Original art by Loki.
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All posts by Peter
d20 New Character Classes – The Magus
It’s pretty well established that I like to tinker with role-playing game mechanics, and that I have several dissatisfactions with the d20 (D&D) spellcasting systems in particular which I’ve tried to remedy over the years.
But in spite of my disillusionment with the spell-slots/*fire and forget* style of casting in it’s several iterations, sometimes I still get the urge to design characters more closely fitting the standard spellcaster mould, though generally I’d prefer them a bit more flexible.
Now the usual spellcasters all have some sort of limitation on how many spells they can learn and/or which ones. Also, excluding the Sorcerer, most classes must prepare spells ahead of time and have an additional restriction on how coppies of each spell they can prepare in a given day, a set of rules which rankles my sense of verisimilitude.
Long have I coveted a class which overcame these restrictions. A class with the spontaneous casting. A class without limitations on how many or which spells can be learned.
The generic “Spellcaster” class presented in Unearthed Arcana perhaps comes closest to this goal, although even that class still has a couple issues. For one thing the Spellcaster, like the Sorcerer, is limited in the number of different spells they can know at any given level. Additionally, the Spellcaster is only intended for use in games where the other generic classes (the Expert and Warrior) are being used.
As an alternative I propose the Magus, a sort of omni-mystical sage or man of power, to provide a suitable player character class.
The magus provides greater flexability regarding the type of spells which can be learned, but with limits: Magi are relatively limited in the number of spells they can have prepared at any given time, also the number of spells they can cast in a day is relativley low, and they gain no bonus feats or other special abilities. Further, to learn and cast spells most effectively the magus must diversify her abilities greatly and learn at least two different skills; while, by contrast, wizards need only concentrate on one ability and a corresponding skill.
The Moss Pit – A Memory
In high school I was on the swim team. Though generally it’s least male exponent, I remained an active participant for the last three years of school as swimming seemed to bolster my health over the winter months. There are alot of random aspects of the experience I recall here and there:
- Friends and aquaintences of interesting character, now gone their separate ways.
- The various away pools: one with salty water, one with disinfectant troughs you had to walk through when entering the locker-room, and a third that was so sauna-like it sapped your strength.
- Painting a ceiling tile in the guy’s locker-room with the words to Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer”.
- The day I swam several hundred extra yards until everyone else had left, in order to avoid getting my hair shaved in solidarity with the rest of the team.
But the one thing that really stands out in my mind is the moss pit.
Current Employment
These days I’ve been doing some testing that involves gel electrophoresis. This is a process often used to separate out different chemicals in a mixture (for example a mixture of DNA fragments with assorted lengths), typically in aqueous solution, on the basis of the individual component’s size and charge.
To accomplish this you basically make half inch thick slab out of gelatin (well “agarose” technically) and cover the “gel” with a sufficient quantity of buffer solution (say a 1x concentration of Tris/Acetate/EDTA solution). Then you insert some of the mixture to be separated into little holes in one end of this gel.
Galactic Noir: Dead On Arrival
I wrote this story in 2001 as part of a “Galactic Noir” setting I was working on back then. In it’s tone Galactic Noir was largely inspired by short stories by George R.R. Martin, specifically those from his now out of print Sandkings short story collection (though not so much by the titular story). But it also drew heavy thematic inspiration from the Orion’s Arm group I was participating with at the time, as well as the old World of Darkness gameline by White Wolf.
Unfortunately, after fleshing out several ideas for this setting via e-mail with a few guys from one of the World of Darkness forums (Bryan Conlon, Gabe Carlson, and “Wolf”), the computer on which I stored all our correspondence had pretty much every one of it’s I/O devices break in some way. As a result the relevant information languished for years on the machine’s inaccessable hard drive.
However, this past Christmas season, while rummaging through Circuit City trying to figure out what to spend a gift certificate on, I stumbled across a kit to convert old hard disks for use as external drives. Now that I have access to this stuff again I’ll probably be sticking at least some of it on the web in the near future.
Dead On Arrival is the only actual story I can remember writing for the setting, and consequently also the only “stand alone” piece of writing that my brief perusal could dig up. So here it is.
Note: This one’s going out to the folks on the Dragonstar mailing list in the hopes that it’ll contribute to the currently ongoing discussion of vampires… in… space…
Keep on keepin’ the faith over there guys.
Protocon 2.0 Live Update 1
So Protocon is now well and truely under way.
Last night saw a screening of the cinematic classic “Manster”.
Fiat: Diceless Roleplaying
After weeks of sporadic tinkering the role-playing system I was hoping to run for Protozoicon is finally at a usable stage. Still not polished to the sleek and glossy shine I’d prefer but workable at least and including all the necessary components. Also, at six pages, it’s mercifully brief.
You can find it here in PDF format.
For those really interested there’s more commentary available here on the design philosophy behind it and such.
Primate Boogie
While I don’t hold with Creationists (or even proponents “Intelligent Design” as the term is currently employed) my world-view is generally in line with that of mainstream Roman Catholicism, a paradigm which is still lacking enough in empirical rigor to draw a fair amount of fire from skeptics. As time goes by I’ve found more and more that prolonged confrontation over these beliefs, even when tenable, frequently causes me enough anxiety to have minor biological repercussions.
An odd byproduct of this is that I occasionally feel sort of a sympathetic anxiousness when other folks views are attacked, sometimes even if I disagree with them or hold an opposing viewpoint. As a result I don’t argue as much in general as I did in earlier years, and (as you’d probably imagine) find some of the popular topics on blogs I frequent cause my stomach to churn a little extra. Curse of Greyface at work in me no doubt.
But in spite of these occasional misgivings about rocking boats when I recently came across the New York Dolls “Dance Like a Monkey” video it somehow amused me greatly:
Click here to watch “Dance Like a Monkey”.
I really gotta hand it to them: between the actual song lyrics and the video animation this thing has got more creationist, evolutionist, religious, skeptic, political, and scientific in-jokes than I’ve ever seen crammed into a 3 minute and 25 second package previously.
The FSM gets some action (always a crowd pleaser with skeptics). But I think my favorite parts were the obvious Dubya/monkey visual humor, and a passing reference to the Scopes Monkey Trial.
I’m actually surprised it hasn’t shown up on Boing Boing yet as it is totally their bag, and will be even more surprised if someone else doesn’t point it out to them before this gets posted.
Protozoicon ’06 – RPG Interest Survey
This year the RPG run at Protozoicon will be decided by concensus. So if you’re planning on attending and interested in playing please give a little feedback if you’ve got time.
The survey only contains 10 questions so hopefully it won’t take too long.
You can click here to take it.
d20 Adventure – Playdough Fun Factory of the Godz
Alternate Title: Evil Elf Chicks Must Die
This was the adventure designed for the sole purpose of testing out the Injury and Consequences mechanics mentioned earlier. The level of the PCs was 6th and I had them gradually facing protagonists closer and closer to the standard D&D challenge ratings.
The since some of the mechanical elements I eventually try out might clash with any of the pre-planned settings (ie. Forgotten Realms or Ravenloft) I instead cooked up a home-brew setting with characteristics generally similar to the standard ones. There’s not much to it but a few background details thrown together and some antagonists. Since I’d been reading Vance’s Dying Earth recently you may notice some minor thematic aspects of that setting worked in as well. Other elements will be invented later as they become relevant to the story.
My prep-notes for the session follow. As such they contain spoilers, players be warned.
Continue reading d20 Adventure – Playdough Fun Factory of the Godz