text:
Echer'Naught Watcher Issue 3 (MomoCon 2017)
Echer'Naught Watcher Issue 2
Echer'Naught Watcher Issue 1
Beginning in Shaintar year 3126, the Rangers of the Greenway Road gaming group have collaborated to create an in-game publication for the city of Echer'Naught. Along the lines of the Goblin Gazzet, the E'N Watcher offers in-game news happening real-time in Echer'Naught.
Legends Awaken and Shaintar 3126
Well, I guess this makes it official. Legends Awaken is LIVE and we have an official storyline.
Timeless Sands will take us into the far west to a land of intrigue and danger. Together we will battle old enemies and new foes while discovering deeper mysteries than our world has ever known.
I do really hope you enjoy it!
As for Legends Awaken, I am excited about the prospect of joining the larger Suzerain Continuum. I know there will be many rules to iron out, but I have faith that the players and GMs are willing to work with us to create the best possible play environment.
Anyway, more news to come, so stay tuned!
Looking for Help
Hello everyone! We're looking for someone who wants to dig in and help us with our client business side by reaching out to new clients and helping oversee client project. You can decide how many hours you'd like to work. If you are interested in learning more, please contact us by emailing Gayle at email@example.com. Also, feel free to check out what we do for client work at http://savagemojo.biz/!
Suzerain Updates
Suzerain not only encompasses many settings, but also different systems, so we have a variety of places that we update our products.
There are a few places we post no matter what subtopic of Suzerain we are discussing: the Savage Mojo website, the Savage Mojo Facebook page, the Suzerain Facebook page, the Suzerain Facebook group, the Savage Mojo Google+ page, the Suzerain Google+ community, the Piazza forums, the Savage Mojo Twitter, and occasionally the RPGNet forums.
For Savage World specific posts we also go into the Official Savage Worlds Facebook group, the Savage World G+ community, and the Pinnacle forums.
Shaintar is one of the newest additions to the Suzerain realms and we have a few special places we go for that: the Shaintar website, the Shaintar: Legends Unleashed Facebook group, and the Shaintar, World of Legends G+ community.
For Pathfinder, we also hit the Paizo website, the Anachronistic Adventurers Facebook group, and the Pathfinder RPG Google+ community.
There are a variety of places to follow all the updates of Suzerain. ;)
In the long long ago, in the before times
Birmingham, UK
Sooooo its been ages (several months) since I last posted anything, which I apologise for, there are a variety of contributing factors but mainly it comes down me being disorganise and pants.
Lets catch up, back at the end of January we went to the Conception gaming con and as always I had a great time. I think other people didn't have as much fun as they struggled to get into games that interested them but I was running 7 games so didn't really experience that side of things.
I ran my usual 4 games of Feng Shui and much fun was had by all, even if the last game went from 'lets go take down the big bag guy that tried to kill us' to 'lets go to grandmas house for tea', but as it so happened the big bad decided to take grandma hostage so it all worked out in the end. Reacting to what players do is one of the great things about being a GM.
I also re-ran the 2 Sav Suz senerios I have written for cons, the Incident Response Team stuff, so the first was the pure investigation and paranoia game the second is the stealth/ combat game this year the players went more stealth than combat.
I also ran The Blessed Child which is one the Quantum Sliders scenarios, #Spoiler Warning, reading this may give away some bits of the plot#
I had a good bunch of players who really got into the RP, so much so that I dropped all of the combat encounters as they would have broken the flow and didn't suit the direction the players took. Basically the players were given a choice to make where there is no right answer and every choice has pros and cons then then had 4 hours to gather details, talk to NPCs and discuss among themselves. They seemed to have a great time going back and forth and boiling down the different gods claims and coming to the conclusion that there was no perfect choice.
At the end they had picked the god they wanted to back, one of the party had Krona Yig the eyeless tyrant riding around in his head and they seemed to have enjoyed the session.
I may have to put together a scenario for next year where they try and remove Krona Yig from their party members head.
Empire event 1 was last weekend and once I got past the serious mud fest I had a really good event. I may go on about it some more in a future post.
I feel I should do a shout out about the Neon Sanctum Kick Starter, I played a playtest of it at Conception last year and was really taken with its innovative card system, and although I am not sure about how well it will gel with my style of running I liked it enough to back it, I would recommend people check it out.
It was the 10th anniversary of Sac ConQuest...
I went to a local convention with two other Savage Mojo family members- Sarah and Curtis Lyon. It's one that all three of us have been attend for the last few years, but this one was special. It was the 10th anniversary of the gaming convention, Sac ConQuest, as well as the first year of the steampunk convention, Professor Mondo's Dangerworks Conclave. Which means that we had a lot of great special guests and events happening.
First off, for the gaming side of things, Cheyenne Wright and John Goff from Pinnacle came out to Sac ConQuest and ran a few Deadlands games as well as a Girl Genius game. I personally got to play in one of John Goff's games where I got to show off my character's awesome lack of driving and climbing skills and superb skill in gunslinging during the Deadlands adventure. It was really great having them two of them out at the con.
Another important set of guests that were present at the con were Kaja and Phil Folgio with copies of Girl Genius! On Friday night, they did a Girl Genius radio theater play called "Half a Dozen of the Othar". I didn't get to talk to either of them a lot throughout the convention (I was behind the Three Sages Games/Savage Mojo booth most of the time), but the time I did get to talk to them was absolutely wonderful.
And speaking of gaming, there were a lot of great games at the con this year. We had a full Adventurer's League, Pathfinder Society, and Open Role-playing going on. Matt Aubel ran several Dungeonlands games at the con this year, which was awesome for me to see since there haven't been as many Savage Mojo demos since Sarah, Curtis, and I started doing the vendor's table. Cheyenne Wright even dropped in on one of the games. And everyone had a great time at the games, which is the most important thing.
There were some really great special guests and events for the Steampunk side of things as well. The Diamond Rose Academie d'Arms (a fencing school in Marysville, CA) came out and were giving fencing demonstrations and lessons with sabers and rapiers. I got to do a little swordplay with a saber, which included correct footing, several strikes, and several blocks. It was really cool and someone I wouldn't mind doing more of, although I'll admit my arm hurt a little afterward.
Another great addition to the con, were the Aether Brigade, the Sacramento Steampunk Society and the League of Proper Villians. The Aether Brigade is a troupe of impromptu actors and they had a booth set up in the Vendor's hall with cool trinkets and mechanical contraptions, like a mechanical parrot which actually reacted to your touch, your voice, and your proximity. And they had a little war going with the League of Proper Villains, which was fun. However, the thing I remember the most about them was their show in Saturday night. They did a comedy show, which featured the Aether Brigade causing havoc, giving advice, arresting The Doctor, and saving the world. It was a ton of fun.
The Sacramento Steampunk Society, the League of Proper Villians, and the photographer Dan Herrera were great additions to the con, because they brought some very memorable people and setups. The Sacramento Steampunk Society had brought a setup which the put up against the wall, with a ton of Victorian and Steampunk paraphernalia which people could use as a back drop for pictures. It added to the atmosphere of the Vendor's hall. There was also Dan Herrera who was taking pictures of people in costumes and doing professional special effects on the pictures (which were totally aweomse by the way) Here is one of the pictures he did:
And to finish off, the vendor room was packed full of great people from both the gaming and steampunk side of things, with both old and new faces. Mike Zabkar (a long time Suzerain fan) from Mike's Collectables and Games was there selling a variety of gaming stuff, including Dust Tactics. Randy from Randy's House of Games was there as the sponsor of ConQuest X this year, with a great selection of games from Indie Press Revolution and Jason Walters presence as well. And there was also our table, with various products from both Three Sages Games and Savage Mojo, which meant that we had a good spread of gaming accessories, portable board games, and role-playing games raging from 1st edition D&D to Savage Worlds, and Dungeon World to Pathfinder. Of course, we had copies of the updated Savage Suzerain book with us as well as copies of Clockwork Dreams because how could we ~not~ bring Clockwork Dreams to a gaming/steampunk convention.
We also had Dava Designs who does an array of jewelry and outfits, some of which is steampunk and some of which is more universal, and all of it pretty or cool. There were many Steampunk artists and creators there like, Moonmajick and the Ninth Stitch, who do various steampunk clothing and accessories like goggles and necklaces. There was Yuly Springer's Butterfly Frillies Corsets which featured various pieces of clothing (so cute!) as well as another vendor selling Victorian (read: Victorian Steampunk) feathered pens. There was another booth who paired up a local artist Sarah Renee Straub (who did my commission of Isolde the Archer from Caladon Falls) and Amber who does Buttons and Baubles- cute Steampunk broaches and buttons.
`There are so many other vendors, events, and games that it would take me way too long to go into ~everything~ about the convention. But, it was definitely a lot of fun and there were plenty of things to do and enjoy for the gaming side of things and the steampunk side of things. Really to wrap up, the only thing I can say is that I am very much looking forward to the next convention in November where ConQuest Avalon will be doing a Time Travel theme.
- Heidi
Palace of the Lich Queen
Birmingham, UK
Hello you Savage gents and ladies, it has been a while since I posted, I feel I am being lax in my posting of stuff that I doubt people read, and for that I apologise.
I was sent the Palace of the Lich Queen document to be savaged (a lame joke but I enjoy using it) about a month ago. I was going to go into details about the various reasons my work was behind and how I pulled out all the stops to catch up, but that's not really important. The important news is that the fully Sav Suz stated version of PotLQ has gone in to be checked over and have mystical layout rituals performed over it to turn it in to a real publication.
Stating so many different styles of demigod encounter was a challenge especially when there isn't a set order (I have talked about the challenges of demigod stating before) but I am really happy with it and really like the style of the encounters, even if some were a pain to figure out from a numbers point of view.
I think you are going to like it when you see the finished product, it stays faithful to the ideas that have run throughout, without just rehashing parts 1 or 2 but tougher. I probably shouldn't say much more.
Yesterday had chance to play twilight struggle which is a great boardgame for two but can take a while if you're new to it. In the end I got trounced but it was pretty even on VP right up until the final scoring phase, a big part of my loss came down to not appreciating the importance of controlling and fortifying battle grounds towards the end of the game. Also my starting placement was poor and I didn't use the coup move enough, oh and my dice rolling sucked, I failed to pass a single space race roll for the entire game. But I enjoyed it and look forward to playing again.
Right well I am posting this while at work, so I should get moving as its gone 7pm and time to head home.
All the best
I am Baytor!
Birmingham, UK
Dungeonlands: MotLQ is coming, can't wait to see the final version. Once that is done Set Rising goes into layout so that shouldn't be too far behind, woot. I am currently at a loose end in terms of rules monkeying, there are some bits being finished up that I will need to look at soon but they haven't been sent over yet, so its super quiet for me right now.
A couple of weeks ago I posted on here about a friend of ours who needed help to get a new wheelchair. I don't know if anyone who saw my post contributed but if you did you have my eternal gratitude and if you ever run into me let me know and I will buy you a drink. They raised a thousand more than they initially asked for which is amazing and they can now look at making it even more suitable for everyday use and larping.
I am not sure if I have mentioned my love of the DC comic Hitman on here before, so here goes. I have never been a huge fan of comics and that extends to anime and manga, there is something about the medium that puts me off a bit, no idea what tho. However there are some where I think the story is so good I get past my initial reservations and just enjoy it.
I was introduced to Hitman back at uni by my house mates and really enjoyed the ones I read. More recently they have been reprinted so I have picked up the last few trade paperbacks I was missing. Today amazon asked me to rate a board game (the resistance) I bought and when I did it took me a page asking me to rate other things I had bought, which included the last 3 hitman comics.
I writing my review I got to thinking about the story and how it is different from all the other DC stuff I have seen, which might be why I like it so much. It is quite a dark setting but has lots of humour in it as well which is the sort of thing that appeals to me, it also is a story of the none spandex clad people, who are the heros of the story but aren't really heros.
That got me to thinking, yes Tommy is a Hitman, but he only goes after people he considers bad guys and how is that any different from the classic superheros. So the main difference becomes that he kills people and normal supers don't (or at least they don't kill the big bad), but then it becomes a question of how you view the situation, if Batman had killed the Joker the first time he was defeated then thousands of lives would have been saved because every time he escapes he murders more people. Maybe that's an extreme response, may it should have been after the Joker escaped and committed mass murder for the 5th time that a more final response could be considered justified.
I don't want to get into the complex morality of the situation, but I will say I don't think Tommy being a hired killer automatically means he can't also be hero, he is just a different kind of hero (as long as he sticks to his ethics).
Before I run off two quick kickstarters I am currently backing that look good and might be of interest to people.
Fallen a2p, seems to be an interesting mix of exploring rpg and tactical combat, with the combat side quiet close to the style used in the new xcom, which worked rather well I thought. This kickstarter is looking like it isn't going to reach its goal unless people jump on board, so check it out. :-)
The other is goblin quest, which looks like an awesome light hearted fun RPG, they are well into stretch goals now so worth a look.
I hope you are all well.
Daily Mojo, 08/23/14, Last Couple Days!
Void Star Studios is bringing back Tact-Tiles through Kickstarter. Tact-Tiles are a great product on a number of levels - they are sturdy, flexible, portable, and expandable. Unlike most "classic" map tiles, Tact-Tiles allows you (or your players) to draw in your own maps and dungeons. This is spectacular for minis. They are perfect for the GMs who need to design multiple locations for battles, carry them around to different houses or tables (especially at cons).
And it actually has uses those who don't play with minis as well. If you want to have your players to map out a dungeon, Tact-Tiles allows the players to map out the dungeon and expand their Tact-Tiles in the direction the dungeon goes. And as a side note, for those who love battlemats but don't like minis because you knock them over (no personal experience here :D), you can uses Xs and other such drawn markings to represent characters.
The Tact-Tiles Kickstarter only has a couple more days left and it's almost funded. You can find out more information and check out reviews on their Kickstarter Page!
Super cheeky request.
Birmingham, UK
Greetings and salutations
I am never sure is anyone reads this but if they do I am sure they have come to expect pointless waffling from me by now.
This post isn't pointless waffle it is a request, for all the lovely gamer people out there to lend a hand to a good cause.
A friend of ours, Emma, has to use a wheel chair, however she is also a huge fan of LARP, the wheel chair she has is dying and getting to the point where she cannot go to events. Her blokey Shek has found an awesome replacement which is perfect for everyday and larp use but such things are painfully expensive, so they have asked their friends if they would be willing to lend a hand getting the money together.
At this point they have raised 1850 of the 2500 they need, in about 4 hours. So they are on track to hit the target and every little helps, and if they exceed their target they can improve the battery and get heavy duty tires for it, although I still think my suggestions of adding lasers would be a better investment.
I realise that it's unlikely that anyone reading this knows Emma and Shek, and it might be cheeky of me to ask, but I know how much I struggled with everyday life and missed doing larp when my leg was knacked and that was temporary and fairly minor.
I know there are too many good casues out there and they all derverse our support, but isn't keeping a larper in a field (and away from normal people) worth the price of a bad dvd? Surely you can wait till next payday to pick up sharknado?
If you're willing to have a look and possibly help out two thoroughly lovely people click here.
Thanks guys
Put The bunny back in the box.
Birmingham, UK
The super shiny version of dungeonlands, machine of the lich queen is in the final stages. :-)
I have talked about how cool it is to see something that you worked on as a word file turned into a proper book with layout and pictures so I promise I won't go off on one about that again, bit it is pretty cool, and I am not even the writer.
Weekend before last was Empire event 3, weather was mentally hot but event was good fun. We have started doing stuff with the wealth the group acquires through it dealings, we are planning to rebuild part of a city, which is going to be ridiculously expensive, but seems like a worthwhile cause.
As always the group was great fun to hang out with, and we mostly stayed in the shade with cool drinks (cool box with bags of ice= genuis) and let the business come to us so there was lots of time for chatting. Saturday night we were lamenting the fact the nation we are part of, The League, is based on renaissance Italy which makes most of the songs we know not really appropriate, but we sang some anyway. I hadn't realized quiet how many songs about pirates I knew.
As is always the case with Empire the weather was less than ideal, but had a great event and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in LARP and is based in the UK. For a system of its size the quality of game is really high.
Bookings for the conception gaming convention rolled round again and Mr Alan did the whole midnight booking thing again, which I try to avoid as I am terrible for loosing track of time, so I am most grateful to him for that. We have a 4 bedroom lodge booked and have 7 confirmed people and 1 unsure which should be fun, especially has half of them are newbies to the con.
I figure I should start thinking about what I am going to run this year, need to come up with some new feng shui games and some Sav Suz (although I can always raid some quantum sliders adventures if I am feeling lazy). I am still debating trying to rework Sav Suz terrasque for sale, as last year the players found the dungeon raiding bit too easy. Current thinking is giving the GM a wild dice on all actions, and some more bennies, while taking the characters down a rank to where they were originally. I might also need to revisit the trap damage ratings to make them more effective.
This last week I have been prepping for the Thursday meetup mix-up game, where we run something different and mix up the gaming groups for a night. This summers game is terrasque for sale again, back by popular request, but the d&d 3.5 version as we needs about 6 GM to run it for all the tables who want to get involved.
Then this weekend is the pub meet, where a bunch of us from Thursday take over a corner of weatherspoons and play silly games till we get bored, I have picked up a copy of Resistance as it is a good social game and will go well with werewolf, saboteur, blaggard and the various drinking games played.
Right thats it for today.
Hope you are all well and super shiny
Daily Mojo, 08/05/14, White & Nerdy
How many of Weird Al's ways of being White and Nerdy are you?
Daily Mojo, 08/02/14, Galaxy Quest 2
Who else would love to see a Galaxy Quest 2?
Which one?
On one side, the trailer for the last movie in The Hobbit trilogy just got released and on the other side, The Guardians of the Galaxy is coming out in a few days. Which one are you looking forward to more?
Daily Mojo, 07/22/14, D&D
How has Dungeons and Dragons affected your life?
Daily Mojo, 07/19/14, Tact-Tiles
With the collaboration of Void Star Studios and BC Products, Tact-Tiles are back! For those you don't know what Tact-Tiles are, they are a fusion between a dry erase board and map tiles and the new versions are now dry and wet erase. The boards are in rigid pieces that connect together in order to create a map that is expandable and customizable.
They have also put together a very neat FAQ for any questions you have about the Tact-Tiles, whether you are new or old to them. So, check out their short video about the Tact-Tiles to see if they are right for you and your gaming group!
Tabletop Rules
How many of these rules applies to your gaming group?
Ramble, ramble, rant.
Birmingham UK
Greetings, it is time for another one of my rambling posts, yey.
There isn't any rules work requiring my attention at present as everyone else is either finishing up the next dungeonlands or working on upcoming projects which don't need my particular skill set yet.
One thing I did want to mention was d&d next, their basic rules have been released and there has been some interesting discussion on the gender section, and its attempt to be more inclusive. If you haven't seen this already basically it has the standard males and females are mechanical equals bit (no spawn of fashan rules here), but then also goes on to mention possibilities not covered by those two options, which I think is pretty cool of them.
I have also seen that some people think the language used could have been worded better, which may be the case, but I don't think that should detract too much from the fact that their heart was in the right place and they were obviously not intending to use terminology that some people dislike/ find offensive.
I was reading a rather unfavorable review of zombicide last night, which I found interesting. I am quite a fan of the game personally (as demonstrated in my previous post), but I freely admit it isn't perfect. But one of his points really did resonate, although I think he might have over stated it a bit.
The fact that the pictures and minis of a number of the female characters and zombies have them in states of undress or unfeasible clothing. Zombicide isn't as bad as many others I have seen, it was one of the things that put me off backing Kingdom death on kickstarter, some of its minis went into seriously questionable territory, for me anyway, I am sure lots of other people loved them.
Please don't misunderstand, this has nothing to do with people who want to look at others in states of undress in real life, I have no problem with that at all, this is particularly focused on minis, game/book artwork and in game depictions.
This is something that I have always found rather odd in gaming/ geek culture. The idea that lasses would go into combat/ adventuring/ everyday life wearing a chainmail bikini and hot pants/ improbably placed bits of fabric/ a wonderbra and cat suit etc, while their male counterparts wear full armour, clothes that keep you warm and have pockets.
I'm not entirely sure why it bothers me so much, I think in part it is because of what it says about its target audience and the idea that I am counted amongst them. I think another part actually goes back to an idea covered in the much mocked spawn of fashan, where it says female characters get less hit points but gain 'Charisma'. Another reason is the same problem I have with films where they feel the need to put in pointless eye candy parts and random action beats, it suggests that my attention is so fleeting that if they don't have them I will get bored and wander off. The final point that springs to mind, although there are probably others I haven't thought of, is that I know lasses from LARP that do the badass warrior, powerful wizard, mighty general etc role just as well or better than their male counterparts, while remaining fully clothed.
I am not saying that no mini or artwork should ever show its ankle again, but I do think that verging on softcore when depicting lasses shouldn't be the norm or if it is then the male characters should be depicted in equally revealing and pointless getups.
I am pretty sure I am in the minority on this one though, otherwise they wouldnt sell as well.
This mini rant isn't intended to upset or offend so please don't be.
All the best
Daily Mojo, 07/13/14
We have a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes for Savage Mojo. So, keep your eyes open for more product updates and updates on our SuzeWiki! In the meantime, here are some adorable dragon beasties to keep your dice safe. :)
I'm not sure how many of our fans LARP as well, but here is 11 awesome LARPing pictures!
Hard Magic
Birmingham, UK
Things have been quiet for me on the savage mojo front for the last week or so as we are concentrating on dungeonlands part 2, and all the stats are done. So now I get to sit back and wait for the finished product of awesomeness to appear. Well I say that if its anything like the first dungeonlands, I may be contacted because someone has had a really cool idea that is so awesome it needs to be added in and requires stats right now. But adding in more cool stuff is always good and generally things like that are fun to stat as they are different, so I am not complaining. :-)
In the interim I have gone back to trying to make working rules for the Grim Noir setting, based on the books by Larry Correia. I am still working on creating base powers and advancements for each of the types of active and trying to work out how to make them balance and allow them to reach the powers the stronger actives have in the books. There is quiet a range of different types and the powers themselves vary in strength and effectiveness, which makes game balance tricky to get right, and I think it may be impossible to have the types balance while keeping to the setting as upping the Pulse cost for the more powerful abilities too much makes it so they can't be used enough to be effective.
I am going to keep playing around with it and will then have to give it a play test to see how it plays and if it all works.
Speaking of Larry Correia, being big fans of the grim noir chronicles we decided to try out his earlier books monster hunters international. I have just finished the first one and it's not bad, but I wasn't wowed, not sure if I was just expecting too much or something different based on this later stuff. Saying that we have picked up the second one as the first was ok and it can take a book or two to really get going.
I currently find myself in a quandary, zombicide season 3 in on kickstarter, I backed seasons 1 & 2 to the hilt and got all the optional survivors etc and really enjoy the game. But I am sitting here wondering, if I am continuing my completionist streak its going to be over £120 ($210), and are the additional bits to an already stuffed game going to add that much? More survivors, more survivors is cool but I have all the ones produced so far which must 30+, so not that bothered by more (even if some are cool and round out the Big Bang cast) if I am honest. There is a new breed of zombie which looks cool, but I already have buckets of normal, toxic and berserk ones + dogs, so again not sure how much they will add. The VIP zombies and swarms of crows do look fun but again, Im not sure how much they will add to the game play.
The completionist in me is currently doing a passable golumn impression, about how I must have all the shieny things. But I don't have tons of spare cash at the moment and that alongside the 'I am not sure it worth it' response makes me think I am not going to bother with season 3.
I also find myself in two minds about another game expansion, I got an email informing me that they are going to be kickstarting an expansion for compounded in august. A game that I find myself in two minds over because I really enjoy the game, however after the response I got to a simple query after the last kickstarter I was so miffed it took me 6 months to actually bother trying the game and put me off dealing with them ever again.
I am going to reserve judgement until I see what the expansion is, if it is particularly interesting I still might back it, but at the moment that seems unlikely. It also depends on what their international shipping policy is and if they have hidden costs again.
Right I think that it for now.
All the best
Savage Bloggers Network
Savage Reviewers has made it onto the Savage Bloggers Network! Savage Reviewers provides short reviews of Savage Worlds products. Savage Bloggers Network is a great place to find reviews, new sites, and news about Savage Worlds so if you want information regarding Savage Worlds, remember to check out the Savage Bloggers Network!
Daily Mojo, 06/29/14, Favorites
As kind of a follow up on yesterday's questions: what is your favorite setting for Suzerain and what made it your favorite setting?
Also, I'd like to know what your favorite setting is out of all the different systems and what made that your favorite system!
Daily Mojo, 06/28/14, Playing in Suzerain
So, today, I want to know about your Suzerain gaming experiences! What Suzerain campaigns have you played and what tweaks to the story, if any, did you make? Have you ever converted another Savage Worlds game (or even non-Savage Worlds) game into a Suzerain game? If so, how did it work out?
Daily Mojo, 06/27/14, Something Sarcastic
So, I wanted to post something very amusing and sarcastic today, so I brought you this! The author proves that truth is, in fact, stranger than fiction. Please enjoy!
Daily Mojo, 06/25/14, The Best Ace
What is your best natural 20 or acing moment in gaming?
I'd say the best one I've ever seen was an attack by an NPC with surprise who dealt 57 points of damage with a sniper rifle in a Fallout game.
The secret to demi-god stating...d12. D12s for everything!
Dungeonlands part 2, machine of the Lich Queen is almost done, I have two encounters to finish off and then the Savage stats are done. I am led to believe the pathfinder stats should be done this week and the maps and such are also pretty much done, so it just needs to go through some final editing (to fix all the mistakes I have put in while writing rules bits) and layout type things that I don't really understand but turn the word files I work on into the beautiful books you guys see, I think it might involve witchcraft. After that is done it should be winging its way to you guys in the not too distant future, yey.
Other than working on stats for dungeonlands I haven't been thinking a lot about RPG gaming recently, have been getting some boardgaming in, final played Compounded and it was a fun as I had hoped, just a shame its taken me this long. It has taken so long because the people who ran their kickstarter only seem to care about the US market, and pretty much told me that I should expect to have to pay additional customs charges (which they didn't mention on their shipping info section) after shelling out extra for international shipping already. To be honest I think their response annoyed me more than the extra charges, but I have ranted about it previously so let's not rehash. Anyways that whole thing put me in a bad mood about the game and it has sat on a shelf since despite looking like a decent game. To be fair it is a decent game and is quite fun and simple.
Also gave netrunner a try and got my handed to me as the corp, I obviously need to play it some more and figure out how to play the corp side better. It is a good game and if I can organise playing it regularly that would be nice.
Played robinson crusoe as well and managed to win, however on the second to last turn I realised I had been playing a rule wrong that I probably should have lost, which is always a bummer but I know for next time now.
Have dug up my old fallout 2 CD and have been playing that over the last couple of weeks, that may be a contender for harshest 'tutorial' ever, I remember playing it for the first time many years ago and getting crippled during the tutorial, never mind the fact that its real easy to die as you figure things out. But it is such a good game.
Right I gotta run, so I guess that it for now.
All the best
Daily Mojo, 06/20/14, Patent
The gaming industry has seen many patents that are far too intrusive in everyone's ability to role-play, especially over the last couple of years. We have a new contender in this arena, although, this one may be less invasive as it first seems but then again it may not.
Universal Horizons is trying to obtain a patent that covers moving a character through genres. According to the publisher who's filing for the patent, the term "genre" refers to their game-specific process of moving from one campaign world to another. As long as other people aren't copying their process in which people move from one campaign world to another (one genre to another) they won't attack, investigate, or sue the company.
There are many different articles mentioning this particular patent. I'm posting two different articles with different view points on http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/patent-absurdity-trying-to-protect-its-rule-set-lands-small-role-playing-game-company-in-hot-water/ and http://www.geeknative.com/46075/games-publisher-attempts-patent-rpg-mechanics/.
In my personal opinion (as well as other ones I've heard), "genre" isn't really a system specific word and it could cause potential danger to many of settings that move characters like "What's O.L.D. Is N.E.W." and Suzerain since genre hopping is a big part of those settings.
What do you think about the patent? Even if "genre" refers to the campaign worlds, does the broader meaning of the word make it too broad and dangerous to other companies who move the characters through multiple genres? What do you think?
Daily Mojo, 06/19/14, Suzerain Adventure Deck
With the release of the Suzerain Continuum Adventure Deck, I have an important question to ask: what is your favorite card in the deck? And if you don't have a favorite, what card made the best role-playing moment?
I think that my personal favorite has to be "Gift From Your Patron". On top of the highly amusing artwork for the card, it is a very useful and flexible card. The card grants the character one edge regardless of all requirements except rank.
Daily Mojo, 06/16/14, XenoShyft Onslaught
So, we have another Kickstarter we (especially Miles in particular) want to spotlight. The XenoShyft Onslaught has been working really well with the rewards and backer. They've got a little over a day and a half left of the Kickstarter. Cool Mini Or Not has been doing really well with this particular Kickstarter, so we just wanted to give a quick shout out to them for their great work!
Roll up, Roll up see the house of mystery.
Birmingham, UK
As is so often the case, my progress with the second set of Dungeon lands encounters is a way behind where I was aiming to be, I had hoped to be pretty much finished by now but am only half way through. Work has been unexpectedly hectic with the grad shows, something we have never had to deal with at this site before, so that combined with staff leave and illness means I have been doing some long days after which I am pretty much crashing out.
Staff and students seem to have this idea that IT can magically produce machines to suit any need at a moment's notice, which to be fair we are surprisingly good at doing but that just feeds the idea that they don't need to give us reasonable notice. However, saying no to the last minute demands would mean our students grad shows suffer, so we keep trying to produce machines out of thin air.
There is a stack of housework that needs doing, I still need to try and clean and reproof our emperor bell tent before the next event and we are still cleaning set dressing from the last event, so I am largely being useless at doing anything at the moment. :-s
But work continues and the encounters will get done fairly soon, the sooner I pass them along the sooner they can be killing your characters in new and interesting ways. :-D
Our Thursday d&d is starting to find up, we are on our way to fix the final mcguffin and then save the world. I have really enjoyed the game, Steve does run a good game of classic d&d and doesn't impose a multi class penalty on our characters, which for most players isn't an issue but it is awesome for me as I am running a 4 class character and haven't picked up a prestige class yet. My bard 'John the really quite fabulous' is a built to max his ability to boost other characters when he tells fantastic stories about his previous exploits, very baron Munchausen, and to do as much damage as possible in close combat with a strength bonus of 0.
As he currently stands he part Bard, part swashbuckler, part swordsage and 1 level of cloistered cleric with domains swapped for devotions. My hard munchkining paid off last week when John faced and killed a cloud giant in single combat in just 3 rounds (the first round was activating inspire courage), admittedly I had 9hp left at the end, I was lucky and went in expecting to die but it was the heroic thing to do in the situation.
This weeks game is cancelled so going to take some board games along to fill in for a week.
Not much else worth mentioning going on at the moment. Sarah continues to suffer with the after effects of glandular fever which apparently can take up to 6 months to clear, :-(
All the best
Nova Praxis
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This setting is being re-imagined for Savage Worlds and if you are interested in science fiction, this setting is for you. Void Star studios, routinely pushes advances in PDF technology and their augmented PDF is simply stunning and easily responds on your monitor, phone or tablet. Click here to learn more and back this project.
Next character concept: Asparamancer!
Greetings one and all, hope you are all having a good day.
I have just received the second set of dungeonlands encounters so have been reading through them. I like what I am seeing, nothing is jumping out as being super complex but I haven't started the second read through which is when I start thinking about actual rules for the craziness. However, the encounters are cool- random effects, time distortion and warp beasties and that's just one room! I think you guys are in for a treat with this one, also liking seeing behind the scenes as to why certain NPCs act in certain ways, the bad guys don't just attack because you crossed an invisible line but because x, which is caused by y and their ongoing struggle with z. Its stuff that many player might only touch on, but the reasoning is there if the players want to look into it and try and be cunning, but also I have found it makes GMing easier, knowing why something is happening and what factors link to it makes rolling with player unexpectedness so much easier.
By rights I should be further ahead than this but I have been playing catch up as yesterday I was in a rare foul mood and did as little as possible at work, so today I have been catching up some, but should get the second read through done at home and make a start on stats this evening.
As some of you may know it was the UK games expo this weekend just gone, we could only make the Sunday as Saturday was Claire and Tims wedding anniversary. For which we went to asparafest, a local event which is basically a country fair with a loose asparagus theme, was a nice day and good company but wasn't wowed by the festival, but they did have an Asparomancer, who apparently tells fortunes based on dropping asparagus. I am thinking an asparomancer may be a great character concept at some point. :-)
After asparafest we went back to theirs for bbq board games and cards against humanity, much fun was had by all.
We didn't get back till late so we didn't head across to the expo until afternoon, I had never been before as it always used to clash with Larp. I quiet enjoyed it but I think I prefer the old gencon/ conception con style over expo approach but was a good afternoon. We had a bash at zombie dice and King of Tokyo both fun & quick dice rollers, after which we wandered and looked at shinnies, sooo many shiny things, never enough money. Ran into a few people we know including Darren and Gill showing off the gorgeous Set Rising art work which was a nice surprise, I didn't realise they were going to be there and it was nice to meet in person after so many email conversations.
In the end we picked up the second DC heros deck building set which has now been amalgamated with the first, the asia and india map packs for ticket to ride and netrunner. Netrunner is a game I have been umming and ahhing over for ages, I really like the android board game, but it is quite complex first couple of times out and is quiet time consuming to play, netrunner is set in the same universe but is a much quicker 2 player card game. I have heard nothing but good things about it from people but it is heading back into ccg territory which is something I am less than keen on. Haven't had chance to give it a run through yet, but am looking forward to it.
Mondays board games was fun, Dave dug out an old Waddington's game 'Escape from Atlantis' which was recently redone as 'Survive: Escape from Atlantis'. It is easy to forget that many old games were just as much fun as the new shiny ones. I was one turn away from winning when Dave killed off the last of Marvs guys in the water, leading to draw between me and Dave, grrr.
After that we played two games on the expanded DC heros deck builder, Alan got me the original and its it much fun and the second one can be done separately and mixed into one giant set which had to be done, there is also a street fighter set which I considered getting, but I thinking mixing in non-supers would spoil the theme. Some of the heros seem a bit over powered compared to others, batman and hawkmans ability to gain additional power for every equipment/ hero card played doesn't seem to balance well against characters that can get a max of +1 a turn and a card draw or characters that need much more obscure requirements. Also the tipping point of the game is a bit of a let down the final 4-5 villains usually fall in really short order, I am thinking of trying out a house rule where the power of the villans is increased by a set amount based on how far down the deck they are, but that will increase the play time.
Right I think that about it for now, I should get back to reading encounters.
All the best
Daily Mojo, 05/30/14, Nova Praxis
So, we have another Kickstarter we want to mention- Nova Praxis! Nova Praxis is definitely a Sci-fi setting with some cyberpunk aspects with concepts like transhumanism and technological singularity and was originally done for Fate Core. And with the success of this Kickstarter, Nova Praxis will become available for the Savage Worlds system. If you are looking for more Sci-fi settings (especially ones that are not Science Fantasy settings), you should definitely take a look at this setting and Kickstarter. Nova Praxis has 12 days left and they need less than $250 in order to reach their base goal. So come on and participate in the fun!
Rivers of mud
Birmingham UK
The first set of encounters for the Machine of the Lich Queen are all done, just waiting on the next set to be sent across now. I'm not desperate to do more rules, although I do quite enjoy it, I am quite excited to see what crazy/ evilness the next set contain.
There is one downside to working on the rules, it means that if I ever play these settings I will have some idea of what's coming, and while I can try to ignore that when making in character decisions it does take some of the fun and surprise out of it. Well none of the guys I play with regularly run SW anyway so it's not such a major issue at the moment as if it gets played I will probably be running it, and I should really know what's coming in that case :-)
The reason it took so long to get the encounters stated was that we were away at Empire LARP last weekend. It was a complete mudfest, it had been raining heavily and continued to do so, on and off throughout the weekend so the site was swimming in churned mud. We were lucky as some people who had pitched their tent in minor depressions found their tents flooded on Saturday. Getting the kit off site on Monday was difficult as we had to carry it all from the IC camping area to the OC car park through lots of mud, but Marv has constructed a wagon to use as an IC baby carriage which we commandeered which significantly reduced the number of trips required. Even so trooping through the mud has left my leg feeling less than happy, apparently my range of exercise to rebuild the muscle didn't include a sliding sideways motions as that seems to knacker it in short order.
The event itself was a blinder, we were down on numbers and the mud meant me, Sarah and Diane didn't get out and about as much as we might have liked, the others waded off to do their thing through the ocean of mud (more fool them). We did lots of trading, had some great RP and have started a bunch of plans that have the possibility to be great fun. Sarah has found her event keen which she has been struggling with pretty much since Indy died at strom years ago. If you're not familiar with keen you can play a character and enjoy events without keen, but having event keen makes things more fun, interesting and gets you motivated to get involved and get stuff done. Our group is quiet small and we have lots of disparate interests but we all work together when needed and they are great bunch to RP with and are always fun to hang out with.
This weekend we are off to the asparagus festival :-s A friend of ours is having their first wedding anniversary on Saturday and it involves going to the asparagus festival near their house and then a bbq back at theirs. Im not sure what the festival entails but the people we are going with are a sound bunch so it should be fun no matter what.
Sunday is the UK games Expo, I have never been before as it used to clash with LARP so I am looking forward to having a wander round and checking things out. I haven't signed up for anything this year but might do next time round.
I think that covers it, Lich queen encounters and LARP accounted for most of my free time this last week.
All the best
Dragon Rage and Mountain men.
Birmingham UK
Empire event 2 this weekend woooo! The weather is looking kinda less than awesome (probably a fair bit of rain which will turn the site to mud) but I have my keen going so am looking forward to this one.
Sarah has been in super kit making mode and has made a beautiful wizard robe for Ash in a black patterned silk effect material, the Birmingham rag market is soo good work kit material as long as you make sure you get enough as you can never guarantee that material will be available again. She has made me a sleeveless robe with a high collar (im describing as mini ming style) in a gorgeous blue silk effect with gold and silver patterning.
She has also made proper covers for all the tables and benches, and we have got hard wearing material (for 50p a meter) cut it into sections and Velcroed the edges to make a full carpet for the tent. She is also working on a new gown for herself with some stunning patterned olive green material, so hopefully that will be available in time.
I have been reorganising the storage of all the LARP gear, as well as rebuilding one of the chalk boards we use and turning an old knackered wooden box that has been sat on a shelf for years into something suitable for events. I have completely rebuild the inside and covered it with material, sanded down the outside and varnished it, just need to reattach the handle and add some clasps and should be good to go.
At the weekend I got sent the first set of full encounters for Dungeonlands part 2 to start stating up, I am really like the first set, they are interestingly different and should force the players to assess how they approach encounters and give plenty of scope for creative responses to the challenges posed. After a read through I had planned to get them done by the end of this week but then I realised I am off LARPing early Friday and will be spending much of Thursday sorting and doing last minute prep. We won't be back till Monday evening and much of Tuesday will be vegetating (LARPing, the holiday you need a holiday after, he he) packing stuff away and drying things out. So it will be the middle of next week before I can get it all finished off and written up, but that's not terrible in terms of turn around.
The first get together of the newly reformed Monday board gaming group was this Monday. Marv had dug out his copy of Mighty Empires which he hadn't played in at least 15 years so there was a lot of us learning the rules on the fly. We only got through 1 full year and into the first couple of rounds of the next one but I think we covered all the big stuff. Due to us not understanding what effect the map tiles had when we put them together Daves starting position was terrible (which wasn't helped by nearby hostile villages, and rampaging dragons) and due to poor rolling on my part my starting kingdom was rubbish, by the time we called it quits Marv was defiantly winning.
There are a few points where I am not sure the balance is quiet right and the fact it was designed to be used as a standalone or as part of Warhammer campaign means the rules are a bit hefty with things that don't apply if you're just playing stand alone. There are an awful lot of tables to consult and some of the wording isn't very clear but all in all not a bad game, next time we play kit should be a fair bit faster but I am still not sure that it isn't a bit much for a casual evening game.
Right well then I should get back to dungeon lands encounters, hope you all have a lovely bank holiday.
All the best
Discuss the contention that Cleopatra had the body of a roll top desk and the mind of a duck.
Birmingham UK
The Necessary Evil planning continues as does the character creation. I have started noting down cool ideas for plots and NPCs as they pop into my head, I am a big fan of running things on the fly as I have talked about previously, but it's always good to have some structured aspects and interesting NPCs, although I often find it's the spur of the moment ones that turn out to be most memorable.
Sarah has decided she wants to play a version of Sally Faye Vierra from Larry Correia's Grimnoir Chronicles. So we have been working on a teleporting combat character with a dash of super sorcery. The idea being that as she improves she can pick up more super sorcery and improve her combat skills a bit as well.
Kris has got the bare bones of a character, but it is a cool concept, we just need to flesh out the background and then we can start working on powers to suit. A genetic experiment that went wrong, he now has to consume human DNA to stop his hybrid form from degenerating into full blown abomination. A background that contains consume, degeneration and abomination in the same sentence has got to be good :-p
In the weekly d&d game last week we ran into my character from the first campaign, apparently he had devolved/ evolved to a full blow vampiric type mage. I was really worried cos where we finished the campaign last time we were about 16-17th level, so he could murder pretty much the entire current party in a single attack. Steve (GM) had created a down powered version that was appropriate to our level, but as it played out it wouldn't have made a difference. A surprise attack with Sarah undead nuking power (14d8) followed by a second one when she beat him on initiative, allowed the following few attacks to drop him before he got an action. It was kinda sad to see him go down so quick but like most mages he was a glass jaw, but recognising the description and that sense of bricking myself cos I know what he used to be able to do, was pretty fun. I am presuming Steves toned down version didn't cast Chain lightning that did 144 force damage to the initial target and 72 to all others, I might have just dug out his old character sheet. he he
Another thing the Thursday game reminded me is how awesome the word is. Its just one of those words that acquire associations, especially with incredibly immature people like myself. Its not a good a word as quinquagesimal, one of my favourite words but its very tricky to work into conversations, especially as you then have to explain it.
Boarding gaming is go, again. Marv has agreed to host at his so he can look after the baby and game at the same time and we have moved it back to Mondays which makes life sooo much easier for me. I think we need to drum up an additional player or two as Dave can only make every other week and I am not sure if Sarah and Di will be up for playing ever week either. 2-5 is a decent number for many of the games I own but I have stuff that easily accommodates more should that be the case.
We also attended a monthly board gaming meet up in the centre of town on Sunday, which was most enjoyable. People were all lovely and I got to give Agricola and Ascension a try and play a game of Dixit. I won Ascension but the guy teaching it to us took it easy as it was our first game, I lost at argicola and won at Dixit, but that might have been a bit fixed, two of us were 1 point from winning and Sarah played a card giving a clue about the 'enemies gate' knowing I would get the Enders game reference, as did several other people, luckily the guy I was tied with didn't, yay for morally dubious victories, they are the tastiest kind.
Sarah still isn't very well, she has finished her antibiotic course and while she is better than she was, she still isn't super well. After a visit to the doctor on Tuesday she was signed off work for another week and was sent to get extensive blood work done, so we are waiting to 2-18 days its takes to get those results back. Hopefully it's nothing too serious. :-s
Hope this finds you all well, all the best.
I want to take is his face...off.
Birmingham, UK
Im never sure if people are interested in my sporadic gaming related musings, but here is another one anyway :-)
So the Neccassary Evil character creation has started, which is always interesting. We haven't finished Steves d&d game yet so people have plenty of time to mull things over and for me to help ensure that the stats fit with what each of the players wants their character to do. So far only two players have been throwing ideas around so they haven't had to worry about a building diverse party.
So we have to mental heavy characters – one who is all about mind control, telekinesis and psychic huegamafudge and the other who is all about illusions and force control, and both of them are big on stealing. I have made a few suggestions to try and help get the characters closer to their description, and have advised them not to spread themselves to thin powers wise, doing a lot of stuff ok often ends up not as fun as doing a few things well.But the system is so easy to get to grips with there have been relatively few rules mistakes to deal with. I just need to see what characters other people come up with.
Also I may have just created a character for giggles today, it lacks a cool name, at the moment its just called the gunman. Basic build is 2 extra arms, attack - ranged (3d6), some armour, some deflection, super skill - Shooting and super attribute boosts to str, spirit and Vigor. He carries a Plasma Rifle and 3 vibro swords and has a rocket pack. So at range he gets a 3d10 plasma rifle shot and 2 x3d6 attack ranged with no penalties, to his D12+2 Shooting skill. Has deflection, armour, boosted Vigor and Spirit for dealing with return fire and if attacked in melee carries 3 vibro swords and has a boosted str.
If you haven't guessed he is somewhat munchkined and lacks for the strong theme (other than shooting stuff) that makes for cool NE evil characters, but it's good to keep my hand in. It's also quite cool to know that no matter how far you push it there is no character build that can't be quiet easily countered and being able to see how to do that, without having to resort to an invisible negator build.
There will probably be more NE posts in the future.
For anyone who has missed it, it was international tabletop day earlier this month 5th of April, which comes from Wil Wheaton's show on the geek and sundry youtube channel where he plays board games.
As it turned out Amazon US had a sale on boardgames that day, Amazon UK didn't, so I am glad Sarah spotted it. I picked up 7 wonders, Takenoko and the Walking dead co-op game for £75 including shipping from the US which I was pretty happy with. We tried to get Ticket to ride: Europe as well but there was some issue with shipping, so we could get that. Sarah bought a copy anyway and now owns a board game of her very own. Yey!
The walking dead game isn't bad, have tried to twice now and its beaten me both times so far, first game was a disaster, the second game we lost just before the end of turn 12 (you win by surviving to the end of turn 12) and we were playing it on standard super fluffy mode, where we could discuss everything and if someone dies you don't instantly lose the game. This makes me think it is a game that has definite replayability.
Unfortunately I had to stop the regular boardgaming I had going, it was on Monday nights at the flat of two of the players as they couldn't make it across to ours. They then started running a RPG on Mondays so moved the board gaming to Tuesdays, unfortunately I work late on Tues so after a couple of weeks of rushing across town in a taxi without time for tea, I had to call it quits. :-(
Currently trying to get something new organised for Mondays, because I do enjoy playing boardgames, but I don't get to do it as often as I would like.
Empire event 1 (5) was good fun, weather wasn't bad but wind made the event quiet cold, especially at night. Heavy rain Sunday night kept us confined to the tent but the group is a laugh so no complaints about that. The heavy rain and giant hail during takedown on Monday afternoon was a real bugger though, but I think everything has be dried out properly now, so it's not a big issue.
Event wise we rocked out at what we do, although if we were a bit more focused as on one area or had power gamed at the start we could be making silly money. As it is we are a group of people who do lots of different things but support each other in doing them, and have fun doing it, which at the end of the day is more my thing. Looking forward to event 2 and have my keen going which is always good.
Hope you're having a good day, all the best. G'Andy
Heeeres G'Andy.
Birmingham, UK
Hi guys and gals it been ages since my last post which is mostly due to me being easily distracted and generally disorganised.
In terms of excuses Sarahs sister got married last weekend and first Empire event of the year is this coming weekend so have been somewhat distracted. However, if I am being honest I think my lack of posts recently is mostly due to me getting into religious debates with people online and comprehensive responses taking quite a while to write and me forgetting. :-s
Right so gaming type news, my side of Savage Mojo has been kinda quiet recently as our layout gurus and artistic geniuses work with the editorial types to finish off some projects while our writers work of creating the next awesome setting. Apparently I am quite keen at the moment :-)
My Thursday gaming group have decided that when Steves excellent d&d 3.5 game (Jarl 2) finishes we are going to move on to Necessary Evil which I shall be running, which is always a good game. Unfortunately my copy of NE is the old version of SW so I will have to dig out my original copy of SW. Well yes I could convert it to the new rules with a minimum of effort but I am refusing to do that for no reason other than being contrary. He he
I do like NE, I think it is my favourite supers system and setting of all the ones I have tried. It explicitly tries to keep that classic comic supers feel but with a non-standard setting that doesn't pit superheroes vs supervillains. Playing villains that have to work together creates some great character concepts and RP, and having the threat of Dr D helps stop the game devolving into in fighting and PvP. If I fancied running a general supers game I suspect I would use the NE system, although it isn't as varied and comprehensive as some systems I think it works well and personally I think its simplicity is a positive feature. The vast majority of effects are covered and you just pick the trapping that suits your concept and you can tweek and add extras to suit. As a GM if a player wanted something that wasn't covered as long as it fits with the concept and setting I'm sure I could come up with something to suit.
Wedding last weekend was lovely, weather held up, everything went pretty much to plan and I think a nice time was had by all. It does mean that now that is out of the way Sarah's family are pressing us for definite plans and dates etc, so it looks like we are going for Dec 2015.
Empire event 1 (well technically event 5, but its first one of the year) is this coming weekend and my LARP keen is finally kicking in, so am trying to get a bunch of stuff that I should have sorted months ago done in a few days, as is usually the case. We are missing a few of the group this event which is going to limit what we can get done but we should still be around 8 people which isn't half bad.
It's looking like the weather is going to be a bit too hot and sunny for me, but compared to the -10c at event 1 last year I think too hot may be an improvement, and I am someone who nearly always prefers cold weather over hot.
Hope you all have a great weekend.
All the best G'Andy
Tabletop Day
Today is Tabletop Day! It is a special holiday that I hope all gamers get to enjoy. So, tell me, what game are you playing today?
I'm Back!
'Ello Everyone!
I've been quiet this weekend due to Sac ConQuest, but the con was very successful and I am now back to keep everyone updated on what is happening behind the scenes at Savage Mojo. Over the next little bit, we should have exciting news for you!
Your Character
Have you ever been so connected with a character that whatever emotion they were feeling- hurt, embarrassment, admiration, love, anger, or any other emotion- you felt too while role-playing your character?
Speaking of Kickstarter, how do you all feel about Kickstarter? Do you like it, do you love it, do you hate it? If you don't use it, why not?
I'm kind of curious at this point to see how everyone feels about Kickstarter...
Daily Mojo, 03/13/14, Let's talk about Setting Rules
Let's talk about Setting Rules, Savage Fans!
For Shaintar, I've incorporated a couple of great ones from the Savage Worlds Deluxe book. There's "High Adventure," which gives access to Edges at critical junctures. There's "Joker's Wild," which gets the Bennies flowing more freely (and in a way that takes the pressure off the GM to remember). I've modified that one, though, so that I get a GM Benny when the luck flows my way. Big Heroes need Big Villains, after all.
Though I don't see Shaintar as "merciless," I did make Shaintar a place where everyone can spend a Benny to re-roll damage, rather than requiring No Mercy. After all, Big Heroes and Big Villains look a little anemic if they roll a fantastic attack roll only to flub it up on the damage.
Setting Rules are a keenly effective tool for ensuring your Realm feels right and plays in a way that fits the genre conventions and expectations everyone has.
Which Setting Rules appeal to you? Which ones do you use, as a GM? Why? Do you have any you've created and want to share?
Detect berries!
Birmingham, UK
I am kind of busy this week so find myself with a limited amount of time to write this post, so I must not ramble on. Yea like that is ever going to happen, he he.
The first set of creatures for dungeonlands part 2 are done and dusted and have been discussed, a few minor tweaks later and I think we are happy with what we have, although I think our editors may be starting to hate me as I still keep forgetting basic formatting and style rules which they have to fix. I do try but my ability to remember rules seems to be rather selective at times especially when it comes to rules about writing or language, my approach to punctuation has been known to terrify/annoy my friends who understand and care about such things. :-s
I just blame it on the dyslexia and leave it at that, even though that doesn't really make sense from a logical. I think in part my head is better with rules it considers interesting or associated that are with interesting stuff whereas functional or important rules tend to be forgotten in short order, which is less than ideal.
The Set Rising extra goodies are with our fantastic artistic types who are no doubt doing fantastic artistic things I don't really understand (my abilities topped out at crayons and MS paint), so I am letting them get on with it, and am looking forward to see what gets produced.
I also got sent the creature and villain from the kickstarter backer rewards to have a look over. They are both pretty solid, with lots of character which is more important than getting the rules spot on, as rules are easy to rework. In this case there is nothing that really needs reworking for the rules either, few places where I might try and streamline the creature to make the GMs life easier, but the rules themselves are pretty much spot on. There are some very nice ideas in there I hadn't thought of, so I might make use of them myself in the future. :-)
Have got a regular board gaming evening going, was on Mondays but has been moved to Tuesdays now. Its nice to play some games on a regular basis.
The Thursday d&d game continues as does my sporadic work on my d&d character sheet of everything. I tend to get bits done when I am covering the late shift at work and its quiet, so it isn't progressing very quickly but it does significantly more than the basics now.
Hope you are all well and get to roll some dice in the near future.
Daily Mojo, 03/06/2014, The Continuum - Translation v. As-Is
One of the more interesting aspects about the revised Suzerain Continuum is the option for Game Masters (and Publishers, for that matter) to determine whether they want to have characters Translate into a setting or have them be able to enter in as-is fashion.
In the former case, the characters will undergo a process (mostly a creative interpretation one, involving both the player and the GM re-working a character so that their essence remains the same, yet their outer appearance and functional capacities "fit" the destination reality. In the latter, Mister Assault Armor w/ Auto-Cannon comes blazing into Shaintar, shattering ranks of Childer and sword-wielding Kal warriors as he blasts away.
Granted, that latter scenario sounds pretty awesome, but I think the GMs out there might have a few clench moments considering it.
So which do you think is going to work better for you and your game? Translation, or just breaking down the walls of Paradigm to see what happens?
Daily Mojo, 03/05/2014, Rules Systems
Rules systems: we all love some, hate others and the only thing we agree on is that we disagree on which systems fall into which category. If there's one thing that divides roleplayers rather than uniting them, it's the proliferation of rules systems.
For a publisher, this is a nightmare of course. You can have a wonderful, rich setting, present it well, and integrate it with a rules system that really fits the style of play you're looking for... but in the end you know you're limiting your audience to people who use that rules system. Everyone else in the RPG world is going to be a stranger to your setting. That sucks because unless you make a certain number of sales, the people who work on the setting can't pay the rental or feed their family.
For players it's wonderful - freedom of choice, infinite variety, a million flavors of gaming goodness. Except that it's not wonderful for players. How do I know? Because there are fewer and fewer rules systems being used, and a trend towards "umbrella" systems that people license under. The smaller, less well marketed, or more niche systems are dying off in record numbers. Sure, there's an "indi" scene, but it's tiny.
At Savage Mojo we took the decision to use Savage Worlds (one of those "umbrella" systems) because it fitted well with the flavor we wanted to evoke in this edition of Suzerain. For our old school killer dungeon, Dungeonlands, we also experimented with a Pathfinder version, for the same reason (it fitted well with the setting thematically, and the fan base of that system). People occasionally ask us if we'll be doing a Fate version of Suzerain or a 13th Age version. Suzerain is big and broad and could fit into any of those others. We also get people asking us to revive the edition of Suzerain that ran our own rules system, which we retired because, well because we didn't have the marketing muscle to popularize it well enough and it wasn't putting food on the table for the creative team.
At this point you might be expecting me to ask you a question, but I'm not going to. Instead, I'm happy to just sit back and enjoy the discussion. I've posited a starting point. What do you think?
Oh wait, that was a question.
Death Lurgy, round 2, Fight!
Birminghm, UK
So last week was a bit of a washout for me, it started well, got the first draft of the dungeonlands monsters I was working on done. I then got someone else to have a quick look over as some of these monsters are a bit crazy :-D
Wednesday I had a training course with work and then had to work the late shift after which I was feeling pretty rough so failed to write my blog or do anything constructive when I got home.
Steve had given us a heads up that he couldn't make the Thursday game and being the GM we had to arrange something else, so I ended up bring the one offs I ran for Conception and letting the group pick, so ended up running Gorilla warfare again. Our Thursday games are around 3 hours rather than the standard con game which is 4 so I had to drop bits to keep the plot rattling along, but they completed the objectives and seemed to have fun doing it.
By Friday I was feeling really rough and by Friday night was in full blown man flu territory, so did nothing for the whole weekend and despite my best efforts I have given it to Sarah now, so she is really unwell. :-(
During the Thursday game I realised that two of the players had never played SW before and only James and Sarah have played it more than a couple times. I am failing to spread the good word, a situation that must be remedied. We have three regular GMs, Steve runs d&d 3.5, Marv ran 3.5 and Gurps and I ran Shadowrun. Unless someone else wants to GM I am probably up next and have been debating what to run and seeing what people fancy, as there a bunch of possible options. I would like to run WHFRP either 1st or 3rd ed, continuing the shadowrun game would be cool and I know James would love to play Necessary Evil again. I think I am going to have to run either SW or Sav Suz now I know they need educating, he he. But the question is what to run, if it SW I will probably convert it to Sav Suz we can do some realm hoping later and maybe throw them into dugeonlands and vampocalypse as well.
Necessary Evil is my favourite supers system and setting and has been requested by James but is a SW setting that I don't think can be fitted into Sav Suz. The setting I would really like to run is Clockwork Dreams but I don't think that will be an option this time round as I want a proper hardcopy to work from but it should be the next game I run. Now I just have to figure out what setting is different enough from campaigns we have done recently and the rest of the table will enjoy. I considered dusting off lowlife but I fear some people might not quite get the spirit of it and my copy of 50 fathoms is on loan to Ash. Millennium Knights is a distinct possibility, as is getting a move on putting together the settings I keep working on sporadically, nothing irons out the kinks in a setting like players stomping around in it. :-)
Also got an email from Miles asking me to help sort out a few extra bits for Set Rising that we have decided to include. It has been decided that as players get a super cool spaceship to zoom around in and might possibly get into so space warfare type shenanigans we should help support this. So I am currently talking with the writer and our amazing artistic types to try and make this happen. It's not a situation that requires me to work out stats so it's all a new experience for me, which is pretty cool and hopefully it will result in some extra tools for GMs help run awesome games which is also a good thing (TM).
Right I got other stuff that needs hitting with sticks so catch you guys later.
All the best G'Andy
Daily Mojo, 02/27/14, The Favorite Moment
What is your favorite gaming moment? It doesn't have to be a Suzerain moment- but it definitely can be.
Daily Mojo, 02/25/14, Judgement of Anubis
Today, let's take a sneaky behind the scenes of Set Rising. Let's talk about weapons, where Ra's techno-Egyptian pantheon is the clear leader among most pantheons, having the bonus of Ra's Hard-light science behind them.
How good are these weapons of Ra's? Well, here one as an example...
Judgment of Anubis: It's simply the best kind of pistol. The Judgment fires several colors of pain and has a selectable round type. No self-respecting badass should be without this weapon It's the judge, jury and executioner, all in one gun. It harms things normal guns couldn't hope to touch - perfect for monster hunting.
Range: 15/30/60, Damage: 3d6, RoF: 1, Weight: 2, Shots: 30, Notes: Semi-Auto, gains + 2 AP in sunlight
3d6 damage and good range from a pistol for sure. A game-breaker? No, especially since Set Rising is designed to be for Suzerain's Demigod rank characters. But it's still a weapon most characters would love to have in their back pocket. Just in case.
You might have noticed that it gets better in sunlight - you'll find that with a lot of the stuff coming out of Ra's realm. He is the sun god after all.
Set Rising is fast approaching. Prepare for the Judgment of Anubis!
Daily Mojo, 02/19/14, The Time of our Cons
So today I want to talk about two conventions coming up this weekend. First, Savage Mojo has partnered up with Iron GM for their convention Total Con. The con is this weekend outside of Boston and you can get Tomb of the Lich Queen (Savage Worlds or Pathfinder- your choice) for half off! You can check out more information at Iron GM's Facebook page or the Total Con website.
Second, Sean Patrick Fannon will be attending Con Nooga in Chattanooga, TN which runs from February 21-23. You can find out more information about Con Nooga at their website.
Daily Mojo, 02/07/14, MMK Reveals All
Miles M Kantir did a wonderful podcast with Misdirected Mark on Suzerain Continuum and all of the changes going on for Savage Mojo as well as a sneak peek into the life of Miles M Kantir. The interview with Miles starts in at about 44 minutes and it's a great thing to check out if you want to learn a little bit more about the inner workings of Savage Mojo!
Daily Mojo, 02/03/14 - When the Sun Rises on the Third Day...
Something is coming Wednesday, if you can only hold on until then.
No matter how dark it gets, how tough the battle becomes, how low the hope of others drops, you must hold on.
Hold on... until Wednesday.
Blog tiiiime, blog time, dada da-da da-da!
Birmingham, UK
This weeks blog seemed to have rolled around really quickly, then I realised I was rather late posting last weeks which explainins it.
First off the Savage Suzerain news I mentioned last week, I am currently cracking on with stats for new monsters for the next stage of Dungeonlands. Obvioulsy I cant go into detail as hopefully many of you will play it at some point in the future and I think its a nice to be surprised when being horrifically slaughtered. he he
What I will say is that we have some very characterful creatures with some fun and funky powers. Funky powers are the bane of my life and one of my favourite parts of the job. Trying to work out how to represent what the writer thought up in rules that make sense and are reasonably simple can be very tricky at times, however when I get it right (or at least think I have) I do enjoy it. Part of the balance is between rules simplicty and being characterful, alot of attacks can be effectively done as a standard attack with a trapping to fit the style of the creature in question, this keeps things simple and quick in combat. However, it is often the case that some bespoke special rules are also required to make the creature able to do what the writer wanted, its at this point that things get interesting and sometimes tricky. It becomes a balancing act between it doing what the writer imagned, what the rules can cover, keeping it playable and trusting the GM.
Its that last point that saves the day everytime, I always try to make the special rules simple, playable and characterful, but should I make a mistake or write something in a way that is difficult to follow I trust that Savage GMs can wing it and make it work for them. I know when I run stuff the stats (even the ones I wrote and are convinced are spot on) are very much a guideline to aid me not hard and fast limits.
So for those of you waiting for the next section of dungeonlands, we havent forgotten you and a working away on creating a brand new nightmare for you to get uncaringly murdered by, bet you cant wait to run in head first can you. :-)
Over on the Savage Mojo g+ page we have a poll about your favoruite genre mash-ups and I would be most interested to hear what other people think so do pop by and vote. Possibly unsurprisingly if you read my blog, my personal favourite is fey/speampunk, but as previouly stated I may be biased on that one. :-)
I have also been continuing my work on my d&d 3.5 exell character sheet of doom when I get chance. Recently I have been doing a fair bit of working sections of the behind the scenes code to make it easier to figure out, to try and bring together the additional sections created when I decided to add a 4th class to the sheet and rewritting some of the early formulas to make them less clunky and work better with the rest of the improved sheet.
As well as improving the existing code a bit I am also finishing up the magic section for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th classes, however excell is being difficult. I have dependant data validation setup on all 4 of the magic sections to switch between domain and sepecialty schools, as far as i can tell all 4 are setup to same however the last one refuses to function and the rest work fine, and I cant see what my mistake is, it is very annoying.
Right well I should probably get on with some work.
All the best
Daily Mojo, 02/17/14, (Nearly) Eternal Hero
We consider Suzerain to be a toolkit for GMs making a game that really suits their gaming group. As such, every rule is a just suggestion, every addition to the core Savage Worlds experience is just a guideline. One of the more famous bits of Suzerain is the ability for characters of all rank to 'cheat death' as long as they have at least one Karma left (one Benny).
Over the years we've found that the vast majority of gamers like the idea that death is a risk for player characters, but hate it when it actually happens. It's a pain to draw up a new characters and reintegrate into the group. Hence, I guess, why D&D has resurrection as an option. The Karma rule in Suzerain is our version of resurrection for Savage Worlds.
So here's my question - has anyone actively vetoed that option in their game? Or do you all play with it? And if you don't have a Suzerain game running yourself, what's your opinion of the (Nearly)-Eternal Hero concept? Would you game with resurrection switched off as an option in D&D?
Daily Mojo, 02/16/14, The Player That Wasn't
In the Savage Suzerain book we talk about the benefits of the Veil, that cloudy, milky barrier between mortal and immortal realms. Because the gods and great spirits can't see through it perfectly, sometimes a Suzerain hero finds himself yanked out of the action at inopportune moments for an extra briefing, to give the gods a status report, or to go on a quickie side-mission. When would you use this as a GM? Why, when a player rings just before the game to say they can't make it! One character disappears from play and the locals can't quite recall what happened to him... gone to the little boy's room, perhaps... so for a short while (one session of game time) the others have to make do without that character. At least they can carry on the story and your gaming session is saved.
Players can't make roleplay sessions for all sorts of reasons. Real life can be a pain like that. What's your worst story of "The player that wasn't"?
Convention report continued
Birmingham UK
Continued from my earlier post, as apparently I am rambling too much and it wont all fit, oops. This is probably why I stick to just doing rules, otherwise our setting books would be thousands of pages long and you would never be able to find anything. he he
And back to the convention report:
I always make sure I play in at least one game, and its rapidly become the tradition that I keep Sat evening slot free for this game and that I aim to play something I haven't tried before.
This year's game was Neon Sanctum who were using the games to play test their system to work out the fine tuning. The system is a card based system that uses cards to define what actions your good at or special things you can do and then a 2d10 roll to see if you succeed or not. At this point you might be drawing comparisons with WHFRP 3rd or d&d 4 and while they do a somewhat similar mechanic in this regard the way they use them is very different. I am not going to go into too much detail as I only had a 4 hour con game to get to grips with it myself, also I might have got bits wrong in my head and it was a playtest so things might have already changed.
But here is the basics taking into account the above caveats. The standard special ability cards are exhausted when used and have to be bought back from the trash at the end of your turn while still in combat. The damage you take removes cards from play and some cards can be activated and maintained using up some of your action points at the start of every round to keep going. Action cards are often enhanced by or require item cards.
One aspect I liked was that while the special ability cards were combat focused they also have traits on them and that are used to give you bonuses to out of combat activities, but like in combat when the card is used for a bonus it is used up for that scene.
The use of the cards and how they work together, how you get them back after use and how they are removed from play by damage, makes the game very tactical, which I did quite like, but did seem to put of one of the other players who preferred more indie freeform games. It is different and that makes it trickier to get a read on in short space of time but I think it does what it set out to do well.
I fear I have described it poorly, so please do check it out if you get chance, I believe they are planning a kickstarter for later this year. As you might be able to tell I was quiet taken with the system, the bit of the setting we got to see and the enthusiasm of the guys working on it.
So in gaming terms a really good convention. The downside was the lurgy, it is fairly normal when people from all over the country and other countries all gather in one place, stay up late, eat poorly and generally get run down that illness will follow. Working at a uni and having to deal with fresher's flu every year, con flu has never really been an issue before.
Also Con flu doesn't usually hit until fairly late on in the con just in time to head home and back to work. This year something nasty was doing the rounds, people were dropping out of games on Friday morning due to illness and it was hitting a lot of people. The Saturday morning game I ran had 7 people booked only 3 showed up, yea this year's lurgy was not good.
I thought I had dodged it, I had a bit of a rough throat on Sat evening but put that down to running a lot of games back to back. By the time we headed home on Monday both me and Sarah were defiantly coming down with evil flu type stuff, so we got back from the con and ended up taking a week of work due to illness :-(
But as a true gamer I can state I regret nothing, he he.
I guess I will have to save the actual sav suz news stuff for next weeks blog.
All the best and happy valantines day.
Convention report
Birmingham UK
Hello one and all.
How shiny is our new site? I hope you guys like it, because I think it looks great, it runs much quicker and it has a forum so you can talk to us, ask us question and generally sing our praises. Too far?
Right so I haven't written a blog in a few weeks so got a bit of catching up to do. Two weeks ago we were at Conception an excellent 5 day gaming con on the south coast of England, which I will witter on about at length in a bit. Last week both me and Sarah were very unwell with chest infection style lurgy so I completely failed to post anything last week.
This week I am a bit later than usual posting mostly due to being busy with work and generally disorganised. But I am here now dispensing insights and wisdom to all who are foolish enough read this.
Conception 2014
I had a really good con, I ran 7 games as planned, played some new board games, playtested a brand new card based system being developed and got Sarah hooked on minecraft.
The four feng shui games I ran were huge fun as always, much destruction and violence was done and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. This year was the first year at conception where I haven't asked played to fill out note sheets to pass to along to the next group as the scenarios while linked were much more standalone than previous years.
The players were up against the evil eunuch sorcerers and their demons this year, they successfully rewrote the 7 samurai, made sure Arthur won and died at Camlan and ensured the allies held Pegasus Bridge during the d-day landings. The fourth game was the request game I run every year for the same group of people and they got a choice of the three scenarios I had run already, so Pegasus Bridge was saved twice!
The other games I ran were all Sav Suz games, the first was Gorilla warfare, the same Quantum sliders scenario that I had much fun running last year. Again much fun was had by the players, but in character RP, some very random detours and players rolling incredibly poorly in the final fight did mean I had to drop the final chase I had planned after the main objective was completed as we were running short of time. I am hoping that next year I will have slimed down the serial killer investigation game I was working on so it will run in a con slot.
The second sav suz game was the continuation of the space investigation game I wrote ages ago and have run a few times. The same characters returning a year or so down the line and having to deal with the invasion of the ice base they are stranded at by hostile forces. The investigation game was designed to be no combat all investigation and party RP, this time it was designed so the players could choose between a mix of stealth or combat tactics in trying to achieve their goals. The party went down the more combat route and seemed to have fun doing it, everyone seemed to have fun and I had fun running it and in the end they saved the planet, after trying to destroy it. :-)
The last sav suz game was savage tarrasque (I swear I spell that different every time) run by me and Mr Alan. If you have read some of my older blogs you will probably be familiar with it, if not quick recap. Terrasque for sale is an old AD&D module that was a convention favourite. The players a split into 2 teams with a GM each, they are given a map, a price list and some objectives to protect and have to build a dungeon. This often leads to some of the funniest, cleverest and most lethal dungeons traps ever created. After 90 min they swap tables are given pregen characters and have to try and beat the other teams dungeon in the remaining time.
A number of years ago I converted it to d&d 3.5 rules and we ran it and Conception, last year I finally finished my conversion to Sav Suz rules and was happy with it. Just before the con as I hadn't had chance to properly playtest we decided to up the characters from Seasoned to Veteran to ensure they were solid.
It was a fun game to run, and the players seemed to enjoy it but even they could tell that the power level wasn't quite right. Damage in traditional tarrasque mainly works by chipping away at the characters HP, that aspect didn't carry over to the Sav Suz version very well and other than one amazingly good damage roll by me the players never felt properly in peril.
So I think the verdict is the basics work ok, but needs more work to make it a proper challenge. I think taking the characters back down to Seasoned may help, but I am not sure that will solve in imbalance. It's going to take some strategic hitting with sticks to fix this so you can expect some posts about my epic struggles in the future.
Apparently my post is too long for the character limit so look out for part 2 shortly.
Hope your all well
Daily Mojo, 02/13/14, We Love Suzerain
We'll be participating in the "We Love Games" sale on DriveThruRPG and RPGNow. All of our main books will be 14% off as a Happy Valentine's Day "Thank you" to all of our fans. We'll be honoring the prices on our site as well. And we'll have an even bigger treat next week - it begins with "Game" and ends with "Scapes", but more on that later....
Daily Mojo, 02/10/14, The Big Irish Vlog
If you're at all interested in seeing Big Irish (aka Savage Mojo's SPF - in other words, me) rave on about various stuff, check out the Big Irish Vlog. I'm back to a weekly schedule, and just posted up my latest one. In this episode, I cover my upcoming convention schedule, the Shaintar Crowdfunding Page on the Savage Mojo site, and a brief monologue about Shaintar and the Suzerain Continuum.
Daily Mojo, 02/09/14, The Realms of Suzerain: American Grit
Our American Grit realm covers both our Noir Knights and Millennium Knights books. It's one of our best established realms, being set in the modern world (well, 20th century, at least).
With the new Continuum editions coming soon, we thought you might like to find out a little more about it, so we've updated the SuzeWiki. Select some of the links to find out more about the Special Projects Administration, which is the nexus of the realm, or to find out what a nexus is for instance.
Over the coming few weeks, in the countdown to the Continuum edition launches for each of our realm books, we'll be updating the wiki with more about each one. When that happens, we'll be sure to let you know.
Daily Mojo, 02/08/14, Eating Goblins for Breakfast
MMK's three year old boldly announced today that she eats goblins. "I had five for breakfast this morning," she added.
Do you have any little gamer moments to share?
Daily Mojo, 02/04/14 - While We Wait
As anticipation mounts for what comes tomorrow, I thought I'd take a moment to recap all we've shared thus far. This should be especially helpful for everyone just tuning in for the revolution in progress.
* Yours Truly, Sean Patrick Fannon, has signed on with the House of Savage Mojo, handling communications and doing some creative development. The team here has expanded and shifted to adapt to the incredible changes underway.
* We launched a talk-inducing, high-tech PDF freebie called the Suzerain Continuum. Maximizing all the potential of an electronic document, it had lots of cool graphics and other bells-and-whistles. Most of you loved it. Some of you hated it. We all talked about it, though, and it speaks a great deal about the possibilities that the 21st Century of game publishing offers.
* Noting the unintended barrier to access, we also put all that nifty Continuum information up on an ever-expanding information site that will tell the story of the Suzerain Continuum in its infinite glory.
* The PDF and the site both get into the revised way we are approaching the Suzerain concept. Things are opening up to create a true "omnicosm" of possibilities, where anyone's setting or ideas can fit into a cohesive and entertaining whole. Ultimately, other settings from other publishers (like Evil Beagle's Shaintar) will be easily integrated into the concept.
* Savage Mojo is getting into the business of books - the physical kind you can order directly from DriveThruRPG and RPGNow, at will.
So that's the story so far, but it's really just the beginning. Stay tuned as the action and drama unfold...
Daily Mojo, 02/02/14, The Game of the Day
I know that I am going out gaming today, but I can't possibly be the only one! Who else is gaming today and what are you play?
~ Heidi
Welcome to the Suzerain Group and Community
We will be taking down the Suzerain page on Facebook and we have made a Suzerain group for anyone who ants to ask questions or have discussions about Suzerain! We also have a Google+ Community for those who prefer Google+ over Facebook! Everyone is welcome to join!
Daily Mojo, 02/02/14, Welcome to the Suzerain Group
We will be taking down the Suzerain page on Facebook and we have just made a Suzerain group for anyone who ants to ask questions or have discussions about Suzerain! Everyone is welcome to join!
Daily Mojo, 02/01/14 - It's Not A Tease...
Sean's still on a mission, so today I'm going to take you behind the scenes at Savage Mojo to see some of the things we're doing. Which makes today a web links kind of day.
When we launched Suzerain Continuum, our super-interactive primer, we came up with a plan to also deliver that content online. We did that here.
This, however, is the tip of a very big iceberg. Once you start something like this it tends to snowball, and the snowball picks up momentum until... until it becomes an iceberg, I guess. Um, maybe I should check with a geographer before I come up with analogies in the future.
Anyway, the point is this: one page leads to another. And another. And yes, while we're at it we figured we needed this one too. And we're also aware we need to update some out of date pages that hook into those....
In fact, the Suzerain Continuum page talks about 8 different realms in total, and they'll each want their own page now that we've started that journey. And this is a task that happens alongside us doing all the other regular things we do, like working on new Dungeonlands books, Set Rising, Clockwork Dreams, a fiction collection, and project codename Illyth-Thing.
What I'm saying is this - there's smoke rising from the funnel, we're stoking the engines below-decks and right now, right this instant is the calm before the storm
What I'm saying is this - there's smoke rising from the funnel, we're stoking the engines below-decks and right now, right this instant is the calm before the storm, frantic activity below the waterline until *boom* you find yourself rammed by the giant Savage Mojo iceberg.
An iceberg which apparently has steam engines and decks to be below. What? How else do icebergs move? I'm just saying....
Daily Mojo, 01/30/14 - On A Mission
While Sean is on a humanitarian mission to New York (No, for real. He's doing something awesome right now to help those in the world who are much less fortunate than us), I have a question for everyone, and it kind of follows on from yesterday's:
What's your favorite published setting of all time, and what's the one thing that aggravates you most about it despite you loving it?
Okay, so that was two questions. I'm a words guy - to me, math never added up.
Let me know, folks. I'm really interested in what you have to say about this. I'm aware that nothing is perfect, and it's easy to talk about our favorite this and the worst ever that, but the truth is that even things we love dearly have faults. Sometimes it's good to acknowledge that and say, "If I could change just one thing to turn awesome into pure genius..."
Sometimes, You Just Want a Book to Hold
Savage Mojo is a high-tech house with classical sensibilities. We all know and love the allure of physical books, and we know how many of you do, as well.
Wonderfully, there's a high-tech solution - thanks to the great folks at DriveThruRPG - to scratch that old school itch. We're thrilled to announce that all of our books will be going through the process to be made available via the Print Program! Now you can get the New PDFs and the gorgeous print versions that you want to pass around the table.
The Continuum Plan
Hopefully, by now, you've had a chance to read up on the basic idea of the Suzerain Continuum. If not, go ahead and either grab the new, high-tech PDF (linked below) or check out the site version of the info here.
Go on. I'll wait.
OK, good. Now that we're caught up, I've been dying to tell you about what this means for all the amazing stuff Savage Mojo's already created, as well as what's in the pipeline for this year and beyond. Every SM Setting is going to get the Continuum Treatment, meaning it's going to be updated and made more self-contained. New information about how to interconnect with the Continuum will be included, bringing it all online with the new, improved plan. This includes Dogs of Hades, Caladon Falls, Dungeonlands, Noir Knights, Shanghai Vampocalypse, and much more.
This doesn't mean you wasted your money, friends - not by a long shot. No, these are updates to your purchased products. Yes, that means you get the new versions for free! Hopefully, you'll be so excited by the new ideas and prospects, you'll be gassed up and ready to go, grabbing all the other Continuum-related products you don't have and the ones yet to be released!
We're also looking at how other products from other publishers can be integrated into all of this. Frankly, any setting you want to include, you can readily enough. However, we've got some great conversations going on with some really cool people, meaning this Continuum thing promises to really change the gamescape for one and all.
I mean, after all, look at how Shaintar is already a part of this...
We Bring Worlds to Life
The Suzerain concept has been in development for a long time, born of the creative and passionate mind of MMK. His vision has always been one of epic, cinematic excitement, endless possibilities, and gripping personal drama against the backdrop of cosmic enormity.
So, too, has the idea of shared worlds and stories, and the flow of story and adventure between all possibilities, in the mind of SPF. This can be seen readily in the expansiveness of Shaintar, the crossover "event books" coming out of the Kickstarter last year, and the full integration of ideas that come from his collaboration with Scott Corum and others for the OmniCosm.
The unity of these ideas in the Suzerain Continuum signifies a new stage of the story. A story so huge and so full of potential that there is only one way to really deal with all that has come and all that will come.
The link below will take you to a place MMK calls the Home of the Story, where you discover that "the Continuum is huge, and it's alive - ever growing, ever exciting."
Hit the link, explore, and enjoy!
Comes the Continuum
The Desk of SPF
A moment of hot in this cold, cold January - the Suzerain Continuum was downloaded over 1100 times from launch to the end of its first weekend of release. This despite server issues and the inevitable consternation that happens when you push the technical boundaries. Some of you didn't grok the "new " that we tried right away; that's OK, some of us didn't at first, either.
(Seriously, I had to wrangle my Adobe and Flash stuff like a rodeo clown dealing with a bull named Fu Manchu to get it to work. When I did, though - BAM! - it was so cool seeing that stuff come to life. Mike over at Void Star Games has been telling us, and now we get it. The mind boggles...)
This was a chance to explore and experiment, and in the end, we all discovered some radically fun new ways to interact with our electronic documents. The Suzerain Continuum, as a concept, represents a completely new approach to gaming, something that will help redefine interaction with content for both creators and consumers, blurring those lines in truly content-sharing ways. It's only natural we kick the whole thing off with a new style of game document. A free one, at that! If you've not gotten your hands on it, yet, hit the link and have some fun!