The End of a Chapter

On Sunday I drew my current Arcana Evolved game to a close. My intention from this game was to ignite conflict between the Giants and the Dragons of that setting. However the torch I used I only lit I stopped short at lighting the fire. I did this deliberately to have what happened next undefined, let people think of their own endings. Hopefully one of the players may be inspired to explore this conflict by running their own game. Here is what happened.

The game mainly took place in Serathis(detailed in Ruins of Intrigue). The group had recovered an ancient powerful artifact called a Tenebrian Seed. The Dragons had many millenia ago used them to create the Dramojh a twisted nightmare fusion of Demon and Dragon. This particular Tenebrian Seed was used to create the first Dramojh with the Black Cyst located in Serathis. It was the first generation of Dramojh who created Serathis. As you can imagine everyone cant trust each other to possess the Seed so conflict is inevitable.

The culmination ended with a cult who claimed they wanted to destroy the Seed and the Black Cyst to prevent the Dramojh being recreated, A leader of the Giants in Serathis who wants to study the Cyst to further her own research, party members who want it destroyed, party members who think it could empower humankind to take control of the Lands of the Diamond Throne and who knows what else.

I can think of a number of different agendas beyond those above to do with this artifact and I am keen to explore them in play. This is however an experiment to empower all members of a gaming group to have a say in the plot and story beyond that of myself as the original GM.

Lets see what happens, if anything at all.

Shared Setting and Agenda's

I'm interested in the concept of disempowering the Game Masters' position on dictating setting and story. That is not to say it should be removed, more redistributed. I think all players of a game should have equal input into defining the elements of Exploration. I have been harbouring these thoughts for a while.

However today I took a step towards possibly articulating and defining a methodology for facilitating play to examine these ideas. It took the form of an email I sent to a friend. here is the bulk of those articulations...

I just had a thought that it would be cool to have a core group of gamers who develop a host of characters based in a city or some such environment. The group would define various factions in the city and then play out various interactions between the groups with one person taking the role of the antagonist (ie the DM) and the rest being protagonists. The group wouldn't have a dedicated DM but would take it in turns "exploring" the issues around those characters.

One adventure might explore what happens to a patrol of the City Guard on one night. Another might be based around a cult trying to assassinate the leader of a church. another might be a merchant faction trying to establish a monopoly on dragon scales.

This is more or less an evolution of the Maralith Arms campaign i proposed the concept of earlier this year just with a broader scope

I might even pitch the Eberron game along these lines, I dunno, I have plenty of time to think it through.

Character Backgrounds

I belted out a concept for an Ars Magica companion I will run probably next year. I had a fairly defined list of circumstances in the concept that was to have/will happen to them. The story guide made a good point in that it will make the character more interesting to play the events in the background out in game as the campaign progresses. What a simple and excellent idea.

I have seen backgrounds for other peoples characters and alot of the time all the cool stuff has happened to the character already. There are quite a few arguments I can see for playing out these events in game.

• All the cool stuff has already happened to the character


• This makes it difficult for the GM to "live up" to the cool stuff that has happened in the background


• often the background has no indication as to where the player wants the back story to develop next


• Its more fun to play out those events


• It gives you time to react to the events differently as you are continually developing the character further during the game

I think when developing characters the players should submit to the GM a plan of where they want the character to end up as play progresses as opposed to submitting a detailed and rich back story where basically as the game begins the character has already lived a full and enriched life.

D&D Firearms

Ahh firearms rules right under my nose in the DMG on page 145. They are simple enough for me to incorporate. Not OGL though :(

Someone has also kindly added rules for firearms on the WOTC boards too - Custom Firearms although I think I am going to stick with the simple DMG version.

Someone on the boards mentioned that it takes longer than a standard action to reload a firearm which I agree with however I am just going to keep them as written. I don't want to house rule too much stuff for this game.

Ideas from GUMSHOE

Esoterorists Sample

This is an excellent snap shot of looking at issues with the old Call of Cthulhu method of investigation. As this will probably relate to my Eberron game the d20 system will be used.

The main premise in the sample is that there are degrees of success, the d20 skill system already supports this. Incorporating these ideas will come down to scenario design where you allow the degrees of success to reveal more and more clues and information to help solve the mystery.

GNS Theory and Planning a Game

Just started reading through Ron Edwards "GNS and Other Matters of Roleplaying Theory" article on Indie-Rpgs. Im going to make some random thoughts here about it.

When advertising a game to canvas players it is a good idea to make clear the premise of the game. That way everyone is quite clear. I like the distinction Ron makes between Genre and Premise.

Considering that I go ahead with the Eberron game here is the Premise as broken down into Ron's catergories of Premise

• Character: The basic premise will be that the characters are a group of Investigators maybe in a detective agency or something like that.


• System: Core D&D with added Eberron crunch - I plan to keep rules as written fairly closely.


• Setting: Set in Sharn the City of Towers - I'm aiming for basically a 1920s level of tech except without firearms. If I find rules for archaic firearms I might grab them too.


• Situation: The characters will be pitted against the agents of darkness (Cults of the Dragon Below in various guises) Most antangonists will be humanoid cultists and their pets. I will try to use the aberrations sparingly to keep their impact greater.


• Colour: Sharn will be gritty and dark. It will be constantly raining and most adventures will take place at night. Imagine a figure cloaked in partial darkness drawing back deeply on a hand rolled cigarette