Day 146 of 362

Okay... something about Blogger is not liking the home machine. It's still giving me the whole "server rejected" thing when I try to upload pictures. I know how to fix it, but I think Blogger/Google has changed some things around a bit since up until a couple of days ago, I had ZERO problems with it all.

Tonight, on the agenda, we have a Pathfinder game, we have an Emperor MtG group and we have my Deathwatch game that has nor run in four weeks. Overall, a good slate. After the store closes, the family and I might go to see X-Men, but I haven't decided yet.

On the Tai'eres front, I discovered that Windows 7 DOES NOT like Campaign Cartographer 2 Pro, so I cannot look at any of my old maps for the world. I did, however, finds some print outs from those days in my archive of notes, so I can recreate the maps in Adobe Illustrator. Work on the setting proceeds slowly as I reconstruct things from old files, notes, printouts, and memory. As I am cementing bits about the setting down, things about how the game system works and what it should contain are also coming into sharper focus.

I feel so good about things right now that I believe I'll leave you with a bit of rules text that I wrote back in the day involving fire and how damaging it can be. I understand that it will mean little outside the context of the rules, but I like it...

Fire

Fire is a wonderful thing. It was one of man’s first tools and we still use ideas derived from it to this very day, namely the cooking of food and keeping warm in the cold. Yep, good stuff that fire.

Being *ON* fire is... not recommended.

Whenever a character is exposed to a heat source warm enough to ignite him, that character may catch flame. For each turn of exposure, the character has a 1 in 6 chance of igniting. This chance increases by one for each continued turn of exposure the character endures. Thus, if a character sticks his hand in a campfire for six turns, he’s going to be on fire.

Once a character is on fire, the flame may spread to other parts of his body. For each turn that a character is on fire, all adjacent body parts have a cumulative 1 in 6 chance of having the fire spread to those parts. Once a body part is on fire, it begins its own incremental upward count of fire damage from 1d4 to 5d4. Fire spreads along a character’s body in the following patterns.

Origin Point

Head     Fire Spreads To... Chest
Vitals     Fire Spreads To... Chest, Left Leg, Right Leg
Chest     Fire Spreads To... Head, Vitals, Left Arm, Right Arm
Leg, Left     Fire Spreads To... Vitals, Left Foot
Arm, Left     Fire Spreads To... Chest, Left Hand
Leg, Right     Fire Spreads To... Vitals, Right Foot
Arm, Right     Fire Spreads To... Chest, Right Hand
Hand, Left     Fire Spreads To... Left Arm
Hand, Right     Fire Spreads To... Right Arm
Foot, Left     Fire Spreads To... Left Leg
Foot, Right    Fire Spreads To... Right Leg

Of special note, the addition of an accelerant (such as alcohol or gasoline) increases the initial ignition and spread chances from 1 in 6 to 2 in 6, plus increases the ignition/spread increment from 1 to 2, thus guaranteeing that a character with a body part soaked in alcohol WILL catch fire in no more than three turns.

Each turn the character is exposed to fire he suffers 1d4 damage, applied to whichever body part happens to have the flame applied to it. This damage increases by 1d4 per turn, up to a maximum of 5d4 worth of damage a turn. Like all other damage dice, these dice ARE open-ended.

It is important to note that, unlike falling, Toughness derived from external armor DOES apply to fire damage. Chain and Plate armors, however, only provide +2 and +3 Toughness respectively in regards to fire. Metal does get hot, you know. Also, Location Modifiers do apply to fire damage.

EXAMPLE: Bob the fighter isn’t especially bright. On a dare from his friends, Bob has decided that placing his right foot in a campfire is a good idea. Silly Bob.

On the first round, Bob’s right foot suffers 1d4 points of damage, and has a 1 in 6 chance of catching fire. Bob is wearing Hard Leather Boots which add three to his natural Toughness of two, giving his right foot 5 points of fire protection. The GM rolls a 3 on the 1d4 and Bob scoffs at the heat. The GM then checks for ignition, rolling 1d6. This die comes up a one, so Bob’s right foot will remain on fire whenever he decides to remove it from the campfire.

The next round, Bob’s still being dim, so the GM checks for damage. This being the second round of exposure, the GM is now rolling 2d4 for the damage. After the dice are rolled,  4 points of damage are applied to Bob’s right foot. With the location modifier applied (x1/2), this damage is reduced to two points. Not bad, but not pleasant, either. Also, since Bob’s right foot is now on fire, the GM must check for spread. This being the first round for that, the spread chance is only 1 in 6. The die rolls and Bob’s unlucky again. The fire has crept up to his right leg.

On round three, things get hairy. Bob’s right foot suffers 3d4 points worth of fire damage while his right leg suffers 1d4 points. Bob’s finally figured out that this is not a good thing and runs screaming to a horse trough to dive in and put out the flames.

Have fun kids...

-- GopherDave