Playing Oblivion: Day 3 part 5 – Garlic Run

This is part of an ongoing series. If you want to start at the beginning, go here.

It's early 2012 and I'm playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Why? Because I (finally) can. Join me on my path to glory and the stabilization of the status quo in almost-Tolkien-land. 

As I leave Skingrad, I spot something burning ahead of me by the roadside. I take my time and check out the plants by the roadside, none of them being nightshade. When I come closer, my greatest fears come true: The burning is actually a portal to hell. Another Oblivion-gate has opened, right here in front of the city of Skingrad. As I get closer, which I must as it is right by the road, the sky turns red and, to someone with Martors disease, alarmingly bright. I decide to ignore the gate for now and move on, when I suddenly find myself surrounded by three goblins attacking from all sides. Martor fights off the ambush with an alarming lack of efficiency, his shield breaking in the process. Once more, I have neglected weapon-repair and now I pay the price. Badly injured, I manage to fend off the creatures and then see, that it wasn't an ambush but me, distracted by the hellgate, having stumbled into their campsite.

Pen & Paper: Creating a World part 4 - Spirituality

My world-building series continues, this time we'll talk a bit about the spiritual world-order that the fantasy-setting I'm creating for my bi-weekly gaming group is like. Religions, spirits and ghosts are present and active in the world - what is that going to be like? Let's explore! (by the way, I am aware that I said I'd go for the recent world-history this time, that'll be up next - promise!)



So, this is a fantasy world. By now we have given it a geography with some basic notions of empires/cultures, as well as some non-human sentient species roaming about, doing non-human sentient things. As I have also started playing with my players, I can now start letting their ideas and thoughts influence the further details of the world they're in. One should always listen to the players, they take over a lot of your work as a GM if you play your cards right...


So, spirituality is this posts topic. For this to be a fantasy-world, there needs to be a supernatural element. This is something I find hard to balance, as too much magic tends to replace technology in any given setting and I usually don't like these settings. Say, "there are no airplanes but we can summon flying horses at will, there are no cellphones but we have speaking-stones, there are no robots but we have golems for everything - but everyone still fights with sword and bow..." - you already lost me there. You can use magic to replace technology, but that results in a sci-fi setting, rather than a fantasy-setting (see Exalted when playing in the first-age - it has the internet and even power-armor). So, nobody in my setting is going to throw fireballs or simply raise the dead when need be. Magic is primeval, mysterious, rare and scary. Supernatural creatures are even more so.

Playing Oblivion: Day 3 part 4 – Another Approach

This is part of an ongoing series. If you want to start at the beginning, go here.

It's early 2012 and I'm playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Why? Because I (finally) can. Join me on my path to glory and the stabilization of the status quo in almost-Tolkien-land. 

This time, I wait out the day in the Squandered Mine. For what I am planning, I need it to be dark when I get to the witch house, as I will leave it soon after arriving. I need to steal that soul-gem without angering the witch Melisande by invading her privacy. There might be a way and, once again, it involves my vampire-charm ability. Its effect lasts for sixty real-time seconds. That might be enough. I lay out the plan in my head and finally, after the sun has gone down, leave to actually do it.

Minecraft: Permadeath Play - Day 3

After my favorite Minecraft play-blog has finished its epic story of a nomad and his eternal voyage (which wasn't eternal after all), I have decided to fill the void left by that glorious adventure by starting my own little project with Minecraft: Minecraft: Permadeath play. By now the game even offers the option of Hardcore Mode, which deletes your save-file and the entire world in case you should die. That is something I can get behind. I started to play and will post day by day here every once-in-a-while. The goal is not only survival, as that would lead to me building a fortified farm and then nothing else happening ever again. Instead, I have set myself some goals that I shall pursue one at a time. The first one is to get a map of my surrounding area, exploring it to its entirety. Let's get started, shall we?

I get out of the cave early, fighting off a zombie, and get to work. The house is going to be made out of wooden planks on a cobblestone-foundation. I start placing wood on the foundation, every once going off my peninsula to check the view on the building.

Pen and Paper Play: How to Host a Dungeon

A short interruption to my World-Creating series, this post is going to be a bit different, whilst being more of my usual fare: A let's play post of the aforementioned How To Host A Dungeon. I have just found my notes from my very first playthrough of it on my old laptop and thought I'd translate and share them with you. Sadly, I am missing the actual dungeon map but, as I am horrible at drawing, it's not to much of a loss. I've set it all up so it is the history of a dungeon before a player-group enters it. Enjoy!


Once the land lay barren and empty, beneath the earth a long vein of gold, a subterranean river connected to a subterranean lake as well as a sinkhole on the surface, and a deep set cave where Gargarax, a wyrm from the old age slumbered for millennia. Then came the dwarves.


Hagrards Bunch, a dwarven tribe built their mines into the ground, working the gold vein and ever expanding their cavernous mines. Their population was thriving and prospering, their civilization blossoming. They created great architectonic feats under ground, such as the Great Hall of Yaldrick the Dwarven King, which his son expanded and his grandson added a great library to. At the height of their civilization, Hagrards Bunch carved the Great Dwarven City of Yaladrakkia from the base rock and despite having to pay tributes to the great wyrm Gargarax, they were still rich enough that, according to legend, the great Treasure Hall of Yaladrakkia, which has never been found, was splendid and filled with riches beyond ken. But the dwarves dug to deep and to greedily...

Pen & Paper: Creating a World part 3 - Geography

In this sub-series I will work out a setting for a game of (low-) fantasy pen and paper role-playing that I'm running as a GM right now. The series is inspired by this  and the interpretation/variety of it by one of my friends, although it will be substantially different from both. Find the introduction over here. This time around I will introduce the world geography, including a map that a friend of mine drew free-handed.


When it came to the geography of The World, I had ideas for some of the political entities and mysterious locations that are to be found in it but no real idea on how they are placed and what the overall map of the world would look like. I asked the aforementioned friend to draw me a world-map that is not of our own world and she went at it and drew some continents and islands on a piece of graphing-paper. She gave it to me and what I had to do next was to fill in the white of the map, make it a habited world. So the basic first version of it looked like this:

Playing Oblivion: Day 3 part 3 – Making Mistakes

This is part of an ongoing series. If you want to start at the beginning, go here.

It's early 2012 and I'm playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Why? Because I (finally) can. Join me on my path to glory and the stabilization of the status quo in almost-Tolkien-land. 

I decide to make a run for it, dropping a Save before leaving the mine to run to the witches house. On the first three attempts the combination of flailing down a mountain-slope and being burned by the sun kill me. On the fourth try, I make it to the house and inside. Melisande the witch asks me about the stones and I can only tell her that I don't have five yet. As I know that there is one in her basement, I move past her and down the somewhat hidden hatch.

Minecraft: Permadeath Play - Day 2

After my favorite Minecraft play-blog has finished its epic story of a nomad and his eternal voyage (which wasn't eternal after all), I have decided to fill the void left by that glorious adventure by starting my own little project with Minecraft: Minecraft: Permadeath play. By now the game even offers the option of Hardcore Mode, which deletes your save-file and the entire world in case you should die. That is something I can get behind. I started to play and will post day by day here every once-in-a-while. The goal is not only survival, as that would lead to me building a fortified farm and then nothing else happening ever again. Instead, I have set myself some goals that I shall pursue one at a time. The first one is to get a map of my surrounding area, exploring it to its entirety. Let's get started, shall we?

Hearing zombies above and fearing sudden death by creeper, I ran out of my cave, the sword I had crafted over night in hand. I had used the iron that the cave held to craft a sword, as I don't want to get killed by some random mob, and a set of shears as I intend to build myself a bed as soon as possible - being outside at night is way to dangerous when you're on permadeath. I get out of my cave and manage to slay a zombie that had been camping out above my entrance. Then I went hunting.

Pen & Paper: Creating a World part 2 - Fantastical Races

In this sub-series I will work out a setting for a game of (low-) fantasy pen and paper role-playing that I'm running as a GM right now. The series is inspired by this and the interpretation/variety of it by one of my friends, although it will be substantially different from both. I have introduced the whole thing over here and in this post I will tell you about the different fantastical sentient creatures that inhabit The World.


There are several different sentient races besides humans inhabiting The World. As I mentioned previously, they differ enough from humans to be a problem whenever they find themselves in human settlements so they live either on the fringe of the human empires or have their own empires. Let's introduce some of them.

Playing Oblivion: Day 3 part 2 – Dungeoneering with a Purpose

This is part of an ongoing series. If you want to start at the beginning, go here.

It's early 2012 and I'm playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Why? Because I (finally) can. Join me on my path to glory and the stabilization of the status quo in almost-Tolkien-land. 

Nornal is one of these ancient ruins littering the landscape, built by some advanced ancients right on top of a hilltop. It's also defended by marauders, which are as much as I can gather, some type of elite bandits. There are two of them outside, attacking Martor with bow and arrow and quickly falling prey to his blade. Entering the ruins, it is noticeable that the place is half-flooded, despite being situated on a hilltop. There are some more marauders present but they are no match for Martor, not now that his vampiric powers seem to be growing every day.

Pen & Paper: Creating a World part 1 - The Basic Setup

In this sub-series I will work out a setting for a game of (low-) fantasy pen and paper role-playing that I'm running as a GM right now. The series is inspired by this and the interpretation/variety of it by one of my friends, although it will be substantially different from both. Over the course of this series I will cover the cultures and races that populate my fantasy world, as well as the geography and mystical aspects including religion, gods and magic. This first post will only feature a brief introduction and overview of it all.


First of all it is important to mention that the world we're going to play in has no name (or many of them). For its inhabitants, who are on a level of technology variing from stone-age-like over the European middle-ages up to early medieval Persia and China, it is the world and as they are unaware of other physical planes besides the possibility of other planets being discussed by some elite philosophers, it is simply The World. None of the cultures living there has actually fully explored the planet, thus the world-map I will introduce later is something hypothetical to the inhabitants of the place, a GM-tool rather than a possible in-game artifact.

Minecraft: Permadeath Play - Day 1

After my favorite Minecraft play-blog has finished its epic story of a nomad and his eternal voyage (which wasn't eternal after all), I have decided to fill the void left by that glorious adventure by starting my own little project with Minecraft: Minecraft: Permadeath play. By now the game even offers the option of Hardcore Mode, which deletes your save-file and the entire world in case you should die. That is something I can get behind. I started to play and will post day by day here every once-in-a-while. The goal is not only survival, as that would lead to me building a fortified farm and then nothing else happening ever again. Instead, I have set myself some goals that I shall pursue one at a time. The first one is to get a map of my surrounding area, exploring it to its entirety. Let's get started, shall we?

I spawn in a snow-covered forrest and immedeatly feel the dread and pressure that I have set upon myself. If I die, this is it. And there is no safe place in the world as of yet. The first day in Minecraft is always something filled with time-pressure, as you scramble to get tools and building-materials to get a shelter for the night going. I also need to find a suitable place to settle down at so, after chopping down some trees to get the wood I will need for my first set of tools, I set out to find a less snow-covered area. I have always liked to start with natural caves or similar, as that would also be a source of coal and stone but the area around me is just snow-covered conifers as far as I can see...

Things to come 4

This blog has been going for three months now and I think I have found my rhythm in posting. That said, this month will probably see the following:

-Pen and paper thoughts. As I had said last month, this time I will actually get around to doing some world-building. We'll see if I do actually do it...

-Again, continuing the Oblivion diary. I have enough material for another two months and I don't think I'm even half-way through the main questline...

-I might go on about some more board-game experiences. Just in theory.

-Several possible Thoughts on Pixels are in the making. I have to organize my thoughts on these though.

-I intend to translate my forum-optimized tactical dungeon-crawl RPG MadSlay Online into English. If it gets done within this month, I'll release it here.

So yeah, I've managed to post more posts in March than I did in February and I'll try to keep up the pace with about three posts per week on average. See how it goes in the near future on this very blog!