KhorasForum

My thoughts are the same as in the other thread. I like both option 2 and 4. Actually I propably like the There Are No Real Gods version the best, but the The Gods Are All-Powerfull give you the whole priest-spells aspect which I've just now started to experiment with. I never liked the idea back when I was playing ADnD.

I'm slowly crafting a new world. The last long-lasting rpg world I created (called Maelaros) that we played in had a lot of good things but also a lot of limitations. So now I'm working on something new. I planning on having an all-powerfull creator who creates worlds out of some sort of primordial, chaos-like matter. When he created this one he left a race of powerful, celestial beings to govern all aspect of it. When the humans and other intelligent races evolved they started worship these beings. Now since the gods have to govern all aspects of the world I've had to create quite a lot. I think I'm up to around 50. But it's fun to do. Drawing them, giving them names, thinking of related spell-like effects they can grant their priests and so on.

Okay, I have two questions about the Thallasians.

First, how sofisticated is the Bio-Luminescence language of the nobles? Can they be assumed to be able to communicate with a complexity close to human languages?

Secondly: Say a ship is attacked by a group of Thallasians who try to sink it in some way. Aboard the ship is a mage who uses a heat spell to make the water boil and kills all the Thallasian. Do they turn red? I realize this won't turn up often, but do Thallasians turn red when you boil them?

EDIT: typos

Wow, those are all helpful tips, sid6.7. I guess you can never know enough.

I have to say, though, personally, that I don't give this issue any thought at all when creating fantasy worlds. I like it when others have put a lot of thought into their worlds and their maps, but I don't do it myself. I don't know enough, geography doesn't interest me, and it doesn't matter to the stories, in my opinion. I have some basic ground rules, but nothing fancy.

The most important thing is nations and politics and all that. I generally create the landscapes to fit the ideas I have for my nations. If this nation needs to be situated near mountains I create mountains, if this country controls a big river and thus a trade in the area then I put the river through that nation. I know that in the real world terrain comes before nations, but I find it easier to do it the other way around when creating my own worlds.

Thanks! Both of you. I really appreciate it. I love drawing fantasy stuff, and it wasn't untill I started submitting fan art for Khoras that I found out how fun it can be to draw other peoples' ideas. I have to really pay attention when reading the descriptions and I like to read around too, to get some detail in, maybe from a nation description or anything that wasn't necessarily in the race description.

And let me just take this opportunity to thank you two, for putting my stuff on your web sites. I look at it as an honour that you deem my drawings worthy of representing your thoughts and ideas.

And yes, I agree. Art work plays a very big role in the outlook of any project like these. It's usually the first impression the viewer gets before they get to reading.

And sid6.7, I didn't know that was you! Can't believe I didn't pick up on that, but your name didn't really give me a clue. Hi! 

I guess it's more practical for an rpg rules system to be generic than to be focused. Nevertheless (is that really one word?) I tend to go with focused ones, because they've often put more work into the particualer genre than a generic will have. Of course it doesn't hurt if the system can also handle other genres, but in my experience the focused ones tend to be better.

I mean, how many times do you really get a medieval knight against aliens with lasers, or a zombie with a shotgun against an elf? I've never found myself in a situation where I needed the system to be able to tackle a whole different setting than the one we were playing in. And even if it does happen, I can't imagine it's very often. So I'd rather go for more detail. Also, most focused systems do cover all the basics needed to play most genres. Things like sci-fi close combat skills can often be used to cover medieval weapons, psionics can be converted to spells etc. And the other way around (though often with a bit more work).

That said, I realize that many generic rpg systems have very detailed descriptions for a lot of settings (GURPS being one with all the supplements) but generally, in a very overall way, and with exceptions, I like focused ones better.

Thanks for posting that! Too bad I'm broke. Maybe next month if it's till up. Otherwise I'll have to rent it. I must remember to check out Firefly. I've never heard of it.

Hmm... I don't know really. It all depends on so much. And there's also the question of whether or not the gods should be real (like in DnD) or not (like in real life... hope I'm not offending anyone here). Obviously, in a fantasy world, it's more cool if the gods really exist. I created a fantasy world, Maelaros, that we still play in once in a while, in which there were three major religions, and none of the gods really existed. Instead there were three dragons sleeping in the central mountains of the world. The dragons influenced the world through their dreams, and their beleifs and thoughts became the religions of the lesser races. One religion was a very Christianity-like monotheistic religion. Another was a Pantheon like Norse, Greek, Roman mythology. The third one was more buddhistic (spelling?) in nature.

Usually, though, I like it better if the gods really exist in the fantasy world. I've never really liked the idea that they ascend from mortals. I think it degrades them, somehow, or makes them less divine. There are a lot of good ways to do this, sure. But my preference, I think, is to have the gods be a whole other class of beings. Whether they created the world or arrived later, or whatever, is a whole other story, but I always like to know where they came from, or how they came to be. It doesn't have to be much, but the more the better.

I never really like GURPS. Basically I think the machanics of the game are okay. But I don't like that whole "I need to be better at archery so I'll make my character ugly"-concept. I know that that's probably not the way it's meant to be played, but it's the way it's written. Or at least it felt like that to me when we played it.

As for The Riddle of Steel... Is has the best combat system I've ever seen. Nothing even comes close, in my opinion. But the rest of the game needs a serious overhaul. The magic and spell system seems like a good idea at first but when you get down to it's just impossible do anything with it. Also, I didn't like the way they make you prioritze at the beginning of character creation. Basically you have the letters A through F (or thereabouts) and you have to place one letter in each of the categories that your character's made of: skills, race, stats, proficiensies and so on. F is bad and A is good, so if you placed your A in stats you'd have a lot of points there, but if you put your F there you don't have as high stats. If you put a low letter in Race you're only allowed to be human, and you prioritze it highly you get to be a faen magician (or something like that). I don't think these areas should influence eachother like that. But the game does have some good ideas. Maybe the second edition will be better 

Thanks. That last one is especially usefull for me.

I remember reading that article (or something very similar) a long time ago one of the first times I was checking out Khoras.net. It was one of the things that made me want to check out the rest of the site, for some reason.

Personally, I've never really liked DnD. In my opinion the best commercia rpg I've ever tried is Alternity, which is now out of print. It's simple fast, and yet still capable of fullfilling all the needs we've had in our gaming group. The only thing missing is a better combat system, but I'm working on that. The rules we now use are a heavily modified version of Alternity, with Fantasy skill set, Perception as a stat, not a skill under Willpower, and a lot of other modifications. I'm working on a new combat system that's maneuver-based like a mix of Mike Mearl's Iron Heroes and The Book Of Iron Might, both published by Malhavoc Press. Also I'm trying to add some of the aspects of the combat system from The Riddle of Steel, which has, by far, the best combat system of any fantasy rpg ever.

Yeah, I didn't like that one either. Won't watch it again. If I had tried to pull off that plot in a real roleplaying game I would have been laughed out of the room. It was too much and too cliché for my tastes.

For a real roleplaying game movie I recommend The Gamers, a great little movie by Dead Gentlemen Productions. For those of you that don't know it, it's a short film about a roleplying group. The film cuts between the roleplaying table and the fantasy world the game takes place in. It's funny and filled with insider jokes.

To give an example, the group arrives at the Old Temple and need to get past the gate. The barbarian tries to rip it off. We hear the player say "Let me do it I have 95% chance of opening it" (or something like that). There's the sound of dice rolling and we cut to the barbarian pulling at the gate. The dice stop. "Aww, man!" He fails the roll and he can't get it off. The nimble elven ranger goes "Let me try" and grabs the gate. Rolling dice again, and he succeeds, rips off the gate, throws it away, turns to the panting babarian and goes: "Lift with the legs, Rogar, not the back."

There's the player whose character dies and who makes an exact copy of the old one just with a different name. There's the player who won't stop arguing with the DM over every little rule. There's the player that couldn't come because he had a date with his girlfriend, so his character just stands in the back for most of the scenes.

It's available on DVD for only $ 18 with an audio commentary by rpg games designer Monte Cook. And they even shipped it all the way to Denmark for me. It's a cheap production, the acting is bad, and it's not very long. But it's funny, and I can recommend to all roleplayers out there. There's a sequal on the way, too.

Wow. That sounds great. Especially the PowerPoint thing. I wish I had more time to do stuff like that. I like to make maps and lots of drawings of things the players encounter, but more often than not I don't have enough time to prepare for a session. We play very irregularly so I never know when the next time is. How about you, how often do you play?

Regarding multimedia and gaming, I thought this was pretty cool.

Great news. Congratulations on getting it back up.