The Fractured Deity

The players in my 4e campaign have returned from exploring an alien planet to the rainy season in the jungle. One of their first orders of business was checking up on various local friends and informants to see what had happened in their absence.  One of the interesting bits of news was that several new religious cults had sprung up along the banks of the Zamonas worshiping the river god.  This was not particularly surprising to the party as they had long known of the prophecy that a specially prepared temple maiden was going to give birth to a new river god at the time of the eclipse.  In fact, the party had even traveled back in time/journeyed to an alternate reality in order to prevent the temple maiden Akili from abandoning her post and committing sacrilege with Old Man Gooty after encountering Akili and Gooty's ungodly child Slotek, so they were pleased to hear that the river god was making a comeback and assumed that their interference with the natural order of things had resulted in the prophecy being fulfilled.  The PCs had also left some precious living spirit beetles (this post explains a little about the spirit beetles) with Akili when they dropped her off back in time thousands of years ago and hoped that they would spend the intervening eons feeding off the magical energies of the temple chamber and multiply.  Tilia had set up some magical circuitry to keep the environment inside the temple perfect for optimal spirit beetle breeding and the party was really looking forward to collecting a handsome harvest of spirit beetle.

Luckily, the world does what I say it does because I play the DM so everything did not go as planned...  When the temple magics were activated by the eclipse and the spirit of the river was invited into the sacred chamber, the mating ritual was augmented by the incredible stored energy of all those spirit beetles.   The temple circuitry was overloaded and Akili and the river spirit, rather than giving birth to a new god, were fused together in a burst of psychic energy that washed out over the flooded landscape and inspired visions in a legion of receptive dreaming minds.  The cultists of the river god awoke with a new purpose in life.

The party learned that the river god had been manifesting in many different physical forms and had been taking a very active interest in affairs along the river.  One terrifying aspect of the new god was an insubstantial waterfall of energy that "fell" horizontally and washed away anything in its path.  This was the form the river took when it broke the magical bonds that had held its main channel from meandering away from the coastal city of Siss-Anor, and the form that destroyed the great navy of that city state.  More benevolently, the river had taken on giant (25' tall) human forms, a comely man or woman, depending on the manifestation, and assisted travelers and riverbank communities in various fashions.  An androgynous humanoid form, even taller (50') had been seen but its activities remained mysterious.  An awesome water dragon was the other most commonly reported form that the party heard about.

When the song people told the party that there was a well established camp of cultists not far up stream, the party jumped in their new hovercraft (created from alien materials with an artificial gas cloud intelligence over the last few sessions on the alien planet) and paid the cultists a visit.

Beautiful Bob did his usual psychic detective work and soon the party learned that the charismatic leader of this group of cultists, Satalio, was actually a clay golem animated with a spark of the divine essence of the river.  Satalio, in short, was a tiny fragment of the river god, although he did not seem to be aware of this fact.  Bob and Tilia soon learned (with a bunch of mucking around in other people's minds and peering through the shadow world and some very fortuitous rolls) that in the moment of conjugal union between Akili and the river spirit, the tremendous energy explosion fueled by the spirit beetles actually resulted in the river god fusing with many of the stronger and more receptive minds within a rather large area.  This resulted in a fractured or fragmented deity, with many different aspects that seemingly operated independently of each other.  Indeed, slavers from another river cult raided Satalio's encampment during a feast that night, and Tilia was deeply repulsed to learn that these slavers utilized the blood tattoo magic of the city state but had a river dragon tattoo form.  For some reason this combination of human sacrificial magic (the blood tattoos) and natural river magic really repulsed Tilia.  

Despite this, Bob managed to convince Tilia that it was in the party's best interest to NOT make an enemy of the blood tattoo river cult without at least meeting with them first to learn more about their goals.  After thwarting the slaver's mission (they seemed to be after several of Satalio's young cultists that came from royal families back in Siss-Anor, probably for ransom), the party allowed the tattooed river cultists to escape and secured a guarantee of safe passage into their camp for the purpose of parlaying with their leader (Ruskus, a former captain of the royal guard who led many of his men in revolt after receiving visions from the river).

The next several sessions are setting up to be mostly investigative, which I like, as the party tries to learn more about the different forms of the fractured deity, the cults that worship each form, and what the goals of these various factions are.  I am hoping to make a post about the blood tattoo cultists soon, if the party follows through and actually meets with them.

Logical Magic and Components

(this post grew out of comments I made on this post about material components over at The Lands of Ara blog)

I love the concept of spell components but in D&D they mostly seem to be limiters on magic casting; if you want to cast this spell, you must first invest X amount of GP in the component cost (or quest to find the components, which seems cool but hardly ever seems to happen).

In other words, the components don't do anything cool and all they do is suck from the perspective of a caster.

I have actually spent a lot of time tinkering around with different component based magic systems and I use a lot of this in my 4e game. Components become fun when they have magical properties in and of themselves. I like to use them like a combination of a spell scroll/potion (the component can be consumed, either ingested or consumed by magic in casting, to cause a certain effect) and a spell building block (combining different components to create new effects).

I like magic to be "logical", inasmuch as that is possible, so a creature that has a magical ability usually either has some kind of organ or gland that relates to that ability and which could be harvested as a material component for a similar magical effect, or the creature feeds on a magical plant or mineral which could be found in the area which also could be used as a component for a magical effect. 

This has the awesome effect of turning random encounters into explorations of how the magical ecosystem of the game works, and often results in all kinds of unexpected plot hooks emerging from play. My campaign maps are covered with marks notating where various plant or mineral components were first discovered in play (most of them emerging from improvised responses to player investigation into the source of a magical ability used against them by a creature), and many of these areas have become destinations in and of themselves for the party as they return to harvest more of the component.

I usually just detail the primary effect/use of the component and then adjudicate on the fly when players start combining components. It is amazing how much more engaged with their environment players become when they realize that plants and animal organs might very well be magical items...

Of course, 4e has abandoned Vancian Fire and Forget style magic, so it fits much better with a component based system of magic. But I am sure you could incorporate similar ideas into traditional D&D style casting. The easiest way would probably be to make components an optional part of the spell, but one that increases the potency of the spell if used. If you actually have some red dragon scale or whatever and use it when you are casting Fireball, maybe it does 1 more damage per die. That way components do something cool, they don't interfere with or limit casting, and you might actually see casters motivated to quest for specific components!

D&D Next survey

I just filled out the online survey about the first playtest materials I got for D&D Next.  I manage an office that conducts market research, so I have a lot of experience with surveys.  This one was nicely executed, not too long, and with enough open ended questions to allow me to feel like I had communicated everything I wanted to about my reactions to the materials.

One thing the D&D Next material has done is make me want to get out the materials from my long defunct 3e campaign and maybe run a one off session or two in the orcish lowlands with the characters from the playtest.  I always statted up my 3e creatures in a stripped down format basically identical to the monster format in the playtest.  I have a ton of low level material that would be perfect to throw against the pregen party.  Maybe this will even inspire me to finally get on the Google+ gaming wagon.

D&D Next - direction?

First off let me say that I hate the name of the next edition of D&D.  It really makes you wonder what the next next edition of D&D will be called.  It also gives one the sense, and not in a good way, that this is probably the last "official" version of D&D.  Maybe they should just call it D&D Last.

One of the critiques of D&D Next that I have heard from many sources is its apparent lack of direction.  It is pretty obviously a stripped down version of 3e with a couple of new ideas sprinkled in.  To me, that is a direction.  D&D Last would actually be an appropriate name because it is definitely a step back down the family tree away from 4e and closer to the roots of the game.  It is closer to the last edition than the next.  But in my opinion that is a good thing.  I think a stripped down version of 3e with most of the skill system thrown out is not a bad edition of D&D.  I will reserve final judgement until I see how complexity is added.  If WOTC succeeds in giving options to the gamers that want to create really complex (mechanically) characters and still keeps the basic game this stripped down and light feeling, I personally will love it.

D&D Next

I signed up for the playtest a while back and downloaded the docs today.  So far I have skimmed some of the play rules, looked at a couple of the pre-gen characters and spent some time looking through the bestiary.

Very brief first impressions:  I like what I have seen so far a lot.  "Old School" is a hard thing to put in a bottle but this feels a helluva lot closer to old school than 4e or even 3e ever did.  If you doubt me just look at the bestiary for a while.  I am pretty sure you could use the monsters as written with AD&D characters (or Labyrinth Lord) for that matter and have no problems.  Of course the AC is ascending, but that is a cosmetic matter in my opinion.  The monster abilities are very evocative and I got some good adventure ideas just reading through the bestiary.  I cannot tell you how glad I was to see a "save or turn instantly and permanently into stone" after DMing 4e for a few years.  I also like a lot about the character sheet.  That cleric looks fun to play.

Even after less than an hour with the playtest I have an itch to both play and DM this thing.

I will definitely be spending some more time with this soon, perhaps a more thorough review will follow.

Opal Island

This is a relic from the fall of 1998, my first semester at college (Tulane University).  I was not actively gaming at the time but I still created game material as if I was.  I recently found a notepad from back then that had a two page write up of the Opal House, and I think it is a pretty cool little locale.  I have transcribed the text below, but I have also included the original two pages at the end of this post for shits and giggles.  I left the text unedited with the exception of fixing a "they're - their" goof.

West Riverside, Opal House

Built on the muddy banks of the Chala River, dozens of ramshackle huts are home to Chala's poorer residents.  Severe storms sometimes push the muddy river water up into this tangle of humanity, but there are always desperate people more than willing to throw up new shacks and call Chala home.  The Opal House is the most infamous of the areas many bars / brothels / smokehouses.  Built on the only permanent island among the myriad shifting sandbars of the Chala River, it is a three story structure built on a massive rock that juts out of the water. There are ferries that run on a cable between the isle and the mainland - the cost is 1 GP to go over to the island, but that fee includes free drinks and a bunk in one of the small bunkhouses if so desired.

[2012 Annotation: I am pretty sure the "small bunkhouses" I refer to are the 5 large one story buildings with a single door.  There must have been a disconnect between the map drawing and the writing.  One can only imagine the conditions inside those flop houses.]

The first floor of the Opal House is a bar with seating and tables.  The air is smokey and music drifts in circles around the naked women dancing on platforms around the walls.  Up one flight of stairs is a cushioned room.  Silver hookahs snake their arms through a haze of sharta smoke to the mouths of the semi-conscious lying on the couches.  Access to this upper level - another two gold coins paid to the slim, dark men standing in front of the stairway.  Ten private rooms adjoin the main smoke room - tapestried and curtained off for privacy, more than a few deals and murders have occurred in their confines.  One more flight of stairs leads to the brothel - drugged out men and women stumble up the velvet covered stairs and emerge into a blue dream.  Rustling blue silk lines the floors, ceiling, and walls.  An unseen and unfelt force moves the silk in gentle swaying motions, and blue-green light flickers out of silver balls that float in mid air.  Passing out in this maze of hallucinations can be deadly - people have disappeared, and there is always a demand for drugged human bodies.Three gold at the door, and you can have a night of delirium on the third floor of the Opal House.  Ferries back to the mainland leave every half hour - 12 person capacity, 1 SP each.

Opal Island is riddled with caves formed when limestone intrusions in the granite rock dissolved in the river water.  Several of these caves have been linked together by Sama Shadow and serve as store rooms and secret meeting halls for the mysterious man.  These caves and store rooms are usually empty - occasionally, hired hands will be loading or unloading boxes of wine, black lotus, sharta and lak.  These boxes are marked with Sama Shadows emblem, a black orb in front of crossed silver scimitars.  The northern store room has a wooden shield bearing Sama's standard - the orb and scimitars over a field of gold.  It hangs on the east wall, and pressing on the orb opens the sliding panel.  The lower levels are very damp and seldom used for anything other than holding drugged bodies.

The lowest levels are home to Sama Shadows "servants".  In the first cave a horrific snake demon coils and flexes in the dark devouring virgin sacrifices and waiting for Sama Shadow to summon its services.  The lower cave swarms with larva, twisted yellow worms with human faces.  Sam Shadow uses these monstrosities as currency in many of his dealings.

Sam Shadow keeps beautiful women in the upper cells - their noses are plugged and a pipe inserted into their mouths.  With every breath in and out they inhale a blend of sharta and black lotus.  After weeks of this, they are beautiful  compliant puppets.  In the large cage, men and women who ended up in Shadow's care huddle terrified in their own feces awaiting their fate - there is always a market for deaf and dumb slaves, their will broken by Sama Khadoum... Two skeletons guard the long hall, terrifyingly resilient and resistant to damage.  A ladder in the corner of the first room leads up to a small cave with a submerged tunnel leading into the river, close to the main dock.

Alien Insects - Tube Sucker

Tube Sucker

Number Encountered: 1d6: 1-5: solo tube sucker, 6: encounter 2d6 tube suckers

Move: Jump 6       Initiative: +15   Perception: +25  

HP:150

AC: 25  (35 in full retracted mode)

REF: 26  (20 in full retracted mode)

FORT: 24  (40 in full retracted mode)

WILL:22

Minor: Full Retracted Mode:  The tube sucker pulls all extremities inside the central body and turtles up.

Minor: Tractor Beam: ranged 15   +20 vs.FORT, pull target 1d4+1 squares

Basic Melee:  Claw: +22 vs. REF, 2d10+5 dmg and knocked prone

Standard: Stomach Tube: melee reach 1, +22 vs AC, 3d12+12 acid dmg, ongoing 12 acid save ends, pull target 1d4+1 squares.

Recharge 4,5,6: Claw Pounce: Jump 6 and make 3 x Claw attacks vs target, this move does not provoke attacks of opportunity, if all 3 Claw attacks land make a Stomach Tube attack at +26 vs. AC.

The ubiquitous tube sucker is the aquarium cleaner of the alien planet's surface.  Three metal plated tentacles ending in wicked claws emerge from the 5' spherical body, itself a metal plated ball of muscle.  A charged gas cloud inside the body serves as a simple brain, and three organs floating in the gas detect electro-magnetic radiation and minute vibrations.  A 10' long flexible tube containing an acid-filled stomach exerts a telekinetic pull on living organisms.  

The tube sucker reproduces asexually, a new organism forming like a corm on the outside of the parent's body.  Even the youngest, newly separated tube sucker has the claw and stomach attacks described above, and they typically grow to full size in very short order feeding on the detritus left by the winter storms.  Their ability to quickly assume a fully retracted spherical form allows them to survive even the harshest of winter storms.  Their gas cloud brain is not affected by the constant jarring as the metal plated sphere of muscle surrounding it bounces across the landscape.

Tube suckers usually drift around alone, but occasionally groups are encountered.  Often the group has its origin at a large food source nearby, such as a downed red layer giant gas body.  Hundreds of tube suckers might be found at a fresh collision site, sucking up the thick layer of organic debris.

Tube suckers seem to be constantly hungry no matter how much material they dissolve in their tube stomachs.  The particular kind of acid found in the tube stomach has a connection to shadow in its molecular structure.  It has a constant supply of hungry ions that stream into existence from beyond.  A shadow organ at the base of the tube sends the byproducts of the digestive process through shadow to re-incorporate as energy elsewhere in trans-dimensional space time.  It is possible that every living tube sucker is part of a single larger entity elsewhere, the functional mouths of a multi-dimensional being.

Alien Spore Thrasher

The Alien Spore Thrasher is a parasitic organism that propagates with special spores that drift around looking for a suitable, moist, living environment to start growing in.  A tiny intermediary form is assumed by the thrasher, barely anything more than several sacks that produce a mixture of venomous secretions and a set of mouthlike tubes that connect to the host organism.  The spore thrasher kills its host in short order and consumes its body to grow the thrashing fruiting body depicted above.  The stats below are for the fruiting bodies of large spore thrashers that grow in the metal arm forest ecosystem from the body of fallen metal arm trees.

HP: 1d4 x 100 HP 

AC:20  FORT:22 REF:25 WILL:18

Basic Attack:  melee reach 1 Thrash +12 vs. REF, 5d12 dmg

Minor Recharge 4,5,6:  Release Poison Spore Cloud Close Burst 1d6(6's explode on the radius of the burst roll- roll an extra 1d6, all subsequent 6's also explode) (choose 1 spore type)

Spores:

Redirecting Cloud : Until the end of the Alien Spore Thrasher's next turn, if any enemy rolls a natural 1-4 on a melee attack roll, the thrasher chooses a new target for the attack and the enemy must reroll against the new target.

Stupifying Cloud: Persists for 1d6 rounds.  Any creature beginning its turn in the cloud or entering the cloud must immediately make a save or become dazed, save ends.

Blinding Cloud: Persists for 1d8 rounds.  Any creature beginning its turn in the cloud or entering the cloud must immediately make a save or become blinded, save ends at -2.

Infecting Spores:  +20 vs. FORT vs. all in burst.  Those hit are infected.  The tiny growing organism rolls Stealth +30 to hide its presence (and avoid future heal checks).  1d4 days incubation period.  -3d12 HP from Max HP total.  Save at -2 each extended rest or the infection progresses, -1d12 additional HP from Max HP total.  Three consecutive saves ends the infection, as does magical healing specifically targeted at the infecting organism.

Alien Insects

I have been on a really productive streak lately in my 4e game as far as generating new material.  Most of the time I spend doing DM prep work is in creating new individuals or species for the party to encounter and detailing environments and locations for those encounters to happen in.

Twists and turns in the game have led the party to leave the jungle that they have been adventuring in for a couple dozen sessions and explore an alien planet in another dimension.  Different dimensions in my game have different rules for how energy and matter behave.  This planet has a solid metallic core that slowly cooled, forming well separated bands of different metals at different depths.   Some of these metals can take a gaseous form if subjected to an intense energy charge, and some take a crystalline form when the gaseous form is cooled.  Some of the metals have natural connections through shadow to other dimensions, giving them wondrous properties such as 10 x elasticity or compounding energy storage.

During the planet's summer, when it is closest to the sun in its very elliptical orbit, the heavy gasses of the atmosphere stay a few thousand feet above the surface of the planet, but during the long winter the planet grows cold and the gasses blanket the surface.  Most of the planet's biomass lives in the atmosphere; the bottom of the food chain are tiny chemosynthetic organisms with bouyant gas bladders which produce a strong bioluminescence as a by-product of digesting metallic gasses.  The light visible on the planet's surface is entirely the result of these glowing zooclouds.

During the winter storms, cold winds send tons of atmospheric life smashing into the planet's surface.  An entire ecosystem that mostly hibernates during the summer and comes to life in the winter specializes in cleaning up the detritus, eating the cleaner-uppers, eating the eaters, etc.

I have made up dozens of alien species, many blurring the line between plant, animal and insect.  And luckily I can now post about them even before they are discovered by the party!  Last session Tilia and a giant elder dragonfly creature shared a mind meld (Tilia has a nature spirit living inside of her which facilitates such things).  The ancient creature imparted thousands of years of encounters with the planet's denizens to Tilia, nearly killing her in the process with an overload of energy to the brain.  I gave Tilia a bonus to knowledge and nature checks conducted on this planet as a result, but I also thought it would be fun to post some creatures here so Mike (Tilia's player) can actually gain some real game knowledge that might be very useful...  starting with the creatures that were swooping in to engage Tilia in combat when we paused at the end of last session!

Ice Fly (adult form)  Initiative: +50 (superconductive nervous system)  Stealth: +25  Perception: +25

HP: 30                                 Movement: 15 Flight Hover
AC: 40                                 Shift 5 Fly as a minor action
FORT: 30
REF: 50
WILL: 30 (an incoming attack must hit the WILL defense twice to connect - superconductive nervous system)

Aura 1: Stinger Spine Aura:  Any creature that starts its turn in, moves into, or has the aura move past it suffers the following attack: Im. Reaction, melee +30 vs. Reflex, 5 dmg, ongoing 5 (stackable) save ends.  All damage done by the stinger spines also deals stackable ongoing damage because shadow connections are made that enable the ice fly to keep pumping a very effective cocktail of anticoagulents and uppers into the victim until a successful save is made.  Any creature taking 20+ points of ongoing damage from this gains an extra minor action, taking 30+ gains an extra move action, taking 40+ gains an extra standard action due to the stimulant effect.

Basic Attacks:  Stinger Spines (melee +35 vs REF, 3d6+5, ongoing 5 [stackable] save ends);
or Pincer Mouth (melee +35 vs REF, 2d12+8 and slowed save ends.  The target is also marked.)

Standard Attacks:  2 x Tail Stinger Spines OR Tail Stinger Spine/Pincer Mouth combo

Recharge 4,5,6: Blinding Dance:  Close Burst 10, +25 vs Will against all enemies in burst, Dazed and Blinded, save ends at -2, and the ice fly can teleport to any point within the burst.

Recharge 6:  Swarming Flies: Remove ice fly from play.  Place 4 ice fly tokens at the corners of a 5 x 5 close burst 2.  Each token has Aura 1 Tail Spine Aura and cannot be targeted by melee attacks.  Each token shifts 10 squares.  Remove ice fly tokens from map and place ice fly at any point in the original burst.  The ice fly gains 40 temporary HP.

Encounter:  Ice Fly Arrow:  move 30 fly (must move at least 10) and make the following attack at any point during the move: +40 vs. REF, 5d12 dmg +Blinded +Slowed, save ends at -2, and the target is marked.

Mark:  If marked enemy takes a move action, the ice fly shifts 10


The ice fly is a feared predator of the boundary between the red layer and the uppermost blue layer of the atmosphere.  Its exoskeleton is metallic crystal, and its nervous system is entirely made up of a superconductive metal that actually transmits signals many times faster than the speed of light.

Nymph Form:  Ice Fly Nymphs live in liquid gas lakes that pool on the upper surface of the floating living islands in the red layer of the atmosphere.  They are also feared predators.

Beautiful Bob Blew Up the Hovercraft

Every other Friday I preside over a 4e campaign.  Calling it "4e" is more than a bit of a stretch, as I add new magic and new rules every single session and it ends up being "D&D - Carl's (gonzo/sci-fi/morally relativistic) Flavor" whether we are playing Mutant Future or Dungeons and Dragons, 4th Edition.

I have gotten in trouble before claiming that 4e and Mutant Future and Labyrinth Lord and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and B/X  et al are all functionally the same thing in the moment of true immersion in game play.  I still stand by that point, but I will content myself with noting that no matter for what edition I play Dungeon Master, the players will always surprise me.

A couple of weeks back, I was totally flabbergasted when Beautiful Bob activated the overload circuit that he had built into the ship at its creation (the entire hovercraft is a magical item created by the party, indestructible by normal means) and let loose all the magical energy stored in its battery in a tremendous explosion to prevent it from being towed to an unknown location.  Maybe even more surprising, the other players did not protest at all.

A tiny bit of back story:  the party was exploring a completely alien planet in another dimension, having left the hovercraft behind well hidden in the canopy of the jungle, guarded by the brothers Beobob and Beebul of the fierce people.  The hovercraft was the destination of the matched teleporter coins each party member held as a get-a-way option.  The hovercraft held Hammer's alternate mechanical/magical bodies (a Warforged Barbarian at character creation, Hammer has subsequently bound his soul and intelligence into a magical crystal that can be mounted in different bodies, allowing him different builds and classes as long as he keeps the same base INT, WIS and CHA scores).  The hovercraft held the largest piece of meteorite metal the party had found, an amazing natural battery capable of storing tremendous amounts of power... which the party had charged completely full by draining a giant whirlpool portal to another dimension.  The hovercraft had 20 rail guns constructed of Brood X leg blasters linked to the central battery with focusing lenses harvested from the eyes of the brood of Kariki Kalos.

And Beautiful Bob blew it all up without a second thought.  Honestly, the hovercraft was the one thing that had made travelling around in the jungle during the wet season feasible, and its firepower when fully manned by native gunners was a powerful deterrent to the devil bounty hunters and everyone else that the party has pissed off so far.

Of course, the party already has plans for how to make an even better hovercraft...