Heroic Roleplaying in a World of Swords, Sorcery, and Steam
I’d like to introduce Aetrimonde, a TTRPG I’ve been designing with heavy inspiration from the houserules my group used back in our Dungeons and Dragons 4e days. I’m not ready to publish Aetrimonde yet, but I’m opening up this blog to discuss its design principles, mechanics, and systems.
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Category: Aetrimonde Gazetteer
Posts about Aetrimonde’s titular default setting: regions, cultures, magic, etc.
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Today, I’m going into more detail about the Unclaimed Reaches, homeland of Ipki Chainbreaker, the goblin Inquisitor who I’m building as a fourth sample character. The Unclaimed Reaches aren’t one of Aetrimonde’s major polities (in fact, they’re not even a minor polity…), so they won’t be getting the full two-parter treatment like the Dwarven Federation…
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In today’s post, I’m going to go into more detail about the deity Deum Radiant and the Illuminate Society, one of the many sects within this deity’s faith. Both of these concepts were introduced in my recent post on Ipki Chainbreaker, goblin Inquisitor. This content won’t be a part of the CRB when it releases,…
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Before I get back to building the latest Inquisitor sample character (and if you haven’t already voted on their ancestry and faith, go do that now!), I’m putting up this one last post related to faith and religion in Aetrimonde. Today, I’m talking about the heavenly realm! …Which means it’s going to be a short…
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Following on from its mentions in my previous post, today I’m going into detail about the “antechamber to the afterlife,” the Underworld. This is another of the alternate planes of existence that overlaps Aetrimonde; for more details on Aetrimonde’s cosmology, see this other previous post. Aetrimondean cosmologists often treat Faerie and the Underworld as related…
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Since I’ve just started a post series focused on the creation of an Inquisitor as a sample character, now seems like a great time to dive into how Aetrimondeans worship. I’m going to split this into two posts, first covering all the common forms of religion in Aetrimonde, and in a second post I’ll dive…
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Having recently dropped a lot of lore relating to alchemy, I’m going to top it off by discussing some lore related to Gobol Karn, ancient birthplace of the alchemical arts…and a lot of horrific atrocities committed using them. The ruins of Gobol Karn are presented as one setting for classic dungeon-crawl adventures in Aetrimonde: they…
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I’ve got a post in the works covering Aetrimonde’s alchemy subsystem used for making potions, elixirs, and volatile chemicals, but as a prelude to that, I want to discuss what alchemy actually is in this setting, starting with a single application: Alchemical Metals! Origins of Alchemy The original discoverers of alchemy were the goblins of…
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In my previous post, I promised the reveal the Secret Lore of Golems, but first, I’d better explain what I meant by that. As experienced GMs know, people play RPGs for many reasons; one kind of player is the Explorer, who plays the game to uncover secrets planted in a campaign by the GM. Secrets…
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Picking up where I left off previously, today’s Gazetteer post will cover the government and society of Caras Elvaren, the magical post-hardship nation of the high elves. Government Caras Elvaren’s government has been described variously as “vestigial,” “impotent,” and “as close to anarchy as anything called a government can get.” The foundational principle that the…
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Today, in order to provide some additional context for Gwynne’s backstory, I’m going to present some of the lore of Caras Elvaren. Summary Caras Elvaren was first settled during the Age of Glories by elf dissidents and exiles looking to avoid the attentions of the sorcerer-kings of Caras Seidharen. During the Collapse, these scattered enclaves…
Aetrimonde 