Musings on D&D, playing 4e, designing, and tidbits on upcoming products from Emerald Press PDF Publishing.
Back From the Dead - Part I
In my early days of D&D, I died. A lot. And by that, I mean every time my character stepped onto the map. I’ve had more resurrections performed on a single player than anywhere else in Eastern Ontario as far as I’m concerned and I’ve never forgotten that. I call it post-character stress disorder.
So needless to say I have an affinity for losing your favourite character and the missed roleplaying opportunities you were looking forward to. All that background material drifting to the heavens as your PC journeys into the afterlife; your discussions with the DM about a character spotlight adventure taking you back to your lost homeworld; and those new abilities already plotted out five levels in advance… gone.
We’re working on a new 4E product designed to counter just such a problem and even expand your character in new, dramatic ways. Risen: The Guide To Resurrected Characters (due out October 2009) presents a series of seven paragon paths (called resurrection paths) designed to bring your PC back from the dead and reinvigorate them with new powers and a life quest to incorporate in the campaign. In short, Risen provides a way to make use of your PC’s death and redirect him or her in new and exciting ways without having to draft up a new character or drastically alter your original design.
With three months to go until Risen lands on the front page of your nearest OBS site, we’re starting a three part preview and behind-the-scenes look into the development of the resurrection paths from initial concept to final design. Aside from myself, we’ll also hear from my co-author, Shawn O’Leary, on his contributions and tackling the design of the cuardach (one of my personal favourites) and the sword of heaven.
From Revenant to Haunt
Anyone remember Combat Advantage #9: The Revenant? Anyone? It contained the initial preview of Risen and a first draft of what was then called the revenant. As can be expected, the revenant is a character returning from the dead to avenge his death. This path converts the PC into a true undead (complete with as much – or as little - rotting flesh as you would like) and a fiery temper fuled by visions of the attrocities committed by those directly involved with his or her death. More importantly, the revenant was the perfect example for developing a “life quest.”
Life quests are the key reason for a resurrected character’s return to the world of the living. Actually, it is the sole reason for their return. Various powers in the multiverse are provided throughout Risen to account for these characters returning from the dead and the revenant was risen by the power of the gods. As he shambles across the land seeking revenge, the revenant gains additional power against those connected to his or her life quest, detailed in the form of haunting visions. Very much like The Crow, a huge inspiration for this path with some mechanical loans from previous conceptions of the revenant from D&D history.
Since the release of CA9, we hit a bit of a snag in the revenant. Wizards of the Coast came out with their own version of the rev as a player race. I won’t provide a complete listing of every curse I uttered, needless to say that I’m pretty sure I used all of them in a variety of combinations. Regardless of any legal wrangles with having a second version of the revenant for players, I didn’t want there to be any confusion between theirs and mine. We needed to tweak the revenant and make it something new.
After a couple of weeks of name searching (including a lot of German variants between Shawn and I, which is ironic because I don’t think there’s a lick of German blood in either of us), we settled on the haunt. Same concept, but now more gruesome in appearance than before and a greater display of mental anguish. Think of it as a mixture between the revenant and a ghost in physical form.
The Importance of a Life Quest
Haunts may be the perfect example for life quests and it’s for this reason I’m introducing this series of blogs with this path. Life quests not only provide new and exciting roleplaying opportunities for your character, but introduce new powers designed for use with your life quests.
For example, you’re playing a haunt. As you arrive in town, your hood drawn tightly over your head and a scarf wrapped over your neck to disguise the deep gash from your death, a vision flashes before your eyes. The trio of horsemen to your left are suddenly standing on a hillside, standing watch over the valley where you were killed. They laugh maniacally from the top of the hill, waiting for their comrades to finish their job and meet back up with them. As your mind returns to the conscious world, your anger rises and your power grows. This triggers your Horrible Memories path feature, granting the ability to automatically mark these scoundrels at the beginning of the encounter and inflict +1d6 damage with a single attack per target every round. Without that connection to your character and his or her life quest, this feature does not function.
But not every encounter is going to involve your life quest and not every adventure will have these villains around the corner, so there are other non-quest based features and powers as well. Overall, this grants each resurrection path a wider variety of powers and features for all sorts of encounters. By seperating these abilities through their connection to your life quest, you can develop your character’s personality in combat encounters as well as social encounters. It also gives you a clear cut means of using combat to develop the storyline as your DM brings you closer and closer to completing your life quest as the campaign closes. This, in turn, embraces your character’s death and bonds it with the campaign. No longer must you feel shame in your death, but pride!
Next: The Firebird and the Chaostician
That’s all for this time. There’s still more to be done as we wrap up all designs on the paths this month, but there will be more to come soon. Consider this little teaser for the firebird in the meantime…
A phoenix and the Far Realm.
Todd Crapper (that's right) is the Head Honcho for Emerald Press PDF Publishing and author of the upcoming 4e adventure, The Key of the Fey (releasing December 2009), and co-author of Risen: The Guide to Resurrected Characters (October 2009). He wrote this blog because there was no one around to stop him, not even those meddling kids and their mangy mutt.
So needless to say I have an affinity for losing your favourite character and the missed roleplaying opportunities you were looking forward to. All that background material drifting to the heavens as your PC journeys into the afterlife; your discussions with the DM about a character spotlight adventure taking you back to your lost homeworld; and those new abilities already plotted out five levels in advance… gone.
We’re working on a new 4E product designed to counter just such a problem and even expand your character in new, dramatic ways. Risen: The Guide To Resurrected Characters (due out October 2009) presents a series of seven paragon paths (called resurrection paths) designed to bring your PC back from the dead and reinvigorate them with new powers and a life quest to incorporate in the campaign. In short, Risen provides a way to make use of your PC’s death and redirect him or her in new and exciting ways without having to draft up a new character or drastically alter your original design.
With three months to go until Risen lands on the front page of your nearest OBS site, we’re starting a three part preview and behind-the-scenes look into the development of the resurrection paths from initial concept to final design. Aside from myself, we’ll also hear from my co-author, Shawn O’Leary, on his contributions and tackling the design of the cuardach (one of my personal favourites) and the sword of heaven.
From Revenant to Haunt
Anyone remember Combat Advantage #9: The Revenant? Anyone? It contained the initial preview of Risen and a first draft of what was then called the revenant. As can be expected, the revenant is a character returning from the dead to avenge his death. This path converts the PC into a true undead (complete with as much – or as little - rotting flesh as you would like) and a fiery temper fuled by visions of the attrocities committed by those directly involved with his or her death. More importantly, the revenant was the perfect example for developing a “life quest.”
Life quests are the key reason for a resurrected character’s return to the world of the living. Actually, it is the sole reason for their return. Various powers in the multiverse are provided throughout Risen to account for these characters returning from the dead and the revenant was risen by the power of the gods. As he shambles across the land seeking revenge, the revenant gains additional power against those connected to his or her life quest, detailed in the form of haunting visions. Very much like The Crow, a huge inspiration for this path with some mechanical loans from previous conceptions of the revenant from D&D history.
Since the release of CA9, we hit a bit of a snag in the revenant. Wizards of the Coast came out with their own version of the rev as a player race. I won’t provide a complete listing of every curse I uttered, needless to say that I’m pretty sure I used all of them in a variety of combinations. Regardless of any legal wrangles with having a second version of the revenant for players, I didn’t want there to be any confusion between theirs and mine. We needed to tweak the revenant and make it something new.
After a couple of weeks of name searching (including a lot of German variants between Shawn and I, which is ironic because I don’t think there’s a lick of German blood in either of us), we settled on the haunt. Same concept, but now more gruesome in appearance than before and a greater display of mental anguish. Think of it as a mixture between the revenant and a ghost in physical form.
The Importance of a Life Quest
Haunts may be the perfect example for life quests and it’s for this reason I’m introducing this series of blogs with this path. Life quests not only provide new and exciting roleplaying opportunities for your character, but introduce new powers designed for use with your life quests.
For example, you’re playing a haunt. As you arrive in town, your hood drawn tightly over your head and a scarf wrapped over your neck to disguise the deep gash from your death, a vision flashes before your eyes. The trio of horsemen to your left are suddenly standing on a hillside, standing watch over the valley where you were killed. They laugh maniacally from the top of the hill, waiting for their comrades to finish their job and meet back up with them. As your mind returns to the conscious world, your anger rises and your power grows. This triggers your Horrible Memories path feature, granting the ability to automatically mark these scoundrels at the beginning of the encounter and inflict +1d6 damage with a single attack per target every round. Without that connection to your character and his or her life quest, this feature does not function.
But not every encounter is going to involve your life quest and not every adventure will have these villains around the corner, so there are other non-quest based features and powers as well. Overall, this grants each resurrection path a wider variety of powers and features for all sorts of encounters. By seperating these abilities through their connection to your life quest, you can develop your character’s personality in combat encounters as well as social encounters. It also gives you a clear cut means of using combat to develop the storyline as your DM brings you closer and closer to completing your life quest as the campaign closes. This, in turn, embraces your character’s death and bonds it with the campaign. No longer must you feel shame in your death, but pride!
Next: The Firebird and the Chaostician
That’s all for this time. There’s still more to be done as we wrap up all designs on the paths this month, but there will be more to come soon. Consider this little teaser for the firebird in the meantime…
A phoenix and the Far Realm.
Todd Crapper (that's right) is the Head Honcho for Emerald Press PDF Publishing and author of the upcoming 4e adventure, The Key of the Fey (releasing December 2009), and co-author of Risen: The Guide to Resurrected Characters (October 2009). He wrote this blog because there was no one around to stop him, not even those meddling kids and their mangy mutt.
Total Comments 0
Comments
Total Trackbacks 0
And yet another word from our sponsors
