Episode 21 Star Crawl with Jonathan Snodgrass - Mutagenesis
Loony toons, games of chance, quantum madness, and a "fountain" of youth...
Jonathan - Nomad
- Alien probe desiring only to “sterilize” disorderly beings (“Non-sequitur: your thoughts are uncoordinated”)
- Incredibly powerful foe:
- AC 25, HP 60, Fort +16, Ref -4, Will +16, 2d20 dmg death ray, can drain knowledge & experience on contact (level drain)
- Extremely vulnerable to logic puzzles: with an Int check (DC 16), Nomad can be locked into a crippling logic loop
James - Gnolams
- Alternate Race Template for Space Crawl: Gnolams
- From Master of Orion 2, which gives me lots of Star Crawl feels
- I spent so much time playing MOO2 in College, it cost me some grades. And Gnolams were my favorite species.
- 0-g species who are master traders
- Stat Adjustments: Strength -1, Personality +1, Luck +1
- Starts with an additional random item roll on page 32. +1d credit die.
- Special Abilities: Deal Maker. Any time making a Personality roll to cement a trade deal, gets +2d to the roll (effectively rolling a d30). In addition, the Gnolam always ends up with 137.5% the value of the deal. It’s just crazy that way.
- Find an official Star Crawl Race Template card here!
Marc - Time Jump Belt
- So, the Ancients were pretty smart, and they knew that time travel was possible, but the toll it takes is pretty rough.
- Mostly its an energy input thing. Lots of energy is needed to push through time in the wrong direction.
- There’s also the issue of movement. The earth spins, the earth revolve around the sun, the whole solar system moves as the galaxy spins. Travel back in time and you end up in empty space not yet occupied by the earth unless you also can travel in space at the same time.
- Long story short time travel consumes vast amounts of energy
- The Time Jump Belt is pretty much a miracle then.
- Tech Level 6
- CM 5
- Power: must use Q-cells which are entirely drained in the process
- Effect: The user can teleport backwards in time and space up to a maximum of 1 turn, or as little as 1 round.
Forrest - Jingle Balls
- As you have gathered from my previous mutagenesii, the Ancients were very smart, as Marc points out. But they were also jerks. At least my ancient ones were jerks. Want proof? Here it is:
- Jingle Balls.
- I know what you’re thinking, and you can pull your mind out of the gutter right now.
- I’m referring here to jingles, you know, advertising music. Or, more broadly speaking, any music that annoys you and that you can’t get out of your head. There’s an artifact for that!
- So simple, yet so profoundly annoying. The ancients knew advertising. They knew music and advertising have a long, hideous history with each other. And they wanted an easy way to advertise in public spaces. So they invented the Jingle Balls.
- A jingle ball is a small, spherical metal ball with no features. One merely needs to drop the jingle ball from waist height onto any reasonably hard surface to activate it.
- Upon hitting the hard surface, the jingle ball emits music that is especially engineered to be an “ear worm,” making its way into your brain, throwing one’s concentration, and generally unnerving any person within a 20’ radius.
- Anyone in that 20’ radius when the ball drops must make a DC 14 Will Save or suffer the following effects:
- All initiative rolls are at -1
- The ability to cast spells, use psionics, or use any mental mutation that takes any degree of concentration is lost
- Combat to hit rolls are made at a -1 as the affected target tries to match shots and swings to the beat of the music, throwing off their natural rhythms
- All intelligence bonuses are lost
- Now, you might say “Judge Forrest, you didn’t provide a duration for these effects,” to which I say “Neither did the ancient ones. Didn’t I tell you they were jerks?”
- These effects continue until, you guessed it, the player - the PLAYER, not the character - sings the jingle, with VIGOR, please!
- You’ll notice that I am not supplying any jingles - those are up to the Judge. I suggest using songs that are really annoying to the one who must sing them. For example, Judge James would be sure to afflict me with “What’s Love Got to do, got to do with it?” Whereas, the Glowburn Judges might use “Come on Hector, finish what you started” for our Patron AI of audiovisual engineering. Whatever is most annoying to that player, that is what the judge should use.
- Jingle Balls were geared for humans, so others gain a bonus to their save:
- Plantients get a +3 because they don’t even know what music is
- Manimals get a +1 unless the jingle involves animal sounds. For example, the PureDNA Cat Chow song “meow, meow, meow, meow” would negate a manimal’s bonus to their Will save.
- Robots get a +1 save versus anything that isn’t techno, which negates their save.
- Like any good jingle (and herpes), the jingle ball is the gift that keeps on giving. Once someone has failed a save versus a jingle ball, that person is susceptible to a return of the jingle should they take a critical hit to the head or face. In this case, the same rules apply as before, though the character’s ability to properly sing the song away may be limited due to missing teeth, tongue, etc. PLAYERS should roleplay accordingly.
- Enterprising players will instantly recognize the jingle ball as a sort of hand grenade to annoy enemies with or to threaten the rest of the party to get what they want.
- The jingle ball never runs out of energy or songs . . . ever. But it can be crushed by a blow that inflicts 12 points of damage at once. Entire rooms full of crushed jingle balls have been discovered, but no one dares enter such rooms, just in case . . .
