The Hydra Collective's Slumbering Ursine Dunes mythic Russia-inspired sandbox adventure setting has a golden barge in it. The intro to the current draft of the product points out that the Dunes takes some inspiration from Michael Moorcock's Eric saga, which has the mother of all battle barges, the giant golden zigguratic Melnibonean kind.
The Dunes have bear warriors, and a King who appears to have at least two things in common with me. (I might reveal those given a rich enough bribe.) The Dunes also has one of the most surreal rumors tables that I have ever seen. I want all the rumors on this table to be true.
There's only a few days left for the Kickstarter for Chris Kutalik's project. If what I've mentioned above is of any interest, check it out while there is still time!
I can't imagine where this Hydra Collective gets the inspiration. Well, maybe I do:
The reference makes me even more eager to see the final product.
*The miniatures pictured above aren't part of the KS but they sure are cool. Call 'em Reptilian but they sure look Melnibonean.
We just created our first 5E character for a campaign that my friend Boris is going to run. Meet Enkidu FerJabbersSake, a Half Orc Ranger (1st Level). He's very attractive for a Half Orc (favors his human mother, I guess) and he is hunting for his younger brother, Agni (also a Half Orc) who was captured or sold into slavery during one of the many intertribal conflicts among the orc and goblin groups.
Agni
Enkidu's about 18. Greenish hair, green eyes, light green skin. Hulking build. Both he and his brother have the Black Flame tribal tattoos on their right shoulder and back. Enkidu plays a mouth harp and has a Trinket: a tiny sketch portrait of a goblin. Perhaps, the sketch is a personal wanted poster for his brother's captor. We'll see.
Not surprisingly, Enkidu's Favored Enemies are orcs and goblins. Enkidu's Natural Explorer talent is for Forests. He guides human settlers, hunters, traders, and adventurers who arrived from the East over the great ocean, seeking opportunities to trade among the lands and peoples under the sway of the orcs and goblins. It's not long after the great war which occurred between the Eastern settlers and the orc and goblin tribes.
Understandably, Enkidu now prefers the company of humans.
I decided to start an archive for my brief G+ posts on my read-through of the Guide to Glorantha. Most are posts of a picture from a specific section of the Guide, with brief commentary. Consider them flags marking my ascent of a world-mountain. The most recent posts at the top, and we'll be updating this archive as we continue our read-through.
The Bandit Map is here: the first supplement for Rachel Kronick's Blade & Crown RPG. The adventure begins with the discovery of a scrap of an old map, and leads to a bandit-hunting adventure in lands shunned by peasants and burghers alike.
Our gaming group playtested the scenario in the Spring/Winter of 2014. We had a blast with it, and together created one of the best adventuring parties with whom I've had the pleasure of gaming. Each member of the party - including my youthful and violent fire mage (based on the Fullmetal Alchemist) - was part of the entourage of a noble (also a PC) who had fallen on hard times. We were bound to each other by oaths of fealty, as well as a desire for gold.
Now, as a game inspired by Swordbearer,Blade & Crown lends itself to gritty, A Game of Thronesy/Abercrombsie-style adventure, There's magic, but most of it is subtle. But in this adventure my fire mage encountered something that quite literally blew his mind.
The Bandit Map is available in print in both full color and in B&W editions, as well as in PDF, All the details, and a free preview can be found right here.
While the scenario could readily be adapted for almost any fantasy RPG with little difficulty, the time is right to check out Blade & Crown if you're not familiar with the game or are sitting in the fence at the moment. It's 25% off right now (regardless of format) until September 30! Find print here and PDF here.
Colin Morris has created a nifty online Fortune Deck card drawing app which you can access from the web. Select the number of Fortune Deck cards you want to pull, and then click the button. Cards are randomly drawn (either upright or inverted) and displayed on the webpage. Refresh the browser page to make a fresh drawing of new cards from the Fortune Deck.
Thursday night saw my fourth game of The Quiet Year (I think). I love this storygame more than any other. Way more than any other, in fact. One of our players described this session as "Miyazaki on Mushrooms" due to the strange aggregation of whimsy, folly, and failure that transpired.
The game had:
Ampicyons (the bear-dog critters on the right side of the map)
I've been reading Ehdrigohr, Allen Turner's fantasy RPG for Fate Core. I read about 130 pages of this full-sized book over the Memorial Day weekend, and about 100 pages this weekend. I still have another 100 or so to go. Today's post isn't a full review, but more of a progress report.
Many Fate fans gained access to this game through a recent Fate-themed Bundle of Holding. The game has a blog, Council of Fools, and a G+ Community. If you haven't heard of the game, you will probably want to check out one or both of those resources before pulling the trigger on a purchase. The author didn't market the game very intensely with the Fate community, so it is less well known than other early offerings for Fate Core such as ADX and Jadepunk. My impression is that the author saw Fate as a vehicle for portraying his world, rather than Fate as a game system that needed new worlds to explore.
And quite a world Ehdrigohr is!
Author Allen Turner has created a multicultural world that is presented from a Lakota cultural standpoint. So this is a game set on a past or future Turtle Island, and the general metaphysics of the world are based on the Four Directions or Medicine Wheel. While not all native peoples of the Americas use the Medicine Wheel concept, it's cultural currency is widespread in North America. It's a model for the universe, for the cycle of life, the social world, spirituality, science, and an understanding of physical and mental health. It's also a zone for physical and spiritual conflicts, and plays many of these different roles simultaneously in Ehdrigohr.
At the center of the world are peoples like the Lakota and Ojibway. To the East are people of the Longhouse. To the South East are mound building city-dwellers. In the oceans to the Southeast are Aztec-influenced folk who build their cities on the backs of sea monsters. To the far South, across a narrow sea, are Bedouin-like peoples as well as a city-dwelling Empire of artificers. To the far West are people who live in a vast marsh on the backs of giant turtles, and folks who live as island cliff dwellers. There are also northern peoples who live in the ice and cold.
This creates a bit of a cultural melange. It may not appeal to people who want a historically purist or very unified cultural vision. For instance, the New Fire RPG has a much more narrow focus on the cultures of Mesoamerica and appears much more unified and less of a gathering of scattered influences as a result. Similarly, Heirs to the Lost World RPG deals with significant cultural diversity but in a narrower geographic space than Ehdrigohr (and also as an alternate history game is a very recognizable 17th C. Mesoamerican and Caribbean setting). Nevertheless, Ehdrigohr is, like the other games above, a labor of love devoted to something of deep personal and cultural importance to the author. It is likely to appeal to the sorts of gamers who want something different than traditional fantasy.
Just as importantly, this isn't the erasure of Gene Wolfe's Urth of the New Sun either, where the peoples north of Patagonia are basically faceless monstrous communististic adversaries. The cultures of Ehdrigohr feel real-enough, tribe like groupings that could share some cultural commonalities as well as have significant differences from each other that make the individual cultures distinct. Along these lines, the juxtaposition of recognizably North American native peoples with Bedouin-type tribal peoples isn't that jarring to me. In fact, right here in Minneapolis, Somali and Native American people have been meeting together to promote intercultural and intergenerational peacemaking. They are discovering many commonalities they share as tribe and clan based peoples.
The setting is shared through both stories and exposition. The stories - often myths - are very good. The setting exposition and rules, however, are very poorly edited. The book has grammatical errors on almost every page with the exception of the stories. It really could have used a few more editorial passes. (I also have some reservations about the implementation of Fate Core here, although I think there's a playable game here.) Yet the vision of the world of Ehdrigohr is worth the reading. Like Tekumel or Everway, it borrows from real world non-European cultures, and does something new with them. I could see running this with my gaming group. Hell, you could probably run something like Fate Everway with it right out of the box!
We'll have a full review up on FATE SF when we have read the entire book.
