First things first, you need to click through this link to Goblin Punch and read the blog post there:

A Spell Called Catherine

Okay? Done? Good. Because this next bit isn’t going to make any sense unless you know what I’m talking about.

Let’s start with a random rules check: Summoning spells physically bring the creature or object from some other place, they don’t create them out of whole cloth.

I’m not sure if that simplifies the ethical implications of this concept or makes it much, much worse: Are these actually versions of Catherine from alternate dimensions? If so, does the Catherine of this dimension actually deserve any recompense for their labors of her other-dimensional “siblings”? They’re effectively immortal while here and if they’re actually returned to the same place and time as the one that they left, are they actually being exploited? What if people start disappearing from this dimension and it’s determined that it’s a result of people summoning them?

Not all of these issues actually require “Catherine” to show up in your setting: The summon monster spells already allow spellcasters to summon intelligent beings to come and do their bidding. There’s a really tremendous ethical mire lurking there. “Catherine” just brings it into sharper focus and puts it center stage.

And even if you’re not interested in the ethical conundrums presented by this particular “what if”, consider all the immediate fantasy plots that fall out of it: You’ve got wizards fighting to gain (or protect) arcane secrets. You’ve got the wizard’s guild encroaching on the whore business. You’ve got mobsters trying to get their hands on the spell (and wizards possibly trying to stop them because they’re uncomfortable with that sort of thing). You’ve got people obsessed with the summoned/created Catherines trying to stalk or kidnap the “real deal”.

If you can’t find at least a half dozen potential scenarios in all of that, then you’re not really trying.

(In a modern setting with magic I’m imagining a similar scenario also resulting in organ donor scams. The PCs get called in when recent transplant recipients start dropping dead because their new organs have vanished inside them. Although I suppose it doesn’t take much imagination to imagine angry diabolists hunting down an arcanist because their human sacrifice retroactively vanished and their demonic patron is unhappy about it.)

Inaki Lind posted a review of the Legends & Labyrinths: Black Book Beta at RPGNet awhile back. Check it out.

Of course, you can also download a PDF copy of the Black Book Beta itself now. That’s over here.

Lone Wolf Development (who previously brought you Hero Lab) is currently running a Kickstarter for their new Realm Works campaign management software.

Personally, I’ve usually been pretty skeptical of campaign management software. I find that it usually only offers marginal advantage over just using a word processor, while usually featuring a less intuitive interface and all the liabilities inherent in a closed format that becomes obsolete as soon as the developer disappears.

But much to my surprise, I think Realm Works is winning over my skepticism:

There are three key features which have really captured my imagination.

First, the ability to share specific points of information with my players. I wish that the software also included the ability for my players to add their own information to a node in the database (so that it would completely replace the functionality of the campaign wiki I currently maintain). But I think it may be a literal game-changer, “Okay, they’ve interacted with Character X. So I’ll unlock his description.” Or to unlock locations on the map of Ptolus that they’ve visited so that there’s a consistent, pervasive, and evolving understanding of the city.

Second, the explicitly node-based method of content organization:

This is self-evidently well-suited to the kind of node-based scenario design that I use in my campaigns. It would be nice to be able to specifically associate content with the connections (i.e., you could click on one of the arrows and see what clue/clues that line is representing). (I’ll also be interested to see if I can “nest” these story networks.)

Third, and the thing most likely to make a backer out of me, is the way they handle maps:

The ability to selectively reveal a map to players is potentially interesting, but appears to be fairly limited at the moment. (It really requires the integration of virtual tabletop features.) But what’s really captured my imagination is the “pin” system. Just a few days ago I mentioned that I prep my dungeons using a Monster Roster that’s independent of the map key. This allows me to dynamically run groups of monsters through the dungeon complex (reinforcing, fleeing, barricading, setting traps, ambushing, etc.).

While the roster helps, this sort of dynamic dungeon complex can still be something of a juggling act. But if I could prep the dungeon in Realms Works so that one set of pins contain the key for each room, another set of pins contain each encounter group in the dungeon, and I can move the second set of pins dynamically during the game?

I never thought I’d want to run a game from my laptop or tablet. (The screen is simply too small compared to the visual real estate I can leverage at the gaming table by laying out multiple pieces of paper and reference books simultaneously.) But if the interface for this stuff in Realm Works is clean, fast, and easy?

It might completely change the way that I run games.

So, yes. This is me recommending that you become a backer of what looks to be a potentially awesome piece of software.

Rob Conley over at Bat in the Attic has posted some nice “rules of thumb” for long distance sighting in hexcrawls.

Meanwhile the Hydra’s Grotto points out that Conley is low-balling mountains in his post “Mountains and Mole-Hills“.

I’m posting this because (a) I find their posts useful and insightful, but also (b) because I think they’ve both missed the mark on mountains.

(Note that Conley uses a 5-mile hex, the Hydra’s Grotto uses a 6-mile hex, and I use a 12-mile hex. I use the 12-mile hex specifically because it simplifies away a lot of hex-to-hex sighting questions. But for the purposes of this post, I’m going to try to simplify things by converting back into actual measurements.)

When I did my series on Hexcrawls, I included a post on spotting distances. In that post, I included my rule of thumb that mountain ranges can be seen from 72 miles away, but I didn’t talk much about where I derived that value from: Basically, I did some quick research and determined that most mountain ranges have an average height of 3,000 feet or thereabouts. Notable peaks within a range will often be higher than that, but the average height of the range is 3,000 feet. And if you just do the calculations, you’ll discover that you can see an object 3,000 feet high from about 68 miles away (which I then rounded up to 6 hexes x 12 miles per hex = 72 miles). Or, if you reverse the math, I’m saying that at a distance of 72 miles you can see the occasional peak that’s up to 3,500 feet high in that range or thereabouts.

And so, for example, PCs can see the mountain range in my OD&D hexcrawl from about 6 hexes away. But there’s also a notable peak in hex L2 (the Stone Tooth from Forge of Fury) that’s not as high and can only be seen from 3 hexes away. And there’s also a volcano in hex K1 from which the smoke plume can be seen from much further away if it’s smoking. And a very tall peak of 10,000 feet in hex A1 which could theoretically be seen from 10 hexes away on a clear day.

The “clear day” proviso is an important one. The atmosphere itself will have an impact on your viewing distance (particularly for fine details) and haze can significantly decrease it:

But I digress: Conley makes his calculations on the distance mountains can be seen from based on an elevation of 1,000 feet. That’s roughly the minimum height of a mountain and, therefore, way too low for seeing a range of mountains from the distance. Hydra’s Grotto aims equally high above average with an elevation of 5,000 feet, which actually exceeds the maximum height of some mountain ranges.

One thing I would pick up from both Conley and the Hydra’s Grotto is the idea of adding a specific mechanic for “finding a good place to sight from” that chews up some time but allows you to see a little further than you normally would. That idea is inherent in the guidelines for determining spotting distance based on the horizon and height (find a tree and you can see further), but hooking it as a specific, mechanical choice might encourage its presence in actual play.

On a lighter note (compared to yesterday’s post), here’s the ape-headed manifestion of a god I designed in HeroMachine 3.0:

“Fear me mortals!”