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.
I’m taking another break from Lost Heroes.
But what am I going to be doing on this break? Writing an adventure based on Lost Heroes!
After the Day of Fudge community event last Saturday (something I was unable to contribute to), the community has started a new project. Write a Fudge adventure for a month (also called The One Month Fudge Adventure Challenge!). Results to be uploaded to the Yahoo page. This isn’t a competition and you don’t even have to have a complete adventure. The point is to enjoy creating (and sharing) something with the community.
And hence, I’m writing one. I had planned all along to do three adventures for Lost Heroes, but they were always low priority and I put them completely out of mind last week, when I laid out my current plans for three “books”. However I had tons of ideas and so I’m picking up the first one to do. 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.
I don’t what to give away too much yet, however I can say I have the plot down already. It’s rather simple, without much variance and also quite predictable (though I believe in this case it’s good). The important part is the actually player characters and they will take some careful preparation and thought.
I also want to make the game as pure Fudge as I can so as long as you’re familiar with Fudge, you can pick it up and play it or easily adapt it to you’re way of using Fudge. Once I’ve done the Book of Heroes and/or Book of Rules, I’ll probably produce an updated version of this adventure using Lost Heroes RPG system (which is a Fudge derivative).
Watch this space for the results of my efforts!
My original plan for v0.19 was to create a playtest/initial draft of my game. I was going to write up the setting and rules with all my evolutions and updates and put it online, in one big glob, for everyone’s viewing pleasure. Probably with some nice fancy web formatting (I know a little). I then hoped I gather feedback from a few people and look at doing a “v1.0″, possible purchasing art and looking at POD options.
Then I decided it’d make sense to have v0.19 as a downloadable PDF too. So I’d have it readable online and downloadable to read offline or print out. I could also upload it to various sites to promote the game and gather more feedback. This changed my mind set, oddly. I was writing the setting nearly independent of the rules and character systems but I then hoped to bring the three pieces together in one document. But once I started thinking about a single PDF, I realised that I’d be doing a lot of editing and reworking to get the setting text to flow with the rules text. I started looking at, what was meant to be a version for playtesting, to be a little more than that, an actual RPG “book”.
I’ve been impressed by the high quality of free RPGs online at the moment. The bar is set really high. For me it’s important that I’m enjoying it and what I’m getting out of the work, is worth what I’m putting in. And, for the moment, that’s holding true. But I have no finances to spare on this project, so I can’t afford to buy artwork, hire an editor or a layout guy and son. I wish I could. So for the moment I’m doing everything myself. I hope I’d still be able to generate something of quality.
Rob Lang over at the Free RPG Blog made an excellent post on how you should layout your free RPG (in fact I find this blog affecting my thinking quite a bit about how to go about doing Lost Heroes RPG) and a discussion with Chris Helton on Facebook about RPG settings without rules (I was completely unaware that people were making available such things and that they were popular!), I’ve changed my plan yet again.
For the upcoming version v0.19 (the first public version), I’m going to split it in three: a Book of Gods (setting), a Book of Rules (system) and a Book of Heroes (character systems and lists). I plan to take on Rob Lang’s advise on how to layout each “book”. They’ll all be available in an online format and be downloadable as PDFs (though I may make several variants of the PDF layouts). For the time being, I’ll use my own artwork (which has slowly but steadily getting better, but certainly still not even close to “professional”) and friends to proofread.
Right now, I’ve just finished the Norse Gods section of the “Book of Gods”. This is the final set of gods I’ll be including. There is still so much left to do in Book of Gods, but having an intermediate goal of a setting-only book, makes it feel much closer.
Recent discussions on the Yahoo Fudge Community have made me think it might be worth providing a POD (Print-on-demand) option, via something like Lulu, even though I still consider this a free RPG. I’ll see when I have something to print.
Onwards to Ragnarok and the final battle! My brief break is nearly over now and if I can make it through my kids final month at school before the summer holidays, I’ll be back at full swing working on Lost Heroes.
I finished the section on the Aesir last week and decided to take a short break. I eventually found myself working on this:
Front and back covers for Lost Heroes RPG: Book of Gods
(read about the construction of this image on my personal blog!)
So I take a break from working on Lost Heroes and end up working on Lost Heroes. Go figure.
Brian drinks his beer slowly, savouring it. He can only afford the one. He lost his job this morning, yet another “causality of the recession”. But the truth is, he didn’t fit in, he wasn’t like them, no matter how hard he tried. Nobody was sorry to see him go.
Sandra is moderately successful. She owns a popular nightclub. She still dances to the midnight beat, even though all her friends have since “grown up” and have families or work in offices. She knows she’ll be dancing for as long as she can.
The young emo-goth Meave sits by herself in the school cafeteria. She numbly rubs at the healed scars on her wrists. The other kids just ignore her today. This is a good day for her.
The work is hard, but that’s good for his soul, thinks Michael as he carries the heavy equipment up to the site. He wants to sing, to celebrate, but knows he should never do that now, not so far from his real home. Those around him wouldn’t comprehend. Instead he treats himself to a simple smile.
But something is happening today. They all feel it. An itch that can’t be scratched. A draft that can’t be blocked. Something is whispering to them, calling to them. They are going to hear it and they are going to learn they do not walk alone.
Brian will pay for his beer, desert his car and walk though the city for ten days. His powerful stone arms will not feel so heavy. Others will recognise him and know they too are no longer alone.
Sandra will hear the music playing on the wind. She’ll clip her hooves and trim back her fur before she searches it out, the great dance. For that is how it calls to her.
Meave will see her father, the god Dagda, in the distance watching her. She will run from him, run as hard as a princess of worlds that don’t exist can run. And the crows will screech through the sky after her.
Michael will feel the joy of the Divine Plan for a moment and he will sing and soar as high as he can, for it’s divine music will summon him to the same place.
They are being called. It is time.