EvilDrPuma

Re: Crystal Caves of the Mole-Men! In Mexico...? That would explain why nobody's seen him lately.

Re: Crystal Caves of the Mole-Men! Now that is an impressive piece of geology. Do you think Bryan Singer is kicking himself for missing the chance to shoot the Fortress of Solitude on location?

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion One idea I've started to toy with is, rather than a widespread conversion, a syncretism (somewhat along the lines of adopting some Irish gods into the Christian pantheon of saints, but more permeating). Maybe I'll post more about it another time, but I'm tinkering with a variation on the "Golden Temple conspiracy" plot seed from the GM chapter that makes the conspiracy less villainous and more misguided...and would offer good reason for moderates in the Temple to adopt a less rigid stance toward the traditional Tualan religion (as in, it's right about a couple of very important things, but not necessarily everything).

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion Steve has more XP to spend than I have. But it is St Patrick's Day, and Tuala Morn is a fantasy Ireland...c'mon, surely she'll cut you some slack...

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion Back in my undergrad days, we had a DM who was famous for boasting that "One well-played (insert monster) can take out an entire party." (You know, one well-played stirge, or rust monster, or rot grub...) Well, one well-played Wild Hunt should take out an entire party. Fast. And the players of those characters should be staining their trousers as well. It's not nice to fool with the Wild Hunt.

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion None direct, but that didn't stop me from suggesting some appropriate tweaks to the jackalope stats from the HERO System Bestiary. (Run away! Run away!)

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion Tuala Morn pretty much uses familiar Celtic gods. The Welsh Arawn is in there, and the smith-god is the Gaulish Govannon and not the Irish Goibhniu, but most of them are known from Irish sources. Lugh, Taranis, the Morrigan, Brigid, Cernunnos (Sernunnos in Tuala Morn), and all those guys are mentioned. The Wild Huntsman gets full stats...and you DO NOT want to mess with him and his pack of hell-hounds!

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion Well, I haven't read Pagan Shore, although I am thinking about getting the PDF just to see how it handles the same source materials. The two obvious differences are (1) Tuala Morn is a fantasy setting inspired by historical and mythological information, not a game-adapted historical/mythological setting; and (2) Tuala Morn handles its Arthurian inspirations in relatively loose fashion, taking a few bits of tone and character types and adding them to its primarily Irish-based setting. From what I've seen, Pendragon takes its high medieval Arthurian legendry very seriously; Tuala Morn has a relatively light sprinkling.

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion And now, back to Tuala Morn. I'm curious to hear what kinds of adventures and campaigns people are starting to cook up. I'm starting to have some thoughts, but I'm busy enough that I haven't had much chance to write them out and play with them.

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion Nah. None of the interesting people are normal.

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion That's also the consensus among people writing books with titles like The Early Germans (Malcolm Todd). There's often some acknowledgement that at least some of the people Caesar calls Germans might have been Germanic speakers, but even the word "German" may have Celtic rather than Germanic linguistic roots. But as far as people (or at least migratory elites and warrior retinues) who provide the foundations for the medieval Germanic states, you're right, that's the Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Invisigoths, and all their lot. (Not to be confused with Franks, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Alemanni, etc., etc., all of whom were also Germanic-speaking...God, this ancient group identity thing gets complicated!)

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion I'd modify that answer; there's a good reason to argue that group identities during the Iron Age weren't really "ethnic" in the first place. Ethnicity as usually defined in anthropological circles develops in an environment of competition and conflict. A good example is the ethnic concept of "Native American," or whichever synonym is preferred; it would have no reason to exist if there were no "other" (European-Americans) against which it could be contrasted. There was a brief, shining moment when at least a Gallic ethnicity might have developed: the Roman conquest. Caesar's remarks about the danger of a Gaul united in spirit seems to indicate that he was afraid of exactly that. But he won, and the opportunity didn't really come to fruition. But Simon James develops such arguments better in The Atlantic Celts than I should bore you by doing here. Other than that, basically, you're right. No matter how much Caesar wants to draw a boundary along the Rhine and say that Celts or Gauls are on one side and Germans are on the other, it just doesn't work. Rivers may make good political boundaries, but they never were very good cultural boundaries in the first place; they promote interaction rather than discouraging it. There probably were linguistic differences, but language is only one tool that can be (not must be) used in ethnic constructions. Caesar's claim that Germans only herded animals and didn't grow crops is simple nonsense when one looks at the archaeology. (And Caesar repeats the same bit of nonsense in distinguishing between his alleged continental immigrants living on the coast of Britain and the "indigenous" people in the interior.) It's fair enough to say that the further north one goes in Europe, the less political and economic hierarchy is visible, but economic and political development aren't necessarily the whole of culture. What I see is a broad continental "palette" of elite culture--which chiefly aristocracies in different places worked with to differing degrees according to local taste and economic means. It's not totally different from the Middle Ages in this respect: German, French, and English feudalism were not identical, nor did the aristocracies of those countries even necessarily speak the same language except when diplomacy called for it. But you can recognize the trappings and values of the medieval church and aristocracy wherever you go to one degree or another, because elites all over a continent found them useful in maintaining and expressing their power. It can create a misimpression of uniformity if you look no further, but in fact it masks tremendous variability. Enough blather, though. The reality as I see it is that Celts and Germans weren't very different in a lot of ways...except when they were.

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion Like rock'n'roll, this thread will never die! Another tidbit I cooked up. I mean this file to contain any house rules I work out for a TM campaign, but right now all that's in it is some thoughts on figuring einech for PCs (and selected NPCs, I'm sure).

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion It's called Gaeilge2, and you should be able to find it for free with a Googling. I did play with the character scale and spacing, so the font doesn't have quite the same lovely narrow look "out of the box." I was inspired by the heading font in the book for that.

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion [ProfessorFarnsworth]Oh, my, yes...[/ProfessorFarnsworth]

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion Definitely of use.

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion Assuming I attached the file correctly, it's a few pages of notes I worked out this afternoon on how one might use the animals and fantastic beasts from the HERO System Bestiary in Tuala Morn. I started doing it just for myself, but then thought somebody else might get some kind of use out of the thing. It's a PDF, but that doesn't trouble very many people these days.

Re: Designing Sword Schools

Re: Tuala Morn Discussion I'm not a death metal fan, but thanks anyway. I have several Chieftains albums copied to my HD that I checked out from the local library, and I think some of their whistle and fiddle songs would be great for Beltane adventures, as would some of the songs with Irish lyrics (players who could possibly understand them being few and far between!). Enya or certain Loreena McKennitt songs would work well for matters faerie or otherworldly--and so would some of those department-store Celtic collections that AmadanNaBriona mentioned (I also have a few of those). Track 6 (Promontory) on the "Last of the Mohicans" soundtrack would be perfect for Celtic-flavored suspense.