I just finished “The Night Watch” series of books by Sergei Lukyanenko, a Russian urban fantasy that rocks socks (if you like urban magic action books that is).
They follow (mostly) the story of Anton, an “Other” or more specifically a Light Magician, as he works in the Night Watch. The Night Watch patrol the actions of Dark Others, Vampires, Werewolves, Dark Magicians, etc. (The Dark Others have their own watch called “The Day Watch”, hence the name of the second book). Sounds all black and white, but nicely isn’t. For a Light Other to do good, they have to let the Dark do something bad, for example the Night Watch give licenses to Vampires to hunt.
They also share several similar concepts with Lost Heroes, which is why I’m talking about them here. If I had read these a few years I’m pretty certain they would have been a big influence. But now instead I can point to them as being examples of what Lost Heroes is about.
In the world of Night Watch, there are humans and their are “Others”, those who are supernaturally different. And so too in Lost Heroes, though I haven’t differentiated between “Light” and “Dark” per say and the types of Others are different too.
There is also the “Twilight”, a realm that lies across mundane reality but only accessible to Others. In the movies (did I mention there are two movies based on the books?), this is translated from Russian as “the Gloom”. I like the word Gloom, it conjures up some great mental images of a sticky grim alternative world but Twilight makes more sense within the world of the books; a multi-layered spiritual planes of existence. In Lost Heroes there is the “Veil” and crossing the Veil you enter the Spirit World. In these books, there is a complex relationship between Others and this Twilight and similarly in Lost Heroes there is a power-play between Others and the Veil (which will affect how powers work too).
I’m amazed there isn’t a PnP RPG based on this world. It’s nearly crying out for it and I’d certainly pay for it. (I do believe there is a Computer Game RPG though).
Oh and by the way, there made two movies. I’ve seen the first one and thought it was good (but the book is infinitely better and more compelling). I haven’t seen the second one.
The internet does throw up some wonderful things:
A week into 2010, and I’ve finished the first draft of “Lost Heroes RPG: Book of the Gods”. I just wrote and wrote until I finished and that journey was 13,000+ words long! My. Hopefully parts of are actually decent.
There is a lot to do before I release it publically. I’d love to just put it online in it’s current form, warts and all, and let people tell me what’s wrong with it. This being a first draft however it’ll be unreadable. (Just read my blog for an example on how bad my grammar and readability can get!). It’ll be plagued with unnecessary “junk” words (“actually” is one of my particularly overused favourites), mixing up “their” and “there” (I drive my wife mad with this one), past and present tense and “effect” versus “affect”. And with such a big load of words to read through, everyone who read it would be just telling me what I already know, but not what I need to hear. At this stage I’d rather hear about if the ideas work, as a whole is it good, do the character concepts grab you, encouragement and so on, not the pedantic grammar and readability issues. (Though if there is anyone out there who wants to read it and willing to ignore the grammar and readability stuff, I’d be more than happy to share it).
I don’t have an editor and I don’t have the funds to hire one, I’m going to have do it myself. Even if I consider this version to be a “beta”, I still need it feeling professional when I share with people. So my plan is to do a read-through and fix up anything I find. Then put it aside for a week and start reading it again. I found this trick really useful, it’s like you’re reading someone else’s work (whose writing style is very familiar).
And once I get through that, I’ll read it backwards. Well when I say, read backwards, I mean read the chapters in reverse order. I know that during writing it, some concepts took shape later in those 13,000 and got a name, but apply across the board. This way I can make sure concepts and ideas are consistent throughout the setting.
*phew*
And then I get to lay it out. Again I don’t have an art director or a graphic layout guy on hand. So again, I’ll be attempting this myself. I’m going to keep it simple however. Rob Lang’s guide seems like a very good starting point for me. Plus I have some artistic ability.
So hold on to your britches, Book of the Gods may be out soon… ish. 
Over at the rather cool "The Free RPG Blog", Rob Lang posted a new article called "How to turn your stock fantasy RPG into a unique delight".
The Lost Heroes setting is basically a fantasy setting and it does include elves, dwarfs, magic and has the potential for adventuring. So as a mental exercise I went through each of Rob’s points and see how it compares to the setting that I’m working on.
Read More…
Krampus, the nastier version of Santa
I came across this today from wikipedia: Krampus.
According to wikipedia:
Krampus is a mythical creature who accompanies Saint Nicholas in various regions of the world during the Christmas season.
Krampus acts in conjunction with Saint Nicholas; the latter gives gifts to good children, while the Krampus gives warnings and punishments to the bad children…
Traditionally, young men dress up as the Krampus in the first two weeks of December, particularly in the evening of December 5, and roam the streets frightening children and women with rusty chains and bells…
A rather cool seasonal monster!
While St. Nick doesn’t actually feature in Lost Heroes RPG, he could easily exist as a Dreamling or even minor God-like being with his home being an icy Island on the Sea of Dreams. The Krampus would be his Nightmare equivalent.
The original Clash of the Titans movie had an impact on my imagination as a kid and is indirectly a source of inspiration for Lost Heroes RPG, so I’m quite excited to see how this remake!
I’ve been letting this blog languish for what feel like months while I’ve been busy writing “Book of the Gods”. So I’ve decided to post some extracts from the current work in progress, a way to wet appetites and to get over my own procrastination.
I’ll probably try to do this once a week if I can. So the first extract I’m going to post is from the “Other Worlds” chapter and specifically the intro to the “Dreamlands”.
The great Dreamlands, home of the Gods, the fantastical and the afterlife exists beyond the thin layer of the Spirit World. You know when you’re in the Dreamlands because everything appears or feels more real. The truth of everything is vividly more apparent and this leads to a sense of “hyper-realism”; colours are more startling, feelings are more passionate, sounds more stunning and so on. To humans, things take on personality because there are more true; flowers are more alluring and delicate, storms more violent and malignant, architecture belies more of the personality of the creator or designs of its architect, the way clothes hang on someone tell more about them then the choice of clothes and so on. The hidden meaning of things is less hidden and more explicit and it leads to an over-saturation of senses and meaning to humans. When people return from the Dreamlands, their memories and experiences there don’t seem real within the pressure of the Veil in the Mundane World, they take on a dream-like quality and many people forget them, just like night-time dreams.
Read More…
The results of my effort for the The One Month Fudge Adventure Challenge that I mentioned in my last post, can now be downloaded from the fudgecommunity yahoo group.
I didn’t finish it sadly and there is quite a lot left to do before its playable, but the framework of the adventure is there. Comments and feedback welcome.
It’s going under the working title of “What is Lost” and it’s actually part one of a two-parter. It’s set in a pseudo-Celtic-historic period (a mix of Celtic romanticism, heroic age and historic elements i.e. you can make it up). Best to think of it as Celtic-fantasy. In contrast the second part adventure (with the working title of “What is Found”) will be set in the modern day. The purpose of the two part adventure was to give an introduction into some of the themes of Lost Heroes RPG. From the end of the second adventure, players and GM could start their own campaign.