Has anyone here read the Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher? A few gaming buddies and I are all fans of Butcher's work, and I was recently inspired to do a Codex Alera Genesys game. Probably going to be a one-off, but might become a full campaign if my players dig it enough.

With that in mind, I've been working on a massive variety of talents, careers, and races that I plan on posting to this thread as I find the time to do so. For the record, I have made Furycrafting a deliberate experience-sink, much like the Force is in F&D, to balance out Furycrafting with the Canim and Marat, who will not be able to Furycraft in my game (Kitai is an exception, not the rule.)

Anyone here have any particular ideas about Codex Alera in Genesys? I'm all ears when it comes to suggestions.

Ohh boy do I love me some Codex Alera, so I'll be super interested to see where you take this. I feel like Earth and Metal Crafting would both make good use of the the "commit a force dice" mechanic to represent their main disciplines (raw strength/metal sense), as would Air and Wood for veils, archery, and flight. Fury-Craft as an experience sink is a good idea too, especially for characters who have multiple Furies.

1 hour ago, Cyvaris said:

Ohh boy do I love me some Codex Alera, so I'll be super interested to see where you take this. I feel like Earth and Metal Crafting would both make good use of the the "commit a force dice" mechanic to represent their main disciplines (raw strength/metal sense), as would Air and Wood for veils, archery, and flight. Fury-Craft as an experience sink is a good idea too, especially for characters who have multiple Furies.

I hadn't even considered incorporating Force dice into it! I might take a second look at all the stuff I have fleshed out and see whether or not Force dice would be better. Right now, I have a Furycrafting skill, but it pulls from different attributes depending on the type of crafting.

Brawn=Earth

Agility=Wind

Intellect=Water

Cunning=Wood

Willpower=Metal

Presence=Fire

And each different Furycrafting type has a wide array of talents that let you do cool and interesting things, like manifesting a fury, tunneling through the earth, increasing the range of your arrows, ect.

Revisiting this project that I started on a few months back. Over the next few weeks, I'll post some links to documents with my assorted ideas.

First off, here's my complete list of custom skills for the various Furycrafting types. Much like how Force use in the Star Wars RPG line is deliberately an experience point sink, I designed Furycrafting to have a wide array of different abilities that would be a heavy tax on characters. Each type of Furycrafting has its own set of 20 talents specific to it, resulting in 120 different talents for Furycrafting alone. On top of that, I included eight setting specific general talents.

From my interpretation of the ending of the final book, Furycrafting in the Codex Alera world is now "merit-based," which I take to mean that anyone who puts the time and effort in can become proficient in any type of Furycrafting, rather than it being determined by the circumstances of one's birth. As a result, any Aleran in my campaign will be able to train in any Furycrafting type by taking a ranked talent, much like how the Force Rating talent in the Star Wars RPG could increase one's abilities in the Force. Each Aleran starts with only one type of Furycrafting at character creation, but each purchase of the Furycrafting Type talent will allow them to unlock additional types of Furycrafting.

To go with the new mechanic of Furycrafting, and the many talents that come with it, I'm going to be adding Furycrafting as a Skill on the character sheet. Different types of Furycrafting will key off of different attributes, as I laid out in my post above.

There's one last detail about Furycrafting to bring up before diving into the talents themselves. In this campaign, I plan on having at least 7 different types of talents. General talents, which are all the ones you can find in the Genesys core book and Realms of Terrinoth that are applicable to this fantasy setting, and then a different set of talents for each type of Furycrafting. Your number of general talents don't count toward your number of Furycrafting talents, and vice versa. For example, you could have three tier 1 general talents, and two tier 2 general talents, but this does not mean that you can go buy a tier 3 Furycrafting talent. If you want a tier 2 Firecrafting talent, for example, you will first have to have purchased two tier 1 Firecrafting talents. Each type of Furycrafting effectively has its own talent pyramid that is kept separate from the other Furycrafting types, and from general talents. This is much like how Strength or Range upgrades in one particular Force power in the Star Wars RPG do not carry over to any other Force powers.

Some of the talents I've tossed in here are relatively powerful for their experience cost. However, I tried to base XP costs not just on the power of the talents, but also on the talents' prevalence in the Codex Alera series. For example, let's look at Earthen Might.

"Earthen Might:

Tier 1

Activation: Active (Incidental)

Ranked: No

Before Making a Brawl or Melee skill check, the character may suffer 1 strain to add damage to the attack equal to their ranks in Furycrafting.

5 XP"

On the surface, that sounds like a really powerful talent, considering how low its XP cost is. However, enhanced physical strength like this is one of the defining features of Earthcrafters in the Codex Alera series, so it would hardly make sense for the talent to be costed around 15-20 XP. I did my best to mitigate this by throwing in additional thematic limits to the talent. For instance, the strain caused by this talent is suffered before attacking, so even if you miss, the strain is still suffered. Thematically, this is because the Earthcrafter is investing the same amount of effort into the swing, regardless of whether or not it hits. In addition, in order to add any extra damage at all, you have to have at least one rank in Furycrafting, which would cost an additional 5 XP. Only when you've invested 35-55 XP into both getting this talent and getting Furycrafting up to rank 3-4 does this talent really start feeling powerful. Thematically, this is explained simply. The more skilled you are at Furycrafting in general, the more you're able to enhance your physical might with Earthcrafting.

All of that being said, there's 128 custom talents here. So for any Codex Alera fans out there, please feel free to peruse through this document and tell me what you think. Just remember that some of these talents are pretty much designed to be broken, to fit with how powerful Furycrafters are in the Codex Alera series.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dt19DJqkySVoUkY-A0ELEwUgn9W0nxGF/view?usp=sharing

I love Butcher's Dresden Files, but so far haven't been able to "get into" Codex Alera. Not sure why, but I've started it a couple of times and get stalled out. Maybe because it's more traditional instead of Dresden's wisecracking style.

Anyway, thanks to this thread maybe I'll give it another shot because the styles of magic seem pretty neat.

6 hours ago, finarvyn said:

I love Butcher's Dresden Files, but so far haven't been able to "get into" Codex Alera. Not sure why, but I've started it a couple of times and get stalled out. Maybe because it's more traditional instead of Dresden's wisecracking style.

Anyway, thanks to this thread maybe I'll give it another shot because the styles of magic seem pretty neat.

The first book is really hard to get into. But once you're about 70 pages into book 2, the series flies by just like the Dresden Files does.

I've been trying to make a Codex Alera RPG work for years but hadn't found a system that seemed like it could handle the magic system very well and kept stalling out trying to write one from scratch. Going to give this a read and get it to my group to try out. Anything else you'd care to put up, I'd love to take a look at.

The first book is pretty much "Farm boy does the thing", but it's written well enough to be charming. The sequels certainly shake things up and the series takes off well. My only issue with the later books is that Amara/Bernard's plots feel very repetitive.

1 minute ago, Cyvaris said:

The first book is pretty much "Farm boy does the thing", but it's written well enough to be charming. The sequels certainly shake things up and the series takes off well. My only issue with the later books is that Amara/Bernard's plots feel very repetitive.

I agree 100% about the Amara/Bernard story. Those characters honestly bored me to tears until the final book.

2 minutes ago, CWSmythe said:

I've been trying to make a Codex Alera RPG work for years but hadn't found a system that seemed like it could handle the magic system very well and kept stalling out trying to write one from scratch. Going to give this a read and get it to my group to try out. Anything else you'd care to put up, I'd love to take a look at.

I'm working on compiling other assorted notes on the player races (Aleran, Marat, amd Canim), careers, and an adversary list (including some fun new Vord variants). Expect them sometime next week, if I can find the time.

Looking over the furycrafting and I had a couple of questions, if you're open to it. My first one is why is the manifestation of a fury at different tiers for the different types? I didn't get the impression from the books that it was easier to manifest, for example a wind fury instead of an earth fury. I'm assuming that has something to do with just how effective a fury can be in combat (or other situations) but it struck me a bit.

For the earthcrafting, I'm curious why soften and harden earth are different powers, is it just a system thing (I'll be the first to admit I'm very new to Genesys) or was there another reason for splitting what feels like one power into two?

Great work so far and I'm looking forward to reading more.

On 6/2/2018 at 5:28 PM, CWSmythe said:

Looking over the furycrafting and I had a couple of questions, if you're open to it. My first one is why is the manifestation of a fury at different tiers for the different types? I didn't get the impression from the books that it was easier to manifest, for example a wind fury instead of an earth fury. I'm assuming that has something to do with just how effective a fury can be in combat (or other situations) but it struck me a bit.

For the earthcrafting, I'm curious why soften and harden earth are different powers, is it just a system thing (I'll be the first to admit I'm very new to Genesys) or was there another reason for splitting what feels like one power into two?

Great work so far and I'm looking forward to reading more.

I put the different manifestations of furies on different levels for two reasons. Judging from how common some manifestations are in the books, some just seemed like they may be easier to manifest than others. The second reason is, as you guessed, due to their combat effectiveness. I'm working on statting out furies as adversaries, and some are simply stronger than others, due to the nature of their element. And of course, the manifestation of a metal fury takes a wildly different form, as the crafter's body becomes coated in metal.

As for things like Harden and Soften Earth being different talents, it was partly as a way of just increasing the number of Earthcrafting talents. I wanted 20 of each type of talent. 6 Teir 1, 5 Tier 2, 4 Tier 3, 3 Tier 4, and 2 Tier 5. This gave a bit of flexibility within the individual Furycrafting talent pools, so two Earthcrafters with the same XP might still have radically different builds.

I also made them separate talents purely because of the amount of uses I could think of off the top of my head for each. With a creative enough mind, either power individually could be quite useful, so I figured it was worth it to keep the two separate and make the players pay the little bit of extra XP for both. You'll notice I did something similar with Brighten Flame and Snuff Flame for Firecrafting.

Metal fury manifestation being a high level power makes sense for sure, I think it happens maybe twice in the entire series.

I'd love to get a look at the rules you are working up for the furies and what they can do. In the books it seems like, for example Amara, can either use her crafting herself to fly or manifest Cirrus, either to fly faster or more easiily (maybe for a longer amount of time) but for the most part her fury doesn't do much else. Conversely Brutus is pretty excellent in a fight or just in general and Bernard for the most part seems to rely more on his woodcrafting and archery when he's in a fight (except for the increased strength to draw his giant bow). So I'm looking forward to seeing how you are planning to balance that out particularly within the action economy of the game.

Love the Codex Alera, recently re-read it on my Kindle (Skimmed over the Bernard/Amara sections because, as others have said, repetitive and boring, especially post Kalrus Senior) however I wasn't entirely certain exactly how the "Merit based furycrafting" was going to work for a couple different reasons. Tavi's opinion seemed to be that someone's strength shouldn't be limited by their bloodline, which was partially more of a problem with the Aleran Empire, than Fury Crafting since it placed such emphasis on strength because he knew some great people who just had weak furies. But I didn't get the impression that was meant to be multiple Furies becoming common place. Just that if you were born with a Water Fury, with practice you could theoretically rival a Lord with that particular Fury. This is supported by the fact that people who named their furies tended to be stronger or as strong as Citizens or depending on the individual, Nobles, as opposed to those who lived in the cities (or the Nobles themselves) who looked down on the country bumpkins for naming their furies. The idea of everyone being able to control every Fury isn't supported in the book, even Tavi didn't have all 6 and there's little to suggest Gaius did either.

My approach to it would be to have each Fury be it's own Trait with exponentially increasing cost the more of them you get, but then the strength be cheaper. Or just limit people only being able to have 2 or 3 Furies. Other thing to keep in mind with the "Merit Based Furycrafting" approach is that you will have to set the game at a realistic minimum of 50-100 years into the future from the end of First Lord's Fury because Alera's likely approach would be gradual and generational not flipping a switch. It sounds like you had taken the last part into account with the mention of new Vord, which makes me think that the game is 200 years in the future from First Lord's Fury at a maximum, 150 at a minimum.

22 hours ago, Wulfborn said:

Love the Codex Alera, recently re-read it on my Kindle (Skimmed over the Bernard/Amara sections because, as others have said, repetitive and boring, especially post Kalrus Senior) however I wasn't entirely certain exactly how the "Merit based furycrafting" was going to work for a couple different reasons. Tavi's opinion seemed to be that someone's strength shouldn't be limited by their bloodline, which was partially more of a problem with the Aleran Empire, than Fury Crafting since it placed such emphasis on strength because he knew some great people who just had weak furies. But I didn't get the impression that was meant to be multiple Furies becoming common place. Just that if you were born with a Water Fury, with practice you could theoretically rival a Lord with that particular Fury. This is supported by the fact that people who named their furies tended to be stronger or as strong as Citizens or depending on the individual, Nobles, as opposed to those who lived in the cities (or the Nobles themselves) who looked down on the country bumpkins for naming their furies. The idea of everyone being able to control every Fury isn't supported in the book, even Tavi didn't have all 6 and there's little to suggest Gaius did either.

My approach to it would be to have each Fury be it's own Trait with exponentially increasing cost the more of them you get, but then the strength be cheaper. Or just limit people only being able to have 2 or 3 Furies. Other thing to keep in mind with the "Merit Based Furycrafting" approach is that you will have to set the game at a realistic minimum of 50-100 years into the future from the end of First Lord's Fury because Alera's likely approach would be gradual and generational not flipping a switch. It sounds like you had taken the last part into account with the mention of new Vord, which makes me think that the game is 200 years in the future from First Lord's Fury at a maximum, 150 at a minimum.

To address your concerns, the way a I have furycrafting set up currently does make it progressively more expensive to have more furies. An Aleran starts with 1 fury at base level. Then there is a "furycrafting type" tiered talent that grants another fury. So the first time you take it, it's only 5 XP for a 2nd fury. But then if you want a third, it's 10 XP, plus you need another tier 1 talent first. So on and so forth. To get all six furycrafting types, you would have to spend 175 XP, and that's not even touching any of the furycrafting-specific talents.

As for Tavi and Gaius having all six, I'm certain they did. We see Tavi utilize Fire fairly often, windcrafting to fly, watercrafting to send messages, metalcrafting and earthcrafting in combat against the Queens, and woodcrafting to bring down the gate at Riva. Alera herself, a great fury passed from Gaius to Tavi, had all elements represented in her.

And finally, yes, I do plan on having the campaign set over 100 years after the events of First Lord's Fury. I'll be releasing a document in the next couple weeks detailing the setting I have in mind, as well as a couple adventures that I think may be fun. It's taking me a bit of time to compile and format properly, but hopefully the end results will be worth it.

"Internalized Crafting" Tavi Said "Earth, Metal, Water, Air" Captain's Fury, Page 442. Which means that's all he can do, since Internal crafting determined which furies you could control.

The Sparks on swords and the like is Metal Crafting. The making plant life bloom to take down the gates is Earth not Woodcrafting.

Likewise there's nothing supporting Gaius could do all of them either. He was at Woodcraft, Water, and Air, and Fire I believe. I want to say the books said he was never Metal or if he was it was weak. And given that he gets crippled on the Kalrus campaign and can't move, and Earth craft can manage that. He also had Alera allowing him to do more than he should. And Alera wasn't necessarily passed down to Tavi, when the Mosaic was destroyed she dissolved. If the Word Queen had control of the capital she would have had control of Alera. That's why Gaius blew up the old Capital, Alera herself confirmed it. Alera was more of an amalgamation of hundretof minor furies, which is why she could do all she did. Because she wasn't one Fury. It's also why she wasn't tied to one location like every other Great Fury in the world. Because she came from all over the continent/world.

On 6/10/2018 at 5:50 AM, Wulfborn said:

"Internalized Crafting" Tavi Said "Earth, Metal, Water, Air" Captain's Fury, Page 442. Which means that's all he can do, since Internal crafting determined which furies you could control.

The Sparks on swords and the like is Metal Crafting. The making plant life bloom to take down the gates is Earth not Woodcrafting.

Likewise there's nothing supporting Gaius could do all of them either. He was at Woodcraft, Water, and Air, and Fire I believe. I want to say the books said he was never Metal or if he was it was weak. And given that he gets crippled on the Kalrus campaign and can't move, and Earth craft can manage that. He also had Alera allowing him to do more than he should. And Alera wasn't necessarily passed down to Tavi, when the Mosaic was destroyed she dissolved. If the Word Queen had control of the capital she would have had control of Alera. That's why Gaius blew up the old Capital, Alera herself confirmed it. Alera was more of an amalgamation of hundretof minor furies, which is why she could do all she did. Because she wasn't one Fury. It's also why she wasn't tied to one location like every other Great Fury in the world. Because she came from all over the continent/world.

So you're straight up neglecting the fire that Tavi was throwing around in First Lord's Fury? Like, actual torrents of flame that he threw at the Vord Queen when she was attacking his camp? And I'd beg to differ on making plants grow being Earthcrafting, not Woodcrafting. Per The First Lord's Fury:

"In Tavi's experience, though, very few people had sufficient respect for the destructive capacities of the gentler crafts.

Wood and water."

He then proceeds to bring down the wall of Riva with what is described as a use of both Watercrafting and Woodcrafting. Pages 436-442. It's repeatedly described as him reaching out to the plants, and to the seeds, and willing them to grow. Sounds a lot more like Woodcrafting to me.

Look at the quote you posted again. "Internalized" crafting. In other words, the crafting he can turn inward. Implying there are types of crafting you can turn outward. Earthcrafting can be turned inward to gain strength, Metalcrafting can be turned inward to gain resilience, Aircrafting can be turned inward to gain enhanced perception, and Watercrafting can be turned inward to be able to sense the emotions of those around you. However, external crafting would encompass things like throwing around fire, or moving a river, or reshaping metal, or building walls out of the ground. Also, Captain's Fury is not Tavi at his peak. It's Tavi while he's still relatively new to the use of Furycrafting, so he hasn't even come close to mastering all of the abilities at his disposal. For a real look at what all types of Furycrafting Tavi is capable of, you have to pay attention to First Lord's Fury, and not just the books that came before.

For Gaius, you're ignoring the fact that he was shown to turn his entire body into metal, which is the way Metalcrafters manifest their metal furies, and which is seemingly the most difficult performance of Metalcrafting possible, given that the only other character to ever do so was Araris. So at the very least, we know Gaius was a Metalcrafter of nearly the same caliber as Araris himself. As for the problem with the campaign through Kalare, it wasn't that he was incapable of Earthcrafting. Gaius specifically stated that he couldn't craft while they were in Kalare because if he did, they would immediately get noticed. It was supposed to be a stealth mission, and Kalarus seemingly had a way to detect Gaius the moment Gaius started to use Furycrafting. And when the time came, Gaius did use Earthcrafting just fine to get back on his feet, and also to set off the volcano that wiped out most of Kalare. Gaius was depicted throughout the entire series up until his death as being the best at all types of Furycrafting. He wouldn't be in charge of the entire country of Alera otherwise, given the emphasis on Furycrafting ability that the citizenry had.

You saying Alera wasn't passed down to Tavi is factually incorrect. Tavi would not have been able to commune with Alera otherwise. Yes, Alera was also breaking down slowly due to the mosaic being lost, but it was a slow process. In the time between Gaius' death and Alera's demise, she had been passed down to assist Tavi in developing his Furycrafting. Yes, it's true that Alera is an amalgamation of other furies, but that seems to be the case for literally all furies. Thana Lilvia (the giant wind fury that is the wife of the mountain Garados), for example, is made up of countless windmanes. Garados itself is also apparently made up of several earth furies (and presumably fire furies as well, given that Garados turns out to be a volcano).

An important thing to note about Alera, however, is that while she is passed down the Gaius bloodline, she is not actually the source of their personal power in Furycrafting. She's mostly a tutor who teaches them how to use all six types of Furycrafting they already have at their disposal. She also assists them in the large-scale grand manipulation of Furycrafting, but always at a terrible cost. Presumably, even with Alera gone, Tavi will still be able to do all the things he was capable of in First Lord's Fury. He just won't be able to ask her to do things for him, like creating a sudden winter storm with a constant eastward wind in the middle of summer.

On top of all of this, it's worth pointing out that almost every Aleran has at least a minor talent in all types of Furycrafting. We learn this from Fidelious reminiscing on his time training to be a Cursor, and from snippets in Academ's Fury. They all have at least enough Firecrafting talent to turn on and off Furylamps, they all have at least enough Watercrafting to move around some water in a cup, enough Earthcrafting to be able to use the causeways, ect. So while not every character in the series has 6 furies that they can outwardly manifest, nearly every Aleran has at least a minor talent in all 6, with a particularly strong talent in 1 or 2.

With all that being said, we don't know exactly how Furycrafting was changed by Tavi and Alera at the end of First Lord's Fury. All we know is that Furycrafting is now "merit-based" rather than based on bloodline. The way Tavi phrases it, "Those who want more of it should be able to work to get it. It's only fair." The way I interpret that is that anyone can work hard enough to grow talented at any type of Furycrafting. Which is reflected in the rules I came up with for my campaign, which is set several generations after the end of the last book. I back up this interpretation by the fact that Tavi is allowing Canim and Marat to start attending the Aleran academy, which mostly teaches Furycrafting. He mentions this in the same sentence where he talks about accepting the Icemen, who are already known to be Watercrafters. This seems to imply that the Canim and Marat may be beneficiaries of the "merit-based Furycrafting" change. So somehow, beings who have never had access to Furycrafting before might be able to work hard enough to gain it.

Any new updates on this project? I got inspired and started rereading the series and am about to finish Captain's Fury, which has me really really excited to get this in front of my group.

Been working on it here and there, but I have a busy schedule and haven't been able to make as much time for it as I planned. Look for further updates (a list of races and careers, as well as an adversary list) hopefully in the first week or two of July. Sorry for the delay on this project, but I really want to get it done right!

Nothing to be sorry for, I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say that we appreciate all the work you're doing on this project. Looking forward to those lists.

This is all looking good so far. It's a lot of fun reading this thread because it really reminds me how much I enjoyed the series. It's not some pinnacle of fantasy fiction, but it's just the right level of fun. I'm really split right now since I have a great idea for a game set in the immediate (or at least five or so years) aftermath of the Void war that I want to run but none of my players have read the series. Of course that just means I can straight steal the books plot for a game but....

On 6/23/2018 at 10:36 AM, CWSmythe said:

Nothing to be sorry for, I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say that we appreciate all the work you're doing on this project. Looking forward to those lists.

This. Just wondering if there's any news of this front since this has been my favorite fantasy series.

Thanks for bringing this back to my attention! I'm sorry there haven't been any recent updates. Life's been kind of busy (got married recently, and haven't had much time for gaming).

I do still have many ideas brewing for this, and some have been typed up already.

I'll be starting a new topic on the My Settings subforum for everything I have done. I feel that's a more appropriate location for this topic.

Congratulations on your marriage!

And many thanks for your efforts thus far!