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Day One: What’s Available and What’s Missing

I posted about the WR&M Renaissance a couple days ago and invited anyone and everyone to post something in the first twelve days of February. I am going to try to post something on all twelve days. Today, I'm going to start with making WR&M your own.

From the srd, here is what Michael Wolf says about making WR&M your own:

I can't stress this enough: make WR&M your own. GMs and players are encouraged to bring their own ideas to the table. Add new lands, create new monsters, change the rules, write up your own spells. Whatever suits your fancy, do it. A lot of creativity went into the production of the game, but it definitely shouldn't end there! This book contains several optional rules that you can use, but you can of course add your own house rules as well. And if you think there's something critical or just very cool missing from the game, let us know!

As someone that combined four different versions of D&D and Battletech into an ongoing campaign, I appreciate the spirit of doing whatever suits my fancy. Looking at what others have made, this spirit shines through. Some games use the same basic rules, but change the name of the game by renaming the three attributes. For example, There is no Pulp WR&M, instead you have Resolute, Adventurer & Genius. (Still looking for a more complete Pointman, Hacker & Thief). Some go in totally different directions genre-wise, like Senshei, Henshen & Mayo. I really do hope that this project gets finished mostly because it is something outside my experience in RPGs. Main Sequence eschews the name Soldier, Agent & Tech to give you Sci-Fi, including Ship Creation rules. (Awesome!)

To be totally different, R.E. Davis made a more crunchy game called REWIRED that changes the core mechanic of rolling a d6.

I've linked to the some of the resources available on the srd site. If you know of more resources for Warrior, Rogue & Mage that are not listed here, please let me know.

What I want to make, though, are materials for the original game. There are plenty of supplements that give you more rules options, but there are no adventures. Beyond that, with the implied setting removed, WR&M could use more fantasy settings.

For example, if you look the implied setting from a pantheon I made lately, there's enough there to make something interesting. First, let's take away the Pathfinder stuff and break it down. There are four types of priests associated by animal; Walrus, Dolphin, Shark, and Octopus. I would split the Thaumaturgy skill into four different ones, one for each animal. It would be safe to add a Swimming skill as well.

Beyond that, we can add a couple talents like Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway (yeah I quoted Frozen) that grants 2 points of damage reduction against any cold attack. There's Echolocation that allows you to locate an object. The DL would depend on distance and size of the object.

Some spells that I need to make are Fear, Obscuring Ink, and Breathe Underwater. I'd also need a spell that makes someone an expert swimmer for a time.

For another race, I can add the Howerter, a kind of uplifted dolphin invented by my son. Its racial talent would be the ability to move around without touching the ground.

For creatures, I would need to create a big bad Ice Drake. For now, let's use the Fire Drake stats, but make the breath weapon cold/ice instead of fire. This is the big enemy of the setting, the biggest bad that is a constant threat to players and their allies. I'd also need to add the golem making crabmen I mention elsewhere.  Their golems would be similar to Work Golems (because they are made of crab shells, not stone) with the damage changed to 1d6+2 claws.

As an extra thought to consider that is not mentioned anywhere on my site, I'd like to have an evil race that likes guns. Since WR&M includes Dragon Pistols and Dragon Rifles in the srd, I'd like to have a form of goblin that loves their own type of pistols. Since they are not as well-crafted, I'd dial down the damage of these pistols to 1d6+2 (instead of 1d6+4).

With that, I think a group could have a good ol' time. It's enough for me to make some notes, roll some random tables, and start a seaside adventure.

That's my first day entry. Make your own or build on mine. I left a lot of stuff out, so feel free to add on.

Warrior, Rogue & Mage Renaissance

A few days ago, Michael Wolf of Stargazer's World posted an srd of his popular Warrior, Rogue & Mage game. Although the game itself has a very generous license, the SRD is released under the Creative Commons v.3 Unported license. The big change from a different license is the ability to publish something commercially. Otherwise, this removes any barrier for the creation of derivative works.

With the help of Euller Pereira and the encouragement of the folks in the Stargazer's Games G+ Community, a website has been created from the SRD. The goal of the site is to be a hub for the core rules, links to games based on WYRM, and downloads.

R.E. Davis over at Chaos Grenade has also posted about this including a reference to Euller's call to arms that originally got the revitalization project started. In short, let's make some awesome stuff with WYRM.

On the SRD Site, there are links to WYRMM based games including Resolute, Adventurer, & Genius , WYRED, Patchwork Fantasy, and others. (We're still looking for Dice Monkey's Pointman, Hacker & Thief). One of the great things about the WYRM engine is that games based on it are not shemped fantasy tropes with different names. Often times, new mechanics and gameplay elements are introduced.

So I declare that the first twelve days of February to be The Twelve Days of WYRM. Please join in, add a link in the comments and I'll create a post on the 13th with the full list.

Bad News, Good News

I avoid these posts, but here's the bottom line first:

Everything is going to be much later than I wanted. Everyone at the house spent the month of December sick. (Apparently, I was sick since the first of the month, or maybe even earlier.) This means delays on the zine, delays on polyhedral pantheons for Swords & Wizardry and delays on more work on various S&W databases. Besides all that, there are a host of other things sitting as drafts on this site.

Enough of that. Now the good news.

My family volunteered to help me make game stuff. My wife will do the cover of my zine. She does oil paintings in a impressionistic, dreamlike style. My son is helping with the writing of the minigames and my daughter wants to play test everything.

For those that want the hard copy, my wife also wants to help me sew the zines together instead of using staples. She gave me the idea to be like Christian and also just mail out articles, minigames, and other writings for free. After all, she said, who doesn't like getting good things in the mail?

I hate delays and it makes me afraid that I will not finish. This fear is why I make no promises with dates and times.

More than that fear, though, is the desire to give back in some way to the hobby I rediscovered in 2001 and the OSR I discovered more recently. Besides, who doesn't enjoy making stuff with your family?

I hope to have a post for Saturday, but we'll see.

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