Six Dimensional Weather

This might be self explanatory. It's a weather table. You pick a starting spot and move through it randomly to generate the weather day by day.

In the above example the weather started in the middle, on a clear day. The GM or whoever rolls a D6 to determine how the weather changes. In the above example they started at the black spot and rolled, in order, 1, 1, 6, 4, 3, 3, 4, causing their week to be clear, then rainy, then covered in blossoms, then stormy, then clear, blossoms again, and finally clear. The weather here is tumultuous but, thanks to the table, is still predictable to a certain degree.

If the players stay in a specific location (and experiences its specific weather table) for long enough they will gain an intuitive feel for the weather. They'll feel their way through its topography, possibly be suspicious of a coming pollination if rain follows a blossomfall.

What the weather does isn't important, and should be changed by the region. You could perhaps change it by season, but a large enough weather map could generate the rough feeling of changing seasons as long as you don't mind some randomness to its passing. The players will know that if they're in the middle of a draught that it's going to be a long time to the rainy season and they are unlikely to see a pollination.

A larger table can be more subtle, less changeable. However note that even this small table would take a week to go from rainy to dry season.

As for the edges: when you bump up against an edge you slide along it or stay put, depending on how the table is made. In this case I've marked dead ends with Xs, where if you bump up against them you just stay in that season. Pollination can last for a while, they take as long as they need. If there is no X (or a clear dead end with no angular preference), then slide in the direction indicated as closely as possible.

This means that seasons on the edges have a tendency to "stick".

I've been sketching these in my hex books.

Crypts of Indormancy

I'm opening Crypts of Indormancy to pre-orders. Having half the job done by the time the books arrive would be a huge help, so that's what I'm doing. You can get it from the Melsonian Arts Council shop in print & PDF or just PDF on its own, or you can go to that other place and buy it, if you insist.

The description from all the various places it's being flogged:

The tomb of Thuuz, Lord Nanifer, Elven General of the Western Isle, has been found. The Islanders he once exploited and terrorised would gladly hurl his bitter carcass back into the ocean. Others, hearing of an untouched crypt in the mountains, no doubt filled with all the pomp and pride of an aristocratic burial, arrive with less ideological motives for defilement. 

Crypts of Indormancy is a location-based adventure possessing ecumenical compatibility with Dungeons & Dragons and its descendants. Appropriate for any number and level of players, all who enter the tomb of Thuuz without their wits ready will likely come undone. For Thuuz’s heirs did not leave his bones helpless and unguarded. 

Crypts of Indormancy is written with the relentless wit of Ezra Claverie and illustrated by Andrew Walter’s unbidden alien hands. Never before has such a conjunction occurred and for all our sakes pray it never does again lest our feeble minds slough away like wet cake in a rainstorm.

 Let's see, what else can we say?

• Andrew and Ezra really are as good as it sounds
• It's an actual book, printed in a print run, entirely not on demand
• It's published in the UK. This should fill you with 80s nostalgia for when that wasn't an unusual thing to say. Gimme all your money and I'll try to fix that.
• The Kickstarter did well enough that it won't bankrupt the Melsonian Arts Council if it fails miserably. Which is nice. Though please don't let that stop you.

DONE

Inform your friends, buy some for your neighbours, post it on all those internet places the cool kids go to, take pictures of yourself playing it and having the most wonderful time imaginable with a look that says "oh aren't you envious, you too could be having as much fun as I, but you can't because they all sold out in, like, a day and Dan retired to the peak of Mt Snowdon, Ezra died in a debauched tour of the riviera and Andrew became a caricaturist at South End who never makes any money 'cos all he can draw is unfailingly accurate and cheerful scenes of  his customer's death." Yea. Do that.

Temperature goes from 

1. Extremely hot 
2. Hot
3. Temperate
4. Cold
5. Extremely cold

Rate clothes or armour (if you;re wearing that instead) according to that scale, with 1 being practically naked and 5 being walrus skin suits. For each step discrepency with the local temperature

Insulating

Cooling

Waterproof

OR

Armour insulates you to the value of the armour. So light is 1, heavy is three.

You may use slots of inventory to be "warm clothes". Each slot used counts towards getting warmer. So light armour with one slot of warm clothes would count as temperate.

INSULATION = ARMOUR VALUE + INVENTORY SLOTS USED FOR WARM CLOTHES

Weather effects:

Arctic desert:

Random generation makes better ideas.

D66 attitudes of those encountered:

11 - Exhausted
12 - Bewildered
13 - Quizzical
14 - Belligerent
15 - Cordial
16 - Mollified
21 - Conceited
22 - Sympathetic
23 - Covetous
24 - Disinterested
25 - Impatient
26 - Servile
31 - Sickly
32 - Immature
33 - Merry
34 - Provocative
35 - Content
36 - Infirm
41 - Insolent
42 - Bitter
43 - Melancholic
44 - Resigned
45 - Irksome
46 - Insufferable
51 - Satiated
52 - Regretful
53 - Relieved
54 - Exacerbated
55 - Genial
56 - Optimistic
61 - Irritated
62 - Wrathful
63 - Mirthful
64 - Joyless
65 - Curmudgeonly
66 - Fearful

Genial ogre, irksome knight, content peasant, and so on. Two things jammed together without your input are better for it.


They traditionally dispose of their dead...

1. ... after 42 days of treating them like they were still alive
2. ... by dumping them in the forest
3. ... by cremating them in their house. Then building another on top.
4. ... throw them in the sea, no matter how far away it is. If they are washed back up it is an omen of a restless spirit and suggests their ghost doesn't want to leave.
5. ... by stacking stones on top of them until they are pulverised. Funeral cairns litter the countryside.
6. ... in great big tubs. Special assistants are set with jugs to collect the juices from special spigots. The juices are burned as the true spirit while the corpse is ground up for animal food.

What are you supposed to be ashamed of?

1. Pointing
2. Bare backs. Capes are essential, but nothing else is.
3. Uncovered ears
4. Revealing the webbing between your fingers. Most erogenous of zones.
5. Boobies (1-2=Just male 3-4=Just female 5-6=Both)
6. All skin. All of it.

Traditional beautification

1. Teeth filed to the gums
2. Ears clipped and jagged
3. Split nostrils, cut at the sides making them look like dainty little wings.
4. Head flattened with cord and boards as a child
5. Gums dyed with lacquer
6. Arms bound to the torso up to the elbow, so the truly beautiful walk around like t-rexs.

The ruling order...

1. ... are ancient in-bred families
2. ... is a foreign culture with its own language and rituals
3. ... is a hereditary priesthood
4. ... grandmothers, ranked by the quantity of grand children
5. ... died out years ago, leaving their silver palaces empty. No one noticed.
6. ... are elected per village every year. They consider it a burden and is often used as a punishment.

What I'm Doing

It is essential that everybody knows exactly how exciting, maudlin, and envelope pushing I am being at all times. While it is safe to assume "very" in all these cases it's only polite that I confirm your blinkered confidence now and again.

I sometimes pretend to be a real publisher, who prints other people's work, in order to mask the obvious narcissism of primarily printing ones own. Crypts of Indormancy is coming out next month, which I didn't write, and it's exactly the kind of adventure I never see—erudite and weird non-European alt-history, written with a strong, identifiable voice free of niche trends. I like it so much that it's being printed to proper standards and in huge bulk. All in.

After that we'll likely see a couple of smaller adventures, a standalone RPG about cockney burglars, and some other projects that are so far away that to speak of them might spook 'um into the tree line.

In the meantime I'll be writing nothing but Troika! forever. The full scope of the game is beyond my means, so I've had to make some hard decisions about how to get there. I considered various crowd funding beg-a-thons: Kickstarter could pay for all the art right away, but leaves me vulnerable to change and comes with a gaggle of hungry punters attached (I love you, but it's a psychic burden to be beholden), while Patreon would let me charge a subscription to MEEEEE and allow me to be as erratic as I pleased, but the fact that it's double-dipping selling your work, once to patreon and once at the end when you actually have something, made me a bit ill with grasping shame.

So instead I'll channel TSR and enter supplement hell. Build the book piece by piece in self-contained chunks. Make them handsome, make them fat, and make them now. The first one is going to be Empires of Foliage and I will never admit to what it is about. There will be 72 new backgrounds, a number of enemies, plus miscellaneous spells items and other related things all connected to the central, poorly hidden, conceit.

Also Undercroft, soon-ish maybe.

Background: Good Dog

You’re not a magic dog, you’re not a talking dog, but you are a good dog.

Possessions
A neckerchief OR a collar and half a leash OR your favourite ball

Skills
3 Awareness
3 Dig
2 Run
2 Track
2 Sneak
2 Swim
1 Sleight of Hand
1 Tunnel Fighting
1 Bite Fighting

Special

Decide if you are, in addition to being a good dog, a big dog or a small dog. Big dogs get +1 Bite Fighting and +1 Dig, small dogs get +1 Tunnel Fighting and +1 Awareness.

May only carry half the normal number of items. Has all predictable dog related limitations, like not being able to wield a sword. May however cast magic is you find someone that can teach dogs to do it. Good luck with that.

Playing a totally mundane dog in Troika! would be very appropriate. Not everyone has to be a show stealing attention hog, some of us just want to be loved and rescue people from wells. They're emotive creatures as demonstrated by the players usage of body language while playing them:

I growl in a way that says "there's a goblin hiding in that tree drawing pictures of us while we eat"

or

I stare at them in the manner of someone who wants to buy that magic necklace and get it fitted to dog sizes. Use the money in my satchel.

The Good Dog has more baked in potential than all your lamassus or floating-head-conglomerates combined. You have to work to make those as fun.

Naming systems have great variety. Much as I enjoy the quasi native american style "Verb Noun" thing, or just picking stuff out of name piles, it doesn't communicate the absolutely mad systems some places use.


Bali:

A name is given based on the order of their birth within the family with no regard for gender. Only children who survive to 42 days old get this, to avoid inflating the numbers. The name of the 5th child and onwards ticks over with the addition of a numeral, so the 7th child will be called Cuthbert II.

1. Hugh, Pugh 
2. Barney, Mcgrew 
3. Cuthbert 
4. Dibble, Grub

A third name is optional and is usually given by the parents. This will be a descriptive nickname, or a word from another language they like. If the child is struggling in life then the parents might give them a new name, considering the old one to be unfortunate.


Hebrew:

Girls:
my brother is pleasant
answer
devoted to the gods
afflicted of god
crown


Boys
Uncle
to be red
Slender
god is just
high mountain
faithful
exalted nation
god answers
answer
wild goat
lion
lion of god
healer
happy
afflicted of god
ruin
servant of Nebo
breath
my father if judge

Troika Initiative

The initiative of Troika! is difficult to simulate in any way other than as it is presented in the book, but here are a few ideas.

1-Number list

This is my least favourite but highest fidelity solution to not using the token bag. Write a numbered list of the participants of a fight, each with as many instances of their name as they should have initiative tokens with #1 being END TURN.

So:

1. End turn
2. Bob
3. Bob
4. Billy
5. Billy
6. Brian
7. Brian
8. Orc
9. Orc
10. etc...

To generate the number you're got to random.org to get it without having to come up with some magic dice yoga.

2-Divining

Do this, it's probably better.

Change "initiative 2" to "initiative d6", 3 to d8 and 4+ to d12.

Now gather up the dice or make everyone roll seperately. Resolve the initiatives by counting backwards from the highest. Anyone rolling a 1 doesn't act.

3-Kind of the same old same old

Or this. Roll 1 d6 for each point of initiative you have, resolve them in order from top to bottom (lots of simultaneous actions) and ignore any 1s.