Micropost: Pantheon of the Eternal Industrial Era.

Vatra - The Primordial Mother Fire. Embodied in the Sun (Her fire above) and Coal (Her fire below).  Consumed the previous world and from its ashes were born the gods.

Qiri - The Daughter Fire. Goddess of the Moon, gas, oil, lamps, chemistry, and noxious gasses.

Avull - Goddess of steam, waterfalls, storms, engines, beasts of burden, passion, and blood.

Hekuri - God of iron, foundries, bellows, mining, cement, stone, and the rail.

Turma - Goddess of agriculture, abundance, forestry, crowds, crowding, and plague.

Udhetar - God of canals, calm seas, trade, travel, deserts, desire, and desperation.

Fabrika - Goddess of management, textiles, wisdom, planning, and mass production.

Zare - God of gold, entrepreneurship, investment, prophecy, games and greed.

Shoku - Goddess of community, conformity, communication, the telegraph, lightning, roads, and repair.

Genje - God of paper, printing, knowledge, literacy, eloquence, entertainment, diplomacy and deception.

Martesa - Goddess of boundaries, borders, property, contracts, marriage, and oaths.

Ushtar- God of lead, law, order, rage, war, and gunpowder. Punisher of broken promises.

Kupon - God of the wilds. Merchandising. 

Inspired by this prompt from Discord user DefinitelyNotAnEggHahaha:

In many fantasy worlds, the gods create the world in a sort of medieval stasis. Humans, dwarves, etc, have medieval-level tech handed to them from day one, and the gods that exist in these worlds also often reflect that technology level (god of the harvest, god of the forge, etc). That is to say, these gods would make no sense in a world where everyone is a hunter-gatherer.

So, with that established, worldbuilding idea: A world created in a sort of industrial era stasis. Have gods of oil rigs, and railroads, and such

A sort of dirty steampunk kind of vibe, where tech never actually progresses because of the influence of these gods

PS: Kupon is literally just the Greek god Pan in a top hat and ill-fitting three-piece suit. 

Astropost: Astronomical Objects, Their Symbols, and Their Namesakes

I want to play a game set in a mythologized version of the Solar System. So I took some notes on the bits and bobs floating about.

Click to open in a new tab.

 The following is an incomplete list of objects in the Solar System, along with their namesakes and symbols.

Fragmentary Powers v2.0 - A Tarot Deck Generator for Janky Superpowers

Use this to generate confusing and bizarrely conditional supernatural powers.

This is an expanded version of the previous post, tweaked to be used with a deck of cards.

Potential use cases:

• Janky superhero one shots.
• Store brand JoJo stands.
• Clearance-sale magic items.
• Use these powers in place of GLOG templates? Bad idea? Best idea?

To manually generate powers, draw three cards from a tarot deck, and consult the tables below. The first card determines the Triggering condition, the second determines how the power manifests, and the third determines what element the power applies to. If you're using a poker deck, then simply ignore the trump suit and Cavalier cards, and map the red and black jokers to the Fool and the Magician.

Here's a pdf version of the tables below.

Fragmentary Superpowers - Two experiments with randomly generating jank.

I need some janky superpowers. Here are a couple of little experiments to randomly generate such things.

The first combines an activation condition with a power and an element:

The second just picks a few options from a list of 'partial' superpowers. Fire summoners are immune to fire. Super strongos have the unbreakable bones needed to support their strength. What if those required secondary powers were just doled out at random instead of being properly matched?

Here are a few doodles of janky superheroes for inspiration. The tables used in the above generators are down below.

Original Premium - While chanting, saltine crackers randomly appear nearby

Thick Liz - Immune to disease, doesn't need to breathe, can talk to fish (they don't listen)

Capn' Flappy - Changes direction of local gravity, redundant wings

Wizards in Rayon Stockings: Some worldbuilding notes on plastics.

How reasonable is it is include plastics in a psuedo-medieval fantasy world without fossil fuels? 

 

A better title might be "Alchemists in Rayon", because of course you can just wave your witchofingers and summon tupperware from the realms of chaos. But even restricting ourselves to low-magic fantasy, for many plastics, it's totally reasonable to throw them in. They'll probably just be rarer and considered high-quality objects instead of throwaway trash.

Clearly, the question on everyone's mind when they see this compilation of public domain witches is
"Where did they get those sweet leggings?"

Skip to the end if you just want a bulleted list of which plastics I thinks a witch might be able to brew in a cauldron. But otherwise, come with me on this scatterbrained journey into the world of organic chemistry.

 

Gretchpost 2021

This is my GLOG hack. It's called GLOLG: Gretchlings steaLing yOur LeGs

Here's the pdf download. Here's the character sheet.

Thanks for reading, and I'm sorry.

10 bandit gangs which ambush you along the road.

1. Avery's Autarkic Army

 As you walk through down the road, dozens of identically clad bandits step out of the shrubbery. They're all brandishing similar swords in similar poses. One of these is Avery, the lone bandit. The rest are magical puppets mirroring Avery's moves.

2. Brutus and Billy, the Brute Brothers

A couple of beefy blokes relax out in the open next to the road, big cudgels in their hands. If your group looks weak, they'll step into the middle of your path, and demand that you hand over your valuables. If you look tough, they'll smile and wave as you go past.

 

3. A Cloudy Encounter

There are rumors of strange thefts on the road between Castletown and Cabletopia. Some evenings, a strange thick fog rolls in, acompanied by the clanking of bells. Then three silhouettes and 6 glowing eyes are seen charging forth from the darkness. The burly silhouettes shoulder past travelers, knocking them aside. After the fog clears, these unlucky travelers  find that they're missing their satchel or waterskin or somehow their shoes.

 

4. Denny (and his devilishly deceptive traps)

The cobbled road in front of you suddenly gives way to a short section made of regular red bricks. A crude amateurishly-carved statue has been recently installed along the road-side, with a wooden chest at its feet. From here, you can just barely see a set of cables running out of the back of the chest and into a hole in the statue.

 Ah, the local shire-reeve warned you about this. And sure enough, when you look around, you see a man in wizard's robes off in the distance, poorly concealed behind a small boulder and accompanied by several bored-looking mercenaries.

The man in the robes is Denny, a former wizard's apprentice with a concerningly pulsating growth on the side of his head. The growth whispers to him in dreams, gifting him grand visions of elaborate traps. Even when his devices manage to catch a traveler unaware, he rarely walks away with a haul worth more than the cost of their construction, so it's a bit of a mystery how he's managed to operate for so long.