Blut Und Eisen: Preview

Humanity, not the Gods, forged the world of Eonar. It might have been created by the gods, but they left it abandoned, broken and desolate. Now all that watches over the world is the sun, the three moons, and the ring. The vast continents and the great oceans of Eonar have become the domains of dukes, kings and emperors. These power-players have become the shapers of the world, the ones who forged it through wars and diplomacy.

Eonar has three continents. The great continent of Diana is covered by most civilized, the beacon of civilization, science and magic. Liorna is a continent of mystery, dominated by the great Dragon Empire which allows smaller countries like Savgos to stay independent as long as they support the empire. Arnesia, with its impressive natural landmarks, vast deserts and amazing mountain ranges has always inspired explorers, but recent findings of vast ruins have sparked the interest of the scientific and occult communities and in turn increased the attention of the Dianan powers. The colonies are thriving and the world is almost fully explored. These three continents are all that is left of the old world, the remains of an unimaginable disaster which scarred the face of the planet. In the wake of the reign of the Witch Queens, warlords have carved new nations out of the land, just to be cannibalized by their rivals. Finally, over three hundred years after the fall of the Witches, these countries have grown into great nations. Now the great powers and smaller kingdoms of Diana are all plotting and scheming against each other, waiting for the spark that will set the continent aflame.

All eyes are upon the noble nation of Vincenze. Surrounded by enemies and potential traitors, it managed to hold its position in the world through clever politics. Vincenze is the birthplace of modern civilized magic and the noble families. Most of the country consists of farmland, but the peaceful landscape is interrupted by beautiful deep lakes, vast mountains and glorious cities.

Vincenze as a buffer between proud Kordov in the north and pragmatic Cyren in the south. Unfortunately, King Leto II has passed away, leaving it weak and vulnerable. The Kordovians, under the leadership of their Emperor Alexavius have finally granted autonomy to the Yukovi tribes. And this allows the the great empire to turn its gaze towards its southern neighbors.

Kordov is not the only threat to Vincenze, but also ancient Strom. Once it was a country of wisdom and magic, protected by its vast mountains and unique levitating castles from outside threats, but now it is a kingdom of strife. The lower class rebelled against the nobility and plunged the country in a civil war which still lasts up to this day. Vincenze has claimed part of Strom as its own, against the wishes of Cyren. It has been forced to return most of its gains most of its gains in a treaty discussed with Kordov and Cyren. Although technically Cyren is an ally of Vincenze, it did not agree with the country expanding its borders, afraid to disturb the careful balance of power in the region.

The only ally that Vincenze has is pragmatic Cyren. It supports the alliance with Vincenze because it is in the country’s best interests to keep the mighty Kordovan empire at bay. Cyrenians are known for their great inventions, art and love of freedom, which they are all too happy to share with other cultures. Others might consider Cyren unreliable and bossy towards its allies, but they keep their mouths shut as long as Cyren has one of the most advanced armies in the world. Recently however, Cyren has been destabilized by recent requests from the Heavenly Sovereignty for additional ground within the country.

The pope has claimed lands in Cyren for a second time to expand the warmachine of the Heavenly Sovereignty. Originally the Heavenly Sovereignty was just the papal city of Icarius, but it expanded greatly during the last crusades, mostly on the continent of Arnesia. The Holy Church of Man has spread far and wide since then, declaring war upon the faith of Blood . Although it officially tolerates Lorroans, claiming it to be an equal faith, there are very few Cyrenians who still openly practice the Old Faith. Cyren granted the papacy several of its provinces eighty years ago to prevent a civil war, effectively creating a new country, but this time the Cyrenian goverment might refuse. The Sovereignty claims that they are the only ones keeping the Bloodclans at bay, the main army of the last of the Witch Queens, Morva.

What remains of the empire of the witches is now reduced to raging Blood Hordes in Arnesia, the industrial viscounty of Drogon and the pirate havens of the Free Principalities. Meanwhile, the remains of the lost kingdom of Ilverna still linger, a grim and desolate wasteland surrounded by dark fogs and only populated by ghosts and monsters. No one knows what caused the disaster that wiped out the once great kingdom by the Moonsea in a single night. Of its former glory, only the City of Whispers remains with its mysterious masked nobility.

These nations are home to a hardy and scheming people who are divided in a rigid class system. The lower class still lives like it did hundreds of years ago, living off the land and serving other people, barely worth the notion from those above them. Nobles have ruled over these people, guiding them with a combination of magic and military might. This reign has been unquestioned for ages, but recently the new middle class has risen, resourceful and rich. The world is changing, although not everyone sees this as a good thing.

The three great noble families, Ashford, di Lyss and Vostrakovna and their liege houses are unsure what to make of these new power players. They have lost in power and influence thanks to these new power players, but they cannot afford to wipe them off the face of the planet as they might once have done. The middle class brings a lot of wealth, commerce and innovation to the world, something which every nation can use. The nations of Diana need to use every resource available to them to win the oncoming conflict. Meanwhile the old families cling to their traditions of magical knights, mighty wizards and cunning lords. Each family has its own unique magic schools, kept strong by the pure Blood of the houses.

However, the families have relinquished their rights to turn any unblooded magician into a slave of the state, hoping to prevent a revolt like the one in the kingdom of Strom, even though this might result into unpure Blood. Everyone knows the dangers of an untrained and unschooled wizard. These past twenty years wild magicians have become a more and more common sight in Diana. The families will have to decide if these wizards are a new resource or a potential threat.

While old traditions are broken, new influences appear. Technology and science have improved with leaps and bounds the past three hundred years. The industrial revolution is changing the once feudal realms into modern states, with more wealth and comforts available to them than ever before. Cities are growing and the world is changing. The standard of living has never been this good and the world is growing smaller and smaller by new inventions like the railroad and the zeppelin. However, this smaller world also means that nations are eyeing each other for new resources. For now, colonization can keep this need satisfied, but soon one of the countries will claim too much. And then war will erupt, with terrible new weapons.

The world of Eonar is changing. Thanks to the advancement in technology and the change in the social structure of the world, war will come. Everyone knows this. Everyone can feel the tension. And that is why nations are preparing. Kordov is hungry for new lands, and Cygen is no longer pleased with Vincenze and might want to claim parts of the weaker country to make up for its losses caused by the Heavenly Sovereignty.

Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided but by iron and blood.

HotBlooded: Rali Steele, in the Shadow of the Elk

During the Knights Winter Weekend the Knights traditionally have a LARP. This time the LARP was organized by Daniel Dover, who spent waaay too much time on it. But the result was awesome.

As I blogged before, I played Rali Steele, the scion of Fyx Steele. Despite my best intentions, to play him as this well intentioned idiot, I somehow ended up becoming the unlikely villain. Really, how did this kid become someone at least several characters wanted to murder? This is a story of intrigue, murder, betrayal and a crazed opera writer…

Fyx Steele, Archduke of the Elk; Rali’s father, was dead. The screams of his sister Jorja Steele (played by Rianne Penterman), were still ringing in Rali’s ears as he found the body. A dagger; plummeted in his chest. Rali saw his life shatter before his eyes, there would be no more drinking, no more laughing, no more pleasant company of women. During his childhood, Fyx Steele took care of everything for Rali. With no real responsibilities he was capable of gathering a group of friends around him, the Scallywags. His father had even arranged the perfect bride; No Yvarai, the queen of the Spring Brides. And all this was crumbling. Gone. All of Rali’s merriness was gone as he saw the Blood leave his father’s body. Now there was only vendetta.

In a clever ruse, Rali’s mother hid the Archduke’s death, making everyone believe that the Archduke only went into seclusion in preparation of his solace. A grand banquet would be held at the Archduke’s estate, in honor of Fyx’ “retirement”, where Rali would get his chance for revenge and where the ruse would finally end. The murder would be revealed and the murderer would be destroyed.

As the guests started making their way into the banquet hall, they greeted Rali and his family, the lovely Jorja and Rali’s wise uncle, Aban Steele (Sander). Of course, an old man like Fyx would not be able to give everyone the proper honors. The houses of the Falcon, Bear, Serpent, Wolf came trickling in. A few of the noteworthy guests were the long self-exiled Elk and Rali’s uncle; Weatha Steele (Hugo), the different scallywags; among them Alexei (Marco) who was Rali’s best friend. The Fox obeyed the time-honored tradition of being fashionably late, making a stunning entrance. The young Steele was finally able to lay his eyes upon his fiancée, No Yvarai (Desirée). Her beauty stunned him, and he made sure she knew. The last Ven to congratulate Rali was Szazs Mwrr (Xavier), Alexei’s father apparently count Chayan Mwrr (Alwin) had offended the baron by entering the feasthall first.

Both Rali’s uncles approached him, both wanting Rali’s favors, knowing that Rali would be the logical successor of the old Archduke. Looking at both Elks, Rali could see their Cunning. Both these Ven would be very useful, very useful indeed. Rali gave both of them part of his resources, with the simple goals: Get the House of the Bear and the House of the Wolf to aid us. Weatha had the task to recruit the Wolf, Aban was sent to deal with the Bear. This would strengthen the position of the house.

Enjoying his last, few, unburdened hours, Rali drank wine, jested with his Scallywags, and most importantly, romanced the beautiful No. She ignored the advances of Alexei, as her fan hid her face from Rali. Her dark eyes locked on his, and passionate romance, the likes no Ven had ever witnessed before. He revealed to No his secret, and how much her Passion was keeping him alive. Alas, time was a fleeting thing, and the grand banquet approached.

Served in the other wing of the immense mansion, Rali watched as the Ven gorged themselves on the immense banquet. Still, the killer had not shown him (or her) self. It was clear that Rali needed help, if he were to catch the killer and get his revenge.

His eyes looked around the room, franticly, trying to find a proper ally. His eyes fell upon Aban, who always had been his father’s advisor. Discussing Fyx’ secret in a dark corner of the mansion, Aban responded rather mild to the death of his brother, but revealed a secret in turn. “How much are you willing to pay for Revenge?” the old blonde man asked. “Everything.” the youth responded.

Aban revealed that there were forces at work behind the scenes, forces which would like to see Rali in power. Aban was chosen over Weatha for this very reason. They promised Fyx great power, power as the high-king, a position all the Ven fear. And rightly so, the last time the Ven had a unified ruler, it nearly damned them all. But the power is so appealing.

“But I need a victim,” Rali, asked his uncle, “ someone to set an example”. The victim that his uncle suggested was Ryandual Adrente, the old Wolf. Ryandual had been hounding Rali’s father for years, and had several times proclaimed that he wouldn’t mind roasting an Elk over a fire.

At the end of the dinner, the guests gathered in the main feast hall, rain tapping on the windows of the Elk mansion. Rali paced around the room, the guests clearly unnerved. “I have something to announce, Fyx is dead. Murdered.” Gasps filled the hall. Confused looks went to Rali and between Ven. “A lot of you saw that he was reaching the end of his life, and you all had reasons to dislike him. But of all the people around here, Ryandual hated him clearly and openly. This crime needs to be avenged, I claim VENDETTA.”

No was worried about Rali. She asked him if he was serious about this. “Yes, I am, I deserve revenge.” “Alright, my love, take this broche as a sign of my love.” No’s servant adjusted Rali's broche for him and then he had to wait for his vengeance.

A jury was gathered from all the participants. For the Wolf, Torr Adrente would defend his father. Rali figured that he would have his revenge, he picked Aban, who was the one to point out that Ryandual had been openly against the Elk. As the challenger, Rali got to pick the last jury member;No. Rali hoped that his love would be on his side.

Ryandual said his last goodbyes to his family, as he would surely be punished for his treachery. The vote was about to be announced; all nobles expecting to witness one of the greatest duels in Ven history.

The announcement was made: “The jury, deems that there is not enough proof for it this case. There will be no duel.” Before Rali could realize what had happened, No came running towards him. “How could you have done this to me! You used me! You only wanted me to fall in love with you so you could get your revenge!” she stormed off, tears flowing from her eyes. A defeated Rali sat upon his throne, his sword in his hands. Suddenly he realised that the good luck charm that No had put on him had disappeared...just like her love for him.

Why was his revenge denied? What was the cause of this treachery?

As the evening went on, and the guests mingled, Rali brooded on what to do next, no love, no revenge. And then his uncle Aban approached him. “Come with me, boy.” Rali followed the older man’s blonde hair through the hallways of Fyx’ large mansion, towards two huge doors in the bottom of the mansion. Behind it, awaited three hooded figures. Chayan Mwrr, his wife Tshanja Jalan and Niassa Yvarai. They vowed that they would grant Rali all the power he would want, if he were to stand for their cause. And so the son followed in his father’s footsteps.

As Rali walked back into the feasthall, he saw that the revelries were coming to its end, several new marriage arrangements were made. Harroon proposed to the lovely Tasha Burghe. Tasha looked completely perplexed as the young Fox went on his knees before her. Further, the Fox and the Wolf reconciled, through a marriage between Torr Adrente and Niassa Yvarai. The Wolf made more alliances, by marrying off Trixauna Adrente (Maartje) and the proud warrior Davan Burghe.

And then Feyla Thorne approached Rali. “Forgive me my lord, I know this might be rude after your ordeal with No, but would you consider marrying me?” Rali knew that at this moment he would be back in charge.

Until a sudden scream came from outside the feasthall. “You will not reveal that I murdered my father!” All the guests ran outside. And there she stood. Jorja Steele, with a dagger in her hand, and Szazs Mwrr, bleeding on the ground.

The real villain had been found…Unfortunately, it was not who Rali thought though…

After action report: Knights Horror Evening – Plants vs. Necromorphs

“Friendly fire…isn’t.”

Alright, been some time since I last posted on this thing concerning sessions. I am a lazy fuck, I know. Sue me.

So, I’ve ran a couple of games recently for the Knights, and they were great experiences as usual. For my Halloween session; PLANTS VS. NECROMORPHS. All in all, this was a good session, Raymond commented that it even was my best. I am also quite pleased with the result.

This session was based on Daniel’s original G-verse game/setting. I like the setting a lot (as some Knights might have noticed) and decided it was time to run something in it. I decided to go for something easy, mostly because my experience with GURPS is limited. My last attempt at GURPS (GURPS Action) wasn’t that much of a success, so I just went with a basic story:

ArchAngel (evil, bad juju, black ops people) scientists discover an asteroid with extremely fertile soil thanks to some progenitor mumbo jumbo and decided to start a research station on said asteroid. Somewhere, further along in space, an old, ancient Nebiros, weapon detects activity on an enemy space station. This results in the weapon activating and making its way towards the base, targets the base and crashes itself into the base while it is just operational. This results in most of the scientists being infected, several artificial jungles full of necromorph infected flesh-eating plants and a general chaos.

Fast forward a few months later, as the PDF patrol ship Washington receives an emergency broadcast from an unknown location. The ship sends out a patrol boat to intercept this signal. On this ship are the medic (Raymond), the cold harded bastard (Arjan), the scout (Aaron), a paranoid survivor guy (Maikel), a heavy weapons guy (Matthijs) and a shell-shocked grunt (Erwin), led by a rough GM-controlled sergeant.

Of course, as they enter the asteroid belt, they notice that the distress signal comes from an unknown space station. The PC’s dock with the station, far away from the main building because there is a shuttle docked on the other end and start exploring. The shit starts hitting the fan quickly as they discover that small plants are crawling all over the first artificial jungle. The players are also nice enough to trigger one of the airlocks, launching one of their own into space (it is okay, he managed to get back). The second artificial jungle is infested with necromorph infected plants fighting their normal uninfected counterparts. As the players make their way through the jungle, their officer suddenly gets grappled by a plant. After a few rounds unleashed on the plants, they manage to defeat the evil vegetables. Unfortunately it is too late for their officer; they are on their own now. Matthijs then hears a message on the sergeant’s intercom. Thinking on his feet he opens the helmet of their now late commander, his own helmet and listens to the agonized screams of their pilot. The squad decided to drag their sergeant’s corpse back to the shuttle to make sure he gets a proper burial. How nice of them. Making their way back, they hear the soft moans of a woman; “Help…me.”

Once they reach the shuttle they get their first encounter with a human zombie, the poor pilot ends up with a short burst of gauss rifle fire in his head. The players also notice that their shuttle is no longer functioning. As such, they decide to explore deeper into the station to find the other shuttle that they saw on their approach. Several more moans from the woman reach their ears, inspiring some of the members of the squad to save her.

The green plants slowly make way for black, metallic plants, infested by the nanovirus. A random corpse even drops on the players somewhere deep in the obsidian jungle.

As they enter the third and last bio-dome, they finally see the cause of all this. What they thought was an asteroid on their approach is actually a missile, which unleashed the nanovirus on the research facility. The missile is now stuck in the roof, as a force field keeps it in place, and keeps all the air from escaping. The squad leaves the thing alone.

As they enter the main research building, which is built into the bedrock of the asteroid (is there such a thing as asteroid bedrock?), a bunch of infected researchers await them. Apparently grenades are kind of nasty against unarmored zombies…err necromorphs.

Things do get interesting as they explore the abandoned building, a sense of dread creeping over them. The soldiers enter the inner sanctum and are beset by a horde of necromorphs. Guns blazing they manage to shoot the horde down. And themselves. Aaron’s gun has a bit more kick than he expected and he ends up shooting himself in the leg. The wound is nasty, but Raymond’s expertise seals the leak and heals the wound somewhat.

Rancid air starts filling the filters of their suits, the players enter a new room and have to make a fear check. The room is filled with the corpses, savaged, operated on and mutilated by…something. The matte glass on the other side of the room shows the silhouette of a monster…

The doctor who used to be in charge of the facility has mutated in a necromorph of insane power. He sustained himself on the still living members of his crew, and even found a woman immune to the virus. The players saw the poor creature strapped to a table, drugged beyond the point of reason; her arms, legs and parts of her body eaten, while she is still alive. Because his food source was running out, the doctor sent out an emergency signal, hoping for a rescue party, also known as lunch. This worked perfectly. And I decided this was a good moment to reveal that all the players who got themselves exposed to the atmospheres found themselves infect by the nanovirus.

The result was slaughter, no player survived the onslaught of zombies, a monster and “friendly” fire.

After Action Report: Planescape Downfall, Session 1

Yes, I am a total copycat and a hack. But after action reports really are a good idea, it allows me to reminisce on my sessions and learn from them, and it allows other people to read about the awesome stuff that my players experienced.

Last night was the first session of what is hopefully going to become an ongoing campaign, so I did not have to worry that character introductions would take too long. Nonetheless, I decided to start media res. This gives me the advantage of exploring character back stories later on, but it also allows the players to adjust their characters where needed.

As I told before, we got a varied party which includes a human serious deathknight of the Raven Queen (Raymond), a wise githzerai artificer (Arno), a scared human girl with chaotic sorcerous powers (Myrthe), an oblivious and new-born shardmind psion (Alwin), a traitorous tiefling rogue with a mysterious past (Xavier) and a gnome who has mastered illusion magic (Jelte, a new addition to the Knights).

This colourful bunch experienced a flash of light and suddenly found themselves in a dark room, only lit by candlelight coming from a hallway. As they were trying to come to terms with their situation, an old bearded man greeted them. The players weren't really comfortable with a blind old man calling them clueless and trying to feel their faces (who would be comfortable with that anyway?). Especially Myrthe's character was confused with the situation, wondering if she went underground or something due to the dark nature of the building she is in. The old man did give them some clues that they were in a huge building in this place called "Sigil".

As they made their way through the building, they discovered that they arrived in Sigil's Mortuary, where several guys in brown cloaks were treating corpses and trying to send them off to their home worlds as a burial rite. Especially Alwin's character was puzzled by this entirely strange and new situation, and even tried to telepathically link to a corpse.

Finally, the party arrived at the bottom floor of the huge building that they arrived in. A huge and sprawling metropolis awaited them. As they first tasted and smelled the Sigil air, they noticed that the square in front of them was crowded, overcrowded at least. Apparently they weren't the only new arrivals. At the bottom of the Mortuary a little argument was taking place between this small, mousy, gnome and this huge bear of a man in full plate. "Alright, you little twerp, you are going to guide us around, even if you don't want to!" the hulking bastard shouted in the gnome's face. "Ah there they are! See! I told you my clients would arrive at any time!" the gnome retorted, pointing at the party. "We'll see who you will work for if they are DEAD!" was the response. Poor Raymond tried to be reasonable with this rather unreasonable fellow.

A new rival party appeared!

This was a fairly easy combat, especially because I designed it for five players originally, but I decided to not add a 6th combatant on the enemy side so that I could assess how much trouble Jelte would have with mastering a new system.

Apperantly he had no trouble at all, because the combat went quite smoothly except for some GM screw-ups (But as Xavier pointed out: Cut the new GM some slack). The party ended up in a skirmish against their foes as the crowd watched on (the crowd counted as difficult terrain for gameplay purposes). The first opponent to bite the dust was the female wizard. As she died, in the back, behind the crowd, a huge magical glyph appeared in the sky, over the crowd.

The party battled on, pwning their opponents one by one (Alwin actually mind controlled the brutal enemy fighter and had him kill his own partymember, nasty). And then the Dabus decided to intervene. A level 14 artillery creature using his stunning-save-ends-close burst 5 recharge power isn't fun. Despite the huge level difference, the Dabus nearly missed Myrthe's character. At that point, only the enemy paladin and dwarf were left standing. At this point, I just decided to let the dice do the talking, the party had every in-character reason at this point to finish up the party and then go for the dabus, thanks to their lack of knowledge of the setting. Fortunately for them, and unfortunately for the enemy dwarf, the dwarf made his save vs. the stun and decided to charge the Dabus before the party had the chance to do the same. His head went splut as the dabus enveloped it with magical runes. (He only had 5 HP left anyway.)

BOTH paladins (Raymond and the NPC) took at least 5 turns to roll higher than 10 on their save. But after that humiliation, they followed the Dabus into town. The Dabus were trying to round up all the adventurers causing trouble and they were trying to lead them to the many inns in Sigil to offer them shelter. Thanks to the unfortunate location where the party spawned, they were the last adventurers to be picked up.

Just before we had to end the session, we ended up at the Dead Dragon Den. One of the seediest inns in the whole Hive. The inn partially consists of the dead bones of a HUGE wyvern, covered in canvas, with a rowdy common hall underneath it. The innkeeper (a surly bauriaur) was rather relucntant to let the party stay in his already crowded inn, but a quick rebuttal with a dabus convinced him otherwise. Unfortunately, at this point, I had to cut the session short and I had to railroad the players a little to stay together. I promised to go back to this point in time next session so we can explore some more roleplay. But before we ended, I introduced them to their home away from home, for now: The honeymoon suite, located in the wyvern's skull.

All in all, it was a really good session, it felt a lot better than my GURPS one-shot. Less chaotic, more structured and the players seemed to have more fun. Laughs were had, and I got to expose a little of the mood that I am trying to go for. I just hope we can get some more story in next session and that I keep improving my GM skills.

Locations: Sigil

Alright, time to get pumped for my first planescape session!

And what better way to do it than to describe some of the AWESOME things I have in store for my players? I think I will regulary try to post a few bits and pieces on the locations and people I plan to have in my campaign. I kind of hope that this will give me a better feel for the locations that my players will be visiting.

So, first up:

Sigil

Sigil is one of the older cities in the dungeons and dragons setting, first popping up in second edition. Several chapters and books alone were devoted to it's affairs and people. Then came third edition, reducing the once glorious campaign city to a measily paragraph in the manual of the planes. But now, in fourth edition, WotC decided to once again focus on the City of Doors. It even got a whole chapter in the DMG2! (I guess they just needed filler.)

But here is my own view on the city, and why it is perfect to start my campaign in:

First, let's start with a musical theme.

Why did I choose this theme? I really don't know, it just sets the right mystical mood for the city. You can almost hear the cavernous nature of a city which is basically a big donut in the sky.

But what is the city like?

The smell of a light drizzle enters your nostrils as your feet touch the muddy street. When you look around, you can see that you are no longer in the kind of city that you knew. The brown, dirty streets are filled with strange creatures; halflings, orcs, elves, humans and things you don't even know about. You can even see the celestial light of an angel reflecting from a dirty window across you. The buildings here are strange, there is no coherent style; Some of them would fit your hometown nicely, while their neighbours seem gothic, elven or even more outlandish. And then you look up; the city doesn't seem to end, instead of the blue sky, you see a mild fog, rain and the roofs of this very same city. The city loops in on itself, filling the entire horizonless sky.

As you first set foot in the City of Doors, you will feel clueless. Which is fitting, because that is the nickname that the inhabitants of Sigil have for newcomers; Clueless. You are unsoiled, but also unknowing of the nature of the planes and of the city itself.

Personally, I see the city as the perfect starting point of a planescape campaign because of its very nature. You can see that the game designers had a city in mind from where the players could get to the planes without having to fear nasty things all the time. The Lady of Pain herself is especially a nice plot device, because she keeps out the gods, adds flavor and makes the players feel a bit more humble, even if they hit their mid 10's. Further, the city itself is WEIRD. Its shape, its mood, its people; they all have a feel to them that you won't find in your average DnD setting. I also believe that they seem a bit more detailed, this might be due to the large amount of fluff that was written on the city, but I also believe it is because planescape as a setting, requires you to think more about things. You cannot just have a town with a lousy king/duke/whatever person in charge. They would get pwned by basically whatever is out there. Which makes for a fine plotline, but you don't want this happening to the main city of the setting. At least not straight away...

But what purpose will Sigil have in my campaign? I plan to use it less as a safe-haven, and more as a point of attachment. The players will be traveling a lot, and as such, won't have many people that would normally stick around. But thanks to the many portals that lead to and from Sigil, it becomes easier to bring back old faces, and give them something to grow attached to. Or at least I hope they will grow attached to it.

I told you I would forget about this thing!

Yep, it says it right there on the tin. I told you before that I would forget about this whole thing in two weeks.

Actually, what really happened was: STUFF. And a LOT of it. I mean, it was just this endless stream of stuff. The introduction, my board stuff, first week of school (actually, I feel lazy when it comes to that). Further, I guess being on the board of a role-playing society really is a lot of work. I partially blame this on us, the board that is, for being new at the whole governing 75 people thing, but also partially on the role-players themselves. When you have a hobby that quite often relies on reading the rules as they are written, this kind of creates a certain way of thinking. So basically, we just have too many rules lawyers ;)

On the other hand, rules are nice, they make things clear. (Un)fortunately the hobby doesn't entirely rely on rules. And neither does being on a board. The rules are there to guide you through the situations, and the situations are there to guide you through the rules. If that makes sense in any way.

Sometimes it would be nice if the rules as written would suffice. Any game would be an awesome game if you could just read these rules, and any decision made by you as a board member would be accepted by everyone. BUT, it would also result in situations where the game would be predictable, or the justice enacted by the rules as written would be unfair towards the members of the society.

Then again, the no rules scenario seems less forable to me. Sometimes this scenario leads to awesome things. During the introduction week I ran several sessions for random first year students that came to visit us during a day where they were introduced to the different culture societies. THE MOST RANDOM things just happened. It was like watching an Old Spice commercial. Non sequitor on top of non sequitor. In some of the other games...less ideal stuff happened; people were bored, were ruining the game for others or it was hard to come up with something exciting. And don't even start with me on what would happen if there were no rules in a student society.

What I am trying to say I guess, it is hard to find that sweet spot between rules and no rules, and then add your own X-factor on top of that. If you can find that X-factor and find the balance, it means that you are in an awesome place where great things happen. Or at least, that is my personal view on things.

And the way I feel right now, both as a role-player trying to run games and as a board member trying to run a society, is that it is hard to find that specific spot. But isn't that what live does to people all the time? It is partially about trying to find the sweet spot, and then adding the X-factor. Unfortunately, there is always a chance to be brought off balance. And I kind of believe is that this is what is taking me by surprise. It sure is exciting, because I have no idea where I will find my next "sweet spot", but on the other hand, it is scary as fuck.

What else was scary was my first one-shot in years. Tonight I ran my first game in err I don’t know, THREE YEARS. I only ran a few sessions before, and this was for this group of Gameforce gamers (no offense, if any of you Gameforce people read this, but it wasn't a fun game, try rerolling your character every 2 sessions for a few months in a row). But I actually ran a friggin GURPS session, a system that I have only played for a few sessions myself. Looking back at that, that is an amazing accomplishment. I managed (together with the help of two experienced GURPS game masters) to tell people a somewhat mildly amusing story. Sure, it was clunky, yes people were left behind at some points, and I messed up. But I managed to run this mildly entertaining game with basically 8 session’s worth of GURPS experience, in a different setting as experience to go from. As one of the players said, it wasn't bad. Yet it doesn't feel so to me. I see so many errors that I made; I lost half my story, made the game drag along at points and I think it is kind of a pity that one of the players that I like as a person was a disappointment as a role-player (but she often says so herself, so I was warned). But I think one of the reasons why I criticize my own game, and maybe also why I also worry about my board membership, is because I haven't found my sweet spot for either, let stand a lone my X-factor.

Or I maybe, I am slowly discovering them, and I just don't see it yet myself. (Damn self-criticism) There is a reason why people like the stuff I do as a board member, and why everyone in my game enjoyed his or her time.