Sorry for posting it as a link, but I'm putting the rules stuff side-by-side with the story it affects, and bbcode can't do columns.
Index page (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/)
Background material (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/intro.htm)
Here's Friday's game. (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/zhengyi.htm) It's kinda long because I went into a lot of detail on the fights, but I broke it up into sections to make it a little easier to digest.
Quote from: James McMurray;245780Here's Friday's game. (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/zhengyi.htm) It's kinda long because I went into a lot of detail on the fights, but I broke it up into sections to make it a little easier to digest.
Shouldn't this be in "The Craft of Gameplay (and Actual Play)?"
-clash
I suppose I could double post it there, but since it also contains rules stuff I put it in general.
One character popped into Shadowrun. LOL. Awesome.
-=Grim=-
Our 5th player is ready to jump in, and his Star Pact Warlock has some rather strange items from the Far Realms. Check 'em out (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/items.htm).
Quote from: GrimJesta;245926One character popped into Shadowrun. LOL. Awesome.
It's just a shame it happened before the game started so we didn't play through it. But maybe they'll opt to go through the Pool of Time and I can roll us another random time period / game system to convert to temporarily. :)
Quote from: James McMurray;246912Our 5th player is ready to jump in, and his Star Pact Warlock has some rather strange items from the Far Realms. Check 'em out (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/items.htm).
Very nice.
One of my players will be running a half-elf Star Pact Warlock, I may well sprinkle a few references to the above as legendary gear he can track down later in the campaign. The tentacular mind-shield creature will be right up his street.
neato.
Thanks, they were all developed in collaboration with the Starlock's player.
Ask and ye shall receive. (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/Warlord.htm) :)
There's a new item (a book the party found).
One new house rule.
A new character in the introduction. We're up to five players (our usual group), but this time the artificer's player didn't make it, so we still only had 4 characters this week.
Added another house rule (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/HouseRules.htm) to make minions more useful. Without some sort of change they're too likely to die before they get to do anything, and thereby be free XP. Instead, they can now take one hit per tier (more info in the link).
Last Friday's session is up (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/swimming.htm). They visit a couple of pools, have a multi-planar skill challenge, and have their first encounter with other Pool Seekers.
There's also a new ritual (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/Rituals.htm) for creating teleportation circles, and a new house rule (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/HouseRules.htm).
It'll be a couple of weeks at least before we play again. The GM of our paragon campaign he the rest of Castle Ravenloft converted, so we'll be playing that. When we come back, some PCs will be pretty different. FRPG and AV will be used, and some want to trade gear and/or classes. The wizard will probably become a swordmage. The warlock's player doesn't want the group to be without a wizard, so he'll probably convert to a wizard / warlock. He'll keep the same Far Realms flavor, repurposing a paragon path and picking a better fitting destiny. The fighter's player will definitely pour through the books to find the biggest damage and highest survivability he can.
The other two players will make changes as well, but they're not usually the type to min-max to the extreme like the fighter and warlock players do.
I'm curious to see what the new wish lists look like now that AV is here and overflowing with tasty goodness.
I forgot to mention that there's also three new monsters in the update.
This stuff (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/captive.htm) was done over email. Another GM was running this week, and it was my son's birthday, so we didn't have a session at the table. Three of the PCs are held captive and interrogated, while the other two are trying to find what happened and regroup.
I uploaded a list of all the pools (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/Pools.htm) the PCs either know about or will know about soon. It includes the locations, tests, granted powers, and what the aura looks like when seen by someone who has been through the Pool of Secrets.
This week's session had the party in two pieces for most of it. The captives broke out of their cells while one free PC and an NPC broke into the fortress. It's also our first sight of the sword mage, as the wizard's player remade his character to account for the release of the FRPG.
Check it out. (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/escape.htm)
I'm a week behind. In the session before last they escaped their captors and braved several pools. Here it is. (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/revenge.htm)
I should have the last session up some time this week. It involves a trek into the World of Darkness.
Last week's game is up. (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/awakening.htm) They've gone through the Pool of Time and into the modern World of Darkness. The in character side shows how the PCs react to the changes, while the OOC side gives some insight into the pros and cons of the two systems, and how it feels to swap between them.
The next session is up (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/homewardbound.htm). Sorry it's taken so long. I didn't run for two weeks in a row so I got lazy.
They return from the World of Darkness a little ahead of schedule and get ambushed by the phane guardian (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/monsters/index.php?id=17). Here are the WoD NPCs (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/WodCritters.htm) for those interested. Sorry for the format, that's the default for a multipage excel sheet saved as html.
It's been a while. The last session was short because we were missing one player and another had to go home early. It was basically just a single large battle and some strategizing. Some of the players were getting burned out on D&D so we took a break for Dark Heresy, but the GM that runs that is gone this week so we'll be playing the epic game again. Here's the latest update. (http://www.colugo.org/jmcmurra/DnD/Bloodstone/poolofelements.htm)