Kran

"Ra urdath san uthmor ahen aggun hara`het shaka`thorr.
My blood and my marrow is yours, do what you want with it."

Kran

Hi Guys,

As you can see the current topic is the feared and terrible ancient empire: Kran. This is Mordor in Ynev. :)

This country was founded by 13 powerful warlock demigod, leaded by Shackallor. According to the legends Kran has been existing since eternity and remains forevever. The "Land of Darkness", "Home of Evil" - called it the travelers like these phrases. Tales and stories what believed to be true circulates around the continent about evil dragons, about enormous warlocks and about heroes who entered its wild and blurred forest to die...
Kran beleived to huge empire, in fact it is alliance of  few dozen small duchy, more than hundred city state, numerous knightly domain. The will who forge the alliance into one mighty power is the will of Shackallor. His hands and supporters are his brothers, they are all demigods, the bastards of the Goathead Ranagol. They were sent to the prime material plane in the begining of the time. Shackallor and his 12 escorts were settled in the Kranian-mountains.
They fought many wars against the humans, the last was the The Invasion, when Kran lead a huge nomadic and greenskin army against Pyarron.
The goverment is very complicated. As I mentioned a lot of states form the empire. This small states are in provinces, all province has governor. The provinces form the empire. 3 kind of province there are: the direct controlled lands are the Imperial Provinces, the semi individual lands are the Alliance Provinces and the Free Provinces. Apparently the second two types have some freedom, but both of them are dependent to the central government. Sometimes Kran takes offer to powerful person to lead a province, for example Ironhand Alex and Chei King received such an offer. According to the gossips they just laughed at the situation.
In Kran several human and inhuman language are spoken, the human languages has an common  original form, this is the kranian. A lot of races live here: humans, aquirs, orcs, evil elves, etc. The most of the human folk settled in Kran in the X. century, they have nomadic origin. Typical kranian is tall, thin, creol, dark haired, his eye is little bit oblique.
The state religion is the Faith of Ranagol, but everyone can worship their own pity gods if they obey to Ranagol.

Than You for the attention!

About the system engine

"The merchants and caravan escorts opened free way for him and he walked away towards the city. The guard, who adressed him earlier just stared after him, he wiped his blooded nose with his theub. He whispered repeatedly the jadd word:
- El Dsiah, el Dsiah...
The storm in the desert, what sweeps away everything." 


Hi,

Before I continue the introduction of World of Ynev let's take a look at the system. As I mentioned earlier the base system is the Sword and Magic (Adventures on Fomalhaut), by Melan: Sword and Magic It is a D20 OSR product. The second source is an SaW hack what is made for a M.A.G.U.S. contest. It is only hungarian content, but the translation is is ongoing, two-thirds of the text is already translated.

Sources:

Setting: World of Ynev by M.A.G.U.S. rpg.
System: Hack of Sword and Magic (Adventures on Fomalhaut), by Melan, D20 OSR RPG

Base System

In the SaW the base roll method is the same as the official:

1d20 + modifiers against DC. modifier usually come form one of the abilitiy or the sum of ability and skill value. The formula of the ability modifier is: [Ability  score/3]–3 It means that the range is the bonus is between -3 and +3. The common ability rolling dice code is 4d6-lowest.

Value of the skills is the following: [Experience  level  +  ability bonus] In the base system the character gets skills at the creation,they can not learn skill during leveling and can not distribute points between skills. I am planning some changes to resolve this little problem, because in M.A.G.U.S. you can learn skills during the campaign. In the other hand in the original M.A.G.U.S. system you had two grade skill subsystem.

Saves and combat are the same in D20, but the increase of the values are smaller and it operates with fewer rules. I would like to change something in this subsystems in order to represent more heroic style, it could be more feats example. For the Attack bonus there are three kind of base value: Atk*1, Atk*2/3, Atk*1/2. First is equal to the exp. lvl, second is the two-thirds of the exp. lvl and the third is half. *1 is often belongs to the warrior classes, *2/3 belongs to the rogue classes, and the *1/2 is represents magic-user fighting style.
There is the +5/+10 rule, if the player want to make a special maneuver during the attack special +5/+10 test must be taken, the measure of the test depends on the difficulty of the maneuver. An  opposite attack check must be taken, but I think you can replace it with skill or ability check if you think it is better in the current situation. Or if the manauver involves non combat elements DM can force the player to make additional tests to the succesful move. For example if the action has jump, catch, sweep, etc. component. If the attacker has +5 or +10 higher, then the opponent's result the attemp is succesful, in case of attacker critical failure the target wins the situation and can turn.(For example fighting back) All other cases are draw.

Combat example:

Messor (El Dsiah) (lvl10 Assasin from Kran, in rank: Messor)
El Sobira City Guards (6 lvl2 Fighters)

El Dsiah, alias Messor (10)

Init: +6
Attack: +9/+4, Damage 1d4+3 with head or arm, 1d8+3 with spear.
AC: 13 (Dex+Quilted Armor)M
HP:  76

City Guards (2+1) (2 is the level +1 is the average bonus,  )


Init: +1
Attack: +3, Damage: 1d8+1 with spear
AC: 12 (Dex+Quilted Armor and cloth aka Theub)
HP: 10

This situation is happend in the iconic M.A.G.U.S. fantasy novell, in the Renegade:

A high ranked assassin, a messor of the Imperial Clan of Kran, who traveled through the Taba el Ibara Desert to train some jadd agents of the emir's bodygards in El Sobira. Now he is in El Sobira and the local guards are trying to force him to show what he posess. The assassin thinks, that the time has come to show some skills to introduce himself to the emir's agents. After this situation he got the name: El Dsiah, the desert storm.

El Dsiah attacks first because of the surprise. The player decided that El Dsiah make a special attack with his head, in order to prone his opponent. The DM offers a +5 maneuver, if the +5 attack opposite check is successful the guard will be proned and damaged.  Player rolls 12 and the result is 21, the Guard's result is 17 with the +5. Attack is successful, Guard becomes proned and suffers 1d4+3 (5) damage.
El Dsiah comes again with his second +4 attack. The player want to make a special attack again. Now he wants to catch the guard's to spear make a sweep attack. DM says, it is a +10 maneuver, because of the catching and the sweeping. The player must make an additional medium(12) DEX check to catch the spear. The player rolls 14 and the sum is 16, so El Dsiah is able to grab the weapon. With the captured weapon he makes the attack roll. This special attack has +10 modifier, the amount is 12, it is very difficult, but messor likes taking risk. :) The roll is 20, the total attack roll is 24, none of the rest of the guards can beat this result. (Their roll results: 16,21,19,23,13) The damage. 1d8+3=2+3=5, every Guard suffers 1 HP loss, because of the sweep attack. (To distribute the sweep attack damage is DM decision.) The assassin scratches all of the Guards faces and walks away stared by the crowd.

Magic


Magic system is almost the same as the D20, but spell names are little bit different. It uses memorization. I want to change it to 5E style, because 5E is memorization is more flexible. The maximum spell level is 5. Little bit low magic, but it fits to World of Ynev.

Monsters

Monsters has level beside the HD. It helps to determine the values of a monster. As I mentioned there is a code next to the name, eg.: 2+1. First is the level, second is the average bonus. Every monster has d8 HD and the attack value is based on the first column, so they get attack during leveling as fighter. Saves usually based on the fighter class, but sometimes it is different if the nature of the monster requires other allocation. There are some more values, but most of them is well known in D20. As you can see that in this system creating and handling monsters is very easy.

M.A.G.U.S. hack

In 2014 the was a M.A.G.U.S. making contest, several rpg hobbist participated and created good hacks. My favorite is the SaW hack. It contains some M.A.G.U.S. specific race and class and the spell list of the new magic-user classes. The new classes are the following: Gladiator, Swashbuckler, Knight, Assassin, Bard, Martial Art Fighter, Swordmaster, Paladin, Clerics of Ynev, Witch, Warlock, Firemage, Magic-user (ynevian style).
In the following part you can find the Fighting Styles. Every class can learn fighting style except for the magic-users (MU, WI, WA, FM). This means that they can choose a style, what add some advantage and disadvantage in the combat based on the nature of the style. For example with two weapon the character can attack twice, but with negative modifier.
Psi is the next chapter. In Ynev the most of the adventurers are psi users, it is widespread. The hack detailed only the Pyarronian Method and the Slan psi (Martial Art Fighter and Swormaster use it.), but I think I will add more content to this chapter. We have some Ynev specific weapons and monsters. All content will be published here post by post, I translated almost the whole text, several monsters are the remaining only.

Thank you for your attention! Next time I will continue the introduction of World  of Ynev.