Pain progress report 2/2021

 

I started working on the current iteration of the game in May 2018, while the first concepts began to appear in... 2005. But for the first time in countless millenia, I feel really full of energy for the game.

So, today I have a big announcement!

I've finished working on the setting! 99% of the world's descriptions are now ready. I worked on it on a daily basis and even reduced my roaming thru the local forests to focus on Pain ;)

Of course, there's still much to do, namely:

• The game mechanics (based on even more streamlined Perilous Ages ruleset) - as I absolutely love working on game rules, I think I will do it in the following weeks. I must playtest it ASAP!
• At least 20 random Artifacts (it won't be easy, as so far I created over a hundred such items for my previous projects, haha);
• Circa 30 maps of various size and detail;
• About 100 pieces of artwork. It will be pretty time-consuming, as I decided to release this game in full color!

Also, this time I will do a proper proofreading of the game. I want to release it in physical form (as premium as possible!), so I want to make it as perfect as I am able to.

More info really soon!

Oh, and I think you'll be interested in seeing the list of actual content made so far! Here it is:

INTRODUCTION

• Welcome to the Nightmare
• Modular game, modular setting

THE UNLIFE

• General appearance of the Unliving Ones
• Feeding
• Healing and body augmentations
• Connection ports and interface

THE SEEKERS

PAIN IS ETERNAL

• Layers of the City
• What Lies Below
• The Outside

THOUSAND SECTS

THE HOLLOW ONES

• The Black Dust

THE FALL

• The Machine 

THE ARCHONS

• Blood of the Gods
• Asccension
• The Architect
• The Alchemist
• The Assassin

IMMORTALS

• The Grey Wanderer
• The Silent Observer
• The Masked One
• The Watcher
• The Hunter

THE BOOK OF KEYS

• What do we know about the Book
• The Abyss
• The Archives
• The Altered Ones
• Awakened Ones
• The Arena
• The Ashen Spirits
• The Black Druid
• The Bone Forest
• The Book of Names
• The Chaos Rat
• The Chimney Towers
• Chronicles of the Lost
• Cosmology
• Dark Iron
• The Dead Tree
• Death Pits
• The Dust Sword
• Excavation Station
• The Fossilized God
• The Furnaces
• The Gatekeeper
• The Great Father
• The Guarded Passage
• Human Skulls
• The Inverted City
• The King
• The Knights
• The Lake
• The Last Star
• Lower City
• The Lower Outpost
• The Map Room
• The Mines
• The Moons
• The Necropolis
• The Portal Fortress
• Portals
• The Prison
• The Resurrection Monolith
• The Rift
• Rust
• Sorrow
• The Sunken Spires
• Thorns
• Tower of Mirrors
• The Trophy Room
• The Unknown One
• Upper City
• The Void Moth
• Warding Pillars
• Watcher's Outpost
• The Waterfall Cave
• The Waterfall Passage
• THE FOOTNOTES COMPILED

MOST IMPORTANT INDIVIDUALS FROM THE CITY

COGNITION CARDS

• Origins
• Card Suits
• Known Cards
• The Moon

THE CRIMSON ONES

• The Red Moon
• Ritual of the Seven
• Demonic Flesh

UNSORTED TEXTS

 

MMXXI - Pain progress report

 

Wow... three posts in 2020...

This time I decided to give up on any RPG-related plans. I just try to do my part of work but without any promises to anyone - even myself.

BUT I think there is one thing I could share with you - progress I made with designing Pain since my last post.

You know me - bullet point list incoming!

• I'm currently revising everything I wrote so far - condensed text fits into 27 A4-sized pages. And I rather remove stuff than add new. I simply rip out anything I'm not entirely satisfied with. This should help with, well, finishing it!
• Yup, only twenty seven pages. But when divided into chapters and fit into B5 format (which will be the final one - or at least I think so) they already take 77 pages. And that's without even touching game mechanics.
  
• Moreover - many entries must be expanded. Some really important figures and places are only described in 2-3 sentences. But for now I hit the wall and my brain is empty. So I focus on other aspects of the design.
• No artwork touched so far, except the first attempts to design a logo. I posted some initial doodles on my Instagram.
• I often switch methods of designing new stuff - sometimes I write only on Google Docs, sometimes I use pen and paper. The latter works especially well with revisions - but geez, applying the changes to the GDocs is PITA! But there is no way around - I tried a tablet but it was even worse than relying on a laptop! Good thing is that I borrowed one and had not spent any money on my own device.

I really hope that I will finish this game in MMXXI. But we all know how things are looking now. Still - expect no excuses for my laziness. If i drop it for several months due to me being too lazy - I will let you know haha.

Okay, I think it's enough for now. Still no promises - but I will TRY to post at least monthly updates on topic of this project. And it's more than sure that I will drop some less-important stuff on my IG (link above).

Stay tuned and be safe out there!

Pain is Eternal

 

still WIP, needs rework

Uh oh. Blogging is weak in me! But I am still working on my game, which I mentioned several times before under this tag (and several other tags as well, as my RPG-related settings and projects intermingled and devoured themselves over and over). But even the name of the game was changed.

PAIN IS ETERNAL.

Yup, that's a saying from the game's world - Pain is name of the city. The only city that survived the Fall (click but bear in mind that this info be quite outdated). And as you can see on the map above - there's quite a lot of things happening under it. So - maybe you should expect some solid underworld-crawling.

Next thing - there will be only one playable race - the Unliving Ones. Humans are now extinct and only the "amalgamations of biological flesh and arcane technology" remain. More info soon (ha, fucking ha... expect to read about them in the next 4d6 months).

Also - game will most likely use my percentile mechanics, a derivative of an engine used in Perilous Ages. But it will be even more streamlined and gritty. Why the d% engine, instead of more standard OSRish approach? There are two main reasons. First - I dislike asymmetrical combat (passive defense and binja armor paradox - the more heavy armor you have, the smaller the chance to hit you is). Second - percentile mechanics are really, REALLY easy to convert them to any other existing ruleset. And they are extremely easy to hack / modify. At least IMO.

However - this time things will be soo fucking different from my previous releases...

Let's be honest - I fell in love with MÖRK BORG. Absolutely, both in terms of aesthetics and content. What is even more interesting (at least from my point of view), I planned to do something similar two years ago - but still had no clue how to start (or finish). Artpunky rulebook is a way for me to go. And - as I already have like ~70 A4-sized pages full of text (not counting the rules) - it will be quite big.

I will try to update the blog with some Pain-related news. Also, check out my Instagram profile and add me on MeWe.

World of Ortix on Instagram!

CLICK ME

Today I created an IG account for my geeky activities, mostly the ones connected to all my blogging/RPG-related stuff. Of course, I will still try to update this blog - but as you can see, I'm not very good at it nowadays.

On the topic of Pain RPG / whY - I'm still making progress with the game. Once I create something more coherent, I will post it here.

Ortix Year Ten (+ map!)

Wow... a decade of this blog.

As you can see, I'm still kicking. Not very active on the RPG-side of my numerous hobbies - was mainly focused on drawing, painting and music. But from time to time i work on the Pain project, adding new stuff - but mostly reworking the old ideas.

For example - yesterday I made a small, very basic version of the cross-section of the City of Pain, which you may gaze upon. Right here, right now I'm working on the much bigger and much more detailed one. Most likely will post some progress photos on my MeWe profile.

Rest in Peace...

[whY] The Shards

1. All Shards revolve around some kind of central location, a place where immense power can be found.
2. Not all Shards are inhabited - conditions on some of them are quite lethal…
3. Shards that are left unprotected may vanish. Sometimes they reappear, twisted beyond recognition.
4. An artificial black hole is located in the center of all Shards. And all Shards are somehow connected to it.
5. Boundaries of some shards are clearly visible, while others seem to stretch infinitely.
6. Shards that are uninhabited by humans are sometimes home to some unspeakable monstrosities, much better adapted to particular fragments of reality.
7. From time to time, particular Shards seem to overlap. There was a clan who possessed a method of determining when and where it will occur. Or maybe it was just another myth.
8. Some shards are artificially lit, while others seem to be surrounded by dim glow. Night-day cycle is extremely rare.

The very first Ortix Podcast!

THE GUILTY FUCKER

Well, it happened. I recorded my very first podcast ever.

I was really nervous, the hum of the laptop can be perfectly heard (even though I recorded using the contraption presented above!) and my English is shitty. But I felt the urge to record it and I did it.

In this - the first ever - episode, I'm talking about the whY setting, its background, some basic features and the form. It's not very long, and most likely not very good as well! But I hope you'll enjoy it :)

Ortix Podcast S01E01 - Introduction and something about The Game Called... whY

[whY] doodle #1

I'm not good at drawing.
But I don't care.

Krshal Trilogy Bundle

If you want to grab the whole Krshal Trilogy (Towers, Tombs, Legends) in PDF format for reduced price, click the link below :)

The Krshal Bundle @ DTRPG

One rule to rule them all... Or not?

Do I need any rules? That's the question I ask myself everytime i run the game. And now, when my gaming group is no more, I ask it when it comes to write down the ideas for something new, be it Perilous Frontiers, whY or something else. I ask myself even if I know the answer.

Please note that I speak for myself and everything depends on multitude of different aspects.

I do NOT need any rules. In fact, I ran game sessions for years (and we had them on a daily basis, back in the late 90s) without a single dice roll. Character sheets were used to track PCs belongings - and nothing else.

Did it worked? Yes. But you must remember one extremely important thing.

YOU MUST NOT BE AN ASSHOLE.

When there are no dice and no stats, you - the GM - are the only arbiter of any actions. And I guarantee you that it will work out for almost any GM/DM in 99% cases - except combat. During combat, things may get ugly really quickly. And they will get ugly if you are an asshole. And - most likely - no one would participate in your diceless / rules-less games anymore.

This is how I determined the results of combat:

• PCs are stronger than ordinary mortals. They are not ubermenschen but they are significantly stronger, faster, more agile and/or more skilled.
• Description of the actions means everything. It was the most important factor.
• Wounds were the most difficult part of the game, as descriptive nature of all damage caused many problems, such as bleeding, broken bones etc. It was extremely gritty but we liked it.
• As we were gaming in the more or less Sword & Sorcery setting, PCs were healing pretty fast - although there were portions of the game that were fast-forwarded (or railroaded, heh), when all the player characters were so fucked up that players decided to let it go for two or three weeks to let them heal their wounds. Also, even though there were little spellcasters, healing potions and/or healing items were relatively common.

These things caused my players to be pretty skilled in descriptive combat and the overall survivability of their characters was really good, maybe except the fact that we were teenagers and peeps tended to slaughter each other on a daily basis, over slightest argument :D

Now - if I will be lucky enough to assemble a new group of players - I plan to go back to similar method of running games, except some addidtional features:

• Most likely, Diamond Diceless will be my weapon of choice, too keep track of the stats and abilities...
• ...but I will use the dice. Solely for the random content - I love random tables! I always add some randomness to the story / module, so I need the dice.
• I'm also considering to give players something in the shape of Fate Points from WFRP/40K RPGs, to allow them to cheat death - or, in some cases, my decisions.

Of course, I'm not sure if it will work - it all depends on the players. Some people prefer this kind of "storytelling", some prefer dice chucking. We will see (or not!).

Rats (half of the table from Tombs of Krshal)

This is the 50% of the table from Tombs of Krshal. Vicious, unsettling rumors about the Vermin. Chuck yer fucking deesix!

1. We must kill them all. They are in fact parts of the soul of the Great Flayer. When there are enough of them, he will be reborn.
2. There is an artifact, buried somewhere beneath the oldest ruins at the fringe of the Palatial District, which allows its user to look through the eyes of a rat. Of any rat.
3. There is a new breed of rats in Krshal. Slightly smaller, with darker fur and much longer tail. They say that they were designed by mages, to get rid of the monsters living in the city’s vast underworld.
4. The Thieves Guild is using rats as spies for years. They also use them to steal small objects but people are saying that they can steal almost anything.
5. Beware of the Silver Rat. It's a very powerful magical creature, a true god of rodents. They say that it can turn gold into mud - and vice versa.
6. There is a homeless girl, living in the Leper's District, able to communicate with rats. In fact, mages protect her, as they cooperate with her quite often.