Worldbook: Nine Alternate Realities has been published on Lulu.com at
http://www.lulu.com/author/wizard/index.php?fCID=1991006&fCookie=.
It contains nine worlds in seven settings like the 1st and 2nd Book of worlds, and weighs in at just about 120,000 words.
The gather world is Starsong Systems. The parallel worlds are Gothika & Fantastique. The contingency world is Doom of the Mech Empire. Other worlds include Northgate City, Heartwar, Symbiont Academy, and Tall Tales of Mythica.
1. Starsong is founded on a question seldom asked. What if ALL the likely scientific advances occurred, what would the world be like. Starsong attempts to answer with a world of wonder where a human can become a cetacean, or a tree. With a world of turned upside down economics where working at Waffle House is big bucks, and strange taboos against ranged weapons. Its a world of great glory, and sudden terror; its a world where normal people live for centuries unless they die in a billion fold swath from a super-virus. Its a brightly sunlit place, with deep, cold shadows hiding not far beneath the surface. Its your future, if you're lucky because as scary as it can be, it could be far worse.
2. Gothika & Fantastique are Steampunk worlds which start with the funeral procession of Her Brittanic Majesties' Viceroy to the Americas, Sir Abraham Lincoln. The world begins to go wonky from there as bridges cross oceans, and dirigibles fly with a foot thick of iron armor, and physics seems to work up to a point, and then go completely bananas.
In Gothika, the satanic mills are real. This world is ruled by Ares, a bully, thug, and a coward, but a god of war all the same. In Fantastique, the bright dream of engineers is real, and while there is danger, the reigning power is Athena, goddess of crafts and wisdom and war. One world ruled by evil, and the other by good, so much alike, and yet so different.
3. Doom of the Mech Empire is probably the most intellectually challenging world I've ever created. The events on the Bronze Age alien planet, with the electroforms that ride the tall, thin, fuzzy creatures (and the hero) mirror the events, and the outcomes of what is happening on the galactic stage as alien space monsters attack the Human Star Empire.
Edward Carroll and Jesse have playtested this world, except for the contingency.
It offers a moral dilemna, for possibly the one thing that can save the innocent defenders, is also the one thing that will almost certainly doom them.
4. Northgate City has been played twice on this site (and as a gather at RPOL.net with Alexis and Misty Reynolds). Its a metropolis of heroes and villains with many unique touches, and a good explanation or two for why supers congregate here rather than spread out over the world. It offers some of the more interesting personalities for the player to interact with. These range from the schemes of the supervillain Dr. Zhorbhakian who is convinced he's a superhero, to Soliton the world's most powerful slacker, to an AI left by Michael Di Vars(r) in one of his many 'foxholes' across the Multiverse.
5. Heartwar offers the Dreamer the chance to change the world's mood by changing the Collective Unconscious. This isn't easy as wrestling with Archetypes, and Myths will strain even the verser's nerve. Worse, there are other dreamers, and not all are benevolent. Worse still, in the waking world, spy agencies from various powers want to control the dreamer because he represents too much independent power.
This has been playtested by our Jhiaxus and by others at RPOL.net as a gather world.
6. Symbiont Academy takes the player aboard an alien spaceship along with five hundred of the Earth's best and brightest to a Megascale Structure millions of times the size of Earth. There, the hope of the Earth World Government will meet with other races, and see if they can pass a test, and be permitted out into the larger galaxy. The nature of the test? Ah, the aliens aren't telling. That would be much too easy. Better study hard at the School of a Dozen Doors.
This also offers the chance to deal with alien symbiotes, and first contact situations with some unique races.
Edward Carroll, Tom Day, and RobMacD have playtested this world.
7. Tall Tales of Mythica takes you to a world where Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and other American folk tales are the literal truth. You can try to find Big Rock Candy Mountain, or visit one of the several Grand Canyons, help Stormalong grease the sides of his ship so it can fit in the English Chanel (and thus make the cliffs of Dover even whiter), and learn skills that you probably can't learn elsewhere in the Multiverse.
Or you could simply visit the realistic Western town of Hardscrabble which is almost completely normal, and is your starting point. It has enough adventure for a bit. But eventually, you'll wander, and see a really big, really blue ox on the horizon...
Actually, the link is http://www.lulu.com/content/1991006 . I believe copied the link while you were still logged in to lulu.com
Although I am notoriously poor at updating the site, in the wake of this announcement I immediately added the information to Eric's page on our support site, as well as including mention of it on the support site index. I don't know how much help that will be for him, but it's now there.
I'm going to have to scrape together the money for one of these myself; it looks pretty good, overall.
--M. J. Young
Thank you David, you're right at what I did. And MJ, thanks for the endorsement, and the very quick indeed update.
Eric
I got a world idea for you Eric. A flatline body bias. Fighting skills like boxing would still work, but you wouldn't be able to walk. The verser verses into a prison cell, and finds that he cannot walk (but he could stand up and box if he tried) He is pitted against other versers in death match fighting contests. It was just a weird idea.
If after so many matches, he is still alive, he is given a suit that will enable him to walk normally.
Your opponents would be chosen by a 3d10 GE roll curve. A 30 roll means a 3@10 in every single @1 fighting style (In other words, someone you couldn't possibly beat) and a 3 would be someone willing to throw the match to give you a chance to move ahead. Just a weird thought.
It would be kind of like the Gamesters of Triskelion from Star Trek. All the Indigs were just brains. They didn't need any body skills. They captured people from space ships to fight for their entertainment. Kind of the same concept is what I'm thinking about.
With the body bias flatlined, only versers would be able to fight in the @1 styles. This could be a good world for someone that wanted to learn to fight. The world is high psionic, high magical, but when the verser lands in the prison cell, they have a tag put on their leg before they wake up so that psi and mag is flatlined for them.
Thank you, John. Why don't you work on it, and once you're done, I can look at it?
All,
I've revisited the book since I realized I'd made a mistake. I'd ordered full color printing for the interior black and white pages. This allowed me to make a price far more congenial to the buyer, and more congenial to me as well.
Call it a 50% sale.....
Or just say that color printing inside a book is really expensive.
Eric
I don't have any clue what the @1 fighting styles are. Any @1 moves that could be done. I need to know all of this to work on it. I'm envisioning kind of a slave camp, where a verser can learn to fight, in an @1 style anyway, and people there doing training that are ex-fighters. Maybe you would have a former heavyweight boxer there that could train you in that, and he is always looking for a way to escape. Flat line body bias would make an escape difficult. I need the @1 fighting styles.
All body-based combat styles are @1; the use of a weapon as an extension of the body is also @1, as are the steal initiative and fast draw skills.
No other "maneuver" is @1.
The assumption is that the core stance and movements of the style give you slight bonuses to defense, attacks, and damage, but that anything you would announce you were doing specifically would be more complex and thus outside the core of the style.
That means you could, within the style, punch, or kick, or grab, or push, or throw, or just about anything else, your opponent for normal damage, but you couldn't fake feint, you couldn't accomplish any sort of intensified damage, and you couldn't do anything that is described in more specific words.
So such a style would involve knowing what the primary mode of combat is, whether it is aggressive or defensive, weapon-utilizing, -adverse, or -dependent, the number of attacks, what weapons are usually taught, and the attack and defense sit-mods and damage mods. Nothing else would be part of the style, unless fast draw or steal initiative are part of the training.
--M. J. Young