What is Bryn Mawr, or why do I keep babbling about this stuff? Pt. 1

I've mentioned ideas for Bryn Mawr without describing what Bryn Mawr actually is, so rather than keep babbling I'm going to take time to define it.

Bryn Mawr is a fantasy roleplaying setting that has been rattling around my head for years. At its core Bryn Mawr is intended to be a land inspired by what is now the United Kingdoms during the Dark Ages with a bit of the culture of the Vikings blended in. Blending some of the legends of the lands with some fantasy races should provide an interesting sandbox for players to explore. So here's some of the most important facts.

• The land is intended to have a distinctly Celtic/Viking world view, without the baggage that the Christian monks and priests brought to the islands of the UK.
• The major races that exist in the world are;
• The old human tribes - heavily influenced by the Picts and early Celts
• The humans in power - culturally this folk is based on a slightly more agrarian version of the Vikings, mainly in the sense that their farms are a little more productive and the forest provide more food than usual.
• The Dwarves - the dwarves are heavily influenced by Warhammer Fantasy and Terry Pratchett's Discworld. This puts a different spin on Dwarves while mostly still being familiar
• Kobolds - Kobolds are a race trying to claw their way into respectability as a people that stand on their own.
• Kerpans - Kerpans are a anthropomorphic race of Squirrels that were created by a magical disaster. Living in hunter gather tribes, these are the "people of the woods" in the game.
• Elves - Elves in Bryn Mawr are the Sidhe rather than Tolkien's elves, terrible and haughty in their grandeur and power Elves thankfully rarely are involved in the life of everyday people.
• "Cutters" - Goblins that were horribly twisted by the same disaster that created the Kerpans.
• More will probably be added as I expand the land but this will still primarily be a human dominated land with Kerpans and Dwarves as common as Elves and Dwarves in classic D&D worlds like the Judge's Guild Wilderlands and Gygax's Greyhawk.
•  The land will intentionally be less fantastical than some retroclone game worlds but still with an old school bent, as thats what I enjoy playing.
• Characters will be presented with a world that exists independent of them, but that they can influence through their actions.
• Personal honor is more important than anything tangible
• The old traditions of hospitality will be important, as Inns will not really exist as people are used to them
• Family bonds will be really important, Im just not sure how to make it happen in mechanics terms

 The world was originally inspired as running under Classic or Original D&D, however I'm planning to focus on systemless description and make rules appendices for the following;

• Classic D&D (Mentzer, Holmes and Rules Cyclopedia)
• Savage Worlds
• Hackmaster Basic
• Harp
• potentially Gurps and Castles and Crusades

My eventual goal is to create a PDF of the game world thats sytemless and several appendices with the different rules systems and how they handle the world.

More later....

The Grand list of Ponderings on Bryn Mawr, Pt1

Before Ive mentioned briefly that I have a fantasy RPG campaign world that Ive been thinking about a lot called Bryn Mawr. If Im listening to a podcast or reading a book some part of my mind is wondering; how can I apply this to Bryn Mawr, what can I learn from this?

So here's the current list of things Im pondering for Bryn Mawr - and the more interesting will probably become blog posts as I mentally delve into the political and social traits of the the game world, perhaps to the point of splitting the posts off into thier own blog. But thats all in the future... for now I just need to get the ideas out of my head and into some sort of physical form. So with no further ado...


The grand list of ponderings

1. What are the real world parallels of the cultures of the races?
2. Ice houses - how is food preserved among the major races of the world? How is it prepared?
3. Is there an Aurora in the world? How far south does it show, what colors?
4. What sort of drinks (especially alcoholic) do the different races make or brew? For example Rat Lager of the Dwarves
5. How big are the fields of the world? Perhaps the size of an American football field
6. How common are tornadoes?
7. Is there Ergot? do people know what it is?
8. The "Town Cryer of Carnegie Towers" as an NPC.
9. Mental illness, how common and how is it treated?
10. How common are taverns? Are they just places to drink or something more
11. Are there any cows or are deer, elk and fish the main sources of meat?
12. What are the standardized units of the kingdoms?
13. How is death and burial treated by the races
14. What are the unifying cultural meals of the races
15. What spices are in the land?
16. Does millet or sorghum exist? What are the grains and staples of the races?
17. Are there city states in the world?
18. What founder crops are there for each race?
19. Are there any military colonies?
20. What amount of the houses in the world are also storefronts and shops?
21. Skiing in the land?
22. Where are the canals from the Great Empire?
23. What is know about the lake that exists at the site of the former capital of the Great Empire? What is weird?
24. What sort of mines are in the land?
25. Are imperial gifts, ala the Chinese, in the world? Gifts that are part bribe part grease to maintain the government, known as pander diplomacy
26. What is the link between crafts and government?
27. Is there an incarnation of the memory of the land?
28. What is the religions of the land like? Dualistic, monotheistic, or pantheistic?
29. Do the Nephillum have a place in the game? The children of man and angel.
30. Is Borron treated as a great betrayer or a cleanser of iniquity? Are there differing views? Does anyone worship him?
31. Are there fairs in the land?
32. How are markets handled?
33. How are family feuds handled?
34. How is magic like polymorph treated in the legal system
35. Do fish ponds exist in the land?
36. Whats Breakfast or Childs ale like? How common?
37. Do people eat seafood? How often and what sort?
38. Are there deer parks?
39. How heroic are PCs expected to be?
40. are there Equinox ceremonies?
41. does the fairy realm exist?
42. How common is Human Sacrifice?
43. What is the role of Anchorites in the land?
44. Are there any special rules or folk lore on how magic might or might not work?
45. What sort of architecture does each race favor?
46. Do chariots have a role in the world?
47. How rare are diamonds?
48. the importance of genealogy and who you are related to
49. are sacrifices offered in times of natural disasters
50. do the gods need appeased or hornored
51. whats paper like in the world?
52. are there sacred mountains?
53. What role do titles have in the land?
54. Whats food like? What sort of food?
55. Are there healing wells? Is there worship at these wells?
56. Are there fae and do they live in the hollow hills? What lives in the hollow hills instead?
57. What symbols are worn by different groups in combat to avoid fraticide
58. Do swords tell of their achievements and uses when cleaned?
59. Is there a Plain of Pillars from some ancient battle?
60. Are there merchant houses?
61. What are taxes and dues like in the land
62. Are there faerie doctors?
63. What is the role of the giant in the land? Are they in decline, have they become corrupted?
64. Is there an equivalent to the Fomori?
65. What role do Doorkeepers have in the land?
66. Are there bloodfines?

 And this is just what is partially rattling around my head...

Delays, distractions, and new games

In what seems like almost nothing and forever a month has passed since my last blog post, not a good thing. On the positive side much of the lack of posting has stemmed from either time spent with the girlfriend or hobby related projects.
1) Ive got a small friendly commission to paint 1:700 scale minis of the Tirpitz, Prinz Eugen, HMS Hood and the USS Essex. Ive never worked in this scale or on naval minis before so its become a learning experience as I work with figuring color schemes that work for each vessel and fiddly little things like what color an aircraft carrier deck really would look like.
2) I'm pushing myself towards some conversion work that involves sculpting, and being reminded how pitiful my sculpting skills really are. On the project desk is a knight for the girlfriend that is inspired by an Osprey color plate of a Saxon or Norman knight of the 1100's; a scratch built Battletech Hover pickup technical, converting a Battletech Raijan to the new Raijan 2 configuration, replacing the forearms of the reseen Maruader that lost bits, and heraldry work on some pre Heresy World Eaters for 40k.

3) It looks like Im going to be running Battletech games on Saturdays for a while now, except for GASP games days. 

More on this all later

experiments with Simple Green part one

I recently picked up Simple Green, a cleaning product that I've heard nothing but good things about for stripping paint off miniatures. Picking three miniatures that had one too many coats of paint applied (products of pushing my luck changing my mind on what mini will go with what force) and a scrap lump of green stuff to test the product. While I've seen glowing reports of how well Simple Green strips paint, but I've never seen anyone comment on how it treated materials like green stuff and plastic.

*update 1*
I've had some luck with my experiments already. First of all, Simple Green does NOT affect greenstuff or plastic. From what I can tell from the initial minis that were dunked superglue joints that are bare pewter to pewter seem to survive well, while glue joints with any paint or other stuff between the pewter and the glue will come apart fairly easy. Paint starts bubbling off the miniature in around an hour and is almost floating off in sheets after a day. After a day in Simple Green paint just wipes off with napkins or paper towels, leaving just a little paint residue in deep crevices that will easily peel free with a nudge from a toothpick. Before and after pictures will come soon,

*update 2*
My mistake - its actually Simple Green, corrected to show the right name.

coming soon!

I haven't been posting much as I've been trying to track down the information for a project I hope to move forward with, a small cnc router setup for cutting thin sheets of styrene. More to be posted as I work out more on the control electronics.

•update•
First of all, stepper motors are more complicated to control than I originally expected. I need to track down more on how stepper motor controllers work and how to have be interact with an arduino or how to build up an arduino so it will function as a stepper motor controller.

Second, I need to look into what size of shaft I need dor the trimming router I hope to use.

And finally I need to rescale the drawings for the machine to fit the size I want for stage one and two.

Magic the Gathering as a roleplaying tool

Once upon a time I discovered a new game at my very first game store I discovered a weird little game called Magic the Gathering something like twelve or more years ago. I've been into the game on and off since then and watched as the game has gone through stages. Some of the sets have fascinating plots and others have at best some good art.

What does this have to do with RPGs? Mostly as a source of inspiration, with ready made art from real artists to spawn descriptions. A cool picture or a good piece of fluff can spawn all sorts of ideas. However my favorite Magic sets see the older arts that didn't have a metaplot but just focused on describing a world. While I know WOTC created plot lines for many of these sets I'm focusing just on what is in the cards.

Where am I going with this? Well the magic set I got into the game with and that I'm trying to cheaply collect a full set of is Fallen Empires. Some of the concepts covered in this set really dovetails with my primary project for an old school roleplaying setting I call Bryn Mawr. As my setting is based on the concept of a land built on the ruins of a fallen magical empire. Sounds a lot like Fallen Empires to me. Now to just sit down and cycle through my collection and add details and ideas to my setting notebook.

experiments in white

White is miserable to paint. Its a simple statement and is pretty obvious when you stop to think about the issues of highlighting what is already one of the lightest colors to paint (I'm speaking of paint rather than true color theory). Since I'm rather set on my small detachment of pre-heresy World Eater space marines, with their white with blue trim paint scheme, I'm forced to deal with the issue of painting white. Ill attach pictures as soon as I have some of the current stage of the 5 test pieces.

My plan so far is the following;
1) primer the models in white (a major shift as I usually work from a black base)
2) stain the White with various GW washes
3) apply a thin glaze of Vallejo Foundation White mixed with Vallejo Glaze Medium
4) repeat

That's where I'm at

*update*
heres the pictures I mentioned..






the plasma pistol trooper



One of my favorite coversions that really fit the descriptions in the fiction of the World Eaters before they descended into worship of Khorne.




A sergeant packing a powerfist, which I may look into doing light sourcing for the energy field that surrounds the fingers of glove.




A nice brutal axe, this may be the first mini I paint for the Gladiator company.




His left knee doesnt look right otherwise I really like how this conversion worked out.

*note* the Photos are all from my Blackberry - works pretty good I think

And so it begins...

I've finally taken that first step into a greater world... blogging. I have a couple hopes for this blog.

1. Help maintain momentum on painting projects through pressure to post updates
2. Gain feedback on ideas, both painting and other projects
3. Explore some ideas for my roleplaying games
   
4. Special project