It’s what happens when PCs get ahold of the Homunculus and Unnatural Servant rituals….

This is something that just occurred to me. It sent me into a hysterical bout of giggling, so maybe it’ll amuse some of the rest of you, too.

The Rite of the Homunculus just got introduced into the all-adept Mak Attax game I’m playing in. I started wondering, ‘what would happen if this ritual got widely diseminated among our PCs?’ This is when I started giggling…

The game idea is fairly simple: assemble a bunch of unnatural beings as PCs (homunculi, automotons, unspeakable servants, etc.) and give them a goal of simple survival. Perhaps the cabal that created them has been exterminated, fled some mightier force, or killed each other off in bloody infighting. The building the cabal used as a headquarters (and home to the PCs) is being condemned and torn down. Now the unnatural beings have to deal with a variety of challenges they are not well equipped for (finding lodging and food, escaping detection, etc.). Perhaps later on, the characters might have an expanded set of goals (revenging on or on the behalf of their former masters, joining the larger occult underground, etc.).

Obviously there’s a number of problems with such a diverse group, the most obvious one being the different power levels. One could solve this partially by allowing those playing homunculi to be adepts and by only allowing minor unspeakable servants.

Another problem would be in fostering teamwork…but this could be solvable by deliberately making the characters dependant upon one another: the automoton would need help in keeping wound up, the unspeakable servant might by inhabiting an animal’s body (and thus not have opposable thumbs!), and homunculi…well, they’re wusses–let’s face it.