i just preordered the box set.. i figured SOMEONE had to buy this in our gaming circle..

* the people have a very strong connection to the spirit realms
* everyone has a personal tuuhrou spirit, but most folks never learn of or bind with them
* the Cusping ritual is what binds them
* aside from tuuhrou, there are many other spirits, too; spirits of hate, love, nature, death, and far far more things.

Notation:
* The "Year of the X" memorandums are added at the end of the year by historians of the Librarium.

Year 999 of the Dawn: "Year of the Blooded Sunrise"
* This will be the final year of the Dawn Empire
* The Dynastic Purge: in the span of a single night, the entire family of Emperor Obai Veidoukan is slain by precise military strikes. The Imperial Rule is ended, and the capital occupied by forces of the Conjoined Guilds.

Year 1 of the Dusk: "Year of the Cleansing Dusk"

THE CORE STUFF:
* The Skies are vast and endless, and all civilized folks live there on floating landmasses and a few mountaintops here and there. These landmasses are born through the air via mostly-discernible currents.

These pages will catalog all of the setting data for our homebrew campaign setting, the Undiscovered Countries.

Inspirations

The Undiscovered Countries are largely inspired by four great works of fiction and media:
* Frank Herbert's Dune
* Last Exile - an absolutely fantastic serious anime series
* Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - a wonderful Chinese wu xia film
* Hero - another really amazing wu xia film

This system of magic is designed for the Undiscovered Countries home-brew campaign setting. In The Skies, the folks there have the ability to form personal pacts with "tuuhrou" - the spirits of everyone and everything. These pacts allows the character's abilities to be greatly enhanced, and can even be used to perform inhumanly amazing feats that could only be called magickal in nature. They must be renewed over time, for as the character draws upon the power of the tuuhrou, the spiritual link grows weaker until it is enhanced by the exchange of spiritual and physical sacrifices.

I'm posting this to let all of you know that starting in January, the format for our game will be "officially" changing. I'm no longer going to be "Head GM" or whatever, at least for a long time. Instead of the "Nathan runs a campaign" format we've had for so long, I want to switch to some different gaming styles and formats. I'd like to get some collaborative games going, and encourage others to step up and run their own games.

NPC: "You're lucky - if this was D20, you'd be screwed."
Evan: "If this was D20, I wouldn't be playing."

Lots and lots and lots of combat! This session was about 90% combat, and definitely the longest-ever drawn-out battle I've run in Savage Worlds yet. The beastlings continue to attack, and this time a new hero joins in the fray.

This was definitely our most action-packed session of this campaign to date, and a good kick-off to what promises to be an extended quest. The story opened with a quick scene of the four heroes traveling, two days after the events of the last session. They are being led by the strange blind old native woman, marching ever forward toward the northwest. As a chill breeze runs through their path, they think back to the events of the previous days, and how they got here.

hi there.. i'm drake, and i'm an alcoholic..

Last night's session begins a little over a week since the last adventure. The colonists have been in the new world for two weeks now, and still there's no sign of the missing third ship. Milly has helped fortify the defense wall, Rassmus has helped map the surroundings and find food, Ulrik has been plagued with dreams of the slain beast (and stopped drinking alcohol), and Atallah has been tending to more political matters as translator between groups.

Normally, whenever you roll a successful attack with one or more raises, you get a single bonus d6 to the damage roll. This house rule changes the damage bonus to be more cinematic, allowing really high attack rolls to greatly increase the damage potential.

With this rule, each raise on the attack roll counts. A single raise nets you a bonus d4 to damage. Each additional raise increases the die type by one (d6, d8, d10, d12, d12+1, d12+2, etc).

This is a slight change to the way skills are raised and purchased through Advances. This text replaces the skill advancement text from the books:

A single benny can be used before the dice are rolled to buy a simple success to the test at hand, eliminating the need to roll. This cannot be done on crucial tests deemed major focal points of the current scene. If there is a question about a roll's importance, ask the GM.

You now start each session with White Bennies (henceforth known as Story Bennies, or "stobies" if you are so inclined) as determined your normal starting Benny amount. Story Bennies can be spent to make changes to the actual in-game situation. Minor changes can happen with one Benny, and major changes with two. Story Bennies cannot be used to affect the dice or the mechanics in any way, whatsoever.

Normally, bonus XP gained from bennies at the end of a session go directly to the characters. With this house rule, the GM makes the dice rolls for each benny privately, and records a secret tally of background XP based on these earnings. Every time the character gets 5 XP, they are rewarded a GM-picked advancement based on how the character has been played thus far.

Normally the Savage Rules allow you the opportunity for bonus XP based on the number of bennies you have remaining at the end of each session. I think this gives too much encouragement for players to "turtle up" and as such I alter this rule. Instead, players have a chance for bonus XP based on the number of bennies they've used, not saved. Spend those bennies! Make things happen! It can only help you in the end.

(This is a Savage Worlds port of the Classroom Deathmatch flashback rules)

(I will fill this in later, after the game reveals how this happened)

At the time of character creation, each player must give their character a "specialty", which is an area of expertise in which their character excels. Examples of good specialties include Battle, Magic, Scouting, Thievery, and so on. During each session, each character receives one "red" benny, which can be traded in at any time before the dice are rolled, giving the next roll an extra wild die should it fall within the realm of the character's specialty. Should a regular action benny be used on this test, all dice are rerolled, including the Specialty Benny.

In our first full session after character creation, we meet the characters that are destined to become the first heroes of this Savage New World. Starting to my left and going around the table, we have Evan playing Milly, a Northwardik blacksmith's daughter with a streak of toughness and a specialty of "Meanness" (although this changes in the next session to Tinkering). Next we have Drake playing Atallah, an Ahzali reformed tomb robber with a specialty of "Risks" (this too changes next session to "Magic").