Go Back   EN World D&D / RPG News > Gamers Seeking Gamers

EricNoah EricNoah is offline

Fiery MacGuffin


I've been a D&D player since 1979. From 1999-2001 I ran Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D Third Edtion News, the predecessor to EN World.


Visitor Messages

Showing Visitor Messages 1 to 1 of 1
  1. fba827
    30th October 2008 05:41 PM - permalink
    fba827
    I am just a member on here that you don't know, and I also know I'm a day early, but, Happy Birthday! -- a milestone birthday year at that! I hope you have a good one.

About Me

  • About EricNoah
    Name
    Eric Noah
    Home Location
    Madison, WI
    Interests
    D&D 3.x, reading, computers, biking
    Occupation
    Teacher, librarian
    Sex
    Male
    Age Group
    31-40
  • My Game Details
    Details of games currently playing and games being sought.
    Gamers Seeking Gamers Status
    Not looking
    Game Location (Town)
    Madison
    Game Location (State)
    Wisconsin
    Game Location (Country)
    USA
    GM or player?
    Don't Mind
    Game Details
    I'm running a house-ruled D&D 3.5 game. I am not currently seeking players.
    Currently Playing
    D&D (3E)
    Interested in playing
    D&D (3E)
    Smoking
    Non-smoker
    Pets
    No
    Days of the week available to game
    All days
    Times available to game
    Afternoon, Early Evening, Late Evening
    More information
    http://sites.google.com/site/ericandkaranoah/Home/erics-rpg-page
  • Signature
    http://sites.google.com/site/ericand...erics-rpg-page

Statistics

Total Posts
Albums
Visitor Messages
Blog - Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D Blah Blah Blog
The Vault
  • Wiki Contributions: 0
  • Last contributed Never
General Information
  • Last Activity: Yesterday 11:29 PM
  • Join Date: 8th January 2002
  • Referrals: 1

Friends

Showing Friends 1 to 6 of 6

My Game Details

Gamers Seeking Gamers Status
Not looking
Game Location (Town)
Madison
Game Location (State)
Wisconsin
Game Location (Country)
USA
GM or player?
Don't Mind
Game Details
I'm running a house-ruled D&D 3.5 game. I am not currently seeking players.
Currently Playing
D&D (3E)
Interested in playing
D&D (3E)
Smoking
Non-smoker
Pets
No
Days of the week available to game
All days
Times available to game
Afternoon, Early Evening, Late Evening
More information
http://sites.google.com/site/ericandkaranoah/Home/erics-rpg-page

Blog

View EricNoah's BlogRecent Entries
Latest Blog Entry

Posted 7th July 2008 at 05:00 PM by EricNoah Comments 1
Posted in D&D 3.x , Cults and cultists in D&D
Ok, this blog stuff is a little more rambly than I intended, but when I see a good idea I just have to jot it down...

Paizo's recent module release, LB1: Tower of the Last Baron, features an openly known temple to Asmodeus in a small frontier town. "That's not a cult!" I hear you say -- well, stick with me a second.

The nifty bit I picked up here is the idea of "pacts." Basically, the leader (or "High Mediator") of the church makes deals with townspeople. In exchange for various favors (not really specified), townsfolk enter into agreements with the church. A suggestion spell is sort of "hung" over them, and then the High Mediator can later call on that suggestion spell as needed.

The seed of this idea works really well for a secret, lawful evil cult. There are a few different angles such a scheme could work from:

1) Enticing neutrals. Sure, most Good people would never knowingly enter into a pact with a devilish cult. But there are pleny of neutral (though possibly foolish) folk who might be willing to make such a deal.

2) Sleeper cells. Certain individuals under such a pact might be compeled to forget that they ever made the deal in the first place, or only have a vague, fuzzy notion of what it entails. If the suggestion can be triggered at a distance -- or by a set of specific circumstances -- cult leaders might very well end up with a little cell of adherents who don't even know they are ticking time bombs. Imagine some of the circumstances: "If anyone besides me asks about the cult, kill them." Or "On April 15th at midnight, put on this mask and kill so-and-so." (Oblivion players: you know those Mythic Dawn sleeper agents who live as normal folk in various towns and then suddenly morph and attack you once you've reached a certain stage of the main quest? I have that in my brain -- so maybe pacts involve not only a suggestion, but additional magical effects that could potentially disguise the cultist and maybe grant additional firepower?)

3) The source of this power could take the form of a magical book (the names and details of the pacts would be recorded here and make them magically binding), or maybe a font where the pact is spoken and the blood of those making the agreement is mingled. Perhaps the font or book also allows cult leaders to scry on their victims.

More later as I continue to muse...

Posted 4th July 2008 at 03:49 PM by EricNoah Comments 0
Posted in Cults and cultists in D&D
As I mentioned in my intro article, I find cults to be a fascinating way to introduce a sinister element to urban D&D games. Cults make great evil organizations and their schemes are great plot devices. Their minor members are excellent minions and their major adherents make wonderful spell-casting bad guys.

I guess I need to start with a definition. For my purposes, a cult (in D&D) is a secret organization composed of seemingly normal people who have pledged their allegiance to an evil power or philosophy, and is led by a charismatic "master cultist" who has formed the cult for reasons that may be beyond what the typical cult member is aware of.

I'm sure I'll need to come back and change this definition as I learn more.

I thought I would make a list of some questions I need to answer for myself over the next few blog entries, and then link to one or two real-world resources about cults.

Questions:

1) What kind of person starts a cult? What does the cult leader get out of it? What classes, races, and/or monsters make interesting cult leaders?

2) What kind of person is drawn to joining an existing cult? What are their personality traits, flaws, typical alignments, social standings, income levels, etc.?

3) How do cult leaders and cult members keep their membership a secret?

4) How do cult leaders recruit new members?

5) What organizational structures do cults use (cells, hierarchies, etc.)? What effects do different structures have on the cult's activities?

6) Where do cults get ther financial and other resources? If the cult is hidden behind a legitimate facade, what kinds of facades work well in D&D?

7) Given that magic is real and works in D&D, what is the role of magic in a "religious" cult? What kinds of spellcasting classes work out best to represent cult underlings and cult leaders? With magic and monsters both "real" in D&D, how does a D&D cult differ from a real-world cult?

8) What are some interesting cult "themes" in D&D?

9) What are some of the basic plots or storylines that can be centered around a cult?

10) What published RPG resources are useful with regards to running cults or creating cultists with interesting powers?

Resources: The following websites make for some interesting reads. I will highlight what I learned from them (as they pertain to D&D cults) in a future entry.

Posted 2nd July 2008 at 07:45 PM by EricNoah Comments 1
Posted in Gaming Resources
Resource: Blood of Dragons: Houses

If you have the urge to run a campaign that features (or even mentions) a network of nobles entangled in vast family trees, the task of coming up with that web of relationships (and names) can be daunting. When I wanted to do so for my Western Shore campaign, I turned to Blood of Dragons: Houses, a resource found on the A Song of Ice and Fire MUSH.

Fans of George R.R. Martin will no doubt recognize many of the family names and heraldric symbols, but this MUSH is set a few generations before the timeline of the novels, and thus the individuals named are new/different as are some of the relationships between families.

Using the vast lists of houses and who belongs to them, I was able to pick out a handfull of them, alter some names and some relationships, and voila, I had the tangled feel I wanted and a big list of names as well.

Figuring out the ages of the named nobles was a bit of a challenge, since you are given their birth year and not an age. What I did was subtract their birth year from 160 to get their "current" age. (For characters who died, you can figure out how old they would have been had they lived, and you can use their death date to figure out how long ago they died).

Posted 2nd July 2008 at 07:19 PM by EricNoah Comments 6
Posted in D&D 3.X House Rules
I'm no fan of spell resistance -- I think it gets used too often, and introduces an unnecessarily complicated step in combat. Blanket magic immunity and/or resistance should be a fairly rare thing among D&D monsters -- I reserve it for creatures that really have a special "schtick" for resisting magic. For everything else, its purpose seems to be simply to toughen up the opposition, and there are other ways to do that during the game prep stage that (to me) make things work better (and create the flavor or intent I really want) during game play.

Here's the house rule I use when prepping for my 3.x game as it pertiains to creatures with SR...

1) Determine if the creature really deserves SR as part of its schtick. If not, just ignore it. Some creatures deserve immunities to certain damage types or conditions and those should be applied as warranted, instead of blanket SR.

2) If it does indeed need some heightened general magic resistance, eyeball the creature's CR and its SR. If the creature has typical SR for its challenge rating, I apply a +2 to +4 bonus to the creature's saves vs. magical effects. If the creature has a trivial SR compared to its CR, don't grant a bonus. [I worked out the math on my own some time ago and for creatures with a typical SR, a +2 to +4 simulates that extra roll, without the extra roll.]

3) For extra protection, grant the creature "Magic Evasion" -- the creature suffers no partial damage/no effect on a successful save vs. magical effects. Again, apply this sparingly.

To make this fair and workable for the PCs, I made sure to share this with them at the start of the campaign:

"For the Player: don’t take feats that improve your ability to overcome SR. It might make sense to instead focus on increasing the save DCs of your spells. If you have a class ability, spell, magic item, etc. that grants SR, go for it – as long as you are the one doing the math, I don’t care."

Posted 2nd July 2008 at 06:50 PM by EricNoah Comments 1
Posted in Uncategorized
Welcome to Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D Blah Blah Blog.

A little background: I've played and DMed D&D in various incarnations since the late 70s. From 1999-2001 I ran Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D Third Edition News, the predecessor to EN World. I am a D&D 3.x/d20/OGL fan who is not yet ready to move on to 4E for a variety of reasons. I currently DM a 3.5 campaign and play in two others. You can see my campaign website here: [Link]

What's coming up? I'll be using this space to gather my thoughts on a few D&D 3.x related topics/projects, such as...
  • All about cults -- the social and mechanical aspects of cults and cultists in a D&D 3.x game. How and why does a cult form? What kinds of personalities are drawn to a cult? What hierarchies and structures do cults use to give orders, accomplish goals, yet maintain secrecy? What RPG stories can be centered around infiltrating or destroying evil cults? I have a cultist NPC class I use to add some appropriate spellcasting to NPCs that I'll share as I tweak it.
  • House Rules -- I'm just getting to the point where I feel I know 3.x well enough to start tweaking it, and I'll share some successes I've had in that area.
  • Resources for Gaming -- there are lots of great free and pay resources that can help with a 3.x (or any) game, so I'll try to point folks to a few of them.

Thank you for reading and I hope to post more soon. -- Eric
Recent Comments
I've never really had...
Posted 7th July 2008 at 09:43 PM by The Kyngdoms The Kyngdoms is offline
I have only one thing...
Posted 7th July 2008 at 07:11 PM by The_Warlock The_Warlock is offline
Oh, nifty name source....
Posted 7th July 2008 at 06:36 PM by Eosin the Red Eosin the Red is offline
Fortunately for me,...
Posted 2nd July 2008 at 08:59 PM by EricNoah EricNoah is offline
Just be aware that SR...
Posted 2nd July 2008 at 08:54 PM by Wulf Ratbane Wulf Ratbane is offline

40 point(s) total     Latest Experience Points Received
  Thread Date Comment
2 Years of Eric Noah +... 24th August 2009 10:22 PM thanks
Game night cancelled 24th July 2009 04:52 PM I know the feeling...
Surviving low-level old... 30th May 2009 09:03 PM positively adding to the conversation
10 years of ENW 5th May 2009 10:33 PM Thanks for 10 years!
delete 16th April 2009 10:31 AM Yeah! The bastards!
New Year's Resolutions... 13th April 2009 03:01 PM You deserve some XP for starting this site.
Game Derailment 13th April 2009 05:58 AM Greatness!
Game Derailment 13th April 2009 01:40 AM Funny.
layoffs? 3rd December 2008 11:28 PM Just for being Eric Noah.
layoffs? 3rd December 2008 03:31 AM Good reporting (shame about the subject)


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 12:31 AM.


Site Contents © 2008 ENWorld
PHP Ajax Multimedia Web Framework © 2008 Digital Media Graphix
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.0 Beta 1
Copyright ©2000 - 2009, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.2.0

"Vault Data" powered by VaultWiki v2.5.1.
Copyright © 2008 - 2009, Cracked Egg Studios.