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Here be Dragons is a roleplaying game of adventuring into the darkest corners of the world, shooting strange creatures and avoiding the jealousy of your colleagues. What’s hit is history, what’s missed is mystery.

Here be Dragons!

What’s hit is history.

What’s missed is mystery.

A roleplaying game of adventuring in the uncharted areas of the world , shooting exotic creatures and giving in to petty jealousies.

A 24 hour RPG for the November Ronnies 25

Using the words ‘DRAGON’ and ‘GUN’

By Iain McAllister

For Melinda

Introduction

Ah so you have chosen to cast your eye across this fine periodical have you. Excellent choice old boy, though I must warn you. The tales within are not for the faint hearted for this is a journal full of daring do, tragic loss and lucky escapes. Of men and women willing to go to the very extremes of society in order to further that they most strongly believe in ‘Science’. You may think they sound like noble souls, no? Be careful, for even those who are willing to sacrifice much to journey deep into the darkest areas of the world succumb to human weakness, a desire to be the best, to bring back the most exciting specimen, to be recognised for the explorers they truly are. And they will do anything to ensure that they do!

What is this then?

The tome you hold in your hands is a game, but not like your conventional board or card games you will be use to playing. In this game you and a group of your friends, who we will refer to as players, sit round a table and pretend to be imaginary people called characters, or player characters (PCs). These characters you portray react to situations and people described to them by one of the players, who acts as a Games Master, essentially controlling the world the PCs interact with rather than just controlling a PC. Every Role Playing Game, RPG, has different objectives for the PCs to perform, be it rescuing damsels in distress from fiery castles, or saving the world from scheming villains.

What do I do in this game?

In ‘Here be Dragons’ the player characters, who we will call Explorers from here on in, journey into the darkest areas of the world, the unexplored areas, the areas where ‘here be dragons’ might be written on a map, to find, shoot and catalogue all manner of strange beasts, birds and insects. The dragons of the title are not literal dragons, but the metaphorical dragons of sailor’s tales, myth and legend. Along the way they will overcome obstacles described to them by the Guide, the Games Master mentioned above, as well as their seething jealousy of the other players and their desire to be the best and come out on top no matter what. The game is set in and around 185 – 186, the period of Darwin and Wallace and the beginning of the theory of evolution.

In Stalin’s personal chambers, a troupe of actors are forced to improvise a Russian fairy tale while the courtiers play their game of life and death. A Ronnies entry using ‘dragon’ and ‘Soviet’ and based on the work of Vladimir Propp.
The game text you are currently reading is not the end product of a design process. It is merely an alpha version, which means that it will have to be tested and developed further before it reaches its final form.

Stalin?s story is my entry for the November 25 Ronnies. This is a roleplaying game design competition held by Ron Edwards, in which the participants have exactly 24 hours to create a game text. Every word in this document has been written within the space of 24 hours ? which explains why it has not been polished and thoroughly tested.

In addition to writing the game within 24 hours, the participant also has to use two terms from a list of four terms as central concepts in his game. For the November 25 Ronnies, the terms were: dragon, gun, mud and Soviet. Stalin?s Story has been based on dragon and Soviet. The other two terms may not be central to the experience of play at all; guns and mud, therefore, should play no role in the game and the designer is supposed to actively exclude them.

Have fun reading the game. And, who knows, have fun playing it!

It is a game about being Deleted by God and the struggle to stop from fading into nothing. It is an entry for the November Ronnies using the words Mud and Gun. It is incomplete, only about 5 hours total work before life stopped me from finishing it. I’m submitting what got done.

Here is how it starts. One normal day. Maybe you were at work, or school, or maybe still in bed. The next thing you know you cut yourself, or your nose starts to bleed, but there is no blood like blood that you have seen in the past. There is mud. Rather a reddish brown mud.

You freak out, and go to the doctor. The doctor isn’t very helpful. Not because he thinks its normal or he doesn’t know what is wrong with you, but because he doesn’t even see you. You sit there waiting, holding your mud in, but the nurse keeps forgetting about you. Eventually you can’t take it anymore and you leave, possibly even telling them what you think of their ‘service’. They look at you like they were seeing you for the first time. Maybe they even call the police on you.

Defeated you end up at home, or jail or where ever. Maybe you cry yourself to sleep, holding a rag over that muddy nose. Maybe just maybe you sit staring at the T.V. Or making calls to your friends and family wondering what has happened to you. They don’t seem to answer the phone, and when they do they quickly hang up to deal with other things in their lives.

Then late at night. Past midnight at least. There is a darkness on your floor where it meets the wall. A darkness like a snake, that moves toward the corners where the walls come together in a crooked angle. From that angle, that off corner, is born the Devil, wearing a shit eating grin, and looking hungry. He tells you all the things you don’t understand, and laughs when you ask him his name. He tells you that God has deleted you, and that soon you will be no more, unless you fight. That he is leaving something for you. Under the bed, or maybe in the closet. A gift, ?to help?, he says. He says that there are others like you, that they too are looking for a way out of their fate, that maybe you could find them.

After he is gone, you don’t remember when he left. You denied it for awhile. Told yourself that he never was real. That you just had a bad day. So you go to bed again. Then you get curious. What if it wasn’t a bad day? What if the Devil is real? Slowly you get out of bed, and lift the covers to reveal underneath it. There it is. Something you know was not there before tonight. Something that only the Devil would of left for you. A gun.

This is my 24 hours RPG entry for the Ronnies of November. The lay out is a bit messed up because I don’t have a PDF converter myself. Keywords are Mud and Soviet. Players are ministers, trying to achieve the highest place possible: the presidential seat. Who will succeed?

Introduction: a struggle for power

Moscow, 19xx

Welcome, comrades. You are chosen by the people of the Soviet Republic to bring your country the best in your respective Ministries. You are encouraged to make sure of it that your fellow comrades will do their utmost best to ensure the success of the Soviet Republic. It is quite possible you will have some difficulties during your period. Don?t let this get you stranded. Will you keep your good name in the process? Or are you disgusted by the public and the Council of Ministers? I hope you know we cannot use anymore mistakes now.

I hope my faith in you isn?t misplaced.

Yours,

xxxxx

President of the Soviet Republic

Players have made it in some of the important seats in the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Republic. However, except for the President (whom is also the chairman of the Council of Ministers), they want to get an even better position. With better status, they will have the possibility to take on more difficult problems, giving them even more influence. And of course, there is the KGB. You don?t want to upset them, do you? There could be the possibility that you will get assassinated by the silent blade of the KGB.

Elseworld has always existed the same way, the creative nurturing force of Gaia balanced out by the magical might of The Dragon. But now a new paradigm in Elseworld is coming to the fore, a new balance for nature based on order and rationality – The Gun. Reason leaves no room for magic and myth confounds rationality. Only one can survive. The Dragon or The Gun.

This role-playing game concerns itself with one of the universal themes in mythology, literature and human thought. The conflict between chaos and order.

In this case chaos relates to capricious magic and myth – The Dragon.

Order is represented by science and cold hard reason – The Gun.

The game is set in Elsewhere, a fantasy realm where the fate of Elseworld is about to be determined.

Elseworld has always existed the same way, the creative nurturing force of Gaia balanced out by the magical might of The Dragon.

But now a new paradigm in Elseworld is coming to the fore, a new balance for nature based on order and rationality – The Gun.

In The Long Patrol, you play members of a platoon of solders from a western nation occupying a foreign country during the 2th century. You could use this system to tell stories about America in World War II, or Vietnam, or France’s occupation of Algeria. In the course of a routine patrol, the players will face challenges to their lives, their sanity, and their very humanity. Will the stress and horror of war bring your platoon together or tear it apart? Who will live and die on the long patrol?

This game is heavily influenced by Clinton R. Nixon?s The Shadow of Yesterday, from values, which are keys in Shadow, to the conflict resolution system.

This games themes are heavily influenced by Tim O?Brian?s The Things They Carried, especially the idea of having sanity checks in a war game.

This game is an entrant for the November 25 Ronnies, using the key words gun and mud. The mud in this game is represented by the moral murk and quagmire the characters face.

October’s Shadows is an RPG where players portray characters live in an aristocratic mansion in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. Each character is defined by their political affiliations and social class in additional to more traditional RPG attributes. These facts are generally expected to be the most crucial facets of their stories.

“How can you make a revolution without executions?”
-an outraged Lenin in October on hearing that the Soviet had abolished the death penalty.

In October 1918, Russia was in a fervor of famine, war and revolution. Throughout the month the outcome of events was fragile and uncertain, a thousand turning points passing every day.

At the end of that month the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government, and began the chain of events that led to the Soviet Union. At first, their grip on power was tenuous, dependent on the consent of a hundred different organizations, but little by little power was concentrated, first in the soviets, then in the Party, and finally in the iron grip of a supreme leader.

But at the same time there was nothing inevitable about any of this. It was simply the result of those turning points and the ruthlessness of those Bolsheviks in perceiving and seizing them.

This game begins with those events, throwing the characters together in an aristocratic mansion in the heart of Moscow. Their struggles are the struggles of Russia?s people; their ideologies are proxies for the ideologies of the people. The characters struggle for power, influence and ideology as events pressure them to take a stand on events as they unfold. They may not affect its course, but the judgment of the revolution lies in their hands.

White Dragon or Bourgeois Imperialist Reptile of Counter-Revolutionary Hue and Instinct A “dragon”, “Soviet” entry for the November ‘5 Ronnies. White Dragon is about drinking your neighbours under the table, betraying them before they sell you out, revenging the purges of the past, blackmailing favours and bribing Party officials, about looking out for the first among equals, and above all, about not getting eaten by the white dragon.

Labor Hero of the collective farm, persevere! Your endeavour is just, and the rewards benefit not only yourself, not only your family, not only your cadre and your village, not only your Soviet, but all mankind, for it is your Labour that spreads revolution throughout the world. Join with the NKVD in purging the disloyal from the Party! Cast aside your superstitions! The modern era of the socialist workers paradise has rendered such anachronism obsolete, so march gladly with your comrades into an enlightened age. Denounce class traitors, kulaks and bourgeois thinkers: purging the old is necessary for new growth. There is no place in the Five Year Plan for the dragons of counter-revolution!

In White Dragon, you play Soviet farmers in a 193s village farming community that has endured the rigours of collectivization. Most of the community?s families were decimated in the process, dozens of your friends, neighbours and family members consigned to the Gulag.

What makes your village different from thousands of other productive little collectives is Belosnezhnyi, the White Dragon, a fabulously beautiful, wise, cruel and hungry serpent that periodically wakes from its gargantuan slumbers deep beneath the hills nearby, and demands food in return for bountiful harvests. His diet is quite particular: one adult, no more, no less. Besides the agricultural blessing, Belosnezhnyi?s influence has had an effect on many of the families in your village, who walk closer to the unseen, and can perform what can only be called magic.

It is best not to demonstrate your uncanny powers in public, though. When the over-wealthy of your village left for the labour camps, they were replaced by whole families of loyal agricultural workers, Party members all. The eyes of the Party are everywhere, and the local Party Chairman ? a ?socially conscious? industrial worker ? can summon the attention of the dreaded People?s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD. Nobody wants that, for a visit from the NKVD usually means only one thing: someone?s going to the corrective labour camps.

White Dragon is about drinking your neighbours under the table, betraying them before they sell you out, revenging the purges of the past, blackmailing favours and bribing Party officials, about looking out for the first among equals, and above all, about not

Travel the venomous swamps of the Mud Planet. Link your mind with the mind of the savage beast, master the Dragon and become a Lancer, sworn to protect your people in these times of chaos. But beware: The bond is not a one way street, and the Dragon’s instincts and urges are of violent power.

Scundea, the Mud Planet, is a foul place. Treacherous swamps and pools of rotting water stretch far and wide under a sick yellowish sun.

The Dragons that roam the overcast skies are hideous creatures of terrible might and cruel cunning.

But those few Gifted who dare touch the predator?s mind, those chosen champions that dare mount and master the Dragon, are bearers of hope to a people abandoned by civilization long ago.

The Lancers, as they are called, must not falter in their discipline and devotion, for the Dragon?s urges and instincts are of violent power.

Those who fail become beasts themselves, Savages that dwell in the wild and have forgotten all about virtue and reason.

Yet in the linking of souls, the stirring of the beast inside the man, lies great power and terrible temptation to behold.

Can you handle the mind of a Dragon?

The world of Contagion is frightening, yet familiar. To many people, the world is no different than our own. The laws are the same, the societies are the same, and the same tragedies and triumphs affect most people. Of course, most people are clueless about the true nature of the world around them. Since the beginning of time a War has raged in the shadows. The forces of Heaven and Hell fight over the souls of man. Good and evil lash out at one another beneath a thin cover of secrecy and misdirection: a cover that grows thinner as mankind advances technologically and the world becomes smaller. Men and women from all walks of life are dragged unwittingly into this conflict.

These are their stories.

Contagion: War Stories is a short fiction anthology from Aegis Studios. This anthology contains thirteen stories of horror and strife, written by some of today s newest up and coming authors. Based on the Contagion roleplaying game, this anthology contains tales of the soldiers, bystanders, and victims of the War between Heaven and Hell.

Contagion: War Stories features masterfully executed tales by Anthony Andorra, Chris Delloiacono, C.T Gerow, MaGnUs, Kenneth Mack, Royal McGraw, Vernon Bo McGuffee II, Luke Pierce, Christopher J Pisano & Brian Koscienski, Cathleen Stark, ssg, and Contagion developer Travis Legge.

Contagion: War Stories features interior art by Alex Rodriguez, Vernon Bo McGuffee II, and Travis Legge.

Coming November 3th, 2005. 2 pages. Cover Price: $1.99 plus shipping and handling

To commemorate this earth-shattering news, we have posted a free sample chapter from War Stories on our yahoo group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Contagionwarriors All you need to do is join up, and you can download this FULL chapter for free!

Tell your friends, Contagion: War Stories is coming soon!

http://www.aegisstudios.net