"Ealdspell," A RPG in Progress

Greetings and Salutations!

Welcome to my work-log blog! Here, I'll begin working an explaining the process of my writing ventures, mostly for my own benefit. My hope is that the more I contibute to this page, the more I will contribute to my many projects. Dear reader, this is for you, but this is also for me. Let us make something wonderous of this shared experience.

Under the "Theses" section of this website, there is a article that is titled One Final Descent Into Madness. Final Descent was one of my two college theses, this one being my creative-writing focused thesis. The project was firs designed as a module for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, for it to be both a campaign and world-setting. This venture was soon shelved, due to the OGL crisis of 2023. With no clear direction ofo how writing homebrew and self-publishing was going to continue, the project was shelved, as much of the ideas were tied to topics such as the Lowerdark, of different planes of existance existing within the space of 5E.

Thus, Ealdspell! This is my process of unshelving the project, and I hope to eventually selfpublish on this website as three seperate Zines. The first will entail the game system itself along with the main cast of playable ancestries, the second will focus on generating cities and NPCs, and the third will expand into the combat and magic systems as well as creating city-wide dungeons. As of now, the ancestries of the first Zine are 90% completed, with only the art and game system needing to be further expanded upon. I'll be running through some of the in-progress work here, so it can be expanded upon at later dates.

To begin, naming! What exactlyis a Eald-Spell? The word comes from Old English, meaning "An old story." With many TTRPGs focusing on the medieval, with the entire experience of a TTRPG being a shared-storytelling experience, having the name reflect what the players would be completing around the table made sense. One Final Descent sounds more akin to a single module, not for a game system with smaller books underneath it. As for why the firection of Old English was taken, it was due to a lack of focus on the subject on the market. High gothic and medieval style is everywhere for TTRPGs, thanks to the influence of stories such as Lord of the Rings, but there have been very little entries that actually use Old English as an actual focus, apart from entries like Vaesen.

Alright, fun, you have flavoring- how is that actually going to impact the gameplay? Let me introduce the main game system: The Humors. In medieval philosophy and medicine, the concept of the different liquids within the body would balance out the indivudal and their temperance, leading to either bodily healthiness or mental detriment. These were Sanguinity (Blood), Choleric (White Bile), Melancholia (Black Bile), and Phlegmatic (Phlegm). When these were in balance, a man's soul was pure. When even one was out of balance, however, and the nature of the man changed for the worse. And with that, you can craft a core system which has not been explored yet on the market! Instead of simply having Constitution for Health, Charisma for speaking, imagine a system where each tier of failed check, each death saving throw, each critical success, shifted the body's Humors, increasing or decreasing skills to the situation. The system is still under construction, but I'm widly excited for its potential. But, none of this is important if you can't visualize it, so behold!

Ozwalde Mispense, Viscount of the Foundation, of Glorious Hryre.

Loxo'Celes, Aspostate of the Great Chains

The lowly Skrunk, miscrent of Hryre and of the Centerfold

Art! Above are some of the sketches that I have planned out for the first release of "Ealdspell." Inspiration was taken from the medival artfirm of "Illuminated Manuscripts," especially from the bestiaries of the time. To have an illuminated manuscript carried a prestige during the medieval ages, as it showed that the owner: A. Was of a wealthy-enough status to read. B. Of an upper echelon, the owner could then afford to hire an artist to produce their work, which could take years to make. C. Helped tie into religious dogma of the time, since most illuminations were produced for song books. The art looks strange! That's because, in the same way that music was composed in order to reflect the holy trinity, art was produced in a stagnent fashion to not usurp that of theological order. It's wonderful! It's strange! And I have never seen it reproduced in a TTRPG book, so I figured I'd try my hand at it.

Details of the world of the "Maw," taken from the Obsidian program.

There is much more that I wish to include in this blog, about story, plot, lore, and relevance, but this post has been long enough as is. What I can say that the themes of this project have spiraled into being reflections of the world we live in now, drenched in medieval mytholocism. But that's a post for another day. For now, have a image of the various different plot-points I plan to touch on in the project! As I bring this post to a close, I wsh to bring light to the next planned post- the ancestries. The goal of this sytem is that everything is drenched in medieval thought and speech, but a key component of this is humanity. Much of medieval Europe was drenched in Christian doctorine, which is something that can't easily be scaled back due to the prominance at the time period. So, how does one translate this into a TTRPG? Remove the human from the equation. Force every ancestry to be something that is alien in form: living stagalmites, colossal leeches and blind insects, living plant matter and humanid rotting remains, undead constructs- all of these have been designed to distance the player from what is normal, easily accepted in the TTRPG space. Each will be a stepping stone for builds, for how the game is played. And all of this will be discussed next time.

Thank you for reading through this space, and I wish you a wonderous day. The world is dark and full of horrors, but our persistance and our stories light the way for hope to continue to fight. Keep writing. You deserve to have your tale heard.