More Beta Updates

Updated Shifter Affinity and more. Tried to put dates on the updates, look around.

Added Night Witch beta in Magics, Orc Betas in Races.

Check out the Betas!

Mark

Bloodline card sets added

I have posted the Beta versions of the Bloodline cards that go with the new 2.0 Bloodlines.
Yes, you can have Surge 1, 2, and 3 up when in Prime form.

Universal Beta 2 has a new Boon as well.

Go to Dragonstorm.com and look.

Revised Dragon Storm website

I have uploaded an all new Dragon Storm website.

The old site was getting too difficult to both maintain at my end, and to use from your end. The process of just adding on had been going on for some ten years and needed a new arrangement.

There is a good deal of new information, new "How to Play" section, and explanation of why we did DS 2, and a lot more. There is a lot of new Betas hiding in the Beta section.

Everyone should go through the site carefully, page by page, to find the new information.

We are focusing the site on DS 2.0. We do not have the time to try to maintain two games and we are going to focus on just the game, and the cards, we are using. However, I did hide the entire old site inside the new site. Find the links and you can go to the old site and dig around.

The Trials Continue

Sue is back in the Medical system. She will be in for about 4-7 days. We did not wait for her to have another near death experience, this time she went in as soon as it became apparent that her meds were failing her. We still do not know for certain what is causing these episodes, but we will find out.

We have every reason to believe that she will recover and get back to normal.

If you are waiting for a commission from her, it may well be late. Be patient, we will get there.

Mark

Shamanism, A Core Dragon Storm magic school.

The newly posted Beta Magics need a longer discussion than will fit well on the Beta Page, so here is the first article. If you have not downloaded the new Beta cards, you can do it here.

Shamans use OD to perform their magics, like all of the magics. The difference is that their focus is on the Spirit World and the Dead.

When we wrote the Shaman Anchor we tried to convey the idea that Shamans are unworldly sentients. Their thinking and visions are rooted in the Spirit World even though they exist in the physical world. This mode of thinking makes shamans different. Their concerns are different. They are concerned with the spirit World as much as the physical world. Normal people tend to give shamans a wide berth.

Shamans are also very important in the daily lives of the physical world peoples. They are the conduit between the living and their spirit ancestors. Those ancestors are the primary source of knowledge from the past. They teach their descendants the family skills and carry the families history in their ever slipping memories. It frequently requires a shaman to establish communication between the living and the dead. They are also the ones you turn to if your ancestors go mad and start haunting you. This means that everyday people put up with Shamans and only seek them out if they have a problem with spirits that they are willing to pay a shaman to deal with it.

Shamans in general do not like Necromancers. Those fellas bring forth the dead. The dead should stay at home. Necromancers create warp. Warp crosses the barrier between the Spirit and Physical worlds. It makes mad and warped spirits. Neither of which is good.

There are, of course, Shamans who approve of bringing the creatures of the spirit world over and trying to make the Physical world an extension of the Spirit world. While relatively rare, these seemingly mad shamans ally with the Necromancers. Shamans of warped races, like Wakana Shamans, are of this type.

The core spells available to the Shaman are the foundation of shamanism. We will be adding specialty schools over time, so if you are looking for Classic shaman abilities and they are not in the Core sets, you can expect them to show up in one of the specialty schools. Spirit Walkers, Undead Hunters, Spirit Channelers, and the pinnacle of the Shamans, the Spirit Dancers, are specialties on the drawing Board.

In the past we have toyed with doing a Temple Speaker, but there is a better way. If you want a Temple Speaker you start as a Shaman. In the fullness of time you work up to an Elethay Acolyte and learn the Elethay magics. You have created a Temple speaker. You could do it in reverse as well.

Shaman Backgrounds. Instead of making a multitude of Backgrounds the new Shaman Anchor is pointed low enough that a character could take it in creation. You take a Farmer Background. You envision this character as hearing voices, having trouble making friends, and just not quite right. Then you spend four points for the Shaman anchor. Doing your characters this way is better than being restricted to just the backgrounds we publish.

Shamans and the law. Frequently the leaders of hamlets, militias and sheriffs will have a deal with a Shaman. Shamans can get testimony from the dead about crimes. They may find spirits who witnessed the crime, or even talk to a dead victim. Dead victims testimony is considered very carefully because they can be lying to hurt someone they dislike.

Spirits and memories. Spirits are like the rest of us. They forget things. They remember things the way they wanted them to be, they are not lying, they just got it wrong. In other words, they are not perfect. Spirits may also lie outright, so be careful.

Remember always to Embrace the Chaos and listen to your GM.

Dragon Storm Updates

First, I have added links to the May releases at the bottom of the Pre-Order page. Just scroll down below the April Pre-Order sets, and you will find them. The Link is here.. Very shortly, (Friday?) you will be able to start ordering them.

Next, I have put up the beta magics. We are starting with the three core magic sets, Shamanism, Wizardry and Witchcraft. The link to the Beta page is here.

My assignment for tomorrow night will be to write up a blog post doing some Magic Talking. You will want to know that these are just the start. Many of the spells that are not posted will be moving into different schools of magic. Things like Shadow Walk has slid over into the Walker school, or maybe that the Nightwitches are the Witches who go Boom and have all the offensive stuff, or that the Wizards will be getting Fire and Ice schools added in the fullness of time.

Personalized Flaws and Boons in the Dragon Storm 2 Era.

The Dragon Storm RPG was created to allow the GM the freedom to create a very chaotic world where nothing is certain. We call this 3.14.

GM's can also use this ability to help players create customized characters that break the rules. Sometimes a player has a character concept that does not fit within the rules. The answer is not to change the character, but to change just that characters rules. Having your character cards as your characters Rulesbook has its advantages.

As an example: A player wants a Warrior character who has all Axes as Favored Weapons, but is so trained to the Axes that she can not use any Warrior cards unless she is wielding an Axe. This concept would require at least three Favored Weapon Boons to create, and would limit the character. It is time for the player to have a talk with her GM.

What the GM can do is to create a personalized Flaw card for the character that breaks the game rules and gives the character a special rule of their very own. After a talk the GM creates the following Flaw card for the player:

"Character X may apply a single Favor Weapon Boon to all Axes she wields. However, when she is not wielding an Axe she may play no Warrior cards, and she will drain ongoing "V" Warrior cards." She, the GM, will then sign the new card. The player, as usual, will be responsible for role-playering his characters new rule.

What we did here was to create a balanced exception to the rules using rule 3.14. When the player gets into a different GM's game they will need to ask permission to use the card. GM's routinely approve cards that are balanced for use in their games.

These custom cards allow the player to create unique characters that both break the rules, and, because of 3.14, are within the rules. We also put the rules enforcement, not on the GM's back, but rather ask the players to play their own characters fairly.

The only rule that a GM should not break is the "Ten Things" rule. As we all learned from experience, having a player with a huge number of Actions and Independents slowed games to the point of boring players right out of DS, and we all want more players, not fewer.

Embrace the Chaos that is DS and have fun.
Mark