Friday Rucht Hour: Pathfinder Crew 2

All right, here's the second half of our Pathfinder party. We have three more for our total of six. All of these were painted by Nick. 

First up is our Paladin. In the Irish setting, this character is a knight for one of the local monasteries. Technically speaking, this character is a bit anachronistic. Such knights wouldn't have existed until later, but we included it to make the setting as inclusive as possible. Plus, my players aren't taking historical notes from me. This mini is actually the Pathfinder cavalier figure, but it works for our purposes just fine. 

Here he is from the back. The cross is actually a nice touch, breaking up the monotony of the big, black field on the shield. What's best is that it can easily painted over for another setting if needed. 

Here's our Pathfinder Witch character. The male witch in the party has been the black sheep. In medieval society, there was a fine line between being a wise healer and "OMG! He's a witch!" So, the witch character must tread lightly wherever he treads. 

Now, for the piece de resistance. This is Nick's personal mini - a Pathfinder Oracle. Not what most would picture for an oracle, right? This character has the blood of giants in him, accounting for his great size and strength. As an oracle, his is mostly blind, however, accounting for his white eyes. His great size and ability for foresight makes this character an excellent parallel to the Irish hero Finn MacCool. 

Nick heavily modded this figure.   The sword is a warjack sword from the Warmachine minis game. I love the holes in the sword - to make it little lighter, you know? It's colored a little differently because it's supposed to be made from goblyn metal. Nick also added the shoulder pads (from a warjack again) and the buckler to his wrist. 

All right, next time, we'll look at some of the baddies of Pathfinder.

Friday Rucht Hour: Now with Enech!

This post I will be returning back to our Pathfinder game set in Mythic Ireland. At this point, the crew is about mid-way through the second chapter of Rise of the Runelords.

What I want to talk about here is how I'm handling some of the magic items in the game and how that interacts with the environment of Mythic Ireland.

Magic weapons! They're real!

One thing I had to clear up with my group was the idea that our game was going to be a low-magic setting. For one, if you read Irish folklore, it's not a low-magic environment. Magic abounds. Magical events happen. People do superhuman things.

And magical items actually abound.

Check out this sword, below. It's a weapon of Celtic origin, from 60 B.C. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

The human form of the hilt—appearing as a geometric reduction of a classical warrior—must have been intended to enhance the power of the owner and to bear a talismanic significance.

So, there you have it - a magical sword. Items like this one and others like it were often crafted with details that were supposed to bring "luck" or "blessings in battle" to the wielder. The difference is, in societies with magical realism, a good luck charm isn't like a rabbit's foot, which we might carry with us to make us feel better. A lucky charm was considered to be the real thing.

So, right off of the bat, I intended for the campaign to feature things like this - magical items as part of everyday life. But juxtaposed with that would be the sense that even though these things were all around, they would never be treated as something mundane.

To also help with the idea of magical items, I'm putting in the idea of player characters self-enchanting items that they wield. The idea behind this is that in the hands of normal man, a bow is just a bow. But in the hands of Odysseus, a bow is a remarkable weapon capable of great feats.

So, just by picking up a weapon, a powerful warrior in my game can make a sword...a +1 sword. If he is truly worthy and capable, he might be able to make it a +1 thundering sword. Etc.

What determines the sorts of enchantments a person can put on an item? Enech. A word that means both honor and glory in ancient Ireland. A warrior was taught to constantly seek enech in his society, continually proving himself and his worth. Throughout our campaign, characters can seek out enech by accomplishing particular deeds.

Here are some examples:

• Rallying a group of people +3
• An act of exceptional bravery +1 to 5
• An act of exceptional cleverness +1 to 5
• Making a sacred oath +1 to 5
• Offering to take up a difficult quest for a noble or king +3 or +5
• Avenging the murder of a kinsman +5
• An exceptional performance before a noble audience +5
• Becoming renowned with a particular weapon +5
• Defeating an opponent in a duel +5
• Proving oneself as a good Christian +5
• Warrior class +5
• Acting as an intercessor with the Sidhe +10
• Bard, Barbarian, or Ranger class +10
• Becoming renowned as a good advisor +10

Here are some ways to lose enech as well:

• Breaking a sacred oath -30
• Angering the Sidhe -30
• Long-term tampering with dark powers -20
• Breaking one’s word -20
• Kin-slaying -20
• Arcane caster -10
• Associating with blasphemers -10
• Caught in a lie -10
• Failing in a quest -10
• Getting cursed -10
• Kinless -10
• Leading a profligate lifestyle -10
• Proving unable to fulfill a sacred oath -10
• Twisting the meaning of an oath -10

As characters progress in the campaign, they will have (and have had) opportunities to enhance their enech. As they do, they gain the ability to bestow items they pick up with magical power. Of course, as soon as these items leave their possession, they are no longer empowered.

Here are some examples of 30 point gifts.

• Make one weapon +1
• Make one weapon keen
• Make your water skin produce a potion of cure light wounds 3/day
• Luck - you can re-roll 1 skill check a day
• Blessing - you gain +1 Hero Points per level

Additional gifts can be gained for more points at 50 and 70 points. Each time a character gains a level, he can redistribute his enech gifts if he wishes.

Anyhow, this little addition has really worked for us. I hope you all can use this for your own games!

Friday Rucht Hour: A Gift from the Emerald Isle

Hello and happy Almost St. Patrick's Day!

For this holiday, I'm going to share my world guide that I wrote up for the Mythic Ireland setting. Find it here. For the campaign, I created some folders containing all of the house rules and setting information the players would need. I made sure that the material was short enough that the setting information fit on two pages, while the rules information fit on four.

The rules information, then, formed the folder that contained the players' character sheets and world guides. It's been very handy for them to bring their sheets back and forth from each session.

You'll note the rounded corners of the world guide and character sheets? Easily done with a corner cutter that you get from a scrapbooking supply store. Just by doing someone as small as cutting the corners of a character sheet, you give the materials you hand out that tiny bit of legitimacy. It makes the material feel more official.

World Guide - it fits on one page, front and back

Character Sheet

The house rules make a sleeve for the world guide and character sheet

Anyhow, I don't expect everyone to download the entire world guide, so I'll post an excerpt here.

Player Characters and Their Roles

Barbarians

In this setting, barbarians are either Viking berzerkers, trained secret rage techniques or are possessors of the riastradh – the Irish warp-frenzy. Either way, such individuals are viewed much like the Navy SEALs or special forces are looked upon today. They are seen as highly trained, highly skilled warriors with mysterious abilities.

Bards

Bards are not just minstrel or entertainers; they are honored keepers of lore and history. They occupy positions of political, cultural, and magical power. The mightiest bards are said to shape reality with their words. Being a bard in this setting will mean carrying a great deal of political responsibility and representing your clan with honor. You are seen as a keeper of knowledge and an authority figure.

Clerics

While monks and priest abound in this setting, only a few can cast spells. Those that do are known to be blessed and are sought after for their healing powers. They are seen as truly gifted individuals – walking and talking miracles. For many, you will be seen as their last hope for their sick loved ones. You will be seen as a mystical savior. Other clerics are actually scholars. These folk are not so much religious as they are learned men who are in tune with creation and its workings. Such men are seen more as scientists than religious leaders, and derive their powers through study and mediation.

Druid

Mythic Ireland is home to the druid. Druids are exclusively Pagan. While they live reclusively, they are sought out by all as advisers, sometime allies, and intercessors with the Sidhe. Being a Druid will mean that you viewed with a mix of awe and fear. You will be sought for your ability to interact with the Invisible World.

Fighters

The culture of Mythic Ireland is a warrior culture. Fighters are lauded with honor and respect. Being a fighter in this setting will mean that people will look up to you and pay homage to you, showing your deference. Most importantly, you are a prime representative of your clan. At the same time, you will be expected to be unfalteringly loyal to your chieftain.

Other character classes, like the Ranger, Wizard, Witch, and Oracle were also included. In fact, the only one we really left out was the Cavalier. The point was - I wanted to truly play a Pathfinder game, not a heavily modified and house-ruled one. So I went through each class and thought about where the class fit in the Mythic Irish setting. I was pleasantly surprised to find that most did actually fit.

All for now.

Friday Rucht Hour: Mythic Ireland

So, Modules
For a long while now, a friend of mine, Nick, has been pushing to play a Pathfinder Adventure Path. With all of the traction they’ve gotten, it’s not surprising.

And for a long while, I resisted running an Adventure Path, namely because the idea of running module, let alone a series of modules didn’t appeal to me...at first.

But then, I remembered my days playing Living Greyhawk and how much fun they were. I recalled how fun running something prepared can be. It allows the GM to really prep for each moment of the game, making sure it will be the best than it can be. In terms of minis and terrain, you can literally plan months in advance for those, giving you time and space to get some really gorgeous tables together.

Rise of the Runelords
So, after looking over some of Paizo’s Adventure Paths, I settled on Rise of the Runelords. What drew me to it was that it wasn’t just a D&D adventure, but it also had horror elements to it.


Also, I noticed that a lot of monsters and encounters in the Rise of the Runelords, if you nudged them a little this way or a little that way, could be Celtic in origin. Undead are obviously not Celtic. But goblins definitely are. Ogres are. Giants are.

Goblins in the Pathfinder system can be nasty.

So, I decided to move the adventure path over to Mythic Ireland.

The Fun of a Mythic Setting
Probably the most fun thing about a mythic setting like mythological Ireland, for me, is what makes the Conan stories so fun for me after all of these years. A question was asked the writers of the Conan RPG if the Hyborian setting was a low-magic or high-magic world. The answer was that it was both.

What they said was, and I paraphrase, that the world of Conan was steeped in magic. Wizards abound. Magic produces wondrous effects. But despite these grand powers being thrown about, the magic of the Conan stories is never treated as commonplace.

That, to me, is interesting and intriguing. It’s always cool to play in a world where magic is mysterious and unknowable. What is more intriguing is to play in a world where magic abounds...but is still mysterious. We dealt with that when we were putting Witch Hunter: The Invisible World together.

The reason these sorts of settings are fun for me is that they introduce an interesting tension. On the one hand, you have a society where magic part of everyday life. On the other, you have this deep, superstitious fear of it.

This was also one of the hardest concepts to get across to my players, because as soon as we were rooted in something quasi-historical, the thought was that it was going to be a low-magic game, but that’s not what I was looking for. Particularly if I wanted to run Rise of the Runelords.

The Rigors of Gaming in a Quasi-Historical Setting

So, that brings me to my next topic - historical gaming. I've done quite a bit of historical gaming. Both strictly historical (Boot Hill), quasi-historical (Vampire: The Dark Ages, Masque of the Red Death, Witch Hunter), and fantastic-historical (Deadlands).

When you decide to use history as a launching point of a game, you have to decide on how "accurate" and "historical" you want to be. Your adherence can range from the very strict to just winging it with what you know off of the top of your head.

There's no right or wrong here, just your preference as game master. The real challenge, then, is bringing your players up to speed with the degree of your historical strictness. Obviously, if you want to be fairly strict in your historical facts, then you need to be prepared to dump a lot of information on your players but do it without boring them with dry facts.

I personally like to do this by giving everyone a baseline level of information, and then as the game progresses, continue to add information as we go. In this way, the players can discover the tropes of the setting as they encounter them.

Some of the interesting things that I had to get through to my players:

• The Perception of Magic: It was very interesting to try to get my players to grasp the concept of a world where magic, science, superstition and religion all occupied the same space. For most people in this time period, for example, most people don't see much of a difference between a cleric and a wizard.
• The Fey, the Fey, the Fey: I really tried to hammer home the importance of the Faerie in Irish Folklore and the prominence they had in everyday life. From the time you woke up, to the time you went to bed, there were hundreds of little rituals that people in historical Ireland observed due to their belief in the fair folk. For example, in some parts, they kept their beds away from windows, so as not to get grabbed by a hag. When a farmer harvested his field, he kept one stalk standing so that the dryad that lived in the field would have a place to stay. Cutting down the last stalk in a field would mean killing the fey or making him move on, threatening a poor harvest in the next year.
• Bards: Interestingly enough, a lot of people were caught up in the D&D perception of the bard, which is as a sort of foppish, perhaps even decadent character. However, in this setting, bards hold a position of honor and are part of a king's court.
• The Ancient Church: Christianity in the 10th century was very different from how it is practiced today. However, it was difficult to hammer home how different this faith was from how it is practiced in the modern day.

Other Cultures, Other Times

For me, part of the fun of a historical setting is to explore older customs and the idiosyncrasies of the time period. For example, gaming in the Victorian Era is fun because of their adherence to rank, custom, etiquette and procedure. By playing with these tropes in mind, it helps transport you away to a different world, because you are being asked to act differently, think differently, and see the world differently.

That's one of the allures of playing in Medieval Ireland. More on that later.