Updates a'coming

I'm considering a fairly major update to the DFX game, or at least major in terms of it adding a few new things. First off, some context. I mentioned earlier that I played 5e for the first time this weekend, and the first time for D&D specifically, i.e., the brand D&D, in many years. Probably a good 9-10 years, maybe more. What I've played since then is only D&D in the same sense that my Wal-Mart brand facial tissue is a kleenex. I call all RPGs D&D when I'm being casual, but I haven't played actual D&D in quite a long time.

My impressions of it were, and I think I mentioned some of these things in my last post, A) if you need an online electronic tool to make and manage your character, that's a major red flag. B) if you need grids, battle-maps, and tokens or miniatures to keep combat straight, on a routine basis, not just for extraordinarily complicated and complex combats, that's another red flag. C) if a single extended combat sequence takes an entire 3½-4 hour session to play out, that's yet another red flag. D) short rests are ridiculous. E) if you need a VTT to manage your combats and characters, and you're being funneled into a proprietary tool that's—as has been said on multiple occasions by executives of the company to investors—going to be based on a subscription and microtransaction revenue model, that's not a red flag. That's the whole freakin' communist parade.

I said earlier that I bought an old used copy of the PHB for less than $20. That will be, I believe, the only 5e product that I buy, and I did so kind of reluctantly even so. I also, very belatedly, ordered older used copies of the 3.5 DMG and PHB. I'd been salty about the update from 3e to 3.5, and just used the SRD for years and years. I did, however, buy the MM, because I like monsters better than players, I guess, or something. (I suppose I could buy PODs from DriveThru at relatively decent prices, if I really wanted more. Most of the ones that I don't have, I don't see the need to do this, though. Except maybe Monster Manual IV. That's one of the few that I really regret having not bought when it was new. It sells for crazy expensive on the used market.) This doesn't exactly "complete" my 3e collection, but almost everything that I missed when it was current, I've now picked up as a pdf or something for less money than actually trying to collect the real books would cost. This is interesting, because actual physical copies of the books are still very expensive; the used market for most 3e era stuff, other than the core books is still pretty inflated. I think people still quite like this game, and if maybe they're not still playing it, they're still holding on to the books for some reason. As I mentioned before, I don't actually think 5e is a significant enough update to 3.5 to have been needed, honestly. It's clearly very much the same game in most respects, and it much more similar to 3e than it is to any other D&D game or edition. Sadly, it seems to have many of the same flaws, and few of the same strengths. Hardly surprising, honestly. If it had come out instead of 3.5, or even instead of Pathfinder, that would have been pretty cool. As it is, well... eh.

But a thought also occurs to me as I'm reading all of these 3e era books again, including some that I bought and never even actually got around to reading, sadly, years and years ago now. (I actually do way too much of that.) One of the major conceits of m20 when it was first designed was that while it streamlined the actual play of the game to almost ridiculous levels, sped up the game tremendously, and made everything much faster and easier on GMs, you could still use anything from d20 or 3e as is without needing to do much more than collapse any relevant skills, and stuff like that. You wanted a monster or spell or magic item from 3e? You could use it, and the conversion to m20 was such a snap that it almost doesn't even count as having to be done; you could literally do it on the fly in your head in a second or two. If you even bothered to. It also occurs to me that although Dark Fantasy X is no longer really an m20 game because it's changed quite a bit since I first conceived it as one, that for the most part this compatibility totally remains. I hadn't really given any thought to 3e in a long time, but since moving and uprooting all of my stuff, I kind of "re-found" my collection which had kind of been put away. Not sure what I'd want to potentially use; maybe some spells, maybe some monsters, maybe some scenarios or ideas here and there... but its been kind of fun to find all of this stuff again and find a way to actually use it again, even though I've long ago abandoned the idea that I'd have any interest in running something as rule-heavy and complicated as 3e ended up being. I just don't enjoy all of that complexity anymore. 

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I'm thinking of adding a new area or two to the setting. I know, I know. The Three Realms and all of that. But these areas won't really be new, just that I haven't done much with them yet. The Boneyard, for instance, kind of serves as a big empty desert that also happens to be the hub around which the Three Realms cluster. I created it more because I'm a huge fan of the American deserts and semi-deserts of the Southwest, from west Texas to southern California, to Arizona and New Mexico and southern Utah and even as far north as much of Wyoming that isn't specifically mountainous. However, that doesn't actually manage to rise to the level of it being a compelling inclusion in the setting. 

There's an interesting conspiracy theory, peddled by such "respectable" places as The History Channel, that there were Egyptians in the Grand Canyon, and that the federal government has covered it up by making the area where the find was off-limits and restricting access. I don't have any comment on whether or not that's a credible idea or not, but it's a cool idea. I'm thinking of creating some civilization in the Boneyard, or at least the Mad Max-like wreckage of one, just so I have more going on in the area than western scenery and old bones from wars between Baal Hamazi and Kurushat. And I've been toying with actually making Nizrekh and Hyperborea real areas in the setting rather than off-hand references "off-screen." But the Boneyard is probably a bit more pressing, since it's geographically contiguous to all three of my Three Realms as it is.

Not that I want actual Egyptian-like influences. But I do want something. I'm not sure exactly what, yet. 

Finally, for whatever reason, I've had some equivalent to fire genasi in my setting from very early on. I did this independently from Freeport, when I got it way back in 2007 or so, but no doubt the fact that they had the azhar race, which was also the fire genasi, but "corrected" down to LA +0, which is really where all PC races needed to be to be useable, encouraged me to keep at it. But for whatever reason, I never had the other three genasi. But as I've been working on the early stages of Elemental Fantasy X, I've been really enjoying having them, and I kind of want to add to the surturs three more races; the tritons, the sylphs and the ... I admit, I always have a hard time coming up with names for earth genasi that I like. I'm kind of considering dvergs, from the Norse word for dwarves. Oread, which D&D does already use, but which is from Greek mythology, also does the job credibly well. But I'm leaning more towards a northern European rather than southern inspiration for the setting. Besides Greek oreads were like nymphs or dryads; all gals. But we'll see what name sticks or if I keep noodling on it. I think what I'll actually do is convert the surturs to the elementalist race, which comes in four flavors; one for each elemental. Culturally they're all the same, and they all come from Kurushat. But rather than being just surturs, they'll be all four. 

I actually think that the elementalists are born like normal humans, and only manifest their elemental heritage as young teenagers. It's a thing of significant cultural importance to the Kurushi elementalists when their kids first manifest which element they'll have power over, kind of like some kind of coming of age bar mitzvah or quincianera or... something that normal Americans do instead of foreigners, although the best I've got is being shuffled off to middle school or high school. We don't really do any coming of age rituals in America anymore. Then, once it first manifests, it takes six months to a year for the young kurushi kid to gradually transform physically into one of the four elementalist races; his skin color, eye color and hair color will change, his body dimensions will probably change; it's kind of like puberty plus because of the elemental change that comes over them as well as... well, as well as everything else that happens during puberty to kids. 

I don't know that I really need more races. I've got five normal ones and five in the appendix. I'm thinking about what to do with them all if I add three more. Surturs are already a mainline race, so maybe it makes sense to put the three new ones there, and move woodwose to the appendix. Then I'll be seven and six. I'm also thinking of moving surturs along with the rest of the elementalists to the appendix instead, and adding orcs and goblins back into the mainline. But that's because the Shadow Over Garenport 5x5 features orcs and goblins quite a bit, and surturs won't make a significant appearance until at least Cult of Undeath is over. I'm also considering taking wendaks out entirely, because the more I think about it, the more I doubt that they have much of a role in the game that a player could make much use of. They're not designed to be very playable, and work more as "The Other" to use libtard academia vocabulary. 

Maybe I don't need to have so few races in the mainline section of the book. Maybe I move all but the ones that would rarely appear (dhampir, seraphs, and grendling/wendaks if I even keep them. Maybe even woodwoses belong here, rather than in the mainline part of the book.) The mainline races will be expanded to be human, grisling (Hyperborean), kemling, orcs and goblins, woodwoses, and all four of the elementalists; surturs, sylphs, tritons and ... dvergs, probably. That makes for ten regular races, a pretty nice selection (comparable to seven in the 3e SRD, and nine in the 5e SRD; although the 5e SRD also has some sub-races that technically expand that to thirteen.) Three more remain in the appendix. 

Assuming that I do this, and I'm leaning heavily towards yes, I probably will, I may want to come up with more iconics or at least some patrons that showcase more of the new races. But, that's OK. Coming up with iconics is kind of fun.

Male and female sylphs.

Male and female triton.

Male dverg. I guess I need to generate some decent dverg girl images, don't I?