The boy who would be King

There is an old legend telling of a city, lost a thousand years ago.

In this nameless city, the people lived, worked, and died, much like our cities today.  And much like our cities today, there were born those with the gift of magic.  But power corrupts, as they say, and those with magic certainly had power.  In it’s endless cycle, history saw the rise of sorcerer after sorcerer, the slaughter and enslavement of innocents, and the fall of sorcerer after sorcerer.  But in this city, things changed.  The citizens, seeing the pattern of history, would kill all those born with magical talent.

Naturally, there were problems.  How do the non-magical find who is magical?  How do the mundane kill the exceptional?  And how do you make sure the dead stay where they are buried?

There was once a nameless boy, born in this nameless city.  He too, had the gift of magic, and he too, was bound, killed, and buried deep in the earth.  But his hunger for life could not be so easily quenched, and he struggled against death in his tomb.  Then he rose, rotted, insane, and powerful.  And the city felt his anger as he buried it beneath the earth.

He is the Buried Man, the King of the Dead, the Rotted One.  He ruled for a hundred years of darkness and despair before being cast beyond the Astral by his successor.

I’m back! (hopefully)

Whew! That was tough work!

I’m giving this whole blog thing another chance.  So without further ado…

Controlling mind control

Al-Qasab: The Great Heron

Well, we had my first run of 4th edition D&D. Combat was really scary, because I was just on the verge of killing several of my players for a long time. More than once I dropped one of players down to 1 or 2 hp. I realized later that I had put them up against an EL 3 encounter, and this was before they had any magic items or anything. Oh well. I learned a lot from this encounter. For one thing, I learned that difficult terrain is something you really want to watch out for, because you cannot shift into it.

The game went pretty well overall, I think. The players went down the main course I had plotted out for them, although I had several alternatives worked out (just not completely written up). Matthew started several fights, which were fun. I think I have a pretty good idea about the defenses and attack values of a given level should be, and I just threw together in my head some NPC’s. I actually ended up doing quite a bit of ad-libbing. It’s been a long time, and I was definitely rusty, but overall I think I pulled it through pretty well. At least, my players seemed to be having a good time for most of it. As per usual, Beth seemed to be bored through parts of it. I tried to bring everybody into it, but Beth had her character do things I wasn’t sure how to deal with exactly (out of my area of expertise). Which isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy the challenge, I just had a bunch of people telling me what they were doing, and I wasn’t sure how to deal with her, so I did Matthew first, and by that point the situation had changed. I shall try to create a better environment for her next time.

I am thinking I may actually have people roll non-combat initiative, so that everybody can have their turn to do what they want to do. For example, if Matthew had rolled highest, I would have had maybe have of his conversation go by, and then I would have checked with everybody else to see what they were doing. I worry that this would create more disconnect, but at the same time, I can see it being sort of a set-up shot in a movie; we see people talking to each other, and a few more scenes go by, then we see those same people again, further along in their conversation. Idunno, maybe I’ll try it.

So anyway, I things are progressing slower than I thought, I may have to find a way to stick Morgan in sooner than I had planned. I forgot how hard it is to plan for games when the players go off on their own thing.

Anyway, sorry I was gone for so long, blog. I will try to update you more regularly once again.

bleah

Due to finals, I missed Monday’s post, and it seems I shall miss today’s post as well.
Next update will be on friday, after I am free from school!

A few special things

About my game in general.

Character Death:
first of, if a player approaches me, and wants to play a new character, and have their old one die within the plot, that is totally awesome, and I will build that into the game (especially if the other players do not know it is coming). Now, as for the death of a character from combat or other circumstances. I think I will give the player a choice. The default is that your character dies, and you roll up a new one. HOWEVER, my friend Matthew made a really good argument that I agree with; If a player is really enjoying a character, and you kill that character off without their permission, it’s like telling them that they are no longer allowed to have fun. Based on this, if a player wishes to keep that character, I will give them a reason for the character to have survived. I also think this offers a great roleplaying opportunity. Here is an example: A paladin has the ability to take a hit instead of another character. So the paladin takes the hit, and it turns out that it was more damage than he thought, and it kills him. The paladin was prepared for death when he jumped in front of that blow, and was ready to go join his god. He is at peace. Then he wakes up. The battle has ended or at least is dying down. His moment of glory for his god was stolen from him, and he is lost. Now the player has a chance to act out the confusion his character feels, perhaps losing control of his emotions in the next encounter (be it social or combat) an then repenting later. I know for me, this would be a great opportunity to explore my character and to have fun behaving in an unusual way.

Starting stats:
I think I am going to do their basic point buy. Just in general, I’m going to try to keep the power balance about the same as the base game, as my last game had some problems with the characters being overpowered based on their level.

Running the game:
Here is the schedule for the game as I would like it: Start with a group recap, with all of the players telling what happened last time, to get us in the mood and remembering the events of last game. Then of course, comes the game itself. Afterwords, I will ask each player what their favorite and least favorite part of that session was.

Extra stuff:
I will ask nicely that each player write a journal about what happened in the last session. Not for xp or anything, just to help me bring their character into the plot more. The other thing I was thinking about was the “roleplaying bonus” that has been offered so often in games I have played. I think that I may have the players vote on 2 things: best roleplaying overall, and coolest thing done. These cannot go to the same person. Instead of rewarding xp, I was thinking I could give those characters a bonus action point that they have to use in the next session, but cannot be used in the same encounter as another action point. Keeping with the 2 encounters/milestone, I think this would work out to make it a nice reward without unbalancing the game terribly.

That’s all I can think of for tonight. I got D&D 4e books today, and I am reading through the DM’s Guide first. I like that it is actually a guide to being a DM instead of just an expanded players handbook (although it is that a little too).

anyway, goodnight, blog!

The planes

Today I’ll talk a bit more about the different planes and how they function in my world.

Campaign Setting

My new campaign will be starting a little less than 2 weeks. I’ve begun to work on the setting, and I shall continue to do so until the weekend at least. Here is my first installment: the Starting Town. Dibble helped me out with this, and is a large part of the reason it is not a European-based setting in the beginning.

Negative Levels

I’ve heard a lot of complaints about negative levels, but I’ve never actually seen them used. They don’t feel very complicated to me, and I like that there is another way to kill the players that is not straight HP damage.

I’m going to use negative levels my D&D game at 5 today, so I guess I will finally see how they work out. The monster I made is full of ways to drain your levels. If you grapple him, do a touch attack against him, or in any way touch him, you get a negative level. if he hits you, you get a negative level. He also has a breath weapon: reflex save or get a negative level. And against those that try to get away from him: a ranged touch attack dealing 1d3 negative levels. I’m not too worried about the numbers game, in nothing else I can just take the negatives into account myself so that my players don’t have to deal with it. Easy enough.

If things go according to plan, this will be the last session of my current campaign. If the players win, hooray! I’ll start a new world for my next campaign in 2-3 weeks. If not, then I will have a nice launching point for a 4e campaign if I want. We shall see! I’ll publish this post after the game with the answers to all my questions.

Backing off a bit

after almost 2 weeks of posting daily, I think that it is a little too fast for me to actually put up good posts. I think I’m going to back off to 3-4 times a week. I should probably pick a schedule, so I’ll say mon-wed-fri and one on the weekend. So, a new post tomorrow! but nothing much today.

Adept Abilities

The idea behind the adept is that they gain supernatural abilities through practice and training. Their sub-schools are perfection, extended form, and psionics.