Still Alive

Look at me, still typing when there’s science to do…

To be brief:  A family emergency has kept me more or less offline for the last month.  It’s one of those things that didn’t seem like it would take long, and then kept complicating until much more time had passed than I’d expected.

New posts will resume next week.  I’ll be on a lighter posting schedule for a little while — 1-2 posts per week, rather than the previous 2-3.

Kicking things off, I have an interview with Wolfgang Baur about Open Design and his latest 4e project, Fey of the Shadow Court.

Rampant Sects

(This is a repost.  This article was originally posted on November 24, 2008.)

In my last post, I talked a little bit about how religions are rarely monolithic in reality — how they splinter into a network of related sects, some of which can believe very different things.  Today I offer a brief illustration:  three sects I’ve developed for my game, all based on my interpretation of the Raven Queen, the fourth edition’s new and ever-intriguing goddess of death.

The Most Ancient and Honorable Order of Deathspeakers is a militarized splinter faction of the church, whose warrior monks seek to destroy the undead and oppose the machinations of Orcus and his minions.  Many of these are fanatical in their beliefs, and enough are reckless in battle that the common folk often call them the “Deathseekers” (but not to their faces).

The M.A.H.O. is actually not very ancient, having been established within the past century — it claims the adjective through a dubious philosophical connection with an earlier sect of a similar name, which was eradicated centuries ago by a combination of Orcus cultists and their own infighting.  It isn’t terribly honorable, either, for that matter, although its activities are largely confined to crusading against the undead and related enemies (necromancers, Orcus cultists, etc.).

The Deathspeakers have only one large monastery devoted to their order — in the wilderness north of the kingdoms of Tir Eselyn and south of Ravenspire.  Few rulers are willing to support a large independent army of religious fanatics on their soil.  Smaller chapterhouses of perhaps 20-50 members are scattered throughout the region, though, and itinerant crusader groups of 3-7 warrior monks and acolytes are a reasonably common sight throughout the north.

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Character Development: Flashbacks

(This is a repost.  This article was originally posted on August 9, 2008.)

We’re all familiar with the use of the flashback in literature, film, and television:  The “current” narration fades out, showing us a sequence that establishes some event or events that took place in the past of the story.  This device is used to provide important backstory (and, sometimes, to retcon, changing “what really happened” in the past).

I’ve seen relatively few people use the device in roleplaying games, but it can be an excellent method of character development.  It makes a good break between the wrap-up of one major quest or story arc and the initiation of the next.  It also makes a great filler on a night when one or two members of your group can’t make the game, but the rest want to play something.

At the beginning of the typical campaign, the player characters either already know each other, or they’re being brought together for the first time by a plot thread or through sheer coincidence.  Hopefully each player already has in mind at least a basic backstory for his character, and sharing parts of these backstories may be a major aspect of the first few sessions, especially if the characters are just getting to know each other.  Meanwhile, the game master has at least a rough idea of the recent past history of the various locations from which the characters originally hail.

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