Secrets of Cinder, Intro and Part 1

Introduction

Very little in this series of articles is directly designed for prospective players of my Cinder campaign. No one needs to read these Secrets of Cinder in order to explore dungeons, kill monsters, and win treasures. And my D&D campaigns will never stop being about that sort of activity. Other stuff can be added, but the core activity of dungeoneering remains. The first installment below was written to investigate how multiple campaigns using different rules might still interact. The rest sort of poured out. It’s very similar to how I got on a roll while working on my asteroid adventure. So consider the next few posts to be strictly theoretical exercises and/or flights of fancy, written primarily for me. Facts established in one entry may be contradicted in another. Some times this is intentional, other times it is simply an unresolved ambiguity in the setting. Maybe some day one of these little pieces will help me to explain a player-spotted inconsistency, or to rule on a weird edge case. Or maybe not.

Duotemporality

The average citizen of Cinder and indeed all but a few wizards and sages generally conceive of time as a forward-moving arrow or a fast-flowing river. Unsubstantiated travellers tales of voyagers from the past or future have made their way into various chronicles, but it was the first verified reports of nilbogism that led to the strict formulation of time travel as a known possibility. And while the few students of time constantly speculate and theorize, no reliable method of time travel is known.

That the river of time is actually a fourth dimension (analogous to depth, width, and height) is well-understood by the masters of the arcane sciences. One of the hurdles that prevents time travel from achieving widescale practicality is the limits of the 4-dimensional spacetime model. Time in and around the planet Cinder has at least two dimensions, allowing for the possibility of sideways travel through time. Indeed, the totality of Cinderian history cannot be understood without mapping events on a “timeplane” instead of the traditional timeline.

On the local scale the 5th dimension has little impact on the day-to-day lives of most inhabitants of the realm, as the modality of the second dimension is limited to impacting three dimensional events at periods of at least a few thousand years in length. A few young dragons, elves, treants, etc may find themselves remembering events in the distant future, and immortals may be able to coordinate their activities across the eons. The latter, if such undying beings exist, could effectively experience concurrent lives in separate millennia.

The biggest effect of the 5-D nature of Cinder, wholly unknown to all mortal races, is that two entire eras may be connected in ways not easily grasped by normal folks. For example, inhabitants of the Age of Clerics have chronicles and songs detailing the events of the Age of Robodroids. Indeed, in popular culture the Age of Robodroids is vividly portrayed as a heroic past, an age of wonder. Meanwhile, sideways in time, the minstrels of the Age of Robodroids sing romances about the long-gone Age of Clerics. Both eras exist as the past of the other age, but neither is the other’s future.

Times, they are a-changin'

Howdy folks! The last two years of regular GMing has finally worn me out. I've been trying to come up with a new Star Wars adventure and the cistern is dry. I've started three separate adventures that I've been unable to finish to a sufficient degree where I would have anything to run. But it's not just the Star Wars. Running one decent and a couple abortive campaigns plus organizing the Run Club plus Worldwide Adventure Writing Month have just drained the batteries. So I'm going to take a little bit of a break from wearing the viking hat.


The players in my group have been supercool about this decision. I'm hoping someone else will GM for a while, but maybe we'll do some boardgaming or something instead for a while. Either way, right now I don't have any plans to GM anything prior to the Winter War convention in February, where I'll be running some Encounter Critical and OD&D.


And the ol' Gameblog is gonna be a little less active for a while. My place of employment is merging with its number one local competitor this weekend and the job looks to blow up big and stupid starting next week. I foresee at least a short period where I just don't have much time for blogging. I've got a couple half-written entries that I will be rolling out hopefully soon, but look for less weekday entires and maybe more weekend blogging.


This isn't a goodbye post. I'm not signing off. But I wanted to let everyone know what was going on. That way if a week or so went by without a blog update no one would be wondering if I was dead or something. Everybody stay awesome during any absences, okay?

For a thread on theRPGsite

Crude, but I think you can see what I'm trying to do here.

my internets still suck but have a recipe

I normally like my movies to have some combination of spaceships, swords, and/or explosions, but I will confess to absolutely adoring Steel Magnolias. It’s a total chick flick but for some reason I love it. I even get teary-eyed during the more schmaltzy scenes. Anyway, here’s the recipe I promised in the post title. At one point in the film Dolly Parton gives the recipe for one of the easiest homemade deserts ever, a little dish called Cuppa-Cuppa-Cuppa:

a cup of sugar
a cup of flour
a cup of fruit cocktail

mix it up, pour it in a baking pan, and bake 'til brown

I’ve tried it a couple times and it totally works. I wish I could give you more precise baking instructions, but I usually set the oven to 350 degrees (my default temp when I have to guess) and just watch carefully. Dolly’s character recommends a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of each piece, but I use Cool Whip or that spray whip cream stuff.

Many years ago I made Cuppa-Cuppa-Cuppa for a potluck at the lodge and all the little old ladies were amazed by the fact that a man was able to cook anything more complicated than Boiled Water.

my internets are sucking

But here, have a pic of one of my favorite heraldic beasties, the Boreyne.

five more links

The First Dungeon Adventure - The original Arneson crawl as remembered by the Great Svenny.

LOLthulhu - I probably should have posted this one on or before Halloween, but the stars weren't quite right.

Bacon Double - This one goes out to the folks on the bacon thread at theRPGsite.

The Unifon Alphabet - A phonetic alphabet for English is one of those things that seems like a good idea on paper. But the fonts could be used for handouts in a sci-fi game.

'The Last Question' - If I had to pick a favorite Asimov short story it would be this or 'Nightfall'.

Long live the King!

Here is my personal recommendation for the perfect toy to get preschool lads this Christmas season. What I am about to show you has got to be the awesomest toy since the development of Hulk Hands. King Carnivore is a transforming vehicle. He starts out as a big ol' truck with a monster wheels and a lighted rollbar hauling some cargo.
You push a button clearly labeled "Go Ape!" and it automatically tranforms into robot gorilla!
Upon transformation the robot beats its chest menacingly. Go Ape!