I wrote this for Shayakand and plan to develop it in the future. Feel free to adapt them to your setting. For more details behind the scenes, I’ve also included a discussion we had on our internal Google Groups site: Gmail – [NMP] Demons and Undead

Many of these undead and demons have unusual motivations and powers. For example, the Pisacha can be bribed to heal others, despite the fact that they are universally savage. The Pani are also unusual in that they are good demons. The Ankura have motivations obvious only to themselves. They radiate evil, yet often seek to mitigate the effects of that evil.

I hope to include some OSR style stats on some of these creatures in the near future.

Mada – An enormous creature with four arms. It can change size at will to become very large.  It has a powerful bite.

Bhringi – A skeleton with three legs. Bhringi are created when a devotee of Khalu is martyred. Very slow moving, but able to use a limited selection of clerical spells (thanks to Khalu). Khalu is specific to Shayakand as the most vile of the evil gods. Feel free to substitute with an evil deity of your choice.

Pani – Good demons that reside in rivers and protect sacred animals. Individual Pani are very-well armed and armored at all times. They will fiercely defend the sacred animals in their care. They are often seen as emissaries of the goddess of agriculture.

Vetala – A type of undead created when children do not properly honor a parent in death. During the day, they inhabit corpses in order to freely move around. A mark of an inhabited corpse is that the hands and feet are turned backwards. At night, they travel as incorporeal beings. They can only feed on blood when they are incorporeal. Vetala are sought by librarians, wizards and others due to their knowledge of the events of the past, present and future. While incorporeal, they may attack with a blighting touch and with an imbue madness attack. Vetala are not very resistant to magic and suffer penalties when attacked with magic in incorporeal form.

Pisacha - A type of base demon that is cruel and barbaric, even by other demons’ standards. They are driven by blood-lust to fight and make war. They keep alive by consuming raw flesh. Like Rakshasa, their hands are backward. They are not symmetric, their upper body is much larger given them a hunchback appearance. Their long arms reach past their knees. They have short, but strong and thick legs. They may have the head of an owl, pig, or a deformed leopard. Pisacha are occasionally sought out by rural villagers hoping that a Pisacha will heal a loved one. Although flesh-eaters, pisacha also like specially prepared rice cakes called ‘blood rice’. If a pisacha likes the gift, it may decide to heal the wounds of whomever the maker of the blood rice wishes.

Bhuta – The name given to a category of creature most closely associated as ghosts. It is believed that bhuta are the spirits of those wrongly executed, or those that committed suicide. Unless otherwise stated, ghosts are incorporeal and appear as fading mist. They can inhabit corpses in order to feed on flesh to sustain themselves. Unlike Vetala, they may possess a corpse at anytime and the hands and feet of the victims are not turned backwards.

Charabuta:  These ghosts stay incorporeal and feed on stolen livestock. They generally do not harm others instead preferring to steal and play practical jokes. It is believed that Charabuta lived as roques in their lifetime. They generally do not care that their existence can strengthen nirrti fields. (The abomination is that they are undead and do not actively seek to move on to the next life.) If pressed into combat, they are very quick and may retain rogue abilities they had in life.

Ulebhuta: Ghosts that look like owls. In general, they seek to feed on solitary individuals walking in heavily wooded areas at night.

Ankura – The ghost of a priest, these are very rare and extremely powerful undead comparable to a lich. Ankura are usually created by a non-evil priest that for one reason or another feels betrayed or abandoned by the gods. They are aware that their existence is unnatural, but they are able to mitigate the effects of any nirrti field that they generate by performing various rituals. They will not consume the flesh of sentient species, instead consuming cooked animal flesh.

Vapavasa – These apparitions do not inhabit corpses. They alternately appear like small globes of greenish light or like a human in tattered clothes. Like Ulebhuta, they feed on individuals. However, vapavasa live by rivers or the sea, usually feeding on fishermen.

Netratrvehina – These headless ghosts inhabit cities and towns. Humans, Chotaki and foreigners that are members of the lowest social class fear them. These ghosts avoid detection by possessing the body of a member of the lowest social class and pretending to sleep. Stories of the Netravehina are the source of many urban dwellers treating members of the lowest social class with dignity instead of disdain and disgust. It is rumored that mistreating a member of the lowest social class increases the chances of being a netravehina’s next victim.

Cover Illustration for Broterh Ptolemy & The Hidden Kingdom, by Paul KingTWe

This fall we will be releasing The Hidden Kingdom, a 4E D&D Adventure Setting in the same vein as The Desire – only with several important improvements.

The Hidden Kingdom will feature a complete Heroic Tier Adventure with a rich storyline. Inside you will find over 10 combat encounters, a bestiary, new feats and rituals, a rich story line, a completely flesh-out frontier city to run future adventures in and plenty of opportunities for roleplaying as much as “rollplaying”. Here at Nevermet Press, we consider The Story Is The Thing to be the golden rule – so this will not be your typical hack’n slash battle adventure.

That being said, we know that 4E D&D has a rich combat system and we are looking for playtesters to run the various encounters in the adventure.

If you have a regular 4E D&D gaming group, and would be interested in playtesting individual adventures from The Hidden Kingdom, then please sign up using the form below. As a bonus – once THK reaches production, we’ll provide each of you with a free PDF copy of the entire Adventure Setting and a DEEP discount on the print edition (at cost).

So – if you like what we are up to, and want to help us make some great games! Sign up below. Leave a comment if you have any questions too. Cheers — Jonathan.

AFTER CLICKING SUBMIT – THE SPINNING BAR WILL CONTINUE FOREVER. HOWEVER – WE DID GET YOUR SUBMISSION. (Looking for a new forms plugin for WordPress…) Sorry for the confusion.

This is the first part of a series about the The Prison, by John Schutt, a dungeon locale set high above the seas off the coast of Loaerth City.  The Prison will be found in the upcoming adventure setting Loaerth & Feywyrd for the Savage Worlds Roleplaying Game.

by John Schutt

A cave complex. An ancient citadel. A mansion long forgotten. A demiplane hidden in plain sight. What do all these things have in common? They are dungeon crawls, usually, with a lot of checking for traps and cautious listening, the occasional monster fight and a lot of loot. The tradition of dungeon crawls goes back to the beginnings of the hobby, and remains a good way to cut one’s teeth in the design business. The thing is, though, dungeons, with over 30 years of history, the burgeoning debate on their realism and its importance in the game, and the sheer number of them out there, and you have a recipe for boredom and even disdain.

I do not disagree with this sentiment. Not only is the idea of a dungeon rather absurd, its idea having roots in the prisons of old and moldy cellars filled with supplies, among other things, but they are stagnant things. You can’t just clean out a dungeon and expect it to go away. As a place outside the common people’s eyes, degenerates of all kinds quickly flock to dungeons, and all manner of foul things appear in their cobwebbed, darkened halls. The process repeats itself endlessly so long as there is a ready supply of baddies and an equally sizable number of adventurers willing to kill them. The best dungeons, those that affect the world around them, tend to be filled not just with muck and small evils, but demon lords and archdevils and liches and aboleths and whatnot. Still, though, the dungeon itself remains rather static, never truly changing its form barring some major worldly event like an earthquake or the passing of time or a major magical catastrophe. Did the Tomb of Horrors become a completely different complex of rooms after the PCs cleared it of whatever lurked within? I don’t really thing so. Indeed, the only real modification I’ve ever seen to a dungeon has been puzzle hallways that move at the will of the villain. These too are limited to the determined settings in the maze-like structure. What I want, and what I plan to make, is a truly dynamic dungeon. Not only in its occupants, but in its design and function in the world around it.

I call my creation The Prison, for no other name truly fits. A floating mountain off the coast of Loaerth, ever circling, no map of The Prison exists, because the rock itself is always shifting, always flaking away. Having appeared suddenly after the Helfay ritual went awry, it is a quiet place that seems to have been irreparably damaged by the huge magical backlash the ritual caused.

And that’s all I’m willing to say about it now. What I want to talk about is how I plan to reinvigorate the dungeon crawl genre of adventure. Where Monte Cook’s DungeonaDay.com goes back to the roots of classic dungeon crawls and perfects them, I want to experiment and invent a whole new system of crawling through mortared stone and steel barred doors. This post, and the one to follow, should lay out, without too many spoilers, how I want to do that.

My first topic for discussion is The Prison’s location itself. It is not grounded in the planes outside the Material, nor is it in the ground or within the earth at all. It sits a thousand feet above and a half-mile out from the Loaerth coastline. To make it visible, I decided to make it the size of a small mountain, carved into the rough shape of a prison, castle or cityscape, perhaps a dark mirror of Loaerth City itself. What I like about making a floating dungeon is the difference that creates with the idea of actual dungeons. Classically, such places existed below the ground or within something large or anchored to some place. In challenging these assumptions, I’ve taken a risk. First, because low level characters usually can’t fly or even acquire the means with which to do so, I have seemingly removed them from the equation. Second, I may step on the toes of long held beliefs and loves about dungeons. Third, how does one escape something that high up without flight, compounding problem one.

In addressing the first issue, I thought, why not have low level characters trapped inside The Prison itself, in the highest reaches where the threats are lowest? Whoever or whatever controls the dungeon might find them, for whatever reason, particularly interesting and decide to give their prisoners a little sport. Another answer might be making a campaign arc that entails somehow getting to The Prison in the first place as well as establishing a good, low-level reason to do so.

As for the second issue, all I can really say is that when something needs to change, some people won’t be too happy, and I can only hope my work makes them at least condone what I’ve tried to do.

The third issue, that of escape, is perhaps the hardest one for any level character, seeing as whatever holds up a small mountain must contain some potent magic of its own. Is there a dimensional lock on the entire facility? Is gravity different in and around it? Could anything even fly to it in the first place? Given these questions, and a few other factors I won’t reveal yet, I added the flaking of the rock or whatever material makes up The Prison’s walls. Different in its construction and composition than almost anything in the world today, or at least, the known world, the flakes sometimes don’t fall like giant stones. Sometimes they float, other times they drift, and some of them even sit in the air and wait, resisting the pull of the planet below as if it were not there. Is there a way to control which stones do what? If so, how and where is it? Could the stones have minds of their own, and if so, how do you talk to what was once very much a wall or floor? The questions on this matter are endless, and endlessly interesting to boot, and to all of them the answer might be, “Yes, but you don’t know yet. Go find it.”

Then again, this last quote is really the genesis for all adventures, and dungeons are just the tip of the iceberg.

Open Game Table, Volume 2

As of September 1st, 2010 – Nevermet Press, LLC will become the official publisher of the Open Game Table: Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blog book series. I previously published the books as a quasi-independent project (with oh… 100+ volunteers helping out), but it was never something that I formally associated with Nevermet Press. The reasons were simple. The company was started by three bloggers – myself, Michael Brewer, and Quinn Murphy – so it never made sense for me to roll OGT into NMP since I had two partners who were not involved as publishers of those books (although they both contributed as authors).

In 2009, before our website went live, Quinn stepped down as a partner shortly before our website went live – but Michael and I continued to herald NMP as its two leaders. In that time we have brought one eBook to market, which has received positive reviews thus far, published over 125 blog posts on a wide variety of topics and genres, and formed a formal LLC for the company. Unfortunately, however, due to family and work constraints Michael Brewer has also decided to step down from Nevermet Press – leaving me as the sole owner of the LLC.

I know that, as a fan of Nevermet Press, you may be reading this and wondering where NMP is “going” and what changes are ahead for us. Well – I’ll say that we aren’t going anywhere but forward! And what changes are coming down the pipe will aim to move us towards being more productive while maintaining that “indy” streak in everything we do.

What about Open Game Table then? Well, with any potential issues moot at this point, it makes sense now for Open Game Table to be part of Nevermet Press’s official catalog. My time is fairly limited, and doing all my RPG publishing adventures under one roof makes much more sense than two. Hopefully (again time permitting) I’ll be able to add Open Game Table to the Nevermet Press store page. Stay tuned to that change, and some other updates to our website in the near future.

That’s it for now – but hopefully I’ll be posting another update on The Hidden Kingdom and the Dead Queens of Morvena development very soon.

Cheers,

Jonathan Jacobs

Jeff Rients posted this last week on his website. It is about the mythical island of Antilla drawn on maps from medieval times through the early 19th century. In his article, he quoted an idea pitched in Dragon Magazine #34.

Here’s a different idea that encompasses four islands that can be dropped off any coast in your campaign world. Some specifics are given, but to fit in the size of this post, there’s only thumbnail information. There is lots of room to expand and plenty of unanswered questions. Feel free to expand it if you like. If you do, let me know.

Background

A little over five generations ago, followers of the twin gods of virtue disappeared. In some cases, entire villages were abandoned. Cryptic messages were found in the religion’s main temple detailing a mass exodus to ‘consecrated isles’ in an untamed, but idyllic world.

Today, a local port is hiring crew and adventurers to sail to newly discovered islands given the name, The Twelve Temple Isles. The stationmaster will tell anyone interested about a set of civilized islands marked by the virtuous inhabitants and twelve large temples.

Once on the two main islands, would-be adventurers will discover twleve larger cities hugging the coastline. Each city contained a very large, ornate temple dedicated to one or the other of the twin gods. As described, the cities are quite clean with little to no crime.

What is striking is that the cities are over 98% human with an apparent lack of any elves. The townsfolk will react with almost childish wonder to any elf or half-elf. The other striking thing about the two main islands is that the interior is entirely unmapped and rarely explored. Although the local townsfolk will not express interest in visiting what they call the Heathenlands, they will do what they can to support anyone that wants to go.

The two smaller islands each serve as a benefice for each of the high priests. The islands are elevated about 1000 feet above sea level and appears to be a completely flat plateau covered mostly with grass. On the northwest corner of each island will be the residence of the high priest. Although large for a home, the structures are not ornate. The interior will have the barest of furniture.

For Explorers

Characters that are just starting on their adventuring career can find plenty of challenges exploring the interior of the main islands. Most of what lies within is unknown. Since each of the large islands are roughly the size of Portugal, there is plenty of room for lost cities, hidden civilizations, victims of the church’s colonization of the islands and more.

Those characters that decide to stick around, especially those that wish to purchase land, will be pressured to convert. Demands of the church will be particularly light, especially if the characters have cleared out a section of land in the interior.

Cities will not have very much crime and the local officials are not inclined to engage in political intrigue. Anyone with any real authority is a priest of the church. A bishop usually serves as spiritual leader and mayor of the town. Other priest perform other civic duties ranging from dealing with sewage, acting as police chief, or managing city markets.

No character can visit the benefice of a high priest without an express invitation. Each of the smaller islands have a small town just above sea level on the southeastern corner of the island. Anyone can visit the smaller islands, but interlopers that openly discuss exploring the rest of the island are forcibly removed, by death if necessary.

Gemilla

Gemilla (pronounced ge-MEE-yah) is the largest of the four main islands that comprise the Twelve Temple Islands. This island is devoted to Mdedro, the female of the twin gods. Each of the seven cities on the island are named for the seven virtues she espouses: generosity, wisdom, longevity, dignity, beauty, wealth, and honesty. In the local language, the names are, in order,Galenki, Sibradze, J’veli, Lishup-Leba, Silimazi, Samdedron, and Patzneba

Each of the seven cities are laid out on a simple plan. The main road (chardil) begins at the northeastern corner of town and runs to the southwestern corner. It is crossed by the other main road (samkret) that runs from the city’s two opposite corners. In the middle of town, where the two streets cross, is the city’s main market and temple.

Other streets run in the same directions in grids throughout the city.

Padare

Padare is the small island that lies southwest of Gemilla. It serves as the benefice of the high priestess of the Twin Gods. The town of Bude on the southeast corner is known for its botanical gardens.

Didige

North of Gemilla lies the other large island in the Twelve Temple Isles. This island is devoted to Namro, the male of the twin gods. Each of the five cities on the island are named for the five virtues he espouses: truth, charity, friendship, devotion, and duty. In the local language, the names are: Simarde, Savelmok, Mesatvis, Ergula, Morige

Unlike their kinsmen on the southern island of Gemilla, citizens here do not find acquiring wealth very important. An unstated belief on this island is that duty and friendship are best learned through military discipline. As a result, almost everyone on this island is trained in the use of a sword and bow.

Although mages are uncommon on the Twelve Temple Isles, they are especially rare on Didige.

Ymana

Ymana lies north of Didige. It serves as the benefice of the high priest of the Twin Gods. The town of Chmala on the northeast corner is known for it’s metal working. Metal is mined from rich veins of iron. As a result, there is a large network of tunnels running throughout the island.

Barrateb Ku

The Barrateb Ku, or Islands of Evil, lie between Didige and Gemilla. There are dozens of tiny islands that serve as bases for pirates, or places of refuge from the church. Both of the big islands send out missionaries every year in efforts to purify these islands.

Other Ideas

For those that play games that stick close to the SRD, priests of the twin gods may have alternating domains.

The bishops of each of the twelve towns may have psionic power. The bishops use their power to keep crime down in their locales.

The high priest and priestess are mystic theurges, able to wield divine and arcane magic. They may limit the use of arcane magic on the islands in order to prevent others from becoming more powerful that they are.

The high priest and priestess died during the original colonization. This fact is unknown to the citizens of the islands.

For a darker, more Orwellian feel, there can be notices about the virtues posted throughout the town. The names of the twin gods can be featured in civic art declaring their love for their followers.

The Barrateb Ku contains the original inhabitants of the islands. They were forced here when they could not resist the colonists.

Other humanoids, friendly and evil live in the central parts of the two large islands. They are unaware or unconcerned by the human cities.

Bibliography

by John S.R. Schutt

While the world RPGs is filled with abstractions and simplifications, from the hit point system to the alignment system, one thing that remains constant, at least while sitting at the table with other people: the emotion that goes into a session.

There’s anxiety, joy, sadness, anger and even surprise when the unthinkable happens at the right (oftentimes wrong) time. The players experience a myriad of emotions in the course of a game, adventure, campaign, whatever, and it should follow that their characters do as well. I mean, they wouldn’t be roleplaying games if the emotion given out by a player didn’t come through in the character.

What’s always bugged me, however, is the seeming lack of emotion from the world at any given moment. One can make the case that the overworld reacts to the actions of the PCs, and good GM’s make sure that it does. Indeed, a static world of stock characters who care nothing for the living, breathing landscape around them would be subject to a constant yawning from the players. I think what needs to happen is that the adventurer, and perhaps even the adventure, should take less from the roleplay and the combat and dig into the emotion of life.

Allow me to set the scene. An entire town is massacred, torched and salted by a roving band of…something bad, let’s say. The adventuring crew, our PCs, are outraged, perhaps because they grew up there, or they had friends or companions or mentors who are now naught but scorched bones and withered clothes. In a fit of righteous (or malevolent) fury, the band sets off in search of revenge, justice and good old fashioned loot. They adventure across many lands and find the end boss who orchestrated the whole thing. They defeat him and take his stuff, avenging their fallen comrades or what have you, set out to restore the lost location to its former glory. The adventure ends with the doling out of XP and a sincere feeling of accomplishment for the characters and, by extension, their players. From there the PCs perhaps spend a few in game months to years making sure the town remains strong and that they know their loved ones did not die without memory. They then set off for the next big adventure.

Perhaps that scene is exaggerated, but my point is this: adventures and those that undertake them are creatures of moment, where emotion takes a backseat to action. The best adventures try to meld them and some even succeed.

In my eyes, the emotion needs to drive the action.

Players, and the NPCs and world around them, should act not because of the metagame, or out of a single set of negative emotions, but in response to a full gamut of feelings and emotions. A tall order? Perhaps. But I’m going to share a little secret with you, and hope that our friends in the editorial department don’t mind (if you’re reading this, they didn’t).

We here at Nevermet Press are attempting something quite akin to that. You may have heard of our newest project, the Dead Queens of Morvena. In it, we’re tackling horror, and I myself am spearheading a graphic novella project to truly give the feeling not just in words but in pictures and thought and feeling. In the Dead Queens, one of the prime ways we’re tackling the problem of emotion is the idea of helplessness. Certainly the setting might be played as an action packed undead hunt using the Pathfinder or 4^th Edition rules, but it might be better served played by PCs without all that power. The world around them collapses, wracked constantly by supernatural forces and evils beyond imagining. The darkness of the night is something to dread with one’s own soul, and every step might mean a fate worse than death. What I want, and I hope the others do as well, is that glimmer of hope in the distance. The best horror does one of two things: first, it shatters the perceptions and leaves one powerless; or two (and my personal preference), it shows one his own insignificance while allowing him the opportunity to understand himself on a deeper, more powerful level than before.

What I’m really trying to get at here is that life, real life, is a conflicted set of chaotic occurrences that make no sense even after countless explanations and wherein hope might be the only path to sanity. In RPGs, something like this is hard to find. There’s a really bad thing going down and as the party grows in power and influence through a set of carefully crafted circumstances, they learn about this very bad thing. Because they’re adventurers, they instinctively seek it out and end it in some way. What I want, and what I hope Nevermet Press can deliver to you, our readers, is an adventure setting that defies this conception and allows for situations of the darkest sort, while still allowing for little bits of joy to shine through. I don’t want a real life simulator. We get enough of that through living and The Sims. What I want is an adventure where life intrudes and breathes energy into the action. Where helplessness gives way to empowerment, and where, if you’ll indulge me in the cliché, the little guy saves the day.

Hello everyone! This is my first post here on the blog and I hope to be making more on a fairly frequent basis. I’m a new face here – though I’ve been involved since July and am working on a few projects behind the scenes (i.e. the upcoming Hidden Kingdom 4E Adventure Setting, and The Dead Queens of Morvena). Hope you enjoy this first article and you can expect to see more from me in the future. Now on to the article…

When characters are travelling, it’s nice to have the world change around them even if it’s just as a marker to demonstrate that they’re somewhere other than where they started. One of our writers, John Payne, came up with a great way to do this in his recent article by changing the beasts of burden used in a society.

His article got me thinking of how I make worlds feel whole and textured in my games. My personal favorite technique to help your players feel like they’re somewhere foreign isn’t to simply to change what the races are called but to change the behavior and trappings of races and cultures.

One thing I dislike in fantasy settings are drastically different species of the same race (especially elves) themed to environments instead of new races altogether or different cultures of the same. As an alternative, I introduce three different examples cultures of elves, each having a distinctly different feel and behavior while remaining mechanically identical. The goal is to show one way a GM can make players feel like they’re truly  travelling in a complete and textured world. 

The Kingdom of Cielo

These elves don’t have any particular inclination for forests or magic, they are the dominant race in a kingdom they conquered by air. They excel in the construction of sky-ships, using them to patrol and maintain their lands.

On religion, they view gods as a frivolous waste of time, worshipping their ancestors instead. They have a flair for the melodramatic and a decided lack of subtlety including a very strong connection between appearance/behavior and one’s nature and profession. What you see is what you get in Cielo – the elves there don’t have a cultural basis for subtly, sarcasm, or double meanings. Villains and dastards wear black cloaks and skulk through alleys; heroes are dressed in white and gleaming gold and never speak a lie; sky-ship captains swing from ropes, wear brightly colored loose fitting clothes, and spend their time wooing women at every port they call on.

The Changed

In a great City sprawling across half a continent, engaged in an eternal war, Elves exist as magically altered members of humanity. Designed for war as scouts, snipers and long distance combatants they come from many walks of life.

Those that volunteer to become elves have to pay for the incredibly expensive process from their own pockets and those that are drafted into the military are often subjected to the change as a way to “pay their debts off” by providing a service to the city.

Scorned and treated with distrust by most humans in the City once elves retire from the military they often stick to the underbelly of society, if they don’t try to leave the City altogether in search for lonely wildernesses. Those that volunteered often work as thieves or operatives for various noble houses or powerful guilds, possessing a much better fate than their drafted cousins.

When exposed to elves from different continents or planes these elves react with shock and perhaps hope for something better. They yearn for leadership and examples to lead them from their mostly miserable lot.

The Wela’n Elves

In the depths of far jungles dwell these Elves, building temple-pyramids high enough to challenge mountains. Obsessed with time itself they build their pyramids up cycle by cycle, year by year, perhaps using John’s Ettl to do much of the work.

They worship time and its passage, chronicling it with a hundred different systems of calendar.  They’ve evolved no monetary currency and instead use a complex system of trade and barter with value based upon the time spent upon an object. Older objects are worth much more than newer ones as a general rule.

At the tops of their pyramids lie sacred pools of water maintained from the beginnings of their obsession with time. Their priests stare into the pools reading the future in the ripples caused by rain and their own hands drawing patterns on the surface.

Behavior, government and even trade is ruled by time (of year, month, week and day) and outsiders will make little headway without knowledge of the calendar or a good guide.

What kinds of cultures have you created for your game? What are some of your favorite fantasy or rpg cultures? What ways do you flesh out your world; make it feel more textured and real?

Sometimes I want the players to feel like they are in a place that is different. I don’t mean different in a disturbing way, but in a way that can make them say to themselves that they are not in your “typical” fantasy world anymore.

In literature, an overused trope is simply reskinning a familiar creature in different looking flesh[1]. For example, a book may feature a race of short, stocky fellows with beards, that like caves and axes, are generally grumpy and have an eye for stone masonry. They are not dwarves. No, they are Fjordians or Schenectadians, but whatever you think, they are not dwarves.

Having said that, they should be a way to just tweak something without having to invent a set of mechanics, skills, feats, edges, or some other aspect your system of choice of employs. It should look different and be different, at least a little. Here’s one idea for a different set of beasts of burden. Why beasts of burden? They are probably one of the first things the characters will see when they approach town.

The inspiration for these creatures comes from my son. He recently purchased a bag of plastic bugs from the zoo. Each bug is about four inches long and pretty detailed. I thought that the lack of anatomical correctness would be a problem. For my son, however, it was the source of a set of new creatures. He picked up the ant-like creature and began describing the ettl and what it could do.

So, in order to give proper credit, my son’s contributions to these creatures are:

One kind has eight legs instead of six. The name, ettl. One kind flies in the air. One kind carries very heavy things. Ettls are the good bugs.

Taking those elements and tweaking three common work animals will give you this:

Ettls

Ettls comprise one of several types of creatures that are similar to ants in appearance. They can live just about anywhere except arctic and cold climates. They prefer to live in large grasslands, where wild ettls are frequently spotted. Domesticated ettl are usually seen in tropical areas where their tremendous strength is employed in the building of massive stone structures.

Ettls are vegetarian – they eat grasses and flowers. Domesticated ettl will eat small fruit that is slightly overripe. Even wild ettls rarely attack. They flee whenever possible and will fight only to protect their young. Female ettl are typically 25% larger than the males and will lay four to six eggs per litter.

Socially, ettls do not exhibit many of the traits characteristic of ants. They do not form social groups amongst themselves and do not build nests. It is rare to see more than four adults together in the wild. Ettls are very easy to domesticate and do not appear to fatigue despite working several hours at a time. Ettl ranchers claim that these creatures like the hard work and need a strong figure to provide the structure and order. They say the need for a stong figure is analogus to an ant colony’s need for a queen ant directing the workers. Although believed to be a superstition by scholars, many believe that women make the best ettl ranchers.

Ettl Cahin

These eight-legged creatures are the predominant type of domesticated ettl. Although slow moving, an individual ettl can drag loads close to ten tons. These gentle brutes are often used to take large stones from the quarry to a building site.

Ettl Chasan

These six-legged creatures more closely resemble ants that any of their kin. Using specially crafted harnesses and plows, Chasan are used for plowing new fields. With their strength, they are able drag the plow through even the rockiest of areas.

Ettl Tuey

These two-legged ettl are known for their running speed. They are built more like ostriches with large, powerful legs. Although they eat a very large amount of food in comparison to horses, they are faster and can run for very long stretches. They are the preferred mounts of messengers who ride them all night to reach far-flung destinations.

What about the ones that can fly?

Here’s where a little imagination can give you something that is different.

Ettl T’at’Ti

These four-legged creatures are used as flying mounts by the royal military. These creatures do not appear in the wild, but appear to result from selective breeding and magic.

Suggestions for using the ettl

Ettl are designed to be beast of burden by a temple-building civilization. They are a distinctly non-magical means to transport huge stones from the quarry to the temple building site. It would be common to see thirty or forty ettl cahin in a single line carrying large stones behind them.

They can, however, be used as a replacement for beasts of burden in any society. Using the superstition that women are better ettl ranchers provides many social plot hooks where ettl are used.

Before signing off, let’s add one more little thing to make these creatures interesting: they are immune to psionics. With that little fact, outsiders may have a reason to attack these creatures in an attempt to harvest their exoskeletons.

I’ll give Swords & Wizardry type stats for all four later this week. But now it’s your turn. What can you come up with? How would you improve the ettl? Are there other creative twists that would make them interesting?

by Charles Dickey

When I engage in a role-playing game, whether as a player or GM, my highest priority is immersion. A few defining points of immersion for me:

• Detailed settings including but not limited to
  • Environment – cities, forests, deserts, floating cubes of iron, islands of salt, or whatever else can be dreamed up.
  • A Calendar – seasons, cycles, weather, holy days, festivals, days of historic remembrance all hold within them the seeds for quality RP interaction and/or adventure.
  • Factions and Causes that the PCs and NPCs can align themselves with
• Player Characters who drive the story, impact and develop the world around them, and develop in complexity as play continues

As a young boy, RPGs—specifically the Red Box D&D set and sprawling out in tens of directions from there—had me at their cover art. I still remember the wonder at which I gazed at Larry Elmore’s sketches of the basic warrior character in that Red Box player’s book, and the sheer awe and increased wonder I felt as I delved into the text of both of those books. There were worlds more exciting and alive with experience than my hum-drum, air-conditioned suburban home could offer, and part of me, at that young age, stepped deeply into these fictional fantasy worlds.

In the past several years, I’ve been pouring my imagination into fantasy again: short stories, a draft of a novel, notebooks packed with a mess of illustrations and concepts, a homebrew campaign setting, a smattering of online games. In all of these endeavors, immersion, cultivating the illusion of reality, is key.

As a GM, I’m learning the value of thinking big and letting go. In running my game, I started with a fairly polished urban setting. I gathered my players and guided them in developing characters to insert into this setting. I carefully set up an adventure plot for them. On the first game night, I opened up with my carefully crafted scenario, then turned it over to them. They considered it all for a minute—from six different perspectives, mind you—and began to engage the world. They ignored key elements of my finely-crafted plot, or missed them altogether. Their characters fought with one another and made an art of belligerence. One character bullied a powerful NPC and almost got killed a few hours into the campaign by a swarm of enormous rodents powered by that NPC’s anger. A key building burnt to the ground. None of this was scripted. At the end of the night, I was frustrated and felt that nothing had gone right. Most of the plot points I had counted on them engaging, and most of the details I had scripted, were passed over, unused. For the GM who had spent hours of time preparing the adventure—set in a game world I had spent even more time crafting—this was a disappointing game session. Yet as time passed and I sat with the events, I began to love them. This chaos was better than anything that I could possibly script!

Running this ongoing game has taught me, in repeated punches to the gut, the importance of sketchy, loose preparation. I’ve drawn maps; plotted probabilistic encounter tables; stocked dungeons; detailed NPCs, gods, political structures, technologies, and economics. I have two notebooks, a full yellow pad of notes, an Obsidian Portal account, and another wiki. I’ve got plans, but when the gaming group gathers, I’ve got to drop those plans and roll with their wants and needs and whims. At this point, I think the best thing I’ve done is make this giant sandbox fantasy world for my players’ characters to root around and attempt to find their own stories in.

As a content developer for Nevermet Press, I’m interested in hearing from the gaming community regarding what a good adventure setting consists of.

GMs, are you looking for crafted, polished adventures that come ready to run?

How willing are you and your players to engage in “railroading” in order to successfully accomplish the goals of a pre-packaged adventure? Also, what level of detail do you look for in setting products? Do you look for stand-alone settings with details on regions, cultures, gods, races, monsters, and history?

Or do you prefer modular settings on a smaller and less detailed scale, leaving room for the GM and players to customize and tailor the setting to fit into an existing world?

Players, what do you look for in a setting?

Have you ever heard “You feel strangely compelled to…” said by the GM during a role-playing session? I have, and I’ve probably said it myself a few times too.

It just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?

Those words are a cheat in my opinion: a simple way for a Game Master to take control of a Player’s Character for an instant and yank that character in the direction needed.  The problem is that the word “strangely” is an admission that there is seemingly no good reason for the character to do this thing, an admission of guilt that the Poor GM cannot think of a way to justify how to make the PC do what’s needed rationally.

The thing is… it’s not the GM’s fault.  Even in the most pure of sandboxes – sometimes a PC needs a little nudge.  Most GM’s aren’t maliciously trying to take our characters from us and make them dance like marionettes.  GM’s are just trying to run a fun and interesting game and that requires events to occur and decisions to be made for the game to keep humming along at a good pace.  Sometimes to accomplish that, an NPC must do a bit of “diplomacy”, some social-fu to make your obstinate character go from “I-be-difficult” mode to “let’s-do-this-shite!”  The problem is that most social mojo rules in RPG’s have little in the way of justification or explanation to what went on to make the character who was just “socialized” now behave the way he’s supposed to.

With physical combat, RPG’s have it pretty-much locked.  Countless maneuvers, modifiers, powers, defenses, weapons and armor to make sure you have a pretty good idea just which pointy sharp-thing gave your character another troublesome orifice to deal with.  Social on the other hand is often resolved with a “I beat you! Now do what I say Biatch!” kind of finality.

At this point you’re probably rolling your eyes knowing where I’m going… mental hit points, which is probably sounding like the stupidest idea since the Smart Car I’m sure… but hear me out.

There is precedence for mental hit points.  In an earlier post I discussed an idea I had about personality traits as attributes.  One of those was Neuroticism, mental equilibrium.  Ever met someone neurotic?  They were probably pretty easy to get revved up weren’t they.  (I love people like that.)  Now have you ever been stressed out?  Experienced a panic attack perhaps?  Probably not the most productive time of your life was it?  Shaky hands, sweats, mind wandering making it hard to focus, its pretty tangible the difficulties associated with stress.

Now consider that some pretty well-established games are using variants on mental hit-points.  White Wolf has Willpower, Call of Cthulhu has Sanity, Cyberpunk has Humanity.

The questions we need to ask about the concept of mental hit-points is what happens when we lose them and how do we get them back?  The first question has a relatively obvious answer; penalties – the unpleasant kind that make getting good dice roll results harder.

The second answer though is a bit more tricky because there lies the reason for making social rules exist, a way to make the character take action because to do nothing is stressing him out…

In my system, mental hit points are called Calm, and I’m just dying to tell you how it works.

Any questions?