Warren's Folly

As far as our skill/finesse class goes, here are my thoughts:
>Mazeborn

>Forerunner
Low duress: ranger character who excelles at traveling through and surviving the maze, using skills taught by early settlers of the maze, and nomadic tribes who wander it.

>Abberant
High Duress: character that allows itself to be changed physically by the maze to gain powers and strength. Mutations of the body, often immitating horrors, grant viscious and heightend abilities.

Low duress would gain benefits to navigation, scavenging and survival. Their weapons would mostly be simple technologically, possibly even made during their travels, but require skilled training to use, i.e. long bows.

High duress can choose mutations of various severity to adopt for a short time, likely at a cost of duress or hit points upon reverting. More mutations can be stacked at a time as one advances, ranging from simple dark vision to growing tentacled whip-limbs.

If this idea recieves support, I'll begin laying out crunch.

That was the original concept I had laid out, but I'd love to see some crunch to see how it plays out. I originally meant it as a rogue, but the currently rather sparse skill system makes that less-than-perfect, so I'd like to see your take on it.

I like it.

Alright let me give it a go. All numbers are rough ideas or placeholders, as are most names.
Also, I might swap out "Forerunner" for "Wayfinder".

>Level Headed, duress Resourceful, Duress Stick to the Shadows
Early hunters quickly learned that the key to overcoming the dark was embracing it. Mazeborn gain an automatic 30% bonus towards any checks involving stealth, and can add 15% to a group stealth check.
In addition, striking an unwary opponent grants damage bonuses. Attacks made against an enemy who is unaware of the Mazeborn gain an additional 15% chance to hit, and use double finess damage [or an extra damage die] if hit. This damage can only be applied once per enemy, per encounter.

>Vital Strike, Duress

There might also be room for maneuvers, but I won't go into that until I'm sure it's a good idea. Example:
Trip/Blind: Requires appropriate target of [limbs/eyes] Maneuvers take a [Duress based] accuracy penalty. If the attack is succesful, weapon die value is subtracted from opponent's [movement speed/accuracy and perception] for that turn, instead of used as damage. Modifier damage still applies.

Not sure if this should be ommited, be available to everyone, or given to/shared with Warriors.

>Low Duress healing provides temporary hit points as a boost, rather than as a buffer. Get healed before those wear off or you'll be a corpse.
Is this to say that if a Mazeborn receives magic healing to give him +5 temp HP and he is wounded down to 6HP he will be left with 1HP and if he is left with 4HP he will die?

Yes.
10 hp + 5 temp hp = 15 hp
Take 13 damage -> 2 hp
Later, temp hp wears off: -5 hp
2 - 5 = -3, aka dead

Temp hp can be used as a stimulant, or to buy time to stabilize someone, but not as a shield.

Rolling for changing this
>INITIATIVE
>Initiative determines the turn order in a round of combat, and by default is determined by the Finesse score of each participant, with the highest score going first.

Into this
Initiative determines the turn order in a round of combat, and by default is determined by the Finesse score of each participant
>+1d8
with the highest score going first.
because it will add some variety to the combat order

COMBAT MOVEMENT
The total distance a character can move over flat ground in a single action is given by
Might × Finesse . 10

I think this should be (Might x Finesse / 10) + 10
because it gives the average score 12*12 = 144 /10 = 14.4 feet a realistic bonus into 24.4feet / round.
the might or finesse based character will get (18*14 / 10) +10 = 35.2
It keeps the average around 25 - 35 feet instead of 15 - 25feet.

Just to clarify will the classes be leveling up during the campaign or will all ability gains be duress based?
Becuase I'm looking to write up some class progression based off of the lore from the last 4 threads.
And what is the difference between Corruptors and Chirurgeon class wise?
Will you decide if you want to be a Chirurgeon upon character creation or will you pick it up as an archetype or will you shift between Corruptor class and Chirurgeon class as your duress increases?

>1.decide upon class creation
I'm not against this one but it means that if your a low duress build and you suffer high duress 80-100 you will be nearly useless ability-wise, same goes for high duress builds during an ambush, if they're at low-med duress during a 2 round ambush they won't be in combat long enough to gain duress and become an effective mage.

>2.pick up as an archetype
It's similar to the above type but It just means you can have a few encounters as a generic blightmage before you and your group decide what kind of paths have worked for them and what build they will take.

>3.shift between classes as duress changes
This seems fairly crunchy and would be abhorred by players new to tabletop simply because they don't want to have to recalculate their atkmod spellmod ability-mod differently every time they're hit with a duress change. Changing between classes seems very useful and should be considered in conjunction with the 2nd option above so it can be avoided by players who hate crunch and embraced by players who can handle the crunch.

Combining 2 and 3 we have the following:

Starting either a skill tree system where you can take a level in either Corruptor or Chirurgeon when you level up so you can go 70% Corruptor and still have some Chirurgeon abilities for use at low duress or you could go 50/50 and have a wide pool of moderately useful abilities that are always available.

Or we could take this approach

You are a Blightmage and your current skill set is determined by your duress. After going up from 40 duress into >60 (or 50) threshold you can use the Corruptor abilities but lose you Chirurgeon abilities, and going down from 80+ duress into

I'd need to double check that it would work with everything, but I think the different "subclasses" are just flavor names. I think different abilities just work at different duress levels.
The choice of play style will probably come in with class-specific knacks, which favor one build over another.

I vote for the second method described.

Other than "no hp gain", we haven't actually talked about level ups. Knacks should be gained, and many abilities should scale in effectiveness.

bump

I would move the threshold for both to be 40-60 and higher and lower than than would be high and low duress, but other than that it looks good.

On duress, when a cartographer's duress would exceed 100 they must make a duress check (will+misc. modifiers) vs duress (before the possible duress increase) if they succeed their duress remains unchanged, if they fail they increase their duress as normal and roll on the insanity chart (somebody made this basically you roll a d8 and gain the corresponding detrimental condition). If a Cartographer's duress exceeds 100+ their Will they become lost to the Maze and become truely becoming a Mad Cartographer over the course of X rounds (varies based upon how much their current duress exceeds 100+Will) with their Charm stat being decreased by 6 and are treated as being threatened, additionally all fellow cartographers gain 3d8 for seeing this horrible occurrence.

What is this?

It's a dark fantasy setting.

Yeah, but is it some big "Veeky Forums makes a system" thing that actually took off, or is it some guy taking suggestions for his own system, or what?

The former. First thread was called something like "Okay, Veeky Forums, let's make a badass system" or whatever, and it's been relatively active for the last week or so.

I gave a draft of the insanity effects in the last thread for reference
And there should be a Knack that allows a player character to make a duress check with a selected stat + misc
>When playing a high duress warrior I will use this to make my duress checks with Might instead of will, and when playing Blightmage will use Lore instead of Will.
This allows high duress builds a smaller amount of survivability, about +6 to duress check which is only giving a 6% higher chance, but can be used to greatest effect when you roll low will (6) and have high Charm (18 / 21) and instead get a 13% increase to duress checks.

I'd say that alchemy materials can be found this way and by scavenging for useful herbs, but as for crafting we should have basic supplies and materials ex. Food, water, wood, metal, cloth, alchemical herbs, monster crafting materials (hides, bones and stuff), expressed in value amounts. Crafting items would require tools, materials, and a safe place to work.

> in-depth crafting system
> tabletop death simulator
> current year

It's not meant to be in depth on the resources side, you use a quantitative amount of a resource or multiple different resources to make stuff. Differing materials will have differing quality. Quality of materials will only increase how good the result is. That will be easy to do with our d100 system as we can have slightly better resources craft slightly better items. This way we can craft items without too much hassle.

But why are we crafting items in the first place?

Read the post I replied to.

That doesn't answer the question, it just proposes a crafting system to justify the existence of a Knack.

But why are we crafting things in the first place? I'm not saying it can't be put in there, or even that it shouldn't, but it needs to have more motivation than "crafting systems exist in other games, we should have one".

It's a TRAIT of a class, and it can be expanded upon with being able to find resources randomly in the Maze and other people being able to get resources through other means. Furthermore, gathering interesting materials from the Maze is a large part of what a Cartographer is in the setting; it only makes sense for us to be able to use these materials in crafting.

Traits are not mechanically or practically different from Knacks, so don't ALL CAPS about it.

> it only makes sense for us to be able to use these materials in crafting

It actively does not. Your job is to go and fetch them for your betters, not burn your whole supply for medkits.

In any case, you're continuing to just say things that are justified if we assume that a crafting system exists, but not actually justifying the effort it will take to develop such a system.

What is your vision for the crafting system that justifies its creation, development, and maintenance? How does it fit the theme of the setting? I'm just looking for the "why", not all the consequences if we just accept that there's a crafting system.

Your job is learning about what these materials do and documenting that and the phenomenon that you experience in the Maze and if you use the stuff you find in the Maze in order to help you survive it and get your information to your superiors they might be a bit grumpy about it but they will not get too angry because you came back alive with knowledge on the Maze. The Maze is harsh, and crafting items gives you ways to survive through your own wit, which is right in line with the setting.

From a game-philosophy stand point, is on the right track.
At it's simplest, "crafting" is needed to give both the Mazeborn and the Chiurgeon a good chunck of abilities. Our wizard needs some potions, and our hunter-survivor needs to be able to live off the land.
If we want to reduce it to it's most basic form, then potion materials can be limited per day, but otherwise ignored. 'Scavenging' can just be gathering basic materials such as ammo, camp supplies, and food from creatures as the occasional plant.
That said, exploration is a big aspect of the setting, so some sort of crafting is very fitting.
If this is agreed upon, we can start hashing out rules, likely based around value and materials.

I would suggest simple items allowed to be crafted during rests. Weapons could require recipies such as "sword: short handle, 1 big sharp or 20 little sharps + base, and binding (glue, rope, screws etc.) to create weapons that function, but with a modifier depending on ingredients used: Wood/Bone = -2, Stone/raw metal = -1 and so on.
Armor probably should not be allowed, but shields or cloaks seem feasible. Perhaps reinforcing plates, which add X to the armor value, but not above a total value of 4-(craft modifier).
We could give enemies basic loot tables to determine resources gained (based on size or species) and allow players to collect materials.

OR

You killed the enemy. You get 1d4 per-size worth of supplies.
During a rest, try and make a thing. You spend supplies up to the value of the object (withing reason/DM approval) and roll a skill check. You can increase your odds by using more supplies. Success gives you an Object -1.

The first one seems like what I had thought of. Could items crafted out of monster materials have slightly random and unique effects as you get farther in the Maze depending upon what monster they are made of if they are of sufficient quality. There should also be a guy outside of the Maze that could make that stuff for you.

> unironically suggesting tabletop Minecraft

You're proposing like 10 mechanics and hundreds of variations of crafting goop, but why? What possible reason do you have to be building swords in the middle of your adventure and away from town?

Enemies already have loot, in the form of weapons, armor, drugs, whatever. Why do they also need trash in their pockets that you can turn into a wooden sword?

Scavenging makes perfect sense, and the rules for that are obvious and well-trodden ground. Crafting for medicine and drugs and so on has been discussed to some degree, but it's also difficult to reconcile the idea of crafting things like that in the field with the breakdown of technology in the Maze (not to mention the size of the equipment necessary to craft such things).

> outside of the Maze

There isn't an outside of the Maze. Once you're in, you're in forever. You're never getting back to the surface.

Oops, there is a hub though, I meant in that. We really need a discription of the entrance of the Maze I find it hard to visualize it.

I think "The Maze" loosely refers to the deeper, unsettled areas of Warren's Folly, but you are correct.

Have you been reading the thread? Most enemies are horrendous monsters and a weird, semi-hostile hellscape of bullshit. You won't exactly be looting bandits and orc camps.

I actually wrote both of the things you're relpying to, trying to show the spectrum of crafting depth we might have. One of the central themes of this setting (as I understand it) is exploration and survival. To me, that says "basic wilderness crafting". It doesn't need to be crazy, but it should absolutely exist, especially for the examples listed above.
If you have scavanging rules to suggest, or port in, I'd be happy to hear them. They'd save me a lot of time trying to reinvent the wheel. I'm just making suggestions here.

Lastly, if anything the technological breakdown REQUIRES crafting.
>Well, your trust gun just imploded. I guess you're without a weapon until we get back to town... Wherever that is.

Thank you for the support, and I'm a fan of it too, but it might be a bit complicated for standard PC play. That style of crafting should be reserved for in-town artisans, or downtime activities.
Warren's Gate is the main settlement, and our current 'Hub'.

The entrance to the maze is when you go underground, everything else is just settlements inside the maze

Keep in mind that these aren't well armed or well supllied adventurers. These are prisoners, exiled into a wasteland and told not to come back without something valuable. The environment isn't exactly giving you gear as you go, either.
Crafting is needed for three reasons:
>Give classes a unique/specialized function
>Allow for the use of resources for BASIC equipment and gear in the beginning, and maybe some higher grade material use later on.
>Invest the players in the environment. Make stuff matter. Otherwise players are better off running away 24/7, even from simple things.

I don't want to bog the game down as a crafting simulator, but it has an important function in the setting.

Like in real life, if you're poor and ill-equipped, you ally yourself with a faction who will keep you at least basically equipped in exchange for the work you're doing for them. Half a dozen factions make that a viable route.

You're also not the only 4-6 dumbasses who are doing what you're doing, so yeah, looting the setting equivalent of bandit camps is probably on the table, since you don't have a prison plane without some rebellious dummies.

The whole bit is that it's not *just* shitty wasteland (I mean, it is all shitty, but it's not *just* wasteland). It's more like Australia. Vast swaths of unlivable bullshit where everything wants you dead, and here and there some towns where you can do some trade and get supplies.

Players are probably better off running away in a lot of situations. That's the nature of horror. Most things will just kill you, because that's what they do.

>Well, your trust gun just imploded. I guess you're without a weapon until we get back to town... Wherever that is.

If you aren't prepared with another option for the known failure of technology, you deserve to die unarmed. If you don't know about it, yet, this is how you learn the hard lesson (or die, maybe).

>I don't want to bog the game down as a crafting simulator

>I would suggest simple items allowed to be crafted during rests. Weapons could require recipies such as "sword: short handle, 1 big sharp or 20 little sharps + base, and binding (glue, rope, screws etc.) to create weapons that function, but with a modifier depending on ingredients used: Wood/Bone = -2, Stone/raw metal = -1 and so on.

The same person wrote both of these thoughts down.

In the particular case of the Chirurgeon, it makes perfect sense to gather some ingredients here and there, develop recipes and whatnot, and then figure out a way to get access to a lab so you can create some things because science is effort and that's what you do.

What does not make sense is on one hand to live in a world where you have to MacGyver your own sword together, but also somehow be carrying around an alchemical lab with you to create your potions on the fly.

Survival means planning, and it means overplanning. You didn't bring enough poultices? I guess you're dead. Forgot your mundane weapons at the whorehouse? I guess you're dead.

I'm all for improvised weapons, but a crafting sim is just the opposite of survival horror. It's bad for everyone playing because it prevents the primary goal of everyone involved: Keep the game moving.

Alright, I'll concede that there are differing opinions.
I post a lot of ideas more for brainstorming than anything else, so while I'm happy we now have a discussion I'd like to see something come of it. I think
>Potions
>Food
>Basic Ammo
Need a system in place, of whatever complexity or simplicity.
Everything else was just spitballing.

I'd love to hear your take on it, mechanically speaking, but I'd hate to have nothing as far as enviornmental use is concerned.

Food was discussed in a previous thread, and basically all food causes at least a small amount of Duress gain because everything is tainted by the Maze. If you didn't buy rations in town, best case scenario is you eating the corpse of a Maze creature of some kind, which I would assume basically cooks the same way as all meat, but will bring additional Duress penalties.

Another user proposed that basic reagents can be jury-rigged into something minimally useful, like a splash attack or a minor unstable potion of some kind, which seems viable. Determining what such-and-such cave lichen does when you put it in water is going to be up to your Lore and your GM, but that information should be permanent so you can actually learn things about your environment.

More useful potions and drugs are probably gonna require a lab, but there's also a good deal that a Chirurgeon can do with healing items and plant life that an untrained person can't do. They're field medics, after all. Anyone can use a first aid kit with some level of success, but a professional is going to know what they're doing when they treat wounds and set limbs and such.

Crafting ammunition is probably gonna be a pain unless:

1. You are a professional (fletcher, gunsmith)
2. You have access to the necessary equipment (foundry, workshop, whatever)
3. Your weapon of choice is a sling or just a rock

These all fall under the class of "supplies", and if you're trying to survive you'll probably want to pack extra rather than hoping you find enough refuse on the ground to make your own. Opportunities to find such things are going to be entirely up to the GM putting in that sort of fiddly work, whereas buying supplies is just something you do in town.

RANDOM QUESTIONS FOR THE SETTING

so, aside from importing it, what passes for wood in the deeps?

fuel for cooking?

lumber for building?

is all the cordage made from the sinew of subterranean beasts?
where do fiber-products come in?

what is the typical greetings for 2 neutral parties crossing paths in the deeps?

are there any mines?
quarries?

these are small details, but they are something which might lend solidity to things beyond fluff and crunch.

>Crafting ammunition is probably gonna be a pain unless:
>1. You are a professional (fletcher, gunsmith)

typically, all a gunner needs at this tech level (IIRC) is some lead, a small basic kit, some spare time, and a modest campfire

I think the generally agreed upon notion for Warren's Gate at least is that most things are run on gas piped in from the Surface (probably some number of quests could be hung off of investigating something or other wrong with that system.

As far as building materials, I don't know that there *is* much other than the imported stuff, unless you like living in caves and carved out mushrooms. One user suggested that Surface stone have some moderately protective effect so that technology could work in a building constructed from it, which might motivate caravans and trade just to set up deeper waypoints where civilized folk could make a living.

Mining could be entertaining, especially if the Maze reacts to such efforts by closing up as soon as the miners go to sleep (or over time, to gaslight them into thinking their progress is too slow).

There's been little concrete discussion about what resources are available in the depths of the Maze, but that'd be useful to hash out. There has been even less discussion about social dynamics and slang and such.

>carved out mushrooms.
can the mushroom be cut and dried and stacked like the Plump-Helmet shrooms of Dwarf fortress? that can be a wood supply.

>fun aside, perhaps mush-wood is not as tough as it's above-ground counterparts.
>a sturdy log cabin might hold the monsters a bay
>mush-wood only slows them down

where do these plants get their nutrients?
if they can grow large enough to be made into shelters then you might have also have deposits of Sphagnum or some analogous plant that can handle near-total darkness and possibly Peat as a fuel source.(good luck drying it out though)

>"not a bad job, cutting peat. nice and safe, and it always needs doin' if people want to stay warm and lit"

some intrepid man discovered a way to rapidly turn cloth strips into rope through a mechanical process without it fraying. gatherers wander the edge of the cloth-garden collecting cloth. this cloth is carried far enough towards the Gate that machines can work and from there is converted into rope and heavy cordage.
(still no ideas about thread, light cordage, or etc.)

if the underground is as sapient and motile as that then perhaps there are those adept in planning a mine so as to coax as much material out of the ground as possible BEFORE it closes up on them. the most skilled of these men become quarry-planners.

"keep safe stone-walker"

I imagine people would want to say something to reassure each other of their sanity. Probably one of a few question and response phrases.
Farewells might be something like "Good crossing to you", or "keep on your path"

Damn, dubs user, this is great stuff.

I really like the idea of a sanity check as a greeting. Very cool idea.

>Damn, dubs user, this is great stuff.
I blame both my ADD and it's obsession with random ass'd facts
AND
my engineering degree

what other smallish setting problems are there to cover?

how are most crops and livestock grown in the absence of light?
vitamin deficiencies are dealt with how?

Expanding upon this, if one doesn't respond in kind it is assumed that they have gone insane.
Obviously, this has resulted in a fair amount of problems as if you find an insane person the proper measure is either running away or killing them immediately so they don't rapidly spread duress.
The Maze provides in interesting ways. It's influence has resulted in a particular grain that can be grown only in the Maze ... some people swear that it has spoken to them. Livestock has been abandoned as the Maze easily corrupts them and turns them into horrors ... chickens are mysteriously unaffected though.

Not sure. How do dwarves deal with it? Some amount of food can be imported from the Surface, but I have to imagine that the bulk of available replenishable foodstuffs comprise mushrooms and meat from the less terrible beasties of the Maze. All you really need for cultivation then is shit (or peat, really) and enough people to hunt down the setting equivalent of small game.

Livestock is an interesting question. I have to imagine most Surface livestock are quickly rendered nonproductive and probably barren by the available feed and the environment. Maybe there's something that can be domesticated to produce some kind of food. Might help with the lack of particularly useful fiber sources, too.

On that last topic, it's also quite likely that there's some sort of flax analogue that might lend itself to the purpose.

The stuff the other user brought up could definitely use a dedicated look, as well. In particular, what are the realistic limitations of manufacturing given what's already established about available resources? Specifically with regard to production of things like weapons and ammunition, and to a lesser degree things like armor, clothes, and consumables.

On at least the last bit, the overall technical limit isn't too bad (most of alchemy is just glass, heat, and reagents, after all), but there's a serious weight and complexity concern when it comes to taking things on the road.

It might be worthwhile to expand that discussion of livestock to also include options for both mounts and work animals, especially for hauling.

Good stuff. There is also a fair bit of trade between the Folly and the surface, which might be the only source of certain amenities.

>Blood Moss
Grows, seemingly from nothing, on spilt blood and corpses. Larger concentrations seem to glow a deep red, almost pulsing.
Can be used as effective kindling if dried, but inhaling too much smoke can lead to halucinations.

>Tangle stalks
Carnivorous flora which grow in caverns. When they bloom, they slowly send out tendrils of thin sticky lines capable of snaring small creatures, who trap themselves by squirming. This prey is then drawn closer, and absoarbed through a net of roots. Although easy for larger creatures to break free, the filaments are surprisingly strong if harvested.

>Chorugs
Somewhere between a beetle and a six legged turtle, these creatures eat various mushrooms, then hide in their shells to digest, seeming like rocks. Their soft underbellies and legs are vulnerable, and rich in protein, but their hard shells are difficult to work with. Their skittish temperament makes domestication possible, if slow.

>It might be worthwhile to expand that discussion of livestock to also include options for both mounts and work animals, especially for hauling.

perhaps insects of abnormal size?
or shall we dig about on our various monster files for something to fit the roles?

>alchemy
lately I hear the word Alchemy and I think of a certain book called "The Lies of Locke Lamora" where alchemy is the name for the most common "magic" out there aside from hiring a bonded mage(which costs the GDP of a large township to hire for more than a week at a time)

but with it you could breed oranges that bear fruit that tastes of and intoxicates like fine brandy. genetic manipulations of some animals are a part of that too on some pretty absurd levels.

>In particular, what are the realistic limitations of manufacturing given what's already established about available resources?
things that require careful or mass production are still common even in the deeps because the capacity exists at the gate. so boxes of matches, lead ball munitions, nails, wire, other small knickknacks are common everyplace with even a tenuous connection to The Gate because they are simple and useful enough to warrant importing the mass production equipment.

the further out you go the more people will depend on artisan crafts, so in and around the gate you might see clothes made from material mass-loomed in a textile mill as you go out further and further you'll see more in the way of homespun cloths from your flax or hemp analogue. this does NOT mean that quality goes down per-se BUT instead, for a certain level of quality the price just goes up. a smith can make you nails, but for the same quality as you'd get near to a factory you'd pay more per nail.

this all means that you might have a non-fixed price mechanic. the further out you go the more certain things cost(or rather, the higher the effective value of the thing).

>chickens are mysteriously unaffected though.
and no matter where you go in the maze, a rooster always crows at around the same time, or rather it crows for about the same hour every day(also ROSTERS CAN GO FUCK THEMSELVES #ShittyNeighborhoodBirds)

>Not sure. How do dwarves deal with it?
usually by either stealing it from the surface, making light to grow the plants, by eating things in the mines that grant the vitamins by non-usual means, or FUCK OFF, IT"S MAGIC.
the 3rd option is probably the best, but it leads to the duress from food issue. perhaps someone in the slaughterhouse asked nicely enough "to meet the chef" and learned how to raise vitamin rich foodstuffs.

>and enough people to hunt down the setting equivalent of small game.
not sufficient, large game is needed to feed larger communities. small game gets hunted as a primary foodstuff it gets scarce, requiring further manpower to hunt sufficiently.
that said you COULD still make it a thing, and IIRC lots of cultures applaud children contributing.
>"you should see Our Millie and her little sling, she's put meat in our stew-pot 3 times this week. and the trade she gets for the bones and fur and entrails bought her some new shoes and a short bow.

but a lot of meat will still need to come from larger game animals, that leads into the idea that most villages have teams of people specializing in taking out and dragging home large game animals. every settlement that likes to eat meat having a team of professional delvers makes for a neat idea. rivalries over territory, stumbling into traps or obstacles left for hunting, coming toe to toe with a team of good hunters

>material resources
by the by, people can and WILL loot EVERY SINGLE LITTLE THING. every bent nail, leftover sundered fragments of armor, shattered sword components, every splinter of wood. because material must now be either imported or saved and importing costs LOTS of value.

an idea I posted in a previous thread regarding bard-like abilities, consider communication. you can do sounds, Drums or Bells depending on your involved distances. with musically inclined individuals taking watches atop towers listening for the beat of drums(for those of you familliar with Anne McCafferey's Dragonriders of Pern books this is what I'm getting at) morse Code and whatnot

furthermore, you'll see more things made from bone further in(assuming the majority of creatures HAVE skeletons) spear and arrow heads, armor components, awls, handles, spoons, containers, forks, etc. because it can serve purpose as wood or even metal under certain circumstances.
bonemeal makes a fantastic fertilizer, jellies(think Jell-O) are made from bone and are a FANTASTIC dietary source of calcium, bone can burn(hotter than most soft-woods) with proper air-flow, it's renewable and easy to carve.

>blood moss
it's good. and offers a trap to any who are new to the maze, AND makes for a good non-lethal weapon(a torch made by wrapping the moss in an enclosed space), your attackers are less able to attack if they are hallucinating.

>tangle-stalks
with regards to my earlier comments about small game hunting, this would be something that every small-game hunter would cultivate as well as any village with a granary or similar food storage structure

>chorugs
make the shell inexplicably light for it's toughness and you have another material for a gifted craftsman to make heavy or clever use of. especially if they ARE capable of domestication as a meat animal.

This thread has reached mythic levels of interesting mechanics and materials.

If this is where crafting is going, I rescind my opinions on the shittiness of crafting as a mechanic.

I'm trying to figure out useful animals for food and burden, but I might be overthinking it.
Carnivores (i.e. us) need a good amount of meat
Herbivores need lots of plants
Plants (mostly) need sunlight and/or lots of soil nutrients. We're all in a giant dead cave.
Do we need to invent an ecosystem here?

Lets say, for the sake of convinience, that the maze isn't totally barren, and there are some tough crops which inexplicably manage to grow. They're unfit for human consumption, and would probably drive us crazy even if we could eat them.
This now allows: Small seed eating rodents, Small vermin, and Medium Grazers.
Perhaps these medium grazers are capable of providing X use, or giving us Y as a usable foodstuff.
Maybe they are lizards, whose regrowing tails are tough, but edible, and who can be kept placated with enough grasses and certain mushrooms.
Maybe they're deer-like creatures which reproduce by budding, and the 'buds' are just pure meat if taken early enough.
Maybe they're just weird chicken-like bats.
Maybe they're just amorphous gel-blobs, who can be fried like eggs.

In particular, I'm thoroughly into the idea of cultivation and using the flora and fauna to your advantage rather than trying to recreate the comforts of the Surface from whatever you can find. Really interesting possibilities there.

Extremophile plants are definitely a real thing, and fungi will pretty much grow anywhere there's carbon. What are the consequences for a grazing species that's primarily fungivorous?

This also gives a somewhat amusing explanation for why wild animals in fantasy games are so hostile. Ours are just out of their gourds on hallucination plants and such.

I like the idea of large bugs (chorugs) as the generic pack animal, even if they're not edible. It supports the the cultivation of whatever their food is in settlements (probably some kind of plant). I'm picturing something like a horse-sized Hercules beetle (square-cube law be damned).

Living jellies are a staple of fantasy settings, too, and if they're made of actual gelatin then that gives a fairly renewable source of protein assuming they reproduce in the usual mitotic way. Even in a glorified prison colony, corpses have to go somewhere.

Imagining the polypdeer gives me a pleasant feeling in the back of my brain.

My solution for basic level food:
Fruit bearing fungus stalks which grow like ferns. They are easy as fuck to grow, just jam an existing stalk into the ground somewhere, and their fruits produce juicy clusters, like an inverted pomegranite. They don't seem to need anything other than a physical connection to the groud of the cave, and won't drop fruit unless it's plucked.
The catch is that, while fit for human consumption, once you start eating them you can't stop. Withdrawl will kill you, and if you eat too much for too long, that'll kill you too. After driving you crazy.
It's a staple crop in societies, as it can be safely fed to livestock, used in small amounts for daily consumption, and exported to the surface (Think of Dune's addictive spices).
Now we have something to sustain our ecosystem, which does not necessarily make agriculture simplistic, gives us a steady export, and a reason for people to be unable to leave. It acts as a good intermediary for other animals. Hell, it might even be the source of all mutated creatures.

Rolling with all my might for the wondrous Mazefruit. The plot hooks that could be built off that thing alone (corrupt WISE higher-ups importing it to turn whole Surface towns into drug-addled Cartographer applicants, criminal element synthesizing drugs out of it, a Maze town that mysteriously went crazy and wiped itself out, etc.)

>My take on the vermin, uncreatively named "Vermin".
Apart from size, color and basic shape, vermin are almost all unique. They are no larger than a human head, with black fur or scales, and grey-beige flesh. They tend to be round, terrestrial with around 4 legs, and a single head in the front,. Some are 6 legged, serpentine and fuzzy, with sharp beaks and antennae. Others have two bird like legs and large ears, with a stumpy mouth surrounded by feelers. All of them eat mushrooms and fruits, although some have been known to eat small insects or meat bites. Some are hostile, some are nearly domestic, but most simply scurry away from other creatures. The myriad of features makes classifying them nearly impossible, but identifying them as "Vermin" at a glance is simple enough.

Oh, and that might give us a good background for how the Mazecaps got to be the way they are.

I'm all for these crazy ideas, but keep this is mind for any new creatures. To survive, expecially in the maze, they need to be
>Fast, to stay away from any horrors
>Defensive, to keep horror from eating them
>Strong, in which case they probably ARE horrors.

Beyond that, just make sure that their presence won't make life in Warren's Folly *too* easy.

Same with plants, I suppose. Consider what they need, what they produce, and how scarce they are.

Edible plants and animals could probably be up to GM discretion. If you want to play a hardcore survival game, make food scarce and use some TBD mechanics to keep your players on edge. If you want the horror to come from the monsters and the weirdness alone, making food more of an afterthought is probably okay (since bookkeeping sucks the horror out of stuff if it isn't an ingrained part of your game). Depends on the way you want to run the game.

Heh, rerolling for Polypdeer and (careful) Slime ranching.

I like the role for Chorugs as pack animals rather than food sources.
When I wrote it, I imagined them as mostly beetle-like, with six legs, radially positioned. They are low to the ground, and their 'wing' segments can fold around them if they tuck their legs in, disguising/protecting them. Bridles would bind these, preventing Chorugs from hunkering down during use. Each leg (thicker and fleshier than a beetle's) ends in a foot with three splayed toes, allowing for travel over rough terrain. The head has long, reaching, vertically oriented mandibles (ala Hercules beetle) which are primarily used for grasping and scooping into the mouth, which sits "sideways" in the middle of it's face, with round harmless teeth, and three small eyes on each side. While normally extended, the mandibles can fold back and retract to cover the mouth, adding to it's disguise.

I really like the idea of using slimes as organic disposals and renewable food sources. These are captured slimes in pits and wells, who would be hostile if they weren't so well fed and contained. They'd be a good source of proteins and calcium (as that one user said) from dissolved creatures, and if treated properly, the slimes' digestion could even purify most foods. It also allows settlements a functional food source, while denying pc's an easy meal out in the Maze.

Can we have a quick recap of what new stuff is being accepted?

back from my evening stroll with an idea based on mongolian and Scythians short-bows.

and I always try for this level of detail in crafting, it makes me a boring person in a lot of cases.

DEPENDENT ON THE AVAILABILITY OF ADHESIVES, RESINS, AND RUBBER/RUBBER ANALOGS
so far, the maze sounds short in resources. HUMANS ARE RESOURCEFUL.

then on my evening stroll I remembered that humans have replaced wood historically. they have done this through the use of COMPOSITE MATERIALS.
this is more than just fiberglass. the most common composites out there are cement and plywood/laminate wood
bows, in places that typically don't have wood were composites made from animal horn and bone; layered, glued, clamped, and then carved to shape.
>That's it. I'm sick of all this "Masterwork composite shortbow" bullshit that's going on in the d20 system right now. horse-bows deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that...
all you need for clamping is a big pile of rocks, all you need for the reinforcement material is really just about anything.
>woven patches of bone and/or leather and/or local fibers placed over a simple carved stone form(don't forget to grease it!)
>pour on glue made from any really good available source
>place top-form(GREASE IT HEAVILY)
>add a big pile of rocks
>come back the next day or the next and extract your new bow-blank, shield, breast-plate, etc.
glues have been made from a LOT of things, most usefully here, insect and animal byproducts.
the crafters in these materials would be the new "village blacksmith" trope.

>SHIT i AM OUT OF ROOM ALL READY??!??

>Do we need to invent an ecosystem here?

>Do we need to invent an ecosystem here?
YES

start at the bottom
>plants
we cannot have these under normal processes INSTEAD we start with algae.
the caves are damp in most places yes?
algae.
algae building on top of itself over stone makes a layer of soil(and serves to fix the carbon-dioxide generated by living beings in the maze)
this soil being mostly comprised of decaying algae is ripe for fungal developments rich in phosphates, nitrates, and other useful materials(i.e. not even close to barren)

now fungal life don't give no shits bout your normal need of sunlight if the rich fertilizer is present
>no seeds for eating
perhaps we can go halfsies and have a "fungus" with seeds or seed pods (fruiting bodies?)
this would grant a place for small creatures to flourish
>but we could skip to small and medium grazer animals
all of the mycovores (fungivores?) can serve as a source for materials (internal or external skeletons?) bone, shell, skins, intestines, and meat can come from these sources

>harvesting meat from animals without butchery
this is good, but not as useful as butchery

>friable gel-blobs
sounds tasty actually...

>What are the consequences for a grazing species that's primarily fungivorous?
a lack of digestion-available vitamins available in the meat.

>(square-cube law be damned)
indeed, though that WOULDN'T fuck over a beetle that size if it wasn't an insect as we define them on earth or if the maze has a higher than average oxygen concentration, or if they are equipped with efficient book-lungs, or if they don't use Chitin as an exo-skeletal support material, or...

that said I prefer Chorugs to be mastiff-sized at most.

>Imagining the polypdeer gives me a pleasant feeling in the back of my brain.
...and I thought I was odd for fetishizing "having a clean and well-ordered work-space"...

thats some good applications.

lets not make it THAT easy to cultivate

Just got off work. Are you guys still taking lore and faction ideas? I had an idea at work today you guys might be able to use.

I'll check when I get home and write something up if you all a 're interested. Also, is that whole 8 fixation still in place?

I feel like we need some broad categories.

though perhaps what we have is that all "vermin", if given time grow, end up as the terror inspiring monsters that wonder the labrynth.

you forgot "good at hiding"

how many ambush predators do you think live in this place?
cephalopods cling to rock, chromatophors matching their color and texture perfectly until something small and edible comes by.
lizards and snakes lay in wait to strike at range, or fire an adhesive tongue.
great ogre spiders wait, silent and still, ready to cast nets upon the unsuspecting.
or trapdoor spiders
bombardier beetles spraying caustic, scalding, poison.
when in doubt, look to nature for creative ways to kill stuff and start mix-n-matching(it's why my handle is monotreeme, a GM should be capable of slapping together some weird shit like the platypus or the echidna and make them work)

>TBD
???

>I like the role for Chorugs as pack animals rather than food sources
why not let them be both?

I like a longer ovate shape for chorugs but thats just me.

>Are you guys still taking lore and faction ideas?
I'm discussing ecosystems and physical object crafting.
for me this is the fun part.

8 fixation is still in, can't hurt to have more lore to bounce things off of.

I'll be trying to synthesize some of this new material into a new version of the rulebook, just working out how to structure it with some of the mechanical updates.

If it's neat and it fits, go for it.
The 8 thing is a subconscious tick in the maze, not a outward obsession, but yes, it's still a thing.

just never let your slimes get out of control...
and always keep the salt handy if it gets too uppity.

careful of ambush predators...

Just wanted to say that I really appreciate your input. I wasn't being sarcastic, I really was trying to build support, I was just worried that it would get the same reception as a crafting system...

Make Blood Moss the algae? Or is that a separate thing?

If we scale down 's fruits, that could fit the seeding fungus niche.

Chorugs can be changed. I'm just set on; turtle-beetle, rock shell plates, broader legs and feet with toes, slow but strong. Everything else is variable. Unless we just want to make them literal giants beetles. Let's go with large dog in height (4ft?) but proportionally wider. Obloid makes sense.
>Why not both?
Do you eat horses?! Wait, you do sometimes? Oh, alright then.

In my head, Vermin were critters generated by the maze, bouncing genetic randomness off of eachother and filling in any ecological gaps along the way. [I may have also been trying to make potentially "cute" horrors. Shame on me.] their role in the maze can be changed as well.

And yeah, slime farming +1

Deer-Polyps was just brainstorming, but I do actually like the concept of a swift creature using budding as "safer" reproduction. Maybe it just carries it's eggs around on it's back and... Now I'm thinking of Suriname toads. Welp, if ever there was a setting for that nightmare of a creature, this is it.

Holy shit, how has nobody suggested Mimics yet?
Too 'normal'?

user with all the salt about crafting here. I could easily have been less of a dick about it, and that's my bad. I have just had bad experiences with people making homebrew crafting mechanics that tend way too much toward the tedium of a Minecraft grid. This is fine when you're playing a video game, but in a collaborative storytelling setting it really grinds everything to a halt. The more organic system that's developing here is way more fluid and thematically appropriate, so I'm very much interested. I don't want to drive people with ideas off, so I apologize.

> Suriname toads
You god damn monster! And on dubs, too!

It seems like we're developing some 'zones' within our setting.
>Surface
Boring. Nothing to see here
>Upper levels
Home of the Gate, and most settlements.
>Middle lands
Where our weird but rule bound ecosystem takes place, but fewer settlements exist as tech begins to fail.
>Deeper reaches
We're off the map here. Anyone living here is crazy, dead, or both.

Does our ecosystem extend all the way through? Should there be any 'laws' once we get into weirdsville?
Do the worse parts of the maze show up as pockets, or progress linearly as you go down/out?

There was some discussion about weird locations (in the Lovecraftian sense) when environmental Duress was worked out, sort of enclaves of dense Mazestuff badness jutting out of the landscape (or leading down into it). There has also been a lot of implied talk about "depths", though what this means in an infinite maze is anyone's guess.

Given that, it seem plausible that in general the weirdness progresses linearly (or maybe logarithmically) as distance from the Surface increases, with some near-Surface areas where the weirdness spikes due to some bad thing having set up shop.

Mwahahah!

Let's 1-up it. Possible horror?
Serpentine lizard with large jaws. It crawls around on all surfaces, slinking in the shadows. Dozens of odd bulges protrude from it's long back, seeming to wriggle occasionally. Injuring it too much may release the spawn, which form a frenzied swarm of leech-like creatures. It may even throw it's own eggs at you, attatching it's parasitic young.

Of course, that's implying that the regular toad isn't terrifying enough to be a horror on it's own. Which it is.

>I wasn't being sarcastic,
didn't mean to sound like I was biting off heads.
do recall that CAPSLOCK is also a sign of enthusiasm.
also, about which topic?

>Make Blood Moss the algae?
perhaps that was just a theoretical evolutionary series, whats to say that the chain doesn't start with a non-photosynthetic moss or lichen instead. blood moss also does good because it means that a butcher can cultivate it as a trade-good as a hallucinogen or as a tinder-box component, all he needs is a shallow trough full of viscera.

>Do you eat horses?!
always meant to try.
also dog, sheep, lamb, pho, porcupine(dont ask), and kangaroo.

I was getting at them with ambush predators, but a mimic is nothing if not the king of ambush 'preds

I think he meant me and misidentified salt when it was the sugar-high of crafting creation.

>Suriname toads
>You god damn monster! And on dubs, too!
agreed, they are the nightmare fuel of nightmare fuel

>Should there be any 'laws' once we get into weirdsville?
model it like most civilizations.
the further you get from larger communities the less official law there is.
in this setting we can also add that the deeper you go the less law there is as well.
"Weirdsville" might have law or it may just have a certain level of acceptable morality but outside of that or past a certain depth there might as well be no law at all

a place like this I don't doubt there could be an influx of criminals, it's like Australia except that if the criminals are literally incapable of leaving without dying, and the fauna is even MORE lethal.
>PENAL COLONIES BITCHES

some points of the ecosystem probably extend all the way up and all the way down others only start past a certain depth

...

...

...

real question here...

...how is this setting for demons and more magical monsters?

We're more Dead-Space and Amnesia right now, and less DOOM or Diablo.
As long as they fit the theme of mind fuckery and horror, I don't see why not.