DShomshak

Another poster expressed interest in seeing the plans for Wetchley House, the base acquired by the PCs in my first playtest campaign for Ultimate Supermage. Fortunately, I still have them as files, so you don't have to look at scans from my crappy scanner. Well, except for the picture of the house.
 
This was a 4th ed campaign, so the plans are hex-mapped.
 
The house isn't big. I don't remember the exact book from which I adapted the plans, but there are scads of books out there such as Victorian House Plans, Classic House Plans, etc. Then I traced and spliced together bits of drawings of those houses, with a little freehanding to fill in the gaps, and made an illustration. I'll start with that:

Dean Shomshak

Wetchley House actually consists of two houses with identical exteriors, one on Earth and one in Babylon, the City of Man. Another floor exists in neither place: It's "above" the 3rd/attic floor of the Babylon half, but "below" the cellar floor of the Earth side. There's also a tower room (upper left in the illustration) whose location is a little hard to explain, but we'll get to that later.
 
Various doors, stairs and an elevator connect them. Much of the plans should be explicable from context, such as what's a door or window, stairs up or stairs down. Circles with letters and numbers in them indicate that a door or stairway operates interdimensionally. Like, where there's a circles "2b" near a half-door on a wall, that's a door from the Earth side, 2nd floor, to the Babylon side, 2nd floor. On the plan of the Babylon side, there's a corresponding "2A) marking the other side of the door (Babylon to Earth). It would have been better to use "E" and "B" for Earth and Babylon instead of "A" and "B," but at the time I never thought anyone but me and the players would see the plans. Oh well, I don't feel like changing the pictures now.
 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 


 
Dean Shomshak
 
 
 

And for anyone who wants some "flavor text," here's an excerpt from the Campaign Chronicle one of my players kept, initially for the benefit of a few former players (but wow I'm glad for the reference now). I added only a few notes of clarification.
 
Also, Wetchley House is ornately Victorian, but I'm not sure it qualifies as a "mansion." The original plans were of a house of fairly modest size, just one step up from a "cottage."
--------------
>Date: Mon, 11 Dec 1995 02:31:34
>To: [REDACTED]
>From: [REDACTED]
>Subject: Madhouse!
 
Well, after a month long break due to Thanksgiving, we again continue the saga of our motley crew of spellcasters...
 
Last month you may recall, we fought and defeated the Anarchitect; at the end, chaos went wild in the Anarchitect's Babylonian base, with Artifex running in and trying to spell hack the wild chaos to settle it. It succeeded, after a fashion. The Victorian mansion is now bidimensionally located (in both Babylon's Victorian London district and in our old lot on Earth in Tacoma, WA). We rest a day, and then decide to explore our new base together. I won't go into details of the exploration, since no exciting battles or such developed, but the house has 9 floors (maybe 10, depending on how you count). The first 4 floors are Earthly, and are - with a few odd bits, such as the living goldfish swimming in the crystal doorknob - a substantially normal appearing Victorian mansion (allowing for some modern conveniences; electricity, semi-modern appliances, etc.). On the Earthly levels exist such rooms as the Kitchen, a Parlor (which Jezeray is dressing this up as a Seance Room for her Fortune Telling business), Library, Smoking Lounge, 3 bedrooms, a Music room, and a Den. All are decorated in a substantially Victorian style. There is also a Cellar floor with the utilities and a now-unused coal bin, and a area perfect for Redeemer (who now has taken to calling himself The Bishop) to convert for his crypt-like quarters.
 
The "next" 4 floors (as we numbered them anyway) are Babylonian - each is decorated in a style based on the 4 sons of Urthona (the Supreme Lord of Art). His sons were Art's envoys to the other
Zoas. The bottom Babylonian floor is dedicated to Bromion, Art's envoy to Order, and is decked out in Swedish Modern (all white tile, chrome trim, very angular with lots of flush surfaces). This floor has a Game Room, Pantry, Office (w/ obsolete PC computer), and a very sterile bedroom.
 
The next floor up is in the style of Theotormon, Art's envoy to Nature, and is decorated in a style we termed Oriental Fusion - a mix of assorted oriental styles. This level has a parlor, vestibule (w/the traditional low Japanese tables), a very lushly appointed bedroom (which Artifex took dibs on), and a Buddhist Shrine of all things.
 
The 6th floor is a tribute to Rintrah, Art's envoy to Chaos, and is done in a style mixing Baroque and Heavy Metal elements - imagine the ornate carvings and paintings of mad King Ludwig's
castles, but with images of punk angels in leather instead of graceful swans or cherubim, and other similarly perverted imagery. This level houses a trophy room, and Armory (complete with medieval weapons and armor), a Salon, and the very ornate - if somewhat disturbing - bedroom.
 
The last Babylonian floor is in the style of Palamabron, Art's envoy to itself, and is decorated in a Art Nouveau / Surrealist style. This level is much bigger inside than outside, and has as its principle feature a Ballroom with a Musician's Dais. In addition, there is a Costume Room (with racks of assorted costumes; Jezeray stole a Gypsy costume to use in her job) and a storage room with lumber - which we will use to fuel the non-gas fireplaces that are located through the house. The main hallway "wraps around" and connects back to itself.
 
One door connects the corresponding floors on the Earth and Babylon sides of the house.
 
There is also a floor that does not exist with Babylon or Earth - in fact, when The Bishop used a Transform to open the skylight glass there was literally nothing beyond except a diffuse white light. The air started to get sucked out just like in a sci-fi movie when you breach the hull. This is what we call the Garden Level - it has a large garden, with a recessed bower to one side, and a round, 20' diameter pool (steps leading in suggest it is a swimming pool although the water is unheated) with a mermaid fountain in the center. There is also an area to the side decked out in plain white tiles. We think it would make a good gymnasiumif we put the equipment in.
 
The stairs form a double loop, too. If you start from the Earth side first floor and keep climbing, you go past the attic foor to arrive in… the cellar floor of the Babylon side. Keep going through the floors of the Babylon house, and above the attic you find the garden floor. Go up another flight and you’re in the cellar of the Earth side. One more flight up, and you’re back where you started.
 
Finally, the "tenth" floor, which is really the tower room above a balcony which is, in turn, over the front door. This is where Anarchitect was conducting his ritual. From the outside, this is just a little turret - but from the inside it’s a 20 foot square room. It seems somewhat reinforced, making it a good place to cast risky spells. It’s only 1 room, with 4 doors, one in each wall. 2 doors lead to the rooms near the turret – one to the Earth part of the house, one to the Babylon half. The other doors lead to matching closets on the Earth and Babylon sides.
 
I should also mention the elevator - it goes to every floor except the tower room. It has only five buttons, however. The first four (from bottom up) take you to the first four earthly floors. The last button takes you randomly to one of the Babylonian floors or the Garden floor. Of course, I have left our a plethora of bathrooms, small storage areas, etc.
 
Well, I hope I haven't spent too much time on the base, which understandably wouldn't interest you as much as me. Anyway, on to the actual adventure...
----------------
But that part isn't relevant here. Kudos to anyone who's lasted this long.
 
Dean Shomshak
 

And for anyone who wants some "flavor text," here's an excerpt from the Campaign Chronicle one of my players kept, initially for the benefit of a few former players (but wow I'm glad for the reference now). I added only a few notes of clarification.
 
Also, Wetchley House is ornately Victorian, but I'm not sure it qualifies as a "mansion." The original plans were of a house of fairly modest size, just one step up from a "cottage."
--------------
>Date: Mon, 11 Dec 1995 02:31:34
>To: [REDACTED]
>From: [REDACTED]
>Subject: Madhouse!
 
Well, after a month long break due to Thanksgiving, we again continue the saga of our motley crew of spellcasters...
 
Last month you may recall, we fought and defeated the Anarchitect; at the end, chaos went wild in the Anarchitect's Babylonian base, with Artifex running in and trying to spell hack the wild chaos to settle it. It succeeded, after a fashion. The Victorian mansion is now bidimensionally located (in both Babylon's Victorian London district and in our old lot on Earth in Tacoma, WA). We rest a day, and then decide to explore our new base together. I won't go into details of the exploration, since no exciting battles or such developed, but the house has 9 floors (maybe 10, depending on how you count). The first 4 floors are Earthly, and are - with a few odd bits, such as the living goldfish swimming in the crystal doorknob - a substantially normal appearing Victorian mansion (allowing for some modern conveniences; electricity, semi-modern appliances, etc.). On the Earthly levels exist such rooms as the Kitchen, a Parlor (which Jezeray is dressing this up as a Seance Room for her Fortune Telling business), Library, Smoking Lounge, 3 bedrooms, a Music room, and a Den. All are decorated in a substantially Victorian style. There is also a Cellar floor with the utilities and a now-unused coal bin, and a area perfect for Redeemer (who now has taken to calling himself The Bishop) to convert for his crypt-like quarters.
 
The "next" 4 floors (as we numbered them anyway) are Babylonian - each is decorated in a style based on the 4 sons of Urthona (the Supreme Lord of Art). His sons were Art's envoys to the other
Zoas. The bottom Babylonian floor is dedicated to Bromion, Art's envoy to Order, and is decked out in Swedish Modern (all white tile, chrome trim, very angular with lots of flush surfaces). This floor has a Game Room, Pantry, Office (w/ obsolete PC computer), and a very sterile bedroom.
 
The next floor up is in the style of Theotormon, Art's envoy to Nature, and is decorated in a style we termed Oriental Fusion - a mix of assorted oriental styles. This level has a parlor, vestibule (w/the traditional low Japanese tables), a very lushly appointed bedroom (which Artifex took dibs on), and a Buddhist Shrine of all things.
 
The 6th floor is a tribute to Rintrah, Art's envoy to Chaos, and is done in a style mixing Baroque and Heavy Metal elements - imagine the ornate carvings and paintings of mad King Ludwig's
castles, but with images of punk angels in leather instead of graceful swans or cherubim, and other similarly perverted imagery. This level houses a trophy room, and Armory (complete with medieval weapons and armor), a Salon, and the very ornate - if somewhat disturbing - bedroom.
 
The last Babylonian floor is in the style of Palamabron, Art's envoy to itself, and is decorated in a Art Nouveau / Surrealist style. This level is much bigger inside than outside, and has as its principle feature a Ballroom with a Musician's Dais. In addition, there is a Costume Room (with racks of assorted costumes; Jezeray stole a Gypsy costume to use in her job) and a storage room with lumber - which we will use to fuel the non-gas fireplaces that are located through the house. The main hallway "wraps around" and connects back to itself.
 
One door connects the corresponding floors on the Earth and Babylon sides of the house.
 
There is also a floor that does not exist with Babylon or Earth - in fact, when The Bishop used a Transform to open the skylight glass there was literally nothing beyond except a diffuse white light. The air started to get sucked out just like in a sci-fi movie when you breach the hull. This is what we call the Garden Level - it has a large garden, with a recessed bower to one side, and a round, 20' diameter pool (steps leading in suggest it is a swimming pool although the water is unheated) with a mermaid fountain in the center. There is also an area to the side decked out in plain white tiles. We think it would make a good gymnasiumif we put the equipment in.
 
The stairs form a double loop, too. If you start from the Earth side first floor and keep climbing, you go past the attic foor to arrive in… the cellar floor of the Babylon side. Keep going through the floors of the Babylon house, and above the attic you find the garden floor. Go up another flight and you’re in the cellar of the Earth side. One more flight up, and you’re back where you started.
 
Finally, the "tenth" floor, which is really the tower room above a balcony which is, in turn, over the front door. This is where Anarchitect was conducting his ritual. From the outside, this is just a little turret - but from the inside it’s a 20 foot square room. It seems somewhat reinforced, making it a good place to cast risky spells. It’s only 1 room, with 4 doors, one in each wall. 2 doors lead to the rooms near the turret – one to the Earth part of the house, one to the Babylon half. The other doors lead to matching closets on the Earth and Babylon sides.
 
I should also mention the elevator - it goes to every floor except the tower room. It has only five buttons, however. The first four (from bottom up) take you to the first four earthly floors. The last button takes you randomly to one of the Babylonian floors or the Garden floor. Of course, I have left our a plethora of bathrooms, small storage areas, etc.
 
Well, I hope I haven't spent too much time on the base, which understandably wouldn't interest you as much as me. Anyway, on to the actual adventure...
----------------
But that part isn't relevant here. Kudos to anyone who's lasted this long.
 
Dean Shomshak
 

Wetchley House actually consists of two houses with identical exteriors, one on Earth and one in Babylon, the City of Man. Another floor exists in neither place: It's "above" the 3rd/attic floor of the Babylon half, but "below" the cellar floor of the Earth side. There's also a tower room (upper left in the illustration) whose location is a little hard to explain, but we'll get to that later.
 
Various doors, stairs and an elevator connect them. Much of the plans should be explicable from context, such as what's a door or window, stairs up or stairs down. Circles with letters and numbers in them indicate that a door or stairway operates interdimensionally. Like, where there's a circles "2b" near a half-door on a wall, that's a door from the Earth side, 2nd floor, to the Babylon side, 2nd floor. On the plan of the Babylon side, there's a corresponding "2A) marking the other side of the door (Babylon to Earth). It would have been better to use "E" and "B" for Earth and Babylon instead of "A" and "B," but at the time I never thought anyone but me and the players would see the plans. Oh well, I don't feel like changing the pictures now.
 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 


 
Dean Shomshak
 
 
 

Another poster expressed interest in seeing the plans for Wetchley House, the base acquired by the PCs in my first playtest campaign for Ultimate Supermage. Fortunately, I still have them as files, so you don't have to look at scans from my crappy scanner. Well, except for the picture of the house.
 
This was a 4th ed campaign, so the plans are hex-mapped.
 
The house isn't big. I don't remember the exact book from which I adapted the plans, but there are scads of books out there such as Victorian House Plans, Classic House Plans, etc. Then I traced and spliced together bits of drawings of those houses, with a little freehanding to fill in the gaps, and made an illustration. I'll start with that:

Dean Shomshak

I cannot now recall where I heard this, but someone pushed numbers around and it seems that radiolysis of water (breaking water apart, generally into protons and hydoxyl ions, usually by gamma rays or X-rays, but other radiation can cause this to occur as well) and other substances at depth in the Earth can produce the sort of chemical disequilibrium that chemosynthetic bacteria would employ both as an energy source and as source for needed nutrients.  Protons and sulfate ions are the two big ones in the discussion I remember; we know of archaeans that get by on just those ions in terms of energy source. 
 
Radiolysis will go on in within Earth for a long, long time, with thorium-232 having a half-life of 14 Gyr.  The amount of water in the mantle isn't something I was able to find estimates for, but there is some.  Whether or not you could get life started in the deep interior is unknown, but once it invades that part (survivors of organisms that rode the subducted oceanic plates down) it could be there for keeps.  You won't make metazoans that way, but the idea that every planet might have a deep biosphere of at least this sort is worth thinking about.

Well, I am not drawing upon Roman Catholic theology.
 
 
Mmm... No. Since I don't think I can explain further without delivering a long, boring philosophy seminar. I shall simply acknowledge that much depends on definition of terms. I suspect we do not define our terms the same way.
 
There is certainly villainy in my campaign, that needs heroes to fight it. There is no supernatural force causing it or defining it.
 
Dean Shomshak

I'm aware of that, thank you. I still find the name... unpleasant.
 
Fortunately, I read Watership Down years before my father decided to make rabbits his side hustle. Meat for grocery stores, blood plasma and eyes for the UW School of Medicine, and brains for a company that, IIRC, used them to make a blood coagulant. One of my jobs was cleaning blood and membranes from the little bunny brains. But it means I can honestly include "Brain Washer" on my resume.
 
Dean Shomshak

Could be worse -- when someone asks me how I managed to pay for college, I can honestly tell that that I used to strip and grind for cash.
 
I was materials science and engineering -- spent summers working in a concrete research lab, stripping and grinding samples.  

The BBC yesterday aired a brief story about astronomers umaging the most distant galaxy yet seen. They're close to seeing the first stars, and expect the James Webb Space Telescope to do the job.
 
Dean Shomshak

Giants were opponents of the Gods in both Norse and Greek (the Titanomachy) mythologies, so those are places to look for inspiration.
 
In one setting I used, giants were an "elder race," slowly vanishing from the world, leaving behind ruins and cryptic monuments, and represented in the present by isolated individuals wielding strange powers that might be magic or technology, holding onto ancient fears, grudges, ambitions, or just habits, with tired monomaniacal zeal.

Well, I am not drawing upon Roman Catholic theology.
 
 
Mmm... No. Since I don't think I can explain further without delivering a long, boring philosophy seminar. I shall simply acknowledge that much depends on definition of terms. I suspect we do not define our terms the same way.
 
There is certainly villainy in my campaign, that needs heroes to fight it. There is no supernatural force causing it or defining it.
 
Dean Shomshak

Months back, ATC interviewed a law professor who suggested Giuliani's actions merited disbarment. I guess he called it.
 
Dean Shomshak
And apropos of nothing, after the years I spent working weekends in my father's rabbit slaughterhouse, the name "Bunny Ranch" fills me with terror and loathing.
 
Dean Shomshak

Months back, ATC interviewed a law professor who suggested Giuliani's actions merited disbarment. I guess he called it.
 
Dean Shomshak
And apropos of nothing, after the years I spent working weekends in my father's rabbit slaughterhouse, the name "Bunny Ranch" fills me with terror and loathing.
 
Dean Shomshak

Well, I am not drawing upon Roman Catholic theology.
 
 
Mmm... No. Since I don't think I can explain further without delivering a long, boring philosophy seminar. I shall simply acknowledge that much depends on definition of terms. I suspect we do not define our terms the same way.
 
There is certainly villainy in my campaign, that needs heroes to fight it. There is no supernatural force causing it or defining it.
 
Dean Shomshak

More news items you can use as events in your near-now game: medieval graves opened about 1400 years ago, for unknown reasons
 
What were they looking for then?  And ... what are they looking for now that led people to discover the old openings?

Orcs... a fantasy staple race now popularized almost anywhere.
 
I ran a game (past tense) where I decided that it made no sense for orcs to be so brutal, warlike, aggressive, unintelligent. A society of people like that simply would collapse without workers, farmers, or craftsmen.
 
So I created a world where orcs were a true society. There were three varieties: urban, savage, and nomadic. The urban orcs were like any other civilization: intelligent, organized, specialized in their tasks (traders, farmers, craftsmen, soldiers, leaders, artists, philosophers, witches, shamans, etc.) The savage orcs were like the orcs we know today: brutal, tribal, aggressive, somewhat isolated, highly prolific, and relatively primitive. The nomadic orcs were a bit of both: civilized, intelligent, organized, but cunning and somewhat militaristic, raised with a philosophy of domination, and to some extent, xenophobia. But they did get along reasonably well with others, despite their xenophobia. You could talk to them.
 
And within each subgroup you could find individuals who fell right into the stereotype and those would be far from the norm. Anything was possible.
 
So, you could meet all types of orcs, and you had to decide how you personally would want to react to one orc or another, not because they weren't orcs anymore, but because you now had a choice. It no longer was "black & white".
 
I liked the idea and it threw up a lot of interesting situations, like when the party was joined by a nomadic orc warrior detachment who encountered undead with the party. The orcs thought this was not acceptable and offered to join the PCs to destroy a common enemy. Not your typical orc interaction, but it was great for the story and the roleplay. Unfortunately I also had one player who could not tolerate the idea that orcs were not the "evil, ugly brutes" that he knew and loved to hate, so he almost immediately quit the game. To each their own, I say.
 
So, then I decided that it was actually orcs who had been here longer than humans. They had an ancient civilization with magical and mechanical wonders that were lost thousand of years ago due to some cataclysm. But the remains of their cities and fortresses were scattered throughout the lands like pockets of buried treasure, ripe for the looting by clever thieves and research by enterprising mages. If they could get past the prodigious magical and mechanically animated guardians. It made for an interesting contrast to see how low orcs had fallen in recent centuries when compared to their ancient predecessors, and it gave the orcs historical significance and a past they could be proud of.
 
It made for a very different game where players actually had to truly consider the orcs, and in some places, admire them, instead of just hating them by default.

Personally, I think there's a strong likelihood of significant armed insurrection -- bombings, massacres, Middle East-level semi-organized violence -- within 5 years. But not civil war, as such.
 
Dems won't try capturing the government by violence because Dems can get everything they want by normal political and electoral means. Polls show that even large numbers of Republican voters want what's on the current Democratic policy agenda.
 
Most Republicans are still sufficiently committed to the process of government (vide all the elections officials who did their jobs honestly in 2020 and certified the result) that they won't back an outright coup attempt or war.
 
The plutocratic far right is shrewd enough to get what it wants regardless of who runs the government.
 
That leaves the culture warriors who have boundless rage but no real institutional backing fro other segments of society, and entrepreneurs of violence who think they might be able to ride the chaos into power. Some of whom would no doubt turn to Russia, China or other geostrategic rivals of the US, acting as mercenaries against their own country.
 
Such an insurrection could not overthrow the US government. But it could cripple the US for years, creating a power vacuum that Russia and China could fill, not to the benefit of the rest of the world.
 
I would of course prefer to avoid such a conflict. I hope that the blood-and-guts screaming from the farthest right is just hot air; that if the Capitol insurrection showed the depth of their rage, it also showed the depth of their incompetence at political violence. It's a good sign that the DOJ seems to be elevating domestic right-wing terrorism as a concern.
 
And the population of Angry White People is dropping, which is part of what makes them so angry. In 10-20 years, it's over.Repuvlicans might gain a few decades through voter suppression and gerrymandering, but that's it. And if  the insurrection actually happens, they lose everything.
 
Dean Shomshak

At risk of tooting my own horn, I recommend my "Worldbuilding: Social Design and Social Forces" thread, which I just bumped back up to the top of the page. You might find it useful for fleshing out the "deep structure" of how your setting functions.
 
If you want every city to have something colorful and distinctive (and I wouldn't say that's necessary for *every* city; concentrate your efforts on the places you intend the adventures to happen in), I'll repeat my usual recommendation of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. It's quite a short...  prose poem? At any rate, Fantasy from an author who won the Nobel Prize for literature.
 
Dean Shomshak

Yeah that was in the original Strike Force, I thought that was a clever device, but I've never thought it was necessary.    Its comics.  If Franklin Richards can be a toddler for 25 years, then the world can be more or less static without needing to explain why Reed's inventions never changed the world.  Comic books are about the illusion of change: IN THIS ISSUE, NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME!

Many prostitutes are essentially enslaved (they cannot leave their pimp or madame, they receive little pay for what they do -- some slaves did get a stipend -- they are compelled to undertake labor, they are treated as property, etc).  It is actually legal in the US Constitution to enslave people while in prison, forcing labor out of them for no pay (breaking rocks down at the penitentiary).  Slavery is more common and present today than most people realize.
 
It was almost ubiquitous in the past, in nearly every culture through human history.  Back when you had to draw water from the river, chop wood to build a fire, start a fire with two rocks, so you could smelt ore to make a pot to boil the water and cook some food, labor saving devices = slaves.
 
I wrote about the way slavery works in my Field Guide, because most modern players (especially younger ones) don't really understand slavery or its history, so a clear statement on it was needed, I felt.  Enslaving people who have done terrible things to force them to work off their debt to society is one thing, indenturing people to do free work in exchange for learning a trade is another, taking prisoners from a conquered nation to work as slaves yet another, and just raiding another people to make them slaves yet another kind.  Each has its own moral character and significance which just condemning slavery entirely whole cloth does not adequately address.
 
This is probably a bit deeper than most players want to get into the concept, but GMs who are doing worldbuilding need to consider this kind of thing.
 
And let's face it, freeing slaves from bad guys is a really great adventure concept.

Picking missions happens for a large ensemble of missions.  Sometimes it has as much to do with technological developments that make for a suddenly greater opportunity to gain information; sometimes simple orbital geometry weighs against missions to the outer Solar System with the gravitational slingshot opportunities varying (e.g., it might be you launch in 2030 and get there in 2038; or you could wait to launch until 2032 and still get there in 2038).  And sometimes it's political in ways I only barely perceive.  It wouldn't surprise me if additional missions to the Jupiter system are being delayed while the Juno mission is still in operation -- its recent close pass of Ganymede gave better-than-ever-before data on that moon, and you want to digest that, and other data to come in the ongoing mission, before deciding what instrument package to load up and send.