Just to remind everyone that this is about a game, today i'm posting a feature entry.

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62Duellists Guild House

"Move your feet!" Drillmaster Fleetfoot yelled. The apprentice duellists were struggling with the regime. They all did at first, but after a few months of the intensive programme, they started to move fluidly from memory instead of stumbling about like newborn lambs, like they were now.

Fleetfoot danced lightly behind the slowest apprentice and hooked his legs out from under him. He landed with an, "Oomph!" of shock and looked up indignantly at the drillmaster.

"That won't happen in a duel!" he moaned.

"That's where you're wrong, sonny," snarled Fleetfoot. "You never know what's going to happen in a duel. One day it's a polite 'how'd you do?' and the next it's flung sand, knees in the groin and gouges in the eye." The drillmaster offered a hand to the offended apprentice, who took it reluctantly. "Get used to the unexpected and you won't get surprised."

Player Character Information
Stat Mods: Manual Dexterity +1, Bearing +1
Occupational Skills: Rapier (Manual Dexterity) 3, Intimidate (Bearing) 2, Ingratiate (Bearing) 2, Drinking (Physique) 1, Athletics (Physique) 1
Status: 2

Disposable Income: 2 bits per session

Goods: signature rapier (9 crowns), duellists banner (5 bits)

Services: Retained on staff (5 pennies per day), Duels: minor dispute (4 bits), major dispute (3 crowns), minor trial (8 bits), major trial (6 crowns),

Description

The castle is old beyond measure and so are many of the cultures that have grown up within its walls. Each cultural area has created its own laws and customs over the years, some of which can be rather bizarre. On the saner end of the scale are duelling laws. Many areas have legal loopholes, specific laws, or common law that allows disputing parties to settle their differences by duelling. Over the years, the burden of the duel has fallen from the protagonists to professional duellists, who train specifically for the purpose. These men and women are drilled and taught in the Duellist Guild House. These establishments have drill rooms, practise yards, sand rings for mock bouts, and bathing areas for tired fighters to relax in. Large guilds ring with the clash of metal and bark of drillmaster from dawn to dusk and in effect hold whole communities within their walls. Small guilds might have a dozen fighters who are hired out from a small private yard and dormitory building.

Most duels are no longer to the death – the disputing parties on whose behalf the duel is to take place arrange the specifics. Most commonly, the duel is until a certain number to blows have been landed, one of the duellist's surrenders, or a set time limit has elapsed, after which time the winner is judged to be the fighter who fought with most style and finesse.

Duellists are sometimes hired to settle trials, as well as local disputes. As such, powerful men and women sometimes court them. The neutrality of the duellist is meant to be sacrosanct, but this doesn't stop some folk from trying to buy them off. A more common way of making sure your favourite duellist never comes up against your representative is to keep him on a retainer to guarantee his availability in future cases. This is the dream job for many a duellist.  

Some guilds have a code of honour, whilst others do not. This makes for interesting bouts should members of competing guilds meet in the ring. One thing that all guilds have in common is the requirement that their members have their own heraldic banner to identify them and that they have a personalised rapier made to specification upon graduating from apprenticeship. The underworld knows that stealing a duellist's blade is a high-risk venture and so seldom attempt it.

A Day in the Life

Duellists tend to have a set fitness and practise routine, which has been honed over the years to their individual requirements. They take to the practise yard early and complete their forms before retiring to the shade to compete in mock bouts with their fellows. If they have a duel to fight, then they prepare in their personal way, which often involves set rituals such as eating certain types of food, dressing in a certain manner and so on. Duellists often have to travel the horizon to fight their duels, which can keep them from the guild house for days at a stretch. Whether close to home, or far from it, returning from a duel is a cause for celebration – lessened somewhat if the duellist lost. The best that a duellist can expect in the course of his work is to be held on a household retainer by a rich employer.

Duellists can become celebrities in the local area, which makes clandestine activities difficult, but you take the rough with the smooth.    

Local Area

There are no special instructions for this feature.

GM Information – Problems, Politics & NPCs

Duellists Guild Houses can sometimes be Elitist (see Politics table). If this is the case, create 1 problem as usual and implement both results. Otherwise, there are no special instructions for this feature.

After 2 months straight working on the game, i've had a bit of a rest the last couple of weeks. I'm back on the ball again now and entering the last 6 weeks of work. Huzzah!

Quote from: One Horse Town;293198After 2 months straight working on the game, i've had a bit of a rest the last couple of weeks. I'm back on the ball again now and entering the last 6 weeks of work. Huzzah!

My playtest is going well. The players love their characters! They wanted to go exploring, though, and none of them used Affiliations and Rivalries. This will bite them in the rump when they come back to Mount Thunderbad after finding a caravan route through the recent lava flows...

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;293225My playtest is going well. The players love their characters! They wanted to go exploring, though, and none of them used Affiliations and Rivalries. This will bite them in the rump when they come back to Mount Thunderbad after finding a caravan route through the recent lava flows...

-clash

Sounds most excellent!

My group went up a level the other week. Went pretty smoothly. The noble now has a Status score of 5! She's got an Affiliation score of 2 with the head Diviner in the region which she uses to get personal staches of the halucinagen popular in the area. Always bleedin' stoned...

Quote from: One Horse Town;293226Sounds most excellent!

My group went up a level the other week. Went pretty smoothly. The noble now has a Status score of 5! She's got an Affiliation score of 2 with the head Diviner in the region which she uses to get personal staches of the halucinagen popular in the area. Always bleedin' stoned...

Hehe! I wanted someone to try out A & R, but they were all focused on Advantages and Signature Moves - which they LOOOOOVE, BTW!

I was extremely impressed by how logically the area came together using only the player's choices of home features. It all makes sense, which is marvellous. I'll have to post up my schematic map of Mount Thunderbad when I get home...

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;293228Hehe! I wanted someone to try out A & R, but they were all focused on Advantages and Signature Moves - which they LOOOOOVE, BTW!

Cool! I thought i was a bit light on explaining them. I'll be interested in hearing your group's thoughts.

QuoteI was extremely impressed by how logically the area came together using only the player's choices of home features. It all makes sense, which is marvellous. I'll have to post up my schematic map of Mount Thunderbad when I get home...

-clash

Groovy. When the dust has settled on the initial releases, i was thinking about writing a whole political area (which should run to 16 or so features) for a ready to use game somewhere down the line. We could use the 2 playtest games for half of it, if you're up for a bit of co-authorship on that one!

Quote from: One Horse Town;293231Cool! I thought i was a bit light on explaining them. I'll be interested in hearing your group's thoughts.

One thing I will do is put an explanation of what Signature Moves are into the CharGen section. A full description can go in the system section, where the Playtest package has it, but something needs to be in CharGen.

QuoteGroovy. When the dust has settled on the initial releases, i was thinking about writing a whole political area (which should run to 16 or so features) for a ready to use game somewhere down the line. We could use the 2 playtest games for half of it, if you're up for a bit of co-authorship on that one!

That would be a lot of fun!

I forgot to upload my map, though! Got involved in cooking dinner - miso pork, which kicked ass! - and my intention just... wandered away. A senior moment...

-clash

Here's Mount Thunderbad:



The ladder-like connections mean that the connected features are on different levels. The parallel line connections mean those features are on the same level. the Warlord's Compound in particular - home of the ruling Duke - is built on a cliff ledge.

-clash

Cool, Clash! I notice the diviners have set up camp closest to the volcano. Must be the fumes!

Quote from: One Horse Town;293739Cool, Clash! I notice the diviners have set up camp closest to the volcano. Must be the fumes!

Exactly! That was my thought entirely. It all made so much sense! The random generation system really works!

Mount Thunderbad is a stable, more or less continuously active volcano which puts out frequent flows of lava rather than blowing it's top occasionally with ash and pyroclaustic flows. The Armorers, Smiths and Weaponsmiths are all using volcanic heat, as are the Scrubbers and Laboratories. Recent lava flows have cut off land access east and west, and the Duke doesn't like being at the mercy of the Docks - the Pirate Ships are even less trustworthy. He's commissioned the PCs to find a viable caravan route over, under, and/or through the flows.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;293749Exactly! That was my thought entirely. It all made so much sense! The random generation system really works!

Phew! 2 years nearly went up in smoke!

QuoteMount Thunderbad is a stable, more or less continuously active volcano which puts out frequent flows of lava rather than blowing it's top occasionally with ash and pyroclaustic flows. The Armorers, Smiths and Weaponsmiths are all using volcanic heat, as are the Scrubbers and Laboratories. Recent lava flows have cut off land access east and west, and the Duke doesn't like being at the mercy of the Docks - the Pirate Ships are even less trustworthy. He's commissioned the PCs to find a viable caravan route over, under, and/or through the flows.

-clash

Awesome! If it helps you, i've made both the Pirate Ships and Bandits Camps features problems in their own right. They still have a problem created for it, but the feature itself is considered to be a problem to the local area. Therefore, if the PCs find a way to solve the problem of the feature just being there, they go up a level.

Quote from: One Horse Town;293757Awesome! If it helps you, i've made both the Pirate Ships and Bandits Camps features problems in their own right. They still have a problem created for it, but the feature itself is considered to be a problem to the local area. Therefore, if the PCs find a way to solve the problem of the feature just being there, they go up a level.

That does indeed help! Maybe it will inspire them.

-clash

Sigh...disaster strikes and leaves me downbeat and fucked off...

A software glitch have lost me my files. My last backup was 26th January. Some 40-odd feature entries have been lost. Luckily, i sent some more up to date files to both Clash and Jon, which means that when i get them back, i'll only have lost 20-odd feature entries to re-write.

I'm not in the mood to start just yet, but when i do that'll be 3 weeks of work to re-do before i get to where i was.

The planned release dates are going to change.

Quote from: One Horse Town;298212Sigh...disaster strikes and leaves me downbeat and fucked off...

A software glitch have lost me my files. My last backup was 26th January. Some 40-odd feature entries have been lost. Luckily, i sent some more up to date files to both Clash and Jon, which means that when i get them back, i'll only have lost 20-odd feature entries to re-write.

I'm not in the mood to start just yet, but when i do that'll be 3 weeks of work to re-do before i get to where i was.

The planned release dates are going to change.

Ouch! I'll see if I can get your files back to you, Dan!

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;298243Ouch! I'll see if I can get your files back to you, Dan!

-clash

Cheers, dude! The really galling thing is that just a couple of days before my PC went bang, i thought it was about time to do another back-up copy, but i put it off...with fucking predictable results. :mad: