2015-12-31 Raising a God

I’ve been working on transforming the rough notes for my Fünf Winde campaign into a 64 page setting book or high-level sandbox. It’s all on GitHub as parts of my Halberds and Helmets project. You can take a look at the first few pages.

=> on GitHub | Halberds and Helmets | the first few pages

There, I’ve introduced the gods on a single page. I think this needs to be short. If you’re going to write more, chances are, it’s going to be boring. In order to make the gods useful at the table, I’ve described my current iteration of the Reputation mechanics. The most important of these is that your reputation score is a percent chance of getting help from your god. This help will almost always be a creature that is being sent to aid you. I didn’t want to duplicate a classic spell from B/X D&D and creatures being sent has a nice vibe to it. In my campaigns, I’ve started describing the same agents as they join clerics in performing the miracles of fourth level spells and higher. I like it when a Valkyrie comes down from heaven and helps you raise a dead comrade, returning him from her halls. Keep using the same Valkyrie, give her a name, let her comment on the cleric’s deeds and you’ve got another interesting plot element. Somebody to visit when you’re in Asgard! The gods also grant boons to those they favor. So every god comes with a small list of boons – stuff that mark you as a member of the god’s faction, grant you an animal companion, etc.

=> Reputation

I’ve also added the Astral Sea as a hex-crawl using flying ships. I’ll be providing a random table of six ship encounters so that a busy GM has something to use right away. One of the big themes in this setting is slavery. If you want to engage and start fighting slavery, you’ll have a lot of enemies. There are various slaver factions in this setting. All of them could use a beating. Thus, this is one of the hooks into the domain game. I guess The Guardians of the Flame by Joel Rosenberg and their fight against slavery left a lasting impression on me after all!

=> Joel Rosenberg

​#RPG ​#Old School ​#bx64