One Thousand and One Nights and One Night
a role-playing game campaign design ’zine
Fruit Cake!
This month I’ve got a mix of things,
kinda like fruit cake. Enjoy! Sorry
no pics in this one, too much stuff!
The 3x3 Matrix
I recently heard of a cool thing for
players to do to help their GM run
games. Create a 3x3 matrix of NPCs
consisting of 3 friends, 3 contacts
and 3 enemies of your PC. Then the
GM can use these NPCs during the course of
play, for ideas or just show up.
My friend MW is running our next game, The
Savage World of Solomon Kane (Pinnacle) and
my PC is Bennesuke, an 11 year old Bushi
(Samurai) in search of his father. I made up the
following 3x3 for him!
3 friends: Father Arturo, Jesuit, part of the
Jesuit Cabal hunting for Bennesuke for an
unknown reason, honor bound to Bennesuke’s
father yet a servant of the Church! KaNimba, a
local tribesman, lost his son during a raid from
an enemy tribe, sees Bennesuke as having the
same spirit as his dead son. Richard “Dicky”
Wellington, spy for Queen Elizabeth (unknown
to pretty most everybody), seems a gentleman
of leisure.
3 contacts: Chin–Mi, Chinese merchant, who
met Bennesuke during a business trip. Sana, a
young Beduin widow, with piercing blue eyes,
who knows many things about Muslims in the
area. The Bengowie Brothers, triplet brothers
from another local tribe, they are treated as one
person because they all look alike so no one can
tell them apart, believed by many to have
ancient powers, they know many things about
the world, and some they tell, but for a price!
3 enemies: Father Ignatius, Jesuit, (unknown
enemy), part of the Jesuit Cabal hunting for
Bennesuke for an unknown reason. Sabu, the
local street kid, jealous of Bennesuke for many,
many petty reasons. Ahmed, Sana's brother, an
unfriendly person who feels Bennesuke should
just go home and quit being a bother!
Content © Wooden Leg Named Smith Productions 2008
Website: 1001nightsand1night.110mb.com
Vol.: 1, Issue: 22, February 1, 2008
Mathemancy: Actual Play Part 2
Last month, I talked about a short one–shot I
was running with the CMT. Here’s the rest of
the session from that night.
When we last left the PCs, they’d each received
an envelope with strange equations, like below:
r Θ x 2 4+π3 xy z
Δ=∑ ⎯
⎯→
5
∇∞ ≠ Φ ⊗ ∏ β Δ
z cos(3Ω − l) q
They’d also seen their friends and fellow math–
o–philes dragged off by the Feds. What were
these equations? And what are the Feds after?
The PCs decided to get out of town, and AW
had an “uncle,” an old friend of the family, with
a cabin on Hood Canal. With little cash in their
pockets and even though it was about 8PM at
this point, I had MW’s bank still open. “WAMU,
‘when you really need access to your safety
deposit box to outrun the Feds’ Bank” was the
fun comment of the night. MW got some cash,
they jumped on a bus just as the Feds raced up
to the bank and escaped to the ferry dock. On
the way, the bus passed AW’s house and saw a
bunch of Feds going inside. They took the ferry
to Bremerton and a bus to the cabin. Luckily,
his “uncle” was out of town.
At the cabin, the pair decided to gather some
info. They found out that the news was covering
up the incident as a “gas leak” and that the
professors were being treated for the “deadly
gas poisoning.” Mysterious, yes. They also saw
their faces plastered on the news–They were
exposed to the gas as well and needed medical
attention right away. Sure, they bought that
one.
The PCs then got down to trying to figure out
the equations. They seemed to change only if
written, not if stored in electronic media, so
they found a blackboard in the garage (along
with a Studebaker, what rich uncle doesn’t have
that?) and started working. After a couple of
hours working together, each with a Knowledge
(Math) of d8, they came up with an equation
that caused the chalk they were using to glow!
(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 Vol.: 1, Issue: 22, February 1, 2008
Mathemancy: Part 2.1 (cont.)
A magic spell, using math as the source! They
were jazzed, especially when they realized that
each equation they were calculating was still
morphing, allowing them to potentially create
an infinite number of “spells.”
I basically used the Savage Worlds! (Pinnacle)
powers rules on this with Knowledge (Math) as
the spell–casting skill. In fact, I told them that
Novice level spells only required a regular roll,
while Seasoned level spells and above required
a raise or more to function until they were that
experience level. That ruling was completely off
the top of my head!
Since the PCs only had access to one spell so
far, and they knew they weren’t long for this
hideout (at some point something was going to
happen), I told them that they had about 2 days
to continue calculating stuff from the equations
and gave them the choice of additional spells: 2
Novice level, 1 Seasoned and 1 Veteran. They
chose Teleport, Detect Arcane and some others.
After the two days working hard on math, they
learned that Prof. Fizzywig had escaped the
hospital where he was held–“completely
disappearing”–and that several of the other
profs had died of the “gas.” The phone rang
suddenly and they quickly unplugged it. Both
PCs decided now was the time to take “uncle’s”
sailboat and get away, so they started to do
that. While they were gathering their stuff, they
heard a car approaching and it turned out to be
the local caretaker, a cantankerous old man
who wanted to get back to his soap operas
“That Patch is going to jail and I’m missin’ it,
foolin’ around with you folk!” with a message
from “uncle”–“Did you get the package?” And
the promise to call directly.
This caused some consternation about “what
package” until I bribed the players to plug in
the phone with 2 bennies. The phone rang and
it was “uncle,” telling them that they should
leave now and he’d call them at a later time,
giving a code to AW. They heard clicks on the
line and jumped in the boat pronto!
(continued on next column)
Content © Wooden Leg Named Smith Productions 2008
Website: 1001nightsand1night.110mb.com
Page 2
Changeling Project, Part 3:
Gaining Glamour
Originally, characters gained Glamour during
play by inspiring, ravaging or destroying. I see
no reason to change any of that. Specifics to the
rules can come later (and most likely during
play to the satisfaction of the players).
Permanently attribute change is already
outlined in the Savage Worlds! (Pinnacle)
rules, so I don’t need to go into that, either.
Mathemancy: Part 2.2 (cont.)
Where was Fizzywig? He was quite the crusty
bastard and obviously knew something, so they
went in search of him. MW remembered that he
often talked about his great friend Prof. Viet,
from Western Washington University, up in
Bellingham. Prof. Viet had died some years
before but there was a park bench dedicated to
him. They sailed there, avoiding an increased
amount of water traffic, including several Coast
Guard vessels and Homeland Security chase
boats. They saw several sailboats stopped by
these government agents but strangely they had
no problem slipping north.
In the boat, they found rifles, pistols and
cutlasses and other supplies. They quickly
armed themselves. The sailing took a while so I
gave them another chance to calculate another
Novice level spell. They chose a simple disguise
Shapeshifting spell.
After docking the boat and disguised by spell,
they went to find the bench. It took them a bit
but found it near Boulevard Park. As they
approached the bench, Fizzywig voice said
“Your damn uncle!” and he suddenly appeared.
That’s as far as we got. We had a good time and
it was pretty exciting. The rules were fairly
loose–Savage Worlds! (Pinnacle) allows for
that pretty well. I’ve got the character sheets
still so I’m sure we’ll return to the world of
Mathemancy! Who are those mysterious
Federal Agents? Who is AW’s “uncle?” What
happened to Pierre? And what does Fizzywig
know and will he tell them?
published in association with the Corvis Babbage Cliological Society
’zine art is either open source or through fair use of copyrighted works