Small Tombs

In late 2016 Gethsemane Games launched our 'GMs Maps' range of short supplements, consisting of a map in various formats and a short text accompaniment to go with it, giving some ideas of ways you may use the map in your games or some background on the type of building depicted.

The range was an instant success.

Each map was inspired by real world examples of the building in question.  The range so far includes castles, Victorian houses, an Asylum, fall out shelters and bunkers, temples and other religious buildings.  It is ever expanding and I keep a list of the sort of maps I want to add to the range.  Currently I am expanding the range at an average of 1 map every week or so.

However, there are some maps that, although they would certainly be of interest to GMs, are a little small to charge money for.  These smaller maps may only be a dozen or so chambers and take me around half an hour to draw. I will be releasing these maps free of charge tot he blog readers, right here on Whispers fro the Other-Verse.  Like our large, more in depth maps which are for sale in the 'GMs Maps' range which you can find HERE these maps are all inspired by real world examples but may include a little artistic licence on my part.

Unlike the GMs Maps paid range, these freebies will not be supplied in multiple file formats, but should be easy enough for you to print or even copy and use in your games.

Without further ado then, here is the first, a small tomb.  This one is based upon the tomb of Ramesses VI, uncovered in 1922 by British Egyptologist Howard Carter and his patron excavator and collector the Earl of Carnarvon.
The tomb may be useful for Horror or modern genre games as well as in Fantasy.  Imaginative GMs may even find  use for it in SF and Post Apocalyptic scenarios!

1. Surface Entrance.  Blocked by a plaster or carved stone panel
2. Descending stair case with a painted plaster wall at the bottom.  Cunning GMs may trap this or add a curse or other magical protection.
3. Passage.  Both ends caped by plaster walls, probably painted.  the passage may slope downward and may or may not be trapped or even guarded by some magical beast.
4. Antechamber with decorated walls.  Again, a good place for traps, guardians or magical effects.
5. Annex.  Hidden behind a plaster wall that is probably painted and/or sculpted to look like the stone wall around it.  The contents may include mundane goods buried with the tomb's occupant or more traps and dangers.  Of course, both is also a possibility.
6. Burial Chamber. Hidden behind another false wall. What dangers may or may not lurk here, along with the sarcophagus of the tomb's occupant is a matter for the GM!
7. Treasure Chamber, leading off the the burial chamber is a room containing the more valuable treasure buried with the tombs occupant.  Along, or course, with whatever other dangers the GM sees fit.

The Second Small Tomb is inspired by the chambers under the Pyramid of Unus, but i have applied a little artistic licence (adjusting scale, adding chamber #10 and changing the shape of chambers #8 and #9 a little).

1. Surface entrance
2. Long downward sloped passage
3. Vestibule.  A good place for a guardian or trap
4. Mid passage.  this may also be trapped guarded and or sloped
5. Camber.  In the original material there are 3 gates or portcullises here.  A GM may add any form of obstetrical, trap or guardian (s)he sees fit. 
6. Long passage
7. Antechamber
8. Tomb-Chapel
9. Burial Camber
10. Treasure Chamber.

I hope you enjoyed this article and get some use from it.  Keep an eye on the blog for more free mini-maps.  In the mean time why not check out our range of GMs maps at RPGNow for lager, more complex maps and plans, a bargain at just $1 to $2 in price!

Fear and Mental Stress

This section details a slight alteration to the fear test mechanic for earlier versions of our games.  This version will now be the cannon and will appear in all future Gethsemmane Games RPGs.

It is inevitable that your characters will encounter things which cause them fear, sooner or later. Whenever a character is confronted by a frightening or horrific creature, situation or event the character will need to make a “Fear Check”. A fear check is a type of WIP saving throw. The character must try to roll under his or her  usual (ie undamaged) WIP+Current WIP, on d%.

Fear Save = Undamaged WIP+Current WIP

If the character passes this roll, then (s)he has been able to fight down the terror and can continue to function normally. However, if the character rolls higher than their WIP, then (s)he will grow frightened and will suffer some WIP loss and some other effects. WIP points lost this way can be recovered normally.

When a character fails a WIP test, the amount that (s)he failed by is referred to as the “Fear Strength” Look up the  “Fear Strength” on the “Fright Chart” (located at the end of this section) to see what effect the character suffers as a result.

Fear Factors

Some creatures have a FF listed in their statistics. Other events or experiences may also have a FF at the GM's discretion.

 Whenever a character makes a Fear Check, the “Fear Factor” of the creature or event which caused the fear check should be applied as a penalty to the characters chance of passing the fear test.

Effects of WIP Loss

The loss of WIP can have a significant effect upon a character and the exact nature of this effect depends upon how much WIP the character has lost.

Frayed Nerves;- whenever a character loses 6 or more points of WIP in a single combat round his nerves become frayed. The character becomes easily upset, irritable and moody. These effects last until the character has a good nights sleep (8 or more hours) or until some one passing a “Psychology” roll spends half an hour soothing the characters nerves.

Temporary Insanity;- When a characters WIP falls to half their usual WIP or less then they go temporarily insane. The character gains a phobia, mental or emotional drawback which lasts until their WIP recovers to more than half their usual score.

Permanently Insane;- If the characters WIP ever drops to less than 10 the character gains a mental or emotional drawback permanently. (Unless a good psychologist can cure them at a later date). This drawback is not lost when the character regains their WIP.

Catatonic;- Should a characters WIP ever fall to 0 or less the character will become catatonic. A catatonic character is unable to act or even speak independently and becomes passive, as if they were a automation. This lasts until the characters WIP is restored to at least half of their usual level, at which point they become permanently insane (see above). In addition, the WIP of the catatonic character is permanently reduced by 1 point.

Final Fear Strength	Fear level	Effects on the character
0 (Zero) or less	Worried	IL is halved for 2 rounds. Lose 1 point of WIP
1 to 10	Alarmed	Character may take no offensive action this round and loses 2 points of WIP
11 to 20	Mildly frightened	Character may take no offensive action this round, IL is halved next round and loses 1-5 points of WIP
21 to 40	Harrowed	Character may take no offensive action this round, IL is halved next round and loses 1-10 points of WIP
41 - 60	Scared	Character may take no offensive action this round, IL is halved next round and loses 1-10 points of WIP. Suffers 5% to all skills for 1-5 rounds.
61 to 80	Cowed	Character may take no offensive action this round, IL is halved next round and loses 2-20 points of WIP. Suffers –5% to all skills for 1-5 rounds
81 or more	Fear struck	The character loses 2-20 WIP and will either flee, faint, hide or vomit for 1-5 rounds depending on circumstances and the GM.

Four Rivers Games Convention

Gethsemane Games will be attending the Four Rivers Games Convention in Newcastle on the 20th and 21st of May


Here is a little bit about it form the organisers, Impossible Gears:-

What is the Four Rivers Gaming Convention?
Four Rivers Gaming Convention is a two-day gaming convention in Newcastle, featuring tabletop role-playing games, wargames, board games, collectable card games, and live role-playing games (LARP)

What is the aim of Four Rivers Gaming Convention?
Four Rivers Gaming Convention aims to bring together the established roleplaying, wargaming, boardgaming, and LARP groups within the North East to share their hobby with each other, and those entirely new to the hobbies

Why 'Four Rivers'?
The event is named after the major rivers of the North East - the Tweed, Tyne, Wear and Tees Rivers 

What is going to be happening there?
Free gaming tables are going to be offered to established gaming/LARP clubs/societies in the North East, on which they can run demonstration games and introduce visitors to their hobby and their clubs - flyers can be given out freely - it's a great opportunity to expand membership and get to know gamers from all over the region

Where is the event?
Four Rivers is based at The Discovery Museum in Newcastle; we're using the incredibly impressive Great Hall and the Turbinia Atrium around The Turbinia Steamship

How much is entry?
Nothing, it's free and open to the public

When is it? What are the opening times?
The event takes place on the 20th and 21st of May. We will be open from 11-4pm and 7-11pm on Saturday...the evening gaming period forms part of the very popular Late Shows, and a pay bar will be available. On Sunday we're open 11-3pm

Isn't that Comic Con weekend?
Yes, which means it's the perfect chance to go 'full geek' and attend both if you like! (we are free remember! and open till 11pm on the Saturday!)

Will there be traders?
Of course! if you're a company that makes or sells gaming goodies, LARP weapons and costumes, develop your own games, or anything else within the glorious pantheon of game geekery - get in touch via Impossible Gears on Facebook or impossiblegears.com . We'd love to see everyone there, from large companies to small independent traders. Single and double pitches are available, and we've aimed to keep the prices as low as possible for a full weekend event - £70 for a single, £130 for a double

I'm in an established gaming group and we'd like to run some games - how do I get involved?
Message me via Impossible Gears on Facebook or impossiblegears.com , and we can talk about what we can offer and what we'd need from you

Does the event have disabled access?
Yes, there's a lift to all floors

Food and Drink?
Yes, the museum has a cafe and there'll be a cafe in the Great Hall too

Is there a changing area for LARPers? what about a stage to have a fight on?
Yup to both of those

Free you say?
Yes, it's a totally free event to attend

Saving Throws in our Games

Saving throws, often also called “Attribute Tests” are a particular type of check used to determine if a character's Primary or Secondary attributes protect them from some harmful effect or allow them to succeed at some feat of Strength, Will, Perception or so forth.  This section details a slight alteration in the way saving throws are made compared to some early versions of our rules (Later versions already use this method).

Whenever a saving throw is called for by the GM, the player should roll a d% and attempt to roll equal to or less than the appropriate target number.  If the player succeeds in rolling the target number or less then they have succeeded, or passed, if hey roll higher, then they have failed.

To find the target number of any given saving throw, take the characters attribute number and adjust it according to the difficulty level of the saving throw being called for, as follows;-

Easy Attribute x2.5
Sandard    Attribute x2
Difficult Attribute x1

The GM will set the difficulty level of he saving throw when he or she calls for one, and should base the choice of difficulty level on how easy or how hard he or she feels the task is.  Some common examples are included above, but they are by no means exhaustive and the GM should use his or her judgement.

Quite often a saving throw may be the result of a player trying to do something that may or may not work, but which is not covered by their skill, but is instead likely to depend upon one of their attributes.  For example, if a player wishes to listen carefully to see if they can hear any noise through a door the GM may call upon them to make a Perception saving throw.  If the GM knows there are a number of people on the other side engaged in conversation he may set the difficulty as “Standard”, if hey are engaged in noisy activity (s)he may set the difficulty as “Easy” where as if hey are sleeping but may or may not snore, perhaps the GM will decide the difficulty is “Difficult”.

Alternatively, saving throws may be called for by the text of an adventure or the GM may rule there is a need for one.  For example, a party of Entropy Stalkers chasing an entropy mutant across the roofs of a city come to the end of one roof and must leap, safely, to the next.  The GM calls for each entropy stalker to make either an Agility save to make the jump safely, and, since (s)he feels the gap is not a large one and the building they are jumping to is slightly lower than the one they are jumping former, the GM sets the difficulty as Standard.  Later, the party are called on to jump over a much larger gap and the GM sets the difficulty of that one as Difficult.  Certain skills may be usable instead of the saving throw, in the above example an acrobatics skill may be appropriate.

Unlike skills checks, saving throws do not earn the character experience points and no tick is placed et to the tested attribute.

DISCOUNT: PANDORA'S WAKE RPG

We have our first discount for readers of the Gethsemane Games Blog!

Get the Post Apocalyptic RPG 'Pandora's Wake' in PDF format for just $3 from RPGnow with the following Link:

Get PDF for $3

Pandora's wake is an exciting Post Apocalyptic RPG in which survivors struggle to live day to day in a world overrun by the hellish creatures of a nightmare world.  Bandits and rival groups add to the danger, and the radioactive wastes of man's attempt to drive back the Other-Verse with nuclear weapons dot the landscape.

The game uses the 3rd generation of the Gethsemane Games Roleplay Rules which are highly adaptable to your own play stile.  You will need 2 ten sided dice to play (or a dice roller app, of course).

The Pandora Event ripped holes in the very fabric of our reality. Holes that let The Other-Verse in, a nightmarish world beyond our own, filled with deadly flora and fauna.

Deadly bacteria and viruses that we had no defense against brought human civilization to it's knees. As plagues swept away two thirds of the human race, the alien life-forms of the Other-Verse began to emerge through the cracks in the walls of our reality, ever expanding, out competing native, terrestrial life, hunting Earth's own biosphere to the brink of extinction. Turning our world into a hellish copy of the Other-Verse itself. Such is the world into which your characters will step, to struggle for survival against carnivorous plant life and predatory alien creatures as well as desperate gangs of raiders and bandits, competing for the scarce resources that have been left behind in... Pandora's Wake.

A Post Apocalyptic RPG from Gethsemane Games

THE ENTROPY EFFECT: Coming Soon from Gethsemane Games

Long ago a mysterious interstellar race calling themselves the Gubulon broke reality with their forbidden experiments.

Deep in space one of their laboratory vessels was stricken by a disaster of it's own making. Breaking up the vessel found itself, somehow, on a small planet in the Sol system.

Now, in a desperate attempt to repair the harm they have done the Gubulon send small 'Reality Repair Teams' to earth to re-capture the escaped experiments and to restore reality to how it should be. Composed of clones grown from captured human genetic material spliced with the Gubulon's own DNA the reality repair teams search the Earth for signs of the escaped creatures that warp reality wherever they go. By following rumours of the strange and weird these 'Entropy Stalkers' must close in on their prey and all the time seek ways to undo the damage done, to restore reality to it's default settings.

As Entropy Stalkers the PCs must join the reality repair teams and descend to Earth to join the never ending mission to put right what their masters got wrong. To chase the madness and go into the very heart of warped reality to try and repair what was broken. All the while without revealing themselves, their mission or the truth to the natives of 21^st century Earth.

THE ENTROPY EFFECT

A game of reality warping sci-fi horror on contemporary Earth.

Due for release in October 2017.

Adventure Modules for The Entropy Effect, coming in 2017/2018

'Sharp Teeth Pretty Teeth' – An introductory mission for first time reality repair teams. As they are inserted via stealth shuttle over the Alaskan interior the teams shuttle is hit by an unexplained EMP pulse that causes it to crash. The team must escape the ruined shuttle, destroy all evidence of extra-terrestrial technology and escape the crash site before the local Terran's can investigate.

Meanwhile, entropy mutants stalk the area and the town the PCs are heading for has just been attacked with fatal results. Can the PCs contain the problem and either save the mutant's by restoring reality or, failing that, eradicate the mutants before they can do any more harm?

(I will probably include this one in the main rule book as a starting adventure).

'Talbot Syndrome' – One of the survivors of the mutant attack on the town was medi-vaced to Anchorage for treatment, but with other survivors being tainted the PCs realise they must follow, find the man and stop him from mutating. Are they already too late? And what are the strange things that haunt the hospitals mortuary and laboratory? How are they connected to the casualty or is this a new threat?

'The 13^th Floor' – A New-York hotel with a history of unexplained disappearances and strange going's on draws the teams attention. Why does it's Entropy level fluctuate from zero (normal) to alarmingly close to a full blown reality fracture? What happened to the guests that have disappeared over the last 4 decades?
How come the lift seems to be heading to the 13^th floor of a hotel that only has 12?

'Bleak House' - The Abramovitch house has been abandoned since before Alsaka was bought from the Russian's. The locals won't go near it for fear of what they say lives there. Those foolish enough to ignore the warnings either disappear or come back half mad with fear and telling wild tales. Yet none of the tales that victims of that place tell seem to match. Just what is going on at the old mansion, and can the team survive long enough to repair what is broken?

'A Tornit of Willow' – A dozen people swear they saw the Sasqatch watching them as they fished in the river north of the small town of Willow. One claims he followed it's tracks and found a stand of trees that had been uprooted and planted upside down. The indigenous people speak of a race of hairy giants in the woods with a long standing grudge against mankind, and there is a strange, oily, substance in the river that mutates all it touches. Can the Entropy Stalkers get to the bottom of what is really going on and can they put reality back together again?

'Number Station' – The Entropy Stalkers hear a mysterious transmission, one of Earth's many mysterious 'Number Stations', only this one seems even more mysterious than most. According to their research the transmission seems to be coming from a decommissioned cold-war listening station at 'Coopers Creek'. A place that has already claimed one expedition, academics from MacReady springs who responded to a similar radio transmission over 20 years ago and were never seen again. Now the last survivor of the failed Forest Ranger expedition sent after the missing academics is suffering from Dementia but the impossible stories he tells of what happened in 1993 may contain more truth than anyone but the Entropy Stalkers dare imagine.

Hydrokinesis: A New Preternatural Ability for Haunts and Horrors

Hydrokinesis

(This preternatural ability first appeared in the H+H adventure “Suffer Little Children” and is reproduced here, from that adventure module).

Range;- Creature's WIP in Meters

Area of effect;- 1 individual or 1 litre of water per point of the creatures WIP

Duration;- 1 CR per point of the users WIP

Initiative penalty;- -5IL

Creatures with this ability have power over water, they can manipulate it in a variety of strange ways, or may even create it out of thin air.

There are several ways a creature can use this preternatural ability, such as;-

The creature may change the colour of water, even making it look like other fluids (such as wine, blood or milk, for example).

The creature may create water, up to 1 litre per point of the creatures WIP. This water is real in every way for as long as it lasts, but will only last for a period not exceeding 1cr per point of the creature's WIP. Strangely, however, if a living being drinks the water, the being will gain all the benefits form having done so, regardless of the fact that the water would have vanished in a few scant moments.

The creature can effect the taste of the water, making it taste salty, fresh, brackish, soapy or even making it taste of some other substance such as wine, blood or milk.

The creature may also change the temperature of the water by a few degrees (WIP ÷ 5 in degrees Celsius each round. This costs the creature 1 point of WIP – temporarily – per round it continues to alter the temperature). Once the creature stops actively altering the temperature, it will remain at that temperature until the duration of the preternatural power ends.

The creature can also use the power offensively to try and drown a character. When this is done, the character that is the victim of the attack suffers 1 round of drowning – as per the H+H rules.

Each round thereafter the victim may make a WIP save (Difficult the second and third rounds, standard on the fourth and fifth rounds and easy thereafter). If the character passes one of these saving throws the drowning attack ends immediately, each round they fail, they continue to suffer drowning effects. Whilst using the power in this offensive manner the creature is unable to do anything else without the Hydrokinesis use coming to an end.

The GM may come up with other creative uses of this ability, and should decide if they are possible.

Welcome to the new blog page for Gethsemane Games.

Welcome to the new blog page for Gethsemane Games.

Here you will find news and articles about and for our products. The blog will serve as a sort of online magazine, with short adventure ideas, new rules, articles about our games, news of upcoming products and occasional offers and freebies.

If you are not already familiar with Gethsemane Games, her is a little bit about us...

Gethsemane Games is a small press games company producing tabletop RPGs and Wargames as well as related fiction and even audio fiction. The company consists of just one full time member, me, Bryan F Irving. I write most of our games and do the layout. For some projects I am joined by fellow writer M R McGowan.

Our lines include Fantasy, Horror and Post Apocalyptic SF and is expanding all the time. I also release regular GMs supplements like the GMs map's range.

You can find the Gethsemane Games Website at http://gethsemanegames.wixsite.com/gethsemanegames

If you would like to get in touch drop me an email at gethsemanegames@gmail.com