Houses of the Blooded

I recently got a copy out Houses of the Blooded and I can honestly say that I was stunned. I really had no idea of what I was getting myself into but the pdf was ONLY $5 so I decided to get a copy.

I don't have words to describe how awesome it is. A game build about the tragedy of the Ven. You play Blooded Nobles who control land and power, fight betrayal, and fall in love. It is everything D&D is not. For ONLY $5 is a steal, I would pay that much (or more) just for the setting, but it also includes great rules that capture the themes of the game perfectly. The only problem I have is that the rules for land and servants seem a little gamest.

I got Spore

I got spore this weekend and managed to get all the way to the space age in one day. Since then I have neglected far too much school work playing spore. You can find my spore page here.

My Discovery of Indie Games

A few weeks ago I had a realization after I got a copy of Mutants & Masterminds. I have considered myself a Role-player for a long time, but when I think about it the only real role-playing games that I have played are Dungeons & Dragons and White-Wolf. Sure Dungeons & Dragons and White-Wolf are both big names in the role-playing world but I realized that I was limiting my self by not trying anything else.
Mutants & Masterminds change all that. Before I picked up a copy of Mutants & Masterminds I thought I wouldn’t be interested in superhero role-playing games, after I picked one up I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I visited the Mutants & Masterminds forums and read what people were thinking about the game.
Eventually I discovered several other games that I had heard about before but had never thought to play. Two games in particular that I became interested in and ordered copies of are Agon and Spirit of the Century. I am also interested in Geiger Counter which I downloaded a copy of.
I am also interested in other games so if anyone has any suggestions I will look into them. (That is if anyone reads this)

Races and The Land Between

Once thing I wanted to do with The Land Between is I wanted to tie each race’s story into the war between the Eladrin and the Shadar-kai. It starts with those two races who have been fighting for dominance using The Land Between as a staging ground.

The Warforged were easy to place in the world. They were created by the powerful Eladrin wizards to fight the Shadar-kai.

Half-Orcs are interesting because I placed them as the native species of The Land Between, however they lost everything, even the name of their race, when the Shadar-kai enslaved them. The Half-Orcs become the base stock that the Shadar-kai used for experiments. From them the Orcs, Goblinoids, and even stranger things came about. With their true name lost the remaining Half-Orcs are only know by their relationship to Orcs.

When the Shadar-kai originally created the contagious disease Lycanthropy they weren’t able to control the creatures it created. However with their studies of Lycanthropy they eventually created a more predictable strain of the disease which created the first Shifters. While this strain isn’t normally contagious Shifters do pass it on to their children.

While the story for Tieflings isn’t directly related to the Eladrin or the Shadar-kai they are connected to the third great power, Demon. When a person become a Magus it occasionally changes their body, in the most extreme cases they become something else entirely, a Tiefling.

I struggled a long time about what I wanted to do with humans. I didn’t want them to be just humans. I wanted them to have a place and a story like the other races. I stumbled upon the solution when I was figuring out why there weren’t Gods in the campaign. I eventually decided that Gods and their Angels did once exist in The Land Between, however when the tried to stop the war between the Eladrin and the Shadar-kai, the Eladrin built magical stairways into the sky and slew the Gods. The surviving Angels had their wings hewn off and were banished to The Land Between. These Angels became the first humans.

I still haven’t found a place for Dragonborn, Elves, Half-Elves, Halflings, or Dwarves but I am considering leaving some of them out entirely.

The Land Between

A couple of days ago I read a blog post by Rob Heinsoo. While reading it I realized that the 100 Kingdoms is a fairly vanilla settings, not to say that is bad. It is just that The 100 Kingdoms follows all the basic assumptions which makes it easy for people to join and understand what is happening.

While I enjoy thinking about The 100 Kingdoms I decided I needed to figure out another setting that was interesting in the setting concept instead of just what happens in the setting. I finally came up with The Land Between.

The Land Between is torn with the endless war between the Eladrin and the Shadar-Kai. Both races use The Land Between as a staging ground for the war. The people who live in The Land Between are drafted on both sides and few people live in peace. However amid the war there exist free agents who work to free The Land Between from both sides.
The people are the Magus. They have made pacts with powerful and dangerous creatures from the Abyss (Which is nothing like the default Abyss). Whether is be through luck, toughness, or strange powers there people are beyond the normal. They also gain dangerous powers called Dark Rites (Which function like rituals).

More on the 100 Kingdoms

While I am currently calling my Campaign setting the 100 Kingdoms, that is more of a place holder then the actual name. The 100 Kingdoms is only the default starting location for my campaign. To the East lies the Ocean of Stardust, a supposedly endless ocean that at times borders with the Feywild leading to a strange Fairy Pirate theme. To the West past The Edge lies the Wilds (Also a placeholder name) which is part Jungle part Swamp. It is populated with Goblinoid and other monsters such as Dinosaurs.

As for what else exists in the world, I am still thinking of different ideas.

D&D 4E and The 100 Kingdoms

On Friday I got a copy of the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook. I’m expected the rest of the books to arrive in the mail on Monday or Tuesday. Since I got the book, I’ve been seriously being to plan my next campaign. I wanted something that fit with the new idea of Point of Light and everything new in 4th Edition.
So after a lot of thinking I came up with The 100 Kingdoms, a land of splinted kingdom left over from the fallen empire of Pyre. It allows for bastions of civilization with large tracks of dangerous land between them.
The starting location for my campaign is called The Edge. It used to be a border fortress, but after the fall of Pyre it turned into a trading town, negotiating deals with the nearby goblinoids
If anyone reads this and has any question I would be happy to answer them.