Celestial Island Map

This is the final version of the Celestial Island Map back-face card for the Elthos RPG Tarot Deck.

I can not begin to tell you how thrilled I am at how nicely the deck came out.  Thank you Jason Moser for a really incredible job on the artwork for the deck!

The Celestial Island Map shows the relationships between the various Elkron of Elthos (the Celestial Deities, or Greater Powers, or Inner World Beings, Archetypes, etc).  There are 12 Constellations (the Outer Circle) that correspond to the Titans, who were overthrown by their children, the Young Elkron, who correspond to the Olympians (the Inner Circle), in the Wars of the Elkron at the dawn of the 2nd Age.  This Map also shows the Alignment pattern, as well as the Elemental configuration upon which the Elkron have built the Elthos Universe.

While it may look reasonably obvious at first glance, it actually took quite a bit of research and reflection to come up with the final configuration of the Celestial Map.  I hope that it will prove suitable over time, and thus far it has panned out quite well for me.

In case you're wondering, I use the Celestial Map, with it's Elkronic Correspondences (a separate table in which I relate a large variety of objects such as trees, minerals, metals, colors, animals, etc., to the various Elkron), to help me guide and maintain the Inner World Landscape of Elthos.  It is an amazing resource in so far as I no longer get lost among the Deities and their correspondences, and now everything in relation to the Elkron retains a consistency and meaningfulness that helps to give Elthos a more reliable, and comprehensible metaphysics.  It also allows me to perform a number of Gamesmastering operations that relate to things in my World such as the relative power levels of the Elkron at any given time, prophesies, omens, and the like.   While I am still in the process of creating new uses for the Elthos Tarot, I have settled on a few that so far have made my GMing life a lot nicer.  Now, when the Player Characters see a Golden Eagle flying North West, it actually does have a meaning.  And that meaning actually does make sense within the context of the metaphysics of the World.  At some point I will be writing up a book on the Elthos Tarot Deck, and it's uses in the context of the Elthos World.   But in the meantime, I just wanted to share the Back-Face card because it just came in today and I think it really does look fabulous!   Thanks again to Jason for a truly wonderful job!

Borrowings from Sapphire & Steel

I ran across a post called "The Time of the Metalanterns" which talked about Sapphire & Steel, (thank you, GreyWulf!) which reminded me that I absolutely love that series and wanted to borrow some of the ideas from it for my World.  In case you don't know, it was a British Science Fiction TV series that I think of as a cross between 'Doctor Who' and 'Dark Shadows'.  It never failed to give me the creeps, while wigging out my mind with incredibly awesome science fiction concepts.

The outlines of my adaptation (or borrowing as the case may be) is that there are super-sentient beings in the Elthos Universe, and a host of inter-dimensional creatures / monsters that are scarcely comprehended by mankind.  One of these beings is Time.  Most beings live within time, but do not understand that it is a sentient force that lives off of the life energy of those within it by devouring them in bizarre and often hideous ways, often by trapping them in the folds of time and strangulating them metaphysically.  When it does this it often causes rifts in the space-time continuum.  There is a shadowy Order of Time Keepers whose task it is to repair the rifts, and rescue those who may be caught in Time's traps before they are devoured.

Edit:  Another aspect that I glean from S&S is that Time will tend to be attracted to beings who are fixated in some way on Time, or an object that has deep significance to Time.   Some examples are:  1) a Scientist who invented a Time Machine, 2) the Oldest Photograph in the world, 3) a Race from the Future who wanted to transport a Monster they accidentally created into another time to escape its Civilization destroying wrath, 4) a ghost who refused to leave the hotel where she was killed by clinging to a Grandfather clock, etc.   As it happens Time will devour every living thing eventually, and if you consider that life spans typically do not last very long in big scheme of things, Time can be seen as a ravenous monster indeed.  On the other hand, some races live very long lives, and so have found ways to evade Time's traps.   As such the vast majority of Time's conquests are quite normal, and really amount to dying of Old Age, which everyone takes as natural.  However, mankind in Elthos was not intended to be a mortal race originally, but through the original deception in Eden, Time gained a foothold on the race of men, and so every person is doomed to die, at some point in Time.  And thus, the Time Keepers know that even natural deaths of Old Age are really the Serpent Time devouring its victims.  However, dying of Old Age does not cause any temporal rifts, and so the Time Keepers do not involve themselves typically with Old Age deaths at all.  That is just beyond the scope of their duties.

Along with Time, there are other forces and entities that are aware of how Time operates, and are able to either manipulate Time in order to advance their own agendas, or have malevolent objectives which entail the destruction of sectors of the Universe by the twisting of Time in ways that cause all kinds of havoc in the ordinary world.

An example of some of these beings would include a race of beings that pinch time causing it to fold it's coils, which they use to escape dangerous situations, and which usually leaves mind boggling havoc behind them as time retaliates in the local area.

Another example are Time Spies, a race of beings who use the coils of time to spy on the events taking place in past and future, and report back to their shadowy order.  These beings work in conjunction with the Time Keepers.

The Time Keepers function like The Time Lords of 'Doctor Who', but since I don't use that Universe, I renamed them Time Keepers, and have them operate similarly to the Time Lords, but with significant alterations as to their methods and goals.  Essentially they are Time Tamers, whose purpose it is to keep Time flowing forward, and without injury to the many countless beings within it.

Other large scale beings include things like Gravity, another sentient being, as well as Space, a being so horrific as to eliminate the minds of those who perceive it, and Judgement, the Ultimate Knower of the Universe.  These gigantic Metaphysical entities will hardly ever come into actual play in my world, I'm sure. However, the concept that they exist, and that Time in particular is a kind of wrathful and hungry serpent, will lead to a certain segment of adventures which will involve Time, and the Time Keepers.

While I don't actually anticipate running a Time Adventure anytime soon, it is still very interesting, and something that I will jot down Campaign notes on, and create a few adventures for anyway.  It's just too fun a concept not to salt my world with.

:)
Mark

Resource: RPG Game Find

In case you are not familiar with it, there is a service called RPG Game Find that continues to improve it's interface and get better over time. I renewed my ad which looks like this:

New York, USA: Elthos RPG - RPG Game Find

While I have not recieved any requests based on the ad thus far, it nevertheless is not a bad service, is potentially useful, and doesn't cost anything. So in case you find it helpful here's the link:

http://www.rpggamefind.com/index.php

Proof Trolls Are Real

Some people don't believe that trolls actually exist in the real world. The blind fools! Of course they do. And now there is finally actual cinematographic proof!

Here is your proof, if any were needed:


Don't be a fool. Remember to bring your torch and oil with you. Trolls are a serious threat, and should not be taken lightly!

You may also like to educate yourself regarding trolls with this factual and highly informative guide:

Everything you ever need to know about Trolls, but where afraid to google

One time in a certain campaign in the old glory days we ran across an invisible 6 armed Cave Troll trapped in a 20x20' stone room into which was a thin 3' corridor that the troll could not escape through. Needless to say he was hungry as hell and in a perpetual bad mood sitting on top of his pile of gold and jewels. Needless to say our thief did not fare so well. We watched somewhat helplessly as he lifted into the air and was torn asunder in a few moments. Our Paladin felt compelled to follow after him to Avenge the unrighteous death, but even his magical armor was no match and he was crushed like a soda can. We left. Oh well. Our wizard made a sign and put it up on the wall next to the corridor "Warning: Invisible Cave Troll". When we came back that way a few years later the sign was still there... but had been turned invisible. Very annoying. I don't think we ever discovered who the evil wizard was who was responsible... but if we ever do... we'll be sure to back away slowly and run like hell.

Maps of Hobbinton

As a followup to my post for RPG Carnival - Cartography, I thought I would post these two maps and explain a little bit about how I created them.

Hobbinton Township Environs Map

The first one is the original that I drew on a 8.5 x 11 piece of paper with a felt tip pen. It shows the area around the township of Hobbinton (aka Hobbington, Hobnington, and Hobbnobton, depending on the district of town of the speaker). It shows a little bit of information that the Players don't start out knowing, so if you are one of the players in the current Campaign reading this, then do yourself a favor and don't study the map too hard. It will be more interesting for you if you get to be surprised during the course of play. Anyway, I drew this map, and then used my camera to take a picture of it, which I uploaded to my computer (obviously), and then worked on it in both, Picasa (a great piece of photo-editing software from Google that does all of the basic manipulations very easily and nicely), and then, surprisingly or not, I brought it into Microsoft Paint, a very simple image editor application I still find plenty of use for.

Hobbinton Township Details Map

This second Map is the one that came out of my efforts in Microsoft Paint.  All I did was I take the middle part of the map and cut it out and pasted it into a new image and saved that file. Then I erased the extraneous stuff I don't want to keep it from being cluttered using the Eraser Tool.  I then used the Line Draw Tool to paint in the details I wanted. I used various thickness lines and colors to distinguish elements of the map from one another.  That includes the main road (green), the section walls that divide neighborhoods (brown), the main channels for water (either underground or above ground), and the Main Pipes that go from the Water Tower to the fountains. I included a bridge which I painted in using the Line Tool. I then added text to the image in Georgia font to make it pretty, and used the line tool to show where these places are located.

Pretty simple. But the results, I think, are very helpful to me as a Gamesmaster. I can now look at the map and it reminds me of a ton of stuff that will be helpful to remember during the next Campaign. :)

On Alchemic Gamesmastering

I am a fan of the idea of Alchemy as a system of symbolic relationships. The Alchemists envisioned, it seems to me, a Universal array of Symbolic Correspondences which appear throughout the natural world as reflections of the supernatural world, connecting abstractions with instances in conjunction with a vast interwoven tapestry of underlying meanings embodied in symbols, glyphs, words, songs and art. Alchemists such as Raymond Lull and John Dee seemed to point toward a mathematical and poetical design of The Great Pattern.

I like the conception quite a bit, and I feel that this is what the Greater Ancients may have been alluding to when they said that "a man can see the whole Universe in the flickering leaves of a single oak tree" (Dendromancy). They alluded to the possibility of an intuitive grasping of The Great Pattern. They surmised the existence of hidden meanings above and below nature, as a reflection of the Realm of Divine Idea, and sought to convey the essence of the mystery through folklore, myth and legend.

How Gamesmasters in the future may include such a depth of correspondences in Worlds to come is a matter of speculation at the moment, however I am optimistic that such implementations may make a whole new level of experience of Feylandia possible. One in which symbolic correspondences may give rise to a deeper appreciation and understanding of the “inner landscape” of the Invisible Kingdom.

I look for an Interactive Story in which minds may mingle and find strange inklings of Other Worlds amid the myriad of treasures and perils of our rough and tumble Campaign Settings. Ones in which Adventurers in their pursuit of fame and fortune may happen to occasionally also chance upon that rarest and most precious of treasures, ...wisdom.

Death anyone?

I like this GMs treatment of death in his game. NO bones about it, and no mincing during the chopping.  Just ... you made a big mistake - you're dead.

Nice.

Tomb of Horrors Session

I have to admire a GM who is perfectly willing to let the PCs get mowed down like so many blades of grass.  Of course there's a lot of angsty Players out there who will feel horribly crushed if their Characters die.  I know.  But there's another side to the argument which is that ever-present-possibility-of-dying-stupidly makes for smarter better players over time.   Sure, you lose a few while you get the hang of how to Be Careful.  But that's part of the fun of the game.   Somehow, in my experience, those games where we all knew we stood a good chance of getting chopped into tiny bits if we didn't pay attention to what we were doing, and plan carefully, were the more exciting (and oddly educational) experiences.

Most GMs I've played with were too wimpy to let PCs die. So whenever we made a mistake the GM would one way or another find a way to save us from our stupidity.   A hint here, a fudged die roll there, a modified result over there, etc.   After a while we got the idea we were not going to get killed because the Great GM in the Sky was looking out for us.   So we just kept playing stupid.   And in some cases we even played stupider, just because we knew we could. After a while we got bored and those worlds shriveled up and died the death of wimpy worlds.

On the other hand were those Worlds where the GM did not pull punches or save us from ourselves.  And those, as it turns out, were the most exciting, and memorable experiences of all.

So I admire the GM who has the balls to let the Player Characters get themselves killed. Its fun.