Spellburn and spellpoints (RPG Blog Carnival)

This months blog carnival from Elemental Reductions has the topic of Beyond Vancian Magic - so I was inspired to write about Spellburn.

Key point here is that while the Vancian casting system as exists in most recent editions of D&D is fine, it it all a bit clean-cut for chucking raw magical energy around - hence you should be able to push the boundaries in extremis - get more bang for your buck with Spellburn.

I used a variant of More Risky Spellburn from Sheep & Sorcery where a caster take d6 spellburn to a stat of their choice to max out a spell effect; damage, HD turned, etc. or to cast a spell they know how to cast but cannot normally do so again before rest.

I like the general concept of a magic user doesn't 'run dry' when they run out of slots, they just run out of safety margin.

Shiny TTRPG links #202

Yet more links from about the interweb; people got creative over last holiday weekend. For more, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Re-pointing to The BLOGGIES 2024: Call for Nominations!

Elemental Reductions is running this months RPG Blog Carnival: Beyond Vancian Magic

Sign-ups for 2025 Blog Carnival topics is now open

Cavegirl & Dungeongal on roleplaying and dungeon-crawls

A Knight at the Opera looks back at 5e with Ten Years (Part 1) and Part 2.

Black Magic OSR gives us Rambling Reflections On Making My OD&D, And A Tiny Aside On Naturalistic Fantasy

Prismatic Wasteland compiles many economic inspired responses to 'Blog Friday' in Roundup of Blog Friday Posts from Across the Blogosphere

Tim Clare in The Observer writes ‘Playing games turns me into a person who makes sense’

Jubal wrote on Exilian Ritual and re-use: writing places that feel alive

Powers of the Astral

So I saw a post on Reddit that was positing that there are lots of powers kicking around on the astral that are pretty much keeping their heads down and being quiet because of the dark forest theory that posits, if you start getting too loud then the terrible things out there in the dark will come and stomp you flat.

Astral map from Spelljammer: Adventures in Space

The big difference for this latest iteration of the astral is that it means travel within systems is relatively slow (even with Spelljamming speed, ditching off Toril of Realmspace out to the Astral boundary is 30 days) but travel between systems is 'DM fiat' officially, 'speed of thought' by the Lore and looking at our last dedicated astral resource (The Plane Above of 4e) travel across the Astral point to point takes d4 to 2d6 days - a range of 1-12 which is still quicker than getting in and out of most systems. For 3.5e in the Manual of the Planes these travel times were 0.5-21 days - so even then travel time between systems was typically shorter than getting out to the Astral in the first place.

Checking what is typical for some famed systems - from the last planet to the Astral in Realmspace is 32 days - but from the Toril itself, 62 days. For Greyhawk this is 40 days from the Spectre - but Oerth is a geo-centric system so you are *80 days* from the Astral boundary to actually landing a Spelljammer on Mordenkainens lawn. Krynnspace is a bit smaller - 20 days from the stellar islands to the astral boundary, 39 days to Krynn. I generated a pair of systems for my Light of Xaryxis campaign and those had 60 and *76* days from the outer planet to the Astral Boundary. With a typical Spelljammer air-capacity of 120 days that makes it a risky business in some places to do the combined crossing of two 'outer systems' in a voyage - out from your start system - crossing the astral needs no air - then in at your destination.

All this suggests connecting Astral realms is simple enough but projecting power into systems is harder; suggesting you might have Astral based realms and powers who leave systems to themselves. Treating the Astral as an ocean and the spheres of wildspace as 'landmasses' seems broadly appropriate. However, almost all the 'landmasses' you come to on the astral sea have barren coastlines with all the interesting stuff in deep interior. The big difference between our perception of 'space is the high ground' from sci-fi is that we have three bits
- the astral which is really easy to traverse, if chaotic in how long it might take
- the wildspace 'expanse' between the astral boundary and any planets
- the various planets

Typical random rolled star-system

Revisiting 6e forecast in this age of 5.5e

Looking back at thoughts and speculations four years ago on what would be in '6e' in this the age of 5.5e and one of the first lines held true - 5e indeed had road ahead of it. There was no official fork but the work is being done to let 5e and 5.5e run at the same table.

We've seen a notch up in power for the 5.5e stuff - I'm going to take a stab and say it'll be worth maybe a half level to a level. You will be able to use a rule of thumb like for Pathfinder vs 3.5e and say that a 5.5e party could take on a 5e challenge that is on paper a level above them. Game structure wise so far it is the same thing as 5e, no significant mechanical changes like addition of social encounters or the like.

Beyond that the only thing I have seen as a change is that more folk are turning up to our open table games with characters on D&D Beyond on their phones. Which is a thing, because the network sucks and we have no wifi at either of our locations we use but we have figured out the workaround is load everything outside then come in and it will run on your phone throughout.

Appetite for digital games is not coming across on our forum - admitedly we are dedicated to running in-person games but we do not even see people coming in *asking* after digital sessions which I find telling. Most of the DMs are running a pretty analogue operation - they might have a laptop or tablet with digital books on it or D&D Beyond but I am not seeing anything like virtual tabletops or any of that. I will be intrigued to see how/if that evolves as new fancy tools come available.

This time last year myself and my old gaming table were talking about what might be in the new DMG - optional rules tied to settings was our big speculative guess if the pitch was to experienced DMs or better tools to teach new DMs was another if the direction was that way.

From what I have read the view seems to be that the new DMG has a better go than the 5e DMG at teaching cold-start DMs how to do the job. I still think a few more starter packs could be a money-tree for WotC if they wanted - tutorial adventurers for different types of things would be snatched from the shelves by new DMs. Even 'add on' guides for say the lowest level games of an anthology - the first heist of Golden Vault having a seperate 'how to' guide for beginning DMs on sale for $10 on Roll20 seems like it would be welcomed.

One thing that is apparent is that behemoth has shrugged off the pretenders to the throne - all the many post-OGL D&D killers have failed to slay it, even where they may have found some modicum of success. Critical Role is having a go pushing their own systems and maybe they will jump off D&D to something else but the window for that to have an impact has passed in my opinion. The 5.5e launch is 2/3 of the way done and it looks like the switch over is happening. They played it safe and they've consolidated what they hold.

All bets are off if Elon snaffles up Hasbro and feeds it to his AI games-corp but short of that happening, as today, so tomorrow.

Shiny TTRPG links #201

At this tail end of black-friday-sales, we link some OSR staples. For more, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

The BLOGGIES 2024: Call for Nominations!

We have a discount code for Lulu - 30% off with HOLIDAY30

Semper Initiativus Unum recommends OSR Products on Lulu

New School Revolution has more Lulu Recommendations

dieheart also has Lulu Recommendations

Yore gives us Gaming books on Lulu.com that I enjoy

Old Skulling recommends RPG Books on Lulu

Attronarch's Athenaeum points to DrivethruRPG for Black Friday 2024: Select OSR Publications

Le Chaudron Chromatique gives us A Feast For A Sphinx rewrite + print edition!

Nickoten on Bluesky highlighting why Jennell Jacquays made the dungeon a master environment of storytelling

The Nothic's Eye gives us Six Dungeon Gods

dungeon doll gives us Dungeon Gods

Review: Journeys Through The Radiant Citadel

tl;dr: some pretty good adventures, standard 5e structures better for a tour-the-world than plane-hopping.

I got to put a handful of these adventures to the test so I feel fit to review this one now. Originally picked up with some keeness in anticipation of a planar adventure anthology - something that was going to deliver adventures in places that felt different. The premise was we get a bunch of adventures that happen in different cultures. In-world these are different realms that are connected to the central Radiant Citadel but the adventures and their settings could be accessed in other ways.

I like that this anthology gave us some interesting new options - both places and stand alone adventures that can be dropped into a planehopping campaign. I like the potential in the book for these adventures to break up other adventure arcs or to offer settings to arrive in that feel a bit different. General reception from among the games group I play at has been positive enough; it does not have the gold star reputation of Candlekeep but there are good adventures in here.

We get good variety of different places that could be encountered in one book - the next nearest alternative that I can think of would be to scour a whole bunch of different settings and pull an adventure out for them. If your players are embarking on an old school Sliders-style world-a-week campaign then this is a great resource to meet that 'what is different about this place' demand without killing yourself assimilating setting books.

I grabbed it when it came out because I was really pepped for cool, transplanar travel to places that are genuinely different and a breath of fresh air. I liked the pitch WotC gave of "we've tapped a bunch of people who are coming from different cultural backgrounds, to give you something different" - I thought, cool something unusual, I'm here for that.

Draconic ancestries and noble lines (RPG Blog Carnival)

This months blog carnival from Forsaken Garden has the topic of Haves & Have Nots - so I was inspired to write about the dragonblooded noble houses of my home campaign - inspired by Dragon Kings of Atlas Games 2004 "Seven Civilizations".

My home campaign has 'dragonbloods' the long descended, much diluted ancestors of dragons as a significant chunk of the nobility - PC's included. Dropping 'dragons' in on top of the usual human noble house too-ing and fro-ing has lead to some interesting effects. 'Rule by sword-right' is pretty close to the surface at the edges - this interacts with long-life because dragonbloods live for a long time and in folk memory (grandpa's stories to people alive today) there have been significant turnover in lands and titles because folk memory is centuries long.

The continent most of the adventures are set on was once conquered by elves with their own notions of what makes a suitable elf until they left and everyone else got to pick up the pieces. This institutional overhang of 'elven civilization', even if only in the warped memory of most, has lead to a strong affinity for elven-court like behaviours in public, even when these are a badly-fitting mask over red-clawed conquest.