Saturday, July 23, 2011

Some thoughts on Stalin and his goals, by Lavrenti Beria's son.

 Some of the stuff I've been digging up for basic background stuff for the setting I'm working on - Cold war in Spaaaaace ! (intro here).

Lavrenti Beria was , by 1953, the number two man in the USSR, and had been in charge of the Soviet Atomic Bomb project.  Here is part of an interview  with his son on the subject of the beginning of the cold war and Stalin's goals (do visit the site, the whole interview is quite interesting).  As ever, it is just one mans report regarding two dead people, long after the fact, but.....jeeeeze.  That's some serious evil overlord stuff and it's real...

Q: Let us speak about the appearance of the atomic bomb in the Soviet Union, in connection with the Korean War.
A: The war in Korea broke out on Stalin's initiative. When the Soviet troops came back to this country, Stalin began the new policy. He was of the opinion that on the basis of the communist development, we must organise small local wars in different places of the world. It was begun in Greece, then in China, then in Vietnam, and finally in Korea. That is one of the examples of these local wars. In two weeks, the Soviet troops managed to fight; they were very good. And at that time, Stalin wanted the Soviet troops to fight with rockets; that was the rockets against the ships. They had two types of heads: atomic head and trotyl head. Stalin wanted the Soviet fleet to destroy three or four American military ships; and they told Stalin that after that, the American side would fight with the atomic bomb. Stalin wasn't afraid of this atomic bomb; he said, "Then we'll give our atomic bomb, too." At that time we had very good military aeroplanes; that's why Stalin was ready to begin a very big war. But our military specialists told him that we had no equipment which could catch the American aeroplanes, and Stalin gave the order to build such equipment. And later on, this task was fulfilled. During all the sittings of the Government, he said that the third world war would take place, and that this war had to take place during his life. That's why the military industry in the Soviet Union was very much developed at that time. We got a lot of tanks and rockets and ships, and I think that if Stalin had lived five years longer, we would have had this third world war. (emphasis mine)



Q: Was it planned to use the nuclear bomb in Korea from the Soviet side too?
A: Yes, Stalin had such plans, and my father was very much afraid of these plans. Such a fact(?) took place, and maybe it's not very good that I speak about this now. My father was even against the preparation of this bomb, and he understood that if the Soviet Union got this bomb, nothing would be able to stop Stalin in his wish to conquer the whole world.(emphasis mine)



Q: The last question: if nobody knew that Stalin was so dangerous, and if people had some plans to stop Stalin.
A: Yes, of course, a lot of people understood that Stalin had such dangerous plans and that they must do their best in order to stop him and his plans. But Stalin was very clever, and he understood everything. He felt all these spirits of people who surrounded him. When he felt that somebody was dangerous for him, he immediately killed them. He protected himself from the enemies, and it was very simple for him to do this. (emphasis mine) And if he hadn't died in 1953, it seems to me that he would have killed all the members of the Politburo. Bulganin, Malenkov, Khrushchev and my father would have been killed - I am sure of this fact. There are even some documents in which it's written that...
(No more recorded. End.)

So.....1949.

So, I'm thinking on the whole retro-rockets red glare setting (cold war in space) .  The main difference (or POD as the alternate history hipsters call it) is this:  Stalin had access to something that he felt was a useful counter to the Allied A-bomb much sooner than the actual 1949 date that the Soviet A-Bomb arrived on the scene.  My assumption is that given an earlier counter, his actions 1946-1949 would largely be similar, or at least similarly motivated as his actual actions before his death in 1953.

So, this opens the question, what was his action plan for the USSR post WW-II ?

But first, a digression.

Well, in all truth, we have nothing but speculation about alternates.  Particularly so in this case, as Stalin played his cards very close to his chest, tended to have multiple plans that would be modified by real world changes, and never told anyone what he was doing.  And he lied. And used threat and intimidation.  And lied.  Plus, if you looked cross-eyed at him, you died.

That said, I'm not a historian, so I can take the luxury of making decisions about questionable issues with input from the game setting I want to describe rather than relying entirely upon documented facts.  So, while all the following is at least,  as I see it, possible, it is not necessarily likely.  In fact, the most likely possibility, insofar as we have no idea at all what the actual quantifiable probabilities involved were has to be exactly what happened in the real world.   Which, due to a lamentable lack of nuclear torch fighters duking it out among Jupiter's moons doesn't work for the setting I want.  So, I'll go with some other outcomes.

However, the "and then Nikoli Tesla/Albert Einstein/unnamed Genius/alien benefactors invented/introduced grav. drive in 1929/1939/1949" has been done before (did you notice ?) and tends to create a future Alt universe with what we think of as the future as envisioned by us, now.  Make sense ?  I suppose I'm interested in "what did the future look like in the 50/60's to those in the 50/60's", and how do we get there in a game ?

So, what defines that period for me ?
1. Cold war and global polarization
2. Inevitable apocalyptic conflict
3. Crap computers and the last generation of narrow access to information and communications.
4. Crew cuts, lantern chins: jocks and nerds, as opposed to slackers and geeks.
5. Less pesky information about the solar system.
6. BIG projects, engineering uber-alles. Skunk works.


More to come.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Quick plug for a rules lite RPG I love

So, given all the loving that the OSR community has for rules lite -or as I like to imagine them, concise rules, I'm surprised that I haven't seen mention of this nifty rules set: Dead Simple

http://thegamesshed.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/dead-simple-rpg-rules/

It does an excellent job of presenting what you need for a core RPG in one page, and has several additional one page settings ( from SciFi thru steampunk, historical, asian (yeah, NINJAS !), and lost of setting additions for bog-standards fantasy (you know, "orcs, elves and halflings, oh my !"), a town an adventure, city rules, all nicely presented in single page format.

Seriously, check it out.  NOW.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Phew. That was a lot of work for a hobby project. What next ?

So, Adventurer is mainly done.  My plan for the future  is to just drop the skyship rules and have the sorcery book as a standalone for campaigns that want to add magic to the characters in book one.  I'll probably add the skyship rules to a quick airship combat system and some chargen and careers specific to make a supplement for campaigns with flying ships: working title "Skyships and Swordsmen " or something like that.  But, I'm taking a break from Adventurer for a bit.

In the meantime.......I'm tossing around some ideas for some campaign settings specific to the Mongoose Traveller rules.  Previously, I've been writing up "Retro Rockets Red Glare" (new working title) the setting exploring the undeclared hot war beyond lunar orbit in an alternate 1980's cold war.  Some of the setting ideas are here and here.  Space travel with Orion spacecraft carrying Gemini or Soyuz interceptors. Early 1980's tech in weapons and computers, missiles and kinetic weapons, that kind o' stuff.  read "Blind mans Bluff" and substitute "spaceship" for "submarine". 

Another idea is a more classic retro space patrol type setting,  in the much cooler future science of the 1940's/50's. Tentatively called "Space rangers of Saturn"; set, unsurprisingly, in the raw frontier colonies of the outer gas giants, operating from the 53rd state, Titan. Yeah, space western.  Sue me. No...actually, don't.

The first is an unusual take on retro, but is likely to be more specialized in its appeal; the latter, more fun, but less original.  Not sure which way to go. 

Let me know what you think.  Likely I'll do whatever my whim suggests, but hey, suggestions are always helpful.

Monday, July 11, 2011

ADVENTURER is complete ! Book Three: Races, Realms and Riches is up and posted !

Well, here it is. Book three of three. It's done.

This one covers the equiv of the wilderness and underworld adventures for original D&D. Player and non-player races, animal and fantastic creature generation rules; map, city and dungeon generation rules, plus traveller style profile strings ! analogues for all the major traveller races ! Major geek fest !

All it seems to lack at this point are some easy combat rules for flyers, and a few careers for the same -or at least skills for them.  I'm not sure if I should add them to book two, or remove the flyer construction rules from it, and have a first supplement covering skyships.  The latter is easier, but would leave  book 2 a bit skinny, and entirely devoted to magic.  Any thoughts ?

So, except for the above, this is probably the final version of Adventurer unless I decide to go semipro and actually publish it via POD or PDF.  Or if major problems show up, obviously.....


So, I've got other stuff to blog about, but I've been forcing myself to  finish this off; it's been gratifying seeing the followers increase even in the face of seriously dense and specialized posts.  I hope you all enjoy this.  And I'd love to hear any comments or stories from actual play.  My local playtest has been a long time thing, but somewhat limited in scope and player headcount.  I know more input would be better, so........http://www.box.net/shared/gzu9dcs4c4r61nrx2zo4



Thursday, July 7, 2011

Update to Treasure and Dungeons for adventurer - PERIL !

After generating, tweaking and fudging the basic UDP, generate the Peril level. Roll 1d6 and add the following modifiers.

Peril

Challenge
Denizens
Size
Type*
Reputation
Protection
Strategy
0


+1
-2
+1
-2
-3
1



-1
+1

-2
2






-1
3



+1



4







5



+1



6



+1



7






+1
8

+1

+1
+1

+1
9

+1

+1
+1
+1
+2
A
+4
+1
+1
+2
+3*
+1
+2
B
+2






C
+1






D







E







X
-2





























Peril is a very subjective rating of the average danger of a typical member of the protection team.  Assuming that it isn’t a fish story, peril rages from -6 (the minimum value) to 18. 
At a very rough quantification, the peril level corresponds to a normal person with the given number of terms in an appropriate career –such as , say, barbarian, soldier or mage.   As a rule of thumb, use the peril as the total number of skills and stat advances added to a normal human (777777). Negative values subtract from stats, but regardless of the peril rating, all denizens have enough level-0 skills to be able to act appropriately.  In general, no more than half the adds should be applied to skill levels.  Note too, that the actual d6 roll  is the maximum possible skill level for one skill –which may or may not actually be achievable.   All other skills must be less than the maximum, no matter how many.

As an example, consider an average dungeon (C-556555). A series of catacombs sheltering the remnants of an unspeakable snake cult, which has broken up into several mutually opposed sects, each defending their own turf against all comers.
Given a roll of 4, it would be peril 5, and would have a typical denizen (let us say evil human cultists minions) with stats of 987777 (three advances) and one key skill at 2, or two at level 1.  All would have “worship huge-ass snake god” at level -0.  Some acolytes would have access to one or two  spell levels (say, dwemomer-1 and mesmerism-1, or perhaps skinshifting -2; both options would also would have dagger-0).

A truly epic campaign ending dungeon site might be AAA99A:  An underground lost kingdom ruled by the terrible sorcery using dragon that destroyed it.  A roll of 6 gives a final peril of 18; good luck !  A dragon the size of 18 men, with appropriate stats lurks deep in the ruins of the elven kingdom it destroyed; it has 9 levels of magic: mesmerism-5 nad several others at one or two.  Its stats would be determined by its size rather than by upping a human, and the creature building tables should be consulted, using appropriate modifiers.  Possibly, (as per challenge level A) it also has the disturbing spirits of grief stricken dead elves, physically harmless, but importantly, loud; with a  few being insane and violent.  Some few enslaved goblins may be on hand to run errands and get groceries (such as adventurers).  As I said, good luck.

Obviously, not all denizens will be human, or directly comparable, so considerable input from the DM will be required for this to work in a sane manner –although pure gonzo is also a possibility. 

The Hoard
Finally, the reason we are here ! The sites’s horde rating is the final measure of its value, both in the main cache of the biggest boss,, and spread around and hidden throughout. Basic procedure is: roll (1d3-1d3) and add the peril.  The below table suggests some modifiers based on  some of the authors favorite S&S tropes; feel free to ignore or modify them.  Indeed, the horde should always be modified if the reward is inappropriate to the danger level and/or the type of campaign.  ALWAYS.

Horde

Challenge
Denizens
Size
Type*
Reputation
Protection
Strategy
0





 -2
-1
-1
1





-1

2







3







4







5







6



 +1



7





 +1

8

 



 +1

9



 -1

 +2

A
+2 


 +1
+2


B







C







D







E
+1






X
-2






*Remember, it’s a fish story…….

1d6 + mods
Metal
Gems :
d6 x (rating+1)
Jewelry:
d6 + rating
Minor magic:
d3
Magic item:
H -L
Artifact:
1
0
Copper  2d6 *10
10+
12 +
10+
12 +
12 +
1
Copper  2d6 *100
10+
12 +
10+
12 +
12 +
2
Bronze 2d6 *100
9+
11+
10+
12 +
12 +
3
Silver 2d6 *100
9+
11+
10+
12 +
12 +
4
Bronze 2d6 *1000
8+
10+
9+
11+
12 +
5
Silver 2d6 *1000
8+
10+
9+
11+
12 +
6
Gold 2d6*100
7+
9+
9+
11+
12 +
7
Silver Talents 2d6
7+
9+
9+
11+
12 +
8
Silver 2d6 *10000
6+
8+
8+
10+
12 +
9
Gold 2d6 *1000
6+
8+
8+
10+
12 +
A
Silver Talents 2d6 *10
5+
7+
8+
10+
12 +
B
Gold Talents 2d6
5+
7+
8+
10+
12 +
C
Gold 2d6 *10000
4+
6+
7+
9+
12 +
D
Silver Talents 2d6 *100
4+
6+
7+
9+
12 +
E
Gold Talents 2d6*10
3+
5+
7+
9+
12 +
F
Silver Talents 2d6 *1000
3+
5+
7+
9+
12 +
G
Gold Talents 2d6 *100
3+
4+
6+
8+
12 +
H
Silver Talents 2d6 *10000
3+
4+
6+
8+
12 +
J
Gold Talents 2d6 *1000
3+
3+
6+
8+
12 +





























The main horde consists of final number on the Hoard table; this result is in one place, or at least in a concentrated sub area of the site  This is the big one, the one the whole thing may be protecting – or the main dumping ground for undead who dislike silver (say).

Final reward


All lower coin values are also found, but spread out through the rest of the dungeon and its denizens. Thus, a hoard type 5 also contains loot equal to hordes 4, 3, 2,1 and 0-. Whereas the main treasure trove will tend to be concentrated, the remainder will tend to be spread out throughout the site, some guarded by lesser foes, some simply hidden or lost.

Similarly, roll once more on the gems, jewels and magic items at Hoard -1, and distribute any that result as with coins.   Now that’s a place worth getting you neck snapped for, right ?  Hmmmmm.  Your characters neck.  Sound better ?

Gems typically have negligible weight and value d6xd6 xd6  coins:1bronze coins, 2-4 silver coins , 5 gold coins, 6 Special, reroll: 1-5 gold, 6  determine the value as if jewelry (below);  this result represents the ruby the size of a mans fist, the mountain of  light diamond, or the pearl the size of  a plovers egg.
Jewelry have a value per piece of d3  talents: 1-3 Bronze talents, 4-5 Silver Talents 6 Gold Talents.  Remember, 1 Talent = 6000 coins of that type.
Minor magic: this covers a variety of helpful but not decisively powerful items.  As a rule, they should never approximate or contain spells of greater than second circle or equivalent mystery spells; nor should they have more than 1d3 specific powers, with 1 such power being the most common. Only the weakest should have constant effect or unlimited use.  A rough guideline is that number of spells + circle of highest spell must be no greater than 3.  And yes, that is very limited.  Spells with expendable charges or single use can have more spells and power, such scrolls of d3 spells of 1-2nd circle; potions; small weapons; item bound spells of 1st circle.