Fantasy Makers Industries Blog

So last week was the first time that I have really played more than just a one shot with the rule system as a player.  It was a great experience to have someone else at the controls.  While my campaign is an attempt to ferret out as many issues as possible with the game system during play, etc., this campaign (more based on a city  and social aspects of the game system, where as mine is focused on the dungeon crawl/outdoors adventure testing the rules) is a good test for playability, and flexiblity in the hands of other GMs than myself.  I am looking forward to continuing to play in this campaign.

Last week was an interesting week with the playtest.  Not because of any really WOW moments during the sesssion (but there was a couple) just the fact that it went really, really smooth.  I mean there are still the occassional bugs that pop up, which I quickly try to take care of with rule tweaks.  I am beginning to be very happy with the rule system, its the magic part that still gives me the problems with the balancing that needs to occur so a mage is not uber powerful nor is he uber weak and unhelpful….I think with the addition of the Fatigue Rules to enhance a spell this may have been solved….which leads to the current update of the playtest….

 So the party, after spending a week healing their wounds and reading specific books that they acquired in the passageway, they decide to go and look into some slavery that was happening in the northwest region of the area.

 Along the way it began to rain very hard, a very dark, chill you to the bone kind of rain, and the party decided to head into a number of shallow caves, more like underhangs than anything else, and found a small cave just out of sight for them to take shelter from the winter rain.  This is where they found (to no-one’s surprise) a 6′ round cover stone over a spiral stair way that has lead them into a series of rooms that are connected by teleportation portals.

These portals are weird in the sense that going into one takes to another room, but goin back through the same takes you to another room.  Its has been very interesting to see how the party deals with this.  Currently, they are looking for a way out.

 The wow moments came when during a fight the priest decided to reverse cure wounds on an opponent which caused him to suffer 50 points of damage, taking him down.  The second was when the mage with the new Fatigue Rules hurled a fire bolt at one of the fighters and by spending 30 Fatigue to increase the base damage of the spell from 4 points of base damage to a whopping 10 points of damage (which I think is really too powerful so I will have to adjust this) for a really powerful 50 points of damage.

We left off with the party retreating back to the kitchen area after a huge fight with some summoned beasties in one of the other rooms….Next week I get to play and see how another GM uses the rules and see what needs to be improved there….

Until then…..

For the longest time I have been concentrating on the abilities, combat and balancing to the best that I can the rules for character creaton….I think this is 95% done…there are a few more tweaks and I have another month in my mind before I want to release this 1st edition to the world….With that said…magic has taken a back seat for some time…and as of recent playtests has become a focus of the gaming as the player of the mage is finding things that are not sitting well…especially if compared with fighters vs. magic users (divine, spell and jinhu)….so it has become a struggle the past month to find a good balance that allows for great casting along with helping them become “big and flashy”…In this effort i have made some critical changes for testing with the spells….

 All spells have a reduced Fatigue cost (3,6,9,12) if they have a fatigue cost at all.  Some spells are so simple they just work.  Second, lower Powered spells may not even have a Defense.  Third, I have decided to remove the TS requirement of the spell or power as this was really limiting the users, now they simply have to be able to cast the spell or power and must determine their successes, if needed with an appropriate skills check.  Many spells simply just need one success, others none.  Fourth, I have implemented a system of Fatigue use that allows a character to spend extra fatigue to make his spells big and flashy:

5 Fatigue: Increase base damage of spell or power by 1 point
10 Fatigue: Defender only gets 1/2 of specified defense, if applicable
15 Fatigue: Lower AP of spell or power by 1 to a minimum of 1
20 Fatigue: Cause defender to hve no defense; caster must specify which defense is being targeted
30 Fatigue: Spell cannot fail, unless a critical failure is rolled.  If there is a defense for the spell the PR of the spell is used as the TS.  All other determinations (range, duration and damage) are considered to have 1 success should the caster normally fail his or her skill roll.

We shall see how these new rules work and play over the next few weekends.

So I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving day….we began play after the holiday with the group, now made up of 1 Acires Priest, and 4 Aelwyn (fighter, thief, mage, and beastmaster), after the party had spent a week in an aelwyn village the mage…who is a champion of good…declared that he wanted to help anyone in the village with any problems….the “leader” of the village suggested that they go to the Tineas Farm and inquire there about a well in the ground that the farmer wanted investigated….sure enough they went….

Well….the whole “well” was actually a well planned out series of traps left over by this mad mage who love traps.  SO they wne through this dungeon of traps with no battles…other than trying to out do the traps….Basically, they had nearly died with all the traps…

 Ya see…all traps in the TGS have an initiative score.  In order to avoid the trap you must be able to beat this initative score.  For the most part they did…unless of course the trap was just an activation like picking a lock, or a whole room ceiling dropping on you or a section of the floor slamming you into the ceiling….

They make it through this maze of traps only to find that the last room has a well in it and is covered in silver coins….Well the thief has to make a Willpower Check at TS 4 to go against his Motivation to Steal the World, fortunately he seconds…at least the first few minutes….he fails the second and fails to the ground paralyzed by a poison.  This also unleashes the beastie in the well (a water elemental).  The others see this and make some hasty decisions.  First, the priest of of the god of war rushes forward to take on the Water Elemental and by doing so he invokes his Bestowed Power “AntiMagic Area” which allows him to cause all magic around him in a 20′ diameter to become inactive for just under a minute.  This causes the elemental to return to the well while the others rush over and grab the theif and head for another door on the far side of the room.  Where the run into a door that is locked with a puzzle trap that they must figure out…well unfortuntely this takes more than a minute to figure and the water elemental comes roaring back and attacks the priest….who is hit with its Rot Living Material special ability…during this time he is attempting to invoke his Vested Power Final Fury of Faith which will kill him and cause his Divine Knowledge in damage to all creatures around him.  There is no defense to this.  But he had previouls critically failed his Divine Knowledge check earlier in casting a heal power, this has its consequences of the character suffering Diety Retribution where the player suffers a -25 to all his DL attempts for 24 hours.  

 So he is unable to “pop-his-top” as he cannot easily enough call upon the divine power that would allow this.  He gets hit many times and has his left upper arm, mid torso and right bottom arm rotting away..all the while the rest of the party has faired even worse…..The fighter thinking that he could throw one of the coins into the well and have the elemental disappear drops to the floor paralyzed…along with the thief….the mage in his attempt to decipher the puzzle chooses the wrong one and his hit with a Death Spell which causes him to check vs. Stamina at TS of 4 or die….he succeeds but drops to the floor unconcious…..So all there is left is the beastmaster and his dog…he solves the puzzle….but instead of opening the door the whole wall and the door descend to reveal the next baddie…a mega spider which promptly attacks the character…who nimble dodges out of the way and runs….his dog is long gone and is running for the exit…with the spider hot on his tail he runs past the elemental and the priest who has dropped to the floor…

The character makes it to the door as the spider and the elemental attack each other.  At his moment the theif regains controll over his body, gets up and begins going through the room from which the spider escaped….he grabs about 40 sp from a chest full of it, an amulet and three books…he then takes off for the door as the spdier and elemental go at it.

A few moments later the fighter snaps to…sees the mage on the floor grabs him and runs….while the beast master decides to go back after the the acires and begins dragging him back to the entrance just as the elemental kills the spider and begins spewing his breath weapon of acid water, but misses from the distance.

In the end, the party gets back to the village with the help of thief,…where they are now recouping from their beating….

Next week….Slavers!

Okay so I missed the update for the second day of Playtesting….I was in the middle of writing it, went to bed and forgot to save it so I could finish it later and well….I lost it..so on to day 3.

The playtest is progressing great.  The players are enjoying and really enjoy the system.  Combat is a bit tough but this because of the fact that they are fighting monsters that 1.86 times more powerful than they are.  I suppose a break down of what is going would better explain this.

Legends of Kralis, more specifically the TGS, has three levels (styles) of play in it: Low, Medium and High Gaming Levels.  By default all TGS games are based on the Medium Gaming level.  A GM can either raise or lower this level of gaming as they see fit.  Low level games will be great struggle, medium level games are tough, while high level games are much less difficult.

As a standard all NPCs are set at a 200 Point Build which makes them 1.6 times more “powerful” than Medium Level games, Low Level games they are 2.5 times more “powerful”, while in High Level Games they are 1.1 times more “powerful.”  It could be argued that I should create stats for each of the different level of games, and maybe I might one day.  But highly unlikely.  In addition, I am not one that thinks that PC’s should necessarily be more powerful than monsters or NPCs, its my basic game design philosophy.  However, these builds are for attributes which only has a slight increase in skill points only because they have larger modifiers than most.

So the adventure continues…..

The acires were joined by an aelwyn…Yes in the playtest I am going right down the races to see if they are broken and I am making each of the player stay with a specific focus for each race….sooo…..this was the Aelwyn Mage….

The players decided on a mid-morning breach of the front door…..not necessarily a good thing…There were three guards waiting for them and two of them had crossbows.  It was going to be a typical fight…at least until the priest decide to charge in…he has slammed hard with two critical hits which caused him to attempt to run away from the comabt…at least retreat where he failed his Willpower check to stay up and functioning…So he began to bleed to death.

 Well the acires and the aelwyn, who by the way has become something of a fighter/mage, decimated the remaining three guards….After spending some time in healing the priest…they decided to make their way in….which lead them directly into contact with the three skeletons from the previous day… they defeated one and the priest attempted and was successful with his turning undead…One of the acires, for whatever reasons, decided to take the skull of the defeated skeleton…

A word from your local Undead Knowledge Bank….
Undead in the world of Kralis, and the TGS, do not die normally.  You may cause them damage, but this is only against their Fatigue…do actually destory any form of undead you must use divine attacks (blessed damage, etc.)….Good news though…once you take an undead being below its fatigue points it drops to the ground or disappears in a cloud of smoke….but this is when it begins to regenerate depending on the rank of the undead it may take an hour…it may only take 1 turn…..so be careful out there…..
Now back to the show….

I am not going to go through every single situation…I am not that patient of a writer…So I will get to the fun stuff….

The players had to take on this stone golem…but they kinda took some hard hits and retreated….The Awesome Award goes to Lee when he took on the golem toe-to-toe by himself…He first started with the Ability Burst of Strength…which can increase your Strenght Attribute by +30 points…so this effectively raised his Str to 120 points….He charges the golem and rolls a Strength check as he is attempting to Charge and KnockDown the the Golem…He rolls a 02 on his roll which gives him a 12 TS….but because he rolled an 02 he gets to roll again for additional critical successes and gets 7 more successes for a grand total of 19 successes against the golem.  I figure that this is a Stone Golem, Strength of 110 no real problem, I figure I will get at least 10 successes…..but no…I roll a 00 (double ought) and fail….There I am as GM with real no idea on what to do next…..Okay, I figure he has knocked into the golem incredibly hard, enough to knock it down, but what then?  I turn to the Sunder, Shatter and Break rules and based on that decide that I would use the Sunder Metaphoric Rock..which allows Lee to break 1″ per 4 successes for 4 inches of stone that was cracked open and broken, with the golem falling and all…and low and behold with his axes beating at the thing, just to break the stone he gets another 02 in his roll…Well ultimately he breacks the “life stone” powering the golem and thus destroying it.

 Well they go on and continue looking into the various rooms off a hallway to the south.  The second room that they come to they find a small bag containing 3 vials, 1 Red, 1 Purple and 1 Green.  Trevor who is playing the wizard of the group states the following: “I take the green one and drink it”.  I look at him astounded at the fact that he, a wizard, went off to such a reckless thing…..well…okay then…Wvyern Poison -60 to all Skills for the next 12 hours.   Now they are essentially stuck in this room, with wondering skeletons around and bandits….So they decide to hole-up in there until Trevor’s character is over the poisoning.

 Over all I think that game itself is getting tighter and running smoother than ever before.  There are some issue still to deal with, but they will get ironed out soon enough.

 See ya next week…..

Well….it was interesting to say the least.  The players were anxious to get going and find the issues with the game.  We are using a player suggested “tick” system for combat and it seems to be working, we shall see. If it works out it could possibly replace the entire combat AP system.  I am not sure as it is very similiar to the old AD&D Weapon Speed system.  But not really. 

 The playtest session went well.  We used the “tick” system and it went well. 

For the lack a a better of starting things, I had the party start out in a human village.  It should be noted that villages, towns, cities etc., are more or less considered islands of civilization surrounded by the WildLands and as such, smaller villages tend to treat outsiders with suspicion and out right distrust at times….thus they found themselves in the employ of a rather eccentric dwarf that had a job for them to do and he did not trust the humans of the village, dispite the fact that he had a residence here. 

The dwarf basically needed them to investigate a lost dwarven fortress set in the mountains outside of the village and attempt to rescue his daughter Grona from whatever fate she had found when she had left to explore the fortress a week prior.  

As the whole group is made up of acires and were in an isolated human village that had made the party aware of their distrust of the party, they readily agreed.  Despite the fact that they were warned of why the fortress fell over 200 years ago.  The whole of the fortress has become home to bandits.  But the real reason of the dwarven departure from the fortress lies in the bowels of the fortress in the form of a “hideous beast that breathes fire and eats through the strength of the stone.” 

It was a day’s travel to the fortress an during the night before they reached they secret entrance of the fortress they were attacked by a small group of bantur that attacked from the shadows of the night with blow guns.  Over all this challenge proved effortless, once they found the hidden little buggers.. 

The next day found them at the secret entrance of the dwarven fortress and they were moving through nicely, having defeated a brown bear that had taken up residence in one of the rooms around the entrance.  They moved through to a main hallway and were faced with several doors.  Trevor’s character, for whatever reason, decided to simply knock on a door that they heard sounds coming from.  This was a potential TPK maneuver as a Firbog and 10 bandits answered his knock.  Fortunately it turned into a Partial Party Capture as Joe’s character was the only one to really flee, however, in a courageous (foolhardy?) moment of inspiration Chris’ character surrendered along side Trevor’s character’s who had critically failed his attempt to cast Earth Ripple and brought down upon him the wrath of a Mis-Spelled roll of lightning strike.  Lee’s character attempted to hide under the dead bear in the other room, but failed in his untrained Hide skill and was captured by the bandits and Firbog. 

They were there for three days as Joe’s Martial Artist hid and tended his wounds before attempting a single handed rescue.  He moved through the lower floor of the fortress looking for his friends and finally stumbled upon them in a dug out prison.  This turned out to be the decisive battle of the night as he snuck into the area and tried to take out two wolves that wer ein the prison area BEFORE the guard come in from the other room.  

Successfully moving silently he was able to attack and kill the first wolf, but this awoke the second wolf which quickly scored two critcal hits on the character.  It was by sheer luck that Chris’ character awoke from his sleep in a cell and he watched as his friend fell beneath the savage attacks of the wolf.  Using 6 Heroic Luck and the required Charisma check at a TS of 6, he ripped the iron bars out of the wall and attacked the wolf.  The got the wolf to attack him and in doing so Chris performed a True Healing on Joe’s character which brought him back to full health and fatigue points.  Again the battle ensued and Joe once more found himself at the mercy of the wolf has it score not one but two critical hits on the Martial Artist bringing him close to death.  Once more Chris called upon his deity and cast True Healing on his companion, the wolf turned on Chris’ character and struck a killing blow on the character, he would slowly begin to die.  Joe’s character finally killed the wolf in one great blow.  Quickly he released the others from their cell and Trevor’s character quickly attempted a Healing skill check without a healer’s bag and lo he succeeded.  They had also located and found Grona. 

Now the party needed to get out, their priest was down, they had no equipment and their mage was without his spellbook as those that had surrendered had been stripped of the equipment.  On the run out of the fortress they encountered three obstacles: a goblin, and two opening doors.  They had to chase down and kill the goblin before he alerted any others and in doig so created enough noise to cause one door to begin to open which they quickly slammed shut and using spikes shut the door long enough to move further down the corridor and which point they found themselves facing the door where they encountered the firbog had begun to open.  Unfortunately, the door swung in, quickly they raced through the doorway to the north and slammed it closed.  It was more difficult to keep closed as the firbog through his entire weight at the door and opened it some distance, with renewed effort they were able to shut the door.  At this point Trevor’s character had long abandoned them and was running for his life out the hidden entrance.  Joe and Lee were left with Chris and Grona’s unconscious bodies and they had to escape.  Quickly spiking this door and a second door they rushed out the secret entrance and out towards the waterfall, behind them they could hear the Firbog and the bandits coming up the stairs. 

Carrying all the extra weight they would not be able to outrun the bandits and the firbog.  In a desperate attempt they jumped the water falls and landing into a deep pool some 90 feet below them they had escaped, the firbog and the bandits had decided not to be such daredevils and let the party go. 

Having survived the jump and meeting up with Trevor’s character down river, they made their way to the village and the dwarf Nimron who was very pleased with their success in rescuing his daughter.  After healing her and giving the party a small amount of cure wounds potion he then gave the party the ability to re-gather their missing supplies as he needed them to go back and retrive a legendary hammer of the clan that was still lost in the halls.

Okay,

So we or rather I have started another playtest group to begin what I feel is the near-finalization of the book for the 1st Edition.  This one is going to need the final tweaks, removal or clarification of rules and I really believe it will be finished.  I am excited about these new playtesters…the majority of them are D&Ders, along with a GURPS player and one Warhammer Gamist.  I am hoping that one of the newer memebers to this group will be a non-gamer who wants to learn how to game.  If she can pick it up without much strain on the brain it would help point out newbie issues with the game…..

 So I will begin a new blog based on this playtesting/campaign where I can talk about the action as well as what the character’s and their players have done.  I introduced them to the combat system this past Sunday night as an overview to Combat.  In general they enjoyed it, if however I had a TPK.  They were more used to run in without tactics to take on enemies (a general style of most D&Ders) and they were not ready for the one hit kills that they experienced.  They tried again and this time they came on with a bit more thought into tactics and were able to survive for the most part.  One thing that I forget is that all monsters are built off a 200 point spread which mkaes them generally tougher than those that would play a High Level game. 

 (For the most part I believe that monsters should be built to take out and take down players if the players are not playing up to the level that they should…besides monster are meant to be one of the biggest challenges within the TGS system…..Don’t go looking for a fight….)

With creatures based on the 200 point builds (which GMs could actually let their players use if they wanted to) I threw 4 Kaznarks at them..and they (the Kaznarks) wiped the floor with them….I shouldn’t have thrown 4 at them as on a one to one basis  monster is generally 1.6 times more powerful than a medium level character and 1.1 times more powerful than those of a high level game. 

So we will see whan they being, for real, the playtest campaign that I am throwing their way….It will be interesting….I am anticipating many deaths….

Okay, so it’s been sometime since i wrote in this blog….I am just horrible at writting logs, not that I am a bad or lazy writer….I can never seem to find the time to do so…..I suck.

Most of my time has ben spent refining Legends of Kralis and the Talarius Beastiary for publication this spring.  Since I am the one man show I have to do it all….which aggravates me to no end as I want to write about Kralis in the Wiki, add more articles to the Article Section of the website and get people interested in the game.  I need about three of me…hmmm..I wish i could replicate myself.

I have a whole bunch of unfinished articles that I need to get up ranging from new beasties to new spells and more advice for the GM….but between my real live job, family and other miscellaneous things that happen here and there….I have very little time….I hope to have more up by the end of next week…..and I will try to get on this blog more often….geesh I wish I could also slow down time…..

Okay…So I have been told by many that I will never be satisfied with Legends of Kralis and that I will always make changes, so that there is never a “true” version of the game that is “stable” enough for people to want to run the game.

I am consistently making changes to the rules. I understand that. But I have been doing it to make sure that the game is the best that it can be…That was part of the problem with us going “back to the drawing board” and things coming to a stand still for some time. I am not satisfied, but I don’t think I am wrong in that. I always want to improve the game, making slight changes here and there. Sometimes I make a change I think is for the better then found out that it was not that good of change…so I change it back. I suppose that is the problem when you do not have a group of designers pushing the envelope and pushing to make the game great. Often it has been me, by myself thinking about things and trying to make better changes. It has always been just me…at least that is how it has often felt.

So I have been told that I will never be satisfied. I won’t. But there will come a time where the game is good enough for now…until 2nd Edition. But that has been something that I have been trying to avoid..a 2nd edition…..so I have been hard to deal with on this matter….I want us to try to get it right the first time…or at least as right the first time as we can so we can avoid a 2nd edition for many years…Many people have criticized me for this.

Many people have been involved in testing and design of this game, giving me input, opinions and even adding content to the book.  Many of those people have left, for various reasons.  Maybe, I pissed them off because of the constant changes or perhaps they think that I didn’t listen to their opinions.  If I have done that I am sorry.  That is all that I can say about that.

However, the only person that has really stuck things out since I began this journey has been Chris Martin. He has been a solid foundation to help with my ideas, never overly criticizing the ideas, always willing to work with my ideas and help make them better, and always willing to do what it takes to help the game get further along. When I speak of we I often am speaking of Chris and I.

For the most part in my mind this entire time has been a playtest. Changes are a part of that.

So the game has yet to see a published book date….It has been in circulation in PDF format for several years, those that purchased or received copies of the PDF have always been given free updates. Before I spend the money and the energy to publish the hardcopy I want to make sure that the game is as complete as we can get it.

With that said. I am hoping that this will be the year that we come to the end of this. We will see. Maybe others are right and I will never be happy enough to publish it….hopefully they are wrong.

Well unless you have been under rock in the RPG inudstry you likely know that WOTC has announced the release of D&D 4th Edition.

There are a number of things that are good and bad about this.  There goes all the rules and material for 3 and 3.5, unless WOTC does something to make the those rules correspond with the upcoming rule set, which I doubt because it doesn’t make any business sense, they sure as hell didn’t support 2nd edition when 3rd came out, and with the release of 3.5 they marketed it as a revision.  They have stated that its going to still be the D20 system that you have come to know and love…but at the same moment they same its an evolution in game design not a new game system.  They have rebuilt the game, they even say this in the their video presentation.  When you evolve don’t technically become something new, something different than twhat you were before?  I mean, this is my personal opinion and all, and will likely be hacked at by others that like to tear theories apart, you know TROLLS but when you change game design you are doing so in order to alter the game itself.   I mean ” yay” the game goes up to 30th level in the core edition”?   They also talk about defining character roles better….Ummm….do not classes already do this, and do not presitige classes do this even further?  ARnt memeber of a group KNOW what they are supposed to do?   

From the beginning of WOTC’s control of D&D I have always stated that they were in the middle of making the Magic RPG gaming system when they noticed that TSR was falling like a downed giant….so they rushed in and picked up the slack and began re-writing the system.  This was not bad, for years players have languished in the mire of inconsistent rules and multiple books that contridic each other at times.  This is not say that 3rd edition was/is not in the same prediciment, but as a business I can see why they would create more product: more ideas, and more cash flow…But then they come out with 3.5 to correct errors in 3.0, and now 4th edition - a new game design but the same old d20…..hmmmm….i don’t get it….perhaps its for better minds than mine to understand.

This brings up the use of the OGL.  When this was first announced it was great because it allowed designers to see what the minds at WOTC were coming up with….It also allowed small publishers/designers to design games (modules and rules) for the largest gaming system ever.  But at the same time, there was this nagging part of me that always questioned why they would do this.  The conspiracy theorist in me was shouting about how they will give their competition the material and then at some point pull that OGL off the block and at the same time gather up all the design information from others at no cost for them.  With 4th edition, there has been a statement floating around that they are either going to not OGL 4.0 or restrict it somehow.  In either case those that produced OGL content may find themselves at the short in end of the stick, or they may just forever have to supplement 3.5 content….but i don’t think that the powers that be for Hasbro or WOTC will really let this stand.  I could be wrong….

 The good news is that there may be a hole to fill in the closing vaccum of WOTC’s 4th edition space for the indie game designer.  As many players may or may not (which I think is mostly passed on emotion) play the new 4th edition ( i remember many claiming the same about 3.5…there is really no solid evidence that they stopped or just sucked it up and played with 3.5 material) but then again this an “evolution” in game design for the d20 System.  Anyways, I beleive that there may be a place for indie game designers that have been over shadowed by the mass that is WOTC to emerge into the sunlight again, blinking but ready to provide good content to players and if it is done in a reasonable way does not financially hurt the company they may listen to their new acquired customers and provide content that they will like, play and enjoy…

But then again, I could be 100% wrong and I need to check my self into the local crazy ward….but we shall see….