DShomshak

For the God of Commerce, folklore and literature already provide the Goblin Market: the place where you can buy and sell anything. It is always dangerous. For the foolish or greedy, the price that seems right always turns out to be very, very wrong. But sometimes the pure of heart or quick of wit can buy miracles.
 
(You probably don't want to call it the Goblin Market unless your goblyns, for all they seem to be a significant threat to several societies, bear a special connection to the God of Commerce.)
 
Tales differ about the location of the Market. Some say it's an oasis in a desert beyond five mountain ranges. Others say an island surrounded by five whirlpools, and only a blind steersman can find the way. Some say if you toss a coin into a certain well at the dark of the moon, the path to the Market opens before you. And there are many other tales. Are you clever enough to unriddle the clues, or savvy enough to buy the secret from one who truly knows and not be cheated?
 
Dean Shomshak

Back in my old "Seattle Sentinels" campaign, one of the PCs disguised himself as a villain to make contact with the vampire Lady Twilight (see Creatures of the Night: Horror Enemies). We ran it near Hallowe'en, so calling it "Trick or Treat" was inevitable.
 
A year later, as Oct 31 approached again, I ran "Trick or Treat II: The Movie." The Seattle Sentinels agreed be consultants for a movie inspired by some of their adventures. They ran into some loonies who'd been enthralled by Lady Twilight, engaged in a "Scooby-Doo" scam against the movie (they were upset at her portrayal) -- then a pair of real ghosts, including the Haunt (CotN again) in the old house used as a filming location.
 
In my first "Keystone Konjurors" playtest campaign for Ultimate Supermage, the heroes were trapped in a recursive series of horrific dreamworlds by Tappan Arkwright II (Arcane Adversaries), in "Trick or Treat: The Next Generation."
 
The second Keystone Konjurors campaign ended near Christmas. Coincidentally, one of the PCs was pregnant with an infant that was the focus of a plan by Yahweh to escape Heaven. In the simultaneous escape of Yahweh from Heaven and the PCs from Hell, it was obligatory for the hasty EDM to deposit them in Bethlehem, PA.
 
ADDENDUM: I almost forgot: During the second KK campaign, we gamed on Oct 31 but one of the players couldn't make it. So I just did a short, silly fill-in scenario in which the PCs (and Black Fang, who at this time was merged with his human side for a sane and controlled personality, married to a PC, and effectively an NPC hero) decide to crash the Emperor of Babylon's Hallowe'en party. Hijinks ensued and a good time was had by all.
 
Dean Shomshak
 
 

PA State House Candidate Attacked In His Home

In Real Magic, P. E. I. Bonewitz postulated "Cellular Psychokinesis" and Atomic Psychokinesis." Between them, between them they could achieve feats such as psychic surgery, shapeshifting, and, yes, lightning bolts from one's fingers or materializing objects from thin air. Very much the old wine of magic in the new bottle of "psi." At that point, yeah, "Only Mental Powers" becomes meaningless as a Limitation.
 
One of the PCs in my "Avant Guard" campaign has a small VPP. (There's no way I'd allow a PC to have a *large* VPP, after the stories another player told of gaming at MIT where *every* character had a large VPP.) The SFX is Primal Magic: "I tell the Universe what it is and the Universe conforms, with no backchat, because I am a goddess." The Limitation "Only Magic" gets a -1/4 value, and that only because the character must define any feat must be written out in Ancient Sumerian, in terms that would make sense to someone 5000 years ago. So for instance, I allow the character to make an Enhanced Sense to detect anything made from an alien metal... but she needs an actual sample of that metal so the spell becomes "Guide me to more of this substance, whatever it happens to be." It forces the player to think at least a little.
 
Dean Shomshak

Wow, Dionesh D,Souza is just all class, bragging about Republicans "LAUGHING" (his capitalization) about an an assault on an 82-year-old man. Add "respect for elders" as one more traditional conservative value that "conservatives" no longer believe in.
 
And likewise, I'm not even reading the Republican candidate statements in the voters' pamphlets anymore. Anyone who's still willing to associate with a party that embraces such vileness is at least tqacitly endorsing it, no matter what pious statements they make to the press.
 
Dean Shomshak

Wow, Dionesh D,Souza is just all class, bragging about Republicans "LAUGHING" (his capitalization) about an an assault on an 82-year-old man. Add "respect for elders" as one more traditional conservative value that "conservatives" no longer believe in.
 
And likewise, I'm not even reading the Republican candidate statements in the voters' pamphlets anymore. Anyone who's still willing to associate with a party that embraces such vileness is at least tqacitly endorsing it, no matter what pious statements they make to the press.
 
Dean Shomshak

Here in WA, it's all mail-in voting. It's worked well for years. I recommend it.
 
Dean Shomshak

Here in WA, it's all mail-in voting. It's worked well for years. I recommend it.
 
Dean Shomshak

Here in WA, it's all mail-in voting. It's worked well for years. I recommend it.
 
Dean Shomshak

Here in WA, it's all mail-in voting. It's worked well for years. I recommend it.
 
Dean Shomshak

Koy is having the problem that it is a border town and the goods are drying up.
 
Koy is the last town on its river that eventually leads to the Gefting Sea and Aerelios.  is is also the end of a pass through the nearby hills that leads to the plains that are Kerq.  So before there was trade through the hill to the other side, as well as some small mining.  Also the River leads north to a set of mountains rich in minerals and precious stones.  But the goblyns have cut them off from all that and are moving south, threatening the pass as well as the town.  Koy is a city in need of heroes.  Both the goblyns and the undead are making life difficult.  If some people can free the upper river from goblyns and open up the other two passes and get mining operations going again, well......
 
Koy is not meant to be flashy, it is meant to be that decent, hard working place where honest people can make a living.  Yeah that can be boring, but it is a nice boring!

This is it.
 
Fine, you've got the basic nuts'n'bolts of politics and economy. Some economic troubles from circumstances outside the residents' control, some more stress from goblyn attacks, and social stress makes some people double down on the social strictures. Especially the ones that distinguish them from those other people, such as the more egalitarian Aerelios. (They're stealing our women! They're stealing our property! They're reminding us that for half our population, our cherished social rules are total bullpucky!) And then a great and terrible MIRACLE happens. Real, no kidding wrath of (at least one) God.
 
... And some people still refuse to get the message.
 
On the micro level, this has adventure uses. For a start, female PCs might find themselves under special attention, not all of it friendly. On the macro level, it reminds players that this isn't just a low-tech place with a bit of magic; this is a Fantasy world with active gods, magical down to its bones.
 
Dean Shomshak

This is it.
 
Fine, you've got the basic nuts'n'bolts of politics and economy. Some economic troubles from circumstances outside the residents' control, some more stress from goblyn attacks, and social stress makes some people double down on the social strictures. Especially the ones that distinguish them from those other people, such as the more egalitarian Aerelios. (They're stealing our women! They're stealing our property! They're reminding us that for half our population, our cherished social rules are total bullpucky!) And then a great and terrible MIRACLE happens. Real, no kidding wrath of (at least one) God.
 
... And some people still refuse to get the message.
 
On the micro level, this has adventure uses. For a start, female PCs might find themselves under special attention, not all of it friendly. On the macro level, it reminds players that this isn't just a low-tech place with a bit of magic; this is a Fantasy world with active gods, magical down to its bones.
 
Dean Shomshak

Ok some extra info about Danica.  Because of its position halfway to the Northern Jungles it was (and is) the clearing house for all the goods coming down from the north.  Also it is the start point for any caravans heading north east to the Bola Desert and even further, the Divided Plains.  
 
But the current goblyn attacks make both more dangerous, and are cutting into their profits.
 
Add the stop to the Norther Slave Trade with the Anti Slavery City at the terminus to the Kulana River, where Danica was the location to which these slaves were first brought and sold.  This further has cut into their bottom line.
 
In addition Danica until recently was EXTREMELY patriarchal.  Women were little more that baubles used in political games.  They had little rights and even less education.  This resulted in a brain drain to Aerelios, which was much more egalitarian.  Thus greater restrictions were placed, until the ladies begged the gods for aid.  Thus the week of Red Blindness.  ALL males went blind, with only a red haze in their vision.  Though called the week, it lasted a bit longer.  During that time the city almost fell apart as the only ones who could see were totally incompetent to any type job due to lack of education and training.  If not for a number of trained female visitors to the city, who were able to help rally people, the city would have fallen apart.
 
Thus some are deciding that females need to be educated, but some are still resisting the idea.  (If you think this is far fetched, just remember we have people today in Canada who think a woman's place is in the home).  
 
Thus Danica is a place that is undergoing social change while its economic base is being undermined!

And in other raging news...
 
https://www.themarysue.com/yes-christian-fascisms-anti-lgbtq-hate-extends-to-asexual-people-too/
 
 

Danica mostly seems rather generic and boring (sorry), apart from the Week of Red Blindness. Whatever that was, it's interesting because ir's forcing significant social change... which some people are resisting. Here's your drama; this is worth developing further.
 
LMB addressed the placement of Koy. I'm not even trying to keep track of the geography, so I have no comment on that score. But while the linformation given is necessary, there's nothing very interesting about it. Of course, it may be that there genuinely is nothing very distinctive here. Not every place in the real world is obviously interesting, either.
 
Kerqod has some good social change with the craft guilds supplanting the (mostly dead) aristocracy. Not everyone will be happy with this change, though -- notably whoever's left from the aristocracy, and whoever owed their wealth and status to them -- which is a conflict worth developing. But the city could use something more unusual and distinctive.
 
Ison's pretty good because it's the odd man out, an outpost from a country that's mostly tied to a different region. NBobody's going to trust these guys much, though some people might be cultivating alliances with Ixon against local rivals, on the theory that Faydon has enough power to be a spoiler, but not enough to become locally dominant. Being built/carved into a cliff also makes it "visually" distinctive. And being a Magocracy means visitors can see all sorts of miscellaneous magical coolness.
 
Reuchia is moderately interesting as a collapsed state. Who's making a play for Reuchian territory?
 
Thomar's split between the "official" power elite, convulsed with infighting, and the bureaucracy that actually runs everything, has dramatic potential. But what was the basis of the former ruling class? What are the offices for which people compete? On the other side, how cohesive is the bureaucratic coalition? Is anyone talking about having the high bureaucrats try to sweep away the remnants of the old regime?
 
Diltren: Nothing very interesting or distinctive here.
 
Rasul: Your basic mercantile city, nothing very distinctive here, either.
 
While most of this hits the basic, obligatory marks for Fantasy setting design, a lot of it seems colorless. I don't see much beyond standard tropes. What is unique about each location? It doesn't have to be big or obviously important for adventurers to be memorable for players.
 
(I gather this is based on something published elsewhere? If so, I think you'll have to put a lot more of yourself into it. The setting *will* be better as a result.)
 
Dean Shomshak

Many years ago, I had a friend who had a motorcycle and did NOT like helmets.  He thought they were useless, they restricted your view, etc. and so on.  When Michigan enacted a law requiring helmets for motorcycle riders, he complained up a storm... but bought a helmet and wore it, because he hated being ticketed more than he hated wearing a helmet.
 
One day I stopped by his place.  When he answered the door, I was shocked to see his bruised face.  Of course, I asked what happened. 
 
"I was cruising down the road when a car pulled into the street right in front of me, too close for me to stop.  I ended up hitting them and flying over their hood.  Smacked into the ground face-first.  C'mere, you gotta see this."  He showed me his helmet.  The front visor was so badly scraped that you couldn't see anything through it, and the upper front looked like a hard-boiled egg that had been smacked on the counter.  "If I hadn't been wearing this thing, I have no doubt I'd be brain damaged or dead.  This thing saved my life."  He never complained about helmets after that.

SF has long included teleportation among the standard psi powers. See for instance Bester's The Stars My Destination. In McCaffrey's "Pern" series, the dragons of that world teleport and form telepathic bonds to their riders: It's all psi.
 
Dean Shomshak

Pirates really did operate over vast spans of distance in the Golden Age of Piracy.
 
But let's not forget that they were operating on the lines of existing maritime commerce. It's less impressive to see a pirate voyaging from New England to the Indian Ocean when Boston merchantmen were doing the same. 
 
Now, a fascinating aspect to this, and one that might bear on the OP's vacant coasts, is just how long and how far these lines of maritime commerce stretched, and how long ago. We have an interminable and exhausting debate over whether or not the Basque were in the Newfoundland fisheries before Columbus that I think is pretty much played out, but is also the less interesting with the discovery that people were present on the Azores as early as the sub-Roman period, seven hundred years before they were "discovered" in the days of Henry the Navigator. 
 
If that's the case, we have to explain literally centuries of what was almost certainly low-intensity (because it is not frequent enough to be documented, and any permanent population on the islands was too scanty to leave obvious archaeological evidence) fishing-related (I mean, why else?) activity. Why didn't it escalate into "discovery"?
 
The answer, which I take from narratives of expeditions to the Canaries, is that the "fishers" weren't going for fish, but for seals. Marine mammals can be taken in rookeries on the beach, which is much safer than fishing for them offshore; they produce a high value staple (train oil) that is completely fungible and anonymised, and while the yield of an individual rookery can be quite high, it is also inherently limited. You can predict about how many animals you can take on a given beach. It's never going to increase, there's no room for capital investment, and the number of hunters has to be limited somehow for the voyage to be profitable.
 
When you look at the global distribution of pinnipeds, and particularly the so-called Mediterranean monk seal, it maps onto the routes of the early European voyages of discovery pretty well. There was a long pre-Age of Discovery era of faffing around with the North Atlantic islands and the islands of "Macaronesia," which all have seal fisheries; there was a southwards push towards the Guinea coast which is first documented in contemporary histories of the "deeds of Prince Henry" when the explorers arrived in the sealing grounds across from the Canaries and then southwards towards Mauretania's Bay of Arguin; Columbus sailed to the Caribbean, catching up with another large seal population, especially off the Mayan coast of Yucatan; the story of how the Portuguese got to the Cape of Good Hope is very obscure, but Namibia has a huge seal population; and, of course, there's lots of sealing to be done off Newfoundland. 
 
So is there a prehistory of low-intensity sealing voyages to the areas later "discovered"? Sometimes. Maybe. Point is, where the sealers go, you're likely to get pirates --subject, and I think this might be the crucial point, to there being fiscal room for them to operate. (There's not much point to going out and stealing hide bags of train oil instead of catching your own seals unless you can sell them for less than the fishers can. Throw in a Prince with a "soap monopoly" like Henry the Navigator in the ports form which the fishers come from, and a rising Meseta to use the soap, and you have a monopoly rent being charged on legitimate edible fats imports which allow the pirates their profit by evading the rent. 
 
Now, when I say that there is no possibility of capital investment increasing yields on sealing voyages, this  isn't quite true. The Canaries in the immediate pre-Contact era seem to have developed quite a trade in dyed goatskin. So-called "Moroccan kid" dominated (dominates) the industry, and the leatherworking port towns on the Moroccan coast are known to have sourced their hides as far away as northern Nigeria during the caravan days. There also seem to have been Moroccan buyers in the Canaries in the era when the  native Canarians were, by some accounts, cave men who couldn't even build boats --perhaps an unfair rap. 
 
The point is that you might see a region that, on a map, looks completely deserted, no towns or even cities, but which is actually fairly populous, and is linked into a global trade network by some kind of high-skill specialised export like dyed goatskin. 

All Things Considered aired a story about the Progressive Caucus letter and Rep. Pramilla Jaipaul's swift retra ction of it, with some mumbling that a staffer had sent the letter before it was "vetted." Um, OK.
 
From the description, it sounds like high-minded dithering by very nice people. Negotiate directly with Russia. But wait, we aren't saying to leave Ukraine out. Oh please, can't  we have a diplomatic solution instead of this nasty war?
 
No. At this point, I don't think we (that is, civilized humanity) can, unless the resolution involves Russia renouncing all claims to any Ukrainian territory, including the Crimea, and returning all the kidnapped Ukrainians. Once those concessions are made, the diplomats can go to work. Until then, let Russia reap the disaster it has sown and choke on its own banquet of horrors.
 
Dean Shomshak

All Things Considered aired a story about the Progressive Caucus letter and Rep. Pramilla Jaipaul's swift retra ction of it, with some mumbling that a staffer had sent the letter before it was "vetted." Um, OK.
 
From the description, it sounds like high-minded dithering by very nice people. Negotiate directly with Russia. But wait, we aren't saying to leave Ukraine out. Oh please, can't  we have a diplomatic solution instead of this nasty war?
 
No. At this point, I don't think we (that is, civilized humanity) can, unless the resolution involves Russia renouncing all claims to any Ukrainian territory, including the Crimea, and returning all the kidnapped Ukrainians. Once those concessions are made, the diplomats can go to work. Until then, let Russia reap the disaster it has sown and choke on its own banquet of horrors.
 
Dean Shomshak

Years ago I was crossing Canada by train and staying in Youth Hostels.  I met a young man from Scotland who was crossing from Halifax to Vancouver.  I met him in Edmonton and asked him what he thought of my country.
"Honestly mate.. its bloody huge!'
"Some of us were talking of going to Calgary for the day!  The way they were talking I thought it was a short jaunt.  Its FOUR bleedin hours!
"Back home that gets me off the island and on the Continent!"
 
Conversly here in Canada we can't seem to think OLD
I was in Stratford at a small shop that was a converted house.  I asked how old was the house?  Her answer..
"Well this is the new part of the house, its only 300 years old.  The back part is the old part, its over 400 years old!"
 
I come from a country where over 150 years old is ancient!

All Things Considered aired a story about the Progressive Caucus letter and Rep. Pramilla Jaipaul's swift retra ction of it, with some mumbling that a staffer had sent the letter before it was "vetted." Um, OK.
 
From the description, it sounds like high-minded dithering by very nice people. Negotiate directly with Russia. But wait, we aren't saying to leave Ukraine out. Oh please, can't  we have a diplomatic solution instead of this nasty war?
 
No. At this point, I don't think we (that is, civilized humanity) can, unless the resolution involves Russia renouncing all claims to any Ukrainian territory, including the Crimea, and returning all the kidnapped Ukrainians. Once those concessions are made, the diplomats can go to work. Until then, let Russia reap the disaster it has sown and choke on its own banquet of horrors.
 
Dean Shomshak