Old Aalia - players' map + adventuring locales

Ok so as planned I've finished off the annotations on the campaign map, and added some sites of special interest. These are represented by numbered stars on the map.

Here's what they denote:

1. The sunken palaces of Garm.
2. The dungeons of Thraal.
3. The Eld tree.
4. Fastness of the giant king.
5. Grbla -- City of the swine-folk.
6. Realm of the Ja.
7. The desolation of Orb.
8. The scintillating peak.
9. The sphere of Agk-H'ral.
10. The caverns of Jib.
11. The breachlands.
12. Feremhaal -- City of statues.
13. Shadda's dominion.
14. The pillars of prophecy.
15. The tower of death. (With thanks to Carter Soles ;)
    

More details on these, and the other locations on the map, to come!

Old Aalia - players' map

Here's an almost-finished version of a new campaign map I'm working on. The original was drawn in coloured pens, then scanned in, cleaned up in Gimp, and vectorised and text added in Inkscape.

The next step will be adding some more "sites of interest" to the map. I have a list of about 15 unusual locales (potential sites for adventures), which I'll probably add to the map simply as numbered stars or something like that.

Finally I need to write up snippets of info about each of the cities and adventuring locales to give the players some hints as to what's what.

The map I posted previously, of the Harln-Halladan region, can be seen just to the right of the text "Old Aalia" in the new larger scale map.

Looking for a random table

I just remembered an excellent post I saw somewhere ages ago, but which I now can't for the life of me track down. It was a method of fleshing out a campaign world and simultaneously producing nice bits of interesting background for characters. The idea was that for each race you have a set of tables like "most halflings X, Y, Z", "some halflings A, B, C", "rarely halflings J, K, L", and so on. That's the gist of it, I just can't quite remember the details.

If anyone knows where to find it, please do let me know!

Fun with body parts

A fun little 4th level necromancer spell for your entertainment...

The rest of this post is designated Open Gaming Content according to the Open Gaming License.

Detach / Graft
Level: 4
Duration: See below
Range: Touch

Casting this spell and touching a body part causes it to detach from its owner, who can then control the part as an independent entity. Thus hands may crawl around, legs may hop, and even heads can be detached and rolled. The detached body part can be controlled for up to 1 turn per level of the caster, after which it must be retrieved and reattached to the body (which happens automatically). If the body part is not reattached during the spell's duration it dies.

Using the reverse version, graft, body parts lost in any way may be replaced either by reattaching the missing part or by grafting on replacement parts cut from another living or recently dead creature. The graft is permanent, but the recipient (which may be the caster himself) must make a transformative shock roll. If the roll fails the graft does not take, and will wither and fall off in 1d6 weeks.

Victorian London guidebook

A little recommendation for anyone interested in running games in Victorian London: I've just been doing a bit of research on sourcebooks for the period, and discovered the wonderful looking "Baedeker's London and its Environs 1900". It's a hardback facsimile of a real guidebook from the time, and is readily available from amazon etc. And it's 512 pages, so I imagine it's pretty comprehensive!

Originally I was looking for something specifically RPG related, possibly the out-of-print "Cthulhu by Gaslight", but really I just want a book with detailed maps, and information about notable places, where one can buy things, and so on. It looks like this book will be perfect for the job! I just ordered it, so will post further information as to its RPG-worthiness when I receive it.

Look what I got!

Just received in the post yesterday...

The really great thing is that I've only played CoC twice, and both times the d20 version, so this majestic tome is all new to me!

Horror in Victorian London here I come :)

Thoughts on wild magic

Though it's not a class I've ever seen used in practice, I've always been smitten with the idea of the wild mage -- a magic-user who lives on the dangerous and unpredictable side of the arcane. The only place I've actually seen a wild mage class presented was in the AD&D 2nd edition Tome of Magic. The class didn't appear in AD&D 1e (as far as I know) and also seems to have never made it into the later versions of the game (again, as far as I know -- please correct me if I'm wrong here).

This lack is something I hope to remedy by including guidelines for wild magic in my work-in-progress book.

My initial thoughts are going along a different track to the ToM wild mage, which presented a d100 table of (fairly extreme) wild surge effects, with a 1 in 20 chance of a wild surge occurring each time the wizard casts a spell. Personally, I'd like a system where wild surges are more common but less extreme. And instead of the fixed table of effects, I'd like to design a system which taps the endless (d∞!) creative potential of the DM & players. So here are the beginnings of my thoughts on how this might work.

The basics

• Any magic-user can choose to be a wild mage. Usually this choice would be made at character creation, and could never be altered, but existing MUs may be allowed to opt to be wild mages if the DM introduces the option in the middle of a campaign.
• Magic-user sub-classes like illusionists can also opt to be wild mages (or wild illusionists, in this case).
• Whenever a wild mage casts a spell, the player must roll 1d6 & 1d12. The d6 determines whether a wild surge occurs, which is indicated by an odd number. If a wild surge does occur, then the d12 indicates what happens.

Table 1, 1d6

1. Wild surge, consult table 2.
2. Spell works as intended.
3. Wild surge, consult table 2.
4. Spell works as intended.
5. Wild surge, consult table 2. Spell remains in memory (can be cast again).
6. Spell works as intended plus stays in memory (can be cast again).

Table 2, 1d12

1. Spell functions as if the caster were 1d4 levels higher than normal.
2. Spell functions as if the caster were 1d4 levels lower than normal. (If effective caster level ends up less than one then the spell has no effect.)
3. Spell has normal effect plus the effect of a randomly chosen spell of the same level.
4. Spell has normal effect plus another randomly chosen memorized spell is activated unwillingly.
5. Spell manifests as intended and a randomly chosen spell of the same level appears in the caster's mind in its place. (The caster is able to cast this spell, even if it is not one that he usually could.)
6. Spell fizzles with no effect.
7. The spell's target or area of effect (where applicable) changes.
8. Randomly chosen spell of same level activates instead.
9. Randomly chosen spell of one level higher activates instead.
10. A randomly chosen spell of level d8 manifests instead of the intended effect.
11. Cast another memorized spell instead. (If the caster has no other spells memorized, then nothing happens and the spell remains in memory.)
12. The caster loses the ability to cast spells for 1d4 rounds or 1d4 turns (whichever the Labyrinth Lord deems appropriate).

So the main creativity of the system comes when the intended effect is replaced by a randomly chosen spell. This would require a lot of quick creative thinking on the part of the DM, which I reckon would be a lot of fun! For example, what happens when a sleep spell surges and is replaced by hold portal?. The intention is that the DM wouldn't have to follow the random spell's description to the letter, but could simply use it as a creative kick-start. In the example of sleep transmuting into hold portal, perhaps there are no doors close by, and the DM could interpret it as locking shut the mouths or eyes of all creatures in range.

As I say, this is all just a beginning, so I'd be very interested to hear anyone's thoughts on what I've described or on wild magic in general.