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.

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...

Psionics in 5e

One of the things that bugs me (very slightly) about 5e is that WotC still haven't published rules for psionics, outside of a couple of Unearthed Arcana articles. The reason this bugs me is that two major settings (Dark Sun and, to a lesser extent, Eberron) make use of psionics in the core of the setting. Omitting the rules for psionics takes something away from those settings - they just work better with the option in place than without.

The reason this only bugs me slightly is that I'm not running either of those settings, not likely to be running them in the foreseeable future, and disinclined to make use of psionics in any other setting. Indeed, even in Eberron I'm mostly inclined not to use it unless a player asks about the possibility (my 1984/Demolished Man/John Le Carre mashup notwithstanding).

All that said, I'm also starting to come around to the opinion that the best way to handle psionics may well be to reskin the Warlock - basically, introduce one or more psionic Pacts, and then just go from there. Or, just possibly, do the same with the Sorcerer. That gives you pretty much everything you need with a minimum of fuss.

And if you insist that each player choose a different class for their character (which I'm also increasingly leaning towards as a good idea), you get to sidestep the possibility of another player also playing a Warlock and the characters feeling too samey.

Resuming the Campaign

Due to holidays and other events, the "Storm King's Thunder" campaign has been on hold for a month. Conveniently, the last session before the break saw the party reach the end of the current mini-arc, reach 8th level, and generally get to a really good break point.

We're due to resume next week, at which point it is my intention to advance the campaign timeline by several months. This has several advantages: firstly, it advances the calendar past the winter months, when travelling would have been difficult. Secondly, it allows me to clear out the remaining legacy quests, none of which were hugely interesting, and lets us jump straight to the next section of the campaign book. And, thirdly, it allows those players who have been absent for a little while to jump back into the action with a minimum of backstory to assimilate. It's pretty much a win on all counts.

For that reason, the action in the next session will pick up with the party meeting Harshnag the Grim outside of the citadel of Mirabar, and from there they can begin their journey to the Eye of the All-father.

I'm not entirely sure how much remains of the campaign. I think we're now closer to the end than to the beginning, and certainly it is now my intention not to pad out the next sections as I have the previous wanderings. However, it is also my intention to have the PCs tackle more than one of the giant chieftains - I'm not a fan of the storyline's design decision that the campaign should only use one of four chapters provided for that purpose.

I think my hope is to bring this campaign to an end by the end of this year, with a view to starting a new campaign early in 2020. However, whether that is actually practical remains to be seen. Most importantly, though, is picking the action up for a new season...

The Next Project

With the epic scan-and-shred task now done, with the digital declutter now done, and with the shelves of RPG books culled somewhat (though pretty effectively), I find myself in need of a new project.

After some consideration, I think the time has come to finally bite the bullet and tackle something that's been bugging me for a fairly long time, but that I've never quite felt motivated enough to try to fix.

It's time to look at create a 5e character sheet that's better suited to my needs.

The Threefold World

The "Ultimates Edition" of Terafa has been on hold for some months, in which time I have completed my scan-and-shred clear-out of my old RPG notes. In the course of doing that I've made two findings, concerning the evolution of the world itself.

In the most recent 'full' version of the world, I decided that there would be three major continents - Talara, Talrania, and Sarinia. However, I also came across maps of two additional continents from previous versions, one an pseudo-Africa that I drew up and very vaguely recall (and recall dropping for good reason), and another that I have no memory of.

Reflecting on this, I'm inclined to stick with the most recent vision of the "threefold world" - that is, I'll retain the three continents (as named). I do intend to make some fairly extensive modifications to these, but both the numbers and the names will remain as-is.

My Grandfather's Grandfather

A few years ago, my grandfather was persuaded to write his family story. This was largely intended as an exercise to help keep his mind sharp, but the end result made for interesting reading for a number of reasons. In the context of this post, however, it's worth noting that the earliest parts of the story contained some discussion of even earlier generations of the family history - and, notably, they began with my grandfather's grandfather.

This largely tallies with my own experiences - I have fairly extensive memories of my own grandparents, but almost no recollection of great-grandparents. I did meet both my mother's grandmother and my father's grandmother, but in both cases they died when I was still young. Similarly, it is likely that my oldest nephew will just about remember his great-grandfather, with those memories becoming much less pronounced as we step through the cousins - as they get younger, the memory they have will be less.

What I'm getting at here is that "living memory" probably extents, at the very most, to the time of my grandfather's grandfather. Allowing for very a small number of very long-lived people, that probably means about 150 years at the very most.

For that reason, when codifying the history of an RPG setting, I'm inclined to think that the multi-thousand year history is probably the wrong approach. Rather, a setting should probably include:

• About fifty years of fairly well understood recent history.
  
• A further hundred years or so of less well understood, but not totally obscure, history.
  
• A very brief sketch of known history before that. But it shouldn't be detailed, may very well be inaccurate, incomplete, and even contradictory. People probably know about the equivalent of the Roman Empire, but probably don't know much about it.
  
• A whole bunch of myths, legends, and other stories that may or may not be true, stand at odds with actual history, and that are more widely accepted than the truth - King Arthur, Atlantis, and so forth.

And, crucially, the last two items probably shouldn't have dates associated with them, or even be placed into a particular order. The past is another country. Of course, it's also worth considering how this interfaces with other, potentially very long-lived races. If an elf lives ten times as long as a human on average, does that then multiply the "50 years" and "100 years" by a factor of ten? Well, perhaps. Alternately, you could take the view (as I do) that elves are generally much less bound by time, and so don't bother with keeping detailed histories in the same way. Dwarves tend towards oral histories, and so although their histories are much longer, they are also more error prone (and, indeed, focus very much on the stories rather than the facts - hence tending towards myths and legends anyway). Besides, I quite like the notion that dwarves maintain a lot of feuds but have, very often, forgotten quite why they bear those grudges.

And, of course, it's worth considering that just because a dragon knows exactly what happened 4,000 years ago, it doesn't follow that you can just go and ask, or that the dragon would tell you!

In other words, I'm inclined to largely ignore the longer-lived races when composing the history of the setting. If nothing else, it's not like the players are going to read it anyway.