I know work is crazy when my brain starts churning out new game ideas that I don’t have time to work on.
Planarch 3030: Cyberdungeonpunk in the Medium-Future
They say the City of Dis used to be nestled among an infinite sea of planes. No more. Now there is only the City Unbound, stretching endlessly from horizon to horizon, composing everything that is.
The golden age of the Sultana’s rule is a thing of legend. Now the Ten-Thousand Parishes are ruled by the kleptocratic Guildsmen, who stare down at us from their megalithic citadels of onyx and brightstone.
They say they protect order and free commerce, but we know they are only indulging their greed-fueled debauchery while we struggle with nothing and the city itself slowly dies, starved of new planes to consume and new places to expand into.
But there are new possibilities to strike back or at least get by. The Loom of All Fates, crafted by the spiderfolk, connects everything together, even the lowliest freebooter and the pinnacles of the Guildsman hierarchies. Lawlessness is rising as the hold of the Guilds and their lackeys begins to strain. New faces have appeared in the city, claiming to come from obscure planes that Dis has not yet fully assimilated. A time of change, of reckoning, is coming.
Where will you stand when the basalt pillars begin to fail?
Check this out. Not sure I’m going to pitch something, but a very cool idea.
Check this out. Not sure I’m going to pitch something, but a very cool idea.
Originally shared by Andy Kitkowski
All My Planescape Stuff, Lots of Signed Tony DiTerlizzi Stuff (OMG OMG OMG I just noticed he’s on G+, Awesome!), giving it all away in a contest.
Click through the album to see what I’ve got. And if you’re not familiar with Planescape, google it and strap in!
So, here goes… I’m moving (back) to Tokyo very soon, and one of the last things I did was play “ship, give, or toss” with pretty much every object in my life, including all of my gaming stuff. My gaming collection was pretty easy to get through for the most part, until I got to my D&D 2E Planescape Collection.
While Dark Sun is my favorite D&D setting, Planescape ruled my creative sphere in the 90s. I loved the hell out of it, and was very much inspired by Tony DiTerlizzi’s ethereal art style (fun fact: DiT illustrated the Dark Sun supplement City State of Tyr, adding something awesome to the setting that Baxa/Brom missed IMO). I picked up some of the DiT-heavy art supplements for this line, like the Factol’s Manifesto and the big boxed sets.
Now, I’m giving it all away. Many of my local gaming friends (who already have their own copies of much of the DS line) think it’s a bad move, that I’ll regret it. However, I really haven’t been using, referencing, or playing any of it in years. For me, my gaming stuff is all about what I can Use; if I’m not Using it, it’s time to move it on to someone who will. Someone like you!
So I’m holding a contest of sorts. See below for details.
You’ll note that this isn’t the entire line of Planescape stuff: I at one time had a lot of the supplements, but ended up moving them on. The core of this set is the original Planescape Boxed Set (PBS), and the Planes of Chaos boxed set (POC). POC is honestly the best product in this entire line: Super evocative, heavily illustrated, supreme amounts of visual impact as well as adventure seeds, adventure seeds, and more adventure seeds. Truly inspired, not in only explaining these weird fantastical realms, but also giving you hints at things to do in them. All tied together with whopping amounts of DiTerlizzi artwork. Fans of Planescape note that I don’t have the Planes of Law or Planes of Balance supplement. Back when, I just didn’t find them as inspiring as POC, alas, so I moved them on.
Out of the PBS and POC, all materials are included (including super outdated “Hey TSR fans, Join the RPGA!” flyers), and in solid condition (scruffing on sides/corners from reading, etc). The PBS box is kinda warped in the middle of the cover; long story short there was a torrential thunderstorm in Wisconsin and this box top was a victim. Still, holds together awesomely. But seriously, between the two boxes and other books (see below) there’s like eleven or twelve 6-8 page fold-out maps, illustrations, “quest board items”, etc. That alone is a creative cartography goldmine; every single fold-out map page loaded with adventure fodder and inspiring features.
The books I have are The Factol’s Manifesto and In The Cage: A Guide to Sigil (the featured main city of the campaign setting). Back at some GenCon (95?) I pestered Tony DiTerlizzi to sign my copy of the Factol’s Manifesto, A Lot: So there’s little illustrations and designs on a few pages, plus a dedication on the page where he revealed his favorite color art piece from the book. Man, this book. Gorgeous. This comes from the End Days of TSR, where improper bookkeeping and overreach caused them to way overproduce some Planescape supplements, cramming them with art and vision. While it sunk them, it created a few inspiring works. This is definitely one of them. It’s basically a guide to the “Philosophers with Clubs” factions of the game, including the organization, major locations, and leaders. In the process, it became yet another adventure-seed laden mess of awesome.
This one… The Factol’s Manifesto is the one book in the set I was really torn on giving away: I was like, “…maaaaybe I should hold on to this one, you know, just in case…”. After thinking about it, I decided that I’m going to dive in, make this Real. So it’s staying in the set.
In The Cage: A Guide to Sigil is basically the setting book that explains the premier city featured in the game, the otherworldly plane-linking City of Doors ruled by the Lady of Pain (one of the coolest feature NPCs of any setting. Elminster can suck it). It’s a little heavy handed in how deep it goes: I didn’t think any more details than the boxed set needed to be set about Sigil to use it in games, but that kind of thinking doesn’t push game supplements, so there I guess. Still, it’s definitely at the top of Sturgeon’s Law, avoiding the 90% of setting books that are boring lonely-fun reading.
Finally, there’s the art: I have two original art pieces from Tony DiTerlizzi: One (the wandering guy) was won in a contest back in 1997/1998: Back when I was living in Japan the first (second, technically) time and bored close to the new year on a cold night in Gunma, on a whim I searched THE INTERNET (it was still kinda new, I was on Dialup; those were the days before Japan rocketed to All Fast Internet, Everywhere) for Tony DiTerlizzi, and he and his publicist were having a contest of sorts: “Ask Tony an interview question”. I did, and won, and got this print as well as some other books!
The other piece is a demon-looking dude. After that said GenCon, I commissioned a piece of art from Tony. It was for like $60 or something, which for a poor college kid was like All The Moneys. But I had to get a piece from my favorite gaming artist. So I sent a poem of sorts (how geeky is that! admittedly, it was a short poem but still) and asked him to draw something inspired by it. I was thrilled with the results! My mom, who passed the next year, even went out to frame it for me as a present.
So, that’s what I’ve got. And I’m giving it away. But in a kinda specific way. Thanks for suffering through all this text, BTW; I don’t have the time or energy to be brief, alas.
I Want To Give This All Away, But Only To Someone Who Will Do Something With It. That’s my criteria for looking for a new owner. I wouldn’t toss this stuff, but I’m very earnest in looking for someone who won’t just go “Awesome!” and put it on the shelf next to a ton of other unused gaming books on a +4 Shelf of Collecting; but who would rather use it in part to do something cool at the table.
So here’s what I’m looking for:
* I’m not asking any money for this except the price of shipping (domestic will likely be less than $25, Intl will probably be about $50), which I would ask for.
* You simply have to tell me what you want this set for. How you plan to use it. And then, most importantly…
* …You then have 12 months to do that thing you said you were going to do. Show me and the world what you did.
* And that’s it!
So, you don’t have to go nuts creating some larger-than-life project. But I do want you to go through with it, finishing (or at least visibly starting if it’s an ongoing thing) within 6-12 months. That’s the duty you assume by taking all this cool-ass stuff.
What kind of project? That’s up to you. Think about what you would want to do with it, and go for that. Some random things I’d imagine people might do with it is:
“Convert it to the FATE system and run a campaign with it”
“Run a mini-campaign, and have a friend illustrate events from the campaign”
“Play several sessions online in some sandbox format using Pathfinder and Ryan Stoughton’s E6 Hack, with your own peculiar take on Sigil/the Planes inspired by the set”
…again, these are just examples. Don’t try to appeal to my interests that much (“I’ll do a Planescape/Tenra Bansho Zero crossover!” “I’ll make sure to make those sketched characters into the central NPCs in an epic!” etc). Just be you, I’m looking at:
* Passion
* Creative Usage
* Realistic Goal (in other words, that it seems that you would be able to meet the goal in 12 months, and not too lofty that it would kill you in terms of effort)
To enter this contest-of-sorts, just either email me (Gmail lets you do that now), contact me through my Kotodama website ( http://kotohi.com/ ), or create a private G+ post to me. In it, tell me your idea, your basic plan of how to get there, and the risks involved. Be brief or long as you need.
Thing is, there’s very little time before I start having to pack and make very hard decisions. So I will need to have your submission by 11:59PM PST Sunday, March 2nd (just five days away). That way we can work out shipping fees and all (I’ll insure it from my side for you) and settle up over Paypal. I’ll announce the Receiver of the Stuff by next Tuesday.
Feel free to reshare this anywhere!
(oh, and hey, if you’re a Tony DiTerlizzi fan, he’s on G+ so go Circle him!)
Couldn’t get this idea out of my head today. It’s a bit LOTR-ish: give a powerful artifact to a rustic and see what they do.
Originally shared by J. Walton
Spawn Point: An Intro Adventure for Dungeon World (and WoDu)
For 1d4 players.
You are not a fancy adventurer like the types that go deep into dungeons and fight monsters. That’s just not your style. Why would you do that when you can make a decent enough living as a trapper? You might not own your own castle or go on expeditions halfway around the world, but being a smart trapper — knowing where the best spawn points are and knowing how to set up a trap that insta-kills the beasties that appear — keeps you fed and warm at night (wrapped in Grasnak pelts), and on a good day might even net you a Lesser Vitality Potion or maybe a Medium Orb, something that you can fence for a bottle of rotgut. What more could you want?
The hardest part is making sure other trappers keep their hands off your dropped loot until you can make the rounds and collect it. Well, that, and making sure you don’t accidentally step in some other goon’s deathtrap while you’re wandering around checking your spawn points. There’s a lot of sketchy trappers out there that don’t respect the fact that you’ve been working these same spawn points for years before they showed up. Carpetbaggers, the lot of ’em.
Still, life was pretty good for the most part. Until just now.
See, you took one or two of your friends to go check the traps. Somebody had been pilfering your goods and you wanted to see if you could catch them in the act and rough ’em up a bit. Nothing too harsh, just intimidate them and make it clear you wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior. Plus, you wanted to show your friends this ingenious new trap that you set up over a green Roktar spawn, a bladed thing that lops off their heads despite the bone frill that marks them as superior to the blue Roktars.
That’s when you saw it. It caught your eye because it definitely wasn’t one of your traps. It was a crude beam-swinger with a spiked end, way too amateur-hour for you. But sitting within the drop zone was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen: the Greater Arc of All Dooms, a level-16 shadow-cloaked scimitar with a 0.00000001% probability of being dropped by a chromatic Roktar, much less a green one. The odds were impossible to calculate, but it was without a doubt a once-in-a-lifetime drop.
So you took it, right. What else were you supposed to do?
Here’s the thing, though: nobody in your backwater village has the kind of cash to buy this off of you. But they’d be happy to kill you for it, especially if they discover that you took it from some other fool’s trap. Really, there are very few places in this region — which is mostly a safe, starting area for noobs — that would know what to do with a Greater Treasure of any kind.
So WTF are you going to do with it? And are your friends foolish enough to help you?
If you want a print copy of Dark Heart or ordered one and didn’t recieve it, please let me know this week!
If you want a print copy of Dark Heart or ordered one and didn’t recieve it, please let me know this week! I’m down to the last few!
Originally shared by J. Walton
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: This week is your last chance to get Dark Heart of the Dreamer in print (for $10 w/ free shipping anywhere in the world), at least for the forseeable future. If you’ve been holding out, hold out no longer! I will still bring a few copies to local cons and meetups, but that’s pretty much it.
LIKEWISE: If you’ve purchased a copy a while ago and have not yet recieved it, please let me know! I’m down to the last few dozen copies and want to make sure everyone is taken care of. The Postal Service is great, but there have been a few disappearing copies. If you might have been a victim of such a mishap, let me know and I’ll make things right!
a thing you could play with DW/Dungeon Planet or whatever
Centuries ago, the Dark Lord (an evil mind-sorcerer) was driven away after decades of war. He was driven away to the stars, leaving the world to humankind and the small handful of good and neutral immortal mind-sorcerers who went into retirement.
Or so it was thought, before the second moon appeared in the sky. But that was no moon. It was the Eye of Death, a fully-operational orbital battle station that looked down at the planet below, monitoring everything and sending down its deadly gaze to destroy all opposition to the new global empire of evil. The minions and champions of the Dark Lord descended as well, to seize control of the seats of power from mortal rulers.
Among the remaining rebels, however, there was a new hope. While the Lord of the Stars was mighty, and the Eye of Death was programmed to follow his every whim, his mortal descendants shared the same genetic code, and if they could only travel in secret across the land — for they had been kept in hiding, not knowing of their true heritage — to the great space elevator called the Mountain of the Stars, they could ascend to the Eye and destroy it forever.
So that’s what you’re going to do. Grab the ancient reforged laser-sword that once belonged to your ancestor, the Lord of the Stars, and let’s do this, princess!
P.S. And of course one of the good mind-sorcerers will come out of retirement to help train/lead you, until they die tragically halfway to your destination.
I also just updated our links to include character sheets for both DW and World of Dungeons, the one-shot guide, and…
I also just updated our links to include character sheets for both DW and World of Dungeons, the one-shot guide, and the experimental Calvino Cycle campaign. If you view the community page on G+, you should see them.
Some folks asked about heritage moves recently, so I wanted to link to the semi-official Guide to Running Planarch…
Some folks asked about heritage moves recently, so I wanted to link to the semi-official Guide to Running Planarch One-Shots that I posted (somewhere?) a while back. While it specifically focuses on running convention games and other one-shots (sharing the Planarch love with others), it does include the list of heritage moves I bring along for demos and some other suggestions that are useful for longer-running Planarch games. Hope you all find it useful!
I wrote a new Planarch Codex supplement in honor of the Italian editions of Dungeon World and Dark Heart, inspired…
I wrote a new Planarch Codex supplement in honor of the Italian editions of Dungeon World and Dark Heart, inspired by Italo Calvino’s experimental novel If on a winter’s night a traveller. Only found 3 major typos so far! Hope you like weird things!
Originally shared by J. Walton
So… there’s a new Planarch Codex supplement, and I just finished the first draft. It’s pretty weird! But I hope people dig it. Definitely still needs to be played and edited, and will probably always be a free thing. I have some thoughts on future changes too, but this is good enough for now.
Now back to the other projects demanding my immediate attention!
Special shout-out to: Claudia Cangini Paolo Bosi Nikitas Thlimmenos and Ben Wray for being responsible for this madness.
So… there’s a new Planarch Codex supplement, and I just finished the first draft. It’s pretty weird! But I hope people dig it. Definitely still needs to be played and edited, and will probably always be a free thing. I have some thoughts on future changes too, but this is good enough for now.
Now back to the other projects demanding my immediate attention!
Special shout-out to: Claudia Cangini Paolo Bosi Nikitas Thlimmenos and Ben Wray for being responsible for this madness.
