The Hawfax (Species)

The Hawfax are a six legged arboreal species with a stiff covering closer to feathers than hair, large, forward facing eyes, a prehensile tail, and four toothed tongues in an otherwise jawless mouth. They are about suited for life in the trees as a human is suited for life on the ground: most wild animals can outperform them. They have remarkably strong grips. The entire creature is the length of a man's arm, not including the prehensile tail, and they weigh 40-60 lbs.

The Refuges: Stornuso (stars in an ocean)

Miruso paddled his kayak through the ice in darkness. The last great star, Friend, had dimmed and then disapeared. The sound of the waves and his paddle in the open ocean were a strong contrast to the darkness of the long night around him. He pulled his fur parka tight -- this was a long trip, and there was no need to waste his heat reserves. He shifted his weight to balance his supplies -- mostly fishing equipment and dried fish.

Off in the distance, Miruso saw a twinkle of light on the water. The familiar light of another traveler! He strengthened the light coming from the skin of his face, hoping that the other traveler would see the increased glow and they could meet up. 

welcome to Stornuso, a dark world of water, ice, fire, and stars.  Its one of the Refuges: one world among many. Its designed for a specific setting, but the geography, cultures, magic and other aspects are free to be used where seen fit.

The World

 Stornuso is a cold world covered almost entirely by water, sheet ice, and iceburgs, and dominated by long periods of darkness. The sky is always black, lacking a proper sun, but studded with a variety of stars that wax and wane in their places. Sometimes they are bright enough to see by, but at other times they are as dark as any night. As the sky is studded with stars, the ocean is studded with volcanic islands. These flare up periodically, belching out light, smoke, and most particularly heat. A hardy folk with their own strange breed of magic ply the seas between islands, following the marine life and the heat.

Human life on Stornuso is made possible by phage magic -- the magic of storing energy for later. Phage magic focuses on Light, Heat, and Motion. The magic always happens at the skin. Light can be absorbed by the skin and released at a later time. Stornusoan mages can slow down ice burgs if only they can stand to touch them with their fingertips ... and later propel their boats with that same power. 

On Making Immortal Characters Seem Old

I was perusing Mailanka's Musings , trying to find something, and run across an interesting (and old) article. It was specifically about vampires being really old, and how we often just throw out the numbers without really thinking about it. And it got me thinking about how you would make a seriously old character feel real without too much effort. And it occurred to me to use some random NPC generating tools multiple times, and then to stack them all together.

The Basic Example

I'm using Collaborative Gamer's tables for making memorable NPC's. I'm not actually going to roll all of the entries. Each iteration will use a role in society, an interesting fact, and a hope/fear.  Just three items, but we'll see what they suggest.  for the first trial we'll just use four-- and leave his modern situation open.

• Religion- Highly social: knows everyone, - Hope/Fear:The Past
• Underworld - Surprisingly open-minded - Hope/Fear:The Past
• Nobility - Weighs things carefully before deciding -  Hope/Fear:Love
• Travler/Tansit - Richer than they seem - Hope/Fear:Sex

Ok, this is only four lives, but we already have a lot going on.  I originally got 'Knows you by reputation' for the last category, but that seemed to specific to PC's, and so rerolled it. A few more details are really needed here: how does this immortality work? a vampire will color these arcs differently than an elf, a highlander, or a wizard. We also could use a lot of detail about the history of the world, to give us a backdrop, and its good to know about how long each phases should last. For this first test, lets use a vampire who goes through phases every 20 years or so, and use the modern world. We're ending in 2016, so we start in 1936. 

in 1936, our Vampire (lets name him Victor) was a priest or preacher of some sort. He knew everyone around, but even then he worried about his past. We have our first sticky situation: Vampires and religion don't mix. As in the vampires can't stick around it. Does this mean he was turned later in life? Or does it mean he fullfilled some dark religious function for the local supernatural community. Or that he tried to hide himself in plain site in his position and found a work around for the religious issue? All of these work, but I'm going to go with the turned later in life option. He was a prominent preacher in the depression who knew everyone. But he had secrets, and a past. I'm not going to do much with that. Perhaps he had no great desires at this point: starting him off as a fairly satisfied preacher has appeal in light of who he will become.

In 1956, he's somehow turned to a life a crime: presumably he was turned into a vampire during that time. His wife, children, and congregation are behind him. They know something happened to him, and being a former preacher isn't going to get him a lot of respect among his own kind. Perhaps he's even wanted for murder. He's trying to find a new life, skulking in the shadows of St. Louis and other cities, just trying to start a new life. His friends are other vampires and scum of the earth. He is exploring lots of options though, and is willing to try new things ... comes of turning a man of the cloth into a creature of darkness.

When we see Victor in the 70's,  He's nobility -- which is another way of saying he's rich. He was underworld last time we saw him, so he's probably a crime lord of some sort, probably minor. He's a cautious sort, seemingly having learned wisdom. He seems to have entered an existential phase: he's looking for love. He has everything a vampire could get, at least in small scale, but wants more. His wife is old and decrepit, his kids have moved on from what their father was, and in his home town he's just a ghost story now. His street acquaintances are either dead, moved on, or part of his new empire.

In the 96, we find him traveling around sating his lusts. He presumably didn't find the love he sought, indicating a sad story. He's liquefied his wealth, and his old crime buddies don't know where he is, just that he 'retired'. He is a simple creature, but no less dangerous than before.

And then we have the modern day. Victor won't be a traveling menace anymore, just as he wasn't a crime lord in 96. We do have a history for him though. It gives us a simple idea of who he was. It also lets us know what he can and can't do. He has a decent spread of skills, but not an absolutely massive one. He actually hasn't lived that long of a life, as vampires go.

How Big a Gap

This is a very important question when rolling up an immortal: how static are they? How long do they go between phases? An elf that hangs around other immortals could have much longer phases than the result of a curse in a land with few other people. How stable the character is is really a matter of taste and situation. In fact, you don't even have to make them all the same size. You could say that the wizard of the red tower had a phase where he ran the barony for 4 years and afterwards spent 66 years researching mind control.

Of course, when playing with the length remember than everyone else is turning over every 20 years. The red mage may have spent 66 years poring over musty books, but in that time his lands didn't stay static, and his stewards probably changed three or four times, each with a different opinion of their master. walk through the 20 year chunks, even when they're part of a single phase.

Tricks and Troubles

No random table will be perfect for this -- not even the ones I just used. Feel free to tweak the tables, and reroll results that make no sense at all. Don't shy away from rethinking what a given response means. And don't take too long getting things perfect: this is a NPC generation process, after all.

Analysis

I don't think this gives perfect results by any means. But it does give decent results, and for a truly deep NPC, its worth the effort.  I hope you find this useful for your games, and that it inspires you to use an immortal in your game sometime.

Magic As Technology

I'm quite fond of the 'Magic as Technology' paradigm. But Why? today I examine why I love this paradigm so much, and what its strengths are.

Magic as technology takes the focus off of character points and places it on the character. When I introduce magic as technology, I don't have people asking "If I take a  rules exemption perk can I take ritual adept (connection) anyways?". Instead they say "can I have this cool device that your description made me think of that isn't in the setting but totally should be?" But shouldn't the focus be on the characters and how cool they are? Yes, the GM's focus should be on the characters. Conversely, the player's focus should be on the plot and on the setting (and on the other players). Everyone should work together, and I love how magic as technology helps focus the players on the setting even before the game starts.

I love how magic as technology simplifies point concerns. In campaigns that use supernatural powers, balancing who has how much of each power and how that's effected by guns being around can be a huge headache. You pay for the skill to use the magic, and that's that.  It also pushes players towards having at least a little skill in magic.

Speaking of point values, I also like settings where everyone or most everyone has access to magic. I world build in part for the sake of world building, and alternate technologies fascinate me. What happens if flying ships as heavy as land ships show up at TL 6? What if mind control is something you just pay for? Exploring these questions become easier when you present the supernatural as technology, rather than as something that might change with every character.

Magic as technology does have a few conditions for it to work well.It needs to be universally or near universally available. Magic as technology is only balanced when everyone has access to it. That isn't to say no-one can be excluded, rather that they are the exception rather than the rule. In the refuges setting many characters will have access only one flavor of magical technology, with a mixed group being possible (and indeed likely). Magic as technology also struggles with 'open-ended' magic systems -- magic that does 'everything'. Probably because of the first rule: if anyone can do anything you get very unwieldy settings.


I love magic as technology. I use other paradigms as well, but I feel this approach is underappreciated. I hope you find place to use it.

Invasion of the Hawfax: The Jungle War

It seems that every nation is born in fire and blood. This was never more true than at the end of the 19th century, when the Hawfax arrived in the amazon. The fighting was savage and showed many of the Hawfax weaknesses -- it also showed many of their strengths and just how badly humanity was outgunned.

The Combatants

 The Hawfax brought few guns with them -- they considered themselves an enlightened people with no need for more than cursory violence. When they arrived on earth, building up a military that could face humans became a necessity. A necessity that all Hawfax regretted and many Hawfax denied. At the start of the war the Hawfax had very few troops, and those that they had were mostly glorified policemen.

 The Jungle war was fought fairly informally-- no nation officially sent troops to the amazon, and even the government of Brazil dragged its feet on actually doing anything to hinder one side or the other. The human forces were a ragtag coalition of opportunists. The derivation was mostly from Brazil, the United States, Latin America, and Europe. The attackers were rounded up only after the Hawfax had demonstrated clear military superiority, at which point official opinion came down severely.

The attackers were poorly organized, and their were really two separate forces. Raul Carvalho led a force of mostly local men speaking Portuguese and Spanish. Most of them had immediate grievances against the Hawfax, mainly the end of the rubber-trade. Sam Cade lead a mostly foreign band of adventures and mercenaries, who largely spoke english, but many languages could be found throughout his men. They sought to take back the earth from the aliens and demons that had arrived to conquer mankind.  There was a fair amount of military experience in Cade's army, but it was poorly distributed. Of course, no Hawfax had seen previous military action.

Soldiers

The Hawfax mostly fought the war under equipped -- the typical fighter was designed for law enforcement rather than large scale action. Their weapons were largely made of plastics, and had a strong tendency to jam and break after a few hundred shots. Of particularly shoddy quality were the large number of guns printed after the emergency started. Hawfax body armor was also largely ineffective against the large slugs human forces favored, and their own bullets tended to merely injure human combatants.

The Hawfax's greatest equipment advantage was their radios and their sensors. Throughout the war, the Hawfax remained aware of the movements of the enemy forces through a combination of cheap cameras, night vision technology, and ubiquitous radio. Another prominent advantage was the medical advantage: disease stalked many of the men who'd come to fight the Hawfax, including infection, while the Hawfax were able to essentially ignore both wound infection and local illness. Its estimated that a over 70% of the humans who died in the war did so from infection well after they'd been shot.

The hawfax relied on rails to travel throughout their settlement, which were easily cut. Their more independent means of travel-- ATV's, helicopters, and boats, were quite vulnerable to human fire arms. Troops moved largely on foot throughout the conflict.

Both Cade's and Carvalho's armies were armed with a variety of bolt action riffles, shotguns, and pistols. Almost as an effective as a weapon were saws, which were essential in any attempt to deal with high roosting foes. Some soldiers but not many brought armor. notably lacking was artillery and there were very few machine guns. Hand to hand combat heavily favors humans -- a simple blow can seriously injure a hawfax.

The nature of the combatants is another place of strong contrast. The invader's forces are made of men comfortable with violence who have come a long way from home in search of fame and fortune. The Hawfax have a small group of professional men and the remainder of their population is deeply uncomfortable with the concept of violence.

Politics

Hawfax strategists dreamed of the effect that radio, automatic fire, and superior sensors would have on human forces. Before the war the hawfax felt that as long as they were in a group, they were largely impervious to human attacks. They had an especially dovish set of politics and the military they had was viewed unfavorably as peacekeepers and a possible threat to their own security. This will make it difficult for the military to do things like beef up security or abandon unfeasible positions until they have been defeated at least once.

After the conflict starts the hawfax will rapidly start equipping their populace, which is uniquely unsuited for combat. Even after public opinion silences the doves, individuals often will refuse conscription for ethical reasons, or freeze in the face of combat. Their will also be widespread resistance to things like forced relocations, curfews, or using gas against the enemy (not that they have produced any such weapons or even know the best chemicals for use on humans).

Governor Pires Ferreira of the state of Amazonas had minimal troops and while he is on good terms with the hawfax, finds himself reduced to a figure head against the forces moving in his own state. The military will refuse to act until the battles were decided, at which point they will support the winner.

This conflict was unusual in that not only telegraph updates but footage was sent back to the capitals of the world in virtually real time. The hawfax pressed the governments to condemn the actions, but official leaders largely followed the lead of Governor Ferreira in being cautious and timid until they knew how the conflict would end. Some of the democratic nations at least had the excuse that the situation put their militaries and legislatures into bickering upheavals, and that it was clear from the start the action would be over quickly. A strong exception to this was Bolivia, Peru, and Chile, who were very vocal in their condemnation of the attacks, and particularly in blaming Brazil.

Battles

When playing out the jungle war, time lines are of necessity fragile things. The PC's ideally should be able to change the execution of the war through clever ideas, convincing authority figures, and general heroics. That said, certain battles are quite likely to happen, and to happen in a general order. A GM can use these as marker posts in the conflict, and change the timing and results in accordance with PC actions.

The Capture of Landing

The first battle of the war will be an assault on the city of landing. Either Cade or Carvalho can make the assault, or they can make it together. Landing is built to human scale, allowing human infantry to rush freely through its streets. This battle is a fairly open battle, with humans on big barges on the river, and the Hawfax making full use of helicopters, boats, and other vehicles-- vehicles likely to go down on their first shot. Guided Rockets may be used by the Hawfax against people in the barges, but they aren't likely to have enough ammo to have a large enough effect. The barge walls will provide a good deal of protection against hawfax bullets until the invaders are close enough to charge. Only the core of the Hawfax miltary will be here, and without large changes in the setup, the battle will end with the humans charging and over-running the place.

The Capture of Landing is costly for the hawfax, and perhaps the best way to minimize causulties is to abandon it later on. 

The Siege of Hawfax

Unless the hawfax are spurred to action before the initial assault or some clever PC intervenes, human forces will quickly make it to the park region. Or rather, the base of the park region -- the charges that carry humans this far will not help them to get into the heights of the capital. At this point things turn into a siege of a sort. The humans will start cutting down trees they think Hawfax might be in, while trying to keep a look out for Hawfax counterattacks (particularly at night).

Chopping the trees will in fact cause a lot of damage to the hawfax infrastructure, and the amount of damage in this period is highly variable. A well prepared attack will have lots of saws, lots of electric lights and the generators to run them, and have the men construct shelters that will stop hawfax bullets and dropped objects. A poorly prepared attack will lack all three of these things, greatly reducing the amount of damage done during the day and giving the hawfax a large advantage at night. Also key is which trees get chopped down. Some areas are much more important than others, and if the loggers can identify which trees are most important, they will do an order of magnitude more damage.

Large portions of the area under the main areas of attack will be evacuated by the hawfax. While not many will die, there will be a large loss of property. This time is probably dominated by quickly printing large number of weapons and trying to teach its citizenry how to fight.

The attackers will certainly light fires to attempt to burn down the forest. While this is a valid tactic, the hawfax are actually much better prepared to fight fires than people. How well fire will work is in large part based on what time of year its is (September is driest, January the wettest). Wild fires in the jungle work best in the undergrowth of the canopy -- the exact place that the hawfax occupy (and defend). Rain is quite likely to interrupt this: it rains 70% of days in January and 15% of days in July. Still, a GM wishing to turn the battle one way can easily tinker with the weather to give one side or the other an advantage.

The Victory of Night

At certain point, enough of the Hawfax citizenry will be equipped with night vision and firearms to launch a counter attack large enough to overwhelm the remaining human forces. This is entirely reliant on rapidly creating large numbers of weapons.

As its name suggests, the victory of the night will turn out in favor of the hawfax. The question is just how one sided the battle is. Many things can increase Hawfax causalities. Not having enough of the hawfax armed when the battle starts will result in more damage. Choosing the wrong hawfax as  soldiers and poor organization can also have detrimental results: conscripts will freeze in combat, disregard orders, attack mindlessly, and other costly behaviors if not properly chosen, trained, and lead. A large scale engagement between the two forces will also be deadly (to both sides). Most of the options that save lives take time though, and all the while the humans are sawing away at the foundations of the city.

One of the biggest factors in this stage of the war is how the attacking humans leave. Do the Hawfax capture them in a surrender? Do they shoot them all where they stand? Do the attackers leave as a group? Do they scatter into the jungle? These options are important, not in the least to the attackers themselves, but also in terms of public relations and cleanup after the war.

Campaigns in the Jungle War

The Jungle war is a great time and place to set a campaign. Almost everyone was caught unprepared, and its a great place for heroes to shine. The classic  miscalculations of PC's and GM's working with new equipment in a new setting is appropriate and 'in-genre'.

Care should be taken in choosing from what angle the players approach the war-- play is very different depending on where the players stand. A foot soldier's campaign is in many ways about survival. Playing humans attackers may not be the most tasteful to all groups, but it is certainly among the most challenging scenarios, while hawfax soldiers are well equipped forces with an interesting resource set who start out outnumbered and in large part outgunned. However, as with most military games, the PC's probably are most effective and most gameable on the outskirts of the action. The classic campaign is human observers (with perhaps an friendly hawfax or two) trying to stop the attacks, by political wrangling, sabotage, and any other tactic the PC's can come up with.  They can also be voices of warning in the hawfax community, trying to mobilize the reluctant population for war, and coming up with strategies for winning quickly.

The Jungle war can also serve as background for other campaigns -- it was a defining moment for all involved, which include most if not all of the Hawfax. Vigorously anti-human demagogues will bring up the incident again and again. Military leaders study it extensively. Characters may have fought in the war on either side, giving them history (and in the case of the hawfax, badly needed combat skills).

GM's wishing for a very different game can set their adventures in a world where the hawfax lost the jungle war -- likely due to key buildings being targeted, a dry season letting a forest fire burn the whole thing down, or a nuclear reactor going critical. The hawfax would then be scattered throughout the forest without much infrastructure. The old ruins would make a fitting set for a pulpish plot.

More on the hawfax is coming! I hope you enjoy what you've seen so far!

On Sea Monsters

What is a sea monster? Why is it so horrible? and how do I avoid just letting my players hack it to death?

There are three notable features of a sea monster. First, its aquatic nature. Second, its predatory savagery. Third, its immense girth. For some reason tales of sea monster result in totally massive creatures more often than purely land based tales.

On Bulk

So just how big is it? This is one of the biggest questions when making your sea monster. A great place to start out is "how big is the boat?" Sea monsters are rarely compared to the size of a person: they are compared to the size of the boat. Some sea monsters will attack the people on a vessel much larger (but those tend to be fish people and tangential to our real topic), and sometimes you throw a monster against the ship that's much smaller than it, but as a general rule, the boat and the monster should be evenly matched in size. This is especially true of monsters you want to drag the ship down.

One of the monsters shown is an appropriate encounter. The others? Not so much

Gurps suggests adding HP and ST in accordance with the cube of weight. This is the scientificly correct way to do things, due to something called the square cube law. Of course, most giant monsters are flagrant offenders of the square cube law, and so I (and many others) suggest raising ST with the cube for most giant monsters. A third option is to use the damage from Cubic Strength and the HP from Square ST: this will give monsters that require lots of hacking away at but don't kill ships with a single blow.

The table below matches stats to sizes, with three entries for each SM. Note that individual monsters are likely to vary from the numbers given. Not that it really matters if a ST 120 monster hits your boat or a ST 125. The examples given to the side are conservative weights: Record holders, Boasting Anglers, and Film directors usually move the creature up a level or two, when they don't create another creature that looks like the original but is much bigger.

Weight	SM	Short Length	Long Length	Cube ST		Square ST
100 lbs	0	1.5m	2.1m	ST 9	0d+2	ST 8.5	0d+1
150 lbs	0	1.7m	2.4m	ST 10	0d+2	ST 10	0d+2
200 lbs	0	1.8m	2.7m	ST 11	1d+-1	ST 12	1d+-1
300 lbs	1	2.1m	3.1m	ST 13	1d+0	ST 15	1d+1
500 lbs	1	2.5m	3.7m	ST 15	1d+1	ST 19	2d+-1
700 lbs	1	2.8m	4.1m	ST 17	1d+2	ST 22	2d+0
1000 lbs	2	3.1m	4.6m	ST 19	2d+-1	ST 27	3d+-1	Big Bottlenose
1500 lbs	2	3.6m	5.3m	ST 22	2d+0	ST 33	3d+2
1 tons	2	4m	5.8m	ST 24	2d+1	ST 38	4d+0	Record Squid
1.5 tons	3	4.5m	6.6m	ST 28	3d+-1	ST 47	5d+1
2 tons	3	5m	7.3m	ST 31	3d+1	ST 54	6d+0	Great White
3 tons	3	5.7m	8.4m	ST 35	4d+-1	ST 66	7d+2	Orca
5 tons	4	6.8m	9.9m	ST 42	4d+2	ST 85	9d+2	Mausosaur
7 tons	4	7.6m	11m	ST 47	5d+1	ST 100	11d+0
10 tons	4	8.6m	12m	ST 53	6d+0	ST 120	13d+0
15 tons	5	9.8m	14m	ST 60	7d-1	ST 150	16d+0
20 tons	5	11m	16m	ST 67	7d+2	ST 170	18d+0
30 tons	5	12m	18m	ST 76	8d+2	ST 210	22d+0	Humpback
50 tons	6	15m	21m	ST 90	10d+0	ST 270	28d+0	Moby Dick
70 tons	6	16m	24m	ST 100	11d+0	ST 320	33d+0	Megaladon
100 tons	6	18m	27m	ST 110	12d+0	ST 380	39d+0
150 tons	7	21m	31m	ST 130	14d+0	ST 470	48d+0	Blue Whale
200 tons	7	23m	34m	ST 140	15d+0	ST 540	55d+0
300 tons	7	27m	39m	ST 160	17d+0	ST 660	67d+0	Kraken
500 tons	8	31m	46m	ST 190	20d+0	ST 850	86d+0
700 tons	8	35m	51m	ST 220	23d+0	ST 1000	101d+0
1000 tons	8	40m	58m	ST 240	25d+0	ST 1200	121d+0
1500 tons	9	45m	66m	ST 280	29d+0	ST 1500	151d+0
2000 tons	9	50m	73m	ST 310	32d+0	ST 1700	171d+0
3000 tons	9	57m	84m	ST 350	36d+0	ST 2100	211d+0
5000 tons	10	68m	99m	ST 420	43d+0	ST 2700	271d+0
7000 tons	10	76m	110m	ST 470	48d+0	ST 3200	321d+0

Bulk is a defense in and of itself. Even if a creature has no natural armor, large animals can take a lot of damage by the simple fact that their vital organs are deep within them. Even an animal without natural armor should have DR at 1/10th of its HP. Additionally, targeting the vitals of such a creature is not trivial. Those wishing to target the heart, brain, or kidneys will need either a lot of penetration from their missile or a  sufficiently ridiculous stick to put a blade on. Adding another DR at 1/10th to attacks vs the vitals is appropriate.

On Aquatics

 One of the trickiest difficulties of a sea monster is that its in the water and you're stuck on a boat -- if you're lucky. Being alone in the water is even worse, unless you have some powerful technology or magic to back you up. Don't let the characters attack the monster whenever they feel like it, and most attacks can't be blocked or parried.

Sea monsters are generally more maneuverable than ships. They may also be faster, but that's true less often -- though you may have to run with the wind to outrun the thing. Most of the time, you don't go to the sea monster: the sea monster comes to you.

The water often forms an additional barrier against injuring the creature. The diffraction in the water gives a -4 to hitting something across the water barrier. Not a problem if you're a aiming for the main body, but if you're aiming for a place that you can actually hurt the thing, like an eye, it can be tricky element to add. And if launch the weapon in the water itself your arm will be impeded! Ranged weapons have greatly reduced ranges, and firearm projectiles will actually bounce off of water.

nothing visible underwater

Of course, That's once you spot the thing. The water forms a reflective barrier that makes it near impossible to see things far away. The angle is important.. you actually have a chance to see things coming up from under you -- but the distance is very reduced. Most of the time, you have to rely on spotting momentary surfacing  (which is usually not complete) or bubbles coming up from a surface creature. Fortunately, most of the time you just want the monster to go a way, and a lot are pretty obliging about displaying before they attack or coming to you to latch strait onto your ship. But exceptions do exist, particularly among leviathans, and a smart monster can use hit and run to great effect.

If you're serious about running a fight in the water, gurps pyramid 26 -underwater adventures, contains the rules for underwater fights.

On Being Monstrous

There are a number of shapes that show up in sea monster lore again and again.  The serpent, the kraken, and the leviathan (ie, really big fish shaped creature). There is a curious dearth of arthropods, probably because arthropods aren't open water creatures and don't get as big as the others.

Sea Serpents tend to be smaller than the ship. They also tend to either have main bodies impervious to most hand weapons, or to display only their head during an attack. 

One signature mark of the sea serpent is the head. Unlike the other two classic forms, The serpent can stick his ugly head up on board the ship and look you in the eye before he eats you. The head of a serpent moves across the deck of the ship monstrously fast -- it should have enough reach that it can strike most of the crew with them striking it. Attacking the serpents head requires ranged weapons, a sufficiently long stick, or acrobatics in the rigging.

The other signature of the sea serpent are its coils. In fiction, sea serpents are always coiling around the ships they attack. Their goal may be to crush the ship, it may be to drag it under, or it may be to just get a firm grip on the thing its attacking (which would actually a tactically sound idea if it was dealing with a leviathan).

The Kraken is a squid shaped monster. That is to say, it has lots of arms. It is common for fiction to not even bother giving a proper count on the arms. Battles with Krakens on the big screen often depict a lot of tentacle chopping. Realistically, this will end the battle pretty quickly -- unless you have the kraken with the improper arm count or a cinematic kraken. Of course, its usually only heroes who can cut through a tentacle. Be sure you know a kraken's goals -- If its trying to just grab the crew for a quick snack, it can be terrifying as it sweeps around tentacles, grabs three or four of them, and then disappears into the deep. Of course, Krakens in fiction usually try to sink the ship, presumably because they want to eat it.

The leviathan is at once the tamest and the trickiest of the forms. Its the truest to life, as evidenced by classics like Moby Dick (Ok, Jaws can also be considered a leviathan). A battle with a leviathan is a very impersonal thing. There is no eye contact, and the leviathan makes good use of the protection of the sea -- most attacks can be made without leaving the water. Of course, Leviathans don't usually float right under the boat and chew until their is a hole: Leviathan combat is about movement. They charge their targets, and its not uncommon for them to launch themselves right out of the air after an attack.

And sometimes the craziest monsters combine multiple forms. Such is fiction, nightmares, and crazy GMs. When I was a kid I gave a serpent a tentacled end, a shark head, and crab claws. When you do this, step back, and ask yourself what the thing is going to behave like. In retrospect, the thing acted much like a serpent -- a personal, face to face conflict based on picking off specific crew. So when you run into something really crazy, just ask yourself what it acts like. And its entirely possible for that kind of crazy monster to act like different monsters at different times.

There is actually a fourth archetype that may play into some sea monsters: the Dragon. which deserves its own article (and got its own book). In some ways, its an extension of the personal and armored serpent, but in other ways, its an extension of a land dwelling monster to the ocean. A similar thing can be said about the giant crab -- essentially a land monster in an aquatic environment.

Facing Down a Ship

A sea monster attacking a ship generally has one of three goals:

• It wants to eat the ship
• It wants to drive the ship out of its territory
• It wants to eat the people

These motivations effect the way the monster fights.

It also important to remember that most monsters are dumb brutes that don't realize the advantages they have. The smart ones generally only have a few tricks that make them one step above animalistic, and don't tend to come up with new tricks. Of course, truly intelligent monsters are possible. Just don't be surprised when they become much tougher to defeat. 

Dragging it down:

So often in fiction, the goal of the monster appears to drag the ship down into the water with it. Ships are remarkably buoyant, up until the point where they start taking water on the inside. It takes a great deal of strength to drag the ship all the way down, but merely tipping the ship over can be just as bad. Of course, most boats are built to intentionally be difficult to capsize. In most cases, the crew can do little to help the ship beyond clever tricks to give small penalties to the contest (likely -2 at the most), and fighting off the monster.

To drag down a ship, a monster needs a way to grasp it -- so serpents and krakens tend to do this the most. The point at which the monster grips the ship is important, as that's where the heroes need to focus their attack.

Ships are remarkably buoyant and stable -- those are pretty much the qualities they are designed for. They also won't fight back being tipped over with more than brute force -- which means you need a reasonable way to roll strength. B349 has rules on how to adjust the scores. You can resolves a monster trying to tip over or pull down a ship however you want, but remember the following:

• Treating it as a grapple where sinking is a take-down takes a mere 1 second
• Treating it as a grapple where tipping or pulling down is a pin will still be over within 10 seconds.
• Ships are big. Even a monster capable of simply pulling it down will need time to move the ship the requisite distance.
•  Attempting to pull a ship down is a great way to cause it damage. 
• Attempting to pull down a ship may result in inadvertent tipping. 
• The time to capsize is effectively a time bomb for your players -- it forces them to confront and defeat the monster quickly. Time the capsize accordingly

This is completely made up, but the following should be playable.

• Find the effective strengths of the ship and the monster. 
• Each round roll a contest of strength.
• Each margin of success by the monster sinks/tips the ship by 5%.
• If the ship is being pulled down, it returns to its place at a rate of 10% per margin of success. Its also appropriate to add the ships stability to this roll -- and to tip the ship if the stability bonus gives the ship the victory. Don't add the two numbers together -- track them seperately
• Once 100% is reached, a tipped ship is on its side, and starts taking on water. It takes 5 minutes of work and a successful shiphandling roll at -4 (this may be a good place for a technique) to right the ship. The monster may attempt to just keep rolling the ship, which doesn't really change its
• Once 100% is reached on a ship being pulled down, the ship starts taking on water. It keeps on resisting the monster's pull, though as water fills the ship, it will resist less and less. 

Is this a tip or a pull under?

The rate at which water enters the ship is highly dependent on the design of the ship -- the GM should decide on a rate.This method can and should be modified when need be -- changing the rates at which the contests of strength happen and 'percent capsized' can slow, speed up, or make more swingy the rate at which the boat goes down. Smaller boats should tip or pull down faster than large ones.

Sometimes a Leviathan will attempt to capsize a vessel (classically a smaller boat). This is not an attempt to drag down or tip the ship via grappling rules. The leviathan needs either a large ST advantage or persistence and a clever mind to pull this off. Model a single attempt like a fluke sending a wave or bumping the ship with the head as a take down attempt using half the ST score. A more involved attempt like amplifying the rocking motion of the boat takes longer (probably 20 seconds), but may be able to use the full ST score at the GM's option. Unlike a physical grapple, these actions DO give the crew a chance to react and fight back, but they will need to be aware of what's going on and ready to counter it to avoid massive (-4?) penalties to their rolls.

Breaking the Ship:

Leaks can happen through punching through the hull, but they can also happen due to internal stress. And sea monsters don't generally punch small holes in the ship: they squeeze it, ram it, or otherwise attack the grand structure. Monsters generally don't bite ships -- boats they might, but not ships. 

Despite the cannon ball problem  and the fact I often have problems with how slam and constricting damage work, this is probably one time when the rules on those three topics come out nicely. Alternatively, have the ship make HT rolls after each slam or 5 seconds of constriction or take an appropriate amount (10 percent?) of damage. Its worth noting that most underwater ramming attacks will take place with fairly long intervals as the creature rams, pulls away, and then builds up speed again. Impact velocity for leviathans is generally between moves 10 and 15. Additional DR should be given to a creature that intentionally rams, and especially one thats designed to do so (Orcas come to mind).

Using Sea Monsters

The sea monster fight is interesting because its almost obligatory to throw in once and boring to do it twice. Voyage of the Dawn Treader -- many monsters, only one serpent. 20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea -- one giant squid. Dreamwork's Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. Several different monsters, but only one counts as a sea monster as treated in this work. In Odysseus, we have two sea monsters-- who show up at the exact same time. Order of the Stick talks about fighting every aquatic monster in the book (literally, as befits order of the stick), but so far only ever shows one fight with a big aquatic monster (a summoned giant squid). There is a lot of precedence for fighting a giant monster once and only once. And if the campaign (or campaign leg) consists of nothing but fighting massive aquatic beasts, you run the risk of being boring.

Unless! your characters go into the game knowing that sea monsters are main foe and specialize as hunters of them. A crew of larger than life whalers hunting down killers that ravage shipping lanes, or  hunters of exotic creatures. This is because sea monsters by nature don't bring a lot of plot with them. They show up, terrorize a ship, and then go away. Additionally, it takes an odd set of skills to fight a monster correctly and most characters won't have that set.

But lots and lots of campaigns can use sea monsters as an added element. I hope this article gives you lots of ideas of what to add and how to handle the fight.

Journal of the Dice: Not this Blog

I'm launching a new blog, Journal of the Dice. I'm launching it because the two blogs are about fundamentally different things: journal of the dice is about solo campaigns and the results of random generators. And that's it. This blog is about worlds created and rules suggestions for playing in worlds -- not about journal logs for a game I play with myself.

That said, Journal of the dice has been lots of fun, and I've been enjoying it a lot. Its also not completely disconnected from this project: you'll see a good deal of crossover coming soon -- these campaigns tend to be ambitious projects. For instance, I'll be posting some stuff on wide-area low control effects fairly soon. 

If you feel like following just one blog or the other I completely understand: its one of the reasons I separated the two blogs in the first place. I hope you enjoy both, or at least one of them!