What’s On My Mind.

Urtur and Dark Earth… Those are my two main campaigns. I want to tell you how Dark Earth came to be. How world building started for me.

Dark Earth… The name might betray that I came up with it at an early age. I think I was about 13 or 14 when I started that campaign and ´Dark Earth´ sounded kind of cool. I didn’t know why it was called that at the time. It was just so mysterious! A month or so after I had named my campaign, there was a computer game and a board game with the same name in the stores. Had I seen these names previously or was it just coincidence? I don´t know and it doesn’t really matter. The name was there and I liked it. All the other games were named after mine.

I created Dark Earth to start my very first adventure in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons this-is-not-the-third-edition game. I needed a location for my heroes to start from and I wanted to create my own world for this purpose. I had very little confidence in campaign settings at that time… And no money, really. And so, Dark Earth came into existence.

So, how did I start filling in this ‘Dark Earth’? I first drew up a western coastline, which soon became the western shore of a country called Troy. The name of this country sounded something like the word ‘three’, and so two additional countries came into existence. These were Une and Deux. Along that same coastline, there was an island which I called Twindordeux, which was my own little joke because in my mind it still meant ‘one’. Or, rather, ‘two divided by two’, combining several languages to make this o so funny joke possible. The coastline was slightly curved and I remember that I was a bit annoyed by how much it looked like the western coast of the Netherlands. Then, I placed some triangular mountain symbols somewhere along the coast and voilà! I had made a start at my campaign! Now, how to proceed from there?

I placed a city on the coastline and called it Sea Harbour… Apparently there was a harbour there which had ships coming in from the seaside. That was quite logical, because the city was also build next to a river, which I called ‘the Rotte’. I went to school in Rotterdam at that time in my life, and I had heard somewhere that Rotterdam was once called Aan de Rotte, which translates to Next to the Rotte, with ‘Rotte’ being the name of a river. So, I took the name of that river, or stream, and named a river in my campaign after it. Sea Harbour got the function of a trade city, with sea and river ships arriving at all times, unloading and loading their precious cargo and turning back from whence they came afterwards. Be it river or sea.

However, I might have been a bit lazy at that time. I didn’t want to draw up a whole city to start my planned adventure for my very first second edition party. So I decided there should be a village a bit more land inwards. The name of the village was, of course, Aan de Rotte, which is quite funny because my campaign had an English set-up. Rotte sounds cool in nearly any language, but Aan de Rotte is pretty specific. Aan de Rotte was quite a small village, but it was on a trade route which ran from the northern capital city, called Triangulus, to a city which was then called Gul’Dan, named after, I think it was a city, in Warcraft II. Because of its location, the village thrived. It was a village with large, rural houses which were well maintained, in a landscape of rolling hills. Boats passed by at a regular pace and trade was good. And, of course, there was the imposing statue of a wizard in the central square. The seed of my very first adventure! More about that statue later on.

So, what would one find in a thriving little village like Aan de Rotte? First of all, an Inn! Second of all, a person of renown. This person was Shimrod, named after my very first elf in de Dutch Dungeons and Dragons basic box, one of the few things from D&D ever to be published in the Dutch language. I had decided that Shimrod came from the island of Twindordeux, which was an island inhabited by elves. No history was attached to the island at this point in my creation of Dark Earth, but none was necessary yet either.

So, one of my players was writing his background. His character was living in a forest as a child when this Dark Knight came and killed his parents. He managed, somehow, to escape and found his way out of this forest. And indeed, he found his way to Aan de Rotte, where he was tutored by Shimrod in the ways of a ranger. More importantly, there was now a Dark Knight walking about in my campaign, and a forest should be close by too. So, in the east, at some days travel from Aan de Rotte, the Big Troy Forest was placed and at the time of the killing of Rafael’s parents (that was the character’s name), a war was being waged by this Dark Knight, which had his forces hiding somewhere in this forest. These were mostly undead, I decided. Some drama was starting to seep into my campaign!

I now had enough information to start my very first adventure. I had a map of the west coast, not nearly done, of a country called Troy, I had a map of the village called Aan de Rotte, and I had some drama in the surroundings of Aan de Rotte. A war had raged there, 8 years ago… but it hadn’t touched the village of Aan de Rotte itself, because that village was under the control of a powerful wizard. This wizard had placed a statue in the village, which generated a field of magic which calmed the emotions of the nearby inhabitants and made trade prosper. This is why Aan de Rotte was such a prospering village. However. Every 50 years or so, a door would open in the base of the statue and if none went inside, the Statute would destroy everything around it. This had happened 50 years ago and the villagers weren’t planning on letting it ever happen again. So, as the three adventurers were drinking their drinks in the local in, the statue opened once more. And they went in, for adventure beckoned them to do so.

Here ends the first session of how I started creating my Dark Earth campaign. The adventurers were zapped away through a teleportation well at the bottom of a chamber under the statue. They were never heard from again and, basically, the adventure wasn’t that good. Well, it was my first and I had overstretched myself by far. Next time would be better… And it was! I’ll continue my world building in the next chapter. If you have any questions as of yet, please ask me.

Tags: Dark Earth, Dungeons and Dragons, English // Add Comment »

Well, I’ve added a rakshasa monster class to my site. Don’t even know if there are any others out there, because I thought that I could do a good job anyway. 7 Hit dice and 7 LA for an ECL of 14… Some abilities still seem to powerful, but that is what the BOOK tells me a rakshasa should be. I included some pieces of text that would not normally be found in monster classes. Pieces that explain just a bit more of the abilities, like Sorcerer Spellcasting and Natural Weapons, so that you don’t have to search through whole books to look up the rules. That a great 4th edition influence, where the abilities are all explained where the ability is actually located. So, this isn’t actually new stuff. But still, I hope you enjoy it!

The Rakshasa!

Tags: Dungeons and Dragons, English // Add Comment »

So, I’ve been away… For several reasons. Two of them are good reasons, the other might be considered so so. Let’s start with the bad reason.

I’ve discovered World Of Warcraft. There! I said it! Yes, that is one reason for not posting. It is taking up a lot of my time. But it is such a great game! Not as good as Dungeons and Dragons, ofcourse not! But still…

One of the good reasons is, that I am in my final year for my Bachelor degree in Philosophy. Even though I am not always doing what needs to be done, together with WOW, it takes up a lot of my time. And I really need to finish this study!.

The second good reason is that I am play-testing 4th edition. And I must say, the game allows for much quicker combat which is still quite complicated at times. But I also keep disliking all the stupid things which collide in the Pit of Dismal Rules. Until I have play-tested long enough, I will not post my final commentary on the latest edition D&D game. But I will post the last few chapters in perhaps a month. I’m busy moving as well (which is good reason number three, come to think of it) so until then, loyal readers!

Tags: Dungeons and Dragons, English, Main Topics // 2 Comments »

My brother recently finished his study at the Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His Animation was approved by the Dutch Film Festival (Nederlands Film Festival) and can be viewed on their site or on youtube. Rate it if you like it. You almost certainly will!

Click here to visit the NOFF and watch the animation.

A link to his website can be found in the sidebar.

Tags: English, Friends and Family // 1 Comment »

For some reason, the comment box has disappeared. I’m working (somewhat) on it. Please be patient and if you want to comment, you can always send me an email.

Tags: English, Main Topics // 4 Comments »

Daar gaan we weer. Dit keer een korte kritiek op het fenomeen terras. Wederom was ik met mijn vriendin in de stad en besloten wij bij de 7even in Breda wat te gaan eten. Aha! Brood met pesto, kruidenboter en tzatziki. lekker. Dat nemen we even. Het was niet eens zo duur als je de prijs vergelijkt met andere eettentjes.

Het duurde niet lang voordat we een net plankje kregen met drie witte bakjes erop en twee broodjes ernaast. Een witte en een bruine pistolet, ieder in van die plakjes gesneden die toch nog aan elkaar zaten. Scheurplakjes dus. Flink wat pesto, een goede dosis tzatziki en de kruidenboter mocht er qua hoeveelheid ook wezen. Zelfs de smaak was niet onaardig.

Echter, het was wel een smaak die we maar al te goed kenden. Wij kopen namelijk dezelfde pesto en kruidenboter bij onze grote vriend Albert Heijn en die pistolets komen daar volgens ons ook vandaan. De tzatziki was duidelijk niet vers of gewoon bereidt zonder veel inspiratie. We kwamen hierover in gesprek. Wat is het toch vreemd dat iets was zich profileert als een eettentje kant en klare dingen serveert? Waarom maken ze het niet vers klaar? Kruidenboter kan je makkelijk in de koelkast bewaren en tzatziki is zo gemaakt. Ook pesto is niet erg moeilijk. En dan kan je het in grotere hoeveelheden maken, spaar je als tent zeer waarschijnlijk nog wat uit ook, ook al koop je goedkope middelen bij de Albert Heijn, en je geeft een fantastische service aan je klanten. Dat alles voor een half uurtje tot een uur werk op een werkweek.

We hebben het opgegeten, logisch, want thuis doen we dat ook, en besloten om daar geen brood met kruidenboter meer te bestellen. Het is gewoon geen verrassing, geen streling van de tong. Het is inspiratieloos. Dus, 7even, denk even na en serveer vers, dan heb je er sowieso alweer twee terrasgangers bij.

Tags: Nederlands, Our Daily Lives // 1 Comment »

So, it had been a while. I’ve been busy, but no more! On to the next chapters.

CHAPTER 6: FEATS

Well, first of all, there are a lot of feats. They come in three tiers, namely the Heroic, Paragon and Destiny tier, and can be chosen once you reach these tiers and meet some other prerequisites. Some are really strong (Like the Jack of All Trades feat discussed above), some are pretty lame (Two-Weapon Fighting adds a +1 damage bonus to damage rolls with your main weapon… Huh?). I really have to play test a lot of characters to see if all the feats are interesting to pick and some point, but I guess they play-tested the feats pretty well. The biggest pro of 4th edition is the number of feats you can choose. You’ll end up with 18 feats at level 30, which is way more then 7 at level 20.

On to the next chapter.

CHAPTER 7: EQUIPMENT

Hmmm… Well… I’ve got mixed feeling concerning this chapter. First of, the art is crap. Especially the drawings of the armor. Weapons are okay except that as always, they didn’t look at the real thing before they started drawing. But what to make of the equipment?

Let’s start with armor. The basics are good, I think, but what troubles me are the special versions of any armor. These can only be found with a minimal enhancement bonus already in place. To replace your leather armor, you’ll find, at some point in your career, the upgraded versions of feyleather and starleather. The only real difference is that their base armor bonus increases from +1 (for normal leather) to +2 and finally to +3. I don’t see why this is even cool. It would be cool if you had a leather armor that was made out of feyleather if the fey part gave you some cool benefit, not just an increase in armor class. It would have been better is you could have just gotten a Paragon feat that gave your plate armor an additional +3 armor bonus and an Epic feat that gives it a +6 bonus. Instead, you’ll be wandering around in a warplate (whatever that is) and finally a godplate (!). In 3rd edition, certain materials gave you some special benefit. Mithril armor lightened your armor and adamantine armor gave it more strength. Some armors even lowered your spell failure chance just because they were made of some special material. Starweave armor, starleather armor, darkhide armor, spiritmail armor, elderscale armor and godplate armor are just silly excuses to scale the game better rather then cool, uniquely flavored new kinds of armor.

As we come to weapons, the rules really start to hurt. If the rules could be offensive, that is. Weapon size is somewhat out. Yes, a halfling is restricted once more to all those weapons that are already of a smaller size. Which is, of course, stupid, because halflings will ecrtainly have their own smiths. The silliest text I could find can be found under the weapon properties part:

Small: This property describes a two-handed or a versatile weapon that a Small character can use in the same way a Medium character can. A halfling can use a shortbow, for example, even though halflings can’t normally use two-handed weapons.

This is followed, somewhat later on page 220, by the following text:

Weapons and Size
The weapon tables assume a Medium wielder, which includes almost all player characters. Characters and creatures that are smaller or larger than Medium have special rules.
Small characters use the same weapons that Medium creatures do. However a Small character (such as a halfling) can’t use a two-handed weapon. When a Small character uses a versatile weapon, he or she must wield it two-handed and doesn’t deal any extra damage for doing so.
Large, huge and Gargantuan creatures use weapons that are specially sized for them. Each size category larger than Medium increases the weapon’s damage die by one size.

And on.

Now, am I by now the only person who thinks that the halflings must be pretty retarded for not making their own weapons and fitting them to their size? Any other size category of creatures does is. Very, very weird and totally redundant. It’s one of those things that I’ll change for certain.

But, it gets even more stupid when we read a bit further:

Selling Equipment
You cannot sell mundane armor, weapons or adventuring gear unless your DM allows, in which case you receive one-fifth of an item’s market price. Art objects or fine goods that have a specific value, such as a dagger worth 100 gp, bring their full price.

Uhm… What? Shouldn’t that have read:

Selling Equipment
You can sell any item you hold unless your DM prohibits it. Selling an item wins you about 50 percent of the market price, but you can haggle to increase this amount. A very good and charismatic rogue might even sell his goods for more then they are really worth. Bad hagglers might even decrease the amount they might have gained for the item if they would have kept their mouths shut. Art objects or fine goods that have a specific value, such as a dagger worth 100 gp, might bring their full price, but small communities might not be able to afford such a treasure and no manner of haggling will increase what they want to give you for the item if they just don’t have the gold to buy it.

Yes, D&D is a game, but certainly some logic is still involved? If the one selling you the armor can ask for its full price, then so can you. A fifth of the price is something no sane person will agree on. But the one-fifth part of the market price is integrated with the whole D&D economy to such an extend, that this will be quite hard to change. House-ruling seems in order here.

Which brings us to adventuring gear. 38 lines of adventuring gear, including 2 for category description, 3 for ammo, 2 for whole packs and 4 for implements, leaves us with 27 cool things to buy… 27. Huh? Why? Where is my good old D&D store which I like to peruse whenever I get some new gold? Where are the pole and the signet ring? How much is a good pair of boots worth? Why? Please tell me why? A friend of mine could build his character quick enough and would then spend a couple of hours going through a list of items, like fishing hooks, an tweak till he got all the right stuff. No more, I guess, and for no apparent reason but to slim down the book. They could have copy-pasted the 3rd edition equipment or even the second edition, but no. It’s a pitty.

On to magic items. Magic items are now included in the PHB, which is pretty handy. Identifying them is out. It isn’t fun to identify items anyway. O? well, let’s give them that (grumble). Items are priced according to their level, which is kind of handy. Everything is scaled to fit 4th editions linear progression and everything looks the same in that respect. Wow. Cool. I guess? There are quite a lot of magic items in the book and a character can be given that unique feel by applying them. Yet, somehow, they lack flavor. I guess that this is so, because many items seem to add to the powers of the classes too much. These items have no real power of their own. But some items are pretty cool. I need to play test them more to form a better opinion.

The strangest thing that I find missing is character wealth by level. If you include all magical equipment in your PHB and all the other rules for characters up to 30th level, then why not include that table?

This is it for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed the read. The final chapters will be appearing soon enough.

Tags: Dungeons and Dragons, English // 14 Comments »

So, I signed up with Scoutle. Scoutle lets you categorise your blog and links you to relevant other Scoutle members. It is totally free of charge and it adds a link that changes content to your main blog page. You can find my Scoutle link thingy in my sidebar. Maybe something cool will come drifting along. Who knows?

Tags: English, Main Topics // Add Comment »

I have read a couple of books by R.A. Salvatore. He is a master in describing new archetypes when it comes to heroes. The most famous one of course being Drizzt himself. But he doesn’t leave it at that. While Bruenor, Wulfgar, Catti-brie and Regis are cool enough, some of the side characters are even cooler! I’m thinking of Pwent specifically. He’s the man, I’ll tell ye! Anyway, I’ve wanted to play a Pwent for some time now, but all the battlerager classes out there just don’t cut it. There was but one PrC that came close to my actual picture of Pwent, namely this one. So, I started to work on my own one. I wanted to create a real battlerager, something entirely different from a barbarian, though it has some abilities in common. A battlerager isn’t a one way mean machine, he has a couple of tricks up his sleeves too! And the great way that a battlerager wears his armor is so specific, that some new rules had to be invented for the purpose of conveying that feeling. And so, here it is!

Class: The Battlerager

Enjoy the read and let me know how the battlerager fitted into your campaign.

Tags: Dungeons and Dragons, English // 2 Comments »

Well, on to chapter 5!

CHAPTER 5: SKILLS

The positive side: There are less skills, yet they still cover the same options as before, streamlined to work well together with the new +1/2 level progression which is the basic idea behind any d20 roll in the 4th edition. There are 17 skills left and characters are now limited to a certain number of trained skills as described in their class. You do not get additional skill points from a high intelligence score, but you can take a feat to gain training in a new skill… Which brings me to the downside of the new Skills.

Training means, that you gain a +5 to a certain skill. Being untrained means that you do not have this bonus. Which means that, because of the half level rule, you have, effectively, a difference of 5 points between any trained and untrained skills if you do not include ability bonuses at any level of play… 5 points. Which means that, on a neutral level, you have about 25% chance of sneaking past an opponent that is not trained in the skill of about your level. Which means, that you have 25% chance to bluff your untrained opponent into whatever you want him to do. Now, of course, you might have high ability scores or you might only try to sneak past opponents of whom you know have a low perception score. But this sounds a little bit strange to me. Because if I want to specialize in sneaking about, I want to be exceptional good at it before I even try to handle it as an option in which I could feel confident that I would succeed. 75% chance would start to get me there. Which means that I somehow have to gain an additional +10 bonus to my skill in comparison with an untrained opponent.

+10.

That is quite a lot. Luckily for me, there is such a thing as Skill Focus, which grants me a +3 feat bonus to a single trained skill. That is a difference of 3 out of 10 solved! unluckily for me, a feat called Jack of all Trades gives my opponent a +2 feat bonus to ALL untrained skills… Yes, to ALL untrained skills. Fortunately, there is the feat called Light Step, which grants me an additional +1 on my stealth skills checks… Uhm… Well, no! Because that feat grants me a +1 feat bonus as well, and they do not stack. No race in the PHB grants me an unnamed bonus to the check, and so my gap remains at 6, for which I took a feat to train in a single skill and my opponent took a feat to gain a +2 feat bonus in all all untrained skills.

Okay, so I might as well start to upgrade my dexterity. Let’s say that I had a 16 in that score to begin with. Which means another +3. I now have 45% chance to sneak past an opponent, taking into account the feats I described earlier. 45% is quite risky, but I could manage it at first level. 55 if my opponent isn’t a Jack of all Trades. And 55% for a first level character is a good score. But it stays that way forever! At 30th level, my Dexterity might have reached its peak at 24 (there are no items that increase ability scores), but my opponent has at least gained a +1 compared to my additional +4 (because of its ability increases) and so in the best of circumstances I now have a 70% chance, excluding items. But it is so easy for my opponent to gain some points in perception to close that gap while I have to scrape of every point of stealth I can get, that the gap probably closes over the levels rather then widens. One feat let’s my opponent gain a +5 bonus to its check, because perception is now a trained skill, another feat levels it all out and every incidental two points of wisdom closes the gap even more. I’ve would never guess that a burglar my take a 50% chance of succeeding at breaking in, nor could I imagine a 30th level hero still feeling uncomfortable with his own abilities in this manner. And, of course, the real cool stuff consists of sneaking not only past a guard, but past your most feared enemy. But that enemy might well differ a couple of levels with you, so the 1/2 level rule works even more to his advantage.

As I see it, the only thing that the stealth skill does with some confidence, is granting you a chance to avoid surprise. Now, I took stealth as an example, because it can be compared to an opponents skill checks. Skills like bluff suffer from the same maladies. It just doesn’t seem right to me. Skill training seems weak to me, while gaining an advantage to an untrained skill seems overly easy. Jack of all Trades might as well be the best heroic skill out there.

Tags: Dungeons and Dragons, English // Add Comment »