Laying the Foundation
We
talked a lot about our product line and what we wanted to do
to support Dungeons & Dragons and the new 4th Edition. With
3rd Edition, we tried the big book approach with Denizens of
Avadnu, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure
out that with the current
$10 sale of our remaining stock that it
didn’t go over as well as we would have hoped. From the beginning
we all agreed that we wanted to do smaller products and that
we wanted to focus on Violet Dawn and Avadnu as a campaign
setting.
It didn’t take us long to decide on doing a series of modules for 4th Edition. Even with modules, we still wanted to develop a lot of the actual world of Avadnu itself. We decided that each module would focus on a particular region and have a gazetteer that a DM could use to have more adventures in that area and expand upon the story in the modules themselves.
We’re not dead set on the format yet, but we’ve been thinking that each module would be between 96 and 128 pages with about 1/4 to 1/3 of that space being used for the region write up. Each module would take characters through about 3 levels of play with a trilogy of modules covering an entire tier of play.
The concept of the Violet Dawn campaign setting has always been to do a reboot of the fantasy genre to help capture that same sense of wonder you had the first time you played Dungeons & Dragons or picked up Lord of the Rings. If you’ve seen Alien Planet on the Discovery Channel, you’ll have a good idea of how we approached Violet Dawn. We started with a clean canvas, the world of Avadnu, and added to it by asking questions like how would a society on another planet develop and evolve.
If you look close enough you’ll see that Wizards of the Coast did their own reboot with 4e. In Races and Classes, Worlds and Monsters, and through the various blogs, podcasts, and forum postings, I’ve seen a lot of the designers using the same concepts to design 4e that we used to craft Violet Dawn into a fresh new setting. Concepts like every monster/race is unique and has its own power or ability that defines it, landscapes are strange and much different from normal earth, writers not being afraid to reimagine a lot of what has come before, the list goes on and on and a lot of these concepts you can see with the new Forgotten Realms books.
For my first Design Diary though, I don’t want to focus yet on the world of Avadnu or its alieness. I want to focus on the races because that is what we have been working on lately and that is the foundation upon which everything else is built. I mentioned on our blog, Arcane Sight, that Ari Marmell had read over a lot of the material that we had written for The Avadnu Primer and that his big concern was the huge amount of detail we had with our races and all of our subraces. 4e helped us fix a lot of that with its stress on being easier to understand and its lack of fluff. Now I’m not saying that we are gutting the fluff from Violet Dawn, far from it, but our race write ups and other elements will be short and sweet just like in the Player’s Handbook.
The other thing is that we use to have quite a few subraces, but those went the way of the dodo. If you want to play a mixed race then you can play one, but mechanically you’ll be the same as one of your parents. We might include a write up on half-races with appropriate racial feats, but that would be a web enhancement and not something that will make the Players Guide.
In the end, with the Player’s Guide we decided to go with the following race choices: humans, mistji, ngakoi, skarren, zeidian. There are a few notable missing races such as the sulwynarii and vulnar, but we plan to add them in down the road. I’ll go a bit into each race here and give a crunch preview by revealing the current version of their racial powers.
Humans
Humans are currently a bit problematic. We can’t redefine a term
under the GSL so we’ll probably just be calling the race Man.
I haven’t done much thinking on humans yet as I have been working
on trying to make all our other races gel. While I don’t want
them to be really different, I don’t want to just transplant
what is in the Player’s Handbook either. I've been thinking about
given each type of human their own racial power, but I'm not
sure how well that would work out as I want to keep their adaptibility.
I figure that I’ll
revisit humans in a later Design Diary.
Mistji
The mistji were the first race and were originally
magical spirits created by the high god Temulea. When Temulea’s children betrayed
him and meddled with the balance of Avadnu for their own purposes,
the spiritual mistji fell from the heavens into forms of flesh and
blood. With all of the magic still coursing through them, the mistji’s
physical forms are weaker than other races, but their command of
all things magical comes to them as easy as breathing comes to humans.
Here’s the current version of their racial power:
Magic Barrier Mistji
Racial Power
With a wave of your hand you create a shimmering barrier that makes you
more difficult to hit.
Encounter
Minor Action Personal
Effect: Until the end of your next turn you or any ally adjacent
to you gains a +2 power bonus to AC.
Special: Increase to +4 bonus to AC at 11th level, and to +6 bonus to AC at 21st level.
Ngakoi
We needed a small race for people who liked playing halflings
and the ngakoi originally came from a monster entry in Denizens
of Avadnu. We liked them so much we promoted them to a player
race. The ngakoi are a tribal people that live on the edge
and will use any type of tool Avadnu provides no matter if
its evil or extremely dangerous. An ngakoi’s most unusual feature is the glowing
third eye in his or her forehead, but no ngakoi is born with three
eyes. When ngakoi reach puberty, they are taught to physically manifest
their connection to the supernatural. Here’s the current version
of their racial power:
Mind’s Eye Ngakoi
Racial Power
Your third eye glows bright green, allowing you to perceive
things that others cannot.
Encounter
Immediate Reaction Ranged 5
Trigger: You or an ally misses an attack against
a concealed enemy
Target: You or one ally in range that you
can see
Effect: Reroll an attack roll against an enemy
that has concealment. Use the second roll, even if it’s
lower.
Skarren
The skarren were developed early on as a race that was pretty
much just hated by all of the other races. It wasn’t until
our lead artist, Jason Rosenstock, took a liking to them and claimed
them as his own that they began to take shape. Born from the blood
of the fallen god of battle, Krüg, these crimson skinned warriors
have no society of their own. They are nomads who wander from place
to place living off of the land and living by a simple code of the
strong survive. Their roving bands or kul’vraks are lead by
the skarren who is strongest among them and they engage in a lot
of activities that hone their physical bodies and prepare them for
battle. It is said that a skarren is only truly alive while on the
field of battle. Here’s the current version of their racial
power:
Head-butt Skarren Racial Power
You drive your bone-crested head into your
opponent’s
body.
Encounter
Minor Action
Target: One creature.
Attack: Strength vs. AC (melee)
Hit: 1d8 + Strength modifier damage.
Special: Increase to +4 bonus and 2d8 + Strength
modifier damage at 11th level, and to +6 bonus and 3d8 + Strength
modifier damage at 21st level.
Zeidian
The zeidians were actually the first race we created many many
years ago when Violet Dawn was initially being developed as
a novel series. As the oldest of our races, the zeidians have gone through
the most changes. They were created by the gods to serve as
guardians for man when they couldn’t survive the harshness of Avadnu.
Tall gray skinned warriors, zeidians live on the fringes of society
keeping a wary eye over the land to ensure man’s safety. Zeidians
approach combat with the calmness of a zen master preferring swords
and close quarters combat. Here’s the current version of their
racial power:
Guardian’s Calling Zeidian
Racial Power
Seeing your companion injured propels you into action driving
his attacker back so he can escape to safer ground.
Encounter
Immediate Interrupt Melee
Trigger: An ally is hit by a creature and bloodied.
Target: The attacking creature.
Attack: Strength +2 vs. AC (melee)
Hit: 1[W] damage and you push the target 1 square
+ your Wisdom modifier.
Special: Before the attack you can move your speed
without provoking opportunity attacks.
I have a few ideas for the next design diary, but I'm not sure what direction I want to take this yet. Till next time...