New Project

So with the races all posted, my nephew had some great timing in bringing over an old PC. So a new project I'll be working on is cleaning that up, upgrading it a bit, and then turning it into a dedicated file server.

I'll shop for parts this weekend (RAM, hard drive), and might even start putting them in this weekend, but college is keeping me pretty busy at the moment, so I'm not sure if I'll have the time.

Until the next post,
Khorne

The Redguard

And finally, the last (but of course not least) race, the redguard!

The most naturally talented warriors in Tamriel. In addition to their cultural affinities for many weapon and armor styles, they also have a hardy constitution and a natural resistance to disease and poison.

Attributes Male +10 Strength and Endurance, -10 Intelligence, Willpower, and Personality Female +10 Endurance, -10 Intelligence and Willpower

Skill bonuses +10 Blade, Blunt, and Athletics +5 Light Armor, Heavy Armor, and Mercantile

the Orc

We're nearing the end of the race introductions, only one more to go after the Orc

The people of the Wrothgarian and Dragontail Mountains, Orcish armorers are prized for their craftsmanship. Orc troops in heavy armor are among the finest in the Empire, and are fearsome when using their berserker rage.

Attributes Male +10 Willpower and Endurance, +5 Strength, -10 Intelligence, Speed, and Personality, -5 Agility Female +10 Endurance, +5 Strength and Willpower, -15 Personality, -10 Speed, -5 Agility

Skill bonuses +10 Armorer, Block, Blunt, and Heavy Armor +5 Hand to Hand

The Nord

Another day, another race.
Today, the Nord

Citizens of Skyrim, they are a tall and fair-haired people. Strong and hardy, Nords are famous for their resistance to cold. They are highly talented warriors.

Attributes Male +10 Strength and Endurance, -10 Intelligence, Willpower, and Personality Female +10 Strength, -10 Intelligence and Personality

Skill bonuses +10 Blade, Blunt, and Heavy Armor +5 Armorer, Block, and Restoration

Khajiit

So here comes... possibly my least favourite race, because, it's kinda furry.
But there's people who like playing them, and they do have an interesting history, so I can't leave them out of course.

 

Hailing from the province of Elsweyr, they are intelligent, quick, and agile. They make excellent thieves due to their natural agility and unmatched acrobatics skill. All Khajiit can see in the dark.

Attributes Male +10 Agility, -10 Willpower and Endurance Female +10 Agility, -10 Willpower and Strength

Skill bonuses +10 Acrobatics and Hand to Hand +5 Athletics, Blade, Light Armor, Security, and Sneak

The Imperial

The next race is quite interesting, in that it would be most like a normal human being. I'm speaking, of course, of the Imperials

Natives of the civilized, cosmopolitan province of Cyrodiil, they have proved to be shrewd diplomats and traders. They are skilled with heavy armor and in the social skills and tend to favor the warrior classes.

Attributes Male +10 Personality, -10 Agility and Willpower Female +10 Personality, -10 Agility and Speed

Dunmer

A quick post today, swamped with work

The next race in the list is the Dunmer, and here he is.

 

Also known as "Dunmer" in their homeland of Morrowind, the Dark Elves are noted for their skilled and balanced integration of the sword, the bow and destruction magic. They are resistant to fire and can summon an ancestral ghost for aid.

Attributes Male +10 Speed, -10 Willpower and Personality Female +10 Speed, -10 Willpower and Endurance

Skill bonuses +10 Blade and Destruction +5 Athletics, Blunt, Light Armor, Marksman, and Mysticism

Breton

So I got a question about the backstory of one of the races; I'll post those later for all the races, but I don't want to make individual posts too long, as nobody will read them fully.

On to the next race then, the Breton

 

In addition to their quick and perceptive grasp of spellcraft, even the humblest of Bretons can boast a resistance to magical energies. They are particularly skilled at summoning and healing magic.

Attributes Male +10 Intelligence and Willpower, -10 Agility, Speed, and Endurance Female +10 Intelligence and Willpower, -10Strength, Agility, and Endurance

The Bosmer

Introducing the third race, the wood elf, or bosmer.

The clanfolk of the Western Valenwood forests, also known as "Bosmer." Wood Elves are nimble and quick, making them good scouts and thieves, and there are no finer archers in all of Tamriel. Their ability to command simple creatures is well-known.

Attributes Male       +10 Agility and Speed, -10 Strength, Willpower, and Personality Female +10 Agility and Speed, -10 Strength, Willpower, and Endurance

Skill bonuses +10 Alchemy, Marksman, and Sneak +5Acrobatics, Alteration, and Light Armor

The Argonians

So apparently, the stereotype of elves being of an ambiguous sexuality holds  true. I'm going to lift the veil of mystery here and say that the Altmer in the previous post was in fact male. The only reason I can say this for sure though is because I know all the images I'm posting of these races are male.

With that, on to the next race, the Argonian

This reptilian race, well-suited for the treacherous swamps of their homeland, has developed natural immunities to diseases and poisons. They can breathe water and are good at picking locks.

Attributes Male +10 Agility and Speed, -10 Endurance, Personality and   Willpower Female +10 Intelligence, -10 Endurance and Personality

Skill bonuses +10 Athletics and Security +5 Alchemy, Blade, Hand to Hand, Illusion and Mysticism

Races

While it isn't the first on the list of attributes, I will start out with discussing races, as it was requested.

So what does race mean, in the Elder Scrolls series?
First of all, and rather obviously, the different races all look different from each other, and they all have a different racial history. Furthermore, all the races have different statistics. In the chart below, you can see the attributes and skills, per race, and more precisely, per gender.

Besides this, the races have some special features, like resistances, or powers. To keeps things organized, I'll discuss the specific races in their own post, and because this post is horribly short, coming up is the Altmer, to be discussed first!

See you in the next post,
Khorne

Altmer

The Altmer, or High Elves as they are often called, are a subset of the elven race.

The in-game description from Oblivion reads as follows for them:

"Also known as "Altmer" in their homeland of Summerset Isle, the High Elves are the most strongly gifted in the arcane arts of all the races. However, they are also somewhat vulnerable to fire, frost and shock."

 To give a small insight into the mechanics behind the RPG, I will keep the Elder Scrolls standards of attributes and Skills ranging from 0 to 100. In the case of attributes, 40 is seen as standard. A strength of around 40 is what most people would have. Every 10 points above this, a +1 is given to the modifier of that skill. These modifiers will be added to dierolls, to determine the result. Every 10 poinst below 40 however, will result in a -1.
In the case of skills, starting at 10, and every 10 points up, a modifier will be given as well.


So that said, here are the statistics for the Altmer race.
 

Attributes Male +10 Intelligence and luck -10 Strength and Speed Female +10 Intelligence and luck, -10 Endurance and Strength  Skill bonuses +10 Alteration, Destruction and Mysticism +5 Alchemy, Conjuration and Illusion

As said, races also give powers and resistances(as well as weaknesses), however, I am not sure yet in what form I will implement these, so I'll wait with posting those.

See you in the next post, (which will not be right now, but I like the line...)
Khorne

Character Breakdown

A short post today, as the separate parts of the topic will be described in lots more detail later.

Once again I'm discussing the Elder Scrolls RPG that I am working on, and more specifically, the important parts that make up a character. For those unfamiliar with RPG's, this information will be put on a character sheet which is a sheet of paper (or a text file/pdf) off of which the statistics can then be used to play the RPG.
For example, a character will have a series of skills, and a number of points put in these skills, the amount of points in a skill, plus a roll of the dice, will tell you how well you do in a skillcheck.

The important statistics for a character from the Elder Scrolls world can largely be extrapolated from the games. As said before, I'm focusing on Morrowind and Oblivion. Both these games have a relatively equal way of creating a character. The order isn't completely the same, so here's the one for Oblivion:

You start the game by choosing a race, from a choice of ten. (For those who don't know the races, future posts will describe them.) The different races have different bonuses and demerits, in regards to attributes and resistances, as well as some special powers.
After choosing a race, you will choose a birthsign, this will give a certain bonus, be it an extra power or a bonus to some attribute.
Next is choosing a class, there's 21 (yikes) premade classes, but you can make your own. What a class does is describe your specialization, and what skills you are trained in.

So, the astute reader will notice bolded texts.
Just from walking through the character generation we get a fairly large list of items to add to the character sheet:
Race
Attributes
Resistances
Powers
Birthsign
Class
Specialization
Skills

Well, this post got a lot longer than I thought it would, as promised, I'll describe these different aspects in much more detail soon.

For now, goodbye
Khorne

addendum: Slaanesh(hah, how fitting) pointed out that when you choose your race, you also choose your sex. this has an effect on attributes, so it's no small thing.

The Elder Scrolls

Introduction

In the world of Nirn, there exist the Elder Scrolls. Prophetic writings of the Aedric, they serve as an archive for both historical and future events. Those gifted with prescience, can learn to read the Elder Scrolls. Reading an Elder Scroll however, will leave the reader blind for a time. Every reading of the scroll will increase this time, until the Reader is left blind forever, never to be allowed to read the scroll again. At this time however, he will have attained a near perfect understanding of the scroll.

Tied to these prophecies, are the Heroes. Blessed, or Cursed, depending on your viewpoint, by fate to achieve greatness. Though Heroes are in essence mortal, they can in time outgrow the powers of even the most gifted man. Indeed, a hero of old once slew the Prince of Madness, Sheogorath and took his place as Madgod, becoming a Daedric prince.

---

 There you have it, the start of the introduction to my current geeky project. An Elder Scrolls pen&paper RPG, set some time after Oblivion, and before the upcoming Skyrim, though I might update the game once this 5th installment of TES rolls out. I'm rather proud of the name I concocted for this:

Dungeons & Daedra.

What started out as a plan to port over the races from the Elder Scrolls series to D&D 4th edition, quickly became a full blown rewrite of the 4th edition system. A mixture between Morrowind, Oblivion, 4e, and the weirdness of what my mind comes up with after five hours of staring at the same Word page.

In future posts I'll describe the rules I'm working on, how I came up with them, and possibly pose a few questions regarding points that are bugging me; there's a lot of those.

I need a cool exit line, I'll work on that. For now I will say:

Regards,
Khorne.

Genesis

And then there was light!

I like saying that at the start of my webventures, yet they often seem to fail. Let's hope this one doesn't.

The aim of this blog will be to describe a wide range of Geeky projects. From building a fileserver from an old computer to creating a pen&paper RPG, or GMing an RPG.

The main contributors will be myself, Khorne and a lovely lady who insists on the pseudonym of Slaanesh.

So with introductions over, I will post the work-in-progress introduction to the RPG I'm working on.

Regards,
Khorne