A role-playing campaign
Setting: The campaign will take place mainly in T'Regnor, a large, ancient city of mysteries. T'Regnor is now ruled by the mighty and theocratic Empire of Amesh. T'Regnor is also a fairly regular stopping point for visitors from other planes, giving it a much more “cosmopolitan” feel than any other city on Ardovia.
Influences: Fritz Leiber's Lanhkmar, Robert Aspirin's Thieves' World, Jolly Blackburn's Knights of the Dinner Table, among others.
Adventure Types: Mostly dungeon and urban adventures. The setting also provides for political and other heavy role-playing adventuring. Forgoing long epic plots, the campaign will be aim for adventures that can begin and end in a single session. Most of the action will be generated by what the player characters decide to pursue.
Schedule: More or less every Wednesday night.
Number of Players: Open. Since each session will try to be self-contained, people can drop in and out of individual sessions. We'll play with whoever shows up, to the limits of reason.
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Rules: |
Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition. |
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Character Creation: |
Players may use the standard random method if they are creating their characters at the game. They may use the point-buy method to make characters between games, or at the games. |
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Level: |
All new characters start at 2nd level. In higher-level games where you have to replace a fallen PC, the new PC will begin at the lowest current character level. If the fallen PC was already the lowest-level character, the new PC will be one level lower than that. |
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Races: |
The following races are freely available for PCs: humans, elves (known as “Forellians” in T'Regnor), half-elves, dwarves, gnomes (sometimes called “Volkish”), badgers (occasionally “Nordish”), and half-orcs. These are generally available, though preferably not in large numbers: kobolds, aasimar, tiefling, cansin, (name of lawful planetouched?), various genasi, and any race from either Oriental Adventures or Nyambe: African Adventures. |
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Classes: |
All of the regular core classes are available, as well as the shaman, witch and avatar from Green Ronin's Master Class series of books, plus the psion and psychic warrior from The Psionics Handbook. The core classes in Oriental Adventures and Nyambe: African Adventures are usually okay as well, for characters from those settings. |
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Psionics: |
Psionics are available, using The Psionics Handbook except for psionic combat, which will use the variant system from Mindscapes. |
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Prestige Classes: |
Assume that no prestige classes are allowed without explicit permission from the DM. |
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Alignments: |
All are allowed, but evil and chaotic neutral are discouraged. |
Characters may flank opponents with ranged weapons, provided that 1) the character is 30 or fewer feet from his target; 2) the ally on the opposite side of the target must be threatening him with a melee weapon.
Both ranged and melee attacks get a +1 bonus to hit if made from “high ground.”
Revised “death's door” rule—a character is not dead until he reached negative hit points equaling his Constitution score. So a character with a CON of 8 is dead at -8 hit points, but a character with a CON of 18 isn't dead until -18 hit points.
Minor magic items such as potions, scrolls, and +1 weapons and armor will be fairly easy to purchase. For other items, the players should not expect to be able to simply purchase them. Expect NPC wizards to demand services from PCs, or to require rare and exotic materials that the party will need to quest for. (Note: PCs with item creation feats can make magic items as they always have; my goal is to slightly discourage characters from buying important magic items.)
“Common” is actually the language better known as Arish. It is the language of the Empire of Amesh, which dominates Ardovia. There are numerous other human languages specific to different areas, including Tergosian (T'Regnor and vicinity), Tarkesian (Tarkus), Adenish (Aden), Karkish (Upper Ark River area), etc.