A Continent of Banalities

It's the LAST DAY of the challenge! I'll miss it. This is a character for the German rpg Heist. It is more GTA than Ocean's 11. I am still learning the system. Werner grew up in the Hausbruch neighborhood of Hamburg, and never really liked school. There was a lot of that going around, and some kids relieved the boredom by bullying young Werner. He was neither thin-skinned nor particularly violent, but he got into many fights and finished all of them. That got him thrown out on his ear. Werner got a job with a demolition company and, through one of the older guys, a membership in a boxing studio. His rise as a pugilist was slow and steady, but somewhere down the line it became his job. Werner won several fights simply by keeping standing. He wasn’t a knock-out punch kind of fighter, but he never went down. In the end that was what sealed his fate. After simply forgetting about a sparring match, and noticing an occasional tremor in his arms, Werner went to see a doctor. This ...

The Brass Monkeys (I took a break from monsters yesterday. My apologies) The music had grown louder still, and now the musicians themselves came into view. Hannah wasn't sure if they had come over the hill or simply come into focus, like a view through a looking glass. They were monkeys with brass faces. Their wild unblinking eyes were painted white and yellow, and their wide mouths were daubed with crimson. The paint work was shoddy, almost as if the monkeys had not wanted to stand still for the time it took the painter to do his job. Their instruments were wondrous. One had hands that throbbed with veins and with flaps of skin between the fingers. When he banged them together it sounded like a cymbal. One had no lips, but a fleshy horn seemed to have forced its way from behind his brass face. When he laughed it sounded like a muted trumpet in a wild neighing solo. Further back Hannah thought she saw one with bellows for a torso and a reed in his mouth like a lolling tongue. ...

...I know what haunts like Ahem, here's a table for generating a job ghosts might want your player characters to do. D20 Job (Ghost) 1 “(Faction) evicted me from my haunt. Help me get it back”. 2 “I cannot find rest! I will haunt you until you help me”. 3 “Ghost hunters are hunting me. Get them to go away” 4 “I am fading from existence but I’m not ready to go”. 5 “I would pay to feel in possession of a body again. Could you procure one?” 6 “Avenge my death!” 7 “I need you to see that my dependents are safe” 8 “My remains aren’t properly buried”. 9 “I escaped from a great black engine underground, but my ghost-kin are still toiling in there”. 10 “My love is still a...

You need a band name, I deliver. You could be Armageddon Meth Bride, Skull Goat, or well, Bong Bong Bong. Committing to the life style. I dig it.  Pattern (D8) 1-3 A-B, 4-5 B-A, 6 A-A, 7 B-B, 8 A-A-B D12 A D12 B 1 Acid 1 Bong 2 Armageddon 2 Bride 3 Bong 3 Druid 4 Doom 4 Fiend 5 Elder 5 Goat 6 Skull 6 Hammer 7 Cosmic/os 7 King 8 Mammoth 8 Fireball 9 Slut 9 -osaurus 10 Unspeakable 10 Throne 11 Turbo 11 We...

A calling ('character class') for The Gathering Gloom. The Freeshooter You were never much of a hunter, which meant that you were a wallflower at best, and a target of cruelty and scorn at worst. You turned to books, to knowledge, to pursue things that did not involve bringing home a twelve-point buck or a brace of rabbits. That was until you met Sofiya the game keeper’s daughter. She was funny, curious, and did not mind that you could not hit the broad side of a barn, let alone a mallard in flight. Her father was another matter. You asked for her hand in marriage. He laughed. Then he spat. That was when your readings took a darker turn, and one night you found yourself in Wolf’s Hollow, waiting for Samiel, the one that some call the Black Huntsman. He appeared as a handsome man with a clubfoot. Samiel offered you the magic bullets, but warned you: ”some are for thee, and some are for me”. Since then you have become a master huntsman, and you are to be ...

Another project I'm working on (on and off) is a kind of proto-Resistance 1700s horror game. It's inspired by Darkest Dungeon, Otfried Preussler's Krabat , as well as all kinds of horror and Gothic fiction. The English title is a bit more descriptive. The concept is very basic: A group of idealists and misfits are tasked with hunting a monster preying on a small village in Bohemia/vague central European place. There are such 'character classes' or callings as The New Priest, The Disgraced Officer, The Brokenhearted and The Coffin Birth. The project started as a version of a sanity/mental stress mechanic which I'm crudely bolting on to a simple version of the Resistance rules (the die mechanic, really) found in a game called The Beast . The mechanic is as follows: HOPE (starts at 6, but your choice of calling may change this) CERTAINTY (starts at 0, but your calling may change this) How HOPE is gained and lost Hope is faith in providence, a bel...