Showing posts with label layout. Show all posts
Showing posts with label layout. Show all posts

Sunday, March 10, 2019

Bestiary of the Fabled Occident

A long time ago I started to put together a bestiary. I've pursued various other projects in the time since but I still have a fair bit of material I'd like to publish and a reasonably coherent design philosophy. I'm honing an approach to the layout and information design. None of these three mockups are finalised.

For various strange  reasons I am establishing intense focus on the Mantyger family of heraldic grotesques: I am mesmerised by themes and variations within themes. The approach of just doing the mantygers does not illuminate the full range of procedural elements that could be utilised in this kind of bestiary but it does at least allude to the fact of their being a range of options that could be utilised.

Laying things out in Photoshop is very tedious. I will be moving onto Indesign to preserve my sanity.

Have a look at the layouts and be as excoriating in critique as possible. I have deliberately overdone things so as to infuriate design boffins into offering free advice.

Basic idea:

- Folkloric monster manual that draws from a variety of historical sources
- 10-word descriptions (I can't remember why I do this but I have been doing it for many years)
- Procedural generation to include as much intriguing miscellany as I can  get away with.
-Double page spread for most monsters, more condensed for less important




Open in new tab or you can't see anything

The Lampago and the Satyral are entirely without historical information, being nothing more that fanciful heraldic charges




Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Outlandish Weapons

Some may remember this post from long ago, where I wrote about farm tools and various other improvised weapons. This post was meant to follow it but time and circumstance necessitated several circumambulations of the stablished earth betwixt that time and now, and various vicissitudes observed and experienced, so the original is barely recognisable. The names and pictures are what counts, though. Good names can be dusted off and reconditioned.

At about the time I wrote the Terrible Weapons post I got hold of a couple of Umberto Eco books that were highly influential on me; The Infinity of Lists and The Book of Legendary Lands. These books are essentially works of curation in which Eco exercised his very considerable erudition in gathering and presenting historical fragments to illuminate their influence on the cultures we inhabit. The result of my exposure to his scholarship and ideas caused me to rethink my approach to things.



Firstly, Lists is about lists, and the use of lists throughout history. I am especially interested in the fundamental importance of lists in rpgs. D&D is, at its core, a game about curating worlds and narratives from menus of options: its bestiaries are lists of monsters, its grimoires are lists of spells, players' handbooks are lists of heroes and weapons and equipment and skills, DM's guides are full of lists of traps and treasures and NPCs and terrains and techniques. The preceding sentence was a list of some of the lists in D&D. Lists of options suggest abundance and dynamism, even those you don't use enrich the sense of more wonderment and excellence receding beyond the horizon. Lists.





Legendary Lands is about the places historical people made up and either believed existed somewhere beyond their borders, enjoyed pretending to believe, or kept in some other manner as a cultural idea worth thinking on. This gave me a couple of things: The first was the sense that I could profitably work with a setting that was immediately adjacent to the real world, set in a vague epoch prior to the dawn of history, as did Howard and Tolkien, and didn't have to make up names for lands (which is something I don't like to do). The second was the names of the lands themselves and the power source of the adjacency of real-world histories and languages and cultures. Meropis and Atlantis, for example, are from Ancient Greek literature, Hy Breasil is from Mediaeval Irish literature. Their geography is already suggested by the sources and their psychogeography also. Drawing from these sources allows ersatz essentialism sans faux-nomenclature and allows access to more and better lists.





The outlandishness of these weapons refers both to their strangeness and to their origin from beyond the Septentrional Suzerainty or the Occidental Imperium (or whatever the generic centre is that provides the ground against which the estrangement of otherness can be contrasted). The weapons require that the character use them is able to speak the language of the realm of their origin. So language, conventionally a relatively useless appendage to the old-school PC, could be said to have with it some knowledge and understanding of culture. Here, the assumption is that if you speak the language you can use the weapon properly. You could, of course, wield the weapon without the language, but it wouldn't be special, certainly, the merlouns and babewyns won't listen to you, and you'll almost certainly inadvertently incinerate yourself with a Magonian Phlogiston Globe.

Open in another tab so you can read the inscriptions. My alchemical symbology is on point.



1. Merloun of Annwn: Raptor bred by the Faulkners of Annwn, whose falconry is unsurpassed in any realm other. AC: 20 (O) MV: Fl 200' HD: 1/2 Att: divebomb d6 dmg (automatically hits) Save: T7 ML: 11 AL: L

2. Mezzoramian Hornbow: Extraordinarily strong bow of horn, antler, hardwood, sinew and perchance blasphemous paynim magicks. STR bonus adds to the damage it causes. Range 70/140/210, d6 dmg, over 3 dmg and it's butted against the bone, d3 dmg to pull the barbed arrow out (-2 to everything per arrow stuck in).

3. Lemurian Keris: Wavy-bladed weapon of outlandish mottled steel. d4 dmg, each wound bleeds 1 dmg/rd until bandaged.

4. Flambard of Lyonesse: Flame-bladed greatsword, extraordinarily sharp. Flourishing the flambard in gleaming moulinets causes opponents of lower level to check morale or flee (unless of significantly superior numbers). d12 dmg.

5. Arimaspian Akinakes: Shortsword of Arimaspian arsenical bronze. Those wounded will be weakened. -1 STR per wound. 1d4 dmg.

6. Atlatl of the Antichthones: The indigo Antichthones, who dwell beyond Taprobane, fling their flint-tipped spears exceeding far by the cunning of their ebon spear-throwers: d6 dmg. Range: 40/80/120. Over 3 dmg and there are shards of flint stuck in the wound, -1 to everything until wounded receives assistance from a Chirurgeon.

7. Choromandaean Gimel: Throwing stick of the savage Choromandae that flies with its own murderous intent. Goes round corners in search of its quarry. Ignores cover (even if complete). 1d4 dmg. Range:  30/60/90.

8. Atlantean Orichalcum Parazonium: Dagger-sword of ruddy golden hue. Puissant against the cacodaemoniacal denizens of supramundane realms. d4 dmg, d12 against cacodaemoniacal denizens of supramundane realms.

9. Dwergish Blunderbore: Preposterous gonne of the Dwergish folk. It goes off with a staggering bang that knocks wielder over if to-hit roll exceeds wielder’s strength. Ammunition is whatever bits of crock, nails, stones or low-value currency the wielder can get their hands on. 3d6 dmg + knockdown as with wielder to 10’, 2d6 to 20’, 1d6 to 30’ spreading in a cone 20' wide at 30' range. ROF 1/3.

10. Amazonian Sagaris: Horse-headed hammer-axe of the Amazones, it is exceeding swift and deadly when used from horseback or chariot - double damage at the charge, helmets knocked off automatically. d8 dmg.

11. Quicklime of Palaisimundus: Pouch of alchemically-refined caustic powder, slung in the faces of enemies causes blindness and burning lungs. Save or -4 for d6 rounds, backfires disastrously on a 1. 10 doses. Wear gloves.

12. Werrebowe of Elphame: Knotty bow of yew, exceeding strong and springy. Flings its peacock-fletched arrows preposterously far. Range 300/300/300, d8 dmg.

13. Shillelagh of the Little Folk: Blackthorn cudgel, buttered well and kept in a chimbley for seven years so it is as hard as iron. Stunning blow puts foe out of action, reeling idiotically, for one rd/lvl on a roll of 20. d6 dmg.

14. Bident of the Anthropophagi: Gigantic eating-fork of the cannibalistic Anthropophagi. Once hit, opponent must sustain the same damage to tear bident from flesh. d8 dmg.

15. Naphtha Flasks of Iram: Combustible spirit held in vessels of crockery or crude green glass. Ignited and thrown, it shatters and the naphtha burns green and evilly. 2d6 direct hit, 1d6 within 5', 1d6/rd thereafter until fire is put out. 10/20/30.

16. Antediluvian Fanged Club: Heavy bludgeon set with the petrified teeth of the terrible beasts of the Earth's savage dawn: the Krackenback, the Ziphius, the Apophis, the Illuyankas: d20 dmg. One terrible monster will attack the possessor each day.

17. Arcadian Syrinx: Panpipe of the maenads and tripping capripeds, the music of which is contagiously frenetic and strange. Disastrous frenzy ensues in the vicinity of its playing. All combatants, friend and foe, gain advantage on their attacks.

18. Flail of the Skiapodes: Terrifying spiked flail, flailed in a flailing motion by the one-legged leaping skiapodes. Two attacks per round, flail self on 1, d8 dmg.

19. Meropian Vitriol: Glass phial of mordant humour distilled from the sublimated rage of ascetic Meropian Philosopher-priests. Disastrously corrosive: d12 dmg on first round, d10 2nd rd, d8 3rd, d6 4th, d4 5th, d2 6th.

20. Babewyn of the Cynocephalides: Unmanageably vermin-infested gurning ape kept by the dog-headed men. It steals and shrieks and flings its dung. Once you have one, another will arrive every d6 days. Everyone is itchy from now on : AC: 15 (5) MV. 40' HD: 1 Att: 1 bite, d4 dmg Save: T1 ML: 6 AL: C.

21. Soliferrum of the Hesperides: Iron javelin forged in crucibles of the sunset-realm and marked with the glyph of the sun. Ignores all armour. d8 dmg, 20/40/60.

22. Angon of Urheim: Iron-shanked spear of the house-carles of Urheim. If thrown at a shield it renders it useless automatically and the opponent cannot attack the next round. d6 dmg.

23. Hoggspjot of Thule: Heavy and hardy hewing spear of the reivers of Thule. Wielder may hew opponent's mundane weapon in half on a successful strike. d8 dmg.

24. Agarthan Firelance: A spear from subterranean Agartha with a pair of incendiary devices mounted on either side of the point. The wielder may light the fuses to produce gouts of blazing green sparks and smoke to dazzle, scorch and dishearten their opponent. An opponent who is deterred by fire will be at -4 to hit for the 5 rds. A successful hit also may cause clothing to smoulder and burn at GM’s whim. 1d8+1 dmg

25. Fire-Blackened Stick of the Troglodytae: A stick, sharp at one end and hardened in a fire, kept by the loathsome Troglodytae in their reeking grottoes, the uspeakable filth thereof makes the wounds vulnerable to corruption. Save or festering ensues: -1 CON/day, save each day thereafter, two saves in a row indicates recovery. Each wound festers independently.

26. Tourney Sword of Ys: A sword specialised for harness-fighting with heavily-armoured men-at-arms. It is a stiff and narrow spike with a grip-knob for half-swording, armour-piecing quillons and a flanged-mace pommel for desperate bludgeoning. +3 to-hit against plate armour. d8 dmg

27. Claidheamh-mòr of the Sith: Greatsword of the Seelie-Wights, extraordinarily wieldy depite its size and conducive to vehement flourishing , successful kill means attack roll and full dmg can then be applied to another nearby enemy.

28. Dart of the Pygmies: Long, fletched, barbed hurling-javelin wielded by the Pygmies in their battles against the Storks and Phoenicopteruses of their homelands. The Darts are poisoned with the virulent lycoctonum which they carry in little crocks. d6 dmg 20/40/60 save or fall frothing in agony, d20 dmg from poison, miss next round. 6 doses

29. Carnyx of Hy Breasil: Brazen discordant howling of the Carnyx fills the enemy with fear and panic. Anyone not of Hy Breasilian ilk: ML Check each round. 1st failure lose initiative. 2nd in a row: Wavering - no actions this round. 3rd in a row: Flee in panic.

30. Hyperborean Harpoon: Cold-forged harpoon for the hunting of the Raudkembingur and Troluals of the boreal seas. d8 dmg. Gets stuck inside if it causes 4 or more damage and wounded one bleeds great gouts, d4 dmg/rd until wrenched out, STR check to wrench out for d8 dmg. Range 15/30/45.

31. Shamshir of Serkland: Supremely sharp sword of superb craftsmanship rewards the nimble wielder with unmatched flickering speed and deadliness: d8 dmg. Wielder may use both STR and DEX bonuses to modify attack and dmg.

32. Jawbone of a Rantipike of Nod: Seemingly simple asinine mandible allows one attack per level each round . 1d4 dmg.

33. Stone-maul of Trollmark: Heavy and unwieldy and fell, the stone maul carries in it some of the malevolent puissance of one whose petrified remnant this is. It has incised in it a sigil of gealdorcraeft: the Stafur til að vekja upp draug. It can strike invulnerable spirits, attacks only every second round and causes 2d8 dmg.

34. Shotel of the Blemmyes: Sickle-sword of the acephalic Blemmyes who wield it along with their great wicker pavises. Ignores shields: d8 dmg

35. Magonian Phlogiston Globes: Crystal spheres, scorchingly hot, 1d4 dmg to anyone who tries to throw them with bare hands, 3d8 fireball of 10' radius, white-hot, failed save = blind, - 4 for 1d4 rds 10/20/30

36. Firkin of Stitchback of Cockaigne : Potent ale of Cockaigne cures what ails you up to the point where you sober up, each mug cures 3 hp for one hour, over three mugs also reduces dexterity by one per mug over three. Firkin has 20 tankards initially. Weight: 10 items

Monday, August 4, 2014

Grimmel-Dobbies and Layout

Here's another image from my Middenmurk bestiary. Grimmel-Dobbies comes, as usual, from a couple of dialect words and essentially means Pond-Fairies or Pond-Bogeys, they are essentially my version of the Welsh Gwragedd Annwn. They live in Lake Nenuphar (Nenuphar means water-lilies) and do not remember that they were inundated centuries ago. As far as they are concerned their realm was ever thus and there is no such thing as water. There are stirrings among the feuding houses, though, and a heresy is afoot. What will happen when the Aspidochelone returns? What does the Murmuring Marsgum know? I don't know. I just want to make things as much like a coiled spring as possible. Or like seeds planted in fertile ground or some other tedious metaphor.

Please disregard slight watermark. Depicted individual is a Harpoon Squire. There will be a glossary.
The Dobbies feature in an adventure I am writing but don't have any real job to do save to distract and waylay the protagonists. Actually everything in the adventure is about distraction and sidetracking so I guess maybe they play (or could play) a central role.

___________________________

I like layout. I like the way visual information can be unfolded onto a page in such a manner as to produce a thing that rewards prolonged visual scrutiny. Like this from Racinet's Le Costume Historique;

Anyone who doesn't have a copy is missing out. It behooves me to say that several of the reconstructions are bullshit but I've actually developed a penchant for historical apocrypha
There are so many things in this image and in all of Racinet's imagery that you can profitably pore over, that spark imagination, that offer narratives. Admittedly there is a fiendish amount of work involved in this kind of thing but every detail, every bit of fluff offers opportunities. Old Forkbeard there with the red shield has a plume on his helmet that has just got to offer some kind of reaction bonus with other heathens.

See the wickerwork armour with the big backplate shield thing, awesome.
My Taschen copy is in three languages with tiny, tiny text and doesn't explain itself as well as it could but is nonetheless so resonant with ideas and psychic energy it acts as a doorway to endless creative meanderings .

Monday, July 28, 2014

Astragalomantic Ontogeny

I have been playing with layout and proceduralism. There are ways of dragging more information out of every dice roll. Doing this has an aesthetic appeal for me. Every time it is necessary to roll a dice to produce a relatively uninteresting result, like how many of something there are, I want to see more interesting results generated. I am also erring on the side of terse description though I can't see that lasting very long.

This is a mockup and not finalised but contains the kernel of the ideas I am pursuing. The 21 dice icons at the bottom represent a character (3d6 x 6 + starting wealth), every page will have one, the numbers will also be used to determine aspects of the character's destiny and help to facilitate immersive and internally consistent procedural narrative generation in ways that have as yet not been determined.

Astragalomantic parsimony dictates that every roll is laden with consequence. Open in a new tab or you can't see anything;

Astute observers will notice this is a B/X goblin with mild reskinning

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Terrible Weapons

For a very long time I've thought that there was a problem with equipment in D&D. Essentially, a fighter starts with a perfectly decent weapon at the beginning of first level and very soon afterwards acquires the best armour available in the mundane world. By second-level there is not much that interests the fighter on the standard equipment list save more of the same.

I love the idea of having a more comprehensive weaponry-based reward mechanic and also of doing things to generally makes the setting more grubby and/or silly. To do this I am adopting a series of different options which may see initially complicated but will all make sense eventually; bumping up prices on the list, offering more varied gear, having a continuity of options stretching out through the levels and the price ranges and using the "fluff is crunch" principle -that I got from the very clever Roger the GS here, initially, I think.

Price Range: The vanilla price range for weapons is tiny and you can afford whatever you want early on. Using a copper standard it is not incongruous to have poor-quality make-shift weapons available for a handfull of coppers and beautifully made pieces by master artisans available for hundreds or thousands. Justifying this mechanically requires some chicanery but it ain't hard.

Varied Gear: History presents us with a vast range of different tools for inflicting injury. As well as this there is imagination and ingenuity (which I refuse to utilise unless I have exhausted other options). To reflect this variation I offer a series of descriptors with very simple mechanical advantages to apply to weapons. e.g.;

shoddy: breaks on a roll of 1*

hefty: always strikes last unless wielder has a STR of 13 or more

unwieldy: always strikes last regardless

short: always stikes last unless the combatants are grappling in which case always strikes first

long: always  strikes first unless the combatants are grappling in which case is cannot strike

armour-piercing: +1 to hit against medium and heavy armour

articulated: ignores small shields, always hit self on roll of 1

In addition to this kind of thing there will be special stuff like; Many-Tasseled Partizan of Majordomo Braglantore: +1 to morale of nearby Lawful troops, -7 reaction penalty with Castigated Testudines. The Fluff is Crunch principle can be invoked to create advantages/disadvantages as well (and see below). Using such descriptors you can produce a 1 groat weapon that is shoddy, hefty, unwieldy and short and a 10,000 groat weapon that is something tales are told of, all without resorting to sorcery.

Continuity of Options (trickle feeding the goodness): This is important. There is a continuity of options in D&D but the amount of choice/player agency that goes into the processes is insufficient. Magic Weapons are usually the only option after first-level and they are hidden in holes. I don't have anything about magic weapons, I am writing an adventure in which there is a magic weapon but is it overdone ? (Yes) My solution is to have equipment lists beyond first-level - equipment lists are, after all, a reward mechanic. Your bloodstained gold does off you the prospect of advancement but in the short term should also offer you the possibility of more satisfactory tooling up for havoc.

So at the beginning you'll have a few options from the Rabble List, with Kavel-Mells and Dunnuks and Sluff-Spades and everything will be terrible and break constantly so you'll be especially excited about getting enough purloined copper to afford a proper Pigsticker from the Auxiliary List and will trek across dangerous territory to buy something that doesnae always break. After this come the Elite, Splendiferous and Ludicrous lists etc.

Fluff is Crunch: a gavelock may well be heavy and unwieldy but it is still an iron crowbar which could be used for leverage and breaking stuff, a draige is attached to a big piece o' chain which has many purposes, a clotting beetle used for breaking sods in the field could be argued to convey some advantage against the Sinister Sod of Metheglin Meugle. I like that most of the things in the equipment table have no mechanical description but are merely plot tokens to be negotiated with the GM on a case-by-case basis.




The Rabble List

1. Yowing Knife: the tool with which slates are trimmed - d4, shoddy, unwieldy. 5 groats
2. Cruke: shepherd's crook - d4, long, shoddy, 3 groats
3. Clotting beetle: a long handled hammer for breaking clods in the field - d6, hefty, shoddy, 10 groats
4. Maddock-hoe: a digging tool, a mattock - d6, hefty, unwieldy, 7 groats
5. Barnet: a cart whip - d2, articulated, long, 12 groats
6. Threshal: threshing flail - d6, articulated, unwieldy, 10 groats
7. Brummock: short curved knife for hedging - d4, short, shoddy, 4 groats
8. Fourgeon: wooden fork - d4, shoddy, 5 groats
9. Hod: spatulate trowel for wrangling mortar- d4, short, shoddy, 5 groats
10. Snathing Axe: small axe for snathing - d6, short, shoddy, 8 groats
11. Huggie-staff: staff with iron hook for fish, d6, long, unwieldy, 7 groats
12. Kent: spiked staff used by shepherds for leaping ditches - d4, long, shoddy, 1 groat
13. Muckrake: for raking muck - d6, shoddy, unwieldy,  6 groats
14. Battledore: a flat wooden paddle instrument used as a mangle substitute - d4, shoddy, 3 groats
15. Kavel-Mell: sledge-hammer for breaking stones - d8, heftyunwieldy, 15 groats
16. Sluff Spade: wooden spade with metal-reinforced blade - d6, hefty, shoddy, unwieldy, 5 groats
17. Hack-hook: curved hook with a long handle for hedging: - d8, long, shoddy, 12 groats
18. Cluncheon: a cudgel - d4
19. Flesh-axe: cleaver, d6, short, shoddy, 8 groats
20. Tendle Knife: a knife for cutting firewood or turf like a billhook - d4, shoddy, groats
21. Oxter-staff: a wooden crutch - d4, shoddy, 2 groats
22. Drowning Knife: large blade on a pole for cutting ditches - d8, unwieldy, shoddy, 20 groats
23. Meathook: a meathook - d4, short, 3 groats
24. Klot: A hoe used to scrape up mud - d6, unwieldy, shoddy, 7 groats
25. Beaming Knife: tanner's knife - d3, short, 4 groats
26. Prong Spade. digging fork with three thick prongs - d6, unwieldy, shoddy, 10 groats
27. Draige: iron hook on a chain for pulling down burning thatch - d6, articulated, unwieldy, 12 groats
28. Dunnuk: dung fork - d6, unwieldy, shoddy, 15 groats
29. Clip-shires: iron shears - d3, short, shoddy, 12 groats
30. Gleavie: barbed eel spear - d6, shoddy, 13 groats
31. Gavelock: iron crowbar - d6 hefty, unwieldy, 15 groats
32. Mash-mungle: an instrument used in brewing to stir the malt - d4, shoddy, 1 groats
33. Lang-saw: a saw - d4, shoddy, unwieldy, 18 groats
34. Grafe-hook: sickle - d4, short, shoddy, 5 groats
35. Broacher: A very large, sharp-pointed knife - d6, shoddy, 10 groats
36. Brand: a flaming torch - d4, on fire, 1 groat

* It should perhaps be noted that I am aware stuff didn't break so frequently in real life but I am concerned with genre emulation here. It is, after all, the Dung Ages.

It occurs to me that I'd like to use a perverse version of the Chekhov's Gun principle to incorporate procedural world-building into the initial character creation phase (more on this another time maybe) such that purchasing a sluff spade precipitates events into reality such that you might have to save a peasant family from the aftermath of a bonnacon's fecal onslaught or purchasing a battledore generates a spectral Washer-at-the-Ford who needs help with laundering the clothes of those she loved and slew. Such fairytale nonsense appeals to me but these "weapons" are so useful they probably don't need such stuff.

Edit: My old post on using a copper standard is of relevance here.