Christmas give away

 Hello,  I need to make some space and these form a nice little, potentially useful package for someone.  Even if you're not an RPGer yourself, perhaps you know someone who is ?  I don't think that the intention to play GURPS is even important, your friendly neighbourhood RPG player might be looking for ideas from sources to drop into their game.  

Anyway, I tried the few people I know and no-one wanted them.  I'm an avid fan of the printed  word and hate to think of this little treasure trove not finding a use anywhere.  Even if it's just making some gamers bookshelf look a bit more diverse. So these are free to a good home.

I'm even so keen that these find home where they are appreciated, rather than going in the recycling to become toilet roll that I could be persuaded to go halves on the postage.  

It's not going to get anywhere for Christmas, but hey, free stuff.

FRPG - The tomb of Ankha Rattalla

w/e 23/24 Jan 10. Jake's House.

The rear party have things to contend with, this will be mostly written up before the game, as it requires only a policy desicion or two from your HedgeLord. But it might involve a change of scenery....

The action team have their mission; to secure the artifact before the baddies get it. I suspect that even if you write this in three foot high letters on a lorry and park it outside the window, you won't be able to remain focussed on the mission objective. You're all rubbish.

Potentially icky. PE Spoiler

OK. So during the 'Lost Temple of Demogorgon', Tud received a broken hip and femur. With no real medical care to speak of, with a long (well over a week) cross country journey through the mountains in atrocious weather, he should have died. Even once back in the Agadir, the amount of marrow in his bloodstream would have killed him. Two deaths. Dead twice. A PC bites the dust.

But Tud had previously spent some time looting corpses and stuffing what he had already been told (and could probably tell for himself by their creepiness) were demon tainted bits and peices down his underpants.

So then. Anyone wanna guess why Tud is still alive ?

Tud the Very Ilin

His entire focus is on gaining the personal skills to be faster, more cunning, more deadly and more resilient in both melee and campaign warfare. While Kamilata is in managing the defence of the static lyrond (a good ex-jalee role), Tud is out arranging the irregular distributed warfare defences of his lyo's lands (a good ilin role). Despite carrying really quite serious injuries. When other ilin are about he will be training them in the terrain, in ambush points, routes, places to shelter, caches, the vegetation, the landscape, the people, the threats, and so on. If/when he takes them out into the wilds he will drive them hard, and they will come back weeks later hairy, filthy and exhausted.

He's probably (Thranduil included?) the most infamously deadly all-round warrior amongst the characters, especially given he won't run out of power points. And despite a rather unlucky recent injury, which his lyo is oddly letting fester... Given his history - he has after all walked amongst the gods, across worlds, used magic, is well versed in advanced steam technology, had an arm turned into the sword of a god, amongst other things - an eye for shiny things, trophies and a rather cavalier attitude to supernatural 'taints' are not bad going. And all his shiny things go towards developing his ability to be really /really/ ilin; apart from a brief stint in the Iron Kingdoms when the ilin structure collapsed, there's no /personal /power or 'wealth' developed; Kamilata and his established position as regent-in-lyo-absence is much more 'dangerous' if you go that paranoid route. Unlike most ilin Tud appreciates the value of money in order to get things to happen outside the normal illin/empire structures, but it all goes into the job.

Tud's rather single minded focus on his job includes a binding loyalty to his lyio, but bear in mind that he's had other lyio that are 'properly' respected so he can obviously compare her behaviour to theirs. And all the older characters have a long history with her as a relatively junior member of the party, which includes behaviour (eg as undead in the Iron Kingdoms) that would normally be fairly fine grounds for ilin loyal to the empire to not just abandon her but try for a mercy killing.

His current lyio has shown little or no loyalty to the empire, to the ilin codes, no responsibility for the lands she is supposedly responsible for, or indeed her ilin. She has the command, but is yet to earn any /respect/. So Tud's loyalty to Forgeillil is to the letter and based on his strong ilin values. But she has yet to take on the role of lyio as well as the mantle - say, by collaborating on a set of defence strategies and tactics, training a reserve local militia force since most of the effective force is usually absent, or pretty much anything beyond her naked ambition and venality (heh). Otherwise, in the meantime, Tud will continue to exercise his ilin skills to the full and for his lyio with little regard to /who/ holds the position of his lyio; given past experience (!) he expects to die in service to her.

If that service includes tattoos or piercings or anything to improve his performance in the field (say, to increase range, stamina, strength, health, sneakiness) then he'll not only go for it but encourage very strongly the junior ilin to do so as well, and that will hold some weight. Obviously if Forgeillil bans things he will follow her instructions, but (especially) if it's given as some arbitrary imperious edict he will do his best to reduce the effects they have on getting his job done to the best of his ability and those around him. The older characters are used to working that way anyway.

Tattoos, for example, might be 'just not ilin' but it's only the soft, safe, court ilin who can afford to ignore such tools. Though many might not take up strange things for traditional cultural reasons, frontline ilin like Tud have a job to do, and /his/ culture has been broadened a /lot/. Treat it like, perhaps, eating dog in our culture; we might frown on it or even think it horribly disgusting, but anyone as focussed and hairy as Tud who has lived amongst dog eaters is not going to be put off by such nancy provincial attitudes, and he won't have much patience for them either. Anyone who tries a jeer or a spit is likely to get a warning clout through both ears.

Some interesting and valid points. My two immediate observations are that all ilin expect to die in service to their Lyio. And that Tattoos are in this context not 'a tool' but more of an identifying mark of a long standing enemy. I'd love to know what the other PCs think.

Body Art

The body painting thing is a cultural more of the Galadhrim, not the Pernostir (ilin classes). Whilst we know that Tud is up for almost anything, he is trying to be a better ilin and tattooing and even non-permanent body art is just not ilin. So Tud might well think twice about agreeing.

Just to re-iterate that point - the Wood Elves do temporary body paint. No other cultural group within the empire indulges in body art of any sort.

Nym should ask Valarwen, who has probably been painted hundreds (literally - she's seen a lot of action) of times before and for whom temporary body art is normal, even expected. FG and TL may also be slightly interested; FG likes magic (and Nae thingy Scillico is magic) and TL likes cultrually important things. Which this is.

Tattooing is entirely associated with the Aerdy. High class Aerdy women tattoo their live's stories on their bodies - it's part of their identity (ie it makes it impossible to keep them as slaves without it being obvious who they are). Tyralandi would almost certainly be interested in having hers updated and Erlini, having been awoken to her cultural heritage by Tyralandi, might well be interested as well. Aerdy menfolk are also covered in tattoos - and the Imperial experience of Aerdy men is not nice. Piercings are also a widespread Aerdy affectation.

Please bear in mind that the cultural gap between the Empire's peoples and the Aerdy is much much greater than it is between the disparate people of the Empire. Certainly the human population of the Empire are not used to seeing Elves amongst them, but they do have a shared history of mutual sufferring, military inter-dependance and eventual liberation. The Aerdy are quite often the bogeymen in the childhood stories of a lot the Empire. In Ulria and Perrenland, when the common people see Tyrlandi and Erlini (or anyone with a tattoo or inexplicable monkey's tail) they stop and point. In urban areas they jeer and spit. If the ilin were not there they may well get stoned or lynched.

In a world of 'them' and 'us' the Aerdy are 'them'. And peircing and tattoos are Aerdy.

The Nae Larach Scillico list is cultural artefact, not a utility spell list.

Pah ! We laugh in the face of Inscrutable Yaks

FRPG on Saturday night; first for six months, alledgedly. A fine time was had by all and the PC party is back on track with the campaign arc. I say back on track, but more honestly perhaps they are just on track (at last).

Somehow, I let the PC party get away with defeating three beholders without sufferring any long term casualties. Oruro got turned to stone and Anar's magic items were temporarily nerf'd but that was about it.

Once again, a series of stun results on their foes allowed the galant PCs to bludgeon a poor innocent evil abhoration in the face of nature into messy oblivion.

I think it's time the "monsters" began to anticipate the PCs tactics and adopt an alternative strategy....

Gaming as a hobby

OK. I enjoy a fairly narrow range of extra curricular activities. The FRPG. One game at a time. I'm much less bothered these days about the rules system. 3.5 looks to have the flexibility for which we abandoned AD&D for MERP. RM is, I now recognise, a little over complicated. Like Space Opera. One of my players, an auditor by profession and inclination spends a lot of time trying to fix it. Now, I see the ruleset as a vehicle for telling a story, so am quite happy to break the rules to further the narrative. So I'm happy with our broken RM and might well be satisified with 3.5 in the future. But then I'll be a player, not the DM, so my viewpoint will be slightly different. Perhaps.

As I have noted before, Fortykay can handle kill team missions and Apocalypse battles. It is extremely flexible. It can also do Stelek esque competitive games and the beer and pizza games that we will one day get around to.

Rules are OK, but I think that the rules one uses have to be suited to the activity one undertakes. If the rules don't suit the style of play one desires, then get new rules.

The Dread Pagoda of the Inscruitable Ones

This w/e is (hopefully) the concluding installment of the a/m adventure. Dragon subscribers (from when it was a real magazine and not just an interweb thing) might recognise it.

The Perran Empire campaign is a home brew RM adventure. It has its roots in AD&D (that's "1st edition") when our PCs carved an empire out of the central Flanaess. As you do when you are 14. Then GW launched MERP. So the PC moved to Middle Earth. Then the rules system morphed into ICE's RM. Then there was a bit of a hiatus. I launched a new campaign, back in the Penguin Empire that has been running for about four years.

Due to us all being grown ups with jobs and families we havn't played for six months (and of course, me being in Kent all week hasn't helped). So this little side adventure was never intended to be on the 'critical path' of the camapign arc. And it's never good to end a gaming session in the middle of a combat.

So I'm faced now with a consitricted timescale where I, as DM, have to sort out the combat and get the campaign back on track. There are about four or five adventures left in this campaign arc. The last one is an epic that will probably take three or more sessions.

The campaign is supposed to end in a grand finale. Whether the PCs dissapear in to the darkness and their moment of greatness takes place in the bowels of the earth or there is a giant showdown with a cast of fousundz is up to them of course. But hopefully it will be memorable enough. Even if I do have to actually stop leaving clues and just the PCs what is going on and what their motivation is in this scene (shesh !).

So, if you're one of the PE adventurers reading this, there'll be a new campaign, possibly in 2011. This time I get to be a player. The pathfinder or shackled city adventures can be downloaded from Pazio, so its possibly time for 3.5. I know that's me weakening and that if I had any integrity as a gamer then I wouldn't be suggesting moving away from RM. But if it makes it easier and quicker to play then I don't have a problem with it.

So to cut back to the dread pagoda. It was never meant to be important.

Rolemaster Magic System.

CNJ Wrote "This has been mostly done for ages. (And I started it quite a while ago – if you remember talking about it in the car park at GW in Nottingham).

Anyway, with the prospect of actually playing next weekend, I remembered that I had always intend to send you the new rules before we played. So you could look over them to see what you thought. I’ve tidied up a few loose ends and this is now the ‘Beta’ version. Obviously it seriously needs a play-test, but for us that really means in Bog’s World.

Personally, I’m quite pleased so far, and would really love to see how it will play.

Radically changing the spell system at this stage in the campaign may seem a bit much, but as I have argued before no one apart from me (vaguely) (and this is including you I feel) actually understands the current system anyway! Which is kind of the point. No one understands the system now because it is illogical, and doesn’t match the background. (It doesn’t even match the rest of Rolemaster actually, let alone anything more story-driven!).

If nothing else, it will allow wizardly characters the option to actually become really good at spell casting. (Which amazingly enough, they cannot in standard RM – go figure.). And if FG is supposed to be (or to become…perhaps an important distinction) the zivorn of the spell-casting goddess. It seems fitting that there is a skill that covers this (i.e. spell casting rather than just magical power).

The attached documents include:
- New Base Spells Table – replacing the ‘Base Spells Table’ in RM (+spell casting skill (‘OB’) –‘Resistance’ of target (‘DB’); +/- range and other mods : basically just like Arms Law)
- Casting Effects Table – results of the Base Spells Table are given as F, PS, NS, etc, which is ‘Failure’, ‘Partial Success’, ‘Near Success’, and so on. This table interprets what these actually mean for different types of spell (the type of spell, which is in basic RM already, becomes more important in this system).
o 66 and 00 results. I’ve included ‘special effects’ from rolling natural 00 and 66. Because I see magic as being rather unpredictable (not to say quirky) and wanted to include more ‘something weird happens’ type results. I had intended to think of more. But this is as far as I had got.
o About the results generally: I wanted to make this more interesting and exciting (certainly more than the numeric ‘he rolls high enough to resist your spell’ which is all the previous system could do. But the need to make it generic overruled that. In theory, we could write a table for EACH SPELL (or at least each list). But I thought we’d see how it works out first!
- Spell Types and Resistance – an overview explaining what the spell types mean and how they interact with the concepts of Passive and Active Resistance. (This will be a bit new to people, but hopefully will become second nature soon enough.)
- Changes to PCs – summarised as lines to ‘drop into’ character sheet spreadsheets, although no doubt a bit of sorting out will be required (cos it always is). There is are quite a few new subtle rules included here (and one or two assumptions/’guesses’ that are subject to change on discussion with you). But these are pretty much how the skills work out in this new system, and I don’t want to bombard you with detailed rules just yet. Since I don’t have any copies of character sheet for Tyra, Val or Nym, I haven’t been able to do theirs yet. But it shouldn’t be a very big job. I have done calculations for some PCs of Resistance as well (a key attribute in this system: replacing the ‘Resistance Roll’ modifiers in the character sheet. But I haven’t collected these in one place.
o List bonuses – some spell lists are easier to cast than others, and this summarises that for each of the PCs’ lists. This info that could be recorded on the ‘character sheet’, and is equivalent to ‘using a +10 sword’ say on combat skills
o Mods to level bonuses – the current level bonuses have to be changed for this system, and this is my suggestion for what they should be (this is one of the ‘underlying rules’ but I have shown this because it is something you could easily alter that might change PCs final skills more than some others).
- Spell Casting Modifiers (part 1) – this is an existing table with various situational mods to Base Spells skill (preparation, use of hands, encumbrance). I include this just for completeness and reference as all these still apply just as before. Part 2 of this table will include all the additional mods to Base Spells (range) and to Resistance (from armour). These are worked out, but not yet written up, because I’m not sure how to divide up these into a ‘handy reference’. I am thinking putting strictly ‘situational’ factors on one sheet, and factors that could ‘go on character sheet’ (be previously worked out) on another. I think they won’t both fit on one sheet! But what would work best for you?

My intention is to print out the various tables and ‘Handy Reference sheets’ a few times (on card if possible??) so everyone can have a copy (or at least, there are lots of copies going around – a bit like the way the Arms Law books etc. do)

I recommend concentrating on the Casting Effects Table, although you might need to read the Spell Types and Resistance doc first so that the column headings make sense. Then look at the Base Spells Table, in conjunction with the Changes to PCs and Spell Casting Modifiers, to see what sort of results PCs will tend to get. I’ll leave it to you whether or not you want to work out some scenarios for PCs (e.g. FG rolling a 90 with no prep…)!

Obviously, I’m very keen to try this out for real – and probably tinker a bit with it in play (ref’s discretion as always is required on what the actual result of any spell is, but consistent over-ruling the tables may mean the tables are wrong!). My aim has been to emulate the basic pattern of RM’s results, and where an exact match wasn’t possible, to change things in favour of what I thought would make a more interesting game. But you might find, even if I have matched existing RM closely, that you don’t like the results it gives and want magic to be made harder, or easier, or less predictable, or something. My aim has been to make it more transparent to everyone (you and players) when a spell is easy, hard, unpredictable, etc. And allow PCs and NPCs to change their actions and tactics accordingly."

I will have a look at the tables and we may use this at the weekend.

Link of the Day.

To Bog's World; Of course. AD(HD) [Attention Defiecit Hyperactivity Disorder] has a cunning redesign to make the blog entiries run in order and split out the background and other peripheral bits, whilst placing them in context. I'm looking forward to it.

http://bogsworld.wordpress.com/

Big monthly audit today.

KK - the vertical version. I did reply to your email. The vertical one. The horizontal one makes me feel queasy.





As for progress. Four Eldar Rangers for the Bel Tain Sacred Guard, Maugan Ra, not my favourite sculpt, but he is (allegedly) death on the gaming table, four vanilla DE warriors and one with a splinter cannon. I've also begun a WraithSeer. Which in the game is a WraithLord who used to be a Farseer, rather than an exarch (see link of the day). And most of a Ravager as well.

Here is a corner of one of the progress tables. To the left of the obvious Deamon Prince are a unit of Orks lead by the freebie Black Reach Nob. Behind the Deamon Prince are two eight man squads of noise marines and two aspiring champions. Behind them is a row of three Defilers. Behind the defilers are three Predator Anhillators (las cannon) and then three Predator Exterminators (Auto cannon and HB). Down the LHS, you can see the four Land Speeders, with two Spawn of Chaos in front. This whole lot are a chaos spaze muhreen warband. With the obvious exception of the orks, who arn't.

I spent the morning looking at Cathodic Protection possibilities.

Here's another Oruro invention for submission to God for approval:

Rod of Static Charge

This is a 9" rod about half an inch wide, semi-translucent dirty yellow, and a special woollen glove that is used to hold it, and a similar sleeve to store it It is charged by rubbing it vigorously on the skin of a live (or only recently dead) mythical cat. Up to 4 charges can be held. Any contact with anything except the glove and sleeve results in a lightning-bolt equivalent discharge to whatever is being touched. When charged it has a tendency to spontaneously discharge; every day the DM rolls a d100, and if 0-23 is rolled that is the hour in which it will do so, preferably at the most inconvenient moment. When it was first made it had 2 charges and the first went off in his pocket. The second time it went off it was in what Oruro calls his 'bomb bay', a reinforced metal box in his lab. Oruro is confident he will at some point work out how to charge it by placing it on the roof of a building during a lightening storm, but he thinks he'll also need about a hundred meters of copper cable to do so.

S'okay. This might make it into play. Two things to bear in mind:

1. An item like this will take time to research, let alone construct. And you're currently mid way through a fight at the Dread Pagoda of the Inscruitable Ones. And their Beholder chums.

2. Nymraith is your PC who invents things. Oruro stands very little chance of successfully making anything, let alone a magic item.

Q&A re Elementals.

1) Were you intending FG to be able to summon/control from all FOUR elemental planes, using the same list. Or will she have to know it separately for each? (Cos in the latter case, we can be 90% certain she’ll go with Fire and not bother with anything else, but if she can summon her choice of element from the same list, I think it might encourage her to be (at least occasionally) more imaginative).

Yes. All four. For exactly that reason. Now this might be a Sindalie thing, or a side effect of being an acolyte of the goddess of spell casting. Or a bit of both. Yes, I know, after all my rants about Harry Potter, I have to acknowledge that FG is "special". Harumph.

2) What sort of beings can be summoned (and/or controlled – the answer might be different for that)? Now I am sure you meant it to include ‘pure’ elementals (walking piles of rock, skipping pillars of flame, sentient waves, whirlwinds, etc.) (with their size and power going up with level). But what about more ‘humanoid’ sorts of elemental? You said you didn’t imagine it including ‘genie’ types. But I their general high power level might prohibit those (not quite sure, and maybe the tables could be fiddled). But there are many more ‘borderline cases’. KK herself, with no prompting, asked whether the Steam Mephits counted? And, I think, yes they would. They are minor elemental beings (from the Plane of Fire). And on my current version of the table, she could summon one as a 4th level spell, and Master it (so controlled without concentrating) as a 9th level spell. Basically both being pretty easy for FG.

Due to her super power of mastering all four elephantals, she will only be able to get 'vanillia' elementals; a conciousness in pure elemental form. So no para elementals (steam, lava, smoke, etc), no djinn (dao, marid, fruity) etc.

3) Assuming (for now) that the answer to (2) is at least a qualified ‘yes, a range of different elemental-beings are in scope’. How would the type of being be determined? Could she choose to summon a steam mephit, say, as opposed to a small ‘pillar of fire’ sort of elemental – perhaps in order to parboil someone/thing without the risk of burning down the building she was in? Or would it be largely random/GM’s whim. In which case the list is a lot less useful (because you just know she’ll get the wrong one quite often!)

Ha ! The answer is no...

4) Another point about summoning is the question of coercion. Are summoned beings compelled to arrive and then obey the caster? I think not, since for even vaguely intelligent beings that would be in effect slavery – which the PE is very against. (I believe KK concurs). Instead, I suggest that the summoning be conceived as like some sort of a inter-planar ‘job advert’: “wanted - one small fire elemental to come and burn something on the Prime Material Plane - transport here and back included - please reply immediately to Forgileill". This would, normally be the default for summoning spells. Even Ryz’s demon/devil summoning ‘works’ because the demons/devils/elementals WANT to come to the Prime, and are looking for a way to do so (even if it is only a short stay).

I like that idea. Make it so, No 1

5) It gets a bit more complicated with the Control/Master spells. These could be seen as some sort of ‘puppet like’ body control, or mind domination/spirit control. But this is heading to slavery again. How about them actually being ‘negotiation’ spells. Whereby FG offers the being something it wants in return for its services – basically ‘Pay’. The currency could just be Essence (i.e. power points). As a slight alternative, the ‘pay’ could be rather ‘fuel’ for its (continued) manifestation on the Prime Material Plane? This rather assumes that the being will want to stay if it can (presumably to burn/drown/crush/blow things), and if the fuel is not forthcoming it will be forced to go home; whereas the ‘pay’ version implies it is more an agreement to burn/whatever what FG wants it to – as opposed to whatever it feels like.

Yes, this idea sounds good. Also provides an elephant of uncertainty when it comes to "loosing control".

6) Revisiting the ‘can a summoned creature be dispelled’. The official D&D answer is ‘yes’ to simple summoning like this – because the manifestation on the Prime is not the real body of the creature and it is the magic that keeps it manifest here. Whereas more powerful portal magic (in D&D ‘Gate’ etc.) actually brings the real being to the Prime (possibly against its will), which is totally different. This and Qs 4 and 5 are closely related – if you know the answer to one it will probably tell us the others.

OK. What you get is the conciouness of an elemental of appropriate power (as advertised) crossing the planar boundries to inhabit a 'body' (composed of an amount of [fire, water, air, minerals]) provided by the summoner. So the thing that could be dispelled are the spell/advert/planar crossing (as an act of magic, a descrete spell in and of itself). Or the conciouness in the manifestation could be attacked (banished) as an outsider. Either of these would have to separately targetted and I think is perhaps harder to do than the glib AD&Dism of 'I dispell the elemental'.

The list attaches is very rough and subject to addition and modification and ‘fine tuning’. But I think it is pretty workable. (I am doing one of demons and devils and other things for Ryz too!)

And I like the list. The list should stay, even though FG might not be able to get 100% out of it herself.

(I tried posting the table, but it just turned out as a list - rah boo poo)

7) Erm... yeah~ what Chris just said... now, if the embodiment of an elemental can be dispelled by an anti-magic zapper (which beholders have...) can FG spell master the Magic portal and the summon elephentals to bring the actual elephental onto the Prime plane? But if it's just the 'containment' of the elephental that's magic, if you anti-magic zapp it, does that release the proper elephental to wreck havoc? Does this potentially also mean that Ryz's demon summons can also be dispelled by anti-magic zapper thing?

That's more than than spell mastery of the list she has; that is a 'planar gate' type list. The effect of the beholder's anti magic ray is dependant on the skill roll the beholder makes, just as it is for Player Characters.