making-arcanum-the-ttrpg

[making-arcanum-the-ttrpg]

Bloggers souls are worth 2.7× the amount of a regular human soul

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when he fucks you 😍😍 when you have sex >>>>>

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lays a beautifol girl egg

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does anyone here like sphinxes (the mythical creature)

especially sphinx boys,,, I got something cooking ...

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Calfish conceptually is so funny to me because in my mind it's literally this image

[ID: a screenshot of texts. Person one says "did you hear the news" "about Taylor swift" and person two replies "that her and stinky are done" "Yes!!". Person one says "no the next dude she's been hanging out with", and person two says "wait" "whomst?" "Don't say sebulba." And Person one sends a tweet that says "Taylor swift spotted around town with podracer sebulba", with an image of Taylor swift and an image of sebulba from star wars attached. End ID]

This was moreso before they were a character defined in canon and so 99% of this mental image is entirely based around how I specifically write dedfish but it's so funny to me

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she will never stop party rocking

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Arcanum's World's Majora

This is the beginning of a series of posts about the Worlds Majora, where the primary races of Arcanum originated. Generally larger than most Worlds Minora, and with a lot more history to them, these are the main places for adventures to begin.

Fulma and Dalrune: The Twin Worlds

Unlike later posts, this one will feature 2 worlds in one, as the world itself is 2 in one. One encasing the other, both the origin of iconic and important fantasy races

Fulma

Fulma is the sand covered outer shell of the Twin Worlds Majora Fulma and Dalrune. Hot, sandy, and difficult to survive in, Fulma is an arid place where little can be found between fonts of civilization. While from a birds eye view Fulma appears as a featureless planet of sand, on the ground all manner of unique environments can be found, whether they be the Sandstone Pillars of the west, the Blazing Brushes of the south, the Glass Spires so prized by the elves, the various cavernous holes that lead down to Dalrune, or the enormous World Cactus at the north pole (a still hot place).

Elves

The incredibly long lived native inhabitants of Fulma, Elves are a learned and odd people. Known for their vast libraries and impressive glass and crystal work, all of which are gathered or made with years upon years of work, study, and dedication, a thing an elf can do due to living for around 1000 years. Additionally, elves also have a unique biology, as they reproduce through spore like seeds, and as such never developed sexual dimorphism, meaning most elves align with more feminine characteristics (by human standards) by birth, but do sometimes transition through various means to a more masculine form.

Scoria

The more solitary inhabitants of Fulma, Scoria are a scorpion like people. Known for their more monstrous appearance and solitary nature (only being found in the company of another for extended periods of time when in cases of injury or mating season), Scoria are an intelligent (relatively) and reasonable (relatively) people, who act as a guardian of Fulma´s ecosystem and its travelers, as the amount of stories of a dying traveler being saved by a passing by Scoria are numerous. Additionally, do not confuse a Scoria’s more solitary nature for general anti-socialness or dislike of people, as in more recent times Scoria have been known to settle down in population centers or travel with others in caravans.

Dalrune

Dalrune is the frigid inner planet of the Twin Worlds Majora Fulma and Dalrune. Cold, windy, mountainous, and almost always covered in snow, Dalrune is a frigid place where-similar to Fulma-little is found between fonts of civilization. While from a birds eye view Dalrune appears as a featureless planet of snow and ice, on the ground all manner of unique environments can be found, whether they be lifesaving hot springs, the Frozen LunarIce Lakes, or the Abandoned Mountains where the Dwarves originally lived, or the new magnificent peaks where the Dwarves now call the capital of their civilization.

Dwarves

The stout and hardy inhabitants of Dalrune, Dwarves are a stalwart and creative people. Known for their impressive metal works, dedicated craftsmen, and quality booze, due to their culture, which prides hard work, dedication, and methodical work. Additionally, dwarves have a unique biology, as early on in their people's history they evolved the ability to change their gender (like a fish), causing them to develop a culture which treats gender more like a fancy hat.

Jelio

The odd and solitary inhabitants of Dalrune, Jelio are a jellyfish like people. Known for their less humanoid appearance and tendency towards a more isolationist life, only really interacting with other Jelio, they are an intelligent (relatively) and reasonable (relatively) people, who just often prefer to keep to themselves. 

[making-arcanum-the-ttrpg]

NOW asks are open, I said they would be in the intro post but I forgot to turn them on, oops

Also more info coming soon!

-Hazel

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Sorry for the delay between posts, life is kickin some of our asses. We'll try to get it a tad more frequent soon!

But anyway, we're here to continue introducing the actual features, so now for the actual playable classes!

Martials:

The Adept, designed to be a skill monkey that's capable of high utility in a fight, alongside delivering large single damage hits

The Berserker, designed to be a face tank that directs the enemy's attention to themselves by being the best target and having enough health to manage that

The Elusive, designed to be an Evasion tank that directs enemy's attention to themselves by being a threat, but also being very hard to hit

The Executioner, designed to be a high damage class that is easily hurt or killed (essentially a glass cannon) requiring lots of teamwork to properly manage, and running off of adrenaline from killing opponents

The Martial Artist, designed to be fast, capable of both defending the allied backline while also targeting the opponent's backline, along with being always dangerous in almost every situation due to not needing a weapon

The Vagabond, a backliner damage dealer, focused on firearms and bombarding does with high accuracy attacks, while also providing support by keeping an eye on combatants

The Warrior, a versatile Frontline, capable of taking a decent amount of hits and dishing out good damage and control effects due to being the best at using maneuvers

Half-Casters:

The Devout, a Frontliner capable of taking hits, supplying buffs, and providing healing, while also being able to dish out a decent amount of damage, making them very versatile

The Maker, a support class focused on keeping the party equipped and stocked, being the best at crafting and repairs (sidenote Arcanum has more defined crafting rules), while taking a more defensive role in combat

The Wanderer, a flanker which focuses on stealth and using spells to disrupt foes, with it's unique gimmick of letting you transfer the concentration of a spell to an external source

The Martyr, a terrifying frontliner with unique casting, focused on sacrificing hp to deal better damage, buff themselves, or apply debuffs

The Exorcist, a support class with some decent damage potential, focused on cleansing buffs and debuffs

The Magus, a more selfish, self-sustaining Frontliner, assisting the team by not needing excess assistance from the party

The Shaman, a Frontliner focused on AOE debuffs, weakening foes to keep themselves and allies alive

Casters:

The Mage, a powerful blaster focused on using magic through knowledge, allowing them to control the elements as if they were a part of themselves

The Innate, a caster blessed or cursed with magic, capable of controlling the fundamental forces (such as Gravity, Time, Light/Dark or Magnetism)

The Attuned, a controller focused on nature, capable of stopping foes in their tracks in a myriad of ways

The Priest, a highly versatile caster, whether it be divine blasts, buffs, healing, or whatever else, specialized by whatever they worship

The Creative, a highly variable and unique class that can take a myriad of unique rolls, whether it be setting traps through painting, dancing about the battlefield, blasting your foes with sonic rage, empowering your allies with peppy music, or suing your enemies

The Scion, a caster who has traded a piece of themselves for power, which we currently picture as weakening themselves to use magic out of their league (this one is a bit unclear, and is more subject to change than others)

The Enlightened, a psionic focused caster, gaining power from innate understanding of things others cannot

The Witch, a debuffs focused class, with access to a ridiculous collection of curses, from "you can no longer have kids" to "your hands are always dry and flaky" to "your blood now alights when it touches air"

The Channeler, a rather weaker caster in terms of direct combat, they support themselves and allies by summoning all myriad of spirits, monsters, robots, and whatever else to fight for them

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Mechanical Rules Core To Arcanum

While Aggy remains busy, I've taken it upon myself to introduce some gameplay aspects of Arcanum.

First, one big thing to keep in mind is that this game is intended to work on a pretty high power scale. Your average player character is intended to be on a higher level than most people you'll meet even starting at level 1, and it goes wildly higher from there. This may present an issue with balancing combat difficulty, but this is a change intended to make players feel GOOD about themselves, feel strong, and unlike in other TTRPGs, prevents level 1 from meaning you die in an instant

All that aside, some actual details on changes, starting with AC. In D&D 5e, Armor Class is how hard you are to hit. Arcanum has divided that into 2 separate things. Armor Class is a flat reduction to all incoming damage, while there's now also an Evasion score that determines how hard it is to hit you. All armors provide one or the other, or sometimes both, although some high AC armors will also restrict Evasion maximum. This means you can decide between 2 directions, either being harder to hit, but getting hurt hard when you do OR being somewhat easier to hit but taking less damage.

Another important part of Arcanum is the addition of Maneuvers. While casters are defined by their impressive magical ability, more martial classes get access to a pool of Stamina, allowing them to perform certain physical feats in and out of combat. While this resource is lower in capacity or immediate power than spellcasting, it comes with the benefit of easily recharging as soon as it's no longer in use. Half-Casters get the benefit of having access to both Maneuvers and casting at once, but are far more limited in both than the other groups

There is also assistance and hindrance, showing up when something is in your favor or not. These bonuses and detriments can stack to no end, but also cancel each other out (so if you have 3 stacks of assistance and 2 of hindrance, you're left with 1 stack of assistance). With these, you roll your normal dice, most often a D20, then roll a D4 for each stack of assistance/hindrance, and either add or subtract the total from your D20 roll based on which it would be. This means that, with proper teamwork and coordination, you can plausibly roll all the way into the hundreds.

These are just a few examples of the kinds of rules being included in the game, many more have already been made and there will surely be a lot more in the future

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Arcanum: Foreword

Currently, Aggy is busy, so his trusted compatriot and resident transbian is handling this first post. Specifically, we both wished to present the introduction to Arcanum

"Table Top Role Playing Games hold a special place in my heart, though I only know how to play 2, D&D 5th Edition and Lancer. I’ve been playing since high school, and before I had even played in my first campaign I had been overcome with the need to make Homebrew for D&D (and then later when I learned Lancer, I started making Homebrew for that too), though I’ve never posted any of my Homebrew online. However as I created more, as I played more, as I lurked more in the communities for D&D 5e, I began to realize significant problems with it.

See D&D 5e has this philosophy, one of many, which is make things simple. However, I feel this has been taken to its extreme in a bad way, it has become too simple, to its detriment, making build choices less meaningful as everything becomes flattened and similar. Besides, they don’t even follow this philosophy very well when you consider full casters, considering how complicated they can get.

But anyhow, that is besides the point. I wanted to make a TTRPG than can do what D&D 5e does, but better-a lofty wish, I know. I wanted to make something where everybody can have fun and be powerful without needing to all be spell-casters. I wanted to make a TTRPG that lets the players do batshit insane things in a world with balls to the walls lore."

This is the first thing in the document for Arcanum, simultaneously a love letter and criticism of the iconic role playing game, D&D 5th Edition, written out by Aggy so as to show both his reasons to start Arcanum and to introduce what his goals with the game are.

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Welcome to the realm of Thoughts and Dreams made true!

Arcanum is a TTRPG inspired by others, such as D&D or Lancer, primarily being made by tumblr user @v-for-vibes, nicknamed Aggy here, and supported by @anarchyandbastardry, Hazel, (who is writing this post)

Arcanum is the name of both game and realm, where there are all the classics. Sentient, humanoid animals; fantasy races of Dwarves, Gnomes, Orcs and Elves; robots, and more, in a myriad of planets, divided into the categories of Worlds Majora and Worlds Minora.

Worlds Majora are the planets and areas the primary races of Arcanum originate from, and are the ones that are generally going to be more well defined and very centric to many events

Worlds Minora on the other hand are celestial bodies of varying size, from restaurants to moons to giant inhospitable planets

All of this is contained within, as the creator says, "a realm of real space within thought space," and the space between planets is indeed breathable, but still extremely cold and harsh without proper precautions. Outside of this is a realm of untold depth, where the minds of mortals can gradually create wonders that rain down to populated lands.

In this realm of infinite possibility, there's mystery, history, dragons, factions, danger and things far stranger than you may ever know

Currently Arcanum is being written up in Homebrewery, and once enough of it is finished and in a readable state, an addition to this pinned post will be added with the link to the Homebrewery doc

Asks will normally be open, feel free to ask about anything in Arcanum, both to help us cleanly explain aspects of the game and also to help us create stuff we may be missing

Finally, here are the tags we will use to organize shit;

#Arclore - specifically for lore, history, and stuff that doesn't fully effect the mechanics

#Arcmechanic - specifically for classes, subclasses, racial features, and more

#arcanum meta - for talking about things not necessarily related to game design; will likely be used sparingly

#Arcdesign - specifically for discussing the design process of things

And probably more tags later once this blog is more developed!