The Splintered Realm

Monday, February 17, 2025

Felt Like Rolling Up a Character

Decided to crack out the Stalwart ‘85 rulebook and roll up a character for the halibut.

I’m going to play a super-tier character. Let’s start with D10+5 four times… 6, 14, 10, 14. Very good. I end up with D6, D12, D10, D12.

6 gifts

29 ESP

32 Fly

54 Melee

66 Phasing

68 Precognition

75 Resist (Null Energy)

This guy already feels a little Martian Manhunter / Vision-ish. The Latin word for New is ‘Novus’ - I don’t mind that, although I’m thinking he’s from the Null Zone but is actually a ‘good creature’ born there. He’s a rejected ‘creation’ of Hazaaek the Null Fiend. The D6 has to go in either Mind or Reflex, and I think I’ll let that end up in Reflex and pop the D10 in Mind.

Novus Null

Super Hero (D10); Hits 22; Move 30’ (fly 500’);

Might D12 (6); Mind D10 (5); Power D12 (6); Reflex D6 (3)

I will take Monstrous since he still looks like a Null Fiend of sorts.

To draw him, I went back to one of my concept drawings for Hazaaek and re-did it - so visually he is descended from Hazaaek on my end.

I am back to the idea of making Project Javelin (or at least a splinter research arm) the ‘bad guy’ for the campaign, and an Amanda Waller type the mastermind. If she’s a high-ranking Javelin operative who just happens to be pushing the boundaries of what she can get away with, she’s got the full resources of Project Javelin at her command, which makes her a capable threat. Not sure why I defaulted to ‘her’ here, but Amanda Waller is a pretty iconic character, so I guess I’m looking to emulate her in some meaningful way.

Maybe go with a female version of the Stalwart Sentinel - she’s an AI-powered android that has been given a mission to investigate ways to use ‘non-humans’ for superhuman interdiction. In effect, every ‘creature’ being studied here has, by some loophole or another, been declared ‘not human’, and therefore subject to experimentation. This could be aliens, outsiders, constructs… lots of options.

My first thought was to make this start with a prison break that then becomes the character on the run… which could work. However, I could instead go all in on one of my favorite movies, Shawshank Redemption, and have the entire story set in the prison, where he’s working from within to undermine it and investigate it.

This gets closer to a dungeon crawl for Stalwart ‘85, and gives me a justification to stat out a full research facility. There’d be lots of opportunities for conflict (other prisoners, guard uprisings, new arrivals, testing powers in danger rooms - all that sort of stuff).

I’m trying to decide on a remote location to place this:

The dark side of the moon. This has its benefits.

Bottom of the ocean.

Inside a volcano.

Near the earth’s core?

Remote mountain range.

I kind of like putting this inside the volcanic mountains north of Meridian. It actually ends up being within an hour of the city, yet remote enough that nobody would ever know it’s there. Malamus the Magma King cannot be too pleased to be sharing one of his deeper volcanoes with such interlopers, but him and his posse invading the complex at some point could be an interesting plot hook.

I also like that there are lots of windows - the prisoners are well aware that they are surrounded on all sides by thick magma that burns at 1500 degrees, so ‘sneaking out’ is probably a very bad idea.

He's definitely got the whole Martian Manhunter vibe going; I could see him being a key part of building the next iteration of the Victory Legion.

Friday, February 14, 2025

More Randomness

There's no one big thing, so here's the small stuff that sort of all adds up...

I'm now a week removed from chemotherapy treatment #3. The side effect is just being super tired. I thought I had recovered after a few days, but the reality is that I'm still sleeping over half the day - I eat dinner and go right to bed every night, and often take another nap during the day at some point. Pain is almost nil, and there is no nausea to speak of, so I feel like I'm getting off pretty well so far.

I had three different commission requests all come in within about a day, so I spent a large part of yesterday getting those done and sent out. It felt very good to get a few more things off the checklist for wrapping up Stalwart '85. I also did the formatting and posted a link for the softcover rules. If you did not back the KS but wanted a print edition, now you can get it.

I've been tinkering with the Halls of Moridis and doing an actual play for Tales of the Splintered Realm with some old-school characters. A 'session' is typically about an hour of me fumbling through an encounter or two and adding the write-up to the Halls. I'm taking a very casual approach to it. Something to busy my mind for a bit, I guess. I have permanent links for those things over on the left side...

Been listening to a LOT of the Decemberists. Good stuff. They have such a deep catalog, I have lots of rabbit trails to explore through Youtube. "The Tain" is kind of an obsession right now.

Sunday, February 9, 2025

Flippin' the Script

Now that I have a firmer idea of how Daggerford is set up, and how it is settled into the nearby environs, I realized that the map of Moridis' Halls would work much better if I flipped it east to west, so that the sewer entrances were in the southwest corner, and the more remote entrances could be northeast of the town proper. I cleaned up the map just a smidge, inverted all of my concealed and secret door markings, and went back to an unkeyed master to work from. I had about a third of this stocked, and now I'm back to the drawing board (almost literally), but it's okay. I have some other ideas for things I'd like to do with some of these areas anyay, and I want to make the dungeon a bit more robust in general. This entire section was really the living and working areas of the D'Ro, with some of their upper prison pens, offices, and minor facilities. Their more experimental, magical shenanigans were on the second level, so while I an hint at such things filtering up from below, much of this is a straight-up dungeon crawl largely populated by undead and vermin that have wandered in from above. The D'Ro themeselves have largely relegated their mad works to levels 2-3, generally abandoning this area. However, I do know that at least three young dragons, all considered too weak by their mother Moridis, have been cast aside into these upper halls. All three have motivation to either get into their mother's good graces or at least muck up her projects, so all three could provide role-play and interactivity beyond waiting for heroes to kill them and loot their lairs.

The New(est) Delvers of Daggerford

I went round-n-round in the old noggin about how to approach my actual play experience for the Halls of Moridis, and in the process went back through my actual plays and lots of notes for dungeon delving for the last few years (on and off). I decided to wipe the slate clean and start all over with a brand-spanking new group of adventurers, using the Tales of the Splintered Realm rules, although with an old-school edge - I went straight up 2d6 for all stats (organize as desired), and ended up with some deeply flawed characters. These are NOT heroes in any meaningful sense, but are literally a group of losers that a noble-minded elf has pulled together. I like that I spent all of their money, and she had thirty pieces of silver left - she has used this to pay off the debts of the other three (they appeared to her in dreams telling her to investigate the Halls of Moridis), and she has assembled her rag-tag coaltion. I mean, Sloth couldn't even afford armor, and most of them have CHA that gives a penalty. This is an old-school sort of group, and I couldn't love them any more.

Also, I have officially crossed a line as a game designer. For decades, I have repeated a process. I will get a few years past a game that I've written, pull it out, decide to play it for a while, start to immediately see where I could improve it, and start tinkering. Before long, I'm no longer playing the game, but instead working on the next edition. I don't think there will be another edition of Tales of the Splintered Realm. It's 'perfect' as it is. As I've been leafing through it, I've been pleasantly surprised, again and again, at how clean and sharp it is. For a moment, I had a pang of something akin to regret that I put friars in there instead of clerics (the only 'revolutionary' change), but then I watched the first half of Rogue One the other day, and realized that the church of the game world better aligns with that ethos - the true adherents of the faith are not armored clerics in churches, they are wild men like John the Baptist wandering the wilderness declaring that the true faith is not dead. Temples are often relics of the past or have been overcome by grifters and charlatans. The choice of character classes reflects this reality. You can easily build a 'cleric' or 'paladin', but the game is correct as it is. I was also astounded that I'd managed to get over 120 monsters in there - I started to think about how this game could use a larger bestiary, and then realized it didn't really need one - the vast majority of the classic monsters are represented and it's a great cross-section. I could literally play with just these rules forever... and I guess I just might.

I did cheat JUST a bit and swap out Vessa's archer talent for two weapons in her Warden build - it's a minor swap, and I just have to accept she is no longer an official warden, but is a house-ruled variant... a mark of shame forevermore.

I'm looking forward to playing around with these four...

Friday, February 7, 2025

Some Random Thoughts

I finished round three of chemotherapy yesterday, so that was something. I have three more rounds to go before we move into a 'maintenance' phase, and they're going to give me a rotation of radiation therapy directly on the tumor pressing against my spine for good measure in the interim, but I have a little time off. I was WIPED the last two days, but after a lot of sleep and figuring out how to manage my diet to rebound quicker, I'm feeling pretty spry today. I managed to update some links on the old blog here to make things a little more up-to-date and easy to access; a lot of my links were to previous iterations of Stalwart, and it made sense to at least have the first visit with the blog be with current stuff. I've got a FAQ, a dedicated post for S85, and a post about my other games that sort of summarizes all things in a bit of a handier fashion. At least I hope it is.

One thing I've been doing is organizing my Facebook feeds and following some things - I mean, there are some cool communities out there that I just had no idea about, and it's fun to reminisce about my favorite eras of professional wrestling and comics and gaming. One thing that jumped out at me was how much, in my wrestling fandom of the late 80s, I never really appreciated 'enhancement talent' (or 'jobbers'). It got me thinking that comics has its own tier of jobbers and enhancement talent, and that Stalwart '85 could use more of that. I have about 4 different illustrations I did when putting together Stalwart '85 that I never used because they ultimately came across as half-baked minor villains not worth the bother. A collection of several of these expert-level, one-trick villains might be a good first issue of "The Stalwart Phile" if I can get around to getting that going. I've got lots of ideas for it, so there's no good reason not to do it, and to keep pumping out content for Stalwart '85. I mean, I could do 20 or so of those and then collect them into a complete volume. Not a bad way to think about adding to the game over time.

I'm so happy to see the positive reception Stalwart '85 is getting as people get their hands on the print books. I was super happy with how they came out, and I'm glad to see that people generally share my enthusiasm. Every time I see a tag that someone posted a pic of their book, it gives me warm fuzzies.

I go back and forth (and back... and forth) about how I want to build the Halls of Moridis megadungeon for both Hack'D and TSR. Ultimately, it's a product for both, so I can build it simultaneously for both. I had planned to start it over with a new group of heroes (and I rolled them up), but then I thought maybe I'd take the characters I'd already been using for Hack'D and just come up with their comparable stats in TSR and keep going where I was. That seems like the better option - I liked those characters (they were based on the inside front cover of the Basic '81 rules - my favorite D+D image ever), so I could just keep going with them. Seems like I have some old notes to dig through and find...

My LEGO room is in full bloom. I've been able to track down a few sets I wanted, I've had many given as gifts (thanks to those who have sent those my way - much appreciated), and I've even gone through and pulled out some of my 10+ year old instruction books and cobbled together sets from way back in the day (I did the AT-ST from 2007 last week). It's a great room to just hang out in. I have all sorts of my old comics bagged and boarded on the walls, and I'm surrounded by nerd stuff. It's a glorious space in my basement.

For a guy who is battling 'terminal cancer', I'm actually doing quite well. I never know what tomorrow may bring, but I'm hopeful that I can still put this mother f-er into remission at some point, and squeeze another few years out of this body that kind of wants to quit on me.

Thanks for all of the support and good vibes. It's all been deeply appreciated.

Stalwart '85 FAQ

Some Questions People Have Pondered...

Q: How does stun work?

A: Stun means that you cannot act at all for the duration of stun, which may be in actions, rounds, or even longer periods of time. All actions against you are successful unless a 1 is rolled.

Q: Could you clarify action management?

A: It is generally an either/or proposition. As a character at tier D10, you can either take 2 actions at full strength, or 5 actions at a -1 downshift of dice. You can be at your best for a few actions, or water yourself down and spread yourself a little thin. It really comes down to the strategy of one foe where you want to concentrate attacks, or a number of lesser foes (or a time when you need to add some movement to your action management that round).