Two years ago Lawrence Whitaker from the Design Mechanism announced the Lyonesse RPG based upon the series of books by Jack Vance of the same name, using a modified Myrthas as its base.
They are now getting close to release, and Lawrence posted this picture of the print proof on their company Facebook page last Friday. `
I was going to set up online gaming to playtest various upcoming games from D101 Games, but the Corona Virus and the fact that many gamers are confined to their homes has accelerated this process.
I’m going to run two games weekly, for at least five sessions. Each session will last a comfortable two hours and run during the day 12-14 GMT (I’m in the UK, and for reasons of childcare/spouse care these times are inflexible).
Sky Raiders of the Sky Realms. (Tuesday 12-14 GMT) The zero edition of this D100 based fantasy adventure game of sky island-hopping recently funded. It uses the latest iteration of our D100 rule system, inspired by OpenQuest, but written from the ground up – which I’m casually calling the D101-System.
Lost Lands of Grungamesh using Swords against the Shroud (Thursday 12-14 GMT), which is a Black Hack version of the Crypts and Things. Lost Lands is a Swords and Sorcery game, with the tone set towards the more horrific end of things.
How to Join
I’m looking for four players in each game which. I’ll be running over Google Hangouts because both are reasonably rules-light systems. I may upgrade to Roll 20 or another virtual tabletop if either game needs it.
In the comments below, let me know which of the games you’d like to play, and make sure you fill in your email address so I can get back to you.
What’s that Mr Newt? Middlerlands for 5th Ed on Kickstarter now? Crikey!! Best go nick some crinkly pieces of paper from yer mam’s purse and bagsy a copy fast!!!
Glynn Seal has teamed up with Necromancer games to produce a big book 5th Editon of his fantastic Midderlands setting book. On Kickstarter until April 2nd.
The second of today’s preview posts about Skyraiders of the Floating Realms, this time a starting character from the game.
Note the Zero edition of the game is still on Kickstarter but we are in the last 34 hours at time of writing.
Janic the Songbird
| DEX | CON | STR | CHA | INT | POW |
| 13 | 14 | 11 | 15 | 12 | 11 |
[Commentary: Characteristics rolled on 3d6, rerolling 1s and 2s, and swooping around two values]
Bonus Damage: 0 Hit Points: 14 Armour Value:1d4 (Leather armour)
[Commentary: Characters with Strength over 15 get a Bonus Damage, Hit Points = CON]
Career: Bard Age: 29
[Commentary: Career provides 110 of the Additional points below, with an extra 30 coming from a pool so the player can personalise the character. Janic suffers slightly skill-wise for having slightly average characteristics, but this is pretty typical spread for a starting character ]
| Base Calculation | Base | Additional points | Total | |
| Melee | (STR+DEX) | 24 | 20 | 44 |
| Missile | (DEX+INT) | 25 | 20 | 45 |
| Thrown | (STR+DEX) | 24 | 24 | |
| Unarmed | (STR+INT) | 23 | 23 | |
| Awareness | (CON+INT) | 26 | 26 | |
| Magic | (POW + INT) | 23 | 23 | |
| Deception | (DEX+INT) | 25 | 20 | 45 |
| Healing | (INT+CHA) | 27 | 27 | |
| Mechanisms | (DEX+INT) | 25 | 25 | |
| Movement | (CON+DEX) | 27 | 27 | |
| Lore | (INTx2) | 24 | 24 | |
| Linguist | (INT+CHA) | 27 | 27 | |
| Culture | (INT+CHA) | 27 | 20 | 47 |
| Oratory | (POW+CHA) | 26 | 10 | 26 |
| Fast talk | (INT+CHA) | 27 | 20 | 27 |
| Performance | (CHA+DEX) | 28 | 30 | 58 |
| Trade | (CHA+INT) | 27 | 27 |
Equipment: Dagger (1d4 damage), Rapier (1d6 damage), Leather armour (1d4 armour value), A lyre. flamboyant clothes, hooded travelling cloak.
[Commentary: The choice of career dictates this starting loadout, but most adventures start with an opportunity to buy extra equipment]
Spells: Balance, Confuse, Enthral, Bless
[Commentary: The first three spells come from the Bard career while the last spell is a free choice made by the player]
The first of two posts today to promote/celebrate the D101’s ZineQuest 2 entry the double zine Grogzilla/Skyraiders of the Floating Realms. This is the short bit of game fiction that starts off Skyraiders with a bang, showcasing the fantastic adventure action of the game and a slight obsession with a certain 70s British comedy show 🙂
Bravely the crew of the Flying Circus, brought the skyship around in the sky to avoid the flight of small blue-skinned winged humanoids, known as Zarks, that were bearing down on them.
“They are after the Spam for sure, that Dwarfen tined meat is too delicious for them to resist!” shouted Capt. T’errick Jhoanes in an effort to cheer his terrified crew. He knew that the Zarks being notorious pyromaniacs would fire bursts of flame from their horns at the wooden ship as soon as they were in range, for these s were
Sure enough, the lead Zark fired off a burst of flame and swiftly set the mainsail alight. More explosions of flame hit the bow of the ship where the rest of the navigation gear was situated. “Bugger! Going down, brace yourselves for impact” shouted Capt Jhoanes to his crew, who knew the drill and grabbed on to the nearest thing nailed down to the ship’s deck. With its bow engulfed in flame, The Flying Circus lost its battle with gravity and started to plunge towards a nearby sky island, covered in trees, and no more than ten miles across.
The ship crash-landed on the centre on the wooded sky island. It ploughed through the tree canopy until it came to rest in a glade which seemed to be the start of an ancient paved road. As the crew sounded off, each member stating their condition, either bruised or minor sprains, the Capt jumped off the ship. On a quick look needed a fast repair of the burnt section of the wooden hull. “Right! It looks like everyone’s all right, carpenters start assessing the damage. Rest of you start forming wood gathering parties. No sign of the Zarks, which is good. Hang about what’s that?” He trailed off, his gaze drawn up the paved road into the distance where he saw a magnificent and intact step pyramid a relic from the ancient times before the land broke and floated up into the sky. “Crikey it’s a Vault, perhaps this trip will have a big pay-out after all!” he said rubbing his hands in glee, for such places if undiscovered held the riches from before the land was broken and floated into the sky.
Lost in happy thoughts, he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was his First mate drawing his attention. “Captain!” the First mate said, pointing in the opposite direction to the pyramid, to the other side of the Glade. There in full black plate, with a helm that completely masked the identity of the wearer, was a warrior armed with sword and shield. Except Captain Jhoanes knew the identity of the sinister set of black armour.
“You again!” he exclaimed at his old nemesis.
“Yes, I told you it was but a flesh wound” came the echoing voice of the Black Knight.
Next up: An example Skyraiders character.
This morning I’m taking a break from banging on about Skyraiders, to pop back and look at part of Grogzilla.
The Six Travellers is a culture write up for Mythras by the Design Mechanism. It revolves around a group of Travellers, who are searching for lost roads and trade routes. Unlike nomads, they rely upon a network of established Sanctuaries within city-states with whom they have treaties and established settlements of their own which wax and wane in size depending on the number of wagon trains who are gathered there.
Let’s hear it from one of the members of the culture itself.
We are looking. Looking for the Ways, the trade routes that were lost to our ancestors when the world went into the Fall when the Ignorance came out of the shadows.
We are led by our gods who are the Six.
They guide our great covered wagons as they roll across the land, from city to city trading and bringing messengers and passengers as well as goods. You are a rider who has yet to settle down and ride with your family in a wagon. As well as protecting your kin from raiders, you must also investigate reports and rumours of sightings of the Way Stones. These magical stones fell from the heavens after the Fall. Gifts from the gods to help us find the way. Perhaps you will find a Great Way Stone and become one of the heroic Waymasters and Waymistresses, heroes of our people who rule us from the great gatherings of the trains at the yearly camps, and who call us every five years to the great camp at our city of Nexus.
A write up of Yulpa the Sunchaser was an early stretch goal of this campaign that funded. Yulpa is a horse warrior/whisper that most members of the culture are members of purely out of practicality. She’s a good starting point for player characters, hence her inclusion in Grogzilla. The whole Six Traveller culture is loosely formed, so it is easy to drop into an existing game setting. The player characters never need to know its there until they encounter some brightly coloured magically coloured non-player characters who ride around in groups on horses or one of their wagon trains.
So where is this all leading? Well somewhere nasty and unpleasant, probably around Halloween on Kickstarter. Gentlepeople and Wildthings of all ages, may I present…
In the Kingdom of Tura when monarchs die, they make the final journey to the Isle of the Dead. It is an arduous journey that only royalty may make. The corpse is prepared by the priesthood of Shem and then is taken overland to a secret port, where a boatman takes the body to the Isle and from there it passes through the Door to Eternity into parts unknown.
Only the Brotherhood of Shem knows that something has gone wrong with the delivery of the last King. Now they must get a group of foreigners together to find out what has happened. Perhaps these chosen ones will get the opportunity to peak through the Door of Eternity and see what is on the other side?
In this adventure, the characters are those foreigners that the Brotherhood gets in, and their outsider status gives them a unique opportunity to learn about the local culture and unravel the mystery. As well as the adventure itself, it will have a full write up the Six Traveller cults, an “What my Wagon Chief told me” Q&A as a quick in-character primer. Overall the Six Travellers are a pre-made set of deities with a culture that is tailor-made as for travelling adventurers.
So the articles in Grogzilla are a way of getting a sneak peek and some immediately gameable content, before the Isle of the Dead kickstarts in Oct/Nov of this year.
If you were wondering what inspired me, it was this rather brooding piece of music by Rachmaninoff which has the painting by Arnold Böcklin which inspired it embedded in the youtube video (see below). This vista had my jaw on the floor thinking “that looks like a good adventure location, I wonder what is going on there?”
This post is a follow-up post to yesterday’s Skyraiders of the Floating Realms (which will be known as Skyraiders from now on to save my typing fingers :D) which explains how the adventuring format works. This is light of the first adventure stretch goal, The Edge of the World, being funded.
What the character’s know at the beginning of the adventure and what the Referee should quickly impart.
This section gives the backstory of the adventure and explains what is going on.
This section is the meat of the write-up. It includes:
The first encounter where the adventure kicks off. In the Edge of the World, this is a dramatic realisation that the sky realm where the characters have peacefully been living for a couple of months has a magical affliction called the Stone Plague, which turns stone to dust very quickly. Since this is happening at a rapid pace, they better get off the island somehow.
This section has a d100 table, of Events, which the Referee rolls on, crossing off events which are one time only. I realised that I tend to do journey type adventures, not dungeon crawls*, but had become somewhat jaded about the write-up and assumption that they are a series of linked events. So I decided to jazz it up by adding a random element to the order that events in the middle take place.
Here’s the one from Edge of the World
D100 Event
01-20 Ambushed by Zarks!
21-30 A Stone Giant Blocks the Way
31-50 An offer by the Twisted Sisters
60-75 Here Comes the Hard Rain
76-86 This Boat is for Ducks Only
86-90 I’m the King!!
91-00 The Sky Realm is Falling and I want my Mommy.
After the table, I then describe the encounters themselves.
And here’s This Boat is for Ducks only
This Boat is for Ducks Only
As a rule, most sky boats will not accept Ducks, believing old wives tales that they are responsible for the current state of the world and are therefore very very bad luck. The characters come across a sign that says “DUCKS!!! Get of this rock here, 2 gold pounds courtesy fee”. Next to it is a rather rough-looking sky sailor who is helping a duck family (mum and dad + three ducklings) into a small flying boat, more a dingy about three metres long. In the boat is another sky sailor and all the duck’s possessions in travel cases. This pair of Sky Pirates, Ulfy (on the ground) and Rulfy (in the sky boat), have hit upon the idea that they can pick up the ducks such as these, pretend to give them free passage off Askor, and instead chuck them off the boat when they are in the sky. Will the characters work out what they are up to and help the ducks?
Sky Pirates HP 12 AV 1d4 (Leather), Damage 1d8, Fight (Cutlass, Crossbow) 45%, Magic 35%, Movement 45%, Senses 55%, Social 35%.
See the creature stats for the Sky Pirates? That’s the new concise stat-block I’m using for Sky Raiders. I had a great realisation a couple of months ago. That the typical D100 stat-block, as you see in OpenQuest for example, is a significant barrier to writing adventures. Because its a big clunky thing where you are effectively rolling up a cut-down or full version of a player character. It’s also challenging to format during layout, and there’s a lot of information that doesn’t get used. So I came up with this format, along with monster creation guidelines that support it, so creating useable creatures isn’t a royal pain in the ass. Its fully explained in Skyraiders Zero Edition.
The events also it’s not an exhaustive list, the Referee can add stuff based upon what the players are doing, or from their inspiration. Also, you don’t have to use all the event’s, and I reckon a good four-hour session by having the Start and End (see below) events, plus three events from the events. Also if you think rolling for event’s is a load of nonsense you can treat it as a linear list, with events turning up in order. But I think there’s a lot of reusability in rolling randomly, and also the order of events can make a big difference of how the adventure plays out.
Note * Although I intend to address how Skyraiders does dungeoneering since Sky Valuts – adventure locations of underground chambers filled with loot are a big part of the setting 🙂
This is the ending of the adventure, and describes the climax with any villains, major and minor, that the characters must overcome to conclude. Because the route that they came here is random, that is a consideration. In the Edge of the World, the fact that they may have previously met Boris the Bad Un, the King of the Sky Realm, or the Twisted Sisters, villainous Sorceresses of the adventure, and they may still be at large is factored into the ending.
Aftermath
For ongoing adventure series, this final section details any rewards and penalties that carry forward, and any adventure opportunities that arise because of the situation.
Currently funded as part of D101’s ZineQuest2 Two for One Zine Kickstarter along with Grogzilla issue 1. It is a zine sized RPG, which is the first pass of about 40-50 A5 pages tidied up, so it is playable. It’s a Zero Edition, with the full first edition coming this summer as a fully kickstarted game.
It comes in two blended-bits :
The Floating Realms
I wanted a setting that is immediate, easy to explain and sucks the players in. I know the idea of adventurers travelling from one sky island to the next in a post-apocalyptic setting, in search of adventure and loot gets me going. It has done since I came across Skyrealms of Jorune. There’s lots of weird fun fantasy game juice packed into even the Zero Edition. Peter Frain has pretty much nailed the spirit of the game in his front cover of two adventurers at the prow of a Sky Ship, with the New Sun and the Dead Moon in the background.
The D101-System
At the beginning of the year, I sat down and over two days wrote a 20-page concise D100 system. It’s written from the ground up, not from a SRD, because I wanted to get my idea of what I wanted from a D100 across. If you are familiar with OpenQuest it’s a continuation of many of the ideas I introduced in that game.
Characteristics are still the familiar building blocks, except for Size which I’ve dropped, randomly rolled. I’ve dropped Size from the usual D100 list of characteristics because I never use in my games. Characteristics as well as being the basis of Hit Points (now Constitution) and being used to work out Bonus Damage, characteristics determine the starting values of skills, usually two relevant characteristics for each skill.
Characters have a previous career, which sets them up for play with a set of skills and three magic spells since everyone on the Floating Realms knows a bit of magic, and a default set of starting equipment. They are then individualised with by allocation of small number points to skills they haven’t already advanced with their career, and players get to pick an additional spell. They advance in free form manner, earning Improvement points that the player can spend on the skills and magic they want, as well as gaining contacts, skills and magic through completing missions for their organisations.
There’s one Skill test system. The skills list is short and concise, even compared to OpenQuest, and the system of simple difficulty modifiers is even more aggressively applied. In any given situation only one difficulty modifier applies from a set range (-40%, -20% , +20%, +40%). And modifiers from magic trumps mundane situational ones.
Opposed skill tests are now so that only player rolls their skill, which is modified up or down if their opponent is more or less skilled than them. I realised I’ve been doing this instinctively for years since it gives similar results to both sides rolling and takes the pressure off me as Referee.
It has one magic system, one list of spells, and no magic points. Instead, you roll against Magic skill to see if the spell is successful and if you fumble the character can not use it again this gaming session. There’s a shortlist of straightforward and powerful spells in this version of the game.
Combat is straightforward, with characters acting in the order of the skill they are using, from highest to lowest, so characters who are more skilled get act first. There’s still attack rolls, followed by defensive reactions to prevent. Armour has a dice armour value, and weapons do damage ranging from 1d4 to 1d12. There are no hit locations.
I’ve moved the system away from resource management and ditched a lot of fiddly numbers. There are no equipment lists and counting of coins and the magic pointless magic system is another example of this. If it’s necessary to know the outcome, a simple skill test is applied to resolve the situation. So, for equipment acquisition the Referee either says yes to reasonable requests and moves on or makes the player perform a successful Trade skill test, modified for availability in the character’s current location, to gain the item they are after.
Overall this is a heavily modified version of OpenQuest, to the point that it’s become its own thing. Its been written from the ground up, and I won’t be releasing it under the OGL. If I had to give the system a name, I’d call it the D101-System 😊
Ok, this one has moved fast, and already funded, the next stretch goal for this year’s ZineQuest2 on Kickstarter is a little zine sized D100 Fantasy Adventure RPG I’ve been working on called Skyraiders of the Floating Realms.
It’s a maximum gaming fun concise D100 with a punchy immediate fantasy setting, centred on adventurers travelling and exploring the Floating Realms of the title using Sky Ships and other methods.
I explain a bit more in this update.
As I said its already funded, and I’m now funding two quick adventures as final stretch goals.
Here’s the front cover by Peter Frain, which is in grayscale because that’s the rules of ZQ2 (all art should be like an old 80s zine in B&W or grayscale), but if you want it in colour there’s a high tier pledge level which allows you to do that.
Now on ZineQuest 2: Grogzilla, briefly seen at Grogmeet 2019 now getting a proper printing. It’s full of fire-breathing three-headed skyscraper-sized giant lizards (stats for D100, OSR, and Monkey!), articles for Mythras, and a mini-adventure sequel to the Road to Hell (for Swords and Wizardry) amongst other things. And It will grow in page count as we hit stretch goals.
Also, our other zines for Glorantha and Crypts and Things/OSR games are available in print/pdf as add-ons at a significant discount.