This is my first attempt at a custom race, inspired by the Rock Trolls from Terry Brooks' Shannarra books. There isn't anything crazy or innovative here - the racial abilities are cribbed from existing abilities. Still I welcome feedback and criticism. It's also probably useful to know that my campaign will not have Dragonborn in it; Rock Trolls are, in a way, a replacement for players who want a tank type character race.

ROCK TROLLS
Fierce, desert tribesmen

RACIAL TRAITS
Average Height: 6'-7'
Average Weight: 300-450 lb.
Ability Scores: +2 Strength, +2 Constitution
Size: Medium
Speed: 6 squares
Vision: Normal
Languages: Common, Giant
Skill Bonuses: +2 Endurance, +2 Intimidate
Rock Hide: Your thick hide gives you a +1 bonus to AC.
Oversized: You can use weapons of your size or one size
larger than you as if they were your size.
Rock Troll Resilience: You can use Rock Troll Resilience as an encounter power.

Rock Troll Resilience
Like your namesake, you can weather nearly anything.
Encounter
Immediate Reaction Personal
Trigger: You suffer an effect that a save can end
Effect: You make a saving throw against the effect.

Play a rock troll if you want . . .

• to be big and tough.
• Yet be stoic and quiet.
• to be a part of a proud, but savage heritage.
• to be a member of a race that favors the warlord, fighter, and paladin classes.

PHYSICAL QUALITIES
Rock trolls resemble nothing more than small giants. If they truly are related to the evil, murderous, regenerating variety of troll, it’s difficult to see physically. Rock trolls are heavily built humanoids, covered in a thick hide that resembles rough rock and feels like bark. Their coloration resembles rock as well, coming in a mixture of grays, browns and tans. Their massive hands have three stubby fingers and a thumb, and their feet four toes. Rock trolls have no body hair, and their thick brows and deep-set eyes belie a profound intelligence. Their rigid skin limits rock trolls in showing emotion as other creatures do, and those without knowledge of their society and culture often have a difficult time reading a rock troll’s mood.

Rock trolls appear to mature at about the same rate as human children, but appear to live at least twice as long as humans. As rock trolls age, their skin becomes rougher, more rigid and the color begins to fade.

PLAYING A ROCK TROLL
Rock trolls society consists of nomadic tribal groups, led by the eldest male rock troll. The elder is often a shaman or cleric. Rock trolls are very spiritual and somewhat superstitious. Their daily lives are defined by hundreds of small rituals that only rock trolls seem to understand. Rock trolls strive to live in harmony with their surroundings, and rock troll communities are often nearly indistinguishable from the rocky badlands where most make their homes. They revere Melora as the goddess of the sky and Kord as her thunderous consort.

Rock troll females are all but unknown outside of their hidden communities, and some scholars have suggested that females comprise as little as 1 in 10 of their population. Because of this, rock trolls reproduce very slowly and rock trolls do not mate for life. Female rock troll adventurers are unheard of. Rock trolls will protect their females fiercely, and threatening those females is the easiest way to earn their wrath. The few known female rock trolls are arcane or divine spellcasters, and if legends are to be believed they are more fearsome than the males in battle. Because of this, females wield a great deal of influence within the communities despite a patriarchal society and the extreme limits placed on female freedom.

While not expansionist or particularly aggressive, rock trolls place high value on martial prowess and are sometimes seen as violent savages. Formalized warfare between rock troll tribes is not uncommon. In many cases, conflicts between two tribes are resolved through the use of tribal champions chosen by the elders of the tribes involved. Rock trolls value battlefield honor, even in the face of dishonorable opponents. When mobilizing for war, rock trolls prefer heavy armor and large, bashing weapons - in their huge hands rock troll maces can give even the most hardened human warrior pause.

Rock troll adventurers are often outcasts for one crime or another, although it is not unknown for a rock troll to come down with wanderlust. This is slightly more common in rock troll communities that have more contact with the outside world. The Nerath Empire also conscripted hundreds of rock trolls into heavy infantry units. Upon the empire’s collapse and the disbanding of the units, many returned to their homelands and some had offspring. Tales of their father’s or grandfather’s exploits in the Empire’s legions are often enough to ignite a young rock troll’s desire to see more of the world.

Rock troll characteristics: Honorable, ritualistic, quiet, spiritual, superstitious.

Male Names: Atalan, Axhind, Barek, Kershalt, Kermadec

Wil

It's been a few days, with the whirlwind that was the 4th of July weekend and then settling into a new job, along with a few extra speed bumps thrown in I guess to keep me on my toes. I've had a huge weight lifted from my shoulders with finishing school and getting a job that I'm really enjoying (one of my co-workers is a huge BSG fan, so I'm starting to feel at home already). Even my commute is more leisurely since I'm not running to the bus and then to the train and then to another train anymore. So I have some more energy to put into creative efforts.

I know that I've spent a lot of time talking about how I don't want to put a lot of time into the D&D game I'm planning. And that holds true, for the most part - I don't want to spend a lot of time preparing for my games. I want to be able to sit down with my friends on game night and just have fun.

That doesn't mean I won't put some amount of prepatory work into it. I want the game night to go smoothly, after all. And the part of me that used to sit down and map out continents and name kindgoms and towns is still there. The difference is I'm doing it at my leisure and don't want anything during actual game play to hang on whether or not I've drawn up the coat of arms for the Duke of Overdetailia. I'm not going to concern myself with making sure anything is original, or unique, or has some deep theme. I want worldbuilding to be as easy as possible.

I could use a pre-existing world like the Forgotten Realms, but the creative spark in me does like having my own world to play with instead of someone else's. In a way it's flipping the paradigm I've been operating under on its head - instead of making up my own plots in someone else's detailed, predefined world I'm using other people's adventures in a world of my own making. The world won't be the most detailed or original, but that's fine.

To this end, I've been gathering up as many tools as possible. Dundjinni is a wonderful mapping tool, but it doesn't do worldbuilding very well. There are graphics out there to use Dundjinni for campaign maps and I'm in the process of collecting those up. Unfortunately, they're spread across disparate collections and forum posts on the Dundjinni website. I'm determined to not use Campaign Cartographer because it's way overpowered for what I want and the interface makes me want to skin myself with a jagged rock.

Enter The Gimp. I downloaded it until I could get scrape up the money to buy Adobe CS3. Playing with it, I discovered predefined scripts for generating land masses using a variety of variables. It's exactly what I need as a foundation for my campaign world. I'm not Slartibartfast - I don't care if the fjords are perfect. I can play with the settings and keep recreating it until I get something I like. Here is a sample map that I was able to generate:



I was also browsing the Dundjinni forums last night and looking at some of the awesome things people have done. Probably one of the most fantastic is in this thread (scroll down a bit).

Now I know that something like that takes a lot more time than I'm probably willing to put into it, but damn that looks good. I wish there was a cross between Dundjinni and Campaign Cartographer that would do photorealistic maps like that, maybe using textures scraped from satellite images or something. Then with the capability of creating topo maps from that, as well as "artistic" versions, all with the touch of a button...man, that would be sweet.

Wil

ENEROTH
The region known as Eneroth lies on the north side of the Brosius Strait. Centuries ago the mannish Nerath Empire colonized Eneroth to the north and Bizaca and Djawadi to the south. They did not find these lands empty, however. Eneroth was inhabited by Eladrin and Elves, the remnants of a once great empire of their own. Bizaca and Djawadi was home to the savage but noble Trolls and a host of other uncivilized humanoids. While no strangers to dangerous monsters and mysterious magic, the dwarves, halflings and men of Nerath had discovered a whole new world of wonders and dangers.

Discovery was not the only goal of the pioneers, and soon Nerath’s foothold on the two continents began to push the wilderness back. Elves, Eladrin, Trolls and others were assimilated into the vast empire, by choice or by force. After a few generations, many held status as citizens and freemen and could be found even in the reaches of the empire furthest from their ancestral homes. For centuries the empire dominated the known world and enjoyed a self-imposed stability and peace.

It didn’t last. Whenever there are those that live in abundance, there are those that would try to take it for themselves. Nerath had grown complacent and soft, and soon fierce barbarians from the northern reaches began probing for weak spots. Few recognized any real danger and most outright dismissed the exploratory attacks - Nerath’s martial and arcane power had withstood far worse than a few bands of restless primitives.

They did not realize their mistake until it was too late. The barbarian hordes nipping at the heels of the empire had roots deep in the frozen northland – so deep that they touched the Feywild itself. Rallied by ancient and powerful fey lords, these Feytouched barbarians poured down unto an unsuspecting empire, pillaging and enslaving everything in their path. In a matter of weeks, the entire northern border marches were lost.

The empire’s response was slow and muddled, like a great beast being awakened from a long hibernation. Legions were first pulled from the southern reaches, and eventually all the way from Eneroth and other distant lands as the empire fought for its life. While Feytouched barbarians marched on the empire’s capital, the vacuum left in Bizaca and Djawadi caused uprisings among the humanoid races there. Races never completely brought into Nerath’s fold saw their chance as well, and within just a few years the empire had been torn asunder.

Even during the height of the empire, Eneroth was mostly a vast wilderness with well-defined pockets of civilization. A handful of scattered city-states thrived amid a web of smaller communities connecting them. In the intervening centuries after the empire’s collapse, this web all but disappeared as humanity contracted closer to the city-states. Some city-states didn’t survive at all. Only in the past century have any begun to take hesitant steps toward carving out new settlements in the wilderness. Many settlements are only a few decades old. The inhabitants tend to be young and adventurous, even if they are still wary and well aware of the dangers that surround them. Ships from across the Brosius Strait or even the ocean from the far eastern continent are no longer an unknown site in the ports of the seaside city-states. Even so, these small enclaves of civilization are merely tiny islands in a vast ocean of wilderness.

Wil

So, maybe I don't want a huge overarching plot but I do need a world. It doesn't have to be a detailed world, but it needs to be a consistent framework to hang adventures on. It needs to be a place ripe with opportunities for the kind of stories that I enjoy and the adventures that 4e was built for.

I spoke briefly before about using bits and pieces of The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion for my world. That game will probably form the basis for a lot of the non-human elements within my game, both aesthetically and how they are portrayed. But the world itself, I have other ideas.

Enter the world of Thief. It's not very detailed, mainly because most of the details about it have been gleaned from the games or made up by the very active fan community. Being based on a series of computer games, particularly very focused and well conceived computer games - the world has a very distinct atmosphere to it. A little darker perhaps than most high fantasy. Perhaps bordering on the edge of steampunk. There is a distinct lack of nonumanoid races - although to be sure there are some, you encounter them in the games. That's where the pieces from Oblivion come in.

Of course, everything is sparse enough that I still have to fill in the small details. But this gives me a springboard to work from, where I don't have to be constrained by a vast library of published work and at the same time don't have to guess about what's on the other side of the ocean. Also, using Oblivion as a backup source for the details makes my workload even easier; there's a huge repository of knowledge here on the world of Tamriel. Over time, as the two worlds merge and I add my own touches, it would become my own. Who knows, maybe 15 years from now we'll still be playing in it?

Wil

Well, not really...but I'm saddened that it seems two great resources for the Thief series of PC games seem to be gone. There was a ton of resources on the games, the characters, even a project that had taken images seen on globes scattered throughout the games to attempt to make a world map. I was going to maybe use them as a starting point for my 4e campaign, but unfortunately they're gone

EDIT: Never mind, apparently my Internet connection at home is playing games with me. Tried it from work and it works fine. I'm using HTTrack to download the site's content locally, in case it goes away again.

Wil

No, it doesn't mean I haven't prepared the nightly adventure. It means that I'm done with creating my own plots. I don't want to create a plot. I've spent a lot of time in the past 15 years making up my own plots for the various games I've played. Cyberpunk, Mekton, Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles. Heck, even though I followed the metaplot in Tribe 8 it still involved a rather lengthy plot of my own to get everything started. Frankly, I don't have the time or energy to come up with 100% homegrown plots anymore.

So, as I read through the DMG and get spun up to start a D&D 4e game I've decided I want to get back to the basics. A barely sketched out world, with our peppy heroes starting out in some village on the edge of civilization. Prepublished adventures to provide the backdrop for the shenanigans my players are likely to pull. That doesn't mean I won't customize the adventures to fit either play style or previous adventures - simply that I won't be making the bulk of it up whole cloth.

Now with individual encounters, settings, NPCs, etc., I'm "an overflowing toilet of joy" as a fellow DP9 forumite once said. I fully plan on making use of every resource I can to fill in gaps with the least amount of work on my part. For example, I love Exalted dearly and own nearly every book (too bad the system drives me insane) - those books are rich in locations, concepts, artifacts, monsters and other ideas to mine. The strategy guide for The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion has riches to plunder in the form of locations, maps and plots (and I may just tweak my game world to be a little bit more like the world of Oblivion and Morrowind). The same goes for Avatar: The Last Airbender. All of those little individual pieces can be used to flesh out existing plots that prepublished material has supplied me with.

Finally, in a way I want to experiment with the characters creating their own story. The way like Keep on the Borderlands was structured kind of allowed the story to unfold truly as a result of the players' actions and their actions alone. One hundred feet underground, down to their last few hit points, out of spells and surrounded by murderous creatures, wondering what to do next - that's kind of a story in and of itself, don't you think?

Wil

First, a very short background that I doubt anyone cares about. I've been mostly a lurker on Enworld since about the time 3e came out, and only joined about the time that I actually got into a 3e game. 3e didn't do a lot for me, and I quickly went back to Exalted, Tribe 8 and Blue Planet as my games of choice.

Over the years, I've become very partial to newer ideas in RPGs (or old ideas packaged as newer ones), such as Aspects and declarations in Spirit of the Century . I've also gravitated more towards the "game" aspects of roleplaying games. Part of this has to do with my love of computer games, particularly first person shooters. Sure, some of them have good stories but a lot of times the story just kinds of builds itself. Characterization exists only my head, as I imagine the thoughts and feelings of my digital protagonist. I'd actually probably love World of Warcraft, but I can't justify the expense because I don't have time to play.

On top of this, recently we've started a board game night with some friends of ours and are having a blast. While playing Betrayal at House on the Hill, I realized that it was just about as complicated as some rpgs. Then I remembered what I knew about D&D 4e and thought, "I wonder if I couldn't get my roleplaying fix and boardgame fix in at the same time?". I also wondered, "I wonder if I could sell 4e to my friends on the boardgame angle over the rpg angle?"

So I got hold of the books and read through them. The first thing that struck me was how well put-together the rules seemed (I know that there are supposedly some issues with them, but I don't really know what those are yet nor do I care). The races and classes hearkened back to a simpler, earlier time. The powers did not seem overwhelming like, say, Exalted's Charm system. I had two character's whipped up on the train ride home that night.

There was something else, too. A very conscious nod towards the roleplaying elements - the things that set an rpg apart from a computer or board game - without trying to disguise or gloss-over the game elements. 4e is a game that knows exactly what it is, what it does and what it wants. No pretentious B.S. about "Feeling up your inner monster."

The vibe that 4e gives of to me is the same as the Basic set. I'm getting hold of things to hopefully make running it life easier - effects cards, power cards, encounter sheets, etc. - and we're going to be buying dungeon tiles, battlemats and scrounging up miniatures. I am notorious for not having a head for complex, exception-based rules systems. Exalted's system gives me fits, even after reading 2e and thinking, "This seems pretty easy." But I played D&D for all of my pre-teen and most of my teenage years, so I don't think actual play will sour me on it.

Now, and this is probably going to sound funny, but where to get some good dice? I haven't had a complete set of polyhedrals for some time (though I know I have plenty of d6s and d10s).

Wil