Character backgrounds

Wow, I'm really cranking stuff out at a fast and furious rate today, aren't I?

Anyway, one more mandatory house rule that I've come up with, and been extremely happy with is the character background exercise that we do as part of chargen. I can't take credit for inventing this idea (it comes from the FATE SRD, and the Spirit of the Century roleplaying game, for those interested) but, as always, I put a bit of my own spin on it.

As soon as your character is finished mechanically, write a small blurb; no more than a paragraph or so, about an adventure of some kind that happened to him in the past. Every character will do this. Make three copies; one for yourself, and two that you fold up and put in a cup or hat or other container.

Every player will draw two character's backstories out of the cup (or hat or whatever.) If you get your own character, or the same character twice, but them back until you have two other characters. Read their past adventure blurbs.

Then, write a sentence or two about how your character was involved in these other characters' adventures.

Every player shares the adventures he has with the entire group. The purpose of this is to create a web of interconnectedness, past history, and relationships between the various characters, and you've got a strong footing right off the bat to start a campaign and explain why your group is all in this together. It also gives a lot of roleplaying opportunities that have proven out as great fun in playtests.

Character classes

I don't have literally everything published for 3.5 (especially in the third party publishing realm) but I've got quite a bit of it. One of the things that really always intrigued me about the game as it developed, was the expansion classes. The game started with 11 character classes, but I never liked several of them to begin with, and many of them felt too limited as tools to use in building the characters I wanted. Now, probably the best option would have been more open-ended classes, but barring that, the second option was more classes, with finer detail, or different focuses.

I've gone through the classes I have, and have identified 46 that I particularly want to mention, either as part of a group, or individually.

There are many more classes than that; even classes that I'm aware of and own copies of, but these are the ones that are specifically needing to be mentioned either because I want to encourage you to check them out, or discourage you from using them.

In theory, I'm a "just say yes" GM, so if you came to me with a class not on this list, I'd probably have a look at it and say, "sure, that'll work." But before you do that, have a look at this rather extensive list of classes that I've already picked.

Now, granted, looking at this list, there are more alt.rangers than any other single class type, probably. I'm not quite sure why that is, except that I believe that the woodsman/hunter archetype is an extremely popular one, and nobody seems to think that any particular iteration is quite right.

That said, and without further ado, here are the list of classes encouraged for the JOSHUAWorld game.

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Original Classes:

• Barbarian
• Bard
• Cleric
• Druid
• Fighter
• Monk
• Paladin
• Ranger
• Rogue
• Sorcerer
• Wizard

These are the basic ones, guys. I don't really have a problem per se with any of them. I really dislike the bard, cleric and the monk, but I won't tell you can't take them. The paladin is an archetype that really doesn't have any place in the kind of game I'd ever run. Picking that class means you're a glutton for punishment.

For the ranger, you might seriously want to consider using the spell-less variant from Complete Warrior, and maybe even the alternate weapon specialties from Wildscape. Just to give you more options.

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Expanded Psionics Handbook classes:

• Psion
• Psychic Warrior
• Soulknife
• Wilder

I like psionics. Many people don't think it "fits" with classic fantasy, but since I consider my tastes to run more towards the classic "weird tale" rather than fantasy per se, I think they fit right in. I'm not saying that psionics will ever be a major element of the setting, but honestly; all psionics is is another flavor of magic. I'm perfectly fine with using psionics.

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Player's Handbook 2 classes:

• Beguiler
• Dragon Shaman
• Duskblade
• Knight

Player's Handbook 2 is where I believe there was a watershed in 3.5 design. Starting here, class balance trended sharply upward, and the ideas behind them strayed into more and more esoteric concepts.

That said, I've been in some games with PHB2 classes before, and I think they're workable. I don't really consider any classes that postdate the PHB2 to be on the same baseline as the rest of the classes, though. I didn't list any of them as available.

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Complete series classes:

• Ardent
• Divine Mind
• Erudite
• Favored Soul
• Hexblade
• Lurk
• Ninja
• Samurai
• Scout
• Shugenja
• Spellthief
• Spirit Shaman
• Swashbuckler
• Warlock
• War Mage
• Wu Jen

A number of books, mostly predating the PHB2, came out as "class splat books" and most of them included a number of new classes. Although I'm not necessarily thrilled with the concepts of all of these classes, I also can't think of a really good reason why I should ban any of them. Any Complete series class, including the psionic ones, are allowed.

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Other classes from other sources:

• Archivist (Heroes of Horror)
• Assassin (d20 Freeport Companion)
• Commander (Path of the Sword)
• Corsair (d20 Freeport Companion)
• Defender (Midnight Campaign Setting)
• Hunter (Path of the Sword)
• Monster Hunter (d20 Freeport Companion)
• Noble (d20 Freeport Companion)
• Outdoorsman (Path of the Sword)
• Survivor (d20 Freeport Companion)
• Wildlander (Midnight Campaign Setting)
• Ninja (Rokugan Campaign Setting)
• Courtier (Rokugan Campaign Setting)

A few notes: the archivist is a better choice (from a flavor perspective) than the cleric, and fills a similar role, although less combat focused, and more knowledge and slightly less tangible benefit focused. It is the only Wizards of the Coast authored class in this mixed bag of "others." Green Ronin's d20 Freeport Companion is still available, but it's only on pdf and its been renamed the 3rd Era Freeport Companion.

Many of the rest of these classes overlap in concept with other classes, to a considerable extent. There are no fewer than 4 alt.rangers on this list, 2 alt.monks, an alt.swashbuckler and an alt.rogue. The Green Ronin classes in particular also have the peculiarity that several of them feature alt.sneak attack damage rules. I think that there's no point in modifying the sneak attack damage rules to limit them even further, so for the assassin and corsair, you can assume that they just use the regular sneak attack damage rules after all.

Also, my copy of Midnight predates the 3e to 3.5 switch. While I know that the document was updated, I never got the update, and Path of the Sword doesn't have an update to get. You'll have to do some minor updating to the skill list to make it compliant with 3.5. That shouldn't be a challenge, since every single one of these classes will also need minor updates to the skill list to be compliant with the fact that I'm using the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game skill list anyway. Other than those minor conversion notes, all of these classes can be used as is.

Character advancement

Although I've played in at least one very long campaign that went above 20th level (I think we quit at 23rd?) in general, I'm not much of a fan of higher level 3.5 edition D&D play. And by "higher level" I mean that kinda generously; 10th level is already too high for my tastes. To me, the game runs best up until 8th or 9th level tops.

In the past, I've mostly dealt with that by simply ending campaigns before they got too high into levels that I didn't want to play. This has mostly worked out very well, but occasionally, I end campaigns that I still think have some good life left in them, or that I'd want to revisit later.

Luckily, some of the fine folks who post at ENWorld came to the rescue and started talking about a top hat houserule system called E6 that governed character advancement, and is designed to keep D&D in a perpetual "sweet spot" loop, no matter how long you play.

I won't link to the actual discussion and document; I'll just summarize the gist of it, how it works and all that, but without all the theory.

Characters advance as normal up to 6th level. Once they hit 6th level, they can no longer advance in levels. For every 5,000 experience points they receive above 6th level, a character may take a feat. Every ten feats amounts to an effective level increase in terms of challenges that the PC's should be able to face, up to about 10th level, at which point the difficulties of bringing all the feats a character has to bear in any given encounter reduce their efficacy in terms of advancement.

That's it in a nutshell. But I've added a few other things to the pot as well.

Class abilities for levels above 6th level can be converted into feat chains. In every case, this requires working with the GM to make sure that it is OK, but as a general rule, each level's worth of abilities must be taken in order; i.e., before you can take a class ability that you would have received at 10th level as a feat, you must first take all the class abilities for 7th, 8th and 9th levels as feats as well. This does not apply to class abilities that are improvements on existing class abilities, i.e. you cannot convert new spell levels into feats, or increased sneak attack damage, or other such abilities.

This means, among other things, that no spells higher than 3rd level are generally available. However, the rules for Incantations (found in Unearthed Arcana or Urban Arcana) can bring higher level spells into the game as needed.

Prestige classes do not exist under this top hat houserule, but prestige classes can also be converted into class ability feat chains by working with your GM to smooth over any inconsistencies and ensure that reasonable requirements are met.

Hellkin mechanics

Well, although I said that I wasn't really very keen on the name hellkin, I'm going to go ahead and use it for the time being. The caveat being that it's never used "in game": I'll find a generic name that I can use in the next little bit. In the meantime, hellkin from Baal Hamazi are called hamazin, and those who are born unexpectedly are called changelings.

Anyway, here's the rules:

Hellkin are a race of native outsiders. Hellkin claim descent from the gods and their servitors, or from fiends. Given the pantheon presented here, there probably isn't any difference. Hellkin tend to make great spies, assassins and thieves, but just because they gravitate easily to that kind of lifestyle doesn't mean that they have to, naturally. To the unfamiliar, a hellkin looks like an exotic race of human, with skin ranging from sooty black to paler gray, and dark hair. Most hellkin have gleaming yellow eyes. Many also have thin pointed tails, or a cluster of small horns in their heads, needle-like teeth, scaled skin, or other marks that set them apart from the humans among whom they are born.

The hellkin of Baal Hamazi have a much more consistent appearance, being a true-breeding human "race" by this point. They always have a sooty black skin and dark hair, yellow, wolf-like "predator eyes", and a cluster of small horns on their heads. Many hamazin shave their heads, or otherwise cause their hair to not grow.

Hellkin Racial Traits

• –2 Charisma. Hellkin carry with them a stigma about their heritage. Even other hellkin know better than to trust one until they know him well.
• Medium. As Medium creatures, hellkin have no special benefits or penalties due to size.
• Hellkin base land speed is 30 feet.
• Hellkin gain a +2 racial bonus to all saving throws against spells and spell-like effects with the evil descriptor.
• Darkvision: Hellkin can see in the dark out to 60 feet. Darkvision is black and white only, but is otherwise like normal sight. Hellkin can function just fine in no light at all.
• Cunning of the Fiend: The hellkin carry the blood of fiends in their veins. All hellkin have a reserve of power from which they can draw in times of need. As an immediate action, a hellkin can call upon his gift to gain a +4 inherent bonus to his Dexterity score for a number of rounds equal to his Wisdom bonus (minimum 1 round). A hellkin must wait 1 hour between each use of this ability.
• Gifted Rogues: Hellkin gain a +2 bonus to Sneak and Acrobatics checks.
• Vulnerability to good. Hellkin take half again as much (+50%) damage as normal from spells and effects with the good descriptor, regardless of whether a saving throw is allowed, or if the save is a success or failure.
• Native Outsider: As outsiders, hellkin can’t be targeted by spells or effects that specifically affect humanoids like charm person or hold person. However, as native outsiders, they may be raised, reincarnated, or resurrected as normal creatures.
• Ages as a half-elf.

Tieflings

Work continues apace on my grand posterboard-sized map of my setting. I finished up the physical features of the khagante of Kurushat tonight (so far) as well as most of Qizmir. I've still got North Qizmir; the most recently settled lands north of the Shipwreck Strait, to finish before I'm done with that unit, however. The Shipwreck Strait serves a similar geographical function in my map as the Strait of Gibralter does in the real world, but I wanted it to be a dangerous place to cross; more of a natural barrier rather than a natural oceanic highway. That way the southern part of Qizmir, the Golden Peninsula, is an Iberian sized chunk of land that's mostly made up of lush savannah, crossed by caravan trails. The sea would naturally have made a better highway, but by making it more of a natural barrier (steep cliffs also round the oceanic side of the Golden peninsula, making it unsuitable for landing) I can have caravans traveling back and forth to the few natural harbors.

The main areas that still need to be detailed are the relatively smallish kingdom of Tarush Noptii, a kingdom ruled by vampires, and the fractious successor states to the faded glory of Baal Hamazi. Baal Hamazi isn't a fading empire in the sense that Terrasa is, it's an empire that's completely gone. Nothing is really left in the traditional sense; the remnant states are to Baal Hamazi as the city-states of Renaissance Italy are to the Roman Empire. Many of these successor states still claim to be the "true heirs" of Baal Hamazi, yet none of them are truly capable of understanding the grandeur that is their social ancestor, and their interpretations of what it means to be Baal Hamazi reborn differ dramatically.

In part because of this, the successor states are a highly Balkanized and politically charged area; nobody has been able to amass significant power in several generations, because the roots of conflict between the various states are too deep and too difficult to overcome.

The idea for Baal Hamazi comes from the 4th edition implied setting, actually, and the name I choose echoes that influence. Bael Turath is the 4th edition tiefling empire of history, and Baal Hamazi is the same. For whatever reason I've always liked the concept of tieflings, even before they existed under that name (Shakespeare wrote of Caliban, who is essentially a tiefling, and Merlin was said to be one as well.) I didn't want to use the name tiefling (which is too bad, because it's a good name... but I don't want such clear and obvious ties to Wizards of the Coast's intellectual property) so I've been casting about for a substitute. Cambion is actually an old Medieval word that refers to the child of a human and a succubus or incubus. Hellkin is another one I've tossed around (and gradually become more dissatisfied with) and darkling is a literal translation of what the word tiefling would be in German. The story is that around the TSR design studios, someone asked Wolfgang Baur to come up with the name, and he picked a German word that basically means darkling. But the idea of a culture of humans who has been tainted by the blood of fiends, and who proudly bear that heritage, intrigues me. It's a very Sword & Sorcery compliant idea.

Although the idea of a former tiefling empire came from 4e, the specific visualization of them does not. In my setting, there are two kinds of tieflings (well... whatever I end up naming them finally); those who are native hamazin, from Baal Hamazi, and those who are changelings, born unexpectedly amongst the other cultures and population groups of the settings. The hamazin have started breeding true, after many generations, and have settled on a common physical appearance. Obsidian black skin, yellow eyes, and dark hair are the hallmarks of the hamazin, as well as a cluster of small horns on their heads. I initially was going for a Graz'zt-like look, but it occurs to me that they also resemble Star Wars zabraks. In fact, Darth Maul, without the red stripes (and without being obligatorily bald) would be a perfect example of a hamazin. Maris Brood, from the game Star Wars Force Unleashed would also be a good one, except that of course she needs to have jet black skin. I've attached a picture, because she's a good example of almost the look I'm going for.

Now the changeling type, on the other hand, do not have a common physical appearance, and can be much more varied in their appearance. An important character I've come up with, Francesca de Sperança Domènechoz (a Terrasan, born in the rural former colony of Calça, with a twin brother who is a regular human) is a good example of one of these, and as a young woman, she has ash-gray skin, white hair, and solid milk-white eyes that look like they're caked with cataracts, but which actually see very well, even in the dark. Others may have even more disturbing physical features---forked tongues, prehensile tails, needle-like teeth, scaly skin, or worse.

Anyway, as soon as I settle on a name for my analogs of tieflings, I'll post my houseruled version of them. It is important to me that they be an LA+0 race, rather than an LA+1 race, so I do not use the rules for tieflings from D&D itself; just the concept.

Character sheets

Although I'm rather specifically not doing the Pathfinder Roleplaying game per se, it occurs to me that the changes that I borrow from there (skill list, CMB/CMD) make any character sheet derived to be compatible with the PFRPG will also be 100% compatible with my game. And, it so happens that there are at least two free character sheets available at Paizo's website. The first is available in the Community Use package, and is the same character sheet that comes packaged with the RPG. The second is a Simple Character Sheet and is available through the store... although it's a free pdf download.

Anyway, I find that handy. I wasn't really in the mood to attempt to create or modify character sheet just for my game.

The only main houserules that isn't specifically addressed is the Defense bonus to Armor class (you'll have to put that under Misc. modifier, or some other box) and the Action Points. However, my Action Point rules are based more on tokens handed out each session, so they shouldn't show up on the character sheet anyway.

Chase rules

I'm adapting Wolfgang Baur's chase rules from the Privateer Press book Five Fingers. I'm not doing them exactly as written, but pretty close.

The reason I chose these, out of the several options I own, is because they're the simplest. I can describe how to run a chase scene in only a paragraph or two. Of course, the price of that simplicity is that they are fairly rules light, and require some GM adjudication and judgement calls.

Anyway, here goes:

When exactly a withdrawal becomes a chase is up to the GM, but clearly if one character (or monster) decides to run away and another decides to pursue, then we enter a chase scene. Chase scenes are handled by making an opposed check by the pursuer and the pursued. The check is a d20 roll + the character's (or monster's) run speed divided by 10 + DEX modifier.

Whomever wins the opposed check gains his regular movement allowance of either widening the gap (if he's the pursued) or closing the gap (if he's the pursuer.)

Let's have an example. A goblin pickpocket with a regular movement of 20 and DEX score of 14 would have a modifier of +10 (his run speed is 80, so his run modifier is 8, and his DEX modifier is +2.) If we assume he has the Run feat, his run speed would be 100, and his chase modifier would increase to +12. If this goblin attempts to pick the pocket of a human barbarian with a base movement of 40, he's in trouble if he gets caught, because the barbarian's chase modifier is +16 (we'll assume he has a DEX of 10--no modifier.)

Clear as mud?

After one minute (10 rounds) a character can no longer run without making a Constitution check. If he fails, he is fatigued, and follows all the rules for that condition.

Attempting to throw off pursuit by ducking into an alley, losing oneself in a crowd, jumping over a barrier, knocking over stacked crates of fruit, etc. is where some GM adjudication comes in, but mostly it means making the appropriate skill check (Acrobatics, Sneak, etc.) and hoping that your opponent fails his associated roll (Acrobatics, Perception, etc.) Common sense rules here; because clever players can come up with many different actions, and because I can't predict what they may be, I make no attempt to make a comprehensive ruleset, merely to point to the skill system as the best way to translate most potential actions.

If one member of a chase is mounted, obviously the mounts run speed is used, not the rider's, although he might need to make Ride checks as normal, especially if attempting anything tricky to keep up in the chase. If the chase scene takes place in unusual terrain, the GM can apply modifier as needed, or even require periodic Reflex saves or Acrobatics checks for runners to maintain their regular speed. Swimming, flying, or even burrowing chases obviously use the swim (or fly, or burrow) speed of the chase participant, but that's obvious, right?

Changes

Ah... I've missed a book that could really and truly be called a page-turner. The last several books I've read, in many ways I've struggled with them. I'm still only about halfway through Reavers of Skaith and I've been reading that for four weeks. And it's only 200 pages long! Fantasy fans (and more to the point, fantasy writers) could benefit from checking out a few mainstream suspense novels and incorporating some of their structure. There's a reason those novels are best-sellers, after all.

Jim Butcher's latest Dresden Files novel, Changes, had a very different impact on me than the books I've been struggling with recently. I got it last night at the library and was home with it again by about 9:30. Now, about 18-19 hours later, I've completely finished the 440 page novel. And I didn't even stay up all night or really miss much time from work to do it, either. It's just one of those novels that you can't put down and it just trips along so quickly that before you know it... it's over. I didn't even have time to put it on my "What I'm Reading" sidebar before it migrated into "What I've Read."

Changes is, in many ways, the novel I've been waiting for Butcher to write. All of my complaints; all of my worries about the series: he addresses 'em. He addresses 'em all. This is not one more notch in the formulaic tread of the series. This is a novel that really changes the game in profound and jaw-dropping ways. The last two novels hinted at that; the impression was certainly given that Dresden and Co. had merely scratched the surface of shadowy, dark conspiracies. But at the end of the day, they returned to (more or less) the same status quo that they were at when the book started.

Not so, this one. Dresden faces significant personal changes. Amazingly significant changes, that'll have no choice but to have a major impact on the books going forward. Murphy has major changes. The White Council faces major changes. The war with the Red Court of vampires faces major changes. Even the writing style and novel structure faces significant changes, ending on one heckuva cliffhanger. Butcher wasn't kidding when he named this novel.

It's a shame in a way that the Dresden Files novels took so long to show this kind of evolution. There's certainly a sense--a strong sense--that Butcher's writing more of these than he needs to in an attempt to stretch out the revenue stream as long as possible. That rarely leads to good results, but Butcher managed to hold it together for 11 novels with only minor hiccups along the way. By and large, they've all been very entertaining even so, the most recent ones especially.

But right when I'm at the point where I'm wondering if the series is going to continue to spin its wheels or actually finally go somewhere... man, does it go. Whew!

Linguistics

I should have double-checked this before, and just added it to my existing post, but because I'm having trouble with the stupid blockquotes formating, I'm just doing a whole new post.

The Linguistics skill covers all of the uses of the 3.5 skills Forgery and Decipher Script. The Linguistics skill also covers the ground of the old Speak Language skill; you gain languages based on the amount of ranks you have in the Linguistics skill. Normally you gain one language per rank, but there are some exceptions, as listed below. The following are the languages from my setting(s).

Terrasan: This is the official language of the Terrasan Empire (surprising, I know) and as such is widely spoken in all the areas of the map shown on my campaign sites and elsewhere. In origin, it is based on the southern shores of the Mezzovian Sea, and it is there that its penetration is most thorough. That said, since no land shown on the map has failed to undergo a fairly severe "Terrasification" culturally, this is a common trade language, at least, if not native language of most people in the area.

Real life similarities: Most place and people names here come from this language. To represent this, I've used mostly Occitan and Catalan names and words, with a few that I draw or manually revise from Romanian, Spanish and various Italian and other Romance languages as well, such as Sardinian, Asturian, Aragonese, Piedmontese, Corsican, Sicilian, etc.

North Terrassan (Balshatoi): The Terrasan Empire was cobbled together over the course of many generations, and from many cultures. The northern rim of the Mezzovian Sea was originally populated by a completely different cultural group. Due to the many years that they have been part of the Empire, their language had largely faded, to be used only by lower classes (particularly, isolated rural populations) and scholars who read the ancient records of the region. As the strength of the Empire has faded in recent decades, however, North Terrassan has undergone a bit of a linguistic renaissance. More and more people of the northern cities: Razina, Iclezza and their surrounding lands, are trying to reclaim the language and bring about its greater prominence. This effort is still nascent; a person who speaks only Terrassan and not North Terrassan will get along fine in these cities, although more and more certain officials, merchants and others will view them as worthy of scorn or even resentment for attempting to "stamp out" their own native culture. Despite the name, North Terrassan is related to Terrassan only by way of geography. Linguistically the languages bear little resemblances that aren't obvious recent borrowings.

Real life similarities: Names in North Terrassan can be picked from Scandinavian and Slavic namelists, particularly Old Norse and Polish or Russian.

Common: Common in this setting is not like Common in a typical D&D setting. Common is a patois or Creole type language formed from Terrassan and various other substrate languages, and it has never achieved anything like a legitimate status. Although a few people write glosses and other short passages in various alphabets, especially Terrassan, this is merely an accomodation; Common actually has no written form at all. Speaking in Common is certainly possible over a wider audience than Terrassan, but it is limited in what it can convey; it lacks the robustness of a naturally occuring language.

Roleplaying note: Realistically, anyone roleplaying in this setting can use Common to get by (although there is no written form of it) without any penalties. For added flavor, anyone trying to conduct any social skill check (Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, etc.) in Common takes a -2 penalty due to the simplistic and sparse nature of speaking in Common.

Kvuustu: Kvuustu is a language that originates in the southern portion of the map, and is most closely associated with the orc population. It's too simplistic to simply say that Kvuustu is the equivalent of the orc language, however; many humans who live in proximity to that area speak Kvuustu as their native language as well. Many scholars believe that this language was once much more widespread over this area, long before the rise of the Terrassan Empire, and that ironically it was humans from the shores of the Mezzovian Sea who first brought an ancient form of this language to the orcs... who now bring it back with their foederati army legions and settlements. Many orcs who are recently arrived in the Empire speak only this language, or at best, Kvuustu and Common. Kvuustu does have an ancient written form, but today few people can use it and most native speakers are illiterate.

Real life similarities: I actually have a word generator program, with custom parameters, that generate my Kvuustu words. It is notorious amongst Terrassans for its difficult consonent clusters and long "doubled" vowels, as well as having fewer phonemes than some other languages. In fact, the more difficult consonent clusters compensate for this lack of phonemes, so that k-, kv-, ksv-, etc. serve as different letters from each other, effectively.

Kurushi: The language of the Kurushat khaganate, this language is commonly known by its association with the hobgoblins, who speak it as a native language. Unlike Kvuustu, this language is quite cultured, and the hobgoblins themselves can claim to have a growing, vibrant, powerful state that is a legitimate rival to Terrasa and other states in the region. In any case, Kurishi has a rich literary history, at the very least, and its use, especially on the southern rim of the Mezzovian, is fairly commonplace.

Real life similarities: If the Terrassan empire is often compared loosely to Rome, then the Kurushi have to be compared loosely to the Sassanian Persians, at least in terms of role in the setting, if not actual linguistic similarity. The fact that the goblins who remain here are isolated from their motherland, and have been for a long time, does not mean that they have forgotten their heritage. Although many serve as foederati for Terrassa, their primary allegiance is to themselves. The names I've created for Kurushat are often Leigh Brackett Martian names that have been modified and malformed to scrape the serial numbers off. In addition, a pseudo-Asian vibe has been applied to some names, although this is too vague and generic to be binned to any specific Asian culture.

Sylvan: This language comes from the woods and wilderness areas on the western borders of the Empire, and is still common amongst the rural mining towns in Caurs Mountains and the woodlands of the southern Bisbal Forest especially along the banks of the Erau River. Because many Imperial citizens only know it from the shifters who live in that region, it is informally called "Shifter" or Vucari by many. Another branch of this language exists deep in the Shifting Forest, but since the inhabitants of those lands are extremely xenophobic and don't maintain relationships of any kind (other than "kill on sight") with their neighbors, this dialect has diverged from that spoken in the Caurs region significantly.

Real life similarities: Most Sylvan names are ones that I've grabbed from namelists from Georgian (the country, not the state in the southeastern United States) and Turkish. I might have grabbed a few Abhkhaz names just for fun as well.

Qizmiri: This language came from across the ocean with the jann. The version of Qizmiri today is heavily influenced by a substrate language of the humans who lived there, who spoke a language distantly related to Terrasan. That language is now extinct, and everyone from Qizmir speaks Qizmiri.

Real life similarities: Most names and words from Qizmiri are borrowed and adapted from either Farsi or Arabic, and should have a similar "feel" to those languages.

Tarushan: Tarushan is mostly a substrate language of the northern reaches of the map, distantly related to North Terrasan. It's mostly extinct except as a source of ancient inscriptions, placenames and loanwords. However, it does remain an active and vibrant language in one region: Tarush Noptii. It is speculated that it is the original native language of the Primogenitor vampires. The linguistic conservatism of effectively immortal creatures has ensured that it remains mostly as it was many generations ago, and today Tarushan is one of the most archaic and conservative languages in the region.

Real life similarities: Tarushan names are borrowed from Hungarian.

Infernal: This is the primary language spoken by those from the Realms Outside, although myriad other tongues exist amongst this diverse breed as well. In addition, this is the language of magic, so a smattering of it, at least, is known by any practitioner of the arcane arts. Perfect fluency in this language, on the other hand, is almost impossible for any mortal to achieve. Because of this, it takes two skill points to earn this language, not one.

Despite that, it was always very fashionable in Baal Hamazi, where the demonic taint of their bloodline was a source of pride to the ruling caste, to speak Infernal natively, and many noble houses took great pains to ensure that their children didn't hear any other language until they were five years of age. Some households still speak Infernal in the home, and it is still a living language of some importance in some of the successor states to Baal Hamazi, and amongst the hamazin in particular.

Dagonic: This is a bizarre pre-human language, remnants of which float around on isolated and moldy standing stones and other areas. Intriguingly, it appears to have originally been a underwater language. Few people on the surface can even make an attempt to learn it, due to the challenges of speech that an underwater language had to have overcome, and the language itself is only known from very scanty and fragmentary remains, making fluency all but impossible for even the most dedicated scholar.Roleplaying note: Because of the difficulty in learning this language, it takes three skill points rather than one to do so. Also, for all intents and purposes, it is a written language only, not a spoken language, since there are no speakers that anyone knows of at all, and how to pronounce the language is anyone's guess.

Knowledge (Skill)

Continuing my series on my houserules, here's another one adopted and adapted from the Pathfinder RPG, via that PFSRD and the OGL. Summarized and paraphrased by me for this blog post, rather than actually "published". For the full text, I refer you to the PFSRD.

The Knowledge skill in D&D 3.5 was always a little hairy. d20 Modern set out specific Knowledge skills, and Pathfinder has followed in that vein. I list them all here, with a few comments (mostly the only comments I include are along the lines of "don't use this one; it'll be worthless in my campaigns."

Knowledge (X) where X equals:

• Arcana - As in 3.5. The theory of magic, in particularly, as opposed to Spellcraft, which is about identifying practical effects. Can also be useful in identifying summoned or other extraplanar or magical creatures.
• Dungeoneering - don't take this one. You'll never use it.
• Engineering - includes also architecture, and any vaguely related field.
• Geography - self-explanatory, mostly.
• History - this one too.
• Local - as in 3.5. Great choice for a game that's set in a specific environment with no plans to travel much.
• Nature - the academic study of the natural world. As opposed to the more intuitive, pragmatic approach, which uses the Survival skill.
• Nobility - You can probably skip this one. I'll use a Local, Geography or History in a pinch.
• Planes - Don't bother. I don't plan on making this a substantially extraplanar game.
• Religion - for any check against the obvious subject matter.

Skill consolidation

While in general I'm skeptical of the change from 3e to 3.5e, one thing it did right was adopt d20 Modern's slimmed down and consolidated skill list. And one thing that Pathfinder (and the rest of the post 3.5 d20-derived systems) has done is further consolidate and strip down the skill system.

A robust skill system is important for any game system I'd like to run. I like having an obvious thing that I can ask players to throw out a check for when they describe an action. The older 1e version of making ability checks felt ad hoc and non-robust to me. I also like skill systems as a tool for character definition and differentiation. It says a surprising amount about the character Ricardo Murcielago, for example, that he has a rank or two in Craft (Needlepoint), because his lace always has to look nice, even when he's out in the middle of nowhere without access to a seamstress.

By the same token, though, skills that tread in each other's territory or otherwise feel superfluous or extraneous don't help either. After poking around with various post 3.5 skill systems, and looking at them next to each other (Trailblazer, Pathfinder, Star Wars SAGA and even 4e) I've decided to adopt Pathfinder's skill system wholesale as the easiest of the bunch to integrate into a 3.5 game without having to do much in the way of actual work to convert.

So, while one or two skills do in fact need to be relearned, mostly all you need to do is match up your 3.5 skill to the corresponding Pathfinder skill, and off you go. If you're playing a custom class that has access to Hide and Move Silently, for instance, that class would now have access to Stealth, the single skill that replaces those redundant skills.

The following little chart should highlight the correspondances. If there's no change to the skill, it will be labeled as such. Unless otherwise noted, the rules don't actually change, though. If you want to make a Hide check, you now roll against the Stealth skill, but everything else about making the check is unchanged.

The only skills that require further explanation (which I'll provide another time in a separate post) are Linguistics and Knowledge.

D&D 3.5 Skill::Pathfinder skill
-----------------------------------------
• Appraise::No change
• Balance::Now use Acrobatics
• Bluff::No change
• Climb::No change
• Concentration::Now is a caster level check plus ability modifier of main spellcasting ability
• Craft::No change
• Decipher Script::Now is part of the Linguistics skill
• Diplomacy::No change
• Disable Device::No change
• Disguise::No change
• Escape Artist::No change
• Forgery::Now use the Linguistics skill; read details
• Gather Information::Now use the Diplomacy skill
• Handle Animal::No change
• Heal::No change
• Hide::Now use the Stealth skill
• Intimidate::No change
• Jump::Now use the Acrobatics skill
• Knowledge::More codified with several specific Knowledge skills instead of the vague 3.5 options
• Listen::Now use the Perception skill
• Move Silently::Now use the Stealth skill
• Open Lock::Now use the Disable Device skill
• Perform::No change
• Profession::No change
• Ride::No change
• Search::Now use the Perception skill
• Sense Motive::No change
• Sleight of Hand::No change
• Speak Languages::Now use the Linguistics skill; read details
• Spellcraft::No change
• Spot::Now use the Perception skill
• Survival::No change
• Swim::No change
• Tumble::Now use the Acrobatics skill
• Use Magic Device::No change
• Use Rope::DM will adjudicate skill check, based on situation

The other notable change to the rules from 3.5 is that no character may have skill ranks higher than his character level. HOWEVER, any skill for which a character has at least one rank, and which is a class skill for that character will recieve a +3 bonus to the check result. Note: this also means that characters do not get their skill bonus x4 at first level; they get their skill bonus... x1.

Spectacular Spiderman

Sometimes corporations are stupid. Disney just bought Marvel, right? Well, there was some stuff leading up to that already; the Disney XD channel had a lot of Marvel programming. One of their biggest hits was the show Spectacular Spiderman. Not only was this show a commercial success, it was a critical one, and Spidey fans everywhere (including me) found it to be one of the very best incarnations of the character(s) ever done, in any media.

On April 13, two days ago, Marvel issued a press release that they're developing a new show called Ultimate Spiderman (based at least in part on the comic book of the same name, and featuring a lot of team-up action) to debut in 2011. That begged the question of what would happen with the pending Spectacular Spiderman which was done with season 2 and waiting on word whether it would be picked up again for season 3 (while simultaneously being a bad sign for said season 3.)

Sure enough, yesterday, April 14th, the situation was clarified; Spectacular was done. Now; this Ultimate Spiderman sounds like a decent show. But did we really need to cancel a show that was a known success in order to do that? Why cancel a good thing and then hope you can be as successful again with another venture that treads the same territory?

Anyway... I'm highly disappointed. I started watching the show because I have little boys, who love superheroes, and stuck with it because it was just spectacularly (if you'll forgive me for saying so) well done. Better than the Sam Raimi movies. At least as good as the Brian Michael Bendis Ultimate Spiderman books. Better by far than the prior TV efforts in the 60s, 80s and 90s. Better than the original run of the comics. Really; the best Spiderman I'd ever seen. I was really excited to see a season 3, expanding the Spectacularverse with more of the iconic Spidey villains: Kingpin, Scorpion, Hobgoblin, Carnage, and more.

But now that'll never happen.

Rest in Peace, Spectacular Spiderman. You'll be sorely missed. And now I'm ready to go into the Ultimate show already ticked off at Marvel from the get-go.

Dinos and Adventure

Dinosaurs and adventure go hand in hand. Always have.

I just stumbled across this cover artwork for an upcoming Paizo product.

Nice, huh?

Combat Reactions

Here's another of my houserules. Combat reactions. Credit goes to the Trailblazer crew for this, again. Combat reactions are basically taking the concept of Attacks of Opportunity, and expanding on it.

My version of combat reactions isn't exactly the same as those printed in Trailblazer, but it's pretty close. I left off Trailblazer's Block option, because at the end of the day, it seemed kinda redunant with the Dodge option. Plus, I reworded everything slightly.

Here goes:

Combat Reactions can be taken for each round of combat. Rather than getting one per round, each character has a number of combat reactions equal to his attacks per round, i.e., a character with a Base Attack bonus of +11 would have three Combat reactions. For most Combat Reactions, you must threaten the opponent as per the standard Attack of Opportunity rules.

Combat reactions include the following:

• Aid Attack: if you announce your intention to aid an attack against an opponent whom you threaten, your ally will gain a +2 to his to-hit roll.
• Aid Defense: if you announce your intention to aid the defense of an ally from an opponent whom you threaten, your alley will gain a +2 to his AC from that attack.
• Dodge: if you announce your intention to dodge an opponent's attack, you gain a dodge bonus equal to ½ of your Base Attack Bonus (rounded down) against that one attack.
• Attack of Opportunity: you may take an attack of opportunity against an opponent who provokes one.

The Conquerer's Shadow

I finished The Conquerer's Shadow last night, just in time for me to get it back to the library on the day it was due. Technically, I actually turned it in late--after they closed--but they don't charge late fees for stuff in the drop box the next morning, so I'm in the clear by the skin of my teeth.

The Conquerer's Shadow is a novel by one Ari Marmell, who's otherwise better known as a writer of roleplaying game supplements. This is, however, apparently his fourth novel, three prior ones written in shared world environments: i.e., they're game fiction. Followers of my blog (if there were any) would know that I don't necessarily hold that against him.

The Conquerer's Shadow is a novel with an interesting premise. The protagonist of the novel is Corvis Rebaine, a former Dark Lord of an almost exaggerated Sauron-like aspect, except human. He's one of those who (also like Sauron) doesn't think he's necessarily evil; he's just using evil methods to bring about a greater good; the inefficient, greedy Guilds who are stifling the potential of his kingdom of Imphallion, who stiffed him as a young mercenary, and who are otherwise painted as very unflattering, are his real targets; he wants to set up a powerful, vibrant kingdom that betters the lives of those who live in it. Even if he has to kill most of the people of said kingdom to get to that point. Anyway... the novel starts off with him unsuccessful in his search for the spell-book of the greatest wizard who ever lived, which was the means to the end. Without having found the book, he's in a strategically untenable position. So, he grabs a young noblewoman as a hostage and skips town, leaving his army to disperse and disappear.

A few pages and several years later, he's settled down, living in hiding, married to his hostage (apparently quite happily) with two little kids and a cottage in the country. When another Dark Lord wannabe comes a-calling, clearly following in his exact same footsteps, he needs to take up his old armor and demon-forged ax and answer the call of duty. The theme of the novel, then, is a prior dark lord, now repentant and a little over-the-hill, having to turn to his old methods to now save his family. But the call of power is undeniable, and he has to decide who he really is: the conquering dark lord, or the quieter family man who doesn't care about what's going on in amongst the movers and shakers of his modest little kingdom?

Unfortunately, there's a strong clash between theme and tone in this novel, and the theme suffers considerably because of it. As you might expect, the Dark Lord's allies, as he starts to gather them, are supposed to be truly terrible. However... they don't come across as such. Even the soul-eating demon Khanda doesn't come across as truly evil so much as he? it? comes across as annoyingly Katherine Hepburn to Corvis's Spencer Tracy. The constant stream of juvenile insults isn't really funny enough to elevate the novel to a comedy or parody work, so instead it just dilutes and weakens the theme of the novel.

In addition, the voices of the various allies aren't very different from each other. Khanda only takes over as the insulting Katherine Hepburn when Marmell has grown tired of Davro, a character who featured much more prominently in the first part of the novel, but who inexplicably seemed to almost disappear after Khanda came along and took all his lines. In addition, the book occasionally slips into other points of view, and we see the new upstart Dark Lord Audriss has, unfortunately, the exact same relationship with his demon ally and his vampire warlord.

The plot's a competent one, the characters aren't half bad, but Marmell never really manages to bring a sense of urgency to his novel somehow. I've been thinking, since I finished it last night, why it is that I felt that, because he obviously tried to do so, and on paper it should have worked. I think it's the tone. It's too light-hearted. Everybody kinda runs around with non-stop wry sarcastic remarks ready to spit out. They're all too easy-going to really make the theme and action work quite right, and the novel never gets as dark as the subject matter should have been. Even when we see people killed, tortured, have their souls eaten, burned alive, or other "dark" things, I just don't feel it.

Again; the tone clashes with the theme. Both end up getting diluted. Now, maybe its just because I've read a lot of him recently, but Jim Butcher manages to nicely incorporate horror and humor without making one clash or undercut the other. I think maybe its because his truly horrible characters are never the humorous ones. Harry Dresden is, himself, fairly humorous, but he's the protagonist as well as the narrator. A few other sidekick characters get some good lines in: Bob the skull, Karin Murphy, Thomas, Carlos, etc. But none of them are horrible. They're all friendly sidekicks. Maybe that's why it works, or at least part of the answer?

Parece un Martes 13

Today is "Martes 13", or Tuesday the 13th. In the English speaking world, Friday the 13th is the bad luck day, but in the Spanish speaking world, it's today.

Now, I'm not particularly (or at all) superstitious about stuff like that, but there is a really cool song called "Parece un Martes 13" ("Seems like Tuesday the 13th") by Argentine band el Signo from a very late 80s or very early 90s vintage that I really like.

Here's a bizarre little youtube clip of the album version of the song, and I've also included a link to el Signo's webpage, where you can download an mp3 of the more commonly heard remix version of the song.

Enjoy!



http://www.elsigno.com.ar/audio.html

New Romantics

I've always been a fan of the New Romanticism movement in 80s music, and you can't talk about New Romantics without mentioning Steve Strange, his band Visage, and their mega-hit "Fade to Grey."

While I haven't seen any hint that this actually got a wide release---in fact, even Wikipedia fails to mention the name of the band at all---here's an interesting remake of "Fade to Grey" from a few years ago, by Welsh teenagers DV8. It's interesting, because Strange himself makes an extended cameo, playing the villain in this bizarre and obviously Tron-influenced music video.

Anyway... enjoy.

Action Points

I've liked the concept of Action Points, ever since I first read about them in d20 Modern. Granted, the concept is older than that, in a vaguer sense, but Action Points really made their debut here. They were further expanded upon and brought into the D&D fold proper in the Eberron campaign setting, and in Unearthed Arcana, the book of "official" house-rules. Surprisingly, in none of these three sources are they exactly the same, although they follow the same similar framework.

I've made a few modifications to Action Point usage over the years myself, and the Trailblazer ruleset makes a few others. A little bit later in this post, after I'm done talking about why I want them, I'll post my complete Action Point houserule; every way in which they can be used.

To me, Action Points represent two things. The first is that if I'm going to play a swashbuckling game with slightly over-the-top (I would say heroic, but most of the PCs I get are rogues and scoundrels, not heroes) characters, then Action Points give them a way to get just a little bit over the top; to give them a boost when they almost, but don't quite make it. It encourages riskier (and therefore, more fun) play rather than conservative, careful play. The second thing that it does is substitute for other things that I'm taking out. In particular, it makes it possible to have a lower magic game without significantly handicapping the player characters, because Action Points can (to a certain extent) compensate for lack of magic.

In any case, here's my complete Action Points house rule:

All player characters (and select non-player characters) get a total of three action points per session. These may be represented with coins or tokens that are handed out and turned in as used, or they may be tracked independently by the player. Regardless of how many are used each session, action points do not carry-over from session to session, and player characters always get three for every session in which they play. Action points can be used in any of the following ways:

• Improve a d20 roll. After rolling the d20 roll, but before the GM announces success or failure, a player may opt to spend an action point to improve the roll. The player then rolls 1d10 and adds the result of that to the existing d20 roll. This applies to any roll that requires a d20, including (but not necessarily limited to) attack rolls, saving throws and skill checks.
• "Healing surge." At any time, even when it is not the player character's turn, a player can spend an action point to get a "healing surge." A healing surge mimics the effects of a potion of cure light wounds, i.e., the character re-gains 1d8+1 hit points immediately up to the character's maximum, and any character that is dying immediately stabilizes as well.
• Confirm a critical hit. A character who has failed to confirm a critical hit by rolling normally can spend an action point to automatically confirm the critical hit.
• An action point can be spent to gain an additional use of a limited use (i.e. per day) character ability.
• An action point can be spent to gain an additional move or standard action in combat.
• Subject to GM approval, an action point can be spent to emulate a class or character ability that the character does not have. This only applies to one use abilities, not continuous abilities. i.e., it could be used to emulate a barbarian rage, but could not be used to emulate darkvision, because Rage is a one-time use ability with a definite (and short!) duration. This is, again, subject to GM approval. Do not expect to emulate the ability to cast 9th level spells, for instance. It won't be approved.

Ode to Old Movies

On a whim, I decided to post an "ode to old movies." By "old movie" I mean one that's old enough that I was too young to remember its original theatrical run. Arbitrary, I know, but there you have it. The watershed movie was 1977's Star Wars; not only was that a game-changer in the way cinema was done, but it's also the first movie that I actually remember seeing in theaters.

Of course, very little of the late 60s to mid 70s output counts either; mostly because that's a period of film that I'm just less familiar with than possibly some others. While Carter's famous "malaise speech" may not have been delivered until 1979, the roots of it were evident in Hollywood long before that. Star Wars itself was a reaction against the heavy-handed, cynical and dark nature of most films that came out in the 70s, reflecting a national mood of mounting frustration in America with issues like Vietnam, Watergate, and others. Rather, I watch "old movies" that are "fun", and that generally means skipping past that period, looking at the earlier 60s and earlier. This isn't completely true of course; an all-star cast version of The Three Musketeers from this era is one of my favorite movies, but it mostly is. I've since discovered that this same broad era that I consider "old movies" are considered by many film critics and historians as "classic Hollywood cinema" characterized by continuity editing filming technique, and other cues.

I've selected three "old movies" as among my favorite of the bunch. Chronologically, they are The Adventures of Robin Hood from 1938, Singin' In the Rain from 1952 and Hatari! from 1962. Of course, there's others I could choose, but I have to be selective here, right?

Erroll Flynn, who amazingly was not the first choice to play Robin Hood, established probably his most iconic role as the dashing, swashbuckling outlaw. Robin Hood reunites the director and much of the cast of Flynn's first starring role in Captain Blood (Michael Curtiz, with actors Flynn, Olivia De Haviland, Basil Rathbone and more. Alan Hale plays Little John, for the second of three times in his acting career). They manage to do a credible job of turning southern California into medieval England. The reason this movie succeeds so well is because its just so dang fun. For an outlaw fighting for the justice of a cruelly oppressed people (in this case, the Saxons, chafing under Norman misrule), Erroll Flynn is a disarmingly charming, light-hearted, and lusty guy, going about his adventures with a hearty laugh and a witty joke.

Despite that, the action is fast and frequent, and despite being many, many decades before we got jaded by Hong Kong martial arts, convincing and thrilling. The final swordfight with Basil Rathbone (as Sir Guy of Gisbourne) across the castle is still one of the best classic Hollywood swordfights ever filmed. I actually miss classic Hollywood swordfights; even with generally better choreography and stuntwork in movies these days, modern movie swordfights just somehow aren't the same.

Olivia de Haviland is, of course, completely charming and lovely as the smug Norman lady who develops instant sympathy for the Saxon plight once she witnesses it first-hand. Supporting cast Patric Knowles, Alan Hale, Eugene Pallette, and Herbert Mundin have altogether too much fun for a bunch of oppressed people on the run hiding in the woods, while Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Montagu Love and Melville Cooper have altogether too much fun chewing up the scenery as over-the-top villains. All in all, everything about the movie is melodramatic and over-the-top, but they manage to never make this a liability by keeping it light-hearted and fun. It never descends into dreary pretentiousness like new(er) movies that mine this same territory; at all points it's simply a delight to watch, even today over 60 years after its first release.

Fourteen years later, we come to Singin' in the Rain, which is today viewed by many critics and Hollywood historians as one of the best musicals ever made. Part of the reason for this is that it's also a mock documentary of sorts of Hollywood itself from an earlier era; the late twenties when the Silent Age of Hollywood was ending and the talkies were rapidly becoming big business. With a lot of esoteric in-jokes to real personalities and events from the time, Singin' is a movie that can be appreciated on multiple levels.

Ironically, for being one of the most famous musicals of all time, Singin' had very few original songs, including even the title song, which was originally from Hollywood Revue of 1929. That said, the performances were what really made this movie stand-out; Debbie Reynolds (and even Jean Hagen, who's voice in a twist of funny irony, stands in for Debbie Reynolds when Reynolds' character in the movie is standing in for Hagen's) sing incredibly well, and Gene Kelly and Donald O'Conner are just amazing performers all 'round. Even Cyd Charisse gets to make an impressive cameo performance. Even if you have absolutely no interest in dancing, its impossible not to admire the sheer athleticism involved in some of these performances; check out youtube clips of Donald O'Connor's "Make 'Em Laugh" routine, Gene Kelly's "Singin' in the Rain" dance routine, or the two of them together in "Fit As a Fiddle (And Ready For Love)" or "Moses Supposes" which was always my personal favorite.

But the movie doesn't just work as a musical; it's great comedy, great romance, and even great drama. It's really got it all. Although it was popular in 1952, when it was released, its true worth has only emerged and been recognized in the years since then, frankly, where its become one of the true and most recognized classics ever to have come out of the Hollywood system.

The final "old movie" that I'll talk about today is Hatari! This movie perhaps doesn't have the same recognition as the others, which are true classics recognized by anyone familiar with Hollywood, while Hatari! is a rather obscure Howard Hawkes and John Wayne piece with an unusual theme. It's also notable as a Leigh Brackett script, for what that's worth (I still have a Leigh Brackett novel on my What I'm Reading list right now as I type this.)

Many critics, even favorable ones today, remark that the movie is too long and starts to drag in the middle. I've never thought so. It's true that the film actually has very little plot; it's a simple ensemble piece that shows a number of interesting characters just interacting, often in regular, day-to-day (well, if you have a very bizarre and adventurous career, anyway) ways, interspersed by scenes of the whole group of them hopping in old trucks and jeeps and chasing down wild animals on the African savannah.

This meandering movie could be a mess in lesser hands, but for me, its combination of light-hearted comedy, rousing adventure, inter-character chemistry, witty dialogue, and just overall charm makes it one of my favorite "old movies." It's also fun to see Bruce Cabot as an older man, showing he's got much more acting chops than he demonstrated in 1933's King Kong by a long shot. Although he's, of course, only one member of an ensemble here. Even John Wayne himself often fades into the background, letting some of the other characters get their time in the spotlight.

I so enjoy this "Golden Age of Hollywood" as it's sometimes called, that of the Disney parks, in many ways MGM Studios (now called Hollywood Studios), which recreates the atmosphere of it, is one of my favorites. A number of other movies get nods as almost worthy of inclusion in this brief list: Some Like it Hot from 1959, Blake Edwards' The Great Race from 1965, which also features Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. Blake Edwards admits that this movie was his attempt to film "the greatest comedy ever" and he comes awfully close. He also manages to film both the most memorable saloon fight ever put to film, and the most memorable pie fight ever put to film while at it, and make an homage to all kinds of things throughout, most noticably the Ruritanian romance. In 1952, Stewart Grainger headlines a movie version of Scaramouche, which has one of the best swordfights ever filmed, and certainly one of the longest and most involved. 1935 was Errol Flynn and Olivia de Haviland's first starring roles together in Captain Blood. Both of the last two are also based on Rafael Sabatini novels, who happens to be one of my favorite, and oft-forgotten today, once hugely popular novelists. Danny Kaye in The Court Jester is another perennial favorite. Oh, so many!

3•5 OGL Compatible

I created this little logo for my gaming wiki. It looks very similar to, and is obviously modeled on, a similar logo that Paizo used for their 3.5 material. I changed the color to make it a little less "copied", but it's still obvious the same idea. Paizo, I presume, did this to separate themselves from the previously attractive d20 license. As restrictions were placed on the license, it became less attractive. As it turns out, the license was completely revoked, so it certainly worked out well for Paizo that they promoted an alternative that had the same meaning for customers, but which didn't come saddled with adherence to WotC's whim.

Of course, the OGL, the Open Game License, is unrevokeable, and therefore safe. It also fails to resonate with customers the way the d20 logo did in its heyday, but then again, Paizo's customer base is probably sufficiently informed that they don't care.

I've adopted my own version of it for completely different reasons; I want to distance my game mentally from Dungeons & Dragons, which it only superficially resembles, in some ways. It uses a D&D baseline, but makes some significant changes.

I've been tinkering with houserules for a long time, and while its probably presumptuous of me to say I'm now done tinkering with houserules, I think my tinkering has reached a state where it's mostly done. What changes I make now are very, very minor.

Here's what I've done, in a nutshell:

1) I had a hard choice to make in terms of which rule system to adopt. Four candidates stuck out to me, all of them from the OGL movement: Pathfinder, Trailblazer, as a bit of a dark horse, d20 Modern + d20 Past, and of course Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Edition. While I like a lot of elements of all of them, three of the four didn't completely make the cut, and here's why.

a) Pathfinder upped the power level in ways that I didn't like. This made it incompatible balance-wise with races and classes beyond the core D&D ones. I'm a bit of an exoto-phile; why would I be interested in playing a dwarf fighter when I can play a shifter scout, or whatever? Anyway, because this made supplemental 3.5 races and classes incompatible, it effectively cut off a lot of options that I wanted access to. Pathfinder has since released 6 new classes, at least in Beta format, but none of the six are really ones that I'm thrilled with from a setting point of view.

b) The same thing is true of Trailblazer, although of course Trailblazer also gives you some guidance in modifying the classes and races to make them all balanced with each other. At the end of the day, though, I realized that was going to be a lot of work. Both of these two rulesets failed to make the cut for this reason. However, that shouldn't be seen as a condemnation of any kind of either ruleset either; it just that I had a very specific statement of work that I needed my OGL-derived game to meet, and both Pathfinder and Trailblazer focused on some slightly different things. That's not to say that neither of them are useful to me, though... I've adopted Pathfinder's slightly modified, improved and simplified skill system and combat maneuvers rules, and Trailblazer's action points rules and combat reactions got integrated almost as.

c) I really liked a lot of the conceits of d20 Modern; it's like D&D except without the proscriptive class nature (classes are more descriptive and are clearly just bundles of mechanics, not role-protection), with a lower inherent magic level (you can't take any spellcasting class levels until you've already got at least three levels under your belt... and even then, the spellcasting classes only have ten levels) and a few other things. What made this rules option ultimately fail for me were two things: the haphazard nature of the modern SRD (MSRD) which includes d20 Modern, d20 Future, Urban Arcana, but which bizarrely never got around to incorporating the d20 Past rules that I considered essential, and the fact that I had other options just as good if not better for limiting magic and introducing chargen flexibility. This is still a close second for me, though.

d) Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Edition therefore became the winner. The fact that I can use classes from all kinds of sources gives me the flexibility I want, and I can also take some other clever steps to reduce magic and flyaway power levels. As I said, it's not completely unchanged; I swiped a few other rules from Pathfinder and Trailblazer both. But I'm able to get what I want with the minimum level of houseruling using this rule system.

e) As an aside, I should mention that I never really considered a non-3.5 OGL option. 4e fails for me because I have no desire to go buy a bazillion new rulebooks to recreate what I've already got for 3.5. OSR-themed games fail for me because when the source material that they are mimicking was current, I was unsatisfied and unhappy with it. Prior to the release of 3e, I was almost an anti-D&D roleplayer because I had been so disillusioned with earlier edition AD&D and BD&D in particular. So honestly, I don't really know much about what's going on with games like Labyrinth Lord or Sword & Wizardry, nor am I particularly interested in finding out.

The 3.5 ruleset is also such a gigantic buffet of attractive options, that I never really considered another system either; although if I were to, I'd probably have a look at Savage Worlds.

2) The E6 top-hat was an essential ingredient for me. E6 postulates that looking at fantasy fiction, its hard to believe that most literary characters are really very high level, or that the advancement of characters as they gain experience and skill is so exponential as in D&D. It also is based on the simple framework that as characters progress in level, the game actually changes genre; going from a more sword & sorcery type game to a wuxia fanasy superheroes game somewhat unexpectedly (well, unless you've been on the curve before, of course.) E6, then, says that 6th level is where your character tops off. You never get any more levels after 6th level.

You can, however, continue incremental advancement; every 5,000 additional experience points a character gains, he or she also gains a feat. There's a few more rules clarifying the odd corner cases that occur here, but that's basically it in a nutshell. Higher level magic can be accessed at the GM's discretion by using the Incantations rules, which were printed in both Urban Arcana and Unearthed Arcana and are therefore open content.

3) Action Points become an integral part of the game. I've actually expanded the use of them somewhat, giving them the option of working not a little unlike 4e's healing surges, and also rather than resetting each level, I give players fewer of them and have them reset each session. One of these days I'd like to buy a bunch of Campaign Coins and hand them out as Action Point counters, but in the meantime, pennies, Skittles, or just about anything else will do the trick easily enough.

4) The Defense Bonus is one that I think is integral to the game actually working correctly. Why is it that attack bonuses go up as you improve, but not your armor class? Why is that equipment dependent? And what if I want a more swashbuckling type of game rather than one where fighters clunk around in heavy armor?

Well, Defense Bonus (from Unearthed Arcana) is the solution.

5) Chase rules. I like action movies. To me, fantasy roleplaying games should resemble literary fantasy fiction and action movies. A staple of action movies is chase scenes. Oddly enough, d20 doesn't have any native chase scene rules. I've got a few options available, and I'm settling on a paraphrasing of Wolfgang Baur's chase rules, which appeared in Five Fingers (and maybe somewhere else, too.) Why those? Because they're the most simple. I could tell you how to run a chase scene with these rules in a modest-sized blog post (in fact, sometime later I will). In a lot of ways they resemble complex skill checks from Unearthed Arcana which in turn were ancestral to 4e's skill challenges... but hey, that's an easy ruleset to adapt.

6) Not exactly a rule, but what I most want to do is change the D&D paradigm. Do I have enough houserules that I can honestly say that I'm not even playing D&D anymore and am instead playing some other game that uses the basic D&D rules as a baseline but then goes somewhere else? I dunno. That doesn't matter. Changing the name of my game is more about changing the paradigm that I want at the table. I don't want a game of heroic good vs. evil. I don't want a game of dungeoneering for profit and XP (or for any other reason, for that matter.) I don't want a game where the players assume that they're supposed to win, no matter what they do.

I want darker games. I want shady characters engaged in shadowy intrigue and plots. I want an urban and wilderness environment that's more exciting than the prospect of conveniently placed ruins, or "dungeons." I want magic to be frightening and unnatural. I want players who play their characters. Who know that they could get swamped and killed if they insist on the wrong fight. I want horror, I want action, I want swashbuckling, and maybe even a little steampunk. I want a sword & sorcery weird tale, not a high fantasy epic.

Anyway, I'll blog some more in the next little bit with more detail about some of the houserule changes that I've settled on. I've also created the house rules tag, so all posts related to house rules present in my game can be easily found with one click.

What I'm reading...

I continue to struggle to finish either The Conquerer's Shadow or The Reavers of Skaith as a quick glance at my What I'm Reading sidebars show. The Conquerer's Shadow, in fact, will be due at the library this Monday. I think I can make that without too much trouble; I've only got about 100 pages left to read. However, the fact that I've taken that long to finish means that the book hasn't exactly been begging for me to pick it up and turn the next page. It's been a decent read, but not an incredible one.

Another reason I need to hurry and finish it up is that Jim Butcher's Changes is at my library getting processed right now as we speak. I don't know exactly how long it'll take to get it done, but only a few days, I presume. By the time The Conquerer's Shadow is due on Monday, it'll probably be ready to go.

Maps again

I've been looking through some of my existing RPG-related maps, mostly just to see how they did things. I'm more looking for stylistic elements I might want to mimic; not really needing the content per se.

I had forgotten that I'd made some high quality laser printer copies, on 11"x17" paper of two separate Eberron campaign setting maps. One of them is the official map in "poster" size; oddly enough not included with the setting (well, technically it was... but not in one piece. All of the smaller regional maps have to be laid out and stitched together.) Prior to WotC providing this on their website, an Eberron fansite guy, with access to Campaign Cartographer, put together his own stitched together map.

The reason I point out these two particular maps is because they are exactly the same in terms of content and layout. It's only the style that sets them apart.

Well, also because Keith Baker had a real gift for names. I love placenames (and character names) from Eberron.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebwe/20041206a

http://www.coveworld.net/eberron/lore-map.html

Seven Seas

Although not the specific seven seas of Medieval folklore, the ones that probably led to the expression "sailing the seven seas," it so happens that the International Hydrographic Organization, which has global responsibility for recognizing the names of bodies of water, recognizes seven "sub-seas" within the Mediterranean Sea. These are the Alboran Sea, the Balearic Sea, the Adriatic Sea, the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Aegean Sea, the Ligurian Sea and the Ionian Sea.

I bring this up because, as I'm working on the map of my campaign setting, JOSHUA-world (not its real name), I decided long ago that the main geological feature that would dominate the part of the world that I'm mapping is a major sea called the Mezzovian Sea, which is also meant to be not unlike the Mediterranean. My "final" draft on the posterboard has enough definition and detail to really start splitting it into subseas, and I bring this up because... well, because I'm now getting to go to town assigning new names to new features. Fun, huh?

I also decided, kinda on a whim, that my Mediterranean Sea analog will be in the southern hemisphere of its planet. So, as you go north, rather than getting colder, it gets warmer. I expect the very upper reaches of my map will be the 15th, while the lower reaches of my map will be right around the 45th parallel.

This makes the entirety of my map similar to the Meditteranean region, again. The Mediterranean is interesting compared to other lands at the same parallel, because of the moderating influence of the large bodies of water and warm currents in the Atlantic. Drawing these lines across the surface of our own earth, we find that Casablanca is on a line with Little Rock; Monaco is on a line with Boston. But using an Old World analog of weather, you can think of my world as stretching from the Sahel in Africa on one hand, and a line cutting through southern France, northern Italy, Romania and the northern reaches of the Black Sea on the other. Except, as I said, flipped upside down.

Confused yet?

I think there's some value in relating fantasy settings to the real world, at least tenuously. Unlike in science fiction, where exploring "what if?" is a key tenet of the genre, fantasy stories explore other themes, and settings that are too outre tend to defeat the purpose. Granted, I consider myself more a fan of the "weird tale" where science fiction, fantasy and even horror hadn't yet crystalized as separate genres, but conventions of all three could appear willy-nilly in the same piece of work, but still--I want elements of my setting to serve as shorthand. Spending time doing ethnographies and detailed geographic studies just to figure out how things work: that's not fun.

Speaking of fun, and speaking of the seven seas, as I was earlier, here's a video from O.M.D. circa 1991. Fun!

Reading

Just a small "twitterish" useless note. If you think to yourself, "hey, you've had those same books on your 'Reading' list for quite a while, what gives?" well... yeah. Sorry 'bout that. I've had an extremely busy time this last week in the evenings and weekends, so I haven't done an awful lot of reading. Plus, I'm reading three books at once, as well as re-reading (undocumented here) some Paizo setting material. I just finished reading the Absalom, Katapesh and Qadira books, and am now smack dab in the middle of the Taldor book, with Cheliax to follow.

Plus, I spent a couple of hours working on my big map project that I mentioned below last night instead of reading. While listening to the Gladiator soundtrack. That was fun. I've actually done more on my big map than I have in smaller draft maps. I'll need to throw together my Baal Ngirsu, Qizmir and Tarush Noptii drafts quick so I have something to go on for those. I've gotten to the point where I'm flying blind, and that's slow.

Anyway, in the meantime, I hope to get The Conquerer's Shadow done fairly quickly so I can get it turned back in before its due. And I'd like to get both of my WIP novels done before Jim Butcher's Changes shows up, and that's only about a week away now.