Theme Parties #3 Tark Hunters

Tark is my local campaign name for the D&D Troll, you know the Green Warty Kind. These nasty things started showing up about a century ago near the City State of Tarakon and have spread across Midrea ever since.

Wizard. Not a fire specialist but a crafty and clever Wizard with an arsenal of spells. Being obsessed with revenge for the death of loved ones dies not means suicidal or reckless. After all, you can't kill Tark if you are dead,

Fighter/Flame Steward. These Tark are an abomination that needs to be destroyed. You Sacred Flame powers and combat prowess make you uniquely suited to the task and its one you fill with glee. Your powers also let you heal which balances out you wrath.

Druid. You may not agree with the Flame Stewards faith but you are allies in this mission. You second job is of course to protect nature from your own parties actions. Fireballs do not go well with dry grasslands.

Monster Hunter/Ranger. Half Elf with a little Demon thrown in but still far more human than not, you take equally well to two related crafts. A little magic, a little stealth and a lot of sneaky mean many dead Tarks.

Rogue . Ending up with these loons was hardly the plan but it beats hanging.It helps that you have more than a little talent for Alchemy. Acid and Alchemists Fire are most handy when facing Tarks.

Theme Parties #2 The Hand

A group of mid level Church Soldiers tasked with dealing with the serious Evil that afflicts their communities

Paladin-- The Church was your redemption and you love her with all you heart. Having being a bad person in your youth gives you greater understanding and perspective than some of the other Paladins. It also makes you a good leader. Now if only you could stay away from the women.

Ranger-- You know better than most there are real monsters out there and what they can do to innocents like your own family. Fortunately you have the skills to fight them.

Rogue/Wizard -- You are a good person deep down inside but someone has to do the ugly work and that falls on you. You also possess a few nasty artillery spells too and are happy to use them on the real bad guys.

Inquisitor -- Other than defeating actual Evil, there is nothing you would like more than leading but The Church has not seen fit to grant that wish. Maybe thats a good thing, being a church raised orphan makes you a bit intolerant to day to day foibles.

Cleric -- You are happy not be the leader. Honestly.You are aware of limits and frankly,planning is not your strong suite.

Theme Parties #1 Exiles of the House of Brass

Exiles of the House of Brass (themed 3.5/Pathfinder)

A group of young adventurers whose parents were exiled from House Brass in the Dragon Empire have chosen voluntary exile and seeking adventure among friends to protect themselves from political enemies.

Special Note: Assume the PC's have some kind of Scry Ward cast on them, probably by the parent of the Sorcerer. This renders them immune to scry spells , crystal balls and the like. In such cases, assume that the spell and any other non epic ones, simply fail. If you like, the spell can wear off as the characters level up or its time for more trouble...

Alchemist -- The apprentice of a House employee, now out a job. Ah well the best way to get better at alchemy (and to afford expensive reagents) is adventuring . Plus you get to blow stuff up.

Dragonfire Adept -- One of a pair of siblings, Chosen by the House but nothing is more important than friendship and besides being Chosen is boring. Better to Burn Bright than Fade Away.

Dragon Shaman -- The other half of the pair. Where my sibling goes I go.

Brass Dragon Blooded Sorcerer (or Battle Sorcerer) -- Your parents are the exiled ones, putting some space between them and you at least till you grow in power is a good way to stay alive

Artificer - Another unemployed House employee now out a job. You also have feelings (protective or romantic) for one of the other party members. Ah complications...

Gun Mage -- A rebel prince/princess. This may not be a lark but who wants to be couped up all the time?

Something to Help get Players into the Game: Theme Parties

One of the classic tropes of D&D is of course "We all meet at the tavern and go tackle the challenges of the dungeon and wilderness together" . There is nothing wrong with this of course and for a game where char-gen might take all of a minute and the game is about exploration as much as anything else it actually makes sense.

But there is another way. In the initial session it can be very productive to have the players sit down at decide on a theme for the party. Who this group of misfits, is and why they are adventuring together and such.

Taking a few minutes to do this can really help in more roleplaying oriented games and help get the players more immersed into the game world.

In the next posts I'll give you a few ideas on such groups. Its just class and a vague Midrea oriented background but its enough to get you inspired for you own games.

The "I Write Like" Toy

I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Kind of cool actually though I'd have thought my style was bit more old fashioned.

Is Fear of Capricous or Bad DM's driving modern game design ?

In the comments in my last post, a poster Daddy Grognard said this

What I don't really like about feats, powers, call 'em what you will, is the way that they're all codified and defined now. What it does is disempowers the DM because no matter how much he's prepared, planned or read the rules, someone else has read them better and can turn around and say "Yeah, my character CAN do that, it says so here on page 456..."

and I have to agree with another poster Ryan

Daddy G.- Yeah, I see the trust issues in the way mechanics are set up.

Which got me to thinking , is the fear of the Bad DM (and admittedly there were a lot of them at least when I was a kid) driving a lot of recent D&D game design?

All the emphasis on meticulous game engineering, encounter design , treasure parcels, total class balance, over simple trust and imagination is there some fear that poor DM's will drive away the customer base.

Now in fairness, there is some merit to this thought.

Back when us Old Grogs were gaming, when D&D was young there was no Commercial Internet (AAD&D 2e was more than half over by then) and people seem to think there were a lot less ways to spend a lazy summer afternoon.

This isn't really true . Many of us had computer with modems and BBS or console games (I had an Atari 2600 actually) and there were Books and VCR's and TV and all that. Its not as if the toys weren't there and they were often just as engaging to us as the Internet and Facey-Space is to todays kids...

However, one big difference we did not face any competitors like WoW or EQ. It may be that there is a fear that bad DM's drive gamers to MMO's . That would explain some of the MMO like design of 4e (its kind of a board game to my eyes) and also the of the earlier Players Option/ 3X designs which resemble the popular computer game Fallout in some odd ways.

There is of course a marketing angle as well. Players buy more books than DM's. TSR (and it was TSR in those days) learned this lesson way back in the 90's with the Second Edition "Complete" books.

So between fear of DM's and the desire to sell more books, you get a concentrated effort to minimize the influence of the DM. In fact it would not in fact surprise me if 5e D&D was designed to be run DM less. Sure the DM will still be there (getting rid of that would drive away all the existing player base) but you won't need him/her/it...

Anyway, just some food for thought. My personal opinion is pretty much the same as Ryan's

I think that if a gamer can't trust his DM, he's playing with the wrong DM.

And as long as I can find players, I'll keep on playing the way I always have and all the treasure parcels and rigid design criteria can go play patty-cake with Orcus's Wand ;)



Now

Another Buckler: Sun Fist Buckler

I do love me some bucklers.

The Sun-Fist buckler is a round gold colored buckler with a garish face of the sun image on it. It is +1 as both weapon and shield. In addition t also can harm anything harmed by sunlight regardless of other requirements. At will it can glow at the intensity of a candle or of a bullseye lantern.

Once per day upon mental command the buckler can create a blast of light. This light forces a save vs magic for everyone in a cone equal to that of a cone of cold. Failing this save means the viewer is blinded as per a Cause Blindness spell. When used on undead this light acts as a clerical turn equal to the users level.