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Monday, May 29, 2023
Production Progress
Monday, May 15, 2023
POP-001 - The Pantheon of Gods
I'm starting to piece together the Pantheon of Gods for the Lost Temple. It ain't much of a temple without a god or gods to worship. In this case, these gods became lost when the temple was abandoned so the PC's will not have any knowledge of them.
The first god is going to represent liminal spaces. While he is not the most important God in the Pantheon, he is the vehicle behind the PC's ability to explore this magical place. Rather uncreatively, I've been thinking of naming him Lumo. I'll probably come up with something better. Lumo is a placeholder for now.
The term "liminal space" is new to me. This post is talking me through the idea.
"Liminal spaces" refer to transitional or in-between spaces that are not easily defined or categorized. These are places where boundaries between different realms, states, or stages of being become blurred or permeable, creating a sense of ambiguity or uncertainty. Examples of liminal spaces include doorways, thresholds, bridges, crossroads, and shorelines, as well as certain times of day (such as dawn and dusk) or stages of life (such as adolescence).
This abandoned temple is somewhat like El Castillo, Chichen Itza. At least, that's what I've modeled the cover image after. I have come to discover that pyramids are really very boring as dungeons. They don't have many, if any rooms. El Castillo challenges my understanding of the pyramid dungeon as it was built on top of other structures. It does have interior spaces that have nothing to do with being a pyramid or temple. These would be an example of a liminal space, crossing from one time period to another or one function to another.
Now this will require a modification of my original idea, adding long tunnels around the perimeter of the pyramid. These would serve as an entry point to the older temples, a sort of dungeon space, and a way into the vertical shafts. And Lumo has always been a part of this culture from the beginning. He is a prime mover here. Where these spaces exist, he is able to exist.Wednesday, May 10, 2023
Artwork Update - POP-001
Tuesday, May 2, 2023
POP-001 - The Pantheon of Gods
A lot more and less than what I need. First, let me do a shout-out to Evlyn Moreau over on Dice.Camp. You can also find her on:
patreon.com/evlynmoreau
https://ko-fi.com/M4M85ZSV
https://evlyn.itch.io
She sent me a collection of jungle-theme images, which will go in POP-001. So I'd better get this thing done.
One item that stands out in this work is that I must devise a pantheon of gods. Typically, I don't do whole pantheons of gods in my campaigns. I let the players tell me about what gods they know.
It's easier that way. The alternative is: "Hey... can you fit your character in this tiny box you can see? Perfect!"
When roughing out a campaign, I will typically have the barest minimum of divine beings. I'll have one God of Light, one of Dark, one in between, and one alternative choice that doesn't fit within these three groups. The last category is for the first NPC cleric or druid the characters encounter and it is a hint that the players can be creative in what they believe.
When I have a city where a large number of different people reside, there is a Temple Row. I keep the gods non-descript unless someone asks me about them. Invariably, the players will come up with a god that won't fit any of my description and I will have to wing it.
I personally love this trick.
As the players search the Temple Row, they will not find a temple to their god but they will have a feeling that they are in the presence of something powerful and familiar. If they continue searching, they will find a place that feels right. An NPC will mention this is "the place of the lost ones" and if the character makes an offering or prayer in this space, they will find a path to their God's temple. For a while, they will be able to interact on a personal level with this space, describing it to me. When they have given me a good idea of what it is like, I let them leave. As they exit, that temple, their temple bends and warps reality until it becomes real. Even if the row, the road, the city, or even the world itself has to get bigger to accommodate it.
Players often find this experience wonderful.
An AI rendering of a Moon Goddess |
Revenants of the Lost Temple must be different than what I am used to doing. I lead with "its a temple". It must follow that I must have gods here. These creatures will be cameo actors to be sure as the module is created for first to third-level characters. I need them to be unique avatars for a whole culture that vanished.
I have selected a couple of ideas for them to embody. A goddess of the sea, a god of the land, a goddess of the Moon, and a god of the Earth. That sounds like a good AI photo prompt.
It's pretty... pretty much not what I wanted. As I flesh these beings out, I will post updates over on my Ko-Fi page. Why don't you follow me there?
Sunday, April 30, 2023
Too Many Irons in the Fire
I'm working on a few too many projects. I need to get myself on a posting schedule. The countdown tells me I have 92 more days to finish my first module, POP-001.
To that end, I am working on artwork. Or at least, sharpening my skills.
This is a copy of Frank Frazetta's style, which I hope will assist in creating pictures for POP-001.
Project 2 is a little more down to earth. I'm getting the raised beds ready in the backyard. I'll have two 8x4 foot areas this year to prevent the overcrowding I experienced last year.In addition to the tomatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, and peppers I grew last year, I'll be trying out lettuce, beans, radishes, and herbs. I plan to keep the strawberries, beans, and herbs out of the raised beds with a new area plus large planters.
Ideally, at the end of the year, I'd like to bring the herbs inside. I didn't plan for that last year and managed to kill off everything by mid-December. There was some saving grace as a had a ton of dried herbs from the summer.
Next up is a slow-moving project, one that may turn into a regular series here. I'm making a castle. I really love the classic look of Bodiam Castle and I recall drawing a rough floorplan for fun and as a blog post.Funny, I apparently forgot to blog about it and you are seeing the rough plan for the first time today.
Anyway, I am upcycling some junk I have lying around to make this happen, I will probably detail my progress as I go.
I don't plan on being too faithful to Bodiam or even rudimentary scale. I am letting the supplies on hand control the look. For a base, I used a bit of wood used for packing material. The towers stand 6 inches tall and will be spaced out 2.5 to 12 inches. The idea is to have something that would help out as a game space.
As you can see from the image above, I have a bunch of different figures arrayed in front. I have a 1:144 scale T.I.E. Fighter, 1/296 Battlemechs, a 25 mm Space Marine from Aliens, a Lego figure, a couple of 25 mm fantasy figures, random plastic animals, and 20 and 15 mm figures. The block in front is 1.25 inches on a side. Roughly, anyway.
It all seems pretty reasonable.
Wednesday, March 8, 2023
POP-001: Making a List and Checking It Ten Frickin' Times
I don't see why AI art is all the rage, but boy do like it for blog posts. |
This creates an interesting scenario where getting lost on a road or trail is difficult, but leaving the beaten path can quickly shift the travelers into survivors. The Temple was lost due to a combination of environment, climate, and happenstance. Once abandoned, it was swallowed. Hundreds of years later and it is difficult to see the difference between abandoned and true wilderness.
This flavors the sort of monsters the characters will encounter. Anything intelligent would have the ability to find the Temple. The Found Temple of the Revenants doesn't really ring. So much for my default idea of having the Kobold Tribe of Minwan wandering the area.
I went through the monster's list from Old School Essentials and made a few choices based on the region and the challenges I wanted. I supplemented this list with animals native to Mexico. I suppressed everything I currently know about The Lost Temple and selected what seemed correct to the theme.
Wilderness Monsters- Bat, Giant
- Bat, Normal
- Boar
- Cat, Ocolot
- Centipede, Giant
- Dryad
- Frog, Giant
- Green Slime
- Grey Ooze
- Harpy Eagle
- Horse, Wild
- Insect Swarm
- Jaguarundi
- Jaguar
- Living Statue, Stone
- Llama
- Mule
- Nixie
- Pegasus
- Rat, Giant
- Snake, Python
- Spider, Giant Tarantella
- Spider, Normal Tarantella
- Spider Monkey
I have a list of 24 critters. It's a bad wandering monster list because it includes a bunch of things that don't or shouldn't wander and more than a few would end in a total party kill. Many of these creatures should be static, events-type encounters.
My favorite from the list is the normal bats. I've never killed a party with normal bats, nor would I suggest it. They are a perfect thematic encounter for setting the mood. Bats are nocturnal. Once a day the players should see them leave to hunt then hours later return to their caves, fat and satiated. It's not an encounter, it's a themed clock.
The horses, mules, and llamas are more theming, they are lost, too. No one will die from these encounters but the sense of loss is reinforced by them. The pegasus and the unicorn give a sense of being out of one's normal place, a juxtaposition of the idea of being lost.
The normal tarantellas, rats, ocelots, jaguarundis, and insect swarms are a part of the background environment, the living jungle.
I'll have a whole post about the Living Statues, there is no intention of making the characters fight them.
This leaves only 14 monsters on the wandering table and I think I will peel away 4 more to make the list 10 long. I think 10 monsters is perfect for a wandering monster list. At this link, I used 10 monsters for a whole campaign setting and I stole the idea from 3 Toadstool Blog over here.
The goal of this product is to populate the Peninsula of Plenty with exciting, living places. In order to match X-1's page count, I need 15 more pages. Over on Ko-Fi, you can see more about this module.