Starwalkers

In the ancient days of the Materiosphere, there were those whose minds and bodies were as one. These were monks and mystics and practitioners of arts long since lost to the worlds from which they came. These were seers from long dead worlds like Anuthis, Sacred Blah, and Osharox. These were individuals who were able to peer beyond the physical world and gaze at the very web weave that was Second Space. Eventually, using their mental abilities, these explorers were able to open gateways into the forgotten realm of Second Space and travel by projecting their thoughts across vast distances. The ability known as star projection allowed these early explorers to leave their worlds and search the distant stars. As their abilities grew, the star projectors evolved in skill and eventually came to be able to move their bodies through Second Space via psychic bubbles they created. This ability was known as starwalking.

Power Gaming and Upper Level PCs

I was watching a video the other day about how in the world’s most popular rpg it becomes incredibly difficult to run a game at high level, for a plethora of reasons. Admittedly, I have never run a high-level game in D&D but years ago I had high level characters in campaigns and I agree with most of what the presenter was saying. Mainly, play just became unfun (balance, time for fights, etc.). Also, the struggle was no longer there for the PCs. We didn’t have to scrap and scrape to survive. I'm sure we were abusing the rules as our PCs were essentially in god mode as we murder hoboed entire villages and laid waste to everything in our paths. And this at first was fun but that campaign quickly ended and looking back I think it was because we all felt that there was nothing on the line, no risk. It’s like putting in all the cheat codes, beating the game, unlocking all the secrets, and then what? 

When I made FAL I never wanted PCs to be able to arrive at that level of play through normal play. I never wanted an orka to be able to one-on-one a dragon in face-to-face combat. I wanted the players to continue to feel that struggle and that need to survive regardless of how powerful their characters became. So, a lot of the rules, the increase in HP and the maxing out of stats and all that is really meant to keep PCs (usually) in a space that always poses a degree of risk for their survival.

Winged Hairies and Inspiration

So, I firmly believe that inspiration can come from anywhere and the more open we are to novelty and allowing inspiration to come to us, the more we will be inspired. This being said, years ago, when I was in the very early stages of FAL and coming up with the creatures who would eventually find their way into the Tome of Awesome, my wife sat down and had a brief drawing session alongside me. In the span of that session, she drew the very first iteration of the winged hairies which eventually made it into the books and lore of FAL. I loved the name she gave them and it felt like those creatures were so meant to be part of the weirdness of FAL. So they went into the book and we devised the lore around the image. She is also responsible for the nubyeb, ootoom, and cat tenderers.

Guts and Iron and Ideas That Don't Work Out

Back in October, I shared an image from one of my first attempts at a game called “Guts and Iron.” This (admittedly very faint) image is an early pencil sketch from that game. The art ultimately didn’t work (neither did the game) for some pretty straightforward reasons, but there are also the embers of something here. Keeping those embers burning until the idea for Far Away Land caught fire in my imagination took time and effort. And that’s really all this post is about: “Guts and Iron” didn’t work, but that is totally okay because very few ideas worth anything are easily made into reality. In some ways, I think that’s true when you play an RPG, too. The effort to shed the world around you for something new, to leave everything else behind and escape to somewhere far away, doesn’t come naturally at first. Sometimes it’s because you haven’t built that muscle yet. Sometimes it's because the world we all live in can be pretty relentless. But as long as the ember burns, your imagination can still catch fire.

Travel and Vehicle Thoughts

Originally the rules for ships and sea combat were part of a separate book for FAL, Seas of Far Away Land. However, along with other travel and vehicle rules, the rules for ship combat and sailing are included in the Enchiridion. It is a fairly simple system that builds on normal combat. Aspects of crews are simplified to make combat between ships quick while offering a narrative element. As so much of Far Away Land is water, it feels like it makes sense that an extensive section on naval combat be included. Also, I have always found adventures on the high seas to really fun. All the mystery of what is to come, what lies below, storms, pirates, etc.

Level 0 PCs

The goal of the Enchiridion’s Level 0 character generator is to enable the quick creation of PCs without defined specialties, advanced skills, or fancy equipment. I’ve said in other FAL books, that every race needs its blacksmiths and farmers, its cooks and carpenters, just like it needs warriors and leaders. A Level 0 character is the quintessential “ordinary person,” a bystander thrown into a dire situation defending their village in battle or caught up in a wizardly plot. That’s just fun to play with.

For the rest of this post, we’re going to look at an example of a Level 0 character generated by a friend for what turned out to be a very bloody combat session. All of the below took less than 10 minutes.

To start, the player rolled two dice and used a table to determine their heritage, which ended up being Croatallian. (For those of you not familiar with them, Croatallians are a reptilian humanoid species of average size.) After the Heritage was set, the player rolled for their single Boon and received Pilot, which gives a maneuver bonus when operating and controlling vehicles. Even though Level 0 characters only get 1 Boon, they still get 2 Flaws. After two more rolls, this player ended up with Impatient and Skeptic.

The next step was to roll for starting equipment. At least one piece of equipment should be linked to the Boon for best effect, and after a few rolls with that goal the PC had a not-so-new but still-useful cart. A few more rolls for other random equipment yielded no additional armor, but did provide the character with a backpack, a belt, and a tarnished hayfork. Hayforks make sense for a cart driver, and it’s tarnished or rusty or otherwise in poor condition because this is a Level 0 character who also starts with no gold. Putting it all together and with their base stats, a picture starts to emerge of our Croatallian. 

BRT: 2, DEX: 2, WIT: 2

HP: 14, AC: 2, ACT: 2

Actions: 2

Luck: 0 (equal to Level)

Boons: Pilot (MAN). (1). Operating and controlling vehicles such as watercraft, aircraft, wagons, etc. MAN indicates the Maneuver score of the vessel being piloted.

Flaws: Impatient, Skeptic

Abilities: Bite: 1d2 damage. Cazzz Blade Proficiency: 1d6+1 damage. (In the hands of a non-crotallian, the cazzz blade does 1d6 damage and has a -1 die penalty when used). Claws: 1d3 damage.

Boon Related Gear: Cart

Additional Starting Gear: Backpack, Tarnished Hayfork, Belt

All that was left was for the player to create a short background for their character. Keeping it short is good practice with a Level 0 character because you don’t know how long they will survive, and also because each adventure survived on the way to Level 1 will add to their story. With a little bit of light-hearted conversation around the results, the Croatallian cart-driver Fezzeekeka (Zeek) was born! 

“Fezzeekeka was born on a Croatallian farm. His mother died of plague when he was young and he was raised by his single father. He is known in his village for winning the cart races at the annual harvest festival for three years running.”

Old School Inspiration

The cover of the AD&D Manual of the Planes was always something terrifying to me. That big cyclopean lobster-handed dude rising up out of some gaseous ether of another realm was so striking the first time I saw it. It begged for adventure and I never forgot the image or the feeling it gave me. I feel like that’s what good art does, it burns an image into our brains so we never forget. The sketch here is from really early days of FAL when I was trying to get a feel for how I wanted the art to look. You might see some vague resemblance between our friend on the cover of the Manual of the Planes and the Mountain Lord featured in the early sketch.