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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4810591" data-attributes="member: 27780">Hmm. It's been a couple of months since I started this. I really ought to start actively dedicating time to writing setting info for this and looking for players, instead of just jotting stuff down in odd moments between doing issues and planning. So consider this a declaration that I am indeed looking for players. If you're in the southwest region of the UK, the vicinity of Bristol & Bath in particular, and have been enjoying reading this stuff, now's your chance to get to try it out. PM me if interested. So here's a couple more bits of vital info for character building. As usual, I've drawn from the magazine while trying to put my own spin on things. Ability generation:I had quite a dilemma on my hands of just what to allow here. On one hand, I'm not very keen on attribute bloat. On the other, many of the optional classes from the magazine that I want to try out have stringent ability requirements. I've decided to go for an alternate system that encourages troupe play, and allows you plenty of choice, while still keeping overall scores at a fairly low level. This also means that the party is likely to start off large, and then rapidly get whittled down over the first few sessions, and we'll get to see just how much ability scores actually matter. You can each make 3 characters. You can either roll 54d6 and assign the rolls to stats as you choose, or take an average spread of 9 1's, 9 2's 9 3's 9 4's 9 5's and 9 6's. This means your characters will on average, have average stats, but you can make some of them good at the expense of others, and at least one should be able to get into one of the more exclusive classes. You are actively encouraged to do this, and then use your weak characters as cannon fodder to get killed in the first few adventures, but each character must have a class, and meet the usual minimums for it. (Unless you choose to dump all your 1's and 2's into making a Hopeless character) Happy twinking. AlignmentAs part of my desire to try out as many optional rules from the magazine as possible, I've decided to go with the alternate system from the Strategic Review 6 for alignment, in which the law/chaos axis is divided into 22 named gradings and the good/evil into 16. This allows me to 1: cut down the number of alignment tongues to 5, making using them as a universal means of communication with creatures from other countries and races more practical. 2: Allow for more gradual shifting of character alignments based on how they act. I will try and move your characters around in it, but only one point on each axis at most for a single action, giving characters plenty of room to notice, and if desired change their ways before a full-on alignment change happens. 3: present a world in which neutrality is very much a beleaguered minority. All the gods, both good and evil, are very keen to judge you, for they all want to know who follows who, be they friends or enemies. Fence sitting in this game will not be made easy for you. Alignment languages and their place in the game. This is another of my attempts to eliminate some of the illogical tropes of the game, while justifying others. Learning new languages for every country is annoying, but having monolithic racial languages with no explanation for how linguistic drift is avoided is stupid. So playing up another oft-maligned trope is my solution. In the beginning, while the world was being created, everything understood everything else. There was no gap between the attempt to communicate an idea and it's reception. Everything was in perfect harmony. Of course, this came to an end pretty much as soon as they ran out of raw creation to shape, and Law and Chaos had their first disagreement on what should be destroyed so it could make new stuff, and what should remain the same. This of course resulted in massive cosmic conflict in which entire races were created and destroyed, (apart from a few which are hidden at the bottom of some dungeon) mountain ranges born and flattened, strange artifacts formed and lost, and lots of other things done that made an almighty mess of their lovely new world. (This of course provides lots of weird little sites for you to adventure in) They soon realized that this was a bad idea, as too much turmoil spoils the fun for everyone, and moved on to the more conventional deific tactic of picking creatures, and playing inscrutable cosmic games with their lives. It was at this point that they decided that everything being able to communicate with everything else did not suit their purposes, dividing them up into Law, Chaos, and Neutrality, and only allowing them to communicate with creatures of the same alignment. This is where humanity first came to their attention, as in response to this, they developed languages of their own, that enabled them to communicate across the alignment barrier (and also write things down, and invent words not defined by the creators, incidentally) Initially, there were some smitings involved, but these new innovations proved unsuppressable, and as humanity spread across the globe, they found that the more freedom they allowed their creations, the more their world could surprise them. So they showed them even more favour, along with a few other races that showed promise. (exactly how much of humanities unusually high ability to learn new skills quickly, and massively increase their capabilities is the cause of their favour, and how much is the result of it is another issue of doctrinal dispute) They then largely withdrew from the world, creating the three demiurges of growth, stability and death to act as checks on the system and keep the world running. Exactly how much attention they are now paying to the world is another thing that is unclear. Do they watch everything from distant planes, or have they lost interest, moved onto creating other worlds, or gone into some kind of hibernation? You can hold whatever beliefs you like on this, or try and investigate the truth. Fast forward a few thousand years, and the rise of Kishkharuden, Cearniogen, and Statrobeceme. (the pre-division god of ambition and desire that would become Gognordekoc and Naryand) Taking inspiration from the prexisting system of alignment, they took over the cosmic mechanisms which were used to automate the system of determining your alignment based upon your actions, instituting their own axis, that of good (as epitomized by Cearniogen) and evil (guess who.) Initially, this was a purely bipartisan division, with the level of your good or evilness being defined by the amount you adhered to their tenets. But the rebellion of Klar, division of Statrobeceme, interference from Kishkharuden and rise of other gods and powerful creatures have resulted in the definitions shifting, due to negotiations, compromises and attempts to define exactly what actions are good or evil in unclear edge cases. While good is still essentially about compassion for others, forgiveness, altruism, etc; and evil is selfishness, greed, destructiveness, causing suffering in others, and so forth; there is still plenty of disagreement over whether certain morally grey acts are good or evil. But I digress. In any case, there are 5 alignment languages, Lawful good, Lawful evil, Chaotic good, Chaotic evil and Neutral. All creatures automatically know their alignment language from birth. (this means that true neutral characters can speak with most animals, incidentally) Indeed, monster races which are nearly all the same alignment never bother to develop a proper language of their own, and tend to divide other creatures up into people and nonpeople based on if they can communicate with them or not. If you switch alignment, you automatically lose the ability to be understood by creatures of your old alignment, and gain the ability to communicate with creatures of your new one. (This is not a conscious process, and you won't realize anything has changed until you next speak to someone and find yourselves mutually incomprehensible where you had no troubles before. ) Most (about 90%) of humans are lawful, although they are split approximately equally between good and evil. (and of course chaotics are disproportionately represented amongst adventurers) True neutrality is rare amongst sentient creatures, requiring either a certain innocent indifference to moral concerns (as shown by animals and many fae), or an exceedingly careful balance of law, chaos, good and evil which is easy to lose. There is inherent morality, with newborn children being of all alignment. Exactly how this is dealt with varies from country to country, and even more from race to race, (I shall have to get round to writing some of those details up properly soon) but it is a genuine social issue. Some embrace it, some regulate it, others try and suppress it, but when everyone can do it, you can't simply ignore it. As ever, hope you enjoy this. Questions would be particularly helpful at this point, to help me define the less obvious edge morality cases and setting ramifications of this before play, reducing the chances of being caught off guard and making a dumb on the fly ruling I later regret. See you soon.</blockquote>

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