World of Esaene (ENWorld)

Friday, July 18, 2008

Revisions and modifications

I've run the game twice now, making revisions after the first one and now refinements after the second. The third encounter was really causing me problems, but with some feedback from players I think I have it down.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

ENWorld Blog

I have created a blog on ENWorld and I may, given some thought, do all of my blogging for Esaene over there.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/blog.php?u=34405

Monday, July 07, 2008

Winter's Shadow

The first adventure to be published is called "Winter's Shadow". The design is complete and I'm working on writing it up, preparing it for layout, and identifying art needs.

I'll be running internal playtests this week and, once I get through with any revisions from that, will be sending it out for some external playtests.

In Winter’s Shadow™, the player characters find themselves in the middle of a conflict on the Isle of Deldesheim. The Baron of Deldesheim, Evander Agenor, is getting married in one week to the Lady Keira Morris, a noble from across the sea in Boyden Arbor. One week ago, a host of goblins and other beasts from the feywild invaded. After pushing back the initial assault, the Baron mobilized his troops, supplemented by two companies of troops from the Royal brigade. During the final battle against the fey, the Baron’s only daughter is kidnapped, which could cause the conflict to spiral out of control. Can the players rescue the Baron’s daughter and prevent a full scale war while battling their way through wild goblins, fey knights, and a mysterious gang of kidnappers?

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Making adjustments to the setting

Now that I've had a chance to run the game and (finally) play (thanks to Galen at Origins for the great session), I'm starting to make the setting adjustments to fit the world as it is.

The first question is a bit of a hot topic on ENWorld and other forums. What to do with Dragonborn and Tieflings. The change to Dragonborn is really just a backstory one - the Dragonborn are the result of a magical experiment, the mortals emulating the Gods (in that the aberrations were designed to be weapons); the dragonborn were created and bred to be weapons, turned into slaves, and eventually freed by their own power in a revolt that toppled an empire. They never rose to power, splitting up into various tribes and factions.

The Tieflings, on the other hand, actual have some minor mechanical changes to go along with their massive story changes. The infernal thing is something I generally reserve for bad guys or a major storyline, not your run of the mill warlord. Instead, the Tiefling are out and "Cealdara" (Key-al-dara) are in. Cealdara are elves with abilities relating to cold. The Cealdara will be cousins to the Eladrin and Elves. Outsiders won't know the difference.