Thursday, April 23, 2015

Cosmological Map In T-Shirt Formation

Is it April 23? I guess it is, but from the temperature in my apartment you would never know it. It's frikkin freezing.

Anyway that aside, I have been toiling away here on another small leg of the project (mostly because I'm so chilled I can't really work on anything that requires deep thinking or analytic computations) ...

Yup... you guessed it.

The Elthos T-Shirt Store!

Now suppose you are curious what your Zodiac Sign relates to in terms of Tarot Cards ... well, until now, that's actually been something of a difficult question to answer. But for Elthos, after many years of plodding along and thinking about it, drawing correspondences and thinking about it some more, and then doing more research and ... ok, you get the idea... finally there is a Correspondence between the two.

Why was this so hard, you ask? Because (and yes, I'm so glad you asked!) it's not as straight forward a question as it might seem.

For example, you'd think that because there is a Traditional Tarot card for the Sun, and the Moon, and all the 12 Zodiac Signs, that there's be a nice and neat correspondence between Tarot Cards and Planets and Zodiac Signs... right? Well, not so fast, there padre. It ain't quite that simple. Let's take a quick look.

Lets do the obvious ones:
MOON --- Moon
SUN --- Sun

Right. Those are the only two really really obvious ones. Now lets do the ones that are kind of clear, if you think about it a bit.

VIRGO --- High Priestess
JUPITER --- Emperor
LIBRA --- Justice
LEO --- Strength
SCORPIO --- Death
GEMINI --- Lovers

Ok after that it starts getting a little dodgy. Ok, quick quiz for you. Which of these remaining cards go with which Zodiac Signs and Planets?

Magician ...?
Empress ...?
Hierophant ...?
Chariot ...?
Hermit ...?
Fortune ...?
Hanged Man ...?
Temperance ...?
Devil ...?
Tower ...?
Star ...?
Judgment ...?
World ...?

Not as easy as you thought, eh?

For those of you keeping count, you might notice that the number of Planets and Zodiac Signs may not match the number of Tarot Cards. Lets count.

Tarot Cards in the Major Arcana - 22. That was easy.

Zodiac Signs - 12. That was easy.

Planets - 5 or 7 or 9 depending on your cultural references. Lets look at Planets for a moment. At this point things get pretty confusing. If you hunt around for any kind of official Table of Correspondences for Planets, Zodiac Signs and Tarot Cards you're going to notice pretty quickly that there is no consensus on the subject. This is because the number of planets doesn't quite match the Tarot Cards, unless you decide to go with 10 planets. In which case yup, then they match. But still... what planets go with what cards? There's some agreement on some of the slightly more intuitive ones...

MERCURY --- Magician
VENUS --- Empress
PLUTO --- Hanged Man
CAPRICORN --- Devil
MARS --- Tower
SATURN --- Judgment

Beyond that, it's pretty much been a guessing game, and there's not even firm agreement on all of the ones I just listed. In some cases, the game wasn't even quite fair... for example one I found from the middle ages that only used 5 planets and so had Venus and Saturn used twice, among other incongruities.

At any rate, for the Elthos RPG I needed (or wanted, rather) to have a clear and concise system that I could use as the basis for a rational Alignment System, something I'd been working on since the 1970's. In the end, after much hemming and hawing and hobbnobbing and reading and pulling of hairs and so forth, I settled on this configuration:

MERCURY --- Magician
VENUS --- Empress
TAURUS --- Hierophant
AQUARIUS --- Chariot
NEPTUNE --- Hermit
ARIES --- Fortune
PLUTO --- Hanged Man
CANCER --- Temperance
CAPRICORN --- Devil
MARS --- Tower
URANUS --- Star
SATURN --- Judgment
SAGITTARIUS --- World
EARTH --- Unicorn *
ELKOR --- Dragon *

You'll notice that there are 12 Planets. That's because I added the Earth (which most astrologers never counted as a planet, but of course it very much IS a planet), and I also added Elkor, otherwise known as Planet X, the World of the Elkron. This gave me 12, which I needed. Why? Because I wanted 12 Planets to go neatly with 12 Constellations of the Zodiac, of course.

But wait! There's only 22 Tarot Cards in the Major Arcana, and there's no way that 22 Major Arcana are going to match with 12 Zodiac Signs and 12 Planets. So if my premise was I wanted one Planet per Zodiac Sign (and of course, who wouldn't?), then I would have to have 24 Celestials (what I refer to as the collective body of Zodiac Signs and Planets). After all most Zodiac Signs have a corresponding Planet... but not all of them... which is why the whole thing has been a mess for centuries.

Ok, so how to solve? Naturally, in my infinite wisdom as Gamemaster of Elthos, I took the only logical expedient. I created two new Tarot Cards The Dragon and the Unicorn.

And NOW I have 12 Planets that correspond with the 12 Constellations, and all of those corresponding with one, and only one Tarot Card.

And to make things even spiffier, I embodied the entire system on a Tarot Deck created for me by Jason Moser... and put it all on T-Shirts.

Please don't ask why they are on T-Shirts. The answer is just too painfully obvious.

So here you are... enjoy!

PISCES --- Fool
MERCURY --- Magician
VIRGO --- High Priestess
VENUS --- Empress
JUPITER --- Emperor
TAURUS --- Hierophant
GEMINI --- Lovers
AQUARIUS --- Chariot
LIBRA --- Justice
NEPTUNE --- Hermit
ARIES --- Fortune
LEO --- Strength
PLUTO --- Hanged Man
SCORPIO --- Death
CANCER --- Temperance
CAPRICORN --- Devil
MARS --- Tower
URANUS --- Star
MOON --- Moon
SUN --- Sun
SATURN --- Judgment
SAGITTARIUS --- World
EARTH --- Unicorn *
ELKOR --- Dragon *

The Elthos RPG T-Shirt Store!

:) 
























Thursday, April 16, 2015

A Few Thoughts on Mini-System RPGs

I'm going to cobble this together as a Blog Post for the record because I think it's an interesting point regarding Mini-Systems.   Originally this was intended to be a response to a blog post, but Google+ posted it as a new thread to my public stream.  Mmm... okay.   So here's the google+ post for reference:

 
The responses were interesting.  I want to encapsulate and paraphrase the main points here.
 
Naturally, it is an each to his own hobby.  
 
That said, what I like about my Elthos RPG Mini-System is speed of play.  
 
Bannister commented that he doesn't like Low Stats Systems ... "I can't fathom a character in a distilled system that can match anything except generic Hero Archetypes...  most players don't like to use it for character creation. too bland."
 
As far as it limiting players ability to define their characters, we've found to opposite to be true here.  My players enjoy the flexibility of loosely defined non-critical attributes, and role play their characters based on their personality and goals, rather than attributes and class.  The speed of play aspect is of such a benefit that I feel that the advantages far out-weight the disadvantages.  But again, each to his own.  I would say this is not the game for those who are very focused on technical rules of the game, but rather for those who enjoy a certain amount of gamism, but also, and possibly a little bit more, enjoy the story aspect.  The system leaves a lot to the creativity of the players by keeping the rules flexible and simple.  When questions arise, the GM adjudicates.  That's the nature of it, and it works well for my group.  Nothing at all against your group or your style of play, of course.  It's all good, as long as people are having fun.
 
Nuff said.  Just wanted to record this for future reference, least it get lost in the Great Google+ Miasma, since I think its' an interesting point.  

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Professional GameMaster Society - Progress

Professional GameMaster Society
Wanting to focus on achievable goals, our fledgling Professional GameMaster Society agreed that we should concentrate as a first order of business on the plucking the low lying fruit.  That has been to create a package of materials for Pro-GMs to use in the pursuit of one of our easiest to generate business models, which we're calling "The Glorified Game-Sitting Service"

In this model the GM sets up shop with a local Community Center, Library, School, or group of parent's to host a game for young people, probably between the ages of 11 and 14.  The fee structure is based, loosely, on a sliding scale depending on the number of participants, with the minimum being 4 (salt to taste) and the maximum being 12 (ditto).  The pay ranges from $12 / hour / Player for 4 to $8 / hour / Player for 12.  Of course the more Players the more money, even with the sliding scale.

For the Package I created a set of documents that can be used by the Society Members by downloading them and replacing the <Item> bracketed items in the document with whatever is appropriate.  For example "Welcome to the <Name> Game Club" where name might get replaced with "Elthos".   The documents include:

  1. A Cover Letter intended as an introduction to the Community Center Administrators, or Library Staff, or whomever would be appropriate, and simply introduces the concept and asks if there is interest.
  2. A Proposal Letter which goes into some more detail and provides additional information, and works towards setting up a program.
  3. A Game Club Rules document for the Parents which explains the basics that they need to know about the Club, and provides additional information about pricing, location, and the benefits of the Club for their kids.
  4. A Pricing Calculator Spreadsheet for GMs to use to work out how much they wish to charge.

All of the documents have the Professional GameMaster Society Logo, and include a link to our Website, as well as a link to our individual Google+ Professional Gamemaster Society Profiles.

At this point the documents are pretty much completed, but I'm waiting to hear from our members on any suggestions they may have for changes before finalizing them.  Other than that I may add a poster or two as examples for help with marketing the local games, possibly.  Overall, I'm quite pleased with the results.  I see this service as particularly useful for High School and College age students who wish to earn extra money GameMastering for young people.  While I don't expect this to become a means by which anyone reasonably expect to get rich, it can serve as a nice way to make supplemental income.

That said, the Society has come up with a number of wonderful brainstorming proposals on a variety of methods for achieving our longer term goals (which do include getting rich GameMastering) that I've also documented in our Google Share Folder.  That as well has been coming along nicely and we have some very interesting ideas on the table.  Some members are prototyping various concepts at this point.  I'm pleased to see it.

This has been a very thought provoking and interesting experiment thus far, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it leads in the future.   My next step will be to pick out, with the Society's help and advice, our most promising model and see what I can do with it, while encouraging our other members to do likewise.  Hopefully, if all goes well, we will have further progress and something of interest to the wider community of GameMasters to report.

If you happen to be interested you may request to join the Professional GameMaster Society via the Google+ site.