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  1. - Top - End - #31
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Alright, after all this flavor, now to the actual meat. Who exactly are these PCs and what do they do?

    Ancient Lands Adventures

    The Player Characters

    In my own campaigns I have two rules that apply to all PCs:

    1. The character must want to search for treasures.
    2. The character must want to work with the team.


    These are simple rules, but not obvious ones. In other campaigns these might not be necessary and there are great numbers of heroic and villainous NPCs in the Ancient Lands who are not fitting these parameters. But for the sake of the campaign, characters who would prefer to not put themselves into danger by collecting treasures in ruins or who are not cooperating with the party can not come along on adventures.

    Why the character is going on dangerous explorations of ruins and what mathods the character prefers is entirely up to the player. PCs that chase after wealth, fame, or knowledge can all work. As long as they don't attempt to do so by exploiting or betraying the other party members.

    What are the PCs looking for?

    As I mentioned before, magic items can not be manufactured in the Ancient Lands. They are all artifacts or relics that contain part of the powers of a powerful being (usually dead). Their number is limited and many of them are unique. This makes all magic items highly thought after and valuable beyond measure. There are two ways for kings, chiefs, shamans, witches, and sorcerers to get their hands on magic items: Taking them from their current owners by force or discovering where they have been hidden or lost by their last owners. The work of PCs in an Ancient Lands campaign is usually the later.

    How do PCs get experience?

    As in the regular B/X and LotFP rules, PCs and henchmen gain experience points for all nonmagic treasure they successfully recover from a dungeon and get to civilization. It's a very nice mechanic to encourage players to use planning and trickery to steal treasures from monsters that would be way too dangerous to face in a fair fight. (XP for winning fights exist, but these are generally only 10% of what you'd get for the treasure.)

    Usually magic items do not count for XP, but since artifact hunts are the goal of an Ancient Lands campaign, this needs to be a major source of experience. I still have to decide on a formula to calculate these XP, though.

    Since the Ancient Lands are more about getting knowledge than hauling big bags of silver, I regard any rewards paid for the retrieval of an item or a proof of the death of special monsters also as treasure gained during the adventure and giving the players full XP. The head of a dragon that gets the party 10,000 silver pieces in reward is a piece of trwasure just like a chest with 10,000 silver pieces.

    One nice additional rule that I like, but which is really fully optional, is that PCs can only gain one new level each year. XP are counted regularly but are only actually added to the characters when they settle into winter camp at the end of each year. A character who has made more XP that year has his new XP score set to 1 XP lower than what would be needed to gain two levels. The idea behind this is to enourage a style of play that consists of big expeditions in the summer interrupted by long rests in the winter and have a real passage of time throughout the campaign. Being a 10th level character is much more meaningful if it's the result of 15 years of adventuring and not something done in just two months. To make this work, the GM actually has to aim for no more XP per year then half of what the highest level party members need to gain another level. If all PCs of any levels regularly max out their maximum for the year, then characters that joined the campaign later or lost levels to unead or sorcery will never be able to catch up.

    Why are there dungeons?

    Given that the Ancient Lands are a relatively small and very sparsely populated low tech world, it is a really good question to ask why there are these unlooted dungeons all over the place? This was a major challenge early in the development that eventually lead to two important concepts: Floating Time and Perpetual Collapse.

    For some reason, true civilization in the Ancient Lands is not sustainable and always only a relatively short lived exception compared to the common state of independent clans living in small villages. Small city states and kingdoms arise all the time but always only last for a couple of centuries before they collapse and the populations fractures back into dispersed clans. This has happened more times than anyone remembers and ruined castles and fortresses cover the land, hidden by the always regrowing forest. Most are only small piles of rubbles with a few remaining walls and nothing of interest, but that still leaves a considerable number of ruins that hold hidden treasures that only now become accessible as ancient gates and walls are crumbling.

    Finding such ruins by accident is almost impossible, but tales of lost cities linger for a long time among their descendants and ancient maps and records are one of the many invaluable treasures that can be found in ruins. A typical adventure begin with the players coming into possession of a map that shows the location of an ancient city or castle. They may have found it on previous adventures or could alternatively be approached by a chief or sorcerer whose sources have revealed the resting place of a lost magic relic that they want retrieved.

    What is an adventure like?

    The typical adventure that I envision for the Ancient Lands is at its core a pretty basic oldschool dungeon crawl. But not the simple murderhobo loot raid on the dungeon at the edge of the village and more an extended expedition into the wilderness.

    An adventure begins as desribed with the party getting directions to a ruin that is worth checking out. This can either be a choice made by the GM or can take a more sandbox form in which the GM has three or four places prepared in advance and the players can decide more spontaneously which one they want to travel to. This is why it is neccessary that all PCs are treasure hunters and ruin explorers. If players would rather stay in town and plot with and against the locals, then creating well designed exploration sites would just not be worth the effort.

    Once the destination has been set, the players need to outfit an expedition. At lower levels this might consist of just enough rations for a week snd some ropes and torches, but at higher levels this can contain multiple servants, workers, guards, and pack animals for a journey lasting months.

    The journey to the destination is the wilderness setion of the adventure. Along the paths the party will come possibly through settlements where they can resupply and gain new information from the locals, an there will also be regular checks for wandering monsters. These random enounters won't be 6 wolves or 8 goblins attacking, though. Instead the results will be treated as hooks for possible side adventures. Like repelling a gang of bandits and then following them back to their lair and possibly taking their loot or freeing captives. All that really is needed for this is to have a couple of wildernes lair prepared in advance that can be populated with the appropriate inhabitants at a moment's notice. With an oldschool system like B/X or LotFP this is actually really simple, as they work well enough with simply the basic unmodified monsters that don't need to be adjusted to party size either. If the lair ends up too strongly defended for the players to assault, they simply have to decide between stealthy infiltration or continuing the journey to their deatination.

    At the destination the party sets up a camp where the servants and animals will stay while the PCs are doing their explorations.

    Once the players think they have what they need or can carry for now, the whole expedition makes the return trip back to a settement where they can stay. Again with random encounters along the way during which some treasure might get lost.

    Once the party made it back to civiization (the next second degree settlement, I'd say), XP for any remaining treasures are calcuated.

    Finally the PCs can seek out any possible employers and collect their rewards.

    Now this is an overview of the general intended adventure structure. What it doesn't include is any specifics about the main adventure sites themselves. This is something I will go into specific detail later.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

    Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying

  2. - Top - End - #32
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Animals I

    I am really proud of these. I got a lot more of them but they still need images and proper names before I post them. I deliberately decided not to have any dogs, bears, pigs, horses, or cows in the setting, as they are just too ordinary and familiar. I still kept cats, deer, goats, and weasels, but all other mammals are based on long extinct prehistoric reatures. Fish, reptiles, and arthropods are all as usual, but I am still on the fence about birds. I think I might actually keep it to small feathered reptiles, as I don't really see any need for detailed creature descriptions in this area. I have one pretty cool bird spirit, but I might be able to modify that one accordingly.

    Arag


    XP: 20
    No. Appearing: 2d6 (3d6)
    Armor: 14
    Move: 180′
    Hit Dice: 2 (9 hp)
    Attack: Bite +2 (1d6)
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 14
    Poison: 12
    Breath: 15
    Device: 13
    Magic: 16
    Morale: 9
    Special: An arag can make a long and loud howl instead of making an attack that calls all nearby arags in the area, which arrive 2d4 rounds later.

    The arag is a predator about the size of a large dog. Their appearance is somewhat similar to reptiles and weasels and they are covered in sleek gray and brown fur. They have a very wide range and are found in almost all parts of the mainland, but are rare on smaller islands far away from the coast. Arags usually stay away from settled areas, but have little fear of single travelers in the wilderness and will sometimes even attack small groups.

    Droha


    XP: 35
    No. Appearing: 0 (3d10)
    Armor: 15
    Move: 180′
    Hit Dice: 3 (13 hp)
    Attack: Kick +1 (1d6)
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 14
    Poison: 12
    Breath: 15
    Device: 13
    Magic: 16
    Morale: 7

    The droha is a big reptile found in all the tropical and temperate forests of the Ancient Lands, except on smaller islands. It’s about the size of a camel and has been domesticated in many areas as the main beast of burden. Drohas often live in herds of one to three dozen individuals.

    Gira


    XP: 75
    No. Appearing: 0 (3d10)
    Armor: 14
    Move: 180′
    Hit Dice: 4 (18 hp)
    Attack: Kick +2 (1d8)
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 12
    Poison: 10
    Breath: 13
    Device: 11
    Magic: 14
    Morale: 6

    Giras are one of the most common large herbivores in the Ancient Lands. They can grow to the size of drohas but are usually somewhat smaller. They can run faster than drohas but carry less weight and they are also less docile and requite more care and attention, which makes them less popular as pack animals.

    Gren


    XP: 25
    No. Appearing: 1d6 (4d6)
    Armor: 15
    Move: 120′
    Climb: 90'
    Hit Dice: 2 (9 hp)
    Attack: Bite +2 (1d6 + 1d6 poison)
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 14
    Poison: 12
    Breath: 15
    Device: 13
    Magic: 16
    Morale: 9

    Gren are dog-sized creatures seemingly related to crabs, scorpions, and spiders. They make their homes usually in rock caves or in large tunnels dug below the roots of big trees, but will also build nests in the underground levels of old ruins. Nests consist of about a few dozen individuals, but gren are usually encountered alone when out hunting. The tail of gren does not have a sting, but their bite is poisonous. Nests are build from a material similar to spiderwebs, but they don’t use webs for catching prey.

    Handak


    XP: 10
    No. Appearing: 2d6 (3d10)
    Armor: 13
    Move: 120′
    Hit Dice: 1 (4 hp)
    Attack: Bite +1 (1d4)
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 14
    Poison: 12
    Breath: 15
    Device: 13
    Magic: 16
    Morale: 7

    A handak is a big rodent the size of a small dog that can eat almost anything. They are very good at digging tunnels through dirt and can gnaw through thick roots and even wooden planks with little difficulty. In areas where handaks are common, people usually build their storage cellars with stone walls to keep the pests out.

    Heor


    XP: 20
    No. Appearing: 0 (2d6)
    Armor: 13
    Move: 240′
    Hit Dice: 2 (9 hp)
    Attack: Kick +1 (1d4)
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 14
    Poison: 12
    Breath: 15
    Device: 13
    Magic: 16
    Morale: 6

    Heors are a large type of domesticated deer that has been bred primarily for riding. They are stronger than most other deer and have smaller antlers that makes it easier to keep them in stables and safer for riders. Heors are quite fast over short distances and well suited to running in forests, but they lack stamina and over longer distances tend to be even slower than a man on foot as they require regular periods of rest. They are still greatly prized for travel as they can carry much greater loads than people. Heors are still relatively rare as they are expensive to maintain and need a lot of training to be ridden. Usually they are used by scouts and messengers, but are mostly unsuited for use in battle.

    Kina


    XP: 10
    No. Appearing: 1d6 (2d4)
    Armor: 14
    Move: 60′
    Fly: 180'
    Hit Dice: 1 (4 hp)
    Attack: Bite +1 (1d4)
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 14
    Poison: 12
    Breath: 15
    Device: 13
    Magic: 16
    Morale: 7

    The kina is a large winged reptile aboutthe size of a big eagle. They are found on all the coasts and islands of the Ancient Lands.

    Krat


    XP: 275
    No. Appearing: 0 (2d8)
    Armor: 16
    Move: 120′
    Hit Dice: 6 (27 hp)
    Attack: Kick +3 (2d4)
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 12
    Poison: 10
    Breath: 13
    Device: 11
    Magic: 14
    Morale: 8

    A krat is a large reptile somewhat similar to a rhinoceros. Young krats can be tamed and are sometimes used to pull heavy carts or drag large logs. They are not well suited to long marches and requite a great deal of attention from their handslers and so are rarely used by traveling merchants.

    Liak


    The liak is a small deer about the size of a goat. They are impossible to be kept fenced in but are commonly hunted by elves, kaas, yao, and many predators.

    Mora


    XP: 175
    No. Appearing: 1d4 (1d6)
    Armor: 15
    Move: 180′
    Climb: 90'
    Hit Dice: 5 (22 hp)
    Attack: Bite +5 (2d4)
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 12
    Poison: 10
    Breath: 13
    Device: 11
    Magic: 14
    Morale: 9

    A mora is a large predator resembling a huge weasel or very slender tiger with a pelt like a bear. Mora are very rare and highly dangerous, but they can be tamed and trained to carry a rider. They are fast and agile and easily kill a man, but require a great amount of experience to control. Unlike warriors mounted on heors and drohas, mora riders are not able to use their weapons while mounted and rather serve as handlers for their war beasts. Keeping a mora is very expensive as they eat mostly meat, and they require a great deal of care, which makes them very uncommon as trained animals. Even in the wilds they are rarely seen.

    Oget


    XP: 10
    No. Appearing: 0 (2d8)
    Armor: 13
    Move: 150′
    Hit Dice: 1 (4 hp)
    Attack: Ram +1 (1d4)
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 14
    Poison: 12
    Breath: 15
    Device: 13
    Magic: 16
    Morale: 7

    Ogets are goats that have been bred by skeyn to be beasts of burden and are used for carrying loads and plowing fields. They lack the speed of heors when loaded but can be comfortably ridden by skeyn at walking speed. Larger ones can carry most elves, but they are too small to carry kaas or yao. Ogets are very hardy animals and produce milk and wool, which makes them common on farms in all parts of the Ancient Lands, except the jungles of the south.

    Straig


    XP: 850
    No. Appearing: 1d3 (1d8)
    Armor: 18
    Move: 120′
    Fly: 240'
    Hit Dice: 7 (31 hp)
    Attack: Bite +7 (2d8 + 2d6 poison)
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 10
    Poison: 8
    Breath: 11
    Device: 9
    Magic: 12
    Morale: 9

    Straigs are winged reptiles much larger in size than kina and are known to kill droah and young krats. They have very long serpentine bodies and their narrow snouts have poisonous teeth that paralyze a victim within minutes. As they usually hunt large animals, the bite of a straig is almost always lethal to elves, yao, and skeyn, though kaas have occasionally survived even without the help of potions.

    Taun


    XP: 10
    No. Appearing: 2d6 (3d10)
    Armor: 14
    Move: 90′
    Hit Dice: 1 (4 hp)
    Attack: Bite +0 (1d4)
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 14
    Poison: 12
    Breath: 15
    Device: 13
    Magic: 16
    Morale: 6

    A taun is a pig-sized animal with green-brown hide, short legs, and a head that somewhat resemble a turtle. They are slow creatures and when raised on farms generally peaceful around people. They can eat a great variety of plants and as they always stay very close to the herd and don’t wander far, they are usually left to roam free at the edges of village and droven back to their stables or enclosures for the night. Since they need a lot of food they are only found in woodlands and are absent in the far north and the higher mountains. Tauns are mostly kept for meat and leather.

    Uba


    XP: 75
    No. Appearing: 0 (3d6)
    Armor: 16
    Move: 120′
    Hit Dice: 4 (18 hp)
    Attack: Ram +4 (1d8)
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 12
    Poison: 10
    Breath: 13
    Device: 11
    Magic: 14
    Morale: 10

    An uba looks like a creature somewhat between a rhinoceros and a hippo with two big horns above its eyes. Uba spend much of their time in shallow water and live in small groups. They don’t eat meat but quickly get aggressive when approached.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

    Spriggan's Den Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying

  3. - Top - End - #33
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    The Undead

    Undead are rare and terrifying monsters in the Ancient Lands and only come into being through the effects of sorcery and demonic corruption. There is no single definition of undeath, but all these creatures share in common that they originally used to be living people (or animals) but have been transformed into something neither fully living nor dead. Animated corpses, wights, shades, and wraiths are the remains of people who have unquestionably died and whose spirits are forever gone. With ghouls and darklings things are much less clear as they have never truly died but share many of the other traits common to undead creatures. They might more accurately be described as corrupted rather than undead but this is a distinction that only matters to sages who have never actually encountered them in person.

    While ghouls and darklings are still consisting of a unified body and spirit and sustain themselves through consuming the flesh of the living, the other types of undead are fully magical beings that can not exist independently of the source of sorcerous power that created them. Walking corpses are usually close to the sorcerer or demon that created them while wights, shades, and wraiths are eternally linked to the corrupted energies of the place that spawned them. In fact they are more part of the place than separate beings and as such it is impossible to exist beyond its borders. This is widely seen as a blessing as these undead horrors have the ability to turn the slain into more of their own.

    Animated Corpse

    XP: 20
    No. Appearing: 2d4 (4d6)
    Armor: 12
    Move: 90′
    Hit Dice: 2 (9 hp)
    Attack: Claw +2 (1d6) or weapon +2 (1d6)
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 14
    Poison: 12
    Breath: 15
    Device: 13
    Magic: 16
    Morale: 12
    Special: Immune to disease, poison, charm, paralysis, and sleep.

    Animated corpses are known under many names but in the end they are effectively just that. The remains of living people and beasts that have magically been giving a semblance of life by the magic of a sorcerer or demon. They have no spirit of their own and are nothing more than empty shells made to rise and move pulled by magic strings. While terrifying to look at, animated corpses pose no greater threat than living beasts and can simply be cut down by any blade, but as there is no blood running in their veins they tend to continue fighting until they are hacked to pieces.

    Ghoul


    XP: 25
    No. Appearing: 1d8 (3d6)
    Armor: 14
    Move: 120′
    Hit Dice: 2 (9 hp)
    Attack: Claw +2 (1d4 + paralysis) or weapon +2 (1d6)
    Saving Throws:
    Paralysis: 14
    Poison: 12
    Breath: 15
    Device: 13
    Magic: 16
    Morale: 8
    Special: Immune to disease, poison, charm, paralysis, and sleep.

    Ghouls are elves, yao, or other humanoids who have been corrupted by the dark magic of sorcery or demons. Though they have never truly died, they resemble the undead, existing in a state between life and death. They grow gaunt with pale skin and dark sunken eyes and are suffering from madness, but are also filled with unnatural vigor and are much more cunning than any beast. Their clawed fingers can crush a mans throat and leave deep rends in the flesh of their victims, and their teeth have the strength to bite through bones, as they regain their strength by feeding on the flesh of humans and beasts.

    Many ghouls once were adventurers and treasure hunters who delved too deep into ancient places where the living are not meant to tread, or what remains of those who become slaves of dark sorcerers or demons. The corruption that warped their bodies also affects their minds and all of them are clearly unhinged, but most of them seem to retain the memories of their former lives and traces of their past selves.

    A living creature hit by a ghoul’s claws must make a saving throw against paralysis or collapse to the ground unable to move for 2d4x10 minutes.

    Darkling


    XP: 35
    No. Appearing: 1d8 (2d8)
    Armor: 14
    Move: 120′
    Climb: 90′
    Hit Dice: 3 (13 hp)
    Attack: Claw +3 (1d6 + paralysis)
    Saving Throws:
    Paralysis: 14
    Poison: 12
    Breath: 15
    Device: 13
    Magic: 16
    Morale: 10
    Special: Immune to disease, poison, charm, paralysis, and sleep.

    Darklings are ghouls that not only have survived in their undead state for decades but actually managed to gain additional strength from it, losing their last traces of humanity in the process. While still roughly the size of a person, darklings are are powerfully build beasts with pale gray hide that run on all fours and have become truly feral in their madness. Darklings are almost always found underground and never go outside during the day. Their small black eyes can see perfectly even without any kind of light. They have never be seen to follow commands of other creatures or communicating in an intelligible manner but have been known to be magically goaded by sorcerers to patrol the area around their lairs or attack the strongholds of their enemies in large packs.

    Wight


    XP: 50
    No. Appearing: 1d6 (1d8)
    Armor: 16
    Move: 90′
    Hit Dice: 3 (13 hp)
    Attack: Claw +3 (1d4 + energy drain) or weapon +3 (1d6)
    Saving Throws:
    Paralysis: 14
    Poison: 12
    Breath: 15
    Device: 13
    Magic: 16
    Morale: 12
    Special: Half damage from bronze, wood, or stone weapons and natural attacks. Normal damage from iron weapons. Immune to disease, poison, charm, paralysis, and sleep.

    A wight is a corpse given life through the powers of the spirits of corrupted places. They are not truly individual creatures but more of a manifestations of the malevolent will of the spirits of the land who have been driven to hateful madness by the sorcery that has corrupted their domains. To be turned into a wight, a corpse has to be greatly corrupted itself and as such they are most commonly found in the tombs of ancient sorcerers or old demonic temples that have been burried with their priests and cultists still inside. The corpses of those who are slain by a wight’s touch will rise as a new wight in 1-4 days, but only if left within the territory of the wights.

    Unlike animated corpses, wights are far from mindless and posess the same awareness and cunning of the spirit that controls them. Sometimes a spirit choses to talk to intruders through its most powerful wight but most commonly they do not communicate in any way at all and simply attack in a blind rage on sight. Umless one possesses magic to hide from spirits, wights are very difficult to ambush and surprise on a chance of 3 in 6. Like spirits they take little damage from most weapons but are hurt by iron just as any living creature would.

    Shade


    XP: 25
    No. Appearing: 1d8 (1d12)
    Armor: 13
    Move: 120′
    Hit Dice: 2 (9 hp)
    Attack: Claw +2 (1d4 plus 1 Strength)
    Saving Throws:
    Paralysis: 14
    Poison: 12
    Breath: 15
    Device: 13
    Magic: 16
    Morale: 12
    Special: Harmed only by iron weapons. Immune to disease, poison, charm, paralysis, and sleep.

    When people die who have been corrupted by demonic sorcery, the corruption that wracked their bodies can linger on, turning into shades. With both the bodies and souls of the original person gone, shades are nearly mindless clouds of corruption that float silently above the spot where the person died. They are normally invisible, but cast dark shadows in the presence of bright lights and they can be clearly seen as shapes of darkness if any light shines upon them in the presence of dust or smoke.

    Walking through a shade drains a small part of the life force of living creatures and can start the spreading of corruption over time. While most shades stand motionless in the spot of their death and don’t seem to react to anything around them, some are aware of the presence of living beings nearby and attack when anything comes too close to them. While their insubstantial claws do not leave any physical injuries, being in prolonged contact with an attacking shade can quickly drain all the life energy of a living creature and spread the corruption through its body. People who survive the attack of a shade often show dark purple streaks on their skin which becomes ashen pale and cold. This will last for several days until life fully returns to the body. Those who die will often leave behind a shade as well, joining those who killed them.

    Shades are common in places where lots of people have been killed through sorcery, like the lairs of demons or the sites of sorcerous battles. They can only be harmed by iron weapons and magic but even when destroyed that way they will return within a few hours. Nobody has ever been able to communicate with a shade in any form, but some people who can sense spirits have said to have heard them whisper fragments of sentences that are seemingly related to the deaths that created them.

    Wraith


    XP: 125
    No. Appearing: 1d4 (1d6)
    Armor: 18
    Move: Fly 180′
    Hit Dice: 4 (18 hp)
    Attack: Claw +4 (1d6 plus energy drain)
    Saving Throws:
    Paralysis: 12
    Poison: 10
    Breath: 13
    Device: 11
    Magic: 14
    Morale: 10
    Special: Harmed only by iron weapons. Immune to disease, poison, charm, paralysis, and sleep.

    Wraiths are the strongest and most terrifying of all the undead. They are somewhat similar to shades in that they appear as roughly humanoid shaped forms of black smoke with no substential body, but are much more powerful in every way. Wraiths are created when a person is fully consumed by demonic corruption to the point where the spirit is no longer in need of a living body and simply sustains itself from the corrupted magical energies around it. A wraith retains all of its memories but none of its personality and turns into a cruel and hateful abomination unconcerned with its former life. Most wraiths were sorcerers in life and are highly intelligent but there is almost nothing that could be offered to bargain with them.

    As wraiths are fully immaterial they can not be harmed by most weapons other than iron blades and are very difficult to destroy as they can simply fade through walls or floors if they realize they are facing a real threat to their undead existance. The touch of a wraiths warps the life force of any creature with pure demonic corruption, causing first a crippling weakness that remains for life and eventually turns the victims into wraiths themselves. Like wights and shades, wraiths are sustained by the corrupted energies of sorcery and can only survive in places that have been greatly affected by sorcerous magic or the presence of demons for a long period of time. They can not leave these places and wound instantly be destroyed if the corruption could somehow be cleansed.

    Phantom

    Phantoms are more a phenomenon than actual creatures, possessing no real form of their own and having no ability to affect their surroundings or other creatures. A phantom is more or less like a memory of a person who died in a place of great magical power that got imprinted on the spirits of that place. They are often localized to the spot where the remains of the persons are resting or at the place where they died. A phantom often manifests itself as a vision of its corpse talking or appearing as they did in life or at the moment of death. Phantoms know that they are dead and sometimes even realize that they are not even actually themselves but only an echo of a long dead person. During a vision a phantom can talk to living people and in fact this is the only thing they can do. Often they warn visitors to the place of their death about the dangers they are facing or attempt to give them advice about completing the task they have come to perform. Most phantoms are resigned to the fact that they are dead and mean no harm to the living, but some might actively try to deceive people and lure them into certain death.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Labyrinths

    Linguists and philosophers have spilled a lot of ink over the question of how the choice of names for a thing affects how people see the meaning of a thing. What I am talking about here are simply dungeons. If you call them dungeons, it is correct and everyone will understand what is meant. But when you tell someone the word "dungeon", the images that pop into their minds will be different then if you tell them the word "labyrinth". "Dungeon" makes you think of the prisons under a medieval castle. "Labyrinth" makes you think of minotaurs. And when I talk about adventure environments, I definitly want people to think about minotaurs. And they are going to be big sprawling environments with mysterious architecture. Damp stone basements with skeletons are almost nonexistent in the Ancient Lands.
    Native english speakers like to complain about labyrinth not being the same as a maze. But the word labyrinth comes from Greek and refers specifically to the Labyrinth of King Minon near his palace in Knossos in Crete. Which Daedalus had build specifically to be so complicated that nobody can find the way out. Especially the minotaur! The classic labyrinth pattern used in antiquity and the middle ages to represent the labyrinth does only have a single path, but the real thing is explicitly complex and confusing.

    And I think having a consistent and specific terminology in a setting is always a nice touch. So I'll be calling those large underground complexes labyrinths.

    To start, I've drawn up a short list of references for how I would design adventures for the Ancient Lands:

    Modules
    • The Lost City
    • The Isle of Dread
    • Quagmire!
    • Against the Cult of the Reptile God
    • Dwellers of the Forbidden City
    • The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun
    • Death Frost Doom
    • Deep Carbon Observatory
    • Slumbering Ursine Dunes

    Other Sources
    • Aliens
    • Apocalypse Now
    • Dark Souls
    • Princess Mononoke
    • Red Nails
    • Stalker
    • Super Metroid


    The general idea is a kind of isolated and self-contained micro-sandbox that consists of a single valley, mountain, lake, or island that contains surface ruins and multiple entries to thematically linked dungeons. A very nonlinear approach with no start or end point once the party has completed the overland journey to reach their destination. There is no plot to them, but they might very well have multiple hooks to get the party to explore them. If everything fails, there's always "I want to get some treasure, this looks like a promising place." But you can also have NPCs who want to get an object or a person who they believe to be somehwere in these adventure environments. They can give the party a map how to reach the place, and perhaps some hints what they are looking for. But once there it's all about exploring the ruins and caves.

    To make it more interesting than simply going room by room until everything has been mapped, an adventure environment also needs inhabitants. There are of course the monsters that want to eat the PCs, but there should also be NPCs who can be interacted and negotiated with. Either to leave the party in peace or to help them with dealing with the dangers and obstacles. Things get really interesting when different groups of NPCs and monsters have some kind of conflict with each other. Players can chose to pick a side and help one group against another, to get their assistance later or to get rid of a shared threat, or try to play two groups against each other and out of their own way. Or the players can ignore them and move on. There is no story except for the conflicts between inhabitants, unless the players chose to get involved with them. The only predetermined goal is that the players are trying to find treasure during their stay. (Hence the requirement that all PCs are interested in finding treasure and why doing so is the main source of XP.)

    The hook is the initial motivation that makes the party search the place for treasure. The story of the adventure is what happens when the players chose to get involved with the conflicts of the inhabitants.

    Types of Labyrinths

    One thing I noticed a while back is that not every dungeon will necessarily fit into every setting. Abandoned factories, destroyed libraries, and huge mines might work for some settings, but would feel inappropriate for the themes of the Ancient Lands as I envision them. There are mines in the Ancient Lands and some pretty big ones, but why would anyone go there to search for ancient treasures? Most scenarios that I can think of that involves mines as a dungeon have something in the deeps causing trouble to the miners or something hiding in an abandoned mine coming out on occasion to cause trouble for nearby villages. Helping miners and villages with things that attack them are fun ideas for adventures, but not adventures that fit into the theme of the Ancient Lands. They are adventures for traveling heroes looking for wrongs to set right, not adventures for explorers.

    Another concern to me was that I want these environments not to just be setting appropriate, but also feel like they are part of this specific setting and not just generic dungeons that could be found in any setting. I want people to look at a labyrinth and think "oh yeah, that's totally Yora's recognizable Ancient Lands style". This came after watching a couple of videos in amazing level design in video games. Pen and paper games are a small niche and the vast majority of dungeons really aren't that great. There are very few really outstanding ones and almost nothing has been writen about the lessons you can take from that. For those innterested, here are the three best articles and videos that inspired me. Bring some time, these will take a couple of hours to fully get through.

    Jaquaying the Dungeon on the need for branching and interconnecting floorplans.
    Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck explaining dramatic questions and decision points.
    Battlefields and BattleFEELS on making rooms into interesting combat spaces.

    Half Life 2 Level Design Gameplay Analysis on making rooms interesting to interact with.
    The Evolution of Dark Souls Level Design introducing the concepts of vertical spiral level design and expositional storytelling.
    Why Breath of the Wild's Empty Space is So Important on the use of space and scale.

    There I several elements I decided to make central to my own labyrinth design:

    • Vertical levels
    • Unlocking shortcuts (Relevant for large areas requiring multiple trips between the labyrinth and the camp.)
    • Lookout points to get an idea for what lies ahead.
    • Meticulous tracking of visibility and especially darkness.
    • Every room needs something to interact with, even if it seems trivial.
    • Hidden side areas with greater danger and great treasure.
    • Flooded areas that require swimming and diving to access the other side.
    • Plant growth as a mostly visual element.


    So I sat down to think of underground environments for adventures that are suitable for treasure hunting exploration, are plausible to exist within the culture of the setting, and bring to life the aesthetics of a wilderness world ruled by spirits and covered in forgotten castles. What I came up with are these types of labyrinths:

    • Hilltop Towers: These are big towers, castles, or fortresses that stand on elevated ground and rise well above the trees, putting much of them outside of the familar forest environement.
    • Mountain Strongholds: Castles and fortresses surrounded by tall mountains on all sides. This is mostly a visual image that should make think players think of mystical hidden mountain valleys.
    • Undercities: These are found below the ruins of ancient cities that have been almost completely obliterated to rubble. Unlike most dungeons these aren't simply basements or sweers but underground roofed city streets.
    • Cliffside Cities: Basically regular undercity labyrinths but with one side cut away leading to lots of windows and balconies. This gives the ruins a unique look and provides an alternative and hazardous route between levels and around blockages.
    • Barbarian Tombs: Natural cave systems that have been used as burial grounds by ancient barbarians, resulting in networks of alternating caves and crudely constructed rooms. Lend themselves to hold all kinds of spirits and treasures.
    • Giant Burrows: Tunnels dug below the forest floor and under the roots of giant trees. Very similar to caves, but with a much stronger plant and forest theme.
    • Sea Caves: Caves that are open to the sea with large sections flooded. Let's you have sea themed adventures in a labyrinth instead of on ships.
    • Lava Caves: Big cave systems with walls made from cooled and crystalized lava that don't look at all like what you'd expect of natural caves and that make nice homes for strange earth spirits and crystal creatures. Or Ancients from the Underworld.


    Not all labyrinths have to fall into one of these categories, but I think these are all quite distinct environments that you don't really see a lot in published adventures and that also pose the players with various obstacles that are not often encountered in most common grid based masonry basements. They also work under the basic assumptions of the setting and are good representations of the aesthetic elements I like to emphazise.
    Last edited by Yora; 2017-04-18 at 12:02 AM.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Wow! Reminds me a bit of Glorantha, except possibly even cooler (sorry Greg Stafford!).

    Well done!
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    While I could never get into Glorantha (seems way too big and I have no clue where the beginners introduction might be), I think it's one of the big originator of the "tradition" of fantasy worlds in which I want to go. Morrowind (which was based directly on Glorantha) and Planescape both had a huge impact on my design.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    At some point this week I realized that even if the campaign style suggests for 30% of the game to be set in the wildernes and 60% spend in labyrinths, the main thing that makes a setting distinctive and interesting is it's culture. If the party always keeps leaving civilization, then civilization had to come to the party. Developing cultures and societies that come up only during the planning and equipment phase would be rather pointless and it would be difficult to make the wilderness and labyrinth parts of the campaign feel setting specific rather than generic.

    There are three ways I see to make the setting relevant during wilderness exploration adventures:

    While I think the Caves of Chaos from the old famous module The Keep on the Borderland are a really stupid dungeon, it has another thing that is hugely important and beloved by many old players. The Keep on the Borderland! While I said that I don't think Ancient Lands adventures should take place in the comfort and safety of towns, I think this valuable approach should really only apply to first degree settlements in the corelands. A small village of the second or third degree that is part of the borderlands would be a different situation. As long as such settlements are part of the mysterious wilderness and not safe strongolds of mundanity, they should be able to support the themes of wilderness exploration and not conflict with it.

    The second way to bring culture and society into wilderness adventures is to encounter other adventurers. And I am using that term very loosely here. People who are also from the corelands, like the PCs, and who are also poking around in old ruins and seeking the powers of spirits. They could be ordinary adventurers like the PCs, but they could also be members of various groups from first degree settlements who have their own interests in the strange and magical. I think I wouldn't want to run political adventures in the Ancient Lands and won't write any material for that, but you can still have such important power groups and only interact with their agents in the wilderness and ruins. Prime example would be Indiana Jones and various Nazi villains. What is happening in Europe is really tangential to the story. It's the background that tells us what the villains want, how they work, and why it would be horrible if they aren't stopped. That's good enough. It's also how the Empire works in the classic Star Wars movies. You really only ever get to see its agents in places that are not part of the imperial state or society. There is no scene that takes place on an imperial world, deals with imperial politics, or shows life in imperial society.

    The third way that I can think of is to have the things that are found in ruins to be based on the society and history of the civilized world. It is an option, but I am not sure if I really want to use it. It would mean having to create a complex history for the setting and that is something I generally don't like in worldbuilding. It can be really cool when done well, but I feel that in campaigns that I want to run, it would be a huge amount of work for comperatively little gain. I am not writing all this for pleasure but I want to get this thing done and into use. And within the next two or three years, if I can make it. Efficency of process is a factor.
    I think I would rather like to focus just on the history of the specific ruin and make that discoverable through exploration. Learning about the big wide world seems somewhat impractical. Maybe as I keep doing that some type of world mythology emerges over time by itself, but I'd even be hesitant to further build on that in the future as it gets in the way of keeping a world accessible. But that's really a problem for creators whose work have become famous and huge.

    However, I do have some really cool stuff already thought up for the second approach. I got a good handful of factions that all have plenty of motivations to poke around in ruins and cause trouble in border settlements, which could be both allies and rivals for PCs. Probably not going to write much about them tomorrow after work, but I should be able to get something written down over the weekend.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    The one counter example I can think of is Sinbad (the Dreamworks animated film). While I do not think that the exact story of the film would work in your setting (it has too much water, not enough trees), the idea that a powerful artifact has been stolen by a powerful entity and must be returned quickly seems like it would resonate well with the setting. I'll have to chew on it a bit more.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    The Blight

    The magic used by spirits, shamans, and witches utilizes the natural life energies within the environment and all the things in it and as such is limited to doing things that are naturally possible. But there is a space beyond the borders of reality which is filled with the energies of raw Chaos.....

    I'm very curious to see how this is to be used in play!

    Magicians stare into the howling abyss to snatch hellfire...

    ....to heat steam kettles and run sewing machines.

    "Magic" in many games isn't.

    It's a tool.

    A superpower.

    Bah!

    Magic should be like the Elves.

    Terrific!


    Magic begets terror.


    It is power.

    It is temptation.

    It has a price.

    It has a will.

    And it waits.

    While I see hints of Athos, Stormbringer, Dark Albion, and 7th Sea, it looks like you came up with "the Blight" independently.

    Well done!

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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Quote Originally Posted by Rockphed View Post
    The one counter example I can think of is Sinbad (the Dreamworks animated film). While I do not think that the exact story of the film would work in your setting (it has too much water, not enough trees), the idea that a powerful artifact has been stolen by a powerful entity and must be returned quickly seems like it would resonate well with the setting. I'll have to chew on it a bit more.
    But doesn't he travel to exotic places to do so? That would make it a bit more specific than general exploration (but you have this with Indiana Jones too) but would probably still be mostly an exploration adventure and not a social adventure. A sorcerer's home or a cult's lair could still be mystical even if it's located inside an otherwise normal town. But it still would be an adventure into the strange and unknown.

    Sorcery is primarily inspired by the Dark Side, but also a bit by Defiling from Dark Sun and the annomalies from Stalker. I also really loved a quote from Mass Effect, which sadly the ending of the series totally backpadled from:
    "Rudimentary creatures of flesh and bone. You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. There exists a real so far beyond your comprehension you can not even imagine it. We have no beginning, we have no end. We are eternal. You exist because we allow it, and you will end, because we demand it."
    Last edited by Yora; 2017-04-21 at 12:17 AM.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Oh, wow. Already a week since I wrote the last section. Somehow I'm not really feeling the excitement right now. But I can tell you more stuff about the NPC factions that I have, for which I actually got a couple of new details these last days.

    Factions

    Lot's of settings have a large number of various organizations and secret societies that are pulling the strings behind the curtain and that generally fall into villainous and heroic teams. For the Ancient Lands I discovered that this doesn't seem right and instead I am doing something a bit different. Since politics and trade get mostly ignored in the setting, these factions represent groups that parties are likely to encounter during their explorations of ruins in the wilderness. They are all groups who share an interest in the sites of power and magic relics that can be found in the domains of spirits and the lairs of ancient witches and sorcerers. I also ended up dropping the distinction between heroic and villainous groups. One thing I noticed very early on is that it's really difficult to make a good organization that isn't some sort of philantropic society that sponsors heroes, while there's a seemingly endless range of antagonistic groups you can create. So I gave up on trying to make heroic factions and then decided that it's actually much more interesting if the other groups are not outright villainous so that the players might sometimes consider it best to just not get into fights with them or occasionally even cooperate with very questionable characters. That's a thing I always loved in the Witcher games, where Geralt simply is in no position to destroy political corruption and violent extremism and just concentrates of getting his own goals seen through, even if that means letting evil people get away with their crimes.

    Druids

    Druids are the faction with the most potential to be considered heroic. They are a rather loose group of shamans from mostly Earth Cults and Moon Cults and their retainers, who are keeping each other informed about the activities of sorcerers and demons and cooperate on a regular basis to destroy them and prevent the spread of the corrupting blight caused by the use of sorcery. The majority of druids are wood elves with skeyn making up another considerable portion, but they also include some kaas and yao and often have good connections with the greenfolk (treants and spriggans). Their main region of influence are the Northern Forests, where they are widely regarded as protectors who are sometimes harsh but generally benevolent. The port city Angdal is one of their main centers of power and it is well known that the king of Angdal is a strong supporter of the group. They also have a strong presence in the Lands of Mist, where the group also includes many jungle elves, but have only a very weak power base in the Inner Sea, where sorcerers have a lot more power within the city states. Druids in the Inner Sea tend to keep a low profile and are seen as criminal fanatics in some of the city states.
    The main interest that druids have in old ruins is to prevent the recovery of magic relics that could fall into the hands of sorcerers and to destroy newly discovered lairs of demons. Groups usually consists of one or two shamans accompanied by a handful of lower level fighters or scouts.

    Sorcerers

    Sorcerers do not really constitute any kind of organized faction but are generally regarded as all being the same group by outsiders. Sorcerers are witches who have turned to chaos energies to learn the art of sorcery and circumvent the natural limitations of witchcraft and shamanic magic. While they have created many unique magical artifacs and seemingly impossible strongholds, they are generally feared by most people for the corrupting blight caused by sorcery. Sorcerers are almost universally seen as very dangerous and in most places practice their art in hiding to avoid being hunted and slain. The exception are some of the city states of the Inner Sea where sorcerers have risen to positions of great power and are found in most of the noble families.
    Sorcerers often delve into old ruins, specifically those that once were homes to ancient sorcerers of the distant past. Many are weary of being discovered but generally their main priority is to find the sorcerous relics they are looking for and leave with them.

    Demon Hunters

    The Demon Hunters are a group based mostly in the Mahiri Jungles where they follow goals similar to those of the Druids of the North and work towards rooting out any demonic presences. However, very much unlike the Druids, demon hunters consider the best weapon to destroy demons to be their own sorcerous magic. They are aware of the corrupting nature of the sorcery they use but see it as an acceptible price for bringing the demons down quickly and destroying other sorcerers who are much less concerned with limiting the corruption they cause. Unsurprisingly this does not only make them natural enemies of sorcerers but also causes considerable hostility between them and the Druids.
    Most demon hunters are jungle elves but their organization also includes many lizardmen and wood elves.

    Sakaya

    The Sakaya are a fire cult that originated in the Akai Mountains between the Northern Forests and the Inner Sea, where it still has its main center of influence and is the main religion after local spirit cults. The Sakaya are a highly esoteric mystery cult that according to their own traditions were founded by three mystics collective known as TAM, who represent the three virtues of humility, compassion, and duty. Sometimes TAM is presented as three people having dialogs about philosophical problems or as a single entity that is teaching lessons to other people it encounters during its travels. Fire is a central element in their rituals as it represents action and the ability to accomplish things.
    The Sakaya are a very egalitarian society and reject the allegiance to clans or chiefs (but accept the authority of local rulers when living among other people) and keep no slaves. In their society all all equal and they readily accept non-yao who wish to live under their rules. Instead of vengeance, all disputes are mediated by their mystics who pass judgement over criminals and the laws are enforced by warriors under their command. Sakaya society offers a great degree of freedom to the people in that everyone is free to find a craft that suits them and become apprentices to older masters. This choice can even be changed if a person feels the need for it, but within their occupation all people are expected to thrive for excelence and always perform their duty to the best of their abilities. Laziness and sloppyness are seen as unacceptable and while nominally everyone is equal, goat herders are commonly regarded as people good for nothing else. Most Sakaya villages are organized very similar to monasteries with a strict hierarchy of elected officials. While these are usually only consisting of a few hundred people, there are also a number of huge monastery fortresses inhabited by many thousands of Sakaya.
    In addition to the villages and monasteries that are found mostly in the Akai Mountains, there exists another faction consisting almost entirely of warriors. Sakaya teachings demand that all members should constantly aim to improve their craft and use their abilities for the benefit of the community. In times of peace and stability, Sakaya warriors often travel to the coast of the Inner Sea to seek work as mercenaries for a few years and then return back to their homes in the mountains to share their earnings with the community. However, over the last century, it has gradually become more and more common for such companies to stay on the coasts for increasingly longer times until eventually some of them broke ties with the monasteries permanently. Instead of using their wages and spoils to provide for the people in the mountain villages who are often living in meager conditions, they kept the treasure for themselves. Instead of returning home to the mountains when work on the coasts became scarce, some companies simply turned to raiding on their own and took over a couple of strongholds as permanent bases. While they are considered renegades by the monasteries, these Sakaya warriors still follow the principles of duty and excelence and have become some of the most powerful armies on the Inner Sea and their captains feared warlords regarded with great concern by the kings of the city states. (Who still frequently hire them to fight against their own enemies.) Unsurprisingly these renegade warriors are dominating the image most people have of the Sakaya outside of the Akai mountains, which leads to further tension between the companies and the monasteries.
    While Sakaya warriors generally have little interest in magical knowledge, many of them have developed a great craving for loot and for proving their skill by slaying mighty beasts. Groups of Sakaya are often causing considerable trouble in villages they chose as base camps for their hunts and don't take kindly to people they consider rival hunters who might interfere with their own quests. But occasionally lone Sakaya can be found joining other adventuring groups.

    Wilders

    Wilders are a weird bunch of people found all over the Ancient Lands who usually live at the very edges of civilization (generally third degree communities) and worship the Ancients of the deeps as gods. They tend to be highly secretive and are always weary about drawing the attention of druids or demon hunters, but not all of them are outright hostile to all outsiders or make gruesome sacrifices to their gods. But even those who mean no harm to others perform strange and unsettling rituals and consort with weird spirits of the deeps. In addition to druids and demon huntes, wilders are often very hostile to sorcerers as well, who they consider to be heretics who are trying to steal the divine powers of their gods.
    The largest group of wilders are those of the Tavir Mountains between the Inner Sea and the Mahiri Jungles. They have lived in the mountains for centuries and are a strange mix of wood elves and jungle elves that can often not really be identified as one or the other.

    Kaska Witches

    The Witchfens in the Lands of Mist are home to a remote and isolated tribe of yao who have traveled to this harsh and inhospitable land centuries ago and have formed a strong but difficult relationship with the spirits of this land. While each clan is lead by a (usually male) chief, the true power of the marshes are the witches. There is no clear hierarchy among them and they are often fighting with each other, but they form a single large society that extends through all the clans. The witches concern themselves very little with day to day affairs in the villages but most chiefs do not dare to go directly against any demands the witches make. When a witch forbids her clan to go to war with another clan or to go on a raid against settlements on the borders of the marshes this is seen as a decree by the gods and even the most brutal chiefs won't be able to convince their warriors to go against it.
    The witches virtually never leave the Witchfens themselves, but occasionally send kaska warriors on long journeys to retrive relics that are of great importance to them. Few such raiding bands would dare to return to the marshes empty handed.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    I search the body

    "I search the body" is a really cool type of random table that works really well to "show, don't tell" the players about a setting, The kind of stuff NPCs have in their pockets can provide great clues about the priorities people have in that world and what kinds of tools are commonly used. Instead of doing an exposition monolog, players just find stuff and will have to make their own sense of them. It's also a nice way to sneak seemingly random side quest hooks into the game. If the player think it's just worthless junk and throw it away, that's fine. But if they decide to investigate the purpose of a strange item or how it came to be in the possession of a seemingly random NPC, it's exactly what you need to get some player driven story going.

    I am probably going to expand this list considerably over time.

    • Bag with silver scraps (worth 1d4 x 10 sp)
    • Bag with silver coins (worth 1d6 x 10 sp)
    • Bag with gold nuggets (worth 1d10 x 10 sp)
    • Small gold idol (worth 1d10 x 10 sp)
    • Small carved ivory idol
    • Small carved wooden idol
    • Small stone or clay idol
    • Snall animal skul with engraved runes
    • Iron dagger (deals full damage to spirits)
    • Obsidian knife (deals full damage to spirits, breaks when rolling a 1 against an armored foe)
    • Iron tipped arrows (1d10)
    • Obsidian tipped arrows (1d10)
    • A map showing the location of a site in the wilderness (random monster lair or a prepared full size dungeon)
    • Glas jar with glowing slugs (light as a candle, slugs live for 10 days if fed leaves)
    • Crystal that glows like a candle for three hours after lying in a campfire for one hour
    • Pouch with iron nails (1d10)
    • Pouch with salt
    • Pouch with opium
    • Herbal potion (heals 1d4 points of damage)
    • Herbal potion (+2 to all saving throws and Constitution checks against exhaustion)
    • Herbal potion (+1 to attack and damage, -2 penalty to AC)
    • Vial with water from a healing spring (heals 1d6+1 points of damage when drunk or negates 1 level lost from energy drain when worn as an amulet and then rendered inert)
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Wilderness Rules

    I just noticed that I didn't post these before. Since going from the base camp in a village to the adventure site takes a considerable trip through the wilderness and this is meant to be an important part of the whole adventure (as is the way back), I've collected and streamlined some rules for this type of wilderness travel.

    Why XP for treasure, wandering monsters, encumbrance, and timekeeping matters

    XP for treasure is often seen as stupid, wandering monsters as annoying, encumbrance as a chore, and timekeeping pointless. And once you remove only one of these elements of oldschool D&D editions then the other three also stop working as intended. They are widely disliked because they become somewhat pointless if you don't use all of them together. (And I think it probably starts usually with envumbrance going first.) Yet, it could very well be said that in the old style of playing this is actually the main game, with combat being an infrequently appearing minor sub-system.

    The general idea behind the earliest editions of D&D (roughly up to the later years of AD&D 1st edition) was to get into a dungeon and get as much treasure as you can grab without getting killed, using whatever means necessary. And the first rule to avoid getting seriously injured in a fight? Avoid getting into a fight. The second rule? Run away. It's not a combat game, it's an exploration game.
    Which leads to the first sub-system, XP for treasure. The goal for players is to explore, overcome obstacles, and find things. How can you keep track of that in a quantifiable way? By counting the amount of treasure they collect. Treasure is found in places that are hidden or behind a dangerous obstacle. What we don't want is the players to run around and search for deadly fights to get into. Because of that reason, XP are awarded for finding treasure and bringing it home, not for defeating monsters. (You still do get XP for defeating monsters, but getting their treasure, with a fight or without one, generally is worth three to ten times as many XP.)
    This is what makes the wandering monsters work. Since they are wandering around the dungeon they don't have bags and chests full of gold and gems with them. Which in turn means that you get very little XP of fighting these guys when you run into them. If you give XP for winning combat then wandering monstes are wandering XP that come to you by themselves. If XP are mostly for treasure then wandering monsters are only a risk of injury or death with almost no reward. This encourages players to be both quick and quiet. The longer you stay in a dungeon and the more noise you make, the more wandering monsters you'll run into.It also encourages to not get into fights and makes resting in the dungeon pretty much impossible. (48 uninterrupted turns with no wandering monster appearing just isn't going to happen.)
    To make wandering monsters not simply ransom, you need to have to be tracking time spend in the dungeon. The old editions had a very simple tool for that which is a second unit of time that is the turn. A turn is roughly ten minutes of time and you mark another turn passed after the party has covered a certain distance while exploring or after every fight. Fights will almost never last 60 rounds but when we just want to track when a new wandering monster roll is made and when a new torch needs to be lit we really don't need to be accurate to the exact minute. (In B/X, Labyrinth Lord, and LotFP spells also always have durations in rounds, which means you never have to worry about spells running out in mid-combat,)
    So speed is of the essence when exploring a dungeon and this is where encumbrance comes in. Characters loaded with supplies and gold move noticably slower when climbing on rubble or over large roots and are somewhat impaired when it comes to rummaging through crates and cupboards. If you want to be faster and avoid wandering monsters you can chose to either take less supplies with you and risk running out, or leave behind some of your loot. When you run into monsters that do want a fight with you but you would rather run away, then carrying big bags of gold or supplies will slow you down and might keep you from escaping. Having to balance between stuff you carry and how fast you can run away is an interesting element that I think is quite important for an exploration game.

    Encumbrance

    Encumbrance is usually the sub-system that causes the most trouble, is the most bookkeeping, and generally the most hated and subsequently ignored. The problem is that you always have to calculate the weight of all the items in your posession and that really is quite annoying and time consuming when done on paper. I don't know why D&D has stuck with this system that then doesn't get used seemingly all the time. It might be more realistic, but when you ignore it it's even less realistic than something more practical.

    More practical is this:

    • All items smaller and lighter than a dagger do not count towards encumbrance. Containers holding multiple such insignificant items (like a bag of coins, a quiver of arrows, and so on) count as a single item.
    • Items that require both hands to carry or are unusually large (such as a polearm) count as two items.
    • Light armor counts as two item, medium armor counts as four items, and heavy armor counts as six items.
    • Characters carrying a number of items no greater than their Strength score are unencumbered and have a speed of 120′ per round/24 miles per day.
    • Characters carrying a number of items no higher than two times their Strength score are lightly encumbered and have a speed of 90′ per round/18 miles per day. If attempting to swim, they have a 1 in 6 chance of drowning.
    • Characters carrying a number of items no higher than three times their Strength score are heavily encumbered and have a speed of 60′ per round/12 miles per day. If attempting to swim, they have a 3 in 6 chance of drowning.


    Simply number every line on your inventory sheet and make a clearly visible line between the rows with the numbers equal to one, two, and three times your Strength score. If your list of items gets over one of these lines, you get into the next category of encumbrance. This is easy. This you can use. No tears.

    I treat a bag of silver coin as a single item worth 100 XP when returned to civilization. (Treasure lost on the way home does not count for XP.) But there are also more rare bags of gold worth 1000 XP, bags of gems worth even more, and lots of other pieces of treasure than count as one item in the inventory and are worth either 100 or 1000 XP. At higher character levels, the party has to return from their adventures with really big loads of treasure, which will easily exceed what they can carry themselves and any henchmen they bring with them. For this reason they will probably need pack animals and mounts, for which these additional rules apply:

    • Small characters count as 10 items, human sized characters count as 30 items, and large characters count as 50 items for calculating encumbrance. All the items carried by characters have to be added to be mount’s encumbrance as well.
    • Mounts carrying a number of items no greater than their Strength score are unencumbered and have a speed of 240′ per round/24 miles per day.
    • Mounts carrying a number of items no higher than two times their Strength score are lightly encumbered and have a speed of 180′ per round/18 miles per day.
    • Mounts carrying a number of items no higher than three times their Strength score are heavily encumbered and have a speed of 120′ per round/12 miles per day.


    Contrary to books and movies, animals that can run faster than humans can't actually travel longer distances in a day than humans. Humans are really extraordinary animals with an amazing ability to walk for huge distances with very little rest. The reason you can travel faster by horse is not that the horse is faster, but that it is stronger and is not nearly as slowed down by your luggage than you would be if you carry it yourself. This is something that RPGs always get wrong. The encumbrance ratings for animals here are adjusted for that so that they have a higher speed per round but the same speed per day as people.

    Wilderness Travel

    The Ancient Lands are a forest world, but that doesn't mean that the terrain is the same everywhere. I've come up with a number of terrains that can be encountered and traveled through:

    Terrain Unencumbered Lightly Encumbered Heavily Encumbered Foraging Encounter Distance
    Road 24 miles 18 miles 12 miles - 4d6 x 10 yards
    Forest 12 miles 9 miles 6 miles +2d6 2d6 x 10 yards
    Heath/Moor 16 miles 12 miles 8 miles +1d6 4d6 x 10 yards
    Hills 12 miles 9 miles 6 miles +1d6 3d6 x 10 yards
    Mountains 8 miles 6 miles 4 miles normal 4d6 x 10 yards
    Swamp 8 miles 6 miles 4 miles normal 3d6 x 10 yards

    For foraging, characters have a 1 in 6 chance to find 1d4 rations worth of food. (The chance can be higher for specialists and scouts.) Whether succesful or not, the distance covered by the party on that day is reduced by 1d4 x 25%. In forests this pretty much ensures that the party wont have to starve even without a scout or trained specialists. However, this will make the journey longer than if the characters would eat food from their own supplies. The result is that there will be more random encounters before they reach their destination. Whether to use valuable inventory space for rations or carry extra gear or treasure is a gamble the players have to judge.

    For every 24 hours that a character goes without food, the character must make a save against Poison or one Constitution point is lost. For every
    24 hours that a character goes without water, his Constitution drops by half unless he makes a save against Poison. After three such failed saves against
    Poison due to a lack of water, the character will be dead. Character who get food and water recover two points of Constitution per day of rest.

    A random encounter happens on the roll of a 1 on a 1d6. However, in more dangerous areas multiple checks are made for each day. Making specific random encounter tables for different areas is another topic for itself.

    #d6 Threat Level No Encounters 1 Encounter 2 Encounters 3 Encounters
    1 Settled or desolate 83% 17% - -
    2 Wilderness 69% 28% 3% -
    3 Hostile Wilderness 58% 35% 7% 1%
    4 Hostile Patrols 48% 39% 12% 2%

    Water Travel

    Finally, travel by boat is very important to get from one civilized settlement to another. D&D loves to make this complicated but based on my own research into this topic I created this much easier table that is good enough:

    Type Favorable Conditions Average Conditions Unfavorable Conditions
    Canoe 24 miles 18 miles 12 miles
    River Boat 80 miles 60 miles 40 miles
    Sailing Ship, Slow 120 miles 90 miles 60 miles
    Sailing Ship, Fast 160 miles 120 miles 80 miles

    Distances for canoes are for 8 hours of travel per day. For the larger ships it's 24 hours. For canoes and river boats, favorable conditions means going downstream, unavorable conditions going upstream, and average conditions on lakes.

    Most of the ideas for all of this come from the Lamentations of the Flame Princess game, Pencils and Papers, and The Angry GM with my own tweaks to best match the requirements of the setting and my own preferences.
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  14. - Top - End - #44
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Over a thousand views. Nice.

    Here's some semi-random pictures I collected for the setting:

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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Not really something specific yet, but this is what I am currently working on:

    Last winter I was building a sandbox environment based on the old Forgotten Realms book The Savage Frontier but realized that while it was what orginally inspired me to get into worldbuilding, it was because I thought the ancient past described in it sounded like a much more interesting world than the present. The whole point of all this here is to do something quite different, not just doing my own version of the same. This is something I've been fighting with from the very beginning. When I don't pay attention I end up writing down stuff that becomes more and more like the sources that inspired my own idea, finding myself returning back to basically where I started. I also tried to make it a proper sandbox with six main settlements, various camps, and multiple faction and from my experiences with that I can now safely tell that this is too big for what I really want.

    I think a better way to approach sandboxes is to actually do it in the really oldschool way like some of the very early modules: One village, one main dungeon, plus a handfull of small dungeons and lairs scattered through the surrounding wilderness. Two of the most famous modules are not called "The Caves of Chaos" or "The Moathouse". They are called "The Keep on the Borderlands" and "The Village of Hommlet". Aside from not giving away as much as titles like "Against the Cult of the Reptile God" or "The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun" (which really isn't such smart design) it puts the village at the center.

    Now I said that I don't really want to do town adventures and that still stands. But when you scatter what little town content you have across half a dozen different settlements, then it will be really hard to give those places any actual life and presence in the campaign. Having a single village that is the only civilized place in the adventure but close to multiple dungeons should make it a lot more relevant to the players. In addition, I think it also makes the adventure feel more wild and remote if you're actually playing in the the very last place before the vast unknown wilderness and not just in several villages somwhere near the border. When you reach the edge of the fields, you should be immediately in the middle of nowhere, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

    So I have decided to forget about major cities and tiny kingdoms entirely for now. Instead I want to showcase and examine the culture of the world through a small handfull of villages that are well enough developed to be ready to use base camps for adventuring parties. Since I am somewhat compulsive with these things, I decided on making twelve of them:

    Fog 1: This village is a small port on one of the minor island in the closely packed cluster of islands just off the mainland coast, inhabited by jungle elves. Think northern Canada or Fireland in South America. It's a common stop for ships transporting pelts, dried fish, lumber, or metal from other outposts on the islands to the south because of its convenient location for ships, but the island it sits on and the other nearby barren rocks are otherwise pretty much uninhabited.

    Fog 2: This village is located on the mainland and sits on the banks of a side arm of the big river that flows from the Witchfens into the Northern Sea. The surrounding landscape is sub-arctic forests and the local wood elves are constantly afraid of Kaska raiders coming from the fens.

    North 1: This town is probably going to be the largest place that I want to detail. It's a wood elven trading town located on one of the many brakish lakes at the end of a large river that transports rare steel from the skeyn city Barregal in the Erhait hills. It's where the steel and valuable timber coming down the river is loaded into ships that transport it across the sea to the south. While the main river is a major trade route, it has lots of smaller side arms of which most aren't really much explored. While not exactly at the edge of civilization, it makes for a good starting point for long river journeys into the wild hinterlands.

    North 2: This is a skeyn town located in a narrow valley at the feet of rocky hills that has most of the buildings cut into the stone of the two steep walls.

    North 3: This village is the hold of a kaas clan living inside a huge ruined fortress.

    North 4: With this one I want to give a try at a wood elven tree village.

    Sea 1: This one is a mountain stronghold inhabited by yao. The lower town conists of strangely shaped stone houses while the upper town is located inside a maze of large cracks in the mountainside.

    Sea 2: This wood elven village is close to being a swamp town located on the bank of a major river that lies between the Akai Mountains where the yao live and the coast of the wood elven city states. The road across the bridge has somewhat frequent travel, but the river that leads deep into the forests leads to who knows where.

    Sea 3: I want to have a second skeyn village but no real idea for a style yet. It's located on the slopes of the Tavir Mountains that are full of volcanoes, holes leading into the Underworld, and home to weird cultists worshiping ancient gods of the deeps. This is probably going to be more high level stuff.0

    Sea 4: Probably a wood elf village. It's only on this list because 11 is not a pretty number.

    South 1: This is a village of jungle elves deep in the forests and on the edge of the elven lands that is closest to the lands of the naga.

    South 2: This village is inhabited by lizardmen and located on the tropical islands off the coast of the mainland. As with the first settlement, this is meant to be a starting point for boat explorations.

    My lofty plan is to write up somewhat detailed descriptions for all twelve of these, which will be ready to use for campaigns set in the approximate regions. They are gateways to all the cool lands that I've come up with. At least some of them I want to further develop into proper modules also including a big ruin to explore and a number of other small cool places to check out. While this sounds like quite a lot of material, it's actually not that massively huge. 30 pages each at the most. And the majority of those pages would be dungeons.

    Right now I am trying to figure out what kind of details are useful to know about a village. I think it's mostly two things: Important NPCs and services. And usually the two overlap. The most important people you'd probably encounter in an Ancient Lands village are the chief, his underchief, the master of the gate, and the shaman. These are the people who can give the players access to the villages resources and also kick them out if they misbehave. In addition there's need for a trader in common goods, a smith, and a herbalist/alchemist/witch.

    The function of these places in a campaign is to serve as a base camp from where the players start their expeditions into the nearby wilderness, where they get their supplies, can get assistance, and return to with their treasures. There may be other small camps in the wilderness, but XP for treasure are only awarded when the players haul their loot to this base camp.

    Since these base camp villages have stores to trade, they belong to the first degree settlements that are properly connected to the trade network. Getting to these is very easy by simply hopping on a boat and probably having a very uneventful journey. So each adventure is likely to start with the party getting of the boat. The larger of these places like North 1 and Sea 2 would probably have inns as they have frequent visitors. But I also like the idea of describing three or four of the big family estates where the players could be invited as guests, as it is proper for clanspeople of high standing and wealth. One of which would of course be the family of the chief. I think providing a little background on the relationships between these major families could make the gathering of supplies and assistance quite interesting. And players might run into people from these families as random encounters in the wilderness.

    My early thoughts on this so far. I think the best way to continue is probably to simply pick one of these villages and try to make it into a proper 25-ish page module with two dungeons. It certainly would be a learning experience that will help with improving the process. Any thoughts and suggestions are highly welcome.
    We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.

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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Regarding the heor: Your description says that the creature is slower than a man when traveling overland, but is used by scouts and messengers because it's of limited use in battle. That seems strange to me. Shouldn't something used by messengers travel faster than a human overland?

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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Depends on how long the distance is. On short distances over only a few hours, fast quadrupeds are all much faster than people. Over a full day or several days, people are much better at dealing with exhaustion and can keep up a pace for durations that animals just can't.

    Though I found out that there are endurance horse breeds that can make 160 km in a day, while human athletes can make 120 km. Don't know if these horses could pull of the same feat again the next day, though.

    Camels crossing the deserts in central Asia can do really long trips in one go, but apparently a good number of animals died on each crossing and after they made it to the other side they had to recover for months before being able to make the return trip.

    But that's horses and camels, which evolved for open steppes. Deer are native to forests and to my knowledge don't do long migrations (reindeer being the exception), so they should be doing much worse on multi-day endurance races.

    In practice it doesn't matter, of course. I use the same overland speed table for all characters and animals, with heors simply having a relatively low Strength and not being able to carry much before losing speed.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    While playing Morrowind again last week, I realized that I really love much about the setting, but can't stand the game. Even though it's considered the best in the "series" it has the same structural flaws as Elder Scrolls 4 and 5 and Fallout 3 and 4. It's also way too dense yet strangely empty like an English park and feels very much pacified. I really have to stop using it as a reference for the Ancient Lands. Taking some particularly cool ideas (silt striders, mushroom trees, kwama mines, Ald'Ruhn, daedra, ordinators) and dismissing everything else from my mind for now seems the right thing to do here. Instead I am playing Warcraft 3 again, which always makes me remember the atmosphere of a vast underinhabited forest continent that constitutes the core of the Ancient Lands style.

    With that in mind I made the descision that I wouldn't put any more work into creating more city states and even demote some of the cities I had lying around as rough notes for years down to relatively small trading towns. It's a forest world after all. Not a city states politic setting. This leaves the following.

    Cities of the Ancient Lands

    Angdal
    Angdal is the only elven city north of the Inner Sea. It sits on the mouth of a great river that serves as a route to Yakun, the land of the kaas. Angdal is the main center of power for the Druids who have the favor and support of the king.

    Barregal
    This huge mountain stronghold is the largest settlement of the skeyn anywhere in the Ancient Lands. It's located in the small Erhait mountain range and the primary producer of all steel found around the Inner Sea. The metal is transported from the city down a large river by rafts until it is loaded on larger ships in the elven harbor town Kevaik (one of the demoted former cities in my notes). The city is ruled by the king, but the steelworks and trade with the valuable metal are fully in the hand of several powerful clans who are fabulously rich.

    Falreig
    Falreig is another skeyn city located on the lower northern slopes of the Tavir Mountains, not far from the coast of the Inner Sea. The city is build inside three enormous caves large enough for dragons to fly into them. While the city does not have the wealth that Barregal gets from its steel production, Falreig is still one of the largest tin mines in all the Ancient Lands, which makes it just as important and powerful. The queen of the city is also its high priestess.

    Ven Marhend
    Ven Marhend is the infamous City of Sorcerers. The port is located on the base of a steep cliff with the mansions of the nobles being build on a large ledge halfway up the cliffside. The noble families of Ven Marhend have many sorcerers among their ranks and even some of the patriarchs and matriarchs make no secret of their dangerous occult research. Unsurprisingly, Ven Marhend is a major rival of Angdal and cities from both cities almost never visit each others' harbors.

    Wood Elf City
    I think there should be at least one more city state on the Inner Sea, but I don't have many specifics for it yet. The city is located on a rocky island very near to the coast and connected to the mainland by a natural causeway. They are a rival of Ven Marhend and the main city in the path of recent Sakaya raiding campaigns.

    Jungle Elf City
    This city is located in the Mahiri Jungles of the tropical south and located some distance from the sea on the banks of one of the main rivers of the region. The queen is a very powerful shaman who is in a long ongoing struggle with a fey queen who rules over a mighty stronghold governed by her red skinned elven descendants who after several centuries number in the hundreds. (Also formerly a city.) The main efforts of the shaman queen are directed against the naga to the southeast who still have a very powerful presence in that region.

    Lizardmen City
    Here I am still drawing almost completely blank. I want lizardmen because they are cool (especially when you imagine them like Turians, who are totally badass). I want them to have some highly civilized centers but also don't want to make them too advanced like I had them in earlier drafts some years back. What I know about the city is that it is home to the main stronghold of the demon hunters.

    Other Relevant Towns
    I have these and I don't want to scrap them, but I think I mostly keep them as background dressing and won't fully develop them into places to be visited.

    Nevald: The largest town in the Lands of Mist. Originally this region was to be home to a distinct third elven culture, but I ended up making it just a jungle elf colony. Being in a now such a remote part of the world and only being a colony of a tropical culture, it no longer makes any sense to have it be a big place.

    Kevaik: This wood elven town is located in a labyrinth of brakish lakes where the river coming from Barregal reaches the sea. It's primarily a place where steel gets loaded from barges on ships to be transported south. It's build almost entirely of log houses and has a wooden palisade and is ruled by a council of the local steel and lumber merchants. This one is still a candidate for being fleshed out into a place serving as a base camp for expeditions into the northern forests, but it's location implies that the nearby ruins probably should already have been plundered. Still have to ponder this some more.

    Halva: This is an ancient mountain stronghold made from white marble currently inhabited by a powerful clan of wood elves. I still love the idea, but I am not really sure how I could use it in a campaign. Being so remote it certainly would make for a very effective Point of Light for expeditions into the frozen norths, but I feel that like Kevaik it might be too big to be practical as a base camp.

    Dakan: This is a large wooden hill fort in Yakun ruled by a powerful kaas chief. I really don't have much more than that yet, which is kind of boring.

    Koshad: A huge giant built mountain fortress very far out in the north inhabited by kaas. I had this idea very early in the development when there still were a lot of cities and influential rulers, but I think under the current design paradigm it has become pretty much redundant. I could still use it as a dungeon.

    The Sakaya Monastery Fortress: Basically this is pretty much straight up Potala Palace in Lhasa. Really cool concept, but irrelevant for exploration adventures. But it could be a fun short episode to visit the stronghold to get information from the high mystics or the libraries about ancient secrets of the Akai Mountains.

    Stronghold of the Sakaya General: While the Sakaya warrior companies mostly act independently, there is one very poweful warlord who has the reputation and influence to gather a lot of other companies under his banner, at least for a while. He has to have a main stronghold somewhere, which is one he took for himself after defeating its former lord. It has to exist but I really don't see any reason why explorers would go there. So I probably will only mention that it exists and has a name, but not write up any further details for it.

    Resa: This wood elven town lies at a river crossing inside a swampy forest. I originally created it as an outlaw town on the border river between the Druids from Angdal and the sorcerers from Ven Marhend when those two were still neighbors and ruled over full countries. Now it's just a town in a swamp, located in a river that leads deeper into the wild forests. This one I definitly want to fully develop into an adventure base camp.

    Cave Port: This town lies pretty deep in a huge sea cave near where the southern coast of the Inner Sea ends and the Mahiri Jungles begin. It's home to a population of jungle elves and frequently visited by pirates to sell their plunder. Could be fun as a place to pass through for a party going from the Inner Sea to the Southern Jungles but probably not much use as a base camp.

    Kelay: This is the city of the sui, elves with the blood of water spirits. It's located on an island and made of coral and has partly sunken into the sea, turning all the streets into cannals. Not long ago it had been the target of a raid by Sakaya warbands trying out naval warfare, and their great success has made lots of smaller ports on the Inner Sea very worried. Could be an interesting stop for a party starting explorations of the southern islands and on their way to their base camp village.

    Tual: A classic pirate port on another small island in the southern sea. Could make a nice spot to meet an informant with information of ancient and almost unknown ruins somewhere in the islands.

    The Red Stronghold: As mentioned before, this stronghold in the Mahiri Jungles is home to a fey queen and her elven descendants. It exists for flavor reasons, but I have no specific plans for it yet.
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  19. - Top - End - #49
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    So... I've actually been doing some writing on an actual Ancient Lands setting book. Not terribly far yet, but I've collected all the new classes, magic, and variant rules made for the setting already. The question I am pondering now is whether to include a full copy of the whole rules or only those that are different from Lamentations of the Flame Princess?
    I think with a book like this you can very much expect almost any interested GM to know the combat rules of old D&D and even for the rare one or two who don't there are plenty of free options around. In addition to being less work for me, I think it also might make it more appealing to lots of people who really want to just take a look at a new setting and not just another retroclone that comes with a prepackaged setting.
    I might even flip my current organization around and take all the rules from the first part of the book and put them into a big appendix at the end. Which probably wouldn't even be that big and might fit on 20 pages (including all spells).

    I got:

    • 2 new classes (Scout, Witch)
    • 6 races
    • A new magic system
    • A new Encumbrance system
    • A new Wealth system
    • New Equipment lists
    • New tables for Wilderness and Water Travel times
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    As a quick update, I have all my rules tweaks written down now as a kind of appendix for the Ancient Lands setting and it only needs a bit of brushing up to put it online as a first Ancient Lands pdf.

    Right now I am focusing on figuring out setting speciific NPCs and that includes putting some deeper thoughts into the character races. Elves, skeyn (golbin-gnomes), and yao (earth-humanoids) are all pretty well fleshed out, as are even the really minor sui (water-humanoids). And I have some good ideas for lizardmen as well (shamelessly ripping of Turians from Mass Effect and Jungle Trolls from Warcraft).
    But oddly enough, I still have only pretty vague idea about the kaas beastmen, even though I had them in the setting from very early on.

    The concept really started with these two images:

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    Big lion-goat guys with beefy arms. I know what they look like, but not really what they are. What I know I don't want them to be are some angry orc/klingon/krogan types with a murder obsession and droning on about honor. Having six playable races made me think about each one representing one of the six abilities and the kaas would be Strength. The yao are Constitution, which I think could lead to some nice contrast between two big burly humanoid races. Kaas would rely on their Strength to attack hard and constantly keep pushing in warfare while yao rely on endurance and use more defensive tactics to outlast their enemies in a fight. But that's pretty much as far as I got.

    Any ideas to get my creativity going would be much appreciated.

    Edit: I had the idea that kaas might be generally hot blooded people. Not looking for pointless fights and killing as a good way to spend their time, but always being ready to take up arms and regarding a swift direct attack as the best response to almost any threat. If in doubt, form a war party.
    In a world where vengeance is the prime deterent of violent crimes, this makes everyon else very weary to not get into fights with kaas. It can also be an advantage when destroying enemies before they are fully ready for another fight. Kaas are big and strong, so they can be less concerned about personal safety. Getting killed while taking out a threat is honorable while being overly cautious or waiting long to make a decision to act is a flaw.
    But of course it has the disatvantage that kaas are more likely to rush into traps and that their armies aren't well coordinate with leaders not waiting for each other for help and support.
    It's something I can see working even for characters who are essentially good and friendly and don't go looking for chances to kill. It's something that can be respected but is also a flaw. And it's something that players can use directly in the game and that GMs can use to make NPCs act in a distinctive way that players can expect in advance and use to their advantage.
    Last edited by Yora; 2017-05-21 at 06:08 AM.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    I can has replies?

    A while back I’ve seen someone describe elementals in Dungeons & Dragons as fundamentally boring. I think they are really cool, but what is it that they rally have going for themselves? When you look at their description in the Monster Manuals and Expert Sets, really all that you get is a description of how they look and their abilities in combat. And that’s really everything there is about them. What little there is about their role in the wider world makes them appear more like mindless temporary golems controlled by wizards than actual nature spirits. I have to agree. Elementals in Dungeons & Dragons are super lame.

    Yeah, well… I’m gonna go build my own fantasy setting. With blackjack and cool elementals!

    Elementals


    Elementals are the oldest and most numerous of the spirits inhabiting the Spiritworld. Even more so than the spirits of trees and animals, they are the spirits of the land, sea, rivers, and sky themselves. They have no shape or form of their own, but wherever the elements are present there are also elemental spirits inhabiting them in the Spiritworld. Whenever they have a need to interact with the physical world around them they can manifest a body shaped from their element. Weapons can not damage water and fire and even when rock is crushed an earth elemental can maintain a body made from rubble. The only ways to deal any harm to an elemental spirit are magic and the elements themselves. Dousing fire with water or turning water into steam with extreme heat can overwhelm the power of an elemental spirit, causing it to lose its hold over its physical form and disappearing back into the environment to recover its strength. Like all spirits, elementals are hurt by iron as well, but bronze, wood, and stone have no effect on them whatsoever.


    Elementals don’t have any needs as living creatures would understand them or even desires like the shie, naga, and raksha. They are eternal beings as old as the world itself, who will probably continue to exist until the end of time, long after all people, beasts, and other nature spirits will be gone. Yet they are not mindless forces of nature, nor completely devoid of emotions. The main priority pursued by elementals is to be left in peace. The one thing that drives them into furious rage are disturbances of their comfortable quiet. However what costitutes a disturbance to these enigmatic beings is never clear to tell. The presence of beasts large and small is a constant and regular occurence throughout all the world and most of the time elementals make no distinguishment between people and animals. The affairs of mortals are of no relevance to them and so they are generally ignored by elementals. However, their apparent peacefulness can very quickly turn into determined agression by causing a commotion in their vicinity or merely getting to close for their comfort.


    While elementals usually don’t talk to other creatures they are capable of speech, speaking in the languages of spirits of the earth, water, and sky. They simply lack any desire to communicate with other beings. But when approached with care by a shaman they can be drawn into a conversation and reveal themselves to be quite intelligent creatures of great wisdom, though much of it has little meaning to the short lives of mortal beings. When interacting with people, elementals often take a vaguely humanoid shape but they can also assume forms resembling various great beasts or simply appear as rolling clouds or bulges of water. The minds of elementals are nearly as alien as those of the ancients that predate the formation of the world, but being a fundamental part of the natural world their presence has none of their warping and corrupting effects on the land and creatures around them.


    Lesser Elemental
    XP: 500
    No. Appearing: 1 (1)
    Armor: 19
    Move: 120′
    Air: Fly 240′
    Earth: Climb 60′
    Fire: Fly 120′
    Water: Swim 180′
    Hit Dice: 6 (27 hp)
    Attack: Slam 1d6
    Earth: Slam 1d8
    Fire: Slam 1d6 fire
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 12
    Poison: 10
    Breath: 13
    Device: 11
    Magic: 14
    Morale: 10
    Special: No damage from bronze, wood, and stone weapons and natural attacks. Full damage from iron weapons. Half damage from cold, fire, and lightning.
    Fire: No damage from fire, normal damage from cold.

    Greater Elemental
    XP: 1,200
    No. Appearing: 1 (1)
    Armor: 21
    Move: 120′
    Air: Fly 240′
    Earth: Climb 60′
    Fire: Fly 120′
    Water: Swim 180′
    Hit Dice: 8 (36 hp)
    Attack: Slam 1d8
    Earth: Slam 2d6
    Fire: Slam 1d8 fire
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 10
    Poison: 8
    Breath: 11
    Device: 9
    Magic: 12
    Morale: 10
    Special: No damage from bronze, wood, and stone weapons and natural attacks. Full damage from iron weapons. Half damage from cold, fire, and lightning.
    Fire: No damage from fire, normal damage from cold.

    Elder Elemental Elemental
    XP: 1,900
    No. Appearing: 1 (1)
    Armor: 23
    Move: 120′
    Air: Fly 240′
    Earth: Climb 60′
    Fire: Fly 120′
    Water: Swim 180′
    Hit Dice: 12 (54 hp)
    Attack: Slam 2d6
    Earth: Slam 2d8
    Fire: Slam 2d6 fire
    Saving Throws
    Paralysis: 8
    Poison: 6
    Breath: 9
    Device: 7
    Magic: 10
    Morale: 10
    Special: No damage from bronze, wood, and stone weapons and natural attacks. Full damage from iron weapons. Half damage from cold, fire, and lightning.
    Fire: No damage from fire, normal damage from cold.

    Much better, I think, though still not really that amazing. Still room for improvement, but I think much of their usefulness depends greatly in what situations they are encountered.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    I've been doing some thinking about factions (among other things) and noticed a problem with druids.

    The idea of druids and sorcerers was taken directly from Star Wars with the druids taking the role of more magic focused Jedi. But as cool as that is, there's a problem that Star Wars RPGs always run into. The way the concept is designed, only Jedi are able to deal with Sith. When it comes to fighting Sith, all their non-Jedi friends have to stay behind and do something else. Even if druids were limited to only NPCs and couldn't be played, then what would they need assistance from the players for.

    To really make this faction conflict work, PC parties of all classes need to be able to defeat sorcerers, but druids on their own are not. This means druids and sorcerers can not be equal opposites of each other. Sorcerers need to have more offensive power than druids, which makes druids needing the help of PCs.

    I think probably the best solution is to have druids be more scholarly with little offensive of their own and relying on elite guards to break through a sorcerers defenses. In a party going after sorcerers, a druid would be a supporting character and not be leading the charge.
    On the other hand, sorcerers can be the big guns who use their minions as shields.

    To make druids seem not completely incapable of performing their primary role, I think they really need their own army of elite warriors. These might even be the public face of the Druids, with the shamans being mysteriously cloaked figures following behind the second rank. Still obviously in charge and doing all the examining of sorcerous curses and demonic trails, but leaving the questioning of locals to the captain of the group.
    However, to maintain the style of druids, I think those warriors would also have to have a distinct appearance that identifies them as elite sorcerer hunters and not just average mercenaries. You should know from a distance what kind of people you're dealing with.

    That's my thoughts so far, but I don't have any clear ideas how to implement it in practice, yet.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    The Ancient Builders
    Ruins play obviously a great part in the Ancient Lands and someone has to have build them in the first place. While I don't want to have a generic post-apocalyptic world I decided to keep things simple and focused and have the majority of ruins be from an ancient time and build by fey races instead of being build by past humanoid civilizations. Ruined castles can have signs of past inhabitation by people, but people-build ruins are going to be almost all abandoned villages. Mortals just don't have the ability to build castles like spirits can, and never did. It's not that mortals lost knowledge and abilities they had in the past, but simply that spirits are just much more powerful in every way. Fortunately for mortals, most fey castles have long been abandoned and only few of them are currently inhabited. The fey races are not particularly attached to stability and leave lots of stuff behind when they are done with them, but these tend to remain around for a very long time after that and over thousands of years those abandoned castles add up.

    Naga
    Of all the old builders, the naga are the ones that still have a strong presence on the material world and inhabit and maintain many of their ancient castles, particularly in the southern lands. Around the Inner Sea and the northern lands these are all long abandoned, though.
    Naga ruins often consists of steep, tower-like ziggurats surrounded by smaller buildings with flat stone roofa that housed vast numbers of elven slaves. They can easily be identified by their lack of stairs, with levels being connected by ramps. They are also generally found near coasts.

    Spoiler
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    Tower Builders
    The tower builders were a civilization of shie that built a large number of citadels throughout the northern parts of the Ancient Lands. All their castles have a square base and smooth walls that slighty narrow inwards until reaching a flat top. These towers are build from huge stone blocks that are very accurately fitted together and each have a completely unique shape. Inside, the ceilings are held up by massive supports that start close to the walls and lean sharply inwards to form a kind of trapezoid arch and provide a lot of cover and hiding spaces.

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    Rock Carvers
    Ruins of the Rock Carvers are mostly found in the area of the Inner Sea, particularly the Akai and Tavir Mountains, but also in various places in the steep rocky cliffs on the coast. Rock Carver ruins are often seemingly low and bulky constructions compared to the other styles of castles, but are mostly located underground, which hides their frequently massive proportions. Often the only parts visible above ground are a steep and extremely thick wall and an only slightly higher citadel that guard the main entrance to the rest of the stronghold. Often these have very few windows that are barely more than arrow slits, but castles in well defensible locations high up in the mountains sometimes have large numbers of great balconies and tarraces overlooking the landscape below. Smaller ruins are often completely invisible from the outside and appear only as easy to miss caves that reveal themselves to be spectacular underground castles. While the working of walls and tunnels is always extremely precise and without any irregularities, many ruins include large natural caverns that have remained entirely unworked and kept in their magnificent natural form.
    The identity of the Rock Carvers is a complete mystery to everyone.

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    Tree Weavers
    The Tree Weavers were another group of shie who created numerous castles and palaces in the Ancient Lands. Their ruins are widely regarded as the most magnificent ones and appear to have been grown from gargantuan petrified trees and living rock rather than build by masons. Except for floors and stairs, which are covered in tiles of polished marble, there are no flat surfaces or straight angles to be found anywhere in these ruins, with all walls slightly bulging outwards and all ceilings being domed. Many ruins consist of tall towers that often have smaller side towers branching off from them in seemingly impossible angles like enormous stone trees. Other buildings have large marble roofs made from a single piece that look like the shells of colossals turtles.

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    Glass Makers
    Ruins of the Glass Makers are the most mysterious ones and widely regarded to be by far the oldest. Many even believe that they were build by spirits that have long retreated into the eternal dark of the Underworld. Ruins of this type are made or a very hard dark material that greatly resembles glass an comes in various hues. Surfaces require a great deal of force to damage and tend to merely chip rather than fracturing. Rumor has it that at least in some ruins such damages slowly heal over the course of decades and centuries but they are so infrequently visited that nobody has ever really seen it happening so far.
    The architecture of these steuctures, if it can even be called that, tends to be highly bizarre and often seems to serve no discernable purpose. However, they all share in common that they contain large underground sections of which generally much less information is available

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    I think this should very much help establish that this isn't medieval England. However, while having a distinct visual style, I think they also should have some identifiable patterns of what will be encountered in them that players can notice and learn to use to their advantage.
    Glass ruins will obviously always be choking with sorcery and corrupted monsters, with the occasionally trapped demon now and then. Rock Builder ruins would make you anticipate magical rocks and gems and Tree Waever ruins should be home to carnivorous plants and living magic items. Other than that I don't have any really compelling ideas yet.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs


    What kind of information would you like to see that you could share your opinions on for me?
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    To make druids seem not completely incapable of performing their primary role, I think they really need their own army of elite warriors. These might even be the public face of the Druids, with the shamans being mysteriously cloaked figures following behind the second rank. Still obviously in charge and doing all the examining of sorcerous curses and demonic trails, but leaving the questioning of locals to the captain of the group.

    However, to maintain the style of druids, I think those warriors would also have to have a distinct appearance that identifies them as elite sorcerer hunters and not just average mercenaries. You should know from a distance what kind of people you're dealing with.

    That's my thoughts so far, but I don't have any clear ideas how to implement it in practice, yet.
    I mean, it depends on how you want things to work. Generally, a magician or magician hunter should have a clear connection with the forces they interact with. Obviously, that means iron in this case, though that might manifest in the form of pellets. It also means sources of bright light - because of shades. That means focusing mirrors or lens or special liquids or powder that burn very bright. They plan to use fire in forests, so they'll need to be able to fell trees and clear perimeters, so expect saws and hatchets. They move from place to place en masse in a fractious setting - Treaties probably necessitate specific, unsubtle uniforms. Bright colors or white or similar anti-camouflage clothing for travel.

    Those are some thoughts. Pack a backpack and a belt for the equivalent PC who's being maximum paranoid. If you could ONLY take what you could carry to fight a sorcerer, what would that be? Then, think of what you'd carry or take with you in a box. My witch-hunters in a setting always carry wine, bread, and two cups because some demons can't attack people they've shared food with and some demons are burnt by wine. Build FROM the concept and, if it's lacking, go back and add to it for the sake of aesthetics.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Quote Originally Posted by White Blade View Post
    Generally, a magician or magician hunter should have a clear connection with the forces they interact with. Obviously, that means iron in this case, though that might manifest in the form of pellets.
    I had totally not thought of that before, even though it's a completely logical consequence of already established facts of the world. Druid guards would give away their identity by all being fully equipped with iron. Amazingly expensive, but that's one reason why they need a continent spanning network of contacts. Providing all members with access to iron weapons is another aspect in addition to sharing information.

    Completely unrelated to that, I am thinking I'll be dropping lizardmen again. I don't really have any ideas for them to distinguish them from jungle elves and the style I had in mind actually overlaps a lot with the serpentmen warriors of the naga armies. Maybe one day I bring them back if I get new ideas, but the world right now looks pretty consistent without them.
    Last edited by Yora; 2017-05-30 at 12:30 AM.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Forest Moon 2: Knights of the Frozen Throne

    About a year ago I've sat down and wrote a list of elements that would evoke the atmosphere and style that was really at the heart of my inspiration for the Ancient Lands, which over the many years of working on it had regularly strayed off into other, more generic direction. Writing these ideas down as Project Forest Moon started probably the most productive phase of my whole work on the setting and in hindsight feels like a second moment of the settings inception. When I looked back at the original first outline I made, pretty much all the important elements were already there and the following five years were spend on toying around with various mechanics and researching background information on society and technology. Much of which ended up being discarded as irrelevant and uninteresting for campaigns. Figuring out what doesn't work and why is a major and important learning experience, but It was only in the last year when I finally learned how much atmosphere is actually much more important than lots of methodical detail.


    Project Forest Moon turned out to be an astonishing success for myself which lead me to declare the setting as basically complete three months ago. Well, at least so far as having reached the beta stage. And to focus my efforts on the final push to smoothen out the remaining rough edges I made another list with the elements that still are not as prominent as they should be and the ways I want to deal with them.

    • That’s no Planet. It’s a Moon! Forest Moon was really just a name referring to one of my major inspirations for the style of the setting. But the idea has grown on me and I totally like the idea of switching the primary moon of the Ancient Lands to be the larger companion of the system. It changes absolutely nothing for the people living in the Ancient Lands, but it adds a little bit to reinforce the notion of it being an alien work very much unlike Earth in many ways. And I also just love the oldschool pulpy vibe that you get from works like the Barsoom series and obviously Star Wars.
    • Points of Light: While it comes from the development process of the most controversial edition that was widely seen as a major step in the totally wrong direction for D&D, Points of Light is a very fascinating paradigm for desiging settings, that is actually extremely oldschool but had to my knowledge never been put into words that well. The whole, and really pretty simple idea, is that the campaign world is a mostly untamed world without any real centralized power or organization and overall generally hostile to the mortal races. They have carved out their small islands of relative safety and stability that are only loosely connected by barely maintained roads, but around them these small villages and towns are completely surrounded by monster infested wilderness. I’ve been working under these assumptions from the very beginning, but I feel that I’ve continuously drifted back towards something more conventional. One way to accomplish this is to completely banish the idea of countries from the setting. Geographic areas are defined by having a consistent landscape, like a mountain range, island group, or wetland. But there are no more cultural regions that give the inhabitants some kind of shared identity. Now every island of mortal inhabitation is reduced to being its own unique entity.
    • No More Cities: As a consequence of the stronger Points of Light approach I am ditching the concept of city states. These have always been problematic for me as they are meant to not be visited by PCs but always ended up being the focus areas of the worldbuilding process. I will keep the handful that I have, but they are reconceptualized as strongholds of particularly powerful warlords. They are fortified towns under a single leader. No longer a common space for a regional aristocracy.
    • Level 0 World: One paradigm I’ve commited myself to some time ago is that every NPC that is not considered important enough to be given a name and individual personality is automatically a level 0 character with no class. NPCs that are fleshed out as individuals only get classes and levels if they have extraordinary fighting prowess or skills or possess magical powers. If their power and influence is purely social then they are still only level 0 NPCs, even if they are very high ranking individuals.
    • More Focus on Journeys: I already had boat travel on rivers and coasts on the list the last time but have not actually done much to make this a more prominent feature of the setting. With a setting like this, the trip between town and dungeon is not enough to cover the wilderness aspects of a campaign. The journey between towns should be an adventure in itself. This is one aspect where I have to put some more thoughts into mechanics and it’s less of a worldbuilding issue. However, the connections to the river and overland path network is one important element in the description of settlements. This also includes creating some more river monsters.
    • More really big Beasts: Part of the concept is that the wilderness is dangerous and terrifying. With a more open ended, site-based approach to adventures and the ability to retreat from encounters or avoid them, I think I can get away with populating the world with more beasts that will be too tough to fight head on for most parties. More dragons and rancors.
    • The Fey Folk: There are three races of humanoid fey in the Ancient Lands. Naga, shie, and racksha. The naga already have a very prominent role in many aspects of the setting, but the other two are still mostly concept that exist more or less in isolation and are not really connected to anything yet. The shie are the creators of the Tower Builder and Tree Weaver types of ruins, but the raksha are more of a character design than a setting element so far.
    • Rituals: The Ancient Lands is conceptualized as an animistic world but so far there is little specific about how this element can be included in actual play. The consultation of shamans and witches and the use of elaborate warding and divination rituals needs to become more fleshed out. Given that divinations in the Ancient World work by predicting the crossing of paths of people with intersecting or conflicting goals rather than stating predetermined outcomes, I see a lot of potential here.
    • Sites of Power: I need to put a lot more thought into magical glades and springs that work as powerful stationary magic items.
    • Druids as Monks rather than Templars: My idea of the Druids was as an organization of shamans that work together to fight the spread of demons and sorcery but I realized that this actually makes them not very interesting as NPCs. If they are the best at fighting sorcery, why would they have to work together with player characters? It’s basically the old Jedi Problem, where one character type is the hero by default and everyone else really only gets in the way and should try to stay out of harm. Instead I want to reconceptualize druids as scholars who have the knowledge to fight sorcery but require warriors to actually do the heavy lifting and clear a path for them.
    • No Lizardmen: I already had lizardmen scrapped once but got them back as part of the setting some time in the last year. But now I realize that all my cool ideas for a lizard race have already been incorporarted in jungle elves and the naga slaves serpentmen. While a neat idea, the lack of a decent concept means the setting will probably be better of for the time being. Not having mortal lizardmen actually frees up a spot for an idea I have for lizard spirit-ogres as a fourth race of the fey folk.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Yesterday I was watching John Carter again and it really is a corny B-movie with an awful script and badly acted protagonists. But that’s the case with pretty much all fantasy movies except for Star Wars and Lord of the Rings (which often are corny blockbusters with an awful script and badly acted protagonists). And while I think that it could be argued that it’s a bad movie, it certainly is a really nice looking movie with a lot of cool ideas. Basically the ideas that are taken directly from A Princess of Mars and are not new additions for the movie. You know, the ideas that Star Wars ripped off to huge success.

    And some of them I think I really want to grab myself:

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    White Apes kick ass! They eat puny rancors for breakfast.



    That Petrified Giant Tree Thingy Shrine. The only problem I have with this design for a dungeon is that it’s not nearly big enough in the movie. It needs to be ten times bigger and then it totally has to be an adventure site for my campaign.



    Helium looks awesome. It just needs a thick forest in the canyon below the cliff and can go straight into the Ancient Lands. (As a Tree Weaver castle, I would say.)



    Those meddling sorcerers. Don’t really have a clue how, but I like the idea. And I really like that their powers are mostly illusions and mind control but that they absolutely suck when having to fight themselves, which makes them much more interesting as actual antagonists. big open question is what they would try to accomplish in the Ancient Lands.



    And since we’re at them, the Warhoon tribe is really gnarly looking. I said I need some better ideas for the raksha. I think this could be it.



    Not appearing in the movie, but I really like this design for Banths. I think this is what I’ll make my arags look like instead. (My original inspiration were varren from Mass Effect, which really look remarkably similar to this, just more fishy.)



    Here I am still really conflicted. Airships are totally awesome! But I feel like they would be a huge change to the setting as a whole. The concept for the world is one of wilderness adventures in a somewhat more primitive world and having the ability to fly over the forests instead of slowly crawling through the underbrush and paddling along rivers would be a drastic departure from that.

    But they are really, really cool.

    And they would not actually be a radically new idea for B/X-BECMI. Elves and Halflings have been given the ability to make airships very much like these in the Companion Set way back in 1983.

    And it’s really, really cool…

    I guess what would be needed is to make these things incredibly rare and put some severe limitations on how far and long they can fly before requiring a stop to resupply.

    Probably not fooling anyone. This really is a question of how, not of if...


    (What the hell was I thinking?!)
    Last edited by Yora; 2017-06-05 at 07:32 AM.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
    Yesterday I was watching John Carter again and it really is a corny B-movie with an awful script and badly acted protagonists. But that’s the case with pretty much all fantasy movies except for Star Wars and Lord of the Rings (which often are corny blockbusters with an awful script and badly acted protagonists). And while I think that it could be argued that it’s a bad movie, it certainly is a really nice looking movie with a lot of cool ideas. Basically the ideas that are taken directly from A Princess of Mars and are not new additions for the movie. You know, the ideas that Star Wars ripped off to huge success.

    And some of them I think I really want to grab myself:.....
    John Carter is my JAM!

    As for the Therns, I can see them working quite well as a shadowy collection of Sorcerers and Witches looking to control the mortal populations of Ancient Lands. They're like a religious/arcane Illuminati, trying to create true civilization...under their thumbs.
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    Default Re: Ancient Lands - Sword & Sorcery with Elves on Dinosaurs

    The nice thing about such groups is that their plans are so big in scale that players are always only to go to see small parts of them. If they manage to stop them in one place, they are not going to be back next year or throw all their efforts behind destroying the party. In the big plan it's of little consequence, but for the specific place where the players stopped them it can make a big difference for centuries.
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