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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Shawn Tomkin's Ironsworn series. Delve I regularly use for setting up point crawls. Ironsworn/Starforged/Sundered Isles have great collections of random tables, I use the book thematically most fitting for the situation at hand. The core tables of Action, Theme, Descriptor and Focus all get heavy use.

    Kevin Crawford's [SOMETHING] Without Number series have awesome tables as well. These however get more use when I need more detail. Prep stuff. Again most thematic book is picked first but I do have used Cites (cyberpunk) for fantasy cities.

    When I want to create background for "medieval fantasy" characters I pick up Burning Wheel and burn something up. Through that I get a good selection of relevant skills to sue (for flavor)

    Anything related to cosmos and mythology I say HELLO! to my growing collection of Glorantha material. From cult books to magic tomes and Atlases.



  • The chosen one trope hands down all the time. I would love to get through Wheel of Time but I cannot stand chosen

    spoiler

    Rand and everyone around him is

    That series I have put down so many times. Having a "hero" protagonist that is essentially unkillable (because they are the title character) I don't mind, Conan for example. We all know Conan won't die because there is always another story about him. But he is not fated for anything, no grand destiny he has to achieve or the cosmos suffers.

    Second is also another that has been touched upon - the goodness of divine authority. Especially if it is light flavored. And nobles divine right to rule set as a standard of good etc. Give me stories of folks fecking up the system and creating their own anarchistic communities while continuing to feck up the system.


  • Another Himedere checking in. I love setting up situations where the players and/or the characters squirm in anguish about what to do.

    My favorite so far was an estranged princess living as a man and hostel owner. He had turned his back on the throne and wanted little to do with it. As a bonus he was the only child of the king's only remaining child. Fast forward a bit and he needed a (legal) favor from the king. Went to court and met with his grandfather. The king would do it, no strings attached if a) he returned to court and resumed his duties as prince and b) sired an heir.

    There were a good thirty minutes of the players anguishing if he should accept while going deep into character motivations and the setting. During that game I don't think I did as much concrete worldbuildning as during those thirty minutes. I loved it, the players loved it. Great time.





  • In a game a while ago there was a FtM prince turned hosteller. Left court and royal duties due to disillusioned and wanting to do actual good. But then they were a PC and quickly needed some help from granddaddy the king. I wondered what the king wanted in exchange. And it was clear - the royal line continued. In other words get an heir.

    I checked with the player that this was an OK path comfort and safety wise. Afterall one way to solve it was for the prince to get pregnant, force upon themselves a gender they did not want etc. We talked about it and had regular checkins.

    The moment that made this an awesome world building moment was when I realized magic impregnation wasn't an impossibility. Nor pregnancies without the biological bits. Because Magic!

    Unfortunately we never to to that part before scheduling did its thing.










  • The mythology of my world is an interpretation of Glorantha. Pretty much near eastern bronze age. So there are Gods abound, with their respective cults. Most/all cults have rites and mysteries for those deeply devoted. None have came up in play so they are secrets even for me.

    A set of secrets/mysteries that I've started working on are the Nysalorian secrets. According to Gloranthan lore when Nysalor was born/created Time stopped to allow the birth. So yeah Nysalor is a big deal. The Nysalorian secrets I'm divining are about the nature of Godhood. I don't know how deep I want to go with them, I could make them the very blueprints of Creation. Perhaps I should tie them to my meta-loredump mystic society/cult Followers of the Blind Idiot God.






  • My world(s) tend to be very dark age, very migration period. This is regardless of technology. Community matters, your word and deed matters and people tend to be accommodating of strangers. If you are a decent and capable person you can find acceptance in whatever community you desire. A wandering stranger can find their way to the upper echelons of communities. Outsourcing is then now that I think of it kinda common, but with the goal of bringing whose doing the outsourced task into the community.