The Red Knights of Iskarin – Temorath Marbane

   Temorath simply had a knack. The Mages Council of the Telgar Academy was well aware of that talents limits – of the limits of any rune mage – but it still was well worth training. The boy would never explore the depths of magic, or work mighty enchantments, but he would be a competent [...]

The Red Knights of Iskarin – Hilsaryn Rollyn

   Recently the Twilight Isles campaign has seen the arrival of a second party of adventurers – a group of dimension-hopping treasure-hunters.    The Red Knights of Iskarin are a grandiosely-named group of shallow, greedy, mercenaries. They like treasure, battle glory, and popular acclaim – to which end they tend to hire bards to sing [...]

Eclipse d20 – Character Optimization and Over-Optimization

   Having looked at some of the abusive builds – and why they won’t work if the game master is paying attention – it’s time to take a look at some of the potentially over-efficient builds and how to handle them.    The Shapeshifter. This character has invested a lot of points in the various Shapeshifting [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 116b – The Burning Earth

   As the earth settled down, Kevin and Marty looked around; they didn’t seem to be standing on anything too unstable… (A family of squirrels, running by at high speed.) “Run! Get as far away from here as you can you dimwits!”    Marty frowned… At least as much as he could with a beak. [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 116a – The Wild Kingdoms

   Kevin snarled to himself… He seemed to have four paws! That wasn’t what the “anthropomorphic” label usually meant on a universe! That was talking-animal territory! Botheration! They were on the semi-realistic FRINGES of the Anthropomorphic Realms! And all his Thralls were being either Rats or Mice, which meant that those were probably the major [...]

Federation-Apocalypse Session 115 – Rough Landings

   With packs stuffed full of supplies and everyone ready to depart, they took a final look over the route again…    First, to the New Imperium and some world called Kashyyyk. Wait; something seemed familiar there. Perhaps it wasn’t just another random bunch of letters? Oh! The wookie homeworld! Wookies… very clannish, mostly morally [...]

RPG Design – Character Advancement, d20, and Eclipse

   It’s very important to allow the characters to advance in a role-playing game; building up a character is one of the major pleasures in them. It can even be quite addictive, as demonstrated by any number of MMORPG’s. Games that don’t feature character advancement in some form tend to be niche productions – and [...]

The Spirits of Kwin Chiang

   In Continuum II, the Clergy can draw on the powers of their patrons over mental links. Some draw on gods, some on demons, some on elementals and nature spirits, and some on conceptual entities. A few – known as Shaman – don’t (or can’t) specialize – drawing small powers from any entity with which [...]

Kwin Chiang, Level Four Human Shaman

   Here we have a Continuum II character – mostly for nostalgia’s sake. It’s been quite a while since I had a chance to run that system. His spirit contacts will go up next.    Str 19, Int 16, Wis 18, Con 14, Dex 14, Chr 17, Com 10, Per 16.    Major Skills: Minor [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 14

   As usual, here we have Kira’s log with annotations so that it can serve as a general campaign log as well.    Oddly enough, their visit to Coruscant actually wound up promoting some party unity. Alys felt the need to keep the rest of the group from accidently destroying the cosmos – or at [...]

Deathlink, Extinction, and The Great Withering

   First up for today, it’s another question from Alzrius.    In Paths of Power II, the Deathlink spell (pg. 51) is a 9th-level spell that allows you to try and kill a specific person at range by killing someone else (possibly a friend or family member for heightened damage) as a proxy, sending the [...]

Tarlin’s Dreams Episode One – The Darkness and the Power

   This is basically a collaboration with Tarlin’s player – setting the scene for Tarlin’s upcoming dreamquest in search of guidance from his god.    The night after Tarlin unwittingly released his demonic doppleganger, he dreamed uneasily – finding himself in the demon realms of death, wandering the endless shadowy corridors and grounds of castles [...]

Readings from the Vault

   The setting was straightforward enough:    The broadcasts had spread, the wavefront expanding at the speed of light, rippling past the nearest – uninhabited – worlds to at last be hard by alien ears. Little attention was paid to yet another young civilization – until early television broadcasts were received and decoded.    After [...]

Recordings from the Holocron of Valerie Soung – Investigations

   Here we have another entry from Kira’s player, with some very minimal editing.    Valerie Soung, Trayus Academy, Malachor V    Leaping over the wall was the first unavoidable test of the security system this night. Either there would be scanners on the perimeter that would detect me or they wouldn’t. Once on the [...]

RPG Design – Overkill Penalties

   Despite the “min-maxers”, the “munchkins”, the “optimizers”, and the “power-gamers” (all good in moderation actually, but some players just don’t know when to stop), bigger is not always better – and even if it is, there are always things bigger than you. It’s a very large universe. Overkill is not always a good thing, In [...]

Eclipse d20 – The Shonen Jump

   This particular request (from Alzarius) was how to set up an anime-style “power up”.    You know how that works; the hero is on the edge of total defeat, and then gets inspired, or the villain says the one thing that makes him go berserk, or the love interest screams, or there’s some pesky [...]

Eclipse d20 – Village Hero, Maylindarin Vrilinassyr

   To humans, the elves seem flighty and mysterious – constructing no permanent holdings, drifting as lightly from place to place as a flock of exotic birds, creatures of gossamer and magic.    To the elves of course, walls of earth and towers of stone seem little more enduring than the cloth and woven branches [...]

Eclipse d20 – Village Hero, Nagindeyu

   Nagindeyu was the son of a passing adventurer, a powerful warrior-mystic from a distant land who had a passing affair with his mother, and left her with a few modest gifts – by the standards of a high-level adventurer. By the standards of the village, those parting gifts were sufficient to buy an inn and [...]

RPG Design – The Common Humanity

   This question was directed towards the Village Heroes series – but it deserves a more general answer. “Why are all of these characters human?”    Well…    The vast majority of RPG’s focus on humans – and most of the ones that don’t actually focus on humans focus on almost-humans with a few quirks or [...]

Eclipse d20 – Village Heroes, Tarvel and Raymund

   Before today’s two low-level heros, a question: “Why more males than females? There’s no distinction in the game rules.”    No, there isn’t – and I usually assume that there’s not much social prejudice against female adventurers either. After all, if the gods have seen fit to grant women fireballs, whirlwind attacks at +18, and [...]