Dungeon Crawl Classics, Tales From the Fallen Empire Closed
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2013 4:47 pm
Ok, so now's the time for the pitch I guess.
*Edit* Post and ye shal receive. I guess it's out on Drive Thru now.http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/1 ... the+fallen
So a little over a year ago I joined in on a Kickstarter for a Sword and Sorcery campaign setting called Tales From the Fallen Empire. About a week ago the PDF of the setting was released to us backers. It should be making its way to Drive Thru RPG shortly.
At any rate, I am hoping to start a PbP game using the setting. You would need to own both DCC, and Tales, as Tales introduces a whole bunch of new classes largely intended to replace the Core DCC classes. That said, if you are interested, you do not need to own the setting yet. I'll need some time to get everything prepped anyhow so I'm not planning on starting the game until after the PDF is publicly available. I've had some interest expressed over at the Goodman Games forum so I'll be reserving a few spots for folks from over there, but I have several spaces still open.
As for the setting itself. Tales is a low magic, post apocalyptic, bronze/iron age setting. The Coles Notes background is that the world (Eld) is the body of a dead god called The Leviathan. His children tried to control the world by proxy, first by controlling a race called the Antivians, or First Men, and later by creating human demigods called the Sorcerer Kings. 100 Years ago the Sorcerer Kings were overthrown, the dragons exiled themselves and went to sleep, and the world has started to rebuild.
Now this is a very brief summary. The setting book has probably 20 or so pages dedicated to the history and lore of the setting, plus more dedicated to the various cultures. There is an absolute ton of detail I haven't gone into.
Now, being a S&S setting in the traditional sense there are a few things that work differently from most other Fantasy RPG's and indeed DCC itself.
1) No clerics, or at least no clerical magic. There are priests, but every single one of them is either a sorcerer or a charlatan. Witches fill the role of healer, though to a lesser degree than Clerics do.
2) No Demihumans. There are non human races, and two of them, the Man Apes of Ooruk and the Draki Lizardmen are playable as PC's.
3) There are a significant number of human 'races' however. They don't have mechanical differences, but they do all have different social and cultural traits that can be used both as background skills, and for roleplaying purposes.
4) The only classes from the base DCC game that will be making an appearance are the Warrior and the Thief.
5) Power corrupts. This is especially relevant for the Sorcerer as it is much easier for them to suffer the effects of corruption, and it is required that they bind themselves to a patron.
Now I'm not 100% sure if I'm going to be running a funnel (level 0) adventure. I'm kinda leaning against it as I'm concerned about how chaotic having 20+ PC's in a PbP game would become, and there are some challenges with the setting itself regarding the funnel. Instead what I'm going to do is allow everyone to roll 4 level 0's using the standard DCC method of 3d6 in order (excepting Luck which is 4d6 drop the lowest) and then pick one to advance to first level. You still roll on the background tables, but you don't actually have to survive an adventure as a baker or whatever.
Other than that the other 'house rules' I'll be using are as follows:
1) To mitigate the lack of clerical healing each PC has a 'healing pool' equal to their Stamina score multiplied by their level. With one nights rest they can subtract any number of hitpoints from this pool to recover lost hitpoints on a 1-1 basis. For example Barri the 1st level Sentinel looses 6 hitpoints in a battle with a bandit, but he has a Stamina of 14. That evening he sets up camp binds the gash on his arm, and gets a good nights rest. By subtracting 6 points from his 'healing pool' of 14 he completely restores his health. Alternatively if desperate measures are required the healing pool can be used without resting for the night. If a character spends a turn recuperating he can restore hitpoints from his healing pool on a 2-1 basis. Barri's 6HP of healing would cost 12 hitpoints from his pool. If things are truly desperate then the healing pool can be used in a single round at a 4-1 basis representing a character digging deep into his or her inner strength and pushing their bodies to the absolute limit. In this case Barri could only restore 3 hitpoints, at a cost of 12 but there may be occasions when those 3 hitpoints mean the difference between life and death. This healing pool refreshes upon leveling up, and occasionally more frequently if the character has several weeks worth of rest.
2) Shields are more practical. In addition to their normal bonus to AC, if struck by a critical hit and equipped with a shield you can avoid the effects of the crit (though you still take normal damage). This does however destroy the shield.
3) I'll be using Dave Arneson's rules for treasure and XP. Basically, you can gain 1XP for every iron piece worth of treasure you recover from an adventure, but you need to blow it. This can be spent however you want. Ale and whores, sacrifices to gods, totems or patrons, gambling, charity, get rich quick schemes, or whatever fits your character best. The key thing is that you can't get anything 'useful' out of it. I'd encourage roleplaying this out, and I will give bonus XP to characters who give me interesting plot hooks while they're whooping it up.
*Edit* Post and ye shal receive. I guess it's out on Drive Thru now.http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/1 ... the+fallen
*Edit* Post and ye shal receive. I guess it's out on Drive Thru now.http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/1 ... the+fallen
So a little over a year ago I joined in on a Kickstarter for a Sword and Sorcery campaign setting called Tales From the Fallen Empire. About a week ago the PDF of the setting was released to us backers. It should be making its way to Drive Thru RPG shortly.
At any rate, I am hoping to start a PbP game using the setting. You would need to own both DCC, and Tales, as Tales introduces a whole bunch of new classes largely intended to replace the Core DCC classes. That said, if you are interested, you do not need to own the setting yet. I'll need some time to get everything prepped anyhow so I'm not planning on starting the game until after the PDF is publicly available. I've had some interest expressed over at the Goodman Games forum so I'll be reserving a few spots for folks from over there, but I have several spaces still open.
As for the setting itself. Tales is a low magic, post apocalyptic, bronze/iron age setting. The Coles Notes background is that the world (Eld) is the body of a dead god called The Leviathan. His children tried to control the world by proxy, first by controlling a race called the Antivians, or First Men, and later by creating human demigods called the Sorcerer Kings. 100 Years ago the Sorcerer Kings were overthrown, the dragons exiled themselves and went to sleep, and the world has started to rebuild.
Now this is a very brief summary. The setting book has probably 20 or so pages dedicated to the history and lore of the setting, plus more dedicated to the various cultures. There is an absolute ton of detail I haven't gone into.
Now, being a S&S setting in the traditional sense there are a few things that work differently from most other Fantasy RPG's and indeed DCC itself.
1) No clerics, or at least no clerical magic. There are priests, but every single one of them is either a sorcerer or a charlatan. Witches fill the role of healer, though to a lesser degree than Clerics do.
2) No Demihumans. There are non human races, and two of them, the Man Apes of Ooruk and the Draki Lizardmen are playable as PC's.
3) There are a significant number of human 'races' however. They don't have mechanical differences, but they do all have different social and cultural traits that can be used both as background skills, and for roleplaying purposes.
4) The only classes from the base DCC game that will be making an appearance are the Warrior and the Thief.
5) Power corrupts. This is especially relevant for the Sorcerer as it is much easier for them to suffer the effects of corruption, and it is required that they bind themselves to a patron.
Now I'm not 100% sure if I'm going to be running a funnel (level 0) adventure. I'm kinda leaning against it as I'm concerned about how chaotic having 20+ PC's in a PbP game would become, and there are some challenges with the setting itself regarding the funnel. Instead what I'm going to do is allow everyone to roll 4 level 0's using the standard DCC method of 3d6 in order (excepting Luck which is 4d6 drop the lowest) and then pick one to advance to first level. You still roll on the background tables, but you don't actually have to survive an adventure as a baker or whatever.
Other than that the other 'house rules' I'll be using are as follows:
1) To mitigate the lack of clerical healing each PC has a 'healing pool' equal to their Stamina score multiplied by their level. With one nights rest they can subtract any number of hitpoints from this pool to recover lost hitpoints on a 1-1 basis. For example Barri the 1st level Sentinel looses 6 hitpoints in a battle with a bandit, but he has a Stamina of 14. That evening he sets up camp binds the gash on his arm, and gets a good nights rest. By subtracting 6 points from his 'healing pool' of 14 he completely restores his health. Alternatively if desperate measures are required the healing pool can be used without resting for the night. If a character spends a turn recuperating he can restore hitpoints from his healing pool on a 2-1 basis. Barri's 6HP of healing would cost 12 hitpoints from his pool. If things are truly desperate then the healing pool can be used in a single round at a 4-1 basis representing a character digging deep into his or her inner strength and pushing their bodies to the absolute limit. In this case Barri could only restore 3 hitpoints, at a cost of 12 but there may be occasions when those 3 hitpoints mean the difference between life and death. This healing pool refreshes upon leveling up, and occasionally more frequently if the character has several weeks worth of rest.
2) Shields are more practical. In addition to their normal bonus to AC, if struck by a critical hit and equipped with a shield you can avoid the effects of the crit (though you still take normal damage). This does however destroy the shield.
3) I'll be using Dave Arneson's rules for treasure and XP. Basically, you can gain 1XP for every iron piece worth of treasure you recover from an adventure, but you need to blow it. This can be spent however you want. Ale and whores, sacrifices to gods, totems or patrons, gambling, charity, get rich quick schemes, or whatever fits your character best. The key thing is that you can't get anything 'useful' out of it. I'd encourage roleplaying this out, and I will give bonus XP to characters who give me interesting plot hooks while they're whooping it up.
*Edit* Post and ye shal receive. I guess it's out on Drive Thru now.http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/1 ... the+fallen