D&D 4e is Full of Lies

Believe it or not, I do still have interest in games other than Unknown Armies. Radically different games, even. I’ve been entertaining the idea of getting back to my RPG origins and running D&D 4e. As much as I hate the clunkiness I associate with a turn order and a physical board and minis, I have been wanting to engage the board game design-y, tactical combat-y parts of my brain for a while and this is certainly a much better outlet for that than 5e.

Before the nuts and bolts of encounter design, though, I want to make the setting my own. If you didn’t know, 4e makes the bold (for D&D) and wise choice to acknowledge that it has assumptions about the kind of world you run it in. Even more interestingly, the “points of light” style it has verges on post-apocalyptic; major settlements are rare, the wilderness in between is dangerous, and nations don’t really exist. There’s also a unique cosmology that deviates in some neat ways from the D&D formula, while retaining all the racist, colonialist nonsense. Whoops.

In this post I’m going to riff on this post on Prismatic Wasteland, an OSR staple that I recommend reading first, if you haven't already. It even references 4e! From there I will be getting gnostic and subversive with 4e’s cosmology and setting assumptions in ways that will likely not surprise readers familiar with my politics.

 

The following are statements in the core books (PHB1, PHB2, MM1, DMG1; I haven’t looked at the rest yet):

• All of the PHB1 gods (except Melora and, to a lesser degree, Sehanine) have a shared imperialist goal.

• All of the gods in the PHB1 and DMG1 except for Gruumsh, Lolth, and Tharizdun are opposed to demons and the abyss, and they are all opposed to the primordials.

• The gods’ supposed values directly contradict each other (eg. Bahamut is a god interested in freeing the oppressed while also being the god of oppressive institutions like nobility) or contradict their purported mutual animosity (eg. Kord and Bane have nearly identical portfolios.

• The material plane (and the Shadowfell and Feywild) were created by the gods. Their creation was opposed by the primordials, who also removed the latter two from the former out of spite.

• Primal spirits represent a balance between the gods and the primordials, and were only created after their struggle.

• Empires never last for very long, and the world in the present exists without any kind of unified civilization.

• “Civilization” (that is, unified empire) is the product of collaboration between the PHB1+2 races; the “monstrous” races do not have any kind of counterpart in scale or level of unity.

• Following the creation of the material plane, the primordials’ agency is greatly deemphasized compared to the gods, and there are none with specific names or characterization as individuals (aside from those that became demon princes; Demogorgon, Baphomet, and Orcus).

• Tharizdun is portrayed in the core books as creating the abyss and subverting several primordials to his side as demon princes, with the goal of supreme cosmic power as an individual. This drove him insane and led to his imprisonment in the abyss and erasure from the culture of mortals (hence there being no mention of him in the PHB1 or PHB2).

• The abyss is not portrayed as able to mount a meaningful opposition to the gods; demon princes and Tharizdun only have disparate cults with their own apocalyptic projects, Lolth is either insane or scheming indefinitely, and Gruumsh is dedicated to a fruitless, eternal war with Bane.

• The elemental chaos and the primordials predate the gods, and the primordials are said to oppose the stability and longevity of the material plane.

• Player characters are just more special than everyone around them. They’re heroes, they play by different rules, they have unique agency and the capacity to reach an epic level of power, on par with the demon princes, who are just below the gods in terms of power.

• The divine power source comes from the gods, and the primal power source comes from primal spirits. Martial and arcane power seem to be the results of exceptional personal skill.

• Sigil, the main settlement in the Astral Sea (and thus center of the gods’ “civilization” in their own realm), is ruled by The Lady of Pain, who is not a god (as she’s not mentioned in the gods section of either DMG1 or PHB1).

These ideas lead me to the conclusion that:

• The voice of the core books is an unreliable narrator (much the same as that of Keep on the Borderlands, several decades earlier) who is aligned with the gods and against the primordials.

• There is probably less dissent and disagreement amongst the gods, including the “good” and “evil” ones, than the core books indicate. They are all proponents of cosmic order in the Moorcockian sense, as well as sharing imperialist and colonialist goals. Thus, the gods are kind of analogous to the capitalist class or feudal monarchs; they have supreme (astral) power while the other occupants of the universe have to settle for subservience and obedience.

• Melora is likely a figurehead for the primordials’ agenda (chaos/untamed wilderness) among the gods, with minimal influence, if she even really exists. I could also see her being a turncoat/”reformed” primordial; there’s a precedent for primordials changing sides in the demon princes.

• There must still be some kind of powerful cosmic opposition to the gods’ goals, because of the difficulty their imperial projects routinely face. It seems like monsters are the primary vehicle for this opposition, perhaps more than “monstrous humaoids” that still tend to worship the gods.

• There is more to the story of the abyss. It may not really be part of the elemental chaos, or perhaps represents a failed project of the primordials, because multiple of the gods are aligned with the demons, its residents. Regardless, it is not likely to be the basis of cosmic chaos.

• The primordials are likely more anarchistic than “chaotic,” opposing the gods’ cosmic colonization and the way much of the universe they created was stolen and made the vehicle for the oppression of all the mortal races of the material plane, Shadowfell, and Feywild. Perhaps this even persists in a metaphysical sense; is death really an inevitable truth, or is The Raven Queen’s domain just part of the imperial engine of the gods?

The following are the questions I think thus need answering to fully flesh out the campaign setting provided:

• Why are PCs empowered with greater potential than all other mortals?

• Are the primordials really proponents of cosmic chaos antithetical to the existence of mortals? If not, what is their actual agenda? What have they been doing since they lost their war with the gods and the material plane got made?

• Do primal spirits really represent the balance, when they occupy and are a product of the material world, which is the result of the gods’ victory over the primordials? Relatedly, what is Melora’s deal?

• What’s stopping god-backed empire from permanently taking root? Or, put another way, what makes monsters so numerous, and why do they seem to inherently oppose law?

• Who (or what) is the Lady of Pain? Is she the head god?

• What’s the deal with Tharizdun and the abyss? Did Tharizdun really get driven insane by choosing to utilize “evil”? Is he really a god, and was he always? Is the abyss really part of the elemental chaos, and if so, does that mean it’s in alignment with the primordials?

My answers to these have yet to take form, although I have a vague vision for a campaign setup, framed by the recent and mysterious magical obliteration of the capital city of the “civilized races’” most recent doomed empire. I plan to have more 4e stuff on here eventually, in between the ongoing Statospheric Saturdays posts, which will continue as long as I continue to have the free time and motivation to write them.

Statospheric Saturdays: Phosphomancy

I've thought a radiation-themed adept school would be appropriate for Unknown Armies for a while, but it really started to take shape for me after I watched the excellent 1979 Japanese movie, The Man Who Stole The Sun. The symbolic power of the A-Bomb and the protagonist's aimless but consuming obsession feel very on brand for UA, even though nothing supernatural happens in it. There are a handful of references to it littered throughout the school. It's kind of like the offspring of Taxi Driver and Breaking Bad, but a lot more whimsical than either.

 

Just a boy and his plutonium.

Anyway, here's the school.

 

Phosphomancy

AKA Curies, atom splitters, half-lives

(Not to be confused with Photomancy.)

"They say radiation’s harmful

It’s a fact of life

Without it, we would die"

Nuclear Babies – Oingo Boingo (unreleased)

The cold war may be over, but humanity will forever live in the shadow of The Bomb. The effects of atomic annihilation are as ingrained as the imprints of its victims in the rubble of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There’s something very Promethean about a manmade force of such unspeakable creative and destructive power. We have devices whose energy output exceeds that of the sun many times over, and yet we put them to such prosaic ends: threatening other countries, powering industry, and so on.

Nuclear power demands respect – and yet we don’t respect it. Systems of its regulation are laughable in comparison to the worst case scenario should they ever fall through, and despite a colorful history of disasters and hand-wringing scientific papers. We can never put the genie back in the bottle, and today most people don’t think twice about it as they go about their lives.

The central tension of phosphomancy is encapsulated in inverting this mentality: atom splitters pray at the altar of the A-bomb. Their god was born in the Trinity test. To invest their bodies with radiation is to harbor a divine spark; to build a nuclear bomb is to hold the power of the sun in their hand. As mere mortals, they are unworthy to turn this divine wrath against others, but they live to be subsumed by its blinding light.

STATS

Generate a minor charge: This is not possible for phosphomancers. They can split up sigs if they need to for rituals or the like, but there are no minor spells and no minor random magick in this school, just as there are no half-measures in nuclear war.

Generate a significant charge: There are two methods: either sustain a dose of ionizing radiation sufficient to permanently alter their health, or acquire sufficient fissile material to power an atomic bomb.

For the former, a few hours in a tanning bed won’t cut it; a few minutes standing right next to the elephant’s foot will. See below for radiation mechanics.

For the latter, “acquire” means it’s your personal property, not just in a lead-lined truck you’ve been hired to drive between facilities. Equivalent or greater explosive yield to Little Boy or 13 kilotons of TNT qualifies as “sufficient”.

You may notice that doing this enables the other charging method. Many Curies have, too. It’s common to see them worship with fetishes made from radioactive plutonium or uranium isotopes, usually involving ritual actions that expose them to sufficient radiation to charge.

Generate a major charge: Two methods again. You can sustain a fatal dose of radiation, or singlehandedly build a functional atomic bomb or nuclear generator. “Singlehandedly” means that you personally own all the materials that go into the bomb and all the equipment with which you make it. This does put rich half-lives at a big advantage, but that was true anyway, because they can afford a lawyer if they get caught pinching plutonium.

Taboo: You must insist on respect for the object of your worship. Any time you bear witness to someone making dismissive or blasé comments about nuclear power or nuclear war, failing to take proper precaution around radioactive materials, or disregarding the chain of command for their usage, you have to correct them in no uncertain terms. This can make charging by acquiring and compiling bomb components tricky, of course. You don’t have to force them to act differently, but at the least you should issue a dire warning and remind them what they’re dealing with.

Simply addressing heresy is not enough, though. You need to proselytize as well. If you ever pass a week without making some kind of public statement, such as counterprotesting at a rally for disarmament, publishing an opinion piece in the news, or teaching your middle school science class how to build a nuke of their own, you break taboo. This can be avoided only if you’ve made meaningful progress on building a bomb or generator of your own during that time.

On top of all that, you cannot seek medical care for radiation you sustain for the purpose of charging, or any adverse health conditions that result from it.

Random magick domain: radiation, mutation, disaster and indiscriminate destruction; more symbolically, weaponized science and the hubris that comes with it, collective ignorance of existential danger, and raw energy on a scale greater than humans can comprehend.

Ω: +0.

 

Mechanics for Radiation

In game mechanic terms, doses high enough to generate a significant charge (ballpark figures, between 100-1,000 roentgens) provoke a Fitness test. On a matched failure or better, you feel sick for 1d10 hours (and probably shit yourself) but recover fully. On a fumble, or if your Fitness score was in the negatives (see below) prior to rolling, you develop cancer in 1d10 days, probably leukemia. See Book 4’s writeup of ustrinaturgy for more details on how that works in game terms.

Your Fitness score also accrues a negative shift equal to the ones place of the test every time you are irradiated enough for a sig charge. It’s suggested the cumulative penalty be tracked in secret by the GM, as with wound points. Every month you spend without sustaining further radiation, the penalty drops by 1d10.

A major charge-worthy dose also provokes a Fitness test, and on anything less than a crit, you have a number of hours to spend that charge equal to the sum of the dice before you are too disabled by acute radiation sickness to do anything but die in agony. On a crit, you get to repeat this test once a day for a week, and if you pass them all, you survive, although your Fitness is penalized by an amount equal to the highest of those rolls, reduced over time as described above, and any children you have will be horribly mutated and unlikely to survive their infancy.

Phosphomancy Significant Formula Spells

Atomic Abjuration

Cost: 2 significant charges.

Effect: The atom splitter enchants a homeopathic crystal purported to ward off ill health such that it actually does. This spell only works if the crystal in question is radioactive, although it doesn’t have to be hazardous enough to provoke a Fitness check against radiation. Whenever the bearer of the crystal (which can be the atom splitter, but doesn’t have to) would enter into harm’s way, be it exposure to a deadly virus or the path of a drunk driver, synchronicity protects them from harm. The one exception is that the crystal has no effect on radiation. This effect occurs a number of times equal to the ones place of the casting roll, after which the crystal disintegrates into slightly radioactive ash.

Demon Core

Cost: 3 significant charges.

Effect: The curie targets a radioactive object and any number of demons within a yard of one another. As long as the object chosen is radioactive enough to qualify for generating a significant or major charge for direct exposure, the demon(s) are bound to the object, and cannot move more than one yard from it. Because of how radioactive decay works, the object’s radioactive emission will eventually drop low enough that it no longer qualifies for the spell, at which point the demons are free. Additionally, every time the half-life period of the object’s radiation passes, the range from it that the demon(s) can move doubles.

I Am Become Death

Cost: 1 significant charge.

Effect: This is the phosphomancy blast spell. The atom splitter inflicts horrific radiation burns on the target, subjecting them to a Violence (5) check as well as a Fitness check as if they just received a significant charge’s worth of radiation (see above).

I'm Number Nine

Cost: 1 significant charge.

Effect: The next time the half-life attempts coercion, the stress check provoked is a Violence (10) or Helplessness (10) check, as their target perceives them to be as dangerous as a head of state with their hand inches from the big red button labeled “launch”. What they’re being coerced into is irrelevant to the apocalyptic implications of refusing (although they still can). As soon as the coercion is resolved, they return to viewing the half-life as they did before.

Manhattan Projection

Cost: 1 significant charge.

Effect: The atom splitter touches an object up to the size of an armchair, and it becomes sufficiently radioactive to provoke a Fitness check at a significant charge level (see above). The caster immediately has to make that check for standing right next to it, but they don’t gain a charge from doing so. Without a geiger counter or Rad-O-Vision (see below), the object appears unchanged upon examination. After a number of minutes equal to the ones place of the casting roll, or after that many people are subjected to the Fitness check, it returns to normal.

Mutagenesis

Cost: 2 significant charges.

Effect: Playing on decades of cultural tropes around post-apocalyptic mutation (and almost nothing to do with actual science), the Curie mutates themself or a target they touch for a number of minutes equal to the total of the casting roll.

This manifests in game terms by letting them exchange all the features of one of the target’s mundane identities for different ones, chosen from the following (see Book 1: Play): provides wound threshold, provides initiative, coerces Unnatural, coerces Violence, medical (affects self only), and provides firearm attacks (which manifests in some kind of biological projectile weapon).

Undergoing such a mutation provokes an Unnatural (5-6) check, and anyone present to witness the transformation, including the Curie, faces an Unnatural (2-4) check.

Mutually Assured Destruction

Cost: 2 significant charges.

Effect: The half-life mystically binds two objectives together, one of which they must either be working toward, and the other of which must go against one of their passions or be diametrically oppose to their own objective. Once this binding is in place, should either objective be completed, the other is instantly completed as well. Every party working towards both objectives is notified of the binding, through a vivid dream, unnatural omen symbolically linked to the two objectives, or series of obvious, synchronous signs.

Rad-O-Vision

Cost: 2 significant charges.

Effect: The atom splitter gains a new Specific Information identity (see Book 1: Play) with a rating equal to the sum of the casting roll dice. This identity, which shares the name of the spell, makes them a human geiger counter. They now see radiation as a kind of bright haze, with intensity corresponding to the amount emitted. A person sunbathing on a nice Summer day will have a little extra ambient glow. A nuclear reactor will be bright enough to make the atom splitter wince without eye protection.

Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Cost: 1 significant charge.

Effect: A single target the phosphomancer can see at the time of casting is overwhelmed with existential dread to the extent of paralysis. They become certain nuclear annihilation is imminent and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. Taking any action that only makes sense if the victim expects to be alive the next day is only possible if they overcome a Helplessness (10) check. This effect lasts a number of minutes equal to the ones place of the casting roll.

The Cost of Lies

Cost: 2 significant charges.

Effect: The Curie warps synchronicity around some complex bureaucratic process in a way that tangibly and directly affects people’s lives. This spell cannot just gum up the voting process on a bill in the senate that relates to the allocation of resources to homeless shelters, for example. Such a bill certainly affects life and death tangibly for unhoused people, but not in a direct enough way for this spell.

What the spell can do (for example) is generate some procedural SNAFU that results in somebody getting fired from a job they can’t afford to lose, cause a workplace accident causing up to a total of 5d10 wounds, or allow a criminal to escape life in prison or death row through some abstruse technicality or disappearance of evidence.

As you’d expect, this spell cannot be used to aid a Curie in the acquisition of bomb or generator components for the purpose of charging.

Major Charge Effects

Neutralize every warhead in one world power’s nuclear arsenal, confer a permanent supernatural identity to someone in the form of a pop-culture-style genetic mutation, put a neighborhood through all the effects of a nuclear detonation except the radiation (EMP, disastrous shockwaves, everything catches fire), power electrical infrastructure or other machinery with the energy of a nuclear power plant for a month, create compelling, falsified intelligence indicating an impending nuclear strike by one nation against another.

Statospheric Saturdays: Magickal Amplifier

Magickal Amplifier (Supernatural Identity)
Examples: Spirit Channeler, Synchronicity Resonator, Wish Granting

These identities do not do anything unnatural on their own. Despite this, anyone that has one is in extremely high demand by all chargers that know they exist.
Their effect is straightforward: they make magick more potent in their presence by granting a positive shift on a successful usage of the identity to the roll of somebody else’s supernatural ID (inclusive of avatar paths and adept schools) made immediately afterward. There are two general types, colloquially known in some circles as “monkeypaws” and “scanners” respectively.

Monkeypaws require intense focus and precise direction to amplify magick, and can only use this identity once per day before becoming mentally and mystically exhausted. They must also be in physical contact with the recipient of their amplification when the identity is rolled.
Scanners, however, have a passive field of amplification that is “on” 24/7 by default and is rolled for ANY magick performed within range. The field extends a number of feet from them equal to their rating in the identity, in every direction and through all surfaces.
Not only can you not amplify your own other magick identities with this power, you also suffer a perpetual -10% shift to rolls to use it if you have any. Cosmic interference, some say, or maybe the Invisible Clergy just punishes those too greedy with their mojo.

 

As usual, Mr. Cronenberg likes to exaggerate these things. 

Fumble (Scanner): You find out the hard way how apt your moniker is, and take damage equal to the total of the roll that would have been amplified. If this kills you, your head doesn’t explode, but your brain turns to mush and any demons within range make a beeline for the recently vacated real estate of your body.

Matched Failure or Failure (Scanner): You suffer 1d5 wounds from a spontaneous nosebleed and headache. This identity is then suppressed for a number of minutes equal to the ones place of the failed roll.

Fumble or Matched Failure (Monkeypaw): You apply a negative shift to the target’s roll equal to the tens place of your rating in this identity. If they still succeed, the effect of their roll is somehow perverted or twisted, monkey’s paw style.

Failure (Monkeypaw): Nothing happens, aside from you tuckering yourself out.

Success, Matched Success, or Crit: You apply a positive shift to the target’s roll equal to the tens place of your rating in this identity.

Statospheric Saturdays: Door to the Dawn of Time

A nice, simple ritual for you this week, as we all mourn the Halloween season, and I brace for the least wonderful time of year for a Jew living in a hegemonic Christian country.

 

Door to the Dawn of Time 

Significant ritual

Cost: 3 significant charges

Ritual Action: Remove a door from a building that has yet to have any long-term occupants. It will work if it’s from a house that’s on the market, as long as nobody has ever moved in. The same goes for any office space or storefront; if it’s never been used by a business, it’s good. Whether or not the building has an owner is immaterial.

The door must be taken intact, including the frame and hinges. The ritual works best with a regular interior door. The era of the destination and the duration of the ritual has been known to vary when garage or cabinet doors are used.

You must then bring the door someplace quiet that has personal significance to you – either because it relates directly to one of your Passions or your Obsession, or because it’s the main place you associate with one of your Relationships. Leave it there unattended for at least 48 hours. If anybody comes into sight of it before then, the ritual will fail.

Once it’s ready, knock on the door once, turn it upside down, knock once more, and open it.

Effect: For as many minutes as the casting roll, the door becomes a one-way portal to 3,303 million years ago, in the same geographic location. While this isn’t quite the dawn of time, it is before any life scientists have been able to identify more complex than a microbe. Anything passing through either side the open door goes alllll the way back, and stays there. If you tie something (or someone, if you’re a real dickhead) to a rope and throw it through, then try to pull it back out, the rope on the other side reacts like it’s been frozen in invisible cement. Nothing can come through to the present, even if that’s where it originated.

This ritual is most often used for prosaic reasons such as hiding incriminating evidence. So far, no trace of anything put through has survived to be found millennia later, and thus blow apart several scientific disciplines. As useful as a magick garbage chute is, though, don’t underestimate the tranquility of setting up a lawn chair and enjoying the view.

About the Author

There was once an About the Author section on this website that had traceable personal details about me, but thankfully, it is lost to time, and can definitely never be dug up by anyone, for any reason, ever.

This version is more fun anyway: here I am statted out in Unknown Armies. I guess I could milk this as a StatSat article, but that would be kinda lame.

Moonglum Games

Obsession: Autonomy. I want to have complete control over my own life and my own body.

Rage stimulus: The capitalist world order and the way it makes us all worse people. No ethical existence, etc. etc.

Noble stimulus: Self-expression through creativity. Realistically, art is the closest I expect to get to the sublime.

Fear stimulus: Being unable to trust my own judgment (Self). 

Helplessness: 3 H / 2 F

Isolation: 6 H / 2 F

Self: 4 H / 1 F 

Unnatural: 1 H / 1 F (I don't want to talk about it.)

Violence: 2 H / 0 F

Socialist 35%: Substitutes for (class) Struggle, Coerces Self, Resists Shocks to Helplessness

Trans Woman 30%*: Substitutes for Secrecy, Evaluates Helpessness, Casts Rituals

Antipsychiatry 55%: Substitutes for Connect, Therapeutic, Resists Shocks to Self

Statospheric Saturdays: I Was A Teenage Werefrog

My second entry for the game jam I mentioned last week. Content warning for harm to children, again (don't worry about this become a pattern. It's FINE). This is a mess in dire need of editing because I was rushing to meet the deadline. For now I'm posting it as is, warts and all, but eventually I plan to revise it and maybe even run it (crazy, I know).

I WAS A TEENAGE WEREFROG 

 

Introduction
This is an investigative scenario with the premise that a UA lycanthrope, played straight, is weird enough to be the entire crux of a mystery. Set it anywhere in suburban America.

Objectives
Here are several possible setups for the scenario, plus associated objectives.

A Sleeper cell from out of town: Make sure “The Kevin Situation” doesn’t wake the tiger. Starts at 20% due to being grounded in the unnatural from the outset.

Local rubberneckers about to have their trigger event: Find out the truth behind Kevin Liao’s disappearance. Starts at 10% due to the reduced firehose of new faces and names to keep track of.

Private investigators hired by Kevin’s father because he’s noticed his son has abruptly stopped spending his money: Find Kevin Liao and make sure he’s safe. Starts at 0%.

Note the different implications about possible resolutions.

Timeline of Events

13 days ago: Kevin meets Patricia Albrici at a Humphrey Bogart marathon at local indie theater UnReel. She uses him to charge but he realizes she’s magick and insists she teach him. 

10 days ago: Patricia gets sick of Kevin following her around and lures him into conducting a ritual that gets him possessed by a lycanthropic demon. 

9 days ago: Kevin transforms for the first time. He spends 9 hours as a bullfrog in the O’Neils’ house over the weekend without attracting special attention, then reverts. 

7 days ago: The demon takes over Kevin’s body for about two hours before school. It uses this time to make meticulous notes in Portuguese on all of the children in his neighborhood and plans to abduct and murder them. After school, Kevin takes the time to translate a couple sentences of this weird stuff he doesn’t remember writing, freaks out, and returns to UnReel to try and get answers. He holes up in a disused projection room.

6 days ago: Patricia manages to duck Kevin’s notice at UnReel thanks to a deployment of random magick (“I’ve got a bad feeling about this…”). She begins asking checkers if Kevin has done anything bad that could be traced back to her and buys a “sexy cop” Halloween costume.

 5 days ago: Having learned that Kevin’s been absent from school for several days, Patricia dons her “Officer Albrici” persona using the Stock Wardrobe spell and does damage control at Kevin’s school while she tries to find out more.

 3 days ago: The demon regains control of Kevin, sneaks out of UnReel in the dead of night, sneaks up to a house to snatch a toddler, then gets displaced by the bullfrog’s spirit, which idly stares into the window for four hours. Kevin reasserts himself just before daybreak and flees, though several neighbors saw him in bullfrog form.

Yesterday: The demon wins out again. It uses Kevin to snatch a different child, Kaighley Vass, and then butcher her with a garden trowel. Kevin comes back to himself in the midst of scattering the pieces at a trash dump. He runs off into the woods in the midst of a total mental breakdown.

GMCs

Ruoxi “Kevin” Liao: A Chinese foreign exchange student-cum-were-bullfrog. He attends Angus Academy on the dime of his father, the CEO of a major rail company. Even before his lycanthropy, he was a bit of a wild child. He deliberately flunks math and science just to buck stereotypes, and has adopted a slightly ridiculous “All-American” persona to try and fit in; he feigns passion for baseball, Westerns, and the Rolling Stones.
His dream is to become a bigshot Hollywood director; he really loves Tarantino. Most likely, he’s somewhere on the Autism spectrum and he self-medicates with weed in the school parking lot. Lots of people know 
about him, but nobody knows him well.For a week and a half, he’s had to share his body with a sadistic and murderous demon and the mellow spirit of a bullfrog.

“Detective” Patricia Albrici: A cinemancer (Book 1: Play, p. 148) with a penchant for gritty crime flicks and a complicated relationship with the prevalence of misogynist themes often found therein. She knows there’s a demon in Kevin, but not that it’s lycanthropic. 
Alongside Terry Kidd and Patrick O’Neil, she’s inserted herself into the hush-hush management of Kevin’s disappearance as “Detective Albrici,” and won their trust and silence. She takes her cue for this performance from Fargo (the movie, not the show, of course). She’s starting to freak out about the lack of news regarding Kevin’s whereabouts that her occult underground contacts have brought her. When she finds out about the dead little girl, she’ll go apeshit.

Patrick, Lena, and Conrad O’Brien: Kevin’s host family. They never saw much of him, which Lena finds sad and Conrad is amused by. Patrick, a workaholic corporate lawyer, doesn’t even know that Kevin is fluent in English. Lena volunteered to host Kevin because she hoped he’d be a well-behaved geek who might bring Conrad in line. For his part, Conrad is more or less a pampered neo-nazi with aspirations in what is to him a political environment full of promise.With Kevin gone a week, Patrick has begrudgingly starting pulling strings to keep things quiet; he wants to avoid Kevin’s father finding out what’s going on at all costs.

Terrence Kidd: The principal of Kevin’s school. Like Patrick, he was late to hear about “The Kevin Situation,” but is going out of his way to keep it under wraps. A surprisingly spry Vietnam vet, he wishes he got to run the school like a boot camp and grouses often about participation trophies and the like.

Stepan Kovac: The media studies teacher. As a Slovakian immigrant, he’s sympathetic to Kevin’s struggles fitting in. He recently agreed to supervise Kevin on an independent study to shoot a feature film, with the hopes he can elevate the boy’s taste above derivative film bro crap. Now that Kevin is missing, he’s sweating bullets, fearing how their relatively close relationship might reflect on him. He’s also the one person really invested in making sure Kevin is safe and accounted for. So far he’s been trying to snoop around on his own, but he’s reached the conclusion he’ll probably have to come clean to “Detective” Albrici at some point.

Kai McDowell, Dong “George” Feng, Nicole Dittmar: Kevin’s hangers-on, or what pass for his friends. Respectively, a nihilistic nonbinary senior who’s checked out of their life until college; a homesick fellow Chinese exchange student whose rebellious streak has just about petered out; and a freshman who’s crushing on Kevin, albeit in a creepy, orientalist way. Since he stopped coming to school, they’ve enjoyed debating what exactly was wrong with him, and where he might have gone.

Key Locations

Angus Academy: The private school Kevin attends. An odd amalgamation; teaching styles range from old-fashioned and conservative to loosey-goosey, post-Montessori weirdness. Its students are roughly 80% filthy rich American kids, 10% filthy rich foreign exchange students (like Kevin) and 10% the offspring of teachers and staff (who get free tuition as a benefit).

Sentry Street: The affluent cul-de-sac where Kevin lives with his host family, the O’Neils. Also the home of the family that bullrog-Kevin stared at three days ago and the Vasses, whose daughter is missing, because demon-Kevin killed her.

UnReel: The indie movie theater where Kevin met Patricia Albrici, and where he’s spent a lot of the last week and a half. It used to be a big attraction listed in guidebooks, but now half the rooms are shut down and its only staff is its geriatric owner and a couple of part-time college students.

The Woods: Kevin’s current location. Really, it would be more accurate to call it “The Park,” because it’s well-maintained and nearby homeowners like to call the cops on people who walk their dogs off-leash. Needless to say, Kevin will have to move on soon.

Complications

Sprinkle some or all of the following in as pacing and bungled investigation demand (other than Transformation, which has to happen):

Ribbit: Every time Kevin tranforms into a frog or gets possessed by the killer demon inside him, the surrounding area is beset by unnatural phenomena: the buzzing of nonexistent flies fills the air and patches of the ground or floor turn into swamp muck and cattails (permanently). If the demon takes over or Kevin is reverting to himself, a physical quirk lingers for 1d10 minutes, such as a long, prehensile tongue or webbed digits. If he’s turning into a bullfrog, it’s the inverse, such as 1d10 minutes of human eyes or a bowlcut on his slimy little head.
These things could happen while the PCs are in Kevin’s presence, or have been witnessed by a GMC. Maybe the GMC functions as a clue dispenser, or maybe they’re losing their shit following a failed Unnatural check, and now they pose a danger to the PCs.

Your Worst Nightmare: If the PCs threaten Patricia (including outing her authority as a magickal farce), she can go all Rambo on them – see the Cinemancy formula spells as a starting point.

False Flag: If the PCs go to the police at any point, it will sooner or later come to light that Patricia is not who she claims she is. This will likely kick off Your Worst Nightmare, and could easily lead to the cops wasting a lot of the PCs’ time and generally obstructing their efforts, if not just arresting them. This is also bad news for most of the GMCs listed above. Depending on how much information has ben gleaned, and how much is then shared with the cops, a manhunt for Kevin is not out of the question.

Transformation: Kevin’s body is again taken over by the bullfrog for 1d10 hours. Ideally, deploy this one in the midst of a conversation with someone who’s seen Kevin recently, and/or in a context that would make his… being a bullfrog, and always having been one a mindfuck. Especially if the PCs are local ponies, this is one of the GM’s best opportunities for a big Unnatural check. Also feel free to fudge the exact point he turns back for similar dramatic effect.

The Bullfrog Strikes Again: The demon gains control of Kevin’s body for another 1d10 hours and kills another child in horrific fashion, with even less effort toward covering its tracks as it continues to indulge its Urge.

Too Many Cooks: A group pursuing one of the objectives your players didn’t pick from the three above gets in their way or misconstrues their involvement for complicity in something really bad.

Inverting the Objective System

Try this as an experiment for using the Objective system for a one-shot: the players know what their objective is from the outset, but aren’t given any milestones. Once you’re almost out of time and ready for a climactic last scene and/or denouement, consult the list of milestones below. Let the players roll the points for each one they completed, plus any other noteworthy actions they took that aren’t listed that you feel should still count.

Then, (in the likely event they are below 100%) have them roll it as a kind of oracle (in the solo RPG sense). Suggestions for a final scene are listed under the different Endings sections, based on the level of success.

The milestones can also help you as GM figure out where to steer the PCs, since most clues are not tied to specific GMCs.

Petty milestones

- Interrogate Kevin’s host family, teachers, or classmates

- Interrogate

- Use minor charge(s) to try and locate Kevin

- Sic the police on one or more involved parties

- Provide proof of Kevin’s location and/or status to a relevant authority

- Prove to a relevant authority that Kevin has not been acting entirely of his own volition

Weighty milestones

- Interrogate Patricia Albrici about

- Use gutter magick or significant charge(s) to try and locate Kevin

- Kidnap, seriously injure, or traumatize one or more involved parties

- Take action to directly ensure Kevin is permanently prevented from harming himself or others

- Exoricse the lycanthropic demon (through some means outside the scope written here)

Endings: Sleepers

00: Kevin transforms somewhere public and wakes the tiger. The PCs get caught in the growing rampage of torches and pitchforks (i.e. gasoline cans and shotguns).

Matched Failure: Kevin’s transforms in front of ponies and wakes the tiger. The riot is small and should be easily contained in the short term, but deciding what to do with the witnesses may be difficult…

Failure: There’s no riot, but enough different people have seen enough of the unnatural around town that the PCs will have weeks of cleanup ahead of them, best case scenario.

Success: The PCs’ only option to keep the tiger asleep are to kill Kevin or some innocent bystander who happened to have seen too much.

Matched Success: The shocking news about Kevin’s violence gets out, but the PCs successfully suppress any unnatural tinges to the story.

01: The PCs get a golden opportunity – through a stroke of luck or possibly occult means – to keep this entire situation under wraps, if they so choose.

Endings: Locals

00: The PCs end up going to prison, either framed for crimes Kevin committed, or else for any illegal actions they took in pursuit of the truth. They don’t get any clear answers as to what Kevin’s ultimate fate was.

Matched Failure: The whole thing ends up a wash. Though the PCs can get off scot free if they lay low for a while, they never find out what became of Kevin, nor can they sift through the various rumors that pile up for any juicy occult truths.

Failure: The PCs don’t get a neat answer as to Kevin’s role in everything, but they do get some undeniable proof of the occult, either from unnatural phenomena related to his transformations or interactions with Patricia.

Success: The PCs gain a complete understanding of Kevin’s sordid last two weeks, but are oblivious to any wider occult implications, and likely have a very inaccurate understanding of how lycanthropy works.

Matched Success: The PCs figure out pretty much the whole of the big picture of the scenario. But if they want to get into the occult underground, they’ll have to find their own ins.

01: The PCs figure out the whole of the big picture of the scenario, and Patricia Albrici or one of her local occult underground contacts ends up teaching them a ritual, cinemancy, or some other real magickal knowledge as thanks, due to blackmail, or for some other compelling and relevant reason.

Endings: PIs

00: Kevin is killed by raiding policemen. The chief (if not someone higher up the totem pole) now has a lot of pointed questions for the PCs about their involvement.

Matched Failure: An occult bloodbath ensues when cops come for Kevin. When the PCs get there, they have to deal with a literal bullfrog handful of dead, metaphorical pigs.

Failure: Kevin is arrested for killing Kaighley Vass. Technically, prison is a safe place, but the PCs are probably not getting paid much, nor having many burning questions answered.

Success: The PCs find Kevin before the cops or anyone dangerous do. He’s freaked out, missing memories most of the last two weeks, and worried about what he may have done He’s also still a lycanthrope, not that he knows it.

Matched Success: The PCs find Kevin having been purged of lycanthropy. He’s freaked out and has little memory of the last couple weeks, and a ton of scary questions. The PCs can send him back to the O’Neils and get paid, but there will be some uncertainty, and maybe some guilt, at the loose ends.

01: The PCs find Kevin in the hands of some sympathetic occultists who’ve just purged him of his multiple undead visitors. He remembers blessedly little and the PCs are happily unaware his body committed at least one child murder when they collect their hefty paychecks.

 

Stat block: Ruoxi "Kevin" Liao

Obsession: Becoming someone people will respect.

Rage stimulus: People's rigid ideas of what I should and shouldn't do.

Fear stimulus: Being treated like a weirdo for reasons I can't control (Isolation).

Noble stimulus: Finding my place in the world.

Budding film bro 40%: Subs for Knowledge, Reads Obsession, Protects Self

Rich kid 35%: Subs for Status, Protects Helplessness, Protects Isolation

Aggressively American 25%: Subs for Connect, Subs for Lie, Subs for Secrecy

Violence: H 1 / F 1 

Unnatural: H 2 / F 1

Helplessness: H 2 / F 2

Isolation: H 4 / F 1

Self: H 2 / F 1

Kevin the Demon

Urge: Stalk and Kill Children 70%

Elementary School Teacher 25%: Subs for Connect, Subs for Lie, Protects Helplessness

Psychedelics Abuser 35%: Subs for Notice, Protects Unnatural, Coerces Unnatural

 

Kevin the Bullfrog

Bullfrog Soul 15% (functions like a demon's urge (see Book 2: Run, p. 110)

Bullfrog Bod 10%: Subs for Fitness, Subs for Pursuit, Subs for Struggle

 

Stat block: "Detective" Patricia Albrici 

Obsession: The seedy underbelly of society, as captured in cynical films.

Rage stimulus: Optimists and kids, and especially optimistic kids.

Fear stimulus: Being trusted (Self).

Noble stimulus: It's a dog eat dog world.

Cinemancer 65%: Casts Rituals, Casts Gutter Magick (adept path)

Armchair Criminologist 30%: Subs for Pursuit, Subs for Secrecy, Subs for Knowledge

Mean-Spirited 25%: Subs for Struggle, Subs for Lie, Protects Isolation

Violence: H 1 / F 0

Unnatural: H 5 / F 1

Helplessness: H 3 / F 1

Isolation: H 5 / F 0

Self: H 5 / F 2