Monday, February 21, 2011

More Wishes!

Click to embiggen.
Someone mentioned that if you took the AD&D rules and projected them forward as the physics of a world, you'd get one like Dark Sun - controlled by magic-user who run city-states.  I've been wrapping my head around a universe extrapolated from Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion, and I'm not so sure.

Wizards are in a nuclear arms race to attain the wish spell - plain and simple.  Upon reaching 17th level, the only sane thing is to pour all of one's time and money into creating a wish spell.  The next step is to use your new power to hunt down and destroy all other existing copies if the spell - and kill or incapacitate the creators of those spells. 

Of course, containment of the wish spell would be impossible.  Eventually, someone else would figure it out, or some extra-planar being will drop by with the power.  Magicians would have to form alliances to protect themselves, and as the power of opposed alliances grew, a stalemate like the Cold War would occur.  A wizard couldn't remain neutral in this conflict for long.  They'd be forced to choose sides. 

If the stalemate faltered, however, opposing sides would wish each other out of existence in a flash.  Wishes could even be delayed with dead-man switch type technology to obliterate the other side even if the original wisher was wishified.  (Which is kind of wishy-washy.)

So, assuming that the magic-users didn't devastate the planet and themselves, they would operate in Magic Unions formed around an agenda - usually the survival and increased power of the Union and its near immortal founder - the "Wish Master" (ick, probably need a better name for that.)  Operating out in the open would be the last thing they would do as they would want to be seen and detected by rival Unions as little as possible.  They would operate much like a cabal.

I can't see that running countries would be in their interest.  At least, not out in the open.  It would be much safer to pull stings from the dark.  Participating openly in military campaigns would even be iffy.  High powered magicians would spend much of their time in study and research.  I kind of see them as above (or below, if you will,) affairs of state.  They'd also want to have a way to get things done in a non-magical way - thus they would be assassins or ninja or some other stealthy, elite force that does not rely, or emit, magic.

So, it's magical cabals fighting each other in the dark over powers that can rip holes in reality, all the while, pulling secret strings in the mundane governments to futher their knowledge and survival.  Well, at least that is the way I see it.  Of course, it depends on how the rules are tuned.

What do you see?

- Ark

Sunday, February 20, 2011

His Name is a Killing Word

As I zoom down in drawing the map for my (as of yet) unnamed world, I begin to feel the urge to name things so that I start getting a frame of reference.  Naming things is fantasy worlds is one of the more fun things in world building, and also one of the most nerve wracking.  I want cool names. 

I mean, the last thing I want to do is call a city Confluzel and have the players, for the rest of the campaign, call it "Floozy City."

It's really easy to slap two English words together.  WotC seems to have made an art of it.  Wintermist, Stonemarch, Gardbury, Dawnforge, Witchlight, and Ogrefist sit within the the Nentir Vale.  So it's all pretty understandable and pronounceable to your average English speaking person.  However, it lacks some of the foreignness I like in a fantasy world.

A while back, I thought it would be fun to make a world where Common was actually English, and that the culture had been around long enough that many of the place names were a lot older - Middle English, in fact.  That would give the common sounds that would make the words easier to pronounce.  It would also, in theory, pluck at the ancient etymological strings inside the players brains.  WotC like to use this with the word "fell" and "dire" I think -  fell-this, dire-that, fell-tonsils and dire-cabbages.

Making English the Common tongue also explains why any notes I give the PCs would be in English, and why you might have a character named Roger.  I mean, if you look closely at the Middle Earth stuff, Tolkien did the same thing.  Hobbit-speak evolves into English, and is basically a tweak on old or middle English.  Good Old JRR probably explains it all somewhere, I'm sure.

So I've been working on names for some of the older towns and regions is the campaign staring region.  I started with an English name and/or concept, and attempted to translate it (horribly, I'm sure) into Middle English.  Here is a list:

Aloftgres (ME Alofte - on high + Gres - grass)  a town on a elevated plain.
Duskenfaunt (ME Dusken - dark + faunt - infant) town of the dark child.
Dwergyen Doun (ME Dwergh - dwarf + Yen - eyes + Doun - hill) a town near the hill of the dwarf eyes.
Ernslak (ME Ern - eagle + slak - gap between two hills) the town at eagle pass.
Failham (ME Fail - dirt clod + ham - home) a town of sod houses.
Flumrys Brig (ME Flum - river + Rys - branch + Brig - bridge) a town near a river bridge.
Fultum (ME Fultum - help) a town built around a religious sanctuary.
Gobelyntur (ME Gobelyn + Tur - tower) Fortress built to hold back the goblins.
Hethwalle (ME heth - health + Walle - well) a town near a well with curative properties.
Kyndrecchen (ME Kyn - cows + Drecchen - torment) Where the cows were killed.
Lefdikuss (ME Lefdi - lady + Kuss - kiss) The town of the lady's kiss.
Nyrvylrem (ME Nyrvyl - little man + Rem - kinddom) land of the halflings
Pricketholt (Pricket - buck + Holt - wooded hill) a town built on a forest hill known for a male deer.
Rotenslade (ME Roten - Rotten + Slade - valley) the rotten valley.
Senginbergh (ME Sengin - singe + Bergh - hill) a town on a hill known for burning.
Senginerd (ME Sengin - singe + Erd - land) the burning lands (the elven Razing Zone.)
Vathloof (ME Vath - danger + Loof - rudder) The place of smashed rudders.

Now the next step is to say these names out loud in front of my son.  If he busts out laughing, I know that it's probably not a great name.  Hmm.  Maybe that means it is a GREAT name.  I need to think about this.

So how do you name things?

- Ark

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Tim Shorts Did Not Rip Me Off

Over the years, I've been leery of PDFs for cash.  Rarely do I feel what I received was worth the money.  Most of the time, I just feel like someone took advantage of me and I need a hot shower and a good scrub down with a thick bristle brush.

Knowledge Illuminates, by Tim Shorts, has broken that mold.  It's a fifteen page, low level adventure culminating in a dungeon crawl.  I'm sure you had that figured out already.  What's nice about it is that it actually makes sense.  All the bits and pieces build into a cool story for the players, and it was an enjoyable read.

There is also a rather heavy, potentially campaign changing idea in here.  I'm talking about the Viz.  No, not the anime distribution company.  It's a . . . thing . . . which does a . . .  thing.  Let's just say it has to do with magic.  I quite like it.  But it has the potential of completely taking a standard D&D type universe and giving one heck of a tweak to the magically inclined.  I don't' know how that would play out in a campaign. 

However, the inclusion of one of Dr. Seuss' most lovable characters as the main villain is very confusing.  Hmm.  Oh.  Not Lorax.  Lorox.  Oooooh.  Um, never mind.  Forget that.  My bad. :)  The big baddy is particularly cool and creepy and - well - just imagining him - the way he is described - might give me nightmares tonight.

The adventure sprinkles all sorts of hooks throughout, and by the time the players are done with the adventure itself, they will not be lacking for things to do.  A lot of things.  A lot of scary things.

This is definitely one I can recommend.

- Ark

Friday, February 18, 2011

And They Say 'Geek'

I was driving my son to school, and suddenly remembered something important from the night before.

"Do you remember Beedo?  He had talked about starting up a blog for his boy when you set yours up?"

"Uh-huh," he nodded, confused that I had switched from the lecture on cleaning the bathroom to blogging all of a sudden.

"Well, his son is posting on his very own blog now.  I emailed you the link last night."

"Oh cool," he smiled.

"They have a game where there are a bunch of kids and a bunch of dads play D&D."

His looked at me, "Can we play with them?"

I took a deep breath, "They are not around here.  They are in Canada or Mongolia or someplace.  I'm not sure where, but not close."

"Oh," he looked down at the floorboard in the car.

"But we could set something up like that.  Are any of the kids in your school interested in fantasy stuff?"

"No, he said, looking out the window, "I say 'Dungeons and Dragons' and they say 'Geek.'

"Is there something wrong with being called a geek?"

"Yeah."

I sighed.  "You know, people who use words that they think are an insult to you were not your friends to begin with."

"It's not people that I know really well that say it," he shrugs.

We do the school drop off thing and on my way home, I begin to think about the day before.  My boss was in town with a bunch of other manager and executive types.  A group of us go to lunch and for some reason the topic moves to Star Wars and I express that my favorite Star Wars movie is The Empire Strikes Back

My boss pops up that he preferred the stories when Han and Leia had kids.

Thinking for a second, I cock my head and reply, "You mean the ones with Admiral Thrawn?"

He points at me with a smile and says, "Yeah!"  Then he immediately looks embarrassed and covered his mouth.  "I shouldn't talk about things like that.  People will think I am a geek."

Too late, dude, too late.

I sighed.

- Ark

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Kicking it Olde Schoole v3.5

The boy and I had a pretty busy weekend. We went to a micro anime convention at a local library, talked Labyrinth Lord over dinner with a old 4e friend, and attended the kick-off meeting for brand new Old School D&D Group in North Texas.

I've attended - and run - quite a few rpg-centric greet and meet-ups, ranging in focus from D&D 4e, Star Wars Saga Edition, and Shadowrun.  Really, the best formula seems to be shaking hands, reminiscing about the old days for half and hour, than taking out the dice and getting to business.  This new group did not disappoint, as the organizer guessed that to be the proper course of action.

The one thing that I didn't realize is that the organizer considered D&D 3.5 to be old school.

That was . . . okay.  Not what I was hankering for, exactly.  I had never player 3.5, but am willing to give anything a shot.  I took my pre-gen's backstory and ran with it, playing an cleric who had been told by his deity to meet up with the group.  I played up the creepy stalker guy who 'talks to God' aspect.

The boy was bored stiff.  He was playing an elf ranger.  Plink plink plink.

While he has some attention problems in day to day life, a good game usually snaps him into focus.  This was not one of those games.

I too wasn't incredibly impressed. The DM and the 'theory' behind adventure were fine.  But the actual fights took forever.  I once thought that 4e fights could be painfully long.  I had no idea.  And at first level even.

I don't really know all that much about 3.5.  I'm sure that some experts could have banged out the fights in half the time.  But these guys we were playing with seemed to know what they were doing - yet it still took freaking forever - and the time was mostly spent on the mechanical details - not in anything that I consider particularly fun.

3.5 seems to be pretty damn fiddly.  There is all sorts of math and bizarre rules slapped willy nilly on everything you might want to do.  4e is much more cut because of what appears to be a rules consolidation and simplification from 3.5.  0e and 1e is much more clear cut cause THE DM JUST MAKES UP RULES ON THE SPOT AND NO ONE FUSSES ABOUT IT SO THERE.

The DM and players were all nice people and fun to be around.  My new buddy 3.5 - well - I don't know if I'll call him back for a second date.  I'm just not that into him.

That gives me some worries about Pathfinder.  I was thinking about taking a look at it - now I'm wondering if D&D 3.75 will do it for me.  How different is it?

I should probably give 3.5 another try - but - hmmm.  Yeah.

Talking to my son about it, he said he didn't like it much.  I asked him what he thought the biggest problem was.  He told me in no uncertain terms - it didn't have and POWERS.  All he could do was plink plink plink.

Ah.  I'm noticing a pattern here.  Options makes the game.  For my son, at least.

- Ark

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Nettle Coral

As I was doing development work on my aquatic 4e campaign Sea of Tears, I started watching the anime series Eureka Seven.  I'm not a fan of giant robot anime, but this series had amazing characters, flying surf boards, great music, a green haired emo girl, and scub coral.  I highly recommend it.

The scub coral in Eureka Seven is part of the big mystery that the series unravels slowly throughout it's 50-odd episodes.  I won't spoil it for you, but my initial ideas of what scub coral was turned out to be dead wrong.  However, I used those initial guesses to fuel a major feature of the Sea of Tears campaign - Nettle Coral.

Nettle coral appears to be a regular form of coral, although a bit more straight and spiky and thorny in appearance - more like bleached brambles.  Its biological niche includes where normal coral lives, but it exists in deeper waters as it does not need sunlight to live.

When the sharp tips of nettle coral come in contact with skin, they delivers a sharp blast of pain and damage similar to a nettle, or other corals, for that matter.  However, nettle coral does something that other corals do not do - they reach out to and touch someone.

"Explosive growth" was how I described it to the wide eyed players.  A foot long nettle coral spike could suddenly grow ten feet long to stab its victim.  The coral commonly grows in large enough batches to take out entire pods of sperm whales.  The stuff was a major shipping hazard, and if a port became infested, it had to be abandoned.

Given the right circumstances, nettle coral grows in huge enough clumps to exit the water and form bone white, thorny islands.  Above water, the nettle coral thorns do not explosively grow, they simply explode, sending showers of randomly sized stinging needles in the direction of any movement or noise.  Pirates and other sea-farers used such island to their advantage.

Eventually the characters discovered that the nettle coral was undead - formed by swarms of zombie coral polyps and the nettle stings were actually the polyps sucking life from them like microscopic vampires.  Had the party a cleric, they could have even turned the stuff, but they didn't have one.  Silly party.

I did a search on Google for the term nettle coral, since I figured that the name was already in use somewhere - perhaps even a real type of coral.  I could only find one reference.  Strangely enough, it was mentioned once in the book Blue Lagoon.  I could not have invented such a bizarre non-sequitur if I tried.

So I offer unto you the humble nettle coral - vampiric and evil zombie polyp swarms.  It's Strahd von Zarovich under a microscope.  Do with it what you will.

- Ark

 (Check out the rest of the Sea of Os'r Project over at the Lands of Ara.)

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Surts' Island Draft

The weekend was pretty busy, and I swore to myself I wouldn't blog till I had finished up at least a rough draft of my island.  I kept to the letter of the law - but not the intent, when I saw one of Telecanter's found treasures and had to go on and on and on about it.  I swear, he always finds cool stuff.  You know that boy who stuck in a thumb and pulled out a plum?  Yeah, that's Telecanter as a kid.

So I finished the rough draft.  It needs a hacksaw taken to it - and maybe an arc welder - but it's done.  I couldn't keep it down to a page.  Verbal diarrhea I guess. So it's two pages.  With teensy font.  I apologize for your eye strain.

The link is here.  Again, this is on Goolge Docs, which makes pdfs look crappy.  Just click File and save it to your desktop and read it via acrobat.

Enjoy!

- Ark

(Check out the rest of the Sea of Os'r Project over at the Lands of Ara.)