The Simon Multiverse

The universe is not a great wheel with planes shooting off like the gaps in the spokes. The simplicity and finity of the metaphor make that clear; rings are contained, restrained, and binding. And more, the idea that we can stand at the centre and look out upon creation from a position of authority is either willfully delusory or utterly naive. We are not at the centre but rather the bottom.

Look at the night sky in Sigil and you see stars. In Baator, stars. Celestia, stars, stars everywhere, separated from us by a dome of shadow. Or rather a sea, one which we can cross on golden ships to those bright points of light. After crossing the Nothing you find yourself at another plane, maybe one you recognise. You realise that this is true shape of things previously obscured my short lines and strange paths.

It is a sphere of shadows with orbs of light. This sphere is the bottom and the centre, yet most outer. Our physical intuition can't imagine the hyper dimensional spaces of the macroversal model.

Like an ant meeting a deer. On bumping into its hoof you perceive a great beast made of horn, towering in a neat column. This is hardly a fraction of the truth but the knowledge of it will suffice for your limited interactions with it. For that ant to become a great sorceror, shooting through the astral dark in a womb made of light, he would have to imagine legs and fur.

Imagine the ocean. The true god sits in a boat, sometimes throwing waste overboard, things unneeded and useless. They fall to the bottom of the ocean miles below in the darkness where life briefly blooms around it. Creatures fight and breed and live and die in the usual cycles of living things. The gods as we know them are whales, we feed on their corpses. Some of live by the thermal vents of the light universe above (below and inside), semi permanent sources of nourishment.

In all cases the nothing will settle, erode the shores it laps against. In some places the horizon knights rove back and forth, filling the nothing with something, but they cannot stop the tide.

Your village is nestled

Wargame AC

Armour in most fantasy RPGs isn't very similar to how real life armour behaves. Verisimilitude isn't necessary but searching for it is fun.

Accepting that AC is a bit off, we go to a hobby that has way more investment in reality: the wargame. A very common thing done in them is to have "soft" and "hard" targets, squishy men and hard tanks.

Steal this idea. Now there is hard armour and soft armour and being effectively naked.

War games are RPGs

Armour as binary Y/n
Weapons

Crypts of Indormancy - Kickstarter

Oh my, what's this? Why it's an adventure by the inimitable Ezra Claverie, Undercroft regular and bottomless font of curious concepts, illustrated by one Andrew Walter, whose art speaks for itself.

“Crypts of Indormancy” is a an evocative location-based adventure compatible with Lamentations of the Flame Princess and most other Dungeons & Dragons clones. Set in a quasi-Polynesian island chain with a backdrop of postcolonial elves digging through their imperial past

This scenario is informed as much by sword-and-sorcery as by anticolonial politics, so you might say that it draws on a non-traditional "Appendix N," one that includes Aimé Césaire, Chinua Achebe, Frantz Fanon, Gyatri Spivak, and Edward Said.

This is the Melsonian Arts Council's first* stand alone, big-boy book and is being funded with big-boy money. How exciting! Let's hope it all goes well and gets funded so we can pay everyone and not end up living in the cardboard box the books get delivered in.

(*Oli Palmer's Something Stinks in Stilton counts sometimes, and will count even more if we hit the funding goal to have it reprinted all nice a pretty-like)

Euro-D&D

Some other initiatives

So, weird, useful and exciting initiative systems. Who's got some?

My current system is bingo calling/chit-pull initiative. I've written everyone's name on a token and pull them out of a bowl (I use numbers for monsters). Totally random, ensures I don't forget anyone, avoids having to roll dice and remembering an order.

 CHIT-PULL VARIANTS:

• Write them on blank cards and shuffle them every turn. You can keep AC/HP/effects timers/whatever written directly on it for convenience.
• Use actual bingo balls. Number everyone.
• Instead of numbering monsters, just put a star on them. When you pull a star move a monster. Even less paper work.

EURO GAME INITIATIVE
Declare a leader token. This can be an actual token, or a hat, or a sceptre, or something hard to lose. That person goes first and play proceeds to their left. All enemy NPCs act on the GMs turn. Once a round has finished pass the token to your right.


DRAMA INITIATIVE
The player with the least health goes first and play proceeds down the line. The GM calls out "1, 2, 3..."etc and people chime in.


AUCTION INITIATIVE
The player willing to take the biggest penalty to all rolls goes first. Like the drama initiative, GM calls out from 6 and goes down. Or some other number appropriate to your system. GM also picks.


SIMULTANEOUS INITIATIVE
All things happen at once. Any actions that would cancel out another are done as contested rolls and the winner gets their way. Damage is simultaneous unless it obviously isn't.


TRACK INITIATIVE
You've got a track of actions, each player places themselves on a spot. Play proceeds top to bottom. On proceeding rounds the players are relocated in reverse order.

A manoeuvre is any non-combat non-magic action, like moving around or rummaging in your pack or pulling a lever.

1. Reckless Magics -6
2. Melee attacks
3. Ranged attacks
4. Manoeuvre
5. Risky magics -3
6. Manoeuvre and melee
7. Manoeuvre and ranged
8. Safe magics

In a non-fun game where you don't roll for magic, just do it all on the last one.


RONDEL INITIATIVE
Everyone starts with a little token on the shaded slice. Randomly pick who goes first and proceed left-wise for the first moves, after that the person closest to the shaded slice acts first. This can result in multiple actions in a row if they don't jump anyone.

• Move 5ft - 1 space
• Attacking moves you spaces according to weapon used (sword is 4, knife is 2, halberd is 5
• Magic moves you spaces according to the spell (magic missile is probably 4, charm is 1)
• Misc actions generally take 1 space.

Once you pass the shaded slice you may take no more actions until everyone has passed it. When the new round begins you start with the person closest to the shaded area. Moves continue from where the pieces are.

Initiative varients

So, weird, useful and exciting initiative systems. Who's got some?

My current system is bingo calling/chit-pull initiative. I've written everyone's name on a token and pull them out of a bowl (I use numbers for monsters). Totally random, ensures I don't forget anyone, avoids having to roll dice and remembering an order.

CHIT-PULL VARIANTS:

1. Write them on blank cards and shuffle them every turn. You can keep AC/HP/effects timers/whatever written directly on it for convenience.
2. Use actual bingo balls. Number everyone.
3. Instead of numbering monsters, just put a star on them. When you pull a star move a monster. Even less paper work.

EURO GAME INITIATIVE
Declare a leader token. This can be an actual token, or a hat, or a sceptre, or something hard to lose. That person goes first and play proceeds to their left. All enemy NPCs act on the GMs turn. Once a round has finished pass the token to your right.

DRAMA INITIATIVE

The player with the least health goes first and play proceeds down the line. The GM calls out "1, 2, 3..."etc and people chime in.

AUCTION INITIATIVE

The player willing to take the biggest penalty to all rolls goes first. Like the drama initiative, GM calls out from 6 and goes down. Or some other number appropriate to your system. GM also picks.

SIMULTANEOUS INITIATIVE

All things happen at once. Any actions that would cancel out another are done as contested rolls and the winner gets their way. Damage is simultaneous unless it obviously isn't.

TRACK INITIATIVE

You've got a track of actions, each player places themselves on a spot. Play proceeds top to bottom. On proceeding rounds the players are relocated in reverse order.

A manoeuvre is any non-combat non-magic action, like moving around or rummaging in your pack or pulling a lever.

1. Reckless Magics -6
2. Melee attacks
3. Ranged attacks
4. Manoeuvre
5. Risky magics -3
6. Manoeuvre and melee
7. Manoeuvre and ranged
8. Safe magics

In a non-fun game where you don't roll for magic, just do it all on the last one.

RONDEL INITIATIVE

Everyone starts with their little token on the shaded slice. Randomly pick who goes first and proceed left-wise for the first moves, after that the person closest to the shaded slice acts first. This can result in multiple actions in a row if they don't jump anyone. 

• Move 5ft - 1 space
• Attacking moves you spaces according to weapon used (sword is 4, knife is 2, halberd is 5
• Magic moves you spaces according to the spell (magic missile is probably 4, charm is 1)
• Misc actions generally take 1 space.

Once you pass the shaded slice you may take no more actions until everyone has passed it. When the new round begins you start with the person closest to the shaded area.