Druid Cycle Player Matrix

I love a lot of aspects of 4e D&D, and one of my favorites is the concept of level tiers. For those who aren't familiar with 4e, character levels 1-10 are known as heroic tier, 11-20 are paragon tier, and 21-30 are epic tier. There are specific game mechanics associated with these tiers (for example, players can select a paragon path at level 11 and an epic destiny at 21), but I find them more useful for organizing characters and storylines.

In the Druid Cycle campaign world, we have a lot of stuff going on. Currently there are eight players and a total of sixteen characters. (Timothy alone accounts for six of those heroes!) Some characters are very active, while others may not see any action for months at a time. How do I keep track of all these moving parts? In a handy-dandy spreadsheet, of course! The rows are the names of the players, and the columns are for the three tiers (heroic, paragon, epic). I put the character names in the individual cells, along with their class and level. This allows me to see the breakdown of the characters in the different tiers (at the moment, we have seven in heroic, six in paragon, and three in epic) and which characters would be suitable for which storylines.

Not surprisingly, then, we have three multi-player Druid Cycle stories going on, one for each tier. (This doesn't include the many solo adventures.) The heroic-tier folks are adventuring in the lost city of Tadjeser, the paragon group is searching for the Castellan's Journal, and the epic-tier guys are hunting Ekhis and his minions. Now, as it turns out, all three of these storylines are related, but perhaps that's a topic for another day...

Perfect Timing

Nice! Just days after deciding to get into Warhammer 40k, I've learned that Games Workshop is opening a store not too far away in Sacramento. The grand opening is October 20. I'll be there!

The Gamers: Dorkness Rising

In the office cafeteria yesterday, my colleagues and I were discussing Wittgenstein over a game of backgammon, and then someone brought up a movie that I thought you'd enjoy. It may not be easy to find, but if you're an RPG enthusiast (and if you're not, why are you reading this blog? Surely not just for the subtle Simpsons references embedded in my posts...), it's worth your time.

So It Begins...

Well, after years and hemming and hawing, I've decided to jump into Warhammer 40,000. I placed an order for the new Dark Vengeance starter set. Regular updates to follow!

Beowulf Returns

As a player and a gamemaster, I've borrowed a lot of themes and imagery from the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf. My fondness for this poem dates back to my undergraduate days. Years later, I devoted a chapter of my dissertation to Beowulf, and concurrently I studied the various adaptations of the poem in modern popular culture (films, novels, music, etc.). You can see the fruits of that labor here. One of my favorite pop culture adaptations was DC's short-lived Beowulf comic book series (1975-76). The comic's connection to the poem was tenuous at best (e.g., the hero's foes included UFOs and Dracula), but it was a hell of a lot of fun. As such, I was pleased to learn that DC has included Beowulf as a backup feature in the new Sword of Sorcery comic. It's very different from both the poem and the original comic, but it looks cool so far.

Email Alert!

Just wanted to draw your attention to a cool new feature...email alerts! Check out the "Follow Us by Email" field on the right-hand side of the blog. You may need to scroll down a bit to see it. Enter your email address in the field and click "Submit." That will sign you up for Front Porch blog updates. Every day that new content is added to the blog, you'll receive an email notification.

Holy Parasocial Bonding, Batman!

This isn't directly related to gaming, but since I do make occasional superhero-related posts, here's a link to an interesting study on the effects of comic book characters upon readers' sense of self. I wonder if anyone has studied whether roleplaying game characters have an effect upon players' sense of self.

Another Look at D&D Next Character Creation

As you know, I've been an enthusiastic supporter of D&D Next / 5e. They still have a lot of bugs to work out, of course, but on the whole I think they've been on the right track.

However, here's an interesting article from Critical Hits that suggests 5e is already on the path to unwieldy complexity in character creation options.

Return of the Castellan's Journal

Just like that, we're back in business!

The Castellan's Journal storyline from a Druid Cycle campaign of yesteryear has returned with a new twist (everybody's undead!) on old characters. In a matter of days, we came up with 4e versions of Tim B's cleric (now invoker) Selmac, Kevin's monk Degare, and Timothy's sorcerer Alexander. Our heroes are now reunited, plotting to escape from servitude aboard the pirate ship of one of their longtime nemeses. Next stop? Recover the no-longer-disintegrated Castellan's Journal and prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

Side-note: Other players from that long-ago campaign are also welcome to join!

"Non-traditional" uses of D&D?

I'm all for it! From Chris Speck's blog, "Squeezing English lessons out of mainstream culture and technology"...
"I played Dungeons and Dragons for many years as a teenager and enjoyed the role-play, the creation and the dice rolling and it’s only recently that I’ve got back into the game. I’ve never taken it too seriously and so, I thought,  why not try it with my EFL / ESOL students. After all, it is a game that requires a lot of talking, communication, reasoning, reading and even some writing – all the skills you need to use a language. This adventure wouldn’t make a good lesson, it’s something you could do as part of an English club or similar."

The rest of the article is very interesting, and a really fun way to help people learn!

ADND - Rules

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was the most well thought out version since the boxed set.  It was made by TSR & added a lot of practical rules & background.

Today we will cover the rules:
* Rules were created about firing missle fire into melee.  It is a very realistic, but didn't bog down gameplay.
* Multiple swings & a more balanced spell system helped balance all classes.
* Classes were customized alowing for each class to be unique.  It also had more classes to chose from than first edition.
* It also introduced 'character points' to build custom characters.  This is being reintroduced (except as an XP system) in Wizards of the Coast DND 5e.
* It also introduced special manuals.  While costly, they introduced unique background.
* It allowed players to play multiple class characters (2 or more classes together).  There were also rules that decreased or increased the XP needed to level if you exceeded basic ability class minimums.

In the following weeks, I will discuss the races, classes, & details each week.

The Castellan's Journal

One of my favorite aspects of the Druid Cycle campaign world -- second only to keeping in touch with some of my oldest and dearest friends -- is the rich narrative history that we've created over the past 19 years. However, some of that history jumped out and smacked me in the face the other day.

It all started when I got a call from Tim B, who expressed interest in resurrecting (literally and figuratively) his character from a storyline called The Castellan's Journal (see my recent post chronicling the history of the major Druid Cycle story arcs), which we started about ten years ago. This adventure lasted for parts of three years and was conducted online in a private chat room. The storyline focused on a powerful magical artifact (the aforementioned journal) and the heroes' efforts to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. Although this adventure ended in 2004, I've always considered the journal to be one of the iconic magic items of the Druid Cycle world. With Tim B about to return to his old character, I thought it would be ideal to bring back this fabled book for another go-around. I managed to dig up my notes from that earlier adventure, including the summaries I had written of each game session. It was there that I discovered a potentially show-stopping problem.

The Castellan's Journal no longer existed.

Gulp. It was right there in black and white: Rather than allow their enemies to obtain the book, the heroes elected to destroy it using a sphere of annihilation. How could I have forgotten that?

The major continuity problem resulting from this discovery is that the book has made some appearances in Druid Cycle adventures over the past few years. Player characters have held it and studied it. At least one player knows its current location. On top of all that, I still want to use the book as the focal point for the return of Tim B's character.

What can be done? I think the only remedy is a retcon worthy of that other great DC -- not the Druid Cycle, but DC Comics. Their tangled, contradictory storylines are the stuff of legend, and each successive attempt to correct the problems only ends up adding more layers of complexity. (My beloved Hawkman has endured more than any other superhero in that respect.) But despite the decades of retcons, we keep coming back to the DC Universe because they're telling great stories about characters we love.

So...here's my retcon: The heroes of yesteryear fully intended to destroy the Castellan's Journal, but it turns out that the sphere of annihilation was a ruse -- it was actually a portal that transported the book to the clutches of the dragon-lord Ironside, who held it for a time until his home was destroyed during the recent Quintessence Rifts story arc. From that point, the book's travels are just as they have played out in the campaign.

There you have it. Is it perfect? No, but it doesn't have to be. I have big plans for that book and for Tim B's old character. As much as I respect and cherish the history that we've forged in past adventures, I'm not going to let a nearly-forgotten episode bog us down.

Retcon...and move on!

Dudes, I Called It First

I was reading the latest issue of DC's superlatively awesome Earth 2 last night, and one of the characters referred to the Big Three superheroes -- Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman -- as the Ternion. Dudes, I totally called it first. As you know, faithful blog readers, we have a new superhero campaign in the works called Tales of the Ternion -- although "my" Ternion is not a trio of superheroes. Current Druid Cycle players will also recognize the Ternion as the three mystical beings -- the Hierophant, the Cataphract, and the  Demiurge -- who discovered the secret of immortality. Yes, the Ternions from these two campaigns are related, but it will be a very long time before players discover how and why.

Anyway, DC Comics, please stop stealing my cool words!

I'd like to chomp on some of THAT cake...

What an awesome cake...

Demeter

For the best results to view the map, please visit here and download the map. It's around 12 megabytes, but well worth the effort!