Wet Bones: A progress report on my Spark vs. Dark adventure

SYSTEM: ICONS

The adventure I've written in Jim Gardner's universe is called Wet Bones. I will be running Mike Lafferty and Walt Robillard through it on the BAMF Podcast soon; for various reasons we have not recorded this yet. We're currently slated to record the first session this month; it's been pushed off once due to family emergencies. (Actually, I could do another playtest on roll20 to see if the last set of tweaks^H^H^H^H^H^Hmassive changes did what they were supposed to do. Holler if you're interested in a sub-three-hour adventure, preferably on a weekend. Two to four players. Familiarity with the game not needed.)

The original adventure I wrote is about four hours with the option to go longer; for Mike's purposes, he needs it to be in one or two segments of between sixty and ninety minutes. So in play, there will not be room to go down a lot of side paths. (I provided a lot of internecine conflict that might come up if the players go in a specific direction. You don't lose any of the main story by cutting it down to less than three hours, but you lose some flavour. C'est la vie.) It will have an example of a minion fight, of some research tests, stunts (many of the villain and hero powers get stunted off the "Darkling" or "Spark" qualities), and two other combats. I'll be on the lookout to bring some Qualities in, but that's really quite specific to the characters and events; I make that up on the fly.

However, it leaves me conflicted about what to do with the text of the adventure.

The adventure has a couple of goals:

• Be a good time. I hope this will be fun to hear and to play. If you don't enjoy it, it doesn't matter if I achieve any other goals.
• Guide people to Fainting Goat's back catalog Mike has a business, and he'd like to sell stuff. Heck, I've written for Mike and for Walt and I'd like them to sell stuff. Mike's first idea was that I run a Fainting Goat adventure but at the time I was stoked for Jim's book so I pushed for running a Spark vs. Dark adventure...but I've done Assembled edition updates of a bunch of Fainting Goat characters, and those are the pre-gens for the adventure. In the adventure, I provide only the updates rather than the whole character, so if you want to play with the characters provided, you have to get the Fainting Goat product. (Well, half of the characters are from Stark City). Villains are a mix of original and from Super Villain Hand Book and from MMM. If you don't have the appropriate Fainting Goat source, my thinking goes, you'll have to do a lot more work to run the adventure.

  At some point, I'll release the "So you want to create characters" section, but that'll be some time after I release the adventure.

• Proselytize for ICONS There's a lack of ICONS Assembled actual play recordings out there. There are some, such as SkyFyre, but there can be more.
• Promote Jim's book Jim is my friend and I liked the book. He can probably use the attention because the second book in the series (They Didn't Tell Me The Gun Was Loaded is the title, I think, but I might have some words wrong) is now available for pre-order. And, because Jim will mention the podcast once it's out, I hope that a few new listeners will then get something from Mike or buy ICONS or both.
• And of course fame or humiliation for me. (Not fortune. Very little in the tabletop RPG field seems to go for fortune...)

I do explicitly state in the text of the adventure that while Jim and Fainting Goat have given me permission to use the setting and the characters, they don't relinquish rights and I have no rights beyond this one adventure. And Steve Kenson hasn't been involved at all. (All of which is true.) Given that, I was going to release it under whatever the Creative Commons license that requires attribution.

So: when to release the text of the adventure? Probably not before the podcast is released. I'm open to suggestions, but my current thinking is:

1. Release a version when the first part of the podcast goes live. Yes, that will include the shocking twist ending; so what? (It suddenly occurs to me that the released version should have links to the appropriate Fainting Goat pages.) That version might be a simple link to a Google Doc.
2. Six months or a year later (time to be determined with Mike), I'll release a version as a PDF (maybe laid out in Word, oh boy! or Scribus: something that looks better than a Google Doc but doesn't involve me paying someone for layout) that includes character creation.

My feeling is that interest will be highest at the first session. If people like it, that's the time to give them pointers to the Fainting Goat website and to a place where they can get the book/pre-order the next book.

I don't know from marketing, though. (I'm a technical writer. I've tried running my own business: I suck at it.)

The counterargument is that it could actually be popular. Maybe I'm stealing money from myself. Maybe someone will want to do a roleplaying setting for the Spark vs. Dark books and they would actually give me money for this. That sounds like a lot of ifs, though.

Anyway, that's the state of things. Feel free to comment.

Spark vs. Dark...groping towards pre-gens

SYSTEM: ICONS

Not that anyone asked, but here are the pre-gens I have already written for the Dark vs. Spark Bruce County adventure. They'll get adjusted by playtests, of course, but this is what I'm starting with. The qualities and backgrounds are not yet written...this is mostly power sets and names.

In general, players are free to change one of the Qualities to make the character fit better for them.

4H

Lindsay Pilgrim has taken the Head-Heart-Hands-Health motto in a totally different direction, Foraitch has one ability that is quite different: a touch can transfer everything the target knows. That information might not be immediately available—it takes time to go through someone's entire life. Okay, balancing realism and game mechanics, let's say it usually takes an hour. Anything that hasn't assimilated when the next person is copied into Foraitch's head, well, that's gone.

Foraitch
PRO	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	Determ.
3	4	5	4	4	5	10	2
Specialties Leadership Expert (+2)
Knack Spark
Powers
Power Mimicry   Extra: Mental powers, Limit: extra only,   Limit: takes time to process afterward (buy back Determination)							6
Regeneration							8
Telekinesis							3
Extra: Flight							3
Qualities
Epigram: "Head, Hands, Heart, Health is my motto"
Loves animals
Quality 3?

Game Mechanics: I figure that though the memory transfer is instant, ferreting out the information can take time: When Foraitch is trying (that is, not fighting), a minutes per point of Intellect of the target. Without trying, it takes twenty minutes per point of Intellect.

If there is a particular piece of information (like the combination to a lock), start with 1 in the first "assimilation period" (ten minutes or thirty), and increase by 1 for each time period after that, up to power level. Test that number against the target's Intellect. The GM can modify this based on whether the information would be easily accessible: people just know their names and birthdays, but there might be slower recall about the events on a specific date. Or spend a Determination point and counteract the limit.)

Lilypad

A blatant ripoff of Jason Tondro's fabulous Frog Girl, but I liked the name-power match.

Lily Patrick is a student at Georgian College, studying law enforcement. Her parents own a Chinese restaurant, but they are Serbian, with a name granted to them on immigration. She is husky and tall, with acne outbreaks that sometimes go away with the switch from Lilypad. (The name started when she started saying her own real name and then had to fix it.)

Lilypad (Lily Patrick)
PRO	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	Determ.
4	5	7	4	6	4	11	1
Specialties Investigation, Law
Knack Spark
Powers
Aquatic							6
Extra: Invisibility; Limit: half effect if not motionless							6
Aura (small spines)							4
Wall-Crawling							2
Super-Senses (360-degree vision)							1
Qualities
Epigram: The were-frog: moving in all environments but at home in none
Social media maven
Still looking

Menagerie

Justice White is a bullied kid—now teenager—who escaped by dealing with farm animals and learning about animals as much as possible. An accident at Georgian (the high school kids were using its facilities, and it's just next door) put Justice in contact with the Light.

Menagerie can turn into animals, even imaginary ones. And as the fight continues, certain powers start to appear, which might turn Menagerie into a different animal.

Menagerie
PRO	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	Determ.
5	5	3	3	6	4	9	1
Specialties Science (Veterinary), Medicine
Knack Spark
Powers
Transformation (animals)							6
Extra: Imaginary ones, too							6
Adaptation							5
Nemesis: Limit: Preparation							5
Qualities
Epigram: Any animal you can imagine (aka "The best bestiary").
Teenager
Quality 3

Snowbelt

David Kooigstra is a farmer. Got a sizeable herd of dairy cattle, and a decent milk quota. And superheroing gets in the way, but darn it, someone's got to do it. And it makes getting lane clear in the wintertime so much easier. The Science and Technologies make up the farming trade, which is broad: he can fix a tractor, tell you what the good weather is for planting, help a cow with a breech birth, and so on.

Snowbelt
PRO	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	Determ.
3	4	4	3	4	5	9	2
Specialties Science, Technology
Knack Spark
Powers
Cold Control							6
Extra: Ice slide for movement							6
Extra: Ice armor (force field)							6
Extra: Telekinesis (Limit: snow/ice only; buys back Determination)							6
Life support (cold)							1
Qualities
Epigram: If it's cold, I can control it.
Somebody's gotta do it (but cold hands, warm heart)
We gonna do this, or not? I got things to do

Speedway

Casey Wilde is in fact the wild kid, in the middle of his or her family. Races cars at the Sauble Speedway in the summer and is a mechanic the rest of the time. A DUI conviction in the past (maybe it's still current: maybe Speedway doesn't have a driver's license right now).

Speedway
PRO	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	Determ.
4	5	3	4	4	5	8	1
Specialties Driving, Technology
Knack Spark
Powers
Superspeed							6
Extra: Defending							6
Extra: Surface Movement							6
Dazzle (sound)							5
Qualities
Epigram: Fastest man around
The simple pleasures: getting hammered and going fast
A dare? Well, then, I gotta.

Think Tank

Dakota Thompson puts his or her mind in the suit and is essentially animating it...and essentially there, so though there's a certain Astral Projection quality to the power. Dakota can animate other suits, but the fact is, fully articulated copies of people don't happen everywhere. Dakota has been building this one for a while, but it could be any articulated thing. This one has microphones and cameras and all such to see what's going on and act on it.

If the suit is damaged, Dakota might take the damage, though destroying the suit doesn't kill Dakota. (Finding Dakota's body and killing it while Dakota is busy? That would work.) As with Astral Projection, Dakota has no sensations while projecting, but can snap back as a reaction. Doing so abandons the suit, however, wherever it is.

Dakota has tried putting weapons on the suit but they've never worked, which is a mystery. Other things, like specialty cameras or microphones, seem to work on a case-by-case basis (that is, they're stunts).

Think Tank
PRO	CRD	STR	INT	AWR	WIL	STAMINA	Determ.
3	4	3	4	4	6	9	1
Specialties Technology
Knack Spark
Powers
Telepathy							6
Extra: Rangeless							6
Extra: Telekinesis							6
Limit: Feedback
Damage Reduction (limited to material of the suit, but normally)							6
Super-senses (telelocation)							1
Qualities
Epigram: Inhabiting a suit with mind powers!
Quality Two
Quality Three

Dark vs. Spark as a genre...character creation

SYSTEM: ICONS

I've been thinking about the adventure I've written for the Dark vs Spark world (All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault by James Alan Gardner). I felt like the standard ICONS origins weren't quite right, because all of the heroes we see are Transformed (though birthright heroes are mentioned as a possibility). (Edited and updated)

So you could do point-buy, because you ignore the effects of the origins. That might be what I do.

In all cases, follow the spirit of the book. In general, hero characters have an SF rationalization or are SF-adjacent (even in the book they're not really SF; in game terms, they're specifying the quality that will guide what powers they can stunt); villains are monsters of legend.

So generally: have some kind of cliche or tag in your Qualities that describes your powers. Given the environment, you can swap Swinging for another Movement power, unless you really want it.

If you're going to do point-buy:

• Use 50 points
• The Knack "Spark" is free.
• You don't get the advantages that come with an Origin, regardless of what the origin is.
• You can use the optional rule from ICONS Origins that lets you essentially buy a multipower or array of powers that fit in the same category. They can't be used simultaneously. For example, you can have three Movement powers at level 4 for 4+1+1=6 points.
• The power "Magic" is still available, you just can't call it Magic, because Light and Dark don't mix. Green Lantern is a character with Magic, for instance: He can do nearly anything based on his Willpower roll...but he has some super-scientific gadget that allows that.
• That said, a character can have magic items, but those items demand a price to be used, and you'd best have an interesting story about how you got it.

If you'd rather have pre-generated characters:

Well, I'm working on some in another post. But because Mike Lafferty agreed to let me run the finished version of this on an episode of the BAMF podcast, there will also be some Fainting Goat characters modified to suit the setting. Mostly this involves changing the backstory and the Qualities; with the pre-Assembled characters, sometimes the powers need to be adjusted, too. I'll be putting up the changes (only the changes: the point is to drive you guys to the Fainting Goat back catalogue). I am currently considering, as heroes:

• Bastion (Stark City)...magnetic powers and your former criminal
• Bodhivajra (Justice Wheels 10)...your can-do-anything-but-directly-solve-the-problem character...though he might be too difficult to rein in. Still considering.
• Chill (Justice Wheels 5)...your cold controller character
• Flux (Stark City)...your child-of-immigrants shape-changer
• Laughing Boy (Stark City...your manic vengeance-seeker
• Mako Commander (Justice Wheels 13)...hey, there's a school of Marine Technology right in Owen Sound, along with a nearby underwater national park.
• Memphis Bell (Improbable Tales Primal Power)...your strong woman, though I'd also have to change the name, it being Canada and all
• Orion-5 (World's Most Wanted 2)
• Professor Prism (World Most Wanted 1)...your light controller with a heart of gold
• Sable Lynx (Stark City)...your slicing fighter

General tie-ins...I need someone to provide someone to provide super-scientific parts, so the area has a supervillain, sort of. The Mechanic will create various gadgets, because he needs money for his Plan To Save The World, which less intelligent beings cannot comprehend. So he's a Spark, but not necessarily one of the good guys. He usually aligns with them...except when he thinks that not aligning will further his plan. So a certain number of the backgrounds will be rewritten to use The Mechanic instead.

If you're going to use random character creation:

Besides Transformed, I can imagine possible Trained, Artificial, and Birthright origins. Gimmick is essentially relegated to "a Spark created this artifact." Unearthly might be possible. I'd rather relegate those two to "if you have a character concept that uses one of these, talk to the GM, but for random character creation they aren't common enough to roll." (I could be talked out of that.)

This is what I've revised after my initial three minutes of thinking...

• Most origins grant you the knack "Spark," which gives you the effects of the Halo from the book, and lets you defend against the effects of the Dark. If you get Spark, it doesn't cost you a Determination point—it's part of the book (or the genre, if you will).
• Roll for origin, but the choices are seriously weighted to "Transformed." The easiest thing to do is say that all origins are Transformed, but I expect I'd get howls at that. So...any roll but doubles is Transformed. (As in the standard rules, and you get the knack "Spark.") For doubles:
  

  1,1 or 2,2	Birthright. You get the knack Spark and the standard benefits.
  3,3	Unearthly. You are or claim to be an alien or from an alternate dimension. You get the knack "Spark" and yu get to increase two abilities (attribute or power) by 2.
  4,4 or 5,5	Trained. Even though you're not a Spark, you've decided to fight crime. Unlike the other origins, you don't get "Spark" but you get +4 Specialties instead of +2. As in the standard rules, you can still trade in a power for two more Specialties.
  6,6	Artificial (your essence has/can move into an object). You get "Spark" and the standard benefits.

(Edit afterward: I'm re-thinking this, because most hero origins in comics aren't pure examples of their types. Is Jaime Reyes unearthly or transformed? Is it okay to say, "generate your character as normal, but remember that there is a transformative event." I'd still shy away from Trained or Unearthly, but those can be done.)

I originally had this, but I don't think I'll do it: Because the book makes a big deal of your one-line character description defining your powers, well, that sounds like a Quality to me. As a secondary reward, define your character with a Quality and you can change one (1) power or add +2 to a power to fit the "Spark elevator pitch." (Maximum is still 10, of course.)

Does that seem too restrictive or is it enforcing the book?

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?

That’s juicy

Reading about Fred King, the polygamous and abusive pastor of a fringe church near Chatsworth has me totally wanting to include an abusive cult in this adventure—should it be Fred King style, or Alison Mack style?

Decisions, decisions.