The Best Laid Plans Part 2

My life has certainly not been going according to plan.

When I was just a boy, I dreamed of great things. For example, I thought I might be the first person to ever attend the California State Science fair seven years in a row. I was among the first group of young minds to get in starting from the sixth grade, then I returned in 7^th, and won first place in my division in 8^th. I was pretty proud. When I got to high school, I was gung-ho to be a scientist and continue my perfect science fair attendance, maybe add another newspaper article to my collection of silly childhood achievements that inexplicably get written about in local newspapers. Then, I met my science teachers, and all my dreams of becoming a scientist were dashed by a couple of incompetent asses. Actually just one, dude didn’t even know that .5 rounds up, c’mon.

Adventure Hooks for the Aberrant Internet

So, a lot of people might have read the last few posts about the fantasy style Internet that I have been building in the last few entries and wondered to themselves... why? sure, it might be interesting to have in your game, but what is the point? How would I actually make this an important or at least interesting part of my game world.



So, I am feeling generous and I thought I would write up some adventure hooks which you could use (and one or two of which I might be using) in an upcoming game when starting a new adventure.



Hook #1 - Find my lost Modum

Modums are precious to many people and for an individual that relies on the world of Hive City to stay up to date on all the latest information, or even might be using that world for less than honest purposes, finding a lost or stolen Modum might be a very high priority for many individuals. This hook could potentially be used at many different levels, ranging from heroic, even to epic tier, as it pits the adventurers against a force of unknown individuals or creatures or unknown level. The Modum in question, would most likely have powers and rarity associated with the level to which the adventure plays out.

Hook #2 - Gain Access to a Room

Some rooms might hold very rare and hidden information, or even be the place where more precious and unique items are stored. Gaining access to a specific room is akin to a treasure hunt for information. Finding out where the door is, finding out where it leads, and gaining a key could be a small or even long adventure unto itself and again can be played out at a number of levels. Maybe the PCs need to track down an individual who is known to possess that information or, perhaps, they need to find it engraved in the bottom of a dungeon.

Hook #3 - A Hive City Meeting

Hive City provides anonymity to those who are willing to purchase a Modum powerful enough. Meeting an individual in Hive City may be a very interesting and tricky way to start an adventure filled with hidden identities and spy tactics.

Hook #4 - A Hive Infested

Hive City has never been a place where monsters exist. It is a realm of a strange ghostly entities there to communicate... but what happens when monsters start showing up in Hive City and devouring the spirits of the people in Hive City, then those individuals wind up dead in the real world... what will happen. This may be an adventure worthy of upper paragon or even Epic Tiers.

Hook #5 - The Hive is Falling Apart

What would happen were Hive City to collapse - the consequences might be tremendous. Stopping its destruction could be something a group of Epic level PCs would relish taking part in.

These are just some potential ideas. Maybe there will be more coming later. In the future, Ill talk a little bit about history in the setting; I'll give a sample of how the races have changed, comparing dwarves in this setting to dwarves in dark sun; I'll talk about the different types of technology in the setting and how views on magic have changed.

Exploring Hive City, the Aberrant Internet

In my previous post, I described the Modum, a race of creatures that bond with other intelligent beings willingly to grant them access to Hive City, a place for communication among intelligent beings. But what exactly is Hive City? What is there? What does it look like?

Through the use of Modum, intelligent beings can access The Weird and the stuff inside it. Hive City. Hive City is a massive city of huge towers. The landscape may be somewhat bewildering at first. It is populated entirely by the people who use the Modum to reach it, so in all honesty, it can be said that nobody really lives there, they only visit.

The towers in Hive City are constructed entirely of what appear to be bookshelves and doors. All the bookshelves are sorted and categorized by topics which makes an individual, trained in finding information there, easily able to find what they are looking for. There are numerous methods by which information finds its way into Hive City. Many of these books are scribed by individuals capable of adding information into The Weird. Other information gets there by more secret, and sometimes, by more brutal methods. All the numerous tomes in Hive City possess a spirit of their own. When an individual draws a book from one of the stacks, they are actually drawing forth the information spirit that resides in that book and making a copy for themselves at the same time. That book remains on the stack and can be viewed by many people simultaneously. This fact has allowed the spread of information to process very quickly.

Each door in Hive City leads to a small extra dimensional pocket room within the Weird. Some of these rooms may be small in size, seemingly fitting into the space that might belong inside one of Hive Cities great towers. However, other rooms may lead to vast halls or even outdoor gathering places where people assemble in their ghostly Weird avatar forms to speak to one another.

However opening a door and entering its room is not always as simple as it may seem. Although some doors lead to public places, which can easily accessed by anyone, simply by opening the door, many do not. Some doors may even lead to multiple spaces. It takes several valuable pieces of information to use one of these portals.

The three vital pieces of information needed to open a given portal (that isn't accessible to the public) are:
1) The doors location within The Weird - knowing the location of the door within Hive City is a must. Some doors are very hard to find, but knowing its location (a coordinate on a 3 dimensional map) allows any individual within the Weird to travel to that location by thought, simply willing oneself to the location of the door.
2) The name of the doors destination - when opening a door, the individual must know the name of the location to which the door leads and must have that name in their mind when opening it.
3) The key - many doors are locked. It is a simple fact that many locations are not meant to be open by those who do not possess the key. A key within the Weird manifests through the knowledge of a password. When an individual who understands the password to a certain door and enters the Weird, an actual key manifests on their body which can be used to open the door. However some door keys are fake - knowledge of a powerful fake password causes a false key to manifest. Individuals who possess and mistakenly use fake keys often suffer horrible fates.

The world of Hive City is ever expanding. The city itself has a boundary, but this boundary is ever growing larger as information continues to enter into Hive City and new towers must be constructed.

From the last few posts I have provided a basic look at how I have created a fantasy style Internet in my campaign setting. This information might be helpful to those who would like to make similar constructs in their own campaign worlds. In my next post, Ill provide a few adventure hooks for people who might be interested in using something like this in an adventure, but don't know how.

Accessing the aberrant internet with chibi mind flayers

Yes, things keep getting weirder and weirder in this discussion, but hopefully today, after a little explanation things might be a little less murky. Last time I mentioned how PC's could access the aberrant Internet of my D&D campaign world through the use of mind flayer babies. I guess they aren't really mind flayer babies in the sense of breeding, but they certainly look like it. What would happen if you took the legs and arms and body off of a mind flayer... well, I guess you would have a squid, but what if that squid had a strange psychic connection to a great network of other so linked squid-like-creatures and could symbiotically bond with other races to allow the linked creature to explore and communicate in this distinct and totally different universe, that is known as hive city? You would have a Modum.

The Modum are an aberrant race of creatures in my campaign world which came to the material plane aboard the giant meteor which crashed Milena ago (along with other, less friendly creatures which I might talk about later). The Modum seemed to be an entirely stupid and peculiar race of creature. They appear to be a type of land based squid, with similar features to that of the infamous mind flayer, but lacking the lower body and appendages. A full grown Modum might be only 30 cm long. Modum are incredibly slow creatures; although they are capable of hovering slightly over the ground, they essentially drag along at barely above a snails pace, which makes them very, very easy to catch.

Modums themselves have virtually no combat capabilities of any kind either. They do not have any powers or attacks and by all accounts are virtually harmless. The only thing that helps maintain their population levels is the fact that they cannot be eaten. A Modum's body and blood is extremely poisonous and so most animals and other creatures avoid them fiercely; they taste horrible to everything and eating one poses a greater threat than simply ignoring it. However, some Modums, though lacking combat abilities, do possess some ability at teleportation, which they use profusely in order to preserver their life if threatened.

Modums do not have any fear of being possessed by an individual. In fact, most Modums will actively seek out an individual to "bond with". The reasons for this are unclear, but some have considered that Modums actually feed off of the act of communication and it provides them with an odd form of nutritional sustenance. The bonding process occurs by placing the Modum at the base of the skull and allowing the modum to affix its tentacles to the bonded's brain - although some people have considered the process to be very disturbing and disgusting to watch- it is actually quite painless and leaves very little after effects. The Modums tentacles possess a type of anesthetic which helps to totally take all sensation out of the process and also to help isolate the bonded during the process of crossing over into Hive City in the Weird. While in the Weird, the bonded's body is more or less helpless, but simply thinking of rejecting or ending the bonding process, the Modum will relax and disconnect, severing the bond and allowing the individual to regain freedom of movement and return their consciousness to the material world.

Some magical scholars have likened Modums to a cross between pets and Ioun stones. They require very little upkeep and the level of the Modum is very much tied with color. Every Modums color is quite different, some colors of Modums being quite rare. The color of the Modum indicates what kinds of activities/abilities the bonded will possess inside the weird. The most common, light brown Modums, simply allow the bonded to send their avatar into and out of the Weird granting access to Hive City and allow the bonded to interact with the environment there, i.e. moving about, reading and finding tomes of information, opening and closing doors, and entering rooms.The most powerful Modums, which are actually capable of granting the ability to shape the entire world of Hive City are extremely rare. Most of these creatures are extremely hard to find and possess no material price.

Next time, I'll talk about the world that Modums allow access to and describe more fully exactly what Hive City has to offer.

The Aberrant and Normal Internet

In my current attempt at putting a version of the Internet into my D&D game, allowing the player characters to utilize it is a tool in their adventures, it is first necessary to break down and describe what the Internet really is conceptually speaking. So, what is the Internet? Some people might say it is simply a wretched hive of scum and villainy; others mights say that it serves but a singular purpose: for porn. However, in my mind, the Internet is simply a place where information can be stored and shared.

So, if the Internet is a place for information sharing, how can the Internet be broken down from what we have today, a complex network of bit and bytes flying about an huge interconnected spiderweb of fiber-optics into something that makes sense from a D&D perspective in a fantasy world.

In the homebrew world that I am envisioning, the Internet can be viewed as a great ethereal city which for now, I'll dub "The Hive" (cus some people might just be right about it being filled with scum and villains). This city is actually a part of the Weird itself. Any area where weird energy is present in the world presents the opportunity to access this city and explore its contents. However, there is a problem.

How do you gain access to the Internet without electricity or computers. In this case, how do you gain access to the weird?

I'm going to do it with Mind Flayer Babies... kind of... but that will come next time. In future posts, I'll explain methods of access to this city, and what the city is like; finally, I'll provide information about how I intend to use this aberrant Internet in my adventures in this world and maybe if I am feeling generous (and have the time) I'll write up some adventure hooks.

The Weird ... an Aberrant Internet

When I got to thinking about building a campaign world a couple of years ago, when I was in Japan as a student and had lots of time on my hands to watch anime and play D&D, I was really interested in incorporating a wide and eclectic range of archetypal anime constructs into my D&D world. I had thought about Samurai, Giant Robots, Ninjas, both ageless and forgotten weapons and futuristic ones as well. But the hard part becomes: how do you incorporate all of theses disparate elements into a single campaign world without throwing the balance curve totally out of whack??? It is a good question and I hope that the solution I have come up with will help to illustrate one possible way to solve this problem.

My idea: Reinvent the wheel. Or, in this case, magic.

When people look at D&D from the traditional sense, you really only think of two different kinds of magic - Divine and Arcane. If you get into the Psionic thing, maybe you could say that is another, but then again, not really. With the new 4e way of doing "powers" from power sources, just about anything can become a power source, if you are creative enough. Arcane magic, divine magic both become power sources to help fuel character powers.

It seems to me what is needed is a new power source that can do something similar, but not necessarily for characters - the world needs a power source as well. In the Eberron campaign setting, the use of magical technology is quite widespread, especially when it comes to the world of transportation, but for me, I have always had a little demon on my shoulder who hated this kind of presentation, for one simple reason: my 3rd edition exposure to anti-magic spells and areas where anti-magic fields are present has scarred me for life.

So, my solution, as far as technology is concerned, was to reinvent magic, and make a new kind of power source for my world. This power source, I have dubbed...

THE WEIRD
(please note, the above is a working title)

Here is a little background for how "The Weird" has come to exist in my campaign world:

*****

Milena ago, a meteor crashed into the material plane from the far realm. Some believe that this meteor crashed into the world after being pulled through a portal in the heavens, other believe it hurled across the stars for thousands of years before striking into the world. Its coming changed the entire face of the land, literally toppling mountains and destroying civilizations, but after Milena of rebuilding, the world has begun anew and is advancing at a much faster pace toward a new, much grander civilization; in part, the meteor can be thanked for this. From the epicenter, where the great rock came hurtling from the sky, a new type of energy began radiating and penetrating the world - this energy, which the people of the planet have dubbed "The Weird" has been found to have a myriad of strange powers, similar to our conceptions of divine and arcane magic, but different entirely at the same time. Harnessing this power, and discerning its myriad uses, has become the work of many of the most eminent scholars across the material planes; it may have even become the new interest of the gods themselves.

*****

So, you might ask, how does this thing I call "The Weird" have anything to do with the Internet... well, that Is something you will have to wait for until next time, when I explain how "The Weird" works.

The Internet in my D&D Homebrew Setting

In a recent post, I mentioned that I recently moved back to Japan and have settled in, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, a few hours from Tokyo and an hour or so away from Mt. Fuji. What I failed to make clear is in what condition this move was made, the biggest hurdle... NO INTERNET FOR TWO MONTHS!!! That is right, from the time I moved here, until now, I have had not internet access at my home and probably still wont have access there for quite some time, at least another three weeks, but possibly even another month all together.

My distinct limitation of internet access to my work computer, which unfortunately, block all traffic to websites that have any large connection to the word "game" has really gotten me to think about how people must have lived prior to internet access (not a bad line of reasoning when it comes to people trying to DM fantasy role playing games...), not on any philosophical or even highly practical level. Basically, I have been reading a lot more books, a lot more. I have shredded through about 6 novels in the last 3 weeks. Some good, some bad, some inspiring.

I have found a newfound interest in a classic Science Fiction writer that I am sure most people here, on the interent, are familiar with... William Gibson. The guy wrote some really good stuff, to be really blunt and simple. I started with the classic, Neuromancer, and I have been going from there. But, in all honesty, I think his new novel, Spook Country, was really, really interesting. In this book, the setting is more present day than in his past works, and more realistic, though still pushing the limit of cutting edge a bit beyond what we have realized in the year 2010. However, it was his subject matter, that of information and the control of it, to create important and valuable secrets that I found fascinating and inspiring.

This got me thinking, given that I like somewhat of a technological bent in my campaign worlds, especially the ones I have worked on in the past, how could I implement a fantastic version of something akin to the internet into a fantasy roleplaying setting? So, this is what I have started working on and will continue to work on into the distant future. In tomorrow's post, I'll explain some of the background to my homebrew world, updating some of the past work that I have done through Obsidian Portal, and talking about how i will incorporate this fantasy style internet into my campaign world.