Take a Trip with Lords of Creation

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

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

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!

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!

More fun links on Dungeons & Dragons Next

There's a discussion of the seminars, events and games to be featured which will discuss the forthcoming edition at the D&D Experience later this month here. I am particularly interested in how they plan to unify all prior editions. My suspicion is that they plan to provide a set of rules that will allow for the thematic elements that people associate with prior editions while still being a distinct new set of mechanics all its own. The easiest way, I feel, to make D&D Next (or whatever its called) feel the most like D&D in the minds of its players is to not only haul those sacred cows back in from the field, but to treat them like bovine gods, fatten them up, and groom them heavily.

ENworld has discussion here, but I haven't seen it yet because their site is most likely overwhelmed with traffic on the issue (ENWorld sadly hasn't got a good threshold for high traffic volume on stuff like this).

RPG.net is freaking out over here. It's a lot more civil than I expected, and generally more optimistic than one might expect. It's fun reading the first ten or so pages of the thread, where wild speculation about how NY Times would never report on this unless it involved the sale of WotC is brought up regularly.

I'm sure there are other interesting spots, but I don't think we're going to have any newer or cooler details until after D&D Expo and WotC starts some official open playtesting.

I'm looking forward to this. I've been playing and enjoying 4E heavily since it was first released (along with several other editions of D&D), and I own every 4E book out there, but I'm no system war fanboy; they needed to do this, to get an edition out there that respected the totality of the fans and was not trying to jam square pages into round books and all that.



ADDENDUM: Morrus at ENWorld does indeed have a great scoop on this and even got to play a rought playtest game of 5th edition. Great reading here about it, and he confirms that the intended model is a core rulebook with a good set of basic rules, followed by a modular approach to all the add-on rules expansions you could want.

All in all, some very good news here. Time will tell, but I feel like WotC is finally taking D&D in a good direction again.

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition is Now Official

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

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

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

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

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.