Ad Astra Noctis Part 2

Bering

Zephyrantes 1337, Anno Astra 1002/5/3 0732

Glenn glanced at his watch as he waited with Robinson.  Three minutes felt like an eternity in this cold. "I really wish these assholes had waited until I'd eaten my food.  First real meal since leaving the starport over Vivian and I get kidnapped."

 

Ad Astra Noctis Part 1

Bering

Zephyrantes 1337, Anno Astra 1002/5/3 0310

Glenn stretched, finally free of starport customs with his luggage claimed.  He'd been told that interstellar travel was like the trams and trains back home on Cluster 1; an interminable wait but that it goes by quickly.  Since his new employers had paid for his passage, he'd taken the stellar gate from Cluster 1 to Finster, shaving months off his travel time.  Skipping across 114 light years and most of the sector in an instant was miraculous to him.  But the journey from there had been a month-long affair from Finster to Vivian to Bering.  The novelty of red-shifted and blue-shifted stars out the windows had vanished after the first week out towards Vivian; he'd pulled the window blind down after.

Lux Aeterna: War Puppets (M&M)

Right, so the War Puppets are up for conversion this week.  You'll notice some powers are broken out into separate entries.  This is because they require slightly more explanation, have a descriptor in brackets, or are a group of effects.

Campaign Settings: Buy-In

Somebody I know said that creating an RPG system is easy, but a good RPG campaign setting is much more difficult.

The World VI: Interesting Places in Galedon

Since one of Godbound's main conceits, setting-wise, is that the world was broken into pieces I kept that idea when working out my own setting.  This particular piece of the multiverse is called Galedon and I thought today I'd share some of its more interesting places.

The World V: The Arts of Magic

There's high magic (known as theurgy in Godbound's rules) and there's low magic.  While the standard traditions exist in The World, they're slightly different and have some new kin.

The World IV: Denizens Continued

More notes on the denizens.

The World III: Denizens

And now a little bit about the denizens of the World.

The World II: The Godbound

Now to go into the various kinds of Godbound that inhabit the World.  Unless otherwise noted, the rules for these Godbound are found in the deluxe version of the rules.  Any changes to their mechanics are noted immediately after the entry.

The World I: An Overview

I've been running a Godbound campaign for a few weeks now and I must say I'm enjoying it.  Sine Nomine Publishing produces a free version of the rules, though I recommend the deluxe version for its expanded material.  While the default setting is cool, I like adding my own twists as usual.  I threw in chunks of Exalted and Nobilis with some of the key defaults for Godbound, as well as some ideas of my own.  Here's the premise piece and a tiny mechanical change from the default assumptions of Godbound.

Setting Saturday 5/6/17: Gods of the Havens

I haven't written one of these in some time.  But as I'm jonesing for some tabletop RPG action, I might as well talk about some stuff I did a few years ago.

Review: Traveller5

I backed Marc Miller's Kickstarter campaign for Traveller5 a number of years ago.  The backer rewards arrived years ago as well, but I never quite looked at the book in any sort of depth.  It is a bit intimidating, being bigger than a copy of HERO System Fifth Edition Revised.  I finally looked at it in depth four years after receiving it.

Traveller: The Fringe Sector

So I am running a Traveller campaign for my friends, and since I haven't really done anything with this blog in awhile due to being busy, I thought I'd do some write-ups on the material I've done for the campaign

Review: Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition

Now that I've had plenty of time to play the game and digest the book contents, I'm going to start the review of it.  Since D&D has had its core rules split into multiple books since its inception and the books these days aren't particularly small, this is a three part article.

First things first.  Wizards of the Coast has provided players with a free 'basic' set of rules here.  It includes the four iconic character classes (cleric, fighter, rogue, wizard) and all the basic stuff you need as a player to play.  It also has a second document that includes all the basic information and tools that a Dungeon Master needs to run the game, including magic items and monsters.  So, if you read this article and think to yourself that you'd like to try D&D 5th Edition, you don't have to plunk down your cold hard-earned cash right away.

There's all sorts of commentary I could go into about why Wizards did released free starter rules but that's not really the purpose of this article.  I could also go into a long discussion about edition numbering and how many editions of D&D there really have been (lots, as it turns out), but this isn't really the place for it.  I know there were quite a few complaints about how Wizards of the Coast released the books over a span of months instead of all at once.  Let's put it into perspective here; releasing all the core books at once is not normal in D&D's history and AD&D 1E players had to wait three years to get their Monster Manual, Player's Handbook, and Dungeon Master's Guide (in that order no less).

Today I'll cover the Player's Handbook. See you after the break.

Player Buy-In

Yeah, I've been sick some more.  And then I had a severe brain drain where I lacked any good ideas or energy to write articles.  I'll get the D&D articles I promised up when I get a chance to sit down and write them as well.  But today I want to talk about player buy-in.

Chargen Lab: Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition

Well, today's character hails from D&D 3e.  The rules for D&D 3e can be found at the d20 SRD page, though I'm afraid character generation is omitted due to the terms of the Open Game License and d20 System License.

Chargen Lab: AD&D 2e

So now onto a character generated in AD&D 2nd Edition.  This is a bit more complicated than the Rules Cyclopedia and 1st Edition characters, so there's more explanations to be had.  Bear in mind that the character I wrote up is a more complex character than the typical 1st level character.

Chargen Lab: AD&D 1st Edition

Continuing a series of characters generated under the various editions of Dungeons & Dragons, here's one generated under AD&D 1st Edition.

Chargen Lab: D&D Rules Cyclopedia

I thought I'd do some articles on character generation in various editions of D&D  to lead up to Monday's official release of 5e.  I would like to say that it is the same character so that we can compare and contrast the various editions, but differences in the chargen methods across editions make that impossible.  We'll start with the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, because that's what's on my desk at the moment.

D&D Retrospective: Basic Dungeons & Dragons

Once upon a time, there were two Dungeons and Dragons; it was in a time before Pathfinder and D&D 4e were competing for supremacy.  One was called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the other was simply Dungeons & Dragons.  Sometimes it was called 'Basic' D&D because of the existence of 'Advanced', other times it was called BECMI D&D.  Or it was named after the people who edited the rules for a given edition.

It might surprise younger readers that Dungeons & Dragons had five editions between 1974 and 1994.  These were evolutionary changes rather than revolutionary, small fixes and clarifications to the game rules instead of vastly different versions of the rules.  Want to know more? See you after the jump.