Mixed Lot

[Thos]

I've decided to join http://www.NaNoWriMo.org. I'm going to write a journal describing a young priest's travel with a band of adventurers across Highpoint. Sofar I'm thinking of using The ShardsfallQuest as starting point and then just look where it takes me. But I'm open for suggestions.

In doing so, a few ideas that came to me:

Coglayer's Chess
A very new game and very popular among young coglayers. It is also a learning tool for understanding cogs, cogwheels and gears and how they interact.

It consists of a square board with a grid of 25 by 25 ball-bearing lined pegholes set an inch apart and a large grab-bag of gears and cogwhhels on axes that fit snugly into those pegholes. A spring-driven mechanism in the board (older boards may have a small steam engine) drives two cogwheels in two corners along one side, these are the starting wheels. In the other two corners on the other side are two more cogwheels, those are the target wheel. The two players take turns placing cogwheels and gears into the pegs, starting at their starting wheel. The first one to place a cogwheel that drives his target wheel wins. Often this is announced by a echanism in the board triggered by the target wheel turning.

As the target wheel is diagonally across the board, the two paths will of course intersect. To differentiate between the two players, one starts with a fast wheel, the other with a slower one. The player may however choose to speed up or to slow down across the board as they wish, as long as their target wheel is driven at the same speed as their starting wheel.

There are no hard'n'fast rules as to shape and size of cogwheels and gears that can be used, except that they must all have the same number of cogs per rimlength. Players may bring their own specialized set of cogwheels to a game, but all wheels are pooled at the beginning of the game and players are free to use cogwheels and gears brought by their opponent. Wheels and gears may be placed next to each other or on top of each other as desired, but any piece placed must be driven by the starting wheel of that player, no static pieces allowed.

Cog-Launcher
There comes a time when a coglayer needs to lay down the cog in his mech! To do so in either defense against invading miscreants or defense against assorted hitch-hiking vermin, the Cog-Launcher is available.

Developed by a gnome coglayer from a buzzsaw with a loose blade-pin into a steampower of its own, the coglauncher will spin thing, sharp edged cogwheels at high sppeds and then launch them at an opponent. An automated reload will immediately feed new cogwheels from the 12-shot magazine for use in the next round. The fired cogwheels start at 1d4 dmg and 10ft. range, 12 to a pound. The spining and firing mechanism can be boosted to fire larger cogwheels that go further and do more damage using standard steampowers. However these cogwheels will also increase in weight.

Moonstruck
This very nasty spell was developed by a Lunar Cult to defamate opponents, preferably while they are in public appearances. It simply bestows the attributes of a Lunar creature upon the target, causing his thought processes to go totally awry, this possibly making an utter fool of himself, while every cleric will be told by his god that he is a Lunar creature. The target will also be considered a Lunar creature for detect lunar and other lunar-targetting spells. (Full spell rules re range, duration not yet quite clear, but I liked the idea. Clerics and Paladins will probably receive a Will-save, as their patron god protects his followers)

[goodmangames]

Coglayer's chess is a cooool idea. I like it. In my DragonMech campaign I once had a group of bored NPC miners excavating a big lunar meteor for mensite. They played a traditional dwarven dice-throwing game called "throwing the bearded tit," which was easily simulated with d6's. The basic premise was that dwarven miners like their women with hairy chests, so the game was based on that. I don't remember the game offhand but I have the notes somewhere... the PCs got involved in a betting match based on throwing the bearded tit. Needless to say, this wasn't considered appropriate material for publication in the print version of DragonMech.