Twilight of the Gods: Erishti

The other day I described how our Dungeons & Dragons group did the impossible and ascended into true godhood. This week, I will be showing off the new pantheon of our campaign world one deity at a time. 

Today, I give you the lord of judgment, peace, self-loathing, and contradictions: Erishti. Through the use of our divinity cards, the player of Erishti took a Shardmind Invoker and made him into a bizarre reclusive god, an ungod, whose personality is truly haunting in its mania.

More Doors

Having finished running through my 4E conversion of Chris Perkins' adventure Lich-Queen's Beloved, I've learned a few lessons about dungeons and adventure design. One of these is the importance of the architectural environment and the very elements of the dungeon itself. In Lich Queen's Beloved, the environment of the dungeon takes on an interesting role and challenge in and of itself in the adventure, namely in the types of doors that are encountered. Doors, I feel, are an oft overlooked source of hazards, terrain effects, challenges, and provocative dungeon dressing. At the end of this post, I also briefly touch upon a way in which we can all design dungeons with better (ie. more fun) secret doors.

What I'm trying to say is that we simply need more doors.

LCTN: Side Passage

THIS IS SCENE #5 IN A PLAY-BY-POST D&D GAME

Many elements of it are unique and innovative, with several key twists that will catch the players by surprise. The adventure is deadly and devious, with victory going only to those clever enough to take it. Though it may not be a traditional Fourthcore deathtrap dungeon, I assure you, dear reader, that it holds many of the ideals of Fourthcore close to its heart.

I will keep these posts easily collapsible, so that readers may easily skip past them if they wish. Although, really, you'd be missing out.

Magic Item: Blessing of the Beast

H2: Thunderspire Labyrinth is one of the better written 4E adventures to come out of WotC's offices. That said, it has a number of flaws and many areas that had a lot of potential that weren't fully realized. I've done a few things here on DMG 42 to tweak that up, not to mention the excellent work by 11 ft. Pole and The Demon Prince of Undeath. Taken all together, it's pretty top-notch.

One of the background elements to the adventure that I enjoyed was the theme of Baphomet the Horned God and his presence on the extinct culture of Minotaurs from the labyrinth. To help reinforce this idea on the dungeoneers, I added a Divine Boon to a few shrines in the adventure. Dungeoneers paying their respects at several strange altars were rewarded with a lasting reminder of the story of the dungeon and how it came to be, who passed by here before them, and why this place was unique.

Lastly, the boon has a mechanic to discourage the 5-minute adventuring day. This boon in and of itself would probably never make a dungeoneer think twice about taking a needed rest, but the design philosophy extended to multiple items and coupled with magic rings and the like which gains benefits from milestones, starts a growing incentive to make the difficult decision to keep pushing forward into the dungeon despite a dwindling supply of healing surges and daily powers.

Twilight of the Gods

The dream ending of many Dungeons & Dragons campaigns is to see the protagonists fight and claw their way to the hallowed halls of godhood and true divinity. But what does it even mean to become god-like? How does one emulate that which is unknowable using the primitive tools of a game that aims to "kill monsters and take their stuff"? I'm proud to say that my group and I have found a fun, satisfying way to cross that threshold.

And you know how I perceived one of the most glorious events in the universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull. With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum, with ears designed only to hear vibrations in the air. I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I can know much more, I could experience so much more, but I’m trapped in this absurd body. --Cavill

The end of a campaign has come and gone with one of my regular groups, and so I'd like to share some of the lessons learned on how we all came together at the table to craft a satisfying conclusion to an Epic Campaign. One of the things I'm most proud of was how we dealt with the player characters ascending to rule the heavens.

Magic Item: The Mirror of Shadows

The last item I have for Keep on the Shadowfell was the Mirror of Shadows, uncovered at the archaeological dig site of Douven Stahl. As an item of shadow, it seemed to me that this little mirror could stand to have more powers over darkness, as well as a small drawback for delving into these dark arts. The item below also encourages the use of rituals by granting a bonus to rituals with certain key skills. Rituals are such an underused component and factor in typical 4E WotC adventures, I've striven to give them a little incentive whenever I can.

Dungeon Oracle Interview

The Overlord at Dungeon Oracle sat down with me to discuss, among other things, the PAX East DM's Challenge and the place for competition in Dungeons & Dragons. Worth a listen if you've got the time!