Sunday, November 28, 2010

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Telemachus wrote:
An overview: is this an alternate Earth? Or another setting entirely?



While I'm beating my head against the wall with how to handle summoning I'll rough out the geography.
Traditionally The Nights or centered on the reign of Harun al-Rashid (caliph 786 - 809), I center my setting about 900, when the Abbasid caliphate is in full decline and petty emirs are staking out big chunks of the Islamic empire for themselves; inciting civil wars, border skirmishes, and palace intrigues. The empire stretches from the lower half of Spain, along the coast of Africa, a few Mediterranean islands, the Middle East, down the East African coast to Zanzibar; along the coast of India, Indo-china, to the Spice Islands.

Politically, Autocrats are the rule.

Cliches for the various lands of the Land of Fate from my Risus of Arabia game.

Maghreb (Saharan Africa): Powerful Berber Mages, Salt caravans, Timbuktu, Barbary pirates, Algiers, Morocco, Casablanca

Egypt: Tombs, tombs, tombs, barging down the Nile, Nubian gold mines, (Egypt is, historically, the center of the Arab world)

Abyssinia (East Africa): King Solomon’s Mines, the slave trade, She Who Must Be Obeyed, Mountains of the Moon.

Arabia: riding camels, sailing Dhows, resting in oases, sand swept ruins of lost civilizations.

Persia: Like Arabia, only with mountains.

Anatolia (Turkey): Like Persia, only on the Mediterranean Sea.

India: Ornate temples of Doom, jungles, the Ganges, Thugges.

Spice Islands: old men who like piggyback rides, headhunters.

Al-Andalus: Arabic Spain. The height of urban sophistication almost constantly at war with the Franks.

From Dragon's Foot

Opening remarks and mission statement.

The Nights are, in tone an temperament, more supernatural pulp than high fantasy. I don't want to run an Arabian Nights game; I want to adventure in the Arabian Nights universe - more the Golden Voyage of Sinbad than The Thief of Bagdad.

Back on topic.

For Mini Six there should be two levels of Perks in Magic Knowledge.

First level is "has some knowledge of". Usually the daughter of a cobbler or butcher "has some knowledge of" enchantments and can recognize a man who has been turned into a monkey and may know how to break the enchantment. Maybe even make reasonably useful charms.

The second level is "higher education". The can make explosives, acids, golems; can summon and bind jinn and demons; and make really useful charms.

You shouldn't have to buy separate Perks for Summoning, Alchemy, and Kabalism; but the skill for each has to be bought separately.

From Dragon's Foot

jeffG wrote:
I ran an Arabic setting several years ago. I did a number of Google searches on Arabic monsters, Arabic myths and Arabic magic. I came up with several dozen monsters and an equal number of magic items.



Yeah, the basic everyday magic is usually handled through amulets and talismans, basic kabbalist stuff. For game purposes we arbitrarily divided the post-grad magic into Summoning, Kabbalism, and Alchemy. In the Nights sorcerers were polymaths, that lead to an over-complicated magic system in the first incarnation.

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=44929

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Polymorph or Glamor?

In several stories a character is changed into a beast of some form. Usually a girl with 'some learning' in the arts is able to see the person as they really are/were. Does this mean it isn't a real polymorph, that it is just a glamor spell creating an illusion? Jinns favor Illusions spells to wreak havoc among humans.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Mini Six Bare Bones

Coming full circle, the first incarnation of Arabian Adventures was to be built with D6, MUNF talked me into using GURPS. Now AntiPaladfin Games has a core D6 system good to go.

http://antipaladingames.com/

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Late Sixteenth Century English Names

http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/christian/fairnames/

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

A Start on Elizabethulhu............

We ran a couple of scenes last Saturday actually using Risus! No one is any hurry to codify anything. A good omen - Barry is showing up again.

The story thus far.......

Sanity Checks have been a hard sell and are now scaled back to Fright Checks - a temporary loss of nerve; sanity hadn't been invented in the 1500s.

I did make a list of fencing maneuvers to crunchy-up combat; the maneuvers don’t add bonuses, but they do add color and give the players something to do. Bonuses come from Questing Dice tied to Fencing and Lucky Dice – one dice at a time from each and they can be stacked. The group is still leery about pumping dice so that option is off the table for now.

Notes:
Swashbuckling is neither a skill nor cliché. Swinging on a drapery into a fight is a separate action.

Most of the fencing characters will be of either the upper yeomanry (families of professionals who do not work with their hands) or the lower gentry (families on the lower rungs of the complex land-holding hierarchy) classes.

Inspirational viewing: anything with William Hobbs as fight arranger.

The Three Musketeers (1973)

The Four Musketeers (1974)

The final duel from Rob Roy

The final duel from Dangerous Liaisons

The Man in the Iron Mask

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Duelists

I divvied up the maneuvers into groups of six, if a player gets stuck just roll and read.

Defense
1 feint
2 bind
3 beat
4 parry
5 block
6 croise (push the blade)

Offense
1 thrust
2 lunge
3 fleche (a committed lunge)
4 cut
5 slash
6 reposte (a parry/thrust)

Infighting
1 trip
2 body check
3 elbow
4 knuckle duster
5 arm bar
6 throw

Cape Work
1 flourish (hides the attack)
2 bind the blade
3 whip at eyes
4 trip (tangle legs)
5 blind (thrown at the face or over the head)
6 block (wrapped around forearm)

Head butts, kicks, knees, and non-standard use of furniture falls under Brawling.
The Main Gauche (a heavy dagger for the off hand) is allowed - but does not have specific rules.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Magic in Earthsea

My take on kabbalism for Risus of Arabia is based more on Le Guin's Earthsea magic than the confusing history of real kabbalism.

Magic in Earthsea

Magic is a central part of life in most of Earthsea, with the exception of the Kargish lands, where it is banned. There are weather workers on ships, fixers who repair boats and buildings, entertainers, and court sorcerers. Magic is an inborn talent which can be developed with training. The most gifted are sent to the school on Roke, where, if their skill and their discipline prove sufficient, they can become staff-carrying wizards.

A strong theme of the stories is the connection between power and responsibility. There is often a Taoist message: "good" wizardry tries to be in harmony with the world, while "bad" wizardry, such as necromancy, can lead to an upsetting of the "balance" and threaten catastrophe. While the dragons are more powerful, they act instinctively to preserve the balance. Only humans pose a threat to it. In The Farthest Shore, Cob seeks immortality regardless of the consequences and opens a breach between life and death which endangers the living.

Magic on Earthsea is primarily verbal. Everything has a true name in the Old Speech, the language of the dragons. One who knows the true name of an object has power over it. A person also has a true name; for safety's sake, he or she will only reveal it to those he or she trusts implicitly. A "use" name, which has no magical property, suffices for everyday purposes. For example, the wizard whose true name is Ged is known by the use name Sparrowhawk.

One vital aspect of magic is that it is impossible for humans to lie in the old language, so that magic works by forcing the universe to conform to the words spoken by the magician. For example, to say "I am an eagle" in the old language means that the speaker becomes an eagle, so that the statement is no longer false. The consequences of this are dealt with in the most recent Earthsea novel, The Other Wind.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Pulp Fantasy

Ryan was in town, and between hands we shot the RPG breeze. It was a standard bitchfest, but he said something simple that made a lot of sense. I mentioned that Risus of Arabia was based in the real world and that it was more supernatural pulp than high fantasy.

He said "Like Conan".

If I'm going to amp up and expand RoA I'll look to Conan for inspiration. Most of the Hyborian country had a corresponding real world countries. And Howard knew how to amp up stories.