Rambling - Judge Fanatic Keys

So I've been thinking lately about what I like to refer to as "The Halo Event."

First and foremost, it should be specified that The Halo Event is not to be confused with The Halo Effect.  The latter is the copying of many of Halo's features into subsequent FPS games (with disastrous or wondrous consequences, depending on your opinion), while the former is something I believe affects gaming as a whole and may have changed it fundamentally.  The Halo Event is not something that I realized was even happening while it was happening, but is an occurrence that I have, I think, come to understand.

I have mentioned previously, as have many others (whose blogs to which I would link you, but I cannot currently be fucked to find the specific entries relating to this subject), that the current mainstream acceptability of games is leading to a gaming industry controlled by the casual gamers as opposed to actual gamers.  In part, this is due to the unexpected, near-blinding success of the Halo franchise.  I say unexpected because, though gamers certainly may have been excited about its development, the non-gaming world likely had no clue of its existence before it was finally released.  Yet when it arrived, it was with the force of thunder that seemed to shatter across boundaries of acceptability, and people with whom I never thought to share a single moment's conversation about video games would ask me if I had played "that Halo game."

While most casual gamers are by nature interested in casual games over major games, they can occasionally become interested in a major game.  This is due to a strange combination of the game's design not being intimidating (at least to a degree), the game's hype being built up to just the right point in just the right way, and a strange timing that I couldn't begin to identify.  Halo (as a franchise, not just the first game) seems to me that it was such an occurrence.  Things like this are what I believe push us closer to a possible future in which casual gamers steer the industry about which they don't care.

But I also think it might be a good thing, in a way.

Yes, it would be horrible if my bleak future idea came to pass.  However, without The Halo Event (it amuses me to capitalize it in that fashion), we wouldn't have a lot of things that we have today.  On a broad level, it was the event that helped bring that generation of game consoles more into the public consciousness than it previously had been (barring the "neat DVD player" that was the PS2, to some people).  Subsequently, it was the broadened realization of the varying console generations that allowed the general public to even understand there was some sort of different between the generation that exists now and the one that existed then.  On a more personal level, without Halo I fully believe I would never have been given Mass Effect; it was the success of a sci-fi shooter, and memories of playing it, that brought the market to a point where Bioware felt they would actually be able to sell a game like that.

Now I'm not laying literally everything solely at the feet of Bungie, here.  There were a great many factors to the success of the Xbox, the broadening of public consciousness about gaming, and the merging of shooters with RPGs beyond just the effects that Master Chief had on the industry.  I just happen to believe that The Halo Event, in its own small way, was crucial in helping us reach the state in which we currently find ourselves.  More importantly than all the other factors, I think this particular event is unique in that we can point to it directly.  We can say "that franchise.  That one right there.  That's the one."

The Halo Event is over now.  There may very well be more Halo games, but those who made the core saga have moved on to different fields.  Others will take up the monumental task of following in Bungie's footsteps to make much monies for Microsoft, and I do not envy their challenge.  They may very well produce great games.  Yet for all they might try, The Event as it was ended when we made our last stand on Reach.

I like Halo.  I like Master Chief, and I'm fascinated by the hero-myth archetype into which he was built.  I like the Covenant, and I love to be disgusted by the Flood.  I will miss Bungie's reign over their as-yet greatest achievement.  I am sad that The Halo Event is over, and I am curious whether its impact will lead the industry I love to a place of rage or glee.  For what it's worth, though (and as very childish as I know this sounds), I am at least pleased to have been here for the event.  It wasn't world-changing, it may eventually prove to have not even been an industry changer, but I believe it was at least significant to this young medium.

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Content - Arcane Magic in the Divine Lands

Looking for more Divine Lands content?  I found some!  It was in my head.  No idea why I put it there (silly, silly place to keep things), but at least I found it.
Click here to download the Arcane classes file!

Many campaign settings treat magic with its own particular flavor.  In some places magic might be addictive, to be used sparingly at the risk of losing oneself to it.  In some realms magic is tightly controlled, specific to particular orders which govern the accepted uses of magic and the methods by which one achieves the ability to wield that magic.  In some realms, magic is even seen as being so dangerous that anyone who wields it must be kept safely away from the rest of the world, lest they pose a nigh-unstoppable danger to innocent lives.  There are still even more ways in which magic is treated throughout a great many types of action fantasy campaign settings; I just happened to list those three ideas because they are found within three of my particular favorite realms.  However, be any of that as it may, we are here to discuss how magic works in Esaria.

Magic in my campaign setting is a terrible force, both for those who anger magic users and for the magic users themselves.  It's incredibly powerful, and it was never intended for mortal use; not forbidden, just not intended that mortals would ever think to start using it.  Mortals, however, are power hungry and ambitious.  They couldn't pass up this tremendous power.  With it, they are capable of doing amazing things, forging and crushing whole kingdoms, but they do so at the risk of their own lives.  Casting a spell wrong could result in rupturing your spleen, or spontaneously shattering your thigh bone, as magic that you were never intended to use goes flowing through your body haphazardly.  Hell, you can even get in trouble by being too good.  Try to use too much magic, and you'll overtax your poor mortal body just as badly as if you had cast the spell wrong (though, in that case, whoever you cast the spell on is much more dead than they would normally be).

There are several different unique aspects to the way magic works in my realm, and that is only one of them.  I hope you enjoy this document, and I can't wait to show you more of my setting!

So, again, arcane classes in the Divine Lands!  Download them here!

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Content - Trolls!

They piss you off, they bait the forums, they slaughter villages, they're trolls!

Okay, so they don't bait forums.  At least, not that I know of.

The trolls of my setting are something of which I have always been particularly fond.  In many settings trolls have usually been ugly, stupid, clumsy, disgusting, or any combination thereof.  I wanted the trolls of my setting to be things of adventurers' nightmares, and I have always striven to make them so when I include them in the campaigns I run.  In particular, I remember one adventure in which I pitted my poor players against a troll who was far, far above their level.  This was a mean trick on my part, to be sure, but dammit I did provide them with whole barrels of oil and functional lamps with which to burn him down.  It's not my fault they didn't search the area before they went charging on with the adventure!  In fact, if I remember correctly, the group actually searched every bit of the village except where I had placed the oil and lanterns.  The difficulty of that fight was so very much not my fault.

So, again, trolls!  I hope they make a big mess of your adventuring party.  (Not in a malicious way though.)  (Much.)

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Content - Serkethians

Serkethians in the Divine Lands.  Enjoy!

Well, here's a new entry, and it's only 23 days late.  Yes, I've been busy at my bill-paying-activity.  Yes, I've been playing Dragon Age 2.  Yes, I've been playing Champions Online.  Yet my only possible excuse is that I am monumentally, unforgivably lazy.  I could have slept less.  Hell, I should have slept less.  I also could have put down my games for fifteen minutes and gotten this done, since I knew damn well it was what I was going to do.  Anyway, here it finally is.

I need to buckle my ass down and post these things more reliably.

Once again, I present to you...serkethians!

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Content - Dark Gnomes and Goblins

Dark gnomes and goblins in the Divine Lands.  Read, enjoy, and use them in your campaign!

I had originally intended to publish my campaign setting once everything was complete.  This, however, is taking much longer than it ever should, for many reasons.  For one thing I'm lazy; video games and teh intarwebz take up massive amounts of my time (admittedly because I let them, because...I'm lazy).

For another thing I keep restarting the project, as I tend to do with most of the things I'm working on.  Every time I come up with a good idea in game design, I develop it and things go nicely, but then sometime later in development I come up with a way to do things better.  So inevitably I restart the whole project.  Now granted, each successive iteration is genuinely better than the last.  But...for fuck's sake I'll never finish if I keep restarting!  I need to learn to stick with what I've got, and save good ideas for later.

Finally, the primary reason this is taking forever is that genuine world building is a fucking monumental task.  I am developing not just races, but the cultures that they form, the interactions of those cultures with others, the history of the race and its connections to the histories of other races or specific regions.  I have to develop so goddamn much stuff that making a dent in the broad project as a whole is simply a time consuming endeavor that normally takes whole groups of people to complete.  So, silly me, I've decided to do it all myself.

Be any of that as it may, however, I have decided to start releasing bits of this campaign setting at a time.  I figure that, since I am working on publishing actual fiction soon on lulu, I can use that as my baseline.  Each story of the upcoming series of publications is going to showcase one of the races, cultures, or other aspects of my setting.  So, in line with that, I will begin posting the game material related to those races, cultures, and other aspects here on my blog.  It's all for free, as the crunchy rules side of my setting was always intended to be.

So, as stated, here is the first bit.  Dark gnomes and the goblins they have horrifically enslaved.  Enjoy!

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Content - Pariah House Rules

Here, I present the Pariah Houserules for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons.

Yes, I realize that I've been posting a lot of D&D stuff lately.  Fact of the matter is, I like D&D.  I like game design, and I spend a lot of time working on various elements for the D&D ruleset that I want to share with people.  So, since I have this place to do so, I'm doing so.

Every gaming group has their own set of houserules.  Every player has things they like to be different, and every DM has preferences in regards to various portions of any given ruleset.  I don't expect everyone, or even anyone, to embrace my houserules whole-heartedly.  Rather, I present these simply with the hope that at least a few people will find at least a few of these ideas useful in their own campaigns.

These are a set of houserules developed, over time, by my current D&D group.  They have been built by the group as a whole, and they are used whenever I DM.  Keep in mind that the presentation is rather bare-bones, and the file was built to be used as an internal document.  I only, on a whim, decided to post these rules here, so I slapped some credits on the end and here they are for your enjoyment.

So, again, here for you are the Pariah Houserules.

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Content - Realm Walker

Here, I present the Realm Walker.

Among my favorite additions to D&D in the 4th Edition was the concept of epic destinies.  On one hand I enjoy most of the game mechanics introduced by the various epic destinies.  However on the other hand, and this is the more important aspect, I think epic destinies are very much an encouragement to role-play.  They provide a few bonuses, one extra power, and a really fun feature at 30th level that usually makes gameplay fun and over-the-top as epic play should be (though, honestly, some of them are kind of silly).

Yet it is the immortality portion of each epic destiny that I most often read.  Even when I find myself uninterested in a particular destiny, whether because the idea itself doesn't immediately appeal to me or because it's tied to a class or race that I'm not terribly excited about, I almost always read the bit specifying the attainment of immortality.  These almost always have nothing to do with any dice rolls, or even stats of any kind.  They are, instead, ideas for how to role-play your character's hard rise to one form of immortality or another.  Moreover, each form of immortality (barring a few exceptions) tends to be interesting and fun.

I have a few epic destinies unique to my campaign setting, but one that I think fits anywhere.  In fact, its entire premise is one that is designed specifically to fit into all campaign settings and be specific to none.  So, as already linked at the top of this blog, I present the Realm Walker in PDF form.

Also, the document itself uses an image that I think fits the theme rather nicely.  It's a lovely piece by an artist named Joe Wilson who was nice enough to let me make use of his work.  I linked to his Deviant Art page in the file, but I thought I should do so here as well.  He's pretty good, please check him out!

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