Ack! Its been a long time since I posted! But I have the perfect topic for it:
Unique swear words, insults, and exclamations!
Belgium!
Gorram!
Merlin's beard!
By the egg!
Cotton-headed ninny-muggins!
A good way to add detail to a world is to give it its own swears, insults and exclamations! Good terms include slang and silly words, as well as religious, historical, and cultural references.
Some examples include:
[person of significance]'s [something belonging to person, usually of note]
God's Thumbs!
[any silly sounding word]
Holy Shnikies!
[a curse word in another language]
Ilka-tuk-tak!
[something considered disgusting or uncouth]
Dragon droppings!
[something of some importance, religious, cultural, etc.]
Sacrebleu!
The sky is the limit.
Of course, the best purpose of making up swear words is to be have your characters swear without offending anyone, a good trick for a writer.
What do you think of this idea? Post a comment!
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Dreamplane conjuration and mutability
My first experience with dreamplanes was a movie, that I don't remember the name of, where a guy with psychic abilities gets recruited into a program where they use a machine to allow psychics into other people's dreams. At first they this is done to help people with problem dreams, then he develops the ability to enter dreams without the machine and has to save the president from one of his coworkers.
Besides the plot, the interesting thing about the movie was that while in a person's dreamplane, they had the ability to create any item they needed and they were even able to change their form.
This seems like a good adventure or side adventure concept, where they can get anything they need, but there is quite a good chance that anything could turn on them, becoming a nightmare. A character that they believed to be another visitor to the dreamplane could turn out to be a part of the dream, and upon leaving they find that this person that they have bonded with is nothing but a dream.
Or maybe...
The person you took out of the dream with you is still a dream-being but by releasing it into world you unleash the chaos of dreams. Which then reminds me of an anime movie called paprika, where people use technology to view and record a person's dream. Eventually it releases a crazy person's dream and an evil person's dream into the world. Long story short, it took a giant naked ghost lady with multiple personalities to fix things.
...
where was I?
Oh, right! While in the dreamplane, you can conjure any item you need and even manipulate the surrounding area. Maybe to add to the mess, you have to worry about your sanity if you go into a crazy person's dream, or maybe nightmares have some sort of corrupting effect on people.
I may just write a campaign based on the ideas here... except that the people I play with are readers... >.<
Well, maybe they will forget...
Anyway, does this rant inspire you? Does it make sense? Does it seem pointless to you? Comment!
Besides the plot, the interesting thing about the movie was that while in a person's dreamplane, they had the ability to create any item they needed and they were even able to change their form.
This seems like a good adventure or side adventure concept, where they can get anything they need, but there is quite a good chance that anything could turn on them, becoming a nightmare. A character that they believed to be another visitor to the dreamplane could turn out to be a part of the dream, and upon leaving they find that this person that they have bonded with is nothing but a dream.
Or maybe...
The person you took out of the dream with you is still a dream-being but by releasing it into world you unleash the chaos of dreams. Which then reminds me of an anime movie called paprika, where people use technology to view and record a person's dream. Eventually it releases a crazy person's dream and an evil person's dream into the world. Long story short, it took a giant naked ghost lady with multiple personalities to fix things.
...
where was I?
Oh, right! While in the dreamplane, you can conjure any item you need and even manipulate the surrounding area. Maybe to add to the mess, you have to worry about your sanity if you go into a crazy person's dream, or maybe nightmares have some sort of corrupting effect on people.
I may just write a campaign based on the ideas here... except that the people I play with are readers... >.<
Well, maybe they will forget...
Anyway, does this rant inspire you? Does it make sense? Does it seem pointless to you? Comment!
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Psychoplanes, Dreamplanes, and Getting Back Into my Posting Schedule
Well, I have not been keeping up with my posting schedule as well as I would have hoped, and lets hope that I get back into it easily. More APSC soon, really.
But for now, I want to bring up a topic that has interested me for some time.
Planes.
Its always a wonderful concept when you can leave your universe and travel to a completely different world, but what if instead of going away from your world, you went deeper into it. Into another world, the world of the mind of another person?
I admit, this is by no means an original concept, but it has so much potential for a RPG.
Perhaps there is some mental instability with your friend and the only way to resolve the problem is to hook your brain up to a machine that can project your consciousness into the world that is his mind.
What wonders would you see? How much would these worlds differentiate? Are they infinite or finite? Does a person's intelligence determine how large the psychoplane is? Are psychoplanes limited to sentient beings? How would an animal's psychoplane differ?
I could really go on all day.
And don't even get me started on Dreamplanes.
Now I want to do several posts on this topic. I probably will.
But for now, I want to bring up a topic that has interested me for some time.
Planes.
Its always a wonderful concept when you can leave your universe and travel to a completely different world, but what if instead of going away from your world, you went deeper into it. Into another world, the world of the mind of another person?
I admit, this is by no means an original concept, but it has so much potential for a RPG.
Perhaps there is some mental instability with your friend and the only way to resolve the problem is to hook your brain up to a machine that can project your consciousness into the world that is his mind.
What wonders would you see? How much would these worlds differentiate? Are they infinite or finite? Does a person's intelligence determine how large the psychoplane is? Are psychoplanes limited to sentient beings? How would an animal's psychoplane differ?
I could really go on all day.
And don't even get me started on Dreamplanes.
Now I want to do several posts on this topic. I probably will.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Monster Builder in Beta!
Blarg...
I keep missing posts due to school related business, but I have good news!
The Monster Builder is out in beta!
Go check it out!
I keep missing posts due to school related business, but I have good news!
The Monster Builder is out in beta!
Go check it out!
Friday, July 24, 2009
A New Twist on the Peasant Railgun (4e)
Ghaa! I missed two days of posting, but to make up for it I have an awesome post:
Just about every one has heard of the peasant railgun. A mechanics experiment that requires a large number of peasants to ready an action to pass a spear (or any other item) to the next peasant when it is handed to them, causing the spear to travel a large distance in 6 seconds, effectively making it a far more deadly weapon than it was before.
Now, for the twist:
I plan to attempt this with a player character.
At level 1.
Its really simple, actually. All you need is the Fighter's Bloodrager vigor talent and the rogue's Speedy Response feat. As a human, this is possible at first level either as a fighter multiclassing into rogue or a hybrid fighter/rogue using hybrid talent to get bloodrager vigor. You want a score of 15 in dexterity, and as much as you can into constitution. For armor, you want nonmagical cloth of no armor, you want to get hit!
Ok, get your army of peasants (closest thing in the MMs would be the human rabble on page 162 in the first MM) in two rows 5 ft (one square) in between them, and tell them to attack you with an opportunity attack if you get close. Then, run down the middle.
For each 5ft you move, two peasants will get opportunity attacks against you. Two things happen if they hit you: after damage is settled, you gain temporary HP equal to your constitution modifier, and you gain a +1 bonus to speed for the move.
Now for some math!
If you have no armor or cloth armor, your AC will be 12 (due to having 15 in dex, giving a +2 to AC) and the peasants have a +6 to their attack. This means that they have a 14 in 20 chance of hitting you, that's a 70% chance.
If you have 1000 peasants (two rows of 500) then approximately 700 will hit you, causing you to move about 700 squares plus your speed (i assume 6) in 6 seconds, that's 3530 ft per 6 sec or...
Times 10 seconds = 35300 ft/minute
Times 60 minutes = 2118000ft/hr
Divided by 5280 ft = 401.1363636... Mph
That's about an additional 0.4 mph per peasant you have, assuming 70% of them hit you.
And the best part is, after all of this is over you have full health (down 4 hp with 4 temp hp) to help you survive whatever it is that you crash into!
Just over 400 MPH at level one! Sure, it needed 1000 peasants, but using rules as they were (sort of) intended I only got to just over 200 MPH, and this could even be scaled up more.
A million peasants could get you to around 401136 MPH, if my math if correct.
What makes this better is that this build could actually be useful in a battle! Though you might want to get some decent armor. If you want to get through the minions to get to the Big Bad or want to cheat at a race (and have an excuse as to that you weren't cheating).
and here is a thrown together version, named Spear:
I hope you liked it! Any questions, comments, etc? Leave a comment!
Just about every one has heard of the peasant railgun. A mechanics experiment that requires a large number of peasants to ready an action to pass a spear (or any other item) to the next peasant when it is handed to them, causing the spear to travel a large distance in 6 seconds, effectively making it a far more deadly weapon than it was before.
Now, for the twist:
I plan to attempt this with a player character.
At level 1.
Its really simple, actually. All you need is the Fighter's Bloodrager vigor talent and the rogue's Speedy Response feat. As a human, this is possible at first level either as a fighter multiclassing into rogue or a hybrid fighter/rogue using hybrid talent to get bloodrager vigor. You want a score of 15 in dexterity, and as much as you can into constitution. For armor, you want nonmagical cloth of no armor, you want to get hit!
Ok, get your army of peasants (closest thing in the MMs would be the human rabble on page 162 in the first MM) in two rows 5 ft (one square) in between them, and tell them to attack you with an opportunity attack if you get close. Then, run down the middle.
For each 5ft you move, two peasants will get opportunity attacks against you. Two things happen if they hit you: after damage is settled, you gain temporary HP equal to your constitution modifier, and you gain a +1 bonus to speed for the move.
Now for some math!
If you have no armor or cloth armor, your AC will be 12 (due to having 15 in dex, giving a +2 to AC) and the peasants have a +6 to their attack. This means that they have a 14 in 20 chance of hitting you, that's a 70% chance.
If you have 1000 peasants (two rows of 500) then approximately 700 will hit you, causing you to move about 700 squares plus your speed (i assume 6) in 6 seconds, that's 3530 ft per 6 sec or...
Times 10 seconds = 35300 ft/minute
Times 60 minutes = 2118000ft/hr
Divided by 5280 ft = 401.1363636... Mph
That's about an additional 0.4 mph per peasant you have, assuming 70% of them hit you.
And the best part is, after all of this is over you have full health (down 4 hp with 4 temp hp) to help you survive whatever it is that you crash into!
Just over 400 MPH at level one! Sure, it needed 1000 peasants, but using rules as they were (sort of) intended I only got to just over 200 MPH, and this could even be scaled up more.
A million peasants could get you to around 401136 MPH, if my math if correct.
What makes this better is that this build could actually be useful in a battle! Though you might want to get some decent armor. If you want to get through the minions to get to the Big Bad or want to cheat at a race (and have an excuse as to that you weren't cheating).
and here is a thrown together version, named Spear:
I hope you liked it! Any questions, comments, etc? Leave a comment!
Friday, July 17, 2009
Go Read A Book (Here Are Some Suggestions)
Go read a book from one of these series:
Discworld by Terry Pratchett.
Myth Adventures by Robert Asprin
Shannara by Terry Brooks
Xanth by Piers Anthony
I've only read books from the first two series, but have also heard great things about the others.
Any agreements with the series above or other suggestions?
Discworld by Terry Pratchett.
Myth Adventures by Robert Asprin
Shannara by Terry Brooks
Xanth by Piers Anthony
I've only read books from the first two series, but have also heard great things about the others.
Any agreements with the series above or other suggestions?
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Making 4e More Like WoW: PVP And Raids!
There have been many people who have complained that 4e is too much like World of Warcraft. I say, take a few more ideas from it.
PVP
I can see many options for this, one on one, free-for-alls. team battles, and multi-team battles. See who can build the best character and play it best, see which team works together the best, or just get a buch of people together to kill each other.
Raids
Why would a 6 person team be able to take down a mighty dragon?
It would definitely be tricky to pull off, but to have a large group play through a dungeon might be fun. The dungeon, and possibly the enemies, would have to be modified to make it accessible to a larger group.
It might work where there is one DM in charge of a certain amount of players and they each group take their turns at the same time, when everyone is done with a round, then the GMs start working on the monsters.
Well, I don't know if they would work, but I think it would be interesting to try. I'm going to try to convince my gaming group to try some PVP (shouldn't be hard) and depending on how it turns out, I'll try to post about it.
PVP
I can see many options for this, one on one, free-for-alls. team battles, and multi-team battles. See who can build the best character and play it best, see which team works together the best, or just get a buch of people together to kill each other.
Raids
Why would a 6 person team be able to take down a mighty dragon?
It would definitely be tricky to pull off, but to have a large group play through a dungeon might be fun. The dungeon, and possibly the enemies, would have to be modified to make it accessible to a larger group.
It might work where there is one DM in charge of a certain amount of players and they each group take their turns at the same time, when everyone is done with a round, then the GMs start working on the monsters.
Well, I don't know if they would work, but I think it would be interesting to try. I'm going to try to convince my gaming group to try some PVP (shouldn't be hard) and depending on how it turns out, I'll try to post about it.
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