Nod

History of NOD Part IV

/ jstater

Wow – so I let myself get lax on updating the blog again. In my defense, I’ve been super busy at work (real work, that one that plays for my mansion and gold-plated yacht) and super busy at home (NOD Companion just needs a little editing and layout work, NOD 22 is coming along nicely, Mystery Men! got a small revision and ACTION X has been reborn as GRIT & VIGOR and is also coming along nicely). So, there’s my excuse. Here’s my post …

HISTORY OF HUMANS AND HALFLINGS

With the power of the elves and dwarves broken, the world was left to the humans and their ilk. We now reach a time a scant five thousand years ago.

As the dragons of Mu-Pan slowly retired into secret places, they left their scions in charge of their warring kingdoms. In time, they would be united in an empire that would have to tolerate numerous dynastic changes and revolutions and stand up to the machinations of the weird lords of Tsanjan.

Thule harbored a rogue elven land called Pohiola. This nightmare kingdom would slowly give way to the invasions of the horsemen of the steppe, as they laid the foundations for such kingdoms as Mab, Luhan and Azsor.

Antilia and Hybresail would remain largely wild places, home as they were to the shattered homeland of elves and dwarves, its human and demi-human populations reduced to barbarism.

In the Motherlands and Lemuria, the human populations learned well from their former elven masters, and founded sorcerous empires founded on demon worship. In time, such empires as Irem, Nabu and Kolos would fall in spectacular eldritch fashion. In their ashes, a new empire was born that would rule much of the Motherlands – Nomo. Nomo was founded when a band of elven adventurers led by Prince Partholon left the shores of Antilia in a dozen longships and make their way to the Motherlands. Finding themselves among a tribe of human barbarians, they soon asserted themselves as their masters, founding the city-state of Nomo and eventually extending their control over much of the sub-continent. Under Nomo’s emperors and empresses a 2,000 year empire was begun which would end only with the disappearance of the Emperor during adventures in the mysterious West.

With the emperor’s disappearance, Nomo fell into factional fighting, with each faction supporting its own candidate for emperor. The former tributary kings and queens in the empire also staked their claims on the throne.

Thus it is in today’s land of NOD. City-states built on the ruins of kingdoms built on the ruins of empires, all threatened by encroaching chaos.

RACIAL CLASS VARIANTS
In Blood & Treasure, I introduced the notion of variant classes. These were meant to illustrate the way one might create new classes using old classes as a base, with fairly minor changes.

BARBARIAN VARIANT: HALF-ORC THUG

Half-orcs often grow up on the mean streets, learning to excel not as trained fighters but as street brawlers. These half-orc thugs advance as barbarians, save for as follows: They may only use padded or leather armor and bucklers, they have the following skills: Bend Bars, Break Down Doors, Climb Sheer Surfaces, Gather Rumors, Hide in Shadows, Jump, Move Silently and Pick Pockets.

PALADIN VARIANT: ELVEN GALLANT

Gallants are elven paladins as dedicated to romance and wooing women as they are to righting wrongs and protecting the weak. While most paladins can be a bit stodgy, elven gallants are rather dashing and devil-may-care.

In a three-fold alignment system, gallants must be Lawful. In a nine-fold system, though, they need only be Good. Gallants cast spells from the bard spell list rather than the paladin spell list.

THIEF VARIANT: DWARF PROSPECTOR

As adventurous as dwarves can be, their first loves are always gold, gems and silver. Many, if not most, get their first taste of adventure as prospectors, heading into the hills or depths in search of metals or stones to mine.

Dwarf prospectors have the following skills: Climb Sheer Surfaces, Find Traps, Hide in Shadows, Listen at Doors, Move Silently, Notice Unusual Stonework, Open Locks, Remove Traps and Spelunking. In addition, they can wield picks and hammers.

THIEF VARIANT: GNOME PRANKSTER

Gnomes are innately magical folk, and some learn from a young age to tailor their magical abilities to the profession of thievery. These gnome thieves are noted for their enjoyment of taunting their victims with pranks and riddles, leaving calling cards and boasting of their thefts before they happen.

In place of a gnome’s normal innate spells, a prankster can cast the following spells: Mage hand, open/closer and ventriloquism.

THIEF VARIANT: HALFLING GYPSY

Many of the halflings that people meet are of a breed known as the pikey – wanderers from the east who live a semi-nomadic life among the larger races, making a living telling fortunes, picking pockets, stealing pies (they love pies) and bilking the naive.

Gypsies have the abilities of thieves, save they replace the backstab ability with the bard’s ability to fascinate. Their skills are as follows: Balance, Climb Sheer Surfaces, Escape Bonds, Gather Rumors, Hide in Shadows, Move Silently, Pick Pockets, Train Animals and Trickery.

History of Nod, Part III – The Dwarves

/ jstater

Today, we cover the ancient history of the dwarves of NOD, with a special bonus at the end covering the identities of the major Kabir and Igigi.

Image by Jon Kaufman (pachycrocuta at DA – check him out for commissions!)

The ancient elves, being fey creatures, were physically malleable. Not to the extent of the Kabir, of course, who could assume any shape they pleased. The elves were humanoid in shape, and humanoid they would stay. But when they were angry, their faces twisted and their bodies distorted (sometimes called a warp spasm), and when they were happy, they almost glowed with joy. An elf’s children were physical duplicates of their parent’s emotional and spiritual selves.

As the ancient elves grew darker, their children grew uglier. Thus were born the orcs, goblins, bugbears, hobgoblins and dwarves. These waifs were turned out into the wilderness by their disgusted parents to die, but many were rescued by entities who saw them either as useful pawns in their own sinister games, or in the case of the dwarves, who were born of greed, by the compassion of Ys, who believed they might be brought up to do good in the world despite their parentage.

Ys was correct about the dwarves, hiding them in the mountains and under the hills, and shepherding their development until they were honorable men and women, industrious, clever and just. Of course, they were still greedy and stubborn as all get out, but nobody is perfect.

As was mentioned before, the dwarves were no match for the ancient elves, and were forced to pay tribute to them. A dwarf loves his gold, and being cheated of it brought a terrible hatred for the elves among the dwarves, and they bent their minds to one day throwing off this indignity. They were a patient folk, the dwarves, and they had much time to plan and scheme. They forged weapons of power and hid them away, and watched as the debauched elves grew insular and petty. They had long ago stopped having children with one another, choosing instead to produce children with their more handsome human slaves, that they might escape the aforementioned curse of “ugly children”. In time, there were many more humans and half-elves in their kingdoms and empires than true elves. The time the dwarves had waited for had finally arrived.

In this time, the disparate elven kingdoms had come under the control of a queen-of-queens, an elf called Vinrix. Vinrix was the most powerful elf of her age, and nothing to be trifled with. When her people came to the high king of the dwarves, Dvalinn, with demands that a hundred-thousand of his people be delivered into slavery to build her monuments, he declined, and sent back from his halls a few bloodied and blinded survivors carrying the heads of their comrades. This, of course, meant war.

War between the elves and dwarves centered around the dwarven holds in the Bleeding Mountains, which in those days were known as Golden Mountains. The elves besieged the dwarves in their mountain holds, as Dvalinn had desired, and slowly but surely the dwarves chipped away at the strength of the elven armies, slaying their great wizard-lords with such mundane things as rockets and cannon. More importantly, they undermined the positions of the elves, and bypassing their enemy’s lines worked their wiles on the human slaves that formed the bulk of the elves’ strength. Before the elves knew it, their human subjects were in open revolt, and they were forced to divide their armies again and again until they were spread thin across the globe.

It finally came about that the dwarves left their strongholds to challenge the army of Vinrix in the field. The elves had made camp around the base of the Crown Stone, the keystone their magical network of standing stones, which augmented their eldritch power and denied it to most other folk. There the dwarves went with humans and others in tow, and joined battle with their ancient enemies. Eventually, it was a matter of High King against Empress, and finally, her back pressed against the Crown Stone itself, the dwarf made a last mighty swing with his hammer and missed. The hammer, forged in the raging elemental fires beneath the earth, tempered in the immaculate grudges of the dwarves, cracked the great stone his people had raised, and everything was cast in a brilliant white light.

Those who were far enough away to have seen the event and survived tell of a great white light that lasted but an instant and then disappeared, followed by a great rush of wind. Vinrix and Dvalinn and their armies were gone, as was the Crown Stone and, with it, the network of standing stones. Some toppled physically, others remained standing, but the great network that channeled magical energy was gone. Where once there stood the Crown Stone on a lush prairie, there was now a great, gaping gulf – a piece torn from the Material Plane. A few bits of land floated in this black gulf, this void-scar on the landscape, but the rest was gone.
With the magic dissipated across the globe, the impossible cities of the elves toppled and those who were left found themselves the inheritors of wrack and ruin.

Needless to say, the elves were none too happy about this. To be sure, the greatest of their cities still stood, fabled Tara Tilal, but most of the others were gone. The elves were now weakened, and they were forced into the wilderness by their former slaves. While some repented and turned back to their ancient gods, many others had revenge on their minds, and magical communications sent a great many (perhaps two-thirds) of the surviving warriors and wizards marching to the wondrous western mountains known as the Pillars of Asur, where that grand old kabir’s great temple stood. They gathered in the foothills and swore oaths and forged weapons and summoned demons, and then started up those slopes to topple their ancestor-god’s house of worship.

They did not get far, though, before the old god himself did appear and whisper a single curse. The sun would be denied these elves for all eternity; it would become to them a hateful thing of pain, burning eyes and flesh, an eternal reminder of their fall from grace and final punishment. These elves turned and fled from their god and the sun, which burned their skin black, and hid themselves in dark places under the earth, and would come to be known in future centuries as the drow. They would eventually have their revenge on the dwarves, though, as they excited the fires that burned beneath the Golden Mountains and gathered the foul goblin folk who dwelled near them and finally freed the last of the elder things that were chained therein. As hundreds of volcanoes exploded simultaneously, the skies were blackened and the holds of the dwarves were cracked and destroyed. The goblins swarmed these strongholds and the dwarves were forced to flee. The Golden Mountains had become the Bleeding Mountains, so named for the red rivers of lava that now flowed there and for the copious amounts of dwarf blood spilled by the goblins. The dwarven diaspora had begun.

—

THE MAJOR KABIR

ASUR: Kabir of the Sun; ruler of The Noble Procession (the aristocratic and beautiful, chivalrous and vain fey, especially the ancient elves and even the rebellious drow who are their closest relatives)

BEL: Kabir of death and rebirth; rules the Mourners (fey concerned with the dead, such as banshees)

GHOBB: Kabir of geology; rules the Keepers of Kitchen and Pantry (the household fairies, as well as the useful folk of the fairy world such as leprechauns and brownies)

KARN: Kabir of the hunt; rules the Bloody-Minded Lot (mean-spirited killers and torturers, such as red caps and trolls)

NUDD: Kabir of the oceans, the “ancient mariner”, who went to sea and never again set foot on land; he might be said to rule the fey of the water, though he shows little interest in doing so and generally leaves them to their own devices

TUT: Kabir of mischief; rules the Merrie-Met (tricksters, dancers, and makers of mischief like satyrs and sprites)

YS: Kabir of fertility; rules the Painters of Flowers and Dapplers of Dew (the fey that make the world go ‘round, the nature-workers of Nod such as the flower fairies, nymphs and dryads, as well as the storm giants – though nobody really rules those folks)

THE MAJOR IGIGI

ALAD: Igigi of Benevolence (NG)

AZAG: Igigi of Morbidity (NE)

AZUR: Igigi of Virtue (LG); After Azur’s destruction by Zid during its crusade in the Material Plane against evil, when it stretched itself too thin and made itself vulnerable, Azur was shattered into seven archangels (solars), generally known as the Seven Virtues.

GUZU: Igigi of Rage (CE)

NIM: Igigi of Love (CG)

SUUL: Igigi of Madness (CN)

ZID: Igigi of Logic (LN)

History of Nod, Part II – Elves and Gnomes

/ jstater

Another chunk of Nodian history …

THE ELVES AND GNOMES

The gnomes and elves are offshoots of the fey, the elves being descended from the fey and dragons and the gnomes descending from the brownies, pixies and sprites, probably from congress with more mundane humanoids.

Though the elves are actually a younger race than human beings, they are longer lived, and they fancy themselves the senior partners in the firm – wiser, more beautiful, more graceful, etc. The ancient elves, being only a few generations removed from the Kabir, were virtual demi-gods and terribly powerful. In no time, they spread their influence and their kingdoms across the face of the world, and their general lack of morality and compassion for lesser creatures drove them to enslave other folk. True, their influence did not spread to Mu-Pan, where their dragon sires held sway, but the rest of NOD was theirs to do with as they pleased.

The elves demanded tribute from the dwarves (more on them later) and drove them to construct a network of towering standing stones that formed the natural flow of magic on NOD into a network they could tap to work wonders. This network also denied magical access to most other folks. With this magical power, the elves constructed impossible cities and walked the planes of reality. They were the greatest explorers of their age, mapping the cosmos and making enemies far and wide.

The power of the ancient elves was staggering, but not without limits. Their magic flowed from the Kabir via elven druids, and the dictates of the Kabir irritated the arrogant elves. They raged against their ancestor gods, and in time they were heard by the demons, that still haunted NOD, and the fallen angels who now inhabited Hell at the center of NOD. These agents of Chaos and Evil reached out to the ancient elves with promises of power unlimited, asking nothing in return, for they knew the elves, unhampered by compassion or morality, would do exactly what their new tutors would like to be done to the world.

Tune in next time for the dwarves and the destruction of everything the elves held dear (i.e. their power)

History of Nod, Part I

/ jstater / 1 Comment
It’s good to be the God of Nod …

There have been requests, so here it is. It will also appear in the NOD Companion (coming soon … I swear!) I have generally hesitated to get too much into this, since, in my opinion, this is just stuff from my personal campaign. I’d like others to feel free to concoct their own history of NOD if they use it in a campaign. Still, some folks like to get the “official” word on a campaign setting, so I guess this is it.

We begin with the Primordial History of NOD …

I first conceived of NOD as a campaign setting about 5 years ago. It had two key sources of inspiration. The first was a map that depicted what some folks believed would be the layout of the continents on Earth millions of years from now. Is NOD meant to be the future of Earth? No. Just liked the map.

The second bit of inspiration came from the fiction of Dunsany and Lovecraft, specifically the Dreamlands. Having grown up on more Tolkienesque fantasy, they were both a revelation and a welcome “shot in the arm” to my imagination. I had created worlds that were little more than fantasy versions of the CIA’s factbook – collections of make-believe countries (mostly based on real world countries) and currencies and languages, etc. Tons of background that would rarely come up when a motley band of tomb robbers, religious zealots, scoundrels and necromancers were descending into the unlit depths of the world in search of fame, fortune and experience points.

NOD, therefore, would be a dream world, one conjured by the dreams, fantasies and mythologies of everyone who ever lived (but mostly dreams, fantasies and mythologies that I made up myself, or that were in the public domain – after all, I live in the real world and don’t fancy getting hit with a lawsuit!)

NOD is composed of dreams. In that regard, it has no geological or cosmological history. It wasn’t, and then it was, and slowly, it got itself crammed with all sorts of fantasy nonsense to entertain and annoy people who like to play fantasy games.

The LAND OF NOD once floated in a great sea of undiluted Chaos. Beset by demons and their ilk, and other things born in nightmares, those organisms that tried to eke out a life on the little planet had a tough time of it. Fortunately, what exists in the Material World has a soul in the Ethereal Plane. Like souls tend to flock together in great eddies in the Ethereal Plane, and these collections of souls, united by common purpose, gain a sort of divine sentience. It was thus that Ka, the first deity, was born.

Ka was composed of the souls or spirits of everything alive, and in fact still is. In those primordial days, though, Ka was mostly composed of the spirits of simple organisms and beasts (as they outnumbered sentient beings by a significant margin), and thus embodied (so to speak) the desire to survive.

Seeing its subjects beset by the creatures of Chaos, Ka injected bits of itself into the Material Plane – like sticking one’s fingers into the bowl of jelly. These protrusions of Ka took material form in the Material Plane, and they are called the Kabir. The Kabir might be considered the first of the fey, though in game terms they would be considered outsiders. Their shapes were variable, but primarily humanoid, for humans, the most advanced animals on NOD, gave them the benefit of their own advanced minds.

The Kabir went to war with the demons and other chaos creatures. In this war, they created soldiers from the stock of creatures already living on NOD, and in this way gave birth to the fey, the giants and the dragons. In time, they achieved a sort of victory, and life flourished on NOD. In time, Ka was shattered, or at least smaller eddies formed within Ka. These were the animal lords, each a collection of animal souls united by the drives of their component species, and more alignment-oriented entities, composed of the souls of sentient beings based on their own dedication to philosophical concepts like Law, Chaos, Good and Evil. These entities could also project pieces of themselves into the Material Plane, appearing not only as the planets that orbit around NOD, but also as the various outsiders (devils, angels, etc.) that plague and aid humans and demi-humans.

The structure of the Nodian cosmos was the product of ZID, the “god” of Reason and the Need for Order and Organization, through the workings of the polyhedroids, who are its manifestations in the Material Plane. They derived the crystal spheres that guide the movement of the planets and constructed from raw chaos the Firmament, which holds the undiluted chaos of the cosmos at bay, the churning of this chaos serving as the motivating force that keeps the Nodian cosmos in motion.

The Kabir eventually retired from the Material Plane to the pocket dimension of Fairyland, leaving their fey children behind to serve as nature’s agents on NOD. Since NOD has no innate physical laws to govern it, all that happens in NOD must happen through an intelligent agent. The polyhedroids are in charge of the big things, like gravity and the conservation of matter and energy, while the natural flourishes like the seasons are overseen by the various fey courts.

Next up … a brief history of the elves and gnomes

The Damnable Sea – Introduction

/ jstater / 1 Comment

Yes indeed, it’s time to start previewing some of my material for the next issue of NOD, the centerpiece of which will be the eastern half of the hexcrawl from NOD 19, which I’m calling … The Damnable Sea.

Here, then, is the intro to the hexcrawl …

There were riches across the ocean, of that there could be no doubt. The elves and dwarves hailed from across the sea, and while both their elder kingdoms were now in ruins, their stories were fantastic and full of wonders.

The earliest forays were made by the swaggering bravos of Guelph in small cogs that were barely sea worthy. These voyages proved profitable, though, as they first constructed the port of Janus on an island that lie mid-ocean, and then went on to build colonies in Hybrasil that disgorged from those shores tons of gold and silver to fund their wars against the hobgoblins. These treasure ships attracted the attention first of the filibusters of Brigantia, who found is worth their while to abandon their galleys for swift caravels. Like wolves they hunted the over-laden treasure galleys of the Guelphlings, showing a portion on their Queen Gloriana.

The Antigooners were not pirates (well, not usually), but merchants with a keen eye for profit. Drooling over the gold and silver of the Guelphlings and hearing tales of green shores north of their colonies, they ventured into a stormy patch of sea that came to be known as the Damnable Sea. Here, they discovered the Virgin Woode and, with the Brigantians hot on their heels, began the Motherlander colonization of that land of elves and ancient secrets.

Upon the disappearance of the Emperor of Nomo and the subsequent decline and fall of that empire, the tributary city-states of the Motherlands sought to claim a portion of their old master’s power. This was first attempted in a series of ineffective wars, as no one city-state was powerful enough that it could best its rivals, separated as they were by vast tracts of wilderness.

While the secrets (at least some of them) of the Virgin Woode were revealed in NOD 19, the Damnable Sea itself holds many secrets. An ancient elven empire lies beneath these waves. The Emperor Jasconius has conquered the city-states of Basilea and Tartessus, scattered the hated sahuagin to the currents, and now looks to extend his suzerainty above the waves, reclaiming from the humans the Virgin Woode as the ancient birthright of the elves. There are also the islands of demonic Satanazes and wondrous Bermoothes with its sorcerous Duke and, in the eastern depths, something more ancient and horrible than the elves.

Three locations from the hexcrawl follow …

3501. Temple of the Wolverine | Stronghold

The wild elves of the north maintain a shrine here dedicated to the Carcajoue, the Wolverine Lord, a deity of savagery and gluttony to the wild elves. The shrine is a spirit house composed of wooden sticks and four stout poles capped with images of the wolverine spirit painted in stark shades of white and blood red.

The shrine is protected by three spirit-wolverines as well as a wild elf druid, Paskatootsk, an elf with a rather sinister cast and a skin covered with white blotches and an evil eye. Paskatootsk is a were-wolverine, and when threatened he does not hesitate to assume his hybrid form to frighten his enemies. Fallen foes are dragged into the temple and fed to the strange, sinister wolverine spirit that dwells within the temple (actually a black pudding who dwells beneath the shrine at the entrance to a series of caverns that holds Skraeling catacombs, lost treasures of the ancient elves, a secret society of fungal mages and the world’s largest opal.

3520. Telchine Forge | Monster

The sea floor here is rent by a great volcanic vent. A tribe of 200 telchines has set up shop here, operating a forge that is now under the control of the Atlanteans. The Emperor Jasconian has sent a company of soldiers and a military governor, a warrior-mage called Xercelad – a haughty elf with delusions of his prime importance in the schemes of his emperor. He detests the telchines, but treats them reasonably well so long as they meet their quotas and deliver their goods on time.

The telchines are primarily working on orichalcum plates for the submersibles of the Atlantean navy. The plates are picked up fortnightly by an old Atlantean cargo submersible.

The telchines dwell in sea caves, their forge being open to the ocean. The Atlanteans have constructed a domed structure of stone in which they bivuac.

3618. Floater | Monsters

The bloated, rotting corpse of a sea giant is floating in this hex, and might be spotted by travelers near or on the surface. The body is floating face down, and shows signs of a great deal of nibbling by sea scavengers. Seven giant bristle worms (i.e. sea centipedes) are even now feasting on the underside of the corpse. Should it be disturbed, they will certainly leave the water to investigate. The giant still wears a chainmail sleeve on its left arm and a gold necklace (300 gp) around its neck. A crystal eye is still lodged in the sea giants eye socket. About twice the size of a human eye, it can be used to project a color spray once per day with the command word “Saskatoon”.

Nodian Maps of Old

/ jstater / 4 Comments

Back when I first started my NOD campaign (maybe around 2005/2006), I wasn’t making hex maps. I was making all sorts of other maps, though, in my capacity as a GIS manager at a real estate company. I was making those maps using a neat piece of software called MapInfo, and, having no other mapping resource and being a total geek, I decided to draw the maps for my new campaign world in MapInfo.

The advantage was that MapInfo maps are fully geocoded – i.e. they have real lat/long coordinates. For Nod, I began with a map of North America and then drew my continents (based on a projection of Earth many millions of years into the future) on top of it. From there, I slowly sculpted the shorelines, drew in woodlands, hills, mountains, deserts, etc.

Two full campaigns were run in the world, one set in Thule (then referred to as Og) and the other in Mu-Pan, and then I began the process of creating the hex crawl material for the gaming magazine. In the process, quite a few things changed – primarily in terms of the style of the world from Greyhawk-style nation state model to the “tiny-pockets-of-civilization-amidst-monster-infested-wilderness” model.

Anyhow – I was recently checking out those original maps, and thought folks might like to see them. They aren’t precisely the same scale (and I’m too lazy to include the scales), but they should give you an idea of what this big lump of fantasy world grew out of.

(As usual, click to embiggen)

Mu-Pan
It originally had more cities, towns and villages. The desert in the north is Yondo. The Tsanjan Plateau is based on the idea of Leng.
Thule
Originally called Og after the big river in the south (a sort of Nordic Amazon). Home of the first Nod campaign, an epic murder-mystery that taught me that I had players with absolutely no interest in solving murder mysteries. Fun nonetheless. Probably the next area I’ll cover with a hex crawl.

I’m considering cleaning these up (i.e. updating them) and using them in the NOD Companion.

NOD 20 Released … Finally

/ jstater / 6 Comments

So what took so long? Well, I’ll tell you, but first …

The twentieth issue of NOD finally arrives, detailing the fantasy colonial city of Dweomer Baye. This issue also includes the Vigilante class for Blood & Treasure, new aquatic monsters, cosmic hero Starman for Mystery Men!, an unholy relic, alien cocktails for Space Princess, random dungeon noises and the bogeyman! 34 pages

Click here to buy NOD 20 for $1.99

So, why did I take so long to finish one of the shortest (maybe the shortest) issue of NOD yet?

I think, first and foremost, my brain wanted to take a pseudo-sabatical from RPG writing. My post count has been low on the blog, and my output outside the blog has been a bit lower than usual. Earlier this year, I finished a couple issues of NOD and did some freelance work besides (more monster lairs), so the little grey cells, they were a bit fatigued mon ami,

While my brain was dragging its feet (sounds like something Yogi Berra would have said) on NOD 20, it was also dragging its feet on ACTION X and the NOD Companion – so I’ve been slowly working on all three projects.

Fortunately, I’m starting to get back into high gear (well, maybe second gear), and I’m also getting a bit more excited about NOD 21, which will detail the western half of the Virgin Woode hex-crawl. This will concern the Damnable Sea and the Victorian/Atlantean aquatic elves who dwell beneath its waves and are preparing to launch a war of conquest on the surface dwellers. They’ve enslaved the locathah, scattered the sahuagin, and now they’re turning their eyes towards humanity!

For ACTION X, I’m currently detailing some notable automobiles from the 20th century for the game. I still need to grab spell descriptions from B&T and some psionic power descriptions from Tanner Yea’s excellent Psionics of Lore supplement for the Spells/Powers section, but otherwise it’s just about ready to playtest. For anyone interested in participating, I plan to run the playtest on Google+ – it will involve entering Iran Mission:Impossible-style to capture or help escape (who knows!) a scientist working on their nuclear weapons program.

For the NOD Companion, I’m detailing the gazetteer portion that gives people an overview of the NOD campaign world in its entirety. I was originally going to make it somewhat detailed, then changed my mind and thought about doing the entire thing as a travelogue involving a Tremanni merchant, and have finally settled on doing more of a glossography with some hand drawn maps. When finished, it will include the overview of NOD, a collection of classes published in NOD and updated for Blood & Treasure, new weapons and some other character-oriented articles from NOD.

So – that’s the gaming side of “why it took so long”. The other side is what’s known as “my real job”.

For those who don’t know, I am a researcher/pseudo-economist who tracks the commercial real estate market in Southern Nevada (i.e. Las Vegas). I maintain an oft-neglected blog concerning commercial real estate, maintain a massive database all on my lonesome, and produce quarterly reports. Back when I started the blog and the hobby publishing, I produced three quarterly reports, detailing the industrial, office and retail markets in Las Vegas. Now, I produce those, as well as reports on the local economy, the hospitality sector, medical office, multifamily, rarely land and I help with a gaming report. I’ve also started doing some freelance economic work. In other words, I do quite a bit of writing, and that’s detracted a bit from my hobby writing.

Still, I think I’m getting back in the swing, so expect more content moving forward than you’ve seen in the last few months. Hopefully, as Frog God Games finishes the big projects it has on its plate, I’ll get the nod (no pun intended) to produce some more Hex Crawl Chronicles for them.

Get Yourself Some NOD 19, Fool!

/ jstater / 4 Comments

Yes, true believers (sorry Stan, needed a quick catchphrase)! NOD 19 is now available in digital form, paperback to follow when I see a review copy. What does this time hold? Dig some descriptive text:

“Spring has sprung, and so has NOD 19 (okay, that was lame, but this descriptive text gets tricky after a while). Anyhow – NOD 19 features the first half of the Virgin Woode hex crawl, a bunch of monsters, the puritan class, four new classes for Space Princess, a new race/class for Pars Fortuna and a bunch of other cool junk! 68 pages of excellence!”

There you have it, lads and lasses. Check out some NOD 19 and rock your brain-stem with fantasy goodness for $2.99 (cheap).

Check it out HERE!

And the MAP can be found HERE 

or just look below …

So far, only the western portion is filled in – the eastern portion will be detailed in NOD 21, while NOD 20 will focus on the colonial city-state of Dweomer Baye.