gridlore | Entries tagged with worldbuilding

I'm reading Eckhart Frahm's Assyria - The Rise and Fall of the World's First Empire. It's a little farther back and further east than my usual realm of studies, but the Assyrians, in all their periods, were such a massive influence on cultures in every direction that I thought it worth my time to read at least a good survey of the topic. Plus, I got it for my birthday.

It's fascinating to see how power ebbed and flowed over the centuries, how different kings handled things, and how their neighbors dealt with a neighbor alternately on the ropes and overthrowing their rulers.

But one thing that struck me as a worldbuilder and game master was the practice of godnapping. Invading temples and stealing the sacred statues of the gods (and presumably all those lovely offerings) and bringing them back to Ashur or Nineveh or wherever the current capital was. As these statues were assumed to have divine properties equal to the Hebrew Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle of the Temple in Jerusalem, the taking of those icons could be devastating to the morale of a city.

To put this in context for a fantasy setting, just as the Hebrews saw the sanctity of the Tabernacle as vital to their relationship with YHWH, so would these Mesopotamian/Anatolian cities see their idols. It could be that these statues were the method through which the deities communicated with their priests and allowed their power to flow. Most fantasy systems have some check on the power of the gods in the material world to stop it from being a constant war in which humanity gets crushed like ants, after all.

So stealing the idol of Ishtar from the temple in Babylon could deny the goddess's benefits to the Babylonians, but might even give the Godnappers a chance to "adopt" the goddess into their pantheon! Bringing a consecrated statue and its accouterments back to your city, building a temple or sub-temple, or an extension to the temple of the same/similar deity of the same general portfolio, might draw the divine energy away from the original worshippers to your empire.

Bronze Age strategic bombing!

The adventure possibilities here should be clear. Stealing or recovering these statues or at least "decommissioning" them before they can be installed in an enemy temple. Of course, most of these statues were 4 or 5 meters tall and weighed several tons...

As we say, further events are left up to the Game Master.

When I'm writing, whether for TTRPGs or my fiction, I use a couple of simple tools in the early stages of building scenes and characters.

The first thing is something I stole from the FATE system. I define three aspects of the setting of each scene or for each character. The advantage here is you have these three touchpoints when you fill out the background or person to build on. These can be notable physical aspects, emotional drivers, or anything.

For example, the main character in my current work-in-progress, Senior Assault Leader Petros Makrakis, has the following three aspects.

Devoted to duty but tired of being responsible for people's lives.
Prone to PTSD nightmares.
He wonders if he's even human anymore.

The same can be done with places and things. The biotech warsuits Makrakis and his team wear are:

Crab-like in appearance.
Intrusive into every orifice and the eyes.
Can generate appropriate ammo on command.
Users say it feels like being in the womb.

Yes, I did four. But the point is you can use the aspects to define broadly places, people, and things in your roughest drafts, so when the writing gets moving, you already know what the bartender at Elfedge is like or what the bridge of the ICV King Richard looks and sounds like.

For characters, I go one step further. I define their motivation in three questions. For Makrakis, it is:

What does the character want? He wants to return to each and resume a peaceful life.
Why do they want it? Petros left Earth thirty years ago and has been fighting ever since. He's exhausted. Done. He sees Earth as his place to live out his life.
What's stopping them from getting it? The Chorus Directors have declared Makrakis and all the other personnel, as well as the rotating habitat they live in, surplus and to be destroyed if they don't leave. No official transport is being provided, so Petros and what's left of his team will have to find transportation and make the long journey back to a world, not even knowing where it is.

The working title for the book is The 13th Month, which any US Marines reading this should get.

I've been reading an excellent biography of Theodora of Byzantium. Daughter of a bear-tamer, mime, actress, and courtesan, she rose from the lowest ranks of society in Constantinopolis - beggars and actors - to become possibly the most politically astute female co-ruler in the long history of the Roman state.

It's a great book, but what prompted me to post is a story that came later in her life, shortly before her death. Theodora was a lifelong monophysite, believing that Jesus had only one divine nature. This contradicted the prevailing church teaching that Christ had two natures, fully human and fully divine. Monophysites were primarily found in Egypt (forerunners of the Coptic Church) and in the Syrian provinces. Their views and clergy were suppressed regularly.

This led to a frantic petition being brought to the palace by the king of the Ghassanids, Christianized Arabs. They no longer had bishops, and most of their priests had been killed or driven off by orthodox Christian leaders.

Theodora arranged for a deposed Patriarch of Alexandria to install a Syratic-speaking monk as Bishop of Edessa. Edessa already had a bishop, but this was all done in secret. Jacob, the monk/bishop in question, is described in the most heroic terms. Brilliant, the strength of an athlete, charismatic as all get out.

Jacob went to work, traveling at night with a small band of guards; he crisscrossed the Syrian provinces preaching, converting, and consecrating priests. The legend says 80,000 of them, but no matter the actual number, the church branch Jacob founded survives today as the Syrian Orthodox Church.

To me, this would be an excellent basis for a fantasy campaign. The player-characters are that small band of guards escorting this holy man around. He might be a reformer preaching against the corruption of the church or the empire (or both!). He might preach against excess wealth, or how elves and dwarves are people too, or he might be a long-rumored Prophet.

That's the pull. The push is the church, and probably the empire hunting you down. Of course, someone keeps setting up safe houses and meetings with sympathizers. Who is this mysterious patron?

A game like this would work best as an episodic campaign. Remember the "hero on the run" shows? Every week the hero would come to a new town, encounter some plot, and resolve it just as the pursuers show up. That kind of thing, but not as cliched. You'd also have daring escapes, accidental revolutions, actual wars, pirates, and all the other joys of life in Late Antiquity to deal with before we add fantasy elements.

I'd probably go with a low magic/distant gods setting here. This is gritty as the sand in your sandals, and too much magic ruins the feeling.

Traveller was my first TTRPG experience and remained one of my great loves—the Third Imperium setting, at first remote and undefined, ground into a complex, vibrant place. I am proud to contribute to that growth by writing for Marc Miller's Traveller (AKA Traveller 4th Edition) and GURPS Traveller - Ground Forces, among other contributions.

But one thing always bugged me. The aliens in Traveller weren't very alien. Two of them, the Aslan and Vargr, were uplifted Terran animals (lions and wolves). One was just a variant human race that was only notable for their whole-hearted embrace of psionic abilities, something proscribed in the Imperium. The Hivers, starfish-like aliens with a penchant for manipulating other species through subtle methods, were nice, but my main problem came with the K'kree.

The K'kree are moose-sized hexapods, with the front two limbs evolving into arms. We know they are a herd species, extremely gregarious, and prone to panic if isolated from other K'kree for any time. They also tend to be claustrophobic, leading to their ships being massively oversized, even accounting for the size of an adult K'kree.

Note that these two conditions are also common in humans. We need social contact; numerous studies have shown that isolation, like extended solitary confinement, is mentally and physically damaging. Early hominids competed on the African veldt, wide open spaces brimming with predators. It's why walking upright was such an advantage. Humans, too, have an innate fear of tightly enclosed places.

My point is as an intelligent species, we can get over these fears to advance. So can the K'kree. Portraying them as animals who freak out if alone for five minutes does them a disservice. A K'kree spacer will train to endure time in a vacuum suit doing a spacewalk where he can't smell his fellow crew members because they are smart enough to understand their fear and get over it. Every year, hundreds of U.S. Army Airborne School students train to overcome their natural fear of heights and falling to earn their jump wings. The same would go for a K'kree assigned to an artillery bunker or something similar.

The other substantial defining characteristic of the K'kree is their endless war against g'naak (carnivore/predator). This dates back to a war fought when the K'kree reached space, and a slower-than-light starship containing an aggressive carnivorous species came to Kirur (the K'kree homeworld). The ensuing war lasted decades and ended with the G'naak (nothing is known about the invaders, the K'kree destroyed all traces of their existence after the war) exterminated and Kirur devastated.

Once the K'kree developed the jump drive, they encountered other sentient species, many omnivores or carnivores. The K'kree solution was simple. Stop eating meat, or be exterminated. Saving The Noble Herd from a universe filled with g'naak took on every aspect of a holy crusade. Along with ancestor worship, shrines to the heroes of this Purifications are found on every K'kree world.

Many species did bow to the K'kree and had their cultures remolded to suit their new masters. Some contacted early in the development still see the K'kree as gods. Others accept survival over death. These servant races can be found on most critical K'kree worlds and serve on starships where their generally smaller size allows them to handle tasks the K'kree would find difficult.

Purification fleets still sweep out, as they have for thousands of years. The K'kree's government, the 2,000 Worlds, prefers a dead zone around their territory and claims the right to kill and g'naak found in their exclusion zone. Mostly, the Third Imperium respects this, though Vargr raiders constantly test K'kree defenses and resolve.

Now, here's my question. Does this paranoid, genocidal, reactionary species sound like they would trade with humans? We are g'naak! We are the K'krees' worst nightmare, a vast, advanced civilization made up of meat-eating species! The K'kree opinion of the Vargr is even lower. As for the Hivers, who not only are omnivores but will eat their own young while they are in the larval stage, there was a war that ended badly for the K'kree, and the 2,000 Worlds tend to ignore the Hive Federation.

The K'kree are cosmic hermits, staying inside their borders and trying to ignore the outside universe until a wave of quasi-religious mania sweeps a border region and a Purification Fleet is organized.

Next, I rip K'kree society to pieces using elephants.

This is some world-building for my planned National Novel Writing Month project and something I hope to publish eventually.

In the very near future, Earth will be conquered by aliens. They are very friendly and polite about it, and after about a day of futility trying to attack the orbiting ships, most of the world gives up. The fleet explains they represent the Chorus (that is how it is translated into most languages), a mixing bowl of thousands of civilizations and races that spread across much of this arm of the galaxy.

The Chorus is run by entities known mainly as the Directors. It is scarce to see one, as they tend to stay in their massive deep space cities and send directives out through messages and couriers. Those who have seen a Director describe them as "space jellyfish" or "electric starfish." No two Directors are the same.

Almost all technology in the Chorus is biotech. This is a hard rule from the Directors. A small amount of "good tech" is allowed, things that can't be done with biotech, like the Stutterwarp drive and most power plants for the drives, but everything else is based on living pieces of technology. Even the ships of the Chorus are living things, most with the intelligence of a housecat.

When humans asked why the Chorus existed and why so many species have put up with it for tens of thousands of years, the simple answer was "peace." The Chorus enforces peace and encourages trade and cultural exchanges between its subject worlds. To that end, the Chorus created the Trade Languages. There are 2,538 of them currently in use. Humans can speak, whistle, dance, or sign about forty.

For nearly every citizen of the Chorus, life under the Directors has become a near paradise. The biotech gifted by the Protectors lifts every member species to near post-scarcity levels, worlds are free to rule themselves as they wish, travel is almost free as most of the Chorus operates on a gift/barter economy, and advances in medicine means even a human can live a healthy 200 to 300 years if they want.

But there is a catch. The Directors are always eager to find aggressive races, species that excel at war, and seem to keep fighting them even as the stakes rise. We fit that bill, and the price for our being allowed the full benefits of the Chorus was simple. We provide a billion or so troops for an endless war the Chorus has been fighting against a foe described only as the "Machine Intelligence."

This is where the novel starts. My characters are soldiers in the war, biotech versus nanotech. The longest-serving, my protagonist, has been fighting for over twenty years. They've been told the war in this sector is over, and they are released from service. Find your own way home. Oh, and this orbital habitat will be destroyed in ten days. Good luck!

As I pointed out in my last post, the Earthdawn Barsaive setting is a close match to modern Ukraine. The designers have made it clear this was their intent. I approve because it gives a huge area for exploration and sweeping grand campaigns.

But there is a major issue. On the campaign map, the Black Sea has been replaced by a gigantic volcanic caldera. It is explicitly stated that this Death Sea fills the Black Sea's basin. Which creates huge problems when doing worldbuilding. Look, I'm as ready as anyone to accept huge magical effects in this setting, but this is just too much!

The Black Sea has a surface area of 436,400 km² (168,500 sq mi) (not including the Sea of Azov.) Lava, the proper term for liquid magma that reaches the surface, has a temperature that runs from 800 to 1,200° C (1,470 to 2,190° F). Normally, lava quickly cools into various fun forms of igneous rock. But here we're told the liquid state is constant. This is going to have extraordinary effects on every land that borders the Death Sea.

For starters, there is going to be a dead zone extending many miles from the coast. The heat, poisonous gasses, and just the ground being baked into fired clay pottery will kill everything. But that's minor compared to the climatic nightmare this would cause. As we all know, hot air rises. The air over this huge area will become superheated and rise quickly, creating an ungodly low-pressure system over the entire area. A book on climatology I read described Earth's atmosphere as desperately seeking to achieve equal pressure across the globe, but being constantly foiled by uneven heating and terrain.

Imagine the massive, constant hurricane-force winds rushing to the Death Sea. The collision of this relatively cool air and the already-heated air over the lava we'll create endless storm fronts that spiral off spawning tornados and world-shattering dry thunderstorms. The near-vacuum at the center of the sea will be a fountain of superheated air that will spread out and fall as it cools, creating storms hundreds if not thousands of miles from the sea.

Seen from space, the Death Sea would be akin to Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a never-ending cyclonic storm covering a huge area. Oh, did I mention that? Cloud cover that blots out the sun for years at a time. Given all this, most Kaers in Barsaive would open their gates, take three steps outside, and say "Well, this sucks" before resealing the gates and going back to work on 101 Ways To Spice Up Your Mushroom Stew.

Later retcons reduced the lava area to a few hundred miles around the Crimean Peninsula. But still, you have the same issues. Kīlauea showed an impact on the weather of the Big Island during its decades-long eruption. So we need a better fix.

I, of course, have one.

Let's put a Kaer on the Crimea right where Sevastopol exists. During the Time of Horrors, the Sorcerors maintaining the defenses also developed a doomsday device, a magical retribution strike that brought E=mc² into play. When a Horror did breach the defenses, the spell was triggered. Kaer, Horror, and a huge amount of territory vanished in an instant. What was left was a massive volcanic rift system that has grown to Mt. Doom proportions. The seabed cracked for hundreds of miles, releasing natural gases that ignite when they reach the surface.

So the Sea of Death becomes the Sea of Blue Fire. Life along the shoreline is still stunted and twisted, and the entire area stinks of rotten eggs and death. Sailing the affected areas is dangerous, not just because of the constant threat of fire (remember, these flames are still magical even if they come from a natural source) but because every so often a huge bubble of gas comes to the surface and explodes. Just being caught by the bubble can break your keel.

Closer to the site of the destroyed Kaer, the threat of volcanic activities rises. Plus, vengeful ghosts, Horror-touched monsters drawn to the inherent magical aura of the area, and a dragon. Because I need at least one Greater Wyrm in this place. What might be really fun is to drop clues that the Sorceror-Kings of that Kaer also built the magical equivalent of an aircraft's flight data box, holding their greatest secrets, including how to replicate the spell that destroyed the Kaer.

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I've written about Earthdawn before, as one of the great examples of what I called FASA Syndrome - great settings, mediocre rules. But in this case, FASA also managed to fumble the setting in my opinion. It all goes back to how some worldbuilders can't stand an empty space on the map. They have this need to fill every space and detail everything.

This brings me back to my concept of The Edge in settings. Adventures can only take place on the Edge. The Edge is a setting where civilization is either absent, an active threat, or simply unaware of the campaign setting because civilizations impose order. With my eyes, I have seen the oldest fragment of a legal code we know of, The Code of Ur-Nammu. It is from Mesopotamia and is written on tablets in the Sumerian language c. 2100–2050 BCE. Civilizations also make safe areas and expand those safe areas. This includes wars and genocides, of course, but also destroying predatory animals, taming rivers, improving communications and roads, patrolling those roads, and so on.

Edges are by nature unstable. The classic Wild West era lasted about 40-50 years. There was a period of about twenty years in China where things like pulp adventures would thrive. Both of these eras ended with the spread of effective law enforcement for good or bad, and social disapproval of typical "adventurer" activities. I think the longest edge I can think of in a nominally civilized area would be France during the Hundred Years' War when bands of unemployed knights rampaged around looting and blackmailing cities.

The point is that an Edge requires some absence of oversight. This brings me back to Barsaive. The default setting for Earthdawn and roughly in the same area as Ukraine. Let's review the main conceptual theme of the game.

Magic is cyclical. At the low end, magic ceases to work. The problem comes at the peak of the sine wave. when our world starts to reach that level, barriers drop and things known as Horrors can enter our world. Immensely powerful, amoral, and hungry for new victims. Cenobites meet Lovecraftian nightmares. But as the world began reaching this level a few centuries ago, a great wizard or team of wizards learned how to build a magical barrier to the Horrors. String physical defenses would be needed as well. All across the civilized world, men and dwarves began digging Kaers, deep fortified cities. There are real examples of these you can tour in Turkey.

Stores were stocked, subterranean farms started, and everyone was safely inside, the great gates of the Kaers were sealed with iron and magic across Barsaive. Well, not everyone. The immortal Obsidimen melted into their Life Stones to sleep, and the T'skrang made Kaers in deep lakes and hibernated. Many elves worked a great ritual to leave the Earth, while the few who refused paid a great price for their survival. No one knows where the Windlings hid. Then the Horrors came.

The siege lasted centuries. Every Kaer faced attacks that ranged from the brutal force of an angry god beating on the gates to subtle attempts to poison the minds of Kaerfolk. When the attacks finally ceased, when the Sorceror-Kings determined it was safe, the gates were opened. . .

. . .and the world was changed.

This is where the game should start, a recently opened Kaer that has established its first villages outside the gates and is ready to start sending out scouting parties. How has the world changed? Where are the other survivors? What Kaers failed, and why? Are there any signs of Horrors remaining? Do our old maps mean anything? Go forth and find out!

That would have been a great game. Instead, FASA gave us not only a Barsaive that was already up and running, with trade and flying ships, and all that, there was a pseudo-Mycenean empire already on the march! The Edge was already gone!

If I were to run this, I'd rewind to the one known dot on an unreliable map. A game of exploration, diplomacy, horror, and mysteries. Most Kaers would have failed, leaving much of Barsaive a howling wilderness. Ruined Kaers make great Places of Mystery; yeah, Kizen fell, but why does it look like the gates were breached from the inside?

You can do so much with this setting, build something lasting, and never really lose the Edge needed for a great campaign. One thing I'd add. If you've ever seen the 1981 Heavy Metal movie, you'll recall that in the final segment, Taarna, The evil Loc-Nar smashes into a mountain, creating a wave of mud that overwhelms a near-by village and turns them into monstrous humanoid mutants. There's the second phase of the campaign, learning of this growing army of "changed men" who capture entire villages and march them off to an unknown fate.

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This takes place after the destruction of the Empire of the Giants and the scattering of the Dragons during the Greater War of the Gods and shortly after the Races of the Tree were created. It was a Golden Age, where the Races of the Tree (humans, dwarfs, halflings, and gnomes) worked together in harmony. Some humans, however, were touched by the Corpus Infernus and roamed the lands as barbarian raiders.

The orcs were created when the demon-touched leader of the greatest barbarian horde was frustrated by his inability to break the defenses of one of the great cities of this legendary age. This leader, Grummish One-Eye, made a pact with Canarak, God of Slaughter to allow him to sack this city.

Overnight, his army was twisted into what we now know as orcs, and with their new-found ferocity, were able to destroy one of the last Golden Cities. But Grummish's triumph was short-lived, as almost immediately his army turned on itself. Grummish himself was killed and is now a demigod in the service of Canarak.

Orcs, being children of Canarak, are violent beings who kill for sport. They live in tribal groups where the strongest and most successful lead by right of force. Orc warbands raid more civilized lands as a way of proving their worth. Orcs don't care about the value of treasure beyond its value as a display of the martial prowess in stealing it.

Orc tribes tend to weed out their own weaklings through hazing and ritual combat. Some males are expelled and forced to find new bands to join. Sometimes, a tribe will grow too large and destroy itself in a frenzy of destruction. While not strictly nocturnal, orcs prefer to operate in dim light. Bands usually try to find a cave system or abandoned tomb complex as a stronghold. Since they crave combat, they will abandon an area if it lacks challenges.

Rarely, an orc will appear with the strength, charisma, and intelligence to unite the tribes into a horde. Such orcs are known as "Grummishning haqiqiy o'g'li" or a "True Son of Grummish." When a True Son appears, civilized nations tremble. The only way to end the threat is to kill the true son.

I use the D&D5e sourcebook The Book of the Righteous for my games, as it is an excellent and complete pantheon, and most of it is system-neutral. It's also fairly easy to add to in careful doses. I've added the giants as div, a variant of the first intelligent species created by the gods. Other div in the current age are the elves, fae, and other nature spirits. These specific div were touched by the primal gods of the elements to create servants. Which is why you have fire giants, storm giants, etc.

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While engaged in a discussion of Cyberpunk tropes everyone is tired of in TTRPGs, one person mentioned the pervasive Asian Chic feeling, with Japanese zaibatsu dominating the world, ninjas, and the entire manga/anime feel.

I agree heartily. What I want to see, and may have to write for the SWADE Cyberpunk system, is a setting where the African Renaissance is full speed ahead and the US and China have been greatly reduced in influence. African corporations are the big influences, African music is hot, and the current First World players like the US and China are collapsing.

Having a campaign set in Mombassa would be really cool, as you have a totally different feel and all of the Continent to play in. You could even ignore the US. Scandanavian mercenaries, Ukrainian bankers, Arab and Indian factors, and a dozen languages are spoken in the new Sprawl as Mombassa (and the space elevator just offshore) have made this city ground zero for intrigue.

What would make this setting unique is Mombassa is an old, old city. It dates back to at least the 14th century. It has ancient mosques mixed in with modern areas. I love the idea of Old Africa meeting New Africa.

And you have all of Africa to play in!

Yeah, I need to write this. I'll be using Sprawlrunners, a cyberpunk Savage Worlds rule set for this. Does anyone want to help?

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This, after much research, is how I see the bridge and the surrounding deck area of the FFS Rube Goldberg which is a very important setting in my project. I really want to hear from Navy and Coast Guard veterans.

Deck 3 of the Rube Goldberg is home to the main bridge. The bridge itself is an octagonal space. At the center is the command chair, used by the Captain or the Officer of the Deck whenever the Captain is off the bridge. This station has a control panel on a swing arm if the OIC (Officer in Charge) wants to examine a specific detail of the ship's operations directly.

Directly in front of this station is a fairly large holographic display. Normally, this is used to track the position of the Rube Goldberg in relation to its assigned battle group. In combat situations, it can be used to monitor threats and the Captain can direct the ship's escorts based on this information. The display can also provide information on the ship's status, updates on replenishment or repair operations on other ships, as well as a variety of live camera shots, both from fixed cameras and remote platforms.

To the left of the display is the Maneuvering station. Here the two pilots (normally an experienced Petty Officer and a rating) work in concert, controlling the ship's movement along the three axises as directed by the commander. Also at this station are an engineering PO who monitors the performance of both the six main drives as well as the maneuvering thrusters. Supervising them is the Maneuver Officer.

To the left of that station is the Environmental Control station. Manned by a Petty Officer and a Rating, they monitor the interior status of the ship, everything from gravity control to O₂ levels and the health of the ship's solid waste recycling plant. Most of their job is watching, as the actual work is spread out through the ship.

To the immediate right of the display is Sensor Analysis. Manned by a junior officer and Chief Petty Officer, this station takes in all the information coming from the various sensors, as well as updates from the Battle Group, and organizes it for the main display. They have a team on Deck 4 That does the initial filtering and analysis.

On their right is Communications. Responsible both for exterior and interior communications, this station is manned by the Communications Chief (a CPO) and two operators. They work closely with the sensors crew so message masers are aimed correctly.

Behind the Captain's Chair is Operations Management. As the Rube Goldberg is a Fleet Repair/Supply Ship, this station is a repeater for the one in the Operations Master Control Center on Deck 33. When the ship is engaged in any evolution involving the transfer of materials, repairs, or anything else where OMC is active, a team from the repair and logistics crew will be on the bridge, updating schedules and answering that commander's questions. This station is a holotable, about 1x2 meters, with workstations built in. This is the one station not equipped with seating, although emergency acceleration couches can be rolled out from the back wall.

The space is crowded, with multiple monitors, control panels; and the walls have multiple emergency air hook-up stations, firefighting equipment, and plaques filled with operational procedures and warnings. every station has a binder with printed checklists and troubleshooting guides. The lighting is usually kept dim to reduce eye strain and make the holotank easier to read.

There are two entrances to the bridge. The one to the left of the holotank as you face it is known as the Captain's Hatch and opens onto his office and underway cabin. The one to the right leads to the lift area, a security station, the midrats galley, and the "crash room" and space outfitted with bunks for quick naps during extending operations. Also on this deck are the Navigation Center (Real Space) and the office of the ship's feared head of the FIS, Fleet Internal Security. It should be noted that there is an entrance to the Captain's Office off the main corridor and that Internal Security is posted both at the Lift Lobby, and at the hatches to the Bridge and the Captain's office, as they are quite close to each other.

These are hatches heavy, manual, and designed to hold pressure.

So, what did I fuck up? What did I miss?

OK, what did I miss?

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. . . the jokes they embed in the articles.

For those not familiar with it, Hârn is an island just off the northwest coast of the Lythian continent on the fictional world of Kèthîra. It is roughly analogous to Great Britain in the 8th Century. The northern portion of the island has been conquered by Ivinians (the setting's Vikings) and the island is divided between several kingdoms and one republic.

It is an amazing detailed setting with decades of work behind it. As originally designed, the setting was issued as articles designed to be placed in a three-ring binder. Recently, Columbia Games has begun doing Kickstarters for kingdom books. The second of these is the Kingdom of Melderyn. Melderyn is an interesting place. While Hârn is generally a low-magic setting, it is present, and the island of Melderyn and the later kingdom are centers of magical power and learning.

The capital city of Melderyn is Cherafir, which is the only port in Hârn where trade with the Lythian states is allowed to pass through. It is a bustling port city and gets its own article in the kingdom book. These articles include detailed maps of the city, its districts, and places of interest. Every district has a listing of interesting and important buildings, characters, and plot hooks. And the occasional land mine.

I shall quote from the Cherafir article, this part detailing the Alienage, the quarter reserved for those passing through with no right to enter the city proper.

E39 Tenement

This three story block is owned by Sarin of Eyloch [C13]. The most interesting resident is Stenyl of Rogern, a crippled beggar who may be found plying his trade on the docks. Stenyl is a former seaman who is paralyzed from the waist down. He has enormous upper body strength and is more than capable of handling ruffians intent on robbing him. Stenyl loathes Lavro of Dulkai [E37]. Six months ago, he beat the pimp severely after objecting to the way Lavro was "disciplining" one of his women.

Stenyl claims to have served with Baret of Nolda, a notorious merchant sea captain from Tarkain. Baret was as much a pirate as a mercantyler and there are many tales of his daring raids against unwary ships and Shorkyni ports. At the peak of his career about 15 years ago, the sight of Baret's personal flag (three black rings on a field of green) or his ship (the "Black Joke") was feared by honest seamen from Karejia to Harbaal.

Barret disappeared around 707 and is speculated to have perished in the Cape Renda disaster. If Stenyl knows the truth of the matter, he has kept it to himself. It may be noteworthy, however, that Stenyl calls himself "the last of Baret's privateers."

Ouch.

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Current Location: Santa Clara, CA
Current Music: One freaking guess.

As part of the Blue Rose setting Kickstarter, I also received a second book, The Book of Fiends - A Malefic Bestiary for Fifth Edition. I've always loved the Lower Planes as a great source of adventures at higher levels. The mastermind behind everything the party has been fighting is an Arch Devil or the party has to enter the Abyss to recover an artifact, whatever. Demons, devils and the netherworld make a great change of pace at higher levels.

It's a great book. What challenged me as a GM/worldbuilder is integrating it with both the established pantheon of The Book of the Righteous and the descriptions of the Netherrealms in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. For example, TBotR describes Asmodeus as a fallen God, Ruling Hell while plotting the overthrow of the Court of Light. The BoF describes Asmodeus' abode in the Ninth Hell as being a frozen wasteland, whereas in TBotR he was once the Elemental God of Fire. Those kinds of things are easy to smooth over.

A bigger issue comes with how Hell and the Abyss are connected. Both TBoF and MToF agree that the "uppermost" layers of both Hell and the Abyss are marked by contact warfare between the two realms. This is easier to justify using the old-school model of the outer planes. But in TBotR, Hell and the Abyss are separate spheres in the Great Sphere, connected by the Black River. How to account for vast armies moving back and forth? Luckily, there's an answer in TBoF. Seere is the Demon Patron of Portals. Delighting in destroying the lawful order of the multiverse, Seere Could easily open a gateway for the Hordes of the Abyss to pour through into Hell.

There's still the issue of Gehenna, the plane where Neutral Evil souls end up. Of course, there's nothing stopping me from adding a new sphere, is there?

There was one Demon Lord whose write-up gave me an idea for an entire campaign. I'll write about that tomorrow.

Current Mood: sick
Current Location: Santa Clara, CA

I hate murder hobo TTRPG campaigns. That's where the characters wander around looking for things to kill and loot. That's it. It was fine in the early days when role-playing was still heavily influenced by war/miniature games, but we are so far past that.

A good game has a hook, an overarching plot that may not even be readily apparent at the beginning. Think of the first season of Babylon 5, where events happened, there were adventures, but only one character even suspected that the Shadows were returning. There were, if I may steal the name of one of the best episodes of that season, signs and portents, but the full push of the Shadow War only really got started in Season 2.

I guess at this point I should remind people who may not remember these elements of the plot structure that are so useful in designing campaigns.

Every campaign needs a push to get the characters moving along and a reason to keep going. In Romancing the Stone the push is finding the legendary emerald. A push can be the heat of war, a natural disaster, or a charge from a patron or employer. The push is towards a goal: finding the emerald, stopping the war, or saving people from the disaster. The push is forced movement to advance the plot. Most scenarios inside a campaign should have some element that pushes the plot forward.

Next, you have the pull, which is usually some reward or pay-off that the characters are striving for. The dragon's horde, learning the truth behind the X-files after stopping the conspiracy. . . something the players and their characters want. Killing or otherwise disposing of the main villain can be a pull that grows on the players as they deal with the baddie over and over, never quite winning. The push and pull should be related in some way.

The enigma is the main mystery to be unraveled by the characters throughout the campaign. Finding the Lost City, deciphering the code needed to save the world, learning why the colony ship was found abandoned; all are mysteries that can make a campaign's worth of adventures to solve. One of my favorite enigmas comes from the 70s kid show Land of the Lost, where the questions of who built the land, how the pylons and gems worked, and how to escape were slowly answered over the show's run. (And I need to win the lottery to get a really good reboot done on Netflix or something. It was good science-fiction, damnit!) Answering pieces of the enigma are great rewards during an adventure.

Finally, the MacGuffin. This is the thing, person, or place that is either the focus of a quest, important to resolving the campaign or simply drives the plot. The falcon statue from The Maltese Falcon is perhaps the most famous of these; as it drives the entire movie and only shows up in the last ten minutes (naq vg gheaf bhg gb or snxr.) The One Ring was a MacGuffin, as were the Death Star plans. The MacGuffin is the essential thing in the campaign.

What makes me think of this is I'm still noodling with my Pirate elves of the Caribbean concept and I was thinking about what to hang a game on. Why would these people be hacking their way through dinosaur and lizardman-infested jungles, fighting Aztec zombie armies, and trading cannon fire on the high seas with dwarf pirates in their smoke-belching ironclads?

Well, I was in the porcelain reading room, and I passed the time by reading one of our Bathroom Readers when I found an article about the crystal skulls. Bingo! In this setting, the elves and dwarfs fled the Americas because the elf empire panicked when they realized they were losing their war with the dwarfs and summon something very, very big. The resulting magical storm destroyed both states and twisted the land. Now, the barrier has finally been broken, and these new old lands and being explored, looted, and fought over.

The crystal skulls, twelve is a good number, were either used in the magic ritual that destroyed everything or created by them, still exists, but have been scattered. John Dee, still alive at 146, has learned that the Ottoman Sultan has dispatched agents to find the skulls to finally crush the remaining Christina world!

He must be stopped, but to move openly would upset the delicate balance of power between the Islamic Caliphate in Iberia and North Africa and the Dual Crowns of England and France, no, he must turn to his agents, they hardy and resourceful men and elves who serve in. . .Their Majesties' Sorcerous Service!

The push is obvious, find the skulls before the enemy does. The pull is the riches the agents can gain both in terms of gold and lost knowledge and power. The enigma is where the skulls have been flung to, and the MacGuffin of course is the skulls.

See how that works? With one idea and those four plot elements, I have the framework for a campaign. I could even cut it back to one skull, which might work better. But now I have a roadmap for adventure. Oh, there's one more thing. . . The twist.

John Dee wants the skulls to make himself the ruler of all Europe as an immortal lich-king.

Or not. You never know, but planting clues is fun!

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Santa Clara, CA
Current Music: My Chemical Romance - I Don't Love You

One of the all-time problems in table-top role-playing games is why the characters are traveling around slaying monsters and gathering loot. "What's my motivation?" as the classic plea from actors goes. Many players establish elaborate backstories and long-term goals for characters, but rarely is the question asked: why are we going in this direction right now?

Well, I think I've found a good answer to that. I'm currently reading a great biography of Harald Hardrada who early in his life followed the river trade routes from Scandinavia through Russia to Constantinople. Other routes rand down to the Caspian Sea and on to Baghdad. The flow of trade in the 11th century was heavy and extremely profitable.

But it was a hard road. The trip one-way takes months; rowing up rivers, porting around rapids and between rivers, in some cases simply selling your boat at a settlement and carrying all your goods a few miles to the settlement on the next river where you buy a boat left by a merchant going in the opposite direction. Despite the claims of the rulers of Kyjevŭ (Kyiv), the vast reaches of the route are still harried by Bulgars and Pechenegs, and pirates are rife on the big lakes and in the Black Sea.

Sounds like fun, yes? Now add fantasy elements. I've always thought that the Pechenegs were a great candidate to be replaced by a goblinoid state. They were aggressive, hard to rule, and never became Romanized like so many other Turkic peoples. The wild forests of the Kievian Rus can hold orc tribes, strange cults, feywoods, and just mundane threats like river pirates. There are also social situations to deal with, like coming into a settlement where the local king just died, and the newcomers are asked to adjudicate the succession because the gods sent them.

So, who is traveling? Along with the merchant-captain and a crew of NPC rowers/spear-carriers, you have a chance for a Canterbury Tales collection of backstories and motivations. The key question is simple: why do you need to go to Constantinople? (or Baghdad.) Fighter types might be attracted by word that the Roman Emperor hires Northern fighters for an elite bodyguard that pays well in gold. A cleric might be carrying a report to the Patriarch, along with a gift of a holy book decorated in amber and gems. you might have a journeyman wizard returning to his master after his required year-and-a-day sojourn in the world. Bards bring new tales to tell, a rogue who is an escaped thrall. . .the key is to have them all have a reason for being on the boat, and a reason to have an interest in completing the journey.

After that, it's just adventures and encounters. This, I think, would be a great way to build a real team, rather than the old "you are in a tavern, and old man approaches you" style of bringing a group together. You can even establish lasting foes, allies, and long-term plots during the voyage. The best part is, no matter which route you take (and there were several) the PC's end up in one of the 11th century's great metropolises in a time of great change and challenges.

And if they decide to just get rich by heading back north. . . that's another adventure to be had!

As always, all comments and ideas are welcomed.

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Santa Clara, CA
Current Music: Avatar - Ready For The Ride

I'm doing a little work on my Elvish Pirates of the Caribbean setting for Savage Worlds. Magic! Steampunk dwarves! Lost cities! Lizardmen! Zombie Aztec warriors! High adventure and ripped bodices!

The basic concept is this. There used to be vast dwarf and elvish empires in the Americans, the dwarfs mainly in the mountains of South and Central America, and the Elves in North America. They, of course, were constantly at war along with their human client states.

The dwarfs, being mad scientists, were getting the upper hand. So the elves did something very stupid. They summoned something much bigger than their collective heads.

Several years later, in the mid 11th century, two fleets sailed out of the Atlantic Ocean to Europe. The Elves landed first in Ireland and Great Britain, the dwarfs in Umayyad-controlled Iberia. Elf magic and dwarf science rewrote Europe.

The year is 1673. In 1492 a Genoan Navigator-Sorceror managed to break the Great Barrier that prevented ships from traveling back to the old lands of the empires. Now, the United Kingdoms of Britain and France (also known as the Royaume-Uni de France et Grande-Bretagne) duels with the Emirate of Al-Andalus to resettle and loot the remains of the lost cities.

But much has changed! Now strange lizard men roam the jungles, riding monstrous beasts and loosing trained attack lizards that are faster than a horse on their enemies. Strange ruins are found that don't appear on any map. And the islands of the Sea of Storms are thick with pirates of every nation. One thing that terrifies everyone is every attempt to settle the northern continent has failed. All expeditions have vanished. Some say that whatever the Elves summoned so long ago is still there, and it is hungry. . .

Current Mood: bitchy
Current Location: Santa Clara, CA
Current Music: My Chemical Romance - The End

As always, I read history mostly for education, but with one eye on things I can steal for my gaming and fiction settings. The travels of ibn Battuta have been a goldmine for both.

But this one comes from when Battuta was in what is now Souther Iran, near the city of Shiraz. Hus guides tell him that the wastes they were covering were unpassable for two months in the summer, as the winds blow so hot that anyone who braved them would die, and that if a man's friends tried to wash his body for burial, it would simply fall apart.

I did a little fact-checking, and that part of southern Persia does get seasonal hot, dry windstorms, similar to the Santa Ana winds here in California. Dangerous, yes, but not as deadly as reported. Unless we put the winds in a fantastic setting. . .

Pick a stretch of blasted desert in your campaign world. As I tend to use a fantasy version of Europe and North Africa, I'll use the Sahara. Now, in my setting, there was a great Dwarf Empire that stretched across most of North Africa when it was still grasslands. Human clients or slaves worked the land, and the dwarfs protected them from their mountain redoubts.

One of the greatest dangers facing the empire was the periodic appearances by the demon lord Yeenougu, who was able to somehow manifest himself in central Africa at least six times in recorded history. The Visitations, as the records call them, resulted in Yeenougu creating vast mobs of gnolls and hyenas which he would send on invasions of the fertile Sahara lands.

During the Fourth Visitation, a team of human and dwarf wizards combined in a magical ritual designed to destroy the approaching horde and the demon lord himself. They created a huge firestorm that raged for weeks, destroy the gnolls, and banishing Yeenogu. But they miscalculated the power they were harnessing and were unable to fully dismiss the storm. Now, every summer, when the winds begin to blow hot wise beings run for their lives.

Because what begins as hot winds will soon develop into raging gales, and wind-blown dust will give way to burning ember and sheets of flame. Being from the Pillar of Fire appear, and rage uncontrolled. At their peak, the fire winds consume everything, leaving not ever ash, just scorched rock. Then the winds and fires die down, and in a few weeks, they are gone for the next year.

Sounds good, right? Let's make it better!

The dwarfs, knowing that Yeenougu was not the only threat from the mysterious South, built lines of forts along their southern borders. Knowing that even with the fire winds, the borders still needed to be guarded, they built tunnels between the forts and turned them into storehouses, deep wells, and barracks. The only entrances are in the now ruined forts and require special keys to enter. . . unless you are in the fort when the fire winds start to blow, in which case they will open for any dwarf.

So you have a linear dungeon that is at least a hundred miles long, a Maginot Line of forgotten chambers. Who knows what the dwarfs left behind, and who knows what has crept in?

Now, placing this wonder. . . looking at the Sahara, I think the Tanezrouft works well. It's utter dry, desolate, and no one dares live there.

This is why I love worldbuilding. Three lines in the journals of a 14th-century traveler have created not just a place of danger, but a place of mystery that has a reason to be there!

Oh, and those wizards? They did this working in around 4200 BCE. Their magic caused the desertification of the Sahara and hastened the fall of the dwarf empire.

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Santa Clara, CA

I've really been enjoying The Travels of Ibn Battúta. As this is a travelogue dictated from memory of a journey that lasted nearly thirty years, he does make mistakes and confuses the timing of some of his side trips, but it is an amazing read.

One thing stood out to me as great window dressing for an RGP setting or a story. At the time of Ibn Battúta's travels, the cult of the "12th Iman" was extremely strong in Shi'ite areas of the Persian Empire. In the city of Shiraz, Ibn Battúta observed a curious custom. Every night, the men of the city would go into the streets armed for battle. They would march to the governor's house and demand a horse or mule equipped with saddle and tack.

Then, horns blaring, drums pounding, the men singing and waving their swords, they would proceed to the main mosque. This was a mosque where a well-regarded Iman supposedly vanished years before. The men would come to the mosque, and start to chant for the 12th Iman to come forth and help them rid the land of evil and inequity. This would last until the call for evening prayer.

Now put this in a fantasy setting. Imagine such a scene in a RuneQuest game, with Orlanhti warriors calling for a great hero to rise. Can you imagine the spirits that would be drawn to this event? Even if you make an event that only happens on the god's holy days, it still would be a wonderful piece of flavor, and a fun thing for characters of that cult to take part in.

Now imagine that the doors open and the Hero emerges. . .

Current Mood: hungry
Current Location: Santa Clara, CA
Current Music: Avatar - Black Waltz

There's a joke that makes its way around TTRPG places every so often.

DM: "The cavern is pitch black, and you. . . "
Player 1: "Darkvision."
Player 2: "Darkvision."
Player 3: "Darkvision."
Player 4: "Darkvision."

The simple fact is that in D&D5e nearly every playable race has fucking darkvision. Dwarfs, elves, gnomes, half-elves, half-orcs, and tieflings all have darkvision. Humans, Dragonborn, and halflings are the poor critters that can't see in the dark. As a Dungeon Master, it's frustrating, and to me, sloppy design to eliminate the need for torches or lanterns.

Let's face it, of that list only dwarfs and gnomes are really good candidates for having darkvision, and I'm being generous. The justification for some of the other species having this trait makes me laugh. Elves are used to living in dim forests? I was an infantryman, I learned to use all my senses to navigate the woods at night.

What follows are a few house rules I'm considering.

Dwarfs still have darkvision, they thrive underground and even though their halls are well lit, they can operate in near-total darkness.

Elves lose darkvision but gain exceptional sight and hearing. They get an advantage on Perception checks and can see much farther than most.

Gnomes have enough advantages already, so I'm taking darkvision and giving them a +1 to any characteristic at generation.

Half-elves get the same benefit as the elves.

Half-orcs lose darkvision but gain a +2 to both STR and CON.

Tieflings keep the trait.

I'm just doing my part to make the adventuring world a bit darker.

Current Mood: geeky
Current Location: Santa Clara, CA

I'm finally going to get a start on my project of integrating the larger D&D multiverse into the amazing The Book of the Righteous (BotR) from Green Ronin. In case you missed my previous posts on BotR, it is a complete pantheon of gods and a full cosmological structure. It includes a Great Church that encompasses the worship of all the gods (something missing in other setting religions) as well as heresies, divine and infernal critters, and rules for playing fully-fleshed out clerics. It seriously is one of the best books I've ever bought for D&D.

But there is an issue when it comes to applying BotR to a game setting. BotR gives the origin of several races. Dragons were born out of Kador's fire in the Great War of the Gods. Elves and the Fey are descendants of the Div, the first race to inhabit the world, as are all the genies. Four races were born of fruits hanging from Eliwyn, the Tree of Life: gnomes, dwarfs, halflings, and humans. And that's it. No mention of orcs, giants, or any of the hosts of intelligent species you can find in the Monster Manual or other supplements.

The easiest thing to do is to just insert these species without comment. I seriously doubt any player is going to stop a game session to inquire about the theological implications of the Kuo-toa or to inquire about the creation of the hobgoblins. But I'm the kind of guy who wants to fill in the blanks, and I want to do it in a way that respects the tight pantheon and story structure of the BotR.

The first step is editing. Foes are like seasoning, adding too many spices ruins the experience. Look at the whole span of J.R.R. Tolkein's works and count the actual monster types in them. The count is pretty low. He created amazing works with goblins, orcs, Uruk-hai, giant spiders, a dragon here and there, and a few unique foes like the balrog. This is an important rule: just because it is in an official publication doesn't mean you have to use it. Take for example the Bullywug (MM p35). While an aggressive humanoid frog is interesting, it doesn't fit in my Fantastic Europe setting, so I can ignore it. Dungeon Masters should always strive to avoid the "kitchen sink" approach to foes.

But that still leaves us with any number of classic foes that lie outside the creation stories of the BotR. I'm going to use a shortcut to handle a whole lot of them right now. Most of the monsters classified as humanoid share an origin with humans. Go back to when Eliwyn bore the fruit containing the four Peoples of the Tree. Each fruit has a just-so story explaining why each race is the way it is. For humans, the chaotic goddess of madness and inspiration, Zheenkeef ate the fruit, and it made her quite ill. Morwyn, the goddess of healing, make Zheenkeef vomit up her stomach contents, and all the gods put together what they found there.

No one said being a god was an easy job. This story is used to explain why humans can look so different, but let's take it a step further. Zheenkeef's puke also accounts for many of the humanoid foes, especially the goblin types, the goblins, bugbears, and hobgoblins. I have plans for the orcs and kobolds, so I'm excluding them.

Finally, as I embark on this, I want to state a few goals. I want to make as few changes to the existing BotR story as possible;e. I'm not going to layer on new gods. Instead, I'm going to use things like existing gods having different names, demi-gods in service of the true gods, intercessory figures, and the like. I want to keep BotR as the primary source and to create some moral quandaries. That Hobgoblin army is made up of children of the Tree, just like your forces, In the eyes of the Great Church, do elves, being descendants of the Div, have souls? I'll be playing with these themes.

First up, by popular request. . . An ancient act of cowardice being paid for today. The dragons in your basement, the cursed of Tiamat, the kobolds.

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Santa Clara, CA
Current Music: Tool -jimmy

One of the toughest questions in assembling a TTRPG group has to be "why are you all working together?" The usual random assortment of races (some of which hate each other,) classes and goals can make it hard to understand why this team doesn't just split the spoils and got their own way after the first big score.

I'm going to discuss one of my favorite methods, and I was inspired to do this after being reminded of the story of ibn Battuta, a 14th-century scholar and lawyer from Tangiers who set out to spend a year or two doing the Hajj and came home 26 years later having seen much of the world. You can see an amusing take on his adventures in these videos. The idea of the traveler in distant lands isn't a new one, we do have Marco Polo and Pánfilo de Narváez as excellent examples of this sort of adventure.

But it rarely shows up in TTRPGs for some reason. This is a shame because you can have so much fun and take the player-characters to new lands where new and interesting things will try to eat them! Or enslave them or get them involved in a plot to overthrow the evil snake people. . . you get my drift.

I'll admit that his sort of game does require a bit more world-building than mapping out yet another dungeon, but there are so many good, detailed settings, not to mention the real world, that the diligent GM just needs to fill in the blanks on the map. Pick a starting point, pick the initial endpoint, and add in a few side trips and you're off!

As an example, using the real world, let's say one player, a low-level cleric in Aachen, is charged with carrying a case of letters from the Archbishop to a church synod happening in Constantinople. This is when Session Zero becomes very important. We need to add each character to this group and give them a reason to join the trek all the way to the end. A fighter might be attached to the Archbishop's guard and be sent as protection. A ranger might be hired to scout the way. An arcane magic use might be friends or related to one of the established characters, you see how this is going.

The best part is you can use these character motivations to establish side trips along the way. The Wizard might offer her services in exchange for a side trip to Prague, City of Mages, so she can call on her order's home and make a report. Which becomes an adventure in itself! You can do this for each character, which gives each of their players starring roles as you go along.

What happens when the party finally reaches Constantinople and delivers the goods? Well, after some adventures in the Queen of Cities where they foil a plot to kill everyone at the synod, they might learn that the Princes of Rajputana are offering money, titles, and land to anyone who comes to help them finally end the threat of the Rakshasa Lords.

Of course, once they accomplish that, they'll be shown an opportunity to travel even further in pursuit of a greater goal, and so on.

Running this game almost cries out for a flow chart, as you can use it to track not only each stage of each journey but also those lovely side trips that are going to be half the fun. Using a flowchart lets you plan for how to move the party back on track, and how to maneuver them into places you need them to be without railroading them. If the next major waypoint is the City of Screaming Statues, does it matter if they walk in, arrive in a stolen pirate ship, or emerge from a cave after sacking the Derrow stronghold?

You can also build in something that is very important: stumbling blocks. All three of the great voyagers I mentioned gained and lost as they traveled. That needs to happen to the party. They are shipwrecked, and all their armor and ger except for a few precious items are lost. The Mad ilKhan imprisons them, and they escape with nothing but the clothes on their backs and few spears. Steal their money, steal their goodies, and leave them to figure out a way to climb back on top again.

Also plan for the players to pause for a time, especially if they get good jobs. The DMG has good rules for this, but wintering in a fortified inn, or waiting out a religious festival are other reasons to slow them down if need. Illness, war, and insurrection are always good, especially if they trigger an uprising against foreigners (guess who our characters are in this instance?)

Finally, one great strength of this type of game, is it allows players and characters to come and go with relative ease to the ongoing story. If Mike is tired of playing his Rogue, that character announcing he's from the city they are in and retires. Easy enough to introduce a new character in the next stop on the itinerary.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Santa Clara, CA
Current Music: Bing Crosby & Bod Hope - The Road the Morocco

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Douglas Berry

October 2023

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Douglas E. Berry

Are we getting ugly or are we getting old?

Entries tagged with worldbuilding

A quick Sunday idea

My tools for writing.

Campaign seeds are everywhere.

A Modest Proposal Concerning the K'kree.

Welcome the Chorus

More fiddling with Barsaive. We have a slight problem on the map.

A Return to Barsaive.

Since I'm in a world-building mood, meet my Orcs.

I'll probably use Sprawlrunners for this.

This is for my NaNoWriMo Project, criticism and suggestions wanted!

The Third-Best Thing About Hârnworld Is. . .

Demons and tying game books together.

Because the hook brings you back. . .

Getting there is all the fun, a campaign concept.

Bodicies will be ripped!

More inspiration from ibn Battuta

History is great. Steal from it!

I hate darkvision.

Who are all you people? (Book of the Righteous Project)

There and back. . . no, wait! Let's go there next!