World Build October Part 7

Its World-Build-Tober: 

Sunday the 7th - World-build-tober

"Draw (or describe) the decorations used for a holiday"

The Coyn World has a very large number of humans from a large variety of times, as the time of the Cataclyzm was not fixed to a specific time point, more of a blurred seven dimensional mess.

As a result, many earth customs from many times and place ended up being part of human culture in the Coyn. You can find Holly wreaths, kissing under mistletoe, pumpkins on all Hallows Eve (though they tend to talk).

But whats interesting to us mere magicless mortals on earth is the decorations done by non humans.

 Imagine if you will, Humans use plants, berries, inks, gemstones to create decorations, yet to some cultures, some races are made of plants, berries, inks or gemstones.. Imagine if they used humans and or human parts to decorate their houses.. urgh.

Luckily, its more common to use magical illusions to decorate, its easier to 'put up' and 'take down'. Some small hedge wizards might manufacture trinkets that create the illusions for people who have little to no access to magic.

Typically, symbols of the holiday, steamers of light or colour, maybe sounds or even a taste in the air, are the most common... that said..

There is a small cult, that celebrates the seventh day of the eleventh month with a strange set of decorations made of paper (with permissions of the dryads, its bark shavings, not wood). They decorate their main hall with furniture, covered with this paper, some represent goods, such as bags of wheat or a small sheep, but some, go a step further, including meat sausage to be eaten in a bread log, cold snow with coloured sugar. people of the cult, travel to each others homes, and purchase the items from one another, decorating the next house with those goods. All sending them off with the greeting "Come again".

Craft Based Roleplay - the Missing Element

     While some might think its a bad idea to reveal your ideas, lest someone steal them for themselves, I don't think that either my idea is new, nor unique, just that I'll be adding it in a way that hasn't really been done in roleplay games. Crafting for adventurers...

Crafting for your Roleplay Group

     One thing that irked me in many systems for years was the inability to really make a half decent magical weapon. At least with a semi-realistic sense of the idea.

     My first encounter with the crafting rules was from Dragon Warriors, Book 2: Simplistic at best, once a Mystic reaches 4th rank, they can begin to craft +1 items, 6th for +2 and 9th for +3. The mystic must go off to a place to remain in solitude, and fast in order to 'attune' themselves to the mystical powers and then begin the 'creation' of an item. There is no talk of 'costs' other than time, 25 days to make a +1 arrow, 100 days for +1 weapon or armour, up to 1500 days for a +3 weapon..

     Yes its simplistic and flawed, A party could leave their 9th ranked Mystic off in some wilderness 'creating' the Warrior a +3 set of Studded Leather armour, and the group returns 1500 days later, now all 15th ranked characters, having acquired several other +2 and +3 sets of armour that are as good if not better from quests and such.. sorta defeated the purpose of creating magical items in the first place.

     Sure a GM could attempt to balance the system, but what ever you do, you'd probably be spending hundreds of hours coming up with some kind of specialized algorithm, that'd break either game balance or usability.. 25 days for a +1 arrow? just to be shot and lost in the very next combat? It only gives +1 to attack, ABR and Damage, its not all that good.

     Dungeons and Dragons does it just as bad, there are countless blogs talking about it just seems to be a kind of 'cash sink' for the GM to ensure the players have a reason to go out looking for more quests, rather than retiring.. even though 12+ level characters are pretty much expected to retire (according to the older forms of the rules, it can be argued) and are only brought out for epic world ending events.

    Rolemaster, Tunnels and Trolls, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, they have their own rules & houserules, blogs about it, but at the end of the day its pretty much the same.. Heroes acquire treasure, heroes get rich, heroes have little need to quest for the mundane magical items such as +1 items, but they still have a basci need for them, heroes sink cash into NPCs that make the items, or they sink less cash but more time OR experience points (another sink system to keep mages from getting TOO powerful) into making magical items with broader choices.

     Seems like not many people really got into the whole crafting side of things... 

Could be just your experience

Yes, I understand, I haven't played every single game with every single GM, and there are likely some half-decent games that are all about creating interesting items. Yet if you read up on this, by the very creators of D&D it seems that I'm on par:

     "The statement "I want to make a magic item" has the power to freeze a DM's blood. Players, too, can find the item creation process intimidating. Sometimes these fears are justified, especially when someone invents an entirely new item and then wants to sit down and make it - Skip Williams"

    I have crafted some adventures where players are trying to acquire the material components of weird and wonderous items, while I agree that they should have some kind of 'cost' to acquire, I am more of the opinion that it should be a cost of risk vs reward rather than a physical cost.

     I would rather stick to the idea that making a sword, be it magical, mystical or mundane, should approximately be of the same time of a real sword, 2-3 days for the weapon & 2+ weeks for the flair, but its more about "getting it right" because maybe forging a sword and getting it wrong just means melting down the blade and starting again, but if your using elementium steel, then it likely involves a few enchanted tools, some runes of protection against it (so it doesn't freeze or burn you while forging) and you'd only want to deal with it once, rather than risking deadly burns or life altering frostbite twice.

     So instead the "cost" to acquire goods, is for the group to acquire the magical forge, the mystical hammer, the tongs of fire, the cooling Pools of the frostbanes and several kilos of Elementium, Elysiuum Wood, Gems of Brightfire and Rubies of Blood. Once acquired, the Blacksmith/Mage/Mystic of the group gets to work, while the heroes rest their wounds and 3-6 weeks later, the Smith presents the Leader/Warrior of the group with "FleshForger the Magnificent" with all the bonuses (and possible flaws) of the new weapon.

Yeah, we all do that.. so whats your point?    

     Recently, (well, ok, 3 years ago now) We were tasked at Uni to make a game, and my group agreed to try making a "potion making game", We only had 13 days in total to make it (well its over 13 weeks, we had 1 day a week assigned to the task, because of other subjects, exams, studies etc) so in the end we made a game where you chose 3 ingredients and dependent on how you mixed it, it would come up with 1 of 9 possible potions/poisons.

     Now, the key underlying aspect of the game, was to experiment


---------------------------------- APOLOGIES TO READERS------------------------
Due to Google downgrading their system, this post was lost, I managed to find this much via some fancy caching, but from this point forward, I am mostly trying to remember what I wrote, appologies if it seems out of sync. Originally Published 08/04/2017
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The Game

The Experimentation of how each 'part' worked, was the process of the game. In the 'morning' You acquired the 3 ingredients from the forest, randomly, mostly it gave you a 1:5 chance, twice, either gaining the whole plant, the roots, the leaves or the flower, or nothing( 2 chances). You'd return to your workshop by the end of the day, if you had purchased food from town you ate it, else you could eat the leaves or boil the roots as a substitute, no ill effects, just the loss of your days work looking for it.
Lastly, you could try to 'experiment' on your potions. Each of the three ingredients could be fried, boiled or crushed (for oils), no other information was given.
Oh and also you could go to town, in town you could buy food for 1 copper coin each meal, and meals could last 4 days (so you could buy 4 max) but while in town, you heard rumours.. someone was sick, someone had a toothache, someone wanted to poison her evil husband.
The only thing we had in the game was that all three paid money (3 copper), the 'bad' job would pay even for failed poisons, but a copper if you failed and 3 if you succeeded.
So each night, you'd make up some potions/poisons, and when you had a few, you could go to town, and try them out. The 'experiment' was on the evil husband, if he died, you knew it was a legit poison, if he didn't it sometimes made him happy, or angry or no effect.
This was the litmus test. Angry.. probably ill effects, happy, likely good effects, dead, most definitely poison.
Now at the heart of this, was percentile effects, Boil the root and you got soup, you knew this from your own experience, eat the leaves, its not killing you either, So boil the leaves? fry the leaves? crush the leaves? Each has an effect: From memory, Boiling, drew out the potent qualities, but not the oil effects, Frying would destroy the potent qualities, but keep the oil effects, and crushing, gave you a 50/50 effect of both, while eating it raw, would give you half of the potent effect, but all of the oil, So it became a maths puzzle..
Roots had 25% poisonous Oil, but 100% Nutitional Potent,
Leaves had 0% poisonous Oil and 25% healing Potent.
The Flower had 75% numbing Oil, and 10% Poison.

If you boiled the Roots and Leaves and fried the Flower, and threw away the Roots and boiled it again, you'd get a healing potion,
If you crushed the flower, added some raw, boiled the leaves and then threw out the leaves, you got a tooth numbing agent, so they could pull the tooth
and if you Boiled the flower several times, and fried the roots several times, then crushed the Boiled flowers into the roots, you got a deadly poison.   
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The Key to it was trying out different combinations, on yourself, and the evil husband to figure out what did what, and how it came together.

In Roleplay

Firstly, to get this to work in roleplay, you need to have the ability of your group to get stuff made. Like stated before, getting the 'ingredients' is part one of the game, Having your players procure a Firebird feather, a Core of Sphagnum and a Dedicated Crystal, is the adventure that they get to go on.

But having the Unique Powerful item, is only interesting if it is Unique AND Powerful.

To Create this, you have to have more control over the flow of goods and services.

If your players like the idea of crafting their own gear, upgrading it, improving it, then make sure your setting works, Making standard items less common, with technological advances, just recently discovered.

Cavemen/Minecraft: The Most interesting 'inventions' game would be starting from scratch, players probably already know about sharpening stones & attaching them to sticks with vines, but how about baking clay to make moulds to heating fire hot enough to melt ores to even make metals.. Playing the game in a minecraft like environment might even be your players thing.

Shift of Ages: As the Bronze Age was in decline and the Iron Age beginning, we see a whole area of roleplay barely played. Have your entire group in the fall of rome, as the Gauls have just discovered Iron and Steel swords are a brand new thing. The Aquisition of Iron Ore becomes an adventure of its own. Or if your more inclined, Steampunk, as all manner of steam powered things get invented, and usually ones that would never work, steam powered mobile phone anyone?

Post apoc: My favourite (and one I'm building a new campaign for) When everything has gone to hell, and your players can't even get a decent weapon, unless the bring back some scrap metal from outside the safe zone.. This one ties in nicely with fantasy: The players have steel sword, but how to get EarthElementium? or Plogistonium. Bring back a chunk of Ever-cold Metal and have your blacksmith forge up one of those as a Cleaver! or Chukrum!

So, now that you've got the setting, Have an NPC in town, controlled by your rules lawyer/ numbers cruncher, 'experiment' with the numbers, What does Plgistonium do? well its fire based Elementium, All Elementiums are harder than normal steel by 2 magnitudes, Plus they do Elemental based damage, they should cut through armour, like a knife through butter. Cool that's your end point, but now, you have to decide how long are they prepared to wait?

For simplicity, since we have 4 values to go with, 2x harder, knife through butter & fire damage, then we need our blacksmith to experiment with at least 4 variables, so we'll need to get him at least 4 sets of the Ore. Then you make skill checks for the Blacksmith, if he passes, he's made progress on 1 of those 4 areas, Or maybe you can't wait that long.. how about mixing it with normal steel, and halving the final properties.. halving the experimentation time.

See this is where I got bogged down in other systems, Because weapons don't typically have hardness values or sharpness values, or strength abilities, and weapons don't cut through armour, the player dodges & the armour deflects & the person cops some of the damage, but not as real damage, but as exhaustion & its all rolled into one roll or one saving throw.. it takes away the players, and the GMs ability to make cool stuff, unless you know the whole formula for THAC0, or such.

This is why I made my system, Because Elementium can easily have +2 damage, without needing to increase the Initiative costs, it can have a 'ignores 2 points of enemies metal armour' for the ABR and it can have 'flaming weapon if exposed to air' and 'is 80.c', so players know the blade is hot, it burns, flamable objects will ignite, water will slowly boil (or at least start to get hot) and each of these areas can be 'learnt' by the blacksmith as skills:
Active Skill: Manufacture - Elementium - Fire - +1 Damage, no Inititaive cost. 
Once learnt, then he can start to take on the next skill.

This all works for the HUB system of my game, where players have an NPC friend, back in town, that they get to level up and choose his skills between adventures, so that you have a plausible way for players to be getting much better weapons, without needing handwavium or bullsh*t Ecomonic systems. 

     

[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
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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
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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
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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: