Sunday, March 13, 2011

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

Saturday, March 12, 2011

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

Friday, March 11, 2011

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

Thursday, March 10, 2011

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

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

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.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

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.