Markdoc

Re: Populating and fleshing out Saltmarsh If there's trade, ie: people passing through, there'll be inns. How many depends on how much trade. Given that Saltmarsh appears to be on a major road, there'll be at least one one or two in the town itself. Probably in fact more than one given that it looks like it's 20 miles or so to Seaton making it a good day's travel. If passengers travel much by sea, they'll want an inn too. I'm guessing, probably two inns, though you might get by with one large one. Bars? Many - if there are sailors stopping by on a regular basis, many, many. A dozen? Maybe more. In medieval times a lot of bars were actually simply the front room of somebody's house, or even a lean-to that could be folded away at night. That's still true today in many places. In a lot of African villages, you pass through there might be one "real bar" and 6 houses with an upside-down cup on a stick outside which means "cheap drinks available here". 1400 people, a fishing village, on a major road - anywhere from 2-12 bars is not beyond the bounds of possibility depending on how big they are. Given that there's both a city and a fort nearby, both of which will have their own, I'm guessing one. Maybe two. Carpentry woodshops? Maybe none. Carpenters in medieval times tended to either be guild members (meaning city) or itinerant. A lot of woodwork you can do yourself or get done by a friend and a town (1400 people is really a town rather than a village) within a day's walk of a city probably wouldn't have enough work for a full time carpentry workshop: if you wanted something fancy, you could get it from the city. Coopers on the other hand there might well be several of - many of the goods you are talking about (dye, salted fish, etc) will go in barrels so there'll be a constant demand and enough work making them. You could always get them from the city, but that adds two day's travel (there and back) to the cost of each lot of barrels. I'm guessing it would be more economic to make them on the spot. You don't import hides, if you don't have to. They rot and even salt-cured, they stink. They're heavy, too. Tanning is usually done near to where you slaughter the animals. That said, there's a lot of open land north of Saltmarsh - if cattle are raised there, they might be driven to town to slaughter and the hides tanned as well. I'm guessing probably not though. Medieval cities have an inexhaustible demand for meat, so it'd probably make sense to drive the cattle to Seaton and slaughter them there. The hides might come to Saltmarsh if the city forbids tanneries, but most likely the tanneries will be on the road outside Seaton, is my guess. One hides are tanned, they are easy to move - so there might well be leather workers. I'm guessing, though that these are likely to be found in Seaton, instead. Why ship tanned hides to Saltmarsh, if the hides are already right where larger market exists? It's cheaper to put the finished leather goods on a ship and sail em up to Saltmarsh, if you need 'em This sounds like a good idea. Bulk preservation is not something that fishermen tend to do themselves, because preserving fish (or any sort of meat) takes a lot of time. You need to decide how it is preserved. Saltmarsh is on the sea, so they can make salt in pans. That's a labour and time expensive business, so if it's done that way, there'll be big salt pans nearby and poor people to work them. People who made salt (as opposed to their bosses) have always been among the poorest of the poor - it's horrible, backbreaking work. The requirement for lots of coastal land makes the business less attractive to cities, so this is a logical job for Saltmarsh. Alternatively, there's a swamp right next door - charcoal burners could operate there, cutting wood and providing fuel for smoking fish. I that case the town would have lots of smokers outside the town walls (because of the risk of fire). Which you go for depends on climate. Damp and humid? Not so good for salt pans (still possible though: that case you use fire to heat and evaporate the brine out of metal pans). Either way, if preserving fish is a major business, there'll be sheds for gutting fish, sheds for hanging it up to cure the town will have a "certain odor" and you will definitely need coopers and woodcutters. A third option - not as much used, but possible - is to ferment the fish instead. Fermented fish is more expensive and heavier to transport, but was considered a luxury a lot of places. In Medieval europe (and today, in places where people travel by foot or animal) people tended not to travel to shop the way we do - instead they come to market (often once a week). That way you can be sure that if you have stuff to sell, there'll be buyers - an important point when a lot of things were difficult to preserve or had limited market size. It also means relatively few travelers most of the week and then 3-5 times as many people one day of the week. Of course, not all towns had markets. Bearing in mind that Seaton is close by, I'm guessing you'll have at most a farmers' market once a week and a bigger market in Seaton that would draw more specialized goods. If you don't have markets (or even if you do) there's also a place for merchants. While Seaton is only a day away, it's a PITA to make a two day trip (or one really long day) to get one or two items. A merchant could make a living loading up on small items that people used regularly (like pins, thread, fancy trimmings for clothes, horn for lanterns, candles, glass for windows, cooking pots, etc) and ordering stuff for them and then either fetching it himself or having it dropped off from a ship. If much shipping goes through the port - and there are fishermen - you'll also have a place for a chandler who sells pulleys, rope, tar, canvas, etc. There might even be place for a ropemaker. I'm guessing there probably won't be shipyards. The logical places for those are Anglor or Torvin where there's either plenty of wood close to hand, or you can send it down the river to town. Last of all, what about religion? There's probably going to be one or more temples, possibly with a hostel for travellers. cheers, Mark

Re: Mullings Over Magic

Re: The Overbearing Presence

Re: The Overbearing Presence These things you request - they are already in the rules on PRE attacks, as she is wrote. That is exactly what "exhibiting a power", Violent actions" etc are made of. This is, is it not, the point I have been making, over and over? The penalties are there for a reason: standing safely back out of reach and trying to PRE attack people into submission is going to activate the penalties - it's the difference between shouting "Go on, chaps! You charge the machine guns, while I stay here!" and boldly vaulting the barbed wire, shouting "Come on chaps! Follow me and we'll give the hun a real seeing-to!" There's an instance where in fact, a movement action makes all the difference.

Re: The Overbearing Presence

Re: The Overbearing Presence

Re: The Overbearing Presence

Re: The Overbearing Presence

Re: The Overbearing Presence

Re: The Overbearing Presence If we were talking about what we'd want to see in PRE attacks mechanics-wise, here's what I'd want to see: 1. It must not be an attack action, as that rules out being impressive or scary while doing something. It doesn't necessarily have to be free as it is now, but at most a half-phase action, and preferably zero-phase 2. There needs to be some method for rapidly degrading effectiveness. I don't want people to be "continually awesome" - in other words a kind of "shock and awe" effect. 3. It needs to be heavily modifiable by situational modifiers - re-use modifier would solve problem #2 above. 4. It should have some combat effect, but that effect should not be overwhelming or result in long-term effects That said, I have no particular problem with using a skill vs skill roll instead of the current mechanism. I can't see any particular advantage to it, but neither can I see any particular disadvantage. One difference is that you could use a PRE attack as a complementary to an interaction skill (the current mechanism simulates that by giving a small bonus for a successful PRE attack, but it's not precisely the same). cheers, Mark

Re: The Overbearing Presence To some extent - if you go "Fear me!", aiming to scare all the bad guys in the area, you will also affect nearby allies (though at a reduced level, as per the rules). If you are trying to intimidate a bad guy to open a door for you, that's not going to affect the bad guys peering down form the upper windows. Targetting with PRE attacks is a pretty blunt instrument. cheers, Mark

Re: The Overbearing Presence Ummm... you do know that the rules already include EGO rolls to negate the effect of PRe attacks, yes? EGO has been a permissible defence against PRE attacks, for a long time. Cheers, Mark

Re: Mullings Over Magic

Re: Mullings Over Magic

Re: The Overbearing Presence I think we've more or less run this one its course. Sean, you seem to argue that yes, Flash can be exactly as devastating as PRE, but that doesn't matter because the defence is fairly common. Hugh, I and some others are saying that a really high PRE can be just as devastating as Flash ... but it doesn't matter because the defence is fairly common (and certainly published Hero product seem to bear that out). PRE defence (a 10 point investment just in defence would net you +20 PRE) makes you essentially all but immune to PRE attacks from a 60 PRE person. In that regard PRE and defence tends to scale extremely well with the other examples you give above. All this is telling me is that we run games differently and what you consider "the norm" simply isn't the case in the games we run. That doesn't mean the rules are unbalanced - in fact, they don't seem to be, in play. It just means that in cases where Flash defence is rare, and people are not prepared for it, Flash will seem overly powerful. In cases where the various defences against PRE attacks are rare, and people are not prepared for it, a big PRE attack will seem overly powerful. In games where rDEF is low, killing attacks will seem overly powerful, etc. cheers, Mark

Re: Saturn’s Hexagon May Be Solar System’s Coolest Mystery So it'll be interesting to see what hatches out of that sucker. cheers, Mark

Re: Mullings Over Magic I'm thinking a discount of 10-15 RP will make magic ubiquitous, since a 3 point investment in Magic Tradition Skill gets you a CHAR roll, - so even without any further investment, that's up to 20 active points. Throw on gestures and/or incantations, and you're down to 10-15 real points without any further ado: you can buy 20 active points of stuff, for 1 point a shot. Woohoo! Forcefield, fast regeneration, flight, teleport, etc. Warriors who don't use magic are not going to stand a chance and rogue types would be redundant. Who needs stealth and security systems when you have X-ray vision, invisibility, flight and teleportation? Who needs big muscles when 2 points buys you +20 STR AND Deadly Blow? You gots you some high magic right there. If you want people to have access to "small magic" but rule out fireballs and teleporting parties of adventurers, I'd suggest the following. 1. No price break. Magic is so useful, people will buy it anyway, if they are not actively stopped. If you allow frameworks (for example for skill tricks) for non-mages, allow mages to use them too (one per tradition). Otherwise, not. 2. Require a Difficult skill roll (-1 per 5 active points). That makes it relatively easy to buy a good enough skill do 5-15 point spells reliably, but almost impossible to do a 60 pointer, without taking lots of extra time, ritual equipment, etc. It also means that spells are not so reliable than you can dispense with armour and weapons unless you are a specialist spellcaster with lots of points invested in your skill roll. That might not sound like much, but 10 points of flight will get you over any wall, even if you can't cross continents with it, and save you from pit traps and the like. 10 points of HKA is no substitute for a greatsword, but these "magic claws" would let a strong warrior do 2d6 HKA even when totally unarmed. 10 points lets you see in the dark, breathe underwater, climb on the ceiling like a spider, change your face to look like someone else, create images to draw the guard's attention, talk mentally to your comrades wherever they are, create magical defences stronger than plate armour, quadruple your lifting power, increase your chance of hitting a foe dramatically, etc. In games where access to "small magic" is easy, my characters almost always take 10-15 points worth and they've never regretted it. cheers, Mark cheers, Mark

Re: The Archaeometallurgy of Armour Excellent find! Worth it for the energy output comparison alone! cheers, Mark

Re: The Cast Of Red Dragon Inn

Re: Do you give differing accents to fantasy races? In our D&D current game, that's how the giant folk talk, with the added refinement that ettins have two names, leading to strange constructions like Billy-Bob and Bobby-Joe, etc. cheers, Mark

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply!

Re: Dwarves, Elves and Hobbits Need Not Apply! I haven't used the "standard" fantasy races in my games for long, long time. I have "fay" who draw pretty heavily on european legends of "fairies" and (in theory) the evil serpent men (I say in theory, because although they're a background element, I've never actually used them in an adventure. But that's it. There are multiple races of humans, though - halflings (or pygmies, if you prefer), and Ogres (humans, magically bred as warriors by the aforementioned snakemen) - but they're just slightly smaller or slightly bigger humans, respectively. There are also Lunites (humans who live on the moon) and Marsans (humans who live on Mars). They are physically different but show up rarely if at all all because neither like Earth much: too much gravity, too hot, the air's hard to breath, etc. I also have lots of constructs: the players right now are dealing with "Destroyers" - sharkmen, basically. But there's no race of sharkmen - all the Destroyers are cultists warped by the practice of unspeakable rites. So their children are just ordinary humans, until they are initiated into the cult (this is a Multiform). Likewise, many years ago, a different group of players had to deal with a bad guy who had a bunch of catgirls. But there's no race of catgirls: he has the Minglers of the Blood extract the life essence of some big cats and then infuse it into some of his slaves to produce a (for him) amusing troupe of dancing girls who were also deadly fighters and doubled as his bodyguard. (we're simply talking Transform, here). cheers, Mark

Re: Do you give differing accents to fantasy races?

Re: Do you give differing accents to fantasy races? It's been a staple of Games Workshop for decades now - along with the idea that Orc speak like oiks or football hooligans. As far as I know, that's where it comes from. Certainly it long predates Order of the Stick and the Salvatore books, because I was being exposed to it back in the mid-80's. I think it got to be popular because it's far easier for english-speaking platers and GMs to do a scottish accent than a scandinavian one: even though I always saw Dwarves as short, hairy, money-grubbing subterranean vikings cheers, Mark

Re: Assuage my fears about the complexity I've been running a pretty popular Fantasy game for years now (well, I assume it's popular: people keep turning up more or less on time and have been doing so for 4 years, even though some other GM's games for the same group have folded over the same period). And you know what? None - not one - of the players knows the rules properly - most of 'em don't even have more than a basic grasp of the rules. Doesn't matter. They tell me what they want their characters to do, I run it. The basic rules, though wildly comprehensive, are actually pretty consistent, so even if you have never come across a particular problem before, it's not hard to work out how to handle it on the fly. They don't have a good grasp of the rules, but they know what their characters can do, relatively speaking. And that's sufficient. The same applies to updating character sheets. They tell me how they want the characters to develop, I tell 'em how much experience it will cost. So yeah, what the other people said. Step 1) Learn the rules Mmm-hmm. Crunchy goodness. Step 2) Work out what you and your players want to run. You set up characters to their specifications (allow a little fine-tuning n the first few sessions) Step 3) Enjoy! cheers, Mark