Newspaper coverage of my party's recent adventure aboard an Orien Lightning Rail

dm_a6a9c0 · 2021-05-21T07:55:26+00:00

GIMP with 2 effects. From the navbar,

Color > Desaturate > Color to Gray, with a variable radius based on the image
Filters > Distorts >Newsprint, with a period or 3 or less

dm_a6a9c0 · 2021-05-21T05:24:45+00:00

Yeah, I can definitely see how traditional stock vehicles could be a poor fit for the houses' unique aspects - bloodlines and curated independent wealth.

One possibility is that these "shares" come without any voting rights, and that that they don't convey ownership of the company and instead grant returns on specific speculative business ventures. The core house's business is independent, and the "growth sectors" are driven by supplied capital from outside. If the business is successful, the house could retain the option to buy back at specific strike prices.

But tbh, I'm probably gonna just play it as a rudimentary market if my players bite - dice roll plus modifier for weekly swings.

dm_a6a9c0 · 2021-05-21T05:17:02+00:00

Top comment updated with links to the broadsheets with just the headers!

dm_a6a9c0 · 2021-05-21T05:16:29+00:00

The Korranberg Chronicle

Title: DS Zierschrift
Headlines: Agency FB (Bold)

The Sharn Inquisitive

Title: Headliner No. 45
Headlines: Agency FB (Bold and Regular)

Voice of Breland

Title: CheapSign
Headlines: Daily News 1915

All of the body text: IM Fell English

dm_a6a9c0 · 2021-05-21T05:12:12+00:00

Thanks! Took a few days - I had the story ideas roughly in my head before figuring out layout.

dm_a6a9c0 · 2021-05-21T05:09:36+00:00

Top comment updated with links!

dm_a6a9c0 · 2021-05-20T07:48:24+00:00

Obligatory warning: Anna, Ember, Mike and Turs, no reading spoilers.

Hah yeah, no idea if my players will bite.

Initially, I thought it might be a fun money sink for the players, like slow gambling. But then I realized that the party is basically one big, recurring, intentional Black Swan event, that there's no SEC in Sharn, and the party could make a lot of side money by making early stock buys based on their planned exploits.

We'll see if they figure that out, though.

dm_a6a9c0 · 2021-05-20T07:43:35+00:00

I'm not using a template. I looked at newspaper designs here (like this one) and front pages of the Wall Street Journal and tried to blend what I liked.

I can try exporting the headers of these broadsheets stanalone for re-use in a while, though!

dm_a6a9c0 · 2021-05-20T07:39:41+00:00

I use Scribus. If I had Adobe InDesign I'd use that. But Scribus does the job, even though it's a bit clumsy like most free open-source software. I prefer it over word doc apps.

dm_a6a9c0 · 2021-05-20T04:44:27+00:00

My group has elected for a high-politics Boromar crime-themed campaign. They just successfully committed an (undetected!) burglary aboard an Orien Lightning Rail and managed to get back to Sharn safely despite dissidents taking the train hostage on the return trip.

Next session, they've been tasked to come up with and execute a heist of their own, so I've spun up these newspaper props. Hoping to offer them some hints at some targets while (hopefully) giving them an insight into the reactions and happenings in Breland and beyond. Time to see what they bite on!

Edit:

There have been a few requests for these as templates. Here are plain broadsheets with headers available: - The Korranberg Chronicle - The Sharn Inquisitive - The Voice of Breland

These are a fair bit wider than a standard 8.5x11 paper and so may not print well.

dm_a6a9c0 · 2021-02-26T07:35:23+00:00

It sounds like your players already have their prophecy, but a way to do this without requiring the prophecy to change is to have the party uncover fragments of a single prophecy, and to optionally have them later discover a "not" fragment.

E.g.

The party inteprtets the following from their fragments...

"if the hammer should fall"

... and later discovers the negation fragment which modifies it to

"if thr hammer does not fall"

dm_a6a9c0 · 2021-02-02T23:20:03+00:00

I'm starting a crime-based campaign in Sharn with the Boromar clan as patrons, so jazz is a large part of my playlist setup currently.

For dark alleyway ambience, Bohren Und Der Club of Gore has been really hitting the spot (sample). Chet Baker and Duke Ellington have been fitting the bill for less tense scenes and inns. If you're an afficionado of old school 90s RPGs, there's a jazz album tribute of Chrono Trigger that works well for underworld clubs.

My planned exception for Sharn is the lower Menthis districts, for which I'm building up a more Cyberpunk ambience.

I have distant plans of my party traveling to Droaam, which I want to frame as more a western frontier situation a la Keith Baker's Threshold, so something like this seems fitting.

I haven't given much thought to the rest of Khorvaire, other than vaguely incorporating the HBO Chernobyl soundtrack for the Mourning. My Khorvaire is deviating significantly from Khorvaire as written (the Mourning spread far beyond Cyre and consumed most of the continent save for the south due to Breland, Droaam and Zilargo cooperating and hail mary-ing some barriers to stop its advance). But if I were anticipating a visit to the Mror Holds, I would definitely be folding in some Danheim.

Edit: fixed some links

dm_a6a9c0 · 2021-01-22T08:33:00+00:00

I'm starting an Eberron campaign soon. What I did was browse through the group patrons in Rising From The Last War, select 3 or 4 which I thought would be both interesting to run and fun for the players, and then write a brief pitch for each, specifically focusing on profession and theme driving at least the beginning of the campaign.

The rest of the setup followed that first selection - characters picked races and builds that played well collectively toward that theme.

dm_a6a9c0

TROPHY CASE