Two philosophies of RMU: rebuild or reorganize?

While it’s  much too late to change the course of events, there are still a number of detailed conversations going on at the RM Forums regarding the RMU Beta test.

For me the endless rules debates became too deep a rabbit hole that I didn’t want to go down any longer and there are still many players who are fiercely engaged. So rather than discuss actual rules, I thought I would discuss the rules making process. A bit of a meta-debate if you will.

I think the RMU development process has become a rorschach test for the RM community. It’s clear that there are variety of differing and strongly held beliefs about the rule resolutions and they are mostly the product of an individual’s ideas on versimilitude and their own tolerance for complexity. I discussed Chargen complexity in a previous POST, but I wanted to broaden the scope of my question into 2 parts. First, does RMU rebuild the ruleset or just reorganize and streamline it? Second, are peoples suggested rule changes a rebuild or a reorganize?

I think the answer to the first question is easy. RMU stayed “inside the box” and merged, streamlined and tinkered with core mechanics without any significant rebuild. Perhaps the only rebuild mechanic that was introduced was the size rules and those were discarded after community input.  Arms Law still kept weapon tables, crit charts and the basic combat structure. Does the round sequence or initiative rules rise to the definition of a rebuild? I think it was evolutionary, but certainly not revolutionary. Spell Law was left almost as-is, with some spell mechanics rewritten or clarified, spell slots filled but little else. Character Law seemingly reduced RMSS skill bloat (but not really) and added to the Chargen process with pages and pages of talents and flaws–rules for rules!

So my second question–are your solutions rebuilding or just tinkering around the edges? It seems like many rule suggestions (including mine) are just an attempt to get RMU to adopt house rules in some fashion. But are these suggestions meant to truly revise RM or are you painting within the lines? I think RMU met it’s name: it’s attempted to unify a diverse community within the established mechanics.

But did RMU need more? If so what?

Did rule changes take you out of your own comfort zone?

Are proposed rules to the benefit of growing the community or appealing to the current user base?

Do RMU rules advance the system into the contemporary gaming community?

I negotiate for a living and a saying in my profession is that the best possible deal is when both parties walk away somewhat dissatisfied.

 

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The Long Awaited Game

This weekend I get to run my face to face game. The last session was nearly a year ago as the get together planned for the autumn last year was cancelled. In fact we wanted to meet up in the June and the September but neither of those weekends happened.

I am actually going to use one of our own 50 in 50 adventure outlines as an encounter, the cabin in the woods, and if you can remember back to 22nd of September last year I will finally get to throw my wicked witch at the characters.

I think these massive hiatuses (hiatusi? or just ‘gaps’) between game sessions, twelve months in this instance, are the main cause of our hack and slash game play.

The challenge facing me is that I need to create the impression that the characters are carrying out a long and fruitless search while making the game session exciting and engaging. The point of the fruitless search element is to make the end of the search feel like something of greater value. I don’t want them to walk into the forest, poke two leaves and then find the long lost ancient sword that has evaded legions of searchers for generations.

I also get to load up the characters with some useful single user magic items, some of which they will not know they are magical. Witches are great at making enchanted items and the BBEG this time is a wicked witch.

The only slight disappointment is that one player has had to drop out of the weekend due to a family crisis. These weekends are always best when the gang is all there. As a group we have now been gaming together for 34 years!

The final thing I am looking forward to is that I get to play as well. I have a 1st level Lay Healer called Otto. We are running around my GMs home brew world that so far appears to have a mix of fantasy and high tech elements. At least that is implied by the sliding doors and elevators we encountered in the first session.

Exciting times ahead!

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A Knightly Encounter

This weeks publication round up brings you the 25th instalment of our 50 in 50, so exactly half way. I will also highlight A Baker’s Dozen of Pieces of Lore by Neal Litherland.

A Knightly Encounter

In A Knightly Encounter, the characters will be halted in their travels by a group of knights who will pick a fight no matter what. There are a number of different reasons provided as to why they might fight and there are five knights in total, each of whom is described. The encounter pits characters against a dangerous d100 foe.

 

<oh how I wish we could write Rolemaster NPCs in place of d100 foe!>

A Baker’s Dozen of Pieces of Lore

This is a collection of thirteen different histories, legends and myths that can be used to add colour to a campaign. They describe people, places, items and events. They can be used as possible adventure and encounter hooks or simply to make a world seem more alive. The pieces of lore are not tied to any specific setting so they can be easily dropped into the majority of fantasy campaigns.

I picked out A Baker’s Dozen because this is one of Azukail’s supplements created using freelance writers. I was thinking along the lines of Azukail is Rolemaster-Friendly + Azukail has a growing stable of freelancer writers, therefore if we ever get a license from ICE then RolemasterBlog + Azukail is an increasingly strong proposition for writing supplements.

And talking of supplements…

I am realy busy this week, next weekend I have my face to face RMC gaming weekend (this is the game being run using RMC RAW). I get back on Sunday and then Monday morning I am going on a weeks riding holiday. Once that is over I have the fanzine to put together.

Once all of that is out of the way the very next thing on my ToDo list is the Nomikos Library. I have some technicalities like installing databases and configuring a new wordpress installation but I hope to have something ready to show and tell by the beginning of May.

Watch this space, as the cliche goes.

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Adding “dark things” to your Rolemaster and Shadow World games.

Poisons, diseases, curses. Oh my. In the earliest days of D&D, adventurers not only had to avoid traps, navigate mazes and defeat monsters, they had to contend with other insidious agents like poisons, level drains, curses or cursed objects, petrification and the diseased touch of the Mummy.  Not really a safe vocation when you really think about it! While much of the Saving Throw/Resistance Roll mechanic was built around these attack types, how often do GM’s really use these “dark things”? How often do you introduce poisons & diseases in your campaign?

D&D made many challenges fairly simple. Curses could be countered with a particular spell, poisons could be Saved or cured etc. They were designed to be yet another discrete challenge that has to be overcome. A binary mechanic: effect vs. cure. D&D didn’t bother with specific poison antidotes (unless part of the narrative) or even causation (what is a curse and why so prevalent in D&D). You Saved and you were good, you failed and you had to seek out a singular solution.

Rolemaster introduced a more realistic system for many of these challenges; and poisons were definitely more detailed! Not only were there many poisons, they were defined into 5 types, had specific antidotes, and had varying levels of effects. A similar approach was taken with diseases and whole spell lists were devoted to varying curses whose effects spanned the realm of imagination.

A few years ago I took a critical look at my own campaign and GMing proclivities. I realized that I rarely used diseases, never used curses (or at least hadn’t for many years) and was reluctant to delve into poisons.  Now I see these interesting affects as not just a quick add-on but great additions to my narrative toolkit. Let’s take a look:

  1. Poisons. Many GM’s are reluctant to use poisons due to their variety, unpredictable effects AND some sort of ethical standard (maybe established by D&D class restrictions). I think that’s just wrong and leaves a whole layer of complexity to gaming. Putting our own social norms aside, the widespread use of herbs in the RM/SW world clearly lays a path for the common use of harmful herbs and agents as well. I just finished then newest Mark Lawrence book that prominently featured the use of herbs and poisons–it really inspired me to add more depth to poisons and an added value to the skill. Luckily, RM and SW already has a comprehensive list of substances that I collated into a MASTER LIST. I also left Poison as a meta-skill that covers identification (by taste, smell, symptoms etc) preparation, application and use, and as part of our system that provides a benefit for ranks, the # of ranks in Poison is also added to any RR vs poisons.  (This models the idea of a poisoner taking low doses over time to build up their resistance). So now poisons are like spells, with varying effects, methods of delivery and counter-antidotes. To facilitate poison (and similar substances) it helps to use a variety of mediums: paste, liquids, powders, oils that have varying effect times and for pre-prepared antidotes to the most commonly known agents. And poisons don’t just have to kill, they can paralyze, knock a person out, make them dizzy etc, so they aren’t just a deadly, unethical or cowardly attack only favored by assassins and “low men”. Poison preparation also shoehorns into our alchemy rules and can be combined with various substrate delivery systems. I’ll be expanding on this in an upcoming blog or RMBlog fanzine edition in the near future.
  2. Diseases. I think my reluctance to use diseases is multi-fold. First, diseases are generally slow acting so they don’t create a sense of urgency. Second, Elves and even half-Elves are basically immune to diseases so in SW much of the population doesn’t eve worry about it. Finally, Spell Law healing makes curing diseases fairly simple and implies most societies are not going to have problems with disease in general. Besides having a disease as a core plot point to an adventure, I think diseases only work well if they have affects measured in days or weeks and not months or years. That may only be magical diseases. Like poisons, I avoided using diseases for many years, but now I like them a lot–especially the slow, sapping type. Perhaps it’s reduces Str & Co 1 pt a day or week, or there is a slowly increasing fatigue penalty. That hits home with the affected player as it directly impacts the game play–they’ll want to deal with it!
  3. Curses. I still can’t remember when I last used a curse. I specifically reduced “Curses” down to a single spell list in BASiL (and even then it was difficult to rank them by level) and I don’t think I’ve used a cursed object in RM or my SW campaign. I feel that curses are very setting driven and probably generated from Channeling/Diety. In Rolemaster, Curses are more “ill effect” than the common idea of curses that tend towards future effects and augury.  Traditional curses are too open ended and hard to fit into the gameplay. I’m open to ideas, so happy to hear other peoples experience with them.

But “dark things” are not just limited to poisons, disease and curses. Beyond these traditional agents, Shadow World may provide a bevy of interesting taints, attacks and complications that can add to your campaign. Here are a few thoughts and ideas:

Demonic Possessions. I’ve blogged about the problems with summoning and demonic possessions should be based on the particular setting. But Shadow World does have Demons, so it’s possible to have Demonic possessions beyond the thematic demons introduced by Terry. Having a player possessed could make for interesting sessions: Demons may not have any particular agenda beyond being a chaos agent and maybe they even impart some Demonic powers (like Frenzy).

Mental Illness. Introducing a mental illness to a player really relies on their roleplaying skills, but can add a interesting twist to group dynamics. Traditional Mentalism spells can cause mental illnesses, but how should they work and manifest in game play. Serious illness beyond phobias and violent tendencies are going to be metagamed by the player, but a players that really commits to it can be a lot of fun even if it gets the group into trouble.

Unlife Taint. There has been several attempts to mechanize Unlife taint in past GC’s and some other thoughts on the Forums. Obviously there needs to be corruption rules for SW. Should this work as a player accesses “Dark” spell lists? In my own campaign I differentiate between “dark” lists (that are the result of the Gods of Charon) and “Unlife” spell lists which tap into an alien, malevolent power. These lists are the various Priest Arnak lists I posted up on the RM Forums, and the lists Terry made for the Steel Rain and other Unlife organizations. Ideally, the Unlife lists should be really different from standard SL lists and more powerfully to justify and entice spell users to explore and experiment with them–and start down a slippery slope. Unlife corruption should be a core rule mechanic for SW. The concept of players “flirting” with learning and casting powerful Unlife spells and risking being corrupted or subsumed by the Unlife is a great fantasy theme.

Channeling Block. A priest who defies their god, behaves in a inappropriate way or similar should be punished. The quickest and most obvious is to sever them from their spell casting ability until they make atonement for their actions. This atonement process is a natural trigger for an adventure or quest!

God Cursed. Similar to the disfavor in a channeling block, a character could get a “mark” that shows they are cursed, outcast or disfavored by a god. This could be in the form of a birthmark, shaped scar, change in eye color, or symbol that can be seen in the person’s skin (excommunication). This would be an ill omen in most cultures, and make it difficult for the player to interact with society.

Just a few ideas that I need to explore in more detail or finalize as rule mechanics. RMSS and RMU have introduced Flaws that are similar to these, but I like for fluidity to these more than CharGen mechanics to offset talents. What has been your experience with “Dark Things“?

 

 

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Interview with Jonathan Dale RMU Dev

Today I have for you an interview with Jonathan Dale about the current state of RMU and I did my best to get the release date out of him but he was having none of it.

Peter: For those people who are not part of the RMU Beta test on the ICE Forum could you tell us how you came to join the RMU Dev Team?

JDale: The glib answer is that I posted too much in the playtest forums, and now here I am. That’s sort of true. ICE is currently made up of freelancers and people’s available time changes, and an open playtest is an exhausting process, especially at the beginning when the rules are still rough. Some of the team were not going to stay closely involved and that meant some new people had to be brought on board. Some of the team had told me they appreciated how, in my comments, I was looking at other people’s views, explaining my reasoning, and suggesting alternatives rather than just criticizing. I also had met with Matt Hanson at an RPG event at Jetpack Comics. Initially I was brought in to help Matt, and we did a sit-down session as well as conversing by email, but as his free time ran out, I ended up the lead on A&CL. I also did some work on Creature Law, mainly on the talents and updating the giant spreadsheet used to create the creatures, and Vlad is plugging away on updating the creatures themselves. Nicholas also brought in Graham Bott to do some work on Spell Law (which did not get changed very much) and Treasure Law (which got more changes, unsurprisingly since it had only been through one beta cycle).

Peter: It has always struck me that you come across as the voice of moderation, on the forums as least, especially when there are some very strongly held views. How much of Arms & Character Law would you say is ready to sign off and how much is still open to change given that most people are praying every day for the RMU Singularity?

JDale: A&CL is basically done. I could have signed off on it a while ago. It’s Creature Law that is taking time. That said, because of that delay, I’ve continued to make minor tweaks and adjustments to A&CL based on feedback, mostly improving wording for clarity. The current discussion of tactical movement is an extreme case of that, I actually have two versions of the manuscript, one each way.

Peter: The problem I have had with play testing was getting the players. I took me over a year to get my RM2 stalwarts to accept RMC. Going to RMU was rejected out of hand. I did find one new player but he comes and goes and we didn’t get to play much. You on the other hand seem to have several games on the go. Did you hit many problems at the game table with the new rules?

My player’s biggest complaint is that…

JDale: I still don’t get to play nearly as often as I’d like. I’ve been forced to fall back on playing a D&D game although the current plan is I will take over and launch another RMU game when that campaign ends later this year. In any case, I started my current (still-running) RMU game before joining the development team. I think my player’s biggest complaint is that I keep changing the rules on them as we go from update to update; I started that even before joining the dev team. We did run into many of the same issues others have mentioned on the forums, for example injury penalties were too high and too frequent (these have since been reduced), and damage was too low (this is being raised). We also converted our long-running (but not frequently meeting) RMSS game, in which I am a player not GM, and conversion is different from starting a new game. Some things go up, some things go down, there were some complaints about the latter but nobody complained about the reduced need for spell prep or their skills that went up. The biggest issue there was with the very different number of starting language ranks between the two editions, which we mostly dealt with by giving everyone 20 extra ranks.

Peter: I would like to ask about monsters. I know you are mainly working on A&CL but the foes we fight are an integral part of combat. When the Beta of Creature Law hit it was dramatically behind in its level of development in terms of presentation and it stirred up a hornets over the normalised creature stats. Is there a secret ‘new and improved’ creature law that the dev team are using that we haven’t had a chance to look at?

“…to a mere 286”

JDale: The core of Creature Law is in the talents and archetypes. The archetypes are basically a streamlined way of handling normal level progression, so the GM does not have to pick individual skills and stat gains when creating a creature. And the talents cover everything else. The archetypes have been slightly updated to take into account other changes but we did a lot of work to clarify the talents, remove redundancy, and make the costs more consistent. That reduced the number of talents and flaws to a mere 286. All of the talents now have full descriptions in the same style as those in A&CL. That required us to update the creature-building spreadsheet to take into account the changes. We also made changes to how movement rates were calculated, how hits are presented (e.g. larger creatures now have more hits rather than taking reduced damage), etc. So, the framework is definitely improved. And I have used it to create creatures for my campaign. But ultimately the books (it will be two volumes, not one) will also present more than 800 creatures that are ready to go; the creature stats all need to be updated based on those changes, and that’s what’s still in progress.

Peter: That is really good to hear, I was one of those people who moaned mightily about the normalised #hits for monsters.

So the thing I like the most about RMU is the skill system. RM2 skills by comparison are a nightmare of inconsistency with some skills giving different bonuses per rank depending on the skill, the costs had no continuity and even really important game mechanics being given buried in the skills descriptions; such as all flying manoeuvres being at -75 only  being mentioned in the Flying skill but not under the manoeuvring rules. RMU by comparison is really neat, skills give bonuses and expertise reduce penalties.

If you had to point to one thing in RMU that really stands out as an improvement or a problem solved what would it be?

JDale: That’s tough. I’m mostly coming from RMFRP, so the streamlined skill list and similar skills rules are a nice improvement from the skills and categories of the previous system. I can definitely see the improved organization and clarity being a big step from RM2, that’s why we switched to RMFRP in our group after all, and there was still room for improvement. The improvements to the attack tables are big in my opinion too. But as someone who enjoys worldbuilding, I was really excited to get tools for creating and customizing professions, races, cultures, and monsters. Those are super useful for me and I think will also be useful keeping everything working when the system expands with future Companion books.

Peter: OK, this will be a bit of a curved ball but I actually did a bit of research before asking to talk to you. So without looking in Creature Law, what OB would you give a starfish?

JDale:  Maybe I gotta keep clam about that. 🙂 I’m sure they’re awesome grapplers with a secondary acid critical… if you just sit there and wait for them.

The answer is 25T(3)gr ;25D(2)be (grapple and beak) but to my horror I discovered that the number encountered is 2d8(!) I play Rolemaster, I don’t own 2d8!

Peter: OK, one last question, and this one I know you cannot really answer, but you have seen more of the books in their present state, the working spreadsheets and so on. You have seen how they have been progressing over the past six months. If I had to press you, when do you think the singularity will happen, at least to the nearest month or season? Should I be putting RMU on my Christmas list?

JDale: Even after the singularity, there will be a round of proofreading, probably a round of fixes to the issues it reveals, and then art and layout. I have no idea how long that will take. I would love to have a copy in my hands this year, but no idea whether it will happen.

My thanks to Jonathan for spending the time to answer my questions and what I think was the coolest bit was that he signed off saying “I am off to go run our LARP for the weekend so thanks for the chat!” In my experience there are not many conversations you can drop the word LARP into and get away without some fairly long explanations. 🙂

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Capricorn One

Yes, you guessed it, the stupid title means it is one of my 50 in 50 adventure hooks.

Capricorn One is a “Can the heroes save the village?” adventure. For added fun as least some of the adventure is going to take place on water so it is a chance to prize your tanked up warriors out of their plate mail.

There are sea monsters, magic and deep water which probably makes it a warriors worst nightmare but jolly good fun to GM.

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Thoughts on ancient structures in fantasy RPG’s and Shadow World.

We dropped anchor in the deep bay west of the Sullen Mountains. A solitary volcanic cone, trickling a faint plume of smoke from its summit loomed above us. The swells chopped but the water was relatively calm compared to the weather we had faced the past few weeks. To the north we beheld the Sunken City, the natives call it the City of Giants, but a cursory inspection of nearby structures indicated the occupants were most certainly mortal in size. The tops of huge blocks, broken towers and chipped obelisks worn down by the millennia spread as far as the eye could see. There must have been leagues of crumbling ruins above the water, but I could only imagine what secrets lay beneath the dark waves.

Travel Journals of Malco Teves, Merchant Captain of the Storm Sea Free Traders

Ancient castles, dark crypts, lost cities. Exploring ruins and structures is a key component in fantasy roleplaying, and if your games are similar most of these “ancient structures” are in fact really not that “ruined”.  I recently visited the Yucatan Peninsula and 4 different Mayan sites: Chitzen Itza, Coba, Tulum and a small complex on Cozumel. In some ways, Coba was the most interesting as much of the huge site (home to 55,000 people) is still buried under the jungle.  As I walked through the jungles, I definitely had my GM hat on, and thought about the experience through a roleplaying session. Peering into the jungle you can see numerous, huge, mounds covered in scattered stones, undergrowth and trees.  These are all buildings that not only haven’t been excavated, they are probably just piles of rubble. Most of the iconic buildings we see at these sites or in pictures are the result of complete rebuilding–often times done multiple times to either repair shoddy work or to correct architectural mistakes as archaeologists gather new information.

In other words, many untouched ancient ruins in real life wouldn’t make good adventure settings! Over time ancient structures degrade: they are buried under strata, collapsed in cataclysms or earthquakes, looted, stripped of cut stone for new buildings or leveled by conquering forces. In jungles, foliage quickly cover buildings and root systems crush and grind the buildings to dust. This reality is in sharp contract to our expectations as adventurers. Rarely do parties have to dig for days or weeks to uncover a tomb entrance or hire a work force to lift and move thousands of cut stones of a collapsed building. Many structures might not even resemble buildings as much as mounds of rubble or small hills which doesn’t work well for a cinematic approach to your game. I think we all tend towards “ruins lite” in our games: basically recognizable and functional structures with some crumbling around the edges.

But what if the buildings are much, much older than Earth comparables?  Right now the oldest constructions on Earth are 10,000 to 12,000 years old (Gobleki Tepi and Jericho) and GT was purposefully buried in 8000 BC to protect it! The 3 Eras in Shadow World span more than 100,000 years with many distinct high tech cultures and of course immortal Elves. These cultures left behind remnants of their civilizations across the planet.

Priest King of Shade (the opening vignette was taken from that) includes the ruins of a 1st Era Althan city. Over 100,000 years old, partially submerged and continuously explored and looted by subsequent cultures I had to think about how it would have survived or what it’s present state should be. Since we don’t have anything to compare to here and it was a city of advanced tech I had to guess at it. And what about other ancient lost ruins that may not date to the 1st Era but are still TENS of thousands of years old. Should we expect them to be intact, structurally sound and playable? Maybe hand wave their condition away due to “magic”?

I’m curious if anyone else has thought about this, introduced standard archaeology or excavation in any of their adventures or have thoughts on this topic?

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What a rip off!

On Tuesday I came across a game called A Slight Mistake. It is a Pay What You Want game on RPGnow but do not pay anything to the author! When I say author what I really mean is thieving scum bag.

A Slight Mistake is, in the ‘authors’ own words…

For a few years now, I’ve been writing a series of novels set on a Dyson Sphere.

Then the opportunity arose for me to run a game based upon them. I created a beespoke set of rules, based upon my own preferences and so I decided to put it out there and see if anyone else would like to play it.

I’ve broken the rules into two books, the GM’s guide and the Player’s guide. Hopefully someone out there might find this useful.

I’ve set it to ‘pay what you like’ as I know this won’t be everybody’s preferences.

You see the bit where is tries to say “I created a bespoke set of rules” what he actually meant was “I ripped off Rolemaster or HARP and try to pass it off as my own.”

The only bit that is ‘his’ is that he turned the individual combat tables into something that looks like this.


He had the amazing thought of grouping spells like this


And that weapons could have their own fumble charts like this.

The combat system seems oddly familiar, lets look at shields and parrying.

I guess you get the picture?

Isn’t it amazing that half the time we agonise about how we can share playable adventures or NPCs without violating ICE’s intellectual property while someone else will happily rip off the entire game system.

I did vainly try to see if there was a mention of Rolemaster/HARP anywhere, any sort of acknowledgement or word of gratitude but nothing. The only kind of introductory preamble is a push to get you to buy his book on Amazon and a reference to Star Trek TNG. I won’t be buying his book.

I am not entirely sure if ICE can do anything about this either. You cannot copyright game mechanics and he has not used any of their logos or trademarks. It is just a wholesale plundering of ideas and presenting them as his own.

It wouldn’t surprise me if his next book was about a sea captain that builds a submarine and sails around under the ocean. He could call it “69046.767miles under the sea”. That is unique after all.

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Culture of Spiders

We have released a few adventure hooks that could easily be expanded into full adventure modules with a bit of effort. One of the prime candidates is The City of Spiders.

As this hook introduced a whole city for the characters to explore along with factions to interact with it is easy to imaging creating several adventures within this one location.

So there seem to be two types of threat in this adventure. People from the various factions and spiders, large and small.

What I would like to do is gather some ideas of what ‘monsters’ you think complement the classic giant spider? I do not want to end up with a D&D menagerie in every room but I worry that a mono culture could get a bit same old same old fairly quickly.

So my four initial ideas are Drider style half human-half spiders possibly related to the inner circles of the church, Gemsting (giant scorpions) living in the surrounding landscape and giant wasps, the original ecological reason why the giant spiders both evolved and why they are tolerated in the city. Finally, there could be golem or or automata in spider form.

So can any of you come up with really good monsters that could naturally sit in a city dedicated to spiders?

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Feldaryn’s Flying Ship

This week is Fanzine week and our latest 50 in 50 adventure.

Fanzine issue 12

This issue is the finishes the Essence part of BASiL with five new spell lists and as a preview of the Channelling lists there is one new featured channeling list ‘Minor Curses’. In addition you also get the Mummy and Mummy Lord as new monsters converted from 5e to Rolemaster. To round our the issue there are a few more articles on NPCs and player skills.

As this is Issue 12 it means we have completed our first year of the printed fanzine. It is also in some way fitting that this is the first issue to feature Craggle’s Shadow World art.

The fanzine is available on RPGnow and on Amazon in print and kindle editions.

 

In Feldaryn’s Flying Ship the characters come across a ship that is stuck – in a tree. The ship is actually a flying vessel and the sole individual on it – by all appearances a powerful mage – needs help getting the rigging untangled from the tree. The mage, Feldaryn, is not what he seems and can be a source of problems to the characters. Having access to flying transport may prove useful, though.

There is a three deck plan of the flying ship included.

 

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