This is quite a useful record for me, of how things change constantly in the imaginary campaigns in my head.

Currently Playing
A 25th level (!) tiefling binder (actually binder 20 / rogue 5) in a homebrewed D&D 3.5 campaign. We are just about to finish the DCC adventure "In the Belly of the Beast", and my character has gained 4 levels in the course of it. We only have 3 characters so advancement would be quicker because of that; also our deadliest party member doesn't get any XP - the druid's animal companion, who is a terrifying sight when fully buffed.

Intending to Play
The character will be going into retirement (not sure how long) and I'll be starting a 1st level human beguiler in our next D&D 3.5 campaign.

Currently Running
War of the Burning Sky for 5 players, although quite often not everbody can make the sessions. The 6th player we used to have is talking about making a comeback.

The characters have are mostly 18th level, and are part way through Under the Eye of the Tempest. This seems to be quite a short adventure, and then its on to the climax, adventure 12.

I'm not finding running high level D&D to be too much of a strain, but having a published adventure certainly helps a lot here.

Intending to Run
A mini adventure path consisting of

Sunless Citadel
Forge of Fury
Red Hand of Doom
Guardians of Dragonfall (Paizo module)
Forthcoming Paizo dragon-themed module (whose name escapes me); hopfully it will flow on nicely

Pathfinder 19-24 Legacy of Fire (under Pathfinder RPG rules)

Would like to run
A campaign set in the Grand Dutchy of Karameikos using the Thieves World Rules from Green Ronin. This would be set in the era of the Gazetteers, year 1000, and draw heavily on my PDF of Gaz 1. I don't have Wrath of the Immortals, so the campaign shaking events it describes won't happen. If the players are so inclined, I'd use include a lot of politics, using the political rules from Penumbra's Dynasties & Demagogues.

A free form campaign set in Necromancer Games' 3rd edition "Points of Light" setting with hooks leading to the various Necromancer adventures I own.

A "Secrets of Sarlonna" campaign where the PCs start of as (more or less) ordinary citizens of Riedra

A mini adventure path set in Eberron consisting of

The Forgotten Forge
Shadows of the Last War
Whispers of the Vampire's Blade
Expedition to Castle Ravenloft

Position regarding 4th edition
I still see no reason to change to 4th edition. There is so much I still want to do with 3.5 / OGL / Pathfinder RPG.

My book boycott of WotC following their decision to withdraw Dungeon and Dragon magazines has been followed up by WotC boycotting me when it comes to PDFs.

My annual Star Wars Saga purchase (as a birthday present from me to myself) is likely to be the only money WotC get from me this year.

amethal

So, just before GenCon, WotC have announced they will be revising the GSL to make it "opener".

I'm glad to hear it, but there's been so many unfounded statements about the GSL over the past months that I'm waiting till we get it before celebrating.

It looks like Necromancer Games may be back in the 4th edition fold. Clark is optimistic he's going to find the new terms acceptable. It comes too late for them to publish the Advanced Players Guide, which was given back to Ari in a very classy move by Clark and is now going to be published by Expeditious Retreat.

amethal

So Necromancer Games are not going to be making 4th edition products after all. Or not straight away, at any rate.

They have rejected the GSL pending clarification of its terms.

They are not looking at going down the copyright route - whether for legal reasons or because they don't want to be that kind of company.

Its a real shame that a popular publisher, who wants to support 4th edition, doesn't feel able to sign the licence. And they won't be making any 3rd edition products at least until Pathfinder comes out. So everybody loses.

amethal

Once again, I'm stealing my topics from Psion's blog.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/blogs/psion/339-gsl-not-gsl-question.html

Does anyone care about open gaming? Does anyone care about third party support? With the GSL, WotC has removed the former from D&D 4. The terms of the GSL are so mindblowingly one sided that it wouldn't surprise me if they'd also eliminated the latter.

However, it appears they haven't. Necromancer Games, 4th edition's biggest fans pretty much from day 1, will be continuing with their alternative Player's Handbook and Adventure Path, and presumably there will be a monster book at some point - it just won't be called Tome of Horrors (and D&D 4's loss is possibly Pathfinder's gain - I'm not sure whether we would have had a Pathfinder ToH anyway, or whether it is a result of the GSL).

Goodman Games are expected to produce a line of adventures for 4th edition under the GSL. Whether or not they'll be called Dungeon Crawl Classics remains to be seen, and there's a chance they'll ignore the GSL and produce it without a licence, relying on copyright law.

Its this copyright approach which most interests me about the whole thing. At the time I had no idea there were so many "D&D compatible" products for earlier editions, or the fun TSR's lawyers were having trying to defend their trademarks.

Necromancer Games warned WotC that if the GSL was too restrictive they risked a return to unlicensed products. Apparently that was taken by WotC to be a threat; if so that is a mindboggling response from a company which has done a pertty good job of boggling my mind this year.

Well, Adamant's Venture 4th, Kenzer's new version of their Kalamar setting and (I assume) Goodman's Gen-Con offerings will be compatible with the world's most popular role-playing game, but they won't be D&D.

Interesting times .... unless you don't care about open gaming and / or 3rd party support.

amethal

I missed out on the "iconic" modules of AD&D first edition. I never fought against the giants, or explored the Barrier Peaks, or did any of the other fun things that it seems like almost every other gamer my age managed to do.

Like many 3rd edition gamers I have been through the Sunless Citadel, but I came to 3.0 late and that module was old news by then. We dabbled with Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, but after that it was homebrew all the way.

War of the Burning Sky has only a fraction of the audience these other modules had, but it feels like my Against the Giants.

I subscribed pretty much the day it came out, and I started running it soon afterwards. There are plenty of other people in the same position, and I enjoy reading about their experiences and posting mine on the EN Publishing Forum.

The designers are also happy to post there as well, which was particularly useful in the early days when us DMs had only a vague idea of where the saga was heading.

It provides a real sense of a shared experience that I haven't had from D&D before.

No one has played it all to the end (adventure 12 isn't even out yet) and there's no accepted "best" way to run it. We are all finding our way forward together.

And its a heck of a good adventure as well.

amethal

This is where I'm currently at -

Currently Playing
A 5th level half elf holy warrior in a homebrewed True20 fantasy campaign.

Currently Running
War of the Burning Sky for 6 players, although quite often not everbody can make the sessions. The characters have nearly completed adventure 6, Tears of the Burning Sky, and are all either 11th or 12th level.

Intending to Play
This campaign has a long way to go, and I've no idea what the DM plans to run after that.

Intending to Run
A mini adventure path consisting of

Sunless Citadel
Forge of Fury
Red Hand of Doom

A mini adventure path set in Eberron consisting of

The Forgotten Forge
Shadows of the Last War
Whispers of the Vampire's Blade
Expedition to Castle Ravenloft

Pathfinder 1-6 Rise of the Runelords (under Pathfinder RPG rules)

Would like to run
A free form campaign set in Necromancer Games' 3rd edition "Points of Light" setting with hooks leading to the various Necromancer adventures I own.

A "Secrets of Sarlonna" campaign where the PCs start of as (more or less) ordinary citizens of Riedra

Position regarding 4th edition
I see no reason to change to 4th edition at this point. There is so much I still want to do with 3.5 / Pathfinder RPG.

amethal

Vehicles is a True20 supplement in PDF format from Reality Deviant Press.

Green Ronin’s True20 tries for a “toolkit” approach. The core rulebook is intended to be useful for games of all genres, and has to cover a lot of ground. As a result it can’t cover all areas in detail. One area in which it is particularly lacking, in my opinion, is in vehicles rules – especially in my favourite genre, space opera.

I was pleased to see that Reality Deviant Press were bring out a licensed True20 product covering vehicles. I have some of their other PDFs, which I liked a lot, and the previews for the product looked very interesting. I received a review copy after responding to the request for reviewers in the Open Call section of the ENWorld message boards.

Vehicles is a 61 page PDF, including the front cover, credits page, two page table of contents (linked to the main document for easy navigation) and two page OGL.

I like the full colour front cover, which features a modern tank and a rhinoceros drawn cart crewed by orcs. There might be a UFO trailing on behind; its hard to tell as the title gets in the way. There is a fair amount of art inside. Its in black and white, which is a shame as most of the pieces are very evocative and I imagine they’d look great in colour.

One of the things that appeals to me about True20 artwork is the juxtaposition of different genres, and Vehicles is no exception. My favourites were the duelling biplanes on page 5 and the Napoleonic warship that takes up the whole of page 14.

It is divided into six chapters. Two chapters of rules, three chapters of vehicles split by era – low tech / fantasy, modern and future, and one chapter for the Narrator on using vehicles in True20 games.

Somewhat unusually, at least in my experience with PDFs, it includes a 3 page index. I think this is a very useful feature, especially in a PDF since it isn’t taking up a limited number of physical pages that could be used for something else. Looking for the torpedo bomber? It’s on page 33.

Chapter 1 contains expanded vehicles rules, and is pretty crunchy. There are rules for running abstract vehicle combat. The Narrator is encouraged to use common sense throughout, which to my mind is a perfectly acceptable approach in True20; other systems may discourage such “GM fiat”.

It also includes ways in which skills can feature in a vehicle encounter – those bad guys who were always leaping out of exploding vehicles in the nick of time in the “A Team” had clearly maxed out their escape artist skill whereas hotwiring cars needs a disable device check.

Chapter 2 covers vehicle feats. True20 grants a four feats at first level and a feat every level after that, but even so there are already far more feats available than any character could hope to take. This chapter offers a modest seven feats (plus a revision to the Vehicular Combat feat in the True20 core rules) for those who want to be hotshot pilots or drivers. (Two general, four expert and one warrior/expert.)

Some of them allow you to add your Reputation bonus to Drive checks or vehicle attack rolls. This is the first time I’ve seen this particular mechanic used, although maybe it appears in other True20 products I am not familiar with. It seems a bit odd to me, and I’m not sure what I think about it. However, if you are running a game in which you want Reputation to be important (maybe something similar to The Fast and the Furious) then these feats could be useful.

Now that we’ve got the rules out of the way, its time for the meat of the book – the vehicles themselves. Chapter 3 is fantasy / low tech vehicles, of which there are 30 – 10 animal drawn chariots / wagons / carriages, 19 boats (including galleon and galley already in True20 core book) and 1 siege steamer (an armoured siege weapon which is manhandled into place and then fires a burst of steam at the enemy) plus an arbalest, ballista and catapult to mount on them.

My favourite is the Carriage of the Gothic Lord, a luxury heavy carriage which has supernatural qualities, enabling it to move as fast as a light carriage. “Advising the carriage driver of your destination is futile, for he already knows where he is taking you.”

It would be nice to have pictures of all these vehicles, instead of just a handful, but I suppose that would be impractical.

The chapter, and also the next two, ends with some story ideas, which are not much use to me, - I’ve got the ideas, I just needed the vehicles! Chapter 3 also has some supernatural abilities you could give your vehicles, such as Blinking or Energy Resistance. (For complete rules for endowing items with supernatural abilities you’ll need the True20 Companion.)

Chapter 4, Modern Vehicles, is divided into Industrial Age, Golden Age and Modern Age vehicles. No dates are given for each era, which is a shame, but there are loads of land, sea and air vehicles, and also some basic spacecraft; far too many to list here.

We also have more vehicle mounted weapons – from Industrial Age gatling guns to Golden Age anti-tank guns to Modern Age … well, gatling guns, actually, but now firing depleted uranium.

I am very impressed by the sheer number of vehicles in this chapter, which has the usual cars, warships, fighter aircraft and such, but also includes trains, zeppelins, helicopters, submarines and hovercraft.

There are also quick and easy rules for technical superiority, use of radar, stealth technology and more.

Then we move on to what I am most interested in – Chapter 5, Future.

It is split into Near Future (hoverboards, moon base shuttles etc.) and Sci-Fi (space destroyers!) There are plenty of vehicles, and a wide range of types. I was expecting the usual space destroyers, space fighters and freighters, but there are also space elevators, vacuum trains, powered asteroids and anti-grav terrestrial vehicles, together with laser cannon to mount on them.

There are short and simple rules for tracking through hyperspace, sensor ranges, deflector shields and more.

Chapter 6 is a short chapter of ideas for using vehicles in games. It includes a suggestion on how to run dog fights, which I liked, and advice on how to give all of the heroes something to do. Some of it, such as the customising vehicles section, seemed obvious to me, but others may find it useful.

All in all, Vehicles is an excellent resource for adding vehicles to a True20 game, and its pretty much all open game content.

amethal

Acts 4 and 5 are basically just one encounter each, on the road from Gate Pass to the Fire Forest. These encounters are both EL 7, despite the fact that the party is probably only second level by this point. I think perhaps a bit more could have been done to highlight for the DM the implications of this.

My group struggled with the first one. There were 5 PCs, so the absence of the NPC Torrent should not have made an difference. What I hadn’t bargained for was the effect of the absence of her wand of cure light wounds, so some of the blame falls on me. Some of the blame also falls on the dratted dice. I’ve seen d6s which roll consistently higher than the d20s some of the players were using.

If I was to run it again, I wouldn’t tone it down. Instead I’d try and give the players a hint as to the number of enemies they were facing. The encounter is set up in such a way that its likely the bad guys will turn up over several rounds. The initial encounter looks like a “standard” level appropriate challenge, but then gets nastier and nastier once the PCs are sucked in.

I had Torrent arrange for the PCs to receive her wand before the second encounter, but they struggled with this one as well. However, part of the blame for this (in my opinion) rests with the fact that the PC with the wand spent most of the encounter in the barn whilst the rest of the party were in the farmhouse.

Anyway, I didn’t have a Total Party Kill, and presumably the PCs now know that the opposition means business. Act 5 also introduces a pair of memorable NPCs – the irascible ex-wizard Haddin and his daughter Cristin, who has visions. They are likely to tag along with the party through the Fire Forest, and provide equal amounts of help and hindrance. However, the series is designed with the intention that no NPC is vital – if Cristin isn’t with the party then the DM can just give her visions to a PC instead.

Overall, I really enjoyed running the adventure and it seemed as if my players had a lot of fun playing it. Bring on the Fire Forest!

amethal

The Scouring of Gate Pass is a 65 page PDF adventure for first level D&D characters by EN Publishing. It is the first instalment in the 12 part War of the Burning Sky campaign. The review will also refer to the free 23 page Campaign Guide PDF and the free 25 page Players Guide PDF. Print versions are available from lulu.com, and there are plans for a future hardback compilation (although I don’t know how 4th edition will impact on these plans).

This is a review after running the adventure – see my Story Hour if you are interested in how it went. For those who care about such things, I subscribed to the entire series using my own money.

The PDF is mostly in colour and is fully bookmarked. It comes with a black and white printer friendly version and a separate colour PDF which reproduces the maps. In addition, scale versions of the maps are available from the WotBS website. Advice and information is also available from the adventure’s author on the EN Publishing message boards here at EN World.

I was extremely impressed by the evocative maps, prepared by Sean MacDonald. The only error I could see is that the barn is in the wrong place on the map in Act 5, but that is easy enough to gloss over. It would have been helpful for the “geographically challenged” such as myself if the country side maps had arrows along the road showing “To Gate Pass” and “To the Fire Forest”, but I suppose for most people knowing that the city is north of the forest would be enough to orientate themselves.

I was less impressed by the artwork, which is a mixture of full colour pieces and line drawings. I don’t really care about the artwork when I am rating an adventure (your mileage may vary).All the significant NPCs are illustrated, and that is enough for me.

I did not spot any glaring typos or similar errors. I have not checked any of the stat blocks, but no errors leapt out at me.

I have awarded the adventure 4.5 stars, which rounds up to 5 stars. I was very impressed by it, but this doesn’t mean I think it is perfect!

As this is a review of an adventure, it necessarily includes spoilers. However I will try and keep them to a minimum.

The adventure is set on an unnamed continent dominated by the Ragesian Empire. In my case I set it in Sarlonna, a long time before the period detailed in the Eberron campaign setting.

The Emperor has died mysteriously after a long reign, and the Empire is in turmoil. The Empire also has four nearby countries to worry about, plus the Free City of Gate Pass where the adventure begins. The characters are encouraged to have a connection to Gate Pass, and there are bonus feats on offer to reward those who choose to be connected with local organisations. This is a nice touch. I don’t know how original this idea is, but it was new to me at the time and has since been used by Paizo in their Pathfinder series. Some of my player characters didn’t fit into the existing organisations, but it was easy enough to create more appropriate groups with similarly powered bonus feats.

The War of the Burning Sky is described as “High Fantasy”. I’m not sure what that means. However, The Scouring of Gate Pass includes angels and devils, elves, orcs and men. A powerful artefact is mentioned, magic users are fairly common and some NPCs have magical powers from an unexplained (to the characters) source. There is also a great deal of political manoeuvring going on in the background. I love fantasy politics, and I did my best to bring it into the foreground so the players could appreciate some of what was happening “off camera”.

The default option is not to use psionics, and the adventure doesn’t have any of the alleged “sci-fi” flavour that some psionics haters complain about. Despite this, the campaign guide explains that the “Dream Magic” in the adventure works well mechanically with the psionics rules. I decided to run the psionic variant, partly because one of my players wanted to play a Psion. Some conversion rules would have been nice, but in truth converting this adventure is dead easy. All it required was changing a Fighter 2 / Sorcerer 1 into a Fighter 2 / Wilder 1, and changing a Sorcerer 1 into a Psion (Seer) 1.

One problem with it being the first part of an adventure path is that the DM doesn’t know how things are going to end. This can easily be avoided by running it as a stand alone adventure, or waiting until all twelve adventures have been published before running it. At the time of writing, the first six are available, with the seventh immanent.

The adventure is split into five acts.

Act 1 begins with the PCs meeting their NPC patron in a tavern. This is a nice touch, a nod to the “classic” way of starting an adventure, but also avoids being a cliché because the tavern has been closed by the authorities, and is the scene for an encounter in its own right.

I don’t like scenes where the NPC gives a long monologue, and the players are expected to sit and listen. The adventure tries to avoid this by having the NPC not give all the available info, relying on the PCs asking questions to find out the rest. However, when I ran the adventure I ditched the NPC and gave her role to one of the PCs. This worked out fine, but I would still recommend a DM reads this section of the adventure carefully, as there’s a lot of information here (and I missed some of it when I ran the adventure).

Basically, the Ragesian inquisitors are coming to Gate Pass to take all independent spellcasters (including those with psionic powers, if you are using psionics) into “protective custody”. Their army is camped outside the city, and negotiations are taking place to allow the inquisitors entry. The PCs are likely to include one or more spellcasters, so this is a good time for them to take a winter holiday somewhere else. Unfortunately, the city is sealed off. The PCs NPC contact, a cleric called Torrent, is a member of the Resistance. The Resistance will help the PCs escape the city if they do a simple job for them first – pick up a case from a courier. Anyone who wants to can then carry on with Torrent when she takes the case to the Town of Seaquen, far to the south. Torrent’s preferred route will avoid Ragesian patrols by taking a “short cut” through the deadly Fire Forest. The forest itself is the scene for the second adventure in the series; the first adventure ends with the characters about to enter the forest..

Unsurprisingly, there are a number of encounters on the way to meeting the courier. These are very flavourful, and give a good impression of a city under siege and threatened by the dreaded Inquisitors.

In Act 2, the courier is waiting in the depository. I gather this is a kind of bank, but whenever I read the word I think of a certain book depository in Dallas. Again things don’t go according to plan, and the PCs have to set off on the trail of the missing case. Their search will probably take them to the almost deserted School of War (the principal and most of his evokers have disappeared during the city’s hour of need) and the Elf Ghetto. Events may lead to the PCs fighting an archon and allying with a devil, which might give some players food for thought. The adventure has a more morally ambiguous atmosphere than most D&D games, which I really enjoyed. (In fact, I’m not using alignment at all in my campaign, except for the alignment sub-types and vulnerabilities of some outsiders.)

The players will also meet a local hero called Rantle, who will ask them to keep an eye out for his sister, who left for Seaquen some time ago. (She does turn up in a later adventure in the series, and apparently so does he.) Rantle is an opportunity for the DM to show off some of the new “combat performance” feats in the players guide, but they didn’t appeal to me much so when I ran the encounter Rantle limited himself to swinging his greatsword and making (not very) witty remarks.

Hopefully the PCs eventually recover the case, although they might not be able to open it (or make sense of the contents, if they do open it), and are then faced with Act 3 – escaping the city. Torrent has a few suggestions, or they might come up with a plan themselves.

amethal

The PDF is in full colour, with each page having a mostly black “starscape” border, with the text in black on a white background within a red frame. I don’t know if there are any plans to release a “printer friendly” version but as its stands printing out the whole thing would use up a lot of ink.

Chapter 1 “Life After the Stellar Imperium” gives the history of the setting.

We start at the end; the current situation is that the Stellar Empire has collapsed, and individual planets are “going it alone”, partly through necessity and partly through choice. The core worlds are crumbling, but opportunity and adventure can be found on the frontier.

Then we get a summary of events from the year 2080 to the “current” year of 2690.

I like the fact that the current situation is described first. In my opinion, too many settings start off by describing the migration patterns of nomadic tribesmen in the dim and distant past, when they should be selling you on the setting as it exists today.

There is nothing particularly starting about the history presented here. Mankind slowly and painfully establishes a foothold in the rest of the solar system, until the faster than light tachyon drive is invented in 2230. Soon afterwards, contact is made with a couple of more or less peaceful alien races. Eventually, the known races decide to get together and found the Interstellar Concord, a military and trading alliance.

By 2417, the Concord had become the Stellar Imperium, under its first emperor. The Imperium entered a phase of ruthless expansion, which ended in defeat by the lizard-like R’Tillek in 2665. The people of the Imperium learned of the atrocities committed against alien races, and many sought to leave the Empire, resulting in civil war.

The R’Tillek attack the Empire on several occasions, devastating a number of worlds, including the capital, which leads to the break up of the Imperium. No one knows if the R’Tillek will attack again. As one philosopher puts it, “Discordia rules supreme.”

The rest of the chapter briefly discusses life in the year 2690, which isn’t very pleasant due to the fragile state of the economy.

Chapter 2 “Major Worlds” describes 11 human systems, 4 systems of the Relarra, 8 systems of the Tallinites, 3 systems of the Giaeti, 6 systems of the Sangor and 8 systems of the Lamogos, plus 11 frontier systems and 3 systems of what was once the Imperium Core. (The six new races mentioned above are described in chapter 3, along with the R’Tillek.)

There is a picture of each world, which helps make them seem “real” planets. Each world has standard information about population, length of year etc. and a paragraph or two of description that generally includes at least one interesting feature. If you need any more worlds, you can just make them up – the setting is very loose in that respect. You can also get rid of worlds with impunity, without worrying too much about any knock on effects.

The chapter ends with a star map, which is always good. I like maps.

Chapter 3 “Character Options” describes the 7 races of the setting. As well as humans, we have the lobster-like (and tasty) Relarra, the insect-like Tallinites, the inscrutable plant-like Giaeti, the extremely human-looking (albeit with blue skin) Lamogos and the weird-looking Sangor, plus the lizard-like R’Tillek. The latter are balanced as a playable race, but are something of a mystery and wouldn’t get on very well with the others.

There is a colour picture of the races standing next to one another, which is useful – although it would be even more useful if it was labelled. It took me a while to work out from the descriptions which were the Relarra, Tallinites and Sangor. (Perhaps that just means I’m not very perceptive.)

None of the races particularly appeals to me as a player. Humans aside, they are just too weird for my taste - apart from the Lamogos, which aren’t weird enough. However, there also other lesser races in the galaxy, and the Narrator is encouraged to allow races from other sources.

There are 7 character paths provided – soldier (warrior), naval officer (expert), infiltrator (expert), mentalist (adept), pilot (warrior), bounty hunter (warrior) and low-life (expert). The mentalist entry includes a list of the powers which are available in the setting (about 36 of them). I don’t get much use out of character paths, so I won’t comment on them.

This is followed by expanded skill uses for bluff, computers, craft (repair), disable device, knowledge (technology), medicine, navigate and pilot. There are also 17 “new” feats, almost all of which are taken from d20 Future.

Next is equipment, which includes new items but also reprints some of the items from the True20 book for convenience. The Wealth system from True20 is not used; instead items are priced in credits. There are no vehicles, but plenty of them can be found in Reality Deviant’s Vehicles PDF.

Finally in this chapter we have some rules for environmental hazards, again taken from d20 Future but adapted to True20.

Chapter 4 “Politics and Organisations” introduces conflict to the setting and gives campaign ideas to the Narrator. It’s a useful guide to what to the setting is “for” and organisations the heroes can join or fight against. A lot of this information is likely to be unknown to the heroes at the start of the campaign so possibly this should be a “Narrator only” chapter.

It is interesting stuff, but I’d have preferred it if the chapter had more directly addressed the question of running Reign of Discordia campaigns. In particular, I’d have liked some direct information about what the R’Tillek are up to. Alternatively, I’d have been equally happy with a discussion of what they might be up to, encouraging the Narrator to draw his own conclusions and promising that it wouldn’t be contradicted by a future product.

As it is, by reading between the lines I think I know what the deal is with the R’Tillek, but I could be completely wrong.

The setting is wide open. You can run pretty much any futuristic campaign in it. I gather that this was a deliberate design decision. It does mean that anyone looking for a more focused setting would be disappointed.

The chapter ends with some sample Narrator characters, making good use of the character paths provided in chapter 3.

Chapter 5 “True Space Combat” provides rules for space combat in True20. These are taken from d20 Future, except that starships use the True20 vehicle damage track rather than having hit points.

The tachyon drive allows starships to escape combat by jumping to lightspeed, unless they are in a gravity well. Ships cannot be tracked once they have jumped. This is very “Star Wars”, although in the Star Wars novels the plot problems this presented were solved by the introduction of Interdictor cruisers. Reign of Discordia leaves open the option of adopting a similar approach by stating that it may be possible to generate artificial gravity wells.

Chapter Six “Starships” gives a number of example starships. Again these are taken from d20 Future (although d20 Future features more of them). However, there is a handy starship size comparison picture at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 7 “Rover’s Beacon” describes a seedy independent starbase which I suppose can be used as a site for adventures. At the moment it doesn’t seem to serve any particular purpose, but maybe the intention is to feature it in future products.

In conclusion, this is a very well put together PDF with some interesting setting information. It also conveniently translates plenty of d20 Future rules into True20 and collects them in one place. There are plenty of plot ideas scattered about the document, and pretty much any style of futuristic campaign can be accommodated. It adopts a very broad brush approach, which might not be to everyone’s taste. My only real criticism is that I’d have liked a bit more help, plot wise, for the Narrator.

amethal

Reign of Discordia is a 137 page PDF from Reality Deviant Publications. It is a futuristic setting for Green Ronin’s True20 system, and was written by Darrin Drader. The tagline is “Interstellar Adventure in the Ruins of Empire”. I received a review copy.

True20 had a previous science fiction setting, Lux Aeternum, which was one of Green Ronin’s setting search competition winners. That setting described one star system in considerable detail, with plenty to keep heroes occupied but no scope for moving elsewhere. Reign of Discordia takes the opposite approach, giving a broad description of a wide area of space. Some Narrators will prefer the first approach, others the second.

However, where Lux Aeternum was light on rules for True20 in space, Reign of Discordia incorporates the rules on environmental hazards, starship design and starship combat from d20 Future (as set out in the d20 Modern SRD).

The front cover depicts a man in body armour, holding a laser pistol and gazing up at a spaceship as it flies overhead. There is another spaceship, and a couple of moons, in the background. Its aspect is futuristic, dark and thoughtful, and does a good job of conveying the feel of the setting. There is plenty of artwork elsewhere in the PDF, and generally it ties in to the nearby text, which is good. I’m no art critic, but I liked it.

The next page is the credits and then we have a detailed two page table of contents, which is handy because there is no index. The table of contents is linked to the rest of the document, which is nice. A minor quibble is that the chapter headings are not marked as such in the contents.

The seven chapters are “Life After the Stellar Imperium”, “Major Worlds”, “Character Options”, “Politics & Organisations” , “True Space Combat”, “Starships” and “Rover’s Beacon” (a space station).

The last two pages are the OGL, of which section 15 is roughly twice the length of the rest of the licence, and the back cover. So, if my maths is up to the task, the actual setting itself is 131 pages long.

amethal

I have a handfull of reviews at EnWorld, and I'm going to post them on my blog (assuming I can find them!)

I did some reviews of Iron Heroes because I really liked the product. I also did a review of the War of the Burining Sky 1 for the same reason.

I have also done reveiws of Reality Deviant's Vehicles and Reign of Discordia. I actually received review copies of those, which is a wierd feeling.

Since I was being "paid" for the review of products I had been looking forward to for quite some time I kept worrying that my review would be biased. Crazy really - if I'd spent those hours working overtime instead I could have earned enough to buy many more PDFs.

amethal

I ran a homebrew campaign from level 1 to level 21. During that time I used one adventure from Dungeon (Dragon Hunters Wanted) and wrote the rest myself.

It got to the stage where I wasn't preparing adequately for the sessions, and I'd created far too many plot lines for any one campaign to be able to tie up.

So, for my next project I thought I'd run a published adventure. I'd recently subscribed to War of the Burning Sky, and really liked the first adventure, so that's what I'm running.

Of course, I can't do it the easy way. I decide to set in Eberron, which I know next to nothing about, so I have to convert the deities and the cosmology.

I also decide to go for the psionics option, so some of the early NPCs have to be re-statted as wilders instead of sorcerers.

And I try it without alignment. Its only when you take it out that you realise how hard-wired into the system it actually is.

And I pretty much leave out all the "pseudo-PC" NPCs, starting with Torrent, so I somehow have to figure out how to get all the necessary information to the players now there isn't a tame NPC to regurgitate it.

If I was starting it now, I'd probably end up using the Pathfinder Alpha rules as well for an additional headache. I never do myself any favours!

amethal

I spend (waste?) a lot of time thinking about D&D. Now that I have this handy blogging option here at EnWorld I'm going to try and write down some of my thoughts, so I can look back in the future and sigh about what idiot ideas I have.

Recently reading Psion's blog, he posts some interesting stuff on alignment.

I had a bad experience with alignment in my last game as a player. The group eventually reduced down to two players and a DM; the other player ran two N characters and my character was CG.

My alignment choice regularly penalised the character, as the bad guys (a bunch of Evil vampires and their minions) loved casting various "anti-good" spells. I think in one fight I got unholy blighted seven times. The other two N characters laughed off such things.

However, strangely enough, nobody ever cast any holy words or similar spells against the party. My alignment was usually irrelevant, sometimes harmful and never helpful.

In our next camapign chances are I'd have played a N character the same as everybody else. (As it happens, we're playing True20 now so it is not an issue.)

amethal