Dirty Apes, Chaos Spires, Religious Coups, and the Rumor Mill of Nowhere

The Domain Game II is rolling along, with the third session going off early Sunday morning. Playing in my pajamas with a steaming cup of java in hand was a decided—yet fun—change of pace from our night games.

As some readers will remember we are playing with my Stormbringer first edition hack, which seems to get “hackier” as I tack on mods to fit with the domain rules. (If you care about such matters Mike D. of Sword+1 will be joining me as a co-writer/designer exploring ways to move the hack into something of possible use and interest to the larger gaming public).

Since it's a slow news day here in the HC, here's the recent tidings from Nowhere.

Two weeks ago, Duke Mraz and crew conducted a reconnaissance in force of the White Ape groves in the Forest of Whispers near the river crater. They wiped out one tree-platform and noted the presence of about six other ape lairs in the two hexes before withdrawing to the holdfort. No counter-raids or other activity has come from the White Apes since that time.

Jathur with his two new recruits, Zibran and Erlend (see roster below) undertook a mission from a black lotus-addled, high-ranking officer of the Satrapy to discover what happened to his missing nephew, an officer in charge of the small mudbrick watchfort to the south of the Duke's hold (hex 69.66). The three found the fort mostly abandoned except for a strange tentacled creature in the fort's cistern, bloated bodies, and a crazed survivor.

They investigated a strange humming, bulbous glass spire back in the woods and found the missing tunic and armor (gleaming and polished) hanging in a blackwood grove next to the spire. Attempting to chop the spire down they were psychically assaulted by the ethereal ghostly form of the missing officer. Hightailing it with the armor they made their way back to the holdfort.

Meanwhile back at the village, Zibran attempted a religious coup against Ehroon and the Elder Elemental Temple of the Ever-Unfulfillable Flame.

In Zibran's belligerent words:

“[My] plan with the priest, stage a religious spectacle in the centre of the village, use Ignite to create a 'sacred flame', assert the primacy of Thakan over this weak 'flickering embers' shite, grab any scriptures he has and stick them in the flame, along with my hand, using control of self to avoid pain. Heal said hand using healing spell. Challenge the priest to do the same, mock him when he can't do so, imply his faith is weak. Debate theology with him by shouting slogans then downing shots of spirits, smashing the glasses against my forehead (control of self!), invite him to make prayers to his feeble deity and do the same, last one standing gets the temple (and hopefully the acolytes). 

When I win I declare his god dead, and sanctify the new temple of Thakan by setting fire to him, offering him the chance to cut his own throat when the suffering gets too great and painting the sign of Thakan on the back wall in a mixture of his ashes and blood. Greet the following dawn with rattling sistrums, firey libations and drunken screaming, declare to all and sundry that the sun looks brighter. They call him 'the Calm' only in comparison with the other priest of his religion.”

Though he escaped near-immolation, a visibly shaken Ehroon has since holed up in the longhouse he inhabits with his acolytes—even missing the weekly Bonfire of the Febrile and Resplendent Flame ceremony--to the scandal of his small, demoralized flock. All queries by village busy bodies have been turned away by his lovely assistants with the vague excuse that the elderly priest is “ill”. A village teen was seen leaving his longhouse with a small satchel early yesterday, before galloping off to Lyk Kutah.

Three families—all shockingly bald and of a primitive and warlike countenance—have taken up residence in the village since the incident.

The Rumor Mill

In other news from the Colony's capital: the House of the Middle Path, a local brewing guild producing the Colony's hu'uz,(a strong spirits that allegedly produce visions and madness) is offering substantial rewards for securing a source for vol, a yellow-orange shelf fungus that grows under forest canopy.

A less-than-discreet source in the sequestered Jade Quarter is saying that the eunuchs will be issuing a recall order for the Westlands Satrap. Other loose tongues hint at a possible elevation in fortune of a certain nomad in the employ of Duke Mraz.

Meanwhile on the northern border Colony patrols have made contact with a strange beetle-riding race of diminutive nomads calling themselves the Khalik Vhar, compounding fears that the Colony was in for yet another round of bush wars.

Placating the waning Sun. 

Roster Additions

Zibran the Calm (Barry B.). A priest of Thakan the Bloody Sun of Nuk-Mir, a warlike deity who requires blood to fuel the sun, preferably that of might warriors defeated in battle, but any schmuck will do in a pinch. Zibran's first task in this new land is to make converts and/or capture slaves and get himself a sacrificial altar built as fast as possible before the sun goes out.

Erlend (Patrick W.): Erlend is from the Howling Moors. He carries with him a selection of axe handles, axe heads of varying sizes, sharpening stones, and a few other accoutrements customers might want.  While Erlend can make a living this way, he is always looking for a way to make a faster profit where being large, strong, and blunt in manner are useful traits.  Adventuring seems like it might be the thing.

Elrend purchased an indentured servant, Rheged, six months prior to traveling. It is unclear if he considers the young man to be his apprentice or servant or possibly both. It is also unclear what trade, exactly, Erlend is teaching.

PCs Waiting in the Wings

Kol (Jason K). Born into a family of wealthy merchants he was sent out, as all third born sons on the island of Koz-Ath are, to seek riches in a foreign land. A tall overweight man Kol would be considered by some to be deceitful and untrustworthy, features on his native island that are considered of high value. Respect is given among his class and faith to those who can use people and situations to their advantage. Rom’Zhe, the God of the Koz-Ath merchant class, is said to give favor to those who ruthlessly extract coin and treasure by any means possible. It is not of Rom'Zhe concern if others are exploited.

Ochar of the Endless Hills (Sean N). Ochar hails from the Endless Hills, A land of constantly feuding merchant clans. Ochar himself belonged to the Deiru family, a fairly low caste clan of butchers and leatherworkers. He fell hopelessly in love with the beautiful Yani of the Xotheo family. Normally Yani would be far above Ochar, as her family works in metal. However, as fate would have it, she was enslaved by the evil Count Kamyr that villain retreated from his foes into exile. Ochar's path seems clear. All he has to do is travel to Nowhere, kill Count Kamyr, rescue the beauteous Yani, and make his fortune. Not necessarily in that order.

Open-Handed Design and the Stormbringer Hack

All sorcery in old school Stormbringer, is "third-party sorcery." Unlike in most fantasy games where magic flows directly from the caster tapping whatever it is that makes it flash, boom, rah, in that old BRP warhorse all magic--even that of items--comes from the summoning and/or binding of otherwordly agents (elementals, demons, beast lords, gods, etc.) rather than from the sorcerer directly.

By any measure it's a fun and satisfying system. I enjoy its unique and highly flavorful feel and it manages to pack a good number of quirky, granular bits (such as the distinctions between the varied types of demons) around fairly easy-to-grasp mechanics. It also models well how most sorcery works in the Elric books.

When pawing though those books again recently, though, I found there a number of scattered cases where sorcerers are in fact seeming to use directly-channeled magic. Not being a hardcore simulationist (a literalist?) this in itself wouldn't elicit a hoot from me—faithful literary emulation is a lost and foolish cause in any roleplaying game worth playing, really--but I've been toying around with wanting to add a limited range of lower-powered magic into the Stormbringer/Domain Game II hack madness for a good solid week now.

So come the third mention of anomalous spellcasting--Earl Saxif D'Aan in this case giving our favorite pale angster a quick mindscan—all I could see instead of text was a big green light slowly flashing tinker, tinker, tinker.

In keeping with the open-handed design philosophy I was yammering on about the other day, I'm going to “let it all hang” and post the kind of brainstorm checklist of goals I typically hash through before throwing out the variant system itself. (Feel free to skip the section if this is too “meta” for your tastes.)

What I Want:

1. A simple and easy magic system with a small amount of starting options, but expandable with player-driven spell research.

2. Should match enough old school contours to be familiar without just being a direct and dull D&D rehash. It also needs to match the sorcery ranks and level progression of the hack (and can thus play right back into the D&D-based domain-play rules).

3. A system with a relatively easy entry requirements by characters than the all-powerful sorcerer of SB (in which a character had to have a combined INT and POW of 32 with a minimum of 16 INT—and then gave out very high powered abilities). The intention is to flatten out the distinction between sorcerers and the non-spellcasting 99%--without ditching too much of the beautiful lack of balance in character types the game is famous for.

4. While the attribute rung is lower, we also still want to keep the relatively low-magic feel of the original (as opposed to say Runequest where nearly all sentient creatures have access to battle magic). So we build in some limitations: training time and requirements one hand and a one-time sacrifice of POW a la the rune magic of RQ.

5. We want something that models the limited direct magic of the Elric books (and other dark S&S in the genre). Most of these powers seem to be of a divination or psionic-like sort. The psychically-based magic of the Petal Throne would seem to fit this so we'll adapt some similarly-themed spells to fit around this.

“Wizardry” Variant Magic for Stormbringer

• All characters with a combined POW and INT of 28 are allowed to cast this kind of magic.
• Players may choose to have characters who qualify be pre-trained in “wizardry”. Add three years (without skill increases) to their age.
• Characters who qualify through game play must be trained in the arcane arts before they can begin to employ magic. Training must happen under the tutelage of a third rank wizard or over and is 30 months minus INT in length.
• To gain spells the character must: 1. permanently sacrifice on a one-time the specified amount of POW; 2. qualify to use the spell's rank (same rank per level as sorcerer); and 3. have access to appropriate and/or artifacts at the GM's discretion.
• Spells can only be used twice before needing to be recharged with eight hours of rest and meditation.
• Spells cannot be cast or maintained if the wizard is wearing armor bulkier than leather.
• Players are encouraged to design spells of their own at the GM's discretion.

Spell Examples:

1st Rank Spells	POW	Effect
Light	1	Produce one small globe of light (40 foot radiance) for 1 hour per level of caster.
Control of Body	1	Total control over body (breath, heart beat, grip etc) for 10 minutes per level of the caster.
Clairvoyance	1	Can see through walls and other obstructions up to 50 feet from caster for 10 minutes times the caster's level.
Telekinesis	1	Objects within site-distance of the caster may be moved up to 50 feet. Object can weigh no more than one ounce per level of the caster.
Cure Wounds	1	Cure 1d6 hit points damage. Also stops fatal major or critical wounds from bleeding out.
Comprehend Language	1	Can read/write/speak any language for 5 minutes duration per caster level.

Editor's Note: It might not be clear in the post this system would be a second, lower variety of magic that bolster rather than supplant the main system's third-party sorcery.]

A Rough Guide to Nowhere

Tonight in the Google+ pocket universe we'll be kicking off the first session of Domain Game II, hand-powered by the increasingly wild and wooly Stormbringer hack. Group Two will be taking their own stab at lordship on October 30th. (One seat still open in each group.)

Domain Game I's foray into the brave new world of Nowhere was shrouded with a dense fog of war. The 15+ players only knew the situations of the other expeditions when they stumbled into them and forged diplomatic channels. Even then there was a fair amount of duplicity and hand-hiding (right James?).

It was immensely fun, but also incredibly difficult to maintain. Essentially, I was running multiple, simultaneous, but related campaigns—all mediated through a small mountain of paperwork (over 300 pages, by the time it just slowly slumped).And worst of all, because of that fog, I couldn't lift the window too much and share all that beautiful madness with readers of the blog.

Fortunately for lazy me, Domain Game II is much closer to the traditional play group. There will be off-season play that will be secret and individualized, but the central play arena will be a “face-to-face” with a somewhat traditional party structure.

A sneaky, shifty, look-at-the-hand-holding-the-keys emphasis on that somewhat. Technically, the face-to-face will be video-conferenced. There will also be some serious curveballs and twists: an asymmetrical array of some playing lordly characters and others playing their hanger-no's. And only like the open books of other games, some players may not be who the rest of the party thinks they are...

Not having the same limitations on reportage, readers will start to be able to check out what's happening with this experiment. Which I am duly going to start today with the first installment of the Rough Guide to Nowhere, the background material and running notes that players will have in their hot little hands (the longer, more detailed version can be downloaded in PDF form here if you are interested) .

Map of Known Lands in Nowhere

Places of Note, Installment I

“The Gate Between the Worlds” (Hex 65.62)

Mysterious black obelisksseem to be spread throughout the landscape of Nowhere. This is the only one accessible to date by the Colony, the gate leads back across the dimensional void to a remote forested area in Elsewhere (50 miles distant from closet town). Tightly-regulated, closely-supervised caravans wind their way through the gate twice a month.

Lyk Ku'tah (Hex 65.61)

The preeminent...well, the only...town and administrative center of the Colony. Close to 3,000 residents are packed into a circular crude but stone-walled and double-trenched townsite.

The High Satrapy's silver-masked eunuch-officials, bureaucrats, courtesans, popinjays, and small horde of hanger-ons and slaves manage to cling to an unusually high level of decadent (if insular and provincial) civilized luxury in the Jade Quarter.

Recent buzz in the quarter's high circles centers on leaked news from Elsewhere that transparent, orange-hued wrap-around sarongs have seemed to push out last season's more somber fashions. Gauze is indeed the new Black Toga.

Black Ziggurat (Hex 55.66)

Scouts report a massive, multi-tiered, dull-black pyramid in the ash-choked burned out southwestern verges of the Colony. Attempts to penetrate the mysteries inside have been reputedly met with quick, ignominious death. One brain-addled, burn-scarred survivor spins wild tales of brass-sided urns filled to the brim with luminescent opals and hollow-tooted demonic guardians .

But then don't all sole survivors go on in such an unbecoming manner? Really now, it's hard to find good explorer help these days. Another pinch of black lotus powder?

Ash Wastes

A burned out wasteland stretches off to the west. Grey ash piles up like snowdrifts around rows of jagged-toothed trunks. The wastes are broken up every few miles by great crude stone-blocked ruins of villages and what look to be ceremonial spaces. The Colony has had a hit-and-go running war with hooded Serpetmen bands that haunt the western portions of this area (Hex 53.65 and surrounding).

The Pasturelands (Hex 63.65 and surrounding grassland hexes)

This is a grasslands, savanna-like area thick with game especially near deep naturally occurring cenotes (sinkholes).  There is an other-worldly, mixed-matched strangeness to the local ecosystem. A number of the species seem unsettingly divergent from each other: a six-legged furry mammalian-looking herd animal here; an exotic vermillion-streaked, many eye-stalked frog beast there.

Forest of Whispers

The Colony's is bordered to the south by a thick band of mixed wood forest. In the deep, eerily quiet reaches of this forest there are dense groves of ebon black-trunked trees--some rising tall and straight over 200 feet. The deep groves are surrounded by gentle rolling ridges with broad-leafed hardwood trees that give off enormous, sweet-meated nuts the size of a child's fist.

Ferocious warbands of white-furred apes haunt these woods and make terror-producing raids every High Summer all along the southern reaches of the Colony. Nothing is known of the fates of the children carried away by the brutes.

Crater and Dome (Hex 65.68)

A recent punitive raid on a White Ape war-camp by the outgoing Southland Satrap revealed a massive crater near the banks of the river here. Even more mysterious was the gold-domed edifice at its center surrounded by a circle of fine, dark gray gravel. The dome reportedly seemed to shimmer and be almost translucent in the glare of the noon-day sun.

The party walked the perimeter of the dome and found a small metal door with a bronze-looking circular value. The space beyond was a large open space (as wide as the dome), with a smooth-bored shaft leading precipitously down, down, down. How deep remains a mystery as the first party's lacked sufficient rope to descend.

Southlands Satrapy (Hex 68.65 and 69.64)

Player starting area, a small border fiefdom ruled by that cruel, young overlord, Jeremy D. (or some other player-tyrant).

The fief's total area is 48 square miles of coastal prairie land. There are currently a mere 10 square miles of the fief under cultivation running in a roughly quarter-mile wide band along the northern banks of the narrow, shallow (and still unnamed) river that marks the southern boundary of the colony in general.

Generating Swords & Sorcery Nations

One of the most interesting and flavor-choked character generation elements in first-edition Stormbringer is its character Nationality chart. A single random roll not only tells the player what part of the Young Kingdoms she hails from but has a profound effect on what the character will be. Her range of class backgrounds, magic accessibility, cosmic allegiances, body type even, all hinge on that single roll.

The resultant character positively drips with Moorcockian Swords & Sorcery ambiance--while providing for some really interesting asymmetrical surprises for the player--a hell of a nice hat trick in game design.

Though I have been busy dumping the Young Kingdoms formal dress in my (non-commercial) SB hack for the second Domain Game phase, I am not-surprisingly deeply reluctant to dump those kinds of elements in the mash-up system.

So what's the work around? How do you create something that can hit those notes without being bland as white toast, buying into a big-boy licensing feature, or straight-jacketing co-creation?

Solution A is create a generic, sociological system. Solution B is to tie it around a specific, hardwired setting of my own. Insert the sound of a loud, strident game show “wrong answer” buzz here.

Solution C is to try and play to that strength of that original chart and go even more random—and weird (and tongue-in-cheek). I, of course, voted for that.

Below is part one of my random S&S nationality generator. The first part is more generalized and can be used for nearly any fantasy rpg, the second part will have more mechanical applications to my hack--but should be relatively easy to adapt into other games if desired.

As always eager to hear any feedback.

Swords & Sorcery Nation Generator

Step 1. Roll on Nationality Name. Change or modify results to suit your own taste.

Step 2. Roll on National Features.

Step 3. Based on Step 1 and 2, compute background paths.

Step 1: Nationality Name

Name Structure Chart

Roll d10
1	[Syllable]
2-3	[Syllable] + [Syllable]
4-6	[Syllable] ' or - [Syllable]
7	[Syllable] + [Syllable] + [Syllable]
8	[Place Name] “of” [Descriptor]
9	Color of Your Choice + [Place Name]
10	[Descriptor] [Place Name]

Syllable Table

Roll d100
01-02	Ain
03-05	Ath
05-07	Bai
07-08	Bay
09-10	Be
11-12	Can
13	Dei
14-15	Eo
16-18	Fir
19	For
20	Gur
21-23	Gor
24	Hir
25-27	Hor
28	Jen
29-30	Jor
31-33	Kar
34-35	Kam
26-37	Koz
38-41	Kyr
42-45	Lan
46-49	Mar
50	Mer
51-53	Mir
54-55	Myr
56	No
57	Nok
58	Nuk
59	Oi
60-61	Po
62-64	Rom
65-66	Rat
67-70	Ror
71	Rex
72	Ru
73-74	Tek
75	To
76	Vlk
77-80	Vor
81	Xo
82	Xai
83-84	Xe
85-88	Xoth
90-92	Yani
93-94	Yor
95-96	Zhe
97	Zu
98-00	Roll Twice

Descriptor Chart

Roll d10
1	Sighs/Sighing
2	Whispers/Whispering
3	Howls/Howling
4	Woe/Woeful
5	Dread/Dreadful
6	Fear/Fearful
7	Desolation/Desolate
8	Madness/Mad
9	Endless/With No End
10	[The First Word that Comes Into Your Head]

Place Name Chart

Roll d10
1	Desert/Wastes/Barrens
2	Steppes/Plains
3	Cities/Towns
4	Forest/Woods/Jungles
5	Isles/Islands
6	Mountains/Peaks/Valley
7	Hills
8	Moors/Craters/Broken Lands
9	Swamps/Marshes/Bogs/Mires
10	Ocean/Seas/Gulf/Bay

Domain Game II, The Particulars

Coming out of a satisfying weekend of socializing and gaming—gratuitous, non-sequitur picture of the ever-proliferating small army of HC players and hirelings marching off into the dear sunlight of yesterday's session below—I am fired up and ready to move on Domain Game II this week.

The nitty-gritty:

Stormbringer Hack. The voting was still in deadlock on the rules and I have decided to use my executive privilege to indulge my current crush on the Stormbringer hack and go with that. I am the decider.

Part I of my hack, which has all rules relevant to the players other than the sorcery system, will be available by this evening. What you will see is elements of Stormbringer mixed in with old school Runequest and D&D--more and more the kind of “frankenquest” that Jeremy Duncan has inspired me with his Hellenistic Successors-era game (along with some other ambitious and creative projects) .

Interested readers and players who haven't emailed directly can email me at kutalik dot the gmail dot the com so I can send you the necessary files.

System is Secondary. That all said above, I need to emphasize to players and those interested in watching the action that the existing rules mechanics (both the hack and existing sections of Borderlands that we'll be using) will be secondary. The underlying philosophy here is similar to what happened in the first phase of the Domain Game, the campaign is a wide-open incubator.

What rules we use are merely guidelines—think menu options rather than immutable laws--and will be running behind the actual play. Practical translation: you tell me what you want to do, I will tell you what to roll, and we will translate it into system mechanics as we go.

Campaign Roster. The campaign currently has two “top-tier” lord characters, Jeremy and Reg, and 12 “casual” players. Given the usual rate of attrition I am going to keep open four more seats for casual players. If you want in email me at kutalik at gmail dot com.

How the monthly game will work is we will always have seats for our lord characters and 2-3 seats that will be allotted to the casuals by their availability--and by random roll if necessary. I will send out a notifications a week and a day before letting people know what's going on.

Tabula Rasa. The players are starting as exiles forcibly cut-off from the old world of Elsewhere. Their home planet is a diverse land vaguely mirroring the lands of the Young Kingdoms and currently unified by a cruel, pre-human race of lithe, play decadents (it starts with an “M”).

However because of their isolation—and the underlying campaign philosophy—much of the particulars of their society is a blank slate. Players are free to make up as much or as little of the culture, religion, political structure, etc. of back home.

Background setting is thus wide open to all who participate—and based on my past attempts at bottom-up co-creation an interesting—strangely coherent even—sense of place will tend to evolve out of play and the constant “yes and...”. Fun stuff.

Kick-off Session. I am going to throw out three dates for the first session: October 18 8:00 pm Central US; October 26 (same time); and October 30 noon Central US. And of course, the “where”, is that charming little pocket universe created by Google+ Hangout. Players should drop me a line here or at my email address about what sessions they can make.  

Hacking Stormbringer

The following are working notes on hacking first edition Stormbringer to fit more comfortably with certain classic D&D core concepts--and the second Domain Game incubator-campaign coming down the pike in the next couple weeks (update on that later today).

Big shiny red, skull-boned sticker qualifier first: this is an intellectual exercise and one possible verdict by the end of the weekend might very well be that it's plain easier to stick with straight classic D&D. Good old, reliable Blue Party.

But in the meantime I do love me a kit-bashing challenge, so off we go.

Goals

I want to model the hardwired upward cycle of old school D&D: exploration leads to booty which leads to personal power growth--and back again. 

Secondly, I want to model Domain Game and campaign specific goals of exploration, expansion, and social advancement. And I want a system that models all this to be easily quantifiable with points and leveled progression.

Sound familiar?

Experience Point Awards

One experience point is earned for each adventure-acquired Large Bronze piece (roughly 1/20 of a D&D gold piece) spent in any off-season activity.

Ten experience points are earned per mile of wilderness actively explored or per hour of an adventure site. Award can be modified by the degree of adversity faced (half for little, double for highly dangerous).

One hundred experience points are earned for each square mile of newly-cleared or conquered land acquired. One hundred experience points are also earned for each opponent level beaten in combat (more on that also later).

Adventurer Level Progression

Level	Exp.	Extra HP	Improvement Checks	POW Checks
1	0	0	0	0
2	10000	+1	5	1
3	20000	+1	5	1
4	40000	+1	5	2
5	80000	+1	6	2
6	160000	+1	6	2
7	320000	+1	6	2
8	640000	+1	6	2
9	1200000	+1	6	3
10	3600000	0	7	3
11	4800000	0	7	3
12	6000000	0	7	3
13	7200000	0	7	3
14	8400000	0	7	3

My mind is stilling racing with a number of open questions. Do the numbers balance overall; is progress to slow or too quick? Do the awards build the right mechanical incentives? Does that even matter?

If I continue with this route, follow-up posts will tackle how this system will fit with the off-season activities of Hill Cantons: Borderlands Chapter 6 and the social advancement rules of Chapter 8.

Off-season activities will provide players an outlet for : 1. spending treasure (and thus gaining experience as above); 2. gaining income or other game advantage (knowledge, political power, children, etc.); and 3. gaining extra improvement checks between levels.