This is when I started to realize that instead of making tweaks in the form of house rules, I could instead set out and make my own rules system.
Having made the decision to take the plunge and start the process of creating my own rules I started bringing the pieces together and expand my ideas. Finding out what I needed and try and find out how to go about things. Lots of learning, reading blogs, game development and the history of D&D took place.
I had the embryo of a rules system, with combat rules, basic abilities and magic.
Started running the first playtest online using Owlbear rodeo and simple notes as character records. Learned a lot about how play flows with different concepts.
Ran a series of skirmishes with a few friends to test out part of the mechanics, and it started to work really well.
WotC and OGL scandal that unfolded and the D&D rules ended up as Creative Commons made me realize that I could now take my backburner project, and publish it without having to rely on the OGL. So the OGL scandal made me start working on this project with much more interest.
Using Obsidian.md I put together a first version of what would become Hawk Tales with Basic Character creation, low level play and 30 or so monsters. This was then used to run the first set of playtests.
A series of online and in-person playtests at conventions, all in all over 60 game sessions 2 hour or longer, and more of short test skirmishes. Hundreds of notes later I felt it was time to go back to developing again.
Took all my notes from playtest and re-wrote the rules, now included all levels of play, more spells and monsters. Playtests continues with convention play at VGHC6 and Gamehole Con.
To improve my online play, I've started adding Alpha 2 rules for Questline VTT.
Next year I plan to update the rules again and then publish the raw form in Markdown, PDF and the web. This will be a raw, un-edited version of the rules to get more feedback.
Online campaign and conventions playtests, with a more structured campaign to reconquer the Shield Lands, and maybe even provide Furyondy with a new heir, we will see what will happen.
Deities and Planes, Mass Combat, Campaign and World Rules.
Re-write the rules again incorporating the knowledge gained from another round of playtests
Bringing it together and edit it into something that can be published digitally, PDF, Markdown and Webb.
Expansion of the rules with more feats, monsters, magic items, artifacts, curses and more.
Most people who design games probably start with the mechanics, having an idea of how they want the mechanics to shape the game and how it is played. When I decided to start making my own rule system, it didn’t start with game mechanics, instead it was something way more fundamental that I felt I needed to start with, physics. How the game world works (in my case Greyhawk of course), at a fundamental level, and let that guide the mechanics. This is going to be an introduction to fantasy physics, and how it is shaping the Hawk Tales rules and gameplay.
None of this is needed to play and have fun using the Hawk Tales rules, you can swing a sword, cast spells and pretty much everything else a fantasy hero does without paying much attention to any of this, just like other fantasy TTRPG’s. For those of you who want to understand and master the use of magic, holy smiting, planar travel or how to go about killing a god using the Hawk Tale rules this is what you need to dig into.
Fundamentally everything exists in three different ways, physically, mentally or metaphysically. The first two are the easy ones, reality around a character living its life on Oerth is Physical, meaning it exists and can be touched, interacted with. This physical world is made up of the elements (earth, air, water and fire) and the Ethereal provides the “scaffolding” that provides structure and depth to this physical world. Behind the Elements and the Ethereal lurks Positive and Negative Energy setting the trajectory, pace of the world. The world started with the Energy Planes interacting, and if the balance between them tilts too much, the world might end with the Energy Planes reigning supreme once again.
When the world had evolved sufficiently to create life that in turn started to develop, thoughts, will, fear and urges, which led to a whole new realm of existence evolving – the minds of creatures harbored worlds in their own right. This new realm of existence expanded in all sorts of ways, and grew stronger, and eventually reached the level where it took on a life of its own, it became Metaphysical. The oldest of the Metaphysical realms are the Feywild created long before advance and intelligent creatures roamed the prime. As life became more advanced, its mental capabilities expanded both the mental and the metaphysical. The metaphysical is partly real and can therefore develop and even come back into the physical again, this how we got the great wheel cosmology, with the Astral, gods, elves, dragons and much more. Again, behind the metaphysical lurks the two energy planes, influencing everything.
These three dimensions of existence are reflected in all creatures, their abilities, essence and what they can do. Let’s have look at the Abilities first. Standard D&D (and its derivatives) have 6 abilities Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis and Cha. The first three (Str, Dex, Con) are physical and determine home good a character are at manipulating the world around it. The next three (Int, Wis, Cha) are mental abilities, determining how well a creature can understand, predict and interact with other creatures. Hawk Tales FRP adds another three metaphysical abilities to this, Comeliness, Presence and Taint.
Comeliness
This is how most creatures experience Comeliness, but there are more to Comeliness than meets the eye. It Covers a creatures metaphysical standing, is it rising towards the higher planes or falling down toward the lower ones. It can range from both high positives to deep negatives. Comeliness can often be perceived as beauty and mixed up with Charisma and can in some ways be used to boost Charisma, but it goes much deeper than that. It is a resource that can be leverage for good and bad, to hide your ill deeds, or sacrifice to struggle on a bit longer. The function of Comeliness is tied to a creature's Essence.
Presence
Measures a creature’s metaphysical strength, how strong its life force is. It dictates a creature's ability to escape death, stand up to certain forms of damage, and planar travel. It only goes in positive direction and can go really high in some cases. A creature’s Essence dictates how a creature can use its Presence, or if it needs it at all, some do better without…
Taint
Is a record of a creature’s entanglement with the lowers side of the multiverse, near death experiences, evil magic, gods and such. As it increases a creature will have a harder time escaping death, but it is also a resource that can serve a creature well if it decides to dabble in the dark arts like Necromancy or join an evil cult.
Is the how a creature functions on a fundamental level, both in the world like does it need to eat, sleep, and does it age for example. Its Essence also dictates this in game mechanics terms as well, how its abilities functions, takes damage, dies and recovers. Humans (and most other characters) will have a Soul as its Essence, which means they are given Presence that increases as they level up, but lost when failing a Death Save or take special forms of damage. Soul based creatures age and have a limited lifespan; they are resistant to summons but not enchantments for example.
Liches have a Dark Soul powered by negative energy, which means they don’t age, can’t die, and literary use the Taint gained from evil deeds to replenish its powers. Both Souls and Dark Souls are Physical Essences, and two examples out a totally of 15 in the game at this state covering all forms of existence, like Spirits, Thralls, Spawns, Mindless, Unminded, Umbral, to the outright weird and scary ones like Phrenic, Residuum and of course Simulacra. Yes, creatures that are created using magic can function very differently than their naturally born siblings.
Essence is a base to build creatures from that makes sure that creatures can (and will) function very differently, both thematically, but also in terms of game mechanics during encounters.
Here again it ties back into physics with currently 21 different types of damage in the game, from the Kinetic (Bludgeoning, Slashing and Piercing), Elemental (Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Poison and Thunder). Together with the two Ethereal Damage types (Force and Vorpal), they make up the physical forms of damage in Hawk Tales. The mental side have only one at the moment, Psychic, that inflicts Hit Point Damage like all the physical damage types, but I’m toying with the idea of others that strike at a creature’s senses or ability to orient itself. Not sure how to do this mechanically yet.
Metaphysical Damage comes in two groups Celestial and Fiendish, with Radiant and Necrotic being the staples. The Fiendish side have more variety (of course!), with Ability Drain, Despair Damage, Energy and Life Drain and Vile Damage. The good side has Disruption and Void Drain to take on the real nasties, all of these damage types use different mechanics, that affect different abilities and aspects of creatures, like their age, Exertion and so on. Some are only effective against creatures based on certain Essences, like Void Drain, which doesn’t do much if anything against humans and similar creatures, but can-do wonders against ghosts and some other forms of undead…
Also bound by the laws of fantasy physics, and this falls under the Strain the spell or other effect is using. There are 11 magic Strains in the current version of Hawk Tales, physical ones like Elemental and Ethereal, mental in the form of Cerebral, and a plethora of metaphysical ones, from Celestial, Concordant, Fey and Shadow, to Necrotic and Fiendish. Strains tell where an effect draws its power from, like Necrotic from the Negative Energy Plane, and fiendish from the Lower Planes, and Fey from the Feywild and so on.
The reliance on a particular Strain means that access to that source is needed to gain the use of that effect, not to cast a spell necessarily but to memorize it. This can be tricky when you descend into the lower planes and rely on magic provided by Celestial lords or access to the elements. The Prime Material Plane is special in that it has connections to almost all other parts of the multiverse, at least indirectly, providing access to all sorts of magic.
Magic is also a way to provide access to other planes and bring aspects of other parts of the multiverse to the Prime. This can be a short instant summoning, or message spell, to the consecration of a temple complex that alters its planar aspects in lots of permanent ways.
Physics also determines how the world can be perceived, what can detect you, under what circumstances, and how to go about trying to stay hidden. Ethereal sensing is used for Darkvision, to detect illusions, see footsteps and even openings to other dimensions. Alignment can be sensed using metaphysics, and so on. The Prime Material Plane is special in the way that it is both physical, harbors a lot of creatures with mental abilities and the base from which the metaphysical planes are created, which means it is diverse and most sense works well here. But more beyond its borders and things can be very different.
This was a brief overview of the underpinnings of the Hawk Tales rules. Complicated, yes compared to other game systems this adds a layer of complexity to the rules. A different kind of complexity, one that doesn’t require more dice rolls in combat, but provides more options for everything from combat to how to sell your soul.
Here are simple versions of all the Ull shields, in PNG and SVG formats. Attaching them to this post. Or you can download them here:
PNG versions (2.4MB):
https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/Heraldry/Ull%20Simple%20Shields%20PNG.zip
SVG versions (1.7MB):
https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/Heraldry/Ull%20simple%20shields%20SVG.zip
Time for a new batch of heraldry, and this time it is Ull. Thanks to Braggi and Mike "Mortellan" Bridges for creating the names, stories and designs, making it possible for me to give them some Photoshop upgrades.
27 all in all depicting all the Khanates and the big settlements of the realm. I think the designs are great and really give that regional connected spirit and using the Oeridian heater shield as a base ties them into the history of the Flanaess, since Ull is a land that was part of that migration story, and the Ulli was among those who stayed.
You can get a zip file with all the heraldry and the compendium image here (301.1 MB): https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/Heraldry/Ull%20Heraldry.zip
They are published under Creative Commons -BY 4.0
Here are a look at al of them:
Ahmud Khanate
Durgai Khanate
Ghestun Khanate
Inchak Khanate
Jadrun Khanate
Jalhir Khanate
Kester Khanate
Kester
Kirgai Khanate
Khugari Khanate
Khurut Khanate
Kirghai Khanate
Kurukand
Lurzid Khanate
Najul Khanate
Okhir Khanate
Okkand
Ongusk Khanate
Qilak Khanate
Semust
Ulakand
Ulgur Khanate
Ulli Khanate
Ulzai Khanate
Umighak Khanate
Yorod
Zhunis Khanate
Thank so much for your support, making this possible!! 🙂
I’m planning a series of posts about Hawk Tales FRP and its development. It was really hard to figure out in which end to start, but after a few days of thinking about it I decided to start at the beginning, both literary and figuratively with a brief overview of the cosmology. The cosmology was where I first started to think in the terms of rules, I wanted a set of rules that treated the fantastic elements like other planes and magic, less like rule mechanics and more as phenomena in the world. This is a quick overview of my take on the cosmology, a bit on how things came to be and a few glimpses of how that ties into mechanics. I hope this brief introduction will peak your interest and prepare to dive deeper into the various parts of abilities, magic, combat and much more.
This also ties into the world creation story I’m using in my Greyhawk campaign. This is a peek into the “behind the scenes” version that tells how things really happened. I’m also working on the creation myths that various cultures use to describe their history as well, together they can hopefully provide a good base for other Greyhawk GM’s to build on and modify to suit their campaigns.
The Multiverse is a BIG place made up of lots of planes of existence, some familiar in nature, others very strange. They fall into three broad categories, the real ones (made up from real matter), the ones that are only in your mind, and the ones in between. Let’s begin with the real ones.
These are real places you can travel to in person, either using mundane or magical means. A creatures Strength, Dexterity and Constitution determines what it can do in the physical world.
The places in the multiverse most familiar to us are the Prime Material Plane, which the world Oerth and its surroundings belong to. It’s a place made of real physical stuff (Elemental and Ethereal) and has life that has (for the most part) evolved here and is native to it. The prime also provides the base for all the other planes mentioned below. This means that all the other planes in some way co-exist on the Prime which makes the Prime a unique and very diverse place, where a lot of things are possible. All of a creatures abilities are a work in the Prime, Physical, Mental and Metaphysical.
Both the origin and end of our existence and what drives it are the Energy Planes. Everything else, in some capacity revolves around the two Energy Planes, the Positive and the Negative.
The tension between these two nodes, created the beginnings of our world eons ago. Rumors have it that a reverse multiverse is hidden on the other side, completing the energy circle between the positive and negative.
Positive Energy Plane
The source of energy for life and everything else that brings life and movement to the prime and other places beyond as well. Radiant damage comes from here.
Negative Energy Plane
The end of all things, it destroys life, brings cold and standstill. Necrotic Damage comes from here.
The Ethereal is what gives the physical structure, time and space, it is the scaffolding of the physical world at a fundamental level. Everything in the Primal exists into the Ethereal (or vice versa). This Border Ethereal is like a window into other dimensions, and is the basis for a lot of phenomena, like Darkvision, and ghosts and other Incorporeal creatures. Force and Vorpal damage is using aspects of the Ethereal.
If you move beyond the Border Ethereal, several weird properties start to emerge. The Ethereal now extends into Time, meaning it can be used to see (and even travel) in time. What effects this has is a thing for a different time, lets briefly look at some of the Ethereal plane’s other aspects. No color, smell or sensation except space, texture and movement. Imagine a place which you can only touch, and maybe even at a distance. True Seeing is using this effect to discern what is there or not, even if it is hidden by illusion or other effects.
Creatures’ native to, or well adapted to, the Ethereal seems to be able to perceive its many dimensions in a much more effective way than a creature with only the normal senses used in the Prime Material Plane. They can use the Ethereal to see through matter at long distances and deep into the Ethereal, detecting anything that stands out or moves. Hiding in the Ethereal is about shape and position; by sitting still and moving only very slowly you can avoid detection for a time. It’s about patients; a patient observer might detect you if it just keeps looking long enough to detect the change over time.
The Ethereal Plane's weird capability to accommodate many dimensions makes it a great way to create Demi Planes that can be very hard to find, and that can in turn be gateways to realms of various kinds. This is the effect used by various forms of magic to create pocket dimensions.
Often referred to as the Inner Planes, which is accurate for most of them - earth water and fire, who literary makes up our world. The Plane of Air surrounds us, and to some degree mixes with the others. The material making up the Prime is elemental and where you find enough of them in a place opens up the possibility to travel to the realm of that Element. For examples volcanoes and places deep Underdark filled with lava are literal gates to the Plane of Fire, you just have to be able to stay alive long enough to enjoy the journey.
Over time life has found ways to exist in the Elemental Planes as well, giving rise to creatures’ native to these realms. The Elemental Planes are well knows to spellcasters with both a Strain, and its own school, and a whole range of Damage Types are elemental.
Mental planes only exist in the minds of creatures, and in a way, every creature’s mind is its own mental plane. It is when these mental planes connect and interact, amazing things start to happen.
The emergence of life, and its evolution into more and more advanced forms have altered the fabric of reality itself. One of the most profound effects, though hard to impossible to detect, is the Dreamscape. Every creature advanced enough to have feelings and urges creates its own realm where this mental exercise takes place. And when creatures who are aware of each other can share this realm, and with creatures expanding capabilities the scope and reach of the Dreamscape has been ever increasing.
Mental Planes are realms you cannot visit in person, only travel to in your sleep, using magic or interact with using your emotions and feelings. The real world can be perceived while inside it using a creature’s senses, but that is where the real world ends. The Dreamscape lacks dimensions and distance, things are connected by thought and perception. What you see, hear, touch and even think of is present in the Dreamscape. Time is a weird concept in these realms, moving back and is possible and its not all that obvious when it time something happens or have happened.
Magic can be used to harness various aspects of the Dreamscape, like accessing the minds of others, send mental messages, or even travel through it in spirit. Some creatures do this regularly to stay in touch and keep safe, like the Fey and Elves who can use their revery state to share a world together. Other creatures and magic are far more capable in this realm so beware, lots of pitfalls here!
Psychic Damage hails from the mental, and it has its own Strain of magic, the Cerebral.
The Dreamscape over time given rise to a whole new form of planes, the Metaphysical. Let’s look at this part of the Multiverse next.
As life grew more and more capable, it had an increasing impact on the expanding multiverse, in many ways life made it expand. Creating a myriad of metaphysical realms, places that are both a product of imagination and real at the same time. So far, the true location of these realms has eluded scholars and wise folks, there are many theories but few hard facts. Widely known and accepted are the impact these realms have on the world, from life and death itself to ideas, visions and tragedies. These realms covers it all and more...
Each creature has an essence that carries its metaphysical aspects, humans and many others have a soul they are born with that must take all their life’s ups and downs. These aspects are Comeliness, Presence and Taint describing a creature’s impact in the Multiverse and rule over its life, death and beyond.
The urges, desires and feelings of the animal world gave rise to the early Dreamscape, and as the animal world developed so did the multiverse. Eventually something managed to escape into it and reside there, and the first Metaphysical realm was born, the embryo of the Feywild. A world full of all everything that animals have been busy thinking about since the dawn of time was starting to see new forms of creatures’ spawn that was a form of spiritual offspring to the animal kingdom starting to develop all by itself.
Who was the first Fey is long lost, but a whole range of creature has sprung into existence in the Feywild, maybe even more than anywhere else in the Multiverse. New waves of creatures from the prime managed to make the transition to the Feywild, and inevitably some made it back again. This is, most scholars agree with, the source of a lot of creatures that possess extraordinary and often even magic powers. Everything from striges to dragons has been blamed for having their origins in the Feywild.
Day and night are a key aspect of nature and so always played a key part in the Feywild as well. The lower parts of the Feywild is often named the Shadowdark. Over time, as the multiverse expanded and developed further the Feywild and its gloomy sibling the Shadowdark developed into a realm with lots of connections to other parts of the multiverse, especially to the upper and lower planes.
The role of the Feywild has become more and more of a transitional realm for those who want a way to travel around the multiverse without relying on powerful magic that can be detected and traced. The drawback is that travel in the Feywild can be very dangerous, it is a world filled with all the dangers of nature in various twisted and exaggerated forms.
The Feywild can be likened to a gigantic sloping landscape full of dramatic geography, life in all its forms in forms that are often "larger than life" in every way possible, both size wise, smarter, stronger, and so on. Higher parts of the landscape are continually lit by an increasingly brighter sun the higher you go, the lower you go, twilight slowly comes and eventually you will be surrounded by a perpetual darkness.
Portals to the higher planes are found in the higher parts, and portals to the lower planes are found in the lower parts. The Feywild has not only given rise to a lot of strange and awesome creatures, and it also fuels the Strains of Fey and Shadow magic.
The Energy Planes seeps in from the portals to the Outer Planes, slowly spreading their influence around bringing the struggle between them into the Feywild.
When life became really intelligent its mental capabilities expanded beyond simple instincts, urges and feelings. Reasoning morals and ethics became powerful forces when masses of intelligent creatures could harness their thoughts in way previously impossible. Their devotion, rituals and persistent dedication started to build on top of what already existed in the Feywild, and over eons it gave rise to the outer planes.
This part of the multiverse is more often the playground of intelligent creatures combining intellectual and cultural traditions, worries and triumphs put on top of what already existed since the dawn of time. The result is the Great Wheel Cosmology, Good, Evil, Chaos and much much more.
The outer planes are home to most of the gods and their kin of various forms, the worst creatures that have ever been imagined and more. From paradises and places of joy to the worst pits of despair, the outer planes make the Feywild almost seem tame....
These planes are the collective creation of the minds, spirits and souls of the world, it is the combined subconscious (and conscious efforts) that creates them.
Metaphysical planes are partially real, but things can spontaneously spring into existence here, even things resembling living beings. The plane itself can react as a living environment, spawn things and change quickly. Time, energy and matter don't follow normal rules here.
Can be visited both mentally and in person, but at great risk, few things come back from here for reasons good or bad..
The power of Positive and Negative Energy is a huge influence here, turning the existence of everything into a struggle for greatness or extinction.
In the center of the Outer Planes are the Outlands, like the eye of a huge storm it is an enormous expanse of land harboring gates to all the outer planes on its rim. In its middle it said a tree grows all the way through the Feywild down to the lower planes. A river is sourced here that flows through all the lower planes.
This is the place where petitioner will end up, if they made the journey passed death unhindered. Where they spawn and in what shape is guided by their Taint and circumstances surrounding their death, so choose your demise carefully....
Above the Outlands is a vast expanse of sky, the Astral, made up of all the casual and mundane thoughts that have existed in history. In it endless and so much can be found there and even more is said to have been forgotten.
One rim of the Outlands is always in daylight and its edge is always obscured by clouds. Rising behind the clouds is an otherworldly range of impossibly high mountains. These are the Higher Planes, where the best ambitions of creatures find solace, hope and ambition.
The other rim of the Outlands ends in darkness and the land disappears into the dark. Down there are places where light, hope, love, respect and empathy have ceased to exist. Endless horrors await those who dare (or are forced to) enter...
This have been time where time has proven it will affect things, especially computers. First it was CPU cooler on my main desktop computer that failed. Thankfully it was still under warranty so a trip over to Micro Center to get a replacement pump and radiator and a couple of hours changing it and things was up and running again.
Next failure what both more expected and more costly. I have three 30 inch monitors that are over 10 years old, I bought them the first summer I spend in California the hear before moving here permanently. One of them has shown its age for several years which an increasing amount of background light bleed and discoloration, which have made me shuffle them around every few years to keep the best one in the center. With calibration done every six months its been doing its job, until a few days ago when it gave up altogether.
I've been expecting this and thanks to your support I'm now able to get a new monitor that will hopefully serve me well for a decade to come. I bought my first 30 inch monitor in 2005 (back in Sweden) that had a resolution of 2560x1600 which was among the best you could get back then. Now a decade later its time to upgrade my desktop experience significantly with a Samsung Odyssey Neo G9, which will replace my three old 30 inch monitors. It is a 57 inch monstrosity with a resolution of 7680x2160 which is higher than all three of my old monitors combined.
It is scheduled to arrive here tomorrow and then I will use this opportunity reorganize my workplace which will take a while so no Twitch streaming on Friday (June 20th), and hopefully I will be up and running again for Gabbin on Sunday.
This upgrade will be fantastic, and a great boon for working with huge maps, especially in QGIS, now I will be able to get both an overview and detail at the same time. Thank you again for making it possible for me to invest in proper tools for the job!
Work on a new generation Greyhawk maps have been ongoing (until my monitor gave up) and progress is being made. It is the first bit of what will be a new generation Greyhawk cartography. Here are some sneak peaks:
I'm editing the textures, rivers swamps and bogs at the moment. A lot of this have to be done manually to get a good result which takes time but I'm very happy with how things are looking at this stage. Things looks more than a bit barren at the moment, due to lack of vegetation, trees will be added in the next stage together with settlements. Then it is final adjustments the area is ready to be turned into a map.
I have several other areas in various stages ready to be textured when this is done.
My rules are currently getting an overhaul to be ready for con season that starts in a month for me with a secret private convention. A second alpha generation is soon ready to be play tested there, online and later at Gamehole Con, Virtual Greyhawk Con and more.
New in this update are Comliness, Taint, monsters that are REALLY good at combat, planar aspects, more senses and rules for dying and beyond. Luse your Presence and become a undead Thrall will soon be a real risk. My first alpha was low to mid level play, this one will cover high level play as well, planar travel and even Cerebral powers...
Thank you again for your support!
A minor milestone passed for this project today, over 300 map names are now referenced. Lots of typos and small mistakes gets "unoerthed" which improves future editions of the map greatly.
You can find the Sources Database here: https://annabmeyer.notion.site/19e0da32cbe6806a922ee8a3e80dd169?v=19e0da32cbe6803b824c000cc8429cc1
I'm adding things every week. It is tedious works like so much of what I do, but this I think is really rewarding and useful for all Greyhawk gamers. Over time this will be a really useful resource to find things and where they come from. When it is done I'll export an Excel version as well, keeping it in Notion makes it easy to edit and it is immediately available online.
Thank you so much for making this possible!
Now I'll go back to Shield Lands again!
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