The White Room was one of the special rooms of the Erstwhile Manor, one which Amaryllis was well-acquainted with. It had no windows, instead being lit by several complicated and expensive methods that spread gentle white light through the entirety of the space. The walls were white with cream-colored accents, and the few pieces of […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 177: The Erstwhile Manor
We got to see Caledwich from the sky, laid out in all its glory. The city predated Uther by hundreds of years, and had probably been settled by humans for thousands of years before it was a city, but when he’d become king, Caledwich had become his home, and the combination of a clear vision […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 176: Warrens
Gemma returned to us just in time for our trip to Anglecynn. We were, for the first time in a long time, constrained in terms of transportation, as we couldn’t use the Egress for fear that it would violate airspace in a detectable way, and the teleportation key only allowed five at a time. We […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 175: High Concept
The other lingering bit of business was a bit more dangerous, at least in theory. You see, the Outer Reaches were memetic or antimemetic in nature, maybe both, and so I couldn’t be told what they were or why they were a threat. That really seemed to be ironclad, at least so far as my […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 174: The Blade of the Self
Optics 20, Clarity:When you hold or touch, directly or indirectly, a lens or prism of any kind, you can alter its properties (e.g. altering focal point, concavity, refractive index, thickness). Any alterations you make will revert once you are no longer holding or touching the lens or prism. This includes biological lens, e.g. in the […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 173: Passions
Skill increased: Passion Magic lvl 6! “Got another,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow. “I can’t really say that this is working as fast as it should be.” “Typical passion mages take a year or more of intensive emotional training to demonstrate their first proper, non-spontaneous effect,” said Raven. “Being able to do what […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 172: Respec
We had somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred days before we found a new solution to the sleeping problem, and then a different deadline of sixty days until we killed or otherwise dealt with the Captain Blue-in-the-Bottle problem. I had never been a particular fan of timers when I was a DM, partly because […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 171: Blood is Thicker Than Water
After that whole mess was temporarily dealt with, we had other things to do. It seemed kind of crazy to finish talking to a dragon and then realize that I had a whole day ahead of me, but that’s how it was. There were things to do, people to meet, support to give, and plans […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 170: On Treating With Dragons
Whenever I came back from a game of D&D, my dad would always ask me whether I had killed any dragons. I found this deeply unfunny, both because I was almost always the DM (and thus not in the position of killing dragons), and because dragons figured into only one of every ten games, if […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 169: The No Sleep Club
Bethel left behind the Egress, but pretty much nothing else. Next to the big metal bean of a ship, pinned down by a rock, was a note from Valencia. J, We’ll be gone for a bit. Don’t worry. I’ll write to Amaryllis once there’s some progress on our end. On your end, you need to […]
Thoughts on Adapting Worth the Candle for Tabletop RPGs, Part 3: Gold Magic, Revision Magic, Still Magic, Warding
Part 1 here, Part 2 here. Gold Magic I think this one is definitely the hardest of the magic systems to adapt, mostly because by its very design it’s entirely antithetical to tabletop design philosophy. That said, I don’t think it’s impossible, just difficult. A gold mage has tactile telekinesis, which grows in power the more […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 168: Hollow
Valencia walked across the Isle of Poran in her red bikini, holding a devil in her maw, thinking through the conversation ahead and all the twists and turns it might take. The first step had been to convince everyone that she was fit to go, which had gone off without any real problems, and only […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 167: Beached
If it were anyone else, I would have felt pretty safe in assuming that Amaryllis was flirting with me. She was touching me more than normal, being closer, more familiar. She had said that she was trying her hardest to have our day on the beach be a happy day, and I didn’t know if […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 166: Brownian Motion
The Isle of Poran was a grim and grey place. Most of the time it was completely overcast, with a chilly wind even when the sun was shining. When we got back though, the water mage we’d hired a month ago had arrived, and she’d taken matters into her own hands, leaving us with the […]
Thoughts on Adapting Worth the Candle for Tabletop RPGs, Part 2: Flower Magic, Pustule Magic, Druids
Part 1 here. Flower Magic Flower mages are another mage that’s at least somewhat close to the wizard/sorcerer archtypes that are common in TTPRGs. If you squint at them, the flower buds that flower mages use are similar to spells. There are some themes to what flower magic can do, mostly within the realm of […]