New Campaign Primer

Hi ho. I'm Sean, this is my OSRD&D thing. Actually assuming I actually make posts it'll mostly just be me codifying my new D&D campaign, of the same name of this blog. So new players will be directed to this post, and I'll leave it public so I can be INTERNET FAMOUS!!!!!111!!!

My game is set in the established setting Eberron. You may have heard of it. If not, this is the Eberron Wiki
So if you want to brush up on the setting go ahead, but be warned I am running the thing basically off of what I remember from my first Eberron campaign years ago, and I make no apologies for misspellings or incorrect facts. This is my campaign after all so I figure published setting or not doing it off the top of my head is the best way to make it my own.

Anyway, on to important information. The game system is Lamentations of the Flame Princess, which is easy to acquire in pdf form around the internets if you are inclined. Please keep in mind I am not running Lamentations totally straight, because I am not a sadistic bastard. Also I am anticipating my players coming from newer iterations of D&D and being used to being more heroic. That said, Eberron also assumes heroic PCs even moreso then stock 3E did.

So lets go over the keywords here so you know what to expect. Next post will get into actual mechanics changes and new content. Eberron is discribed as pulp fantasy, gritty magepunk. I have no problems with any of that, but lets analyze what those mean. Or at least what I think they mean.

Pulp fantasy is simply fantasy stories that often feature heroes and settings which don't spend a lot of time trying to justify why they are what they are. Conan and Lord of the Rings both count to my knowledge, and D&D came out of the huge succcess of the genere in the whenever D&D was made. Late 70s I think. I am a bad nerd...

Grit is hardwired into Lamentations. We have run one game and the most notatble thing about it is that, after shipwrecking on a small island the party had, after their first near fatal attempt at dungeoneering, split up to hunt for food and the party bard was drained dry by a stirge. The party has, as of yet, not recovered her body or are techncially aware she is dead. So yeah, grit. Like I said I am going to tone it down a bit.

Magepunk, is that even a thing? Ok so steampunk is well known, and insofar as I haven't researched it I am assuming that the whole 'punk' genera started with cyberpunk and the novel Neuromancer, which is a fun read. I think Blade Runner falls into this space too. Anyway, punk settings imply over saturation of some kind of technology. It widens the gap between the upper and lower class astronomically, with the 'haves' basically running things how they see fit and the 'have nots' trying to scrape up or scam whatever they can. In the case of Eberron magic is both commonplace and about as exciting as having a computer. In other words, no one cares. People are more likely to be impressed by someone skilled in swordplay then the guy who can conjure magic missiles all day.

The campaign itself will initially be set in Sarlona, hence the name of the campaign (The Dreaming Dark are the Sarlona secret police). All the races of Eberron will be playable, though I am partially sticking to Lamentations race-as-class precedent because even though it is a little clunky it is also a really effective tool to get you into the mindset of playing something that isn't human. Classes run basically as written, with numerous sub-classes to fill in the traditional D&D roster as well as whatever I think is cool. One caveat is MUs can cast spells off the cleric list. Clerics and Bards are my two least favorite classes, because they just clash with your usual group of adventurers, so I am still fiddling with ways to make them more palatable (Bard is already a done deal however)

As for obvious rules hacks of Lamentations, I am changing both Skills and Saves to more contemporary systems. Saves will follow 5e in that each Ability is also a saving score. You make con saves or str saves or whatever. Skills will follow a system that I don't have the link to, but will be more similar to newer editions with a skill rank adding a bonus to your attribute modifier vs a DC set by me. Easy DC is 15, with a sliding scale probably looking like 17, 20, 25, 30. This assumes for normal skill checks a flat d20 roll succeeds 25% of the time, players will succeed closer to 33% of the time, and someone with relevant training will succeed at least 50%. Some things I will be trying to avoid making players roll for are Perception, Diplomacy and Knowledge. These are things I would like to be up to player skill vs character optimization, we will see how it goes.

Ok wow this got a lot longer then I was planning on. Next time we get into races, classes, psionics, dragonmarks and some actual rulescraft. I would also like to address engineering versus artifice, and there was something else... Well if it was important I'll remember later maybe.