Yer Lordship

I don't really feel like writing today, and I haven't for a minute, so I'll just say what's up and then go: I've been writing a game about being Lord of All You Survey based on the very vague idea that you're "supposed to" start building castles and raise armies when you get high enough level.

That and the fact that there have never been very good guidelines for doing so. The vast majority of information concerns what monsters to bonk and what kind of neato powers you've got that enable you to steal ever increasing amounts of loot that you can't spend on anything reasonable because magic item shops are stupid, or on books detailing somebody's generic homebrew world that's a pale imitation of Eberron, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, or whatever 4th edition's world is called.

Whee.

I've been doing a lot of research on farms and milling and bakeries and ancient logging techniques, and it's honestly extremely interesting and I hope that the information that I glean will make for a decently granular simulation. Time will tell!

The Steam Lands

A dusty, arid place, this is the capital city of the Steam Lands. It echoes with a tomb-like silence. Though it is aligned with both water and air, it is always dry. The only liquid to be found are pools of colorless acid, or from the greedy, dark clouds that always hover overhead, obscuring what weak sunlight the world uses to mark the day.

The peak is the home of the king of the demons, a grim husk whose only thoughts are towards domination and suffering. Power is the ability to make those below you miserable, and the Steam King is powerful indeed. Those who serve him constantly vie and writhe, backstabbing one another, but it never seems to disturb their king. Their petty squabbles are, and always will be, beneath his notice.



This was another one of the places in my Median campaign that never actually ran. Although this picture is new, the idea is not. As I've mentioned in the Horror of the Deeps post, water is evil and fire, good. Similarly, Earth is law and Air is chaos, so the home of the chaotic evil is a place of water and air- of acid and steam. In this place, water is not smothering or mysterious, but unattainable, and the air is thin of oxygen. The demons themselves ration their water, slaying each other to possess what little water their foes have within them. It is a place of cannibalism, privation, and pain.

It is a very dangerous hell.

Snippet: Mindgames

This is going to be a frightfully short post, but I am unapologetic.

One of the biggest things, I think, that games do wrong is that they leave a lot of space where there's nothing particularly interesting to do. The other mistake, of course, is to give the players too many things to do, and that's just as bad. I'm thinking about textbook combats in older-edition D&D games and combats in 4th edition D&D. It's easy to "zone out" in either of them, and kind of sit there, attacking the same target until it's dead.

An Igniter, from Bloodline Champions.

One of the games I've been playing recently has been Bloodline Champions. It's a great online fantasy action game, very fast-paced and it's a blast and a half. One of the best parts of that game is the way that it makes the game go forwards. Limiting healing to 40% of your health is one way- you can only heal up so much in a round, so you need to go forwards and kill them, rather than poke and heal and poke and heal.

The other big thing is that there's always a mind game going on, where you've got to predict what they're going to do to make your own move optimal, and to attempt to out-play your enemy. All of the combatants are roughly equivalent in ability and in power, so it's up to the player's decisions to make the difference. You can't rely on brute force (at least, unless you're a class that enjoys a size/strength/durability advantage), and even if you try to, you need to consider your enemy's moves and their likely counterattacks.

It's something that should, and could, be codified into a neat game mechanic, and I think it's where my attempts at development will go. I would love to bring yomi (in the David Sirlin sense of being able to read your opponent) into roleplaying games. It's the one part of any game that I truly enjoy, and it should be present in one of my most long-lasting hobbies.

New Class: The Sorcerer

A foreward: The Sorcerer is one class from my in-progress work on, essentially, reworking all of the basic Labyrinth Lord classes. It's something that's really a lot of fun, and something that's definately getting used by my group the next time we meet. The formatting's almost done, which is always cool, and the classes are all pretty different than the generic fantasy classes. Well, not all of them, but they're definately different than the Way It's Usually Done in classic fantasy gaming, which is to keep the underlying structure of magic, for example, and just add some more spells and maybe a theme or two. Not enough is done to accomodate more literary influences or the simple fact that in LL, resting directly after a fight is about the only thing that makes sense to do, whereas Conan, Aragorn, Elric, and the like don't bother to wait for their paltry wounds to close, since they didn't take any- and neither did the people in D&D.

Naturally, this goes hand in hand with my house-rule for Wounds which I posted recently. So here's the Sorcerer, influenced by a certain Melnibonean, Lovecraft, and (believe it or not), White Wolf's old Werewolf game. Here's the write-up, and after that, a link to the pdf.

Agrindan and his bound Fire Elemental.

Sorcerer

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Sorcerers delve into the very raw materials of creation, seeking to reshape the world as they see fit. Using the secrets of the arcane circles they've gleaned from years of study into the bizarre and blasphemous books of the wizards of old, Sorcerers take what knowledge they've plundered and turn it into raw power. Sorcerers tend to be aggressive, as they are dealing with raw energy and absolute power. Their powers are more suited for searing their foes with gouts of fire and creating great cracks in the earth than subtlety.

Though just as many sorcerers are indifferent to the affairs of the gods as not, there is a strong current of faith in amongst them. They tend towards worship of the Unknowable Ones, a cthonic mystery cult dedicated to the creators of the world itself. They hold that the gods of acolytes and laymen alike are but scavengers on the corpse that the Unknowable Ones had created, and that they deserve no more respect than the flies on the corpse of a mule. The true worship goes towards the Unknowable ones, and the result of their worship is the blessing of the Bonded Elementals.

To a sorcerer, their elemental is not their servant or their slave, but a minor deity in and of itself. They do not demand for their elementals to do their bidding, but rather request it upon them. And the elemental, for its part, often complies.

The elementals themselves are highly variable. A stone elemental is as likely to be an ambulatory boulder or a man made of mud, and fire elementals can be anything from a pillar of burning ash and smoke to a salamander composed of molten lava! Very few elementals are to be found in the stereotypical “anthropomorphic” style, tending instead to be as variable and bizarre as the elements themselves.

Hit Dice: d4

Allowed Weapons: One-handed weapons only, sling

Allowed Armor: None

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Class Requirements: 11 Charisma

Prime Requisite: Charisma

Level	Experience	Special Features
1	0	Elemental Binding, Summoning Circle
2	2,501
3	5,001	Elemental Resistance
4	10,001
5	20,001	Raw Power
6	40,001
7	80,001	Elemental Mastery
8	160,001
9	310,001	Tower Master / Sage

Sorcerer Features

Elemental Binding

At 1^st level, a Sorcerer has the ability to bind elemental spirits to do his bidding. While not true “elementals” in the monster sense, elemental spirits provide magical assistance to the sorcerer. The Sorcerer must spend his turn psychically commanding the elemental to do his bidding.

The Bound Elemental has as many hit die as the Sorcerer who summoned it has levels, and is both ethereal, and invisible to those who are not Sorcerers or do not have some form of magical vision. A Sorcerer can have only one Elemental spirit summoned at one time.

Elementals can be healed if they're exposed to a significant amount of their primary element. For example, a fire elemental can be healed by allowing it to bask in the roar of a great fire, and an earth elemental can be rejuvenated by allowing it to rest in an area with plenty of earth, but little other, bordering elements, such as in a narrow earthen tunnel. When a Bound Elemental is reduced to zero hit points or less, the Elemental is returned to its plane of existence and a new elemental spirit must be summoned.

Summoning Circle

Sorcerers have knowledge of Summoning Circles which can be used to summon elemental spirits and bind them to their will. The ritual depends on the background of the player, but it never takes less than one hour and is always physically and mentally draining, requiring at least an hour of rest afterwards.

Elemental Resistance

The sorcerer's close bond with the Elementals has bolstered his personal toughness to those who would use the elements against him. He takes one less damage from fire, electricity, acid, and cold.

Raw Power

Bound Elementals summoned by a Sorcerer of 5^th level or greater lose one less health when they exert themselves.

Elemental Mastery

At 7^th level, the Sorcerer's elementals have an additional Hit Die when summoned.

Tower Master

At 9^th level, the Sorcerer may build a tower. Typically this is built without permission of the local lord, and no permission is required. Few interfere with the affairs of powerful wizards! Once a tower is built, 1d4 low level magic users will come to the tower to learn the ways of the Sorcerer.

Sage

A Sorcerer who does not build a tower may choose to wander further as a Sage, ever seeking more and more knowledge to further his power. In many social circles, Sages are accounted the very highest of respect.

Death by Mold / What's Next?

One of my players the other week died because they set foot in some yellow mold. The mold, being a weaker variety than normal, dealt less damage than it normally would have. After being burnt a little by its acid, they took note and decided to drop a torch on it.

Normally, it would have resulted in a normal bit of damage, but this mold happened to be underground in an extremely arid environment. The fire spread out, and burnt both the players for a tiny bit of damage, which unfortunately was more than the Minotaur ("reskinned" fighter) could bear. He died, leaving the cleric to flee back to the surface where the Minotaur's brother was waiting for the two of them to come out. When only the cleric returned, Minotaur II vowed to finish his brother's works.

Just a quick anecdote on one of my favorite player deaths. Set ablaze by a yellow mold's corpse! Classic.

Temple of the Plague Orcs: Almost Complete

My project of the last month is nearly complete. I've got the entire document written up, formatting's just about done, and everything's almost exactly where it needs to be. It's an exciting time!

Temple of the Plague Orcs

My first ever module, the Temple of the Plague Orcs is nearing completion. I've got a the main idea down, stats for the plague orcs, writeups for most of the rooms, and ideas of how and where everything goes. It's coming along swimmingly, actually. I'm kind of surprised. So surprised, in fact, that there's surprisingly little to say.