To quote a poet: The rubaiyat

Thank you Omar Khayyam for poetry on government, wine, and women.

Dungeon Mastery: sci-fi weapons

SCIFI WEAPONS
An interesting Scifi-weapon informational discloses the energy of various weapons in scifi measured in joules. Now we can look at damage charts for these things. Given the bone club used in 2001 space oddessy is a hundred and twenty joules we can likely convert energy to hitpoints damage at 1hp per 100 joules. That gives us a heavy bone club (2d6), s-mart's top of the line 'boom stick' (6d6), and the halo sword (15d6). Sounds about right so here is a chart:

Now some guy from the future can yell to the rock throwing crowd: 'this is my boom stick!'

Dungeon Mastery: build a setting from three pieces of art

Art will always be a significant contributor to roleplay games (fantasy and scifi).

  


Three interesting pieces of art I have had floating around for a while now.

INDISMAR, THE CITY-STATE OF

Population: 1184 (96% Dwarf, 2% Human, 1% Elf, 1% Other).
Area: 500 square miles
Symbol: A green pennant with a black web

History: Indismar began as a small trading post extracting iron from the mountains. This continued for four hundred and seventy three years, the dwarf population eventually finding themselves owned by merchants thanks to crippling debts.
In the calender year ten twenty-three a dwarf prophet foresaw destruction. While those in the mines would be safe, those shackled to the oars of their owner's galley ships were forced to revolt and flee to the safety of the mines. The tidal wave claimed the rulers of Indismar and the population of the city perished leaving the dwarves in the mines. When the waters retreated the dwarves emerged to claim their prize only to discover an elder horror now levitate above the grand plaza in the ruined city. While the Wood-beast appeared dormant the dwarves avoided the ruins and reclaimed the port. They work around their unwanted house guest.
Indismar has since become the economic centre of a mercantile network. The previously quiet dwarves have proven to be skilled Merchants.

The Ruins: adventurers explore the ruins for the wealth and secrets of the dead. Great wealth is to be had plundering the ruins, but there are reports that some adventurers are gathering beneath the Wood-beast at the heart of the ruins.

The Wood-beast: since the coming of the Wood-beast wizards have found magic to be unemployable in Indismar. Some think this is tied to the presence of the Wood-beast, others think it also the cause of the tidal wave that liberated the dwarves and a major influence on the rise of dwarves mercantile ambitions. Just what the Wood-beast is and what will happen when it awakens has many concerned.

Free stuff: a thought on an interstellar probe

Three dee print the space craft in a super zeppelin (32 billion cubic feet of hydrogen can lift a million tons - part of which would be the super zeppelin and three dee printer) on the edge of the atmosphere and drop launch. Sounds like a plan.

Dark Sciences: bead cores, lightning in a volcanic eruption, and an intergalactic web

You have likely seen lightning in the cloud of a volcanic eruption. It's because magnetic fields pass through metals in the cloud and are as a consequence not straight fields. They break and weave through particles creating small potentials of reverse magnetic polarisation and these allow electric potentials in the spaces...

Now I'm going to suggest that the odd Web of interconnectivity between galaxies are magnetic field condensate. How we would use that for intergalactic travel if I'm some how right is anyone's guess.

Black Appendix: turning thirty years of dungeon mastering into a tome

This year I will begin getting down as much of my dungeon master notes as possible. They are currently scattered across a dozen notebooks.

Board games: space industries-age of discovery

 

 

 

 

What didn't make it in the game

There are two cards that won't be included in this game.

• Huracan is an interstellar survey probe created by the Dyson sphere makers. 
• Valiant is an interstellar transport.

Basically interstellar colonization involved following a line of Sunmakers to the next star system providing artificial suns where interstellar colony ships could find warmth along the way.