One Thousand and One Nights and One Night
a role-playing game campaign design ’zine
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Lé épée du Lion
Richard the Lionheart (1157-1199), By the Grace
of God, King of the English, Duke
of the Normans and Aquitanians,
Count of the Angevins, was quite
the fellow. During the Third
Crusade, he was known for
cleaving anvils (among other
things, say people) in half with his
sword. So I came up with a magic
item based upon his sword, the
épée du lion, the sword of the lion. This can be
used in any Earth setting post the Third
Crusade or even modified for others.
I used the Savage Worlds! Fantasy Gear
Toolkit (Pinnacle/Great White) to create the
épée du lion. The base weapon, a sword, is
$300. Adding +1 Fighting is $1000. To smite
through anvils and such, I chose +3 Damage
($3000), but that’s pretty expensive. I want a
more low-powered weapon as a treasure for my
group. So I added a limitation (-50%) “Only
against inanimate objects” to +2 of the Damage,
which fits with the history of the sword. That
dropped the total cost to $3300. Now it’s a
good historical weapon to hand out to a group
of modern investigators, it gives one character
small bonuses to hit and damage, and is better
at cleaving through trees, anvils and rocks.
Content © Wooden Leg Named Smith Productions 2007
Website: 1001nightsand1night.110mb.com
Vol.: 1, Issue: 9, July 15, 2007
Savage Godwin's Law!
I’ve been re-reading my Hellboy (Dark Horse
Comics) collection and figured it would be a
good thing to make up some Savage Worlds!
(Pinnacle/Great White)
Nazis! for my game group to
fight. Making enemies is
pretty easy in Savage
Worlds! because you don’t
have to follow the standard
PC generation rules. It
actually says so in the rules (see page 121 in the
main rulebook), just assign the attributes,
edges and skills you want, and you are done!
But what type of Nazis should I make?
Several interesting Nazi foes appeared in a two-
issue one-shot called Batman, Hellboy,
Starman (Dark Horse/DC).
Some of these Nazis mooks were
mages that shot green lightning!
And there was some sort of
unnamed strange Nazi war
machine-robot, too. Batman and
Hellboy fight these guys in the
first issue and then Starman
shows up for the second. It’s a
pretty good story and even has a bit of that old
Lovecraftian horror (with quotes) as well.
So I made some standard mages from the Nazi
Knights of October, with attributes of Agility
d6, Smarts d8, Spirit d8, Strength d6, and
Vigor d6. Their skills are Fighting d6, Guts d6,
Intimidation d8, Knowledge (Arcana) d8,
Notice d8, Shooting d6, Spellcasting d8, and
Taunt d6.They have Death Wish (“will die for
the Reich”) and Mean hindrances and edges
Wizard and Arcane Background (Magic). Their
spells (with 15 power points) are armor, bolt,
detect/conceal arcane and light, all of which
have the Trappings of green electricity.
Rounding out the mooks’ are the calculated
values of Charisma -2, Pace 6, Parry 5 and
Toughness 6. They are skinheads, wearing
black t-shirts with large red swastikas on front
and back, black jeans and jackboots.
(continued on Page 2, First Column)
published in association with the Corvis Babbage Cliological Society
’zine art is either open source or through fair use of copyrighted works
One Thousand and One Nights and One Night
a role-playing game campaign design ’zine
Savage Godwin's Law! (cont.)
Uber-Soldat DLfZ-31, aka “Adolfs,” is a large
robotic killing machine used by the Knights of
October for their brute-squad. The
standard model’s attributes are Agility
d6, Smarts d8 (A), Spirit d8, Strength
d12, and Vigor d8. Its skills include
Fighting d12, Intimidation d8, Notice d6
and Shooting d8.It has the special ability
of Fearless (immune to Fear and
Intimidation), the edge Improved Block
(+2 Parry) and Requires Near-Constant
Maintenance (breaks down after d6+9 combat
rounds) as a hindrance. Thus it’s calculated
values are Charisma 0, Pace 6, Parry 10 and
Toughness 12. Over seven feet tall and weighing
as much as a mid-sized car, the DLFZ has a
smooth metal surface covered with a black
finish. A large white swastika with a skull in the
center adorns its chest. The machine has few
visible sensing devices, so knowing where to
strike to blind it is difficult.
Finally, we need an officer to order these good
little Nazis around, so introducing SS Captain
Kurt Dussander! The Captain is a Wild Card, so
he gets two Bennies. His
attributes are Agility d8,
Smarts d10, Spirit d8,
Strength d6, and Vigor d8.
His skills are Fighting d8,
Guts d8, Intimidation d10,
Notice d8, Shooting d8 and
Throwing d8. He’s just like
the previous guys, in terms
of hindrances: Death Wish
(“will die for the Reich”)
and Mean. He’s got a load of edges, like
Improved Block (+2 Parry), Combat Reflexes,
Command, Hold the Line!, Harder to Kill and
Quick. Kurt’s calculated values are Charisma -2,
Pace 6, Parry 8 and Toughness 8.
Capt. Dussander is a harsh commander, willing
to sacrifice the lives of his men to attain his
goals. He’s feared by “friend” and enemy alike.
A total fanatic for the Fuhrer, he lives to die for
the future Reich. Kurt is over six feet tall and
thin, filled with hate and dreams of power!
Content © Wooden Leg Named Smith Productions 2007
Website: 1001nightsand1night.110mb.com
Page 2
Vol.: 1, Issue: 9, July 15, 2007
Simple Design Example: Two Red
Dawn Scenarios
So you wonder where I get my ideas? Here’s a
bare-bones one that I’ve been mulling over
lately. I was having dinner a few
weeks ago with my friend EH and
our significant others. During the
main course, EH admitted that in
high school (in the early 1980s) he
wrote a term paper on the
differences between the US military
and the Soviets. I promptly blurted
out “You researched the Red Dawn Scenario!”
We soon were talking about Red Dawn (United
Artists), much to the dismay of our dinner
partners.
But that got me thinking. It’s not that difficult a
setting to game - A bunch of high school kids
are forced to flee town after the invasion of
their country by a foreign army - in fact, there
are several systems or settings that would
facilitate it pretty well. That
could be used in Midnight
(Fantasy Flight Games), a
setting that is sort of like a
“What if Sauron had won?” I’d
set the game right at the
invasion, rather than the
default setting a century later.
The PCs would be on the run
from town just as the invading hordes entered.
The town’s magistrate is executed and a demon,
a succubus, takes over the area. It’s up to the
PCs to start a resistant movement and
eventually take down the wily succubus.
A second game that I thought up was using
GURPS Traveller (Steve Jackson Games), set
on a small border world along the Zhodani
fronteer during one of the many brushfire wars.
One day, the Zhodani invade. Now, this can be
quite fun because it presents a problem for the
players - the Zhodani troops can read minds.
How that effects the course of the game is
something I’d like to explore. Throw in a PC or
two that are half-Zhodani or even are mind-
controlled, and you’ve got some fun!
published in association with the Corvis Babbage Cliological Society
’zine art is either open source or through fair use of copyrighted works