One of the things I’ve been brainstorming is a way to turn skill challenges into their own little minigame, and my current line of thinking is creating a pseudo-boardgame.

And that lead me to this silly little thought. Picture this:

The PCs have to navigate an underground river through the underdark with no light. You announce that it’s time for a skill challenge and you…

…

(wait for it)

(wait for iiittt……)

…break out a chess board and start setting some pieces on it!

Things look bad for white. Black is 3 moves away from checkmate and still has most of its pieces, while white’s forces are anemic and under assault.

Now, every time a PC gets a success in the skill challenge, that player moves a piece for white. Every time a PC gets a failure in the skill challenge, the DM moves a black piece. If White is checkmated, the PCs fail the challenge and if black is checkmated the PCs succeed.

On April 30th, 2011, Tibetan protesters trying to break free of Chinese internet censorship inadvertently exposed a worrying secret to the world. They had uncovered what is now referred to as the “Darknet.”

The Darknet is so-called because almost every attempt to determine anything about it has been thwarted. Its a network of indeterminate size, but even the lowest estimates number in the thousands of nodes, and some have suggested it may even be in the millions or billions.

The truly strange thing is that no one is sure where the Darknet computers are located. They are connected to the internet, but traces on the origin of their traffic have proved futile as the traces wrap around the globe multiple times before the trail fades.

Those who’ve tried to investigate the Darknet have suffered a series of increasingly-dangerous setbacks. At first, they found their computers hijacked or wiped by viruses unlike anything yet-documented, viruses which have also resisted all attempts at capture and study. They seem to know what systems are honeypots and how to avoid them.

However, the more persistent have been targeted by stranger and stranger attacks. They’ve had their houses foreclosed on despite never missing a mortgage payment; been declared legally dead; had falsified warrants and arrest records placed in their name, and more.

Recently, some of them have even had attacks made on them in meatspace. One researcher was killed when the balcony of his hotel room collapsed, and was later found to have been sabotaged. Another was assassinated by a known mafia hitman; when the police tracked the hitman down they found him lying dead in a pool of vomit in a motel in Arizona.

At this point, the Darknet has been known for only five weeks and the more it resists inspection, the more it makes everyone paranoid. Many believe it is a Chinese cyberweapon, though the only real evidence for that is that it was first discovered in Tibet. The Russians believe it to be American; the Americans believe it is European, and the EU has been strained almost to the breaking point over infighting. Several African and Middle-Eastern countries and groups have claimed responsibility for it, but have been unable to prove their claims.

One popular theory states that the Darknet is based in satellites in orbit around the Earth or even the moon, which have somehow managed to go undetected as yet. Some even claim that the Darknet is extraterrestrial in origin, and that aliens are using it to study us, whether for good or ill.

I already made a post on Magic’s newest setting, Zendikar. However, the Daily MTG site just put up an article on the design for the look and feel of Zendikar that just blew me away, and warranted another post.

I feel pretty confident when I say that Zendikar may just be the greatest D&D setting never published.

The latest set for Magic: The Gathering looks like it was tailor-made for 4th edition’s Points of Light philosophy. Zendikar is a magically-infused plane where there are no advanced civilizations and indeed even large cities are extremely rare, as they literally get ripped apart by the changing landscape.

There’s a great post on the Magic website detailing the setting’s theme, regions and inhabitants in great detail.

Decades ago, the mad tyrant Zarnoff succeeded at the impossible, binding a god to his service. The god was Ferno, lord of the flame, and since that day the only fires which burn come from The Ashen Citadel, in the heart of which Zarnoff keeps Ferno’s essence.

It is utterly impossible to start a new fire ever since Ferno was captured, either by mundane or magical means. Zarnoff has used his monopoly on fire to create an empire for himself, even going so far as to create an army tasked solely with extinguishing unauthorized fires and tending authorized ones.

Around the world, in most cities and communities can be found Firemongers. These people pay hefty prices to maintain a fire of their own, which they are allowed to sell to others. The fires are guarded jealously, as Zarnoff has them inspected frequently and if a merchant is found to be loose in his control of his supply then it will be forcibly extinguished.

By Zarnoff’s decree, only established firemongers are allowed to use one flame to create another. The penalty if Zarnoff’s forces discover a violation is death.

Needless to say, many have tried to topple Zarnoff, but that is a task not easily-achieved. Even ignoring the fact that he has the power to control a god, Zarnoff’s monopoly on fire means that only he is able to shoe his horses and equip his army with metal armors and weapons. There are pre-existing armaments, of course, but most of them are long-since corroded or broken. Too few remain to equip an army of sufficient size to challenge Zarnoff.

The announcement of Dark Sun as the next 4th edition campaign lead me to go take a look at the Dark Sun boxed set, a gift I received a couple years ago but never actually dug into much.

One of the more unexpected surprised of Dark Sun was the introduction of character trees. In a nutshell, in a campaign using this concept as written, each player would roll up four different characters. They could choose which character to play during each session, and whenever the character they were playing gained a level they could also have one of the inactive characters (of a lower level) also gain a level.

The idea was two-fold; first, it would allow the players to have a stable of characters so that they could draw on the one best suited for a particular adventure or even their mood. Second, in the harsh world of Dark Sun, starting out at lower levels is especially bad (or so they make it seem), and this gives the players a bit of a buffer for when they lose their best character.

It’s an interesting concept, and one that I think could be successfully applied to modern games. So let’s look at some possible implementations.

Classic Character Trees

Exactly as described above, or similar at least. Each player gets a stable of characters, and gets to choose which to play during any given adventure. Whenever the active character gains a level, one of the inactive ones does as well.

Pros
This style would work for any system where it’s not uncommon or particularly undesirable for PCs to have differing levels of experience. Point-based systems in particular, such as Savage Worlds, White Wolf, or Shadowrun would work well here, although you’d have to adjust it a bit. For example, if a player earns 20 experience points, they add the full 20 to the active character and also get to distribute 20 points among the inactive characters however they want.

This approach is also nice because, simply by virtue of having several characters who each necessarily have “off-screen” things to occupy their time when they’re not adventuring, it ties the players more strongly to the game and to the setting.

Cons
In games like Third and Fourth edition D&D, a character who’s not close to the average party level (and, by extension, the level of the encounters they’ll be facing) is mathematically moot. At best they’re ineffectual and boring, and at worst they’re a liability to themselves in others. Simply put, this approach will not work in such a system (but continue reading…).

Fully-balanced Character Trees

As above, but all characters in the tree are always kept at the same power level, either by splitting up exp evenly or just advancing all inactive characters at the same time rather than one at a time.

Pros
This is a necessary fix to the concept for certain systems, such as the aforementioned D&D third and fourth editions. It also prevents an unplayed character from falling too far behind and becoming “unplayable” (or, at least, unpalatable).

Cons
The rapid gain of levels and powers among four separate characters may prove difficult for some players to come to terms with, particularly in the case of new players or even experienced players who are playing complicated classes or classes which they don’t have much experience with.

UA Gestalt

In the Third edition Urban Arcana book of optional rules, they presented a variant called gestalt in which players pick two classes and smoosh them together, gaining all the benefits of each class and, in cases like saving throws and such, taking the better between the two classes.

Pros
It’s fairly simple and organized. You only need to keep track of one character. The player always has access to all of their toys. It makes some character options much more feasible (e.g. fighter/mages in D&D third edition are usually fairly crippled unless you’re playing a class specifically designed as such. A gestalt fighter/mage, though, would be quite capable in both respects).

Cons
It absolutely requires a class-based system. I can think of no way to adapt this as-is to a point-based system (but, again, continue reading…). It represents a definite power creep, though not quite as much as you might think. Gestalt characters are just plain more powerful than non-gestalt characters, especially if they min-max their choices to minimize weaknesses and maximize strengths.

Final Fantasy Gestalt

I’m not sure if this is a concept or not unique to the Final Fantasy franchise, but it’s the only example I can think of off the top of my head. In essence, your character can have multiple different classes… but only one at a time, and they’re all kept separate and distinct. So for example you could be a level 5 fighter/6 wizard, and at the beginning of each adventure you’d choose whether you wanted to be in “fighter mode” or “wizard mode.”

Pros
This adopts many of the pros from the character trees above, since that’s basically what you’re doing. You have multiple different character sheets, but rather than each representing a different character they all represent the same character wearing a different hat.

It does have the obvious advantage over the character tree method in that it’s a bit simpler to maintain party cohesion if, story-wise, it’s always the same character.

Cons
That’s a double-edged sword, however. If you’re into verisimilitude, then this might not be the best approach as you have to figure out why your character was swashing buckles with the best of ‘em yesterday but today he can’t carry a sword to save his life.

Character Pool

The final option to consider is a pool of characters which don’t belong to particular players. Instead, each player chooses a different character each game. You could even take it a step further and have some extra characters, so that if you’ve got, say, five players you have seven characters and thus there’s a bit more choice.

Pros
It strikes me that this could be great for groups which have trouble with consistent turn outs. Bob’s not here this week? No biggie, Dan’ll play the cleric. If you go with the extra-characters-in-a-pool idea, this could also be a great way to gracefully “absorb” temporary additions, such as potential new players or friends visiting from out of town.

You also only have to worry about one character per player (or a bit more if you’ve got a pool), which is always nice.

Cons
This could make it difficult for players to become attached to characters and, by extension, the game itself. It also might end up a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it removes a bit of the social obligation to show up when you know the party won’t be completely screwed without you there.

Particularly cunning and devious, even for changelings, the rare husklords have an unusual ability which makes them nearly impossible to kill. A changeling husklord can shed its skin at will, leaving behind a convincing corpse to fool adversaries. Meanwhile, the changeling itself is completely invisible until it regrows a new skin, a process which takes several days.

During this recovery period, the changeling usually seeks out a hiding spot as it is particularly weak and vulnerable. It becomes visible again a mere few hours after shedding the skin, and while the skin is regrowing it is unable to shapeshift and physically weakened.

The skin left behind appears like any other corpse upon casual inspection. There is no outside indication that the changeling has left the body, not so much as a hole or tear in the skin or clothing. Those well-versed in the medical arts may be able to discern the truth after a bit of investigation, and in addition after about an hour the corpse begins to deflate, lose its structure, and eventually disintegrates into a bluish-grey sludge.

It’s unclear exactly what is at work with the husklords. Certainly it is magical in nature, but it does not appear to be something which can be taught or learned. Some simply have the gift for it.

Bear with me as this isn’t a fluff piece as usual but rather a mechanical idea. I’m working on my own RPG system which I don’t want to get into too much since chances are I’ll get bored with it and abandon it pretty quickly…

But anyways, I think I stumbled upon a neat mechanic. I was looking for a way to allow for healing magic to be used as much as a player would like without having any limits on it such as mana points, uses per day/per encounter, etc.

What I came up with is the idea of sympathy points. In short, most healing spells and direct damage spells are labeled as sympathetic magic. Whenever someone is the target of a sympathetic spell, for better or worse, if it affects them they also gain a point of sympathy. Points of sympathy are lost after resting for a few hours.

Now here’s the interesting bit; all sympathetic magic gets a bonus based on the sympathy points the target has. So the more you heal someone, the stronger your heals on that person become, but also the harder an enemy’s fireball hits them for. And of course, that fireball also adds sympathy points, making other attacks and heals themselves stronger.

Too many sympathy points and you could be killed in one shot by even the weakest spell. Thus there’s no hard limit on healing, but you do accrue a bit of risk… It’s probably unlikely that one weak spell will kill you, and a single healing spell keeps parity with a single damage spell, but if there are multiple enemy casters the effects could become very nasty, very fast.

It also gives you another mechanic to play around with. For example, a mage might have an ability which doesn’t do damage but does add a number of sympathy points to a target, or which moves sympathy points between targets.

Another interesting thing with this idea is that it dictates a bit about the setting itself. This suggests a world where people are “magically inert,” but as they are affected by more and more of it they turn into magnets for magical energies.

So yeah… Just kinda had to get that outta my head. Toodles!

First, a quick note. Stormwind City is the capital of the kingdom of Stormwind in the world of Azeroth and the lore of the Warcraft universe. I will from here on simply refer to Stormwind City as Stormwind, which is technically not correct but it’s how I think of it. Blame WoW, which calls Stormwind City just Stormwind.

Stormwind, on its face, appears to be a fairly generic fantasy castle/city. Indeed, as the “human city” in World of Warcraft it seems specifically designed to be quite normal and expected. However, beneath its surface are some interesting bits of lore and plot which could go well in any setting.

Rebuilt on a Shameful Foundation

Stormwind was one of the oldest human kingdoms in Azeroth, and among the first destroyed when the orcs came to Azeroth. It was only retaken in recent years, and the crown set out a call to all the kingdom’s greatest engineers and artisans to help rebuild it.

A dispute arose as the workers, after toiling long and hard to rebuild, demanded recompense. The crown had assumed they’d worked for civic pride alone and refused them, in fact exiling them from Stormwind entirely.

The wronged craftsmen banded together, forming a band of criminals known as The Defias. The same ingenuity which allowed Stormwind to regain its former glory was now turned against it, the artisans and engineers using their skills to take their payment in the form of blood and banditry.

Since then, The Defias have grown exponentially, conscripting all those whose greed outstrips their scruples. Entire portions of the kingdom of Stormwind have for all intents and purposes been taken over by them, and the crown has had little success in stopping them.

The Stockade

Within Stormwind, there is a dungeon-esque prison known as The Stockade. Frequently plagued by riots, recently they’ve gotten so bad that the Stormwind guard has pulled out entirely. They now sit outside the only entrance, standing behind barricades and simply trying to keep the prisoners from escaping.

A prison like this is ripe for adventuring and adaptation. Not only can the PCs help to protect the city or stop the riots, but an adventure could also be setup where the PCs have to find a contact inside the prison, but don’t have the time or resources to actually stop the rioting.

For those unfamiliar with Eberron, the setting takes place in the aftermath of the Last War, a great war between five nations which lasted over a century. One of those nations, Cyre, was completely wiped out in an unprecedented and unexplained event known as The Mourning.

All along the borders of Cyre– political borders, mind you, not just natural borders– there is a wall of mist. Within, time seems frozen, as the land is littered with the corpses of those killed in the Mourning, but still appearing as fresh as to have just died that day.

Here are three possible explanations for the Day of Mourning to provide inspiration and possibilities.

Sacrificed for the good of all

It is a fact that the catastrophic event which destroyed Cyre spurred the remaining four nations into signing the Treaty of Thronehold and ending the generations-long Last War. Perhaps this was exactly why Cyre was destroyed. Someone or something with the knowledge and power to do so destroyed Cyre as a way to end the war once and for all.

Who could have done such a thing, and how? Why Cyre? Is the culprit still alive and present on Eberron? Perhaps they even had a hand in the Treaty of Thronehold itself.

Variation

The players get the opportunity to change history through time travel, a wish, or something similar, and stop the Day of Mourning from ever happening. Should they do so, they find the world changed and themselves entrenched in a war that never ended.

Exodus

Cyre was not, in fact, destroyed. Rather, a plot was discovered among the other four nations to destroy Cyre once and for all. On the very day the combined strike was to happen, Cannith magewrights loyal to Cyre managed to shift the entire country into a demiplane in Siberys, leaving the shattered crater which is the Mournlands in its wake.

The reason the Cyran ruins and bodies of those present remain is due to the nature of the act. It wasn’t a true planeshift, but more like a cloning of the country into the demiplane. This cloning took place over several weeks, and when it was complete the final step was taken, transferring the essence of all life from the old Cyre to the new. In fact, the other countries’ combined attack was necessary for this plan to work, as it required the added lifeforce of the foreign soldiers.

The players could discover this piece by piece, first learning of the impending attack on the same day, then discovering the Cyran government knew of the attack and had begun a plan to escape it. In the end, the players might visit the living Cyre.

Variation

The plan was not successful. The attempt to transfer the country to the demiplane was sabotaged, aborted midway, or perhaps never even fully conceived in the first place. Regardless, Cyre exists now trapped halfway within Eberron and halfway within Siberys. If the PCs could find some way to undo the transfer, Cyre could be restored to a normal, if devastated, state and re-colonized.

Scrubbed from Reality

This Eberron is but one of many existing in parallel realities. In another, the Last War ended considerably earlier, with a magically-advanged Cyre dominating the other four countries and eventually the world. The Cyran rulers were cruel and harsh, and when the others finally managed to overthrow Cyre a plan of ultimate revenge was concocted.

The others used the Cyran magic against the country, destroying not only their former oppressor but also every copy of it in every other reality.

The PCs might stumble upon something odd along the edge of the mournlands, a bit where it extends beyond Cyre’s borders, or even a bit of Cyre which is untouched. After performing some research, the PCs discover that the affected land was once offered to Cyre as part of a rejected negotiation, or Cyre had gained the unaffected land through something similar.

The key is that in the alternate reality, these changes didn’t take place and the Mourning followed the border of that reality’s Cyre. If the PCs put two and two together, they might even be able to visit some of the alternate realities and see what might have been.