious Rpg & Wreched Eqoque Session Six

 We began rounding up the two cults that had been operating in Yellow Stone after the incident with the  Rake  last session on October 3.  And we turned over the members to the sherrif's department out of the local two towns. We didn't trust the department after we uncovered documents within the cabin belonging to the head of the cult. 

We were not sorry to see this leg of our campaign end. But we uncovered that the local mayor was actually the head of the cult! And this led us to having our suspicions that the local police were in on the act. We wrapped things up by having the Pinkertons come in on the advice of the Smithsonian's paranormal recovery and evaluation division department. This organization is not favorably looked on by our mages and arcanists. 

We boarded our skyship and began to head back to London on a two day journey. There was some mighty strange weather we hit going over the Atlantic and this lead deep into a strange vortex of lightning, thunder, light, and shadow! Then our party of adventurers found themselves flying just outside of a ruined London! 

Where the Hell and when the heck were we?! 
And that's when we saw the walking Dark Martian Tripods! The streets, the countryside was full of them and the Red Weed! We began to look for a place to set down! There was a normal looking forest just outside of London and we set down there trying as hard as we could not to attract any unwanted Martian  attention!  

We made camp and camouflaged our flyer as soon as possible. We were good with provisions and such. We've got to figure out what's happening to our party! 

For this leg of the campaign I broke out my copy of Wretched Apocalypse second edition, Victorious: Hunter & Hunter Catalog By Mike Stewart & Victorious Rule Britannia. The wasteland is being designed from Wretched Apocalypse while the stats for the Martian Walkers are from the Victorious Hunter & Hunter catalog, details on Britain's heroes and villains comes from Victorious Rule Britannia   

The War of the Worlds Godzilla 1898! - A Troll Lord Games Victorious rpg - Shifting Powers

 Still upon my mind is our Victorious rpg campaign  after having a beer with a fellow DM today. Would the world powers of the 1890's be actively searching for & exploiting for monsters & Kaiju?! So I dragged out my Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition Monster Manual & Monster Manual & Monster Manual II to think about this end of the campaign. 


So as the evening draws in here, thoughts of what a Martian invasion would mean to an 1897 Earth have been on my mind. A combination of classic AD&D or D&D immediately springs to mind. Imagine if you will for a moment that the Elves, Dwarves, & other mythological creatures of Europe had a foot hold or so on the elite & royal families of Europe. Every once in a while a portal to the Wilderlands of High Fantasy might open perhaps AD&D's Greyhawk. 

So basically you've got monsters & tribes of myth & legend still in the far corners of the globe perhaps even the Amazons, etc. all looking into the modern world of the Nineteenth century  with more then a bit of distain. Why?! Well what if the powers of this world started exploiting the giant Kaiju for their own technological & military benefit. Godzilla would be the latest kaiju  in a string of Earth's immune system from a huge variety of otherworldly & interdimensional threats. 

Thank you Charlton Reading Library site.  

Does this set this world up for an all out early World War? What if Germany knows all about the Kaiju & knows about the Martian invasion by 1880 or so?! This throws everything in  Germany 1880's military machine  into overdrive with fear & panic. Germany begins an age of exploration across the globe in an effort to A. gain as many military resources as possible & B. to expand their own ranks of Kaiju or gain a technological edge. This leads to the possible invasion of the United States in 1897 all part of the  Imperial German plans for the invasion of the United States in  reality. This set up Mexico & Cuba in our Victorious game two years ago. Let's talk about Christopher Tamm of Elf Maids & Ocotopi blog, over the years Chris has been instrumental in killing off several of player's PC & having several of my characters killed off. Chris is completely unaware of this little fact. But every now & then we all need a bit of a boost. Chris has a free download Great Weird War which has been fueling a singular point. 

Does the Martian Invasion of 1897 & the presence of Kaiju bring an early World War I?! Personally yes, the reason for this is that these two pressures set up perfectly for the technological march of HG Wells War in the Air , & even possibly the World Set Free.. 

The War in the Air is a completely alternate history & its one possible timeline that happens as a result of the Martian invasion. Both of these Wellsian peusdo historical events bring about Well's Shape of Things to Come.  This was an alternative  time line visited by the PC's in 2019 but they weren't huge fans of the Well's  one world state. 

And before the fire & pitch forks start Wells was one of the first writers to do an entire shared universe for his fictional creations. But does this set up a full on post invasion war?! Only time will tell as the player's decisions shape the future of this campaign world. The presence of Kaiju excelerates many things including the development of technology & the path of alterative history. 
There was also some talk today about leading the adventurers down into Gary Gygax's EX1 Dungeonland. But once again I had to remind the fellow DM & player of their encounter with the Jabberwocky  from The Dragon issue #54. This thing is a nasty customer. The player's PC's ran from the thing the last time they were in Wonderland. 
And in the aftermath of the invasion there are going to be tons of undead & ghosts to deal with. Fortunely James Mishler has Ghosts The Incorporeal Undead to help generate some really nasty spirits & ghosts from the left over alien & weird radiation.