LotFP Magic Item Contest – The Shrink Bullets

James Raggi has unveiled the results of his LotFP Magic Item Contest and I was not amongst the finalists. As a result, I am publishing my entry on the blog. Enjoy.

The Shrink Bullets
This magic item assumes you're playing in a Renaissance campaign, which anyway seems to be the focus of the latest LotFP supplements.
The Shrink Bullets are created by black powder-inclined magicians only. Their creation requires assistance by an alchemist that has undergone training in modern chemistry, and who shall hence be paid the double wage normally expected by an alchemist. Each Shrink Bullet requires 1D6 days of laboratory work and 1D12×50sp worth of materials.

Each Shrink Bullet is worth 5,000sp (because of its magical properties; the materials themselves are worth as per above). The Shrink Bullets can only be used in a perfectly hand-crafted gun, worth at least ×10 the price of a standard gun.
Each Shrink Bullet ignores up to 5 points of armour protection, but does 1D4 of damage only. If the result is a natural '1', the bullet doesn't inflict any actual damage but releases its dweomercraft. The target must save vs Magical Device or be "shrunk" and captured within the non-exploded bullet.

Later on, the magician may use the non-exploded bullet containing the captured victim against another target. This time, upon impact, the bullet won't inflict any damage but will release the 'captured' victim, full-size, right next to the intended target. The 'captured' victim will fight on behalf of the magician, at his full strength and capacity at the time of capture, for a duration of 1D12 rounds. At the expiration of the last round of bondage, the victim will have no recollection of what happened to him after the bullet impact that captured him in the first place.

A magician is limited by his level in the number of captured victims that he possesses in his Shrink Bullets at any given time.

Captured victims are constantly and unconsciously trying to regain their freedom. Every day, there is a cumulative 1% chance that a captured victim is spontaneously released from its Shrink Bullet. When this happens, the freed victim attacks the closest creature for 1D12 rounds as per above.

Creatures only hit by magic weapons have a +4 bonus when saving against a Shrink Bullet.

Csachticz Weapons

A few commonly used weapons and protections at the time of the Blood Countess:

crossbow

maces

sword

glaives

partisan

great-axe

cannon

musket

Despite the increased use of firearms, plate armour reaches its peak at the time of the Blood Countess, and the full suit of armour, commonly perceived as “mediaeval”, is actually only a feature of this period.

plate armour

shield

What's New with Phil & Dixie

Apparently the full run of the deliciously Old School comics What's New with Phil & Dixie by Phil Foglio, which used to run in the pages of Dragon magazine, is available here.

I remember how much I used to fantasise about Dixie's pert boobs as a teenager....

Aperita Arcana Done

Ebon Gryphon Games have at last released the finalised version of Aperita Arcana to us backers — see my earlier posts for a description of the Aperita Arcana supplement for the Monsters & Magic role-playing game.

The cover art is nice, with a good balance of light and dark, if slightly too much on the dark side. I am not a big fan of 'digital' art [this is actually an understatement] but the elfin lady on the cover truly has an incredible expression, her eyes showing both surprise at the appearance of the demon and a firm will to control it. The demon is slightly less realistic but I really dig the "glow-in-the dark" pentacle.

Aperita Arcana is available in PDF format from RPGNow. I have no idea whether a dead tree version is in the works.

Edit: Aperita Arcana is now available from RPGNOW both as a softcover and as a hardcover book! Should you have bought the PDF, get in touch with Ebon Gryphon Games to redeem a $10 coupon to buy the book.

It is also available from Amazon but then only as a softcover.

Aperita Arcana Available by End of Month

Duchess Phenaella

If you don't know about Aperita Arcana yet, please refer to my previous posts, here and there. In a nutshell, it is a Monsters & Magic supplement by Ebon Gryphon Games that expands on the core M&M rules by adding new advancements, new spells and spell lists, rules for ad-lib spells, and much more. I warmly recommend this supplement, even if M&M is not your go-to system, if only for the excellent GMing advice scattered throughout the supplement, and for all the material that can be salvaged irrespective of your gaming system (e.g., the advanced ‘language’ rules).

Well, here's the good news: according to the latest KS update (12 January 2015), Aperita Arcana should be available before the end of the month!

13th Age in Csachticz − Detailed Icons, No.4: The Great Boyar

The Great Boyar is the name given to the Orc Lord in 13C. The name 'Boyar' shall obviously evoke the mysterious lands at the easternmost end of early modern Europe. At the turn of the 16th century, the historical Muscovy had fallen into a succession crisis known as the Time of Troubles because Feodor I, the last of the Rurik dynasty, died without leaving any male heir. The land was devastated by famine and by the civil war amongst the various claimants.

In 13C, a figure has emerged from this squabble to unite all the petty kingdoms east of the Oriental Range under his iron rule. Little is known about the Great Boyar, except that he commands ruthless hordes to do his bidding.

USUAL LOCATION

The Great Boyar is shrouded in mystery, and so are his whereabouts, although he is rumoured to dwell, attended by beautiful rusalki, at the centre of a vast and foreboding marsh guarded by fearsome vodyanyie.

COMMON KNOWLEDGE

The Great Boyar being a figure shrouded in mystery, and his lands being far and isolated, little is really known about him. Some say he's far taller than a normal person, some say he's not really human, some others that he is of an amphibious nature; some others yet insist all of this is true— and then worse. Yet some argue that all these rumours are purposely spread by the Great Boyar himself to instil a sense of fear in his enemies.

ADVENTURERS & THE ICON

At the moment, the influence of the Great Boyar doesn't really extend over the Fair Kingdom, so adventurers shouldn't feel his influence (yet). However, it is rumoured that the Great Boyar commands many aquatic creatures, such as the already-mentioned rusalki and vodyanyie, and he may have started to gain hold upon the waterways and the marshes of the north-eastern borderlands of the Fair Kingdom.

Also, adventurers who like to plunder more than law may look favourably upon the Great Boyar and the promises of looting that the onslaught of the Eastern hordes might bring upon the Fair Kingdom.

A particularly interesting PC background could be that of the exiled knyaz, a wandering knight pertaining to one of the noble houses on the losing side of the Muscovite civil war. These adventurers would have a conflicted or negative relationship with the Great Boyar.

ALLIES

The Great Boyar operates on his own. He's also a big unknown because he's a recent addition to the roster of Icons. The Emperor will certainly try and manoeuvre him so that he turns his attention towards the Empire of the Crescent Moon first, and the Sultan will try and do the same but with regards to the Empire of the One Faith.

ENEMIES

No actual enemies yet. The Emperor is known to have tried to prevent the Great Boyar from reuniting the petty kingdoms of the East via his proxies there, but he has failed.

HISTORY

Little is known about what the Great Boyar was before gaining his current title.

THE TRUE DANGER

At the moment the Great Boyar is but a distant threat. However, the other Icons would do well to remember that the last time a single individual managed to unite the Eastern lands, almost all of Europe fell before the Eastern hordes. Will history repeat itself?

⁂

Should you want to run a mash-up of my Fair Kingdom setting and of the Land of Unreason from A Red & Pleasant Land, the Great Boyar could be the Twin of the Colourless Queen, or even her spouse, who manages to influence events in the Land of Unreason via its many canals.

In this case, the distant eastern domain ruled by the Great Boyar is the geographical twin of Nephilidia.

A Red & Pleasant Land: Playing Cards & Suits

Central European cards

When people think about a deck of playing cards, they usually think of the following four suits: Spades (♠), Hearts (♥), Diamonds (♦), and Clubs (♣).

In A Red & Pleasant Land, Zak S. has obviously used the four aforementioned suits, what with the Alice in Wonderland connection. The four suits feature prominently in Chapter III, Beasts & People, because of the various Orders named after the suits in the employ of the Heart Queen.

However, given the prevalent Mitteleuropean milieu of the setting, I think it would have been nice to introduce Central European suits, and also to expand upon their possible use with the game. This is what I am going to attempt here.

First, a word about playing cards— They were introduced from Mamluk Egypt to Europe via Italy in the 14th century. Italian playing cards (used to this day) have retained the original Mamluk suits of swords, cups, coins, and staves. In the mid-15th century, in Central Europe, these suits became leaves, hearts, bells, and acorns. At the end of the 15th century, the French derived the presently-known suits from the Central European ones.

Playing cards have, since the very beginning, piqued the interest of occultists and diviners, who have devised all manners of correspondences between the suits and various elements of European life, e.g.:

Suit	Social Class	Season	Element	Divination
Leaves	Burghers	Autumn	Air	Hope
Hearts	Clergy	Spring	Water	Love
Bells	Nobility	Summer	Earth	Money
Acorns	Peasants	Winter	Fire	Trouble

You will notice that Acorns correspond to both 'winter' and 'fire'... So much for consistency!

Another difference between French playing cards and Central European decks is in the area of face cards. Whereas French cards sport the well-known Jack, Queen, and King, Central European cards have three male face cards per suit: Unter (a lower-class knave), Ober (an upper-class knave), and König (King). Aces are also slightly different, as each ace in a Central European deck depicts one of the seasons of the year.

Bells, Acorns, and Leaves cards.

So how would the use of Central European cards impact A Red & Pleasant Land?

First of all, both French and Central European cards use Hearts as one of the suits, so at least there wouldn't be any change in this respect, and the Heart Queen would remain the Heart Queen (but see below).

The orders would be modified as follows:
✠ The Order of Clubs (soldiers) becomes the Order of Acorns
✠ The Order of Diamonds (courtiers) becomes the Order of Bells
✠ The Order of Spades (commoners) becomes the Order of Leaves

Another impact would be a reduced number in monarchs: instead of six decapitated lords, 3 kings and 3 queens, there are only three– the three Kings of Bells, Acorns, and Leaves.

As for Hearts, instead of having a timid king and a queen, the use of Central European playing cards would imply:
✠ The Queen of Hearts, female counterpart to the King of Hearts (works as the Heart Queen described in A Red & Pleasant Land) except that she's naturally the top ruler of Hearts
✠ The Ober of Hearts — use the King of Hearts described in the book in his role as the general of the Hearts' army
✠ The Unter of Hearts — use the Knave of Hearts as described in the book

Should you be able to get hold of a Central European deck of cards, you could use them along with the 'correspondences' table above to ad-lib the effects of spells (via the elements or the divination column), to randomly generate NPCs, etc. You may also add the following (even though I prefer not to use demi-humans in a faux European setting):

Suit	Class	Race
Leaves	Magic-User	Elf
Hearts	Cleric	Human
Bells	Fighter	Dwarf
Acorns	Specialist	Halfling