Amnesia Campaign

[featherynscale]

In other news, all the creativity I am allotted in the world has lately been going into continued work on the D&D game triadruid and I are running. triadruid is a veritable beast at world-building. He runs simulations on genetics and inbreeding in the royal families. He comes to bed with me so that he can ask me questions like "So, what's against the law in this Empire? Are there copies of the code of laws in each city? Is prostitution legal?". This morning, I was slow to get out of bed, so he tromped down to my room with the Monster Manual to talk to me about what sort of creature(s) might be in the imperial coat of arms. Very little of this work is related to the plotline of the actual game at this point, but it's nice to know what else is out there, in case the players get a wild hare and want to abandon their quest in order to stage an assassination attempt on the Emperor or something.

So far, the actual game is going well. About half of the players have discovered what character class they were practicing before going out of their skulls, and some of them have chosen interim names for themselves. Brother Orc (orcjohn's character, who is of the opinion that he is a monk) has proved himself to be rather good at keeping the group's possessions in order and accounted for. Between Brother Orc and Fiddle Colongiggle (agrnmn's gnomish character, who is pretty sure he is a bard), the characters managed to get an entire 'dungeon' worth of loot onto a few pack horses, and then to break down a still they stumbled upon in the woods, and lash that to the horses as well. I am not planning on giving them a lot of time to set up the still, but they are clearly thinking ahead. At this moment, they are on their way towards the nearest road and civilization. So soon, they will be encountering their first group of people who will really know anything about the world, and won't that be fun?

In the process of all of this, I have noticed that the pantheon provided for use in the 3e and 3.5 books is hopelessly unlikely in a "realistic" world. You have three death gods and two forest gods and approximately eleventy-five gods of war, but no god for things like, oh, say, commerce, cities, art, healing, the ocean, or the moon (they have a sun god, but no moon god). Also, of all of the gods provided, only three are female. I'm not sure how gods come to be in 3e, but I'm pretty sure I know how it doesn't happen. So we're tweaking the pantheon a bit for our purposes. Luckily, Brother Orc picked up a book entitled "A Survey of Religion in the Empire", so I'm thinking that as long as he keeps reading it, I can do a steady download about religion without it being weird. Handy, that. And I gave him that before I ever thought about serious alterations to the pantheon. I'm just that good.

Also, I apparently need a gaming icon. I thought I had one at one time, but alas, no more. EDIT: Nevermind. :-P

Comments

[lexpendragon.livejournal.com]

Gaming Icon should be the coat of arms, featuring a Shrieker, Gelatinous Cube, and a displacer beast, with a Githyanki in the middle.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

I argued for the arms of the Imperial Army to have a gelatinous cube on them (mostly on the grounds that triadruid rejected an earlier suggestion as "too hard to draw"). But I was denied.

[lexpendragon.livejournal.com]

Makes as much sense as us using a Bald Eagle instead of a Turkey for our national bird.

base for icon

[adammaker.livejournal.com]

old school die?
http://www.johnsjottings.com/archives/2003/12/01/gaming_in_ancient_rome.html

Re: base for icon

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

That works too. Thanks!

[triadruid.livejournal.com]

What was it that was too hard to draw, anyway? The tarrasque?

*whistles innocently and walks off, in case any players are reading...*

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Could have been. I distinctly recall wondering how one stylized the tarrasque for heraldry, in any case.

[kittenpants.livejournal.com]

So, in our world, a lot of heraldic beasts were mythological creatures, like unicorns, griffins, dragons, yales, etc. Heck, the leopards and dolphins of heraldry were really mythological creatures in a lot of ways. So, if dragons and griffins and whatnot exist in D&D, what do tehy put on their coats-of-arms? Do they have fiction and mythology about irrational and impossible things?

[wildnsquirrelly.livejournal.com]

"but it's nice to know what else is out there, in case the players get a wild hare and want to abandon their quest in order to stage an assassination attempt on the Emperor or something"

It's always nice to be prepaired for those bastards that decide to assault Skypoint. Dan still talks about that. I'm quite certain that if we were to show at his door tomorrow with the needed resources he'd call in sick to work for the next two days to play it.

But then, I probably would, too.