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Loretober 27: Gala Not every party is a gala. According to the Correspondence of Sages, for a party to qualify as a true gala it must be a very large party, one at least large enough to fill a huge ballroom to overflowing. It must also be a party that celebrates a special, once-in-a-lifetime...

Loretober 26: Political Leader Great Crilithar became acknowledged, after his death, as the first true Emperor of the Amphorian Empire. In his own time, he was 'merely' the Mayor of Amphora. In that office, he formally annexed nations that had previously been puppets of Amphora, paying tribute...

Loretober 25: Tome The Conjurors' Research Council (the one surviving remnant of the otherwise defunct Wizards' Guild) published the first edition of their Handbook of Alchemy and Metaphysics in the year 7,564. The 40th edition, published two centuries later, put the CRC Handbook essentially...

Loretober 24: Spell "Minute-spells" are minor, flashy spells beloved of apprentices, street conjurers, and hedge mages. They technically can last as long as a day, but very few last longer than a minute. "Day-spells" are the working spells of wizards and sorcerers. They are relatively easy to...

Loretober 23: Boon "Boon" is a term found in the northern dialects of various languages. It has a meaning of "blessing" or "answered prayer," with connotations of the blessing or answer being unusual or special in some way. Some theologians claim that all boons are divine, granted solely by the...

Loretober 22: Coming of Age In the Amphorian Empire (and in the Winesea Islands, after the Empire's fall) a coming-of-age ceremony took the form of a "Doomsday Party." In a Doomsday Party, the young person celebrating his or her coming-of-age wears clothing and applies makeup to appear as an...

I suppose my harshest house rule is "Any clever trick or exploit that the players can use can also be used by the NPCs and monsters." Now this usually works out as "Would this game-element be 'unfair' or fun-killing if used against the PCs? If yes, then it gets banned or nerfed, both for NPC and...

I can understand this in the abstract. But in practical terms it's going to be a highly unusual situation, at least in my games, where player knowledge is significantly greater than character knowledge. The PCs, after all, live in a world where those monsters are real, and are engaged in a...

Loretober 21: Sport The stereotype, when it comes to halfling sports, is that they're all of the aiming and throwing sort, or even that they're limited to darts and to various forms or target archery. Wrestling, however, is also a popular halfling sport. The halfling enthusiasm for wrestling is...

What I find attractive about your "must have something from the type of creature being shapeshifted into" rule is that it makes intuitive sense from a simulationist perspective. That it would also cut down on gamist-style player exploitation of shapeshifting is, for me, just a bonus. I'm not...

Loretober 20: Occupation "Manacle Maker" (or "Shackle Smith") is an established occupation, with reports indicating it to be better known here than in the various otherworlds, even if not actually more common. Before the founding of Great Amphora, and in the early days of the Amphorian Empire...

I'm an old-time rebel against harsh old-school-style rules, going back to the days when old-school was still new. But this... this is something I might actually adopt myself, at least for shapeshifting magic. Although I'd be inclined to make it a focus, instead of a component.

Loretober 18: Biome The biome of the Three-Season Forests on the Eastern and Western Caps of the world have some subtle but important differences from the Temperate Forest biome of the Old World landmass. The most obvious difference is the "Leaf Storm" dividing the end of Autumn from the...

Loretober 18: Innovation The establishment of gear magic as a legitimate branch of arcania, rather than merely a form of occultism, allowed the development of practical pocket watches. The dwarven witch Alice von Zwilligeisen established the theory, and her brother Bolo, a master clockmaker, put...

Loretober 17: Time The division of each day into two periods of twelve hours each is now a long-settled convention, with the growth in popularity of dwarf-clocks being the factor that finally established it: The dwarven clockmakers refused to craft clocks that struck thirteen. A small number of...

Loretober 16: Premonition A true premonition, according to the scholars of the arcane, is an untrained and unintentional act of prophesying or scrying, while a false premonition is simply a matter of self-deception or wishful thinking. An important aspect of the study of formal scrying spells...

Loretober 15: History Year Event 1 The Golden Ones officially finished creating the world c. 1 - 2,500 The Crystal Age c. 2,500 - 4,300 The Electrum Age c. 3,030 Arrival of first humans and lizardmen from the...

Loretober 14: War The War of the Eyebrows was fought 240 years ago in the Red Mountains, between the goblins of Cheetzpink Mountain and the neighboring dwarves of Hartzberg. It ended when the goblins won a narrow and costly victory at the Battle of Copperbat Cave. At the peace conference...

Loretober 13: Weapons The sacred woman's daggers carried by the female followers of the Moon Goddess are all, theologically, the same dagger. This results in any given instance of the Dagger having a number of arcane oddities. Each new instance of the Dagger must be made to the same pattern...

There was an old USENET post about a setting with an alignment swap: Most of the usually-evil underground races/species (drow, kobolds, beholders, medusae) are typically-good, and the above-ground races/species are corrupted and evil. This is the bit about halflings in that setting: