In the first part of this three-part series, I talked about Stephen King’s novel, Firestarter, its 2022 theatrical adaptation, and how this tale could inspire your tabletop games. In this article, I’ll talk about the RPG I’d use to tell these tales, Deviant: The Renegades. I’ll touch on the concept, the mechanics, and how The Shop, the evil organization that hunts the Firestarter, would work in this game.
***FIRESTARTER SPOILERS AHEAD***
Firestarter tells the story of Charlie McGee, an eight-year-old with pyrokinetic powers. Charlie and her psychic father, Andy, are hunted by the organization that developed their powers and want a return on their investment. From Stephen King, his eighth novel brings another powerful child like we see in King’s The Shining that has to deal with the horrors of the world.
DEVIANT: THE RENEGADES
When the Kickstarter for Onyx Path Publishing’s Deviant: The Renegades was running in October, 2019, I ran a review of a draft chapter from their book on d20 Radio. From jump, I saw this as the game to play for properties like Firestarter, Stranger Things, Let the Right One In, and other horror fantasy involving children. Deviant: The Renegade uses the Storytelling System and benefits from other books that support the Chronicles of Darkness Second Edition tabletop roleplaying engine. Not only do you have access to the projects this system, you have access to the whole of the CoD universe, which represents a variety of horror options. Within Deviant, there’s a modified system balancing your chronicle’s power levels between the players’ characters and the antagonist. The engine ties the two together, origins and power levels, hero and enemy.
In the context of making a Firestarter campaign, you’d build Charlie, Andy, and any other kids as the protagonists of the campaign (say, a young Carrie White from Carrie and Danny Torrance from The Shining or the Lot Six kids from Firestarter: Rekindled). In the other corner, you’d create The Shop, the outfit that orchestrated the origins of these characters. By giving the kids great amounts of power, you decide how powerful The Shop is. For instance, while The Shop has the limitless resources of the government, what extras would they have in this world? Does this version of The Shop have a human Rainbird or one with mental powers granted by Lot Six like in Firestarter 2022? Do they have the support of their own stable of Lot Six powered children like Firestarter: Rekindled? Or have they developed something even deadlier, like a portal to another dimension of monsters like they did in King’s The Mist? With Deviant: The Renegades’ ruleset, the more powerful the kids are, the more powerful The Shop is. Charlie may have the mental power of a nuclear bomb, meaning The Shop is likely to have a varied arsenal.
ORIGINS, CLADES, VARIATIONS, AND SCARS
Deviant: The Renegades uses Origins to determine how each character came into their abilities, and Clades to categorize their powers. Despite this adventure spawning from The Shop’s Lot Six, the individual characters have different Origins and Clades.
Andy McGee and Vicky Tomlinson are Exomorph Cephalists. In Deviant, the Exomorphs Origin is called The Unwilling, those “remade intentionally, but against their will.” Their Clade is the Cephalist, also called The Psychics, meaning they’re psychics that reshaped “themselves as their souls cracked and giving them power over the world through sheer mental will.” As one of The Unwilling, they get one Scar-free Overt Variation Magnitude, and an extra dot of Conviction.
In this RPG, the specific powers within the Clade are called Variations. Andy McGee has the Cephalist Variation, Telepathy. At four dots, Andy has the Forceful ability. In addition, he has some Electrokinesis. Vicky Tomlinson has limited Telekinesis in the book (maybe one dot’s worth) but more in the 2022 adaptation where she can hurl objects around (closer to three dots to obtain Throw).
Charlene “Charlie” McGee is a Genotypal Deviant Coactive. For her Origin, Genotypal Deviant fits the bill as she owes her condition to her parents, which transferred the Lot Six alterations to her. For her Clade or power, an argument could be made for Cephalists like her parents, but Coactive also works and gives a greater option to work with. Charlie “harness deadly levels of [fire]. The intangible source is irrelevant; its fusion with the human who controls it is what defines this Clade.” As one of The Born, Charlie gets one Scar-free Subtle Variation Magnitude, and an extra dot of Conviction. For Variations, Charlie has five dots of Pyrokinesis, a limited bit of Precognition, three dots of Telekinesis: Force Field, and five dots of Lash, allowing her to project the Pyrokinesis. Charlie is a powerhouse.
Each character has Variations, but each of those has a Scar. A Scar is the drawback to the ability, the cost of the power. For Vicky, it was exhausting. For Andy, nosebleeds and pinprick seizures. For Charlie, a loss of control. Vicky’s Scars are Concentration and Andy’s Scars would be Depletion and Power Failure. Charlie’s powers are fierce, so her Scars are greater than many. Among them, there’s a limited amount of Misfortune and Subliminal Conditioning (as implemented by her father), with the main one being Cooldown, “Variation becomes more difficult to control each time the Deviant directs it.”
To recreate Firestarter’s cast and Clades, the Threat Level is likely the highest level, Metamorphosis, meaning characters get 15 or 16 dots of Variations and the Conspiracy, The Shop, starts with a Standing of 6. That said, you may want to build to that level, in which you could start with Dysplasia or Invasion level, meaning each character has 7 or 10 Variations and the Conspiracy has a Standing of 3 or 4. Regardless of your choice, that brings us to The Shop.
NEXT TIME: SHOP TALK
In the final part of this series, we talk about the antagonist organization from Firestarter, The Shop. We’ll look at their history and touch on how they’d work in a Deviant: The Renegades campaign before discussing if this RPG and type of story is right for your gaming group.
Egg Embry participates in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program, Noble Knight Games’ Affiliate Program, and is an Amazon Associate. These programs provide advertising fees by linking to DriveThruRPG, Noble Knight Games, and Amazon.
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