Whoops!

Posted a half-finished entry in the middle of last night accidentally. My bad! The God of Gates' cult will be forthcoming once I've got it finished.

Simpler Mounted Combat Rules for Openquest

This replaces the current mounted combat rules for Openquest, which are that someone on horseback gets a +25% to their attack and defense skills against non-mounted opponents, while the non-mounted fighting the mounted get a -25% to their defense rolls. I don't think this makes much sense, nor do I like having to add bonuses unless absolutely necessary. There's also a rule that limits the maximum effective score of combat skills while mounted to the score of the riding skill, and I hate those kinds of rules.

Things I want to incentivise:

Charging on mounts
Attacking and/or killing mounts

Therefore I propose the following rules, which completely replace the mounted combat section:

Mounted attackers increase the damage of their attacks to the next largest die type.

Riders move at the speed of the mount they are riding. They use their movement action to guide the mount.

When a rider's mount is dealt damage the rider must immediately test their Riding skill or the mount's persistence (test only one). If they succeed, the mount does not panic. If they fail the test, the mount uses the Flee Combat action until either the rider regains control (they may test each round) or the mount cannot see or hear the attacker.

Bonus alternate rule:

I don't use weapon sizes or the associated rules because I find them fiddly, but if one wished, instead of increasing the die type, one could increase the size of the weapon by one size (Small weapons become medium size, etc.) when attacking.

Emern: Inspirations

Emern is going to go dormant for a while as the guys want to try out this "Openquest" and "Dawnlands" stuff they keep on hearing me talk about and post. In honour of it, I thought I'd post some biographies of conquistadors, explorers and colonial administrators that served as the inspiration for the setting.

Christopher Columbus, a partial inspiration for Governor Hesh of Arkhesh
The two cousins from Extremadura, Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro
La Malinche, Cortes's lover
Bernal Diaz del Castillo
Geronimo de Aguilar
Francisco de Aguilar
Hernando de Soto
Lope de Aguirre (there's a movie about him you should watch)
Diego Velazquez de Cuellar
Francisco de Ulloa
Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo
Fortun Ximenez
Pedro de Alvarado who killed Tecan Uman and who was/is the inspiration for a yet undiscovered villain
Hernando de Alarcon
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado
Juan de Padilla
Melchior Diaz
Luis de Velasco
Gonzalo Guerrero (Father of the first mesztisos recorded & killed by Alvarado)
Ferdinand Konscak
Georg von Speyer
Gonsalo Jimenez de Quesada (A possible inspiration for Don Quixote)
Sebastian de Belalcazar
Diego de Almagro and his son, Diego de Almagro II
Blasco Nunez Vela
Nikolaus Federmann
Juan de Fuca
Vincente de Valverde
The Pinzon Brothers
Vasco Nunez de Balboa
Pedro de Valdivia
Bartolome de las Casas
Pedro de la Gasca
Alonso de Alvarado (the guy who started the "El Dorado" craze)
Pedro Alvares Cabral
Francisco Garay is basically one of the PCs once the domain game starts
Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza
Caramuru
Piet Hein
Juan Ponce de Leon

A Visual Encyclopedia of the Dawnlands Part 1

Over the years, I've collected tons of fantasy and science fiction images, a small portion of which have formed the visual basis for how I imagine the Dawnlands looking. This is part 1 of a series and mainly focuses on people.

If the Kadiz Nomads Had Cameras

If the Kadiz Nomads of the Dawnlands had cameras, these are their family snaps. In real life, these are pictures of the people of Siberia and Central Asia in traditional costume. Many of them date from the 19th and early 20th century. The Kadiz are a Turkic-like people (as are the Kaddish) who vary in appearance from "Turkish" and "Russian" looking to "Far Eastern" in appearance, and so the range of physiological variation is accurate to the setting. I got these off of Wikipedia, so they should all be Creative Commons.