Showing posts with label races. Show all posts
Showing posts with label races. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Iron Canyons Dwarves: Lawful or Just Really Annoyingly Zealous?

Advanced Expansionist Culture of Chivalry, Piety, Honor

Strongly Monotheistic with Large Families

Crusaders and Colonizers - NEED MORE CAVES
Always looking for new habitable underground areas like Elvish Ruins, natural caverns

Classes: OD&D Dwarf, 1E OA Samurai, 2E Runecaster, 3E Crusader, Pathfinder Inquisitor, 4E Paladin
Manifest Destiny brings them aboveground to conquer

Once the slaves of the elves, they are sworn enemies

Clash with humans over territory

Subjugate or work with Skaven to colonize and spread

Armor: Plate, Chain, Scale, Breastplate, 3/4 Plate, 1/2 Plate
Very Early Firearm Use: ~1520s or so - Arquebuses and first Matchlocks

Swords, Pikes/Ranseurs, 2H Swords, Early Firearms, Crossbows, Hammers
Only dwarves know the secret of creating/using gunpowder

Preferred wealth: gold, gems, silver, garnets, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, topaz

Dwarves have no penalties to fighting in darkness

Linguistic Basis: Spanish, Italian, Portuguese

Food: Spicy preserved meats, mushroom flour noodles, rich sauces, breads

Drink: Mineral waters, whisky, white wines

Puritan, intolerant attitudes

Sometimes hire/coerce humans as scouts
Strong Warrior Religion - Paladins are warpriests, dress in Blue

Inquisitors dress in Green

Crusaders dress in Yellow

Samurai in the colors of their house


Iron Canyon Elves: Evil or Just Necromantically Misunderstood?

Gaunt
Tall
Terrible
Decadent
Ancient
Live Thousands of years but have imperfect memories - only recall last ~150 years or so
Thus, many elves seek to discover their own distant pasts
Civilization in complete decline; a shadow of the glorious elven past


Powerful, terrible magic with fearful results

No religion remaining except death cults - necromancers as priestly caste

Captured humanoids become thralls or terrible experiments
White, yellow, gray, or greenish skin - not always easy to tell undead elves from living elves

All elvish armors:  chitin, bone mail, skinsuit, Ichor - all dead things, no minerals

Most remaining cities are in river valleys but the high plains are full of elvish ruins and massive undercities

Immune to undead special attacks

Linguistic basis: Greek

Food: None; sometimes partake of bitter herbs or nutrient supplements made from dead sentient races and beasts

Drink: Fermented Bloodwine, various serums and chemicals

Largely asexual or with highly abnormal habits

Grafts or other magical body-modification 

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Cross-Edition D&D in Iron Canyons


The basic ideas for Iron Canyons arose from a design constraint I put on myself at the very beginning: No fighters, no Magic Users, no Clerics, and no Thieves.  I still wanted fantasy races, so there are Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and Skaven (which take the place of Halflings), but none of the class options available for any class are available for any other.   I also wanted to play with the idea that each race would have a (non-base) class option from each edition of D&D and would use the rules from their edition when resolving combat or other situations, just as has been done when incorporating characters from different games or editions in FLAILSNAILS games on G+.

So here is the current race/class options chart, subject to frequent revision as I flesh this out:

EditionHuman (C)Elf (E)Dwarf (L)Skaven (G)
OD&DZak's Random RangerOD&D ElfOD&D DwarfOD&D Halfling
AD&D 1EUnearthed Arcana BarbarianAD&D MonkOriental Adventures SamuraiAD&D Illusionist
AD&D 2EVikings Campaign BerserkerNecromancer Specialist MageVikings Campaign RunecasterDark Sun Trader?
D&D 3.5EDruid*HexbladeCrusader (Tome of Battle)?Scout
PathfinderCavalier (with flavor changes)WitchInquisitorBard
D&D 4EWarlord (with constraints*)Assassin (with constraints)Paladin (with constraints)Warden (with constraints)

*So, for the later editions where its all feat-trees and ability-combo building, I will probably highly constrain the choices so its more like the traditional "at-this-level-you-get-this" rather than "choose from these 15 things" to bring it a little more in line with the amount of variation available in older editions 

Humans may not be any kind of Lawful.
Elves may not be any kind of Good.
Dwarves may not be any kind of Chaotic.
Skaven may not be any kind of Evil.

 A lot of the choices in the above chart will make more sense as I explain the different cultures of the PC races.