D&D with a twist

Desdichado · Jul 11, 2006

I was tinkering around with some ideas, and that resulted in this blog post (which I've thoughtfully cut and paste for your convenience

). Any thoughts?

So, one of the main reasons I opened up this blog was purportedly to talk about gaming, and I haven't done much of that over recent months. However, I've got a few gaming topics on my mind at the moment.

First off; The Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss is a pretty recent release, written by Eric Mona. Maybe these elements were already present in D&D and I just somehow missed them, but there's some Eric Mona-isms all over this book. The idea of the obrylith; ancient demons that predate the tanar'ri are very obviously a riff on his earlier work with the qlippoth in Armies of the Abyss for Green Ronin. He has somewhat expanded their role, though--even making a handful of the Demon Lords remnant obryliths (Dagon, Pale Night, Pazuzu, etc.) Apparently the history of the Queen of Chaos and her pre-mortal war against (among others) the Wind Dukes of Aaqa from the Age of Worms campaign arc in Dungeon Magazine has now been officially canonized as Greyhawk history too.

Anyway, this book is pretty good; more or less as I predicted it would be. I like fiends as antagonists, and I like the work of Eric Mona. I was particularly impressed with his idea of a demon lord pantheon that could replace the gods of a campaign setting, spelled out again originally in Armies of the Abyss. Which leads into my second point.

I've gotten to the point where I like my campaign settings to have a "twist" of some kind to them. Something that sets them apart, often significantly, from "standard, traditional D&D." The demonic pantheon idea mentioned above is one such idea. It automatically makes the game significantly darker, and gives it a bit of a Midnight vibe. Houserules and GMing advice from the Heroes of Horror book could really add a lot to this type of game, too. Either that or straight-up combing the D&D rules with the d20 Call of Cthulhu rules. Unearthed Arcana has already done a fair amount of the work there for us too.

Here's some other ideas I've had too:

I'm tired of magic. What if you used the psionics classes in place of magic? Between the Expanded Psionics Handbook (included in the SRD) and Complete Psionic you've got, I think, seven psionic classes. Add the non-magical classes from the PHB back in (barbarian, fighter, rogue; and maybe the monk could pass muster) and you've got as robust as selection as the PHB offers anyway. While you're at it, you could yank all the standard D&D pallette of races (except human) from the selectable pool as well, and just use the psionic races. There's seven of them in the Expanded Psionics Handbook and Eberron introduces the kalashtar (and possibly the Inspired as well) making a nice selection. In fact, Eberron would be great to raid for source material, especially once the Sarlona book comes out (can't find a release date; maybe that book is just a rumor?)

I don't like the idea of fantasy literally without any humans, but there's plenty of other races that can be added in instead of the standard elves, halflings, dwarves, etc.. How about a campaign where you had humans and x-touched races only? I.e., the planetouched aasimar, tieflings, genasi, and the shifters and changelings (lycanthrope-touched and doppleganger-touched, respectively?) It might take a little work since the earlier races are all LA +1, which is something WotC seems to be trying to get out of doing now. Maybe a little tweaking to make them back to LA +0 and you're good to go? Presumably this campaign would feature a world with lots of interplanar trafficking of some kind. I imagine a setting that is primarily (if not entirely, at least from the point of the view of the players) based in a massive city. A fantasy Coruscant, if you will.

Anyway, that's just three rough ideas of games that I'd love to either play or run either one. Do you have any ideas? Feel free to add comments.

Psion · Jul 11, 2006

Are you really willing to ditch ranger?

You could use the non-magical ranger variants in Wildscape (which provide more combat styles, and extend combat styles for those that don't take spellcasting.) It's $4 at DTRPG if you don't have a copy.

Mallus · Jul 11, 2006

Short answer: I like the sound of it.

Longer answer:

In general, I like the idea of selecting a handful of elements from the published materials and focusing on them. Enable the options you're interested in and turn the rest off.

Psionics instead of standard arcane magic is a fine idea. I like the psi rules better, and psi classes can be multiclassed without, well, without completely sucking.

So all gods are devils in this setting? I love that idea. If you want clerical powers, you have to worship a fiend, case closed. It's a nice inversion of the conventional 'good priests' vs. 'foul magicians', with the 'mage' types being --relatively-- pure and the miracle workers being inherently corrupted.

And whoppingly large fantasy cities? I can't imagine a setting without them. Of course, my homebrew is called "The World of CITY", and the bulk of the action takes place, oddly enough, in a city comprised of 10 metropolii interconnected by magical gates. Umm, called CITY by most of its inhabitants, unless they're lawyers, in which case its The Monopolis.

Check out the story hour in my sig. It's set in CITY, and its nothing if not 'non-standard D&D with a twsit'. And funny... really, really, funny. Or so I'm told.

Desdichado · Jul 11, 2006

Psion said:
Are you really willing to ditch ranger?

I am a fan of the idea of the ranger, but I don't really like the ranger per se.

Psion said:
You could use the non-magical ranger variants in Wildscape (which provide more combat styles, and extend combat styles for those that don't take spellcasting.) It's $4 at DTRPG if you don't have a copy.

You talkin' 'bout the FFG book? I do have a copy that I got as a prize at an ENW Gameday, but I haven't yet read it.

Still, though, the Wildlander from Midnight is a great alt.ranger idea. I could even get behind the Scout from Complete Adventurer too. In fact, I'd probably (if this wasn't all hypothetical anyway) allow any kind of non-magical alt.class (pending review, of course.) I think something like the Swashbuckler, Scout, etc., for instance, are great fits to almost any campaign.

Desdichado · Jul 11, 2006

Mallus said:
Short answer: I like the sound of it.

Well, actually those are ideas for three separate campaigns. Although the first idea and the third could be easily (and very interestingly) combined, as could the 2nd and 3rd. I suppose with the Ardent (or whatever the divine Psionic class is called from Complete Psionic I could combine all three of them, but that wasn't what I had in mind.

Hmmm [goes off to think...]

Mallus said:
So all gods are devils in this setting? I love that idea. If you want clerical powers, you have to worship a fiend, case closed. It's a nice inversion of the conventional 'good priests' vs. 'foul magicians', with the 'mage' types being --relatively-- pure and the miracle workers being inherently corrupted.

Yeah, have you seen Green Ronin's Armies of the Abyss or Book of Fiends? That's where the idea comes from, and it covers all the main domains except good and law (not surprisingly.) I've been enamored of the idea ever since.

Mallus said:
Check out the story hour in my sig. It's set in CITY, and its nothing if not 'non-standard D&D with a twsit'. And funny... really, really, funny. Or so I'm told.

Awesome. I'll be downloading this to a text file post haste.

Psion · Jul 11, 2006

J-Dawg said:
I am a fan of the idea of the ranger, but I don't really like the ranger per se.

You talkin' 'bout the FFG book?

That's the one.

Kid Charlemagne · Jul 11, 2006

I like the way that d20 allows a certain kind of toolkit approach to game building. In my own campaign world, one thing I'm going to explore through subsequent campaigns is a clearer sense of advancing technology - magical and non-magical. I plan on representing this by playing with the magic rules and adding and eliminating core classes, as well as by doing things like changing firearms from exotic weapons to martial ones.

Nyaricus · Jul 11, 2006

J-Dawg said:
Well, actually those are ideas for three separate campaigns. Although the first idea and the third could be easily (and very interestingly) combined, as could the 2nd and 3rd. I suppose with the Ardent (or whatever the divine Psionic class is called from Complete Psionic I could combine all three of them, but that wasn't what I had in mind.

Hmmm [goes off to think...]

Okay, honestly, you could combine those ideas into one *great big* idea quite easily. Maybe, moreso than usual in D&D, the Material Plane is more a a crossroads than usual, and demon lords and Arch Devils (or however those titles go) have killed off the gods and taken over their posts. There is one mighty city, "Coruscant", which is perhaps the largest mortal-run city in the multiverse, have travellers and inhabitants from all over the nine hells and back again through the elemental planes. Corruption is rampant and whatnot (Dark Sun is like that

). Psionics is a fairly easy sub-in for magic, in any case. Powerful Ardents serve powerful demon lords, with amny temples of sacrifice and unholy rituals in parts of the city. Psions form great colleges of The Mind. Genasi rub shoulders with Changelings who rub shoulders with Shifters who rub shoulders with Humasn who rub shoulders with... everyone. This city is, in everyone minds THE city.

I dunno, so on and so forth. I really like the idea, in any case. Take one part Star Wars, one part Diablo II, one part Dark Sun and I think you are on to somehting here, sirrah!

Good luck, and keep us updated

Arnwyn · Jul 11, 2006

Apparently the history of the Queen of Chaos and her pre-mortal war against (among others) the Wind Dukes of Aaqa from the Age of Worms campaign arc in Dungeon Magazine ...

Aside: From the 2e Rod of Seven Parts adventure, actually.

Your ideas are certainly interesting.

blargney the second · Jul 11, 2006

J-Dawg said:
I'm tired of magic.

That's funny, I had the same thought recently. I'd also like to use the flood of dragon material coming out this year, so I'm going to tie the two together. An Eberron game where people in contact with "normal" magic contract a plague that makes them become various dragon-related creatures.