So, this is going to be a little
different from my usually heavily planned out in advance and scripted
stories. Astute readers of this blog will be aware that a rather
fabulous official Gor role-playing game was released earlier this
year, entitled 'Tales of Gor'. Like all role-playing games it can
either be played tabletop face to face with friends (around, um, a
table...), or, as is becoming quite popular these days, via the
Internet. A couple of weeks ago chloeK (the talented artist who does
all the Emma of Gor pictures) and I were messing about with some back
and forth writing improvisation just for fun and I suggested, since
she seemed to be enjoying it, that we could try something more formal
as an RPG adventure on this blog site.
So that's what we're going to do.
chloeK has created a Gorean character using the rules in the Tales of
Gor book and I'll be running an adventure story on a very regular
basis (several times a week is the idea) for her to react and respond
to. It will read a bit like a story that is serialised in bite size
chunks, albeit written in the second person, and crucially I'm not
fully in control of where the story goes.
Yikes!
The game will be set in the same 'Gor'
that Emma, Brinn and co inhabit so there may be some passing
references to characters and places that I've used before in my
writings here.
Because this is an interactive
role-playing game, it will differ significantly from the Emma saga
and associated short stories because I won’t have complete control
over the story line. While I have a rough idea of what I intend doing
(at least at first), two significant things may confound my
expectations and make things challenging for me as a story teller.
Firstly I don’t get to decide what
the main character does because Chloe will be making the decisions
for her.
And secondly I won’t be determining
the outcomes of any opposed actions. An opposed action is where a
character attempts something where the outcome is not certain. This
could be anything from a fight scene to say trying to sneak quietly
past some guards. In a role playing game a character has a numerical
rating in various abilities which gives a general probability of
success. Dice are then used to determine whether that probability
works out well or whether the character has failed.
The format of the game will be
reasonably simple. I’ll write a piece of prose (as a post on this
blog) and then Chloe decides what her sultry heroine does next
(writing her response in the comments section). She can make the
responses as simple or as detailed as she wants. I then determine the
success or failure of any opposed contests by rolling some dice
against her skill sets and then I write another piece of prose (as a
follow on post) which outlines what happens next. From this Chloe
makes her next set of decisions and so on with the storyline bouncing
between the two of us. Obviously I’m in control of the entire game
world (Gor as a whole) and the myriad non-player characters that she
will encounter. But her skill set can influence how they regard or
treat her. And the decisions she makes will also have a bearing on
how they react to her.
Chloe got to make the initial choices
that would determine the setting of the game and the type of
character she would be playing. I asked her to choose any location on
Gor other than the Barrens (for the simple reason that I have never
read either Savages of Gor or Blood Brothers of Gor so couldn’t do
that setting justice).
Chloe opted for the island Ubarate of
Cos in the Thassa sea, and she decided to play a Cosian woman of the
caste of the Builders. The Caste of Builders are the scientists and
architects of Gor. They command the great projects and the
permissible technological advances in the realms of mechanics and
engineering. They have especially good command of optics, the height
of which is the telescope, known as ‘The Glass of the Builders’.
She named her character Lady Rosalita Sanchez of Telnus.
Cos and Tyros
The island states of Cos and Tyros have
a long alliance and are the second great power on Gor after Ar, or
were. Together they still represent one of the greatest maritime
powers on Gor, but their ability to project and use military force on
the mainland has been much diminished. Both islands are unusual in
that they are nations, rather than city states. Cos is an island
state made up of the cities of Telnus, Selnar, Temos and Jad while
Tyros, smaller, is made up of Kasra and Tentium. Both islands are
mountainous, cut with terraces to raise crops to feed their cities.
Cos grows many ta grapes on these, exporting them to the mainland and
making them into sweet wines, both of which are much sought after.
Tyros’ mountains are more rugged and
riddled with vart caves (a type of large, bat like creature), the
inhabitants of which they train and use in hunting and battle.
The alliance of these two islands has
tried to defeat Port Kar, the pirate city, and failed. They succeeded
in conquering Ar, before the revolt, which turned out to be a more
successful display of their power.
Their navies and armies need to be
rebuilt but the wealth of Ar that they stole makes them hugely rich,
even in defeat – though this is little salve to Lurius of Jad, Ubar
of Cos, and his monstrous ego.
Cos and Tyros are the only powers that
regularly trade with the Farther Isles, a series of small islands
stretching out into the Thassa. Small and relatively unimportant
these islands also occasionally play host to pirates and privateers,
as well as those seeking to escape from their problems on the
mainland.
Character generation:
A Gorean character is defined by
his/her attributes, skills and traits:
Attributes - things like how
strong, clever, charming she is.
Skills - useful things like
playing an instrument, sailing a ship, scratching another girl's face
and pulling her hair in a fight etc
Traits – quirky things that
make her unique that are both an advantage and a disadvantage.
Attributes and skills are usually rated
between 1 to 5 (though can go higher for certain reasons) with 5
being Tarl Cabot in quality. These equate to the number of dice you
roll to determine a result of an opposed action. The ratings can
possibly have a +1 or +2 in some cases. 3D+1 would mean for example
you roll 3 six sided dice and add one. Basically high numbers are
always good for you. One die is a 'wild dice' and if a 6 is rolled
you can roll that die again and add any further sixes that come up.
Similarly if a 1 is rolled you subtract that number from the result,
rather than add it, and keep rolling, and subtracting, so long as you
roll further ones. This adds a little more uncertainty to outcomes
and can create. Some extreme results. The number you roll is matched
against a difficulty number. If you meet that difficulty number or
higher, then you have a success. The degree of success is a direct
factor of how far you exceed the target number with your dice roll.
Skills are a sub set of specific
attributes and quite often your dice roll is the total of attribute
plus relevant skill
There are six Attributes and these are
your inherent capabilities, gifted to you by your genetics and the
hardships that your body and mind have been put through.
Three dice (3D) is considered the human
average and, for a normal person, five dice (5D) is considered the
achievable human maximum (i.e. Tarl).
Dexterity is a measure of your
hand-eye coordination, your fine motor skills, your ability to move
your body with great accuracy. Whenever you do something involved
with your hands and fingers like shooting a bow or picking a lock,
you will be rolling your Dexterity.
Associated skills: Care, along with:
Bow, Burglary, Crossbow, Draft Beast, Rope Work, Sailing and Sleight
of Hand.
Body is a measure of your
physical fitness, your strength and toughness, your muscle mass, bulk
or ability to apply force with your body. Whenever you have to endure
some hardship or exert the power of your body you will be rolling
your Body.
Associated skills: Fitness, along with:
Endurance, Run, Survival and Swimming.
Reason is a measure of your
innate intelligence, your ability to think through problems, solve
puzzles, recognise patterns and use your wits. Whenever you have to
apply your intelligence to a problem you will be rolling your Reason.
Associated skills: Philosophy, along
with: Culture, Healing, Initiative, Kaissa, Navigation, Scholar,
Senses and Trading.
Arts measures your aesthetic
sense and your practical, creative ability. Whenever you play music,
paint a masterpiece, create a mosaic or apply your craft, you’ll be
rolling your Arts.
Associated skills: Aesthetics, along
with: Art, Composition, Craft, Music, Poetry and Singing.
Agility is a measure of your
whole, bodily awareness, balance and control over your own body.
Whenever you’re doing something that requires whole-body fitness
like acrobatics or fighting, you will be rolling your Agility.
Associated skills: Coordination, along
with: Acrobatics, Athletics, Blades, Clubs, Escapology, Evade,
Fistfight, Pleasure, Riding, Spears, Stealth, Tarn Riding, Throwing
and Whips.
Charm is your force of
personality, your ability to say what people want to hear, to lie,
cajole, persuade, intimidate and lead. Whenever you try to persuade
or otherwise influence someone, you’ll be rolling your Charm.
Associated skills: Confidence, along
with: Animal Handling, Bluff, Charisma, Command, Convince,
Intimidation, Slave Handling, Speaking, Will.
So...
Generating a character in Tales of Gor
is very simple because you can simply pick up a basic character
template based on the caste choice and it has attributes and skills
pre-chosen. But to add a bit of variation you then get to allocate an
extra 6 points to attributes and 5 points to skills.
Chloe also got two additional attribute
points because of her sex. Women on Gor get a +1 added to their Charm
and a +1 added to their Agility.
Finally she had the option to choose up
to three ‘traits’ from a list. Traits are background things that
have both an advantage and a disadvantage built in and they add
colour to the storytelling possibilities.
It’s always interesting seeing how
players design their character attributes, skills and traits because
it gives a good insight into the kind of game they want. Take Lady
Rosalita for example. Chloe decided to pour points in to boost her
Charm attribute to the maximum possible, creating a character who if
not the most beautiful woman on Gor, comes extremely close (sorry,
Emma!). She eschewed buying skills that might prove useful in any
form of combat, but bought skills that would allow her to influence,
cajole or manipulate people instead. This is perfectly in keeping
with the Gorean setting of course where women wouldn’t have
considerable fighting prowess unless they were Panther Girls or
Talunas.
With her choice of three 'traits' she
bought the following ones from the extensive list in the book:
Agent of the Kurii - you are one
of the human agents of the great powers behind so many of the
events on both Gor and Earth. They are
a powerful ally with networks across Gor that you can tap into making
it far easier for you to travel and to work, but you will almost
always be working to their ends and in working for one you make an
enemy of yourself to the other.
Patron – you have a powerful
patron, a man or woman with plans that involve the trials and
conflicts of cities – or even worlds. This is an individual with a
direct interest in you, even though they might be part of an
organisation. They will look out for you and aid you, but they will
also have many different things that they wish you to do for them –
to further their plans.
Slave Heart - in your heart of
hearts you are a natural slave. You dream of it, you think of it
constantly, even act it out in privacy - but it tugs at you and makes
you want to be a true and total slave. Increase your Charm and its
maximum by +1D and your Pleasure skill and its maximum by +1D. Reduce
your Will and its maximum by -1D.
Now it was my turn. Chloe had given me
an idea of who she wanted to play, so based on her various choices
(caste, location, attributes, skills, traits etc) I fleshed out a
starting background that would be the springboard for her interactive
Emma style Gorean adventure. This is what I came up with and
presented to her:
Lady Rosalita Sanchez:
Rosalita Sanchez is a High Caste Free
Woman of the city of Telnus on the island of Cos. She is maybe 27 to
29 years of age, and had her age stabilised when she was 23. She is
probably still white silk, but that is for you to decide.
Rosalita has a younger sister, Rosanna,
aged 19 (and un-stabilised as she is not old enough yet), who lives
with her in the harbour cliff-top house that their father built from
high quality Cosian granite and marble. As you might expect from your
caste, it is a superbly constructed building that overlooks one of
the harbours of Telnus with a crenellated (chest height walls)
courtyard attached to the house at the very precipice of the
reinforced cliff that drops alarmingly for maybe three hundred yards
to the foaming waters below. The courtyard catches the sun in the
morning and is adorned with beautiful plants and fruit trees that
enjoy the Mediterranean like weather conditions. It is of course
protected from the sky with strands of Tarn wire and quite safe. It
has an amazing view of the entrance to the harbour and on a clear day
you can see vessels coming and going far below.
The house is quite narrow but built
high on three storeys and cylindrical in design with an extensive
basement below that you use for storage mostly. The basement includes
slave kennels but you do not currently own a slave. This is an
inconvenience for it means you have to look after the domestic duties
yourself, or rather share them with Rosanna. The girl is after all in
your charge and not yet old enough to be stabilised, let alone take
charge of her life.
Your father, Elias Sanchez, died
several years ago from some disease brought back by Cosian soldiers
returning from the mainland after Ar was liberated. You probably
share the typical Cosian resentment, rivalry and enmity towards Ar as
a result. It probably gives you much satisfaction to know that many
of Ar's most beautiful women were brought back in chains to be slaves
on the island of Cos after the fall of the city (in the Gorean
equivalent of the late 1980s). They are a common sight now in the
slave markets in Telnus, and the sluts are easily identified by their
Arian accents and shameful ways.
Despite your inheritance of a property,
you are by no means as wealthy as your caste status suggests. You
probably have accumulated silver worth in the region of £35,000 to
hand, mostly secreted in safe spaces within the house. You do however
enjoy the favour of a wealthy patron – Salvador Saffini – one of
the city's wealthiest merchants – and the man for whom your father
worked for many years as his chief builder. He has to an extent seen
that you and your sister were safe after the death of your father. He
has a son, Dante Saffini who often personally commands his trading
vessels – large round ships that trade with the mainland, and a
daughter, Lady Isabel Clara Saffini. It is through his daughter that
you developed your connection to the Kur conspiracy, for Lady Isabel
is secretly an agent of the Kur forces within Telnus and, some years
ago she recruited you to the cause, promising you in time wealth and
power in equal measure. She is essentially your contact and go
between – your connection to the higher more mysterious echelons of
the Kur forces on the island of Cos.
With an incredibly high Charm rating of
6D+1! (the charm equivalent of Tarl's sword fighting skill) you are
famous throughout Telnus for your incredible beauty, grace, style,
and presence. Even veiled and fully robed, you move with the most
sublime gestures and your voice is like silken honey when you laugh
softly. Your eyes sparkle above the veil and you find men are often
drawn to speak to you at social engagements, smitten by your charms.
You often find the men easy to manipulate and influence, as your
incredible charm and beauty is further enhanced by your Charisma and
Convince skills. It is this perhaps that persuaded Lady Isabel to
recruit you.
Many young Free Men seem to desperately
want to please you in polite social circles. They yearn for your
approval and friendship, competing amongst themselves for your
attention. Whether they get it is another matter of course.
You have never seen a Kur, though you
do understand that you essentially serve creatures from another
world. Lady Isabel assures you that the Kur are alien gentlemen of
sorts who hold the High Caste women of Gor in high esteem, and will
see that you occupy a position of considerable influence when their
schemes come to fruition. At times they also recruit and use
barbarian women from Earth. This probably seems peculiar to you
because barbarians are but simple girls compared to noble, lofty
Gorean Free Women, and the common perception is that Earth girls are
natural slaves. You have heard through Isabel though that often these
stupid girls do not realise they are expendable to the great Kur
cause, and presumably they are simply recruited for missions where a
Gorean Free Woman might be rashly endangered. Far better then that an
Earth woman runs the risk of being collared or killed instead of
someone like you! Perhaps they do have their uses after all...
If there is one thing that troubles you
it is the shameful secret that only you know, that with the 'slave
heart' trait you are perhaps a natural slave who some nights lies
awake in her silken bed, twisting and turning, frustrated and
miserable. You will never admit this to anyone, and in fact you do
not even dare to admit it to yourself, but some of your fantasies and
dreams are hardly suitable for a High Caste Free Woman of Cos. It is
your secret and you are ashamed of it. Of course no one must know. No
one must have even a hint of an idea.
As a consequence of the 'slave heart'
trait, you have a natural aptitude for sex with a Pleasure skill of
1, even without any form of experience or training. It is almost as
if you instinctively know what to do, how to move, how to please a
man from your dreams perhaps. It is possible that you may fear
getting too close to a man, for fear how your body might respond if
that were the case. Can you trust yourself with a man if he gently
and considerately made love to you, being careful not to treat you in
any shameful or disrespectful way? Or would he sense from some of
your responses that you are more than you try to seem?
-----------------------------------
The Tales of Gor RPG interactive
adventure should hopefully begin in a couple of days on this blog
site. :)
- Emma x
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