Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 29 May 2002 to 30 May 2002 (#2002-141) From: Automatic digest processor Date: 31/05/2002, 17:00 To: Recipients of MYSTARA-L digests Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 12 messages totalling 498 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Elven Kingdom of Doria (6) 2. The NWN Mystara Screenshot Challenge! (3) 3. Chasing Dogma (was: Elven Kingdom of Doria) (3) ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.dnd.starflung.com/ To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 10:40:13 +0300 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ville_V_L=E4hde?= Subject: Re: Elven Kingdom of Doria Nice work, Havard! I really liked this one, and it was nice to read it although I can't use it IMC. But perhaps if we some day manage to get a secondary (actually tertiary) campaign going... Just one thought. I haven't read the stuff that describes the death of Alfheim, except the Almanac entries found in the Vaults. But as far as I gathered, when Alfheim dies the climate spells dissipate as well. This should mean that since Alfheim is no longer a rainforest, no water pours down to the Sump and Weir and ends up in Malphgeggi. Although Streel is a powerful river, this should still make the project of drying up Malpgehhi a lot easier. By the way, what about the average rainfall in Ylaruam? Has it increased due to the fall of Alfheim? Where did the rains divert? (Note: The Alfheim Gazetteer states that the increased rainfall was created with the expense of the Alasiyan basin, after all. This is one of the reasons why I have been thinking of a campaign based on Al-Kalim's return to lead a holy war against the water-greedy elves.) Ville ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 16:23:43 +0200 From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Havard=20Faanes?= Subject: Re: Elven Kingdom of Doria I was just about starting to wonder if anyone actually read that mail.. :) -- Ville_V_Lähde skrev: > Nice work, Havard! I really liked this one, and it > was nice to read it > although I can't use it IMC. But perhaps if we some > day manage to get a > secondary (actually tertiary) campaign going... I dont really expect anyone to use this one, but I always liked that storyline. Im thinking about using this scenario as part of an alternate future for Mystara which I might develope into a complete Mystara setting. Official information detailing the death of Alfheim doesn't really take into account much of the after-effects of this development. But I think you are right and I will include this in my revised version of Doria. As for the effects on Ylaruam, I agree that this is the first step in removing the desert from that country. The Fire Seeds causing the high temperature in that country also has to be removed. (Adventure Potential here!) Also, maybe some "sand to earth" or "fertilize ground" spells can be developed to complete the restoration of Ylaruam. Ofcourse, if the use the Dune analogy in Ylaruam as is indicated in that gaz, this will lead to a deterioration of the Ylari culture turning proud desert warriors into lazy and corrupt city dwellers with "Marketplace Souls"... ______________________________________________________ Følg VM i fotball 2002 på http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 03:50:44 +1000 From: Alfred O'Meagher Subject: Re: Elven Kingdom of Doria It's interesting cause our campaign, world of mystery is set directly west of there, between Slagovich and Atruahgin lands. It is such a blank area I guess that's why the DM picked it. It's at www.geocities.com/knightsbelow ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 14:09:32 -0500 From: John Polacek Subject: The NWN Mystara Screenshot Challenge! Hi everybody, As some of you may know, Bioware, the makers of the much-anticipated game, Neverwinter Nights (NWN), have released a beta copy of the NWN toolset. This is the application that allows one to create modules that can be played and DMed online. The beta is incomplete, and includes only 2 tilesets and a small portion of the monsters that will be available when the final game is released, but it is still really cool! You can download the beta at: http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/toolset.html Starting today, Realms of Mystara (http://www.mystaranet.com), a project that will be developing a NWN server set in Mystara, is running the Mystara Screenshot Challenge: Build an area with the toolset that depicts a specific locale in Mystara, whether from Gazeteer, adventure module or whatever. Submit the screenshot by either posting it or a link on the RoM forums, or emailing the screenshot to me directly at ashlander73@mystaranet.com. Make sure you indicate what area in Mystara you're depicting, and any published works that area appears in! To see the screenshots that have been made so far go to: http://www.mystaranet.com/mystarascreenshots.htm _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 14:12:00 -0500 From: John Polacek Subject: The NWN Mystara Screenshot Challenge! correction: email any screenshots to me at: ashlander73@hotmail.com or post on the RoM forums: http://www.mystaranet.com/forum.htm Thanks! _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 13:41:48 -0700 From: Chris Furneaux Subject: Re: Elven Kingdom of Doria --- Havard Faanes wrote: > I was just about starting to wonder if anyone > actually > read that mail.. :) I do that sometimes.... the list has been very quiet lately. Anyway I read it, good job, as always. Chris. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 07:16:16 +1000 From: Alfred O'Meagher Subject: Re: Elven Kingdom of Doria we've been busy... PLAYING! ;-) ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 23:43:02 +0100 From: Paul George Dooley Subject: Re: Elven Kingdom of Doria ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alfred O'Meagher" To: Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2002 6:50 PM Subject: Re: [MYSTARA] Elven Kingdom of Doria > It's interesting cause our campaign, world of mystery is set directly west > of there, between Slagovich and Atruahgin lands. It is such a blank area I > guess that's why the DM picked it. > BLANK??? Sind, Graakhalia, the fierce nomads amd ravening monster hordes of the great waste that the master uses. After all according to PWA3 there's over 3/4 million people there, not counting monster races, with over 1/2 a million of them in Sind, again not counting monsters. We can't be talking about the same place surely ;^) Paul ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 19:11:48 -0100 From: Redwolf Subject: Re: The NWN Mystara Screenshot Challenge! The site is unavailable is there somewhere else to get the toolset? ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Polacek" To: Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2002 6:09 PM Subject: [MYSTARA] The NWN Mystara Screenshot Challenge! > Hi everybody, > > As some of you may know, Bioware, the makers of the much-anticipated game, > Neverwinter Nights (NWN), have released a beta copy of the NWN toolset. > This is the application that allows one to create modules that can be played > and DMed online. The beta is incomplete, and includes only 2 tilesets and a > small portion of the monsters that will be available when the final game is > released, but it is still really cool! > > You can download the beta at: http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/toolset.html > > Starting today, Realms of Mystara (http://www.mystaranet.com), a project > that will be developing a NWN server set in Mystara, is running the Mystara > Screenshot Challenge: > > Build an area with the toolset that depicts a specific locale in Mystara, > whether from Gazeteer, adventure module or whatever. Submit the screenshot > by either posting it or a link on the RoM forums, or emailing the > screenshot to me directly at ashlander73@mystaranet.com. Make sure you > indicate what area in Mystara you're depicting, and any published works that > area appears in! > > To see the screenshots that have been made so far go to: > > http://www.mystaranet.com/mystarascreenshots.htm > > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. > > ******************************************************************** > The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp > The Mystara Homepage: http://www.dnd.starflung.com/ > To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM > with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. > > ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 09:24:23 +1000 From: Alfred O'Meagher Subject: Re: Chasing Dogma (was: Elven Kingdom of Doria) But all that stuff only got picked up by a handful of people. Our DM has got quagmire, in which there is a great big blank map, and all the Savage Coast stuff, which starts further west. Atruahgin Gazette never turned up here when we started, a local shop has about half the gazettes now for AUD$40.00 each, but it isn't worth it after we played quagmire and red arrow and curse of xanathon. If I had to pick between our campaign and the published stuff, it would be our stuff every time. I guess that will set the Mystara Papacy off. I remember though in the colored box sets it said somewhere in each of them that it is up to the DM and players what their campaign is like - is that ruling part of canon too? As a player I get really really bored with all the geopolitical & population stuff and dogma in Mystara, especially on some of the websites. It's pants. In most cases it doesn't bear any relationship to the real world, or to logical extensions of what was given in various adventures and rulebooks. Tracy Hickman, Frank Mentzer (sp?), Bruce Heard and others made it up as they went along, to be fun, not to be some sort of scientific paradigm. It just doesn't work under close scrutiny, so tediously writing it all out is pointless unless you are using it in a campaign you're running. I notice that the geopolitical stuff people grind out never takes into account dinosaurs and hutaakans and beautiful elven princesses in magical dungeons and exotic monsters and mystical events, even though 99% of all the modules are stuffed with things like that. Where does the Isle of Dread fit in all of that fragile continuity? You can't extrapolate a coherent medieval / renaissance world, with five intelligent species, from a set of synopses in a series of gazettes, two d100 events charts and a set of random encounter tables. Where is the sense of wonder? Mystara is adventure, adventure, adventure. You only have to read the original D&D rulebooks and modules to get that. They just pile everything in, and at high level you run your own unique realm. It isn't like playing in one of those cr@p worlds where Elminster's always looking over your shoulder or all the high level people are a level you can't be or there's aways some D&D version of a modern army running around stopping all the heroism. Mysyara is more like Ancient Greece. Gods in disguise are forever interfering in mortal life at the same time as mortals rise to the epic level of the gods themselves. It's a setting with demiurge wizards and all the concepts of science fiction, fantasy, science fantasy and pulp gothic horror mashed together. If you haven't read the Clark Ashton Smith Averoigne stories, how can you even dream of talking about the realm that is basically dominated by a scion of the noble house in the tales? What about the Colossus of Ylourgne? Or the implicit links with the Cthulhu mythos? What about the werebeast supplement? It indicates that it is possible - "canonical"? - to have a campaign world where werebeasts will be exterminated, or rule the whole world, or be a common type of PC race like the many cartoon furry humanoids. Shouldn't the grand fiction that is "canon" at least acknowledge the middle of the road campaign suggestion from this supplement? It is of equal status with all the others. Likewise People of the Sea, etc.etc. And of course Top Ballista. I think "canon" approaches in gaming or science or arts all share one central feature. They are study paradigms that want a dead body to dissect and catalogue rather than have to deal with the mess and excitement of an organic whole that is still changing, growing and producing unlikely unexpected effects. No amount of pusillanimous committee-decided shifts in geopolitical balances and corrections to perceived wrongs in modules and gazettes substitutes for the shock to the system of a new rulebook or boxed set. The "canon" approach, had it applied to Mystara pre-Savage Coast, would never have arrived at a seismic shift like Red Steel. Successful settings all have the common feature of grand sweeping events that transform them. Some fans will kvetch at the change, some will be thrilled, but everyone will be stimulated into fresh thought and action. Mystara needs a group of authors to produce some new BIG ideas to apply to it - not FORCE people to apply, but just to offer them. We should work out rules for eg *an ICE AGE Mystara, maybe a comet freezes the planet, maybe Immortals of Winter zap the whole place *a FLOOD Mystara, maybe a Deluge sent by the Immortals, maybe a crazy artefact caused it, whatever *a Mystara plagued by a war between rival shapeshifters Whatever. Big concepts. Things to make people go "huh. never thought of that. It would never work. But I COULD use that idea on a smaller scale..." or "I COULD use that as a new challenge for my Master Level PCs" or "I COULD use that for the planet they are going to through the Alphatian chaosgate" or whatever. No matter how crappy Forgotten Realms got, it always saved itself and kept fans, and each time through the same mechanism - throwing in a new concept in boxed set or new rulebook. So it ended up a patchwork. Big deal... like Mystara isn't? No two Mystara games should be the same - that's one of the joys of playing in more than one of them, the recognition of common origins that have evolved so differently. There is no ideal Mystara setting based on "canon". The rules themselves, following in the heroic spirit of Dave Arneson himself, mandate that each game table will have a radically different world to play in. "It is for you, the player, to decide" remember? That means more than just running the D&D equivalent of Napoleonic re-enactment battles over and over again. For ten modules that you play through, NONE of them will be run as intended. It just doesn't happen. There is always deviation from the planned course of the adventure, caused by player choices of race and class usually but often by the predilections of the DM too. A DM mad on Ancinet Egypt or Greece or Rome will stress things that someone who is into barbarians and Conan and the Scorpion King won't, and vice versa. Pfhaugh. I am going into lurker mode for a long while as of now. I would love to discuss this but it will degenerate into an orthodoxy versus original thinker debate, and that is as pointless as a cueball. Anyone can comment on this thread of course irrespective, or to me directly at nineunknown@hotmail.com. -Alf ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 17:29:02 -0700 From: Mike Harvey Subject: Re: Chasing Dogma (was: Elven Kingdom of Doria) Hoody-hoo! Great post! :-) Speaking of which... How many "versions" of Mystara have you run? (By "you" I mean all you DMs out there) What I mean is, how many times have you run a great campaign that just totally screwed with the world and changed it... and then said "that was cool, now lets try something different", and RESET Mystara to its original unchanged state? For example, maybe one time you let the PCs conquer the world and build a giant empire; then you reset the world and follow the almanacs; then you reset the world again and say that the lycanthropes take over; then you reset it again and have the Outer Beings destroy the immortals... If you don't reset the world between campaigns, then I would assume you have a continuously progressing campaign that gradually gets further and further away from canon. It seems like resetting things would allow you to reuse great NPCs and plot ideas that maybe got killed or invalidated in the previous campaign, or to replay a historical event a different but just-as-cool way. Heck, there is far more just in the Almanacs than you could ever use in a single campaign. You would have to run multiple campaigns over the same time period in order to follow all the different simultaneous threads. Both ways (single campaign vs multiple alternate campaigns) would be fun. Anyway, just wondering... I think I may "throw out" my current campaign when I finish with it and do something different next time. Mike -- Mike Harvey -- Beaverton, OR http://members.dsl-only.net/~bing/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 04:09:34 +0100 From: Paul George Dooley Subject: Re: Chasing Dogma (was: Elven Kingdom of Doria) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alfred O'Meagher" To: Sent: Friday, May 31, 2002 12:24 AM Subject: Re: [MYSTARA] Chasing Dogma (was: Elven Kingdom of Doria) > But all that stuff only got picked up by a handful of people. Our DM has got > quagmire, in which there is a great big blank map, and all the Savage Coast > stuff, which starts further west > Soory didn't mean for you to think I was putting you down, I thought the wink on smiley was enough to show that I had no intention of trying to make this a canon debate. Let alone launch the first salvo in the latest round of the ongoing war. > If I had to pick between our campaign and the published stuff, it would be > our stuff every time. I guess that will set the Mystara Papacy off. I > remember though in the colored box sets it said somewhere in each of them > that it is up to the DM and players what their campaign is like - is that > ruling part of canon too? > Actually I think that when they realised they could make money of gamers it was the accountants who made this non-canon. After all if they actually tell us to make up our own minds about the campaign we won't be buying their spoonfed stuff. :^) As for the rest of what you wrote; I agreed with some things and disagreed with others but so what? You're not playing in my game or me in yours, but I think we'd both say the same thing "OUR version is best!" as, to paraphrase the bard, "To thine own campaign be true." And to finish: Too much canon is bad anyway, As it lets the munchkins come and play. Abusing this rule, that rule, this item and that, Let it burn in hell forever the ****ing t**t! Paul ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 29 May 2002 to 30 May 2002 (#2002-141) ****************************************************************