Showing posts with label Zeitgeist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zeitgeist. Show all posts

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Zeitgeist's setting, and the deva & goblin.


So, it occurs to me that I could have a wee bit more about Zeitgeist's setting. Like anything at all. This is what I get for posting while on lunch at work.

Zeitgeist takes place on Lanjyr. It used to be a relatively stereotypical fantasy world until about 300 years before the start of the ap. A goddess died, terrible things happened, magic stopped working some places, etc. As a result of this, the industrial revolution came to the world.

The PCs start out in Risur, which has a rather Great Britain feel to it, but it's in a subtropical region. It's industrial revolution came a bit later, and there is a lot of social issues as a result. Risur has traditionally been very magic and nature oriented, and now it's moving to industry and technology. The PCs start out as members of what is essentially Risur's version of the Secret Service and/ or the FBI.

So you're starting from a very different place than in most aps. Some of my players had difficulty adjusting to this. Anyway, things happen, the PCs get thrust into the middle of it, and ultimately some really epic stuff happens.

So, the deva. In this setting, the deva is someone who was originally your garden variety mortal, but they were in the blast radius when that goddess died. As a result, a piece of her divinity became lodged in that person's soul and now they reincarnate when they die. The deva doesn't really have memories of their former lives, though there are vague rumors that some have managed to figure out how to do that.



Deva Traits

Ability Score Increases: Your Intelligence score increases by 1, your Wisdom score by 2.

Age: Devas are reincarnated as adults and have an immortal life span. They can still died from disease or injury.

Alignment: Many devas tend towards good. Lifetime after lifetime has taught them that being virtuous to others has its own rewards.

Size: Your size is medium.

Speed: Your base walking speed is 30 ft.

Astral Resistance: You have resistance to necrotic & radiant damage.

Cantrip: You know one cantrip from the cleric spell list. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability score for this spell.

Memory of a Thousand Lifetimes: When you make an attack roll, saving throw, or ability check & don't like the result, you can roll 1d10 & add it to the result. You must complete a long rest before you can use this ability again.

Worldly Knowledge: You have proficiency in the History skill.

Languages: You can speak, read, and write Common & Elven. If you've lived in Risur for a significant amount of time, you can also speak, read, & write Primordial.

This is obviously very heavily borrowed from World Builder Blog.

As for the goblin:



Goblin Traits

Ability Score Increase: Your Dexterity score increases by 2, your Wisdom score by 1.

Age: Goblins mature faster than humans, reaching adulthood by age 10. Goblins rarely live past 50 years of age.

Alignment: Goblins used to tend towards Neutral Evil. In this new civilized age, goblins now tend towards Neutral.

Size: Goblins range 3 to 4 feet in height, and typically weigh 40 to 60 lbs. Your size is small.

Speed: Being unusually fleet of foot, your base walking speed is 30 ft.

Darkvision: Goblins are used to living underground. You can see in dim light as if it was bright light up to 60 ft., and in darkness as if it was dim light.

Nimble Escape: When an attacker targets you with a melee attack & misses, you may Disengage as a reaction and move away from your attacker.

Sneaky: You are proficient in the Stealth skill.

Goblin Weapon Training: You are proficient in the scimitar & shortbow.

Languages: You can speak, read, and write Common & Goblin. Goblin uses the Dwarven script. Immigrants to Risur are typically also able to speak, read, and write Primordial.

I borrowed heavily from Myth Weavers & the Small But Vicious Blog for the goblin.

Zeitgeist: the Gears of Revolution for 5e



If you're not familiar with Zeitgeist, published by En World, it's a very good AP. It's very different from the other APs out there, and players who want to hack and slash rather than roleplay & investigate probably won't like it. That was a mistake I made when I tried to run it; I didn't make a good choice on who to invite to play it.

Anyway, I wanted to run this for 5e. It's been published for 4e, which is reflected in a couple of things in the material, and Pathfinder. I started converting the Pathfinder stuff to 5e. A couple of people on the En World forums have also done some conversion work, and I borrowed some of that. If I post any of that material, I will properly credit the source. En World announced not long ago that they would be putting out some converted material, which should be nice.

First up: playable races.
Deva
Dragoborn (any)
Eladrin
Gnome (forest & rock)
Goblin
Goliath
Half-elf
Half-orc
Human
Lightfoot Halfling
Minotaur
Mountain Dwarf
Tiefling
Wood Elf

There are wood elves & eladrin in this setting. Obviously, you can get the eladrin from the DMG.

Goblins can now be found in Volo's. I originally came up with something different, which I'll put in my next post.

There are Devas here, which is a type of aasimar. I'll put that in my next post, too. Both the deva & goblin are originally other people's ideas.

For the minotaur, you have the UA material & material from Kobold Press to choose from.

Everything else is straight out of the PHB. I will say I like the stuff over on Tribality to mix things up a bit for dragonborn.

That's all for now.

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Zeitgeist: The Gears of Revolution session 1

I will attempt to avoid spoilers just in case anyone ever wants to run this AP, which I highly recommend. Expect some to get in there despite my efforts.

So, some madness overtook me and I decided to translate the Pathfinder version of Zeitgeist to 5e. Zeitgeist is an excellent adventure path from En World that takes your characters from 1st to 20th level. Lot's of good stuff. Half my players have defected from Pathfinder to 5e, so I thought why not give it a go.

I've only finished the first adventure. Fortunately, some swell folks in the En World forum had already taken the time to translate the theme packages in the player's guide into 5e backgrounds. They worked out quite well, and took a bunch of work off of me.

We had our first session today. I'm not a game designer or 5e expert, but so far it seems that the translations work pretty well. One thing I've noticed is that it seems pretty easy to disarm someone, possibly too easy. It's one of the optional rules in the DMG. Handily enough, the DMG also has rules for guns, and guns are pretty common in this setting. The basic gist of things is that the AP takes place in a setting where the industrial revolution has finally made its way into a fantasy setting. It's actually pretty awesome.

If you don't know, the PCs start out as members of the Royal Homeland Constabulary. Kind of like an old timey Secret Service. They have taken the place of the plucky adventurers that people used to go to for taking care of trouble. Zeitgeist starts out with the party doing crowd duty looking for possible miscreants at the unveiling of the Coaltongue, the newest, bestest, first steam powered ship in the naval fleet. The party tackled this job well enough, and made all the roles they needed to to ID the miscreants in question. And that's when things kind of ground to a halt for a few minutes.

My party didn't seem very comfortable with the idea that they had authority. Or at least they didn't know what to do with it. They just set to watching the suspects, waiting for them to do something. Only problem is, if it reaches the point where the suspects are actually causing a problem, then the party has already failed in its mission. I actually had a NPC police officer try to prod the paladin into action, who simply responded by being snarky and annoyed and telling the officer to go arrest the man if he wanted. So the officer did just that, and a fight broke out.

I won't go into details, but it was kind of a messy fight, though no one died. It would have been a very bad thing if this fight had broken out in front of the nation's king. But it all worked out, though the paladin and the officer with him did both get a serious beating (being disarmed is a bitch). Fast forward through a party full of nobles and industrialists and onto the ship they went.

Needless to say, things happened. My player's initial confusion as to what was happening totally made sense. Once they realized their initial thoughts were wrong, they kind of got stuck again. Granted, the session ended before they had time to fully process the situation because much of their attention was focused on beating down the meanest halfling they've ever seen. This AP is pretty different from the usual things your players will likely have encountered. They're police, with authority, and paperwork. They can't just go all murder hobo and expect to get anywhere. There are clues to follow, NPCs to talk to, and quite a lot of non-combat encounters. I think my players are going to have to take a little time to adjust to a whole new approach to things.

Someone I know who is running this AP in Pathfinder has expressed skepticism that this will work out. He seems to think that at higher levels things are going to get screwy. I haven't played with a party past 4th level yet, so I guess time will tell. 1st level is working out pretty well so far, even if some of my conversions may not be exactly right. Anyway, let the investigation continue!