Last week I gave you the hook for an adventure based off of the song The Shankhill Butchers. This week, I will give you my recommendations for system and some stats you can use as a springboard for your own game.
When I started to think about the idea for this adventure hook, I immediately started to think about Green Ronin’s Dragon Age Roleplaying Game. It fit everything I had in mind. It captures the dark fantasy feeling that I was seeking when I wrote the hook. The setting also includes the Fade, the realm where demons exist and where dreams take place. A demon would be a great antagonist, using a rogue mage, or an apostate as they are called in the setting, to conduct the ritual killings it needed to collect the life force of its victims and gain greater power. It would be able to contact the boys through their dreams and use its powers to dominate their minds.
The Dragon Age games also highlight the concept of forcing the players to make tough decisions. This was a hallmark of the video game, where sometimes you felt like there was no “good decision.” With this in mind, you can put the players in the tough position of deciding the fate of the young boys who are merely puppets of the demon controlling them and forcing them to make sacrifices in the final battle to emerge victorious.
The game also features a particularly vile and dangerous form of sorcery known as “blood magic” that was easy to derive from the plot I had. Blood mages, or maleficarum as they are called in the universe, are infamous for being able to use their magic to control people and the practice of such magic is enough to get a person cast out from the Circle of Magi and hunted down mercilessly by the Templars. In game terms, you can have several of the boys held back in reserve to serve as a source of healing for the blood mage serving the demon’s earthly interests, forcing the PCs into another moral quandry – do they kill the boys and prevent the fight from dragging out or do they try to save them and possibly leave them to a grislier fate of being used to heal the maleficar?
Below I’ve included some stats for both the boys and the apostate that is the demon’s emissary in the physical realm. The boys aren’t meant to be a strong combat threat. Instead they are there to harass the PCs more than anything. They are there as a decision point for the PCs. Do they take them out and stop them from being a threat? Or do they pursue less lethal options and pull their punches? If they follow the second path, maybe the PCs have some allies at the end of the adventure when they face down the apostate and his other remaining servants.
Shankhill Butchers
Abilities (Focuses)
1 Communication
2 Constitution (Stamina)
0 Cunning
2 Dexterity (Brawling, Light Blades, Riding)
0 Magic
1 Perception
3 Strength (Axes, Intimidation)
1 Willpower (Morale)
Combat Ratings
Speed Health Defense Armor Rating
12 15 12 3
Attacks
Weapon Attack Roll Damage
Dagger +4 1d6+4
Hatchet +5 1d6+5
Powers
Favored Stunts: Lightning Attack and Pierce Armor
Possessed Morale: While in Fort Shankhill, the butchers are unable to fail a Willpower (Morale) test due to the effect of the demon’s mind control.
Talents: Dual Weapon Style (Novice)
Weapon Groups: Axes, Brawling, Light Blades
Equipment
Dagger, Hatchet, Light Leather
Blood Mage Apostate
Abilities (Focuses)
3 Communication (Leadership)
3 Constitution
1 Cunning (Arcane Lore)
1 Dexterity (Initiative, Staves)
5 Magic (Arcane Lance, Blood Magic, Entropy Magic)
2 Perception
-1 Strength
4 Willpower (Morale, Self-Discipline)
Combat Ratings
Speed Health Defense Armor Rating
11 65 11 0
Attacks
Weapon Attack Roll Damage Range
Arcane Lance +7 1d6+5 16 yards
Quarterstaff +3 1d6 n/a
Powers
Spellpower: 15 (17 vs Blood and Entropy Magic). Mana Points: 40
Spells: Blood Sacrifice, Daze, Death Magic, Drain Life, Horror, Vulnerability Hex, and Weakness
Favored Spell Stunts: Mighty Spell and Imposing Spell
Class Powers (Mage 6, Blood Mage Specialization): Arcane Lance
Talents: Blood Magic (Novice), Entropy Magic (Journeyman), Lore (Novice)
Weapon Groups: Brawling and Staves
Equipment
Quarterstaff
Other Games: Dragon Age isn’t the only game system that can be used to tell this story, but it was the first one I thought of. When I told my wife the source of inspiration for the song, she immediately went to World of Darkness, and indeed, if you prefer a stronger horror vibe to the game and don’t mind converting the stronger dark fantasy elements to a more modern setting, you can definitely get some mileage out of it. I would warn against more traditional fantasy games like Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder for this kind of story. The traditional milieu for those games is more of a “heroic, high fantasy” in which the concept of difficult moral questions doesn’t play as well. You kill the orcs because they’re obviously evil and don’t stop to think about their motivations. You might get better mileage out of an earlier version of the game, or a recent retro clone, or even something like Castles and Crusades, where these kinds of questions could be examined a little bit more in depth, but I would argue against anything from 3rd Edition and on.
Stay tuned next week for a new inspiration and a new adventure hook on There’s an Adventure in That!
Ben Erickson
