Set 401, Magic Potions gets its page!

I am trying to play a little catch up here and get some of the web work done. I completed the Set 401 Magic Potions page. It has the card pictures, notes, PDF to download and the Guideline.

I have gone to a quick and easy RTF Guideline with numbered points. I had wanted to do something more elegant, but there is just not the time to do it. Let me know how those work for everyone.

Set 401 is already at the printer, and is available for Pre-ordering. Several people already have and I need to up our initial order on them. Go ahead, order five sets for yourself, unless you already have.

You have probably noticed that we are focusing on new Items for Second Edition. You, and we, still have the classic items, so there is no real sense in us hurrying to do more of those. All of the old items still work. The Magic items are the only ones that will even need a second thought on how they work.

Remember the old NFS items? We are just about ready to put the Second Edition versions of them up. I am hoping next week.

Sue has sent me a long list of commission printing to be done, and the kitchen is calling for a clean up crew, so I will be off DS for the night. In the morning it will be a long grocery run taking up time. I will be getting back to DS sometime tomorrow afternoon.

Good Night, and Good Gaming!

 

Magic Item Set 402 is available for Pre-Orders.

I have sent the set off to the printer, therefore we are taking Pre-Orders.

I have made a web page that has the pictures, guideline and PDF all on the page for you to look at, mull over, and then order.

Speaking of placing your Pre-Order, here is an ever so handy link to go do just that.

I want to mentiong the Dragon Storm 2011 Convention as well. We are working on the special cards to be included with the memberships. If you have not checked out the Con, or have not bought a membership yet, you should go to the page and do that.

Features Arriving!

I asked for Players to submit new Feature card ideas, and they did. You can look at them right here.

Thank You, and keep them coming. Submission Link here.

Now that we have opened the ability to proxy cards we can web publish a lot of cards for the GM to pick through in creating "situations".

I am happy with the submission system. I can go online and by searching for the right type, like Features, I can see all of your ideas at one time. Play with them, put them in a card and send them off to Sue for a yes/no response. It also means that I can actually find the ideas that have been submitted. Works good. Keep doing it.

Game went well last night. They did not like Granny in the steam bath with all of her Warped Labrynith Cats (On Cast 13, you can download them now, scroll down). Ten of the little ugly furballs dancing in, striking, then dodging away. Only the Exploding attacks really hurt them, but it gave nice cover for a Prime Madspawn that looked like a sweet Granny. Granny had the not yet web published "Uses Witchcraft" feature, used Split Actions to attack twice, regenerated like crazy and well. It was about a 600 point encounter. The Steam in the room started things off with 2d6+2 Heat damage.

Now, on to the next project.

The Feature Hunt

It looks like I need Eight Features to finish out another sheet. Look over the GM Features on the Download page.  If I am missing something from the past, post me a note here.

If you have a Feature you have enjoyed using, submit it as a card idea, and we will see what happens.

Monday, and more Dragon Storm!

I sit down at the computer to put up information in the blog about three times a week, yet I never know what I am going to do until I start typing. Everything here is the first rough draft of thoughts about the game and what we are doing.

The problem is I have a few hundred thoughts, cards, ideas, stories and scenarios bubbling around in the brain. For the cards I did a quick check to see where we are at. I have just over 1600 cards in the computer for DS and probably twice that many in notes. I am never sure which ones people are interested in, so I just make my best guess. I put some time into prepping for tomorrows game and that caused me to touch up the little Labyrinth cast members I have been using to test the players.  They are not much individually, but since the party is running over 600 CP, I can use a dozen of them and throw in some fun features. With the new Exploding dice these little monsters actually get to hurt the characters. Anyway, I added the cast 13 sheet to the downloads page. Scroll down to the new GM cards and check it out.

When I am prepping for a game I sometimes put cards for encounters in nine card sleeves for easy access. I have really got to get some more of the card holders from Tim, those work sweet for a GM. I put together a couple of the sheets in the computer and added them at the bottom of the GM cards on the download page.

Oh ya, I remember what I was here for, more new potions that are in the pipeline:

 

The Strength and Speed Vales are two more that have longer durations. They work best if you know you are not going to be needing healing or recharge vales. As you recall drinking a potion cancels any operating potions.

On Wednesday I believe that I will be announcing new sets available for Pre-Order. So get ready to place orders. It should be the Magic Items we showed a couple of weeks ago (Algar's and Karvac's items) and the first two Basic Universal sets for Second Edition.

Thanks to you guys I am also going to have to increase the order for the Common Potion set #401 at the same time. It really helps us for you to order these as we send them off to the printer, Thanks!

Sunday Updates

Sue and I went to Animarithon on Saturday at Bowling Green as an experiment. Anime Cons, even one day ones are well worth going to, but we are tired.

The new Cast GM cards we posted got Doug to send in his Goblin ideas. I posted them on the DS Beta Blog, go look.  Glad to see creative fun stuff from the players! Thanks.

I added a PDF of GM accessories cards. The new sheet is the Smiling GM cards we have been using, plus the Unknown Interference card. Scroll down to the GM PDF's for a look. I like giving these out during the game, it reminds me to give bonus experience for good role-playing.

Friday brings DS Potion talk

There is a new Potion rule in Second Edition that I should make you aware of.

 

Basically you can only have one Potion working at a time. This will not affect healing potions and the like because they work in a flash and are done. Some of the other potions you will be seeing here last for a longer time. The Chameleon Vale below works for a variable amount of time (V). However, if you were to drink a Healing Vale, the Chameleon Vale would instantly drain, poof, done. As with all character abilities and items it will be the players responsibility to keep track of their own goods.

 

 

We are preparing to head down to Bowling Green in the morning for a one day Anime Con. It is an experiment, just to see if it is worth it. I have been in contact with their game room person and I will have Demo space in the game room.

A Latent Question

What to do with the Latent Shifter concept has a potentially simple solution, but I would like some input from you.

The Latent Shifter is someone who has strong enough Dragon's Blood to be a potential shifter. The Latent cards really should wind up giving a character the same stats as one that starts as a shifter. If this blood is already strong enough to become a shifter, then they should be drainable, maybe not as good as a real meal for a necro, but maybe an appetizer?

So, how about a single card that is attached to a shifter character, rather like a Flaw?

Any thoughts?

Wednesday, Newsletter Ships!

The March 2011 Newsletter has issued forth from the Secret Clanhold. (Time to do a happy dance! Just imagine me dancing. Aren't you glad there is no video.)

If you are not signed up for the newsletter, but you want to get ahold of a copy, you can go to the newsletter page and download a copy.

If you are signed up for the newsletter but you did not get it, I may have a bad email for you. Then I need you to go and fill out a form with your correct email. I will get Mocha on those updates right away.

If you are not signed up for the Newsletter, or the Guild, you can do both on the Guild Site.

I have gotten myself distracted by these blasted Orcs. I now have 20 cards that I can't properly evaluate because I need the Dragons and Universal combats to compare them to.

Friday I think you will be seeing the start of the next Potion set.

Monday, and more Dragon Storm!

We will start off with the news that we received the new Set 400 from the Printer. We shipped the per-orders. We posted the set as available individually in the Market place and added an Items page, take a look. It took just over five weeks to get the cards back from the printer this time.

Set 401, Potions, is now available for Pre-Order. You can go here and place your orders now.

I posted the newest Familiar Place Monday Comic. It is here.

For those of you who have been wondering what we will be doing for the GM's, I have posted some GM PDF's for downloading. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and check them out. If you have any comments, please send them to me at mark@marksmysteries.com. If you have any card suggestions for the GM, here is the link to the card submission page.

So, for now, Good Night and Good gaming!

Friday Dragon Storm RPG Update

Time for the last three magic Items in this set.

This is a very good one handed blade at +4 STR. Once per day (L1D) the wielder can add a +20 melee attack. Just the thing for a finishing move. The blade recharges each adventure day at Dawn (DWN). If the wielder rolls a Terrible Two while using the blade the magic function will not work again until the weapon is "repaired" .

One nice feature here is that the blade shifts with the user. That means that shape shifters do not drop the sword. It is not usable in a form, but you do not drop it. A Werewolf, Gargoyle or any Avatar may choose not to absorb the item and use it, since they have hands.

Having just covered the DWN, L1D and Shifts with user on the previous card, I will only say, they appear here as well.

The Spirit Pipe is a good item for the role-playing aspects of the game. It also allows non-shaman characters to get information from the spirit world. GM's can take advantage of this type of item to pass on information characters may have "missed" as they went along.

These items are all intermediate Magic Items. We are working upward from the simpler magic rings and potions to more powerful Magic Items. In the process we noticed that we need more magic items.

We have gotten far enough along in the rules and cards to be able to create the Second Edition Items. There have been a lot of interest in the NFS items we published. A rework of them is on Sue's desktop for her editing.

Now for a little advertising:

Card Set Pre-orders are here. We are getting good responses. Keep ordering!

Registration for the Dragon Storm Con 2011 is open. Check it out and register. The earlier we know how many special card sets to arrange for, the better It appears to be taking a month to get the cards back from the printer, so we will need some serious lead time.

I have begun a new series of pages related to the Second Edition Cards sets. The only one working at this moment is the Item Set 102. I will get these done by using my spare time on this project. Go take a look.

Wednesday Dragon Storm Updates

I have started a new project. I do that a lot. Anyway, I am putting together a page for each set of cards. I have managed to complete exactly one page so far, you can see it here.

On the bottom of the page you will find individual card PDF's. Our printer is creating a new layout system, and during that conversion process I have a PDF. Since we have folks who want their computers to speak the cards, I decided to add the PDF's at the bottom of the page.

For today's cards we have three more "intermediate" magic items. These are all Karvac's magic items. Karvac was an Archer and a scout. Her twin sister, Algar was a warrior. Friday's update should include Algar's items.

The twins expended a huge amount of experience to create the original's of these. Today Ritualists work with volunteers to create a few of these copies each year.

 

 

Sue has the art assignment on these and when she gets those completed we will be printing this set.

Monday Morning RPG and Comic Updates

The Monday Morning Familiar Place Web comic is up! Go take a look.

Pre-Orders being taken for the new Potion Set. The page is here. We are expecting the Magic Rings in any day now. If you did not pre-order yet, you can still do so.

Dragon Storm Con Registration is open. Plan on it, Do it. The link is here.

We have some new Magic Items to start showing. Sue is working on the art for these.

When using a reusable Magic Item, like these books, and you get a Terrible Two the item drains and will need to be reactivated before it is available again. It fails, but you will get it back.

Magic books connect the intrepid adventurer directly with a Philosopher Spirit. Useful for both players and GM's.

Different Spirits specialize in different times.

There are many copies of each of these books, which means that Don, Newt and Ann are busy spirits.

Necromancers like to have one copy of these books for themselves. I am afraid that the Philosopher's can not tell if the knowledge they disperse is going to a good or bad person.

Necromancers want to keep knowledge out of the hands of everyone but themselves. That means when they hear of one of these books they try to find and destroy the book.

Enough for today, next update Wednesday.

Sunday Evening Upload!

There are five new Second edition Sets on the content page. You can find them here. It includes the Perception, Scouting, Philosopher, Street Smarts and a new Magic Item set.

I am waiting to here from Susan's Spirit messenger. When I do I will be driving down to Detroit to pick her up. Sounds like she had an excellent convention, but she will be tired.

Sunday News from the DS Secret Clanhold.

Pre-orders are now being taken for the new Potion set. You can check out the contents by downloading the PDF and decide what you want. Just follow this link to check it out.

The printer tells me that the Ring set will be here this week. When they arrive the set will be moved to the new Items section of the market and they will be available individually for $4.00 each.

We have been getting reservations for the Dragon Storm Con 2011. If you have not checked out this special Dragon Storm event, follow this link and check it out.

Susan is currently at Furnal Equinox and is having a good time. The Con is going well.

Here at the Clanhold our water heater has decided to give up the ghost. Rather than be hurried into buying a solution, we are trying the old fashioned washbowls, boiling water and all that stuff. It is, so far, an interesting experience in going back to the "good old days". I do not recommend going back to the old ways.

I have been tweeking the Guild site, trying to make it easier to find the different options available. You can check it out here.

The DS Content page has had a few revisions. We are slowly adding the PDF's for the Second Edition. The changes in the game still allow the old and new cards together, however, you may need to add a little common sense in the conversion. I am sure that DS Players and GM's can easily cope with it. The link to the page is here.

That is it for today, I need to get back to card editing. This process is much slower than I would like it to be.

Tuesday brings Guild updates and more GM hints.

I completed a Clan Roster update that arrived in my email from the hard working Councilor Ann. I also broke out more of the link buttons to make it easier to find information on the Guild pages. Go take a look.

Gamemasters and Multiple attack tracking in Second Edition.

Among the basic Universal cards Split Action and Kick both provide additional attacks in a combat round. For most creatures, and characters, these are the only ways to get additional attacks. Each of these cost 4 CP. This means that if you want a wakana to run up, kick and hit twice it will cost 8 CP to do so. If you are keeping track of extra experience on a scratch sheet you would write down 8 for later experience.

If a Character, or cast, gains the Warrior Anchor they will be able to access the Hit 'em Again card and get a fourth attack. This one is also 4 CP. The GM will want to be careful here, because giving our Wakana above a fourth attack costs the 4 CP and the 10 CP for the Warrior Anchor to make that fourth attack. You will need to add 14 to your scratch pad for extra experience.

Gamemasters can use these CP adds to create anxiety in the characters without having the cards actually with the bad guy. This should be used to heighten the game. Normally bad guys should be limited to three attacks, with the fourth attack being unusual and used only against higher CP characters.

The simple surprise of a Skeleton swinging twice can keep the characters on edge. Use this GM shortcut to keep the characters sense of danger and chaos ramped up.

As a side note, shape shifters will have a fourth attack built into each of them. The dragon's Tail strike is an example, and it also comes into 4 CP. The CP cost is being kept consistent across the game, making the GM's job simple.

A Dragon, or other shifter, who is also a Warrior will be able to attack five times. Within the design we will be trying to keep that as the top limit.

Tomorrow I will look at shortcuts deploying bad guy archers.

Good Morning Gamemasters!

Gamemasters have a lot of details to deal with during an adventure, and I have a tip to pass along.

Health Anchors. Making your bad guys tougher.

A GM should have a set of health anchors handy during the game. If the players are having to easy of a time running merrily through your bad guys, use your Health Anchors.

These cards are universal cards and they can be played as easily on the bad guys as they are for Players to buy for the characters. The only detail to be careful of is to make sure you add the card points for any of the Anchors you use to the players total experience gained for the evening's play.

Numbers.

With the new exploding dice numbers count in ways they never have before. Skeletons are low CP value and they have a chance at having an exploding dice attack. What difference does it make to you, or your necro, if the characters blast six, 12 or 18 skeletons. If your dumb skellies get one, two or even three exploding attacks in, they can do some damage before they are splinters on the floor.

Zombies are also nice for this, and they can take a few extra hits. If the zombies are not tough enough, add six CP and 12 HP to them from your handy Health Anchor.

A few Haskalad archers can always be fun to through into the mix. They like to hang back and fire at good guys, that is what they do.

A Scratch pad for Experience notes:

When I am running a bunch of easy to destroy bad guys I keep a piece of scratch paper handy. On that paper I simply write down the experience for the skeleton as they are destroyed and add it all up at the end of the night.

I also jot down the experience from the Health Anchors I used here. It all winds up in the same pot, so why not just put it all down together.

I like to keep experience points from scene changes on the same pad. When they enter a warp bubble, find a ruins, whatever they stumble across. Individually these events do not add up to much, but over the course of an evening they can add up to 30 or 40 experience for non-combat activities. When they are in a Hamlet or village these points can jump up to 80 to 100 points. Remember, we count for dealing with the surroundings.  Snitches, merchants, scouts rumormongers, beggars and a lot of other incidents can become experience.

 

Dragon Storm Second Edition Universal Cards Posted.

I have posted PDF's for the first two Universal skill sets for Second Edition DS. You can go download them, make proxies, and use them right now.

The Universal skills in these two sets are basic survival skills available to everyone in the Stormlands. They are excellent cards to add to young characters as they learn the world around them. As characters grow they will have access to more powerful versions that are "unlocked" by acquiring Anchors.

From a design point of view these skills give us a foundation on which to build the more powerful skill cards that are acquired through training and buying Anchors.

One question I know we will see is: "What happened to adding Characteristics to skills?" Skill cards unlocked by adding Anchors do add Characteristics.

I have several additional Anchor sets in hand that Sue has returned to me for final tweeking. You will be seeing them appear over the next 2-4 weeks.

Right now I will go work on the first nine Valarian Second Edition cards.

Friday DS Update

Sue has dumped a vast number of card sets back into my lap. That means I need to slowly go through all of them and get them ready for posting. So, new samples will be waiting a couple of days.

Talking Enhance Cards:

We are going to have to explain the Enhance cards carefully. People are still temped to try to play them as a stand alone card. Enhance cards never stand alone. By themselves they have no power. They need to be combined with an Action or Independent to be used.

We have always had that problem with people wanting to play Dragon Claws as an extra attack. The advantage of labeling the Enhance cards is that we can now point to a "Class" of cards that must be combined to be played.

That means that when you are studying the cards everything that says Enhance needs to be looked at closely.

This weekend I am going to assemble the press sheets for the starting character and for the Potion set and send them off. I will be putting up pre-order information as soon as they go off to the printer.

The Ring set is being printed and we will have them soon, then I ship the pre-orders and put the set into the regular listing at full price.

Now, back to work.

Thursday Update, More Potions and content update

I have added Second Edition card files to the content page. You can go and download them anytime you want. The Starter/Demo Character, Starter Item sheet, Magic Rings and Magic Potions are up now. Watch for more.

The Second Edition rules have returned from myself back to Sue. The first Appendix, The GM and Items, has been added for editing. We are making good progress. Next time I get them back I will be able to lay them out in publishing format to see better what we have.

Now, let us look at the next three potions.

In the new rules to be able to use your 8 Independents, you will need a card to play. This is a card and qualifies. So when you have no Ind ability cards to play, you can drink a potion.

We are also adding a way for characters to get experience when their enemies use Magic Items. Sue's idea is that we use a 10 to 1 ratio. So, if the necro drinks one of these during combat their will be an extra 7 experience points added to the players pool of experience.

Magic Meals. Now how much better can life get.

I really want to write an article about the starter character. I hope to do that this evening.

Tuesday DS Updates.

Today is a short update. We are continuing the potion set today.

In the Second Edition rules you will need a card to use to perform your eight Ind's. For young players that means they will have time to drink potions. Higher CP characters will have spells and abilities to use, so they will be drinking fewer potions than the kids.

Magic Coffee! Way to go.

The GM is going to have a number of different Tox cards to use, so expect a lot more need for these potions. Dragon Storms, warped lands, and occasionally the monsters will have the tox.

OK, that is it for today.