Dino-Pirates of Ninja Island

In the words of the founding genius, JPL:

Ninjas, pirates, and dinosaurs. A fantasy Asia, filled with warring island nations. Samurai mounted on domesticated raptors. Bigger dinosaurs hunted by quasi-Polynesian tribesmen. Dueling factions of shadow warriors. Privateers and bucaneers battling the servants of the Imperial Navy. Fallen kingdoms deep in forgotten jungles. And I call it...

DINOPIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND!

Scratch Factory is your as-official-as-this-sort-of-thing-allows home for all things DINO-PIRATE. The first product, an introductory adventure (complete with sample PCs, all ready to go) has already been released: THE SLAVE QUEEN OF THE RUINED CITY. This adventure showcases many of the key themes and ideas of this fantastic pulp adventure setting, including all the basics of any DINO-PIRATES adventure:

  • Dinosaurs
  • Pirates
  • Ninjas
  • Monkeys
  • Robots

It's all there, we promise! And we assure all customers that we will hold to this list of essential ingredients, and that every DINO-PIRATES adventure ever published by us will include every single one. That's a promise, kids, and you don't get many of those you can count on in this world.

 

Latest Notes

Some commentary on gaming we've posted recently:

It's All About Philosophy

DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND is about more than savage beasts, cruel enemies and wild adventure! It's also about PHILOSOPHY!

The parent system of DPoNI, True20, was designed to allow GMs to tailor their campaign's mechanics to their own tastes, so that nearly any genre or subject could be modelled. I've always loved these kinds of systems, going back to Fantasy Hero way back in the 1980's. I knew the style of story I wanted to be part of, and endlessly tweaked rules and especially magic systems to conjure forth exactly the feel I wanted.

So True20 provides the raw material, unformed, for us to build on. It also gives us organizing principles -- philosophies -- with which we can distinguish one type of magic from another. So we can have terrifying Imperial Sorcery, powered by secret incantations and sheer will, or we can have island shaman who speak to the spirits of nature to call fury down upon their enemies. A philosophy is pretty easy to define in True20: it has "canonical" powers, "barred" powers, some drawbacks and prerequisites. Here's a quick run-through of the philosophies provided in DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND.

Imperial Sorcery


As we say: "Imperial sorcery is the fearsome power used by the eunuch sorcerers, formerly at the behest of the Emperor but now for their own foul desires. Ordinarily, this sorcery is only taught within the Empire itself, and then only to trusted servants of the eunuch lords."

Imperial Sorcery is the only philosophy that provides much in the way of direct offensive power -- Elemental Blast, Pain and Drain Vitality all make these sorcerers effective in combat -- but it is riskier, with a higher Fatigue save and an obvious display associated with the power's use. Imperial Sorcerers are never subtle foes, but they need backup if they're going to survive. Most such sorcerers surround themselves with minions who will never hesitate to leap in front of onrushing heroes (remember that in DPoNI, minions can automatically interpose themselves. Handy, that).

Inspiration: This magic is based on a lot of the bad-guy sorcery seen in Hong Kong films like Dragon Inn and Swordsman II. Whenever Brigitte Lin starts waving her arms around and looking fierce, somebody's about to have a boatload of Imperial Sorcery dropped on them.

Heavenly Medicine


"Originating in the Empire, but now found throughout the islands, this set of powers revolves around restoring balances in essential energies, or taking advantage of imbalances. Exorcising ghosts, curing diseases and repelling evil spirits are just some of the heroic practices of this art."

More supportive and less offensive than Imperial Sorcery, Heavenly Medicine allows practitioners to restore health and even life, to keep evil at bay and to speak with spirits, but it requires a certain amount of paraphernalia and mumbo-jumbo to pull off properly. Practitioners are not at their best in rough-and-tumble action, but when they have time to assemble their materials and direct their energies. They can provide their allies with potent benefits.

Inspiration: Go rent Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind. Watch it several times. Also check out Mr. Vampire. This stuff is awesome.

Ninja Mentalism


"Amongst the ninja, many clans develop the mental powers of their adepts, allowing them to cloud the minds of others, or to focus their own concentration so sharply that they can achieve supernatural states of alertness or ability."

It's true; ninja can disappear at will, walk through walls, and lead their enemies into traps. They do this with the power of concentration -- their minds rigorously focused and their thoughts resolutely trained. These powers allow for the development of ninja characters who can perform feats of superhuman athleticism, or those who draw a veil across the minds of their enemies. Illusion, trickery and strength of will are the tools of the ninja.

Inspiration: Mostly Frank Miller's Elektra: Assassin, actually. Possibly the greatest comic book of all time, you know. Also a zillion ninja movies.

Shamanism


"Common on many of the islands, this form of magic depends on a close relationship with natural forces and spirits, as well as a fierce will to order external powers. Many tribes honour and revere their shamans, but it is also common for those with strange powers to be hounded from their communities and persecuted."

Control animals and the forces of nature (or "communing with" if you prefer the hippy version), shamans are capable of awesome feats. Especially in their preferred setting -- for the primary drawback of shamanism is the dependence on a particular location or type of terrain. Shaman characters must take the Power Focus feat, and limit their ability thereby. But with powers like Beast Link and Weather Shaping, they can definitely have an impact anywhere.

Inspiration: Storm from the X-Men, Beastmaster, heck, even Doctor Dolittle I guess. Those three would make a pretty fun dinner party, I think.


So there's a quick run-down of the philosophies available in DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND. Of course if a player has a concept that doesn't fit any of these, feel free to make up more -- or just let the player select powers and build a character without any philosophy at all.

Hot-Rodding the Hot-Rods

So quite some time ago I talked about adapting my Hot Pursuit chase rules for DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND. Figured now was as good a time as any to talk about how that went, and the hot-rod approach I ultimately ended up with.

The original Hot Pursuit was reasonably thorough piece of work, including as it did a couple of dozen "maneuvers" chase participants could select from during the action. One of the problems I found with this approach was that my players were not conversant with those maneuvers, and so I had to do a great deal of hand-holding to get their actions sorted out.

Most times I would get them to describe to me what they WANTED to accomplish, and then I'd apply the appropriate maneuver to resolve the attempt.

Which is fine, and worked great. But it wasn't quite right for DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND. I needed something more stripped down. More hot-rodded.

DPoNI is already a pretty hot-rodded sort of game, with a lot of the fancy, comfort-ride-inducing features sawn off, and a number of scary-if-you-don't-know-what-you're-doing sort of attentuations and optimizations added on. It's not necessarily a "starter" game. A DM who doesn't know how to control a game could get kind of overwhelmed by things like the Stunt rules, or Conviction, if they aren't careful. Sort of like stomping on the gas on a customized Camaro -- SOMETHING's going to happen, but not everyone is going to enjoy the experience.

So how to build exciting chases into a game like this?

The first thing I did was strip things down. The big list of maneuvers that never got looked at except by the DM? That had to go. In its place, I included the already-tested Stunts concept. The original Hot Pursuit rules were designed so that a wide array of skills could be useful during a chase. With the Stunt rules in DPoNI, skills were already useful at any time, so that took care of that.

Unexpected obstacles are a big part of any chase, so I kept the Obstacle Check system, but instead of detailing each possible type of obstacle (which in Hot Pursuit determines the kinds of maneuvers that will be effective), DPoNI leaves the nature of the obstacle entirely up to the DM.

Finally, I threw out all the opposed checks that Hot Pursuit operated on. Opposed checks have had a tough ride of late, but at least in chases, I knew a static DC was a better choice. Making it an ability check (Strength, by default) made sure that even at high levels, chases remain exciting.

Overall, the DPoNI chase rules retain the fluid excitement of Hot Pursuit, but by stripping out the power steering and comfortable shock absorbers, they transmit the power of the narrative directly to the DM and the players.

"Hot-Rod" rules demand more from the people using them -- more imagination and more judgement. I guess that's why I like them.

Photo: Joe Zlomeck.

Creating "That Feel"

A mountain fastness by Claudio...In one of my earliest campaigns (Hi Glenn!) my co-DM and I decided to send our party to an "alternate universe".

Hey, it seemed like a pretty cool idea in 1985.

Anyway, we'd run a few sessions in this new world when Glenn came to me and said, "This isn't working."

"What?" I said, "It's going great. They're all after the paintings, and we've got this whole dungeon worked out..."

"No, no. That stuff's all fine. It's the universe. It's no good."

I was mystified.

"It's not DIFFERENT. They're in ANOTHER UNIVERSE, but it just feels like the same old same old. Same monsters. Same weapons. Same everything. We have to make it different."

We did a bunch of stuff: we changed the technology so that the primary weapon types were different, we drew a new map with new place names and we changed a bit of the window-dressing around magic. We threw out all the existing monsters -- and Glenn figured out we could use the same statistics for a critter but completely change its description, so the players would have no idea what they were fighting.

But the best thing we did was we changed the names.

It was not entirely successful, since we hadn't put much thought into the names of the "original" universe, so it was the usual fantasy mish-mash of Latin-sounding, Anglo-Saxon stuff with lots of vowels for the elves. And lots of "K"s for the dwarves.

But for this world, we made up naming conventions for the different places. Inspired by a Dragon article, I came up with phoneme collections for the various locales, so that Osgipur names would be mostly generated from "ur"s, and "gip"s and whatnot, while Maeloch names had "och"s and so on. It sounds goofy, but at the time it really helped us deliver the idea that this place was all new to our heroes.

Creating a world is one of the things I find most exciting and rewarding about being a DM. You want to instill a sense of wonder in your players, but it's so easy to get caught up in grinding hit points, positioning and buffs and all that tactical stuff, that the "window-dressing" can get given pretty short shrift. Which in small doses isn't such a bad thing; you don't want to interrupt every action in combat with a discussion of how unusual the architecture is around here. But if too many sessions go by without that sort of ambience or flavour, your game starts to lose the unique spark that got your players excited in the first place.

I've always found names to be far and away the most useful way to establish the sort of atmosphere I want. Like Robert E. Howard, I make use of existing cultural associations to evoke particular ideas in my players. My scheming manipulators had Italian-sounding names while the imperialistic worshippers of a god-king sounded Egyptian. And I mix it up; my nomadic horse tribes used Aztec names. When running a campaign, one of my most trusted tools is a few pages of names for all my cultures, so that if I have to come up with an NPC on the fly, they'll have a name consistent with their origin.

You can go too far with this sort of thing, of course, and see your setting descend into mere cartoonishness, but I've always found that distinctive naming conventions the single best way to make my campaigns stand out. Probably why I still have this soft spot for Exalted, even after some very painful efforts to actually play it. Some cool-ass names in Exalted.

In the "Wish I'd Thought Of It" Category...

It's just such a good idea. DMs are a persnickety lot, picking and choosing from the entire history of fantasy, sci-fi, and, uh, history. No DM just runs a campaign the way it's "supposed" to be run, and all the exceptions, additions, house-rules, hand-waves and addendum could never be anticipated or tracked by anyone.

But I never knew a DM who couldn't use a little help staying organized.

Which is where the very clever folks over at Obsidian Portal have staked their turf. Over at the "OP" (as those of us in the know like to call it (actually, I just made that up)), you can sign up, create your own campaign site, and BOOM -- you've got a site complete with adventure log, forums, a place to keep maps and all that good stuff. It's seriously really cool.

Looks like a great place to run a PbP campaign, but even for face-to-face games this is gonna be really useful. I mean, basically it's just a wiki with a few bells and whistles, but the bells are well-thought-out and the whistles carefully placed.

And, by the way, they also support DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND as a game system.
Powered by Feed Informer