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 Recent Posts
I also picked up Perdido Street Station based on the comments in the Dragon editorial. I manage a bookstore and had to order a copy in. Funny thing is while I did not recognize the title I did recognize the cover when it arrived--I almost bought it years ago when it was new in hardcover but never did. Now I'm about halfway through the book and I am really enjoying it. Thanks Erik. Of course this means I've barely looked at this issue of Dragon in an attempt to avoid spoilers.
Life's Bazaar: cut the dungeon in half, though. No Jzadirune, but keep the skulks and creepers as the antagonists. If it were me I'd keep Jzadirue and drop the Malachite hold. Jzadirune has the Vanishing and that bit of history/threat is quite cool my PCs became infected a couple of timesand even the players were a little creeped out at not knowing how or why. Also why would Keygan have a passage to the Malachite Fortress in his shop? So what I would do is remove the Grell and replace it with the scene with Kazmojen. Leave most encounters as they are but sprinkle in a few slaves to rescue and there you go. Technically you can leave the Malachite Fortress where it is the bad guys just aren't using it.
So far I've done a decent job of collecting miniatures by relying heavily on the D&D minis--buying random boosters and the common singles but a few key encounters still require me to hunt down special pieces. For example: Orbius and the Umberhulk would have been cost prohibative in the extreme. Fortunately I had an old Grenadier Beholder from the days before only WotC could produce them. the figure is a little small but I mounted it on a poker chip (same size as large base) and called it a day. For the umberhulk I picked up a Hooked Hulk available here it's a bit big but it'll work and it's not $75+.
I agree. Use the scale key and the movement charts in the PH making estimates as needed. I've been looking into travel times myself for just getting around town. For my caculations I also accounted for the increased difficulty of moving up and down the slopes between the major avenues. As an example, to get from Ghelves Locks to the Church of St. Cuthbert can take (depending on the route taken) just under half an hour on foot (assume 30'move or longer with lower movement rates). When you factor in crowds and distractions such a walk could take the better part of an hour. Getting around town can really eat into a heroes day. But anyway, for the chapter you need the information for, such leisurely paces as I described above are obvously out however mobs of pannicked people will still eat into the time it takes PC's to lurch from disaster to disaster. Flight and other magical means of movement will be almost a neccessity. I don't know that I would break it all the way down to round by round except in each "scene" but I have not gotten that far in the campaign yet and may change my mind a half-dozen times between now and then.
Always been a big fan of the ol' Continual Light on a coin, kept in a small puch or box. Or multiple even so you can chuck one or two down a dark hole to see what's down there. A good sized rock. If the party has a spell caster with access you can get a light source that can be dropped in a lantern or in an emergency (and low levels) can be whipped at an enemy as an impromptu weapon...all for a simple spell slot and the effort it took to bend over and pick up your stone. ;)
I think the OP was looking at the rules from Unearthed Arcana. As far as I know the SRD madness rules came out of UA. That said I think the madness rules presented in UA with a bit of work might be modified to what you need. Also I know that the Wheel of Time RPG had some insanity rules--I don't have the book handy at the moment and I'm not familiar enough with that rule to know how it might be applied to your problem but you might check it out if you have access to the book.
If this is step one in a plot to corrupt more gods and goddesses (and hey, Wee Jas had an easy in to corruption with her portfolio of death as well as magic), then your epic PCs might start to piece things together when one of their gods starts to show the first signs of corruption... I really like this idea but it also possible that Wee Jas is the one corrupting the other gods...It would certainly create a reason for the PCs to have to kill her at the climax.
This is still a useful thread and while reviewing my maps and city notes to prepare for my upcoming campaign I discovered a few named locales that lack descriptions. For example: Meat on a Stick Just north of Magma Avenue is a well-weathered red-brown tent adorned with a tattered banner featuring a simple red sausage. The tempting scent of spices and roasting meat drift out of the open flap. Inside a jovial gnomish merchant serves stuffed sausages on a stick to a surprising number of patrons. Meat on a Stick has been a fixture in Cauldron for more than twenty years but the smiling proprietor is new, the gruff and fatherly Deamer Ardol retired less than a year ago and sold his business to Hobart Lund. Hobart grew up in poverty at the Lantern Street Orphanage and swore he’d never live like that again, so he is always in pursuit of the next big score. Right now the score is meat on a stick, a year ago, before he bought the stand from its aging owner, Hobart was selling treasure maps of questionable quality. Hobart still supplements his income with grease stained leftovers from his map stock -—No Guarantees, but since he purchased many of the maps from adventures some of them might actually be worth something. Hobart is a genuinely charming person and this keeps him from becoming a joke around town despite the fact that he changes occupations so frequently. Since he’s always on the lookout for a quick money scheme and is well liked by many townsfolk, Hobart tends to have a fairly good ear for what’s going on in Cauldron.
How close to the books do you think it'll run? It looks like Murphy is a brunette instead of a blonde. I can live with that, but I wonder what other things they'll change? It has been a while since I checked his site but Jim Butcher really seemed excited and happy with what they were doing with the series.
We all were at one time. ;)
God I hope 11.6 is a longer time in coming than that--Personally, despite some people's rush for a 4th ed., I'm hoping it takes closer to the same kind of time it took to go from 1st to 2nd ed. or 2nd to 3rd ed. (10 years minimum, please) rather than the mere couple of years between 3 and 3.5. The core rules don't need that much work. Hopefully the D&D will make it to an 11.6 edition but sometime around 2073 would be better. Just in time for me to DM a game on my 100th birthday.
Yeah I'm a noob of better than 20 years experience myself who also lacks a lot of time to set up a weekly game--I find that for the campaigns I tend to run leveled humanoids are my enemies of choice for my PCs. That means a lot of work for me and since I work 40+ hrs a week, have a preschooler, and the numerous responsibilities that go with owning my own home I'm happy to have a book with short cuts built in. I like lots of new monsters (just like so many other DMs) but I don't think I've really even scratched the surface of available monsters and a ton of new ones rarely add anything to my game...Leveled humaoids and a few applied templates really make MMIV work for me.
Yes there is a ton of Dragon based stuff pouring out of WotC right now, but I look at it a hair differently. I don't use most of the Dragon supplements in my campaign right now. However, when I get around to dropping a major draconic antagonist on the party they won't know what it can do...because all of the products offer a host of really scary options. Foreshadowed correctly the PCs will be VERY uncomfortable and scrambling to survive. If used well all of those supplents can make a dragon encounter the stuff of legends again.
Quit naming celebrities . . . they show up when you say their name aloud! Aw man. . .I was hoping someone would invoke someone like Bogart. I mean really what's the point of True Resurection if a Hollywood legend can't. . .okay I'll shut up now. . .but at least I figured out how they did those Coke commercials a couple of years back.
I agree with the last poster, however, I would add that if you have an idea of where the story arc of the campaign will go plan some of those distant map sites that you can use to foreshadow important events, people, or locales. I especially like to do this with famous landmarks, great cities, or magical sites as well as some of the famous people who might be found there. I treat history in much the same way: more detail closer to "now" and less the further back you go. Any historical periods with direct impact on the storyline of the campaign get extra attention as well. If later some of those hints or historical bits that you actually gave your PCs don't quite fit with what you need now you can reconcile some of the differences as bad rumors, historical inaccuracy or the like.
FTK-No apology needed. The reason for the post was because of a passing conversation I had with someone at Origins. They said someone should post on the wil save thread...then we discussed the april fools art and random titles...I was intrigued and said I would post. That was it. Although I have never been accused of being one of the cool kids before. So thanks for that ;) The reason I haven't told you why before now is that I haven't been on my computer since I posted the other day. I should have probably read the thread in better detail before bringing it back. I didn't expect the vehement responses I triggered. So to all the folks on these fine boards I may have irritated--I am also sorry.
Although I had to duck out of the Meet and Greet early to make it to another event, I had a great time. It was good to finally be able to put some faces with names of Paizo staff I see here on the message boards or in the magazines. I'm looking forward to doing it again at GenCon. (Provided I can slip out of work for another weekend and can find a sitter again. Crosses fingers) Thanks again,
They had 3 successful Eberron Modules with the initial launch of the campaign setting...Paizo's Adventure Paths have soared...and I haven't seen as many of the third party (OGL) adventures as where previously availabe. In other words it looks like the market has changed enough that WotC's going to get back into publishing adventure modules. I just wouldn't look for large quantities of them to hit the shelves.
I like the versitility offered in the mix and match concept that the d20 Modern base classes offer but you're right the names are bland. The Game Mechanics has a book that Green Ronin prints or you can get as a pair of PDFs called the Modern Player's Companion that might help also. In the MPC they offer quite a few named class combos that outline a suggested progression that is more themed than the base classes alone without giving up the versitility of the Modern Base Classes. Unfortunately a few of these combos may not be as usable for the era you're planning to run as you might like, but they should inspire you to create your own.
I like the idea of the Dvati, though I'm a bit curmudgeonly about letting them both be played by one character. Personally I'd probably handle them as NPCs, pretty much the same way I would if it was any other character who had an identical twin. Dvati are not twins. A single dvati is not a pair of individuals it is an indivual in a pair of bodies. In short, they are one being, and should be played by a single character. Dvati speak as one, act as one and are never in disagreement with themself. Not only are the characters weakened by splitting each half between two players (or player and DM)as has been pointed out already, but you are interferring with the way the race is designed for roleplaying.
Man a year of that kind of gaming garbage would seriously stink. Long ago one of our gaming groups tried (what was a the time this new game) Cyberpunk. The GM ran this game for maybe 3 sessions. (I liked you're Epic Boy some I'm going to swipe it...) He decided that his uber powerful double agent NPC would hire us. This guy who was supposed to be a solo (fighter archetype) knew all the right people so that when our fixer (information broker archetype) went out to find out some stuff he wandered into the conversation the rest of us had been sitting in on for about twenty minutes. Big baddies show up and our epic boy swats them aside mowing through them with a assortment of integrated weapons that would have been more at home on a tank than hidden inside a person. We're then told to run...we take a 10-minute break while our GM rolls dice to see how well Epic Boy is doing. Finally the game gets rolling again and Epic Boy is in our flat with an Epic Netrunner in tow despite the fact that our party had one of those too. Our GM then points out that the shower is running and suddenly Epic Boy's, Epic Girlfriend Assassin comes out in a skimpy towel with a big ole revolver on a gun belt that she overdramatically drops on the table. What the...? Anyway we ditch Epic Boy and he vows to be our enemy and within weeks (in-game) and minutes (real time) we're dead or as good as dead except that Trauma Team a heavily armed ambulance service resurects our characters except that Epic Boy's Epic Netrunner has gutted our accounts so we have no way to pay for the miracle that TT has performed on our behalf. We are forced to go to work for them. The GM narrates 18 months of city hot zone pickups and summarily tells us we're the best people doing runs in the city. He then sends us out on a "simple run." Now our GM has in his head exactly what each of our characters is supposed to do round by round--but has never shared this with us. TPK. It took 3 rounds tops, because: "You've done this hundreds of times, but this time you did it your way instead of following procedures. Besides, if you had stuck around with Epic Boy this never would have happened." He didn't run anything for a very long time...and the next time it didn't last fifteen minutes. Epic Vampire Boy? Um you know I forgot, I have to get home and finish my chores...
Count me in too. I really prefer the layout of SCAP's HC to the numerous issues of Dungeon and with Age of Worms it be even more Magazines due to the number of Wormfood Articles in Dragon. I would be thrilled if an AoW HC was made available. Someone asked what we (the community) could do to make this book happen. It seems that Paizo staff would be as ecstatic as most of us would be if this issue got cleared with WotC. So, I'd like to ask to whom at WotC should we be politely directing this request. I would very much like to see an AoW HC as well as a Savage Tide one when the time comes.
Plan Double Q. If plan A fails then fall back to Plan B, and so on...but what happens when you run out of letters? When the party I was running through a d20 Star Wars campaign ended up with a particuarly insane plan they would dub it Plan Double Q. One of the PCs on the occassion of hearing another character's insane plan announced "What's this plan Q?" Later durring the planning of another dangerous plan--"This isn't even Plan Q, you've all the way round to Double Q!" Plan Double Q always seemed to work no matter how dangerous or hairbrained, and even began to turn up in other games. In fact for a while players tried to one up each other for wild and outrageous antics to be dubbed Plan Double Q. It made for some very dramatic Star Wars moments.
That’s exactly how I see it (right down to my small gripe about armor). As for Gurps being more realistic I can't say that I agree. I've played Gurps (and enjoyed myself) and I've found that while the system is more detailed and complex it isn't necessarily more realistic. The Hit Point system streamlines combat incorporating some active defenses, stamina, and actual injury all into a single mechanic. What makes HP seem flawed is the way damage is commonly described during play. If a player rolls a hit then the DM describes a hit if the roll is a miss the DM describes a miss. This ends up with heroes who have become walking pincushions with dozens of arrows (and sometimes spears or swords) sticking out of them. When we play, it sometimes falls back to that, but I try to talk about rolling with a particularly grisly blow minimizing its effect or a fighter straining with his foe across a locked blade in a close parry, telling the player that it took 10hp of strain to force his opponents blade away from his head. Like I said, I don’t do this with every attack but my players understand how I interpret Hit Points we use this to season combat descriptions as frequently as possible without slowing combat too much.
One Day I hope to run my Aurthurian Campaign. Rome has withdrawn from England and the Saxons have begun thier campaign of conquest. Dispite the fact that it is earth it won't be our earth, in this world magic works and the gods are real and so the PC's may through valor change the course of history. The campaign draws heavily on some History Books, Gurps Sourcebooks(Camelot, Rome, and Celtic Myth), the old D&D historical supplement for Imperial Rome, some newer d20 supplements and the fiction works of Jack Whyte (Camulod Chronicles) and Bernard Cornwell (The Warlord Trilogy).
I've been using hero points/action points since before either the Unearthed Arcana rules or the Eberron Campaign setting came out. I had read somewhere (perhaps Dragon magazine) about one of the designer's homebrew in which they used Hero Points. With out clear rules I mocked up somthing for my own game similar to Force Points in d20 Star Wars. As soon as I saw the rules in UA and the ECS I switched. Action Points offered more versitility than my simple homebrew rules had. In my current Eberron game I use the Eberron Rules for acquiring Action Points and use both rulesets (UA and ECS) for what you can do with them. Both Hero points and Action Points have been such a boon to the game adding the cinematic element that it is unlikely I will go back to playing with out them.
The campaign I'm currently running is an Eberron campaign and my next will be SCAP in Greyhawk, but, I enjoy a great diversity of settings. One I've wanted to run for ages is a homebrewed fantasy historical campaign set in Britain just after Roman occupation complete with Celtic myth, invading Saxons, and Arthurian seasoning.
The red box set. A friend's dad had bought the game as something that they could do together...however my friend's dad never managed to find the time to run. So one hot summer day we ended up in his living room and my elf approached a ruined castle when suddenly a carrion crawler errupted from the ground paralized and ate my poor elf. 20 minutes later I had a new character and we started again with my friend running the solo adventure in the players guide. In the first three rooms I killed giant rats, a rust monster and found a secret door. I was hooked. A few days later we added a couple of other guys and I got my revenge on that carrion crawler and cleared out the castle ruis before continuing on to discover the unknown...
AoW hands down....but Shanckled City is very cool and ties into the Age of Worms. Paizo did an excellent job of foreshadowing the next adventure path. Not to mention the fact that Shackled City greatly improved with the hardcover release and I'm looking forward to an AoW hardcover before I begin Age of Worms. Just my 2 cents.
I loved the layout and execution of the Player's Guide to Eberron. In case you missed the book it covers some character creation but its real value is in detailing countries, power groups, races, special locations, religions etc from a character's point of view, complete with listed DC's to know certain "secret" bits. This was what I've been looking for in a players sourcebook for a long time. Anyway, I think such a volume for Greyhawk would be awesome. With the success of Age of Worms this might be the ideal time for WotC to release a Greyhawk guide or two.
WotC (Hasbro) are only interested in profit, after all this is the reason why it is a company and not an org. So a 'new' setting (like Eberron) has to be for the 'broad' clientel. And this means Anime, Harry Potter, 'Matrix'-Action and common elements like Elves, Dwarves etc. While this is true I think it diminishes the PEOPLE who design the settings. Keith Baker created a setting submission for WotC's massive setting search--and it won. I doubt he was only thinking about the market place--I bet he mostly thought the idea was cool and potentially fun. I don't think any of the countless others who have worked on the project to date stand around the water cooler going "How can we drain money off the masses today."
Part of the design credo was if it has a place in D&D then it has a place in Eberron. And while the setting has all the old stuff it doesn't always have the same flavor. Have you looked at the Drow of Xen'Drik? Not your average Drizzt knock off.
Like many others have mentioned I use everything I read and not just Sci-fi authors make it to my D&D games. Jeffrey Deaver – A master of suspense, Deaver keeps me guessing to the last page and I keep my plays guessing almost as long. Orson Scott Card – esp. the Ender Series and the Shadow Series together the first two books are good examples of how player characters might experience the same campaign events differently. Raymond Chandler – Noir at it's best I drew on these sources before Eberron's release for a Werewolf game and discovered it slipped nicely into several other campaigns unexpectedly. Now that I'm running Eberron I'm glad I started reading Chandler. J.R.R. Tolkien – Enough said. Jim Butcher – The Dresden Files modern noir investigations but instead of a private detective Harry Dresden is an actual wizard, the only wizard in fact to advertise in the Chicago phonebook. For fans of Laurel K. Hamilton who are tired of the gratuitous sex give Butcher a shot. Jack Whyte – Historical Arthurian legend set in roman Britain that ends with pulling the sword from the stone rather than beginning with it. Bernard Cornwell – Another author of historical fiction: The Sharpes Rifles series, The Grail Quest trilogy (set during the hundred years war), the Warlord trilogy (more Arthurian legend), As well as some stand alones like Gallows Thief and Stonehenge. Robert Ludlum – Particularly the Bourne novels. I’m currently planning on making an assassin based on the villain from the books (not the movies). Ellis Peters – Brother Cadfael is a Benedictine monk and medieval detective. And many others:
Since the PC's are unconscious and will miss Orbius there is the possibility that Orbius and the slaver could come to a violent disagreement and when the PC's eventually come to and find that the cage they were thrown in has disintegration damage from a stray eye ray (making escape possible) and Kazmogen is dead. The three remaining orphans could relay the story of what happened and who took Terrem. I would then NOT return Terrem to the orphanage and instead leave the PCs with the impression that thier narrow escape came with a terrible price.
I think that a lot of the animosity over Eberron stems from the fact that many players feel that Eberron is killing Greyhawk. WotC isn’t producing new Greyhawk sourcebooks and they feel that they have been abandoned. I’m not sure that this is really the case. When Greyhawk was at its peak TSR didn’t produce sourcebooks hand over fist for Greyhawk—they made adventure modules. What WotC has really abandoned is the release of modules. To date 3.5 has seen only 5 modules (from WotC), yes 3 of those were Eberron modules but that was a necessity of launching a new setting: WotC had to set the setting’s baseline. In my opinion Greyhawk is better for not having dozens of new sourcebooks every year. Part of what makes Greyhawk a great setting is that so much of it is a blank canvas (as F2K pointed out he has volume of personally designed NPCs and other materials gather from 26 years of gaming in Greyhawk thats part of Greyhawk's charm). At the other end of that spectrum is the Forgotten Realms where nearly every square inch is highly detailed and full of Epic NPCs who so overshadow the average player character that it’s a wonder that the Realms ever needs another hero. Eberron (right now) sits somewhere between these two extremes, I really like the setting: It has rich detail, high magic without dependence on luminaries such as Elminster or regular divine intervention to make it so. Most of the high level NPCs have been culled by war leaving \plenty of room for PCs to leave their marks and DMs to personalize the setting. Magic has not lost its wonder nor is it a replication of technology but rather presented as a logical power in the world and just when characters think magic has become too commonplace there’s an Indiana Jones-esque journey to far away lands and hidden temples where ancient wonders lie waiting to be uncovered. Every campaign is full of clichés its part of what makes a setting resonate with its audience. Eberron’s audience is not just low attention teens as has been frequently suggested, I am 33 years old and the campaign resonates with me. If you want to like Eberron (and give it a fair chance) take a closer look, read the material on WotC's website and the Campaign Setting book. Don't just take the word of someone who posts their opinion on a forum, make up your own mind. If you do I think you might just like what you see.
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