Introduction To The Armies of Adel
Posted: November 29, 2011 Filed under: Campaigns, Fluff/Inspiration, Other Systems, RPG, Spirits Of Eden 4 Comments »For most people in Adel, a stay in the military is a respectable, character-building experience – mostly because no large conflicts are currently ongoing. Most military groups allow a person to serve two years and then decide whether to retire from service, or make a career of it. As such, almost every village and every town has plenty of men and women who’ve picked up blades and loaded bullets for their nation once in their lives, and each nation has many more who remain, ready to give their blood for the honor of their nation and the protection of their people. Military characters are an archetype that can yield great stories within Adel, and in this article we’ll look in brief at the armies of the Five Nations, and the unique character of each army and some of its foundational ideas as institutions and emblems of their nations. These are not the only military forces in the world – the smaller powers of the eastern and western seas have their armies, some of which may even be able to stand against the forces of the continental peoples, should they ever come to blows. But the five nations are the most iconic.
Fantastic Locations: Zuri Makavana’s Potion Shop
Posted: November 24, 2011 Filed under: Fluff/Inspiration, NPCs, Other Hobby, Other Systems, RPG, Spirits Of Eden 2 Comments »Located right around the corner from the western gate to the vast, central Andalian market city of Impel, Zuri’s Potion Shop was established a year ago in PC2011. It is a little and somewhat crowded shop and barely breaks even most of the time, though it has its good months. It is known mostly through Zuri’s own modest fame, and that of her cohort Claudette Dorje. The wide selection of potions and trinkets, along with other strange services granted in the shop, ensure Zuri some continued business, even though a lot of it is of a kind Zuri wouldn’t actually want, especially not repeatedly.
Worldbuilding Diary: Layers
Posted: November 21, 2011 Filed under: Campaigns, D&D 4e, Fluff/Inspiration, Legacy D&D, Other Hobby, Other Systems, RPG, Spirits Of Eden, Worldbuilding 3 Comments »I have talked about “Layers” before, in brief, and probably in other web sites and not this one. There is a price to pay in memory when you make disparate comments about your projects on other people’s blogs. Anyway. I write The World of Adel using a three-tiered system of Layers, dividing topics of interest for different groups of people. You can read as many or as few Layers as you want to get started playing a game. This way, I reward greater interest in the setting and greater time commitment, but I do not penalize lesser interest – you can run a perfectly fine game off of Layer 1.
So let’s look at how I arrange these layers. This article will contain a lot of my opinions, which tend to wildly diverge from conventional gamer culture. I do not say these things to offend, just as my observations, and to explain why I did certain things, and why I advocate certain things. These diaries are just as much about the setting as about me – since the setting is a product of myself, and what I want to see in my gaming and hopefully in gaming as a whole.
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Essence: The Adelian Soul
Posted: November 17, 2011 Filed under: Fluff/Inspiration, Other Systems, RPG, Spirits Of Eden Leave a comment »When the last Cataclysm tore apart the world, it released massive amounts of energy from its core. This seemingly gaseous stream of particles spread across the sky and fell upon the land, embedding itself in everything living that remained after the destruction. The disparate energies of the World Soul also collided with one another, coalescing into the transcendent bodies of the Spirits. This soulstuff bled out of the world is known as Essence, and its complete global saturation of Adel helps in large part to explain the unique characteristics of this world, its people and the deities which uphold its natural structures.
In this article we’ll look at Essence and what it means and does to the Adelian people.
Pilgrimage (Short Story)
Posted: November 13, 2011 Filed under: Fiction, Fluff/Inspiration, RPG, Spirits Of Eden 2 Comments »Amala always rose with the sun, crawling out of bed when the first lights of the day slipped through the window of her room. Because she slept on the third floor of the temple, and her room faced the dawning sun, she was usually the first one to awaken. Thus she had morning duties for the temple. She donned her simple brown robes, tying them right over left with a black sash, and clipped her hair to the back of her head, readying herself for garden work.
Atop her bedside drawer, her almanac was open to the center page, folded out into a calendar. Red ink circled the day’s date, the 27th of Darkmoon. Amala closed the almanac and dropped it into the bags near the door on her way out. She had spent the night preparing those bags. With her almanac, they were at last full and ready for the trip.
She made her way down the brown brick stairs to the temple’s ground floor, and exited the structure through an open-air hallway lined with sculpted columns. Amala departed the pilgrim’s way, out the front of the temple. Already she took in the air of the sacred grounds with nostalgic feeling, peering into the forest as if an eternity had passed. She had yet to leave, but she already felt gone, a far-away visitor to her own home. Halfway to the hill when she noticed her mistake. She was not headed for the gardens – she was leaving the grounds. Silently she chided herself for exiting the wrong way.
Around the side of the pilgrim’s exit a little stone path led her to the western exit, distinguished by its fountain and the watering pump, and the stone path to the gardens. Amala took one of the watering cans hung outside for use by the Oblates, and filled it with water from the hand pump. The orange dawn crept upward. She ambled to the garden, water sloshing in her can as she traversed the stones down the hillside, taking in the sounds of the cicada in the trees.
Amala wondered if Sargasso’s mornings would be this peaceful and pleasant.
Wandering Monsters High School Kickstarter
Posted: November 13, 2011 Filed under: News, Products, RPG 1 Comment »I found on my twitter feed (and have been retweeting since) a fairly humorous looking kickstarter for a game called Wandering Monsters High School, which to my understanding is essentially a high school/magic school setting for D&D style monsters, with abilities that are graded, and a wide variety of monsters to play. The game even has a free version out, to which this new version will be an improvement, according to the author – so you can get the basic gist of the game for free, and be assured that the new one will be even better than that. I have a soft spot for simple games with quirky premises, like Maid: RPG and a bunch of unfinished games on 4chan’s /tg/ board. Wandering Monsters High School will likely not be anything like any of those, which is probably a big plus for most of you, and probably for me as well! Check out the Kickstarter here, it could use your pledgemonies.
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