Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 17 Jul 2002 to 18 Jul 2002 (#2002-185) From: Automatic digest processor Date: 19/07/2002, 17:00 To: Recipients of MYSTARA-L digests Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 11 messages totalling 550 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Ville's Adventures 2. Modrigswerg 4 (2) 3. Mystaran Almanac: AC1018 Events (a short review) 4. Modrigswerg 3 :some ideas (2) 5. Delayed Dimension Door (3) 6. R:[MYSTARA] Delayed Dimension Door 7. ESD available everywhere? ******************************************************************** 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, 18 Jul 2002 14:23:07 +0300 From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ville_V_L=E4hde?= Subject: Re: Ville's Adventures Thanks, that was a nice welcome from my trip to the countryside. Most of my old adventures were written for relatively small zines in a time when Mystaran DMs were a rarity in Finland. It is nice to have an opportunity to share them. Yours, Ville ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 15:21:59 +0200 From: =?iso-8859-1?q?la=20Volpe?= Subject: Re: Modrigswerg 4 The Stalker raised the question of Kogolor dwarves not having magic users among them. So I thought that I'll have something along these lines: magic users among dwarves were shunned at the beginning, and thus there were always very very few; among the Modrigswerg some MU hid their use of magic and grew a sort of secret sect helped by the dark elves (renegade elves or Haavard's svartenalfen but I still have to check that out), so the clan was partially corrupted and thrown out by the dwarves who declared them all mad. At this point Kagyar steps in to help Garal who is worried for the race (1 they are dying out 2 they are corrupted), they bring the original race to the Hollow World (where the spell of preservation forces the cultural bias against magic users to become a "game rule"), while he asks Garal to be free to forge his own race from the remaining. Kagyar takes the dwarves and bring them to Rockhome, leaving the tainted Modrigswerg in the Northern Reaches. He gives the Rockhome dwarves false memories, makes them tougher and magic resistent, but no one cares of the Modrigswerg, that at this point fight a bloody civil war, some leave for Graabjerge (free room for Jacob Skytte), some remain in Northern Reaches and become paranoid atheists with a taste for double edged magical items, retaining the ability to make them maybe thanks to the intervention of some trickster god (Eiryndul and or Loki), very few may become an underworld race or some weird sects of entropic worshipping guys. I will also read carefully Modrigswerg 3 to take ideas thence too. Still waiting for other comments, before writing definitely. Iulius Sergius Scaevola Captain of the XXth Cohort Port Lucinius, Thyatis ______________________________________________________________________ Scarica il nuovo Yahoo! Messenger: con webcam, nuove faccine e tante altre novità. http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/?http://it.messenger.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 07:55:04 -0700 From: Herve Musseau Subject: Re: Mystaran Almanac: AC1018 Events (a short review) > Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 23:52:27 +1000 > From: Alfred O'Meagher > Subject: Re: Mystaran Almanac: AC1018 Events (a short review) > > Acronyms really don't fit fantasy game worlds. They are just another I tend to agree with you. It took me some time, and for some people to mention it (notably about NACE), for me to realize it, as we French love to play with acronyms. There are almost no acronyms used in the almanac, as I strive to remove them. For example, I always edit WDL into Western Defense League. So far I have left the canon acronyms as acronyms (for example DDC), although I hesitate to expand them too. The other thing I leave as acronyms is the game stats (which, incidentally, is very clique-ish). I wish to point out that canon does use acronyms. The most acronym-riddled canon product is probably Gaz3, many of its acronyms being silly ones (this gaz was written by Bruce Heard -- it was probably his French side showing ;) . > isolationist symptom of clique thinking. Why wouldn't it just still be I'm not sure what you mean here. If you mean in the almanac, there are very few acronyms used, as I said above, and those we do use are canon or rules-related, so they should be comprehensible by anyone who belongs to the Mystaran or 3E cliques (respectively), provided they have a deep enough knowledge of them (which is not so easy to acquire, I admit, and thus may seem clique-ish to some). If you mean that we sound like a clique when we speak about Mystara, on that list for example, by using acronyms like DV for Davania or whatever, well you are probably right but it's only human to use acronyms in that fashion. I understand it's quite hermetic for newcomers. That's why I wrote some time ago a list of common Mystaran acronyms, which you probably can find at the Vaults. It's probably outdated and lacks the latest of our acromnymic creations, but the basics should be there. > Alphatia? The politics have changed, not the people. It has changed, it isn't the same place anymore. In the (canon) PWAs already it had been renamed New Alphatian Empire by Zandor. As I said in a recent mail, though, most people do still call it Alphatia and its inhabitants Alphatians. Nayce (or the earlier NAE -- just teasing you, the acronym is never used in any product) is probably mostly used by government officials (of Nayce and of other countries) to distinguish it from Alphatia (the HW one), or by anyone to refer more specifically to the central government (like Americans would say "the federal government" or Europeans would say "Bruxelles" [or is it just Frenchs that say "Bruxelles" in that case?]). So, as someone else mentioned, it is like Russians that everyone calls Russians and the place Russia, whatever its current name (USSR, Russia, ...), except when for some reason they need to use the actual name. > Mystara has all these other realms with normal enough names, fantasy setting > nomenclature and so on, and then a late-1990s ugly American style acronym. Which is not an acronym anymore if you use "Nayce," which is the current usage in the almanac (although there was an acronym used for a time in previous almanacs). It's a name, like any other, like Alphatia or Ylarum or Hule. Now, you may or may not like it (some people still don't like that word, for some reason, like some people don't like the name "hin"). > Yuck. It won't attract new fans who have recently purchased the original > works. In fact the users of the original stuff are going to pretty much I fail to see how having a place named Nayce will affect whether new fans are attracted to the setting or not. If you mean to say that newcomers who have read about a place called Alphatia and find in its place one named Nayce will be pissed, maybe so, but then that is the case for many other places as well (eg Aengmor instead of Alfheim). This is unavoidable when you deal with a kind of product such as the almanac, which by definition creates a changing world of Mystara by advancing in years. If you want a Mystara that is more like the one in older canon products (while, I'd like to point out, the latest products, which the new players to Mystara are most likely to use to get introduced to the setting, are in fact more like the almanac than the gaz-era), then obviously the almanac is not the right kind of product for you. In fact, several people on this list do that, and thus aren't too much interested in the almanac. That is fine. There are other kind of products that we write that are for different usages. The almanac is one kind of products, and there are others. Admittedly, the almanac is one of the biggest such project, and thus it may seem to you as if it was the only one, but such is not the case. If the almanac is of no interest to you, then browse the Vaults for other types of fan creations that are more in line with what you are looking for. > outnumber the online almanack users 10 to 1 based on sales and the way their > own websites are going (I found 200+ Mystara websites through using the AD&D > web rings and website links pages. The OD&D and AD&D Mystara home campaigns > of these pages number at least 4-5 players each, the one I play in numbers > 12 plus many more online who play in the DM's PBeM.) Why do you pit almanac users against other types of Mystara fans? We are all part of the same community. We are all fans of the Mystara setting, and we strive to develop new material for it, since the world is dead. So we share our ideas and creations among ourselves, so that everyone can profit from the others' work. One among such shared fan work is the almanac. > This list is very cool, but I am already sick of the clique-ish almanack. Do you mean that the almanac team is a clique, or that the almanac creates a clique of almanac-type campaigns? The team might be seen as a clique, especially for newcomers. It is true that we work in a group, most of them a sub-group of this list, and in that sense we are a clique. However, that clique is open to anyone with ideas and a desire to join the team. Of course, you have to be willing to write according to the paradigms of the almanac -- that we write one future, that it is currently set in year 1018, that it tries to create one coherent future of Mystara that is compatible with MA-canon (canon, previous MAs, some other fan works), etc. Otherwise, the almanac is the wrong project for you, but hopefully there are other projects that would better suit your tastes -- and if there aren't, create them. Using the almanac is not forming a clique, because honestly each campaign world is its own clique -- a clique of one DM and a handful of players. It is a nonsense to say that the almanac as a product creates a clique, because then any product does -- it's like saying that the HW is clique-ish. > It's twaddle. Any DM worth the name has a cartload of their own stuff, they > don't need an almanack unless it is inspirational and full of useful details > and maps. Otherwise it's just an attempt at being elitist and forcing one Well, that is the purpose of the almanac -- giving the DM more new material from which to draw. That's the purpose of everything that list produces, actually. That was the purpose of TSR back when it produced Mystara modules. If you have a cartload of your own stuff, I don't know why you ever needed to read and use Gaz1. I don't know what you're doing on that list. I know why the rest of us are here, and why we write for Mystara, whether it is the almanac or something else. We like Mystara and we like to write new material for it, for the sake of all of us who share that same love for this fantasy world. > person's view of a fantasy world on to everybody else. The almanac is the result of the work of a team of us, all of those who wish to work on it, and not that of one person. It is not forced on anyone, you can easily ignore it, or use what you like from it and ignore the rest. Like everything we write and that you can find at the Vaults. Like everything from canon, actually, as each official product says in its intro. > Also, it's odd how canon is "canon" but nevertheless is changed on a whim > when it suits the online almanack creators. Actually one of the paradigms of the almanac is that canon is part of the MA-canon. Thus, we don't alter canon on a whim in the almanacs. Sometimes, though, canon is self-contradictory, and we have to take one possible interpretation of it over another. That is as far as we go at "changing canon". OTOH, you can find on the Vaults other works that do change canon, for one reaosn or another. ===== ___________________________________________________________ Herve Musseau http://www.geocities.com/hmusseau/ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes http://autos.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 18:14:26 +0200 From: =?iso-8859-1?q?la=20Volpe?= Subject: Re: Modrigswerg 3 :some ideas > 3060 BC > -Garal Glitterlode, envious of Kagyar's creative > ability creates a new artisan race he calls Gnomes, > and places them in the outer fringes of Evergrun, > near the south pole. > These > are the ancestors of the Ice Gnomes. Is this canon on the origin of gnomes or what? > -Kagyar gives the Modrigswerg many more of the > personality traits of the dwarves at the time of the > reshaping. Because > > of this they are remain reclusive and makers of > extreemly fine trap systems to protect their > caverns. > The Modrigswerg > > were re-shaped first and not as much care was taken. > -Kagyar placed the Modrigswerg here because he > wanted > the many creations of the first Dwarves to be safe, > and > > because this way there would be no obvious changes > to > the outside world, all they would know is that there > are dwarves > > deep in the mountains still and that they should not > to be meddled with. > -The Modrigswerg have not yet been tainted by the > Dark > Elves by this time. Uhm...uhm...I prefer to have the meddling with entropycs happen before the reshaping of the dwarven race. Greetings, Iulius Sergius Scaevola Captain of the XXth Cohort Port Lucinius, Thyatis ______________________________________________________________________ Scarica il nuovo Yahoo! Messenger: con webcam, nuove faccine e tante altre novità. http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/?http://it.messenger.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 18:21:23 +0200 From: =?iso-8859-1?q?la=20Volpe?= Subject: Re: Modrigswerg 3 :some ideas I liked very much the way Chris presented the civil war among the Modrigswerg, so I think I'll use a lot of Chris's ideas in my article. However I'll predate the events and change a little on the present relationships between the dwarves and the rot dwarves. Any problems with this? Iulius Sergius Scaevola Captain of the XXth Cohort Port Lucinius, Thyatis ______________________________________________________________________ Scarica il nuovo Yahoo! Messenger: con webcam, nuove faccine e tante altre novità. http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/?http://it.messenger.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 10:41:12 -0600 From: Angelo Bertolli Subject: Delayed Dimension Door I was thinking of a new spell that works like dimension door, where the caster disappears and appears elsewhere. Only the cast can delay the reappearance up to a certain amount of time later. But, I can't really see how this would be useful. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 18:57:43 +0200 From: Marco Fossati Subject: R:[MYSTARA] Delayed Dimension Door Don't worry....IMC I've found that clever players can always use in very innovative ways spells...IMHO you should give this spell to your players (or maybe a chance to learn it) and then they will come up with some great ideas with this spell.... Cheers, Marco Fossati > I was thinking of a new spell that works like dimension door, where the > caster disappears and appears elsewhere. Only the cast can delay the > reappearance up to a certain amount of time later. But, I can't really see > how this would be useful. > > ******************************************************************** > 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, 18 Jul 2002 17:39:35 +0000 From: Agathokles Subject: Re: Delayed Dimension Door Angelo Bertolli wrote: > > I was thinking of a new spell that works like dimension door, where the > caster disappears and appears elsewhere. Only the cast can delay the > reappearance up to a certain amount of time later. But, I can't really see > how this would be useful. If the caster's subjective time was suspended, it would work as an effective time-stop spell. Otherwise, it can be used for ambushes, or as an extreme measure for personal protection (you could stay out of danger until help/rescue come). -- Giampaolo Agosta agathokles@libero.it agosta@elet.polimi.it http://digilander.iol.it/agathokles ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 20:30:44 +0200 From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Matteo_Barnab=E8?= Subject: Delayed Dimension Door > I was thinking of a new spell that works like dimension door, where the > caster disappears and appears elsewhere. Only the cast can delay the > reappearance up to a certain amount of time later. But, I can't really see > how this would be useful. I think that your "delayed dimension door" could be quite useful; for example you could "dimension away" yourself to save your life: while you are "elsewhere" your friends could manage to defeat the threat, or enemies could be bewildered by your disappearance, and, thinking that you teleported away, they could be easily surprised at your return. Or you could use delayed dimension door during a duel with another magic-user: while you "stay elsewhere" the duration of his spells elapses (of course, this applies only to short duration spells, such as sword). The spell can be used also against an enemy: if he fails the saving throw you can state the very precise position of his return and you can take advantage of his absence preparing him a surprise, such as a cage, a web spell, an area of confusion, a cloudkill or, well, a couple of delayed blast fireballs well clocked! But now I have another question about this spell: while the recipient is elsewhere, _where_ is he precisely? In the Ethereal Plane, in the Astral Plane, or in a pocket Outer Plane? This problem is not as lazy as it could seem: during the "absence", the recipient could be attacked by the inhabitants of the Plane in which he's temporarily hosted, or, more reasonably, he could take advantage of the dead time to cast spells on himself (or to drink healing potions, or to poison a weapon, and so on). If this is the case, this spell would be extremely powerful, perhaps at the same level of timestop (as hinted by Agathokles). Let me know, this spell could be inserted in the (possible) second edition of the "Tomo della Magia di Mystara" ;-) Matteo ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 16:08:52 -0700 From: The Stalker Subject: Re: Modrigswerg 4 On Thu, 18 Jul 2002 15:21:59 +0200, =?iso-8859-1?q?la=20Volpe?= wrote: > The Stalker raised the question of Kogolor dwarves not > having magic users among them. So I thought that I'll > have something along these lines: > magic users among dwarves were shunned at the > beginning, and thus there were always very very few; > among the Modrigswerg some MU hid their use of magic > and grew a sort of secret sect helped by the dark > elves (renegade elves or Haavard's svartenalfen but I > still have to check that out), so the clan was > partially corrupted and thrown out by the dwarves who > declared them all mad. I'm still very confused about what these svartenalfen really are, so I guess I should go look as well. This is on Haavard's site? > At this point Kagyar steps in to help Garal who is > worried for the race (1 they are dying out 2 they are > corrupted), they bring the original race to the Hollow > World (where the spell of preservation forces the > cultural bias against magic users to become a "game > rule"), Ah, very clever solution IMHO. Fits perfectly and retains the HW Kogolors. Now why didn't I spot that? :) > while he asks Garal to be free to forge his > own race from the remaining. Kagyar takes the dwarves > and bring them to Rockhome, leaving the tainted > Modrigswerg in the Northern Reaches. So what does that mean for the Immortals? Does it mean that Kagyar was involved with or indeed the creator of all the dwarves (Kogolors, Modrigswerg, and Rockhomers alike) but abandoned all but the Rockhomers at this time? It would explain why the Kogolors don't worship him in HW or why he seems to have no association with the Modrigswerg. > He gives the > Rockhome dwarves false memories, makes them tougher > and magic resistent, but no one cares of the > Modrigswerg, So the Modrigswerg are essentially Kogolors and not Rockhomers at all? That is, they are dwarves but are less resilient or magic resistant than the Rockhomers, and the latter are the 'classic' dwarf in D&D? > that at this point fight a bloody civil > war, some leave for Graabjerge (free room for Jacob > Skytte), some remain in Northern Reaches and become > paranoid atheists with a taste for double edged > magical items, retaining the ability to make them > maybe thanks to the intervention of some trickster god > (Eiryndul and or Loki), very few may become an > underworld race or some weird sects of entropic > worshipping guys. > Sounds good to me. Hel might also be an option as the nasty Immortal, but of the three I rather prefer Loki somehow... Eiryndul would fit nicely with ties to the dark elves/svarfenalfen, but he just doesn't seem cruel enough to me. > I will also read carefully Modrigswerg 3 to take ideas > thence too. Still waiting for other comments, before > writing definitely. > Okay. Waiting to see it. - The Stalker ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 08:15:27 +0200 From: Giampaolo Agosta Subject: ESD available everywhere? I'm reporting this from ENWorld: -------- ESDs now available internationally from SVGames -- one of the first noticeable things about SVGames' website (see yesterday's news) is that it doesn't bear the notices regarding restriction of ESD purchases in certain countries (and, of course, someone like myself would never have been so dishonest as to tell WotC's old system that I lived in the US, because that would have just been dishonest!). Wary scooper Douglas dropped them an email, however, just to check, and got this reply: "Sure enough, ESDs are available internationally now. We look forward to doing business with you." -------- Looks like we're going to have ESDs, at last! -- Giampaolo Agosta agathokles@libero.it agosta@elet.polimi.it http://digilander.iol.it/agathokles ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 17 Jul 2002 to 18 Jul 2002 (#2002-185) ****************************************************************