Channel Healing Card Talk

By now you are getting used to saying your GM has final power over how the DS RPG cards work in their games.

Channel Healing was available as a Deluxe card and we have not put it into a set yet. I have put a copy in one of the picture Galleries attached to our market in the Dragon Storm website. For now you should download a copy and use a Proxy. We, of course, hope you will buy a copy when they are available.

Characters in a link can play all of those Vigorous strikes, Dragon Claws and many other cards to boost this healing spell. If they have saved an Independent Action for this they can also add their current STR to the spell. This is really a big addition when the character is in Prime Dragon Form.

Ultimately this card is the most powerful healing card in the game, and one of these least used power cards in the game. High Card point characters usually have one of these babies ready at all times. A healing of 150 points is not uncommon.

As we begin to see the more powerful bad guys, like the Mighty Madspawn and the Pylos, this card becomes a vital asset. When combined with Share the Pain it will keep a lot of characters alive. If you are not using Channel Healing, you should take another look at it, especially if you are a Warmaster determined to keep your troops fighting.


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Gamemasters Rewards Program

Good morning. I am thrilled to see all of your shining faces this morning.

I know that all of you are expecting to hear the news on the big roll out of our Gamemaster rewards program.

We are going to be providing a few perks to those people who step up and help us out by running games at the conventions Susan and I are attending.

First, we are starting to make Gamemaster badges. Each convention will have it's own GM badge. Now, you can collect them all!

Second we are going to provide each GM with a Smiling GM and Unknown Interference card to use during the convention games. You can use them to help ride herd on all of the wild convention attending players out there.

Third up on the list is that GM's will be getting a $5.00 Gift card for each game they run at these conventions. If one of us does not show up at your games to actually present your gift card you should come to our table in the Dealer room at your next opportunity and whimper. These tactics work for our dog (Mocha) and cat (Mac), so they will work for you too!

Fourth, well, there is no fourth yet, but we are thinking really hard on that one, but as I have not had enough coffee yet today I will just have to wait and see.

All of this will begin officially at the Marcon 2010.

Now is the time to let the wild fun begin!


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Channel Strike

As with all of our card talks your GM is the ultimate judge, not us.

Channel Strike is one of the most powerful damage cards in the Dragon Storm game. This is an Independent Card. To be able to apply your characters strength to your teams attack you should use an Independent Action. To be perfectly honest I really only apply this strictly to my cast members. I let the players have an advantage over the bad guys on this.

The STR cards you can add to a Channel Strike covers a wide range. You can even play undrained forms you have in reserve. With that liberal use as a guide you can also add any STR that the character has in play at the time of the Channel Strikes. That would include STR from forms, aces, boons, character cards, and anything I have missed that are in play, only weapons are not added. Having cards like Vigorous Strike allows a Link member to participate viably even if they have no other STR cards.

Channel Strike may be carried and played by anyone in the Link. They do not have to have the Boon themselves, but they do have to be in the Link. This means you can support your allies and friends during the game.



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Gamemasters needed at Marcon

As usual we are running behind, but if we were ever caught up, people would want to know what we did with Mark and Sue.

We have two tables scheduled for 7:30pm Friday night.
There are two tables scheduled at 9am, 2pm, and 7:30pm Saturday.
We also have two tables at 9am Sunday morning.

Gamemasters will get a Marcon DS Badge, something we are just starting. Each con we are at will have it's own badge. GM's will also get a $5.00 Gift card for each game they run.

On Saturday night I will be running a DS open CP game at 7:30pm. There will be six seats and those who GM at Marcon get seats first. Whoever runs games while I do will be getting extra Gifts for running those games.

Yes, we are slowly working on a plan to reward GM's for the kindness shown to us for running games at conventions Sue and I are at. I am not sure what we are capable of offering, but this should give us a good start.


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Channel Link

There have always been a number of questions about how we play the cards that are in The Dragon Storm RPG. As everyone knows the rules themselves make your GM the ultimate judge of the game, not us. Your GM has the authority to overrule anything said here.

In our games the Channel Link bonus of +1 WIS only is added when there is an active link. This represents the Link provider to access some of the experiences of the participants. It also opens the link to the dangers of Tap the Link and Blast the Link in trade for the bonus.

The card itself has no time required rituals for forming a Link nor any indications of the rituals used. These we left open to the interpretation of the players and GM's. Since we lean towards role-playing we need one hour of ceremonies to set up the link. Each player determines the ceremony their character needs to perform to activate the link. We let them describe it.

Channel Link itself is a Universal Boon and is available to even those ugly scum who we call Pylos Necromancers, you know the ones, they want to drain all shape shifters. This gives the Necro access to all of the Channel cards. I use this much less than I should because I am too lazy as a GM to keep track of this correctly. It is also a dangerous power to give to the bad guys.

The card itself also gives only one way the Link can be disrupted. Blast the Link adds another. Blast the Link also sets a precedence that outside powers can break a Link. In our games the GM's have a number of different ways a Link goes down. Some of these actually become the source of adventures trying to eliminate whatever is messing up links in an area. We use Link breaks as hooks for stories etc. However, where the characters have trouble with Links, so do the Necros!





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We Are at Ancon!

We are at Ancon, Saturday morning, trying to wake up.

This is going to be a fun little game con. Unfortunately there are no scheduled DS games, but I am sure Dave and the others running the Con would make arrangements. These guys just want to provide a fun gaming experience.

I am looking forward to a chance to talk to some of "our" people here. It should be a good show for that.


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Using the Waystone Portals from Set 19

Waystone Portal stones are created two at a time and each pair is unique. They are capable of opening a path between themselves which travels through the Astral Plane from one stone to the other. You will note that we have put a pair of these in the set as they are made in pairs. They are 800 gp each.

These stones are being made secretly by newly trained artisans. The texts to train people to make these was recently discovered by a Brotherhood Researcher. The Brotherhood shared this knowledge with the Valarians. It is unclear if Necromancers can also make these, but they have gotten their hands on a few. The Brotherhood Researchers have not discovered how the Waystone Portals function, so variations are not yet possible.

Once these portals are placed they entwine themselves with both the Astral and Physical Planes at their locations and they become extremely difficult to move. Only a Glyphmaster may move the stones once they are activated. The Glyphmasters diversified understanding of magics allows them to feel the power flowing through the stone so that they may safely move the stone.

I need to make it clear here that it does not require a Glyphmaster to place, activate or use the Waystone Portals.



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Dragon Storm Card Sets off to the printer.

We have sent Card Sets 20 (Items), 22 (Valarian and Rogue Organization Cards), 23 (Werecat), and 24 (Tigrean) to the printer. They are now on the Pre-Order pages in our market.

Set 25 will be a set of characters that were only available as Deluxe cards. I have simply run out of time to get them done this week. We will be at AnCon Friday.


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Market and Gallery Updated

Card sets 18 and 19 are shipping. The pre-orders went out and I moved the orders from the Pre Order page to the Standard card page.

Sets 20 and 22 went in to the printer so I put them up on the pre order page. I expect to get set 23 up tomorrow. These new offerings have card lists, galleries of the cards, all for your consideration.

I also did a little reorganizing on the market pages.
this is the link to the DS market.


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ComicCon Convention Wrap Up

It was a good, well run, entertaining convention. We had a wonderful location right across from one of the food concessions. We had two tables and we tried spreading Sue's art prints out on the table. It worked well. Having the prints out that way drew people to the images. The new badges and mouse pads moved well.

Since it was a comic convention we put the DS in a small space. We had the samples book for the card set and we kept the sets themselves behind the table. That also worked very well. What I need to add is a pad of paper people can use to write down what they are looking for. I should check into getting some DS scratch pads done to use at the table and sell. The DS sales were better than we expected. We may even have picked up a couple of new players for the game. Looking good for sales.

We drove the hour to the con from home so not only did we do well we kept expenses to a minimum.

The convention had a large number of Movie, TV and Comic guests (one of whom was Susan Van Camp). The dealers leaned heavily to comics of all sorts. There was also a couple of Anime DVD dealers. A great con for Autograph Collecting. It also had a good number of independent artists with their Independent Comics. Many were doing pen and ink commissions as well. Some really good people at this one.

For Sue and I it is a chance to see people we worked with in comics many years ago.

From a gaming point of view the con is not too good. There was only one game dealer and the entire gaming available was a Magic tournament. So as a gamer the show was poor, but, well, a show can't have everything right.

Looking at this I seem to have written a disorganized review blog. Guess I am just going to have to practice.

Next weekend we will be at AnCon so I will get a chance to practice more.

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Card work continues

Breath of Fresh Air for the Elemental Magics is ready to go. I am thinking that this could be very interesting. I can see the uses for this down at Rodney's Tavern on Thursday night when the miners have the evening off.

It will also force us to consider some nasty air borne bad stuff, while I am sure our creative GM's will be way ahead of us on this one. Hmmm, maybe a nine card set of airborne dangers for the GM? We will see if time permits.

Later I will do a ComiCon update.











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Dave Linnemeier Memorial

Dave was a good man, a friend and a good gamer. We will miss him.
I will pass on information as I get it.

Viewing will be Friday, May 21 at 11:00 am at St. Vincent de Paul church. The address is 1502 E. Wallen Rd., Fort Wayne, IN 46825 at the corner of Wallen Rd and Auburn Rd.


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Burst of Wind Elemental Card

The Burst of Wind card is done and ready to go for the Elemental cards. This one will be in the second set. Since I am prepping for ComiCon starting tomorrow I will make this short.

This is a card that I am expecting to see some very creative uses for. A couple of things have occurred to my mind, but I will let all of you consider what could be put into this wind to obscure the caster or even to be breathed in by a melee attacker. GM's should prepare to be amused and to let people experiment.

I have added the Gallery for the Cards in Set 19 to the Gallery page.






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New Card And Picture Galleries

I am gathering a series of pictures of the Dragon Storm cards to use in articles, this blog, adventures and any other way I can think of. That means I have them in my Iphoto program to use in anything I do. Since that program has a way to easily post the pics, I am using it.

This is the link that will take you to the page with the links to the galleries.

The idea is to provide as much material as we can for you to game with. In the long run it will turn into you guys buying what you want to buy.


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Elementalism Anchor

Like other schools of magic Elementalism has a background (previously posted) and an Anchor that allow characters to learn the skills needed to be an Elementalist.

On these cards is the basic guides for dealing with elementals. The Elementalist may give simple mental commands to a called elemental.

What is a simple command? Kill Him! Very simple, but it may not work out as well as the characters would hope. I am sure we can all envision possible responses by the alien elemental. If the character is portrayed by the player as adding a series of gestures meant to point out the target, it should work. GM's need to be careful not to overrun the player and Players will need to be creative in dealing with commands to an elemental. An occasional problem can be fun, constant problems would be outside the spirit of the game. If the GM determines that the elemental is confused by the order, I would have the elemental do nothing, your GM may have other interesting chaotic ideas.

Keep in mind that sending mental commands is not the same as mind reading. Nothing here indicates that the elemental talks back. The character would only know by the lack of response that the elemental is not functioning correctly. Possibly adding Mindspeech or Mind to Mind would assist in tracking the elemental.

(I have no idea what I would think of if a character were to try to bring an elemental into a Channel Link. It is the kind of situation that I answer based on my mood and the players role-playing effort.)





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Cards as they are complete.

The first of the Elementalism cards has been completed. As you can see, it is the background.

The background card suggests some information about Elementalism. You will notice that the Elementalist background does not have any reading and writing knowledge. That indicates that Elementalism itself is somewhat on the crude side of magics. I am sure that their are scholarly elementalists, but they are not common. It also indicates that elementalism itself is taught by word of mouth, so it will have many unusual beliefs and actions. This certainly leaves the player with a lot of flexibility in creating and portraying the elementalist character. Yes, the incorrect title on the right side has been turned in to us and I have fixed the original file.





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Origins Booth Number

We will be in booth 913 along the right hand wall side of the Origins room, unless, of course, something comes up. You never know for sure what last minute changes could occur, but it means we will be there!

Sue and I are talking about what we can do for people who volunteer to help us out. We need to show our thanks, but it has to be something we, as a small outfit, can actually do without hurting ourselves. These things are not as easy as they look.

If you want to help cover the booth at this show, or at ComiCon, Ancon or Marcon, get in touch. Markharmon@Mac.com would be a good e-mail to use. Even if you have thoughts on a rewards system, I would like to hear it.


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Convention preparation and thoughtful times

We are preparing for the upcoming series of conventions in May. It will start with Novi Comicon, go forth to Ancon and wind up at Marcon. These cons, and links to their websites, are on the conventions page in the dragonstorm.com website. We are looking forward to seeing people, but I am reluctant to leave the safety of the Secret Clanhold and venture out into the world.

During our period of rethinking I have begun approaching the new game from another direction. We have the basic rules in place, but the actual "feel" of the game and the precise expertise abilities the characters will need to deal with the world need to be fleshed out. I am starting by building the bad guys, complete with a description of how that type of creature operates and it's powers. This means starting by presenting a background for the bad guys that we can reflect in the characters abilities and in the world's attitude. I am also hopeful that we can slowly "leak" out the monsters so they can be tested in the DS campaigns, adding both more variety and an understanding of how the new world's guidelines work. The Zombies are the first such monsters I am getting done. They have some "interesting" side effects that will make them have a personality of their own. When I have it squared away I will be posting the PDF of the creatures, and even telling you where they are.

We have also determined that we will have to go at the new game very slowly. We have promoted Mocha and given her new responsibilities, but I have a feeling we simply will not have the time between Sue and myself to do the game justice if we try to move too fast.


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