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| Matthew Adams |
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Sunday, March 31, 2019
Toika! Mood Art
Monday, March 11, 2019
Death Was Pleased - Ash, Cannibal Knights, and Math
We finished up our setting jam for my dark-fantasy, post-magical war, point-crawl (which is really a mix and mash of Gus L's Fallen Empire and parts of different settings I've taken a liking to). We've got four characters ready to go, a rough idea of our starting location, and a ton of cool player-made ideas for me to use and draw from.
Our current party roster is:
Our current party roster is:
- Baladur, Level 1 Wise Tainted Shaman
- Kasat, Level 1 Wise Librarian of the Circle
- Otto, Level 1 Strong Ordo Contemnite Mors Knight
- Remmy, Level 1 Deft Shriek Tamer of the Windriders
All of my players opted to be from various outsider groups and backwaters in the rough eastern regions of the world. I wanted to get some of my ideas down about this region and some of the aspects my players have injected into the setting.
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| Zdzisław Beksiński |
We will starting on the Road of Tombs, a grand imperial highway towards the eastern edge of things that was hit hard by the Wars of Regicide. Further east, past the Ash Wastes and fang-like mountains, is the distant domain of the Kingdom of Vheissu with its volcanic legions and magical mastery. The Road of Tombs is a mixture of somber memorial and monument of hubris, untold generations upon generations of ancient Agarthans entombed along its path for reasons long forgotten. Plundered during the wars as an easy source of necromantic fodder, it has been corrupted like much of the southeastern empire. Along its monolithic pathways the dead are particularly restless, dark shrines host shadowy groups, and necrophagic wyms carve out their desolation. Only the foolish or the exceedingly brave would travel its worn stones into the depths of the scoured Agarthan Heartland, making it a perfect route of travel for blackguards and secretive travelers.
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| Doe |
Ordo Contemnite Mors
Less of a formal martial order and more of a loosely connected group of fanatics hellbent on stopping the universal decay that Death has unleashed on the world. These warriors accept a Thrall Mark (a degenerate curse, based on potent dark Thaumaturgy) in order to gain potent abilities and power to oppose the abominations and horrors that now roam the world. Some even go so far as to turn to dark necromancy to stave off Death's foul embrace and carry on their forsaken crusade in this world, coming closer and closer to resembling the things that they hunt.
The eldest of the Ordo would be monstrous to the average person. If not for the now infamous Thrall Mark, it would be easy to mistake these old warriors as liche lords or dark knights. Many villages or caravans are shocked to find their savior, standing over the ruined remains of their monstrous attackers, to be quite monstrous themselves.
Others still, lose themselves to their endless crusade, becoming just another horror roaming the world and spilling blood. As a result, the public opinion on these fanatics can range from adoration and appreciation to being detested and even hunted.
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| Zhengyi Wang |
Tainted Peoples of the Ash Wastes
The Ash Wastes are probably most well known for two things: the infernal blood that runs deep in the people who live there and their mastery of unsavory magics. These shadowed borderlands made the perfect refuge for the demonic-hosts (individuals possessed and used for war), with the most stable of these beings being able to breed. Generations later, the infernal blood still touches some the folk of these lands, called the Tainted, with some more overtly affected than others. Perhaps as a direct result of this, the voodoo-esque magics of these nomadic tribes contain some of the most potent necromancy, hexes, and curses that can be found outside of the most well-preserved Imperial magics or demonic tomes.
Far from the picture of violent and bestial savages that the laughably exaggerated tales and Imperial propaganda abroad paint them as, the nomads of the Wastes are a very pragmatic and communal peoples. They exalt Demon Kings not because they aspire to be servants of darkness or seek great destruction in this world, but because of the ease with which their ancestry allows them to commune with the underlords and how useful such powers are in their difficult lives. These slaves to darkness would leap at a chance to escape the pacts and bargains that they have made, but with the rest of the world regarding them as monsters fit only for extermination this isn't likely to happen any time soon. The real dangers of the Wastes are the arcane creatures, leftover demon-hosts, and even outsiders summoned whole into the terrestrial world staling the crags and old battlefields of the those harsh lands.
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| Paul Canavan |
The Revived Library of Pythag
In the cold, north eastern reaches of the Agarthan Empire lies one of the most complete collections of knowledge on history, the outsiders, the Mystery Thaumaturgic, and more. The Library, practically a city with the population of its upper levels, is a bastion of learning and scholarship. The lower levels are seemingly infinite in their depths, plagued by secrets long forgotten and eager to escape. It was claimed centuries ago by a heathen god of hidden knowledge, with the ultimate goal of collecting and preserving all the world's knowledge and wisdom, who now rules this Bastard Kingdom from the Library as a Philosopher God-King.
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| Tatyana Kupriyanova |
You could spend a hundred lifetimes searching his collection and indeed many dedicate themselves to plumbing its depth and adding to its vast holds of information. As a reward for this service, Pythag whispers fragments of lost secrets of the Mystery to his Librarians. He only shares tiny fragments of his knowledge though, delighting in the boasts of his wisdom and jealously guarding the most potent of secrets. His Librarians are well know for their mastery of the mystical mathematics and their study of the alchemy of old. Pthag and his servants are particularly interested in scouring the Successor Empire and its ruins for every last scrap or fragment of forgotten knowledge and wandering Librarians can be found all across the imperial territories.
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Whitehack Houserules
So I wanted to put together a short guide for my players in my Death Was Pleased campaign. I'm only adding a few things that are direct author suggestions for game tweaks and a couple of quality-of-life tweaks.
Silver Standard: We will be using a silver standard for our campaign economy. Read all values in the gold as silver. Treasure earns 1 XP per silver piece value.
Referee's House Rules
Attribute Generation: Roll 3d6 in order for each of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Two of these scores may be swapped.
Silver Standard: We will be using a silver standard for our campaign economy. Read all values in the gold as silver. Treasure earns 1 XP per silver piece value.
Inventory Slots: Characters have ten inventory slots. Three of these slots are always quick access, representing items that aren't tucked away in pouches or bags. If they possess a backpack, sack, or similar container, they gain five additional inventory slots. Heavy objects take two or more slots per referee discretion. 1000 coins and 100 gems take a slot, anything less isn't worth counting. For every uneven number of additional objects beyond a character's current slot maximum, the character moves one category slower. If slowed, characters may strain to move faster.
Splintered Shields: Similar to how characters may save or roll once per battle to reduce damage, shields may be sacrificed to avoid damage. Anytime you take damage, you may opt instead to say your shield absorbed the blow. The shield is shattered and must be discarded, but all damage from the hit is negated. Against AOE damage effects, the shield may be sacrificed for an automatic save and half damage.
Commentary
Given that Whitehack rewards both low and high stat rolls, I'm perfectly fine with 3d6 down the line. A simple stat swap covers everything else I need. As for the silver standard, after reading Delta's house rules (a decent amount of which are almost already conceptually or mechanically in Whitehack to my surprise) I decided to swap over. Seems to be a nice way to allow gold to have real value, both monetary and for carrying convenience. Along the lines of carrying convenience, inventory slots are being used as even with the simplified weight scheme in the core rules it's still too much bookkeeping for my tastes. Abstracting slots, bags, and still having strength rolls to strain encumbered movement will keep things simple, still allow clever item management, and still reward high strength when it comes to hauling junk around. On a final note, as this is not a "deathcrawl" or "miserycrawl", having shields as ablative armor makes characters a little stickier and is a fun rule that I have used before that both my players and I enjoy.
I think the above changes will allow players to have effective characters, be able to carry more loot and adventure longer (you won't be leaving an area sooner with most of its treasure untouched due to it being to much to carry), and place emphasis on resource management being key to success and survival (give up the shield to tank the damage? Discard equipment to fill a bag with relics? Risk straining to carry your overburdened self to safety? I'm all about these micro level decisions as the party adventures).
I look forward to seeing how well these function and tweaking these as we play.
Sunday, March 3, 2019
Visions of Ruin
A Visual Palette for Death Was Pleased
I wanted to put together a visual summary of the new point crawl I'm working on, based off of Gus' Fallen Empire setting. Listen to this as you look through these.
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| Hubert Robert |
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| Hubert Robert |
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| Hubert Robert |
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| Carl Blechen |
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| Roman Kupriianov |
Death Was Pleased - Concept, Goals, and Notes
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| Paul Chadeisson |
That said, it's also a perfect toolkit to tackle some really weird and neat setting ideas!
Death Was Pleased
Looking at the major touchstones I had in mind making this will help me flesh this out:
- This is basically a remix/take on Gus' wonderful Fallen Empire setting
- Jake Wyatt's Necropolis comic (Go read it!)
- Kill 6 Billion Demons (Go read it!)
- Skerple's Alexandrian/Dark Souls-esque Iron Gates setting; while it has a different focus, the tone and process are really what inspired me here
So what do I want? I want this to be a point crawl with lots of faction play. I want to use some of the less-generic ideas on fantasy that I have come across. I want this to be a setting that can take full advantage of the Whitehack's ability to flesh our a setting together.
Design & Theme Goals
- Make a pointcrawl in a decaying world, with a mythical, massive, ruined city as the focus
- Use environmental storytelling
- Aesthetics of ruin are a must of course. We are fully rocking the pathetic aesthetic.
- Utilize Whitehack's rules on groups to make a faction rich environment where players can change the things that interest them
- Portray an apocalypse that isn't sudden and destructive, but slow, ruinous, and barbaric
- A sort of inverse colonialism with this decrepit ruins of this once all powerful civilization being flooded by it's former subjects who want its wealth, tech, and land
- Magic is technology. The usual spell slinging is a shallow fumbling of the marvels of old high magic and arcane manufacturing (this also lets me tap into Castle Blackmoor and OD&D leanings towards hints of items of high technology like ruined automatons, swords as prisons for higher dimensional beings, power armor, etc.)
- Human only - although subspecies, offshoots, and more exist because of magical tampering
- Pathetic and sad, not evil. Even the foulest horrors walking the world exist because of the mistakes and misguided desires of the past
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