The Rise of Felskein [Completed]

wolff96 · Jan 6, 2011

A friend of mine recently pointed this story hour out to me and I've spent the last few days burning through it. All I have to say is: Wow.

I really enjoyed it, Iron Sky, and thought you did a great job of ramping things up from the basic, against-the-goblins origins to saving the world from destruction. There was a lot of foreshadowing and glimpses of higher level threats even near the beginning, which was just really well done.

I will have to say that Harold would not have survived in pretty much any group I've ever played in. Yikes. He started as a fanatic and just went further and further off the deep end as the story continued... That's a great arc and some good RP, but wow...

Anyway, just wanted to drop in and add my two cents to all the others congratulating you on finishing this amazing story hour!

Iron Sky · Jan 6, 2011

Hey wolff96, glad that you enjoyed it!

I'm actually in the midst of analyzing this and other campaigns I've run that turned out exceptional to determine what made them different from the others I've run that were not (like the 4e game I ran after this).

I've come to the conclusion the Quirks and Secrets makes a huge difference even if the players only spend 10 minutes coming up with them. I read somewhere that one of the reasons why D&D games tend to be so combat-intensive is that players are required by the system to spend an hour or more working on the combat-relevant parts of their characters and only a few minutes on non-combat stuff.

People want payoff on their investment, so if they've put an hour into their combat mechanics and 5 minutes on their backstory, they'll want combat to justify their investment. If they've spent 30 minutes coming up with quirks, secrets, flaws - in general a past and a personality, even if it's basic, they'll have more interest in the non-combat parts of the game.

There was a GURPs scifi game I ran that was one of the best campaigns I've ever run even if didn't like the system, mainly due to the fact that I had a separate character-creation session with each player where we spent hours creating back-story and their character at the same time.

Unfortunately, my players were so into the game that we played every other day for two weeks (everyone was on X-mas break) and I burned out hard (unfamiliarity with GURPs didn't help) causing the campaign and the subsequent novel I was writing along with it to die in the middle.

I've gone back several times in an attempt to finish said novel, but my years of GMing have robbed me of the ability to just decide what happens in a novel - I'd rather write about the interesting things that came about instead of "forcing" them to happen in my imagination.

That said, I'm creating a rules-light RPG that I figure I can also use to write a novel since the character creation is fast and weaving together the character elements has been making characters with established, interesting backgrounds and motivations in a paragraph!

If I start another story hour or other writing project, I'll link to it from here.

Theo R Cwithin · Jan 7, 2011

Interesting insights on traits, backstory, etc. I hadn't really thought of it in those terms. Seems a good way to kind of ensure all the players on the same page about what's in store with the campaign. Philosophy yoinked.

Anyway, congrats on finishing this up, and many thanks for seeing it through! It's really engaging stuff, and I look forward to accidentally stumbling upon your next awesome story.

.

Neurotic · Jan 7, 2011

I can confirm that part about GURPS.

Flaws and traits are supported (in fact expected) part of the character creation and there are even quirks, little disadvantages with minor or no mechanical penalty, there just to give your characters some color.

Skills play much greater part which of course means there needs to be RP parts where those skills can be used.

Iron Sky · Feb 7, 2011

This isn't a Rise of Felskein update and it isn't another story hour, but I have been doing a commentary on the Dark Sun game we're playing now here.

Iron Sky · Sep 12, 2011

It took me almost a year, but the novelized version of this Story Hour is available at Smashwords here in all eBook formats for major eBook readers (PDF, Kindle, iPad, etc).

The cover is done by our own @steeldragons here on ENWorld! Many thanks to him; it turned out far better than I could have hoped!

If you get the book in the next three days (until September 15th) you can enter the following code to get it free as thanks to everyone at ENWorld whose encouragement helped me make it happen!

Code: AB49K

Enjoy! (and tell your friends

)

Edit: Unrelated side note, if you hadn't noticed already, I've started another story hour. If you want to check it out, it's in my sig.

Blackbrrd · Jul 28, 2013

Downloaded the book and going to check it out on my two week vacation to Rhodos. I will give you a review when I come back.

Blackbrrd · Aug 8, 2013

I just finished all 543 pages of it. I am quite impressed. It's very easy to get into and quite entertaining.

The group angle is unusual and would have worked better if more characters than the elf wizard were interesting.

The casual way party members are left to die felt a bit weird. Maybe they were henchmen or their players were busy creating a new character?

The story was quite original, better than quite a lot of published fantasy novels.

Thanks for the free book

doghead · Jan 22, 2020

Just finished reading this SH again.

Because it is the awesome.

thotd

Iron Sky · Jan 27, 2020

Blackbrrd said:
I just finished all 543 pages of it. I am quite impressed. It's very easy to get into and quite entertaining.

The group angle is unusual and would have worked better if more characters than the elf wizard were interesting.

The casual way party members are left to die felt a bit weird. Maybe they were henchmen or their players were busy creating a new character?

The story was quite original, better than quite a lot of published fantasy novels.

Thanks for the free book

Only noticed this 7 years later, but glad you enjoyed it!

I ran pretty brutal games back then and we definitely suffered from "player churn" as the PCs died in combat. Also, the archer player really wanted to play a solo game and often made choices that seemed optimal for him even if it meant other players died.