Tag: role-playing

Temple of the Earth Mother

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South and west of Annan’s Port are two shrines, a temple, and one of the world’s most powerful artifacts.  Only the goblin tribes that still roam the mountains know of the shrines and the temple, and even they have forgotten why they are supposed to defend them.

Click this link to read the description of the Shrines of Moon and Sun, and the Temple of the Earth Mother.

Time, the son of the Moon, was murdered here in his mother’s shrine, his body left on her altar.  A cruel thing to do, in and of itself, and a deliberate act.  When she found her murdered son her cry of anguish filled the world, disturbing any and all who follow her.  Some were called to this place, including an NPC that my players had grown fond of.  They chose to follow him, in his almost mindless need to answer the call and attend the goddess in her shrine.  They didn’t have to do that – it was all their idea.  So I ran with it.  When they finally reached the mountain, Kenny was pulled from his sleep to attend the goddess.  The party found him in the shrine, his body possessed by the essence of the Moon.  Mortal bodies are not meant to handle such things, and her presence effectively killed him. (The look of shock on their faces was priceless. And heartbreaking.  I felt bad. Sorta.)  When she understood what she had done, the Moon told the party about the Well of Souls below, and that if they returned with water quickly enough they could save their friend.  Thus began a mad dash through a maze of crumbling rooms and kobold-occupied caves and tunnels.  The tension from the time-limit was palpable.  All in all, a memorable and enjoyable session.

Kenny had to stay behind, a new cleric to the goddess, imbued with her essence.  When they meet him again he is going to be one powerful dude.

 

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Points North

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There are three places of interest north of Annan’s Port: the Ferry House Inn, the Eidechse village, and a broken wizard’s tower.  This week I offer brief descriptions of these places.  I have two parties running the Sons campaign and one of them is outside the tower.  They had the chance to explore it but now the wizard who accompanied them is apparently summoning a lightning storm on the roof, and two lizard-folk tribes are engaged in battle.  They are fighting for “possession” of a beautiful young man who happens to be Tide, the son of the Sea.  This is where we had to stop last session.

Click the link here to read the descriptions: North of Annan’s Port

Have a glorious weekend, fellow Worldwalkers!  Happy Halloween and Merry Samhain!

 

Creative Commons License This work by Jean Headley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Temple of the Drowned King

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This week, a description of one of the temples called Temple of the Drowned King.  This is actually the second location that my players were sent to at the beginning of the Sons of Moon and Sea campaign.  They were to check on a powerful artifact, to ensure its safety.  In reality, the two lizard folk shaman who guided them were members of a death cult.  They were there to steal the artifact.  The older shaman sacrificed her acolyte to open one of the blood-locked doors (which didn’t make it into the write-up).  Then, at the last, the entire party was betrayed by a higher-level rogue, the remaining shaman murdered, the artifact stolen, and the party left to suffocate, drown, or be destroyed by the chamber’s guardians.  The rogue used an item to open a portal and skip out on the party.  With just seconds to make a decision (the door, which was also closing, or the portal that lead to only-gods-knew-where), the party chose to jump into the portal after the traitor (a trainer at the local adventurers’ guild).  I used this as an opportunity to give them visions of possible near-future events and to move them forward in time one week.  This explained their absence in the city because I actually had two separate groups playing through two different parts of the campaign, and the temple group had been “on hold” for a while because Life.  It was a wonderfully intense session, since it included a “breath meter” as their breathe-underwater spells ran down, and they were completely surprised by the double-betrayal.

Whew!  All that said, if you want to check out the temple, click this link: The Temple of the Drowned King, part I

Post script:  I had each player roll a d6 before going into the temple.  Once they reached the inner chamber, that stat went up by one point.  This was a result of the residual power of creation saturating the chamber.  (1 = Strength, 2 = Dexterity, etc.)

 

 

 

Creative Commons License This work by Jean Headley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Deities of Erde

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So many of the belief systems we encounter in both fantasy reading and role-playing games are modeled after the Greek and Roman pantheons.  There is nothing wrong with this, but I wanted something different for Erde.   I went farther back in time, in a way, and drew on aspects of Egyptian and Asian beliefs, as well as western Pagan beliefs.  The gods of Erde did not create the world or her people.  Instead they are the world, or parts of it, and it was the belief of people that woke them and made them self-aware.

This week’s post includes minor spoilers for the campaign.  You can read the whole thing by clicking the this link: Deities and Beliefs.

May the gods smile on you and yours!

 

Creative Commons License This work by Jean Headley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Frozen Blossoms

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So often these days when we hear the word “monk” we think “martial arts masters.”  But a monk is a person who has dedicated himself to a monastic order and to living by the precepts and tenets of that order.  It’s a spiritual life.  It is often a life of solitude, tucked away from the rest of the world.  In the role-playing games I’ve seen, “monk” is a combat-oriented class, a type of fighter, albeit one that harnesses internal energy to do some pretty amazing stuff.  But one does not have to be a fighter to be a monk.

I was trying to create a sorcerer character in D&D 5e recently, and I was unhappy with both choices for sorcerous origins.  Most of my worlds don’t have dragonborn, and wild magic didn’t fit the character developing in my mind.  So I went looking.  I finally settled on Yokai-kin – people who carry the blood of spirits/demons/gods for whatever reasons.  I’m still working on the mechanics for the character, but in the meantime, I present to you the Temple of Frozen Blossoms, and the sorcerer monks who live there.  Click the link to read the full write-up.

 

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The City’s Heart

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I was listening to a song by S. J. Tucker called November and one of the lines really struck a chord with me.  “The city’s heart sings a song for November.”  I couldn’t stop thinking of the heart of the city as a thing alive, it’s own entity.  What if a permanent community was built around an act of sacrifice?  How would that play out?  Would different forms of sacrifice produce cities that had different ambiances to them?

I finally sat down and wrote a vignette – a scene – describing one sacrifice.  For me, Eylithlana and her family are elven, but I deliberately left out all descriptions of them so you may fill in those details as you wish.  Her name is pronounced A-lith-Lah-nah.

Click here to read The City’s Heart

 

And for your listening pleasure, here is the link to S. J. Tucker’s song http://music.sjtucker.com/track/november-2

 

 

Creative Commons License This work by Jean Headley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

the Port of Annan

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This week, a quick description and history of Annan’s Port, the starting area for my current campaign, titled The Sons of Moon and Sea.  It’s set on the world of Erde.

Click here to read about Annan’s Port

The map was created using Inkarnate Worlds, which you can find at http://inkarnate.com/

 

 

Creative Commons License This work by Jean Headley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

the Crone

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So often modern imagery depicts death as skeletal, or ghoulish.  It presents anthropomorphized death as evil, a relentless hunter who seeks our destruction and then revels in it when he inevitably wins.

In the campaign I am currently running, Death goes by many names, among them the Hunter of Shadows, the Mistress of Ravens, and the Drowned King.  However, should the player characters fall, they will encounter a kindly old woman.

Click here to read the passage I have prepared for my players.

A note: We are playing Dungeons & Dragons™, 5th Edition.  I intend to give this passage to any players whose characters have failed two death saves.  Should they fail the third save and die, the Crone will lead them out of the Forest of Souls.  Companions who survive will have the opportunity to rescue the character(s) from the Otherworld.  Should they succeed their death saves and stabilize, the Crone will light their path back to the mortal realm.  But the characters will have the opportunity, at two fails, to choose to move on.

 

 

Creative Commons License This work by Jean Headley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

 

Creating Characters

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This week I chose to talk about my character creation process.  Usually I don’t have any trouble creating new characters. On those rare occasions when the ideas just aren’t there, I use these tricks to get the creativity flowing again.  And sometimes I just have fun rolling up random – really random – characters.

Click this link to read the full post: Character Creation

May the dice always roll in your favor!  Or at least give you really interesting character concepts.

 

 

Creative Commons License This work by Jean Headley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Critical Success

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Sometimes the dice roll in your favor, and whatever you’re trying to do you do spectacularly well.  In combat, this means you get to open a can of whoop-ass on your enemy.  Unfortunately, sometimes the enemy opens that can on you.

I added the Critical Success table to the Critical Rolls page.  (<– Click the link to check it out.)  It ranges from Maximum Damage, to Triple Damage, with some extra stuff in between.  We haven’t had the chance to test these tables in-game yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions about the tables, or about anything else on the Worldwalker’s Guide, please post them.  I’d love to hear from you.

May your dice favor you in all things!

~Jean