He Does Have a High Wisdom...

I bought myself some Warhammer miniatures Saturday. I plan on making an actual Spineplate mini for use in my DnD campaign, and the Warhammer Chaos Knights can be made to be pretty much exactly what I envision for old Kethranmeer, the warrior of steel mind and steel flesh.

When the group first met Spineplate, he was a savage thing of metal plates welded to a framework of steel struts and hinges and gears. He was also caked in rust and blood. When A'lst refurbished him, he was very shiny and all flat planes of metal. After his most recent conversion (which no one noticed), he wields a hammer and has built his body to emulate plate armor, including a belt and cloak. If not for the blank helmet of his head and his metallic voice, he could pass as a knight of The New Empire if he had need to. As he said last scenario, "Spineplate not beast, warrior. Live as warrior, kill as warrior, die as warrior, not beast." and also "Want cloak, buy cloak. Belt hold pouches, pouches handy."

There is follow up to Spineplate's conversion in the next scenario, hopefully the players care enough to investigate. I remain optimistic.

I'm really excited to play with my paints again. I know it is going to be frustrating, because it has been so long and there is some conversion work I need to do. But I really want to do this, and if I am patient and take my time and don't get too discouraged from dried out paints and clumsy hands, I think I can have some fun.

If we do end up playing these characters for the long haul, perhaps I could make the entire The Robust Five (More Or Less), rather than use Legos till the end of time. We actually have to get to the end of this campaign though before I can decide to put in that much work.

It hasn't changed too much, but it is slightly more robust and I haven't posted it for download in a bit, so here is the wiki: http://www.mediafire.com/?3d7o13kyp73bezb

Music: Queen of Bees - Witchcraft

Collected Stuff

Ok, so here are the audio files:

Part 1: http://www.mediafire.com/?mtyzhjmhni2

Part 2: http://www.mediafire.com/?jz2zddzzd3n

Part 3: http://www.mediafire.com/?nxybyyzir3z

Part 4: http://www.mediafire.com/?z4mi0zeowzz

I have to warn you, they're pretty bad and pretty rough and the first two and a half hours amount to pretty much nothing. Heh. If I had been thinking of it, I would have collected all the Lost commentary into its own audio file.

Second point, I converted all of the characters of The Robust Five (More Or Less) into GURPS format, except Hector. They're all at 275 points (which is the points level of extremely competent adventurers) and about as good as I could manage converting them from their character classes in 4th Edition DnD. Gideon has no spells because there isn't a chaos random magic thing I could find. I suppose some fire spells and necromancy spells would be fine, but I'd like Jeff to make those decisions rather than me. I picked some spells for Derf because he can already ignite his sword, sheathe it in frost, and electrify it, so I figured those were safe choices. He can also shoot lightning and remove the life sustaining elements of oxygen from air, and I felt that was sufficiently deadly and terror inspiring to fit with Derf's nature. Xein probably needs some more skills too, but this is just a rough creation.

Here is the Excel sheet for them: http://www.mediafire.com/?z2wzfri4km2

There are some other characters in there (Volung's firstborn son, Walthuler, and Savage Doc Managan) but they're mostly irrelevant and pretty outdated from what those characters would be in modern times.

Still working on the campaign book.

Projectedness

Experiencing beer farts roughly twenty-four hours after ingesting said beverage seems slightly off.

So I've been working on a few projects lately and I wanted to post about them.

I'm constantly at work on the Hekinoe wiki with the ZuluPad thing. At the moment I'm focusing on some Grenaldeen and The Grey Wastes stuff because I have Keroen Skathos on my mind. It all helps to flesh out the world though, so I don't feel it is wasted effort or time. I really love ZuluPad and am glad it finally occurred to me to set up a place to put all the campaign information. Sometimes I look at previous posts on my blogger here and I am stunned by what I've forgotten or changed since the campaign began. The wiki is nice because I can update and retcon it easily and not really worry about it. I should actually upload a new version of the wiki here.

Wiki: http://www.mediafire.com/?ynznokjnjhx

The second project on my mind is putting GURPS into its own wiki. I love my GURPS books and I really love the way the manuals are set up, there's a lot of fluff and crunch in them and the sort of minimalist approach to artwork means that if a book is one hundred and sixty pages long, you get one hundred and sixty pages of content. Not one hundred and sixty minus the cover page, table of contents, artwork for the cover page of each chapter, and all the random borderline anime artwork you find in all the DnD books. My goal here is to develop a resource I can use for quick reference in the middle of a scenario. I'm filling it with Advantages and Disadvantages and Skills and a host of tables and such, plus I'm throwing some character sheet type stuff in there. I have a page dedicated to The Brain In A Jar. He has Telekinesis 40. I click on the blue Telekinesis link and bam, I have all the info on the ability. Whenever we need to do a Quick Contest or figure out Distance and Speed Modifiers, bam, those tables are in there for my reference. At first I was rather skeptical about the value of this thing when you take into consideration how much time I'm putting into it, but I really really like it and as I'm doing all this hyperlinking and copy & pasting and typing I find myself really getting into the nitty gritty details of GURPS and how everything works. It is going to take me forever to get the thing as complete as I want, but I really am enjoying the work and am learning a bit about the system while I am at it. I probably won't link it up here when I finish it, I think this is something that will stay safely ensconced within my laptop.

Third project. I believe that I am going to attempt in earnest to create a sort of campaign book for my The Known World setting. It'll be constructed with GURPS in mind, because that is where I intend to go with The Known World and Hekinoe in general. A document like this will kind of step on the toes of the wiki, and I'll certainly be borrowing material from the wiki, but the campaign book would have more stuff like race and class templates, adventure hooks, technology and weapons specific to The Known World, etc. The problem with this is that I don't precisely know where to start and how to plot it all out. I've been looking at some GUPS campaign books and kind of using them as a guideline and I've toyed with creating campaign books for my various settings before, but I just don't know where to start. I usually play with Microsoft Word, but it seems kind of...clunky I guess for what I'm trying to do. I'm not sure if I'll get anywhere with it, but I think it would be neat. I also think, and this is part of the reason I started the wiki, that the more solid information you have laid down and available for player perusal, the more legitimate it makes your campaign look. The more details you have, the more concrete the whole thing is, makes it feel like this imaginary place in your head has some meat to it I guess.

Man, I missed blogging.

Music: Maiden, Mother & Crone - The Sword

Concerns

New ZuluPad Document:http://www.mediafire.com/?5jmomjwmymm

It has been a bit since I've last updated so I figured I should mosey back on in here and type some stuff out.

To be brief: I have some concerns about last time. The PCs are blackmailing the head of a terrorist cell bent on bringing revolution to his hometown. He is not a god or a king, more on par with a mob boss. I feel like they're in over their heads and I don't know how to make that apparent without feeling like I'm picking on them. They, Martel in particular, seem to feel like those armbands make them untouchable.

The problem (as I explained it to Eric last night) is that they're walking around with an armband on their person and several hidden away on their various properties. Now, they can walk up to a reaver and say "Hey, I found these in a bank." and seal the fate of the city and Nakmander himself. Or, they could be walking around and get into a tussle with some folks in a bar and a reaver sees them with their armband. Or they try to cross into a secure area of the city and get searched. Or they enter the domain of a city official and get searched, their weapons confiscated, and their armband discovered. Or Nakmander says, "Hey Cenn, I've got some dudes that just robbed me and they've got some reaver armbands. I don't know where they got them but I thought I might let you know."

I don't know. I feel like some of them think they have Nakmander and the rebellion by the short hairs and it seems more like a Cold War-esque mutually assured destruction situation. Without evidence of who exactly killed the reavers (or if they are even actually dead) the possessor of such items has only their word that the items don't belong to them. It comes down to a situation of Nak's word against theirs, and Nakmander is better at Bluff and Diplomacy than them I think.

I dunno. This is a touchy issue because I want to reward the players for sticking to their guns and role-playing a bit. I also want to make it difficult for them because it is a difficult situation. The armbands aren't just a big red WIN button and I don't want them to feel like they run shit in Hell and whatnot. I want them to feel like they stand upon the edge of a knife and if they stray but a little, they're going to get fucked.

I guess I just need to find a way to keep them feeling empowered, but also punish blatantly foolish arrogance. Hopefully Eric and Jeremy can keep them civil, perhaps they'll share the events and timeline of my The One-Eyed Man story with the group. We shall see.

06 - The Heist

So here it is I guess. Hopefully it all works.

Part 1: http://www.mediafire.com/?egxnot2zkzq

Part 2: http://www.mediafire.com/?nmieiowjq1o

Part 3:http://www.mediafire.com/?y2jdnzmnwz3

Part 4: http://www.mediafire.com/?jwddmnzwzqv

Part 5: http://www.mediafire.com/?tvomygq1wma

Part 6: http://www.mediafire.com/?2jihtwtmqyx

Part 7: http://www.mediafire.com/?mmth3yjz2gy

Part 8: http://www.mediafire.com/?timinmkn2ym

Part 9: http://www.mediafire.com/?jj0yudgmrig

ZuluPad: http://www.mediafire.com/?tc2kjxjnmcq