Cephalon Dusp's Archives

     Recently, prompted by the Wandering DMs podcast, I have been thinking about the trade of magic in all of its forms. My own setting is still incomplete, but I also have enough detail to it that I can start thinking about how magic currently works in it. So, I will be doing a small case study on some fictional average wizard's apprentice. Background Information     There are several important pieces of information to know about my setting, but I will be quick. The single largest change I have made is transitioning off of vancian spell slots to a Magic Points (MP) system with spell costs equal to the spell's level and odds of failure depending on the caster's level. As casters gain more experience, they will even get chances to cast spells for free, though it is very unlikely for an apprentice. A caster will have MP equal to Level + Arc, and they will recover 1d3 + Arc for every week of recovery time (no creating magical items, primarily focused on meditation ...

    I'm back again! To help make up for the content I didn't make the last couple of weeks, I have decided to make this week a double post week! Hope you all enjoy.      It shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone who has played any version of Dungeons and Dragons (or most of its spawn) that many RPGs have a large focus on combat. It makes sense, considering the game's roots of dungeon crawling and exploring the wilderness while fighting off the monsters that call it home. So lets spend some time working through design decisions to sketch out the broad strokes of a new(?) combat system. Some Quick Background     There are many, many ways to simulate combat in an RPG. Most fantasy RPGs all come up with their own way of handling it too, so there are a lot of things to pull from. For brevity, I will only pick out a few particularly notable examples.     First, in 5th Edition D&D, combat works by having every character and monster take ...

 I am alive! I have recently been doing quite a bit of playtesting with my system, but I haven't wanted to commit any of my thoughts on it to paper yet, so I haven't had too much to write about. However, I recently came across a worldbuilding idea that I think would be very interesting to see implemented. 10-8-21 Update:  After some discussions and feedback, I have clarified below the fact that in this system, everyone would be human (or whatever) and the Castes would just be named elves, dwarves, and so on. Hopefully this will make my intentions a bit clearer.  What is a Caste System?     Now, to most Western readers the idea of a caste system is very strange, so I will be doing some basic background before I get to the core idea.      Anthropologists generally classify systems of social organization into Open and Closed systems. An open system allows people to change their place in the structure, potentially moving up or down in terms of power o...