The Campaign Builder's Guild

I've never played or read anything about White Wolf with exception of Exaulted. Which is a POS, seriously.

It has a terrible backbone for the way they handle the mechanics and combat resolution, and the world they present is way, way over the top. It's definitely "inspired", and not in a good way - it seeths of Westernized anime "creep"/fanwank, similar to Book of Nine Swords but to a whole different level.

- Periphery ("outer circle") - call it the "path of the left hand" for the more esoteric, periphery amongst scientists
- Physos (Greek physis, 'nature')
- Forcas (based on Formicarius, written to discuss witchcraft in the 14th century)

I want to play a male level 39 basement dweller equipped with a female Night Elf rogue!

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawI keep hearing people say they don't like thing X because it isn't realistic or just in some way breaks some sort of logic.  And this is starting to confuse me:

What do people like so much about the realistic or the logical?  Why do people hate unrealistic and illogical things so much?

Take for instance common fantasy tropes (oh, say dragons in dungeons). If it's believable, then its logical and I can suspend disbelief.

I am just reading through this now. Suffice to say, this is right up my alley. I like what I am reading thus far!

Some cultures see cannibalism as evil and wrong. Some tribes eat their enemies to absorb their memory, and even their own family members in tribute to their ancestors. Hell, Christians take the sacriment, which is the literal/aliteral flesh and blood of their god.

Ultimately, why is it even necessary to categorize what good and evil is? Gamemasters are mostly looking for a way to collar their players and hold them accountable for their actions. What really needs to be discussed is morality, with standards set by culture, NOT by character creation rules.

Fly loose and free, I say. Alignment restrictions are antiquated; a sacred cow that should be put to pasture. Why not have players create a character personality write-up without hard, rule-based restrictions?

The more "traditional" dungeons I've had in my game were cities buried beneath earth and rock. The halls of these "dungeons" were nothing more than the old city streets, the chambers are old buildings. Earth and sand had settled and hardened into the areas, giving the appearance of what would be at first sight assumed to be artificially crafted to fit the standard dungeon, but were in actually the ruins of a city buried by the ravages of time and spells.

I am not a huge fan of science fiction. However, should I ever had written a campaign based on sci-fi, I'd adopt Mass Effect. It's chocked with background information, and a very concise universe without going off the deep end.

If not Mass Effect, then a Phantasy Star universe based on PS2.

Like Vreeg, I am not one for brevity. The sheer amount of material I have on my wiki makes it entirely impossible to post here at the CBG. Give me some of your thoughts on the key conceits and the city of Kahabro if you can.

Any reviews would be greatly appreciated! My post/discussion thread is here - http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?28540

I would recommend naming your system SILK - make an acronym out of it. Are there any notable personalities or gods in your world you can throw at us? That may help, too.

Nope, never ever ever. It's silly, never pulled off right and can have severe game-altering effects that can be highly abused.

Quote from: CthulhuOkay. So I have begun my campaign and my group has learned of a dragon that lives off in the mountains not far from the village they are at. Cliche-ness aside I need some help. In my campaign I decided that dragon's are not restricted to alignment by type, but then I thought, "Why should all dragons be from a specific species? Why can't all dragons just be dragons?" So I was wondering if anyone else has tried this and/or has any advice on how well it works. My main concern is that my players will find it to far-flung from previous D&D sessions.

You want to really change up what makes up your dragon's stats?

[size=36]Make It Immortal[/size]
no, seriously...make it unkillable.

Instead of having the players engage it in a hackfest of HP damage, spells and the like, make it killable only by using landscape. Meaning, they have to "position" the dragon under a dangerous precipice, so that the Wizard's Lightning Bolt can strike the rocks and cause them to fall on top of it.

Perhaps the dragon has no wings, but lives dangerously close to the edge of a cliff. What if the players were able to render it unconscious and drag it to the edge of the cliff, to die a perilous death upon impact atop the mountains below?

Maybe your dragon lives deep in a cave, riddled with ice stalagtites. Loud noises cause the stalagtites to shake, and every roar the dragon takes in pain(after being delt at least 35 damage in one hit) causes one of the pinnacles of ice to strike it, in order to pin it to the ground.

What if instead your dragon didn't have a breath weapon, but breathed shards of bone and blood that burned and boiled? Maybe it has a "critical" weakness, like ice? What if they forced the dragon into a lake and used Otiluke's Freezing Sphere to trap it like an icecube in the waters, only to later float downstream off of the edge of an endless waterfall into the very heart of the earth itself?

Perhaps the dragon has an Achille's Heel, that can only be found upon the very tip of it's prehensile tail. Only by striking this pinpoint, will it render the serpent unable to move or breath "insert breathweapon here". Maybe they can pin it to the ground, rendering the entire thing useless with a magical silver-tipped spear? It could then become an attraction for all to see from the countryside, about how they can torment the dragon by pelting it with rotten fruit and otherwise for eternity (which can lead to a dearth of adventured protecting the site, cohercing the thing into total submission, perhaps it decides to charm someone to find a legendarily-strong man to remove the spear?).

There is more than one way to skin a cat...err, dragon - that can make your game MUCH more interesting than "hack, slash, steal its loot". ;)

Cheers~

Welcome to the forums!

Your setting sounds strikingly similar to mine. I don't use demiraces whatsoever (ethnic variants of humans only), and the primary conceits of my game revolve around ethnicity, politics, commerce and the fall of the monarchy with rise to provincial lords.

The Witcher is a great analogy to make, as it carries some very mature themes that aren't often explored in traditional RPGs.

Here's my suggestion -
I would start with two countries; one that is a commercial juggernaut with a nautical locale and an older, landlocked nation that gave the world the secret of steel but has begun to crumble from within due to a vast civil war that erupted between the nobility and the peasant uprise. The peasants are being fueled by propaganda from the nautical country to rise against their oppressors (and since they control the grain, they control the coin). Serfs revolt against their "soft" masters who's name is built upon their labors for generations. Old, squabbling noble houses have given reign to cynicism and comfort, which empowers the serfs to rise (as that the nobles have isolated themselves, even in the crumbling cities they dwell within). Amongst the serfs, smaller, provincial warlords have begun to arise and cobbled together levies against the nobility. These warlords give rise to a new class; you can almost go the route of freedom fighters who employ terrorist tactics (setting fire to grainaries, poisoning fields and assassinating key targets via guerilla warfare).

Meanwhile, in the nautical country their warships have been struck by privateers of a third, emerging island-nation far off the map. The privateers could be remnants of an older, cast-off civilization that originally founded the nautical nation, but were ran off by the natives (think the founding of America).

With that in mind, you've got politics and war. Now, you need to interject some sort of strong religious presence (perhaps the nautical nation is similar to Italy or is a theocracy born from virtue) to really shake things up. Ethnic cleansing of the privateer raiders, raids along the smaller chains of islands that make up the privateer's country or even internment camps where the nautical nation is now enslaving the privateers as a "slave class", mirroring the ancient nation (giving rise to politically-funded slavery).

Cheers~

An often-overlooked part of the first chapter in the 4e D&D book covers personality traits, which works realms better than the shoddy alignment system.

Personally, I don't use alignment in my games. Players tell me during the character creation process how they want their characters to be, and play from there. I don't "penalize" alignment deviation, or personality deviation. I trust my players to act in character. The only thing I penalize is metagaming at the table.

Quote from: Vreeg's Coachwhip.I like the idea and the concept.
Looking at the Well of Souls, I might look at the idea of him gaingin power and being partially lost to this twisted mirror plane.

Now, even after reading through it and the religion, I don't know who rules in the Well of Souls.  That will helps me understand who might be tempting him while pulling him closer.

The Well of Souls is where all gods dwell, although they do not take shape whatsoever. They are personified by their worshippers, but are truly nothing more than basic ideals deified. The Well of Souls is a place of intense power, akin to the Shadowfell in 4e in that the Hurmasti (living dead) take shape and dwell spiritually within the Well of Souls while taking physical shape in Deismaar. Belief is power, and if enough people believe it can shape and mold the world around them (ala Planescape but less in your face, secret of the multiverse sort of thing). It, in a sense, is both Heaven and Hell mirroring the living world. Death is seen as a passge into another life. Although the tenants of faith enforce the idea of ultimate judgement by the Custodian (the lady of life and death), belief is what dictates where and how a person lives onward after they die and pass into the Well.

It is a paradox because people technically dwell in both places at once. I plan to introduce at around mid-Paragon levels storyplots to allow the players travel between the two worlds, sort of like Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. This has a lot to do with the following spoiler -

The Super Secret Story
[spoiler]To give you some story background, the Captain is unwittingly being lured by a "man" calledthe Founder. A promise of power, born from penal servitude, brough the Captain to the Founder's hand (you may want to read about the Kargat to understand the full relationship, since technically my game revolves around them). The Founder is nothing more than an exarch of the god Demish, the god of change and discord. The Founder is fashioning the Captain into the living embodyment of judgement and death. As the Captain uses his powers, the veil that separates the Well of Souls and Deismaar breaks down. The eventual goal is to facilitate the Last Cataclysm, where the two worlds become one.[/spoiler]