I Am Truly Torn...

About what I should/want to be doing. I just got done watching an... 'interesting' movie, The Lost Future. Surprisingly, it wasn't terrible, but I digress. At the moment, I am considering whether to go play Oblivion, Blog about how I want to implement Microlite20, or read the latest version of Beacon (release 5, as of this post).

Life seems to answer many of my questions for me as I procrastinate; the living room (where the Xbox is) is full of kids watching T.V., and though I need to read Beacon before my pending play-test, I don't want it's greatness to influence my first decision on how I want to tweak the system to give the setting its own feel.

So to get started, for those that aren't familiar with Microlite20, "it is a trimmed-down, subminiature version of the Primary Fantasy SRD rules (see license for more info) that has been designed to be quick and easy to play. The goal was to create a simpler game, but one where all of the resources of Primary Fantasy SRD (monsters, spells, adventures and equipment) could be used without conversion."" ~ Microlite20 Purest Essence.

Basic Microlite20 kicks things off with Stats. It only uses three of the six 'common' stats you would find in other fantasy role-playing games, and its source SRD; Strength, Dexterity, and Mind. Charisma is a commonly house-ruled stat, though I am somewhat torn on its use myself. But, I am not sure that I want to use any of them for this incarnation of the system to represent adventurers in Humanity's Reign & Ruin (referred to as simply HR&R from here onward).

My intention for HR&R is for it to be gritty and low magic. How can I reflect this through the rules even now, as I approach "putting pen to paper"? Stats. Perhaps, rather than be conventional, I can convey the gritty feel now. As I skim the basic rules, something caught my eye. Something that always catches my eye, "Note that there are no “saving throws” in this game; use Physical + STR or DEX bonus for Fortitude and Reflex saves. Saving against magic (Will save) is usually MIND bonus + your level."

Everyday in HR&R should be a day to save versus something, so why not just use these commonly removed items for stats? Perhaps I should just use; Fortitude, Reflex, and Will, instead or Strength, Dexterity, and Mind. If players have a preconceived notion of this verbiage being associated with 'saving their proverbial bacon', then could having them as stats convey the gritty life threatening nature of the setting I want to produce? Or, as I fear (1), this would be too large a step away from the conventional?

Well that is the first small stumbling block in my path to getting underway, getting what is in my head and in a small mound of written notes, into a congealed setting and rules set.

I would love to hear some thoughts on this.

Best,
TB

(1) Thought on Fear as I wrote the above post: How to project it into the game, by implementing some mechanic that makes sense?

Firmly In The Less Is More Camp...

Minimal systems are currently my preference. My Gamer ADD/OCD tends to have me wondering, so rules heavy systems don't seem to last. An example of a borderline too rules heavy system is Savage Worlds, that I began mulling over a while ago. I stopped then on page 78 and haven't returned.

I am currently fully entrenched in Microlite20, but what factoids I have gleaned from developing Savage Worlds - Plot Point Settings are interesting. For example; Plot Points, Set Pieces, and Adventure Paths and Delving into Design: Echo of Dead Leaves (Part II) (interesting reads if Plot Point Settings appeal to you). I am planning to attempt a similar tact while pushing ahead on a Microlite20 house rule set for Humanity's Reign & Ruin.

As I had mentioned, I envision Humanity's Reign & Ruin as being two settings, a before and after kind of thing. Humanity's Reign, as a middling magic, human-centric, middle-ages - with monsters, affair. The subsequent setting; Humanity's Ruin, a demi-human-centric, pronounced magic, humans are rare, dark and gritty - with monsters, affair. They tie together with my, for now only in notes and mind, game history.

Currently my approach to presenting these two, tied together, settings is going to be a short paragraph about each and allow the Rules, Tables (thanks to Zak's How I Want To Hear About Your Setting), and Plot Point Setting adventures to speak for themselves. I have a mental image of what, and how, the world and things in it coalesce, but have no desire to put out an expansive Setting PDF on it that no one wants to read. I think a simple Gazetteer focusing on the above, with maps, should suffice. Then six to eight Plot Points, with all the entail, for adventure.

At the moment, I am speculating on whether a Plot Point Zero adventure is in order? I think it would be interesting for the first adventure to be the 'lead-into the fall of Humanity' and have the Plot Point Setting Adventures lead up to that experience that the Players would have already experienced.

Thoughts on a Plot Point Zero for Humanity's Reign & Ruin?

Hopefully this is a beginning to an end...

Best,
TB

The Writing Actually Begins!

My Decleration of Intent seems to have gotten my mind right! The writing has begun and the big change for me, other than scrapping a large chunk of the bad fiction, is that I have decided to use Microlite20 as my go-to-rules set. I realize that many might not consider it 'OS' to use an SRD derivative work, but playing with Microlite20 with my girls sure has the old style vibe for me. Take it or leave it, I am confident that I have made the right choice. Especially after working on something as small as the Mini-Gazetteer using S&W:WB.

Just a rough mockup for a cover. Though, I am not sure what more I would want in one to be honest. Alot of my layout inspiration is coming from Beacon at the moment.

Best,
TB

Getting Carried Away

More GIMP Goodness: I was messing with the peel-back of the last image I had done, and suitably darkening up the Humanity's Ruin pic, when I decided to try something else...

Kinda wish I could figure out how to have the before/after knight showing rather than the castle before/after. But, I am digging it.

-EDIT-

Messing around...

Come again,
TB

Humanity's Ruin Image: A New Beginning

So I started messing around with the Humanity's Ruin image and the OCD and ADD kicked in:

Humanity's Ruin: A New Beginning

Not exactly what I set out to do, but....

Thoughts?
TB

-EDIT-

While I was posting the above, I had GIMP minimized and when I returned to it, this was there:

Strange Results

I can't explain it... perhaps my keystrokes were still effecting the image? It was the only layer and was called Copy#8. Strange! If I could only do this to the 'Humanity's Reign' image!

Images for Ukarea

I got to thinking I wanted some images for Ukarea. Searching the Internet I found this in the public domain:

Very nice for the human-sentric first half of Ukarea's history: Humanity's Reign (TM). I started looking for an image for the second half of Ukarea's history: Humanity's Ruin (TM)... Not so much luck. Then I got to thinking edit what you have! So I came up with these:

Reign 1

 Reign 2

 Reign 3

 Ruin

I obviously have some work to do on the Ruin image. I don't like how the light on the leaning knight hits him, and want to add some shadow to the ruins.

I would love to hear which of the 3 Reign pictures I should use though...

Best,
TB

Been A While...

Yes, it has been a while since I have posted anything here. Do to some unfortunate personal issues I haven't had time for much past reading other's blogs, that I am subscribed to. But, for the few that follow along, I have every intention of continuing on with my Ukarea setting: Humanity's Reign and Ruin.

While I intended to go with Sword & Wizardry: White Box, I am beginning to lean more towards the Dark Dungeons rules set now. Mainly do to my familiarity and love for it's inspiration (Rules Cyclopedia) and the recent shake up of White Box, that I am not prepared to comment on at the moment.

I still have to delve into the legal-ese of Dark Dungeons, but "Dark Dungeons published 2010, no Copyright is asserted on the original text found in this work." does sound promising assuming a OGL page at the end of my publication will suffice.

With the re-discovery of Building the Perfect Class at Breeyark, I feel motivated to rebuild the classes from the ground up to better fit the setting that I have in mind. Especially the dark fantasy side, Humanity's Ruin, which will be demi-human centric. I think this all (Dark Dungeons and Building the Perfect Class) ties well into what I am gunning for.

More to come soon, promise.

Best,
TB

Time to Scratch My Head!

So, I finished up the arable regions and their populace. I had started with a figure of 19,530 total inhabitants for the barony. After all the arable regions inhabitants were subtracted, I had 17,208 people remaining.

The guidelines suggest taking the square root of the population (which is 131) and multiplying it by a randomly generated number (2d4+10), where I rolled 3 for a total of 13. The largest non-arable producing center in the barony would then be a Small Town of 1,705 inhabitants. My sensibilities thought this was fine, but when I started reducing 1,705 by a random percentage (2d4x5%), I got two more towns of 1,279 and 1086 persons, and a village of 760. This left me with a staggering 12,378 people in a multitude of tiny (<760 inhabitants) villages, which is not ideal for what I had envisioned!

Think I will call it a night and mull this over. My knee-jerk reaction is to start with a Large Town, or even a Small City, and then reduce it to eat up some of the population...

"OH NO! GODZILLA!" ~ resident of my starting barony

TB

Progress: Coming to Life

The barony that I chose to start with in Ukarea (TM) is starting to take shape and I thought I would share, for those who care, and to make a log of what I have done so I can do it again if it works out well. I have the memory of a nat so hopefully I can convey what I have done so I can recreate it if necessary later.

First question, how many inhabitants are there in the barony? I decided a general question could have a general answer; 16 six mile hexes (total livable area) each have 31sq miles of space, or (16x31=) 496sq miles total. This is comforting because it is on par with the 498sq miles of a default dominion (One 24mile hex) in BECMI or RC. OCD sated. So based on the random Population Demographics formula; 4d6xC where "C" is the number of centuries the barony had been around (2 full centuries in this case, see older posts). I multiplied the random population density by the number of square miles in my barony for a total of 19,530 people. That sounds about right, I guess.

Second question, how much arable (farmland) is needed to support 19,530 people in a medieval society? Using the figures provided, 1 square mile will sustain 180 people. 19530/180=108.5 sq miles of arable land. I should have probably just said 108 or 109 one mile hexes, but I didn't. A one mile hex is not equal to one square mile, based on the .9306049 squared figure provided. A one mile hex is, based on that figure, .866 square miles. Multiplying .866 by the 108.5 square miles needed I discovered I needed 125 one mile hexes of productive arable land (farmland) to support the populace.

Oh, Hexographer...

Third question, how was the land dispersed and how much of the total population lived in the arable regions? I placed the 125 one mile farm hexes to taste, creating twelve separate arable regions. I decided that each of these regions needed farmers and families to work the productive lands. But how many? I decided to do the same thing that I did for the barony as a whole. I counted the number of hexes for each region and multiplied that by .866 (the square miles to a single mile hex) for a total square mileage for each of the twelve regions. I am kind of thinking of them as mini-dominions, which I think is a fair assessment. So as an example, farmlands covering 6 one mile hexes has a total square mileage of 5.196. I dropped that area into the Kingdom Population Calculator under Land Size, entered 229 years (figured earlier) for Kingdom Age, and rolled 4d6x2 for Specific Desired Density then hit calculate. Which gave me some key information; Total Population, Rural Population, and Urban Population. The key for me was Total Population.

Note: I could have used the same random (4d6xC) that I had generated for the barony for each of the arable regions, but chose not to so that I would get better randomization. If two arable regions had the same number of one mile hexes, it would have the same number of inhabitants. Which I didn't want. With this, a second 6 mile hex arable region will more than likely have a higher or lower population (perhaps it was founded earlier or later than the first one I did).

Note: I disregarded Rural and Urban results, as they felt wrong to me for the small villages, hamlets, and thorpe that I was creating. In retrospect, I think I could have inverted the corresponding results for the two fields to get a fair assessment of how many of the population lived in the settlement, and how many lived out of it, perhaps on a distant farm.

Lastly, I took the number of people in the arable region and used it into the Population Center Demographics Calculator to find out what types of services were present, and noted it down for the dominion writeup that will come later. I have completed eight of the twelve farm regions thus far and hope to have the remaining four done tonight. Once I have all them done, I will total their populace and subtract it from the dominion total population. Once I have the figure, I can use the steps provided to determine the largest settlement and all subsequent settlements per the Medieval Demographics Made Easy site.

This all sounds rather difficult I am sure, but once I figured out how I wanted to do it, it went rather quickly.

Happy Gaming,
TB

So the Rolling Begins

Pulling out the dice, firing up Hexographer, and pulling up my old blank Ukarea (TM) map...

1d4+1= 2 (200 hundred) + 2d10 = 2,9 (29 years) - So the new Barony will be 229yrs old (Recorded Time). Not a founding Barony by no means, but falls into what I suspect will be about average.

5d6 = 21 hexes (6mi each) - where to plunk my first undertaking?

So I chose a chunk of land from the Ukarea (TM) map, and picked 21 hexes and blew it up!

Each small hex is now equal to one mile across, or from center to center. Keeping in mind that a hex at this scale has an area of only .866 square miles I can continue by placing Farm Land to determine the number and density of the populace and use 'Arable' land and figure out how many people could be supported the dominion by rolling 6d4x2 for each such hex.

Additional Note: If each Farm Land hex has 6d4x2 farmers, then subtracting that from 180 (the number of persons it could support with its resource) I can figure out how many people are living in settlements.

More to come as I splash in farmlands and tinker a bit...

Hope you enjoy it! My OCD is being sated!

TB

Attempt at Randomizing Dominion Creation

I decided rather than reinvent the wheel, I would take my blank map of Ukarea (TM) and repopulate it. I was never really happy with the breakdown of dominions anyway and hate to throw the work away that I have already done for it. Now to apply some randomizers...

Pulling out my old copy of Dawn of Worlds (direct link to pdf), as a reference for world building time lines, I have decided to try some random calculations for the dominions I will be creating. During the Second Age in Dawn of Worlds, time is measured in 100 year increments and a minimum of five turns has to be spent on the age (500 years). Which interestingly enough corresponds to the multiplication factor for randomly determining Population Density in Medieval Demographics Made Easy by S. John Ross. I have decided to go with 1d4+1 for the number of hundreds of years, and a percentile roll, 2d10, for years between centuries. The number of full centuries will be 'C' in the converted Population Density formula of; 6d4xC per square mile of arable land.

So, with that, I can determine how old the dominion is and how many people there are per square mile. Once I chose where the dominion will be placed, I can draw up a sub-hex map with arable land represented as farmland. Each 1 mile sub-hex is equal to .866 square miles. From there I can extrapolate how many people are in each sub-hex / each 6mile hex / and the overall dominion. I can also determine based on the number of hexes that could be made arable, how many persons the dominion could hold at full capacity. (This might lead to a fun little ratio that I could use to determine need for expansion, which in turn will influence the relations of neighboring dominions, when I get that far into this)

In my previous post about distractions, I discovered that there was similar square mileage in sixteen 6mile hexes as in a standard BECMI (RC) 24mile hex dominion. Sixteen 6mile hexes being average for a dominion (Barony most likely) I have decided to try going with 5d6 (range of 5 to 30, with a bell curve around 17 or 18) for a random generator of how many 6mile hexes my starting dominion will cover.

Now all this may sound silly, and I can rationalize that it is, but OCD is a remarkable fickle bitch. Good thing I enjoy doing such things, aka exercises in futility.

More tomorrow, hopefully.

TB

HOW IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY DO I GET THE TEXT BACKGROUND COLOR TO GO BACK TO TRANSPARENT?!

Great! More Destractions!

As I had mentioned in an earlier post I had ran across two topics that got my juices flowing. Now, I want to mash them together, with a couple of other ideas, and see what I can come up with:

Take the following:

• Micro-Megadungeons (at Evan's Swords of Minaria Blog, which takes the idea of  leveling a party to forth level all in a small setting)
• The One Page Dungeon / The One Page Wilderness and to a lesser extent the 5 Room Dungeon (Sorry no link)
• The Master Plan (by 3llense'g, over at Goblinoid Games) that suggests a Nemesis can advance as the party does, that I think of as a Mini-Game for the DM. 
• And something else I can't remember at the moment... 

Put it all into my brain, shake vigorously, and release! 

((Pulling this out of the Draft list so topic may wonder))
So, while looking for the mysterious fourth inspirational item referred to above, I stumbled across S. John Ross' Medieval Demographics Made Easy. I had seen it before and scanned over it, but was not interested in developing a setting at the time. Now, unlike then, I am. Well to begin with I couldn't decide whether to start big and zoom in, or start small and grow the setting. I decided to take a middle route. I wouldn't develop a whole world, nor would I begin with a village. Inspired by the early works of Grubman with his The Phoenix Barony setting (Sorry can't currently find a link), I decided to start with a barony. I had to decide how big the barony would be, so I consulted my copy of Test of the Warlords module and Rules Cyclopedia. Both sources suggested starting with a 24mile hex for the basic dominion. This held me up for a brief moment, as I had decided to go with a 6mile hex scale, based on Steamtunnel's The Hydra's Grotto blog. I converted the 24mile hex to square miles and did the same for the 6mile hex. I found that their were 16 6mile hexes worth of land in a 24mile hex. So my starting barony would be 16, 6mile hexes. That soothed my OCD, temporarily...


I set about using the guidelines presented on S. John Ross' site and tried some of the linked random generators, but none of the results fit my idea of the demographics of a fantasy role-play setting. Needless to say, I went to bed frustrated. While trying to go to sleep, I had an epiphany! I was trying to once again develop from a top-down viewpoint. The question was, what if I went bottom-up? Could I draw the map how I wanted it and then based on that determine how big the population was? How many Cities, Towns, Villages, etc. would be present? Sure I could. If I made a map with sub-hexes and put in farmland I could figure out the population and what size neighborhood to place based on the figure provided of 180 people could be supported with each 1mile squared. Off to fire-up Hexmapper!


More to come, hopefully tonight!
TB

Humanity's Reign (First Map of Ukarea)

As I mentioned in my earlier post today, I had developed a Hexographer map of Ukarea during Humanity's Reign which I am not too fond of. I managed to pull it onto the web, and share it now in hopes of getting some constructive feedback, before I rerender it. What should I change? Where did I go wrong? Could it be salvaged? As I mentioned earlier, the only hope that I currently have is that thought the lands are claimed they may not necessarily be maintained.

Thanks in advance.
TB

The Changing Times of Ukarea

As I have mentioned on other posts, Ukeara (TM) is going to be a multi-time-line setting, taking place in the early years known as Humanity's Reign (TM) and a later period after humanity's fall, known as Humanity's Ruin (TM). Combined the setting will be referred to The Time of Humanity's Reign or Ruin (TM) or possibly just Reign and Ruin (TM).

The setting started out rough, to be honest. I thought I would start with a basic map, develope humanity and then wipe it off the face of the planet. Changing the map as I went. After finding a great free (which I hope to one day purchase so I can do custom hexes) online java based map program; Hexographer, I set about trying my idea out with the program, and came out with this:

This seemed to work just fine, but I was not happy with the size or layout, so I went back and started anew. I have a base map, that I am now finally happy with. The latest version of unsettled Ukarea (TM):

I started assigning parts of the world for dominions (which I do not currently have a picture for), but am unsatified with it. I have taken some time off from the project recently, as I was getting burned out, and now when I look at the map for Habit for Humanity, I see issues. For one, I filled the entire map with claimed lands, nothing is not claimed. If there were Badlands, I probably would have settled them too. Granted that humans wouldn't be in every hex that they claim, but it does conflict with reality. Yes, I like alittle reality in my fantasy.

So, back to the drawing board! I am thinking of breaking the time of Humanity's Reign (TM) down into several time-lapsed maps. This should help me keep a realistic human expansion and history easier, rather than looking at a settled map and trying to answer, "Why are they settled this way?"

More to come as time permits,
TB

The World of Ukarea

I have finished the base map for The World of Ukarea (TM) and have roughed out the Dominions of Humanity based on some guidance on the S&W Forum for sizes and such. I did not strictly go by the suggestions, as they seemed to be aimed more toward a traditional Middle Ages breakdown and I wanted a rougher chaotic fantasy feel.

I do want to take a moment and thank everyone at the Sword & Wizardry Forums who has given me some great advice and have shown so much tolerance for a S&W noob ~ Thanks you!

Now that the map is done, I have settled on using The Kingdom of Thuslean as my starting point and have decided to focus on the Grand Duchy of Duvallae', one of four dominions in the kingdom. I intend for the Kingdom, and it's subordinate fiefs, to be some of the youngest established lands of humanity in the world, with vast regions of inhospitable areas and limited technology.

I still have not settled on an overall technological level for The World of Ukarea however. I have thought of advancing some of the older dominions to as far along as a Steam-Punk-Fantasy-Society. I am unsure at this point, but I have to decide now, if I do do that, how do I limit the subsequent Humanity's Ruin dark fantasy setting from becoming too wrapped around the discovery of 'lost tech'?

Things to ponder as I drill down on my maps and my notes. I can't wait to destroy it all as well when I make the 'ruined' kingdom area....

That's it for now.
Best,
TB

The Plan Changed

Somewhere along the way, the plan changed. I initially was shooting for a Dark Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy setting that was devoid of humans (or nearly so). Hence the initial name; Humanity's Ruin. While trying to develop the setting, and the myriad of ruins of former human civilization, I discovered that I was doing as much work on the time of humanity as I was on the time of it's ruin. So I decided to combine the effort that I had already put into it and start from the get-go. Combining the two to become; Humanity's Reign & Ruin (TM).

What I envision for release initially will be a Setting book that will, in lose terms, cover the time of man prior to its downfall as one setting and the time after as another. Released together in a single PDF / Print-on-Demand Book. The time of Humanity's Reign will be a Human Only setting. What I mean by that, is it will be a history of Humanity; from its conception, through its trials and tribulations to overcome monsters, while surviving the hardship of the world to eventually reign supreme. A more 'traditional' fantasy, though I haven't quite decided on a level of technical advancement for humanity before its downfall...

The second half, if you will, will be a Demi-Human Centric setting after the fall of man. A much darker setting of survival, chaos, plotting, and discovery: political and religious. Humans will be lost as a whole, but some will have survived and will be looked onto with suspicion and awe...

More to come as time allows,

TB