Brave New World
Mecha Versus Cthulthu
R’lyeh lies dreaming beneath the Pacific Ocean. The PCs showed up in mecha found using one of two recovered idols. They came to find the information mentioned in the second idol they had recovered about how to translate parts of the Necronomicon and bring the fight directly to the Iconnu.
I used the stats for a neolithid for a junior Cthulthu. The fight was vicious and the PCs felt troubling tremors in the city below as they clashed. They won the day and descended into the city.
Something was waking up. They hurried.
They found the information they needed. They needed to bring the fight to Fargo, North Dakota. Inside the Intrusion.
They traded in their water mecha for supernatural items. The supernaturals gained supernatural skins that they could seal to enter the Intrusion using supernatural energy. The Awakened gained Large mecha which they could also seal against the Intrusion using a Humanity Point.
And they found out what to do with their new found items. As the city quakes intensified, they fled to the surface.
Three Anchors and Fargo, ND
Fargo, ND helps maintain the integrity of the Incursion. If the PCs take out Fargo, then they will reduce the size and threat of the Intrusion.
To weaken the hold of the gate to the Iconnu in Fargo, the PCs have to seek out and destroy three anchors around the globe: one mage, one vampire, and one demon guarded by werewolves. These anchors came directly from the free D20 Modern adventures on Wizards’ website.
After that, the PCs would penetrate the Intrusion and make their way to Fargo, ND through a mutated and tortured landscape filled with weird and terrible creatures. Once there, they had to enter a meat processing plant, find a map to the gate to the Iconnu, and shut it down. More on this adventure next month.
Doing that would significantly weaken the Intrusion. Maybe shut it down all together.
Converting D20 Modern Modules to MCWoD
The three adventures Anything Goes, Everything Goes, and Almost Gone from Wizards each feature a different supernatural villain. I recast the mage in Anything Goes to a MCWoD mage, the vampire in Everything Goes, and the werewolves and the alien (to a demon) in the last adventure.
Other than recasting the villains I kept the other NPCs and locations the same. The only change was the reason for each adventure: the PCs were there to kill the anchor and thereby weaken the Intrusion.
Mages in MCWoD
Here’s a secret. All my mages in MCWoD are rote casters. I don’t have the time or ability to cast on the fly during a game. Writing high level 3rd edition adventures is extremely time consuming; the effort for mages would be too much.
So I use rotes and simply detail three or four spells the mage uses over and over again. I got this idea from 4E, simply giving a villain just enough power for a short encounter.
It works great and the players can’t see any difference (there really isn’t any). I might up the DC or do another legal tweak, but that’s all.
The Hand and Eye of Vecna
So I’m converting the free adventure, Everything Goes, from Wizards website to use as the second anchor adventure. I’m changing the vampire, Bora Ghali, from a D20 Modern vampire into a MCWoD vampire. And I realize I need to give her something truly nasty in the way of a supernatural item.
I decided to give her the hand and eye of Vecna. Ancient items now imbued with real supernatural powers. I decided the hand would harm supernaturals and the eye Awakened in mecha.
Eye of Vecna: The wielder can use the eye to cast a quickened annihilate matter rote. Range: sight, damage 3d6 and ignore hardness, save is Fortitude DC 20 for half.
Hand of Vecna: The wielder can cause criticals on those normally immune to criticals. The wielder must slay an innocent every sixty-six days.
High Level 3rd Edition Games
High level games are a pain in the neck to design adventures for. The math and paperwork is extensive. You might spend more time designing adventures than running them which just seems wrong.
I minimize the effort by using free modules. I try to always include at least one MCWoD update in each adventure but not usually more than two.
When I stat NPCs I pretty much ignore skills all together unless one is critically important. I usually give most PCs a standard suite of feats with only a couple of changes as well.
My players have also seen a break down in the ability of the game at higher levels. The 14th-level PCs are the equivalent of 17th-level characters in other 3rd edition games. The supernaturals are vastly more powerful, mathematically and mechanically, than the Awakened. This flaw is part of the 3rd edition system and not so much just a problem for MCWoD. The rules simply aren’t designed to support all the number crunching.
As the GM, I have struggled to balance encounters and make the game run. I gave the Awakened mecha as supernatural items to toughen them up.
High level MCWoD play is not easy to run but it is rewarding. However, the “reality” of the world goes away completely. As one player put it, “at lower levels, an assault rifle was a threat like in the real world. Now, it isn’t much of a threat.”
Which is true. High level MCWoD becomes more of a superheroes game than a horror game. You can still scare the PCs, but you have to be careful that the threats you throw at them won’t just kill them outright (bodaks, I’m looking at you).
I hope 4E lives up to the hype about being easier to run because I’m convinced I couldn’t run another high level 3rd edition game. It is just too much work. Even if it is fun! For instance, I rolled my first 80 in a D20 game. How great is that?!
Next Month
Next month will be my last column written for Brave New World. I’ve spent seven and a half years playing D20 3rd edition rules and three plus years writing this column. I have finally gotten a world built and a campaign run in it from start to finish. I’m going to finish up the second draft of my fantasy novel rewrite and spend some time on playing D&D 4E.
Next month, I’ll wrap up this column with a discussion about converting old modules to modern rules. The last adventure for MCWoD involved a trip to Far-Go, a location detailed over twenty years ago for Gamma World. I updated it for MCWoD and cast my supernaturals as Humanoids and my Awakened as Pure Strain Humans. I enjoyed the Easter eggs hidden in the old module and realized how many things have disappeared from the gaming world.
And I got to bring back the mutated humanoid chickens. Gallus gallus 5/13.
Keep your Awakened close and your Supernaturals closer, Charlie
