Just Say No To Nel

Jeremy and I were talking recently about the possibility of running a Nel campaign and how it would work perfectly with GURPS because of all the tweaking you can do to create characters. GURPS is actually a pretty amazing system to use for the creation of a Nel character, even my homegrown stuff can't compare to how thoroughly and easily it would be to make any kind of Nel in GURPS. It's kind of awesome.

I've tried to run a few Nel campaigns in the past and even discussed the possibility of Eric running one. None of them have turned out particularly well, despite Eric being goofy and crazy with Ma'akillis. I recall him being a "Magick" Sidhe Blood Warrior. Blood Warriors were just about the most overpowered class I ever came up with. It was awful, but back in 2nd Edition I had no conception of what balance was or that I should perhaps try to maintain it, I just made up "cool" shit and let the chips fall where they may.

Anyway, we discussed campaigns. We also discussed how I would react to people incorrectly playing Nel. There would be a lot of "You're doing it wrong!" and me throwing something. We agreed that I am probably way too invested in The Nel to ever let anyone play one and that my brain was a far better place for them than on someone's character sheet. Bummer, but it would take a very specific group to do "justice" to what I envision the Nel to be.

Advanced Pathfindery Stuff

It is actually Thursday of last week for me, heh. I have a bit of a backlog prepped for posting on the ole blog here. I guess I'm flirting with professionalism or some such. I just bought the hard copy and the pdf copy of the Advanced Player's Guide for Pathfinder. I have one thing to say:

Fuck yeah!

...and now we're back to being a foul mouthed amateur. Heh. This book has got to be one of my favorite P&P RPG books yet, and I've had my grubby mitts on quite a few. There are ridiculous options pouring forth from every orifice. Each of the core Pathfinder classes has at least five new options to add some more focused elements to the class, and there are six new fully fledged base classes (two are incompatible with my campaign world) and eight new prestige classes (two are incompatible with my campaign world, I think). There is a whole mess of new feats, new combat maneuvers that I like.

Those more focused elements of the core classes are a particularly welcome addition for me. Each core class has upwards of five or six themes I guess you could call them, that kind of tailor your character to what you desire. There is an Archer option for fighters that removes a lot of their armor use abilities to give them expert skill with bow stuff. I like these options, and they're all pretty enjoyable. The few that I don't care for or think are stupid are tied to classes I already don't care for. So far, my favorite is a monk style that centers around draining the life and vitality of those they fight. I find that to be kind of a striking concept. They don't just punch and kick you, they actually cut away little bits of your lifeforce, which they then empower themselves with to further whomp on you. The Skirmisher option is decent for rangers and I may make it mandatory because it replaces their spellcasting. I really enjoyed the 4th Edition take on Rangers that yanked out the spellcasting in favor of the um, well, skirmisher kind of mobile combat. Actually, this whole thing is kind of flavored by 4th Edition and I really like it. When you decide to play a fighter in 4th Edition you have a half dozen or so styles and features to choose from before you even get to power selection, and that offers quite a bit of versatility. Anyway, I dig what they're doing. Good on them.

The new classes are pretty neat as well, but I am always a fan of new classes. There seems to be a focus on multi-talented and caster classes in this book. I'm not sure I care for that. I've never been a true spellcaster in the rare times I've played as a player or wielded an NPC as the GM. I feel like that might border on cheating if I were to use something like a Wizard.

The Alchemist and Witch Hunter are both kind of spellcasters that do other things, sort of in the vein of Bards. The Summoner, Witch, and Oracle, are straight up casters with some fiddly bits to differentiate from Clerics and Wizards and such. The only class that doesn't have some manner of spell use is the Cavalier (kudos to Paizo for going old old school there). I enjoy the ideas behind the Witch and the Alchemist in particular. The Alchemist is actually a pretty damn attractive class. Bombs are awesome, but the whole Mutagen thing really entices me. I am very tempted to have an Alchemist or some sort of Barbarian or Fighter Alchemist mishmash as my NPC in the upcoming campaign once Kethranmeer steps out of the picture. It might step on Eric's toes a bit, but I think there is enough versatility to the class that I can find my own niche to play in. We'll see though, I'm just dipping my toes into Pathfinder and we're quite a ways away from the end of this campaign arc. No need to rush into anything and get burnt out on it like I have on certain other systems.

I could go on at great length about what I like about all the classes and why I like them, let's just say I am a fan of all the classes present in the Advanced Player's Guide. The new options for the old classes are fancy as well. At first glance, it really looks like Paizo is keeping things pretty well balanced power wise in the base class area.

This isn't especially relevant to my concerns, but there are a lot of nice new options presented for the races in the main Pathfinder book. You can tweak your dwarves now so they go old school and get resistance to spells. Or you can give them an enmity bonus against elves. You can give your half-orc tusks, or make your halflings reload their slings faster, or your elves can be desert dwellers. On top of this, instead of a +1 to hit points or skill points for taking a level in your favored class, you can get a race specific bonus. For instance, dwarven fighters can opt to add a +1 to their combat maneuver defense against trip and bull rush attempts.

There are a lot of feats and they're pretty broad in their focus and applications. Most classes have something tasty to play with. There are a few feats for the new combat maneuvers and so on and so forth. There are a bunch of feats, too many to go through one by one. Most of them seem to be viable and potentially useful.

Prestige classes, there are a few of them in the book. They are alright. To go along with my love of the Alchemist, the Master Chymist seems pretty nifty. Very much the Doctor Jekyll/Mister Hyde class. The others, meh. I'm not super intrigued by them. With 3.5 I was all about the prestige classes and there were hundreds of the fucking things, I like some of the Pathfinder ones, but I find myself more focused on the core classes. Pathfinder's prestige classes seem somewhat limited to me, which is fine because prestige classes are supposed to have a narrow focus, and if the keep producing interesting base classes with tons of options, you won't really need six hundred prestige classes to choose from.

There is some other stuff in there as well, some new artifacts and magic items, a gray bearded old wizard type that has boobs (pg. 313), some new combat maneuvers, etc. I particularly enjoy The Knucklebone of Fickle Fortune, there is also a Hammer of Thunderbolts in there (another old school huzzah). The other options added in are three new combat maneuvers, hero points, and traits. Traits are already in my game, but I will be taking some inspiration from those in the book. Hero points seem to be a neat concept, but they're not something I have to have in my game at the moment. We'll see though.

Eventually I plan to give the whole book an extensive read, but these are all just my initial impressions. Overall, I really like the book and am impressed. If Paizo wants, they can release a dozen of these, as long as they have a similarly crunchy content. I guess it boils down to this: if you like Pathfinder and want some neat new options or ways to spice up your current character, get this book. I did. Legally.

The Surface 101

Alternately, this could be called Nethwenta 101. This will be the first in a series of 101s about the ancient empires of The Known World, hopefully.

The empire of the Glenwighta race was wide and its tunnels extended far beyond the modern day borders of The Fell Peaks/Kusseth. Long before Kaleshmar fell, the Dwenoren and Glenwighta frequently met in border skirmishes that filled the dark places of the world with cries of pain and the scent of blood. The Dwenoren were still fierce warriors then and had an edge over the Glenwighta, they had no need of light. The Glenwighta however, could always smell the Dwen coming. It was a brutal war that the Glenwighta have no knowledge of any more, and the Dwen only dimly recall the valor of those days.

In those days, the Glenwighta had almost no knowledge of sorcery, and perhaps this is the reason they had no knowledge of their innate weakness to it. It was considered too volatile a force to play with. If even one spell misfired in a violent detonation of arcane forces, it could bring ruin to all nearby maze-cities as the tunnels of Nethwenta channeled destructive energies from one city to another down smooth halls of carved stone. Or worse yet, if one city collapsed into a ruin of rubble, it could disconnect others from the food and water they could not harvest from their own areas.

The Glenwighta of Nethwenta were a highly industrialized society, but their industrialization was a long, slow process that was heavily monitored and only grew when the Sol and Okwighta agreed that it was time for a revolution. This process of technological advancement put them decades behind the Dwenoren and Greyskin Abraxens, but it allowed for a very stable growth and development. A more modern example of this, some clans of Okwighta were experimenting with early firearms even before Kaleshmar fell, but the technology was too dangerous and prone to unreliability, so research continued. Meanwhile, when the Dwenoren "invented" firearms and distributed the technology to other races, millions lost life or limb when poorly combined chemicals or improperly machined gun parts caused catastrophic failures to the weapons.

There were of course elements of Nethwenta society that demanded progress at the expense of safety, believing that through industry and learning they could overpower any foe that came against them. They were a small fragment of the society and their goals were not welcomed. They were practically outcasts, and often congregated in small enclaves of like minded individuals. When Nethwenta grew too populated for these secretive little enclaves to exists at the outskirts of its borders, these almost-outcasts left the earth and journeyed away from their people into the world above. Their absence was a footnote in the now nonexistent history of the Glenwighta, and they were not missed.

In that time, the Solwighta were regal kings clad in plate armor of dark metals and were waited upon by their warrior cousins the Conwighta. The kings of Nethwenta were noble rulers, long lived and mighty from long years of battle. The tunnels the Glenwighta lived in had once been full of fell creatures, the Solwighta and Conwighta prosecuted a long and bloody campaign against these creatures while the Okwighta remained safe within the early borders of the kingdom creating a series of interconnected settlements for their cousins to return to when they grew too weary of war. It was this ancient initial conflict that prepared the Glenwighta for when they would eventually clash against the ancient race of Dwenoren.

The empire of Nethwenta in its hey day was a peaceful kingdom and almost an underground utopia. It fell because the Nagsulen (now called Fell Humans) were tricksy and the Solwighta were unwilling to exterminate a race merely because they were mutants warped by sorcery. Unfortunately, this led to the enslavement of the Glenwighta people and the complete destruction of their culture.

Perhaps somewhere deep beneath The Fell Peaks and Kusseth there are some remains of the Glenwighta tunnels and maze cities, but they would likely be infested by the bizarre creatures that the Solwighta once waged war upon. Such ruins would be rich with strange devices and weapons and armor forged of curious materials unlike that found in the surface world.

Scratch The Surface

I've been thinking about something lately, and I have Jeremy to blame for it. Jeremy says that he always likes to read things about my campaign world on the blog here and I've been making a conscious effort to try and write more on the blog about the background of my world. I realized one thing while doing so.

My world doesn't have a past.

I have a timeline that details some major events since the fall of Kaleshmar, and there have been some neat events and major changes. But it doesn't feel like there is this rich past history to the world. There aren't any ancient empires, other than Kaleshmar, and there aren't hidden ruins dotting the countryside where ancient kings once ruled from. It just feels like the history of my world is kind of vague and minimalist. I guess it feels like there is a past there, but it is a couple of words that are written down on paper, rather than written in the world by the nature of its geography or by the minds and stories told by the peoples of the various countries in the world.

Its just that aside from the Vyanth/Sereth, the Glenwighta, and the Dwenoren, all the races and countries found in The Known World are in some way where they are because of the fall of Kaleshmar. I recall saying once that the continent that is now called The Known World, was inhabited by civilizations prior to Kaleshmar exploding, I've just never gotten around to putting evidence of these past civilizations into the game world. It might be time to do that.

Pathfindery Stuff

So, Jeremy and I played a game of Pathfinder Sunday evening. We were supposed to do it Friday night, but I had had a long shift at work on way too little sleep and then not gotten enough sleep when I got out Friday morning. I was dead on my feet, but we stumbled through the book enough to get Jeremy a reasonable looking D'alton to play on Sunday. I've had Spineplate ready to go for a bit, so he was done and ready for use and we could focus on D'alton.

The scenario was like seven or eight pages of text in Word, but Jeremy and I managed to finish it in roughly two and a half hours. I mean, it was mostly talky talk and a few skill checks, and it only had one fight so there wasn't a lot of lengthy involved stuff in it. Anyway, it went pretty well, we did some story stuff that I've wanted to do and I was able to toy around with some role-playing. It all actually worked out pretty well and Spineplate and D'alton were able to get some things organized the way they wanted to, rather than the way the rest of the group decided to do things.

Jeremy and I remained primarily in character for the entire two hours, except when I was explaining the rules or how to do something. Its wasn't heavy duty role-playing, but we did remain in character and didn't go off into the distant reaches of Lost talk.

All in all it was a pretty productive event. Jeremy and I have a solid understanding of Pathfinder, which is no surprise because we've played 3.5 Edition and 4th Edition isn't terribly different. I'm also pretty confident that we get character creation as well. I didn't anticipate having any problems or needing to peer at the books for hours trying to find rules. I guess it boils down to the fact that I really know 3.5 Edition in a way that I don't quite know 4th Edition. Or maybe I know both of them, which makes sense because I've read all the appropriate game material from the rulebooks.

After all was said and done, we had a good time. We also realized that we're grown ups because nowadays, black dice with red numbers aren't awesome and edgy, they're just a fucking pain in the ass to read.

Fred and Eric were sad that we tried out Pathfinder without them, but worry not my friends, I plan on running another Pathfinder test scenario for everyone to try out. I look forward to it.

Pour One Out For Those That Have Fallen

The Brick

The Doctor

The Other Doktor

The Driver

The Other Driver

The Brain In A Jar

The Vampire

The Psychic

The Robot

The Other Robot

The Accountant

The Sorcerer

The Gangster

The Immortal

The Radiation Shadow

The Telekinetic

...and both Hank "motherfucking Joban" Mardukus-es

They lived for but a year, but their contributions, and our loss, will not be forgotten.

Music: The Case For Mars - Symphony of Science

Vyanthnem 101

The forests of Vyanthnem are a strange and somewhat wondrous place. Er...let's restart. The Vyanth were the "elves" of my world. Eladrin specifically when I pushed everything into the 4th Edition DnD square hole. In that vein, they live in a forest, and they are magical. That is kind of where the similarities end though. They are not wise and nature loving, in fact, they have hunted their forests bare of all life.

Back to what I began with. The forests of Vyanthnem are a strange and somewhat wondrous place. Surrounding the cities of the Vyanth is a very nearly impenetrable wall of trees, each one the exact copy of the others near it, right down to the leaves growing from their branches. The forests are a still place, for there are no birds or beasts, and those strange uniform leaves remain still because there is no wind. The forests of Vyanthnem are a completely manufactured place, created by the Vyanth to act as a barrier to other races attempting to invade Vyanthnem.

They also explode when plied with sufficient amounts of sorcery. Seriously. Vyanthnem is a kingdom surrounded with an impenetrable wall of sorcerous, exploding, trees.

The Vyanth are a vain and hedonistic people, primarily concerned with their next fuck, high, or fight. Originally, their main form of enjoyment was spent bumming around their forests, and those of The Beast Lands and The Wild Lands, killing and tormenting whatever they like while their rivals exploded trees near them to provide a challenge. After they killed everything that walked, they moved to stuff that flew, and moved on down the food chain till all that was left in Vyanthnem was the Vyanth themselves. Then they got bored and started attack the nearby nations. They soon found that they could save themselves the trouble of waging war year round by taking slaves from other countries, so they built gladitorial arenas in all their cities and began taking (and breeding to a lesser extent) slaves from other countries and that's how they while away their lives. They sit in their stands and watch others bleed out on the sand for their amusement.

It wasn't always this way though.

Along time ago, the Vyanth were very human-like, but they've been using sorcery for a long long time and now they look the way they do, who know what they'll look like in another six thousand year. A long time ago they lived in scrublands, like most other races in The Known World. They were ruled by a king then, but I haven't come up with a name for him. Anyway, he ruled the nation that would someday become Vyanthnem and Serethnem.

This king was a fair tempered fellow, and when three refugees from the west wandered into his kingdom, he was inclined to allow them safety within it, because they brought a gift with them. It was a powerful staff that could channel all kinds of fun powers. This king was a powerful sorcerer in his own right, but this staff of power made him beacon of power. Power power power, now the word has no meaning. Heh. To continue: this led to Callifay hacking his head off and the creature that would one day come to be called the Silver King taking his place.

Callifay was looking for an object that had been stolen for his master and the former king of the Vyanth had it, so he went in guns blazing, swords rather, and slew a bunch of the Vyanth and cut off the head of their king. He was actually looking for those three refugees the king had allowed into his kingdom, but they had given the staff they stole to the king and kept their heads low enough that they avoided the bloodshed Callifay brought to Vyanthnem.

What happened over the next couple years isn't well recollected by anyone. Callifay was running around killing folks and that made it hard for them to write things down. The long and short of it was that the nation split into Vyanthnem and Serethnem and those two nations produced two kings from somewhere and became two separate nations.

This invasion made the Vyanth very adverse to strangers wandering into their borders and potentially bringing another Callifay with them, so their new king used the staff and erected a massive wall of sorcerous wood to protect the kingdom. Callifay had been run out of the kingdom because of the simple fact that he was outnumbered and his own magic couldn't fend off that of the Vyanth. With Callifay gone, the Vyanth were free to become arrogant and hedonistic under their new king.

As I said, they put up the wall of trees around their country and kind of locked themselves away from the world, but trapped in their cities they grew more and more bored. Callifay's actions led to their xenophobia, but boredom led to their hedonism, which led in turn to their institution of slavery and the gladitorial arenas.

Vyanthnem is a kingdom of tall, sorcerous, sons of bitches.