Jeremiah Donaldson's Blog: This and That - Posts Tagged "rpg"

Neverwinter Foundry remakes.

New projects have been added to the Fall/Winter 2023 release schedule. These projects are remakes of some of my Neverwinter MMO Foundries in the Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures build set.

For those of you who don't know, the Neverwinter MMO Foundry was active from the release of the MMO in 2013 until it was shut down in 2019 due to Cryptic (the company running it) not having the people to maintain it anymore. A similar Foundry for their Star Trek game was shut down at the same time. There are other theories such as them not being able to monetize the Foundry to blame for the shutdown. Some people that you can find online are still hoping for a return of the Foundry. So would I. So I could go in and make a record of everything. However, that almost certainly won't happen and we are now right at the 4 year anniversary of the Foundry being shut down and at the 10 year mark since I created those stories.

Enter the Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures build set. This is a 30 year old SSI production and is their developmental tools that were released as a 'game' when they lost their D&D license. It has had an active community since 1993, or 30 years as of this year. There are a minimum of 600 adventures made for it that can be played, but an exhaustive list, no matter how complete, will almost certainly never be complete. The system is old, but solid, and it can be bought from Steam or GOG as part of the Gold Box collection. FRUA is the system I've choosen to rebuild some of my Foundries in.

The Foundries I'm rebuilding, and have mostly rebuilt already, are my Stopping Leland campaign and the BeoWolf stand alone. These are the most original stories I made in the Foundry and the ones that don't use any of my other characters that appear elsewhere such as Ott and Ren. They also each won a 'Screenshot of the Week' with the two shots below. The three part Stopping Leland is already built and undergoing debugging. BeoWolf has been started on but will be pushed forward until 2024 since so much stuff is already queued for 2023.

There will be more info on these projects later in the year.

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The countdown to the release of Disturbance Timeline RPG 2nd Edition has started.

'Welcome to the first blog post counting down to the release of the Disturbance Timeline RPG: 2nd Edition rule set. These posts will continue up to the release of the 2nd Edition on June 1st of 2024 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 1st edition.

This first post is only an overview of the project and some differences mentioned. Each of the other blog posts will touch on a different section of the rule book and go into more detail on the differences from the 1st edition that are relevant to that section.'

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Welcome to the second blog post counting down to the release of the Disturbance Timeline RPG: 2nd Edition rule set. These posts will continue up to the release of the 2nd Edition on June 1st of 2024 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 1st edition.

This post takes a look at the world of DTR2ed, which has seen many additions for the 2nd edition. The 1st edition contained only 8 locations with scant detail to build the world, but the 2nd edition contains 14 that are far more fleshed out and each location now has a general timeline of their history up until the United Earth Federation in Yellowknife takes over their respective location.

The 2nd edition also divides the ~200 years of the post-apocalyptic time period up into three time frames. The middle and longest period is the default with no modifiers, but starting a game earlier or later than that changes prices on stuff like weapons and food and a few other things. This takes into account for things being more wild at the beginning of the 200 year period and more civilized at the end of it when the UEF takes over.

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This is a first in a series of posts that will look at histories of recurring (or not) characters in my writing and games. The first one takes a look at one of my favorite characters to mess with. He's also had the most versions over the years.

Lunatic Larry started off as a character in a text only, society simulation called Cantr II, way back in about 2003ish. The game is still up and running but I've not played since maybe 2005. The original version was a crazy hermit that lived in the mountains and toiled to dig stone to build his 'Church of the Insane'. He would shout craziness to travelers who had the misfortune of ending up in his mountain enclave and some would join. The Church of the Insane grew to nearly a dozen members and started kidnapping and killing travelers who were dragged into the maze that was the church. Eventually, a team sent by a nearby town caught Larry by surprise, killed him and many church members, and scattered the survivors.

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Welcome to the third blog post counting down to the release of the Disturbance Timeline RPG: 2nd Edition rule set. These posts will continue up to the release of the 2nd Edition on June 1st of 2024 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 1st edition.

This post takes a look at the dangers present in DTR2ed. This section of the book is new, but most of the contents appeared in the 1st edition expansion and the Diseases & Conditions module.

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Welcome to the fourth blog post counting down to the release of the Disturbance Timeline RPG: 2nd Edition rule set.

Welcome to the fourth blog post counting down to the release of the Disturbance Timeline RPG: 2nd Edition rule set. These posts will continue up to the release of the 2nd Edition on June 1st of 2024 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 1st edition.

This post takes a look at the types of dice rolls in DTR2ed. As with 1st edition, two ten-sided dice are needed to play and the primary dice rolls require both. Most original types of rolls from the 1st edition remain in the game, mostly unchanged, such as Attack, Damage, Reaction, and Skill rolls. However, there have been three major changes from the 1st edition.

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Releases In Focus is a new blog series that will take better look at each of my game and writing releases. It is being started with the Spring/Summer 2023 releases and only look at things going forward, ie, nothing about previous releases will be in this blog series. It will also only look at my major releases and not at essays, poems, or anything else not in one of my main product lines.

The first of the three Spring/Summer 2023 releases being looked at is Post-apocalyptic Escapades: General Cyanide Expansion. This is the second of three planned expansions to use the core Post-apocalyptic Escapades game World Cards, with the first being The Lurker.

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Welcome to the fifth blog post counting down to the release of the Disturbance Timeline RPG: 2nd Edition rule set. These posts will continue up to the release of the 2nd Edition on June 1st of 2024 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 1st edition.

This post takes a look at combat in the 2nd edition, and there have been some subtle but major changes made to the combat system in DTR2ed.

Perhaps the biggest change to combat is just how fast it gets very deadly. PCs start off with more of everything compared to the 1st edition as I detail throughout this essay series. Concentrating this power into noncombat abilities is one thing, concentrating it into combat abilities is another. The overall effect of this is that a level 1 PC in the 2nd edition starts off roughly as strong as a level 12, give or take, PC in the 1st edition. I've been able to get a single Skill to 81% at level one with test PCs by (mostly) sacrificing everything else at creation, and balanced PCs are still just as much stronger, their strengths are just more spread out. The deadliness of combat by the Skill number is compounded by other changes that have made it easier to land Critical Hits and increase other combat stats.

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This is a 5th in a series of posts that will look at histories of recurring (or not) characters in my writing. This one takes a look at the Disturbance Timeline itself. Not really a character, but sorta is. Maybe you'll agree by the end of this.

The Disturbance Timeline is my fictional future of humanity that is now 'alternate history' since its starting point (2022) that was almost a decade ahead when first created (2014) is now past us. The timeline was inspired by my love of all things history mixed with my love of futurism and was purpose built to connect the storylines in Plague and The Last Stop. They weren't originally connected, but then I realized one day that they did, or should, take place in the same world. The first version was first posted on my website in 2014 and it is in the back of the Disturbance Fiction Collection (vol 1 since pieces for vol 2 are well advanced).

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Welcome to the sixth blog post counting down to the release of the Disturbance Timeline RPG: 2nd Edition rule set. These posts will continue up to the release of the 2nd Edition on June 1st of 2024 to mark the 10th anniversary of the 1st edition.

This post takes a look at the Player Character changes. Overall, this section has seen massive changes from the 1st edition and the range of characters that can be created has been greatly expanded. Paralysis by analysis is now a serious issue at creation due to the options available. For instance, there are 39x38x37, or 54,834, three Skill combinations if you count the 30 main Skills and the 9 Skills added by Knacks. The number of PC build combinations jump to 4,222,218 if the other 77 Knacks that don't add Skills are included in that calculation. The first expansion module, Vicksburg Region, will add yet more (22 Knacks so far, 4 of which add new Skills) as will the other two planned pieces of supplemental material. A random Skill table, for the 30 base Skills only, has been included to alleviate paralysis by analysis.

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