One of the DMing rules of thumb I adopted a few years ago (actually as a consequence of "The Eberron Code" campaign) was that a successful campaign should change the world. Where in this context 'successful' refers to the quality of the campaign, not whether the PCs actually succeeded in their goals or not.
That is, if the PCs are busy investigating a series of mysteries that lead them to a final showdown with Bel Shalor, that conflict should have a lasting impact on the world. If the PCs triumph, they exorcise the Shadow of the Flame; if they fail, Bel Shalor is freed from his bonds and unleashes a reign of terror on the world.
Since the final conflict inevitably comes at the end of the campaign, I feel it's also important that that impact be carried forward to future campaigns in the same setting. And so, when I run Eberron I now include the cleansing of the Flame as something that has happened in the world - Bel Shalor is defeated and won't be causing anyone much strife any more.
In the context of my current campaign, then, "Storm King's Thunder" is likely to make two lasting changes to the setting. Firstly, the PCs actions are likely to thwart the schemes of some but not all of the giant lords. The ones they choose not to engage will be assumed to be at least partially successful in their designs.
The second consequence concerns the Ordning, which imposes a strict heirarchy on the various types of giants. As above, this will be directly related to the PC actions - the first giant lord defeated will be lowest in the new Ordning, then the next defeated, and so on. Any the PCs don't confront will be higher than the ones the PCs defeat, and will retain their existing positions.
(So, for instance, if the PCs defeat only the fire giant Duke, the new Ordning will be Storm > Cloud > Frost > Stone > Hill > Fire.)
Though there is something a little tricky there: it is by no means certain that I'll ever run the Forgotten Realms again, since I'm not a fan, so this may be a change that has no effect.
Incidentally, I think "Storm King's Thunder" has now reached the point where it can be considered successful. That being the case, I should give some thought to the consequences if the PCs just fail. In this case, I'm inclined to posit a new Ordning with the Cloud giants at the top, then the Storm, Frost, and Fire giants, then Stone and then Hill giants. All the giant schemes are successful, and the race remains considerably more hostile to smaller folk than has previously been the case. And much of the Sword Coast will have been devastated.
I kind of hope the PCs don't completely fail at this point!
Monday, 20 May 2019
Thursday, 16 May 2019
Bring Me the Heads of the Giant Lords!
One of the things I like least about "Storm King's Thunder" concerns some of the best material in the book. After the wandering around in chapter 3 and the visit to the Eye of Exposition in chapter 4, the book then presents lovingly-detailed lairs for the five giant chiefs who have been causing all the trouble thus far. These are all really good material.
And then the PCs are encouraged to choose one of the giants to face, with the promise that if they thwart only one of the chiefs' schemes, they will all fall. And so of these five lairs, which represent both a very large part of the book and also represent pretty much the best part of the book, four are expected to be ignored. (The theory here, I think is both so that when groups meet to trade war stories they'll each have had very different experiences, and also so that groups can reuse the same adventure and take another route. The problem with that latter notion being that surely reuse of the same adventure with the same group must be fairly unusual - wouldn't you prefer to do something else.)
On the other hand, I also don't like adventures where the PCs either must deal with everything in the adventure (often because area A leads to area B, which leads to area C, and so on), or where they have a "choice"... of what order to face the various challenges. My ideal would be for an adventure where the PCs will face most things, will only deal with everything if they really look for it, and are likely to miss some things.
To that end, I'm looking at how to address the issue with SKT for my current campaign. And, as the party are just about to enter the Eye of Exposition, now is the time.
My thinking is that the Oracle will inform them that they must face one of the giant lords (to get the required teleportation device), but that they can face more if they choose. Obviously, any giant lords they don't face will be able to complete their nefarious schemes, and will stand to make gains when the Ordning is restored. The giant lords they do defeat will come lower down.
But, in addition, with each giant lord the PCs face, the Oracle will imbue them with some trait of that species (the size, the ability to throw boulders, immunity to fire/cold, a stone skin...) which they will then carry for the rest of the adventure, and which will improve their standing in the Storm King's Court.
That way, the PCs have an incentive to face down the giant lords without being required to do so. They will then be free to choose their own path - especially useful as only three of the giant lords have really been introduced thus far, while a fourth subrace has featured but not to the same extent. So my expectation would be that they'd deal with most, and not all, of the five lords.
Which is nice.
The downside is that the PCs will likely end up at a considerably higher level than the adventure supposes, which means I'll need to beef up the last chapters.
(However, one of my other objections to the adventure is that the final conflict is yet another example of one of WotC's bad habits: an overwhelming challenge, with a built-in 'cheat' to make it manageable. If the PCs are considerably higher level, the 'cheat' can perhaps be removed, and certainly downgraded, making for a more satisfying (for me) final battle.)
And then the PCs are encouraged to choose one of the giants to face, with the promise that if they thwart only one of the chiefs' schemes, they will all fall. And so of these five lairs, which represent both a very large part of the book and also represent pretty much the best part of the book, four are expected to be ignored. (The theory here, I think is both so that when groups meet to trade war stories they'll each have had very different experiences, and also so that groups can reuse the same adventure and take another route. The problem with that latter notion being that surely reuse of the same adventure with the same group must be fairly unusual - wouldn't you prefer to do something else.)
On the other hand, I also don't like adventures where the PCs either must deal with everything in the adventure (often because area A leads to area B, which leads to area C, and so on), or where they have a "choice"... of what order to face the various challenges. My ideal would be for an adventure where the PCs will face most things, will only deal with everything if they really look for it, and are likely to miss some things.
To that end, I'm looking at how to address the issue with SKT for my current campaign. And, as the party are just about to enter the Eye of Exposition, now is the time.
My thinking is that the Oracle will inform them that they must face one of the giant lords (to get the required teleportation device), but that they can face more if they choose. Obviously, any giant lords they don't face will be able to complete their nefarious schemes, and will stand to make gains when the Ordning is restored. The giant lords they do defeat will come lower down.
But, in addition, with each giant lord the PCs face, the Oracle will imbue them with some trait of that species (the size, the ability to throw boulders, immunity to fire/cold, a stone skin...) which they will then carry for the rest of the adventure, and which will improve their standing in the Storm King's Court.
That way, the PCs have an incentive to face down the giant lords without being required to do so. They will then be free to choose their own path - especially useful as only three of the giant lords have really been introduced thus far, while a fourth subrace has featured but not to the same extent. So my expectation would be that they'd deal with most, and not all, of the five lords.
Which is nice.
The downside is that the PCs will likely end up at a considerably higher level than the adventure supposes, which means I'll need to beef up the last chapters.
(However, one of my other objections to the adventure is that the final conflict is yet another example of one of WotC's bad habits: an overwhelming challenge, with a built-in 'cheat' to make it manageable. If the PCs are considerably higher level, the 'cheat' can perhaps be removed, and certainly downgraded, making for a more satisfying (for me) final battle.)
Monday, 13 May 2019
Giants
Alas, I have decided that I'm really not a fan of giants in D&D. In principle, they're pretty great - a semi-civilised race with a distinct and unusual culture, with several different factions that are mutually-adversarial (though not necessarily mutually-antagonistic), and indeed a well developed religious and spiritual role. It's all good stuff.
Unfortunately, when it comes to practice, giants fall down due to one fatal flaw: they're basically big bags of hit points that have to be whittled down a bit at a time. And, indeed, they're big bags of hit points, and they have very little else going on. Which means they're really dull in combat.
In my opinion, what giants really need are more terrain/movement powers, plus possibly an area attack with their boulders. Oh, and more mobility. This might well come at the price of fewer hit points, but that's no bad thing either.
(Of course, the DM can always add these things, and "Storm King's Thunder" does a decent job of making some likely suggestions. But, really, these things should come as standard. Plus, if I'm adding them to giants, could I not do a similar addition to other monsters and get an even better return on investment?)
Of course, this might also be a worthwhile time to note that the first Monster Manual of any edition pretty much sucks, which is largely an inevitable consequence of it being written before the edition is fully understood. Unfortunately, that first MM is also the place where all the most iconic and best-loved monsters are going to be found. I'm almost inclined to suggest that the 4e/Essentials approach is a reasonably decent one, with the entire set of monsters getting a thorough overhaul/rewrite midway through the edition for a better game experience. But that's another rant...
Unfortunately, when it comes to practice, giants fall down due to one fatal flaw: they're basically big bags of hit points that have to be whittled down a bit at a time. And, indeed, they're big bags of hit points, and they have very little else going on. Which means they're really dull in combat.
In my opinion, what giants really need are more terrain/movement powers, plus possibly an area attack with their boulders. Oh, and more mobility. This might well come at the price of fewer hit points, but that's no bad thing either.
(Of course, the DM can always add these things, and "Storm King's Thunder" does a decent job of making some likely suggestions. But, really, these things should come as standard. Plus, if I'm adding them to giants, could I not do a similar addition to other monsters and get an even better return on investment?)
Of course, this might also be a worthwhile time to note that the first Monster Manual of any edition pretty much sucks, which is largely an inevitable consequence of it being written before the edition is fully understood. Unfortunately, that first MM is also the place where all the most iconic and best-loved monsters are going to be found. I'm almost inclined to suggest that the 4e/Essentials approach is a reasonably decent one, with the entire set of monsters getting a thorough overhaul/rewrite midway through the edition for a better game experience. But that's another rant...
Tuesday, 7 May 2019
Excommunication
In standard D&D, Clerics receive their spells from a patron deity or, in some less common cases, from a force, philosophy or similar agency. One consequence of this is that should a Cleric fall away from their patron (generally by shifting to an incompatible alignment) the Cleric will lose all access to spells and powers.
(In some older versions of the game, the DM was actually encouraged to keep an eye on the spells the player of the Cleric chose to prepare, and potentially to substitute some or all of these for spells of his own liking.)
I'm not really a fan of this notion, partly because of the interference with player agency, partly because I simply don't want to use alignment, but mostly because I would prefer my religions less monolithic than that implies (since it's hard to have a heresy when the deity is giving a clear and immediate guide to his intent).
For that reason, in Terafa Clerics will not be granted their spells and powers by their deities directly. Instead, those powers will be granted by some unknown and unknowable Source. The Cleric taps into that Source in the name of the deity and is granted spells. And, as a consequence of this, it is impossible for the deity to interfere with the granting of spells - the Cleric's player chooses his spells, and that's that, and also the Cleric can't fall away from the deity by changing alignment or similar (of course, the Cleric could fall away from the church and suffer all manner of social consequences, but that's another matter).
But... One of the key features of this arrangement is that the Cleric must tap into the Source in the name of a deity. They can't call on it independently, or simply create a new deity (or force or philosophy, or whatever). And if a deity is killed or otherwise ceases to be active his Clerics no longer have the ability to tap into the Source. (The DM must take care with this - it would be hugely unfair to rule that a Cleric PC's patron deity had been killed, and thus strip the player of his hard-earned powers. But it is a plot point that came up in one older campaign, so I do want to keep it intact.)
The upshot of all of this is that excommunication doesn't exist as such in Terafa - a Cleric cannot be severed from his or her deity in the manner common to other D&D worlds.
(In some older versions of the game, the DM was actually encouraged to keep an eye on the spells the player of the Cleric chose to prepare, and potentially to substitute some or all of these for spells of his own liking.)
I'm not really a fan of this notion, partly because of the interference with player agency, partly because I simply don't want to use alignment, but mostly because I would prefer my religions less monolithic than that implies (since it's hard to have a heresy when the deity is giving a clear and immediate guide to his intent).
For that reason, in Terafa Clerics will not be granted their spells and powers by their deities directly. Instead, those powers will be granted by some unknown and unknowable Source. The Cleric taps into that Source in the name of the deity and is granted spells. And, as a consequence of this, it is impossible for the deity to interfere with the granting of spells - the Cleric's player chooses his spells, and that's that, and also the Cleric can't fall away from the deity by changing alignment or similar (of course, the Cleric could fall away from the church and suffer all manner of social consequences, but that's another matter).
But... One of the key features of this arrangement is that the Cleric must tap into the Source in the name of a deity. They can't call on it independently, or simply create a new deity (or force or philosophy, or whatever). And if a deity is killed or otherwise ceases to be active his Clerics no longer have the ability to tap into the Source. (The DM must take care with this - it would be hugely unfair to rule that a Cleric PC's patron deity had been killed, and thus strip the player of his hard-earned powers. But it is a plot point that came up in one older campaign, so I do want to keep it intact.)
The upshot of all of this is that excommunication doesn't exist as such in Terafa - a Cleric cannot be severed from his or her deity in the manner common to other D&D worlds.
Thursday, 2 May 2019
The Arrival of Man
In Terafa humans are unique amongst the races in that they alone do not have a creation myth. While elves and dwarves each maintain that they are the oldest of all the races, halflings trace their origins back to a single forbidden love, and dragonborn trace their ancestry to the hoards of the oldest wyrms, humans have no such tale.
Instead, the very oldest human myths speak of their arrival on Terafa from somewhere else. Those myths are inconsistent on whether humanity was driven out of their first home by environmental catastrophe, by the wrath of their first gods, or due to a rebellion against ancient masters (and, indeed, whether that rebellion was successful or failed), but the tale has it that they were forced to leave in a great Ark.
After many years of travelling in their Ark, humanity were discovered by the benevolent deity Choriim, himself wandering in a self-imposed exile from Terafa, and guided to their new home. For this reason, humanity will always count Choriam as their most faithful patron, while Choriam prizes humanity above all other peoples of the world - though he did not create them, it was he who brought them home.
Of course, shortly after the Arrival, the Usurper tried to sway the hearts of humanity to his cause, bidding as always to overthrow and drive out Choriam. But that is another story...
Instead, the very oldest human myths speak of their arrival on Terafa from somewhere else. Those myths are inconsistent on whether humanity was driven out of their first home by environmental catastrophe, by the wrath of their first gods, or due to a rebellion against ancient masters (and, indeed, whether that rebellion was successful or failed), but the tale has it that they were forced to leave in a great Ark.
After many years of travelling in their Ark, humanity were discovered by the benevolent deity Choriim, himself wandering in a self-imposed exile from Terafa, and guided to their new home. For this reason, humanity will always count Choriam as their most faithful patron, while Choriam prizes humanity above all other peoples of the world - though he did not create them, it was he who brought them home.
Of course, shortly after the Arrival, the Usurper tried to sway the hearts of humanity to his cause, bidding as always to overthrow and drive out Choriam. But that is another story...
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