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Showing posts from 2016

Settlement Business and Services Summary

In a previous post I discussed the details of settlements in Mythosa. This is a follow-up to that post, summarizing the availability of businesses and services in each of the settlements. They are shown in the table below (businesses are in brown ). Most services that produce physical goods are not listed as their presence is implied based on the equipment lists in the PHB (i.e.; if the PCs can buy a sword in a settlement, you can assume that there are smiths; if they can buy arrows, assume fletchers are present, etc.). If a percentage is shown, that is the chance that one individual of that type is found in the settlement. Service/Business Hamlet Village Town City Metropolis Alchemist None None 50% 3 (2 to 5) 5+ Artist None 50% 3 (1 to 5) 10 (5 to 15) 15+ Astrologer None None 50% 3 (2 to 5) 5+ Bank None None None 2 (1 to 3) 4+ Boatwright* None 50% 3 (1 to 5) 10 (5 to 15) 15+ Book Dealer None None 50% 3 (2 to 5) 5+ Bounty Hunter None None 3 (1 to 5) 10 (5 to 15) 15+ Bre

Archfiends of the Nine Infernal Kingdoms

The Nine Infernal Kingdoms are regions of the plane of Maledicium where powerful archdevils have established their domains, pockets of stability and order surrounded by demon-infested chaos. Brief descriptions of these "kings of Hell" and their dominions are listed below (in order of relative power, weakest to strongest). Note: Each archdevil is listed with aliases as it is ill-advised to say their names aloud, outside the context of a ritual or invocation. To do so is said to invite misfortune upon oneself. ⁜ ⁜ ⁜ ⁜ ⁜ Ilsidris, King of Avernus The Hawk, the Whisperer Ilsidris is the ruler of Avernus , and is the third ruler of this kingdom in recent history. He has the form of a human male with a hawk's head, bird wings, and taloned feet. Ilsidris speaks in a sinister whisper, causing feelings of dread and uneasiness to those who hear his voice. The avian archdevil is the weakest of the infernal kings, but he is able to ally and manipulate the others in

Settlements in Mythosa

The Mythosan world map and PDF show and document a number of towns, many cities, three metropolises, and one hamlet. Hopefully it is obvious that this is not the entirety of settlements in the known world; to show every village and town on the map would be major overkill and a lot of unnecessary work (and to be honest, I have no idea where every village or hamlet is; I add them as I need them). That said, there's nothing that documents the specifics of settlements in the context of Mythosa other than the general terms listed in the world guide. This post is intended to clarify that. There are five types of settlement in Mythosa: hamlet, village, town, city, and metropolis*. On the world map, settlements are shown based on their size (relative to the scale of the map) or their significance. Given that, all the cities and metropolises of the known world are on the map. Regarding towns, the ones that appear on the world map have some particular importance (like Irongate due to its

TableSmith 5.2 released

Yes, you read that right - a new version of TableSmith has been released! I realize it's long  overdue, and it's not a huge release, but it is something (and finally addresses the folder access problem that's plagued 5.1 since Windows Vista was released). There are some new features, but this is primarily a technical update to address two things. First, the standard installation puts the program and other "read-only" files into the "Program Files" folder of Windows, while the tables, config file, and other mutable files go into a TableSmith folder in the user's Documents folder. This is the expected installation that Microsoft encourages, and fixes the issue where everything was installed into "Program Files", which then created issues when TableSmith tried to save it's configuration information. "Back in the day" (i.e.; Windows XP and earlier), you could do that, but Vista and later didn't allow for that. Ironically,

Irongate PDF Uploaded

I've uploaded a small (one-page) PDF for the town of Irongate (found in the Ruinlands  region) that I put together for one of my current Mythosa campaigns. It can be found on the Downloads page.

Mythosa PDF Updated

I finally updated the Mythosa PDF (available on the Downloads  page). When I switched from a static HTML site to Blogger, I obviously wanted to preserve the Mythosa pages. Originally, I just printed the pages to PDF and stitched them together into a single file. This was good enough for a start, but not for the long term. I took the contents of the PDF, cleaned it up, reformatted it, and reposted it. It still could use some more artwork, but that will come later.

Campaign Setting Formats

While reviewing my backlog of PDFs, I was looking through a small campaign settings book (what and by who is irrelevant). As I'm looking through the Table of Contents, I see the same standard chapter - Races, History, Organizations, Religion, etc. On the one hand, this is a good, boilerplate approach to a setting and organized in such a way as to be easily digested by the reader. But on the other hand, I was thinking, is this the only way? We've been following the same basic template for presenting setting information since the late 70's. It's not bad (I certainly have done and am doing the same thing), but is there a better way?

State of the Site

While there is an "About" page on this blog (link over to the right), I figured I'd post some explanations of what is going on with this blog as well as the old Mythosa site. Currently, the old website is gone (even after I spent a bunch of time revising it…sigh), and this blog is the Internet home for Mythosa, TableSmith, my iOS apps, and whatever other projects I may be working on. I got rid of the old site for a couple reasons. First, I realized that "fantasy campaign setting" sites really aren't a thing any longer. Most of them are gone, and the handful that remain haven't been updated in years (some have been sitting idle for over a decade). Farland is still going, but it's an exception (and has always been at a higher level of quality than most every other world site, mine included). Other than that, most people have moved their content to blogs rather than static HTML sites. Now, just conforming to the current fashion isn't a rea