It is Monday! Again

Sometimes I feel like Monday comes every week. I know that can not be true, but what can you do. Anyway, I have posted the Weekly Familiar Place Web comic from the artist Susan Van Camp. Spread the word, tell people where to find Familiar Place.

Now, let me see what else is in the bag. All these scrolls here in the Secret Clanhold must have, ah yes.

The Farmers Spirit. Old Simpson Jebry had died. It was, by all accounts, a natural death of old age. Not a unique way to die, but not usual either. All of his life he had heard stories about the world "out there", and he had dreamed of seeing it.

His spirit lingered and he floated slowly along, taking in the sights on his way to the void, for he did not have the power to survive long as a spirit, he was just taking the long way to his final end. He spied a tigrean barbarian who was carrying a bone. The barbarian was treating the bone well. It had been very tasty meat.

Old Simpson thought that he would follow the barbarian for a time and moved into the bone. When the barbarian was looking for healing herbs, Simpson saw one. When the barbarian finally threw the bone away, Simpson guided it next to the Healing Herb. The barbarian was perplexed at the bones odd flight and investigated. He found the herb. Being a superstitious sort, he picked the bone back up as he gathered the herb. The bone thanked him in his mind.  This took the barbarian by surprise.

He proceeded to question his fellow travelers about the bone, asking them if they could hear it talk, they could not. He started to hand the bone to one of his fellows, and the bone spoke again.

"What? You are giving me away?" He snatched the bone back and finally asked the bone what it wanted. "Me, I want to see some of the world before I go on." So, the barbarian put the bone in his pouch and they travelled on.

As a GM I am always looking for ways to give players a little feel for the oddity of Grandilar and the spirits. In this case I watched how the player was role-playing the character, and he was doing a good job of it. So, I threw him a bone, literally.

Next, we have the new cards for the day. Potions will be the next set that we publish, so let us get a look.

The first thing we need is something to put the potions in that can be attached to a belt and allow for easy use. Yes, there will be magic versions coming along.

In Second Edition we are going to clearly distinguish between diseases and the Tox. They act the same, but they are not the same. The Tox needs different treatments than diseases.

This is another of those, "We need this in the game" cards that duplicates a Classic card. We recommend that Classic Vales of Refreshment use two IND to consume, because you get two cards back. It will be up to the players to track that. GM's already have plenty to do. If you forget, oh well, it is a game.

All right then, that is enough for today.

Dragon Storm and SVC Weekly Update

It has been an interesting and busy week here at the Clanhold. Everything is progressing towards a full DS 2nd edition. I wish there were a way we could do it all at once, but that is beyond our abilities. *sigh*

Sue is getting regular updates on her Fur Affinity account. Many of these are commissions she is completing.

She is also posting to her regular art Blog. If you are tracking her art, this is a good way to do so.

And here at the DS blog we have been showing off a number of the new cards for DS as they approach completion. I have been posting these to my Flickr account as I go along. If any of you out there have a Flickr account I should be following, let me know.

If you want to read some of my crude comments about the ongoing card exposures, go back through the last few days on this blog.

I have been getting regular Etsy updates done as I go along. Stop in and see what prints are available. It will probably be a couple of weeks yet before I get really caught up on that.

Susan's Familiar Place Free Web comic is still getting regular monday updates. If you have not been following along, you can start from the first issue and catch up. What we are learning here will get us ready to do a Dragon Storm comic on a regular basis as well.

I have started reworking our content page to include, mostly, just the finished 2nd Edition sets. The ones on the content page are ready for Proxies. We will print as soon as we can arrange it. The printed ones, like the Ring Set, will be in the market. There is a PDF attached in the market so you can proxy the cards as needed, or order them when they are available.

Which reminds me, the printer is nearly ready to ship these to us, so the time to get the special price on the Ring Set is coming to a close soon.

We are getting a good start on people signing up for Dragon Storm Con 2011. Have a good look at your calendar, check out the information, and sign up so we have an idea of how many will be attending.

If you want to keep up with everything we are posting to the web, follow me on Twitter at markellisharmon.

I also post on Facebook. You can find my account here. Because I have the Guild mailing list I can not use the handy FB search functions to find you. I am far too paranoid to risk your emails, so I don't search for others.

I did not get the last three Lifeline cards up here last week, so here they are:

 

 

We have none above Nine, but if it becomes necessary to put them up as a PDF for Proxies, we could do that. Ten will be at 1,500 CP.

That is is for the weekly update, enjoy!

Friday Update, Starting the Lifelines

If you are confused by the order of Thursday and Friday Blogs. Apparently we have been the victims of a nasty time shift a Pylos Agent slapped on the Secret Clanhold.

Here are the first three Lifelines..

Thursday update, more Lifelines

The next three Lifelines. Elder, Esteemed and Grand Elder are here.

Lifelines are designed to work within Second Edition to give characters bonuses for their experience. The numbers on this series is are designed specifically to integrate with the Second Edition HP improvements and the 10 things rules. They also give a visual record of your characters LLB and Boons limit. Handy to have right there with your character. Classic players will want to stick with the old Lifelines, these will be out of whack for Classic characters.

Tomorrow we will have the final three Lifelines. Right now I need to get to work on that Astral Belt magic item you have never heard of.

Wednesday Update

We had some pure 2.0 games yesterday, they went very good. We started with just the new Starter Dragon Characters. After watching the groups play we will be switching out three cards from the set and putting in different ones.

That means no new cards today, I am busy doing revising work, so well, on to it.

There is going to be some confusion about Enhances, but there always has been. How many times have we all seen people want to attack with Dragon's Claws or a Werewolf Slash. Now we have named the Enhances so we can deal with them.

 

Should be back to cards tomorrow.

Good Morning! More Street Smarts for you.

Today we will finish looking at the Street Smarts. Sue is upstairs right now giving these another run at editing, so I am sure there will still be some tweaking before publishing.

 

Basically this takes the old rumormonger Human card and opens it up to the world. Yes, vermites can now spread stories, but the GM may modify roll just because few people trust a Vermite.

Once again, this card is designed for town use. Finding a trap in the wilds takes a different skill set. Although it would be worth checking to see if you can use it in an abandoned temple. Maybe, see your wise and wonderful GM. (Did you bring chocolate?)

This will be an easy contest in a hamlet you know well, but in a new place, well, there is that GM MOD to use to simulate that.

Looks like the humans are going to need some new skills. Haggle is going to be available to everyone who knows the streets. I am thinking that the butlers buying for the rich will have street smarts, but the rich will be taking the Aristocrat cards.

This is a card that covers a lot of territory in a few words. Players will be using this one in all sorts of creative ways. Just be sure that as you suggest unique uses, do not expect the GM to recall what she agreed to today. It may not work tomorrow.

 

Street Smarts Anchor and the associated cards.

To start this off I want to let you know that the weekly Familiar Place Web comic has been posted. You can go look at it here.

Street Smarts. Many anchors in Classic DS lead to a series of cards that can be played. That is how we did Magic, Valarians and many others. Street Smarts takes this approach into the skills area. It means that their will be fewer Universal cards, but that is no big deal, there will still be plenty.

These cards not only create a series of logical cards, they also create a way of adding a knowledge base to your characters that fit their personalities. Not all characters will be studying the street life.

Obviously these skills are aimed at use in town. If you are looking for the wilderness versions, wait for the Scout.

Another street skill of value.

Valarians will naturally be hesitant to use this skill, but sometimes it may be a necessary skill.

GM's will want to take a look at these skills. Using them on Cast members will let you fill out the world nicely. Personally I am just using the base anchor as a feature on my street cast. I am a little lazy. It also means I can gobble up the extra anchors from multiple sets to use as GM cards.

Tuesday will see the other five cards in the set.

This week in Dragon Storm and Art by Susan Van Camp

We had an interesting week of samples for people to look at this week. So, here are some links to tie it all together.

We officially announced the Dragon Storm Con 2011. We are getting sign ups for both supporting and player memberships. I also upped the bonus for being a GM. Sign up. Spread the word. It will be fun.

There have been some upgrades to the Guild site. It is easier to find the character update forms, the guild membership and Clan rosters are updated.

I have made a Flickr Set of Pictures that have all of the GM cards from the week. These should be set up so you can download them and make Proxies. Yes, we need an awful lot of art before these are ready. You can also bet there will be some tweaks of the cards before they are published, but they are close.

I also created a Flickr set of the Character starter cards. These cards are pretty well set, but there will be a couple of changes. As I am going through Sue's new rules I discovered I will need to add the first Lifeline card and a Bloodline card. We are going to go with the Ravenwing. You will be seeing these cards next week. OK, I just added the Bloodline and the Lifeline to the Flickr Set. More on Bloodlines next week.

On the 2.0 rules, Sue has sent me the rough. I am doing the edit. I have finished the Player section and very soon I will be heading for the GM section.

I finished updating the Dog art section of the Etsy store. I am almost guessing that no one has actually seen all of the dogs in one place, until now. Their is also a Flickr Dog Set on my Flickr account.

The Wolves and Werewolves section of the Etsy shop is updated. These pics are just plain fun. I also made a Flickr set of these.

The cats and kittens on Etsy are getting an update. That will be ongoing this week. I will be throwing in a few other things, like dragons just to add some variation.

I have created a commission section on the Etsy store. There is just one so far, but they will be growing.

As I have been working I have started putting up a Twitter announcement with each. My Twitter account for work is markellisharmon. Go ahead and follow, I won't mind. I do try to answer private messages.

I have also been putting updates on my Facebook page. This link takes you to my profile, where you can do the friend thing. I am too paranoid about security to open my address book to FB and look for people. After all, I have your email addresses and I do not trust any of them.

Looking at this week in Dragon Storm, I am getting tired already. I better get back to work.

More GM Terrain Features

Today we have a few more GM terrain features that relate to people, their places, their ruins and anything else related to the world itself.

Combining a Mountain, Frozen weather, a couple of hamlet ruins, a warped site or two, an inhabited Hamlet with a General Store and a Roadside Inn gives a background for the search for the ancient Ravenwing Villa that is rumored to be here. Of course, the fact that the rumor came to the Valarians through a spy employed by a necromancer as a researcher, means their is competition for the goodies.

These are not terribly common in lightly populated areas, but there are always a few Jikadel Missionaries who want to spread the word. They have some very interesting ways of confusing people and getting them to surrender their freedom by offering to protect them from the nasty Shape Shifters.

These spots are frequently the remnants of a Dragon Storm that came through at some time in the past few years. Areas with regular Dragon Storms have lots of these. A wonderful meeting spot for warpspawn, mad spawn and other ugly cast members.

A lot of hamlets have merchants around. These are normally locally owned establishments that rely on the good will of locals and traveling merchants for survival, so they are open to new faces.

Roadside Inns pop up at hamlets and even in the wilds. They are found at crossroads and any where else that people may need a nights sleep.

Tomorrow will be round up day.

GM Terrain Features

We have even more Terrain Features for you.

The basic idea is that you start with one of the basic Terrains we showed a few days ago and add as many Terrain Features as you need to be able to run the area as you want to. So far we have looked at the land itself. Today we start taking a look and the population of the area, and anything they have left behind.

Small and semi-permanent farmer, hunter homes. These are common in the lands. They also tend to lean towards Elethay. Jikadell requires a bureaucracy and enforcers to enslave the locals and it is not profitable to do it in such small places.

Of course, hamlets, being too small to overcome some of the dangers of the world, are abandoned on a regular basis. There are more ruins than hamlets. The troubling fact is that something made them leave, and it may still be nearby.

Hamlets usually have an Elethay Shrine. One, or more, of the locals works in the fields and is an Acolyte. Low overhead religion. Being a religion of Faith and Freedom Elethay is clearly different than Jikadell's Power and Greed religion.

When a hamlet is abandoned, so are the shrines.

OK, these are all over the place. Outside hamlets, maintained, abandoned, ancient, old and new. Nothing good gets up and wanders out of a burial ground.

One of the changes here is that we are taking the scene cards apart and using the ideas from them as Terrain Features. The adventure "hooks" from the scene cards will be making there way into the actual 2.0 rulesbook to help give the starting GM some ideas for adventures.

That is it for today.

More on the Dragon Storms of Grandilar

I am running behind schedule today, but I have packed most of the shipping for today's run to the post office. Guild memberships have been updated, and cards are shipping. The orders of the week are packed. I have a couple of art packages to prepare yet, but that should not take more than half an hour.

Dragon Storm Con 2011 Update: We have started getting memberships and supporting memberships. This is a good thing. As soon as you know that you will be coming to the Con, make your way to the page and buy your membership. If you can't attend, be sure to buy a supporting membership so you get the cards.

Now, on to the days GM Storm cards:

The Storm that is most common in the lands. They will burn out when they leave there Warped homelands, but the damage they can do while winding back down to a Hopper is a big deal.

The Mantle that a Flyer grows is a painful layer that obscures what is going on inside the storm.

Here it is. The full Dragon Storm. To take one of these out is nearly a campaign of its own. Some of these have held together devastating the lands for a year or more.

Wrapped around the Nexus the Outer Core is a barrier that must be fought through to reach the Nexus.

There, that is it for today.

Dragon Storms, A first look.

Let me see what I have here. Ah yes, Dragon Storms. It has come to my attention that these wild dangers have been neglected over the past 15 years.

In Susan's edit notes to me on these she points out that these storms are going to need a serious treatment in the Guideline for them. That means use these with the idea that your understanding of them may change. Chaos, embrace it.

The earliest storm seed. These pop up in many warped areas, but few of them find the fuel they need to advance. Having said that it is dangerous to leave them. Wild madspawn have been seen to find additional warp fragments and feed these to make them grow.

The second stage of a storm. Again, many of these fail to go on to the next stage. They may well have the side effect of creating a warped pocket on the land that can continue for decades. It is best to snuff them out early.

For those of you who are curious, Proto storms do occur underground in the clanhold ruins of the ancient dragons. Especially where several ancients were killed and drained. Finding one of these in an underground room is, well, distressing.

Now the storm has become free of it's anchor to the ground. It has enough size and power to begin moving. It is naturally drawn to warp sources to continue its growth. It is a very good idea to end them before they grow further.

In my own campaign the young characters stumbled across several Bare storms, then a couple of Proto storms and now they have a couple of hoppers bouncing around making trouble. Someday they will have to deal with these.

This is the core of a hopper and up. Yes, it has it's own Madspawn. It just keeps getting tougher.

Storms also have features. The most common of which is this virulent form of the Tox. In my case I like to put this on both the storm and the nexus. Oh what fun!

The Tox is another concept we have not gone into very well. For myself I have always played the Tox with a generous use of 3.4. The effects, timing and power of the Tox is chaotic. However, we will be giving GM's more tools and examples.

Just as a note. The Tox acts like a disease, but it is not a disease, it is a Warp thing.

Tomorrow you will get to see the other four Dragon Storm cards.

Gamemaster Terrain Features

Today I want to show off more of the new GM Terrain Features.

The idea here is to create a set of generalized features the GM can add to the world, bringing travel itself forward as a part of the adventure. Susan has created a chaotic world of Normal, Warped, Od and Wasted lands. Yesterday we covered the basic land forms and the magic features.

What we are looking at here is how that can actually affect the weather. These Features can be used for a number of situations. Underground Warped labyrinths may have rooms within them that are warped, and frozen or an isolated tower ruins that is filled with Od and wild windstorms and has extreme temperatures. Use these to build the idea of the chaos swirling around the characters when any extreme, be it Od, Warped or Wasted, is around.

 

 

 

 

Take note that most of these do not yet have art. Darkness Prevails is the exception. At last, I are a artiest!

Dragon Storm Con 2011

I have posted the February newsletter. In it you will find the announcement for Dragon Storm Con 2011. This is the summer con with three days of Dragon Storm playing.

Everyone who plays DS should look at the information by following this link.

Make sure you pass the word around to everyone. I know there are people out there we are not reaching. Talk to them, spread the word.

. There is a $15.00 supporting membership available. Supporting members will get the convention only cards mailed to them. You can get the cards by attending or by supporting.

We want as many players and as many GM's as we can get. If you are willing to run one to three games, there is a discount in the membership for GM's. The earlier we have a GM head count the easier it will be to layout the games.

Now I am going to repeat the link for you to follow.

It appears that there are about a dozen of you people out there that have changed your email addresses, or Mocha got them wrong, so you did not get the newsletter.

I have added a form on the Guild site where you can change your address. Then I have to make sure Mocha gets the changes entered. I will end with a picture of Mocha at work:

Familiar Place Updated and GM Cards

The weekly Familiar Place comic has gone up. Follow this link to read the latest. At 26 in a row we now have six months up!

Now, on to the GM cards. This is the first nine Terrain cards. We are making the new GM cards full mix and match. It allows the GM more flexibility when creating their adventures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That gives six basic types of land. The GM can, and will, use their descriptions to create variations in the minds of the players.

Next we have the Magic levels to combine with them.

This is the "low" magic places around the Stormlands.

The bad magic concentrates in particular areas. Dragon Storms have the effect of spreading these zones. To simulate a highly warped area the GM may well put two of these on a place to get the effects they are looking for.

The areas of pure magic are rare nowadays. Many more existed before the ravages of the Deathday massacre reversed the warped and od in many areas.

Tomorrow I will post the next nine Terrain Features cards. We will be getting into the weather.