Egypt Gazetteer?

Yes, yes; I know I have one-and-a-half projects in the pipe already. (And to be honest, I wonder if I haven't overreached myself there ...)

But the idea has settled in my head that writing a little gazetteer for, say, Labyrinth Lord set in Bronze Age Egypt could be damned fun. It's certainly a topic I'm familiar with! -- which would be a great help in staying motivated.

Descriptions of changes to classes, some new weapons and gear; a goodly handful of settlement descriptions with a bit of tweaking for gameplay, and a flock of gods to go with; a smattering of spells, a clutch of critters ... Those grimoire ideas would fit in there like a glove ...

I think I could do it. It might even get me back in my groove.

Has anyone else released anything for Egypt?

Various project status and suchsort

My attempts to collate blog contents into a format that I can release through Lulu have been bordering on the comical (if not stressful), I have to admit. Outside sourses of distraction and stress have slowed me down but I am trying to get back in saddle, so to speak. I haven't set aside the notion, just trying to work out how to put it all together; the raw conversions to Labyrinth Lord, at least, are just about complete.

(There have been much flailing along the lines of "what in the seven shining hells do I do with it?!" --)

For the elemental project, I've started in on the critters and am working out basic notions for magic items, spells and the uses of cysts. The fluffier parts haven't had a word set down yet -- but arguably take up the lion's share of my mental meanderings on the subject.

... I am slow, and still a little flailing, for which I apologize.

I'm still working, though, don't worry *grins*


One thing that's been preying on my mind (aside from how to bridge together the blog contents) is the overlap between the blog critters and the critters to be put in the element collection. The various spirits at the very least arguably belong in both collections, and there are a small number of similar stragglers.

Would this bit of overlap be problematic for anyone interested in the collections? I'd love some input before I fret myself to death.

I give! I give --! :D

Seriously, folks -- the upswelling of encouragement to put together a book/pdf, and offers of help thereof, have made my week :3 It's been getting a little rough lately, you have no idea how much this made me feel better.

Yes, Jeff, this means I forgive the sudden broadsiding of being drafted ;3 Thank you!


So, I've decided I shall give it a try. I still have a few weeks of rockiness ahead, including being exiledon vacation for the first week of June, but I shall work on assembling the entries here into a document and then converting the stats to Labyrinth Lord as necessary. (don't need WotC hunting for me, after all!)

I will assuredly need to ask for aid, though, because my layout skills are not the best and artistic ability is worse these days *sheepish grin*


I will keep things updated, and thank you all again for the show of support. It means a lot to me. :3

Of Magic-Users and Clerics: O mighty spellcaster --

Skimming through my copy of the Rules Cyclopedia recently (I forget what it was I was actually looking for; probably the different sorts of landed-gentry high level characters become so I can work on my esper class again), I happened to notice something that struck me as interesting. Making a quick comparison with Labyrinth Lord, I found something even more interesting.

Clerics can be argued to get more spellpower than magic-users, if one looks at the number of spells per level and not just the number of levels of power available.

Now before the torches and pitchforks come after me, let me just say that yes, I know that the 7th-level spell cap for clerics and the 9th level cap for magic-users arguably makes a difference. It's the number of lower-level spell-slots that caught my eye, though, and I can't help but be amused ... all the moreso because the cleric starts off a level behind, with no spells at first level.

The break seems to come between 9th and 10th levels:

9th:

CL - 3/3/3/2 (11)
MU - 3/3/3/2/1 (12)

10th:

CL - 4/4/3/2/1 (14)
MU - 3/3/3/3/2 (14, different spread ...)

... where the MU keeps adding higher-level spells, but the cleric keeps on adding more slots for lower level spells.

Later on, a few more examples:

15th:

CL - 6/5/5/3/3/3 (25)
MU - 5/4/4/4/3/2/1 (23)


20th:

CL - 7/6/5/4/4/4/3 (33)
MU - 6/5/5/5/4/4/3/2 (34)

.... where it's trying to even out again, but not quite making it even though the MU has gained a level ahead. The distrubution is still a little weird. (Note that because of BEMCI's 36-level progression, a 20th level MU still doesn't have 9th level spells yet. That's next level.)

Whether or not this is actually of any concern, of course, is the great quality-vs-quantity argument I suppose; whether the gaining of the highest two levels of spells is worth the lessening of spell slots further down the line in the "lesser" levels. I admit I'm mostly commenting on it out of amused curiosity.


Where it gets really amusing is when a comparison is made with Labyrinth Lord. Due to LL's shifting of the cleric progression table to allow for spellcasting at first level, and adjustments for the twenty-level scale instead of thirty-six, the cleric pulls even further ahead -- and surprisingly early!

4th:

CL - 3/2 (5)
MU - 2/2 (4)


5th:

CL - 3/2/1 (6)
MU - 2/2/1 (5)


10th:

CL - 5/4/3/3/2 (17)
MU - 3/3/3/3/2 (14)


15th:

CL - 7/6/5/4/4/3/1 (30)
MU - 5/4/4/4/4/3/2/1 (27)


And then we have

20th:

CL - 9/8/7/6/5/5/3 (43)
MU - 6/6/5/5/5/5/4/4/4 (44)

... where again the MU pulls ahead in overall numbers, but the balance is sorely lacking. And in the lower levels of the classes, in LL the cleric quite simply has the numerical advantage from early on. Again, whether this is a problem or not depends on one's opinion of means of balance and the quality-vs-quantity debate.

I have to say, though -- as someone whose highest level game ever run was in the vicinity of 9th or 10th before players asked for a reset, I think I'll be sticking with the BEMCI progression lest the magic-users lynch me ;3

A serious writing project? Seriously?

In the last few days I've found myself pondering working on a document packed full of how I intend to handle elemental magic (or, at least elemental spells), the elemental planes themselves, and all that fun stuff. I dare say I could fill a decent handful of pages with:

- planar description for all six elements
- an explanation of how Courts work and few examples for each plane
- elemental cysts and what one can do with those nifty shinies, including the hybrid cysts
- crossovers between the elemental planes and the mortal world
- calling elementals and elemental spirits
- and of course a goodly measure of critters, magical items and spells

I could even work up a Labyrinth Lord version. With luck, this notion will take root over the next few weeks and something might come of it -- I need to encourage myself more! (Or at least stop getting distracted by everything else that comes along.)

But here's the big kicker of a question, because I have to admit the temptation is dangling: would it be worthwhile to actually make this project -- if it flies -- into something I could put on Lulu?
Better question: how could I manage that, with the artistic and layout skills of a dead wombat? *grins*

Well, better to see what I can write first I suppose. That week in exilevacation in the first week of June might come in handy, too ...

Spellbook musings: part the first.

I'm seriously considering changing the spellbook rules (such as they are) for BEMCI. More precisely, the size of the bloody things and how many spells they can hold. This is being brought about by the desire to have other sizes and forms of spell recording -- such as the scrolls and folios mentioned in recent spell postings of mine -- available to PCs, and because the extant rules drive me batty.

In the Red Box, we are told that "a spellbook is about 2 feet square, 2-6 inches thick, and weighs at least twenty pounds". This already hurts my head on sheer size alone when I try to contemplate the size of the parchments used to make the quires of pages -- medieval books were not generally so massive in dimensions, I swear -- but, in addition to this, there is apparently no limit to the number of spells that may be entered into the spellbook. (magic --!)

Neither the Red Box nor the RC give a price for a spellbook. An expanded equipment list from Dragon Magazine ("Different Totes For Different Folks", March 1993) gives the spellbook as 100gp, weighing 200cn / 20 lbs, with a measurement of 24x24x6", and capable of holding a grand total of twenty-four spells.

Ouch.

Over in the land of Labyrinth Lord, the OGL version of the spellbook is in use: 15 gp, weighing 1 lb., with 100 pages and spells taking up one page per spell level. No dimensions are given. This feels like it goes a wee bit too far over into the other extreme (price-wise, at least, and maybe weight also for a main spellbook), but I'm still debating.

Ideally, in the next day or so I'll cobble together a collection of standard sizes, with options to go smaller, perhaps -- yes, I quite like the idea of a girdle book as a small "travel-sized"spellbook, limited in space but containing spells the caster doesn't want to be without, and it's a major cause of my musings here -- and post them up for general consumption.


Similarly, the putting-spells-in-the-book system versus replacing-the-book system needs work. More to the point, being able to scribe new spells into a spellbook with no cost attached but being forced to shell out thousands of gold pieces to replace a lost book -- when it is much the same process in many ways -- strikes me as quite daft. This bit requires more mulling-over on my part but I do want to address it in some way that doesn't grow too complicated.

That old-fashioned antagonism; or, this is why we can't have nice things. Especially, it seems, if you're a lowly player.

Some nosing and poking about my blogroll (and my unwieldy pile of bookmarks) this morning reminded me to go check out a copy of Knockspell. After all, a zine that was going to support Labyrinth Lord sounded good now that I've finally acquired a hardcopy of the game ...

Despite the lack of much of anything explicitly for LL that I noticed in my first breezethrough, I liked a goodly amount of the content. Gabor Lux's adventure Isles on an Emerald Sea was quite nice, and Robert Lionheart's Random Hireling Generator is an absolute stitch. I won't be surprised if I find other favoured pieces when I go through it again.

Alas, the good parts are not what I am here for at the moment. I am here, instead, to air my part about the one thing that -- to be perfectly honest -- soured my temperament to the point that I'm surprised the nifty things seemed nifty at all.

That one thing is an editorial by Tim Kask, a gentleman who's been around since the wee early days of D&D. The editorial is titled "Who sucked the fun out of RPGing?" -- and that alone should have been a fair warning to me, as those sorts of editorials by anyone seldom appeal to me. But I read nonetheless.

I am not, in a word, impressed.

The editorial reads, to me, like a paen to everything that irritates me and makes me want to distance myself from the so-called "old school Renaissance" even more than I technically already am. It is fair that Mr. Kask prefers the original edition; it is fair that he dislikes later editions. I can be picky about my editions myself. But passages like 'How did [D&D] go so wrong? How did the game morph into today’s endless editions, each seemingly worse than the preceding, each more hidebound, restrictive and dogmatic?' -- that smacks of the kind of grognardism that I do not much like.

Fine. Fair enough; this is his opinion, and like all of us he is entitled to his opinion. But the remainder of the editorial is what really ground my gears, as Mr. Kask spends a goodly number of paragraphs detailing how any sort of rules debate or elaboration (or nitpicky things like the damage of fire vs. lightning, granted) never happened in the good ol' days; they were having too much fun. And what killed the fun?

I'll let the gentleman's closing paragraph speak for him:

'It all starting going bad with the publishing of AD&D, The Player’s Handbook. Here come the rules lawyers, the nitpickers and the homegrown experts. The fun started to leech away within months. Now there were dicta, dogma and regulations; gone were the days of guidelines. And who was to blame for this sorry, disreputable state of affairs. The players…'


The Player's Handbook ruined the fun of D&D?

Players having access to some of the Holy Writ ruined the fun of D&D?

The DM not having complete and utter control of said Holy Writ ruined the fun of D&D?


This explains so much of what bothers me about hardcore grognardism. Do please excuse me while I run in the other direction as far as my feet can carry me.

Prying Labyrinth Lord from the grip of the postal service.

I've finally acquired a hard copy of Labyrinth Lord.

I've wanted to take a closer look at this one for a while now, but -- though I dearly love how the digital world feeds my information addiction -- trying to read a pdf that long makes my neurons fry. Lulu really pounds my Canadian wallet dead and flat on shipping, so it's taken a bit of time to get a hard copy that's dutifully paid for instead of forking over money to Staples.

Finally, Amazon came through. And then I had to contend with the stupidity of the postal service, who will never convince me that they tried to deliver the parcel yesterday with no response when I was sitting here waiting for the damn buzzer. (sigh.)


Regardless, my copy is here now and I'll be contentedly sifting through it. I don't expect to jump ship from BEMCI any time soon, but I wanted to support LL -- and if I ever have the brass to actually "professionally" publish anything, LL is the system I think I'll be wanting.