So, the last time I posted, I talked about the planning for the Ptolus D&D game. It's a few months late, but all the pieces are finally in place.
Logistics
The delay in starting the game was essentially due to our packed local gaming schedule. Everything kicked back into gear in February, and I ended up in
- a weekly Friday D&D game, The Red Hand of Doom set in Eberron run by one of my old university friends
- a fortnightly Saturday Lunar Exalted game run alternately by
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ristin and broc_dresdroth for the furry gaming group - a second fortnightly Saturday D20 Future game with rotating GMs, interleaved with the Exalted; this was originally launched to replace my Albedo campaign for the furry group, and over time had absorbed many newer players
This was as much gaming as everyone involved could reasonably cope with, so the only way a new game was going to get a timeslot was to wrest it from one of the incumbents. Eventually the opening came: the D20 Future game collapsed, largely because it'd accumulated an ever-increasing cast of players and associated cat-herding difficulties.
The furry gaming group has been increasingly dissatisfied with the pattern of losing characters to campaign collapses like this: first the D20 Modern (Sly Cooper's son, radio star weasels, the world's most beautiful Clydesdale, and the musically controlled time machine), then Albedo (villainous platypus clan drops the planet into hyperspace), now D20 Future (trapped in a posthumanist cult's prototype for The Hereafter). Part of the problem seems to be that we've been playing essentially character-driven games, and eventually once all the interpersonal dynamics have been explored the lack of an actual plot brings the scenario to halt. Another part (in this most recent case, at least) is the sheer number of people becoming unwieldly.
The solution we're attempting is to use published modules (so we have a guaranteed plot to fall back upon) and to split into two groups. jagafeh is going to run The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde for roxxychan, sesquipedeviant, whyrl and ? (the Platypus) every second Saturday. Meanwhile, I'll run the Ptolus game for broc_dresdroth, iceleron, quillblade and ristin on the corresponding Sundays. These will both be fortnightly D&D campaigns starting from level 1, so it'll be intriguing to compare the two groups' progress.
Rules
We'll be using the 3.5 edition rules, with the following variations:
- Nonstandard Point Buy: 32 points (DMG p.169)
- Gaining Fixed Hit Points (DMG p.198)
- Contacts (DMG2 p.153, Cityscape p.57)
- House rule: cannot spend personal XP on spells or magic item creation; all such XP costs must be paid by other means. In order to allow this, the following rules are also in play:
- Extract Demonic Essence (FC1 p.86)
- Metamagic Components (UA p.139)
- Optional Material Components (BoED p.37, BoVD p.45, CM p.135)
- Power Components (DMG p.36)
- Sacrifice (BoVD p.26)
Characters
The context for the Ptolus game has shifted from being based around a private investigation agency, to focusing on a team of inquisitors from the Church of Lothian. Religion in D&D is usually highly polytheistic, with dozens of competing faiths and deities. In the Ptolus setting, the Church of Lothian is the overwhelmingly dominant state religion, patterned after the Catholic Church in medieval Europe. About 200 years ago they went through an intolerant era remembered as the Days of Blood
, forming an order called the Conciliators to persecute pagan faiths and the practice of arcane magic. The Church has liberalized greatly in the ensuing years, and although the Conciliators no longer use terror and torture, they still exist as the Church's investigative branch. Lingering ill will from the days of the inquisition incline them to be very low-key in the present era.
I'm expecting iceleron's character Brother Marcus Chorus to be the nominal leader of the player team. He's an acolyte priest in the Conciliators, fresh out of the seminary and full of naïve enthusiasm to finally do good in the field. He's led a somewhat sheltered life up until now, having been raised within one of the Church's orphanages and never really having engaged directly with the wider world. His family
name was actually assigned to him by the orphanage. He's a particularly promising student of holy magic.
Here's a statistics block for Marcus, set out according to the new new format rather than as a conventional character sheet. The basic idea if that it's divided vertically into 5 sections: what you need to know before combat, when he's a defender, when he's an attacker, when he's outside of combat, and a summary of any special rules. It won't make much sense if you're not familiar with the D20 system; I'm putting it here mostly for my own reference, and possibly for the players. The headshot sketches are all quillblade's work.
Brother Marcus Chorus CR 1
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Brother Logan Dawn (ristin) is a childhood friend of Marcus's from the same orphanage. He's also ordained as an acolyte priest, albeit in the Order of the Dawn temple guards. He's on secondment to the Conciliators to provide a bit of muscle for the team. As well as being the best warrior in the group, he's also their best negotiator. I'm sure he'll end up as front man for fieldwork.
Brother Logan Dawn CR 1
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1/day—smite evil (+2 attack, +1 damage)
at will—detect evil
The Andovar family has been turned upon its head since we first saw them in January. They're still the heirs of a fallen noble house, cursed by a dreadful dalliance with demons in their past and brought low by the Conciliators during the Days of Blood. Originally quillblade's character Mali Andovar was to be the elder sister, the one stable member of the clan. While she pursued a relatively normal career as a private investigator, the lives of her two younger twin brothers Rembrandt and Sebastian (Troy and broc_dresdroth respectively) were both dominated by the family curse. Brandt worked for the contemporary Conciliators, obsessed with atonement. Meanwhile, Bastian brazenly flaunted supernatural abilities arising from his demonic heritage, relying on charity from his big sister to get him a job.
Almost everything about this situation has since been scrambled. Sebastian is now the stable elder sibling with all the detective work skills, working as a lawyer for the Conciliators. His pet project is to return House Andovar to its former power and influence, though for now the only legacy he can claim is a signet ring bearing the family's ancient crest. According to the rules, bards aren't allowed to be lawful, but I'm willing to break that because it makes the best sense to model a lawyer. Most people probably regard a good lawyer with greater incredulity than a lawful bard.
Sebastian Andovar CR 1
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The Andovar family curse now runs through the females of family. (Great…the men get the Heirloom, the women get the Crazy!
—quillblade) Their mother Peri, and Mali herself are now both plagued by fiendish voices. Peri is a long-term resident at Mahdoth's Asylum in South Market; Mali visits her weekly and knows some of the staff there. Sebastian has meanwhile arranged for Mali to be sheltered at the Conciliator Chapterhouse. She likes living on holy ground; it muffles the voices and their constant litany of sanity-sapping secrets from the Abyss. Mali will bring to the group her knowledge of darkest magic and the skills for forensic lab work. I'm looking forward to throwing in some CSI bits for her to do. Again, there's a tiny bit of rule-bending here: strictly, wizards only get access to Draconic as a bonus language. Having Mali learn Abyssal and Infernal directly from her voices is just too cool to refuse, though.
Mali Andovar CR 1
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All things going to plan, the first session with these character will be this coming Sunday.
April 26 2007, 15:39:13 UTC 5 years ago
April 26 2007, 16:02:09 UTC 5 years ago
Anonymous
April 29 2007, 03:46:22 UTC 5 years ago
April 30 2007, 07:54:29 UTC 5 years ago
Getting everyone together for character generation rather than doing it separately seems to really help with the backstories. It probably didn't hurt that we had a few months to mull them over, waiting for the timeslot to open up, either.