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Shadow World Wish List: the definitive Master Atlas.

With every new product Terry Amthor publishes, the world of Kulthea grows larger and more detailed, but it’s been quite a while since an updated version of the SW Master Atlas was produced. In truth, there has been a tremendous amount of world building material generated, but it’s been scattered among the various SW supplements over the last 30 years.

In general, a setting’s “Master Atlas” should contain the overview and broad strokes of the world—the foundation that sets the table for all other material. It should differentiate between “world spanning”, “universal” and “ubiquitous” and material that is regional in nature. Using that very basic definition you could argue that the Loremasters and Navigators are Master Atlas material while the Eight Orders of the Emerian Empire are not. Certainly, some of this is arbitrary, but if a new Master Atlas was planned, what should be included? Part of it is consolidating this “world material” from existing products and the other is filling in the blanks—new material that fleshes out the world, answers important questions or establishes setting specific material that might be different than general Rolemaster rules. (see the blog here)

IIRC, Rolemaster Companion I was generated from the “Red Book”—a notebook filled with optional material used in the early days by key ICE employees and playtesters. The material was cleaned up and made into Companion. We have our own version of the “Red Book”—our own Master Atlas that consolidates all “world material” into the existing MA4 text (converted in editable Word format). We went through each product, starting with the Iron Wind, and added any pertinent material: languages, creatures, Loremasters, artifacts, key persons etc. When a new product comes out, we go through it and do the same thing; our current MA stands at 320 pages without the numbered timeline and without fauna/flora. With fauna/flora our comprehensive MA would be well over 500 pages without artwork and graphics. Is that too large for todays consumers?

Some of that (100+ pages) is our own material—some of it posted up on the Misc SW Files. What is the origin of Elves? What happened to the Earthwardens? Where did the Dragonlords come from? What is the origina and the genesis of the various monsters/creatures? What are the reasons behind “magical” alloys? What is the background behind the lack of chemical processes in SW? We wrote it out of necessity, much of it years ago when it wasn’t clear if SW would continue. I think we came up with some good answers to many of these questions—but ultimately may be modified based on new material Terry produces.

Even with all the material we have, plus the material we’ve written I think there are gaps in the Master Atlas. After 4 versions, it’s probably not a priority for Terry to tackle the Master Atlas yet again even as he updates other past regional products. But…if such a product were to materialize, what would you like to see in it? Here are a few of my own:

1.       Language etymology. Matt did some work on it and I tried some basic classifications but it would be nice to have a basic “language tree” based on the root languages and sub families to build a framework for future products and establish relationships between cultures for language skills/translations etc.

2.       Essence Flow and Foci Map. While I like the idea of not creating permanent Major Flows, they are a key part of the world. Nexus is surrounded by them; Tanara was isolated by them etc. There was a map from an earlier product (Emer in the Atlas Addendum) but I think reintroducing these permanent flows helps fix the Flows as an important physical manifestation of the setting.

3.       Setting specific creatures. Much of the flora/fauna of SW is just a duplication of Creatures & Treasures. This feels like shoe horning a generic fantasy framework into a more unique setting. I would prefer to see a broadening of SW specific bestiary: more fusion and bizarre creatures.

4.       The Pales. Something I’ve been working on is added material on the Pales: environment, more denizens, realm powers etc. It would be great to have them fleshed out as real places that could be visited or used for travelling. My group is currently in the 2nd Pale and pushed me to build the setting out more for the adventure.

5.       Finished SW specific spell lists. Additional spell lists for the Unlife (type specific rather than general) and the other groups detailed in Powers of Light & Darkness.

6.       Finalized and consistent rules about the Unlife. Eliminate the “Anti-Essaence” and create framework for channeling (?) the Unlife and corruption rules.

7.       Notable world wide holidays and religious celebrations.

8.       Simultaneous publication for D20 rulesets.

Just a few of my ideas—anybody have any other ideas for the “definitive” SW Master Atlas?

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Dyson’s Dodecahedron

I am truly terrible at maps. Thankfully one of the best fantasy cartographers I have ever come across is Dyson Logos. His blog, Dyson’s Dodecahedron, is an immense resource for maps including amazing isometric layouts.

This particular one…

Vault of the Ghost King

…is ideal for those of you of a Shadow World bent. The elevator just smacks of higher technology. To my mind even the spiral stairwell would quite possibly be beyond many cultures.

I am thinking of using one of Dyson’s maps for the session of fruitless searching that I mentioned last time. I guess that many GMs will have already discovered Dyson but I thought I would feature him anyway just in case there are GMs out there who have not discovered him yet.

You should certainly check the blog out.

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Brief thoughts: masks in your fantasy setting.

In my recent blog post I referenced the Mayan, Lord Pakal. Pakal was buried wearing a jade funerary mask and it reminded me that masks are very cool! You’ve probably used or encountered a mask in your RPG game—maybe it’s a powerful magic item, a funerary mask found in a crypt /tomb or worn for a festival or celebration. I was reminded of masks worn by cultures or organization in popular fiction and how the mask itself became a defining trait.

Masks can be powerful symbols—they can hide an identity or gender, signify membership, convey emotion, create equality and/or eliminate social barriers. In a fantasy setting, masks can convey tone or atmosphere to the group using a very simple description. One-off masks are great, but what about standardized masks worn by whole groups of people/fighters etc?

Two that immediately come to mind:

1.       The Immortals in the movie 300. Certainly the movie was highly stylistic and not that historically accurate, but the masks make the enemy both anonymous and menacing.

2.       The Seguleh. If you haven’t read the Malazan series—do so! The Seguleh were a militant, hierarchal society of skilled warriors. All wore masks, each one signifying their rank (1st being the best warrior).

I can’t recall any particular group that sports masks as part of their uniform in Shadow World—can you? I’ve included a few cool masks worn by some cultists and like the effect they had on the players.

Anyone have any magical masks they want to share: stats, powers, description etc?

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An exciting long and fruitless search

One of the requirements of my unfolding story is that the party have a long and fruitless search for Randall Mourn in the Spiderhaunt Forest.

The challenge is how to make that exciting to play?

The adventure as written says that the party are pretty much looking for someone who cannot be found until the villain of the piece wants to draw the party in.

I am inclined to really draw this out with entire side plots and adventures rather than trying to emulate such a long search and then resolve it in a single weekend of gaming.

So here is a question for you all. If you were on a quest to find Randall Mourn would a period of side quests none of which actually find Randall be off putting?

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“Long Skulls” and the Worim of Shadow World.

I just got back from Mexico and had the opportunity to visit some Mayan ruins. Seeing various ancient sites (Coba, Tulum, Chitzen Itza) is great creative inspiration for roleplaying! It’s also a reminder of an unusual and curious phenomena found not only in Central and South America, but all across the world: Elongated Skulls.

Accepted thinking is that skull elongation was the result of various types of head-binding practices adopted by primitive cultures. The application of clothes, boards and ropes on an infant’s skull to deform and stretch the soft craniums in children. Unfortunately, attributing ALL elongated skulls to this theory is challenged by 3 basic issues:

  1. Pre-natal skull elongation. There are documented cases of in-utero and very young infants with skull elongation.
  2. Cranial Volume. While purposeful elongation can change the shape of a skull, it does not alter the volume of the skull. There are many examples of elongated skulls with 20-25% higher cranial volume. (see Paracas skulls).
  3. Differences in skull suturing. Certain elongated skulls have only one parietal plate rather than two as in normal skulls.

Skull deformation, aberrations in volume and suturing are often ascribed to dolichocephaly, hydrocephaly, craniosynostosis or Antley-Bixler syndrome, but there is not enough evidence to support these medical theories. Elongated skulls have been found in Egypt, Malta, Russia, Peru, Bolivia and Mexico and head-binding was performed in the Congo, Vanuata and Malasia. Notable rulers in both America and Egypt are known to have elongated skulls: Tutankhaten (King Tut), his father Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and the Mayan Lord Pakal.

I’m not suggesting “Ancient Aliens”, but there is an argument to made for elongation via genetics verus elongation via binding. A distinct race of people, with elongated skulls, that also held positions of power is depicted in history and through the archeological record. Is it possible that the wide-spread practice of head-binding by many cultures around the world was “emulative”?

So what does this have to do with Shadow World? Terry has sprinkled bit and pieces of information throughout his books including this one:

“The tall, slender Lydians are most populous in Mythenis and some regions of Gaalt, thought they are found on other cool climes—especially in the southern hemisphere. This race has a somewhat elongated skull and large, bright, amber-colored eyes. They have fair skin, pale blond hair and are more slender than the Laan or Talath and tend to be hirsute……Some Loremasters believe that the, or perhaps the Talath, are descendants of the Worim.

And this:

“Some Loremasters hold that the Trogli are a race descended from the Worim: those who chose to hide underground at the end of the Interregnum.

So what do we know about the Worim? Only what we can piece together from various obscure mentions: they are non-native to Kulthea, had a high level of technology and built machines (tunnelers and war-machines). They may be precursors to the Laan (or Talath, or Lydians) or Trogli.

Until Terry expands upon the Worim, we’ve had to come up with some of our own material. First and foremost, the Worim had elongated skulls. This genetic trait was passed down to a lesser degree to both the Lydians and the Trogli. We’ve also generated some additional summary info in our SW Civilization Summary here (btw you need a Forum membership to see and download files).

This helps differentiate the Worim from some of the other Interregnum civilizations, Taranian & Jinteni, and adds a unique physical marker to the race. For some great ideas and SW campaign flavor, google elongated skulls, Paracas and especially Lord Pakal’s tomb.

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Firearms in Rolemaster – The Mechanics

In my last entry I talked a bit about how I revised the attack tables for firearms in Rolemaster. That’s not the only change you need to make if you plan on adding realistic firearms to a game using any flavor of the Rolemaster rules. I’m a firm believer in using a two second, phased round for firearms, but you also need to make some core mechanics adjustments. That’s what I’m talking about today.

Continue reading “Firearms in Rolemaster – The Mechanics”
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Happy to bite the bullet

I have been thinking about game design a bit recently, triggered by the comments about realism vs abstraction. All game systems are inherently compromises between realism vs abstraction, complexity vs simplicity or rules ligth vs rules heavy.

I have seen a lot of articles that imply that simple rules and rules light go had in hand whereas the reality has in my experience been the opposite. If you have a very simple rule for each situation then you can easily end up with tens of hundreds of simple rules, one for just about every situation. AD&D is a prime example of this with just about everything being handled in its own unique way.

I have complained in the past that RM2 was totally inconsistent with the way it handled skills with different pricing structures for musical instruments and weapons to the way you buy martial arts to the way you buy most other skills. Some skills give +1 per rank and others +5/+2/+1/. Some skills cancel out penalties while others have built in failure penalties such as failing your quickdraw roll. The whole skill system is a hodge podge of different mechanics.

Intothatdarkness’s firearms rules sound the opposite of that in that they are based upon one core metric, the energy of the prjectile based upon muzzle velocity and mass which should mean that any and every possible firearm should be able to be modelled with just one mechanism. The firearms tables I have seen before worked on the idea of one table per ‘type’ and a mk 1 would be a very light version, mk2 would be a pistol, mk3 a carbine, m4 a rifle and mk5 some kind of support weapon. I think the idea of a table for pistols, one for rifles and so on makes more sense and most combats could be carried out with just one or two tables. so very little page flicking between combat charts.

Into is also using a 2 second combat round which is my preferred interval. Cutting a round down into such small chunks makes what is possible in a round more limited so and so player declarations become simpler. I like this as trying to protect someone while they spend 5 rounds trying to pick a lock can be quite intense under fire.

It sounds like Into has also solved the critical issue with firearms. Under bought and paid fore Spacemaster or modern day RM all projectiles were doing puncture criticals and soon enough every possible critical has been delivered and recieved and the excitement of ‘what will the critical say?’ is lost. By having a critical table by location rather than by weapon that should give loads of possibles.

I am not a fan of adding in additional rules but these sound right up my street.

Also relating to comments made this week Brian said that he had rolled all magic into essence and I am defintely heading in that direction myself the more I tinker with spell law. I definitely agree that magic is magic and the false barriers between the realms do not seem to add more than they detract.

Well, that is about the sum of my musings this week. It has been one of those weeks with no gaming on my part and the next planned session is so far away that it in itself is not stoking the fires of the imagination.

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Miscellaneous Musings

Heading off to vacation so I probably won’t get new posts up for the next 10 days or so, but I thought I’d put up some random thoughts.

  1. It’s great to see new contributors to the Rolemasterblog! People who don’t sign up for the RM Forums don’t see the various RMU development threads and may not realize there is ongoing discussion and activity. I think this blog helps spread the word about RM and perhaps reaches other RPGers who might not go the forums.
  2. I got a few more messages re: BASiL mentalism spells. Right now I’m making real progress on finalizing my next submission: Empire of the Black Dragon and I’m very focused on that. Writing is HARD, but I find that it’s easier to write following your creative impulses. I’m having a great time writing adventures–its just flowing so I’m going to go with it. Part of it is the “unique’ nature of the material which is more fortresses and layouts than regional & cultural overview. Reformatting mentalism spells is more work than creative but I will get around to it!
  3. I started another great book, The Twelve Kings of Sharakhai. I’ve always loved a good desert setting and we really haven’t had one with Shadow World yet. Terry? With that said, I wonder if someone could come up with a unique desert culture that isn’t the standard middle eastern/Arabian tropes? I’ve always been intrigued by the Synshari race.
  4. I’ve been reading a lot of other blogs (and linking to good posts I find here). Not many Rolemaster blogs and almost no Shadow World blogs. BAD!!! The ones that I do find haven’t had any recent posts–some have been inactive for years.
  5. Armor makes a difference! My PC’s generally go light on the armor due to our simplified rules and the inherent trade off between encumbrance and protection but a couple of them are reconsidering…. The had a “run-in” with an Alliance Jenaara and Kal-chah warriors and got their butts kicked!
  6. Peter, the banner pic you put up is much better than the word jumble that was up before.
  7. I have a great artist interested in doing the layouts for my next project–hopefully he signs on!!
  8. I’m loading up my kindle for my trip–any good book recommendations?
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Special skills, special spells. Gods in roleplaying.

As part of the ongoing discussion of Clerics and Channeling in Rolemaster and Shadow World I thought I would call attention to a great blog and commentary over at Grognardia.

Peter has talked about rolling Channeling into the Essence Realm and I have basically rolled all of the Realms together–only organizing them by casting mechanism.

But this blog raises some earlier thoughts I had about Clerics and Channeling in general. Before Shadow World I was running a “diety-lite” setting where Gods were mere abstracts providing the homogenous powers provided by Spell Law Channeling. Now with Shadow World, I’ve fully embraced the use of active, involved Gods and built the Orhan/Charon spells lists and organizations to better define Clerics “special skills”.

However, were I to start from scratch I might do something different. Probably further consolidate all spells into the single realm of “Essaence”, and when and if applicable utilize “Channeling” as gifted benefits or powers from Gods or Higher beings when applicable. That’s basically what I’m doing now, but in the context of controlled spell acquisition and DP expenditure.

Interesting to read D&D design theory from 1984 and similarities between providing special Diety specific skills/spells and our own discussions on Diety specific spells lists.

 

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