Mad Gaming Madness

Magic is the lifeblood of Eberron, encircling it like the Ring of Siberys and seeping up through the earth from the bones of Khyber. Perhaps the clearest manifestation of this pervasive magic is the appearance of dragon­marks among seven of Khorvaire’s common races. Dragon­marks are elaborate skin patterns—more intricate and colorful than birthmarks, more distinctive than any tattoo—that also grant their bearers innate magical abilities. There are twelve families of dragonmarks, each one associated with a number of closely related manifestations. A thirteenth mark, the Mark of Death, has faded from history, and no living creature on Eberron carries it.      When it is used, a character’s dragonmark grows warm to the touch. It becomes fever hot when its spell-like abilities are used up for the day, and must be allowed to cool before its power can be drawn upon again.

You were born to one of the thirteen dragonmarked houses that wield enormous power throughout Khorvaire. Perhaps you have manifested one of the magical dragonmarks that showed your descent from a house member, or were born to someone who was granted member-ship or married into a house; regardless, you have lived a life of privilege and responsibility.      The dragonmarked houses are deeply entrenched in the economic and social ecology of Khorvaire. All guild monopolies are controlled by the houses, which fix prices and maintain quality standards. Although the houses are forbidden from holding lands or political office by the Korth Edicts, many dragonmarked heirs have great influence in politics due to their affiliations and personal power.

I'm not completely happy with this one. Part of it is, I want to know how the new system will handle psionics, which has always been a bad fit for many fantasy games. The other is, well, the kalashtar's actual psyche and essence has always been kind of vague and undefined, which kind of fits their origin in the Realm of Dreams, I guess.

EDIT: So, Warforged were supposed to be in the Dungeon Master's Guide, but were cut for space. I had posted a preliminary version, based on an update of the playtest version. However, I've since seen a version done by Keith Baker for a one-off character for a 5E game he played in , with input from designer Rodney Thompson. While Mr. Baker states quite clearly that he hasn't done any testing, and that this isn't in any way official, I like it quite a bit, so this is what I'm using for my game. I cleaned up Mr. Baker's paragraphs into the standard format.

With shifters, the problem is the new edition's focus on simplicity. Shifting changed your characteristics, and if you wanted your shifting to become really good, you had to take a tree of shifter feats. There were builds focusing entirely on maximizing your shifter advantages. The new edition doesn't really do temporary ability score changes in the same way -- the barbarian's rage, for example, gives a boost to damage and hit points, but doesn't require recalculating your character's abilities. Similarly, the gauntlets of ogre power / amulet of health / headband of intellect change the impacted ability score to a flat 19 -- a +5 bonus that's easy to plug in, and lasts indefinitely as long as you leave the item on. So I decided that 5E shifters should get their +1 stat bump from their trait, and tried to make the traits (which I had to rename "legacies" because "trait" in 5E is a very specific thing) almost as powerful as a feat, ...

The main deal with changelings is their Shapechanger power. In 3E, they could assume Medium forms only. Why do halflings and gnomes get a break from one of the setting's core elements, namely rampant, justifiable Paranoia? In Eberron , you should never be quite sure that you know who you're talking to, no matter if they're a human, bugbear, or gnome. Also, in 3E you could assume Small forms as well with a feat, and the new edition has a completely different feat economy. Anyway, I used the wording from the Doppelganger in the DM Basic Rules document v.0.1 .

Races Changeling Kalashtar Shifter Warforged Backgrounds Dragonmarked Scion Feats Dragonmarks

So, the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons has started dropping ( Player's Handbook last month, and I got my Monster Manual last night). I've been running this on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM at Maplewood Hobby for the last two years (three years in February) during the playtest, and as time has gone by I've been more and more impressed with it. It's very similar in feel (to me, anyway) to the original Basic Set D&D (and I'm talking about the purple box with the Erol Otus cover, so B/X for any OSR people) which was the most "fun" version. But the mechanics are very streamlined and simplified -- gone are different-methods-for-different-tasks, instead we're using the d20+bonus>target number method, which makes things easy.

I posted a long time ago about the Order of the d30 . Well, there's been more traction on that front of late, with a Google+ group . Also, Rich Leblanc has posted a link to a Mediafire folder with the sigil in a variety of formats. I may have to make a t-shirt!

As I've done the previous three years, this year I produced an entry for the One Page Dungeon Contest . This year's entry came in just under the wire; I had four different ideas that I worked on at one point or another, then I went ahead and completed one I started in 2011 and never finished. Inspiration is a fickle mistress.

The news came out last week that one of the cornerstone artists who defined the tone of the original Dungeons & Dragons game, David A. Trampier, passed away on March 24, 2014, at the Helia Healthcare facility in Carbondale, IL. He would have turned 50 on April 22.

So, I've run a short Apocalypse World campaign (set in the ruins of the Hoover Dam) and have an occasional Monster of the Week game, and I thought I'd check out Dungeon World . This is the same game design, but with the trappings of Dungeons & Dragons . As a long-time D&D DM (I run the D&D Encounters program at Maplewood Hobby ) I've had a great deal of experience running all different flavors of the game.

I was going through older files I'd put together years ago for a home game, and came across my Religion document. I was going to have quite a few real-world religions, represented in a fictionalized context in a sort of "multiversal collision." Anyway, among the religions was an interpretation of the Judeo-Christian church. I had been inspired by this thread on the Paizo boards as well as a series of discussions on the HârnForum on adding early Christianity to fantasy games. I never ended up running the campaign, which is just as well. I'm more interested in theological navel-gazing than anyone else I play with, and the extra effort to make something plausible would have been wasted. In fact, it is wasted just sitting on my hard drive, so here you go.

Wired.com has a great article on an enciphered manuscript from a secret society that has recently been cracked with the use of computer-aided linguistics. Interesting read!

I found this extremely insightful post about trust issues that can crop up in gaming, and wanted to bookmark it. Then I thought, why not share it here? (via nerdwerds )

This year, I originally started with something different, a modular starport sheet with associated Visio file, so you can make starports in minutes. In my sci-fi home game, this is something I need that I've always intended to make; I thought the One Page Dungeon Contest would spur me to finish the idea. Unfortunately, I didn't really have an adventure in there - it's basically more of a GM tool. And the contest is for a "Dungeon," so...

I like to have a lot of pre-gens for the D&D Next (040213 Playtest Packet) tables I run at the local hobby shop, because sometimes everybody at the table wants to play a martial character (and that should be allowed so that we can see whether or not it works in playtest) but there's only a couple in the packet. So, I went through and made as many unique pre-gens as I could earlier in the week. Sorry if they look rushed.

Apparently, they published all of the 2012 One Page Dungeon entries in one handsome volume ! I'm thrilled! There's some great stuff in there!

So, I've been doing a bit of work with D&D Next lately, since I run D&D Encounters at the FLGS and the new module can be converted to work in either D&D 4e or the new D&D Next playtest. Every single player at my store opted for D&D Next, so I need to get up to speed on my familiarity and comfort with the system. With that in mind, I present a few options for cleric PCs. I'd love to get them playtested.

Much like last year, I ended up with some additional materials after I was through with my submission. In this case, I made up a business card and the label to a Rescue Ball* package. I figured I'd post both the .pdf files and the images so that GMs can use them with the adventure, or edit them with details specific to their campaigns.