Redwolf's Journal (continued)

 Shadow of the Erdtree is more Elden Ring - one of the best games of recent years. Oh. More? Okay, I was initially disappointed by the map size. That turned out to be because you initially only see about a quarter of the overall map. So, size-wise, it's respectable. And there is a layered element to it. There are a few tombs and some more complex areas. Overall, I think there's a good amount of terrain, though there are a few areas that are underused and relatively empty: - The abyssal wood is atmospheric, but really too expansive for what's there with no riding. - The "finger" areas are fairly large for being important in one quest line with very little more than being littered with annoying enemies. - The shaman village feels like there should be something, anything, there. The exploration was still fun, though, and I liked finding ways to get places I could see. There is still at least one truly evil tomb designer out there, though, with that teleporter-filled,...

I find it a little odd that the whole central point of argument in a game I'm playing (the synths in Fallout 4) should also be mirrored in a book I pick up. But there it is. The Mechanical is the start of a series depicting an alternate history pitting mostly the French-in-exile against a Dutch nation that's taken over most everything else (Europe anyway?) by virtue of their alchemy and the artificial beings, Clakkers, powered by it. In a lot of ways, though, it could be any two fantasy nations. While some real names and religions and such are tapped, the whole thing feels pretty skewed away from historical basis to me into the realm of fantasy. Overall, I enjoyed. The writing does spend a little too much time being descriptive at point, and the book contains what has got to be the most horrifying and haunting scene I've witnessed in years (if perhaps for personal reason), but it's still good. The story primarily follows three main characters, intersecting but not ...

So I recently finished a couple anthologies. As mentioned before, it seemed like a low-investment break as far as reading, plus it gives a chance to be exposed to more writers. Of course, as far as any "review" they're also something of a mixed bag. Fairly little struck me as outstanding in either direction. Blackguards is pretty much just rogue fantasy centered on "bad" people - some of them likable rogues and some not so much, as a book like this gives authors opportunity to flesh out side characters and backgrounds from their own series. Nothing too remarkable, though I saw enough interesting in one tale to delve into the attached series. Unfettered is almost as appealing for the story behind it as the stories within it. I don't think I'd heard of Shawn Speakman prior, but he certainly knows quite the list of current fantasy authors to draw upon. The stories vary much more wildly from twists on Arthurian legend to Kushiel series background to g...

In an era when story-based single-player games tend to run around 10 hours, it feels odd to have just finished a nearly 80-hour play through of a game. DA:I is very good. There's a lot to do. It's held back from perfection by having a number of elements that are not used to their potential, I would say. Mounts, for example, are neat to have, but totally overlookable. The war map missions are a nice way to interact with the world on a strategic level, but the different approaches your advisors offer seem to have minimal impact. Customization options for the keep are almost entirely cosmetic. In fact, consequence to choice in general feels a little bit lacking - I sided with mages over Templars, and should see how the other side plays out, but I don't get the feeling that much actually changes. All of these are things that add depth and variety to the game, but they would be better with more sense of repercussion. That said, the story is pretty solid. The characters are ...

Caught a link to a short article here that links to a more detailed discussion in which some established fantasy authors talk about income earned by writing. It's another "behind the curtain" sort of thing that I like to see.

As a follow up to my last post : Hmmm... so it's acceptable, at least in some cases, to conceal major plot twists. I would have expected at least a little more reservation from those two, just based on what I've perceived as a desire to not cope with major changes in a campaign and/or a desire for full disclosure in advance. Well, I agonize over and over, but... I really cannot imagine any way in which I would run this online. It's not terribly likely offline either (perhaps more due to scheduling and such), and there's really only one offline gamer I know who might read any of this anyway. Kyn, at least, keeps prompting me for more details whenever I post some sort of campaign seed, so here's what I scribbled/fleshed out the other day... Spoilery self-notes: The Empire of Vastyr assaults and is eventually defeated by the Republic the PCs come from. In the process, the PCs (and several NPCs) are exposed to mystical forces that render them more than human w...

I have some ideas floating around in my head that I want to tie in with a campaign concept I had in mind some time (years?) ago, but while I'm pretty sure I made a related LJ post back then, I'm unable to find it. Blasted me not tagging things in a useful fashion... Edit: Ah. There we go . So as I write out terrifically spoilery notes while they're in my head, a major question comes up. Mind you, this campaign is still all theoretical. And I think it unlikely still that I'd run it online. But I need opinions on a certain point. How much should a GM disclose to players about a new campaign? I have trouble with the "full disclosure" thing when there's some concept of the campaign that I feel works out well from a narrative perspective as a surprise to the characters. Yet the last time I tried that, in my Midnight game, I think it was far, far more trouble than it was worth. Or maybe I just didn't reveal enough ? I think there's some more ...

It's interesting to watch the evolution of fiction pushed by reality. These thoughts have bounced around in my head for a couple weeks, more recently brought back to mind by comments on the John Carter movie. I never read the Barsoom novels, but the whole "retro-futurism" concept reminds me the thoughts are more widely applicable than the few examples that have come to mind for me. One is Shadowrun. SR back in the 80's involved fighting your way to nodes so deckers could get in past security and crack open secrets worth stealing. As the internet and wi-fi became more ubiquitous in the real world, however, the Matrix became almost laughable. And, as a result, we have newer editions with more wireless technology. The concepts of decks and hard lines have become archaic. The biggest example that's been in my mind of late has to do with the Dresden Files. That's partly because the magic in the setting is (repeatedly) explained as being based on belief. A cha...

Okay, so you're in a fantasy world. The technological level is fairly limited, but there's magic to make up the difference. Now take a look out over the port and start thinking... Ships are good for getting people and cargo around. Handy, that. They don't require gateways or knowledge of your destination, technically, so you can explore with them. That's awesome! I want one of those. But why limit yourself to the seas? With magic, you can have a ship that can soar through the air, or cross planes! The form of a ship, however, is designed with the sea in mind. If you take that out of the equation, you should actually build things differently, shouldn't you? Let's start with the bottom of the hull. That's really only suited to sitting in water. If you don't want to be limited to seasides, what then? Well, if you make the bottom flat, at least it can sit upright on the ground. Heck, that's a really good place to put some sort of entrance or loa...

Cracked is occasionally an amusing read. Today's list doesn't really contain any surprises for me, but the bit about standard time zones phasing in within about fifty years on either side of 1880 strikes a chord. Just a few days ago, my thoughts we wandering over how radically the evolution of transport and communication has changed life and how that really kicked in with the railroads. Before that, a lot of things simply didn't matter because they were days or months distant, rather than hours or days. Pondering that also calls up previous thoughts of how any world with common or powerful magic would radically change. So many settings take this for granted. The "dark ages" were dark partly because communication and travel were difficult, dangerous, and time consuming. Simple sending spells and some airships or teleportation magic could easily cause an explosion of civilization development along the lines of telegraphs and trains in real history. Unless you ar...

A much more in-depth look at ways and reasons to limit the influence of gods in a fantasy world than I've ever had the focus to write: http://www.campaignmastery.com/blog/monkeywrench/ I find the log in general to have a lot of good thinking about worldbuilding and running fantasy games. Those behind the blog seem to have a lot more time to put into such things than I did even at my peak. I find it hard to imagine getting into so much detail, but it makes for interesting reading - at least to me.

Feeling better in general than I have in a few weeks, though I still can't say I'm highly motivated to creative roleplay. Slowly accumulating more fantasy world thoughts to record, though. Longevity I mentioned it in passing before and had a little follow-up discussion. So why is such a small point in a setting worthy of such consideration? Well, in the case of a book or campaign, it absolutely isn't. Unless there are supernatural aging effects floating around (2nd Edition AD&D ghosts, for example), it generally doesn't matter if a character is 20 or 60. Adventurers aren't likely to live to a ripe old age anyway. But in a persistent/ongoing world, such things do have an effect. The phrase "long term plans" doesn't even start to cover it. Plus, I think a mechanical enforcement actually works along with reality - or believability rather. As I said, I see someone who extends their life through magic as losing their "humanity" (for la...

Realism, or Not One article I recently glanced at summed up an aspect of fantasy for me in a way that resonates pretty strongly. "Internal Consistency, not Realism, is the benchmark of a believable fantasy world." If you made things realistic, it wouldn't be fantasy. No, what the audience and/or players want is to be able to make the initial leap of logic and then not have their suspension of disbelief shaken further. You're already accepting magic (in some form and measure), historical variances, and whatever else. Being given cause to question "well, why doesn't the archmage next door take five minutes out of his day to solve this problem?" takes you out of the illusion of a working world. The world doesn't have to work/grow/develop/look like the real world, it just has to be believable within its own confines. Well, that and be at least somewhat relateable in most cases - it's hard to roleplay something/someone that is completely alien....

Collecting more scattered thoughts... Magic Magic remains a difficult point. On further consideration, I think I'd set the bar for mortal magic at subtle, "alchemical" effects - usually minor effects that take preparation and could in many cases be considered fringe science more than magic. That means anyone tossing a fireball is at least a little bit of a monster, or has somehow bargained with one. That seems like a fair way to keep magic limited and the consequences of magic from spinning the setting wildly out of the realm of what we can even conceive. Geography It's been a long time since I've sat down with colored pencils and drawn out a map, but that's usually my preferred method with some inspiration coming before or during the process. Geographical barriers often define nations and it helps if things make sense. For a "lasting" setting, I'd be inclined to stay away from fantastic features like a desert right next to marshland, tho...

Someone recently asked me about worlds/settings of my own, which is interesting as I'd recently been pondering things I would put in a fantasy setting were I to build one up... I've really only had one world that I used over an extended period of time, developed, and expanded on: Makelia. It was spawned largely out of a "vision" of a character (and one big expansion came from another one). It was a world that bucked a few fantasy tropes, but had its fair share still. At the time, I was very interested in a "shades of gray" outlook. The "evil" nation wasn't really evil, wars were motivated as much by differing political views and competition for resources as any crusade of light against dark. There were no true gods, just being who attained greater and greater degrees of magical power - some of whom liked to be viewed as gods. There were two types of magic, differing more on source than capability, and later psionics ("mind magic") ...

I came in on a discussion yesterday about magic. In part, it was about certain applications looking too technological for a fantasy setting, but it got me thinking well beyond that. My comments at the time: The good/bad of magic is that it's magic . By definition (or lack thereof) it can accomplish anything you can think of, unless there are some sort of hard limits in place. So the inventor spends his years learning aerodynamics and says to his mage pal 'I've had a contraption that lets a person fly like a bird!' The mage takes a few minutes with all his arcane knowledge and whips up a spell that... makes someone fly like a bird. The mage doesn't need to understand the technical points because magic itself is a shortcut/plot point/fiat that makes it possible. Unless, of course, the setting's magic has some other requirements, but it usually doesn't. I'd also add that the only way I see to keep magic from doing certain things or looking a certain wa...

I was flipping through channels to see what was on recently and caught a scene from a movie I'd seen before. I can't even say it was a good movie. Still, it got me thinking of how characters become casters, and a slightly different angle I don't think I've seen before... I think I most frequently magic in fantasy settings as either an inborn talent (only certain people have it) or result of specialized training (theoretically, anyone can learn). Sometimes there's a mix of the two, or there's the "chosen of the gods" approach. More rarely I'll see magic that's only available by pact, or something like that. What if magic were finite and bestowed? Imagine a world that is... gifted by the gods, or blessed by chance, or whatever, but you end up with X amount of people who can work real magic. A hundred. A thousand. Whatever. Probably no one knows exactly why anyone can cast at all. If a wizard dies, his magical gift flits off to a new host....

Just jotting down a little idea I had (actually before I started on the fantasy underworld-heavy Night Angel series) that could potentially be used in a game someday... The Glass Daggers (or Knives?), an assassin cult known for using exactly that. They adhere to a belief similar to the modern "sniper's creed" of "one hit, one kill." Initiates are trained, but sent on their missions armed solely with a glass dagger - sharp, lethal, but fragile. This forces them to catch their target vulnerable and unaware in order to score a clean kill, and keeps the chances of secondary deaths minimal. Those who prove able to work within these limitations and get away prove their worth, are trained further, and may eventually be equipped with more durable weapons of magically/alchemically-strengthened glass... I always thought glass armor in the Elder Scrolls looked neat, but sounded a bit silly. ;)

Last night, we played in our current ongoing offline RPG. The setting is a heavily-Celtic-inspired fantasy world made by the game's GM. Previous sessions have included dragons in disguise, lots of stumbling around in the dark, death by mushrooms, and many other things detailed at http://aeranos.blogspot.com/. For the last long while, the PCs have been clawing their way from one situation to another just trying to survive. Most of the group wants to fulfill its original mission, but a decision to follow kidnapped townsfolk got them overcommitted and sent waaaaaay off course. In the previous session, we had an unusual situation where we took control. We came up with a plan - an offensive plan to expose a traitor and head off an ambush. Just being able to decide what we were doing and take the initiative for once felt remarkably good after being reactionary for so long. Of course, it didn't work out as well as hoped. The traitor was exposed, but his eeeevil contact summoned nas...

I've had thoughts before on the impact of undead on societies, most frequently stemming from events on Faire thought they're more general than that. I know some books/games have addressed it at least in a small measure, but I don't think I've read anything that goes into great depth. Perhaps that edges too much toward the theme of science fiction. Zombies! Least of the corporeal undead types, zombies are perhaps the most obvious undead to have in quantities. I think I'm going to set aside thoughts of "plague" zombies. Their diet of flesh or brains would make them awkward to maintain and doesn't fit well with creatures whose resilience comes from a lack of metabolism anyway. So... purely "magical" zombies (which get to defy biology and physics almost by definition): basically mindless, reasonably strong, tireless, and potentially obedient. You've got the makings of excellent dockworkers and military grunts for direct engagements. If t...