Guns in fantasy

 

I've decided to make a long article about matchlocks and cannons because it can be fun. I've invested a lot of thought on this already, why not share it altogether? 

Why early firearms are normally not a thing on a medieval fantasy world and what happens when they do? What are the implications on a given setting? 

1.  Though arquebuses redefined warfare in the great scale, combats at street level or "adventurer mode" are not very affected. Matches cannot be lit and cannons cannot be loaded in a hurry in the middle of a tavern fight: unless you do the whole dance hidden somewhere, it will be very obvious to everybody that you intend to cause violence. They are bad weapons outside open war, because they cannot be kept "readied": the match consumes, and the gunpowder is either dispersed or susceptible to explode. Keeping watch on a routine night with a loaded gun is not just inviable, but also will give your position by light and smell; only for having you exposed after the first shot. You might keep humans at bay with the threat of a single shot, but it won't work on wolves or other animals. Bandits may still use them on an ambush, though. 

 

2. More firearms means more room for swords, specially more scimitars. The logic on this is because plate armor is suddently not as worthy, and less plate armor means cutting weapons are not facing their great nerfer. On warfare mode this means lighter cavalry and cuirassiers; on adventurer mode this means a golden age for sword duels (see that the golden age of romantic swordsmen appears in both japan and europe after the guns have popularized: in tercios, musketeers and samurai)

3. The appeal of certain monsters is to engage them in melee. This is true specially for fantasy staples like dragons, ogres and other big things, but also mass mooks like orcs or goblins. It is inevitable that once guns exist, they lose part of their appeal. Monsters whose attacks are magical or spiritual are comparativelly not affected, such as vampires, witches, ghosts, etc. Monsters that attack deviously such as snakes, beasts or clever human are also equally interesting. On war mode, makes war be a more historical thing of human vs human instead of law vs chaos or human vs orc, unless you give orcs guns too, at which point they are not mooks anymore. On adventurer mode, this means less combat overall: is harder to pull out filler battles. When it happens, the combat is probably a named NPC or plot-driven henchmen. Knowing myself, monsters that give little aesthetic value in this new situation are not just out of the campaign, but out of the setting altogether. No Smaug type dragons has an upside: allows me to use the oriental ones; if not as physical creatures, as divine ones.

4. Just as arquebuses changed the value of plate armor, the existance of cannons changed the way castles and fortresses were built. Anachronisms can still be had, but they probably require a bit of the fantasy side of the fantasy setting. I am using plate armor made from a spiderweb alloy that is good against bullets, though very expensive and only used by nobles. This keeps cavalry charges somewhat viable in the setting´s near future. On the fortress side, bastion forts were the standard response through the renaissance so my plans to include fortress-based feudalism are still cool without using magic at all. The more aesthetic castles if needed can be placed inside said fortresses, in all their spectre of colorful clichés. There are many other points but atm I feel that I've layed out the main ones.

 

 

  

Spell Hunters. This entry overrides all previous entries on magic in this blog.

 

 

www.sembrys.com/pixel-art 

More recent notes on my current rules. For context, attributes are this, with -1 to +3 modifiers applying to things: 

Strenght
Dexterity

Skill #1

Skill #2

Magic

Charisma

 

Let's focus on magic. Each attribute bonus gives you 1 Mana Die, plus one if you get the Wizard class. So, a Wizard with a +3 magic attribute has 4 Mana Dice. The second mana die is only active (but not the 3rd or 4th) when the magical operator is holding their staff; which is often given to them in an emotive ceremony, and signals experienced magic-users to the eyes of all beholders. 

 

Non-Wizard PCs with some magic bonus automatically get one spell slot, and can start with one spell on it. That is probably the last spell they will ever learn, so they don't have to bother with a spellbook.

 

Additionally, wizard PCs get one spell slot in their spellbook per level up, and can prepare spellbook/2 number of spells at a given time, rounding up. So, a "first level" wizard with +1 magic can know two spells, but have only one prepared. At the next level up, he knows three spells, but can prepare two.

 

I put "level" under quotations because I won't keep track of levels as such. I'm departing from that, and I have everything else that depends on them worked out (all such fixings are scattered through this blog). So, everytime somebody levels up as a wizard they just put a new line on their spellbook and sometimes a new slot on their prepared spells, that's it. 

 

*** ON SPELL HUNTING ***

 

Apart from that first spell at magic +1, the rest of the spells must be found in-game. This is, in-world, the classic adventure motivation for all beginning and intermediate wizards; and a good way to put a party in motion through a sandbox. 

 

The classic places in which a spell can be found are: 

* mystical shrines scattered through the land, or deep in dungeons; usually hard to access and guarded by pertinent traps and monsters. 
* taught from another wizard, monster, spirit or magical powered entity. The teacher must be usually convinced to or befriended, and might put you on a test of worthiness first. 

* spending downtime reading another wizard's spellbook or equivalent. This is done by passing a magic check during downtime. Only one or two spells can be learnt from a given spellbook; because magicians write mostly to themselves and is hard to decipher their mindset.

 

No more requirements should be needed, as learning a spell carries its own disadvantage: an empty spell slot on your spellbook is permanently spent on said spell, and it cannot be scratched away or unlearned.

 

*** ACTUAL CASTING *** 

 

 You invest any number of mana dice; the spell effects are commonly higher depending on the results, but if a 5 or a 6 is present at the roll, one mana die is spent. So, if you want big results you must use 2 or 3 dice, but it makes the mana easier to drain. The actual chances for losing a die are:

 

1 die: 33%

2 dice: 55%

3 dice: 70 % 

4 dice: 80%   

 

I´m currently working on the spell list but currently is an reworking of my old one into this system. Will update the new soon but if I waited for this entries to be perfect, I'd never update a shit. 

 

*** FINAL NOTES *** 

 

Charisma plays a role on magic by powering certain spells and influencing possible relationships with teachers or summoned entities.  

 

Mana Dice are recovered through rest but probably randomizing how many. For example, roll all lost dice and recover all that show 5 or 6. 

 

Classes are meant to be flexible, so you can level up each time as a different one (fighter, wizard, specialist) , but staying faithful to one makes it exponentially better. I'm actually very happy on how its done, will write it later. 

 

Magic-User monsters such as a Yuki-Onna work by PC rules: 1 to 3 mana dice, one spell (frost) unless it´s better to do otherwise.

 

 

 

Planets 3: Duel Culture

Note: this is part of a series, worldbuilding some shit apart from the usual D&Dlike stuff.

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Forgotten from each other, separated in distance and time, every planet naturally develops dialects and customs, and uphelds their own traditions. But if there was one thing that could be considered a constant throughout all the disk, enough to form the backbone of a common culture, that would be the practice of the martial arts. And with it you will find universal respect for a fight in which men have challenged each other 1v1

Everybody knows a version of the tale in which the Sun challenged Gravity to a duel and won, scattering the Gravity Shards all across the universe, around which the planets were eventually formed: the bigger planets around the big shards, and the smaller planets around the small ones. The myth has some weight (no pun intended) as digging deep into any planet one can experience the gravity pull increasing gradually the more you approach the core. And this happens more violently in small planets: it´s easy to imagine the merciless shard down there, pulling everything around as if it was ashamed of being naked and wanted to dress itself. At some point, the very pull dismantles all digging attempts, which are extremelly dangerous to people and have costed lives and fortunes to men. 

Dungeons of increased atmospheres are very useful for some: Dojos use them for physical training. It can help processes when the decantation of any mixture is involved; or the pressure can be used to improve certain metal castings. I've heard of subterranean prisons under castles, where the prisoners can barely move; and of terrible monsters that have adapted to their ancestral caves or the depths of oceans.

 

 

The inverse phenomenon happens outwards: the point in which the pull diminishes enough to be negligible is further from the ground at the bigger planets, and at jumping distance in small ones. This leads to interesting cases like the one at the capitol city of Missina: a big blue planet with little landmass and on which their inhabitants have recourred to building skyscrapers. It is a custom there to travel through the city jumping from one tower to another, all across the streets. The whole city is accessible by "flying" in this method; and it's main Dojo is specialized on mid-air combat: their trainings often take place between the towers that flank the city's bay, with the loser invariably falling down into the waters. This art has a special key relevance because, due to it's size and location on the Disk, Missina attracts an astounding number of asteroids; and the local fighters can kick approaching asteroids before they crash, driving them out of contrived collision zones.

There are some who worship Sun and Gravity as deities, amongst all the others. But real or myth, you can find fighters and fighting schools in almost every round rock of the system. Their styles and attacks are often inspired on the planet's inner or nearby fauna, landscapes, occupations, etc. Some of them use weapons and others refuse them entirelly. Some practice friendly sport amongst peers, while other schools do not contemplate duels that are not to death. Whenever two fighters clash, it's not only their skills who met, but two different worldviews, and there are not universal guidelines or rules for a combat. Those, alongside what do victory and defeat mean on it are to be discovered in a case by case basis. 

 

 

Ultimate Game Balance: fighting man VS specialist

 source: something called "tale of the silly bard"

 

Rivers of ink had been spilled over the eternal balancing of Magic Users and Fighting man on different games. For some reason, they never tap into the real problem: balancing them towards the Specialist. Not the thief; who is normally a DEX fighting man: I talk about the common folk who maximizes non-combat skills or it's equivalent. 

I am developing rules to do what my table is already doing without the proper rules: Playing slow: not adventures all the time, but more doing a medieval life simulator that only sparingly does dungeon delving. I am really put to it now that autumn gaming vibes are high.

I want to have non-combatant, and not-magical classes to be playable. Most of those characters are, in world, hobbits or women; as most capable men are conscripted as  level 1 warriors by birth. I don't want to twist their crafts into making them proficient in combat somehow, but rather make them a interesting to play by what they are, should anyone want to. Could it be done?

The basic answer to this shit is to reduce combat challenges through the game, and increase the challenges related to whatever profession the players choose. A plumber hobbit joins the party and suddently all the castles have a bad case of clogged drainpipes. Suddently you realize that fixing drainpipes is not very interesting to portray in game, and that even if it appears, it will be reduced to a downtime roll. 

I think that a good approach is to buff specialists by giving them "meta" abilities: those that allow the player influence the game outside the actual capability of their character. Apocalypse World type games do this a lot. For example:

 1. Meta-Autoemployment: When you advertise your profession in a place where it can be needed, roll skill (on my game, it works by rolling 1 to 3d6). For each success, choose 1. On a failure, you might get bad customers or none at all. 

* An NPC you know or have heard about is seeking your services
* You get a chance to get some money from your work
* Your work is greatly appreciated
* Your work allows you to find a piece of accurate information about something you ask your GM.

 Good things about this: It makes the game plot be about your profession organically, and in the measure you want to. It is also useful to the party as a whole in order to advance stuck plots. Appropiate for most artisan-type works such as tattoo artists, painters, the proverbial plumber or even poets, though also for therapists. 

 2. Quantum Pockets: this is a classic. Basically, you get to produce any object by saying you were carrying all along. It must be related to your profession at least slightly. In my games, this has saved many lives, by producing tons of antidotes for different poisonous monsters. A staple for healers, but for alchemists (with a much bigger array of tricks, though never explicitelly healing; more on them coming soon) it should work only with things they have produced previously.

3. Inspiring others: I have bards in mind. I could extend it to any kind of performers or maybe instructors; but also to courtesans and princesses. A success gives you the chance of deciding how a person in your audience feels, or the general audience instead; or the GM finds it too dissonant, he must give you an insight on why it didn't work. You can also choose this option on the Meta-Autoemployment list. This does not necessarily represent the Bard itself deciding how does the person feel, as if it was a spell; it can represent some serendipity which was maybe produced by the performance itself.

I'm sure I can scourge the Dungeon World compendium classes to find more ideas; will edit if i do. Apart from these meta-abilities, there are the classic ones

4. Actually performing your work: Roll skill to fix that broken ship, play a good song, do a nice dance... whatever. In my experience, this will happen once per campaign, but will happen eventually. The case of sailor PCs when the campaign finally sees water is specially relevant.

5. Generate items during downtime: This is where alchemists shine. To limit their powers, I had alchemists in my last campaign able to learn from 1 to 3 different "recipes". I will post a list of things someday, but I allowed them to make up whatever thing they wanted: the downside of having to stay with that recipe during the rest of their career was usually a good counterweight. Gunpowder (bombs and refilling ammo); acid vials, paint that changed color when wet, specific poisons, antidotes, smoke bombs, recreational drugs, greek fire, a freezing grenade, whatever that had any propierties that could be explained somehow without blatant magic. Not just for PCs use: the production could be sold for money or traded with other alchemists. Lowly professions such as blacksmiths can also do this for common items, though those must be boosted with Meta-Autoemployment

6. Intoducing magic into the profession: Non-wizards, in my game, can learn only one spell at most, and raising the magic attribute, AKA, "mana dice", is not very optimal. If you want, you can make your spell a profession trick and "cast it" by performing your job, using your skill dice. This prevents you from casting the spell in the normal way from now on. An alchemist knowing the invisibility spell, knows instead how to make an invisibility potion. A blacksmith knows how to imbue a spell into his work, or a dancer can cast through her dance. IDK, this seems the wildest of all the points but i'm willing to give it a try.  

 A NOTE ON NINJAS: as the game is more and more shamelesly based on Sengoku era Japan, I now have plenty ninjas. The kind of ninjas that are spies as much as thieves and assassins, and disguise as peasants, pilgrims or artisans; or adopt cover-up jobs. I like that now they can better play that facet; and all those moves (specially the Meta-Autoemployment) make great combo with infiltration, gathering information and all kinds of sabotaging. If you saw the last entry, you can check that there are two skill slots in case you want to be a good tattoo artist as a cover, and have a sword expertise at the same time. 

  lone wolf and cub, part 4

Fall 2025; New Project, weapons and armor

Most recent notes on my current rules.

 

Attributes are this, with -1 to +3 modifiers applying to things: 

Strenght
Dexterity

Skill #1

Skill #2

Magic

Charisma

 

Skills are from a list including many mundane shit, but some weapons (sword, bow and unarmed combat, for now) can improve by being chosen as a skill 

 

Attacks are rolled with one or more d6, with 6s being critical hits. Armor tiers are as such:

 

NO ARMOR: hit on a 3+

 

SPARE HELMET or NO HELMET, or WORN OUT ARMOR: hit on a 4+ 

 

PROPERLY ARMORED: hit on a 5+

 

CHAIN ARMOR: hit on a 5+, -1 damage from slashing criticals

 

HALF PLATE: hit on a 5+, -1 damage from slashing and piercing criticals including arrows 

 

FULL PLATE: as above, but adding +1 HP to the wearer

 

 MITHRIL: makes armor lighter and adds -1 damage from firearm criticals. (This is my way to make noblemen-based cavalry not displaced by the advent of arquebuses: using fantasy to my advantage into an alternate arms race. There will be more of this)

 

Notes about Mithril: In-world, is not a metal, but an alloy of giant spider´s cobwebs and steel. It is neither easy nor cheap to make, but powerful warlords do not bother commissioning full plate armors unless they are bulletproof. Alchemy and alchemists are a very important part of the setting, which is also what pushed me to accept firearms into it: it's just weird to have alchemists making all sorts of pseudomagical inventions and not having simple gunpowder available.

 

Other magical or enchanted armors will have specific effects, or add extra HP to the wearer. 

 

 Weapons, on the other side, deal 1 damage on a hit, or their critical damage on a 6. Starting characters will roll 1d6 for damage, but fighters eventually get 2 and even 3d6. 

 

SWORD (critical 3): one rerroll per combat if using both hands. +1d6 for any given attack per combat for each weapon skill rank. You cannot add more than one per turn. If you want to do "anime logic" moves like cutting in half an incoming cannonball, you must convince the GM, spend one of this dice and getting a success on the roll, of course.

 

AXE / MACE (critical 3): if your maximum result is your STR bonus or lower, you can re-roll it. Two handed versions of this weapons deal critical damage of 4, but their weight is increased.

 

DAGGER (critical 2): +1d6 on a grapple

 

SPEAR (critical 3): You attack before your opponent, and if you do hit, you receive -1 total damage from his attack. Can be used on a horse. Polearms do not, as they require both hands, but have a critical damage of 4

 

BOW (critical 3). Aiming minigame: You can spend one turn to carefully aim your target: roll 1d6. Add this result to the next attack if succesful. If your aim roll is not very good, you must move to get a better line of sight and re-roll it (spend another turn). The first and the third ranks on bow expertise giveyou an extra d6 each for aiming (keep best). The second rank gives you a whole d6 for attacking (so you shoot with 2d6). As the attack bonus increase through levelling does not extend to ranged weapons, this is the easiest way to improve your ranged damage.

 

CROSSBOWS (critical 4) are as bows but need an extra turn for reloading. Can aim, but have no expertise skill.

 

ARQUEBUSES (critical 4) need an extra turn for reloading; cannot aim or be expertised upon. They do, however, 2 damage instead of 1 on every normal hit; and shields block with disadvantage. 

 

UNARMED COMBAT: Critical damage is equal to 1, plus roll 1d6: if you roll your STR bonus or lower, add the result to the damage. You can disregard critical damage and just initiate a grapple, push down your opponent or any similar feat (You can actually do that with any melee weapon, actually). Your GM will say if its possible; if it is, your opponent gets a "save" consisting in rolling their current HP or higher on a d6, so wounded or inexperienced fighters are more vulnerable. I'm currently deciding how unarmed expertise works, but I think it will not be broken by giving you +1 extra attack per combat, per rank. Unarmed and Sword expertises, being expended by combat, favor short combats such as duels, and are diluted in mass combats as in war; which for me sounds very nice, being that I intend to have both situations happening during the game. 

 

 

 

 

Extra: actual handwriten notes for this entry, alongside a couple of harpies. 

 

Eleven Samurai

 I just finished this movie a while ago. Very good stuff, the kind that gets me on the GMing mood.

 Some usable ideas:

 1. The whole movie is a very interesting plot hook: The spoiled brother of a Shogun kills a random peasant; the local lord recriminates this behavior and the Shogun's brother kills him too. The lord's clan wants revenge, but the Shogunate wants to incriminate (and expoil) the clan themselves so they don't lose the moral authority for having such a psychotic member on their family. The PCs (eleven samurai) want to vindicate this injustice, 

2.  Cannons can be made from bamboo. Easily enough, it seems, to prepare an ambush with a day of anticipation. Also cutting some trees and dropping them at the precise moment can split a retinue in two. 

3. One of the samurai is a woman who comes to the party to replace his dead brother. It seems to me a very original background. It also made me wonder how exploitable it is, on historical or other settings in which women are not expected to be warriors, to present yourself as a harmless lady and avoid all attention in ways that veteran men with the 100 yard stare cannot; while having by rules the same combat stats. Even if it happens one time in a hundred, the existance of this unexpected warrior women can entice superstition and legends; maybe granting them a name (kunoichi or something like that) and place on the world's inner bestiary.

 4. Its surprising how the whole movie, set as it is on the XIX century, features katanas, bamboo cannons and some bombs as the only weapons (and some bows on the hunting scene), It this were an rpg everybody would wear at least leather armor. Feudal japan seems like a pretty lawless place to the point that a trifle involving lords and high nobility seems a little like a street gang war. Special importance is given to the Chambelains of both nobles, so probably is a good idea creating interesting assistants when making noble NPCs. Technically is easier for normal PCs to interact with those intermediaries than with the nobles themselves, so giving them depth will make them easier to portray and easier for the PCs to find ways to interact with them meaningfully. 

5. At some point, there is a scene where people is inside a cabin while some stalking group is outside hiding in the rain. In a game this would not be an important fact, but in real life, every minute spent in the cold rain decreases the pursuers health and energy, while the people inside recovers hp. However, getting into the cabin and making fire is a tricky choice when you are being pursued. I really must make things like rain matter on a game. If I was running a campaign and I cannot transmit the importance of "thinking as humans" on a situation like this, I would fail as a GM. Be it rolling for rain damage or something. In fact, I think this kind of situations can be as interesting as combat if not more, if done well.

 6. "we'll travel in groups so we don't raise suspicions". This obvious fact has never ever appeared on any of my campaigns. It has a gaming motive: splitting the party is burdensome for GMs as much as it is risky for the PCs. Still, is a good point and its usable for NPC parties at least. And (note to myself) I want it to be as obvious and feasible to run in the game i'm making as it is on reality, the exact "hows" are to be discussed yet. 

 

 

Vampires and Crosses

Dracula has been my summer book. I had read it long ago, in my goth days; but only now have I "lived" it. Back then, I was probably dissapointed because "the movie was better" and because there was no Lestat on it. Warning: I'm not sure if this post is about rpgs at all. 

But now, let's admire the fact that all the old D&D books put a crucifix or two on their equipment lists. I had a player ask me recently: If I have a crucifix, it means that Jesus existed on some form in this world? 

I answered: yes. It's something a bit strange and that I don't know how to elaborate, but even though the healer priests on the cities are always female, the clerics themselves in the end behave like chistians deep down. They have white magic beacuse they channel the good god's will. But if a cross works, and specially if it works on the hands of the most alignmentwise neutral of the laymen, is because there is a Jesus there who died for our sins. 

Nowadays, the cross is not on the list; it just says "Holy Symbol", and is meant to be something the cleric uses to turn undead. There is a current on vampire-related media that says that is the faith on the Holy Symbol, not the symbol, what repels vampires. I do not think so. 

If we analyze deep down what is the core nature of the vampire, their key trait is not the sunlight weakness (actually, on Bram's Stoker book, it just removes the vampire's powers) not even their undead. The important thing is that they feed on the living to overextend their unlife. They should have died long ago, but they want to "abuse" the gift of life by stealing it from somebody else. Paradoxically it doesn't really work, as they are by their very nature uncapable of truly live. 

Jesus, on the other hand, gave his life. You might say he died for "us"; that he died for his passion or for the great work. The sight of a cross puts the vampire face to face with their sin, and the shame that they try to drown in lust and cruelty is then violently exposed; rendering him paralyzed by the small part of yang inside the yin that is their dark nature. All of this happens mostly subconsciously, and most of them only rationalize as "this cross burns"

 

You can see how in his eyes, the cross draws the sight of the true life he craves; the acceptance of the kingdom of heaven inside one. Yet that life is forever banned to him, enacting a mockery of it instead. 

It could be argued that other deities can achieve the same effect too, of course, but not just any. Archetypically speaking, Jesus is a "Sun" type god, so maybe its a good idea to search in that direction. I love comparative mythology but I am a christian and my knowledge is better on my territory. I am sure that your average buddha has reached enough understanding of love, surrender and devotion that could turn a vampire without any symbol at all. But Jesus could make it so every peasant could have a vampire-repellant cross in their drawer beside the bed (Thats why non-clerics can use crosses in D&D against vampires) 

I think that Ghouls could also be affected depending on their nature. However, turning zombies and skeletons is different. They are not sin-driven creatures, but rather puppets of one.