Verdan Incognita I

On Verdan, the “Civilized World” mostly consists of Eurasia – and not all of that. Much of the southern reaches of Africa, and the North and Eastern reaches of Asia, remain partially unknown. Much of the vast, [...]
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Verdan Arcanis – Technology and Magic II. The Biological Sciences

To continue with the state of the sciences on Verdan… On the biological side, the structure of the body is reasonably well understood, as are the nature of physically-based diseases (a few seem to be lux-based in n[...]
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Verdan Arcanis – Technology and Magic I

The presence of magic has had two effects on the development of science and technology. It makes it MUCH easier to test things and to sort out what’s going on on an immediate, local, level. You want to look at somethin[...]
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Switched at Birth – An Origin Story

A good background should help define who the character is, especially early in the adventurer when he’s relatively inexperienced. Your PC’s backgrounds should do more than just provide him with skill bonus or a free [...]
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Verdan Arcanis – Historical Development

Mankind’s early Eurasian history on Verdan resembles events on Earth relatively closely up until around the Age of Discovery. Yes, Verdan has some magic, and even relatively minor magic has an impact – but wh[...]
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Verdan Arcanis – Basic Magic

With the Star Wars game winding down thanks to some exceptionally clever maneuvering by the players, it’s time to start setting up the next one – and, thanks to a series of player votes, it’s going to be the Ba[...]
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The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XXXIX – Gates of the Third Circle

Hala’s little reverie hadn’t taken up much time – although she would like to know what caste her bondmate was… After twenty thousand years there was no easy way to find out much about who’d had your exa[...]
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The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Session XXXVIII – Out of the Umbra

Sadly, despite Mr Montagues calling them in, the Nocturnals hadn’t been able to help out with the analysis much; there was just no way of knowing what WAS “normal” for a young primordial! Nobody even knew how they [...]
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Listen to Your Characters

As a follow up to my previous post, "Let Your Campaign Talk to You", I've been thinking about new ways to approach developing character backgrounds, and looking at various techniques from literature and televis[...]
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The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXVII – Investigating Charles Mansen

Over the next several weeks there was much frantic Sidereal scrambling to fit surveillance on Charles in between their usual duties – and immense amounts of frustration with the results of that surveillance. It was[...]
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The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXVI – Titanic Misperceptions

A couple of weeks after Mr. Clearwater and Cipher Child had visited Charles – and about the same amount of time before the Bureau of Heaven would be announcing the results (someone HAD to be expediting that) there [...]
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The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIV – Fiduciary Divine

While Charles was busily building more manses to impersonate (or perhaps become) his “third-circle souls”, working on the Stargate project, mapping the earth’s dragon lines, running rescue missions, and otherwise k[...]
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Exalted – Let’s Take This Elsewhere!

At least in our Exalted game the question of “How secure is Elsewhere” is coming up. To answer that, the first place to look is in the basic book, where “Elsewhere” is introduced. Charm Concept: Elsewhere Elsewhe[...]
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The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice – Higher Souls

Thanks to a helpful suggestion from Vaalintine (and the resulting in-character moment of inspiration), Charles has found a reasonable way to fake having some third-circle souls for Aden; he’s building some high-powered[...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 201c – From the Mouths of Babes

Felan, meanwhile, was busily angling for becoming a junior coalition member in charge of creches… After all, the others had placed a – quite astounding – level of trust in him. Having a group of hatchli[...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 201b – Draconic Circumstances

Markov was momentarily bemused when his coalition-allies asked about how he’d gotten his hatchlings so organized and useful. That was mostly Felan and his statues of course – and the fact that they had some extra[...]
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Eclipsing Wealth, Part II

For today, we have an Eclipse question…. The rules let me have the internal equivalent of pretty much any magic item, whether through Innate Enchantment, Inherent Spell, or Spirit Weapon… but the only mechani[...]
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Legend of the Five Rings – Kasumi Neko, Cat Clan Samurai

The Cat Clan plays a very minor role in Rokugan; it’s tiny, obscure, has no major school of its own, and mostly operates under cover. Their general role is to appear as the mysterious shadowy figure who passes on some [...]
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The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIV – Annotations of Anonymity

Charles didn’t know it – but his anonymous time was very rapidly drawing to an end… Like it or not, he’d simply meddled in too many things too quickly to remain in the background. The various groups on Yu[...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 201a – It Dropeth From Heaven Like Gentle Rain

Marty was taking advantage of Markov’s constant mental peeking at the hatchlings to peer a little deeper… The hatchlings were so ruthless, so driven to defeat each other, so vicious in victory. They were so YOUNG[...]
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Viva Le Revolution! Realms of the Banefire

Life… isn’t fair. A sizeable chunk of the population winds up holding the short end of the stick in early childhood, continue to hold it all their lives, and ultimately die with it jammed in some very uncomfo[...]
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The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXIII – City and Soul

After the tests, the Proctor very much wanted to talk to Charles… The minor antics of mortal and god-blooded thaumaturgic assistants could usually be safely ignored – but in this case, the child evidently had[...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 200b – Markov versus Marty

Meanwhile, Markov had been trying to track down that fat mage who’d snatched Tokif – and apparently a few more of his enslaved offspring – right out of coalition territory! He’d called him fat! He needed [...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 200a – Flowers and Unicorns and Rainbows

Meanwhile, Valira – the formerly-possessed mouse-lady – and her two children had fled into the wilds of Kadia – although Kevin had sent a few Thralls after them to help them out. (A Thrall, in the form [...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 199 – Gold versus Red

With the creche under control, Markov elected to concentrate on building his coalition – with a focus on what his remaining local opposition (Ishvialsen, that gold who’d moved into the area) was up to at the mome[...]
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The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXII – The City of Crystal Dreams

After a few couple of weeks – and a dozen or so more rescues (which, with practice, were starting to go more smoothly – for the moment), Charles got a message from “a drunken shedu” up in Yu Shan.[...]
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The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice XXXI – The Bicyclist of the Unpocalypse

Now that Aden was more or less fully landscaped, it seemed a pity that there was hardly anyone there to enjoy it… Well… There were Yu-Shan gates all over the globe – including in a lot of troubled areas[...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 198c – Organizing the Creche

Marty frowned… It looked like Markov was likely to remain “untamed” for quite some time… How was that possible? Markov was just an Identity! A role he took while he was in the Dragon Empire! Was h[...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 198b – The Voices of the Dawn

With Kevin quietly inveigling their latest evil necromancer, Mr Cartwright was quietly asking for an explanation of what was going on from Marty. (Marty) “Kevin just transported everybody to his personal dimension.[...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 198a – Yep! It’s Another Evil Necromancer!

Meanwhile, back with the Colony Council – in far slower time at the moment than the Dragon Empire (which was not helping the group maintain control of their identities there at all), the discussion on Kevin –[...]
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Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 06 Episode 18

Season 06 Episode 18 Your hosts: Stu, Stork, Tappy, Kimi PC secrets. How to keep them. Why to keep them. [...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 197 – Philsantias Versus Sanity

Meanwhile, still in fast-time in the Dragon Empire, Raphael as Philsantias (who currently had firmly suppressed most of the instincts, drives, and memories that went with the dragon identity) was relaxing a bit while his[...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 196 – The Slave Rebellion

Felan was quite right. Markov’s errant daughters turned out not to have gone very far at all… They’d mostly attached themselves to some of his allies sons; the more dominant boys who had already passed their ex[...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 194b – Future Concerns

The secondary characters got rather far into the future in this segment – hence posting it has been delayed a bit so that it’s closer to it’s proper point in the game timeline. In the Dragon Empire, Markov had [...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 195b – The Dragon Sculptor

In the Dragon Empire, young Felan was – rather busily! – looking for a way he could be allowed to keep more slaves… (Felan, to Markov) “Uhm… Father? If I can find something useful to contrib[...]
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Eclipse d20: The God-Blooded Template

Quite a few myths and tales revolve around the sons and daughters of gods – but, oddly enough, such individuals are often little more than mortal. They often show some exceptional attributes or skills – but G[...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 195a – Of Mice and Men and Councils

Over in Cyarkian, some exceptionally nervous guards were making an approach to the Inn – with a summons for the group to meet with the colony council. Hopefully none of their absurdly powerful and erratic guests wo[...]
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The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXX – And No, That Doesn’t Mean What You’re Thinking Out There!

Hm… He was being watched by at least one observer and possibly more after he left to Occluded Observatory – and the effect traced back to it… Well, that was no surprise at all really. After all, he had [...]
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The Chronicles of Heavenly Artifice Part XXIX – Deva Cutter and the Bronze

It was several weeks before Charles finally had an opening on his schedule – and the Deva Cutter affair seemed to be the priority to fill it… Sadly, just getting in to see the right people was going to be awk[...]
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Spellfire of the Vanities

Once upon a time, in the ancient days, there was a setting called The Forgotten Realms – an exciting land, where heroes and their guiding spirits spent many pleasant hours consulting books of rules, rolling strange[...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 194a – La Belle Draco sans Merci

With the children now past testing – even if Markov’s reality-manipulation had resulted in an unreasonably large number of them passing – they had time to ramp up to some serious rivalries with each other! [...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 193b – The Lesser Dragonwars

Marty, of course, had his own activities to review… In Kadia – where he was quite helpless in the face of infant cuteness – the Thrall-concubines were continuing to deliver happy, gurgling, infants regu[...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 193a – Rats Up Doc?

Back with the Rats and Mice of NIMH, the rumors and gossip were running through the streets like the great flood, tumbling under truths like grains of sand and drowning common sense in a sea of speculation. A little magi[...]
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Game-Mastering Ritual Magic

Ritual magic – whether in the form of magical circles, inscribed runes, or dancers hired to tread out a mystical pattern beneath a spinning disco ball – is wonderful stuff. According to tradition it can accom[...]
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Star Wars – Twilight Seekers Campaign Index

Spellweaver 81 – Kira Keldav’s player – has been compiling an index of the material for the Twilight Seekers Star Wars Game. Given that time problems have left my indexing well behind, he’s kindly[...]
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The Light That Kills! Positive Energy, Part II

To continue with the request for some nasty – or at least weird – positive-energy based abilities for Eclipse… Malignant Healing: Healing is a vital component of life; without healing, the wear and tear[...]
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Come Into The Light – The Light That Kills!

In many d20 games, “Positive Energy” equates to healing, goodness, and rainbows filled with kittens. It’s a power that good-guy clerics get to use to keep the rest of the party alive and to blast those nasty undead[...]
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Fantastic Coinage III – Ervoli Feather Bands and Tenebrous Obals

Ervoli Feather Bands The Ervoli Nomads carry little; they have a hard enough time wresting survival from their desert lands without burdening themselves with extra weight. Their mostly-ceremonial “coinage” consists o[...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 192c – Reporting In

Meanwhile, Philsantias had reached the metallic dragon territories to give his report. The metallic elders had lost several agents already, starting with an adolescent silver trio who had tried just barging in and workin[...]
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Federation-Apocalypse Session 192b – Dragon Hunting

Sartheri had used his shapeshifting to take a much smaller form, run his smartfibers around the area, and set up a variety of cloaking magics and observation methods by the time Philsantias carefully emerged from his poc[...]
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