#rpg settings

Big questions and very fun ones! Thank you for asking. :D

1. What do you think about the idea in some works (primarily RPGs) that werewolves/other lycanthropes have three forms, human, hybrid, and animal? 

I think that’s a fun idea in general. I’m a big supporter of werewolves not being restricted to just man and man-wolf or man and wolf. However, I do think that some systems make it too rigid and give the different forms silly names that sound... out of place and frankly too almost scientific for my tastes. It really takes away from the mystery and spookiness and makes it feel more categorical and defined. I think a lot is taken away from werewolves, and any monster or magic for that matter, when it becomes too rigid and easily definable.

That being said, I do like the idea that a werewolf can assume the form of a man, a wolf-man, a larger man-wolf hybrid form, and a large wolf. As I said, I don’t like the idea that there are rigid restrictions on this kind of thing - and I, of course, also enjoy werewolves that take a wide variety of forms, so if there are some that can take any or all of those forms, that makes them all the more fun and scary!

My own werewolves in Wulfgard, they are quite mysterious and some of the most powerful of all monsters - they take a wide variety of forms, but the most feared form they assume is the very large hybrid of wolf and man... more wolf than man, with the head of a beast.

You’ll be finding out a lot more about my werewolves soon, as well as Wulfgard in general - here’s a preemptive link to the new and improved Wulfgard tumblr; be sure to start following there now for lots of exciting updates in 2021! I’ve got a lot cooking and I can’t wait to share. :D

2. And second, some vampire media (again, mostly RPGs that I am aware of) give vampires the ability to summon packs of wolves or even turn into wolves themselves (the netflix Castlevania series comes to mind). How do you think that fits in with werewolves in media?

In folklore, it fits pretty well, especially in terms of the blurred line between werewolves and vampires in certain Eastern European countries and, to some extent, even Greece, which I’ve covered in a few werewolf facts, like this one.

In media? I think it can be fine, too, but overall I prefer that modern media draw a finer line between werewolves and vampires. Why? Well, because I like both, and I like both to be their own unique thing. When werewolves and vampires get mixed up at all, werewolves tend to play second fiddle (for some reason...).

Straight-up werewolf-vampire hybrids can, IMO, get out, though. I really don’t like those, I’m afraid. Both werewolves and vampires are far, far cooler on their own and absolutely do not need to be combined to create something “cooler” or “more powerful,” because that’s just silly and also demeaning to both of the other monsters. Introduce something like that into a setting, and no one will ever find the others scary again, because now there’s a “bigger and badder” “version” of both.

Adopted or Surrogate Child: Why did you marry mom. Isn’t it weird since she’s a lizard person?

Dad: [thinking to self: we had been drinking and she had an okay enough face and the right number of holes and it became a regular thing]

Dad: we fell in love slowly, going from friends to more. [technically true]

Thoughts on the Time of the Red

I recently picked up the corebook for Cyberpunk Red, and have read through the whole book. I haven’t done anything with the rules yet, so I can’t speak to those. However, I do have some thoughts about the setting, particularly the changes in the Time of the Red. Continue reading

Psst. Psst! Tabletop RPG nerds!

You know who else likes TRPGs? Your ol’ buddy Fford. And this here is a really cool book with an awesomely twisted campaign setting inside, one that’s compatible with Pathfinder, Swords & Wizardry, and even the Fifth Edition of (as they say in the OGL rulebooks) the world’s oldest roleplaying game. That’s Dungeons & Dragons, if you’re not hip to the lingo.

I’ve backed Frog God Games books on KS before, but this one sounds especially tailored to my precise tastes. Just read this flavor text and tell me you don’t want to own this:

The Blight is a city; a vast corpulent, mad, ugly thing, but it is so much more than that. Its veins seep into other places, drawn across the Between, which rips at its fabric and tosses it about like a child throwing a ball. You might find a curiosity shop from the Blight crammed amongst the mighty tenements of some other city, a horrific character staggering along the streets of an otherwise normal town, or perhaps even a whole block perched within another city like a cuckoo in a nest.

Her polite name is Castorhage; named after the grotesque royal family that rules here, a family even worse than those who would depose them. It has been called lots of other names, other oaths have been flung at her and her constituent filthy, chymic poisoned parts. From Sister Lyme to the chaos of Toiltown, through the throttling alleyways of the Jumble to the airy madness of the Hollow and Broken Hills, every facet has a story, and every story a dark edge. Yes, the Blight is a place, but it is a place that touches others, like a cancer, suddenly infesting a brighter place and poisoning it. There is no escaping its touch, and once it draws you in, you may never escape. Welcome…

If that doesn’t sound awesome to you, you are wrong and a dummy and I bet you play as an _elf_.* For the rest of you, you can get nine hundred dang pages of that if you back this.

Which you should, as the campaign seems to have stalled a bit over the holidays, and they haven’t met their goal yet. Which is criminal. Back this thing so I can own it, please and thank you.

Music Monday's coming, don't worry.

Just found this wonderful gem online - apparently a guy thought it up while feeling lucid last night - it's an amazing way of organising a fictional D&D style cosmology.

>>Far Realms are the planes of primordial truth, the building blocks of ideas flying around at random, smashing into one another until sufficient “mass” is achieved and a coherent ideal is formed. It is believed that the Far Realms are growing. [Lovecraftian monsters are ideals not soundly pieced together that have managed to gain material form] >>This ideal suddenly “falls” through the many planes of the Elemental Coil wrapped around the Inner Planes, accumulating material elements so that they can “shoot through” the Elemental Coil and take on physical form on the Inner Planes. The Coil has a strict size and actually contain the ever-fluctuating Inner Planes. >>The inside of the Elemental Coil is where each possible material elemental plane is stacked on top of one another inside the coil. >>The Inner Planes are embodiments of ideals. Due to the restrictions placed on the Inner Planes by the Outer Planes, only so many ideals may exist at once.

>>The denizens of the Inner Planes discovered that when they died, large, dark voids suddenly appeared in their previously brilliant view of the Elemental Spire. What’s more is that they learned that their deceased bodies floated in these extradimensional voids. Understanding that they were made of the elements above, Inner Planars realized they could break down the compositions of their dead to their basic elemental building blocks, and a few rudimentary idealogical building blocks; the Prime Materials of Creation. >>Using the remains of their dead, the early Powers created material planes in the Astral. Life forms grew on these planes, some by artifice and some by consequence. Knowing the power of belief, some Powers began to cultivate followers among these prime material life forms. This, obviously, created a power struggle of immense proportions. >>Some Powers took a path other than the path of belief, and this path is truth. Rather than seek out followers, they continued to do as they would, causing worthy followers find them instead. >>The Lady of Pain saw these two paths and understood they could be merged into the same path to power. She at that moment understood the laws of the entire Multiverse. >>The Lady created Sigil in the spiral orbit of the Elemental Coil as a refuge from her unenlightened peers and their machinations. She barred the Powers from access with a number of powerful wards, using the city’s torus shape to power her defenses. >>Many Planars opposed this philosophical arms race and suddenly found themselves on the outer surface of the Elemental Coil or in Sigil.

>>The refugees made an interesting observation in that both on the Inner Planes and the Outlands, a town’s adherence to an ideology or lack thereof will put it either in the Inner Planes or the Outlands. A town on the Outlands will be sucked back through to its mother plane if its inhabitants lean to closely to that plane’s ideology. Likewise, portions of an Inner Plane may be banished to the Outlands if it does not adhere to that plane’s dogma closely enough. >>Eventually the power struggle settled down, but definitely did not die out. The Outlands soon became a great neutral ground for Planars and Powers and Sigil the trade hub of the Multiverse

Phyiscal Description of the Multiverse The Inner Planes exist in a bubbling, spherical hyperbolic mass, contained by the tightly wound coil of the Outer Planes. The Outlands exist on the outside surface of the Outer Planes that faces the inner planes. Sigil orbits along the outside of the Elemental Spiral, drifting between the spaces in the coil. Gates of various sizes open up all over the outer surface of the Coil and Gate Towns have a habit of opening up around them. The Astral manifests as shapeless voids that orbit around the Inner Planes and the Prime Material exist inside of them. Most Inner Planes have their own atmosphere, however, if you find yourself looking up on an Inner Plane that doesn’t, you will see a sky of great swirling formations of iridescent elemental energy. Tiny black dots eclipse small portions of the sky like stars. These are Gate Towns in the Outlands. Looking up in the Outlands will get you a view of the star-like brightness of the Inner Planes. “Night” and “day” cycles are fairly irregular on account of the fact that you have to wait for an Astral space to pass over for it to get dark out. The Far Realm exists as a negative space in the Multiverse. It seems to funnel and “turn inside-out” at which point they become one of the two ends of the Elemental Coil.

Which then went on to be explained, in simpler fashion below, which really hit me:

So, lemmie get this straight: - the Far Realms are a foam of unrealized ideals, abstracted concepts (q.v. Plato's "The Cave"). - when the ideas accumulate, they condense into material, and sink. The "bottom" of the Far Realms are layered in these materials (the "elemental planes"). - some ideas are complex enough to sink below even the elemental planes (accumulating material from those planes on the way) to the space called the "Inner Planes." These ideas are big/dense/concentrated enough to be what we call the Gods or the Powers. - Gods/Powers discover they can decompose each other into their component parts -- the ideals and accumulated materials -- and use them to synthesize new and unseen essences & substances. - The Gods/Powers use the resynthesized ideas & materials to make their own sandbox (the "Prime Material"), which can be influenced by the Gods/Powers to create new ideals for the Gods to incorporate into themselves instead of waiting for it to sink from the Far Realms. - Or maybe the Gods/Powers find a way to use their Prime Material people to add new ideals to the Far Realms. - Or maybe the Far Realms are being depleted, and by using Godstuff to create people, who create new ideas, this is how to recycle the Godstuff back up to the Far Realms to replenish it.

... yeah, okay, I can see this. Don't try to incorporate Sigil & The Lady Of Pain into any creation myths though -- it was designed to be an exception to the rules or an outsider to the system, so making it part of the system is awkward. Better to say it is "the exception that proves the rule." How about this: the Lady could be exploiting the portals and torus-shape to make a mini-cosmos where the ideals/ materials/ people/ faith/ ideals ecology cycle is super small and tight; she's trying to build a cosmic archology, something that can live independently of everything else (ironically, only possible by the vast # of portals to everywhere else). The Gods/Powers stay out because (a) The Lady will not tolerate interference in her little experiment, and (b) Gods/Powers that set foot in this place get swept up in the tight ecological cycle and get decomposed VERY quickly into Prime Material substances. A god that tries to remain in Sigil would lose all their godstuff to the believers, ideas and dreams of Sigil's inhabitants, leaving a very mortal avatar with very immortal enemies outside Sigil.

Isn't this amazing? I'm totally thinking of setting my worlds in this cosmology; I've never been able to set the planes in a reasonable way, which had led to me not really thinking about them leading to disconnect when Devils get involved as they're not as Devily as they really should be.