Thanks for the reply. I'd be interested if you could post a bit more about the mechanics of the special backgrounds/bonuses.
D&D 4E Who's still playing 4E
Nemesis Destiny
Adventurer
Sure. Again, collapsed for the sake of the thread.
[sblock]Each character got a Rune Reading from me before play started. The runes were drawn after character creation, but before any real background was drawn up. It was a simple affair of drawing runes on wood chips from a bag, one at a time. Each rune was mapped to one of the 6 stats by me, so 4 runes per stat, with the 25th rune, the blank one, representing the character's prime stat.
The first rune represents the character's Strength, not the literal stat, but they'd get a +2 to whichever stat the rune they drew mapped to. This did not replace the human +2 to any, but supplemented it. I did realize the potential for a starting 22 stat, but this didn't come up and I wasn't particularly scared. 4e won't be thrown completely out of whack by an extra +1 to hit and damage.
The rune was put back in the bag, reshuffled, and the player draws a second one. This represents Skill. They were allowed to select a skill that keys off whichever stat the rune represented. They could either gain training in that skill, or if they'd already trained it, gain Skill Focus in it for free. One of the players drew an Int-linked rune and picked Literacy as his benefit for his barbarian, despite his 8 Intelligence. Rune goes back in the bag and reshuffle.
The third and final rune represented the PCs Fate or Wyrd. This was more of a negotiation between me and the player. For example, the warden wanted an heirloom magic weapon, so we built "Wound-wolf" - a nigh-indestructible +5 enchanted Axe blade, which he had stuck on a pole (it was a halberd for him). The high bonus didn't matter, as I used a houserule on top of the Inherent Bonus system where if you had any magic item enhancement bonuses, it would add to your effective level on the inherent bonus chart instead of gaining the full bonus.
The Winter Druid wanted to be master of the Ice and Snow, and a tamer of beasts. His rune was travel-related, so his benefit was terrain walk (ice) and Mark of Handling for free.
The hardest one was the Paladin. Neither myself nor the player in question had any idea what her "Death" rune would mean. Fortunately, in the second session, the action resolution solved the problem for us; she was killed brutally by bandits. The bandits got surprise, and she rolled a 1 on her initiative. She was in a tactically poor position and the druid couldn't reach her on his turn, and the following turn she took an unlucky critical that brought her below her negative bloodied value. That solved that... except I told her player not to throw out the character, as I had a kernel of an idea for later.
The hunter ranger was another interesting one; her rune indicated a pact or constraint, and her player chose a pact with the goddess of vengeance, Letha, and I chose the form that the pact would take mechanically. I also had the unusually active goddess taunt and goad the character where appropriate on a path to corruption and hate.
Disappointingly, the player grew bored with his character and wanted to bring in another. I like to collaborate with players on this kind of thing, so I only asked that he wait for the right story moment for me to insert his character, but he decided that he couldn't wait, so he deliberately tried to get her killed, which I found rather annoying, as it makes no in-game sense, even for one being mildly tempted by a goddess. Without getting into a ton of detail, it was a bold violation of our group's social contract. Due to some Magic Jar hijinks going on at the time, her soul ended up dead, as he wanted, but the spirit of her grandfather, which was trapped in her heirloom blade, moved into her body instead, bringing it back to life. The player was quite flustered, as he found the prospect of playing an old man trapped inside a young woman's body a little... uncomfortable. It may have been a tad heavy-handed but everyone thought it was pretty funny (including the player in question). He still retired her, and left the group shortly after for personal reasons unrelated to the game. He briefly returned much later, but again didn't stay long.
Anyway, I was heavily into reading and discussing the intricacies of 4e on this forum with you at the time, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], and others as well. I tried to keep in mind the things I was learning from these discussions. I tried to use the runes to draw inspiration from the players about what they wanted to see, and I tried to use them to engage with them in the fiction. I used them in that way on several occasions.
In the case of the Paladin's player, he'd brought in a new character, his shapeshifting young lad of a barbarian, but for story reasons, had him leave the rest of the party to finish an essential quest, and forcing them to escape via a different route. They were irreversibly divided, so at this juncture, I had him return with his old Paladin, returned in Valkyrie form by the gods to complete a holy quest (which she did not share with them). It was basically to shepherd them to their ultimate fate as Einherjar. I don't normally plot to kill off my PCs on purpose, but this was something I'd wanted to explore for some time, so I contrived to make it so. Being fearless viking warriors, they charged heedless to their deaths in a great demon-war which had erupted. Her mission was a success, and the rest of them could go on to meet their destiny in the Otherworld, which was the capstone of the campaign.
Another example I can offer is that of the Warden. His runic choices told me that he was interested in and proud of his heritage, so when he multiclassed into shaman, we agreed that he could channel the spirits of his ancestors, and summon their aid (via the spirit companion). I provided him with several specific ancestors over the course of the campaign that had abilities above and beyond the simple spirit companion. They were basically like magic items. He'd gone to the trouble of tracing his lineage back a long way, so I put some of those names to good use, and put personality behind them.
Not sure if you were interested by the custom Druid of Winter stuff my player and I came up with, but she was very keen on it, so we were determined to get it "right" rather than wait for the promised but never delivered Dragon article on it. We both thought that martial axes would be a good weapon, and that a raven would be an ideal animal companion, and had it work as an action-granting at-will. If the raven hit its target, an ally could make a basic attack with a bonus equal to the druid's Con mod. Its Harrier Aura prevented OAs within its squares. The player seemed to enjoy this playstyle a lot, and continued to invest in the raven. The player had also multiclassed Bard via Master of Stories, and selected Arcane Familiar and some supporting feats, which I allowed to apply to his companion raven. He also took a custom Runecaster theme that we'd cobbled together from some of the things from the AD&D Vikings green book. I tried my best to make his rune knowledge important, as he was one of the few literate characters.
If there's anything else, or if I hadn't got the angle you were after, I'd be happy to share more.[/sblock]
Nemesis Destiny
Adventurer
You're most welcome! I'm glad the flow of ideas goes both ways. Let me know how those ideas work out for you
My campaign is in the endgame stage - the PCs are 30th level, Torog and Orcus are both defeated, and the final questions are (i) whether or not the Rod of Seven Parts will be reassembled, triggering the Dusk War and the possible reconstruction of the Lattice of Heaven, and/or (ii) whether or not the PCs will help escalate the Raven Queen even higher in the divine hierarchy. So it's always good to see how others have handled themes around Ragnarok, Apocalypse, fate and destiny, etc.
Jessica
First Post
My last campaign fell through because with school and work going on at the same time, I tend to get stressed easy due to my packed schedule and then when I get stressed any game I'm campaign running at the moment tends to be the first thing on the chopping block. I think when I get done with school though, I am considering running a 4e modern/futuristic fantasy game using the OGL Dias Ex Machina supplements for 4e(since I don't really like standard medieval fantasy). Also because from the one game I ran of 4e, my best friend who had only played 5e up to that point(and had mostly bad experiences*) suddenly became a huge 4e fan.
I'm not sure whether I want to just include Ultramodern 4e/Apex classes or whether I want to add the pre-existing 4e classes. I don't know what kind of future fantasy I want to do whether I go closer to something like X-Com or 40k or Overwatch/Battleborn for inspiration. I don't know whether I want to go human only or maybe add some fantasy races and/or alien races.
*Not only has she had mostly mediocre DM experiences including: a 3 hour session of Rage of Demons where we never made it out of the jail cell and one PC died, Princes of the Apocalypse with the DM who gives the most deadpan descriptions of things and who CONSTANTLY looked up in the book whenever he wasn't sure about anything, and a former 3.5/PF DM who was just generally dickish while simultaneously not having bothered to learn any of the 5e rules. Also she started off playing a Tiefling Ranger and switched to Wood Elf when she felt that she wasn't contributing as much as other party members and then steadily got bored because most of her turns consisted of just spamming attacks(and occasionally casting Hunter's Mark).
I'm not sure whether I want to just include Ultramodern 4e/Apex classes or whether I want to add the pre-existing 4e classes. I don't know what kind of future fantasy I want to do whether I go closer to something like X-Com or 40k or Overwatch/Battleborn for inspiration. I don't know whether I want to go human only or maybe add some fantasy races and/or alien races.
*Not only has she had mostly mediocre DM experiences including: a 3 hour session of Rage of Demons where we never made it out of the jail cell and one PC died, Princes of the Apocalypse with the DM who gives the most deadpan descriptions of things and who CONSTANTLY looked up in the book whenever he wasn't sure about anything, and a former 3.5/PF DM who was just generally dickish while simultaneously not having bothered to learn any of the 5e rules. Also she started off playing a Tiefling Ranger and switched to Wood Elf when she felt that she wasn't contributing as much as other party members and then steadily got bored because most of her turns consisted of just spamming attacks(and occasionally casting Hunter's Mark).
Nemesis Destiny
Adventurer
On that note I can elaborate further as well, if you wish, though since my campaign ended at the cusp of Paragon tier, it will be notably less epic than the destruction of two gods
I love reading stuff like this
I've always wanted to do something of an XCOM RPG... it's never gone off the drawing board stage, though I did a brief trial of it in a Shadowrun campaign, the players were mostly 'meh' about it, so I dropped it.
Nemesis Destiny
Adventurer
double post? I thought that was over with the dialup days...
Yes - we need more actual play threads, especially for 4e D&D.
If you want to do it in a new thread, make sure you mention me.
Nemesis Destiny
Adventurer
Done. That was lengthier than I thought, and I still think it fails to get enough of the thematic elements across.
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