Email 30-7-2006
Friends,
as you may understand, due to my current situation I doubt we will ever finish our Conspiracy X adventure. For a time I was thinking about giving up on roleplaying and storytelling entirely but when someone pointed me towards a very cool new D20 campaign setting designed by Fantasy Flights I was quickly hooked.
The setting Midnight to me is a dream come true. It has a very well designed and coherent theme, a great story, powerful and rare magix and most importantly it has the fresh feel of surprise to it. Midnight has a very strong Tolkien flavour in names, races and general feel. Imagine a Middle Earth where Frodo was captured, tortured and subsequently killed. The One Ring returned to the dark one's hand and Sauron covering all the lands in a second darkness. Midnight is a true fantasy setting only the bad guy won. Better yet, it is dark, strange and dangerous without it automatically becoming gothic. I promise it won't be white wolvish, no vampires, no Doctor van Helsing's and no firearms. You will enter a world which knows no longer other divine forces than that of the Dark God, Izrador, the Shadow in the North. His might is in his millions of orcs and other foul minions, his power revealed to the scattered, broken peoples by his Chosen, his clergy, the Legates. Izrador rules all, and will tolerate no challenges to his authority. Magic is outlawed. Weapons and armor are outlawed. Possessing any of these will get you killed on the spot. If you are up to the challenge of playing an elf or dwarf? Don’t let an orc see you – or any of the subjugated humans, either, for that matter – your kind is killed on sight, with rewards (food) going to those that turn you in...
Into this bleak and foreboding world, your characters can try to eke out an existence. Survival is not easy, especially when one of your biggest problems is where your next meal will come from. Will you be one of the last of the Fey, an elf, hiding in your forest, while your people fight and die on its borders against the ever-encroaching forces of the Shadow? Will you be a Dorn, Sarcosan, or Erenlander – humans of different nationality, who have lost hope and lost their cities to Traitor Princes from within? Or will you play a Halfling – a member of an entire race that once knew gaiety and magic, descended from the Fey like the elves – now subjugated to the last as slaves for the Shadow’s armies, mines, and Legates? Will you die, your corpse rising as one of the growing number of Fell - soulless undead horrors that crave living flesh?
Hope is not lost entirely, however! Each and every Player-Character chooses a Heroic Path when they begin, and as they rise in level, more powers and abilities become theirs to wield. The blood of heroes, kings, even dragons, flow through the veins of some, while the lineage of Outsiders and Elementals manifests in others. Who knows what could be dormant in the body of your PC?
With this email I have attached a file with an extract of the introduction to the world of Midnight: its setting, history and lands. It is as far as I have currently read it myself. I am in the process of designing a couple of adventures which might eventually become a full campaign. As campaigns go I'll try to do this as 'project-based': adventure modules of several sessions. This has the advantage for people who only want to play for a couple of weeks, do something else and join again with a later module.
However, before proceeding - this is the work of a lone saturday -, I'd like your input. Would you people enjoy this setting? If so, would you enjoy it enough to spend game time with me/us? If not, since all of our lives are getting more and more demanding, no hard feelings. If it's up to me I'd like to play regularly but not weekly. Maybe biweekly/monthly if we could arrange someone to keep notes (so we won't forget where we were). If these could be emailed before the next session the time we have together can be used for playing. As such besides a storyteller (which would during the first couple of modules be me) I think a party herald/scholar may come in handy.
On character design. Read the attachment. For a beginning party I'd suggest we keep to playing humans (maybe a gnome) but I demand good alligned heroes This is just for starters, we can go more exotic as time passes. Make up something that resembles a character sketch (background story, general feel on class, future development and such) and I'll send you the material necessary for character creation. We'll start play at first level, basic d20 rules. Keep in mind that there are different core classes: Barbarian, Channeler (wizard/sorcerer), Defender, Fighter, Rogue and Wildlander. PC's have a huge amount of feats, heroic paths and prestige classes to chose from in order to tinker your character into what you want him to be.
Eventually the rewards of heroism are not fortune and fame. In this age of shadow, you character will fight only to guard the last lights in a darkening world and to preserve the glimmer of hope that the long night will pass.
With this I bid you goodnight as it weirdly also happens to be Midnight.
Gertjan
as you may understand, due to my current situation I doubt we will ever finish our Conspiracy X adventure. For a time I was thinking about giving up on roleplaying and storytelling entirely but when someone pointed me towards a very cool new D20 campaign setting designed by Fantasy Flights I was quickly hooked.
The setting Midnight to me is a dream come true. It has a very well designed and coherent theme, a great story, powerful and rare magix and most importantly it has the fresh feel of surprise to it. Midnight has a very strong Tolkien flavour in names, races and general feel. Imagine a Middle Earth where Frodo was captured, tortured and subsequently killed. The One Ring returned to the dark one's hand and Sauron covering all the lands in a second darkness. Midnight is a true fantasy setting only the bad guy won. Better yet, it is dark, strange and dangerous without it automatically becoming gothic. I promise it won't be white wolvish, no vampires, no Doctor van Helsing's and no firearms. You will enter a world which knows no longer other divine forces than that of the Dark God, Izrador, the Shadow in the North. His might is in his millions of orcs and other foul minions, his power revealed to the scattered, broken peoples by his Chosen, his clergy, the Legates. Izrador rules all, and will tolerate no challenges to his authority. Magic is outlawed. Weapons and armor are outlawed. Possessing any of these will get you killed on the spot. If you are up to the challenge of playing an elf or dwarf? Don’t let an orc see you – or any of the subjugated humans, either, for that matter – your kind is killed on sight, with rewards (food) going to those that turn you in...
Into this bleak and foreboding world, your characters can try to eke out an existence. Survival is not easy, especially when one of your biggest problems is where your next meal will come from. Will you be one of the last of the Fey, an elf, hiding in your forest, while your people fight and die on its borders against the ever-encroaching forces of the Shadow? Will you be a Dorn, Sarcosan, or Erenlander – humans of different nationality, who have lost hope and lost their cities to Traitor Princes from within? Or will you play a Halfling – a member of an entire race that once knew gaiety and magic, descended from the Fey like the elves – now subjugated to the last as slaves for the Shadow’s armies, mines, and Legates? Will you die, your corpse rising as one of the growing number of Fell - soulless undead horrors that crave living flesh?
Hope is not lost entirely, however! Each and every Player-Character chooses a Heroic Path when they begin, and as they rise in level, more powers and abilities become theirs to wield. The blood of heroes, kings, even dragons, flow through the veins of some, while the lineage of Outsiders and Elementals manifests in others. Who knows what could be dormant in the body of your PC?
With this email I have attached a file with an extract of the introduction to the world of Midnight: its setting, history and lands. It is as far as I have currently read it myself. I am in the process of designing a couple of adventures which might eventually become a full campaign. As campaigns go I'll try to do this as 'project-based': adventure modules of several sessions. This has the advantage for people who only want to play for a couple of weeks, do something else and join again with a later module.
However, before proceeding - this is the work of a lone saturday -, I'd like your input. Would you people enjoy this setting? If so, would you enjoy it enough to spend game time with me/us? If not, since all of our lives are getting more and more demanding, no hard feelings. If it's up to me I'd like to play regularly but not weekly. Maybe biweekly/monthly if we could arrange someone to keep notes (so we won't forget where we were). If these could be emailed before the next session the time we have together can be used for playing. As such besides a storyteller (which would during the first couple of modules be me) I think a party herald/scholar may come in handy.
On character design. Read the attachment. For a beginning party I'd suggest we keep to playing humans (maybe a gnome) but I demand good alligned heroes This is just for starters, we can go more exotic as time passes. Make up something that resembles a character sketch (background story, general feel on class, future development and such) and I'll send you the material necessary for character creation. We'll start play at first level, basic d20 rules. Keep in mind that there are different core classes: Barbarian, Channeler (wizard/sorcerer), Defender, Fighter, Rogue and Wildlander. PC's have a huge amount of feats, heroic paths and prestige classes to chose from in order to tinker your character into what you want him to be.
Eventually the rewards of heroism are not fortune and fame. In this age of shadow, you character will fight only to guard the last lights in a darkening world and to preserve the glimmer of hope that the long night will pass.
With this I bid you goodnight as it weirdly also happens to be Midnight.
Gertjan
posted by Gertjan at 3:56 PM
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