New Campaign Report

[Greenfield]

I'm not sure anyone cares, but we've officially finished our "Curse of Darkness" campaign and begun a new one, "After the Dark Age".

It's set in the same Grecco/Roman campaign world, a generation later.

The sun shines now, at least some of the time, though the aftereffects of the Curse are still with us.

One such after effect is a version of the Black Plague that rolls through every 10 years like clockwork. And it's resistant to curative magicks.

I'm not sure what "resistant" means in this case, since someone else came up with the campaign theme and is running the introductory adventure. It's possible that Remove Disease and Heal simply won't affect it. It's also possible that they work, but only some of the time. Another possibility would be that they help alleviate the illness but don't remove it entirely.

Our job, apparently, is to find out who/what is responsible for this new problem.

I may or may not post stories on the Story Hour forum, we'll see how it goes.

 

[Crothian]

What kind of character are you going to create? Do you have any house rules to help the game get a better Grecco/Roman feel?

 

[Greenfield]

I built two characters. The first is a Ranger, and he's a slightly abusive build in that he's a Spiked Chain fighter. And yes, he'll cheese the whip before he's done. Personality wise, he's a loudmouth with a temper and, well, as one writer once put it, "I don't have authority issues, I just don't like people telling me what to do.".

The second was a straight Scout, which some people consider abusive enough all on its own. He's a soft spoken, get-the-job done kind of guy with a fairly straight laced moral code.

The players decided they liked the loudmouth. Go figure.

As for house rules: We had some in our last game that we're continuing:

1) Iterative attacks happen every four BAB points instead of every five (helps the melee types keep up with the spell casters).
2) Teleport and it's near relatives are restricted. Last time they didn't exist in the game world at all. This time they exist, as rituals, and run from ley-line junction to ley-line junction only. Greater Teleport can change ley-lines, so it can go more places in the line network. In practice, it works when and where the DM says it can.
3) Last game we removed Raise Dead and its relatives. People just didn't come back in Grecco/Roman tales. Instead, the party had to travel to the Land of the Dead, find the dead person's spirit, and walk them back to the land of the living. That option is still available, but now we also allow the spells. The spells are now an all-day ritual, usable only on Hallowed ground, ground dedicated to a deity appropriate for the person being brought back.
4) Last time we granted every spell caster a bonus feat, specifically Non Lethal Substitution (as a generic), on the theory that it's hard to learn magic when practice of some spells kills your fellow acolytes and apprentices. We're continuing that, but added a balancing bonus feat for everyone else: One additional weapon proficiency. Classes like Ranger and Paladin, which start as fighter types and eventually become spell casters, can choose which they like. No character ever gets more than one such bonus feat, no matter how many classes they might end up with.
5) The Item Creation Feat, Craft Wondrous Item, was considered too broad and powerful. We realigned the feats slightly: Amulets, earrings, headbands, broaches etc got moved to Forge Ring, which we renamed Craft Magical Jewelry. Dusts, oils, candles, incenses and other consumable items got moved to Brew Potion.

 

[Grogg of the North]

Was this the game that was going to be set in Australia originally? Or did that get shelved?

Good luck on your game. I look forward to Story Time.

 

[Dandu]

I'm not sure anyone cares, but we've officially finished our "Curse of Darkness" campaign and begun a new one, "After the Dar Age".

What was the Age of Dar like?

 

[Greenfield]

One of the players, a player relatively new to the group, seemed to think that we only run campaigns with real world locations. Either that or he somehow got confused by the movies. In either case he wanted to run a Lord of the Rings setting, located in New Zealand. Except we wouldn't be dealing with the One Ring or any of the lesser Rings. Or the main characters. Or locations. And it would be neither before the second rise (and fall) of Sauron, nor after it.

As for the Dark Age? It was dark. As in, our last campaign, the Curse of Darkness thing.

 

[Grogg of the North]

Is this super black plague dangerous to characters that are resistant to disease, like paladins? Or has that yet to be determined?

 

[Greenfield]

We don't know yet. None of the PCs have the right class/level to know for sure, and the information on other people hasn't been provided.

It is known that Rangers and Druids tend to avoid catching it, but that may simply be because they spend more time away from cities and high population centers.

Another odd reality of our gaming style is that the DM who came up with this theme may not know himself. In the round-robin style of gaming the DM duties are shared, and we often lay out plot hooks or puzzles which are intended to be picked up and used by another DM.

In our last campaign I ended up introducing a "side plot" kind of story hook that ended up dominating the campaign right up until the end. The quest, to retrieve a dagger buried in Pompeii, ended up being resolved in a completely unexpected manner (at least unexpected by me).

Another major PC is listed as "Dead, and wanted for questioning" because of a plot hook one DM set down.

It leads to a very evolutionary style of story development. Sometimes it's epic, sometimes it "eh".

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Looking forward to the stories!

 

[Greenfield]

Okay, message received and understood. Stories will follow.

We've just finished our first adventure. I've always believed that one way to tell if an adventure is a good one is whether it would make a good story.

This one was depressingly pedestrian. No real challenges. It's going to be a challenge to spin it into any kind of grand tale.

But I'll try.