The Land of Oriya

Creating a world doesn't always start from the beginning of time. And you don't need to create the whole world, either. For Hostargo, I've tried to create a "land" area that holds enough interesting history and locations to ground the players in the setting, while also leaving enough room for expansion and manipulation of what's already there.

I started with how I envisioned the first recordings of man, and how it would have expanded throughout time. I started making ages that matched up to roughly what you would expect the technology levels of a civilization to be as they progressed. I also don't want to bore the readers, however, so I did about a paragraph of good detail for all of the six previous ages. Then, for the "current age", I will be putting all of the information about the present day setting.

For the map area, I was able to hire a very talented artist from The Cartographer's Guild named Josiah. I worked with him over many weeks to first draft, then tweak, and finally produce the following gorgeous map:

View the full size here!

I am very excited to place Hostargo within the Land of Oriya. The name Oriya came from me digging waaay deep into the internet for unique names. I can't even find my way back to where I was, but the word I was looking at meant "The Mother of all Consciousness", which given that the source of magic in my world is "memory", I thought it was fitting.

While the main game will obviously center around the city of Hostargo, this map inspires me; it makes me want to adventure int his land to all the neat places Josiah and I created. I hope you enjoy it as well (do not copy it, please), and it will be a main feature in the final RPG book :D

Thanks for checking it out!

I'm engaged!

Another journal entry - this time with very exciting news! Yesterday I asked my long time girlfriend and hopefully lifetime partner to marry me... and she said yes!

In other news, we've already put in 20 hours into Grim Dawn. I love the occult magics and mix of fantasy & firearms. It's a very well done hack & slash RPG (diablo clone), and is the most delicious "potato chip" gaming I've had in a while. Plus, I can't think of a better person to play it with than my new fiancee!

Work on Hostargo does continue, though slowly. I'm hammering out specifics, so each little thing is generally hours of thought and consideration. It can be maddening, but the more I get to play great titles like Hard West and Grim Dawn, the more inspiration and drive I have towards working on Hostargo. That's what I tell myself anyway! Haha, until next time!

Hard West

The wild west has always been one of those underplayed genres for me. I've recently gotten a few awesome tastes of that ye-olde adventure with a couple of video games like Secret Ponchos and now Hard West. Since the game I'm trying to make (Hostargo) also has a "western" base to it - especially when it comes to combat scenarios - I wanted to dig into some of the mechanics of Hard West, which is a tactical, turn-based RPG.

First and foremost, the game is heavily cover based, much like other tactics games where firearms (ranged weapons of any kind) are the main weapon of choice.

God created men. The six-shooter made them equal.

But unlike other tactics games, where sometimes you just have to fight cover-to-cover and hope for the best, Hard West always gives you a few tricks to work with. First, the wild west setting always provides a variety of unique building types: from crumbling shacks to the smooth stone walls of a fortified mansion. Second, there are plenty of environmental props, such as wells, wagons, stalls, cargo boxes, and animals. But lastly, it was a real pleasure to find that you could interact with objects in the environment to create, destroy, or re-enforce cover. You can flip tables, pull up cellar doors, and stack boxes - all things that I would normally want to do in a tabletop!

Movement and positioning are key in Hard West. It's unfortunately largely unrealistic, but the action point system lends itself well to tactical movement. First, you have two action points (AP). For one AP, you can move. For one AP, you can shoot. For two AP, you can usually do some sort of special shot. The big kicker though, is that any shot will immediately end your turn, even if you haven't yet used all of your AP. This means that there's no "shoot and hide" strategy. Instead, it forces you to think of not only where you need to be to shoot, but also where you need to end up so you don't get flanked yourself on the next turn. I quite like it, despite it's sometimes frustrating lack of flexability.

The RPG elements aren't huge, but they hit the spot. The use of poker cards to build characters gives it that wild-west feel while still rocking a fully customizable system. Different cards give your characters different powers, and then different poker hands give different bonuses on top of that. Throw in jokers as wild, and you've got yourself a fully fledged RPG team building experience!

Overall, I highly recommend this to both fans of tactics games, and to fans of the weird west genre. It has it's quirks, but even it's overland exploration will have you feeling like a true pioneer. 7.5/10