At Will

I don’t like the new duergar.  What don’t I like?  The quills. The quills!  Not being much of a complainer, I decided I’d make the duergar that I’d like to see.  I wanted to continue to move them in a new direction from previous versions of D&D.  I also wanted to further explore the duergar’s infernal roots. What might you get if you went further down the duergar’s infernal path?  Letting that question swish around in my mind brought me to the Hellrock Duergar clan.

I hope you enjoy it!  Comments and criticisms welcome!

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Someone left this comment on my last post about a core rule book for a modern version of 4e:

In D&D, you could wind up running into something your character is supposed to know but you don’t, or worse, the other way around, and it would slow down the game or butcher the roleplaying process. (Vecna? Who’s Vecna?)

Fluency in setting meant that D20 Modern was an immediately recognizable game, letting you focus less on the setting and more on the characters and gameplay.

And I’ve got to hand it to the guy who wrote it. He’s absolutely right. I had never given the subject a lot of thought, but fluency is a very big part of what makes a game enjoyable.

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This week we’ve got in a fresh shipment of unusual and exotic magical pets. You understand that we have to keep our sources secret, so I can’t tell you exactly where these little guys are from. No returns on these either, sorry! But wait! Don’t walk away yet! We’ve got some very special companions here with all kinds of amazing little abilities that could aid you and your party members on the journey ahead.

And the prices can’t be beat.

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Gamefiend already gave out some excellent dungeon mastering advice this week, so I’m going to take a quick break from my usual system modifications and advice to discuss something that me and many others loved and enjoyed about 3.5: the d20 series.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll clue you in. After 3.5 had been released for a while, Wizards released a series of rulebooks for 3.5 in the fall of 2002, starting with the core rules for d20 Modern, a contemporary setting for D&D 3.5. Shortly after that came companion sources like d20 past (for pirates and pulp action), d20 future (for your cyberpunks), and d20 apocalypse (for all you Mad Max fans). You can find just about all the rules you need to play at the following link from Wizards:

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One hand giveth and the other taketh away? Both hands are probably wearing rings from the collection below. (These pieces might match up well with a skill challenge.)

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