NaNoWriMo - Rebellion

Every year I sign up for NaNoWriMo and every year I never really finish. This year, rather than a novel, I plan on doing something functional. I want to wordsmith every blog post I have ever made and if possible, add an image for each.

I figure this task is on par with writing 50,000 words. And I think it is something I need to do anyway.

As I work on that, I will also wordsmith all of my publications and add more artwork to each.

It's a reasonable endeavor, at least more reasonable than kicking out a novel.

52 Weeks of Magic - Item 35 - Lead of Calling

The Lead of Calling is a weak magical device used by country witches and sometimes huntsmen and trackers. The Lead of Calling will allow the user to call back a lost animal within a league of the wielder. The animal will take it's sweet time responding, often as much as 3 hours, but it will come. So long as the wielder's only intent is to collar and return the animal, the animal will behave as if it was charmed.

This Lead only works on domesticated animals, which does not include cats.

If the animal is more than 3 miles away, the Lead will indicate the direction to the animal.

There is a powerful and dangerous side effect to this magic item. If the animal is killed while on the lead, the holder will be struck down as if Mazed. They will be trapped in this maze until the animal is consumed, buried or naturally decays. The maze will continuously replay the animals last moments and the character cannot avoid this. There is no saving throw. The trapped person will also experience everything the animal's body experiences in death, from two perspectives, one of being the animal and one of being the Mazed watcher. They cannot starve, die of thirst or inclement weather in this condition. They may awake with one or more phobias or insanities from this effect.

52 Weeks of Magic - Item 34 - Aerialist's Skin

Flying is a little more than throwing one's self at the ground and missing.

This week's magic item is the Aerialist's Skin. This item appears as a rolled runner made of some sort of soft parchment. It feels slightly tacky and can be either brightly colored or a natural tone. It can be found at magic academies as much as at traveling circuses. The runner is laid down along a course or under the trapeze in lieu of a net.

The Aerialist's Skin somehow contains a fractional dimension, meaning that it acts like a net or trampoline. It does not need to be suspended like a net, the falling victim's body penetrates into the fractional dimension of the Skin, rather than the cold, hard ground. The Skin's surface is soft, with a lot of give. It will reduce damage from speed or falling by 6d6 or the equivalent of falling from 60 feet. The tackiness of the surface is amplified by speed and impact meaning that a person falling onto it will not roll or bounce off.

The Aerialist's Skin is unlikely to find its way into a dungeon, but it is an interesting "consumer magic device" which the general public will have a small amount of experience with. Wizards use it to learn to fly. Circuses use it as a safety device for high wire acts. Creative thieves and thief acrobats may find a use for it in cat burglary.

The material is flammable, so usually it is wet down before use.

Pulling it together...

Well, I am trying to put together a Patreon Campaign. Patreon is a great idea, but realistically, it is a one stop shop for pulling together some sort of Campaign or major production. No one is there to just fork over money so you can "do some stuff and things".

So, what do I got?

I don't like the tier system, because assigning items/rewards to tiers is a bit wonky if the items don't have a 1 to 1 correspondence. Ok, I'll have to think about it. But what does someone get for a couple of bucks?

A city. Not a module, or a game, but a place to have their characters live in.

I have this great software called Worldographer from Inkwell Ideas. It produces maps like the one above. It comes with a license so you can use in commercial works. That ok, but it's someone else's art work. As a starting point, it's ok.

What comes next follows that person's work. As I look at these little icons, I start to think of how each one appears on the outside, from street level.

That image is how I picture those large villa structures on the upper right side of the map.

And of course, since I have the street view, I can easily image in the interiors.

Interiors give way to "who lives here?", which leads to character art and sheets. That I can do.

How would it look?

I would like an atlas feel, so that each of the facing pages reference each other. On the left page would be the color mini-map, a sketch and a hand drawn interior map of the structure.

On the right side would be a character sketch, a description and a character sheet. It would be very simple to rework the page so that the mini character sheet could be removed and replaced with more text for details of the area. Simply put, one would be D&D based while the other would be rule set agnostic.

I find myself naturally doing this as a part of the process of building my campaign. This one city will have 64 blocks or insula, so at a rate of two a month, I have a functional Patreon page for 2.6 years. Possibly more were I to branch out and do other themes, rule sets, etc.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

52 Weeks of Magic - Item 33 - Mortar of Pestilence

The Mortar of Pestilence is a massive variation of the Wondrous Decanter. They stand 6 feet wide and 4 feet tall. The Mortar must be mounted on some sort of pivot. They are often found on castle walls as a defense. They can disgorge 100 gallons of water, like 3 bathtubs full, in one second. This will cause 1d6 points of damage on impact and will push the victim back 1d12 feet for an addition 1d6 points of damage. If the surface struck is a slope, the victim will slide further and possibly take more damage. The target area is about 10 feet by 10 feet.

But what about the Pestilence? One of the first attempts to use the Mortar involved oil. A couple of pours of oil worked correctly, but it was found that water was far cheaper. One of the Mortars was not poured and over time, the oil went rancid. The oil was impossible to light and within minutes everyone with in 120 feet was sickened, including the defenders.

Oil will go bad within an hour when put in the Mortar. The sickness is airborne and will require a saving throw vs. Disease in the first round of pouring for everyone within 10 feet of the Mortar or within the target area at the base of the wall. A failed saving will sicken characters to the point that they will suffer -2 penalty on all ability scores and a -2 to attack. Anyone who enters the target area will need to make a save, even hours later. This effect will be washed away by the next rain or by pouring water on it. 

The mortar can be filled by bucket or by Create Water spells. Usually clerics will have to work in shifts to fill the whole vessel by magic. Buckets are easier than magic and nasty materials can be added to the vessel. Oil is most common, but so is sewage. Any organic material placed within the Mortar will rot and spoil within an hour and causes the disease effect. Aside from water, any substance placed in the Mortar will become so foul it will be unrecognizable and often does not operate as it should. For example, poison will not be a poison on decanting, oil and alcohols will not burn and milk... oh god. Milk!

Pouring acid into the Mortar of Pestilence will demagik the device and it will bubble and spatter out of the container over a period of 100 hours. Everything in the area must make a save as if they were splashed by the acid.

52 Weeks of Magic - Item 32 - Wondrous Decanter

The Wondrous Decanter is often found in churches, temples and shrines. It is a utility item for holding liquids. Occasionally, the very rich will own one for home use.

The Wondrous Decanter will be filled with water when found. It can be refilled. It does not have charges. There are three ways of filling it: the normal way, going to the well or the stream and filling it up; the second way is for a cleric to cast Create Water; or using the Decanter as a part of the create Food and Water spell casting. 

In all cases, the Decanter will accept up to 36 gallons of water. When filling from a stream or lake as opposed to magic, the Decanter will fill to the brim with clean water in one round even if the source was muddy or fouled. It is not a perfect filter, the source liquid must be mostly water. It cannot take water out of another substances. If water is not the major component of the source, the Decanter will not fill.

One of the wonders of the Decanter is, it will not spill a drop. It will dispense 1 cup of water every 3 seconds. The stopper will seal itself if left unattended. This item is a +5 item when making saving throws. It may occur to characters to use it like a water bomb. It is often too hard to break to make this effective. If broken, all 36 gallons will gush out from the fragments over a period of a minute.

The last wonder is more for the sagely, the Decanter acts like a Bag of Holding for water. It is no heavier full than empty. The water contained within also has little momentum so that all 36 gallons can't be dispensed by accident.

These Decanters come in a variety of shapes, styles, and outward sizes. 

RedBlade Character Generator Review

RedBlade is a super fast character generator for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. This tiny piece of software is lightning fast and full featured. Don’t let the price or size of the package fool you.

The Base screen is all business. Down the left side are buttons to guide you through the process. Select a name, class, multi-class, adjust hit points, etc.

As you select items, the graphical interface displays changes. Click the Abilities button to continue.

Rolling abilities couldn’t be easier. But what kind of player would you be if you didn’t reroll? The program orders the rolls high to low. Assign the highest first by clicking the ability button and proceed through the numbers sequentially. Should you wish to make changes ability assignment, use the arrow buttons on the right.

The Class button displays all the class skills and abilities available. Since I have selected a rather plain fighter, nothing is displayed.

Skill selection is a breeze. There is a drop down box for class and Class skills and Cross Class skills. The software tabulates points to Class and Cross Class skills. The initial selection occurs on the center screen and more ranks are added on the right with the arrow buttons.

The Feats screen is rather ingenious; not only are bonus feats displayed in their own area, feats with prerequisites are greyed out. Hovering on a feat displays a blurb about it in the bottom box.

Languages are a snap with this software. Class and race are used to create a list of languages, the number available is counted off on the top box.

Shopping for equipment is fun; this is my favorite part of character generation. RedBlade breaks equipment down in to a dozen or more types and will display standard magical versions. The only oddity of this screen is the fact that coins are optimized to the minimum quantity. Silver is automatically converted to gold while gold converts to platinum.

The software allows you to customize equipment in the form of masterwork creations or non-standard magical items. It is very comprehensive.

Through out the software, helpful pop ups will appear and describe issues. Each is very clear. To resolve the issue below, you may add more money or click the “Buy for free” check box.

Each screen feeds another, so selecting armor under shopping calculates information for both the “Equipped” screen and the actual armor class.

The Equip screen allows for multiple sets of armor and weapons. It is intelligent, allowing for two handed welt weapons. This screen will create a series of armor classes and to hit numbers on the final character sheet.

One set of equipment is labeled primary combat kit. Using the Dropbox allows for secondary kits such as bows.

The magic screen displays all things magical. Typical this is reserved for inherent abilities. Our fighter does not have any so the screen is blank.

The spells screen divides spells into level and class.  It will allow you to “cheat” and obtain more spells than normally possible. It will also calculate any bonus spells based on race, domain, class or ability points.  It will display both known spells and spells memorized. There is a row for spell DC which I find to be very handy.

The role play section is all free form. Basic information is entered on this page.

A separated area is available for history.

The last area is for goals. If an area is omitted, it does not appear on the character sheet. No need for clutter, eh?

“Finished” gives two options, character sheet and save. The sheet is saved as an HTML file and clicking the sheet button will display it in your favorite browser software.

Since RedBlade uses standard HTML portability is not a problem. Pages can be opened in Word or converted to pdf to fine tune printing.

All and all RedBlade is not the most comprehensive character generator, but if you want to quickly crank out characters, this is the tool for you.

Reality to Fantasy and Back

I want to explain some of the fantastic and mudune items that appear in my last post. This piece felt like a bit of Ready Player One. There are many references which may be unclear.

• On Transit Road, in East Amherst is a former bar converted to a Church. I have no idea what kind of church, but there it is. My wife really did point it out to me. 
• In Buffalo, it is common for people to tack on an "s" to words that should not have them. "Anywheres" is a horrible one, but we also say things like "Federal's" for "Federal Butch Shop". It's not entirely clear if we think that Mister and Missus Federal own the butcher shop or if we think we need to add an apostrophe because we dropped whole words. "Timmy runs", "Timmy ho's" and "Tim Hortons" are some of the more common language butcherings we perpetrate. 
• The Peasant Dance and The Peasant Wedding by Pieter Bruegel the Elder are the source of many of the references in this story. If you enlarge the picture on the right, look at the two men carrying pies on the unhinged door. There is an extra foot or two people have 5 feet. The foot is wearing a shoe which doesn't match the boots of either men. Mysterious, eh? 
• Fact: The very high booths are a reference to a bar named McBee's. (Again, that damned Buffalo "s".)
• The picture on the wall matches McBee's style and mirrors Bruegel's styling of the Wedding painting, but is actually an image from the classic D&D module, X2 Château d'Amberville.
• Bruegel is referred to as "the Elder", but he wasn't a friar or anything. 
• Many of Bruegel's paintings depict The Church in a questioning way.
• "Diamonddraught from the Land" is a reference to the Thomas Covenant Chronicles. It heals people. 
• "Black Taquynian coffee imported from the Country of Torre" is a reference to the game Gemstones IV. 
• Gemstone IV is entirely textual. Actually consuming coffee from a text game would be weird. 
• The coffee referenced can be found in the town of River's Rest or simply "the Rest", which is referenced in the blessing prayer potion of the text. It is the reason that one word is capitalized after the comma. 
• Elanith is not in Canada, it is the fictional world Gemstone IV and DragonRealms takes place in. 
• The menus and dice are a reference to the many tables in various RPGs. 
• "Scout. The Son of the Miller" was meant to sound like the name of a Tarot card. 
• One of the ways of gaining experience in Gemstone IV is run messages. Destinations are random, as is payment. 
• The die rolling is kind of reference to The Deck of Many things and how it is presented is how a Deck of Many things might work for a married couple. 
• The blessing is a reference to classic Cub Scout and Boy Scout meal time prayers. My son is a Scout and lifeguard at a local camp.  
• I'm a teacher who has taken over a classroom from an excellent teacher and mentor named Ms. Miller. This has happened at two different schools, three times. Weird how that happened. 
• There is only one magic item table with an entry for 67-68 in the Efreet DMG . It's the Armor and Shield table, Splint Mail, +3. 
• Believe it or not, passing down tradition like D&D has been going on for 3 generations, with more to come.