Mythosa Design Notes III: Religion

The previous incarnation of Mythosa took a cue from White Wolf's Scarred Lands and had a religious system based on the nine alignments. At one time I liked this but I eventually found it somewhat limiting. As such, I wanted to open things up a bit. I was also reading Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique stories and thought that it might be cool to have a world dominated by dark powers (evil gods, demon lords, etc.), with very few, if any, good religions. Interesting but ultimately a little too dark for my tastes. On the other hand, I still liked the idea of a limited following for the "good" deities - it's a built-in plot device for clerics and paladins, giving them a reason to proselytize and crusade for their religion.

I also liked the idea (hardly original) of a dichotomy between the "primitive" nature religion ("Faith of the Old Mother") and the "civilized" religions (the "New Gods"). Often the nature god/goddess and druids are simply relegated to the "neutral" square of a campaign matrix. They have some unique traits but everything tends to fit together in a nice package. I liked the idea instead to have a genuine philosophical conflict between the two, particularly since it's not the standard "good versus evil". George R. R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice has something like this (RuneQuest comes to mind as well, though they take RPG religion to an entirely different level).

Mythosa Design Notes II: The Overall Theme

The primary theme of Mythosa is that the world is a dangerous, chaotic place, with small bastions of civilization scattered here and there. Travel is perilous and humanity clings to a handful of city-states and walled towns that dot the countryside. This, again, sounds like it was taken from 4E with its assumption of "points of light" campaigns. It is essentially the same concept, but I had the idea for this long before we learned about that part of 4E. Inspiration came from a variety of sources, including but not limited to:

• Robert E. Howard's Hyboria (the world of Conan)
• Fritz Leiber's Nehwon (Lankhmar, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser)
• Jack Vance's Dying Earth books
• Michael Moorcock's Young Kingdoms (Elric)
• Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars books (John Carter)
• Bob Bledsaw's Wilderlands of High Fantasy (D&D campaign setting from Judges Guild)
• Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique stories
• Ancient Greece (Sparta, Athens, etc.)
• Renaissance Italy (Venice, Florence, Genoa, etc.)

In another sense, Mythosa is meant to be post-apocalyptic, in a fantasy sense. That doesn't mean that the world was once technological and has "reverted" to medieval fantasy after a global nuclear war, or even something along those lines (like Shannara or the world of Wheel of Time). Rather, it's more like Europe during the Dark Ages, after the collapse of the Roman Empire - if the collapse of the empire occurred over the course of five years or so.

In any case, the above settings and the overall theme that emerges from them make for a world that reasonably justifies the degree of violence in a typical D&D campaign. Not that there's not room for other elements (politics, trade, etc.), but it's nice to have a milieu where all the killing and looting are at least somwhat rationalized.

More Commentary on World Creation

This is a bit of a stream-of-consciousness rant, so I apologize in advance if it's not clear or rambles on...

I've been working on the Mythosa revision lately and I've come to a realization that I should have come to years ago. Ray Winninger [sp?] said it in Dragon years ago, and others have echoed it: Don't create more than you have to. I've always given lip service to that idea but I haven't followed it as much as I should have. The reason I say this is that as I've been working on the wiki entries for the new Mythosa I've been at time hard-pressed to describe the features of a particular mountain range, woodland, or other geographical feature. For the previous version and this one I've been using the common model you find in such examples as the old 3.0 D&D Gazetteer and the Player's Guide to the Wilderlands. But looking at the old Mythosa gazetteer, I've come to a simple conclusion: I wasted a heck of a lot of time on needless details.

Not that details are bad. But coming up with them when you don't need them or when they really don't matter is a bit of a waste. Not every river, for instance, needs to be named right away. Not every clump of trees needs some fabulous secret. Unless there's something particularly special about a geographical feature, it really doesn't need much description. Especially since what you write will be ignored if necessary in the course of running a campaign.

This may sound like a minimalist approach, but that's not entirely true. For instance, I've still created a map of the "known world" even though there are places where the PCs may never get to. But I do want a framework in place for consistency and to give me a starting point if something needs further development. The problem for me is that in the past I've tended to go overboard and come up with details that go beyond the framework but really are something that won't be used.

Another area where I usually overdo it is history. Let's face it - for the vast majority of players, they couldn't give a monkey's red butt about the intricate and detailed history you've woven for your homebrew. And, again, these are usually pretty boilerplate: elves were the first race to learn magic, dwarves have been on the decline due to orcs and their kind, the past had an ancient empire (or empires) that littered the countryside with ruins and treasure troves, at least one major cataclysm altered the world years ago, etc. We usually present it as a big "info dump" to our players and then wonder why they aren't as enraptured with our creation as we are. Personally, I'm much more of a "let's explore the world" type of player than a "gimme XP and phat l00t" one, but even I can't find myself really that interested in just poring over a GM's 75-page campaign world history.

In that regard, I've decided to limit the history of the new Mythosa to no more than a few printed pages. Part of the reason is that, as I said, players don't care, and part is to give myself enough leeway to make alterations without having to resort to retconning. Recent history will be relatively well-known, but past that the only things will be the major events (cataclysms, divine wars, etc.). The in-game justification for this is that the major cataclysm of Mythosa took place only a few decades prior to much history was lost.

However, there's another reason for this. Earlier I said that the players don't care. Except for the number cruncher/power fantasy folks that would probably be better served with an MMORPG, that's not exactly right. Players can appreciate your world's detail, history, etc., but it needs to be delivered in such a way that it's relevant to them. As the writers say, "Show, don't tell." Slapping a 200-page printout on the table and hoping your players read it and enjoy it is unrealistic. But involving the details of the world in your actual game - that's something else entirely. Get the players involved and they may start to appreciate what you've created. That's not to say that they should be creating parts of your world (though why not?), but the greater their stake, the more they'll care about this town or that forest or how navigable a particular river is.

How do you do this? That's an exercise I leave to the reader - mainly because I don't have too many good examples. Mini-info dumps during play ain't it (i.e.; a sage relates a full page of text to them). I'll try to post some examples as I think of them and/or use them in the future.

On World Creation

I was recently reading an article by Robin Laws that got me thinking and inspired this post. The question that came to mind - and actually something I've asked myself in the past - is this: Why have I created my own world rather than use an existing one?

If I were a publisher, put Mythosa in print, and was trying to sell it at Gen Con or some other convention, one of the questions I would likely get asked multiple times is: How is this world different from the other ones on the market? A perfectly legitimate question and one I would ask myself. Mythosa doesn't have a particular "hook" like Midnight's "Sauron won" or Ravenloft's "world of gothic horror". It's pretty much "bog standard" fantasy. In that category, some that come to mind that we already have include Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, Hârn, the Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Scarred Lands (though OOP), Aereth (Goodman Games DCC #35), and Kalamar. What does Mythosa have that these other settings lack? Besides the omission of halflings and gnomes, which isn't really a selling point for many (though maybe for some).

The answer to that question is, honestly, not much. My world (or the new version) probably falls between Greyhawk and the Wilderlands; it may also bear a resemblance to the 4E Realms, but not to the 3E incarnation. So, why am I spending my time re-inventing the wheel when countless others have fleshed out these other settings?

This is a question you could also pose to the various world-builders elsewhere on the 'Net. Sometimes you'll find something a little unusual, but generally the worlds are familiar enough that the average player would be home in any of them. So why the bother?

Some people undoubtedly feel they can do a better job than Bledsaw, Greenwood, Crossby, or whoever. More often than not, they simply regurgitate the same memes and themes that we've seen before, but no better (and often worse) than the aforementioned authors. However, I believe that for most of us, it's simply the desire to create. It doesn't matter that we're running games in a world that's like Middle-Earth or Oerth with the serial numbers filed off - the key is that we're running games in a world that's our's. More than once I've considered dumping Mythosa and running my campaigns in Greyhawk, the Wilderlands, Hârn, or even the Forgotten Realms. And I have used all of them (well, not Hârn, but I have a number of Hârn books) at least one time or another. But in general, I'm not "comfortable" running in someone else's creation - to truly be happy, I need to be both the manager of the world and its maker.

Certainly, there are advantages to running your own world. You don't need to worry as much about breaking continuity since the only canon is what you've created. Your players may get a greater sense of mystery since they can't buy the latest novel or sourcebook about your world. But those are just side benefits. It's that feeling of being the one to decide what goes where and why it's there in the first place that drives us.

Laws's article still has me thinking about what I can do to make my world unique. It has received its fair share of compliments (for which I am grateful), but it's still something I keep in the back of my mind, particularly as I work on the new version.

Independent Development...or Insidious Conspiracy?

I just learned that one of the four new races that will be available in Guild Wars 2 is known as the "Sylvari".

A name that I've been using for years (since the early 90's) for the elves of Mythosa.

Did the GW team come up with that name all by themselves? Perhaps, but how likely is it that someone could independently take the word "sylvan", drop the "an", and tack on "ari" in a Tolkienesque fashion?

Virtually impossible.

Time to find a lawyer and rake in my millions!

Blogdump

Lots of little things, I'll just group them together today.

Mythosa Chronicle: The articles for the next issue are ready, I just need to get off my backside and get a map done and some art pieces. The main article for the issue after that is also written (thank god for the productivity of my daily train commute), so things should get moving again on that.

Mythosa Hex Map: A full hex map of Mythosa is done; I just need to decide on a coordinate system. This is mainly for my campaign, but I'll post it here when it's done.

TableSmith 5.1: A minor update is coming soon. Just a couple of minor features to finish.

Economics: People - it's not a "zero-sum" game. Please learn some of the basics.

Hmm...I thought I had more, but that's about it for now I guess. I'll have to do better in the future - the above seems rather "Twitter-esque" (I really don't get the appeal of that site). More later if need be.

A Update on the Site

I haven't posted in awhile so I figured it might be a good idea to summarize what's been going on around here lately.

Mythosa Chronicle #11: This was originally supposed to be posted six or seven months ago. Well, I was busy. In any case, the rough draft of this issue is done and once the editting is finished it will finally be posted. I'm hoping to get back to doing one each month, but I'm not sure how likely that is. The Chronicle will continue regardless, but probably at a more irregular pace.

TableSmith: Development on version 5 keeps humming along, albeit slowly. Everything is pretty much ready except for the "Archives" functionality. Once that's in, TS5 will go into beta and eventually will be released. Probably as a commercial product, though; I can't afford to keep doing it as a fully-featured shareware. Not enough return for my time and effort investment.

MMORPGs: I decided that Guild Wars is to World of Warcraft as methodone is to heroin. Or however those drugs work. I still play both but I together I play them less than I previously played WoW, which is a good thing. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be playing WoW, though. I've decided to focus my efforts on my rogue, even to the point where I've started putting together her blue armor set. But only two of the eight pieces can be gotten without having to make the raids into Scholo and Blackrock and wherever. Part of the end game which, as I've stated before, doesn't appeal to me. So, while WoW is a fun game I think it may have run its course for me unless I want to be a hardcore, 30+ hour/week raider.

Site Redesign: Yes, I'm thinking about re-doing the site again. Not in a major way, but just making things a bit nicer. I'll probably stick with the existing design and layout for the most part.

That's all for now.

Mythosa and TableSmith mentioned on Dragon's Landing podcast

Episode 7 of the Dragon's Landing podcast featured some very nice coverage of both my Mythosa website and TableSmith. I think the hosts may have confused TableSmith with the long-defunct "TableMaster" (as far as how long the application has been around), but that's a minor quibble.

I haven't listened to the earlier episodes yet but I will be; it sounds like a cool show. Of course, I'm a little late to the party when it comes to "podcasting", so this may be old news to some of you.

What's Been Going On...

Given that I haven't posted much to the site recently and haven't put up a new Mythosa Chronicle in awhile, I figured I should post an update as to what I've been up to for the five or six people who visit this site ;)

World of Warcraft: Of course. I'm past the "I can stop any time" stage to "This really is a problem - someone should intervene". It's not as bad as it could be, but it is cutting into other leisure activities. Work? No. Wife? No. Website, painting, world development? Yes... But if it I wasn't playing WoW I'd be spending a lot of time on Jade Empire for my Xbox, so if it wasn't this it would probably be something else...

Mythosa Chronicle: Originally my plan was to publish this monthly, and it still is, though now it's more like "monthly...or so". You know - like KoDT... Anyway, the Chronicle isn't going away, I've just been busy with other things (outside of WoW) lately. It'll continue in the near future...

Hex Maps: I started working on the hex maps I mentioned in an earlier post. Unfortunately, in the process I discovered that the scale of the main Mythosa map was larger than I really cared for; something I didn't see until I "zoomed" in, as it were, to the smaller scale of the hex maps. So, I scaled down the map by about 20%. This, in turn, invalidated the hex maps I'd created, so I need to create them from scratch. They'll be going up once they're done. Or re-done, as it stands.

TableSmith 5.0: Work continues on TS 5, slowly but surely. The remaining work consists of the DataSet functions, a few other functions, and much of the UI. The bulk of the engine is complete, though I need to do some optimizing as the new version is currently slower than version 4.5.

That's about it for now.

Myriad Tidbits

Of course, "myriad tidbits" is rather redundant, isn't it?

Mythosa Chronicle #10 is now available. I'm still pretty much on the "monthly" schedule, but I don't want to be beholden to that. I'm a little surprised I've kept up with it for almost a year. Seems to be a good style for me - publishing a few articles on various topics about once a month. I would like to do something more...standard, as in a sourcebook on Mythosa's kingdoms, or a "big book of magic" or whatever. Unfortunately, doing that entails a lot of work I may not want to do at a particular time. For instance, while I find Amaristan interesting (wouldn't be there if I didn't), at the moment I don't feel like fleshing it out to the degree that I'm going to be soon for Ralynia. If I tried doing that, it would turn from fun to work and would take longer than it should and would ultimately be disappointing. If this was something I got paid for that might be different, but even then there's the question of whether it would be as good as it could be - if you want to do something, it's a lot easier to make it good versus doing it because of a financial or professional obligation.

That does lead me to wonder if I should have built up my campaign in a different manner. Rather than "top-down" if I should have gone "bottom-up". I think what I've done is a combination of both - "top-down" for the general details of the world, so there's a general coherency to the whole thing, and "bottom-up" for the specifics of campaigning. If that makes any sense (I think I'm rambling now...).

I still need to re-do the front page of the site. I'm cool with the general layout with the menu, title, and background. But the change log, search area (does anyone actually use that? I may pull it), web counter, etc. seem kind of thrown together. I may get rid of the web counter, too. I originally put it there for my own use, but any value it has is superceded by the web stats I have with my host. Come to think of it, I haven't used that counter in months. Not to mention the fact that posting your visits seems to be as useful these days as showing all the "kewl" awards you've won - no one cares any more.

Well, gotta stop writing and get some painting done. I've been doing much better in the past couple of weeks - doing any painting is more than I've done in a few months. Even finished a figure in less than an hour (an otyugh from WotC's defunct Chainmail line). It's not going to win any awards but it's good enough for the tabletop.

Sundry Bits Again

Actually "Sundry Bits" could be the name of a weblog. Not found of that, though, so I'll just use it as a post title. Feel free to use it for your own blog if you want.

World of Warcraft: My biggest timesink right now. Little consolation that the same holds true for most of the people I play with right now! The problem isn't the game itself but that I'm spending too much time on it, though I can't really say I'm spending more time playing WoW than I did, say, Morrowind or Knights of the Old Republic. Still, though, it's a fun game. And addictive. The most important thing, though, is that my Undead Warlock is almost level 34.

Deathknell: Looking to be pretty nice (and I'm not talking about the starting town for the Undead in WoW). Lots of people didn't care for the Aberrations series, and I'd have to agree that it wasn't one of the better sets. But what I've seen previewed on the Web so far for Deathknell looks good. And more monks! Up until now, I didn't have many at all...

Mythosa Chronicle: Number 9 is being proofread and should go up in the next few days.

That's about it for tonight. Back to Warcr- Well, maybe something else and then bed...

Voidwalkers Are Awesome

Given that I spent six hours playing WoW last night I've guilted myself into actually getting something done this afternoon that doesn't involve clearing out my quest log or running back to the warlock trainer for new spells (I started another character - an Undead Warlock - on a different server that some of the guys I work with are playing on; BTW, the Undead are really cool). Now, I've only been playing for a tad over a week, so I don't think I'd call it an addiction just yet; I'm really just in the novelty phase (I flew on the Zeppelin from Lordaeron to Kalimdor last night!). In a few weeks we'll see if I can label it an "addiction" or not. Oh, and I did the quest last night to get the spell to summon a Voidwalker - those things rule!

One thing that helped last night was that I had no server problems, which hasn't happened since about a week ago. Could be all the geeks were out on dates and not playing? (Says the guy who spent six hours on a Friday night playing an on-line RPG...but, hey, I'm married so it's not like I have to go out looking for women...)

So aside from that (my Warlock can make dynamite now!), what's on the slate for the site? Well, I'm almost through Complete Adventurer so I'll be updating the House Rules soon with the approved feats and prestige classes from that book. Issue #8 of the Mythosa Chronicle is going through editting and should be out on the first of the month. I've got some plans for TableSmith formulating, though it's too early to pin anything down for that. Not trying to be mysterious or anything (I personally believe that when someone says something like "I'm working on this cool/big/awesome new super-secret project but I can't tell you anything about it yet" they should be slapped in the face with some sort of large fish...perhaps a salmon or a tuna). I just don't like talking about something I'm going to do until it's in its finishing stages.

And holy crap do I really need to get back to painting. I don't think I've touched the miniature painting table in months.

Finally Updated the Mythosa Gazetteer

OK, it's finally done. The religion book has been updated for a little while to match the changes to Mythosa and the map, and now that the current campaign has more-or-less finished up (about 4 AM last Saturday), I can post the updated gazetteer (fortunately, the finale also finished as I hoped it would, so I didn't have to re-write that last part of the updated history). Though in the actual game the PCs fought a severely-weakened Orcus (a full-strength Orcus would have beat their asses to a pulp - they're around level 17). I used the Zoroastrian name for Asmodeus in the gazetteer for the demon for copyright reasons. And, yes, I realize that in D&D "Asmodeus" is a devil while "Orcus" is a demon. Deal with it.

After a brief hiatus to the the real world as well as one of the other guys running an adventure I'll be DMing the new campaign. I'm looking forward to it, as I've discovered I'm not really a fan of high-level campaigns (this is not just because of my regular group but due to some other high-level adventures I've played in in the recent past). High-level stuff can be fun, don't get me wrong. But week after week of it I don't enjoy. Primarily for two reasons: the first is that the combats take forever. Everybody either has a bazillion actions to run through or too many options to quickly decide what is tactically most advantageous at that given moment. The other reason is that it seems like at high-level characters are defined not by their backgrounds or personalities, but by the rules they have at their disposal - it's all about the feats, or the magic items, or the spells...not about the characters.

Mike Mearls sums up my feelings pretty well in the Darkness & Dread d20 book (from FFG) when he describes the appeal of "dark horror gaming":

The key to a horror game is that you must use your own planning, inventiveness, and quick thinking to survive. You cannot simply rely on an optimal selection of feats or magic items to pull through an adventure. Roleplay becomes much more important, while good tactics trump class abilities and spells.

Granted, he's taking about horror gaming and not "heroic fantasy" or whatever you want to label a typical D&D campaign, but the point is the same. And I wouldn't say this is just a 3.0/3.5 issue; it would apply to high level in any edition.

Actually, there's a third point as well: As a DM, there's a buttload of stuff you have to keep track of when it comes to running high-level stuff. The abilities of monsters and NPCs for one. Each player has one character to keep track of and optimize; the DM has numerous creatures and characters to handle, and it's difficult to recall exactly everything each opponent can do much less what each of those things mean. Not to mention preparation is a pain since you have so much more to consider if you actually want an adventure to be a challenge. You don't want to negate or circumvent your players' characters' abilities - that's a cop-out. You should be able to use all your nifty abilities and swag once you hit higher levels. But at the same time as a DM you need to put something together that will still interesting. It's not hard for an entire adventure to come to a quick conclusion because you didn't account for a particular spell or item one of the PCs had.

Monday Musings

A web posting (more of a press release) on a gameboard I frequent contained this statement in regards to the company posting:

"...a company dedicated to producing high quality RPG products"

Are there any companies that are dedicated to producing low quality products? That admit to it? I've seen this in a number of places - "We make high quality products!" Sure, Chester. I think I'll be the judge of that. You don't need to say that; the very fact that you are producing something implies that you think it's high quality. This sort of thing just seems like a typical, amateur marketing phrase that really means nothing.

Another one along those lines: "By gamers, for gamers." I may have said this before, but I'll say it again: This is a tired cliché that needs to be put to rest. Most RPG companies have products made "by gamers" - even the designers at the megalith WotC are gamers, though their business people might not be (but that's not their purpose). Even if the products aren't made by "gamers", if they're good - who cares? Though generally those companies don't last long, so it tends to be a moot point.

Turning to the site, I actually got Chronicle #6 published on time. I didn't think I would, given how little time I've had to spend on it in the past couple of weeks. But the weather this weekend was rather crummy around here (north of Chicago), so I was able to finish it up. And get a bunch of raking done. Raking is a pain; I'd rather vaccuum the leaves off the trees before they fall and save some time... Anyway, the revised Gazetteer is almost done; the history chapter is the only thing left, and that's mainly because how it ends depends on the current campaign.

Long Time No Post

I really need to get off my backside and post more. Of course, I complained about that a month ago, and it didn't do a lot of good, so I guess I'm going to have to resort to threats of violence. I'm not sure how I'll respond to that, but I'll do my best to coerce myself to comply.

WTF?

Anyway, I've uploaded the latest issue of the Mythosa Chronicle to the World page. It was actually done a few days ago, I just haven't gotten around to updating the site until today. Due to time constraints, the majority of it is re-prints from articles I'd already posted, though the piece on weapon groups (from UA) for religious classes is new. Eventually, I'll run out of articles from the World page and have to stock the Chronicle with new material. Expect shorter issues in the future...

I finished Doom 3 a couple of weeks ago. Amazing game. I was turned off a bit by the "Guardian" (if you've played the game you know what I'm talking about), as I felt it took away from the feel of the overall game. In retrospect, I believe I approached the encounter wrong, so that may be partly to blame. Outside of that, though, an excellent playing experience. I hope Half-Life 2 can match up.

I'm also looking forward for Fable for the Xbox. It's supposed to come out this month, though with many features removed from the original design. Still sounds pretty good, and I've seen it compared favorably with Knights of the Old Republic, which is good news (KotOR is in my top five favorite electronic games, along with - in no particular order - Morrowind, Doom 3, Unreal Tournament 2004, and C&C: Generals).

My plan is to start posting here regularly, if for no other reason than writing practice. Not sure what I'll be discussing, though I'll try to keep it at least tangentially related to gaming. And non-political. I'd really love to post some of my opinions about the current goings-on (going-ons?), but I don't want to turn this into yet another soapbox. It's nice to have a few havens away from the constant tide of partisanship.

Magical Commerce

For those of you keeping score, I updated the World Guide article titled "The Economy of Magic". Basically, I changed some things in regards to how the Alchemists Guild will buy and sell magical items.

The first change was primarily for simplicity. For buying, instead of rolling a d20 and referencing a lookup table, I simply streamlined the process and made the percentage of the purchase price equal to 3d4 x 100%. Roughly the same result, slightly lower average, but what you would expect. These guys have overhead to deal with, you see...

The other change was more complicated. While I understand how ubiquitous magic tends to be in a standard campaign, I've always tried to keep it as something more mysterious and exotic than, say, high-tech gadgetry in a sci-fi setting. At the same time I wanted to accomodate the players in my game who would, at least, want to be able to sell the magic items they came across that were of no use to them. But then I realized that in the process of how I set that system up (via the Alchemists Guild), it simply commoditized magic, and made it as mundane as trading cattle or grain. Plenty of computer games are set up that way (Diablo comes to mind), but that's not what I wanted for Mythosa.

The compromise I came up with was to allow the Alchemists Guild to still pretty much buy anything (they want to monopolize magic as much as they can), but be picky about what they would let out. Thus, the change to the "buying factor" table that I came up with. On the one hand, it does recognize that some things are pretty common - rings of protection +1 or cloaks of resistance +1 come to mind. For that reason, they're more inclined to sell those, either out of "stock" or by creating them. But they really aren't comfortable about letting out the more powerful items that can be created. They can make them - but they aren't going to without good reason, and money isn't a good enough one (odd as that may sound to some people).

The other reason for this is that, in my opinion, items of great power shouldn't be available at the drop of a few (tens of thousands of) gold pieces. To take this to an extreme, if a PC wanted, they could go to a "magic shop" and buy the equivalent of Excalibur, Stormbringer, or Mjolnir. Not really the stuff of legend, doing that...

Part of this, of course, is an artifact of the original design of D&D from 30 years back. There are a number of things that work perfectly well with a small group of people plundering a dungeon, but they sort of break down when extrapolated to a world at large. They require additional rationales or mechanical limits to explain why, say, caravans and fleets are still used in light of teleportation magic, or assassinations aren't as big of a deal for the rich with resurrection magic handy. That's not to say those examples (and others) cannot be explained away with proper thought - they can and are regularly. I'm just bothered when they aren't.

Note that despite the 30K gp limit, this still means that it's possible to get armor or shields up to +4, a weapon with a bonus of up to +3, the majority of rods and rings, every potion, almost all the wands, and all minor and medium wondrous items. That's quite a bit. But if you want something of true power, you're going to have to figure out a different way to get it.

The next question is "OK, so how do I find the powerful magic I want?" My response: "Use your imagination." We're talking about a fantasy game set in a world filled with magic, monsters, lost cities, ruined wizard towers, oracles, bards, sages, etc. If you can't figure out how to track something down you want without it available at your local "Magi-Mart", you might want to crack open some of the old classics of fantasy and mythology and see how it was done in the past.

Another Palm Utility and Other Stuff

I'm in the process of tweaking "XP Tracker", another (my third!) PalmOS RPG utility. This one allows you to keep track of things your PCs do for experience. Primarily the slaughter of misunderstood forces of darkness, I'm sure, but other stuff, too. Whatever has a CR...

I should be posting the app in the next day or two. The next one is a character manager, though it'll initially be fairly small. It's primarily a focal point for a lot of other apps I'm planning (treasure tracker, spell tracker, etc.).

I've got a write-up on Prestige Classes and where they fit into Mythosa ready for being put into XHTML and uploaded, but I decided to hold off on posting it. With Complete Divine coming out this week (it's probably already out; I need to swing by the game shop this weekend), I figured I'd wait to see what I would include from that.

It's raining again, which likely means more water in the basement. Sigh...gotta get that taken care of.

Site Update

Almanac is in the RPG Utilities area of the main site. It's Mythosa-specific (see earlier postings as to why this is), but we'll see what the future holds. I have started mentally planning my next PalmOS utilities, and thus far what I have in mind will be both generic and probably free. Of course, by "generic" I mean non-world specific. Since I play D&D 3.5, they'll be designed for that. Well, technically, for d20. But without the d20 logo. I can still use the OGL for d20-based software, but using the logo with software is too much of a grey area in some cases, outright prohibited in others. I don't want to with that, so they'll be OGL. The source will be available as well, of course, so you can see what's open and what's not. Of course, you'll need to use CASL if you want to modify the code...

I also added a Trivia page, to capture the little items that I want to get posted somewhere. The Detailed Climate Zone map is something I created for myself as a reference for the Almanac program. The weather system was originally based on latitude, but the results didn't quite match what I wanted for particular areas of my world. So, like any good Hollywood writer or junk scientist, I changed the data to fit my desired outcome. Hey, it's a fantasy world, and it works. It's one of those things that fits my philosophy of "it doesn't matter if it's realistic, just if it's realistic enough".

Threw a couple of things into the Timeline that came up when I was putting in the Trivia page. I also modified my "House Rules" based on some recent observations in my campaign. The main one is dumping "Armor as Damage Reduction" (ADR) from Unearthed Arcana. I like the idea, and my initial analysis of it indicated that it was workable, but I've since found some holes in it that I didn't see initially. Suffice to say, the idea being this variant is that you get hit more often but take less damage. Unfortunately, I've found situations where you end up getting hit more often and taking more damage. If I find some time I'll post the scenario I came up with that shows this. Rather than change the rules even further to accommodate ADR, I've decided to go back to the standard way of doing armor class.