Six Secret Books

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YO

I'm going to start pushing out some these little baby bird posts that never really grew to a decent size but just sat in my draft folder demanding that I throw up some insects into them.

Oh Fuck , also keep forgetting to mention you can use the code on the following PEECHO print on demand books:

 Frosty_12495 (might only work with Fire On The Velvet Horizon) or

Frosty_60310 (ditto but for NooFutra)

(Peecho makes it a bit of nightmare to keep revenues separate or distinct so 2 books 2 different accounts.)

to get 20% off. The email said best order by the 4th December to get books by Christmas so that's already completely buggered to damnation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(LINKS TO PEECHO BOOKs CHECK OUT IN THE HEADER ↑↑↑↑↑↑

Anyway look I wanted to glue some MILD content on to that greasy CONSUMMATION bait and other stuff kept happening.


OTHER NEWS

been making various SMALL ENTITYS

There might even be a world building post at some stage. I have zero concrete plans other than making a bunch of these things but we'll see if any ideas stick in my head long enough for A COHERENCY.

ANYWAY
1d6 books, did it need to be a table? Well why have a list when it can be a table and a list? Are you NEW? IF SO hi.

1. Hand written book, with various splotches , stains and repairs. Resembles an encyclopedia in contents Most extensively stained first chapter. The real book of value is read by using the first chapter to learn which stain or smot corresponds to which word. Learning the book of stains gives insight into the secret weaknesses, failings and hypocrisies of the world

2. Odd barked  dead tree, actually a giant scroll written on extremely resident  translucent paper (skin of legendary eel), rolled up into a tube. What appears to be bark is the interlayed words

3. An injury to the world itself , was sewn shut by a single golden hair of a saint. Unpicking this stitching opens the wound , letting horrors sneak into the world, but a great book of wisdom is written length ways along the hair, requiring an ingenious lens or ant(s) servant(s) to be read

4. Ink poured into a human brain, the brain then dried , and cut into fine sections reveals a singular tome

5. A great book, a monolith, yet turgid, documenting a thousand years of successions and slow regime changes. Each of its thick pages is actually part of singular piece of paper, folded concertina style. Slitting off the spine and unpicking the stitching reveals the occulted book written on the inside folds of each page. It reveals the conspiring , stratagems and tactical betrayals that was the engine behind this dry history . Furthermore it shows that each event , however mundane or anodyne seeming, was an advancement of a purpose most sinister. 

5. A book with covers so wide and tall, that they could be repurposed for a door or modest dining table.
It is splayed open and a thriving hive of bees has ensconced itself in-between ,over and around each page. However removing the bees and their wax-industry would show each page is blank. Instead the honeycomb cells formed directest on the page hold the letters, each a sluggish black bee larvae, part ink and part grub-flesh.

6.This book has been burned to ash but still holds its shape. A single breath will cause it to collapse into irregular soot. However by mixing that soot with water and using it as ink, the book can be recreated, each page arriving in a dream. The trick is each page gets dreamed up by a different person, and only they will be able to recreate it using the ink. Each page describes a different , accurate , destructive prophecy , with the last page revealing the cataclysm that will again destroy this book by fire.

NooFutura available for purchase

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NOOFUTURA

 

NooFutura the weird fantasy cyberpunkesque toolbox/overgrown zine/ setting guide / barely coherent vapourware book I wrote for the Mothership rpg is live for buying.

I went with Peecho, a print on demand company, which , after a very moderate search, I've found to be the best print quality for price.

It doesn't have any of my art in it , as originally it was an opportunity to just get paid to write something without having to worry about any other aspect of the project. However it proceeded to have an incredibly messy development which resulted in me taking on various other roles in the project. (I will do a "how the sausage was made" as a follow up post to this in a week or so and go into a bit more depth about that). One of those roles was art direction and the subsequent artists for the project were Amanda Lee Frank ( instagram ) and Sam Mamelli (also instagram). So that's whose stuff you are seeing on this page right now.

So before we get to links, I need to point out that
 Peecho doesn't have much in the way of an online shop front , instead it just gives you shareable links , that drop the clicker straight into the checkout.

 So as well as this post serving as the shop front , I'll make a permanent page at the top of this blog , beside the Peecho Velvet Horizon page .


If you want a quick look through the contents here's a preview pdf: CLICK ME

 

LINKS FOR PURCHASING:

EDIT: Peecho's phone checkout menu is kinda ass, and it doesn't show the prices so I'll include them here as of 24/4/22

Magazine

( 21.83 us $ not including shipping)

 

Softcover

 (28.01 us $ not including shipping )

Hardcover

 (39.00 us $ not including shipping)

 PDF

(5.00 us $ )

(via itch.io) 

Here's some (basic) photos of the binding on the magazine & hardcover format

Leucrotta

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A break in the silence to show some photos:

The Mothership zine(?) I got commissioned to write is very close to release. That's me holding on to the test print . It's got some stuff that needs correcting before it can go live, but probably about month away? It was kinda of nightmare from start to finish? It's me doing a take on shadowrun but trying to be less tolkien , more "new-weird", less cyberpunk 1980 and more cyberpunk 2019. 

Well , I say "2019" but it felt like every 3 months I would hear about some new fresh way the internet and modern technology were being alarming , so the longer it went without release , the more glaring the absence of <rpgified version of current alarming problem>.
I think I'm extremely fair from being able to accurately capture the current zeitgeist anyhow so it's basically a grab bag of weird spins on weird niche problems. Actually there's nothing about touch screens being shit in there. Fuck I should've included that.  I've managed to avoid having a touch screen phone for so long and now I have one and I don't think I've ever done anything on it without it feeling awkward and difficult. I guess if that next gen haptic feedback the switch doesn't use and the ps5 was trying to impress people about with, if that takes off maybe they can make a touch screen phone that's mimics pressing a button with a 95% accuracy.

Which sounds good but imagine typing a keyboard where 1 in 20 taps doesn't do anything. That's fucking touch screens.

Anyway , it's for Mothership but it's a zine so it assumes you will just pick out the bits you like and ignore the rest, so you should just do that. Also Mothership just had a kickstarter for a 2nd edition and this is written for 1st edition. No worries. 

Oh it's just going straight to print on demand, likely just Peecho as I found a cheaper + better quality softcover option on there than at lulu. So no kickstarter, you'll just be able to buy the thing.

If people turn out to like it a lot and get a lot of use out of it, yet want it expanded upon and updated for mothership 2, potentially a new book could be created using the kickstarter model. 

However I don't plan on going to that trouble unless its obvious how the new book can fulfil a need or function that this release doesn't manage to.

The pdf of it was going to have some extra functionalities like hyperlinking but like much else about this project , that had fallen through , and it's just going to have the bare minimum for a pdf.
But the good news is that means it will be available at a price suitable for a no-thrills pdf zine, i.e pay-what-you-want.

 

 Anyway I've been messing about making small scale things, being making a lot of modular d&d terrain that will be featured in a huge photo post at some point.

But I also made a Leucrotta using wire form , knead-it, coffee lids and construction adhesive. 

Decided to change the head, sorry I didn't document about 5 steps between above and below.

Weapon Breakage In Darksun

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 Really still unsure how to reintegrate this blog back into the Things That Get Done.

I've got a few different ideas for how to change what I do with it so it becomes relevant for me again.
Possible when I start running d&d again (aiming for January in the new year) I'll use it as way of codifying dm prep?

Anyway I have a back log of post drafts, so the current version of this blog might just me hastily doing the bare minimum with a draft post? I can't get over how trying to do anything more will take hours.

 So was talking about Dark Sun and its weapon breakage system got mentioned.

Basically it had a weapon breakage system that was terrible and I'm not sure if anyone used it.

The idea was to encourage players to be improvising or scavenging more. Or make them really feel like they were using bone and wood? Trouble is a lot of campaigns have the dm feel obligated to provide decent magical weapons, and in Dark Sun that often means steel weapons , and then bam the whole weapon breakage system goes out the door.

So what are some ways to push the campaign in that direction of players breaking and improvising weapons?

One:

Player facing rule:

Any damage roll with a weapon of "breakable material" can have the dice flipped to its opposite side, in exchange for breaking the weapon. So 1 on a d6 can be turned into a 6, a 3 on a 12 into a 10.

(could also let players sacrifice a piece of armour to flip a die rolled on them? Light armour is one piece provides +2 ac, medium armour +4 ac is two piece, heavy armour is +6 ac and is three pieces. Losing a piece of armour moves it down a category.  

Let monster parts or other scavenged bits be repurposed as armour  , like hollowing out a kank head gives a helmet (1 piece) etc. )

Two

Sort of dm facing but then is also player facing?

so replace most magical items being found in creature lairs instead with various creature parts functioning as limited use weapons and armour with special properties

So you kill an agony beetle, its antenna can used for a whip that does 1d10 psychic damage, but drops a die size for each successful hit or fumble.

Encourage players to experiment and creative with what they find by letting it giving various temporary or 1 off effects.

Anyway that's the idea, I normally expand upon my rule ideas too much and add too much gradients or whatever, and these posts take up too much time. So trying to stay more efficient = more posts?

Kickstarter Cognition Snare, 8th part of the Hexahedron of the Monks of Flame

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Just 5 Days remain for the kickstarter  , with Patrick dropping some key pieces of art on each of the remaining days

but for me, I'm trying to get a few more pieces created so I'll be sticking to the just doing these rooms. If this is the first post you've clicked on, go here to read the introduction.

The Most Recent Room that Patrick has done is accessible by clicking on the start of this very sentence wow.

now today's post is

ROOM 13 THE LECTERN

Most Obvious Thing:

Lectern room with flimsy looking pew seating all facing east wall where there's a podium, and a circular plinth set into the wall.

It is displaying a statue of a robed man with a flaming orb for a head , arms held out stretched on either side of him , one holding a sickle , the other holding a battle axe.

There's pew wedged in beside the statue, apparently preventing it from rotating back into the wall. Bit of several broken pews are piled up near.

A morose looking young man, looking like a sloppily dressed wizard equipped for travel, is doing something magical to the statue.

Beside him is a scarecrow with one of its hands a dagger.

Further Details:

 The pew won't hold for very long, snapping most likely shortly after the party enters the room. The plinth then rotates into the wall ,  rotating a statue of cowled man , his head bowed , and with his cowl having ash pouring from it like a shower head. He holds a spade and a stick of charcoal. The plinth will then continue to rotate alternating the statues . 

This will fuck up what the wizard (Cymin Gutwagon) was doing , causing him tocurse , and him and the scarecrow (via his verbal commands ) will drag another pew and jam the plinth from turning again. He'll then have to redo the chalk diagrams , realign the bottles, extinguish and relight the candles etc. The purpose of this ritual is to transfer the rare form of flame elemental in this statue's head into a large glass bottle , a job he has been assigned by his master, as he is a barely competent apprentice who tends to mess a lot up.

This wizard had heard about disruption here and sent his apprentice to obtain the only thing he figured he would be able to get it. If he's successful the wizard himself will try and obtain things of greater value from this place.

The plinth turns by an endlessly walking boulder located beneath it. 

A foot pedal near the speakers podium connects the plinth to the rotating axle when pressed, and its currently always depressed because the speakers podium has been knocked over backwards on top of it (presumably by a panicking monk ).  Move the podium off the foot pedal , plinth stops turning.

Cymin thinks the statues are endlessly rotating due to the time irregularity and hasn't tried any problem-solving deeper than wedging pews in between the plinth and the wall. 

Cymin Gutswagon has the personality of a  fatalistic sullen not to bright teenager , he only seems come alive when directly interacting with elementals, and presence tends to calm them down.

If attacked he has only the simple animated scarecrow with a knife hand for protection,  however he has 3 applications of Enlargement dust and he'll use one on the scarecrow before scurrying for cover and using a wand of ungulation on the remaining pews.  The effect of the wand is to  turn inanimate objects  into belligerent cattle like creatures. It has 12 charges.

 

 

6th Part Of Kick Starter Cognition Snare, The Hexahedron of the Flame Monks

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RAH RAH RAH kickstarter
TAA TAA TAA TAAA room by room dungeon

 The room Patrick just did was here

 

ROOM 5

Most Obvious Thing

 Beached Time-Whale! Some bastard harpooned him right in his Tempituitary gland and he dropped out of the astral plane in the middle of this hexahedron causing the problems with the seasons. This whale fills up atleast half the room. The room apparently was some kind of dormitory , with simple cots and cupboards that are now smashed to splinters , with the robes, washing bowls etc all festooned around the room.

The Time-Whale looks like a Whale (!) , but also a lot like a drunk person trying to draw a caterpillar.

It is a whole mess of hard to describe colours and has an elaborately barbed harpoon stuck above its right eye.

Details:

The whale is confused and freaking out but if the harpoon is removed it will be able to phase out back to the astral plane. The whale crashing here is what fucked up the seasonal transition, however even if the whale phases out it it will take another seasonal transition for the Hexahedron to reset itself.

 Unfortunately the whale is only as smart as not that bright dog and in a weird environment and in pain.

Its main defense is winding time back , so if its approached quickly , threatened , or attacked it will wind time back (in the immediate area) to just before that action was attempted.

Attempting to cross the room will freak the whale out enough to "time cancel" the action unless its done very slowly and calmly.

 Removing the harpoon will require either a lot of brute force (hurting the whale), or delicate applied knowledge of either machinery (the harpoon is a nightmare of byzantine hinging barbs) or surgery. 

(not hurting the whale but most definitely freaking it out unless its distracted or calmed down in some way)

The Harpoon:

The harpoon is the size of a polearm, does 1d20 damage but won't reduced something hitpoints below 1.  It's completely bloody awkward to use however , and trying to use it like a regular weapon gives -5 to hit.

However, because its designed to harpoon time-whales , and thus needs to bypass their time-rewind defense by skipping ahead to a place in time where it has stabbed the target.

To active this ability one just needs to speculate about attacking something with the harpoon, it will then suddenly have already impaled the target . 

Kickstarter Cognition Snare: Hexahedron of the Monks of Flame : The Fouth Part

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As the kickstarter continues so does this room by room dungeon

 The most recent room was here

 

 

ROOM 3

 Most Obvious Thing:

The north , south and west walls have trench of ash in front of them with odd looking bare golden trees emerging out of them.

 There's a 50% chance when the room is entered of it either being of Flame or of Ash. 

If it is of Flame then there's a great cloud of burning gas around the branches and roiling along the ceiling. It burns like a dirty gas flame, mostly blue with ribbons of yellow and the branches of the trees still visible through . 

If it is of Ash , there's no flame cloud, but a cold wind will rise from nowhere, whipping along the surface of the ash trench , making a simulacrum of snow drifting in the snow.

 Details available with further consideration:

The reason the trees are odd looking are they entirely (and artfully) constructed from human bones coated with a valuable amount of gold. They also might be hot enough to cause burns to the touch , depending on how long the flame cloud has been present (see context).

The flame cloud , if present., appears to have purple flames among it to, and these resemble the wings of large butterflies (2 foot wingspan)

The ash wind , however, instead has periodic movement under the ash , like something is swimming in there (which something is).

 Every 5 rounds  the flame cloud dissipates   , and the ash wind starts, which then continues for 5 rounds before the flame cloud bursts into life again.  This will cool down the bone trees so they could be touched without causing damage but then cool them down to the point they will cause damage from being so cold.

This is a ludicrous scenario as far as read world physics is concerned but there is at least 3 sources of bullshit involved , the bones are slightly haunted , belonging to former monks whose remains have deteriorated beyond the state of the ones in room 8, magic is involved in the construction, there's elemental present in both the flame cloud and the ash. 

Assume the trees do 1d6 fire or cold damage to anyone touching them on the 4th or 5th round of the Flame/Ash and d.m call on the possibility for wearing protective gear and getting less damage, or making prolonged contact on rounds 3 (maybe a d4?).

If a branch is broken off from the bone tree , this interferes with the magic that makes it cool down/ heat up and it will stay at its current temperature for 5 minutes. This is just to reward any players who think of breaking off bits of the tree to hit the guardians of this room with them. 

 

Context and details:

 Anyone stepping or falling in the trenches will sink extremely quickly to the bottom of the room through the ash.

The ash trenches are 7 foot deep and continue a "square" (see map) underneath the middle of the room, so if you were to fall into the trench and try and walk along the bottom and climb up when you hit a wall , you would have a ceiling over  your head and be in trouble.

The trees go all the way to the bottom of the room, with 7 feet above the ash and 7 feet concealed.

The room guardians are Flaming Glass-body Butterflies and Razor-boned Skeletal Eels , lesser known Elemental spirits that can be compelled with magic to hang around and attack people messing with an location or object.
Which in this case is the bone trees and the ash trench.

The Butterflies only manifest when the flame cloud is present, and when it dissipates, their wings disappear and they cling to the ceiling and become inert. Their bodies are difficult to see without the wings, and someone would have to be specifically looking at a particular patch of purple fire to notice the lingering visual disturbance of the body clinging the ceiling afterwards. 

 If the bodies are taken outside the room the butterflies can't manifest in them. They valuable as weird trinkets, but more valuable to alchemists or wizards that deal with elementals or summoning.

They attack by swooping down from the cloud and leaving a flaming trail behind them.

There's a total of 8 present. When the flame cloud reappears, any damage done to the butterflies is healed and any defeated ones return to life, unless their body has been removed from the room or destroyed with cold damage (of which they take double damage)

Their ash equivalent  are 5 feet long skeletal eels with delicate looking (but with steel strength) razor sharp ribs that extend out as they dive from one side of the room to another, slicing anything in their path.

Once the ash wind is about to dissipate, they will try to be already in the ash itself when this happens. They will become inert eel skeletons when the flame cloud present. Like the butterflies they will restore any damage or destroyed eel when the wind returns, unless that particular body is destroyed with fire or removed from the room.

Their bodies are valuable in much the same way as the  glass butterfly bodies.