Development Plans for Blessed Lands

Okay, so I’m trying to catch up where I can and I think that because I missed the online meeting a couple weeks ago, I’m out of the loop. Apparently we’re making updates to files in the DropBox folder, “Blessed Lands Rules Project” instead of posting all this stuff to this forum. And I think that a lot of this was covered in discussion at the meeting. We appear to be submitting original ideas for Talents, Spells, Backgrounds, etc? Am I correct so far? And am I missing anything important?

Hey Scott. You pretty much got it. Proposing new content is fine and there are areas where it’s still needed. When you look at the first post in the thread you’ll see section titles like Backgrounds (4). Basically that means our rough target is 4 new backgrounds to include. Right now we have more than the target, but Henry said there’s flexibility on page count. Bolded items are ones that have been submitted. Non-bolded items were discussed but not yet written up.

Some areas like Talents and Spells, we’re still short. Goal is at least 3 more non-Limited talents than we have proposed now. Likewise, we’re still short on Pantheonistic spells. For the spells, Henry’s looking for unusual combinations when possible.

With all of the sections I expect we’ll take the best content available saving the rest for future supplements. I’d rather have too many ideas and narrow down to a set of really good ones.

If you’ve got other questions, certainly feel free to ask. Not sure if the Dropbox experiment is the best way to do things in the future, but is worth trying.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

Hello Cody,

We’re days away from Gen Con, so things will need to wait until I get back.

I’d like to set up a meeting to review things. Would everyone be amenable to that?

Thanks!

A meeting is fine with me. Please try to give me as much lead time as possible, since I don’t get online as much a I used to. But I’ll try to check back here as frequently as I can.

Scott

After a quick discussion with Henry, I posted an Errata onto the rules board re: the Fijian Ula so that can be dismissed.

I added two more weapons to the proposed equipment: the lasso and the Chu-ko-nu.

The lasso was used as a weapon by the Huns during their invasion of Europe and fits the theme of the Yhing-Hir tribe of the Maghir, the Tomal Khan’s people. They may not be as much into the horsemanship as the Hinterlands stock or the Himmatah riders of the north, but they could keep the tradition alive. It also makes sense if we keep the Former Herder (ba) as an option as it would be a valid weapon/tool for them to have.

The Chu-ko-nu was added as a Khitani weapon due to the fact that they were a mainsday of Chinese warfare for about 2000 years before the rise of gunpowder weapons. Though it is up to Henry to decide, I could see it being the ‘main’ weapon for the Khitani ground troops like the Gladius is for the Coryani. In China, the Chu-ko-nu was easily mass produced (one of the earliest industrial production of modular components!) and required little training to use which was greatly appealing to the Chinese as it meant they could field huge armies of barely trained soldiers. The Chu-ko-nu was inherently inaccurate, but was designed to be used in mass fire like you saw in early musket/rifle tactics or machine gun tactics where if you fire enough arrows fast enough, you’re sure to hit SOMETHING. My thoughts about including it here is that IF it becomes a major weapon for the Khitani Fens, then that means a good number of them will eventually filter their way into the Blessed Lands eventually.

If anyone else has any ideas for unique weapons/armors/shields, please feel free to add them to the list!

I have reservations on using too many Khitani weapons. (I have been mulling over stats for a Nest of Hornets) Ultimatley, it is up to Henry (of course). But if we add them here, we will be stuck for any khitani sourcebook. That being said, I think the crossbow by itself is fine, since the Khitani portion of the city guard/militia would have them.

So, looking deeper at the Pantheon Spells (both in CoH and in the proposed list), not including Unfettered Sight (which Paul has written up as an almost ‘generic’ pantheon spell) the following gods are represented as follows:

Althares – 3 spells
Anshar – 3 spells
Beltine – 2 spells
Cadic – 4 spells
Hurrian – 2 spells
Illiir – 3 spells
Larissa – 4 spells
Neroth – 2 spells
Nier – 3 spells
Saluwe’ – 3 spells
Sarish – 2 spells
Yarris – 3 spells

If we are to write more spells for people, I say we focus on Beltine, Hurrian, Neroth, and Sarish. This makes even more sense with the Death Mongers being a playable faction in the BL book.

Proposed mixes: Beltine and Sarish, Neroth and Sarish, Hurrian and Neroth, and Hurrian and Beltine. If we focus on these, all the 12 PoM gods will have 3-4 spells each in various combinations.

Thinking about other types of equipment that we may wish to put into the book: Do you guys think that Japanese-style Tatami armours are different enough from what we have already?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatami_(Japanese_armour)

Another alternative would be Mirror Armour, though these could likely be represented by Brigandine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_armour

Likewise, there is also the Gambeson, which appears to be similar to an Armoured Jacket, but moreso.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambeson

There were also things called Lantern Shields which, while probably not relevant to current Tiers of play could be interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantern_shield

Updates for anyone who wishes to know:

Backgrounds – 8
Bestiary – 6
Equipment – 4 (2 weapons, 2 shields)
Fighting Styles – 5
Flaws – 7
Martial Techniques/Weapon Tricks – 4 (3 MT’s, 1 WT)
Paths – 9 (one requiring Henry’s input, the WotEF)
Spells – 13 (6 Pantheon, 6 Three Sisters, 1 Pantheon/Deity?)
Talents – 21 (7 general, 14 Limited)

Ignoring the Bestiary, we can probably start looking at trimming back the rules to see what will fit into the book.