3 posts tagged “eberron”

This last Saturday we played out penultimate session of our current Eberron campaign (we're getting ready to switch from 3.5 to 4th edition). A few observations:

• Most of our fight scenes have been lasting 10-12 rounds. That feels like a pretty good length.
• When I ask for a skill check, someone in the group is going to get a 25+. If it's Diplomacy or Sense Motive, I know it's our diplomancer rogue. If it's a Spot check, I know it's the half-elven ranger. Really, it's been that way since they passed 6th level.
• The big bad guy is scarier when he can attack multiple PCs at once. This is probably why fire-breathing dragons put the fear in parties. The effect is even better when the big bad guy doesn't look like someone who should be able to make a "Death Blossom" attack-- like an Inspired soulknife.
• Tower shields in 3.5 editon are super-effective. Enchanted tower shields are flat-out impenetrable.
• The DM will rarely get more than two slices of pizza. This is simply a factor of always talking.
• My friends appreciate port. I knew I liked these people for a reason.

Now: to schedule the next game before another month has passed!

The grassroots movement has taken hold, and I've gotten my regular players interested in switching from a 3.5 to a 4th edition campaign. This is admittedly my idea-- I'm a sucker for new systems, and always eager to try the latest thing. But! In my defense, we meet infrequently, and I've only got a little over a year before I head overseas again. I want a chance to play with the new stuff before I'm out of Metro range. And besides, if we don't like it, we can just pick up the old characters a few levels later for the great "reunion" adventure.

Of course, this means it's time to brainstorm for campaign ideas. I'm still planning to run with the Eberron setting since I have all the books and the players are familiar/comfortable with it. But which part of Eberron?

• A campaign in the Lhazaar Principalities would allow me all sorts of island-hopping adventures-- I just have to promise my players that I won't overuse the "pirate chic." I've run an island based campaign before-- there's something in the geographic constraint and intricate ecology that appeals to my DMing tastes.
• A Droaam or "monster" campaign could be fun reversal if the players are up for it-- Droaam has been a source of antagonists for their current characters, and I think they'd appreciate the inversion. However, I don't know that they're as into gnolls and ogres as I am, so that's a long shot.
• The capital city of Thronehold has gone completely unremarked in our campaign, and that's a shame. The palace and vaults of an eight-century-long dynasty just sitting there locked up? Who's got the key? What's going on behind the doors? Who'll feed the Corgis? A campaign there could really explore the political aftermath of the Last War, and put PCs in a central position to determine the future.
• The party has already visited Sharn a few times-- maybe they want to do a strictly Sharn campaign. That'd demand a better written cast of NPCs from me, but urban adventures lend themselves pretty well to improvisation in terms of plot (it helps when there are genuine monsters in the sewer).

Or maybe the players will tell me something I haven't thought of yet.

This is going to sound really geeky, but part of the reason I wanted a blog was so I could have a place to talk out loud about twiddling with the rules for role playing games. My comic strip is for observations based on the real world-- or at least, the world as a disaffected goth would like it to be. When I want to talk about the pure fantasy that is D&D (and similar pursuits), I want a different venue for it. I'm a regular on the forums over at Wizards of the Coast, but those boards are (for me, at least) for posting polished, finished thoughts. This blog will be for the ideas that don't work yet.

 Case in point: house rules adapting my D&D Eberron campaign to the streamlined d20 rules presented in the Star Wars Saga Edition rulebook. This is more a thought exercise than anything: even if I come up with a workable set of rules, my players don't own SWSE, and I won't ask them to shell out cash to learn a new system for a once-a-month game. But I can scare them by talking about it. :)

 The central concept to this little conversion project: The rules of an RPG are the system by which player characters interact with the game world. Under the current D&D 3.5 system, interactions are basically broken up into combat (the base attack bonus and related maneuvers), magic (spells, spell slots, and widgetiness), and everything else (skills). In SWSE, "everything else" includes using The Force (which is basically magic) and initiative (which is part of combat). That's three divisions collapsed down to two. Could turning magic into part of the skill system work for my D&D game? And if the skill system can work for two out of three divisions, why not pick up the hat trick? I've already seen other systems where one mechanic covers all interactions-- namely, The Shadows of Yesterday by CRN Games.

The advantage to collapsing D&D 3.5's divided rules sets would be increased predictability; that is, when something pops up that the rules haven't covered, I can extrapolate from the unified game mechanics how the situation should be resolved. The disadvantage is that D&D is a big, huge game: changing something as fundamental as how the fighter attacks an orc has sprawling repercussions that may require more time and attention than I'm willing to give to this "thought experiment."

But! A DM can still try...