Pretty interesting. I mean, he didn't remix it in the same sense that I am, and I strongly suspect that he's still using regular 5e D&D rules, but he remixed the geography to turn Scion's Sound into a proper, big, epicontinental sea, not unlike the Baltic, as he keeps saying. This allows him to create different strategic and political challenges as well as have proper naval activity and piracy going on.
Plus, it's a nice map. Some of the other changes, like adding more settlements that he pulled from other official sources, and increasing the populations of many of them so that there's a bit more urban centers than the setting otherwise posits, allows for better intrigue and skulduggery too.
I've spent a fair bit of time the last few days fleshing out the content of my Eberron Remixed wiki page. Much of that is material that I otherwise might have explored on my blog, and I will likely cross-post a good deal of it later once things slow down just a bit. But one thing that I noticed; while going through the mechanics, I thought of a few minor updates that I will almost certainly get around to adding to my Dark•Heritage 2 document, changing the revision from 2.4.1 to 2.5. The changes aren't huge, but they did kind of beg themselves and when I thought of them, I kind of wish that I had thought of them earlier.
The first one is that I realized that an important element of adventuring had been left off; how to deal with suffocating and drowning! I've added a section for that in the Other Hazards part of adventuring.
I also added a new twist to the spellcasting rules for a natural 1 where there is a risk of a permanent decrease of 1 to your Sanity score when you fail a roll badly. You get another chance to not lose the Sanity; i.e., you have to fail a second check to have your Sanity score permanently reduced, but still—it kinda seemed obvious.
And I modified the Shadow Sword class, making it pretty much exactly the same as the Jedi class that I had originally based it on; i.e., instead of a sneaky minor ability, I gave it a modest suite of psionic powers heavily influenced by the stuff you see Jedi do in the movies. Viola! Although based on the Jedi, it's kind of a combination of the soulknife and the psion in terms of its role in the game, and the only way to bring psionics in at all.
Anyway, I recommend you again to my Eberron Remixed site if you have any interest in that project, because I'm advancing material faster there than here, although I will eventually get around to crossposting my Remixed discussions here too. I'm not 100% sure which of all of these changes will for sure make it to Dark•Heritage 2.5, but probably all of them except the change to the Shadow Sword. And I'm considering even that.
Funny how activity in one area seems to always cross-polinate in another for me.
So far, I've adapted (and by adapted, I mostly mean "copied and pasted" my Dark•Heritage 2 rules with a very few minor tweaks to be Eberron workable; although fitting the Eberron setting into the rules I already had was one of the key conceits and part of what made it interesting to me. I did, however, add the three signature Eberron races that weren't already in DH, and made a reference to Dragonmarks.
More work will need to be done expanding on my early precis for adaptation to the setting half of the site, but that's still in Coming soon... mode for now. That said, check it out!
Reading through my older blog posts, I was struck by how cool Eberron was with a few minor tweaks to fix some of the niggling issues that it has. I had toyed with this idea in my EBERRON REMIXED tag a couple of years ago. Then, after adopting m20 to be usable for Eberron, I updated it to Fantasy Hack. I could simply leave it there, of course, as a perfectly usable in that mileu, but I've largely left Fantasy Hack to the side, and prefer Dark•Heritage 2 now, as similar already as they are. What would I have to do to convert EBERRON REMIXED into this system, and what impact would that have on my remixing of the setting?
First, let me revisit some of my guiding principles for the remixing project. I'm actually not cutting and pasting, but rewriting and potentially slightly tweaking them here.
Eberron's high concept was a swashbuckling game of derring-do in a D&D kind of setting. D&D, at least at the time and in the edition that Eberron was developed, was a highly static game of cautious, grid-based tactical combat, which is completely at odds with Eberron's concept. 4e, as near as I can tell, was even worse in this regard, although I suppose that the combat was at least more over-the-top in some ways. I have no idea if 5e is more in alignment here or not, and I don't really care to find out as I have little interest in learning 5e, but the first point of order remains making sure that your system is in alignment with the concept of Eberron and actually supports that concept. I'm quite happy with DH/m20 in this regard. Although I recognize that other systems could also accomplish this goal fairly well, because I've settled on m20 variants, that's the only system that I'll be discussing with regards to remixing Eberron.
I've come to appreciate over the years the wisdom of the much more humano-centric assumption that Gary Gygax himself would have had, as well as that of the writers that he was creating a pastiche of, such as Leiber, Howard, and others. Eberron spotlights non-human races significantly, and I've rejiggered the setting to be much more humano-centric in its assumptions, with "demihumans" and monsters appearing much less frequently, although still being available as need requires.
Anything that reeks of wokeness and social justice dogma is remixed out. Eberron, as published in the 3.5 era, was before wokeness was even a term, but the concepts are still there. In general, this means stop pretending that men and women are interchangeable widgets, and changing the sex of potentially a great many important NPCs. (If they were to even show up in my games, which is probably unlikely anyway.) It also means that the Christan church stand-in, the Church of the Silver Flame needs to have its "oh my gosh, so oppressive!" snide insults completely removed from the setting. For that matter, I also prefer to have actual Christianity be the default religion of most people, rather than a stand-in for Christianity. And as an American, rather than a European, I also prefer to focus more on local pastors and whatnot leading congregations rather than big, centralized organizations vying for power. That was one of the main things that the American colonists wanted to escape from, after all.
Because Eberron was designed specifically to be a setting where everything from D&D potentially had a place, it lacks coherency sometimes. I'm perfectly OK with pruning esoteric D&Disms out entirely and not replacing them, to be honest with you. My design goals for remixing Eberron don't have to be the same that Baker had when he designed it in the first place. Some judicious and occasionally ruthless editing of concepts that never really fit very well is acceptable, and even desireable.
Eberron is very big; the remixing project is taking a relatively light touch on the details of the setting, focusing instead on big picture stuff. That said, a "protagonist" area would be essential for actually playing the game; y'know, a place where most of the action actually takes place. Here, I think the single best setting element, Sharn, as a place of fantasy noir type stories, is this place. I also know that yeah, zipping all across the continent and beyond is a feature of the setting, the modules, the novels, and what's expected generally from Eberron, but I tend to think that there are more local opportunities for adventure than most gamers realize, possibly because not enough of them get out and experience what the local adventuring possibilities in real life actually are. Sharn and its surrounding environs are therefore where any more detailed localized remixing would take place, although honestly, I probably won't bother too much with that until I'm actually at a point where I care to play with this.
Now, Fantasy Hack, or at least my EBERRON REMIXED version of it, accomodated almost all of the demihuman racial diversity in Eberron. The first thing that I need to do in adapting Eberron into DH is remapping the races from Eberron into the races that exist in DH. The signature races of Eberron need to be present, of course, otherwise it wouldn't exactly be a very good translation of Eberron, but some of the other D&D races that otherwise aren't selectable in DH can be translated into something else. I know, I know--that will make the setting diverge in a number of ways from the setting as published. In fact, it's probably a beachhead into a more thorough remix of the setting than the Fantasy Hack version was. That's OK. If you want something a bit more closely hewing to Eberron as printed, the Fantasy Hack revisions can be seen with the earlier posts that have this same tag, while those going forward from this one will be more of a departure into a different take on the setting. That's actually what prompted me to do this, though--the concept of a more thorough departure sounded intriguing enough that I wanted to start exploring it piece by piece, step by step and little by little. This actually helps with the second goal of the setting remix guiding principles, actually. Some of the demihuman groups will become human, and my demihumans are actually demihuman rather than "non-human." (Gygax seemed to use the word to refer to races that were more aesthetically pleasing, like elves and halflings, etc. rather than to imply that demihumans were actually part human and part something else, like the prefix actually means semantically. Maybe parahuman was really the word he was looking for.)
The Fantasy Hack races list is as follows; I'll start from there and see where I need to diverge.
Human: +1 to all skills
Elf: +2 to MND
Half-elf: +1 MND, +2 to any skill(s)
Dwarf: +1 STR, +1 to AC as natural armor
Halfling: +1 DEX and Stealth affinity
Gnome: +1 to DEX, +1 to MND
Goblin: +1 DEX and +1 to Subterfuge
Orcs (and Half-orcs): +2 to STR
Hobgoblins: +1 STR, +1 to DEX
Warforged: +1 to STR, +2 to Acrobatics, no stat increases on leveling, but are immune to mind-influencing magic, and do not need to breathe, eat, drink, etc.
Shifters: +3 to STR, -1 to MND, +1 to Survival skill, -1 to Communication skill.
Changeling: Can change form as a single action, +1 to Subterfuge, +1 to Communication
Kalashtar: Can spend 1 HP to establish a two-way mindlink with a creature it can see, which enables telepathic communication, +1 to Communication, and +1 to Knowledge
The DH5 list is more modest, but of course, it doesn't technically have the Eberron specific races, which could be added (keep in mind that the Wose race from DH5 is both conceptually and mechanically identical to the shifters. Let me post that, and then I'll post a side by side where I map one list to the other and discuss how to do that.
Human: +1 to all skills.
Skraeling: +1 to DEX and Stealth affinity.
Orc: +2 to STR.
Goblin: +1 DEX and a +2 to the Subterfuge skill.
Cursed: Racial affinity for Stealth, +1 to Athletics and +1 to Knowledge.
Jann: +1 to any 2 skills, and also have the fire strike ability; they can infuse one attack per day with the power of the ifrit and their weapon will burst into flame doing an additional 2d6 damage for 5 rounds.
Kemling: +1 to DEX, a racial affinity for Stealth, and the ability to see in the dark with a biological equivalent to night vision goggles.
Nephilim: +1 to MND and a +1 to Knowledge and Communication.
Wose: +3 to STR, -1 to MND, +1 to their Survival Skill, and -1 to their Communication skill.
What does DH5 not have that Eberron does?
Elf. I know that elfs are very much standard to D&D, but I've deliberately not used them in DH5, figuring that they don't really fit. I actually don't think that elves are important to the setting unless you're specifically using Aerenal in some fashion, but if you are, I actually think the Nephilim can stand in for the elves here. Since there are no elves, there also are no half-elves, where a specific race of humans (without differing stats) can replace them. In fact, in the spirit of making the whole thing more humano-centric, maybe Aerenal should be a primarily human nation, with its own Aereni ethnic group, ruled over by an overcaste of the Nephilim.The dark elves of Xen'drik, on the other hand, were represented by kemlings. I'm not sold on this, necessarily, or even the concept of making Xen'drik an important part of the setting that I'd expect people to go to, and there are other places that I like kemlings. But it's possible for there to be two completely unconnected groups of kemlings, I suppose, so maybe it's best to keep it as it is for now. And the Valenar elves can, of course, just be a small faction of Nephilim that left Aerenal, just as the the setting promises anyway.
Dwarf. Elves and dwarves are the two races that scream "vanilla fantasy" to me. (Especially with that Tolkien spelling instead of the more standard elfs and dwarfs.) I know that both have their roots in old Germanic if not even Indo-European folklore, but they are not presented in fantasy settings, most of the time, as they are in that kind of folklore. If they were, they probably wouldn't be a playable race anyway. Can you imagine the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, for example, from the Dresden Files trying to be translated into D&D with its members as playable characters? If I'm not going to do elfs, I'm not going to do dwarfs either. That said, I have less resonance with the Mror Holds and the notion of dwarfs as the Swiss bankers of Eberron. If we need Swiss bankers, just make them more like the actual Swiss; an ethnic group of humans from the mountains of the Mror Holds.
Halfling. In Baker's attempt to get away from the "stereotype" of the hobbit and make halflings cool, even though the concept is fundamentally uncool, he made them dinosaur-riding Plains Indians, if you accept a very strange, and kind of hippy interpretation of Plains Indians. I prefer a much more savage and dangerous type of Plains Indian; y'know, the kind that we actually feared and respected, and I'd already decided that the jann were where I'd use them.
Gnome. If the halfling already isn't very cool, then gnomes are the halflings' even less cool, nebbish older brother. A nation of spies and gangsters is a little strange to think of on its own (how exactly does such a nation survive, for one thing? They have to have someone to prey on, and that makes them fundamentally unstable as a nation on their own and a threat and enemy to everyone else.) It's an insufficient twist to make the gnomes salvageable. I actually think that replacing the gnomes of Zilargo (and elsewhere) with the Cursed makes some sense, though. It retains the vibe of normal people don't really trust them, even if they don't necessarily have an in-your-face reason not to, and it also works that they've had to develop means other than overt strength to maintain their positions in some cases.
Hobgoblin. Orcs and hobgoblins are already conceptually exactly the same thing. I overlooked that with my earlier attempt to translate Eberron into Fantasy Hack and made a unique hobgoblin stat line, but I'm not willing to do that here. The orcs will replace the hobgoblins in Darguun and other areas where orcs and goblins might have association. The orcs of the Shadow Marches will, on the other hand, not be orcs at all, but rather skraelings, which seems to fit them perfectly. Most other pockets of orcs here and there across Khorvaire will also be replaced by skraelings.
Warforged, kalashtar and changelings need to be actually brought in, as they are in the Fantasy Hack iteration. Being signature races to the Eberron setting, it just doesn't seem right to not include them. That said, warforged can actually be taken out if desired with surprisingly little problems to the setting itself, other than that you don't have the Lord of Blades as a potential villain, and changelings can just be dopplegangers and monsters rather than playable character types, and their frequency reduced without upsetting much of anything either. And kalashtar can be a human group.
Shifters and woses are already the same thing. Use whichever name you like. I think I prefer shifter for Eberron and wose for DH5, but whatever.
Besides races, what are a few other changes needed? I never actually adapted any Psionics rules to the EBERRON REMIXED project, although I think I probably referred you to the m20 compilation document and m20 Psionics as a suitable replacement. I actually am less intrigued by this than I was at the time; I think that if psionics needs to be in at all, beyond the kalashtar racial ability, they can simply be Shadow Swords to represent their psionic abilities. The Shadow Sword is kind of the Jedi from STAR WARS REMIXED (later AD ASTRA) but with the force powers removed and the lightsaber replaced with a manifestable psionic blade. If you wanted to go to a form that had more psionic powers again, you could always port the actual Psionic Knight class (i.e. fake Jedi) from AD ASTRA since the Shadow Blade is already quite similar. Replace the ability to cloak yourself in shadow with the ability to use Psionic Powers, as listed here. I'm not sure that I necessarily recommend doing this yet—to be honest with you, I always thougth psionics sat uncomfortably next to magic in D&D. Do one or the other depending on what flavor you prefer for your magic in your fantasy setting, but having them both as alternates to each other was always weird. But that said, I think I'd at least allow this if someone really wanted to play a psionic character, pending further review of the concept, where I might decide that it doesn't really fit after all in the future.
For that matter, my magic system is more Lovecraftian rather than Vancian. Doesn't that potentially impact one of the major setting assumptions of Eberron, i.e., very common low level magic applied to objects to make them mimic some aspects of what is done with technology in the real world? Well... yes and no. Yes in the sense that if you really stopped and thought about the implications of such a change, it would make sense that it undercuts that element of the setting. Then again, it would hardly be the first or even the most egregious element of a setting that doesn't make sense if you really think through the implications of including it. And since the PCs aren't meant to be street light makers, or even lightning rail makers, it's kind of a moot point; at no point am I interested in exploring how these things were developed or how they're manufactured and maintained, so there's no point in really trying to worry about it or explain it. I mean, do you know how light bulbs are manufactured and how electricity gets to them? You can probably say something about noble gases and the filament and hydroelectric power and power lines, but the answer is, no, you probably don't, unless you work for a power company directly involved in making sure that it happens. Does that impact your ability to accept the real world because you don't know how that works? Well, it shouldn't with your fantasy world either.
Besides, although I didn't convert them per se, because utilizing d20 elements in m20 is usually a pretty straightforward task, the Dragonmarked feats still exist after all and I've always said as much. One can simply assume that the Houses maintain and create these items, as the setting mostly says that they do, and if the feats themselves don't cover it, you can assume that there are other, higher-level House secret feats that the artificers have that you as a player character don't.
Other than that, for now, I think that my previous conversion of Eberron to Fantasy Hack doesn't need to be supplemented by anything right away beyond what I've detailed here to be further converted into Dark•Heritage. But don't forget, if you were to try and use this, to go ahead and implement all of those changes too. Maybe I'll even create a small little classic Google Site to house this put together in a better format; i.e., not just a handful of rambly blog posts that occasionally over-write each other.
In looking to make better use of "my assets" I've decided that I'd like to do away with having Porto Liure as a Spanish-like island city and bring it into the mainstream of DH5 somewhere. Because, honestly, by shunting it off to the side away from where I'm working, I've pretty guaranteed that it will play no role in anything in DH5 ever again. On the other hand, I've got a number of cities that need developing in DH5, and I do have one in particular that's supposed to be a little seedy, with all kinds of shady goings-on in the background. A kind of fantasy "Washington D.C." so to speak, in the form of Waychester. In reality, conceptually a little bit more like the London of King George whereas its southern rival Upwater is more all that's good and admirable about British culture, especially and specifically including its breakaway spin-off, American culture. So yeah; it's got ambitious tyrants running around stabbing each other in the backs in the form of the Grand Duke and his rivalry with his Duchess, but more to the point, he's trying to extend his dominion over the entire area and proclaim himself King. He's not a nice fellow; he's ambitious and driven and in a way that has little concern for the rights and way of life of the people in the southern portion of the Hill Country. Basically, he's like the Puritans of New England, who 150 years after their war of aggression against the South are still trying to stamp out and eliminate any vestige of the South that they aggressively and unprovoked went and conquered militarily. In other words, the epitome of a secular, normal villain.
This is a little bit in contrast to how I've seen the Lords of Porto Liure, who are more insular. Rather than ambitious, they're ruthless and decadent, but their games are played with their own cadre of local nobility, and their view is inward rather than outward. This gives plenty of opportunity for noble sponsored skulduggery while maintaining Porto Liure's status quo. That said, I never developed either of those ideas beyond a vague inclination, so making the Grand Duke of Waychester remain as he is while Waychester itself becomes, to some degree, the assets I developed for Porto Liure is fine. The reality is that while the Grand Duke has ambitions on militarily conquering the South, he's got problems closer to home with regards to corruption, sedition and open rebellion, starting with his own wife, who he's locked in a tower, but who's loyal supporters have not forgotten her. So the change is even more subtle.
I'll also have to rename everything, although that doesn't mean that I need to reinvent everything. Porto Liure was originally designed to be a kind of fantasy Tortuga, and it therefore had a lot of pseudo-Spanish nomenclature. Waychester is a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon endeavor, and there isn't any Spanish anything that would give a background of such names, so they'll all need to go. But just because the names of neighborhoods like Castello or Ciutat Viexa are vaguely old-fashioned Spanish sounding (or more likely Catalan, since I heavily used that dictionary to find suitable alternatives to straight up Spanish) or the Castiada crime family can't be used doesn't mean that everything about them except the name isn't still good.
So, for another post in the near future, I'm going to take a few of my older Porto Liure posts and adapt them to Waychester, which will be my new go-to wretched hive of scum and villainy in DH5.
It's been many months since I've done a Friday Art Attack. I'm not quite sure how I fell off that bandwagon, but its time to get back on it! Because I've missed this for some time, I'll try and do a larger than normal one too...
A Conan man-ape. In fact, the Conan man-ape, Thak. Frank Frazetta painted him most iconically, but this is a good character portrait take on him too.
Classic old school "near future" science fiction art of a space station and its traffic. In real life, docking with a space station is a big deal, but in this type of art there's always all kinds of traffic coming and going as if space stations were like gas stations in space or something.
A couple more of these kinds of cheerful views of the future, which sadly has given way to the dystopian nightmare that faces us today for a variety of reasons, mostly poor decisions made by us in terms of who to trust and what to believe about reality. In any case...
I know that Valhalla is out now, but this concept art from the ancient Greek Assassin's Creed game is really cool, and I tend to really like the classical Greco-Roman vibe. It's also one that I often forget to include sufficiently, but the reality is that Western Civilization is built on three pillars, and the Greco-Roman cultural tradition, if not necessarily genetic inheritance, is absolutely one of those three pillars.
Some WAR fantasy art; a sea serpect and a sorcerers in a little boat.
I'm not really into cosplay, although I know that I have a cousin--or maybe even two--who are into the whole 501st stuff. That said, this unique Mandalorian outfit is really, really cool.
More Greek Assassin's creed screenshots.
Some good old-fashioned pulp artwork. Why the girls don't have any clothes on is a mystery to me, but y'know. That's often part of the vibe for this kind of artwork.
I'm not sure who the artist is here, but this is a great Conan piece. Very classic, Frazetta-inspired technique. Even the girl kinda has that "Frazetta girl" face a little bit.
Another interesting piece of old space opera art.
Vae victis! Barbarian chieftains taking their spoils, in this case, also including Roman girls as slaves.
Speaking of which, here's another Roman and Celtic post-battlefield bit of art. I'm not sure, but that might even be Julius Caesar and Vercingetorix themselves.
I've long had a strange fascination for the "savage humanoids" and seen them as poorly and thoughtlessly underutilized. So seeing them presented as actual characters rather than merely mooks has always been fascinating to me.
A yeti fighting snow leopards. What's not to love?
The Kings of South America; Smilodon populator, the largest cat that ever lived. (The North American species was about lion-sized; this was nearly freakin' bear-sized.)
A more interesting and fantastical takeon the coloration of a sabertooth.
Part of Warhammer's ghoul-kings armies. I'm actually not sure exactly what I think about the big hump on their backs and the bone-spines, but it does make them look extra gnarly, I guess.
A vampire that has lost all control and become a feral monster, something that I've also adopted for DH5, but which has analogs in folklore all over the place. I don't know how that thing is supposed to fly with those wings, or what even keeps the one bone attached to the other given that it protrudes out from the flesh, but whatever. Warhammer art is overly stylized and gnarly sometimes.
A more typical vampire artwork, although not a typical vampire character in some ways.
I think we are foolish to discount the value of oral tradition and history. And because of that, our understanding of the past is often quite wrong. I don't read Razib Khan much anymore, but the Bell Beaker Blogger pointed out this article, where he discusses a recently published paper. I'll quote a few parts of it, recounting how it's likely that much of the stories of the Irish mythology probably do in fact represent genuine encounters between pre-Celtic Bell Beakers and the even earlier megalithic EEF peoples who were on Ireland before the arrival of the Bell Beakers.
First, let's address what remains of Marija Gimbutas' absurd "feminist archaeology" of Old Europe.
There’s a lot of moving parts in this research, and the most interesting element isn’t the genetics, but the social structure that you can infer from the genetics. It seems entirely likely that the “Megalithic civilization” of Atlantic Europe was hierarchal. But this pretty much confirms it. As noted in the paper violations of first-order incest taboos as a cultural norm (as opposed to deviancy) are strongly associated with very stratified preliterate or semiliterate societies (with the possible exception of Zoroastrianism). Additionally, this research highlights that a set of individuals, likely paternally related, seem to be enriched in elite burials.
In a few circles, there are ideas that Neolithic Europeans were peaceful and matrilineal. The existence of stratification like this and the likelihood of ‘god-kings’ makes that very unlikely in Ireland. Though there was no doubt some variation in Neolithic Europe, the existence of “long-houses” in Germany from contemporary cultures is ominous. The matrilineal element is distinct. There are matrilineal societies that are quite warlike (e.g., the Nairs of Kerala or the Iroquois). But the possibility of common Y chromosomes suggests that this was a patrilineal society, which is, on the whole, more common anthropologically.
Patrilineal, violent male hierarchies among Old Europe are starting to look much more and more common. The TRB and GAC cultures were not Indo-European, but were arguably more savage and violent in spite of their incipient "civilizational" "urban" centers and whatnot. To be fair, the more urban centers were further south in the Tripolye and Cucuteni areas of the Balkans, but still. They were clearly often warlike too; those are fortified cities after all. The narrative of the Indo-Europeans being the bringer of oppressive violence is just cultural Marxism rearing its ugly head again. It's a just-so story of "your ancestors were evil, just like you are, therefore give all of your stuff to the Jews and other minorities." If it wasn't so deadly serious, it would farcical to really see what the gist of the prevailing narrative really boils down to. It's no wonder that I now say that racism is a hoax. Along with a great many other things.
And we shouldn’t underestimate the ability of oral tradition to recall events for premodern people. Mount Mazama blew 7,700 years ago, but native people in the area have legends of that explosion. Australian Aboriginals have myths that clearly outline and detail landmarks that are now underwater due to rising sea levels. The point is that it’s plausible that facts that are 3,000 years old could persist down to Christian Ireland, and be recorded by priests.
Where this becomes relevant, I think, is that scientists should be very, very careful about being cavalier in brushing off the oral histories of native peoples, such as in the United States, because it disagrees with the establishment narrative. We already know that the establishment narrative was established by John Wesley Powell, and hasn't changed much, and much of the evidence collected by the Smithsonian during and before his time remains locked up and unanalyzed. John Wesley Powell was the son of a Methodist minister in upstate New York. He had two complementary ulterior motives for creating such a narrative: he didn't want to credit anything Joseph Smith had said or published in the Book of Mormon, which said that in the past there were high civilizational societies in the area, and he wanted to promote Manifest Destiny, which required that the Indians all having been savage, stone age barbarians into antiquity. Therefore all kinds of evidence of metalworking, cities, complex social structures, complex technology comparable to what was in the Old World, particularly with regards to the Hopewell remains, which farmers were digging up all over the place, was pushed aside, buried in the Smithsonian basement, written off as a hoax or other weird mystery that simply didn't fit and was ignored, etc. I could point to dozens if not hundreds of material evidences found of burial mounds, metal swords and armor, walled cities, written scripts, and evidence of sustained contact with the Old World, and more found throughout the Midwestern region of the United States, but most people simply aren't aware of at all, because it doesn't fit the prevailing establishment narrative and therefore it's all ignored and dismissed.
The same is true for evidence of megafauna lingering considerably longer than is credited after the ending of the Ice Age too, for that matter. But that's a whole 'nother discussion.
I came across some of my older posts and saw where I'd made an offhand comment about leveling up near the beginning of a game about once ever 4-5 sessions, and having that slow down, and that an ideal, full 10-level game could have about 100 sessions. I whipped up a quick chart showing what level I'd expect the PCs to be at at every session. Realistically, of course, I probably wouldn't be this rigid, but setting it out like this would make it much less likely that I'd get carried away and start doing things too fast, or forget about it and do it too slow. It also could serve as a baseline to use to put off-set with the main chart if I have a new character join at 1st level. Although typically, I usually have new characters join at the same level as the rest of the group when I've done it in the past.
UPDATE: That's a ridiculous ridiculous way to lay this out. Let me summarize it more easily. The numbered bullet point would be the level of the characters in the session.
As more samples come in, more likely possibilities are coming to light. However, I do note some hinkiness in the dates. As we look for the origin of the Indo-European languages and who spoke this proto-Indo-European, we've had a lot of handwaviness in the past between "the steppe" which was often generalized, and the post-steppe expansion into Europe and Central Asia and beyond. But we're getting less handwavey over time, and that's a good--and interesting--thing. But I do notice that some of the dates of the cultures that are supposedly in a linear are a little bit hinky.
Notably, let's try to lay this out, and I'll show where the dates are a little funny; either overlapping in a way that doesn't quite make sense, or not leaving enough room between cultures for one to be a normal successor to the other. Probably this is simply a lack of sampling; if we have too few samples, of too poor quality, then the dates we have for archaeological material cultures may be a little rough. First off, I think it's important to note that the Yamnaya culture is no longer seen as the likely ancestor of Indo-European, although sources like Wikipedia (and by extension, Infogalactic) are still out of date. Yamnaya is likely now seen as neighbors and probably close cousins to the proto-Indo-Europeans, who interacted with them closely and probably spoke very similar related dialects, but the specific y-DNA haplogroups associated with the Yamnaya culture are not the y-DNA haplogroups associated with the later spread of Indo-European languages. Because language spread often, especially in early historic and pre-historic settings, is associated with demic changes of some kind, having the Yamnaya spread their languages but not their genetics seems unlikely; especially when a closely related set of genetic cousins did spread their DNA through the Indo-European region, and almost certainly brought their Indo-European languages with them.
Anyway, so the first step in this process is to walk back to the earliest stage where we can say something useful. The Dnieper-Donets culture of the western steppe region from the Mesolithic were a robustly built, Swiderian derived late Cro-Magnon population that by genetics can be associated mostly with the Eastern Hunter Gatherer (EHG) lineages of R1a and even moreso R1b, plus I2a, that was mixed somewhat with a Western Hunter Gatherer (WHG) component. This WHG increased over time with the transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic, possibly as a result of population pressure by expanding Early European Farmers (EEF) ancestry, who's source was ultimately Anatolia and who would have resembled (genetically, at least, but probably physically as well) the modern day Sardinians. At this point, these archaic culturo-linguistic groups that were on some kind of glide-path towards becoming Indo-European, but can't yet be called even early/archaic proto-Indo-European don't yet have any Caucasian Hunter Gatherer (CHG) admixture (the event that putatively could have moved them into archaic proto-Indo-European territory, assuming that Bomhard's Caucasian substrate hypothesis, which is certainly gathering momentum in terms of expert approval, is true. Nor does it have any EEF admixture yet, although as we'll see, that's an important element of later Indo-European groups that can confidently be pinned to a specific Indo-European language group.
Dneiper-Donets coexisted with some later groups, of which it was partially the ancestor; probably it got absorbed into additional groups there. The dates are 5,000-4,200 BC. It seems related genetically and culturally, and probably had relatively intense contacts with the Samara culture to the East. It was finally absorbed into the Sredni Stog culture, which was probably an outgrowth of this culture itself admixted with another, to the east. Curiously, however, as David Anthony points out, the CHG ancestry was limited to the Volga-Caspian steppes, and the Dnieper-Donets had, instead, the WHG admixture, and later populations that followed Dnieper-Donets (Sredni Stog) had EEF ancestry. But Samara and Dnieper-Donets, while both being primarily an EHG based population, seem to have not been included in a mutual mating network, Khvalynsk, which followed Samara, had no EEF, but rich CHG admixture, and Sredni Stog, which followed Dnieper-Donets had EEF admixture and CHG admixture. The relationship between Eastern and Western steppe is still unclear, and how much one contributed to the other is unknown.
This actually makes me wonder if it is possible that the WSH ancestry; somewhat different than the EHG with a bit of WHG and EEF that made up the earlier Western steppe, is not the source of PIE. Archaic PIE may well have come from the east, but then late PIE comes from the west, while the PIE groups that remained (i.e. Yamnaya) ended up being linguistic dead-ends. This is where the Caucasian substrate hypothesis comes from, and the language of the EHG's--if you will--took on some significant structural and vocabulary borrowings from the language of the CHGs, who's women it appears that they took and married, whether in a friendly fashion or not is impossible to say at this point. Finally, at this point, we can say that archaic proto-Indo-European forms, and it has a east to west character across the steppes. The Dneiper-Donets culture picks this up by first becoming Sredni Stog on its eastern edge; a culture that eventually absorbs the remainder of the Dnieper-Donets culture altogether. The dates for Sredni Stog are 4,500 to 3,500 BC, and for Khvalynsk are 4,900-3,500 BC. Again; the genesis of these EHG (with some WHG on the western edge) populations into an archaic proto-Indo-European group, i.e., with the significant admixture of CHG, especially on the female lines, seems to have been something that spread from the east. This doesn't necessarily mean that literal CHG people spread into the Dneiper-Donets; more likely Sredni Stog was formed by already admixed populations from the east became more socially dominant and spread their dialects, social customs and genetics through intermarriage and other interactions further west. This mixture of (primarily) EHG plus CHG; male lines almost exclusively from the former and female lines growing significantly from the latter, created a group called Western Steppe Herder (WSH), which is the genetic profile of the Yamnaya, in particular, but also the Khvalynsk culture which preceded them. The Sredni Stog is 80% WSH itself; very closely related to the Khvalynsk and Yamnaya groups, but as mentioned above, there was a bit more WHG already present and because of the cultural horizon between the steppes and the Balkan farming communities, the Sredni Stog also picked up some EEF admixture, again, almost exclusively in female lineages.
To this point, although more sampling would be good to confirm our direction, we feel like we understand in broad strokes what happened. It's what comes next that is a little bit confused. The Sredni Stog and Khvalysnk cultures end, and over the same geographical area, the much broader Yamnaya horizon replaces them. Yamnaya's timing is 3,300-2,600 BC, and its ancestry appears to come from the eastern portion of Khvalysnk. The Afanasevo culture seems to be genetically identical to the pre-Yamnaya Repin, and Repin seems to be the source of Yamnaya as well. Yamnaya paternal lineages are closely related to but different from that found in later Indo-European populations, indicating that at least genetically (and therefore almost certainly) they cannot actually be the source of Indo-European languages. They seem to be a closely related sister group. What seems to have happened, although there is a gap in archaeology and genetic sampling that needs to be closed, is that Sredni Stog peoples, especially male lineages, moved further west into the Balkans and the surrounding areas. From somewhere in this area, probably the North Carpathian and Lesser Poland type area, this group expanded to become the Corded Ware horizon. The Corded Ware, however, didn't come around until about 2,900 BC, so the gap in terms of how Sredni Stog turned into Corded Ware (through Usatove?) is unknown.
And here's where we see some hinky dates as well, although lack of samples of bad radiocarbon results either or may be the source. A derived Corded Ware variant is the Fatyanovo-Balanovo culture, who's dates are 3,200-2,300 BC. How a derivative culture is earlier than the culture from which it derived is, of course, a problem. As Davidski pointed out recently, genetic samples from the Fatyanovo-Balanovo culture cluster extremely closely with both the much later Unetice culture, and even with modern day Poles in an extremely tight spread, indicating how closely related they all were (and still are.) However, the F-B culture is seen as the primary source of Sintashta (especially in terms of y-DNA lineages) which led to Adronovo, which led to the entire spread of Indo-Iranian languages; everyone from the Aryan conquerors of the Middle East and northern India, to the Persians to the Scythians and their related peoples who spread deep into what is today China.
The Unetice sample is a typically Balto-Slavic subclade of R1a. That isn't to suggest that Unetice was Balto-Slavic; they seem to be a very broad pan-European phenomena not unlike their own ancestors, the earlier Beaker culture. They were followed by the Tumulus culture, which led to the Urnfield culture; Unetice, while still strongly resembling farther eastern archaic proto-Indo-Iranian (supposedly) Corded Ware variants, and probably maintaining close contact with them still, is too early to belong to a single stock, and geographically probably was ancestral to cultures who later developed into all of the well-known European branches of the Indo-European family: Balto-Slavic, Italo-Celtic, Germanic, and maybe even the more southern paleo-Balkan Indo-European languages about which we know very little like Thracian, Dacian, Illyrian, Greco-Armenian, Phrygian, etc.
The Beaker culture also seems, by genetics, to obviously be an outgrowth of the Single Grave variant of the Corded Ware, but the horizon starts about the same time that Corded Ware does, according to published dates, anyway, so that's a bit of a challenge. Corded Ware and most of its clear descendants are dominated by R1a clades, but the Beaker culture is dominated by an R1b clade. Not, however, the clade which dominated the Yamnaya culture, and at an autosomal level, in spite of the y-DNA clade, the Beakers seems to be almost exactly like Single Grave Culture. So where did this R1b-L51 and its subclade P312 come from? It's not the Yamnaya subclade, and the Corded Ware was dominated by R1a-M417. At an autosomal level, the Beakers may be identical to the Single Grave, but a totally different Y-DNA lineage spreads with them, which comes to dominate western and northern Europe in its wake (don't get me wrong; R1a clades are still common. This is especially true in the east, but R1a clades were associated with the Germanic peoples too, for instance.) Did it travel in relative obscurity from the Sredni Stog, into the Corded Ware, and somehow, suddenly come to social dominance with the spread of the Bell Beakers? It seems to have, but more sampling of Sredni Stog and Corded Ware to confirm the presence of R1b-L51 would certainly be nice.
Also, can anything be done to sort out the origins of the Balkan Indo-European languages? Older models suggest that they came from Yamnaya derivative peoples, like the Catacomb, etc. but newer studies suggest that they too may well have a Corded Ware genesis and have actually moved more directly south from the North Carpathians into the Balkans and from there into Greece, Anatolia, and the rest of the places that we know historically that they spread to. All in all, this is still a very handwavy proposition, and more data would be really well received to see if we can't sort this out better.
In a similar fashion, it'd be nice to have better samples from earlier in the Balkans, because it is supposed, and there is tantalizing evidence that hints that this is probably the case, that the Anatolian languages spread from the same population group that led to the Corded Ware in an earlier migration, picking up much more EEF ancestry on the way. The Usatove culture is usually considered to be the likely vector here. And in also similar fashion, we still don't really know exactly how the Sredni Stog became the Corded Ware; were there hybrid cultures, or geographical extensions like Usatove further to the north that could be likely candidates for proto-Corded Ware cultures? Again; more sampling is needed.
To be fair, there are a lot of samples that have been done but not yet published. But we need to start seeing the results of some of these if we are to 1) untangle the origins of some of these peoples, and 2) convince those that are still clinging to models that are starting to look more and more unlikely that they need to be abandoned and a non-Yamnaya model accepted instead.
And while we're at it, Wang's 2020 preprint on Tocharian genetics seems to have caused more confusion and questions than it answered. There's even a proposal to link Tocharian to Corded Ware rather than Afansevo/Yamnaya, and its been difficult to sort out because of all of the Saka/Scythian presence in the area as well. More sampling with better dating is required here to make sure that we're actually getting the rest population groups. I do kind of like the idea of Tocharian representing the one known descendant of a Yamnaya-derived version of Indo-European, but I can't say with any confidence that I know that it does so anymore.
I've come to a somewhat belated appreciation of the Western as the American genre, both in print and in film. I've read a few books here and there, and picked up a ton of Zane Gray books for my Kindle (for free, even.) And I've watched my share of Westerns over the years, although many of the titles escape me. The only westerns that I own have been Tombstone and Silverado. My folks, after a little discussion, sent me a few el cheapo DVDs that are among their favorite westerns that they either think I need, or that I haven't seen. This post is to make a quick list of what I want to watch in the relatively near term.
I'm going to mostly de-emphasize spaghetti and revisionist westerns, although I do want to watch the Dollars trilogy again because I haven't seen it in a long time. Anyway, here's the list.
Angel and the Badman - an older John Wayne that my folks sent me.
Tall in the Saddle - the same as above.
Crossfire Trail - my mom's favorite western; Tom Selleck playing the lead character in a L'Amour adaptation.
The Sheepman - I've seen this one before, but it's my dad's favorite western. An interesting counterpoint to those who say that the spaghetti western redefined the western protagonist. I wonder if the people who say that think that John Ford was the only maker of westerns before Leone or something.
A Fistful of Dollars
For a Few Dollars More
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Hang 'Em High - I've also never seen this one, and I'll add it in.
Once Upon a Time in the West - I said I'm not trying to prioritize revisionist and spaghetti westerns, but I've also actually never seen this one and I'd like to.
The Legend of the Lone Ranger - the 1981 version. I've always wanted to see this one, and it looks like it's actually an old fashioned rather than revisionist western, in spite of its date. It has a bit of a bad reputation as both a flop and a bad movie, but if you note, the Amazon reviews from people who bought it almost routinely say that the bad reputation is undeserved. It's never quite become the sleeper or cult classic, but what the heck; how hard is it to give it a try? Even if it's terrible, I'm only out a couple of bucks for a streaming rental and a couple of hours for watching it. UPDATE: Saw it. Not great. But not bad, really, either. But if that's all you know about the Lone Ranger, it's a sad way to discover the character. Then again, if all you know is the 2013 version, this isn't that bad. Don't get me wrong; it's an objectively badly made movie in some respects, but the plot and characters are notably less annoying than in the more recent one.
El Dorado - part of a series of classic John Wayne (color ones, not early B&W ones) that are considered real classics of the genre but which I either haven't seen or haven't seen in a long time.
The Searchers - same as above
The Cowboys - haven't seen this since I was a kid
Rio Bravo - one that I'm particularly miffed to have missed. Kind of an answer to High Noon, which I have seen several times.
Rio Lobo
The War Wagon
Rooster Cogburn
True Grit (sadly, I've only seen the remake. It's good, but I suspect the original is better.)
Hondo
McLintock
The Comancheros
Shane. This isn't John Wayne, but it's another one that I really should have watched years ago
Magnificent Seven - I've seen both versions, and even own the second one, but I'd watch them both again
Anyway, that's a big enough list to keep me busy for quite some time. I'll come back to this post and mark movies seen as I watch them, so it'll be a tracking document for me, if you will.
I haven't done much on the blog since Blogger changed its format. It's not that I've struggled with the new format, although it is true that I don't like it, but I've just spent more time doing other things on other platforms. That'll probably be true for the time being.
I've discovered a new YouTube channel, and I've linked at least one video from it. I highly recommend that you watch a lot more of the channel than just this video, though.
I didn't literally just discover these two YouTube channels, but I'm giving them free advertisement for the three people who may see it here; Voowg and Voyager's Revenge have both utilized the Red Dead Redemption game to make cinematic short movies. Both have different strengths; Voowg seems to have a much better sense of storytelling, whereas Voyager's Revenge is able to use mods to create more unique characters. Both have a very good sense of cinematic direction; i.e., they are able to render very good action sequences, at least. Anyway, I quite like them both. It also really makes me jones for the ability to customize the characters more! Why can't we get some of the story mode clothing in Online? Why can't we get NPC clothing items; like double bandoliers (not crossed; both across the same shoulder) or open vests, or the big hairy coat of Flaco, etc. Why can't we break down the role outfits, when clearly with mods they can be broken down? I had thought that the bandoliers, for example, were just "painted" on the coats, but that's not true; they are regular bandoliers and with mods they can be removed, or used with other outfits, etc. There was a glitch on the PS4 that you could use to get the Carthage crossed bandolier, which seemed to be everyone's favorite, for instance, but it keeps getting patched so it doesn't work anymore. Why not just let us do it anyway period? I wouldn't mind paying the high price for the whole outfit, especially if I could use the components. I said earlier that the bounty hunter outfits, for example, are a mix of really cool and really weird visual cues; do you know who awesome it would be if I could use the Garwood (tier 3) outfit without that weird little poncho on it? It'd be my favorite outfit period, and I'd have all of the colors.
Anyway, here's a few of their better videos; not the ones that focus on outfits, but the ones that focus on being entertaining little short films in their own right.
Here's a sampling:
John as Van Helsing. I've said before that some kind of Supernatural style monster hunter role would be awesome in the game.
Arthur Noir. An expansion on the bounty hunter role that's some kind of detective or lawman would be a great new role too, by the way.
The Frontier Explorer; a more laid-back, interesting one. I don't think there's anywhere to take this into a role, but this is right up my personal alley, certainly, with regards to just exploring and enjoying the outdoors.
Hitman Arthur. The different kind of expansion on the bounty hunter that would be the flip-side of the lawman or detective.
Arthur (and John) as Indiana Jones. Sadly, the collector role just didn't ever manage to be as exciting as this, but some kind of treasure hunter that's actually exciting should be in the game somehow.
Arthur's Valentine bank robbery. Why don't we have heists and an outlaw role? The template already exists in GTA Online, fer cryin' out loud, and it's probably the most requested by the fans.
The Hateful Eight. It says in big letters TARANTINO STYLE, but maybe that just means that instead of plot and story there's a lot of posing and style. That certainly seems like Quentin Tarantino to me; style over substance.
The Moonshiner is the fourth role that I started, and I avoided it, even after it was officially started, for quite some time. This is a bit ironic, as it's the one that, along with the Collector, at least for the time being, I spend the most time on. Although not as lucrative as the Collector in terms of bringing in cash, it is, however pretty lucrative and it manages to be so in a much more passive way. Rather than actually focusing on running all over the map to pick stuff up, I can get a batch of moonshine started, and then go do something else for quite a while, before doing a short delivery mission, running back to the shack and starting another batch, and generally very passively earning decent money. While I won't make over $500, like a coin collection will, which takes me an hour and a half or so to pick up, I can earn a net ~$200 every hour or so, and I only need to spend 10-15 minutes of actual game time to do so.
I'll say this up front first; the moonshiner update itself is notoriously buggy, and many of the problems that people have with the online game are especially rooted in this moonshine update. While there have been some fixes, the game still remains fairly buggy today. But, that is ambient stuff around the role, not directly associated with the role, so other than saying it up front so nobody asks down the line, I'm not going to consider it in my discussion/review of the role. The moonshiner role is different than the original three frontier pursuits roles in a number of significant ways, although then similar to them after that.
It requires not just finding the NPC that kicks off the role, but also having at least some progression in the trader role before you can kick it off. Keep in mind that I am a late adopter of the Online mode of the game, so by the time I started, all four roles were available already. But you have to either have made a delivery or two with trader, or be at level 5 with trader (although quite likely those happen at about the same time anyway) before the moonshiner can be unlocked.
It costs 25 gold, not 15 like the other three. To be fair, there is a lot more content for these than most of the other roles have, and then once you work your way through that content, it's both more fun and easier to just keep rolling with than most of the other roles too. But that's still a lot of gold bars to gate the content, which does kind of suck. Then again, people complain too much about that too. Given that you can do daily challenges for a few weeks, a few treasure maps, and some bounty hunter missions and easily get the gold necessary to play the role, if you're patient enough to wait a week or two (or three at the most), for the most part, the complaints about it are overwrought. Yes, it is expensive, but it's not like you really have to pay actual real microtransaction money in order to do it. You just need to be patient.
It is not centered around your camp in any way, and in fact gives you a unique property; the first in this game, although we presume that more are to be coming in the future. While the camp's position on the map is variable, even if you stay in the same region, the moonshine shack is not. For instance, I keep my camp in the Heartlands >95% of the time, but it can be anywhere from northeast of Emerald Ranch to near Valentine, to down on the river by Limpany to next to Bard's Crossing and Flat Neck Station, and plenty of other spots in between. Practically speaking, there's a bit difference between some of those locations. The moonshine shack, on the other hand is always exactly in the same place. It's not like the homes and offices and businesses of Grand Theft Auto Online, although it has some similarities, but it does at least stay in the same place. You can relocate it, if you like, but it's a little pricey ($250) so you're best served by giving some thought to the location you pick (out of five options) at the beginning. I didn't, although as luck would have it, I picked a location that I quite like, and am unlikely to move my shack.
Especially notable, the moonshine role has story missions which are not unlike the normal Online story missions; in fact, most players agree that they are better. Not only does it assume by default that you play the missions solo, which you cannot do in the Land of Opportunity storyline, but they have unique tactical challenges for you to deal with that are kind of interesting. They're a bit difficult; wave after wave of enemy for you to deal with, but with some health tonics and some care, they're not at all impossible to do solo.
Cripps does a poor job of posing, but here he is in his Collector themed outfit at his butcher table. Take note of the pith helmet, googles, and sweater in particular, which closely resemble your own outfit choices from this role.
So how does this all work? Well, first off, you go to Emerald Ranch and meet with Maggie, the real boss of the moonshiner business (unfortunately) and pick your moonshine shack location after paying your 25 gold for... a deed to the land, I guess, or whatever. The five locations are down in Hennigan's Stead, Tall Trees, the Grizzlies up near Cattail Pond, Heartlands, although it's in the far corner north of Emerald Ranch in the hills, and Bayou Nwa between Saint Denis and Lagras, more or less. All of them are a bit isolated, by design--if you're making and selling illicit moonshine, you want to be away from the prying eyes of the revenuers, right? Let's go through the five locations and I'll discuss very briefly the positives and negatives of each.
Hennigan's Stead--the positive is that this is far away from most player activity, and is kind of isolated from other players. That said, most of New Austin is kind of dead, and there isn't a lot of other things to do near here either, meaning that you'll be running back and forth from your moonshine shack to... wherever else you need to go to do something else. Its lack of central location puts it far away from most else of what you'd need. Also, the moonshine wagon needs a bit of a delicate touch; you'll break your bottles if you're rushing around over tight curves and roads where it's easy to get your wheel running over a rock or banging into a tree or whatever. It's not the worst, but it's not the best either in terms of the routes to make deliveries.
Tall Trees--I picked this one based just on the fact that I felt like I wanted to spend more time in this region and get to know it better, and it turns out to have been a good choice. The roads are usually pretty good, and most deliveries end up going out into the Great Plains--although when you have to cross the Montana River that's when you need to be extra careful--and it's close to Blackwater. It's also right around the corner from Manzanita Post. Although you can already fast travel to your shack, you can't fast travel out of it, and this is the one that's the closest to a fast travel post.
Grizzlies--while isolated and in a beautiful setting, where you see relatively few other players, making deliveries from this shack is a nightmare just based on road quality. I do not recommend. Plus, it's a pain to get to or from when you want to go do anything else.
Heartlands--Some of the deliveries here are not good; the terrain is too hilly and fraught with too many tight curves and whatnot if they go in a certain direction, but they're OK if you go towards Emerald Ranch, on the other hand, or some of the other nearby shacks or homesteads. It's also quite close to Emerald Station with its fast travel post. For an isolated backwater shack to brew hooch in, it's relatively well connected. It does seem to be a popular one, however, so you'll see more player activity than in some of the other spots.
Bayou Nwa--lots of players swear by this location. The place is flat (although there are lots of trees and bridges, so it's not like deliveries are super easy), it's close to Saint Denis and Rhodes, with their many amenities, it kind of has that moonshiner vibe already, being that it's in the bayou, and there are fast travel posts nearby at Lagras, Saint Denis and Rhodes. Also, depending on what kind of moonshine you're making, much of the flavoring ingredients can be found nearby. I need to stock up on vanilla flowers, for instance, every time I'm in the area anyway, but if I were already there, it'd be easier and I'd waste less time riding across the map.
Maybe there isn't a bad location per se, but the Grizzlies and Hennigan's Stead seem the least desirable, while the other three are more popular. In general, it's considered wise to set up your camp either in the same region or an adjacent one, so you can more easily get from one to the other. I haven't taken this advice, and I keep my camp in the Heartlands. I've tried a few times to migrate to the Great Plains, but I was doing this often during the peak camp bugginess, and I found that I was frequently getting bumped or losing my camp and unable to set it back up in that area, and I finally gave up. I do admit that spawning in my camp in the Heartlands, doing a few camp things, and then having to run all the way to Tall Trees to do moonshiner stuff is a minor drag, though. Ironically, if I could actually choose my site within the regions, I'd probably move my camp even further away, and put it in Calumet Ravine, or near the Wapiti Reservation (keep in mind that the Injuns haven't been relocated here yet in the Online mode). That would be even more inconvenient, but I love that area and don't have enough of an excuse to spend time there, so I'd prefer to put my camp there and see it more often. So clearly running around the map a little bit every time I log on isn't as much of an issue for me as it is for most other players.
After you pick your spot, you need to do the first two story missions (in any order) first in order to get set up. One of them has you rescue Marcel, your arrogant blowhard French guy who talks too much (like Cripps) every time you interact with him. He's the moonshine "cook". The other one is stealing a still set from a rival. After that, the rest of the story missions are optional in the sense that you can do everything else without needing to do them to unlock anything else, but I recommend doing them sooner rather than later as it is a great source of role XP (and XP generally) and the missions are pretty fun. They are like story missions from single player, in many ways, but quite imaginative; in one you take a steamboat from Annesburg to Saint Denis, fighting revenuers on boats and on the shore the entire way, in one you are in a burning fire running around killing revenuers while trying not to catch on fire yourself, etc. It's fair to say that the moonshine story missions are the best story missions in Online by far, and comparable if not even better than many of the story missions from Single Player.
Still poor at posing, but here's Cripps in his Trader themed outfit while whittling around camp. While there are design cues common to that of your own outfits, this is a little bit more distinctive looking.
Maggie, who sits upstairs in the shack at a desk, not only gives you the story missions, but also bootlegger missions, which benefit your business, and some of them are quite fun too. One variant is helping clear a drunk patron from a bar and getting him home, my favorite one is getting into a fist-fight with a rival gang in a saloon, including a big boss boxer. Sadly, all of the bootleg missions I've done and those two have only come up once or twice each. Most of the time, you just go to a roadblock of revenuers and kill them all, or go to a rival still operation and blow it up. In theory, you can sneak in and poison their moonshine, but realistically, I almost always get seen, so it just turns into a "kill everyone and blow up the still." Which is fine, because then I have a good dozen bodies or so to loot, which is nice, because they tend to have moonshine related stuff and moonshine recipe items on them which is helpful.
Maggie is also the store for shack upgrades. There's not a ton of these, but there are some. I'll talk about most of them in the list of unlocks, because most of them do have to be unlocked before you can buy them anyway. Some of them are essential, and some of them are merely cosmetic. And after that, you'll get to the point where all of your business is downstairs with Marcel. I, actually, almost never see Maggie anymore. I enter my shack from the side door, not the front door, and just head immediately down the stairs to talk to Marcel about making and delivering moonshine. Once you have the still and Marcel, you can start making moonshine, but you'll want to unlock all of your options, because making better moonshine is very much worth it. Making unflavored weak moonshine is almost certainly not even cost effective; I think I even made a batch or two where I literally lost money. But you will want, as soon as you can, to get to strong moonshine, and you'll want to do either a two or three star flavored version for best financial results. Curiously, it's not a given that you'd do three star over two star, although most likely you will.
All of the three star recipes require a collectible as one of the ingredients. Because it only gives you twenty dollars more per delivery than the two star recipes, the net profit difference between the two is only about $10-12 or so (the ingredients are either flowers or antique alcohols.) It is also my experience that the Wild Creek three star always has a buyer, but that the other three star recipes may not have a buyer. Making a batch and then finding that you don't have a buyer other than cheapskate Bert Higgins kinda sucks. Having that happen and then waiting an hour or two (two full hours is the max amount of time for the buyers to reset) and then still not having a buyer for that particular flavor really sucks. But again, the Wild Creek seems to always have a buyer, so that's the one I make.
The bounty hunter themed outfit has less common themes with the player outfits, although he does sport an eye patch and a wide-brimmed hat. Honestly, I think the mercenary outfit that I got from the Outlaw Pass 2 looks at least as bounty hunterish as this one, though.
All of the flavored moonshines require three ingredients to add the flavor, and these are mostly things that you find out on the map in free roam. Wild Creek, the three star one, for instance, requires the creek plum flower (a collectible; you can only grab a maximum of three per day before the collectibles reset), a vanilla flower, and wild mint. The evergreen two star moonshine requires winterberry, evergreen huckleberry, and ginseng (if I remember correctly, either Alaskan or American is fine.) For quite a while, I was making the evergreen moonshine and selling it, because I didn't want to spend collectibles to make three stars, but I decided that getting creek plums wasn't too hard, and was worth the trouble. You can pick up up to three every day, but you can only carry ten at a time. If they change the collector role making finding creek plums more difficult, I'll probably revert back to the evergreen moonshine, which doesn't require any collectibles, only "regular" ingredients that reset every few minutes and can be picked up much more easily (the winterberry is the most difficult to find, but I know several locations in Cumberland Forest behind Valentine, as well as some up near Brandywine Falls near the observatory or mad scientist lab. The payout for a delivery of three star moonshine is $247 and some change, while the payout for two star is $226 and some change. For only twenty dollars, and ten dollars (roughly) net, you can see why I don't think making three star recipes is essential. The two star recipes are almost as good, and getting the ingredients is arguably easier, and will absolutely be easier if the collector role makes finding the collectible ingredients more difficult.
Of course, now that I have my own bar, making the three star stuff has another value; I can drink it and get all three of my stat rings turned gold. If you make two star, you only get two rings turned gold (health and stamina is what I remember from evergreen.) Drinking your own product is best when it's three star, but that's a minor thing. I usually drink every time I'm downstairs, but it doesn't last super long, and mostly only matters for my delivery mission.
Now, those costs are gross revenue for every batch sold, assuming no damage to any bottles. The net cost takes the cost of moonshine mash out. When I was focused on leveling up the moonshiner role, I did enough bootlegger missions between batches to keep my mash price down. Now that I've reverted to a more passive way of doing the role, I just buy the mash at full price. That means that I need to take $50 out of the sale price, and that's my profit; it's less than $200. Just under for three star, and closer to $175 for two star. Because I'm doing it so passively, it's worth it to me to not feel the need to spend the time doing bootlegger missions, and I just make less per delivery. But still enough that it's a steady stream of income; I can make enough to buy what I want, after a few deliveries at most, without having to spend very much time doing it. It's ideal for me. I love having moonshine batches brewing in the background while I'm doing whatever else I'm doing, and when it's done, I go make a delivery and start a new batch brewing.
A few other tips on making deliveries. Most of the time, you'll be stopped by a roadblock of revenuers. Not every single time; occasionally I'll have them wave me through, I've had them stop me but then let me go, and sometimes the roadblocks don't actually have anyone at them. (I presume this is because some other player helpfully came by and killed them a few minutes earlier, in order to loot their bodies and pay it forward to make the delivery easier.) Most of the time, they want to stop me, will see my illicit moonshine, and start shooting at me. To avoid damage to your wagon and its cargo, the best way to handle these roadblocks is to stop your wagon just before you get to the little yellow spot and then just shooting all of the revenuers, looting them, and getting back on your wagon and continuing your delivery. Otherwise, your cargo will almost certainly be shot by the revenuers, and you'll lose some of your cargo and have a massive decrease in the amount of money you make from the delivery. You want to avoid having any bottles break, and its worth it to go to somewhat extreme lengths to avoid it.
Another tip is that the AI will drive your wagon for you without error or damage if you pull up your gun as soon as you start your wagon and put it in aim mode, and keep your gun aimed while you're moving. You'll want to go back to manual steering when you get to the roadblock and probably also to your destination to make sure that the AI doesn't screw up and hit something (which has happened, and routinely happens at some destinations), but other than that, it's a pretty good way to protect your cargo. Do it again after clearing the roadblock, but keep your gun trained behind you, and you can pick off revenuers who gallop up to attack you from that point on, which is almost every single delivery. Again, if you don't, they'll shoot at you, they'll hit your cargo, and they'll damage it. It doesn't take much damage at all to significantly reduce the amount of money you make from your delivery.
The tier one moonshiner outfit. I tried to do the best I could with color schemes to mitigate the awfulness of this outfit, but you can only do so much. I'll never wear this, I don't think, unless I'm just in a mood to be silly. Speaking of color schemes, I do notice that I tend to lean heavily towards dark ones, and my character wears a lot of black.
Anyway, I have plenty more to talk about, but I think it can be saved for the various unlocks, because much of it relates to those items and if they're worth getting or not, and how they impact your moonshiner business itself.
Tier 1: Novice Level 1: Two role unlock tokens. Level 2: Berry cobbler moonshine recipe, plus two unlock tokens. Level 3: Two role unlock tokens. Level 4: Bootlegger opportunities (allows certain free roam bootlegger missions to pop up on the map; notably roadblock clearing and rival still smashing.) Plus two role unlock tokens. Level 5: Bold dance unlock, plus two role unlock tokens. The dances can be done at various places, but are mostly for your moonshine bar. Tier 1 unlocks:
Toxic moonshine pamphlet ($500) allows the creation of toxic moonshine which can be thrown like a Molotov cocktail, and creates a green cloud that damages everyone in its range.
Holme Gloves (8 gold) I bought some on sale, because they're pricey for an outfit, cosmetic item, but they do look pretty cool. They are two-toned padded leather with a lattice pattern on the backs of the hands, in a variety of bold colors.
Levens gun belt ($215) A good looking gun belt, with triple Xs on it, the universal symbol for hooch. It's pricey, but looks good.
Norfolk Roadster - Speckled gray and black coats ($150) I'll talk more about this horse breed in the top tier, but I'll say now that it is a fan favorite, and considered one of the best horses in the game.
Bar Expansion ($950) This is VERY pricey, and it's even more pricey to update the decor (the cheapest alternate is 10 gold; the other two are 15 gold each). And while it's really cool, it's worth noting that it's mostly just cosmetic. You don't make any money for having your speakeasy here, although you do open up the possibility of drinking your own product, and inviting other players to your bar to serve to them and interact with them as well. There are a number of daily challenges that pop up routinely that involve this, so while you don't make your money back in terms of cash, it does open up lots of opportunities for making gold bars back as parts of daily challenges. Plus, it's just really pretty cool for its own sake.
Ivers Saddle ($550) Very expensive, and honestly, not one of the best-looking. It has an art-type pattern on it, but the colors are not attractive. The best thing about the saddle are the shine bottles hanging from it.
The Gatlinburg ($250) (Presumably named for the town in Tennessee at the gate to the Smokies national park, and famous for its hillbilly moonshiners of the past.) All of the moonshiner outfits are fairly "dressy" and fancy looking, but for some reason, the first two have aprons on over their actual clothes, which look ridiculous. One of the least attractive of the outfits, and I don't even like the hat. I only bought it so I could take a picture for this review series.
The tier two moonshine outfit. Given how similar it is to the tier 1, I tried to go with a different color scheme while still avoiding the white apron, but I don't know that it looks any better.
Tier 2: Promising
Level 6: Wild Creek moonshine recipe, plus two unlock tokens. I actually think this is the best recipe. At strong level, it's a top price moonshine, plus it has easier ingredients to find than the other three star recipes, even though the sale price is the same, and it always has a unique buyer available, unlike the other tree star recipes. I make this almost exclusively after I graduated up from the evergreen moonshine.
Level 7: Ingredients satchel upgrade. I haven't double checked, but I presume that this stacks with the trader ingredients satchel upgrade. I can carry 30 of all ingredients in my satchel, I believe. Plus two role unlock tokens.
Level 8: Two role unlock tokens.
Level 9: New buyer order. I don't remember what it was like before I had this, but now that it's unlocked, I always have Bert Higgins, who will buy anything you want to sell, but at a reduced rate, and a specific buyer who wants a specific recipe at a specific strength, and will pay full price for it. Plus two role unlock tokens.
Level 10: Two role unlock tokens.
Tier 2 unlocks:
Darrow Buckle (6 gold) a belt buckle for your gun belt. Not as attractive as some others that I got for less, but still... if you like buckles, here you go. I haven't bothered buying this one either.
Flammable Moonshine ($20) Like fire bottles, but not exactly. You pour it first and then shoot at it to set it on fire. This features heavily in the last story mission, but I otherwise haven't used it for anything.
Sawed-off Shotgun Varient ($450) Although I've kinda been meaning to, I still haven't bought any sawed-off shotguns, so I haven't used the variant skin, obviously. It's really pricey, especially considering that if you carry sawed-off shotguns, you probably carry two. It does look nice, though. If I had the guns, I'd buy the variant skins for both. One of these days I'll get around to it.
Nevin hipflask (8 gold) A gun belt decoration. It costs twice as much as the collector's compass, and honestly, I don't like it as much either. I haven't bought it yet, because I just always use the compass.
Band expansion. There's no listed price, and I didn't pay for it either, although I wasn't sure if that was a limited time thing or not. This comes with the moonshine bar, and is half the fun of the bar. (That's because I didn't buy the bar until after I'd passed this level, though.) You can play all of the instruments and you can dance to the music too. It doesn't really have much tangible benefit, although just today there was a daily challenge to play for four minutes with my band, and another one to dance for four minutes. One gold bar for taking a few minutes to do something that's kinda fun anyway. These come up pretty regularly; at least two or three times a week, so again, you make pretty decent gold by having this.
Condenser upgrade ($825) Although expensive, this is a must have purchase. It allows you to upgrade from weak to average strength moonshine, and is also a necessary component of eventually getting to strong moonshine. Your income will be seriously limited until you get this, which will bump up your sale prices considerably.
The Dagenhart ($348.25) While marginally better than the Gatlinberg, because the apron is waist down, this just looks like the Gatlinburg with a less obvious apron. I don't like it any better than the Gatlinburg, and I can't imagine I'll ever wear it, or even the hat from it. Ugh.
The tier 3 moonshiner outfit, a fancy one for a night dancing and drinking in my bar, perhaps, or for walking the streets of Saint Denis while trying to look like a local. Doesn't really look appropriate for a camp out in the Heartlands in the mud, but whatever.
Tier 3: Established
Level 11: Cheerful dance; another option for when you're dancing with your band, plus two unlock tokens.
Level 12: Spiced Island Moonshine recipe; one that at three star I've not always been able to sell. It also requires a collectible alcohol to make. Plus two role unlock tokens.
Level 13: Two role unlock tokens.
Level 14: Two role unlock tokens.
Level 15: Master distiller reduces the time it takes for a batch of moonshine to brew by 25% at all strengths. This turns strong moonshine from a 60 minute process to a 48 minute process, for instance. Plus two role unlock tokens.
Tier 3 unlocks:
Savatier monocle (8 gold) It's a monocle. Either you think that's awesome, or you don't. Needless to say, I have one. I'm thinking about getting some more, but the color differences are probably not really very noticeable given its small size. Some of them, though, have tinted glass which will show up more.
Norfolk Roadster Piebald Roan and Rose Gray Coats ($550) I quite like the piebald roan. I should point out that the real horse breed, which is now extinct, although it contributed to several existing breeds, was more commonly actually called the Norfolk trotter, but it's still the same breed.
The Pittsburg ($446.75) The first good looking moonshiner outfit, although it seems much too fancy for day to day running around doing free roam stuff. Maybe I'll try it anyway, just because, though. It'd be fun to hunt animals in a super fancy dress suit and top hat.
Neat Center Parted (2 gold) The moonshiner haircut. Sadly, it doesn't come with a facial hair variant, and it's really nothing special anyway, other than the prominent widow's peak that it features.
Polished Copper Upgrade ($875) Upgrades your moonshine strength to strong. Again, despite the high price tag, this is an essential purchase.
Levens holster ($150) As always, if you're going to buy the gun belt, you need the matching left-hand holster.
The even more exaggerated tier 4 moonshiner outfit. Really fancy. Because my hats are the same color (or nearly so, anyway) for tier 3 and four, I can swap them between each other and still look like it fits; and the default color Stuart top hat would match this color scheme quite well too.
Tier 4: Distinguished
Level 16: Two role unlock tokens.
Level 17: Materials satchel upgrade plus two role unlock tokens.
Level 18: Two role unlock tokens.
Level 19: Protection. Greatly reduce the risk of attacks. Attacks on what? Your camp? Your moonshine wagon during deliveries? I'm not actually sure what this does. I rarely get attacked, although I do usually fight the roadblock, and that always prompts follow-up attacks while I'm finishing the delivery. Maybe this changes the percentage that the roadblocks will hassle me. Plus two unlock tokens.
Level 20: Rowdy dance, plus two unlock tokens.
Tier 4 unlocks:
The Wilksboro ($545) Similar to the last outfit, except with a tail on your coat and an even higher top hat.
Hangover ($300) An emote. Similar to that of the collector, this is certainly appropriate for the role. And it'd good for a laugh here and there. Otherwise, though, I'm not quite sure who would use this and for what.
Norfolk Roadster Dappled Buckskin and Spotted Tricolor Coats ($950) The roadster is a fan favorite horse. While it doesn't have max anything, I don't think, it has near max stamina, really good health, and near max speed, and I have no complaints about its demeanor when under attack (just this morning I got attacked by a cougar and then a wolf pack back to back, and my roadster handled them both like a champ.) It's one of the best all-rounders, being really excellent at everything. In order to get better at any one stat with another breed, you have to sacrifice things of equal value. I got the dapple buckskin, because the spotted tricolor looked too similar to my Criollo, and while I don't necessarily really love that coat pattern, it's worth pointing out that the white face mask markings do make it very distinctive looking. Again, as with all top tier role horses, you actually need to completely finish the role before you can buy it.
Stuart Top Hat ($250) A very odd looking and tall hat that unlocks once you finish the moonshiner role. It's very distinctive, and the fact that you can buy it for cash instead of gold is attractive, but I also think it looks kinda silly.
