This is What I mean when I say D&D

The Setting –

            This game will be played in the magical land of Hylan – a chaotic place where many, many kinds of creatures and beings make their homes.  Within Hylan are many kingdoms and territories ruled over by different peoples, cultures and races.  For now – this needs filling in – whatever you want to bring to the table has a place in the land of Hylan.  Our game will begin at the source of the River Prashnilivar where you have been sent (for some reason) to explore the Unknown City – a strange, inaccessible place that no-one returns from.

Some brief notes on the setting’s history –

            Long ago the many deities were locked in a mortal conflict that destroyed much of the world and themselves with it.  The world has slowly recovered but still lies largely in ruins.  As the old gods were killed off – their names, their power and their worshippers and culture vanished with them.  What remains of the world is ruled over by those few and strange gods who were not involved in the conflict that wrecked the world.  Because of the strange elements that they govern the world itself has grown somewhat stranger. 

The Gods, Their Worship & Their Gifts –

            Turbayad – The Sea God

• Symbolized by its avatar/proxies the Starfish, Mollusks, Crabs and Sea-Urchins
• Spiritual Instruction is based upon perseverance, regeneration, survival and the tides
• Individualistic Worldview – highly competitive, it rewards those who overcome/defeat others
• Rites – consuming another animal – up to and including cannibalism, having many, many children, baptism & bathing, sprinkling of holy-water
• Sacrifices  - only living creatures will do, they are to be eaten or drowned

Hypnum – The Dream God

• Symbolized by two eyes, one opened the other closed, sometimes by three eyes, with two closed and the third opened.
• Spiritual Instruction is riddle-laden & intensely personal/mythic.  Emphasis is upon perceiving & even existing in alternate realities and the experience of hypnogogic states
• Solipsistic worldview & peculiarly ambiguous concerning one’s role in the world or society – largely an existential philosophy
• Rites – Sleep, psychedelics, trances & hysterical fugues.  Refusal to accept reality.  Fortune-telling
• Sacrifices take place in dreams, they are highly significant, often in the form of personal memories

Bacter – The Soil God

• Symbolized by Worms, fungus & decaying/rotting matter
• Spiritual instruction relates to the unity of all things through the under-woven mass consciousness arising from bacteriological neural-networks
• Communal/Hive based worldview – all are seen as having some role or contribution to the whole.  The social order relies heavily upon emergent consciousness & ‘metabolism’
• Rites – Burial of the dead, defecation & coprophagy, the spreading of infectious agents
• Sacrifice is of any dead or dying organism, burial in the ground of anything dead.  Personal sacrifices include exposure to pathogens

Veras – The God of Lost Things

• Symbolized by rats, magpies & sometimes a small object of value – e.g.:  a jewel or a coin
• Spiritual instruction favors personal redemption through self-discovery, personal trials & self-denial
• Compassionate indifferent worldview, benign acceptance – all are searching for something
• Rites – concealing & stealing articles of value, discarding personal effects, losing things
• Sacrifices must be very precious items and are usually sacrificed by burying & hiding them.

The Gods and Magic Powers –

            The gods grant their worshippers abilities in line with their worldviews and philosophies.  The performance of minor works requires the performance of one of the god’s rites, greater miracles require a sacrifice. 

            Example Works

                        Veras – Concealment, Stealth-spells, invisibility, illusions

                        Bacter – telepathy, speaking in tongues, inflicting diseases

                        Hypnum – Causing sleep, dementia, altered states

                        Turbayd – taking on a war-form, healing/regeneration, creating water

Other kinds of magic –

            Because of the void left in the spiritual planes by the destroyed gods there is a vast quantity of power that exists within the mythopoeic vacuum.  Since there is no guiding anima to all of this power it can be accessed and commanded by those with very strong wills and the knowledge of the special words, phrases & gestures required to make it go.  This requires almost superhuman concentration and the use of this magic has a few complications and some perils –

                        1^st – Because of the complexity involved and because of the absence of the guiding hands of the gods – once an effect is loosed it vanishes from the caster’s memory.  To re-use the magic it must be stored in an elaborate written form and memorized anew. 

                        2^nd – Relying heavily on the same effects or same type of effects essentially begins to draw the caster down the path of the old-gods and they will begin to take on traits and qualities associated with the powers in question.  However, being mortal they are not capable of accepting these stigmata and may suffer very adverse effects – e.g.: a wizard who throws a lot of fire-spells may begin to smoke, or burn, his extremities eventually becoming charred until he disintegrates into ashes.

(no subject)

Some people were quizzing me about Rules  so here come some rules
   (Remember - this is stripped down - easy/peasy D&D and is meant to reward Imagination and Creativity and Ingenuity)

First - Statistics.  You got 6 of them fools! 

Fighting
Skills
Hit Points
Wisdom
Magic
Charm 

You also have a few ways of figuring out what the values are gonna be.  Listen up!  You roll a 20 sided die and try to beat a target number which is based on 1) how good you are at shit and 2) how badass of a problem are you trying to solve?  For #1 your values range from 6+ to 12+  That is, if you're badass at something - then you gotta roll a 6 or better to succede.  That's against a straight up nothing-style punk.  Against a treacherous type thug - you gotta hit 8 or better, against the boss of dangers you gotta hit a 10 or better - that's at shit you're awesome at.  At stuff you blow at, like as in you need a 12+ to sucede at doing something arts&crafts like, against a more badass arts & crafts style challenge you might need a 14+ or even a 16+ (that's for some crazy baskets made of iron and shit!)

Figure it like this - you have a few ways to assign your stats.  You can be Pretty Good at Everything - which means you need a 10+ on all your rolls, you got better than 50/50 to do most anything. 

Next you can be Specialized in Something  - which means you need a 8+ on some roll or another (that's the base roll, against a tougher opponent it's 9+, against a boss it's 11+ cause you are a badass at that roll).  Of course being rad.  You get a 10+ on everything else except that one thing - which you suck at, you need a 12+ with that one. 

You can even be Specialized in Areas of Things - which means you choose two things that start at 8+, but then 3 things that are 12+  It's cool having focus, but not that cool.

Finally you can be Stupidly focused on One Thing - in this case you get one stat at 6+, you basically can't fail at that thing.  Everything else though?  that's at 12+.  Good luck living dope. 


Super important Note - your Hit Points are kind of opposite, they are always 10, but if you want to make them your sucky stat, they go down to 8 - not up.

So here's an example of how this looks:  What's say I want to play a sweet bear-man, I think that this is a dude who loves honey, he's kind of dumb about honey because he loves it so much, so I'll make his Wisdom poor - he'll have a 12+ on that, cause he can get outsmarted pretty easy.  He's pretty loveable though, cause he's like - a fluffy bear man with the cute ears and everything- so he makes his Charm an 8.  Wait though - he's a badass bear-man, with like, huge strength and dangerous shit going on - so he's got a 8+ on his Fighting too.  So I end up wrecking his magic and his skills stats up to 12+.  He's pretty sweet, this bear man.  I figure he probably has some kind of claws and maybe biting - so I mention that to the GM and the GM is all:  "Yes, that is perfect, yes."  And then he rememberes that I'm dumb about honey and he uses that against me in a clever way later on.

My Bear-Man's stats would be:
Fighting 8+
Skills 12+
Hit Points 10
Wisdom 12+
Magic 12+
Charm 8+

So you might be asking - what kind of damage does a bear man do?  With his bites and claws?  Well you'd be smart to ask!  It would be however much you beat the number by - plus or minus a little bit based on what kind of claws or biting you are doing.  Let's say My sweet-tooth bear man goes up against a giant Platypus monster.  That guy is a prick.  My bear man goes in swinging with his fighting powers and he needs a 10+ to hit the playtpus monster - because it is pretty tough.  My bear man rolls a 14 though, so I end up doing 4 points of damage!  That is baller when you notice that everybody has 10 hit points.  Except that the platypus monster has a little bit of armor so it goes down to 2 points.  Wah!   Well next time around my bear man rolls and hits a 20.  Straight up Nat-20  - and the bear man does double-style damage so 20 points!  Shit - the bear man just ate up that platypus fucker. 

What about when I get beat up thought Dungeon Master?  What are my options?  Well - first thing - you can get you some armror that reduces the damage that you take.  2 points for weak armor, 4 points for tough armor and up to 6 points for Full-on-Plate.  That's right, good luck messing with a bear man in fullplate.  Next you can use your turn to protect yourself.  You can use your weapon to parry - so you only take half the damage, or you can use your shield to block - so you take no damage.  Except that if you do that - you don't get to do anything on your next at-bat, sorry, that's the toughness. 

But what about if I do get hit?  Am I just fully healthy till I drop dead all of a sudden?  Like in the jake-ass versions of D&D people are always playing?  Shit no!  When you get to half your hit points you gotta start rolling a 12 sided die instead of the 20, and when you get to 1/4 of your hit points you gotta start rolling the 10 sided, cause you're all fucked up.

Now you might be asking - what about advancement? 

Well, that's done with the Harrow Deck - cause I think it's cool.  Every time you come you get to draw from the harrow deck.  When you get three of a kind you can cash that in for a -1 to one of your stats.  You can also throw a card down and declare that you have automatically succeded at a thing related to that card.  Like-  if you have a hammer and want to use it - you can, so that you'll automatically beat up a guy, as if you had rolled a 20 on the die.  No kidding, it's nice.  But then you can also save them up and cash them in for better stats  - or something crazy that you made up on your own.  Like, what if my bear-man wanted to get super good at smelling honey?  I'd swap one of my Key cards for that excellent power and the DM would be all:  "That is fine.  You are fine.  You are the kind of person I like."

So there it is, not quite ThAC0 but maybe a bit easier than roll high and add stacking bonuses.

(no subject)

This is Clio, the Muse of history - she's about 10 feet tall and hangs in the museum down the street from me - along with her sisters and old Golden-haired Appollo.  Of all the muses, she's got the best expression - photos don't quite show it - but when you look at the painting with the others - you can tell, Clio's seen it all, she's an Historian after all, she's read the accounts, she know what weird shit people get up to in life.  She's, in the parlance of our times-  a Bad-Ass.  I go and look at Clio from time to time, when I want to do a thing, a real-ish thing.  Really write my things that I like to write, that I care about writing well.  So I went and looked at her for a while today. 

That's all.