Meme-Free Zone

In the end I've decided to keep this REALLY simple, just a brief note on what I think the money is approximately worth, some sample prices, and a sidebar about the coinage. I've sent this to Jo already, but if anyone thinks I've got anything badly wrong please let me know.


( main text - Money )

( sidebar text - Currency )

Would "Coinage" be a better heading for the sidebar than "Currency"?

I really don't want to rewrite the full Forgotten Futures magic rules for the Tooth and Claw setting, and there isn't actually any need - the source of power will be a little different, everything else is much the same. So the chapter on magic will be pretty short:
( Read more... )

Does this seem OK? The illustration is one of frostfox's dragons - I've added the pointy hat and a couple of spell books.

Just writing the "use with other Forgotten Futures settings" bit, and finishing off some other details, and I will then, I think, have the rules section finished, and can move on to the adventures. I hope that I'll be able to send what I've done so far out for comment once Dragonmeet is out of the way, so if you wanted to be a beta reader please remind me.

Here's the example of how to play Forgotten Futures in the Tooth and Claw setting, revised yet again. I'm much happier with this version, though it's considerably longer. Since this is a fairly important bit of the text all suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Apologies that the HTML inside the cut was formatted by Word, so expect it to be buggy as hell...
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More Yarge - this time it's sailors



Basically I've gone with Samaurai / Japanese costume, and (almost uniquely for Yarge) no guns, presumably because of the risk of fire aboard ship, which I will have to remember to mention in the description - they do have guns aboard, they just don't carry them routinely.

If I could find something more archaic and nautical - and not, I hasten to add for the benefit of nojay et al., anything at all to do with schoolgirls in sailor costume - I might go for it. But I need to find at least six or seven useful images, and this lot were a lot easier to find.

Remembered to do something today - made sure I still have Steve Jackson's permission to use the Cardboard Heroes format (yes, it is a registered design) for some figures in FF X. Basically cut-out paper Yarge, who turn out to look remarkably like Cossacks. There'll be about sixteen or twenty of them; some soldiers, bandits, peasants, a princess (hey, dragons dig princesses - it's traditional), a merchant, etc. As usual they'll be my crap "no, I still can't draw" version of the format, with one side the picture of the character, the other a hollow silhouette. Here's a few to show what they're like:

( click on picture for bigger view )

I think I'm also going to try to do another foldout dragon design - the one I have is OK, but another wouldn't go amiss, maybe a more upright alternative body.

This one is a bit long so I've put it behind the cut - maybe a bit too long, tell me what you think.

( Better in the Original Draconic... )

...I have purchased phlosque[1]. To wit a largish resin dragon I found cheap on eBay, which is about the right size to be the big boss in one of the adventures I'm running at Dragonmeet. Arrived today, and it's about the size I want, but even less menacing-looking than I expected. I will have to de-cute it a LOT; replace the cute widdle baby dragon hatching out of its eggs underneath with a pile of gold coins and maybe some bones, change the colour from greens and golds and reds (with little sparkly bits) to something a lot meaner looking, change the expression from "cute motherhood" to "hey, let's eat these bozos," and so on.

I may eventually post "before" and "after" pictures. If it works, and I can stand to look at the "before"

[1] There doesn't seem to be a good Wikipedia or other reference that explains what phlosque is, which is a pity. Think of it as the fantasy art equivalent of those pictures of cute big-eyed kids painted on velvet. There's a tongue-in-cheek description here, more brutally Dave Langford describes it as "notably and noisomely cute sf/fantasy art"

A clearer picture of two paper models, one with paper wings, the other with plastic



And one I tried and seems to work rather well - printed entirely on acetate, I made a little flying stand for it out of some of the left-over film. I think some of these will be what I use for the game at Dragonmeet.




I'm thinking about running two Tooth and Claw scenarios at Dragonmeet, rather than one T&C and one Diana, since I don't have anything anywhere near ready to launch for Diana.

For the Tooth and Claw game dragons eat a LOT of meat, so I think that I have to assume that the average wage will pay for e.g. a cow every few days, and that meat in general will be cheap whereas some types of food (e.g. bread, cheese) either won't be on sale at all, or will be a niche market catering to foreign (human) tourists and foodys. What I want to do is work out things adventurers might want to buy - e.g. beer, guns, etc. - based on the thing I know - e.g. cows.

What I really need is some idea of the cost of a beef carcasse in the mid-Victorian era. I can then relate other prices I know to that. Presumably information like this is available, but I've not got very far - I got a victorian maths text that gave three different prices for a cow in three different sums, but I'm pretty sure that there is no real world connection, the numbers were just used to make the sums work.

Maybe something like a naval history, presumably navies bought meat in bulk? Anyone got any thoughts?

Later It occurs to me I'm looking at this wrong - it's only the big rich dragons that will be eating whole cows, your average dragon in the street probably just buys a goat or a few pounds of beef. So I'll work it out from butcher prices, which I already have.

For the chapter on the Yarge in the Tooth and Claw worldbook I mentioned that some dragon plays are adapted from Yarge sources, but often need a lot of changes to make them more fitting to draconic tastes. The passage reads:

Many Yarge plays and novels have been adapted for a Draconic audience, although sometimes much changed in the translation. It may be hard to believe, but the comedy Ten Pounds of Flesh, with its corrupt lawyers defrauding the lovable moneylender and receiving their come-uppance in court, when their client’s heart is ripped out and their fees remain unpaid, was originally conceived as a tragedy in which the moneylender is ultimately robbed of his rightful dues.

Okay, now I think it might be fun to include summaries of a few other Dragon plays, novels, songs, etc. here and there - not quite sure where they'd fit in yet, maybe just as little fillers. Probably in the RPG rules and adventures since I've pretty much finished the worldbook. But they'd need to be no more than say 150 words - the actual summary in that passage is only 51 words, so that gives a lot of scope.

If anyone wants to give this a try please add your summary as a comment. I'll include as many as I can in the game - and donate 1p per word (of the published length, and I will abridge if there is any padding) to Cancer Research UK for each one I actually use. The authors will be credited, of course. Similarities to well-known works would be greatly appreciated.

I ought to be putting out a call for beta readers for the worldbook towards the end of the week - I'm just going through the printout again, when I'm reasonably happy with it I'll ask for some volunteers to look at the PDF.