A great Role-Playing Game is all about
fun. If you aren't enjoying the game, then go do something else.
But there are ways we can all contribute to making the game exciting.
Think of it this way. You're willing to pay money to go sit in a
dark room with a bunch of other folks and watch actors portray roles
from a set script.
With role-playing you get in free and you get to directly play a role in
the interactive, cooperative storytelling. What could be better
than that?
During a session the players and game
master need to work together to play together. Game
groups who play together, stay together.
Not only that, they end up with years of great stories to tell and watch
many characters and the fantasy world itself grow and evolve. It's
pretty much just an advanced form of make-believe! I love the
feeling of a character in my campaign coming across a retired high level
character that the same player played three campaigns ago! Just
the mere news of a former player's character changing the world in some
interesting way adds great depth to the interactive cross-campaign
experience.
With the advent of the D20 system, we can
all agree on one unified set of core mechanics for governing how our
fantasy game is played. But within that system there is a lot of
room for modification and tweaking, especially with cool things like
feats, prestige classes, magic item crafting, and much more.
For instance, in my own game I've found
that I detest Monty Haul high level play where every player is so
powerful that the challenges created to face them would be an obvious
upset to the game world's balance. Plus I think characterization
is the key to really having inspiring game sessions.
Throughout history, it was the unique
characters in life, after performing heroic or tyrannical deeds, that
made the history books. After DMing three different campaigns up
into the higher levels (12th plus) I found that I preferred low-level
play, where more was at stake for the characters, and quests were still
challenging without having to bring in other dimensions and super
villains. (Not that those are necessarily "bad" things to have.)
To help facilitate the creation of unique
characters I guided my players through a unique character design process
where we even rolled up their astrology after starting as a baby with a
score of 1 for every ability. Then we used tables to simulate
everything from family social status, wealth, and investments, to
mentors and life events during certain critical age increments.
You can access this process
here.
I started looking for a way I could
recapture the spirit of low-level play at the higher levels and had a
great insight. I didn't want individuals wielding high level
magic, as that alone would wreak havoc on the societies of my world.
I thought about just forcing all
spellcasters to multiclass, which is an option I've heard other game
masters have went with. However, after studying the classes, it
seemed to me that once a character reached 12th level, they pretty much
had most of the cool abilities and class features that defined the class
anyway. After that there are just more times per day or uber-
powerful things to go against some of those uber-powerful creatures in
the monster manuals designed for high level play filler.
So I just lopped the top 8 levels off of
each class, added more core classes from many D20 sources, and decided
that 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells could only be accessed through
Prestige Classes, deities, or rituals involving multiple spellcasters
combining their talents.
After that, I even thought it would be
cool to start a campaign at 3rd level where the GM required each new
character to have three core classes of 1st level each, or a higher ECL
race with one
or two core classes. That way your group has a lot of diversity
and it makes the game about unique characters, not just munchkinized
power. As a writer, I believe character evokes plot! Imagine
four characters each with 3 different classes! That would be like
having a group of twelve 1st level characters with all kinds of diverse
talents. What an adventuring band!
The other thing I've never liked about
D&D is the magic system. I have to admit that I've grown to accept
it as it is at least in the game except for two main things. I
tweaked it many times and play-tested it in sessions, but was always
left back at the drawing board. Ultimately I realized I just
wanted it to be a little more like it is in my novels. I had to
abandon that idea though. But I still didn't like the superficial
Vancian method of memorizing spells, nor did I like the division between
divine magic, arcane magic, and psionics.
What I did instead is come up with 12
colleges of magic, dissolving the old division between divine and
arcane magic. I made each spell casting class have free access to
their main college or colleges through class colleges,
limited access to other schools through cross-class colleges,
and gave really difficult-to-gain access to normally off-limits schools
through exotic colleges. I did all this simply by
using Spellcraft points as runic language points for learning the secret
symbols for the 12 colleges. I made clerical magic into the
College of Oracular Magic, Druidic spells into Naturopathy, Psionics
into Psionic Magic, and added Celestial Magic and Magecraft.
I like house rules too. In my
campaign, when a character drops below 0, he can still be conscious
(albeit disabled) until he gets a number of points below zero equal to
his Constitution bonus. That is a cool house rule that many GM's
use, because not only does it make things interesting for the character
involved, it allows the disabled rules to come into play more, which is
what you find in heroic movies or novels when a character is hurt but
still struggling to accomplish the great deed or destroy a dragon.
You can access some other House Rules I use in my campaign
here.
I finally got to play in a Forgotten
Realms campaign down at my local fantasy game shop and saw the coolness
of multiclassing first hand. I designed a bard who was more of a
poet-scholar Indiana Jones style bard with a rapier and a whip. I
took 2 levels in Bard, and then took a couple in fighter to get really
good at my whip (The DM hated my whip because I was always stripping
weapons out of enemy hands who faced my allies and tripping them up!)
It was great and I remembered the true joy of playing a character again.
It had been years and actually the first time I've ever actually played
a D20 character. After I got tough with two levels in fighter I
soaked up a couple of levels in Rogue to get evasion (what's a tomb
raider without evasion!) before going back to Bard to gain access to my
2nd level spells. I had a blast with that character and even wrote
haikus for each of my spells and bardic music effects! His name
was Setheria Fletch, and of course when the campaign ended abruptly to
my utter dismay, I had to import a 15th level version of Setheria into
my world to be the head archaeologist working to fill up the new World
Wonder, the Museum of the Ages! For a 6th level character
(Bard3/Fighter2/Rogue2) I had all sorts of options. I was skilled
with the rapier and short bow, and deadly with my whip. I could
cast almost any spell through scrolls with a +13 Use Magic Device.
I distributed my skill points in such a way that I got crazy synergy
bonuses. And my Charisma was so high that I quickly became the
party's unspoken leader, even though I got us into some crazy
situations!
This entire website was re-inspired by
the play of this character. I got so into designing my world after
that rush of creative fun, that I wanted to give Thandoria a makeover!
I love this game!
Kelly Lee Phipps
Asheville, 2005
