Umbra Britanniae (Shadows of Britain) Savage Worlds, Weird Wars Rome

This product is copyrighted to Pinnacle Entertainment Group 

I have been looking to run an Eldritch Horror style game for quite some time. I knew I wanted to merge the Mythos entity Yig with some concepts from R.E. Howard’s Kull, some kind of serpent men and actual historical events. Originally, I thought to use the excellent Solomon Kane RPG from Pinnacle since the Howard connection already exists, instead I decided to go with Weird Wars since there are sourcebooks that cover several time periods rife with conflict and drama. I could, with some research come up with the basics of these settings, but I decided to work with some pre-existing source material so I can focus on writing the story and not the “fiddly bits”™ of coming up with Hindrances, Edges and backgrounds for myself.

I am a big fan of the Atomic Robo comic book series by Brian Clevinger & Scott Wegener (All their comics are available online for free here and also check out the fantastic Atomic Robo RPG by Mike Olson over at Evil Hat). In “The Shadow Beyond Time” series, Robo finds a being much like the betentacled horrors found in H.P. Lovecraft’s work. What impressed me was the idea that this creature existed outside of time. That is to say that it existed in all points in time at once and the linear nature of the fourth dimension did not affect it. So as Robo perceived it, he was fighting this thing on several instances in his life. To the creature it was all part of a single interaction outside of linear time. Neat idea! (Stolen)

The concept of the game centered on the idea that interacting with the Outer Gods, binds the character’s “fate” to the struggle against the cosmic being. Time is irrelevant to these eternal beings and their goals are unfathomable to us mortals. The basic idea here is that there is part of us that is eternal and exists outside of time. Usually, when we die that drop goes back to an infinite ocean to flow back at some point. When this energy or spirit is touched by one of these entities, it acts as a marker that changes its direction of flow towards the hoary maw of the unfathomable black. Caught in an eddy of

To the Great Old Ones, these spirit essences are but flecks of flotsam in a vast ocean of eternity and rarely give them any notice. Unless some of them acting in consort catch the beings attention. Once the eye of the Outer Void is upon you, you will be forever tied to its fate and thus are trapped in a karmic circle that cannot be broken since it exists in all points in time simultaneously.

The characters fall into a situation where they foil some plot or dispatch a creature/minion of one of these beings and therefore become marked by it. They are then tied to the beings plots throughout time. Sort of like an immortal tick on Azathoth’s back. This basically opens up a massive amount of options for storytelling within a framework. Although the characters start in Imperial Rome controlled Britain circa 105 A.D., they can move on to their experiences during WWI, Biblical times, the Hyborian Age or even on the dusty plains of half terraformed Mars. After a nice long campaign, the characters then piece together the larger plot through the generations and maybe even discover a way to end the cycle.

I started with Weird Wars Rome. Tim, one of our players is a Roman history enthusiast and historical miniatures wargame player. My other two players, Mike and Paul share the same hobbies and also love the era, so that was an easy choice for a springboard point. Once I decided on the setting, I had to work on the specific location and the time period.

Because of the mysterious nature of the game and it involving strange and ancient lore, I chose Britain as my location. The Romans in general considered the isle to be a mysterious place filled with strange beasts and Druidic magic. This is great for dark and creepy stories, much like “Worms of the Earth” by R.E. Howard featuring Bran Mak Morn, King of the Picts. If you are interested in reading this great story, you can find it for free on the Project Gutenberg Australia site. I think it’s some of Howard’s best work ever.

During this period, Rome held southern England and Wales, but have not penetrated too far to the north. It takes place seven years before the completion of Hadrian's Wall. This wall to separate the empire from the barbarians is a little mysterious in and of itself.

“Although Hadrian's biographer wrote "(Hadrian) was the first to build a wall 80 miles long to separate the Romans from the barbarians", reasons for the construction of the wall vary, and no recording of an exact explanation survives.”

-Wikipedia (Some random un-vetted person online)

Although we can infer quite a bit as to why the wall was built, we do not have any record to tell us anything specific. Hadrian was well known for his policies focusing on defense and retaining Roman territory versus the expansionism embraced by his predecessor Trajan and the wall did much for managing trade by giving the Romans a sure way to properly tax goods travelling to and from the north and south. Yet, that little bit of uncertainty can open up a lot of narrative possibilities while still retaining a touch of realism that can make a setting more relatable and real.

Another interesting fact about this particular period is that the identity of the Governor of Britannia from 103-115 A.D. is unknown. Since no record of this person(s) exists, that opens up more opportunities to create whatever I want in his place. Being the most powerful representative of Rome in the country, I can do a lot with whomever I put there. His motivations and actions are completely up to me without breaking the historical feel of the game.

The final reason for this choice was variety in player character options. The Roman Empire was in one of its zenith points as far as raw territory and cultures. The options for PC’s are amazing for several reasons, including:

• Trajan messing around in the east, gobbling up Dacia or at least, trying to..
• Egypt having been annexed by Rome.
• The silk road being active to the far-east.
• Several large groups of Gallic and German Auxilia being brought in to bring down the almost unending uprisings going on in Britain at the time.
• The domination of Judea and the Middle East.
• Control over most of if not all of North Africa.
  
  
  
  

The players can choose to play just about anything in that time period. All roads lead to Rome!

Before I get a little TLDR on you (too late it’s Plus 10 too long), you may ask, “Hey Jim, why put so much effort into making and researching all these choices? I mean, can’t you just make this up and put it in some nebulous Roman time wherever? Does it really make a difference?” Good question. Let’s go into that.

When all is said and done, this is a horror game. I find that the more you ground the world in a real and palpable way, the more visceral the payoff when the supernatural poop hits the ceiling fan. When players become sufficiently immersed in a setting, narrative and character the intensity of the emotional reaction is greatly increased. This is the real importance of immersion.

One of the main components of horror fiction is to take something that can be considered not only mundane and safe, but somewhat harmless and innocent and put a sinister undertone to it. For example evil dolls. (Before I continue, f**k clowns and evil dolls. Thank you.)

Take something that is as sweet and innocent as a child playing with a doll. Turn that on its ear, film it in black and white, add mood lighting with tons of contrast and play some music in a minor key. Poof! scared off my poo pump. It’s a way of using people’s preconceptions against them by shifting expectations from a safe place to a place of fear and uncertainty.

Same thing holds true here. I create a world that is realistic and grounded in historical fact. I am writing for players have already created a mental picture of how that world works. My players who are the nerdiest history fanboys to geek a dork in spazville have legions of games, books, miniatures and videos about the Roman Empire. It is really easy to play with these preconceptions and use them to solicit an attachment to the game which goes deeper than a work of absolute fiction. This consensus creates a baseline that the players can cling to and I can play with.  I am not trying to say that historical settings are superior to fictional ones. Not at all. I am just saying that it is easier to create these base line realities than conjuring them up from thin air. Collaborative world building is also great fun, but I prefer it when players get some input vs. the GM doing all the world building. That is simply a preference thing.

I really don’t do a lot of mechanical game prep. That is to say I don’t stat out every NPC nor do I use tools to “balance” a combat scenario nor do I ever have anything more than a list of names and skeletal framework for player goals (note: not a plotline, but player character goals. Your characters will never follow a simple plot line). What I do prep is my setting. I make it as complete as I can so that I can make informed and organic choices when reacting to the player’s choices. When you have created a convincing enough reality, you will find that you can live in it and shape it better with simple causality and common sense. This lends an amazing amount of flexibility for you as a storyteller while maintaining the appearance that you are in control.

This ended up being much longer than intended. My apologies. But next time I will go over the player characters and what happened in the prelude scenario.

First story in my "Howard and Lovecraft. Timeless horror through ages undreamt of." series. Starting off in WWI

Prologue

Thunder clouds loomed overhead like the wrath of an angry God as elements of the 8th Brigade, Charlie Company entered the remains of the French village of Rouseaux near Thiaucourt. If it weren't for their pocket watches, the platoon would not have known that it was well past dawn on that dark September morning. Droplets of rain began to fall as a somber prologue of the torrent that was about to follow. It was almost as if heaven openly wept for the young dead that blanketed the soil of the western front. It would be worse at Verdun.

The dozen or so buildings that made up this small village were all but destroyed. Flashes of lighting would backlight the remains and for an instant the silhouette of the village itself appeared to mimic the form of a rotting corpse by the side of a road. The buildings were shattered and burned by artillery, the smell of death and remnants of mustard gas filled the air. Most striking of all was the silence.  Only the soft pitter pat sounds of rain and the distant roar of thunder filled the air.  For the doughboys of Charlie Company who have heard nothing but the constant cacophony of bitter warfare for the past few long and brutal days the silence and calm was eerie and disquieting.

The men of Charlie Company moved slowly into what remained at the village square. The past few days had instilled a healthy and life preserving dose of paranoia. The church bell tower was the only part of the building still intact. A strange iron crucifix made of serpents topped the tower and was suddenly struck by lightning as the rain began to fall in earnest. Nothing but the rain moved. Almost as if the moment was framed and hanging on some lonesome wall.

Suddenly the moment broke as a young soldier pointed out a single figure moving in the darkness. Instantly, rifles came to bear and tension filled the air. The figure was small and moved clumsily. The young private who spotted the figure first spit out his soaked cigarette and motioned for the men to stand down. Rifles were still up but slightly lowered. The young solder moved tentatively towards the small form and shouted back, “It’s ok fellas it’s a little kid!”

The private pulled out a Hershey’s bar from his pack. Those were like gold out there. He slowly unwrapped the candy and showed it to the young girl.  As she stumbled forward the young man noticed how pale she was.  He then noticed how her features looked bloated and distended almost as if she been stung by a giant insect. They both walked towards each other arms spread for an impending embrace. Suddenly the American’s smile changed to a look of unspeakable horror as the young girls mouth opened unnaturally wide to expose the head of a giant Adder. The thing sprung fourth and bit the dumb stricken soldier in the eye as he screamed in terror.  The girl thing then leapt on the fallen doughboy’s body as her hands split into multiple serpent heads which repeatedly ripped at their victim’s green uniform leaving blood and venom soaked wounds. The soldiers body began to spasm and convulse then suddenly lie still.

The platoon was initially too shocked to act, but soon at least one of the men got his wits about him and the loud retort of a carbine broke the spell.  Then all the men began to break loose with their weapons shooting at the atrocious wolf in sheep’s clothing. Round after round exploded into the girl’s body as chunks of her flesh ripped away and her head careened and fell back at a right angle to the rest of her body.  It seemed like the corpse was still, but the men were still too horrified to inspect the remains of the thing and their friend. Lucky thing since the corpse of the young girl exploded into a flood of writhing serpents that lashed out and spit at the shadows about them before they slowly began to slither away.

Strange things are afoot in Thiaucourt

My story begins after Pershing and Patton secured the St. Mihiel Salient and began to regroup.  The player characters will be a group of American soldiers from the 8th brigade who are tasked with scouting out the outlying villages of Vigneulles, Thiaucourt and Hannonville-sous-les-Cotes. These characters can link up with stranded airmen and tank crews who are working their way back to the lines at St. Mihiel.  There are also possibilities for French and surrendered German PC’s as well.

The Story

Before you read on, please consult my previous blog entry on the concept behind these stories so that you can better understand the meta-plot. These stories are linked by its primary antagonist, Yig (the father of serpents). In this installment, the German army stumbles upon an ancient pre-gaelic cult to Yig that had secretly survived countless generations in rural France. Elements of German infantry enter a small village and stumble upon the cult of Yig which use their connection to the ancient being to protect themselves. The German soldiers are horrified by things from beyond the outer dark and end up using artillery and mustard gas to destroy the serpents and ultimately themselves. The destruction of his minions angers Yig, who then protects the area around his hidden shrine from further intrusion.  When the player characters come to investigate the town and rescue any French citizens that may be hidden amongst the rubble they fall into the clutches of an angry Yig!

The player character’s souls are forever involved in a cosmic struggle against Yig and this is yet another chapter in this epic struggle. I will have a large platoon of NPC soldiers accompanying the PC’s to provide some "death and disappearances of friendlies" moments to intensify the horror. In fact they may have to fight their own fallen compatriots! You can probably tell this is going to be a horror/survival and investigation game, but then again most Lovecraft style games involve those elements.

The main manifestations of Yig are going to be:

Snake Corpses: Yig commands his serpent minions to infest the corpses of the fallen. These bloated creatures are basically zombie like monsters that are filled with snakes that give the corpse mobility and articulation. When destroyed these creatures burst open and release their serpent infestation. There are three main types: soldier, initiated and villager.  The soldiers are the corpses of fallen German soldiers and have the benefit of the soldier’s weapons and tools. That’s right, zombies that shoot mausers. The initiated are the corpses of the fallen cultists that have been resurrected in part by their serpent infestation. They are tougher, have magical edges and retain most of their human intelligence. The last form is infested villagers who are more of your traditional zombie type, but have a nasty poison attack as their hands are made up of venomous serpent heads.

Serpent Men: Underneath the shrine of Yig is a passageway to the underground civilization of the Serpent Men. When the PC’s discover the shrine and try to destroy it, these creatures will come forth to defend it. These creatures are similar in description to the serpent men of the Kull setting.

In between fighting off these monsters, the PC’s must uncover the cult in the town by investigating the ruins.  The church has a strange wrought iron cross made of intertwined serpents. A cellar is filled with strange books and idols. The players can also capture and interrogate an initiated to gather information.  They have to do that at their own risk since they will have hypnotism powers.

Ultimately, they must find out two crucial bits of information. First, they have to find out that the shrine to Yig is his gateway to this world. Second, they must destroy the shrine or Yig will fully waken manifest an army of the slain to conquer the world.

First American Offensive at St. Mihiel Salient (WW I)

Background History. You can skip over the italics part if you aren't at all interested in the military history, but I am setting this story during real life historical events!

“The Battle of St. Mihiel (12th - 16th September 1918) was the first large-scale, separate offensive by American forces on the Western Front. By late summer 1918 the strategic importance of the German-held salient south of Verdun had was not so prominent as it was in 1917, when the newly arrived American Staff officers arrived on the Western Front. Their desire at that time was to carry out a separate offensive by American forces against the danger posed by this salient. Marshal Foch, commander of the Allied forces on the Western Front in late 1918, had to be convinced it was still relevant to make the attack. He did agree, although he was also wishing to use the American forces for an assault west of Verdun in the Meuse-Argonne sector. 

The German forces were in the process of evacuating the salient when the American First Army attacked them, supported by French tanks and artillery and 600 Allied aircraft. The offensive successfully cleared the Germans from the salient and 15,000 German prisoners were captured with 250 guns. A few days later the American First Army transferred to the Meuse-Argonne sector in preparation for an attack.

South-east of Verdun the Front Lines were positioned along a ridge of high ground on the hills east of the Meuse river as far as the town of St. Mihiel. The town is located in the Department of Meuse in Lorraine. It was captured by the German Army in the first weeks of the war. At St. Mihiel the Front Lines turned at a 90 degree angle in an easterly direction across the low lying hills from the eastern Meuse river bank into the plain of the Moselle River. This created the bulge of a salient held by the German Army, protruding into the French-held territory. The battle area became known as the St. Mihiel Salient. In September 1918 the United States Expeditionary Force launched an offensive to break through the German line at St. Mihiel.

The Front Line on the ridge, fiercely defended by the German Army, protected the views to its rear over the German occupied territory of Lorraine and the Imperial German border, which was approximately 30 miles (48 kilometres) east of St. Mihiel.

The weather corps of Corps I Operation Order stated: "Visibility: Heavy driving wind and rain during parts of day and night. Roads: Very muddy." This would pose a challenge to the Americans when the order to advance was given. In some parts of the road, the men were almost knee-deep in mud and water. After five days of rain, the ground was nearly impassible to both the American tanks and infantry. Many of the tanks were wrecked with water leakage into the engine, while others would get stuck in mud flows. Some of the infantrymen developed early stages of trench foot, even before the trenches were dug.

Several towns in France were never rebuilt after WWI because of the fact that the towns were so thoroughly destroyed by heavy shelling and were so littered with unexploded munitions that they were labeled unsafe.”

Action vs. Reaction - System experimentation

For those of you who have been following my Action vs. Reaction article where I speak to Kay Sukaue, martial artist and general great guy about combat and game mechanics.  I had mentioned that I was trying to come up with a game mechanic that better interprets real martial arts combat as a hack for Savage Worlds.  Here is a very rough first draft of what I have in mind.  Please keep in mind that this is a first draft I drew up at work during lunch today and was meant to keep Kay up to speed on what I was thinking.

Combat Mechanics Discussion

I’m not sure if you are at all familiar with the Savage Worlds system, but it works on a dice step method. All Skills and Attributes are rated 1-5, see below. All player characters also get a Wild Card die (d6) along with every roll, taking the highest. This represents the Hero factor.

Step Range 1 – 5 (All stats are rated 1 to 5 die steps.  1=d4, 2=d6, 3=d8. 4=d10 and 5 = d12). Both the die values and the step values are used for different reasons.

New Derivative Statistic – Combat Fitness

Vigor (Vi) – Physical Body
Smarts (Sm) – Mental Readiness
Spirit (Sp) – Spiritual Development

Average round up = Combat Fitness (CF)

I went with Vigor instead of Agility for the calculation of this derived stat.  Agility will be an important factor later on as it determines the cap for Martial Arts skills, but this statistic is more designed to create a basis for gathering a Combat Awareness statistic for the new initiative system. As you will see further on, it more describes the ability to determine the appropriate time for a Decisive Strike and to determine opponent weaknesses and strengths.  Vigor to me represents physical conditioning instead of coordination and speed. I figured coordination and speed would become important when a maneuver is executed.

Note: When I refer to a "Martial Art" skill I am referring to any martial melee skill.  This would be anything from Fencing to Greco Roman Wrestling.

New Initiative System

The new initiative system is not designed to determine who “goes first”.  In my new vision for close combat all combat is resolved as opposed and simultaneous rolls.  The difference comes in who has determined the correct Decisive Maneuver first, executes that maneuver and whether the defender at that point provides an opportunity for the attacker to continue on to another maneuver in the chain until the defender is defeated or creates an Initiative Break.

The winner of the initiative simply gets a combat bonus depending on his situational awareness and how well he has sized up his opponent.  Combatants have the choice to attack after not only one but several initiative rolls to see if they can maneuver for a better initial strike.  It is possible for there to be little difference between the two combatants who are very evenly matched.

Advantage Roll

Instead of rolling for “Initiative” combatants roll for “Advantage.” Advantage determines a combatant’s ability to decide upon a Decisive Maneuver and act upon it. The Advantage Roll is a simple CF roll. Checking for Advantage may take several passes since the required number may not be reached in a single roll. Therefore, successive rolls are added together until someone reaches an amount equal to or greater than their opponents Combat Threshold (see below). Rolling for Advantage is part race, part gamble and part strategic determination.

·         The Race: Each combatant is trying to reach his opponents Combat Threshold (CT) first. To determine the character’s CT add his/her CF to the result of a secret Martial Arts Skill or Bluff Skill roll.

·         The Gamble: Opponents do not know each other’s CT, they have to guess at it. Players secretly roll their Advantage Roll and write down their totals. At any point (as long as each side has made the same number of Advantage Rolls) a player may call a Strike and the combat begins. No combatant may roll for Advantage more times than their CF. Therefore a character with a CF of three would be able to make a maximum of 3 Advantage Roll passes.

·         The Strategy: After a Srike is called each side then reveals their Advantage Total (AT) and their CT.  Each side then subtracts their opponents CT from their AT.  The result is their Combat Pool (CP).  Combat Pool is used to act and react in combat. The player with the highest total is said to have the Initiative. Players must be judicious in the use of their Combat Pool in order to survive the combat.  If both sides end up with an equal number of Combat Pool they may choose to call an Initiative Break and reset or continue with the combat with neither side having a clear advantage.



Note: There is an obvious hole here and I will shore it up as soon as I think of a way how. What if someone calls a Strike but their opponent has not yet met the CT? To me thats an iaijutsu or surprise strike kind of maneuver, but I have to think on that a bit more to come up with a solid solution.

Spending Combat Pool

Combat Pool is a representation of comparative situational awareness.  These points can be used to give a combatant more options. Once you are out of options, you are probably out of luck. The character with the higher Combat Pool has more options and therefore has the Initiative. Combat Pool can be spent in the following ways.

1.      Check for Bluff: If a character suspects his/her opponent of using the Bluff Skill to determine their CT he/she may spend a CP to force an opposed Bluff vs. Perception test. If the Bluff check is higher, nothing happens.  If the Perception check is higher and the combatant did indeed use the Bluff Skill to determine CT the character that used Bluff must subtract his/her opponents Perception Skill from their CP and CT until the next Initiative Break. This must be done before any combat is resolved.

2.      Mitigation: Players may spend one CP to remove an environmental combat modifier found in the regular combat rules in Savage Worlds. By using their superior situational awareness characters can overcome situational obstacles.

The Combat

Now that we know who has the Advantage in combat it’s time to strike. Each player must spend one Combat Pool to engage each enemy in the combat. Therefore, if a character is fighting three opponents he/she must spend three CP to engage all three. If a character does not have enough CP to engage all of their opponents, he/she cannot defend against all of them. All friendlies in the combat can split the CP cost between them as long as each enemy is engaged with at least one friendly character. All combatants that are in combat with an enemy they cannot engage can suffer from a free strike.  Free strikes are resolved before all other combat. Combatants can make a free strike by making a normal Martial Arts test against the victims Parry. The Margin of Success of this roll is then applied to damage directly.

Once engaged each combatant can spend 1 CP to add a die of the appropriate type to their Martial Art Skill to a pool. Once all combatants have decided on how many CP they are going to spend they roll their dice plus one Wildcard die. The character with the highest total (including the rule of doubles) can then choose to subtract one from their opponents Combat Pool or add one to their own Combat Pool. If both sides have 0 CP an Initiative Break occurs and the combat resets.  Once a combatant is reduced to 0 CP  and one or more of their opponents still have CP remaining then that character is hit and damage is applied.  If multiple characters are reduced to 0 CP characters engaged with them may choose to hit an opponent of their choice. If one combatant facing several is reduced to 0 CP and his/her opponents still have CP remaining, the victim is hit multiple times.

Damage

Weapons no longer have a dice value for damage.  They have a single damage value.  This damage value is added to the remaining CP of the attacker and compared to the victims Toughness and damage is applied normally.

Response from Kay

I like what I see so far.  You are going to have to explain the +/- 0 play on CP.  Sounds like CP is life blood in combat… without correctly applying CP then you may be overpowered or out maneuvered.  Am I getting that right?

My Reply

That is correct.  The whole thing boils down to getting the edge on Combat Pool over your enemy.  It’s a measure of your Situational Awareness and assessment of your opponent. At that point it’s up to you to employ that advantage in real terms. If you are aggressive and have a CP edge, you want to push that advantage by having a higher dice pool than your opponent and then using that edge to erode their Combat Pool, this simulates you attacking and setting yourself up for the follow up maneuver.  Once you lose all your dice, you have basically run out of options. It is also possible for both sides to run out of CP at the same time and therefore forcing an Initiative Break.

I plan on using edges that reflect different martial arts styles.  Like a Defensive Martial Art would grant you an edge verses an opponent that has a higher pool than you (or in other words an opponent that is very aggressive grants bonuses to a martial artist that is trained to counter that kind of move.

Let me know what you guys think!