[1:16:03 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Hi, everyone, and thanks for coming here. I’m Alex Greene, author of the Mythras book Fioracitta, The Heart of Power.
[1:17:05 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> (done)
[1:18:02 PM] <Sophia_Art> Hi everyone, I’m Sophia, I’m the art director at Design Mechanism, We’ve got a wide range of games, but our most famous one is Mythras, a d100 brp-like game.
[1:18:21 PM] <Sophia_Art> I design the books, commission the art, and take part in the playtests.
[1:18:37 PM] <Sophia_Art> (done)
[1:19:35 PM] <Dan> Thanks, guys! The floor is open to questions!
[1:19:52 PM] <Dan> So what is Fioracitta?
[1:20:19 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Shall I start here?
[1:22:05 PM] <Sophia_Art> no one knows the secrets of the city better!
[1:22:52 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Thank you. Fioracitta, The Heart of Power is a setting book and sourcebook for Mythras / d100. The book describes a busy Italianate city in a country which is kind of like a parallel of Renaissance Italy.
[1:25:02 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> The city sits on the shore of a massive, glacier-fed lake, and it is a community to humans and a bunch of non-human species.
[1:25:14 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> It is on the verge of its finest hour; a time where its Leonardo daVinci or Niccolo Machiavelli has yet to step forward and change the course of its history.
[1:25:34 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Perhaps your characters are those people that history is waiting for.
[1:25:39 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> (done)
[1:27:40 PM] <GenoFoxx> so who or what is the main source of antagonistic darkness in the setting?
[1:28:19 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> The usual. Greed, ambition, the lust for power. Nobody is immune.
[1:28:42 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Throw in magic, and things can get much, much worse.
[1:29:26 PM] <Dan> For those unfamiliar, is Mythras a setting, or just a system?
[1:30:34 PM] <Sophia_Art> It’s a sytem, that has numerous settings published for it.
[1:30:56 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> What Sophia_Art said. 🙂
[1:31:08 PM] <Sophia_Art> it’s very flexible, so it can do many different genres. (done)
[1:31:22 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> As for the question of what’s the Big Dark …
[1:31:49 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> The magic can warp even the most virtuous of minds, but only if you’re using it to hurt people.
[1:32:20 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> So some of the enemes can be people who’ve been twisted by magic, kind of like addicts.
[1:32:25 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> (done)
[1:33:10 PM] <Dan> So is Fioracitta part of a larger setting?
[1:33:25 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> No, it’s self contained.
[1:34:35 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> You can use it in your own settings – I’ve heard of people who want to put Mythic Constantinople in the same setting, and it’s a perfect parallel for visiting Valkyrie agents playing the dimension-hopping Luther Arkwright setting.
[1:34:55 PM] <Dan> Does it have a Renaissance level of technology (e.g., firearms)?
[1:34:56 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> (done)
[1:35:45 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Firearms haven’t been mentioned in the setting. That’s not to say that they can’t be introduced in the course of the game.
[1:36:20 PM] <Dan> What is magic like in the setting?
[1:36:30 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Nothing is stopping you from having the soldiers in Carbo District begin training with these new-fangled musket things people have been hearing about.
[1:37:20 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Magic can be light, or it can be heavy, depending on your choice as players. It ranges from Folk Magic, low cantrip stuff, all the way up to Theism and godly miracles.
[1:38:10 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> There’s sorcery, animism, and even illusionism. Oh, and the mystics, training their bodies and minds to do all that ninja stuff.
[1:38:33 PM] <Dan> How do they differ?
[1:38:51 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> The magic types have different cultures.
[1:39:42 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> There is basic Folk Magic, and then there are those who make it their life’s work – Folk Magicians who run an invisible college.
[1:41:28 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> The mystics can claim ancestry from bull-leaping athletes from thousands of years in the past. They can learn to augment all sorts of skills, so there are mystics who do all the running and swimming and competing in sports, those who jump into house fires and save lives, and then there are the Face Schools who learn Oratory or even Acting and
[1:41:29 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> enhance those skills with their power.
[1:42:37 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Next, Animism. Mythras has animism as a magic source – shamans, basically, entering trances, befriending or fighting spirits, putting them into fetishes … but there’s a big division between the two traditions.
[1:43:11 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Benedittara basically do a lot of white light stuff, using medicine spirits and so on.
[1:43:20 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Maledittara are the same, but goth.
[1:44:26 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Sorcery is divided into two main streams – Lo Scudo, The Shield: sixteen traditions, based on the characters of the geomantic shield.
[1:44:52 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> And The Jewel, the illusionists who above all crave sensation, so they can replicate it.
[1:45:07 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> I’ll talk about the deities and religions separately. (done)
[1:46:00 PM] * Dan nods
[1:46:12 PM] <Dan> Are these all traditions introduced in the Mythras core rules?
[1:47:47 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> The Mythras core rules outline just the basic rules and mechanics for their five magical Disciplines: Folk Magic, Animism, Mysticism, Sorcery, and finally Theism. All of them have their core rules there, and you will need to refer to the Mythras Core Rulebook for those.
[1:48:26 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> All that I’ve done is give these various Disciplines a background and history, and given them all a flavour.
[1:50:39 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> The cultures of magic are as many and varied as the different gods, ranging from the two big churches of Tamaggia (mainstream) and Venea (secretive, pagan), down to little gods like Schiova (worshipped in a little shrine found in most government and guild buildings, and lawyers’ offices).
[1:50:47 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> (done)
[1:52:07 PM] <Dan> How does Theism work?
[1:52:19 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Grace Points! 🙂
[1:53:16 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Okay, most magic uses Magic Points. Like almost every d100 BRP game, everyone has a characteristic called POW, and you get your Magic Points / Power Points / Prana Points from those.
[1:53:32 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Theism works differently in Fioracitta.
[1:54:34 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> You keep your Magic points, but your deity furnishes you with Grace Points up to a certain level, up to POW.
[1:55:34 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> If you misbehave, for instance by doing something that goes against your church’s ethos, you can lose those Grace Points seemingly for no reason.
[1:56:39 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> You have to get them back by attending their Low and/or High Masses, or by donating your time to some cause which resonates with your gods. Volunteer work in your favourite temple is good.
[1:58:15 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Some ceremonial activities bestow those Grace Points if you attend. Pageants, fasting, giving your time to charitable deeds such as the Tazari feeding the community during their Arwah fasts – a quick way to get back all spent Grace Points before the next adventure.
[1:59:21 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> And to spend those Grace Points, you need to roll a skill called Exhort. That’s the casting skill.
[2:00:35 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Just kicking my Adobe Acrobat. It went down just as I was calling up the Mythras Core Rulebook again.
[2:00:50 PM] <Dan> No worries!
[2:01:19 PM] <Dan> What species are available to play?
[2:03:10 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Ah, here’s my favourite part of the book.
[2:03:52 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> I introduced four new non-human playable species to Mythras through Fioracitta. They are – Bestia, Longane, Ophidians, and Monacielli.
[2:05:25 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Bestia are large, furry, with beetle brows and jutting lower jaw tusks. Don’t think of them as trolls or ogres – they’re not. They’re generally as smart as humans.
[2:07:01 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Longane are shapeshifting people who live in and near Lake Lascha, the River Cariccia, and Lake Ippalia just outside the city, a little to the east. They shapeshift into otters when submerged in the water.
[2:08:40 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Ophidians are a favourite of most Mythras settings, but the way I’ve portrayed them in Fioracitta is unique. They belong to communities called Nests, where each new generation is born. And cities tend to have few rat problems if there is an Ophidian Nest somewhere nearby.
[2:09:37 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> The last are the Monacielli. They’re hard to describe. I can go with goth hobbits. With the males wearing tonsure.
[2:09:58 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> And a mild tendency to play pranks, and a strong sense of poetic justice.
[2:10:31 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> If some entity came along, claiming that no man can kill them, these guys will happily remind that entity that Monacielli are not men …
[2:11:17 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> You can bring in your own non-human characters, too, but you might find a small community, or even be unique.
[2:11:47 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Minotaurs, Panthotaurs, anyone from the Core Rulebook’s Creatures chapter if you like.
[2:12:12 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> It’s just that Fioracitta belongs to my beasts and critters.
[2:12:42 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Oh, and the humans. Mustn’t forget the humans.
[2:12:58 PM] <Dan> What do teh Ophidians look like?
[2:14:09 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> You know how some artists like to draw snake people with female shapes? I specifically made the genders look identical to visual inspection.
[2:14:37 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Humanoid forms, really slender, heads like various different kinds of snakes.
[2:15:24 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Many of them are happy just to be out, but few can take on the appearance of ordinary people, usually exceptionally gorgeous humans.
[2:15:38 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> a* few
[2:17:00 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> They lose some of that humanness if they’re stressed – scales here and there, maybe a forked tongue flicks out – but their shadows never change shape; their shadows always look like snake people.
[2:17:15 PM] <Dan> Species aside, who are the PCs, generally speaking, and what do they do?
[2:18:49 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> The PCs are part of a social class that you join if you really can’t fit in anywhere else. All of the careers, like artists, journalists, soldiers, pugilists and Casanova-style trellis climbing seducers; most people tend to fit in to society and have a status.
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[2:19:16 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> The PCs belong to a floating status called Avventurieri – Adventurers.
[2:20:54 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> They’re the third-born sons and first-born daughters who will never inherit; the refugees and refuse from outflung communities on the run, who have only settled here because the money ran out; and the strange, moonstruck dreamers whose parents despair over, who somehow end up taming spirits for a living or end up as an Archbishop of some god.
[2:21:12 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Misfits.
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[2:21:33 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Flamboyant, fabulously-dressed, fashion-defying, misfits.
[2:22:06 PM] <Dan> Where do they go to have their adventures?
[2:22:09 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> It gives them a strong sense of freedom, but it’s a precarious life.
[2:22:36 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> The city, for the most part. In the core rulebook, they can visit outflung communities outside the city, in its Condato.
[2:22:54 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> On the lake, under the lake, or on the Cariccia River.
[2:23:10 PM] <Dan> What sorts of adventures are to be had?
[2:23:15 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> And underground. I haven’t even begun to describe the catacombs.
[2:24:02 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> You can have subterranean crawls, fighting off monstrous creatures warped by magic, or you can tackle spirits in their spirit world.
[2:24:17 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> But the most intense adventures can be found in the halls of power.
[2:24:51 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Parliament, the Senate, and The Arti – the individual Guilds, from stonecutters and bankers to night soil collectors.
[2:25:39 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Fioracitta’s a place of politics, where sometimes a bribe can get more done than a length of wood or a dagger.
[2:26:03 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> And if you really need to shift that stubborn stain on the seat of power, there is always poison.
[2:26:19 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Time to bring out those fancy rings with the little compartments.
[2:26:28 PM] <Dan> Heh. 🙂
[2:26:48 PM] <Dan> Can you give us an overview of the contents of the book?
[2:29:30 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> There’s the introduction, which tells you what’s going to happen; Characters, covering all the ways you can create player characters suited for this setting (as compared to just chargenning someone from another book); History, which tells you what everybody knows about what’s come before (but you know different 😉 ); Economics, and everything for
[2:29:31 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> would-be traders and would-be betrayers (you ought to know what it is they’re bribing you with).
[2:30:08 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Then Magic, and all the different ways it can get you. You can be a street sweeper who knows Folk Magic, but these guys make magic their life’s work.
[2:31:04 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Next is The City and The World, where the reach extends out a bit past the city, to give a brief overview of the lands around Itarra, from where your PCs could hail, before describing the city itself.
[2:31:42 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Communities, Districts, eating places, churches, chantries, parks, sports stadiums, and the Glacier.
[2:32:22 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Last, it’s Culture. This is all about the different groups, like the churches, the people who run the chantries, and the Families and the Shadow Society.
[2:32:53 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Every light casts a shadow. The Shadow Society exists to counterbalance Fioracitta’s light.
[2:33:12 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> It’s more like a whole bunch of Hellfire Clubs of various sorts.
[2:33:54 PM] <Dan> Are they the Big Bads?
[2:34:10 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> And also it goes into the law, and the three – well, four – main nexi of power; Senate, Parliament, Tamaggia, and the Arti.
[2:34:46 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Every group can produce a Big Bad. There’s no big enemy species lurking in the wings, ready to bring it all down.
[2:35:05 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> The Big Bad is corruption.
[2:35:12 PM] * Dan nods
[2:35:53 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Here’s an example. Tamaggia is the big church, but it’s not monolithic, and it isn’t able to convert everybody, and it knows it.
[2:36:28 PM] <Beelzedude> Is that also a possible fate of the PCs? Meaning, is there some kind of mechanic with corruption points or something like that?
[2:36:48 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Yes. The PCs can become the Big Bads.
[2:37:46 PM] <GenoFoxx> Dad, I love you….but you’ve changed. So I will do everything in my power to defeat you and destroy your plans
[2:38:04 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> They can either die, and get a beautiful monument, or they can live long enough to be called a terror to the city, hunted down, and buried under a monument with lots of garlic in case your corpse gets any ideas.
[2:38:24 PM] <Beelzedude> very nice.
[2:38:31 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Luigi, I AM your father.
[2:38:58 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> I could not resist that one.
[2:39:34 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> The milieu that Fioracitta comes from is one where people think so differently to 21st century people.
[2:40:22 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> If a politician is using mind control magic on the people, they will literally drag the miscreant down off their box and dismember the guy … and not say one single word.
[2:41:12 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> You can save the city, and come to the people for a reward, and they’ll just bury you in the woods and build a shrine for people to worship you as a new saint.
[2:42:39 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> This, I think, is the big appeal of Fioracitta. It’s so freewheeling.
[2:43:22 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> (done)
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[2:44:57 PM] <Dan> Does the book have its own bestiary?
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[2:46:49 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Not like a traditional rpg book’s bestiary – it mentions the flora and fauna, the ordinary animals that live in and around the region. I didn’t put combat stats on Lake Lascha Blueback, because most people just wonder how good it tastes filleted and served with lemon.
[2:47:20 PM] <Beelzedude> Very, I presume.
[2:47:20 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> However, I am working on the pitch document for the Companion – and that’ll have a bestiary.
[2:48:10 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Definitely. I recommend the blueback soup in Borda’s, on the road out of town to Vindia.
[2:48:44 PM] <Beelzedude> With the setting being based on italian city-states, is the history of the world also adjacent to ours? Like could one dig and find roman-equivalent ruins?
[2:49:06 PM] <GenoFoxx> or a starship?
[2:49:32 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> LOL If you like, you can dig deep and find nothing but Ringworld scrith.
[2:49:44 PM] <GenoFoxx> heh
[2:50:43 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> The history has its eras – prehistory, the Antenati, the Rhonans, the barbarian centuries which ended with the Bragoni conquest.
[2:50:56 PM] <Dan> What is your *least* favorite aspect of Fioracitta?
[2:51:02 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Then a war with the people of Fourche, which the Bragoni lost.
[2:51:12 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> H’mm. Tough question.
[2:52:12 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> It’s probable that readers might give the history section a miss, but I heartily recommend you bite that leather strop and dig into it, because there’s a little gem you might all be missing.
[2:52:29 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Your PCs can literally rewrite history.
[2:52:43 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> And it’ll all be just as canon as what’s in the book.
[2:52:56 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> I even give you all the tools to do it.
[2:54:09 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Historical events, famines, plagues, wars, disasters, unexplained weird stuff like mass hysteria … you name it, you can make it part of official Fiorese history. as can everybody else.
[2:54:41 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> Including writing in your own ancestors, if you worship ancestor spirits.
[2:56:38 PM] <Dan> Before we wrap up, usual reminder: If you’ve enjoyed this Q&A and would like to treat me to a coffee or two, you can do so at https://ko-fi.com/gmshoe . Anything’s appreciated!
[2:56:52 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> You might also find yourselves tempted to skip chapter 5, describing the geography – but again, you’ll be missing out. Because that’s the place where it says that your characters can start your adventures in a palazzo, if you like. You just won it at government auction. Hope you are happy keeping company with a dozen ghosts, but that’s Fioracitta
[2:56:53 PM] <alex_fioracitta_UTC> for you.
[2:57:13 PM] <Dan> Thanks very much for joining us, guys!