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.