G is for the Garriga Mountains

The Garriga Mountains extend north to south, from their southern shores on the Mezzovian Sea (where Iclezza sits at their eastern feet) to the Shutrak Savana far to the north.  Geologically, they are quite obviously a continuation of the Romeu Mountains to the south of the Mezzovian Sea, and the Tolosa Isles with make an irregular dotted line through the waters to connect them.  The Garriga Mountains are ancient granite and limestone mountains, worn somewhat smooth by millenia after millenia of erosion, yet still dififcult to cross, and widely considered impassible by wagon or caravan until fairly recently.  The mountains are almost completely covered in dense oak and hickory forest, with pines and hemlocks at higher elevations.  There are, however, many mountains are are either grassy or heath "balds"--they are not above the treeline, and yet trees refuse to grow on their summits.  The balds tend to be good locations for hunting large herbivores; it is believed that their continued eating of saplings is what keeps the summits in their "bald" state.

The slopes, many creeks, streams, and rivers, extremely rock-strewn terrain, and thick forest have made the Garriga Mountains extremely difficult to penetrate by any other than small groups of outdoorsmen, survivalists, or trailblazers.  For many years, villages and farms in the foothills to the east had to travel southward to Iclezza, board a ship for a short journey westward, and then undertake yet another long journey northwards again to reach a counterpart village or farm in the foothills to the west.  For those who find the prospect of a long overland journey daunting, the mighty Tec and Volo rivers run through the foothills on either side of the mountains (and very roughly parallel to them) and are navigable.  Nevertheless, the prospect of an extremely long journey to cover a relatively short distance between two points was prohibitive.

Finally, an explorer name Cade d'Oceil found the route known today as Cade's Gap, a pass through the mountain that, with a bit of work, yielded a serviceable road that can accomodate wagon and caravan traffic.  The road is quite winding, and is occasionally washed out after the frequent rains that blow through the Garriga Mountains, but when properly maintained, has greatly expanded the ability of the rural folks who live in the foothills to trade with each other, to pass through the mountains more frequently, and even to take advantage of the land within the mountains itself.  Although the mountain slopes remain thinly inhabitated, a number of coves, or sheltered and enclosed valleys, dot the range, and many of them feature somewhat thickly settled farms, cleared valley floors, and villages.  Many of them style themselves after the iconic imagery of Cade d'Oceil: dressed in buckskins and wearing a cap made of the fur of a coon or fox, tail still attached and hanging down the back.

Nominally the entire mountain range is claimed by the Terrasan Empire, and is part of the High Lordship of Iclezza.  However, as one travels further north along the foothills, and further into the heart of the range itself, the less one encounters folks who acknowledge Terrasan lordship, who follow Terrasan customs, who speak or name their children with the Terrasan tongue, or who resemble the typical Terrasan ethnicity.  This land has traditionally remained a redoubt of the balshatoi ethnicity, or Dunners, as they call themselves, after a word in their own tongue.  Many such dunners are in fact "hybrid" both in custom and in blood with Terrasans, but as the separatist "Matter of the North" grows as a political force in the lands near Iclezza, even the bronzest and darkest of folks, who speak only "hillbilly Terrasan" are turning their hearts towards their assumed Northerner heritage, and looking less towards Terrasa for leadership.  Many of the inhabitants of the Garriga Mountains are indeed quite notably not Terrasan at all, and remain relatively "pure" Northerner; one of the few such places left in the Terrasan sphere of influence.

The mountains themselves are not terribly difficult or dangerous to traverse on foot for those who know somewhat of wilderness survival and travel.  What is more concerning is, perhaps, the tendency of local powerful matriarchs and patriarchs to enter into feuds with other groups.  The so-called hillbillies of the Garrigas are often suspicious of strangers, and at times a state of cold warfare exists between small groups of the dunners and others.

New Campaign wiki

Another quick thing: I created a new wiki for the "all rogues" campaign that I'm preparing.  It's an abbreviated DARK•HERITAGE setting wiki, to some extent, although it has a few details around Porto Liure already that are not on the main wiki (crime syndicates, for one.)  And, of course, it's a campaign wiki, not a setting wiki, so it focuses on the PCs and their options a bit too.

http://wretched.wikispaces.com/

And here's a picture that's evocative of the game we'll be playing.  By Ben Wootten, for some WotC book or other.  Available on his gallery webpage.

More ramblings about using Pathfinder for Dark•Heritage

http://dwimmerlaik.wikispaces.com/Rogue

That right there is a reorganization of the material for the Rogue class in Pathfinder, with all the material, additional talents and archetypes that Pathfinder has put up on their "PRD" on a single page.  This, of course, was sparked by my "all rogue" game concept, discussed in the last post or two, and which is getting geared up to run online very shortly.  I'd like to do something similar for at least some of the other classes--fighter, ranger, barbarian, etc.  Classes that would feel more or less at home in DARK•HERITAGE anyway.

The archetypes concept is a great one.  I like it a ton, because it allows a great deal of flexibility, customization, and variability in class builds, without having to write completely new classes.  I'm reminded of Corey Reid's old Barsoom Tales game.  The conceit of that game, when it started at least, was that there was no magic on Barsoom.  Players had access to three classes; the fighter class, the rogue class, and the expert class.  Later, it turned out that both magic and psionics existed after all, but the players had to discover them before they could use them.  While this may sound extremely limiting to many D&D players, I've always thought the concept was really kinda brilliant.  And since I don't really like playing spellcasters, and don't like the way magic works in D&D very much anyway, that hasn't bothered me.

Anyway, the combination of those two thoughts has caused me to give a little bit more serious thought to how I'd adapt Pathfinder to work with the DARK•HERITAGE setting; a concept that I have only given minimal thought to before.  My earlier thought was to more or less replicate my 3.5 adjustments as much as possible; I'm now, honestly, thinking that that does not take account to the differences between Pathfinder and 3.5, which are really more thorough than I first thought.  So, let's get to it, shall we?

First, 3.5 was already way too fiddly for me.  Granted, my solution to that was to ignore a lot of the rules during play, and focus on a more "rulings" centered, GM has responsibility to adjudicate the game paradigm.  I like the detail provided for character definition, but during play, things like skill check DCs (or Saving Throw DCs in many cases) would be handwaved, things like encumbrance were completely ignored, combat was done without minis where possible, using narrative combat techniques (which somewhat crocks a few of the feats and class abilities that are heavily centered around tactical combat), CRs and XPs were fairly ad hoc, and roleplaying type activities were encouraged to be roleplayed rather than rolled as dice checks--to some extent.  In other words, I used the 3.5 rules, but largely played the game as if it was still B/X in most respects.  I don't have much use for all the rules of 3.5.

Of course, Pathfinder one-ups 3.5 in terms of rules.  By a fair margin.  A few things are certainly better.  I like character definition even more (see archetype discussion above).  I think the CMB/CMD simplifies all kinds of stuff that was difficult to remember and difficult to pull off correctly in 3.5 (although I sometimes handwaved that in 3.5 anyway.)  Everything is more rigid, and codified.  Granted, I can mostly run Pathfinder the way I ran 3.5... which is heavily based on the way I used to run B/X back in the day.  But to some extent, the rules bloat dampens my enthusiasm for doing so.  Not enough that I won't do it... but almost.  Frankly, the direction Trailblazer went as an improvement on 3.5 is much more my style than the direction Pathfinder went.

And I don't think the fact that Trailblazer and Pathfinder are essentially synonyms is an accident either.

I've complained before about how Pathfinder seems to increase the magic content of the game when my tendency would be to reduce it.  Most of the new classes (prior to the release of Ultimate Combat, at least) were magical classes.  But following Corey's lead, I can just exclude classes that don't work for my setting.  Since all of the Pathfinder classes, especially the original core classes, have all these archetype variations to choose from, making such restrictions isn't really very restrictive, in my opinion.  And heck; with the Use Magic Device skill and the Minor Magic, Major Magic, and even a Familiar rogue abilities to choose from, you can turn a rogue into the equivalent of an Occultist (from d20 Modern) which means that a Rogue really can do it all in a campaign.  But I don't need to be quite so restrictive, unless--like the game I've been talking about here--that's the whole conceit of the game.

Here's the class list that I can see as being appropriate for DARK•HERITAGE.  I prefer now to use magic as per the Occultist, i.e., characters with Use Magic Device are your spellcasters.  With the Magical Aptitude feat, and the Rogue abilities (if playing a rogue), you can make a pretty decent spellcaster for a low magic game that hits all of the high points on what you expect a sorcerous character to be like and be able to do.  With Incantations and scrolls or other magic devices granting access to potentially any spell in the game, you've got a lot of flexibility without having to do much customization and rules work to adapt spells, too.  So... no spellcasting classes really made the cut at all.  And some other classes failed for other reasons, namely that they're either flavorful in all the wrong ways (like the paladin or samurai) or full of supernatural abilities that really aren't what I'm interested in seeing replicated except in very odd cases (monk, ninja.)

• Rogue - all archetypes are acceptable.
• Fighter - all archetypes are acceptable.
• Ranger - ranger's must take the skirmisher archetype, which replaces their spellcasting ability with pickable abilities instead.  They can also take other archetypes, although I would discourage shapeshifter except in very unusual circumstances.  I might have missed an archetype that built on the spellcasting (although I don't think so), and if so, that one can't be used either.
• Barbarian - all archetypes are acceptable, but the titan mauler is a poor flavor fit.
• Cavalier - all archetypes are acceptable, although frankly I was on the fence about allowing this class at all, since the "knightly orders" concept isn't really a very DARK•HERITAGE like concept.  If you pick the Beast Rider archetype, you better check with me before picking any mount.  You certainly are not going to be riding around on a tyrannosaur.  As cool as that is, there are not dinosaurs in DARK•HERITAGE.
• Gunslinger - all archetypes are acceptable.

A couple of other notes.  The Survival skill should include the ability to make a track check, I think.  The Track feat is completely superfluous.  If you have access to it as a class feature, replace it with another feat choice, or with a choice from the Ranger skirmisher archetype's list of Hunter's Tricks.

There are also some other feats that I think are superfluous and you should be able to do them without having a feat.  I can't think of any others off the top of my head, but if you do end up picking such a feat, you can switch it out for something else.  Let's talk.

We'll use the slow progression method.  There will be an "informal" E6 or so--I won't actually literally incorporate the E6 tophat, but I don't really like lengthy campaigns, so the chances that you'll get above 6th level are miniscule anyway.  I'll also have NPCs be at that same order of magnitude of "power"--when I bother to stat them at all, of course.

Crime syndicates of Porto Liure

Although it was my plan to do G is for the Garriga Mountains today, I find myself in need of some detail about the criminal organizations of Porto Liure for the "all rogues" game I'm going to be running online, which I mentioned briefly in my last post.  So, let me whip something up there, real quick.

Porto Liure has a reputation as a lawless, anarchic place.  That's not entirely true.  One of the conceits for its very existance; a necessary caveat for Terrasa accepting its bid as an independent city-state in the first place, is the establishment and enforcement of a rule of law in Porto Liure, and agreeing to do so was old Jacobo Bernat's key compromise in his bid to establish himself as the newly minted Lord of Porto Liure at the end of the Pirate Wars 150 years ago.  How seriously that endeavor has been taken over the years has, of course, waxed and waned.  At its most stringent, the streets were nearly as clean as in any Terrasan city, and at its most lax, the Lord of Porto Liure was little more than among the most prominent gangster warlords in the city, with the City Watch as his personal enforcers.  Naturally, most of the time, it's somewhere in between.

But even at its most strident, the streets of Porto Liure have never really been clean.  It's just not in the nature of Liurans to roll over and accept too much authority, and the result of that is that organized crime is one of the most enduring and notable features of the city.

Currently, the following are among the most prominent elements of organized crime in the city.

• The Cherskii Mafia.  Headquartered "overseas", this mafia was formed and remains run to this day by bosses amongst the hamazin.  Originally meant as a method to raise money and resources for a resurgent "glorious revolution" and revitalization of Baal Hamazi itself, as the years have passed, the patriotic zeal has proven fleeting.  Most likely, the organized crime business is simply more profitable.  Although nominally run by hamazin hellkin, in reality, they tend to be distant and rarely seen authority figures.  Much of the actual muscle of these gangs are made up of shaggy urban changelings and local humans.  They deal in the usual vices--prostitution (not strictly illegal in Porto Liure, although discouraged in some locales), smuggling, drugs, protection rackets, bribery of officials, and the occasional contract killing.
• The Union of the Snake. A small group in Porto Liure, this is actually a Sarabascan outfit that specializes in assassination and poisonings.  Because their reputation is so good, the business is incredibly lucrative, and they can charge so much, the Union has surprising clout given their small numbers.  They are much more specialized than most, however.
• The Castiada Crime Family.  A local Terrasan family business, which has grown over the years to be a major player in the city.  Ruled by the "Old Gray Lady", it's not entirely clear who this person is.  It's not entirely clear that it is in fact a single person, or even a person at all.  Commonly, it's believed that the Old Gray Lady is a leader in disguise, and the actual running of the family is confined to a small group or triumvirate who take turns donning the Old Gray Lady's robes when the occasion demands.  Some have made wilder claims; that the Old Gray Lady is the ghost of an ancient Castiada matron who still rules the family from beyond the grave being one popular tavern story, but if anyone knows the truth, they're not saying.  In addition to playing in the usual vices, the Castiadas have made a concerted effort in the past to corral all the cat-burglars and pick-pockets in the city under their umbrella.  They haven't been completely successful, but they've managed to take a cut from a fair amount of them, and freelance operatives better learn to take very small, discrete steps around town or risk their brutal wrath.
• The Fuzeta da Ponte family.  Another local gang, but one with tendrils extending throughout the western Mezzovian region.  Old Man Heitor, the capo emeritus of the family, spent many of his younger years at sea as a pirate, and only retired to take over the organized crime business from his father when the sea lanes got too hot for him.  He's now stepped aside for his own son, Leonardo, who plied the seas with a little more legitimacy, sailing with a letter of marque issued by the Lord of Porto Liure himself.  Fantastically connected, both locally with the nobility, abroad with various important VIPs throughout the region, and with a number of old pirates and smugglers on the waters as well, the Fuzeta da Ponte family might be the most potent player in the city, although their strength is difficult to estimate.  Although they dabble in everything, their specialty is smuggling and piracy, and many pirates on the clear blue waters of the Mezzovian are sailing with debts owed to the Fuzeta da Ponte family, which they ensure they use as leverage to take a cut.
• Kaz's Crew.  Kazimir Lagebøter's ancestors were from the north, as a casual glance at his name suggests.  However, his family has lived in Porto Liure for generations.  Seen by many as a newcomer, and therefore with some disdain, Kazimir's success derives from his reputation for potent, dangerous, and cursed witchery, which he learned from an old vampire hag he took as a lover while traveling in Tarush Noptii.  At least, so say the rumors.  Regardless, his rise has been meteoric, and his crew have an almost unnatural, offputting mien to them.  Few can say to have directly witnessed any action of witchcraft, but everyone whispers about it nonetheless.

The All Rogue game

Someone asked recently about "what to do with an imbalanced party" and one specific example he gave is a group of all rogues.  I thought this was a curious question, given that running a game for a party of all rogues is actually an ambition of mine.

First off, to answer the question, I gave my opinion that it is the GM's job to provide a game for the player characters he gets, not passive aggressively penalize the players for not picking an "optimized" party balanced to some kind of mechanical ideal.  Control of the player's character, and definition thereof, is one of the few things that the players should have absolute control over (within parameters set by the GM, of course.  I absolutely believe in the GM's ability to veto broken or "bad" mechanics.)  It's not any more difficult or less fun for GM's to provide a game that works for the players rather than for an idealized theoretical party structure.  In fact, except in very unusual cases, it's going to make the game much more fun for the GM to provide a game that's also fun for the players.

So, I reiterate; to sacrifice a fun game for one that's idealogically "pure" is not only bad GMing and a poor consolation prize, but it's also passive aggressive.  I see no point in it.

But, that out of the way, I've actually, like I said, had the ambition of running an all rogue game for some time.  The idea appealed to me when someone I knew through work mentioned years ago that they had done so with a pirate theme, but it didn't really congeal in my mind until the Paizo folks came up with the notion of the archetype--subtle variations to the character classes suite of abilities that optimize them for a more specific role or archetype within a campaign.  Using the Pathfinder variant on the Rogue, including the archetypes introduced, has a number of benefits relative to the 3.5 SRD.

• d8 hit dice (as opposed to d6) removed some of the fragility associated with the rogue--which helps tremendously in an all rogue party.
• Pathfinder skill consolidation helps the skill points go even a little bit further.  With 8 skill points per level, Pathfinder rogues can be built to be experts in pretty much anything, and a party of all rogues can contain an awful lot of varied expertise in a game that utilized a lot of skill checks.  Which it should, especially given this party.
• 3.5 rogue is locked into a number of class abilities that may or may not be applicable to the concept of the character.  This is why the archetypes are so nice; the Trapfinding abilities in particular get frequently sacrificed to make way for something else (since Trapfinding is a very specific ability that doesn't apply to a lot of Roguish archetypes.)
• The pickable abilities are greatly expanded, making room for additional flexibility and variability in rogue builds.

So, just for the heckuvit, here's the list of archetypes that can be used to modify the rogue class.  They are all available in the Pathfinder book collection, or on Paizo's website with their "PRD"--a Pathfinder specific version of an online SRD. 

From the Advanced Player's Guide section of the PRD:

• Acrobat
• Burglar
• Cutpurse
• Investigator
• Poisoner
• Rake
• Scout
• Sniper
• Spy
• Swashbuckler
• Thug
• Trapsmith

From the Ultimate Combat section of the PRD (it's unfortunate that the PRD isn't better organized to keep all Rogue elements in the same place, but eh):

• Bandit
• Chameleon
• Charlatan
• Driver
• Knifemaster
• Pirate
• Roof Runner
• Sactified Rogue
• Survivalist

What you'll also find somewhat curious is the slight overlap with some of the other classes; the Scout and Survivalist in particular edging somewhat into Ranger territory.

F is for Forbidden Lands

Here's a scan of my WIP map.  A portion of it, anyway.  I actually think I'm going to redraw this entire thing in a new format--a digital format--and add text digitally and whatnot.  But for now, here's most of the Forbidden Lands.  As is immediately apparent, a lot of Lovecraftian names make appearances.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that this is a secondary world fantasy setting, a lot of the names come from the Dreamlands stories.

Another style questionaire

I've said it before and I'll say it again; I'm a sucker for questionaires.  Here's somebody's questionaire about gaming style, with my answers.  I don't think this is quite as good at pinning down GM style as the Merit Badges (it's much less succinct, for one thing, and also curiously not as comprehensive) but I like approaching the same question from multiple angles to see if doing so susses out nuances or details.

Question 1:  Which of these genres interest you the most? (choose one or more)
Sci-fi, fantasy, modern, historical, horror, humor/satire, realistic shooting, superhero, surreal, detective, post-apocalyptic, multi-genre, other?

Fantasy, but honestly I like my fantasy to be a bit non-traditional and often mingled with other genres. My own setting I see as a hybrid of fantasy, swashbuckling pirates, westerns, and Arabian Nights with a strong overlay of horror and spy-thriller type intrigue.

Question 2: What sort of emphasis would you like the game to have? (choose one or more)
Troubleshooting, action, tactics, plotting, wackiness, story, character growth, technical stuff, business-simulation, epicness, survival, other?

Action, story, character growth. Most of the best games I've run or played in have had a fair helping--although not overwhelmingly so--of wackiness too.

Question 3: Will you be willing to get to know the game and learn to understand the game-world? Will you read the GM’s e-mails and hand-outs outside the game?

Within reason, absolutely. If he's inundating me with the equivalent of a dissertation, though... probably not.

Question 4: Which of these are you and how much? Gamist, Narrativist, Simulationist

My tastes and approach to the game are definately mostly narrativst, with a dash of simulationist. I find gamism as an approach to my RPG to be tiring and I quickly lose interest in games that focus on those elements.

Question 5: What guarantees a good game? Short answers please.

Well, nothing guarantees it of course, but it seems to be most likely to happen when you're with a bunch of guys (and/or gals) that you like hanging out with, and you have a somewhat similar approach to the prospect of gaming.

Question 6: What is the ideal size of a gaming group?

3-5 players plus GM.

Question 7: Do you prefer a designated GM or a GM hot-seat?

I don't mind different GMs for different campaigns, but within a single campaign, a single GM please.

Question 8: How challenging the game should be to player characters? Please note that this has nothing to with how challenging the game is to players.

Fairly challenging. The crux of good drama is when bad and difficult things happen to interesting characters. This means that by default, a good game is one where the characters are challenged. I know that this isn't what you're asking, but a lot of the traditional methods of challenging players (puzzles, tactical challenges, etc.) on the other hand bore me to tears, and I really don't want to spend my leisure time engaging in them.

Question 9: Can bad dice rolls kill characters? Can characters die at all?

Yes. Character death should always be a possibility... although at the same time, it ideally it would also happen rarely.

Question 10: How much the GM should help players in game? With rule-questions the GM must help of course but if the character is in a tight spot and should make a decision, should the GM offer an option (thus putting words in the players mouth – “ok, I’ll do that!”) or should the player be given the right to make his/her own decisions, whether right or wrong? Should the GM have a GMPC which guides players through difficult spots?

As much as he needs to and absolutely no more. The GM's job is to facilitate the game and make it as fun as possible. To accomplish this, one of his key skillsets is the ability to "read the crowd" and react immediately and appropriately. If the players seem frustrated with a situation, then a hint is a good idea. If they're having a great time anticipating and dealing with a challenge, then back off. If they're having a great time anticipating an action that you think is a bad idea, maybe you should rethink your plan and be more improvisational. Being warned off by a heavy-handed GM from something that you're really excited to do can be a real enthusiasm damper. If you really must do it, you better be darn sure that what they have to take as a consolation prize is really cool and exciting so they don't feel gypped.

Question 11: What do with a PC when the player can’t come?

Quietly ignore the fact that he's not there.

Question 12: Do you like traditional gaming (whatever that is?) or do you enjoy groundbreaking, innovative games.

I rarely appreciate mechanical innovations for their own sake. Give me something tried and true so I don't have to focus on the mechanics and can just get busy playing.

That said, I've had a lot of fun with Dread, for instance. Then again, there really aren't a lot of mechanics to think about.

Question 13: Do you want the GM to prepare the session and to write the story or would you like the characters to create the story themselves? Script vs. freedom, which do you prefer?

I like the GM to provide lots of hooks; things that we could potentially pursue. But if I later feel like I can't actually play the game other than to follow along a pre-programmed course, that's usually a major letdown.

Question 14: How fast-paced the game should be? Can we stop to buy equipment for an hour or should the GM be ruthless and skip over the parts that he doesn’t deem vital to the story? (referring to “guards at the gate”)

Again, the GM needs to know how to "read the crowd." Sometimes that kind of stuff can be fun. Sometimes its not. He should skip when players are obviously feeling bored or ready to move on, he should stop and savor when the players are enjoying it. I think pace control is mostly an element of the game that I look to the GM to control, but there's no one size fits all answer to the question of what kind of pacing is the best kind. Even within the same group. Even to me personally. Sometimes I like to savor the little world-building moments. Sometimes I find shopping tedious and want to get on to something more exciting. Mostly, I'm keen on a faster pace. But not always.

Question 15: How do you feel about having off-game discussions about in-game-issues, i.e. meta-game table talk?

I feel that it's absolutely essential for a successful game.

E is for Eltdown

(Editor's note: I've made some updates 8/21/2019 to bring this DH4 post up to date to serve as source material for DH5.  While I want to respect my original DH4 work, I've used strikethrough and other editing to show both what it used to say and what it now says.)

Eltdown is a strange border town, located deep in the hinterlands.  Much of the population is Tarushan, and while Eltdown is occasionally plagued by troubles from that benighted land, Tarush Noptii Timischburg does not claim it among its territory, and does little to interfere as a matter of policy.  Nestled deep in windy and perpetually shadowy downs in the wild lands between the borders of the Razine city-state of Terrasa Hill Country and Tarush Noptii Timischburg, it's fitted uncomfortably as neither.  It is nestled up against the boughs of the so-called Haunted Forest, but also manages to reside in the small gap that separates those rumor-darkened woods from the more overtly dangerous Shifting Forest Thursewood.  Few travelers from any direction have cause to pass through Eltdown.  As such, its inhabitants are very insular and untrusting in strangers.

It's not clear why anyone ever settled the area in the first place, as the soil is not particularly fit for farming, there are little to no mineral resources, and even timber means going into the Haunted Forest—an activity the natives are very reluctant to do unless they pass only a few steps under the trees in the full light of day.  Rather, it appears that much of the core population has been here since before the founding of the current empires of the day.  Many families trace their lineage—through admittedly semi-legendary sources—to before even the founding of Tarush Noptii Timischburg, although what kingdom or country they belonged to before the rise of the vampires is long forgotten.  Possibly it was settled because of the gap between the two forests, which may have been a lake in ancient times that has slowly been retreating and turning into fens and marshlands for centuries.  This lake would have made a natural highway from the lands to the south into the lands of the north.  Without the benefit of water travel, the marshlands are nearly as treacherous as the forests on the west and the east.  The Eltdown Fens, as they are now called, are also the source of a nearly perpetual roiling fog that surges over the town frequently.  When the streets are so foggy that it is difficult to see your way, the locals whisper that more than just workers returning to their homes wander the streets.  The residents of Eltdown seem to have resigned themselves to a frequently low life expectancy, abnormalities and occasional birth defects or mutations, and high infant death rates.  When pressed to explain such things, the whisperings and mutterings cease, but furtive and veiled glances towards the fens take their place.

Although few outsiders will be able to hear it from a local, there is an ancient book, The Parchments of Pnom, which refers to an ancient city on a lake that appears to be geographically contiguous with the area where the Fens now squat.  And the few travelers and traders who occasionally pass through Eltdown speak of rumors of haunted, ancient stone circles, menhirs, cromlechs and possibly even an entire city lurking somewhere in the fens.  There are no accurate reports of it, for nobody is believed to have seen it.  Exactly how the rumors were started, then, remains a mystery—or for sceptics, a matter of scorn.

The most erudite in matters of arcane and forbidden—indeed often heretical and highly illegal—knowledge, on the other hand, are more likely to be believers in the mysterious Fen-city, sometimes called Pnom itself (although that label is merely one of convenience; no true scholar believes that the city was actually ever called Pnom.)  The reason for this is the even more secretive and poorly known manuscript copies of Translations of the Eltdown Shards, which purport to be garbled translations of ancient tablets found in the environs near the Eltdown Fens.  This text is blasphemous in the extreme, and fewer texts are more noxious to the health and sanity of the human mind.  Possessing one is an instant sentence of death in any civilized land for both the possessor, and anyone else who might have seen the text while in his possession.  In some places, even knowing of the existence of the book, much less having ever seen a copy, is enough to earn a burning at the stake by the Inquisition.

But because of the notoriety of the Eltdown Shards among the small and eclectic community of scholars who study such arcane and forbidden knowledge, the locals of Eltdown have learned to accept that occasional strange and disquieting foreigners lurk about their lands, looking for something that should be left alone and forgotten.  Sometimes such foreigners are caned and sent on their way for their trouble, and sometimes even worse is done to them; they may be hanged or placed in a gibbet.  But mostly the locals know to leave such individuals alone, for far too often they turn out be witches or sorcerers of foul repute—or even worse.

What exactly do you mean by "dark fantasy" anyway?

I frequently call my setting one of "dark fantasy" but I think that might require further elaboration, since there's a trend to migrate to dark fantasy in general in the genre... but the end result is not always the same.  And if you look up dark fantasy at Wikipedia, or Google it elsewhere, or whatever, you can get a lot of different interpretations on what it means.

One trend that's pretty noticeable in modern fantasy has rather pejoratively been labelled "grimdark"--although lacking any other descriptive adjective that really fits, I think the pejorative is becoming the mainstream label for it.  Probably the most notable example that I've personally read of this kind of stuff is by Joe Abercrombie.  When I say that DARK•HERITAGE is dark fantasy, this is not what I mean.  I thought Abercrombie's novel Best Served Cold was just gratuitously nasty and edgy, long after being nasty or edgy had any meaning anymore.  It just kept on serving it up until I was sick of it.  Sex, violence, seedy betrayals, torture, incest, cannibalism--it had it all, and it was all luridly on display.

So, again, just to get that out there--that is not what I mean when I say dark fantasy.  But Joe Abercrombie didn't come from nowhere, and he hardly is responsible for starting the trend.  I look at pioneers like Glen Cook and see a tone that I like better.  Sure, it's got pretty rough anti-heroes doing pretty nasty things; but not really gratuitously, and usually "off camera" anyway.  I most especially like the notion of likeable scoundrels and rogues; folks who are more anti-heroic, yet charismatic and interesting to read about.  I also love the idea of anyone who uses magic being scary beyond all reason.  Something about the very nature of using magic is corrupting, unnatural, and just... inhuman.  I like that.  It's very Lovecraftian.

So there's not a lot of black and white good and evil in DARK•HERITAGE.  Lots of folks are bad.  Most folks that you'll encounter, maybe.  Most likely the protagonists and PCs will be more anti-heroic rather than traditionally heroic.  Think of it as a strong patina of noir over a sword and sorcery (rather than high fantasy) base.

A lot of so-called dark fantasy today is in modern-day paranormal "chicklit"—the successors, contemporaries and collegues to Laurell Hamilton and Stephanie Meyers.  Clearly DARK•HERITAGE doesn't fit that mold; I greatly enjoy the pleasure of constructing a "secondary world" fantasy setting, and I'm looking to emulate—to some extent—Westerns and swashbucklers with that, not the modern world.

But one thing I do have in common with that brand of dark fantasy is the focus on the paranormal that is more horror-like in approach rather than typically fantasy like.

In fact, I'd say that that's what I consider to be dark fantasy; the kind that I'm trying to emulate in my setting, at least.  It's sword & sorcery specifically (as opposed to high fantasy) with a thick coat of noir and horror laid on top of it as thematic elements and tone.

On "fixing" d20 games

Although I'd long noticed that the price of used 3.5 books was not coming down on Amazon (and was in fact increasing) indicating robust demand, I'd never really thought much about the notion of who plays what and trying to gauge the relative sizes of the various fractured "camps" within the D&D playing world.  It wasn't really until recently that all of that crystalized in my head around the idea that there are basically four large camps which, while maybe not exactly equivalent in size, are certainly on the same order of magnitude.  This includes 1) the OSR, 2) folks who never left their d20 D&D games, 3) folks who migrated to Pathfinder as the spiritual successor to the D&D that they used to play, and 4) of course, folks who did migrate to 4e after all.  Because Pathfinder was positioned as the successor to 3.5, I figured that most folks who played in that same vein probably played Pathfinder rather than 3.5, and I presumed that my own hesitation with migrating to Pathfinder was merely my own inertia and conservatism in taste, as well as the fact that I'd spent a lot of time getting 3.5 to what I wanted it to be already and didn't need what were, in effect, Jason Buhlman's houserules on top of my own.  That isn't to say that I didn't buy a lot of Pathfinder product (in pdf, where it was relatively cheap) or adopt a few of it's better rules as houserules of my own, but again--my assumption was that there was the OSR, Pathfinder and 4e, and lingering d20/3e/3.5 players like me and my group were the exception.  I probably shouldn't have been surprised, given the sales of 3.5 books on Amazon, but I kinda was, and I hadn't really thought about the idea that maybe the group that's quietly been playing 3.5 (or even 3e) all along without migrating to either 4e or Pathfinder might have been a significant group; on the same order of magnitude as the other three.

So, in many ways, I've been a little reluctant to talk too much about the specific d20 nature of my games, assuming that that's not of interest to anyone.  Granted, it's not like I have a big and loyal following of readers anyway, and I'm mostly doing this blog for my own benefit not for anyone else's... but subconsciously, I felt like talking too much about a system that I assumed was obsolete was wasted effort.  Now that my admittedly somewhat speculative analysis leads me to the opinion that actually the d20-playing crowd is bigger than I thought (plus, it also encompasses Pathfinder players--although I suspect Pathfinder players are generally fairly committed to their system and aren't necessarily interested in "fixing" it) I feel more emboldened to talk about it more openly.  For occasions when I do so, I've created a new label, d20 which will be for posts in which the d20 system explicitly plays some kind of role in what I'm talking about.

All that said, "fixing" a game system, of course, is heavily dependent on what you think the problems are, and they are unlikely to be universally regarded.  I do tend to think that there are some problems I see with d20 that many players of d20 also see as a problem, but I believe that many other problems I have with d20--or at least specifically with the D&D iteration of it--are questions of taste and I may actually be in the minority with what I prefer.  By and large, what I prefer is a system that runs fairly fast and loose at the table, without bogging down in minutiae and tedium.  I do, however, really like a robust and detailed character generation method.  I like being able to give characters plenty of definition through the rules... but when we're actually playing the game I want it to fade more into the background and be easy and intuitive to run.

Much of this can be accomplished by merely remembering the "Tools, not rules" maxim that was present at the launch of 3e back in 1999 or 2000 or so.  If you believe that the GM adjudicating an attempted action by picking a skill that sounds relevent and making up a DC that sounds reasonable, for instance, then all that business in the skill description part of the rules becomes merely example and modeling of how it might be done rather than a straitjacket on how to play the game.  I've always run this way, so much of the "choking on rules" complaints I've heard about d20 over the years struck me as a bit odd and I'm not sure why otherwise reasonable people who played that way in other systems get hung up on that in d20 specifically, but it's worth stating explicitly again for emphasis--tools, not rules.  Use the tool that's appropriate for your game; when it's not appropriate, don't use it.  Just as you wouldn't use a circular saw to put a nail in a 2x4, you don't need all the detail that the game gives you if it's not something that's benefitting your game.  That should be intuitive, but... apparently it's not.

So, with that, I'll divide the remainder of my post into two blocks--generic system fixes, and fixes that cater to my specific taste.  Each block will first identify a problem, and then provide a solution.  For the most part, luckily for us, these solutions are already in print.  Folks have been tweaking d20 for quite a while now, so it only seems fair that actual designers and others will have come up with great solutions that I should look at first before attempting to reinvent the wheel.

Generic system fixes
Problem #1) High level D&D is too complicated and cumbersome.  The math doesn't work out very well or sensibly, it's too difficult to use, and it feels too different from D&D at lower level.  It's as if the entire genre of the game changes.

Solution: Use E6.  Avoid higher levels.  Even without E6, you can have campaigns that end before you get into higher levels.  E6 (or you can arbitrarily set it at E8, or any other fixed point you wish) allows for continuous play with the same characters, though, and avoids the problems with higher level D&D.

Problem #2) Base attack bonus increases with level, meaning that you're better at hitting things.  Armor class does not.  This means that unless you wear increasingly heavy armor, or have a high hit point total, you can't really be involved in melee very well.  The idea of the swashbuckling rogue is a nice one, but it doesn't actually work in the system. 

Solution: D&D itself patches this clumsily by assuming that you will have access to magical equipment that closes this gap. Every other d20 game--Wheel of Time, Star Wars, d20 Modern, etc. on the other hand, give you a level/class based AC progression.  In other words, you get harder to hit as you advance, just as you also get better at hitting.  There's also a rule in place for D&D for this in Unearthed Arcana, although it's not perfect.  Here, since it replaced armor proficiencies, the same classes that have heavy armor are better at avoiding getting hit.  Somehow this doesn't seem quite right; the swashbuckling rogue, for instance, isn't really  much better in this system than he is in D&D normally.  Ideally what would be done is that after looking at the d20 Modern or Wheel of Time or Star Wars game for inspiration, the progression would be manually assigned to each class as appropriate.  This just means doing a little bit of shuffling on who has which bonus, though.  And I freely admit that I might be biased in my opinion on who should have the better ones--because they're the classes that I most like the archetypes for.

Problem #3) Iterative attacks (i.e., once you have a BAB of +6, you get a second +1 attack as long as you make a full attack option) bog down combat.  They also have the (probably unintended, although you never know) side effect of making combat very static.  Since one of the major literary influences of the game is swashbuckling action stories, this somehow seems totally wrong.

Solution: In an E6 game, only characters with a full attack bonus will ever get to this point.  Instead of advancing to +6/+1, however, they'll advance to +6... and then get the ability to move both before and after making an attack, similar to the Spring Attack feat.  Unlike Spring Attack, however, you can make this move even in heavy armor--although, of course, your speed and therefore movement will be less.

Problem #4) Attacks of Opportunity create a major complication in combat, plus they force you to use the grid-based miniatures combat instead of narrative "just describe what happens" combat.

Solution: That problem isn't strictly speaking true, although I can see your point.  You can play narrative combat with attacks of opportunity as long as you do a good job describing stuff, and make sensible rulings about when AoOs (and feats related to AoOs or the avoidance of them) come up.  However, you'll just have to be careful to avoid playing with any overly rules-lawyerish or argumentative players.  Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, that's a requirement anyway, and is only coincidentally related to solving this particular problem.

Problem #5) Combat takes way too long, and long combats get boring.  Also,

Problem #6) Preparing for the session takes way too long.  Statting up all these NPCs is a ton of work, and takes forever.

Solution: Schrödinger's stats.  Do you really need to know all of those stats?  I submit that you do not.  And if you do not, your players will never know the difference anyway.  Don't be a slave to the stats.  I don't know how many combats I've run with NPCs or monsters who were never statted up at all.  Even in the midst of combat, I didn't know what any of their stats were.  I made up to hit and damage bonuses (and dice type) on the fly, and combat ended when I could tell that the players were ready to move on, or that the result was inevitable.  I.e., they didn't necesssarily have set hit points either; I have the ability to decide as the GM that any given hit took the combatant into negative hit points by "retroactively" adjusting wha tthe hit point total is.  This can be done even if there is no hit point total.  It takes a bit of a paradigm shift, and sometimes we think that doing this is "cheating".  It's not.  It's the GM's responsibility as the adjudicator of the game to make sure that it runs at optimum at all times.  And frankly, that doesn't  mean always following all of the rules as written by the letter.  Taking some kind of moral high ground because your game is more "correct" but less fun is a poor consolation prize.

Problem #7) There's too many skills.  Some of them seem to overlap, or otherwise make it difficult to split out.

Solution: Eliminate Move Silently.  Every Move Silently check can be done with the Hide skill.  Eliminate Listen.  Every Listen check can be done with the Spot skill.  Maybe even eliminate Gather Information and Bluff and simply use Diplomacy.  I'm a little less sold on that last one, though.

Problem #8) There's too many feats.  Lots of people don't think you can do something if you don't have the proper feat to do it.  Plus, feats are like little rules subsystems that don't operate the same way as the rest of the game (often) so it greatly increases complexity.

Solution: Yeah, there are a lot.  Don't use them all.  There's no reason you have to.  Plus, although there's a lot, for the most part, players need to worry about the feats that their characters have, and none others.  And you don't need to worry too much about it either.  Feeling paralyzed because you think you need a feat in order to do something unusual isn't a problem with the rules so much as it is a problem with the approach to the game.  You just have to... y'know... not play that way.

Problem #9) The 15 minute adventuring day.

Solution: Well, this is a problem partly caused by two problems.  1) The way magic works in D&D, which if you see below, I'll be changing, and 2) the way adventures are structured.  That's all on you as the GM, buddy.  If you have a problem with it, then do it differently.

Specific system fixes
Problem #1) I hate D&D magic.  It feels very mechanical, bland, highly focused on combat-utility applications, and plus there's way too much of it.  I haven't yet read a fantasy book with magic that felt like D&D magic... even D&D novels.

Solution: Luckily for you, there are a lot of alternate systems in print, much of which is Open Content.  I prefer Incantations, which are in Unearthed Arcana and Urban Arcana (and the SRD.)  Although it does require that the GM make a lot of spells, or create ritual costs associated with existing spells to adapt them as Incantations, which I admit is a minor drawback.  But there are plenty of other options too.  I've gotta have no less than half a dozen "magic systems" for d20 games, and only one or two of them was bought specifically because I was looking for other ways to do magic.

Problem #2) If you change the magic system, you've hardly got any classes left!  Almost every class had a spellcasting progression except Rogue, Fighter and Barbarian.  And monk too, I guess, but he had all kinds of weird supernatural abilities.

Solution: I have no idea how many alternate classes in OGC I have.  Scores.  Hundreds, probably.  Lots anyway.  It's certainly possible to give your players lots of options while still curtailing the overtly magical ones.  Another way to increase the effective number of character classes without adding more actual classes is to adapt archetypes from Pathfinder.  The archetypes work by, essentially, swapping out some class abilities with others that are more in keeping with a specific archetype.  Some archetypes are only extremely modest changes to the base class, but others make for some interesting changes that significantly change the feel of the game.  And the great thing is, they can mostly be adopted as is even into a 3.5 game that's not necessarily a Pathfinder game, although naturally keeping an eye open for some areas where they don't quite fit is important. 

For example, the Rogue class has a number of archetypes introduced in the Advanced Player Guide section of the PRD (the Pathfinder version of the SRD.)  These include the Acrobat, Burglar, Cutpurse, Investigator, Poisoner, Rake, Scout, Sniper, Spy, Swashbuckler, Thug, and Trapsmith.  It also introduces a ton of new Rogue Talents, which are alternate class abilities useable by any archetype.  Most of the archetypes really only change one or two class features, but then they also recommend Rogue Talents that complement the archetype.  It's somewhat subtle, but many of them get rid of a lot of problems players might have with playing a Rogue, when the Rogue isn't exactly what they want.  For many, the specifically Dungeoncrawling Trapfinding and Trapsense abilities are the ones that get sacrificed to give you something more flavorful.  The Ultimate Combat section of the PRD gives us a bunch more archetypes, at least for non-magical classes. 

Problem #3) How is it possible that there aren't any rules for running chase scenes in D&D?  Isn't that pretty much one of the main, staple action sequences from any cool adventure story?

Solution: No kidding, right?  What a major miss.  Luckily, a few folks have stepped into the breach to offer us alternatives.  I think the simplest and most native d20-feeling chase seqence ruleset I know is from Five Fingers and is written by Wolfgang Baur (I actually think it might have been lifted from some other source--such is the way open content works, after all.)  I've actually posted them, in simplified form, here on the blog myself.

Problem #4) d20 doesn't have Madness, or whatever other rule that I really like from some other game.

Solution: So add it in.  I prefer the Madness option from The D20 Freeport Companion, but there are other options out there in print, including one in the SRD which is the same as that in Call of Cthulhu--almost word for word.

Problem #5) D&D--and to a lesser extent, d20 games (and any RPGs for that matter) don't offer much support for structures other than dungeoneering.  I don't like dungeoneering.

Solution: I don't either.  But, as was done back in Ye Olde Days of the Hobbie, we just had to make it up ourselves.  It's a shame that there aren't great products out there that support something other than dungeoncrawling, but there aren't really much.  Luckily, the system is flexible enough that you can do other things easily enough with it and it still works, so... well, do your best.  But you're kinda on your own.

Blood of Angels and Magnimar, City of Monuments

I finished the last two Paizo books that were part of my Amazon order, the slimmer Blood of Angels, a kind of aasimar counterpart to the Blood of Fiends book I reviewed a couple of weeks ago, and Magnimar, City of Monuments, a sourcebook on the city of the same name that has appeared in numerous adventure paths to date.

These will be shortish reviews; after reading and reviewing several Paizo books in a row, I'm starting to feel like my reviews of them are getting repetitive.  So rather than repeat them, I've lumped the two together, and will not give too many details about each.

Blood of Angels follows much of the same format as Blood of Fiends, and as such is the "definitive" guide to playing aasimars.  It gives a number of alternate and modified ways to construct the race; you can swap out physical descriptions with a d% with physical quirks based on your celestial blood, it has a similarly long chart that gives alternate racial abilities, and it also offers more focused aasimar types which are more closely tied to a specific type of celestial.  As with the other book, the last several pages are pretty specific to their ruleset, and don't work quite as well if you're still playing 3.5, or whatever.  But much of the content will be as useful as Blood of Fiends was, and for the same reason.

In terms of the fluffy stuff, some of it feels kinda obvious, although the book makes an interesting point that aasimars can grow up burdened by expectation, and feel very alone regardless of any other factor in their life.  One thing that occured to me is that how is it that people know a person is an aasimar?  Depending on the physical features such a character develops, it doesn't necessarily resemble an angel exactly; and frankly, with some of those features, why are they not assumed to be tieflings, even?  And at the beginning when it discusses the genesis of aasimar bloodlines, it came with the same kind of feel--I couldn't help but ask how any of this was "good"?  How is it that angels are acting this callously towards mortals, and how is this any better than what fiends supposedly do?  This is where I found the book to be surprisingly inspirational to someone like me who ignores alignment and specifically cultivates a dark fantasy vibe to my homebrew gaming.  First off, what really is the difference between a celestial and a fiend, other than alignment?  There are a number of different fiendish types already, depending on your choice of source material, as well as a number of different types of celestials.  Each "type" has a suite of special abilities.  A number of other outsiders exist with similar suites of abilities--but they are neither fiends nor celestials.  The differences between them start to grow very esoteric and fluffy after a while, though.  Why aren't creatures like efreet or slaads fiends?  What if celestials aren't necessarily any more "good" than fiends, because in a dark fantasy milieu, what is good and evil?  Is the only difference between celestials and fiends who is prettier and has better PR?

If you've ever read Scar Night, you might think that actually that's a pretty compelling scenario.  And even if you don't, the notion of fallen angels is, of course, heavily ingrained in our collective mythological lexicon.  And the notion of pitching aasimar as nephilim appeals to me greatly.  So much so that I might even officially make it a possibility for DARK•HERITAGE.  And when a book makes me consider adding a new, potentially significant element to my setting because it's got something that I like, well, I call that a success.

Magnimar was more overtly successful in that I can more easily see myself using it as is without having to get there through proxies and by making changes to setting assumptions.  Magnimar is a city in the "frontier region" of Golarion, the big Varisian area, which is similar in some respects to the "points of light" setting of 4e, although coincidentally, I'm sure (for one thing, it predates it by at least a little bit, or at best they were coming out at more or less the same time.)  This PoL setting has scattered villages, roving barbarians, and then basically three or four significant population centers.  One of them is a pirate port, one of them is a weird, bohemian crazy place, one of them is a little Chelaxian wannabe, and then there's Magnimar... maybe a glimpse at what Cheliax might have been before the diabolist House of Thrune took over.  In this sense, it's an interesting addition to the setting.

It's also a fairly typical D&Dish place.  It's relatively ordered, and can therefore be a relatively safe "home base" for PCs to strike out from in search of adventure, but it's also got a fair bit of adventuring possibilities right there within city limits, from dealing with cults, shapechangers, corrupt nobles, organized crime, and (yawn!) the ubiquitous "dungeon ruins within the city."  It's a little bit less of a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" and more a place that's hoping to do the right thing, but teetering on the edge of going the wrong way.  If, of course, the PCs aren't there to nudge things along.  To be honest with you, my reading of Magnimar left me a little less impressed than I hoped to be, and even while I was reading it, I was thinking back to passages and places in other books like Freeport or Five Fingers, where I liked what they did better.

One interesting little mechanical addition to the rules was the notion of performing some kind of ritual in front of a monument to get a temporary benefit.  This seemed very similar to the notion of shrines and whatnot in Five Fingers, and I'm pretty sure that the Paizo folks must have gotten the idea there.

After describing the various locations around the city, there were a few pages of plots and secrets and stuff going on around town, and then there are a number of pages of bestiary.  There are only a couple of actual new monsters, though, and quite a few sample NPC stats.  As with Isles of the Shackles which I just reviewed, I'm a little skeptical that this is a good use of pagecount, and if this becomes the modus operandi of Pathfinder setting books, I'm going to knock them down a notch or two in estimation from where they used to be.

But despite that seemingly negative approach, I thought the book was well done, and I think Magnimar is a great resource for anyone running a Golarion game, or even a regular D&D game in another setting.  It's especially nice if you're going to run one of the adventure paths that spend a significant amount of time in the city, like Rise of the Runelords or Shattered Star.

D is for House Dracul

Infamously, Tarush Noptii is openly ruled by vampires.  The quick version of their history is that some... thing fell out of sky thousands of years ago.  Several heroic generals and their armies went to investigate.  They were all slaughtered.  The generals themselves were somehow corrupted by what they found, and became the Primogenitor vampires--twenty of the most loathsome creatures in existance.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves; P is for Primogenitors, and today's blog entry is only D.  For now, the important thing to know is that there are eight houses of vampires which are "descendents" of one of the primogenitors.  Not all of the primogenitors spawned houses, and not all of the houses which used to exist still do.  But one of the most notorious and traditionally most politically powerful of these houses has always been House Dracul.  Aristocratic, arrogant, and somewhat social by nature, the vampires of House Dracul tend to deliver the classic image of a vampire to a game of DARK•HERITAGE as sexy, monstrous, and clannish.  They match the classic archetype of Dracula himself (as the name implies) and are also similar to other gaming vampire clans as Warhammer's Von Carstein, and in Vampire: the Masquerade, they'd find their closest analogs amongst the Ventrue and the Giovanni.

Although they are, of course, somewhat secretive and keep their power close to the vest in their incessant power struggles with other Houses, it is believed that there are upwards of 200 vampires in the entire kingdom who owe some kind of allegiance of fealty to House Dracul, making them by far the largest of the houses, if true.  Because of this, House Dracul is often forced to "go it alone" as their rivals tend to form alliances against them.  Few prefer to deal with Dracul, since Dracul treats them constantly as if they approach them from a position of strength.

In addition to the vampires, House Dracul has an army of about 5,000 Untouchables, mortals who have pledged their service to the house in return for protection from vampiric predation for them and their families.  These Untouchables are apread throughout the kingdom of Tarush Noptii and wear distinctive uniforms (and travel in platoons.)  Because of their priviledged position, they are usually given a wide berth by the common people, who have a number of myths and rumors about what they are up to.  It is widely believed that the Untouchables harvest non-Untouchable Tarushans for feeding.  This is actually mostly false; the vampires of House Dracul all insist on hunting their victims themselves as much as possible, and only extreme circumstances of some kind or another will have a vampire "fed" by a captive brought to them by someone else.

In addition to their activities within Tarush Noptii itself, House Dracul is the "face" of Tarush Noptii to the outside world, and Tarushan embassies and official contacts between Tarush Noptii and others nations are almost always staffed by Draculans, often including one or possibly two vampires, a bodyguard of a score Untouchables, and possibly some other soldiers or mercenaries or other valuable workers of some kind.  These expatriate Tarushans still serve the house loyally, but are also more pragmatic and more likely to enter into alliances with indivuals from other Houses if they happen to come across them, seeing themselves as not just representatives of House Dracul but also the entirety of Tarush Noptii as a whole.

This outward looking attitude has greatly increased the coffers of House Dracul relative to many of the other houses, even further increasing their strength and influence.  In addition to the Untouchables, several thousands--numbers that are unknown to anyone other than the Dracul elders--of mercenaries serve their wishes within Tarush Noptii as well.  In all things, House Dracul seeks to expand its own influence and blunt the influence of other houses.  In response to the success of the house in opening embassies, some of the other houses have started opening communications with power groups outside of the nation of Tarush Noptii, but given the headstart and other natural advantages that House Dracul has, nobody has yet managed to parlay that into the kinds of benefits that House Dracul takes for granted.

In a d20 environment, I prefer to represent House Dracul with the eldritch template from Monsternomicon rather than the vampire template from the Monster Manual.  Remove any reference or requirement related to being elfish (since of course there are no elfs in DARK•HERITAGE) and it works great as a less limited version of a vampire; one who is not unduly hampered by the sun--although they still prefer to avoid it whenever possible.

New WotC announcement

Well, in the wake of the ongoing GenCon and other things, a lot of news is coming out of WotC about stuff happening in the next little bit.  One of them is that, as of September 18th, the 3.5 core books are going to be reprinted with new cover art in a premium format--which I think just means that they'll be really expensive like the 1e reprints were, and otherwise be very similar to what they would have been in an "original" format.  This is curious, and has sparked more than a few debates.  I've even been a little bit involved in one such.  Hence my lack of an update to my A to Z series.  Sorry, folks!  D for House Dracul is coming soon, I promise!

So, here's the sitch, along with some commentary by me.  1e reprints have been out for... what, a couple of months now?  3.5 reprints will be out within about a month.  5e, or DnD Next, or whatever they're calling it, is about two years away is what official scuttlebutt is saying.  4e continues to be out, but with 5e prominantly announced, will probably have reduced sales on its titles as folks hunker down in anticipation of switching over.  This means that, other than 2e which was already quite close to 1e in terms of core books at least anyway, every edition of AD&D or its successors ever published will be in print at the same time!   In addition to this, most of the other stuff that's not in print will still be available via PDF again.  Why in the world would WotC do this?

Here's where I meander into pure speculation and make crap up.  But allow me to iterate some assumptions, and you can tell me how wrong I am afterwards...

• First, WotC has an imperative to generate revenue to pay for development of DnD Next.  I think the reprints do a nice job of creating a probably reasonably high margin revenue stream in the meantime while 4e sales will (presumably) be lower than they would be because of the impending new edition.  It's a nice move for the fans, it's a nice move towards "healing" the fractured player base somewhat, generates some customer goodwill, and hey, brings in some money at the same time.  Win/win for customers and WotC both.
• Second, lots of people theorize based on some sketchy and circumstantial data that Pathfinder might actually be outselling D&D these days.  If it isn't, it's at least got to be making a noticeable bite out of their market share.
• Third, on Amazon, the used market for out of print 3.5 edition books has prices still as high or higher than new for many, if not most books.  Even in mediocre condition, in some cases.  This suggests, although it certainly doesn't prove, that there's still a robust demand for 3.5 edition books.  Which in turn suggests that many groups are quietly still going about their business playing 3.5.  Maybe even in really pretty big numbers.  Maybe, and this is where I get really speculative, in numbers rivaling that of groups playing Pathfinder or 4e.  
• This in turn means that the D&D market is more or less fractured into four significant chunks, the OSR guys, the 3.5 guys, the Pathfinder guys, and the 4e guys.  I hesitate to say that they're roughly equivalent in size, but I bet they're at least on the same order of magnitude.  By reprinting the 1e core books and the 3.5 core books, WotC are making a direct warning shot against two of the three non-4e market segments that they are interested in getting their attention again.  I don't know how they directly address the Pathfinder guys, but then again, Pathfinder was supposed to be an iterative improvement on 3.5.  A 3.75, if you will.  
• Speaking of which, what's the relationship between lingering 3.5 groups and Pathfinder groups and whatnot anyway?  Here, I hesitate to even speculate on the market at large, but I can at least offer my perspective.  Keep in mind that I rather reluctantly migrated from 3e to 3.5 in the first place.  In fact, because of the SRD being freely available, I never even bought the 3.5 core books (although I did buy the Monster Manual--that one I at least thought would be more convenient to have in book format rather than as a webpage.)  I don't think that 3.5 as a core ruleset necessarily improved on 3e.  For everything it fixed, there was something else that it broke and half a dozen other things that changed just for the sake of change, being neither better nor worse, but sadly being different, meaning that it became difficult to remember exactly how it was supposed to work properly (although to be fair, I remember this being an issue back in the day when people migrated freely and openly from the B/X or RC line into AD&D and back.)  With Pathfinder, the situation was very much the same, although because of the way in which it was done, Paizo managed to generate a fair bit of customer goodwill rather than cynicism with the move.  But from a purely systemic standpoint, it's not at clear to me (or to a number of other players I've spoken to) that Pathfinder is actually an improvement in 3.5.  Sure, some things are better--archetypes are great, for instance, and the skill list consolidation was a good thing.  CMB/CMD was a nice clean-up of a perennially ugly part of the mechanics.  But they did absolutely nothing to address what seem to be the two most common complaints about 3.5--that it breaks down at higher level, and that it's too complex and fiddly.  In fact, in the latter case, it gets qualitatively worse.  Their solution the first problem seems to have been elegant yet also pretty dubious; in their flagship product, the Adventure Paths, they simply started having them end earlier instead of going all the way up to 20th level.  And plenty of other things are just different for the sake of being different again.  Long and short of it, it's not really clear that it's universally accepted that Pathfinder is an improvement on 3.5.  I'm certainly not sure that I think so, and I don't think that I'm alone.
• All of this means that there is circumstantial evidence of WotC acting somewhat strategically, without being arrogant or tone-deaf either one, in terms of trying to woo some of the big blocks of "lapsed" players; by which I mean players who don't buy anything from them because they don't play the current edition of the rules.  No matter what else you might think of WotC or DnD Next either one, that's still a pretty good thing, right?

My hombrew races discussion

I made an off-hand comment in a messageboard discussion about race demographics that I'd removed most of the iconic D&D races from my homebrew, and the thread-starter asked why I had done that and what had motivated me to remove what he considered to be among the most popular D&D races.  I got a little long-winded in my reply, and since I thought it was germaine and along the same lines as the kinds of posts I make on my blog anyway, I'd reproduce my answer here.  Enjoy.  Or not.  Read it anyway! 

Hah! I thought my proclamation of a somewhat radical taste had killed the thread! Nice to see that there's at least a little life left.

First off, I'd argue that of those four, only two are popular: elves and dwarves. Gnomes and halflings get relatively little love, and gnomes in particular only play to either players with esoteric tastes, or characters of an esoteric nature. Reading between the lines, it seemed apparent to me that WotC agreed with me at the launch of 4e, since the gnome was not a player character option at first.

But far and away the most popular character type, in my own personal experience and in polls that I've read here and elsewhere--at least since the launch of 3e, if not before--is human. Not only that, except for Lord of the Rings (and books that are to a greater or lesser degree a pastiche of Lord of the Rings--stuff by Fiest or McKiernan, for instance) and D&D or Warhammer fiction, the assumption of elves and dwarves is not normal in fantasy fiction. Especially the kind that I read, which more and more is drifting into non-traditional molds. In other words, the elfs, dwarfs, gnomes and halflings of D&D are something that really is specific and unique to D&D and have little or no analog between the covers of the very same fantasy literature that inspired the game--excepting Tolkien, of course.

Now, granted--D&D isn't necessarily supposed to emulate fantasy fiction, and some folks would say that that's not the point, and that's not a problem. But for me, and I suspect a number of other gamers who came into the hobby through the same vector as me, the whole point of playing D&D, the whole reason that it was an attractive idea as a hobby in the first place, was because of our love of fantasy literature. What made the game sound like fun was being able to be involved more intimately in an experience that was not unlike a collaborative and semi-improvisational fantasy literature experience. As such, many of the disconnects between D&D and fantasy literature (speaking of the genre generically, of course, since obviously there's a lot of variety in setting, tone and feel amongst fantasy literature) got to be more and more grating and frustrating over time. In my case, it led to me leaving D&D entirely in the late-middle 80s over "creative differences" and I played some other games for a while before getting too busy to really game at all. Sometime in the mid-90s, I started poking my head back in the hobby again, checking out what was on the shelves at stores, and stuff like that. Around this time, White Wolf was at their heyday, and for a little while, I was captivated by the high concept of those games. That didn't last all that long, but it did manage to bring me back into the fold as a gamer, at least.

When 3e was released, I was ready to embrace more traditional fantasy again, and since the game was flexible enough to allow me to play the games I wanted to, I became specifically a D&D player again, and an enthusiastic one at that. But before long, the same issues that I had before started to grate against me again, and I felt more and more like D&D was a subgenre of fantasy unto itself that bore little relationship to anything else in the genre that wasn't specifically D&D already. So, again, I started casting my eyes about at what else was going on.

This time around, I had come to peace with the rules, at least--for the most part--and part of that was the flexibility inherent in all the various modular subsystems that were developed for other d20 games, or in Unearthed Arcana or by third parties who had developed new magic, new races, new classes, etc. So rather than ditch D&D for some other game--like Savage Worlds, for instance, which I suspect would be right up my alley if I ever got into it--I just houseruled the game more to my liking.

In the case of the races specifically, I came to associate them quite strongly with the D&D paradigm which I was rejecting. Luckily for me, I probably have literally hundreds of other racial options in print from one source or another, so I was able to give potential players in my campaign other options. Curiously, I ended up literally homebrewing most of my races myself rather than using ones in print, although there are some obvious similarities between some of mine and some that are more familiar. So for my setting, I have:

• Humans. Still the baseline, as in D&D.
• Azhar from the d20 Freeport setting. Conceptually, they are not far removed from an LA+0 fire genasi, though. I call mine jann, re-imagined them visually (based with Red Men from Barsoom, actually, with a bit more "fiery" details) but use them mechanically as is.
• Another race that takes the azhar and gives it a more darkness/shadow twist rather than fire twist, but otherwise is built off the same mechanical "chassis." Visually, I imagined these guys as a hybrid between Nightcrawler of the X-men and Darth Maul. They have some obvious similarities to tieflings, so I even adopted a kinda sorta Bael Turath analog for their backstory too.
• Changelings are a custom-mechanics race, based loosely on the half-orc, but given a more wildman approach. Although I frequently say that they're based on the wildman/wose archetype from medieval heraldry, art and folklore, in reality they're probably more based on the shifters from Eberron and the tharn from Iron Kingdoms than anything else.
• Neanderthals from Frostburn are adopted pretty much exactly as is. Plus, everyone knows what a Neanderthal is, right?
• Although I've since decided that this is just another human culture after all, I also had a goblinoid empire, and made hobgoblins and goblins specifically PC choices in an earlier iteration of my setting. I kept everything except the mechanics--like I said, it's now just a somewhat exotic human culture rather than humanoid. I do maintain gnolls amongst this group, but rather than a separate race, it's a magical transformation that individuals can undergo to become elite shocktroops of this race's harsh and militaristic state religion.
• Not really a PC option, but vampires play a significant role in my setting too.

Other than that, I've also done away with most of the monstrous humanoids in my setting. Quite frankly, D&D has way too many. It's nice to have them as buffet options when you want them, but to consider that all of those races are really going to be in any given campaign is unbelievable and unworkable.

Isles of the Shackles

I just finished Isles of the Shackles, the last of the four Paizo setting books that came with my aforementioned shipment of Paizo books on order from Amazon.  And just in time!  If the package tracker on Amazon is to be believed, the other two books that were on pre-order arrived in town earlier this morning, and should be waiting for me at home when I get there later today.  And although I have to do some Cub Scouts work, and I promised my wife that I'd clean the bathrooms while she folds laundry after that, I hope to still have time to flip through the two new books and maybe start reading the shorter of them, Blood of Angels--aasimar-themed counterpart to the Blood of Fiends which I recently read and reviewed.

I put off reading Shackles for a while, in part because I actually expected it to be my favorite of the current crop, and wanted to end that run "on a bang."  As it turns out, Distant Worlds probably will end up having been my favorite of the four that I got in that shipment, and Shackles which, while still interesting, somehow managed to be a bit less than I would have hoped.

It starts off almost without any preamble whatsoever as a gazeteer of the islands.  This section takes up probably close to 2/3s of the pagecount, with most islands/areas making up a single page.  This is kinda nice, and offers a nice collection of ideas.  Many of them are oddly disparate--here we have the little tropical Japan, here we have the little tropical Byzantium city, here we have the island with dinosaurs, here's the undead island, here's the dragon island, etc.  This gives the region, unlike most of the other regional books from Paizo, a strange patchwork feeling, and there's little context to unite them or give them any kind of cohesion other than geographical proximity and that you need to reach them by ship.  Several of them are--surprisingly--not even necessarily all that piratical feeling.  This section, being the meat of the book, was a bit disappointing to me relative to other Paizo regional detailed books.  That's not to say that it's bad, exactly.  There are a lot of ideas here, many of them reasonably good.  However, since I've touched briefly on crowd-sourced similarly themed projects before (check this out, for instance) I found it less impressive than I hoped it would be.

And the remainder of the book was mostly a list of opponents, including some rather esoteric new sea-going monsters, and some statted generic NPCs that might be common in the region.  I don't recall ever seeing that latter in any Paizo book before.  While it might be a convenient shorthand, it also seems a bit unnecessary, and probably mostly just padded the pagecount.  Do I really need stats for a generic pirate captain (fighter 5/rogue 1), several officers and crewmembers, a pirate sorcerer, pirate undead (which, again, use standard Bestiary undead templates and are applied to classes and equipment lists that maybe feel more piratey than some other alternatives... maybe.)

So... this isn't exactly a negative review, however, I do admit that I had high hopes for this book in particular and found that it didn't completely meet them after all.  I also have high hopes for the book that should be sitting in my "inbox" at home when I get there, which is a city-book dedicated to Magnimar.  Magnimar is a city that is not unfamiliar to Paizonians, having been part of the setting for the Rise of the Runelords campaign.  Within some of those volumes, it got a fairly decent treating already.  I like city books in particular, and am always keen to pick them up by people who do them well (and I think that is one of Paizo's particular strengths--they haven't yet done a city-book that I didn't like).  So I have high hopes, but... I'm also concerned that it will feel like deja vu; rehashing a lot of info that was already present in the RotR books, and adding relatively little to it.

20 Questions

Some of my friends have been posting the Jeff Rients "20 Questions" questionaire on their blogs.  I was initially reluctant, because the questions are so geared towards D&D specifically and I thought some of them were kinda banal, but finally after reading, I dunno, half a dozen or so, I figgered I'd take the plunge anyway.

1.What is the deal with my cleric's religion? You don't play a cleric.  If you want to play a cleric in a generic sense, i.e. a member of some clergy, I guess you can do that, but you're not a D&D specific "divine caster" archetype.  The DARK•HERITAGE setting has some basic religious info on the campaign brief already, but basically organized religion is a small part of most people's lives, and people tend to be superstitious rather than religious.  There are plenty of mystery cults and whatnot, but exactly how that works is probably up to you. 

2.Where can we go to buy standard equipment? Almost anywhere.  That's why it's called standard.

3.Where can we go to get platemail custom fitted for this monster I just befriended? There's plate and then there's mail.  Platemail?  Huh?  Also, you won't be befriending any monsters.

4.Who is the mightiest wizard in the land? Nobody owns up to being a wizard.  They'd be lynched or burned at the stake, or otherwise killed with extreme prejudice and extreme superstitioius precautions. 

5.Who is the greatest warrior in the land? Don't know.  You've been living in a period of protracted yet uneasy peacetime.  There really aren't any ongoing wars, therefore, no warriors famous for their current exploits.

6.Who is the richest person in the land? Probably the Caliph of Qizmir.  Or the King of Terrasa.  Or the khagan of Kurushat.

7.Where can we go to get some magical healing? Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!  Oh, you're serious?  Well, you can't.

8.Where can we go to get cures for the following conditions: poison, disease, curse, level drain, lycanthropy, polymorph, alignment change, death, undeath? I'm sorry, I'm trying not to laugh.  Go see a doctor and hope for the best, I suppose!

9.Is there a magic guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to get more spells? No! If there were such a thing, it'd be so paranoid, evil, and xenophobic that there's no way you could join it anyway.  Do you mean is there some kind of organization from whom you could steal more spells?  Possibly.  Holy cow, but you're a reckless one!

10.Where can I find an alchemist, sage or other expert NPC? Urban areas.  Most cities are full of expert NPCs of all kinds of stripes.

11.Where can I hire mercenaries? Again, urban areas.  Especially cosmopolitan ones where people are coming and going.  Caravan towns or port cities, or whatnot.  Also, border regions. 

12.Is there any place on the map where swords are illegal, magic is outlawed or any other notable hassles from Johnny Law? Magic is outlawed everywhere.  Weapons are, mostly, acceptable everywhere.

13.Which way to the nearest tavern? Thataway three blocks.  (Huh?  Weird question.)

14.What monsters are terrorizing the countryside sufficiently that if I kill them I will become famous? Dude, this isn't D&D.  Monsters don't run around terrorizing the countryside, and adventurers don't run around killing terrorizing monsters.  I guess if you want to style yourself some kind of monster hunter, Porto Liure's a good place to start.  It's famous for being haunted by all kinds of things.

15.Are there any wars brewing I could go fight? There are rumors of wars in the far northwest.  There are also worries of invasions in the Black Mountains near Kurushat, and in Baix Pallars.  And, of course, the Terrasan empire is creaking under strains, possibly to fall apart in civil war and seccession.  But you'd have to be some kind of instigator to get the war kickstarted before you could fight in it.

16.How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous cash prizes? Lots of that in Sarabasca.  Some of that in Porto Liure.  A bit elsewhere too, but those are the best ones to enter voluntarily and get cash prizes for victory.

17.Are there any secret societies with sinister agendas I could join and/or fight? Are you kidding?  They're all over the place.  You'll probably be introduced to three of them in the first session or two.

18.What is there to eat around here? Seriously? 

19.Any legendary lost treasures I could be looking for? If you have time, I'll be sure to throw some rumors your way.

20.Where is the nearest dragon or other monster with Type H treasure? In that other guy's D&D campaign.