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The Man Unmasked
United States
Jackson
MS
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Lately, I've been assembling props for a LARP character I've been wanting to play (imagine a cross between Harry Dresden and John Constantine). Items have included a hand-written journal full of magical lore and sigils and the like, a suit case full of oils, powders, candles, and inks, and a staff and wand combination, that can be used for creating power circles. It's been a lot of fun. But my most recent prop has proved to have a much cooler secondary purpose.
I went to the local home improvement store and picked up some floor tile, specifically one made up of a bunch of roughly 1" x 1" x 1/2" stone squares, which I separated and wrote the Nordic Furthark runes on. My wife was contemplating buying the Ebberon campaign setting and I joked, "Well, these are used for divination, let me cast the runes and see what they say."
I grabbed twelve, "A good mystic number in many cultures," and dropped them. The face up ones meant regeneration, balance (night versus day, black and white, etc), justice, and destiny.*
"Oh yeah," I said. "Ebberon is all about balance. I mean, you can be any alignment for any deity and the good guys and bad guys will work together. Balance and justice. And we've been meaning to get back into D&D again, so regeneration. Clearly, it's destiny!" I gave her a wink.
But it occurred to me, this could be a great random campaign generator. Draw twelve stones and drop them and develop a story based on their positions to one another. So I've developed the following guidelines for doing so and an example.
1) Only face up runes are interpreted.
2) Face up runes that are touching each other are directly related. The more they touch, the more they are related (thus flat end to flat end is a stronger connection than corners touching, but one leaning on another is more closely related still).
3) The largest area of touching runes is the main plot. All others are side plots and supporting details.
4) A face up rune covered by a face down rune indicates that something is obscuring the face up rune, or hiding the truth of it.
5) A face up rune covered by a face up rune indicates that the top rune is holding down or oppressing the bottom rune.
6) A rune on its side indicates a red herring or ploy designed to throw the party off course.
Example:
Twelve runes were cast. The results are as follows:
Sky/Justice by itself
Fire/torch/beacon + sun/triumph over darkness
An intuitive bond + icile (standing on its side)
Thunderbolt/Justice standing on its side.
My big pair are the two face ups touching. A fiery beacon calling our heroes to triumph over darkness. With the addition of the sun, we'll say it's a literal darkness. The sun has been blotted out and people live by torchlight, but a beacon has been lit and the heroes have come to restore light to the world.
The heroes will have an intuitive bond with a ice wizard or frost giant, but it will be a false bond. He's a spy for the sun thief.
Now we have real justice and false justice separately. For the most part, they will be supported in their righteous cause (justice) by villages and kings, and those in high places (sky) are keeping a close eye on their champions. However, the sun thief has set out a false trial to keep the heroes back. There's a thunderbolt, which strikes quickly. They've been falsely accused of raiding a small village in the night. They must prove their innocence and free themselves from jail before they can stop the true villain.
Bam, a story in the toss of a handful of stones.
My wife and I have been playing with it for the past short while seeing who can interpret the coolest story from the runes. You should try it. It's a lot of fun and can help you break free from your rut if you find yourself stuck creating MacGuffin-hinged plots.
*Rune meanings come from the book The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Signs and Symbols by Adele Nozedar, though the following websites can also be used: http://www.runestones.com/RuneMeaning.htm and http://www.sunnyway.com/runes/meanings.html
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Cracky McCracken
United States
Ohio
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that's awesome. i wonder if you could use Tarot cards in a simular way? probably.
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Young & Lawful Good
United Kingdom
Redhill
Surrey
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This is indeed a wonderful creation. It's not going to be extremely helpful someone who can't pull together the strands into a coherent story. But for an experienced storyteller who needs a novel hook, this is really excellent.
I think I'll have to take your advice and make a set of my own, and use them in our unit of Dwarves when we do our high fantasy LARPing. That would be very appropriate.
On the subject of tarot cards, Everway used a tarot-like card-based system for a resolution system. It was a gorgeous game, but so different from traditional RPGs that it sadly had very little commercial success. I got my copy very cheap when they were put on clearance not too long after their flopped launch. Maybe it was just ahead of its time and it would do better nowadays, when indie games and innovative mechanics are more popular?
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Art Gorski
United States
Prescott
Arizona
Get my Mac software for Classic Traveller at http://naasirka.weebly.com/
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Stelio wrote: I think I'll have to take your advice and make a set of my own
Or just buy something like this...
http://hauntedwoodcrafts.com/runes/elderfuthark.html
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Young & Lawful Good
United Kingdom
Redhill
Surrey
Support comes in many forms: community involvement, forum posts, submitting data, word-of-mouth advertising, financial donations... All of these are vital to this site, and you have my sincere thanks for participating in any of them.
Currently: banned as per http://rpggeek.com/article/9104203#9104203
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Cool! Nice find, Art. I think I'll still go with Sean's suggestion though: the stone would be much more appropriate for Dwarves, it's a much cheaper solution, and it's fun crafting stuff oneself.
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The Man Unmasked
United States
Jackson
MS
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I went by home depot and picked up one "floor tile" for five buck clearance, which had probably 130 or so 1x1x1/2 stone tiles on it of roughly the same color. I made three sets. One for me and a couple for my dwarf lovin' friends. I could have made more, but for variety, added in the additional two Aettir, rather than using the basic 24 runes of the first three.
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Cliff
United States
Western Great Lakes - Owashtinong Aajigaaning
Michigan
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Stelio wrote: On the subject of tarot cards, Everway used a tarot-like card-based system for a resolution system.
Everway came to my mind as well. The (law of) fortune deck was one, indeed, next to the law of drama (storytelling or 'let it ride'?-like approach) and karma (highest ability wins). But I can see the fortune deck or even trying to make sense of a random "dropping"/reading the bones of the even more numerous story background cards in the style of Sean's cast runes.
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Eric Dodd
New Zealand
Martinborough
Wairarapa
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The I-Ching is another option. Vital set-dressing for that Philip K Dick RPG!
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The Man Unmasked
United States
Jackson
MS
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Red Wine Pie wrote: The I-Ching is another option. Vital set-dressing for that Philip K Dick RPG!
Ah yes, the Philip K Dick RPG, where you play three characters at once, only one of them is real and you don't get to know which. Oh, and there's a 50-50 shot the real character is already dead.
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Pete Repeat
Australia
Melbourne
Victoria
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dumwytgi wrote: Red Wine Pie wrote: The I-Ching is another option. Vital set-dressing for that Philip K Dick RPG! Ah yes, the Philip K Dick RPG, where you play three characters at once, only one of them is real and you don't get to know which. Oh, and there's a 50-50 shot the real character is already dead.
Ha ha. I'd not heard of that before, but I like the concept.
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agorski wrote:
Mike from the Haunted Wood here- Thanks for the link! If anybody wants to order a set of runes (or ogham or alchemy tiles) you can use the coupon code "geekdo" for 10% off. You're also welcome to download the rune meanings in .pdf form here: A Quick Guide to the Norse Runes
Please forgive me if the commercial post isn't welcome- I don't mean to spam, just thank you for pointing people my way.
-Mike
Haunted Wood Crafts
PS: I've actually created a couple GURPS characters by picking a random date and time, then running up the astrological chart for them- it's a really fast way to get a highly detailed psych profile for the character. http://www.chaosastrology.net/freeastrologyreports.cfm
You also might be interested to know that the Elder Futhark runes tell a story in three acts when read in order. Maybe you could consider that for a full campaign...
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The Man Unmasked
United States
Jackson
MS
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MikeTheBard wrote: PS: I've actually created a couple GURPS characters by picking a random date and time, then running up the astrological chart for them- it's a really fast way to get a highly detailed psych profile for the character. http://www.chaosastrology.net/freeastrologyreports.cfmYou also might be interested to know that the Elder Futhark runes tell a story in three acts when read in order. Maybe you could consider that for a full campaign...
Two fantastic ideas, Mike! I may have to use both of those in the near future.
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