The Fifth Game of Christmas

Previous Games of Christmas: Alternity, Star Wars, Mage, Transhuman Space

H'okay folks, strap yourselves in for this one. This game right here is one of my all time, hands down, no holds barred, favorite games of all time. I know it is a little odd to do two games that use essentially the same system from the same company, but this game is so good it needed to be here. This is an example of a game that does nearly everything right, and that is impressive considering how much was going against it. It is the third game in a series of games, and it is the prequel to the two other games. It had to encompass the abilities from the previous games, and yet still have a completely different tone and feel. Coming into this game I was a fan of the two previous, but I was a little leery of it. But oh man, this game does everything right. So lets get to it, yeah? Get your rocket belt and your ray gun, grab your panama hat, ready your zeppelin and get ready for...

Adventure!

This game is set in 1924 and is a game of pulp adventure. You play members of a group of do-gooders and philanthropists. You can play someone with super powers, psychic abilities, or just your wits and your daring do. I have run this game so many times and every time I love it. I have had mysterious treasure maps, Intelligent gorillas who worship a mutated giant gorilla, Dinosaurs, alien invasions, Journeys to the hollow earth, or even to other times and dimensions all together. I have even used the system to run games set in a pulpy high fantasy Roman Empire(which one day I will probably write out as a whole setting, though it was pretty close ro Hunters of Alxeandria). This game is fantastic. Don't wait for the end of the review, go out and buy the game right now. You will not regret it.

Peritextual Elements
The game starts off with a delightful conceit, its cover is in the design of the old pulp covers and it looks mysterious, dangerous, and full of adventure. The art inside is very sketchy and, again, fits the feel of the old pulps. It has a frenetic and energetic feel to everything. Its nice. The first half of the book has no mechanics and is just short stories and world building. The font looks like old fashioned typeface, and again it just screams pulp. The headings and titles are all solidly differentiated. The book also is clear and easy to read without getting into backgrounds that are too dark or too busy. The sidebars are well set out and easily understood. The only real issue I have with it is that sometimes it can be a little difficult to find what you are looking for in the moment.

Mechanics
The mechanics are basically the same as for Mage(see my previous review), save that the target number is set at seven for every roll. What you are no aiming for is the number of successes. This simple change really simplifies the game play. Also added to this game are a couple of small subsystems for inventing new things and improving existing things. They are fairly simple and if you do not wish to engage in them they are easy enough to set aside. Characters also get power based on what type of hero they wish to be, Stalwarts(people with superpowers), Mentalists(people with psychic abilities), or Daredevils(your average plucky hero with no powers. Each set of powers are self contained and interact with the rules in a way that makes a Stalwart feel very different in play from a daredevil or a mentalist, even if you focus on the same role in the game. It is a solid achievement.

Finally we get to the biggest change to the system. You get a number of special points that allow you to alter the game world. These points are not in character(though some in character powers use them), they are a meta fictional economy that allow you to take control of the story for a little bit. When you wish to change something you may spend these points to do so, the bigger and more obvious the change the more points it costs. For example, if you are pinned down by Thule Cultists in a Nepalese bar and you have no weapons or gear you could spend a point to say you had a knife in your boot.. It would two or three to say that a pistol or sub machine gun happened to be in a nearby cabinet, and it would cost maybe five or six points to say that the local authorities show up and attack the cultists because they are wanted in these parts. As you can see the use of these points is incredibly powerful and it really makes the game feel fun as the players can add whatever cool stuff they want to see. In a lot of ways I see this system as a precursor to fate points in Fate. Maybe I am imagining things though.

Setting
Oh my gosh, the setting. You guys, the SETTING! you wouldn't think it would be all that impressive as it is just real world history seen through a pulp lens, but it is just so good. It starts off with a short story by Warren Ellis. Yes that Warren Ellis. Its pretty good. There are also two stories by Greg Stoltze. Yes that Greg Stoltze. And if I am completely honest with myself, Greg's stories are quite a bit better and more in theme with the game than Warren's. That is not to say Warren Ellis' story was bad, far from it. It is a fun read. I just enjoy Greg Stoltze's stories a little better. Aside form the stories the game break down the secret societies and strange places in the world. Some of my favorites? Baron Zorbo and his balloon armada, he wants to move everyone into cities in the sky and leave the earth free to grow plants. To do this he needs crystals from the hollow earth, and fights a war with the intelligent people who dwell therein. Another lovely one is the plateau in South America where dinosaurs and all sorts of cool things exist, its basically Land of the Lost. Then there is Shamballa, and the Murder Society, ancient Egyptian cultists, an evil national geographic type organization, and so much more. It also introduces you to the Aeon Society, which it is assumed you will be a member of. It was formed a year prior and it seeks to find out all the hidden mysteries of the world and make the world a safer, better place.

Oh right I forgot the key thing. that's how into this setting I am I get bogged down in details. So a little while back their was this scientist inventor type guy, right? His name was Hammersmith. He built this device that supposedly tapped into Telluric energy, which is ill defined and super important. He invites all these people(including a bunch of folks who would later form the core of the Aeon Society), to see he cool telluric engine. Any way, it explodes and floods the world with telluric energy. Have you watched The Flash show? It was like the particle accellerator exploson in that, but in the twenties. So all over the world suddenly people and places start getting powers and all that. So that is the birth of super powers and psychic abilities, and maybe even the birth of the strange luck daredevils seem to exhibit. One of these guys who was there was Max. And Max was right in front of the device when it blew. He got unstuck in time and was now in the far future. He sees all sorts of problems and when he finally figures out how to get back to his own time, max sets up the Aeon Society to change the future and make it brighter. So that is the setting...basically. Though I think you should get the game and read it for yourself. It is a delight to read.

Next time...

Feng Shui

Fourth Game of Christmas

Previously: Alternity, Star Wars, Mage

Today is going to be a tough one. I really like this game and it was incredibly influential on me, but man it is just going to be hard to do a review in the same format as the previous reviews. That is because I will not be doing a game in the same sense as the previous review. I will instead be doing a setting for a game. So this one may be a little shorter than the others.Today I will be reviewing...

Transhuman Space

Lets start out with this. This game is for GURPS, and I have a love hate relationship with GURPS. On the one hand I really do not like the system. It is just not for me. But on the other hand the setting books are pretty darn fantastic. Their books are better researched than some textbooks I have used in the two times I have been in college. So why do I like Transhuman Space as a game? I think it is because this was the setting that made me buy GURPS, play GURPS, and even enjoy GURPS. And that is a lot to ask from a setting.

Peritextual Elements
The cover(s) for the books in the series are quite evocative and drew me into the setting immediately. That said, within the books the layout is GURPS standard. With the bulk of the text filling out the interior columns and the sidebars all handled a a column on the outside edge of the page. If you have seen one GURPS Book you know what I am talking about for Layout. It is easy to read and easy to follow along. It is serviceable. The book is black and white and utilitarian. It depends on the ideas presented to carry the book. The books are pretty well indexed and it is pretty easy to find what you are looking for. The books are very information dense, so be ready for a bit of a sit and a read. I don't dislike the visuals, but they are not amazing either.

Mechanics
OK so the GURPS system. It is an attribute and skill, task oriented system, with loads of fiddly subsystems and all that. It is point buy, so your GM will tell you the maximum number of points you can spend on your character and you must make it fit within that boundary. The GM will also often tell you the maximum number of points you may gain from disadvantages. this is due to how open the game is. There re so many disadvantages and such that if you don't limit it the game will rapidly become over powered and silly. This is one of many things I dislike about disadvantages that offer upfront benefit rather than ongoing benefit.

To do a task you roll three six sided dice(3d6) and are looking for low numbers. You are seeking to get a number below your skill level. A roll of 3 is always a success, and a roll of 18 s always a failure. There are bunches of subsystems and add-ons and methods of changing the shape of play. With GURPS the GM must decide what they are cutting back from the system rather than what to add. This is one of the grand old Kitchen sink systems, and overall it is not bad. That said it is way to fiddly for me, so outside of Transhuman space I don't care to play it all that much. Why do I love Transhuman Space in this system? Well I think it is because the setting is just as fiddly and open as GURPS is. You can play it anywhere from gritty and hyper realistic to super powerful and anime-esque. Its all over the place and it somehow fits perfectly with GURPS.

Setting
OK the setting. I love the setting. the game is set in the near future. It is pretty hard sci fi, no FTL, no artificial gravity, no blasters. The thing I like about is that the setting is both plausible and optimistic. The various places in the solar system all sit on knife edges, things are about to go south, or could easily fall apart, but the players could hold things together, or make them better. The setting is huge, it covers the whole system, and it deals in politics, economics, and all sorts of other interactions.

This was the first game I ever owned where I constantly thing, "Oh man, this is so cool...but what exactly do I do with it?" The world is so big, and plausible, and open that it can be overwhelming.

The setting deals with technology and how it alters the world and grows. Humans can augment themselves through multiple modes. And they have uplifted animals, and built Artificial Intelligences. Death is cheap and you can come back from it in a number of ways. The thing that comes through on all of this, for me, is that even with the ability to instantly and cheaply alter yourself beyond human understanding, people are still people. Emotions and desires that drive the transhuman world are still understandable, even if the means of operation are alien or strange.

The setting books that exist deal with Earth, the oceans, the orbit of earth and the moon, Mars, Venus and Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn, and even the far reaches of the solar system. The research and attention to detail make this setting a joy to read and fun to plan campaigns in. I have barely scratched the surface of the setting, and that is the best part. You can keep digging into the setting and it just keep expanding in front of you, like a cybernetic mandala stretching out forever and ever, a fractal world of plausible impossibility.

So that is Transhuman Space. You should check it out.

Next...

Adventure!

Third Game of Christmas

Previously on the Games of Christmas: Alternity, Star Wars

And now....


The previous two games I discussed for this series were old favorites of mine. Loves from a bygone era. This one is a little different. When it first came out I was not a fan. Take your mind back to the nineties. Good times. Good times. Teenage Jake was there, and he loved games. I still do. Back in those days I loved games by Palladium, ICE,  TSR, FASA, WEG and all that. So I come across White Wolf games and the World of Darkness, and it just confused teen me. It started out with these short stories and it was full of in world jargon. And it was like three chapters in before it even got to character creation. Also the weapon tables were minuscule. The folks in my area who played the world of darkness games all kind of looked down on me and my love of action and such. So I kind of ignored the games for years. One day I decided to buy one of the games and I chose Mage: the Ascension second edition. HOLY CRAP!!!! it was full of everything I loved. Goggles, laser swords, rocket battles round the moons of Jupiter(as an aside how cool is it that we now have a satellite around Jupiter?!), shooting fire from your hands and being awesome all the time everywhere. So lets dig in.

Mage: The Ascension

Lets start with the version I am using. Once again RPG naming conventions are confusing. There was Mage First Edition, good, then came Mage second edition, also fine. Then they did Mage second edition revised, which changed so much they should have called it third edition. And now there is Mage twentieth anniversary edition. For this review I will be dealing with Mage second edition, as that is my preferred version of the game and setting. We clear? good. Now lets hope I can keep all of this in order in my own head.

Peritextual Elements
I love the cover. It is simple and yet powerful and evocative. It is a solid example of simplicity in design. Within the game the art varies from excellent to kind of confusing to wretched. I like most of it, but some did not age well. At all. That said I like that White Wolf was trying to push boundaries with the art in games and that attention to mood and tone really shows through. The layout is pretty standard and the Font choices do not get in the way. There are no big issues with layout.

Mechanics
This is a dice pool system with Attributes rated from one to five. Those attributes are added to skills which are rated from zero to five. So at most you will be rolling ten dice, though in practice you can end up with more and most often are rolling less. The skills are divided into three categories for arbitrary reasons, but that is not all that important. It is a task based system and when you roll for the task you must beat two difficulty settings, the target number and the success number. The target number is the number you must match or exceed on a ten sided die in order for that die to be a success. As you are rolling multiple ten sided dice you may also need to have a number of those dice show as success, each of those is a success and you tally number of successes. If that sounds complicated...it is. Also for each one you roll on any of the dice you must take away a success. Also if you have an attribute at four or higher you have a specialty(I think its called that) and if you are in a situation where that specialty would apply any of the dice that show as tens explode(much like the wild die in Star Wars). So that is the basic system. GM sets the target number and the number of successes needed, and you roll and check number of successes achieved against that number. Sound good? Well now we get into magic.

Mage is a game about magic. I know right, such a surprise. Well you see it is about all magic that has ever existed being real. And because that makes no sense, how that would work in a world where things seem to make sense. So what that means is that reality is subjective.  You get a critical mass of people believing a thing is possible and suddenly it becomes possible. However if you try to do magic and no one believes its possible then it gets really hard and reality hits you back. SO magic in this game isa complex equation of figuring out if your magic type is coincidental(it fits with the established rules) or Vulgar(it obviously doesn't) and how many normal people are watching and a whole bunch of other factors. You then add in the size and duration of the effect your trying and that tells you the target number and the difficulty. If you fail or if you push too hard then paradox hits which is like a different kind of magic and it is not a cool thing. I like this game I swear I do, but when I try and explain the rules I can see people's brains just going to white noise.

I will end with this. The rules are not that tricky once you get used to them, but they do have problems and are often very clunky in places.

The Setting

There is also a GURPS version, if you don't like dice pools

You get to play Neo. You get to be a Jedi. You get to be John Constantine. You get to be Doc Savage. This game is about fighting to change reality through shear force of will. Your character knows that the world is a stranger place than anyone imagines. In fact it is stranger than anyone could imagine. And in mage it is your job to wake the world up to every possibility. The problem is that there are forces that get in the way. Forces that want to stop you. Forces you must stop. The Technocracy were a group of guys with a great idea. They just wanted to make the world sane and safe for normal people to live. However like most Utopians, they did not care how many bodies they needed to step over to get their desired outcome. Now they are slaves of orthodoxy and dogma. They are not saving the world for the normal people. They have enslaved the normal people to their will. The serve the status quo. The Nefandi are like if the Joker had superman's powers...and a TARDIS. They are mages who seek to destroy everything. They have burned their souls in the desire for power and now they seek to burn the world. If you do not stop them, everything dies. Even abstract concepts will die. Marauders are chaos incarnate. Sometimes a Mage goes mad. Mad mages are not hit by paradox. So these mad mages wander around and do whatever they want, the break the very fabric of reality. Cause and effect no longer apply, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria. The universe is also divided in two. There is the real world that we see around us right now and then there is the spirit world, the umbra. All magic is coincidental in the umbra. However there are things that dwell in the umbra, spirits, gods, demons, and stranger dwell within. While a mage can do much, they are still mortal. However you can make a secret fort in the umbra where only your magic rules work and no other types of magic work. and each planet has its own umbra so you can travel through the umbra and get to Jupiter or mars, or whatever. It is very cool. Look, the setting is big. Like, really big. I haven't covered it all, I haven't even covered most of it. But I love the setting. The setting and the optimism inherent in it is what keeps me coming back to it.

I do not own the Twentieth anniversary edition, but from what I have seen and heard it fixes a bunch of stuff and it has everything in it. No seriously, everything. Its like 600 pages long or something. Anyway, that is this day of Christmas.

Tomorrow...

Transhuman Space

Second Game of Christmas

The First Game of Christmas: Alternity

Now we reach the second game of Christmas, and boy oh boy is it a treat! This was the single most influential roleplaying game in my life. I can honestly say that without it I would not be the same person I am today. It is based off of a film trilogy so iconic everyone recognizes it instantly. The prequel came later and no one liked it as much. And now finally, as of last year a new movie came out that may not be as good as the original but it hit all the right notes and had an interesting Father Son dynamic to it. And this series is...Tremors!

HAHAHAHA! No I am just kidding. Its Star Wars. The game is Star Wars. Come to think of it, though, why isn't there a Tremors RPG. It would be awesome.

STAR WARS!!!!!!!!! YEAH!!!!!

For this review I will be digging into the Star Wars Roleplaying Game by West End Games. There were two editions, though the second one had two versions. I will be digging into my favorite version which is Second Edition Revised and Expanded. A brief note on the earlier versions. First edition is excellent, though more hand-wavy and free from than second edition. Second edition(not revised and expanded) is not very good, just in layout and explanations on how things work.



Funny story, this was the first game I ever played. I had technically made characters for Palladium games and AD&D 2nd edition but this game is the one I played first, and it was the game I first GMed, as my friends refused to run a game for me. To this day my GMing style is based a lot on what I learned from the GM's section of these books.

Peritextual Elements
Revised and Expanded really set the bar for me on how a game should be laid out, and how it should look and feel. All color high gloss pages with quality art and easy to read sidebars. It also had these advertisements in it for various in universe things, like an Imperial recruitment poster, or a Rebel Propaganda poster, or an advertisement for a tourist cruise, or wanted posters for the rebels from the movies. It was so very nice. Also the way it did sidebars was through various in universe character explaining things to you. And each had a head shot of that character with an expression ad all that. It allowed for the rules and setting to be clear and well explained while also allowing for character and mood to come across without getting in the way. I loved that. Its one of the things that drew me to the Dresden Files game as well. Such afun thing.

Mechanics
The game's core mechanic is a dice pool of six sided dice that are rolled and added together. You have a set of attributes with specific skills attached to them. You usually start with an attribute between 2 and 4 and skill ratings of 0 to 3. When you do a task you add the skill to the attribute roll that many dice and add up all the numbers to beat a target number, One of those dice is the wild die, which must be visually distinct. If it rolls a six the wild die explodes and you can roll it again and add both the six and the next roll to the die roll. This goes on as long as you keep rolling sixes. If it rolls a one you remove the highest die roll from the roll. Some people hate the wild die, but I dig it. You also have character points and Force Points which allow you to do interesting things with dice. Force Points can be spent to double a dice pool for a given roll, but you only get them back when you are heroic, lightside, and paragon. Character points are probably the only mechanical widget in the game I have an issue with. They can be used, on a one for one basis, to add dice to a roll. That sounds awesome right? Well, the issue is that they are also your XP and if you spend them on a roll, you cannot spend them later to advance. This leads to point hoarding and death spirals, so I don't care for that as much as the rest of the mechanics. Also two small issues are strength as resistance to damage and fore powers.

When you get hit you roll you strength plus you armor versus the damage roll. If you get high enough you take no damage. This led to odd situations where wookies were unable to be damaged by anything. There are a few fixes for that out there, but it is an issue to look out for, The other issue is Force Powers. They were a bit complicated, started out really weak and ended up completely OP, as they had no dice limit on their skills. That meant that eventually you could get impossible skill levels and just dominate every scene. Also this game introduced Darkside Points, which you gained by being evil, a jerk, and very renegade. If you got enough Darkside Points you lost control of your character and the character became a GM character and a villain. So watch it with the force lightning. Funny story I have a couple of friends of mine who claim that they can only play Jedi in this game if they are drunk. If they are sober the rules make no sense to them. Not sure if that's true, but the rules can get a little messy. I am a super fan of the system, though. I mean, I love it so much I started a project using this system(modified) and I think that it might even be going somewhere interesting.

Setting
Um, have you seen the movies? Of course you have. Everyone has. Literally everyone, ever. The series is so powerful it travels in time! It is the reason cavemen painted on walls. Well maybe not that, but seriously, I don't think I need to explain why the setting is cool. That said, this game added so much to the setting. The had loads of expansion books and boxed sets that came out that expanded on the setting and tied into the movies and even dug into the comics and the few books that had come out. Seriously this game first came out at the dawn of the expanded universe(now called legacy, because J.J. Abrams hates me). It would go into detail and explain all sorts of cool stuff that was only briefly sown or hinted at in the movies. And the books statted out everything. Do you like Star Wars? Good then you will like the setting of this game. If you don't you won't.

That is it for today Game of Christmas. I hope you like it.

Next...

Mage

First Game Of Christmas

Alrighty folks it is coming up on Christmas and this year I am going to count down the days until Christmas with a list of my top twelve favorite role playing games of all time. Now favorite is pretty subjective and I picked these games for a number of reasons; how much I have played it, how influential it has been on me, and my emotional connection to the game are all things that went into the hat for my favorite games of all time. So without further ado lets start the list with...

Number 1: Alternity

This game will always be of immense importance to me. It was the first game I owned that consistently drew me back to it over and over. The mechanics, the settings, and the art all drew me in and held me there. I think it has some flaws and all, but it hit so many of the things I was looking for that it was easy to get past the small number of minor annoyances.

The Peritextual Elements

The art is just fantastic in the game. The main books have some truly spectacular art and the rest of the book series have, at worst, adequate art. The pages are a semi gloss and a pretty heavy weight. The hard covers are solidly built and sturdy. I have had the Player's and Game Master's Handbooks since 1998, I have taken them around the world and through a war and the cover is still solidly held together. Now I try not to hurt my books, but even still that is a fine quality book cover. The only real downside I have on the layout is the dark blue green they use for sidebars, they can get a little rough on the eyes, but it is a minor gripe.

Mechanical Elements

The core mechanic is pretty interesting. Roll a twenty sided die and try and get below your skill level(or half your attribute level for untrained skills). However it is more than ust a binary pass fail system. Each skill roll is broken into four possible outcomes: Failure, ordinary success, Good Success, and amazing success. the lower you roll the better your result. The die roll can be altered by a situational modifier which is a a die that is rolled alongside the d20 and either subtracted or added depending on game factors. The game is heavily task oriented and has a large number of skills. There are broad skills which cannot be advanced, but give a solid basis for doing all sorts of things and specialty skills which allow you to increase them with experience points. This is a bit of a detriment as the game carries some issues relating to how the attributes work. you get skill points based off of intelligence and so you can have a variable number of skill points. With the large number of skills it can be very difficult to get the character you want to play. each specialty skill also has a series of rank specific advantages that allow you to do cool stuff with the skill if you have a high enough rank i the skill. I really like these and wish there were more.  Every now and again I look through the game and think about reworking it into something simpler and more unified.

The game also has Last resort points which let you modify rolls and the like, but as they cost experience points and are very limited by your attributes you will not likely see them in your game. You may also spend your skill points on perks and gain some skill points on flaws. However as you don't have enough skill points in general, most people never get more than one perk and only gather the least offensive flaws. There is the requisite big lists of weapons and equipment, I like it, but nothing special. And there is a bunch of optional stuff like mutations, psionics, and cybernetics. The GMs guide also has rules for FX, which include super powers(which do not work very well at all in this system), spells, and miracles. Also conversion rules for AD&D 2nd ed, so you can now play your space elves.

Settings

Stardrive was the first big setting for the game and it has a boatload of setting material for it. It is set in the Verge, an area that was the very edge of human space before the second galactic war. During the war they were left to there own devices, but now the war is over and everyone is trying retake their old holdings and things are getting crazy what with alien invasions and stuff. The setting is a really solid kitchen sink space opera and it has one of my favorite campaign plot devices ever. the lighthouse is a massive space station/war ship that does a constant circuit through the verge. It is like Babylon five, but bigger and it travels. So it lets the players have a home base and be involved in all sorts of places.

The other major setting is Dark Matter. Which is one of the best settings for nineties style strange investigations into the unknown. You play members of the Hoffman institute who are investigating all the strange goings on. See, there is this stuff called dark matter that ebbs and flow through the universe like a tide. When the dark tide is high, magic, psionics, aliens, and dimensional travelers become common. And the tide is rising. If you ever wanted to fight a nanotech hive that has taken a human host one week and a greater demon wielding mystic flame the next, boy howdy is this the game for you. Also it reworks the magic and miracles FX rules from the GMs guide and they are some of my favorite magic systems in gaming ever. Super fun setting.

There was also a take on Gamma World for the system, but it only had one small book, and was middling at best. Finally there was a Starcraft quickstart that came out right before the gameline was cancelled. It is not that good, but I do wish they had made a whole game book for it rather than just a sample adventure and a bunch of generic pregens.


So that is the first game of Christmas. Tomorrow...

Star Wars(You know which one)

Challenge of the Star Knights: Delta Academy Beginings

Once their were a thousand schools for training the Star Knights. Eager students, the best in the galaxy, entered those hallowed halls of learning. Each was a beacon of hope and learning. During the war many schools fell to the forces of the Maggedon. Others were abandoned or hidden, lost to the sweep of ages. Now all that remain are fifteen, each hidden away through unity technology and remote locations. Delta academy is hidden away in the Marconi Traverse, on the very periphery of he civilized galaxy. While the Star Knight Academies still accept only the best of the best the politics and petty grievances still crop up. Delta Academy is where they send those students and teachers who are too much of a problem for the more prestigious academies.

If you want to read previous posts before digging into this one:
The Pitch
Rules Part 1
Rules Part 2
Ikhai
Species

Now your caught up. Lets get started on the problem at hand.

A big part of any school setting is the teachers and the headmaster(call them what you will) as well as the ancillary characters in and around the school. When setting out to make characters it is important to showcase and highlight these characters. They will be expositions characters primarily, though they can add more to the game than that. I would like to see them as sometimes adventure hooks, and complications, as well as being quest givers and those who explain. I was having a real rough go of it trying to sort out how I could make them work and make the players care about them.

I had a bit of a breakthrough with the school setup. I want there to be a bunch of teachers and for those teachers to have a set of mechanical effects in game. I was reading through some of my other games and the answer presented itself. I think I will do something like Icons from 13th Age but tweaked to fit this setting and fit the tropes I am aiming for.

When starting a new campaign/game the players will look over the list of teacher/mentor archetypes and get to set some relationships with them. Those relationships will be positive, negative, or conflicted. And they will be rated from one to three dice. I do not think they will have to have relationships with all the mentors/teachers, but they should each have relationships with two to three so that way you can get a solid idea of what each player is looking for in play and who they care about.

Those dice maybe used in game to gain social advantage, or a moral boost to a roll(through memory of encouragement or some such). How this works is this. When you are in a situation where you are acting either in accordance with the wishes of your mentor(for a positive relationship) or against the wishes of your mentor(for negative) you may roll the dice against a set difficulty. If you succeed you may use your relationship dice as an add on to your roll, or to gain access to something you might not have gained otherwise(I am still working on this and so it is less clear right now). If you fail the roll you may choose to still use the dice, but your relationship dice will decrease by one. Conflicted relationships could be used in either case, but the ramifications will be different depending on how you use them.

Right now this is just the very basics of the idea, so expect it to change as I try it out in playtesting. I would love to hear any thoughts on these mechanics as I am not entirely sure that this is the correct mechanical path to suit my game.

The Current List of Mentor Archetypes
The Uncaring Stickler
The Schemer
The Kindly Mentor
The Gentle Meddler
The Mother Figure
The Father Figure
The Chaotic Mess
The Social Climber
The Washed Up Master

I will probably add more and make alterations to these archetypes as I go.

I would also like to work out a method for building a relationship web so that the the players and GM would have a method of easily seeing possible ramifications for actions. I have thought about using the method in the Smallville RPG, or maybe something else...I am not really sure on that one if it is even needed. Other things I am working on in the setting are Orders, which are like houses in Harry Potter, groups you are all in together to bind you and give you rivals. I am still working out the details of those as I don't think a sorting hat type situation would sit all that well with some players. My current idea is that students are assigned to orders at random and the players are all just part of the same order, but I am not sure that would be all that great either. I need a way to get people to agree on an order while still allowing for all sorts of personality types and problem solving methodologies. I want to avoid pigeonholing people into certain types of behavior within given orders, but I also want the orders to feel unique and have personality.

It is an issue. I will probably do a whole post on it as I keep going round and round on it and can't seem to make it fit. So that is it for now. I had a decent idea(I think) and I think I am aiming in the right direction. Let me know what you think.

World Building Part 8: Demons and Monsters

At the dawn of time something went wrong. No one knows exactly when, as it was before the first people came forth onto the world. However into the perfect creation came a flaw. A being of great power that was the antithesis of the world spirit, the anti element if you will. It sought to wipe out everything and bring about and eternal nothing. This was Niddhoggandr, the demon king. Long ago it was sealed away with great elder magics, no long lost, by the four chosen disciples of the four peoples. All demons that exist today are but pale shadows of the true demon awaiting it's eventual release.

What no one realizes, is that event caused untold destruction  in the Fallen, a parallel and similar dimension, and directly led to the constant threat of demons. The demons seek to either destroy that original spell and hopefully save their world, or gather as much life energy as they can to prolong the life of their world. to gather that energy they must cause hardship, pain, and despair among the peoples of this world. To break the spell would reawaken Niddhoggandr and spell doom for this world.

Alrighty folks I am back to playing around with this bit of world building. I am still working on my other projects, don't you worry, but I had a bit of inspiration on how demons and such would work in this world and so I thought I would share. It has come to the point where I will need to come up with a name for the world. As I have been building the setting I have seen a few things start to pop up, the ideas of harmony and balance are pretty key to the setting, extremes of one thing or another seem to be bad, in the setting as it currently exists. That is what led to humanity conquering the other peoples, so I could go forward with that. So I need a word that sounds like a planet name that also means something like harmony. So I got to digging in good old google translate and came up with, Amoni ,the Haitian Creole word for harmony. I chose it because it sounds nice and is easy to say and spell. I may change it in the future but I am currently leaning toward calling the world I am building Amoni. Yay!

Previous Posts in the series:
Part 1 Initial Ideas
Part 2 Airships
Part 3 Peoples
Part 4 Basic Magic
Part 5 History
Part 6 Deeper Magic
Part 7 Culture

On to the world building:

There are two alternate dimensions that seem to directly interact with Amoni in some way. The Far Away and The Fallen. Each contains beings that seek to access Amoni and the people therein. These beings are known as demons and spirits and they seem to delight in chaos and the destruction of the world for their own purposes.

The Fallen may once have been like the world, but something went wrong and the energies of the dimension became corrosive and corrupting. Most demons hail from this land, sent to reap the life energies of the world and return them to the wastes to use that energy to prolong the life of that dimension. People can access and use the energies of The Fallen, though there is a cost. People who tap into this dimension's energy can gain great power and the ability to do what would normally be impossible standard magics. However as they use it they become corrupted and eventually become demons themselves, unable to survive in the world naturally without harvesting life energy merely to survive.This is the nature of what folks call the undead, people who have become so corrupted that they must devour life energy to survive.

The Far Away is a strange land of pure spirit and natural energy energy. It is wild and full of dangers.The landscape constantly shifts to suit the moods of the spirits who reside within it. Often they will seek to echo the world's landscapes, but they will feel off and have odd angles.  Time has no meaning and the beings who dwell there wish to steal your soul and ride your body in the world. They live in a world without meaning or feeling, and so possessing a person and wandering about in Amoni is a great vacation for them. Make no deals with the spirits from the Far Away. For every deal you make brings you closer to falling under their power.The Spirits behave like spoiled brats who have never had anyone tell them no. Even when they wish to do good, they cause chaos and disorder.some spirits are actually fully malevolent, and these are also called demons.

Those are my first thoughts on the demons and spirits that inhabit the land as well as a brief on the worlds they come from. Now I want to dig into creatures and monsters of the world. I am currently trying to sort out exactly what makes a good creature description and which creatures do not need a description. I could go the route of Jack Vance where I just give the creatures a name and do not describe them in any detail. This works very well in the Dying Earth and might work here. I do feel like I would be missing out on some fun though. I could also go full on Audubon and give a detailed description of every creature in the world with detailed analyses of the habits and variants of the species, but man that seems like a lot of work.

Perhaps if I knew for what I am going to do with this project that would help me. If I am making this just for my own fun and nothing else then I guess I can just do whatever animals and monsters interest me and be done with it. I can describe what I like as I like. However this is not just for me. I mean I am already posting online so at the very least this is for the entertainment of at least one other person(though I hope everyone who reads this is at least a little entertained...please?). Because of that I must have some sort of focus in what I design here. If I were designing a world to write fiction about then I could probably get away with the Vancian method of merely describing the barest of minimums, though all I would need then would be a list of weird sounding names and some basic descriptors on the size of the creature and if it would eat people. Then there is my wheelhouse, RPGs. If I am designing this for RPGs then I need to give the GMs enough information that they can use the creature in play and make the game more fun.   I would need to do one of three things with each creature(perhaps all three). The creature needs to add flavor, challenge, or plot to the setting. I think this final method would be most useful to me here. It is always easier to describe less than what I have in my notes and adding more is relatively easy(though it takes more time), but this final method will at least give me a set of goals to aim for. Lets break that down with some examples.

Welcome to flavor country. Animals described for flavor exist to define the world and showcase either its normalcy or its strangeness...or both. So when we describe a creature that is mundane and ordinary in the context of the world, something that does not add drama or danger we must use it for flavor(I think, though let me know if I am wrong). So for this setting I was thinking of not having horses be a thing in the world. I have already established that the Bit-Bit ride about in giant flamingos(not too giant as the bit bit aren't all that big themselves) so perhaps birds have taken the place of draft and riding animals. Though I think that lizards would be cool too. S I think I will brain storm a little on the riding and draft animals of Amoni:

Phoru: Humans ride about on terror birds, Mostly this is because I really like the idea of giant riding birds, but it also fits with the motif of the Human Empire, where even their mounts are dangerous and scary.

Djialisks: Njan have domesticate giant lizards that they ride. There are two types of domesticated Djialisk: The Wa-Geck is a giant gecko that hey can ride only with special harnesses and ride over any surface. The Annago - giant monitors, unruly and difficult, but super useful in war and for draft work(pulling large wagons and plowing). Cats riding lizards just sounds like fun and it fits better with the desert terrain they dwell in.

Gelves: The great war flamingos of the Bit-Bit have already been discussed and so I will just say I really like the idea of tiny knights riding great pink flying death machines. But maybe that is just me.

Once you get past beasts for flavor you get into beasts as challenge. This is your standard monster or danger. It is the Bear that made its home in the abandoned farm or the dragon pillaging a town. The beast exists to be defeated, driven off, or appeased. though this is fairly simple, it is important to know what motivates the creature, its instincts and desires.

Sky Whales: Lumbering behemoths of the sky. While they are called whales they are in fact something else entirely. They fly through the inflation of air bladders that are then heated with elemental fire energy, allowing them to be neutrally buoyant in the sky. They then channel air energies to travel slowly through the clouds gathering sky plankton. They are dangerous to air travel as they see anything smaller than them as food and most things smaller than a full on warship are smaller. They are territorial, and fairly passive unless disturbed or hungry.

Shabu-Shabu: a swamp dwelling creature that feeds on blood. It is a small bipedal creature that appears somewhat like a Bit-Bit from a distance. It spreads disease and actively hunts intelligent peoples. The Bit-bit claim that it is a curse on their people by Niddhoggandr for locking it away.

Finally there are creatures as plot. these are more than just challenge but the goal of the story/adventure/narrative itself is so tied into the creature that it becomes the core of the story entirely. Examples from other stories include the Questing Beast, The Unicorn(who could heal anything), and The Dragon Fafnir(as the whole of the story is based around the horde of the dragon and the ring that was in the horde), also Smaug(though he is just a better characterized Fafnir when you get right down to it).

Lundorm: Massive worms that devour rock in the mountain ranges of the world. They cannot digest precious metals however and those form into an ultra dense melded precious metal sphere in their many stomachs. these spheres are the most valuable metals in the world as they accept enchantment better than any other material. As the Lundorms are too large to domesticate and too dangerous to live near there is a powerful market for the Spheres and a whole adventuring community has grown up around Lundorm Hunting.

Ur-Phoen: A massive bird lat lives far from civilization. It is said to be the first bird, somehow still alive after all these years. One of its feathers when properly treated can cure any disease, and it is said that eating its heart would grant immortality.

And that is my thoughts on demons and creatures in rough. I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter. Comments, critiques, and ideas are always welcome.I will probably do my next post on the Challenge of the Star Knights, and later this month I am going to start a big new thing, so look for that(#12gamesofchristmas ...shh). So I guess I am fairly busy in the upcoming weeks.