If the expense of human art is so high that we can only get that rather unworthy art we see, then maybe ruling out the cheaper methods of the age wasn't such a good move.

Honestly, no art, or old art from earler RM products (if they own them) would have been better than this art.

Ah! That's a neat idea!

The Mentalism spell Staying True allows for 25 kilograms per Level of caster to be neutralized that way. Enchanted by a level 50 Psychographer, a boat could have a total of 1250 kilograms, including payload. That's not much (so not a 500-ton-Skypship), but it's certainly an option. It would then have to be moved by other means, such as wind or air magic. Pure enchantment cost would be either 2112 silver pieces (for 19th level) or 8125 (for 50th level, I am not sure which to apply in such a case).

So, my players are approaching a city in a magically advanced kingdom, where it is common to produce, trade and use all kinds of enchanted products. To the point where weapons are usually staffs enchanted with lightning bolt (which are produced in masses, for the king's armed forces, which containt astonishingly few Fighters, but all kinds of more attunement-inclined professions). Selfwinding clockwork tanks using half-boles (enchanted with with fire balls and other area effects) as main guns, Constructs as heavy infantry, Bottomloess Reservoirs for ammunition of repeater crossbows, lightsaber-like blade weapons as a last resort, etc. This is all terribly expensive, but the king and his predecessors have been accumulating this kind of gear for a long time, and attract all kinds of extremely talented and experienced alchemists from all over the world. (I imagine this realm's GDP to be enormous, compared to your typical fantasy nation).

Now, one obvious trope for such societies are aircraft or air travel of some kind (in addition to some enchanted teleportation portals). Which begs the question how they might look like.

A simple approach is to simply enchant a rod (or staff) with Fly I (or Fly II). This would cost something like 390 silver pieces (or 720 for the staff), allow for flights, with recharge cost being 20 for 30 charges (or 28 for the staff, for 100 charges).

For the occiasial Flyer, a Daily Ring of Flight might be a better option. 544 silper pieces for Fly I, or 924 for Fly II.

A more luxurious item would be a Constant Ring of Flight, for 2,090 silver pieces for a Fly I version, or 2,318 for Fly II.

But suppose I do not just want individual flight, but I want to move large amounts of passengers or cargo to unknown locations (so Teleport is out of the question). Many fantasy settings have sky ships. Maybe I am overlooking them, but apart from doing a multicopter design using Perpetual Motion with some kind of transmission to steer, I am not quite seeing a good option for that? The "flying sail ship" trope is apparently not in Treasure Law or Spell Law?

A bild-like Construct with wings might be possible, depending on understanding of flight mechanics. But that would probably be limited in size?

Quote from: pawsplay on May 23, 2024, 02:35:21 AM

Shall we talk about Fabula Ultima? Gorgeous book. Tiny publisher. Currently an Adamantine seller.

I didn't want to get involved in this discussion about apples and oranges, but I have to second that. Fabula Ultima is a great book, with very nice art and a layout I find quite conducive to reading.
It also happens to be a (personal opinion again, obviously) quite interesting RPG, which I believe is a great part of the appeal. But it's one thing to be great, and another thing to be accessible and make the greatness be obvious. FU, in my opinion, does that : the book art and layout makes it easy to grasp the core of what makes it interesting.

Now compare it with RMU and see where the differences are. It does not explain the full difference in popularity, but it probably does explain part of it.

I must admit that the last RM book I could read without wondering why it took so long to get to the freaking point was probably the original ChL&CL. RM2 suffered from a critical lack of editorial and quality control, and from RMSS onwards, the core of the rules and the design intention were buried in meandering prose. Personal opinion here, but the first commandment should be "get to the point"; the second should be "provide an example"; and the third should be "provide *technical* design information" (instead of an essay on the relative values of historical and literary source material, which can easily be omitted or moved to the appendices).

Layout and artwork is the icing on the cake.

Fabula Ultima won product of the year 2023 on Ennies etc. The art and layout might be part of winning the awards, but it is also interesting for our current discussion to note that it is not awailable as Print on Demand product and according to the comments it was not in print for parts of last year.

Let me also quote from their homepage

Fabula Ultima has won a Gold for Best Game and a Silver for Product of the Year at the ENNIE Awards.

Well, we’ve told you a thousand times how this story began. The enormous work that went into it. The striving for everything to come out the best it could. The endless research.

Today, we reached a place we never dreamed of reaching. And we can’t help but be grateful!

Grateful to Emanuele for entrusting us with their little creation, thanks to the whole team of wonderful people who worked with us, and thanks to all of you, the amazing NEED GAMES! and Fabula Ultima community.

It sounds very much like this started as a one-man project with no concerns about devoted time to make the product perfect. How much money that was devoted to arts it hard to tell if the guy who did it wanted to make it perfect...but it is worth to note they even have a soundtrack for the game!

If we turn out attention NEED GAMES themselves this is italian company with like 20 employee that seems to have purchased license to everything from Warhammer to Bladerunner. I have not done any real research, but it sounds similar to the german company previously mentioned. You really need to stretch definitions in rediculous ways if you want call this an indie developer.

I will read it and tell you about as soon I am ready - the reviews were very good on amazon.

Thanks
Micael