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[Hatman]

Greetings.
It has come to my attention that I would like to try running a game, and that my attempts to learn to draw aren't going to make progress unless I have some sort of an obligation. So to that end I created this thread.

If you have suggestions for races/cultures/schools of magic post them in the thread. I retain veto power over any suggestions, but will likely only exercise it if something is blatantly imbalanced or insufferably special. Overlap between schools of magic is fine; schools are more clusters of spells people project associations onto then immutable bits of magical law.

Spoiler: Races/Cultures (click to show/hide)

Lizardmen: regular everyday lizardmen, just like you or I, these guys are the default race by which everybody else is measured. They can swim, and are not penalized by watery/swampy terrain. being generic as hell, they can develop pretty much any culture you want, provided it is appropriate for the technology level of the setting, but they are poor cavalrymen, so bear that in mind. Their ships are often basically floating wads of wicker and weaponry pushed about & crewed by swimming lizardmen.

Dwarves: If I have to explain dwarves to you you must be new here. They get a bonuses to defence and production, especially in mountainous regions, maluses to both in woodlands & can see in the dark. Culturally, they tend towards ancestor worship and towards necromancy. They are not good cavalrymen, but can build roads fast to remain competitive mobility wise. Their ships are slow but durable.

Elves: Pointy eared folk. Keen sight gives a bonus to hit, bonus to defence in woods. Elves are slow learners and not industrious, often taking centuries to adapt new technologies, but these traits are somewhat lessened in times of war & crisis. Most cultures are terrible diplomats due to snobbery. Elves make good bowmen, and some cultures may be good infantrymen or cavalry. Their ships are often simple longships, which are fast to build & maneuver but not suited to ship-to-ship combat

Humans: As anyone who has ever tried to argue with a human can tell you, they are stubborn bastards who can devote ridiculous amounts of willpower to the most banal of tasks, and have something of a vicious streak; Because of this, humans make excellent magicians and are good at resisting enemy enchantments. They fight well on open plains where other races would be penalised due to the lack of any viable cover. They are strictly diurnal, having poor sight and accuracy at night but being correspondingly keen sighted and alert during the day. They generate mana more easily than saner races do. Culturally humans are almost as varied as lizardmen, but most human cultures regard the sea as an evil place; they can specialise in naval power but only at the expense of being good at anything else at all. The other universal trait of human cultures is a bent towards magic that makes things explode. When they build ships they are often large, fast and expensive.

Goblins: Goblins are strong but frail. They have no favoured or disfavoured terrain, are accurate with melee weapons and are poor archers. They are strictly nocturnal in much the same way humans are strictly diurnal. Culturally they tend to be based around mass production of infantry or light cavalry. They are very omnivorous and have a bonus to food production; they can eat wood, bone, cloth et cetera. They tend to build ships which can carry absurd number of troops but which are frail glass cannon type arrangements.

Spoiler: Magic Schools (click to show/hide)

Arcane: Generic spells so simple and universal that every wizard learns them, such as dispel magic.

Apportation: Spells that teleport things: Any teleportation or summoning (non necromancy) spell can be learned by practicing this school; puts the right monster in the right place at the right time, whisk enemy troops off into space, kind of a one trick pony.

Chaos: Thematic school based largely on blowing shit up, summoning hellspawn & blowing up summoned hellspawn. Chaos magicians can conjure fire, call forth lightning, summon various demons and cause mutation. Overlaps with Conjuration, Apportation & Transmutation.

Conjuration:Spells that make matter out of thin air; the ability to crystallise and stockpile excess mana could be thought of as incredibly basic conjuration; "real" spells include Magic arrow, fireball, flash flood and similar effects. while mainly offensive it has defensive utilities such as creating walls and such; Overlaps with Chaos & Nature.

Death: Thematic school relating to the afterlife and how to move creatures to and from it. Mostly involves summoning undead, killing the living, wilting crops, curdling milk, spreading plagues and being a shitty neighbour. Overlaps with Enchantment, Nature and Transmutation.

Enchantment: Spells that change the way objects interact with physics without altering their physical structure; Can cause objects to levitate, develop an electrical charge, change their magnetic properties, control the wind, control the momentum of things somewhat denser than the wind, produce illusions Et cetera. Overlaps With Death.

Nature: Thematic school concerning water, earth and animals; can slowly heal troops, produce food rapidly, pelt foes with hail & bears, cause a foe's city to be stricken by locusts & earthquakes and grant troops animal-like abilities. Overlaps with Apportation, Conjuration & Transmutation.

Transmutation: Changes the shape of things. Useful for healing troops, granting them positive mutations, granting enemy troops negative mutations, turning a water into poison and otherwise ensuring your troops have the upper hand, but lacking in actual killing power. Overlaps with Chaos, Death & Nature.

If you wish to suggest a race culture or school of magic post comment in the thread. If you wish to participate pick a race, 2 schools of magic and PM me. Your race will be common knowledge to anybody participating in the thread, as will your location, but your magic will be known only to you and whoever you use it on.

Spoiler: Players (click to show/hide)

IronyOwl: Lizardmen
RulerOfNothing: Dwarves
GiglameshDespair: Goblins.
Yourmaster: Humans. Absent.
escaped lurker: Other, different goblins
The Froggy Ninja: Has cancelled.

As I now have 6 players to make art for and keep track of, I will not be accepting more signups at this point in time. I apologise to those of you who were piecing together submissions, and I am sincerely flattered that you took interest in this project.

[escaped lurker]

Seeing as the Klackons were pretty much my favourite vanilla race in the father/brother franchise MoO, I figure asking can't hurt... ;з
Yeah, they might be a bit hard to balance if you use a homebrew application of the game, and actually take the magic part out of the game somewhat ... actually, this idea is sounding worse by the minute...

More important, how are you going to implement the game onto the forum? The gameplay-mechanics would be of the greatest interest actually. Else, the idea would sound great so far thou.

[Hatman]

Mechanics of combat are as they were in MoM - every "attack" if effectively a number of attacks equal to the "attack strength", which have a base chance to hit of 40% (for units - spells are more varied) and defence has a similar 40% base chance of working, though if you are on terrain your race favours it is increased, and it decreases on disfavourable terrain. Plains, for example, are very exposed and count as disfavourable for everybody except humans. Certain races and units have bonuses to hit, evade and resistance rolls.

If anything I intend to add more magic than MoM had, hence the increased number of schools, but I don't want to carbon copy every spell in MoM.

Klackons were basically entirely specialised around production weren't they? Shouldn't be impossible to balance, the easiest thing would be to make libraries available early so that their lack of research ability hurts them compared to the literate races.

[Remuthra]

Hmm... Let's see here...

Could I play as Mind Flayers of Thoon?

[Hatman]

If you can boil them down to where they like to live, how they operate in combat (guessing illusiony mind magics are involved?) and what kind of culture/technology you want for them, yes. I can draw squidheads. Well, to the extent that I can draw at all.

[RAM]

What about some slime-folk who appear as mounds of fluid with extreme surface-tension and contain solidified scaffolding chemically formed as the need arises and are massively into recycling? Buildings would be made of slime-matter, possibly harvested from dead slimes or composed of living slimes and could be converted into different buildings at little cost other than time. Military units would largely be the product of combining and specialising slimes. They could therefore be voluntarily split into their component parts, and would likely do similar, although to a lesser extent, when destroyed. They would likely be extremely omnivorous, but their metabolism would be an unknown quality, so would be a decent element to use for balancing. To make them really interesting they could use a population-based economy, expending population for constructions and population growth for more subtle expenditures, but that would likely be more trouble than it is worth.
 As for military units, they could have basic slimes, with spiked crusts and fairly balanced stats. Centa-slimes with four elongated legs and a spike for cavalry, these could be used to construct Centi-slimes that are massive ramming units with many legs that would be fast and powerful, but very easy to hit... Then there could be spear-slimes, with long spikes to use at a distance, which could combine, maybe three of them would stick their spears together and form a catapult with two holding the ground and one holding a rock and the whole thing flipping over to throw the rock as a ranged weapon. The shape owuld be ungainly, and they would need to plant themselves into the ground to get leverage, so their speed would likely be abysmal, at least when shooting...The defensive line of units would likely just get larger and crustier, probably resorting to hammer-style weapons and getting increasingly slow. If they need an ultimate unit, perhaps just a giant slime that can throw basic slimes at the cost of health...
 Socially, they would likely be utilitarian and communal to an extreme degree, though their amorphous forms would make artistic expression extremely easy, probably resulting in the prevalence of fashions, but little in the way of permanent art. Likely a sort of hive mentality considering that anyone might have cause to form a gestalt for the good of the community. IT would make a strong sense of individuality very impractical. Prejudice would seem difficult to maintain, although if all the copper-miners turned green, that would be an example of an obvious opportunity... hierarchies would likely be fairly mundane, with layers of authorities each organising their responsibilities and in turn being organised by the layer above them...

[Remuthra]

Spoiler: Stuff. (click to show/hide)

Sure thing. Mind Flayers of Thoon, simplified, are tentacle-faced psychic alien cultists from another dimension. Their fighting involves a lot of infiltration and espionage along with ranged psychic and magical attacks. Their forces, as established in the Monster Manual V, besides generic mages, include armored psychic clerics, sneaky roguey types which can cloak temporarily at the cost of their own health, metallic brain parasites which kill and take over humanoid hosts and then use their memories, along with the parasite's abilities, to infiltrate other species' forces, zombie slaves created by the parasite from other humanoids as servants which lie dormant as sleeper agents before revealing their true form, a series of robotic servitors and combat mechs, and huge mutated cyborg Flayers with axeblades for hands. The entire species comes in a sort of spacecraft which travels from the Far Planes, where the Mind Flayers say they met something called Thoon. It is unknown whether Thoon is a powerful cosmic being, a god of some form, or simply a philosophy, but it is impossible to relate anything about Thoon, because it comes from the incomprehensible realms at the edge of the universe. Mind Flayers collect the brains of their fallen and preserve them within a pit at the center of their camp. The Mind Flayers are led by their Elder Brain, a powerful psychic tentacled brain-monster which directs the machinations of the cult, and which feeds on young Mind Flayers and a mysterious mutagenic power source they call Quintessence. The Elder Brain is surrounded by a bureaucracy of Disciples of Thoon, those heavily-armored clerics mentioned earlier. They are obsessed with the gathering of knowledge and Quintessence, and harbor a disdain for "lesser" races. They are autocratic, fanatical, and very secretive. Their constructs are built by sluglike cyborg abominations known as Madcrafters. Mind Flayers' primary food is the brains of other creatures, which they extract using their face-tentacles. Quintessence is stored within pods known as Matrices. For more information (and drawings), I suggest you consult their source within pages 104-125 of the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5th Edition Monster Manual V.

[Hatman]

Ram: Slimes should be doable, if odd. What makes a slime wizard?
Escaped lurker: Klackons will likely strain my meagre artistic skills, but If you wish to play as them I suppose I shall just have to improve.
Remuthra: That is a lot of focus on infiltration, which is not really a thing at present. Also, I was not aware that mindflayers had so many melee troop options. My thoughts on balancing them had been to just make all there troops capable of magical ranged attack but liable to be turned into headboots in melee, but if that is to work it will be a departure from the fluff you are referencing.

[zacen299]

Can we have Therianthropes or Were-creatures? As in say wolves for their average soldier. Boars or elephants for cavalry. Hawks and other birds for harassment. Bears for their defensive line. Among whatever else you can think of. They'd also be able to go into any form between human and animal taking on their qualities. In more of a gameplay sense they'd be skirmishers and forest fighters. For their society it would be something along the lines of a council. Except to get on it you need to prove to the entire city or nation that you are better than everyone else you are competing against for the position. (If you like the idea at all I'll fluff it out more tommorow)
Assuming of course that this makes any sense or even fits at all considering I'm half asleep right now.

[Hatman]

Sounds more like nature magic than a species, really.

[Remuthra]

Ram: Slimes should be doable, if odd. What makes a slime wizard?
Escaped lurker: Klackons will likely strain my meagre artistic skills, but If you wish to play as them I suppose I shall just have to improve.
Remuthra: That is a lot of focus on infiltration, which is not really a thing at present. Also, I was not aware that mindflayers had so many melee troop options. My thoughts on balancing them had been to just make all there troops capable of magical ranged attack but liable to be turned into headboots in melee, but if that is to work it will be a departure from the fluff you are referencing.

Go ahead and do so, whatever makes the game work .

As far as the abundance of melee troops, they come from a melee-focused game, so that's sort of to be expected.

[zacen299]

Sounds more like nature magic than a species, really.

I totally see that now, and that's why I really shouldn't post when I'm half asleep. I'll think of something different in a little bit.

[Lukeinator]

I have a race Idea. The Fishmen would not need  boats, who would also be able to breathe on land. The lower tier soldiers would wear shell or coral armor, the higher tiers would wear scale. Their magic would mainly consist of using waves and storms to damage boats and coastal settlements, and hardening water and making structures, weapons, and armor out of it. They would be diurnal, and be good at fighting in the ocean.

[mastahcheese]

Since I seem to have this sort-of race that has popped up in a couple games, I guess I'll throw them out here.

Mysterious Travelers: About the size of a human, they come from across the regions that maps don't reach, often from across oceans and mountain peaks. They are always fully covered in robes with a hood, and their face cannot be seen, even with magical lights. Should one be uncovered, and the hood removed, they mysteriously vanish, leaving only an empty robe in it's place, and they have been reported to be seen again, as if being unmasked transports them back to their home, unharmed. They similarly vanish when killed, only they don't return. They can't voluntarily remove their hoods, nor the hoods of other travelers. They employ strange, advanced weapons, and are often magically inclined. They are expert sailors and craftsmen, and can create devices beyond the scope of the normal world.

[RAM]

Well, I guess on the rare instances that a slime does come into a strong sense of individuality, society and its own nature would take it to slight madness, which would be a natural point to furnish them with magic. If a sufficient quantity of slime felt that magic was of value to slimefolk, then you have the beginnings of an empire...