heliosail

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Filip's Fantastic Locations #001:

(Hi, I'm Filip. If you like it, use it! Just drop it in any game. I tend to go for narrative-first stuff, but I'll drop a few lines at the end as to how this location might play out in mechanical terms.)

The Lucky Well

Aspects:

An old man, Life-Drawer Karrugin, tends to a ring of willow trees overlooking an ancient well, its stonework covered with soft moss. He spends long hours drawing water for anyone who asks.

Rumour is, visitors to Maldara who offer a tribute of coin to the old man see their luck change for the better.

The well's water is the most delicious, coolest, freshest water you've ever recalled tasting.

Secret: Karrugin's home, just next to the Lucky Well, has a secret passage leading deep within the earth. Below it, Karrugin brings the gold to the water sprite that makes the cavernous space beneath the well its home.

NPCs: Life-Drawer Karrugin, human sage.

Motivation: To care for the community and shield the well.

Appearance: A wizened man, short of stature, with a bushy beard, his eyes forever weighed by weariness.

Personality: Gruff, but not unkind. Humble about his place in life, disdainful of those who do not possess humility.

Rumour: No one knows quite how old Karrugin is, not even the oldest visitors of town.

Secret: Life-Drawer Karrugin is a member of the local society of hedge witches, wizards, and various other wisefolk*.

Sprinkle, water-spirit.

Appearance: A teal drop, its form rippling from one outline to another. It often recall

Personality: Playful, forgetful, distracted.

Motivation: Sprinkle likes to help. It cares for people. Wants to make people happy. In fact, the sprite likes helping almost as much as it likes shiny things...and it likes Karrugin most of all because he helps it help people without frightening anyone and he brings it shiny things.

Secret: The existence of the sprite is the big one! No one knows about Sprinkle, and that's how Karrugin and the water-spirit like it, due to some wretched experiences from long ago.

How does drinking water from the Lucky Well work?

A few examples:

D&D 5e (and any other modern d20 game such as Shadowdark):

The simplest way to go about a place like this is, you can give your players a Heroic Inspiration. Everyone loves an advantage, right?

If you'd like to underline the "good luck" nature of drinking from the well, you might instead choose to riff on the Portent roll, and decide to give your players a high dice roll to use in lieu of a bad dice roll later in the session. How about a 15?

Resistance games (Heart, Spire) or Powered by the Apocalypse:

After you invite your players to give you a roll, let them choose to instead take a mixed success one time after having sampled the Lucky Well.

The One Ring (though you'd need to tweak the lore a bit, perhaps):

The next time the characters roll on the Journey tables, let each of them roll with advantage.

* Inspired by M.T. Black's Wand & Robe Society from one of the appendices of his Iskander Adventures Vol. 01.

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The "Aspect" structure is inspired by Sly Flourish's excellent Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, one of the quintessential books any and every referee should read to make their lives easier.

Art attribution: Hanging over the Dark Pool by Alphonse de Neuville, 1862 from OldBookIllustrations.

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Art nouveau postcard by Raphael Tuck & Sons by totallymystified Via Flickr: Printed chromo-litho with additional glitter. No artist credited.

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Primrose and Feather, 1899, by Alphonse Mucha

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A psiren who lives among humans and feeds often will appear almost completely human. One that lives outside of human society does not have the luxury. They are very obvious alien. These "feral" psirens live in small groups and raid passing ships. They often hide out in the Skerries, or other remote places.

In these groups, there a few different types of adversaries your crew might face. The most basic the Psiren Scavenger. The more powerful Psiren Hunters are usually tasked with going after the crew of a ship during a raid and occupying them while the Scavengers do their work. The Scavenger's job is to strip the ship of useful materials as fast as possible. They do not tend to take risks, but they are highly opportunistic, and they will attack and feed on a human if they encounter one. Psiren raiders often go for long stretches of time between feedings.

Although they can sustain themselves on normal food, psirens must consume intact human DNA regularly. This helps them heal from the constant background radiation of our universe, and it also helps them maintain a humanoid shape. Without intact DNA to maintain their bodies, they will eventually die. Because of this, psiren scavengers who haven't had the opportunity to feed in a long time can be quite brutal, seeing their human prey as nothing more than an opportunity to survive.

We post new creatures for your Heliosail game every Monday on Patreon, for free.

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I finished inking my last unicorn piece! Now for some color

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Illustration by Hilda Cowham for 'Father Tuck's Annual' c. 1920.

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Summer (from “The Seasons”), 1896.

Artist: Alphonse Mucha

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i loosely followed thedimelions’s tutorial for naturally dyeing a pride flag, with a lot of added research about natural dyes, stains, mordants, sewing, etc, and i wanted to share my results!!

process, notes, and more pics under the read more🌱

starting off i soaked my fabric (100% cotton acquired from joann's during their closing sale, rip joann's ;-;) in a 1:5 mixture of soy milk and water for 12 hours, then let dry on a clothesline in the sun, then dipped and dried two more times (the proteins in the soy milk help the natural dyes adhere to the fabric, creating darker colors and better colorfastness)

while that was happening i started making my dyes, which involved simmering my chosen dyestuffs in some water for 30-60 minutes. i didnt time it, just went until the color developed to a point i was happy with

as far as ratios i didn’t measure, but the more dyestuff = stronger color so err on the side of more

red: turmeric + baking soda, paprika, and yellow onion skin dye as the liquid base

orange: yellow onion skins

yellow: turmeric

green: red cabbage + baking powder (LOTS), turmeric

blue: red cabbage + baking powder

purple: red cabbage

for the red cabbage dyes, i added the baking powders and soda after simmering and just kept adding and stirring till i got the color i wanted. ((BIG NOTE red cabbage, and debatably most of the others that I used, are fugitive dyes, meaning its not a true dye and more of a stain that will fade with time and wash out more easily, especially without mordanting on additives like iron. keep this in mind if you end up doing this project or transfering these methods to cloth you will be using for clothes, ie washing and wearing more frequently))

i also tried to make a pink with avocado skins and pits, which did come out a lovely rosy color, but i didn’t end up using in the final flag, which i might use beet or red cabbage + lemon juice or another acidified for next time to get a more bright pink

now with my dyes ready and my cloth dried out from its previous soy milk dip i cut it into strips and stuck it in the jars, which were placed in the sun for the day (alternatively, you could simmer the cloth in the pot) and then left to sit overnight

the next day i squeezed out the excess dye and gave the ones with turmeric a light rinse to get the grit out, then hung them to dry

((small note i reused the dyes baths to see what would happen since they still looked just as pigmented, but the colors are much much much more faded on the second go around. all in all its doable, but I wouldn't recommend it.))

now time to sew! i procured a second hand sewing machine specifically for this project and had never sewed before, but thankfully this required the easiest stitch in the game (a straight stitch in a straight line). i looked up how to sew a flag specifically to get those clean lines rather than just overlapping, and this video was great (shoutout Suffolk Public Library)

as you can see my flag ended up quite long cause I left a lot of wiggle room, so I just look up flag ratios, trimmed it up (and used the extra strip of rainbow as decoration) then added a white strip folded over to make a way for me to hang it on a stick if I ever so desire.

and ta daaa! i would still like to clean it up a bit, and do a zig zag stitch around the outside to stop the cloth from fraying further, but im happy with the unpolished look of it. once i figure out how to get a pink I like, and how to get browns and blacks, i want to make a progress flag and trans flag. also just started growing some indigo, so excited to see if I can get some blue dyes out of that.

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Araw Lane ☀️ I whipped up this illustration to be used for the Games Con Canada build of our game, Keeps, but we ended up having to cut out this content because we were running out of time.

Still wanted to share this though. I was really proud of the colours I chose and the rendering overall!

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This is the most recent commissioned artwork for endure a post post-apocalyptic TTRPG. It is set in an alternate history, Earth an undeterminable amount of time after and asteroid storm triggered the eruption of every super volcano on Earth.

Now we got mutants robots and the remnants of humanity trying to build communities and survive in the harsh wasteland.

Inspired by older sci-fi such as planet of the apes thunder the barbarian and commandi last boy on Earth.

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Part of the ChaosWood forest map. ChaosWood RPG - Forsaken Tombs. A dark fantasy tabletop role-playing game. Don't let chaos consume you. Coming soon! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/xploringmap/chaoswood-rpg-forsaken-tombs

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Get the game for free! Patreon Itchio Gumroad GameJolt

Heliosail is Finally Here

Words cannot possibly capture how I am feeling today. I am joyous, overwhelmed, proud, humbled, and terrified all at once. This game is, in many ways, a very personal reflection of my heart and soul. I could have released it years ago, when it was "playable" for the first time, but I held back. I knew that it had not yet bloomed into the rose that I could see within it. 

This game has changed me in a profound way over the years I've devoted to it. When I started this process, I was in my mid twenties, severely depressed, being entirely supported by my father, and completely unable to see a future for myself. Since that time, I have moved halfway across the country, put my depression in full remission, come out as nonbinary, changed my name, written a novel, and now fully support myself. I am unrecognizable from my younger self. I used to be unable to make new friends, and now I have a whole group of people I met and bonded with over TTRPGs. I used to have screaming, crying meltdowns over my math homework well into high school. Now, I understand mathematics, statistics and probabilities with ease, and know that I am AuDHD. I used to be constantly anxious that if I ever did the wrong thing, no matter how slight, I would be rejected by the people in my life. Now, I can sit down at a work meeting and accept discipline without crying (Sometimes.) I used to not have the energy to do more than two things in a week. Now, I am running out of days in my calendar for everything I want to do. 

I cannot credit all of this change to one project, of course, but this game really has been a guiding force through this chapter of my life. I've been in a sort of dance with it, where I began to create answers to my anxieties, and in turn, Heliosail gave me resolve and hope. I was worried about climate change, so I imagined a future where we go back and fix our mistakes. I felt like I didn't fit in, so I created a fantasy where I could run away on a ship and be queer with all my friends. I was anxious about surviving in this capitalist world, so I imagined a society that tries to take care of everyone in it.

I fell into a comfortable pattern, where I could experience the joy of puzzle-solving that is the design process, and literally build the world that I wanted for myself.

And so, the truth is that, while I am excited and proud beyond words to finally let the world see my work, I am kind of mourning too. There will be more Heliosail to work on; I am already planning more content for the game, and will continue to try to spread it to those who will enjoy it most. But that is not the same. To achieve my dream for this work, I will need to develop a whole new set of skills. I feel rather like Sisyphus, having just reached the top of the hill only to realize that somehow I'm at the bottom once again. No matter how daunting I find the road ahead, though, I believe that Heilosail is worth it. Maybe it makes me sound conceited and self-important, but the truth is that I feel a drive and responsibility to make this project a success, as if it is for something greater than myself. It's like I'm pushing this boulder, not up a hill forever, but towards someone who badly needs it. I don't know who they are, but I am driven to reach them as if both our lives depend on it. 

More Content Coming Soon

More files will be coming in the near future, added to the download for Heliosail everywhere you can find it. I will be adding a "Home-Printer Friendly" version of the handbook very soon, which will be black and white with no images, and will be reformatted to use the fewest number of pages possible. I will also be releasing a free adventure to provide you all with some content for your games. Adventures I publish after this will be paid supplements, but I will continue to publish "Monster Mondays" and other free content on Patreon. 

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Monster Monday: Landsman

The Navy has a strict and complex hierarchy of servicemen. Landsmen are at the bottom of that hierarchy. A Navy Landsman is someone who has been conscripted or contracted for a temporary tour, usually 2-4 years. They are not eligible for promotion, and many of them are unhappy to be there.

Landsmen have a reputation of being opportunistic and unscrupulous. They make good henchmen, foot soldiers, and nameless enemies to have your grew fight. While this stat block is built for a human, it could be easily edited to reflect an anthroparian or psiren Landsman by altering the ancestral traits.

These enemies are meant to be used in small groups to pad out a larger encounter, rather than as enemies by themselves. For example, a Navy Captain and two Landsmen could be a good fight. That said, you could make a Landsman more difficult by giving them Tricks that provide more critical damage and sneak attacks. They are meant to be a "rouge-ish" build, with Deft Fingers and Subterfuge as their core skills.

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D&D 5e Skills VS Heliosail Skills

A good number of people playing Heliosail for the first time will be familiar with D&D 5th Edition (5e). Since this is the most popular and iconic game in the genre, a lot of first time Captains (the Heliosail GMs) will have the most experience running 5e and think in terms of 5e skills when it comes time to ask for skill checks.

There are some big differences in the skill lists between Heliosail and 5e, and not every 5e skill has a perfect analog in our system. Skills in Heliosail are meant to be applied very liberally. As the Captain of your game, you should be encouraging your crew (players) tocome up with creative and unusual ways to apply their core skills. In general, as long as they can make a good case for why their skill should work for the situation, you should let them use it.

In the table above, I have a comparison of the skills in the two systems. If the skills in both columns are in plain text, that means that they are direct substitutions for each other. If the skills are in italics in one column, it means that there's no perfect substitution for the other system's skill. The skills listed in italics are all ones that could cover the same area as the other skill, depending on the situation.

In general, most 5e skills have a good substitutions in Heliosail, but I will go through the trickiest exceptions here.

Athletics

Heliosail doesn't have a special skill dedicated to Athletics. Acrobatics can be substituted for many physical feats, and Endurance for anything that requires a prolonged effort. You can also call for a straight Body attribute check if you're not sure that either skill suits the situation.

Investigation

Whenever possible, crew members should use their other skills to aide in their investigation work, depending on what they are investigating. For example, if they're looking for blueprints in an engineer's workshop, then the Repair or Crafting skill might come in handy. If they're in the library looking up information, then Erudition would be a good match, since Erudition is book-smarts and formal education. If they are trying to piece together clues, then Insight is a very appropriate option. When in doubt, you can always call for a perception check instead.

Perception

Speaking of perception, this is not technically a skill in Heliosail. It does not advance or improve like proper skills do, and there are no perception Tricks. That said, it is rolled as a check like a skill would be, and it is used in the same way as it is for 5e, when crew members are watching for something.

Survival

There's not that much camping happening in Heliosail, and so surviving the wilderness is less of an issue. You should not come across too many situations where you want a good substitute for Survival, unless you are specifically exploring a terraformed or alien planet. In most situations, Naturalism, as your plant-related skill, should work well in place of Survival. Endurance may also be called be upon, if the issue is about building shelter or withstanding the elements.

Deception

As with Investigation, different skills may help a character lie, depending on what is going on. For example, a doctor might be able to use their Medicine skill to lie to someone who does not have the same knowledge, by using a lot of very official sounding medical words. If the Deception is more akin a carnival barker's fast-talk, then Captivation would be an appropriate skill to use. Barter may also apply, if the Deception is related to trade. When in doubt, you can always fall back on Subterfuge for these moments.

Performance

Most of the time, Captivation will be most appropriate skill to substitute for Performance. However, in certain situations, other skills may go well here. Acrobatics, for example, would suit well if the performance in question is based on a physical feat. If the performance is a close-up magic show, then Deft Fingers would be the best one to go with. If your character is faking a séance or haunting, then Superstition would apply.

Persuasion

Barter is probably the best skill to substitute for Persuasion, as much of the time the two go hand-in-hand. However, Captivation or Subterfuge may also be reliable substitutes. As always, if the situation is related to a specific other skill, then your crew should be encouraged to use that.

In D&D, the common pattern of play is for the Dungeon Master to call on players and ask for specific skill checks. Many DMs dislike when players ask if they can use a skill to do something it's not explicitly designed to do. In Heliosail, the opposite is true. The situation you want to cultivate as the Captain is for your crew to ask if they can use a given skill in a novel and creative way.

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Belle porte à PARIS

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Guys this is such an Arsinoe inspired item!

René Lalique, Art Nouveau Octopus & Mermaid Brooch, ca 1900. Gold, Pearl, Enamel, Diamonds.

Photo credit : Le Journal de Jac (Exposition Art nouveau-Metamorphoses du bijou 1880-1914)

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Excerpt from Unchained Mysteries, a treaties on investigative TTRPG gameplay that shares a lot of points with Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy. Use adventure modules. Use adventure modules. Use adventure modules. (This is also in reference to the previous posts about how you should not stack the role of author and showman on a GM.)