The Standard Kit

I really like ACKS' templates.  However, they're a pain in the butt to build, because you have to pick equipment.  I do like the notion of providing flavor to a template via well-chosen mundane gear, but it gets to be a bit much to pick everything when you're aiming to build multiple templates per class.  I've also noticed that some of the published templates miss out on important things; we had a new player bring in a spellsword his first session with the template from the book.  When the party was separated, he found himself without torches through no fault of his own!  He managed to survive the ghoul-teleport debacle anyway, but this was due in part to DM mercy as a result of being shafted by the template.

We've long been fans of Ming's Standard Adventuring Kit, and made great use of it during the last campaign, but it was occasionally irritating that the prices and weights of things were not in accordance with ACKS' rules.  It also seems a decent solution to the template equipment problem; a template with "Flavorful weapon, appropriate armor, one or two other misc items, and the Standard Kit" is very quick and easy to assemble.

So what does the Standard Kit look like in ACKS?

• Backpack
• Blanket
• Pint of military oil
• Small hammer
• 12 iron spikes
• One week's iron rations (medium-quality, 3gp)
• 50' hemp rope
• Sack, large
• Sack, small
• Tinderbox
• 6 torches
• Waterskin

Total price: close enough to 15gp
Total weight: 2 stone (12 items)

The main alteration from Al's list is the removal of the grappling hook, as grappling hooks are expensive in ACKS.  The beer and holy symbols were also omitted.  I also waffled over the inclusion of a dagger in the list, but hitting 12 items on the nose was too convenient, 18 gp is a less-easy-to-deal with number than 15, and clerics can't use 'em.

Next time: actual templates.

Scaled Continent Dungeon #1 - Ready for Players

The sewers of Voltager mapped, stocked, treasured, and a little fleshed out in two nights, and now I'm four days ahead of schedule for first game.  Might work up some templates next.

I'm a bit conflicted on starting level / XP value.  On the one hand, I don't want to build too many low-level dungeons on Voltager, since the mainland is the primary attraction of the setting.  Wilderness adventure more-or-less entails 5th-level for good survival odds, though, so I don't want to hold XP numbers down for long.  On the other hand, having played in a campaign that started at 4th level, it felt too powerful in the beginning.  Two webs and two sleeps a day is great, and then you pull fireball soon after (with a little luck or a scroll).  I'm sort of thinking something like 7500 XP; close enough to 4th that folks will level into it after a decent treasure haul (or already be there for thieves and clerics), but with a gap before they'll probably want to go deep into the jungles.  Good level range to hop between frontier settlements for a while.

High-3rd also seems a reasonable fit for the degree of difficulty that has been baked into this fully-operational battlesta deathtrap dungeon.  When I first ran Sandygates, I was slightly concerned about lethality.  This one doesn't exactly make Sand look like a cakewalk (there are fewer morelocks and less green slime, for starters), but the things in here are nasty in different and exciting ways.  I think the Old Crew could probably handle it OK at this point, but I'm not sure about random FLGS players...  ("It's no Tomb of Horrors, but I'm not as verbose as Gygax anyhow.")

Fortunate side effect of 7500 XP: 6000 GP to spend on important low-level adventuring gear like Reserve XP and Restore Life and Limb castings.

On the Application of Phonemes to NPC Naming

Disclaimer: I Am Not A Linguist, and the following should not be construed as linguistic advice applicable to your particular campaign.

But I did take linguistics 101 once and now I know just enough to be dangerous.

Recently on the way back from lunch on a workday, I somehow ended up with both "Krishna" and "Grishnakh" in working memory at once, and went "Tolkein, you clever bugger, taking proper names from other languages and performing slight shifts on them to distinctly change their tone!"  In this case the shift from 'k' to 'g' is voicing a velar plosive that was previously unvoiced (and then appending a k, but that's more of a phonotactical move).  The k->g voicing is similar to the devoicing of 'd' in the High German consonant shift (ex: door vs tür in German).

The question, of course, is "How can I apply this to the Scaled Continent?"

Let's start with snakes.  They hiss.  A snake-language should have lots of unvoiced fricatives.  If we take a base of say, Aztec names and convert z -> s (which is actually proper pronunciation in Nahuatl, but reversed elsewhere for flavor), ch -> sh (and x -> sh for ease of reading and in keeping with the Nahuatl pronunciation), we get something slightly different.  If we figure crocodiles might favor nasal (crocodiles have long heads, probably sizable nasal cavities) and gutteral sounds, and we convert say co/a to go/a (voicing) and say l to n (alveolar nasalization?) and apply it to the same set of names, we start to get different accents.  Chichimecatecle (good lord that's a long name) becomes Shishimecatecle in snake, but Chichimegatecne in crocodile.  Lizardman probably falls somewhere in between, with some fricative devoicing and some nasalization (or just use base Aztec names for them).  Beetlemen have a buzzing language, converting sh -> j, s -> z, and f -> v.  I have no idea what sea turtles sound like; I guess clicks, nasals, and vowels probably carry best underwater, though, if dolphins and whales are any indication.  Tricky.  Frogmen might have l -> r and p -> b (I foresee Zorton the Frogman being a party favorite; it's fun to say).

And I haven't even touched vowels yet, but that's because standard english transcription does a horrible job with those and getting vowel pronunciations right is hard.

So if we apply the accent filters and then feed the results into the Markovinator...  I should have sufficient names of reasonable variety but shared roots and flavor.

For now.

(Though players, being players, will of course mangle Shishimecatecle into "Sheesh" and Chichimegatecne into "Megatech".  *sigh*  At least I know what I'm in for)

(Also, apologies to any actual linguists reading this.  I know converting sounds using regular expressions on text is a travesty, but computer voice processing is complicated and sort of a hard problem to be tackling as a hobby project due next week at first game)

A Broker of Consequences

Parenting advice from one of my coworkers:

"I tell my children that I don't deal in reward or punishment; I only deal in consequences.  Reward and punishment are matters of opinion; the edict 'If you eat everything on your plate, I will give you a bowl of peas and you will have to eat them all' is a reward if you like peas, and 'If you eat everything on your plate, I will give you a bowl of ice cream and you will have to eat it all' is a punishment if you're too full to eat any more.  Consequences, on the other hand, are a matter of fact, and I make it clear to them that I am a broker of consequences.  If you do X, I will do Y; whether or not you choose to interpret Y as punishment is up to you."

I'm not sure if it's particularly good parenting advice; upon further examination, I'm left a little unsure of the intent in that arena.  It certainly seems reasonable DMing advice, though, where the source of punitive intent (say, a king who has been offended) is (or should be) divorced from the agent responsible for enforcing consequence (the DM).  The DM does not punish; the DM administers the logical consequences an action within the world.  And hey, if you needed to end up in the royal dungeons to ask a political prisoner some questions about where you can meet his conspirators to bring his plot to fruition and you have a good escape plan, it might not be a punishment.  But save versus death to avoid contracting some unpleasant malady from the filthy dungeon bedding...  (consequences!)

Anyway, I thought "broker of consequences" was a wonderful turn of phrase for describing the role of a sandbox DM.

Free the OGREs!

I am sad that I missed the OGRE 6e kickstarter, but SJG has been so kind as to release the rulebook and everything else except for the counters and maps to the internets.  Mighty nice of them to finally give me a chance to read the rules, which I found interesting.  Coming from the Domains at War and Stargrunt tradition, the thing that struck me as I was reading was "Where are the morale rules?"  Which, naturally, would be a poor fit for the sort of 'humanity's last stand against their own best weapon' engagements that the game models.  Other than that, though, the rules seem pretty reasonable; ranges in particular are plausible given the 1.5km hexes (one of the things that grinds my gears about BattleTech).  I also like how tread damage is handled as gradual attrition and a cost for ramming.  Could use some air support rules too.  The rulebook gives enough detail of the OGRE map for me to probably set it up on my hex mat, so that might be a fun solo game this weekend...  I'll probably also pick up the pocket edition when it comes out, because for that price, why the heck not. 

It might be fun to write a program to run the OGRE while I play humans...

Settlements of the Scaled Continent

In ACKS' default 'borderlands' setup, it is assumed that there is a region of human civilization on one map edge, with forbidding wilderness on the other side and a sparse line of frontier towns down the middle.  The Scaled Continent has a very conveniently navigable dividing line, namely coastline.  And so, a list, named in my typical town-naming style:

• Notable non-border settlements:
• Salvation - The largest settlement on the Islands of Voltager, so named due to its position as a source of fresh water in the middle of an otherwise massively empty ocean.  Once occupied by the lizardmen, fell to a short Auran siege due to Voltari complicity and poor fortress design.
• The Forks - Once-capital of the Thrassian Empire, located at the massive fork in the Serpent's Tongue from which that river derives its name.  A multiracial city, hosting large resident populations of lizardmen and vipermen along with representatives and slaves of a hundred jungle races, along with man, dwarf, and elf.  The Citadel, a massive castle once home to the dragon-king Itzcoatl, rises eighty feet from an island at the center of the city.
• The Pit - An immense sinkhole deep in the jungle whose walls the vipermen have riddled with burrows.  Known for its market, where it is said to be possible to buy any poison known to man, and many more exotic.
• First, towns that are where they are for a good reason:
• Stillwater (town) - A trading port at the mouth of the River Langour.  Primary port for man-crocodileman interactions, and a designated Human Preserve / slave-trading area.  Named for the speed of the aptly-named river on which is sits.
• Haven (village) - a good natural harbor located midway between the mouths of the Langour and the Serpent's Tongue.  Old lizardman ruins on the promontory overshadow the town.
• Unity (village/hamlet) - Settled by a passing ship's crew due to generosity of friendly natives.  Good relations persist to this day.
• Port Maw (town) - Positioned at the mouth of the Serpent's Tongue river, a major trading port with the lizardmen and vipermen of the upcountry.  Once a major slave port, less so now.  Named for the impression of early sailors that the overhanging canopy resembled a toothed mouth.
• Mission (hamlet) - An Auran religious / military outpost some ways south of Port Maw.
• Guano Cave (town) - Midway between the Serpent's Tongue and the Islands Innumerable.  Primary natural resource and export is guano from the extensive nearby cave complexes, contested by cave inhabitants.
• Liberty (village) - Carved into the cliffs of the Turtle's Beak by escaped dwarven slaves.  Remains a dangerous place for slavers to put ashore.
• Scurvy's End (village) - Among the northwestern Islands Innumerable, and home to extensive fruit trees and abundant fresh water.  A favorite stop of sailors.
• And of course, those settlements with less fortunate origins (mostly villages / hamlets)...
• Mire - A hellhole in the Crocodile Fens founded by poor benighted (and beknighted) fools in search of a city of gold.  Enjoys regular visits from hungry crocodileman raiders.
• Miasma - A barrier island off the coast of the Fens settled by sailors who ran ashore during a storm.  The whole place stinks of rot from the salt marshes, and malaria is its primary product.  The soil is good for growing rice in the marshes, but mortality is atrocious.
• Rat's Nest - North of Port Maw, a ship washed ashore during a tremendous storm was caught in the canopy of the jungle.  Most of the original sailors have left, but the elves enjoy the humor of the place and congregate here.
• Splinter - A treacherous reef in the Islands Innumerable, inhabited by sharkmen.  Their religion prohibits them from eating anyone who makes it to shore, and a small colony of survivors has sprung up on the nearby atoll as a result.  They trade crude alcohol, crafts, and stories to the sharkmen for fish, but are always careful to stay out of the water...
• Mutiny - Beyond the Islands Innumerable lies the Bay of Black Sand, abutting the Desert of Black Sands.  A fool captain once attempted to chart the coast of that miserable place.  When he came upon a river running north into the desert, and a merciful source of fresh water, he let it be known to his crew that he intended to continue east along the coast after only a day to gather provisions.  His mistake in henchman morale management cost him his life, and a town sprang up at the river's mouth.  These days it caters to fools seeking to explore the desert's interior, and is inhabited by the desperate, the wanted, and the slightly-unhinged.

Of course, there are a number of abandoned, destroyed, and forgotten settlements littering the coast as well, but those are adventure locales and must be found!

Scaled Tongues

Setting work on Scaled Continent continues.  Start date of campaign at FLGS is set for 3 November, so I have just over two more weeks.  Running a game for a group of complete strangers will be...  interesting (provided I can get any to sign up).  If not, well, I've heard good things about Roll20...

Been working on mapping, custom treasure, and custom spells.  Not Joe Orcs these beastmen - Player's Companion and custom spells for their witch doctors and shamans.  Got to thinking about language and the importance thereof in dealing with natives recently.  I like the assumption that the various beast species have their own languages (crocodileman, viperman, toadman,...), along with a general 'Thrassian' pidgin from the Imperial days and a religious / court / high language, probably Draconic.  Common is the language of slaves and former slave races, who also have their own racial languages (Elven, Dwarven, Auran).

The plethora of languages suggests some fun complications to me which are typically glossed over.  First off, how many languages do beastmen speak?  Off-the-cuff heuristic says that the higher up the chain of command they are, the smarter and better travelled they are.  Normal beastmen speak only their tribal language, while champions speak two languages (tribal + pidgin or rival tribal), subchiefs three (tribal + two pidgins or rival tribals), and chieftains, shamans, and witch-doctors four or five (tribal + two pidgins or rival tribals + Draconic, typically).

Entertainingly, this means that the guys you're most likely to capture to interrogate for intelligence (the grunts) are the least likely to be able to communicate with you.  Hi-larious!  Also, the Comprehend / Read Languages / Tongues / Telepathy / ESP spells are much more useful when language barriers crop up reliably than in a game where you occasionally meet a dead script in some guy's tomb but all the beastmen speak Common.  As are the Thief ability to read languages and the late-binding +Int language slots.  ACKS provides plenty of ways to work around this problem, but it could still get in the way occasionally and entertainingly.

The other side of the coin is that the language you're speaking may effect your reaction rolls.  Choose wisely; an armed band of demihumans addressing a lizardman in Common comes off as a slave revolt, while the same armed band of demihumans speaking Thrassian is more likely to be perceived as Voltari mercenaries.  Speaking the tribal tongue of those you are addressing is liable to get a bonus, while speaking the tribal tongue of an enemy group may net a penalty.  Common sense applies, but a plus or minus one bonus to reaction rolls from language might be utilized to good effect by canny PCs.