Yora
2023-12-28, 05:26 PM
I recently had an idea for a campaign in a seemingly generic Elfland setting that combines monsters from Lords of Madness with some concepts from Bloodborne. And while I was at browsing LoM for more ideas, working with the Manual of the Planes seemed like another great idea.
And at that point, why not just make that a D&D 3rd edition campaign?
I think I've not really done anything with the system in over a decade, but looking at it again, it seems like riding a bike. I know all this stuff! I know how it all works.
But while everything comes right back when I look at it, my memory is very hazy about all the hoards of options and alternative system that existed for the game even then. So perhaps you might have some ideas what material I might take a look at to port some concepts from Bloodborne into 3rd edition.
To quickly recap and summarize, in Bloodborne, there are these ancient and powerful extraplanar aberrations called the Great Ones. Humans learned of their existence out there in the dark depths of the Cosmos and wanted to study them to gain supernatural powers. One of the schools of research that wasn't all about human experiments with alien blood believed that the realm of the Great Ones wasn't a distant place but right all around them. The human mind is simply too simple to perceive most of reality, while much of the true form of the world remains invisible to it. So their research was into expanding the human mind and gain awareness of all of reality. As one of them put it "to line the insides of their brains with eyes".
In the game, having encounters with eldritch beings increases a stat named Insight. As your insight increases you start to see more really weird stuff in the environment that apparently had been there invisible to normal human sight the whole time. The downside is that you also become more vulnerable to the supernatural attacks of the eldritch beings and their corrupted servants. For gameplay reasons, there is also a completely separate stat called Arcane that you level up normally, which enables you to use eldritch magic items and increases the damage you do with them.
This is something that I think would be really cool in a planar Lords of Madness campaign, but Insight and Arcane should be the same stat. Let's call it Weird for now.
- Encounters with aberrations and studies of aberrant lore increases character's Weird score.
- A higher Weird score enables you to use eldritch items and makes them more powerful.
- A higher Weird score makes it harder to resist the supernatural attacks of aberrations.
It would be kind of like a Sanity score that makes you mad when repeatedly exposed to the eldritch supernatural, but it also makes you better at aberrant magic.
Any alternative rules or new systems that come to mind for this?
Such a campaign should definitely include psionics. Not sure how I would combine psionics with Weird yet, but if anyone knows material for more eldritch psionics, I would absolutely be interested in that as well.
And at that point, why not just make that a D&D 3rd edition campaign?
I think I've not really done anything with the system in over a decade, but looking at it again, it seems like riding a bike. I know all this stuff! I know how it all works.
But while everything comes right back when I look at it, my memory is very hazy about all the hoards of options and alternative system that existed for the game even then. So perhaps you might have some ideas what material I might take a look at to port some concepts from Bloodborne into 3rd edition.
To quickly recap and summarize, in Bloodborne, there are these ancient and powerful extraplanar aberrations called the Great Ones. Humans learned of their existence out there in the dark depths of the Cosmos and wanted to study them to gain supernatural powers. One of the schools of research that wasn't all about human experiments with alien blood believed that the realm of the Great Ones wasn't a distant place but right all around them. The human mind is simply too simple to perceive most of reality, while much of the true form of the world remains invisible to it. So their research was into expanding the human mind and gain awareness of all of reality. As one of them put it "to line the insides of their brains with eyes".
In the game, having encounters with eldritch beings increases a stat named Insight. As your insight increases you start to see more really weird stuff in the environment that apparently had been there invisible to normal human sight the whole time. The downside is that you also become more vulnerable to the supernatural attacks of the eldritch beings and their corrupted servants. For gameplay reasons, there is also a completely separate stat called Arcane that you level up normally, which enables you to use eldritch magic items and increases the damage you do with them.
This is something that I think would be really cool in a planar Lords of Madness campaign, but Insight and Arcane should be the same stat. Let's call it Weird for now.
- Encounters with aberrations and studies of aberrant lore increases character's Weird score.
- A higher Weird score enables you to use eldritch items and makes them more powerful.
- A higher Weird score makes it harder to resist the supernatural attacks of aberrations.
It would be kind of like a Sanity score that makes you mad when repeatedly exposed to the eldritch supernatural, but it also makes you better at aberrant magic.
Any alternative rules or new systems that come to mind for this?
Such a campaign should definitely include psionics. Not sure how I would combine psionics with Weird yet, but if anyone knows material for more eldritch psionics, I would absolutely be interested in that as well.