Review: DDI: Eye on Dark Sun: Aldaarich

Review of DDI Article: Eye on Dark Sun: Aldaarich

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/dueods/201102eods

I've never been a huge fan of the Dark Sun Campaign Setting. Yeah, I think it's a great concept, and I'm sure the folks who adventure in Athas love it, but it's not my cup of tea. I've always been more into Dragonlance and The Forgotten Realms; call me a traditionalist, I suppose, but that's how I like my D&D. I have yet to pick up any of the 4th Edition Dark Sun products except for the Free RPG Day offering last summer. 

That being said, I loved this article. It details an area that is far enough removed from the areas detailed in the Dark Sun Campaign Setting that it can be easily dropped into any world. And an intriguing place it is! The ruler is a paranoid-schizophrenic type, and a nasty level 20 sorcerer at that. The main city is a prison; none of its people ever leave, and no one is allowed entrance. Its people are all infected with the King's madness. 

The article also fleshes out a few of the local military leaders, and gives DMs a good starting point to build some intrigue-heavy plotlines. No one in Aldaarich trusts anyone, and that should definitely be a theme of any adventure here. 

This is definitely a terrifying place, and I can't wait to send my players there! Like I said before, this is the kind of place that could easily be dropped into any campaign with very little, if any, modification. This kind of article is the reason I keep my D&D Insider account active. 

The Legend of Zelda: A Railroady Sandbox

One of the things that the Legend of Zelda video games have always done very well is create the illusion of the sandbox, while railroading the player along the prescribed storyline. It was the first video game that allowed for open-ended exploration (some twenty years before Grand Theft Auto, I might add) and had a save feature. Basically the idea is that the player has a big area to explore, but can't explore further until the dungeon is conquered and a MacGuffin is acquired, which in turn gives the player the ability to explore new areas and find the next dungeon. 

I know I spent countless hours in every Zelda iteration just running around, trying to get a handle on the world that was available, and the resultant joy in having new areas to explore once I had the mechanical means to do so was always one of the best parts of the game. This is obviously a tradition I want to continue and draw upon for my Legend of Zelda 4e game with my kids, but I think the lessons learned here are applicable to any DM cooking up a homebrewed world. 

Start with an area big enough to explore, and with some minor treasure to pick up, but make sure the players know there is a bigger world out there. Facilitate more exploration by giving them a mechanical means to do so. In LoZ, this meant acquiring bombs or the hookshot to get to new places. In more traditional D&D, this might mean clearing out the gnolls that control the pass through the mountains, or eliminating the necromancer in the old tower deep in the forest that keeps sending undead to kill the lumberjacks. 

One thing that made the exploration so great was that persistence, curiousity, and cleverness was regularly rewarded with tangible benefits. Pieces of heart, bottles, bug-catching net, etc, that either granted additional prowess or opened up new options. This is definitely something that DMs should include in their games, especially as it rewards exploration and role-playing! 

What do you think? Are there any video game tropes you've used to good effect in D&D? 

Newbie Award! Holy Crapola Batman!

Newbie Award! 

http://gothridgemanor.blogspot.com/2011/02/2-8-11-newbie-blogger-award.html

Gothridge Manor just gave me his Newbie Old School Blogger Award, and it is very much appreciated! Thanks to everyone who came over here from that site to check things out, and all the new followers! While I play 4e, I love my old-school games too, and I will try to put up system-neutral material for use in any game. I'm not an edition warrior and you won't see any nerdrage here, and I won't get sucked into any of those kinds of arguments. 

I have a number of on-going projects I'm detailing here in this blog. My Islands in the Sky campaign setting, my 4e Legend of Zelda houserules and setting, the ongoing Pack of Gnolls series, and my D&D the CCG project. More projects will probably go up in time. I'll also do play reports once actual play actually commences (hopefully soon!). There will be some random reviews and some looks back at some of my old-school books. Comments are always welcome and appreciated. I am thrilled to be a part of the D&D blogosphere and I hope my contributions see some use in your home games! 

Islands in the Sky: Verisimilitude

Okay, so this whole "Islands in the Sky" campaign setting confounds my sense of verisimilitude, purely on account of resource logistics and management. The very nature of these earthmotes is to isolate; each Island is its own little world, connected only by the arrival and departure of airships. 

A number of questions quickly arise. First is a question of consumption that I have yet to find a satisfactory answer to: how much land is needed for a thousand people to survive off? As in, how much food must they grow? What other resources do they require? With such a limited amount of land available, is it possible for people to thrive in any way? Or does society fall into a survival of the toughest type of existence, due to the scarcity of resources? Seafood would obviously be pretty important, as would having airships to get down to the ocean in order to fish. 

What about communication? At what point do magical means of communication in a fantasy setting become farcical? Obviously, it would be silly to have cell phone or star trek type communicators. But what about something like a weekly newsletter that gets dropped off in town squares? That would be more appropriate to the fantasy feel while still allowing for plenty of communication between islands, although the islands are still dependent on airships with this idea. 

So, if our little societies get most of their food from the sea (and some that they shoot out of the sky), and most of their communication comes from delivered newsletters, this leaves one most important, supreme resource: the airship. 

So let's put some Gnolls on some airships! Pirate Gnolls! Ahoy matey! 

Old School Inspiration

So I started looking through my old AD&D 2e books today, just for kicks, and one of the things I came across that I had always thought was cool was the Character Kits from the Skills and Powers book. Now, I know the Player's Option books are pretty much universally derided as being too prone to power-gamer min/max abuse, but I don't really care. I was always more interested in the story possibilities inherent in each of the kits, and I think they can be exploited to good effect in 4e. 

In Dark Sun, we were introduced to the concept of Character Themes, and the Skills and Powers Kits fit the bill quite well for more homebrewed Themes. Obviously, themes should be appropriate for the world they come from. For instance, in my Islands in the Sky campaign, the first theme I would want to introduce would be something concerning the airships. Just looking at the Players Option list, this opens up the following: Mariner, Pirate, Smuggler and Swashbuckler. These kits all speak to possibilities inherent in the nature of airships. 

A lot of the kits seem like they could very easily fit into any campaign. Things like Merchant, Peasant Hero, Rider, Outlaw, and Spy would be common character types. 

A number of these kits have become their own class in 4e! Assassin and Barbarian are the most obvious. The Cavalier is an Essentials Paladin build. Gladiator is already a theme in Dark Sun. Sharpshooter is basically a ranger build, and Animal Master is basically the Essentials Druid Sentinel. 

Now to start coming up with Encounter powers for these new themes... The original kits only gave players a bunch of suggestive fluff for their character, a benefit and a hindrance. I guess the idea was that the kits, if allowed in a game, would balance themselves out by having a benefit and a hindrance. Regardless, it's going to take some creative thinking in a lot of cases to come up with some encounter powers to give these themes! 

Review: DDI: Windswept Lord

Review of DDI Article: Windswept Lord

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/drfe/201101kord

Windswept Lord is an excellent article specifically about the god Kord's relationship with the Dwarven race. The first page is all mythical background and fluff, further exploring the gods' myriad connections and history in the Points of Light setting. 

After that, we get some usable goodies: a divine boon, a new magic weapon, and a reagent, all flavored for dwarves with Kord's blessing. There is also a new background, the Clan of Kord, which is basically a clan for dwarven orphans and ne'er-do-wells, 

Overall, in four pages you get a whole lot of fluff and plenty of usable crunch. Dungeon and Dragon magazines have recently scaled back their schedule of articles to give themselves more "flexibility" with when they put things out. This Channel Divinity article is a great example of why that decision was a good idea, as this is a very well-written article that had something usable for any player of a dwarf, and any DM with a dwarf in the party. I know in the last couple of weeks we've seen fewer DnD Insider articles, and some have been pushed back, but if this is a sign of what is to come, then I am all for it. Don't get me wrong; I loved the monthly content calendar and used it frequently. That is definitely missed. But this is one of the better articles I've seen in a while. In fact, most of the stuff I've been seeing since that change took effect has been top-notch. Keep up the good work, D&D Insider!

A Pack of Gnolls on Dinosaurs

So, what's scarier than a slavering, bloodthirsty, 'roided-out pack of gnolls? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

A slavering bloodthirsty 'roided-out pack of gnolls riding dinosaurs, that's what! 

I think this Pack of Gnolls would be most appropriate in the 4e published Eberron setting, where "behemoths" (aka dinosaurs) are common enough critters that barbarian halflings ride them around the Talenta Plains. 

A clan of gnolls that has trained a number of dinosaurs to be mounts and pack animals would be a force to be reckoned with as they travelled across the plains. They would undoubtedly butcher whole tribes of halflings and use their skulls to drink their blood. Nasty stuff like that. Because gnolls are evil, you know. 

Come to think of it, this clan of dino-riding gnolls may get its own Island in the Sky...