Gheallie Sidhe Units

[geeman]

At 07:18 AM 9/26/2003 -0500, Kenneth Gauckwrote:



> > That aside, perspective can obscure actual guidelines making for

> > a confused, meandering text. An introductory text followed by

> > objective prose allows for both in-character, POV stuff for role-

> > playing purposes and an organized document.

>

>Meandering is just bad writing. Confusing likewise. Obscuring actual

>guidelines is actually kind of the point.



That may be true, but in many cases in-character prose lends itself to

meandering and confusion. In fan produced material its often an oxymoronic

method of going about writing gaming material. In character text has a

time and place IMO. "Greatly speaking much rulishness has come upon the

landly! Take heed--and read--that you might find, descriptionwise, the

facts among the fiddle faddle!" I prefer a simple expository text for the

majority of a document unless there`s some point in obscuring things.



I can only tell you that when I`ve come upon campaign material that relied

over-heavily upon a first person perspective I`ve found it a rather

heavy-handed device that grows tiresome pretty quickly. Amongst D&D

products probably Planescape is the most obvious example of in-character

prose, but those texts actually dip in and out of character, using the

vocabulary occasionally to maintain theme. However, those texts drop out

of that voice when it makes sense to do so, and in something as expository

as a PS text I think that`s pretty quick. The "goofy" aspects of the PS

texts are just as likely to come about due to the vagaries of the

in-character text, so as a scheme for writing those documents I think a

little more objectivity is sensible.



Gary

[DanMcSorley]

On Fri, 26 Sep 2003, Athos69 wrote:

> I`m starting to get the feeling, Ken, that it doesn`t matter what we

> write, you are going to gainsay us and pull it to shreds. As a

> consequence. I am no longer going to worry about your opinions on the

> Atlas, unless you start putting your own vision down on paper and write

> a damn section that I need to interact with for the sake of internal

> consistency.

>

> In short Ken, You can talk the talk -- let`s see you walk the walk.



That was rude and unnecessary. Apologize.



--

Daniel McSorley

[kgauck]

----- Original Message -----

From: "Gary" <geeman@SOFTHOME.NET>

Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 11:03 AM





> I can only tell you that when I`ve come upon campaign material that relied

> over-heavily upon a first person perspective I`ve found it a rather

> heavy-handed device that grows tiresome pretty quickly.



The best example I am familiar with (you mentioned Planescape) is the Blood

Enemies supliment. Since this books is supposed to be a compendium of

researchers, its easy to change anything without imposing DM fiat (I changed

it so you don`t know what the Vampire can do) be instead saying, "yes that

was commonly believed to be true, but first hand, things appear otehrwise."



> The "goofy" aspects of the PS texts are just as likely to come

> about due to the vagaries of the in-character text, so as a scheme

> for writing those documents I think a little more objectivity is sensible.



True, but I don`t mind characters having goofy ideas. It makes source

critcism harder. "Who do we trust about Baron Ghoere? The man who thought

the world was flat, or the one who thought he was a bird trapped in human

form?" An exageration, but it presents the kinds of problems I encourage.

The text should appear more or less objective, with the preface, perhaps as

you describe in clear IC text, that this is only researched information, and

may contain flaws, giving everyone an escape hatch. DM`s do it anyway, but

this puts a nice polish on things. Rules lawyers are less of a problem when

you have such a statement.



Kenneth Gauck

kgauck@mchsi.com

[irdeggman]

Originally posted by geeman@Sep 25 2003, 06:24 PM
of those are pretty subjective. (I still think that dwarves eating rocks

is a good idea from PSoB-A, which is something a lot of people have

expressed a dislike for.) However, let me pose the following question to

everyone in general: What items in the Player`s Secrets texts do you think

should NOT be included in an update of them or of other BR materials and why?



Here are a few that would be on my list:



1. The very specific new information on heirs to the realms who are assumed

to take over from the existing regents presented in the campaign

sourcebooks for each region. None of this material should be written right

into the text itself. It`s better off as a boxed text explaining how one

might handle the transfer of the domain.



2. Grimm Graybeard`s elevation (or "declination" I suppose) into an

incorporeal rock spirit. It`s just too weird.



3. The PSoMedoere should not indicate that Ruornil has intervened (or will

intervene) to keep that land safe from invasion. The BR gods should

maintain their "hands-off" pact. (Note: This part of that text can simply

be viewed as a jingoistic/mythical telling of the realm`s history rather

than truly factual, in which case that text is actually rather appropriate.)



What else?



Gary

Some good points Gary.

One thing that everyone shuld keep in mind is that the Atlas is supposed to be just that, an atlas and not a "new" version of the PS modules. The atlas is supposed to handle the economics, geography, major regents (at the time), known holdings (again at the time), major assets (also at the time), maps, etc.

One of the things this entails is that there should be no built-in text documenting how rulership is being transferred. This, IMO is so game specific that each DM would be redoing it anyway, so this would really add no value and only end up using valuable space space.

Now a section in Chap 8 covering possible ways for a DM to handle a transference of rulership could be useful - provided people have some ideas of the text that should be added. IMO it should be short, sweet and just basically cover ideas that a DM can use to handle the situation.

[irdeggman]

Originally posted by RaspK_FOG@Sep 26 2003, 08:31 AM
About the genetics and blood abilities discussion, I think you may be right... I overdid it with dominant abilities, which would result in too many blooded people.

I could propose another system then; if you really are interested, we could gather all the families, make their relevant trees and work out the diagrams&#33;

And no, I don&#39;t know how should we do it, but it could be done in a way that all abilities were assigned a probability, and then give an alternate, saying that the various levels could simply have a uniform chance of appearing based on level (minor: good chance, major: average chance, great: small chance), and work out the table accordingly. It would not take long if I had an organised diagram (family trees), but I don&#39;t... Does any of you have one?

I just don&#39;t see this as being doable. Again the hereditary blood abilities are based on bloodlines not on derivation, so every bloodline would have its own distinct weighty. Since not every bloodline is (or will be) documented I just don&#39;t see this as very useful.

As an example I will again refer to Divine Wrath of the Roele bloodline and Healing of the Dosiere bloodline - both are of And. derivation. They can&#39;t both have the same weight on a generic scale since this would lead to a greater amount of scions with And derivation having these abilities. Divine Wrath is supposed to be a very rare thing.

Any table created would just end up getting re-done by most DMs if they even bothered to use it. The table would have to be done for each bloodline in any event rather than by derivation.

Now in the Atlas any hereditary blood abilities from a bloodline could be listed as such for the major scions listed. Remeber that not all scions will be documented in the atlas and even when documented not all will have the same amount of detail - it will depend on how much of amajor factor the scion is.

[ryancaveney]

On Sun, 21 Sep 2003, Gary wrote:



> At 09:41 AM 9/21/2003 +0200, Athos69 wrote:

>

> >Anikmal farming (goats) is done underground, and I would hazard a good

> >guess that teh goats are fed on fungi.

>

> Unless you`re referring to something else, the section that describes

> this in the BA SB just says that the goats are _penned_ underground,

> and that that is done for occasions when hunting (a surface activity,

> presumably) is not possible or game scarce, not that the farming of

> such livestock is done entirely beneath the surface of the earth.



I agree -- the goats, to make sense, would have to live primarily above

ground and get their food there. Livestock is a rather inefficient means

of feeding people -- if the dwarves are going to eat the same fungi the

goats would, they`d be much better off just eating the fungi and never

bringing the goats into it.



> Given the secretive nature of dwarves, it`s pretty likely that they

> would graze such creatures in isolated valleys and glens of their

> mountainous terrain, difficult to reach by foot--if one doesn`t have a

> tunnel, that is.



Now this is a really good idea. This is exactly the kind of herding I can

imagine dwarves doing.





Ryan Caveney

[ryancaveney]

On Sun, 21 Sep 2003, Osprey wrote:



> > If sidhelien become more like fairy being as some here have

> > supposed there is no reason why Cerilian dwarves can`t

> > become somthing like little stone golems ;-)

>

> Maybe more like little earth elementals. ;)



That`s perfectly serious, IMO. They have the density of stone and are

cold to the touch! Defintely not normal living creatures.



> Seriously, though, even though BR doesn`t use the Elemental Planes as

> accessible places,



My BR does, in part because the bloodlines themselves have such strong

elemental associations. In fact, I think that`s the primary factor

determining the bloodline derivation of a blooded elf: if you see an elf

with a Basaia bloodline (Rhuandice Tuarlachiem, for example), you can be

fairly sure that elf is going to have fire as the dominant element of her

personality, and so on -- and vice versa, if blooded. At Deismaar, I

think that while the distribution of derivations to most races was based

primarily on the identity of the nearest exploding god, the distribution

of derivations to elves by contrast was determined primarily by their

preexisting elemental composition: the right kind of energy "stuck" much

more effectively than the wrong kind.



> I consider dwarves to be akin to the elemental races (not pure

> elementals, but more like the Dao, Xorn, etc.), but far more grounded

> on the Prime and in life. More like an elemental affinity. If humans

> have the 4 elements balanced within them (by Aristotelian reasoning),

> dwarves are mainly Earth with lesser amounts of the other elements.



I consider the dwarves to be the first of the many "manufactured" races of

Cerilia -- that is, everyone sentient except the elves, giants and

dragons. In my version of the backstory, when the dragons first arrived

and met the native elves and giants, they were fleeing a war and feared

pursuit, so they needed an army. They asked the elves and giants, who are

essentially just embodied elemental spirits themselves, for help. Of all

the elements, earth is the easiest to mold bodies out of, so the race made

this way (the dwarves) is primarily earthen; additionally, earth is

associated with qualities like strength, steadfastness and durability

which are greatly to be desired in soldiers. Thus, IMO, the dwarves have

by far the best regular army in Cerilia in part because they were designed

that way by their creators. After the dwarf experiment, however, the

elves and giants became disenchanted with the dragons` desire to continue

experiments of this kind, and without the elder elemental races the

dragons could not give life directly to any new ones; thus the dragons

turned to manipulating existing life, and Uplifted (in the full David Brin

sense) all the other sentients (humans, gnolls, goblins, orogs, and

whatever weirdness may be found in Aduria, such as yuan-ti and wemics) to

serve as their private armies as they go to fighting each other when the

long-feared pursuers never arrived.



I`ve said all this before, sometimes in greater detail, but the subject

has come up again, so... here`s my favorite crackpot theory again. =)





Ryan Caveney

[RaspK_FOG]

I will accept that I have no further arguments on the genetics subject. Irdeggman, you have proven that it would not have any real value, and I have to agree you are right about it...