(Image is ‘Very Well, Alone’ by David Low)
Sometimes, you’re graced with a player who just shows up, consistently, every time, with a great character, a great concept, a willingness to get kicked in the teeth, a desire to get the dice rolling.
If you have one of these, let me know, because it sounds pretty great.
In November, Modiphus did a black Friday sale that came with 50% off all hardbacks.[1] I had been eying up the Black Sun Exarch edition of Achtung! Cthulhu! For a while now, at least since I picked up the humble bundle for Modiphus’s 2d20 system a few months earlier. The chatter in the places I frequent is that A!C is the best of the iterations of 2d20 now that Conan is discontinued, in terms of attention to detail; several people mentioned that Fallout’s editing leave a lot to be desired.[2]
I’ve only played the 2d20 system a little bit, in an online game of the (now defunct) Conan RPG. I thought it was good, very detailed, but some of that detail while allowing for a suitable cut and thrust of sword play sometimes bogging down a little bit when not everyone is on the same page. It is a pretty crunchy system – not full GURPs, but definitely able to give D&D a run for its money at its most complex. However, I think it has a clearer vision, at a system level, of the experience it is trying to bring; a mid-to-high complexity pulp heroic system.[3]
That is just a long lead in to talk about my next Irregular conversion: Rho(nan). Like all the Irregulars, Rhonan has had seen several variations at the time. When doing a conversion, it’s important not to focus on exact details, but rather try and capture the spirit of the thing, to translate it into the new context, so the exact challenges are made sense of in that new space, and make sense of that new space.
Rho’s original incarnation,[4] in Masks, was a Nova somewhere between Superman, Cable, and Hancock; possessed of the power to fight the sun, wracked by indecision that his colossal power caused him. He’s also appeared in Monster of the Week, an agent of the Revenant Advice Bureau sent in first to clear up the Plymouth office, then again to represent the UK in the EEC in Switzerland and facing down the Black Spider; and also in a playtest of Avatar RPG, as the spoiled child of very wealthy Earth kingdom parents and a dabbler in alchemy. They all have in common an ability to manipulate and change stats, vast power governed only by their conscience – Rho the Nova literal matter control, Agent Rho the social and political fabric of having government at his back, Rho the Successor through changing the spiritual relations through chemistry.
So, to be Rho, this character needs to have some sort of control, either through a power or ability, that allows him to affect the environment in which he and the other characters are operating in – either through literal transformations or through figurative actions that alter the relationship between spaces and events.[5] This power should be tremendous but should not be unambiguous; in all incarnations, Rho’s power has been contingent and has placed himself or others in social, physical, or spiritual peril.
A!C is a game of pulp action and heroism taking place in an alternate World War 2[6] where the Axis had gained the power of the Cthulhu mythos. This Rho will be some form of operative in this conflict. There’s an obvious way in which his questionable powers can and will be manifest.
The three games Rho was played in were all variations on Powered by the Apocalypse, and A!C is, at least in execution, very different from those games, with narrative elements supplementing a traditional framework.[7] I had a very clear idea of how I was going to make Rho in A!C but as I read the character creation chapter I saw that A!C has enough flexibility and breadth to allow multiple ways to demonstrate Rho in the system. It also has the option for randomized character generation, which I didn’t expect. So, I’m putting aside those initial ideas and will be trusting the dice for the most part.
Let’s flip to page 44, Chapter 5: Heroes are forged.
We begin with starting attributes. A!C PCs have six attributes: Agility, Brawn, Coordination, Insight, Reason, and Will.[8] Page 46 explains what each Attribute is, both in the fiction and the specific applications in the mechanics: a Brawny character will hit hard and be healthy, while someone Insightful will be a good shot and have some capability with spells.[9] Skills all start at 0 and can go as high as 5, and are explained from page 48 to 50. Attributes start at 6 and can go as high as 12, and are combined with Skills to determine the target number of checks. Focuses are also explained, which are subsets within Skills that characters can specialize in.[10] 2d20 is a roll under system, so 1s are good and 20s are bad. A PCs Attributes and Skills are, at least when starting out, increased by Archetype, Background, and ‘Characteristic.’ You don’t have any ‘free points’ to spend.
To select Rhonan’s Archetype, I flip to page 52. Archetypes start on page 54 but this also has a d20 table I can roll on.[11] My original idea was an Occultist and, unbelievably, I roll a 16, or smack in the middle of the Occultist range. So it looks like the dice gods know what is going on. The Occultist Archetype is on page 60.
As an Occultist, Rho gets +1 Brawn, +2 Will and either +2 Insight and +1 Reason or +1 Insight and +2 Reason. I’ll go with the higher Insight.
For Skills he gets Observation +1, Persuasion +2, Resilience +2, Stealth +1, and either Academia +2 and Survival +1 or Survival +2 and Academia +1. I think I’m going to go with the high Academia; Rho isn’t the image of the naturally gifted student, but he’s applied himself.
I get any 2 focuses from Academia, Persuasion, Resilience, and Survival.
Two things about this: first of all, the example in the book is really helpful, as it makes clear that you get 2 Focuses in total, not two from each Skill.
Second, I was going to explain what a Focus does. 2d20 is a roll under dice pool system. Characters roll a number of d20s when they attempt a task. The tasks target number is determined by the relevant Attribute plus the Relevant skill, and the difficulty of the task determines how many successes they need to achieve the task; not, as in other systems, a modifier to the die roll. Characters want to roll low, as a ‘1’ on the d20 is a critical, achieving two successes. More successes generate Momentum, which can be used to achieve better results on the test, or saved to be used as bonus dice on future tests.
A Focus changes the critical number. When a character has a Focus in the Skill they are testing against, the Critical number is instead equal to or lower than their Skill. So, if for example, Rho has a Focus in Occultism, with his Academia of 2, he will gain 2 successes if he rolls a 2 or less on the d20. Nice to have.
Focuses are detailed under the relevant Skill between pages 48 and 50. It doesn’t say whether you need to have a Skill to have a Focus in it, but of course the point of a Focus is tied to the Skill, so it would be pointless not to have one. Also, with that in mind, any Skill at 1 is probably not worth investing a Focus in – so for Rho at this point, Observation, Stealth and Survival.
Yes, Rho will have a focus in Occultism. I am also going to select Science; this Rho is synthesizing what I can from all iterations, so Rho is interested in the interplay of both the natural and paranatural forces. Perhaps this Rho has had some dealings with Nachtwolfe, the eldritch scientists of the Axis.
Rho also gets a single Talent from the three presented with the Occultist: Occult Scholar, Summoner, and A Price to Pay. Each of these will make Rho a spellcaster of some description. While I’ve invested in Academia, I think A Price to Pay better draws on the themes that Rho previously embodies, what price power?
A Price to Pay means that Rho can, when he successfully casts a spell, gain 2 bonus Momentum to improve the spell – it cannot be saved. This increases the spells cost by +2 Challenge die[12], and the Cost is in physical rather than mental stress. Live fast, die young.
This also makes Rho a spellcaster, which is detailed in Chapter 9. I may as well skip ahead now to page 139. There are three ways characters can learn magic in A!C: a Traditional method, restricting themselves to a single discipline of magic and use Insight; a Researcher, who figured it out themselves and use Reason; or Dabblers, who… figure it out for themselves, are a bit worse than Researchers, and use Will. While I think Dabblers are thematically more interesting, there is no compelling reason to be a Dabbler when you have the option to be a Researcher.
I am going to zig a little back to original flavour Rho and go with Traditional.[13] I’m also going to err a bit from the lore of A!C and have him select as his Tradition the psychic and ESP origin. In A!C, this is the US tradition, as they don’t have the body of tradition that European magics do… which is certainly something they wrote in the book. Anyway, I want Rho to melt things with his brain. He learns 3 spells: Attenuation, allowing him to strip otherworldly entities of their protections; Remote Viewing, so Rho gets a sight beyond sight; and Spontaneous Combustion, to which lets Rho set people or things on fire. I’ve picked these three to get the spirit of what Rho could do in Masks; his ability to change gribbly beasts and set things on fire are a nod to the matter manipulation, moving something solid to something less so or exciting the molecules, and Remote Viewing is a nod to the molecular awareness that that ability granted him.
As a Traditionalist, he will test with Insight+ the skill tied to the spell. His Insight will also grant bonus Power dice.
Rho also gets a set of ritual tools and a contact: an occultist or mystic.
Ritual Tools are a kit. Kits are on page 110, Ritual Tools specifically on 112. Kits come with Resources which are a ‘free’ way to get Momentum for specific types of tests. In the case of Ritual Tools, Rho can get up to 3 Momentum for ritual casting, at which point the kit is exhausted. Rho doesn’t know any Rituals and, because he is a Traditional spellcaster, can only do Psychic Rituals, of which there are none in the book.[14]
Contacts are detailed on a sidebar on page 53, and players are supposed to work with the GM to come up with what they are like. I’m going to jot down that Rho has an old friend from before the war, from some time spent in Paris, a tarot reader and cardsharp by the name of Maverick. He’s a smuggler and specialist in black books.
Step 3: Nationality. This has very minimal impact on stats but does establish a Truth about the character, their native language. Truths are a narrative element of A!C, explained on page 21, that affect people, places, things. They are there to allow a mechanical element to be introduced. The Truth for nationality isn’t major – it just sets up that you can (or cannot) understand or be understood by specific people but another Truth might be, for example, ‘Afraid of Snakes’ which might make actions in or around or involving snakes one step more difficult, or impossible, if they interact with another Truth such as ‘Snakes on this Plane’. It’s a nice little widget.
On page 62 there are two tables for Nationality, one Common, one Expanded. The Common nationality has a d20 alongside the nationalities, the Expanded does not; a reasonable enough design decision.
In the two versions of Rho that exist on a parallel Earth, he is Scottish, so British in A!C. I love to roll the dice, so we’ll see what comes up: 19. This Rho is Russian! Interesting. His first language is Russian. Any additional languages will only come if his Reason is high enough. It probably means his name is also not Rhonan, that’s just what he goes by now. Let’s go with Renat Orgil Isayev, and Rho is the sound of the first two initials.
Step 4 is Background: what you did before you went to war, effectively. Page 65 has another table. As Rho is already a psychic, the pressure is off to find a source of weird power. Let’s roll, for another 19: Rho’s background ‘Resistance’ is detailed on page 71. A Russian in 193x, especially one with an education and weird psychic powers, is in a sticky position, especially if they want to oppose tyrannical forces but feels quite right for Rho who, across dimensions, ends up implicated with dictators only to turn against them.
Rho gains the following Attributes: Agility +1, Co-ordination +1, Reason +2, Will +2.
He also gains the following Skills: Persuasion +1, Stealth +2, Tactics +1. He also gets a Focus in Stealth and one from any other skill. For Stealth I pick Camouflage, to allow Rho to manipulate the environment to hide things and people from sight. As his Persuasion is now 3, I am going to look there, at Negotiation. This isn’t just pure power-gaming, I want to bring in Rho the Agent, whose manipulations were moving bureaucratic factions in his favour.
Rho can pick a single Talent with the Stealth keyword. These are (the book helpfully tells me) on page 93: All the best hiding spots, Exploit Weakness, Face in the Crowd, Hit and Run, Like a Shadow, and Perfect Timing. The obvious choice to make a combat power house is Exploit Weakness, but I quite like Perfect Timing. This allows Rho, when making a Stealth test under time pressure, to purchase a bonus d20 for 0 cost. While not quite the same as turning lighter than air to fly, it does mean Rho can materialise at the 11th hour – and who knows, maybe there is a psychical element?
Finally, I can either pick one Truth for Rho: Confident Saboteur, Allied Émigré Agent, or Valiant Cell Leader. I could also make one up, so long as it referenced being a resistance fighter of some sort. Of these options, I like Allied Émigré Agent but depending on time, the USSR is not an Ally. I’m going to be spicy, and go with Trotskyist Defector. Rho has defected from the USSR, because the USSR has defected from him!
Rho also gets to pick from a piece of covert communications equipment, a saboteur’s kit, a weapon, or a contact with the Stealth keyword. Let’s have Rho be a bit of a people person, and get another contact. In honour of the comic book loving player, this contact is Natalia Belova, a Russian people smuggler. Natalia got Rho out of the USSR and they maintain friendly contact.
Step 5 is Rho’s Characteristic. Once again, on page 72, there is a table to roll on. I get a 13, ‘Raised by a Cult’ which is… ok, this was one of the other ways that Rho could have been a weirdo psychic. Now he’s double weird. I am going with what I roll, and this perhaps explains why Rho is the way he is and how he got to where he was going. Raised by a Cult is on page 75.
Rho’s attributes are increased by Brawn +1, Insight +1, and +1 to another of choice. At the moment, I could shore up a weakness or boost a strength. I like the idea of Rho as sharp but I think, to escape a mythos cult and then escape Stalinist Russia, that’s a determined young man, so I put the final +1 into Will.
His skills increase by Academia +1,[15] Resilience +1, Stealth +1, and +1 to any other skill. I’m going to pop it into Observation. Rho has a keen mind and pays attention. He’s most used to learning in a scholarly environment, but he doesn’t ignore the world around him.
Rho gains 1 Talent from the Stealth, Resilience, or Weird keywords. I’m going to go straight to Weird, and I am grabbing Mystical Power (page 96). This grants Rho the additional Truth Glimpsed What Mortals Should Not Know. Rho can, when casting a spell, increase its power by +2 Challenge Dice. However, if Rho does this each ally within Close range suffers 1 mental stress as they are exposed to the horrors/wonders Rho has glimpsed – probably that Rho is one of an infinite continuum of Rhos.
Finally, Rho gets the Truth Raised by a Cult (which I could personalise but not this time) and some cult effects – robes, talismans, and similar.
Step 6 is finishing touches, where we calculate attributes, skills. Rho should have 51 in Attributes, with none higher than 11, and Skills totalling 17, both of which he does.[16] Rho’s Reason of 9 grants him 1 additional language. While French might make a bit more sense, we’ll go with English.[17] Stress, which is effectively hit points or wounds, is calculated with the higher of Brawn or Will plus Resilience. Rho is actually a well-built lad with Brawn 8, good though not exceptional, but he has a Will of iron, so it’s 11 plus 3 for 14 Stress. He also has a Courage resistance of 2, thanks to his Will; any morale effect is reduced by 2 points.[18] He’s seen some shit out around the Urals that you would not believe.
Brawn, Insight, and Will enhance Rho’s melee, ranged, and magical damage respectively: no bonus for melee, +1d for ranged, and +2d for magical.[19] As a Traditionalist spellcaster, he starts with 2 Power and his Insight grants +1 to Power for his spells. This means, with 3 Power, Rho can bind all of his known spells. If Rho learns more spells, he will have to pick which ones he wants to prepare. The check to bind spells is difficulty 0 so Rho is assumed to succeed unless there’s other stress or action going on. If Rho is knocked out, all his spells become unbound.
Let’s put some of this together. Rho uses Spontaneous Combustion as an Attack[20]. His Insight plus is Resilience is 12, with no relevant Focus.[21] It is difficulty 1, so Rho has a better than 50% chance of pulling it off. By default, this spell inflicts Rho’s base power of 3d+1d Physical Stress. Thanks to his high Will, Rho increases this to 6d Physical Stress.[22] Rho can further boost this by invoking Mystical Power for an extra 2d Power, to do 8d physical Stress, though he will also Stress his party if he does this; and gain 2 Momentum if he invokes A Price to Pay, Rho could gain a further 2d to damage, for a 10d Stress to the enemy, or add the Piercing 2 Effect,[23] though this does mean Rho inflicts 6d physical stress to himself. Rho could, if he’s very lucky, inflict 20 physical stress[24] in one blast and turn a grizzly bear[25] into a grizzly feast. That’s not even considering the Persistent effect, inflicting 4 Stress per round per Effect rolled. However, Rho is only likely to want to do this once, as an unlucky roll on the Stress inflicted on him could almost bring him to his knees.
The last little bits for Rho are to determine his name, which I did way back in Step 3, his personality and appearance. Rho is a scruffy chap with a raggedy beard in a long coat. He probably smokes compulsively and is very wary of watchers seen and unseen. This is all drawing on original flavour Rho; perhaps in time he’ll go down the mad scientist or operator route, getting a lab coat or a haircut.
He can also select some personal belongings. A!C doesn’t deal in hard currency; while bribes are a thing in WW2, being agents of government agencies means that buying that shotgun doesn’t make sense. In practice, characters get given what they need to do the mission, no more and no less. There is an optional rule, which is a little less optional at character generation, where items have a restriction level, with higher restricted items only being available for more urgent, well provisioned missions. Starting characters can have either one item of Restriction 3, two items of Restriction 2, or three items of Restriction 1.
Rho is a guy who made it out of Russia at night in a trunk. I see him more as having a bunch of stuff rather than one great item, so I will go with three items. First of all, his coat I’m going to classify as leather armour; a bit of a stretch perhaps but a thick coat for the winters, reinforced on the sly, seems a good fit.
A!C is a game of seeing cosmic evil, confronting it, and shooting it in the face. It makes sense that Rho, along with his mental powers, has some way to defend himself. Keeping with the low profile, I’m going to avoid anything too big and flashy, picking the Concealed Pistol. It’s not a powerful monster killer but Rho can hide it on his person. It still makes a big bang. It is also usable in Close Quarters, meaning that if trouble starts up close, Rho can still bring his small-arm to bear. It does 3d Stress, which Rho’s insight increases to 4d.
Finally, so it’s not all tits and violence, I’m going to select an Analytical Tools kit for Rho. This means Rho can identify and test chemicals he encounters out in the field. In game mechanical terms, the kit allows him to gain up to 3 Momentum on Academia (Sciences) tests for chemical testing and the like. It’s not much, but it circles back to the idea of Rho as a man of both the supernatural and rational worlds.
Traditional games tend to give a lot of emphasis to combat[26] but Rho isn’t so great in a stand up fight; he can take punishment but when it comes to swinging punches or getting out of the way of them,[27] he’s better off avoiding them entirely. He is pretty good at Cthulhu style investigation and observation. A!C doesn’t have default Characteristic plus Stat configurations, though it does have common ones. Rho’s strength lie in the library, with his ability to get crits on a 3 or less when researching Occult or Scientific stuff. He’s not exceptional in the field; his skills and talents lend him to being a follower. However, he is a sneaky fellow and pretty good at talking to people, especially when it comes to quid pro quo. His main strength is his determination; anything that requires grit, Rho is best in class.
Rho (Renat Orgil Isayev)
Archetype: Occultist Nationality: Russian Background: Resistance
Characteristics: Agility 7; Brawn 8; Coordination 7; Insight 9; Reason 9; Will 11
Skills: Academia 3 (Occultism, Science); Observation 2; Persuasion 3 (Negotiations); Resilience 3; Stealth 4 (Camouflage); Survival 1; Tactics 1.
Stress: 14
Resistances: Physical 1 (heavy coat) Courage 2
Melee bonus – Ranged bonus +1d Magical bonus +2d
Concealed Pistol: Close range; 4d Stress; Close-quarters, hidden;
Talents: A price to pay (pg 60); Perfect timing (pg 93); Mystical Power (pg 96)
Spellcasting – Traditional (Psychic and ESP) – Insight + to cast
Power: 3 – Insight + Survival (Difficulty 0) to Bind
Known: Attenuation (Academia, Pg 150); Remote Viewing (Observation, pg 152); Spontaneous Combustion (Resilience, pg 152)
Contacts: Maverick, Parisian partisan and Taroist; Natalia Belova, Russian people smuggler.
Truths: First language Russian; Glimpsed What Mortals Should Not Know; Raised by a Cult; Born in the USSR; Second language English; Trotskyist Defector
Belongings: Analytical Tools; Concealed Pistol; Cultist trappings; Heavy winter coat (as leather armour); Ritual tools
[1] I love sales. It’s a weakness and a blindspot. If I’m in the super-market and something is £1 off £5, I’ll snatch it up. Going for sales like this, in an industry with thin margins like RPGs, is super selfish but mum raised me to grab a bargain.
[2] Which is a shame, as Fallout RPG is something I think I could get a lot of people to try.
[3] Also, as John Carter demonstrates, it can be stripped down a bit to a much more mid experience. Though I think that can mean a bit of a loss of depth – the build your own Talents in JC do the job mechanically but they miss the opportunity to embed little bits about the world and the game assumptions.
[4] There’s a secret, bonus origin to Rho in Savage Worlds that never saw the light of day.
[5] It is no surprise that Rho’s player loved the Warlord in 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons.
[6] The UK has a funny relationship to WW2, in that it, in my opinion, refigured the way Britain looked at and thought of itself in the world: plucky underdog defiant in the face of an overwhelming and foreign evil. My title page image for this entry is a very famous and misleading bit of propaganda cartoon published after the fall of Paris in 1940. Someone far cleverer than me has observed that this presentation of the British in possession of a globe-spanning Empire at the time of WW2 is, shall we see, a bit of a rich take. A!C is a bit more honest about this, noting that, for example, 3 million soldiers from the Indian subcontinent served in WW2 on multiple fronts.
[7] I would not argue that A!C is not narrative, because I don’t think any RPG is not narrative.
[8] So, something to note: there is no Attribute that corresponds to Charisma/Fellowship/People like me-ness. I think this is an interesting choice for a game set in WW2, which in popular culture is fixed with people aren’t exceptional except for their ‘just follow me-ness’ as, in the main, most war stories are. The game definitely has charm and leadership (in the Persuasion and Tactics Skills and Talents or some combination thereof). I think this is an interesting design choice; in A!C, leadership and being the centre of attention like that is a spicy something extra above and beyond your native talents.
A point I come to again and again in games is that attributes are best understood as the game communicating with you what you are expected to do. Traditional games like A!C (and D&D and WFRP) are sometimes a bit obfuscatory about this, with an implication that these are abilities that correspond to realities in the games – Strength is how strong you are. I think a more helpful way for the purposes of game play is to think of these as just game mechanic tools. Strength is actually how good you are at things that Strength is good for, no more and no less.
[9] I think the attributed are intentionally similar but not the same as d20 standards. Overall, they do look to have a more even application than, for example, Dexterity in D&D being the best stat, and Constitution being indispensable.
With that said, Brawn could be a bit of an all-in stat, as it gives you capability and damage in Melee, health and damage resistance. For shooting, you need a good Coordination and Insight, magic likewise needs two abilities. It’s worth keeping in mind two things: first of all, Brawn isn’t so applicable to other arenas (thought, point 8 above, I think leading your troops over the top would be Brawn) and getting best use out of Brawn always puts you in danger; in A!C you are bringing a knife to a gunfight.
[10] I will explain these later.
[11] As I mentioned above, I had an idea in mind when I first thought about making Rho but I have decided to trust in the dice.
[12] Challenge dice I’m going to refer to as +xD from now on. They are six sided dice, but not d6s. Page 16 has a table that explains how to read d6s as Challenge dice: 1 = 1, 2 = 2, 3 and 4 = 0, 5 and 6 = 1 plus an effect. Effects are specific to the type of Challenge being triggered – a jaggedy sword or a nasty spell.
[13] Rho’s player would probably make the case for Researcher, just because that gives him more options.
[14] I would definitely allow some mad as balls, Stranger Things style Ritual use of Remote Vision though, including accidentally opening a door to the Upside Down/Dreamlands.
[15] Religious home schooling, I guess
[16] Thank you Excel
[17] At some point, he’ll grab the Linguistics Focus to get French, German, and Italian.
[18] This is particularly important for Rho, as it allows him to reduce the cost of his Spells – provided they are not cast with A Price to Pay.
[19] Rho really can melt with his mind.
[20] It can also be a summon, lightning a room rather than a person on fire.
[21] Discipline is called out as a possible, but Rho doesn’t have it. I’d allow it, though.
[22] This may be an error in the rules printing I have: Rho is getting to add his Insight dice to his Power, then his Will bonus to Magical attacks, for a total of +3d. RAW, Rho is getting both of these.
[23] Piercing ignores Resistance so can pay off against tougher foes.
[24] It’s time for some motherfucking numbers. I’m not a statistician so these are mostly as handwavy as causing Stress, which is an outlier, as only one side of six can grant 2 Stress. On a Challenge die, two sides result in 0 Stress, and three sides with 1 Stress, and two of those also cause an Effect. So, the most likely result of 10d is 7 stress (5 dice cause 1 Stress, 4 dice cause 0 Stress, 1 dice cause 2 Stress). Of the dice that cause Stress, three of them will also trigger an Effect, so the target will also have Persistent 3, inflicting a further 4d stress for three rounds, or an average of 3 extra Stress each round.
[25] Stress 16 Armour 4
[26] Which I’ve done here, so I’m the first with my back against the wall.
[27] Remember, A!C is a roll under system. Rho has to get under a 7 to his with his pistol on 2d20. While he can attack with his mind, that inflicts Stress.
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