What is Heroes & Other Worlds?

Heroes & Other Worlds is a game of adventure inspired by Metagaming's classic Melee/Wizard/TFT system combined with inspiration from the Moldvay edited basic game. The rules are easy to learn and use standard six sided dice. The system is simple, sensible and flexible in the spirit of classic role playing games from the early 80's. Become a Hero, Other Worlds await!

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Happy HOW-lloween!

Well it is all treat and no tricks here at HOW central.  On October 31st, I hput together 3 adventures into a special free Halloween Cauldron PDF download.

This could be slip these into your campaign world quite easily and while one adventure has already been published as a free download before, I include it here as I used it to kick off this series of adventures with my own group.  Note, the final adventure is very hard and very deadly.  My own players fled and did not make it too far--which is fine because as the Referee it creates a thread of doom and story to use and to "threaten" players with long term.

Spooktacular Halloween wishes to you and yours, but like Halloween, it did not last and is now gone...

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Sorry

Sorry the craziest year ever in my work life last year...was trumped by this year's insanity.  I am very happy and grateful to have a great job in the real world, but the office demands and travel are severely cutting into any shot at time to write and create. I know this may come as a surprise, but my lovely wife would like to spend time with me as do other family and friends in those spare hours when I have time to do so. 

So I apologize to you that things are not coming along as quickly as I had hoped and intended. I can only ask your continued patience and hope that the results will be worth the wait.  I am as anxious to get some new stuff out as (I hope) you are to see some new stuff. Thank you!

Thursday, October 8, 2015

This is Ruskya


Don't let the quiet fool you, work on Blades & Black Magic is happening on jets as I travel (a lot) for work...

Below is a first pass at a Rodinia homeland entry for Blades & Black Magic--tell me what more (within reason) you need to make it worthwhile.  Keep in mind (from me) you are not going to get a frustrated novelist rendition of who begat who in the snowy wilderness among the wolf people before the ancients learned to write yada yada yada...

YOU can make that up and it will be more real and more important because YOU know what you like and how YOU want to play it! I want to give you enough to work with to develop that kind of story--without pouring a sticky syrup of words over it all that drowns your own creativity!

One of the features is a SWOT for each homeland.  SWOT is a business analytical brief used to determine: Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats.  This can be applied to new markets, current operations, new opportunities, etc. Having to do these in the real world made me think it might provide an interesting hook/framework to be used for each homeland.

So without further blather--here is the initial take on a homeland, let loose your comments for good or ill.



Ruskya
Government structure: Warring clans
Weather: Short spring and summer, long, rainy autumn, cold, snow heavy winter
Typical Food: Wild animals, root vegetables
Typical drink: Mead
Typical house: Animal skin yert or wood cabin
Gods: War, Trickster, Mother, Animal, Weather
Trade goods: Furs, raw metal, raw wood
Typical village: 140 men, 100 women, 210 kids.
Typical livestock: Goats and chickens

Ruskya Strengths
Strong fighters
Forest and mountains make them tough to invade
Many natural resources

Ruskya Weaknesses
Fear Magic
Clans mistrust each other
Harsh weather

Ruskya Opportunities
Develop industry to convert resources
Unite clans to become a power
Develop a trade city to bring in wealth

Ruskya Threats
Invasion by a unified power
Secret cabal of clan sorcerers seeks power over the clans
Clan leaders linking to outside powers to gain internal prestige but at cost of subjugation

This is Ruskya
Ruskya is a snowy, mountainous region of the north. The people are golden or red-haired, blue-eyed and the men are bearded and the women typically have hair in braids or long and left loose. Their land is made up of warring clans, but they are not opposed to working together if there is gold and prestige to be gained.

The Ruskya are traditionally armed in leather armor, furs, and using wooden round shields. They prefer hammers or axes in combat and dislike the use of bows except for hunting.

Typical Ruskya mercenaries are raiders, hunters, trackers and swords for hire.  The rare Ruskya sorcerer is seen as a dangerous oddity, not to be trusted and certainly to be feared.  

Typical names Bragi, Egil, Gorm, Heimdul, Horsa, Njord, Njal, Rann, Sigurd, Wulfhere

A Mercenary starts with basic clothing and boots, a fur cloak, a large shield, a spear, axe or hammer, and a knife. 

A Sorcerer starts with basic clothing, boots, fur robes, a dagger or staff.