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The Main Event is an alumni of Dickinson College and The University of Miami Law School. He writes dungeon mastering advice in his Pain of Campaigning series. Now a practicing attorney in Maryland specializing in Wills, Trusts, and Estates, The Main Event is an aspiring author and always looking for new clients or avenues of publication. Email him or follow him on Twitter.
Pain of Campaigning: XIX Getting My Hands Dirty
Last week I dealt with brainstorming for my military-based high fatality huge party epic campaign. This week, I’m going to elaborate on a few of the underlying concepts for the campaign. What follows are my preliminary rules/fluff for the game, subject to further consideration and reader feedback.
A Word on Magic: In my game world (this is in fact a MASSIVE prequel to the games my friends have been playing in since the seventh grade) I’ve held to a simple rule regarding magic and new spells: unusual circumstances allow for more powerful magic. It sets a tone for magic, in that if an NPC wants to use a spell to cause the apocalypse it’s going to have some steep requirements, such as the souls of thousands of innocents or a unique astrological event. In the past, PCs rarely have performed this kind of plot magic, though I’m not opposed to the idea. However, it colors the effects of the Magical Prophecy that fuels a bit of the plot and acts as an implicit promise that I won’t just massively overhaul the world with a huge spell out of nowhere.
The Prophecy: Although the first adventure is still coalescing, the background to the game is coming along nicely. Essentially, only nineteen small villages remain in the wake of a cataclysmic attack by the marauding “Fesh” on legendary city of Aurum. A preliminary report has the surviving attackers numbering 1900 “profanes” (i.e. Monsters). Each of the 19 Village Elders are accomplished spell casters. They assess realize the only thing they have to hang their magical hat on is the 19 numerology. True, it’s a bit of a stretch of fortune, but it’s coincidental enough to not be truly logic-defying. They craft an incantation-turned-prophecy to buy time and hope that there magic is strong enough. Their intention is to create a barrier to save their villages, the rest of their prophecy represents more of a wish list, initially. As it turns out, their blood sacrifice and the “19″ numerology turns out to have enough power that the prophecy becomes an entity of itself, assisting the villagers and their champions (the PCs). Without further adieu, the Prophecy in question:
The XIX Prophecy
On the Eve of the Birth
Of the 190,000th
Heroes Emerge from Scorched Earth
Of the Number Nineteen
Each path eldritch or Mundane
Answer to slaughter against their Name
Nineteen Towns the soul Survivors
Blood of the First Born
Barrier ‘gainst threats most Dire
Solace to those battle Torn
Nineteen Months it Shall Stand
Nineteen Heroes in a Fallen Land
Nineteen towns soon to Fade
Nineteen Harmonies to Aid
Heroes that would Fight
Against Fesh and its Blight
To Save the tattered Remains
Or else be reduced to Chains
By Nineteen Hundred Profanes
Design Objectives for the Nineteen Harmonies: Fluff-wise the Harmonies are 19 boons for the players when they select specific groups of characters for a mission. My goal was to make unusual adventuring groups viable, reward synergistic party relationships, and address some likely deficiencies typical adventuring parties would have in a military setting. Moreover, I wanted to give each “family” of Harmonies a distinct flavor, reward unusual composition, and encourage the use a diverse set of characters in the campaign. Each Harmony is activated based on a four man party, which means others can tag along and mooch so long as four characters achieve a Harmony. As such, there need not be any ‘balance’ between these Harmonies, they just need to be interesting enough that PCs want to use them and not so good as to totally make the party overpowering.
The Nineteen Harmonies: Successful use of a harmony on an adventure awards 250XP per Tier and 500 GP (possibly scaled each tier) to each character in the campaign.
- Martial Squad: (Four Martial Classes)
- 1/Enc: Each Member may reroll damage
- Arcane Squad: (Four Arcane Classes)
- Resist: 5 Energy Type of Choice (stacks with previous resistance)
- Primal Squad: (Four Primal Classes)
- Ignore Difficult Natural Terrain For Movement Purposes
- Divine Squad: (Four Divine Classes)
- +3 HP on any healing
- Power in Diversity: (Four Different Power Sources)
- Each PC: +1 to Defense of Choice
- Defender Squad: (Four Defender Classes)
- 1/Enc: Party chooses Hunter’s Quarry or Sneak Attack at the start of any encounter.
- 1/Turn: One teammate a turn may use chosen ability.
- Leader Squad: (Four Leader Classes)
- 1/Turn: Team Member may Mark a Monster he attacks.
- Striker Squad: (Four Striker Classes)
- 1/Turn: Team Member May Use Second Wind as Move Action
- Controller Squad: (Three Controller Classes)
- 1/Turn: Team Member May Shift as a Minor Action
- Balanced Team: (All Four Class Roles)
- 1/Turn: One character may treat an encounter power as reliable.
- Language Bound: (Shared Non-Common Language Speakers)
- Special “Battle Tongue” that none outside the party can understand
- Diversity Team: (Four Different Race Types)
- Ability to understand all language w/ minor action concentration
- Pure Blood: (Groups Apply to #12)
- All Racial Encounter Powers may be swapped with the owner’s permission (still only apply 1/Enc. Total). In the case of humans, simply replicate either Half Dilettante or Half Orc power.
- Human: Human, Half Elf, Half Orc
- Fey: Elf, Eladrin, Gnome, Dark Elf
- Rock: Dwarf, Goliath
- Planar: Genasai, Deva, Tiefling
- Misfits: Halfling, Shifter, Dragonborn
- All Racial Encounter Powers may be swapped with the owner’s permission (still only apply 1/Enc. Total). In the case of humans, simply replicate either Half Dilettante or Half Orc power.
- Light Foot Squad: (No Armor Above Light)
- +Gain temporary training in Hide or Perception. If already trained, choose a +2 bonus to one.
- Heavy Metal: (All Medium or Above)
- Ignore (-1) Armor Check
- Martial Prowess: (All Martial Weapons)
- +1 AC to all Party
- Simple Soldiers (No Martial Weapons)
- +1 To Hit to all Party
- Magicked Up: (All Party Members Have Magic Items)
- Should any magic item be lost, any PC can make an Arcana Check (DC: Magic Item Level + 10) to discern its location.
- No Magic: (No Party Members Have Magic Items; only applies to characters without magic items)
- Each PC may choose to give one stat a +6 Enhancement bonus for the adventure.
Conclusion: So, there you have it, a pretty extensive post previewing the underlying concepts of my game. The Prophecy is serviceable and it rhymes, but I never particularly like my own poetry. Some of the Harmonies don’t seem quite right to me yet (particularly #10), and there’s definitely room to approve some of the wording, but overall I’m very satisfied with my progress.
I've Had Enough
I can no longer stand idly by, party to a fraud perpetrated on our readers. Taking advantage of the fact that I’m the only writer on duty right now, hoping that my treason goes undetected long enough for word to spread, I make my stand. It is with a heavy heart that I admit my role in the greatest gaming scheme since card counting at Blackjack. I, for one, will come clean. Long ago, TheGame and Bartoneus entrusted me with administrative capabilities during times in which they were away. I mean to use that now, in an attempt to wipe the slate clean. [Read the rest of this article]
Inq. of the Week: PHB2 Power Creep
Last week we asked about Worldwide D&D Game Day. 68% said that did not go (yours truly included), 28% went and enjoyed, while 4% of attendees went and had a bad time. This week we’re going to look at the state of D&D now that the dust has settled after the release of the PHB2.
In the heyday of 3.5 I’d browse every new splat book, not for intriguing new play options (many, many sucked), but for the overpowered Prestige Class de jour. After all, who didn’t want to dip into a single level of six prestige classes for awesome abilities? With a few exceptions, the poor original DMG prestige classes were forgotten, unless of course something new came out that made a dog suddenly viable (Duskblade -> Dragon Disciple). Now, with the PHB2 out I was curious to see if this newer, more-balanced D&D suffered the same fate as its predecessors: Power Creep.
Having perused the PHB2 myself, but not really having played with the classes too extensively, I have to say that it’s a very tightly balanced book. If anything, some classes come across as too bland and conservative rather than new and powerful. With that in mind, we come to this week’s Inquisition:
Loading ...Pain of Campaigning: Actually Planning
After a long hiatus of actively DMing, I was roused from my gaming slumber. The results are a bit unusual and probably not going to be to everyone’s liking, but after droves and droves of articles detailing how to run games, I figure I’d do an article of my current work in progress: XIX.
The strange confluence of events inspired my current D&D project
- My impending departure from Miami and return to Maryland would put me in an area ripe with players in friends interested in RPGs.
- The release of the PHB 2 (and some of the grousing about “too many options”) made me consider a way to let people get a flavor of it all.
- My own article, and Original Sultan’s comments supporting my “War is Hell” flavored D&D campaign caused me to consider a fun way to have high fatality games.
- The strange convergence that unwittingly occurred between a long gestating fiction project and my first ideas for this game.
I decided I wanted to have a game where characters died (and over the course of the game a lot would die,) not through my own mean-spirited intent to kill, but through insane difficulty and the need to sacrifice lives for military objectives. So, I decided I would make a game where there were a preset number of characters, far outstripping the number of players, but I had trouble initially settling on a number and method of deciding the composition of a party of characters, but not necessarily full-time PLAYER characters. Then, in struck me, why not just have one of each class? Hence, I came up with the idea for eighteen characters (PHB 1 & 2 + Artificer + Swordmage) , but quickly remembered (thanks to The Game) the impending release of the Monk. Hence, 19 characters… or the much cooler campaign slogan: XIX.
Sensing that XIX could be a ready-made theme I decided to just have be important to well… everything. I had already decided on a military-based theme and figured “why not have the party have the unfortunate task of dealing with a large force of varied power, numbering precisely 1900 monsters?” (Imagine a Battlestar Galactica-like opening scene at the start of each adventure with the total enemies remaining). And why not have them defending 19 hapless towns? At this point, having overcome a few initial intellectual hurdles, I had a few logistical problems crop up.
Problems
- I needed a “timer” to force the characters to actually do something against the horde of monsters (or “Profanes” as I later flavored them). It couldn’t be so arbitrary that the players felt like they’d lose on a whim, but there had to have some flexibility so I could move the game along.
- I needed a reason why some CR 25 baddy wouldn’t just waltz in and slaughter the characters at first level.
- I needed a way to succinctly hand out information on the setting and foreshadow some of the events to come.
- A reason to avoid the Video Game RPG pitfall of neglecting fully half of playable characters in favor of leveling up favored characters.
- Satisfying the people that LIKED having their own character without undermining the whole point of the “massive team.” Also, making sure I didn’t have to level up 19 freaking characters.
Solutions
I wrapped up Problems #1 and #2 with a neat little bow: a magical barrier of blood powered by the poor frail Elders from the 19 towns. Those very same barriers will only survive 19 months (shocking, huh?) and would degrade, only recognizing more and more serious threats as time passed. The PCs would also have to consider those poor old folks, as keeping the barrier up would eventually cost those noble oldsters their lives. I envisioned instances where the Players would take on a mission, leave some other characters at home base, only to have a bunch of “leftovers” from earlier missions storm into their once-safe territory.
For problem #3, I quickly settled on creating a prophecy. With my own fetishistic obsessions with the number 19 in this game, a prophecy revolving around the number seemed like an easy fix, provided I could write one that didn’t make me gag (I’m not fond of my poetry skills).
Problem #4′s solution came to me from its source: video games. Games like Chrono Trigger and X Men: Legends incentivized using certain characters together. Continuing my number 19 obsession, I whipped up 19 different combinations of character types that would unlock specific advantages (later dubbed The 19 Harmonies) for the party usable in every encounter. Moreover, successful “unlocking” a Harmony would result in EVERY character getting XP and the award of yet-to-be-defined prophetic bonuses/resources (something along the lines of plot magic). I decided to tie this in with the aforementioned prophecy, making the Prophecy/Ritual of the Elders become a force unto itself, willing the PCs to win against their seemingly insurmountable odds.
Problem #5 resulted in a compromise. I decided that each player could designate a “Primary” character that was reserved for them to use when they showed up and acted as their default persona for role playing between missions. I intended to farm out the character leveling process to interested players anyway. This “Primary” rule guaranteed that I wasn’t stuck acting as custodian for the whole stable of characters. So, at least one character per player would be their responsibility, with the option of players taking on a whole “team”, with the understanding only one could be their primary character.
Conclusions
There you have it, my background planning for my D&D game. If interest on the subject is high I’ll actually post the XIX Prophecy and the XIX Harmonies I’ve created.
War in Low Level Campaigns
Most gamers tend to think of fantasy warfare as a clash that centers on heroes of outlandish skill, immense power, and blistering charisma. Wading through common soldiers to find other champions is equally pervasive in literature and cinema (Lord of the Rings, Troy, etc.). To that extent, DMs reserve massive warfare for characters of mid to high level. This article intends to look at a few ways of showcasing low level PCs in large scale warfare and the inherent advantages to taking your game in a warfare based direction.
Hired Scouts: Imagine that the drums of war are beating: armies are mustering, conscription is beginning, and the great game of thrones is reaching its zenith. However, military units take time to move and march. So, an enterprising Kingdom/ General/ Officer decides to do something unusual: hire adventurers. When you think about it, the versatility of a group of 1st -3rd level PCs make them an ideal group to throw into the wilderness and nose around. You can easily take things on an exploratory angle, or it can evolve in to one of the adventure ideas that follow.
Got There First: Military history is filled with examples of soldiers changing the course of a battle through intelligent decisions rather than military might. One of the easiest decisions to portray is holding a key piece of terrain. A PC’s skill role can very easily inform the party that a hilltop (or whatever) provides a critical vantage point (or supply point, etc.) and that losing it would doom the kingdom’s forward forces. This leaves the PCs to hold the hill against more traditional forwards scouts, whether they be kobolds, goblins, or a more traditional military unit. Success means that they gain a degree of renown, not for their godly combat prowess, but for tactical acumen.
Guerrilla With A Cause: Another thing that PCs can manage to do is nip at the heels of a major military force. The enemy makes efforts to guard its men and material, but a well run team of adventurers are an ideal group to destroy wagons, steal valuable equipment, and kill hapless sleeping soldiers. In a way, this is the more active alternative from the “Got There First” idea. There, they react to a situation and defend. Here, they are told to plan on their own means of being general nuisances. This kind of task can easily evolve into a full scale guerrilla warfare series of adventures where the PCs spend their time causing trouble for an occupying force. When word of their success spreads, the PCs could find themselves as beacons of hope for subjugated peoples or propaganda pieces to spur on the main military force.
War with Low Level Benefits: Having the PCs operate as a group of military troubleshooters gives the campaign a definitive direction and bond. You can run the game brutally and kill off characters if you want to emphasize the “War is Hell” aspect. Moreover, at low levels you can have them graze against the REAL powerful entities that populate their world. Sure, they might be being dealt with by others, but if you play long enough it will inevitably be the PCs that has to figure out how to deal with the high level Wizard. Moreover, once the PCs do reach those mid to high levels they’ll get the chance to turn the tide of battles single-handedly, but they’ll be doing it having had endured the terror of being a scrub during the early days of the war. And that will make the epic battle all the more satisfying.
Everyone Remembers Their First [DM]
Although it’s not a secret, it’s not oftentimes explicit: many of the primary writers and commentators on Critical Hits have known each other for quite a long time. In fact, most of us can trace back our D&D gaming lineage to a single Dungeon Master. That’s not to say we hadn’t played before or more often with others, but our friend Abe made an indelible mark on all of our gaming consciousnesses. This article examines our early gaming experiences with Abe and considers how they affected my current notions on role-playing and D&D. [Read the rest of this article]
Pain of Campaigning VIII: What About the Bad Guys?
Intro: Looking at the Campaigning Inquisition, I saw that the vast majority of people favor heroic or at least characters that have the potential to be heroes. Considering the nature of the D&D beast, this makes sense, but I worry that people may be hesitant to try one of the most enjoyable modes of D&D: playing as one of the bad guys. My favorite D&D game of all time had us play demon-summoning, undead-raising, townsfolk-terrorizing evil sons of bitches waging war on civilization; until my character betrayed the party when he realized ruling over an empire of uncivilized barbarians would be completely unacceptable. This article is going to give some tips on how to organize and maintain an evil party, how to make enjoyable for players that may be leery of the idea, and how to make it enjoyable for you even if you have reservations about such a game as a DM.
Maintaining & Organizing Play: The first problem people have with an evil party is keeping it together and focused. Rather than abiding moral sense to help people you have a group of pricks and selfish jerks. So, you have to have a hook that keeps the party together and you have to make it clear that it’s necessary during character creation. Some good hooks involve the need to overthrow a sickening empire of good, an even more evil apocalyptic power seeking to destroy the very world that the PCs would dominate, or a simple case of necessity where law enforcement, good religious groups, or polities are going to hunt them down one by one. Either way, make it clear and firm that these motivations are required AT THE START.
Winning over the Dubious Player: Some of your players may have understandable reservations about hanging up their hero boots and switching sides to the villains. First off, just because a character is evil doesn’t mean they have to contemptible murderers. You could play an honorable, but brutal, warrior or a otherwise selfish spell caster that’s looking out for his family. Alternatively, some parties have the resident bad guy that works with the heroes: a character could be the opposite: the good guy that finds himself amongst cutthroats and bastards because of circumstances. Or a character could be the mole or spy, but this time a spy for the good guys. Its important to realize that just because the party may have selfish/evil goals doesn’t mean each PC has to be that way.
Winning over the Dubious DM Inside You: The idea of having a bunch of bastards scheme, connive, murder, and rampage through your campaign world may not win you over at first, however there are a lot positives. First, there’s something morbidly amusing about watching PCs deal with normal legal authorities and going totally against the grain. Secondly, as big, bad and evil as the villains are that you’ve created, you’ve never seen anything compared to the scheming of a group of PCs. The plans they execute and the things that truly ‘evil’ characters come up with can be pretty mind blowing. Which leads me to my final point that the long term can fully appreciate. When its all said and done, and the baddest, most despicable PCs have built their empire of evil you have something great: a ready made second campaign. Imagine the horror of your players when they’re forced to retire their magnificent bastards and be the poor group of souls that have to figure out a way of BEATING them…
The Pain of Campaigning I: Story and Pre-Game Decisions
The Pain of Campaigning II: Starting the Game
The Pain of Campaigning III: The Plot Thickens
The Pain of Campaigning IV: Put a Little Politics In It
The Pain of Campaigning V: Suitable Villains
The Pain of Campaigning VI: Give Your Villains Some Panache!
The Pain of Campaigning VII: The Finale (Part 1: What You Want the Adventure to be)
The Pain of Campaigning VIII: What About the Bad Guys?
Dungeons & Dragons & Racism
Can't We All Just Get Along?
Considering the Inquisition of the Week is ‘Races’ I thought I’d look at an issue that has personally caused me fair share of incredulous chuckles and uncomfortable examinations: race in Dungeons & Dragons. At first blush, D&D is a harmless fantasy game of heroes and villains, black & white. This article will examine the phenomena, offer some explanations as to its implications, and suggest how I have, anecdotally, approached the quandary of race in Dungeons & Dragons.
Orcs are just stand-ins for the hordes of mooks from action cinema, they just happen to look different than us. After all, every evil villain needs his flunkies, and the tradition of fantasy has those flunkies inevitably appear as inhuman beasts. But then, consider how D&D has evolved and how vastly different it is than the action movies I compare them to. In those movies, the protagonist can’t enter a bar, sense that an off-duty mook is there, and unceremoniously bash his face in. They are just normal guys that work for a bad guy (a fact that the Venture Brothers show loves to toy with). Now, let’s consider the scenario in D&D. The party walks into a bar in a normal town, sees an Orcish gathering, and a dwarf unlimbers his axe and goes to town on them. My point isn’t to argue whether or not that a ‘good guy’ would do that, but just that the Players, based on typical source material provided by Wizards of the Coast, would consider such an action reasonable, if not prudent. After all, Orcs are evil.
Not only are they evil, but they have a genetic predisposition to heightened strength and health. I guess that makes them good athletes too, right? And man, they sure can take a lot of punishment thanks to that Encounter power! And it’s not just Orcs, it is every race. Just consider the underlying assumptions PCs make every time they encounter a humanoid they are familiar with. The underlying implication, that you know something about a person based on their race, is anathema to the state ethos of our modern society, yet we play a game that not only enforces this notion, but thrives on it. There are a few plausible reactions to this kind of inherent racism.
First and foremost, some may choose to dismiss this line of thought because we are admittedly speaking about a fantasy game. Part of the game is succinctly describing to players what their characters are experiencing. Races, and their standard modus operandi, are valuable shorthand for the players and DM. What may be inappropriate for real life (hey there Jew, be my lawyer!) works well in a fantasy role playing context. Moreover, races that have different rules provide different play options and interesting decisions in character building, both of which are good things. On the other hand, it’s inescapable that race in D&D exists to justify the annihilation and pillaging from lesser beings. After all, how often are PCs challenged to consider the morality in plunging through a goblin warren, taking all valuables, and leaving cowering goblin children and infants with nothing? I suspect such things are infrequently considered. What’s more is this kind of chilling logic serves as an eerie mirror into classic justifications for expansion in modern human history (such as the American West or Hitler’s Third Reich).
As a DM I embrace D&D for what is, a game, but I refuse to allow the players lazy, albeit justified, racism act as an excuse for what would otherwise be poor behavior. Typically I use NPCs and occasions where races act “against the grain”, such as the peaceable goblins that find their homey warren invaded by overzealous dwarven miners. What’s more, I categorically reject the notion that monster types or races are unequivocally of a certain alignment. PCs learn rather quickly from this and find that although they can predict combat tactics and the like based on race they should be weary in assuming that they can ‘heroically’ attack the bugbears. All in all, I think that the D&D can promote a sort of racist laziness in players that I find both boring and disturbing. Rather than railing against its propensity for causing this I find that tailoring my style to be aware of this tendency acts as a sufficient curb on the greatest excesses D&D racism can cause.
Four Concepts Adrift in D&D
With the impending release of the PHB2, and the general notion of what will be included, it occurred to me that even with these classes there seem to be some fairly reasonable character concepts that just don’t seem to mesh well with D&D. This article will identify those concepts, identify where I perceive the shortcoming in bringing the concept to fruition, and take a stab at how to solve this problem.
PIRATE (Naval/Airship characters in general)
Problem: Although not limited to Pirates, we all know that when we talk about the problems with nautical characters we’re all thinking pirates! In my mind I see the problem as two-fold. First, if you make yourself adept at ship-oriented things (including making up skills), it tends to make you bad in other respects (i.e. plowing through Dungeons, fighting Dragons). Secondly, there are no real powers/feats or much anything that manage to help this concept out anyway. So, here you are, wanting to be a pirate, but without any real rules to support your plundering anyway and with the few small things you can do just making you a bit of clunker off the boat. Overall, I view this as a crunch deficiency.
Solution: First, if your PCs really want to be pirates, figure out a way to set up some standard pirate ship skill challenges using non-obvious skills that are not perfect fits. For instance, you could let the PCs use their skills to help the pilot: use Endurance to help work the sails during a storm (keeping up at the task) or Nature to help figure out what to expect from the storm. Secondly, I would suggest that should a class be made, or powers be made available along the lines of the Spell Scarred, and that they should simply receive ‘bonus text’ in the nautical setting along the lines of the benefits fighters gain when using hammers with certain powers.
PRIVATE EYE
Problem: The hard boiled investigator just seems to be without a home in D&D. Sure, there is not a ‘detective’ class, but it seems like you can replicate a great deal of this through the Rogue. Now, perhaps the focus on backstab is a bit inappropriate, but the skill set and attribute focuses are decent approximation. To me, its not the lack of private eye/investigator rules that shoots this concept in the foot, but the inherited assumptions of most D&D games. Simply put, most DMs don’t run games to accommodate a mystery solving sleuth.
Solution: With the proper heads up you can probably keep some mysteries running through the game. You can also incorporate them into an overaching plot so that one PC’s constantly nattering about clues doesn’t bug the other characters too much.
HORSE WARRIOR
Problem: Dudes fighting on horseback is a mainstay in fantasy, yet it always seems like a clunky afterthought in D&D. Sure, Paladins used to get warhorses, but they always got in the way and their solution to the problem was having the horse be summonable (nice hand wave, guys). In 4E they have lifted that portion of the paladin concept, but we have no real viable solution for a PC that loves riding horses. The rules have always felt inorganic and tacked on… plus it’s just annoying to have the dude that leads his horse through a dungeon, and equally problematic having the old school horses that would be more formidable than low level characters! Right now, again, I see a crunch problem.
Solution: To me, this is actually an easy one. The ‘pets’ from prior D&D editions felt extraneous to me as well, or ridiculous. Now, the 4.0 Beast Ranger has addressed that problem. I was impressed with its simplicity and effectiveness. I would hope that in the Divine Power book they reintroduce the Paladin Mount with a similar rules set.
NOBLE
Problem: The noble comes in many guises, but amongst the general notion resides some of my favorite concepts (such as the “Lord without a Throne” aka Lan from Wheel of Time or Paul from Dune). However, the mainline D&D product does virtually nothing to support it, despite its prevalence in non-D&D d20 products (Star Wars, Wheel of Time, etc). As simple as it is to make it part of your own character’s fluff, the concept is prevalent enough that there should be some meat to the idea. We have reviewed products that use multi-classing as a fix, but this does not deal with the idea of possessing land, title, or the background skills that would be logical for your upbringing. I view these problems as a lack of crunch.
Solution: The idea of the multiclass noble is interesting, but only gets at part of the problem. I think the idea of having feats that reflect a noble background (with the skills, lands, wealth, titles) and some just general use powers open to people that take that feat make sense. A full blown noble class would inevitably be a leader, but I am not sure that if there is enough inherent to the concept that involves combat to be a fully fleshed-out 4E class. Alternatively, the noble could be a class that features ‘advance multi-classing’ where you have to choose a class to supplement your power selection.
Book Series Review: The Malazan Books of the Fallen
Background: The Malazan Books of the Fallen is a mouthful to say, but really that’s for the best, because it’s also a whopper to read. Currently on book eight of ten, the universe also encompasses a bunch of novellas (which I have yet to read) and an entirely different author writing novels in a shared world. Steven Erikson was an anthropologist by trade and boy does it show. Everything about the different races and cultures encountered is impeccably realized and fleshed out in a story that’s scope is epic on a level of the Illiad. Elder Gods, Immortal Ascendants, Ancient Races, Dragons, and even humanity are engaged in a multifaceted struggle across three continents (thus far). For instance, the second book of the series only has a small group of five characters from the first book while the rest (at least 80% of the text) is devoted entirely new characters. The fifth book introduces an (almost) entirely new continent, cultures and plot-lines. For me, the series has yet to disappoint as it avoids the common epic fantasy pitfall of nothing happening (see Wheel of Time) and uses some genre savvy tropes to cleverly explain the common aspects of the genre while it turns some others on its head.
Setting: The series begins with a focus on the Malazan Empire, a newish aggressively expansive political body and its unique brand of soldier. From there, the reader is treated to the T’lan Imass (undead that swore an eternal vow of GENOCIDE against an ancient powerful race of creatures called the Jaghut), the Pannion Domin (perhaps the most horrifying ‘evil empire’ I’ve ever read about), the Lethererii Kingdom (an interesting combination of capitalism run amok and the old Chinese notion of empire), the mysterious Anomander Rake and his brooding ennui-riddle Children of Darkness, along with countless others. Magic is drawn from magical realms called warrens (the more modern manifestation common amongst humanity) or ancient holds (elder magic). The power of various factions is one of constant flux and even immortals fear the strongest amongst humanity. The series deals a lot with the foibles of humanity and history, but also with the helplessness of the divine in the face of demands and actions of their followers in the name of their religion.
Story: With the scope of the series it’s hard to pinpoint a single plot, but the main thrust of the series focuses on the newly re-emergent Crippled God and his destructive machinations. Readers get to see the maneuverings amongst the divine, the headstrong and clever mortals that intercede and the soldiers that just end up caught up in conflicts a bit over their pay grade. Sometimes the link to this overarching idea is tenuous at best, or even non existent, but it is the most clearly identifiable thrust common to all the stories. The characters are numerous and mostly well developed, but Erikson’s fetish for the infantry grunt can get a little tiresome when you have upwards of thirty marines traipsing around a novel (all with cute little nicknames like Blend, Smiles or Picker), it’s hard to keep them all straight. That being said, every reader is sure to find their favorites amongst a rich cast of heroes, scoundrels, and outright evil bastards.
Overall: A-. The strength of the books in their scope, depth and imagination in a way serves as its weakness as well. Accessibility and plot structure suffer a bit as a result. While not easy to pick up as a book like Mistborn, it’s a project committing to the series, but well worth the effort.
