* FAQ

1. Why did you write this?
2. Where can I get hold of this game?
3. How do I participate in this project?
4. How do I get up-to-date information regarding this project?
5. Where are the [insert favorite race/monster/magic here]?
6. What do I do if I find an error in the game or on the page??
7. How do I get in touch with you?

Q: Why did you write this?

A: I wrote (and I am still writing) this game because it is the kind of game I would like to play, that I would love for someone else to have written. I have tried to stay as true to my vision of the world and the rules as possible, while making it a playable game. You can read more about all of this in the Design-part of this page.

Q: Where can I get hold of this game?

A: Once the Kickstarter is complete you will be able to get it on Drivethrurpg as well as from me directly, if you run into me at some convention. It will also be available in some stores.

Q: How do I participate in this project?

A: I am always on the lookout for new talent to add to this project. Particularly I am looking for skilled illustrators that would not mind drawing a few of the pictures for the upcoming expansions and adventures. If you are interested in joining in you can email me.

There are other things you can do to help as well, and these will be posted as the openings appear; playtesters, writers, artists, coders and a lot more.

A: The best way is to keep an eye on this page, but you can also join our Facebook-page or subreddit as they get updated with all major happenings. There you can also connect to other fans of the project.

Q: Where are the [insert favorite race/monster/magic here]?

A: The game is still growing, and while I would have loved to include everything that Lociam has to offer in the Core rules it would simply have been too much to read or play with at once. The Core rulebook would have been a thousand pages long, which would have been too much. However, there are several planned expansions, and more information coming out, and if there is something you feel is missing please feel free to ask.

Q: What do I do if I find an error in the game or on the page??

A: The subreddit is the best way to go about it, as it gets monitored regularly. This page also has a webmaster, but mailing there can leave you filed with all the spam it gets, so the subreddit is recommended.

Q:How do I get in touch with you?

A: The best way is to visit the subreddit. If you are unable to you can mail “webmaster (squiggly) lociam.com”

* Design History

Designer’s Notes

A lot of things have been asked about the work I have made called ”Lost Roads of Lociam”. I thought I would answer some, and expand on a few points. As more questions arise I will attempt to explain my reasons behind them as well.

Why did you write this?

Well, I have always liked roleplaying games, and have always been fascinated by the challenge, the interaction, the stories and the twists in the game-mechanics, rules and settings that come with them. I have always felt compelled to try to make some improvements to some of the games, adding an article here and there, and adjusting a rule where I find it is missing. For instance I have written several articles, adventures, monsters, texts, campaigns and alternative rules for “Vampire – the Masquerade”, “Middle-Earth Roleplaying”, “GURPS” as well as several Swedish systems of roleplaying, like “Drakar och Demoner”, “Eon”, “Mutant” and a few others. It is something I enjoy doing.

I have been writing roleplaying-games since I started playing back in 1982, and most of them were really bad. They were loose ideas that I tried putting on paper. Back in 1990 I started on a game I called Silent Fighters, a really bad idea about aliens and magic and all sorts of things. I quickly abandoned the idea for the world, but parts of the rules stuck with me. I started reworking the world, and expanding on the rules. This leads us into the design history that I will elaborate further on later.

I have played a lot of games, and found some things lacking from them, things I felt were needed to make a good game.

Why? What’s wrong with [insert favourite game here]?

Nothing, I guess, but I have felt some things missing from a few games, and I really wanted to make sure they were part of something fresh that I could get to play, or maybe even share with someone else. I also never truly liked games based on books or movies, as they were too “set” for me. I wanted freedom to explore.

1. In most fantasy-worlds there are plenty of monks, priests, churches and religions around, but being written largely by people who have no faith themselves, or trying to be politically correct and not offend anyone, they really don’t do much. Except for the occasional “hunt and kill” the gods make a very small or no appearance at all in most fantasy-games. You get to kill some, but they don’t affect the people on the farms. I always thought this was odd. Why would the communities support the churches if they did nothing in return? They can’t all be secular landowners, can they?
This game has active gods. You can sit down and pray to them, and sometimes they will answer. About one time in one hundred if you are not a devout follower, and a lot better if you are a faithful. Even a farmer can get rain if he prays, and a hero can conjure an angel when one is most needed. Gods play an active, but not personal, part in the game.

2. In most fantasy-games magic is something reserved for the select few. A special caste of characters or people is able to use magic, whereas most others are barred from it. This was always such a shame, I thought. In a high-magic world, or a magic-rich world, magic should be something natural for most beings to use. So magic, in this game, is for virtually everyone. Some trolls and animals are not clever enough, but the average carpenter, city-guard or mayor-clerk will have some magical skills at least. Then there are some who specialise in magic, and grow more powerful, of course. But few are barred from magic, and most can learn it, if they have the time and energy to spare.

3. I never liked the big complicated combat-rules. When people fight in roleplaying-games all the elaborate tables for hitting, wounding and saving show up, and it slows the action to a trickle. I thought this was a shame as well. This game has exactly one table to keep track of. The rest are skillrolls, and basic math. If you want to you can add modifiers and optional rules, but the basic system is really quite simple. It is also pretty dramatic, and deadly. If you get in a fight chances are you are going to wind up hurt. That’s part of the deal. If you want to hurt someone else you have to stake your own skin on it.

Now that we have covered the three basic things I wanted to address, we might as well get to some of the smaller points as well.

4. Why are there always big monsters available everywhere as opposition for the player-characters? Is there not enough evil in the human heart to make good bad guys? The movie “Willow” was such an astounding example of how this could work that I cut out most of the monsters from the basic game, and left the humans in there. There are some monsters in the basic adventures, there needs to be; this is a fantasy-world, but most of the antagonists are humans, just like the characters are.

5. Most games cannot handle “ordinary life ™” at all. The skills of a normal hunter or farmer can’t fit into the scheme of things, with heroes and magicians running around as player-characters. I thought this a great shame, and have proven that even blacksmiths make great heroes (right Stig?) and that they can go back to their forge and make a few more horseshoes after saving the kingdom. The rulesystem is designed to hold up to the pressure of ordinary life, so that fishermen can be fishermen, and carpenters can be carpenters, as it were.

6. Finally, a few games I have seen out there try to be too big at once. They try to encompass everything you might possibly every need, and in the process grow utterly unwieldy. The core rulebook for this game is really slim, and streamlined, outlining the things you need to start playing and inventing stuff on your own, not every conceivable rule you might need for every situation, nor hordes of monsters, or detailed descriptions of loads of races to play. There will be more information of that sort in the adventures and expansions. This is not a marketing-trick either; it’s not like I am trying to get you to buy more stuff (even though I would appreciate it if you did), but if you read the Design-history below you will find that this game was once far too massive to actually play. Better make it leaner and playable, than “complete” and utterly impossible to enjoy. The elves are coming, but they are not in the core rulebook. The same goes for the illusionists, and demon-spawn (for those of you who want to play bad-guys), and a lot of other things. A lot will also be given out free on the web as the project progresses.

Design-history
Here is a small note on the “evolution” of the game. This moves from a simple form to a better, hopefully a more complete version has only been possible through the tireless work of all my playtesters, even those not mentioned in the credits. I thank you all.

1. The first version of this game was “Silent Fighters” and never got completed. It was all of 16 pages when it was abandoned. Good riddance. This was in late 1990, as I recall.
2. I tried my hand at “Silent Fighters” again, and completed it at a staggering 26 pages. It was still mostly rubbish.
3. The third try at “Silent Fighters” was, believe it or not, a slimmed version, but included religions for the first time. 16 pages.
4. Fourth try was in Swedish, and was called “Solgård” which is pretty close to “Solar Halo” but not quite. It was 60 pages and had twice as many races and monsters as any other version. It still had some big flaws, and not even the sci-fi version of the game corrected those. We are now up to 1994-1995.
5. Now the game changed a bit, and turned back to English in “Roads of Xiam” (this was before I figured out Xiam is an alternate spelling for the old name of Thailand). This was a whopping 160 pages of text, packed with things, like twice the number of skills, triple the magic, a total of 26 religions and a lot more. It was terrible to read or find anything in.
6. I never knew when to stop. The sixth try was even bigger. It was 167 pages of smaller text, adding more and more contents. It was now spiralling out of control. It had over two hundred magicforms in total, as well as 53 races to choose from.
7. The seventh version, 1996-1997, added a few more skills, but didn’t much improve things overall. A lot of mistakes were corrected, but even more new ones were added.
8. By the middle of 1997 the eight version, now named “Lost Roads of Lociam” was a massive tome of 253 pages of pure text, and included far too much material to possibly be playable by anyone but myself. No one else could grasp the thing. It had nearly 300 forms of magic, over 80 playable races, nearly 50 monsters roaming the lands, and a lot of other confusing bits.
9. Version nine was still a tome, now 261 pages with some basic layout and still not a single illustration. It had much of the basic rulesystem we have today, but it was just far too big to manage.
10. In 1999 version ten was ready. It was just 107 pages, as I had decided to make a lot of the material into expansions rather than try to cram it all into a single volume. It was slimmed down but still missing a few key ingredients compared to what we have now. Still, for instance, magic was learned one spell at a time rather than in spheres. This made magicians terribly weak, even the good ones like the playtesters tried they hands with.
11. The eleventh version was the first with the magical spheres, and was 108 pages thick. It had still to face one of its worst tests to date though; Santa Claus.
12. By version 12, in 2001, playtesting was progressing weekly, and more and more bugs and flaws were discovered in every adventure. I had begun drafting the expansions at this time, but the system had still some basic mechanical flaws. One of the playtesters, nicknamed “Santa Claus” which is a pun in Swedish I suspect few of you will get, had troubles getting through the math of the game, particularly when testing attributes in gameplay. At first this was discounted as an error on her part (yes, Santa Claus is a she) but I soon realised this was a key to improvement. By streamlining the system into containing nearly exclusively D100-rolls the game was smoother and better. Thanks for that, Santa Claus. The manuscript for this version I gave to my brother-in-law, hoping he would test it out further with his groups, but he is a lazy bugger sometimes and I kept testing as I proceeded to the 13th version.
13. Now we are up to 2003, and version 13. This was about as well as I thought I was going to get it, and I started asking around for illustrations, and illustrators. The feedback I got was very positive, and after some tweaking, a few very long delays, and some bouts with inactivity and other projects, this is now the version that is going to print. The material from that 261-page tome is now split into expansions and expansions-to-be and will be printed as well, later on. The game has been playtested by a total of playtesters exceeding a hundred, in multiple settings and adventures, some of which will turn into printed works for you all to enjoy, and others better forgotten.
14. 2010, version 14. It was in essence just a re-formatted version 13 with some more kinks ironed out, and some additional planning and expansions changing the order of some articles in adventures and supplements. This version got printed and sold both at conventions, in stores and online.
15. Once version 14 was out I spent a year and a half improving it, going through version 14.1 and 14.2, doing monthly articles and tweaks, and then realizing that the game was as good as I could make it, and that it simply wasn’t good enough. After some soulsearching I then tore it all down, and rebuilt it from scratch. All the rules were re-written, a whole new framework put into place and while the world is the same, we move a few generations forward, from the era of peace into the Age of the Black Chaimara.

I hope you enjoy the game, as I have enjoyed bringing it this far. It is all up to you now to see how the game develops from this point on.

º The Future

So what comes next?

This project is not just the Core Rulebook and the character-creation rules of the World to Be, as you may have figured out. There is a lot more to it, and if you are missing something, it is possible that it will be covered by the expansions to the game being written.
Below is a small list of publications coming up.

Core Rulebook Set

Adventure
When Two Tribes go to War
This adventure is all about two nomadic tribes vying for the same territory, deep in a swamp. The characters get tangled up in this plot and will have to see it through.
Apart from the adventure itself the publication contains information on the people of the marshlands as well as sieges and defenses,

The Same Old Story
Bandits ravage the countryside, and the farmers huddle in the village by the mountain. Who can ever help them? Well, the traveling band of adventurers, of course!
Apart from the adventure the publication also includes expanded equipment-tables with rules for additional armor.

Circles Disrupted
A magician is demanding a ransom from the local king or he threatens to burn all the crops and plunge the land into a never-ending drought. Will the characters be able to get to the magician in time to stop his evil plot?
In this publication you can also find rules for magical circles, the colleges of magic as it were, as well as rules for magical rocks and crystal, and lastly a new Sphere of Higher magic; The Sphere of Nightmares!

In Glorious Ashes
The ruins of the First Kingdom is a place not just of incredible wealth, but of unspeakable dangers. Can the adventurerers brave the myriad random magical pitfalls of that place, along with its monsters, bandits and other dangers to obtain the greatest treasures lost to history?

Through the Eyes of Madness
Drawing heavily from the Cthulhu Mythos by H.P. Lovecraft, this tale of terror is about long-lost cults, the blurring or reality, the Thing hiding in the depths and the time when the stars are right in the dark uncaring sky.

The World that Is

The first expansion of the game is about the current world, and the primary occupants of this era; the humans. The expansions include articles about the cities, countryside and wilderness of the continent Maoc, and information on the human race’s rich past in this world.
It also contains rules for herbs and plants, as well as potions and brews that can be made from them.
The expansion also contain three new Spheres; the Sphere of Illusions, the Sphere of Undeath and the Sphere of Winter.
The Undead make their first real appearance in the game in this expansion, and have their own section in the publication, with an article on them, as well as listing of walking deceased monstrosities.

Adventure
The Passing of a King
Conflicts within royal court spill out into the city, with the task of killing a monster that ravages the countryside. Will the death of the monster settle the dispute of succession to the throne, or stire the conflict further?
In addition to the adventure itself the publication contains material on peoples of the plains, people of noble blood and some more potions.

God is on Our Side
Two armies, both certain they they have the blessing of the very same god, march against eachother. Are they both right? Are they both wrong? Is one going to be able to use divine might to smash the other?
This also contains an article on religion for the common people, as well as information about living in the cold, the tundra and the glaciers of Lociam, and finally about herbs as a commodity, herb-traders and gatherers.

The Making of a Church
If you thought the politics of a court was tough, you should try a church. This adventure is all about the schism forming in the Salvation-church, and about villagers taking up arms to defend their faith against their neighbors’ heresy.
This of course contains a lot of information on the background of the Salvation-church, but also rules on addiction to magical potions and some hard-to-put-down new potions and brews.

Campaign
Hunt for the Dark
The campaign centers on the undead, and on the people hunting and fighting them. The characters are drawn into a long-standing conflict between a group of undead-hunters, Lifebringers, and their foe; a powerful vampyr.
This campaign is in XX parts and also contains information on the Black Crusades, the Lifebringers and the scant information that is available on the magic of the more powerful undead creatures of Lociam.

The World that Was

This expansion details the older races of Lociam; the elves, the dwarves and the animal-peoples. It contains information on their culture, religion, and their ways. It also allows characters to be made from these races, not just humans. The expansion also includes information on super-human martery of weaponry, expert craftsmanship and four new Spheres of Higher magic; The Sphere of Artefacts, the Sphere of Darkness, the Sphere of Ordered Silence and the Sphere of Spirits. Among the new monsters introducted here are both spirits and creatures of Shadow, as well as the true Dragons of Lociam.

Adventure
Has nice Ring to it
When a magical artifact is stolen from a dwarven king, the characters are set out to get it back, racing against time as the thief uses the awesome power of his new prize to wreak havoc on the lands.
This publication also include information on peoples of the mountains as well as a new Higher magic Sphere; the Sphere of Rock.

Campaign
Eastern Monition
An ancient evil rises in the coastland, and the elves muster a defense against it, enlisting the help of the adventurers in their midst to hold back the rise of this new old darkness.
This also contains information on peoples of the coastlines, rules for traveling by sea, and new martial mastery techniques.

The World that Will Be

The old world is dying and a new one is taking its place. This third expansion deals with the emerging power of Chaos and their Third People.

The World as Yet Unseen

What about everything else then? Well, the World as Yet Unseen details the mysterious islands and continents one can go do discover, as well as the moon some adventurers have tried to reach.

º Background

The world of Lociam

Beyond the barriers of time lies another world. This world is filled with mystical powers, monsters, heroes, and magic. The only way to get there is by the use of imagination.
This world lies in an universe not unlike our own. A cosmos of life and light in a bubble. A bubble on the black seas of Chaos. A raging war is in effect on this sea of Chaos, and the prize of this war is the contents of the bubble. The prize is life.
In the bubble, the cosmos, is a balance between Order and Chaos. Enough Order to make the sun rise every day, and sink every night, enough to make water heavier than air, and enough to keep the heart beating in the living beings. But there is also Chaos; Chaos of desire, hunger, greed, illness, and power. All that which is necessary for the living to keep their spark for life. Their motivation and imagination.
However, Chaos is not satisfied with this balance. Chaos is to rule, and that is final. Therefore, Chaos has made holes in the bubble, and Chaos is seeping into the bubble, and a war between Order and Chaos is unavoidable. The bubble is straining to heal itself, and stop the Chaos coming in, and this is a colossal effort.

The life in the bubble is a multitude of worlds, around a million stars, in a million galaxies in this tiny bubble on the sea of Chaos. We look at one galaxy, one star, one planet. This planet is the third from its’ sun, and has three moons. The world is named Lociam, used like we use the world Tellus, but is called the Home, like we call our world Earth.
The world is green and blue, much like ours, but also very different. There are two magnificent continents on the world, and they are divided by great seas. Around this world circles three moons.
Unlike our world, this world is filled with magical wonders. It has a living current of magic flowing through it, and all living beings are magical, in one way or another. Some of the beings have learned how to use this current of magic, and has developed spells and chants to make magic do their bidding.
Another difference between Lociam and Earth is that Lociam is filled with living gods. The gods of this world are not dead or dormant as most are on Earth, but alive and active, caring for their followers, and aiding them in their actions. All beings that have a faith therefore have a special place in the eye of their god or goddess, making it harder or easier for them to be granted favors by their divine patron.
When these active gods started working on Lociam they could not agree as to how the beings of the world should look, or be, and most gods and goddesses created children in their own image. This resulted in a diverse group of intelligent, humanoid creatures. Humans, elves, dwarves, angels, demons, and even stranger beings were created a long time ago, when the world was new. There are beings on the surface of Lociam, in the oceans, in the earth, and even in the sky.

Among these the humans are the greatest race. They have prospered on Lociam as they have on Earth, and they control most of the land. They have kingdoms and domains, and they fight petty wars for pieces of land, like the dark ages of our own history. They have also collaborated on great works, erecting cities and pushing the frontiers of their civilization into the wilderness, and with roads, trade and the lettering of books brought light into the darkness that are the savage lands.

This is the world Lociam, and in this book are the rules for playing a character in this world. Enjoy.

A history of magic

On our world, magic has become the art of showmen and tricksters. This is not the case on Lociam.
Magic is quite alive, and very real on Lociam. Why this is may be hard to tell, but one would guess it has to do with the activity of the Gods and Goddesses of Lociam. Below follows a short description of how magic works on Lociam.

Through the walls of the bubble of Order on the Sea of Chaos sound a cry. This is the cry of tension. There is a strain of Order to keep Chaos out, and a force of Chaos pushing to burst the bubble. In this fight there is a cry. This is the tension. The tension resounds through the entire bubble, bouncing off its walls, and getting caught in all souls of all living beings in all worlds in the bubble.
This scream is that of power. If one can hear it, one can also direct it, and make it alter the reality around oneself. This is the use of magic. This is also very hard, and takes many years of practice. It is hard to manipulate powers of this magnitude, and to make this possible the living beings have developed forms of magic to be able to re-channel and re-direct the powers of this scream; this scream of tension.
First there is the Lower magic. This ability is found in almost all beings that can think and act. The powers of these forms are small, and are hard to learn, but to use them the person need only think of a pattern, and through this thought is the proper energy channeled towards the correct purpose. The effects of Lower magic are normally transient, unless anchored in another living being.

Then comes the Higher magic. This is a skill learned as a trade, and only some are called by magic, and can devote their entire lives to the study of this art, and make progress. The Higher magic is divided into spheres, each representing a certain force of the world; fire, water, spirit, change, and so on. The effects of the spheres are divided into thought, spells, runes and rituals, but they all have two things in common; language and power.
There is an ancient language taught to all magicians, users of Higher magic, and this language enables them to form patterns of immense complexity in their minds, re-directing the powers of tension into whatever direction, in whatever form, they want. Rituals are just large spells in this aspect, and can take hours to cast, but the effects are much greater. To sustain these patterns or forms in the world there is a requirement of power. This power is normally drawn from the very soul of the magician, but there are alternative sources of power. This power is basically that of will, and emotion, and replenishes itself after a few hours of rest. If all power is drained from the soul of the magician, all will is lost, all emotion is lost, all life is lost, and the magician dies.
It is not the will of the magician that causes the change. No mortal has that much power. The will of the magician is just the tool for directing the immense powers of magic surrounding the patters formed by the language.
Since magic is such a natural thing on Lociam, the beings of this world have learned to sense it, like beings on our world can sense the wind. This is done by opening the inner eyes of the soul, and looking out over the surrounding area, seeing the traces of the scream, and the way it has been directed. All this can be seen in a ghost-like state called astral. Astral traces look superimposed on the normal world, and are not tangible, but they are quite real, residue of the passing scream of tension.
Since mortals can affect the world so easily, it is even easier for a divine power to affect it. This is done on a regular bases, and a follower of a specific deity can ask, or pray, for a specific effect, hoping that the deity will make the small effort to alter reality in favor of the asker. However, the Gods and Goddesses can not do everything everywhere all the time, and therefore, they only listens to those of their faith, and only to those they like. Even if you are of the right faith, and the deity likes you, this does not guarantee you that the desired effect will occur. The will of the divine is hard to foretell, and even harder to understand.

Geography of Lociam

Lociam has two major continents with a great ocean between them on either side. The continent was once a large supercontinent, but split in times long passed and has since drifted apart. In some distant future they might collide as they finish their global trek.
Maoc is the bigger of the two, divided between hundreds of kingdoms. The continent stretches tens of thousands of kilometers from a hot south to a glacier-covered north.
Vai-qau is the smaller continent, only a few thousand kilometers from north to side, and about half as much from east to west. This is a savage continent which is only partially explored by the humans of Maoc.
Between these two is the ever-widening Sea of Conglomeration in which islands appear and disappear over night. This makes it very hard to navigate with any ships. On the other side there is the Copper Sea, which is impossible to navigate with any human ships, although rumour has it there are elven ships that can traverse this violent ocean.

History

Below is a time-line for the rise of Lociam. It starts at the very beginning of time and goes up to the current date, but it is no way complete, and several events are missing, but will be revealed later.

Beginning of Time
Lociam is created and Mian’cau, the Primal Landmass, rises from the waters.

Primeval times
The first children of the Gods appear. Among these are elves, dwarves, and animal-peoples.

Primeval times
The First People discover the powers of magic, and learn how to control and use it. Their civilization is great. The influence of Chaos is very small at this time.

Approximately two million years before year 0
The giants found their first kingdom on Lociam.

Approximately one million years before year 0
The Second People, the Humans, are created, and start colonizing the world.

Approximately 120’000 years before year 0
Mian’cau splits into two continents; Maoc and Vai’qau. They start drifting apart at a great speed.

Approximately 40’000 years before year 0
The first demon appears on Lociam, tearing through the bubble of Order from Chaos.

Approximately 12’000 years before year 0
The humans begin their war against the kingdoms of the giants.

0
The First Kingdom is founded on Maoc by Marcon Sa. This is appropriately called the First Kingdom.

24
Maoc now has 112 kingdoms fighting for the unaccounted lands.
Nearly all the kingdoms of the giants are laid in ruins, and the giants are close to extinctions.

31
The humans in the First Kingdom, in cooperation with the First People, starts the first magic-academy.

44
The humans in the kingdom Diazo starts a war to make the First People extinct. This military campaign is called “Cleansing of the World”. It continues for some time. Humans in the surrounding kingdoms are intimidated by the military aggressiveness of the Diazo, and do not intervene as thousands of the First People are hunted down and killed.

70
The First Kingdom falls after getting its capital destroyed.

79
An army composed of different races from the First People rise to destroy the kingdom Diazo. This sparks a war between the First and the Second Peoples. This war is normally called the Redressional War. This war also ends the “Cleansing of the World”.

87
The first Savior appears and starts proclaiming his religion. He and his followers tries to stop the war.

198
The Redressional War comes to a halt when the high-priest of the Savior; Ybl Ena, sacrifices his own life to the Gods of Peace and Mercy.
The Savior foretells his own death and builds his mausoleum.

199
The Savior, sensing his imminent death, utters a spell of Non-war over the First People. This means that they are incapable of starting any wars for 1000 years. If they do initiate a war, they will all perish.
The Savior is assassinated by a group of mercenaries. These men never goes to trial; they are killed during interrogation. They claim full responsibility, but the king of Diamz (former Diazo), is accused to staging the assassination, and abdicates.
The Savior is buried in his mausoleum, and around it the city Starground begins to grow.

207
The tension between the First and Second People is great, and the First People build a new city; Blazepeace. A great part of the First People move there to escape the persecution by the Second People. No war can settle all the bad blood.

235
As a gift the First People build the city Wisdom’s Halls and gives this to the Second People.

306
The fist creatures from the Third People are created.

700
The first colonization-attempt of Vai’qau is initiated by explorers from Maoc. They encounter strange civilizations and initiates an expansion-war against these civilizations.

985
A demon from Chaos steals the Savior’s sword; The Primeval Flame. A joined army composed by warriors from both the First and Second Peoples defeat a large demon-army at the gates of Breadground. The sword is returned to its rightful place in the Mausoleum.

1134
A force from the Third People first tries to burn Starground and then Blazepeace to spark a war between the First and Second Peoples. This fails as the elf-lord Zelogard travels to Starground and stays there as voluntary hostage until the conflict is resolved.

1185
The Third People starts working on their city on the western coast of Maoc; Rummageburrow. This is a rich port of commerce for both the Second and Third People.

1199
One thousand years after the non-war spell cast by the Savior, the First People take to arms and march towards Rummageburrow. An army of the Second People tries to stop this army, and after a few bloody battles the First People returns to Blazepeace without crushing Rummageburrow.

1343
The city Blazepeace disappears from all maps and can not be found, no matter how hard it is searched for.

1442
The last year of peace. There is still hostility between the First and Second People, and hostility between the Third People and First is at the brink of another war. However, apart from colonial expansion, there is no war on Maoc.
The lion’s share of the First People have withdrawn to Blazepeace, while Rummageburrow has grown. Starground and Wisdom’s Halls are powerful and rich cities.

1443
This is the year of the Chaimara, when a solar and lunar alignment on one side of the world leaves the other in utter darkness, and through this darkness the old gods return, and return in force. Forming cults and sects around the Descent, a massive canyon in the south west, they form crusades to strike at the “false gods” of the Savior and the banner of Marcon Sa.

1449
The Black Chaimara forms its armies and draw up support from nearly every human settlement within fifty day’s journey from the Descent, and start their campaign against the “false gods” and to “wash the world clean in blood”.

1450
The Black Chaimara starts to build stone cairns and temples along the roads of conquest. These Beacons of the Chaimara are almost as much fortresses as places of worship, and spring up everywhere during the next few years.

1455
A crusade mustered by the Salvation-church marches on the Beacon of the Chaimara located by Hiro’s Step. The crusading force is destroyed almost to a man, with thousands of slaves taken, and countless more killed or ransomed off.

1459
Wisdom’s Hall burns. Armies of the Black Chaimara reach out to destroy this bastion of reason and knowledge. The city is saved, but countless books and artifacts are lost either to the fire or to thieves. One of the permanent librarians is killed. The others receive bodyguards made up by members of the First People.

1470

An armed delegation from the Third People seek audience with the high priesthood of the Black Chaimara to discuss treaties and mutual defence-agreements for the upcoming wars with the Salvation-church-held cities along the west coast. They are resoundingly dismissed, two of them are killed and eaten, and the rest gravely wounded in the escape.

1478
Thieves manage to break into the cathedral and the mausoleum of Starground, stealing valuable relics and assassinating three priests. They then disappear into the city and are never caught. While the Savior himself is undisturbed and his sword remains safe, the event shakes the confidence of the city rulers, and more effort is put into security around the mausoleum, as well as the cathedral. The project to expand and strengthen the eastern walls are put on hold for this purpose.

1479
A breath of death and ill sweeps from the marshes of the Weeping Hills and onto the clan-held lowlands below. In its wake follow a large undead host lead by Bey Whitemantle, necromancer of the Black Chaimara. The clans are defeated one by one until the entire region is made desolate. Bey himself is murdered by one of his undead lieutenants and the army wanders back into the swamp, where it could still remain.

1482
On Vai-qau colonizing forces destroy what might be considered an empire of sun-worshippers called the X’tla’nah. Vast treasures are gathered and the surviving X’tla’nah are driven north into the arms of their cannibalistic neighbors.

1488
The storming of Starground takes place. Armies of the Black Chaimara storm the walls as the population loyal to the Savior and Church of Marcon Sa man the walls to repel them. The followers of the Black Chaimara already living in the city then attack from within, the gates break and the city becomes the setting of a massive pitched battle where soldiers fight street to street and house to house. Finally a sort of stalemate is reached, with roughly half the city under the control of the city guard supported by pledged armies and rapidly onrushing Knights of the faith, a quarter of the city firmly in the grip of the forces of the Black Chaimara and about a quarter contested. This is the way the city will remain for a long time to come.

1491
Placing a curse upon the countryside around Starground a majority of the first-born die in their sleep. The faithful of the Black Chaimara are not spared, but accept the sacrifice gladly to weaken their enemies, using their dead children as an excuse to be let into homes and villages, and murder the grieving within.

1495
The Mausoleum Muster takes place. Forces of the church of Marcon Sa and the Salvation church gather for a crusade, form up and fight their way out of Starground. They liberate nearby villages and roads, securing supply-lines and strengthening allied states nearby. The Crusade takes two years and is wildly successful, and while unable to liberate Starground from the Black Chaimara it ensures that the forces holding the city cannot easily be starved out.

1497
During the passing of the dark moon a cult in the east draws forth a monster from the shadow of the malign moon and throw it into the nearby Beacon of the Chaimara. The monster, as much smoke and shadow as it is claw and fang, razes the fortress, consuming many of those inside before disappearing into the roots of a nearby mountain.

1499
The elf settlement of Ailananor is burned by forces of the Black Chaimara, and many of their ships are sunk. Their shipmaster calls the evacuation and holds the gate while her people escape. Not only does this single elf hold off the forces of the Black Chaimara long enough for her people to get away, killing hundreds of opposing enemies, but also manages to escape herself. In a ceremony in Blazepeace she and her people are honored by Zelogard and one of his sisters who are in attendance, near-divine patrons of the elves.

1501
This is the year the game begins. So many things have been lost, and so many things have been built. The last three generations have seen more change than the ten before it combined. The balance of the world has shifted perceptibly, and a new power has risen in the ranks of mankind. The First People, safe in Blazepeace, look on, and the Third People in Rummageburrow try to find ways to profit off this. Starground remains a split city. These are uncertain times.

The natural order of being

There are several active divine deities on and around the world of Lociam, and some of them have created children in their image. They are divided into three Peoples; the First, the Second, and the Third.
The First People were created during the Primeval times, and were Dwarves, Elves and Animal-People, their form dictated by the god or Goddess that created them.
The Second People where created by Whorrm, the Man-Father, and they are the Humans of Lociam.
The Third People are either creations of Chaos, and its Gods, or the creation of other Gods, who just didn’t manage to create a People fitting in to the First People.

The First People were the first intelligent mortals on the world of Lociam. They were created by three divine powers; The Animal-father, who split in several pieces during creation, the Elf-queen, and the Dwarf-father. They will be detailed in later works.

The Humans of this world are divided into nine races, and all have evolved into a form that suits the environment in which they live. They were all created by one God; Whorrm, but have later been divided by evolution and cultural separation into nine distinct races.

The Third People, being created last, is either composed of the creatures of Chaos, and their image on Lociam, or by Gods who never really got around to create their children to belong to the First People. Their reasons for this vary as much as the image in which they create their children.
These are the mortal beings who inhabit the world of Lociam.

Social order

On Lociam, like on any other world, there are laws and regulations that control the life of the human common citizens. These laws are either written, or just so common praxis that they are followed without question. This goes for both the countryside and the cities.
There are exceptions to every rule, and, unfortunately, they all fall under the Golden Rule: “He who has the Gold makes the Rules”. Those with power often ignore the rules, simply because they can do just that.
Some of the laws are common for all lands, city and countryside alike, and they are the laws of the First Kingdom, the cradle of all human civilization on Maoc. There are basically seven rules in this law:

1. One shall not kill a fellow man.
2. One shall not steal.
3. One shall not commit adultery.
4. One shall not lie.
5. One shall not destroy a church or castle.
6. One shall be loyal to thine faith and church.
7. One shall accept the words of the ruler as truth.

These rules are frequently broken but still respected, and followed, but local laws seem to carry more weight than this generic rule of doing good deeds, as dictated by Whorrm, the man-father. There are loop-holes in this generic law, and some try often and again to use these holes to avoid punishment. One loop-hole, for example, is that, according to the first rule, it is acceptable to kill a woman, or a Dwarf.
There is no one to enforce these laws after the First Kingdom fell, but the laws are still the backbone for ordered laws on Lociam.

Humans and other mortal beings are normally either nomadic, traveling from one place to another, or more commonly stationary, living in a village or city. A city is normally defined as a village with a stone wall around it.
The people living in the city pay taxes for the protection they are given by the wall and the guards normally hired by the ruler of the city, be it a hero, a knight, or a priest. There is also commonly a council where representatives from the different guilds can speak their case in certain matters, except taxes.
Those living in villages normally gather money enough to hire either mercenaries or bounty-hunter when there are trouble brewing in the vicinity.
Nomads have no set place they live in but travel, either at random or in a set patters across the land, following herd-animals, seasons or other factors. Normally these nomadic tribes are small, family groups, but there are large groups as well, wandering cities or caravans miles long.
This is the way life goes on on Lociam.

‡ Contact us

If you want to get in touch with the people making Lost Roads of Lociam then there are a few different ways.

• 3rd draft is done

As we work tirelessly on the next edition of the game we are editing the layout, printing it, proofreading the draft, then re-editing it to improve it. The first draft was completed just 18 months ago, and we are now on draft 3, and not only is the main rulebook complete, but the character creation rules as well! Currently, editing is progressing on one of the adventures “Lights In Old Houses“, and once that’s done I think we are just about ready to finalize and try to get this thing into your hands!

• Sometimes you get to fix mistakes

I am, as you may know, editing the latest edition of the game.
And I am using a machine to help me (I also have a duck, if any of you get that reference).
One of the things I am looking at is if the professional trainings are equal. I mean, do you get a raw deal for being trained as a craftsman as compared to a magician, from a points-perspective. As the chance to get all the professions is the same, it makes sense that they should be “worth” the same, right?
It is important to not overpower certain groups of characters. So I ran the numbers, and it came out like this.

Worst professional training?
Warrior – absolute wreck. Just shy of 30% of the training the higher tier professions get.
Pathfinder, Leader, Demonhunter – pretty dismal. Just about 50% of the training that the better ones get.

The winners?
Magician comes out at the same level as Priest/Priestess, at twice the Pathfinder, Leader and Demonhunter.
Healer – slightly ahead of the magician.
Top of the totempole? Craftsman. Soooo many points.

Now warriors get +10 Athletics, +20 Martial and a free Proficiency in a weapon/armor. Instead of just +5 Athletics and +15 Martial.
And demon-hunters jump from +10 Perception, +5 Martial and +5 Magic to a far more respectable +20 Perception, +10 Martial and +10 Magic.

Instead of a spread between 14 points of “gains” to 35, the spread is now 32-34. Far fairer all around.

That took me the better part of an evening to sort out, but at least now it is done, and I think the professions are all the better for it.

• Working in the background

Even though you may not have been able to see it, the game has actually been progressing. These things happen in the background when you aren’t looking. I just did not feel it needed an update until there was some substantial progress to be reported.

This happens to me as well, when I feel nothing much is happening, and then, suddenly, a result is produced without me knowing there was a problem to begin with. A few weeks ago this happened as I was biking off to the woods to do some hiking, and as I took a corner, all of a sudden, a brand new way to handle weapon proficiencies in the game presented itself. I didn’t know that there was something wrong with the current system for proficiencies, but apparently there was, as this system was a lot more elegant, and works a lot better. All it required was a rewrite.

In other news, the acquisition of a new piece of software solved one of the core issues that was plaguing the layouting process, and with that problem out of the way, all of a sudden, layouting the game became a dawdle. So I knocked out a first draft and this is currently being reviewed and revised. The previous layouting-process had been very costly., time-wise, and not very efficient. It had taken me about four days per chapter, and the results were not always what I wanted them to be. With this new software I was able to exceed my previous year’s worth of output in just a week.

Below is a short clip of what the rough layouting draft looks like.

The reason the clip almost comes to a stop of at the picture of the person hiding in a bush, a picture which was in the last version of the game as well, is that that particular picture was corrupted, and could not be loaded at all. I thought I had lost it, but it happened to be one of the pictures that had been sent to me physically, so I was able to re-scan and re-edit it, so that it could be included. It would have been a sad loss had it been gone forever.

The playtesters have also been busy, and completed two run-throughs of all the available pre-written adventures, and more. They have been sniffing at the rules for the first expansion as well, trying out some of the things that won’t be in the core rulebook.

The progress by the illustrators have been amazing thus far as well. Only a handful of pictures remain to fill out the rulebook and the character creation book. Then we can roll on into the adventures as well. I have been astonished by the outpour of talents on display for this little project, and the amount of effort these truly gifted individuals have displayed in their contributions. I could not thank them enough, no matter how hard I might try.

• FreeRPGday!

Lost Roads of Lociam participated in the Sci-Fi Bookstore (Stockholm) as it hosted FreeRPGDay on the 15th of June.
A total of 13 heroes were made, epic destinies forged, as it were, and a lot of fun was had.
You can read more about FreeRPGDay here.

Our humble thanks go out to all who participated and made this a fun experience!

• The indispensability of playtesters

I am always greatly humbled by the ingenuity of my playtesters, and know that I would be lost without them. They have a way of finding issues and problems I could never have dreamt up on my own, and find opportunities I could easily have let slip passed me.

I am currently running several groups of playtesters to walk through the adventures that are currently written for ht 15^th edition of the game, the core game system and character creation-system.

Recently one such group arrived in a town, and found themselves in need of horses to reach some time-critical destination. The adventure they are playtesting contains, apart from the adventure itself, rules for horses, and I was all too happy to pull these out and offer the players options as to which horse they would like to purchase, and the pros and cons of each.

Several of the players were also concerned about the possibility that once they reached their destination they would be riding into fire, as it were, and were interested in how being on horseback would influence their ability to fight, if such a situation would occur.

Now, rules for mounted combat have been in the works for a long time, but I always planned on “saving them” for a later adventure, possibly making them more of a central theme, but of course that was shortsighted of me, as there was clearly a need for them, and not just a need for them, but the perfect opportunity to include them, along with the rules for the different kinds of horses.

So here we are, with tested rules for mounted combat included about four adventures “too early”, all because my playtesters correctly identified the need for them.

This is why playtesters are clearly indispensable.