[Forge-main] Worlds and magic

[Enrique Perez]

Hola,

Duncan wrote:

> I've been thinking of creating an open "Ancient Greek epics in space" game, 
> for example, in
which
> gods, heroes, monsters, and magic would be melded with spacecraft, 
> technology, and space
> exploration.  I think that it would be... well, perhaps not a classic (no pun 
> intended), but
> entertaining enough.  Could contain rules for tragic flaws, hamartia, 
> prophecy, etc.

This sounds interesting and we certainly need a world to showcase and stretch 
the envelope of
forge. A concept that I just discussed with some hackers yesterday and that I 
like reading about
is where a portion of our world transported to an earlier time, like '1632' by 
Eric Flint:
http://www.baen.com/library/0671319728/0671319728.htm

Basically to meld it into 'Greeks in Space' you would take an area of earth 
from the near future,
preferably around a spaceport and transport it to a medieval, magical past.


Ricardo wrote:
> At the moment though, we need a basic system which means completing Basic 
> Forge before we even
> get started on Fantasy Forge. Most importantly we need to get the basic dice 
> mechanics sorted
so,
> respectfully, if anyone has any ideas for this (I'm fresh out :) I would be 
> most grateful.

>From reading:
http://www.freeroleplay.org/forge/downloads/basic.html

it sounds like you have the skills and difficulties worked out and that you're 
using a d6 system
for unopposed action rolls. One thing I don't see is an advancement system, for 
which I suggest
giving experience primarily for missions, full for a success, half for a 
glorious failure and a
quarter for surviving a failure in a cowardly or dull way, as well as a bit 
experience for role
playing.

>> http://members.axion.net/~enrique/experimentalists.html
..
> It looks good :) However, I am not sure if it is legal for you to publish 
> d20-derived material
> under the GNU FDL. Most of the magic items and spell descriptions can be 
> published under the GNU
> FDL, but the rules-based stuff, like feat prerequisites and so forth really 
> belong under the
OGL.

Right now I'm developing it based on d20 because the items have to exist in 
some kind of system,
it's not really meant to be a d20 supplement and I'll be happy to move it away 
to a completely
free system. Once forge is stabilized I believe it will be straightforward, 
although time
consuming, to port it to that system. I'm assuming you'll have the spells from 
Jerry's 'Gods and
Monster' so I can use those as prerequisites instead of the d20 ones I'm using 
now. For each feat,
I assume they'll be some kind of similar skill or power.

> I can certainly export material to HTML. Good to hear you are supporting PNG. 
> It is not only a
> free and open standard, but its much better than GIF.

The other reason I like png is that some open source fantasy png's have already 
been developed for
the worldforge project which we can use.

>> As far as how to compare the power between different types of abilities, one 
>> way is to pick the
>> most powerful possible from each and consider those to be of equal level.
..
> The problem with your approach is that its very subjective and different 
> campaigns have
different
> ideas about power levels. For example, in a low-tech world healing powers are 
> more powerful than
> in a high-tech world where the same effects can be achieved by a quick visit 
> to the A&E ward.
> This is why the domains mechanic I've presented and used in many other games 
> is so useful - it
> allows you to redefine the basic power levels for each application of the 
> rules.

Essentially comparing the most powerful ability from each domain is the way of 
calibrating the
domains mecanic. What I mean is comparing the most powerful ability gives you 
the 'power constant'
for each domain in each game world.

Cheers,
Enrique


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