Creatures

I finished the conversion. Now its level-less and based on a d6. What's nice is I think the creatures are pretty easy to translate to other systems. I tried to make it so each one gives a unique experience (or at least a flavor). Still, there's more editing to do for the Campaign and Handbook , but I think its really getting to where it needs to be. This one has all the creatures, places, some fables, and a campaign.

Try it out, tell me what you think: The Northern Realm Campaign Book

John Bauer

Dryads

While working to convert the Campaign World book over to the d6 system, I thought I'd make some adjustments to the traditional creatures that I left alone in the original. Here's my attempt at a dryad.

Dryad

Resting beneath the giant oak, I lean back, enjoying the respite from the summer sun. Placing my hands behind my head and reclining against the trunk, slowly I drift off to sleep… I wake in darkness, coughing and sputtering wet earth, gasping for air only to let in more dirt. Choking, head throbbing, I again slip from consciousness, catching glimpses of what appears to be a face nose to nose with me.

Dryads live in the deepest, furthest groves. They live under the roots of great gnarled trees and reach up through the woody earth like hands stretching through prison bars. They’re said to seize resting travelers, drawing them below and leaving them in the dirt to suffocate and fertilize their homes.

Born in a womb of hard earth and dense roots, dryads are strange creatures of wood and shadow. When a dryad leaves her home tree, its roots and trunk part. Under its eaves and the shade of the forest, the dryad is nearly imperceptible, like a dark blotch it can dart across the forest floor unseen.

A dryad only becomes visible in sunlight. Otherwise, it moves like the shadows of swaying tree branches. The only indications of its presence are snaking movements in the shadows where patches of sunlight pierce the canopy of the forest.

Dryads rarely leave the safety of their tree burrow but if ever one leaves and crosses into the sunlight, it becomes wholly visible, appearing like an abstract painting, hard to make out details and brushed with dark hues. Their skin is damp and knotted. If it again slips into the shade, its body melds into the shadows and becomes invisible again.

Edmund Dulac

 

Goodbye D20, It's been fun

I love the d20. It's big, it's swingy, and it's pretty much the universally recognized symbol of tabletop rpgs. I will miss it.

One of the biggest changes I made between the first iteration of Northern Realm and the second was the spell system. The spell system was based on a pool of points that you could spend to roll d6s. The d6s would determine the spell DC, crazy extraneous effects, and its power level. I like the spell system a lot. So when it came to reconciling the d20 system I had in place and the new spell system, I had to fudge the mechanics. I've been fudging it for months now, until a couple weeks ago when I finally decided, fuck it, change everything. It's all going over to d6 mechanics. Oh and I never liked levels so those are gone as well.

I don't have much experience with d6 rpgs but what I was doing seemed to balance out really well. My goal with the system had always been to make the game more strategic and risk-based without making it crunchy. Resource management plays a huge role as well. I didn't always succeed in doing that with the d20, but I think I'm succeeding here.

Anyone interested in trying it out: The Northern Realm PHB

A note: The campaign world book now needs new creature statistics so that'll take priority over editing. Until it's done the stats are incompatible with the new system.

And a question: How important is character advancement? Now that its level-less, there are only a few mechanisms for making your character numerically better other than wealth the experiences you have in game. There are a couple of other things, but they won't always play a role (like boons or tomes). To me, mechanical advancement is not so important. That said, flexibility is, so I added the statement, "You may choose to pick skills during play rather than during the character creation process– however; once each skill has been chosen it cannot be changed later." I added the same for spells. Is that sufficient for most?

Edmund Dulac