And we're back?

Since it looks like I might be running a game again sometime in the near future I'm going to try and restart this blog as a public place to noodle on my world building, game designs and planning, and possibly start reviewing products I've got? We'll see about that last one, if it happens it'll be ridiculously infrequent or possibly just me babbling about mostly out of print games that I've collected over the years. I'll probably start posting about my LARPing as well since that looks like my wife and I are going to start that up again and this seems like as good a place as any to talk about it.

I know I failed hard at the "D&D Thirty Day Challenge". January was a rough patch that I won't go in to unless someone asks but suffice to say real life ate me and has only recently released me enough for me to have the extra mental and emotional bandwidth to even think I might be able to keep this up. I did end up with a new-to-me car out of the ordeal which is nice, and I'll probably start the Challenge again but I'm not sure when. Anyway, back to business-

Like I was saying, one of the couples is moving into a bigger place with a guy from the FLGS and they'll have a spare room so we will hopefully (fingers crossed) be starting up a new game again! *cue the triumphant music*

First some logistics to help me organize things in my head. The current plan is the do a month or two of weekly gaming on Saturday nights or possibly Friday nights. After that we're going to switch to aiming for two games a month since we've proven time and again that we can't keep a weekly game together for very long. Ideally this'll happen once a fortnight but there will be some flexibility built in so when the inevitable conflicts arise we'll be able to shift things and hopefully still get two games in that month.

That leaves what we're going to be playing. I honestly would like to just jump into a GURPS game because that's a system I've wanted to run for literal years and have never managed to get father than getting everyone's characters made. One of my potential players brought up the fact that none of us have gamed in the last year so it'd probably make more sense to run something we all know relatively well already though, ie some flavor of D&D or something World of Darkness. After some thought I think I'm going to go with D&D because I've been wanting to do some fairly straight forward fantasy gaming and my World of Darkness stuff always ends up being a slightly surrealistic horror show with ghosts, demons, Mythos inspired insanity, dream-prophecy, and kinda oddly placed bits of mundanity for the "simple to get us back in the swing of things" game we were talking about. [Also if I play my cards right I can "encourage" a conversion to GURPS at a later point....]

Tune in next time for me arguing with myself about if I should run Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition or Adventurer, Conqueror, King System; the pros and cons of both for what I want to do with the game, and the thrilling conclusion of my perhaps too open display of my particular brand of insanity!

GURPS Island in the Sea of Time [Wall Spaghetti 1]

One of my favorite authors is SM Stirling, he writes really good alternate history/pseudo-historical fantasy books. His currently longest running series is a post apocalyptic series called the "Emberverse" by fans due to the first book being titled Dies the Fire and the world the characters live in being the "embers" of ours. The first trilogy was a fairly hard post-apocalypse story where the end happened because some ASBs (alien space bats) have stopped electricity and high pressure gasses from functioning properly. It's a good series and if this sounds intriguing at all you should go look it up, the audio book is rather well done also if that's more your speed. (I want to run an After the End game based on this premise at some point but that's not really the topic of this post.)

At any rate Dies the Fire starts in 1998, which confused a few critics since he didn't write and publish it until 2004. The reason though is that it's connected to another series of his that he did write in 1998 that started with Island in the Sea of Time. The premise of this trilogy is that the island of Nantucket, along with the nearby Coast Guard cutter Eagle and her crew are all transported to the Bronze Age around 1250 BCE. They got to keep all their cool tech toys though they were limited to what could be produced on the island.

The game I think I want to run functions off of the same premise with a few changes. While in Stirling's book series everything was very hard from a sci-fi point of view, after the initial transportation of course, I want to fold in a bit more fantasy. The biggest change is going to be making the magic of the Bronze Age peoples an actual, practical thing which is it isn't in my source material. I think this'll help even things out a bit between the arriving time travelers and the Bronze Age folks, since one of the biggest conflicts in the books was between the Nantucketers and a wayward Coast Guard lieutenant that decided to carve out his own kingdom from the "savages" of the era he found himself in. While it made for entertaining reading and I'm sure it would make for an interesting game having the technologically advanced Americans and the populous and magically active Bronze Agers be on more of an equal footing at least to start sounds good to me.

One of the biggest decisions to make for the game is whether I'm going to make everyone play one of the displaced modern folks doing a "survey" or some such of the Bronze Age world either on a ship or based out of one of the forts that gets set up in lands that Nantucket has claimed or allied itself with; or if I'm going to start the players off as folks from one of a selection of Bronze Age kingdoms and tribes reacting to the arrival of these new "Eagle People" (as the Nantucketers get called by a number of groups in the books) and the upheaval it brings. I think I'm leaning more towards the first idea and letting new PCs come from groups that the PCs have made friendly contact with.

Some other quick notes since I want to actually post this and not let it join my stack of half written posts languishing with an italic "draft" notice next to it in my Blogger dashboard-

• Everyone's human and though people from different countries might have suggestions for skills, advantages and disadvantages due to culture and such none of it is going to be mandatory
• The 1250s BCE are mature Bronze Age which means overall most places are going to TL1 I believe. The Nantucketers are from 1998 so they'll start at TL8, though lack of manufacturing and infrastructure drops them down to a weird TL5-6 in the books. Then the areas with trade to Nantucketer bases or Nantucket itself will end up being a weird schizo-tech level somewhere in between those levels. I'll probably use the tech and scrounging rules from After the End to help cover my ass about that stuff.
• I think I'm going to use Ritual Path Magic with some distinct traditions for the magic. Ritual Adept is either going to be completely unavailable or only something you can get through long and arduous study along with some kind of quest. It'll be so rare as to be completely non-existant. If I do go with Nantucketers PCs to start with if anyone wants to be a mage I'll make them choose a tradition as well as buying up the appropriate Cultural Familiarity and Language up to Native. Even after that I don't think I'll let them start with more then one quarter to one third of their points sunk into magic, Nantucket's big thing is going to be their higher tech level.
• Spirits and monsters will exist as well though they're super rare in Nantucket controlled areas. I think mana levels are going to go down in heavily technological areas. So it won't matter in a battle say, or if a magus is trying to show those upstart Eagle People a thing or two in his king's court but if tries to go to Nantucket to cast spells it'll be much more difficult. 

Quickly, Before I Pass Out

Quick post before I pass out since it's almost 3am, I only got about 4 hours of sleep last night and I've been up since 7am or so. Basically this is just an update to declare my intentions of returning to this and hopefully make a better go of it. It's also going to be very stream of consciousness so it might not make a whole lot of coherent sense.

One of my players (temporarily my GM) is running an IKRPG game for the group. When we started out we had a large Protectorate of Menoth paladin, a dwarven arcane mechanic and his "pet" Warjack, and an inquisitive sharpshooter from a merc company full of pirates. Because I thought of something a bit more in-line with the game premise I switched from my pseudo-Arabic paladin to a commando working for Cygnar's intelligence organization. The guy playing the dwarf switch to an ogrun (think civilized orc/ogre that hails from dwarven lands) because I jokingly told him his character had heroically sacrificed himself in battle to save the lives of myself and the other PC. He thought I was serious and erased his character sheet and started making his ogrun ironhead.

Of course now that we're starting to get in the swing of things the guy running the game switched positions at the school we work at and he's now working weekends. Hopefully this won't interfere with game too much. As it stands though game's on indefinite hiatus until he gets used to his new schedule and figures out if and when he's going to be working past five on Saturdays since that's our optimal start time.

On the plus side a friend of ours messaged me saying he had more free time so he could start gaming again. This unfortunately is because him and his wife are splitting up however so I'm very conflicted about how happy to be about this news. I really need to actually take the time to grab lunch with him at some point.

I'm now planning on using this blog (I know, I've said that before) to help me plan out games I want to run. When and if I ever get to run them who knows but at least I'll have something down in case. So, really quick without any real explanation:

• RuneQuest 6 translation of 2nd edition era Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay with some influences pulled from 1st WFRP and early editions of the wargame
• GURPS Fantasy hexcrawl set in my own home brew setting
• further defining my "Ithaca by Night" setting thing for new World of Darkness (That's Ithaca New York not Ithaca Greece. Sorry all you Grecophiles out there. Also does anyone call it the "new" World of Darkness anymore except people that played in "old/classic" World of Darkness?)
• translate Forgotten Realms to ACKS, with most of the work going into custom divine casters and other classes though defining either the Sea of Fallen Stars or The Sword Coast with the economic rules in ACKS sounds interesting.
• Mapping out a few sectors for Mongoose Traveller.
• Further defining the collaborative map my gaming group made for a Burning Wheel game a few years back.

There I think that's all of it. I'm supposed to be planning something for some out of town friends for when they're here at some point. Only problem is I don't know when "at some point" is so it's hard to build up the drive to start planning. I'm thinking I might print off the D&D 5e starter rules and run the two people left in my group through something basic though to fill up time while our GM settles into his schedule. 

Death and Rebirth

So, after two months and not nearly as many games as you'd think we've switched systems and worlds away from Numenera. Happened mostly because we didn't play for more than a month and during that time I started doing a ridiculous amount of overtime at work which killed my momentum and inspiration for the game. Honestly it was hard for my to build up inspiration for the setting as well. I felt like I was constantly struggling to make things weird enough for the Ninth World setting and yet keep it familiar enough for play to still happen. The other wall I ran into conceptually was the fact that it was an explicit rule set out in the core book and in a couple of the head designer's blogs was the fact that you weren't supposed to connect it to the modern world at all. I know it's my game and I can just change what I want to but having it said explicitly made me struggle with it. Silly I know but there you go. Anyway, on to the new game.

Now, as of about two weeks ago, I'm running a sandbox Warhammer Fantasy game. The catch is that we're using Runequest 6 for the game. So far we've had two games, one was character creation and the second was finishing up characters and starting the first adventure. I'm starting them off with the adventure in the core WFRP 2e book because of the group two of my players are pretty much completely unfamiliar with it and the other two are only passingly familiar with it. Both of them are fairly conversant in 40k though so I'm hoping it'll translate over to some degree.

Everyone's characters are complete as it stands, though one of my players went out of town for a couple games so I need to finalize things with him. The characters are currently:

Orzad, a dwarven machinist and engineer obsessed with clockwork and automata. He was "suggested" to join the army to help deal with the Chaos incursion that became known as the Storm of Chaos as a battle engineer. Is a good shot with his rifle and is near constantly fiddling with it and other bits of machinery. Technically a member of the dwarven gentry he's lost much of his influence since his departure. Still one of the richest and best equipped members of the party.

Hannah, a high born priestess of Shallya. Doesn't quite get the whole adventuring thing and is still carrying some baggage from her birth in terms of how she expects people to act and react to her. A passable combatant and the second best off member of the party what she really offers is the social graces and the miracles of Shallya she can call upon. Is currently on a pilgrimage to learn humility and got caught up helping refugees from the Storm.

Torendil, an elven commoner and apprentice magus. Is currently a student of Aqushy, or the Bright Wind of magic, the use of which is used to burn things mostly in a variety of fun and interesting ways. Has little to nothing in the way interpersonal skills and is about as arrogant as it's possible for an elf to get. In fact even other asur have taken offense to his attitude and it was his teacher who sent him on a mission to "prove his mastery of magic" in the human dominated Empire which he took up with great relish to show the humans a thing or two. Hopefully his magic is enough to keep him alive because his skill at arms is very poor.

The last character still needs to be fleshed out some, he doesn't even have a name currently. All I really know is that he's a former slave who killed his master and is now travelling to seek his honorable death as a dwarven slayer.

And now I have to head off to work, I'll pick this back up later (maybe tonight but probably tomorrow). At the point I'll go into how I've been having them make their characters and go a little into what subsystems we're using from Runequest and what I'm porting over from Warhammer.

Stuff from Jeff's Gameblog

[Author's note: I started this yesterday about noon, it's harder to come up with this stuff than I thought it'd be. Honestly I figured I'd just be copying from the corebook in Numenera but I actually had to come up with a decent amount of content. I still need to come up with the answers to the last two questions as well but it's getting on towards work so I'll have to think of them later.]

So there's a series of questions on an OSR blog, Jeff's Gameblog, wrote up a series of questions designed to help define the immediate play area for a sandbox game. The first part of this entry is so I can answer these questions, I'll be handing out the answers to my players.

What is the deal with my cleric's religion?     You're probably an Amber Priest, a member of the Order of Truth. They're centered in the kingdom of Navarene and are led by the Amber Pope. Their primary tenants are the furthering of civilization through the study of the past worlds and the technology they left behind. While not truly a religion they have found that the people of the Steadfast are more willing to receive their teachings if they cover it religious trappings, even going so far as to establish days of reverence and rituals in the last couple of generations to reinforce this viewpoint. Recently the current Amber Pope, Durranet VI, has called for a crusade against the Gaians of the north who worship various machine intelligences and natural phenomenon as spirits and gods. There is a splinter faction of Amber Priests who view the solidification of the Order of Truth as a religious organization a dangerous straying from their true path and have forsook the Order and the Amber Pope though they keep the title of Amber Priest. These anti-papists have seperated themselves from the Order and tend to keep to themselves.

Where can we go to buy standard equipment?     Most villages will have basic supplies that you can purchase (food, normal clothing, even some very basic weapons and armor) though to get access to the full equipment list you'll have to head to one of the larger towns. To really try to purchase and not just find things like cyphers or artifacts you'll have to go to a major city. I'll be putting out a larger equipment list soon, it'll be from either 2nd edition D&D or Warhammer so there'll be a lack of weird stuff but it'll work for the "normal" stuff.

Where can we go to get platemail custom fitted for this monster I just befriended?     Best chance for custom work like that is to head to Stirthal and inquire at the markets there though Thriest is closer and the markets are expansive as well. 

Who is the mightiest wizard in the land?     The matter of the most powerful nano is a some debate. There are two main competitors for the title in Malevich are Saduka the Red who dwells in a shapestone tower near an inactive floating relic at the eastern end of the Voil Chasm. Very secretive, Saduka keeps to himself though strange lights and noises seen from a distance at the relic have convinced the locals that he is consorting with spirits or possibly even demons. The other is Quanon, a being that dwells within the Chasm under Stirthal. Though he may have been human at some point in the past now he can only tenuously hold that distinction having enhanced himself with so many biomechanical parts as to barely even be humanoid any longer.

Who is the greatest warrior in the land?     Polele the Bandit King is the greatest warrior in Malevich, a veteran of the wars common in the kingdom before Yorvic's father managed to solidify his claims to the kingdom.

Who is the richest person in the land?     Though King Yorvic (and thus his regent, Ellabon) arguably own everything within the kingdom and is thus the richest person in the land 

Where can we go to get some magical healing?     Though almost any local clave will have a trained chirurgeon magical healing is not common. Despite this healing elixers from Guran and Qi can be bought in most major towns and all large cities. There are also rumors that Saduka the Red can heal the wounded and it's a well known fact that the Aulifex can do the same at his tower in Kordech.

Where can we go to get cures for the following conditions: poison, disease, curses, death?     Poison and disease can be healed by most trained chirurgeons. Curses are harder to remove from their targets though the monestary outside of Neverlost can do so and it's said that the Aulifex and Quanon can do so, for a price. Bringing back the dead however is just not possible, but of course there are rumors of it happening.

Is there a magic guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to get more spells?     The Order of Truth is the most widespread organization with these kinds of resources. There are a number of nanos who are part of the Order, this combined with their mission has given them a wide knowledge base on esoteries and numenera. The Sarracenians are another group though they are specifically concerned with the study and worship of plants and plant like creatures. Many find this odd though it has given them a unique insight into natural processes and many of their members are accomplished healers. Additionally the Gaians, though opposed by the Order of Truth, have a unique perspective on esoteries and numenera that can give them access to knowledge otherwise forgotten or overlooked by others.

Where can I find an alchemist, sage or other expert NPC?     Quanon is a well known expert in the previous aeons and the numenera that they left behind along with being able to repair and recharge almost anything. He'll gladly sell his services for shins though it doesn't come cheap, he is much more willing to trade for numenera. Counselor Rashik, the overseer of Thriest, is also a well known man of learning. He's currently putting most of his effort into turning Thriest into a center of learning and his own knowledge is broad.

Where can I hire mercenaries?     Mercenaries are actually very common in Malevich because of the near constant state of warfare that was common in the kingdom until recently. Most towns have a few mercs hanging around looking for work. If you need more then that getting in touch with Polele would be the best bet as he has access to a large pool of former soldiers at his disposal.

Is there any place on the map where swords are illegal, magic is outlawed or any other notable hassles from Johnny Law?     Most places allow travelers to wear weapons when passing through villages and town even if only grudgingly, recognizing that the wilderness outside civilization is rarely safe or easy to travel through. Even the major cities in Malevich allow individuals to carry most weapons though they usually require peace bonding of some kind.

Which way to the nearest tavern?     Caluec has a small roadhouse since it serves as something of a travel hub for the area. Marqash has a both a tavern and an inn for serve the travelers and soldiers stationed there. Omm lacks a tavern though it does have a roadhouse that serves as one for locals and travelers that're doing more than just passing through. Nulb has a sizable tavern as well. The major cities all have various taverns, inns, bars and roadhouses befitting their nature as major hubs of travel and commerce. 

What monsters are terrorizing the countryside sufficiently that if I kill them I will become famous?     Margr are always a problem and many nobles have bounties set on their heads though killing a few won't really earn you any significant recognition. Getting a name for yourself as an abhuman killer would require a truly amazing number of them to be slain by your hand. 

Are there any wars brewing I could go fight?     The recently declared crusade on the Gaians in the north is looking for new soldiers and accomplished warriors like the PCs might stand to make a name for themselves in they so wished. Also there are always tensions and border skirmishes brewing along the borders in Malevich, the barons vieing for control over more land and better territory.

How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous cash prizes?     Yep those are around but the closest one is going to be in Stirthal, Thriest, Neverlost or even father to another city; the smaller towns that're more local can't support that kind of thing.

Are there any secret societies with sinister agendas I could join and/or fight?     Indeed there are, the Convergance is the big one. They're a somewhat dark mirror of the Order of Truth, searching out numenera and the secrets of the past in order to directly benefit themselves and hopefully rule the world one day. The other is the Jagged Dream, a loosely organized group that wants to plunge the entire Ninth World into war and flames.

What is there to eat around here?     Most of the villages herd kescke, large ruminants with long shaggy fur and a curling  plate-like horn growing from their forehead, for their meat, fur and milk. One of the most common crops grown is manoic or manoic root which is used for everything from brewing alcohol to being dried and used as a thickener in soups stews and other foods. The dried flour is also used in the production of bread, cakes and noodles. A few kinds of gourds are also grown. In trade cities a wider variety of fruits,vegetables  and meats are available.

Any legendary lost treasures I could be looking for?      Yup, I'll let you know when I think of them...

Where is the nearest dragon or other monster with Type H treasure?     See the previous answer.

Introduction..Thing, I Guess?

I guess this is where I write something about myself then? Nothing terribly interesting I'm afraid. I'm a gamer in my mid-20's with horrible organizational issues that's hoping that using a blog to write about his game planning will help keep him organized and on track. I'm going to try to write here at least once per week, hopefully more then that, to get my mind and plans in order.

Anyway, I'm going to be using this place to map out and discuss (mostly with myself probably) my RuneQuest 6 game. Currently it's in the very early planning stages so most of it's pretty vague but I'm going to be using a homebrew world I've been working on in one form or another for years called Myganos. The basic premise of the world is that there's a largish empire (Turin) that's doing a Roman Empire impression currently. It has been expanding constantly for the last several generations and looked to be set up to continue for the foreseeable future but then one of their border provinces rebelled. The ensuing civil war broke the momentum of expansion Turin had and inspired other uprisings. Which, while individually minor, caused enough problems that the wars haven't stopped since. There are numerous smaller kingdoms, city-states and countries surrounding Turin waiting to see how the wars end while rival empires sharpen carving knives to slice up whatever is left when the dust settles.

This'll only matter peripherally though because the game itself is going to take place in the far northern reaches of the empire and going to concern the goings on of various ne'er-do-wells, vagabonds and cutthroats that usually make up adventuring parties. It does however inform the kind of situation the PCs are from, whether they hail from the Empire, one of it's rival kingdoms or one of the many tribes that have thus far escaped assimilation. It also goes to explain why there are places of darkness like this that exist since the Empire did at one time assign "specialists" to deal with such things.

I think that's enough for now. Mostly because I can't seem to get my mind to concentrate properly on the task at hand (it took me almost 2 hours to write this post). I'll post again in a few days.