A World a Week: Blimp World Gazeteer 1

Sky Hippos- The safest means of transportation on the entire world. Native to the Primal Land and faring better for the most part and warmer and wet environments, these animals alternately like to feed on aquatic plants and fish and take to the air to avoid predators. The better-fed and oldest ones can be the size of small-buildings. Gaggles of the oldest wilder one still migrate with the seasonal winds from the marshes south of Sihlt-Awash into the Central continent and the Big Island and then back to the western-most Primal lands every few years.

Lope-Trolls- Believed to be evolved from the trolls that are recorded to have been driven out of the world by humans and their gods back in the mythic ages, not a member of those trollish species. They like cooler weather and mud. Though predatory when they are younger, the older ones are smart enough to work with the humans around them not against them.
 
Kindred of Blimp World

Human- D6. The player must decide before the GM rolls for them whether they have a "plus 1," a "minus 1", or to have no modifier.
0 Wizard
1 Recognized
2 Learned
3 Criminal
4 Newly Rich
5 Landed
6 Titled 
7 Part of the Aristocracy/Oligarchy/Elite of their background nationality.

Furry- May be any animal the Player chooses. They will be either a animal-headed humanoid (60%), a talking-version of the regular animal (30%) or a shape-shifter. The Player does not get to choose, the GM must roll which kind in front of them. They then must live with the results. Bonus points for roleplaying out any disappointment.
Place at Home (roll D6)
1  Criminal
2 Learned
3 Recognized 
4 Merchant
5 Landed
6 Wizard

Goblin- D6. The Player does not get to choose, the GM must roll which kind in front of them. They then must live with the results. Bonus points for roleplaying out any disappointment.
1-Cute and lucky (plus 2D to CHARM and LUCK stats).
2-4 Ugly but smart (-3 from CHARM, plus 2d3 to MENTAL)
5 Ugly and brave (-4 from CHARM, plus 2d3 NERVE)
6 Hobgoblin (-5 from CHARM, plus 2d6 to PHYSICAL)

Elf-Blood- A "halfling" race. CHARM plus 2D. Born with pointed ears and Glamour ability (Caster's NERVE vs Target's MENTAL).  GM rolls for whether the Player gets to roll on the Human (even) or Furry (odd) social standing chart. 

Trollkin- A "halfling" race. Player rolls D6 or the Player opts to allow the GM to choose for them.
1-4 Hobgoblin (-5 from CHARM, plus 2d6 to PHYSICAL)
5-6 Were-troll (spend 2 NERVE and 3 MENTAL points and PC gains 2D PHYSICAL. Able to recover points when back in human form a single point per day.)

A Personage of Blimp World
Klust's Spy Master
Parsifal Kipt, Vice-General Cloud March West Group. the Quick 125
Cut his teeth in the Horde's second war with the Maroon as an Infantry Leutnant. He would then become a sky-hippo pilot in the Western Wars as an Horde advisor to the Floating Sultanates against the Western Oligarchy. Since the undertaking of Horde Unification he has become one the leaders of the nation's intelligence branches. Working near his native lands in the city of Kluster he has many assets in Havre and the Fields.
He has a knack for finding disaffected halflings within his city's neighbors and coercing them into devious schemes against their compatriots and spies of the Compact.
MENTAL 55
LUCK 20

The End of the World, err Year Post 2019

Here was the game-thing making schedule thing that I did last year. 

Jan 27-Feb 15: Getting ready for BASHCon in Toledo (Feb 15-17)
Sure did.
Though I was ready, I actually didn't run the event I officially submitted. The whole weekend was more of a casual get-together of the PeryPubbers, and the clique grew by a couple people.

FEB 15th (?): The release of Wobble: the RPG
On February 19th, 2019, Wobble: Transdimensional Roleplaying was released onto the world. And it was a critical, as in critique, flop.
It ironically sold enough copies both to friends and strangers to pay for the art expenses after the bad reviews. It still sells though I discourage people that ask me first. Perhaps some people still understand that RPG games should not require office buildings to be something to read for fun.  No way. Who wudda thunk it? Still waiting on the profit though on this one. You know, editing and that stuff.

Feb 18- July 31:Getting ready for GENCon's (Aug 1st-5th?) seven runs and working on Spacers(TM): Universe
Yes and Yes. GENCon 2019 was a success for the group, and I sold about nine copies of the game systems that I ran. This was out of 60 ppl that played. So like 3 in 20. What can I say? I still got it as a GM. As for Spacers(TM)...

July 31st (?): The release of SPACERS(TM): Universe.
Noop.
The spaceship and spacesuit SF RPG to end all S&SSF RPGs, fell apart about June.
What happened that particular bits have become so detailed that they'd just be better as separate releases to be added to someone's Spacers (TM): Core collection.
You, my seated reader, are going to see more than one of these over the following months. Plenty of material is finished and waiting to be edited after the Holidays of course. A lot of the art is bought. My maps and diagrams are designed waiting to be refined. I just want to spend some time to pay attention to the formatting. Mostly because reviewers don't read crap, they look at production and get glazed eyes over glossy paper. Not that I am doing glossy pages and color pictured interiors, but I do want to avoid the non-reader reviewers' ire at DTRPG. Gads, let's hope they just avoid me and mine all together.

August 6- September 30: Prepare Crawlspace's Halloween special. October 1st(?): Release the Crawlspace Halloween special.
Sure did. Here's the mag.
With an introduction to artist Teresa Guido, the whole Halloween thing started in early Summer and ended up with four other releases. Her perspective on things energized me wanting to get my Count Vulgarr "trilogy" out there. Check them out.

October 1-Nov 15: Work on Red Bat Christmas special. December 1st(?): Release X-Mas Red Bat.
Ayup. Not only did a Red Bat with Yule of the Yeti, I happened to do a Crawlspace one as well, which will be released this weekend-- Operation: Joulupukki is just a not Christmas sort of thing what with Nazis and Commies shooting things out in the Continuation War. Definitely a New Year's Eve sort of thing, at least in Cleveland.
Jay Murphy helped make the Holidays special for Peryton Publishing with his X-Mas gift of Santapocalypsis. It really rocks as wargames go. Easy to turn into a table-topper tradition every Yule Tide season.

 December 1-?: Begin Crawlspace, The Letterbox Edition rule additions
Yeah. About that, the name is going to be Crawlspace: 21 and Over... .

A World a Week: Powderpunk Left to Right-"The West"

I mean the established states and coagulating nations of Scotland, England & Wales, the empire of France, and the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily. Yet, I say "the West".  Don't ask me why, but I just don't feel any Catholic empire-nations like Spain or Portugal are truly a Western thing. Spanish-dominated Rome in the later Renaissance was shocked by anyone ten miles east of Cyprus in regards towards central authority. Mind you, the Catholic nations were a lot nicer places to be than "the West." Mostly the weather but then unexpected wealth, as opposed to what was expected, from the "New Indias" suddenly started paying off for the trouble that they had been from when that silly guy Columbus got funded with his "Western Passage" start-up. Sure slavery and indentured servitude, but people didn't get drawn and quartered for being better read than their monarchs as often.

Despite the Treaty of Perpetual Peace the lands of Scotland are still in the thick of the losing fight against the protesting sentiments of Calvinists and the propagating English. But the growth markets in subversion and burning of heretics is at an all time peak. The French agent-provocateurs are stirring up things in the name of  Mary Queen of Scots.

Biggie 8-Mack Henry to the Nth's only son Little Eddie, oh we never knew him, is gone. His estranged sister is in charge. Mary Tudor is proving to all of England & Wales that she is the least Tudor of all her line by rocking the Catholic Church back into the U.K.. The fireworks are provided by all the protestants being burned at the stake, at the very least, for their deviant takes on supernatural affairs. A certain Lizzy, Queen of Protestors, her half-sister, is busy getting her street cred during these most bloody of times.

France can be said to be the most civilized place to be. Henry, not the one you're thinking of (Henry the Second), has been holding BIG FRANCE together for about 9 years now. He's actually doing a good job at not burning too many people at the stake when he can help it . A bunch of hillbilly whiskey producers, the Bourbon, are making things difficult with Spain. Italy just doesn't know when to stop being too Catholic (oh those Spaniards). Still things are banging against the Haspburgs to the northwest even if things in Corsica and the Italian marches are a bit rough. The English cousins are too chaotic to deal with.

Corsica has just freed itself from Franco-Ottoman occupation because Admiral Andrea "Ackbar" Doria and his Genoese Jedi-marines. Well, that and the fact that the Turkish fleet was being wracked with the plague. Henry, the French Guy, knew better than to sink assets like ships in a losing wager so his fleets skedaddled back to France.

Under the dominion of both kinds of Spaniard, the Aragon and the Castille, this collection of small kingdoms were getting introduced to the feudal system about twenty years after everyone else in the world started thinking it was a bad idea.

Despite the long term stability of being ruled by the Spanish Aragon crown, Sicily has been under a cloud of turmoil and just plain bad luck. Always a favorite spot for refugees, the ones at this time from Greek other Mediterranean folk prosecuted by the Ottomans. A massive Earthquake a few years before has not helped out things either. To top things off, the plague is starting to creep around the island.

It's kind of about the give and take in these parts.

December Docket

Spacers(TM): Time Line and Settings

Fifty years from now Moonfall. The population of the Mars colonies and the moon hit over one thousand colonists each. The Corporate Wars begin.
2110-2240 The Great Anarchy (the Sub-Grunge) begins. My buddy Miles's road warrior/sub-grunge cyber setting from the 1980s.
2114 The first Primrose Experiment takes place in the newly founded Manhattan-New Jersey Republic.
2222 The second Primrose Experiment  ends in disaster for nearly four thousand space colonists.
2260 The official founding date of Earth Central's Space Fleet.
2370-2500 The Near Space era begins. Governments of the Earth, the Moon, Mars, and the Jovian Clans (of both Jupiter and Saturn) form the Terran Federation.
2396 Launch of the first interstellar colony-ship The Slingshot takes place.

2553 The communication between the colony of Radamanthus at Proxima Centauri and the Terran Federation begins the Star Push. From 2500-2725 slower than light speed colony ships are regularly sent towards nearby star systems.

2720- The Belgian Drive and S-T Oscillation Enabler allows humanity to travel at speeds up to .9 the speed of light with only ten percent, or so, time dilation. "FLAT-Space", or faster than light travel with generational-scale relativity, is achieved. Lightyears can be crossed in months. This is the start of the War Star periods. 

Artwork by Randy Market (RandyBacon JediMarket)

Eberron 5ed.

Well a pleasant surprise occurred a couple of weeks ago, a dude that does "Quest Wise" Youtube gaming reviews featured Eberron for 5th Edition D&D. Now, I don't play that Other Game, me being a 2d6 troll. Meanwhile I should profess  a willingness to read any worthwhile roleplaying materiel.  On BTW, I have played T&T 5-7 to work out my visions of narrative fantasy. Do I profess to understand of this or that edition of D&D? It seems to find fans more than ready to argue about or be outraged over, but this setting has a soft spot with me. 

It was a few years back when the first 3/3.5 Ed. copy of anything D&D-wise that was not already published in previous editions. So I asked Peryton to pick up a copy of the latest along with her 35-1,234 pounds of other books that she has shipped into the household every other day. I have spent the last four days reading through the setting.

I don't have the 3+E release around my desk to compare the two. I did talk about the settings " because I was amazed that anyone would buy them. Still I bought every paperback, I think there were eight, involved.

It's still all about "After the Last War" atmosphere, but I don't quite remember it being so full of parallels with Europe of the end of the Great War. The countries from a fallen continental empire of kingdoms can be an allegory of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire or an extrapolation of Europe after "war to end all wars" in 1919. Indeed the newly independent countries have hallmarks like cheese or discipline to define themselves from one another-- speaking of the "old world," they have thrown in newspaper clips as side boxes for the delving reader.

I find that appealing.

It's a flavor of D&D is more of the experimental factions take on a non-Gygaxian humanocentric world. We're talking Monsters! Monsters! level of PC races (that's Kindreds, to my OGs; or species, or folk, or .... ) . Apparently once the player goes goblin, there's no hobbling a half-orc into things ...(but there is). These also some dragon-kin characters, known by their tails. Somethings called a deep-kin, Teifling(sp?), known to be a witchfolk of sort. These chances to play aliens in a D&D rules matrix are added to the regular sorts everyone that is into role-playing is familiar with (elves and cousins). There is a golem race that is for the munchkin but can be a race of androids worried about what movies like Star Wars never goes into.

Technology-wise, the authors steer away from the logical conclusion of steam-punk genres of having overly realistic weapons of mass destruction complete with stupendous magics. Nope, there are trains and blimps (sky-ships) but they're powdered by summoned elemental spirits. Ideologically, necromancy comes to fore as evil before the discussion of autocracy versus growing disenfranchised populations of the less than well-read. The Character is a strong focus of this campaign book. I suspect many middling GMs for D&D can run a romantic tale style campaign and start to earn their wings at letting the drama at the game table-top flow from the Players' take on the setting before them.

From a T&T delver's point of view, there is a lot to work with, I suggest staring out with a certain scenario that will help things along.