We had our first session yesterday, and I decided to sport some undeads and witness the power of Turn Undead.

We had our first session yesterday, and I decided to sport some undeads and witness the power of Turn Undead.

We had our first session yesterday, and I decided to sport some undeads and witness the power of Turn Undead. Many lulz were had.

However… Skeletons are labeled as “horde”, so I decided to drag in around 20 of them. After nearly killing two of my three players off, they got a brief respite when they killed a sentient skeleton that commanded them.

But guess what, I hate bookkeeping. Skeletons have 7 HP and 1 armor, and it is a rare event that even the darn fighter kills them in one blow. As such, I had to track the HP of around 7 skellies at a time.

How do my fellow GMs deal with this? I felt that it quickly got a little arbitrary, since I quickly forgot which skeleton the HP count belonged to.

In case people want to know, the Fantastic Locations that we made during our Microscope game are as follows:

In case people want to know, the Fantastic Locations that we made during our Microscope game are as follows:

In case people want to know, the Fantastic Locations that we made during our Microscope game are as follows:

The Glass Spire

A secret order of witch hunters, working directly for the king of Elwynnan, sought to destroy a mage tower in the capital city of Athion, along with all the unfortunate souls within. They stole a new and untested doomsday device from an artificer in the city and then deployed it in the tower. After they had gotten safely away from the city, the device (henceforth known as “Worldbreaker”) went off.

The witch hunters thought it a bomb, but it didn’t destroy the tower. Instead, the city around the tower was leveled and the ground was turned into glass, as were the tower. An expedition was sent in to investigate, but only one elven woman survived, a magitech who claimed that her party was assaulted, and by large murdered, by a gigantic glass spider, along with millions of its tiny young.

Shimmerwood

It’s a forest, aye, but that’s about the only natural quality it possess. Shimmerwood wasn’t grown as much as it was crafted. It was meant to be a paradise for a circle of druids, but it was corrupted and twisted by their greed and lust for power. As such, no natural animals inhabit these woods, and abominations and monsters aplenty roam it, always looking for flesh. Even the trees will uproot to crush unwary travelers.

Deeply magical in nature, it ultimately attracted a tribe of wood elves, who used their magics to tame parts of the forest and claim it as their home. Their city is all but unassailable, as one has to venture through miles upon miles of the monster infested forest to even reach it.

The Necrim Ziggurat

The Necrim Cult has long been a plague on the land of Elwynnan, in not long ago, during the Last Great War that brought the world to its knees, they even succeeded in eradicating the country from within by releasing an undead army so immense that it could not possible be sustained by the magics of the necromancers who controlled them.

The trick was the Necrim Ziggurat. Hidden within Elwynnan, the Necrim built an unholy temple to absorb, pervert and channel the magical energies of the land. And as the war raged, they had no shortage of bodies…

The Necrim Cult is devoted to discovering the secrets of eternal life, and their magic is really just a perversion of druidic spirit magic. Instead of spirits though, they bind and enslave souls, or harvest them for energy.

The Flying Citadel of New Athion

The city was constructed at the behest of the mad and self-absorbed king of Athion, long after the capital city was turned to glass by the Worldbreaker device. The city was meant to house and protect the lucky survivors of the Last Great War, and thousands upon thousands of refugees fled their homes to find safety here.

The king was later “persuaded” into abdicating. There was incriminating evidence that he was solely responsible for the destruction of entire cities, and the people would revolt should a certain document “accidentally” fall into the wrong hands. His own daughter was, along with his chief advisor, responsible for this, and when the daughter took the crown, she formed the Great Council, consisting of the various lords, appointed by the surviving nobility.

The city is highly mobile and it travels where the Great Council dictates. They even use this control the weather when possible, so that they have rain when their fields needs it.

The Crystal Caves of Zaiir

This cave, now lost to time, was a source of great power for the Sorcerer King during his long reign many ages ago. It was literally filled with crystals that absorbed energy, and they were used as batteries to power the magitech weapons and equipment of his armies.

Its location was kept a strict secret, and when the capital city of Carelius fell, its whereabouts were lost. No writings were allowed to even document its existence, for fear that it might fall into enemy hands.

Note: We decided that New Athion would be the home base for our campaign.

We finished our second and last session of microscope yesterday.

We finished our second and last session of microscope yesterday.

We finished our second and last session of microscope yesterday. We played it to built some history and setting for the campaign I’m going to GM. The player to my right had the last turn.

This Sunday, we will play our second Microscope session, and our “points of light” inspired setting will then begin…

This Sunday, we will play our second Microscope session, and our “points of light” inspired setting will then begin…

This Sunday, we will play our second Microscope session, and our “points of light” inspired setting will then begin come new year.

I’m so excited! Currently, I “persuading” the other players that the game will be far more interesting if I’m mean when making hard moves.

So far they’re taking the bait. Especially one of them, who usually doesn’t like that kind of “consequence play” as he calls it. He consider it a kind of “gotcha” type play.

He was easily convinced, when I said that earning your loot (and continued existence) was much more satisfying than the adventure being a “cake walk”.

I can’t wait to finally getting started on this game. An actual campaign. 🙂

We have the Paladin, which is the only base class limited to only one race, namely the human.

We have the Paladin, which is the only base class limited to only one race, namely the human.

We have the Paladin, which is the only base class limited to only one race, namely the human.

Which other classes would be iconic for only one race? And which race?

#dragonclass

#dragonclass

#dragonclass  

I’m still working on my dragon class, for those of you who care, and I’ve decided to scrap a lot of my previous ideas. They were too setting specific, and that would be kind of detrimental to the general usefulness of the class I think.

This setting didn’t feature the classical dragons we know, so I decided to remove a lot of stuff. I’ve now decided that the class will be about a young dragon who has yet to find its place in the world. You know, like any other adventurer 😉

To take a D&D’ish vibe, I decided to link the dragon to an element, one you must choose when making your class. Each element will affect your breath weapon in some way, which is perhaps the biggest mechanical effect. The other effects are not yet completely decided, but I have some ideas. One of them is that it should affect your lair as well, by type and location.

For example, Green Dragons (no, I will not color code them, I’m referring to D&D here) has acid breath and lives in forests. I’m going to do something similar. Maybe.

I have already decided a bit about what moves I want in the class. One move is related to your lair, a sanctuary of sort to hoard treasure (which will trigger the lair move), and one about Draconic Physiology. As a separate move, I have the breath attack. Instead of ammo, I use “breath”, which you have 3 of after you make camp, if you get a few hours of sleep. Otherwise, it functions mostly like volley, except the “weapon” itself is inbuilt and have differing effects depending on your element.

I have a lot of ideas for advanced moves, but I won’t dig too deep into this before some play-testing.

James Hawthorne You seem to have taken an interest in this. Thus the tag 😉

I collected all the Compendium Classes I made during #bardweek  on my blog for easy reference.

I collected all the Compendium Classes I made during #bardweek  on my blog for easy reference.

I collected all the Compendium Classes I made during #bardweek  on my blog for easy reference.

Thanks for giving me the inspiration. It was really fun for me to make these! I hope people get some joy out of them 🙂

http://partialsuccess.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/aftermath-of-bard-week/

Sage LaTorra Adam Koebel

Sage LaTorra Adam Koebel

Sage LaTorra Adam Koebel

Will there be a “pretty print” feature for the codex in the foreseeable future?

Or even better, a way to extract and embed the html so you can make your own monster compilations?

I’m thinking of making some monsters for my home campaign, and having a page per monster (plus the layout of the site on each) would be a waste of paper.