Power Corrupts: Side Effects for Magic Users gaining levels

"This is Corruption"
Doug Kovacs 2011

On the internets today, my eye was poked by an awesome image by fantasy artist Doug Kovacs.  It masterfully illustrates a wizard passing through the various stages of his career and gradually changing as he becomes corrupted by his growing power.  This also rekindled my love of the old  AD&D 3 Stage Miniatures (of which I've written before).
 
Hack and Slash, Trollsmyth and Grognardia all write about spell casters gaining temporary side effects as a consequence of casting or memorizing the spell.  However, I feel that this would become onerous to track in game and doesn't really reflect the concept illustrated in the image, namely the chronic effects of exposure to thaumaturgic energies and their corrupting effect on the flesh and mind.

This is not a new idea,  in fact it's a defining feature in most fantasy literature, be it Saruman's corruption by Sauron or Raistlin Majere's racking cough and golden skin.  So why should there be a free lunch in RPGs? 

I can't think of a good reason not to to do this, so here's a little table of random levelling effects.

D20	DESCRIPTION	EFFECT
01	NOT YOUR DAY	Re-roll twice (ignore all results of 1 or 20) apply both effects, you retain the right of choice.
02	HAIR LOSS	The hair on your head falls out. You're permanently bald, deal with it.
03	MAGICAL BURNS	You have been burned by the thaumaturgical energies. Permanently lose 1 CHA, 1 DEX or 1 CON (your choice) which cannot be healed by any means.
04	ASTRAL SMOKE INHALATION	Your lungs have become scarred by smoke inhalation. Lose 1 CON permanently and develop a wracking cough which cannot be healed by any means.
05	DEFORMED SKIN	Your skin has become: scaley, changed colour, become translucent, become hairy, become leathery, developed warts or lesions, veined, liver spotted (you choose). This change is permanent and cannot be healed by any means.
06	DEFORMED EYES	One of your eyes has: changed colour, changed shape, become sensitive to light, or a particular spectrum of light, become bloodshot, enlarged. This change is permanent and cannot be reversed by any means.
07	DEFORMED HAND	You have, lost a finger or thumb, arthritis, paralysis, had your hand replaced by that of a beast, lost your whole hand (You choose).
08	SOUL TAINT	Your soul has become tainted and you have become less empathetic as a result. You permanently lose 1 WIS and 1 CHA which cannot be healed by any means.
09	VOID MIND	Part of your mind has been lost to the void. You permanently lose 1 INT which cannot be healed by any means.
10	DEFORMED FACE	You have: lost an eye, lost your nose, unexplained nose growth, lost your sense of smell or taste, developed facial scars, lost an ear, mishapen skull, lost teeth, developed fangs, facial droop, developed a wild expression (your choice). Lose 1 CHA permanently.
11	WITHERED LIMB	Your arm or leg has become withered (you choose). Permanently lLose 1 STR, 1 DEX and 1 Move which cannot be healed by any means.
12	HEARING LOSS	A magical explosion has permanently damaged your hearing and cannot be healed by any means. Lose all bonuses to hearing checks.
13	STOLEN YEARS	You have been permanently ravaged by Time. Add 10 years to your current age. This change is permanent and cannot be reversed by any means. You can never be rejuvenated below the age of 10. This effect can be taken multiple times and the effects of old age should also be applied as specified in the game rules.
14	STOLEN LIFE FORCE	Part of your life energy has been eroded. Lose 1 STR permanently. Cannot be healed even by magical or divine means.
15	SOUL CONTRACT	To save your own life you had to sign a soul contract. Your soul will be collected in 20 years unless you can find a way to break the contract. If you already have a soul contract it just got 5 years shorter.
16	SANITY LOSS	Your mind has become ravaged by the unspeakable horrors which lurk beyond this mortal realm. You permanently lose 1 WIS which cannot be healed by any means.
17	SIGHT BEYOND SIGHT	Everytime you look at someone: they age before your eyes, you see their death, you see their skeleton, you see their alignment aura, you see the face of a deceased loved one (you choose).
18	FRACTURED MIND	Your mind has become trapped straddling two universes. Whenever you are required to make a binary decision (Yes/No, Left/Right, Up/Down, Kill/Don't Kill) you must roll a d6 to determine your state of mind; 1-4 Your decision is unnafected, 5 You must change your mind to the opposite choice, 6 You become catatonic.
19	MALODOUROUS	You smell of: sulfur, stale urine, faeces, rancid milk, orc, a week old corpse (you choose). This change is permanent and cannot be reversed by any means only masked by strong perfumes.
20	GM'S CHOICE	GM rerolls and chooses the effect for you.

3 Stage AD&D Miniatures

(R to L): Citadel (ADD11) Female Wizard (Lvl 1)
Ral Partha (01-331) Illusionist (Lvl 2), Illusionist (Lvl 3)

The Droste Effect: Has anyone used it in a game?

After downloading Tiles of the Dead: Games Room (Crooked Staff Publishing), I'm now thinking about running a one session game devoted to the Droste Effect.

Packaging for Droste Cacao

What is the Droste Effect?

Simply put the Droste Effect is a particular form of recursion when an image appears within itself.  It is named after a Dutch brand of cocoa powder which used the effect in it's advertising but has been used by artists from M.C.Esher to Jan Van Eyck for hundreds of years. 


Scenarios which use a Droste Effect are largely going to be dependant on the exact characters in the game but everyone needs at least two things:

• A Focus - This is essentially a portal to each level of recursion, deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole.  The floorplan I mentioned above has a typical RPG table (complete with character sheets) which acts as its focus, but this could just as easily be a photograph (or a woodcut) on a mantlepiece, a window or even the PC's own shadows cast in their torchlight. 
  
  Whatever you choose, as soon as the players notice the Droste Effect in the image then they should feel that the world has gone a bit wonky for a moment.  How long it takes for them to work out that this a'int Kansas anymore depends largely on how obvious you make the differences between realities or how quickly the next recursion happens.
  
  
• A Pivot Point - The Droste Effect revolves around it's pivot.  Locate the pivot point within the scenario and the players just have to work out what the correct outcome is and "hey presto" the Droste Effect will resolve itself and the world resets with no lasting effects on the PCs.  Get it wrong and you need to find the focus again and enter the next level of recursion.

Some Scenario Ideas

Mirror, Mirror - A great way of introducing a Droste Effect into any game is to use a mirror as portal to a mirror universe.  PCs will find that adventures in a mirror universe will have a peculiar set of complications; backwards writing, driving on the opposite side of the road, guns with ejection ports on the other side throwing hot casings into your eyes, you can see where I'm going with this.

Evil Kirk - Throw the players off by replacing one of their PCs with an Evil version of themselves.  To make it harder for them to spot, just replace one of their personality traits with it's diametric opposite.  Your normally grumpy or pessimistic Dwarf, becomes cheerful and eternally optimistic, just see how long they can last before they drag him kicking and screaming back to where he came from.  The pivot for this could be that all the PCs have to become Evil for the Droste Effect to collapse.   A more sadistic DM would make sure that injuring your Evil counterparts had some sort of penalty like reflective damage.

Uppa, Groundhog Style - Whatever the genre, the groundhog day scenario forces the players to repeat their actions until they hit on the right solution (aka the pivot).  This could become tiresome for players until they work out what the pivot is, so make sure that you let them fast-forward through the non-relevant bits.  This is probably the closest to a traditional Droste Effect as each day is one level of recursion.

Everyone is Everyone Else - When the PCs encounter the Droste Effect, make each of them pass their character sheets to the player on their left.  They must now try to play the character in front of them in the style of the characters owner.  Best played in an established group where no-one takes themselves too seriously.  Each time they encounter the Droste Effect they pass their character sheets to the left until everyone has had a turn, the pivot for the scenario is simply that everyone must play everyone else until their original character sheets come around.  Of course once they work this out they will try to quickly resolve the Droste Effect by "Goal Hanging" so you make it harder by moving the focus around making it more of a treasure hunt.

One of our PCs is missing - Each time the PCs encounter the Droste Effect one of their number is missing and they will remain trapped in this Droste until they locate the missing PC.  You could rehash another meme (Final Destination), by making the missing PC die in interesting ways just as they are found, thereby triggering a new Droste Effect.  The pivot is that you must prevent the missing character from dying.

Have you tried it?

If you have any ideas, suggestions or experience of using the Droste Effect in your own games, feel free to comment below.

The Arnolfini Marriage
(Jan Van Eyck 1434)

close up of mirror, inscription reads
"Jan Van Eyck was there 1434"

Sci-Fi Ship Morphs Part 4 - More Basic Tiles

Here are some more basic tiles for you to fill with your own furniture.

With Doors

Without Doors

Daves Mapper

All the tiles for this and previous posts in this series have been uploaded to Davesmapper.com, so go get mapping!

Previous Posts in this Series

• Part 1 - Getting Back on the Morphing Horse
• Part 2 - Guns, Guns, Guns
• Part 3 - Cryo Tubes, Mess Hall, Transporters and Drop-ship

Goblin Aid - Raising Money for Kevin "Goblin Master" Adams

On March 20th, Miniature sculptor extraordinaire Kevin "Goblinmaster" Adams was brutally attacked in his own home by a couple of scumbags.  Thankfully, Kev survived the attack but suffered some pretty serious injuries.

The gaming community has rallied to support Kev in his time of need and, thanks to Ian Brumby (Fenris Games) and John Atter (Frothers Unite), The charity facebook page Goblin Aid was launched.  Unfortunately I passed on Salute this year, but Wargames Foundry were selling a "snorklings" blister of 6 miniatures including a self portrait mini of Kev.

Dear Tony Blair... has an excellent update post showing all the "greens" which have been donated by sculptors the world over to be cast into a series of boxed sets to raise money for Kev.

Thanks also to James "Grim" Desborough of Postmortem Studios for passing on the news.

DIY Gelatinous Cube

Finn gets half eaten by "Jelly Cube"
Adventure Time with Finn & Jake

Gelatinous cubes are one of those classic dungeon monsters you need in your DM's arsenal, in fact I'd go so far to say that if you haven't encountered one you need a new DM.

The commercially produced miniatures are on the whole way too expensive but here's a list in case you have no modelling or DIY skills.

• Otherworld Miniatures - The go to guys for OSR style fantasy miniatures have 3 versions;  DM16a Standard (£15), DM16b Deluxe I and DM16c Deluxe II (£25).  These are very useable and to the usual Otherworld Miniatures sculpt standards, but pricey all the same.
• D&D Miniatures - The Desert of Desolation series of minis introduced which you can still pick up (if you have deep pockets) on ebay for £40.  One for the serious collector I think.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants - The DIY Roundup

There are basically two ways to tackle this, solid or hollow.  Making your gelatinous cube solid has a number of advantages namely that it will be extremely sturdy durable and you can embed miniatures and other items inside for that partially digested look.  However the cost of resin can be high and it's not a material everyone feels confident using. 

The obvious advantage of the hollow cube is that you can put your PC's miniature inside it and there's a weight saving.  It's a purely personal choice, but here's a quick round-up of the more prominent jelly cube makers out there on the interweb.

Solid DIY Gelatinous Cubes

• Sean K Reynolds details the process of making his solid resin cubes with hirst arts moulds.
• Big Lee has an adventure making a solid resin version.
• Michael Curtis made his solid version from wood and joint compound.
• Fat Dragon Games has a papercraft gelatinous cube in their Dragon Tiles: Tombs and Horrors set for $7.99 but all I want is the cube itself.

Hollow DIY Gelatinous Cubes

• Dungeons & Digressions shows you how to make a quick and dirty cube from acetate.  
• Damian posted his interesting hot glue only homemade version on ENWorld.
• Dungeonmaster Mark has a video of his great looking hollow gelatinous cube on Youtube.
• Djpiebob just uses 4 chessex dice boxes for his cube.

Make it the Roleplay-Geek Way

You will need:

An old shirt box, ripe for recycling

• Acetate - I got mine from an old shirt box (I bet you have some old packaging lying around) so was this was essentially free and made me feel good about reusing and recycling.  Most come clear but any colour will do, it just has to be transparent.

• Hot Melt Glue Gun - I picked mine up from a discount store complete with a couple of packs of sticks for £3, but most DIYers and hobbyists will have one of these already.  If you don't have one of these you can use superglue, but make sure that you add some gluing tabs to your box grid (see Step 1 below).
• Pen - A Sharpie or other non branded fine permanent marker (like a CD Pen).  Green or Blue are best, but any colour will suffice.
• Sandpaper - Wet & Dry is best to minimise coarse scratches but essentially any sandpaper will do the finer the better.
• Ruler - for marking, cutting and folding your acetate.
• Craft Knife - for cutting your acetate.
  
  
• Sticky Tape - for holding your cube sides together as you glue.
• 30-60 Minutes of Your Life! - You won't ever get it back but you were only going to waste it watching TV or reading some other persons blog.

Acetate marked out in "Cross Pattern"

Step 1: Get your sheet of acetate and mark out a grid of 2 inch squares (50mm) in the standard folded out cross pattern you learnt in high school geometry class using the pen and ruler.  Like so:

If you want to make a hollow box, cut out a smaller square (approximately 40mm) from one face, usually the end one in the cross pattern. 

If you're using superglue it's a good idea at this stage to leave a thin glue tab around each of the faces as it's really tricky to glue edge to edge without seepage and the inevitable fingers stuck together.

Acetate cut, scored, folded and scuffed

Step 2: Making sure that you have the marked side face up, cut out the acetate cross and score along all the fold lines using the blunt side of the craft knife.  Using the ruler as a straight edge will help you make sharp folds.

box taped and glue up in progress

Step 3: Again, making sure that you have the marked side face up, take your sandpaper and rub along all the inside faces edges to both scuff off the pen lines and to give it a frosted look.

Step 4: Tape each side one at a time and glue the edges together.  The hot melt glue may heat up the plastic and deform your box sides but don't panic at this stage.  Beware, the hot melt glue is exactly that, HOT! and will take a while to cool down, so try to avoid the temptation to touch it as it will burn you, stick to your fingers and go all stringy. 

If you're using superglue instead of hot melt glue try to avoid getting any on your fingers as it's a real pain and you will get finger print marks in the acetate. 

Extra drippy effect applied to outsi

Step 5: When all sides are glued and cooled, strip off the tape and repeat the process on the outside edges.  You can drip hot glue (or PVA) from the top face down each side for that extra... drippy look.

Eh voila, you have a super cheap Gelatinous Cube, or as we say in Sarf East Lahndan, "Jellied Cube for nish, mate!".  You can make your cube's as big or small as you like and in as many colours as you like. Try spicing it up by by glueing miniature swords, shields or bits of that half butchered skeleton you have lying around your bits box, to the inside faces

With a bit of creativity you can use hot melt glue and acetate for all sorts of things like flying stands, Tenser's Floating Disc, magic portals, Walls of Ice, Fire, Force and Fog or any of the Bigby's Hand spells.  Let your imagination and hot glue flow free!.

Finished gelatinous cube happily munching on a GW half-orc