Rob

I think it's awesome that the first search result for 'Greg Vrill' is the long ass story about the carbuncle's jewel. Doubly awesome that it ends in a spam blog comment.

Mark

Mkay. Rolling more than one prof is fine, I guess.

I guess you two make a good point: If it over laps 2 profs, and the character has both, he/she should be rewarded for that. -I'll make it that way.

Besides this prof discussion, rearranging the faith magic list, and some more spell tweaking, everything else in response to the play testing has been done.

I'm going to post v6.8 on the gmail account now.

Rob, the WoN has been more or less updated to match the fixes, except for the priest domain thing. Have we decided on that? I made two spelling corrections, but didn't highlight them since you said you haven't touched your copy.

If the goal is to get the beta version on the website by Friday, I want y'all to have the whole again now.

well yeah you could try it that way

In general I agree with Rob. You normally like players to make their knowledge checks. It does become a problem when you are following a character who is trying to hide and carrying a magic staff. He gets to roll stealth to hide from you, but you get to roll track to follow him and know where he is, perception for the same thing, and magic acuity to try to sense the staff. You could even try to roll perception again to try and get a feel of the crowd and their responses to see if someone just ran hastily into the market or whatever. There is a danger to allowing a person roll an unlimited number of times, restricting it only DM's don't want you to make the roll, and allowing all kinds of attempts when they do.

another example where maybe it makes sense though is say a prophetic scroll. The scroll is explained in an ancient language the character knows, but it's in a cipher. That language describes the whys of using a hermetic text at the end. In the whys section a few familiar religious figures and common motifs are used. The cipher used is a fairly easy to solve math problem and one that was used by known ancient religious sects. There are lots of way to solve this and it seems weird to restrict a character to only rolling 1 of the perhaps 4 or 5 skills they could use to unravel a mystery that is probably essential to the story. I think it's important that the DM not make the DC levels lower than they should be, but the DM should also allow that it's in fact reasonable, and more to the point how people actually solve puzzles, to allow the characters to try coming at the problem in different ways.

.......so uh that's all.

Rob

Sure on all of the below, except for one thing.

Why can you only try rolling one of your knowledge skills? That's retarded. If I have World and Religious Knowledge, and I want to know where the temple of Gandhi is, I can try both. Different target numbers reflect the various degree of coverage. But since I bought both damn proficiencies, I should be able to try both. I've let players do this for years. Usually people only have two, three at most (World K along with Religion or Ancient History).

Mark

Agreed. Yes, falling has been rolled into acrobatics. Your DM/player shame thing made me laugh.

No doubt there is always going to be skill bleed-over.

Dave suggested a possible skill category thing. Perhaps if you had World Know III, you automatically had Regional Know I, etc, etc... It gets complicated.

Another problem is players saying things like: I failed Regional Knowledge? I try World Knowledge then!

I thought briefly of a skill-tree ala Shadowrun, but a little browsing on RPG forums brought up a lot of negative posts. Many people prefer simplicity and don't like the need to reference a chart.

At the time being, I think it best to roll some silly profs into others, but leave those that can justifiably stand on their own alone. Then, I need to add to the discussion of making prof checks. Some of the following will be mentioned:

1. Sometimes more than one prof can be used for the same attempt. Perception/Wilderness lore might be used to track someone.

Of course, Tracking knowledge includes somethings Perception/Wilderness Lore don't. What does the condition of the tracks mean? How much time has passed in the current weather conditions? How tall was that creature? How fast was it moving? etc...

2. Doing so might require different target numbers. Ex: Make a Tracking check of 6, or a Perception check of 10.

3. Players should only roll one of these. -They can choose.

ok

ok as to swimming and the like, sure. marathoners, bowling, jarts. all special skills. But these kinds of things can, and in general should be combined. most characters that are going to have swimming are also the kinds of characters that could run for a good distance. and if you can run, you can jump a good distance. They are athletic characters. If you have an interest in keeping the skills separate then fine, it just seems like they could be put together, and that if you had a swim at rank for you could prolly outrun a guy who has running at rank 1. Plus if you have climbing at 4 or 5 you are in about as good a shape as a person can be. If swimming isn't a physical talent, then make it Int based, blah blah.

You have other skills that could be broken down, but that in general sucks.

How the fuck to someone practice the falling skill and not die in this game? Jump off a 20 ft cliff? It's a wicked retarded skill. Just combine it with something, anything. Who the fuck has falling? I mean really...If someone wants falling for their character let that asshole justify it to the Dice Commander, and let it be a shameful thing between the 2 of them, but don't encourage that bullshit.

animal training, breeding, riding, healing, and more are all separate skills, but thank god you don't have them. Track should be able to be done, with Perception and Wilderness survival, or lore. It's dumb that a guy could track a deer, but not a guy. It's dumb that a guy could notice the kind of boot a person is wearing, and it's track, but not be able to follow them as a path.

ok, enough kvetching.

Eagle Cam

New bald eagle cam:

http://www.briloon.org/watching-wildlife/eagle-cam.php

This is not the appropriate place for this sort of stuff, which is really Table Talk I know. But eagles are always good.

Rob

Faith Magic second listing:

No, the first listing is by level first. The second listing, by domain, have a list for each of the four domains, and then order the spells by circle, then alphabetically.

There's been no other work on Narbohring since 6.7 came out, so there's nothing new to add just yet. Go ahead and upload 6.8 and I'll make my changes to that one.

Cool with the other stuff you mentioned.

Mark

About 1/2 way done with these.

I like the idea of Faith magic lists by domains. However, I ran into a little problem when I was doing it: I think the actual descriptions become somewhat hard to find. Instead of 8 subsections, you get 32. First you find the level, then the domain, then the spell.

Maybe that's no worse than before. I dunno. I'm going to do it, and I'll get your opinions.

Changing abilities to disciplines, and having no 'ability skills' or 'proficiency skills' (just disciplines and proficiencies) makes it read much easier.

I'm putting acrobatics and falling together. However, I'm having second thoughts about running, swimming and climbing as one. I'm sure there are marathon runners that suck at swimming, and swimmers that suck at climbing. Each one is kind of a distinct thing in real-life. Also, whereas running is endurance based, climbing is agility. What is more, it becomes a ton of rules for one proficiency.

Leadership and Military Expertise are now Martial Knowledge, which will be more general. However, leadership is persona-based, so that's a loss for persona. -Regrets?

Wilderness Lore absorbs fishing.

Rob suggested losing touch spells altogether, which I think is great. I hate touch spells.

Rob, once I've caught up, could you send me the latest WoN? I can then spread the changes through, and send the whole back to you.

Another thought: I think the website should have an 'Artists of Wayfarers' page. We can have a illustration or two for each, and a contact link if they like.

Mark

Ok, going to work. Most things I agree with.

This confused me, however: Why shouldn’t mages just always defer to 0?

That's because only the winner of the initiative can defer to 0.

Lot's to do. Good suggestions. Most of them anyhow.

Gayfarers? -Let he who makes a RPG name cast the first stone. It's not as easy as some might think.

Rob

Okay, what follows are my notes from our one and a half playtesting sessions last weekend.

First, though, let me offer my own thoughts:

1. Combat was not slow. Given the number of PCs (nine) and in the first battle, the number of NPCs (ten to twenty), combat was at least as fast as D&D. Mainly what slowed it down was people forgetting their armor impedance, looking up spells, and discussions of movement- all of which should be negligible for a serious game. On my side of things, it was fine, and basically the same as D&D.

2. The most important change, systemically, is to change Intellect to Education, and Charisma to Presence (or maybe Willpower).

3. Exploding d4s is fine I think. People might bitch, but honestly it seemed fun for players to roll tons of dice and keep rolling the d4s on a 4.

4. A party of ninth level dudes is powerful. Characters were not overly weak. The priest and the mage were damn good. The thief and the fighter were kick ass. The only guy who seemed lost in the shuffle, besides the golem, was the Ritual mage.

5. There were some laughs over 'Gayfarers' and 'Gaya' (Gaea). They suggested 'Terra' below, but I dunno, I dated a chick named Terra in middle school. Gaea is fine, if not just Nature. The other laughs came from Godfrey's guy who could swim in plate just as easy as without, and the comedy was he was no better if he took off his armor.

6. Perception is the catch-all DM proficiency. Players searching a building? Perception check. Want to remember how many exits somewhere had? Perception. About to be ambushed? Perception. Might be nice to make this clear in the description. Also, is it clear that both players and DMs can call for checks? A player can roll Perception on their own, plus the DM can call for it.

...

Here are the criticisms from the sessions:


Should not be hard to find how many ability points you begin with. Right now you’ve gotta look through the text a lot. Should be clear.

“Agility” attribute is missing its header label in the beginning

Leadership and Inspire should be combined

Combine falling, jumping, running, and swimming into athletics 4 per grade

Shields: improve dodge instead of armor absorbance

“Proficiencies” and “abilities”, not “ability skills”

Add bookmarks to the fucking document

“Martial knowledge”- identify combatants

Why can’t mages have shields? Why is it easier to cast with a staff?

Wilderness Lore 1 per grade is cheap.

Weapons and armor should be listed in the back, and listed by class as well

Why buy worse armor? Why buy knives?

Potion of blinking… +3 to dodge, but an additional -3 to be hit?

Counterattack is not a prereq for advanced counterattack?

Cloak of Blades, reduce bonus to-hit… clarify what it is

Clarify that Handmaidens only do direct damage spells thru weapons

Increased attribute: no reason to have “1x”

Spell to give a weapon “vital strike” skill

Specify that Multiple Attacks must be in the same grade of weapon that you have Weapon Mastery in

Typo “Character’s” in Perception in GMs section

Add poison costs to Narbohring

Make the skill costs better in terms of formatting: bold, parens

Add website to every page in the book

Auto char gen website

Iron skin should be a little better- make it stack with normal armor

Archers and snipers? Sure archers get a +2 to hit at short range, but maybe there should be some archer abilities? What about special strength bows too?

Increased Endurance should retroactively affect health points, right?

Rust: broken plate mail should be 1d6, not 1d4, yes?

Faith spells should be listed by domain as well as alphabetical order

What does Blindness do? Put effects of being blind under blindness spell

Magic shield spells are too weak… maybe 50% chance of block? Or even 100% chance?

How obvious is casting? If I cast persuade on you, do you know I’m about to do this? Do your friends?

Incinerate Spell: save for half… taking 4d6 is not exactly the same as taking half of 8d6.

Spirit Armor and Magical Vestment? Do they stack with, e.g., leather armor?

Systemically, Blindness and Cure Blindness, and all similar kinds of spells, should be the same Circle.

Look at spells like Cripple- should there be an ‘area of effect’? Cripple on a large dragon vs cripple on a gnome is the same thing?

Does Fireball damage make sense?

Is Disease too powerful? If you’ve got 40 hp, isn’t this just a lot better than 4th circle spell Maim?

Difference between stunned and paralyzed? Paralyzed guys are easy to kill

Shatter is 3rd Circle? A bit weak… can’t shatter anything but glass?

Totally retarded when characters can’t read. Makes for bad gaming. Make it easier to get languages and read them. Maybe +1 skillpoint to read a language you can speak (without having to take literacy)? Or you can spend one of your free languages to get the literacy ability? Make language acquisition scale up faster, so that at 10-11 it’s two languages.

Command Confuse duration is 2-4 rounds, but in the description says it lasts 1d4 rounds.

Why shouldn’t mages just always defer to 0?

Saving throws are damn expensive. Not sure that this discourages min/maxing, seems to encourage it… players thinking is that the best defense is a good offense.

General movement and combat rule: if anyone moves a lot (between 25% and 100% total), everyone participating in that part of the combat gets only one attack.

Bonuses to Dodge for full movement action? Bonuses to attacks from charging?

What about a set of optional combat rules? Keeping a more simple set as standard, and then a bunch of more complex rules.

Paul suggested adding ‘combat stance’ declaration. This might actually be simply handled under the Perception prof… should be harder to perceive when you’re in melee, maybe against one guy or surrounded, than when you’re standing in the back observing.

Blind spellcasters only have a 10% miss chance when targeting, vs -5 to hit? Maybe a 50% spell miss rate?

What happens on a critical fumble from a backstab? What about multiple attacks from a backstab… Paul fumbled on the first attack out of three… is Dave still considered ‘unaware’ for the subsequent backstab attacks that round?

You can move 25% and attack. Why can’t you attack then move 25% away?

Target number of Perception should be the stealth check. Paul was wearing Cloak of Shadows, but it was no harder for Dave to see him, as the Perception check is just based on Paul’s grade, not actual skill

Disintergrate does or does not destroy equipment?

If you kill a mage’s golem, does the golem go insane?

Touch spells should last longer. Should last indefinitely for concentration, if all you’re doing is maintaining the spell and trying to touch with it. Then should have fall-off of one round per circle before being nullified. Or what about lasting CHA rounds? Chances are it’s gonna take two or three rounds to score a hit, especially at lower levels.

Add casting times to short spell lists at the end… lists are already there and there’s room. Or add a note to the ‘outliers’ where casting time is not –Circle.

Let’s revamp Hermetic spells. Into ‘paths’… 1st, 2nd, 3rd circle blast magic and how it all scales. Command spells are a great example of this.

“Skills” “skills” “skills”, all needs to be renamed

Ambidextrousness is better than advanced counterattack, which isn’t really all that great if you can only use it once per round.

Splint mail costs more than chain and has a worse impedance? Dude, make all the armor make sense

Random encounter list intro section- “plot-device” should not be hyphenated

Terra is better than Gaea

Healing and Perception- make them Intellect-based instead of general

Minimum impedance for chainmail (-1) and plate mail (-2)

Ritual magic under ‘Spell repertoire’: “in lieu” is not strictly right I think. Say instead “Upon purchasing Ritual Magic Potential, a mystic begins with 2 spell points, plus CHA bonus”

Hindsight and Psychometry are not balanced for their circle? Divination magic is too good.

Madness has no counteracting spell.

Time Cube should be 8 rounds for 1 round, not 8 hours for 1 hour.

People didn’t like exploding d4s.

What about constant armor impedance: leather 1, studded 2, chain 3, plate 4 or something like that?

Ritual magic seems weak.

Shiekh Rob

Yeah, but did you see this?

http://www.sheikhs-and-desert-love.com/browse_location.html

They've fuckin got their own world map. Hotlinked.

The City of Thieves. God is this ready for a hot role-playing game.

Mark

Looks like sheik's got something to tap.

Rob

FUCK WAYFARERS.

It's old news. I've got an idea for a better game with a new fantasy market to tap.

Take a look.

Mark

Version 6.7 is up on the account. Still working on some of your edits, Rob.

Mark

Just finished a ridiculous amount of formatting. Silly things like table shading and underlining, stuff that needed to be tweaked for the layout.

I'll post v6.6 to didfactory after I write this.

Some things:

Rob, you need to fix the WoN priest domains. Primary is 1 domain, Secondary is 2, and Tertiary is 3. Alternately, priests get all circles of 2 domains. -No priest can cast from all.

I'll add oozes to the random determination today.

Ed and I were talking last night about the game. He mentioned a bit of worry about the lethality of combat. Admittedly, it is a bit harsher than D&D. However, spell damage is scaled down a bit.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about health points, which are a bit anemic.

In short, I changed the auto heath point/level thing.

Instead of: 2nd-9th: 2/level, 10th+: 1/level

it is now like this:

Table 2.1.11: Skill points

Total skill points earned	Skill level achieved	Ability points earned	Proficieny points earned	Health points earned
-	1	-	-	-
20	2	12	8	3
40	3	13	7	3
60	4	14	6	3
80	5	15	5	3
100	6	16	4	2
120	7	17	3	2
140	8	18	2	2
160	9	19	1	2
180	10	20	-	1
200	11	20	-	1
220	12	20	-	1
240	13	20	-	1
260*	14	20†	-	0‡

This pads the lower level health points a bit, but only by 4 by 5th, and then no more. This lead is lost by 17th level, but these characters will likely have End bonuses, or can just keep buying them.

Anyway, it's a small change, but I like it.

Ok. My eyes hurt.

Rob

Yeah, I'm a takin a break.

Back to hiring artists. Jesse is making a full page illustration of "Timmorn and the Apple Tree" which I think might be a nice touch. Hiring someone now to make the Guild logos.

I'll get to editing later. I agree that it'll take a while. But I need to get back to, uh, my real job.

Yup, it's just "Daniel S."

...

I saw a profile on ifreelance, talking about how someone is "a good editer".

Mark

Damn. I guess you got a second wind, Rob.

I've just pasted it in, so I'll have to give you feedback tonight. However, I saw the glossary. That's pretty fucking cool. -I can't imagine that was fun.

As for the Resistance stuff and other formatting, I can do it, no problem. I've gotten pretty good at MS Word, as shitty as it is. If you can wait until tonight, I can send you back a formatted version before you start tweaking or editing anything. Not that you won't want a break.

Does Daniel S. have a full last name?

We are getting there. I've been editing away. -I think my the errors are getting less frequent. EDIT: Ha

Still, fresh eyes are a major plus. For all you other guys.

BTW, could all you guys try making some characters? I'd like some thoughts on the process.

I'd also like to put a few example characters in the rules. Paul, I'd especially like if you could make one of these. -Any level 1-10.

I think we need a couple of months of solid editing. Then comes the layout. Then the index.

Rob

Okay, the first full, complete version of Narbohring is now in the gmail account. Wow was that some work.

...

Mark, I think you didn’t add the new creatures (e.g., oozes) to the random monster list.

Dude, since I assume you already converted all the Willpower & Fortitude references, and have a good way of doing it, could you do the same for the Narbohring section? Thanks.

Also, make sure to add Leo Lingas, Daniel S, and Jesse Hawley as artists.

…

Oh shit, I’ve got the glossary in there now. Appendix IV complete I think. Lemme know if I’m missing any entries, or shit is out of order or something.

And the campaign background, in Appendix III. Hey, it’s all the secrets of Narbohring, in one handy guide. I dunno if this will be to everyone’s liking, but it’s how everything worked out in the end after five campaigns.

Speaking of campaigns, I’ve got three example campaigns in there now too, in Appendix III.

Typo corrected: Zuul -> Zhol

Mark

Oh, shit. Don't worry about an example campaign. I think ToN is plenty rich.

Also, take er easy. I've almost burned out several times. Do some other stuff for a few days. You've kicked out ToN in marathon fashion.

Dispel Magi would be pretty badass for 4th circle.

Rob

Sure thing, I'll send the map draft in a couple days. Good idea. We only get one chance at this.


God, finishing up this section has been brutal. Think I ran down.

Actually, guys, how important is it for me to have an example campaign or two in the back? Do I need to weave all this shit into a narrative? Or could that wait for something else? Honest thoughts here, but I'm pretty burned out now.

Fuck it, I'm sending Narbohring, which is complete except for Appendices III and IV (example campaigns and glossary). didfactory bitches, Word file only.

...

Mark, typo in Dispel Magic: “Note: Dispel Magi may affect…” I didn't correct this one.

New stuff:

Paul’s item suggestions incorporated (not all but most)

Steve's suggestion for 'starting to be rare' changed.

Armech/Zostig- Quiet Halls
Tarach/Bourgansbaine- The Conclave (Hector and Tari!) and the Ambrose Clinic
Tarach/Rothaine- Cult of the Lotus
Tarach/Turth- Loose Lion

Removed Viral Magic from Drohksmere/Torsche. Will save this for something else.

...

Electro has taken over techno, house, and mashups. I hear it every time I go out these days (nights). Fuck yeah. Cheers to 2008. If you ain't done it yet, check out Narbohring art.

Mark

I believe I've made all those changes. v6.6 PDF and DOC are at didfactory. There's also a new font for the title that you'll need if you want to see it in something other than courier.

I simplified vision impairment some, and added an 'unintended targets' optional rule for missile weapon attacks into melee.

Amongst others, there's some new stuff in there concerning death due to aging (magical), and some thing about GMs occasionally rolling dice for players in secret.

I've also added a tentative foreward for myself, and left space for you to do the same, Rob.

Also, I haven't heard back from everyone on how they want to be mentioned in the credits.

BTW, Justin, can you get the new versions on the gmail account?

Rob, don't worry about the Narbohring formatting. Once you send it to me, I'll do so and send it the whole back. -Probably same day so I don't slow you down. There's a few quirky things here and there that I'd rather just fix than explain.

EDIT: As for art, I really dig everything but the photo gals. The KoT is crazy cool. I think your art topics are good. However, are you making a rough draft of the map before finding someone? I'd like to see it if you are. Just for suggestions. -I think Leo looks like he might have the landscaping kind of skills. However, I did find an honest-to-goodness historic cartographer on an ifreelance search.

Rob

Awesome, yeah, glad we're in agreement on this. All attributes should be more-or-less important. 5 CHA doesn't mean you're an ugly motherfucker who can kick your ass. It means you're still the shy kid in the corner, tear in your eye, about to be mind blasted.

So, 'physical resistance' and 'mental resistance' checks? Should I change all Fortitude and Willpower references in Narbohring? Physical Resistance? physical resistance? What's the capitalization?

There's two more artists who haven't chimed in yet. Their stuff should be top notch (Key IV: Petrarch, Sister Aprill and her brother, snowglobe, Sister Joy going to Rooksroost, Arcanodaemon, and Ixondr in Thorneskeep). I'll also post the black-and-white Narbohring cover when it arrives- the artist is currently adding the title and a bookish border.

About to start wave two of art acquisition. Here's what I'm thinking:

Map

Guild Symbols

Key of Typhon III (Umslamyr)

"Don't fuck with priests"

The feast of books in the defiled Shadowsfall tower

Some portraits of the Maxinays

Each of the Curious Folio illustrations in Petrarch's tomb

...

Any other suggestions?

Mark.

Ha! Got you, Rob!

The new Cha+Int+End rule finally hoses those folks with a 5 Cha. Hahahahaha!

This makes me very happy.

Mark.

Confidence, check.

I'm digging Leo, Fern and the Stained glass a lot. Not so much the photoshop girls. I've nothing against digital drawing, but I'm not so keen on the photo-drawing stuff. Maybe it will look ok when it's on the page, but the photo stuff feels anachronistic in the fantasy setting. Even the convent, which is compositionally strong and atmospheric, suffers from the photo-patio thing. My mind just wants to pick apart the inconsistencies.

I can live with those pieces, but they aren't my thing.

EDIT: Fern's village is awesome, and Leo's Torshe is just like I pictured it. I really thing Leo might have what it takes for the map.

Rob

Naw, I don't got any better names for the relics. I just threw that out there.

Yeah, I think the phys/mental resistance thing is better. And charisma is definitely part of mental resistance- because charisma is almost 100% confidence, and so is willpower.

In fact, I just checked- I didn't see the word 'confidence' in your description of CHA. I think it should be there, as in a single word it shows why CHA is the priest attribute and part of 'mental resistance'.

...

Just so it doesn't get lost in the postings: tons of final art for view at didfactory@gmail. Enjoy.

Mark

Relics:

Sure. If you got some better names. Let's do so.

You’ve still kept skills and their target numbers apart:

I hate putting all that junk up front. And I do think some GM treatment is in order. I can move a 'target number chart' to the Player's Section. Do you really think I should move the whole thing? I'm on the fence on this. It does make put a big chunk o' text up front.

Fortitude and Willpower:

This is a great idea. I was bothered about Willpower and Fortitude myself, but my thesaurus failed me. Physical and Mental Resistance isn't fancy, but they'll do. I also like the A+E+S/C+E+I thing. Done and done!

Golems need to be in the monster listing.

M'kay. I'll do so.

Why have weapon prices listed twice? Redundant.

Ed made me, dammit. He didn't like going back and forth between weapon damage and cash, and I couldn't put all the damage and crap on the equipment list. I also didn't want to pull weapons off the equipment list because that would be a pain too. Blame Ed. -SRY.

We need rulings on light sources:

True dat. Will do.

We also need rulings on travel times.

Yeah, you are right. Ugh. I'll do it.

All good suggestions. Thanks. I guess I've got some work to do this weekend.

---

Anway, the art is fantastic from what I can see in the thumbnails. I'll wait until I get home to open them up. Leo is obviously fucking amazing. Well, I did open the color one. -It's so cool and bizarre. I dig it too.

Rob

Final or almost-final artwork from four of my five artists is on the didfactory gmail account.

It's almost all great. Especially check out the 'title page', the first key of Typhon. I splurged a bit, but fuck it, I'm going to have a painting of a friendly Arcanodaemon in my house.

Criticism quite welcome- in particular, if there are pieces you don't think work, let me know. Please let me know. I don't want to bias opinion by giving my own just yet, except for that damn painting which I love.

At first I wanted the Arcanos' robes red, but then I liked how it was a blend between Muriel's and Ixondr's colors, and fit the 'frame' of the window too. I'm commissioning a 'real' Arcanos for the monster listing, and I love how the version here is more like a friendly fairy-tale version of a hideous demon. The guy has sleeves. The eyes are spot on for all three characters, which are basically the three main players of all Narbohring. While Mark and I agree that the cover of the book should have a dramatic scene on it, I love this as the cover for Narbohring.

...

About to start up round 2 of art buying. Narbohring guidebook still in progress. Things for Mark to chew on:

Relics- holy, unholy, telluric, vatic relics? Do these need to be renamed?

You’ve still kept skills and their target numbers apart. This is silly, dude. You don’t have spells split into two sections, what the player does with them and how the GM rules about them.

Fortitude and Willpower are right outta 3rd edition. What about changing their names to Physical and Mental resistance checks? You could even do something like Physical is AGIL + ENDUR + STR, while Mental is CHA + INT + ENDUR.

Golems need to be in the monster listing.

Why have weapon prices listed twice? Redundant.

We need rulings on light sources- what’s the illumination radius of a candle, torch, and lantern?

We also need rulings on travel times. How far can you go on ship each day? On a horse? With a caravan?

...

Paul, thanks for all that. That's some great editing. I really appreciate you catching the small stuff, like the misspellings that don't seem to come up in my damn file. Even more valuable are the suggestions and criticisms.

You're right about the Slavers- I slashed the Slavers paying money for people thing. Too hard to systemically explain, not to mention a load of nonsense. Now they essentially offer bounties.

Glad you like the Astromancer- it's so out there, partially inspired by something Dave had, but I wanted to put some crazy shit in to balance out how boring most of the towns are.

Most of your item ideas are in there now, in one form or another. Same for Portal Boxes, MK.

...

Steve's been saying that Narbohring should open with a short story to introduce major concepts. Thoughts?

Mark

I agree the 1d8 or 2d4 is not a huge difference. -Well, it's 0.5 damage to be exact. However, it is a difference, and it's easy.

As bastard sword is either weapon class E or F depending on how you hold it (longsword, broadsword are E, greatsword, claymore are F), it can make a difference with using weapon skills and what to do with found magic bastard swords. -It also makes a difference with shield-wielding as you mentioned.

I'm not keen on the two-handed 1.5x STR mod thing, as I could see the argument extended to other 2-handed weapons. -Maybe it is in 3.5? Either way, I think it's a lot of fuss due to one weapon.

I'm constantly editing and formatting. More things to consider than I thought. Once the content is more or less done, I'd like to get into the final layout form (columns), minus pictures. I think an index is in order, and that's going to have to come after any major changes.

I'll make that gay demon straight away.

BTW, if y'all check this more than your email, send me one telling me how you'd like your name (or nom de plume) to appear in the credits.

Rob

3rd edition has you doing 1.5X your STR bonus when using a two-handed weapon. We don't necessarily want to rip off 3rd ed everywhere, but is there really no other advantage to using a two-handed weapon other than you roll a slightly higher die? Seems like it's always:

two-weapon use > using a shield > using a two-handed weapon

I think there's enough balance with shield use in Wayfarers now- I think. Need to look more at that. Optimally, you'd want to take three guys, maybe 5th level each, one with each of the above specializations (two-hander with greatstrike), and they should all tie each other for wins and losses.

Work on Narbohring has slowed as I've been pretty damn busy here. Will send soon, plus a list of other things to think about.

Today's other thing to think about: Mark, let's add a new demon: incubus. Male succubus with shape-changing abilities.

Mark.

Today's featured edit: Longsword does 1d8. Bastard sword does 1d8 in one hand, 2d4 in two.

Mark

Thanks Paul. I downloaded it, but it wouldn't open. I'll try again in the future.

I think we have to use Lulu instead of Booksurge. Booksurge doesn't allow for a trim size above 7.75 for our number of pages. -That's pretty ridiculous narrow for a rule book ~500 pages.

Lulu lets us go 8.5 which makes a huge difference. We can still get an ISBN and such.

We retain all rights, so if we ever want to, we can move to a B&M publisher.

have you tried this?

Open Office?

I use it for my word needs, and more. It's free, and seems awesome.

just download it and check it out. It can open the microsoft shit, but I'm not sure that microsoft supports all the Open Office formats, or whatever. It might just be the file extensions that are used by Open Office by default aren't supported by microshit and you might have to save them as .doc or something, either way 1 cent thrown your way.

Mark.

Yeah, the riddle is: Who can make a Willpower check of 18?!

This artist is the most D&D basic-like. -I think it's good to have some of that.

Rob

Do those dwarves get a treasure if they answer a riddle?

...

I think that your art and my art are gonna look pretty different. For example, I have no dwarves.

Mark.

Rob's favorite. Good ol' dwarf tombing action.

I love it.



















Formatting right now. MS Word is MUCH LESS than it should be by now. Even the header-footer crap is weird between sections and subsections.

I'm seriously starting to think Microsoft is holding us all back.