Long time passing

So, given that I've completely neglected this thing for a whole year While Things Were Happening... hi!

Metatopia starts this evening and starting tomorrow I'm doing Alpha Tests for a game that I really should be talking about here but I haven't and booooo to me.

The Game, or the hollowed-out shell of a game in it's nascent, trembling, baby-bird form is At What Cost, and it's meant to deconstruct advancement so that all character building/creation is in play, and goes on all the time. The hope is that this bakes all of that stuff into social goals and character development, so that build speculation is a statement about the character in the character's voice, rather than meta-chat. We'll see how that goes.

And I'm really making this post to procrastinate from yet more game prep, so... urm, I should y'know... get on that.

...I should also mention though two things:

first, I was on another Tome Show episode on MEGADUNGEONS last November that I neglected to mention, go clicky link if that sounds fun. I've another one on Secrets in Games that will be up at some point, and let's see if I actually link it in a timely sort of way this time.

Also, Shieldhaven & Sam Dillon are doing a whole series with the Tome called Edition Wars, which is quality content if you're a D&D history nerd, which I am.

Also, for if you like Talisman (the board game), did I ever mention that I was a writer on an RPG version of it? Because if you're interested in the playtest/quickstart of it, that's available.


Oh boy, what else have I been up to... um, Grim War II is on hiatus, but Reign II: Realities had a successful kickstarter that I totally failed to mention here because I'm the worst, except that I am super excited about the arcane and impenetrable setting that Shieldhaven and I wrote for it. I think it's my goal to always be writing the Nobilis 2nd Edition Heartbreaker, that folks will like, stick on some shelf and admire occasionally but be completely baffled about how to actually play.

...hm, what's that? Am I have rolling anxiety attack right now?

Well yes. Yes I am. So glad you noticed.

Peace.

Metatopia highlights to come... either tomorrow or sometime next year, maybe.

Spells, Feats, and Advancement.

When I was a kid, I fell in love with my dad's collection of Dungeons and Dragon's handbooks, and most especially the lists of spells and things. Sure, they were presented kind of prosaically and weren't laid out in a way that was especially useful, but as little scraps of interest, they were incredibly cool to me, and hinted at the neatness of being a wizard... keeping a prop spellbook, and questing for arcane knowledge to grow in awesomeness and power.

When I was first able to roll up a character, then, I was extremely disappointed to learn that what I actually got was a tiny list of what was more-or-less available, with some obvious Best Choices, and of those, I could only cast a very few times a day, and had to decide how many times I thought I might cast a given thing. Which made the Best Choices at the beginning even more important.

What I thought I wanted, at the time, was a removal of the limits on how many spells I could know/keep in spellbook, and a different way of approaching how many spells I could cast in a given day. And to some extent, I am still in favor of some slotted spells, some at-will cantrips, and prepping the spells themselves, rather than individual castings of the spells. That said, having automatic access to everything in the spell-book at level still wasn't, and isn't, to my mind, especially interesting. The problem, at bottom, was that the way one typically gains the spells is hugely uninteresting: to wit, you level up, and then you (most of the time, some DMs vary) just get access to the spells for your level, within the bounds of your int.

Yawn.

I have two basic issues with these things: one which has to do with the way spells are handed out, and the other which has to do with the way one advances at all. We'll address the first to begin with, since it's actually applicable in D&D, and, some might argue, is the way the game ought to be run in the first place.

It boils down to, "treat spells as treasure." Fully, entrench the spells in the story, as items and artifacts that are a part of the world beyond their utility/combat effectiveness. Sure, it is important that a starting mage have spells they can use and have fun with, but couching that in story about how they learned said spells, and creating the expectation that yes, the players will and can uncover new spells over the course of play that can be added to said spell book (whether or not the user can cast them right at that moment) is kind of nifty. I'd like to remove the idea of gaining spells from the idea of "gaining a level," which also brings me to my second point.

The more I play games, the more I think I'm over the idea of levels as the primary form of advancement. Stands-In-Fire, at one point, suggested a system where you could learn one new skill/ability each session, and the more I think about it, the more I like that idea. I get, and I can pretty much be convinced that, for mages, it's important to limit capacity (ability to cast more powerful spells, and/or number of spells one can cast) in the early game and have that expand, just as I don't necessarily disagree with the argument that a fighter should get better at accuracy and damage as the game progresses. Doing something like that, however, would be antithetical enough to D&D that you might as well start building a new game system around that idea. Which is certainly fine by me. The main idea here, for mages in specific (though I really love the too-underutilized idea of training/specialties as treasure from 4e), is that what advances is now much and at what power you can cast, so the level that matters is the level of the spell. You get new spells through play/research, and pretty specifically through play/research, so it's not grubbing through the boring Player's Handbook pick lists. Importantly to me, though maybe not so interesting to other people, this also removes the desire to plan ahead with spells, because you don't actually know what you're going to find in the course of play, but must think of cool ways to use the spells you earn/learn/find as you go along. Personally, I am not a fan of playing the build game, and I would very much like advancement to be tied directly to what happens in the course of play, rather than planned out in advance based on what is in a rulebook.

But like I said, that could very well just be me.

Since I touched on training treasure above, I want to take a moment to talk about Feat Systems, and why I don't care for the ones I've seen from 3.x to the current iteration in Next (yes, this includes 4e). Largely, I think they encourage optimal combo combo building, which encourages deep system mastery at the expense of newcomers, less devoted to build-play players, and in some cases, the balance of the game itself. The habit of stacking customization in feats, and then handing those feats out at regular level intervals has the effect (once again, to me), of making non-feat levels basically boring stops on one's way to grind to get to the next set of feats.

I don't know what you like to play, but any tabletop game where it seems like a good and worthwhile use of time to grind high-xp monsters over and over to get closer to leveling has missed out on the thing I enjoy about playing a role-playing game: the figuring out of what one needs to go to achieve each individual goal. The goal in these situations is meta (more XP to get to the next level) and it's obvious what one needs to do (grind difficult monsters to get there). And yes, I'm not just talking about 4e-- this happened in 3.x games too. I prefer if the goal is less meta (one of the only times you'll see me say 'less meta' is desirable), more concrete, and more story oriented, for example, "we are seeking the monk who lives atop Forsaken Mountain that she might teach us the Awesome Ways of Awesome." Still, we're talking about advancement, but we're talking about something that's in the story.

And now, I admit that it isn't the feats themselves I mind, it's the way they're handed out, and how they're presented to the players as, essentially, a shopping list to handle at level. I would have no objection to treating them, once again, as treasure, earned through acts and adventuring on the part of the players... you could have tomes of Dwarven Lumberjacking (as a tropetastic example) which teach superior skill in axes, or a cool ability that allows one to do a nifty maneuver while wielding an axe. Or enchantments/blessings that one can temporarily add to weapons, or meditations that allow one to focus one's energy on repelling blows, and improve AC for a time. And these items could pretty easily map to feats as they're written in any of the aforementioned editions, tying their distribution to and through play, rather than to something so arbitrary as level.

To be completely fair, Arcana Evolved _did_ try to do this some with their spellcasting feats, by requiring ceremonies involving certain kinds of beings or creatures in order to obtain them, though the way they were presented was pretty much entirely though the rulebook, rather than being knowledge I think it would ever occur to anyone to organically acquire in play.

Anyway, I also get that, for the most part, this can be handled through the GM's style of game running, rather than needing to be ensconced in rules, unless one is modifying how advancement works, of course. And I imagine that there are already systems in place that do the things I'm talking about more naturally.

But huh, I'd also be open to running a gladiator/arena kind of game where the point was to build an optimal character from the beginning, and swap out pieces/choices between each session to tweak for effectiveness, as something of a crunchy 180 from my play-style, here. Hrm.

Information Presentation: D&D Next and Fight Building.

Shieldhaven having sent me the latest Legends and Lore post, I was struck by the following portion:

Is a monster having immunity to non-magical weapons negating the concept of not strictly needing magic items?  Or is the intent to force players to get creative when facing such monsters?

We believe that not all monsters need to be able to be defeated in a straight, head-on fight. Some monsters should require players characters to either have the right tools for the job (in this case, magic items), or be creative in how they deal with them. We don’t want the answer to every monster problem to automatically be “stab it until it dies,” and that goes for spellcasting, too; there may well be monsters that end up in the game that cannot be harmed by spells. We think this is good for two reasons: one, it makes having the right tool for the job (and the tool itself) much more special and valuable, and makes the player feel good for having it; and two, it adds texture and problem-solving to adventures rather than encouraging players to simply barrel through every adventure using violence as the only solution.

All that having been said, any time we deal with something as impactful as immunity to spells or immunity to nonmagical weapons, we have to be sparing with how often we sprinkle it throughout the game. We don’t want to end up in a situation where those monsters that provide that texture become the standard, creating a reversal where players are frequently frustrated by having to constantly deal with monsters that cannot be harmed by traditional means. Like all things that present a non-traditional challenge to the players, we need to be judicious in their use so that they retain their value as an exceptional thing that provides texture, not a constant source of frustration.

All good points on the part of Rodney Thompson (thanks to Haven for the edit. :P), but what doesn't get addressed here is how to use them as a GM. "We" here doesn't seem to imply the GM, after all, but the overall design. And that's fair; they're clearly aware that giving even a significant portion of the monsters huge, sweeping immunities could easily lead to a lot of player frustration. What they don't get into, and what I'd really like to see in a DMG 1, are some basic uses for monsters with weapon/magic immunities, and how to make them fun.

For starters, don't have that be the only kind of monster in a given battle.

This could actually be a very general statement: where possible, include monsters of different types, with different strengths and weaknesses. The NPC roles of 4e were very useful for this, as having a controller, a couple soldiers, and a bunch of minions with complementary abilities often made for complex and engaging fights with a lot of layers. The magic or weapon immune monster could be likewise interesting, but the trick is providing enough stuff for the characters whose go-tos are obsolete something to do.

Thus, my next suggestion is, where possible, include manipulable elements in the combat location, and make sure that the excludes players can use them. In a battle where the big bad is immune to spells, don't have a lot of strength-check challenges, but structural items that spells can weaken and knock into the monster? Pretty awesome. In one where the monster is immune to non-magical weaponry, having a lot of mundane adds, or say... having something like a giant fire-pit where the fighters can temporarily gain a swing or two of enchant, but have to do something to keep it going? Very cool, and gives everyone something to think about while the combat is going on. If you can't tell, I was madly in love with terrain powers, zones, swarms, and special terrain in 4e, and I very much hope to see those come back in D&D next.

I think in general, a basic ideas guide in the main released DMG on how to stat fights for this edition, and how to set up the fights to be entertaining would go a long way in helping everyone at the table have fun with it. At this point, most people playing/testing Next have a lot of expectations and habits built up from previous editions. A little bit of guidance in how to make the most of this one, and how to realise what the designers had in mind for combat structure, would be a very good jumping off place for making it their own.

Grandiose Plans.

So, I learned somewhat recently that Atlas games has made the WaRP system available for use, which is the system Over The Edge is based on. And if you've read much of anything I've posted here, although that has not been a particularly frequent thing of late, you know how much I love love love Over The Edge.

So, I've had this King In Yellow/Dawning Star game I've wanted to run for several years now (ostensibly called, "The Truth in Yellow"), but, as I am not a fan of D20 Modern/Future, I'd been hard up for a system to run it.

And you see where this is going.

This will require spending some time with the Ineffable Tome of Ages and making shit work with what I want it to do, but WaRP is pretty durned flexible, and I'm excited to play around with it.

In the meantime, Shieldhaven has been gearing up for a D&D 5e game where I've got a couple of alts, one of whom (Lanth the Veytikka Fighter) you can see here, as rendered by the awesome Mr. Lich:

I am also playing a Beruch warlock, though I haven't a pic of her. Yet. :)

Ping.

So, I seem to have agreed to run a Nobilis one-shot next week, in addition to playing Shieldhaven's Yearly One-Shot, a Song of Ice and Fire hack set in his homebrew setting of Aurikesh. So I am focusing on that, and on other writing projects, and yeah.

So anyway, go read This very thoughtful look at Vancian Magic which does a really good job of covering what I actually like about playing a Magister in AE. Though I do agree with Shieldhaven's comment that seeking and finding spells would be super awesome-- I've just never played a game where the DM actually cared about running that kind of thing, or offering that kind of treasure.

...And I still think that 4e isn't bad for doing this, I mean, there's actually rules for handing out powers as Training Treasure, and I imagine that there are ways to make rituals cooler, and more of this kind of flavor.

Which kind of gives me an idea for how I'd run a 4e game, the next time I try (my current game notwithstanding, I am hoping to pick that up in Jan.)... but Shieldhaven's been making noises about wanting some heroic adventure, and I've been making noises about wanting to run something he could play in.

Basically, I'd probably do one of those hacks where either bonuses are built in and divorced from gear (so that gear can be just cool abilities/powers, instead of What You Need To Hit/Not be Hit more), create an interesting list of maybe 12 magical components that have to be combined variously to create different effects for crafting/spell creation, and have them be real things that the players are actively seeking in-game. Also, I'd consider severely limiting the either all Arcane Classes, or maybe just Wizards, to just their At-Wills, and maybe 1 Encounter.

Daily Powers would come soley from rituals, which could be created via a recipe (a certain combination of materials related to the kind of effect one wants), or discovered in play. A Ritual would need to be performed at the end of an Extended Rest, and grants the Wizard their daily for the day. You could only prepare one a day, of course, though you could have a pretty hefty spell-book of Rituals. Perhaps at very high levels, one could have more, and I suppose one could do this for Dailies and Encounters and have lesser and greater Rituals, but I dunno.

I also kind of like the idea of Rituals that would allow you to, say, swap out a power for a multi-charge power that's better, but costs you something, materially.

The big problem I always had with Vancian Magic in D&D wasn't that you had a spell book, and had to prepare spells, it's that the components were undefined and were just, "I dunno, components." and later ones seemed to just assign arbitrary, random components without rhyme or reason... incense, or a 500 gp bowl had no contextual connection to anything, you just know you need them. What I would need to make me happy there would be context. Not unlike the Oblivion alchemy system, where you know, for example, that a certain mushroom cap is super useful in invisibility potions, or strength, or whatnot.

Anyway. I'll think about that more when I don't have a story due today, and you know, actual work. Though it's awesome how I only really have ideas when I've got deadlines.

RoadTrip Inspiration

As may have been mentioned before, Shieldhaven and I go on a number of road trips, usually to Georgia, which involves many hours of natter. And not a little of this natter, of various sorts, is about random design ideas and the like. The chief topic of discussion this time were a pair of branching ideas, stemming from his thinking about how to make martial combat in D&D 4e feel more parry and thrust... have a certain amount of dynamic action, where one can actually respond to attacks in a way that is logical given one's particular class (read: Martial School). One hopes he will expound further on the topic, as it was a really cool idea, and I contend that it is not that difficult, in 4e, to do something like this by adding minor action powers to classes.

However, when he was first pitching the idea, I managed to completely misunderstand what he was trying to do, sticking on the point of, "a purely martial system." Which made me think about, "wait, why no mages? What if there were NOTHING BUT mages?"

Now, it occurs to me that most of the time, when one winds up talking about any given tabletop game system, one is actually talking about combat systems. There's a number of reasons for this, but the main one is that it is more clear-cut to reduce combat actions to roll something, do something, than the huge and open field of social endeavors that people can undertake.

And then there's magic. Magic, especially in earlier editions of D&D, is pretty much a box of tools a mage can use to fight, sure, but realistically they have a potentially huge number of applications, limited only by whether or not you're the sort of person who would do well in Spontaneous Competitions in Odyssey of the Mind. So what happens in a world where everyone is basically a wily tool-user, and there's none of the beloved hack-and-slashers to stand before our dress-wearing wimpiness and take the damage?

Well, first of all, rather than dispense with the question of why there are no fighter PCs, let's come up with some answers.

Pwny Island, 4e Act 2: Earth Ponies

Now that I've posted the base stats and some design ideas for the pritty ponies, time to fill out the roster with powers and abilities. Each of the breeds belongs to an elemental type, because, well, of course they do. Today, we shall focus on the Earth-based ponies:

Earth Ponies: +2 STR, +2 to any one other stat.
Unicorns: +2 INT or CON, +2 WIS
Kirin Ponies: +2 INT or DEX, +2 CON
Purr Ponies: +2 DEX, +2 STR or CHA
Reindeer Ponies: +2 DEX or CHA, +2CON or STR

Pwny Island, 4e-- act 1.

So, I didn't mention this in my last Roundup, but I've been playing Pony Island quite a bit also, as an Attention Eater for my normal workday. And there was a forum thread about a player who wanted to run a one-shot D&D game, 3.5e, using the pony breeds as the races. Which made me want to do the same for 4e, since it seems to me that reskinning races is a lot easier in 4e, ultimately. There are some serious complications here as far as playability, which I'll lay out in the initial.

Here's the complete list of pony breeds and their PI stats. PI was kind enough to supply base Strength, Intelligence, Agility, and Charisma scores for all of their breeds; which track pretty well to potential D&D bonuses-- except that WIS and CON are out in the cold. I'm going to attempt to convert the stats given for each race into reasonable bonuses based on a) the PI base stats as much as possible, and b) expected 4e classes. All ponies will be medium sized creatures, and there are some races, that while I list them here for completeness, I'm likely to leave out of the final conversion (ie, all of the aquatic breeds). Anyway, if you would like to read the descriptions that I'm going to be working with, you can look here

Earth Pony (your basic, no-frills pony): [IN: 7 | ST: 10 | AG: 6 | CH: 7]
Flutter Pony (flier): [IN: 5 | ST: 5 | AG: 12 | CH: 8]
Pegasus Pony (flier): [IN: 7 | ST: 8 | AG: 5 | CH: 10]
Unicorn: [IN: 11 | ST: 5 | AG: 5 | CH: 9]
Fairy Pony (flier): [IN: 6 | ST: 3 | AG: 9 | CH: 12]
Dragon Pony: [IN: 12 | ST: 12 | AG: 8 | CH: 2]
Winged Unicorn (flier): [IN: 11 | ST: 8 | AG: 5 | CH: 10]
Wishing Pony (flier): [IN: 12 | ST: 5 | AG: 8 | CH: 15]
Valkyrie: [IN: 13 | ST: 6 | AG: 13 | CH: 2]
PhoenixPony: [IN: 8 | ST: 4 | AG: 12 | CH: 10]
Kirin: [IN: 14 | ST: 6 | AG: 6 | CH: 12]
Purr Pony: [IN: 9 | ST: 9 | AG: 14 | CH: 8]
Reindeer Pony: [IN: 9 | ST: 5 | AG: 13 | CH: 13]
Mountain Pony (flier): [IN: 6 | ST: 13 | AG: 13 | CH: 8]

Aquatic ponies, either left out or for another type of campaign:

SeaPony: [IN: 6 | ST: 6 | AG: 10 | CH: 8]
ShellPony: [IN: 8 | ST: 12 | AG: 4 | CH: 6]
MerPony: [IN: 8 | ST: 4 | AG: 11 | CH: 10]
MerDragon (flier) : [IN: 10 | ST: 10 | AG: 10 | CH: 10]

Right out of the gate, we've got an issue with with fliers, because the ability to fly is Just Plain Better. Although this is a subject of considerable obnoxious debate, Fly speeds are the shit, as are potentially avoiding attacks of opportunity by flying over someone's head. Also, the chance of making the game just unplayable for non-flying PC characters, because they can't follow their flier friends, is a worry. There are certain types of campaigns that you can have with a party of fliers that you have a harder time with, using non-fliers. Earth Ponies are pretty much the humans of the world, and making them competitive will be something of a trick.

Secondly, there's how nothing in D&D is really designed for quadrupeds. I am getting around that by assuming that a Pony Game would be ponies only, and so all armor/items/etc exist in a pony-friendly version. This will be harder to justify for weapons like swords, axes, bows & crossbows, et al, unless they are mounted on the armor somehow. Ponies have the advantage of having things like hooves, teeth, and (in some cases) horns, which can be easily weaponized. Anyway, I'll deal with Pony Itemization in a later post.

I'll be using some of the ideas and versions of the powers shown for the Gritaur, here. Specifically, I am thinking I will grant flying races the following power (modified from Sabelkatten's Gritaur racial of the same name):

Take Wing Flying Pony Racial Power
With a powerful thrust of your wings you launch into the air to find a better spot from which to engage your enemies.
Encounter
Move Action Personal
Effect: Until the end of your turn you may fly your speed +2. If you don't end your turn on solid ground, you glide to the ground without taking falling damage.

Dungeon Project: Expanded Room 4, and Room 5.

For the previously mentioned Dungeon Project, sector 1, and after this:

Room 4

The red lines in the hallway leading up to here are heavy, barred iron doors with locked gates, much like the ones to the cells in room 1. A DC 15 Thievery check will pick the locks.

The chamber itself contains six 10'X10' cells with heavy metal doors of solid steel. Each of them have a narrow slit at about eye-height, with a sliding panel over it. Each door has a numeral 1-6 scratched into it. If the doors are locked, it is a DC 20 Thievery check to pick them. The door to cell 5, in the south-east corner, should be locked; it contains a rough-hewn tunnel to room 5, hidden under a trap door under dirt (DC 15 Perception, DC 17 Thievery, +2 to thievery, or potentially Arcana (DC 20, you're following the malevolent feel from the cells) checks to disarm with previous successful perception rolls).

When in this chamber, an Arcana 20+ check detects a faint malevolent energy from each of the locked cells. If actually in one of the cells, the DC on that check drops to 12 for the cell one occupies. A better check under those circumstances (17+) implies that the energy is necrotic, and growing in strength.

Each cell has 1-3 silent skeletons collapsed upon the floor, or on small, wooden stools, or the like, and one Skeleton slumped against the wall on the outside of the cell. If the trap-door is triggered without being disarmed, they'll wake up and attack. I'm going with nine Tortured Skeletons, plus a Stonespawn Skeleton in its own cell, and two Skeletal Legionaries. Between them, they should drop around 2o sp total in corroded coins. One of the legionaries should be the one that was outside of the cell; this one has a large, iron key hanging from its rotted belt.

Room 5

A room that looks like it was used mostly for hiding out than a potential escape route. There is a dusty cot piled up with rat-nibbled blankets and pillows, oily rags, a lantern, a deck of old playing cards, and numerous other oddiments and living detritus. A stack of books are piled up in one corner with many pages torn out; largely, they look like lists of names with various numbers beside them. A streetwise check (DC 15) or history check (DC 17) reveals that it is a book of prisoner names. Potentially, one of these is Palambro Alieri.

One of the corners contains what seems to be a crude set-up of alchemical components from what looks like prison cookware and cutlery. There's perhaps 50 gp worth of Residuum there, and a vial of crimson aether. There is also a page that is another list of names and numbers on one side, and on the other, says the following:

"These are the ways of travel, for the lost:

--by Knife

--By Water

--By Fiery Air

--By Night

--By Stone

--By Direct Command

--By Forgetting what is True."

***

So I'll be doing room 3 in a separate post, sometime when I have the brains to do it.

Three Gates Prison: section 1

For the previously mentioned Dungeon Project, sector 1:


I'll copy here the rules that Shieldhaven is using in his version of the dungeon, which is connected to mine:

Ground Rules

For the creation of this dungeon, I will be doing the following.
1. Using 4e rules.
2. Assuming that the scale of this map is 1 square = 10 feet. 4e, and 3.x to a lesser degree, requires space to move. The game is less fun when all of those lovely movement powers are unusable because there's nowhere to stand. Also, the tactical decisions of positioning go out the window. (If you hate minis combat, you won't understand this reasoning, but you're probably also not playing 4e.)
3. Connecting my dungeon to the dungeon Shieldhaven is writing. This particular entry is based on his above-linked version and our various conversations, and things may get changed around a bit as writing goes on.
4. Writing in story goals. While I'd like any DM to be able to plug this into a campaign without hassle, I think that defining spaces for those plug-ins and showing some cool ideas of my own are the way to make that work.
5. Rejecting any obligation whatsoever to use symbols on the map for their original purpose.
6. Statting fights for five characters of about 6th level.

The Big Idea

The core conceit of connection between Kainenchen's crypts (The Prison at Three Gates) and Harbinger's halls (The Dungeon of the Three Deceits) is that this dungeon, the one I'm writing, is connected by certain psychic strands. Barriers in one dungeon may be removed by solving a puzzle or winning a fight in the other. The specific do A to achieve B connections are the main things that I expect to see change as we go, because we haven't written everything before writing everything. See the tag at the bottom of the page that says, "you get what you pay for?"

Story Hooks

1. Six magical daggers are spread through the two dungeons. Each is imbued with one energy type. These daggers are also shaped to be keys to a certain very unusual lock.
2. There is a very powerful, very dangerous creature called the Living Shadow of Ugrazhe that has been fragmented into six beings, and can only be destroyed while in this fragmented state.
3. By activating the six waystones, portals to a heretofore-undefined Elsewhere open, and the dungeon becomes a travel node for portals.


Rules of Travel Between the Dungeons

The locations with what is traditionally a "staircase" symbol - rooms 1, 30, and 39 - are stable lines of travel. When traveling across a stable strand in either direction:

• luminous water becomes crimson aether (dissipates if not contained);
• crimson aether becomes nightskein;
• nightskein becomes luminous water, which begins to lose its light again (10 round duration, as before);
• one randomly-determined character loses a healing surge; a second randomly-determined character gains a healing surge; and
• travel takes one standard action.

Background of the Prison

Part of the plan here is to make something that is easy to plug into whatever campaign, though for my part, I generally design dungeons to be the whole, or at least the centerpiece, of a given game. I do believe strongly that players need reasons to care about places, and they should have interesting histories that players could potentially know something about. This is largely turning out to be a statement of intent, I'll get into details later. But either way, the place is an old, dark and sinister prison. I'm sort of seeing it as set near the ocean, possibly near a delta inlet or somesuch.

Room 1

(In this instance, the 'staircase' symbol is both a stable strand and a staircase.)

This is one of the two 'official' entry points to the prison. One comes down from the stone admittance tower aboveground by way of the long staircase in the north, which leads to the room marked 1 on the map. There are 4 10'X10' holding cells in each corner with bars of wrought iron and heavy padlocks (DC 15 Thievery). Three of these cells are empty but for a hard, wooden bench, a battered tin plate, and a larger metal bowl. There are metal plates in the back walls of each, above the bench, where manacles were at one point attached; the northwest and southeast panels still have pieces of shattered manacle dangling from the plates. The fourth, where 'B' is marked on the map, contains a skeleton lying on the floor, ragged pieces of cloth still clinging to its frame. Searching the skeleton yields a sunrod and a couple of silver pieces (DC 12). Down one ratted pantleg (DC 17), there is a throwing knife-blade with a blue stone at the base of it, lashed to a stick with a bit of sinew. It is identifiable as a throwing-knife +1 (10 Arcana), and also something else (15+ Arcana) which can't be quite placed, but (20+ Arcana) perhaps something like a key.

On either side of the staircase, there are stone stands, the tops are carved into gargoyle faces with wide, gaping mouths and obsidian eyes. A DC 12 Arcana check shows a magical aura emanating from the stands, 15+ indicates that there is something like a gate or teleportation magic involved, and it's kind of icky, a roll of 20+ identifies the energy as necrotic and lightning, and gives one the indication that it is some kind of magical switch. A DC 12 perception check shows that there in a thin, horizontal slot in the back of the throat of the left hand gargoyle mouth. On a 17 or better, the PCs find small pressure blocks in the bottoms of the mouths. If both are depressed at the same time, the stable strand activates, and a sheet of wavering, opalescent-black energy conceals the hallway. If PCs search here, they can find small stones or use fragments of bone from the skeleton in the corner to use to hold down the buttons; about 10 copper pieces will work as well. Passing through this field takes the PCs to room 1 of the Dungeon of the Three Deceits. Also, it destroys whatever was in the mouths (assuming it's non-magical material like small stones; if they use something magical, then it scores it black, but doesn't destroy it) holding down the pressure blocks, reducing them to ash. If the PCs are holding the blocks down when someone passes through, the gargoyles deal 10 Necrotic and Lightning damage to those PCs. If they do it again, it will do the same amount of damage, and grant vulnerability 5 necrotic. Subsequent attempts do not stack this vulnerability.

If the throwing knife found above is inserted in the slot in the mouth of the left-hand gargoyle, it fits, but nothing obvious happens.

In the east wall, there's an alcove in which a tunnel has been hollowed by crude hand-tools.

Room 2

On the other side of a rough, rocky tunnel, this natural stone cavern allows a stream of brackish water in through the north wall, where it widens into a pool and seeps out through the southern wall. The water is very shallow, not more than 3 feet deep at the deepest, and tastes acrid and salty if drunk. In the center of the north wall, it looks like the tunneling continues, but stops about 5 feet in. The aforementioned crude implements lie on the floor, any wooden handles rotted away and the blades rusted.

Digging in the cavern wall will trigger a stealth check on the part of whoever does it (DC 17); upon failure, this will wake up an angry Geonid, and 3 level 4 lesser Earth Elementals. A perception check at a DC of 25 reveals the presence of something living in the rocks.

Near the pool (A), a black, somewhat glittering and thready material clings to the stones in fragile pieces. Perception or Arcana (DC 12) reveals it as nightskien.

Room 3 will belong to a later update.

Room 4

The red lines in the hallway leading up to here are heavy, barred iron doors with locked gates, much like the ones to the cells in room 1. A DC 15 Thievery check will pick the locks.

The chamber itself contains six 10'X10' cells with heavy metal doors of solid steel. Each of them have a narrow slit at about eye-height, with a sliding panel over it. Each door has a numeral 1-6 scratched into it. If the doors are locked, it is a DC 20 Thievery check to pick them. The door to cell 5, in the south-east corner, should be locked; it contains a rough-hewn tunnel to room 5.

And I will get to room 5 later, as I've got to dash the hellz out of here. Peace!

Psychic Power and the Telepath Question.

One of the nice things (there are many) about dating a fellow gamer/GM is that you get to have long, late-night design conversations about various and sundry things. Last night, we wound up discussing what I was looking for in terms of The Truth in Yellow, the psychic horror game I am wanting to run. For this game, I am leaning very heavily towards using the Over The Edge system, although I am planning on using the Dawning Star setting. Yes, I know that DS was written for D20 Future, but the sort of game I'm planning to run isn't particularly a shoot 'em-up, while Red Truth is exactly what I'm looking for in terms of psionics for this game in specific*.

Which leads to to psionics in general, which is a special love of mine. I am a sucker for a good psionic system, though I've never yet found anything that works the way I think psionics should, exactly. Which wants to ask, well, what do I want from my brain-suckers, anyway?

*It is important to note that, although I have been maundering about Red Truth et al above, the list below is not something I intend to use in that game; Red Truth doesn't do the things listed below, as written. That said, Red Truth is effing awesome. But one can like more than one thing.

1) Psionics are different from Magic.

In my ideal system, Psi and Magic are fundamentally different, and while certain of the effects can mimic each other, the sources are not t'all the same. The primary example is Sleep. Traditionally, Sleep is considered an effect that works on the mind, whatever the source. So doesn't that make it psionic?

The answer in my proposed system is no. A mental effect is psionic only if the source of the effect is mental, not the target. Hence the difference between a pyrokinetic blast and a mage's fireball, metabolic healing and magical healing, or a telepath knocking out a target and the sleep spell.

I would not include telepathy or read minds as magic effects at all, except perhaps in a very limited, 'send message' kind of way. In these cases, what is happening is not one mind speaking to another, but an effect which simulates sound that only the intended recipient can hear.

The principal difference is that psionic energy comes from the person innately, while magic is pulled from somewhere else. To answer the question Shieldhaven just put to me, how would mages be limited at all? My thought is that the mage is limited in how much energy they can pull, and how they can pull it. Also, magic is something that has to be learned, and anyone cal generally learn it, while psions are born.

2) A Psion's lot is not a happy one.

Being a psi, using your powers, and learning to control your powers isn't easy, and is likely to take a huge chunk out of your ability to do other things. The penalty will vary based on the kind of psionics you're using. Sound risky? Should be risky. Success as a psi is freaking awesome. How to model this for different stories one wants to tell is something of a question. Not every story should or ought to be, "this is how I learned to control my powers, and these are my scars." For games that take place later in the characters' lives, perhaps a list of disadvantages linked to powers would be good, that could either be selected purposefully or randomly, though the latter runs the risk of becoming a gamble to see whether your character even survives creation.

3) Different sorts of Psi are also different.

This will require a lot more thought to cease being nebulous for me, but I think that different kinds of psi should be different skills. Pretty much as follows:

a) Telepathy -- I go into your mind with mine and affect your thoughts. I can change your mind, implant thoughts, or forbid you from thinking of a thing, though I can't make you like it. At the extreme, I can overwhelm your synapses and fry your brain. It's not particularly subtle though. I can sense thinking beings without necessarily seeing them, by 'hearing' their mental energy, if they are not trying to shield it from me, or else I am not trying to block them out. If I'm not careful, you'll wind up destroying my brain, or I'll go nuts and destroy all of yours.

b) Empathy-- I go into your mind with mine and affect your emotions. I can change the actual function of your brain much as drugs or alcohol do, by making you feel one way or another just at the moment, though I can't make you think anything in particular. I'm much more subtle than the telepath, at base. I can sense any creature which is alive and experiences emotions without necessarily seeing them, if they are not trying to shield from me, or else I am not trying to block them out. If I'm not careful, I'll go insane from everyone else's emotions, or I'll wind up driving other people to unpleasant things.

c) Telekinesis-- I move objects with my mind. With effort, I can actually sense objects that I cannot see; the more subtle, the more effort this requires. This is not easy for me. Aw shit, now I'm bleeding.

c.1) Pyrokinesis-- I generate heat energy with my mind. So... um, I set shit on fire. Go me. As for my problems, see the telekinetics.

c.2) Electrokinesis-- I generate electricity with my mind. I blow out streetlamps and can't ever wear watches. I might wipe hard drives too. But... force lightning!

d) Impression Sensitivity (Psychometry) -- I read the psychic impressions of objects. I can tell you who last touched an object, or at least what they are or were like while they were actually in contact with said object. The more information I can get from something, the more overwhelming objects are in general. (some sort of rules about how particular objects hold energy might be useful here).

Another version of Impression Sensitivity works on people at touch-- I 'read' you when you are touching me, and I can tell what you're thinking & feeling, as well as seeing a little bit of your past when I touch you.

e) Metabolics -- I heal people with my mind. I can make you-- and possibly myself-- better, stronger, and faster, with effort. I probably am also an empath though, otherwise I might fuck this up pretty badly, and wind up hurting you or myself, or healing you at a profound cost to myself.

f) Precognition-- I can see the future! I don't like being around other people who can see the future... we mess each other up. Also, this is extremely stressful, and did you know human brains aren't really built for this kind of thing? They're not.

f.1) Clairvoyance-- I can see the here-and-now at a distance! Problem is, I need something to focus on, or else it kind of hits me at random, and blacks out, you know, what I should be paying attention to. Like walking down stairs, or driving.

These are my starting place, I shall go further from there. But the brain, it storms. Storm brain, storm!

So, more about my game... custom gods and feats.

In the company of Such Illustrious Game Designers (by which I mean thems what has actually found themselves paid for this sort of thing. Whereas I have only been paid for the heartless crushing of dreams), it is with a little trepidation that I offer up my humble efforts in this realm for scrutiny. Nevertheless, it is perhaps of interest to some few of you to see the ways in which I have potentially broken my D&D game horribly with a few extra Divine Feats.

To explain. In the setting I have created, a world called Liel, the most prevalent form of religion is called the Giedame. In this faith, each worshiper claims a personal pantheon of six gods, which may be any god in this setting, or any other setting for which rules exist in 4e-- and if rules/feat choices did not exist for a deity a player of mine wanted, I promised to make some up. As for setting deities, I provided the local pantheon of Ar'Siva, the island continent where the main of the game takes place. Entering the worship of each god allows access to that god's feats, which may be taken at any level. In the interest of avoiding tl;dr, I'll break this up into groups. So here's the first bunch:

The Hero-Gods (Atailan)

The Hero-Gods, Begaren, Vai'Varin, and Pi'kati, are called thus because of their roles in various myths and stories. It is not known whether they were once people who lived and were later deified, but the stories treat them as if they once, indeed, lived in the world like men.

Begaren

-- The God of Honor, Valour, and Nobility, his worship is common to warriors and those who value codes of honor above all else. In Ar'Siva, he is a favorite god of Military Knights, though his worship is more common in the other countries. His worship suggests proficiency with all manner of heavy (not thrown) swords and/or shields. His symbols are a sword cutting through tendrils of dark energy coming from below, or a shield with a hand and three orbs upon it, parting a wave of dark energy from above. Those who consider themselves Dedicate to Begaren may choose from the following divine Feats:

Shield Brethren

If you have shield proficiency, grant +2 to a defense as an immediate interrupt, once per encounter to one ally who is adjacent to you, or adjacent to the attacking enemy.

Sword Brethren

If you have proficiency in light or heavy blades and have a sword equipped, +1 to attack rolls for flanking allies using melee weapons.

Vai'Varin

-- The God of Humility, this god is never himself depicted, though like Begaren, he is considered a hero-god, and spoken of as such. His symbol is a common household item-- a shoe, a kettle, a broom, et al-- held singly, or on a plain field. Leaders benefit most from the worship of Vai'varin, and many warlords serve him. He is a common household god on Ar'Siva. Those who consider themselves Dedicate to Vai'Varin may choose from the following Background Feats:

Helping Hand

Adjacent Ally gains a +3 bonus to their surge value when they spend their second wind, +5 at 11th level and +7 at 21st.

50 Feet of Rope

You may spend your move action to grant one ally an extra 5 move before the end of your next turn. Allies who start a climb or a jump adjacent to you gain +2 to their Athletics check.

The Best Cook Ever

During an Extended Rest, you may sacrifice a Healing Surge to add +2 to all Allies Surge Value, as you are up cooking the entire time.

Pi'kati

-- the God of Tricksters and Rogues, he is a god widely worshipped by people in all walks of life. He is especially popular in Ar'Siva, in the country and among the proleteriat. It is not uncommon, apart from those who are of the Rogue or Bard profession, for someone to feel themselves Pi'kati's in Soul, and honor him thusly. His symbol is a four-holed flute with one hand open and one hand closed; sometimes with his grinning Face behind it. Those who consider themselves Followers of Pi'kati may choose from the following Divine Feats:

Unassuming Pickpocket

+2 to stealth and thievery or you may also treat Stealth and Thievery as trained skills, even if your class does not permit it. Once per encounter, you may make a bluff check as a minor action to gain combat advantage over an enemy within close burst 10.

Made You Look...

Once per encounter, as a move action, you may shift from a square adjacent to an enemy to another square adjacent to the same enemy. You have cover from enemies until the end of your next turn as long as you remain adjacent to that enemy.

Coming next: The Gods of Ascension and the Gods of Detriment.

I will also note that thanks to DDI, adding custom feats and making them apply correctly is really bloody difficult, and thus a hard thing to have 4e players do. Also, I have not really dealt with Divine Power dailies for these gods, except for Vai'Varin, as my Cleric and my Artificer worship him (The Rogue and the Avenger primarily worship Pi'kati). Still, the most efficient way of breaking one's game is through handing out utterly stupid custom magic items. But more on that later.