Realms of Chirak

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: The Second Story Arc

2012-03-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

For the life of me I can't find the precis on the first story arc (although it is briefly summarized at the start of this) but there's some fun stuff in here for the second story arc, so I figured I might as well include it:

Campaign: Post-Apocalypse 2221 – Story Arc 2

Premise: The PCs have just finished rescuing (or so they believe) the new Chief Administrator of New Eden from certain death at the hands of what appeared to be a surviving cybernetically enhanced assassin, perhaps sent by the Jovians.

Shortly after affecting the rescue, the PCs discover that they have lost all communications with New Eden, and an investigation reveals that the air waves are simply dead....the air waves are silent, except for one sudden anomaly a comm officer might discover: a curious radio station broadcasting from a location calling itself the “White Mountain Getaway,” with the following message intermixed between stations:

“Welcome to the White Mountain Getaway Station, last bastion of civilization in the greater Southwest Territories. Remember that you can always come on up to the White Mountain resort to get away from all your worries. For all of you listeners out there who can't make it, here's some soothing music to sooth your aching souls. I'm Diana, your DJ, and here's a rare classic from 2094 by the cyberpunk bank 01011001...”

Other than this broadcast, and an occasional mysterious and inexplicable “screeching” data burs of encrypted data from some mysterious location in the north, the air waves remain dead.

Encounter Events:

The “Grish”

These are humanoid reptile men. They are led by one who calls himself “Gorm.” A study of their DNA reveals that someone has spliced (heavily) from human and gila monster DNA, to the point where it is difficult to tell which was the base species and which was the receptor species. There are six in the group, looking to trade (they mostly have food stuffs and salvaged metal worked in to simple tools and weapons). They have some local knowledge for sale as well, and speak reasonably good “spanglish.” They can mention that they know where Castle Warren is. They have a single solar-powered radio that they were given by a “shiny metal man” a year ago, and use it to listen to the radio station from White Mountain. They have never been there....Gorm says that all his kind who have gone that way are believed to have died, though none have a conclusive story as to how (but ghosts play a part). Finally, he knows of “Castle Warren” in the mountains and will mention it.

Tom Saw

This eccentric fellow lives in the wilderness and trades with both the cannibals and the apache. He is a shiny, metal-skinned man (thus not edible) and runs a small farm all by himself, from which he grows crops and sells them. Though he looks like an android with plastic-metal dermal protection, he is in fact a human replicant, with the working tissues of a real human inside the protective polymer shell. Tom Saw doesn't know who or what he was in his prior life....he has vague memories of working on a star ship, for example, but he seems to have forgotten most everything else about his old life. He is very helpful, and can offer up lots of produce and other goods to the PCs. He has no weaponry of any kind, but he says he doesn't need it....he hides in an old bunker when danger approaches. He does have lots of kerosene on hand, though, and a solar array for power. He also raises animals, including classic sheep, pigs and horses as well as one domesticated “grand cabbage” (one of the purple-cauliflower monsters) which it turns out provides edible honey-like pollen when it blooms.

Castle Warren and Professor Edmund Warren

The mysterious castle Warren is known by many locals, but few understand its occupant or his goals. Warren is a throwback, a transgenic survivor of the old age, who through telemerase resequencing treatments managed to extend his own life by centuries. He looks about 50, now, but he is well over 200 years of age.

Warren survived the apocalypse by hiding within one of a number of special bunkers created during the months leading up to the catastrophic bombardment, in which the greatest minds of the 22nd century were put in to hibernation, along with the materials necessary to aid in rebuilding society when they awakened after the cataclysm began to recede. Unfortunately, Bunker Phoenix-119 was right in the path of the “stitching” event that led to massive regional bombardment by the meteor debris field dragged by Nemesis. Of all those who were ensconced within the bunker, only a handful survived the devastating shockwaves that collapsed the vast bulk of the complex. Years later, self-repairing robots inside the complex at last reawakened and managed to revive Professor Warren and two others, including the physicist Victor Thane and Patricia Wells, the senior head of transgenic engineering at the New World Medical Institute. According to Warren, the latter two quickly left to parts unknown, seeing the complex as a total loss.

Warren stayed on. With the help of “Jack” a solitary advanced repairbot and two sentry drones he began salvaging whatever he could, then migrated to the nearby new mountain ranges (which were pushed up from tectonic shift caused by the bombardment). There he established his “castle,” which as of the current date now contains a working telescope, radio observatory and partially working particle relay equipment tied in to the rebuilt remnants of the subterranean Supercollider that he has used several additional repair drones to reconstruct beneath the earth.

Warren has now managed to observe a number of interesting details. One such detail is that the Seed Pods around the world seem to be communicating, but they are using high speed burst transmissions that are heavily encrypted and broadcasting on a very low end of frequency ranges in tiny amounts. They are also, he has observed, communicating through some sort of high-energy particle wave. He has a massive particle detector recovered beneath the earth that was orignally used for dark matter reasearch. This complex was, until recently, transmitting evidence of what the doctor now believes to be faster-than-light particles being transmitted in bursts by the Seed Pods. This complex recently went silent, and he doesn't know why. He'll likely want the PCs to go down below to see if they can fix it....although he sent a repair droid to do the work, it also has never been heard from again.

Warren thinks that a recent, increasing array of FTL bursts suggests a communcication is being carried out with parts unknown, and he is worried he's missing out on the data necessary to piece together what's happening. If the PCs do as he asks, then they will have to find the entrance to Phoenix Bunker, had on down, and see if they can “fix” the problem...

Warren will not tell PCs about one of the things he WAS doing: he had successfully captured and deactivated a Seed Pod using hibernation stasis equipment from the bunker and has been trying to replicate its communications abilities, to see if he can communicate with the xenoforms in control of these devices (if indeed they aren't the xenoforms themselves). He thinks that the terraforming process is well underway, and stage two is: colonization!

The Phoenix Bunker

This bunker is actually more intact than one would imagine, but hundreds of stasis hibernation pods failed for some reason early on. Much of the gear within this complex was lost in a cave-in around the storage compartments, but Prof. Warren has managed to gather a great deal of it. Some notable locations in the bunker are described below:

Hibernation Chambers (many dead people here after stasis pods failed...careful search may reveal that the failure was....deliberate!)

Command Center (The bunker AI is still functional here, but has been cut off from all other activities in the complex. If it gets restored, it can inform the PCs that all bunker controls have been relayed to Warren's castle complex)

Storage Pods (most collapsed, although drones have recovered much here)

Supercollider Array (28 miles of tunnels; cleared and restored by drones)

Medical Bay (still works, but over-run by a strange group of subterranean mutants who use its facilities; Patricia Wells is held hostage here)

Particle Detector (elevator system leads to this location 4 miles deep; the detector is offline right now, sabotaged by Victor Thane, who has returned to stop what he sees as Warren's madness in attempting to communicate with the Nemesis Xenoforms)

Some Wandering Encounters:

1. cannibal hunter tribe

2. apache hunters looking for game

3. a fleet of immense flying manta-like creatures pass overhead; will attack flying vessels

4. a strange field of grass that dissolves rubber and metal

5. a “dead” Seed Pod. It appears to be inactive, until PCs get too close...it then opens up, and releases what appears to be a cloud of spores. PCs who are caught in the cloud begin to mutate!

6. The sky lights up in a fiery array that looks like the atmosphere itself had caught fire. This lasts for approximately half an hour, and dark clouds of sooty smoke descends to blanket the land. Shortly thereafter a curious, stringy substance of whispy material begins to blanket the region, sticking to everything it touches; petroleum-based liquids will dissolve it, but water seems to feed it. Anything it sticks to it also bonds to. Shortly thereafter, it begins to drain the vitreous liquids from its hosts, pulsing and growing new seed pods......these eventually hatch in to spidery xenoforms that are extremely aggressive, attacking everything in sight!

7. The remains of what appeared to be a large, active survivor city, now completely abandoned by everything except one mad, gimped robot and a small group of Gish who are scouring the city for supplies. The place was called Sinagua and it was full of 2,000 people only a year ago, survivors PCs may know. They also find working radios tuned only to the White Mountain station...

8. Vast pools of what appear at first to be oil, and indeed turns out to be such, but long, ropy tentacles will try to drag nearby creatures and vehicles in to the substance. Beneath is an immense creature that actually creates petroleum as a byproduct, with roots digging deep in to the mantle of the planet.

9. A hilltop along which several dozen survivors have been killed and staked to crosses. On closer inspection, it is evident that each victim had evidence of mutation or enhancement. Not a mile away is a small community of “pure strains” who follow the mad reverend Smith, who preaches that the mutations are demons trying to enter the world through human flesh. They have a plan to destroy Seed Pods, and claim to have already destroyed one (with a metallic carapace to show for it). Turns out the reverend in his younger days found one that was inactive....perhaps damaged on impact....and took claim for its destruction.

10. UFOs are spotted! On the horizon, bright objects moving in a random, impossibly fast pattern fly about. Approaching the area where they seem to be centered reveals nothing, but curious distortion-effects in the region are truly inexplicable, until one or more party members passes through one intentionally or by accident...revealing that these distortions are some sort of timewarp....it turns out the UFOs are from a future civilization of hominid that has returned to earth via wormhole to study the past...

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Spacer Campaigns

2012-02-29T06:00:00.003-07:00

Spacer Campaigns: The Jovian Expanses and Outliers

There are as many mysteries in space as there are on Earth. Here are a few:

The Jovian Expanses

This is a collection of loosely organized Free Colonies with a strong neo-libertarian bent. The region is dominated by three primary colonies, being Europa, Ganymede and Saturn’s Titan, while dozens of smaller colonies and hundreds of mining and development facilities can be found throughout the greater region. The need for cooperation and resource management has insured that the otherwise loosely allied colonies of the Jovian Expanses remain cooperative and not hostile; the only real “police force” in the region recognized by all the Expanses as a proper authority is that of the Europan-based Expanse Investigations Offices. The EIO serves primarily to address issues of piracy and sabotage among the many independent corporate agencies and private parties of the predominantly libertarian domain of the Expanses, and works on a per-contract basis; for a colony to gain the advantage of the EIO it must be willing to pay the necessary insurance to provide funding and support for the organization. In turn, the government of Europa out of Galileo City provide supplemental dollar-matching funding, in exchange for more favorable contracts with the outliers and free colonies. So far, this has worked, much to the detriment of the inner-system socialist Solar Collective.

Europa

The principle governing colony world in this region is Jupiter’s moon Europa, where the vast ice-floating city of Galileo can be found. Galileo was founded early on in the advancement to space, and it became a center of outer-system exploration due to its unique position, providing water resources from Europa’s buried ocean while also providing extensive research on the nature of its vast oceans.

Europa was discovered early on to hold ocean’s full of microbiotic life, but no advanced lifeforms had evolved there at the time of discovery. In the century and a half since, rapid advances in bioengineering led to the development of engineered lifeforms specifically designed to populate the waters of Europa and to serve as a specialized developmental ecosystem, as well as a food source. The runaway success of this project has led to Europa being the third most “terraformed” body in the solar system, after Mars and Europa. The rapidly developing aquatic ecosystem is contributing greatly toward a more oxygen-saturated planetary atmosphere, although the likelihood that the moon will ever hold onto a thicker shell of atmosphere remains improbable. At present, humans can only venture onto the surface of the moon in suits; lethal radiation due to lack of atmospheric shielding otherwise prevents the moon’s surface from being hospitable.

The bulk of the “floating city” is beneath the ice. The vast construct and its outliers were part of a massive works project that began well before the death of Old Earth and continued to this day. The first fully sentient and self-aware quantum AI, calling itself Simon Marius, serves as the functional administrator and arbiter of the city, providing a relatively safe environment and responsive body of governance that the Europans have come to accept. Unlike most futuristic “AI doom” predictions, Marius continued to function in a manner that was mutually beneficial to himself and his creators.

Ganymede

The second most important colony world in the Jovian Expanse, Ganymede provides much-needed mined water resources as well as silicate and other resources. Much of the human-inhabited region is underground in the somewhat more stable planetary geology, to take advantage of natural rock as a shelter from the extensive radiation in the region. Ganymede has become a center of activity for starship construction and development, a feature that predates the collapse of Old Earth, and it has several orbital shipyards that provide new and much improved designs for outer-system starships; it actually makes a fair amount of money selling hulls to the inner colonies of the Solar Collective, as well. This prosperity and independence has made Ganymede the center of trade and commerce in the region for industrial construction and manufacturing, while its sister colony Europa provides food and water resources.

Ganymede’s center of trade and commerce is the orbital station Commerce. Ground-side, its dominant industrial city is Tether, which is not coincidentally linked to Commerce by a Space Elevator, the largest and most effective of its kind; only the old Space Lifts of Earth were regarded as more impressive, and virtually all of those have long since decayed and collapsed, catastrophically.

Other Moons of Jupiter

Not all Jovian moons are suited to colonization, and some are only approached by local mobile fleets for brief resource mining operations. Still others have developed extensive habitats about them, and are now part of the regular trade lanes of activity. A quick summary follows:

Amalthea (Inner) Satellites: the inner satellites closest to Jupiter are dangerous and only independent miners (commonly called belters) tend to be crazy enough to look for precious metals and other resources on Metis, Adrastea, Amalthea and Thebe.

Plot Point: There is a story that there’s a permanent colony on Amalthea, the ellipsoid inner moon that skirts the edge of the Jovian rings. This otherwise hostile moon is said to have contained a secret, an ancient monument of extraterrestrial origin, according to the self-proclaimed space prophet (and madman) Johnias Whinn. Thirty years ago he, a former eccentric billionaire, left his position as CEO of the SysStar Corporation and poured his resources into an investigation of the moon after strange stories surfaced from local belters who claimed they had found extraterrestrial artifacts. Although no independent observation has corroborated this, Whinn nonetheless claimed to have found something, and built a terradome on the planet’s surface, protected by an orbital defense platform manned by an AI called Searcher. Contact with the colony was lost ten years ago when a major impact presumably disabled or destroyed it and its orbital watchdog platform, but no one really knows. Remnants of his group, called the Searchers, still exist in odd pockets, including on Saturn’s Iapetus, where they seek evidence that the entire moon is actually a constructed vessel.

The Main Group: This group of moons includes Ganymede and Europa, as well as Callisto and Io. Io is an aggressively difficult moon to colonize, and most of the activities that go on are temporary operations staged from orbital platforms. Callisto, in contrast, suffers less from Jupiter’s magnetosphere and lacks any interior volcanism; dozens of small interdependent colonies exist on its surface and work in tandem to provide resources to one another. The local mining is mostly at the surface level, and three primary orbital platforms serve as the tether to the rest of the universe and the local colonies. Most of the colonies are a mix of subterranean and surface development, with the surface shielding less aggressive than at other inner system and main group colonies.

Plot Point: There’s currently something of a revolution going on in the many interdependent colonies of Callisto, where generations of regional interaction have led to several movements to develop a unified local government. Currently there are dozens of political parties lobbying for votes in the first round of elections, and the most outstanding party leader is one Clarence Durnham, leader of the Independence Party, which is strongly anti-outsider and also anti-AI. This has led to concern from neighbors Europa and Ganymede, who feel that such an isolationist party could be costly to the rest of the Expanse.

The Irregular Satellites: With so many irregular minor satellites in eccentric outer system orbits, its hard to even begin to keep track of the many colonies, private interests and other mysterious agencies out there, struggling to survive or otherwise looking for easily mined resources. As often as one finds an active colony or mining op you will just as likely stumble across an abandoned or defunct ruin. It’s a wilderness of survival.

Saturnian Space and Titan

Saturn is the edge of the outliers, the vast and untamed region of outer system activity that does not recognize the authority of any inner system powers, and engages in trade only with certain Jovian Expanse members. The only local authority of note is in the Diaspora of Titan, centered on the mining city of Herschel, which is managed by a benevolent AI called Devon. The Titan colonists are fiercely independent, and corporate and private influences are dominant in the Saturnian system, with absolutely no central authority or body of law outside of the all-mighty contractual agreement. What few disputes arise are often resolved in the free courts of Herschel, a loose civil protection system that moderates contractual obligations and rights. This movement toward total Capitolist Free Enterprise and the envelopment of personal and commercial rights into contractual obligations began during the dark years immediately following the destruction of Old Earth; in this period, the risk of death by asphyxiation due to lack of replenishable resources for air, water, food and other resources (never mind fuel) led to a rise in regional influence by corporate structures that quickly moved in to fill the void that was left with the destruction of Earth’s governance. It has steamrolled since then, and has rapidly become a cut-throat way of life in the region that even the quasi-unified libertarian colonies of Jupiter find disturbing in the way humans are regarded as commodities.

Enceladus

Aside from Titan, Saturn’s second most populous moon is Enceladus, where active regular mining groups produce much needed water and other resources for the region. This is also the moon with the largest concentration of shipyards. It is dominated by Cronos, the megacorporation that first founded the initial mining colonies and was given main privileges during the Old Earth years to administer local government. Cronos was a major factor in the contract-based rule of governance in the Saturnian region.

Iapetus

Iapetus is another moon on which numerous colonies can be found, including its largest which is Engelier City, built in the Engelier crater. There is a regional mystery, clouded by the efforts of local corporate powers, suggesting that evidence of extraterrestrial architecture related to Iapetus’ 1,300 km long equatorial ridge have surfaced. To date no one takes such claims seriously as groups like the Searchers appear to be fanatical and easily misled into believing natural formations are actually artificial, but some researchers feel there is evidence of writing found in petroglyphs along the ancient and mysterious ridge, and a few dedicated scholars (including Hans Orman of the Solar Collective) have made the study of this moon their life’s work, spending years at a time in the rough outlying colonies searching for clues, be they geologic or extraterrestrial as to the origin of Iapetus’s mysterious Equatorial Ridge and so-called writing.

Speaking of Three Months! Guess who's 3 Months Old???

2012-02-28T12:00:00.003-07:00

Yep, Marcus turned 3 months this weekend! Yay. Dad proud.

Three Whole Months!

2012-02-28T07:00:00.005-07:00

That's how long it took me to try and stay system-monogamous with Pathfinder....but I've fallen off the wagon and am going to start up a new 4E bi-weekly (or maybe weekly, we'll see) game soon.

A few reasons:

1. 5E's announcement has actually diverted all the attention of the Edition War gang away from bashing 4E to bashing Monte Cook's blogs and polls. This has effectively left 4E as "just another old edition" which I rather like.

2. I have my quibbles with 4E, and I really hope all the stuff I have issues with goes away in 5E and it also keeps all the stuff I like, but sticking with Pathfinder for a while has once again reminded me very much of just how much I dislike the 3rd edition approach to D&D. It's not that 3.X is bad, but it goes out of its way to make the process of simply enjoying a game for those with limited time too difficult to manage. I absolutely adore how 4E made the DM's job easier, and I really need that right now to be able to keep enjoying fantasy gaming. Traveller is good this way, too. So is The Mutant Epoch, for the record, and I still plan to run that soon.

3. Part of the problem is my new job. I've always noticed that there's a massive inverse ratio between "time I have to dick around designing stuff for scenarios" and "time I spend working my ass off." Right now, and for the forseeable future, I am in ass-worked-off mode. So in order to enjoy gaming, I need a system that lets me enjoy a night of gaming with minimum prep time (without also feeling like I'm cheesing it and basically providing a suboptimal experience; I can do 3.X ad hoc, but the experience is always shallower and less satisfying for it). 4E is one of several systems that handle minimal prep time really, really well.

4. I kinda miss the tactical combat that has clean, smartly designed rules that don't require constant rulebook flipping. Yeah I'm looking at you 3rd/Pathfinder. Regardless of the minis issue, 4E's streamlined combat mechanics are somehow more involved and interesting than 3rd edition's rules, while simultaneously being simpler and easier to moderate. Except for all the status markers, but we're all used to that now.

Okay, got that off my chest!

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Plots and Locations

2012-02-27T06:00:00.001-07:00

Plot and Setting Point: New Eden

The Colony of New Eden

The first colony, established about fifty miles from the seemingly successful native city of Needles and close to the Hoover Dam collapse point along the new Great lake, is established as the frontline center for research and investigation in to New Earth. Once the New Eden project is complete, then the formal re-colonization of Earth will commence.

Some of the mysteries New Eden must face:

• Learning to communicate with and educate the natives

• Discovering how to deal with the incredibly hostile alien seed life

• The revelation that more than one alien seed race is intelligent

The Survivor City of Fenx

The successful survivor city of Fenx is organized by a council of elders, who are the wisest survivors of the region. It is populated by many resourceful people who work in a cooperative egalitarian society. The organization called the Recorders is centered here, where relics of the lost civilizations are gathered and studied.

Fenx has a bunch of stuff to deal with:

• The threat of the skullkin, raiders, zombie hybrids and other menaces

• Finding the sacred relics of old that the recorders need to help restore society

• The appearance of men from space, who seem less interested in working with the men of Fenx than in changing them forever

• Survival! Always vital

Fenx Details:

Rulership: A governing council and appointed “Administrator” usually referred to as The Boss. His name is Molten. He's an affable fellow, a large, heavy-set but muscular man who offsets his gruff attitude with a dark sense of humor. He is very focused on keeping the peace with Fenx; he came here a decade ago from the town of Agua Prieta down south, where he saw the entire hierarchy of the town descend in to anarchy and tear the place apart.

The Sheriff: Constable Paul Hearse is the appointed sheriff of Fenx. He's a Wandering Gun, who impressed Molten and the council a few years ago when he rode in to town on a working solar car and drove off the then-powerful Knockers gang of wasteland wanderers. Hearse is a bit of a mystery....he's old, very old, and some think he's a First Gen Survivor, with Old Blood (the term to refer to someone who survived the apocalypse first hand, or is directly descended from someone who did, and who inherited anti-aging longevity genetic enhancements). He's a bit of a mystery, and could be a useful ally. He's very protective of Fenx, and between Hearse and Molten this is one of the reason that Fenx has prospered so well for the last decade.

Doctor Tom Rhymer

The Scrapyard-- Jerold runs it

Gun Shop--Hearse runs a gun shop. He can make bullets and shotguns.

Cages--There are prison cages. One has a small terror claw. Another has a melting mutant thing.

(The following are just short notes for ideas I implemented or planned to implement in the campaign)

Plot Points for the Post Apocalyptic Wasteland:

Southland Mine – Site of many ancient derelict robots, submerged in lava fields

The Superstition Pass Community

Being Plagued by screamers

Close to the Autogang territory

The Superstition Mountains Resort Community

Threatened by Slimer Mutants

A small community of about 50 people who took up residence here in a community surprisingly intact, nestled in a small northern vale that protected the resort from destruction

Leader: Turus the Bright

The Purple Vale

The Cauliflower Bug Mushroom Monster Fields

The Bull Cauliflower monster

Mysterious towers and “hill” at the center of the valley

The Jovian Crash

The remains of a cybernetic Jovian Pilot

A Neural Plug found on site

Broken Rail Gun
Northside of the Purple Valley

Evidence the shuttle crash was dragged down here by the giant cauliflowers

The cauliflowers “bloom” in to trees during rain (called agoros)

Creeper Spines

Encountered in Valley 2 where the ship actually crashed.

The Crash Valley

Fire swept area of crash, evidence of remains hauled off by creatures, footprints of cannibals nearby, and hidden remnants of trail of the captor and the woman.

The path leads up in to eastern mountains where the admin was hauled off by the renegade cyber soldier. Bodies of cannibals rammed on fence posts warn the local savages away from the cyber soldier's turf.

Path is littered with explosive motion sensing trap mines along the way.

Also, fine young savage named Jon Grinning Bear; hunting for his sister (named Fawn).

Cannibal Tribe called the Eaters of the Dead

New chief admin Tabitha Haft

Next: Spacer Campaign Ideas

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Flora and Fauna of New Earth

2012-02-24T06:00:00.002-07:00

Flora and Fauna of New Earth:

“Zombie” Hybrids

Not all humans who succumb to the DNA altering gene viruses of the Seed Pods come out “normal” In the end. A large number of altered humans from what may have been an early experiment by the alien machines were turned for all practical purposes in to violent, nearly unkillable mutant zombies. There is a belief that the virus altered the biology of the affected humans such that their body achieved a sort of “collective independence” in function and neurology. Effectively, you could cut off a limb, even a head, of one of these beings and each piece kept on living.

The zombie hybrids are a major threat to most normal communities of humans. The transmit viral protein strands through their saliva, which can infect and alter prey, turning the new host in to another zombie. They seem to be immortal, living pretty much until killed and eaten, although some unusual indigenous and alien diseases can have strange effects on the altered morphology of the zombies.

Thrashers

Thrashers are vicious alien lifeforms introduced by the Progenitor. Thrashers look like grass, initially, except the blades of grass (average 3-5 feet in height) are part of a bristly network of appendages attached to a much larger form beneath. Thrashers are plant-like; they bloom, spreading seed pods, which are caught by other thrashers. A small percentage of thrashers live long enough to grow large and dangerous. The largest of the thrashers can be a terrible threat to everything around.

Thrashers can move, by flexing their large, flat body, rolling up in to a ball (tentacle/grass blades out) and roll and pull themselves to their destination. It’s remarkable and terrifying to see one in action all at once.

Terror Jaws

The terror jaws are another alien introduction, therapods reminiscent of dinosaurs, but with a four-hinged jaw structure that also has surprisingly fine manipulation skills, Terror Jaws appear in a variety of shapes and forms, with the smallest being no larger than dogs, and the largest dwarfing Old Earth skyscrapers. It is not at all clear to Solar Collective researchers how the largest of these beasts can even support their own weight, and efforts to perform a biopsy to discover something about the physical properties of the largest beings.

Terror Jaws are smart animals, and pack hunters. They tend to feed off of indigenous Terran prey, and are also fond of several alien herbivores that were introduced by the Seed Pods. They are not a theat as long as they are not hungry and do not sense danger, but if provoked they can be deadly in close combat.

Skull Collectors

This particularly terrifying creature is some sort of weird hybrid symbiont which seems to voraciously absorb victims in to its own mass, adding them to the collective consciousness of the alien host organism. Many skull collectors alter their human victims, lengthening their necks, so that their distorted heads, which have grown numerous odd sensory nodes. Thus, skull collectors appear to have a number of tentacle heads with skull-like, polyp-laden heads attached to the ends of the hideous limbs.

Skull collectors live on the DNA and integrated body mass of all other living Terran and alien animals They are highly territorial as well, and appear to reproduce asexually, quickly shedding their newborns and forcing them away less they be re-absorbed in to their mass again. It is this inherent territoriality that prevents skull collectors from a ceaseless advancement in growth and threat to local humans and animals.

Other Creatures in Brief:
Reavers

Mentally unstable survivors with adverse mutations….failures

Harvesters

Strange an immense gathering beetles migrating from south to north

Pincers

Large horned beetle-like creatures that are prime hunters

Wasteland Scavengers

Rabble of all sorts who have degenerated to barbarism

Bandits and Raiders

Professional criminals who prey on the efforts of others

Black Plague

A name given to the victims of this black-creeping tar like substance which covers victims and takes control of their bodies, in order to spread itself to more hosts.

Thumpers

Giant beetle-like monstrosities that can be heard for miles using chemicals to detonate the ground in search of mineral veins which they absorb.

Sky Whales

Strange ovoid balloon-like creatures which attack with numerous dangling tentacles. They live in the upper atmosphere, mostly, and are a flight hazard.

Skullkin

Monstrous wolf-like beasts with exoskeletons and a terrifying howl. They are fierce predators.

Watchers

The mysterious sentient alien beings appearing near the Grand Canyon. They are four-armed and two legged, with long lean carpaced bodies, light blue skin, and wedged heads. They are tool users apparently, and it is uncertain where they have come from, but they are genetically distinct. May be new products of the Seed Pods.
Next: Plots and Locations

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Weaponry of the Solar Collective

2012-02-22T06:00:00.001-07:00

Weapons of the Solar Collective

In Space, big guns can puncture spaceship hulls pretty effectively. Most space-born weapons tend to carry a light load with minimal risk of hull puncturing. On Earth it’s not the same deal. Most explorers, researchers, colonists and CDF forces preparing to venture to one of the new Earth colonies go through a rigorous routine involving muscle development using spin gravity to acclimate the spacers to life in 1 Gee. Then they learn how to use high-energy kinetic impact weapons: slug throwers.

Advanced weapons are all fair game, but plasma weapons are highly experimental and disintegrator weapons emit lethal radiation and a shielded suit must be worn for “safe” use. Laser weapons are fairly common and actually pretty useful on PA Earth, since the only people wearing proper reflec armor designed to thwart lasers are the colonists themselves. The most common hand weapon, however, is the less lethal electrolaser stun weaponry (stun pistol and rifle) which are remarkably simple yet sophisticated tasers. Neural weaponry is also fairly common and emp rifles are usually carried in squads of zero-gee units.

The simplest and most effective weaponry remains the slug thrower, a technology that is easier to maintain in the rough natural environment of Earth than more sophisticated and energy-intensive weaponry.

Armor is less sophisticated. Although the need for protective suits in space has helped develop some armor technology, there has never been a need to mass-produce such suits. As a result, complex body armor is rare among the colonists; light and heavy armor suits are available, but power assist armor is usually only found among the spacer colonies and rarely employed on the ground. Heavy power assist armor is extremely pricey and exists in the domain of the spacer militaries only at this time.

As it turns out, warfare either for sport or necessity was still a big thing on Old Earth, and as a result an alarming percentage of extremely durable, radiation-resistant, chemically resistant hazmat-style military combat suits still exist and are even in circulation among the survivors of PA Earth as a valuable commodity. Such a suit, even a partial suit, can be nearly impervious to the hand-made archaic melee and ranged weapons of survivors, and so is extremely valuable. The only thing that keeps it from being even MORE common is the predilection for such armor to be in the presence of derelict military bases, long abandoned by humans, but still managed by insane military robots. So there you go.

The really impressive Old Earth military armor can still be found in working order. These old-world Dragoon-Class Power Suits (Heavy Powered Assault Armor) are extremely rare and working suits must be found; they can’t be purchased at the start of play. Those who do own them are usually reluctant to give them up for obvious reasons. The old Dragoon-Class suits were powered by portable nuclear cores, which if breached could go critical and release lethal level doses of radiation in their immediate vicinity. The half-life of these cores is usually two or more centuries, and there are no Earth-side production facilities in place to replace them (that anyone knows of).

CDF Standard Gear

The Colonial Defense Force of the Solar Collective arms its field troops as follows; characters in the CDF automatically get one of the following packages (choose one):

Planetside Defense:

Armor: Light Assault Armor or Adaptive Mesh and a light helmet

Weapons: heavy pistol and assault rifle or stun pistol and stun rifle.

Melee: knife or baton (or both)

Heavy Weapons Specialist:

Armor: Assault Armor or Light Power Assault Armor and a heavy helmet

Weapons: Heavy pistol and assault rifle with undercarriage grenade launcher

Melee: vibro-knife

Security Defense:

Armor: Assault Armor and heavy helmet

Weapons: stun pistol or stun rifle, heavy pistol

Melee: stun lance and baton

Space Defense:

Armor: Vacuum-Sealed light power-assault armor

Weapons: laser pistol, laser rifle or electromagnetic pulse rifle, or plasma rifle

Melee: superfine knife or zap glove.

Next: New Eden

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Technology Levels

2012-02-20T06:00:00.001-07:00

Technology of the Solar Collective and Post-Apocalyptic Earth:

As a rule of thumb, here are the basic guidelines for technology in the setting:

Primitive and Archaic Technology: Available and normal tech for survivors on PA Earth.

Medieval and Renaissance Level Technology: rare tech levels, but some advanced survivors may be at this level.

(Modern) 21st Century Earth Technology: These technology levels can be found in the forms of relics and artifacts in the ruins of Earth.

Advanced Technology: This is the default tech level of the Solar Collective.

Advanced Plus Technology: this is the default experimental tech level of the Solar Collective; devices of this level may exist, but are rare and experimental. Examples would include advanced nanotechnology, AI-Construct World Ships, and fully engineered new life forms.

Old Earth Technology: The Pre-apocalyptic earth had tech that was well beyond much of what is common among the spacer colonies today and relics of such can be found on Earth and in the ruins of abandoned space stations and colonies, especially around Venus and Mercury, both of which were largely abandoned due to time and cost by the Solar Collective. It is known that experimental biotech and quantum level apportation on a macroscopic level was in development at the time Old Earth was devastated. Of all the lost tech, only AI advances are believed to be superior today, due to the self-evolving Jovian Network.

Default Solar Collective Technology Levels by Field:

This list will let you know what’s most common for the Solar Collective.

Transportation: STL is the only available form of space flight. In this universe, it is still apparently physically impossible to overcome the light barrier

Weapons and Armor: Modern armor and weapons can be recovered in the ruins, and is common amongst advanced survivor towns. Advanced gear is also salvageable and common among the spacer colonies

Power: There are very few successful experiments at harnessing antimatter, but it’s considered a sort of “holy grail.” There is a common belief that A-M technology was being developed on Earth right before the End.

Biotech/Medicine: Biotech is ahead of the game; transgenic modification is relatively common among spacers and has no social stigmatism attached to it anymore. Old Earth was on the cusp of much greater advancements, and it is known that some survivors today exhibit genetic modifications that date from this period, though the tampering of the Seed Pod Terraformers has confused the issue of what is a relic of human modification and what is alien. The information learned from the Seed Pod Terraformers on Mars also propelled biotech research well ahead of the pack for the Mars Collective.

Computers: Spacers use sophisticated AI technology with built in fail-safes; unrestricted AI technology built on quantum level biotech dominates the Jovian Expanses. Relic AI technology on Old Earth shows that this is one area where the colonies have actually evolved a bit past where Earth tech levels were a century ago.

Next: Weaponry

Glassworks

2012-02-19T22:30:00.007-07:00

It's Sunday Evening! Time for some more Philip Glass. This time, his passage from Glassworks of the same title, followed by Metamorphosis, one of my all time favorite pieces (and one of Glass's works which was featured in an episode of Battlestar Galactica. The one where Starbuck was stuck on lifeless Caprica).

Rest

2012-02-19T22:15:00.003-07:00

This is misattributed as a zombie tale, when it's really a sort of ghost story/revenant's journey but well worth watching....once again, Vimeo proves to be the place for interesting and exotic films:

Rest from Sunday Paper on Vimeo.

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Spacer Backgrounds

2012-02-17T06:00:00.004-07:00

Citizens of the Solar Collective and other Spacers:

The Solar Collective is an advanced society with access to high tech resources, a necessity for them to have survived in the solar system for the last century. All Solar Collective characters start with access to most advanced technology, limited only by what resources they take with them to the surface of New Earth. Usually if they are arriving as part of an expedition funded by the Science and Research Institute of the Solar Collective, then they will receive plenty of gear for the task at hand.

Some characters may come from the Jovian Expanses or the Outliers. These are the regions where higher technology is blossoming, and access to even more advanced technology can be found. Characters could also have been involved in unusual research projects in the Mars Colony or off of the Venusian Projects.

Space Professions: Many professions are reflected in space, though the following are most common, including but not limited to assassin, computer tech, doctor, engineer, explorer, journalist, mechanic, pilot, scientist, soldier, spy, teacher, and technician.

Powers: Special agents of the collective may be outfitted with cybertech to aid them in surviving the extremely dangerous and often toxic wastelands of the world. A character may gain access to cybertech by making a LUCK roll and having a base wealth by profession of affluent or greater, or if the GM dictates it (such as their employer granting the surgical modifications necessary to complete a mission) Characters may build their cybertech using the Super Powers rules with a normal level of enhancement.

Equipment: When equipping characters, any Advanced Tech gear is readily available, although more conventional modern equipment may be chosen for its sturdiness or practicality. Some guidelines on weapons and armor will follow under the tech section. For practical purposes, assume your character has received equipment up to a value of Expensive as if the character had affluent wealth. from the Solar Collective to aid his venture on Earth.

Sample Ideas for Spacer Backgrounds:

Soldiers of the Collective

The colonial defense force is a small but well-trained military outfit. Although the Solar Collective foresees no conflict among their own, there are still plenty of rogue operators out there, not to mention the mystery of the Outliers in the outer system, and the reberllious Jovian Expanses. Such turmoil insures work for the CDF. Crack CDF elites are now being recruited to protect humanity’s return to Earth, as well.

Colonist

The colonists are a great choice for average (although “average” for the Solar Collective is still a scientifically educated and capable adult) citizens eager to “clean up” the old planet. As the mobilization to recolonize and “rediscover” the homeworld picks up, Spacers will be given opportunities to buy new plots of land on Earth, to begin the process or reinhabiting and reintroducing civilization to the damaged world.

Researcher

Researchers are chomping at the bit to begin new land-based expeditions to the old homeworld, after decades of limited ground contact and satellite surveillance. Many researchers are eager to unlock the mysteries of Thanatos and its terraforming project.

Educator

Educators are among those spacers eager to learn about the survivors and help lift them back up to new tech levels.

Explorer

Some spacers are simply interested in charting out the mysteries of a world no longer familiar, one which is essentially new alien territory to men and women who have lived their entire lives in space and on desolate planets.

Astronauts and Space Pilots

The astronauts and space pilots of space are unlikely to venture out on Earth for very long, but there may be some unfortunate incident forcing him to wander about for a prolonged period.

Next: technology!

Philip Glass, Minimalism and 1000 Airplanes (on the roof)

2012-02-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

I had mentioned that I liked Philip Glass. That's a mild understatement...I believe I have just about all of Philip Glass's music which he wrote, orchestrated, performed or was even in the same room as. If you don't know much about Philip Glass (outside of the fact that his music occasionally graces Verizon and car commercials) you can check out a free sampler over at Amazon here called "The Orange Mountain Music Sampler." This'll give you an opportunity to experience the grandfather (although not the originator) or modern minimalist music in action.

Here's a sampling of one of my all time favorite works by Philip Glass, from the soundtrack to the science fiction play 1000 Airplanes on the Roof. This was the first CD I purchased back in 1988-89 along with my first CD player, and I still have that CD today.

Trollszine 4 is Out! Plus Fiery Dragon Ramps up for more T&T 7.5 Goodness

2012-02-15T12:00:00.031-07:00

From The Trollish Delver

Always nice to hear more good news in the Tunnels & Trolls community (the guerilla underground of the RPG network). Trollszine #4 is out and you can download it for free here. Needless to say I have another contribution therein, and I need to get ahold of Dan Hembree and Scott Grant, the new caretakers, to provide some material for future issues.

Dan's blog talks about some great news as well: Fiery Dragon, which has previously produced the Tunnels & Trolls 7th and 7.5 edition boxed sets (as well as a follow-up Delver's Kit) and is apparently moving forward with a new module and a new release of the 7.5 rules (hopefully in a full-size or more manageable bound book format....I'll keep my fingers crossed....). Moreover, they'll be donating a portion of the proceeds from these sales to the Jeff Freels Transplant Fund, a noted blind artist who is well regarded for his sword & sorcery illustrations. You can see some of Jeff's stuff here.

I haven't talked much about T&T on my blog....I don't get to play it as much as I might like (if I could play it weekly I would), and while its a very easy and intuitive game, it is very hard to sell to the predominantly D&D-familiar crowd I normally game with. That said, I've always held it up as one of my favorite systems of all time, simply because it's so elegant in its design and thanks to the many people from Ken St. Andre on to Liz Danforth, Jim Peters and the many, many others who have contributed to the game over the years to create a unique, farcial, serious, zany, dark, weird and over-the-top realm of fiction and gaming for T&T. It's nice to know that back in 1983 when I discovered T&T that the game would be going just as strong as ever nearly thirty years later, in its weirdly underground style. My first several years as a fanzine editor would never have happened way back when if it weren't for T&T and its dedicated fans.

By Jeff Freels

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Backgrounds for Survivors

2012-02-15T06:00:00.001-07:00

Backgrounds for Survivors:

The following backgrounds are appropriate to survivors by type.

Primitive Survivors

The survivors of the apocalypse are descendants of the humans who somehow weathered the passing of Nemesis and the destruction of Thanatos. Primitive survivors are wildmen, barbarians and savages by and large, and while they can often puzzle out the uses of the ancient artifacts of lost civilizations they are generally an uncouth, uneducated lot.

Available Professions: primitive survivors have access to a few professions, including explorer, hunter, shaman, tribesman, warrior and wizard.

Powers: Humans make a LUCK roll; if you make it you are a Hybrid and must roll D100: 1-40 roll for mutations; 41-80 psionics; on a 81-00 roll once for a mutation and choose one psionic ability. If you choose wizard or shaman then you may automatically start with psionics and may still roll LUCK to see if you start with mutations, as well!

Equipment: Primitive only; LUCK roll to gain access to 1D3-1 advanced pieces of gear. Purchase gear as if they were of destitute wealth level.

Enlightened Survivor:

Those who may have dwelt on the surface but who retained, learned, or were taught to understand the technology of the forgotten era are known as Enlightened Survivors. Perhaps the character was raised by a community of pre-apocalyptic robots, or maybe he was lucky enough to be born in to a village that had a ritual process for retaining an understanding of written language, as well as a rare cache of ancient tomes filled with the mysteries of physics, mathematics and mechanical engineering.

Available Professions: typically includes craftsmen, criminals, explorers, farmers, gamblers, hunters, laborers, lawmen, merchants, nobles, priests, sailors, scholars, servants, slaves, soldiers, thieves, and warriors. Some enlightened communities may include mechanics, teachers and students.

Powers: Make a LUCK roll; if you make it, roll D100: 1-40 roll for mutations; 41-80 psionics; on a 81-00 roll once for a mutation and choose one psionic ability

Equipment: Enlightened survivors normally have primitive gear, but they also gain access to 1D3-1 advanced pieces of gear salvaged by their community. Purchase gear as if they were of poor wealth level.

Awakened Survivor:

Survivors who somehow remained in stasis or were hidden away in technologically advanced enclaves and shielded from the destruction above are called Awakened Survivors. Regardless of whether the safe location the awakened survivor heralds from suffered a critical meltdown forcing him or her out of stasis, or whether the survivor’s hidden enclave at last ran out of resources and was forced onto the surface world, awakened survivors have been propelled into the real world as a result.

Available Professions: any profession may be suitable, but the likeliest professions include computer tech, doctor, engineer, explorer, mechanic, scientist, soldier and technician.

Powers: Make a hard (1/2 skill) LUCK roll; if you make it, roll D100: 1-20 roll for mutations; 21-80 psionics; on 81-00 roll once for a mutation and choose one psionic ability

Equipment: Awakened survivors are of average wealth level initially and can start with advanced gear (usually taken from their enclave or stasis facility), and should gather as much as they can afford or the GM allows, after which they must then forage.

Emitremmus - Nuclearization

2012-02-14T23:31:00.000-07:00

You know, I just realized that although I found this great jem of Fallout-inspired post apocalyptic music a while back, I don't think I've mentioned it on the blog yet. So without further adieu, here is Emitremmus: Nuclearization: Voyage in the Post-Atomic Unknown:

Royalty Free Music - Stock Music Library | Jamendo PRO

New Hu Creix: Far

2012-02-14T12:00:00.007-07:00

More excellent music from Hu Creix, with four tracks available for listening at Jamendo:

Royalty Free Music - Stock Music Library | Jamendo PRO

Ed Greenwood's Edition Neutral Forgotten Realms

2012-02-14T06:00:00.001-07:00

Rule of Three over on the WotC website mentions this bit, specifically that Ed Greenwood is apparently writing his own version of the Forgotten Realms and its going to be edition neutral (as will the Menzoberranzan book). Thought it was worth sharing....I personally would be a lot more interested in seeing where Ed has taken his own campaign over the decades, that would be much more interesting I think than the years and years of hijinks and marketing shenanigans that have driven FR book for the last couple decades now.

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Characters

2012-02-13T06:00:00.003-07:00

BRP Rules for Characters in 2221:

Characters in the Post-Apocalyptic solar system are built at the default “normal” level of advancement. The following optional rules are employed:

Education is used (use to determine starting skill points)

Mutations, Super Powers and Psychic Abilities are available

Sanity Rules are in place

Personality Type Skill Bonuses are used

Androids use the Build Point-Buy option

Random Character Options:

If desired, a character’s background and race can be rolled for:

D100 Race                              D100 Background

01-60 Human                           01-25 Stellar Collective Spacer

71-80 Genemod                       26-30 Jovian Collective Spacer

81-90 Uplifted Animal              31-40 Spacer from the Outliers

91-90 Android                         41-75 Primitive Survivor

                                                76-95 Enlightened Survivor

                                                96-00 Awakened Survivor
Note: Hybrids can manifest as part of several backgrounds (below)

Races

There are five possible races: humans, androids, hybrids, genemods and uplifted. After choosing a race you will then decide on your background package, either as a survivor or with the Solar Collective and other spacers.

Humans

Despite the genetic alterations of the Seed Pods and the general devastation of humanity, actual humans continue to exist and prosper. Humans on Earth are a ragged lot of primitive survivors struggling day to day against horrific alien flora and fauna. Humans in the Spacer colonies are a hardier breed of man that has adapted to survival in space, and now seeks to return to the mother world.

Humans have a chance of becoming hybrids (below) but untainted humans often modify themselves. Spacers are often genemodded transgenics, or sometimes rely on cybernetic enhancements. Any spacer can choose to modify his or her body with bioware or wetware if he so chooses; only affluent characters can afford this (based on the wealth of the chosen profession, not the equivalent wealth level they are allowed to gear up from).

Androids

Androids generally only exist in the space colonies, though stories on ancient androids which still function on Earth exist. Androids are synthetic humans, built of artificial components and otherwise looking very much like humans. That said, androids are still machines and require physical repairs with the proper tools and parts to recover from injury, though there are rumors of nano-repaired androids.

Androids are built using super powers at the normal level. They are not subject to mutations or psionics. Because they are built, androids should be made using the build option for attributes.

Genemods

For a really odd character, you could have a survivor who is descended from a genemod. Genetic modification, also called transhumanism, was a common practice before the collapse of humanity. Some of the genemods may have been especially suited to survival, and since they were modified at the genetic level may have passed on some or all of their engineered traits to their children. If you wish to play a genemod survivor you may do so; such characters are designed using the Super Power rules in BRP (normal level of ability). Genemods may still roll to see if they have hybrid traits, as well (more below).

Genemods that require unusual or high tech maintenance may be unfeasible without a good explanation. Some genemods may be current transhumans from the Solar Collective, as well.

Uplifted Animals

Humans aren’t the only indigenous flora and fauna being modified by some Seed Pods. Animals may have been modified or uplifted as well. Such animals could also be relics from the pre-apocalyptic era of transhumanism, as well, or recent creations produced by bio engineers in the Solar Collective, too. Such characters can be designed by determining the uplifted stats of the base animal averaged with their human equivalent; they also gain access to unusual traits automatically (roll D100: 01-50 pick two mutations; 51-80 gain Normal level Super Powers; 81-00: gain psionics).

Hybrids of the New Earth

The hybrid is a variant of humanity that is becoming increasingly common: genetically tampered humans, some of whom survive childbirth, others who are changed after a happenstance encounter with a still-active Seed Pod from the Progenitor. To survivors, the hybrids are mystics and shamans who have been touched by the gods. To more learned men, the survivors appear to have been attacked at the genetic level, their DNA altered by hybrid gene-splicing nanoviruses released by the Seed Pods for an unknown purpose.

Hybrids experience mutations over time, causing them to manifest aberrant physical and mental abilities that sometimes border on the supernatural. The psionic effects of the hybrids are astounding, and as researchers are allowed access to Earth they seek to understand the mysteries of these strange mutants. It is suspected that the Seed Pods are clearly making intended experimental changes in their subject humans, but to what end remains a mystery.

Normally you do not choose to become a hybrid; instead, depending on the professional background you pick (next post) you will make a LUCK roll to see if you are a hybrid.

Next: Character Backgrounds

The Traveller Effect - or is it the Mongoose Effect???

2012-02-10T16:33:00.001-07:00

I've been running Traveller on off-Saturdays now, and its looking ot be a permanent system for a while. This is good! It is also the only night I am truly looking forward to. Not because my other game nights aren't awesome, but because there's something really cool about having all the rules in one book (or even a handful of books) that all fit in the grip of a single appendage (i.e. hand).

Mongoose's digest size Legend and LBB series for Traveller are very kick ass like this. I'm going to add Mutant Epoch, C&C, T&T 7.5, Advanced Fighting Fantasy and probably a few others to the list. I will dream for a bit of what life would be like if I limited myself exclusively to RPGs that could be carried in their entirety without a sense of want in one hand. Ahhhhhhh.....

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: A BRP Post-Apocalypse Sci Fi Setting

2012-02-10T06:00:00.009-07:00

This campaign actually played out in its first form using GURPS 4th edition, but I subsequently revised it for use with BRP, which was an easier set of mechanics to introduce players to. Either way, it may offer some inspirational ideas for your own future Apocalypse Campaigns!

2221 – After the Nemesis Cataclysm

The End of Earth: The Earther’s View

The end of the world happened about 100 years ago, although almost no pocket of civilization left keeps records anymore, so there is some debate about exactly when it happened. Best guesses from the organization called the Recorders is that it began sometime in 2121. This is the first time that records from the Old World speak of the entity known today as Nemesis.

Not much is known about Nemesis in the present, although it is thought to have been a great and terrible being from the sky, which passed near the world of man and wreaked terrible destruction upon the vast civilization of humanity. To the men of the current era it is seen as a quasi-mystical event, a grand cleansing that unraveled the civilization of old, from which a handful of worthy souls rose anew. The name, Nemesis, has come to hold terrifying connotations of reverence, awe, and fear. It is, to many, a terrifying god of darkness.

Not much else is known of this time, though the small handful of scholars called the recorders do seek to remember or salvage what little they can of the lost lore. It is known that Nemesis was heralded by several archons of the sky, which descended to wreak terrible destruction upon the world, in honor of their dark master. Wherever you see vast craters and scars upon the earth, you are looking at the tread marks of these archons. The cradle of the West, near the free city of Fenx, owes much of its life to the vast footfall of the archons, which itself filled with life-bringing water.

The most devastating effect of the great cataclysm was the arrival of the so-called Progenitor. Very little is known about what the Progenitor was, but it is known that the mysterious object was nick-named Thanatos by the ancients, who appear not to have understood what it was.

It was only after the great footfalls of the archons and the searing heat of the skies cast by Nemesis that the Progenitor came to Earth, and began to seed. Thousands upon thousands of what could only be described as pods, many of which are still plainly visible across the wilderlands, crashed to earth and exploded open, spewing forth mysterious gasses, spores they were called, which implanted themselves in everything, be it the soil or living creatures, and began to grow. Men and animals who inhaled the spores went mad, become ravenous beings driven to hunger and violence. From the soil, new plant life grew, strange and terrible life that was much more dangerous than normal plants. Soon, the first animals of the Progenitor appeared; some simple creatures, other terrifying giant therapods with six eyes, four jaw-like tentacles, two legs and long, prehensile tails. These creatures were immediately hostile to man and animal alike. Survival during this early period was harsh.

Over the years, it has been a long struggle for man and his devastated environment, working to survive against the new life brought by Thanatos, a form of life which survives by virtue of the devastation caused by Nemesis and the Archons. There are pockets of humanity which survive, and some claim that there are men in the sky who still survive, waiting for the day when they will come down to bring humanity’s surviving descendants to the mysterious safety of the starry heavens.

This is the future now of 2221.

The End of Earth: The Solar Colonial View

The world came to an end in a few short months. It began when the ISA Deep Space Array, a manned research and scientific outpost near Pluto in the vicinity of the Kuiper Belt detected a rapid approaching object that radiated a low level of heat but appeared to be immense in size. The object was dubbed Nemesis, after recollections of the very old but discarded hypothesis of the Nemesis star, once used to suggest that a large stellar object traversing the solar system might have gravitationally dislodged asteroids and comets, sending them hurling in to the solar system to lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Here, whether it was a fluke or not, was a massive object, a brown dwarf, which was about to pass dangerously close to both the Sun and the planets of the solar system.

Nemesis took a trajectory through the solar system which brought it alarmingly close to Earth. Space colonies had been established on Titan and several other Jovian moons, as well as extensive colonies on Mars, the Moon, and even research stations over Venus and Mercury. While most of the colonies were relatively safe, it became painfully evident that Earth would suffer a catastrophic near-miss.

As Nemesis came closer, it became evident that the situation was worse than could be imagined, for the heavy gravitational pull of the brown dwarf was dragging a large mass of asteroids and planetoids with it. Worse yet, it was dislodging cometary debris from the Kuiper Belt and beyond. Over a matter of weeks, thousands of planet-killer sized objects were detected heading inward toward the solar system, creating a devastating barrage of objects, any one of which hitting Earth could lead to catastrophe. The largest of these objects appears to be in a tidally-locked orbital pattern around Nemesis, and was labeled Thanatos.

Humanity’s preparations for the end of time included an effort to export as many carefully selected people as possible to the Solar Collective, as the colonies came to be called. Efforts at deterring planet-killer size objects were undertaken, but with limited success, for there was no amount of time and effort that could possibly deflect the number of incoming objects toward Earth.

After four months, the first of a series of asteroids and cometary debris struck Earth and the moon, followed by more than a dozen more strikes. The largest single impact object was a mile in diameter, but that was more than enough. Eleven successive strikes took almost the entire ecosystem, let alone the civilizations of man, out in a matter of hours. Only a few well-placed or lucky installations and cities survived for any length of time, and even then the wave of regression, followed by the nuclear winter and the devastation on both climate and food resources left 99.9% of all humanity dead.

The Solar Colonies watched in horror, unable to do much more than plan for future efforts to return and re-colonize their home world. That was when the Thanatos Object appeared to launch thousands of objects, like seed pods, at Earth and Mars, pelting both planets with a rain of steady asteroids for a period of weeks. On Mars it was immediately evident that the seed pods contained strange life, which seemed to have been genetically tailored to the unique environment and slight atmosphere of Mars. Because of Mars’s slight atmosphere, however, the vast majority of life spawned from the pods was microbial, with a handful of larger creatures that appeared to be remarkably efficient at converting and producing a meaningful atmosphere. It instantly transformed what was a millennial terraforming project initiated by humans for the last six decades in to an event that would take only a century or two.

It wasn’t until a year later that spacecraft observing Earth revealed that the objects on Earth were also seed pods, which had seeded the earth with the spores, bacteria, eggs and seeds of an entire alien ecosystem. Unlike on Mars, it appeared that the pods on Earth had less work to do, and so began to hatch all sorts of beasts, both foul and friendly. The severely weakened ecosystem of Earth was being attacked by alien invaders. Amazingly, it appeared that in the wake of Nemesis, an effort at alien colonization was underway.

Within three years, a project was launched by the Mars colony to pursue Nemesis and investigate all they could learn about the Thanatos object. It was evident now that what was previously believed to be a close orbital body to Nemesis was, in fact, a slower-than-light colony world, using Nemesis as a means of transportation and expansion. It would be decades before the project returned, using the fusion-powered Starbringer spacecraft, with firm evidence that Thanatos was a relic, ancient, controlled by an unknown artificial intelligence, seeding any potential world that Nemesis passed by. The object itself was some sort of immense processor and seeder, managed by curious self-replicating biomechanical robots reminiscent of Von Neumann machines.

Of all the alien creatures observed to date on both Mars and Earth, no evidence of true intelligence has manifested. This has led to a great deal of speculation about the real purpose of Thanatos, and where its intelligent creators have gone. Speculation ranges from suspicion that the artifact is a relic, long abandoned but still functional, to the fear that sister objects containing STL world ships of the intelligence behind this impressive terra-forming project may be on the way. For now, it remains a mystery.

A century after the event, the Solar Collective is an organized and efficient society of humans, with a strong presence on Mars, where they have made great headway in genetic engineering while learning to control and manipulate the alien environment introduced by Thanatos. The Jovian moon colonies are strong, and new colonies on the Moon of Earth have been built to replace those wiped out in the cataclysm. Recently, direct evidence from observatories on the Moon has shown that mankind survived the great extinction, and now holds its own in small colonies throughout the world.

The Collective is lead by the Colonial Director, a woman named Samaris Yingada, who has decided that the time is now ripe for the first tentative efforts at re-colonization must begin. Ten thousand men and women have volunteered. The Lunar Base has become the staging point for the re-colonization, and a brave new era of exploration and rediscovery is almost underway.

Next: Character Generation

Origin of the Endreti Trolls of Lingusia

2012-02-07T06:00:00.002-07:00

There was a post on troll origins in people's campaigns over at rpg.net and while answering it I thought, "I should add this bit to my blog." And lo, so it was!

Long ago, about ten thousand years or more in the distant past, during the fall of the Prehunat Empire, the trolls were a sylvan race not unlike elves who at the dawn of time were an innocent people. As the fable goes, the first of their kind was a terminally ill woman who would travel to a reflecting pool from which it was said those who slept by the water would experience strange healing dreams. There she shunned her sickly image in the water but made a comfortable bed in the grass beside the pool, and she did indeed dream. A voice spoke to her, ageless and ancient, with a strange quality that suggested that the originator of the voice was, itself, dreaming, perhaps even of her. In the dream it offered her perfection and immortality, if she but honored the sleeping entity. It revealed its name as Tsathoqqua, and said that like the frogs of the earth who bore down into the mud so too had it, long ago, and it had ever since been trapped below.*

The woman considered the voice's offer and eventually assented to its wishes. In doing so, she was changed into the first troll, as her flesh grew rubbery and pallid, but her immortality through regeneration (and a racial memory) was made manifest. Her form became hideous, and she cried out against the change, but Tsathoquaa explained that she was the purest form of beauty he could imagine. This first troll woman was known as Sakarta (and indeed all endreti trolls afterwards would name their first queen after her). She grew mad from her change, and at first lashed out with her newfound beastial rage against her fey kin. In time she grew lonely, and in a pact with Tsathoquaa she would capture her kin in the night, take them to the pool, and subject them to the dark god's change. Thus were the first of the endreti trolls born.

*Tsathoquaa in the Warlords era of Lingusia is revealed to be one of the twleve chaos titans called the Skaeddrath, and the pool from which the first trolls came was also the birthpoint of many horrible monsters over the eons. It is located deep in the eastern mountains of the Amechian region (the Sea of Amech region in the Warlords era).

Busy Week! On Moving, the Nook Tablet, and Crude Matter

2012-02-06T06:00:00.006-07:00

Just a minor update and apology, the blog's preloaded content has momentarily run dry and I have not had time or a regular internet connection to properly update, due to a sudden move into what feels like a veritable mansion compared to the rather quaint townhome situation my wife and I are used to. Marcus of course is taking it all in stride: one place is the same as another. He only got upset when the vast array of colors and shapes that he loved to look at (known to adults as my "bookshelf") disappeared, to be replaced by a plain ordinary brown set of blank shelves with no colors or shapes whatsoever. Then he let out a major wail.

I'll always have a million books (or at least that's what my aching back tells me I have after this weekend of moving) but I did take a bold step forward on my Birthday last week and bought a Nook Tablet. I figured hey, its kinda like a tablet, and its also like a reader, so maybe I can check out a bit of both. Then I promptly downloaded my vast Baen Library (both the free stuff and the other books I have bought there over time in the hopes I might one day find a convenient way to read them), then went on something of a fevered shopping frenzy for more book deals. It was not pretty, and I don't know whether to be thankful or irritated that my bank let me make so many minor transactions with Barnes & Noble without questioning why so much activity had hit my card. So yeah....

Anyway, it's only been four days and already I am perplexed by the crude plant matter that we once used to record data. Life before the Nook (or more precisely ereaders in general) seems like a strange dream.

The Nook and its like aren't good for some things. My giant Halo Encyclopedia or Age of Conan coffee table books do not translate well to the hand-sized Nook, for example. Even though in principle accessing a PDF of, say, Pathfinder can be more efficient, the Nook Tablet (or rather Pathfinder's PDF layout) still doesn't cater to the medium. Stuff like that. And while some publishers get that we know they have reduced overhead in electronic media, others appear to take a "threatened" stance against it and proceed to jack up electronic prices even more. Then there are publishers like the aforemention Baen books who absolutely get it.

I'm not asking for steep discounts...but if you're $8 paperback is retailing for $8 in electronic form, then I know you're charging me more for the virtual edition in terms of profit than the physical edition. There's nothing wrong with that, except of course how I will then not buy your e-copy and go instead for the competitor who marks their $8 books down to $6 (or sometimes even less).

It doesn't look like ebooks in general have reached the "Steam Holiday Clearance Sale" level yet, though. Maybe they have on Amazon, I don't know. I couldn't bring myself to buy a kindle, though. I like having more options, not less...Nook seemed to fit a happy middle ground somewhere.

Anyway, apologies for not having any recent content! Once the internet is hooked up in the new house there should be more to come. Maybe even a Mutant Epoch article or two if I can find some time to finish them up...

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Hnaka Warrior Women

2012-02-02T06:00:00.001-07:00

Orders, Cults and Secret Societies of the Sabiri

The Sabiri are like any other civilization, and must have their special secret societies and closed groups. Unlike many other lands, the sabiri have some unusual influences to this effect, including the revived demon cults of the Kadelans, the religious cults of the enigmatic Kobal and Amorgas (which are worshipped solely in this region) and the many unusual martial orders that cater to unique characteristics of the local culture and its unusual gender divisions. Each of the key groups and their influence in the land shall be addressed below.

Hnaka Warrior Women

The hnaka (hih-naka, which means horse slayers) are small sects of warrior women scattered throughout the many tribes of Sabiri. The hnaka rite of passage is a special ritual that women who chose to eschew their traditional roles may attempt to pass. The ritual is a grueling quest to prove one’s worth as a true warrior, and is meant to frighten away would-be initiates who haven’t the strength or fortitude necessary to survive in the demanding roles of a hardened warrior cult.

Hnaka who pass the test are indoctrinated in to a curious new society, one in which they are expected to dress and act like a man, and to even adopt male roles of sexual dominance. In the southlands a few extremist tribes near the border to Helios are known to undergo rites of genital mutilation. A handful of hnaka refrain from all sexual relations and choose a path of celibacy.

Tribes which have a sect of hnaka amongst their number treat the women of this group as if they were men in almost all other ways save for ownership of horses (indeed they are forbidden from ownership of horses). The men in turn treat them in kind, and grant them all of the rights and status of male warriors. This means, in theory, that hnaka can even take husbands—or wives—as if they were men. A hnaka who chooses men as husbands in this manner does have some restrictions: the men must be foreigners, slaves, or captured in battle from enemy tribes. It is extremely rare for a hnaka to take on a voluntary warrior mate of a friendly tribe voluntarily, for it still means a loss of status for the man.

Hnaka in battle show the uncharacteristic unity of their kind. If a dozen tribes gather on the fields of battle to face off against another dozen, the hnaka sects amongst each friendly tribe will gather together as one and work as a united company. No one questions this, and the hnaka usually choose one chieftain among the tribal leaders to answer directly to, though the exact process by which they make this decision is enigmatic. The hnaka do seem to have some sort of internal ranking system, but exactly how the pecking order is established is unknown.

Hnaka in battle are distinguished for being ground troops. As a unit the hnaka are infamous for their ruthless and deadly efficiency at dealing with mounted warriors on foot. Their ability to bring down both horse and rider is how they attained their name.

New Feat: Hnaka Celibate

Prerequisites: Hnaka Warrior Maiden background, female, celibate

Effect: A small number of Hnaka warrior women believe that sexual energy depletes their warrior’s prowess. By restraining from sexual contact these women are perceived as achieving greater skill in battle.

A celibate Hnaka warrior woman who remains so gains a special property: she may expend a hero point during to gain one of two benefits (chosen when the point is spent): she may gain a bonus to all attack and damage rolls equal to her level for a number of rounds equal to her Chrisma modifier (minimum 1 round) until the end of the encounter or she may recover a depleted spell slot. Should she ever break her oath of celibacy, she loses this feat immediately and must replace it with a different feat.

Warrior women who were not virginal before taking this oath may subsequently take it and be eligibile for the feat, but they must also subject themselves to a process of ritual purification during which they prove their worth by abstaining from sexual congress for a year, first.

(Notes: First, one might be forgiven for thinking that I devised Sabiri female warrior cults with all their tattoos and leather specifically to have an excuse to use Royo's warrior women illustrations in my campaigns. Second, this is technically as far as I've gotten with "ready to release" content in the Sabiri line, but I hope to get more material done soon....maybe even by the time this edition of Tales rolls around (I've preprogrammed a bit of it so I have a couple weeks...)

A Few Lessons Learned About Fatherhood

2012-01-31T18:39:00.001-07:00

So we're two months and a few days in, and already I've learned some important lessons about early fatherhood. To wit:

1. It turns out that there is a special phenomenon known as the All Consuming Hunger that is experienced by only two classes of being: babies and zombies. And they sound a lot alike when expressing this hunger, too!

2. Unless your stomach is cast iron, give up any love of spicy mustard or thick curry for a while. Or corn meal.

3. What do Babies and the French have in common? They both think Jerry Lewis's slapstick is hillarious! In fact, babies pretty much think anything you do is hillarious if you make enough funny noises while doing it.

4. Kids can be remarkably well behaved and quiet when you are responsive to them. In defense of parents who may have to deal with colicky babies, I concede that I may just have gotten extremely lucky.

5. We as social entities learn to manipulate at a very, very early age.

6. I am startled that more parasites in nature don't go for the ultra-super-duper-cute look, it seems to work well for babies!

....more to come, I am sure....!

2012-01-30T06:00:00.003-07:00

Death Among the Sabiri

The Sabiri regard death as part of the process. They revere their fallen dead, especially the warriors and those who perished honorably. They regard a long life as honorable, too. One who is wise or clever enough to live to an old age and pass away without a sword in the gullet deserves recognition, it is felt. Cowards, traitors, and those who exhibit utter selfishness are disdained and rarely given fair treatment when time comes for burial.

While most notable Sabiri are interred in stone-capped dolmuns (and most tribes have at least one or two such locations that they will tavel to for the burial and honoring of noteworthy personages of the tribe) the average Sabiri is buried in a small stone cairn and without too much fanfare. They revere the dead, but do not feel that the soul, once it has migrated from the body, has any use or memory of its prior life as it moves on to the next.

Chieftains and great heroes get treated a little differently. Over the last few centuries the Sabiri grew fascinated by the immense ziggurats and other burial mounds in a large region called the Necropolis, adjacent to where the city of Fartheren was established. It has long been the practice that chieftains, warlords and heroes be buried here. High priests, too, have come in to the habit of seeking interment in the Necropolis. Tribes will deviate from their routine, sending large funerary processions over hundreds of miles to reach this location, that a chieftain may be buried.

While a few especially megalomaniacal chieftains and warlords have seen fit to erect their own burial mounds at the Necropolis, just as many have seen fit to have an existing Kadelan ziggurat excavated or opened, that their body would be interred within. This practice is actually quite common.

When a wealthy Sabiri passes away, he tends to take it with him. Some chieftains will even have their favored wives and daughters (though never their sons) buried with them, and it goes without saying that all Sabiri prefer to be buried with their horse. This practice of wealthy burials has also led to a surge of interest among foreign grave robbers. A small cult of sabiri death priests called the Kad’harak tend to the Necropolis for this very reason, and will vigorously defend the hundreds of monuments and mounts at the site against possible theft.

Sabiri have a decidedly different (though not unusual) reaction to undead. The undead are regarded as abominations, and only the demon cultists of the Servants of the Shroud seem to regard the undead as anything to be valued. Most Sabiri are very superstitious about undead, for they represent a break in the cycle of reincarnation, a scar in the symmetry of the universe. Undead are reviled and hunted. Those who manufacture them, such as warlocks and necromancers, must do so in secret for fear of reprisal. Most Sabiri prefer to be buried with the Mark of Tilalk, a white runic etching placed in paint upon the foreheads of corpses, believed to grant good luck on their journey to the next life, and to protect them from unnatural reanimation.

Next: Hnaka Warrior Women

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Warfare in Sabiri

2012-01-28T06:00:00.002-07:00

Warfare

Sabiri avoid warfare when it is not necessary, despite their proclivity for ritualistic violence and blood sports. Though there have been as yet no anthropological studies of the Sabiri by those few who are elsewhere inventing the field (among the Preservationists), such observations would see that the nomads are prone to using violence as a means of managing overpopulation. When a tribe begins to starve or finds its herds and water sources depleted, then violence is sure to break out. On rare occasion an especially charismatic warlord, such as the revered Zvhakkatas, will rise to power and can bring the chieftains together for a specific act of war, the vanquishing of enemies, or the seizing of territory. Rogue tribes, those which have forsaken the ways of Kobal entirely, are often also targeted by other tribes for extermination.

Most traditional disputes are settled through ritual warfare, blood sports and individual contests. The Sabiri do not practice arena or gladiatorial fighting, but they have no shame in making it a sporting event. When two tribes come to conflict, be it over land, bison, women or simple honor then they will meet on the field and seek to humiliate and defeat their opposition. Though the goal is not to slaughter the rival tribe, it can often lead to such consequences, for the hot blooded warriors may lose all sense of purpose and descend in to bloody battle. This is nothing unusual, and the Sabiri do not frown on a warrior who fails to control his blood lust.

As indicated in the history, warlords have on occasion risen to power among the many tribes. Such warlords are especially charismatic and usually driven by purpose.

There is one warlord who holds power at this moment out of Zen Hettar, claiming lordship over the northern sabirath (dominion). Despite Zamad-Ruus being a warlord, he is not seen as very powerful, and serves mainly as a figurehead to speak with the Espanean governors when needed. This makes some of the chieftains restless; the populations of the tribes grow large, and many sense that a new time of bloodshed is brewing.

Recently the Ghuzdar’Shadoan orcs have become increasingly bold, striking out against the nomads and seeking to claim their own space. It is believed that for unknown reasons their ranks have swollen and the orcs, much like the Sabiri, are feeling population pressure. It is only a matter of time before a new battle rages. The orcs, in turn, are being driven in to a frothy rage, for they claim that a new avatar to Shaligon walks the land, a orcish warrior-woman named Griska Swordthane. If these stories are true, then it does not bode well; years ago the last avatar of Shaligon was reportedly slain in a great battle between the Khasdrikana tribe of Sabiri and the Wyvernclaw orc clans, which were reportedly eradicated. The avatar and high priest of Shaligon was slain that night, and it was said that the restless spirit of Shaligon trod the land, one hundred feet tall, in furious anger at the failure of her followers.

If a new avatar has indeed arisen, it will give the orcs a new focal point through which to direct their rage. Many Sabiri hope this is the case. While they have no issue with taking arms up against one another, the Sabiri find true delight in the slaughter of their inhuman neighbors on the field of battle.

Next: Death among the Sabiri

Showing off!

2012-01-28T00:23:00.000-07:00

My wife's cousin Jessie has a real talent for photography, and I couldn't resist showing off a few of the pics she took this week while my wife and son were down visiting her (I am missing from the pics, sorry! Was busy working my butt off this week, thanks to a big promotion).

Why am I in this bowl???

Mom and Son

In case you're wondering, yes that is a tattoo of the Tzimisce vampire Sascha Vykos from Vampire: the Masquerade. How cool is that?!?!?!?!

More 5E Goodness

2012-01-28T00:14:00.000-07:00

So fresh posts that aren't part of the pre-programmed features haven't been as frequent lately due to a very busy work schedule that's been eating into my free time. With any luck things will slow down and I'll have a chance to work on some new content...part 2 of my Mutant Epoch Travelogue, for example!

Anyway, some free time on this Friday evening, and I thought I'd point out this transcript from the D&D Experience over on Enworld. It's some interesting reading, and helps to get a bit more info on what D&D 5th edition (D&D Next) is going to be like. Some of the bits I picked up include:

1. They implied all classes to appear in the core PHBs of prior editions will show up in the 5E PHB. That's roughly fifteen classes in all. If they keep the warlock in the core I'll be happy.

2. Monte loves his wizards. We all knew that though! I'm not one of those "linear fighters vs. quadratic wizards" people, though, if only because I rarely run games where this phenomenon pops up, and also because I've seen high level fighters in 3rd edition and their frankly terrifying. But either way, it sounds like they want to balance out wizard vs. fighter damage with "better overall average damage per round vs. occasional amazing damage"....which is pretty much how it's always been in D&D (until recently).

3. 15 minute character generation. Goooooood.

4. "Vancian" magic is back. Or rather, Pre-4E Vancian magic (because Dailies were kinda Vancian).

5. The fighter is taking a lot of work. It sounds like they are recognizing that the many active features of the fighter from 4E (and the other approaches in 3E and 2nd as well) are key to making the fighter just as fun.

6. They're really pushing for the idea of "preset/default design" as the core book, followed by "addiong on options" that allow for increased complexity.

So I'm really getting eager to see the playtest doc for D&D Next when it comes out. I'm seriously hoping that this is a game that offers just enough of what each player wants to really, finally, settle the whole "edition war" nonsense....or at least throw some water on the fire, maybe give us enough time to ...you know... play the game for once!

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Life in the Sabiri Tribes

2012-01-26T06:00:00.003-07:00

Life in the Sabiri Tribes

Sabiri are migratory, and settle in specific locations several times a year. Most tribes have a region they consider properly theirs, through which the roam. Such regions can span the length and breadth of the Sabiri lands, or only a portion of it. As a rule, the largest tribes tend to migrate over a larger range of territory out of necessity.

On the outside it appears inexplicable, patterns of nomadic movement that may at best seem to follow the waterways and paths of the great bison herds. To the insider it is a mixture of sacred determination; the waterways and bison are placed along a path preordained by ancestors long gone and the communion of venerable and helpful spirits.

Most tribal paths make at least one round a year through one of the sacred ceremonial centers that have turned in to great “tent cities.” Zen Hettar and Uvalin are two of the largest such sites, a communical gathering center where chieftains can convene to discuss news and events, games are held, the trading of brides is made, and warriors can display their prowess. Trading is very common, and though the Sabiri enjoy the commodity of coin they are as likely to barter for and with good as they are gold.

Sabiri tribes focus heavily on preparing for winter. The winters last for several months, starting early in the fall on some years and creeping in to mid spring if the season is especially bad. As hot and humid as summer gets, winter is atrociously cold and snow can blanket the land for months. Tribes prepare accordingly, insuring that thick pelts and stored food is readily on hand. In the deep south some tribes, less affected by the weather at the closest stretches of Helios, tend to be more relaxed about the seasonal changes, and these are fiercely defended territories.

Tribes are divided in to four main units. There is the individual family, which has a patriarch and his wives, as well as all relatives under his protection and dominion. A group of families (from as small as two to as large as several hundred) comprise the tribe proper. Several tribes under a charismatic warlord constitute a Kaskir, or nation. Multiple nations can assemble in a loose unity under a sabirath, or dominion. The dominions are centered around one of the chief ritual centers, which right now consist of Uvalin and Zen Hettar. Dominions rarely have a ruler, though the greatest chieftains may form a council. On rare occasion they may elect a warlord to power. Northward is Madalios, which is regarded as its own dominion, though the settled relatives of the Sabiri are regarded, like all who have given up the nomadic lifestyle, as a people of less worth.

Sabiri Merchants: The Askartin

There are a few tribes that have developed semi-sedentary or even given up the nomadic way of life. A cluster of such Sabiri dwell around the great communal centers at Uvalin and Zen Hettar, small families of Sabiri who claim the regional “city” itself as their tribal land. These Sabiri are part of a unique sect described as askartin, which literally translates in to goat merchant. The Sabiri see these specific families as providing a necessary service that benefits the more traditional Sabiri ways. The askartin are the smiths and traders who have learned to sustain themselves year round by way of trade and commerce with he nomadic tribes and the Espanean colonials. Indeed, most of the indigenous Sabiri population that has settled around Fartheren belongs to the askartin sect.

Askartin are much like their nomadic brethren, though regarded as somewhat less important in battle. The askartin see themselves as no less significant, however, and have advanced their love of horses from the nomadic way to a more sophisticated pastoral approach, raising horses in larger numbers and selling them to the nomads and Espaneans alike. The askartin skill take steeds for their own, and still train in ritual warfare, but they do not roam.

Askartin have not attempted to domesticate the bison, though they have taken to raising the butu goats in the region; thus, the name “goat merchant.”

Next: Warfare

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Sabiri Tattoos

2012-01-24T06:00:00.004-07:00

Sabiri Tattoos

Tattoos are vitally important to the Sabiri. The nomads long ago learned to imbue the inked and scarred marks with magical force, and in turn learned to attune their own bodies to these symbols etched on their own skin. Though Sabiri spell casters can and do employ written tomes, those warriors who dabble in magic prefer to use the spell tattoos, as they are easier to access in the fields of battle.

Despite the notoriety of spell tattoos, it is much more common for most members of a tribe to carry tattoos commemorating various deeds and actions, even if they do not contain magical power. A major victory (and sometimes a defeat) can be reflected within a tattoo. A marriage, alliance, a newfound brotherhood, or a symbol reflecting dedication to a specific cult or order is all celebratory with a new mark upon the flesh.

The process of making tattoos for the Sabiri who practice the art is complicated, and involves a sacred language of ideograms, in which each stroke or mark reflects a key proponent of the overall mark, but only in relation to how it is placed with the other symbols. It is a form of language, but not one that can be easily read without a trained eye.

Conventional marks are easily understood by most Sabiri; it is a special part of their greater language that they can understand. Tattoos imbued with magic are not so easy to grasp; the symbols used for magical language are a carefully guarded secret among the tattooist, and the tattoos themselves are said to reach deep in to the owner’s body, to tether to the soul, allowing the magic to flow freely between the symbol itself and its bearer.

Regardless of the nature and type of mage, most spells learned by that mage can and will ultimately end up as tattoos upon his or her body. Over time it becomes quite evident that the magic is a being of extreme power. These mages exhibit a strange sort of quintessence around others, which give away their nature as sorcerous beings. As such, these powerful tattoo mages will cover their own body from head to toe in obscuring garb, to avoid detection by simple visual observation of their many spell marks; thus the common saying among the Sabiri that “You know a warlock, for he the man who is always cold.”

Interestingly, because most older Sabiri women dress in heavy robes and dresses, the saying is a bit different. “You know a witch if you know a woman.” Sabiri are, indeed, a society divided by deep gender differences, and a male culture that has not a small amount of fear and superstition about the fairer sex.

Sabiri Tattoo Magic Feat (Pathfinder Version)

Prerequisites: Sabiri cultural background, Craft (tattoos) 4 ranks or better.

Effect: The Sabiri have learned the unique art of inscribing ritual spells on their bodies. Through the use of this feat, along with 100 GPs worth of tools and a special ink which comes from the blood of an enchanted creature (usually a gorgon), the Sabiri artist can spend one day (12 hours) placing the inscription for any spell in question upon the body of a person. All features of the ritual spell must already be in place; the recipient of the tattoo must already have learned the ritual spell, for example.

Once it is placed upon the character’s skin, then he can never lose or forget the spell; he knows it innately by virtue of the arcane or divine script tattooed upon his body. Characters can have up to eight imbued ritual tattoo on each of the following areas: head, arms, legs, neck, chest and back. A Break Enchantment spell will remove a tattoo to make room for another one.

If the tattooed character dies, it is possible to take the spell from his flesh. The character must make a Knowledge (arcana) check at a DC of 20+the spell’s level to grasp the weave of the spell tattoo. It is also possible to imbue it on one’s owns kin through the process described above if the caster also has this feat. Otherwise, the skill check allows the caster to flay the skin and convert the region of the tattoo into a scroll.

Tattoo artists among the Sabiri often charge enormous sums to foreigners for the privilege of an integrated tattoo rune. The base price is usually 1,000 GPs, plus maybe some task.

Next: Life in the Sabiri Tribes

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Arms and Armor of the Sabiri

2012-01-22T06:00:00.007-07:00

Arms and Armor

It is not typical for nomadic cultures to have sophisticated steel weapons, but the Sabiri are surprisingly adept at metallurgy. Certain cultural “hot spots” like Uvalin and Zen Hettar support this trade and because of this Sabiri steel is a prized commodity.

Sabiri are fascinated by the construction of long-lasting weapons that are useful in mounted combat. Sabres, falchions, scimitars and other one-handed slashing blades designed for use from horseback are regarded as favored melee weapons. The women of the Sabiri have developed sophisticated knife and dagger practices apart from the men, though women on the path of Hnaka are as proficient with sabre or scimitar as as male.

Aside from close combat weapons, charging weapons such as lances and spears are highly valued, and in ranged combat the sabiri self bows are considered beautiful works of art, crafted in secret rites from the long bones such as the ribs and femurs of the immense amasa bison.

Lances, though valuable to the horse warriors, are actually rather prized, due to the lack of useful timber in the land to generate poles of sufficient size to manufacture the weapon. Most lances come from expeditions to the Kossarit Mountains or northward toward Madalios, where certain tribes specialize in the manufacture and trade of lances made from the wood of more mountainous regions.

Short spears and javelins are also very popular, and javelin sports are a common entertainment in Sabiri tribes, even more so than ritualistic dueling. A good javelin thrower can make a reputation for himself. Some women are allowed to participate in certain tribes, but it is generally frowned upon.

Sabiri women excel instead in close-quarters combat. The Shumariin assassins are famous for their deadly knife fighting skills, and warrior sects of women have taken up the scimitar and turned to duo-wielding styles of combat that are terrifying to behold. These blade dancers are a breed of dervish known for integrating a deadly dance with swordplay, a technique that fears Sabiri men who believe the blade dancers to be witches that mesmerize them in to obedient death by blade.

Armor, in contrast to the preferred garb worn by most sabiri on a day-to-day basis, can get quite complicated and bulky. Most of the time Sabiri wear soft leather garb that offers some modest protection, but in regular skirmishes they prefer to wear lacquered armor and cuirbolli worked in to fitted plates. Such armor is impractical from day to day, but it is considered a necessary addition to the warrior’s repertoire in times of real conflict. The cuirbolli and lacquered plat armor is preferred for its light weight material and ease of use. Such armor is also relatively quick to assemble and wear. Keeping with fashion traditions, most such armor is dyed or painted blacks and dark reds, though color variations creep in from tribe to tribe. Most individual families paint their symbolic crest upon the armor, which is derived from the same sacred language used for tattoos.

(left) A Sabiri woman in the markets of Fartheren

Next: Sabiri Tattoos

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Dress and Garb of the Sabiri

2012-01-20T06:00:00.001-07:00

Everyday Garb

The Sabiri dress with an economy of design; short vests, breeches and laced boots and moccasins are common, and garb is designed to be comfortable and not to chafe. The wilderlands of their domain are a warm region in the spring and summer months, followed by bitterly chill winters. The entire region is humid almost year round. This tends to promote garb that breathes freely, though tempered with garb which is functional.

Most Sabiri prefer the soft worked leather that comes from the local amasa bison which roam the region. This supple leather is naturally dark, due to the ebony pelts of the bison, and has the accidental side effect of looking rather ominous from an eastern viewpoint. Nonetheless, sales of amasa hides with the east is fairly brisk. The amasa are principally saved by the fact that the Sabiri rely on them and covet their herds. If the Espanean traders had their way, these beasts would have been driven to extinction by now, no doubt.

Espanean men tend to wear leather breeches and a harness for their tools and weapons. They sometimes wear a variant of chaps while diring, providing leather protection on their legs in combat; these same chaps are often worn at other times, designed for comfort first. In the winter they tend to wear heavier fur coats and hoods, stitched together by the women.

Many tribes enjoy unusual head dresses made of woven horse hair from the trimmed manes of their steeds. These head-dresses can get quite elaborate, and some of the men in the tribe will weave the horse hair with their own for unusual extended braids. Although the women fo the tribe (especially elders) are master weavers of the horse hair, the women themselves do not decorate themselves with the braided horse hair; it is another custom reserved for men. Women in Sabiri have instead adopted complicated lapidary designs for themselves.

Espanean women disdain long dresses and garb more common in the east except in the winter or as a sign of age. Elder matrons often settle with long fur skirts and coats, often worn year-round, and will wear decorative garb that stands out with evocative lapidary work. The younger women favor vests, light blouses, short skirts and breeches, sometimes with the utilitarian harnesses for equipment and weapons like the men do.

The Sabiri are a modest people, and it is considered taboo to appear overly “sexual” in Sabiri society. This manifests in the form of a disdain for eastern makeup and a preference for useful clothes over garb that accentuates the female form. Curiously, women who have adopted the warrior’s focus (the hnaka, below) tend also to eschew restrictive garb that doesn’t breathe well, so they are often dressed as lightly as the men save for their bustiere-like vests. Sabiri women dressed as warriors do not appear sexualized, however, despite showing off their extra skin, as they tend to emphasize their capabilities by additional tattoos and a plethora of visible armaments. This is how the women say, “do not touch, or you may die.” It works well.

Ritual Dress

Ritual dress is always more stylistic and designed for beauty and grace. Dance is a preferred social medium among tribes, and when two or more tribes come together they always throw a party. Ritual forms of dress are often quite elaborate; during such conflagrations the women of both tribes will exhibit atypical garb designed to show off the wealth of their immediate family and the tribe as a whole. Men will anoint themselves with artifacts of victory and war, and wear revealing garb to show off tattoos earned in battle. The most frightening members of a tribe are the ones who show no tattoos at all; the truly powerful shamans and sorcerers of the Sabiri prefer not to advertise their sacred tattoos at this time, lest they be compromised by an observant enemy.

Some Sabiri, especially around Fartheren and along the coast near Westgate among the Sendenar have taken to Espanean garb during these meets. It is at least partially due to acculturation from the foreign groups these Sabiri regularly interact with, and also due to the fact that the standard garb of the east is seen as so outwardly flamboyant that while it is scoffed at as a form of conventional wear, these Sabiri have accepted Espanean dress as suitable for gatherings and events.

Next: Arms and Armor of Sabiri

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Commemorative Editions, or "I just Got Internet Whiplash"

2012-01-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

I would honestly regard this as bigger news than the 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons announcement...

First is the ENWorld article here.

Next is actual press anouncement here.

..aaaand here's the WotC page for the PHB.

I for one am amazed that they are doing this, and actually this really suggests to me that WotC is now officially "thinking outside the box" about what D&D is and who plays it (and who they want as their customers).

SO yeah, I'll be ordering these new prints of AD&D, and I think I see a brand new 1st edition campaign in the near future to enjoy them!

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Culture of the Sabiri

2012-01-18T06:00:00.006-07:00

The Culture of the Sabiri I: Appearance and Horses

The Sabiri are really three distinct cultural groups: The Madalians of the north, the Sendenar of the coast and the Sabiri nomads of the mainland. There is a fourth group, rarely identified as such but still worth mentioning, in the form of the Eredites of the Jagged Coast. Details on the other subcultures of the Sabiri will be discussed in turn, but the overview of the nomadic culture shall be looked at here.

Appearance

All Sabiri are known for their distinct, almost eerie skin tone. Best described as “chalk white,” Sabiri have a sin coloration that is variably whitish or grey, and foreigners who first meet a Sabiri often believe them to be ritually painted at first. The Sabiri accent their skin with sacred tattoos, usually favoring stark black lines over colors, which further accents the grey-white of their skin. Despite their unusual appearance, Sabiri are otherwise completely human.

Horses and the Sabiri

The Sabiri are a nomadic culture. They thrive on being in a state of perpetual motion, maintaining an unhealthy obsession on transience. To the Sabiri, the sedentary life is something one assumes when death has at last come to claim its due.

Horses are extremely important to the Sabiri, though unlike other nomadic cultures in Chirak (or even the local orcs) the Sabiri regard horses merely as equals, as beings of flesh and blood that you can tame and befriend. Most Sabiri treat their horses better than their own kin. A well-kept and trained horse will see you through many conflicts; relative, maybe not so much.

Every Sabiri learns to ride the horse at a young age, and is exceptionally proficient in the art of mounted combat by puberty. Women and men alike excel at this task, though the women are generally expected to take up more supportive roles after puberty and to rely on their horses for tasks more mundane than battle.

Horses in the Sabiri lands are strong, robust animals, some of the largest breeds in all of Chirak a Sabiri steed is noted for its black coat, though some spotted black and gray variants exist, as do pure gray horses. As many horses as Sabiri wander the land, perhaps more, for there is a healthy number of wild horses that roam the region as well. Some Sabiri men find it a challenge to capture and tame a wild horse, but others consider it folly; most Sabiri raise their mount from the time it is a foal, to develop a close rapport with their steed.

Because of this attachment, Sabiri characters should begin play with a horse, one which they have spent most of their puberty riding and learning to trust. Female Sabiri do not develop as close a bond to their horses, though they sometimes develop close bonds with multiple pack horses.

Selling a horse is considered a serious offense in Sabiri culture. A horse that has grown too old to be of much use is retired to the ranks of the pack horses and tended by the women. A horse which is too frail even for that duty is still cared for until death, or until they are forced to put it down.

Next: Dress and Garb

Cool Legend Stuff at rpg.org

2012-01-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

Stumbled across this site while perusing the Mongoose Forums. The latest offering is some handy write-ups of various common NPCs you might encounter in Legend, and prior posts include ready-made characters. Good stuff! I need to do more like this for Legend. I've been caught up in the Pathfinder fervor lately (my Wednesday group has 9 people in it now, egads!!!!!) but if Pathfinder is my wife, then Legend is like my secret mistress*.

*Actual wife doubles as my secret mistress, thus one of many reasons we have such a good relationship.**

**Please dont' kill me sweetie if you are actually checking my blog out. Joke! Joke!

Tales of the Cannaded Dei: Recent History of Sabiri

2012-01-16T06:00:00.002-07:00

Recent History: From 200 years ago to the present

When Espaneans arrived in the West, the Sabiri had settled comfortably into their roles as nomadic masters of the great lands they had conquered. The only true rivals to Sabiri dominion were nonhumans such as the orcs and centaurs, and the greatest threat the Sabiri faced daily was one of internal conflict and the appeasement of Kobal. The Sabiri had divided in to roughly fifty prominent tribes, each one several thousand strong, and united under a collection of charismatic warlords. This was not a people accustomed to subjugation.

Antonio Fartheren was an aspiring noble in Capitol Barcen, which had recently undergone a coup against the throne. Fartheren was a supporter of the old guard, King Demetrio who was assassinated by his cousin, Androsos Aguirre. This was followed by a bloody but brief civil conflict in which the streets of the Capitol ran red with blood. When all had settled, Aguirre had established himself on the throne (for a few years, until his own execution at a later date) and supporters of the old king that had survived the coup were now out of favor. Fartheren, concerned for the life of his family and himself, settled on a plan: he vacated the city entirely, placing his estates in the hands of his younger brother and seeking out eager volunteers to set sail westward, to find new and unclaimed coastland. While he seemed mad to some, the truth was he had already discovered the pleasant bay where Westgate would be founded in his younger years, and had long aspired to make use of the unclaimed coastland.

Fartheren arrived at the western shored along the Sabiri coast with four ships of eager colonists and his own extended clan. They found the beautiful unnamed bay where Westgate was soon to be built. Ancient ruins that stretched along the shoreline were surprisingly intact, and over the next decade many of Westgate’s buildings would integrate the remnants of the original ruins in to their own architecture.

The first decade of the new colony was fairly smooth. The colony established trade lines with the southern provinces of Grelmaine to the north, but rarely had any conflicts with the rather suspicious people of that land, who were themselves mostly uninterested in expanding in the the Sabiri lands. Only the Gordoska would come to follow the lure of colonial expansion in to the region, and then mostly as an effort in conjunction with Espanea. The Grelmanics had many superstitious beliefs, and felt that the entire land and its chalk-skinned people were bewitched and spawned from demons.

Westgate’s first encounter with Sabiri came from small coastal tribes that migrated along the coast engaging in vigorous fishing and hunting. These coastal dwellers called themselves the Sendenar, and bore the same chalk-white skin as their nomadic inland kin. Unlike the Sabiri, the Sendenar were friendly and not at all territorial. They enjoyed these new neighbors and quickly adopted the tools of trade and commerce that the Espanean merchants introduced to them.

A few expeditions inland led to some terse and unfriendly encounters with Sabiri nomads. It was the adventurer Galston Drotheros who forged all the way to the Kossarit Mountains and found the passage to the mysterious Pelegar city of Valen. His journey took him as far as Abraheil, and he returned six years later with amazing tales of what lay in the distant West.

Drotheros returned and reported word of the distant Western kingdoms. This was the first official contact between the lands of the West and East. Drotheros was more impressed with the ancient antiquity and clear wealth of the West; his journals preserved from the period in a travelogue still printed to this day mostly described the Sabiri as uncouth barbarians who appeared more interested in ritual sparring than communication and trade.

Westgate itself was a successful colony, initially. Lord Fartheren later petitioned the successor to Aguirre after word of the usurper’s execution had reached Westgate for recognition as a formal colony of Espanea, and he was granted full recognition. Moreover, his colony was recognized as an important bridge to the West and further colonization efforts by the new ambitious King Satero. Within months Satero declared that any commoners and freemen who wished to stake out land on the unclaimed western shores were encouraged to do so, and subsidies were offered to merchants who wished to explore the west for trade and profit.

The second decade of Westgate was a period of rapid, uncontrolled expansion. Before the decade was over two dozen colonies stretched out along the coast and inland, settlements picking choice locations along the inland rivers and lakes, favoring an arc along the path that the explorer Drotheros had charted out to mark the western passage to Valen. Explorers were everywhere, forging inland and uncovering evidence of the ruins of a lost civilization while having periodic skirmishes with the locals.

The Sabiri began to take notice of the Espaneans when they realized that the newcomers were now setting up shop along all the known lakes and rivers that were the lifeblood of their people. When the new colony of Fartheren was settled near the legendary Necropolis, it was an affront to the Sabiri, who could not believe the audacity of these foreigners to set up shop in land that was both the sacred burial site of their chieftains and the central grounds where annual rituals and events would be staged by the nomads.

The governor of Fartheren in those first years was the ambitious youngest son of the King, Gavin Satero. Gavin had a plan to forge a small empire for himself out in this remote land, and he set about trying to integrate the nomads in to his scheme. First he tried to make the area of Fartheren tempting to the Sabiri, inviting them to continue holding their rituals and celebrations in the area, and encouraging them to continue using the Necropolis for the burial of their chieftains. Then he began an aggressive campaign of mercantile exploitation, in which he attempted to expose the nomads to a sedentary way of life in the pursuit of fine goods and creature comforts. Few of the nomads took him up on this offer.

The Espaneans eventually reached a period of colonization in which thousands of new colonials were pouring in to the region every few months. The prospect of becoming land owners was too much to pass up for many, and records from this period suggest as many as one hundred thousand commoners, criminals, landless freemen and other hopefuls arrived in Westgate, eager to stake out their claim.

The Sabiri as a whole became nervous as the chieftains of the many tribes gathered at the sacred site of Zen Hettar to discuss what to do about this unexpected invasion. In the end, a new warlord stepped forth named Khaddaram. Under his unifying rule Khaddaram was the first of the Sabiri warlords to strike against the foreign invasion.

From 170 years ago right up until a 130 years ago the nature of the colonial holdings changed from one of bountiful opportunity to perpetual conflict. At various times the colonists would sue for peace and perhaps establish friendly relations for a time, but inevitably an ambitious governor would come to power and seek to expand once more, to subjugate the nomads, sometimes even trying to force them to settle and pay taxes. About 130 years ago, however, things got much worse when Marcus Escobado took power in Fartheren.

Escobado was exiled to Fartheren, granted control of the colonies at that time because he was seen as a dangerous threat to the throne, a potential urusper, back in Barcen. The plan worked, for Escobado was thoroughly enchanted with the defiant locals and the hardy colonials he now had been given dominion over. He set about his own plans for conquest and domination, at first by wedding the daughter of the warlord Hrados. Hrados became a strong ally of Escobado’s, who enticed the warlord with gold, Espanean women and plans for power. Under Escobado’s plans, Hrados would help unite the Sabiri in to a force strong enough to conquer all the lands, and perhaps even take the great city of Valen in the mountains.

The Sabiri trusted one of their own, and so Hrados was elevated by unanimous agreement of the chieftains to supreme warlord. Hrados then assembled the nomads in to an army, which joined with Escobado’s own forces to forge westward, to the very gates of Valen, where a protracted siege eventually led to invasion. The city, seemingly impregnable, surrendered to the invading army after only a week. Though it should have seemed suspicious to the attackers that such an impregnable fortress should have relented so quickly, Escobado and Hrados were too elated with their victory to be concerned.

The invaders entered the city to accept its surrender, but to their surprise they were greeted by only one being, a penumbral entity called Gloom. “This is my city,” Gloom intoned, and the being, truly some demon from the outer darkness, tore in to the warlord, general and their men, committing to a slaughter of the invaders that to this day is remarked as one of the most terrifying events in recent military history.

Later scholars would identify this Gloom as one of the last great immortal soldiers of the Last War to survive the Apocalypse, and surmised that this entity chose to settle and protect the city of Valen for unknown reasons. Nonetheless, the damage was done, and the Espanean and Sabiri forces were routed.

The defeat at Valen had a long term resonance with the Sabiri, who blamed the misguided trust of their defeated warlord on the silver tongues of the Espaneans. They would never have had such hubris and impudence as to invade their mysterious Pelegar neighbors, the Sabiri contended, if the Espaneans had not tricked them in to visions of power. Some warriors also felt Kobal had abandoned them, and this led to enough doubt that the emergent demon cults gained a foothold. The Espaneans in turn blamed the Sabiri on their defeat, if only for the need to make someone a scapegoat.

From 130 to 110 years ago this ill will between both parties led to constant minor conflict and warfare. The trade routes had dried up as the city of Valen locked out the easterners entirely, and the colonies suffered for it. The final telling blow to the colonies came when the new, young warlord Zvhakkatas rose to power.

Zvhakkatas was the first warlord since the failed Hrados to be placed in power by agreement of the chieftains at Zen Hettar. His vision was simple: drive the foreigners from the land. His approach was direct: attack and slay them until they fled or they had fallen in battle.

Zvhakkatas’ unrelenting assaults lasted for twelve years, during which time over two dozen towns and small cities were sacked, pillaged and burned to the ground. The Espaneans were unprepared and under-manned for the attacks, so it was often more of a slaughter than a proper fight. The unrelenting attacks by the warlord and his followers led to tens of thousands of deaths and left the land dotted with burnt ruins.

Zvhakkatas was never able to destroy the two largest cities of the colonies, however. He met his fate sieging the walled city of Fartheren, which managed to hold against the Sabiri horde, at last turning the tide of battle. This victory was made possibly only because the governor of that time, Darton Calidos, had withdrawn most troops from the smaller towns and cities to consolidate his fighting force in Fartheren. This had insured that Fartheren survived, but at the cost of all the outliers.

Zvhakkatas was slain in battle by a renegade Sabiri, one of the few who had chosen the sedentary civilized life the Espaneans had to offer named Midragas. Midragas was a paladin of the fiery demon god Vargre, whom he had taken up the worship of. Vargre’s cult was small at this time, but it had gained a footing some years ago after the defeat at Valen, for many Sabiri had been shaken in their beliefs by the defeat, and some who blamed Kobal turned to other venues of worship. The cult of Vargre had been rediscovered by explorers who had begun to plumb the depths of the ruins of the Kadelans, and a young Masirian Arcanist named Arathys had uncovered a mysterious temple to this demon god. Within the temple he had a vision, and with that vision he was compelled to begin a new cult.

When Midragas slew Zvhakkatas, it was at once seen as an affront to his own people, but it also quietly garnered more support for Vargre, as some disillusioned warriors turned to the mysteries of the fire cult and soon became immersed in it. The recognition of the cult subsequently gave Fartheren a holy prominence in the eyes of many Sabiri, which in turn gave the city a meaningful quality to the nomads that insured the city would stand. Hostilities were eventually ceased entirely, and both Fartheren and Westgate remained viable cities as a result.

The last century has remained peaceful. Fartheren is ostensibly still an Espanean territory, but most visitors who travel here find that the city has become quite removed from its colonial origins, as many Sabiri have settled in the region year round, and several cults have now risen to prominence. The followers of Kobal insist that one day the demiurge will come to obliterate the city from the face of the earth, but for unknown reasons he has not yet chosen to do so. In the meantime, more demon cults sprang up as more Sabiri have been lured to the mysterious religions of the Old Empire revealed by the Arcanists who studied Kadela. Boolion, Colobon, Vargre and others have all gained prominence here.

Westgate remains a viable port city, and within the last three decades negotiations with the council of Valen have reopened trade between the West and Espanea. Caravans now ply their trade across the Sabiri lands and in to Pelegar. Additional trade routes have since been opened to Helios, Madalios and even Zann.

For the Sabiri, the traditionalists continue to congregate annually and await a time when a new warlord of sufficient charisma will appear once again to unite the tribes. The Espaneans are not seen as a threat at this time by most of the tribes, but they remain suspect. The tribes of the eastern lands near Fartheren are also looked upon with suspicion, for they continue to congregate at Fartheren, and are also more receptive to these curious demon gods, a heresy among the Kobal traditionalists.

Next: Culture of the Sabiri

Tales of the Cannaded Dei: History in Antiquity of Sabiri

2012-01-14T06:00:00.003-07:00

History in Antiquity: 700 to 200 years ago

Sometime around the fall of the Kadelans, the Sabiri arrived on scene. They may have been conquerors or opportunists, but it is certain that they were migratory folk even then, and may have come from a region near the Everdread Desert. It is possible that the Everdread may have been somewhat inhabitable at some time in the past, but that as the climate changed the natives were forced to move on, and they migrated northward until they came to a vast region freshly vacated by the Kadelans. The Huron minotaurs just north of the Everdread have stories of chalk-skinned folk in some of their old folklore, which suggest that this may be true. There are also splinter populations, such as the sedentary folk in the remote city of Eredar along the Jagged Coast who are clearly related to the Sabiri.

Sabiri do not write, except on rare occasion to commemorate a great event or victory. The learned men and women of their tribes keep language a carefully guarded secret, so few outsiders can learn it first-hand, and even fewer commoners in the tribes can understand it. To the Sabiri language is a powerful device for magic, not unlike their unique magic tattoos.

Because of their habit of making monuments to commemorate victories, scholars have noted that there appear to be no such monuments declaring a victory of the Sabiri over the Kadelans, nor do the Sabiri themselves tell any stories about such an event. It seems that when they arrived in the land, the Kadelans had been gone for decades.

Until about four centuries ago the Sabiri did have to contend with the Auman minotaurs. The minotaurs roved the land in small, militant bands, sometimes squatting in old ruins and occupying them, and at other times roving about looking for conflict with nomads, orcs, or anything else they could find.

Kobal was already present when the Sabiri arrived on-scene. This enigmatic demiurge was already quite powerful, but appeared to be utterly disconnected from reality. It is believed that his body and some primal level of consciousness wandered the land, radiating so much power that he generated a perpetual storm wherever he traveled. His consciousness, meanwhile, roamed the astral realms of the planes seeking cosmic truths.

The minotaurs revered Kobal as their own god, and made sacrifices, including virginal females, to appease him and keep his wrath from their own communities. The Sabiri picked up this same practice of worship soon after occupying the land, realizing it was the only way to keep Kobal at bay. In time the warrior caste of the Sabiri adopted similar teachings to the Auman, including a reverence for martial prowess and strict codes of honor. Such beliefs stemmed from the cultists of Kobal, who said these beliefs were dictated in dreams and visions sent to them by the demiurge himself.

Around four hundred years ago the Sabiri believe the Auman minotaurs met their final fate. The nomads have a number of folktales which revolve around the Auman, who they claim revolted against Kobal, and attempted to overthrow the demiurge before he grew too powerful. Some of the stories suggest that this was hubris on the part of the Auman, but the most commonly known tale speaks of an Auman prince named Holorash, who grew discontent with Kobal’s dominance after the demiurge chose Holorash’s wife as his own consort. Holorash rose up and seized control of the Auman tribes, and set out to destroy Kobal and claim the demiurge’s Zodiac Stone for himself. The story, of course, ends with the massacre of the Auman at the hands of Kobal, who after all was clearly powerful enough to have taken down the Old Empire, if some accounts are believed to be true. In turn, Kobal spent several decades eradicating the Auman. In the end, as all Sabiri tales say, Kobal came to the Sabiri and declared them his flock. A flock which would behave, and offer supplication and sacrifice, lest it fall like the Auman did. Kobal had truly become the last of his kind.

The cult of Amorgas began sometime after this event, possibly around 300 years ago. Amorgas was a strong woman, and she was chosen for sacrifice to Kobal, to be taken as one of his many short-lived wives. The story tells of how Amorgas was so captivating that Kobal let her live, and she grew close enough to him that she was able to steal a shard of his divine Zodiac Stone. In turn Amorgas fled, and survived in the northlands of Sabiri, evading Kobal in his wrath. She was at last found by the demigod, who locked her away in his subterranean realm, so that she could not flee again. He let her keep the shard of stone that in turn granted her the power of an Avatar. From this spark of the divine did her cult begin, and it grew to be a strong secret society to which only Sabiri women may belong.

Sabiri life continued from this time, an uneventful period until about two centuries ago, with the arrival of the Espaneans.

Next: Recent History

Tales of the Cannaded Dei: the Prehistory of Sabiri

2012-01-12T06:00:00.006-07:00

The Prehistory of the Land: 700 years ago and beyond

Sabiri’s history is murky after around seven centuries ago, due in no small part to the absence of written records from that time. It is known that there was a large kingdom that ruled the entire region for several centuries that fell about six hundred years ago. The name of this empire is lost to history, but most locals call the people who built its ruins the Kadelans, after the most famous of its ruined cities, believed by some to have been the capitol of this lost kingdom. The word itself, Kadela, is Sabiri for “Those who Came Before.”

Exactly how long the Kadelans ruled this region is unknown. Arcanists have recorded over one hundred ruins and sites throughout the land, and suggest that they were driven people, for many of the monuments and structures they built are fairly impressive, but most of the stone used to build these structures came from quarries two hundred and more miles distant in the Kossarit Mountains. There are few consistent rivers in Sabiri, so building in a location to rely on local rivers for the easy passage of cut stone was unreliable at best. There is plenty of evidence that the Kadelans used slaves, however. All in all, it is suspected that the Kadelans may have ruled for at least seven to ten centuries, as such a range of time would help to explain how they built so many fantastic monuments.

One of the most famous Kadelan sites is right next to the city of Fartheren, where the infamous Necropolis can be found. It has been very popular in recent centuries for Sabiri warlords to seek out the Necropolis as a place of burial. Although most of these warlords like to suggest they will build their own monuments, the truth is that almost all of the ziggurats in the Necropolis were there long before the fall of the Kadelans. Most of the monumants are large ziggurats, the largest of which is nearly 300 feet high, though most are only 20-30 feet in height. The oldest monuments exhibit very detailed, sophisticated architecture and design. The newer monuments, including the impressive mound that belongs to the famous warlord Zvhakkatas, are much simpler and are often created by heaping earth over a barrow and then hauling in stone plates to give the exterior a pyramidical shape. The last such tomb to be made was Zvhakkatas’s tomb, a century ago.

Although the Kadelans wrote in an ancient script derived from the lost Inadasir language, they were prone to offering little detail in their writings. Almost all translated script, stelae and remnant scrolls found among Kadelan ruins amount to business records, proper names, and occasional land deeds. They appeared to have little or no interest in recording details of their culture, history, or deeds. Although they left no sacred monuments behind (other than to their buried rulers), some take the absence of any idols to Kobal and other demiurges as a sign that they revered no gods. This is at least partially true, as the only temples found to date are dedicated to entities best described as demon gods, not unlike the one hundred and thirteen entities worshiped in distant Xoxtocharit. Boolion, Colobon the Asp, and Vargre of the fire are three of these beings worshiped by the Kadelans that have recently seen their cults restored after being rediscovered by the Arcanists.

No one can really say why the Kadelans perished six centuries ago when warfare quickly destroyed their many cities and drove their people to extinction. Some speculate that the Sabiri, believed to be migrants at the time, arrived in the land, perhaps driven by a very charismatic warlord, and that they eradicated the Kadelans. Others point to the many remains of the old minotaurs in the land, called the Auman, of which tens of thousands of skeletons have been unearthed in the ruins of the city of Kadela alone. It is clear that the minotaurs were far from extinct in that lost age, though perhaps whatever killed them also killed the Kadelans; perhaps they killed one another.

There is one more link to the mystery of Sabiri’s prehistory. The port of Westgate is built on the ruins of an older city, founded by Masirians and abandoned six centuries ago. Many feel it was abandoned in the wake of whatever terrible war destroyed the Auman and the Kadelans. Unfortunately, the Arcanists who have such a keen interest in the region are barred from activites in Westgate, and so little formal research has been done. Although a few Preservationists have been interested in investigating, a treaty between Espanea and Masiria prohibits tomb robbing in Masirian ruins, as there are miles of crypts and catacombs beneath Westgate. For this reason many possible questions about what happened six centuries ago remain unanswered. Even descendants from that time in Masiria (some of whom may have been children at the time, Masirians being so long lived) have been silent on whatever transpired so long ago.

Next: History in Antiquity

My Wife's Future (and Mine)

2012-01-11T12:30:00.005-07:00

Found this, realized it is what life will be like just a hop, skip and a jump down the road...

Source!

Penny Arcade always Knows How to Make My Day

2012-01-11T08:58:00.000-07:00

Penny Arcade always knows how to make my day!

The Mutant Epoch, Travelogue Volume I

2012-01-11T06:00:00.060-07:00

Buy. This. Book.

The Mutant Epoch Travelogue Episode I:
Wandering in the Wasteland

Alias “Enrico Fermi’s Surviving the Hard Way”

I first stumbled across the “Let’s Play” concept (at least, the concept done well) on Shamus Young’s website (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/). Shamus does it to video games, but I think the concept would work just fine for RPGs, too. Kind of a weird “fourth wall” fiction exercise with a little game mixed in, if you will. So with that intro, let’s start the new series, featuring the further adventures of Enrico Fermi in the Mutant Epoch (or whomever succeeds him if Enrico dies).

Enrico’s adventures will be a creative framework I throw up around the components of the tale generated by the GM resources in the core TME rulebook. The rules provide for a bewildering variety of charts and tables, encounters, creatures, artifacts, traps, hazards, vehicles and rules to deal with all of it. On occasion I may stop and discuss a feature of the rules for clarification, which I shall put in italics.

So! Remember Enrico? Here he is:

Enrico Fermi

Type: Mutant (minor); Former Caste: gladiator slave
Appearance: pitch black reflective skin, purple-grape bulbous eyes, a bulbous head, with rusty colored hair (probably long and in a braid to keep it out of the way from his fights); he has whip scars on his back. Gender: male Age: 18 Weight: 94kg Height: 1.69 meters
Traits: Endurance 37; Strength 55; Agility 58; Accuracy 46; Intelligence 47; Perception 59; Willpower 38; Appearance 88
Secondary Stats: Move: 6.75 meters; Healing Rate 4; Melee Damage Bonus +6; +30% strength range; Agility DV -6; Acc SV +4; Initiative Modifier +2
Skills: Brawling 2, Grapple 2, Riding 1, Stealth 1, Weapon Expert (pistols) 3
Mutations: fangs (medium), deviant skin structure (reflective skin), bulbous eyes, bulbous head, mental mine (1D20+4 damage; ranges based on WILL)
Gear: hatchet, spiked leather armor, spiked shield, iron helmet, one regular round of pistol ammo, tattered slave garb.
Armor: Total DV -27 (-6 AGL, -16 armor, -5 shield);
Weapons: Hatchet (SV 01-54; 1D12+6 damage); Brawling (SV: 01-59; 1D6+8 damage); If he ever gets a pistol his SV is 01-62 with a +6 damage modifier for skill.

Fermi looks a little like this, but shinier, more handsome, and coal black:

Today, Enrico Fermi is a free man! We’re going to put him through the wringer. The Mutant Wringer, that is!

The Mutant Epoch has a very interesting scenario mechanic, as evidenced in The Mall of Doom: you can run the game with a group, or you can run the game much like a programmed adventure with a party of 6-10 mutants done solitaire style, ala Tunnels & Trolls, Fighting Fantasy and other games. That said, the actual format of how this works is singularly unique, and I plan to sit down soon and try it out; it’s a really cool concept, as for the first time I might get to enjoy a published adventure as a player, without having to hunt down a willing GM. I’ll talk more how that goes in the future, but for now I thought I’d demonstrate some of the rules, GM tools and features in TME that are available by simulating a little tale of excitement and woe for our recently created mutant Enrico Fermi.

Remembering Enrico, he’s an escaped gladiator slave who looks like a shiny metal ebony alien with overly large eyes and cranium. He has a bounty on his head as his former owners very much want him back alive, and he escaped with some basic gear, probably grabbed from the armory of the gladiatorial pits where he was kept.

To elaborate on the time and place of Enrico’s environment I am going to place him deep in the Animas Wastes, the post-apocalyptic future of Southern New Mexico that I have devised for this setting. He was kept a slave in the compound outside of Silver City in the north mountains of the region, where the cruel warlord Brakas rules with an iron fist. After his escape, he found himself fleeing the mountains and down into the south valley, where he eventually emerged into the vast, trackless white salt flats of the Animas Playas, a wasteland even in the pre-apocalyptic era!

Many mysteries await Fermi, but I’ll give him a break and say he’s heard rumor of free civilizations south of the mountains. He knows that somewhere outside of Silver City can be found the ruins of ‘Kirkie, the Free City of Cruze and the settlement at Bordertown (formerly known as Lordsburg). He figures he can find one of these places, he’ll be safe, for a bit anyway. Only problem? No map, no knowledge of life outside the slave pens, and no idea where to go.

Fermi sees lots of flat, open cracked desert before him, with occasional scrub, periodic jutting stones, and far in the distance to the west he can tell that there’s some sort of craterous area dotted with ruins, and further south what looks possibly like an old city or township. Mountains wall in the entire region in the far distance. He decides to head south, to the sliver of building on the horizon.

In TME Fermi can typically walk at 3 meters per round, a round being 3 seconds, which means 60 meters per minute. Eight hours of walking in a day can get him 3600 meters in one hour, or 3.6 km, so Fermi is capable of getting approximately 28.8 km (17.9 miles) before he risks issues with fatigue. He’s traveling on relatively flat desert scrubland, so there are no movement modifiers. It’s about 80 km (50 miles) to the settlement in the distance, so he’s either going to have to push to get there or risk issues of thirst and starvation over time, as he left Silver City without any food or water.

Long before Fermi has to worry about dehydration, however, he’s got a problem with wildlife….

There’s a 1 in 10 chance of an encounter for every two hours of daytime travel in the desert (TME page 129), and that changes to hourly at night, and if the encounter does occur there’s a roll (in meters) to figure out the point at which both parties may become aware of one another. So, let’s see how Fermi’s first day of travel goes (firing up the official Mutant Epoch Die Roller app, of course!)

Fermi doesn’t travel 8 hours continuously, he’s stopping periodically to rest (1 hour of rest per four hours of travel sounds fair), of course, so the I as GM roll five times and get the following spread: 8, 6, 6, 1, 4. Looks like something happens on his seventh hour of travel…he’s journeyed approximately 21.6 km with an hour’s break by then, so he’s making good time, about a quarter the distance he needs to reach the distant settlement in the low-lying animas playas ahead, when suddenly…..(Page 131 has the desert encounter matrix, which uses a D1000 roll; I roll a 46!)

963 meters away a Colossal Scorpion crests the horizon! Anyone who’s ever played Fallout 3 might have an idea of what it’s like when you see a massive scorpion slaughtering Brahmin mutant two-headed cows, sure….but what Fermi is seeing is (according to page 169) is a 5 meter long (!) 810 kg monstrosity!!! Let us all be very happy it’s so far off. But wait….does it notice tiny little Fermi?

The ubiquitous and hypothetical GM in this scenario decides to grant Fermi an opportunity to act before the colossal beast turns to notice him in the distance, like a delectable bacon-wrapped shrimp at an Overeater’s Convention. Fermi, naturally, tries to hide. It’s not going to be easy, there’s flat, cracked plains and minor scrub as far as the eye can see. Luckily, Fermi is good at this, or at least has done it before with his Stealth 1. He can attempt to conceal himself (not moving, crouching down and trying to look like a boulder, or otherwise lowering his profile) which requires a class A hazard check by Fermi to pull off. The Hazard Table shows that a class A check with his Agility of 58 grants him an 85% chance of success. A quick check, Fermi rolls an 80, and he narrowly avoids detection as he hunkers down.

A note about TME’s Hazard Check Mechanic: the hazard check works as both a skill check, saving throw system and avoidance mechanic. It is player-driven for the most part, in that, as in the above example, the player rolls to hide, rather than the GM rolling to see if the creature spots him, although the chance of success for the player might be shifted one or more hazard codes if the circumstances were different. For example, if the giant scorpion was only 100 meters away and popped out of a cave unexpectedly, I as GM could decide that that’s a class C hazard to hide from, which would reduce the chance to 78%; and if the scorpion had made its own stealth check and was watching Fermi all along, he might require much worse, such as a class H, forcing him to roll 33% or less to hide in plain sight from a lurking predator that knows he’s out there. This is a very old school approach that will feel familiar to veteran long-time gamers.

So in short, the Hazard Check system in TME is player-driven and does not dither about opposed rolls or other issues, instead requiring the GM to adjudicate difficulty by hazard code accordingly.

Back to the story!

Colossal Scorpions are pretty near-sighted, with an average perception of 24, and this one is no exception. It’s completely oblivious to Fermi in the distance and eventually wanders away. This is fortuitous for Fermi, as it turns out it was a mutated Colossal Scorpion with giant wasp-like wings and a hard outer carapace that could withstand ballistic strikes! He watches as the massive beast takes flight and heads off to new territory. The GM, ever burdened with a calloused and cruel soul, decides there is a 20% chance the giant beast takes flight in Fermi’s approximate direction. A quick roll of the dice gets a 95, revealing that fate is at least on Fermi’s side and the beast instead heads west toward the distant crater.

Three hours later, Fermi collapses at last, as night descends and he looks at the beautiful cracked moon in the sky and the ephemeral, whispery shards of light that run like a band across the starscape, oblivious to the fact that the band around the earth is a floating landscape of relic technology used in space warfare, thousands of dead satellites that have not yet been dragged into near Earth orbit yet to burn up, and a vast swathe of moon rock cast into space in its own eccentric orbit around the Earth from when the nukes were dropped on the Lunar Colonies in the final days of the pre-apocalyptic era. Fermi just thinks it’s cool, and appreciates that the extra light makes it easier to look out for danger.

The GM, ever the heartless soul, determines it’s approximately 7 PM when Fermi collapses. Fermi does decide to scrounge around a bit, see if there’s a slow moving animal or a source of water near his rest point. Unfortunately Fermi never learned to fend for himself in the wilderness, and lacks the Wilderness Survival skill, so his odds of success are slim. In TME if you have Wilderness Survival then you can basically do stuff that keeps you alive; it’s a 1 rank only skill, and no rolls are really needed. Without it, you must guess. The GM considers Fermi’s plight and decides that given it is night time, his surroundings are alien to him, and it’s a sparse desert that only a Class E hazard check on perception will yield any fruit. For Fermi this is a 62% chance, still not bad, thanks to being an observant fellow. Fermi rolls a 37%--take that, cruel world!

After a bit of consideration the GM decides to make Fermi’s success interesting. He decides Fermi has stumbled across some rusted relic junk in the desert, beneath which lies a den of desert rats. Rolling to see what sort of relic junk Fermi has found, we go to the table on page 210 and get 53: armor (using the low rank listing). Armor is usually something you wear, so the GM decides it’s got a body in it, and rolls on the corpse chart, getting an 18: White Plague! Next the GM decides to see what sort of guy this was who perished from the white plague, checking the NPC chart on page 137: rolling 28 we see he was a militia officer of some sort, maybe a soldier out of Silver City who went A.W.O.L. or was cast out when the white pustules started appearing on his body. He died out here with 8 gold coins on hand, a suit of scrap relic armor, a junk helmet, and just for fun the GM assumes he has a weapon (broken) and some random item: a quick roll reveals a broken razor sword and a pair of women’s knee high fashion boots, worth about 50 silver pieces, not that Fermi knows.

All Fermi knows is that there are desert rats in a nest under the corpse, partially burrowed in. Also, the corpse is rather mottled and covered with unpleasant white pustules. It doesn’t look like this guy was dead for very long before perishing. Fermi, none the wiser, flips the corpse aside and starts bashing rats.

Luckily for Fermi it’s a lone desert rat defending her den of babies, and it does not have a mutation. He tries to smack it with his hatchet as soon as he flips the corpse over, and the rat tries to escape! Initiative ensues.

Fermi rolls a D10 and adds his modifier (+2) for a total of 5. The rat rolls a 7 and has no modifier, but that means it still goes first. The GM figures it will try biting Fermi once first and then flee, so he rolls to attack. The rat has a SV of 01-30, modified by Fermi’s DV of -27. Fermi is well protected against rats! She rolls a 99, which is always a miss and almost a fumble.

Fermi reacts in turn, hatchet in hand, he strikes down with his modified SV of 01-54, and he needs to roll 39 or less after taking account for the rat’s DV of -15. He rolls a whopping 25! He hits. He deals 13 points of damage to the rat’s total Endurance of 1, probably cutting the creature in two. The babies are easy to mop up.

After killing the rat and its babies then gathering them up, he investigates the corpse. It’s got a decent sword that needs repairing (snags that), some cheap armor, and a few coins. Fermi loots it all and shakes the rotting corpse out. The GM chuckles evilly.

Now Fermi’s only problem is how to cook his meal. He has no flint and tinder, though he does have a case of ammunition, which means he has flammable gunpowder if he wants to crack open a bullet and try to ignite it with a hatchet swing. He needs tinder. The GM concedes that there’s dry brush all over the place, so tinder is good.

Meanwhile, the GM suggests that Fermi make a Type C Endurance check, because he is starting to feel a little itchy as the night goes on.

Fermi may be in trouble here….his Endurance is only 37, but a type C hazard check means he has a 58% chance he hasn’t contracted the white plague from touching the dead body, so the odds are slightly in his favor. He rolls….a 71!!!! Fermi is idly wiping snot-like puss from his hands onto his face, mouth and jeans. Mmmm tastes like a gummi bear without any flavor.

On the side the GM starts tracking the disease. Fermi has 3D6 hours (rolling 10) before the illness begins to show. After that, things get ugly; but first let’s see if Fermi survives the night…

The GM decides that Fermi spent an hour hunting for rats and meanwhile Fermi has decided he likes bullets more than cooked rat meat, so he eats them raw. The GM feels sorry for Fermi so he doesn’t make him roll an Endurance check to see if he can stomach raw rat meat. Before going to sleep, Fermi takes the time to dig a hole for himself to lie in lengthwise, and drapes some stray brush around (gathered from his aborted fire) to camouflage himself. This is important; he’s using his stealth for concealment, but the GM rolls secretly since Fermi will be asleep and may muck up his own disguise. The GM gets an 88, over the 85% Fermi needs. A sense of foreboding layers over the night…

Over the next ten hours of rest until dawn the GM rolls for each hour to see if something unpleasant creeps up on the camp: we get a spread of 4, 8, 1, 8, 9, 8, 1, 5, 2, 2. Oh boy, looks like tonight is going to be rough.

Three hours into his rest and Fermi has a guest: a dune spider!

Actual Size May Vary

(It is at this point that the narrator figures Fermi is an idiot for traveling alone, but such is life in the wastelands….)

The dune spider starts 38 meters away from Fermi’s camp spot when they are first detected. They are not innately stealthy creatures, relying on pack hunter techniques instead, and dune spiders are large (2.4 meters in length). He figures Fermi might have a decent chance that he awakens to the sound of the razor barbed scuttling (hazard type A) modified by 2 (type C) for being asleep. That’s a 78% chance, and Fermi rolls a 97….this ain’t gonna be pretty….

The GM figures the spider is on the hunt, so it is actively looking for prey. Fermi tried to hide when he went to sleep and failed, and he’s not even awake now to react to the spider. However, he is motionless because of this, so the GM figures the spider has a chance it will overlook him and makes the spider check its Perception (62) against a Type A hazard (giving it an 85% chance it’ll spot Fermi). He rolls for the spider; and it notices the tasty meatbag nearby!

The spider has it on round one, and it rushes in to strike at the tasty prey. Fermi sleeps in his gear, but he’s not dodging actively nor is he wielding his shield so his DV is reduced to -16. The spider has an SV of 01-66, modified to 01-50. Worse yet, since Fermi is asleep it gets +80 to the SV (total now being 01-130; it can’t miss). The foreboding and doom thicken….

The spider attacks! It rolls a 77, and the spider’s razor sharp hooked fangs sink into Fermi’s left shoulder (the GM rolls on the location chart for fun), dealing 6 points of Endurance damage (on a D20 for damage). He is also down to 31 Endurance from his lowly 37.

A round in TME is 3 seconds long, and a human can run about 6 meters in a round. Fermi is starting prone from sleeping, but he is awake now. A new initiative is rolled….will Fermi fight or run? He rolls a total with modifiers of 11, and his foe rolls for a 6. Fermi has the upper hand!

Note: TME uses group initiative rolled at the start of each round. It’s classic old school in this regard, with the optimum or most eligible PC affecting the initiative with modifiers. It also makes the combat mechanics ideal for narrative style play and avoids the clutter of multiple-initiative tracks, though house-ruling in individual initiatives would be a snap.

The GM determines that Fermi can get up and attack, he can crawl and attack, or he can get up and run 3 meters. The spider looks very quick quick, so fleeing may not be a realistic option. Fermi decides to bury his hatchet in its skull and attacks.

The Spider’s DV is an impressive -30, so Fermi needs 24 or less. He rolls a 99; that’s an automatic miss, so his hatchet blow flies wide. He finishes by staggering to his feet and snagging his shield as he swings around wildly.

The spider senses its smaller prey is dangerous and tries to go for the kill. It needs a 39 or less to hit a standing, awake and armed Fermi. It rolls a 92! The two appear to be in a traditional dance of near-misses.

Round two begins. Fermi is ready to take the spider on, and he’s feeling like once again he’s in the battle arena in Silver City. He gets a 5 for initiative to the spider’s 7. As he maneuvers the spider strikes out again, this time with a 99 (hmmm the dice roller likes that number) and it wildly misses him. Fermi retaliates with a firm blow and rolls 24 exactly! His hatchet connects for 13 damage against the dune spider’s 42 Endurance, reducing it to 29; the DM says he lops off a leg.

Note: There is only one humanoid hit location chart that is mostly available as a reference for flavor or for use with specific critical charts; location-based damage is not specifically in TME other than for flavor.

Getting hit for more than 25% of its Endurance is worth a morale check, the GM decides. Dune spiders have excellent morale, which means a type A hazard check against Willpower. The dune spider has a 52 Willpower, so it has an 80% chance of success and rolls…100! That’s the TME equivalent of a critical failure in combat, and it means the creature is suddenly thinking twice about the meatbag it thought was an easy meal.

On round three, Fermi’s initiative is 9 and the spider’s is 1. Fermi decides to finish the spider off and strikes again with his hatchet, rolling a 58 at this time and missing. The spider, on its round, flees at its full movement rate of 9 meters/round. Fermi will not be able to keep up, but he has an ace up his sleeve.

On round four, Fermi goes first again (initiative 4) and the spider last (2). He uses his psychic mutation to generate a mental mine, and tosses it at the fleeing spider that is now 9 meters away from him, which puts it well within his radius of effect (10 meters) and keeps him outside of its blast radius (5 meters). His SV with the globe is 01-80 and he rolls a 29, bypassing the -30 DV of the fleeing spider (he also got a +20 to his SV since the spider was fleeing at full tilt away from him). He then deals 1D20+4 explosive psychic dripping plasma damage from the mental mine, dealing a lucky 23 points, almost maximum! The spider is now badly wounded with only 6 Endurance left.

Fermi hasn’t got the energy to make another mental mine, and he has no melee weapon. The dune spider scuttles off into the night, probably moving in odd patterns due to plasma scaring and a missing limb. Fermi breathes a sigh of relief, then goes back, remakes his camouflaged bed, and goes to sleep. Did I mention Fermi’s not very wise?

On the seventh hour we have one more tragic encounter, in which Fermi once again gets to dance with death….or does he? The GM rolls for the encounter and gets a 282. An event! This should be interesting. A couple rolls later and it’s a massive thunderstorm rolling in; sometime shortly before dawn the crack of thunder and a torrent of much needed rain is dousing the Animas Playas basin, and Fermi is soaked in his little hole.

At last, dawn arrives, and so does the creeping chills. Fermi is wet and miserable, so at first he may think its just a cold, but in fact the white plague is starting to settle in. As the day progresses, his traits are dramatically affected; his appearance drops by half as white, thick pustules begin to cover his skin (technically making Fermi look like a grey alien wearing a polka dot tuxedo) and he loses 1D20 from each trait (to a minimum of 1). His sickened stats now look like this:

Fermi’s Sickened Traits: Endurance 24 (18 counting the injury); Strength 46; Agility 49; Accuracy 31; Intelligence 40; Perception 46; Willpower 34; Appearance 44

Fermi doesn’t know it, but he’s only got 2D4 days to live, as in all likelihood he won’t make it with his weak Endurance as it is…

Fermi trudges onward, desperate in his delirium to reach the distant settlement! It’s less than 53 km away, maybe is he pushes all day he can make it. Before he leaves, he takes the time to drink deeply of puddle rain water, avoiding any issues with dehydration; he manages to fill up his only canisters, being his gladiator’s helmet and the pot helm he found on the corpse, to carry extra water. He ate the rats, and he is good to go.

Fermi can walk 8 hours (with about 2 hours of rest for a total of 10 hours), and he can push it for another 8 hours of travel time. This means he can force march himself 57.6 km in a day if he pushes himself to the limit, but he will suffer for it. Given that he needs medical attention, and his only chance of such is in the settlement, he decides to risk it.

Pushing the extra 8 hours amounts to a 10% reduction in Endurance for every two additional hours of forced marching (dropping it from 18 to 12, after rounding out). He’s sick, injured and exhausted, but he might have made it to the settlement sometime after dark, if the GM doesn’t roll a terrifying encounter…

Since Fermi started off right after dawn (about 5 AM) and pushed on for 16 total hours plus 4 rest hours, he has 7 rolls to make during the day and 6 night time rolls. Hooo boy….

So, our cunning and malicious GM rolls the following for daytime: 6, 1, 5, 10, 3, 8, 4, and at night: 3, 10, 7, 7, 5, 1. Looks like he’s got something unpleasant on the second hour of travel, and maybe right outside the settlement gates if he survives the first event…

So early in the morning as he is jogging tiredly along Fermi sees a massive armor-plated snake in the distance (937 meters away, thankfully). In the Epoch of Mutants it turns out EVERYTHING is massive. Or colossal.

Tastes Like Chicken

Fermi’s got this covered. He hunkers down and gets very still (rolls a 36, a success on his stealth). The snake has limited vision and is mostly interested in movement. The GM decides that Fermi loses an hour waiting for the snake (so he rolls for one more possible encounter at the end of the day, getting a 5).

The rest of the day goes uneventfully, although Fermi is in a delirium! He is about an hour away from reaching the walls of the distant settlement, which glows in the darkness of the evening with the lights of multiple torches, when the second event of the day happens.

Dirk. Or maybe Gibs.

Not 25 meters away from Fermi when he spots them are a roving band of warmorts, a pair of brothers with dusky tan skin that lets them blend in with the desert. Warmorts are unknown to Fermi, all he sees is two odd humanoids that blend in well and appear to be armed with some decent gear. He understands body language just fine, though, and as the two warmorts raise their axes caked with dried blood and grin viciously at him, his instincts tell him RUN!!!

Fermi looks hesitantly at the pair, his voice croaking from lack of use….he hasn’t spoken to a living being in weeks. “Fellas,” he says, studying their axes. “Nice to meetcha. You from that town out yonder?” he looks hopeful. Pleeease let them be from that town…

“Look at da little sweetz that’s come wanderin’ outta the desert, Dirk,” says one warmort.

Dirk nods. “Aye, Gibs! We’ve got ourselves a fine and tasty morsel! Get ‘Im!!!”

Welcome to TME’s Chase Rules. Survival in the wasteland is dependent heavily on recognizing when you’re outgunned and outclassed (or out mutated). Luckily for Fermi the warmorts are fresh out of ranged weaponry, so they take chase after him with their axes instead. Fermi is the target, the warmorts are the chasers.

Chase rules provide a way to resolve quick escapes, desperate runs, and any situation involving group A pursuing while group B flees. After adding up a series of modifiers, we get a +2 (as Fermi has a base run of 6m and they have 5m). Rolling a D10 plus the modifier yields a 12 total, compared to the appropriate terrain table (running across open ground).

As a result, Fermi takes advantage of the slight dips and rises in the area to elude his attackers, forcing them to make Hazard type D perception checks (to which they roll a 7 and 40, both better than the 52% chance they need). The warmorts have not lost sight of him!

Next chase round, Fermi is making ground but can’t shake them yet; he’s now run some distance and is at least 33 meters away from them. The modifiers haven’t changed, so with a new roll we get a 6; nothing special, so this continues for a while, until he is 37 meters distant when he stumbles across a shallow ravine, a crack in the earth. He can jump across it (the GM rules for an agility check for the sick fellow, who rolls a 16 and beats a type B hazard), but the warmorts have to make another type D perception check or stumble into the ravine; they get a 63 and 55 respectively, which fails the 52% target and both stumble at the crack in the ground, losing a round of movement while Fermi gains a round plus D6m for his agile maneuver (total of 12m!)

By the third chase round Fermi is 53 meters away, and the GM checks morale on the warmorts, who quickly get tired of chasing this skinny freak in the dark.

Ahead, Fermi sees the firelights of Bordertown….he has arrived!

A kilometer away, Dirk shakes his head. "Dat waz da faztest gibbet I ever sawr, eh Gibs?"

Gibs just shrugs. "Oi, more where dat one came from, Dirk. Oh yes indeed....get da' boys, we're gonna go gibbet huntin'."

The two warmorts trot off, rubbing their axes with glee....

TO BE CONTINUED! Part Two: Of Mutants and Men!!!!! With a special crossover guest appearance by the spider goat. Or not….

Take a Trip with Lords of Creation

2012-01-10T07:00:00.000-07:00

Just a short hello to my latest subscriber Aaron Steele, and a hearty recommendation that you check out his blog, A Paladin in Citadel. I popped on over to see what it was about, and was excited to see a discussion of the old but under-appreciated classic Lords of Creation, an old Avalon Hill RPG from the mid 80's that I loved a great deal back then. Aaron is also returning to another all time favorite of mine, the World of Tiers novels by Philip Jose Farmer (Farmer is among my top five fantasy and SF authors, right next to Lovecraft, Howard, Wagner and Niven). Anyway, it was very cool discovering his blog and I wanted to give it a "shout out" (or whatever the vernacular is these days).

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Geography of Sabiri

2012-01-10T06:00:00.005-07:00

Geography of Sabiri

Sabiri’s geography is best summed up as vast region of rolling hills and plains, with grass and scrub as far as the eye can see. This is not far from the truth; you do not even begin to see dotted groves of squat trees until you are far to the north, and the entire region seems to have been totally overrun by thick brush.

Navigating this land can be more difficult than it looks. An accomplished rider can maneuver quite well, and the Sabiri themselves learn to master the best paths and places of passage while avoiding the rockier and more overgrown regions. The land is also laden with small natural lakes that are actually cisterns and basins where run-off from the frequent storms collects. Thanks to a wide open swathe of coastland along the Sea of Chirak, a great deal of rainfall is funneled through to Sabiri. There is also the matter of Kobal, who generates a constant storm wherever he strides, but more about that shall be discussed later.

Although the land itself is quite stable, Sabiri experiences many earthquakes caused by the tumultuous volcanoes of the the Kossarit Mountains. It is not uncommon for vast swathes of volcanic ash to descend on the land for weeks or months as yet another volcano belches in to the sky in the West, occluding the sun from Sabiri for days, weeks or even months. There have been three major eruptions in the last century, and all have led to periods of strife and famine caused by the disrupted weather and the great ash clouds, so most natives of the region see volcanic activity and earthquakes as signs of ill omen and conflict.

Next: History of Sabiri

LULU Coupon for 25% Off

2012-01-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

Wow, today is the day of a million posts!

So Lulu is offering a special promotional for publishers on their site to offer up. It's s 25% off coupon good until January 31st. Here are the specifics:

25% off any of your books

Coupon Code: LULUBOOK305

Coupon expires January 31, 2012

$50 Max Savings

Note that as best I can tell this coupon should work for any books on Lulu that you didn't self publish (I can't use it to buy my own books, for example). However, Lulu is taking the hit on the discount so it doesn't affect creator revenue, which is nice. So keep that in mind when you're over there, it can work to get Nod and Knockspell magazine, The Mutant Epoch, Swords & Wizardry, and other awesome books at Lulu. Just sayin', there's a lot of good OSR stuff over there! That said, you can find my own books for sale right here.

Monsters of Legend Errata - Yay!

2012-01-09T12:03:00.002-07:00

Inthe midst of the interwebs dancing like puppets on strings to WotC's mad piping, its easy to forget that other RPGs exist. Anway, there's a much need update to Monsters of Legend out now. It's right here over on Mongoose's page, and includes corrected ogre stats (I didn't realize they were borked), the missing traits, missing chaos table (I didn't know that was missing, I assumed they had left it out due to the whole Legend =/= Runequest deal) and a new table for detailed appearance issues caused by the chaos table. Now, to see if the PDF is also updated, and to find out when Mongoose plans on releasing a V2 Monsters of Legend that is fixed!

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition is Now Official

2012-01-09T07:00:00.001-07:00

Mike Mearls' kicks it off right here on Legends & Lore. It's going to be an open development process, there's apparently an early playtest copy that will show up at the D&D Experience later this month, and its apparently going to be as crowd-sourced and public a process as they can get, which is a smart move I think....work with the existing body of gamers, we're the ones who do all the new recruiting, anyway.

Me, I'm just happy they announced it so all the wild speculation and rampant fear-mongering can end. It is a bit ironic that in all likelihood this means that last year's rumors that bounced around were all probably true, more or less.

ADDENDUM: Actually, who knows "how good a thing" this will be....I made the mistake (as always!) of reading the follow up commentary by posters to the announcement. Sigh.....I know that the living, breathing posters of the interwebs are not the same as the normal people who do not spend all their time online bitching endlessly about stuff, but its still bad tidings when the edition war crowd turns so ugly so quickly at this announcement.

Tales of the Cannaded Dei: The People of Sabiri

2012-01-08T06:00:00.010-07:00

The People of Sabiri

There are three major population groups of humans in the region of Sabiri. The first group, after which the land is named, is the Sabiri proper. The second and third groups are derived from migrant and colonial populations that come from Grelmaine and Espanea.

Sabiri People

The people of Sabiri are a unique offshoot of humanity that some scholars suggest are direct descendants of the Inadasir empire of old. As a people, Sabiri are unique in appearance, looking physically human but with distinct skin tones ranging from grey to chalk white. Although Sabiri seem to lack pigmentation common in other human racial groups they do not suffer from suburns and are most definitely not albinos. Almost all Sabiri have lustrous black hair and only a few have auburn or red hair; no one has ever seen a blonde Sabiri that wasn’t of mixed lineage. Their eyes tend to be steely grey and blue, but some women of sorcerous talent are born with compelling green eyes. Sabiri men who follow the ways of Vargre develop bright red and orange eye coloration.

The Gordoska

Not all Sabiri are natives. In the last two centuries there have been efforts by the Grelmanics and Espaneans at colonizing the region. The people of Grelmaine long ago lost interest in what seemed to be a valueless landscape, but many coastal towns and a few inland communities can be found in the western region of Sabiri, where stout descendants of prior Grelmanic incursions eventually settled. These people call themselves Gordoska, after the Grelmanic word for “isolation.” The Gordoska take great pride in their meager lands and way of living, and are on generally friendly terms with the Sabiri people.

Most Gordoskans retain the blonde and blue-eyed looks of their Grelmanic heritage, but an openness to the Sabiri has led to an influx in mixed-heritage children. After several generations, this has led to the largest population of chalk-skinned, blonde haired people in the region. Most Gordoskan half-breeds come from situations in which a Gordoskan man takes a Sabiri wife, usually in purchase from a Sabiri tribesman who has one too many, or perhaps a daughter deemed too sickly or weak to be marriageable to another Sabiri. Such women are sold for goods and valuables to Gordoskan men looking for the thrill of an exotic wife, and the beauty of the Sabiri women is quite famous in Grelmaine.

Unfortunately Gordoskans are not the only Grelmanics to encroach on Sabiri lands. There are many slavers from this kingdom who seek to capture young Sabiri as well as the women to be sold in to slavery. Grelmanic law only proscribes citizenship and basic human rights to landed gentry in their own lands, and they view non-Grelmanics as having few or no rights. As such, trade in Sabiri flesh is a popular if dangerous pastime, for the Sabiri are so difficult to capture. They almost never take Sabiri men, who will fight to the death and are notoriously difficult to break in captivity.

Espanean Colonials

About two centuries ago the first efforts at colonization of the Sabiri lands from Espanea were undertaken by an entrepreneurial governor named Lucas Fartheren. The long and tragic tale of Espanean conflict in Sabiri will be elaborated on later, but needless to say the Sabiri did not take kindly to foreigners from across the sea arriving and trying to enforce rulership over the landless natives.

The Espanean colonial efforts were eventually deemed a failure, and the effort abandoned, but not before a fair number of would-be entrepreneurs and colonists had established themselves on Sabiri shores. In the end, the port of Westgate remained a viable city, serving as the center of trade between the distant kingdoms of the West and the land-locked nations of the Sea of Chirak.

Deep inland along a natural reservoir stands Fartheren, named after its long-dead founder. Built atop the site of one of the ruins of the old kingdoms that preceded (and were destroyed by) the Sabiri nomads, Fartheren has become a hub of activity and one of several centralized gathering points for the nomads, where they can assemble to engage in seasonal trade and ritual activities. Fartheren has also become a center of religious activity for several regional cults, especially the nebulous fire cult of Vargre.

Espaneans from these two cities are a hardy lot, descended from the pioneers who believed in governor Fartheren’s vision of an expansive Espanean Empire and those who came after. While some Espaneans have intermarried with the Sabiri and created distinct mixed ancestry in their kin, most surprisingly have not. The local Espaneans remain a largely cooperative but otherwise insular society in the region, developing their own local customs and mannerisms that work with their neighbors without giving up any of their own cultural identity.

Nonhumans in the Sabiri Lands

There are as many nonhumans in the region as there are humans, some believe. It is certainly known that many orc tribes roam the lands as nomads, and that some centaurs and other demihumans can be found in the more remote regions of Sabiri. Although few elves are ever seen here, the Zamedian elves in the north around Madagar are most likely to be encountered in this region. A few races are completely absent from the region, found only as travelers passing through, including the smaller folk such as halfings, gnomes, goblins as well as larger monstrous kin such as minotaurs. It is believed that there were once a great race of local minotaurs with bison-like heads, but in various local tales it is believed that they were all slain by the last of their kind, the dreaded demiurge Kobal.

Ghuzdar’Shadoan Orcs

The orcs of Sabiri are almost universally descended from the orcish tribes of the Kossarit Mountains. There are about two dozen known orc tribes, with such colorful tribal names as the Black Riders and the Storm Vipers. These orcs appear to have adopted their own identity from those of the mountains, and call themselves the Ghuzdar’Shadoan, which roughly translates in to the “War Riders of the Dark One,” the Dark One in that sentence being Shaligon.

The Ghuzdar’Shadoan are friendly to none, although it is known they will on occasion trade amongst themselves or with the Helians in the south. A few of the orc tribes have taken goods and coin from Arcanists, members of whom have a strange interest in the fallen civilization from six centuries earlier.

Physically these orcs look similar to the rest of their kind, but with slightly shorter builds to better accommodate riding horseback. Ghuzdar’Shadoan orcs hold a deep reverence for their horses, and appear to worship a dark spirit-lord which they call Gazdanak. Some have observed that this may be the same horse-spirit that the Hoagarit worship, across the Sea of Chirak along its eastern shores. This belief extends to a strange sort of animism, in which the orcs revere a variety of animal spirits, which they believe are in turn different aspects of their creator goddess, Shaligon.

Zamedian Elves

The Zamedians are an expansive tribe, with small groups ranging from the northlands of Madagar and even in to Crystite, all the way south to the edge of Helios. Though they can be found throughout this region, they number fewer than five thousand, with most Zamedians dwelling in small groups of twenty to forty members.

The Zamedians are not by nature nomads, but often live as such, migrating from one location to another, seeking out the same sacred spots where they will then settle for a few years before picking up again and moving on. Zamedians prefer to settle down whenever possible as they engage in a modest form of agriculture. They are also pastoral herders, and raise the butu, hardy goats native to the region.

They have a generally friendly relationship with the Sabiri, who see the Zamedians as a spirit race, something beyond mortal understanding. They also fear the Zamedians somewhat, for more than a few campfire tales of the Sabiri revolve around the passionate justice Zamedians are known for, as well as the terror a fallen Zamedian can cause when he or she returns as one of the undying.

Like many elvish tribes, the Zamedians have lost much of their old lore, though they have a rich heritage of local tales that go back at least one thousand years. They worship a variety of animal spirits, which they claim are local spirits who roam the Sabiri lands freely, and that the entire region is very close to the Spirit Lands. They revere no gods, and see the Sabiri demiurge Kobal as a blight upon the land and a cruel, genocidal killer of his own kind. Among the Zamedian tales is the implication that their ancestors were a part of the old kingdom that dominated the region, and that it was Kobal who was responsible for its downfall. The Arcanists and other scholars who have studied the region tend to believe there is more than a little truth to this, for ruins in the region clearly have a mixture of human and elvish influence.

Scarabanish Centaurs

The Scarabanish are actually centaurs from the vast deserts of Helios who migrated northward over time and began to war with the Sabiri nomads, Ghuzdar’Shadoan and other natives in Sabiri. The Scarabanish are very warlike, and their culture is distinctly different from the more pacifistic centaurs to the east near the Everdread Desert.

Stories suggest that the Scarabanish began their migration many centuries ago in distant Zann, where they were at last driven out by the local kingdoms. They migrated to Helios, where many centuries of warfare and conflict led them at last to being pushed out in the Sabiri. The Scarabanish have been here now for at least a century, and have proven a bane to all natives.

Physically Scarabanish are like most centaurs, although they hold smaller equine bodies and human torsos to match, closer almost in size to ponies. This stunted size does not make them any less formidable, however, as they are extremely aggressive and rarely interested in talk.

Player characters might find an opportunity to play a Scarabanish centaur that has been cast out from his own tribe due to some humiliating action, such as stealing another man’s wife, or slaying a rival caught unawares. Scarabanish prefer to cast out criminals and rejects rather than kill them; they prefer to keep their strength for killing the “two feets.”

Next: Geography of Sabiri

The Free To Play Conundrum

2012-01-07T06:00:00.115-07:00

I just received an ad email letting me know that Star Trek Online had gone free to play and that it would very much like to see me come on back. In recent months I have received the same ads for many other games including Age of Conan, Fallen Earth, Everquest I and II, DC Universe Online, the Aion announcement that it will soon go F2P and many more. I kicked off last year with Chapions Online going F2P and pretty much spent most of February 2011 playing the hell out of that game (which I'd love to get back to some day but all these single player experiences kept clogging the pipes last year in my mad and futile dash to play All The Games before Marcus was born).

Anyway, when I received the notice about STO's F2P announcement (gotta love the truncated terminology of the MMO experience) I realized that in the long term, F2P has got to have a saturation point, one at which the value of a F2P game, no matter how cool and AAA a title it might be, is going to bump into the problem that it's only likely source of meaningful income is the dedicated and foolish consumer with money to burn on highly transient ephemera.

Now, one could argue that all gamers by definition are consumers of highly transient ephemera (at least in the realm of computer games) and that spending cash on a F2P game is no different than chucking $15/month on a pay to play experience like WoW, Rift or Star Wars: The Old Republic (are there any other P2P games left other than those three, anyway?) However, the truth is that in the end, ownership is a powerful tool, and I am really interested in seeing how the concept of ownership plays out in the F2P market.

To compare my own experiences: I played WoW from around February 2005 and subscribed for about 16 months straight before taking my first prolongued WoW break, after which my subscription pattern boiled down to, "subscribe for a few months after each new expansion arrives, or until the sight of Stormwind or Orgrimmar causes physical pain." Although I subscribed to and played many other MMOs after this point (noting that my acquisition of WoW was preceded immediately by my defection from Mac to a real PC that could actually play games), few held me for more than three months before I felt sated for the content offered. Ultimately I lacked the OCD or addictive personality necessary to stay with an MMO for the prolonged period it demanded. I have also found online social networks, another massively compelling feature of MMOs, to be lacking, so finding a big friendly guild was still not an incentive for me.

Okay, digressions aside, the first F2P game I dedicated myself to was Dungeons & Dragons Online (alias Eberron Unlimited). I was part of it when the game first released as a P2P model back in 2006, with a dearth of content, a grind singularly painful and an experience that was at once promising of a vastly more involved and complicated experience for an MMO type game while still being almost impenetrable to a single-player-hardcore, multiplayer-casual type gamer like me who enjoyed multiplayer elements mostly for the ambience and never for the actual pleasure of it all. Or in other words, I played DDO on and off with a great deal of frustration until early 2010 when I decided to give it another shot as a F2P experience, with a thought of "nothing ventured, nothing gained," about the matter.

Ultimately DDO grabbed me and held me thanks to some key improvements and changes in the gameplay experience that made it a fun package for the F2P player, and also made it more fun for the "single, with occasional rare group" style of gamer I was. It's still not perfect, and there are dungeons in DDO I can't hit without a group, which I always resent in this sort of game because, you know, if they want me and my "hardcore single player, casual multiplayer" ass to play the game then they might as well offer me some way to tackle that raid content that demands whole groups of live players (a "buy this dungeon in single player + bots" feature would earn my cash, for example). So DDO hasn't fixed that part entirely, but luckily a large chunk of the game is manageable for me.

Um....so anyway, with DDO free to play I realized that I could, if I wanted to, buy into the game, purchase its various scenario packs and expansions, character slots and so forth, and effectively "own" the whole of the game. I calculated out how much it would cost to buy everything I wanted, determined that if I played the game for ten months I would spend $150 in subscription costs anyway, so if I capped my spending at that amount, bought everything (timed for their sale events with 20% off discounts) and then got at least ten months' worth of game time out of it that I would basically come out ahead of the subscription model, all while effectively coming as close to ownership on a F2P online game as I could, at least until they turn the servers off one day far down the road.

As it turned out, this was a great idea: I have spent more than the $150 I originally alotted on DDO since then, but it was primarily upkeep (and for a short stint I was hooked on bonus XP potions) and occasional "gold seal" henchmen. I have purchased the additional races, classes and scenarios since released, which they admittedly keep up often enough to continue to get some money from me. Overall though the experience was such that I payed the equivalent of maybe 18 months' worth of subscription fees, but I garnered two+ years worth of play time out of DDO to date, and can continue to log in and and ejoy all of the game content I purchased into perpetuity without spending another dime (or again, the Heat Death of the Universe equivalent in the MMO-verse: server shut down--RIP Tabula Rasa).

I did the same thing (more or less) for Champions Online when it came out as F2P last year, with one caveat: I bought all the content I wanted within the first week it went F2P, and I did so with their super-deluxe one time sale. Champions Online offered a lot of superfluous content, as well; costumes and other cosmetics that frankly didn't interest me much, but nonetheless which I did buy particulars of, along with the remarkably cheap scenario packs and character builds (that are not so cheap if no sale is going on). In fact, it was a great deal then, but I never would have bothered if I hadn't caught the game on sale; since then, the core prices have been fairly fixed (I may have missed some holiday sales, though) and as a result, have been a huge deterrent, especially since unlike DDO I haven't gotten more than a few months' worth of play time out of Champions Online; my staying power hasn't been as great, and it's not as competitive for my time as the many other games I had been playing last year.

So then Age of Conan and many others all flooded through the gates of the F2P circus this year. Age of Conan was especially disappointing, as the prices set for items in the store demonstrated that Funcom didn't actually want you to buy their stuff (or at least, they didn't want people who value their hard earned money and have common sense to buy it), such that it was clear that subscribing was still a better way to play. On top of that they massively overpriced the new expansion content. I love Howard's Conan, but I don't love Age of Conan enough to spend hundreds of dollars on a game that I know has issues after level 22. Maybe if I knew all that money would go to actually finishing the voice overs and later dearth of content in the game (between levels 50-75 or so), I might consider it; but Age of Conan, like DDO, needs a lot more polish. I know Turbine got its act together and turned DDO into a good game, but I really don't trust Funcom to do the same.

So now, today, I see a sea of F2P games, and realize that while I might at some point download all of them on my PC, probably none of them are going to get my money, unless I find something absolutely, unbelievably compelling about the way they handle the F2P experience such that I feel compelled to give them my money (and get a good return). None of the F2P games out there now seem to be in the least bit concerned about the idea that F2P players like me will give them money for unlocked content if they make the return worth my while; they are all seemingly obsessed with the idea that F2P players are a painful aberration, like giant pinatas that when beaten shower down cash, if you can just hit them hard enough. Games like Age of Conan clearly think that they can use F2P as a way of conning you into subbing, and if you don't sub, then they figure maybe they can get money out of you equivalent to a lifetime subscription, if they just truss it up enough in shiny lipstick and make their dollar to funpoint to product relations obscure enough to scare away the "math is terrifying" types. Uuuugh.

There's also a new problem for MMOs on the horizon that I predict will have a major impact: Bioware popped out Star Wars: The Old Republic at last and demonstrated that it is perfectly feasible to do an MMO with an elaborate multi-pathing storyline that is at once filled with emotion, difficult decisions, role playing, voice overs and not a goddamn Kill Ten Rats quest in sight (or at least, showed how you can actually integrate such quests into the general flow of things without ever making it obvious or annoying; never have I seen a game handle "grind quests" so smoothly and efficiently that you don't even realize you're doing them until they're done). SWTOR has set the bar very high for the next generation of MMOs, and I don't think I'll ever be able to stomach paying (or not paying) to play a game that at any point obviously has me collecting ten dead rat bodies.

(I really, really wish that Bioware had gotten ahold of the Conan property and made Age of Conan now.)

Okay, that was a lot of text to basically say, "I will continue to play DDO and Champions Online at my liesure because they beat the rest of you F2Pers to market and made me an offer I couldn't refuse; and I am subscribing to Star Wars: The Old Republic for the next year, so suck it, Funcom." When all MMOs are F2P, no MMO is free....but as a consumer, faced with a nigh infinite number of choices for hooking me with the free h'orderves then hitting me with a major bill for the entree, I choose instead to eat at home.

Basically I guess that is the moral of my raving coluimn for the day!

Tales of the Cannadad Dei I: Sabiri, Gateway to the West

2012-01-06T06:00:00.021-07:00

One thing I didn't do a lot of last year was provide actual content on the Realms of Chirak. Lots of Lingusia, Agraphar, Ad Astra and so forth, but nothing for this blog's namesake! That is about to change. Today I kick off a series of articles focusing on the Realms of Chirak, and the first few are going to focus on the Sabiri lands, a personal favorite of mine.

Since I've decided to go monogamous with my fantasy game system of choice this year, Pathfinder is my new hot-to-trot ruleset. Because of this, I will take time when possible to update Chirak references and details printed here to that system (or Legend...or both).

First, though, to get you up to speed I present the Sabiri entry from the Realms of Chirak Gazetteer:

Sabiri, Gateway to the West

Stoic nomadic plains culture which has been impervious to outside influence

Cultural Level: iron age

Population: approximately 2-3 hundred thousand

Government: loose clan-based tribal princes

Rulers: Zamad-Ruus in the north at Zen Hettar; various chieftains

Religions: ancestral worship, mixed with worship of Kobal and Amorgas.

Social Titles: few, usually a man is known for his deeds; merchant princes, warlords, heroes

Coinage: plenty of trade, no common coinage

Allies: The Sabiri trade with Pelegar, Madalios, Grelmaine, and Espanea

Enemies: The Sabiri regard everyone with suspicion, but especially Crystite and Helios.

The Sabiri people are nomadic pastoralists and traders. They are the primary people to bridge the gap between west and east for trade. The Sabiri are ruled by merchant princes who move in semi mobile communities of up to several thousand, and move in steady five to six year territorial circuits. They are reminiscent of the Hoagarit, but without the emphasis on warfare. The Sabiri worship Kobal, a spirit of the land which some believe is a demiurge with a shard of the Sagittarius stone. Kobal is known to roam the lands, looking much like a great, shaggy humanoid bison, somewhat like the bison that are herded and used for survival by the Sabiri. Besides Kobal, there is Amorgas, a quiet goddess of the Sabiri women, said to be the avatar of a woman who survived her sacrifice to Kobal when he became enamored with her.

The Sabiri people are a dusky, grey-skinned kin, human but with a nearly grey-white pallor to their skin tone, as if they are perpetually caked in a light dust or whitish clay. While both men and women enjoy piercing and tattoos for decoration, the women are prone to some extreme piercing with rings along their neck, ears, and other extremities.

Tattoos are a little more complicated, for a man with tattoos likely has magic. All native Sabiri sorcerers have a tattoo for each spell they have learned, and therefore a very heavily tattooed man can likely be considered a powerful sorcerer. Other tattoos of Sabiri society have powerful sorcery woven in to them, creating spell like effects that the wearer can invoke. A popular example is the Cult of the Asp, a society of assassins and mercenaries which are known for their serpent tattoos that can come to life on a command.

Westgate

The city of Westgate is a free port, loosely managed and governed by Espanea, which offers some protection for trade routes to and from the city. The governor of the city if an Espanean-appointed noble named Estobar Revan, and his garrison of troops is enough to insure he is not unseated. The local authority is a coalition of merchant princes, mostly of Sabiri descent from local clans in the western reaches of the Seas of Chirak. Westgate is cosmopolitan, and is the sole city to benefit from direct west-east trade routes. The local communities of Sabiri are the only permanent, non-nomadic people in the land.

Because Westgate is principally a trade port, Sabiri influence is actually somewhat subdued. The Sabiri are not a seagoing culture, and do not understand such things. The architecture of Westgate is a mix of Espanean and Masirian. The history of the city suggests it was originally founded seven centuries ago by Masirian merchants, then abandoned and repopulated by the Espaneans two centuries ago. It is the only city facing the West where you are still likely to meet Nithiadians trading with Espaneans and others; all traders are welcome here, and all trade is considered fair, regardless of politics.

Fartheren

Westernmost city once founded by the Sabiri as a center of trade and burial with a year-round population, Fartheren was conquered and made one of the Espanean colonies about two centuries ago. About a century ago, the Sabiri warlord Zvakattas struck out and destroyed most of the Espanean forts and colonies, but he met his end through betrayal at Fartheren and was entombed within the famous Necropolis of Fartheren, a vast city of the dead for the many ancient princes, kings, and warlords of the Sabiri people. This Necropolis is a famous locale throughout the region, well guarded and a very pricey location for prominent Sabiri princes to be interred. No monumental architecture (the famed ziggurats, which stand sometimes 100 feet or higher) has been built in about a century, however. Still, there are easily over two hundred such monuments in the vast city of the dead.

Other locations in Fartheren include the great markets, where the seasonal nomadic convergences gather, as well as the Tower of the Eternal Flame, a society of respected fire mages who worship the demon god Vargre. Near the center of town is the Governor's Palace of Espanea, where Governor Josen Salvos Grellacas still rules (although his position is secure mostly due to the support of the local Sabiri merchants). The chief justicar of the Espanean governor is the knight Arturo Palandro, A paladin of the Espanean crown.

Not far away, the immense octagonal, smoke filled temple of Kobal is built, a mysterious place of worship with feverishly dedicated priests who are as quick to strike out with punishment as to commit self flagellation. The leader of Kobal's sect in the city is a swarthy man called Vogol.

Still operating within Fartheren is the cult dedicated to the demon-spirit Boolion, called the Servants of the Shroud. Their numbers are small, but they pervade all walks of Fartheren society. Their secret leader is Zhomas the Irredeemable, who masquerades as a simple alchemist in the merchant quarter, but is in fact the cult leader and mastermind. His enforcers include Kuzraol the incubus, Gaerille the Merciless (a captain of the guard), and Lord Krevin'nar, of the Vitti tribe, an ally to both the Servants of the Shroud and the Arcanists.

Kadela

The ruined city of Kadela is avoided by most Sabiri, save those who trade with its dangerous inhabitants. The city was founded centuries ago by Masirian colonists who were driven out by the Sabiri warlords four centuries ago. It was later re-colonized by the Espaneans, who held it until it was sacked and destroyed by the forces of Zvakattas a century past. Since then, Kadela has become an enclave of hidden knowledge for the Arcanists, who discovered that the ancient library of the Masirians was still intact within the bowels of the city, and contained a great deal of forbidden magical knowledge. Now, the city is a refuge of teaching for the Arcanists, who are ruled by a dark woman of unknown descent called Middara Aegysaria. She is known to have summoned and bound at least three demons to her service, and is feared and respected by all Arcanists.

Uvalin

The City of the South is one of the few sacred gathering points of the Sabiri to be kept year round. This exclusively Sabiri city has a small continuous population which lives there and maintains its existence on the offerings of the visiting tribes which pass through. At any given time, two or three tribes will tend to be in the city, and as many as ten to fifteen thousand nomads may be in the area. Often, in the Summer these tribes gather for great war games, incredibly bloody sports of challenge in which different tribal warlords spar for the right to be called supreme warlord. No true warlord of the might of Zvakattas has come forth in a century, however.

As a true Sabiri city, Uvalin contains a great temple to Kobal, as well as a House of Judgment, where great crimes or concerns can be addressed before a selection of Ancestral Idols, each one a massive head carved of sacred stone and imbued with the spirits of great ancestors for divination. These heads are linked to the alignment charged planes, and can open portals to such planes, sometimes to engulf those who are presented before them and sweep them away to their fates in the planar realms. The heads are used to judge the truthfulness or character of the men who are presented before them, but the heads always require offerings. When activated without guidance, the heads will always seek to influence the soul of the man before them to become closer to the alignment of the judging idol, or to destroy that person if he or she is too dangerous to the ethos of the idol.

Zen Hettar

The northern Sabiri city of Zen Hettar is not unlike Uvalin in the south, but it is also a cultural interchange for the northern people of Madalios, who are ethnically related to the Sabiri, but have given up their nomadic ways. Zen Hettar is also currently ruled by the most prominent warlord of the nomads in the present, and man called Zamad'Ruus. Said by some to be the next great warlord, Zamad'Ruus seeks to conquer Madalios and destroy their infidel ways.

Madalios

Many smaller communities and two major cities comprise the more fertile, riverine lands of the Madalios people. Once Sabiri, the Madalios traded and interacted with the people to the north, in the crystite lands of Knos as well as the Zamedian elves of the mountains, and learned the ways of settled agriculture and civilization so elusive to the nomadic Sabiri. Over the last few centuries, they Madalios have settled in and given up the nomadic ways of their southern cousins, and accepted a regional rule of democracy by the men, who vote their leaders in to power, and then choose their warlords to run the armies which protect their lands from the Sabiri warlords to the south and the Crystite forces of the north. The current regent of Madalios is Ariman Daer, a strong young soldier who has displayed amazing tactical skill in repelling recent Sabiri incursions.

The Madalios people are peaceful, however, and seek only to defend themselves, preferring instead to dwell on their own means in their lush river valleys. Their two major cities, Diabaros and Kolmek, are heavily fortified and built atop the ruins of much older cities which date back to a culture which was forgotten and exterminated by the Crystite armies a thousand years ago.

The Madalians have also forsaken all religious faith for a peaceful coexistence with natural beliefs, and follow druidic beliefs to the exclusion of all others. They refuse to follow any other gods, and the reverence of the druids centers on the life-giving nature of their many rivers.

Next: the people of Sabiri

A Past, Present and Future History of D&D plus Ryan Dancey

2012-01-05T12:06:00.002-07:00

All of this makes for some fascinating reading, and while I know it seems like the rpg.net crowd is split between casting Mr. Dancey in bronze and burning him in effigy, I tend to think the guy knows what he's talking about (or at least makes a compelling, reasoned and educated presentation of his case).

So first, go to the Escapist and start here. This is basically a trio of slightly biased articles that take as a given that D&D 4th edition has done more harm than good (although it does try to address the changing face of the hobby a bit, the article series pins a bit too much on 4E's shoulder as the point of blame). Regardless of one's impressions, loves or hates for 4E, it is hard not to dispute that the current community around the game is fragmented and that the way the game and brand have been managed is at the center of it all.

Ryan Dancey was quoted in the article briefly, and decided to elaborate on it here and then with follow up comments as well. It is very interesting stuff, and I think portrays a really interesting picture of what's going on and gone on internally at WotC over the years for them to get to this point. Anyway, if you are at all interested in the business of RPGs, its worth a read.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

I really find this one quote interesting from Ryan Dancey:

"Flight to Quality" isn't something publishers do. It's something consumers do. And it's an emergent behavior, not a planned or scripted thing. It just happens because most people are rational, and in a shrinking market, the rational thing is to go where most of the other people are going. Once it starts, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. In Pathfinder's case, it's well past the starting point.

...because that is exactly what is happening, en masse, in my local area. My own groups are 100% Pathfinder as of yesterday, although that is at least partially because I decided to commit exclusively to that system for my D&D-esque needs for this year (but the move immediately doubled the number of players attending my Wednesday game, so it had a net gain effect).

Anyway, the general consensus is that Pathfinder is alive and well and being supported. It is visible in the community and its publisher's public face is proactive, friendly and responsive to what the community wants. Admittedly, Paizo is not responsive to what 4E fans want (Pathfinder and 4E have key differences in intent, obviously), but the problem here is that I'm not sure WotC is even responsive to their own audience, either. This is having a specific impact on pretty much anyone locally who is not playing D&D Encounters. In fact as of this week I think the only 4E games active that I am aware of at the local game shop are Encounter-based.

So yeah....I can see this phenomenon Ryan is describing, and its happening in real time, locally.

Deep Space Subsector 2

2012-01-02T06:00:00.001-07:00

More Traveller that has seen print before, but which I felt deserved a place in the blog. These linked worlds have no map; you can insert them into whatever sector you need a collection of odd worlds to explore. These are not specifically part of the Ad Astra setting, but they could be.

Deep Space Subsector 2
There are many remote worlds in the Penumbra Sector of space, stretching out along the edge of the known Commonwealth. What follows is a smattering of planets from this region, in Deep Space Subsector 2, ready for the referee to drop down in to any particular region he needs to populate with a handful of exotic, remote worlds.

Regeren
X873500-1(C) Tmp 9
Regeren is a wasteworld, a relic planet that suffered a terminal meltdown to do as yet unknown causes approximately 2,000 years ago. It was founded by human colonials, possibly from a STL sleeper ship, almost 4,000 years ago. The Regeren culture was prolific and expansive, but something led to its downfall. Warfare is clearly evident, and they even seem to have dropped asteroid payloads on their own cities as weapons.

There is no active starport at Regeren, but there is a small scientific research expedition headed bu the Utopia Prime Exoarchaelogical Institute. The leader of this expedition if Prof. Carol Dranir, who is workinghard to uncover the myster of what happened to this TL 12 society before it was eradicated, and whether they did it to themselves or it was from an outside group.

There is a hidden class D starport manned by the Sathar Consortium in the region, and used by friendlies to the Sathar normally labeled pirates in Penumbra space.

Recently, the four communications relay beacons and satellites in orbit went offline, and Prof. Dranir needs them repaired/replaced, as well as info on what happened to them. Moreover, visitors arriving will receive a brief, strange burst of data from groundside that seems to have come from a relic structure; the data is encrypted using techniques common to Regeren’s military.

Vortex
C632314-C Tmp 3
Vortex is the appellation commonly used to describe what happens to crafts’ instrumentation when approaching this world….to most it’s like “slipping in to a vortex.” This anomalous amber-class world is presently being studied by the Starcom Science Institute out of Paridas for evidence of what is going on here, both on the planet and in the system. The head of the institute, Dr. Richard Chandler, is a congenial fellow who decries the corporate military presence to be found here in favor of the scientific endeavors. He believes that evidence of progenitor technology—the local phenomenon of the two-million year old species which affected so much of this sector and its neighbors so long ago—may be responsible for the anomalies, but so far the only direct evidence of progenitor presence is in the form of a vast dish-like object circling Vortex’s sun in its own trajectory near the Kuiper belt.

Recently, Dr. Chandler lost contact with his crew working on the alien artifact, and he needs someone to investigate.

Paridas
A210686-E Tmp 2
Capitol of this subsector and central station of activity for the TSA, the PSS and The Scout Service. Paridas is as close to normal as you will get in Deep Space Subsector 2. The planet serves as a principal waystation for local authorities as well as Commonwealth ships, and is the central hub in the region for interstellar communications and news. With multiple outlying gas giants, the system provides ample resources for ships relying on processed refueling, and it is heavily patrolled, insuring that most pirates and other raiders from beyond the rift do not bother the mercantile traffic in the region.

Than’kk
BA68763-B Tmp 8
A polity of Paridas, this world has a large migrant population of adapted humans as well as the local indigenes called the Athan’ka, which are a form of intelligent cetecaean. The population has thrived here for centuries, but most of its technological evolution has revolved around adapting to life on a water world.

Skaltin
D665671-A Tmp 6
Skaltin is the first gateway world in this region to the Penumbra Nebula expanse. Skaltin is a virtual lawless planet, populated by succeeding immigrant waves of various extremiss, revolutionaries and expatriates over the centuries. It has arranged for a nominal political position in the Penumbra Collective, allowing the PSS to maintain a base of activities here, but there is little actual authority in the region outside of the twelve “families” that keep the system running. There is a vigorous local economy centered around belt mining and fuel extraction from the three jovian-class planets in-system. The “twelve” like the PSS here mostly as a deterrent from rampant piracy. The local PSS commander is Commodore Alice Burns, a weary older woman who at once is horribly pessimistic, but secretly loves the challenge of this system.

Gassar
E100302-C Tmp 2
Gassar is a small indendent colony of rebels who believe that jovians (4) of the system show strong evidence of intelligence life brewing in their depths. The locals are cult-like in their observation and study of these beings, and have been trying to communicate with them for two decades. Gassar itself is a small barely habitable moon, and it is unclear how they sustain themselves with such meager facilities and limited contact. Their leader is Andon Poorman, a man wanted by the Terran Authority many sectors away for a veritual genocidal crime many decades ago.

The Sathar have a secret military installation here, and they are interested in the work going on at Gassar, so they provide funds and resources in exchange for the data the colony generates. It is a class C military outpost.

New Combat Rules for Swords & Wizardry

2011-12-30T06:00:00.025-07:00

Although written with Ages of Lingusia in mind, the following combat options may work well for any Swords & Wizardry campaign looking to add a bit of extra oomph to battles:

New Combat Rules
Combat is more or less unchanged in Ages of Lingusia, but there are a few new options made available should you wish to apply them.

Two Weapon Fighting
The standard rule of two-weapon fighting presumes a duelist who is gaining a slight edge (+1 damage) on his attacks by using two blades to keep his opponent off balance. There are a couple more options, as follows:

Defensive Duellist: A defensive posture with two weapons may be taken, which instead of granting a +1 damage bonus instead grants a 1 point AC bonus to defense. The off-hand weapon must be a light weapon, usually a dagger.

Double-Striking: A fighter, ranger or assassin may attempt to attack with both weapons, incurring a -2 penalty to the first strike and a -4 penalty to the second strike, but doing damage with each weapon that does land a blow. If the fighter uses an off-hand light weapon that is smaller than his main weapon (such as a dagger or shortsword) then the penalties are -2 and -2 respectively for each attack.

Monks may attempt to dual strike with fists, and rogues may do so as well provided they wield either a dagger and shortsword or two daggers when doing so.

Unskilled Weapon Use
Sooner or later a wizard may be fored to take up a sword in defense. Whenever a character wields a weapon with which he has no proficiency, he receives a -4 attack penalty to his chance to hit. If the character continuously wields such weapons, it is within the scope of the GM to award XP to the character that should apply to a new class level in which training for the weapon is given.

Tripping a Foe
A character may take a -2 penalty to an attack roll to both strike and trip a foe at the same time. If the attack succeeds, the weapon does half damage and the foe must make a saving throw or be knocked off his or her feet to the ground. A foe knocked prone in this manner may be considered off-guard on the round that it is tripped (and thus susceptible to backstabs). Some weapons such as nets and pole arms should grant a +1 attack bonus to attempts to trip a foe.

Armor and Weapon Damage
Over time armor and weaponry can wear out, have holes punched through it, get notched and so forth. On certain conditions the GM should check to see if certain gear has suffered damage:

If a character takes maximum damage from a hit
If the character is reduced to zero hit points by a physically damaging blow
Any time a “1” is rolled on the attack roll

Each time one of the above instances happen, the character should make a saving throw for his gear based upon its composition, as follows; if it fails, the armor or weapon suffers a -1 penalty to AC or damage until it is repaired (usually for a percentage of cost). Gear that is reduced to zero effectiveness is destroyed.

Magical gear adds any magic bonus to the saving throw, and sometimes may be immune to damage if the GM rules it as such.

Gear should not be damaged on a “1” if that is the only chance it could otherwise be damaged. There’s a reason plate mail was so handy, even though it was terribly bulky; you were a late-medieval tank when ensconced within.

Gear Material Saving Throw Bonuses or Modifiers

Leather Save: 12; +4 vs. crushing or bludgeoning weapons

Wood (shield) Save: 12; -2 vs. crushing or bludgeoning weapons

Gold or Silver Save: 10; -4 vs. fire damage

Copper Save: 9; -2 vs. crushing damage

Bronze Save: 8

Iron or Steel Save: 5; +4 vs. softer materials

Mithril Save: 3; +4 vs. piercing and slashing weapons (+4 vs. all if mithril plate)

Ring or chainmail Save: 5; +2 vs. piercing weapons

Adamantine Save: 2

Ages of Lingusia: Neutral Kindred in Swords & Wizardry

2011-12-28T06:00:00.001-07:00

Next up are the neutral races of Lingusia. Note that satyrs and faeries have made an appearance in Agraphar as well; here are their Lingusia counterparts.

The Neutral Races

Half dragons: The Half dragons of Lingusia are a servitor race of the dragon lords, destined for slavery due to their draconic heritage, and often seeking to rebel.
Half dragons are statistically the same as Marlacks, but gain an additional feature:
Humanoid Form: half-dragons can shapeshift between their draconic form and a humanoid form of usually pleasing likeness, with either human, elf, or Halfling traits. This form lacks the claws and wings of their draconic form (see Marlacks, above) but still has a certain scaliness and draconic slit eyes. It takes one round to complete the transformation, although the half dragon can still move and act while changing. The half dragon can shift between forms at will.

Faeries: The faerie kin are true fey, born out of the Weirding and driven by curiosity to enter the mortal realm.
Height: 10 inches to 1’4” tall
Weight: 5-15 lbs.
Languages: Faespeak, elvish, and Middle Tongue
Ability Scores: +1Cha, -1 Con
Favored Classes: thief, magic user
Tiny Creatures: Faeries roll only 1D6+2 for Str and Con and never have higher than 8 in either attribute.
Tiny Fae: All Faeries are of the Fey realm (the Weirding Realm), and are tiny creatures, only one foot tall on average. They gain a 2 point bonus to AC and Reflexes due to their small size and nimble flying abilities. Faeries can only wear armor made for their own kind, which can be difficult to locate, and normally is only ever made of leather.
Flight: Faeries have wings and can fly. They are tiny however and only walk at half their normal movement rate, but can fly at double that rate.
Fae Archers: Faeries are always skilled in the use of the faerie bow, regardless of class weapon options. Such faerie bows only ever do 1 point of damage (and it has a 50% chance it only does subdual damage), but they can apply their fey magic to it to make the bow more effective. A faerie begins play knowing how to apply the sleep spell to a single arrow, but in the course of play the faerie can take magic user spell scrolls (and even tomes) and learn other spells to apply to her arrows as well. The faerie must use the Spell Learning chance based on her Int to attempt this, but once she has learned a spell that can be used for her arrow, then she may always imbue her arrows with that spell. Regardless of what spell she is imbuing, she can do so three times per day; the arrows will last for one week, and must be fired by a faerie from a faerie bow to activate the imbued spell.
Glamour Magic: Faeries may choose any one first level magic user spell that they can cast once per day.
Aspect of the Fae: Faeries are able to detect the presence of other fae for 100’ at will.

New Weapon: Faerie Bows
Ranged Weapon; Damage: faerie arrows do 1 point (50% chance of subdual damage only) plus imbuement if any; Rate of Fire: 2; Weight: .25 lbs.; Range: 20 feet; Cost: 150 GP (faerie characters get one for free); Special: Can’t be wielded by anything less than tiny creatures; small creatures can use the bow with a -5 penalty to attack. Only faeries can cause the spell imbuement when wielding the bow.

Goblins: Goblins are a deviant underworld race of deformed unseelie fey who have long ago sought to make a home for themselves in the mortal plane.
Goblins have statistics in the MM can serve for player characters, if desired.
Height: 4’1” to 5’2” tall
Weight: 100-155 lbs.
Languages: goblin, orcish, middle tongue and some other monstrous languages
Ability Scores: +1 Dex, -1 Wis
Favored Classes: assassin, fighter, thief
Goblinoids: The goblins are the least of the goblinoid races, and are related to both orcs, hobgoblins and bugbears. Goblins have learned to sustain their society through living off the scraps of their larger kin, and have become excellent survivors as such.
Although goblins are not prone to the use of magic, they nonetheless do have occasional mages and clerics in their communities. They revere an obscure deity, one never heard of outside goblin circles called Yamgach, the patron god of goblins. No human texts, not even the Idean Codices, speak of who or what this Yamgach is. Not even the orcs, trolls and other monster kin under whom goblins dwell seem to know much about this goblin god!

Terkithyi Lizard Men: A brutal race of fierce alligator-headed warriors who pride strength and fierceness as key traits.
Average Height: 6'6”-7’6” tall
Average Weight: typically 200-350 lbs
Languages: Lizardman and Middle Tongue. A few Terkithyi learn Draconic or other local Amechian tongues such as Chigros, Belladasian or Hotepsalan.
Ability Scores: +1 Strength, -1 Intelligence
Favored Classes: cleric, fighter
Vision: lowlight vision
Natural Claws and Bite: Terkithyi have vicious claws that do 1D6 damage and a bite that does 1D4 damage.
Natural Armor: Terkithyi receive a 2 point Natural Armor bonus to armor class.
Cold Blooded: Terkithyi are reptiles by nature, and grow sluggish and unresponsive in cold climates. When exposed to winter conditions atypical of their native environment (usually by more than 30 degrees), Terkithyi are at -1 to attack rolls from sluggishness. A terkithyi in a cold environment for more than 24 hours begins to lose hit points at the rate of 1 per day (negating normal healing).

Haikyndyr Lizard Men: A desert-dwelling race of lizard men who are swift and cunning, defending their southern lands with poisoned arrows and traps.
Average Height: 5'1”-5’6” tall
Average Weight: typically 100-150 lbs
Languages: lizardman and Middle Tongue; some know Draconic
Ability Scores: +2 Dexterity, -1 Intelligence
Favored Classes: cleric, fighter, thief
Vision: lowlight vision
Claws: All Haikyndyr claws do 1D6 damage. They have a bite that does 1 damage (but is not nearly as fearsome as other lizardmen)
Favored Environment: Haikyndyr are desert dwellers and receive some special bonuses when in a desert environment. They gain a +10% bonus to stealth checks in the desert (move silently, hide in shadows) which is also a -10 penalty to tracking attempts.
Tail Trip: Haikyndyr are known for using their tails in trip attacks. They get a +1 attack bonus when aiming to trip someone in battle.

Serpent Men (Setites): The dark race of serpent men owe their existence to the dark god Set, considered to be the great deceiver and lord of maliciousness. The serpent men seek to espouse their dark god’s ideals and secretive goals.
Average Height: 5'6”-6’6” tall
Average Weight: typically 100-250 lbs
Languages: Serpentine and Middle Tongue; some know Draconic
Ability Scores: +1 Intelligence, -1 Constitution
Favored Classes: assassin, cleric, thief, magic user
Optional Racial XP Modifier: -10%
Vision: darkvision 120 feet
Poison Bite: Serpent men can bite with potentially lethal effect. Their bite does 1 point of damage but injects poison that requires a saving throw; failure means the victim is paralyzed for 1D6 hours; at the end of that time a second saving throw must be made; failure means the victim has perished.
Long Lifespan: setites can live to be 200 or more years old, and some venerable priests are said to be 600 years or older.

Ogres: A race of brutal killers and mercenaries who dwell in the forestlands of Lingusia and will work for whoever offers the best loot and largest meals.
Average Height: 8’ to 12’ feet tall
Average Weight: 400-900 lbs.
Languages: ogreish, plus one other (usually the middle tongue or giantish)
Ability Scores: +1 Str, -1 Wis; ogres should never have less than a 12 strength
Favored Classes: fighter
Optional Racial XP Modifier: -10%
Vision: darkvision 60 feet
Tough Hide: Ogre’s have thick skin offering a 2 point improvement to AC.
Large Weapons: Ogres can wield normal human-sized two-handed weapons as one handed weapons.
Disguise Issues: Ogres can’t attempt a decent disguise unless they are trying to masquerade as a different sort of large creature, like a troll or minotaur. This makes ogre assassins particularly ineffective.
Fists: Ogre fists do 1D4 damage.

Tieflings: Touched by infernal and abyssal blood, the taint of the tieflings is evident in their appearance and often also their behavior.
Languages: the local common tongue; tieflings who are in touch with their ancestry might know an abyssal or infernal tongue
Favored Classes: assassin, thief, magic user
Ability Scores: +1 intelligence and -1 charisma
Vision: Dark Vision 60 feet
Infernal Heritage: tieflings take half damage from fire sources and gain a +2 save bonus against spells and effects with fire (fireballs, fire breath, etc.)
Darkness 15 Feet: Tieflings can cast darknes 15' once per day.

Living Constructs: Extremely rare products of sorcery and arcanists, the living constructs of Lingusia are very rare, self-aware golems.
Ability Scores: Living constructs should gain a +1 bonus to one stat of choice, and a -1 penalty to Charisma, as they have difficulty understanding the emotions of living beings.
Mental Resistance: the strange minds of these animated entities make them especially resilient against mind affecting charms and enchantments, incurring a +4 save bonus against such magic and effects.

Marlacks: The winged dragonmen of Lingusia are an ancient, fiercely loyal race that has become more populous in recent centuries. Dedicated to their dragon lords, the Marlacks are determined to prove their worth so that they may ascend the ranks of dragonhkind.
Average Height: 6'-7' tall
Average Weight: typically 300-450 lbs; the natural armor of draconians is heavy
Languages: Draconic and the middle tongue
Ability Scores: +1 Str, -1 Int
Favored Classes: fighter, thief, magic user
Claws: Draconians have claws that do 1D6 damage.
Wings: Marlacks have dragon wings which give them lift. They can move somewhat faster, fly reasonably well, and are sufficiently talented that they gain no normal penalty when fighting while in flight (thus fighting as if they were on solid ground). They move at the same flight rate as their ground rate.

Minotaurs (Mishrag): From deeply religious cults to fierce warrior tribes, the minotaurs are a god-touched races of men who are born with bull’s heads.
Average Height: 8’ to 10’6”; minotaurs have shrunk over the centuries, and are not quite as large as they once were in ages past.
Average Weight: 400 to 550 lbs.
Languages: Minotaur and Middle Tongue, though some learn giantish, orcish and ashtarth.
Favored Classes: cleric, fighter, ranger
Ability Scores: +1 Str, -1 Int; as an optional rule, characters should not choose minotaurs as a raceunless they rolled at least 13 or better for Strength. There are no weak minotaurs out there.
Optional Racial XP Penalty: -10%
Vision: dark vision
Head Butt: Minotaurs who can get a charge attack or running start in can gouge with their horns for 2D4 damage in melee.
Maze Sense: Minotaurs are exceptionally good at navigating mazes and other complicated passages, and have a sense of absolute direction when doing so. A Minotaur has a 3 in 6 chance of discerning false passages and secret doors when in a maze.

Satyrs: The mysterious satyrs are native to the Weirding Realm, but they cross over more and more frequently in to the mortal plane, obsessed with its delights and hedonistic possibilities.
Satyrs gain access to a uniquely powerful power (the pan pipes) which are presented here as an encounter power that gets better as the Satyr levels. DMs may wish to scrutinize the race carefully if you are concerned about balance. Satyr characters should be most likely to choose primal classes, though by no means are they exclusively required to choose from such.
Height: 5’2” to 6’ tall
Weight: 100-250 lbs. (or greater for the gluttons)
Languages: Feyspeak, elvish, and middle tongue
Ability Scores: +1 Cha, -1 Wis
Favored Classes: fighter, thief, magic-user
Optional Racial XP Modifier: -20%
Master of Pan Pipes: Satyrs can imbue any set of pan pipes with melodious and hypnotic magic. Satyrs can learn to perform multiple hypnotic tunes with their pan pipes, to various effects. At the start of their career the Satyr may choose from one of the following song effects, which he may perform once per day for 1D6 rounds (with the effect lasting for the length indicated by the roll). Additional tunes may be learned over time, as the satyr reaches 3rd, 6th, 9th and 12th level in their class advancement. All satyr songs can be resisted with a save versus magic enchantment/charm, and elves are always immune to satyr’s songs.

Satyr Songs:

Song of Delirium: You can weave a hypnotic tune that lulls your foes in to a stupor. All listening become entranced by the song and cease their actions for one round.

Song of Ferocity: You pipe a ferocious tune that sets your allies’ blood a’boiling. All allies who hear the song gain a +1 to their next attack roll and damage roll.

Song of the Wild: Your furious music sets your allies or enemies dancing madly about. The targets of this spell are compelled to dance instead of their preferred choice of actions.

Song of Escape: Through the wild pipings you energize your allies to recover from their plight. Each ally gains a +2 bonus to saving throws.

Song of Understanding: Through your enrapturing songs you sew the seeds of communication. This spell works to allow all who hear the song to understand one another as if they spoke each other’s language.

Song of Seduction: Through your hypnotic music you weave complex charms which draw in those around you, charging them with passion and lust. Each creature in burst becomes enamoured with the creature closest to it or a satyr, chosen by the song caster (save ends). When enamored, the target creature is effectively charmed in to desire and lust for a designated target, regardless of previous affiliation. For the duration of the encounter or until the effect ends the enamoured target will attempt to aid, seduce, copulate with or otherwise party with the target of his or her attentions. This can even overcome the hostile intentions of otherwise mortal enemies when in effect.

Option: Daughters of Oberon
Some satyrs are, once every seven generations, born as females (not called fawns, either; never ever call them that!) A satyress is a rare beast, for not only you are a coveted female satyr, but you are born a true daughter of Oberon. On discovering your heritage you find that you have some of his fey glamour to light your blood with arcane power. Satyresses (all female satyrs) gain the ability to charm person once per day.

Source!

Ages of Lingusia: Kindred of Chaos in Swords & Wizardry

2011-12-26T06:00:00.003-07:00

As with the races of law, refer to prior blog entries for expanded data on each race; what follows is a short summary plus S&W statistics:

The Chaos Races

Dark Elves (Ashtarth): Members of the renegade sorcerer clan of the silver elves, these chaos-tainted dark elves have evolved a sophisticated culture of demon worship.
Dark elves are like normal elves in all ways with the following differences:
Attribute Modifiers: +1 Dex, -1 Con; female Ashtarth gain +1 Cha as well.
Favored Classes: ranger, thief, magic-user, cleric. assassin
Racial Spells: once per day each: faerie fire, darkness 15' radius. 10% of ashtarth can levitate at will.

Orcs (Anyu): The orcs come in many varieties, from the civilized but still brutal grey orcs to the malicious chaos-tainted blue and red orcs and the xenophobic fell manorg of the north. They are a threat to all humankind, and few of their number are civil enough to interact with other races.
Average Height: 4’6” to 7’ feet tall; orcs vary widely in size
Average Weight: 100-350 lbs.
Languages: ogcish, plus one other (usually the middle tongue, ogreish or goblin)
Ability Scores: +1 Str, -1 Int
Favored Classes: assassin, fighter, thief
Vision: darkvision 120 feet
Light Blind: orcs fight at a -1 penalty to attacks in sunlight or other bright light (torch light is okay)
Half Orc Adventurers
In S&W, half orcs have darkvision for 60 feet but do not suffer penalties to battle in sunlight.
Ability Scores: They are stronger (+1 strength) but suffer for their mixed heritage (-1 charisma).
Favored Classes: assassin, fighter, thief
Red Orcs
Red Orcs are treated somewhat differently than normal orcs, and have normal average intelligence and strength (no modifiers)
Red orc may treat cleric and magic user as favored classes
Gul'hlath Black Orcs
Black orcs gain a 2 point armor bonus
Fell Manorg
Fell Manorg receive a +2 save bonus against cold effects and spells (breath attacks, cone of cold, etc.)
Fell Manorg may never start with another language other than orcish, goblin, minotaur, giantish or draconic.
All Fell Manorg start off illiterate (which precludes them from starting at 1st level as a wizard) and must use a language slot from intelligence to learn one form of writing
Green Orcs
Green Orcs are natural experts at jungle camouflage and survival, and receive a +10% racial modifier to all attempts at stealth (move silently, hide in shadows) in a jungle environment.

Naga: An aquatic race of evil beings who have risen to power and now aspire to conquer the dry lands of the world.
Height: 5’5” to 6”
Weight: 150-180 lbs.
Languages: Naga, common, and other options include draconic, infernal, and orcish.
Attributes: +1 Dexterity, -1 Constitution
Favored Classes: cleric, fighter, thief, magic user
Optional Racial XP Modifier: -10%
Deep Vision: Naga deep vision functions equally well underwater as well as in darkness. They can see in shades of grey even in total darkness.
Amphibious: Naga can breathe normally on land and under water with no impairment. Note that this does not protect them from unnatural attacks such as stinking cloud.
Natural Swimmer: All naga are excellent swimmers, and move at full speed when swimming.
Armored Scales: Naga are scaled, and these scales provide natural armor protection, offering a natural 2 point armor class bonus.
Tail Strike: Naga can smack with their tails for 1D3 damage, and get a +1 bonus to attack when trying to trip with their tails.

Gnolls: The gnolls are a demonic race that seeks to overcome the dominance of the orcs in the underworld races and to establish themselves as the principle legions of chaos.
Gnolls are by and large an unfriendly fringe race, but if your campaign tends to avoid urban humanocentric regions in favor of the vast wilderlands inhabited by other monsters then gnolls may be especially suited to your particular games.
Height: 5’4” to 6’6” tall
Weight: 100-250 lbs.
Languages: gnollish, goblin, orcish, giantish, demonic
Ability Scores: +1 Con, -1 Int
Favored Classes: cleric (of chaos), fighter, thief
Bite: gnolls have a deadly bite that does 2D4 damage.

Sherigras: These chaos-tainted beings were once human, and long ago their kind descended in to chaos and madness, pursuing the dark arts and worshipping the dread gods of the Abyss. Marked by skeletal, gaunt features, the Sherigras exist where they are allowed, on the fringes of society.
Average Weight: 65 to 150 lbs.
Average Height: 5’1” to 6’6”
Languages: middle tongue and abyssal
Favored Classes: cleric, thief, magic user
Ability Scores: +1 Dex, -1 Cha
Vision: dark vision
Optional Racial XP Penalty: -15%
Chaotic Alignment: Sherigras are by their very nature aligned with chaos.
Mark of Chaos: Sherigras are tainted by an aura of chaos that is easily sensed by most creatures if they do not try to hide it. This penalty makes commoners, children, animals and other beings sense a vague sort of unease in their presence, and can lead to strong negative reactions from normal folk.
Taint of Chaos: The taint of chaos can be used as a weapon. Once per day, by concentrating, a Sherigras can project the aura, treating it like a fear spell with a 30 foot radius of effect from their person.
Chaos Affinity: Sherigras are attuned to chaotic energies, and have a 3 in 6 chance that they can feel the presence of planar beings and objects which are attuned to Order or Chaos (such as demons and angels or artifacts) when such creatures are within visible range.
Manifestation of Chaos: Long ago before the cataclysm Sherigras were so attuned to chaos that efforts to advance the indelible cause of their dark gods rewarded them with strange side effects, and efforts to oppose their nature led to punishment. After the cataclysm this effect lifted, and sherigras have since been freed of their dark tether to chaos, although their bodies remain wracked with corruption. Choose or roll one trait from the following list, and gain that as your chaotic affinity; each affinity grants a penalty and a bonus accordingly:

Sherigras Chaotic Affinity Table, S&W Version(D100)
1-10: hideously skeletal; you suffer an additional -2 modifier to your Con score but may use your chaos affinity fear effect twice per day.
11-20: Permanent Blindness; you permanently suffer from blindness, but gain the ability to cast invisibility once per day.
21-25: Permanent loss of one arm, but you gain a flexible tentacle which provides a +10% bonus to Delicate Tasks, Opening Locks and a +5% bonus to Picking Locks.
26-30: You have hideous claws instead of hands. You gain a natural claw attack that does 1D4 damage and can be treated as two-weapon attacks, but you suffer a -10% penalty to Delicate Tasks, Open Locks and any other check requiring fine manipulation.
31-35: You have a serpent’s tail instead of legs. You can swim at double your movement speed, and can make a constriction attack that deals 1D4 subdual damage. You suffer all the reasonable restrictions accompanied by having a serpent’s body instead of normal legs.
36-40: A Visible black nimbus of chaos energy surrounds you, visible to anyone and disguisable only by illusions (spells); However, you become more resistant to undead level drain effects and on a saving throw with a +2 bonus will be unaffected by a level drain attack.
41-50: A Third eye rests in your forehead; it grants periodic visions as determined by the GM and you gain a +2 save bonus to any saving throw against a blindness or vision-imparing effect.
51-60: A demonic face appears in your torso, which must be fed and speaks a lot (double your daily intake of rations, and take a -15% penalty on Move Silently checks if you don’t gag it). You can cast spells using this mouth even if you are gagged normally, and can perform unusual acts of ventriloquism.
61-70: Animals will instinctively attack you on site, without exception, even if you have some sort of animal empathy. However, all aberrations, undead and outsiders of at least animal intelligence react to you as if you are at least not hostile, if not actual kin, and you may cast charm monster once per day.
71-80: Blistery Black Boils cover your body from head to toe giving you a -2 reduction to your Charisma, but you are immune to disease and any exposure to a disease to which you fail a saving throw on makes you a carrier for that disease, instead.
81-90: You have perpetual stigmata, bleeding from spontaneous wounds, your eyes, and elsewhere constantly. Once per day if you are reduced to negative hit points you may make a saving throw with a +2 bonus; if you succeed, then you stabilize at 1 hit point.
91-95: You have the head of an animal; you may choose the animal and gain a natural attack appropriate to the type you chose (i.e wolves get a 1D4+1 bite), as well as a natural animal empathy for those animals and the ability to communicate with them.
96-00: You appear to be outwardly normal, but at nighttime your skin disappears and you seem to bleed continually. In addition to being easy to track, you no longer suffer as grievously from cutting and slashing wounds, instead reducing all such damage by 1 point (to a minimum of 1) while this is in effect. However, you are of such a monstrous appearance that normal social interactions are almost impossible. Think “Hellraiser.”

Ghuls: The flesh-eaters of Lingusia are half-undead survivors of undead plagues who retained their wits if not their sanity and formed a new race of deformed beings, many of whom serve Orcus and other demon gods.
Average Weight: 100 to 250 lbs.
Average Height: 5’2” to 6’6”
Languages: ghoulish, middle tongue, and access to most monstrous languages
Favored Classes: assassin, thief, cleric, magic user
Ability Scores: +1 Con, -1 Cha
Optional Racial XP Penalty: -10%
Vision: dark vision
Cannibalism: Ghuls gain strength from cannibalism. They do not need to eat fresh meat; there is much truth to the idea of ghuls seeking out corpses and carrion. Once per day, Ghuls who spend a minute or more devouring a humanoid corpse may regain 1D3 hit points.
If a ghul goes a day without eating humanoid flesh, then he does not heal 1 HP at the end of the day as he normally would. After one month of resisting cannibalism he will lose 1 HP per day. This continues until he resumes his cannibalistic ways or eventually is wounded and dies, after which he turns in to a normal undead ghoul.
Although the notion of cannibalism applies to eating members of one’s own species, ghuls find that the flesh of any demihuman will do just fine, be it elf, orc, dwarf, halfing or gnome. Humanoids that are not mammalian such as lizard men, kobolds, marlacks and so forth will also suffice, although they taste disgusting to the ghul palette.
Disease Resistance: Ghuls gain a +2 saving throw bonus to resist disease.
Putrefying Smell: Ghuls can emit a terrible stench twice per day which can have an adverse impact on nearby enemies and allies alike. All creatures within 15 feet of a ghul that emits the stench must make a saving throw against poison or suffer nausea and weakness, instilling a -1 penalty to attack rolls and other checks.

Deep Dwarves (Darendur): The deep dwarves were once a chaos-tainted race themselves, though many of their kind have emerged from the deepest regions of the Lower Dark and renounced the chaos gods. Some still adhere to the old ways, though, and regardless of their affiliation, the deep dwarves are still marked by chaos.
Darendur are like all other dwarves, save for the following differences:
Languages: Deep Speech, plus one other (usually Tradespeak or Giantish)
Ability Scores: +1 Con, -1 Cha
Favored Classes: assassin, fighter, thief
Restricted Classes: Darendur are barred from any spell-casting class, as they are unable to work magic.
Optional Racial XP Penalty: -15%
Magical Sensitivity: All darendur have a curious innate ability to tell what sort of magic an item is, much as if they had cast detect magic. Darendur may identify magic items in this manner merely by touch (they don’t even need to study them visually).
Dark Vision: Darendur have Darkvision of 120 feet, being atuned to the lightless depths of their subterranean homes. They need no light source to see in a series of black and white shades, able to rely on a form of infrared to see.
Light Sensitive: All darendur are light-sensitive, and experience blindness for one round if exposed to a sudden daylight-like effect (such as a spell or unexpected sunlight), and normaly fight with a -1 penalty when in light brighter than a torch thereafter.
Magic Resistance: Darendur have a strange resilience against magic, and have a +2 bonus to saves against it.

Trolls (Thargonids, Mihidir): The trolls are an ancient race, and while the thargonids are horribly corrupted by chaos, the mihidir still retain a trace of their ancient, proud lineage.
Average Height: 7’ to 7’6” tall (males) or 6’ to 6’6” for females
Average Weight: 250-350 lbs.
Languages: Trollish, plus one other (usually Tradespeak or Deep Speech)
Favored Classes: assassin, thief
Ability Scores: +1 intelligence and -1 charisma
Vision: Dark Vision 120 feet
Optional Raciail XP Miodifier: -20%
Regeneration: Mihidir trolls heal at an amazingly fast rate, recovering one hit point per round of battle. Only fire and acid damage does not regenerate.
Claws and Teeth: Mihidir are well armed with natural attacks; their bite does 1D3 damage and claws do 1D4 damage.

Next: Neutral Kindred in S&W!

Olga Scotland: GRIMNIR Black Ops Frigate

2011-12-25T06:00:00.002-07:00

More amazing music from Jamendo. The first piece is a great, upbeat and unique instrumental bit. If you are like me and have had enough of Xmas music, then enjoy! Also, Merry Xmas!

Royalty Free Music - Stock Music Library | Jamendo PRO

Sky Invaders

2011-12-24T14:40:00.000-07:00

Another great discovery at Jamendo...this is a strong orchestral soundtrack that would fit any epic video game or provide great mood music for an SF campaign:

Royalty Free Music - Stock Music Library | Jamendo PRO

Ages of Lingusia: The Lawful Kindred in Swords & Wizardry

2011-12-24T06:00:00.007-07:00

Races and Kindred of Lingusia

The races of Lingusia are diverse and offer a variety of alternatives to the default options for races in the Swords & Wizardry Complete rules. The following additional rules are used to govern how races work in this particular setting:

No Class/Race Restrictions
S&W Complete defaults to certain expectations; only humans, for example, can be assassins, rangers and paladins. In Lingusia all races have access to all classes (with some exceptions) but they may pay a penalty to advance in classes that are not considered favored. Thus you can have orcish assassins, Halfling druids and minotaur paladins if it is so desired; just be mindful that NPCs and monsters encountered in the wild should be qually as diverse as the PCs!

Favored Classes
All races have favored classes. A favored class suffers no level/XP restrictions for that race. Classes that are not favored will suffer some restrictions, however; in Lingusia, a race advancing in a non-favored class must pay double the normal XP to advance each level past 9.

Humans treat all classes as favored.

Multi-Classing
There are no specific multi-classing restrictions in Lingusia. Characters of any race (including humans) may choose to multiclass, applying the penalties and rules as describe in S&W to determining features such as hit points, saving throws and hit modifiers. However, any XP penalties due to favored and non-favored class combinations still apply.

Dual-Classing
Only humans can dual-class. At the GM’s discretion they can actuall continue to earn XP that applies to their original class, advancing in levels in both. However, there are two XP costs to consider:

First, the character must “stock” 2,000 XP applied toward “level 0” in the new class; when 2,000 XP is reached then he is now first level in the new class.

All XP earned for the new class (including the “0 level”) must then be divided by the level of the original class minus the level of the current class. Thus, a 7th level warrior who takes up spell casting decides to become a level 1 mage. He earns 8,500 XP on his next advwenture, which he applies to his new wizard class. The new class only actually receives 1,417 XP (as it is divided by 6, which is the fighter level minus the wizard level).

Other Race Restrictions
Other races may have restrictions based on specific features of that race, and subsequently may not be eligibile for certain classes. This will be addressed in the text of the actual entry.

Optional: Attribute Modifiers
Each race has an optional bonus and penalty that may be applied to attributes after they have been rolled and race is chosen. These reflect the average strengths and weaknesess of each race, and are completely optional. No attribute should drop to lower than 3 or higher than 18 under S&W rules, however, so for example a sylvan elf with a +1 Dexterity who already rolled an 18 for Dex would not gain a 19 Dex, as he is already maxed out.

Under this system it is recommended that humans gain a single +1 bonus that can be applied to any attribute of choice. This will help keep humans an attractive option relative to other character race options. However, Lingusia is a much more diverse world, in which humans are a plurality but not a majority, so it’s okay if you find your group consisting of half or even more nonhuman races.

That said, if the GM does not want the player group to contain six ashtarth dark elf rangers, he is well within his rights to request that the PCs diversify a bit.

Each racial entry will include relevant data on the race for the setting, as well as advice or rules necessary to run the race in S&W. Some additional lesser races are also referenced, with enough data to get interested players going.

Optional: Balancing Out Power vs. Class

If you are concerned that a certain race grants an unusual number of powers or features that will otherwise unbalance the power level of your game, then it is suggested that you treat the race as having an XP cost, to reflect the additional power and complexity that accompanies it. Such a race would impose a 10% (or greater) penalty to all experience earned. This may offset or remove bonuses due to prime attributes, but will insure that the character in question does not level as quickly, and therefore not outshine other normal class/race combinations.

Ultimately, the idea for so many race options is to give the players a sense of the exotic in the fantasy realms of Lingusia, and to allow for a wide variety of flavor. Use whatever combination of restrictions or options work best for your particular style of campaign, and you should be fine.

Summary of the Lingusian Kindred of Law with S&W Statistics:
What follows summarizes the races with S&W-appropriate statistics. See the prior blog entries for more detailed entries on each race.

The Lawful Races

Silver Elves (Suethenurien): fair skinned and tall, these elves dwell in the ancient woodland realm of Sylvias.
The suethendur eldariin are high elves; use the normal S&W elf character generation rules to create silver elves, with the following additions.

Ability Scores: +1 Int, -1 Con
Favored Classes: cleric, fighter, ranger, magic user

Silver elves gain special rules regarding what house they belong to:
The Elvish Houses: Most silver elves belong to one of the dozens of Houses of the Sun and some of low or forgotten heritage belong to no house at all.

You may roll (or choose if your GM allows it) on the following chart to determine your unusual house heritage and any benefits/limits that accompany such a background:

D100 Rolls Result
01-90 House of the Sun
91-00 House of the Moon, roll again:
01-12 House Ilmatar
13-24 House Istrion
25-36 House Nethestor
37-48 House Vystrion
49-60 House Shalmanfiel
61-72 House Astrux
73-84 House Calyspion
85-96 House Arienform
97-99 Salienform
00 Shilnavilin

House of the Moon Descriptions:

Ilmatar, House of Fire. This house is legend for its metalwork and armoring skills, and is unique in its ability to harvest and tool adamantine implements. Likewise, members of this house are famous for their talents at pyromancy and alteration.

Istrion, House of Water. Blessed by Trimelin, this house is known for its seafarers, shipwrights, merchants, and water mages.

Nethestor, House of Ice. Located in Ice Falls, members of this house are powerful with cold magic, and considered pre-eminent architects throughout the elvish lands.

Vystrion, House of Earth. Those of House Vystrion are accomplished druids, geomancers, and earth workers. They are known for their agricultural and horticultural skill, as well as magic shaping the earth and the flora.

Shalmanfiel, House of Enchantment. Masters of illusion and disguise sometimes regarded as tricksters and hucksters, the illusion-crafting skills of House Shalmanfiel are well known.

Astrux, House of Many Eyes. The most venerable house of the politicians, they have made the art of diplomacy and politics a family affair. All houses participate in politics, but House Astrux rules the field. Nothing gets done without their participation or approval. Almost all rulers for the last two thousand years have been from House Astrux. Members of House Astrux are consumate commanders, and favor the fighter class, which they almost always take.

Calyspion, House of Conjurers. This is a small house, largely dominated by the Fraternity of the Gray Robes, a venerable order of conjurers and summoners whose abilities are tethered to the Weirding Realms. Oddly, some of these mages also take up arms and practice combat to become war mages.

Arienform, House of the Sky. Blessed by Ogron, this smaller house sprouts many wind elementalists, navigators, and weather mages.

Salienform, the Outcasts. Exiles by choice or force, Salienform have been branded heretical and cast out from the Houses of the Moon. Salienform are usually born of two houses, and choose one ability bonus from each house. Intermarriage among the Houses of the Moon is forbidden (although it is permissible with the Houses of the Sun). Likewise, criminal or deviant behavior also results in expulsion. If this is the case, determine your reason for belonging to this outcast caste.

Shilnavilin, the Dark House. This is officially an extinct house, as its members became the seed of the Ashtarth many millennia ago. The Ashtarth who still wage war against Sylvias claim this house title their own. The only fair skinned members of this house are said to live in the demiplane of the Desecrated Lands, worshippers of the ancient Anhedron the Damned, he who first corrupted the house and cursed them to become Ashtarth forever more. Members of this house are rare descendants of the original tainted bloodline who were not marked by chaos, though the corruption of their house still marks them in unusual ways. They are almost never lawful good in alignment, and most are albino.
Special Benefit: You may plane shift (as the gate spell) once per day to the Desecrated Lands. Considering how deadly that dimension is (it is the vast boundary at the topmost layer of the Abyss), such a use might be seen as a desparate act indeed.

Wood Elves (Sylvanurien): The free spirited and much shorted woodland elves are found throughout the world and are distinctively mischievous.
Sylvan elves function as normal elves in S&W, with the following options:

Ability Scores: +1 Dex, -1 Con
Favored Classes: druid, ranger, thief, magic user

Humans: The most populace and successful of all the lawful races, humans are found everywhere, and are believed to be the favored progeny of the gods. Humans function in S&W as they normally do (unless optional rules are added).

Iron Dwarves (Maddendur): The iron dwarves are a rough mountain breed of dwarf with a nose for minerals and and in insatiable desire to dig deep for hidden veins of gold and other precious metals in the mountains of the world.
Iron dwarves are just like standard dwarves in S&W, with no unusual modifications except for the following specific features to Lingusia:

Optional Ability Scores: +1 Con, -1 Dex
Favored Classes: cleric, fighter, thief

Silver Dwarves (Suethendur): The silver dwarves are a mechanically inclined lot, dwelling mostly in human lands due to an ancient exile from their own mountains, and famous for their talent with anvil and hammer.
Silver dwarves are generated using the standard dwarf rules in S&W, but with the following modifications:

Optional Ability Scores: +1 Str, -1 Dex
Favored Classes: cleric, fighter, thief, magic user
Artificers and Crafters: All suethendur are excellent craftsmen and inventors by nature, and have a keen understanding of ancient machinery as well as the clockwork and steam powered mechanisms they tinker with. In game terms, if necessary, GMs may let a sivler dwarf make a D20 roll equal to or under their Int score to grasp the general use and meaning of such devices when encountered.

Gnomes: Commonly mistaken for true fey, gnomes are earthly beings more at home in the elemental realms of earth, and are found hidden deep within the remote forests and mountains of the world. They suffer from a strange corruption in the presence of civilization and technology.
Height: 1’6” to 2’4” tall

Weight: 25-55 lbs.
Languages: feyspeak, gnomish, the middle tongue and possibly other sylvan languages
Ability Scores: +1 Dex, -1 Wis
Favored Classes: fighter, thief, magic user
Forestkin: Gnomes of Lingusia are creatures of the earth, and they are fairly in tune with nature and the spirits of the land. When gnomes leave such an environment for too long they tend to go a little mad, and gnomes that dwell in human cities are considered eccentric to a fault.
Illusionists: Gnomes are particularly versatile at illusory magic and may cast phantasmal force once per day. Forest gnomes use this ability to disguise their homes and provide pleasant entertainment within their communities. City gnomes use it to swindle and con humans or to produce extravagant sorcerous “magic shows,” for which they charge sums of money.

Halflings (Syleni): An even rarer breed of fey, the diminutive Halflings are suspected to have been the product of an ancient union between a tribe of fey and dwarf or men, though none know for sure.
Halflings work exactly as indicated in S&W and are regarded by most as brave little souls (when they aren’t mistaken for children). Halflings are the most closely associated to humans of all the demihuman kin, and their villages are almost always nestled within or near larger human cities and towns.

Height: 3’6” to 4’6” tall
Weight: 75-155 lbs.
Languages: sylenic (Halfling), the middle tongue and possibly other sylvan languages
Ability Scores: +1 Dex, -1 Con
Favored Classes: fighter, thief, magic user, ranger, monk
Halflings in Lingusia are a pleasant and unassuming folk. Because of this, some rogue and errant Halflings have become masters at taking advantage of their larger human kin, relying on the generally pleasant nature of their kind to provide a smokescreen for their illicit dealings!

Aasimar: Aasimar are a variant race and counterparts to tieflings. Like tieflings the aasimar have a parent or ancestor with planar blood. Unlike the tieflings, the aasimar have been touched by a divine spark from a good or beneficient being such as a seraph or other angelic entity. A few may even have godling ancestry.
Languages: Middle Tongue, plus one other (usually Tradespeak or Celestial if they know their divine parent or have access to such lore)

Ability Scores: +1 wisdom or charisma no penalty
Vision: darkvision 60 feet
Immortal: You are immortal in origin and all effects that work for or against immortals also affect you.
Divine Heritage: aasimar are unusually resistant to the effects of chaos, and gain +2 bonuses to save vs. magic cast by chaotically aligned beings and monsters.

Amazons: An ancient race of warrior women who are sworn to an eastern god of war, Vishannu, and received the gift of immortality for their dedication.
Amazons are human in size and appearance, but gain the following benefits:

Favored Classes: fighter, ranger, cleric, monk
Ability Scores: none
Languages: Vyrindian, middle tongue, and some usually know Belladasian, Hotepsalan, Eastron or draconian
Immortals: All Amazons are ageless. They mature at about age 25 and do not get older. Although they do not age, they are prone to disease, injury, poison, and all other forms of death.
Gender Bias: Amazon women have difficulty dealing with men as equals, as they are unused to men who are independent or in positions of power; conversely they see men as naturally inferior.
Martial Society: All amazon women train in at least one martial weapon of choice outside of their normal class options; pick one weapon with which your character is skilled at using, in addition to (or despite) your chosen class’s normal range.

Next: Kindred of Chaos in Swords & Wizardry

This Old Republic

2011-12-22T07:00:00.006-07:00

My wife jumped on the bandwagon months ago with a preorder of the $150.00 super crazy collector's edition featuring a Darth Ugly action statue. I resisted. I have spent most of the last year burnt out on MMOs and focused on the decidedly more engaging single player experiences offered in most other games (or the short and frenetic madness of pvp-focused games like Black Ops and GoW 3). I haven't felt very "Star Wars-ish." I didn't want to buy into yet another MMO that was destined to string me to disappointment after a week or two (Rift, Star Trek Online, DCUO, etc.), chiefly with the fact that MMOs seem necessarily limited in their storytelling conventions and just how they can engage a player with that oft-ignored -RPG component that can sometimes be found at the end of the MMO-part.

But yeah, after weeks of ignoring my wife's Star Wars: The Old Republic experiences in beta and then special pre-release early start play, I finally caved and got this game yesterday. I can tell you this much so far:

1. I'm glad I'm playing it now, because I always did want to play KOTOR 3 and this is it.

2. Bioware has managed to wed MMO styled gameplay to their traditional single player RPG storytelling medium. This turned out to work very well. I basically feel like I'm playing KOTOR 3 but with the occasional need to ignore random people running around and a chat window.

3. Whoever made those Bioware movies should be comissioned immediately by Lucas Arts to make a Star Wars trilogy of films using the CGI displayed here. Oh, and maybe give them cart blanche to do whatever the hell sort of storyline they want.

4. The gameplay is really conventional (I haven't even read the tutorial bits, the gameplay is a natural to anyone who's played any MMOs at all since December 2004) but this does not detract from the fun. The shoot-them-up component I've experienced so far as a republic trooper has been fairly engaging as starter zones go.

5. Bioware-style dialogue trees. I am already developing a sense of who my trooper cyborg is and whether he's a maverick, a tow-the-line sort of guy, or an embittered soul. I'm only a few hours in and I'm already being confronted with tough decisions. Hell, I got a classic, "fetch me my necklace" quest and it rapidly blew up into a "she could be a spy for the Sith Empire!" subplot. I really don't know what I'd do with all my free time if it weren't for Bioware and Bethesda knocking out such quality, thoughtful RPGs these days. Read a lot more, I guess.

6. Fully voiced, including your own character. I can't express strongly enough what an impact this has. Age of Conan had this up to about level 20-22, for example, and it was well done (until you left the starter zone and voiced dialogue suddenly got very scarce). Hell, even among single player RPGs I think a voiced protagonist is a smart move; contrast Mass Effect with Dragon Age or Fallout 3, for example.

7. Graphics are good. I cranked it up to max and it is a nice looking game, for an MMO. Not as slick as a dedicated single player experience, but still superior to most MMOs on the market right now.

So I opted for a three months at a time subscription plan. I think it will take me at good long time to finish all of the individual character campaigns in SWTOR, and it's the first MMO I've played since DDO and Champions Online that really grabbed me and now has me keen to play more.

While playing with Marcus in my lap last night he did something I hadn't seen to date: he started staring long and hard at the screen.* Did he recognize shapes and images as the same stuff he sees Mom playing all the time? Or is he just now starting to develop better, far ranging vision? I need to read up a bit on this. He's starting to pay more attention to odd things, like staring intensely at my book shelf (which I imagine looks like a panoply of colors to him) or his stuffed monkeys and ducks hanging from his comfy baby chair.

Okay, enough rambling! I have some preloaded stuff for my S&W Ages articles, and am hoping to get another TME feature done this weekend, but if I don't post much else between now and New Years, have a grand old time for the holidays!

Dies Natalis Solis Invicti!

*Should he even be looking at a computer screen? Try reading up on early childhood parenting, and you'll discover more wacked out, contradictory information than you can shake a stick at!

Swords & Wizardry Rules for the Ages of Lingusia

2011-12-22T06:00:00.002-07:00

I had discussed this before, and now I'm back on it: some conversion mechanics for use with the Ages of Lingusia content I have run previously on the blog. I still hope to prettify and edit the entire mess and put it out as a proper book for people interested in such, but for now just "getting it out there" will do just fine.

Characters in the Ages of Lingusia

The Swords & Wizardry edition of Ages of Lingusia assumes you are using the Complete edition available from Frog God Gqames, which includes nine character classes. The class rules work more or less precisely as described in the S&W Complete rulebook, with the following optional additions:

Maximum Starting Hit Points
Instead of starting with an initial hit die at level one, all characters get a slight fighting chance by receiving maximum hit points at first level (the highest value of the first hit die plus any constitution bonus). This will slightly ease the pain of being ganked by two or three kobolds in the night.

Die Rolling Conventions
These are completely optional, but I use these die-rolling options specifically to grant characters a slightly heroic edge:

Attributes: attributes may use the “roll 4D6 and discard the lowest die” method of character generation to generate more heroic personas. All other characters except nefarious villains should roll the standard 3D6. Characters may distribute their attributes accordingly, or roll straight down the row, whichever they prefer.

Hit Dice: I have always been kind on hit dice, and characters may roll their hit die at each new level; if they do not like the result, they may re-roll, but must retain the second roll regardless of whether it is better or worse than the first. This mostly serves as a “do over” for 1s and 2s on the hit die roll, but provides better odds characters will have somewhat more favorable hit points over time.

Attribute Checks
Attributes can be used to resolve matters of skill, lore and aptitude about which there may be uncertainty otherwise. A D20 roll is compared to the attribute score, and if it is equal to or under then the character is granted the knowledge or completion of a certain task appropriate. Modifiers may be applied to the attribute to improve or lower the odds of success. As a rule of thumb, assume a range of +1 to +4 applied to the attribute (or subtracted from the die roll) for progressively easier tasks, and a -1 to -4 or higher modifier for increasingly difficult tasks.

Perception
Perception is a default trait that is equivalent to Wisdom, though elves may receive a +2 bonus to the Perception score. A D20 check, with bonuses or penalties applied to Perception, may be rolled (equal to or under) to resolve any uncertainty as to whether the character spots a fine detail that might otherwise not be noticed or is overlooked.

Luck
Everyone needs a luck score, and this value is always rolled using a straight 3D6. The luck score is a tool for the GM to use with attribute checks to resolve uncertainties involving situations where luck plays a big factor. Did Kormak stumble across the mugging of Lady Cateris in time? Did Maximus happen to drop the Star Sapphire of Zephon when he was drunk off his ass? Luck can be a fun way of deciding if such things happen.
Options by Class
There are a few additional optional rules for some classes, as indicated below. These options apply to the classes presented in S&W Complete:

Assassins
Assassins receive access to thief abilities at two levels below the equivalent thief class level. Rather than start the assassin with thief abilities at third level, grant the abilities at first level, but scaled down proportionately for level 1:

Clerics
Chaotic clerics can command undead, rolling as if they turn undead, but on a T result the undead will not harm and may even obay simple commands for 3D6 rounds. On a D result the undead will obey the cleric as if charmed.

Neutral clerics are an important part of Lingusia, and have the distinct advantage of being able to either banish or command undead with a turn check.

Clerics optionally gain bonus spell slots at 1st level, based on wisdom. A 1st level cleric with a bonus spell slot may use it to learn 1st level spells at that time, even though he normally doesn’t gain spell access until level 2.

Druids
Druids optionally gain bonus spell slots based on the average of their wisdom and charisma.

Fighters
A fighter gains a new ability: he may make three attacks every two combat rounds at level 7, and at level 12 may make 2 attacks per round. These attacks are not restricted by HD like the default Multiple Attacks ability, which he retains as well. This modification allows melee fighters to gain an additional edge over other martial classes (who get an additional perk, below).

Rangers, Monks and Paladins
Each of these classes are permitted a full bonus to hit and damage for high strength scores.

Magic Users
In Lingusia, mages can prepare spells when they have slots available for those spells to imprint in their mind. The time taken to imprint a spell is approximately 15 minutes of focused concentration and effort per level of spell. There is not daily limit; if a magic user has just finished casting three first level spells and two second level spells and has three hours to rest after his ordeal, he has more than the necessary hour and forty five minutes needed to reacquire his spells.

Under this system, spell slots (especially at lower levels) become a resource that can be recovered between battles and other strenuous events that lead to the use of magic. The magic user is only in trouble if he is forced to deal with a lengthy ordeal during which he has neither time nor opportunity to recover used magic, or no access to his spellbook.

Under the optional rules a magic user gains bonus spell slots based on his intelligence (see next).

New Optional Magic Rules
The following optional magic rules can be used at your own discretion. The basic rule (bonus spells) is the default assumption for the Ages of Lingusia setting, and isn’t terribly world-shattering, though it will front-load spell casters with a little more magic. The subsequent optional spell point system is provided purely as an interesting alternative rule for the use of magic to experiment with; although I used it a great deal in the old days, I actually favor the more traditional spell memorization system these days, but on occasion it’s fun to run a campaign with gonzo spell point-based magic systems.

Optional Bonus Spell Slots
Some spell casters receive bonus spell slots. The bonus slots are determined as follows, and provide one extra slot that can be used for the indicated level of spell:

Ability scores are determined as follows:

Clerics: Wisdom

Druids: The average of Wisdom and Charisma (Wis+Cha/2)

Magic Users: Intelligence

Optional System: Spell Points
In the old days I always implemented a spell point system, although in more recent years I have grown fond of the “Vancian” memorization system. Presented here is the spell point mechanic for your consideration.

Under this system spells cost Spell Points (SPs) to cast for arcane magic or Divine Points (DPs) for clerical and druidic magic. If for some reason a character has more than one source of magic, he must keep separate track of each spell point pool.

Spells cost SPs equal to their level, so level 1 spells cost 1 SP, while level 9 spells cost 9 SPs. Any material components are still required.

Classes earn SPs instead of spell slots, at a rate equal to the number of spell slots earned multiplied by the spell level the slot can be used for. Thus, a level 1 spell slot is worth 1 SP, but a level 5 spell slot grants 5 SP. This means a 5th level magic user with 4 1st level spells, 2 2nd level spells and 1 3rd level spell actually receives 11 SPs (4 for four 1st level slots, 4 for two 2nd level slots, and 3 for one 1st level slot). If you use the bonus spells rule above, those also grant bonus spell points.

Under this system all spell casters cast “on the fly,” without having to memorize spells, though they must have necessary material components ready for use. Spell points are recovered at a variable rate. The default rate (for fast magic games) is 1 point per hour of rest, or all SPs per 8 hours of sleep. This rate can be adjusted as follows:

Spell Point Recovery Rate

Default: 1 point per hour of rest or all points after a ful night’s sleep

Fast Magic: 1 point recovered per 10 minutes of rest (or all points after a night’s sleep)

Slow Magic: 1 point recovered per hour of sleep; 1 point recovered per 2 hours of no activity.

Spell points are limited by the maximum casting level of the caster; thus, for example, magic users can’t access 5th level spells until level 9, although once they reach level 9 they can spend spell points on any such spells up to that level that they add to their spell book. Likewise, spell points are not capped for use like slots, so there is nothing preventing that 9th level mage from using all 32 spell points to cast magic missile over and over again if he so desires.

The chief advantage of a spell point mechanic is that it frees up spell casters to use spells according to need rather than trying to anticipate what may be required of them. Many spells tend to go unused at the moment when they could otherwise be handy to cast, and in this system that rarely ever happens except as an oversight.

The downside of a spell point system is that it makes spell casters remarkably more flexible and potentially much more powerful in later levels. Because the spell point do not cap the number of spells of a given level, it means that there could easily by mages in the world who specialize in lower level magic while retaining higher levels specifically for the extra SP. Conversely, it means at high levels one particularly devious mage could destructively unleash a few high level spells in favor of numerous lower level spells.

In my experience with using this system, the great equalizer boils down to judicious use of the same system with villain NPC mages and priests. When the NPCs use the same mechanic, it means that the GM can be just as devious, albeit much more often and in many creative ways than the players.

The following chart provides a breakdown of spell points per level for each caster type as well as an indication at what point access to new spell levels is gained:

You can use the following chart to calculate bonus spell points (see Bonus Spell Slots, above) if using that optional rule as well:

Next: Races and Kidred of Lingusia in S&W

Realms of Chirak

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: The Second Story Arc

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Spacer Campaigns

Speaking of Three Months! Guess who's 3 Months Old???

Three Whole Months!

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Plots and Locations

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Flora and Fauna of New Earth

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Weaponry of the Solar Collective

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Technology Levels

Glassworks

Rest

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Spacer Backgrounds

Philip Glass, Minimalism and 1000 Airplanes (on the roof)

Trollszine 4 is Out! Plus Fiery Dragon Ramps up for more T&T 7.5 Goodness

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Backgrounds for Survivors

Emitremmus - Nuclearization

New Hu Creix: Far

Ed Greenwood's Edition Neutral Forgotten Realms

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: Characters

The Traveller Effect - or is it the Mongoose Effect???

2221 - After the Nemesis Cataclysm: A BRP Post-Apocalypse Sci Fi Setting

Origin of the Endreti Trolls of Lingusia

Busy Week! On Moving, the Nook Tablet, and Crude Matter

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Hnaka Warrior Women

A Few Lessons Learned About Fatherhood

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Warfare in Sabiri

Showing off!

More 5E Goodness

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Life in the Sabiri Tribes

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Sabiri Tattoos

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Arms and Armor of the Sabiri

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Dress and Garb of the Sabiri

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Commemorative Editions, or "I just Got Internet Whiplash"

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Culture of the Sabiri

Cool Legend Stuff at rpg.org

Tales of the Cannaded Dei: Recent History of Sabiri

Tales of the Cannaded Dei: History in Antiquity of Sabiri

Tales of the Cannaded Dei: the Prehistory of Sabiri

My Wife's Future (and Mine)

Penny Arcade always Knows How to Make My Day

The Mutant Epoch, Travelogue Volume I

Take a Trip with Lords of Creation

Tales of the Cannadad Dei: Geography of Sabiri

LULU Coupon for 25% Off

Monsters of Legend Errata - Yay!

More fun links on Dungeons & Dragons Next

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition is Now Official

Tales of the Cannaded Dei: The People of Sabiri

The Free To Play Conundrum

Tales of the Cannadad Dei I: Sabiri, Gateway to the West

A Past, Present and Future History of D&D plus Ryan Dancey

Deep Space Subsector 2

New Combat Rules for Swords & Wizardry

Ages of Lingusia: Neutral Kindred in Swords & Wizardry

Ages of Lingusia: Kindred of Chaos in Swords & Wizardry

Olga Scotland: GRIMNIR Black Ops Frigate

Sky Invaders

Ages of Lingusia: The Lawful Kindred in Swords & Wizardry

This Old Republic

Swords & Wizardry Rules for the Ages of Lingusia