Where in the World is Xoth?

Xoth is here actually. Well, only in my multiverse. The World of Xoth is Morten Braten's creation for his Pathfinder game. I took his setting material and used it for my playtesting of USR Sword & Sorcery. This, an the "Known World" of Mystara from B/X D&D, are my touchstone campaign worlds when I got back into gaming five years ago. With some regular play it didn't take long to start  daydreaming about intersecting gaming worlds and gaming groups with each other. The Flailsnail's conventions showed me that I didn't even have to be thaaat concerned about different systems mashing with different system PC's. Running some Classic Traveller and keeping a Clockwork & Cthulhu campaign going the pieces of my multi-verse are mostly full-formed now. Mystara, Xoth, 1646 C&C Earth and the super-future of my Outer Frontier Traveller Universe I'm placing all in the "normal", terrestrial universe, with only Clockwork & Cthulhu and Traveller necessarily being separated in time.

I quickly populating the different campaign worlds with many different "doorways" out of the terrestrial universe and into other "realms", the multiverse of my game world; "Murph's Multiverse"! Mystara PC's ventured into the far future, Mystara's the-end-of-time (my Ro'Myr setting?) as well as crossing over into A Red and Pleasant Land. Xoth, these PC's activated ancient devices which connected to beings in Outer Frontier Traveller Universe, as well as through Lotus poisoning in the far-east they ended up in a strange mushroom-dreamland. The PC's from my current C&C game have entered the realm of The Pale Lady (shares space with A Red and Pleasant Land) and became acquainted with "trans-arcana" penetrations. In the Outer Frontier that PC group investigated and activated more troubling powers started in another time and place on Xoth which brought my multiverse its first glimpse of horror-scarred Carcosa...

Which gets me all thinking about a visual map of all this. Where all these great settings get placed and their linkages get tracked.

So now I know where Xoth is, Trappist-1, and Earth. Mystara can be place anywhere in the known universe (or beyond) and right now there really isn't a pressing need at this point to pin it down. The Outer Frontier will eventually get mapped back to "original" Earth. Oh yeah, I even have some modern-day adventures from Anthropomorphic USR and Fear & Loathing USR to bridge all my imaginings to the here and now!

The inspiration for my map is coming from that great map of Kamandi's world by Kirby. Now I guess I just got to draw it :) 

The Why? of doing this is to hone a functional DM'ing device to tap crossover opportunities by retaining, recognizing and cataloguing mentally them for later use. If I have a multidimensional model of my homebrewed gaming universe I can hang cool ideas like ornaments on a christmas tree. Or stars in the night sky I guess.

Running Rom'Myr for Hobbsapalooza

An online weekend of live play, Hobbsapalooza is open to anyone who wants to play or run games online for three days starting this Friday! I will be using this opportunity to see if I can get a Friday night game of BFRPG going to try my own Dying Earth setting of Rom'Myr. Being late evening for the east coast I can easily see this game not getting off the ground, but fingers crossed...

The Google Drive document the Hobbsapalooza link above sends you to is where you write in the games you want to run or play. The administrator will copy your DM submission into the Player sign up page when "approved". This is a small online con, but knowing Hobbs & Friends it will only grow every year. So come on down!

A Red & Pleasant Land Random Generator Page

I've started another page on the blog for aRaPL random generators. Like all the other random generators I am using Meandering Banter's Text to HTML tool to take split-column tables and get them as close to a one-click generator as possible. I haven't figured where the break-down point exactly is, but I think somewhere north of 23,000 combinations crashes the HTML posting here on blogspot.

For example; this first generator Intercepted Communique had to be broken up into three separate buttons to provide the over 2 million(?) combinations the various tables from the book generate, giving you a complete mysterious missive on the fly!

Anyways, I will add more split-table generators from this great OSR setting, there are some real cool ones in this publication.

[EDIT] It seems Blogger can only handle so much HTML in any given post so I cannot dump everything in one page. Two to four generators per page seems to be the limit. Somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 combination/table entries is where I think I break my blog. What this means is many separate pages to cover a specific topic, bargle! 

BRP Pulp Adventure Generator

Has been added to the Random Generator Page. With one click you get the frame work for your next astounding adventure in the world of two-fisted tales!

Blood of Heroes Referee Charts

This is a PDF put together from making snapshot grabs from the DC Hero rulebook. It is rough. It is intended as my table side reference chart for live play of the MEGS heartbreaker Blood of Heroes from Pulsar Games. 

With my laminator I get a kick out of making durable reference sheets for the various games I play. Feel free to download a copy here if you plan on running any game with the MEGS system. The Action and Results Tables are used for everything in the game. You will want these two charts handy at the table so everyone is not flipping through the rulebook everytime someone needs to resolve an action.

A Vornheim Random Generator Page

I'm going to see how multiple pages on the blog work as a means to organize the random generators I'm making via Meander Banter's Automatic List to HTML Translator. This post over at D&Dw/PornStars helped crystalize the idea of using pages because, oh yeah, I use Vornheim the Complete City Kit in everything I run. 

So now I have a subject big enough to need its own page. I dove into Meandering Banter's HTML Translator and quickly broke it with the size of the file I was trying to create. Fortunately this blogger created version 2 which allowed me to create a generator with such a large combination set. This has the effect of a one-click generator for the interesting results which come from multiple random tables. I mean, if the online tool doesn't do anything different than the game book why make it? As I create more random generators from Zak's book I will add them to the separate page.

Are there days more finer?

Than receiving commissioned work for your DIY gaming project? Today I received my art pieces from Jeremy Hart for Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery. This means I now have my artwork from Jeremy, and Michael Gibbons. Zak Smith, and Athan Kirk have submitted their written work (Mass Combat Rules and the adventure Race of Sorrows respectively), leaving only Gennifer Bone's surprise art pack and then me to put it all together (and Jens D to edit the mess!).

One of the assignments I gave to Jeremy Hart is to provide page treatments. This is a term I made up myself. I don't know what the official book publishing name for this is but I'm talking custom footers, chapter headings and column dividers. This is a blatant attempt to make my purchasing dollars go farther. Pay for an art image which can be used more than once. Here is a preview.

I'm hoping these repetitive images will help give the final book the brutal physicality I've always enjoyed in my Sword & Sorcery literature.