Pb: Three Truths and Five Principalities

House cleaning on the new and improved Pb, coming sometime early next year. If you've been keeping up with the setting, not much here is a revelation. But I do have a map now, which is more than I could say at any other point in this setting's development. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

THE FIRST TRUTH. The landscape is no unbroken mass of endless earth. Rather, it is composed of floating motes of land held in place by titanic chains plunging down into the luminescent, eldritch Æther below. The largest cohesive land mass, the AGGREGATE, was a work of deliberate artifice from the earliest civilizations, the product of lashing countless motes into a patchwork. No sun nor moon hangs in the star-spackled sky.

THE SECOND TRUTH. The AGGREGATE is ruled with an iron-gauntleted fist by the EMPIRE and its right hand the CHURCH (or perhaps it is the other way around). The CHURCH teaches the doctrine of the Warrior-Poet, who compiled the stories of the Saints, mythopoeic personifications of the chemical elements, into the Codex Periodicum. Whispering adherents venerate, for example, Saint Gold the Witchfinder General or Saint Iodine the Mysteriarch.

THE THIRD TRUTH. The OLD WORLD was the age of the Saints, when human civilization was still in its infancy. When the first great human congregation, known to historians as the CONQUEST, crafted the AGGREGATE, it ushered in the NEW AGE, marking the decline of the Saints and the beginning of an age of stability and growth only interrupted by the insurgency of the Warrior-Poet’s successors. As order waxes, magic wanes. The UNDREAMT WILD surrounding the AGGREGATE is still in a tumultuous, hypermagical state of nature, making the AGGREGATE a fragile bastion in a sea of undifferentiated OLD WORLD.

To allow for ease of administration and to alleviate ethnic tensions, the EMPIRE is divided into 5 major principalities, the domains and influences of which are broadly safe from politic’s fickle maneuverings.

IODINIA. The heartland is littered with the EMPIRE’S most bountiful jewels. Raz Haruungar, the greatest city of this or any age and the capital of the EMPIRE, lies beyond the ensnaring hyphae of the Mycelion, a colossal fungal forest-organism. Iodinians have fair or lightly browned skin and eyes in any number of unnatural prismatics, a holdover from the physiognomic tinkering of the CONQUEST.

SACCHARINIA. The closest thing this imploding dynastic power has to a holy book is Machiavelli’s The Prince. Massive spires of sugar-crystal grow out of the sweetened soil of the Sugarspire Flats, into which the Saccharinians carve palaces and dance halls silly with decadent splendor. Saccharinians are known for exaggerated bod-mod, from bleaching their whole body in vibrant pastels to piercing anything that isn’t bone to elaborate full-body works of tattoo artistry.

BURSINGR. The cold here is so bitter it will cut the skin right off your back if you’ll let it. In the shadow of Zenith Mons, king of the motescape’s mountains, glacial fjords thich with piracy cut through the gelid landscape. Bursingi are built thickly and pale, bristling with red hair and marked with spiraling tattoos, breathing tapestries of genealogy and reputation.

GOLGOTH. This is where the old faiths still live, and they don’t mind the heat. It is named for the Golgothan Edifice, the cliff face upon which the first painting of the human form was painted. Golothans are barely unified by their bark-brown skin, hair, and eyes; each clan has developed its own conventions and aesthetics over the centuries.

CHURLIA. Here, the EMPIRE is ripping the riches from the earth’s singing hands. Churlia is dominated by swathes of rolling grasses, in which are littered the rusted ruins of OLD WORLD wars, and its native tribespeople find themselves in the crosshairs of the EMPIRE’s expansionism. Leather-browned and olive Churlians integrate beadwork into their oil-stained overalls, sewing their aviator hats out of Yeabu pelt and woven grass.

The COMPLICATION table, or, reactive random encounters

    After some playtesting, I find myself wanting to make some tightening revisions to NEW AGE. One of the revelations I had recently is that the primary reason I wasn’t utilizing random encounters is because of the extra cognitive load of tracking dungeon-time, which was necessary to ensure that there would be regularity to when I checked for an encounter. That, plus the possibility that a random encounter would possibly coincide with and as such interfere with a planned encounter, made them a tool I didn’t often use- except, that is, to check what happened when the players tried to take a rest in dungeon-time.

That made me realize that what I needed was a reactive system of random encounter checks, not a proactive one. Me rolling for a random encounter wouldn’t be at my will, but in response to the players wanting to take a rest or undergo something with a high time cost. This concept of reactive random encounter checks, my want for tools that I could use for multiple purposes, and my love for the d12 led to the below rules, which I’ll bring to the table with NEW AGE 2e or whatever. This is the absolute first draft, so phraseology and language are subject to change, particularly in the realm of getting closer to succinct, natural language, but I think the concepts have legs.

BREATHERS AND RESTS. If you take an uninterrupted hourish to nurse your wounds and eat a snack, you regain [WEIRD]* SOMA. This is called a BREATHER. If you spend a peaceful night in a warm bed with a full belly, you regain all your SOMA. This is called a REST.

*I’m calling [MAGIC] [WEIRD] in the new version for the same reason I call HP SOMA.

COMPLICATIONS. If you undertake an action that lasts more than a half hour in a dangerous place, like a BREATHER or an excavation, the DM can at their discretion check for a COMPLICATION, which might be mitigated by precautions you take before your undertaking, like barricading.

The Great Generic COMPLICATION table:

1 ENVIRONMENTAL INTERRUPTION. This should be a light annoyance, but enough to interrupt any action requiring the duration to check for COMPLICATIONS.

2 WEAK HOSTILE FORCE. This is a creature that is by default violent, but doesn’t pose a threat to the party, serving mainly to interrupt them and marginally drain their resources or strain their creativity to come up with an alternate solution.

3 FRIENDLY FORCE. This is a force that is actually helpful for the players, be it an environmental effect and a creature.

4 NEUTRAL FORCE. This is a creature whose motivations are such that their interaction with the players could go either way. If it turns to hostility, this creature usually poses a fairly serious threat/resource drain to the party.

5 HOSTILE FORCE. This is a creature that is by default hostile and is a fairly large threat/drain.

6 OVERWHELMING THREAT. This is something with the potential to wipe the floor with the players, environmental or animate. The challenge then becomes circumventing it safely, not necessarily encountering it head-on.

7-12. Nothing happens; the action goes through. [The first 6 entries can also be used as a d6 table for whatever nefarious purposes a wily DM may devise.]

COMPLICATIONS for a volcano dungeon or some shit it’s late:

1 GEOTHERMAL GASSES. Hot sulfur pours up from subterranean chambers. Roll TNCT or go blind for d6 hours, sweating like a pig and being incapable of resting on a success. [Cracks in the ground spewing yellow smoke.]

2 DRIP. Lava drips on a character, causing d10 damage and destroying a random piece of equipment. [A fresh crack in the ceiling starts to glow.]

3 HARDEVOIR. A dwarvish architect doing research on the natural design of the caverns. He knows a good chunk of the place by the back of his hand. [The tapping of his cane against the volcanic stone.]

4 TARRANAX. A red wyrm navigating the caverns in search of the Blueflame Blade, once a part of its hoard. Will do or say anything to retrieve the blade, then attacks as soon as it’s back in its scaly clutches, or if its ego is not sufficiently stroked. [An illusion of trumpet fanfare Tarranax projects before it enters any room populated by smelly apes.]

5 OBSALAMANDER SWARM. Living within the igneous rock, these elemental carnivores manipulate the cavern walls, floor, and ceiling to pin victims in place and drain their blood, even flowing into metal implements when struck. [Swimming patterns in stone, like ripples in water.]

6 PYROCLASTIC FLOW. Lava floods the room over the course of ten minutes, destroying anything short of fireproof therein. [A sudden increase in the room’s temperature, plus the glow of flowing lava if applicable.]

Three things to notice: one, the 7-12 is implied; I just write it as a d6 table so a cunning DM’s instinct becomes to repurpose it in a pinch. Two, I’ve also included a way to foreshadow each COMPLICATION, so that the players have a moment to react to whatever’s being telegraphed, which is just good practice. Three, I've built the generic table so that a DM in a pinch or converting on the fly or improvising could use the generic table on its own to inspire an extemporaneous encounter or in conjunction with another random encounter table that isn't structured as the COMPLICATION table is.

Alright, time to get back to the rest of the NEW AGE overhaul. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

More Cheap Tricks

 

• Sprinkle 8-12 landmarks, microdungeons, or other oddities on your overland map. When you need to quickly generate an adventure, roll a dWhatever to determine where the macguffin or villain is.

• For an extra twist that significantly extends the adventure’s duration, roll again for where the macguffin or villain is rumored to be.

• Even for the most amoral murderhobos, it’s hard to say no to a child, and by extension a missing child.

• Going around the table board-game style, even in moments of roleplay and exploration, is a great way of reminding yourself to keep the spotlight moving, and encouraging players who fall into the backseat into making decisions that propel the game in interesting new directions.

• Handing the players a map that you slowly fill in with more details is a lot of fun for both you and them.

• This map can be made all the more fun with the addition of flaws, discrepancies, and falsehoods, especially when they communicate more information about the world. Why is the Barony of Fenderburg so much smaller on this map from the Agrappen Dynasty? Why did Fordsbridge collapse? Who the fuck thought there was a town in the middle of the forest here?

• Mobility aids can be a great way to not only provide in-world representation, but also make your world all the more fantastical. Dwarvish tank-wheelchair? Using a cloth-wrapped spire of quartz as a crutch?

• This is an old and oft-told trick, but it bears repeating. Whenever you can, describe monsters without using their names, then pick up on whatever the players are calling it and call them that yourself. It heightens the mystery of the fantasy and shows that you’re invested in their perceptions and experiences.

• When your campaign is feeling sluggish or listless, ask yourself what goal your players are pursuing. If the answer is nebulous or unclear, do some work to fix that. A goal is not the enemy of agency; in fact, it is its friend.

• Contrast is heightened by familiarity. If you want to deliver a big emotional impact, get players used to the equilibrium before changing it. An encounter in which a festival breaks into a bloody melee feels more poignant if the festival has been proceeding peacefully and enjoyably for hours of table time.

• This advice exists in many forms, but this is my mantra: anxiety may be born from what is known, but deeper horror comes from what isn’t.

• When building religious traditions, create stories, not characters.

• Idioms encode a lot of world information in very little space, and add to players’ immersion if they’re inclined to use them.

• Multiple possible truths, always. Rumors, lies, apocrypha, academic discrepancy…