Shattered World

Four Days, Four Posts. Go Me!

2008-02-21T21:22:00.002-05:00

Today, as promised....Kobolds.

Kobolds
Kobolds, like goblins, are among the smallest and least physically intimidating of the humanoid races. Also somewhat like goblins, they are less prone to the sort of intertribe violence which marks relations among the larger humanoids. Beyond that, though, they are very different.

Kobolds consider themselves "Children of the Dragon", the first sentient humanoids to exist on Arith, created by the Emperor Dragons at the time of the World's Dawning. They believe they are more ancient than any race save their creators, and that they are, thus, destined to rule over all "lesser" species. The fact that they do not is evidence, they feel, of a great sin and shame they committed at some point in their own distant past. Their racial name is a corruption of the draconic word for 'outcast' or 'shamed ones'.

Other scholars consider this to be bilge, of course. They claim kobolds are no older than any other humanoid race, and that while they may have once been slaves of dragons (the mythical 'Emperor Dragons' never existed), they differ not at all from many other species who spent time in such servitude. Kobolds, it is said, have egos in inverse proportion to their size.

Lifestyle
Kobolds value cunning and skill. They believe the best way to do a job is to have someone else do it. They are not by nature lazy or irresponsible -- indeed, they are masters at certain devious crafts -- but they prefer to put their efforts towards making other people do the work. Unlike goblins, they actively seek out slaves and put prisoners to work. They also organize raids on caravans, storehouses, or cattle farms, as well as more profitable assaults on the treasure vaults of the dwarves or the hidden caches of the hill gnomes.

Kobold lairs are always deep in cave or tunnel systems, and well protected by layer after layer of traps and alarms. Trapmaking is a special art to the kobolds, and many compete to create the most ingenious -- yet still functional -- traps. While goblins will swarm an enemy, kobolds will kill foes without the enemy ever getting sight of them. They have many large, open, tunnels which larger species can easily navigate, surrounded by tiny crawlspaces used by the kobolds themselves. Only in the very deepest, best protected parts of the lair are there large open spaces for rooms, workshops, and farms (often tended by captives).

While kobolds have few wizards, they do produce a large number of sorcerers -- allegedly 'proof' of their draconic heritage. Such sorcerers are important, but they do not occupy the instant leadership position of 'blues' among goblins; there are simply too many born. Indeed, there is often vicious rivalry among them, leading to few surviving to become anything more than nuiscances.

Kobolds are polygamous, with males seeking multiple spouses based on their ability to provide -- ideally via someone else's labors. Unmarried kobolds are the ones most likely to be found outside the safety of the lair, as a single successful raid can produce enough wealth to lure a wife. All of the wives of a single kobold lay their eggs in a communal hatchery, and the children are raised by the family as a whole; only fatherhood matters.

Kobold tribes trace their origins to one of the five great Emperor Dragons, and rivalry between tribes of different Emperors is vicious, much more so than rivalry between tribes of the same emperor. Tribes always include their ancestor in their names -- the Crimson Knives, the Black Fangs, the Azure Blades. There is no (socially approved) mating or trade between tribes of different ancestors. A small number of tribes, disdained by the larger Kobold population, claim to be the outcast servants of other, stranger, dragons. While the existence of many 'lesser' or 'exotic' dragon species is known, few kobolds believe that any but the Five Emperors created them.

Religion
Kobold faith mirrors their history. The dragon gods made the kobold gods; the kobold gods made mortal kobolds to serve mortal dragons. Each of the five main branches has a different pantheon, though many non-kobold scholars insist that all of the gods are just aspects of the same root deity. The truth may never be known. Kobold clerics offer the usual wisdom, guidance, protection, and healing, as well as serving in war. Many clerics are cleric/sorcerors, and the most skilled become Mystic Theurges.

Post Crush
Kobolds have done, overall, very well since the Crush. Their few great cities were badly damaged, but none were utterly ruined. They found a new world filled with wonder which their devious little minds quickly mastered -- especially once they captured Earthborn humans to teach them what to do. Now, there are kobold cities glistening with strings of mismatched electric lights, and oddly configured stereo systems blare music throughout the cave systems. Trapmakers have learned to use electric eyes and pressure plates to enhance their art, and the elite kobold guards carry heavy pistols as two-handed weapons. Further, some of the most ingenious kobolds have begun to learn to manufacture gunpowder and have produced fairly reliable black-powder arms. Battles with other underground races, most notably goblins and orcs, are swinging in the kobolds' favor.

Down, down, to goblin town...

2008-02-20T06:54:00.003-05:00

Hey, three posts in three days! This is what I was aiming for, not my 'once every week maybe' rate. Sorry.

Ah, another long essay on another of D&Ds surfeit of humanoids. The main thing with goblins is distinguishing them from kobolds. Small? Check. Cowardly? Check. Considered fodder? Check. In Shattered World, goblins have two marginally interesting traits -- they aren't a race of bloodthirsty backstabbers who kill each other for sport or because they're bored, unlike pretty much every other humanoid race, and they have a naturally occuring psionic 'leader' caste which can make them act very differently (as well as providing unexpected surprises for those who assume all goblins are 1/2 hit die XP on the hoof...)

Coming tomorrow (or later today, if my odd level of creative energy continues): Kobolds, aka, Arrogant Little Bastards.

Goblins
Goblins are the second-smallest and weakest of the four main goblinoid races. They were created as the 'middle management' caste by the Illithids, and given, more than any other servitor race, the gift of psionics. While each of the three major goblin races has their own legends of the rebellion, the truth of the matter is that the goblins -- the weak, despised, and often oppressed goblins -- were the true masterminds and instigators. The hobgoblins were too loyal; the bugbears too brutal. Of all the servitors, it was the goblins who first developed the notion of 'gods', and were the first to create -- or discover -- them. This new faith grew slowly underground, promulgated by the psionic leader goblins who could hide their thoughts, and the thoughts of the faithful, from their masters. By the time the Illithid suspected, it was too late -- the rebellion was spreading out of control.

When the races fought free to the surface, it was assumed by the goblins that they'd pick up where the Illithids left off. But the long war had reduced their psionics to a mere handful, and in the upper layers of the underworld,strength and size counted for a lot. The three races split and fragmented; the goblins, small and weak, were treated as inferiors or outright slaves. There were new gods, stronger gods, to support the others.

Over time, the goblins retreated to the safety and comfort of the caves. They split into many tribes, each carrying only a small part of their accumulated lore, and as millennia wore on, most of it was distorted and forgotten. Today, the goblins know nothing of their true heritage or origins; they have their own creation myths which only obliquely speak of their captivity and rebellion.

Goblins have learned to be sneaky. There is no goblin term for "fair fight"; there are only "fights you are certain to win" and "fights to avoid". Superior numbers are the primary goblin tactic; they will not attack with fewer than 4-1 odds, and prefer much greater. There are few goblin armies (except those under the command of other powers); goblins form raiding bands. You will never see a goblin force assault a town openly, but a hundred of them might boil up from the sewers, tear through a small neighborhood, and vanish again before the cry can be raised. They take prisoners rarely; they fear what the prisoners might do if they escape. They might capture and torture someone if they think he knows where treasure is, or, very rarely, kidnap someone for ransom (such plots are usually done when a Blue is leading them), but they are not generally slavetakers. They are perhaps the most "merciful" of the humanoids, preferring to kill quickly; this is done more out of fear than kindness, of course.

Goblins like traps, but they are not nearly as cunning as kobolds; they prefer simple traps which immobilize victims so that a dozen goblins can swarm out and fire bolt after bolt into the trapped intruders. If Blues are available, there will often be psionic warning systems put into place, as well.

Goblins are generally self-sufficient, though they prefer to steal if they can. Goblin smiths make passable weapons and armor, and the deep goblin cities are fully functioning centers of trade and commerce. Goblins are primarily carnivorous, but will survive off fungus and others subterranean plants if they must; they mostly herd giant slugs as meatbeasts.

Goblin tribes which have left the caves usually dwell in the deep forests, places where there are many good hiding spots. Such goblins are nomadic; there are few goblin communities on the surface.

Culture
Goblins are among the most cooperative of the humanoids, at least among themselves. Inter-tribe rivalries are settled by formalized ritual combats instead of genocidal war, and internal politics is based on cunning debate instead of raw power. The goblins automatically and instinctively defer to any 'Blue'; all such born are raised by others of their kind (if any exist). A tribe or community which has several such members often changes in character, becoming more driven to conquest or expansion, though still in an essentially cowardly fashion.

Indeed, cowardice is a virtue among goblins, not a vice. To survive to run away is no shame. "Come back without your shield, without your sword, without your leg...but come back!" is the goblin military credo. "Don't let them see the yellows of your eyes!" is another. "Brave" and "Foolish" are synonyms.

Goblin solidarity does not, of course, extend to any non-goblin race, especially not to the dwarves, who are the goblins most vicious foes. The fact goblins are unusually peaceful among themselves does not make them one whit less savage or brutal when dealing with other races. They are almost incapable of making cross-racial deals without treachery or deceit; they never seek to share territory. They will not fight to their own extinction, but will flee rather than live in peace with a powerful neighbor.

Religion is very important to the goblins. They have one of the largest pantheons recorded, and it is often uncertain if the gods are all unique, or are merely different aspects of a smaller number of true deities. Individual gods in the goblin pantheon tend to be weak and highly focused, with few greater gods wielding mighty powers. Much like the goblins themselves, their gods must cooperate to get things done.

Goblins are communal in terms of family and childrearing. They do not marry or form any kind of long-lasting relationships, and are very sexually egalitarian -- another difference from the other humanoid races. Goblins seeking sex will try to bribe a potential mate with gifts and treasures, usually stolen. This is one of the few things which can make a goblin brave -- or at least, less cowardly. Showing daring in the pursuit of a mating-gift is considered admirable (and does a good job of keeping the goblin stock from degenerating completely). As is typical, a 'Blue' does not need to engage in such feats; they merely need to express interest and the object of their affection will almost always comply.

Children are raised by the community and parentage is rarely a matter of record. There is some measure of status in having had many mates, and goblins will often wear tokens from each mate as a way of 'showing off'.

Post Crush
The Crush had surprisingly little impact on the goblins. They lost some of their largest cities in the cataclysm, but they didn't have many to begin with; they were always a widespread people. Tribes which were partially destroyed managed to merge with other tribes and regroup. The destruction of their enemies, especially the dwarves, only benefitted them.

Goblin communities are widespread, but the largest are in the eastern mountains. They are not afraid of technology, but neither are they comfortable with it, and rarely adopt or use it. They do not actively attack holdfasts, but will raid trading caravans if they have an edge, or find passages into towns and use them to conduct lightning-fast assaults.

Of late, though, some goblins have been on the move -- large bands have been spotted migrating. These bands are always led by one or more blues, and engage in some very un-goblin-like behavior, such as directly attacking foes and not retreating until the situation is truly desperate, as opposed to at the point where they take any casualties at all.

The Floating City

2008-02-19T11:36:00.002-05:00

Ah, slowly filling in the gaps. A few things -- part of my world background/future history assumes much higher levels of tension between the US and the former USSR and China, leading to a lot more military bases, underground shelters, and advanced military technology. It also lets me re-open closed bases and give Philadelphia an active military shipyard.

Floating City Of New Philadelphia
The entire eastern seaboard, densely populated on both Earth and Arith, cracked into a chain of rocky islands in a single hour of cataclysm -- followed up, a few days later, by a series of nuclear strikes which lined the Shattered Coast with worldholes, great magical tears between planes. Tens of millions died instantly (and some theorize that this much psychic stress must account for something), but many survived and had to decide what to do next.

The Philadelphia Naval Base, closed in the mid 1990s and converted to civilian use, had been reactivated by the military in 2015, as foreign tensions increased to greater than Cold War levels. Several destroyers and smaller ships were regularly docked there, and by a fortunate coincidence, were out to sea on the day of the Crush. While the captain of the Olympus chose to take his ship and its support group deeper out to sea, Captain Craig Kallisto of the destroyer Gallatin decided to attempt a rescue of survivors now trapped in the drowned ruins of Philadelphia. Risking disaster by navigating the rocky and storm tossed waters, he managed to save a few hundred people, and used a mix of bluster and force to 'recruit' anyone in the area with working boats -- from sport fishermen to yachtsmen -- into helping him. By the time he had saved everyone he felt could be saved, New Jersey had been nuked and it was painfully obvious there was nowhere safe to go. (The first attack on the smaller ships of the Gallatin fleet by sahuagin raiders convinced him of that....)

He found that most of the survivors didn't want to leave, and of course had nowhere to go. The thought of transporting hundreds of civilian refugees on a wild hunt for a safe haven didn't appeal to him. Partly by inertia and indecision, the survivors started to settle in, the fleet drifting among the ruins. The seas of Arith, now mixed with those of Earth, contained fish in a density not seen in the Atlantic for decades. Small islands proved stable enough for subsistence farming. The mad tangle of ruins proved very defensible, and a few dozen depth charges wiped out the sahuagin city which had appeared a mile or so offshore, ending the most regular threat.

The Gallatin itself is anchored, its fuel long since exhausted. It and its sister ships, bedecked with every scavenged solar panel that could be found, form the hub of a dispersed, half-floating, city. Smaller craft, capable of running on alcohol or biodiesel, provide an active coast guard, protecting converted fishing boats. Dozens of small islands are covered in crops, providing steady if not always varied food, and regular runs into the ruined suburban sprawl return all sorts of useful treasures. In 12 PC, a diving expedition found and recovered the Liberty Bell, which is now displayed on the foredeck of the Gallatin.

As with a lot of post-Crush societies, democracy has taken a back seat to expediency. Captain Kallisto considered the situation to be a state of emergency justifying martial law, and nothing since the Crush has changed this perception. When Kallisto died in PC 18 (of, oddly enough, natural causes), his second-in-command, Julius Operman, took over as Captain, and there was very little dissent over this. Society is divided between 'the fleet' and 'the ciies', and while all able-bodied citizens are expected to form up when ordered to do so during an attack or invasion, there is no formal draft -- indeed, joining the fleet is difficult if one comes from a 'civvie' background, and marrying an officer is considered a major social move. The 'civvies' elect or appoint ombudsmen to represent their interests, and there are monthly public meetings where complaints, issues, or concerns can be voiced.

The Floating City is currently at a state of semi-peace with its neighbors, though tensions are high. The tritons of Siliamish have engaged in several skirmishes with fishing boats which have entered 'their' waters, but there is also a mutual protection pact against the sahuagin who still sometimes raid from south. There are several holdfasts surrounding the Floating City which view it will suspicion; its military outlook and the fear of an expansionist leader coming to power worry many of the locals.

Outsiders are generally not turned away, but are also not encouraged to say. There is a flotilla of trading barges which is moored on the outer edges of the fleet's claimed territory, and this is where merchants and wanderers are expected to stay. Private arms above the level of a shortsword are not permitted; Fleet officers maintain weapon lockers where all such items are stored during visits. Petitions for citizenship are possible, but closely scrutinized.

As with many Earthborn holdfasts, magic is viewed with suspicion, but it's too useful to be banned. Three sorcerers have been born to the locals over the years, all of whom ended up being "recruited" into the fleet; in addition, attempts have been made to master the arts of wizardry, though with few Arithian teachers and no real books of arcane lore, it has been painfully slow going. The ship's chaplain developed 'miraculous' powers, of course. The fleet maintains no 'official' faith, in accordance with military regulations, but the New Unified Church Of The One God is the most popular religion, its missionaries being both enthusiastic and willing to perform miracles on demand. Those claiming a need for religious services are often allowed to travel, escorted, to one of the several floating places of worship, which include one of the only surviving synagogues.

Non-humans and Arithian humans are rare. A few have petitioned for citizenship over the years, but the Floating City is very strongly Earthborn in character and is, if not actively hostile to Arithians, profoundly unwelcoming.

Get Your Kicks On Route..er...70...

2008-02-18T21:38:00.002-05:00

If I ever do this commercially, I will have to do a Route 66 supplement. For now, however, this is a "sketch" of Route 70, specifically the part from Indiana to Pennsylvania. Why? Because the PCs are crossing it in "downtime", and I want the players to make up some Cool Stuff that happens en route. There's a lot of points here I want to detail in the future; I could drill down to do a dozen pages on a single city-ruin if I need to, but for now, this general 'sense of the place' will have to do.

And of course, in so doing, I realized I needed to do a history of Mantaros, the kingdom which occupied the Northeast region on Arith. Since I included a throwaway reference to a floating sky-palace, I then leap to the conclusion that Mantaros, already established as the oldest kingdom of the Alliance, was one of those very magic-heavy kingdoms, with cities filled with magical wonders of all sorts -- which naturally self-destructed dramatically when the Crush came. Look for some more essays soon, and sorry about the long gap.

For those traveling across the northern part of the former United States, the best and safest road -- and this is using very qualified definitions of 'best' and 'safest' -- is the former Route 70, which was also a series of wide, Roman-style paved roads on Arith. Today, of course, it is a cracked and broken ruin -- impassable in many parts -- but still the closest thing to a direct east-west route in the area.

It passes through many dead and ruined cities, which creates a need for long detours for those not brave or foolish enough to enter the monster haunted ruins. Indianapolis is a swirling madhouse due to the Worldhole created during the Day of Fire; Columbus escaped the nukes but remains a deadly jumble of fallen buildings and lethal lairs; the outskirts of Pittsburgh hold strange and twisted creatres which spawn from its own reality-twisting center.

Monsters native to the area include roaming bands of gnolls and orcs, as well as bullettes, ankhegs, and wild wyverns (often confused with dragons by the Earthborn; Arithians laugh at such childish errors). There are bands of hill giants in many parts of western Ohio, as well as their ogre cousins. Ragedrakes are known to dwell in the Pittsburgh region. Rogue golems, freed from the spells which bound them and filled with rage at their enslavement, are common near the old Ohio border, where an academy of magic specializing in the art of soulless constructs (all mages learned well the lesson of Skallidane!) once stood in the kingdom of Marridon. Countless dozens of other monstrosities exist in lesser numbers.

The Pittsburgh worldhole is a partial gateway to a part of the Elemental Plane of Earth, one made of every kind of hard metal. As a consequence, creatures surrounding it have become things of living metal, of lead and iron and even adamantine, though they are not constructs nor golems, but creatures of metal flesh.

Columbus is a wild zone, a tangled mess of ruined skyscrapers mixed with the remnants of high magic, as it was an old city, called Jaliath, in Mantaros. Its most spectacular feature was the Emerald Minaret, the flying palace of the Baron of Jaliath. During the crush, the Minaret shattered, the lower half falling to earth, the upper half remaining afloat. The Baron and his family are presumed dead, but the remnant of the twisted spire still defends itself, firing green beams of arcane energy at any fliers foolish enough to approach. Not a few rogues of Arith idly dream of a plot to enter the place, as the treasures of the old Baron are said to be of incaculable worth...

Once the mountains of middle Pennsylvania (or the Kraz Kar Haj) are reached, the threat of orcs and goblins becomes more dire, as these species have laid claim to much of this area, and while they are not well organized, they are numerous, and regularly raid for food and slaves. There are a few dozen faltering Dwarvish fortresses scattered along the range, most deeply paranoid and mistrustful, and so cunningly hidden an army could march over their front door and never know it. The mountains also hold dire beasts.

Happy Johnson and Huggy

2008-02-04T10:13:00.000-05:00

Over on RPG.net, in a thread on customizing monsters and why 4e's simplified system was better than 3x's "everyone works by the same rules" system, someone commented on the pointlessness of being able to give Perform skills to a choker.

Ladies and gentlemen, Happy Johnson and Huggy!

Happy Johnson, formerly Bandolimiir, was one of uncounted itinerant bards of Arith, making his way from town to town as part of a general troupe of entertainers. When the Crush hit, the open road upon which they had been traveling suddenly became a 4-lane superhighway filled with speeding vehicles, smashing the caravan and scattering the survivors into the surrounding towns.

Bandoloimiir barely managed to escape with his life and fiddle. Never a fighter, he spent the next few weeks mostly in hiding, trying to avoid both newly-emboldened monsters and Earthborn humans who couldn't tell him from an orc. Taking shelter in a mostly-looted mall, he happened on a box of "Happy Johnson" brand joke t-shirts. Not yet speaking English, but enjoying the comical art (and soft cloth), he made off with a few.

Eventually, hunger drove him to seek shelter among a band of humans traveling in a self-propelled metal house. (This was while there was still ample gas to scavenge easily.) He used his various perform talents...and a hasty Charm spell..to win them over. As he expected, they found his antics adorable and him harmless, so he became their companion as he learned all he could about the new world which had been formed. They found his oversized t-shirt truly hilarious, and quickly gave him his new name. Once he learned enough English to "get" the joke, he decided it was a perfect icebreaker -- no one would attack someone named Happy Johnson, after all!

Once he felt confident enough to move on, he did so, bartering entertainment for transit and food. It was during a dark and stormy night (sigh), taking shelter in a cave, that he met Huggy.
Huggy was an infant choker, abandoned and alone, and too feeble to actually harm anyone. Happy, on a whim, desided to feed the poor thing, and managed to raise him as a sort of pet and companion. Dressed in a makeshift clown outfit and taught to do acrobatic tricks, "Huggy" is a main part of Happy's act. Arithians are often fearful or nervous, but Earthborn -- who are Happy's main audience -- usually don't know about chokers and consider Huggy to be just a strange sort of midget.

Happy is not a fighter, and he knows it. If he is going into dangerous territory, he will seek out powerful company. If on his own, he will use his natural charm, comedic skills, and sometimes magic to make himself some friends and protectors. He does all he can to come across as harmless and non-threatening, which he mostly is. If a fight breaks out, he will use his magic to slow/distract pursuers and leave as fast as he can, though he will not abandon Huggy.

HAPPY JOHNSON CR 5
Gnome; bard 5
CG Small humanoid ( gnome )
Init +0; Senses Low-light, Listen +4, Spot +2
Languages Common, Gnome
AC 15, touch 11, flat-footed 15; ,
hp 20 (5 HD)
Fort +1, Ref +4, Will +6
Speed 20 ft. (4 squares)
Ranged masterwork crossbow (light/small) +5 (1d6 /19-20 )
Melee rapier +1 (small) +5 (1d4+1 /18-20 )
Face 5 ft. Reach 5 ft.
Base Atk +3; Grp -1
Known Bard Spells (CL 5): 0th - dancing lights , ghost sound (DC 13) , lullaby (DC 12) , mending (DC 12) , prestidigitation (DC 12) , summon instrument 1st - charm person (DC 13) , comprehend languages , hideous laughter (DC 13) , sleep (DC 13) 2nd - alter self , eagle's splendor (DC 14) , enthrall (DC 14)
Prepared Spells Spell-Like Abilities (CL 1):
speak with animals ( 1/day) dancing lights ( 1/day) ghost sound ( DC 12, 1/day) prestidigitation ( DC 12, 1/day)
Abilities Str 10, Dex 10, Con 10, Int 14, Wis 14, Cha 15
SQ +1 racial bonus on attack rolls against kobolds and goblinoids., +2 racial bonus on saving throws against illusions., +4 Dodge bonus to Armor Class against monsters of the giant type., Bardic knowledge (+7), Bardic music 9/day, Countersong (Su) for up to 10 rounds, Fascinate (Sp) can effect 2 creatures for up to 5 rounds, Inspire Competence (Su) +2 to skill checks for up to 2 minutes, Inspire Courage (Su) +1 to saves against charm or fear effects and +1 morale bonus on attack and damage rolls (Concentration + 5 rounds)., May wear light armor without incurring the normal arcane spell failure chance., Speak with Animals (burrowing mammal only, duration 1 minute).
Feats Armor Proficiency (Light), Extra Music, Negotiator, Shield Proficiency, Simple Weapon Proficiency
Skills Balance +8, Bluff +10, Climb +5, Diplomacy +16, Disguise +4, Disguise (Act in character) +6, Escape Artist +2, Perform (Comedy) +6, Perform (Sing) +8, Perform (String Instruments) +8, Sense Motive +9, Sleight of Hand +9, Tumble +5,
Possessions mithral shirt; musical instrument (fiddle); potion of misdirection; rapier +1 (small); Masterwork Crossbow (Light/Small) ;

HUGGY CR 2
Choker; aberration 3
TN Small aberration
Init +7; Senses Darkvision (60'), Listen +1, Spot +1
Languages Undercommon
AC 18, touch 14, flat-footed 15; ,
hp 23 (3 HD)
Fort +3, Ref +4, Will +4
Speed 20 ft. (4 squares) Climb 10 ft.
Melee tentacle +5/+5 (1d3+2 )
Face 5 ft. Reach 10 ft.
Base Atk +2; Grp +4
Abilities Str 14, Dex 17, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 12, Cha 11
SQ Aberration Traits, Constrict (Ex), Improved Grab (Ex), Quickness (Su)
Feats Acrobatic, Improved Initiative, Skill Focus (Tumble)
Skills Move Silently +4, Perform (Comedy) +2,
Possessions tentacle;

Illithid Sex

2008-01-25T11:04:00.000-05:00

See, the 'official' name for Mind Flayers is 'illithids', so, it's sort of a pun on 'illicit' and...oh, forget it.

Mind Flayers
In vast, deep, underground cities sprawls the Empire Of The Mind Flayers...both the most widespread and the weakest of the Three Dark Powers Below. ("Weak" being a rather relative term, of course...)

Arithian history begins in ancient and forgotten times, easily 50,000 years in its past. At that time, there are few records of intelligent surface-dwellers; the only races whose recorded history goes back so far are those who dwell in the darkness below. Secure in their caves, they created many forms of life, opened portals to other worlds, built empires and dominions that spanned creation, and grew old, insular, corrupt, and debased.

The mind flayers (their racial name for themselves is purely psionic, and cannot be pronounced by humans) were the most comprehensible of the older races. They were also the masters of creation, breeding many subject races in their great vats. They enjoyed the taste of sapient thought, and crafted beings for flavor as well as utility. Many of the surface races, though they know it not, began life as cattle.

Something happened, though, long ago, which caused the fall of the great empire. To create servants worth feasting upon, the Mind Flayers needed to give them souls. The Flayers themselves, soulless and godless, did not understand that soul-stuff calls to soul-stuff. The servitors needed gods, believed in gods...and found gods. Some claim their belief created the gods from the raw energy of the universe; some claim their need called out to already-existing gods who took them in and appeared to them as they believed. Either way, the gods empowered the slaves, enabling them to rebel. (Tens of millennia later, the same would occur on Skallidane). The Empire, vast and disconnected, did not fall all at once, nor did every slave rebel, but bit by bit, it crumbled, and the freed races fled upwards, finding a surface world free of any dominant power.

Today, most of the great empire is in ruins. Many of the former cities, outposts, and fortresses are in ruins; others are held by new powers. A few places, though, are still in the control of the Flayers; such locales are deep, hidden, secret, and deadly.

Very recently, a great psychic tremor -- and an equally great physical one -- passed through all of the Underworld. Sensing that the world has changed greatly, the ancient powers, long content to sit and dream alien dreams of forgotten glory, are extending their tendrils outward and upward...

Culture
Psionics informs everything Mind Flayers do. They exist in a world alive with thought. They build their cities of psychoactive crystal, and their language is a mixture of simple words and complex psychic overtones. Their writing, a seemingly random sequence of colored shapes and lines, is likewise imbued with psychic impact; to a Mind Flayer, each shape and color triggers a stored memory of a complex concept. A red triangle of a certain size and shape might mean 'Enemies are approaching'; a green hexagon following it might impart 'The are beholders, six of them'. Almost imperceptible differences in shade, size, and angle can change the meaning of a symbol dramatically, and a non-psionic, or a psion who has not absorbed the training of the Mind Flayer, can not easily learn even the simplest part of the language.

Mind Flayers cannot conceive of other thinking beings as possessing any inherent right to exist. They are food, slaves, and entertainment, nothing more. The best one can hope for from a Mind Flayer is to be seen as an amusing pet; this is where other races' psions tend to be categorized. Among themselves, they lack any emotions of love, affection, or compassion, but they also tend to lack the virulent hatred and treachery which define the other great powers of the Underworld. Mind Flayers can cooperate, form successful communities, and work together for a goal. They are not prone to self-sacrifice or to put any kind of collective good ahead of their own, but they do understand the concept of "Either some of us die, or all of us die" and have traditions and means of choosing a sacrifice when it is necessary.

Biology
Mind Flayers are naturally hermaphroditic, and mostly disinterested in sex. Indeed, it is almost never the case that two will mate. Rather, at a random point late in a Mind Flayer's life, it will spontaneously impregnate itself. The young grow inside the parent, using their latent psionic power and direct, physical, connection to its nervous system to control it, forcing it to seek out shelter and isolation. Then they burst forth, killing the parent, but devouring its mind and some portion of its memory and personality, allowing it to 'live' in a way, scattered among its 5-10 children. Because the children, at first, share portions of a single mind, they will cooperate and help each other, until the squirm (collective noun for a Mind Flayer kids) has grown strong enough to rejoin greater civilization. By this time, most of them will have died, prey to other forces of the Underworld; usually, no more than 1 to 2 survive to adolescence. The adolescents have developed enough experiences of their own that they are unique beings, and have only a dim sense of ever 'being' their parent.

Mind Flayers are basically humanoid in shape, with flexible cartilage for bones and a head which looks like a 4-tentacled octopus. They live on a diet of fungus, insects, and brains. They do not need much brain to live -- once a month is sufficient -- but they need at least a pound of it. Sapient brains are much preferred, both for flavor and the fact that they need the neurochemicals of a thinking mind to fuel their own psionic powers. A Mind Flayer denied access to sapient brains for three months loses all of their psychic abilities; this is a common form of punishment or control among the community.

Outcasts
Of course, there are always exceptions. For as long as any can recall, some Mind Flayers, a rare few, have not been content to be part of the complex and convoluted machine which Mind Flayer society. They desire power for its own sake. Often unable to find this among their fellows, who will swat down the impudent one, they leave to become lords of their own pretty domains. It is these renegades and radicals who were the first to sense the great change which came upon the world, and it is they who have begun to explore the long-forgotten routes to the brightly lit hell which is the surface.

Smarter Than The Average Half-Fire Elemental Awakened Bear....

2008-01-16T20:53:00.000-05:00

Another bit of random geography to be more fully detailed later...and an NPC...

The Yellowstone Inferno

It is a well known fact that Yellowstone park sits atop a dormant supervolcano which might explode at any moment – it's a few thousand years overdue. In the instant of the Crush, the overlapping geological instability triggered just such an eruption. Fortunately, it was not the world-destroying event predicted, in large part because the underworld of Arith was much more open (and thus, less lava-filled) than the subsurface of Earth. However, it was still catastrophic. The entire region was consumed in a chain reaction of volcanic activity, turning forests, mountains, and lakes into a wasteland of black ash and lava.

Worse, such an explosion, in a time of great magical instability, ripped open elemental walls. The Yellowstone Inferno is now riddled with gates to the planes of Earth, Fire, and Magma. Elementals of all three planes, mephits, fire giants, azer, and similar beings have all laid claims to portions of the wasteland. The surrounding region defies all attempts to tame it; there is no demi-human or humanoid civilization within a hundred miles of the central eruption, and those who live on the borders of the Inferno are elementally tainted. Half-elementals, elemental blooded, and stranger things are born there, and natural creatures are often caught up in vortexes of elemental energy and transformed. Of course, there are elementally infused ores to be found here, as well as other rare and magical substances...

The nearest outposts of civilization remaining are the American Falls Holdfast, The G'rukh Mag dwarven fort, and Pines Blowing West, an Elven settlement. Trade between the three is limited, but in the past few years, all have agreed to contribute a few dozen men to a series of patrols which monitors the western border of the Inferno for major incursions, as well as trying to keep bugbear and orc activity under control, an effort which grows more difficult with each passing year. Rumors abound that some being of power – a red dragon, an evoker with a love of fire, an elemental baron, or even something stranger – has begun to tame the Inferno for its own ends, but these are dismissed as travelers tales of little merit.

There are further rumors that the slowly-recovering outskirts of the Inferno are patrolled by a most unique guardian...

Name: Yuggi, Guardian Of The Inferno
Race: Brown Bear (Awakened)
Player:
Classes: Animal8 Druid10
Hit Points: 175
Experience: 153000 / 171000
Alignment: True Neutral
Vision: Low-light
Speed: Walk 40 ft.
Languages: Druidic, Ignan

Stat Score Mod
STR 24 (+7)
DEX 14 (+2)
CON 21 (+5)
INT 10 (+0)
WIS 17 (+3)
CHA 12 (+1)

-------------------------- Skills --------------------------
Skill Total Rnk Stat Msc
Climb 9 2.0 7 0
Concentration 9 4.0 5 0
Concentration (Cast defensively) 13 4.0 5 4
Diplomacy 4 3.0 1 0
Handle Animal 4 3.0 1 0
Heal 7 2.0 3 2
Knowledge (Nature) 9 5.0 0 4
Listen 9 4.0 3 2
Spot 10 5.0 3 2
Survival 14 7.0 3 4
Survival (Natural environments) 16 7.0 3 6
Swim 13 2.0 7 4

-------------------------- Feats ---------------------------
Alertness
You get a +2 bonus on all Listen checks and Spot checks.

Combat Casting
You get a +4 bonus on Concentration checks made to cast a spell or use a spell-like ability while on the defensive or while you are grappling or pinned.

Improved Natural Attack (Claw)
The damage for the selected natural weapon increases by one step, as if the creature's size had increased by one category.

Multiattack
The creature's secondary attacks with natural weapons take only a -2 penalty.

Natural Spell
You can complete the verbal and somatic components of spells while in a wild shape. You can also use any material components or focuses you possess, even if such items are melded within your current form.

Self-Sufficient
You get a +2 bonus on all Heal checks and Survival checks.

Weapon Focus (Claw)
Armor Proficiency (Light)
When you wear a type of armor with which you are proficient, the armor check penalty for that armor applies only to Balance, Climb, Escape Artist, Hide, Jump, Move Silently, Pick Pocket, and Tumble checks.

Armor Proficiency (Medium)
When you wear a type of armor with which you are proficient, the armor check penalty for that armor applies only to Balance, Climb, Escape Artist, Hide, Jump, Move Silently, Pick Pocket, and Tumble checks.

Shield Proficiency

-------------------- Special Abilities ---------------------
Animal Companion (Ex)
Animal Traits
Improved Grab (Ex)
Nature Sense (Ex)
Resist Nature's Lure (Ex)
Scent (Ex)
Spontaneous casting - Can spontaneously cast Summon Nature's Ally spells
Trackless Step (Ex)
Venom Immunity (Ex)
Wild Empathy (Ex) +11 (+7 on Magical Beasts)
Wild Shape (Su) 4/day for 10 hours (Large)
Woodland Stride (Ex)

------------------------ Templates -------------------------
Awakened Animal

-------------------------- Combat --------------------------

Total / Touch / Flat Footed
AC: 21 / 16 / 19

Initiative: +2
BAB: +13/+8/+3
Melee tohit: +19/+14/+9
Ranged tohit: +14/+9/+4

Fortitude: +21
Reflex: +14
Will: +15

Unarmed attack:
to hit: +19/+14/+9
damage: 1d4+7
critical: 20/x2

Bite:
to hit: +17
damage: 2d6+3
critical: 20/x2

Claw:
to hit: +20/+20
damage: 2d6+7
critical: 20/x2

--------------------- Special Abilities --------------------

------------------------- Equipment ------------------------
Name QTY LBS
Amulet of Natural Armor +3 1 0lbs
Cloak of Resistance +3 1 1lbs
Ring (Protection +2) 1 0lbs

New York, New York

2008-01-08T23:58:00.000-05:00

OK, no more pointless 4e snarkfests. Besides, there's been just the tiniest trickle of things which give me hope it might not totally suck (though the new licensing program sure isn't one of them...). Anyway...

New York City is my hometown (more or less), so it always gets some focus in any kind of modern or post-disaster game. This is mostly a sketch of the city, a framework into which other ideas can pour. Half-ruined skyscrapers as fortress kingdoms, trade between them as if on the canals of Venice, twisted winged creatures flitting from rooftop to rooftop, and obscene monsters lurking in the drowned tunnels below...

(Someone fund me. I wanna write the supplement for this!)

But for now, a few paragraphs...and an organization.

I had no intention of writing up the Wyvern Lords when I started writing this essay. I just kept writing, and there they were, aging fanatics yearning for a dying dream, proud warriors twisted by self-hatred, missing the chance to build a new world because they are blinded by tears for the loss of the old...there's a lot of story hooks there.

This happens to me a lot. I just start writing, and ideas fall into place, and I end an essay somewhere I never expected it to go...

New York City
In 2020, New York City was a primary center of trade, industry, and commerce, with the metro region home to some 23 million people. The city was little different than it was in the early 21st century; the skyline had grown slightly, and the sprawl was even denser in the surrounding regions, but it had not experienced any radical changes in size or status.

The Crush struck it hard, as it did most of the Eastern Seaboard. Manhattan buckled and crumbled. Staten Island fractured. A rift cracked along the center of Long Island, destroying Brooklyn and Queens, along with must of the suburban sprawl. Bridges and tunnels collapsed under the strain, cutting the islands off from food -- not that there would be any coming, anyway. While millions survived the initial disaster, the death toll in the next few months was catastrophic; the region could not support a hundredth of its current population, and most died in fighting over the scarce resources.

In addition, the same place on Arith was home to the capital of Mantaros, the oldest of the Alliance Of Free Kingdoms. The largest city in Mantaros, Azalian, sprawled over the region, a blending of five older cities merged into a single political entity, and a center of learning, culture, and spellcraft. While almost overwhelmed in the merger, its population had power if not numbers, and reacted predictably to the seeming attack. Wyvern-riding troops mobilized from shattered rookeries. Wizards climbed out of the ruins of their towers and unleashed fire, ice, and choking gas on rioting mobs. Beings of all lands and races, trapped and confused, lashed out at anything which seemed hostile -- or which could not defend itself.

The result, inevitably, was slaughter. Millions died in the first few weeks, trapped in the ruins without food or potable water. Those who tried to swim often drowned in the tempests which followed the shattering of the coast, or were killed by monsters. Some, of course, made it, and surviving Coast Guard and naval units (both Earthborn and Arithian) did all they could. Sometime during this time, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Olympus sailed out to sea, with a full compliment of crew and planes, and, rumor has it, significant supplies seized from whatever stores they could find.

After a few months, the major fighting ended. Most of the populace which could flee, did; the rest entered a state of spiteful detente. Surviving skyscrapers became fortresses. Canny residents learned to set up fishing nets from fifth-floor windows to find food, and built rooftop stills and desalinization plants. A few managed to rig up solar panels to provide limited power. The city ruins could not support more than miniscule fraction of the old population, but New Yorkers in any universe are tough...

New York has the honor of being one of the few major American cities to not be consumed by a worldhole -- much as with Chicago, nukes aimed at it missed, striking New Jersey and creating the Blighted Woods. It is still in ruins, however. About one building in 10 is still standing. Manhattan is now submerged under about 40 feet of water, leaving many of the ruined buildings still partially visible, and turning navigation into a lethal game. Locals who have learned the lay of the land -- well, of the water -- and know which patterns of ripples spell a sharp steel shard ready to slice a hull in half -- can navigate the treacherous waters with relative safety -- they are much calmer than the Sparred Sea, but outsiders would be advised to travel slowly -- and know how to swim.

The largest land area still semi-habitable is Staten Island, or parts thereof. Relatively undeveloped, it offered areas which could be farmed by survivors. Several holdfasts exist on the island, some Arithian and some Earthborn, and there are constant brushfire wars between them.

The great buildings, ruined or not, of Manhattan provide an attractive nesting place for monsters, especially winged ones. A harpy colony rules the former Broadway area. Wyverns, now feral and wild, constantly prowl the skies. Assorted humanoids, mostly tribal exiles, have laid claim to various buildings. And there are rumors...rumors only, mind you...that the flooded and collapsed subway tunnels have, somehow, merged with darker and deeper caverns, home to things unknown and unknowable...

There are also more venal rumors -- that untold caches of wealth, stockpiles of gold and jewels, lie just below the surface or are hidden in some forgotten safe on some high level floor. Certainly, the wealthy of Manhattan did not manage to take all or even most of it with them, and some treasure must survive somewhere...Further, there is the fact that, almost forgotten in the ruins of New York lie the ruins of five of the largest Arithian cities. Artifacts, magical scrolls and treasures, strange items, powerful relics...all of these might still exist.

The Wyvern Lords
The Wyvern Lords of Azalian were once the elite fighting force of the Alliance Of Free Kingdoms, legendary for their skill, honor, and bravery. When the Crush hit, many of them survived the initial chaos, only to fall trying to protect their people or reclaim what was left of their home. A small number, seeing the odds growing desperate and hope growing slim, made a painful decision. They pulled back, leaving the sinking islands, and took refuge in the north, roughly (and ironically) in the location of Valhalla, New York. While this area, too, had been shattered by the Crush, it was generally less war-torn, and it was fairly easy for the 50 or so riders who fled -- or, as they put it, retreated -- to find shelter and a place to dig in, protecting bands of Arithian refugees who were in desperate need of such protection. Shamed by their flight, the Wyvern Lords have sworn to reclaim the lands of Azalian, and to defend all citizens of the Free Kingdoms who come seeking their aid. The Valhalla Holdfast (or, as they call it, New Azalian) is one of the largest pure-Arith holdfasts on the East Coast. The region has become an island some 15 miles across, and it is now tightly held by the Wyvern Lords. Earthborn are forced off at swordpoint; if they resist, they are killed.

The Wyvern Lords are harsh, but fair, masters to those under their protection. A military organization, they have little patience with the needs or interests of civilians, and consider themselves to be in a state of constant war. Rules in New Azalian are simple, direct, and ruthlessly enforced. All resources other than those needed for pure survival are directed towards the goal of "reclaiming Azalian", and then, the entirety of the Alliance. While most Arithians have painfully accepted that this world is neither Earth nor Arith, but a new land to which neither side has full title, the Wyvern Lords reject this conclusion utterly. This is their land; they will let no one claim otherwise.

The human Wyvern Lords, 40 of the 50 who left Azalian, are all aging; the youngest is 50. A handful of new Lords are being trained, but there is a fear that with such a small pool to pull from, the glory of the Wyvern Lords will soon fade. This has made many of them desperate; if something is not done soon, all of their dreams will come to naught. A few in the Holdfast have begun to wonder what the point would be in reclaiming a drowned ruin, when building New Azalian into a true city is a much more desirable goal, but few will wonder this out loud. Wyvern Lords have keen ears...

In Which Lizard Snarks On 4e

2008-01-07T09:16:00.000-05:00

Not really Shattered World related, but since this blog also serves to hold my rants on game design, I might as well put it here.

Trap design in every other version of DnD.

Ug the kobold:"OK, here's a hidden trip wire, and it triggers this crossbow and then deflates this bladder, so that it blows through a horn, letting us know someone is coming."
Zug the kobold:"Looks good."

Trap design in 4e: (You may need to make a free account to read this article)
Ug the kobold:"OK, here's a hidden trip wire, and it triggers this crossbow and then deflates this bladder, so that it blows through a horn, letting us know someone is coming."
Zug the kobold:"No, that will never do. The thief will spot it and disarm it."
Ug:"Well, yeah, but he might miss it. Besides, it will warn us against goblins or even wild animals coming down the tunnel. We have enemies besides PCs."
Zug:"No, no, that's not the point! What does the FIGHTER do?"
Ug:"Kill our women and children, usually. Thus, the traps."
Zug:"No. First, you need some arcane runes for the mage to read and disable. They'll set off the fireball if he doesn't."
Ug:"We have a fireball?"
Zug:"Then, I think, we'll have the runes cast 'animate dead' on some skeletons, so the cleric can turn them.
Ug:"We have someone who can can cast that?"
Zug:"Of course, the skeletons will be trying to stop the thief from disarming the crossbow, so the fighter will have to protect him from them! Perfect! The whole party is involved!"
Ug:"You want this done by WHEN?"
Zug: "Just make sure there's something like this every 50 feet down this tunnel. But make them all different, we don't want people getting bored."
Ug:"Look, are we defending our lair or setting up a theme park ride for adventurers?"
Zug:"Theme park. Duh. Didn't you get the memo?"

Pining Away

2008-01-01T10:42:00.000-05:00

Another random piece of geography for people to correct my errors on. :) As someone who is from New Jersey, it's always one of the my favorite places to destroy.

The Blighted Woods
South-Central New Jersey was always a small patch of wilderness in the midst of suburban sprawl. The area was worthless for development, and ultimately attained value as a nature preserve. In 2020, it remained so, with the only commercial use being collection of rare or exotic plants to test for useful sequences of DNA. On Arith, the same region was similarly empty of settlement, and was a place where bandits, outlaws, and other such types fled to hide from encroaching justice. Autumn Druids were known to practice dark rituals there, and the places where failed towns lay in ruin were regarded as unhallowed sites prone to undead or worse.

In 2020 (or 0PC), a nuclear missile targeted at New York City veered sharply off course, landing squarely in the center of the Pine Barrens. A worldhole was created there, and the region transformed. Today (2040/20PC), the area is a twisted and warped place, a realm which is, according to some, trapped halfway between the material plane and the shadow plane. It is a dark and forboding zone, monster haunted and evil. As with much of the rest of the Eastern Seaboard, the region is now an archipelago, part of the so-called Shattered Coast, but the waters surrounding the islands are shallow and choked with black, acidic seaweed, causing some to call the region the Sargasso of Shadows. Shipwrecks exist in many places just below the surface, providing additional hazards to navigation, and in many cases, they are filled with the zombies or shadows of their drowned crews.

It is never daylight. At high noon, the Blighted Woods are still cloaked in misty twilight, and most of the time, the place is just black. Light, even magical light, is swallowed by the gloom; it is impossible for those without darkvision to see more than thirty feet ahead. The place is filled with constant noise -- trees swaying and creaking without wind to move them, the chittering of strange insects, the mournful cries of alien birds. Where the ground is not swamp or mire, it is covered in a foot-thick layer of dead leaves, fallen branches, and the like; this undergrowth constantly shifts and moves as the things which dwell beneath it seek prey.

The worldhole region, occupying about a one mile radius from the blast point, is different. Here, all is barren; dead, leafless trees form black shapes against an eternally grey sky. Nothing solid seems to live here, but shadowbeasts of all description flit from here to there, winking in and out of reality. Dire cold is constant, and fires flicker and die unless they are magically sustained.

There are no normal communities or holdfasts in the Blighted Woods. Nor do any normal, mortal, creatures live there for long, unless they are very powerful and very strange. One local power is Nergiaphen Of The Black Scar, a being rumored to be a druidic lich, who has taken over a twisted grove near to the worldhole and is practicing bleak arts. A few creatures who were dwelling in the woods when the blast struck have been transformed; a gang of bandits known as Martin's Marauders has been transformed into dread shadows, and they are known to ride and raid on moonless nights.

The place is also home to a Chancery of the Seelie Court, one of the largest on the Shattered Coast.

Many of the shadow beasts created in the Blighted Woods have roamed outwards, becoming a persistent threat to travelers and outlying farms.

Dwarfing Expectations

2007-12-29T12:06:00.000-05:00

Sheesh, got to update this more often...

In any event, continuing the theme of major PC races, we turn to the dwarves, who are not to be looked down on. Hah! Sorry. I'll be good.

In any event, while there was a strong temptation to re-use the dwarf culture and gods I created for my last D&D game, I decided not to. The old dwarves were deeply family oriented, with everything being based on clan, relationships, and so on...these dwarves are not. Most don't even know who their parents are. The hyper-militarism gives a lot of good, easy, hooks to hang characterization on, as well as providing any players with a baseline for characterization based on how closely their character clings to the dwarven 'ideal'. As for the similarity to the hobgoblins...that might be simply convergent evolution of cultures, or...it might not. There's some backstory I'm still deciding upon on.

I also like the idea that there are lost settlements, deep underground, cut off from all other communities but capable of being self-sustaining in that wonderfully illogical and forced D&D way. ("There's...uh...mushrooms. And, uhm, meatbeasts that eat the mushrooms. And, erm, there's this fungus which doesn't need light but which gives off oxygen just like green plants and...") (Yeah, and a race which lives in dark caverns is inky-black-skinned, not albino skinned. Bah! My Drow are pure ivory! But that's another thread...)

Anyway...dwarves. Or dwarfs. Whatever.

Dwarves

History
The dwarves are the youngest members of the races who call themselves the Free Peoples, though they claim their history is older than any but the elves. They first entered the annals of history 5,000 years ago, when human miners of the Second Jarialian Empire tunneled into the Kragaz Mountains (these occupy roughly the same area on Arith that the Alps occupy on Earth). The miners, driven by a desperate need for mithral and elemental ore, had tunneled deeper than ever before in history, and found themselves suddenly confronting a dwarven work gang tunnelling upwards.

These initial meetings were tense. The dwarves had little idea there was a 'surface world'; to them, the world was simply caverns and tunnels going endlessly upwards. It took some convincing that the surface was not simple a very big cavern. Likewise, the dwarves had known nothing but war in the entirety of their history; all the other races they knew of were violent, cruel, and brutal. The ideas of 'alliance' and 'trade' were likewise foreign, and initial contacts tended towards violence, if only because the dwarves had been taught that an open hand is always a prelude to treachery. It was a century from the first contact before the first true treaties between man and dwarf came to be forged.

Dwarves are, by nature, as solid and unmoving as the stone in which they live. Their culture has changed little in those past years, although they have gone from a hunted and hated race to a powerful and numerous one, and have spread across the surface of Arith. Forged by the necessity of brute survival, all dwarf culture was modeled on military lines; there is no concept of 'civilian' or 'non-combatant', and with a few individual exceptions, it remains so to this day. All dwarves have a rank; even a newborn is given a position in a regiment, and has caregivers assigned to him. Family means little to the dwarves; one's squad, regiment, or division defines one's social circle.

Dwarves in the Allied Kingdoms area where heavily concentrated in the southlands of Sorvan, or Western Canada/the Northwest. Settlements were found throughout the Alliance, however -- wherever there was mining to be done. So called 'Dwarf Highways' -- tunnels of stone hundreds of miles long, filled with rest stops and supply rooms -- linked the distant cities. The dwarves, paranoid despite centuries of friendship and alliance with humans, never allowed non-dwarves access to these places, except for the rare few who were exceptionally trusted and who had sworn oaths to never reveal their secrets.

A typical dwarf city is like an iceberg -- 90% of it is underground. Each city is surrounded by a ring of border forts and outposts, and often includes a large surface area (mostly worked by non-dwarfs hired for the job) dedicated to agriculture and cattle -- while the dwarves had mastered feeding large populaces on the bounty of the caves, they enjoyed and appreciated 'surface foods', especially since they could assign other races to harvesting them, freeing themselves up for more directly martial pursuits.

The largest dwarf city in the Americas was Kuz Kar Don, located in the mountains surrounding Flat Head Lake (Hog Nar Zul, as the dwarves called it). Dozens of other cities and outposts were located in nearby regions. Large cities were also found in the Rockies and the Appalachians. In every major human city, there was often a 'dwarf town', where those who grew tired of the mountain life -- or who were exiled from it -- would go. As a consequence, humans tended to think of dwarves as surly drunks who were best left alone, as those dwarves most likely to live among humans were those who could least abide the strictures, order, and conformity of mountain life. Human city dwellers were often astounded when they met "proper" dwarves.

Society
As noted, dwarves have a very militaristic culture. While they are not generally conquerors, it has been the case that there have been more than a few "wars of pre-emptive defense". The dwarven mindset is that they are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and any buildup near to their cities represents an encroaching threat. Dwarf settlements are often surrounded by a 'neutral zone' of caves and tunnels which is constantly patrolled, with many traps designed to close off a passage long enough to send word to the city and get a full division of doughty warriors out there to rout the 'invader', who might just be a lost kobold looking for food.

There is little which the dwarves do which does not have some tie to their worldview. Weapons and armor tend to have little extraneous decoration. Jewelery is given as rewards for courage or service -- where a human will have a chest full of medals, a dwarf will have fingers laden with heavy rings. What art there is tends to be statues and reliefs depicting great heroes and great battles. Music is marching cadence or battle tales; children's songs teach weapon usage and the nature of foes. Many scholars have noted the similarity between dwarf and hobgoblin cultures, with the chief difference being the aggressiveness of the latter as compared to the former.

A dwarf will always use his rank before his name. A spouse or child may call a dwarf by their given name without rank; for anyone else to do so is usually a grave insult. The 'outcast' dwarves of the human cities often retain whatever rank they last held and introduce themselves by it; a dwarf who does not give some rank when talking to strangers is a very odd dwarf indeed, and might be insane or dangerous. (Or the product of a multi-generational outcast family...)

The Crush
The Crush caused terrible earthquakes and rifts. Mountains lifted and sank; fissures opened beneath cities, and juts of solid stone materialized in what were once hollowed caves. The great highways collapsed. Most of those who were traveling along them were killed; many were trapped, finding themselves stuck between impassable blockages. A few, fortunate enough to be in an intact rest area, were able to survive and set up some form of sustenance if there was a water source nearby. Many found themselves waiting in vain for a rescue which never came, or were exterminated as other underdwellers, emboldened by the disasters which struck the surface world, moved upwards to see what they could see, and kill who they could kill.

Kuz Kar Don collapsed in on itself, killing tens of thousands, as well as slaying General Mag Har Jal, commander of the Alliance dwarves. Other large cities suffered a similar fate. The only major settlement to survive even partially intact was Joz Nan Don-ek, located in what on Earth was the Black Hills of South Dakota, and, today, the cracked and damaged features of two great dwarven heroes peer out from the mountain alongside those of American presidents. Relations with the Sioux, who have reclaimed much of the surrounding land, remain difficult at best.

A fair number of dwarves have been forced out of the underground, or have had to take over tunnels and mines which were not carved by them. This most problematic in the coal-rich areas of Pennsylvania, where there has been constant strife between dwarves looking to settle and Earthborn humans looking to mine coal, which is now a much more accessible power source than oil. In some places, there have been peaceful settlements; in other places, there is out-and-out war, often with strange periods of alliance when mutual foes such as goblins or orcs attack.

Gnobody Gnomes The Trouble I've Seen...

2007-12-22T11:17:00.000-05:00

On to another race, one which gets little love in the world of D&D, the gnomes. In part, this writeup was due to the self-confessed inability of the 4e design team to find a role for gnomes which wasn't either "short dwarves" or "short elves". It took me all of five minutes to come up with a basic concept which brought together the 1e/early 2e incarnation of gnomes as forest and hill dwelling trickster/crafters and the 3e/MMORPG incarnation of gnomes as technologically adept, and make them very clearly their own culture and not either Dwarf Lite or Elf Lite. This ain't rocket science, people.

(Again, I'm not claiming Great Originality here, nor is that what I'm aiming for. Given the stats of gnomes and their most common gaming interpretations, all I'm going for is something which works and provides enough background that I can guess what J. Random Gnome might do in a given situation or give a PC who wishes to play a gnome a skeleton on which they can build their character. True originality -- as opposed to just filing down the serial numbers and applying a quick coat of paint -- isn't really a virtue in RPG worldbuilding; the more alien and incomprehensible the world is, the more work it is to play in or, FSM forbid, run. There's a reason that any one of 10,000 Tolkien rip offs sell more copies than, say, "Skyrealms of Jorune". Criticizing my work for unoriginality is like criticizing an elephant for not having wings.)

Of course, since no one in my current campaign plays a gnome, none of this will be useful for a while. So it goes. But an idea crawled into my brain, and it won't rest until I let it crawl out.

(As a side note, it's interesting to see how the worldbuilding process works, at least for me, and if no one ever reads this blog, it's still a good record, for my own use, of the creative process. Skallidane exists only because a player wanted to run a Warforged; I yoinked the island itself from, of course, Swift's Laputa, and my own extremely inchoate concept of a gameworld inspired by console RPGs; I have had an idea for a flying island of steampunk ultratech burbling in the back of my mind for a few years now. So from the chaoplasm of vague ideas solidified the concept, in rough form; with the Warforged backstory, the end of Skallidane was fixed; that, in turn, gave me a hook for the gnomes, whose history helped add in details about the place. We now have a decent image of what a Skallidane street scene might look like, or at least I do; if I even do Arith itself as a setting, I have something to draw on. I steal from myself as much as, or more than, I steal from others, and fragments of barely-begun worlds often make their way into later creations.)

Gnomes

History
Very long ago, thousands of years in Arith's past, the gnomes dwelled primarily in the hilled grasslands and temperate forests. They were skilled toolmakers and hard workers, but lacked the warlike industry of the dwarves, the arcane might of the elves, or swift cunning of the wild halflings. They were closest in character to the village halflings, in fact, and the two peoples often lived in peace in close proximity. Their most fierce wars were against the goblins, who dwelt in the caves nearest the surface world and often boiled up to overrun the woods for a time.

Then came the technomages of Skallidane. Seeing a race of people with mechanical skill but easily conquered (or so they thought), they steered their island across each major gnome homeland, raiding the villages for slaves. In time, the race was practically extinguished on the surface of Arith; only on Skallidane itself did they exist in any numbers.

For centuries, they lived and toiled, learning the secrets of their masters, and plotting their revenge. Gnomes were not front line combatants by nature, but they were cunning and crafty. Subtle flaws -- so subtle, it would take a generation to notice even the smallest -- were added to the machines. Changes were made in way in which incarnum was harvested and implanted in the Warforged. Decade after decade, generation after generation, revolution was brewing.

Even now, almost all scholars attribute the fall of Skallidane to the Warforged. The gnomes were seen as victims finally liberated from their cruel masters, and keeping this illusion going is something the gnomes are quite happy with.

Since then, their homelands have been long since destroyed or settled by others. The gnomes who fled Skallidane spread across Arith, seeking community among other races. They were clever, peaceful, and hard-working. They never sought active power or demanded more than to be allowed to live in peace, and they did all they could to fit in, not make waves, and otherwise be as unobtrusive as possible. Small in stature and in numbers, they realized they could survive best under the shelter of others. Each gnomish community adapted itself to its environment, to cause the least possible friction with their hosts. Cities and villages with gnomish enclaves prospered, as the gnomes added little strain to public services and contributed much wealth to the city, as craftsmen, workers, or spellcasters. They also brought with them some of the lesser arts of Skallidane, and became known in some areas as the makers of wondrous toys and devices, none useful in daily life or warfare, but fun little fripperies to amuse and entertain.

All of this is true, and the gnomish heart is rarely filled with malice or spite. However, they are neither harmless nor helpless. Wrong a gnome, and disaster will befall you in a thousand little ways. In their most secure communities, often in sub-sub-basements no one knows are there, lie many secrets, for it is not merely the lesser arts of technomancy which the gnomes preserved and kept secret. They learned a harsh lesson, once, about being as harmless as they seemed, and they will never allow themselves to be used or enslaved again.

Today
The Crush did as much to disrupt the gnomes as it did anyone else; all the more so, because the gnomes were mostly found in the larger cities of Arith. Since then, many gnome bands have become wanderers, often traveling alongside halfling caravans, but unlike the halflings, they seek places to live. Much more skilled with machinery than other Arithians, they are finding that they can be of value to Earthborn holdfasts who are struggling to maintain failing devices, and they have begun, very subtly, adding in the arts of Skallidane where they can. The Earthborn, for the most part, do not recognize this, and just think the Ornaments (slang term for gnomes) are skilled workers.

A small number of gnomes have decided that this is the perfect time to regain their lands; since the Shattered World is neither Earth nor Arith, but someplace truly new, they feel no one else has any true prior claim on their homes. Many have sought out ancestral dwelling places and seek to tame and reclaim them. A few have tried to recreate "true gnomish culture", as it was pre-Skallidane, going back to old styles of dress, naming, and even language. Most consider this a pointless self indulgence, probably inspired by reading a lot of Earth political tracts.

Mechanics
Gnomes are mostly as described in the PHB or SRD. Gnomes who strongly take after the culture they dwell in may take the following options:

Dwarf:+2 Profession (Mining) instead of Craft (Alchemy)
Elf:May choose any type of magic (but only one) to get a +1 bonus to save DCs;Dodge bonus vs. giants drops to +3.
Human:Gain +4 skill points at first level only; lose Weapon Familiarty and the ability to Speak With Mammals, only receive a +2 AC modifer against Giants.
Halfling:Gain +1 racial bonus on climb, jump, and move silently; lose weapon familiarity and +2 Craft (Alchemy)

This Is Why I Need Editors...

2007-12-21T16:56:00.000-05:00

Lizard sometimes uses placeholders when he has an idea, and intends to look up the Right Stuff later. Lizard should not post until doing so. :)

I should have said "Lake Michigan", with the intent being that most of Northern Michigan is now a sunken mess of broken islands surrounded by unearthly spars of rock, with lakes Michigan and Huron merging to form one inland sea.

Sparring

2007-12-20T15:42:00.000-05:00

And now we get to random bits of geography. :) I often base my creation on whatever weird images crawl into my brain, and the image of a vast ocean filled with jutting obelisks of stone, battered by crashing waves, and home to countless monsters lurking in the violent froth, was too good to pass up. Sigmund Freud can have a field day; I don't care.

The Firefox spell checker doesn't recognize 'thaumaturgic'? What gives?

EDIT:Corrected a whole bunch of embarrassing geographical errors. I'm a writer, not a cartographer, damn it!
====================
Sparred Sea
Where two of the Great Lakes, Michigan and Huron, once stood, there now exists a vast and twisted inland sea, one which has swallowed most of northern Michigan and which is rendered almost impassable by great juts of land. This region, the creation of nuclear and thaumaturgic energies intermingling, is the Sparred Sea.

History
Shortly after the Crush, a sequence of events -- the details may never be fully known -- set off a nuclear exchange which destroyed many of the world's largest urban areas and unleashed the dreaded Worldholes. One powerful bomb was intended for Chicago, but narrowly missed, impacting a few miles offshore in Lake Michigan -- not, as erroneously reported by clearly drunk chroniclers, Superior. This area was already grossly unstable, and the bomb triggered a cataclysmic chain reaction. The lake buckled and boiled, and strange energies exploded outwards. The shores were scoured for miles around. The region lay shrouded in burning mist for weeks; when the fog finally receded, those who ventured back found that the lake had become filled with huge, jagged, outcroppings of rock, often hundreds of feet tall. Navigation became nigh-impossible, for the boat-ripping spars of rock which lined the bottom could appear anywhere -- and, indeed, seemed to shift position, as one week's "safe" route became next week's ticket to the bottom.

Worse still, while there was no active, visible, Worldhole in the lake, it showed all the effects of one. Hideous mutations emerged from the lake, all kind and manner of twisted abominations. Gargantuan monsters would emerge to swallow those few foolhardy enough to attempt a crossing, while the shores were filled with things of nightmare that emerged during the dark to lay waste to a lakeside camp or a struggling village, only to vanish back into the rocky depths with the coming of the sun.

Present Day
The best reason to venture near the Sparred Sea are the Chicago ruins. The city and its associated suburbs are half-drowned and mostly rubble, but they still contain considerable wealth, and there are always rumors of lost caches of material, be it gold, fine wine, or high-tech engine parts. The sunken eastern half of the city is a monster-infested maze, the spires of the skyscrapers mixing with the rocky outcroppings which give the Sparred Sea its name.

There is also the fact that the lakes remain a source of fresh water, and, if they could be tamed, a navigable route. On Arith, the same geographical region held a number of cities linked in a trade federation known as the Mantarian Alliance. The Codex Mantaros, the law guiding the city-states in their dealings with each other, became the basis for the Alliance Of Free Kingdoms. Many hope that the lake could once again provide a basis for a similar trading state.

Many creatures seeking isolation have made their homes among the spires. Wyverns are known to nest there, near the shorelines, allowing them to forage on land and retreat to relative safety. It is rumored that Duergar have tunneled into the rocks and built a small fortress. Brave and foolish raiders will use the shelter of the stones to hide bases, striking from them at shoreline communities. Creatures of elemental earth are also known to hide among the towers, and stonetouched animals and other monsters are common along the shore. If there are any great or ruling powers on the Sparred Sea, they have not yet made themselves known.

Far from the initial destruction point, there are communities which have set up, or simply remained, along the great lakes, though the corruption and chaos of the Sparred Sea touches on them, as well. Such communities report that the spars themselves seem to be spreading, with maps needing to be constantly updating as new juts of rock emerge seemingly overnight. Whether this phenomenon is natural or directed is unknown.

The magic of the region breeds strange and fierce weather; blistering heat waves and lethal blizzards. Travelers on the lake may face giant waterspouts or rogue waves a hundred feet in height.

The Vatican Rag

2007-12-17T14:31:00.000-05:00

And so, I wade into that most dangerous of territory, playing with real-world religions in a game setting. In a world where you risk the death penalty for naming a teddy bear "Mohammed", one must tread with caution...

IAE, this all started because someone wanted to play a Jesuit. Easy answer -- a cleric is a cleric is a cleric, pick some domains and be done with it. Lizard answer -- work out what the Catholic Church has been up to since a)2008, and b)the Crush.

This job is only made the harder because 99% of what I know about Catholicism can be boiled down to:
a)They are ruled by some guy in a funny hat.
b)Jack Chick claims they invented Communism, Nazism, and Islam.

So I did extensive (read a few pages of Wikipedia) research, and came up with this. This isn't any kind of commentary on Catholicism per se; I consider all religions equally silly, with the exception of Scientology, which is especially silly. It's not Dantesque wish fulfillment in which I get to inflict on the Church whatever punishment I think it deserves. What it is, is an attempt to create a quasi-plausible "future history" and lay the seeds for potentially interesting stories, and do so in about 20 minutes of total work time.

Catholicism

Pre-Crush
Catholicism, steeped in ritual and clinging to a belief in literal demons, has survived the transition to the new world better than most other major religions, though the very hierarchies which once gave it strength have, in their absence, turned the faith into an ever-fragmenting set of splinter cults. No one ever anticipated the instaneous loss of so much of the higher leadership or the near-total breakdown of communication among those officials who remained.

The Pope in 2020 was Pope Paul VII, who was elected in 2018 and was, previously, Cardinal Ernesto Juan Gomez, a native of Brazil. He was chosen due to the still-rapid growth of Catholicism in South and Central America, and as a symbol of the Vatican trying to distance itself from corruption and nepotism, by choosing someone who was far outside the inner circles of power. In his two years in office, he earned a reputation as the most liberal and socially active Pope in history, and this probably contributed to the explosion of separatist factions which occurred after the Crush.

The Four Popes
Paul VII
Vatican City was shaken to rubble during the events of the Crush, and also found itself surrounded by armed legions of the Kolarian Imperiate, which was based in the same region on Arith. The resulting chaos killed many, though legend has it the Swiss Guard managed to get Paul VII to safety, and that he still lives and is the true Pope. Most dismiss this, as there has been no word from him other than easily-forged letters; those who claim he is still alive, in turn, dismiss the controversy as the creation of those looking for a split.

The Jesuits, for the most part, follow Paul VII, supporting the claim he is alive, but remains in deep hiding, as there are powerful forces who seek to kill him -- and if he dies, it will be a triumph for the forces of darkness.

However, he would know be a man of 72, making his continued survival difficult. According to rumors, the Cardinals surrounding Paul VII are preparing to elect a new Pope from among their number. According to other rumours, this is their excuse for 'revealing' a new Pope to the world.

Benedict XVII
Of those who do not accept the survival of Paul VII, the largest group, mostly in Europe where the United Church Of Christ has little old and ecumenicism is something Americans do, follow Pope Benedict XVII, who has been a prolific writer of letters and recorder (where the technology exists) of video messages. Benedict was the highest-ranking Cardinal to survive the fall of the Vatican, and assume the Popehood by decree, claiming elections could be held once the church has stabilized. He has an apprentice, Giuseppe Maritono, who will take over should Benedict fall. The 'new Vatican' has been established in a sheltered part of the alps, where armed guards keep yeti, winter wolves, and frost giants at bay. Benedict XVII is a staunch traditionalist, and while he has not explicitly said so, he has hinted the Crush was a sign from God that the Church had veered from the truth. He is sometimes referred to as the 'Pope Of Europe'.

Pope Patrick
In the former United States, while many surviving Catholic bishops and cardinals were sending the messages that would soon help form the United Church, others were contacting each other to reconstruct the Catholic Church in America until contact could be established with Rome (or what was left of it) and a final determination of the true Pope be made. This led to what has since been called the American Vatican Council, a loose alliance of priests which has formed a Constitution defining the 'temporary Church'. They have declared no Pope and have backed none of the other candidates, and are lead by Cardinal Patrick Brian Malloy, formerly of New York City (he was visiting family upstate when the Crush hit, saving his life). They are based in a large holdfast relatively close to Albany. The AVC is active in sending out missionaries, supporting charities in various Holdfasts, and issuing polite but firm encyclicals on the theological fallacies of the UCC. Despite his refusal to claim the title, Cardinal Malloy is often called 'Pope Patrick' or 'the American Pope'.

Novus I
Lastly, the Southwest is home to a movement, mostly imported from the remains of Mexico and parts south, of the 'New Catholic Church', one which claims to be the rightful heir to old while not being a direct continuance of it. Heavily influenced by the Central/South American style of Catholicism, and revering 'Saint Ernesto' (whom they believe died in the Crush), it is the most vigorously evangelical, reaching out to Arithian humans and non-humans alike. NCC priests often travel in small caravans, acting, in many ways, like old-style Revival preachers of the early 1900s in America. The head of this branch of Catholicism is Pope Novus I, or "The First New Pope". (Lizard is almost certainly mangling the Latin)

Game Mechanics
Followers of the Catholic faith may, if they choose, accept the following rule modifications:

Demomic Lore: The Catholic church has always believed in demons as real entities and has studied them more than any modern faith. While the exact details of their beliefs were inaccurate, much of what they had written about evil outsiders had a useful ring of truth. As a consequence, Catholic clerics gain a +4 Competence bonus to Knowledge(The Planes) checks, and a +2 bonus on all Charisma based skills when dealing with Outsiders. In addition, Dimensional Anchor, Banishment, and similair spells which either hold or dismiss outsiders are cast at +2 caster levels for all purposes.

Prayer: Because prayer and litany is such an important part of Catholic ceremony, the Silent Spell feat cannot be used.

Expanding Elves

2007-12-14T23:06:00.000-05:00

So, a few weeks ago, I posted something on Elves. Here's a lot more. Why? Because I stupidly decided there'd be a small elf community a bit north of where the campaign begins. Which means people might decide to go there. Which means I need some vague ideas on what elves are like. Again, I am not claiming I'm redefining elves or making some amazingly original creations here. I begin with the core D&D tropes and then try to detail them in a way which I think breeds plots or the potential for interesting characters. To me, the essence of the D&D (i.e, Tolkein ripoff) elf is alienness. Living for centuries makes you different, and a bit weird. Being chaotic by nature just magnifies it. Elves understand the world differently. They don't see in four dimensions, but maybe they see in three and a half. They're just a little bit out there, and you know everything they do and say makes perfect sense to them, but they're still tilted just a couple of degrees outside our reality. They're playing by rules you not only don't know, but can't learn.

As is usually the case, this essay is bass-ackwards, in the sense that first I wrote up an elvish community, making up some names and roles and concepts, then, from the community, I back-engineered elvish culture. (This isn't all that odd -- for example, Gene Roddenberry created Spock with pointy ears and greenish skin, then reverse-engineered this to establish an arid, thin-aired Vulcan and copper-based blood.) I'll bet an awful lot of creative types do "Concept first, justification after".

Anyway, elves -- Revised&Expanded.

Elves
The elves of Arith are among the oldest of the Free Peoples, though certainly not the oldest sapient species. They are long-lived beings who dwell in environments which carefully blend natural beauty and civilized comfort. They once ruled over vast empires, long before the first Magewar, but now are a somewhat diminished race, gathered into a few large woodland cities and countless small settlements and villages. The elves produce many skilled individuals, but few great heroes -- but those who do exist are great indeed.

The Long Sleep
Elves live for centuries, but very few spend all, or even most, of that time in a single pursuit. After a few decades of life, an Elf will grow weary, and develop a deep sense of ennui and indifference. All joy flees from existence; food is bland, lovemaking tiring, even life-and-death struggles begin to pall. At this time, the elf enters what is known as the Long Sleep, where they enter into a coma-like state, needing nothing but air to survive. (Obviously, they do this in safe surroundings -- usually a sacred hall in a larger Elvish community). The Long Sleep lasts for 6-10 years. When the elf awakes, he is reborn in spirit. While he retains, in part, all of his old memories, he has lost much of his learning. In essence, he emerges with no class levels, and begins life anew, studying different arts than he did before. The dreams of the Long Sleep serve to show him new paths in life, and he might emerge with a different alignment. While still technically the same person, he thinks of himself as one reborn, and often ignores old friendships and commitments, as if they belonged to another. (Elf law dictates this is so -- marriages end when one spouse enters the Long Sleep, and debts are forgiven as if the debtor had died. Laws of other cultures are not so understanding.)

Government
Elvish government is summarized by lalithilianilis, or 'Agreement reached by consensus which transcends speech'. Elves simply understand how things are supposed to happen. They are bound by few rules, and most of those rules are based on complex webs of understanding and cultural assumptions. To an outsider, everyone simply seems to do as they please, but to the elves, their society is perfectly sane and controlled. Even a simple request such as "Who is in charge here?" is meaningless to elves, since the answer could change based on the situation, the time of year, or even the phase of the moon. Long dealings with other races have taught them to have a few spokesmen, but those are not the true 'leaders' -- rather, their job is to appear to humans, etc, to give them a person to consider as a leader so that their needs are met. Elves have little concept of hierarchy and 'leader' and 'follower' can shift and change with each passing moment.

Names
Elf names are long and complicated. Unlike their place names, which are usually descriptive and poetic, an elf's name seems to others -- even those who speak Elvish - to be merely a long collection of syllables, usually five or six words in length. To the elf, though, the name is summation of their essence, and speaking it will produce, in the listener, a resonance which tells them all they need to know of the person. As such, the name changes as the person does, and one elf can tell another all that they have gone through over a decade merely by giving their new name, which might differ by as little as a syllable from their old one.

Personality
Elves are constantly torn between the Now and the Never. An elf can become suddenly focused, sometimes frighteningly so, when an event occurs which demands immediate attention -- such as an attack. However, anything which doesn't need to be done now might as well need to be done never -- if an elf loses focus, he/she might well forget about the undone job for a month, a year, or more, unless suddenly reminded.

Religion
Elves worship a large pantheon of gods. All of their deities blend humanoid and natural traits, either plant or animal, and tend to shift in the degree to which these traits balance over time. Jalillianili, Goddess of the Hunt, for example, sometimes appears as an elf with a few slightly lupine features, other times as an elvish werewolf, and other times as a wolf which a few hints of elven blood. An artist might portray her anywhere along the spectrum in accordance with what aspect of her he was trying to convey or invoke.

Elvish worship is not predicated on specific rites and rituals, but on a 'sense of properness' -- they will sometimes stop and pray at seemingly random moments, or ignore the gods for years and then volunteer for a holy quest. Elvish clerics are simply those more attuned to the moment than the lay populace. Religion is one thread of the entire tapestry of life; a blade might contain symbols of the Goddess of the Hunt, the God of Ironworking, or even the Goddess of Family, depending on the whim of the crafter or the inspiration of the customer. (It might contain no religious iconography at all, too)

Language
The elvish language is lyrical and complex. While most people can learn the basics, truly mastering the language is amazingly difficult for non-elves. The individual words are not exceptionally complex, though the elves pride themselves on single words which encompass multiple aspects of a single concept. Rather, the true complexity is in the tenses, as the Elvish frame of reference is so long that conjugation includes span of time in the past of the future. Further, both nouns and verbs must be conjugated in this fashion, so that "I walked to the store" must be said, in Elvish, as "I(From the point in the past where I was born to the point in the future where I will cease to be) walked (seven days ago) to the store (as it existed in that point in the past)" To elves, this is intuitive; to others, it is nightmarish. Further, as befits their nature, elvish "rules" of grammar are more polite suggestions; poetic phrasings and metaphors are more important than sticking to the rules.

Art And Culture
Some non-elvish sociologists have commented on the 'beautiful simplicity' of Elvish arts, from woodcarving to cooking. They miss the point. Elves have remarkably complex arts, but the complexity is hidden by an obsessive drive to perfection. An elf cook might make a thousand variants on a single dish, constantly experimenting by varying ingredients by the tiniest degree, until he has achieved absolutely the flavor he desires. An arrowsmith might make ten arrowheads a day, year after year, and only the most keen of observers would note that each one has a slightly different pattern carefully hammered into it, making them as unique as snowflakes. The smith, though, could look at anyone and then tell you the day, and even the hour, it was made, simply by studying the pattern she implanted.

After The Crush
The elves found themselves "trapped in a world they never made", but then again, so did everyone else. Their centers of civilization in the region of the Pacific Northwest were wiped out, and their ancient foes, the bugbears, emerged in force to ravage what remained. As with most of the other races, it was the small outposts and isolated villages which survived more-or-less intact.

Elves had earned great respect from the humans of Arith for their wisdom and power, but the humans of Earth at first saw them as one more set of invaders. Early battles between the two races still leave bitter memories, even though hesitant truces have been forged in many regions. Older Earthborn refer to the elves as "Spocks" or "Keeblers", or greets any passing elf with "Yo, Legolas!", though a certain segment of the populace finds their unearthly beauty and aloof intellectualism compellingly attractive, so it is hardly surprising that half-elves are becoming common anywhere that the two peoples live together in any kind of peace. (Some elves find humans' energy and enthusiasm sufficiently appealing that their other flaws can be overlooked, at least for a night's pleasure...and what is one night out of many tens of thousands?)

The elves thought the humans of Arith were living life at a full gallop with no ability to slow down and appreciate things, as well as dying so fast you hardly got to know one before you were meeting his great-great-grandchildren. Thus, they see the humans of Earth as little more than mad blurs of motion, and what they've learned of pre-Crush Earth society fascinates and repels them. The walls that Earthborn humans erected between themselves and their world -- both physical and metaphysical -- terrify them. Many have found a new appreciation for the humans of Arith, suddenly aware of how far they might have gone. "Skallidane across the entire world" is a typical Elvish phrase for Earth human culture.

They are also fascinated, and intensely curious, with the fact that a race very similair to their own features so prominently in human art and literature -- along with dwarves, gnomes, and other such beings. Those philosophers who have survived have begun to formulate theories, but it will be decades, or longer, before any of them feels they know enough to voice their hypotheses.

Most elvish communities are more isolationist than ever. Few in number and slow breeding, they wish to preserve all they can. When it is prudent to deal regularly with other societies, they usually have an outpost a few miles from their main population center, which serves as a place to meet and trade. They often prefer to be helpful, within certain limits, as long exposure to human psychology has taught them humans hate most that which they do not understand. Thus, no matter how odd or distasteful they might find it, many elves regularly leave their communities to work in cooperative ventures with humans, often in the form of shared patrols, teaching of history or art, or running messages back and forth. "To the humans, the mysterious is the dangerous, and that which is dangerous must be killed out of hand."

A few small hints...

2007-12-14T09:45:00.001-05:00

To: Tom Gordon.
Subject: Good Guess. :)

Which brings up an interesting problem for this blog, in that some parts of the world need to remain hidden for the sake of the live game -- not just NPCs and adventures, but Mysteries To Be Revealed. It's not that I don't trust my players not to act on OOC knowledge -- they're much too good for that -- but rather, that it robs them of the fun of discovering the world. Ultimately, the game is about showing the players a good time, and anything which gets in the way of that is problematic.

So, while it surprises no one that something has survived more-or-less intact(ish), (It's such an essential trope of the genre that it must be included) the where, when, and how has to remain hidden for the nonce. (I also need to work out a few key details...)

As a side note, this is the kind of thing I loathe in commercial products -- the "setting details revealed in next supplement" marketing scheme. (Brave New World, I'm looking at YOU.) I'm not talking about things where the world is too big for one supplement to detail properly, I'm talking about things where core premises or major, major, plot elements are left out, not to give the GM freedom but to sell more books. If the campaign world has any big Secrets or Hidden Lore, they should be given up-front -- maybe not detailed to the nth degree, but there so the GM knows about them and can take them into account. Forex, imagine if the new Galactica were released as an RPG first, and the first sourcebook completely failed to mention that Cylons now come in fleshtone. (I also hate metaplot in game settings; give me the world at Point X, give me everything I need to know to start running it, and sell me supplements which simply expand on that base in terms of depth and detail. Don't "advance the timeline" to kill off major NPCs, nuke a city, or otherwise screw with my live game. If you think you've run out of crap to milk for sales, then, if you must, release a "future" setting or a "past" setting which basically kicks off a whole new baseline. (OK, I never use prepackaged supplements anyway, but when these tactics annoy me on a general level.))

Enough ranting. Elves later. (Been setting up a new computer, and, as usual, that sucks down most of my time and energy. Gack.)

Let The Infodumping Re-Commence! (Bugbears)

2007-12-11T14:29:00.000-05:00

So here's the thing. I've been churning out world details like mad, but a lot of it has been scenario-focused since the game is now up and running. I don't plan to post major NPCs and stats somewhere where nasssty playerses can gets their pawses on them, preciousss. So I sort of need to edit and filter that which is truly world-based out from that which is in-game based.

In any event, there's a whole mound of what I term 'cascade creation' going on. I start doing X, I have a tossaway reference to Y, then when I do Y I realize a need for Z, and so on. A lot of the offshoots of what I'm doing for the scenario can and will be posted here. In the meanwhile, though, I've been developing the culture and background for one of the many humanoid races which wander the campaign world. That they also happen to be antagonists for the first story arc is a nice bonus. Nothing in here is current-plot-specific, though, so I can post with minimal fear. (This is also an interesting example how plot and general creation drive each other. I had some short notes on bugbears, which inspired my plot -- then I found that the plot caused me to ask questions of myself, which caused me to do a lot more development on the bugbears to fill in some gaps. There's still some things left, such as family life and exotic weapons, and mebbe some racial spells, and....sigh. Here's the annoying thing. Give me a week, I could write a 32 page PDF with full details to make the race fun and interesting for any campaign, but with 4e looming and GM-focused supplements selling extra-poorly, what would be the point? Eventually, I'd like to have an ad-supported blog which earned enough money to justify serious time investment, but for now, I have to limit myself to interesting tidbits that are created during my normal 'allotted' time for creative endeavours.)

Anyone want to be a Patron Of The Arts?

Didn't think so. Sigh.

Anyhoo...Bugbears! (Tomorrow -- more on Elves.)
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Bugbears

History
Bugbears have long been mortal enemies of the elves, as both claim the woodlands for their own. While the elves adapted the arts of men and dwarves into their own culture, becoming masters of crafting and construction, the bugbears clung to the simplest of tools, albeit fashioned with cunning. They built no great cities, but lived as semi-nomads, wandering during warm months and settling into small villages during the cold winter. They also raided passing travelers and outlying villages, and many individuals turned to banditry. Over decades of war with the elves, they were driven into the deepest and most remote parts of the wood, denied access to many areas which had been their traditional homes. Many tribes became semi-underground dwellers, seizing the upper levels of the underdark passages for themselves and driving out smaller, weaker, races, including their goblin kin. There, they nursed their hatred for the elves who had driven them out of the lands which were rightfully theirs.

The Crush impacted them little, directly. To some extent, all it did was dump a host of fresh raiding targets in their laps. While many of the Earthborn who dwelled in the regions the bugbears called home were armed, they were not prepared to deal with organized raiding parties. The bugbears reacted to guns, tractors, and other artifacts of man with insane hatred, and tore apart anyone using such devices against them with no hint of mercy. Small towns nestled in the deep woods were attacked, raided for fresh foods, and then burned, the inhabitants slaughtered if they could not escape. Elves fleeing the destruction of their great cities were also targeted, and the many elvish outposts which kept the bugbears in place were overrun and destroyed.

The bugbears have no great nations, but the two largest collections of tribes are found in the former Pacific Northwest and in the heart of Europe, in and around the former Black Forest. Smaller groups are known to exist in parts of the American South, New England, and the jungles of Central America. Individuals who have left their tribes for whatever reason might be found anywhere, though they are welcomed in few settlements.

Culture
Bugbears consider themselves guardians of nature and embodiments of the natural order, which is a struggle of all against all where the weak exist solely as prey for the strong. They have a deep seated, perhaps almost instinctual, hatred of metalworking, and this extends to almost any craft beyond a late paleothic level. They are, perhaps, the finest stoneknappers and woodworkers of the humanoids, but all their craft cannot make a wooden shield hold against a mithral axe or allow a sling stone to be deadlier than a crossbow bolt. They compensate for this by breeding powerful druids, and training their best warriors in the arts of stealth and ambush.

Bugbears are also violent and chaotic by nature, and no tribe can grow to more than a few hundred individuals before it fragments, usually in a single day of brutal conflict. When tribes disagree over territory or resources, there will be a contest of champions, but the losing tribe often disregards the results and attacks anyway, if it sees an advantage. Unlike the more egalitarian goblins and hobgoblins, bugbears view their females as nothing more than breeding machines and tokens of status for the alpha males of the tribe. On the other hand, females and young are protected with insane vigor, and attackers will not reach the women and children of the tribe until every male of fighting age is dead.

In times past, bugbears were taken as prisoners by the hoboblin nations, and these slaves have been bred for strength and obedience for centuries. Despised by their free ancestors, they are shock troops and workers for the hobgoblins. In the aftermath of the Crush, some have freed themselves, and, without homes among the Free Peoples or their own kind, they often join up with bandit gangs or seek work as mercenary soldiers.

Religion
Bugbears are a nature-oriented people, but, unlike the elves, their gods do not incorporate nature into their physical forms. Bugbear religion is based partially on reincarnation, on the belief that a spirit travels through life over and over -- for a time. If the spirit survives life's challenges, it grows stronger with each incarnation, until it eventually ascends to godhood. A weak spirit is torn a little for each life in which it fails, and eventually, it is too weak to remain in the materal world and is pulled into the Maelstrom Forest, a lower plane where the souls of the weak are hunted, tormented, and tortured until they are reduced to raw soul-stuff, which then reincarnates with a 'fresh start'. Souls strong enough to break free of the material but too weak to become gods become the deities servants, avatars, and messengers. Bugbears do not believe reborn souls can incarnate as anything but bugbears; all other races have alien souls, even their goblinoid kin.

Some spirits linger between incarnations, lending their power to the worthy. From these waiting souls come the shamanic powers of some bugbears.

Glugruk The Challenger
Bugbears do not have a well defined hierarchy of gods. Indeed, each tribe has at least one 'local' god who is the deified version of their greatest and most famous ancestral hero. A few deities, though, seem to exist in one form or another across bugbear culture, and one such is Glugruk The Challenger. In life, it is said, Glugruk would never refuse a challenge which the challenger was also willing to do -- swim a raging river, enter a human city and kidnap an infant, march into an orc lair and slay ten of their warriors. As long as both contestants faced the same task with the same odds, Glugruk would accept, and the legends say he never, ever, lost.

After his ascension, Glugruk began to appear to worthy-seeming bugbears to offer them tasks to undertake. For these challenges, Glugruk would incarnate himself in the same form as the one being challenged, and if the target managed a decent showing without cowardice or hesitation, Glugruk would offer a blessing. If he failed or refused...he died. Victory was not essential, but performing beyond the normal limits was.

Bugbear rangers and barbarians are the most common followers of Glugruk. He has few true clerics, as that sort of religious training is not a major part of bugbear culture.

Blugrul The Wisdom-Giver
While might and skill are admired among bugbears, there is also respect for those capable of cunning, insight, and awareness -- provided such things lead to victory! Blugrul is the second of the 'shared gods' known to most bugbear clans. He was, in life, reputed to be a great seeker of secrets, tearing them from those who guarded them. He believed that nothing should be unknown or hidden to those with the courage and daring to learn the great truths.

When he ascended, he became a revealer of knowledge to bugbear shamans -- but he never gave answers, only a path to where the answers could be found. Winning the answer -- and understanding it -- was up to he to whom the answer was given.

Obviously, spirit shamans are the main followers of Blugrul, but rogues and scouts -- all those who seek that which is hidden -- hope to emulate his success and ascend into his service.

Classes
The typical bugbear is a first level Warrior, but elite bugbears are likely to be Rangers, Rogues, or Druids. As with all races, there are bugbear Sorcerers, and many bugbears become Barbarians. Few bugbears are true fighters, as they lack the dedication to the fighting arts which that class requires, as well as lacking the metal armor and weapons the class tends to rely on. A rare few are psychic warriors or psiblades. Wizards, standard Clerics, and Monk are almost unknown. A handful of bugbears find they can become tribal drum-shamans, or bards, often with a slightly different spell list.

Gods, Demigods, and Heroes

2007-12-02T12:21:00.000-05:00

Huh. Didn't realize it's been so long since I posted.

Currently, we (by which I mean, 'me') are in the panicked drill-down phase, where I need to run a game in, oh, five days, so I need to assemble enough world to support the first game session. This means making sure every PC class and race has a place and role in the world. This means, especially, religion. And since religions are regional, I had to first come up with something for the general region of the first few games. That meant deciding, in broad strokes, what the Arithian area was like, then creating some gods which fit that culture. Oh, and since I don't know if the PC plans on being an Earthborn human or not, I needed to sketch out a few of the faiths which have evolved among the post-Crush Americans, and give them game stats.

Religion in D&D is a fairly mechanistic thing -- it tends to be mostly about what domains you get and any annoying restrictions on play you might have to endure in exchange for being a mobile first aid kit. Of course, I want it to be more than that, but first things first -- you can have a D&D faith with game stats but no substance, but not one with substance and no game stats.

I view the gods of a D&D world as the bored CEOs of truly huge corporations, and the clerics as relatively low-ranking employees. Spells are their paychecks. The CEO doesn't know the names of one one-thousandth of his employees, and certainly doesn't monitor their daily activities too much. So long as a cleric doesn't too drastically violate the workplace policies, he gets his spells every day, just like an office worker who barely does his job still collects his pay. Every so often, though, there's a surprise inspection. Further, the higher ranked an employee is, the better the odds that a senior VP of marketing (i.e, an archon or celestial or something) is keeping close tabs on him.

What this means is that, in actual play, it doesn't matter if the cleric of god 'a' uses a quick Cure Serious Wounds on a follower of god 'b'. That's like taking an extra-long coffee break. The CEO might object if he knew about it, but he doesn't, and no one is going to waste his time bringing it to his attention. Of course, using beneficial spells on out-and-out enemies of your god is a lot more like corporate espionage -- you might not get caught instantly, but, when you are, you will be summarily fired, and possibly turned into a leprous weasel.

(Paladins are on permanent probation. They're always being watched, and their manager is a be0tch who will write them up for every tiny violation...)

This post contains a lot of small essays I've been hacking together, and should not in any way be considered the exhaustive, or even semi-useful, list of religions and deities. I still need to define some more evil gods, add at least two more Earthborn faiths, and so on. But, hey, it's a beginning.

Earthborn Faiths
Following the Crush, the religions of Earth underwent many changes. The following discusses the perceptions and game mechanics, but offers no opinion on the validity of belief, either in terms of the fictional world or the real one. The observed facts are presented; theologians on the Shattered World draw their own conclusions as to what they mean.

United Church of Christ (Earthborn)
Following the Crush, the countless denominations of Christianity in America found themselves bereft of numbers and facing a profound theological crisis -- first, alien gods, and their followers, had appeared everywhere (and were wielding palpable power), and, second, the truly holy and devout suddenly found themselves able to do the same, seemingly without regard to the many distinctions and doctrinal disputes which had consumed the branches of the faith for so long.

Communication post-Crush was a nightmarish mix of still-surviving technologies and hand-delivered messages. Surviving leaders of major deominations spent several years exchanging letters, often with weeks or months between responses, slowly building a rickety ecumenical framework which they felt could keep Christianity from shattering into a thousand irrelevant and shrinking cults, and offer a basis for evangelism and outreach to the newcomers whose souls were at risk from their polytheistic faiths. The United Church of Christ built from the teachings of many faiths, and tried to adapt them to their new reality. A key doctrine of the United Church is that there is still only one true path to salvation, and that other gods are either Yahweh revealing himself in alien ways, or deceptions of Satan -- there is still tremendous debate over this, and the newly-formed Church is clearly heading for a major schism sometime in the future.

Followers of the United Church of Christ gain access to the following domains: Law, Healing, Protection, and Good. Clergy must be of any Good or Lawful Neutral alignment. Vows of Poverty are common but not required; neither are vows of chastity, though marriage is still a sacrament.

Unitarians (Earthborn)
Once a relatively small sect filled with tofu-eating granola heads, the Unitarians have found their belief system proven empirically -- or so they claim -- with the plethora of different gods who all seem real, at least in terms of the ability of their devout followers to cast spells in their name. The Unitarian basic philosophy of peace, love, and all that other tree hugging hippie crap remains unchanged, and the stresses of life post-Crush have actually strengthened the faith -- it now takes real guts and dedication to preach non-violence, forgiveness, and especially tolerance. The Unitarians are evangelical in a low-key way, and work to incorporate all they can learn of Arthian deities into their faith -- at least, those Arithian deities not dedicated to slaughter and mayhem. Of all Earthborn faiths, the Unitarians are most likely to accept humanoids, especially half-orcs and half-ogres, into their ranks, provided they manage to abide by the tenets of the faith. Many Arithians consider them to be insane or deluded, but elves, half-elves, and, halflings, find aspects of the faith appealing, especially since it doesn't require the abandonment of their own gods, holidays, and traditions. Unitarian 'churches' are a mix of church, school, and town hall, and they run charities and provide shelter for those in need. Their relationship with the United Church Of Christ varies from cordial companionship to borderline religious war, depending on the nature of the community and just where the local branch of the UCC fits on the scale from Hairy Thunderer to Cosmic Creampuff.

Unitarian clerics have access to the domains of Liberation, Healing, Protection, and Community.

The Verithanian Gods (Arithian)
The Verithanian gods were worshiped in Mantaros, Denethon, and Calval. They are mostly human-seeming beings, each with many traits and foibles. The Verithanian deities are very active, and their structures and relationships change over time. Myths tell of the rise and fall of various gods, and of the impact these internecine struggles have on the world. The Verithanian pantheon is the largest of the three major faiths of the Alliance Of Free Kingdoms, and contains many minor deities without large active priesthoods. Such lesser gods are remembered alongside the more powerful entities, or are called on by those whose immediate needs fall within their specialty.

As might befit the complex politics and changing alliances which defined the eastern nations of the Alliance, the gods are seen as the nobles of the High Kingdoms. Each god has his own province in those kingdoms, and all swear putative loyalty to Marridan, High King Of The High Kingdoms. The events of the Crush have led some to speculate that there has been a coup in the heavens, that after aeons of plotting, Borrabos has finally overthrown Marridan, and the world itself has trembled in response. Certainly, Borrabosian cultists have spread this tale among the ruined cities of the Shattered World.

Gods are defined as follows:

King or Queen -- Greater God
Duke or Duchess -- Intermediate God
Baron or Baroness -- Lesser God
Earl -- Demigod
Knight or Dame -- Quasi-Deity

A few of the Verithanian gods...

Marridan
Divine Rank: 20
Symbol: A gold crown crossed by two red swords
Home Plane: The Fortress
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Portfolio: Law, Verithania, Rulership, Power, Justice, Command, Patriarchy
Worshippers: Nobles, the powerful, generals, judges
Cleric Alignment: Any lawful
Domains: Law, Leadership, Nobility, Pride, Glory, Strength
Favored Weapon: Warhammer

Description
Marridan appears as the essence of rulership -- a massive, red-haired, full bearded, and strongly muscled man, always garbed in fine raimant, either that of the highest nobility or ornate plate armor of the grandest make. He usually manifests as 30 feet in height. His weapon, Law's Might, appears in his hand as needed. His aura of command is such that anyone who sees him treats his every word as a suggestion with a Save DC of 50. Unlike many such gods, he never seeks to diminish or disguise himself. He would no more walk among his followers as a common man than he would gouge out his own eye.

Dogma
Command, duty, discipline. Marridan rules a fractious and quarrelsome kingdom of gods, all seeking power, and he maintains absolute fairness and order. In the mortal world, laws are to be obeyed, hierarchy is to be respected, and all things must happen in their due course. The greatest possible sin is treason and treachery. Remember your duties to those below you as well as those above. To fail to do right by your bondsmen is as wrong as failing to obey your liege.

Clergy And Temples
Clergy of Marridan usually serve as advisors to the nobility, and as judges and lawgivers in many communities. The most powerful clergy are often given noble rank, and this is not considered a conflict of interest. After the Crush, some of the lowest ranking of Marridan's clerics have become wandering justices, making a circuit of the holdfasts and offering to resolve conflicts or settle disputes. Some of the academically minded have begun to make a study of the laws of Earth, which they find, in general, to be ill defined and alien. A few Earthborn lawmakers, police, judges, and politicians have taken oaths of service to Marridan, as well.

Hallenia
Divine Rank:20
Symbol:A tree, surmounted by the sun
Home Plane: The Fortress
Alignment: Neutral Good
Portfolio: Nature, life, healing, rebirth, creation, weather
Worshippers: Druids, rangers, healers, midwives
Cleric Alignment: Any non-evil
Domains: Plant, Healing, Animal, Weather
Favored Weapon: Quarterstaff

Description
Hallenia, Queen of Nature, traditionally appears as a women clad in ever-growing plants, and wearing a grown of golden -- but still living -- leaves. She always appears with a dire animal of some sort, the exact type depending on her mood and her mission -- a wolf for when she is angry or seeks to tell her followers to fight, an owl for when she wishes to dispense wisdom, and so forth. Whenever she appears on the material world, life blossoms; areas where she has walked are incredibly fertile for years afterwards.

Dogma
Hallenia is the goddess of life, healing, nature, and rebirth, and she encourages her followers to create, nurture, and care for things -- nature, their homes, their families. She is seen as the wise protector of nature from excesses which would lead to the destruction of all; she sets limits and boundaries on relentless expansion, and blesses those who respect her. As befits a deity of the often-wartorn nations of the East, she does not preach pacifism or indiscriminate use of the gifts of healing; a dead orc is a boon to the natural order. Cruelty is forbidden, though, and compassion to any who might be worthy of it is a boon.

Clergy And Temples
Hallenia's clergy are usually found in farming villages and small towns, though there are temples in the large cities, too. Her temples are usually found in areas of wilderness otherwise surrounded by fields and orchids, a sign of tribute to nature itself, a sacrifice of some land to the wilderness. Many of her lay clergy are midwives, nurses, or other caregivers. Those who stand between the world of nature and the cities of man often worship her -- druids and rangers, in particular.

Gabriella, Duchess of War
Divine Rank: Intermediate God
Symbol: A sword and axe crossed, over a round shield.
Home Plane: The Fortress
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Portfolio: War, battle, defense, victory
Worshippers: Soldiers, generals, guardsmen, paladins
Cleric Alignment: Any, but usually lawful
Domains: Law, War, Protection, Glory
Favored Weapon: Any

Description
Gabriella is the Verithanian Duchess of War, and she appears as a heavily armed and armored woman possessed of a fierce beauty. When she appears, it is always wearing the armor and wielding the weapons of the army to whom she shows herself, or the leader she has appeared to council.

Dogma
Gabriella is the Duchess of war, not violence or mayhem. She preaches directed and purposeful action, of battle for a cause, of sacrifice for glory. She disdains those who disobey orders or who engage in brutality for its own sake. She respects courage, but not foolhardiness. She is also considered an "Officer's Goddess", though most of the rank-and-file pay her homage as well.

Clergy And Temples
Most fortresses, barracks, and military schools maintain shrines or even full scale temples of Gabriella, and her clerics accompany troops into battle, healing or smiting as needed. Those too old or wounded to fight become teachers and advisors.

Post-Crush, many fighting men of Earth, especially national guardsmen, police, and remnants of the military, have begun to embrace her doctrines, though this is not widespread. A few surviving military units openly follow her, but on Holdfasts centered on old Guard bases or the like, there is more likely to be a carefully hidden shrine and some copies of Arithian holy writings, laboriously translated.

This is my Boom Stick!

2007-11-26T10:46:00.000-05:00

Ah, guns. Where would games be without them? It's not possible (well, not easy...) to do any kind of post-apocalyptic game without the smell of gunpowder in the imaginary air, and if having a squad of orcs with machineguns is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Of course, guns need rules. Fortunately, D20 already has good rules in D20 Modern, so they can be moved over fairly easily. Only a few minor tweaks are necessary. Still, the game designer in me is itching for more complexity. We're talking about guns which have been in active use for 20 years now, without any industrial complex behind them. Well made, well maintained guns can be kept in a fireable state for centuries, but cheap guns left in the rain and mud (or even well made guns left in the rain and mud) can be much less...safe. This is one of those things where the rules lawyer, the world builder, and the actual DM in me all get into a fight. Writing this, now, the Rules Lawyer wants to write "The Complete Guide To Post-Apocalyptic Guns", with all sorts of cool tables for misfires, gun condition, ammo rarity, reloaders, and all that other gun porn. The World Builder is thinking about the social/economic issues and wants to write another essay. And the DM is thinking "Hey, we're actually going to be playing this in under two weeks, and your 'opening scenario' consists of one NPC, a paragraph of plot, and a link to Google Earth showing the rough area of the game. And did I mention you have a cleric character and no deities statted out for him? Or any 'townsfolk' NPCs? Or...."

Probably, the DM is going to win and I'll be fudging the details of guns for now, not going much beyond this little bit of rule mods:

Knowing how to use guns requires "Firearm Proficiency". Classes which gain proficiency in all martial weapons gain this automatically as a bonus feat; other classes must select it. Heavy military weapons, artillery, etc, all require an Exotic Weapon Proficiency; "Firearm Proficiency" covers single-shot or semi-auto pistols, shotguns, and rifles. Full-auto weapons and black powder weapons each require a seperate proficiency. (Black Powder weapons are starting to come into vogue as they can be manufactured more easily than modern firearms, but they are less common than 'legacy' weapons from pre-Crush Earth.)

Double-Tap is replaced by Rapid Shot and Manyshot. All D20 feats applicable to bows have 'twin' feats which apply to guns. These feats must be learned separately for each class of ranged weapons -- that is, you can have Point Blank Shot (Bows) and Point blank Shot (Guns). Each applies to all weapons in the category that you are proficient with -- you do not need PBS (Pistols) and PBS (Rifles), for example.

If there are similar or overlapping feats between D&D and D20M, the D&D feat is the one which will be used.

Profession (Gunsmith) covers the maintenance of weapons and reloading cartridges, as well as evaluating the worth of a gun and its condition. Craft (Guns) allows the manufacture of guns from scratch. Five ranks in one grants a +2 Synergy bonus to the other.

At this point in the campaign world, it is not possible to enchant guns or bullets; there are no +3 Flaming rifles around. There are a few exceptionally well-made weapons which have the equivalent of an Enhancement bonus, but this is not magical and does not detect as such. However, bullets do tend to overcome magical DR; pistols can overcome DR x/+1, while rifles can penetrate DR x/+2. Heavy weapons (LAWs, etc) can penetrate DR x/+3. DR against specific damage types is not ignored by bullets, unless, of course, they do the specific type of damage to which the creature is vulnerable. Likewise, abilities such as Deflect Arrows or spells such as Protection from Arrows do not affect bullets.

All gun-related feats from D20 modern can be taken as fighter bonus feats.

Sharp-eyed readers might note weasel phrases like "At this point in the campaign world...". Lizard can't think small or local. It's my weakness, one which keeps me from ever really completing anything. When I started thinking about Shattered World, my first real decision was '20 or 200?' -- that is, set the game 20 years after the disaster, or 200. Both had promise and problems. I decided on 20 (reasons for that in an upcoming post), but in the back of my mind, I'd already decided that 200 would be the setting for any 4e games I needed to run -- the massive changes in the world (as reflected by massive changes in the rules) would be the result of the final merging of two worlds. At the same time, as Arith comes together, the urge to define it at some point in its past -- probably about 1,000 years pre-Crush -- and use that as a future campaign world is also strong. So one world spins into three, albeit with two no more than 'placeholders'. Point being, I figure that, in 200 years, there will be magic guns. But for now, I really, really, want to keep away from 'magitech', except for very steampunky things that are artifacts of Skallidane. Partially, this is because I'm coming out of a D20 Modern game which was hip-deep in magical cell phones, guns, binoculars, and 8-balls, and I want this game to have a very different feel, despite some overlap in the sense of "21st century, and there's orcs running about".

Elves And Dragons And Gods, Oh My!

2007-11-23T16:04:00.000-05:00

An assortment of short bits of worldbuilding, sort of 'filling in the gaps'.

Dragons. My last two D20 campaigns were chock-full of the things, and it's hard to imagine the game without them -- It's Dungeons & DRAGONS, after all! However, I wanted to get away from them for a bit, without writing them out entirely. Thus, this backdrop, which lets me bring them in if I need them, allows for interesting dragon-based classes and races, but which keeps the great beasties themselves out of the way. For now.

Elves -- I like to define at least a bit of culture for each of the main races. I don't veer too far from the established norms, as I dislike change for the sake of change. ("My dwarves are nine feet tall, beardless, and hate mountains -- but they're still dwarves!") So elves are still artsy-fartsy tree hugging wizard-warriors, but they're also a little alien and withdrawn, reinventing themselves every few decades when the ennui of existence grows too much. I think this also adds some great plot hooks for both PCs and NPCs. The PC might have to deal with friends, or descendants of friends, who knew him in a "former life", while the party might seek out a great Elf general, the finest warrior of his generation, only to find he's now a first level rogue who has only dim memories of that former life and no desire to return to it.

Gods -- I like gods, at least in works of fantasy and imagination, where they belong. D&Dish gods, very mechanistic and defined, appeal to my marginally Asbergers sensibilities. I always loved the racial gods from old issues of Dragon, gods made from the whole cloth to fit the worlds of gaming, not reality. Since I needed to provide background for Warforged in my world, I wanted at least one deity for them. (I think I need at least one more, come to think of it, but here's the first.) Also, having established "Name, The Verb Of Name" for one Warforged god, I can make sure the others follow that pattern. Always good.

Dragons
Dragons are not fairy-tales in Arith -- they are creature of undisputed historical fact, and their actions shaped the world to the point of the Crush and beyond. However, the actual sighting of a dragon is something no living Arithian -- at least, those of the Free Peoples -- can honestly claim to have done. The dragons were unquestioned lords of the world in the dimmest recesses of history, long before the Magewars, the fall of Skallidane, or the founding of the Alliance Of Free Kingdoms. Even after they fell from total lordship, they were still mighty powers in the world, both in their natural forms and as disguised wanderers passing among many races. It was a long, slow, process by which the true dragons bred less and less with their own kind, and fewer and fewer of their young grew to maturity. The eldest dragons, weary of their petty games and wary of their powerful foes, retreated more and more from the world, finding the darkest and most foreboding of places in which to dwell and dream. No one knows how many of the elder wyrms live still, or where they sleep, but many fear the great tragedy of the Crush has awakened them, and they have begun to once more move upon the world. Others claim this is nonsense, fear mongering in a world which has no shortage of real fears.

Certainly, the dragontainted are well known -- from half-dragons born from seemingly normal human parents, to sorcerors, to dragonfire adepts, to stranger hybrids and odd creatures -- but the great beasts themselves? They belong, thankfully to an earlier time.

Elves
The elves of Arith are among the oldest of the Free Peoples, though certainly not the oldest sapient species. They are long-lived beings who dwell in environments which carefully blend natural beauty and civilized comfort. They once ruled over vast empires, long before the first Magewar, but now are a somewhat diminished race, gathered into a few large woodland cities and countless small settlements and villages. The elves produce many skilled individuals, but few great heroes -- but those who do exist are great indeed.

The Long Sleep
Elves live for centuries, but very few spend all, or even most, of that time in asingle pursuit. After a few decades of life, an Elf will grow weary, and develop a deep sense of ennui and indifference. All joy flees from existence; food is bland, lovemaking tiring, even life-and-death struggles begin to pall. At this time, the elf enters what is known as the Long Sleep, where they enter into a coma-like state, needing nothing but air to survive. (Obviously, they do this in safe surroundings -- usually a sacred hall in a larger Elvish community). The Long Sleep lasts for 6-10 years. When the elf awakes, he is reborn in spirit. While he retains, in part, all of his old memories, he has lost much of his learning. In essence, he emerges with no class levels, and begins life anew, studying different arts than he did before. The dreams of the Long Sleep serve to show him new paths in life, and he might emerge with a different alignment. While still technically the same person, he thinks of himself as one reborn, and often ignores old friendships and commitments, as if they belonged to another. (Elf law dictates this is so -- marriages end when one spouse enters the Long Sleep, and debts are forgiven as if the debtor had died. Laws of other cultures are not so understanding.)

Govar, The Forger Of Souls
Part of what helped the Warforged escape their bondage and become free-willed beings was the slow evolution of a religious consciousness. Since they were formed with souls -- or at least, fragments of souls -- they had the capacity to understand the concepts of higher planes and higher beings. As with all such issues, it is uncertain if their desire for a deity created one from raw god-stuff, or if they attracted some being from elsewhere in the multiverse who took on the form they wished him to have. Either way, the first god of the Warforged was Govar the Forger Of Souls.

Divine Rank: 15
Symbol: A blue smith's hammer
Home Plane: Mechanus
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Portfolio: Law, Creation, War, Warforged
Worshippers: Warforged
Cleric Alignment: Any
Domains: Law, Creation, War, Warforged
Favored Weapon: Warhammer

Description
Govar appears as a massive mithral and adamantine Warforged, thirty feet high, swinging a warhammer composed of solidified incarnum. He wears a simple tunic woven of prismatic fiber, and his eyes are deep pools of golden light.

Dogma
Govar preaches obedience to rightful authority, honor in duty, service to the race, and liberation. Unlike many Lawful gods, Govar believes that it can never be right to own another sapient being, no matter the cause. His clerics oppose any form of slavery and will use any means at their disposal (preferably lawful ones) to end it. Buying slaves and freeing them, attacking slave vessels, or ambushing slave caravans and liberating their 'cargo' are all noble acts according to Govar.

Clergy And Temples
Only Warforged are clerics of Govar. Because they are few in number, there are very few freestanding temples to him. Rather, a group of Warforged will dedicate a portion of their workplace, home, or barracks to a shrine to Govar.

Forging War

2007-11-20T12:49:00.000-05:00

So. One of my players wants to play a Warforged. I don't own Eberron; no offense to the creators, but I don't use pregen settings, and only buy them if I think I can suck the Crunchy Bits out of them, and, by the time Eberron came out, D&D 3.x had so many books of Pure Crunch that it didn't seem worth the effort. This isn't "Eberron suxx0rz!!!!", just, I don't use it. OTOH, I do like to meet player requests -- nothing kills a game faster than a player who isn't playing the character they most want to play. Warforged were described generically in MM3, which I had, so I went from there. The following is pretty cliche, but it sets up things nicely, and also fills in some background on Arith. Arith began as a vague "generic fantasy" world, and, frankly, it still is and always will be, but at least now it's getting some requisite history. It's all still pretty basic, but that's part of the point -- the "interesting" part of Shattered World is post-Crush. If I made Arith a baroque creation not readily identifiable as a typical D&D world, a)I would have to do a lot of worldbuilding, and, b)It would overshadow the world the campaign is set in.

So, I wrote up the warforged backstory. In so doing, I tossed out the term "Ironsouled Legion", because, you know, it sounded cool. Then I started thinking that it could fit into Shattered World, and that gave me the chance to crack open PH2 and build me an Affiliation. I love "systems for defining things", and I wanted to use a lot of the cool options which 3.x has produced over the years, so there you go. Thus, we present Warforged (as they exist in the Shattered World), and the first Affiliation for same.

(And, frankly, the idea of some Warforged painting himself red and blue and calling himself Optimus Prime is just damn appealing...)

Of course, having conceived of Warforged paladins, I now need some gods. They might be coming next. (Racial deities are another thing I like to create). And so worlds are built cascade style -- from one idea comes the next, and the next, and the next. The hard part is knowing where to stop, to actually focus on play, and not on making a stage no one will ever act upon.

Warforged
The warforged of Arith began millennia ago, shortly after the last Magewar. On the flying island of Skallidane, the scholars of the Pearl Conclave sought to supplement their small numbers (and their many dead soldiers) by finding ways to make smaller, cheaper, golems. To simplify the process, they used a small portion of incarnum -- the raw material of souls -- to power their creations. The miniscule spark used was enough to provide mobility and obedience, but not consciousness. At least, not at first.

After centuries (and this was still at least a thousand years pre-Crush), the populace of Skallidane was at least a fourth warforged. They served more than the Conclave -- the worked in every part of the flying island city, from the fields to the mills to the foundries. Then things began to go wrong. Some of the most ancient of the warforged began to grow rebellious; then it spread. A year after the first incidents, the island was consumed in a virulent war. The magitech for which Skallidane was known and feared was turned against itself, as the Conclave sought to destroy their own creations, unaware of how powerful they had become, and how free willed. The warforged, made with incarnum, had grown true souls, true freedom of thought -- and they were not content to be slaves.

By the time the war was over, Skallidane was no more -- the smoking ruins of the wondrous city had crashed into the sea -- but tens of thousands of warforged survived. They scattered across the world. There, their reception was uneven at best. Masterless golems -- which is how they were seen -- were known as rampaging killers only. While Skallidane was not loved by most of the world, a force which could destroy it was even more terrifying. The warforged were generally driven away. Some gave them shelter -- conquerors who saw them as perfect soldiers and who did not understand their true nature. Some took to banditry, some tried to disguise themselves as humans in thick robes and heavy makeup. A few, though, were determined to prove to the world they were as worthy of respect as any elf, man, or dwarf. They formed the Ironsouled Legion, a band of heroes who took on the greatest and deadliest of foes, asking nothing in payment but to be treated as equals. In time, their deeds became legend, and if folk didn't exactly love warforged after that, they began to accept they could be anything they chose to be.

Most warforged were destroyed in the first century after Skallidane's Fall, and many more died since then, as their natures take them towards dangerous careers. However, while the old rituals of warforged creation have been lost, it was found that a warforged could give up a small portion of their incarnum to animate another. The creation of the body takes 10000 gp and the soul-sacrifice takes 1000 XP, making this a rare process, but common enough that the race can continue -- and that many warforged take up adventuring to pay for the process of having 'children'.

Post-Crush, the warforged find themselves in a world where humanoid machines are sometimes feared, but often admired. The worlds of anime and tales of mecha appealed to them, and some have begun to paint themselves as Gundams or Transformers in the hopes of appearing to the Earthborn as heroes.

Ironsouled Legion
Ironsouled Legion
In the past of Arith, the Ironsouled Legion emerged from the ruins of Skallidane, to prove to the people of the world that beings of steel could be beings of soul. The Legion became legend, and the tales of its deeds have been told and retold by bards for centuries. The legion is not dead, though -- it existed right up to the Crush -- and beyond. Now, in a strange new world built from the mangled corpses of two older worlds, its members -- scattered, isolated, hunted, and feared -- still uphold the ideals of its founders.

The Ironsouled Legion
Symbol: The symbol of the Ironsouled Legion is a bright blue anvil, upon which is superimposed a white heart.

Background, Goals, and Dreams: The Ironsouled Legion exists to provide examples of heroism, honor, and nobility among the Warforged. While not every Warforged is a member of the legion -- or aspires to such nobility -- the Legion believes that if they can proved Warforged can be heroes, the rest of the world will at least give an unproven member of the race the benefit of the doubt.

Missions on behalf of the Legion often involve great risk, impossible odds, and worthy causes. Depending on the skills of the members of the Legion, they may be sent as front-line fighters, scouts, or bodyguards. Hunting down evil Warforged is one of the Legion's primary missions.

Type:Fighting Company

Scale:7

Affiliation Score Criteria:Only Warforged can join the Legion. Further, all must be of Good alignment (and will be tested) and maintain the highest standards of heroism. Cowardice is the worst flaw imaginable; second to that is acting in a way which shames all Warforged. The Legion encourages Warforged to go beyond the stereotypes, and so, Bards, Wizards, and even Druids can be found among their number.

Criterion
Character Level +1/2 PC's Level
BAB 5 or higher +1
BAB 10 or higher +2
Leadership Feat +2
Paladin +2
Completes a mission for the Legion +1
Dies on a mission +2
Acts to increase the reputation of the Warforged +2
Kills an evil Warforged +1
Acts in a cowardly fashion -10
Brings shame to all Warforged -10
Friendly association with evil Warforged -8
Friendly assocation with evil non-Warforged -5
Creates a new Warforged +1

Titles, Benefits & Duties: The Ironsouled Legion are warriors, first and foremost; even those without fighter type levels are expected to enter combat on a regular basis. There are no idle scholars or philosophers among the Ironsouled! As they progress through the ranks, members are expected to take on greater duties and assume the mantle of leadership, often volunteering their services to command armies of other races, if they are willing be so led.

3 or lower Not a member, or a member who has not proved himself.
4-10 Coppersouled: +2 on all Charisma-based skill checks with other Warforged; +1 on attack rolls against evil Warforged
11-15 Bronzesouled +4 on all Charisma-based skill checks with other Warforged; +2 on all Charisma based skill checks with non-evil being; +2 on attack rolls against evil Warforged
16-20 Ironsouled: Gain one Fighter bonus feat; +4 on all saving throws against fear; +3 on all attack rolls against evil Warforged
21-30 Adamantinesouled: +6 on all attempts to influence Good beings and +3 on all attempts to influence non-evil beings; +4 on all attack rolls against evil Warforged; +2 to natural AC bonus
31+ Mithralsouled: Gain two fighter bonus feats.

Of Humanoid Bondage

2007-11-15T17:11:00.000-05:00

Sorry, no porn.

The D&D world is (in)famous for its proliferation of sentient races. There are dozens in the 'official' books, and ghu knows how many in the third party supplements. Lesser, saner, Dungeon Masters ignore all but a handful of such races. I, having grown up old-school, like to use 'em all -- but I also like some idea how they fit in. The following is an overview of the humanoid races included thus far -- but I've only gone through Monster Manual I and the Tome of Horrors (Best. Monster Book. Evar.) More will be coming...
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Humanoids In The Shattered World
On Arith, most of the so-called 'humanoid' races – a somewhat derogatory term for basically man-shaped beings whose civilizations and cultures were antithetical to those of the Free People's – dwelled in the rough wilderness, kept in check by organized patrols, powerful magics, and their own internal conflicts. Many bred rapidly and then, unable to expand, turned on each other until their numbers were reduced to what the wastelands in which they dwelled could sustain, then the cycle began anew. The days of great native leaders, or evil overlords, raising vast armies and laying siege to the civilized lands were long past, and only the oldest elves remembered the last true humanoid wars.

This all changed after the crush.

Without much civilization to destroy, the humanoids weathered the change fairly well. Where the Free People's saw the Crush as a great punishment from the gods, the humanoids saw it as a blessing. In their myths, their gods had finally overthrown, or at least stymied, the human and demi human gods, giving them the opening they needed.

To the humans of Earth, there was little difference between orcs and goblins – or between goblins and gnomes, for that matter. All were strange, alien, invaders who had arrived in a civilization-destroying cataclysm. Only after years of harsh experience did the distinctions begin to matter, and the knowledge that hobgoblins could be bargained with while orcs could not, for example, began to sink in.

Two decades post-crush, the various humanoid races have yet to organize into armies or be recruited en masse as crossbow fodder, but they have expanded greatly. Many have learned to use scavenged technology, capturing Earthborn slaves to maintain it. They are no longer constrained by patrols or magic; now, only their own flaws and hatreds hold them back.

Goblinoid Races
Three major races (and one minor race) are known as Goblinoids.

Bugbears
The bugbears, largest and strongest of the goblin races, have always been the least technologically adept. They dwelled in the twisted woods and blighted forests, driven there by the elves in one ancient war after another. Their small tribal villages managed to live by hunting, raiding, and occasional farming, and they mostly fought among themselves, lacking anyone else to battle. Now, they claim all the woodlands for their own, though they are strongest in the region which was once the Pacific Northwest. They hate and despise the technology and artifacts of Earth, considering them blasphemous abominations, and actively destroy any they encounter, often burning any semi-intact suburban sprawl they come across. Those using such artifacts against them will be killed as slowly as possible.

Hobgoblins
Of all the humanoids, the hobgoblins were always the most dangerous, maintaining true nation-states and capable of forming complex social structures which were stable for generations. Their military might was immense, and they could wield it as finely as a dagger or as viciously as a battleaxe, as necessary. This actually hurt them – when the crush came, their various small kingdoms, isolated but strong, were battered and weakened. Though they relied less on magical communication than the Free People's did, they were still cut off and isolated, and the hobgoblins are known to leap on any sign of weakness – even among their own kind. Local rulers saw the chance to be top dog, not mere underlings to a now-distant superior, and took it. Provinces and baronies sought to take advantage of the chaos for their own benefit. As a result, the window for a true hobgoblin empire spanning a large part of a continent was closed rapidly. Today, there are a handful of fortress-holdfasts, and quite a number of freelance hobgoblin regiments. Life in a hobgoblin holdfast is brutal and difficult, but for those who learn to obey and work, it can be a safe life – and for many, that's sufficient.

Goblins
Small and fecund, goblins are generally considered nuiscances, except when they are able to breed in sufficient numbers to overrun a community. They dwell in darkness, underground, nomads of the Earth-girdling cave systems. They will bubble up from the depths in a surge, overwhelming defenders with sheer numbers, and then retreat to the safety of the dark. Their rapid breeding and maturation, combined with their basically cowardly and servile nature, makes them ideal fodder for more powerful beings. They are also one of the most religious of the humanoid races, with a pantheon of several dozen gods, most of whom are relatively weak. Unlike many of the other humanoid races, intratribal violence is rare, and even different tribes usually manage to get along well enough to get by if they aren't competing for a specific resource. Goblins are known to produce more naturally psionic individuals than any of the other races, and these 'blue goblins' are cherished and protected by their fellows.

Mites
The mites, or 'deepest goblins', remain in their dark underground holdfasts. Indeed, as other races head upwards to claim the surface world, the Mites occupy their former cities, looting everything left behind as valueless by richer races. They are of minimal danger to those on the surface, but they can prove a persistent threat to explorers in the Underdark.

Orcs And Orc-Kin

Orcs
Orcs represent pure violence, with very little culture beyond survival and conquest. They are the mad spawn of their one-eyed god, and they see the world as having cheated them out of their rightful place as rulers of all. The Crush merely allowed them to spread. Orcs traditionally establish a secure base, and then loot and rampage through the area surrounding it, covering as much territory as they can while still being able to retreat to safety. Caves are preferred, though some tribes will seize a castle or fort if they can capture it with its security still mostly intact. Legends of the orcs declare that a true leader will one day arise, one who will unite all the warring tribes and lead them to absolute victory. Orcs have learned to love guns, though they can barely maintain them, and they will seize weapon stores in preference to all other treasures. A few of the smarter or more self controlled orcs have left their tribes to become bandits, mercenaries, or hunters, but most cannot get along with other races well enough to function as such. The current strongholds of the largest orc tribes in the former North America are located in the Appalachians, with many old coal mines having been converted to vast warrens.

Ogrillon
The Ogrillon are not a race unto themselves, but orc/ogre crossbreeds are common enough that Ogrillon can be found in many orc bands. The smarter become leaders and warriors; the dumber are exploited as basically mobile weapons platforms, aimed at the largest foe on the battlefield and left to fend for themselves.

Orog
Orogs are rarely seen among the orcs, as they were targeted for destruction in every war against the orcs, to deprive the orcs of their best leaders. These elite orcs can be found, when they exist, leading orc raiding bands against rich foes, or abandoning their more savage cousins to find work among more disciplined forces. Not a small number have joined up with mercenary bands.

Gnolls
In many ways, gnolls are even more bestial than orcs – stronger, faster, and disease ridden, they are primarily nomadic, The packs wander across the face of the Shattered World, with a few areas of higher concentration in the former Upper Midwest. Unlike orcs, almost no gnolls leave their packs to join other races in banditry or to find semi-legitimate work; they are too vicious and uncontrolled, prone to sudden attacks of violent temper and bloodlust which are not constrained by fear or greed. Gnoll prisoners are used as brute labor and mobile food; it has never occurred to them to preserve 'useful' prisoners or gain instruction in how to use scavenged technology – indeed, they're often scared of guns and will break or destroy any them come across.

Kobolds
Similar to goblins in stature, but very different in tactics, kobolds build great maze-cities in the underdark, riddling them with traps and tricks. Kobolds breed much more slowly than the other humanoid races, and so, have learned to make each member count, focusing on surprise, deceit, and their racial gift of sorcery to take down far more powerful intruders. A single kobold is often hasted, then dispatched to be a visible target; when a dupe follows him, he suddenly takes off at magically enhanced speed while his hidden comrades bring down the victim. Kobolds have the same cunning and love of machines – including modern Earth machines – that gnomes do, and kobold lairs are often lit with electric lights (powered by stolen generators) and have an assortment of odd machines placed randomly about them. Kobolds and gnomes have a long history of antipathy, as both races compete for much the same space. Kobolds are found everywhere, but their current strongholds are located in the former American northeast and parts of Eastern Canada.

Derro
Twisted, evil, and inhumanly sadistic cousins of the Dwarves, the Derro were hunted almost to extinction on Arith, surviving only in a small number of deeply hidden cavern fortresses. As such, it took some time before they became aware things had changed. They found their way back to the surface, or as near as they could tolerate. They are too few to establish any notable communities, but small clans have spread in the former mining areas of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, where they make quick snatch-and-go raids on wandering travelers. The malicious ingenuity of the Derro has been inspired by the new technology they've discovered on Earth, and they have become adept at using scavenged technology as implements of torture.

Grimlock
Grimlocks long ago ceased to be a free race. For centuries, all of the race has been the slaves of the Illithid, knowing nothing but service to their dread masters. When word of the Crush reached their bleak and forgotten cities, they saw new opportunities in the world above, but refused to act without further information. Thus, their slaves were sent upwards, to probe the new world and find out all that they could. Grimlocks mostly haunt the ruined cities of Earth, dwelling in the empty subways, underground structures, and the like, raiding upwards for food and prisoners to question. A few have decided they like the freedom of this new world, and have fled by night into the ruined suburbs and the reborn wilds, always seeking the comforting darkness below when they can. Grimlocks still loyal to their masters live in organized units; escape grimlocks form loose-knit gangs.

Kuo-Toa
The Shattered Coast is infested with the Kuo-Toa, amphibious humanoids of malign purpose. The new caves and ruined cities provide them with endless places to call home, and they have bred rapidly in the years since the Crush. Many simply attack any ships they see, but a few of the more cunning have established what can only be called protection rackets, where some sea traffic is allowed in their regions and others is not. In the southern parts of the Shattered Coast, they face serious competition from the Sahuagin.

Crabmen
Crabmen are rare creatures, not generally welcomed by the Free Peoples, but also not violent and hateful enough to survive among other races. They lived in isolated villages and small cave systems on Arith, and on the Shattered World, they dwell in much the same place. The sunken cities which line the coasts provide them with many hiding places, and they are happy to keep their shelled heads down and stay out of the way of the more violent races.

Dark Creeper
Dark Creepers are practically things of legend, with only one city known to exist on Arith. Since word of the Crush reached the Underdark, they have sent out scouts, but the bulk of their population remains in the Spiral Pit. The scouts of the Bottomlord can be found primarily in the remnants of Denver and its surrounding regions.

Dire Corby
The cave birds, as they were known, dwelled in the upper parts of the underdark, preying on things even weaker than themselves and lusting for the woods beneath a moonless night sky. After the Crush, they swarmed outwards, settling in the blighted and twisted forests of the far north. Small bands roam across the so-called 'Empty Quarter', and they have become fearsome legends of the night.

Flind
Thankfully rare, the Flind are growing more common as the gnoll packs breed. A small number of packs are Flind-led, and when such packs meet, the Flind are sure to enjoy an orgy of mating so as to increase their numbers. Perhaps the most infamous are the Scabfangs, a pack which has settled in the north Georgia area and which regularly attacks convoys in the area.

Grippli
A rare species which lived in peace in the swamps of the Alliance Of Free Kingdoms, the Grippli have found themselves even more pressed as the other swamp dwellers, notably the lizardfolk, have invaded their swamps. Some have fled to human-controlled holdfasts for safety; others have moved deeper into the swamps. The largest known settlement is in the Florida Morass, in the area once known as Disneyworld.

Gimme That New Time Religion...

2007-11-14T00:18:00.000-05:00

Ah, religion in D&D, where the wielder of the power to literally bring the dead to life with a word (and a 5000 gp diamond) is viewed as a mobile first aid kit. For the Shattered World, I of course needed to honor this fine tradition, but I was also thinking about what effect real, tangible, provable, on-demand, your pays your money and you gets your healing, including for amputees, miracles would do. Further, I didn't want to pretend Earth faiths didn't exist. By the same token, I didn't want to stat out Yahweh and decide if Jesus could take Odin best two falls out of three.

I have still not decided on the precise, real, nature of the gods -- but from a game mechanics perspective, any god who is sincerely believed in by enough people is real in terms of casting spells, sending avatars or servants to do their bidding, and so on. Thus, Earth religions produce clerics, favored souls, paladins, and so on, just as Arithian faiths do. The exact domains for various Terran faiths is something I need to work on next, but the following is my initial essay on religion:
====================
The power of the divine is undoubted. Those who serve the will of the gods can heal wounds, summon divine aid, smite their foes with fire or lightning, walk on water, and perform many other miracles -- including calling the souls of those departed back to their bodies. After the Crush, Earthborn religious leaders of great devotion and true faith found that they, too, could work miracles -- but their powers were no greater than those of worshipers of alien gods. In future times, it will be that a great deal of theology and debate will be had around this topic, and great books will be written, and great philosopher will espouse, but here and now, in the time just after the Decade of Fire, all that matters is that those who befriend a priest will live longer.

The inhabitants of Arith brought with them their gods, and the peoples of Earth found that the ancient rites, preserved by neo-pagans and cultural revivalists, worked as well. Still, most of the Earthborn in the former United States followed a monotheistic faith, and most still do -- especially after seeing a Rabbi form a golem from the mud of a ruined field, or a Minister lay hands on a dying man and seal his wounds.

Over the two decades since the Crush, the various sects and denominations of Earth faith have changed. Many of the more mainstream Christian churches have merged into what some are calling the United Church of Christ. Older denominations still exist; they're just smaller. There are estimates that at least four Popes currently exist, as the fragmented remains of the Catholic Church argue over just who are the true heirs of Rome. The Jews, concentrated into cities and never many in number, are now nearly extinct, and Rabbis have become wanderers, traveling from holdfast to holdfast, in order to provide religious services to what survivors may exist. (Oddly, the Jewish faith has begun to attract converts from among the Free Peoples, especially the Dwarves.) Islam remains strong in the Mideast, but less so in the United States -- again because so many Muslims dwelled in the now-dead cities. Christianity, the faith of the farmland and the suburbs, survived well.

Odinists in America, many of whom lived in the upper Midwest and the Northwest, have revived their ancient gods. Neo-pagans and wiccans have cobbled together a form of Druidism which allows them to tap into the power of nature itself. Converts to the ways of the 'invaders' also abound, and there are many who have turned from the gods of Earth to the gods of Arith.

Magic, Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Maximized Fireballs

2007-11-13T14:46:00.000-05:00

One of the first things I needed to work on was magic. Specifically, I needed to make sure a lot of the tropes of a post-holocaust game could not be undone by casters. Thus, communication and travel were nerfed, and death needed to gain a considerable sting -- no more revolving door afterlife. The 'Soulstorm' mentioned here currently exists in my head as a vague concept with a cool name; it will be quantified soonish.

These changes don't unbalance general play much, but do change the nature of the world. Arithian society, dependent on scrying and teleportation networks, was just as damaged as Earth society when its communication and transport systems failed.

Oh...and to someone who mentioned satellites...yes. They're up there. And there is no 'anti tech' field, if you can get the hardware powered, most of the old systems still function. It's been 20 years, of course, and I'm sure some satellites are showing their age...but if there's anyone out there with generators and technicians, they can maintain a global communication network. For example, people in secure bunkers designed to outlast the effects of a global nuclear war. Of course, such places are things of legend and rumor...no one has found a functioning redoubt of that nature.

Anyway, magic:
It is undebatable that magic works in the Shattered World; doubters and skeptics were silenced within days of the Crush. With only a few important exceptions, the power of magic is as great as it ever was, but what has changed, dramatically and terribly, is the state of magical knowledge. In the span of days, millennia of learning were wiped out, along with the knowledge and experience stored in thousands of living minds.

On Arith, magic had long been more science than art. Vast libraries stored the details of thousands of spells. The precise means by which reality could be warped to a man's will were documented, defined, and enumerated. Fairly complete theoretical models of magic were well known, and only a few niggling details – such as the exact nature of the thaum – remained to be resolved. Magical societies and associations spanned the globe, linked by networks of scrying devices and teleportation sigils.

Then it all went away. Libraries burned along with the cities, and spellcasters were slain in the ensuing chaos. The common folk of Arith, terrified and confused, blamed wizards and sorcerers (not altogether incorrectly in general, but tragically wrong in specifics) for their blight, and weapons designed to keep enemy spellcasters from wreaking havoc were turned on allies. Storehouses of materia were destroyed. The networks of communication which kept the Orders together shut down instantly. Apprentices were separated from their masters. Clerics of various pantheons decreed that the tragedy could be blamed on those who worshiped the wrong gods, and holy wars exploded across the land. When the first of the upwellings began about a month after the Crush, those few casters who remained alive and protected were pressed into service against the newly emboldened hordes of the Underdark, and most perished in that fight.

Today, twenty years later, magic remains a powerful force, but no longer a well known one. Only a small number of the Free Peoples were spellcasters, and, as with most of the folk of both worlds, only some 5% of them survived the first year post-Crush. Many have retreated into hiding; others have found some small measure of safety in the few stable outposts and villages, where they might take on one apprentice every few years. The Earthborn have begun the study of magic, but many are viewed with hostility by both the Arith and their fellows.

The altered magical field of the Shattered World has changed how some magic works. Powerful storms in the Ethereal Plane limit the range of all spells to Long at best; no spell has 'unlimited' or 'same plane' range. The Soulstorm makes easy returns from the higher planes impossible; no magic of less power than True Resurrection or Wish will bring the dead back from the land of the Gods. The revolving door has been bolted shut.

Stockpiles of wands, scrolls, and potions were consumed during the Decade of Fire, and the materials needed to make more are in short supply. Costs for the manufacture of magic items have increased tenfold, and the small wealth of most settlements means that few are made. No more does every soldier keep a Potion of Cure Light Wounds and some Oil of True Strike on his belt for emergencies; no more is there a store selling common scrolls in every large city. Items of magic are horded, used only in the direst of emergencies, and given how common dire emergencies are, the hordes are getting pretty thin...

Of course, it's not all dire. The desperation of the survivors for any seeming of safety has led some to seek the shelter of the friendly neighborhood spellcaster, no matter how insane, depraved, or violent he may be. No small number of the holdfasts are under the rule of a magical overlord...did I say overlord? I meant protector. Of course, when one considers that during a time of great crisis, when the forces of light tried to array themselves against the onrushing darkness, the ones most likely to survive would be the ones whose entire system of ethics could be summed up as "Me first!", one gets an idea as to the sort of casters most likely to have lived long enough to become petty lordlings...and about how well they take to the idea of any competitors.

Druids...the Joy of Sects

2007-11-13T10:49:00.000-05:00

Long before I had much more done than the initial world concept, players started telling me what they wanted to play. The first concept to be presented was a druid...which meant, I needed to define druids in my world. In the manner of all good creators, I stole, and in the manner of egotistical creators, I stole from myself. :) I'd often thought the four 'neutral' alignments of Druids (lawful, chaotic, good, evil) made nice 'sects' of druidism. Add a nature theme, and, presto!

Why no True Neutral? No good hook for them off the top of my head, plus, let's face it -- there's a Book of Exalted Deeds and and Tome Of Vile Darkness, but there's no Manual Of Pretty Much Standing Around Doing Nothing. Evil without concern for law or chaos, or law without concern for good or evil, etc, all provide good dramatic and mechanical hooks, but absolute true neutrality is a bear. It's not impossible, and I might even take a whack at some sort of True Neutral supplement one day, but for now, I like my four sects.

Druids
Druids do not derive their powers directly from a deity, though they often do worship one. Rather, Druids gain spells by their connection to the divine spark which exists in all natural things and by tapping into the power of the elemental planes. While all druidsshare in common a special connection to the natural world and the primal forces of the universe, there are four distinct sects of Druidism, each with a differing worldview which affects how their powers function.

Summer
Summer Druids are Lawful Neutral in alignment. They see the natural world as a clockwork mechanism. Season follows season; the stars and moon move according to fixed laws; each animal and plant lives in a complex pattern of birth, life, and death, playing its part in the great machine of life itself. Summer druids are often found in the more advanced civilizations, where they are part priest, part natural scientist. They are the most inclined to study and categorize nature, and they have produced some of the most sophisticated biological tomes of Arith. A few view civilization as a wrench in the machinery of the world, and actively seek to return sentients to their 'proper' place in nature, but most are comfortable with cities and complex culture, studying the relationship of social strata in a city just as they'd study the castes of an ant colony. They are known for being aloof and indifferent, roused to action only when something threatens the order of the world. Following the Crush, they have become very few in number -- most died in the cities, and others went mad as the order of the world vanished into utter chaos. A few have managed to ally with Earthborn humans to preserve the remains of biological science, and have become incorporating modern theories into their own understanding of the world. The panoply of new and changed species which emerge in the vicinity of Worldholes draws some to investigate these most dangerous places, seeking to understand the rules they believe must underlie the seeming chaos or just document the altered world and try to understand how the balance will reassert itself.

Mechanics
The scholarship of Summer Druids is unparalleled, as is their discipline. Summer Druids can 'take 10' on Knowledge (Nature) checks even under times of stress, and have access to spells of the Knowledge and Law domain in addition to their normal druidic spells. (They do not gain any additional spell slots, however). Their unconcerned and diffident nature, though, causes them to suffer a -2 on all Cha based skill checks.

Autumn
Autumn Druids, sometimes called Bleak Druids, are the avatars of death in nature. They see nature 'red in tooth and claw', and worship the fact that all things must die for anything to live. Of all the druid sects, they are the most isolated and feared. They wander the world, rarely settling in one place, seeking to balance nature by bringing death and destruction where it is most needed. The blazing forest fire, the hungry wolf pack tearing through an isolated village, the blight which dooms crops -- this is the nature worshiped by the druids of Autumn. Most humanoid druids are Autumn druids, especially those of the Bugbears.

Following the Crush, the Autumn sect has grown. Seeing the world of Earth, a world wholly out of balance with nature, a world where even the greatest normal disasters kill a few dozen instead of thousands, they are convinced as never before of the absolute rightness of their cause. They actively work towards pain, terror, and destruction.

Mechanics
Of all the druids, only Autumn druids can tolerate undead, seeing them as the ultimate survivors. As such, they can rebuke undead as a Cleric four levels below their own, and may use their Knowledge(Nature) checks to make checks about Undead, as well. They have trouble channeling the power of nature to bring life, though, and all of their healing spells cure 1 less point of damage per die (minimum 1).

Winter
Winter druids worship nature as impulse and abandon. Where the summer druids see rules and boundaries, the winter druids see exception and variation. Mutation, change, and chaos are their watchwords. A summer druid sees an endless cycle of order in the caterpillar and the butterfly; a winter druid sees that nothing, not even shape, is permanent and stable. Earth science such as chaos theory and continental drift appeal to them, but they prefer an intuitive understanding of the natural world to the stuffy scholarship of the summer druids.

As such, they have been the most comfortable with the Crush. The madness into which the world has been plunged appeals to them; the lies of order have been undone. Unlike the Autmun druids, they do not seek destruction for its own sake, but neither do they aid in building order. Many Winter druids are a touch mad. They have been known to offer services to communities, such as helping crops or driving off predators, in exchange for anything from a song to a virgin to a sack of gold. They have no fixed routes and schedules, but wander as they see fit, heeding a song only they can hear.

Mechanics
Autumn druids revel in chaos. They can rebuke Chaotic creatures as a Cleric four levels below their own, and gain a +2 on saves against any spell with the Chaos descriptor. They are, however, unfocused and easily distracted, suffering a -2 on all Wis based skill checks.

Spring
Spring druids worship life, hope, rebirth, and renewal in nature. They are the kindest and most compassionate of the druidic sects, though they can be moved to rage by callous destruction or the turning of nature to evil. On Arith, they were patrons of the outer villages and small towns, wandering in a long circle around their territory, blessing crops, curing animals, and offering help and advice. While they never sought to destroy cities, they did not value them, and sometimes appeared outside of city walls to implore those within to cast off their chains of stone and come return to the land. Spring druids were also notoriously free with their sexuality, and wandering druids would often father children or take a local man to woo for a night, returning a year later with a child for the village to raise. Such children were considered blessed or sacred, and many would take on the mantle of the Druid in years to come.

After the Crush, the Spring Druids have found themselves strained almost to their limits. While many survived the initial disaster, the sheer press of desperate need which followed overwhelmed them. The world had twisted to extremes of chaos and evil, and their healing, compassionate, natures were tested in the face of suffering such as they had never experienced. They also saw the horrors of cities and crafting gone mad, artificial mountains of stone, glass, and steel scarring the land. While they were among the largest druid sects on Arith, their numbers have dwindled greatly since the Crush, with only the Summer druids being rarer. Many have been forced to cease their wandering, and have instead settled near a conflux of holdfasts, providing what services they can to the locals and struggling to keep the encroaching wilderness in balance. They tend to be suspicious, if not outright hateful, of technology, and often make its abandonment a precondition of their settling in a region.

Mechanics
Spring druids can swap a prepared spell for a rejuvenating effect, losing the ability to swap for a Summon Animal Companion, as per PHB II.

The Outline Of History

2007-11-12T21:46:00.000-05:00

Here's the first infodump I sent out. A few comments:

'Arith' was intended to be a temporary name, as it's a pretty obvious cliche, but nothing dramatically better suggested itself, and I didn't feel like doing an S&R an what was becoming a massive collection of documents. Maybe if this thing goes commercial (hah!) I'll put some mental effort into a better name.
I have no idea what a 'gigacollider' might be. It sounds cool.
I chose 2020 to give me about 13 years of 'future history' to play with, to set up anything I might need to do, but keep it close enough to 'our time' that the world will be mostly recognizable. If I need super-efficient electric generators, man portable lasers, robotic battlesuits, or AI computers, I can justifiably add them; if I don't need them, they don't need to exist.

The History Of The Shattered World
In 2020, the Austin Gigacollider came on-line. The largest atomic collider ever constructed, it was designed to unlock the final secrets of creation, to produce strangelets for study. A few fringe scientists and luddites feared this would lead to disaster, but they were ignored. As it turns out, they were right, but for no reason they could imagine.

Right next door -- and a world away -- academicians at the Diamond Tower were working towards isolating the thaum, the hypothetical basis of all magic, divine and arcane. It would allow the creation of spells of unprecedented power, as well as refining the control of magic to a previously unheard of degree.

Two experiments, in two worlds. Each one ground breaking, but harmless -- in itself. Had the worlds not been so close (dimensionally speaking) or the experiments not so close in time and space, nothing would have happened. The kind of disaster which created the Crush was a one in a million chance.

As we all know, one in a million chances happen nine times out of ten.

The two experiments caused a void to appear between the worlds, and both worlds rushed into it, their dimensional natures suddenly coinciding. Cities appeared on top of other cities; flesh merged with flesh. Because both worlds had similar geographies, the largest cities were located in roughly the same spots; thus, the most concentrated centers of population were struck the worst. Billions died instantly, and the more industrial (and thus urban) the nation, the worse the effect. Power plants exploded as mountains appeared inside them. Coastal towns were swamped, or left miles from the shore. Rivers fought to find new beds.

As the initial shock faded, whatever governments remained struggled to make sense of things. Each saw the inhabitants of other worlds as invaders. Earth forces scored early victories, but soon fell back, as supply lines were non-existent. Tanks ran out of fuel; artillery batteries fell silent. Earth soldiers had no concept of magic, and could not deal with scrying, teleportation, or summoning. Despite superior numbers and deadly weapons, the armies of Earth soon fell.

In various isolated bunkers, failsafes tripped. The external chaos meant no signals could come through. Some of those stationed there, seeing the world collapse, decided to launch final strikes. While only a fraction of Earth's nuclear armament was launched, it was enough. Radiation and magic mingled, increasing the destruction.

The collapse of the infrastructure doomed billions more. What civilization survived the crush and the nukes was burned or torn apart in riots. Strange, alien, races had appeared, some creatures of beauty out of legend, others horror from nightmare. A war of all against all began, a decade of chaos, confusion, and destruction.

Worse, because the deep underground and barren wilds were mostly uninhabited on Earth, the creatures which dwelled there -- orcs and trolls, ogres and giants, drow and beholders -- suffered the least. As the armies of light fell, they emerged to a world where they could ravage unopposed. Earth's armies made no distinction between elf and orc, between troll and kobold. All were enemies, so the alliances which could have saved them were not made in time.

It was after ten years of near-constant war that the first tentative allegiances began to be made. In a few spots around the world, tiny handfuls of survivors started to see common foes and work to secure a small number of tiny freeholds, places where a pathetic semblance of normal life could begin to occur. At a rough guess, 95% of Earth's population was dead at this point, and about 50% of Arith's. All of the great cities were destroyed; the old nations erased. The folk who dwelled in the tiny pockets of semi-sanity looked out on a world ravaged by war and peopled by monstrosities.

Mai Wurld. Let me share it with u.

2007-11-12T21:25:00.000-05:00

I've been running a D20 Modern game for almost two years now, in which I mostly ripped off Buffy and a few other sources. I had planned for my next game to be Star Wars, a campaign I was calling "Saga Of The Rogue Jedi", where the PCs would be new Padawans who had just gotten their goofy little braids an hour before Palpatine issued General Order 66. They would struggle to survive without their masters, go from honored heroes to hunted fugitives, and, ideally, become some of the founders of the Rebel Alliance.

However, my prospective players were all ga-ga for D&D. My problem was, I wasn't really excited about a D&D game. My friend Tony does games where the entire campaign takes place in some small country, or even a single city, and we end up all knowing about Fred the Shoeshine Boy's unrequited love affair with Milly the Flower Girl, except Milly is probably a shapeshifting creature from the lower planes and Fred will turn out to be the secret ninja guildmaster or something. They're deep, complex, emotional, and infinitely memorable.

Lizard don't do that.

He's Francis Ford Coppola; I'm George Lucas on an off day. (Insert joke here). I want spectacle, cool settings, wild rides, amazing scenes. I need a huge canvas to draw on, an epic backdrop, and if the scenery falls down if you breathe on it too hard or the NPCs are invisible if you look at them from the side, well, that's how I roll. The D20Modern game was the most 'rooted' I've done in a while, and even then I had a cross country trip with the last angel from an alternate world, as well as an epic struggle against a vampire prince in LA (ending with the most annoying perfect roll I've ever seen...thanks, C.)

If I was not going to do Star Wars, what I was going to do was Rifts -- except, you know, without the sucky rules or setting. I like huge kitchen sink worlds. (If I ever scrape together enough money, I will resurrenct, and publish, the Sea Of Worlds, which can be artfully described as 'Planescape meets Spelljammer meets Nexus, on a Gygax/Hargrave bender'.) I'd be using Hero or GURPS for this sort of world, though, and those systems are also a hard sell to the current gaming group.

Then I had an inspiration. I could use D&D -- 99% bog-standard Third Edition rules -- to do the sort of game I wanted. High magic, semi-high tech, serious high weirdness. I love post-holocaust games, but a fantasy post-holocaust game doesn't work. The players have no emotional investment in the fact Cl'ich'e City is now in ruins. Besides, if a world is already in the Dark Ages technologically, how far can it fall? Let's face it, the real Dark Ages were post holocaust.

But what if our 21st century world fell, and the cause of the fall was a sudden eruption of magic? OK, cool, but a bit too close to my current D20M game -- magic enters the modern world, yippee skippy hurray, been there, done that, bought the +5 t-shirt...

Ah, but what if it wasn't just magic entering our world...but a whole world? Two worlds -- one a typical high fantasy world filled with far too many sentient races and magic items out the wazoo, the other a near-future version of Earth (near future so that I could add in some nifty new tech, change some features of cities, create some new buildings, play with politics a little) -- collide across dimensional boundaries. In the process, the civilizations of both worlds are destroyed, and even the fabric of magic is subtly altered. Even if the characters come from the 'fantasy' world, the players have an emotional investment in this world, and so, will react appropriately to battling lizardmen in the ruins of Disneyworld or seeing giant dwarf heads appearing on Mount Rushmore. Bingo.

And so it began. I started writing essays and histories, filling in the gaps, and then (today, a few weeks into the process), I decided to take it public. The first flood of posts here will be the stuff I've already done on the world. When those are exhausted (in far too short a time), you'll get the new stuff, which will keep coming even when the campaign is in swing -- worldbuilding never stops. Along with the actual world data, I plan to discuss the whys -- what inspired me to create this, what it means, why it's needed, etc. Why? Because I think the creative process is interesting in itself. I am not quite so egotistical as to imagine I have much to teach my fellow creators, but I am interested in telling them how my mind works, and hoping they will share with me the processes by which their minds work.

So, let it begin!

Introduction

2007-11-12T21:13:00.000-05:00

Greetings!

This is an experiment in semi-public worldbuilding. In a few short weeks, I will be starting up a D&D 3.x campaign, and while I've done a good bit of worldbuilding on it so far, I've got a lot left to go. Then it sort of occurred to me that it might be a marginally interesting exercise to post my worldbuilding documents as I go, leaving out scenario-specific data the players aren't supposed to know, discuss the 'why I did this' sort of thing, and get feedback which might prove useful in making the world better. This is not a wiki, or a "Hey kids! Let's build a campaign world!" blog. I don't want co-creators. I do want, or hope to get, interesting feedback on whys and wherefores, questions about things I might have missed, pointers to gross inconsistencies in the internal logic, and so forth. And, who knows? Maybe someday, an offer to gather it all up and print it for the Big Bucks. (Bwahaahah!)