End of semester Hiatus

Too much to do. Back in a few weeks.

Food and Water Part 1 of ?

Greenshafts, an introduction.

One of the primary reasons that people tend to stick close to the cities is the easy availability of edible foodstuffs. Consumables found in even (if not especially) the most fecund parts of the wilderness are often unsafe to eat (for an in

depth look at how unsafe, see Part II).

Agriculture is predominantly practiced underground in natural or fabricated subterranean complexes known as greenshafts, which are usually located within cities or in close proximity to the same. Because of the frequency of curse squalls in most areas, this is a necessary and beneficial practice. However, it is unknown which came first curse squalls or greenshafts.

To put things in perspective, outdoor agriculture is unknown in most places, and you might have trouble convincing people that anyone has ever engaged in it. At best it is viewed by civilized people as something that was left behind long ago.

Within the greenshaft, agricultural production is accomplished through a variety of technologies, the power for which is usually drawn from the earth itself in the form of geothermal heat.

Areas of the greenshaft hold corral pools for hron, a species of domesticated aquatic mammal. Hron are valued for their milk (and the cheese that is made from it) and meat. Furthermore, hron hide can be used to fashion both warm and water resistant clothing. Hron meat is mostly a luxury of the elites. Additional meat is grown in vats.

Tower of The Changer 1pg Dungeon

Get it HERE.

Okay, the idea here was to create a training ground to teach a group how to think about dungeon exploration without killing them outright. The levels I'm working on now will be considerably more lethal and should be done sometime around 2015 at the rate I'm going.


Edit: there were two small mistakes in the original version. I fixed them and re-uploaded. Sorry.


Edit #2: 04/07 Once again, I've uploaded a new version. this time with a better lay out and some links and shit.

The Gordian Knot of Old Style Gaming: Skills.

Head, a city on the north coast of Xäl

Introduction:

The Zen of Freight:

As a freight handler, the job I had before returning to the eternal womb of academia, I possessed but one rule: never touch the box. Now, my job was to move boxes from place to place, but my goal was to never ever touch them, ever, ever, ever- impossible, yes, but also sensible.

Every time you move a box, you risk hurting yourself, or damaging the freight. Therefore, you must strive to never touch the box. Every time you are forced to break the rule and touch the box, you must strive to break contact as soon as possible; furthermore, you must engineer things so as you never touch the box again.

I try to approach rules tinkering the same way.

I try never to change the rules, but unfortunately as a referee engaged in the act of bending a game to my world, it’s my job. Therefore, whenever I do touch a rule, or group of rules, I try to minimize my contact, whilst simultaneously achieving my goal.

All that brings us to skills. I do not want to use them; they are fiddly and full of suck, but I want to have a system for overcoming certain kinds of obstacles and executing certain actions. Beyond that, I want a system that recognizes that different characters have different capacities in regards to different activities.

At first glance, that would seem to leave me at an impasse.

However, looking at S&W I see a preexisting mechanic that can be used without changing much of anything at all- the saving throw.

Every character has already has a ST. (See that, I’m not touching the box, and already I’ve gotten somewhere).

What I’m about to say is so simple that I’m (no joke) really not sure if I can express it clearly- let me know, please.

If a character wants to climb a cliff, pick a lock, navigate a ship, figure out how to recharge an energy weapon, or, really, do whatever, they (at the ref's discretion) must make a saving throw. This saving throw may or may not be subject to modification by the referee. This modification may be based on one or at most two, of several factors, including but not limited to- character background, an attribute score, the difficulty of the task, wind speed, relative flatulence, breast size or whatever.

[Note- some tasks (e.g. getting drunk, blowing your nose, walking down the street) are so easy that they should not require a ST- but hopefully you knew that; otherwise, lay off the glue, man; your habit demeans us both.]

Back to the ST.

An example:

After riding all day through the Jungle of Nool, Kronarg The Cannibal comes to a sheer cliff blocking further progress. He decides to climb the cliff and keep going. The referee frowns, ingests some (possibly illegal) chemicals, and considers the factors in play.

Kronarg’s strength is 15; he is a level 4 Fighter, which makes his base saving throw a 13; he grew up in the southern wasteland of Skeeme and never saw a hill until after his 20^th birthday.

To determine Kronarg's base modifier, the ref divides his strength by 6 and rounds down (I’m touching the box, now; be cool, it was bound to happen) this gives Kronarg a modifier of +2.

However, it is windy and near dark; furthermore, Kronarg hasn’t had much experience climbing sheer cliffs. The refereee decides it’s a wash and tells the player to make a saving throw with no modifiers. If Kronarg can beat a 13 he climbs the cliff without too much trouble. If he misses the Referee may grant another saving throw (perhaps based on dexterity) for Kronarg to regain his grip, or maybe he just falls and takes some damage- it’s up to the ref.

So, in summary here’s how I roll-

Divide by 6:

Decide which attribute best applies to the situation, divide it by 6, round down. This is the player’s positive mod.

Determine if the task is difficult or easy or whatever:

This is completely up to the referee. It can be a negative mod or a positive or no mod at all.

Keep it at two mods- hell, keep it at one (or none) if you can and it makes sense to you.

Okay, that's pretty much it. This can be used for just about anything the PCs might want to do.

Once more: Pick a stat; divide by six; assign a mod or two; you’re done.

Now at this point, if you’re really drunk (again), you might be thinking: wow- that’s not a bad idea, maybe this Aos guy should make up a table of common modifiers.

Maybe you should put down the wine cooler, step the fuck away from the box, and reconsider for a second, eh, Slappy? First- wine coolers? Really? This isn’t 1988, bud; show some fucking dignity.

Consistency is overrated, and has little or no place in my style of game.

You can never step in the same stream twice; you can never climb the same cliff twice; the wind may be different; the light might be better; you might be climbing below Sursha the Sexy on her “no underwear” day.

The referee should never feel compelled to be consistent in the assignation of modifiers. As I’ve said, the world isn’t consistent; furthermore, codification leads to charts. Even under the best circumstances, if you are looking something up on a chart you are slowing down play. In other words- if you’re creating a new chart, you aren’t just touching the box- you’re making love to it. Sweet, sweet love.

You sick bastard.

Note: Hypocrite that I am, I’ll be touching this box again, anyway, possibly with my tongue, when I make the new character classes.

Note 2: RE: The drawing- I do not like the drawing a the top of the post (for one thing, there isn’t a half dressed girl in it), so I’ll be doing it over when I post the detailed break down of Head, which will happen… someday.

I think next time, though, I’ll be starting on those new classes. First up The Emissary- think Taarna from Heavy Metal.

Badasses and hit point Heresy

Sometimes a badass just needs a ride.

What follows was inspired, in part, by this-

Trollsmyth's Damage Table

However, it is also the distillation of some ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for quite some time; some of it comes directly from a forum post I made a while back; most of it is new.

Edit: I now have my own, slightly different table.

Disclaimer: what follows will definitely add a little more complexity to play, but only a little and there is some bad language. If either of those things bother you, I suggest you put on a Sean Cassidy record and think of puppies or hobbits or some shit like that.

Now, excuse me, whilst I behave like an idiot:

The Metal Earth is not an heroic setting; it’s too late to save the world in any significant way. You might save a city or a region from a specific threat, but the world? No motherfucking way. That shit is just too fucked up. Again, in case you didn’t get it the first time, Mr. Frodo- The Metal Earth is not an heroic setting.

What The Metal Earth is, however, is a badass setting.

Like the comics, novels and movies that inspired it, The Metal Earth is slopping over with badasses. Being a badass isn’t about being unkillable; it’s about being tough. Your PC is not indestructible, not deathless, not going to win every time- but he* is a motherfucking badass.

With big giant balls of badass steel**.

*or she, or it- badasses don’t care about PC shit like this; they’re too busy kicking ass and/or shagging your little sister.

**Now would be a good time to get in touch with your inner 14 year old by putting on Back in Black.

Anyone who willingly ventures outside the cities has giant metal nads, anyone who is exiled and survives, also has giant balls of steel- even if all they do is run and hide all the time. If your character can get it together long enough to crouch in a bush and punch a grumpy, he has big giant motherfucking shining ferrous balls- and he is tougher than the steak special at the motherfucking Sizzler.

Therefore, the hit point rules as written do not work for me. (As a point of information, they never have). So here is my new system, like or leave it- if you want to use the ME (and some people seem to want to) you can just as easily use the rules as written and I very much encourage you to do so- what works for you works for you, but I’m going to offer this system as an alternative.

Metal Earth alternate Hit Point Rules:

The small and the large: These rules only work for small and medium creatures, and perhaps should be used only for PCs and important NPCs, but that, like everything else is up to the Metal Master… er, I mean the referee. The standard system applies to bigger animals, mainly because in the most extreme sense, it’s easier to swat an elephant with your sword than it is to hit some leaping, dancing badass like D'Artagnan.

Hit points represent fortitude, luck and skill. They do not represent the ability to sustain physical damage. They are computed as follows:

Hit points= Constitution + ld6 + LVL mod.

Level Mod= +1 per level for sorcerers; +2 per level for everyone else.

Melee Damage:

When a character reaches 0 hit points- that means they’ve actually been hit, up until that point they have not actually sustained any real physical damage. At this point the referee rolls on this table

Critical hits:

A natural 20 is a critical hit. The player who has sustained a critical hit must make a saving throw; a failed save results in a roll on the wound table- and the loss of 50% of remaining hit points. A success means a loss of 50% of remaining hit points- or max normal damage, whichever is more.

Missile/Energy Weapon Damage:

If hit by a Missile weapon a character must make a saving throw. If the character fails the saving throw, they roll on the damage table, and hit points are immediately reduced by 50% of their current total. A successful save results in normal hit point damage. A critical hit is of course a critical hit. Anyway, missile weapons can fuck you up.

Recovery:

Standard: CON/5 + 1/2 LVL times a day, badasses heal 1d6 hit points. This is when the character has a chance to catch their breath (at least one turn) or drink some strong booze; that’s right, if you’re a badass, whiskey is a fucking healing potion.

If recovery is done in combat, the badass must sacrifice an action and only receives 1d4 hit points (unless, as mentioned above, they drink some hooch). Whiskey or not, this can never be done more than once every 10 rounds.

Basically, if recovery is done while at rest, the character is catching their breath; if done during a fight the character is hella pissed off and ready to kick an imperial* shit ton of ass.

Regardless, a good night's sleep will restore all hit points- unless there is a shortage of food and water, in which case it's up to the referee how much is recovered.

*That’s right, sweetheart, an imperial shit ton, badasses do not use the fucking metric system, nor do they fucking speak fucking Elvish. Do you think Conan used the motherfucking metric system? He’d rip off your genitals merely for suggesting such a thing. Den of Earth is another badass who didn’t use the metric system; first off, he was an American, and they’re not even smart enough to divide by 10 for fuck’s sake, and, beyond that, he measured everything in cock lengths- e.g. an elephant is 3 dencocks long.

....So anyway, Mr. Frodo, if you've got problems with any of this, Legolas is holding a table for you down at The Prancing Pony. The two of you can sit down together and convert BTUs to kilocalories or some shit like that; then you can have a good cry, together, in Elvish.

Short Gazetteer part 3 of 3- the map and and what isn't on it.

(Dedicated to James at The Underdark Gazette)

Short Gazetteer Part III


"The present is not the unified product of one past. Rather it is the result of many possible pasts, entwined like the threads of a garment or, more likely, mashed together like the ingredients of a cheap sausage. Who is to know what made the end product? Not you, not the lords of the cities or the sea, and certainly not I. All one can do is eat the sausage and hope the fragrence of the forthcoming flatulence will be of the milder sort."

-Bhanal the Mystic, shortly before he was cast into the wilderness by the Circle of Ssaur for public drunkenness and inciting religious sentiment.


The Metal Earth is vast; what is shown on the map and detailed here in the gazetteer represents only the smallest fraction of what is out there. The map is intended to be both inaccurate and difficult to obtain (in my own game it hangs in the office of the Chief Elder of the Council of the city Head). Aside from traders, outcasts and bandits, people stay in the cities. Banishment is the most common criminal punishment everywhere, and it is effectively, in most cases, execution.
The area depicted is meant to represent a common culture area. Certainly this culture area displays regional, racial and ethnic differences within its confines, and indeed within its individual components, but there is a common language (so old and pervasive that it really doesn't have a name) and a widely shared cultural package including such things as dietary preferences, pottery styles, sexual taboos, and ideas regarding cosmology and religion. Obviously different groups and different areas all "interpret" the package in thier own way, but even so, on any given evening, a hand of Mür in Zil are likely to sit down to a meal not all that different from what can be had in the dockside taverns of Shards. Although anyone who has had burritos in Texas and New Mexico, or hamburgers both in the US and Europe, or chicken wings in Buffalo, NY and any other place at all really, can tell you that subtle differences can be quite telling.

Part of this cultural package is the shared belief in the reality of places the existence of which can, at best, be evinced by indirect means. For example: there are Snow Apes, they are civilized and have high technology; they do not live amongst the general population of the Rüinlands; therefore, they must have a city of there own.

Such conclusions, drawn (at least tenuously) from logical deductive processes, nevertheless provide the foundation upon which fanciful rumor can be built. Furthermore, there are some travelers in the world, and half remembered historical accounts from the Earth's long, long history. These rumors and accounts blend together to create the descriptions of the legendary places (some if not most of which actually do exist one in some form or another) discussed below. The truth is, perhaps, buried or hinted at somewhere within the legends and myths- or perhaps not...

Secret city of the Snow Apes: According to rumor the secret city of the Snow Apes is located in the Spires ( the northern mountain chain of Xur the northern continent. Snow Apes travel the world in groups of three, often in advanced vehicles and perform what seems to be an endless scientific survey. They are perhaps the most xenophobic race native to the planet (if they are natives) and they place little or no value on the lives of other sentient beings; in fact, they will literally kill you just to watch you die- often taking notes during the course of it. Their supposed city has countless names in legend, but is most often referred to just as "the Secret City." unruly children are often told that if they do not behave they will be whisked away to the Secret City. Sometimes it actually happens.

The Enclave: The enclave is the supposed last, hidden refuge of the humans. Legends and rumors as to its location are varied and vague. It is thought that the human residents of southern Xäl relocated to the Enclave some 3-5 centuries in the past. Human player characters are often from the Enclave or looking for it, or in some cases, both.

The Fountain: It is undeniable that the Fountain actually exists and there are a few people who know where it is. However, humans can gain the power to use sorcery if they drink from it, and its location is therefore a closely guarded secret. Most legends place it in the Jungle of Nool; somewhere up on the Würm; in the War Waste; or on an island in the Archipelago of Nom.

The War Waste: Myth describes the War Waste as a haunted, time-lose, super-continent size battlefield of varied and unpredictable climate and composition. The landscape is composed of the rusted out or otherwise destroyed remnants of war machines and the decaying bodies of soldiers from all the ages of the Earth. The clash of steel, gunfire and sounds of fighting can often be heard in the distance and it is not uncommon to run up against a Nazi patrol, or squad of Roman legionnaires. It is thought to lie in the great unnamed ocean east of Zansall (the southern continent).

The Island of the Changers: The island of the Changers is another place that actually, without question exists. Many poor souls have been taken there, altered and then later released in their own homelands. However its location is unknown. Count Brood, the great human hero of days gone by, is said to have visited the Island of the Changers during the course of his adventures in the Rüingulf. These stories, the veracity of which is open debate, place the island some days sail to the south of Skeeme. Regardless, the Island of the Changers is the legendary home of these evil scientists, and it said to be the place where they do most of there experimenting.

Koristanasalix: the last great city of the humans lost or destroyed during the Wars of Unreason. The streets are said to be paved with arcanum, and attractive erotically augmented autonms and synthetics see to you every need. Food is grown in the sunshine, not in the dark recesses of greenshafts and everyone who resides there lives for 10,000 years... and so on. Nobody knows weather it exists or not, much less where it is. Selling maps to Koristanasalix is such a popular grift that in many cities it is grounds for banishment.

Anyway, my next few posts are going to focus more on mechanics. First up you will see how I plan to pervert/expand the saving throw system in order to use it in lieu of skills. then come the classes, and I still need to post the (non contest) 1pg dungeon I did...

Addendum: I changed the blog's title pic, as much as I liked the original pic (it was a part of screen cap from Thundarr) I felt like i should have something of mine up there.

Also- I spent my first old school dollars today (unless we count the paper route money I blew in the early '80's, of course)- I bought the S&W White Box... er box from here.

Dungeon Design, Metal Earth style

I've been sick (yay! spring break :/), so I'm breaking my private "no drawing, no post pledge." Depending on how you feel about my "art", I either owe you an apology, or you need to thank me.
Also, as an art related aside, I'll mention that I'm supplying Blair with some art for the planet Algol booklet. Whether or not he's desperate enough to make use of it is another matter entirely.
Also, also, nothing about porn stars here today. I will, admit, however to liking boobs. A lot.
So anyway, dungeon design:
Some points:
1. I have to be able to halfway convince myself that the place could be real.
2. I like coming up with convoluted logic for why things that should never be could be. This entire blog is devoted to that enterprise. The entire Metal Earth is made with dungeon/ adventure/monster justification in mind.
3. These crazy rationalizations help me design the dungeon- or whatever.


I have to have something like this written or thought out:

The combined cavern/room complex beneath the tower of the changer was constructed in stages. During the waning epoch of the Minotaur Empire, a disgraced imperial aristocrat and his retinue came to the Crumbled mountains looking to create a new summer labyrinth far from the intrigues at court. Unfortunately, the aristocrat in question, a man whose name has long since been forgotten by history, had in his employ a shae sorcerer, who, not long after the completion of the complex, manifested an unexpected desire for power, coupled with a previously unexpressed talent for necromancy and a rather excessive amount of bloodlust. Anyway, good times ensued, which ultimately resulted in an empty complex- empty of the living, that is.

The next to come were a group of reptarch farmers from Ssaur who were trying to create a utopian colony. Although they installed many grow-vats and laid the foundations for a bitchen’ subterranean ecosystem, they were eventually, after a years long battle driven out or destroyed by the undead. The undead, however, were decreased in number by this conflict, and since that time, as a result, several attempts have been made to re-inhabit the complex; a few groups, as well as many animals (eager to access the food that grows within) have made some headway, but no one controls the space.

There are four basic varieties of Architecture- natural, reptarch, minotaur and lich; although, some other groups and individuals have made modifications as well. Minotaurs like to decorate, so there are a lot of minotaur busts, murals, busts bas-reliefs. Minotaurs also like to bathe, so there are lots of baths, some of which were converted into vats or something else by the reptarchs. Furthermore, the reptarchs planted a lot of food fungus and algae on the walls, they also seeded pools with plankton, algae, fish and other stuff. They constructed mostly with metal and plastic, their machines are everywhere. Strangely, enough they were also fond of murals.

So, any thoughts? Where do you stand? Do you have a stance? Does one even require a stance? Is this even an issue?