This thread might spawn spin-offs, but please feel free to start hear with ideas and questions you have.

An idea I have that I haven't been able to shake is a game set in Eberron (for its modernish, quasi-sci-fi trappings) that emulates an XCOM-type game.

That is: the primary characters would be agents in a secretive group that is trying to deal as quietly as possible with an alien threat, in this case aberrant creatures and their allies.

The party would be sent on missions (ideally, they could select from a few options but wouldn't necessarily be able to deal with every call for help) where they would smack around some strange and nefarious creatures, while making an effort to recover the creatures' bodies and remnants of the items and vehicles they use.

The enemies would rely less on stock powers and more on special items that would shoot or blast "plasma," which would do copious amounts of damage of a compound type: probably at least fire and lightning, but possibly fire, lightning and radiant/necrotic.

Missions would generally involve hunting down and killing aberrants (with the aforementioned focus on relic recovery), but there would be missions involving shutting down strange equipment while under fire, or escorting or rescuing NPCs, or other things.

Collected artifacts and bodies could be researched to provide certain bonuses. One main focus would be to try to mitigate the effectiveness of the plasma weaponry, or find a way to integrate the plasma energy type into PC powers (which might provide some special effectiveness, such as increased damage, or might just be represented by higher enhancement bonuses).

In the XCOM games, there are non-combatants who do things like research and item creation. I think I'd like those to be PCs, but not actual 4th Edition characters, since they won't have combat ability. One thought I have is that the players could "donate" trained skills from their characters, because they won't need things like Diplomacy and History in the field. The non-combatant experts, such as medical staff, mage wrights, researchers, operations, command, etc, would have one or two of the donated skills, for with which the players would make checks to see if, for instance, research succeeds, or an alliance can be maintained.

The XCOM games I've played have an aspect that involves balancing relationships with nations or corporations. In Eberron, the dragonmarked houses and gangs would stand in for these, and would be the people requesting specific aid. Success would keep relations good, which should keep things stable or provide rewards. Failure in the missions (or not choosing to prioritize them) would result in deteriorated relationships, which would lead to decreased resources and possibly armed conflict.

Okay, that's enough for now. It just felt good to get that out. I welcome input.

It sounds like a really fun concept. I like that the PCs would be donating skill ranks to the researchers and scientists, feels very fitting. I'd definitely play :)

In reply to jkeogh (msg # 3):

Thanks. You'll hear about it if I ever pull this together.

Frankly, for a game with "Dragons" in the name, they seem to be pretty rare as enemies, or even as vague threats.

So, I'd like to run some short adventures that involve a group of adventurers tasked with taking on dragon problems in various localities around some more-or-less generic fantasy world.

The set-up could differ with each dragon. Sometimes the party would travel to the dragon, other times it would be on its way to attack their location, maybe sometimes they'd have to chase it, or keep ahead of it for a time.

The risk with a thematic monster is the players picking up items and other options specifically designed to deal with dragons. In this world, the dragons would have seen to it that anti-dragon items are hard to come by, the dragons having either destroyed them and those who know how to make them, or hidden them in their lairs. A dragon never knows when it might have to equip its minions to attack another dragon.

This is definitely a workable idea in 4E. There are enough variations on dragons and dragon-kin to keep a steady supply of threats, even as early as 1st level. Plus there are plenty of character builds and paragon paths that are specifically anti-dragon.

It could also work within the 'points of light' concept, as a land overrun by dragons would have very few pockets of civilization -- and those would have to be heavily fortified. Very few people would be brave (or foolhardy) enough to venture outside, and most of those would be merchants rushing to get to the next town as fast as possible.

In reply to LonePaladin (msg # 6):

Yes, I think a dragon-haunted world is definitely on the darker side of points-of-light.

I'd want to strike a balance with characters that were suited for fighting dragons (since such a world would need such individuals) and having the dragons be an actual challenge. I think that's doable, in a number of ways, though the players would have to be amenable to not kicking as much butt as they're truly capable of doing.

In reply to engine (msg # 7):

Reign of Fire style games could definitely be interesting.

I've DMed a setting where a red dragon had conquered a nation and ruled it tyrannically for hundreds of years.  The PCs were members of a rebellion against this dragon queen and there were many draconic and half-draconic children that were governors and underlings in the nation.    In that game, the PCs decided assassination and guerilla warfare were the most effective method of resistance, rarely standing and fighting against any of the dragon's military or police.

That campaign didn't go far enough for the rebellion to be success.  Indeed, it ended when the entire party were KOd in a failed attempt to 'bomb' a "police station" in a small town and awoke in a prison awaiting their presumed execution.  At that time, one of the players moved away (to join the military) and the rest felt discouraged at the idea of trying a prison break so used that player loss as an excuse to start a new campaign with a new player to replace the one lost.  Still, everyone enjoyed the game up to that point.

In reply to Godzfirefly (msg # 8):

"Reign of Fire" occurred to me as a basis, but D&D dragons have much more personality than the ones in that movie.

How would the dragonborn factor into this setting? Would they be the minions of the Dragons or would they be on the side of the oppressed?

In reply to jkeogh (msg # 10):

There would be some of both stripes. The main upshot is that PCs could be dragonborn, but would likely face dragonborn foes. But any creatures could be allies to the dragons, or oppose or hinder the PCs trying to deal with the dragons.

Well once again, pencil me in! I like your game concepts.

Would you do this one with maps or would you allow us to establish the setting ourselves?

In reply to jkeogh (msg # 12):

No maps. And the focus wouldn't be on the world, really. The world would be generic. I mainly want to see people have to deal with dragons, dragon lairs, dragon raids, etc.

Gotcha, Flying can be hard to keep track of, but I'm sure we can work it all out :)

Here's a hypothetical for the group. How viable would a five-man band be if the party lacked a defender? I've got a possible set-up with specific characters: an artificer, cleric, wizard, barbarian, and rogue. So two leaders and two strikers, but no defender. They should be great at mitigating damage (and recovering), plus dishing out damage, but they'd have little aggro control.

Would it be viable over the long term?

In reply to LonePaladin (msg # 15):

It depends a bit on how they are built. Clerics can be a little Defender-y. And, if a wizard is built heavy on the Controller side of things, it can help to funnel damage where you need it to you so that the leaders can deal with it...

I was thinking the two leaders would be more like a trapsmith (for the artificer) and a pacifist healer (for the cleric). I have a very specific set of builds in mind here, just getting opinions on its viability.

I think it could work. The barbarian could end up "tanking" for the party.

In reply to LonePaladin (msg # 17):

If you have more specific builds in mind, perhaps more detail about them could help us know what is going on in the party and if it's viable?

I can say from experience that the Pacifist Healer concept is interesting for a while, but when played straight it can get frustrating for both the player and his party.  If you're looking at pre-constructing characters, you should make sure there's something else about that one that is interesting to play as/with.

Okay, here's the full elevator pitch. You should be able to figure out the source.

---

Five unlikely companions band together in the aftermath of the Last War, intending on finding everything strange and mysterious in Khorvaire — then poking it with a stick to see what happens. They are:

• Red, a warforged artificer, obsessed with building traps to catch monsters. He's the team leader, the head planner.
• Dafannay, an Aerenal elf priestess of the Silver Flame. A wealthy socialite, she's the team's ethical compass, but more often than not they use her for bait.
• Vellama, a gnome wizard. The team's inquisitive, she has encyclopedic knowledge of monsters, and enough divination spells to fill in the gaps.
• Sh'gae, a human barbarian from the Demon Wastes. Used to foraging and hunting, he's become obsessed with all the mass-produced food -- especially sweets -- that civilization has to offer. His search for the perfect snack tends to lead him face-first into trouble.
• Scûb, a longtooth shifter rogue. Sh'gae's childhood friend, his only concerns in life are his friend's well-being, his next meal, and the Big Score.

Driving their earth-elemental-powered carriage, the Conundrum Contraption, they drive all around Khorvaire, investigating monstrous incursions, Quori possession, religious corruption, and hints as to the cause of the destruction of Cyre.

Hahaha! I think I have seen this write up somewhere else on rpol :). I think it could work. It would be funny. Most of their enemies would be old men in costumes right?

Actually, no, I'd mostly play that part straight. There would be plenty of times where something would turn out to be different than what's apparent, but it wouldn't always be someone in a mask.

Why bother with masks when you have changelings?

Well, in that case...combat doesn't seem likely to be a major component of the game anyway, so the combat balance may be less important.

I think it would be a fascinating group to run and would be a very interesting experiment. Somehow the only two characters that appeal to me are Sh'gae and Scub and I can't tell if that's because of my preference for strikers or my personality as told by who you like from the inspiration of this game.

In reply to LonePaladin (msg # 15):

Yes, it would be viable, even if no one did anything to fill in the "gap." I bet they'd be better off focusing on their actual roles than trying to cover for a "missing" role.

I imagine a DM could gin up encounters that would have the group wishing for a defender, but in general, I doubt they'd feel the absence.

I'm probably better off focusing on some of my pressing real-life work right now, but it's also probably good for me to have a creative outlet.

So, is anyone up for running a game? If you have a concept you really want to try as a GM, I want to help you make it work as a player.

For my next game (whenever that might be) I thought I'd take a page from Dungeon World. In that game, a "miss" when attempting something is worth 1 experience point, which is sizeable chunk of what's needed to level. I was thinking about providing experience to the party equal to that of one minion of their level for every missed attack roll (in actual combat, against a known enemy, not just "an invisible foe who might be there"), skill check (within a skill challenge, or otherwise specifically called for by the GM), or saving throw.

I know many people don't mess with experience points at all, and I hear that. I'm not suggesting this for them.

Assuming that tracking this wasn't a burden on anyone involved, how would this sit with you?

I'd like to run a game, and while I don't think I can or want to go full "sandbox" I would like to avoid a "plotted" adventure. My thought is to have a town that is trying to develop and some adventurers from that town who need it to develop both for its own survival and for their ability to develop. It's beset by several concurrent problems (usually of the dangerous monster variety, but not always) which they can choose to deal with or not. These problems will have other problems driving them, and might drive each other to a degree. It will be a never ending struggle for the PCs and the town, but the PCs can pursue goals that give them access to more options and services as they enable the city to grow.

Any interest?

In reply to engine (msg # 28):

I like that you are trying to establish roots with this game and meaning beyond go fight monsters. I would participate for sure. Now, i know you don’t prefer maps, but is that just for combat or would you refrain from using a map to visualize the town?

In reply to jkeogh (msg # 29):

Thanks. I find I'm tired of characters coming to a town and being expected to save it when they have no real connection to it.

I myself probably wouldn't bother drawing a map. For one thing, I have no particular skill with it. For another, I tend to find maps overly restricting; every situation that arises has to be considered in terms of relative locations and lines of sight and how far sound might travel, etc. It's hard for me to see an upside, though I'm open to the idea that there is some.

I'd be willing to have a post or a thread that detailed the town to a degree, stating what is in it, and maybe some relative positions, e.g. the keep is being constructed in the middle of town, next to the street with the temples on it, which is on the other side of town from the thieves quarter.

My post in the main Game Proposals thread landed with a thud and I can't bump that post. Do you think I should just launch the game so I can bump a Player's Wanted post?

Yes. I never saw your post in the Game Proposals thread.

In reply to jkeogh (msg # 31):

I made it yesterday. It's still near the top.

Okay, I'll think about just launching the game. Thanks.

Just a bit of a warning, but in my experience the campaigns that are based on the concept of defending a home tend to need more plot intervention from the GAM rather than less. It runs into the problem that Star Trek had with DS9... it's easy to explain conflict when the heroes are going out into the unknown, but it's harder to justify the adventure when the heroes sit at home waiting for the adventure to come to them.

In reply to Godzfirefly (msg # 33):

Thanks for the advice. My thought was that the threats that "come to" the town would generally be ones that the PCs can't solve on site. While there might be some need to defend it from direct attack, if something is undermining the town buildings, turning the well water to stinking slime, or causing all the icons in the temples to turn black and weep blood, then the PCs are going to be asked to head out and deal with the source of the problem.

I have no intention of recreating the first Diablo, but that's sort of the model I'm thinking of: the outside world is causing problems for the town and the solution to them lies elsewhere. Even the folks on DS9 had to hop on the Defiant a lot in the later seasons, even if the wormhole came into play less and less.

Even if the issue is just monster attacks, something elsewhere could be causing them to increase in frequency and severity. The PCs can stay at home and fight an ever rising tide (and maybe even outlast it) or venture forth and cut off the source. Either could be fun, so I might not need to decide which course I want the game to take.

I got the above game off the ground, and it's going alright. It's slow enough that I'm considering running another one in parallel.

I'd like to run a game that involves the two things I've rarely seen together in my many years with the game: dungeons, with dragons in them.

There'd be more to it, like finding out where the dungeons are, and some information about them and their denizens, getting to the locations through hostile terrain, and then coping with countermeasures in the lairs to drive out or destroy the dragons. It wouldn't always be necessary to kill everything inside, and it might not always be possible or even helpful. The dragons would be smart and paranoid and resourceful and probably wouldn't just wait to be killed while they're trapped in a room with no means of escape.

That said, I would want there to be fights with dragons. The dragons might not stick around if things are going badly (and maybe the PCs won't either), but my goal is to highlight dragons as fearsome, not as pushovers.

I posted this in the main Game Proposals thread, and I got some feedback, so to address that:

"Countermeasures" would consist of traps, enemies and other challenges that work to either make the lair inhospitable to the PCs, or bring about some goal of the dragon's or both - or that just live in symbiosis with the dragon and have their own agendas. I've spent some time going over the available monsters to find ones that would mesh well with dragons, particularly ones with immunity or resistance to element types, both to stick with a theme and to allow the dragon to use their breath weapon with impunity.

I don't really want a lot of intrigue or any "civilized" groups opposing the PCs, even inadvertently. There are enough dragons that I don't need to use metallic ones, but if I did they wouldn't have anyone's interests in mind except their own. That most (if not all) of the traditionally "good" creatures default to "unaligned" is one of my favorite things about 4th Edition.

I'd probably start at a low level, because that's a little simpler to handle.

 Any interest?

Yup!

(Seriously, can't think of anything more constructive than that right now.)

In reply to LonePaladin (msg # 36):

What he said!

My most recent PBP game having flamed out, I'm thinking about starting a new one.

I was thinking about the one I mention above, with a focus on dragons inside dungeons. I'd dig having a dragon encounter as the first encounter, just to make sure the game featured at least one.

But I'm up for anything that people think they'd be interested in sticking with.

I'm open to starting at levels other than low-Heroic.

I'm open to Eberron and Dark Sun. I could do Forgotten Realms, but people seem particular about how that is handled.

Let's hear what people are up for and let's see if we can put something together with some staying power.

Edit: I'd be up for running a module, if a good one can be recommended. I'm looking at the old Isle of Dread to see if something might be done with that in 4th Edition.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:59, Wed 28 Feb 2018.

[frantic online research follows]

The only 4E reference to the Isle of Dread was in the Manual of the Planes, making it a site in the Feywild.

In 3E, the Isle featured prominently in the Savage Tide AP, in Dungeon issues 142-145; there was an earlier remake/sequel in issue 114 that also placed it formally in Greyhawk (as opposed to its original location in Mystara).

So, really, the Isle would be left almost entirely up to your own interpretation for a 4E conversion.

As for the rest:

• Dragon Hunters: I'm all for that. It doesn't even have to be in dungeons. Give us a full-on hunt, trekking across the frontier, interviewing witnesses/survivors, chasing down minions, fighting our way through to the dragon at the end. Knock-down-drag-out fight in its lair (or a running chase through the terrain of your choice), scoop up its horde, go spend it, repeat.
• Setting: I'm good for anything, though I admit that I'm not a big fan of DS. (That's not saying no.) I like the Realms, but not how they handled it in 4E. Not unless you actually want to extrapolate on the Spellplague and its repercussions.
• Level: I'm flexible.
• Module: Want me to start skimming the ones I have here, see if anything stands out?

I'll look into Savage Tide


True. I mainly like dungeons for the limited choices they provide. I think it's easier to get people to make a choice when there are fewer choices, such as left and right, rather than every point on the compass.


Yes, the spellplague seemed like one of the more interesting aspects of that setting.

What I like about Eberron and dislike about the Forgotten Realms is that it feels a lot more like PCs can be part of events that change the former, but not so much the latter. That is, the Realms seem much more like something people expect to stay as they are in the books (changes between editions notwithstanding). Eberron's canon and development seem less strict.

For anything pre-written that I might run, I'd be interested in finding a way to place it in Eberron.

<quote LonePaladin>Want me to start skimming the ones I have here, see if anything stands out?[/list]
Sure, thanks.

I realized today that part of why I want to run stuff created by my and whatever players I have is that I feel desperate to get away from the idea that 4th Edition is only good for combat, and that combat is just about killing the other side. My preconception about prewritten stuff is that it doesn't do enough to get away from the tiresome aspects of the edition and of the hobby as a whole. I'm just thinking now that the "tiresome stuff" is somehow comforting to people and might engage them more. But that could be a vain hope.

If you're looking over adventures, I'd be most interested in ones that:
Have encounters that involve combat combined with goals that can't necessarily be achieved by killing or capturing the other side, or by getting them to surrender. I have rarely seen this in pre-written stuff. There's one Dungeon Delve encounter that involves a portal to the Elemental Chaos. The PCs can ignore it and focus on the hydra that's in the same room, but the longer they wait, the more demons will come through. The goal is to close the portal, which can, in theory, be done without killing the hydra.

Have skill challenges that are based on the original rules (with the updates) but are combined with combat or other skill challenges (see the hydra encounter I mentioned). Most pre-written stuff featuring skill challenges presents one at a time, as the only thing happening in an encounter. There's usually no reason not to put the best character forward and just throw dice at the challenge, hoping maybe for some good description to make it worthwhile.

Avoid reinstating some of the things that 4th Edition thoughtfully tried to get rid of. Someone suggested an adventure to me and as I was flipping through I saw two stand-alone "gotcha" traps of the sort that both DMGs and a few WotC articles recommend not using.

I'll be honest, I don't know much about the spellplague and would be happy to explore your version of that as opposed to canon.

I'm eager to see what you come up with here :)

I'll keep it in mind.

If the point of the spellplague is about the differences between 3.5 and 4th Edition, then I'm not sure what would be worth doing. If it's a focus of the current world, I'd be more interesting.

Does anyone know if there are any novels that touch on it? I've read a couple of Forgotten Realms books that were, ostensibly, set in 4th Edition, but neither mentioned the spellplague.

In reply to engine (msg # 42):

I know RA Salvatore wrote at least one set of stories where the a strand of the Weave touched Catti-Brie. It's been a long time since I read it, but it gave some detail about the spell plague and it's consequences.  (That book's title was 'The Ghost King')

More recently I've read a few short stories by the same author that touched on how wizards dealt with the change to magic shortly after the spell plague, but they weren't really ABOUT that...they just were set during that time with wizards as main characters.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:47, Thu 01 Mar 2018.

This wiki page does a really good job of summarizing the Spellplague, its causes and effects.

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Spellplague

The novel Plague of Spells, first in the Abolethic Sovereignty series, is set right after the initial decade of the Spellplague, when people are just starting to figure out how to use arcane magic again. (It basically shut down completely in that first decade, so everyone had to start from scratch.) It's an excellent book, and the whole trilogy shows just how damned scary aboleths can be.

The novel Sword of the Gods is a fun read, while you're at it. Demascus is an interesting, quirky character, who shows that you can play a 4E deva without being all stuffy and serious.

In reply to LonePaladin (msg # 44):

I think I read the opening of Sword of the Gods and the last novel in the Abolethic Sovereignty (got it for free at a con).

That link was... informative. I don't think I know enough about the Realms as they were to make sense of much of it. As I understood it from a metagame perspective, it basically accounts for magic being the way it is in 4th Edition, the presence of dragonborn (and maybe a few other races), and the new cosmology. Was there more to in from a game perspective? I'll have to follow a lot of links to really understand the rest of it.

Honestly, I'd never even played in the Realms before 5th edition and its push for stories told in the Realms. So, most of my knowledge comes tangentially from hearing people talk about Drizz't stories and getting free Audible stories set in the Realms.

Since the 5e push to tell stories in the Realms, I've learned A LOT about the Realms from Chris Perkins' streamed games.  Acquisitions Inc transferred to the Realms when they changed editions, and Dice, Camera, Action started there.

In reply to Godzfirefly (msg # 46):

I read the Icewind Dale trilogy, and a few others with Drizzt and his original gang. I didn't feel like that gave me much of an overview. I dabbled in some of the old PC games, but not enough to really get a sense of things. Oh, and I did play Neverwinter Nights and I enjoy Lords of Waterdeep. For what any of that is worth.

Honestly, I think I'd mostly be up for handling it as just a generic setting, but once a person says "Forgotten Realms" it carries a lot of stuff with it.

I wish there were a setting that wasn't described as a planet so much as just plane that was essentially boundless (except when one followed magical guides to its edge). Someplace that could contain a "world" like Eberron, or the Realms, and could involve or even mix them, but which was big enough that one could adventure there without ever feeling the effects from any of those areas.

I want the Realms without all the baggage, I guess.

I dunno about the 4e era of the Realms, but I know that the Realms are encouraged to be played exactly like that right now.  The Sword Coast and adjacent lands have specific baggage, but there's supposed to be a multiverse around it that connects a variety of worlds in the Realms via Sigil.

(Heck, in the most recent session of Acquisitions Inc, the PCs visited a version of WotC HQ where the employees are literally wizards of the literal Pacific coast...and referenced a variety of worlds being connected to the Realms...including Phyrexia.  I know that it may not technically be canon, even with a WotC employee/creator running the game, but neither are our games, so we can run them however we like.)

The point is, WotC is currently encouraging us to consider all D&D worlds (official and Homebrew) to be in the same multiverse...all connected by Sigil.  That includes alternative versions of Faerun, if you like. Or worlds that have Faerun-like organizations without the same cities & characters. Or worlds that just use the same rules and assumptions of Faerun (like Golarion did.) Or any combination you want.

Oh. Thinking about it, it's more like I want to be able to use, say, Waterdeep, or Thay, without having to know huge amounts of the history of that locale or the locales around it.

I think I get to feel like the Realms (and the idea of a multiverse like that) aren't "points of light" enough for me. I like the ability to play as if no one really knows for sure what's over the horizon, or even the next hill. There are stories of a town over there, but who knows if it's still there? Go see.

Some races existed in the setting before, like aasimar, but the geographic changes of the Spellplague -- notably the 'return' of portions of Abeir -- made them more prevalent. There were genasi, for instance, but they were incredibly rare before. Most of the ones present in 4E Realms came from the sections of Abeir that turned up, along with dragonborn and tieflings.

In the Realms, eladrin are basically just an elven subrace, as are the drow.

If asked to pick something for a Realms game, my first answer would probably be a spellscarred genasi swordmage -- y'know, all the stuff they introduced in the FR sourcebook. Just to showcase the Realms-specific content. My other choice would be a drow dark pact warlock, but that particular build (the Slow Poisoner) could be a bit of a hassle for a DM.

As for the setting's outlook, here's my take on each of the major 4E settings and how they relate to PCs.

• Eberron tries to make the PCs Big Damn Heroes, making them larger than life and encouraging them to meddle and stir up trouble. The big movers and shakers (like Kaius III or King Boranel) are strictly in the background, and it's rare for them to actively get involved in the plot.
• The Realms polarizes the story. The novels are all about larger-than-life heroes and direct involvement of deities and world-shaking events, but at the table there's a big emphasis on the ordinary people who get caught up in it. While the Big Heroes (like Elminster and Drizzt) are taking on the massive problems, they're too busy to deal with the small-scale fallout. So the real heroes are the regular people who take up sword and spell to clean up after the big celebrities.
• Dark Sun, on the other hand, has no heroes. The world is bleak, anyone in a position of power is corrupt, and the best anyone can hope for is surviving for a bit longer. Heroism and altruism have to be balanced with pragmatism and a bit of necessary ruthlessness, or the so-called heroes get steamrolled by the greedy and ambitious.

Oh, and speaking cosmologically, Eberron is pointedly NOT connected to other worlds.

That's probably a big part of why Eberron is also not a well-supported 5th edition setting.  ;-)

By the way, that's a very concise and probably accurate view of those 4E settings.  I do have one addition, though...Realms has an interesting history of being about multiple interconnected stories.  That has obviously been turned up to 11 in recent years, but Realms has had a long history of multi-media adaptations that let the developers of the setting include references to characters and events that are somewhere else at roughly the same time.

It's probably the part of the setting I like the best, to be honest...and it's what makes the published adventure books for 5e the first ones that ever tempted me...because they tell a different part of stories that I have seen told from the angles of DDO and publicly played campaigns.  (I know the novels have always had that for Krynn, Greyhawk, etc...but that's less interactive and less simultaneous.)

As for engine's desire to use Waterdeep, Thay, and other setting-specific locations in a 'points of light' type campaign...I say go for it.  There have been PLENTY of near-disasters in the Forgotten Realms setting that could have easily gone a different way.  Just choose one and say it did go a different way.  Tell the players that they're starting in a city on the Sword Coast (or wherever) that survived the disaster, but no one in the city knows what/who/where else survived...or if they survived, whether they are the same as they were before.  The city probably isn't self-sufficient after the disaster (isolated cities rarely are,) so the city needs someone brave to go out and learn what's left out there before the storehouses are empty and their families start starving.  This way, you only need to learn the details of one city in the setting, you don't have to learn too much about it (since they won't be present in that location while they adventure,) and you can include as much or as little of the setting as you want just by saying that part survived.

(I'm going to claim that wanting to understand settings falls under "advice.")

What's with the two parallel worlds? Was one of them the "standard" Realms, or did people play in both worlds? Was the "sundering" part of a change to the game, like a new edition, or something in the books or what?


As I understand it dragonborn didn't strictly exist anywhere in the Realms until they were retconned with 4E. Right?

I always wondered about genasi. I'd never heard of them until 4E, so I assumed they were a major part of the Realms that I just hadn't heard about. Did they form a major part of one of the video games or the books. Tieflings, as I understand it, were brought to prominence with Planescape, so I tend to assume that new races generally stem from some iconic source.


Hm, I don't know anything about it. A drow dark pact warlock seems like an okay choice, but if a character is particularly gimmicky in combat I do tend to feel like it distracts from the challenge and themes of the game.


I knew that about Athas, but I'd never heard that about Eberron. Fine by me. I feel like I can bring elements across from other settings, but it's harder to remove elements.

Insofar as adventures in the worlds are about the fates of those worlds and the people in them, it's a bit odd for me to think of anything going on beyond them.

In Dark Sun, if anyone could leave, they would, and if anyone could come it with anything even moderately powerful they could have a pretty good run, for all the good it would do them - they'd still be in Athas. So, there's no point, storywise, in it being connected to other worlds.

Eberron is the name of the setting and of the planet, which is not really the case with any other setting. I'm not sure what Paragon or Epic play in Eberron should be like, since that's when characters start travelling the planes, or at least dealing with extraplanar threats. I guess it could be about Xoriat or Dal Quor finally making a move. But I feel like everything needs to move towards Eberron.

Only the Realms seem inherently like they can and should involve extraplanar adventures, mainly because it seems like a static hodgepodge. It was designed not to change or go anywhere without a driving force like organized play or an edition change. In the intro adventure in the 4e setting guide, the PCs are tracking some goblins who stole a ritual; at the end, they face down the goblins, but it turns out that their ritual was a fake and could never work. I felt like that sort of said it all: you can have adventures, but they won't really matter.

I quietly suspect is also has to do with the somewhat "non-traditional" nature of Eberron that people seemed to push back against. 5th Edition seemed to want to pull back from anything after the turn of the century.


That's another thing about the setting I find daunting, because I feel like it's expected. Even in the churned up 4e Realms, I imagine people who came to a Realms game I was running would want their knowledge to pay off, for me to put in references for them to get.

(Actually, what I'd dig doing would be to understand more about all these settings - in which all of the settings were in the pre-history of Athas and the PCs explore their ruins.)


That is actually almost the exact same premise that I just tried to run, though with a non-specific setting and city.

RE: Dragonborn - In 3.5 Dragonborn was a template that any character of any race could adopt after a ritual that involved a "rebirth" as a Dragonborn. It granted you a +2 to Con and a -2 to Dex and it gave you darkvision or a breathweapon or wings that could glide...

4E made them more prevalent.

In reply to jkeogh (msg # 54):

Huh. Good to know. It seems like 4th Edition's contribution was to make them a race in their own right.

In reply to engine (msg # 55):

More accurately, 4e (and later, 5e) took a variety of similar-but-not-the-same, humanoid, dragon-like creatures and consolidated them into a single stat and lore.  The 'dragonborn' that jkeogh mentioned were one of many things called dragonborn or something similar...including draconians from krynn, half-dragons, dragon-kin from Faerun, and the Dragonborn of Bahamut (which are what jkeogh is talking about).  In the end, though...none of them are quite what 4e or 5e ended up using.



I relate strongly to this.  I already have a lot of trouble with players that memorize statbooks and try to correct my use of monsters and spells mid-stream.  Having to deal with players making the same kinds of comments about my setting too is a massive headache.  It's the primary reason I put forth the effort of creating my own setting for when I DM.

Still, I've learned a few tricks over the years to deal with this (including my favorite, "Yeah, your character notices that difference too and thinks its weird; there's gotta be some reason for that discrepancy"...which gives me enough time to make up a story-based reason for later that makes it look like I made the change on purpose.)  So, I feel more confident about the idea of jumping into DMing in a setting that I might not know the most about, now.  I still haven't done it, but I'm no longer vehemently opposed to it, at least.

For me, I think I'd just openly have to request help, probably from the outset. Far from planning the adventure in advance, I'd pick some aspect of the world that interested me and ask the players what is important to them about that aspect and which of its ties back to the rest of the world they'd like to focus on, and how we could make it work with the rules we want to use (i.e. 4th Edition).

But I do like the Eberron approach, which I probably lean on a tad too heavily: just about anything the characters think they know might just be something they either have wrong or have misunderstood.

I got a copy of the Keep on the Borderlands remake that was used for encounters. I'm familiar with the original module. Is the remake worth reading, let alone trying to recruit for? Given that it was for Encounters, I expect a lot of kill-em-all encounters.

Okay, history time.

In very ancient times, there was one world, called Abeir-Toril. Primitive, except for the elves, and the gods were fighting with the Primordials. Imagine elementals turned up to 11 then mixed with each other. Anyway, things got really bad and the chief god Ao split the world in two.

One part, called Abeir, got about a third of the landmass, all the primordials, and a smattering of other races (though, notably, no elves except for drow). And lots of dragons. So they had a lot of base-level elemental stuff, and lots of dragons. Did I mention a lot of dragons?

Anyway, the rest -- Toril -- got most of the land, all the elves, and all the gods. The two worlds coexisted, with Abeir being in a sort of pocket dimension that was physically in the same place as Toril, but otherwise cut off from it.

Now, the Realms has always been notable for having portals leading to other places. Some portals just bridge two spots on the map (like, say, one leading from a hilltop near Neverwinter to a similar hill in Cormyr). Others bridge elemental or astral planes (like the one in Myth Drannor that linked directly to one of the Nine Hells). Still others lead to completely alien worlds -- there was a persistent one that made a two-way link between Mulhorand and Earth's Egypt around 2000 BC. Seriously, they even had copies of the Egyptian gods.

Anyway, when the goddess of magic, Mystra, was assassinated by two other gods, this temporarily destabilized arcane magic in Toril. This had happened before, except this time one of the assassins had been secretly installing a double of the magic-stabilizing thing that drew from the Plane of Shadow, and it went haywire too. This made a big explosion of wild magic that spread across the world, then went through the numerous portals into every plane of existence, and eventually reached Abeir.

When it did, it basically screwed up everything there too, to the point of grabbing entire landmasses and forcibly swapping them with sections of Toril. That's how dragonborn came into the Realms, and how genasi became much more common.

Whew!

Okay, I thought I'd described this before. The Slow Poisoner is a character concept I've had for a long time, that would be a total headache for a DM at a live table -- because its primary focus is ongoing damage. I'd worked out a way to make a Dark Pact warlock that could eventually tag people with mixed poison/necrotic ongoing, penalize their saves, hurt them for making their saves, and make the effects viral.

Not really a heroic character concept, as it implies a mindset that enjoys inflicting slow, lingering harm on people. Which, really, says "drow" to me.

Thanks!

Does the fact of the two worlds enter into gameplay at all, prior to 4th Edition? Like, could a party be from Abeir, and have all their adventures there? From what I understand, it's quite a bit less "Earthlike" than Toril. I don't recall seeing game or book art that mentioned a difference. Anyone have any they can point me towards?


Yes, I think you did. I'd forgotten. I think I'd probably prefer that players not bring concept characters like that to my games. I get concerned about corner cases that the designers didn't consider. I guess I'm still smarting over the last optimized brawler fighter I encountered.

It was hinted at, in passing, in one of the original 1E books. Up until the 4E cataclysm, it was never brought up again.

But then, the setting has a lot of secrets that are hinted at here and there, then resurface years later. For instance, in the original books the sage Elminster has a manservant with him named Lhaeo. He was the source of long-suffering sighs, practical advice, and the occasional but of a joke.

Until he learned that his real name was Haedrak Rhindaun III, and that he was the last living heir to the kingdom of Tethyr. Something that had been hinted, but never spelled out, in the early books -- and they waited until late during the 2E stuff to bring it back up.

That makes it substantially more interesting to me, and seems like it would make it easier to DM for Forgotten Realms veterans. It seems like an aspect of the setting that they can't be closely familiar with (outside of what's in the 4e books).


I can respect that. I don't know that I can work with it, but I can respect it.

Here's the thing: you don't have to use any of the existing lore, you can just make up your own thing. If you want to use it, you'll have a much easier time of it nowadays thanks to the semi-official FR wiki. It's pretty thorough.

But you can easily make up your own stuff, even involving the Big Damn Heroes. I once made up a high-level campaign built around the rivalry between two of the most powerful wizards in the Realms. Essentially, I took the fact that Elminster had this little pocket dimension socked away with a spell that would automagically send him there in a crisis -- then had his enemy Manshoon do some magical research to make that little dimension's access one-way. So all he had to do was put the Old Sage in enough danger.

I made up this elaborate scheme that not only involved Elminster, but required heroic intervention (thus the PCs). I even managed to find a way to contact Ed Greenwood, the setting's creator, and asked him to nit-pick the plot I'd worked up. He gave me some harsh, but fair advice, and added that it could possibly be book-worthy if filled out more. (I should have taken that as a cue to try writing.)

Much later -- like fifteen to twenty years -- I got to go to a convention and met Mr. Greenwood there completely at random. As I was introducing myself, I told him about that e-mail exchange we'd had regarding the "trap Elminster" plot... and halfway through recounting it he finished the description for me. He remembered the story from that far back.

Anyway, point is, if you use the Realms don't be afraid to break from what's canonical. It's not like we're just recreating one of the novels and have to get it verbatim.

In reply to LonePaladin (msg # 63):

That's a cool story.

engine, you mentioned in another thread that you don't care for the elven/eladrin subraces presented in the Neverwinter book. Can you elaborate?

In reply to LonePaladin (msg # 65):

At least one of the options for elves in the Neverwinter Campaign Setting seemed hugely overpowered to me. Something about being able to use Perception for initiative checks without much downside. Seemed a little preposterous to me, but maybe I missed something. Maybe it was just the player using one in a game I was in.

Why does Forgotten Realms seem to go crazy with the elven subraces? Is that key to the setting? Eberron has some distinct elves, but they're all left mechanically the same.

I actually wish Eberron had made a clearer distinction in the rules, given how different Aerenal elves are from Valenar. But there should also be subraces for halflings -- either human-integrated urban halflings or nomadic dinosaur-riders from the Talenta plains. I know when I was making a Pathfinder conversion, I used the optional racial traits to do just that.

Anyway. The Realms has always had several elven subraces, all the ones listed in the Neverwinter book. In 1E there really wasn't much distinction mechanically, but that was normal for the rules -- elves were elves, period. 2E started expanding on it, suggesting different bonuses and options and such, and 3E made it a fixed thing.

The way they divided it in 4E actually works, since eladrin come across as more, well, civilized and educated, while 4E elves seem more primal and wild. So it makes sense that the eladrin subraces are Moon and Sun, and the elf subraces are Wood and Wild. I'd actually rule that the original races ('eladrin' and plain 'elf') are not available in the Realms. Also, both races -- plus drow -- are all elves, so some of their options may be interchangeable. (For instance, a feat strictly for eladrin might be made available for elves. Case-by-case.)

The same goes for dwarves -- Gold Dwarves and Shield Dwarves are the most common types, so I'd consider disallowing 'vanilla' dwarves.

In reply to LonePaladin (msg # 67):

Me, I don't see my value in the subdivision. Just gives more opportunity for accidental brokenness, one way or another. I like how Eberron's elf elves are all the same mechanically, but would have very different personalities. The options given for a choice of ability scores really seems to be all that's necessary, and I actually even question that. I saw it mainly as a sop to people who won't play a character that doesn't have a 20 in their main stat, so I take a dim view of it. The key upside I saw was a nod to concepts like the psi-forged.

I was thinking about trying to run (at least parts of) Scales of War. Then I got to thinking that maybe I should look into trying to convert and run Red Hand of Doom for 4th Edition.

I probably won't have time to get into it before the summer. Would anyone be interested in advising me on that? Advisors would still be invited to play if they didn't feel it had been too spoiled for them. I probably wouldn't try converting it all at once, but as things went along.

I actually don't imagine I'd get very far into it, as I gather it's a pretty massive module, but it might be fun just to try it out, since it's considered a classic module.

I have nothing personally on Red Hand of Doom. I'm to understand it was alright, but not outstanding. I do, however, have extensive notes on Scales of War, it's pseudo-sequel, because I tried running it IRL. Personal time stopped me, but I made it about two or three in before life stopped us.

And that is an adventure series you want to read in advance, and modify. Some of the design decisions and story decisions are absolutely boneheaded, as in playing the game "What Where They Thinking?" levels of dumb...especially one moment that seems to believe player character groups will just up and surrender without a fight to, well, actually anything to be honest with you. But they keep all their weapons after the fact while the BBEG monologues to them, because...reasons?

Seriously, though. Don't be afraid to tweak the adventure, and don't be afraid to use advance knowledge to change the past.

Oof, yeah. That doesn't sound well-thought out. That, overall, is probably my main issue with modules: the assumption of how things will go. I mean, they can't plan for everything, but the writers should know enough to know that it's hard to get a specific outcome from combat and stay plausible.


I'll be honest, I am afraid. I don't believe I could read the whole adventure before running it, unless it's super-compelling reading. I should probably start with smaller adventurers, things that can only go so far awry if I modify things.

In reply to engine (msg # 71):

Red Hand of Doom always seemed interesting to me but I have never made it past the first little bit.

I would highly recommend the Paizo Adventure Paths if you want to convert something.  You may want to skip Kingmaker though

If you decide to go the simpler route and run Scales of War, don't think too hard about the maps. It's something I tend to obsess over, especially when a map is three-dimensional -- I usually try to recreate them in SketchUp to see how things line up, and more often than not I run into problems.

For instance, in the dungeon of the first Scales of War module, there's a part where an open pit drops into another room. They describe the drop as being something like twenty feet, but if you actually plot out the map it comes out to something like fifty. One of the later maps looks really good on paper, but if you try to create what they're describing as a 3-D thing it just doesn't line up right.

In an older adventure, one from the Age of Worms campaign, there's this little fort in the wilderness that's being attacked, and when I made it 3-D I realized that it'd be impossible to defend. I did end up with a really neat looking recreation of the BBEG's tower at the very end, though -- I even made an animated fly-by to show it off to the players when they got to it.

So sometimes I get rewarded for wanting to extrude the game maps. Undermountain lines up really well, and there's a mid-level 4E adventure set in a crumbling building that looks really neat in three dimensions.

In reply to LonePaladin (msg # 73):

All in all it tends to cement my preference to avoid maps entirely, or at least make the connections between them vague, rather than having them crammed onto one page. King of the Trollhaunt Warrens has a crowded little cave system and eventually I decided that it made more sense and was more fun if the rooms were hundreds of yards of twisty passages apart, and all the passages had unworked side passages.

I like the idea of putting them in SketchUp, though.

Yeah, I've been doing that pretty much since SketchUp came out. I once had a full map of the entire first level of Undermountain. ALL OF IT. It was a beast of a map, but everything lined up. Heck, I'd even bothered to include wall thickness where it mattered, and had the doorways the right size ('cause the original book bothered to tell you how big they were).

I believe someone even took my map and ported it into Unity to make an interactive model you could 'walk' through. Not sure if it's still around.

Remember the Caves of Chaos? B2, Keep on the Borderlands? The map looks okay in 3-D, until you include a contour map of the ravine itself -- then none of the entrances look right. C'est la vie.

Anyway, if you run across a multi-level map and want to see it extruded, let me know.

I'm looking for one or two players who would be interested in joining an in-progress game of The Slaying Stone, a standalone adventure. I'm generally open to any race and class, but I would like to suggest that, since the party is in a town run by "monstrous" races that choices like kobold and goblin would be more appropriate in this game than in some others. So, if you've wanted the chance to play such a character (while still being, at worst, "unaligned" and still able to cooperate with the party) you might enjoy this game.

More traditional characters are, of course, welcome.

At present, we have a swordmage, an invoker and a cleric.

Are you still looking Engine?

In reply to jacktannery (msg # 77):

Not at this time, thanks. I may have something else in the works next year.