Kalgamorra

tanis · July 23, 2008, 08:26:39 PM

Ok this was just an idea, but of course David is King of the Hook, so...

The moment I started reading about Kalgamorra, my brain just started firing off ideas. And it occurred to me that it would make a great adventure idea for people to use, either just as a little part, or potentially more. My original line of thinking was to have the owner/manager whatever of one of the amateur teams come to the players, either because he needed a team, or he needed a replacement team because his was indisposed (i.e. maybe a rival team poisoned them or made them get sick), with the intent to contract them to play a game for him. Or if it's a new team, maybe he wants to make them the team, even if just for the first game. This would be a way to introduce players to concepts of Drakkel, and would give a kind of practice or refresher course in good role-playing potentially as well. And if the players enjoyed it enough, maybe they could even finish the season, maybe even becoming a newly franchised professional team, leaving their names and deeds forever emblazoned in the history and psyche of Drakkel.

Anyways, like i said this was just kind of an idea, and I thought maybe y'all would like to comment on it.

avisarr · July 23, 2008, 11:09:50 PM

Having a group of players actually form a Kalgamorra team would make a fantastic adventure. Either a one night adventure or even as part of a longer campaign. I'm definitely going to get my players involved in a game next time I have a group near Drakkel. I think it would be a blast. Of course, it would take just about a whole evening to role play something like that out.

tanis · July 30, 2008, 12:05:29 AM

haha yeah but it'd be worth it. and it would be, more than anything else, just plain fun

Drul Morbok · September 27, 2012, 06:41:09 PM

Quote from: tanis on July 23, 2008, 08:26:39 PM
The moment I started reading about Kalgamorra, my brain just started firing off ideas.

Haha, same here!
I discovered this page about 6 years ago, searching the internet for inspiration...reading some pages, some more the next days, having other things to do for some weeks, forgetting the name, finding it again some months later, and so on - and now I'm a pretty frequent visitor to the news section

And I guess the first thing I remember is Kalgamorra...when I found this page again, it was when I saw the entry when I was sure this was the site I had been looking for.

This game is so awesome!! It's practically offering story hooks in each sentence - Kudos to Mr. Roomes!

I just created some hook for my players:
The "manager" of one time got drunk with a business partner, they arranged and maybe gambled, and at the end of the evening, a lot was at stake . Things went terribly bad for the manager, forcing him to accept a humilating bet:
Fire the stars of th team and replace them with "riff-raff from the tavern" - carefully selected by the business partner.
Now guess where the players enter the scene

And such is the bet: If they win the next game, the one certain debt is void, if not, the team goes to the partner.

Of course the manager won't tells thing quite that way...he will flatter them, seeing great potential in them, telling them the story of the run-off-the-mill NPC with a plea for help. He'll make it sound like a way to success and fame. That's what everybody ist told, not jus the players.
Nothing could be farther from truth...imagine a fantasy-setting equivalent of a TV casting show!
he manager is already preparing for losing the team, and so is trying to pass the buck to the players by publically raising great expectations in them - while they still don't quite remember all of the rules, and it's only two weeks to the tournament.
Fans will despise them for replacing their beloved stars, and in training, teammates will be yelling at them for violating some obsure rule of the game.
That's until they win the first game, of course. I guess that's when I stop being cruel and let them be Heroes.
But then word about the bet is spreading. I guess you could say that in Drakkel, coins have ears as well as mouths, so sooner or later the team might be taunted by other fans as Riff-Raffians, and when they inquire, they find out that they were not actually hired for greatness, but rather chosen to fail. And I really hope thy'll want some kind of revenge - served ice cold

I think it should end up with the players as team-owners. Maybe they befriend a lawyer, have one as teammate or among their fans, who points out, that technically seen, due to some formalisms in the wording of the bet, for a short, rather symbolic period of time, the team is in a state without owner, and some almost forgotten subparagraph from the founding rules of the team state, that this qualifies as urgent matter, under which circumstances a team leader can claim actual leadership about the teams as such, a status, which given some regulation, actually qualifies as ownership.
In other words: If the captain of the team officially claims leadership exactly the moment the bet is resolved, this qualifies as ownership by law.
Of course, such a blatant loophole would not have appeared if they had not won the competition, because nobody would have expected them to, so maybe the exact wording was a bit lenient for that case. Additionally, the manager was more of an investor than actually interested in the team or its history, so he maybe cared a bit too little about the legal implications of what he dismissed as nostalgic ceremonies.

One way or the other, they end up owning the team.
End of the story.

Or just the beginning?
After all, I think having a Kalgamorra team might be a nice background. All it needs to bring the players' characters together is some innate tendency to be in taverns

Phew, it's getting awfully late, this one got a lot longer than expected. So I'll e short:
Most of the time, being in the team should not require playing actual matches, although those could be used as a filler episode for incomplete gaming groups.

And one final sentence:
I'm not quite sure if such an adventure would work on Khoras...it's just an exapmle of my "brain firing off ideas", so to say

Drul

David Roomes · September 27, 2012, 10:20:09 PM

Love your thoughts behind this. Yes, there are a lot of plot ideas and hooks that could arise from the Kalgamorra game. I've been wanting to play an adventure that centers around Kalgamorra. By the way, coincidentally, I'm working on a short story that prominently features a Kalgamorra game toward the end. I'm finding it difficult to write as I really want to capture the atmosphere of a big gaming event. I'll post it on the site when it's done.

"Coins have ears as well as mouths..." - what a GREAT quote! I love that. Ok, THAT is going on the Drakkel page RIGHT NOW.

Drul Morbok · October 02, 2012, 09:56:26 AM

Hehe, I know about this short story, you mentioned it here and there...and to be honest, this story is the main reason why now I am a "pretty frequent visitor to the news section ", as I called myself in the post above - I just can't seem to wait until it's finished, so I check at least once a week

David Roomes · October 07, 2012, 06:59:48 PM

And I apologize for the delay regarding the story.

For those keeping track, this is the third short story featuring the sea captain Callister Draabyn. The first two stories were easy, but this third one is much harder. I don't know why I'm struggling with this one. For one thing, it's much longer. Not really a short story anymore. It's currently 90 pages and growing. I guess that puts it in the territory of "novella". Anyway, I am determined to finish this third story.

I think there will be more stories after that, but they will definitely be much shorter!

Anyway, keep checking. This story will be there eventually. If I don't have it finished by the end of October, I'll start posting it chapter by chapter.

Drul Morbok · October 10, 2012, 05:08:13 PM

90 Pages???

Wow, I knew it was longer than the others, but wow, that's amazing!
Did you count the pages of the Word document, or the number if the text was in book format?

David Roomes · October 13, 2012, 08:30:56 PM

90 pages is where it's at in Microsoft Word. In book format, I don't know. Probably something similar.

David Roomes · November 11, 2012, 01:33:02 PM

My apologies for the delay, but chapter 1 of the third story has finally been posted. So, the name of this new short story is "The Jewel of the Wild Sea". It's another story featuring the sea captain Callister Draabyn and his crew. This story is not yet finished and it has gotten a little out of control with regards to length. It is over 100 pages currently.

Chapter 1 has been posted as of today (Sunday November 11, 2012). I'm going to post a new chapter every 2 days or so.

I'm going to reformat the Tales section a little bit. It's a pain in the ass to get HTML formatting to mimic Word. It's really important to me that every line break, every indentation and every bit of formatting be preserved. So, I'm thinking about just offering all short stories in Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF format. PDF is nice because it retains the look and feel of the original and it's easy to put online. And Adobe PDF is pretty universal. I'm wondering if the MS Word is even necessary. Do you guys have a preference? Word or PDF or both? Let me know if you have a preferred format.

And when I say MS World, I mean Microsoft Word 2010 (.docx extension). I'm not sure how many people have and use Word.

I'm going to go back over the earlier stories and make them PDF as well. HTML is just a pain sometimes.

So, anyway, that's all. The Third Story is now going on line, a little bit every couple of days. I have 10 chapters written so far and I'm hoping that posting a new chapter every 2 days will light a fire under me to finish this story. Nothing motivates like a deadline. My goal is to finish the entire story before the end of the year.

Drul Morbok · November 12, 2012, 05:18:33 PM

Wow, awesome...but I won't start reading before the whole thing is finished

But when I do, I'd prefer PDF...Word will probably underline each unknown word, so I'd have to turn out the spellchecker everytime I read something...and I'd never bet on having the text displayed the same on different versions or, say, Open Office.
And I generally prefer PDF for reading.

So as far as I'm concerned, no Word file is needed...but maybe for others...

David Roomes · November 12, 2012, 10:12:55 PM

Ok then, PDF it is. I'll make sure that all the fiction is available in PDF format. And I will strive to finish the third story as soon as possible.

David Roomes · November 26, 2012, 07:59:52 PM

As promised, the new short story is going online, chapter by chapter. Six chapters have been posted so far. Will continue releasing them up until chapter 10. Once chapter 10 is online, things will slow down a little as they will be posted as they are written. There will probably be 13 chapters total. Stay tuned...

Also, these are the "raw" chapters. That is, they haven't really been polished. After they're all out, I may go back and polish a few of them up.

Drul Morbok · September 19, 2020, 11:33:13 PM

Looks like getting myself to read the story might have taken even longer than for you to write it - but I finally started it.
I just wanted to wait for a special occasion, and now on my pilgrimage, whenever I indulge myself with a guesthouse, I read some pages.

Right now I'm in the middle of the Kalgamorra match and...well, no spoilers here, but I love the story and how Kalgamorra is included into it, and how its character and atmosphere are captured.
Great work, as are all of your stories!

As for the initial topic - did by now any of your campaigns, or other adventures/sessions, involve a Kalgamorra game, with the characters as either players or involved in some city action, like catching the greased pig or the like?
Of course this question also goes to everyone else on the forum...

David Roomes · September 20, 2020, 10:26:56 PM

So far, the "Jewel of the Wild Sea" (story #3) is the closest I have gotten to a Kalgamorra game. I think it would be a lot of fun to put the characters of a D&D game into a Kalgamorra game, but it just hasn't worked out yet. No worries... there will be more D&D games in the future. I expect it will happen eventually.

Very glad you're reading it. I am pretty proud of that third story. It's the best of the three, in my opinion. Also, it exceeds the minimum length for a "novel". At 62,000 words, it's well into novel length territory. So, that means I've written a book!

I promise story #4 will be MUCH shorter.

Kalgamorra

avisarr