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After tweaking some characters to fit into the changed rules, we began where we left off. The party discovered most of the secret doors in the dungeon thanks to successful spot checks, and found the undead drow "king", from whom they managed to get the crown from by paying him with 90 gp in compensation (the price was originally 300 gp, to which they managed to make him agree to by making hard persuasion checks, and managed to make him agree to a lower price by a nigh-impossible deception check). I gave them XP for good role-playing, and they leveled up. The party, after returning to town, decided to tackle the Ogremoch's Bane quest. They have yet to encounter meaningful threats in terms of combat. The skill die mechanic, while nice, sometimes seems a little too swingy, and I think there...

Most editions of D&D have been very neutral in terms of world lore. Races might receive a small assumption of flavour but this is very easily altered, and most classes make no assumptions regarding the type of fantasy world the DM is running. All save one: the cleric. The cleric makes a pretty huge assumption that is going to drive this entire blog.

Before I say my say, there are a plenty of good resources already on the web for creating fantasy pantheons. In a 30-second Google search I found this site and this site, but there are many others (Edit: such as Lord Archon's here). Feel free to check them or do your own search.

This is the seventh part in a series on fantasy world building.

Chapters

Below are links to the other chapters in this series.

Introduction

Part

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Everyone’s time comes eventually. Eventually bad tactics, story, or cold dice kill a character. I’ve lost a couple and I’ve killed a couple.

But what happens next? I’m not talking about the long tunnel with the bright light or passage to the Shadowfell, but what happens at the table. A character just died and there are two or three hours left in the session. What do you do?

What Came Before

This is the spiritual follow-up to an earlier blog where I mused about killing PCs, but did not really touch on the follow-up. This seemed like an omission, which I now correct.

Below are some options and discussion on what to do when a PC dies at your table.

The Watcher

The baseline action for a PC dying unexpectedly is that player sits around bored, watching events unfold.

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Perfect worlds don’t need heroes, and they certainly don’t need adventurers. Functioning kingdoms do not need to hire mercenaries to do the jobs of soldiers or a police force, civilized areas do not need a half-dozen heavily armed warriors acting as caravan guards, and very few hamlets or villages are threatened with slavery and death in a happy countryside. By the needs and conventions of the game, D&D worlds have to be seriously flawed, and even kingdoms ruled by a kind and just king must have their problems. Even campaigns built around delving into forgotten ruins seeking treasure and magic suggest a non-utopia based on the fact such a dangerous occupation is appealing, which says that there are few safer ways of earning that wealth. After all, the life of an adventurer is

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Since its introduction a few months ago, the Maneuvers system has proven a huge success, and well it should! This system is easy to understand, easy to use, and adds flexibility to otherwise boring classes. No longer does the fighter's turn have to consist of "I hit it with my sword" round after round; now he has a number of options to choose from to make his play more interesting.

However, with all of the hype that this system is getting, it can be easy to miss the mistakes that have still been made. In his commentary on the monk, even Mike Mearls identified one of the largest problems that remain:

For instance, right now the implementation of sneak attack and rogue maneuvers overall isn't quite where we'd like them to be.

A Unique Experience

The real problem, though, isn't with the

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The dominant element in fantasy campaigns tends to be nations, be it tiny city-states like the city of Greyhawk, or massive continent-spanning empires like the Five Nations of pre-Last War Eberron. Expansive and detailed nations are a staple of fantasy worlds and separate fantasy from the vague unnamed kingdoms of fairy tales.

This is the Fifth Part in a series on fantasy world building

Chapters

Below are links to the other chapters in this series.

Introduction

Part 1: The Hook

Part 1.5: Factors

Part 2: Conflict

Part 3: Geography

Part 4: Races

Part 5: Nations

Part 6: Room for monsters

Part 7: Deities

Part 8: Cities

Part 9: Factions

Part 10: History

Part 11: Economics

Part 12: Culture

Part 13: Starting

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Non-human races are a big part of what separates Fantasy fiction from Swords & Sorcerery (and extremely poorly researched historical fiction). Folk Tales, Mythology, and Tolkien have all blended together in a smoothy of imagination to given us the standard fantastic races of RPGs, and numerous fantasy stories and D&D splat books have added and expanded the pool of potential races for a fantasy world.
This is the fourth part in a series on Campaign World Building for 5th Edition AD&D, and the first where we really get into the conventions and assumptions of D&D Next.

Chapters

Below are links to the other chapters in this series on World Building.

Introduction

Part 1: The Hook

Part 1.5: Factors

Part 2: Conflict

Part 3: Geography

Part 4: Races

Part 5: Nations

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I’ve written a fair bit about skills in 4e, and how I personally think the math behind skills is a little shakier than, well, anything else in the edition. You can find some of my earlier blogs here and here. One I’d specifically like to point out is this on reinventing skills in 4e.

It might seem a little late to be thinking about house rules for 4th Edition, but I don’t believe so. Not everyone will be making the switch from 4e to 5e, and even those that do might decide to play the occasional short adventure or micro-campaign in 4e. No matter of the final quality of 5e, there will be some adventures and stories that might be better served by 4e. And if the system can be made a little more playable that’s only a bonus.

The Problem

Here’s a quick summary

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Given the good feedback, I'll detail this "new" cosmology of mine in a small series of blogs. After a little intro that explains a bit of what I did with this cosmology in the latest blog, I will then delve into the concept of Elders and how they (can) mingle with the Fey.
While the previous blog was more of a "lore" article, now I'm doing more of a "designer's notes".

So what about the planes?

As you may have noticed, my cosmology draws heavily from 4e, more than from the Great Wheel. It is aimed at explaining things more rationally than the classic cosmology, even 4e's, so fitting in the aligned planes and the "wheel" schematic is a bit weird IMO.

I wanted a more "top-bottom" approach, that I actually see more as concentric.

That is, I see the "Elemental Chaos" as being nothing more than...