Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

As you may have guessed from the name, a Harrow deck is a mystical set of cards used for telling fortunes. The second Pathfinder Adventure Path uses it as a running theme throughout, and the finalé (spoilers for general progression of the story in the link) includes rules for a mighty artifact known as the Harrow deck of many things, based on the ordinary deck of many things, one of the two most complicated magic items in any DMG (along with its fellow pile of cards, the deck of illusions), with more than twice as many effects in it. One on page 72 piqued my interest:

From this, we can infer either (a) that the artifact has the power to cause genie governments (which are run by beings close to gods in the core setting, not sure about this one) to accept same-sex marriage; or, even better, (b) that genie governments already accept same-sex marriage. (One might say the same thing about ladies proposing, although as far as I know that's always been a matter of tradition and not law.) The latter is the closest I've seen to any societal stand on the matter, as from what I've read, there are no such marriages depicted in the official works, and no particular opinion is given on those individuals who are in such a relationship or have such tastes.

Other related comments:

1. As you probably know, genies are based on the jinn of Muslim (and perhaps pre-Muslim) folklore, and their depiction in D&D and thus the OGL follows such inspiration (as illustrated by the fact that the genies, including the ones from the Plane of Water, are associated mostly with desert-originating, Middle-Eastern-themed humans in both the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk). If you assume that they follow such a culture in the absence of contradictory information, that would mean that they would allow same-sex marriage (because of the information above), but allow polygyny and not polyandry (by default). That sounds a bit confusing. . . .

2. In case you were wondering, The Marriage is the card connected to the lawful neutral alignment and the ability score Charisma. Its traditional meaning is "Union of persons or ideas"; as a morally neutral card, it is never misaligned and thus always means this. (This information is found in the article about Harrow in general in the premiere of the adventure path.) Of course, there's nothing to relate it to same-sex marriage except one effect of the wording of the first clause (instead of "a genie of the opposite sex," for instance) in the description of the artifact version, and the commercially available illustration appears to show opposite sexes (judging by the fact that the partner with the pecs has sideburns like the illustrator's protagonist in his Dungeon-serialized NPC-race comic, and the one without needs a strategically placed infant), but considering the fact that it's allowed by the card, one might consider this to mean that it's also allowed by traditional/civilized society and is neither moral nor immoral. In any case, I've never seen another magic item that has such a clause. (The Chinese lady from "Hǎo!" would like that.) Too bad it's only available by random draw.

3. "The genie's type ... [is] determined by the GM." This brings up the question, "What types are available?" In D&D, genies are split into a balanced mix of the four elements (air, earth, fire, and water) and the generic Material Plane ones. However, the layout of my cosmology is somewhat hard to explain due to the fact that the earth and water genies are only described in the Manual of the Planes in 3rd Edition/v.3.5, which means that they're not Open Game Content and thus are not allowed to be used by anyone except Wizards—which means no one, now that they've done away with D&D as we know it. Of course, we've seen that paizo is allowed to use some closed content, probably having gotten the rights when they were publishing Dragon and Dungeon, so maybe we'll get them back. Incidentally, although the illustrations of the deck for sale were made before the Harrow deck of many things, the "union" was emphasized by showing one of the partners distinctly watery and the other fiery.

4. The protagonist of "Private Club" (one of my shorts) would work very well in a story about this item. Unfortunately, there are two problems with that: (a) that names in Pathfinder products are Product Identity, so I can't sell it if it has specifics; and (b) that it's a very obscure topic, so no one would read it. So I probably won't bother to drawing it (even if I get around to drawing anything), and the ideas will just go to waste.

Since Thursday was my one night off, I stopped by the other side of town yesterday. Unfortunately, I had not realized that it was the release date of 4th-Edition D&D, so the clerk at the desk immediately asked me, "Have you gotten your books yet?" I made the mistake of telling the truth: that I had gotten a better deal elsewhere, which of course didn't make him and Carlos happy. They made fun of me for the fact that my copies hadn't been delivered yet. I neglected to mention (as a comeback, one of my principal weak points) the fact that, as over the last few months the Wizards have revealed more of their master plan to tell repeat customers to go to hell (as mentioned here), I wouldn't be buying them at all if I weren't intending to use them to save more than the money I paid for them.

Due to the fact that 4th Edition is trying its darnedest not to be D&D, there's also the problem of the theoretical chance of publishing my campaign setting. I have no intention of retconning it to the point of being 4th-Edition-friendly, so the only chance I would have of using the d20 System or something similar is if someone else ends up producing the books and allowing them, such as the Pathfinder RPG. The reason for this is that the d20 System requires you to note on each book that it requires the 3rd-Edition or v.3.5 Player's Handbook, which Wizards will obviously be discontinuing if they haven't already. The Pathfinder RPG is designed to allow people to continue to use v.3.5-compatible materials, so it would work with that, but I don't know whether they'll allow me to actually tell people to use it. I could instead use the OGL, but that would require publishing my own basic materials. Since this was designed as a D&D setting, that would mean either (a) repeating pretty much the same stuff that's in the Player's Handbooks and Pathfinder RPG or (b) changing the setting so that those have something original worth printing as well. The latter means completely reworking the setting, which may be a good thing considering that it's not very original so far, but it defeats the purpose of publishing something I've already developed if I have to go back and start from the ground up. Of course, the chances that I'll ever have the resources (money and name recognition) to do this are rather slim.

By the way, on the topic of the subject line, DUNKIN' DONUTS® CMs have nifty tunes, but the first two* have really dumb lyrics. The "doing stuff [things]" one is pretty self-explanatory (as is the issue with this one, the one for which it's not the creators who are stupid), but as Ms. Maelwaedd noted, it's an odd strategy to tell customers, "We understand your idiocy and provide for it!" The thing about this is, as with every spoken language except English (as far as I know), French and Italian have simple, consistent rules for how every word is pronounced. (lokodraucarn once tried to defend his mispronunciation of "coup de grâce" by saying, "I took German and Russian! No silent letters!" Yeah (again, a very belated comeback), I took Spanish and Japanese. That doesn't stop me using an American English dictionary. When I play a game where I have to vocalize a term often, it makes sense to know how to pronounce it and what it means.) A more common problem is trying to figure out which language the word is, but that's often easy, too.

*As usual, I tried looking for the videos to illustrate, but apparently now Google™ Video BETA doesn't index them anymore and instead has hardcore pornography openly displayed. (YouTube had both.) I never got that before.

Edit (2008.07.31): Easier to find when I get the lyrics right

My readership appears to be at an all-time high (apparently at least two regulars!), but I've accumulated quite a lot of stuff during its absence, to say nothing of my sloth and the fact that I've built up a lot of new things due to year's-end-and-beginning splurging. So, I'd like to see if you have any requests or suggestions. What I've got in the works is as follows:

( Ridiculously long notes )

By the by, I noticed in the rules that I'm not allowed to use anything that isn't either public domain or Paizo property. This means that I can't use my own stuff unless I'm willing to allow it to be public domain. I've tried tricking them in my entry by removing the names, but by the rules, it's illegal because I'm still basing it on my own stuff.

This will be more irritating if I get to the next round, because I'd have to design an entire fictional nation and allow it to be public domain. I was going to use the Empire of Altan, which isn't derived from anything I don't normally have the rights to use (including the name of the capital, which should be available as long as road names fall under the category of "Works created by an agency of the United States government"), but I'm not sure about making my home-brewed setting public domain.

A while back, I asked for help finding a book on world-building on an intraplanetary scale to supplement the big one. Unfortunately, none of my readers give a damn about creating fictional settings, so no one had any suggestions. So I gave up on that. However, a month or so ago, I fortuitously ran across exactly what I wanted at Castle Comics & Cards (which still doesn't have any presence on the Internet, as far as I know). It took me a while to wade through all that un-spell-checked text, but I'm ready to share my thoughts now.

Despite the lack of editing, the content itself is virtually beyond reproach. It's made for the d20 System, but that's probably only to boost sales, as it doesn't even include rules except in the appendix. The main body of the book is devoted to determining how Earthlike worlds (virtually the only choice in swords and sorcery) develop their geography, both topographical and cultural. The former is all based on real-world geology, except that they have rules for how magic works (which seems odd, since it's supposed to be non-setting-specific). I don't much like the illustration style, but that's not the point of the book.

Here are updates to a few planets using my new knowledge:

Asgard (Project Artificer): As I've mentioned before, I prefer to make settings in the Southern Hemispheres of their respective planets, just to counteract the usual pointless prejudice and make things a little less identical to Earth. Unfortunately, I also put the sea on the east and the mountains on the west for much the same reason. This means that for the region to have wind blowing off the sea (so it can be as wet and populous as I intended), it would have to be within the equator and 30° S, or between 60° S and the South Pole. I chose the former, because, as I noted last time, the planet is entering an ice age, and I wanted the mammoths, woolly rhinos, and all to have already evolved. This way, we can just say they've immigrated from farther south. The plate activity that created the Iron Peaks died down some time ago, but the volcanism was reactivated by the Revenant's Rending.

I've also looked more carefully at infrared light and found that it is radiated by objects in proportion to the heat they give off. In any case, the world would look pretty weird if it was viewed in that manner most of the time, so I'll assume that creatures are just better at picking up what little visible spectrum there is, or perhaps they get light from a star around which the brown dwarf orbits (which would result in a very complicated circadian rhythm). There may be occasions where I show the viewpoint of creatures with infrared vision, but for aesthetic purposes, I'd prefer that to be the exception rather than the rule.

Mannheim (Project Homuncupunk): As the land has all sunken beneath the sea and the City covers the planet, geography isn't as important as it is in many settings. I'll have to study underground settings a bit more carefully. I might give it a very small axial tilt since most people don't ever see the sun anyway, but that would make the year less interesting.

Nolav (Project Mése'ta): The focus area has much the same geographical characteristics as Alfheim on Asgard. In this case, just for variety, I chose to put this one below the 60th parallel. Presumably, the Sea of Empires doesn't stretch out too far to the east, so most of the polar easterlies get caught on the Teeth and don't get their moisture to the Wake—or the desolation might entirely be caused by lingering magic from the Pantheon Wars. I did have a problem with the fact that I had previously established that the day-night schedule was not hugely changed by the season, contrary to what you might expect from such a high latitude, but after further research, it appears that the 60° mark is fixed, regardless of axial tilt. Thus, if I put the tilt at 13° (just for good luck), there are still 17° of polar easterlies outside the Antarctic Circle. Below the Circle, on the Isle of Berserkers and the like, things get interesting, because there are long periods without daylight in the winter. This means that most deities favored there have prayer times at noon or midnight, not dawn or dusk, as the latter would cause their clerics to be unable to restore their spells as often. Whether due to fate or chance, there appears to be a hot spot on the North Bank, as there is not much volcanism in the Teeth.

The normal geological history does not work as well in this case, as (much contrary to most swords-and-sorcery settings) the world was only created 2,200 years ago. This means that all the tall mountains and deep oceans were scratch-built. (I don't know why the gods always make organic, natural-looking geography, but Earth's creation myths wouldn't work too well if they didn't. In Babylonian and Norse mythology, it's just because the world was made from the shattered body of a slain predecessor deity, but that won't work as well here, with the forces of law bringing order to Chaos. Perhaps they couldn't overcome it entirely, or perhaps the Pantheon Wars broke up the neat lines a bit.) There may not be interesting fossils, but there are areas where the primal Chaos from which genesis occurred may still remain or break through in some spots, which can be at least as interesting.

Ryttyr (Project FOBE OGL): The seasonal wars for territory are no doubt due to a severe axial tilt. If there were too much land along the equator, the two races would be able to live there all the time, so presumably their lands are connected only by a narrow isthmus, or even not at all, meaning both races must be seaworthy—or, even more interestingly, that when one end is winter and thus uninhabitable, the planet moves far enough from the star that the polar ice caps thicken and a landbridge rises from the sea. The cultural differences between the peoples of the two hemispheres are likely environmentally motivated. For instance, the continent in the Ryttyr's hemisphere might be experiencing large amounts of volcanism, causing mountainous terrain, where crossbows are more useful and mineral resources more plentiful, while the Rog lands are stable enough to grow thick forests, where they focus on mêlée combat. These are of course generalizations, but as long as a good proportion of the habitable space is such terrain, their societies as a whole will be strongly impacted.

As those of you from the Gnoll Patrol already know, I've created a Yahoo! Group to compile data on my projects. The chief benefit is the database function (which is sorted chronologically rather than alphanumerically, for some reason), but I will probably be the rest of my stuff online here in the future. There shouldn't be any need to join the group to access the information, but it would feed my fragile ego, at least. . . .

As usual, I'm getting caught up in planning all sorts of things without actually following through with much of any of them. This can be easily illustrated by my notes on future LJ posts:

[A 計劃]
Differences (AI, Soldier; humans: everyman or individual?; neutral or chaotic?)
Lanky
RAGNAROCK CITY (reproduction)
Zodiac (Srutt 13th, doesn't like rat and water, does like Third Trine, dodecagram; too many?)

[Élitism（仮）]
Able Learner, Diverse Background, Educated/Well Read, Skill Focus, other skill-bonus feats
Scouts (expert, warrior if not elf or gnoll but wants bows; Guerrilla Scout, Guerrilla Warrior)
Mix-and-match (expert for ninja/ranger/rogue/scout, warrior for barbarian/fighter/ranger/samurai)
Equipment packages

[Incest（仮）]
...

[Index Astartes: Storm-Daemons]
Mk1 for Scouts
Mk2 loincloths
Belief of not showing face similar to Redemption, but not belief of recruits, as original homeworld lost
Rearming priorities
Segmentum Tempestus

[感想（仮）]
BLEACH 10–17, 19–20 (100; ____-Fung; bomb)
Comic YuriHime VOL.8 (different cover; sefrie; Aoi Shiro; Sudō fight!; nice new serials (Suō-chan desu wa); first yuri?; S and Selection? (Eiki cover!))
Diamond9! (Fourth batter?; doping; odd premise; fickle Yuzuriha)
Gakuen Like Love life (white uniforms and colored pants)
GUNSMITH CATS BURST 3 (to Hollywood, or not to Hollywood; Kyōto dialect)
Hatsukoi no Kyōyū (oops)
Irregular Webcomic (T. rex; ridiculous variety of LEGO; brown hair?; have some minis; http://irregularwebcomic.net/1246.html; goofy expressions; http://irregularwebcomic.net/1502.html)
Legostar Galactica (couldn't wade through bad punctuation, etc.)
Machi-Kado Hana-Dayori (...)
MY OTOME Zwei 2 (Ishigami(n); Ms. Marguerite ↓; Ms. Himeno very changed; Ms. Wang back; Ms. Hallard)
PILGRIM JA:GER 2–6 (ridiculous numbers of characters; famous historical personages; reason for cross-dressing?; Buonarotti and Pufau)
Saint October 1 (more tarot, Arcna City; nothing special; comics better)
Sakura no Kiwa 3 (laid-back)
SCAPE-GOD (weird but oddly meaningful?; secrets of Bush admin; gozu/mezu)

[こいつに教えてもらった]
...

[南斗の拳]
Ambidexterity
Chinese ("Auntie")
Dexterity
Gluttony
Hate hate hate hate
Hayashiya, Nanase, Sakura, Morinaga, Reynolds, Akamatsu
Impulse buy/can't resist a deal
Make JEOPARDY!, not WHEEL OF FORTUNE
Michael Corleone, Alfredo Pacino
Not metrosexual—can't stand housework
Wisdom

[Second Son of Soong]
Camera
Corporal punishment
Quest limit
Tauren ranged weapons
The trouble with travels

[Soft Town]
History: Chosen for metaphysical, not geographical features; If you want it done right, get a dwarf to do it—thus now their home in exile (Barzak, Glorgyth, Nuradann)
Demographics: Humans (mostly Imperial), orcs (mostly half-), halflings (mostly lightfoot), dwarves (mostly hill), gnomes (mostly rock), elves (mostly half-), planetouched (apparently mostly aasimars)
Religions: Ambi?theos, Pantheos Dexter, Pantheos Sinister, Bolero, Ured (agreement with Pantheos church not to convert living citizens), halfling pantheon, gnome pantheon; other Demiurge-associated deities and Atheos persecuted by Pantheos Dexter; Hezrack and orc pantheon in Scarborough; dwarf and elf pantheons outside city limits
The Market: Biggest neighborhood, home to most business, halflings, Wakers, gnomes; Maester Munster
The Old City: Mausolea, run by dwarves of Ured (rumored Barakkh too), could substitute for duergar mummy crypt; ironically, mostly human construction, but dwarves rebuild collapses in their own style, clan graves in most heavily rebuilt area (from disaster?); poor all in one mound
Scarborough: Half-orcs can get pre-confirmed passage from courts; otherwise, often harassed by gate guards; most buildings connected; sewer entrances to Old City bricked up; gangs replace tribes; wererats
The Triangle Palace: Embassies (dwarven king now living there)
The Guild of the Black Hand: Based in Scarborough, but has other locations, particularly in Old City; Orcs & Humans (some halflings, but few dwarves/elves/gnomes/goblinoids); leader unknown, but enforcers Maim and Rend legendary; assassins form highest tier; rumored to also have labyrinthine training/execution area with minotaurs; devotees to Pantheos Sinister, Ambi?theos, Bolero, Hezrack
Albert's Locks: Heavy garrison
The Emerald Crown: Structures not tolerated; also royal hunting grounds
The Killing Field: Orcs not near here due to low ground

["Strange" Is a Relative Term（仮）]
Multimedia
Text editing/capitalization
Noses!
Sound effects

Any requests?

One of my fellow players in Dungeons of Greater Lafayette suggested that we try another campaign for his sons, who I assumed are not terribly experienced roleplayers. This meant that I would want to try a lower-level campaign than the Gnoll Patrol. I was also interested in trying a slightly different theme from the medieval swords and sorcery that have provided the bulk of my experience so far, and the result was this:

Long ago, when the plane of Nolav was first colonized, the region north of the Teeth was a land of green, rolling hills as far as the eye could see. But that soon changed over the years of the Pantheon Wars. By now, only the oldest dragons can remember the area now known as the Wake as anything but a huge expanse of sand and stone.

Many nations have been born and died out in the Wake over the last two millennia, but the strongest current power is the Harkonnen Dynasty, reigning over the Bloodstream that brings life to the desert. The flame-haired King Henira rules with an iron fist, watching over his lands from the pinnacle of his palace-temple in the Desert Capital. In the regions he cannot spare the time to monitor personally, his many sons spread his word, leading his legions to crush any dissent.

However, away from the fertile land in the river valley, other groups claim their own regions of the wastes. Wild painted elves and packs of savage gnolls wander the lands following the herds of rothé [bison], while orcs emerge from their caves at night to raid for slaves and land. None of the races gets along with any other, and even tribes of the same people may fight with each other over resources or ancient feuds.

But there is one "safe" haven where all races are more or less welcome: Mongrel Gulch (sometimes affectionately called "Mongrelch"), the wretched hive of scum and villainy set in a ravine at the foot of the Teeth. There, members of all the desert peoples rub shoulders, along with half-breeds and those whose races are unidentifiable or unknown. The main body of the population is made up of outcasts from less accommodating groups, but racial hatreds and personal grudges still have their place here. Showdowns between lazy-eyed swordslingers are a regular sight on Main Street, and the town's biggest saloon throws out shattered furniture (and patrons) on many a morning as a result of a bar-fight the night before.

It was only a few months ago that a lone half-elf bard announced her plan to clean up the lawless town. Miss Kitty's radical ideas were hardly the majority opinion of Mongrel Gulch's denizens, but her supporters were the ones with the motivation to go to the polls and elect her mayor. Although she has little power over the stubborn townsfolk, Miss Kitty is persuasive enough that she was able to convince the notoriously lazy gnoll sheriff, Thrasher, to get off his barstool and look for some new deputies to keep the peace (so he doesn't have to do it himself).

Now a new type of wanted poster can be seen posted around town among the usual "dead or alive" ones: the "help wanted" poster from the sheriff's office. Applicants are expected to be capable of handling themselves in fights and of ranging a few days' ride from town to deal with bandits. The number of positions available is not fixed, but the group should ideally include:

If an individual can meet more than one of these needs, then all the better, as she can serve as a backup or reduce the total number of deputies needed. No one will be turned away because of race or sex, and there's a "don't ask, don't tell" policy for alignment. Room and board will be provided (within reason) by the sheriff's office, along with finders' rights on goods confiscated from criminals and outlaws.

Now all that remains is to see who turns up to apply for the job. . . .

This campaign is intended to use the same rules as the Gnoll Patrol, but they are, as always, negotiable. Each character will start with 6,000 XP, which puts him at ECL 4, unless he chooses to spend XP on multiclassing penalties, self-crafted magic items, or reducing level adjustments. A character may take most any magic item he can afford with his 5,400 gp. Due to the setting (a large town in a temperate sandy/rocky desert), one may be well advised to check out the character options in SANDSTORM.

Those of you who played in the second season of the Gnoll Patrol may remember that I had a "master spell list" that I had compiled (starting with the SRD and adding from there) of the spells from most of the v.3.5 sources I had. Well, I've updated that a bit. I've added some new books (including the 3rd Edition Magic of Faerûn), fixed formatting that was broken when I foolishly tried to use it in OpenOffice.org despite the fact that it was made by Wizards and thus is only designed to be accommodated by more commercial software, and noted a few things that I still need to fix. If anyone's interested, it's available as a 67-kB zipped RealText file here.

On Saturday night, I was just about ready to offer players of the Vanari Campaign places in the Gnoll Patrol, but I chickened out at the last moment. The part that probably influenced this decision the most was the fact that we had several reasonably heated rules arguments during that night's session. However, when I think about it, I also worry about the fact that the people there know a lot more about fantasy (and historical) settings than a rules lawyer like myself. I don't imagine I would handle being corrected by my players very well.

Just to prove the merits of halfheartedly beating a dead horse (a brutally misused cliché in this case), I have partially updated the Empire of Altan section of the Gnoll Patrol. I really should get a proper background set up there, but it really doesn't matter if there's no one to play it, now does it?