[UPDATE 1/6/21: I no longer support spending money on products that benefit Zak S, or giving him positive attention and connection. The short version is that I find credible claims that he has engaged in unacceptable behavior and not made up for it. For more detail, see here for the core of the accusations. To get Zak's side of things, he maintains this separate blog from his main one to post updates on the legal status of these complaints.
Please consider these claims and make your own decision on their validity, and the implications thereof, before either supporting or shunning Zak.]
Okay, so this one is pretty brief due to a few real-life reasons, but my tentative goal is to keep up week-daily blogging and have this particular series wrapped up by the end of the year, and a pdf of it by the end of January. Tentative. I've made too many blog-promises that have evaporated to want to be too concrete.
So, here is the table of contents/outline I've come up with for this Middenheim re-write, subject to change as I dig into stuff and realize it needs to be better organized:
- Very brief introduction/overview of the city - a few bullet points to establish the feel
- The Watch - brief overview of the Watch, because having a threat of "the cops" helps with a noir feel
- The Districts - this will be the meat of the rewrite (and much of the format is taken from Logan Knight's stuff on Corpathium), as each district will include:
- Sights, Smells, Sounds, et cetera
- Typical Buildings Description
- Daytime Activity
- Nighttime Activity
- Encounters and any modifications to "I search the body"
- Rumors
- Notable NPCs
- Landmarks - here's where any important/named buildings will go
- (Interesting Building Features)
- (Interesting Interior Features) - These last two I'm undecided on, but I like what Logan Knight has done with them in his Corpathium districts
- Inns & Taverns - Some notable ones will be described in their district, this will be a generator for name, quality, and accommodations
- Religion - Super brief section on the major religious forces in the city and what conflicts they have
- The Long Arm of the Law - The original Middenheim book has an interesting, but kind of complicated legal system. I'm going to suggest a stream-lined version that will hopefully promote jailbreaks and tough choices.
- What shop is This? If a character wanders into a random commercial building
- The Powers that Be - A chart for important NPCs. Like Vornheim, it will be arranged such that a single roll produces results in-line with the published NPCs and their relationships, but multiple rolls can get you someone new and unique
- NPC Generator - a "basic" NPC generator that will probably borrow a lot format-wise from Logan Knight's NPC Birthing Sacs and Zak S's NPC table in Vornheim
- NPC Relationships - Again, similar to the Vornheim approach, this is meant to create juicy inter-NPC relationships for the PCs to get involved with and cause problems
- Chaos Cult Generator - this is going to produce random Chaos cults with random short and long term goals, random enmities with other Chaos cults, and random involvement with other power-groups. Like the NPC chart, I want to have 1 roll or multi-roll options, and I'll include the Jade Scepter and Purple Hand as examples
- The Undercity - some very brief notes on how to have a mega-dungeon connected to your sewers
- Random Intrigue Generator - a table or series of tables to quickly and easily create complicated relationships and power structures between groups. Ideally fast to use and will combine with the NPC relationship chart to create all sorts of problems on the fly
Overall, my plan is less to present "Middenheim, as it "really" exists in a particular year", and more to present "how to use Middenheim to have *the sort* of adventures the original supplement talks about, but with more room to tailor to your own game and players.
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