Backed the PDFs for now until I'm sure I can afford postage.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/sigilstonepublishing/belly-of-the-beast-rpg?ref=category_featured
In the mean time. An RPG about the remnants of humanity living inside a Great Old One.
Stole my thunder! I added a few things.
Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sigilstonepublishing/belly-of-the-beast-rpg/descriptionBelly of the Beast RPGhttp://www.bendutter.com/sigil-stone-publishing/belly-of-the-beast-rpg/Written by Ben Dutter. The artists are Jeff Brown and Arthur Asa
Belly of the Beast is a tabletop roleplaying game that focuses on grim scavengers living in the vast innards of the Great Devourer, salvaging and scraping through the swallowed ruins of a bygone age. The game uses the Ethos Engine (Vow of Honor, Hunt the Wicked), but has been rebuilt to model the incredibly difficult and terrifying lives of scavengers in the belly of the Beast. You can read the alpha working draft (about 30,000 words) or the quick start rules (a few pages). Characters are driven by their Instincts, and improve their skills after successfully completing more and more valuable pulls – scavenging missions. They have to work together with their company, try to barter off their salvaged goods, and survive amid caustic acid, bloodthirsty reavers, and hungry cannibals.
Testimonials
Joshua Yearsley, editor for Evil Hat Productions:
"Everything about Belly of the Beast makes sense, and that's an impressive feat. This is a Bronze Age fantasy that somehow also feels like hard sci-fi - just as colonists on Venus would adapt to the planet's harsh realities, so do the inhabitants of the Evergut. The Beast's bowels not only inform the lives, cultures, and practices of the Swallowed, but also incite exploration of gender, class, and family. Ben's created an authentic sense of time and place in nearly unthinkable conditions. Fantastic."
Setting
A medieval fantasy world has been swallowed by a massive World Eater. The characters are scavengers, digging through the refuse of the Eaten Age. Highly focused on surviving in an endless web of dark, digestive dungeons and tunnels. Hundreds of years ago a massive rock fell from the sky, crushing kingdoms and continents in a shower of molten stone. Eventually, life in the realms returned to a state of normalcy, and the many clans continued their incessant struggle for power.
Three generations ago, the skyrock - possessed with foul energies and discordant vibrations - erupted in a disgusting ball of effluence and viscera, birthing the creature that dwelt within it: the Swallower of Worlds, the Insatiable God, the Devourer, or simply: the Beast.
Incalculably large, the Beast unfurled its great girth upon the land, consuming thousands of leagues of soil, stone, and forest. One by one, the mighty strongholds and great armies of the age fell to its inexorable consumption.
And yet when legions, empires, and cities are swallowed whole, not all is lost. A rare few survive the Devouring, and test their mettle living in the Belly of the Beast.
You are one of these exemplars of grit and greed: a scavenger. Hundreds of great civilizations have been consumed, but their wares, artifacts, and materials are ripe for the taking deep within the recesses of your new home.
I flipped through the about 300 page alpha. Check this out.
Hunger
The single most significant element of the Beast is its Hunger. When the Beast gains Hunger, it decides to consume more of the land. And when its Hunger is abated, it is content to sit for months or years slowly digesting through castles and mountains and forests.
A company’s actions can have a major impact on the Beast’s Hunger. Any large scale extractions, pulls, or movement of heavy quantities of debris that prevent the Beast from digesting it increases its Hunger. Breaking large pieces of debris loose and sending it deeper into the Beast decreases its Hunger.
For example, Katarod’s company wants to accelerate the rate at which the Beast is consuming a particular region, as the influx of fresh trees and water is helpful to the scavengers. They go and make several large pulls, blocking up passageways, and preventing much of the debris from traveling (slowly) down the digestive tract and deeper into the Belly. As it isn’t gaining nutrients from its food, the Beast’s Hunger increases.
Later, Katarod and his crew want to stop the Beast from eating anything until after they’re picked through the best and freshest loot. They go deeper into the Belly and dislodge great quantities of rock, mud, and other waste so as to fill up the Beast’s entrails with otherwise undigested food, making its Hunger decline and desire to eat stop.
Pain
While the Beast certainly doesn’t feel pity or remorse, it can feel Pain. Despite many attempts, the Devourer can’t be killed, or even seriously wounded. The united armies of a hundred kingdoms stood before it, unleashing their greatest weapons and technology - with hardly any effect. They were eaten along with the rest of their cities and the ground they stood upon.
However, the Swallowed know that the Beast can be hurt from within, and while the injuries aren’t substantial or life-threatening to the gluttonous creature, they can change its behavior and cause it discomfort.
Scavengers can use this to their benefit, but more commonly reavers and violent strongholds will attempt to elicit a reaction from the Beast in order to endanger their enemies. The most common of these is to simply hack, drill, and mine your way into its flesh. :stare:
The first few layers are easily scraped away, however after several feet the omnipotent creature’s guts begin to heal so rapidly that all but the most dedicated organizations can hardly make a dent.
Few and far between are instances in which a hundred or more workers make a concerted effort to damage a segment of the Beast’s innards - and often the boiling hot blood and terribly deteriorative fumes are enough to make the attempt not worth the effort.
Even such a small impact upon the Beast’s health can cause a major reaction, forcing the Beast to roil and move violently, regurgitate great quantities of half-digested waste, or feverishly consume certain elements such as cooling clay or saltwater.
Sometimes external events, or large scale random shifts within the Beast’s bowels can cause it Pain - more than one semi-permanent stronghold has been dislodged in such a tumultuous location, disappearing into the black depths of the Belly’s lowest regions. :ohdear:
In general, scavengers want to prevent the Beast from experiencing Pain, as it complicates their job. The more stable, calm, and happy the Insatiable Demon is, the more reliably they can extract valuable hauls.
...
Hazards
The Evergut is saturated in danger, ensuring that only the most cautious and careful scavengers survive more than their first attempted pull.
...
The most common form of Hazards are the Beast’s digestive systems - various tentacles, acids, fluids, gases, slimes, mucks, and other inner-musculature that causes scavengers to become stuck, encased, drowned, asphyxiated, stabbed, mashed, chewed, or otherwise killed.
Adapting Belly of the Beast into other gamesWant to spring a Belly of the Beast game on your unsuspecting party? The following scenarios come to mind...
- (Pathfinder): unlucky characters exploring the Worldwound are consumed by Rovagug the Devourer! Hilarity ensues
- (Scifi): Weyland-Yutani paper pushers and Space Marines get swallowed by a Very Large Alien.
- (Superhero): GALACTUS eats Earth. Has Mars for seconds. Saturn's Rings as an aperitif.
- (Cthulhu): You are in the Dreamlands. You decide to take a shortcut through the vale of Pnath. You are eaten by a Dhole.
- (Warhammer 40K): Imperial Guardsman regiment is swallowed by a Tyranid Bioship. With some modifications I could see Belly of the Beast rules used to describe life for voidborn citizens inside an Imperal ship as well.
- (Classic World of Darkness): Tzimisce says fuck it and consumes the Big Apple. Welp.
Let's talk mechanics. Survival and Instinct
The system focuses on skilled survivors compelled by their innate Instincts. It highlights the dynamic between their need to cooperate with each other and their personal, selfish, and often dangerous desires.
D6 dice pool
Belly of the Beast uses a pool of d6 to resolve Tasks. Successes are counted based on the face value of each die (1-6), with the number determining success based on a character's Skill. Poorly skilled characters succeed on a 6, while the most competent succeed on 3s or better.
Skill based competence
Characters' abilities are based upon the eight Skills (Awareness, Coordination, Cunning, Influence, Lore, Might, Resolve, and Stealth). The better at a particular Skill, the more likely an action within that Skill will succeed.
Universal task resolution
Players roll a relevant Skill to overcome a Task, and can add Instinct Dice (ID) to their base roll. When characters fail to overcome Tasks, they suffer Consequences. Combat, mental challenges, physical obstacles, and social interactions are all handled in the same Task system.
Instincts
Players select two Instincts that drive their characters to act, earning ID when acting Instinctively, and spending them to activate Instinct Maneuvers or add dice to their roll. A character with the Greed Instinct can consistently find the most valuable item in a given area, while one driven by Loyalty allows the character to suffer a Consequence in another's stead.
Talents
Each character has player-defined Talents, freeform abilities that provide bonuses when relevant. A character could be especially Nimble, granting them a bonus when they're attempting to balance over a chasm, or an Expert Alchemist, gaining an advantage when brewing potions and harvesting ingredients.
Specialties
Scavengers fill their role with a single Specialty - a narrow field of expertise or innate capability that grants an edge when relevant. An Engineer automatically succeeds when creating simple tools, while a Tracker has permission to attempt otherwise impossible tracking Tasks.
The author mentions, in the alpha, the system was designed to be a Storygame where the GM does not roll dice.
In order to succeed at a task, you need to be skilled and lucky (only rolling one or two dice) or you need to spend
Instinct dice to roll multiple times. Instinct Dice can be replenished by giving into one's instincts which can be like a vice in World of Darkness. So there is this sort of tension between "my character giving into his darker side to try to survive" and "he attempts to rely on the thinnest margins of luck and his friends to stay true to his higher nature".
Why you should fund this already funded projectBen Dutter wrote on the kickstarter... "About an hour and a half ago marks the one week point of the Belly of the Beast Kickstarter. Not only have we funded, but we've pressed onward to the $4,000 stretch goal. That means more art for you and more money for Jeff and Arthur, a win-win I'd say."
Who is one of these Artists?Arthur Asa
Hardworking artist-dude based in Mexico. I first became aware of Arthur's work when he stopped into /tg/ to illustrate what ever crazy ideas were posted. He did this for free on a regular basis. He has given his dues, is a good guy and why don't we help his project succeed?
I was really impressed by the nuances of humor in the details of Arthur's sketches and just how fast he was able to respond to /tg/'s requests.
Examples. Most of the black and white images are /tg/ requests:
Tumblr (Arthur's current portfolio) :
http://regourso.tumblr.com/Deviant Art:
http://regourso.deviantart.com/
The idea, "Honor thy father," becomes particularly chilling as the story evolves.
Where the Heart is (free webcomic):
http://www.wthi.one/comic/dusk/.....
Links:
How does Belly of the Beast play?One shot podcast playtest of Belly of the Beast:
http://oneshotpodcast.com/podcasts/one-shot/142-belly-of-the-beast/Current Belly of the Beast Draft:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15BOdcpeoOTnpkgev1N93lsz9-RlhALj7wIOVr2icB6Y/edit?usp=sharingQuickstart rules link is currently broken
Belly of the Beast Author's Blog (Ben Dutter):
http://www.bendutter.com/blog/
