Weapons of all Flavors

I have been beating my head against a wall for some time about weapons in the book.  Not because the weapons are important...they probably will not be important at all.  But because they offer a guide post for the creation of other weapons and can help to arm an NPC in an unexpected encounter.

See in Manifest Destiny the RPG, I have included a system for the creation of weapons and armor.  This system is simple and can be altered, modified, and added to quite easily.  The reason I think the weapons I am making right now will be irrelevant to the player is because most players will probably look to make things that are far better then the vanilla weapons I am putting forth.  So with this it is easy to see that anything a player will make, unless limited by the cost or the GM, will be better then what I am making now with the same system.

So that leaves what I am making in the real of the GM and how that person plans to use the things I am making.  In most cases I see the items as fodder for NPC's and basic gear.  Something that is easy to reference and add on the fly with a minimum of hassle and rooting around.  But it also makes it hard to get done cause since it is not for the players and may just be entirely ignored...it is not a very motivating set of reasons.

But I am slowly working them out.  Right now I have eleven out of twenty six done and I am just plodding through them ad I have the chance.  At least making them helped to highlight some contextual errors in my writing and some options I was missing.  Not a bad thing in my opinion.

Tightening the nuts and bolts

Well another week and more things to work on.  I have not really been doing anything to astonishing right now.  Just fixing small inconsistencies and reworking some of the numbers to make sure they present better and are a little more idiot proof.  Like that is really possible...

Any way, I have been filling in gaps in the skill system to make sure I have all the skills that are needed.  Fine tuning character creation and the careers that help build your character up and develop some history.  Not to much else really.

May be I will have more to talk about in a little.  But I figure it is better to not make a post and focus on the book then it is to blather on for hours about this and that and never get anything done at all.  Any way I will keep fiddling about and working on my project.  It has been along time coming and a difficult path.  But I knew what I was in for.

Progress and Ideas

Slowly I have been beating on several fronts and it has been an interesting ride.  I have been working on techniques, the final link in the skill system.  I have also been writing the history of the Golemite species and how they have come to be what they are.  On top of that I have also been working on some of the more technical threats like Golems and how they became the core technology behind power armor and the Gladius Unit.

So first, I have been working on techniques to try and make sure there is a good spread of them.  Techniques are skills that serve a specific purpose.  Through intense training a character can achieve something with a technique that would either have a high degree of failure or would take multiple rolls.  An example would be allowing the character to fire three arrows from one bow hitting three separate enemies.  Or to slide a knife into an armored foes back bypassing their armor and dealing damage directly.

Techniques have certain skill dependencies that are required before they can be learned.  So a character will require the correct specializations of the proper ranks to learn the technique.  This allows a character to specialize more in depth then if the game relied on simple skills alone.

The rest of my work has been in the creation of the world and historical materials.  The history of the Golemite species has been filling out very well.  I am currently working my way out of the Golemite dark ages and their discovery of magic.  This will allow them to reclaim technology lost with the decay of Human tech over the past thousand years or so.  And allow them to create their own replacements becoming truly independent.

I have also been thinking about Golems and how they are used.  From simple robot types that have simple programing to character controlled death machines that stand thirty feet tall.  I am taking something of a side path to the Golems design.  Instead of being carved or forged.  Golems resemble robots.  They are asembled from smaller pieces allowing them to be more durable and reducing the chances of major flaws in their core materials causing weaknesses.  I am also investigating the idea of sentient golems, but only as NPC threats that GM's can use for encounters.

So...that is what I have been working on piece by piece.  It is hard some times to maintain all three trains of thought but they fir together so well with in the games dogma.  And that makes it allot easier to write in this more broken chain of thought.

The children of man and their personalities.

Over the past couple weeks, besides being sick as a flee bitten mongrel, I have been working on finishing the six core character races; Dralarian, Golemite, Podling, Vyrmkin, Kudu, and Furbolg.  This has been something of a long process for me because as I have been altering and changing the system, some times though major rewrites, they have had to change a little also.

But the core ideas behind them have also remained the same.  The Golemites will have allot of variety, the Kudu will be Squirrel tech heads, and the Asterilians...well they got the Ax.  They There were just to many issues with them, so I wrote them out of the main story and made their creations, the Podlings, a main race instead.

In any case I have been working to make sure that their background, culture, and core information fits well onto two pages each.  But I am also looking at creating supplementary information about them so that they can be more real if you desire.  I have some time and the writing is fun if not time consuming.

It is all about the details, what happened when and why.  That takes time to be reasonable...even in fantasy, you have to have a little amount of sense.  So any way hat is what I am up to right now with the RPG.

On a side note, looks like opinions of the system are good.  Those that have looked it over and that are in the know have stated it is very complete and they could see nothing wrong with it.  That made me smile since the core of the game needs to be solid.  But I will not delude my self, there is still some rewriting to do.  Old information needs to be reworked a little to make sure it all fits properly.  But more on that one later.

Welcome to 2011, have a nice stay.

This post is going to be a little long, so be warned.  I will attempt to make sure it is laid out better and includes an index...well sort of.

• Festive Niceties
• To the New People!!! (clapping)
• General Goals for 2011
• -  More Writing
• -  Some Formatting
• -  Editing
• -  Art...Lots and Lots of Art
• Getting that much needed HELP!!!
• Clicky Clicky Meow Meow

Festive Niceties

Happy New Year and THANK GAWD it is all in days past.  Now I do like Christmas, New Years, and my birthday all being in the same month.  But at the same time a LOATH them also.  This is just because I can never get anything done in December.  It can be a very frustrating time as I am sure you all know.

So with that said, I am happy to have had those great days and the months festivities.  But I am also ecstatic to be done with them so I can order my mental blocks and get back to writing.  As short lived as that may actually be.

To the New People!!! (clapping)

Wow...I actually have some people visiting.  This makes me happy because for a long time I thought I was going a little crazy.  I mean I had a blog, but no one was reading it.  It was like talking to my self with out a mirror.  I am just glad I did not comment on my own posts...I think then something would be wrong...(Shifty looks around the room).

So thank you very much for visiting and for your continued visitation in the future.  May this blog be worthy of further persons visiting, reading, commenting, clicking, etc.  After all my goal with Manifest Destiny is to try and foster a community.  And that community starts right here, god save us all.

Writing Goals for 2011

On to the meat and potato's of things.  There is allot done, but there is allot to do still.  This fact does not escape me and I know therewill be allot to do for a very long time.  Well...the core book will be done in a reasonable amount of unspecified time.  But then there is more...much much more.  For now, I must stay focused on the task at hand.

More WritingAhh the fun stuff sitting all day while peering at a screen typing away.  There are still some fine points that I need to hammer out before things are close to where I would like them.  I need to finish the section on addiction.  I need to create and refine the section on skill based techniques.

Plus poisons, equipment, and...allot of things that escape me right now.  Oh and examples and fluff also.  Mmmm...love the fluff.  But all in all things have not gone to bad.

The above may look daunting, but compared to the 170+ pages I have already written.  What is left is really not that much.  But it is just getting those portions of my mind to cooperate long enough to do them.  I shall get through it though and that will be that.

Some Formatting
The book needs to be formatted.  That is plane and simple.  Pages need to be split, front pages need to be laid out.  Spaces for charts and images need to be put in to make sure everything fit in nicely.  And to do it all I will need to find some one that can consistently assist on that.  That or I chop my attention into small one inch cubes...but that never works.  The cubes just sprout legs and run off.

Editing
Editing is also of vital concern.  I know my faults and my limitations.  And one of them is that my spelling sucks and we will not even go into grammar.  But fortunately I did find a willing party to do this for a price.  So the editing will get done and will be good.

Art...Lots and Lots of Art
And then there is art.  Art is necessary and there will need to be allot of it.  Currently I am looking at needing about 120 to 150 individual images.  Now that may seam like allot, but consider your average RPG book.  If you look there is either a piece of art or a chart on each page.

Assuming that I have 170 pages of usable material right now and about 30-40 charts you get an approximate amount of art needed.  This helps to understand how much art is actually needed.  And this varies between full page images and small quarter or eighth page images that are used to help space things and break up the text walls that are present now.

This will also take the time of others.  The time of my self to make sure things are right.  And money, a small mountain of money.  When doesn't it right?  Well that or I have to deal with people doing it on the side and then things get very very iffy.  So...money it is.

Fortunately I have found one person so far that is interested in the task at hand.  And I am hopeful that when things progress I will be able to find others.

Getting that much needed HELP!!!

Help is an important thing right now.  I have been doing this on my own for a while...several years now and it can be hard.  Never underestimate how much a single person can make things better.  So, if you have read the above and think you have something you can contribute...I am all eyes.  I would be all ears but unless you send me a audio message...I can not hear text all that well.

If you have a thought, and idea, a musing that can assist, drop a comment.  If you have an idea for a monster, poison, spell, or item power just drop a comment.  My goal is not to make the game about me and mine.  It is to create something bigger then what my mind can devise.

Clicky Clicky Meow Meow

For now, in lieu of a donations tag on this blog I have ads.  If I get enough traffic and clicks on them I will get money.  That money will be in turn used to pay for all the stuff that needs money.  Now it is not as daunting as one may assume.

Right now I have $5 in add revenue sitting around.  Editing is going to run me about $1 per page.  So right now if I got a check in the mail, I could have five pages edited.  Images are going to range between $20 to probably a couple hundred depending on what is being drawn.  First are the little things and them we go up.

But the simple thing is that my efforts will be ad driven for a while.  So if you feel you want to help...you know where to put your mouse.  Sorry...no naked lady adds...not that kind of blog any way.  But there are some good game adds...League of Legends is a particularly interesting game if you get it as an ad.

So that is that...my text wall is done and I thank you for reading it all if you did.  I promise to keep these to a minimum, may be once a year.  In any case thank you again for visiting and taking a little interest in this game and I hope you find it inspiring, enjoyable, and entertaining as I write it and move to release it.

Making a better Item

There was a time long ago in in the old world when magical items were immutable.  Once enchanted with function, they would never change from that.  This is how it was for hundred of years till a better method was needed.  Not because the items were not powerful, but because their creation was so dangerous.

To make an item imbued with magic required a long and complex ritual with rare materials and chaotic forces.  The risk of this process was that a item could be made of such devastating power and evil nature that it would destroy all that took part in the ritual.  And would then have to be hunted down and destroyed as it would call to the basest beings to protect it.

But in time this changed, with research into the weapons carried on Star Jammer class space ships being the key.  To make the weapons more versatile, their effect focus's were separated from how mana got to them.  This allowed the foci to be removed and a new one put into the gun changing how it worked.  Originally only used on larger capitol weapons other took note.

With the coming of the great war many were put to work on ways to get an advantage.  The Kudu researcher Glinbak Hardnut had been looking at ways to make magical items easier to make.  One day he came across plans for the next generation of space born weapon and had an epiphany.  If they can separate the focus of power from the gun...why could he not do it for a personal item?

Years went by and his efforts moved forward.  Eventually getting government funding and all the perks that go with it, Glinback did it.  He made a safer, easier, and more versatile magical item.

The legacy of Glinback Hardnut is that all magical items are broken into two parts.  The first is the conduit and the second is the focus.  The conduit is the item its self, bound to the character the conduit creates a stable path for the characters mana to be accessed.  But on it's own it has no power.

Foci are the lense for the characters mana.  They give the mana form and function.  Changing the chaotic nature of mana into a stable effect.  Foci can be slotted into any conduit item, drawing mana from the user, though the item, and into the focus.  Then imbuing the effects back into the item and the user.

This allowed a user to change foci at will, to alter his items with out having to carry twenty tons of spare equipment.  Just a small pouch with foci was all that was needed, and it was safe.  Foci them selves did not have power, so the item and the focus could be made safely with out needing to expose the creators to the chaos of the energies being harnessed.

In time this lead to new innovation in magic items.  Mana batteries called Universal Mana Crystals (UMC's), hand weapons that could accelerate a metal slug or launch a bolt of lightning.  Vehicles of any type one can imagine.  And even the great floating citadels of power on the planet Elttaes.

History of Magical Items, Abridged
Revised by Jacob Vanders, Human Historical Corp

What odd things creep into the mind...

Or may be out of it when one is idle.  Not to sure...do things really creep into the mind...oh well...thoughts for another day.  But what I was thinking about before random musings was vehicles.  Now really...what do vehicles have to do with Manifest Destiny?

They have allot to do with it actually.  Magical vehicles that mimic reality, cars that can fly.  War machines that spit fire and bolts of energy.  From a simple cart to a 30ft tall mecha...it is all possible cause it is powered by magic, by imagination.

What I got to thinking about was how much of the operation of a vehicle in combat is the vehicle and how much is the crew.  In doing so I thought about weapons and accuracy and believe I have a system.  Maybe...maybe not...not to sure.

See what I am thinking about is that the weapons provide the dice for the roll in the form of an accuracy attribute.  And the crew provide the bonuses and skill.  So really any idiot can fire a gun, and that gun can be accurate.  But with out skill, their chances of hitting the broad side of a barn are slim.

So lets say we have a hypothetical tank.  The tank mounts a very good gun with an accuracy of eight.  So the crew would get 8D12 to roll with each shot from the gun.  You then toss in some crew using the same skill set that MD uses skills for general, specialization, and familiarity.  So lets say our gunner is rather new...and between the three he has a plus three from general tank guns, but only a plus one for time with medium tank guns.  And no time at all with this medium tank gun.  So he adds a plus four to all rolls resulting in a 8D12 + 4 for any attack made by the tank.  Not a bad thought I think.

Now this leads into armor also...what to do what to do.  Two routs I can see, both are in MD really.  The first would be the usual, each gun has a power rating and the projectile provides the damage.  If the power of the attack is greater then the armor rating, it goes though.  But that leads to having to track the armor of the tank on all facings and can have armor degradation...kind of messy when it comes to streamlining things.

The other option is a simple bounce/no bounce roll.  Instead of the gun having power, it just does damage based on the round.  If the round hits, another roll occurs with 1D12.  IF the roll is over the armor value, the round penetrates.  If the round is under the armor value, the hit bounces.

Both can allow for effects like armor piercing ammo and the such...and both offer their own unique spin on things.  And this is not even getting into more complex systems like say...vehicle size, its height, the size of a turret if it has one.  That matters since if only the turret is showing...you can only hit the turret so you need to know its size.

The things I think about when I can not think about things.