Part of an ongoing series last update with MANGROVE:
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/11/pariah-hexgen-14-mangrove.html
...we now come to TEMPERATE BROADLEAF FOREST. I feel like I'm making genuine strides towards a comprehensive proto-neolithic psychedellic animist hexcrawl, more than two years after making this initial post.
I'm making a chassis to run old school modules, but hoping to spin it out in interesting directions... this
weekmonth I'm looking at alignment and alsojotting down some notes about so-called "demi"-humansgiving up the extended footnotes about dwarfs and elves because there is no time in my life to do anything any more... which is an exaggeration and I apologise.
Previous posts in this series:
- Hit Points, Hit Dice, Death and Dismemberment etc.
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/11/generic-adventure-game-hit-protection.html
That was in the past. Now: let us tackle alignment, aware that this is a path well-trod, but one we will attempt to follow with fresh legs and open eyes.
But first...
While I was writing this I became aware of recent posts on alignment at FORTRESS OF DUST and VDONUT VALLEY which more or less align (ha!) with some of what I'm hoping to achieve.
I originally included this generator with a continuation post concerning GENIUS LOCI REACTIONS AS ENCOUNTERS but I like it too much to leave languishing as a footnote. I like the revisions to the generator enough to give them their own post.
Besides which, I should continue on from the series which last covered TROPICAL FORESTS:
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/09/pariah-hexgen-13-jungle-tropical-forest.html
...we now come to THE MANGROVE...
Previously I've posted two posts about random encounter generation, both of which within the framework of PARIAH (but easily adaptable to your old school game of choice blah blah...). The first attempt was inspired by Goblin Punch's encounter stew, but modified to accommodate the skills system I'd built into PARIAH (this version was included in the zine). I wasn't entirely happy with it, especially when playing it online and started to think about how I could move things around and create something more coherent but also thematic.
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| I googled "Nature spirit - scary" and got this |
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/07/genius-loci-linking-encounters-hazards.html
That post has become one of the most popular on this site, no doubt due to it being featured in an edition of The Glatisant. Nonetheless what was presented was somewhat incomplete.
This represents an attempt to grant that post a little more polish.
In my previous post about Ulysses 31 I mention the utility of Diogo Nogueira's TITLE GENERATOR in the wonderful Solar Blades and Cosmic Spells and soon realised it would be better for me to "show" rather than "tell".. and tbh I can't think of a better advertisement for the game than that!
I used to think the DIY old-school scene needed to take more inspiration from James Joyce* than Ulysses 31. I have since revised that opinion.
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| Characters L-R: Yumi; the eponymous hero, Ulysses; Telemachus and finally the robot Nono |
Ulysses 31 was a Japanese-French anime released in the early 80s, charting the voyage of the titular hero through space after being cursed by the Gods of Olympus. You don't need to have studied classics at a posh English school to recognise that this children's cartoon was a sci-fi retelling of Homer's Odyssey. The (literally) epic storytelling, stylish animation and (figuratively) epic soundtrack (U-le, U-le, UlySSEEEEES!/Flying through the ga-la-k-SEEEE!)would insure that the cartoon would have a lasting impact on young Gen Xers and older millennials around the world.
My question is this: would it make for a good campaign?
Let's cut to the chase- this is another "0 HP" post, but I've been thinking about it while putting together this GENERIC ADVENTURE GAME by working backwards from monster stat blocks.
Follow-up post to a concept https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/08/cherry-coloured-funk.html: an Esoteric Enterprises campaign where a party of down-at-heel artists and performers, all tied to the same unscrupulous agent, carry out magical crimes in the esoteric underworld of H-Town.
What follows is a simple character generator... grab one of each of the standard dice-set (D4, D6, D8, D10, D12) and roll....
This is a post was originally made on 27th September and then removed. Revisions have been made since then. To lay my cards on the table: the objective is to create a gam without the standard attribute array..
By their definition, a game is OSR compatible if a character created can be run-through a B/X , 1e or BECMI adventure module with minimum effort. It's not a definition I agree with, but it did get me thinking: what kind of gaming system could you run through a B/X module with minimum effort?
Continuing this series of hex posts by terrain type, following the previous posts about temperate plains...
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/09/pariah-hexgen-12-temperate-plains.html
...we now come to TROPICAL FORESTS...
This post aggregates the DMing advice from all sources following the 15 more cheap tricks to liven up your game by Phlox, itself following up an earlier post of ten similarly cheap tricks. It includes "cheap tricks" from the following source:
The last few posts in this series have opened with apologies: let's get things back on track. Last time out I brought you two mildly different river generators....
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/09/pariah-hexgen-11-rivers.html
...but now we travel to the prairie/steppe/grasslands of the TEMPERATE PLAINS:
This has been available online for nearly a month and I haven't really mentioned it on the blog other than as a footnote to my recent posts. I would therefore like to announce that my this PARIAH hack of GH's In the Heart of the Unknown is currently available to download as a PWYW PDF on Drive Thru RPG:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/369092/Heart-of-the-Primal-Unknown
This post was thusly titled in an attempt to differentiate it from the previous dense taiga and upland taiga posts but make no mistakes: this is about a slightly less dense and flatter version of those two territories... perhaps begging the question why.
Well I shall tell you.
You might have realised that I cut my RPG teeth on BECMI and the later Rules Cyclopedia in the late 80s and early 90s, and I have a strong affection for the gazetteer series and the beautiful maps that they included. I loved them so much I've recreated them (though ever-so-slightly different) for the production of these hex generators... but more than that, I've created these generators to honour these hexes in some way.
You see, when my players would embark on overland journeys through the Grand Duchy of Karameikos all they had to differentiate one hex from another was a slightly different journey time and a choice of 8 monsters. Yet (as other authors have pointed out more eloquently than I) a 6 mile hex can be an entire world... and that's what I'm trying to do here.
(Not evening mentioning that gazetteer hexes were EIGHT miles across)
So here is the SPARSE TAIGA: somewhere between the dense forests of the far north and the either TUNDRA of the farthest north. Stick this on your map:
I forgot to post a hex generator this week so I very quickly dusted off the volcano generator and re-purposed it for Mountains. Last time was upland taiga I believe:
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/08/pariah-hexgen-7-upland-taiga.html
...but yes, this time it's MOUNTAINS. I'll give the generator another going over soon to make it more distinct from the volcano hex, but it's looking okay so far. Let me know your opinion below:
Hands up, that title is bait. It's not brand new, I'm quite sure... but on Sunday this was new to me and sent me into a bit of a flurry.
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| You have no idea how long it took me to get this result... |
The world is changing: the way of life of the hunters, herders, foragers and fishers is compromised by those that grow and plan. With this new subsistence strategy comes new ideas: not just about how to obtain sustenance but also about our individual rights and responsibilities.
These rights seem to vary from one person to another, rather than equal among all peoples.
It is a curious and alien thing for outsider to observe: people having stopped being people, transforming into the parts of a grander mechanism. Behind this transformation might lie many hands: the servants of dusk, or the emerging cult of the Sun & Heavens... but most insidious of all is the cult of the Nightmare Fruit...
The last hex we looked at was the TROPICAL PLAINS.
The last hex we looked at was the SWAMP.
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| Promo card for Brand New Cherry Flavor |
I'd been thinking about an urban horror/fantasy campaign for some time. Maybe since she-who-is-known-as-Eldritch-Eternity has been describing her own burgeoning occult-modern campaign on various discord channels, maybe since I picked up a copy of Dark Streets and Darker Secrets with the "Old School Cool" from Bundle-of-Holding... maybe it was the build-up and excitement just before Garblag Games started their latest Vampire Campaign, set in the 90s...
...you know, because if I was going to run an urban fantasy campaign with horror under/over tones it would HAVE to be set in the 90s...
...and then along came BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR
Last time I took a look at TAIGA
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/08/pariah-hexgen-4-taiga.html
Over the past 12 months it has been interesting to observe the rapid growth of the FKR: the reinterpretation of Free Kriegsspiel wargaming conventions in the indie RPG/NSR/OSR roleplaying spaces. Free Kriegsspiel is a mode of wargaming whereby players are encouraged to immerse themselves more thoroughly in the "game world" by detaching themselves from the games' mechanics. Instead, an umpire or referee decides the outcome of the players' actions, cleaving as closely as possible to what they believe would be the "real world" outcome of such an action.
Giving a) the predilection for rules-light gaming/rulings not rules in the OSR and b) the preference for narrative over mechanics in many parts of the indie game scene the attraction of these 2 RPG "blocs" towards free kriegsspiel is unsurprising. How such an approach is interpreted varies a great deal: last year I had the opportunity to speak at length to friend-of-the-blog Jim Parkin of https://d66kobolds.blogspot.com/ on my very occasional podcast. He did a great job of explaining how such a philosophy might be applied, and it's well worth a listen if this stuff tickles your fancy:
..actually it was an off-hand remark Jim made about FKR on the NSR server he runs with Yochai Gal (https://yochaigal.itch.io/) which prompted this post.
EDIT JULY 2023:
The blog Index is now listed on this page:
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/p/site-index.html
It's been... 8 months? Time I updated the blog index, which offers an alternative to searching by labels (at the bottom of the post) or trawling through the archive (on the left, underneath the shameless self promotion).
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2020/12/200-posts-before-2021.html
There's also a button at the top of the page: it says "index".
See you next time!
What could be more exciting than the TUNDRA hex generator of yesterday?
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/08/pariah-hexgen-3-tundra.html
What could be more exciting than the WETLAND hex generator of last week?
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/08/pariah-hexgen-2-wetland.html
People often ask me: "What are you doing in my garden?"
...but that's a joke stolen from Michael Redmond, and another story entirely.
No, they often ask me: "Why do you keep using perchance when you can achieve the same effect with javascript AND you can just write it directly into blogger?
To which I reply:
Shut up...
...and take this hex generator for a volcano hex generator:
This post follows up my earlier post on Aziza, Queen of Dawn, wherein I tried to turn an encounter with a goddess into a different kind of mini-game rather than a combat encounter. Using this as a template for each of the "ruling spirits" of the the other realms of Pariah, I set to work on Death...
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| Nergal: a Sumerian death god |
A few months ago I was flicking back through my old PDF of Spears of the Dawn by Kevin Crawford (currently available from Drive Thru RPG I believe) and came across a neat table for generating adventure seeds.
The set up is simple: 5 1d20 tables which together imply a story:
As explained in my last a recent post I think I'm nearly done with hand-wringing and "anxietising" over my post frequency (or lack thereof). Life is complex at the moment and I will just have to deal with it, hoping that the future will provide more opportunities to play and to create.
That said, I have plenty of drafts sat on the ol' slush-pile awaiting a cursory polish, and I will attempt to drip feed these out to you as the weeks and months go by. This is one such slush-post: the Artefacts of the Others...
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| Roadside Picnic concept art by Alex Andreev https://www.behance.net/gallery/19310523/ZONA |
This post is a sketch or a collection of notes... or maybe a starting-off point. It is an attempt at addressing a self-imposed problem: that of making an environment that is also a character, not just a spirit of the place, but a spirit-as-the-place.
"The genius loci must be consulted... but it does not have to be obeyed..."- Tom Turner
This is an informal essay — more a collection of notes, really — which represents an attempt to jot down some thoughts I've had since listening to (and occasionally participating in) discussions on discord, anchor and twitter about general RPG "theory" (scare quotes mine).
Apologies for those, by the way. The scare quotes. I can get defensive when I see attempts to intellectualise the hobby, mostly due to my an ambiguous relationship with design theory. This isn't a boast, it's a confession: part of me is and always will be passive-aggressively anti-intellectual, while another part craves the validation of the labyrinths of Hod. Both these aspects of myself shame me, or I shame myself by outing them in public...
But look. We're here now, you're reading, I'm writing and we both may as well persevere. GNS still gets touted around and we really have to move on....
How?
Well, there aren't really any answers here, but I hope the anecdotal vignettes that follow might provide some further thoughts and discussion. It's also likely to be in two parts: both are inspired by childhood play, but the second part is perhaps more relevant within the context of street culture and children's folklore and I'm more likely to post it at my other blog psychocartography, as I've neglected it for nearly two years now and I think I'd like to resurrect it.
Here's some half-formed thoughts. Bon appétit.
It used to be that I'd look back on a forgotten /abandoned piece of writing and be pleasantly surprised by its quality... or maybe (should it have been below par) there'd have been some nugget or turn of phrase which caught my attention. The older I get (and, dear readers, I'm barely into my forties) the less this occurs and the more I'm struck be the weird spelling mistakes ("no" and "know"?), missed typos, odd grammar and sentences trailing off into the void. Not sure if I have a degenerative brain disease nor if this is the platform upon which to talk about such things... but maybe I should speak to someone.
All that neurotic hypochondria aside, nothing really prepared me for picking up the Bestiary the other week in an attempt to turn it into something at least partially table-worthy and realising the first entry was a complete rip-off of the isopods in lair of the lamb. This was disconcerting: I'd read the adventure at some point in the summer of last year, then within a few months I'd added a very similar (albeit somehow more aboleth like version) to my bestiary without really acknowledging or realising that I had stolen the core idea (metal eating woodlice) from another source.
It's not so much the plagiarism (I've ripped off loads of stuff, but I always try to cite my sources) but the worrying fact I hadn't realised I'd done it. It's such a specific thing. What made it worse was the fact that I read the adventure through AGAIN around December and STILL didn't twig the connection (I had somehow forgotten about my rip-off monster). The 3 sessions I ran never made it to the Isopods but I had read ahead and was eagerly awaiting the party running into them.
There's something weird going on and I don't like it: being a pitiful human, I believe that my actions are somehow powerful enough to mould this universe back to a state that I am more comfortable with, and I offer up this post as an act of sympathetic magic: take this derivative shit away from me, with apologies to Arnold K.
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| Common pill woodlouse via wikimedia |
A great deal of time has passed since Jim Parkin (https://d66kobolds.blogspot.com/) first suggested I watch Primal... but now the dust has settled, those 10 episodes are safely beneath my belt and my belly is full I can finally answer the question: how much PRIMAL is there in PARIAH? How much PARIAH is in PRIMAL?
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| Image copyright Games Workshop, in case their lawyers track this blog down through reverse image search and threaten to have me kneecaped. |
Work sucks - I know.
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| April panel from a Roman mosaic of the months (from El Djem, Tunisia, first half of 3rd century AD) |
Honestly, I don't know what it is. I just don't seem to be able to write anything in March. Nothing against the month, nor indeed this poor unfortunate:
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| A man from Mars, aka. "Martian man". Absolutely nothing to do with Martian Manhunter. |
Slayer of the Father (Nye) https://twitter.com/ersatzexpert?lang=en
Chasing Ape (TinheadNed) https://www.stdin.co.uk/blog2/
Timidly Hindered Dwelling (Sofinho)
Louis Gen2K of https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1l359KSJetX0WTiE0AnWbw is the gamemaster.
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| Lions at Chauvet cave. |
Early to middle spring
This is the summary of the 31st week of the PARIAH campaign, covering 14th-20th February.
The previous session report is available at this link:
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-unlucky-ones-pariah-campaign-week-30.html
You can catch up on all the session reports via this link here (all posts tagged "unluckyones"):
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/search/label/unluckyones
I've decided to lump these updates together as there were only 3 sessions played in that period. Incidentally, this brings the total number of PARIAH sessions (in this campaign) to 35, not including 3 sessions of "hudless" Pariah in a modified Lair of the Lamb and 2 sessions GMed by Louis in his Brù-Gar campaign setting (there will be further posts about this shortly).
Given that the first (post-Kickstarter) session was played on 6th June, that's 40 sessions over nearly 38 weeks!
As the sandbox continues to evolve and develop I'm hoping some of the players will be happy to step-up and take on GM duties so we can start to flesh out this burgeoning world even more.
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| Visible/experienced world, end of most recent session. |
Have I done one of these before? Feels like I should have... maybe I'm thinking of that I search the body post I did recently. In any case, here are some magic items for your proto-Neolithic campaign:
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| Neolithic grave goods, possibly magical. |
Jewel at the Foot of the Mountain. The Bridge Over the Great River. City of Many Stairs. Gateway to the Sun and Heavens. The Endless village. The city has nearly as many names as the number of deities to whom its inhabitants pray... and it is this peculiar feature that grants its most familiar name: the City of a Hundred Gods.
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| Was going to use this as the cover for PARIAH volume 2 then remembered... ...we ripped it off Assassin's Creed... |
To outsiders these "gods" are hungry, capricious demons that thrive on that unique misery endemic to urbanised societies... but to those born within sight of the city's incredible walls, they are entities worthy of their devotion. The myriad cults venerating these one hundred deities each work in synergy to make the metropolis greater than the sum of its parts.
So come then, let us explore each district via the "gods" venerated there, starting with the outskirts of the city and of course its walls.This is the summary of the 30th week of the PARIAH campaign, covering 8th-13th February.
The previous session report is available at this link:
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/02/pariah-etau-campaign-session-28-29.html
You can catch up on all the session reports via this link here (all posts tagged "unluckyones"):
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/search/label/unluckyones
Multiple sessions were put forward with the nature of the session determined by the players present, similar to a "west marches" style campaign. Dates provided are in-game, to help players to coordinate the events of the past few sessions.
Once again, a fun challenge has emerged from the OSR discord, this time issued by Sahh: create a 1d00 I search the body and grant flesh to the bones of your world. The first response to this challenge was made not by Sahh but Locheil of Nothic's Eye and it is this post that I shall first link below:
https://nothicseye.blogspot.com/2021/02/i-loot-body-d100-aclas.html
...but Sahh was quick to remedy the situation and put up her own:
https://coloursofpentagrams.blogspot.com/2021/02/world-in-1d100-i-loot-body-table.html
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| Illustration by Greg Harlin from this cool article: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/100830-first-feast-science-proceedings-israel-shaman-sorcerer-tortoise |
These events continue from the TWENTY-SEVENTH session. The real world dates were Sunday 31st January and Saturday 6th February 2021 on the Atelier Hwei Discord.
Players:
- Mister Kent https://twitter.com/MrKentKomiks as Beautiful Other-far-from-the-Lake
- Oisín https://twitter.com/OisinoftheHill playing as Earnestly Wooded
- Semiurge http://archonsmarchon.blogspot.com/ playing as Witheringly Footed at the Point
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| Map annotated by https://twitter.com/MrKentKomiks! |
CW: SUBSTANCE ABUSE/ ADDICTION and BODY HORROR
In PARIAH, powerful curses are represented by curse templates. Inspired by Emmy Allen’s lateral advancement trackers (particularly wendigo sickness and the wounded daughter) templates provide the opportunity to inflict a doom on a pariah over an extended period rather than removing them from the game immediately—providing the opportunity to remove the curse, or at least having some fun in the attempt.
This is the basis for ghouls in PARIAH:
http://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2020/04/ghouls.html
Each template has triggers which initiate a roll on the affliction table. Each entry reveals one (or more) afflictions: beneficial, baleful or both. Each curse has a point at which the player must surrender their character to the GM, though it is down to the table to establish when that point might be (suggestions are provided). A pariah may suffer multiple curses concurrently.
Curses are thus diseases, a monsters, and a weird mode of lateral character progression (but not necessarily in that order)...
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| Sleepflower by Abigail Lingford |
Being an individual of advancing years it's often some time before I catch up to the latest trends currently entertaining the kids, and when I do it's embarrassingly late. So here I am, some TEN WHOLE DAYS after the original post, attempting to answer the ten setting questions posed by Vayra in her recent post:
https://madqueenscourt.blogspot.com/2021/01/ten-setting-questions-sort-of-like.html
The setting being interrogated is the implied setting of PARIAH.
These events continue from the TWENTY-FIFTH session but also picks up the characters not seen since the NINETEENTH SESSION. The real world session took place on Saturday 9th and 16th January 2021 on the Atelier Hwei Discord.
Players:
- Eugene https://twitter.com/eakiselev as Nervously Rides the Grave
- JFur https://jenniferixon.itch.io/ playing as Fallen-far-from-the-Wind
- Mister Kent https://twitter.com/MrKentKomiks as Beautiful Other-far-from-the-Lake
- Oisín https://twitter.com/OisinoftheHill playing as Earnestly Wooded
- Semiurge http://archonsmarchon.blogspot.com/ playing as Witheringly Footed at the Point
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| The Temple of Water |
Beautiful Other was joined by Antelope, the old ally of the founding pariah band in hope of tracking down the mystery surrounding the irrigation temple and the apparent disappearance of Wither, Rides-the-Grave and Earnestly Wooded. The latter resolved itself fairly soon after leaving the settlement...
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| Arthur's RPG design work is available at https://aryl-ether.itch.io/ |
If someone had told us that our next meeting was going to be nearly 6 months later and under full lockdown conditions it is doubtful either of us would have believed it. Nonetheless, last weekend we found ourselves on either end of a discord call, catching up on the intervening period… a period which has been particularly busy for Arthur.
Part 1 of this 2-part post special can be read here:
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/01/exploring-space-procedure-in-different.html
In a previous post I look at play procedures in different environments, in the hope that this might somehow "unlock" the secret to running a city encounter. For many readers I'm trying to solve a problem that isn't there, and I'm not going to argue with you: I think this is probably about my own obsession with cities and what they mean. Hopefully something good can come out of it.
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| Lilith, Anselm Kiefer |
As usual thinking about ability scores was keeping me awake at night, and—after yet again unsuccessfully trying to square the circle OF STUPID ABILITY SCORE MODIFIERS—I started thinking about reaction rolls. One may well assign the notion of ability score modifiers to the status of "only for the combat mini-game", but then you miss out on the UNADULTERATED POWER of having an 18 charisma character getting involved in this murky business:
None but a nincompoop would deny the beauty of the 2d6 table: indeed, many have tried to use it as the basis for whole systems. I am certainly a fan of the above interpretation (taken from the red box), as there's it runs the whole gamut of monster emotions! In all seriousness, I enjoy that it suggests multiple stages of negotiation, with charisma perhaps playing second fiddle to other circumstantial modifiers.
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| Constant's New Babylon Nord. It is upside down, courtesy the internet. |
Work for PARIAH VOLUME 2: CITY OF GHOSTS continues apace. There is no way I am going to be able to have this ready for Zine Quest 3 unfortunately, but I have at least settled on a format. The nature of the space is closer to a dungeon crawl than a city crawl, so there will be a somewhat granular approach to the space... by which I suppose I mean a keyed map with defined locations and routes around.
However, I'm still thinking about a bigger, more urban setting for another project, but feel the need to really define the procedure for exploring an urban environment, as it's the least defined in old school play. To get there I'm first going to have a look at some traditional play procedures with additional commentary regarding how this manifests in PARIAH.
Discussing the etymology of hobgoblin on the discord server was a reminder that the idea of a "kitchen ghost" or "hearth spirit" is common to many cultures across the globe. Hob is used by a lot of British people to describe their stovetop, an evolution of the hot plate that once kept pots simmering on traditional stoves. Goblin, of course, was a type of fey creature rather than a rat-faced runt with green (or orange) skin and a selection of pointy sticks. The hobgoblin was thus a kitchen-based domestic spirit and not the larger kinds [of orc], as suggested by Gandalf.
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| They used to be fun, now they're just another "proud warrior race" trope. |
In protestant Europe (and in many of the lands the countries of that cultural sphere once occupied) belief in this spirit and the practice of honouring it has largely died out over the last few centuries along with many of that culture's folk traditions. The guilty party in this case being the religiosity of the reformation and the "rationalism" of the later enlightenment period.