Red Ash Turns 3

Red Ash is now three and still under development. A lot of work has been down and even more is to do.

Currently the resizing is continuing. I had miss placed my old formula for figuring the base weight of a given size. So I had to make a new method and finally settled on one based of of a cylinders volume. the idea came from a forum I had read on estimating weight (in the specific can, of a blue whale) and one responder stated an easy way to do it was to use the formula for determine a cylinders volume. Once the volume was determined they could multiply that by the mass of water.

An interesting approach and one that was simpler than my old method. So a played with the numbers and came up with some rules that will span the entire range from Speck (size #1) to Gargantuan (size #19). Now I will need to work on changing my database structure to support the new work, change the species script to use the new data and make adjustments to the existing species, debug and of course upload to the site.

Each of the new size categories will use a formula of...

grams = ((width x width_mod) * (width x width_mod)) x PI x (length x length_mod)

width and length mod change depending on size category. Also note that length and height are interchangeable.

The end result is that the average human will end up being a little lighter than is currently listed and slightly narrowed.

Each category marks the average height (or length), width and weight for a creature of that size. Going up or down from there will not cost any additional points. It will increase the encumbrance values but it will also bring weight more into play when having to cross an old bridge for example.

The new weight formula will cover things as small as an ant at .003 grams to 94,872,921.4 metric tons ( the average weight for a creature that will be in the Gargantuan size category) and bigger if need be.

Also I decided to formalize the space as 1 meter on a side, or 1m squared. I will be dropping the space reference on creatures. To determine how much space a creature will occupy on a grid map just round up to the nearest meter for the creatures size and reach. A crowded status will be applied when a creature are forced into a smaller area.

Anyways, more work ahead.

All the Best,
Chris J

A matter of size, blame it on the Kraken.

Ah the fun of making a new system with a few year of work to find out your scaling doesn't scale as much as you thought.

This all came about as I was working the Kraken as my next entry into the Red Ash Species. As with most of the entries I like to read up on the mythology of the subject. The Kraken it turns out is a very old legendary sea monster from the Norse myths of incredible scale. Some of the earlier legends have it as the size of an island and later scaled it down.

While reviewing the sizes I slated in the core rules I noticed that my upper limit was set to 16.5m (about 54 feet) in height or length. While this is very big it is hardly an island.

So after some thought I decided to change the size scales and I will upload then to the site once done.

As always...all the best.

Chris J.

Delayed...

This is just a quick note to inform everyone I am having some site issues that my host is working on and should have fixed in a week or so. I can then get back to adding more content to Red Ash.

Till then I wish you all the best and Happy Gaming!

Chris J.

Happy New Year from Red Ash!

OK a day late, but the well wishes are all there. While I have been enjoying some time off from work and family visits, I have also been working on implementing a few changes to the red ash website.

For one I have made changes to the species listing to include the species classes with the level range restrictions and the ability point increase. You can access it by clicking on the green icon and you can close it by clicking on the red icon.

I also added encounter regions as a table based display instead of a text based one. The text will be removed soon. I did this mainly to support future tools such as a count of encounter types by climate and terrain and a random encounter generator.

Under the powers section of a species I made a change to include the damage amount and type to those with the bite and/or claw powers.

I also made a few bug fixes.

All the Best and Cheers to a great new year for you all!

Chris J.