The Plague Lands of Winterlight

[Fellfrosch]

Wow, I'm really impressed. This setting is full, detailed, and very anime-ish. I've already got a bunch of cool ideas for characters, but I'm wondering if Kilowatt has any specific direction for us (like do we need to start in any particular profession of location, or what).

[Tage]

It would be good to know how much flexibility we're going to get as far as choosing which village/council we're from, and how advanced our characters can be.

[Mr_Pleasington]

Wow, reading that made me want to play.   That's very nice setting you've developed!

[Kid_Kilowatt]

Thank you for the kind words about my lame attempt at creating a fantasy setting.  My intention was to turn the dark monster-hunter setting on its head by placing it in a milieu of constant light.  All right, I stole the idea from the Swedish movie "Insomnia".  My other big idea was to create a thoroughly atheistic fantasy society - not that they don't believe that higher powers exist, but they are forbidden from worshipping them.  The arctic Feudalism and everything else kind of grew out of those two ideas.

My idea for the playtest was to create a non-anything-goes fantasy setting to see if the BESM rules is flexible enough to bring the setting and characters to life satisfactorily.  I admit that fudged a little by bending the "spirit-naming" magic system to fit the two-variety magic system in BESM.  I would encourage players to think up a character concept of any kind, as long as it fits the basic feel of the setting and the anime style of BESM.  Then we can see if the flexible BESM system can work with the concepts we come up with.  The power level is going to be moderate but BESM's chargen system is REALLY flexible, so players can choose to play high-prestige characters like council bosses, bell-ringers, blood scribes, or Empire magistrates.  However, playtesters are not limited to the one of the character concepts suggested in the write-up - come up with something new (but not completely disconnected from the setting and style) and we'll make it a part of the playtest.  The further we can push the envelope in the playtest, the better.

As soon after Christmas as possible, we'll meet to talk about character concepts and run through a mini-campaign so we can put a playtest write-up on the site.  If it turns out to be fun, we can keep playing.  We'll see how it goes - I haven't GMed a game in about six years, so I'm still psyching myself up.  Contact me if you have any questions.  

[Mr_Pleasington]

GMing is like riding a bike, KK, it always sticks with you.  You're probably not looking for any advice, but there's one bit that's easy to forget over the years that is essential to good GMing:  The gamemaster is there to have fun too.  

Okay, end stupid advice segment.

I've eyed BESM several times, but have never picked it up.  I own and like Silver Age Sentinels, which uses the same system, but have never been able to convince myself to buy BESM.  Hearing someone talk so excitedly about a game makes me excited about the game, though, so now I've started reading reviews around the net to see if its worth owning.  Thanks, Kid, your enthusiasm and my week will is going to end up breaking my checkbook

[Prometheus]

Well if nothing else, you can wait for us to tell you how it is, Mr. Pleasington. Are we going to meet this coming week to take a look at the system and get a little prelim character-making work done before Christmas strikes?

[Mr_Pleasington]

I was planning to, Prometheus...with Christmas coming up and this being finals week, I have neither the time or budget for a new game.  Soon, though...  

Certainly give me a run down though.  I've had a setting I've been working on slowly over the years that this sounds perfect for.  I've ran a few games there with various systems, but none seem to be able to capture and emulate what I want.

[Kid_Kilowatt]

I have finals next week (LAW SCHOOL finals) and then I'm taking off to Seattle for Christmas.  We'll have to do the prelim and chargen when I get back - around New Years sometime, if my playtesters are available then.  Till then, wish me luck on Federal Tax I and Intellectual Property Licensing.  Don't believe the hype - law school sucks, y'all!

Long live the Empire of Endless Day!

[Fellfrosch on Vacation]

One of the characters I was thinking of was a bellringer, but Tage and I couldn't really decide how such a character would work as a mobile adventurer (since the bells described are enormous and stationary). I thought maybe some kind of smaller bell hanging on a pole strapped to his back, stuffed with rags to keep it from ringing, but he can unstuff it during combat and gain some magical effects. That, however, is just my weird idea based on the mention of enchanted bells--how do you envision a bell-ringer, Kilowatt? Or anyone else?

[Prometheus]

I saw the bell-ringers as wandering about villages looking for bad things to kill and disposing of them if they could. If they ran into bigger bad things, they'd ring the bell and get everyone in on it.

I'm not sure how a bell-ringer would work in a campaign given that bell-ringing seems to be used for calling people together. I guess there's nothing that says that has to be the case, however.

I just found out that I will be otherwise engaged on Thursday night anyway, at least for a while, so Kid's schedule (good luck, Kid!) works with me. I still find myself wishing I could at least get a look at the BESM manual before the break, though.

[Kid_Kilowatt]

Here's the deal with bell-ringers - because of the relative stability of the society and government (up till now) there has been little need for law enforcement.  A single trained champion could drive away most small bandit gangs or stop inter-council fights or placate mean drunks.  When the challenge was too great for a bell-ringer to handle on his own, she rang the bell.  This didn't happen very often, except when large-scale bandit raids happened or a monstrosity of some sort wandered out of the Plague Lands.  The ringing would warn villagers to gather to the town center (This is starting to sound like Age of Empires 2) and would be projected by the bell's engraved name-magic to the state capital, summoning the militia.  The city-states are not too large, so dog sleds could bring the militia to most villages in a matter of hours.  The bell is immense and non-portable, so most bell-ringers would be bound to a single location.  Up to this point, most bell-ringers have acted as bodyguards to village Magistrates or crossing-guard-type peace-keepers.  The system is in trouble, though, as a threat has appeared (the Plague Priests) wielding sick magics that could level any village in minutes if they managed to defeat the bell-ringer.  

There could be exceptions to the stationary village champion idea, of course: the mobile bell-ringer in training, the bell-ringer replaced by a council toadie and cast out, the bell-ringer whose village has fallen to the Plague Cults...  A moving bell-ringer with a portable bell sounds like a cool idea that could be fleshed out.  Run with it if you feel like it.

As for needing to read the rulebook beforehand, I think that this playtest would actually work better without everyone spending a lot of time with the rules.  The idea is to have a character concept in mind and then challenge the rules on the spot to cater to this concept.  If players spend a lot of time with the char-gen system, they learn to min-max it (and BESM is kind of susceptible to this) and they modify their concepts to make room for the coolest "powers" they find in the rules.  The rules are very simple and stripped-down, so I think we can tackle it without a lot of review of rules.  

[Prometheus]

Fair enough. I already have an idea or two. I'll try to flush it out over the break.

[Prometheus]

If we make a decision on what we would like to be for Winterlight, should we post our idea here or email it. (if so, where?)

[Prometheus]

So what's the next step on Winterlight anyway? When are we meeting next and what should we have done by then?

[Kid_Kilowatt]

Sorry for not posting back on this - I've been super-busy this week with the Sundance Festival and didn't have time for getting together.  We should start playing next week if that's okay with everyone.  Maybe next Thursday night?