Fantasy Zeppelins

Fletnern has not yet developed the technology for balloons and zeppelins.  OK, that’s not completely true.  See Khonsifer in All About Sea Ports.  But for the most part, they don’t have the technology.  Or do they?

The first hot air balloon carrying people was in the mid-18th century.  Almost immediately, hot air was replaced by hydrogen.  What do you need to produce gases lighter than air?  Well, one of the most common ways to produce them at first was to use coal gas - the gas produced when making coke.  Fletnern has coke producing facilities, so it they wanted to, they could produce coal gas and float a balloon.  I’m not 100% sure how they would capture and hold the gas, but if the balloon “ports” were at coke producing sites, then they could fill the balloons to make them ready for the next flight.  Hydrogen gas can be produced, but this seems a lot harder than magic.

Worried that coke is an anachronism?  Well, the Chinese were producing coke back in the 4th century and floating balloons (those sky lanterns) as a means of military signaling back in the 3rd century.  Yeah - the years around 275AD.

You see, that’s the problem with world building.  It’s too easy to say, well, Earth didn’t develop X until the Renaissance, so it is too modern for my fantasy world.  But the truth is that Asia had technology that we choose to forget far earlier than Europe.  And in Fletnern, there is global travel and global trade.  So if one culture develops something, it is vastly more likely that the idea will get out - out to other folks who might take that idea and develop more.

So why can’t Fletnern have balloons and zeppelins?  Well, it could.  But at least at this moment in time, they are finding it easier to use ships that have been enchanted to fly.  That is a decision I made for Fletnern a long time ago - They prefer to think of magical ways to solve problems instead of scientific ways.  Alchemists could produce hydrogen or even helium gas that could lift some pretty massive zeppelins, but for an alchemist to create that much gas would be difficult and incredibly time consuming.  So they find an easier magical way of doing it (enchantment) instead of trying to find a scientific way.

A lot of this is due to the Titan Civil War.  Titan enchanting (somewhat similar to what we might see as technology) actually tore a hole through the crust of the planet and literally blew up a continent.  When that is the established history of a world, maybe some guy making hydrogen in his lab also blew up.  Now the world is convinced that studying hydrogen is a good way to die in a fiery explosion.  Yeah - Not the career path for too many guys.

This is just one small factor in why you need to have some of the core principals of your world’s history figured out.  If on Fletnern technology were not treated as dangerous and in and of itself a weapon of mass destruction, then some of these concepts might have produced results during the last couple thousand years of technological stagnation.  But because I know my world’s history, I can make intelligent explanations of why things are the way they are.  Not only does that make the world make more sense, but quite often, it leads me to mission ideas that involve those historic items.

This post was written as part of the upcoming The Circuitry of Magic aka All About Magitech, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing all sorts of ways to use magic in different ways, including some that might resemble technology and/or machinery.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 62 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.

 

Venomous vs. Poisonous

You know those annoying folks who are always so worried about what words you’re using when they still know perfectly well what you meant?  Yeah - Not our favorite either.  Whether I call it dirt, soil or earth, you know what’s sticking to my shoe.

When it comes to venomous vs. poisonous, there is a scientific difference.  But I hate scientific differences.  I like common sense.  So here is the best way I have heard it described:

If it if bites you and you die, it is venomous.

If you bite it and you die, it is poisonous.

So, since this month it’s All About Spiders - we are primarily talking about venoms.  If it were All About Mushrooms, then it would be poisons.

Should you care?  Probably not!  We are equipping you to better understand the difference and protect yourself from those annoying word police folks.  But, you know what?  We’re going to keep using poison, venom and toxin as interchangeable.  Yeah, we’re rebels like that!

This post was written as part of the recently released Savagery of the Spider Men aka All About Spiders and Poisons, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one details everything having to do with spiders and poison, but with a full defined mission showing both the stats for point-based characters (like in Legend Quest) and class-based characters like in most of the die-20 games.  Not only that, but we get into what it takes for a GM to put a bit of that fear back into your missions (not cosmic horror, but some jump scares and some nervousness).  Some of the sense of uncertainty that FRPGs had when they were new.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 68 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.

 

The Theme of the Adventure

We’ve talked about it before as it affects campaigns, but theming affects adventures too.  What do we mean?

Not every adventure is or should be the same.  Back in our All About Wilderness edition, we talked about missions that brought back that sense of exploration.  That was a huge thing back in the early days of FRPGs, probably because it reminded us of The Hobbit.  The Hobbit was one of the first stereotypes of an adventure.  Bilbo and his dwarven buddies went wandering and ran into a bunch of stuff that wasn’t very friendly.  You know, like an adventurer.

Then again, there was our whole build up to the Holy War.  Within the various discussions there were ways to run it as a religious conflict with angels and demons clashing around the party, often times looking for help.  There are other ways to get into it where it is more of a gritty “Saving Private Ryan” sort of war where the party would feel more like soldiers vs. mercenaries just trying to survive.

We published Little Kingdoms with its campaign Necromancers’ Coup.  Here the theme was all about villagers desperately struggling against the horrors of an undead invasion.  Non-adventurers racing around small villages hoping to save themselves and their neighbors.

But the theming should affect individual missions too.  While a campaign’s theme can be the overarching mood, missions can be different, at least subtly so.  Let’s think through the Endless Dungeon missions.  The overall theme is definitely a dungeon crawl, but that doesn’t mean they should be all the same.  Variation keeps the campaign from feeling dull, boring or stagnant.

Blood in the Slave Pits was themed after making minor monsters fun again.  While the first encounters with the goblins are pretty standard fair, the second half of the mission shows what can happen when even the least bad guys start using strategy and coordination.  This is by no means a dungeon crawl with that feeling of different monsters around every corner, but instead a somewhat planned mission against the possibly too real goblins.

Then this mission, Savagery of the Spider Men.  Now the party is in for a whole different feel.  Is this horror?  No.  But there are a few aspects of that.  Things are supposed to feel weird and alien.  The bad guys can walk on the ceilings and there are a couple of jump scares planned into the mission.  There’s more atmosphere to it.

This is the idea behind the themes.  Going from a gritty mission into a more exploratory one then into one with political issues and encounters keeps the party guessing, but also keeps them entertained.  Switching it up is the idea.  This also pushes the GM.  Trying something new can teach you a thing or two, maybe even teach you that you’re good at something you didn’t know you were good at.  After all, the whole point of GMing is to keep the players coming back and variety is the spice of a PC’s life too.

This post was written as part of the recently released Savagery of the Spider Men aka All About Spiders and Poisons, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one details everything having to do with spiders and poison, but with a full defined mission showing both the stats for point-based characters (like in Legend Quest) and class-based characters like in most of the die-20 games.  Not only that, but we get into what it takes for a GM to put a bit of that fear back into your missions (not cosmic horror, but some jump scares and some nervousness).  Some of the sense of uncertainty that FRPGs had when they were new.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 68 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.