Sycarion Diversions
All Kinds of Fun!
The Desire for Basic Fantasy
Dec 14th
To give a little Old School love to NMP’s Portrait of a Villain – the Desire, here’s a version of the Desire for Basic Fantasy:
The Desire
Beware to those that betrayed her – she will repay any harm done to her tenfold. Beware to those that stand in her path – her lust for power is insatiable.
The Desire
Armor Class: 17
Hit Dice: 8**
No. of Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d4+4 (silver dagger)
Movement: 30′
No. Appearing: 1
Save As: Fighter: 8
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: G+O
XP: 1015
The Desire is a human woman of great ambition. Even without the powers granted to her from a demonic pact, her training as both a thief and a magic-user is formidable. As a thief, she can use any skills as an 8th level thief. She uses magic as an 8th level magic-user. The spells in her spell book are: Detect Magic, Magic Missile, Shield, Detect Invisibility, ESP, Invisibility, Clairvoyance, Dispel Magic, Polymorph Self, Wizard Eye.
From the demonic pact, she gained the power to charm anyone who meets her gaze; a save vs. Spells is allowed to resist, but at a penalty of -3 due to the power of her charms. The pact has also granted her immunity to sleep, charm and hold spells. She is also immune to any special ability that resembles those spells (for example, she cannot be charmed by a vampire). She also gained an unnatural toughness that allows her improved saving throws.
She carries a magical silver dagger +4 that she uses in physical combat. Typically, she will use her spell casting ability if forced into personal combat. In almost any combat situation where she might be encountered, others do her real fighting for her.
If you do not use Basic Fantasy, you can find The Desire for:
The Pathfinder system over at the Sea of Stars
Deadlands Reloaded (Savage Worlds) over at the Core Mechanics
First Posted Generator – Sanskrit-ish City Names
Dec 3rd
Here are the original tweets for this idea in the order they were written. Better write up coming soon. The available yould egine, if folks want to use Yould, is called sk. (This is a note for myself more than anything.)
Properly, the web enhancement is called Mahasarpa and it’s available as a web enhancement from WOTC here. Please bear with the misspelling.
THinking about Masharpa (from WOTC) and India flavored articles from old Dragon magazines.
Then came across Inkwell Ideas’ generators for city names: http://bit.ly/6H6lYC and http://bit.ly/4BvC2z about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
Then thought about adding an area with India-like flavor for BFRPG setting. Would use Anti-Paladin Games format of one-page descriptions. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
Of course, when creating a new setting, I start with the language so that I know what to call things. Most of the time, it’s English. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
This time, I want something Sanskrit-ish. I turn to my favorite tool, Yould, which I helped document. http://bit.ly/7PvMfM about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
Firing up Yould, I realize that I prefer transliterated texts to work up a few ideas. You see, Yould requires texts to “train” the generator about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
In a perfect would, I would use documents written in Sanskrit and generate from there (Yould is UTF-8, works with anything) about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
But I am looking for ‘good enough’ because I do not want to get bogged down in my linguist OCD issues. (Yes, I love languages) about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
Not finding any larger transliterated texts that I could use easily, I take a readily available English text and use google translate about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
Google Translate provides “romanization” of the English to Hindi translation of my long passage. I use the romanization to train yould. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
After some work, yould has a masharpa engine I can use to make Sanskrit-ish words. Decision: generate 100 words and choose the best ones? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
Or create a name generator similar to the ones I saw on Inkwell Ideas. I decide to create a name generator similar to the Chinese City one. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
I generate small words to correspond to same concepts used (directions, geologic features, pleasant adjectives, colors,etc) and expand list about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
Final Generator has Five Colums with 20 entries per column. Roll D6 twice to choose which colums. Roll D20 to find entry. Viola! about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
Final Generator produces names with the flavors I want, as well as provide 100 vocabulary woods for the setting. Will post on sycarion soon about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck
Example results: Vanataane, Lahekan, Prekham, Rushaim, Apharuen, Pahrahta, Itashaya. 38 minutes ago from TweetDeck
Life is good, I feel like I can make some one page writeups of various areas. 38 minutes ago from TweetDeck
2010 Is Full of Promise
Jan 4th
Posted by John Payne in Commentary
2009 was a lean year in content. There was plenty of ambition, but the remains of nerd projectitis are evident. Hypermen went unfinished as well of Peridot. Mnemosyne never developed a magic system. Lenga, despite all the history written, never described more than a handful of emperors and the The Mill. I regret the unfinished threads of Lenga that were never developed.
Yet, this year promises a lot more. Things have changed for the better.
Positive Changes
More on all of this later. Suffice it to say, that I hope to have a lot more content here in 2010.