At OhayoCon

It has been a great con! Thank You!

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The problem of a fertile imagination

We have just a single set of the old tattoos, and Sue has it with her at the Con (Epic Confusion). So, I am here remaking them to fit the new 2.0 way, which is a magic item needs to be playable without having to lay your hands on a spell card to make it work.

The tattoos are pretty straight forward and convert by shortening the text to fit in the box, but they work the same.

The tricky one is the Mark of the Shadows. The user is sliding into the shadows between the physical and spirit worlds and using it to see into both the physical world and into the spirit world, yet they are in neither, so they can not effect either, or be effected by either. It makes this tattoo into a way to survey enemy camps, bases or rooms, or to gather information. This is different than the classic spell, but I can fit it on a card. GM's will need to use 3.14 to make specific calls that will come up when the card is used, but that is what we have GM's for.

Are these shadows a nice safe place? Well, what happened to those who failed to get back out? Plus I know there is at least one monster in there with you. Their are also totally alien native shadow creatures in there. Wherever there is a space, something uses it. It may not turn out as slick and safe as you want. For the time being we are going to let the GM populate the shadows with creatures from their imaginations, just be aware, we will be adding some "stuff" in the distant future.

I have no idea what I could write on a card to help the GM, and the player, understand that chaos can strike anywhere.

Try this:
When someone enters Shadow Walk, by tattoo or spell, have them run into a crying man sitting on the floor. He watched his wife and family grow old and die, he watched his children, grandchildren and more, live and die. He watched the vast majority of the world die in the storms and wars after Deathday. He is mad, he wants just one thing, and that is to get out of the shadows so he can die too.

This should give the player an idea that all is not well in the shadows. I do not have a solution to the mans problem, but if a player comes up with a good, creative idea, let them get lucky and succeed. In my games good role-playing trumps dice rolls.

Conventions and Dragon Storm Con 2012

We have been getting questions about the dates for Dragon Storm Con 2012. We have them. July 20th to 22nd, 2012.

Link to Dragon Storm Con Page, with, of course, Membership information.

We also have the 2012 Con schedule up and posted. There will be, as usual, additions to the list.

Here is the Link to our Con page.

Skype and Dragonstorm gaming

For some time now Christina Nixon has been running a Google Group dedicated to arranging, and discussing, Skype Dragon Storm games.

I am a member of the group and I watch the updates with a lot of interest. Skype allows people to play DS on a regular basis, even when spread across the country. The one thing I can say about these games is that they have some great GM's running these games. People are having fun.

If you are interested you can go to the google group site and apply for a group membership. Just tell Christina how you discovered the group, and see what happens.

This is the link to the google groups page.

Shifter Affinity, a beta talk.

Shifter Affinity is one of the many beta sets you can find on the Dragon Storm RPG Beta Page. Which, if you have not looked in a while, you can follow this link to take a look.

Shifter Affinity represents the Character learning more about themselves and the body they have acquired. Characters who do not bother to do the research on their shifting abilities will live a happy and fulfilled life without it. However, some character concepts require special abilities not shared by every Tom, Dick and Sandy around the table. It is something you use to personalize a character and build in skills not common to all shifters.

When building a memorable character you will want to look carefully at the cards and consider which ones will enhance your characters.

The first is the Adopted Form. This card allows a character to use forms not normally available to them. For instance, you may be running an Elven Unicorn. The Unicorn can shift into Farilan Elf. You may envision an Elf character who can shift into any Elven form. You would "Adopt" the Haskalad Elf from the Griffon and, with a second Adoption, pick up the Dragons Ebony Elf. Now you have an elf shifter who is different than the other elves.

The second card is Mind-to-Minds. If you have the concept of a versatile leader who deals with many different groups, you can use Mind-to-Minds instead of sharing a Link with the Vermite beggar on the corner. While most characters are not going to consider such an act, your character just might want to. The problem is that you need to know yourself, by having Shifter Affinity, to get this ability.

The third character intensive card is Gender Switch. We have left this a little vague so that players can mold it to their character concept. I have seen characters who switch due to external events that the player envision, just a fun character idea. I have a character who learned this because he is a wanted man in several places and gets recognized. Therefore he has places where he is a she. How, and why, you use such a card is up to you.

Next we have the Form Affinity. With this one the character becomes a quick shifter. In the blink of an eye they can flash to a new form. run into the alley and poof, you are new. If you are wearing common farmers garb and little distinguishing equipment. Well, you just might get away with it.

Affinity Defense is going to be a little more difficult to explain why the character took it. This is something that you may see the blustering tough guy using, another idea is playing in my mind, but I do not see it clearly enough to explain it right now.

Affinity Cloud is something you would look at for characters that spend time scouting out neutral and Jikadell territories where the bad guys would be looking for fresh meat on a regular basis.

This set is still short a couple of cards. So, we will keep our minds and eyes out for more cards that work here.

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I am going to add a small piece of historical information here that is only slightly involved with these cards. In ancient dragon clans a couple would expect to have two children. One as the father and one as the mother. They would switch genders to trade places. The other problem is that a pregnant dragon can not shift until after the birth. That means 30 months locked in to a single form.

The child is born live and after six months is forced in to a Stone Sleep to grow up and be taught by spirit teachers. Depending on the child they will be out of the Stone Sleep in just 50 years as a young adult ready to go. Many mortal scholars have mistaken the Stone Sleep for eggs. Now that the ancient dragon society is gone many mistaken myths have grown up, and there are few dragons around to correct the mistakes. Even fewer care if the mortals get it wrong. Now I find myself wondering why the spirit who told me this keeps laughing. Could this be wrong? We may never have absolute certainty. The chaos unleashed by the Deathday Massacre is a plague to historians.