The Adventures of Sprocket and Mira in SPACE!

[Jack Daniel]

My current campaign, using a mish-mash of the 1983 and 1991 OD&D rules, has been going strong for about a year and a half now. Usually, any campaign I try to run will fizzle out after about a year, with the PCs topping out at level 15, getting bored, and drifting away. But this game... it reached its first major climax at level 15, but now it's level 25, with no signs of slowing. And I blame the rules.

In the past, I've always used AD&D or some iteration thereof, like the d20 system. And it always starts to become craptacularly unbalanced at just about level 15, the end of the fabled sweet-spot that 4th edition was supposed to correct. But now I'm using the later versions of OD&D, and the divine blessings which are the Companion Set and the Rules Cyclopedia have kept me inspired (and the players challenged) for an extra ten levels, with the distinct feeling that this could go on forever.

The game has had two regular player characters throughout: Sprocket Astroturf, tinker gnome extraordinaire; and Mira, a knightly bird-maiden along the lines of a 3rd edition raptorian (Deo gratia for the Creature Crucible supplements to OD&D!). Sprocket's Chaotic; Mira's Lawful. Sprocket solves his problems with brains and bullpuckey, Mira with swords and muscle. They make a heck of a team.

Now for the first 14 levels of gameplay, with those famous red and blue booklets close at hand, I had these two player characters traipsing across the surface of Arcadia (the Europe-like continent which serves as the campaign’s major setting area), delving into multi-level mega-dungeons and trying to outwit an evil party led by a mad wizard, Zoltar, as they raced to find the Nexus of Leylines, a mythical position somewhere deep beneath Arcadia which would give its possessor unlimited arcane power. As it happened, the player characters were 13th level when they actually confronted Zoltar at the Nexus, and they defeated him utterly. This kicked them up to level 14, which meant that it was just about time to put aside the Expert Set and pull out the glorious green of the Companion Set.

I dusted off my CM series of modules: CM1, Test of the Warlords; CM2, Death’s Ride; and CM3, Sabre River. CM1 is an interesting piece of work, because it’s really a campaign skeleton, not a single adventure. It presents an area called Norwold, largely unsettled, meant for the player characters to carve dominions out of. I had this happen in my campaign, and the PCs became Baron Sprocket of Astroturf and Baroness Mira of Insulaves.

Now in OD&D’s Known World, Norwold is just north of the lands that the player characters come from, equidistant between the empires of Alphatia and Thyatis. But my own campaign setting is a fantasy version of early 1800s Europe, with Arcadia standing in for Europe, and another continent called Lemuria which is vaguely like North America. I put Norwold in Lemuria, right about where northeastern Canada would be. (The various Old-World nations also have their respective analogues: Avalon, Utopia, Asgard, Midjard, Hesperia, Elysium, Sylvania, Olympia, and Amarna, to name a few places, stand in for England, France, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Greece, and the Ottoman Empire.) The campaign began in Utopia (imagine post-revolutionary France, but run by tinker gnomes). And now it had moved to the new world.

OD&D has rules for running characters’ dominions in a SimCity kind of way, but also for mass battles, and rising through the ranks of nobility with conquests and alliances. They started as barons; but the player characters were pushing 24th level when all of the nearby lords finally capitulated to the military and diplomatic might of Sprocket and Mira, who were elevated from counts to marquises by the circumstances… and then, just to make it more insulting than injurious, Mira swore fealty to Sprocket, leaving her a marquise in the vassalage of the newly created Duke Sprocket of Greater Astroturf (at which point, the gnome’s surname actually managed to become even more grating than it already was, what with an entire duchy named after it).

Well, the PCs are now 25th level, meaning that in one or two short sessions, I’ll be dusting off the black box with the Masters Set in it. And rather than running out of steam, the campaign has just cranked up a notch. As it happened, while the PCs were carving out their personal dominions and becoming lords and ladies in the New World, a Napoleon-esque gnome (a Gnapoleon?) by the name of General François Biendit marched Utopian troops on Midjard and Elysium and took both nations in one fell swoop, creating a new land empire that dominated Arcadia.

Deciding that he had to do something about this, Sprocket convinced Mira to accompany him back to his homeland, where they proceeded to assassinate General Biendit so that Sprocket could assume his identity. They marched the Utopian gnomes back home, and it might have seemed that the war was over, except that now Elysium, which had been an autocracy, was in chaos, with no government. And the surrounding nations, Hesperia, Sylvania, and Olympia, were all licking their lips at the thought of conquest. Further, the rulers of Hesperia and Olympia even had legal claims to the Elysian throne. Our heroes had to do something. So, they split up.

Mira went to her own homeland, Sylvania, to convince the ruler there not to attack. Said ruler is Duke Konstantinos IV, an enigmatic ruler believed by his terrified and oppressed subjects to be a vampire. Mira went in fully expecting an epic showdown between herself and Count Dracula… only to discover that Konstantios was very much alive, and a high-level monk at that. His mysteriousness was due to his monasticism, and his martial arts training. He was also dead set on attacking Elysium as a matter of personal vengeance, but Mira talked him down and diplomacy’d the man into a more defensive military posture. One down, two to go.

Sprocket, meanwhile, went to Olympia, to speak with the rulers there, King Olibios and Queen Jolanda. Sensing that the queen was extremely soft-hearted and the king unusually willing to listen to reason, Sprocket used this to his advantage, and presented a plan that would convince the Elysians to accept Olibios as their ruler, if he would guarantee them a modicum of independence and self-rule. The king agreed, and soon, Sprocket and Mira met up in Elysium, where they managed to convince the princes and senators to meet in a great congress with the purpose of federating all the various little republics and principalities which had sprung up in the wake of recent strife. Another diplomatic success, and it looked as if Elysium and Olympia would have their differences resolved.

Enter Hesperia, a none-too-friendly autocracy run by a governor named Maximo Lucilli. A major imperial power with a huge navy, Hesperia was ready to take on Olympia directly, ignoring the anarchic Elysium for the time being, but poised to pick up the spoils when war was over. To top it off, nearby Amarna was once again (as it had done repeatedly throughout history) ready to attack Olympia and make it a subjected province. An alliance between the two powers was natural, and forthwith happened, something Sprocket and Mira are still clueless about.

Instead, as soon as they heard that Hesperia was fully marshaled and mobilized, they sought an alliance with their own liege, the Empress Maeve of Avalon, the major imperial and naval rival of Hesperia. And Avalon has a tight alliance with Asgard, which pretty much ensures that if Avalon enters the war, so do Asgard’s dwarves. Using his characteristic approach of rhetoric and argument, Sprocket handily convinced Queen Maeve that it would be in her best interest to defend Olympia. And the queen’s last words, as one of the craziest game sessions ever (and the only talky and diplomacy-heavy game I’ve ever run that had me sweating bullets from the adrenaline) finally came to a close, were: “Imagine… the whole world is going to war!”

At that point, Sprocket’s and Mira’s players just smacked themselves on the forehead, finally realizing what all their politicking had just done. They’d just started World War I, a hundred years too soon. “Well,” said Sprocket’s player, “thank goodness they haven’t invented machine guns yet.”

I just stared at him and deadpanned, “You did that when you were 2nd level.”

The player went pale. And now I need a Risk board and whole lot of tiny minis, because next game session, it’s war!

 

[Dragonwriter]

Wow... That is awesome. You made me laugh out loud... Congratulations to you and your players.

Inventing machine guns at 2nd level... I love it!

Thank you for sharing!

 

[RangerWickett]

Cool. I somehow feel that 25th level characters could make trench warfare less than ideal.

 

[Everett]

Will you post an update about the beginning of the war? I'd read it.

 

[Olli]

so, any updates off the war coming????

this is awesome

 

[Jack Daniel]

Well, it finally happened. My Lv-35 PCs befriended Bahamut and slew Orcus.

Wow, it's been a while since I've thought to blog about my campaign. But it's got to happen now, because we're all done with the Masters Set. Session before last, the player characters hit that 4.35 million XP mark -- the most XP that a character can possibly earn in OD&D -- and made 36th level, the maximum attainable level. It's like reaching 99th level in a computer RPG. That's how epic this campaign is. It's a first for me, and I have to say, a heck of a lot of fun.

Jeez, the Great War was so many game sessions ago that I'll have to see if I can remember all the details. Suffice it to say, the Hesperian navy threw everything it had at Olympia. Sprocket and Mira stayed there to rally the troops and direct the war. Elysium was too discombobulated to bring anything more than a token force to the table. The Amarna corsairs might have been troublesome, except that Avalon's Royal Air Force flew southeast, past Olympia, to keep them at bay. Mira was able to muster everything that Sylvania had, and just in time to repel Hesperia's main ground invasion, saving Olympia. The Amarnans, meanwhile, hurled back Avalon's Air Force and sent them limping back home, retaking quite a bit of lost territory in the process. The main theatre of the war was Olympia and Elysium, and in a long and entrenched battle that went back and fourth for nine whole days, the Hesperian invasion force was finally defeated, forcing a surrender and a treaty.

Now, here's where things get funky: the treaty was to be signed at Marvilles, a city in Utopia. In attendance were Duke Sprocket, Empress Maeve of Avalon, Governor Lucilli of Hesperia, King Olibios of Olympia, a senator representing the Elysian Federation... and then, into the room walked General François Biendit, presumed dead (because Mira had killed him and burned up the body to prevent any unwanted resurrections). In the treaty negotiations, Hesperia essentially lost its sovereignty to Utopia, which in turn gave Elysium over to Olympia, as Sprocket had already proposed.

Now, where was Mira through all this? During the war, Duke Konstantinos had tried to sneak-attack Elysium, to take it for Sylvania. Mira didn't like this very much, and so she surprised the Duke and all his generals while they were making war-plans, killed everybody in the room, and declared herself the new Duchess of Konstantinos's realm. Then, when she marched the Sylvanian armies into Olympia to help throw back the Hesperians, and this won them the war, she was able to return to her homeland as a war-hero... and the people made her the Empress of Sylvania!

Not to be outdone, Sprocket sensed that something was very strange about General Biendit's reappearance, so he returned to his own homeland, Utopia, to get the down-low in this. After many games' worth of spying and intrigue, he finally discovered that the General had a whole compound under Reville, Utopia's capital. It was your typical Bond-villain lair, with henchmen, a doomsday machine (just in case), and (let's not forget that Biendit was a gnome, just like Sprocket, and therefore a mad scientist extraordinaire) an automaton factory and cloning vats. As it turned out, this General Biendit was not the original Biendit, but an automaton (a clockwork robot) with an exterior of cloned flesh... and there were seven or eight others wandering around the complex, just in case the the current one got bumped off.

Well, Sprocket did the impulsive thing and decided to just flat-out attack Utopia. So, he gathered his own troops from back in Norwold (including his gnome techs, and about a hundred automated, steam-powered war-mechs) and got them ready for a war. Then he made a pact with the Empress of Avalon and the President of the Lemurian Republics to attack Utopia in concern when the time was right. Sprocket then spent the next month working one of his technologies---a teleportation device---into a practical means of secretly transporting his armies to Reville (actually, to a factory in that city that he owned). Marching his armies from the heart of the city itself to the palace, while foreign armies assaulted the shores of the country, Sprocket confronted Biendit for a battle gnomo-a-gnomo.

Sprocket won, but he discovered a nasty surprise: the Biendit-bots were all equipped with a deadman switch and a subatomic phlogiston bomb. So, Reville was nearly nuked in the ensuing blast, and in order to undo the destruction, Sprocket had to develop his greatest invention. (Now, keep in mind, the player characters are pushing the early 30s in terms of experience levels---with Biendit out of the picture, Sprocket is the greatest scientist in the world.) So, he finally develops an improbability engine, a technological item that essentially duplicates a mage's wish spell. Now, like any good level-thirty-plus-odd bookworm type D&D character, Sprocket can alter reality. So, he un-nukes Reville. And now, Utopia has a capital city again, but no government. Ergo, Sprocket runs for president... and wins. And, since Hesperia is still subject to Utopia, that makes Utopia technically an empire... which makes Sprocket an emperor as well.

*whew*

Now, as I catch my breath, I have to take a little detour and explain two things about Sprocket, so that this next part of the story has the proper impact.

(1) When the campaign first began, the "hook" used to draw Sprocket and Mira into the adventure was a letter from Sprocket's uncle, a rich but dotty old gnome named Thaddeus Q. Thimblequimby. Uncle Thaddeus was a collector of artifacts, and a descendant of the nobles of l'ancien regime displaced by General Biendit's government.

(2) Since day one, Sprocket has been using aliases and pseudonyms like most adventurers use arrows and healing potions. He's got an alternate identity for every situation. And he takes pains to make other people, even close friends and allies, think that his multiple personalities are real people. He'll use a holographic projector and a phonograph to make it look like he's in his lab, working on machines... when, in reality, he's out adventuring, dressed in ashigaru armor and carrying the daisho, calling himself "Lo-no-Mai, the wandering gnome ronin," and acting like a Lawful Good samurai warrior. Or he'll use makeup to make himself look like a hobbit, and a polymorphic mutagen to transform Mira into a golden dragon, and then go adventuring as "Tellwiggly the halfling dragon-rider, atop his loyal steed, Theracuzia the dragon."

As far as Mira's player ever knew, she was in on all the secret identities.

When Sprocket Astroturf was officially crowned l'Empereur d'Utopie, he announced to the world that he would now go by his real name---his real, real name---and rule as Darius Thimblequimby VI.

Mira's player? Her jaw dropped. She positively freaked out when she realized that "Sprocket Astroturf" had been a pseudonym all along.

The coronation of Darius/Sprocket was a huge affair of state, and all of Sprockets' and Miras' important friends and allies attended, including most of the local royalty. Queen Maeve, King Olibios, the President of Lemuria, princes and senators of Elysium, the high kings of Midjard and Pohjola, and so on---people that our heroes have been dealing with for quite a long time now, so they're practically old friends. Since Maeve, Sprocket, Mira, and Olibios are now the major players in Arcadia, and their countries form an adjoining band all across the continent, and they have such a tight alliance that while they reign wars are very unlikely, it seems that a "Pax Arcadia" of sorts has emerged.

When the curtain fell on this scene, Sprocket and Mira were 34th level.

==========

Backing up again, Sprocket once recovered a very powerful and useful artifact. Once, (around 18th level or so), while adventuring in the land of Asgard, our heroes found themselves deep beneath the dwarven capital, the great hall of Niðavellir. The high king of Asgard, Jarnhammar, was sorely pressed by orcs and trolls swelling up from the underdark. The tunnels under his hall were a festering hole of evil. Sprocket and Mira, along with a small band of dwarves and an aged old priestess from Sylvania named Bloduedd, delved into this hellhole to meet the foe head-on. At the Battle of Gaðrhal, some tricky tactics and powerful technology helped to collapse a cavern and decimate the main force of orcs, holcs, and trolls. Our heroes themselves still had to fight off a quartet of nightshades, no easy task even for high-level characters, but they survived.

In the mess, Sprocket, Mira, and Bloduedd got separated from the dwarves and went deeper underground than they intended. They wound up in the Kingdom of the Kobolds, and they came into the maze-like palace of Kurtulmak, the Kobold King. (This campaign world does not have gods per se, nor does it really have "immortals" in the traditional OD&D sense. Immortals in this game world cannot be killed, but neither do they have any godly powers beyond what a wizard could accomplish. Wish is as powerful as it gets; no epic spells, true dweomers, or salient divine abilities.) As an immortal, Kurtulmak could not be killed, but he could be outwitted. And much of his power rested in an artifact, a bejeweled golden girdle which granted its wearer some protections from magic and the ability to teleport and polymorph other. Sprocket had no training in thievery, no capacity whatsoever to pick pockets, but there's always that one-in-a-million chance... long story short, when they finally confronted Kurtulmak, Sprocket roleld that unbelievable "1" on his long-shot pick pockets roll and just nicked Kurtulmak's golden belt, just like that. They had been sneaking about in the Kobold Kingdom for some time, so they knew the kinds of powers that Kurtulmak was feared for, and they had seen him operate the belt. Sprocket at once polymorphed the Immortal Kobold into a bunny rabbit, and that was it. "Kurtulmak the Unkillable Bunny" was thereafter a running gag throughout the campaign.

Needless to say, Sprocket abused this belt at every turn. And I kept careful track, counting the number of times it was used. What Sprocket didn't learn until much later, and much to his chagrin, was that this artifact was a little piece of Chaotic Evil. Its proper name was the Girdle of Orcus, and it had a foul purpose. Orcus once gave it to Kurtulmak, thinking that he could use the artifact's taint to bring the Immortal Kobold under his power. It didn't work, and Kurtulmak kept the belt, using it for his own gain.

When Sprocket stole the girdle, it woke up, and it started whispering Chaos to the gnome. Every time Sprocket used the belt, it also weakened the fabric of reality. There was always a possibility, for example, that using the polymorph or teleport power would just conjure up a hostile demon instead. Also, (in order to avoid alerting Mira's player), I had to be subtle about the belt's effects on Sprocket's mind---prompting him that chaotic or evil acts were worth considering, or weren't so bad and wouldn't change his alignment. It took quite a while (and a visit from one seriously ticked off archangel) for Sprocket to catch on, but eventually he realized the nature of belt and started using the item more sparingly. Nevertheless, the damage was done. He overused the item (use number one-hundred happened during the melee with Biendit), weakening the boundaries of the Prime Material Plane, and Orcus stepped through. Not right then and there, of course. He made a nest in the Underdark and started gathering an army, everything from goblins to balrogs.

These beasts started swelling up from underneath all over the world, first beneath dwarven mountains, much like the evil underneath Niðavellir once had. In Mira's dominion, back in Norwold, one her barons was a dwarf---Lord Dexter Rockbuster---with a dwarven hall of his own. He called for help to Mira, an ocean away in Sylvania at the time, to push the orcs and demons back into their hole. Sprocket and Mira came, and they led a massive army into the mines. They crushed orcs, zombies, and trolls, but when it came to balrogs and mandraks (fear-inducing demons), they were defeated and repelled.

Now 35th level and really pissed off, they went back to Arcadia and summoned the newly formed "Council of Nations," bringing their allied rulers together to discuss the problem. Most of the rulers were too sorely pressed in their own countries to offer much help, but then the council was crashed by a famous archmage by the name of Griswick---a wizard that Sprocket and Mira had met before, and one whose advice everybody respected. He told Sprocket and Mira that the Girdle of Orcus, an item in Sprocket's possession, was the key to stopping this madness. Griswick then proceeded to tell a story, revealing an important secret of the campaign world to all the royals present (and this, let me tell you, is just the tip of the iceberg):

The planet Gaia is home to two very powerful immortals, the Lawful dragon Bahamut and the Chaotic dragon Tiamat. Bahamut is the Guardian of Gaia---the closest thing the world has to a god or deity. Tiamat is the source of all evil, the creator of orcs and undead, and the mother of Orcus---and she is imprisoned in the core of the world. As long as Bahamut stands guard over Gaia from atop the Blessed Isle, Tiamat cannot be freed. But her son, the demon-lord Orcus, can still wreak some havoc. And he wants to wreak some major havoc, by releasing the Weapon of the Enemy. The Weapon of the Enemy is nothing less than Tiamat's avatar, an agent of pure distruction. (You guessed it, kids: it's the Tarrasque. Sprocket and Mira still don't know this little tidbit.) But in order to free the Weapon, Orcus needs his belt back. So, it’s on our heroes to destroy the evil artifact. And only one entity has both the knowledge and the desire to see the belt destroyed: Bahamut.

But to get to the Blessed Isle, which floats above the world far higher than any airship can sail, a group of heroes would have to travel over the impossibly high Drachendorn Mountains, cross the blighted wastelands of orc-infested Tuonella, and then pass through Cursed Land Draconia, a place that nobody has ever returned from.

==========

Our heroes decided to simply fly over Tuonella, little interested in wrangling with an entire kingdom of orcs. Once they arrived in Draconia, though, they were grounded. (On a globe, it’s in the same place as Siberia. And the weather is just as lovely.) The Cursed Land is a twisted place, where practically everything is evil and mutated, and some places are just plain weird. Stretches of country are magically invisible, made of rubber, moving up and down, spinning, low-gravity, you name it. Between these regions are haunted forests, haunted swamps, haunted farms with evil and carnivorous crops… you get the idea. But in the middle of it all is a high cliffside with a monastery at the top, and some very serene monks who *really* enjoy their solitude. And beyond this, a rocky valley with four stone pillars in the center. And in the middle of those pillars, a crystal tower that stretches into the clouds.

After taking some rest among the monks (who were, in fact, half-dragon humanoids), they passed to the pillars, which formed an impenetrable barrier around the base of the tower. This was defeated by teleporting, and they passed onward, to the gates of the tower. Inside, a spiral staircase carved into the crystal, that wound up, and up, and up. They had to climb for three days straight before they arrived at the half-way point, temple in the clouds, where they were confronted by… none other than Griswick the archmage, who revealed his true identity to be the archangel that had once visited Sprocket to warn him about the evil of the girdle. To test their worth to appear before Bahamut, they would have to defeat the world’s most powerful wizard. This they did, though not without some difficulty.

From here, they were permitted to proceed up the crystal tower again, another three days of climbing. As they rose, they noticed that they needed rest less and less frequently, and that they stopped noticing the passage of time. Outside the tower, only stars were visible—-Gaia could be seen far below, the curvature of the planet’s surface apparent. Finally, they reached the top, a crystal palace guarded by ancient gold dragons. Taken into the awesome presence of Bahamut, they presented the Girdle of Orcus, upon which the Lord of Dragons summarily performed a divine disjunction, breaking the belt, and with it, Orcus’s immortality.

Sprocket and Mira spent an untold span of time in the crystal palace (time didn’t actually pass in this place, convenient for Sprocket, who needed to build some more robots and weaponry), before asking Bahamut to teleport them into Orcus’s lair to carry out an assassination. This they did, although the battle was about as difficult as the one with Griswick. Orcus fell, and so his armies were dispersed. The world was saved… and our heroes reached 36th level for their efforts.

==========

Sprocket has a very nice airship. It’s called the Expedition, and it’s outfitted with all the latest technology: shields, lightning cannons, a dimension door drive for short-range FTL jumps, a teleport engine for the long-range travel… or so Sprocket hopes, if he can ever figure out how to make the thing airtight and launch in into space.

After defeating Orcus, our heroes teleported back to the crystal palace to confer with Bahamut. The Dragon God informed them, for their reward, that they were now worthy to drink the elixir of immortality, the substance that once gave Bahamut his own immortality some twenty-thousand years ago (along with that of all the other immortals on Gaia). The elixir is fatal to anybody that tries to drink it before reaching 36th level, but Sprocket and Mira were now strong enough to survive the elixir and join the ranks of immortals. The only problem? The elixir is deep beneath the surface of Gaia, in the feywild. Sprocket wants to quaff the elixir before venturing into space. So, this is their new quest.

This evening, our heroes traveled back to the dwarven kingdom of Asgard, for deep under Niðavellir is the great cavern of Gaðrhal, and in the tunnels from that cavern is the way to the Kobold Kingdom. And beneath the Kobold Kingdom is a Stone Door that our heroes were unable to open the first time they visited the place. This door, Bahamut informed them, is the passage to the feywild.

They came to the door and found that now, it would open for them. And they passed through… and they fell. And they fell, and they fell, down the rabbit hole…

 

[the Jester]

Awesome!

I really like the sound of your game.

 

[Nebulous]

Indeed, i really enjoyed reading that. How long did it take to get from 1st to 36th? I've never played OD&D, i wish i had.

 

[Jack Daniel]

The rulebook says that with an ordinary party of six players, playing once a week, it should take about five years. This campaign has had two PCs, playing two to three times a week, so it's only taken us about two years or so to get this far.

As to what's going to happen next, well, I'll post the next section of the story once the players have completed another adventure. Meanwhile, here's how I'm going to handle the game rules (for those readers who are somewhat familiar with OD&D and might be interested):

==========
Warning! Crunchy rules ahead!

There are two sets of rules for carrying an OD&D game above the 36th experience level. The first is the Immortals Set (1985); the second is a revised set of rules, the Wrath of the Immortals (1992). Both versions of the rules involve a transition from mortal, adventuring PCs to godlike, immortal PCs who concern themselves with creating their own demiplanes, drawing power from worshipers, increasing their divine power levels, and ascending through the hierarchy of immortal beings. Above all, immortals cannot interfere in the mortal realm unless they descend and take mortal form.

This is a very different sort of game from traditional, adventure-based D&D, and not exactly appropriate in either scope or tone to a gaslight/steampunk world. The characters can become immortal, and they can ascend into the heavens, but they will not be gods. Instead, the game will shift in tone and setting from gaslight fantasy to science fantasy, and it will take place in the galaxy at large, with the characters travelling from system to system via steamtech spacecraft.

In OD&D, once characters pass name level (9th level), they stop rolling hit dice, and they instead gain only +1 or +2 hit points per level. Fighters, thieves, and monks get +2 hit points per level; clerics and magic-users (and, in my world, technologists) get +1 hit point per level. The amount of experience to gain a level is fixed from 8th level onward: either 100,000 XP (cleric or tech), 120,000 XP (fighter or thief), or 150,000 XP (mage or monk). Under the ordinary rules, demihumans are usually limited to 8th-12th level, but as a house rule, I allow demihumans to advance all the way to 36th level, albeit at a -20% XP penalty to keep them balanced with humans.

For my system, I have had to create a set of rules for "epic level advancement." The rules are very similar to the makeshift epic rules outlined in the old 3.0 FRCS, before the 3e Epic Level Handbook came out: characters gain special "epic levels" (or, in a terminology more befitting OD&D, "epic ranks") that come with minor, fixed benefits. Above 36th level, characters no longer improve attacks, saves, class abilities, or spells. Other qualities can improve at certain intervals.

Upon reaching 36th level, characters no longer earn any experience points. Instead, advancement shifts to achievement points (APs). Characters earn APs for winning battles (1 AP is earned for every 10 monster hit dice defeated), overcoming challenges, and achieving important story goals. An epic rank is earned at every 100 APs (this scale makes it very easy for the DM to ad-hoc AP awards, since APs always represent a percentage of the next level-up). At this level, demihuman abilities are fairly minor, and demihumans are going to be six or more experience levels behind humans already, so there is no demihuman penalty or limit to APs earned.

Each epic rank comes with an increase in hit points (+1 hp per epic rank), and a particular benefit that cycles ad infinitum until that particular quality or set of qualities is maxed out. The benefits are as follows:

AP Total    Epic Rank
0           O (36th experience level)
100         I (+1 hit point, +1 skill slot)
200         II (+1 hit point, +1 to weapon damage rolls)
300         III (+1 hit point, +1 skill slot)
400         IV (+1 hit point, +1 to any ability score)
500         V (+1 hit point, +1 skill slot)
600         VI (+1 hit point, +1 to weapon damage rolls)
700         VII (+1 hit point, +1 skill slot)
800         VIII (+1 hit point, +1 to an ability score)
etc.        Lather, rinse, repeat

Basically, a new skill is earned at every odd-numbered epic rank, until a character can't possibly learn any new skills. At every even-numbered epic rank, a character either adds a +1 bonus to weapon damage, until a maximum bonus of +15 is reached; or the character increases one ability score, until all scores reach the maximum of 25 (the adjustment for a score above 18 is the score itself minus 15, so an ability of 25 is a +10 bonus). At every single level, a hit point is gained, until the character reaches the absolute maximum of 999 hp. If and when all of these qualities are ever completely maxed out, the character can earn no more AP, and then ascension to godhood and character retirement are the only options for further advancement.

One particular magical item in the game, elixir of immortality, can render a character unkillable. This does not make the character godly or invulnerable. Instead, it merely means that a character reduced to 0 hp does not die for any reason. A character with 0 hp, even an immortal one, is unconscious and incapacitated, and cannot fight until he heals again, but he cannot be killed. He could be sealed, bound, trapped, or even cut up into little bits and scattered to the winds for millennia… but never killed. Eventually, the character can recover from any wound, no matter how severe, through natural healing.

 

[barbaraloqw]

good work! Did you give us more?