Knowing a rough outline of what you have planned is invaluable. I tend to outline things at least five levels beyond wherever my group is currently at. That way if they decide they don’t want to do a particular adventure or skip to the end more quickly than I expect, I have a vague idea of where they’ll be headed next. I can usually wing the first part of the next adventure if I have to.

Campaign Outline

1. Modron March I: Modron March [Level 4]
2. Infinite Staircase 1: Planewalkers [Level 4]
3. Modron March II: The Unswerving Path [Level 4]
4. Modron March III: Ambushed [Level 4]
5. Interlude in Sigil: Aasamir’s Revenge
6. Infinite Staircase 7: Reflections [Level 5]
7. Well of Worlds: Recruiters [Level 5]
8. Infinite Staircase 6: Dream Well [Level 6]
9. Modron March IV: Politics of the Beasts [Level 6]
10. Infinite Staircase 4: In Disarray [Level 6]
11. Interlude in Sigil: Harbinger House [Level 6]
12. Infinite Staircase Tale 2: Lost Sovereignty [Level 7]
13. Interlude in Golorian: Hunting Dragon Turtles [Level 7]
14. Interlude in Arborea: A God’s Favor
15. Modron March V: Modron Madness [Level 7]
16. Modron March VI: Law in Chaos [Level 7]
17. Infinite Staircase 5: City of Air [Level 8]
18. Infinite Staircase 8: Kyton Challenge [Level 8]
19. Modron March VIII: Camp Followers [Level 8]
20. Infinite Staircase Prologue: Ants vs Salads
21. Dead Gods 1: Circean Embers [Level 8]
22. Dead Gods 2: Crux [Level 8]
23. Dead Gods 3: Masks [Level 8]
24. Modron March IX: Sidetracked [Level 9]
25. Dead Gods 4: Message from Thanatos [Level 9]
26. Dead Gods 5: Bottom of the Multiverse [Level 9]
27. Dead Gods 6: The Vault of the Drow [Level 9]
28. Dead Gods 7: The Ruins of Pelion [Level 10]
29. Dead Gods 8: Deepest Pandemonium [Level 10]
30. Modron March X: The Flower Infernal [Level 10]
31. Vault of Lost Souls [Level 10]
32. Modron March XI: The Last Leg [Level 10]
33. Dead Gods 9: The Dead Book of the Gods [Level 11]
34. Faction War [Level 11]
35. Die Vecna Die [Level 12]
36. Demon God’s Fane [Level 13]
37. Paladin in Hell [Level 14]
38. Building a Better World 1: Apocalypse Stone [Level 15]
39. Interlude: Coliseum Morpheoun [Level 15]
40. Building a Better World 2:Picking up the Pieces [Level 16 - 19]
41. Building a Better World 3:True Test of the Starstone [Level 20]

Don’t get overwhelmed. I started the outline when I realized I wanted to interweave Modron March and the Infinite Staircase adventures. Anything that says interlude was likely added an adventure or two before it happened. The original outline had less than a dozen entries. When I first wrote this, there were some question marks on which Infinite Staircase Tale would happen where. I left room for the players to pick. As the game went on, the outline grew.

Around level 11 or 12, I realized I had nowhere to go past A Paladin in Hell. Levels 15+ were a void. There weren’t any good higher level Planescape modules to steal from. Paizo’s high level modules are rare and didn’t really fit. So I decided to strike out on my own. I found the Apocalypse Stone and it sparked some ideas. The characters are tricked into stealing a stone that acts as a planar cornerstone for the world. They were told it was the Test of the Starstone, a path to divinity. Instead the stone anchors it into place in the planes. I decided that the near apocalypse that is caused would end with planar travel being cut off. The characters would have to travel to several domain hot spots, the vistegial remnants of the world’s connections to the outer planes. They would have to absorb the energy through a ritual, becoming a conduit for that domain.

Once each character is a conduit for for domains, they will be able to perform a greater ritual to restore the plane to balance. They will then have the opportunity to take the actual Test of the Starstone and become new deities of those domains for the reshaped world. Or they could choose to relinquish the domain power and retire as mortals. We’ll see when we get there.

There was only one problem. The characters are based in Sigil. They don’t care very much about any particular prime world. The impact of seeing a place they loved destroyed isn’t as great if they don’t have a real connection to the world. Fortunately, Bort the Fighter is from “Ancient Greece”. A version of our world where mythology is true. So even if the characters only have a loose connection to the world, the players are intimately familiar with it. They’ve already worked with the Greek Gods in an interlude in Arborea before. I just needed to lure them to “Ancient Greece” to begin the arc.

So with this in mind I decided that the paladin they would be rescuing during A Paladin in Hell would be a paladin of Apollo. Back tracking further, I made him the same paladin they’d worked with during the Modron March (Ambushed, Infernal Flower). To make his connection a little more immediate, I had him be the one that asks the party to come with him to the Demon God’s Fane. During the course of that adventure he was corrupted by a demon spirit and slain in the final battle. A Paladin in Hell began at his funeral, at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Since I knew where I wanted things to go I could drop hints and clues several adventures ahead.

So they are currently travelling to domain hotspots around the world. This actually makes it easier, because now they know what is going on. So I can ask them which domains they plan on hitting up next. So far they’ve tackled:

• Knowledge – Bort the Archivist
• Madness – Bort the Binder
• Trickery – Bort the Rogue
• War – Bort the Fighter

Since I already have a good idea which places they’ll hit next (Strength, Luck, or Runes) I can think ahead. Knowing where your group is headed, or likely to be headed, is key to staying one step ahead. Even if they take an unexpected turn, you’ll always be halfway prepared in your mind.

Eclipse Phase by Posthuman Studios.

Eclipse Phase is a science fiction RPG that I want to love. I really do. It incorporates new sci-fi topics and really feels like an RPG for the modern reader. On the other hand, in some ways it tries to do too much. Which makes it harder for me to sell to the other players. Too much new terminology to pick up. Both in-character and out-of-character.

First let me tell you about the most amazing feature of this game. It’s free. Every book they release is Creative Commons (Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike.) That means you are free to copy and remix the material as much as you like, as long as you don’t resell it and tell people where you got it from. More importantly, it means you can download all the books legally. The company itself releases good quality versions of the file. They of course would like you to go buy the beautiful printed books or purchase the PDFs to support them. On the other hand they embrace the “information should be free” hacker ethos.

The setting is the relatively near future. Mankind has colonized the solar system, but nothing beyond it. There is no galactic empire that spans thousands of star systems. We only have the planets of our solar system to work with. We have advanced to the point where we have stations every where from the sun’s corona to Pluto and beyond.

Meanwhile, Earth is dead. Or mostly dead. 10 years ago a collection of AIs sparked World War III and wiped out most of mankind. There is a quarantine around Earth because automated war machines still roam around destroying anything that moves. Luckily the AIs mysteriously left the solar system, so things have been relatively quiet since then.

We have also perfected the technology for copying brain patterns. So a few billion people “escaped” earth by uploading their brains into the colonies. We have the ability to implant these brain patterns into bio-enhanced bodies, artificially grown bodies, or purely robot bodies. However, living space isn’t unlimited. So many refugees from Earth have to live virtual lives in the computer network until they can earn a body. A large number have chosen to contract themselves to corporations as indentured workers, often mining or other tedious jobs, just for the chance to walk around again.

Another aspect of being able to copy brains is that you can now duplicate yourself. The legality of such “forks” (as they are called) varies from place to place. Most of the time it is illegal to have multiple true copies running around, but some places allow limited versions for a short period of time. You can also merge your forks back together, stitching the memories of both into a new whole. Of course, doing so after being separated for too long may lead to mental instability. For the most part, people don’t fly from colony to colony when they want to visit someplace. It just takes too long. Way easier to temporarily send your mind over there and rent a body for the trip.

I said we hadn’t reached other star systems earlier. That’s actually not quite true. After the AIs left we discovered a number of “Pandora Gates” (named after the moon they were found on, although the mythological implications of the name are intentional.) Nobody knows how they were created. They do allow travel to distant worlds. Of course, not very many expeditions return successfully. Those that do often come back with worthwhile information or tech. Whole campaigns can be centered around the exploration of the worlds beyond the gates.

Suffice it to say, the setting is rich and detailed. There are a ton of aspects I glossed over in my quick overview. I really like that the setting has so many types of games that can be played in it. The primary themes of the game are horror and conspiracy, but exploration and adventure are also possible. The Eclipse Phase world is an interesting place to explore.

So what are the problems with the game? It can be overwhelming. I tried to run a one-shot and failed utterly. Part of it is my fault. I had two scenarios to choose from, and I went with the one that had the most straight forward plot. However, it just uses pre-gens from the book. So it doesn’t have detailed backgrounds to hand out to each player. Nothing to ease them into playing the scenario. I realize I should have printed up the Quick Start Rules to hand out. It at least condenses the basics of the setting down to 6 pages. The other scenario I could have tried had better backgrounds, but I suspect it still would have floundered due too information overload at the start.

The rules are, once you start playing, relatively simple. A percentile based skill system similar to Call of Cthulhu or other games. Creating characters? Takes hours. You’ve got a thousand points to spend on skills and other aspects of your character. Which is why I opted for pre-gens. However, I didn’t realize quite how obscure the terminology really was. There’s a lot of info on the page, most of my players got confused too early. I planned on running things rules-light anyway, with the sheets as just a guide for what the characters were like. But since the statistics all use unusual terms (COO, COG, SOM?) my players didn’t really know what to make of things.

So I realize with a little more preparation I could have made things easier. On the other hand, next time around I’m tempted to just use some variation of FATE to run the game. Simplify skills so that people can easily find “Guns”, and “Dodge” instead of “Kinetic Weapons” and “Fray”. Give each character some aspects for their mind and personality, and some separate aspects for their current body. Example: Ruster morph: Aspect: Adapted to Mars. Aspect: Red skin. Making it so that a new player can understand who and what their character is about with a single read through of the character sheet will go a long way toward engaging them with the game world.

Overall, I really like Eclipse Phase. It has some hurdles, although the Quick Start Rules do help. Once you get past the jargon, there is a lot of great stuff in the setting. I just need to find a way to hook players in a single page of text, not 2 hours of studying the main book. Still, if you like sci-fi, you owe it to yourself to check it out. I mentioned it was free to try, right?

Apathy Rating: 4/5.

Few people have actually experienced a very high level Pathfinder
game. I’m fortunate enough to be running one at the moment, so I thought I would start a series exploring the ups and downs of my campaign.

First a little background. This campaign has been running for around 4 years now. That means it started life as a 3.5 campaign and migrated to Pathfinder Beta and then Pathfinder. The basic premise was originally to do a Planescape game. This quickly expanded into running the best of the old Planescape modules. My players have been through Tales of the Infinite Staircase, The Great Modron March, Dead Gods, Die, Vecna, Die and quite a few sidetrecks along the way. All before hiting 15th level. This does mean that my group levelled slowly and got more wealth by level than expected. A lot more wealth.

The game is currently at 17th level, but I’ll back track a bit and start talking about their adventures around 15th level. It’ll help prevent spoilers if my players bother to read the blog. And give me a bit of a buffer, so I have plenty to talk about for the forseeable future.

House Rules

Spell DCs

The DC for spells is equal to 10 + 1/2 caster level + stat. This means a 10th level wizard with an 18 Int has DC 19 for all of their spells. From Sleep to Fireball and beyond. Overall it really doesn’t change that much. Most of the good spells are still the highest level a caster has available. On the other hand, it is way easier to keep track of. When I write an NPCs statblock I just have to calculate that once and put it next to caster level in the statblock.

Metamagic

I use the metamagic system from Book of Experimental Might. Every time you take a metamagic feat it gives a number of uses per day. It can be applied at the time of casting to any spell. Powerful feats are limited to once per day (quicken, maximize), and less powerful ones are three times per day (empower, extend). This does mean my high level casters can have quickened maximized 9th level spells. That’s probably a little overpowered. On the other hand, enemy casters still fall in short order.

Critical Hit Deck

We use Paizo’s Critical Hit Deck. It makes things a lot of fun. Especially on those rare magic criticals.

d20 Playground

While the core rules are Pathfinder, I allow material from a wide range of sources. From Wizards of the Coast to Open Design to Green Ronin. I also pull from a wide range of monster books. In some ways this unbalances the game. In other ways it really doesn’t matter at this power level.

Cast

Bort – Female half-elf fighter. Uses two scimitars with improved critical and staggering criticals. Used to be a male centaur barbarian, but he got tired of dying in every fight. So early 15th level they decided that the centaur was like a cocoon and Bort the Fighter emerged fully formed from the husk of the centaur’s body.

Bort – Female tiefling rogue. Uses two short swords. One of them is the Sword of Kas (now named Starscream). Also has boots of hellstep which allow a dimension door as a swift action but without the restriction on actions afterward. Can hide in plain sight after a dip into shadow dancer.

Bort – Male dwarven archivist. Like a cleric, only he doesn’t know all cleric spells and can’t channel energy. On the other hand, he can give some bonuses to attacking creatures with an appropriate knowledge check.

Bort – Male human++ binder. A very strange class. If I were to start over I’d make all the abilities (sp) instead of (su). Also it uses con as one of its primary stats which I would probably switch to Cha. Overall, while there are a few bindings I should tweak, the class is strangely underpowered in combat and overpowered in non-combat.

Did I meantion my group is a little silly? The binder for the longest time was the only PC not named Bort. After winning the cup of dreams from the Coliseum Morpheuon the group decided to use their first wish to rename him Bort. Some future year they plan on wishing that he enjoys being named Bort. So I will have to say Bort the Rogue or some such whenever I talk about a character in the game. On the other hand, I never forget a PCs name anymore.

Lost City by Logan Bonner

As a patron for Open Design‘s Lost City I am slightly biased. I wasn’t really involved in pitching ideas however; my patronage was really more of a pre-order. A sign of my faith that Open Design would deliver an excellent adventure for 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Logan Bonner does not disappoint.

In a way Lost City brings a taste of classic Dungeons and Dragons to the latest edition. Inspired by such classics as B4: The Lost City and S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. Out in the desert, there is a ruined city. Not just any old city, but the wreckage of a once flying city. What treasures await inside? Will the characters befriend the inhabitants still living within, or destroy them? Much of the destiny of the city is left in the character’s hands.

The main inhabitants of city are the Oklu, a race of reptilian humanoids. Servitors to the original builders of the lost city, the Oklu will likely become both allies and obstacles to the characters as they explore. The factions of Oklu are split on how to protect their sacred home. The characters are likely to upset the balance of power. They could unite the Oklu and restore the city to its former glory or just as easily spark a civil war as they plunder it.

My favorite section of the adventure are the hanging gardens. A portion of the city fell upside down. Now plants hang from the floors of the city. Exploring from upside down building to building will be require great athleticism or the aid of magic. Just be careful not to fall when fighting off the insectoid hive that made the area their home.

If you are looking looking for an excellent paragon tier adventure for Dungeons and Dragons, Lost City is a must buy. It could easily be adaptable to Dark Sun or any other setting with a large unexplored desert. Lost City is what adventures are all about.

Apathy Rating: 5/5.