History Outsiders have existed throughout Cimmerian history as the messengers of the gods. All of Cimmeria's greatest heroes have interacted with outsiders in some fashion. Angels sent by the gods aid heroes. Demons and beings of law impede mortals when their ego's outgrow their position. The largest incursion of outsiders into Cimmeria occurred to punish King Aeëtes of Colchis. His profanely extended life was in violation of the rule of Hades.

Hem returns! Our previous guest from Episode 83 back with another BRP horror game. This time about zombies taking over Iceland. Three brave family members receive a special package that might put an end to the Endtimes. They just have to get the package off the island and into the hands of some researchers. Hem plans on releasing a new episode every day through October as part of the spooky season.

Physical Description Outsiders have no unifying physical characteristics. While many of them are humanoid in appearance, others take wildly different shapes. The subraces of outsiders are unified by ideology rather than biology. Thus, within an outsider subrace there can be drastic differences in appearance and physical capability. Outsiders do have some uniformity in their magical powers. All outsiders can see in the dark.

In addition to taking a look at BESM 4th Edition for a canceled Setting the Stage episode, I also read Mutants and Masterminds 3rd Edition (MnM). And despite being purpose built as a superhero system, I think it's one of the worst I've seen. Mutants and Masterminds grew out of the open license for D&D 3rd edition. The license allowed tons of games and content to be published for D&D and the d20 system without paying Wizards of the Coast.

Avery presents her world of Traumwald which means Dream Forest. Traumwald was a peaceful, magical world inhabited by anthropomorphic animals of all kinds. Their peace was shattered by the attack of the Ichal, a biomechanical hive mind species similar to the Borg. The Ichal are led by the dark god Ulvakros who seeks to absorb all life into himself. The Ichal have spread across different dimensions and now they have come to Traumwald as the next stop on their mission of multiversal conquest.

An RPG review that isn't about a China focused game? Is this blog allowed to do that? YES! I've even done it before when I reviewed the Marvel Multiverse RPG at the start of 2024. I read BESM 4th Edition as part of my research for a Setting the Stage episode that ended up not panning out. But at least I can still get some…

Location The water races live within the Caspian and Aral Seas of Cimmeria. Many of them live around the edges of the water near the land and islands. The deeper areas belong to locathah and scrags that can survive at those depths. A few of the water races live in the ruins of Phoenix after the Second Alliance War. The Delain River leading to the city from the Caspian Sea is also occupied by a few water race villages.

Our guests today are Jay and Sandra from the 3RPG podcast. Their podcast is a talk show, typically with three hosts. Unfortunately the third host Chris was unable to make it. Jay and Sandra are working on a RPG product dubbed The Balance of Aksio. It's a new narrative fantasy TTRPG system with point buy character creation. The world within Balance of Aksio grew out of games that Jay and Sandra have been playing together since high school.

Subraces The water races are varied in visual appearance, but all are able to swim and live anywhere within the waters of Gaia. The different subraces do not typically live in the same communities besides those around Cecilia. Locathah: Locathah have humanoid bodies with webbed limbs and the head of a fish. They live in the deeper areas of the Caspian, far from the sun's light.

History The water races were originally native to the Mediterranean Sea and the outer ocean that encircles the earth. When the Olympians came to Cimmeria they did not bring the water races at first. Only after winning the Goblin War did they open a whirlpool in the Caspian Sea. This whirlpool links with Charybdis, the whirlpool in the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily.

Flare talks with us about his campaign world, Akridon. Three continents dominate the world, Tyros for humanoid races and Dusklands for bestial races. The third continent is known as the Scourge, having being destroyed in a cataclysmic war centuries ago. The world draws a lot of inspiration from the World of Warcraft setup with duality featuring in the continents, the racial appearance, and the gods of the world.

Physical Description The water races of Cimmeria live within the Caspian and Aral Seas. They are generally humanoid in shape with most subraces having a head, torso, two arms, and two legs. Their bodies are adapted to the water, sporting gills, webbed toes and webbed hands for improved swimming. Many water races have dorsal fins and tails to assist with movement through the water.

Hurray! I've written 1,000 blog posts for this website! Lots of stuff about my own life and science when I started. That's transitioned to the blog being mostly about Dungeons and Dragons. D&D stuff is more fun for me to write and less invasive into my personal life, especially after my kids were born and I wanted to protect their privacy.

Browse curated TTRPG resources, from free art and icons to writing tools and artist communities—built for creators who prefer human-made work.

Closing in on the end of my tour of Chinese RPG systems. Panic at the Dojo (PatD) should be one of the last ones! Panic at the Dojo was launched via a Kickstarter in 2016. The game was developed and successfully put up for sale for anyone to buy in 2018. An active Discord community supports the game. A second version is in development and should be launching soon.

Tianxia had more going for it than I expected. It's a FATE Core system similar to the FATE systems Do: Fate of the Flying Temple and Jadepunk which I've reviewed on here in the past. I wasn't a fan of those presentations as they were too simplistic or too far from my own desires for a wuxia China game. Tianxia…

Vampire: The Masquerade, Revised Edition (1998) Kindred of the East (1998) Dark Ages: Vampire (2002) Blood & Silk (2000) Hunter the Reckoning (1999) The Hunters Hunted (1992) Demon Hunter X (1998) Time for a Chinese based review look at the World of Darkness book line! What is World of Darkness? World of Darkness is a series of TTRPGs that have been released since 1991.

Vampire: The Masquerade, Revised Edition (1998) Kindred of the East (1998) Dark Ages: Vampire (2002) Blood & Silk (2000) Hunter the Reckoning (1999) The Hunters Hunted (1992) Demon Hunter X (1998) Finishing off our Chinese based review look at the World of Darkness book line! All Together One of my original ideas for a China RPG was instigated by Hardcore History's Supernova in the East…

I have allergies. I've had them since I was a kid. They're fairly minor ones. Dust makes me sneeze. Eating corn makes me itch. Some perfumes can also give me a slight headache. Pollen and cats make me sneeze and make my eyes water. The cats allergy is funny because we have three cats in our house. I've immunized myself to the allergy through exposure.

Michael tells us about a D&D horseback riding experience at SaddleSnaps! The Chicago-based stable hosted a weekend camping, horseback riding, and D&D event. About 50 players came from across the country for this new experience. During the event, the players were split up into three groups. Each of the groups engaged in the "Exploration" and "Social Interaction" pillars of RPGs as a LARP.

Continuing our Chinese based review of the World of Darkness book line! Demon Hunter X Demon Hunter X is an expansion to an expansion. The book expands on the groundwork in Hunters Hunted with additional lore and mechanics for playing hunters in Asia. There's tons of well-organized lore and a solid Storyteller section. There are two new types of hunters, the Shih and Strike Force Zero.

Subraces There are dozens of subraces of fey, far too many to describe them all. The most prominent fey are described here, with many less common subraces living in the woods and wilds of Cimmeria. Centaurs are one of the largest fey subraces as a horse-human hybrid. Satyrs are a frequent trickster with a goat-human hybrid body. Nymphs are the beautiful daughters of gods and the spirits of nature.

Hem tells us about their actual play campaign, The Sprouting. Within the world of The Sprouting, Earth's history diverged during the 1800s when an eldritch horror was summoned into our reality. The horror lay in wait for centuries, building up a secret army of plant monsters. In 2020, the plant monsters struck, ruining infrastructure and attacking population centers across the world.

This quarter we're going with a simple mug. Start your day off with a critical hit! I'll send out the rewards at the end of the month. If these look cool to you, sign up for the Setting the Stage Patreon! Or if you've missed them they're available on the Setting the Stage Zazzle Store.

Continuing our Chinese based review of the World of Darkness book line! The Hunters Hunted Hunters Hunted came out before Hunter: The Reckoning and deals with a different kind of Hunter. Hunter: The Reckoning details normal people who become gifted with supernatural power and become the Imbued. Hunters Hunted details normal people who are... normal people that hunt monsters. No fantastic supernatural powers here!

I said in a previous post that I'm reading the Cartoon History of the Universe Part 3. Here's the page I'm on now about Japanese civilization. The Cartoon History series is now complete with five books. The first three are called Cartoon History of the Universe Parts 1-3 and the second two are called Cartoon History of the Modern World Parts 1-2.

History Fey existed long before the Olympians came to Cimmeria. Many species of fey came into being during the Golden Age of Cronus. Their position was closer to divinity than humans thus their disdain for mortals has existed for centuries. Fey in ancient times were often antagonistic towards humans with a few exceptions such as Chiron, mentor of heroes. Fey attitudes towards mortals stayed much the same after the Olympians conquered Cimmeria.

A Far-Future Ice Age TTRPG Set in the Year 100,000

George tells us about his D&D actual play called Fears and Fortunes. The campaign follows the adventures of Sly, granddaughter of the Seer of Bearuport. Sly accidentally releases a bunch of ghosts from her late grandmother's tarot deck. She and her band of companions must find the fourteen ghosts that escaped and imprison them within the deck once more.

Continuing our Chinese based review of the World of Darkness book line! Hunter: The Reckoning Hunter: The Reckoning provides rules for playing as humans that fight back against the monsters of World of Darkness. After humans witness magic or monsters, sometimes they become Imbued. A force known as the Heralds mark Imbued with special powers to see the monsters that exist in the World of Darkness, and a compulsion to kill those monsters.

I gave Descript a try for editing Setting the Stage. It worked well, but I think I'll continue with Audacity for now. The main advantage of Descript for me is transcript editing. The program detects different speakers and what they're saying with decent accuracy. It's very easy to edit out all the filler words of "um, uh, like, kind of, basically, and chchch." Just select the word in the transcript and press delete.

Physical Description Fey have no unifying physical appearance across the different subraces. All of them are vaguely humanoid. The different subraces have some part of the natural world joined with part of their humanoid form. Leafy dryads, water naiads, horse hybrid centaurs, or goat hybrid satyrs are all examples of the natural world fusing with the humanoid form. Along with these fusions fey are frequently on the smaller side for height and weight.

Chapter 13 is done! We're closing in on the end. I've started Chapter 14 as well and 15 and the Epilogue are outlined. I've set a goal of writing 1000 words a week that should have me finish by the end of Summer. Chapter 13 - Return to Shalerton Blendegad, Galandir, and Tereman rode on horses through the countryside east of Phoenix.

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Seiya tells us about his TTRPG system and setting, Synesthesia Synthetica (SNS). SNS is a biopunk game adjacent to the cyberpunk and steampunk genres. After an asteroid induced climate disaster, Earth has rebuilt itself using bio-technology instead of the metal based tech that surrounds us in the real world. Genetically modified humans have split into distinct species and mutant horrors prowl the wastes outside civilization.

Continuing our Chinese based review of the World of Darkness book line! Blood and Silk Blood and Silk is the Asian version of Dark Ages: Vampire. All you need to get started running a Medieval Age World of Darkness game in Asia. Blood and Silk is fortunately less repetitive than Dark Ages. It assumes that you have a copy of…

I talk with my friend Will about JRR Tolkien's Middle-Earth and how it can be used as a campaign setting for D&D. Want to be on the show? Fill out this survey.Join our Discord!Support Setting the Stageon Patreon!

Location Humans live across the plains, hills, and valleys of Cimmeria. Few are found in the forests and mountains. The exceptions are the people of Aractrash that have learned to live with the jungle and the people of Mars' Oasis who subsist on the magic of the Dythalid Pool. Throughout Cimmeria humans gather in the cities of the region, with dispersed towns, villages, and farms around the major population centers.

Travis tells us about his world of Tetara. Travis runs Tetara as a paid game on StartPlaying. Each group's campaign runs in a different region of Tetara. As the campaign progresses that group gets to shape their region through their actions. After a region has been molded through play, Travis tends to run a second campaign in that region to explore the consequences of the first campaign.

Podcast Episode · Black Armada Tales · 5 May · 33min

Continuing our Chinese based review of the World of Darkness book line! Dark Ages: Vampire Dark Ages: Vampire details the setting and rules for playing Vampire: The Masquerade in the Medieval Age. The book is set in 1230 prior to the institution of the Masquerade by the Camarilla clans. Because vampires aren't limited by secrecy they are a lot more evil.

Subraces Humans have numerous subraces across the world. There are slight physical differences between the subraces, but they are separated by appearance and culture rather than ability. Only a few subraces are relevant in Cimmeria. The Cimmerians have the most population in the region, obviously. The Cimmerians are followed by the Aractrashans and Xorians who split off from the main group of humans to form larger kingdoms.