Character Names

I've always thought, if you're going to roleplay, you shouldn't be choosing your character. You should play what you get, to that end...

Having your group, make your character

The Idea here is, as a group, you have needs and wants of your group, you want to help each other out, and play as a team. So why do we let players make their own character, often it results in some kind of loner, trying to be self centered, or an over achiever as the player is trying too hard to be the best group friendly character.

So Instead, I tried this for several years, often at conventions, because captive audiences will do new things, and go away telling friends how interesting it actually was to try something new.

So, First, your name. 

(Now as player, you can veto one thing, but only one thing, if you want to change your name, do so, but be aware you cannot veto anything else later)

Write down: The last two letters of your first name, the middle two letters of your last name, the first two letters of your mothers name and then the last letter of your fathers name.. sounds like a meme.. I know.. Now, read it to the group. don't show them, read it! and have them spell it for you. That's your name.

(GMs: Nominate your world to match known common earth like traits, this is purely an association game for your group, not fixed to any tropes, unless you want it that way)

Ask the group, what kind of culture does it sound like, matching what the group knows of current cultures, then Ask the GM, if it sounds like a name that matches part of their known world, and have your character come from there, if that place is a set race, that's your race, if there is a choice, have the group decide.

Now you can roll the dice for your characteristics, apply racial modifiers, cultural modifiers, and ask the group, what kind of character do they think it is, picking a primary (or secondary) lifestyle for you, and you choose the other.

Lastly, they pick your starting profession. You can always change, but this is what your parents chose for you.

Why do it like this? Is this un-fun?

As an artist, and author, I often balked at my teachers telling us to write / draw specifically in a genre or style that I didn't like. Yet, every time, I learnt something more of the genre, or the style and while I may have never done another piece like it, I am amazed at how much I got out of it in the long run.

My greatest piece of art, was life drawing of my own shoe, when I encountered it years later, I had forgotten how well I could draw, yet as a kid I distinctly remember how bored I was with the idea of drawing a shoe.

In this sense, I've often considered, roleplay is a form of art, its a learning experience, and we should use it as best as we can to tell stories, but not self-indulgent personal fantasy in the truer sense of the word, but instead the story emerges as we have our characters go on the arc of self discover, self loathing, and self acceptance. Which can be next to impossible if we build out own fantasy archtype as our character.

Lastly, I have had groups make their self indulgent fantasy character, and get bored of it, all to early. They've achieved their pinnacle and there is nothing more to do with them after, But players, saddled with this personal abomination, grow to like them, and over time, have claimed how, despite themselves, they have found it to be their favourite character.

So I say,..Give it go..  you might be surprised. 

 

You should write a book!

I have, it seems, an interesting life.

When someone takes 5 minutes interest, I invariably those words:

You should write a book!

Well, Maybe I should.. but maybe I'll start small with a single blog.. and if I get enough interest, I'll take it further, maybe a blog diary, then maybe a book.

Who I was before:

I was born in the 70s, grew up in the 80s and 90s, but, because Australia was behind American in consumer commercialism, I tend to relate to Americans born in the early 70s, rather than the late 70s.

I listened to The Beetles, Wings and a little of the Eagles and ELO growing up. I was aware of the other music, yet, other than a single song by U2, I can't remember the rest.

I got my first proper interest at 12, with a choose your own Adventure Book. Appointment with F.E.A.R. I think it was. Then later I got Heroquest, Dragon Warriors the board game and one of those 50 in 1 electronic kits.

I got a job looking after kids in After school care, but career wise, I had no interests. I didn't even get the job myself, At a Teachers Social gathering at my house, my mum talking to the woman in charge, understood she was looking for staff replacement of a junior, she talked to me and I politely talked to this 'adult' at this 'party' not knowing it was an interview.

I started a club, invited all the kids I was looking after, from after school party, to a weekend club to play games, entry fee $2.. $6.50 in today's currency. lasted 2 years, til some kids stole a lot of my inventory and I went out of business. Lessons Learned, even kids can be thieves.

A few years of unemployment, I started work as a bartender apprentice in a country pub, that doubled as a bikers pub on Sundays. that was an experience. I could probably write a chapter about that, what people do when they are drunk, in the country, what people tell bartenders.. wow.. half of those people were in their 50s then.. so they're in their 80s now.. if at all.

On to Nightclubs in town, dancing on bars, throwing bottles in the air trying to juggle them, being a bouncer, a stage dancer in "Heaven" nightclub, even a stripper for a small time.

Come my mid twenties, time to "grow up" I worked in finance, restructuring home and business loans, as new bank systems were being put into place, and some deregulation allowed small vendors to sell their own banking products, bought my own house.

Then a turn for the worse, parents divorced, since they were my guarantors for my house, that went belly up, and I was out. $10k in my hand, since my best friend had left for a wild adventure in The Islands, I too decided to go.. the Internet was new, so I went to visit all my new friends internationally. I drew a map, and left Australia just after the Y2K scares all calmed down and plane prices were low enough again.

Country after country, Hong Kong living in apartments smaller than my bedroom back in Oz, Philippines, travelling around and almost, without knowing it, getting married. China, being dragged around as a 'show and tell' toy for some executives, and the black-market-nightlife, without alcohol!

The Trans Siberian Railway.. 9 days on a train.. Moscow.. for 2 weeks, being lost, confused and falling in love, then forced to retreat, again 9 days on the train back to China.

Getting a job OS, as an English teacher, trying to maintain a long distance relationship, with cultural barriers, getting new visas, getting a 2nd job, bar-tending, renting an servants quarters in old France city mansions region of Shanghai.. wow.. losing my keys, and having to climb the fence and getting arrested, but talking my way out of it.

Back on the train, Back to Moscow, being a teacher, and not knowing what to do..

Travelling to South Russia, and starting a school, then my boss is fired, then my new boss is fired, then my new boss fires me, then the students revolt, the school rehires me to finish the term, and I lose my visa, and have to flee the country. Actually that was a lot, more than a chapter there, should have included the meeting of my clone, the boat in the lake, which was a restaurant/strip club for families, getting robbed? meeting strangers on the street. learning Russian phrases so i can buy milk.

Back to Moscow, Fall in Love, Lose her contact details, flight details lost, need new flight, emergency, panic, borrow money, on the plane back to Australia. 11 months I worked to pay back my borrowed money, started University, getting back into the swing of Australia.. no.. can't do it. get involved in a scam, manage to wheedle my way out of it, use the money to go to Russia.

Start working for a Business School, as an English teacher, early morning, late nights, visit old friends in the south, can't find clone, back to Moscow, 'lend' money to a guy, who runs off, get ripped off, get robbed, get beaten up, sleep on bench in snow, drugged by prostitutes and robbed, renting rooms from people who want to practice English, Fighting Russians who just won't stay down. getting a side gig as a stand up comedian, teaching English to people in positions of power, high level singers, actresses, going on TV shows, witnessing all manner of debauchery from people I would never have guessed. falling in love, witnessing the recreation of a nightmare I had as a child and start wondering if there is any truth in clairvoyancy.

Travelling Europe to visit castles, Staying in Backpacking hostels and Couchsurfing, Meeting people from around the world, Starting world wide Roleplay games with interactions.. Being a Professional gamesmaster, highly paid, still now in 2000, I'm still in the top 10, and I haven't been paid as GM in 8 years.

Getting Married, Meeting the President, Being warned to leave the country, returning to Australia, Having Kids while Studying in Uni, getting a job in IT.. all is quiet.. is it over?.. or was that the eye of the storm.....

World Build October Part 21

Its World-Build-Tober: 

Sunday the 21st - World-build-tober

"Draw (or describe) one of your worlds natural wonders"

If you've ever travelled earth, Seen some of the natural wonders that we have, you'd be hard pressed to invent anything that isn't already a real, natural wonder.

Sure you could include magic, turn things upside down, or floating without gravity, entering one place and popping out another. Things akin to the world in the Russian made Dragon Hunters movie (which I've seen on YouTube in its entirety).. or Labyrinth, Jareds castle's gravity mixed locations could present an interesting natural wonder..

That begs the question, if a place is created by a god.. is that a natural wonder?

If magic, psychic or godly powers, influence anything, would it still be natural?

So, for this, I Think I'll have to go with something a bit different, and a lot bigger.

The Coyn World..

The World was made of Lava, it was a spinning top of lava, and upon its surface little lava people walked around and fought for the creators amusement.

Over time the lava cooled, and became a giant rock, meteors of ice and minerals crashed into its surface and eventually over time, the escaping gasses formed a dome of air.. because, even though the world gravity caused the shape of a flat coin from the rock, air has its own way of doing things.

At first there was no plant life, mostly due to a lack of sunlight. There was no sun, originally being lava, there was no need, but as the rock cooled, light faded into nothing.

Yet life still somehow existed on the surface.

The Creator has included some left-over toys to create suns, but never got around to starting them up, they floated around this little creation, their energy seeping into the world, yet no light.

At some point, the little lifeforms on the surface began to create light sources, who knows why, and eventually, they tapped into the giant energy balls and started one up as a sun (not before getting one wrong and creating a cold sun) and so, light eventually existed on the world.

Now (skip time), Four remaining spheres float around the world, One Sun, bright and hot, one Cold-sun, Bright yet frozen, One untapped Sphere of energy and a small lump of rock, that may have been the top of the spinning top at some stage. Plants began to grow, giant dinosaurs didn't take the time to eat all the plants as people were already running around the world, using the dinosaurs as mounts, No comet has come to wipe life off the planet, but there was a great flood of mud that buried everything, and people had to dig it all up again, which created hundreds, if not thousands of tunnels and dungeons beneath all the cities of the world.. hence the name.. DungeonWorld.

World Build October Part 16

Its World-Build-Tober: 

Tuesday the 16th - World-build-tober

"Draw (or describe) a powerful or high ranking individual"

My players know of some individuals, who like Voldemort, should not have their name spoken. We refer to them as Mr.D, Mr.B and "her".

There are many people who could be considered powerful, high ranking yet powerless. I do like a good trope, and having seemingly innocuous folk be ultra powerful (like yoda) is good fun, yet done too often is boring.

There is a guy though, that is powerful, yet doesn't really understand it.

See back year ago, we decided to roleplay ourselves in my game, We stat-ed our characters, argued about how it sucked that we were not herioc, and in the end the 'portal' opened in my lounge room and we all traveled to this fantasy Coyn world to play.

It lasted about 2 sessions. It became obvious, that being our real selves in a world, didn't give us the skills to survive the world, It wasn't fun playing a bunch of geeks and nerd, who had very little real combat training, no spell ability, no actual lore of gods, and the only thing going for us, was our meta knowledge.

The game stopped, but one player kept it going with a kind of offline play by email game.

The thing was, not being born in the world, of the universe everything resided in, it made no sense that the gods could be aware of him. Without that, death could not come for him. 

See gods are responsible beings, responsible for the day to day goings on, that we in our world call physics. So without the 'god of physics' around.. he became immortal.

He's still there, tending bar, he now owns the bar.. he's aware that he can't age, and suspects he's immortal, but doesn't want to test the theory, and he can't ask anyone since he's the only one this applies to, he can't find out for sure.

He knows alot about the world in general.. Imagine being cast back in time now, to 0 B.C. How much history of the world do you know, basic physics, maths, science, etc etc.. alot..

He (in real life) knew a lot about my world, so in the game, he knows ALOT about the world.. 

But while he can't make things happen to gods.. if he tells someone, and they believe it.. then that affects the gods.. which means he can influence, without repercussion..

Now that is powerful.

World Build October Part 15

Its World-Build-Tober: 

Monday the 15th - World-build-tober

"Draw (or describe) what your inhabitants wear in cold weather"

There Are Three Winters, One is due to the huge pillar of ice in the centre of the world, and the shadow that it casts across the land, Every season, there are several days when the sun doesn't peak out from behind the crystalline structure and the world as you know it becomes colder than you've ever felt before..

In the middle of Summer, the Blistering Sands of the Omfg Deserts cool enough to walk on, then the rare rock pools freeze, cracking the rocks they sit in. As the sun returns to heat everything once again, water seeps into the cracks, providing small life recluse locations to grow away from the 60c+ deserts

In the Town of Amishandor, Far enough North, that the shadow passes for a mere 3 days, people come out to celebrate in Summer, as the cool winds and chill temperatures are a respite from the hotter summer days, Yet in Winter, when its already cold enough to freeze ice left outside, those three days become dangerous.

During these few days, Amishandor crack open their winter chests and bring out the Rattain Furs.

The Rattain are a race of giant rats that live in the hills to the north, mutated by the demonic powers that reside there, to be able to live in the cold caverns and protect the treasures. While dangerous, the fur has an amazing property, that even after death, the fur creates warmth for the wearer.

When Adventurers came to Amishandor, and travelled to the Demon caves, they returned often with skins, and items raided from the tunnels. At first the townsfolk shunned the fur as it was strange, smelled and gave of an eirie warmth, yet with a good wash and skilled stitching, has become a sought after cloak by travellers.

Number Crunch - The Fall of Fort-town

Here I will simple write out the actions taken by two players on a game untitled, the basic rules are in my previous post here. I'll try and post a small brief on how each turn played out, but I'm going to leave the conjecture on the history for the next post.

Number Crunch - The Fall of Fort-town

Firstly Maps: I took this randomly created map (left) that had a fort & walls and a river between, to make it two halves of a city. Then Myself and my Player, plotted relevant points to a hex grid and counted out areas that were 'population' vs 'anything not population'

It worked out well enough.

Introduction to Structure:

Turn #1 - isn't it obvious?

CITY NAME: Since this is a tale of two cities, I'll separate them until later when they re-merge.

ADV - Each turn in the beginning, a significant adventurer arrives in the town (fleeing from the zombie horde), They have an influence on the city, before settling in

Actions: typically It'll be like this "3 x Action name - results if imporant

Lastly, Changes to the game, 

-------------- Then a separator

Turn #0 Roll for Population increases, due to influx of refugess. North side poor = total Pop 11, South side Pop 17, Gathered food roll d6: 2 = population.. dang it.. well better than a 1 = half the population, would have gone cannibal on us.

BOTH Cities still joined: Jsemeby Fort-town it remains.

ADV - None from the Chaos.. starts next turn.

Major Changes.. All Zombies active attack this turn, Zombies co-ordinated attacks against the wells to check for initial breaches, wow.. none.. Wall spell happens, all Walls are now 2x health + 2x AF. Ok, secured.. no more external zombie problems.. oh wait, they can climb on their backs like ants? Nope, thats not in the Number crunch.. leave that for the Write up..lol. ok..

Lastly, Bridges are destroyed to ensure safety of north, as south seems to be overrun.. so the north panics.. Kaboom. two cities

-----------------

Turn #1

CITY: South JFT (Jsemby Fort Town)

ADV - - Mage Arrives, Offers Spells: Earth Elementalist - Shore Up the Water against river flood zombies.

9 people assigned to shore up the river bank

2 assigned as guards

3 assigned to tear out the houses on the west bank.. (My world doesn't have west, but I'm using it for ease of translation)

3 assigned to turn land (the west bank) into Farmland.

ZOMBIES: 6 Zombie hordes emerge from the river into the south side, as the embankment is being made.. argh! 2 guards are not enough.. 1 death.

RESULTS: 3 food added, total 20 food, 16 consumed (guard loss) = 4 food remains.

BONUS: Hero MAX destroys Zombies on river bank.

BONUS: Hero RILEY Overseas construction of river embankment +1 wall

--

CITY: North JFT

ADV - Merchant, Bonus 25% food covered for turn.

3 x tear down the rich apartments on most ariable land.

1 standard Village destroyed

2 x build Farm on that land.

4x Guards to defend walls (I have no idea of what to expect)

ZOMBIES: Emerge at my Pyre location.. crap -1 happiness

RESULTS: only need 75% food = 7, 3 food remains.

==========
Turn #2

CITY: South JFT

ADV - Entertainer - decreases unhappiness for turn.
Due to Overwhealming attacks by Zombies: 13 Guards
3 x destroy buildings
1 x Build Farm
ZOMBIES: Attack Pyre & Farm
RESULT: 7 population loss from starvation, 3 population unhappy
BONUS: Hero Max, destroys Zombies at River Bank
BONUS II: Hero Riley oversees construction of river embankment +1 wall.
-----
CITY: North JFT
ADV- Doctor, Sets up Medical Practice -10% disease
2 x build embankments
6 Guards
1 x Destroy buildings,
1x Build Farms
ZOMBIES: Invade Pyre Land, Take over Village in region.
RESULT: 1 Loss to Zombies, 4 Loss to Starvation, 2 Unhappiness
==========
Turn #3
CITY: South JFT
ADV - Entertainers, Once again clear unhappiness (what luck)
3x destroy Town
3x Build Farms
2 Guards
ZOMBIES: destroyed, Town Cleared.
RESULTS: 2 pop loss from starvation, 3 unhappy
BONUS: Hero Max purges the Pyre
BONUS: Hero Riley, Shores up the Pyre against attacks.
-----
CITY: North JFT
ADV: Academic - Helps town to Build Walls
5 x Guards, to clear town, but fail.. pyre still zombie infested.
ZOMBIES: Pyre is Zombie shanty town now..
RESULTS: no deaths, population food stable
===========

So, 15 years, ( 5 years per turn) Our populations stabilized from Farm income vs pop requirements.

While we were a bit lax on rules, and making stuff up on the fly, we had fun. We played 20 turns and around turn 16 managed to rebuild wharfs so we could transport goods and services from town to town, effectively reforming into one town, but by then, political upheaval caused the two to remain semi-seperate. I don't want to give too much away at this point, because the players might read it and also I'm not sure how interesting it is to read a turn by turn of a unfinished game. If there is any interest, I could later post it up.

If I did it again, I'd have thought out the turn by turn, destruction of peoples houses causing unhappiness, but maybe destruction of zombies causing calm, our food system was broken, and in effect we cheated to get as much population as we did, but maybe there were hidden stores that were unaccounted for, and we didn't include more food abilities in adventurers, Turn 6, a Mage Adventurer turns up south side, so maybe a few banquet spells weekly, and north side had some merchant adventurers, somehow get through from another town..


So, For I'll write up the 'history, as known by the players, as their characters who grew up in the city would have learnt from their parents and grandparents.

Levelling your Race

A thought occurred while discussing races with my group.. can you level up your race?

I'm a 5th level elf

If classes or professions are a 'set' of bonuses that are applied as you level up, why can't we have a set of 'racial' bonuses that we can choose to 'level up' as well?

I'm curious as to if any other game systems do this too, One that seems closest to the bill is Legend, but its not exactly a specific "level up" so much as just getting Boon bonus's to your race skills.

For the d20 fans, It would essentially be a set of skills, feats and increasing bonuses such as night vision or will save. A decent DM/Games designer could probably come up with a decent list, but the questions for such a system would be, why bother to level up my elf, when I could level up my class?

Maybe if DMs were a little more restrictive with their classes, then this would be a viable idea. i.e. Elves are not allowed to take rogue classes normally (alignment, disdain for such a career), yet elves are stealthy, especially in a forest, so maybe an 'Elven build' with stealth skills, ref saves and the like, Evasion, Uncanny dodge, but none of the Sneak attack, Backstab, Pickpocket skills.

For full Dungeonworld rules, there would be no real point, all skills are able to be increased, and only your motivations to increase them hamper or help this. I already have background skills lists, so this too serves its purpose and you may choose to practice and improve your background skills as you choose..

Yet, Dungeon Delvers Twelve, the simplified version rules, relies on the tropey level up sets of bonuses, pre-chosen to help newer players in understanding their characters better, guiding them. 

This, would be useful to have a 'levelling system' for your race, it would represent the players choice in increasing their background skills.. it could be an interesting set of bonuses, traits (and or flaws) skills and racial goals.. as you think more of your culture, your family and your race, as you return year after year to continue your racial training, you learn more of the racial divide between certain cultures, possibly racial hatreds, which give you combat advantages when fighting the 'enemy'

Just a few thoughts at this stage.. we'll see if I introduce it or not.

Dungeonworld Character Creation Update

When you realise that you've being doing it wrong...

In case you haven't been reading, a quick summary. Dungeonworld, Original, 1994tm, was and is always about player choice. a set of choices for your lifestyle, your background, your career, your path to adventurous glory.

But recently I was reading how GMs and Games designers, typically, put their own psychology, their own views and theories into their games. If a GM has a particular hatred of combat, then they don't include much combat in their games. If a Games designer wants to portray the message to their players that Socialism is bad, then they may make the Orcs socialists.

Well, I may not be trying to say one or the other, oh, while I do have a fear that roleplay games are moving towards a less 'conflict' oriented style of play, as society becomes less accepting of such, and I think its dangerous to stamp out history by making our fantasy RPGs more modern, I hope that I won't be trying to influence players to be more violent in reaction to that.. 

No, instead what I realized is that I give players choice, almost too much choice, because I feel that my own life lacks choice. I'm no unique butterfly, but I do think I'm a dash of an outlier when it comes to life. I prefer not to watch TV, news, sport, facebook, social media and I like control, fine grained, pixel perfect control. So as a player, I want a system that gives me as much control as I can have.

Rolemaster: Critical charts for Broadswords..
Yes, each weapon has its own crit chart!

Yet other people, when presented with that level of control, are overwhelmed. Its too much control! choices? what? more choices? argh!, can't you just, like, give me a list or something? MATH?! Argh.. 

I have equated my full rules system to Rolemaster and GURPS when it comes to character creation.. though I have shaved a few hours off, lol. 

But it hit me recently.. My upbringing was about choice.. I was given a lot of choice, my grandparents encouraged me to try different things and I wasn't expected to 'go get a job' at 17, I was given ample opportunity to make my own choice.

Yet in a medieval environment, we're pretty sure that people would not have much in the way of choice. The rarity of disposable income, university grants, unemployment or student benefits, meant that the bulk of society had to get a job, and that often start at the age of 10-12 with apprenticeships.

Well, I didn't always used to be an Elven Wardancer.. I started out as a shoemaker.. No not that Elf.. Grrr

So, being a medieval fantasy game, it hit me.. just like their characters would have had no choice in their apprenticeships, players should have none either.

Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not taking away players agency or choice, If a player wants to sift through the rules and pick out their first career, their GM has the right to allow them.. I'm just suggesting that they gain the advantage of making it part of their backstory.

Imagine instead of being overwhelmed with lists, choices, bonuses, which one to add first, should I go A or B, which one will lead me to a more effective profession, what will give me more bonuses to my sword skills.. instead, the GM rolls on a chart, based on A) his world, B) what my higher stats would have had my folks deciding on a good career for me and C) what they could afford. This gives me a set of background skills that may or may not have helped in my future adventuring career.. but what it does do, is create some plot, some hooks, some aspect of who I was before I became a great warrior .. 

Its one of the things I loved about Warhammer, but forgot about, the 'building a backstory' from what I got as a starting career. My favourite character started as a physicians apprentice, and while I made some progress, I never ended up completing it, let alone going on to physician, and when I became a mage, I purposely chose not to take spells to do with healing and surgery, because it reminded me of the career I gave up. Now, if I hadn't had a 'rolled' background.. I'd likely have just chosen wizards apprentice from the beginning, and I would missed out on that whole aspect of story & plot.

Also career paths, lead players to try things out that, probably, unless they're deep in LORE, they're not going to even think of.. 

I mean how many of you would have though to play as a mo-hawked suicide axe-wielding Dwarf.. if it weren't for the "Giant Slayer".

Also, it saves a heck of a lot of space in the character creation pages.. which means a decrease in the costs to produce the books..

so WIN WIN!

expect to see the updates to the appropriate google docs over the coming weeks.

[Story - Untitled] Big Long Text plot Synopsis

I don't normally do this, Posting a plot Synopsis, but since I got the Idea from Observations of the Fox in his Worldbuilding, and I'm unlikely to have the time to run this at any time soon. I leave it up to you, Gamesmasters to do with it what you will. I think it would make for a nice Adventure, If I have the time in the future I'll write it up a little cleaner.. but I'd rather someone use it than it sit on a dusty harddrive.

The Town over the Mines of a Metal that's Stronger than anything, destroyed by...  

(p.s. I have not edited this, When an Idea pops into my brain, I write it fast & furious, so its messy, I'm not going to edit it as is, I'd rather edit it into a larger document later)

Its not fully understood how or why it exists, but an ancient buried castle was discovered in a wilderness, the soil was poor, plants didn't really grow, a desertous wasteland.

But that didn;t stop some adventurers from exploring the burined castle.

The first thing they noticed was the castle was not flat. The windows had hard glass in them, so it was obvious this was a rich castle.

Weapons didn't make much of a dent to the walls, and only through some powerful magics were they able to break in and access the castle.

Unfortunately there was not much to claim, the rooms were for the most part empty. Strange monuments were bolted to the walls, alot of the caste was empty. But two things stood out. A Large Sword, later known as the Blade of White Lightning, and a small round runic device, correctly guessed by the mage as a runic fireball.

The Adventurers left, and for years afterwards no-one known, came across it.

The Adventurers became pretty famous in their time, Sir Lious for his combat skills and the foes he vanquished with white lightning, and the Mage Eldus who used the runic fireball to defeat the demon gate.

Eldus, had read the runes on the device and found 10 small notches, and determined (incorrectly) that this was the radius, but 1 metres was a tad small for a powerful runic device, so setting it for 1 made no sense, instead he thought possibly each notch was 10 steps/ 3 metres (feet).. making the full radius 30 metres. But given the power of the White Lightning blade, he also was quoted as saying, jokingly, it could be 10 x 100 metres! no one believe him, but he must has thought it a possibility.

The Demon Gate was opened by Sd'ohy Udhi of the Half Orc Clan, in an attempt to bring power to the Half Orcs, Sd'ohy gathered as many books on the subject and studied hard the ancient demonology, and using a large ancient stone gate, runes he copied from those books, he managed to create a Demon gate.. allowing demons to enter the world, at will. It was horrendous to say the least, Within hours, hundreds of demons had merely walked through, slaughtered the half Orcs and began their relentlous feast on all souls that lived near.

The Adventurers heard of the Demons, like mostly anyone else within weeks of travel to the Gate, as Demon begun to pour into the world and reak havok as quickly as they discovered it.

So, They headed for the gate, After a battle like none they had faced before, they defeated demon after demon, some mere beasts with extra horns, some a mixture of an elephant and a bicycle, neither of which they knew the look of, and nearing the end, with a telescope, theymanaged to locate the Gate.

Eldus, seeing the sheer bulk of demonic entities entering the world summised that they could not hope to approach, let alone close the gate easily.. he would need to study the runes, determine the counter spells and close it, all while his friends held back wave after wave of demonic creatures..

as it was, at this distance, The party was fighting back large numbers of weird things.

It was then, that Eldus remembered he had the runic fireball!

He took out his rare scroll of group flight, he had hoped to make a copy before using it, but now was no time to think of lost items.

Casting the spell, the group flew over the land, fighting off the few winged demons that existed, and Eldus Magically engaged the Runic Device, and dropped it to the gate.

Being a overly cautios fellow, he had timed it, so they could fly at least 500m away from the gate before it would explode.. they turned on his cue to watch the explosion.. but after the initial wave of blue light, shredding all the creatures on the land, Eldus screamed at his companions to fly, fly as fast as they could.

The blast ripped through them as they flew.. Eldus quickly cast feater fall on his companions as they flew, and so as they pased out from pain, they glided down to merely crash with a few scrapes and bruises.

Sir Lious the sword weilder had not passed unconcous, instead he landed with his now sleeping friends, and fought off the few demons that survived the blast.

After the carnage, a 750 metre crater existed in place of the cavern.. and interestingly revealed several underground cryots and tunnels.. The team managed to raid these places for weeks afterwards, until the rains filled them and today the lake it home to a fresh water merfolk city.

The Original Castle
-------------------

The Adventurers had mentioned the place they claimed their items from, which of course prompted others to travel to the site and raid it..

The Opening of the Castle had somehow leaked some moulds and plant life had begun to grow up around the entrance to the castle.. Some of which proved to be not only edible, but highly nutritious. People could come and live near the castle, use its now open door (blast hole) as a means of access, and traders tents began to appear around the entrance, selling goods to adventuerers who sought the riches of the castle.

Once such dwarf, known as Werthstone, found that when lightning was cast at the walls of the castle at the same time that he hit it with his Eldritch Hammer, the Stone would break away in shattered chucks.. He returned with some of the chunks to his home, and they fashioned the metal with ancient techniques, into a dagger now known as Eldritch Werthblade. The Metal renamed as Eldritch WerthStone.

Werthstone, returned with a small group of Dwarven Metalsmiths and Priests, and found a small town had sprung up around the castle. Importing food, goods, wood and the like, and Exporting the Lode Stone (as they called it) As they had taken the idea of Werthstone, and had priests bless the stone before striking it.
This of course became a tiff with locals, they instead had to live outside the towns borders.. . At first they were livid, , at first they decided to build a mineshaft more than five hundred metres from the castle, They knew that within the time it took them to build the shaft. The Townsfolk would somehow lay claim to the castle, and prevent them from taking any of the precious stone.

After a feast, getting drunk and a few fights, they eventually gave in, and So they dug quickly.

Within a few months, the Town had summoned the sherrif and a small regiment, to protect the kings interest in the castle.. the sherrif stated, that according to the laws (and the treaty with the dwarven king), the Dwarves could claim a chunk of land and pay tax on that land and claim anything beneath that land..

The Town was happy with that arrangement, at first the dwarves felt like they would dig deep, then an illegal side shaft to the underside of the castle, and claim the lowest levels of stone first.. illegally mine the stone, deeper than anyone had travelled, so by the time anyone reached their tunnels, they'd have claimed a large chunk anyway..

but within a few days the dwarves came to the surface, and signed the document. begrudingly.

A month later, the Dwarves bought some extra land, behind their own, and further away from the town, then later still,    They brough in a few hundred new dwarves to work their mines, and build their end of town. Stone from beneath the surface, gold, some Jewels.. They bought another 'chunk' of land behind theirs again.. still further from the town. The town was happy, they had claimed this castle and its possible source of income for years. The dwarves had obviously struck stone & gold independantly, and so peace settled in the town.

The Dwarves were supplying stone to the townsfolk, who traded for it with Lodestone, the dwarved turned lodestone into werthstone and sold it back as picks, shovels, swords, anything that someone wanted. The Metal was harder than many types of metal, cut deep and true with almost every strike, resisted damage, lasting longer than Mithril and Deamonite, and with dwarven craftsmanship, was some of the most balanced and therefore sought after weapons in the world. So the dwarves could, and did, make a far larger profit being the smelters of the stone, than the miners.

Two things happened that shattered this bergeoning city.. The Kings of the Dwarves and the Humans, struck a deal to deal with the Half Orc incursions and their enslaved demons, and asked the Dwarves of Cyrstylwerth? to fashion helms and breastplates of Werthstone, to aid the armies. The Humans would supply metals for the chainmail, the Dwarves the Werthstone (Dwarves, when asked by their king to supply them do so as an honorable task. to refuse your king is to refuse your kind, so it was done without payment)

But The Werthstone Mines & Forges started cranking out far more armour and weapons than the town thought possible.. 100 crates of Lodestone would go in, and 500 suits of Armour would come out. Ok the dwarves were good, but surely not that good?

Then the Dwarven city came under panic, Crazed, purple eyed Dwarves came screaming out of the mines, ravaging anyone in their site before being chopped down. over 400 dwarves and 100 humans were killed in the slaughter. A scouting team was sent down to investigate. The mines closed until their return. They did not.

Some townsfolk packed up and left,

The King of the Dwarves sent a small army, with a Miners detail, they dug a side chamber down the mineshaft to find the source of the problem, Days went by, digging, preparation, priests in prayer, until the day came to break through into the mine. They did so,.. The horn blew to let everyone know they had entered.. Within minutes, the horn blew again.. one and a half times.. Not a good sign.. The Priests threw up protection barriers against evil, undead, demons, dark elves, dark dwarves.. but the purple eyed Dwarves walked straight up the shaft and with the echo of a few hundred screams, slaughtered everyone in sight.

The Townsfolk waiting on edge for news, hearing the screams, fled as fast as they could.. yet none have been heard of since.

The Townsfolk that left before the dwarven army told folk of this:

The Dwarves had mined a shaft down when they first arrived, and sooner than expected, hit the Castle of Lodestone.. but It was somehow pearched on a rocky mountain years before the great mudslide. and the dwarved had found its western most buildings. So it became obvious this was why they signed the land deal, they were sitting directly above a large deposit of lodestone in its raw form. So all this time they were digging out rock and gold, they were also digging up lodestone, but converting it to werthstone before bringing it to the surface, then when folks came with lodestone to trade, theyd gladly buy it, because it gave them legitimacy as to how they got lodestone.

But the Dwarves had dug too deep. The story is, the Lodestone is the shell of an egg of a great creature, not evil, not dwarven, not undead not demonic, nor elven, nor human in any nature, and its very breath drove the soldiers mad, insane and so no priestly barrier had been erected against madness.. (this is the reasoning of the survivors) So the mad soldiers emerged from the caverns and slaugtered the town.

TODAY
=====

As it stands, As its rumoured, The Town lies in ruins, covered in vines, trees, strange plants that move too much for just wind.. There are no living humans in the city, and supposedly a few Mad Dwarves in Werthstone Armour guard the abandoned streets, purple glow to their eyes..

Green Adventurers do not seek out this place, only those who favour their skills and might against mad, gibbering dwarves who run like cheetas and fight like monkeys, dressed in armour tougher than dragon scale, yet light enough to be barely noticed. Yet this armour is what those who travel there seek out.

Gossip
------

3 months back, 3 Adventurers returned from the Shid'he deserts, wearing Werthstone Armour, and Weilding a Werthstone Glave, They fought back some Dwarves, entered the Dwarven city, took one set each of the armour set aside for the human king, and a single Glave, found in the hands of a long dead soldier.. They claimed the city seems to be far emptier of Mad Dwarves than previously claimed. Possibly the Dwarves have died of old age? or so many of them fell at the hands of Adventuring parties? Its unknown..

The King has asked the kingdom, for adventurers to travel to the falled city, find out if indeed the rumour is true, is the city now empty? He'll pay a princes ransom for this information, one tenth to be paid in cash upon the return of the adventurers, the remainder to be paid when his own scouts have returned with confirmation.



TL;DR Two Races vie for control of a new metal, mining it, unleashes a new horror, killing the town, and creating an adventure: 

Laylines, Gallifreyan Circles and Magic

LayLines

Quick Clarification: LeyLines are lines formed from existing places for spiritual & mystical energies on earth, of which I am not talking about, Instead like the Fishing Lay Line, Magical LayLines have points that are either fixed or move, and 'catch' up residual magic, dragging it into nets of magic such as Circles and Spirals and Symbols of magic, permeating the Land and Nature and Magic and causing some weird and wondrous things from time to time. LayLines are Harnessable by intelligent beings for their own purposes, be they malevolent or benevolent.

This could be a snapshot of my Layline Project.. If I visualised it.

He-man/pony Master of the Ponyverse

I think, Like any decent geek, its fun to take one idea, that we all love, and use it to represent something else, that we all love, and this blend can sometimes be awesome or interesting or some kind of facinating idea that sparks more ideas.. or sometimes awful, sometimes brilliantly awful, cringe-worthy. Depends on your point of view(I'll let you figure out which one He-Pony is)

So I was looking at Gallifreyan language the other day, and it got me thinking.. That's a nice way of representing circle lore. And since I

Credit to Sirkles

use circle lore for Ley-Lines it just clicked..

So I started researching Circle Languages. Gallifreyan has been done by several individuals, each adding their own take on it. Mostly its English in a funny pattern, like when you visit an Asian country and have your name written in their characters. It makes little to no sense in their language (although it can, my Chinese name means 'your friendly teacher of the people)

I'm a bit of a student of Language, Having taught English in several countries, mostly in Russia, I would often ask student to compare the words to their own language, compare to the flow, the style and the way its spoken vs written. So it comes easier for me to ask questions like, how does the grammar work, do verbs have tenses (like English), genders (like German), prepositional suffixes or prefixes (like Finnish, with 27 of them), do the sentences run in ordered structure (Germanic) or are structureless and use other rules (Russian)

While I'd love to blog about how Gallifreyan should be properly put together by someone with more insight than a few teenagers, like J.R.R.Tolkien for example.. (if I get enough posts requesting this, I could.. I have been researching for months)

This blog is about something else that's been on the horizon.

Maybe you've read about the mathmatical model I was building about Laylines, but then gave up and just wrote a program instead. In that I decided on some key factors about magic and laylines.. but only recently did I pull out all those notes and theres a pretty big reason why..

The Convergence

So, about 3 weeks ago, I was glancing over my roleplay notes for an upcoming game, where one of our group thinks she might be a lycanthrope. None of the "normal" attempts at discovery worked.. because.. lycan = wolf, so they figured it was something else. One plausible suggestion was that a layline might have infected her, and as each layline passed through camp, she was turning into something.. only to return to form the next morning.

Not an actual screenshot

So, I remembered I had a program somewhere which was tracking laylines in real time.. and I noticed something. sometime soon, there was going to be a convergence of many laylines.. and It might be world changing.

But I didn't have them properly sorted or structured in the database.. just a nice graphic of spinning circles & symbols showing pretty colours...

Must Investigate!

It Didn't take me long to find out that while I was right, I was wrong.. I didn't have the right 'symbols' in the system yet. Something I had put off for later and now I was getting stuck for time.

The Problem being.. I had put this together years ago and left it running, I could have missed other convergences, and probably have, so I don't want to miss this next one (I sped up the program to check, and won't see another for 2 years)

But no-one is anywhere near this.. and I don't have any players, playing mages to truely enjoy the experience... its like I'm the only person on the planet, and I've just spotted a quadripple rainbow!

So I asked them.. do you want to be mages for a day?

A resounding YES.

So, I am now on the quest to ensure the perfect storm will have some spectators.

The majority of the Laylines.. are exactly that.. laylines.. lines of magic that move around the planet at different speeds, directions and possibly (yes even now I'll not give away true details) different pivot points or angles of flow.

Maybe they flow in straight lines, maybe they move up and down with the terrain, or through terrain.. surely water magic would use water and fire magic, use lava.. who knows?

but now maybe some will.. its even more fun.. because the greatest magicians in the world (well.. ok.. a bunch of pre-made NPCs used by players for an afternoon of conjecture) are going to try an harness the magical storm for their own crazy nefarious projects.. and probably fight about it until its too late.

I'll record the conversation and maybe if its worth it, write a story from it

So, with 80% of laylines already structured, I was stuck deciding on what to do about the last 20%.. I had notes, and sketches, but had nothing concrete. Until I remembered Gallifreyan circles.

Simplistic, but this is one of several layers..

Now, a quick pop over to Lorens webpage, structure some quick images, load them into the layline engine and viola. Freaky looking beasts that they are.

See, I can write "Illusion" into the engine he's built and Viola.. instant magic circle.

Combine this with 16 forms of magic, 16 power laylines, circles, pools, null magic fields and sacred artefacts in the world .. and this picture gets pretty messy.

What do they Do?

Typically 3 Layline crossings will cause a lump of rock at the crux of the crossing, to become magical. maybe it had ore in it, that becomes magical metal, maybe a small seedling would become magical wood (sought out by sorcerers for wands and staves) This happens once every week or so, I saw 11 in one day.. but I only monitor places near my players...

But there are hundreds of these happened daily.. so they're not vitally important (yet), as you can see here in a screenshot, all the brighter areas are usually criss-crosses of lines & circles and such

If all laylines were visible, this would be a blur

So, now I have my laylines, and circles and spirals and symbols and glyphs and they're all circling around this world.. causing all manner of mischief.. 

and the biggest mischief of all.. is coming.. just after March, but closer to August. My players will create 100-200th level Magi, they'll be assigned values based on their choices of race, creed, religion, beliefs and location both birth and current. Then they'll all have to be versed in the basic arts of using laylines to travel (else how would they all get here?) they'll be given a list of clues as to what could happen.. 75% true, and 25% false.. with comparison and conversation, they should be able to determine which truths are absolute, and which lies are bent truths, until they understand the best that they can.. and harness the wave of power.. to do something awe.... -some or -ful, I don't know yet.

Programming Addendum:

My Initial Foray into this was simply using Javascript to 'spin' the images. Each image was a very transparent white line (or lines/elipses/shapes) or coloured (for specific types) on a black background. When 2+ lines crossed each other they glowed more, the more lines, the more "white". The bigger problem was that this layering didn't allow the coloured lines to mix/enhance the white (pastels instead)

So, the 2nd attempt was using C# to write a 3D program using the Graphics card to 'draw' lines in 3D space, and then multiply the colours against each other if they intersected. It then outputs an image. Useful to know on a given day/time what laylines will cross.

The Problem with both of these is that there is no 'prediction' I can type in co-ordinates of players, for the scheduled gaming session, but I have no idea where any of these lines are going.. unless I type in the next 'second' or 'minute' and spit out the image and compare.. brute force.

It was more luck than skill that I found this 'Convergence' I mistyped a date, and saw a bright spot.. then I ran it over and over.. to get the 2-3 hours either side of that 'moment' which lead me to do that again for several 'hours' after.. to find that an even brighter event happened 3 hours and 7 minutes after the first.

After that, I wrote a script to run the program and find 'pixels' greater in brightness than 50%.. but I intend to rewrite the program to run realtime and map out events in the mapping database so GMs will be able to plan ahead for local mini & maxi convergences. 

World Rules vs Known Rules

For quite some time I've been delving into sites about faith, gods, physics and maths and the history of these, because I felt that often writers give the readers/players too much.Just wanted to share some thoughts

Historically, we're ignorant

Humans, on earth, have frequently been wrong. Ignorant of the world around us. But we're also creative. so far more often than not, when someone didn't understand something, but couldn't be seen/known to 'not' know the answer, they invented the most plausible answer they could think of, and, until someone thought of something better, it was given.

So why do writers assume anything different?

Well, most likely because its easier to just have the rules of the world match the understanding of the reader, and I'm going to do it right now: I'll invent a plausible answer because I don't have enough research of the subject matter, because most likely the reader needs to either identify with the subject material, or they need to plausibly believe the difference between their own understanding and this 'fictional reality'.

Some of the best writing I've read, the authour has created a set of rules for his universe, but had the characters in the story, not understand that set of rules.. instead the rules of the character were something less than correct. It wasn't the premise of the story, but was critical to the structure of the plot.

But its not often (maybe I'm just not reading the right people)

Now I'm not talking about authours who use the same logic structure on an earth setting, (IMHO) its not so creative to use an already established scientific misdemeanor, such as a group of people that believe the world is flat, such a common and dis-proven that anyone actually thought this post-greek maths.

Nor am I talking about using theories about our world about the rules of our universe, and using one theory to write a nice novel about. 

I'm talking about world building here. When you build your own world, with your own set of logic and rules that govern the world, and then.. you build another set of rules that the inhabitants of the world have come to believe.

Then we take it further

 So we create a world, and its different in some way, that makes it interesting to write about. We add inhabitants, being a complex and dynamic world, for the existence of plot, we need different races maybe, or different species someone to antagonize the other. and they have their own beliefs, to break the egg at one end or the other or what have you. How 'right' are they? 

The conflict of different people over any given difference, is 99% of history, be it peaceful or bloody conflict. The culture and learnings of races, the fall and demise of the ones that backed the wrong belief or sometimes the right one, leaving a culture to struggle with itself until an inevitable reversal of ideals to match with the scientific research of the day.

While this may be a small aspect of the plot, its usually this kind of backstory that shows me the reader, that this world is not just a fly by night construct, that your book/world is going to exist for a a long time to come, and if I invest my money and time in your product, I'm going to get a return on that investment. i.e. more future enjoyment as you publish several books/products

Meta Gaming your Players

What I'm about to write, I have not read elsewhere. As a Games designer for computer games as much as for PnP Roleplay, this is something that I borrowed from threads and posts, took a good hard look at it and said.. why not? and morphed it into what I do as Gamesmaster.

Character Progression doesn't always have to come from play.

Meta Gaming

Wikipedia says : Metagaming is any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. Another definition refers to the game universe outside of the game itself.

In simple terms, it is the use of out-of-game information or resources to affect one's in-game decisions.

I'm not talking about that.

Meta Gaming in Video game terminology is about the game outside the game. The points you earn after each parkour run, that buys you speed boosts or the tower defence weapon upgrades or the Berzerk Ball world upgrades. Its the Game outside the game, that improves in inner game.

Its about the 'improvement to the game' that you earn by 'playing more often'.

So in that context, I give you: the Meta Gaming Rules I use, to make my roleplaying experience more enjoyable for players

Roleplay Points

In my older Posts I've mentioned Roleplay Points, Points I award players per session for several reasons:

• Roleplaying, and not Meta Gaming!
• Being there for that session
• Making a good quote, pertinent to the situation, which causes much hilarity or groaning
• Using Voices, drawing character models or 'adding' to the experience
• Being a good player

I also ask the players to nominate one player each week to get the 'player of the week' Bonus +2 roleplay points

Roleplay Points, are currently used to buy two things: Quests and Hero Points.

Quests allow players to nominate something their character wants to achieve in the next few sessions. They declare a quest, assign 5 roleplay points to it, and during any roleplay session, they may refer to the quest, to assign more roleplay points to it (it must be roleplayed to give it these points)

When the quest is completed, the characters gain a massive boost to their character sheets. Background Points, Karma Points (for both see below) and a chunk of Experience Points.

The Chunk of XP is typically at least half a levels worth for many game systems (often as much as a full levels worth of XP, if it was a 6 session quest for example) above and beyond the normal XP

In this, I no longer need to dole out XP as game rewards, XP is for doing what you should be doing.

Karma Points 

This is where we get real meta. When a Player Dies or retires their character, we add up the number of roleplay sessions we had with that character (approx 3/4 of number of weeks since we began for average) multiplied by their Levels gained (i.e. minus starting level if you didn't start at 1st) and if they chose (retired) we double it.

Karma allows that player to 'buy' a better character for the next session.

But when they have Karma.. Then, now things get interesting... Firstly, they probably buy some Background Points

Background Points

When I get a new player, they start as a Human, with a boring dead end job, who becomes a somebody. They decide one day to stop being who they were, and be something more than that, and join the adventurers/gang/group. This is all justly evened out using Background Points. Humans 0Bkgpts, Average parents 0Bkgpts, Average Job 0Bkgpts.

But after earning a few Karma, and buying some background points... they can choose a more interesting race, a more interesting beginning profession and maybe some contacts in some high places(or low places) a dash more starting cash.

Is your world primarily human? with some dwarves and elves? 0Bkgpts for them, but what if the player wants a half-Orc? are they rare? add a Bkgpt cost to them, are they slightly imbalanced? more Bkgpts, maybe you'd even allow a construct, with a soul of a dragon.. IF they spent the Bkgpts for it.

The GM can now 'balance' his world by making the harder to find races use up some of these points, so plays can see the benefits, match up with the costs.

Character Progression by Whimsycatcher on Deviant Art

We also use background points for flashback events, remembering the past and discovering your heritage, which are roleplayed events (more in my blog)

Back to Karma

But Karma has more going on, While Karma can buy into some nice Background points for that one character.. the best way is to earn enough to buy Karma bonuses. +1 to Strength for every single character you ever play in my game/campaign with friends who GM my world, or at Cons that I participate in.

Longer Term Gaming

Some of this I developed when I ran a games club, and wanted to entice players to come back time & time again.. but its also a great way to reward players who realise that their character is getting old, or just plain dead. So, While I may have balked at Meta Gaming in its negatives, I'm glad to have looked past to see the positives.

Thoughts?

The Citadel of the Shadowlords Part 1

TL;DR: An introduction to the situation, backstory, catch up and where we are when we began.

The Citadel of the Shadowlords

Introduction

In 1990, I ran a campaign with maps, I really go into my maps, to make sure players could visit places more than once, I wrote a bunch of index cards, Major Cities, Smaller cities, Villages and Hamlets with details such as population, major industries, major locations of interest. On the green cards were those locations of interest, and the pink cards were meant to be NPCs of interest..

I'm not 100% sure why I never really filled them all out, maybe I wasn't such a studious GM as I am now, maybe the work and effort seemed too difficult for a 15yr old.. Anyway I managed to write out around 30-40 cards.

After opening a gaming club, writing a new game system, traveling the world and returning, I started a new gaming group at uni in my spare time, but instead of going to a lot of effort to start a new scenario as I did in Moscow, I wanted to test some new rules, but didn't want to mess up the new world with rules testing, so when I unpacked all my roleplay things in '12, I found this box of cards.. and thought.. hey.. thats interesting!

Curiously, I had added a land called RUASHA and a city called MOSKVAAR as parts of the lands, years before I had a thought to go there, but I guess I did watch a lot of bond movies in my youth.

Before I left Australia to travel, I wanted to bring my roleplay plots to a nice close, So I built an adventure about a secret cult that wished to destroy the world, and claim all the souls for their own purposes. One of the players was a spy for the cult, and through him, the evil shadowlords managed to do what they set out to do. All characters, the whole world, all destroyed..

Meta-plot I had enough of trying to write a roleplay game, without any real world experience, I wanted to make a decent system, a proper world, but this was before prominent internet in our lives, so I was going to do things old school. Travel.

Now, 2013, I'm testing the 4th edition of my system, I have all new players and I have this world to use.. but when I'm almost ready to publish, its time to port the characters over to the 'real world' and follow the original plot of the old world.. its destruction..

Yet the players have decided to thwart the GM, and save the world...

Backstory

In one group,There are six Uni students, they know my world is dark, dangerous and difficult. They also know that I have had seven GMs and over 100 players play in this world, live, and sometimes when they bump into other characters, such as heroes, they can't quite be sure they're not dealing with other PCs from another game.

So the players are always trying to mess with the world, so their 'marks' will be seen by other players in other games.. If that means making new forms of magic, or screwing with local guilds to never accept adventurers again.. so be it..

Knowing full well, that their current campaign is set in a 'past plot campaign' and that at some point (31 Dec 2015) the world is going to be destroyed, they decided it would be fun to mess with this too.. by stopping it.

So, There are five groups, Three run by myself, Two by two other GMs all in the same area, all players with the general knowledge (from multiple ways of in story exposition) that someone, somewhere is trying to destroy the world, and the flow of magic seems to centre on a site within the forests of Eastern Alexer.

Wallstormers # 02

 We started somewhere.

The 2nd wall stormers.

The Gate opened. the Guards ready with pikes and halberds, the few zombies directly at the gate were dispatched. The heroes.. five, stepped forward, armoured, sharp weapons, spiked maces, they were honed fighters. Hacking and slashing at the horde, they grew tired. The Knight was pulled in first, his armour too heavy, the Barbarian clawed at too often, was dragged in next. they called the gate to be shut. The ranger pulling back, the Rogue stabbing furiously, he held out too long, the portcullis gave way, crushed him to the ground. NO!. the mage was outside the gate.. 

KABOOM. the ranger and all the guards thrown back.. what was that.. a spell gone wrong? the street lined with guts, hundreds of zombies destroyed..

The town officials glanced at each other.. as the gate were being shut, that orphanage with those kids.. the ones with strange magical glowing eyes.. surely not.. 

Original Stats: The Mage

When we first started looking at putting together the Mage in our system, we had 3 players who tried magic, Mattius the Thaumaturge, was an experimenter, he had no real spells, just things he picked up along the way, Reym the Elven Mage/Fighter, who had some augmentation for combat, and finally Sutekh, the sprite, who had a range of natural abilities, but not specific magics.

Remember, this was back in 2nd Edition Rules, The Amalgamation of all systems had begun, but magic was far down the list.. so in order to make a playable game, I just hobbled together the spell lists, averaged out some spells and levels to match something clean, and ended up with a hodgepodge of mismatched rules that made little to no real sense..

which is magic, when you think about it.

Magic is either science or its Not

My First big problem was that I was reading far too much Science Fiction at the time, Issac Asimovs stories of Azazel the 'Demon' using high level technology to create the effects, which seemed like magic. 

In '96 I went to a community college to get a degree on Computer Science and was learning about databases.. one thing I put together was a structure of 'cause & effect' for spells.

Then at the Same College I met some teachers, who put me onto some Professors at University, who were very keen to discuss how magic could work under the laws of Thermodynamics, Electromagnetism and Looking into Spirituality and how it could be represented in a magical system.

Now, while I have remade the rules of Combat several times, Archery several times, Stealth several times, Magic remained the same system for many many years..

Here's how it worked then, and still does for Version 3..

All spells, based on their school, had a difficulty level to study, A Study requirement, an Imperfection level to cast spells. The Caster would roll for cast spell, if passed, they had an imperfection chance %, but if failed, this value was increased by the spell difficulty x The failure result.

Back then, Magic worked on a number of d8s  x the spell level. so 1st level spells could fail up to 8 pts (if you had no score) and the highest 16th level spells, could theoretically fail by 128pts. We were experimenting with varied dice pools at the time.. my colleague was trying to make a 3d8 version of the whole system, arguing if 2 dice gave a good bell curve, 3 dice would be better.

Again though, Maybe because the magic was so broken, or so difficult to learn a spell, or the number of players I had was so limited, I needed a group to play some mages..

So the OS team were born.. 5 Mages, down on their luck, driven out of town after town for some shocking trickster attempts, vowed to return to vent their revenge, sought out some powerful magics and blew themselves to smithereens when the imperfection failed far too much. But in that time, I did manage to clean up the magic rules from v2 to v3.

v3.5 is another story for another day.. 

Dungeonworld, The Beginning of the Club

In 1992, I was in Highschool, Year 12. I had an after school job in Childcare, and alot of kids from the after school care were interested in board games,. one in particular was Heroquest.

Back then I was paid $7 an hour to look after kids. I worked one hour after school from 3:45 to 4:45 when the school care had the most kids, and needed extra help.

I volunteered to run Heroquest for any of the kids interested, from 4:45 to 5:45 as some of the kids had to wait around for their parents until 6pm.

while I recognised that I was giving up a potential $7 an hour.. I also saw this need. Kids wanted to play these games, and their parents might be in the need for them to get out of the house and give them some peace and quiet..

So I started a club, Saturday and Sunday afternoons, 12pm til 4pm, for $2 an hour (I was expecting the kids to get most of this from their parents)

First of all, this partly didn't work, Parents had choices, and many of them were not as expensive as $8 for the day. Magic mountain, down at the beach, cost 20c a game, and $2 would get you a hot dog and coke.. so parents could leave their kids there for the day, with barely $5 in their pocket.

Most of the kids who wanted to come to my club, couldn't get $5 a month out of their parents, let alone $8 a week.. So I had to scale this.. firstly I made a set of 'helpers' those who would turn up at 11:30, help set up, and get in free.. then I made a membership card, laminated , which allowed 5 'visits' for $10.

So my next big problem was gamesmasters.. which is still a problem to this day.. I ran games, I never once had anyone run a game for me, For the next 4 years, I would run games.