The question here was “Can you do a fifth-edition style Warlock?”. The answer, of course, is “yes” – but it’s important to note that there are some philosophical differences between the editions. In 3.5 a lot of people felt that the game played best at the mid-levels. When being killed was unlikely but combats were […]

First up it’s some of the major tales of Modun – items known across many cultures. Then, of course, it’s how to use them… The Golden Empire Saga: Set during the mythic times of the at Doll Invasion, chronicling the defense and the rise of the Golden Emperor from his drawing the Sword and Girding […]

The question has been asked “what happened with the Valdemar game?” (Valdemar d20 Basics, Part II – Gifts and Spells, Part III – Building Heralds and Companions, and Part IV – Beyond The Borders (Hawkbrothers, etc). A later set of articles covered the practical use of Valdemaran Gifts – Part I and Part II, a […]

Magic and Psionics in lovecraftian settings suffer from a major problem. It’s not that magic is inherently bad, or that psychic powers aren’t useful – it’s that other species got there first. The Mi-Go, the Great Race of Yig, the Flying Polyps, the White Apes, Cthulhu and it’s Spawn… The world is OLD. Even the […]

There is a basic problem with lovecraftian d20. “Cosmic Horror” revolves around the idea that people aren’t important. They don’t matter. Even entities such as Cthulhu ultimately do not matter; they threaten only a few worlds in infinity. The cosmic entities are incomprehensibly vast and powerful, they might brush a galaxy aside as if it […]

And for today, it’s some more material for the Martial Arts – a serious occult style and a purely cinematic style with some modifiers to enhance it to truly wild martial arts stunts. Cloak Of The Horned Lord / Robe Of The White Witch (Cha, Unarmed) It Is The Cŵn Annwn – The Wild Hunt […]

And for today’s minor bonus… The rootstock (or “Primal”) Elves of Modun were deeply attuned to the elemental structure of the world, capable of using all four of it’s basic elements – but that same attunement made them uniquely vulnerable to the disruptions of nature wrought by the Doll Wars. With the shattering of the […]

While minor magical items are fairly available in Modun’s towns and cities, the instabilities of high-powered magic have a compounding effect on the creation and use of greater ones. There are fewer high-powered spellcasters around since that path is far less rewarding on Modun. Spells of level seven and up are entirely unavailable. Anything above […]

This question was about Modun Halflings Charms and Talismans. Now I didn’t include those originally because of two factors: many of their Charms and Talismans only work in Dream and – to a far more limited extent – in Fables and because a lot of the rest are specific to particular Fables and only work […]

For today’s bonus item, it’s a bit from Majestic’s later progress. As the wilderness waned and urbanization increased, the creatures of the wilderness’s wild magic – fey, shapeshifters, wandering wizards, the witches of the forest deeps, dragons, and more – slowly withdrew to the Otherworlds. And as they withdrew… the ancient morphic patterns their existence […]

d20 characters all have some natural magic. It helps them heal cleanly and completely, it helps them resist external forces by allowing “saving throws”, it helps them resist pain (to the point that normally only magically-induced pain affects them), it helps them resist nonmagical illnesses, it renders them inhumanly capable and tough… and it can […]

There isn’t yet that much available on the Dwarves of Modun – mostly because, as yet, no one has elected to play one and the current focus of the game is a long way from their lands. No one has even met one yet (Well, outside of the 158-year-old gnome theater performer who has surely […]

And for today it’s a bonus post – a trio of campaign-enabling items: Covenant Seals (to set up adventures and missions), the Siege Perilous (to take the party to distant adventures), and the Dreamer’s Censor (to train and access the realms of dream). Covenant Seals: Back in first and second edition clerical types prayed to […]

The question in this case was about Tolkien’s battles of music. And those are fun, and dramatic, and fairly similar to any other fight – a declaration of challenge/opening combat, attacks are launched to succeed or fail, “injuries” are inflicted, the battle sways back and forth as skill and talent influence the course of battle, […]

Anime Characters usually have a rather limited bag of tricks compared to a typical RPG character. Why? Because players get bored with doing the same thing over and over again and – while literary or anime characters can stretch their odd powers in bizarre ways, RPG’s tend to have definite rules, since otherwise you wind […]

Once reading and writing were considered powerful mystical arts. After all, from nothing but a few meaningless scratches a practitioner could discover what was happening in distant realm, discover hidden secrets, exercise mysterious arts using herbs, or ropes and pulleys, or building ships, tell the tales of the gods, command the obedience of legions of […]

All right, this got thrown into a session as a funny suggestion, but it amused me, so about twenty hours later the suggestion spawned THIS – and already Rex, the Tyrannosaur-Druid, has indicated an interest in taking it. Mayhem awaits! Occult Skill: Mario Kart Driving (Restricted, Dex) Also known as the Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang Effect or Wacky […]

d20 Humans are usually the generic option, although there are often a few special cultural traits and feats available to differentiate them. On the other hand, it seems reasonable – and much more interesting – to treat humans as being extremely adaptable, and to consider how an unearthly environment might change them. Thus most of […]

There have been a lot of versions of the realms of Dream, with only a few relatively-consistent principles beyond “they mean something more than random stuff thrown up by the brain while it’s partially shut down”. What are those rules? Dreams are pretty malleable; with a strong will and an awareness that you’re dreaming they […]

The Trope is commonly known as “Our Elves are Different!” – and it usually is somewhat sarcastically applied to races in a particular setting that are basically just given a couple of minor cosmetic and cultural tweaks (often based on some real-world group or myth) and a few trivial mechanical modifiers, After all, it’s much […]

And it’s time to convert the Aegis which – like many late-cycle first edition pathfinder classes – attempted to maintain “balance”, and avoid unexpected and “overpowered” interactions by offering enormous numbers of relatively minor and very niche abilities to choose from. Honestly, this really doesn’t work very well; if it did you wouldn’t have all […]