Battle Billies, Nuclear Lemmings and other madness...

It gets very disconcerting to have really, really smart people get into this game...

I have a player at present, he's playing a god of mankind, with secondaries in animals, agriculture, and change (I believe). He has pronounced himself the God of Animal Husbandry, and defines this encompasses genetic manipulation via natural means to create a superior breed of being. He has presently made a household unit of Battle Billies. Ten over-sized battle sheep, each one big enough to function more like an elephant or mastodon.

So, to share these "heroes" with you, I present Battle Billies:

Battle Billies

These fluffy beasts tower over the common man. Their thick wool coats provide them excellent defense against simple weaponry. They have massive tusks and curling horns on their head and they attack by charging and ramming their opponents.

Body d10
Mind d1
Spirit d1

To create battle billies your tribe must first corral some sheep. Then simply pump them up and watch them destroy your village.

Base Sheep stats we used
Body d4, Mind 1, Spirit 1

Create Battle Billies
Significant Alteration (3 dice shift) Base Cost: 4

Domain: (Animals, Sheep, Change, or any other such things) (As your God)
Duration: Permanent (+3)
Location: (As your God)
Transformation Inclination: (as Your God)
Scale: Village (+2)


He has other plans of making radioactive lemmings and in times of conflict swarming them to a central location in a city where he will blow them up. And then there's the mono-molecular wool bearing sheep, and sheep that excrete steel or coal or glass or whatever is needed. And he's scaring the other players...

Honestly this is a funny concept yet a good one. I like creative concepts no matter how "corny" or "odd". Battle Billies to the rescue!

I had a player in one of my earlier demos control a flock of seagulls, drive them inland, change thier poop to acid and used them for a bombing run against salamander slavers.

That was just one of his many odd miracles.

His artifact that he created was the "Baby Banner". When placed on the battlefield and activated it can "impregnate" enemy combatants (man, woman, child or beast) with human babies in the third trimester. Scale was 100 (village) dice was a d10 for the miracle. Did not have a chance to use the artifact but it was very odd...

Honestly, where he loses is the d1 mental and d1 spiritual. I just up the scale on one of my warriors and have him shout 'BOO' at the sheep.

Would you want Battle Billies with enough intelligence to question your being their god?

Besides, he can just yell Boo back at them in order to stampede them your direction again.

A flock of sheep can be herded with as few as one dog if its well trained. True, he has no dogs yet... but still...

Oh yeah.. He's decided to lead his people directly from the known world until they learn the ropes of mix and matching genetics...



Creative Fate, and I can see the value of the seagull thing, and the Baby Banner as well...

Oh, it gets worse. I'm saving Belief for now, but if I ever get Bed-Athelete and Eternal Midwife together with favors owed to my people?

1) Cast permanent miracles on populace
2) Using RapidBreed(TM) miracles, triple birth rate
3) Using RapidAge(TM) miracles, make the kids adults
4) find the 'mutant' kids, rinse and repeat

Personally, I'd love something like UnNatural selection, but admit that's something for a computer game rather than a tabletop.

I'm not entirely cinched on how I'm doing the Birth Rate thing as of yet. Fate brought up lots of points regarding this general "age" of mankind, the paleolithic age was not a good time for humans. Heck, we're lucky the game allows them to live in houses! They should be grunting as their primary means of communication and sleeping among the bones in rat infested caves. paleolithic man was barely upright, and tools were rudimentary at best.

You can imagine however that a good number of children made it to independent childhood, when they could go without their mother most of the time. But it is also doubtful they all survived to maturity, although the mothers would probably have a child a year. Also, life spans would have been incredibly short, maybe thirty, forty years at most. Women would have much shorter lives, and older siblings that made it to adult hood might even have to step in and raise younger siblings after their mothers passed on leaving children behind still in need of rearing.

Perhaps 1 per 10 is a bit many making it to adult hood... after all, we're not counting the children per se, we're counting the matured members of society right? We don't know how many actual children are in a tribe or how many women are pregnant.

I could make you players start tracking all that stuff, and adjusting my own books to reflect it, but I like the fairly hands off approach the game uses for the mechanics. I think the solution here is to implement a die scale, thus also making miracles affecting maturity to be exacted on tribes more easily. Something simple, like 1d4 individuals per village scale unit in the tribe mature a year. You can't shift the scale, but you can use innovations to shift the die types or add pluses. There may even be natural occurrences that permit a bonus to die type or such.



Tomorrow night the Gods reconvene to discuss some basic matters of estate... ...er... I mean state. And once I have you all down for your prime pieces of property, I can really start playing with your heads... ...er... ...followers! Yeah followers...

One quick question.

Where is your game taking place? Some places are backwater and people live in tents roaming around like Native Americans. Others are more civil like the cities.

I am assuming rural, but I would like to know where.

Oh Varchild,

I like that die mechanic. If you find sucess with this let me know and we will talk about making it a rule in our next book about followers.

Rothena, a point or two Frinthward of Naalward (aka, Northeast) of Vohens on the coastline.

Posted for Varchild. Varchild says, "Hi".

Fate wrote:

I had a player in one of my earlier demos control a flock of seagulls, drive them inland, change thier poop to acid and used them for a bombing run against salamander slavers.

That was just one of his many odd miracles.

His artifact that he created was the "Baby Banner". When placed on the battlefield and activated it can "impregnate" enemy combatants (man, woman, child or beast) with human babies in the third trimester. Scale was 100 (village) dice was a d10 for the miracle. Did not have a chance to use the artifact but it was very odd...

Thank you

Hey oroboros,

Long time no see!

I just want to let you know we will be at Owl Con and Con-Jour in Jan-Feb 09. I hope to see you there!

Rich

Varchild_Marquee wrote:

Would you want Battle Billies with enough intelligence to question your being their god?

Why would it be a problem that these Billie goats gruff to ask why he is they're god? All he has to do is say ''why else? Because I can unmake you.'' I'm sure the Billie goats wouldn't want to revert to their demeaning nature of eating paper.... Or for that matter anything else. In fact perhaps the Billie goats would be grateful as to gain a greater understanding, so much that they would be eternally loyal. Which in that case is even better then mindless slaves.