Yeah.. thats right...Crown!
I am a bit of a nerd, and I have this idea of making a great map of Crown, where you click on the locations to find out what kinda place lies there. So thats what I have started making... and it works! So far, though, I have only added a few bits to each of the wards, but hopefully, the city will grow and more locations will be added all the time, making it a great tool for all Crown fans.
You can find the map here!
Also, there seemed to be a problem with the site, but thats fixed now, or so I hope.
- Mood:creative
- Mood:
cheerful
Just wanted to let everybody know that I have begun making a REAL Crown website... just follow this link!
http://www.wandermans-realm.dk/contents/C
Comments...please!
Like so many, I have now carved out a small place on the World Wide Web, which i can honestly call my own. Its just a little place where I will post news, pictures, crown stuff and whatnot.
If you wanna drop by from time to time, please do... you can find it here!
Wandermans-realm.dk
As many of you Crowniacs might know, Crown is not only a campaign setting created for the d20 system, its so much more. Many shortstories have been set in this setting, among these, the Skein of Shadows! I have only read three of these stories, sadly, but I am expecting a signed copy of the book in the mail asap! signed by none other than the Wandering Men, of course... the authors.
When I started to write Crown, I had an idea that I wanted it to be a very story driven setting, and I even got a young author aboard from the very beginning, named Sarah J. Kerr (those familiar with the book know that she wrote a shortstory which is featured in the beginning of the campaign book), but now a vast number of stories exists and if rumors are true...more are on the way!
This is a very cool development indeed, and one that speaks well of the future of this setting, even though few have managed to find it on RPGNow.com!
If you wanna read more about Crown, and perhaps some free stories, head on over to www.wanderingmen.com, its a very cool place created by some very cool people that have helped make Crown what it is today... a place that lives and breathes!
Also.... Crown NPCs taken from my very own Crown campaigns will start to appear on their site, complete with all new art!
All free, of course!
- Mood:
exhausted
I have once again become a regular visitor to the web, which means that I want to start up a few Crown games. One of these is a play-by-post game over at www.plotstorming.com, the other one is a chat game over at www.salroth.com.
Crown has been a peaceful and prosperous city for decades, but now rumors of chaos acolytes are stirring. Strange things are happening in the streets, where weird creature appear out of nowhere and attack seemingly innocent crownfolk. Somewhere in the Narrows, the Chained was mentioned, and now talk is that this powerful creature has begun to resurrect the Grey God. Fear is fast growing in the hearts of the common people, and the Queen has sent her adventurers into the streets to assure her people that Crown will remain a safe place to live....
But will it....
If you want to experience Crown, then head over to one of the sites mentioned above - everyone is welcome!
Must see this movie....again!
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?p
Its taken a while, but I just hope that all the faults have been corrected and that it will be received positively by the RPG community!
The thing is... everyone can do it, but it has a cost, range and, of course, a check.
You must be within 60 ft. of your opponent, and have as many power points available as the spell being cast, costs. Also, divine magic counters divine magic, and arcane magic counters arcane magic.
(So far, a caster must have at least one reserved action point to spend, and counterspelling provokes attacks of opportunity)
The two casters make opposed Willpower checks, as they try to control and dominate the spell (feats may boost this check, though), and its rather simple... the winner has control of the spell. If he has enough lore points to cast the spell, he can redirect it to another area or creature, but if not, he can only choose to destroy it.
This should make playing a mage or acolyte even more fun... :) and dangerous!
At the moment I am leaning towards the following core races;
1) Humans (of course)
2) Elves (could we have a fantasy setting without these and would it be worth playing?)
3) Dwarves
4) Halflings
You have seen the names before, and if you have been roleplaying for at least a year, you have at least played 2 or 3 of the races above. I'll assume that the readers/players are familiar with these, and not waste a full page describing them again (and in a slightly new way).
Possible new core races (because a new game needs new flavor);
5) Half-giants (I am currently playing in a frost and ice campaign world, and thats perfect for half-giants)
I want these to be seekers of their past, and solitary creatures. They seem crude, but may in fact not be so crude afterall. and who cares if their parents were humans and giants, half-giants is just a term, much like halflings.
6) Goblins (Also perfect for my frost and ice campaign world)
Small, crude and even sneaky. This is the true beggar race of the world, found in the stinking alleys of every town, a race that nobody cares about.
And I already know that I want the following racial templates;
1) Trollblooded (Misunderstood and tortured)
2) Shadow (eviiil!)
Also... size is now a score (10 for humans, 9 for dwarves, 8 for halflings, 12 for half-giants etc) And you can always take a feat that either moves you up or down in size, or a racial template (I.e. Trollblooded adds +1 to size), so you could effectively make a large trollblooded halfling (size 10, like a human or elf), and sizes offers (of course) certain modifiers and penalties, much like we know it already.
Ideas are...as always...welcome!
I am back to square one, with a simple Damage Reduction system (called Armor Hardness), which is pretty much, Leather Armor (Hardness 2), Chain mail (Hardness 5), Plate mail (Hardness 9) and so forth, where Hardness = DR.
It works.
Every armor has a Hardness (its DR, if attacker penetrates) and a Resilience (its DR, if attacker does not penetrate). Some weapons are better at penetration, like Daggers and Spears (and thus gain a penetration bonus to damage, say 5), while others are really bad, like maces and hammers (thus gaining a penetration penalty, say -15, to damage rolls). A dagger would then deal an additional 1d4 points of damage, while a mace would deal 2d6 points.
We now have a mace that cannot penetrate a scale mail, yet deals damage nonetheless.
With a Damage Reduction system, we can drop Touch AC without a twitch, but...
we are going to keep "flat-footed", or rather, we'll call it Off-balance, and instead of loosing your Dexterity modifier and dodge bonus, we give the off-balanced character a fixed -5 penalty, that way every off-balanced character feel the sting of actually being off-balanced.
Also note that if surprised, you are not caught off-balanced, but instead Unaware, and receive no Defense bonus whatsoever.
Our Defense score looks like this;
Dexterity modifier + Class score (Rogues have the absolute best) + size pen/mod. + misc.
You can then choose whether you want a fixed score (+10, which is definitely my choice) or +1d20 (which seems to be Peter's choice).
This already seems to be a much better, realistic and fun system than 3.5e...
- Mood:
tired
I contributed a little something to Tricky Owlbear's "Behind the Monster" series - the barghest!
I can't take all credit for it, though. Its a collaboration with Bret Boyd, and for those who care, I wrote the history part and Bret wrote the aggresive tendencies and related research part.
I am quite happy about how it turned out, and the barghest certainly remain one of my favorite creatures of Dungeons and Dragons.
Now I just hope that he likes my first adventure enough to wanna publish it! :)
- Mood: optimistic
Action Point System
I may have mentioned it before, but in this system, we want something different than full-round actions, standard actions, move actions etc. For this we have come up with a really simple and useful Action Point system. It assumes that all characters have 6 action points to be used in one round. You can always use less action points, but never more. All activities, whether a Swim check or an attack roll cost a certain number of action points.
Example
An attack roll costs 3 Action Points and a Swim check costs 6 action points. By this reasoning, all characters (whether level 1 or 20) can make 2 attacks per round and 1 swim check, doing nothing else worth mentioning.
However, you can always lower the cost of an action, giving you an opportunity to do something else, or perhaps gain more attacks.
Example
Your fighter wish to make 3 attacks in a round, to do this he has to lower the Action point cost of an attack roll by 1. This gives him a -5 penalty, to all attacks made in this round! He could do the same thing with his swim check, giving him an extra action point, the penalty would still be -5.
Lowering the action point cost by 2, gives a -10 penalty and so forth. This penalty applies to all checks (no matter what kind) in this round. It can be lowered to no more than 1.
Attacks of Opportunity
I have never really liked this aspect of the game, as it tend to be either too much or forgotten entirely. However, there is a room for it in our system, but it will always be a planned action, meaning that the player has to "save" action points.
Example
A fighter makes 2 attacks at reduced cost (1), imposing a -5 penalty to both rolls. He now has 2 action points left, which he saves. They are "in play" for the rest of the round, and until it becomes his turn again. Should the opportunity present itself, the fighter can now make an attack of opportunity, possibly ruining a spell from a wizard, break the stride of a rogue and so forth.
Could it be an easier?
The idea we are working from ,is that the core classes run from level 1-5 (apprentice levels) and decide which possibilities you get later on. This means, that at level 6 you are forced into making an entirely new decision, which advanced (or prestige class) will you take? These advanced classes have requirements (just like prestige classes), which should be possible to fulfill at this point. I.e. if you want to take a level in assassin, you need 3 warrior levels and 2 rogue levels.
This should make for a broader range of characters, who dont overlap too much.
We seem to agree on a lot of points, but yesterday also proved that there are some issues that has to be resolved if this project is going to succeed.
Anyways, we agreed upon the following attributes, and we also agreed upon calling them attributes and not ability scores;
Strength
Dexterity
Stamina
Intelligence
Willpower
Perception
Charisma
We also agreed that they would run from 7-16, with additional increases from racial traits, giving them a possible 5-18.
Our favorite way of rolling these attributes is, 4 + 3d4, but we also discussed, 3d8 (drop lowest), 8 + 1d8 and a few others.
Of course, feats will be easy to apply to this system... and magical defensive weapons.
On a side note, the competence bonus is out, since ranks and base attack bonuses would imply some kind of competence. No reason to have this stupid bonus type bog up the game! :)
Initiative is, of course, determined by dexterity (may have a whole other name), feats (if any) and misc, like penalties for wearing heavy armor. The easy rule would be to say that armor check penalty applies to the initiative as well. In this design choice, a really fast rogue (if we have such a class), would always act before the wizard, slow fighter etc.
Sometimes the randomness of the game should be dropped, to allow certain characters to shine in their chosen roles.
This choice would make for a more simple system, as people wouldn't have to keep track of the various bonus types, and if they stacked or not, but more importantly...
...it would make for a more fun game, where you could actually attain that Strength 45 that the player's handbook describes on one of the very first pages, something I sure as h... have never tried! :)
Feel free to comment on my design choices if you have an oppinion.
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