Combat in UARPS - Part Two

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Dark Ages! Here is the second part to the last post, on combat in UARPS. This is also the last of my planned posts related to UARPS for now, as I believe I have broadly covered most aspects of the game to some degree. If you want more specifics on any subject, or want a new one covered, or even just have something to say about this clip in particular, feel free to say something in the comments, and I will do my best to accommodate!

Combat in UARPS

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Dark Ages! Here's my first post after my vacation in Iceland, where I explain the broad points that informed the creation of the combat system for UARPS. If you have any questions or comments, post them below as usual, and as always, I hope you enjoy this content!

Iceland : The Arrival

Hello, and welcome back to the Dark Ages!

Today, I'll be describing my flight to Iceland, and my very first day, spent walking around Reykjavik while waiting for my bus to Vellir, the farm in Hveragerdi where I would spend the majority of my vacation.

First off, I would like to clear something up : before I went to Iceland, I had expected something similar to Yellowknife (which I visited for work last summer), a Northern community with a rocky, forested natural setting.

This is not the case. Reykjavik itself looks like a typical Dutch town, of all things (Well, generally Northern European, but my first thought was of the town of Brunssum, in Limburg, so that is the example I will use), and the countryside of Iceland is virtually barren when it comes to trees. The nearest they come to forested land is patches of "trees" that a Canadian may call worthy of a hedgerow.

It is worth noting that they are trying their best to rectify this by planting more forests, more on that later.

The major landmark in Reykjavik is Hallgrimskirkje, the massive cathedral at the town's centre (as far as I could tell; it is almost directly North of BSI, the main bus terminal, and halfway from the water to the South to the water to the North, so it seems central enough). The most defining feature about it, I would argue, is its incontestably modern architecture.

See here :

The contours of the spire (if that is the correct word) are the part that catch the eye the most. If they look like they are made of concentric pillars working their way up to the top, well then they look exactly like what they are. The gaps between those vertical lines serve as windows for the wings of the church itself.

Of course, while you are there, you have to climb to the top of the spire, and take a look around. What you see then will be your first hint that you are, to paraphrase the cliché, not in Limburg anymore :

The city is surrounded by magnificent ridgelines, and is, in fact, not even close to the size of what we from the West may consider to be a typical city.

That impression will stay with you if you, as I did, decide to wander around the town itself afterwards. Everything has a small-town kind of feel, streets are small and cozy, and the food, well...

I felt like I was cheating when, in the middle of Reykjavik, I stopped at a location called Le Bistro, clearly styled after a French Café and not anything remotely Icelandic. However, the food I had there, a meal called the Farmer's Breakfast, was delicious and also included what I would find to be the most typically Icelandic food available : Skyr. (Seen at the lower left of my tray in the picture)

Skyr is a strange substance. While some will tell you that it has the consistency of yoghurt, they would be right half the time, but also not cover nearly all of the complexities of the dish. Basically, Skyr is a cheese product, that comes in some variation on a creamy consistency. It can be flavoured with outside substances in all sorts of ways, and can come with different degrees of cheesy flavour under all that. I'll have Skyr several more times on this trip, so expect more on that, but suffice to say that this particular Skyr tasted somewhat cheesy, had a consistency almost like thick yoghurt, and was topped only with granola.

The Skyr I had afterwards, however, was in a dish they cleverly titled Skyramisu, and was artificially coffee-flavoured, with a fluffier consistency. Aha! Already with the variation!

In any case, once my brunch had been satisfactorily introduced to my digestive tract, I headed out onto the town, with the intention of visiting the National Museum and the Culture House.

I'm sure you will be disappointed to know that, on the Winter schedule, basically all museums in Reykjavik are closed on Mondays, bringing my exploration to a bit of a crawl. Instead of visiting those, I did a lap of the town, visiting the University Park and City Hall on my way back to the bus station. 

And that basically concludes my first impressions of Reykjavik. Shortly thereafter, I was in a van on the way to Vellir, where I began riding with the Eldhestar stables, a fantastic experience I would recommend to any of you!

I hope you all enjoyed this, and please feel free to tell me if you did (or didn't), and tell me why, so the Dark Ages can continue to please!

Thanks very much, and I look forward to our next post, which will be (for real this time) my second post on Combat in UARPS.

Bless bless!

World-Building

Welcome back to the Dark Ages! In this fourth post in the series I am creating on UARPS, the Universal Advanced Role-Playing System, I touch a little bit on some guidelines I have put together for creating worlds in role-playing games, and provide a few thinking points to keep in mind while you create your own.

Enjoy, and if you have comments on my technique or techniques of your own, don't be afraid to leave a line in the comments!

The Arbiter

Welcome back to the Dark Ages! This is the third post in the informational series I am creating on UARPS, the Universal Advanced Role-Playing System. In this episode, I discuss the role of the Arbiter in leading a gaming session.

Enjoy, and don't forget to leave any comments or stories you have!

How UARPS treats its Characters

Welcome back to the Dark Ages! This is the second post in the series I am posting about the Universal Advanced Role-Playing System, or UARPS. In this episode, I touch on changes between the character in UARPS and other role-playing systems.

Enjoy, and don't forget to leave a comment if you have one!

UARPS is online!

Welcome back to the Dark Ages,

Here is a link to the Google Drive folder that contains the UARPS documents as they exist currently:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0Bx9U3YZIxaHmeGVxUHRPUUl4d1U&usp=sharing

Note that these are still subject to change, and have only seen limited testing. Please let me know if there are mistakes in the files, or major discrepancies in terms of gameplay, and I will rectify these as soon as possible in a new version.

Enjoy responsibly,

Aaron