@gonzohistory had a great idea in one of his last few podcase episodes: a game of Lexicon where the players create a fantasy bestiary as a handout for players.
That sounds like something I might want to try. You could integrate this with a game of #dnd or so, where players get some extra xp or something for bestiary entries.
For the first time I’m going to be playing a character in my world. One of my players in the last two campaigns is going to DM and together we set up the one-sheet so as to not change too much lore. One of the ideas I came up with early, was by playing in the Age of Myths, because any lore changes can just be referenced as legend when we play in the current era.
The Road to the Uncoupling
Your story begins in a prosperous world of togetherness and mutual can-do spirit. Before the battle for the heart of Kirtin on the Lake (KotL) or the sacking of Kirtin in the Sky (KotS), before the Proctors spread death and misery in Sas Rurulit, and before the unprecedented events of the Awakening and the finding of Lorebooks, there was The Uncoupling. The apocalypse that destroyed the weave of magic for the Kin and Kon, leaving Ken and the 5 coloured dragons of the Chromatic Convocation in complete possession of magik.
Players are part of a select group that were born with innate magical ability (you’ve been everflow touched) that is prized even in this magic-rich world. Possibly you inherited your trait from a bloodline trait or ancestral ties to deeper magik of the Everflow. It has shaped your early years, possibly enrolled at a young age by family in the scholarly studies to become part of the magik ruling core of society or you hid your talent and nurtured it on your own.
However, recently there have been rumblings, rumors about a shadow organization unhappy with the status quo, who seek to eliminate the existing ruling council and rule not by consensus but by force. You’ve each been selected by the bronze Dragonborn Artok, tasked with this mission by his patron, the adult Bronze Dragon (Othimbane) who sits on the council, to identify and either infiltrate or forcefully break these fools of their notions and ensure that no other plots are forthcoming.
This campaign takes at least three millennia before the Born Generation and the return of magic to the Lands of the Everflow.
Gain information about “The Shadows”, a secretive organization bent on wiping out the Ruling Council of Aur.
Artok has the rough information about several potential members that could lead you to a hideout or meeting place.
Infiltrate or brute force your way into the group.
Identify other members and find potential leads about who is the power behind “The Shadows”.
Keep (human council) and (gnome council) members apprised of your investigation.
Possibly assist the council with additional tasks at your discretion.
Factions (NPC names to come soon)
The Ruling Council of Aur (RCoA) – A group of 9 members, three of each Ken, Kin, and Kon, and 4 dragons, two each of metallic and chromatic.
The RCoA is the “federational government” of Aur, with different cultures/regions governing in their own way and answering to the RCoA.
Kin: Human (F), Goliath (they), Halfling (M)
Ken: Elf (F), Elf (M), Dwarf (M)
Kon: Goblin (M), Bugbear (They), Hobgoblin (They)
Dragons:
Elder Metallic (Silver) – Tanargnyvur
Adult Metallic (Bronze) – Othimbane
Elder Chromatic (White) – Dwargauth
Adult Chromatic (Blue) – Nymaryxon
In occurrence with the rise of The Dragon moon (the fourth moon of the Aurian system), the dragons withdraw from the council for a year (draakmoeten) and meet at an undisclosed location with the world dragon (a deep time dragon) named Andarawus Del-mos.
The Metallic Dragons
The Chromatic Dragons
The Shining Order of Dreki – Holy dragonborn order who serve the Draconic races as paladins, clerics, and religious personages located across the world. Some that choose a more individual path travel and assist as Priests and Mortuary persons in smaller towns and villages.
Necromantic magic is thought to primarily flow through the draconic race).
The Shadows – A heretofore unknown organization/cult/religion(?) focused on the overthrow of the RCoA, and to rule through force and oppression rather than through consensus.
Campaign Facets
2nd & 3rd tier drop in/out campaign play, starting at 5th level
All PCs start at lv.5 with the added feat “Everflow Touched”, adding a +1 to spell attack modifier and adding one free 1st level spells (from any school expect necromancy, unless your PC is dragonborn) to your spell list which can be cast once per long rest.
Material components will not be needed.
at lv. 9 this will increase to +2 and an additional spell (2nd lv.) can be learned.
Rules used are core 2014 WotC D&D, plus most player facing options from WotC
Check with the DM about using setting-specific feats, subclasses and spells
Allowed races are Kin (human, halfling, goliath), Kon (goblin, hobgoblin, bugbear), Ken (elf, dwarf, non-rock gnomes) and dragonborn/kobold as shining order of Dreki
Divine magic is thought to come from the forces of nature and the philosophies, there is no active pantheon of faith, beyond those who worship the dragons.
Potential for multiple pathways to quest completion
Player driven story creation in a sandbox setting
Wide regional/worldwide settings with airship and/or teleportation travel
Actions may become legend
Milestone leveling – several sessions per level gain; saves time when we all don’t have to track XP
Optimizers around 5e #DnD say that a +1 is about a ~5% increase in success, but that assumes that the range of results is 1-20.
As we know the range of results in the game actually stretches from about 1-40 and the range of difficulties is 5 to 35. Neither of those would be a range of 1 to 20.
So all the arguments about optimization are about a ~2-3% gain.
@bedirthan If you need an 19 or higher to succeed, a +1 bonus actually translates to a 25% increase in your chances. The percentage is always higher than 5%.
Would you be interested in reading my advice on running a D&D game for kids?
I’ve been running kids D&D weekly for almost two years now and when I started I searched around for advice and found it was either about removing combat entirely or pure unstructured murder.
We go for a middle ground of creative storytelling and light murder.
Knowledge of the rules helps, of course, there are some specific things you have to take into account when working with kids that aren’t mentioned much #DnD
"#DnD combat quantifies the bodily integrity of all its participants through “hit points,” with the roleplaying conversation unable to proceed beyond combat itself until the enemies’ hit points are reduced to zero"
Die Sichtweise, dass Kampf ein Störfaktor ist, der das Rollenspiel aufhält und abgeräumt werden muss, bevor es weiter gehen kann, gefällt mir. Den Gedanken beim Encounterdesign zu berücksichtigen, könnte helfen Kampf spannender zu gestalten
Die Künstlerin ist Wylie Beckert. Von ihr stammt auch das alternative Titelbild von Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. Alternative Titel sind eigentlich lokalen Läden vorbehalten, aber auch online zu bekommen. Bisher wird ausschließlich die englische Version der Bücher mit "Alt Cover" produziert.
Not to start a war, but the Shadowdark Facebook group I saw a link to a YouTube claiming Shadowdark “won” the OGL war.
First, you can never “win” open gaming. You can temporarily become dominant. If anyone has, it’s Paizo who often gets as much or more shelf space as D&D.
Second, while Shadowdark uses the 5e CC-BY SRD, but it contributes nothing to open gaming itself. It’s got a 3rd party license, and it’s fine enough, but that isn’t open gaming.
@deinol Oh, absolutely. I just like to remind people that gaming, in the end, lies with the gamers, not with the corporate machinery (whether cottage- or industrial-corporate).
We seem to forget that all too often to our detriment.
I still need to take this 5e #DnD subclass for a test drive.
Fighter: Conscript
You attempt to forget your past. Your neighbors may look at you as a hero or a villain. You go about your days, an expert smith, carpenter, or other artisan.
Recently you’ve felt the call. You are duty bound to pick up your sickle, spear, gambeson, and those well-worn boots again. Your people need help, and you are called to serve.
The original game Fantasy Wargaming: The Highest Level of All (or just Fantasy Wargaming in some editions) was a 1981 book by Bruce Galloway, a clear variation on Dungeons and Dragons, based on Galloway’s home rules. Unlike it’s competition it was not afraid of using actual historical concepts like astrology and occultism in it’s descriptions, although it also was written so densely it was hard to make sense of it in any shape or form by someone not already familiar with roleplaying games. And, well, it was called Fantasy Wargaming.
Which made this a problem, as the game was published both in the UK and the US by mainstream publishers obviously trying to break into the nascent TTRPG market. The most available version was most likely the one published by the Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club, which made the game available to many people who did not have any experience with roleplaying games before.
Unfortunately one has to say, as the game’s size (300pgs) and conceptual denseness made parsing the book quite a feat, meaning if people used this as an introduction to roleplaying, it might not have been very successful.
The Story of Fantasy Wargaming goes into this, and into the development of the game. It could have been a bit more thorough and a bit more critical, but for what it is it’s a nice look into the environment that created it. And well, it’s free.
(I learned about this book from an episode of the Vintage RPG Podcast which had the author on and talked about this project. Well worth a listen)
@zdl@gmkeros.wordpress.com@gmkeros.wordpress.com If I remember correctly, a lot of FW seemed to be riffing on C&S specifically. I may or may not be remembering correctly.
@edheil@gmkeros.wordpress.com@gmkeros.wordpress.com I've read it. I've read (and played) several editions of C&S. I have no idea. The writing in Fantasy Wargaming was just that bad.
Issue 3 of Wanderer Bill’shttps://lkh.sdf-eu.org/wandererbill/grenzland/ just landed in my mailbox yesterday, with, among other things, an NPC class written by me (“The Anointed of Abyssal Slaughter”). It mostly was me combining the given topic of the issue with an interest in NPC classes a while ago.
The ‘zine also contains a one-page dungeon by Alex Schroeder (“The Crown of Neptune”), a game report (“Schiffbruch”), rules for sailing ships (“Salt’n’Tar”), and another scenario (“Eingekerkert”), the latter three all by Wanderer Bill. The ‘zine is a mix of German and English, and you can get it for the phenomenal price of free at the website.
(he does have a few more physical copies for 7 Euros left over though)
Halfling's Help was a potent wheat beer brewed by the hin of Luiren. It tasted of strawberries and sun-dappled meadows. #dnd#forgottenrealms#Realmslore
https://gmkeros.files.wordpress.com/2024/05/warlocks_and_witches_in_a_dance5238827366399506857.jpg?w=1024John Faed, Warlocks and Witches in a dance (1855)I am not a fan of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. In fact I am not a fan of the 4th edition either, or the 3.5th edition, or Pathfinder (the 3.75th edition) for that matter. Actually I burned out running 3e and that was the impetus to go back to older edition, retroclones, and the OSR.
Which means I only really was touched by the introduction of warlock peripherally.
It didn’t help that I first saw them done in 3.5 and was not impressed. I still am not. It took them a while to get them into a state where players might intuitively grasp what the class is about. The 5th edition one seems to have managed that though, and I think I get why: warlocks are fun.
They are the kind of power fantasy that has all the hallmarks of a chugging half a quart of vodka with Red Bull and stealing a car. Maybe in the back of your mind you know that this is a bad idea, but right now you are intoxicated and it’s fun and who knows if morning will ever come and who cares about those flashing blue lights behind you?
Warlocks are the bad example your parents warned you about. It’s what lazy kids become when they grow up. But why, do the fighter and the magic user say, do they have so much fun being lazy? What about training? What about studying?
To which the Warlocks answer: “Eldritch Blast!”
But no, I think Warlocks as a character concept are really wonderfully OSR: you sell your soul to… not necessarily the devil, but SOMETHING, and then you can do all kinds of stuff you never learned. That sounds overpowered, and it is. But there is the implicit end of the warlock, which most people seem to forget because they treat it as just another class: this is a class that is completely dependent on some other unknownable being and their whims. There is not really a good ending for the warlock. Whatever actually happens with them when they die, in most cases it shouldn’t be pretty. If you have pledged your soul to the devil you won’t end slurping ice cold drinks at the shore of some scenic lake of fire. If you pledged it to an archfey you might end up as furniture.
I think what is missing from the class as written a bit is that there should be marks of what you are doing on you as well. You don’t become level 5 with no outside mark. I would say that every level there should be a possibility of a new pact marker. Cloven feet? Horns growing? Ears start looking like leafs? Something like that.
Reaction rolls should be affected. People might fear you, but they won’t respect you. You took the easy way and when people know they KNOW. Animals will look at you funny. You might not be able to pass under a horseshoe anymore. Mirrors shatter. That stuff.
Also ages ago I wrote about how to do multiclassing in my opinion. Every level, even the first, should cost as much as the next highest level of your other classes. That still holds up, but I think Warlocks… don’t follow that rule. Because learning another class when you spent your life doing something else shouldn’t be easy. Unless, well, you sell your soul or something. New warlocks just become warlocks.
