"The world is dying. The oceans batter the coastline with waves fifty feet high, fiery rocks hurtle from the sky to destroy towns, winter snows lie in a killing blanket twenty feet deep over the land, lakes are vaporised by a sun that is no longer benign and great rents open in the earth to swallow communities whole. It is here, at the towers of the orders of the cabals that the survivors flock - the great and the small. Huge shantytowns ring our hallowed halls, filled to the brim with all that is left of beauty, art, fortitude in the face of hideous hardship and the power centres that once ruled mighty empires. It is here, where we can shelter the survivors from the worst disasters, that stragglers come in daily, hoping that we have an answer – praying that we have an answer."

"To which I say to them 'we're working on it'. The change in the towers has been astounding. Orders that were once at each other's throats over the smallest thaumaturgical dispute now work in concord to save those folks who are left. To you the reader, I leave some instructions, should our efforts come to naught or a mighty asteroid avoid our screening and blast the last sorry remnants of humanity from the face of the earth. I hope that there are others, and should they stumble upon our graves, this missive will give them hope and instruction on how to continue our work."

"The orders have long known that there are a multitude of worlds other than this one in existence. What waits there is anyone's guess – our bodies are too fragile to make the transition to them. But this catastrophe has hastened research into this field, with all orders lending their own expertise to the attempt. After months of labour, our first team of planar explorers are ready to go where no man has gone before. Other worlds. You may ask how we are now able to withstand the flows of the vortex that separates worlds where before we could not? That would be a very good question. I have lowered the instructions into a reinforced vault. Everything you need is found there and our labs are also sealed within the earth and protected by spell and iron. They should be safe."

"The answer to the question is simple. Our bodies do not travel through the vortex, only our minds and consciousness, carried in vessels of iron, marble or copper. We have devised a method by which artificial bodies that can withstand the vortex may carry us on our explorations to find a new, safer world. What our first mission will find is a mystery, but their bravery in this initial mission is greater than that of the Gods. Plato the Guardian is carried within the crystal heart of a ruby automaton, his sword carried in unflinching hands. Neptune the Supplicant carries the word of the Gods with him to other worlds, his voice of power issuing from the hardened leather form of the dragon that he now wears. The Artificer Ra has grafted two additional pairs of arms to the alabaster myrmidon that carries his knowledge. The Diplomat Alfred the Great sings with words that chime with pitch perfection from the brass throat of his porcelain courtesan. Last, but not least, my brother cabalist from the Order of the Griffon Ascendant, Ling Chung, accompanies them in the body of a tar raven, his enchantments at the ready."

"It is in the hands of these heroes that our fates lie. Will they find a world with room to spare for us, a world that does not threaten us with death at every breath, a world that we may call our new home? Only time will tell. And if these brave souls do not succeed, then others will take their places, with bodies fashioned to their needs to carry them to our salvation."

"Now, should we fail, and reading this you marvel at my telling and at the facilities below your feet, then it falls to you to continue our work. It is not yet complete, you see. Even should we find a place that we may call home, we have many thousands of people to take there. That's a lot of vessels to make and many years work. Of more concern, is that we have yet to find a way to take ourselves bodily to other worlds. Are we doomed to live forever within constructs even if we do flee to safety or is there a way that we can 'switch bodies'? It is this that we are currently working on and the research that you must continue should we fail. If our constructs work, and if we find a world that will take us, and if we manage to construct thousands of vessels to carry the remnants of our people to safety, then we will need to work a mighty magic that will swap the constructs bodies with our own, whilst keeping our faculties intact and not letting our fragile flesh come into contact with the vortex. It is a mighty undertaking, my friends, and one that may even be doomed to failure, but as my mentor once said, 'small steps Zeus, small steps. Taken one step at a time, even the longest journey can be accomplished'."

"So, to any reading this letter amongst my ashes, I say – 'small steps friend, small steps'."

Zeus – Commander General of the Order of the Griffon Resplendent.

Come up with a funky dice mechanic for this one. Tentatively named the SDT system (although that's a bit close to STD for comfort, so it might have to change! . That stands for the Success - Degree - Time system, where each roll determines, you guessed it, success, degree of success and if necessary the time taken to achieve that success.

It looks like this.

Example: Bob the thief is trying to pick the lock to the crypt door whilst his buddies are fighting off some critters. His Lock Picking skill is 55%/2d6. So he rolls percentile dice and 2d6 for the attempt. The % roll tells him if he has succeeded and the 2d6 tells him the degree of that success. He rolls 43% and 7 on his skill attempt. Success! What's more, his success number is 7. This is matched against the difficulty of opening the lock (the success number gained by the lock smith in his craft roll!) which is 9. Because Bob succeded (got under his % chance) it doesn't matter that he hasn't met the difficulty of the lock - his attempt simply takes him into the next round, where (as he's already succeeded) he rolls his 2d6 again, hoping to take his success number over the difficulty of the lock. He can't miss. He only needs 2 more. He rolls 5 and the lock opens. What's more, he can attempt another action this round with a -2 to his success number (the amount carried over from last round). If he beat the success number in the first round, he simply takes a round (the time period decided upon by the GM for the attempt) to unlock it.

Quote from: One Horse TownCome up with a funky dice mechanic for this one. Tentatively named the SDT system (although that's a bit close to STD for comfort, so it might have to change! . That stands for the Success - Degree - Time system, where each roll determines, you guessed it, success, degree of success and if necessary the time taken to achieve that success.

It looks like this.

Example: Bob the thief is trying to pick the lock to the crypt door whilst his buddies are fighting off some critters. His Lock Picking skill is 55%/2d6. So he rolls percentile dice and 2d6 for the attempt. The % roll tells him if he has succeeded and the 2d6 tells him the degree of that success. He rolls 43% and 7 on his skill attempt. Success! What's more, his success number is 7. This is matched against the difficulty of opening the lock (the success number gained by the lock smith in his craft roll!) which is 9. Because Bob succeded (got under his % chance) it doesn't matter that he hasn't met the difficulty of the lock - his attempt simply takes him into the next round, where (as he's already succeeded) he rolls his 2d6 again, hoping to take his success number over the difficulty of the lock. He can't miss. He only needs 2 more. He rolls 5 and the lock opens. What's more, he can attempt another action this round with a -2 to his success number (the amount carried over from last round). If he beat the success number in the first round, he simply takes a round (the time period decided upon by the GM for the attempt) to unlock it.

Interesting system, OHT.  But that seems like a) a lot of math for some, and b) some bookkeeping to track round to round if you've hit the difficulty yet.

Any play with this yet to see how it flows?

Quote from: James J SkachInteresting system, OHT.  But that seems like a) a lot of math for some, and b) some bookkeeping to track round to round if you've hit the difficulty yet.

Any play with this yet to see how it flows?

Yeah. The round to round stuff will only be relevant to some activities. I'll have to break it down a tad more first before it becomes workable. For example, combat will not have the round to round calculations. Succeed, but don't beat the difficulty? You've been parried. Need to do some twiddling, but hopefully it'll come together and be fairly intuitive in the end.

The success roll feels somewhat arbitrary in this case.  I'm not seeing the advantage of doing it that way as opposed to just basing it on how well you beat the initial success roll by.  Other then I suppose simplifying the math somewhat.  If you are just going for different, for the sake of different that's fine.  But ideally there should be a logic to it.

Quote from: kryystThe success roll feels somewhat arbitrary in this case.  I'm not seeing the advantage of doing it that way as opposed to just basing it on how well you beat the initial success roll by.  Other then I suppose simplifying the math somewhat.  If you are just going for different, for the sake of different that's fine.  But ideally there should be a logic to it.

I've done it this way for 2 reasons. 1st, developing your character can be done in a 'i'm steady and succeed a lot, getting decent success' or 'i'm not great at what i do, but when i get it right, it's great!' IE, you can increase either the chance to succeed or the degree dice (or both over time). The 2nd reason is that i'm going to have a self-modification system where the player decides how he will tackle the skill. Lower your chance of success for a greater degree of success or up your chance of success for a lesser degree.

So the lock picker confronted with the lock above (who's skill is 55%/2d6) might decide to try to make sure he succeeds by upping his chance by 20%, which will deduct 1d6 from his degree of success roll (75%/1d6), or he might do the opposite and lower his chance of success by 20% to gain an extra 1d6on his degree of success roll (35%/3d6). This reflects his ability to do simple stuff more easily or harder stuff less easily, but leaves the decision as to when this manifests to the player. The GM informs the player as to the expected difficulty of the task (IE, it looks like a simple lock) and leaves it to the player to decide how he uses his skill.

When creating a world for PCs to visit, the generalities are created by using the random creation tables found in this section - from which ideas on how to expand them can flow.

Before you do that however, each world needs to have a profile created for it. This represents the sort of character best suited for the challenges found on that world. The profile headings are: -

Threat Level
Trade Level
Technology Level
Civilisation Level
Enchantment Level

Each heading is given a rating of 0-10 (details on what this means in game terms can be found later). These ratings correspond to the combined rank of PC that is best suited to meet the challenge. Setting a threat level of 4 would mean that the world is somewhat hostile - perhaps there are wars, or lots of beasts, or atmospheric considerations. These threats are best coped with by wilderness experts, martial experts and the like. So, this world's threats would be ideal for a party that contains characters whose Ranks in those areas equal 4, such as the Guardian or Guide. Likewise, Trade Level equates to characters like the Artificer and Fixer, Technology to the Cabbalist & Archivist, Civilisation to the Diplomat and Enchantment to the Supplicant.

In this manner, you can tell at a glance which mix of characters are best suited to adventuring on which worlds. Some example worlds are contained in the appendix.

But, the vortex being what it is, chances are that a lot of the time, parties will be outmatched in some areas, whichever world they are exploring.

23rd day of the Tempest – report of Guardian Captain Gilgamesh on the 'world of bells'

We emerged from the vortex after a most unpleasant journey. Our Guide, Sir Arthur was violently ill from the trip and we had to take a spell to adjust to our new surroundings. We had spilled out into a rustling forest glade, not unlike those found near the towers before the hurricanes came. The light was fading and the golden sun was slowly sinking below a horizon barely glimpsed beyond the bowers of the forest. Birds sang and crickets chirped; it was such an unthreatening experience that we all subconsciously let our guard down. When the noise came, it took us totally by surprise. The dusk air was rent by the chiming of a thousand bells. I've never heard such beautiful music in all my life. Not even Artificer General Stone Ribs' great organ could match it. It moved me to tears on the spot and affected the others similarly. Before we knew what was happening, we had packed up our gear and were walking across tilled fields towards a small town in the distance. Files of people came from all directions, their faces enraptured and sweet salt tears streaming from their eyes. There must have been thousands of us shuffling over the fields towards the town and the sweet music. Our minds were all but gone – all that penetrated the fog of my mind was the music, pulling and urging. I started to feel some unease that this was not natural, but could do nothing to resist the lure.

Luckily for us all, cabalist Iscariot muttered a spell that broke the enchantment and our minds were our own again. Nevertheless, intrigued by the experience, we followed the stream of people (incidentally, they looked and sounded just like us in our world!) to the town. They were too enraptured to notice our outlandish countenances, which was fortunate, for I feared that this was not as welcoming a place at it seemed. The people streamed into the buildings of the town and lights started to peek through the curtained windows. Not long after this amazing spectacle, we heard the sound of marching feet from up the street and we decided to hide from prying eyes. A troop of armoured forms started entering houses and from some they dragged unresisting folk. What happened to these folk is difficult to describe – suffice to say that the fiends in the armour killed them and consumed the remains. Not a murmur escaped from the victims' throats as they succumbed.

We left as soon as we could from that place. We suspect that some kind of monstrous race hold the apparently human population of that world in slavery – the music calling them to their deaths. We do not recommend further contact with this world, unless we have few alternatives. I recommend this 'world of bells' be added to those other worlds labelled low priority. The only reason I can see for returning is to ascertain the heritage of the poor townsfolk. If we wish to help them, we would have to go in strength. I leave it to your august wisdom to decide our coarse of action.

Gilgamesh.  

The profile for the 'World of Bells' looks like this.

Threat Level 5
Trade Level 0
Technology Level 3
Civilisation Level 2
Enchantment Level 4

Although the group did not stay too long, they fell foul of the enchantment of the bells, but thankfully had a strong Cabbalist with them. Should they have fought the inhuman guards, they might have been in some trouble, as Gilgamesh's Guardian is the only warrior in the group.

(these are rough skeches at the moment. The maths is still coming...)

This is dead. However, parts of it have been folded into another project - something that i did a lot of work on in a past Rolemaster campaign. Now, it's getting its own system.

Details to follow once i get my finger out on some SH stuff...