[Campaign] The Dreamwalkers

[Lord Mhoram]

I'm a month or so away from starting my FH game, and as I pull things together, and the campaign gels, I will post things here, along with a campaign log after it starts

The basic background idea for the world was something that was half Swords and Sorcery and half High Fantasy (yeah, I know sort of muddled), and in the end I decided to use a champions/dark champion approach - parts of the setting have one feel, parts another.
The world is pulling out of the dark ages, and there are great swaths of desert and empty space between city states, and some larger areas of civilization. There are still organizations and communication between long distant place.

My magic system feel and background is stolen strait from rolemaster - originally there was one magic "Eldritch" that was just the study of magic. After a huge even that pretty much knocked the world back to the stone age, magic was developed into 3 distinct disciplines - Magic of the Mind, Soul and Body (or Mentalism, Divine, and Arcane). There are other types of magical abilities, but that is the only "spell based" magic. The other types of magic include special abilities that are trained to (such as Ch'i or Holy Knight divine powers), cheap little 1 & 2 pt minor magic (called Knacks) and gifts of the Gods (special magical 'package deals' that follow a theme).

The name for the game comes from an ability that all the PCs will share - they can see things in dreams, and have gained some other specialized talents because of that. They are also figures of prophecy, though no one really knows that yet (The prophecy stuff borrowed heavily in style and tone from David Eddings' Belgariad).

[Lord Mhoram]

Now as I am something of a top down world builder - here is the very broad overview of the history of the world. Note that in my world there are not "evil gods". Evil supernatural beings are Demons and Devils. The Unmaker mentioned is actually a force for chaos/entropy. While Evil works for thier own ends, they still do not want the Unmaker to succeed. Yes the name is stolen from Orson Scott Card.


First Age: Age of awakening and the Gods (500 or so years)
Major Events: Gods created world, gods woke up the races, Gods walked among the peoples.
Beginning the polarization of races. Gods have conflict. Gods are beings who create not destroy (although they do break things in their disagreements) they have differing goals .

Event that ended age - first non god using magic

Second Age: Age of great powers (2000 + years)
The peoples settle into their roles, and begin using magic, and creating grand abilities. The discovery of Magic / earthblood/ etc. Magic is only “magic” not separated. Races drift to their “attitude” and direction, and gain their approach to life, and any “gifts” they may have. Gods become somewhat pushy and also begin to formalize in their attitudes and approaches. Many saints created to intercede.

Event that ended age - Last saint of the early ages elevated.

Third Age: Age of Exploration (2000 + years)
The races move to explore their world. Each race move out of their “home” areas, and have some conflict. Saints do not have conflict, even those working for “opposing deities”. Lots of interracial conflict and lots of politicking. Great cities and empires created fall new one form.

Event that ended age - the first attack of one God against another.


Fourth Age: Godswar - Gods leave active presence (500 years+)
Gods form alliances and get tough with each other. Planet reshaped and nearly destroyed. Gods realize that this creation of theirs is too fragile, and leave completely, but their prespresence is not gone completely- Saints are still there, and channeling still works.

Even that ended age - the day of godsbattle. (note last archmage dies at this point)

Fifth Age: Age of rebuilding (1000 years)
The restudy of magic creates the three realms. Races claw out from the results of the war, and begin rebuilding. Most races create “homelands” that are their own, and fight to protect them. Life is insular. Technology is knocked back to stone / pre bronze age, and climbs from that point.

Event that ended age- First Saint of later ages elevated.

Sixth Age: Age of intermingling & cosmopolitinization (2000 Years)
The races drift and remeet, this time without gods along. Technology hits steel and near industrial era. The races each have a homeland, but much exploration and intermingling. Major cities see ghettos of every race, and everyone living in them. There slowly grows a great and good empire that spans the continent, and helps make life better for everyone, ruled by a council of 9.

Event that ends age - The unmakers’ five gates being opened.
1) destruction - the capital city destroyed.
2) Plague - The run of plagues that sweep the continent
3) Famine - The great hunger of the cities.
4) Monster gates - great creatures walk the world. (edit - reamed Horros)
5) Climate problems - Earthquakes, tidal waves, etc. (edit - renames Storms)

Seventh Age: Age of the unmaker (current age)
Rebuilding - Grand social units gone, but individual cities and small societies survived the Unmaker's gates. Society has moved to self preservation and city states, with great swaths of wilderland. learning is as high as it was during the empire, but only in select area, in the cities.


Note - Links to other threads involved in my game:
Magic Systems

[Lord Mhoram]

For the mechanical structure I have a wide open anything goes in a lot of ways. Lots of different bits in the game are stuff I liked in fiction or other games, and decided to use it in mine, like the term Unmaker or my magic system. There are a couple of things I like about D&D - the incredible proliferation of sentient beings, and, in the d20 version, a solid sense of nifty abilities, but ones that are semi formalized.

So I have written something on the order of 100 talents, and I do more every week (and some of those were published in DH 41 - plug plug). I have specific magical abilities for a number of professional package deals, which, in game, the only way to learn is to learn from someone in that profession and take the package deal - which is as close as I will come to classes. This is Fantasy HERO, and I'm only stealing bits that I like.

I also use every race in FH, and have built 10 or so of my own, plus adapted 5 or 10 from other fantasy sources (notably D&D). Now when I do my conversions and adaptions, I do not try for a perfect replication. I go for a feel and style kind of adaption. I don't necessarily use the exact same special abilites or such, but I put in theme-actic kinds of thing. For example I adapted the Goliath from Races of Stone for D&D 3.5. There are a race with marking over thier bodies - in D&D you can get feats to represent special magical reflections of having special marks. I used the concept but had different special abilities tied to the markings.

[Lord Mhoram]

Comments and questions welcome.

The overview of the magic system.

Magic is multipower based. Each multipower has -1 in limitations:
No Push -1/4
Variable lim -1/4 (is usually Gestures and Incantations, but can be extra time, extra end, or focus)
Requires a magic roll -1/2

The multipower reserve normally only be 3 times the Int of the character. Some talents that adjust this - a talent for 2 pts raises the potential by 10. There is a "natural archmage" talent that allows an unlimited maximum cost 10. There are a couple others that allow you to add half again the reserve for a specific area (realm) of magic, and another that lets you half again it for 1 spell (and the first has a -1 lim on the reserve, and the second a -2 it is relatively inexpensive to be very good at one type, and have a huge signature spell).

As mentioned before I am borrowing the feel of the rolemaster system.
There are 4 kinds of magic; the three realms (Mind, physical and soul) and then the really old stuff (Eldritch). At character creation a player buys a perk that sets the character's magical ability. Normally this would not change during the life of the character, but as a GM I'm willing to work with players that want a major change in characters.
The spells themselves are classified as "Public" "Private" and "Secret". Each step up is more difficult to learn (by SFX). The perk chosen allows differing access to spells. If someone is a magical dabbler - then they can but spells that are public to the realm they choose. They can also choose to buy private spells, but if they do, then those spells take up double their real active points in the mulitpower and are x2 end cost and magic roll penalty to cast.
There are over a dozen types of spellcaster levels, each with differing access to levels of spells or which relam (or realms) of spells they can choose from.

This helps reinforce the three realm nature of magic, most mages stick with one realm.

The end cost is basically an end battery (that cannot be higher than your multipower reserve).

To avoid the "all attack powers are at the same level" I do something draconian here. I build all the spells. I have over 150 built, and am constantly working on more. The players can come to me with ideas, and I'll work with them, but I'll be setting the realm, the end cost and the magic roll penalty (then end cost and MR penalty set the spells "level" if you will).

Because being a mage is fairly costly the major break from the standard rules that I do is this- when you purchase (or increase) your magic multipower, you get as many points in spells as the reserve costs you. So if you have a 60 active point multipower reserve, it costs 30, then you get 30 points of spells for free - and as the spells are slots in the MP, they tend to run 1 to 3 points, so that gives a fair amount of versatility in the spells.

I also use a slight twist on Uncontrolled. The default way of stopping an uncontrolled spell is to let it last one minute. Each step up on the time chart is a +1/4 advantage called Extended Duration. This allows things like water breathing or armor spells that are cast, have a duration and no longer need to have the multipower in that slot.

The Int/5 for numbers of active spells is in effect (and uncontrolled powers are considered active spells). Bob Greenwade's Extra Spell Slot talent was stolen and is used.

Other general notes - almost no spells require focus in the form of material components or have side effects. I don't like that kind of feel for my magic, and have disliked those thing in other game magic systems, so I ignore them.

There is also a house rule that if you have an adjusted 18 or less to cast a spell, you don't have to roll.
I allow penalty skill levels with the Magic skill to offset penalties for specific or small groups of spells (those are spells you have specialized in) as well as one for all active point penalties (but those are 1.5 so it only saves you half a point per level, but that can help).

[Lord Mhoram]

Part of the reason I'm posting (other than if anyone can find this stuff useful) is for feedback - if anyone has questions, or sees logical holes in backgroun, mechanics or such, feel free to comment.

[OddHat]

Thanks for posting, and repped.

A few thoughts:

Not sure I'd give -1/4 for "no push", but as you're the GM that's 100% your call. I might instead allow a more generic -1/4 "Spell" limit to get a smooth -1 total. The "Magic Type" limit would reflect the fact that all magic in the Multipower had to conform to the rules of a specific magic type, something that would occasionally cause inconvenience. Of course, there are objections to be made to that approach as well. Still, the "I build all the spells" approach and all the other bits and pieces in your system certainly seem worth at least -1/4.

The big mix of races will definitely give a high fantasy rather than sword & sandals feel, but that's not a problem for most fantasy gamers. The world itself sounds very old school, but again that's a feature rather than a bug.

Timeline looks solid, lots of potential plot hooks.

[Eosin]

I agree with Oddhat on the Lims. It'll be interesting to see how the magic turns out in real play.

The Gates of Unmaking is a really interesting idea. The last two gates could use a little more massaging to get them in line with the biblical feel of the first three ~ maybe something like 5. The Gate of Storms (Natures Fury, Wrath etc...)

[Lord Mhoram]

Thanks for posting, and repped.

A few thoughts:

Not sure I'd give -1/4 for "no push", but as you're the GM that's 100% your call. I might instead allow a more generic -1/4 "Spell" limit to get a smooth -1 total. The "Magic Type" limit would reflect the fact that all magic in the Multipower had to conform to the rules of a specific magic type, something that would occasionally cause inconvenience. Of course, there are objections to be made to that approach as well. Still, the "I build all the spells" approach and all the other bits and pieces in your system certainly seem worth at least -1/4.

The big mix of races will definitely give a high fantasy rather than sword & sandals feel, but that's not a problem for most fantasy gamers. The world itself sounds very old school, but again that's a feature rather than a bug.

Timeline looks solid, lots of potential plot hooks.

Yeah, the No Push is a little much, and I like your suggestions.

Yeah, the races thing is very much the high fantasy - but I have vast tracks of desert and wasteland with small city states scattered around in many areas of the game world - which to me evokes as much of S&S as I want (I tend not to like most S&S, but I love the whole feelt that I see in it of "not much civilisation and barren space").

[Lord Mhoram]

I agree with Oddhat on the Lims. It'll be interesting to see how the magic turns out in real play.

The Gates of Unmaking is a really interesting idea. The last two gates could use a little more massaging to get them in line with the biblical feel of the first three ~ maybe something like 5. The Gate of Storms (Natures Fury, Wrath etc...)

Ohhh I like.
The timeline is as much notes as finished product - so I appreciate that.

Gate of Horrors and Gate of Storms. I love it - consider that adopted.

And I can't wait for the magic system in work either - I've been tinkering with how to get it to feel just the way I want for years. I've done a couple of solo playtests that worked out okay, but that was solo....
I've got an archmage in the group (someone who does all magic), a mentalist, and two characters that aren't quite done yet that may or may not have magic, so it will get a solid play.

[Lord Mhoram]

Some rough details on the Unmaker...


I'm really going after a combination of three things here -
1) - The Ultimate enemy - the idea that there is something that is trying to just undo all of creation and at times causes the forces of good and things like demons and devils to join sides to fight it appeals to me.
2) - A corupting influence. I might be borrowing elements of the whole Chaos corruption from the Kandris Seal (and if you don't own it, go out and buy it now - it is wonderful).
3) In line with the above, creatues that are of the Unmaker are a little off - so a little Cthulian horror going on here as well. Probably not full blown "sanity blasting" but with "feel wierd/uncomfortable" types of things aorund them, and maybe some penalties to skill rolls, combat rolls, CE, some negative levels, or some unluck while being around them.

From a D&D sense pretty much any Abberation class of creature would be influenced by the unmaker.

[Mister E]

I like that the characters are linked by their dream visions. It has an element of retro-causality to it, in seeming opposition of the Unmaker's entropic goals.

Also, the distinction between 'evil' and 'chaos' is great.

[Lord Mhoram]

I like that the characters are linked by their dream visions. It has an element of retro-causality to it, in seeming opposition of the Unmaker's entropic goals.

Yeah. The characters are going to have prophecies about them that they will find out - specifically the structure to oppose chaos. Although I like your phrasing.

Also, the distinction between 'evil' and 'chaos' is great.

Yeah. I wanted to do something a little different.
I wanted a strong good / evil thing going - if people do what they are supposed to do morally they are good people and join the gods.
If they do things they aren't supposed to, they go the other direction and become the plaything of the Infernal. I'm going with a very strong moral outlook here - Good vs Evil is very much a "human/sentient" centered thing - it is all about the choices of the person in question (with Gods and Saints being the incarnations of those concepts, and the Infernal being the incarnations of the other side).

The whole Unmaker/Chaos thing is completly from the outside - it is insanity, destruction for the sake of destruction, outside the Good./Evil continuim. Think the Mythos, or, in D&D, the "outlands." A demon would change and hurt a sentinet to corrupt him, and take it's soul - the Unmaker does it for fun, or because it has some non-understandible reason why.

[Pariah]

I'm really looking forward to playing in this campaign. Been a long time since I've done Fantasy.

I'd Rep you for all your hard work, were it not for that pesky "You must spread" thing.

[Lord Mhoram]

Some notes on religion/gods.

The gods of the world are basically the pantheons of Egypt, Greco/Roman, Norse and Celtic (yes, my D&D roots are showing here). There were many other pantheons, but when they left after the Godswar their influnce disappeared - this will tie in to a later campagin element, when the PCs visit other worlds, and find different gods there, but ones that are familiar to them from dim history. The over timeline is how this world views things, but it is actually bigger.

All gods appear to any sentient race as a member of that race - that way I get to skip the whole concept of racial pantheons (which I don't like) and it draws together faiths (all followers of one god no matter the race) and also allows for conflict (The Elven aspect is the one true aspect of this god). So I can have murky religous politics even with the strong hand of divinity in the world.

And yes some churches don't especially care for each other. The Athena/Ares conflict is intact (though not at a lethal level) - Athena Being the Goddess of Skill in arms/Tactics/ and Defensive combat, and Ares being the god of battle and combat in general. i.e. - special ops teams, martial artists, Duelists, and tacticians follow Athena - Grunts, Leader generals (as opposed to tactcian generals) follow Ares. So the rivalry is not unlike those between modern military branches in the US.

[Lord Mhoram]

some other notes on future big events -
There be sorta spoilers here, so my players that read this board (3 do, one has never posted, one has posted a few times, and the other is Pariah), if you want to avoid them, skip this post. However the spoilers are going to be general, and I don't mind if you read them, it will likely come up during conversations anyway - I suck at keeping secrets.

Two big elements in exploration that will come up after the campaign has had a solid grounding

1) Hollow Earth/lost world - dinosaurs, special races, primitive cultures the whole works. I've always loved the concept and plan to include it here.

2) Space - I'm pretty much going to rip off Spelljammer almost in it's entirety here (ships and the mechanics of space travel, and cosmology (Crystal Spheres and the Flogiston) - not the races or politics) Again I considered Spelljammer the be the single greatest D&D setting ever made, and of course I will incorporate it. This is where the differing views of the gods and the history of the godswar come in.
The end of the Godswar had differing pantheons split and go to different spheres. Any follower of any god is fine in any sphere*, but there may be social trouble The exploration here will be a big part of the overplot. This is the point where the charcters know exactly what they are destined for (literally - as people of destiny) and how important that is.


* One of the tropes that run through other fantasy games - gods are limited in where thier power can be used, and of Clerics that are powerless in areas where thier god is not worshipped just irritate me to know end. My Gods are boundless (mostly) so that kind of thinking just doesn't fly in my worlds.