The Chocolate Chip Country

I'm back in the DM saddle, putting together a Pathfinder game on Google+. Monte Cook worked on Pathfinder, updating the D&D 3.5 rules to be more in the spirit of what came before.

So, in putting together a setting for this game, I have no problem with referencing my 2nd Ed sources.

One of the problems with building a world from scratch is figuring out how many NPCs will have class levels. ( Read more... )

(For an Exalted game)

There once was a family that took animals up and down the bright road to sell them. The bright road went through a land of death, so they were very careful not to leave it as they traveled.

One day, cruel dreams decided to play a game with this family. They made shadows that lured away the animals from the bright road. The animals were their livelihood, so the family went after them, but it was late and the sun soon left the sky. In the dark, death crept from its land and struck among them, feasting on such rich life.

One small girl was told to run, so she did. She was small enough to slip through the teeth of death as it gorged on the larger prey. She ran all the way to the bright road and was safe, but she was also alone.

Her heart overflowed and she cried.

At one end of the bright road is a white city. The faceless patrons of the city there loved life and hated death, and heard her crying. They sent a friend to bring her into the city where it was safe.

She was given a new family, and taught to care for different animals. She never forgot her first family, but there was so much life around her that she couldn't be scared of the death that ate them. Instead, she grew up lovely and clever, and told stories to little children and tended wounds wherever she found them.

She was a special woman, for she had a star in her heart. When one of the old stars fell to the earth, its blaze kindled the star in her heart. She left the white city and went to live in the sky with the other stars.

The people she had known forgot her, but the stories and kindness lingered on to mark where she had been.

Well, once you've figured out what the monster is for, you can pick out some abilities.

For Horror Monsters, there is a strong tradition of things like blood draining, bites that turn you into another monster, and mind control. To go along with the idea that horror monsters make safe things unsafe, powers given to horror monsters tend to be invasive abilities that violate your borders. Draining your blood leaves few marks and removes the vitality from you. Turning you into a monster robs you of your identity. And mind control is, well, just plain invasive no matter how you slice it.

Notice that these also tend to be powers that are reasonably easy to not notice, too. Vampires get mind control, blood draining, can bring you back as another vampire, and are often inhumanly strong and fast. None of this is obvious just by looking at a standard vampire. This allows them, as a monster, to stay an unknown longer.

For Adventure Monsters, we're usually talking about obvious monsters. Dragons don't hide well, unless they're some kind of shapeshifting or shrinking dragon. Giant boars tend to stand out. In fact, being giant is a popular power for an adventure monster. The bigger and more impressive the monster is, the more impressive is your hero's victory when it's beaten.

Unusual but physically threatening effects are common. Dragons breathe fire. Hydras grow more heads when you cut them off. Medusa has poisonous snakes for hair and turns people to stone. Talos was made of bronze and practically invulnerable.

You can let your imagination run wild in designing abilities, but keep in mind what the monster's for. If you want to scare your readers or players, go for subtle or mental effects. If you want something that would be impressive to the by-standers and give a larger than life feel, then go for something big or flashy. You can mix and match, too. Lots of things in stories and myth have more than one power or weapon. On the other hand, things with just one ability can be very effective in the right setting. Scylla is a terror particularly because she is found with Charybdis.

After my walk yesterday, I spent some time writing up Improbable NPC. This is for a 2nd Ed AD&D game. If I'd been writing it up for 3e, she actually would be a little tame.

We're playing around in my Spelljammer setting. Right now, the crew is on a desert planet, so I'm going to have the joy of having them make Constitution and/or Survival checks soon.

One of the players is relatively new to the group. He's the kind of player who browses through the monster manual when he's bored, and decides to go ahead and roll up random things for his character while I, as DM, am busy elsewhere. I've had to tell him twice that I prefer to be present for those sorts of things. (He's done this for other games, too.) He also seems to have picked up the notion that all AD&D settings have magic shops around where you can just buy potions and useful magic items that people happen to have available.

I've spent so much time DMing, and now one of the stereotypes shows up in one of my games. I'll admit I'm finding it a challenge. Sometimes a very annoying one.

I'll admit to the temptation to keep the group from finding any bags of holding or portable holes or the like, now that this player has repeatedly mentioned buying one. I'll have to think more on that. On the one hand, it would be very useful to them! On the other hand, they're on a world where most of the major magic users don't have hands, and most people are more concerned with survival than amassing wealth*.

*EDIT - "Most people" does not include the dragon population.

Changeling is an interesting setting. It's in the old World of Darkness, a world like our own, but, well, darker, with more gothic and punk features. And lots of supernatural critters around.

Anyway, the Changeling flavor has this premise- that the fae of the old world, in order to survive the encroaching Banality of mundane life, hid themselves in the bodies of regular humans. So, each changeling has a fae soul and a human one, and at some point, the fae soul gets a chance to come out for a while.

( Long )

anher and I have been pretty active in gaming circles, recently. One of the folks started up a werewolf LARP on the free weekend, and we'd been trying it out. There had been a lot of friction. Sometimes it was a case where what we were used to and our assumptions of what 'everybody does' were different from his. Sometimes it was adjusting from one set of rules to the next (last time we played in a werewolf LARP, we used 2nd edition rules, and they're on 3rd).

And sometimes, it was just a problem between us and him.

Well, it got to a point where anher was having to reclarify something with the guy once or twice a week for a game that only runs once a month.

In the end, we left the game. The ST finally did something to cross the line beyond which I have no further tolerance, and anher was only staying in because I didn't want to give up my character.

There's a lot less stress in our lives, now. There was some ugliness- we all game together on Tuesday (tabletop), so we'll see how much it'll carry over into other things. I hope it doesn't. I don't mind playing with the guy, and I'd hate to see other stuff get derailed because of hard feelings.

We'll see.

Sky One is doing a movie of Hogfather (the Discworld book) for the holidays.

And, less specific but, I think, even cooler-
http://www.merzo.net/index.html

Starships and stations from all sorts of sci-fi stuff, all mapped out to scale next to each other. Seeing Unicron next to, say, Phobos (one of Mars' two moons) gives a real sense of the perspective the movies and stuff try to achieve.

The Death Star is freakin' huge!

Guardians of Order (GoO) is going out of business.

BESM, 3rd ed, will be published by somebody else.

Heck, I didn't even know there was going to be a 3rd edition, but I suppose it's inevitable. It just sucks that GoO won't be around anymore.

For a Changeling plot:

I need a bunch of traditional children's stories associated with Halloween, preferably ones with interesting or memorable characters. These need to be stories you'd find in a large collection of short stories and/or fairy tales.

Brian and I will be doing some of our own research, of course, but I thought I'd see what my friends list can come up with. I'd love to find out a bunch of unusual stories that I can use to flummox players.