Astulae the Roleplaying Game

In today's post, I am releasing part of the first chapter of my own roleplaying game, Astulae. Its just a "taster". I hope that you like it; questions and comments are certainly welcome.

Product Link: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/141686/Astulae

Overview.

Roleplaying games have a long tradition of using dungeons – often vast underground locations that are filled with monsters to slay, potential treasure to acquire, traps to be disarmed, and glory to be sought. As playing groups mature, questions about such dungeons grow. Why were they built? What is the ecosystem like? How can so many inherently evil creatures live side-by-side without any friction whatsoever? One stock answer to these kinds of questions leads to concepts such as powerful wizards controlling everything inside their dungeons. But this is not without its own issues either. What is the motivation of the powerful wizard? Madness, or some grand master plan?

Astulae is one coherent answer to these questions, using a unique type of dungeon format. In a nut-shell: imagine that your dungeon is not a series of rooms connected together with cobweb-ridden corridors deep underground, but instead, it is a collection of pocket dimensions gathered together from many parallel realities that are inter-connected by a labyrinthine system of portals.

Additionally, Astulae is a nod to mega- dungeons that appeals to the hack and slash style of dungeon exploration of yore. But it need not be used in the typical “adventurer seeks treasure and dragons to slay” manner (although there is, intentionally, a dragon sitting on a pile of treasure in one particular location to cater to this). There are many plot hooks scattered throughout this work and these may play the primary driver behind any Astulae adventure. With a friendly player group, the GM can provide many hours of entertainment within the Astulae exploring many possibilities.

Finally, Astulae can be used in combination with almost any other setting. Since it explicitly connects to many realities, almost any campaign setting can logically find an entry or exit to this novel mega-dungeon.

Setting.

Astulae (a plural) is Latin for “splinters”. At a basic level, each “room” in Astulae is a splinter of reality taken (and sometimes frozen in time) from across a grand ensemble of possible parallel realities. Somewhat akin to pocket dimensions, each Astula (singular) can have its own laws of physics, its own peculiarities, and sometimes: its own denizens – some benign, some deadly, and some incomprehensible. In some Astula, magic and technology can coexist side-by-side, and in others both are strongly suppressed. Further, many Astula appear to be in a state of decay: slow, or otherwise. In turn, each Astula is connected to another via a (two-way) portal that ultimately creates a large ensemble of “rooms” to explore and navigate between – a mega-dungeon in many respects, but not a traditional one. But the configuration is not stable. Portals can be re-routed to other Astula. And new Astulae are added to the ensemble over time to create entirely new pathways and loops through.

Portals. 

Each “normal” Astula typically contains three or more portals (sometimes referred to as windows, gates). These can take many forms: literal doors, small gaps that only polymorphed (or size-changed) characters can fit through, and even hidden gateways (e.g., built in to a set of drawers). Frequently, they appear as swirling vortices of black, purple and blue colours (the colours are not meaningful unless the GM determines otherwise). Other times, they are just “normal” doorways that the PCs can see through into the next Astula. Some are simply a circular gap in space – not until they step through such a gateway will the existence of the portal become obvious. In almost every case, they have well-defined boundaries (such as door frames, or the branches of a tree that curve back on themselves to form an oval) that defines the extent of the portal.

In normal circumstances within a given Astula, one door will lead back to where the player characters (PCs) came from. The other two (or more) doors will lead onward to new Astulae. Which ones they lead to are up to the GM. As a suggestion, the choice of a portal to the “left hand side” (whichever orientation that is!) of the PCs will lead to an Astula that is thematically similar to the one that they are in, whilst portals to the “right hand side” head to more deviant Astula. PCs are encouraged to pay particular note to the orientation of left and right (through making note of which portal they came through in to a particular Astulae), so that they don’t get confused.

Uncommonly, there will be many more Astulae leading off from a given Astula, each using a different portal. These are noted in their descriptions, but the GM is free to improvise on existing Astulae. Many of these extra sets of three portals are at right angles to the other ones. For example, there may be a vertical set of three portals, and a horizontal set of three portals. The vertical ones can be employed as ways in which to translate to a different theme of Astulae.

Etiquette around portals between Astulae natives – the collective term for the people that exist within the Astulae – is mixed. Most groups realize that if they want to freely use portals, then they must allow others to do likewise. Therefore agents of the Mandated Cabal faction (described elsewhere) rarely prevent Brown Clerics (another faction) from using portals in Astula they’re interested in, so long as their own opera- tions go undisturbed. But both would likely be opposed to agents of the Red Telepath wanting to destroy the self-same portal. In the case of flickering portals (those that only open for short periods during the day), Astu- lae natives will sometimes gather in groups nearby waiting for them to appear and gos- sip about the news of the day. In some cases, portals are closely watched. Other portals have been taken over by small conglomerates that charge PCs to use them.

Genre.

In principle, the Astulae setting can be used as almost any genre desired. The GM is free to use only a small subset of the Astula described in this tome; hence it could be totally restricted to a traditional high fantasy ideal, with a good versus evil meme scattered throughout. Or it can be played as a modern era psychological drama to great effect. That said, Astulae is principally intended as a multiple reality and parallel worlds gaming journey. It has some darker undertones scattered throughout, and tensions bordering on outright conflict between various factions (both real and perceived). Further, facets of horror, insanity, control, manipulation, strangeness and conspiracy feature in an array of the locations described. Of these, the sense of being the “outsider” is one of the chief memes associated with this setting. It will show up again and again to the PCs as they frequently look out of place compared to the Astula they enter and their abilities and knowledge appear highly strange and disorientating to others.

Astulae RPG in New Year Sales!

Astulae, the roleplaying game of alternate realities megadungeon, is now on sale at DriveThruRPG and RPGNow.com until 12/Jan/2015.

Here's what one reviewer said:
I found this game to be very intriguing and the concepts contained within to be new and fresh. The idea of parallel dimensions is not a new one, but there are enough unique aspects of this RPG to make this feel new, in particular the effect of magic and technology between the dimensions. The book itself has a huge amount of information for a GM to create some awesome adventures for their players. I like the fact that it does not tie a GM down to any particular play scheme, however there will inevitably be some work for a GM to do in mapping across thing such as player classes etc, to the classes described in the book. This would be no small undertaking for any GM, although in the appendix it does give an example game system to use. However I feel that this is also it's greatest strength and will allow great flexibility for adventuring.

This is the cheapest it'll be for some time, and an expansion has already been penned and will be released in a few weeks time! Hope you enjoy!

Astulae - a new RPG

With equal measures of pride and trepidation, today I've published my first roleplaying game. Its called "Astulae" and I'm selling it via DriveThruRPG at http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/141686/Astulae.

The image to the side is the front cover of the book. Clocking in at over 200 pages, this has been a real labour of love that I've undertaken in my (extremely limited) spare time between moving houses, and between when my young children are finally asleep in their beds and me being asleep on the kitchen table through exhaustion! Its taken about a year to write up, polish, source the images, and typeset the whole thing. 

I hope that some of you out there might like it (Christmas time gift or stocking filler perhaps?! lol!), perhaps at least recommend it to your friends who might enjoy it or "like" the Facebook page for it: https://www.facebook.com/sequesteredindustries. I'm also prepared to hand out free copies to reputable reviewers as well!! (just send an email using my warpstoneflux gmail address).

What's it all about then?

In a nutshell: Its a campaign setting in a twisting megadungeon of alternate realities. 

Imagine that your dungeon is not a series of rooms connected together with cobweb-ridden corridors deep underground, but instead, each “room” is a splinter of reality taken from across a grand ensemble of possible parallel realities. 

Every Astula (a room) can have its own laws of physics, its own peculiarities, and sometimes: its own denizens – some benign, some deadly, and some incomprehensible. In some Astula, magic and technology can coexist side-by-side, and in others both are strongly suppressed. 

But many Astula appear to be in a state of decay: slow, or otherwise. In turn, the Astulae are connected to one-another via portals that ultimately creates a large ensemble of realities to explore and navigate between – a mega-dungeon in many respects, but certainly not in a traditional sense. The configuration is not stable. Portals can be re-routed to other Astula. And new Astulae are added to the ensemble over time to create entirely new pathways and loops through. Will you enter and find a way to profit? 

This book itself is the campaign setting for Astulae and features over 100 highly detailed pocket dimensions (Astula or dungeon-like rooms) across 7 genres (High fantasy, Futuristic, Medieval, Nature, Outlandish, Urban and Waterside), 20 factions or persona who run through these Astulae for your PCs to join with or oppose, almost 50 altered laws of physics and reality or oddities to further flavour each Astula, 36 unique dressings per major Astula genre to further dress the contents of each room, 8 large-scale meta-plots to launch at PCs, and a suggested d6 rules system for groups who don't wish to use the contents in a rules-agnostic manner or adapt them to their own favourite rules set. And that's before all the flavour text and over 70 unique pieces of artwork scattered through the book that can be used as plothooks or inspiration! Jump in to Astulae to plough its depths!

Graffiti and other flavour for painting miniatures, and empty rooms in RPGs

In Dungeons and Dragons, and indeed: many other roleplaying games, (including painting blank walls for the warhammer / 40k!) there are whole suites of rooms that are described as "empty". This does not mean they are featureless. To the contrary, an "empty" room can consist of all kinds dressings and flavour.

One of the best resources I've found on the internet for this comes from the Hack and Slash blog (with a downloadable pdf here). This contains a wealth of information for role-playing games to make those empty rooms more interesting and entertaining. Add to that some traps, some treasure (pdf here), and the makings for a free wheeling game are already in ones hands.

Today, I wanted to give a list of graffiti for the Astulae setting that we have "in preparation". Many of these are generic enough to be transplanted to other settings easily enough. I hope you gain some inspiration out of them. Roll 1d10 if you must, otherwise select the ones you want!

1. Tag - a symbol or a combination of letters is scrawled on the surface at regular intervals, perhaps by disaffected youths, wild monsters staking their territory, or lost adventurers trying to keep track of where they've been.
2. Unreadable language - written back-to-front to what the players expect, or using characters that simply don't exist in their own language, this graffiti simply makes little sense.
3. Symbols of power - magical lettering and runes adorn the wall. Perhaps they're to be used in a ritual, or perhaps they summon a magical creature when read or traced by fingertip.
4. In Memorium - a stylised header lettering at the top announces those who have lost their lives, perhaps within the hallways of the dungeon being explored. A set of names follows the "In Memorium" header.
5. Arrows - several arrows point the direction to travel in. Or perhaps not. It is up to the adventurers to decide whether to follow them or not.
6. Warnings - "Beware the Red Telepath! She can take whatever form she wishes in your mind's eye!"; "Do not trust the Lady in Blue - she LIES!"; "Run away from all Crossers!"; "Always follow the wall to your left!"; "Do not pick up the ancient device!", etc.
7. Maps - an attempt to map out a portion of the Astulae (or dungeon) has been etched in to the wall. Several crosses appear on the map, perhaps denoting visited rooms, dangerous rooms, or rooms with vast treasure hordes?
8. Instructions - "Give way to Crossers"; "Stop at the intersection"; "No diving in to the pools"; "No walking across the grass", "Obey the rule of three"; etc.
9. Names and Labels - whether they are street names, house names, names on statues, or whatever else, the possibilities for such labels are literally infinite.
10. Audio announcement - "Attention please. The driver of the vehicle with registration XXX needs to report to reception immediately"; "No magic in the corridors"

Finally, whats with the image of the obliterator? Well, I've added some text to the base of the obliterator for a little flavour (slightly obscured in the image) that reads "Zoot Lives!".

Plot hooks

“I never wanted any of this. What choice was there? Come here, or die. And so I came here. I have lived 7 years in the Astulae. Not once have I found an exit in that time. Remember that when you see what I have wrought: I never wanted any of this.”

-Unknown author, from a papyrus journal page recovered by expedition XIII.

“I have asked my nine best minds to divine the source, power and centre of the Astulae. None have returned.”

-Guildmaster Aldro.