What Uz is Not

I've been seeing quite a bit of excitement about Uz on G+* and since I'm going to be be running a game of it soon, I thought I should try to give a clearer picture of what it is like.  In one of the threads, Richard mentioned that it might be useful to talk about what a Science Fantasy setting isn't in order to get across what it is and how it's different from others.  I certainly agree with this sentiment, so here are some of the things that Uz is not.

• Uz is not Sword & Planet.  To be honest, I don't really know what Sword & Planet is. While I am inspired by some of Roy Krenkel's art, I haven't read much of ERB's stuff.  My only familiarity with Barsoom comes from the recent John Carter film, and the only thing I've ever read that could be considered Sword & Planet was Amulric by REH.  If you're expecting Tharks, you will be sorely disappointed.
• Uz is not Moebius.  I have a lot of respect for Moebius and enjoy his art a great deal, it just doesn't have anything to do with how I conceive of Uz.  Reynold Brown, Virgil Finlay, and Roy Krenkel are the artists that inspire Uz.  Oh, also Mark Schultz, but mostly just his work on the first Del Rey collection of Conan.
• Uz is not Heavy Metal Magazine.  This is one of those things that is often brought up in conjunction with Science Fantasy. While I've seen the move - which also did not influence Uz - I haven't ever read an issue of the magazine.  
• Uz is not He-Man or Thundarr or any cartoon.  I have almost zero experience with He-Man, and while I like Thundarr it was not what I had in mind in the short days between drawing this map and running the first session.**
• Uz is not "80s" or "70s."  I was born in 1988 and so I missed most of the 80s experience that seems to be such a big part of the OSR.  Most of my young mind was subjected to things from the 50s and 60s, which is when my parents grew up.  I was raised on a steady diet of Saucer Men, Godzilla, and Hammer Horror.  However, I would hesitate too associate Uz with a decade after 2900 BCE.
• Uz is not Carcosa.  Now, I like Carcosa and I actually used it quite a bit when I ran Uz recently - primarily its technology generators and some of the monsters.  However, Carcosa has no decadent city-states with jade-domed temples.  Uz is decadence and decay, not a brutal struggle for survival.

I hope this helps you get a better handle on my Uz setting.  If you would like me to clarify any of these points, let me know.

One last note:  I do not dislike any of these things.  You'll notice that the overwhelming theme is one of ignorance.  I don't include them because I haven't read or seen much of them.

*Comparatively speaking for one of my campaigns.

**The inception of Uz went something like this: I tried to draw a section of a big, Jakalla-style underworld map.  I then asked my wife "what does this map go to?" and she said "how bout some kind of Biblical thing?"    I then remembered that that two days or so prior I had already made a desert-y map, so I just put it in one of the cities.

The Reptoid: A Character Option for Swords & Wizardry

The Reptoid
Reptoids are a race of extraterrestrials that attempted to conquer Earth in the distant past.  They hail from the planet Repton, which humans once knew as Planet 12.  Most Reptoids encountered in the Desert of Demons are degenerate shadows of their former selves, living as hunter gatherers and roaming those lands which humans find most inhospitable.  Some still attempt to dominate humankind and return to the stars.  The options below are provided for the latter type.

Reptoid Racial Abilities
Character Advancement: Reptoids must choose at the beginning of each adventure whether they will be masquerading as a human or showing their true form.  While wearing their human-suit, Reptoids advance as a Fighter and use the Fighter advancement chart to determine their abilities.  Reptoids in human guise may only advance as far as 4th level.  Reptoids who are not wearing their human-suits advance as Priests and may reach as high as 8th level.  Reptoids never mutate as a result of advancing a level and draw their spells from the list available to priests of Apollo.

Weapon/Armor Restrictions:  When not wearing a human-suit, Reptoids are bound by the weapons and armor restrictions of the Priest class.  Their exist certain technologically advanced armors designed by the Reptoids themselves, and Reptoids may wear these without any penalty.

Ancient Enemies: Reptoids loathe Martians and all their works.  As such, they gain a +1 to to hit rolls against Martian opponents.

Keen Detection: Due to their superior senses, which are far in excess of those of puny humans, they gain a +1 to search rolls.

Languages: Reptoids characters begin play knowing the Reptoid, Martian, and Uzite languages.

Note: This character type is currently unavailable in my Uz campaign.  In the event that some members of the group make friends with a group of Reptoids, future characters will be able to be members of this race.

What Uz is Like

Uz
Precis: Clark Ashton Smith, H P Lovecraft, and Erich von Daniken rewrite the Old Testament and the Epic of Gilgamesh.  The Ancient Near East meets 50s sci fi and Ufology.

Conspectus: A dying Earth covered in decadent, Bronze Age city-states; weird alien gods that use their hideously mutated priests as conduits for psychic powers; squat, domed temples made of solid jade; high tech weapons left by Antediluvian civilization, and ancient aliens; primitive Reptoid bands roaming the desert on giant lizards; irradiated wastes ruled by the Devils of Steel; underworlds of great antiquity lying just beneath the surface of massive cities; morlocks, mu-tants, and martians, oh my!; horrible vats used to create new forms of unnatural life; Dagazar I, King of Uz; Uz, the First City of Men; Almodad, the Jewel of the Desert; Phut, the City of the Sea God; New Jerah, the City of the Warrior Women; Gether, the City of Slaves; the ruined city of Old Jerah with its vast necropolis; Necromantic Ones sealed in ancient vaults

Taste, Sound, Image: Dolma, Hawkwind's "Spiral Galaxy 28948," Reynold Brown's poster art

The Priest Take II

This past weekend, I ran a session of Uz instead of my normal Nightwick Abbey game.  I only allowed two character types: fighting-men and priests.  Fighting-men function more or less like their counterparts in the White Box, but priests are not like clerics.  

The rules I'm currently using for these spell-casters are presented below.  The spell list and mutation table are for a priest of Mot, also known as He Who Pulls into His Gullet or He Who is Not Worshiped.

Priests
Priests are the religious leaders of Uzite society.  They traffic with the extraterrestrial intelligences that returned to Earth after the Deluge, and their performing of certain rites for these entities grants them psychic abilities that humans call spells.

Priest Advancement Table

XP	Level	Hit Dice	Base Attack Bonus	Saving Throw
0	1	1	+0	14
2,501	2	2	+0	13
5,001	3	3	+0	12
10,001	4	3+1	+1	11
20,001	5	4	+1	10
40,001	6	5	+2	9
80,001	7	6	+2	8
160,001	8	6+1	+3	7
320,001	9	7	+3	6
640,001	10	8	+4	5

Priest Class Abilities
Weapon and Armor Restrictions: Priests can only use the weapons of sacrifice - daggers, maces, and strangling chords - as well as the strange weapons of the Antediluvian races.  They may only wear light armor and a helmet, being untrained in the proper use of heavier armor and shields.

Spell Casting: Priests are able to cast spells a number of times per day defined on the chart below. To may select which spells they will cast from a list associated with their particular deity.

Level	I	II	III	IV	V
1	1	--	--	--	--
2	2	--	--	--	--
3	2	1	--	--	--
4	2	2	--	--	--
5	2	2	1	--	--
6	2	2	2	--	--
7	3	2	2	1	--
8	3	3	2	2	--
9	3	3	3	2	1
10	3	3	3	3	2

Transfiguration: Beginning one level after the priest begins casting spells, and continuing every level thereafter, the priest must roll on a table associated with their god to see what changes channeling alien energies has wrought on their bodies.

Example Spell list:

Mot

Level 1
1 - Cause Light Wounds
2 - Darkness
3 - Putrefy Food and Drink
4 - Sleep

Level 2
1 - Curse
2 - Hold Person
3 - Darkness, Continual
4 - Invisiblity

Level 3
1 - Cause Disease
2 - Darkvision
3 - Invisibility (10’ Radius)
4 - Detect Thoughts (ESP)

Level 4*
1 - Cause Serious Wounds
2 - Animate Dead

Level 5*
1 - Commune
2 - Insect Plague

Example Mutation Table

Mot Mutations

Roll	Mutation
1	Hands twist into hideous claws.  Gain natural attack dealing 1d6 damage.
2	Grow a hideous snout.  Now have a 2 in 6 chance to smell something behind a door.
3	Skin becomes leathery and covered in coarse hair.  AC increased by 1.
4	Limbs elongate strangely, forcing you to adopt a strange, ape-like gait.  Base movement reduced to 90’, and cannot hold something in both hands and walk at the same time.
5	A small reflective lens develops in your eye.  Gain darkvision 60’.
6	Gain a horrible craving for human flesh.  Your body will reject all other food.

*Level 4 and Level 5 still need a few spells to flesh them out, but I don't think anyone is going to be able to cast those for a while.

Nightwick Abbey Play Report

It's been a while since we had one of these, but I assure you that the game has been chugging along.

More Songs About Wizards

Before anyone says "what about...?" check the first post and note that neither of these is supposed to be comprehensive, though I like suggestions anyway.

Building a Scenario Using Sandy Petersen's Lazy Man's Guide (Part II)

Part I

Part III

Sandy Says

"Step Four - Finalize the Plot
"

(He jumps right into describing his own "plot," so I'm not going to replicate it here).

My Notes

Step 4

A little over a month ago, International Antarctic Research Station (InARS) finished drilling through a large ice-wall over what they believed to be a massive cave system.  Inside, they found a large well made of polished basalt and topped with a heavy stone lid.  The well has about a 50’ radius, and the lid was far too heavy to be moved by muscle power.  It also was covered with strange glyphs that none of the researchers recognized (the language of the Yithians). 

They sent out a request for an Anthropologist to come in the next research rotation.  In the meantime, they assigned the geologist, who was used to using 3d imaging software to predict where to drill in the Antarctic ice, the task of turning the photographs they had taken of the well into a flat image, and making the glyphs more clearly visible.  Doing so opened his mind to the influence of the Great Race.  While not actually possessed, he was driven mad and compelled to stop them from opening the well – which contains a Flying Polyp – at any cost. 

He initially did only small things, such as sabotaging equipment or deleting files, but once the research team settled on opening it with a large crane, he took drastic action.  He used dynamite to blow up the crane while they were lifting the seal, killing four of the twelve researchers outright and trapping two more in the well itself.  Those two were quickly slain by the polyp.

Overcome with fear, the geologist returned to the basecamp and slew the five remaining researchers and technicians.  Fully mad at this point, he contemplated suicide but the Yithians knew by probing his mind that a relief team would show up within the week and have compelled him to stay alive so that he can sabotage any of their efforts.  He has already cut out several of the systems powering various experiments.  He hopes that taking the time to get these back online will delay them long enough to keep them from going to the well.  This is the situation when the PCs arrive.

The polyp gives off low levels of a cosmic radiation, one that will eventually poison the whole station if the well isn’t sealed permanently or blown to bits or something.  This will take a while to do.  The most immediate evidence of this is the decline in the quality of radio transitions which happened at almost the exact same time they found the well.  It’s been getting worse ever since, with an immense spike around the time well was broken in the explosion.  However, the most immediate threat the polyp poses is that it might wake up.  Starting on the first night after the PCs arrive, there is a 20% chance that the polyp will awaken.  Each night thereafter, the chance increases by 5%. This continues every night thereafter until the creature either awakens or is sealed. 

Commentary

You'll notice I established what happened before the investigators arrived and added a little timeline at the end.  This is not a plot so much as a setup and that's the way I like it.  Unfortunately the cosmic radiation thing - which I described as an odd tone that came over all of their radio equipment and even their Geiger counter - made them not want to go to the site.  That was a mistake on my part.

Sandy Says

"Step Five - Create the Characters

Work out personalities and "trademark" features for the main villains and good guys. In our case we have five villains, and we may as well as work out the basics for all five of them. Naming characters can be a pain. I have three techniques for getting character names for my adventures.


1) I use names of childhood friends that my players won't know.

2) I get them out of a phone book opened at random. (Only good for locals.)


3) I get them from a movie filmed in the character's nation of origin." 

My Notes

Step 5

Dennis Bullock is the geologist turned madman.  He is under the influence of Yithians, but not directly possessed by them.  His psychosis manifests as an intensely strong, even murderous desire, to keep people from releasing the flying polyp – though he is not quite sure what is even in the well.  He murdered his comrades with his hands and improvised weapons.  As such, he bears a number of scars that could easily be mistaken as the result of defending himself.  He’ll attempt to play this up and claim it was one of the researchers who died when he blew up the crane that committed the murders.  However, he isn’t a very good liar, especially given his mental state.

Graham Stark is the leader of the relief team. He’s a geologist also, but his main concern will be finding out what’s inside the well.  He’s a likeable enough fellow, but he’s a bit over-serious at times.

Fred Williams is one of the other researchers.  He’s a biologist who specializes in a type of primitive cypress tree that once inhabited Australia and Antarctica.  He’s a nice guy, but he doesn’t get a lot of pop culture references.

Mary Miller is a geologist.  He is practical and tight liped.

West Andrews is a biologist.  Kinda spacy.  Oldish.

Omar Bradley is a biologist.  Grumpy, but has a good work ethic.  Prone to making jokes about other people in a rather assholish way.

Gene Turner is a helicopter pilot.  He is gruff but loveable.  Loves a good drink.

Dead researchers: Jeff Krempa (Team Leader)X, Stan Hower (Technician)X, Amy Milne (Geologist)X, Wayne Morris (Geologist)X, Robert Cunningham (Doctor)X, Patrick Lamb (Biologist)X, Eric Lutz (Technician)X

Commentary

The Xs mean that I've placed their body somewhere in the facility or at the dig site.  You'll notice a lot of these are very skimpy, mostly because I made up a lot of them about five seconds before the game started.  At first I was a bit worried about the number of NPCs that the group was carting around with them because I was having difficulty manifesting their personalities; however later in the session some of the NPCs started to mutiny against the fact that the PCs were making decisions locked in other rooms so that nobody who might be possessed could hear, and that was pretty cool.  HÜTH joined late and took over West Andrews, who had not really been defined at that point.

Oh, I used method 1 more or less, but I slightly changed the names.  Most of them were taken from people I went to High School with or college professors I've had.


Only one more step to go, and tomorrow has maps!  I also hope to have a write up from a player's prospective before this is all over.