Lost In (Game) Space

How I Spent the Gencon Weekend

2009-08-17T07:50:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately, I didn't spend it at the con. I'm suffering from con envy. I haven't attended a con since sometime in the 80's, and unfortunately that was pandemonium. Seriously that was the name of the con.

Reading con snippets on twitter all weekend only made the con envy worse, and created an irresistable urge to give into backseat delving.

The worst thing is I found and read the rules for the Ultimate Delve, and spent the weekend obsessively creating characters for it on the character builder. I'm intrigued by the tactical and strategic challenges the delve presents.

Mostly I'm curious - when creating a character specfically for the challenge of the Ultimate Delve, how does that change your character building choices and priorities. For example, knowing you get bonuses to two stats at level 4, and that you're building straight to level 6, does that affect your initial ability score purchases?

Not having the ability to take extended rests and switch out spells, do Delve wizards benefit most from being optimized to one specialty, or from being built as generalists.

Finally, am I the only one who cares? I'm wondering if there are chats or forms dedicated to discussing U-delve options.

Someone help me out here so I can get back to doing more productive things.

The Soul of Good and Evil (part 2)

2009-08-12T08:02:00.000-07:00

Now for the exceptions:

While evil and chaotic powers do not have the ability to create new ones, they can gain control over existing souls. Such a soul can then be placed into a member of an monster race, and suddenly that creature gains free will and the ability to gain levels as other adventurers do.

Evil Powers do not do this for the same reason other Deities do. They do not seek the evolution of that soul. Rather they seek to harness and harvest the power that would have gone into its growth, and to use it for their own ends.

This is why many evil entities bargain for souls. If the soul is freely "sold", it falls completely into the power of its new patron. Selling is not the only risk a soul faces. It may also be trapped, or torn apart to release it's power.

The result though is there will always be a few individuals of monster races who can be played as PCs, and who may exercise their free will by choosing to adventure and not blindly serve the ends of the evil Power that gave them their soul. Free will cuts both ways.

Devas are another exception.

The original version of this cosmology was put together in 2000 - there were no Devas to be accounted for. It's not difficult to fit them in. Deva's already have evolved souls. The reason they do not ascend is because they are geased to remain on the mortal plane. When a Deva dies, their soul does not go to the Silver Wheel to have past life experience stripped. It just finds itself born into a new Deva body.

The Soul of Good and Evil (part 1)

2009-08-11T16:15:00.000-07:00

Those of you that survived my last ramble may remember I went on at length about the origin, purpose, and nature of souls in my last campaign world. I plan on carrying those forward into the 4e world I'm putting together.

First, however, follow me through another slight digression.

I've always preferred campaign worlds where good is good, evil is evil, and the gray between is the exception, not the rule. Monsters were monsters for a reason, and there would rarely be a moral qualm about whether it was right to oppose and destroy them. The playing of monster races has become more popular though, and while sometimes it's for the roleplay element they provide - and that's fair - the majority of players just wanted to create a super character by layering PC classes atop monster abilities.

I don't understand the attraction of playing kobolds, goblins and so on. To each their own. My cosmology however accounts for why characters of monster races would be rare.

Monsters have no souls.

As the ultimate creation of the Lords (God/desses) of the Astral Realms, souls are, by nature, constructs of order. They were given to mortal races so that in living life, interacting and imposing their will upon the universe, individuals of those races could evolve and mature towards a form of godhood themselves. It was a way of slowly creating soldiers for the next war against Chaos and the forces of the Devourer. Having a soul is also what gives mortals free will - and ultimately the choice of following good or evil.

The powers of the realms of Chaos - including worshipped entities of Elemental or Demonic origin, do not have the ability to create new souls.

The schism between the good and evil powers of the Astral happened before the creation and granting of souls, do the Diabolic forces have no ability to create their own souls either. However, they do have a greater ability to play with the stuff of souls when mortals fall into their hands.

The original monster races were created in mockery and in opposition to the player races. Since they lacked souls on the whole, and had no ability to grow in power through experience, they were given abilities, built into their forms.

Monsters that have no souls have no free will, and so they act in the fashion they were created to act. Those that were made to be forces of rampaging destruction are motivated only by their baser instincts. While they may be cowed and intimidated, they rarely respond to diplomacy or reason.

In this cosmological variant, souls of the deceased to not migrate to some great unknown beyond the reach of the Gods. Souls that have reached the point of ascension (epic levels), migrate to the Astral, to the service of their Deities. Those not ready to ascend pass through the Shadowfell, and on to the Silver Wheel - a place where they are renewed, purged of past life memories, and returned to new bodies.

This also serves to explain why raising the dead is not a common thing outside of adventurers. Young souls do not have the ability to linger in the Shadowfell of their own will, but quickly pass on to the great wheel. Only the older souls, those of adventurers, linger. The closer they are to the point of ascending, the more fervently they will hang on in hopes of being called back to complete their destinies.

Next.... so what about the exceptions?

Cosmological musings.

2009-08-07T08:26:00.000-07:00

You'll have to bear with me a little on this post. Sometimes rambling is unavoidable.

When 3e first came out, it drew its share of criticism and complaint. One of the rules it introduced that rubbed people the wrong way (and drew much mocking) was that any character creating a magic item was required to pay a cost in Xp as well as money for components.

The stated objections went something like this: "How come making a magic item suddenly makes you forget things you learned? It makes no sense." It was born from the desire to interpret experience from the 2e viewpoint, rather than finding a new way to look at it.

At the time, I was planning to create a new campaign, and since this was a new edition, I decided to build from the ground up, starting with a new cosmology. I took a more 'holistic' approach to world building. I wanted a universe where one thing flowed naturally from another, and where the rules would seem to evolve from the Universe's needs.

Here is the extremely condensed version.

The Gods were in a struggle with "outside" and "alien" forces which constantly sought to destroy creation. These elder gods were remaking reality after the last universe had failed to resist the forces of the Devourer, and had been destroyed.

Many dieties in the old pantheon had fallen in the struggle and as part of this "remaking" the elder gods had to bring new divine beings into existance to prepare for the next battle to save reality. But at a certain point they were cut off from being able to directly access the source of energy that brought gods into being. A new way of creating divine beings was required.

One of the gods invented (or re-invented) souls. These were energy nets housed in mortal beings, but extending out into the higher planes. As mortals lived and exercised their will on reality, these souls gathered and processed the forces of existance. This is where xp came from.

Non-adventuring NPC's had young, newly created souls, not yet able to fully manifest their will on the world outside of day to day things. Still their souls would evolve and their net expand. When the mortal passed on, the soul would be recycled, memories of the past life lost, and be reborn into another mortal.

Adventurers (and high level NPCs) were old souls, who having matured to a certain point, longed to go out and make their mark on the world. They gathered energy quickly, and the more they gathered the more powerful their force of will became. It was this force that allowed them to manifest their incredible abilities. This could be in the form of magic, or in the form of incredible deeds of combat beyond a regular mortal's ability.

Xp then was actually a measure of the personal power a character was gathering - which is why it could be lost if invested in giving power to magic items.

If a soul was powerful enough, rather than die - the character would find a way to evolve and ascend into eternal service to the gods. They became part of the army destined to resist the next incursion of the Devourer.

This ability to gather power is what made souls precious items and a commodity to outsiders. Only the gods could create new souls. Other beings wanting to give souls to their mortal servitors had to bargain for them, or steal them. It was these bargains that made monsters with character levels possible. (Remember, part of my aim with this cosmology was to account for the change from 2e to 3e).

The point of all this was that rather than reject the then new 3e ruleset for its differences, I let it's rules inspire the cosmology. At some point if anyone cares to read it I can post that previous work.

What I'm more interested in now, is finally working on my own 4e world. Life has gotten in the way of that pursuit til now. The 4e cosmology as published is closer to my own vision than any previous edition's has been. It won't require a total re-imagining.

I've rambled enough for now. Remember, I warned you.

A little background check

2009-08-05T09:32:00.000-07:00

I've tossed this idea around on the D&D boards and on Twitter, but I'll start fleshing it out more here.

One of the most frequent complaints I've read about D&D 4e is that it lacks the role-play support of previous editions. That's more perception than truth - or perhaps its a convenient malignant obfuscation. Some will say anything to put down the new edition. No quibble is too small.

Most often, the "no-RP" complainers point to the lack of crafting and profession skills that were in 3e (and crafting proficiencies from 2e). 4e supporters correctly reply that you don't really need those skills to roleplay. Choosing those skills requires taking resources from more meaningful in game skills. That reasoning neither stops nor addresses the objections.

The game designers missed an opportunity to address this situation when they created character backgrounds. Currently backgrounds give overall skill benefits, or access to a new skill - things which just encourage further character min-maxing. In fact I recently saw someone put down the Eberron backgrounds as being underpowered compared to the Forgotten Realms backgrounds. The power of backgrounds offered should not be a disincentive to choosing a campaign!

What they should have done instead is allow backgrounds to give narrow, specific, situational bonuses to existing and pertinent skills.

Examples: If your background is as a master chef, you gain bonuses to any skill check made for the purposes of cooking. You could use the bonus on a nature check when looking for cooking spices. You could use the same bonus on a streetwise check when looking for a store that sells the ingredients you want. You may even be able to use them on an insight check to figure out what someone's favourite dish might be.

If your background is sailor, you can apply your bonus to acrobatic or atheletic checks made for doing shipboard tasks (not for ship-board combat however).

You can either specialize in one area - and gain a large background bonus in one profession. Or you can have a background that includes dabbling in more than one field, gaining more but smaller situational bonuses.

The DM can decide just how many bonus points can be given in his campaign without affecting game balance because the bonuses only affect role-playing situations.

There, problem solved.

(No feats or skill selections were harmed in creating these bonuses.)

One small step (take two).

2009-08-03T11:35:00.000-07:00

Blog-a-phobia: fear of actually putting one's thoughts down for public consumption.

Poda-phage-a-phobia: fear of not only putting one's foot in one's mouth but of accidently biting it off and swallowing it.

You get the idea.

I'm suffering from blog fright, e-writer's block; a severe case of "whywouldanyonewanttoreadthis"-itis.

Somewhere between when I sit down and the blog editor comes up, I'm suddenly overcome by this feeling that nothing I think or say is likely to be original or of consequence.

I'm sure I'll get over it - eventually. I'll try to make sure that if my ideas aren't always the most interesting they'll at least be entertaining.

For now I'll settle for figuring out how to format and customize this page so that I look like I at least know what I'm doing.