After the two-week hiatus, AC is up and running again. It's a nice, shiny Monday morning and telepaths are investigating odd schools while drug dealers prepare to try and move operations and the world carries on as 'normal'. The extent to which the world can remain like that is, of course, up for debate, even with new telepathic conspiracies in the making.*
FYI: The GM is now living in the same building as his brothers, so there may be odd pauses and such (as Chaos learned last night) when people insist on coming over to visit and such without due warning or filling out the proper risk assessment forms beforehand.
* That the telepathic conspiracy is having problems arranging for a simple MRI is, probably, just a giant double bluff on their part, unless it is a triple bluff.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
BE & SM: What happens when one crosses D&D with BESM.
For the BESM D&D Game, some rules & assumptions:
RULES:
1) Shock Value will be used (see p. 158 in BESM book for details). Basically, you get hurt and you have a good chance of being out of it from the wound. Combat Techniques and/or a high soul can alleviate this, ditto with things like regeneration.
2) Critical Damage is being used. 12s will count as criticals in the sense of Something Awesome happens, 2s as a massive screw up.
3) If your PC ends up with attacks and abilities that require the use of the expanded rules chapter to function, make sure to remind me of that and them as needed.
4) I expect most PCs will make use of Restrictions and Defects. I am not setting a hard and fast limit on either. I do expect players to keep tracks of the concentration, energy cost and such of abilities themselves.
ASSUMPTIONS:
1) Most every PC will have increased shock value and/or regeneration. Humans, dwarves and such do not have the latter save from magical stuff and/or high 'levels'.
2) Mind shield and resistance can be had by anyone, human or monster, but barring run ins with magicians, clerics or other monsters shouldn't apply too often.
SETTING:
TShe game setting is intended to be the usual 'monsters come in from the cold' kind of story. The backstory IS grim, but probably not first-hand knowledge to the PCs and mostgly just stories told by old people of another era, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing at all in this era. Your PC concepts can be as serious or absurd as you wish, but the tone and style of the game will pretty much depend on what everyone makes and does.
RULES:
1) Shock Value will be used (see p. 158 in BESM book for details). Basically, you get hurt and you have a good chance of being out of it from the wound. Combat Techniques and/or a high soul can alleviate this, ditto with things like regeneration.
2) Critical Damage is being used. 12s will count as criticals in the sense of Something Awesome happens, 2s as a massive screw up.
3) If your PC ends up with attacks and abilities that require the use of the expanded rules chapter to function, make sure to remind me of that and them as needed.
4) I expect most PCs will make use of Restrictions and Defects. I am not setting a hard and fast limit on either. I do expect players to keep tracks of the concentration, energy cost and such of abilities themselves.
ASSUMPTIONS:
1) Most every PC will have increased shock value and/or regeneration. Humans, dwarves and such do not have the latter save from magical stuff and/or high 'levels'.
2) Mind shield and resistance can be had by anyone, human or monster, but barring run ins with magicians, clerics or other monsters shouldn't apply too often.
SETTING:
TShe game setting is intended to be the usual 'monsters come in from the cold' kind of story. The backstory IS grim, but probably not first-hand knowledge to the PCs and mostgly just stories told by old people of another era, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing at all in this era. Your PC concepts can be as serious or absurd as you wish, but the tone and style of the game will pretty much depend on what everyone makes and does.
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Besm D&D game idea
History
For much of its history, this was a D&D world like any other, a smorgasboard of ideas and concepts jumbled together. It is said that the world did make more 'sense', long ago, but there was a war involving dragons and elves that has long since passed into myth, even among dragons. The elves, who live longer, do not speak of it, but for a long, long time -- and even now, to an extent -- the elves and their kin are somewhat feared because racial memory runs deep. It was enough for the elves to be left alone for some time, even when the human kingdom of Osgiliath began to expand and the wizards and warriors devised new methods of making weapons that changed the face of the world.
(OOC: Basically think of an industrial revolution in terms of magic: magical devices are made on assembly lines, regular weapons as well and so forth. After two generations the alliance with the dwarves was struck and 7 generations ago both races ceased selling weapon and metals to anyone else.)
Within 10 measly human generations the entire face of the world has been changed. In the last three the monsters and other races have been domesticated, extinguished or driven into hiding in various dark corners of the world still inaccessible to the armies of man. That these grow fewer with each passing year goes without saying, and yet is still being said. (Can you tell I am writing this on little sleep? I can.)
6 generations, the elven empire in the western continent fell to the humans, as much due to their skill as to overconfidence and decadence of the elves. The humans made an exact replica of Osgiliath there stone by stone and razed the elven city and burned down the fabled trees and forests of the elves. Most of the elves died then, by their own hands. The few who remain are jesters in human courts, or hidden in the wilds of the world, and they have such long, long memories ...
This is not to say the world is entirely human: the dark wood and its like still exist, scattered but real, and the remnants of the mighty orcish armies that once terrified the world still remain in various steppes and plains. Only without weapons the orcs have descended into barbarism and are truly only a threat to each other in this new age. And the dwarves, of course, have the underworld to themselves: and how long this alliance with the humans last is the only deep fracture in the new world they have made.
Summary (as humans count generations, so about 30 years apart*)
10 generations ago: humans Industrialize, begin the march on the world. Osgiliath begins taking over neighbouring kingdoms.
8: Dwarf/human alliance. Metals in exchange for technology.
7: trade of weapons and metals by both races with other ones ends entirely. Arming ones enemies is, after all, unwise. War is essentially declared.
6: the elven kingdom falls, and many monsters flee into hiding, expecting a retaliation from the elves (or their allies) that never comes.
5-4: the mighty orchish armies fall apart without a steady supply of weapons.
3: the monsters have fled into various woods and dark places.
Now: most of the monsters have passed into human myth and legend, which is good for the monsters to a large extent. Only the rangers are liable to recall the precise truth about monsters.
(For humans, living over 60 years is rare, though more common now without monsters. This basically assumes that the entire timeline is about 500 years old, at best.)
* Humans live this long thanks to clerical healing.
Geography
The eastern continent: Home of the empires of man, initially. Now almost entirely settled and broken.
Western: original home of the elves, now mostly conquered; a light in the world gone out.
Northern: Barbarians and ice; mostly conquered by the dwarves more than humans, even above the surface. In exchange, much of the underworld beneath the two cities of Osgiliath are in human hands.
Southern: From whence came the orcs. This is the location of the dark wood and the point at which the campaign begins.
Setting Note
If you want to add stuff in the history about your race and stories about it, let me know and I'll add them to the file.
Campaign
While at first blush things might seem somehow hopeless, much of the human empire is conquered human kingdoms who don't always sit easily under the yoke of Osgiliath. While the empire has been frankly amazing in the arts of war, they have yet to produce civil leaders of equal caliber so local laws and customs can sometimes be odd and exploited by the PCs. As well, your status as 'mythical' begins can give you an edge, to say nothing of pushing human/dwarf relations hard, finding out what kind of plan the elves might have, re-arming the orcs or finding out what the wizards want etc.
The PCs
Given BESM and the anime genre, the PCs are basically made of awesome compared to most of the humans they'll run into. Oh, some have magic, and prayers, and weapons and spells, but the PCs have supernatural abilities beyond anything those small and jealous humans can manage and that shall be both your glory and your doom.
For much of its history, this was a D&D world like any other, a smorgasboard of ideas and concepts jumbled together. It is said that the world did make more 'sense', long ago, but there was a war involving dragons and elves that has long since passed into myth, even among dragons. The elves, who live longer, do not speak of it, but for a long, long time -- and even now, to an extent -- the elves and their kin are somewhat feared because racial memory runs deep. It was enough for the elves to be left alone for some time, even when the human kingdom of Osgiliath began to expand and the wizards and warriors devised new methods of making weapons that changed the face of the world.
(OOC: Basically think of an industrial revolution in terms of magic: magical devices are made on assembly lines, regular weapons as well and so forth. After two generations the alliance with the dwarves was struck and 7 generations ago both races ceased selling weapon and metals to anyone else.)
Within 10 measly human generations the entire face of the world has been changed. In the last three the monsters and other races have been domesticated, extinguished or driven into hiding in various dark corners of the world still inaccessible to the armies of man. That these grow fewer with each passing year goes without saying, and yet is still being said. (Can you tell I am writing this on little sleep? I can.)
6 generations, the elven empire in the western continent fell to the humans, as much due to their skill as to overconfidence and decadence of the elves. The humans made an exact replica of Osgiliath there stone by stone and razed the elven city and burned down the fabled trees and forests of the elves. Most of the elves died then, by their own hands. The few who remain are jesters in human courts, or hidden in the wilds of the world, and they have such long, long memories ...
This is not to say the world is entirely human: the dark wood and its like still exist, scattered but real, and the remnants of the mighty orcish armies that once terrified the world still remain in various steppes and plains. Only without weapons the orcs have descended into barbarism and are truly only a threat to each other in this new age. And the dwarves, of course, have the underworld to themselves: and how long this alliance with the humans last is the only deep fracture in the new world they have made.
Summary (as humans count generations, so about 30 years apart*)
10 generations ago: humans Industrialize, begin the march on the world. Osgiliath begins taking over neighbouring kingdoms.
8: Dwarf/human alliance. Metals in exchange for technology.
7: trade of weapons and metals by both races with other ones ends entirely. Arming ones enemies is, after all, unwise. War is essentially declared.
6: the elven kingdom falls, and many monsters flee into hiding, expecting a retaliation from the elves (or their allies) that never comes.
5-4: the mighty orchish armies fall apart without a steady supply of weapons.
3: the monsters have fled into various woods and dark places.
Now: most of the monsters have passed into human myth and legend, which is good for the monsters to a large extent. Only the rangers are liable to recall the precise truth about monsters.
(For humans, living over 60 years is rare, though more common now without monsters. This basically assumes that the entire timeline is about 500 years old, at best.)
* Humans live this long thanks to clerical healing.
Geography
The eastern continent: Home of the empires of man, initially. Now almost entirely settled and broken.
Western: original home of the elves, now mostly conquered; a light in the world gone out.
Northern: Barbarians and ice; mostly conquered by the dwarves more than humans, even above the surface. In exchange, much of the underworld beneath the two cities of Osgiliath are in human hands.
Southern: From whence came the orcs. This is the location of the dark wood and the point at which the campaign begins.
Setting Note
If you want to add stuff in the history about your race and stories about it, let me know and I'll add them to the file.
Campaign
While at first blush things might seem somehow hopeless, much of the human empire is conquered human kingdoms who don't always sit easily under the yoke of Osgiliath. While the empire has been frankly amazing in the arts of war, they have yet to produce civil leaders of equal caliber so local laws and customs can sometimes be odd and exploited by the PCs. As well, your status as 'mythical' begins can give you an edge, to say nothing of pushing human/dwarf relations hard, finding out what kind of plan the elves might have, re-arming the orcs or finding out what the wizards want etc.
The PCs
Given BESM and the anime genre, the PCs are basically made of awesome compared to most of the humans they'll run into. Oh, some have magic, and prayers, and weapons and spells, but the PCs have supernatural abilities beyond anything those small and jealous humans can manage and that shall be both your glory and your doom.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
besm D&D Game: basics
Premise: Think lolad, except as monsters set in a D&Desque fantasy setting.
Themes: Survival, The Quest(tm, patent pending), the reservation system
System: BESM 3, 250 points. This game will use the heroic level benchmarks except skills are not necessary: only get what fits the character, if any.
Characters: Build something from the monsters manual in D&D, or even another source entirely. Players are encouraged to make up as detailed a culture as they want to make their 'monsters' as civilized as they wish. (Think of how the old world viewed the new for human attitudes regarding the Pcs.)
Setting: Your Ye Olde Fantasy Worlde. The world has never been named – though the humans are working on that – and used to be pretty generic and normal until the humans perfected hot air balloons and zeppellins and began to travel into lands they couldn't reach. The missionaries of the three-faced God and Goddess plunged into the wilds of the world and innovation after innovation strengthened the human nations until they had continent-wide empires stretching from sea to shining sea. In the past two hundred years the humans have advanced (and bred) ferociously to engulf other lands and progress has never seemed so sweet a mistress.
In their fabled towers, the mighty and awful wizards work magics that keep the empires growing, gathering apprentices to make fabled magical items a step at a time, saving time and energy and equipping the armies of man with weapons to slay even the greatest of monsters. Of these wizards, the most famous are Morinehtar (the darkness-slayer) who destroyed the last of the Great Wyrms with a single word of power and Romestamo the earth-helper, who forged the alliances with the dwarves that benefited both mighty races and cleansed the underworld of many old monsters.
And as above, so below for the dwarves have supplied metals and wondrous smithing to the humans in exchange for the fabled 'industry' of the magicians and applied that to making their own marvels; armed with human magics and their own weapons, they have conquered the lands under the earth as they own. Each mighty empire leaves the other alone, content for now to secure their own dominions.
Which brings up to the Dark Wood that winds through the Everglass Mountains. These were mined dry by the dwarven ancestors centuries past and were refuge for the last of the gnomes before the dwarves destroyed them all. Now they are one of the few blank spots on the map, a place of monsters and the wild that the armies and desires of man have yet to conquer. It is your home, for however long it lasts.
Notes on races:
Elves serve the humans, acting as messengers and court jesters and wonders as the pygmies on earth did for the courts of Europe. There are few of them left, and most believe they can wait out these empires and times and the world will again be theirs. (The extermination of the dark elves under the earth does not bother them, as those were not real elves.)
Gnomes: Extinct, thanks to the dwarves.
Halflings; Someone has to work the mines the humans have, after all. Most are considered just short humans and not a separate race at all.
Half-orc/whatevers: Very rare, all considered monsters.
Notes on classes:
Barbarians: Some exist, though the northern wastes are not very empty any longer. Most are considered scum by the empires and end up in the Dark Wood and places like it to test themselves against the last remnants of the world of their father's stories and the legends of their father's father's, despite knowing their may be none left for them to pass those stories onto. This does not stop them from wishing to hunt and destroy monsters, naturally.
Bards: Next? Seriously they're bards.
Clerics: The followers of the God and Goddess have spread far and wide. While they don't have political power in most lands, they have much popular support and gather many followers to try and 'cure' the monsters and make them human again, or yoke them to the will of humanity like they did the horses, wemics, centaurs and griffins. Unlike other classes, they would rather find a use for monsters than destroy them.
Druids: The druids are the only humans on the side of monsters, if at all, as much as they are on the side of the woods themselves. (Though the woods would be safer and nicer without all those monsters in them.) They tend to be rare and distrusted by all sides but are generally the only humans who will not attack monsters on sight.
Fighters: S.e. Knights are basically fighters in magical armour whose goal is to destroy monsters, and they are very, very good at it.
Monks: Warriors who often protect the clerics, monks are capable of taking down monsters without weapons at all and rely on the strength of the gods and the magic of their prayer to defend themselves. Some of them are not, always, horrible, and they tend to view the world differently from the clerics but are wise enough to keep their views to themselves.
Rangers: Big game hunters. They are often the most dangerous foe of the monster in the woods since they have studied the tracks, habitat and such of monsters.
Rogues: No one trust them. Obviously.
Sorcerer: Those who have made deals with monsters (and worse things) for power. They can be human or monster but serve masters and forced beyond the ken of others. Wizards tend to kill them on sight if given the chance, if only to tidy up the world a little bit.
Wizards: Mighty and scary magicians, often enough, who are the backbone of the human empires. They tend not to interfere directly in the empire and seek other things than mere temporal power.
Monsters:
The ones that exist will depend on the PCs and characters they make.
Themes: Survival, The Quest(tm, patent pending), the reservation system
System: BESM 3, 250 points. This game will use the heroic level benchmarks except skills are not necessary: only get what fits the character, if any.
Characters: Build something from the monsters manual in D&D, or even another source entirely. Players are encouraged to make up as detailed a culture as they want to make their 'monsters' as civilized as they wish. (Think of how the old world viewed the new for human attitudes regarding the Pcs.)
Setting: Your Ye Olde Fantasy Worlde. The world has never been named – though the humans are working on that – and used to be pretty generic and normal until the humans perfected hot air balloons and zeppellins and began to travel into lands they couldn't reach. The missionaries of the three-faced God and Goddess plunged into the wilds of the world and innovation after innovation strengthened the human nations until they had continent-wide empires stretching from sea to shining sea. In the past two hundred years the humans have advanced (and bred) ferociously to engulf other lands and progress has never seemed so sweet a mistress.
In their fabled towers, the mighty and awful wizards work magics that keep the empires growing, gathering apprentices to make fabled magical items a step at a time, saving time and energy and equipping the armies of man with weapons to slay even the greatest of monsters. Of these wizards, the most famous are Morinehtar (the darkness-slayer) who destroyed the last of the Great Wyrms with a single word of power and Romestamo the earth-helper, who forged the alliances with the dwarves that benefited both mighty races and cleansed the underworld of many old monsters.
And as above, so below for the dwarves have supplied metals and wondrous smithing to the humans in exchange for the fabled 'industry' of the magicians and applied that to making their own marvels; armed with human magics and their own weapons, they have conquered the lands under the earth as they own. Each mighty empire leaves the other alone, content for now to secure their own dominions.
Which brings up to the Dark Wood that winds through the Everglass Mountains. These were mined dry by the dwarven ancestors centuries past and were refuge for the last of the gnomes before the dwarves destroyed them all. Now they are one of the few blank spots on the map, a place of monsters and the wild that the armies and desires of man have yet to conquer. It is your home, for however long it lasts.
Notes on races:
Elves serve the humans, acting as messengers and court jesters and wonders as the pygmies on earth did for the courts of Europe. There are few of them left, and most believe they can wait out these empires and times and the world will again be theirs. (The extermination of the dark elves under the earth does not bother them, as those were not real elves.)
Gnomes: Extinct, thanks to the dwarves.
Halflings; Someone has to work the mines the humans have, after all. Most are considered just short humans and not a separate race at all.
Half-orc/whatevers: Very rare, all considered monsters.
Notes on classes:
Barbarians: Some exist, though the northern wastes are not very empty any longer. Most are considered scum by the empires and end up in the Dark Wood and places like it to test themselves against the last remnants of the world of their father's stories and the legends of their father's father's, despite knowing their may be none left for them to pass those stories onto. This does not stop them from wishing to hunt and destroy monsters, naturally.
Bards: Next? Seriously they're bards.
Clerics: The followers of the God and Goddess have spread far and wide. While they don't have political power in most lands, they have much popular support and gather many followers to try and 'cure' the monsters and make them human again, or yoke them to the will of humanity like they did the horses, wemics, centaurs and griffins. Unlike other classes, they would rather find a use for monsters than destroy them.
Druids: The druids are the only humans on the side of monsters, if at all, as much as they are on the side of the woods themselves. (Though the woods would be safer and nicer without all those monsters in them.) They tend to be rare and distrusted by all sides but are generally the only humans who will not attack monsters on sight.
Fighters: S.e. Knights are basically fighters in magical armour whose goal is to destroy monsters, and they are very, very good at it.
Monks: Warriors who often protect the clerics, monks are capable of taking down monsters without weapons at all and rely on the strength of the gods and the magic of their prayer to defend themselves. Some of them are not, always, horrible, and they tend to view the world differently from the clerics but are wise enough to keep their views to themselves.
Rangers: Big game hunters. They are often the most dangerous foe of the monster in the woods since they have studied the tracks, habitat and such of monsters.
Rogues: No one trust them. Obviously.
Sorcerer: Those who have made deals with monsters (and worse things) for power. They can be human or monster but serve masters and forced beyond the ken of others. Wizards tend to kill them on sight if given the chance, if only to tidy up the world a little bit.
Wizards: Mighty and scary magicians, often enough, who are the backbone of the human empires. They tend not to interfere directly in the empire and seek other things than mere temporal power.
Monsters:
The ones that exist will depend on the PCs and characters they make.
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