The Ways Of…
First up, two announcements.
For the time in a while, I’ve finished a new Spes Magna product, this time for 5E D&D. The Ways Of… presents seven new monastic traditions, each one available to a different core rules race. The elven monks of the way of the Blade and Bow practice a different art than do the halfling monks of the Way of the Hearth. A dwarven Cave monk fighting back-to-back with a gnomish Prank monk use their ki in very different ways. Other monastic traditions include tieflings, dragonborn, and drow. This is the playtest version of The Ways Of…. Get it today by paying what you want, and create a monk for your favorite non-human race.
I’ve also completed about two-thirds of The Ninth Face of Cro, my fourth Dangerous Place and the first one written for 5E D&D. (The other three Dangerous Places are for Swords & Wizardry.) The Ninth Face introduces beginning characters to the Mortuary Moot, a frontier region recovering from a natural disaster. As part of the recovery efforts, the barons have put out the call for adventurers to seek fame and fortune in the Moot (and thus help drive out the hordes of evil humanoids and other monsters who threaten settlers and merchants). I hope to have The Ninth Face available as early as this Friday (although next week is probably more realistic).
And now for more thoughts about investigative 5E D&D.
I’ve written three blogposts about The GUMSHOE System’s applicability to a more traditional fantasy game, wherein I’ve mused about clue hunting, gothic Victorian D&D, and what an Adventuress background might look like. The focus on these musings has been TSR’s wonderful Masque of the Red Death campaign expansion with a dash of Chaosium’s excellent Cthulhu by Gaslight. In recent days, I’ve started down a different rabbit trail. Two of my other favorite TSR products are Oriental Adventures and the Birthright campaign setting. Both of these products encourage and reward things like courtly intrigue, spying, et cetera. They’re ideal for investigative roleplaying.
Nota Bene: All of the links in that last paragraph are affiliate links. If you click and buy, I get a pittance.
5E D&D already includes a few nods to what was the Oriental Adventures milieu: monks, assassins (read: ninjas), and samurai. Working up a few new races (spirit folk) or subraces (korobokuru) shouldn’t be too hard. Classes such as the yakuza could become subclasses. Thrown out the PH weapons and armor tables and pull in OA weapons and armor, change a few names, and a lot of the work would be done. Also, I’ve printed for closer reading the 5E conversion of Birthright by Marsupialmancer. The conversion looks promising.
Little by little, after our current d20 Modern science-fantasy-horror campaign draws to a close, I’m leaning heavily toward a less gonzo game of political intrigue with a decidedly OA feel. Time will tell whether my ADHD drags me in a different direction before we’re ready for a new campaign in the fall.
