Emberfrost

As much as I like the name of Pergammos as the name of the planet. Fantasy settings tend to have a more generally evocative name. After some deliberation I've decided to call the setting Emberfrost. There are a few crappy myspace blogs that use the name, but in general it seems to be largely unclaimed. Hard to find these days.

At worst I can call it "Legends of Emberfrost" or "Lords of Emberfrost" or something like that to make it unique.

Pergammos - a new fantasy world

I love astronomy. If I hadn't decided to be an illustrator for a living I would have gone to pilot school to be a helicopter pilot, but my 3rd choice would have been astronomy! So of course the recent incredible breakthroughs in finding exoplanets has me excited. Any time a planet is in the "goldilocks" zone it makes astronomers get all tingly inside. The goldilocks zone is where the distance from its sun makes liquid water possible on a planet.

Gliese 581 is a planet that is in its star's goldilocks zone.


A fascinating thing about Gliese 581 is that it is tidally locked. This means one side always faces it's sun, while the other always faces away. Fire and ice. This struck me as an incredibly compelling planet for a Fantasy World. Imagine if a planet only had a strip, about the width of California, around it's circumference that was habitable. To the north deserts, unquenchable fire, and uninhabitable lands boiling with magma. To the south a frozen desolate wasteland too cold for any life to bear. But, that space in-between a veritable paradise. A perpetual Hawaii in twilight where life thrives.


Of course Star Wars beat me to the punch with Ryloth. But, Ryloth is mild compared to Gliese 581. And I'm talking about a fantasy world with fire dragons and ice dragons, wizards, artifacts, and mighty warriors!
So I took a little time to develop the idea. I don't know how far I'll go with it, but I'm thinking of making this a publishable fantasy campaign world for use with the Original Edition (and as my previous post indicated, any edition from 0 to 3.5).


Andraxis the bold used a particularly powerful Ethereal spell and flew high above the clouds, higher than any mortal had dared to before, after returning he created this detailed map of what his astonished eyes saw. To the north (left) the world was bathed in fire and blinding light. To the south (right) the world sank into darkness and cold. In the middle the mighty domains of man, elf, and dwarf could be seen bathed in verdant green. Andraxis took months to recover from the ordeal, and swore to never venture so far into the heavens lest he incur the wrath of the immortals. But the sights he saw and recorded has benefitted all the sentient races.

Gondalfar, the world famous cartographer gives us his detailed contour of the world. He drew heavily on the works of Andraxis, and on his own world famous explorations to create the standard map used by the Imperium:

Gondalfar's map looks uniformly peaceful, but it is well known that fire breathing dragons, evil Efreet & salamanders, and intolerant fire elementals dominate the lands to the north. While to the south snow dragons, frost wyrms, and ice devils rule the lands.

A Review of the Original Dungeoneer

In 2003 a little game called Dungeoneer was published. I poured my heart and soul into the game, and it was incredibly difficult to make. I had this idea: a genuine dungeon crawl in a deck of cards. The game was well received, probably what the movie industry would call a "cult hit". It made enough money that I was compelled to create additional sets, but never enough that I could quit my full time job. I was just rereading this review by Shannon Applecline, who has been a supportive Dungeoneer reviewer from the beginning. It brought back old memories and is inspiring me to make the Dungeoneer RPG (which will probably be released as "Dungeoneer Deluxe") the best I can make it.

http://www.boardgameinfo.com/review/9/9195-Dungeoneer%3A-Tomb-of-the-Lich-Lord

Your Dungeon is Suck

Spent some time this morning reading through Your Dungeon is Suck. I came across this sarcastic, foul-mouthed, hilarious blog via Beyond the Black Gate. It is a thoroughly entertaining indulgence, a veritable feast on the worst of the OSR filled with barbs, attacks, characterizations, and poignant digs at all the old-school gaming bloggers. I especially like the ones that hit close to home. I'm guilty of almost all the infractions he charges OSR bloggers with (except I haven't made a retro-clone; yet...).

One point in particular made on YDiS is about the minuscule and barely relevant rules differences between the original set through 3.5 edition. (It is true that 4th edition is just out in left field - a nearly complete departure from the original rules). With barely any effort and a tad bit of imagination you can pull a monster, a magic item, or even a whole adventure from something published in 1974 and play it with your 3.5 edition books. It really cracks me up to read on forums how worked up individuals will get over a weapon that does d6 damage in the Original Edition and the same weapon doing d8 damage in 3.5 edition.
This is the quote from YDiS that really got me:

If you do not have the imaginative gumption to bridge the insignificant mechanical gap between these [editions], then you should not be playing roleplaying games – you should be reading books. If you still need a creative outlet to express the glorious uniqueness that is you, write fanfic.

Ok, I'm going back to work on my retro-clone now. It's going to have the 3 truly true classes, and only the 3 truly true classes, and it will have hobbits, balrogs and banths. Oh, and all weapons will only do d6 damage, because I know you were very concerned about that.

Sometimes its good to laugh at yourself a little. ;)

Impending

Getting printer's quotes. It's getting serious now.