Noircana - a new spell sextet

Time for more noircana. Most of the discussion on this project is going on over at JD's blog, The Disoriented Ranger, and there's a brief intro here.

This time it's a modular set of six new spells for the toolkit we've been developing, for various worlds and various game systems, not least the simple tactical roleplaying ruleset here.

They're for working with magical energy, including creating sources of power and magic items, as well as manipulating magical signatures. This builds on my last contribution and should also tie in with the work JD is doing on wider landscapes and world histories.

In what seems to be the most useful order to introduce them, the six spells are Conjure Reservoir, Channel Power, Beget Source, Bind Spell, Reinscription and Filter Signature.

Noircana - magical signatures

This is a first contribution to the noircana project I posted about yesterday, a possible campaign toolkit that JD, Garrisonjames and I are talking about below this post at The Disoriented Ranger.

This system covers magical signatures for users of magic and sources of power in a landscape, for a sandboxy, oracular-dicey campaign.

                                                                                                                              

Key elements are size, signature, generation and strength, for casters and sources.

Quick ruinedcitycrawls - and Conan on Necromunda?

For a little background for this post, go read this one at The Tears of Isstvan then this one at Hill Cantons. It's aimed at tactical roleplaying, but you can find an introductory ruleset for that here.

It's all about managing the complexity of a ruined cityscape that's occupied and prowled, and the key elements are the map, faction territories, depth, locations and activity.

                                                                                                                              

Local made good - collaborative campaign locations

This is a simple tool for generating locations in a campaign collaboratively, whether at the start or partway through. It's intended for both wargaming and roleplaying campaigns and it relates to the recent discussion with bombasticus at this post.

It's been tested with a group of five players who barely know each other and went down very well.

The central idea is this: the forces or characters that the players are guiding are part of the wider landscape, so they reflect this landscape and have relationships with elements of it. This tool treats them as a kind of inverse function to find the known nature of a given location.

                                                                                                                              

You'll need all of the players, plenty of dice (I'll assume d6s), a sheet of paper and at least one pencil or pen. The key elements are size, links, centre and features, and generation involves rolling dice on the sheet and marking the positions to form a map.

A simple architect builder

The machineries didn't get going so I missed the deadline for that Hill Cantons stronghold contest.

As a form of compensation, and an outlet for my interest in it, here's an architect builder, for when your character needs to know who's available to build a stronghold, or who they've gone and hired.

It's aimed at rules-light roleplaying, but it could also be used to inspire modelled terrain pieces for wargaming: did battle ruin all those buildings?

Words for worlds (1) - working past dwarves in space

Many people are likely aware of the IAU decision a few years back to create the new classification of dwarf planet, which reduced the 'full' planets in the solar system to eight and added five dwarves: Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake and Eris. Not everyone was happy, not least with the definition going beyond intrinsics to cover orbital clearing.

Beyond this issue, there's also the problem of division into comets and asteroids, bodies at Lagrangian points, the extra terms like 'minor planet', 'trojan' and 'centaur', transitions from gas giant to star and the challenge of reflecting relative size of moons and planets.

If there are more large worlds in the outermost reaches of our system and billions around other stars or travelling between them, these problems in classification could get worse.

To see if it can be helped based on existing terms, here's a simple two-term approach to core body type. The first word covers construction, the second mass. Here 'dwarf' shows only intrinsic aspects: its mass and hydrostatic equilibrium. Two words are coined: troid, from 'asteroid' and 'planetoid', for bodies of a mass below a dwarf, and mid, for stars and planets between the extremes, which seems fair but not too prosaic, has long roots and could be a nod to our geo- and heliocentric exceptionalism. The word 'planet' is optional.

1. ice / icy          1. troid
2. rock / rocky       2. dwarf
3. gas / gaseous      3. mid  
4. stellar            4. giant

As far as I can tell, it covers the core forms. Gamers will see immediately it's set up like two 1d4 tables so it could at least be used to generate locations for gaming. One or two purely conceptual results could make for interesting sci-fi experiments, like 'stellar troid'.

I think it's clear how it works. Using this approach, rather than teach children that Earth, Mars and Pluto have one or more 'moons', we'd say Earth is a mid with a dwarf, Mars is a mid with two troids and Pluto is a dwarf with five troids. It's still simplified, but less so.

With it our system gains lots of secondary dwarves, and if we're talking status that feels fair to worlds like Titan that may be home to terrestrial life's nearest neighbours. It sees our system become, as far as we know, one stellar mid, two gas giants, two ice giants, four rocky mids, I think 24 mainly rocky dwarves, and the oceans of ice and rock troids.

Various more extrinsic elements can be shown as extra terms, the most obvious being:

1. [primary / secondary / tertiary etc.]   1. [orbital / eccentric [dominant]]

                      2. Langrangian

                       3. interstellar

Halley's Comet then becomes a primary ice troid, or - more fully - a primary, eccentric, dominant ice troid. The adjective 'interstellar' still covers those so-called 'rogue' planets.

Who can see the problems with it?

_

Well met

A look at bonds with flash fiction, with a simple propluristemic tool for relationships in gaming.

- - - - - -

First the weekly flash fiction challenges, a joint entry for both Jennie's Expansion Joints and Succinctly Yours over at Grandma's Goulash.

The first should have 15 words, one of them tie, and the second needs 140 characters, has to be based on this image of a detective-like figure and may use the word fabricate. Tough task.

Will they match up?

Undeniable connection.

A tie indiscernible, apparently fragile. Nevertheless, immensely strong.

Impossible to fabricate - proof.

Elementary.

It's inspired by Jennie's intro for this week. So how about that gaming tool then?

Well met

This is a simple system for setting up random relationships between characters. It's aimed at sandbox roleplaying, but could work in wargaming too; more on that later. It builds on the idea of minus level characters and finds another use for the basic scarcity system I've been developing for the ever-growing Hogintu supplement.

The basic mechanism is a die roll. I'll assume a D6, but you can use any. When a character or party meets another person, roll the die. The result is the distance from the current location that this person is from, geographically and/or socially; the higher the number, the further away the character has his or her associations.

The GM or players can interpret this. A 1 may be a character from this exact neck of the woods, a 5 from the edge of the region. An instant foundation for the encounter, and perhaps even immediately obvious to the characters from equipment or accent.

If you roll a maximum, the person is from a degree further afield. Roll again and add the second result to the first. Keep rolling and adding for each extra maximum.

All well and good, but here's the important bit. When creating a new character, each player should go through the same process, and record the total. This number represents their origins. You can fudge to suit character concept of course, and a well-travelled character could have multiple rolls, use a larger die or be given a range.

Every time the player character or party as a whole changes location, you could add or subtract a degree, here 6, from the player character numbers to represent distance travelled. If you want more you could even set up a matrix for extra dimensions.

And the point? If when two characters meet, the numbers match, they know each other, or at least know of each other. You could roll a one-off die for how well, with a 1 being close family and a 6 a friend of a friend or distant acquaintance. This has clear potential. Strong bonds, shared secrets, memories unlocked, even new loyalties.

And for wargaming? To take just one well-known historical example, when Poland was partitioned, Poles could find themselves facing each other in the armed forces of one of the three occupying empires, either the Prussian, Austrian or Russian. For a Romantic patriot and keeper of the flame, that must have been painful.

Why not roll for units when related factions meet on the battlefield? They may do their nominal duty, but could instead choose to hold back, refuse to fight, even find common cause. A plan or force might collapse as supposed opponents join together and rise up.

_

Mapmaking merry (6.1)

Here's a variation on my system for random map creation. This time I need it to work for collapses, avalanches and the like, whenever characters could be trapped in new structures.

It's simple, but does build on the previous post so you'll need to read that to follow.

1. The initial choice of polygon should have a number of points (corners, perhaps also centre) at least equal to the number of characters if you don't know who'll be affected, or the number affected if you do. Mark each character as being at a single point, arranged as they are at the moment the landscape changes.
   
   
2. For who's affected, choose a die with a number of faces equal to or above the number of points. For a fair mass I'd suggest rolling it once per character and more dice for a greater mass or spread. The results indicate the points covered; results without points could be overspill. Repeat results could mean multiples of material finishing up in a location, for the purposes of injury and digging out.
   
   
3. For the connections the degree of complexity ought to be low, perhaps half or less of the usual die, and a modifier of -1 should be applied. This means there could be no connections at all, with every character potentially isolated.

Buried characters could be allowed to create new passages, deeper in or outwards, and for this and the rescuers you'll need an approach suitable for the game system. It could be a roll per turn, or a random number of turns per connection. Direction could also be random to represent disorientation, with modifiers or a reroll for voices or other guidance.

Hiding the map from rescuers means they'll have to guess where to begin digging, but a roll could also be made. You might even want to have them test when moving over the material, to see if they trigger internal collapse and injury, or fall in themselves.

_

Mapmaking merry (6)

Here's an idea for drawing a quick random map, for entering undesigned settlements or complexes spontaneously during a wargame or roleplaying session. Choose your die.

1. Lightly sketch a quick polygon with a number of points or sides equal to the number of faces on the die, i.e. a standard six-sided die needs a hexagon.
   
   
2. Roll that die once per degree of complexity wanted, i.e. for a simple map once.
   
   
3. Roll again a number of times equal to that result, i.e. if a D6 is rolled and the result is a 4, roll again 4 times. Each result from this set of rolls corresponds to a point on the perimeter, e.g. with a D6, 1 is 2 o'clock, 2 is 4 o'clock etc. Mark them. Re-roll or ignore duplicates, as preferred for speed and complexity.
   
   
4. For each point marked roll once more. This is the number of lines branching from the point, either to other points on the perimeter, into or across the centre, or outwards. If you wish, you can roll for direction, as if determining points again.

Any non-connections can be assumed to mean connections by other means, maybe through buildings if a streetmap, over the surface or through rooms if a tunnel complex, or by secret entrances, potential breakthroughs or only teleportation of some kind.

For entrances to buildings and rooms, you'll need more time, but could roll the die for each line, once for one side, once for the other. The number on the die could be the number of entrances, or you could divide, or there could be a 50% chance, as preferred.

A D4 will produce a map to a square grid of course, while higher numbers will increase the range of possible axes and give something more organic. Use multiple tessellating polygons for larger maps. The D6 is the largest die for regular tessellation.

_