Nuclear Beasts

Recruiting Rangers

There aren't nearly enough Caretakers to recruit or train Rangers. The Oracles don't like to leave the Sacred Hills, although their Lorekeepers might be sent out.

So the major sources of new Rangers are:

• Volunteers who travel to the Sacred Hills expressly to join.
• Possibly some recruited by Lorekeepers, especially as some sort of official levy.
• New recruits given a Ranger seal and directed to the Sacred Hills.

I'm thinking that the last is the most likely source for new recruits... when a Ranger encounters a likely candidate who really is willing to travel that far, they give them a special seal (perhaps a metal eagle holding a shield over its breast, some sort of ancient design) and direct them there.

The seal carries certain benefits; it allows you free passage and free room and board through any Beast settlement... so long as you keep heading towards the Sacred Hills and don't come back again. Beasts who misuse a seal tend to eventually get caught and are punished severely for their temerity.

When you return to the Sacred Hills (as all Rangers are expected to do periodically), they check up on your recruits and determine whether or not you should be given more seals. The biggest black mark isn't recruits that washed out of the training; it's recruits that never showed up at all. It's not unknown for Rangers to track down "missing" recruits and demand the seal back. That may be the only way that they can get another one.

Possible Dice Effects

Here's a thought for using cyberware in such a system...

Each point of strength enhancement (cyber limbs and muscle implants) converts 2d6 of your Strength rating into d8s instead. But it also converts 1d6 of your Speed rating in a d4. So you get mostly stronger, but you do lose a little flexibility, too.

Religious Sects

While most tribes still worship the All-Mother, there are some heresies and disagreements.

Sin-oriented: these sects teach that the All-Mother is all powerful and could make the world perfect, but chooses not to do so because the Beasts don't deserve it. They point to various sins, flaws and failings of their congregations and believe that the ills of the world are the result of them. No Shadow ever falls upon someone without them first committing some secret (or not so secret) crime that merited such a dreadful punishment. They tend to idolize Caretakers as being without sin (which, for the most part, Caretakers are... you have to have free will in order to sin).

Pantheonists: in addition to the All-Mother, these clans worship a load of minor deities, many of which are anthropomorphic principles such as the God of Thunder or the Father of all Bears. The Caretakers generally don't comment on such beliefs so long as the locals still obey them. If they make another deity more important than the All-Mother, though, they're asking for trouble.

Shadow Worshippers: a very dangerous heresy, and one which the Caretakers have striven to stamp out. Shadow Worshippers believe that the shades of Man are sacred and that Beasts should take them into themselves deliberately. Because they honestly believe that their own personalities should be subordinate to the Shadow, when possessed they tend to be possessed much more completely. Interestingly, though, perhaps because their possession is deliberate, Shadows tend to cling to them more weakly and are more easily removed.

Most Shadow Worshipper clans are smart enough to steer clear of Malignant Shadows, but still regard people possessed by Obsessions, Furies or Whimsies as sacred and try to aid them in their goals instead of driving them away. There's even some evidence that by deliberately channelling these spirits, they make it easier for them to find permanent rest, but such evidence is generally regarded as wishful thinking by outsiders.

Shadow Worshipper tribes who deliberately surrender to Malignants tend to eventually all end up as Malignants and become raveners. These sick, destructive cults are often used to justify the suppression of this religion in general.

Hectorites: another forbidden faith, heavily repressed by the Caretakers. Hectorites claim to follow the memory of Hector, the Caretaker who went mad and led the rebellion. They believe that the All-Mother isn't divine and should be opposed. They generally explain Her away as completely fictional, some sort of robot, or a Malignant Shadow of great power. Some Hectorite groups take these distinctions very seriously and have been known to engage in bloodshed with rival sects.

They also vary in their opinions of Hector. Some groups have deified him (he died to save them from the All-Mother and one day he will return) while others regard him as a martyr, but not a divine being. All of them minimize his supposed madness (many describe it as vicious lies sowed by the Caretakers; others maintain that it was part of his psychic war with the All-Mother) while exalting his great leadership and nobility.

Hectorites only operate openly in the far east, beyond the range of the Caretakers and where Hector raised his army. Here there are still some towns and villages that publicly revere his memory and plot war against the All-Mother and her slaves. Rangers who come here had best tread carefully and hide any silvering they have; it doesn't take much for the locals to become convinced that someone is a Caretaker spy and execute them.

In Caretaker-controlled territory, Hectorites are rare and have to operate in secret. They often try to recruit Beasts who are already discontented with some Caretaker edict or the behavior of local Rangers, but being a Hectorite is really, really risky and most Beasts won't join them.

Exterminator Traits

An armored robot is one that is pretty much proof against normal weapons. Claws can't tear it, bullets bounce off. The Rending power can be used to damage it anyway, but your best bet is to use more powerful attacks such as high explosives (really hard to get; only the Caretakers generally have any and they only break it out for emergencies) or traps. Traps work best: drop a wall on it or collapse a cliffside as it passes and drop it off the side... anything that inflicts a massive amount of damage should be able to harm it.

More Shadow Ideas

Types of Shadows

Rangers generally classify Shadows as one of four general types.

Obsessions: these spirits have some goal or purpose that they were prevented from completing in life and they exist solely to fulfull it. They attach themselves to Beasts who are frustrated by a similar need. So a spirit with an obsession about reaching a particular place in Los Angeles might take over a Beast who got lost trying to find his way back to his village. Obsessions generally aren't directly dangerous to other Beasts, only to the one Beast whose mind is being increasingly dominated by an urge to perform some task... a task that may well no longer be possible.

Furies: these spirits are still filled with rage and frustration against whomever they blamed for their troubles in life (usually they're mad about the Last War in general, but sometimes it's more personal than that). They adhere to Beasts who are really angry at someone else and drive them to attack that person in a murderous rage. If the target of their anger is successfully killed or at least beaten into a bloody pulp, the spirit will sometimes become quiscient... but more often it'll just pick a new "enemy" to unleash its anger upon. When a Beast goes into a wild rage, it's often said that "the Furies are upon them". This is sometimes used as an excuse for a violent crime, in which case Rangers are often asked to determine whether the person really was controlled by a Fury or not.

Malignants: the worst and most dangerous of all Shadows, these spirits are creatures of pure, distilled evil. They embody feelings like jealousy, sadism and general viciousness. Unlike Furies, however, Malignants tend to be disturbingly smart. They are quite capable of lurking in a Beast's mind for years, gradually motivating them to increasingly cruel and depraved acts until it finally becomes obvious that they are no longer sane. Malignants experience a sick glee when they do something wrong, and this emotion is shared by their host. As such, a Beast with a Malignant tends to become addicted to causing pain and destruction.

Malignants are also capable of forming attachments to other Beasts, although it's generally more of a violent possessiveness than actual affection. Entire clans, especially ravener clans, have fallen under the sway of malignants until every Beast is governed by one of these cruel Shadows. Such tribes are extremely dangerous because they generally reserve their worst acts for outsiders and content themselves with petty cruelties amongst themselves. A group of Malignants working together to sow evil and dismay can be a truly terrifying force and most Beasts would rather perish than be captured by such a tribe. The deaths of their captives are always long, drawn out and excruciatingly painful.

Malignants attach themselves to a little core of evil inside a Beast. As such, almost anyone is potentially a Malignant host, since most Beasts repress and hide any evil urges they might have. Furthermore, once they do adhere to a host, they are the hardest of spirits to banish and they almost always go into dormancy instead of being banished completely. Because of this, the Caretakers generally advise that Malignant-possessed Beasts just be killed. Rangers are not encouraged to try and free them from the spirit, although there have been successes in the past.

Many Beasts believe (pretty much as an article of religious faith) that normal Beasts are nearly incapable of evil and that all cruelty and selfishness in the world comes from the influence of Malignant spirits.

Whimsies: generally the mildest and least dangerous of Shadows, a Whimsy is a human spirit that has forgotten or refuses to believe that it is dead. Hosts generally suffer from confusion and distraction as the spirit influences their actions in bizarre ways. They may chatter about ancient events or desperately try to find their car keys. A Whimsy is distinguished from an Obsession in that it hasn't got a specific, singular goal that occupies its mind. Instead, its mind wanders randomly through fragmentary memories, causing its host to have problems telling whether something is real or just part of the Spirit's memories. It's believed that Whimsies most commonly attach themselves to daydreaming Beasts, although this may just be a popular superstition.

Banishing a Shadow

There are a number of ways of banishing (temporarily or permanently) a Shadow.

1. Inspire the Beast to break free by reminding them who they really are and what they have to live for.
2. Obsessions can be removed by completing their task or at least convincing them that it is done.
3. Some spirits (especially Whimsies) can sometimes be banished by convincing them that they really are ghosts. This has a tendency to just put them into dormancy, however, as most Shadows lack long-term memory and soon forget their ghostly state again.
4. Weaker and milder Shadows can be driven away by inflicting physical pain and injury on their hosts. Nobody really likes this solution, since it involves deliberately torturing the unfortunate Beast until the spirit can't take it anymore, but it does work on many mild and relatively innoffensive spirits.
5. Hypnotise the subject into blocking out the spirit. This sometimes drives the spirit away completely, but it's unreliable as a long-term solution.
6. Remove the spirit with psychic powers. This is somewhat dangerous, and often involves first transferring the Shadow to the psychic, then attempting to banish it there. The problem, of course, is that the Shadow might adhere to the psychic more strongly than their previous host, leaving the psychic Beast under its influence and unable to be rid of it.
7. Kill the host. The most dramatic and permanent resolution, usually reserved for Malignants.

Exterminators: Once in a great while, a Malignant spirit actually manages to possess one of the computer intelligences that run an ancient robot. Such machines gradually become more and more unpredictable in their actions, then eventually go on murderous rages, attacking and killing any Beast that they can catch. Exterminators often shun the use of their most powerful weapons, preferring to kill Beasts up close and personal, in as bloody of a manner as possible. They are known to engage in grotesque acts such as hanging severed heads or even entire corpses from their metal frames or in some hidden hideaway, always hunting for more prizes to add to the collection.

When its murderous rage is temporarily sated, an Exterminator will sometimes go back and resume its original duties. Other times it simply sits and waits, as though bereft of purpose so long as the spirit is dormant.

Psychic Powers and Shadows: Beasts with psychic powers are most vulnerable to possession by Shadows. Beasts who have no psychic powers and no psychic potential get a +4 to resist Shadows and thus rarely become hosts. The "Psychic Potential" Gift is free. It lets you take psychic powers in the future if you want to, but removes that +4 bonus.

Other Names for Shadows: other common names for Shadows include Demons, Ghosts and Echoes. The term Echoes is preferred by those who wish to emphasize that Shadows aren't really people in any sense of the word; they're just psychic residue left by people who died during the Last War.

Mastered Shadows: some Shadows are so weak (or their hosts so strong-willed) that they can be repressed and controlled indefinitely. The urges that they exert on their hosts are easily ignored and the Beast can live a fairly normal life. A Mastered Shadow is basically a free trait that you can take. If you ever use it in a contest (by deliberately unleashing the Shadow and using its urges to aid you), you must afterwards make a willpower test vs its trait to see if it continues to influence you. Taking a strong Mastered Shadow is a bad idea, as it will generally turn into an unmastered Shadow the first time that you use it.

No one ever has more than one Mastered Shadow. Shadows just don't like to share hosts. If you do somehow end up with multiple Shadows, the weakest one will eventually leave.

Dogs in the Vineyard Thoughts

Just in case the real game doesn't work anything like what I'm imagining, here are my current thoughts about using something like the Dogs in the Vineyard system for Nuclear Beasts.

• Stats would include an Animals Instincts rating, which would be 5d6 for 1st generation, 3d6 for 2nd and 1d6 for 3rd. It applies to the sort of tasks that your species is good at and to social interactions with other members of the same species.
• The penalty for "No Hands" would be that whenever you spend dice to perform a task (whether actively to do something or defensively to save yourself from some effect), you have to sacrifice one extra die (that contributes nothing towards the total) to perform a task where hands would be important and two dice to perform one where hands would be essential.
• The bad guys in the setting would include human spirits of rage and death that can influence or even possess Beasts who become vulnerable to them. These should get a cool name. Not "psi-demons"... and probably not "demons", although that would work (especially if most Beasts don't know what these evil spirits are). Maybe Murders? Malignants? Maligns? They're basically the rage and dismay of humans who died in the Last War, and whose spirit is still restless.
• Performing a normal action entails rolling all of the dice and using the sum of your highest two dice as the result. Penalties force you to lose dice, starting with the highest ones. The difficulties assume that you have d6s to roll... so 7 is an "average" task, 12 is really hard, et cetera. Since you can have dice larger than d6s (just not for stats), a task could theoretically be as hard as 24 and still be beatable, but it's not bloody likely. Crits probably occur when you can beat the task multiple times with your dice or if a single pair of dice can produce twice the total necessary.
• Stats might have funny names, but they'd probably basically be Strength & Toughness, Agility & Speed, Charm & Psi and Smarts & Perception. Then Instincts. Maybe Strength, Speed, Spirit & Smarts. Plus Species. Except that being all "S"s would be annoying to abbreviate.
• Psi should have some funky system, like dropping a die code each time that you have to roll it during a session or dropping each die that comes up "1" in a contest. You get lost dice back by abstaining from the use of all Psi for a few days.
• Equipment would grant bonus dice in appropriate situations... or big penalties if it's absolutely necessary and you don't have it. e.g.- fighting in ranged combat if you don't have a gun would entail a 2-die penalty (or outright forbiddance) to actually attack anyone back, although you can still dodge. Most items (especially spiffy ones, anyway) get a rating of their own, usually one die, although it's possible to get a gizmo with multiple small dice.
• Cyberware effects would vary by device; psychic powers generally just get a rating of their own, like "Sixth Sense d8".
• It could use a system where the more dice it takes you to perform a normal task, the longer it takes your character and the more likely it is to have problems. e.g.- if it takes you one die to beat the difficulty of climbing this wall (7), then you just leap over. If it takes two die, you climb it normally. Three, you climb it really slowly, but you get there. Four or more, you'd run the risk of hurting yourself or suffering other long-term malign effects such as breaking your rope, embarrassing yourself in front of important NPCs or making enough noise to attract the guards. Should failure occur if it would take five or more dice to do it? e.g.- one die (or being able to do it twice because you have so many dice) is a crit, two is a success, three is a partial success, four is failure and five+ is botch?
• Stats are rated in multiple d6s. Other ratings tend to be a single die, but can be larger than d6. Unimpressive but generally useful stuff might grant a handful of d4s.
• There's an expensive Silvering that entails robot arms being grafted to the shoulders of a First Generation Beast. This would reduce the hands penalty by at least one die and might eliminate it entirely, depending on how "cool" I want the robot hands to be. Other generations might be able to get some additional benefit from an extra arm or two as well. There's probably also the equivalent of the Mechadentrites: tiny mechanical add-ons that can't help in combat, but do help analyze and repair ancient tech.
• Races consist of describing what you're good at, then giving a list of stat adjustments and special abilities. If you get too much cool stuff, you may also get flaws, where you lose dice when performing certain tasks (e.g.- Elephants are lousy jumpers).
• Penalties could also be handled by increasing the difficulty... then they'd be harder to get over, even if you have a lot of dice. If all jumps are +4 difficulty, a 7 task would become an 11 for you... much harder. And a 12 would become a nigh-impossible 16. It wouldn't matter how many d6 you had to roll, you'd still be toast if the difficulty went above 18 or something (even 3d6 can't do it).
• There could be various types of human spirits, named according to the effects they have. Obsessions, Furies, Malignants. Maybe even Whimsies. As a whole they could be called demons, ghosts, shadows or maybe Black Spirits. Or Dark Echoes.
• "Luck rolls" would just be 2d6, giving a range from 2 to 12. I might have a Minor Luck psi-power that adds to this... and a Major Luck that can add to almost anything. Actually, make that Luck (only adds to Luck rolls, but it's not a Psi power so it doesn't get reduced by use) and Probabiity Control (can influence pretty much anything, but it's expensive and it grants no special powers).

More Ranger Roles

Monitor: the communications / radio officers.

Bioeth: expert on plant and animal life. They make the decisions about what should be exterminated and what is all right to keep or even desirable.

Sergeant: the warleader. In battle, all other Rangers are expected to defer to their expertise.

Mediciner: expert on treating wounds and illnesses. They diagnose poisons and diseases and often have psychic healing powers.

Historian: expert on ancient technology and human artifacts.

Scout: the group's scout. Preferably a stealthy and skilled tracker.

Beasts in the Garden

Haven't done much with this in awhile, but I'm still thinking about it. I'd kind of like to pick a very simple, easy to expand upon base system, one that already exists, and then use Nuclear Beasts as a setting for it. See how hard it is to customize that system to my needs.

In particular, I'm thinking about making the default setting to be that all PCs are Rangers. They'd serve the Goddess and the Caretakers by pacifying outlying areas, organizing people against the Blight, exploring ruins that need exploring, et cetera. The All-Mother could be portrayed as a benevolent ruler... or a cynical manipulator... or just a mad A.I. with delusions of grandeur.

PCs would then have access to the full range of abilities... psychic powers (Rangers who manifest them get the best training), cyberware (at the behest of the Caretakers, of course, but they're flexible if you've earned it or need it) and plain old competence (the Rangers are picked from among the best candidates). There would be a built-in rationale for adventuring (they need Beasts who are loyal, tough, and can go places that the Caretakers can't... oh, and they have to be expendable, too).

I could delve into more detail on the Rangers, breaking them up into various groups. The Monitors, for example, have built-in radios. They exchange info with other Monitors and are the best at communicating with robots... they can talk to an Exterminator at a safe distance and can often identify a robot's type, purpose and current activity by studying its radio traffic. When a military unit suddenly switches to high encryption or complete radio silence, it's time to get out of there.

I'd probably still keep the "psi interferes with cyberware" theme, but tone it down a bit so that it's more of a tradeoff than an either-or thing. The presence of "psi-demons" and evil spirits might become a bigger deal, as that adds another major form of opposition. The Rangers should feel like they're desperately trying to keep this civilization running but there are a dozen different ways it could be destroyed if they screw up.

What little I've seen of Dogs in the Vineyard looks very interesting. I want to pick up a few more specialized systems and playtest them. Since they're generally very specific to their genre, I'd probably have to make major changes in order to support the setting that I'm looking at... which is fine; then I could actually publish it without it just being a ripoff. But I want a good starting point.

Setting

Well, I'm still of the opinion that an interesting setting is more important than the rules. In fact, I'd generally prefer for the rules to be oriented around the setting... if the game involves lots of fights, the rules should support exciting fights. If there's tons of politicing, there should be good rules for social interaction.

I'm toying with the idea of making the Rangers more important. The PCs could all be Rangers by default... the elite of the Beasts, chosen by the Caretakers for special training. Those who perform heroically are often allowed to be silvered if they want to, allowing PCs to take both psi and cybernetics. The two should "mess" with each other in some fashion, probably by increasing the Risk from 1 to 2 (or to 3 for extreme cases).

The All-Mother sends them on various missions, fighting monsters in one area, rooting out toxic plants in another, reactivating an ancient factory or whatever. She can be benevolent, whimsical or even outright insane, depending upon the course that the GM wants the game to take. PCs might be fanatically loyal to Her, merely practical, or actually come to oppose Her and seek freedom from Her rule. She could well be grooming the Rangers to run the country after She finally shuts down.

Discouragement

Ugh. I've been trying to get feedback on my setting ideas at RPG.net and I'm about ready to give up on the whole thing. No interest, no comments... the only replies I get it's obvious they haven't even read what I asked them about. I can only guess that folks have all, at one time or another, glanced at the blog and gone, "Eh, whatever," and now ignore my posts. I dunno.

Basically, I guess I should try for feedback on some other locations (rpg-create and the Forge are about the only other options I know), then maybe give up.

I mean, I'm trying to devise a setting that interests folks. If folks like the setting, they'll learn the rules... if they don't, the rules are pointless.

I see a few basic things I could do to try and salvage something out of this.

• Call it a learning experience and give up. Not exactly a positive experience, but I'm definitely better prepared if I ever come up with an idea that people do like. I've also honed my skills for art and layout and I'd be better able to do stuff like taking on art commissions if I wanted to.
• Just finish off the system as a generic game. If it playtests well, maybe I can use it for some other game setting.
• Finish what I have and put it out as a PDF. That might well net greater attention, since it would (hopefully) look nice and professional. That won't be easy though, and honestly, if no one's interested in the game-in-development, I doubt it'll do anything more than sit on my website and accumulate the occasional comment. Probably no one will play it, not even me.
• Backburner the project and come back to it in six months or so, if I think it's worthwhile. Maybe I'll come up with some twist that actually makes the setting draw people in. Who knows? Maybe I really just need a catch-phrase.
• Jump to a different setting and convert the rules to it. But this time I'd want to do some research and look for feedback on the idea first. Maybe something like Spiral would go over better... who knows? It may just be my presentation.

Bullet Point Setting Summary

• Set in the ruins of the U.S., long after the apparent extinction of mankind.
• Characters are "Beasts", animals that have been genetically engineered to grant human-level intelligence and speech.
• Can be quadraped (no hands), semi-humanoid (paws that can double as hands) or completely humanoid. Mammals only.
• Created by the mysterious All-Mother, who is now worshipped as their goddess. The All-Mother lives in an underground cavern barred to regular Beasts. Probably some sort of advanced A.I. with resources for genetic manipulation and cloning.
• The All-Mother can "silver" Beasts who prove worthy, replacing some body parts with cybernetic upgrades.
• The only Beasts allowed into the All-Mother's presence are the Caretakers, who act as the All-Mother's agents, ruling the land on Her behalf.
• The Caretakers have all been heavily "silvered" and are easily recognizable by the metal skullcap that they all wear. It links their minds with that of the All-Mother. There are only a set number of Caretakers, with new ones being created only when the old ones die.
• Her other servants are the Oracles (priestesses who speak on her behalf, handling individual requests so that folks don't bother the Caretakers) and the Rangers (Beasts who serve the Caretakers; often silvered themselves).
• Many Beasts manifest psychic powers, enabling them to do stuff like project their image somewhere or tear through steel with their claws. Such Beasts are never chosen as Caretakers and rarely get silvered; their powers interfere with cyberware when used.
• The Caretakers keep the overall tech level artificially low. The best guns available are old-style six-shooter revolvers and single-shot bolt-action rifles.
• The Engineers are a secret society dedicated to reviving ancient human technology in defiance of the Caretakers.
• There are other types of Beast in the setting, including the avian Harpies and the reptilian Kukukuk. These were apparently created by someone else besides the All-Mother and do not worship Her. There are a lot of border conflicts between them and regular Beasts.
• The southern part of the continent is being slowly taken over by an alien ecology largely toxic to regular life. The Caretakers spend a lot of time organizing efforts to root it out and prevent it from spreading further north.
• Many ruins are guarded by ancient, nuclear-powered robots. Functioning ID cards (which can be used to safely bypass many robots) are extremely valuable.
• Of late, some newly manufactured killer robots have been seen roaming the land and killing any Beasts that they encounter. These are not as powerful as the ancient robots but are far more aggressive. Their origin is unknown.
• The Verde (the green and fertile region around the All-Mother's home) is still recovering from a civil war where one Caretaker went mad and led a rebellion that attempted to destroy the All-Mother. He was slain, but the Caretakers were forced to withdraw from contact for nearly a generation.
• The more human-like a Beast is, the more vulnerable they are to sickness. The ancient bioweapons that wiped out mankind are still active. All primate species are extinct.