Earthdawn Third Edition Development

I went over the Cathay stats for both the Cathay books and the Cathay Shards. I added the Cathay Dragon information that was left out of the Gamemaster’s Core to the Dragons chapter and looked over the Cathay Dragon stats. The only thing left for me to do is stats that are dependent on new races and/or Disciplines from the Cathay’s Players Guide. There is still a lot of work to do though once the fifteen Disciplines are developed for Third Edition. I went over Hank’s other project, an adventure for Barsaive, and have filled in the Cast of Characters. I am currently working on Nations of Barsaive Volumes Two-Four and checking for any changes necessary to make from the finalized Namegivers of Barsaive. As you may have guessed, development slowed down a bit over December and January due to the holiday season, so there is less to talk about here.

Jason’s Earthdawn Campaign

SPOILER ALERT: This section contains spoilers to Shards Collection: Volume One; Runvir’s Tomb. You’ve been warned!

We continued to explore the Tomb of King Runvir, fighting hordes of troll cadaver men and looting, and lost the ogre and another troll crystal raider in the process. We lucked out and found the Oracle Fountain in our exploration, which the trolls informed us could heal our wounded and resurrect our dead, and that we could ask one question of the oracle per year. We managed to revive our two dead troll crystal raider and ogre allies, and the rest of us healed up. One of the crystal raiders remained unconscious and we left him at the Oracle Fountain. Thoris Rockthrower asked the Oracle if he would find the crown of King Runvir. The Oracle replied, “Yes you will wear the crown before you die.” We asked about where the crown of King Runvir was located. The Oracle responded, “It is in within the throne room of King Runvir within his tomb.” Our troll allies became excited, having found the Oracle Fountain and could practically feel the crown within their grasp. We asked about three questions for Bella, about a way for life to continue after death in a way such that the spirit and memories could go on living. The Oracle explained, “For one’s life memories to be retained, one must transfer the current spirit to a new living body. After death the spirit must be bound to a new living host.” To translate, Bella could be able to find a way to cheat death by moving her spirit to a new living host after death. Of course, to prepare such a living host would probably require wiping the memory of a current living host or creating a new living host, such as through the Alter Life or Create Life spells, and a way for her spirit to be able to possess this host after her death. Hmmm. But with this information, Bella is one step closer to her goal anyway.

As ready as we could get, we entered the throne room of King Runvir. K’terep was surprised, as he expected to find an animated cadaver man of King Runvir. Instead, we found a giant crystalline jellyfish with many tentacles. It announced that its Name was Skarvik “the Strangler” and that he was happy to have new playthings after so long without one. We engaged the Horror in melee with Bella backing us up with ranged spells. After a solid hit by Gareth with his warhammer, shattering some of the crystalline structure of his body, the Horror lashed out at him with his tentacles. Gareth sustained one attack knocking him flat on his back unconscious, and the second attack smashed him into the floor, leaving him dead. Thoris Rockthrower then attacked with a shield charge, causing more cracks in Skarvik’s body to form. An angered Skarvik attacked with his two tentacles, burrowing them into Thoris’ chest and gut, and when removed left two wounds gushing blood. He fell to the floor in agony and crawled away from the battle. His men screamed at the Horror in rage, and then attacked Skarvik. One of the troll crystal raider’s troll swords managed to pierce the Horror’s body through the crack left by Thoris’ attack, killing Skarvik. We attempted to revive Gareth, but the last chance salve failed to save him. We followed the trail of blood left by Thoris to the tomb of King Runvir. He had opened the tomb and grabbed the crown. Slumped with his back on a wall, he lay dead with the crown on his head. His men wanted to try and bring him back to life, but K’terep told them that it was pointless; he would just die again from blood loss since his body was in such poor shape. Longtooth grabbed the crown and placed it onto his head. The troll crystal raiders protested saying that as a cave troll he was unfit to wear the crown of a great ancient king of Ustrect. Ogre and Nova convinced him to trade with the troll crystal raiders for the crown. He then proceeded to haggle with them, eventually trading for all their silver and the loot they got from the tomb. Satisfied, he let them have the crown. Meanwhile while they haggled and bickered over the crown, K’terep and Bella looted King Runvir’s tomb for a pearl necklace and some gold jewelry. K’terep wanted to get the tapestry of King Runvir with the pearl necklace on it as proof we are King Runvir’s Tomb and had the Ogre smash the glass casing. K’terep promised he’d return it to the trolls after he was paid for his mission by their employer. Satisfied the trolls let him take the tapestry. Our troll allies made a makeshift map/scroll case and we placed the tapestry inside.

We grabbed our dead and headed for the Oracle Fountain to grab our unconscious troll ally and leave King Runvir’s Tomb. We found it hard to carry a dead troll, a dead dwarf, and the large tapestry through the tomb, so we looted and then buried Gareth in a casket. Nova carved, “Here lies Gareth, dwarf Warrior and friend of Nova Born Burst.” At the entrance, Nova, Bella, and K’terep were in the front when the shadow of a figure appeared in the doorway. Our troll, ogre, and cave troll allies had been following us the whole time with us leading the way throughout the tomb, and the trolls were even slower yet since they had been carrying their dead leader Thoris and their unconscious troll brother. The dwarf told us his name was Thygold Doriksin, and that he worked for our employer Jorgin Torvin. He asked us if we needed any help carrying the loot from the tomb, especially the proof of the Oracle Fountain. We told him that we did not need any help with the loot from the tomb since we had very little of it (I had the tapestry and the pearl, Nova some silver, and Bella had some jewelry but the rest of it was in the hands of the cave troll). We stepped out into the daylight of the morning dawn and saw that the dwarf had five human henchmen and had his own caravan that he had used to follow us here. Thygold asked what had happened to Gareth and we told him he was dead. Noticing we were down a Namegiver, he dropped his pretense of friendliness and ordered us to give us all the treasure we got from the tomb and the Oracle Fountain thinking he had the upper hand with a two to one advantage in terms of manpower. We told him that the Oracle Fountain was far too big to carry and that if he wanted it he would have to go into the tomb and get it. Perhaps with his five men he could carry it where we could not? He entered the entrance of the tomb and ordered his men to loot anything of value. As soon as they entered the entrance of the tomb, the troll crystal raiders attacked them, angered by them attempting to loot the tomb. The ogre and cave troll attacked them as well, since they were not us. It was a slaughter, all but one of Thygold’s men died with him. At the end of the battle, Gareth returned carrying a golden bowl. He claimed that Mynbruje had raised him from the dead and that this golden bowl was the proof of the Oracle Fountain. Mynbruje had raised Gareth from the dead to insure that his questors would rediscover the Oracle Fountain and also as thanks for freeing the tormented spirit of his long dead questor Dorthial and freeing the tomb of the influence of the Horror Skarvik. K’terep declared him a ghost, a spirit sent by an angry passion for trespassing into the Oracle Fountain and attacking the questor’s spirit, and he ran out the cave entrance and readied the horses to harnesses on the caravan. Gareth tracked him down and eventually calmed him down. Meanwhile, Nova was grilling the surviving human accomplice, interrogating him for every scrap of information he had. The ruffian eventually revealed that Jorgin Torvin planned to double-cross us by making it appear that we had stolen something of value from the Brocher’s Brood and make us an enemy of them. We thanked him properly, by giving him to our troll crystal raider allies as a newot. K’terep, “You will make a fine crystal raider someday.” Thug, “What? No!” We gave our troll crystal raider allies our old caravan and took Thygold’s caravan. We noticed a break in the wheel axle on the front, and our troll crystal raider allies made their new newot fix it. Crystal Raider, “It’s never early enough to start breaking in a new newot!”

After resting the night, we went our separate ways, one caravan returning to the Twilight Peaks to the Bloodlore trollmoot, and us heading towards Kratas. We planned on how to double-cross a powerful wizard before he did it to us and yet still fulfill Nova’s blood promise. We decided to bring the caravan into town with the ogre and cave troll inside, using tapestries to hide the inside from view. They would hold onto the golden bowl while we entered the Drunken Dragon Inn and then lure the wizard to the caravan so that he could see the golden bowl before we ambushed him to save Nova. The trip back to Kratas was relatively peaceful otherwise.

We returned to Kratas and the four of us entered the Drunken Dragon Inn. Jorgin asked us what happened to Thygold and his men. We told him that the Bloodlore trollmoot attacked us and killed Thygold and his men. We barely escaped with our lives and the proof. We told him that the proof of the Oracle Fountain was too big and heavy to carry into the Drunken Dragon Inn and that he would have to go to our carriage in the stables to see it. The wizard asked what security was there. Nova told him, “None, you mean the stables are not a secure area?” Jorgin, “ What you fools left it unguarded!” Jorgin rushed out of the inn and ran to the stables with us following him. Jorgin opened the back door to the carriage and found the golden bowl, proof of the Oracle Fountain’s existence. Nova declared that he had fulfilled his part of the blood promise and demanded that Jorgin do the same with our reward. Jorgin declared that Nova had fulfilled it and began reaching into a belt pouch full of silver to give us our reward when our ogre and cave troll allies rushed out of the carriage and ambushed him. Surprised, he was no match for all of us attacking him, and he fell to a particularly gruesome downward chop from the cave troll’s cave axe. We grabbed the wizard’s body, threw it into the carriage, and left Kratas in the dead of the night.

We looted the wizard, and Bella went over his notes finding out a lot about the pearl or should I start calling it the Stone of Wisdom? The Stone of Wisdom is a magic necklace that infuses its wearer with greater wisdom and allowed King Runvir to rule Ustrect wisely. K’terep decided to return the Stone and all of the wizard’s notes about it as well to the Bloodlores since the bearer of the Crown of Ustrect should also have the stone to rule Ustrect wisely. We decided where to go next, with K’terep wanting to return the items to the Bloodlores of the Twilight Peaks, but not knowing where they live in a large mountain range, he told the group that we should return to Throal where we could perhaps learn the location of the Bloodlore trollmoot in the Twilight Peaks using the Great Library. We dumped Jorgin’s body off a cliff in the Tylon Mountains along the Tylon Mountain path, and left the Ogre and Longtooth at Longtooth’s lair since there was no way they could be allowed into Bartertown and Throal. As we made our way through the Tylon Mountain path, an espagra attacked us; angry about the cloaks we wore of its fallen comrades. K’terep halted the horses while the others attacked the espagra, eventually kicking it off the top of the carriage and it falling to its death off the clifface. The next day griffins attacked our horses. K’terep managed to stop the horses, and we used spells and spears to wound them, with K’terep wounding the last one with a gliding stab from his ch’tard blade. Wounded they fled, finding the horses to be too well protected by us to be a viable meal. This is a standard encounter in Jason’s games. If you have horses, invariably griffins will eventually attack them. 100% encounter chance.

Alright so we are no heroes. Antiheroes maybe?

END SPOILERS

Video Games

I’ve been playing a lot of Persona 3: FES of late. The game is quite interesting in one aspect; that is you have one year to complete the game. The opening character’s contract giving him access to the ability to use and switch multiple persona for one year really does remind me of a blood oath in Earthdawn that grants him power but at an eventually cost. Another game that used time in it and was very good was Valkyrie Profile on Playstation. The game was divided into many chapters that had time periods in them while Lenneth was in Midgard, each corresponding to a phase of the war in Asgard. During the chapters periods were used to explore towns, dungeons, and recruit dead characters as Einherjar. The goal was to recruit the Einherjar, train them in dungeons, and then send them to Odin to win the war for the Aesir over the Vanir. The end of the game was Ragnarok, the mythical end of the world in Norse mythology. So the whole game was a countdown doomsday clock to the end of the days. Persona 3: FES is set up similarly with time periods during the day, night, and late night which can be used to improve social links or stats or visit Tartarus, with time inevitably moving forward to an end scenario. I kind of want to lose the game by running out of time just to see what happens. It really increases the tension of the game by adding the element of time to the equation. Unlike other RPGs, your time to grind and level up your group is not unlimited, as your characters will become tired and sick and unable to adventure into Tartarus while the bad status persists and you’ll have to rest up a day or so to explore the dungeon again. During the day, you are grinding in a different way to increase your social links, which strengthen your persona of a particular tarot arcana. You feel like you cannot waste your days, you need to use your time periods wisely. I got bored of the social link grinding and encounter grinding so ended up playing some different games.

I beat down Star Wars Starfighter on Playstation 2 in about eight hours over a weekend. I think I was spoiled by the Star Wars: Battlefront space battles (Forget about trying to fly spaceships in ground battles, the crash rate is unbelievable due to realistic gravity rules in Battlefront and you are firing down at enemies, and thus pointing your nose down to the ground…), because this game did not even come close to the action or play control for space battles in Battlefront. The first problem I have is that the game’s graphics are not very good. The cutscenes were terrible with people that barely had faces. The in-game graphics were not so bad, but I am forced to compare it to the excellent Colony Wars trilogy on Playstation, and the game is not even close in terms of graphical capability or the pixel rate which allowed for really fast gameplay. I even prefer Colony Wars 3: Red Sun’s cutscenes, which although mediocre in general, they at least had an impact due to things actually occurring in the cutscenes that were interesting, and the faces were still better than on them than in this game, a Playstation 2 game. The second problem is the play control. I absolutely hate how overly sensitive the controls are and to add insult to injury, the game really punishes you for slamming hard into objects with death. So rather than a fast paced game with thrusters full blast, the way a shooter should be, you are constantly holding down the brake button to keep yourself slow to prevent yourself from crashing. The basic way to maneuver in this game is insane, its called accelerate, turn, break, turn, accelerate or accelerate break turn accelerate break turn. You’ll cruise to victory since most of the enemies just cannot handle this; even the last boss has trouble. The third problem is that the game’s missions have a lot of defensive missions where you have to guard something or keep a weak vehicle alive. The fourth problem is that there are three ships in the game and you cannot select between them, you cannot change their weapon layout, you cannot customize at all. Honestly even a terrible game like Defender for Playstation 2, at least allowed you different ships and weapons, this has been a part of these type of shooters since Super Wing Commander and have been a part of shooters since Gradius and Darius. The fifth problem I have is that the game’s main story has 14 missions, and they are all based around Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. There are more missions, but you need to master the first 14 missions in order to unlock them. Mostly, “mastering” them means you need to keep all defensive targets alive or beat XYZ objective within a time limit. I hate time limit missions, and I don’t like defending targets, so I am not unlocking these bonus missions. Overall, it was a mediocre shooter for $4.00 USD that I can’t recommend getting.

I then played Red Faction until I completed it this week. This is a Playstation 2 FPS game that I both like and dislike. There is a lot to like about this game. The first thing that is important to me is the ability to blow up the environment through the game’s geo mod engine. This allows you to be impatient. Why look for a key to a door when you can blow up a hole next to the door and make your own door? This also allows the game to have a lot of special areas to find and explore, even as a linear game there is often two different ways to explore an area, an easy way and a hard way. Every weapon seems to have a secondary weapon ability. The pistol has a silencer on/off feature, the shotgun can fire two or one shots, the assault rifle can fire semi-auto or single shot, the machine gun has auto and semi-auto, the flamethrower can spout gouts of flame or you can throw the gas canister as a firebomb, the rocket launchers have dumb fire and heat seeking modes, the sniper weapons have an aim feature, the railgun can use X-rays to shoot through walls, and the submachine gun has two different fire modes. The game has some futuristic weapons like the railgun and the fusion rocket launcher (a nuclear explosive rocket). There are a ton of vehicles to use including a driller, tank, vtol fighter, submarine, and a Halo-esque jeep with drive or machine gun features and part of a memorable rail shooter sequence with an ally miner driving. The game also has a quicksave feature. The game’s difficulty follows a steep but manageable curve for the most part. You can drag dead bodies around like Hitman in order to hide them during stealth missions. The game is also very long for such an early FPS for Playstation 2 despite being very linear. There is also a lot to dislike about the game. There is a torturously long load screen, which happens between areas, and when booting up after dying, a common problem of THQ/Volition games like Summoner. The aiming system is terrible. You press up for a zoom and crosshairs to look around. The sniper weapons have better aim with their zoom features. The autoaim targets whatever foe is closest to you. This makes it hard to justify the use of anything but the fastest rate of fire weapons except in special circumstances, like when normal fire will not get the job done such as against vehicles. The platforming in this game is bad, as you have a lot of ladder climbing sequences which forces you to press the analog up or down while facing a ladder. You’ll often fall off the ladder as a result and you’ll take falling damage for it, another thing I don’t like especially since the jumping is iffy too. The stealth sections are no fun at all. All you get is the pistol with the silencer and it seems like one mistake and you are DEAD. Then again I don’t like stealth missions so YMMV. The last section of the game really cranks the difficulty level way up with your enemies using railguns to one shot you to death, and there is a dearth of health and armor drops in the last area. I took on the last boss with 52% health and 38% armor and keep in mind that I had quicksave to work with (The last boss had about 3 forms as well…). The plot is basic about miners on Mars who revolt against the evil Ultor Corporation that is mistreating them and the characters are wooden (but it is an FPS so not too important). The graphics are okay. Volition has always had a problem with faces so they are the deformed usual of their games. The game music is barely there, the voice acting is terrible, but the sound effects are good. Overall it is worth the $4.00 USD I paid for it. I had a lot of fun blowing stuff up in this game. A flawed but fun game. At least it didn’t crash all the time on me like Aidyn’s Chronicles the N64 and Summoner on the Playstation. I’ve also got Red Faction 2 for $4.00 USD, but I am probably going to go back to Persona 3: FES for a while. I’m ready to grind some more, although if I get bored again I might start Red Faction 2 or Devil May Cry which I also got for $4.00 USD.