FantasyCraft:Otters Ransom

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Otter's Ransom: a Dungeon Boom town

Game Introduction

A basic Dungeon Crawl game with expectations of greater interaction with the people of the world and a chance to grow beyond that. Ran with the FantasyCraft system with houserules and set in the setting of Distant shores of the realm seas.

The game proper is focused on the Lost Lands a small country sized region surrounded by 6 other nations. The Lost Lands used to be under control of family heavenly married into the neighbouring nobles and after the last noble died without an heir the neighbouring nobility got into a feud about who was the legal inheritor and so since then these families have been putting down the risk of war on any who tried to make a claim and people moved away over time mostly top to bottoms as people who desired power left to places that had people to impress, then the merchants looking for richer customers till finally most towns are mostly empty and people can't really afford to run them any more, leaving mostly small isolate villages and hamlets. Not to mention the lost of security of a nobility willing to defend you from folk threats.

What's changed recently, with the discovery of dungeons, a renewing source of wealth and magical items, the fighting nobles motivated by greed or at least a need for funds have came to an agreement they will offer the community in this unclaimed lands a shared contract of protection in return for the a share of the wealth but in such away that doesn't give them claim of the land or its people. In doing so creating a sort of free town free to rule itself not bound to the nobles. Long term there are plans to claim control but those are for another time.

The party are but one group of hopefuls looking for a new life, either via the riches of the dungeons or by supplying services for the growing population of the newly born town of Otter's ransom.

Campaign and rule variants

Default Campaign Qualities

  • Fast interests (permanent): Honestly I feel the default game is a bit over restrictive with number of Interest, and while at first looks like they are meant to be fluff background knowledge too many mechanics are based on them.
  • Miracles (permanent): This is self explanatory as it fit's my first goal can't have priest and Paladin without it
  • Beneficent Universe (Permanent) [Note must be alignments mandatory path see alignments]: This is to give alignments at set theme
  • Plentiful magic items (permanent): Part of making the world High magic is making sure magic items are plentiful.
  • Great Magic Items (permanent): To make the spread of available items larger
  • Sorcery (permanent): Again self explanatory can't have Mages and alchemist without it.

Not a campaign quality as such but best place to put this The era of the setting is assumed feudal with Prototype Reason items on the horizon.

House rules and rulings

Character creation

Starting Interests: You start with 4 languages: 1 native (chosen from one of your races languages), the universal language trade and 2 other from any language that not restricted from you, a study in your culture or homeland, a study in a career and 4 additional interests of your choice.


Alignment interest: Repeat but Free step from Beneficent Universe must be from mandatory path, but only this step must be from mandatory path. Examples of mandatory paths Great Beast alignment mandatory path Beasts or Angel Alignment mandatory path Good

Starting feats: All PC’s gain 1 free feat at level 1 that is to be used either on a Species feat or basic skill mastery (Race), other feats might be available on discussion. Because a lot of the different races are based on taking a feat at first level and I want to increase diversity this rule exist to allow it. Basic skill mastery (Race) are skill mastery pairs only available at character creation, chosen to give an insetting feel for the non specialised races

Rolls

Knowledge checks: To re-balance larger amount of starting interests I'm adding 5 to the dc's on the knowledge check tables, not perfect but it means characters on the high end of interest can only reach the same level of knowledge checks as characters with the standard rules and the lower end while not reaching the same height of knowledge makes up with greater company in the levels they do reach.

Gear and items

Prototype upgrade: an item upgrade that allows a object to count as one era lower then normal at the price of stability, difficulty to build and price. To allow all items to exist while keeping the setting at a less organised era. As I want a setting of mostly city states with the rare kingdom.

Prototype, type Craftsmanship, Const -1 min 1, Comp X2, Era ancient(item's era is considered one less), Cost +200%

Food and Drink: Instead of the first food and drink of the day having it's effect players get to choose which affects that day, characters that gain the benefit of two foods and drinks per day get to choose which two.

Ruling on Meal sizes: Note by my reading/assumption all food counts as a meal for the 3 meals a day and a ration represents 3+ meals in an easy to carry manner eaten over the course of the day rather then 1 large meal that lasts all day., with the common meal entry just being an example of a meal with n bonus effects. As food and drink prices are multiple portions assume prices will be lower for individual portions, to the point of not worrying about individual common meals in friendly locations.

Trinkets: Magical Items with rep cost of less then 5 count as trinkets and not prizes

Silver Trinkets: a magical item with purely RP effects or replaces a fairly cheap item. Price is debatable by item but less then 50s (that or add a +50% to an existing item and say how it is magic rather then mundane)

1 rep Trinkets: RP effect that might be extra useful / arguably uncommon or replaces a substantial item or multiple cheap ones.

Otter's ransom

Otter's ransom.png

Founded bout 5 years ago (9th Earth 5336) officially, but there have been temporary camps on the site previously, mostly due to the geography a relatively flat piece of land near but higher then the nearby river which is access able by a gentle slop. Well its more that the river locally is in a very small gentle sloped valley.

Local (1 to 2 day travel) surroundings are wild grassland mostly maintained by the mix of local wildlife and semi peaceful grazing monsters, there is the occasional small wood holding out against being destroyed which are slowly being turned into managed woodland for wood and foraging.

Common local grassland monsters include, jackalopes, Ground nesting Screechers (some sort of monster song bird), pebble turtles, Razor cats (extra large wild cats with unusually large claws) and proto-Slimes, of these only the Razor cat is a direct threat and even then only to children. A less common but often seen monster is the ice adder but they are mostly seen in winter and may be a type of elemental. The woods usually have woodland adapted members of the grassland monsters (smaller and better are dodging trees at high speeds or tree climbing) but there are a type of nut throwing squirrel and an usually large rat (Cat sized). The river has a rather generic fish monster and an large clawfish but population and diversity of aquatic monsters is low due to the presence of an unusually peaceful and playful Otter-like elite monster which gives the town it's name, as the locals have taken to gifting the great monster a regular offerings of food and playthings to placate and gift thanks for it's protection. (While not a great beast many think such an accession is only a matter of time)

Characters

PC's


Party Resources


Character template

Allies

General folk

Enemies

Places of note

Otter Home: The otter made lake which the Great Otter lives, along side many differing other type of playful and peaceful otter creatures.

The Vault: The place where the magical items and taxed wealth of the dungeon is stored until the representatives of the supporting regions can collect their share. This along with the guild is the main place to acquire non-trinket magical items.

The Guild: A organisation created, staffed and funded by the surrounding Adventurer's guilds, in hopes of gaining their own share, a microcasm of the larger political complexities.

The Academy: Similar to the guild house this place was created by surrounding universities and colleges to study the magic, natural world and history of the Lost Lands. While peaceful compared to the guild, it is slightly underfunded and so many of the scholars so secondary work, such as teaching the locals or adventuring themselves.

The Church: A non denomination building in which ceremonies of birth, growth marriage and death can be preformed, may be booked to preform religious sermons if need. Most often though used as a place of public meetings and announcements.

Old camp: The original camp, no specialisation in population type.

New Camp: The camp of the most recent immigrants, biased towards medium Demi-folk and Creature-folk.

Small Camp: A camp that small folk have concentrated around to avoid being bumped into by larger folk.

Large camp: A camp for larger folk who want to avoid creating a hassle for others.

Feral camp: a camp aimed at those with a powerful sense of smell as to keep themselves up wind from the smells of the town.

Rain Guard rock: A geological feature that in the past has helped protect travellers from the wind and rain.

Other locations

Wider World

Sylver

A mostly temperate rainforest like region areas not covered in forest are mostly wild plains, Home to mostly to feral-folk and Beast-folk and the more mystical races the area architecture is greatly incorporated into the wilds. An exporter of ranched farmed and hunted meats and animal products, the hard to grow herbs and spices along with aromatic woods, lumber and their products. Many say it is full of portals to ethereal realms, though this hasn't been confirmed. That said it does share a major Realm harbour with its neighbour Agichestershire.

Cartrefcarreg

A region made almost completely out of Mountains and valleys there are still places untouched by civilised folk (open question if areas visited by wild drakes count). This region is rich in veins of metal, precious stones and high quality stone that the locals mine and used in their crafts and homes. Most building though in the region are carved to cliff faces rather then built with the fertile valleys almost exclusively used for farming.

Tujaalbahr

Surprisingly dry for a sea bordering area and hot for its place in the world, the suspected reason for this is the large population of minor fire and related elementals which suggests a powerful elemental calls this region home affecting the climate. This region is one of the richest as it focuses on trade both with the local regions but also with far off lands, it can reach out to these by both its sea routes and minor realm harbours. Those who do not directly engage in international trade focus on the arts and craftsmanship with local and imported goods. A hard to disprove claim is that the majority of the pirates of the bay come from this region but seeing as this region suffers most from them, it is considered a primarily internal problem by most. While it rents port towns to other nations, it does so in far smaller number than Lanc'cust (region 4) preferring to act as a intermediate trader instead.

Lanc'cust

A long thin nation or at least it's mainland part no it's land border is never more then a month travel by foot from the sea. Like Tujaalbahr it's sea border is even more ill defined then it's land borders. This nation due to the large number of finfolk and aquatic adapted versions of standard races focuses on fishing the surface and foraging/farming the sea floor of it's bounty. Almost self sufficient most trade revenue it gets is tariffs on good's passing through it's border and the renting of ports towns to the other nations rather then direct profit from trade. Hold claim over a large number of fully under water towns it sometimes boosts it's the largest region.

Zier-grirek

In many ways the thematic opposite to Agichestershire, Zier-grirek at first glance gives of the feeling of the dark kingdom. With most of the north western end being lowland flat naturally sulphurous swampland and full of semi nomadic Uruk and other semi nomadic people, it's easy to see why such a mistake could be made. Not all of the kingdom is swampland though with the lands near the Agichestershire border being decent farmland and most of the east being unusually dry grasslands and forests, with the south giving way to jungles. The other feature of this region is it is magic rich especially in physical magic being rich in magical reagents from it's swamps and jungles and having actual solidified magic mines. This leads to the west side being rich in wizard towers and magical research collages, plus a semi industrialised alchemy and iron crafts. Other the the export of magical consumables, mainly elixirs, this region is famed for it's iron good export from its many bog iron deposits and a bustling trade in mundane medical goods from the more mundane herbs and study of such, though it's not just slanderous rumour that most of the poisons on the markets come from this region.

Agichestershire

An almost picturesque rural region of farms and woodlands, with a large majority of human inhabitants, with the aeras that are not almost pure human full mostly Elves, Pech and Dwarves make this region is almost a stereotypical fantasy setting. Due to this areas calm climate and fertile soil it is a major exporter of food for not just the neighbouring regions but to the greater world. Tor'Ville is noted to having one of the lowest natural amounts of magic in its borders, but as the locals say "Who needs magic when you have good soil for grain and hay". It is to be noted that this region has regular skirmishes with its neighbour Zeir-grirek.