GP

I really love a good Jeep.  Ever since I was a little kid, I've coveted one of these, and it hasn't ever made sense for me to have one yet.  The year fast approaches, however, where it will.  I'll be past the point of supporting kids (or at least some of them), I won't need to haul them around, and I'll be indifferent to the price of gas (to a certain extent) and the practicality of my vehicle.  Plus, as I've made hiking and backpacking a major hobby again, I've found that the ability to drive on some of these really bad roads to get to remote trailheads is actually a practical concern after all.

That said, I see Jeep as a type of vehicle moreso than as a brand.  Ironically, most Jeeps are not jeeps (just as Libertarians are not necessarily libertarians.)  I don't know how a Grand Cherokee can qualify when it's really just a soccer mom SUV with only minimal off-road capability (or styling, for that matter) to call itself a true Jeep, an actual descendant with similar capabilities as the old GP's or Jeep-class light utility vehicle.  And there are a number of others that I'd love to drive, but since we don't live in a free country anymore... I can't.  They've been legislated out of legality here in the US, usually due to spurious association with "global warming"--a non-scientific theory which has just recently made the news again after it was rather prominently denounced and debunked by a wide variety of experts who are finally going public--a little late, since the general public has seen for years that "global warming"--whether under that name, or the more nebulous new labels it's been getting like climate change or climate disruption--is intellectually bankrupt.

Ahem.  Anyway, Jeeps.  My first love is probably, of course, the actual Jeep Wranger, which luckily are readily available in the US.  But I wouldn't mind getting my hands on any of these perfectly acceptable surrogates, if I could.

The original, with lift kit and big super-swamper tires.  Beautiful, even in Caterpillar orange.

The Land Rover Defender, or "Landy"--the best and most widespread ersatz Jeep, inspired by the MBs seen in Europe during WW2.  Sadly, this icon will cease production at the end of 2015, and it's never been for sale in the US--even though you can get them almost everywhere else.

The Chevy Niva, for the Russian market.  Although it has the look of a "sport cute" as much as an honest-to-goodness light utility vehicle, it's still been engineering to be relatively capable.  I'd take one.

Troller T4, a Brazilian vehicle which has been part of the Ford family for a few years now.  This is the upcoming redesign, and holy cow is it hot.  I really wish Ford would bring these guys over.  Isn't there a market among the old Bronco buyers for something like this?  My favorite of the current crop of ersatz Jeeps.  Plus, I like that it's with Ford, which isn't owned by Italians, and which wasn't given millions of dollars by the federal government just to go ahead and declare bankruptcy anyway.

Some new Land Rover concepts.  Whatever ends up replacing the Defender will probably look something like this.  Sport cute?  Yeah, kinda.  But also very sporty and probably reasonably capable.  As long as I can get them with a lift kit and big tires; these particular ones with the low profile tires and fairly non-aggressive approach angles aren't going to be rock-crawling anytime soon.

New Marvel announcement

I've been way too busy to focus on the development of my new DARK•HERITAGE site (possibly exacerbated by the fact that it's not going to be terribly different from the old one, really, which means it's less exciting to work on.)  I've also been too busy to give too much thought to my campaign noodling projects, such as AD ASTRA, SOLNOR, HYBRID DREAMLANDS, ODD D&D, or heck, I might as well throw REALMS TRAVELER and EBERRON REMIXED into that while I'm at it, right?

Frankly, I haven't had much time to even game, much less develop games.  Work has swamped me, personal life has been very busy.  I'm not even reading very fast anymore.  This means that my normal suite of topics has been kinda dry for several months, and I've been struggling to think of meaningful things to post about.  I did, however, make a trip report post on my hiking blog.  Check it out, if you're at all interested in that kind of thing.  I've got one more yet to do on that trip before I'm done; it was big enough that I split the trip report into three posts.

In keeping with the season, I've watched a few scary things here and there, but I'd like to do more.  I got Mama and The Grudge for my daughter, who wanted to watch one of the two of them for a Halloween party with the rest of her teenager friends.  I've seen the latter but not the former, and thought it was quite good.  I've also been wanting to watch the remake of The Wolfman in October for quite some time now, but haven't done it in the last few years.  Maybe this will be my year.  I did, however, watch the second half of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, specifically the part where Mr. Toad ends and Ichabod begins.  The Disney Headless Horseman retelling has always been one of my absolute favorite Halloween stories and I've had a tradition for many years of watching it.  It's short; can't be more than about half an hour, and it's fun.  A true classic.  Although the tone is mostly silly, the Headless Horseman itself is a reasonably frightening entity as portrayed here.  Not bad, Disney.  Plus, you can never go wrong with Bing Crosby.

However, what I think is the biggest and most interesting news is the announcement of a full slate of Phase III Marvel movies yesterday.  Some of them were surprising, but many were not.  In any case, there's a lot more news available than there had been for some time.  Marvel is, of course, done for 2014, and we will have the final two Phase II films next summer; Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man, which surprisingly, has been under development for a long time, and which so excited Marvel's production company that they bent over backwards to accommodate it.

Phase III then kicks off with Captain America: Civil War in 2016 that will feature Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man (thus validating a number of rumors that he managed to insert himself into the Marvel management's consciousness as necessary to move forward.)  This also gives us some hints as to how Avengers 2 may end.  Dr. Strange is next, which isn't terribly surprising either, given that his character was notably mentioned in Captain America: Winter Soldier, fueling speculation that there was a strong desire to get him on the schedule.  Although filming hasn't yet started, apparently Benedict Cumberbatch is strongly favored for the role and is in negotiations for it as we speak.

In 2017, we get three movies: Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (about which we know very little), Thor: Ragnarok (which hopefully doesn't have the stupid "Asgard in Oklahoma" finale that it did in the comic books--I'd be happier if it was more similar to how Thor #400 ended up as an expression of the Ragnarok myth.  The third is Black Panther, who as a character will debut in Captain America 3 first, actually.  The next year, he gets his solo film.

2018 also gives us three films: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1, in which the Thanos threat (presumably) makes its appearance, Captain Marvel (with Carol Danvers; it's rumored that Emily Blunt is favored for the part, but that's just a rumor) and.... Inhumans.  Yeah, that's a weird one.  Then again, that's what I thought about Guardians of the Galaxy too, and the Inhumans could work out interestingly.  The second two movies also suggest that the Kree are somehow associated with the Infinity War in some way or another, and that Inhumans and Captain Marvel would be spin-offs of a sort from that.

The last Phase III film is slated for 2019 and is Avengers: Infinity War Part 2, which given the close release dates will probably share much of its principle photography with Part 1, a process pioneered with the Back to the Future series and cemented as viable with the Lord of the Rings films.

There are also persistent rumors of work being done on a Black Widow project, a Nick Fury project, and an Iron Fist project, although clearly none of them have made the release announcement yet.

Top 5 80s songs

The other day, I was talking to some of my kids about 80s songs (I was probably listening to Pandora on the stereo smart TV too.)  My kids always want to rank things.  I have a harder time actually doing it.  I like stuff.  I like some stuff even more.  I don't like other stuff.  But forced rankings?  Those are hard for me.  That said, we had a discussion about our top 5 80s songs, and I thought for the heckuvit, I'd post them here.

Given my predilections, it shouldn't be surprising that for the most part, I'm going to lean towards post punk New Wave, especially stuff that has a drum machine and a synthesizer as the main instruments.  But not exclusively.

In no particular order (and if you ask me again next month, there may be some significant differences in my choices.  Maybe.)

"Bizarre Love Triangle" by New Order.

I've included the official music video version, but for years, the version (and only version) that I had was the 12" one that's included on Substance.  In the meantime, I've come to also really love the Richard X remix.  It's a little tough to leave off "Blue Monday" but I think I should only have one song per band or artist when I'm only picking five songs anyway, and I do like "Bizarre Love Triangle" better.  And, as an aside, when I first met my wife, we danced to "True Faith."  I like both of the other mentioned songs better than that one, though.  Sorry, hon.

"If You Leave" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

You can probably see why I tend to just write OMD; that British spelling of maneuvers is killing me.  Every single time I write it.

I don't actually really like the movie Pretty in Pink all that much, but for whatever reason, OMD's "If You Leave" definitely makes the cut of one of the top songs of the decade at me.  Never featured on any album other than the soundtrack for the movie and OMD's various greatest hits compilations is kind of a real shame; you have to go a little bit out of your way to pick this one up (along with their other great song, "Dreaming".)  For what it's worth, this song also makes my teen-aged daughter's list, but she is a big fan of Pretty in Pink.  In fact, she watches the movie on Netflix every couple of months or so.

"Behind the Wheel" by Depeche Mode

It's hard to pick a single Depeche Mode song.  I think that Music for the Masses is my favorite album of theirs, though (although that's a hard pick), and of the songs on that album, certainly "Behind the Wheel" is my favorite.  I think "Enjoy the Silence" is the single most iconic DM song ever, and probably their single best single, but it was not released in the 80s (5 February 1990) and more properly belongs, of course, along with the rest of Violator with the transition into 90s post-New Wave Alternative music.

I've included the album version rather than the single version, which was remixed and which misses out on a lot of the dark droning menace of the album version, honestly.  There's also a very interesting Vince Clark remix of the song that came out much more recently.

"A Little Respect" by Erasure

To show that I'm not all dark and edgy with my synthesizer New Wave music, I should probably put something like Erasure on the list too (although I'm also tempted by Book of Love and Pet Shop Boys for this slot.)  And among Erasure's songs, is it "A Little Respect" or "Oh, L'amour" that gets the nod?  I'm going with the former just because The Innocents was the first Erasure CD I picked up and I have some nostalgic attachments to it above and beyond the others for that reason alone.  There's a great 12" for "A Little Respect" including an Extended Mix and a Big Train Remix.  The 12" Vocal and Dub remixes, on the other hand, are not worth the trouble.

"Animal" by Def Leppard

Not everything that I listen to and like is synthesizer New Wave from the second half of the decade, though.  As we get to the "bottom" of the top five, I'm finding more and more that there is a ton of material competing to be on the list.  But, hard choices have to be made!  Duran Duran gets edged out, as does a-ha, Real Life, and a bunch of other similar artists.  In fact, I think that I definitely need representation from at least one of the "hair rock" bands of the 80s.  For this selection, I went with my favorite track from Hysteria, which is truly one of the greatest albums of all time.  Competition for the glam metal bands was pretty fierce, though--strong output from guys like Quiet Riot, Whitesnake, Mötley Crüe, Van Halen, Ratt and more merited consideration.  At the end of the day, there could only be one, however, and "Animal" gets the nod.

Star Wars Rebels

Well, with the double-length pilot now out, and the droids cameo episode now out, and with the a Zeb/Ezra buddy "cop" episode impending, I thought it might be a good idea to talk about this show and the Star Wars franchise as a whole (interesting after a bunch of leaked concept art has appeared on the internet just recently.)

I'm still waiting for the show to get really good.  It had a credible beginning.  It's certainly not bad.  But the character relationships and the plot haven't really "gelled" yet.  And although the Robin Hood approach is a familiar one to Americans, who appreciate a good rebel, the problem of keeping these character heroic and sympathetic seems like an interesting and difficult line to walk.  In this regard, I'm interested in seeing where the next episode goes.

What bothers me a little bit is that there isn't any hint yet of a direction for the show. If it devolves into "caper of the week" it won't go very far.  So far, that's all we've seen.  Even the pilot didn't really hint at much of a direction, although it does set up an apparently recurring antagonist in the form of Agent Kallus.  One of the things that made The Clone Wars good were the arcs, however.  If we don't start seeing arcs that go somewhere, this show will not be as good as the show it replaces.  Even though, as my kids say, the era is more interesting.

I do like the concept of an ensemble cast being the crew of a heist team, basically, though.  That's not a bad idea at all, and one that feels almost like a shout-out to RPGers everywhere.  I've heard more than one gamer say that they are tuning into the show basically because the crew of the Ghost reminds them an awful lot of their own PC group in an Edge of the Empire game or something.

Speaking of my kids and the franchise overall, I also recently found out that there's a Star Wars: Battlefront reboot in the works.  This is tremendous, since the first two games are really quite good.  I haven't had a chance to tell my boys yet, but I'm sure they'll be thrilled.  I found some interesting concept art for a fallen Dark Obiwan Kenobi that is pretty interesting.  It's probably best repurposed, but we've seen both Clone Wars and now Star Wars Rebels have been able to quite nicely repurpose old concept art into new characters to good effect.

For what it's worth, the Star Wars Rebels character Zeb is based on original Ralph MacQuarrie concept art for Chewbacca and Chopper is based on old concept art for R2-D2.

And oh, hey, here's some concept art from cancelled game 1313 of a younger Boba Fett.

Setting noodling

I've got a number of irons in the fire with this basic idea; noodling around with high concepts for settings, including REALMS TRAVELER, SOLNOR and ODD D&D.  There may be others that I'm not thinking of at the moment.  But, in my read-through of the Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft, I got to the novella The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, which was always actually my favorite Lovecraft story, in spite of its atypical nature.  And I thought, as I have done before, that there's a wealth of useful information in that setting.  Therefore, here I am adding yet another setting noodle tag: DREAMLANDS REMIXED.  Sigh.

Not that I'd want to actually game in the Dreamlands per se.  That can be done, of course.  There's a Call of Cthulhu scenario/setting that explores the Dreamlands.  But I'd rather just use the map and a few of the details of the Dreamlands as a setting, and then play it straight as a secondary world fantasy setting, rather than using it as it really is meant to be.

How would I do this, if so?

1st: There's really only one PC race; human.  It's not possible to play one of the almost-men of Leng, or a zoog, or a moon-beast, or one of the lunar fish people of Ib or whatever.  Only human.

2nd: I'd look to the primary sources (or perhaps secondary sources) of the Dreamlands for inspiration, but not force myself to be completely stuck into the interpretation thereof.  Ghouls and ghasts, for example, might be like they are in D&D, or how they are in Dream-Quest, or some other interpretation that differs even more.

3rd: Might have to whip up a little bestiary.  Zoogs, gugs, ghouls, ghasts, night-gaunts, shantak birds, moon-beasts, and more all make notable appearances.

4th: The Great Ones, or gods of the Dreamlands, are only vaguely referred to, really, in spite of their prominent "off stage" roles in a few stories.

5th: Magic seems relatively subtle.  I don't see any role for clerics, although the more arcane magic-users aren't necessarily out of place.

6th: I'd almost certainly use an m20 variant anyway, although I don't know that I'd use the same one that I use for DARK•HERITAGE.  Maybe a more "classic" m20 variant is called for; "Purest Essence" without clerics and a few minor house-rules (like Heroism Points, fer instance, to counter a bit the lack of healers.)

7th: Lovecraft himself never wrote any action-oriented stories of any kind.  Randolph Carter is not an action star, and he's a bit questionable in his choice of allies and actions.  I'd rather borrow a bit of Robert E. Howard's tone here, and make it a bit more straight-forward in some ways, while still retaining the sense of dark fantasy sword & sorcery as much as possible.

8th: Not all Dreamlands stories were by Lovecraft.  Gary Myers wrote a long set of them, collected in the book Country of the Worm.  Brian Lumley wrote others.  A lot of Lovecraft's own stories are unclear; do they take place in the Dreamlands, or in some kind of semi-mythological past world, not unlike the Hyborian Age?  And Lovecraft also generously makes reference to the works here and there to places created by Howard or Clark Ashton Smith, including Valusia, Hyperborea, etc.  Some of these would not be unwelcome in my Hybrid Dreamlands campaign.

9th: The map linked in the image is not the DREAMLANDS REMIXED but rather an interpretation of the actual Dreamlands.  I wouldn't mind whipping up a DREAMLANDS REMIXED map.  I'd love to figure out a way to color hand-drawn maps well and without as much effort as I need to use to do it digitally myself, though.

10th: I'm going to also think about adding some of these locations to my Forbidden Lands area of my setting.  I already had, of course, but now that I'm reworking the setting a bit, well, that gives me the opportunity to rework that as well.

New setting wiki

Well, Wikispaces went down.  Or at least it's no longer hosting wikis for free.  Therefore, both the rules wiki, the setting wiki, the archived earlier version of the setting wiki, and the sister-setting wikis are all gone.  I was able to archive all of the content from them before they went dark, but they're going away as we speak.

I've decided that how I'll handle this is to create a new Google Site--which probably won't go anywhere for years--to replace all of them.  I won't merely be replicating the old content, though--I'm starting from scratch.  I'm also taking this opportunity to perhaps make some addendums, changes, and some evolution if you will to the setting.  Some stuff that I've done before has fallen out of favor, and some things that I really like didn't really fit before.

Much of the content will, of course, be fundamentally the same.  Much of it may be even be exactly the same, verbatim.  Much of it will be copied and pasted from this blog.

But... I can't resist taking advantage of this unforeseen opportunity to tinker a bit.  Make some modifications.

I'm not going so far as to say that this is now a Mk. V of the setting; I'm still on a Mk. IV that's just getting a little bit of a clean-up, restructure, and a few other minor changes.

Anyway, although I don't really have any content there yet, here's where the site will be: https://sites.google.com/site/fowldwimmerlaik/

Free Kindle fantasy titles

I'm not super good at reading titles on my Kindle app on my phone.  But I'm optimistic about the concept, and I'm even more optimistic about the concept of using Amazon and ebooks to enable independent writers to get their work out there, sell it to paying customers, and make a living (or at least a supplement to their living) from their work without having to work through the increasingly bloated, bureaucratic, ideological, and frankly blatantly rapacious traditional publishers.  Great idea.

The big problem, of course, is how does one find authors that one likes in this new, expanded, decentralized market?

If you go to Amazon's Kindle Books section, browse to Science Fiction and Fantasy, subheading Fantasy and then sort price low to high, you'll find that there are literally more free books than you can ever hope to read at any given time.  Many of them, no doubt, will be terrible.  But some of them are not.

In a rash of enthusiasm, I just "bought" about 20 free ebooks for the Kindle.  I specifically ignored anything that had a cover that looked like a romance novel (sadly, at least half of the titles.  What in the world has happened to our genre?)  Just to be extra careful, and because I had more selection than I'd be able to actually consume anyway, I even avoided most titles written by women entirely--I've been burned more than once with a book that had a great looking cover and blurb that ended up being a stealth romance novel with a fantasy coat of paint slapped on--unless it really looked like it was up my alley.

Along with all the content that I already had, my "To Read" list is now dramatically longer; I've just (mostly) ignored my Kindle content as not quite the same as my "real book" content.  I am, however, going to go ahead and add all of my Kindle titles to my "To Read" list and track (and review) them like regular books.  Anyway, here's my list, for the curious, in the order they are listed on at Amazon (I think in reverse order to how I bought them):

• The Realm Shift by James Somers
• Stealer of Flesh by William King
• The Prophecy by Jeffrey Poole
• The Unsuspecting Mage by Brian S. Pratt
• Sword Bearer by Teddy Jacobs
• Red Axe, Black Sun: Sword & Sorcery by Michael Karner
• A Dwarf With No Name by D. P. Prior
• Winds of Change by William Robert Stanek
• Forged in Death by Jim Melvin
• The Elder Unearthed by Michael W. Garza
• Death's Angels by William King
• Knights: The Hand of Tharmin by Robert E. Keller
• Hammers in the Wind by Christian Warren Freed
• The Emperor's Blades: Chapters 1-7 by Brian Staveley
• The Sable City by M. Edward McNally
• Wind Warrior by Jon Messenger
• A Tide of Shadows by Tom Bielawski
• Cthulhu Mythos Writers Sampler 2013 by David Conyers
• Knights: The Eye of Divinity by Robert E. Keller
• The God King by James A. West
• The White Tree by Edward W. Robertson
• Moth by Daniel Arenson
• Nightblade Episode I by Garrett Robinson
• The Last Roman by Edward Chrichton
• The Last of the Sages by St. Clair
• Thinblade by David A. Wells
• Witch Hunt by Annie Bellet
• The Dark Citadel by Michael Wallace
• Fire Mage by Jon Forrester
• The Chronicles of Dragon by Craig Halloran
• Eye of the Moonrat by Trevor H. Cooley
• A Quest of Heroes by Morgan Rice
• Altdorf: The Forest Knights by J. K. Swift
• Where the World Is Quiet by Henry Kuttner
• The Metal Monster by Abraham Merritt
• The Moon Pool by Abraham Merritt
• The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
• Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs (I've read this before in print)
• At The Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughts (this too)
• Chosen (The Amish Bloodsuckers Trilogy book 1) by Barbara Ellen Brink (this is the exception to my avoidance of cheap fantasy romance novels.  This looks too campy to be believed, so I couldn't resist.)
• Servant: The Dark God Book 1 by John D. Brown (I actually paid for this one, but it was dirt cheap as part of a promotion a few weeks ago.)
• Quantum Mortis: A Mind Programmed by Vox Day
• Awake in the Night by John C. Wright
• The Testing by Jonathan Moeller
• Child of the Ghosts by Jonathan Moeller
• The Tower of Endless Worlds by Jonathan Moeller
• Blood of Requiem by Daniel Arenson
• Magic of Thieves by C. Greenwood
• A World if Born by Leigh Douglas Brackett
• Polaris of the Snows by Charles B. Stilson
• A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (I've read this many times and own it in print)
• The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (this too)
• Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (and this)
• Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini (yes, and this too)
• Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini (and this)
• The Sea-Hawk by Rafael Sabatini (I don't, however, own this one in print and haven't read it in years.)
• The Circle of Sorcerers by Brian Kittrell
• Gateway to Nifleheim by Glenn G. Thater
• The Darkslayer by Craig Halloran
• The Weight of Blood by David Dalglish
• Caliphate by Tom Kratman
• A Magic Broken by Vox Day
• The Wardog's Coin by Vox Day

October Music

Cooler weather got you down?  Not me (October is actually my favorite month of the year, and Halloween my favorite holiday.)  But my wife hates it when summer ends.

Here's something.  Check out some Halloween music, and use it as background music while playing your RPG games.  The two outfits that seem to be the most well known in this particular ouvre are Midnight Syndicate and Nox Arcana.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SECuhCmLbow&list=PL9E0F78AB37D4E9E0

There; that's the entire first CD by Nox Arcana, Darklore Manor that someone made as a youtube playlist.  Their other CD Blood of the Dragon, with its more overt sword & sorcery theme might be a better fit for most fantasy RPG players, but frankly, I think the Halloweeny sounds work quite well too.

The only thing to watch out for if using Nox Arcana in your games is to eliminate the tracks where Vargo narrates his poetry or other spoken lyrics over a bit of background.  That'll probably distracting at the game table.  Personally, my favorite Nox CDs would be probably Grimm Tales, Transylvannia and Phantoms of the High Seas, which is a little bit different thematically from the others.  Necronomicon is a decent Cthulhu-themed album, although the track "Azathoth" doesn't even have any "infernal piping of blasphemous flutes" which is bizarre.  They have a big catalog, but in my experience, the albums mostly start to run together after a while; they're all cut very much from the same cloth.  Phantoms and Blood of the Dragon are the most divergent, other than the winter/Christmas ones.  Instrumental gothic Christmas music?  They actually put that stuff out with a straight face, yeah.

From competitors Midnight Syndicate, I'd vote for Vampyre, Dungeons & Dragons, and maybe Dead Matter--not the movie soundtrack album of that name, but the unrelated studio album with the same title.  Yes, the same band put out two albums with the same title but a completely different track list.  Confusing.  The subtitle for the one I'm recommending specifically is Cemetery Gates.  But as with Nox; the albums aren't really all that different from each other, with the possible exception of Dungeons & Dragons and The Rage.  It wouldn't hurt you to instead go for "greatest hits" reissues--although neither of their two such albums has my favorite track, "Blackest Rose."

Freeport and the Isle of Dread

Due to some discussion in which I inadvertently landed with James Jacobs (of Paizo) I suggested that I believed that Paizo's use of Tiamat (as well as Orcus and Demogorgon) was based on IP issues.  That is, although all three names are public domain mythological figures, the specific interpretation of them through D&D is not, and Paizo probably wanted to leave open the possibility of gamers using the D&D versions in their personal games without coming up with unique interpretations of the name for Pathfinder that contradicted the D&D ones.

Jacobs essentially said that this was 100% correct, although they did use some other names to get a lot of the same concepts/aspects in print.  For example, the Paizo Demon Lord and goddess Lamashtu is meant to specifically invoke several of the concepts of Demogorgon, without necessarily stepping on Demogorgon's toes so much that you couldn't also have Demogorgon in your game if you wanted to.  I told him that I had thought Angazhan looked more like a Demogorgon analog to me, and he admitted that it had evolved somewhat coincidentally into those similarities; Angazhan was originally conceived as a more fantastical, demonic version of King Kong.  Because there is no Demogorgon, Angazhan ended up taking on some of Demogorgon's vibe in that regard (as well as that of another D&D demon lord Ilsidahur.

See posts #6 and #9 in this thread for the full details.  In #9, Jacobs referenced the Paizo reinterpretation of the Isle of Dread--I actually own two copies of that particular issue (for some reason--although I'm not sure where the poster map might have gotten two in the meantime) so I pulled it down last night after that brief online discussion and flipped through the small article on the island (I didn't read the actual adventure again--at least not yet.)  Frankly, I'm kind of excited about the possibility of the Isle of Dread.  It's very obviously D&D's homage to King Kong's Skull Island--not that there's anything at all wrong with that.  Add in some demons to make things even more interesting, and off you go.

As a gaming concept, this sounds at least as interesting to me as the SOLNOR concept I just proposed.  Which is exactly how I never finish anything up by being distracted by new ideas.  Dang.  I thought of mixing it freely with Freeport, the pirate setting of Green Ronin.  Freeport being near to--but separated by consistently and maybe even supernaturally difficult seas--the Isle of Dread and serving as a potential base from which to launch exploration of the isle, is a great idea to me.

Of course, I don't really need to specifically develop this idea.  I've already got Porto Liure, which started off as pretty much the same concept as Freeport, but which matured and evolved--much as Demogorgon matured and evolved into Lamashtu in Paizo's setting--into something unique.  And I've got the Demon Isle--:L'Isula Dzovençan--which would come across as a kind of hybrid of Iron Kingdon's Cryx, the Isle of Dread, and Paizo's The Worldwound all wound up into one petite, compact package.

While I've got two campaign ideas kind of going off on each other simultaneously, one is really an all new setting noodling project, while the other is turning an existing setting into a playable campaign with slightly different themes.  I think there's room for both, right

New D&D setting noodling

Creating a new tag, SOLNOR, for a new campaign setting noodling project.  I previously did this with ODD D&D, a setting noodling project that I'd like to add a few more details to still, and maybe even run someday.  By setting noodling, I don't mean to imply that I'm actually developing a setting that'll be ready to use.  Rather, I'm developing a high concept, kicking it around a bit, maybe discussing a few implications of it, and then setting it loose.  By that standard, ODD D&D could be considered complete, although--like I said, I'd like to do a bit more with it before I release it back into the wild.  This setting will be more or less the same.

Solnor refers to the really big ocean in the world of Greyhawk.  You could consider the setting to take place on Greyhawk if you wish (although there's no inherent reason why you need to).  Rather, I just borrowed the name because I needed one quick and dirty.

There was a guy who used to post at ENWorld who always made gratuitous references to his setting, his game, and his hobbies, which seemed to be incredibly nautical.  He had big tanks of fish.  His setting, nominally Greyhawk, was completely "Under the Sea"--and yes, we sometimes made fun of him a bit by referring to his Little Mermaid setting.  But mostly that's because he had a bad habit of name-dropping it all of the time, not because it wasn't actually a pretty cool idea.

So, that's where I'm going with this particular setting.  An undersea setting.  All PCs must choose races that are aquatic (or at least amphibious) since there is no expectation that a campaign set here will ever actually be on land.

Anyway, more to come as I noodle with it.  Right now, all I've got is the high concept, and that's not enough to really do more than roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Undead revisited

Although DARK•HERITAGE is, of course, a setting that purposefully eschews some of the standard conventions of fantasy, it doesn't abandon them completely, and there are a few that I really like and can't help but put in place.  A lot of these come from D&D which makes sense since my setting is an evolved cadet line of D&D, if you will, in the first place.  I'm also a fan of a lot of the stuff found in Warhammer (as a setting) however, as well as stuff found in Iron Kingdoms.

I stumbled into a game store on Friday afternoon--the first time I've been in one in months--with the intent of flipping through the 5e books.  I did do that--the Monster Manual in particular--but what really caught my eye was stuff going on in Warhammer that I hadn't been aware of, namely the return of Nagash and the End Times supplement.

Sauron is, of course, the original Dark Lord of modern fantasy fiction, but Nagash is probably the original Dark Lord of the Warhammer setting, at least, and a great classical expression of the Dark Lord motif.  I've long been a fan of Nagash.  Of course, it's a lot easier now with really cool new art and really cool new models.  There are other cool models released recently too, Arkhan and others on Dread Abyssals, some kind of undead creature that looks sort of like a short-nosed dragon skeleton with the ribcage completely filled up with ethereal skulls.

I don't play Warhammer, nor do I have stats for a lot of these monsters, but I love the visuals and the concepts behind them.  Not just the dread abyssals, but all kinds of critters from the Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts armies--I've long been tempted to stat up a terrorgheist or a necrosphinx in m20.  This latest batch of releases will probably be the tipping point that causes me to add some of these Warhammer monsters to DARK•HERITAGE, at least as options.

Of course, while I'm at it, it's not like the Undead are the only Warhammer armies that I like.  I'm a big fan of both skaven and the beastmen, and for that matter, the Chaos daemons are philosophically very interesting (although when it comes time to advance specific daemons, I tend to fall back more on D&D conventions than follow Warhammer notions.)

But if I'm going to be statting up Warhammer undead, why not add some of the Cryxian undead from Warmachine while I'm at it?

Last night, I made a list of troop types from both armies, based on what was available on their online catalog of miniatures (minus actual warmachines--those are too specific to Iron Kingdoms to be able to translate well into any other setting without being obvious that they're "stolen.")  Over the next few days or weeks, I'm going to stat up some of these critters as m20 monsters, usable in DARK•HERITAGE.  Of course, I haven't really developed the concept of undead in DARK•HERITAGE very well yet, other than establish that Tarush is some kind of slumbering undead god under the capital of the nation of Tarush Noptii, which is ruled by vampires.  Does that mean other undead would be in Tarush, or be rivals of the Tarushans?  Don't know.  I've only obliquely mentioned undead in the setting so far.

I do have a few ideas, but let me stat some guys up first, and then I'll worry about exactly where they fit in after that...

Bounded Accuracy in MyM20 doc

I am not updating the MyM20.pdf file at this time.  However... if I do at some point decide to do so, it will roll from 1.1.6 to 1.2 due to this change, which although somewhat small in nature would also be fundamental in impact.  So for today, all I'm doing is noodling with the concept of how I might implement it, rather than actually doing so.

The biggest single change I have to make--or at least by far the most work to implement--is reworking the monster list so that it is geared towards a bounded accuracy paradigm.

You may ask (I know I did) what exactly is meant by bounded accuracy.  Unless you've been following the development and launch of D&D 5e, you probably haven't heard the term.  The concept is simple: flatten the power curve.  Characters no longer have runaway growth in all stats, to-hit rolls, skills, etc.  Characters may grow into being able to face new challenges, but they never completely grow out of being challenged by prior challenges.  In D&D of editions past, the notion of 4th or 5th level characters--to say nothing of higher level characters than that--being challenged by even large groups of kobolds or goblins was ridiculous.  Under a bounded accuracy paradigm, all characters, regardless of level, have to watch out for these challenges, at least in large numbers.

How does this work?  Mostly by shifting the To Hit and Armor Class escalation as level goes up to one of hit points and damage.  If characters have only very modest increases in To Hit and Armor Class scores as they increase in level, then goblins will always be potentially challenging if you run into enough of them, because they can always hit you.  However, if your hit points and damage output go up, then goblins become minions (if they weren't already) and you can, at least, face larger numbers of them, because the ability of any one given goblin to wound you in any significant way is reduced.  You hit and are hit more often, and do more damage with each hit you do.  In this way, larger and more dangerous monsters are more dangerous because they also have higher hit points and can deal more damage per attack, not because their To Hit and Armor Class scores are necessarily really high (although for challenging opponents, that may well be true as well.)

By the same token, Skill checks and saving throws (both in m20 implemented by a check of your relevant Ability score + relevant skill bonus + d20 vs. a target Difficulty Class, or DC) don't really change too much as levels increase either.  For a d20 Rogue at 1st level, a DC 15 Lock that he wants to pick is a standard difficulty lock.  For a 10th or 15th level Rogue, a DC 15 Lock is childishly easy.  This is verisimilitude breaking; under a bounded accuracy paradigm, a DC 15 Lock is always a standard DC lock.  And while a higher level character might be expected to pick it more easily than a lower level character, it's never trivially easy, because DCs are more static as well.

So, how would this be implemented?  In my standard m20 game, a character at first level has hit points equal to his STR score + 1d6 and gains an additional +1d6 at each level gained.  On leveling, a character also gains a +1 to his skills and to his To Hit roll.  He gains a bonus to his AC equal to his level divided by 2 (rounded down), or +1 every other level.  He gains a +1 to an ability score every three levels.  Fighters gain an additional +1 to To Hit and Damage at levels 5 and 10 (in addition to what they gained at 1st) and Experts gain a new Affinity every three levels.  The maximum level supported by the system is 10th level, which forces a kind of bounded accuracy of sorts.

Under a new bounded accuracy paradigm, characters would not gain all of these bonuses each level.  Instead, they would gain them according to the chart below.  Fighters would continue to gain an additional +1 to Hit and Damage at 5th and 10th level (and also, now, at 15th and 20th.)  The Expert affinities would slow down a bit; every four levels (there's only so many affinities after all), so in addition to the 2 he gains at 1st level, he would gain an additional one at levels 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20.

All characters gain an additional +1d6 hit dice per level (although they would no longer gain the additional +1d6 at first level.)  Characters will gain a bonus to their To Hit according to the chart below.  Characters will also get additional damage dice (not unlike a Rogue's Sneak Attack skill, although it would apply to any attack; melee, ranged or even magical) at certain levels, as indicated below.

Characters will also gain more than one attack as they progress; eventually being able to attack up to 4 times per round.  However, GM's need to be advised that this doesn't mean that characters are moving across the battlefield like the Flash, at super speed, hitting tons of enemies all at once.  Most of the time, these additional attacks can only be used against a single opponent, although occasionally a GM could rule that bunched characters can all be attacked in a single round, since they're standing around next to each other.

Characters also gain a bonus to their Skills, but no longer at every level--it follows the progression listed below.  And characters gain additions to their ability scores.  This is a little different than what was done in the past; characters get two points to spend.  These can be spent on one ability score (to therefore bump the bonus up +1 reliably) or they may be split across two abilities.  No ability score can be increased above 20 using these; if for some reason a character has a 20 in all three scores--first off, wow, that was some excellent stat rolling at character creation, and secondly; any ability score increases are now lost.  You simply can't go above 20, full stop.  Sorry.

Level	HD	To Hit	AC	Damage	Attacks/rnd	Skills	Ability
1	STR	+1	+0	+0	1	+1	+0
2	+1d6	+1	+0	+0	1	+1	+0
3	+1d6	+1	+1	+0	1	+1	+0
4	+1d6	+1	+1	+1d6	1	+1	+2
5	+1d6	+2	+1	+1d6	1	+2	+2
6	+1d6	+2	+1	+1d6	1	+2	+2
7	+1d6	+2	+2	+1d6	2	+2	+2
8	+1d6	+2	+2	+2d6	2	+2	+4
9	+1d6	+3	+2	+2d6	2	+3	+4
10	+1d6	+3	+2	+2d6	2	+3	+4
11	+1d6	+3	+3	+2d6	2	+3	+4
12	+1d6	+3	+3	+3d6	2	+3	+6
13	+1d6	+4	+3	+3d6	3	+4	+6
14	+1d6	+4	+3	+3d6	3	+4	+6
15	+1d6	+4	+4	+3d6	3	+4	+6
16	+1d6	+4	+4	+4d6	3	+4	+8
17	+1d6	+5	+4	+4d6	3	+5	+8
18	+1d6	+5	+4	+4d6	3	+5	+8
19	+1d6	+5	+5	+4d6	4	+5	+8
20	+1d6	+5	+5	+5d6	4	+6	+10

The Legacy of 4e

I never played 4e.  I never bought 4e.  I never even really properly read a 4e book (although I did flip through some of them and read bits and pieces of some of them.  And talked a fair bit with gamers who did.)

In general, I say that the legacy of 4e was the Great D&D Schism, wherein D&D players, who were already bleeding severely away from 3.5 as it was near the end of that particular era, were split into various groups that seem to be pretty much irreconcilable.  Enough moved to 4e to make that a significant faction of the former D&D player base.  Enough moved to the OSR (although frankly, they were probably already doing that prior to the release, or even the announcement of 4e.)  Enough moved to Pathfinder when that option became available.  And, frankly--a fair number stayed with d20 even though it was no longer current or supported.  It is, after all, fairly compatible with Pathfinder material still, and there is tons of stuff in print available to use that you shouldn't need to always need something newly released to have more than enough information to keep gaming indefinitely.

Personally, 4e exacerbated a lot of the problems I already had with 3e.  30 levels instead of 20?  I'm already only interested in about 10 of them as it is.  Tactical gameplay that turns into something that feels like Warhammer Fantasy Quest, or some other token and board game instead of an RPG?  Big lists of character powers?  Literally printed on cards?  No possibility of "theater of the mind" combat?  Blegh.

But I'm not making this post to rag on 4e; rather, there are at least two innovations that 4e brings to the table that (hopefully) will be around improving D&D games from here to the end of time.

First; the concept of the minion.  I had independently stumbled across the concept of "Schrödinger's stats"--a necessary innovation for my winging it style of GMing.  In this paradigm, you don't need pregenerated stat-blocks; you can simply make up stats on the fly for many opponents.  I had also independently stumbled across a future development of that; the notion that you don't even need to track hitpoints; whether you just made them up on the fly or not.  Rather, you can have opponents go down when you start to feel like the combat is wearing on the players and it's not fun anymore (actually; hopefully right before that happens, if you're perceptive enough.)  I hadn't yet, however, come up with the notion that they don't even need hitpoints at all, and the idea of minions that automatically drop if they're hit hadn't quite occurred to me yet.

Granted, if you do use "theater of the mind" style combat, as I prefer, then it's a little harder to utilize big hordes of minions (although not impossible) but smaller swarms of minions is still a very useful tool.  This is one aspect of 4e that I hope to see more of as editions continue on.

The second notion is the healing surge.  In d20, I'd utilized action points as healing surges, or rather, one of the potential uses of action points mimicked healing surges by functioning as an instant potion of cure light wounds, essentially.  Since my setting doesn't have clerics or potions, this was even more useful to me than it was to a standard D&D player--although it was a useful use of action points in any game.  When I input Heroism Points into my m20 game, I did something different.  However, I wasn't really super happy with the results.  On further thought, I've updated my m20 file (again--now at version 1.1.6) to have Heroism Points work pretty much exactly the way Action Points used to work in my old d20 houserules document.  Bingo!

Now, an early contender for an innovation of 5e that I hope is implemented as well as promised, and which I hope (if so) becomes part of the core DNA for D&D going forward is "bounded accuracy."  Of course, other games besides D&D already had this in spades, but it's a new feature to the specific lexicon of D&D.  But that's a discussion for another post sometime.  And my m20 doesn't do anything to address bounded accuracy other than arbitrarily cap leveling at 10th instead of allowing it to go farther.

DM songs

Yeah, yeah... the title of the blog is DARK•HERITAGE but not all that often does it come out that that's partly because I'm a huge fan of Depeche Mode!

The DM facebook guys have been hosting these interesting polls; pick your favorite five songs from two albums at a time.  So far, they haven't gone farther than four albums, but I decided to go ahead and pick my choices now.  Just in case I forget to vote later.  I can't remember if b-sides or other non-album tracks from the same era are counted, but I'm going to throw them in regardless.  They are, after all, included on the re-release bonus versions.

Poll #1: Speak and Spell and A Broken Frame

1. "Just Can't Get Enough"
2. "Ice Machine"
3. "Leave in Silence"
4. "My Secret Garden"
5. "The Sun and the Rainfall"

"New Life" and "Photographic" are runners-up.

Poll #2: Construction Time Again and Some Great Reward

1. "Everything Counts"
2. "Lie To Me"
3. "People Are People"
4. "If You Want"
5. "Blasphemous Rumours"

A number of CTA era tracks make the runners-up list, including "Fools", "And Then..." and "The Landscape is Changing."

Poll #3: Black Celebration and Music For the Masses

1. "Stripped"
2. "But Not Tonight"
3. "Never Let Me Down Again"
4. "Sacred"
5. "Behind The Wheel"

This one is--by far--the most difficult for me, as I have to cut songs that I really, really like--better than the favorites I picked for earlier albums.  Runners-up include "Black Celebration," "A Question of Time," "World Full of Nothing," "Little 15."  It felt odd to not pick "Strangelove" but I have to admit that it doesn't do it for me like it used to.  Over-exposure, I'm guessing.

Poll #4: Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion

1. "Waiting For the Night"
2. "Enjoy the Silence"
3. "Dangerous"
4. "In Your Room"
5. "Mercy In You"

No runners-up.  Barely got five that I could pick as it was.  

Poll #5: Ultra and Exciter

1. "It's No Good"
2. "Insight"
3. "The Dead of Night"
4. no vote
5. no vote

Can't think of five that I would pick.  I only got three.  Sorry.

Poll #6: Playing the Angel and Sounds of the Universe

1. "John the Revelator"
2. "Precious"
3. "Lillian"
4. "Wrong"
5. "Oh Well"

Biggest runner up was "Martyr" but "Suffer Well," "A Pain That I'm Used To" and "The Darkest Star" make the list too.  Other than that, I didn't like Sounds of the Universe much anyway.

I don't know what the DM facebook guys will do when we get to Delta Machine since they can't pair it with anything.  That's OK; it's not that great anyway.

Pantheon remodeled and expanded

So, I'd like to further explore the pantheon of DARK•HERITAGE.  This isn't strictly necessary, since I downplay both religious and mythological elements in actual play, but at the same time--I love a good fantasy mythology, so I can't resist.  First, let me redraw the pantheon and other mythical or semi-legendary figures.  Then, let me add additional members, myths and elements to it.  For today, I'm only going to expand on one, but eventually I'll add more.

The Four Horsemen

• Ciernavo (Chernavog) - The Black Pharaoh
• Peronte (Perun) - The Thunderer
• Culsans - The Judge
• Caronte (Charon) - Death, with Orcus (Hell) behind him

Other Major Deities

• Istaria (Ishtar) - The Heirodule
• Cathulo or Dagon (Cthulhu) - The Sleeping Sea God
• Susnacco (Susinac) - The Traveler
• Selvans - The Hunter
• Surturo (Surtr) 
• Pan - The Beast of the Forest
• Huudrazai - The Blind Idiot Stargod
• Yog-Sothoth - The Gate

Lesser Deities

• Grigori - The Watcher
• Samyassa - The Fallen
• Herne - The Master of the Wild Hunt
• Dog

The Heresiarchy (not actually deities, but demigod-like characters)

• Bartolommeo, the Many Angled
• Esmeraude, She Who Ushers the Apocalypse
• Sébastien, He of the Beast Aspect
• Kefte Taraan, Mistress of Forgotten Secrets
• Kadashman, He Who Peers Into the Void
• Djemaa Mennefer, the Gnomic
• Amrruk the Ancient
• Jairan Neferirkare, the Soul-less
• Arzana, Clad in Black
• Siggeir Sherihum, the Sangremancer
• Shimut the Flesheater
• The Master of Vermin

The Great Beast Pan is a deity that is poorly known among the more civilized peoples of the Three Empires, but some few call on his name.  Among the barbarous apes and monkeys of N'gah, he is the patron deity and the King of N'gah resembles him in most respects.  The apes of N'gah are more anthropomorphic than gorillas or chimpanzees, being better at bidepalism and capable of using tools and their hands more like a person.  The same is true for the larger monkeys that make up the intelligent (yet savage) populace of N'gah, which resemble baboons that are more anthropomorphic.  The King of N'gah is, however, an icon if Pan himself, a savage god that resembles a gigantic human-like mandrill covered in spikes, with steel-clawed hands.  The King occasionally uses weapons, but given his steel-like claws, he usually doesn't need to.

It is unclear why this race of Pan-worshipping intelligent apes and monkeys exist, or why their range is so constrained.  Pan's motives are inscrutable.  However, sorcerers and others occasionally worship Pan, especially if they desire vengeance.  The dominant theme of Pan is anger, rage and ferocity, and such is the society of the apes as well.

The current King of N'gah is Kivili.  He would best be represented in d20 as an awakened dire ape with some class levels.  In m20, he'd be similar (although obviously less complex in terms of what rules to use.)

New m20 Iconics: Eitel Ibrâileanu

Eitel Ibrâileanu is a back-country "swampy" stranzero who now lives in Porto Liure.  While a young man, his family was singled out as harboring bokor sorcerers.  Eitel got to watch as his parents, his brothers and his sisters were lynched by a mob of panicked swampy villagers.  A sympathetic family friend helped Eitel himself escape, and he made his way to Sarabasca.

Bitter, poor, and unused to the rough urban culture of the port, Eitel fell in with a bad crowd of urban stranzeros who were more interested in taking advantage of him than helping him.  He soon saw even more of the dark side of Sarabasca than he ever knew could have existed--information that left him questioning much of what he thought he knew.  He also discovered that his parents probably actually were bokor after all after a number of bad deals with local Sarabascan sorcerers, he could recognize the accoutrements of magic.

After about a year and a half of the seedy underside of Sarabasca, his "patrons" tired of him and conned him, essentially selling him to a press gang.  He sailed with the pirate captain Piero Daumat, who made berth at both Sarabasca and Porto Liure.  The pirate wasn't a bad fellow to his crew, however, and Eitel found that the sailing life wasn't so bad.  He even made a bit of money and some actual friends in the few months that he sailed with them.  If he was robbing, pillaging, killing, and selling the odd innocent victim into slavery, he was able to overlook his scruples for a time.

Then Piero Daumat crossed the wrong guy.  A mercenary sorcerer cursed him.  Piero Daumat is now even more infamous than as a mortal pirate--a ghoul pirate who eats his victims, along with a feral crew that is more ferocious and bestial even than he is.  Again, Eitel made a narrow escape by virtue of being too inebriated in a cheap saloon in Porto Liure to be with the crew when the curse was foisted on them.  His past as a pirate is now behind him.  It is clear to him that the supernatural is a vexing problem that has--twice--come within a hairs-breadth of ending his life dramatically.  He retains his bitterness at his lot, but rather than take that bitterness out on all around him via piracy or organized crime, he's focused his bitterness on eliminating the Shadow of the supernatural.

He doesn't get along well with the other guys in the iconics group, necessarily, but they value his skills,  Prior to his removal from back-country Sarabasca, he was a talented hunter, trapper and guide through the wilderness.  Even now, Eitel does not come into Porto Liure often; he lives in a small hut outside of town, and checks in weekly to see if there are tasks that need doing.  Although he does take a small stipend from his patron, and is happy to see his gear kept in tip-top shape on his patron's piece of eight rather than his own, he's still self-sufficient, and lives mostly off of fruit, berries, herbs and plants that he grows in a small garden or gathers in the woods, as well as meat that he traps or shoots.

Eitel also uses an unusual double-sword as a weapon.  This was a favored dueling weapon among Hasparans two hundred years ago, and although it's fallen out of favor, it's still seen as a highly traditional weapon.  Eitel has learned to wield it as a hobby.  Only fairly skilled fighters use double-swords as it is very easy to injure oneself if you are careless or even simply unlucky.

Character sheet:
Name: Eitel Ibrâileanu
Class/Level: Outdoorsman 3
Race: Human (Terrasan-eastern)
Sex: Male
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 150 lbs.
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Dark brown
Skin Color: Dark olive
STR: 14 (+2)
DEX: 12 (+1)
MND: 11 (+0)
Hit Points: 29
Armor Class: 16 (medium armor)
Athletics: +4
Communication: +4
Knowledge: +4
Subterfuge: +4
Survival: +7
Melee To Hit: +5
Ranged To Hit: +5
Magic To Hit: +3
Wealth on Hand: 12 gp, 35 sp, 14 cp
Weapons: Double sword 1d8 + 2 damage
Bow 1d8 damage 500 ft.
Tomahawk 1d6 + 2 damage 50 ft.
Other Equipment: Chainmail (medium armor), backpack, bedroll, winter blanket, fish hook, fishing net, flask, rope (50'), cold weather outfit, explorer's outfit
Spells: None
Notes: Raccoon animal companion.  AC: 13, HD: 2d6 (8 hp), AT: Bite +2 d6), climb

Dark•Heritage m20 v 1.1.5

Well... as soon as I thought I could rest on my laurels with 1.1.4, I printed the document out and decided to read through it one more time.  Luckily I did, in printed format, with a bit more leisure to pay attention--I found a number of errors.  Most of them are merely minor errata or clarifications, but I did find one very egregious error.  It was so bad, I had to fire my QC manager.  (I don't have a QC manager.  I do all of this myself.)

When I added the monster section, I mostly cut and pasted and mixed around a bit a number of monsters from a number of m20 sources.  It was always my intention to go in and clean that up, make sure that there was common formatting, make sure that all the stats were aligned, etc.  But I got distracted, didn't do it, forgot I hadn't done it, and didn't look over the monster list again.  D'oh!  I found references to D&D-style spells that I didn't have, I found monsters with extraneous stats, I found that none of my monsters actually had hit points (just hit dice!) and I found that my list needed some work (I had too many various version of "ghost" for example--spectre, wraith, ghost and more.)  I still had some monsters that didn't really fit the milieu as well.

So, for my 1.1.5, the current update, I've mostly fixed the monster section.  It's a significant fix to that section of the document.  There are, however, a few minor typographical fixes and a handful of clarifications and minor rewrites of a sentence or two here and there scattered throughout the rest of the document.  Heck, I even found an error on the character sheet!

A few notes about the monsters.  The list is somewhat abbreviated, but it shouldn't be hard to make your own, or convert from other d20 sources.  In fact, I prefer the latter especially--for the most part, if you have the basic attacks and damage, hit points, and armor class, you're good to go--all you need is a couple of special abilities to make the monster interesting.  This extremely abbreviated format means that it's really easy to mix and match special abilities with a monster that otherwise can be modified or adjusted on the fly to be appropriate for any range of desired challenge.

By far the most "difficult" monster on the list is the Angel, which I included more as a point of reference rather than because I expect to use one.  At 20 HD and with a number of special abilities, it should be out of reach of even a party of 10th level PCs in most circumstances (the highest level that the game supports).  Angels, as they are in Campbell's Deepgate Codex, are most likely fallen and scary... and can take on small armies in combat without being overly worried.  But like I said, I really only included it for reference.  A minor god, like Herne of the Wild Hunt would be an order of magnitude more fearsome in combat--probably twice the HD and twice the special abilities.  A major god, like one of the Four Horsemen would be an additional order of magnitude more powerful--60-100 HD.

The notion of a PC ever taking on even the lowliest of these, the angel, is barely feasible.  Anybody beyond that is absurd.  But the monster list is relatively short.  Rather than add more monsters to it, however, I'll probably leave it up to you if you want more.  They're farcically easy to create.  I'll probably also add them here and there on the blog, as inspiration strikes me.

New m20 Iconics: Manoel Vaz do Camões

I'm creating a new set of Iconics, now that I've really and truly settled on a preferred system.  In the past, my Iconics were somewhat systemless; these new Iconics will be characters created specifically with regards to the m20 system (version 1.1.x where the x represents minor errata, fixed spelling or other errors, not actual changes to the system itself--that would require a bump to 1.2!)

This entire group of Iconics I see as a motley crüe... er, excuse me, crew that has attached themselves together of necessity as an "ensemble cast" not unlike a small group of PCs.  Although my own personal preference for running a game would be only three or four PCs, I'm going to whip up six Iconics--but it's my expectation that if they're ever used for anything, they break out in teams of 2-4; they rarely go all out together to resolve anything.

The Iconics will all be 3rd level to represent their past experience, which I'll only hint at.  All of them have been touched by The Shadow in one way or another, and the experience was either traumatic or tragic or both for most of them.  Because of this, they are able to put aside substantial differences in culture, upbringing and whatever else to work together to counter what they see as significant potential dangers to their home, the cosmopolitan laissez-faire "pirate" paradise of Porto Liure.

Because they have the unofficial backing of a minor noble who's own tragic brush with The Shadow is what prompted him to sponsor this small group, they have access to a small brownstone on the Rua de Xavier.  Some of them basically live there, although several do not--and they use the building as a headquarters for investigation into threats of the more occult variety that they hear rumor of.  Because of the sponsorship--although somewhat scant and off the books--by a minor noble, they don't have to work to support themselves (although some still do.)

Manoel Vaz do Camões is the first of these new iconics.  Formerly an Inspector with the Watch, Manoel was a professional in an outfit that is mostly made of semi-official thugs and uneducated muscle who keep the peace more by brute force than by any ability to actually investigate crime.  The professional investigators were a rare and unusual breed, highly in demand, and Vaz do Camões was successful and highly sought after, having made a name for himself after solving several unusual and highly public cases.  He had the wary respect of the crime families, and the more solid respect of the gentry and even some of the common people recognized his name, if not his face.  This came to an end several years ago when he was part of the investigation of the Church of Starry Wisdom, near to where he currently lives in Rua de Xavier.  That investigation was infamous, and many heretics and witches were put to death.  Little of what really happened was ever made public, and Vaz do Camões slipped quietly out of the public eye following the investigation, resigning his post on the watch and going private for a time until his current sponsorship.

Manoel is a confirmed bachelor, with no known family that he remains in contact with, at least.  He's not a native of Porto Liure, however, having moved here as a young man from Terrasa itself, where he was a student, apparently, before being drawn into the investigator profession.  He still presents a cultured and studious demeanor, and enjoys quiet socialization at times among the scholars of the Academy.  A famous teetotaler with little in the way of a sense of humor, he is serious, erudite and extremely observant.

Manoel was also the first to be recruited by the minor noble who sponsors this small group, and is the unofficial leader of the group.  He is the one who maintains contact with the sponsor, who he refuses to name to the rest of the group out of concern for his anonymity, and he is the one who directs the majority of their investigations.

Manoel is a middle-aged, bronzed and cultured Terrasan with gray at his temples and is relatively clean-shaven, although he often misses several days at a time.  He is thin and fairly athletic, and although not as powerful or dangerous as his friend Ottvar Golovskin, he is still a skilled fencer with a side-sword.  He also carries at least two daggers and a pistol with him wherever he goes, and is known for donning thick black leather clothing and a cloak (the equivalent of light armor.)  A long scar adorns the left side of his face, although it is now faded to a small white line.

Manoel is conflicted by the use of magic.  He knows first-hand its terrible cost, but he also knows first-hand the benefits it can bring to its users.  He's a cautious student of arcane and forbidden arts, perhaps still lingering with the lawman's distrust of illegal sorcery, but he does know a few small spells that are useful in his chosen profession.  He's very discreet in their use, of course.

Character sheet:
Name: Manoel Vaz do Camões
Class/Level: Expert 3
Race: Human (Terrasan-southern)
Sex: Male
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 175 lbs.
Hair Color: Slightly graying black
Eye Color: Brown
Skin Color: Olive
STR: 14 (+2)
DEX: 12 (+1)
MND: 16 (+3)
Hit Points: 24
Armor Class: 14 (light armor)
Athletics: +4
Communication: +4
Knowledge: +7
Subterfuge: +4
Survival: +4
Melee To Hit: +5
Ranged To Hit: +4
Magic To Hit: +6
Wealth on Hand: 4 gp, 9 sp, 5 cp
Weapons: 2 daggers -- 2d6 +2 damage, range 50 ft (if thrown)
Side-sword (spada da lato) 1d8 + 2 damage
Flintlock pistol 2d6 damage, ranger 100 ft.
Other Equipment: Leather armor (+2), travelers clothing, candles (5)
Spells: Cackling Breath of Moloch
Light of Kuranes
Unerring Vision of Istoria
Notes: Has Investigation and Deception affinities

Microlite 20 Dark•Heritage revisions

I've released a new version of the m20 DARK•HERITAGE rules.  You can download the 27 page pdf on the DARK•HERITAGE page of this blog, clicking on the m20 logo on the side (it looks like a d20 landed on 20), or by simply following this link.  I've actually shortened the document slightly (although some of that may be due to formatting.)  The following bullet list summarizes the changes made:

• Sorcerer class was removed entirely.  Instead, I've added the Expert Class (which I already used in my m20 STAR WARS game, with "fantasy-ed up" affinities replacing some of the sci-fi ones.
• Magic is now available to anyone of any class who chooses to learn spells.  This format was borrowed more or less as is from the d20 Call of Cthulhu book, and it works very much the same way, although spells still have levels, because it's easier to do it that way then to customize the Sanity cost of each individual spell.  This means that "eldritch tomes" like The Necronomicon or The Book of Eibon had to be introduced overtly into the game rules.  That's not a bad thing at all.  The game retains it's "swashbuckling horror" vibe.  PCs can, of course, choose to forego magic altogether.  It's a much more cautious and sensible approach, in many ways.
• Fixed the ranges on ranged weapons.  Reading through them, it struck me how ridiculously short the ranges were in the prior version.
• Improved the use of Heroism points.  They were practically useless as they were at lower levels.
• Removed a small handful of spells and monsters that felt "too D&D" to fit the DARK•HERITAGE milieu.

These changes, other than the fairly significant upheaval in how magic works and the class associated with it (or not, as the case now is) don't change the game all that much.  For those who pay attention to that kind of thing, I consider it a revision, not a "new edition."  The previous changes I've made would be considered minor errata, not worth even a full decimal point; this revision would make it m20 DARK•HERITAGE v. 1.1.  I've fixed a few minor typographical errors and other changes, and for version control, I'm adding them as a second decimal point.  As of this typing, we're actually on version 1.1.4.  I don't anticipate that it would ever roll all the way to 2.0, and unless I think of something significant to change, I don't even anticipate a revision to 1.2.

A few developer comments on the changes.

The Heroism point change (and the ranged weapon change) make combat a little bit more effective and swashbuckling in feel.  On the other hand, the elimination of the sorcerer class and the adoption of a Cthulhu-like magic make magic less predictable and therefore a little bit scarier.  That said, for folks who like playing sorcerers, an Expert with a jacked up MND score (therefore, a nephilim would be best from a stat perspective) and the Sorcery affinity (maybe even taken more than once) is arguably actually better at casting spells than the Sorcerer would have been.  However, depending on your GM, you don't know for sure what spells you'll have in your repertoire.  It's not as simple as always counting on having magic missile or whatever, as you would in D&D--you may end up with an odd and eclectic spell list.

Anyway, check it out.  The entire document is only 27 pages (and that includes a page of OGL, a page of character sheet, a table of contents, a title page, and 3-4 pages of "discussion"--the rules themselves are fairly short.)  I'm always curious about feedback.