Homebrew tabletop game system thread the II

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

No, post- don't wait. The whole point of being up to 2 AM is to get playing time in, and I'm trending towards caffeine fuelled insomniac anyway.

Oh, other thing; I'm considering popping that other crossover bit into the Guild subforum to see what they make of it.

[Simon_Jester]

He sighs. "What happened? It all started with the knight from Carfax who tried to burn Catarin at the stake. It didn't work, she convinced us to bring him up to Qulan all tied up for Sir Detrick to manage. So we did, but on the way, Caer Edric- you know where I mean, right?- there was a pair of elf-wizards harrying the place. Brother and sister, the brother D- Dl- Dleam-thay-ar-an and the sister... I forget right now. Anyway, she tried to get the whole garrison killed by bewitching us, there was a fight, she... we had to kill her. We knew he'd be laying for us then, on the way up to Qulan, we got some help along the way, a party of elves who said they were looking for him, there was a fight. Bryan- a man-at-arms with us- was killed, we made it to Qulan, rested in the temple for the night. Then... breakfast. I thought fighting elves was a strange day."

"The first thing that went wrong was Sir Alfred getting challenged to a duel and nearly killed- fifth strangest thing was wrapped up in that, I was trying to help him by magicking up a hammer and it, um. Went bang. Quite a bit. Would have worked though, so that wasn't so bad. Then we were looking through the elf's papers and-" he looks around guiltily- "...I didn't think they'd be booby-trapped. Some sort of horrible curse, and we might all have been turned into I don't know what if Will- um, another man at arms- hadn't..." he sighs. "I would never in a hundred years have thought he'd die to save someone like that. My gods... anyhow. The horrible elf-curse, that's why this isn't the second strangest thing that's happened since breakfast. You did manage to bump the mad Krylanyan I met later down to fourth place though, so this isn't too bad. All in all, if the day had ended there it wouldn't have been too mad, but that was when we found out... do you- do you know of a... woman named Johanna Calvern?"

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

'Hmm. About as well as anyone else from Kuquan can claim to, I think- although for reasons that...that was one of the reasons I wanted to talk to my younger self, to see what I would have made of myself now. One of the reasons I ended up here instead of doing that is that I don't think it would have gone particularly well.

I bumped into her about, oh, roughly now give or take a couple of days, and at that point I was already used to dealing with horribly complicated things and things that are much scarier than I am,' he may be underestimating himself here, 'she needed people who could talk to other people, and somehow that ended up with her offering me a job;
I spent about a thousand times more time talking to squirrels and sparrows than people, for wood's sake, and I think I thought that to give me that option- oh, yes, I was an outlaw as well, for reasons that made sense at the time- she had to be either desperate, deranged or both... and if that was true it was probably best not to say no.

Things generally failed to get much saner from there, really; I'm looking back on this which is odd, but a lot of the time I saw the essential part of it as being a firebreak between her and anyone who might cause her to lose her temper and get splattered thereby.

There were an awful lot of spur of the moment decisions, dubious moves, expedients, situations weighed individually- nine tenths of the time I was making it up as I went along really, and the other tenth were the situations that seemed so inevitably plunging towards a bad end I usually wished I was.

I'm not sure even now how to sum her up. A monster, definitely; but a self aware one, and on some level looking for- call it atonement? I wouldn't say evil, oh there are veins of it, as there are in us all, and perhaps hers throb more than most, but she does sit very heavy on the world. When did you cross paths with her?'

[Simon_Jester]

"About... four hours ago, maybe? I can hardly remember why I was willing to join the bunch looking for her to ask what she wanted while she was hereabouts, I think... I think I must have been expecting the elf-curse to go off after the fact and turn me into a guppy or something anyway. She's why the curse was only the second strangest thing to happen today. If you came around trawling for 'run screaming into ludicrous danger,' that's probably why we wound up in your net... erm. Verone? Verone?" The wizard seems to be bubbling slightly. Larric is concerned. He waves a hand in front of Verone's face.

[Feralgnoll]

Rohal will try to keep his eyes from doing some serious widening at the sight of all the magic going on about him.

"Larric, Verone, when you get a chance, I would like to tell you something."

OOC: Verone does not know I am a werewolf correct?

[Simon_Jester]

"Just to save time, you mean something aside from, we're in a dream, it's all his idea, he's hoping to make things happen yesterday by doing something tomorrow and it almost worked? And yes, of course. First chance I get, I'll give you a good listen."

[Agent Sorchus]

Lets see. One computer dead. A six year old campaign coming to a rattling end (and I hope it is the actual end, this is a pretty bad dm and the group has outgrown the limited nature of the roleplaying there.) And...

But trust me you don't care. I don't care (except that the other comp should be fixable. Just have to solder a new power connecter and fabricate a new hinge . Maybe look into a new battery also.)

So what is your name?

So theoretically your past self is looking for a job right about now, and someone else could hire you? Him... either way as of yet you haven't actually moved down that path of fate (OOC I think I might be putting points into fate, will get back to you tomorrow hopefully) and someone else could move you off the path?

Maybe those words you were going to share with your past self can find another way to his ears. Mind sharing?

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: Umm. What.)

[Kaelan]

OOC - wrong forum by chance?

[Simon_Jester]

Now Larric knows this must be a dream, Eliska would have made more sense in real life.

[Kaelan]

Well now, that was an interesting rundown that Larric has just given over the past few days.
Should have stuck with the countess.....

Dirt addresses larric
"I think your friend Derick was confused. It sounds like you're the one going insane who needs watching over."

Back to hedgeman..
"Is this to be the first of many nightly encounters, or just a one off? Also, madness magnet aside, was there anything in particular you wanted to impart. I think the humans here were looking for a single day and night of normality. It appears as they are out of luck so far."

[Simon_Jester]

Hm, that sounds like it's on the ragged edge of Dirt's linguistic ability- are language barriers an issue in the dreamspace?

Larric shrugs. "Sir Detrick thinks you're going to break something, and wants someone to shout at if you do."

[Kaelan]

Experience is a wonderful thing.
Just don't expect dirt to blather in this language.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, Larric's probably a good conversation partner for Dirt, because he usually talks in short words, relying heavily on a limited core vocabulary- he's an elementary school dropout from a peasant background, and it shows. He also doesn't talk very fast, except when he's agitated.

At least, that's how I've been trying to write him. Since I don't talk or think that way, it's a bit of a stretch. Feedback on how I'm doing is appreciated.

[Kaelan]

OOC

Too many complex words for such a limited vocabulary, Larric come across with more education - self taught? Or at least well read.

IC
"well I can understand the stereotype. I prefer to keep things intact as its easier than putting them back together again'"

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

I modeled him a bit after Michael Faraday, at least for background. So yes, he is self-taught, to a large extent. Apprenticed to a bookbinder, and he handled a lot of books, most of which he actually read. His Education stat is still below the average, though.

He's... it's a problem for me representing him effectively, because he's intelligent and not educated. I don't have a lot of experience with people like that, I don't live in the same circles as them and there aren't as many of them around these days as there would have been in days of yore.

What happens is that I take the way I naturally write, deliberately try to tone it down and use fewer Big Latin Words, and it's still not plain-English enough. Hmph.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

A day spent with a notepad in hand, working towards large fictional explosions...

Ah, good, Sorchus is back. I really shouldn't worry so much, I should have known there was a good reason but I do worry. That post did actually make sense to me- addressed to the druid, yes? Who finally admits 'Oh, sorry, didn't I mention that? Aburon. I'm more or less a druid- it would be a lot easier to say I was if, well, I'm sort of an independent whatever-a-fundamentalist-isn't.

At this point Detrick knows who I am, he's tried to kill me a couple of times- don't worry, I think we get on better in the future-from-this-point. Look out the outlawry notices; I always wanted one, but I could never manage to get one to keep.

I hope not;' to Dirt, 'It's sort of like trying to play an orchestra by yourself. There's probably a limit somewhere. Oh, yes; if she hasn't changed, mar- Colonel Calvern pointed you at them to point them at the problem you emerged from. Tell them a bit more about it, yes? Can't hurt any more than it already has.'

To most of the group 'Look, I'm not sure how much it would be wise to tell you, I can't just go blurting out the contents of my head. Your current problems- Elves? If I've got my politics right, the solution to that whole bloody messy problem winds in pretty closely with his problem.' meaning Dirt.
'I can tell you who's who, what they stand for and why they're barking mad, and I can show you where some of the levers of the situation are, oh, you bumped into Njal? Never, ever commission a flying machine from him. It means you no longer have an excuse not to bounce from one crisis to another like a magpie with advanced ginger poisoning. He's right, though.'


Oh, Simon, for autodidacts- self taught people- some of the easiest to find and study are the early trades unionists for a start, the chartists, the Independent Labour Party that was the foundation stone of the modern version (and a damned sight better too)- there's a long tradition of self- teaching on the political left, arguably the Open University grew directly out of it, and that tradition has preserved quite a lot of speeches and letters.

Overwritten, overwrought, opaque, overly purple in a lot of ways, a lot of the founders of the movement come across as trying too hard to escape simplicity, overcompensating and landing out somewhere in the baroque, although that might be a function of the age.

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Larric is indeed a product of a different era- not political, really, at least not at this stage of his life. He'd much rather be getting on with his work, if it weren't on hold due to the interesting nature of the times. He's not quite like the Chartists, doesn't have that framework of ideas driving him.

And, hm. I can think of at least one autodidact whose prepared texts tend towards the 'overwritten' end of the scale today, I know this one personally. Larric might fall into that trap if he were trying to write a book or give a speech with preparation, come to think of it. But he doesn't do so in ordinary conversation, there's a bit of a disconnect (or supposed to be) between the list of things he understands and the way he talks about them.

You should see his list of chemical elements some day. He can put numbers to them, at least for low values of Z, but the names range from 'pragmatic' at best, shading through comedy, to 'ludicrous' at worst.

IC:

Larric's curiosity is warring with his sensibility; he knows that Aburon has the upper hand here in terms of deciding what information to dole out, and plainly seems more likely to want to talk about the elves (which are of relatively mild concern to Larric personally) than to the situation in the southern part of the barony (which is of somewhat greater concern).

"The elves- I don't know if you've heard the name Dleamthayaran-" which comes out faster now that he's brought it back to the front of his mind- "but... he was up from Zarthan, looking to start a war between elves and men. If you don't know his name, maybe you know his sort. And if you're giving advice, advice for stopping that war from happening would be a kindness. Elf-ways are always a tangle, I know, but- who's pushing on this? What's going on in their heads, what are they thinking, and who do we go to to make it stop?"

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

'I know his extended family, at least- the wordroot is familiar. Um. Where to start? Elves are, ah, much less inexplicable than they like to think. They like being mysterious and unpredictable, they work on it, but the bare essentials, the fundamental needs and behaviours, have a lot more in common with the human, or any race, than they want to admit. They actually get quite annoyed when you point this out to them, usually.' he grins.

'Don't let them blind you with magic and baffle you with bullcrap. They do make sense. Sometimes, they try to hide it because it is a very ugly thing indeed. When you're trying to understand them, think of a mineral rich river, froth and scum everyhere, bubbles that form everywhere there's turbulence, and glitter and loom. Ignore the bubbles. Worry about the current.

When you're trying to do anything, it's the other way round- it's the bubbles, the people, that matter.

None of them are false to their own; all consider their people better and more worth preserving and defending than humans. Some of them value humans much less than others, though- and some of them don't hold each other in particularly high regard, most of their radical wing-
the Shapers, who believe their special job in the whole panoply of nature is to be the brains of it all and direct all the lesser forms to newer, more perfect and more intricate form, they're almost all poison puffballs waiting to go off. Odd thing is, as much as I dislike the movement in abstract, and they really are loonies, I've rarely met one that I didn't personally get on well with. Don't tell me what you think that means.

The Nurturers, and remember these political currents are as near as they go to having gods, are probably the most constructive and the sanest, and if you picture a plough horse a hundred feet tall, no, a thousand- impossibly huge- just plodding along doing it's thing, live and theoretically changeable, but just so damned big and full of momentum it's practically impossible to get it to do anything it hasn't spent a century pondering, that's what they remind me of. They do good, but spirits, they do it so abysmally slowly.

The Happenists ought not to be useful by any measure, containing the majority of the zealots and bigots- they believe in letting nature do what nature does, which would be fine except they try to enforce it. Fanatic conservationists.

Of the southern elves, the ones in Alavanirimire, the middle was falling out of the scale. The fact that more and more of them were trending to one extreme or another didn't actually help them resist the Zarthani very much, and those who survived and made it north fell in with the like minded locals and started to pull the centre apart in the same way.'

[pause for breath.]

[Simon_Jester]

"I honestly couldn't begin to guess which way Dleamthayaran swung. But then we might have trouble with more than one bunch-" arc lamp- "Rohal, didn't you say something about that wolf, the strange one? I doubt there's a straight connection there, mind you..."

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

'The key players were- are- the individuals with authority over their factions, the princes- no, that's just how it translates, although it's wiser to treat them as though they were royalty.

Considering that when you try to herd cats, the cats don't usually understand the concept of being herded, they're not consciously and deliberately using all their cunning to escape and evade and if necessary injure the herdsman, you can imagine how hard getting elves to agree on anything is. In fact, the more I think about it, the less I like the idea of throwing you at that problem. Luhaian and Ariam are bona fide psychopaths, Caranthir isn't but he has to do a very good job of pretending to be, Jarrath spent too long playing at pirates and it sunk in, trying to put myself where you're standing I wouldn't want to cross paths, never mind swords, with any of them.

The dark elves are in this, too. Dirt?'

[Feralgnoll]

"I saw dark elves do battle with some Elvish Alchemists." Rohal will interject.

[Simon_Jester]

"And alchemy- might just be coincidence, you can always find two someones to trade in something if you look long enough- but, again, that reminds me of the strange wolf you told me of."

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

'Dleamthayaran was Probably a Happenist- violently opposed to change, to the extent of going out and looking for some to hit. Strange that that involves chainging things back to how they imagine they used to be, usually.

The dark elves are an interesting thing- the northern cavern, well, you'll find out in a couple of days anyway. I'm not so sure of the south myself, but there's friction there between the locals, incomers and humans, because of them.

The white wolf- I know her, well, it's complicated, her pack live on the mountain, occasionally come down- sometimes when the old faith needs them.

I'm not surprised that the elves, probably incomers, tried to pick a fight with the svartalfven. A lot of the time the Svartalfven are more trustworthy, though- and no, I don't mean predictable.'

[Kaelan]

OOC - a bit hectic at the moment. Will posts Dirts response to the Elf info along with Dark Elf feedback later on today.