One Thousand and One Nights and One Night
a role-playing game campaign design ’zine
Second Issue of the Year
Hey, welcome! I’m pretty excited
about this issue. Continuing the
Changeling Project, I’ve decided to
start on Glamour and Banality and
my work–up for the rules on that.
Also I’ve got a couple of other
things that may amuse or excite.
I’ve got a Frappr map on the
website (let me know where you
hail from) and if you are interested
in joining the All Nighters, the
1001+1 subscriber group, email me and I’ll add
you. I usually send out preview copies of the
’zine to them prior to the official post date
(along with notes about the issue). Thanks and
see you next month!
CMT Quote
“You’re a Paladin but not one of those ass–hat
Paladins….”–Heard around the table at the
Corvis Monkey Troupe!
One–on–One Gaming
Mike and Cam at Godzilla Gaming Podcast
(mentioned in Issue #19) talk about gaming
one–on–one in episode 8, season 1 (look
between 29 minutes and 56 minutes) and it
came quite a surprise to me some of the stuff
they came up with. Why didn’t I think of that?
I’m not going to tell you what, instead you’ve
got to go to that podcast, download it and
listen. If you’re a gamer who has limited group
sizes, they present a pretty cool idea that you
may want to consider.
Touch it with a Ten Foot Wiki
I’ve been on the lookout for a way to better
organize my games and game notes and came
across a non–ServerSide wiki that allows me to
add pages, edit and use without having to be
connected to the internet. It’s all at Uncle
Bear’s site for Ten Foot Wiki (which you can get
at www.unclebear.com/tenfootwiki). I’m still
trying it out and I’ll let you know how it works
in the future!
Content © Wooden Leg Named Smith Productions 2008
Website: 1001nightsand1night.110mb.com
Vol.: 1, Issue: 21, January 15, 2008
The Changeling Project, Part 2
Preparing for this issue, I started thinking
about what and
how much I’ve got
to convert to
Savage Worlds!
(Pinnacle). It
reminded me of
sukiyaki. Now, I’ve
heard that sukiyaki
is the Japanese
version of stew. Japanese chefs saw American
sailors eating stew when Commodore Perry
opened up Japan in the 1880s and came up
with their own version. What does this have to
do with Changeling: The Dreaming (White
Wolf) you may ask? Well, the systems are
completely different and so the tone of each
game can be completely different, just like
sukiyaki is not stew. So you may not like my
conversion like some people prefer stew to
sukiyaki. I personally like both, so that’s why
I’m continuing. That’s just my little caveat to
you. If you don’t like it, please feel free to
change it and I’d be interested in what you
change it to (hint: email me).
Glamour, Banality, Bedlam!
Looking through my 1st edition Changeling: the
Dreaming (White Wolf) rulebook recently, I
read Glamour has to be higher than Banality in
order to remain a changeling, but if your
Glamour gets too high, you go crazy and enter
Bedlam. It puts Glamour and Banality in a race
with each other–which one will reach the finish
line first? It makes more sense to me to have
Glamour and Banality on opposite sides, where
the more Glamour you have, the less Banality
and the more entrenched in Banal reality, the
less Glamour you have. Allowing them to flux
during play is necessary, since Glamour is often
used to power spells and Banality can be used
to root a character into reality to resist
enchantments. Standard Savage Worlds!
(Pinnacle) has five stats: Agility, Smarts, Spirit,
Strength, and Vigor. I figure that a changeling
(continued on Page 2, Second Column)
published in association with the Corvis Babbage Cliological Society
’zine art is either open source or through fair use of copyrighted works
One Thousand and One Nights and One Night
a role-playing game campaign design ’zine Vol.: 1, Issue: 21, January 15, 2007
Mathemancy: Actual Play Notes 1
Recent turnout at the Corvis Monkey Troupe
has been scant, due to family emergencies,
sickness and the holidays. The first meeting of
the year resulted in exactly three members
showing up, MW, AW and myself. Another
member DM was supposed to run something
yet I had the feeling that it would be better to
have a game in my pocket ready to go in any
case. My intuition was correct!
We used Savage Worlds! (Pinnacle), and I had
MW and AW make up some basic, everyday 21st
century characters (Novice + 2 advances) with
Knowledge (Mathematics) as a skill, as high as
they could get it.
MW came up with a guy who mostly lives off
the grid. AW’s PC was a typical geek. They
started in Seattle, at the Full π Tavern in the U–
District, the local hang–out of the University of
Washington Math Department. An informal
group of math professors, grad students and
graduates met regularly to discuss math. They
showed up late, no–one was there but they each
received an envelope from the barkeep, Bill.
The envelopes were from Pierre. Opening them
up, they found a series of equations that
seemed to change over time. For example:
Δ=∑
r Θ x 2 4+π3 xy
⎯
⎯→
5
z
∇∞ ≠ Φ ⊗ ∏ β Δ
z cos(3Ω − l) q When enchantments are cast, the character
Talking with Bill, they found out that the other
core members of the club had come and gone,
after getting their own envelopes. A grad
student, Preston, came in and talked briefly
with them, telling them that all the professors
were back at the Math Dept. acting all weird
and doing crazy math on blackboards.
The PCs went over to the Math Dept and saw
black government SUVs surrounding the
building and arresting the professors! As Prof.
Fizzywig was being dragged from the building,
he cried out stuff that was just crazy to the PCs!
MW’s PC wisely shut off his cell phone and they
calmly walked away from the growing crowd.
(to be continued in Issue #22)
Content © Wooden Leg Named Smith Productions 2008
Website: 1001nightsand1night.110mb.com
Page 2
The Changeling Project (cont.)
would have an additional two stats: Glamour
and Banality, which are opposites of each other
and have different ranges of the regular dice
(d4 to d12). Arbitrarily, let’s
set the range for Glamour and
Banality dice between d4–2 to
d16, and combined they can’t
be higher than d18. Does a
d18 exist? I’m sure maybe but
it doesn’t matter. If your Banality is a d10, then
you can’t have higher than a d8 in Glamour,
and visa–versa. So the maximum pairs are
d0/d18 d4–2/d16
d4/d14 d6/d12
d8/d10 (and reverse)
Since these are the maximums, it’s probable
that a character will have a breathing space
between their Glamour and Banality (say a d8
Glamour but only a d4 Banality). But when a
changeling accumulates d16 in Banality, they’re
very close to going the whole way. If they get to
d18 they’re pretty well gone. If they reach d20,
then it’s over for them. Did I mention d20? No,
I guess not. d20 is for complete Banality or
Bedlam (in the case of Glamour). It’s over for
the character at that point.
Spending Glamour
temporarily spends Glamour (unless it’s a
permanent thing). Each die of Glamour has that
many points to use (a d8 has 8 points, a d6 has
6, a d4 has 4, & etc) and so the attribute
temporarily goes down after that. If a powerful
spell is cast, a changeling can go through
several dice of Glamour, but each time that’s
done, his permanent Banality increases by a die
for every two dice spent. For example, a PC has
d8 in Glamour and d4 in Banality. He can cast
most spells below 8 points, but if he fuels a
major spell with 14 or more points (8 for the d8
and 6 for the d6), he gains another die in
Banality, to a d6. If he spends 24 points,
draining himself down to a d0, he gains two
permanent dice in Banality, to a d8.
published in association with the Corvis Babbage Cliological Society
’zine art is either open source or through fair use of copyrighted works