Pergamino Barocco – Alternative Binding

The Pergamini Barocchi have been printed. If all goes well I should be able to ship the first batch next week.

Tonight I found some binding leatherette and, well, I wanted to know if the Pergamino would do well with an alternative binding. So instead of the two split hardcovers I’d make a normal book case and attach one of the end of the concertina to it, leaving the other free.

Thing is, leatherette hates me. With a passion. It’s a stubborn hateful piece of scorn and I can’t seem to glue it even with a plasma torch.

But tonight, kind reader, tonight the leatherette was conquered.

Here are some pictures.

Yes, FUN PVA GLUE IS FUN.

Pressing the cover.

OH HAI YOU MIGHT BE A SPELLBOOK MAYHAPS?

100% vegan-compatible, non renewable leatherette. Might add some kind of clasp or tie like this braided one.

Contents seem to be accessible.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. By the way, this copy is not really for sale as it has some minor imperfections I’m not really happy with. Small imperfections. On the other hand I ran out of dark brown leatherette and have only some reddish left, and I REALLY LIKE THE BROWN ONE. But if you do really like it too we can have a chat.

Mind you, none of them will be 100% straight and without kinks because I’m just an hobbyist.

If you have bought a Pergamino already: if you prefer this binding, let me know and I’ll happily oblige.

If you have inquired about a Pergamino: you’re part of the waiting list. Email me because IT’S BOOKBINDING TIME. This means some kind of transfer of money or food or something so that me and Roger can feel motivated to do more and better.

If you have not bought a Pergamino and want one: at the moment I have what can be termed a surplus of scrolls. But it’s not really a surplus because there’s a waiting list. I’m not sure I’m going to print many more because, well, It’s really expensive to make.

So, yeah. My email is as per use tsojcanth at gmail. The webstore is here.

Adventure Fantasy Game Spellcasting: how I (re)learnt to love undeads, but not that way, and considerations

Spellcasting in Adventure Fantasy Game differs quite a bit from your run-of-the-mill OSR game, and from other systems too. The closest is Roger’s, and that’s because we had a long chat about them back in the day. How is it different from traditional D&D spellcasting?

First, there’s no split between divine and arcane magic. I’m not sure of the reasons that led Gygax to split spell lists, but i suspect none of them are good. Moreover, the concept of clerics getting more spells with levels instead of by increasing the standing in front of their gods is a bit fishy. It seems as if there were no gods but instead the spells came from the cleric inner powers… exactly like magic-users. This change did not break the game.

Second, it’s mana based, but each spell can be cast only once a day. This allows each spell to costs one mana point, simplifying the system a lot, while making actually harder to play casters. Difficulty is moved from “what should I memorize today?” and “is this the right moment to cast Sleep?” to a broader “I have no idea if I should cast now and what”, simply because every spell is a unique life-saving snowflake. It’s possible to cast a given spell a second time using items called fetishes: grab a fetish, spend one mana, a specific spell goes off. A fetish can be used once a day. There are also Mana Vessels which store a mana point; full vessels can power spells up to a given level and need to be recharged by a caster. Also, very importantly, each caster has access to all his spells all the time, so even very narrow-use spells see play instead of laying forgotten and unmemorized in musty tomes. This means that even bad spells are used a lot: Giving the Gift of Life, a level 0 spell that heals 1d6 hits at the cost the same amount of temporal hits to the caster, is seen by casters’s players as a warm, fuzzy, nostalgic kick in the groin.

Third, everybody can cast level 0 spells, provided they can somehow get one measly mana.Rolling a high Spirit is an option, grabbing a full mana vessel is another. The concept is that your level-zero auntie did really cast spells and sung those zombies back to the grave and could read any language. Your non-caster PC might not know spells yet, but fetishes are moderately common and teaching rules are kindly provided. Now, finding an equally kind teacher is a completely different topic.

Fourth, every single caster seems to be a little necromancer that could. Possibly because players love pets in RPGs. Possibly because necromancer want to be fiddling with corpses. Possibly because the equivalents of “charm undead”, “animate but not control a skeleton” and “animate a skeleton” can be respectively cast by a caster of level 0, 1 and 2. The first two can be of course combined (but the control spell costs 1 mana a day to upkeep), while the last one costs 50 coins in components. This does not stop low level casters from keeping a few skeletons around “just in case”. This, of course, might bother the peasants and burgers. Which is one of the reasons why casters live out in the sticks. It’s also a useful way of recycling discarded armour. This early undead proliferation is interesting because it directly impacts on the setting: low level mages will exhume corpses from graveyards and will have a small group of fanatical undead goons protecting them, if they can find the money. Some of you will cringe at the thought of game balance suffering from this: don’t. The Original Tilean Murderhoboes are masters at breaking everything, but this did not break the game. Instead, ponder the implication of low-level necromancy on your campaign world.

Fifth, it’s not just the system, it’s a whole different spell ecology. All the 80+ spells are new, the first purely offensive spell is cast at level 2, and there are a grand total of 8 damaging spells in the whole manual. There’s no Sleep spell. Hell Gate, the closest thing to Fireball, opens a gate to hell spouting raging flames, possibly gating in uncontrollable demons. Casters in AFG are not there to dish tons of damage but to do what mere mortals cannot: bend reality with words.

Comments and discussions here

Cover Art for Chthonic Codex (or at least probably, I’m confused)

Cover art is required to be awesome but sometimes it’s so awesome it’s annoying as you’d like to use it again and again but since it’s tied to a particular product you really can’t use it more than once or else people get confused. Unless you want to confuse potential buyers, just don’t.

Why opening with such a confusing paragraph?

Because I’m confused.

Because I acquired “Creation of a Better Human” by Claire Maclean, pictured below. And I love it to bits. I worked with Claire already for AFG, where she did a darn good job with idols and characters.

And I want CoaBH to be a cover for a book on wizards that might never be completed. Said book (let’s call it Project G) might or might not end up being merged with the Chthonic Codex as they are really close in spirit and setting, if not in at-the-table-target-user: the Codex  is aimed at GMs, while Project P at people that want spellcasters to be awesome-r.

But the Codex is an in-game book as well, mostly written in-character by the Grand Sorcerer of the Fire Valley Deleterios XIII for the benefit of other Savants of the Fire Valley and he was exactly the kind of person that would write and collate an omnibus version of Fire Valley related arcana.

So, there you go. I decided. Project G will fold in the Chthonic Codex.

Comments on Google Plus here.

Pergamino Barocco: Not your usual spell RPG supplement

In the life of a small-small-small-small-press RPG publisher there are times when substance and content is the only thing that matters. Some other times, instead, it’s mostly about style. Then there are some lucky combinations where both need to be turned up to 11.

RPG supplements about spells and magic are usually awfully plain lists of descriptions of spells, all crammed up in as few pages as possible and seemingly written in the driest way possible.

Enters the Pergamino Barocco

And here is where Roger and I break the mold. Because you always wanted your spells to be in a book that looks like a spellbook, feels like a spellbook and illustrated with arcane imagery. Maybe handbound. Like in the picture below, showing Roger’s copy.

The Pergamino Barocco contains a panoply of arcane knowledge ready to be used in your old school fantasy game. Each spell (designed and written by Roger) occupies at least a page and is illustrated with a period woodcut.

And it’s not going to be a stitched book, but a folded scroll. So not only you can page through it as a normal book, but you can also display any number of pages you want at the same time,  potentially all of them at the same time, as shown below [*]. This also makes possible for multiple magic-users to peruse the book at the same time should they agree to share its secrets.

I will bind all copies (click for some examples of my bound books), individually and carefully, by hand. The cost is not exactly defined but it will be around 15£ + s/h (free shipping to the UK).

You can choose your Pergamino to be bound in your choice of the following materials: maroon buckram (washable and resistant, same quality of Roger’s copy but maroon), purple bookcloth (nice feeling, more delicate book-grade cloth) or black japanese silk (three copies only, price around 25£ due to the sheer cost of book-grade silk). And will come with a gold-yellow ribbon, because all books need at least a bookmark. [**]

The print run is going to be extremely limited. First come, first serve basis. Custom orders are naturally possible. Preorder here.

[*]: my garden-variety gnome Gnaro is in the picture to provide some scale. I honestly can’t remember how it ended up in the picture in general, and there in particular.

[**]: Roger’s copy does not have one, in case you wonder.

AFG Preview: Spell Research, Transcription and Printing Press

Today it’s editing time here at the Lost Flat of yours truly, mostly spent fixing small bits and bobs and the horrible horribleness that was the Fighting Capability section, then adding items to the shopping list, writing up the Innumerable Demon Gods for the Divinity chapter and cleaning up the section concerning spell research, grimoires and transcription.

Then I decided that, damn, if I didn’t include a section on stating that introducing the printing press in a fantasy setting will upset mages and guild members everywhere I’d feel the worst possible typography nerd ever. So I wrote it and to be honest it’s shocking to realize that the RPG industry can’t cope with the idea of printing spellbooks in game and that in forty years nobody tried to push the boundary with something as simple as this. Then I realized that the RPG industry is dying like it’s going out of season. So it’s here for you to read and bravely go forward destroying the social equilibrium of your fantasy campaign world.

Oh, yes, the preview also has spell research rules usable with any Old School RPG; just remember that a spell level in AFG corresponds to roughly twice the level of the same spell in Old School games. I’ve been using it for the past 15 years in three-four different RPGs with minimal changes and it works fine. Oh, did I mention that AFG comes with more than 80 new, non-SRD spells? And I had to include the Flammarion engraving with the spell research rules because I know it’s a cliche but this is my only occasion to use it, ever. And it’s lovely and loaded with symbolism.

Spell research preview: download, print, enjoy.

Quick Unique Spellcasters

New developments in the OSR are looking quite interesting. I’m not referring to the whole YDIS/Kellri shenanigans (I don;t care much about YDIS, I consider his blog to be a fun satirical self-referential OSR pastiche) but to what Roger the GS is doing with game presentation and rules, taking the one-page approach a step too far toward awesome.

In particular I’m really happy about his Wizard rules: we had a productive discussion on spell levels, memorization and the like and, despite I initially had quite different ideas on the topic (having spent a while researching magic systems for fantasy games got me some possibly clever insights), I think his approach is different but superior due to being fun.

The planning aspect of the magic user, instead being of centered on daily memorization and resource control, is based on individual spell scarcity (more and diverse spells will see play) and long term research (Fireball isn’t enough when you can cast one, so you want to research more and diverse offensive spells). I believe, furthermore, that uninformed choices are less fun and interesting than informed ones: memorizing in advance, while supporting some interesting kind of gameplay, for me appears less interesting than deciding, on the spot, which spell I should cast now and save the party, at the price of not having the spell available until the next day. We’ll playtest it later on tonight.

This makes also easy to generate  spellbooks for magic user NPCs:

1. Give the wizard LEVELd2 spells (more expert wizards will have researched or obtained more spells).
2. That’s it really. No memorization faff.

There is also the more awesome method:

1. Go to the previously covered Dying Earth Spell Generator.
2. Take the first LEVELd2 entries and put them in the MU’s spellbook. Look ma no studying I don’t need to do homework today I swear.
3. Improvise spell effects. Be awesome. Reward the few surviving PCs with an awesome spellbook.

This kind of casting also introduces new possibilities for minor magic item crafting. I’ll cover them in the future.

You know what’s awesome? A generator of Vancian spell names!

Go to the awesome Chris Pound’s Vancian Spell Generator Name Generator and enjoy (the link was broken for a while, now it’s been fixed). Also Noism covered the name-making Forge recently.

Here’s the first three I got:

Lehia’s immiscible defect MU2 Duration: instantaneous

Physically removes icky stuff from drinks, food and potions and compresses it in a solid, insoluble lump. Works like purify food and water, removes icky bits from badly done potions (making them useless) and mixed potions (if you used the potion miscibility rules, you can just pre-mix potions and make sure the brew is not baaad)

Paskobadi’s entire analysis MU3 Duration: instantaneous

Works like Unveil Arcana but on all the target item’s properties or spells.

Lehermari’s scarce guard MU2 Duration: 1 turn

Target 1d6 individuals at medium range will immediately check morale or leave the area, will also check morale at the beginning of a fight and will make an additional morale check at any time a morale check is needed for other causes.

New Monster: Bumble Dragon

Alice and I were bumbling about Speirs Wharf and were discussing the benefits of having a garden. She mentioned clover flowers attracting bumblebees, and then mentioned pondweed. I quipped that, from the perspective of a foreigner, English plant and insect names seem made up by three-years-old with not much fantasy:

• foxglove
• hogweed
• pondweed
• bumblebee: I love bumblebees. And I didn’t know that bumble was a real verb, by the way.
• shieldbug
• firefly

All of them are amazing D&D names for monsters and plants, of course.

So we started discussing/brainstorming the Bumbledragon. She never roleplayed, except when last week she played Horse in KNIGHT HORSE SQUIRE SWORD, a RPG we came up with at the last Glasgow Indie Gamers night I’ll tell you about real soon now. Bumble Dragons turned out to be some kind of fat, blue, absent minded dragons, not really good at anything, except thinking about magic and eating cheese. Now and then they set stuff on fire without realizing it, and spend all time thinking about magic, pie, cheese, tea and treasure to buy teh noms. A wizard in need of advice in spell research could bring tea and noms to a Bumbledragon and ask for council.

Bumble Dragon

 

LEVEL: 9

DEFENCE: as plate

SQ: firebreathing (3d6), improv spellcasting (MU 5), random firebreath (1d6, 10% every turn), 3d6 bite damage

Bumble Dragons are flightless peripathetic fat blue dragons with small wings that go bumbling around thinking about magic: they don’t really interact with anybody offered food (automatic good reaction) or attacked, which will turn them into a nasty brutal fighting machine. They can attack with a nasty bite or breathing fire once a round or cast spells like MU5 without need to memorize spell beforehand or resort to a spellbook (usually leaving a spellslot free for a fly spell). They have lairs full of cheese and treasure to buy more cheese. They love cheese, tea and pie (especially cherry pie): if a magic user offers such food to the dragon and ask for aid in spell research, the dragon will contribute and in 3d6 turns will give advice sufficient for reducing research time by (2d6-4)*10%, with a small possibility of a setback. Every turn there’s a 10% chance that the dragon will belch a whisp of firebreath (1d6 damage), unless a teapot of tea (rooibosh, peppermint, rosehip and lotus are good substitutes) has been consumed in the previous turn. A big pie or wheel of cheese per hit per day will keep a bumbledragon satisfied enough to be considered some kind of specialist/henchmen/follower.

Wizard spell progression

The other day I started toying with the idea of having spell levels map directly on spellcaster levels, and streamline the number of spells per level as well. This way we would have level 5 MU casting level 5 spells. Except “the other day” was weeks ago, stuff is keeping me extra-busy till september.

There are a number of ways to get there:

The Ur-d20/Otherguy way (as it was allegedly used in early d20 system development and also by another guy can’t remember that comes from the Internets, but I forgot much about both systems so details have been reworked)
Split each spell level in two, obtaining typically 18 levels. Each spell level usually have less powerful and more powerful spells, so it would be just matter of splitting the spell lists: I’d put magic missile on level 1, sleep on level 2, mirror images on level 3, web on level 4, fireball on level 5, lightning bolt on level 6 and so on. This can take a while tho, and would make things confusing (“is that spell level 5 in the old or new system?”).

Spell progression rules: 1 spell a day for each spell level equal or less than character level, plus 1 spell a day for each level equal to character level -5, plus 1 spell a day for each level equal to character level -10 and so on. This keeps the overall spell progression remarkably close to the original

lvl 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 and so on
 1  1
 2  1 1
 3  1 1 1
 4  1 1 1 1
 5  1 1 1 1 1
 6  2 1 1 1 1 1
 7  2 2 1 1 1 1 1
 8  2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1
 9  2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1
10  2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1
11  3 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1

Schools/Talents/Affinity

Exactly as above, but spell levels are simply doubled. In addition spells are split in traditions or some kind of affinity (fire, illusion) or some schools do a better job at teaching them or some pupils at learning them. Depending on these relationships a character can access some level 2 spell at character level 3 instead of 4: overall similar to the above, but allows for greater character customization and wanting to recover lost tomes describing better ways of casting spells, or looking for better teachers. Apprenticeship is not only for pre level 9 mages (as suggested by Mentzer).

Powerful mages
I reworked the MU level progression so that they would need as many XP to gain character level 2  as they would need to be able to cast spell level 2 and so on. A horribly steep progression indeed, needing 4 times as many XP at each level (simply doubling would keep the magic user 1 level beyond other characters). Which is kind annoying as the mage progression loses smoothness and, in addition, HP would be in average lower in systems that reroll all the HD at level gain and take the new total only if it’s better. In addition the caster level would be half for the same amount of XP unless we corrected by doubling it. So I opted for a progression that would allow earlier access and more hp to compensate for lack of casting level. A table for OD&D might look like this:

HD       XP 1 2 3 4 5 6
1d6       0 1
2d6      5k 2 1
3d6     15k 4 2 1
4d6     45k 4 4 2 1
5d6    135k 4 4 4 2 1
6d6    405k 4 4 4 4 2 1
7d6    810k 4 4 4 4 4 2

So, less xp to get high level spells, with overall marginally higher hits and way less powerful level-bound effects like fireball damage.

Don’t touch anything and let MU rock the world, casting more powerful spells earlier
MUs are so flimsy I actually am considering using this for a change: at level 1, magic missile, level 2 levitation, level 9 meteor swarm. Warriors build fortresses, mages make stars fall.

Bin everything and use the awesome system from the first edition of the Empire of the Petal Throne
Which is way clunkier but way, way cooler and more colorful. ‘Nuff said.

And now it’s time to eat lunch and get ready for tonight’s Bad Religion gig.