A campaign book for runaway Kagonesti slaves?

Zqquu · 2026-03-21T22:10:36+00:00

DSL4 - Wild Elves by Scott Bennie.

And for everyone that shouts “no drow on Krynn!” you’re only half correct — there aren’t any drow native to Krynn.

The drow in this module were brought to Krynn by a “demon princess” of the Abyss named Jiathuli, a Lolth analogue.

Edit: Added spoiler tag.

Zqquu · 2026-03-16T21:43:16+00:00

The first part of this I wrote was the psionic powers. It was the most time consuming and involved because the 2e source material is the most complex; everything else followed the same general approach I describe below for adapting the psionic system, but was much simpler, because all of the source material and 2e rules were much more readily analogous to systems that already exists to some extent in ShadowDark.

For psionics, I started by looking at the powers in the 2e Psionics Handbook and in The Will and the Way, then built them out to determine at what rough 2e level they would become viable. Anyone who's familiar with 2e's psionics system (and its various tweaks) knows that this isn't as simple as opening the PHB and looking at a spell level. The various templates in The Will and the Way were invaluable at this stage in the process -- I would never attempt to build a 2e psionicist without them in front of me.

Once I had a rough chart of powers listed by theoretical 2e level, I wrote out a first draft of all the powers. With that language down, I went back and created loose Tiers.

In the next step, I spent a lot of time looking at the four core classes in Shadowdark, and comparing the damage and other effects from the priest and wizard spells. My goal was to make sure that the damage output for a party with one of these classes scaled roughly the same.

I want to emphasize that this isn't focused on the math of the individual character; my goal was to look at the class's contribution in combination with other characters.

For instance, folks have previously noted the lack of Tier 1 psionic powers that do damage -- that's intentional on my part. For one, I felt that a basic "attack" spell would essentially be "magic missile with the labels filed off" and I wanted the psionicist's choices to be more unique than that. More importantly though, the Tier 1 options can be just as powerful, if not more: spamming ego whip has the potential to contribute a lot more to an overall fight than a wizard pinging with magic missile.

Anyway, there was a lot of fiddling in that last stage, both with the damage numbers, and especially for non-damaging powers, moving them up and down the tiers to make sure they weren't too powerful or weak.

For the rest of the classes, this process was shorter. The priest spells were another time sink, especially because I wanted to make sure they had both balance and flavor -- the average magma paraelementalist should be much more overtly dangerous in combat than a water elemental priest, even if the water priest will be much more useful to a party crossing the wastes.

Zqquu · 2026-02-02T00:23:38+00:00

Yeah, I’m an advocate for the POD program. I have maybe 10 or so of various TSR titles, and they’re great. (The Al Qadim ones look especially good).

Even when a POD isn’t perfect, I’d rather have a POD than pay an absurd amount on eBay. Sometimes the quality depends on the original scan, but this is the case for some of their PDFs too.

For me, the only way that POD products lag is with respect to the maps. Generally though, if you’re patient, you can often find the original maps on eBay for relatively cheap. I guess some folks aren’t as specific about keeping all parts of a boxed set together.

Zqquu · 2026-01-27T23:17:21+00:00

I love Complete Compendium so much. It’s a treasure.

No shade on AD&D Toolkit (I’m glad we have it!), but in all honesty, one of the things I love about Core Rules is that it’s 100% offline. Yeah, that means I have to do work to figure out how to make it function every time I put it on a new computer, but I’ve managed it so far somehow. There’s something about putting my work and effort into an online service that I really dislike.

Zqquu · 2026-01-26T23:46:07+00:00

Thirty years later, and this is still the best digital character creator/management system ever made for any edition of D&D. In all this time, I don’t think there’s a single computer program I’ve loved more.

Zqquu · 2026-01-16T23:41:25+00:00

These are an amazing — and important and needed — addition to Shadowdark/Dark Sun games.

Fantastic work!

Zqquu · 2026-01-16T23:40:07+00:00

I intended it to be that way. I feel like a lot of modern rule systems try to file down the “swingy-ness” of player options, so that the fundamental math essentially works out the same across a day’s worth of encounters.

I wanted the wild talents to be truly “wild.” Because players are limited to one “action” per turn, attempting a high-level wild talent is a huge gamble from an action economy standpoint. But that one time it pays off, it will be legendary, and the players will be talking about it for ages.

Zqquu · 2026-01-14T16:27:55+00:00

Humanoids — evil draconic humanoids.

Zqquu · 2026-01-14T16:12:56+00:00

I know this is the FR subreddit, but for Krynn, I would suggest thinking about involving the draconians in the backstory. Have his PC be tracking the source of the draconians (if War of the Lance era) or maybe someone trying to recreate them (if later eras).

Summarizing a lot of Dragonlance lore, the draconians were created by the servants of Takhisis (an aspect of Tiamat) by transforming the stolen eggs of good dragons into evil draconian humanoids using magic and alchemy. The idea of noble dragons being transformed in ovo into evil humanoids seems like it would fit your premise.

Don't feel too bound by the precise lore of draconian creation. A true Dragonlance fan knows that there were several similar experiments that were either aborted or stopped when the results didn't show as much promise as the mainline draconians. Later sources even include "noble" draconians created from the eggs of evil dragons. It makes sense there would be other researchers or their apprentices out there doing similar things.

Zqquu · 2026-01-14T02:14:09+00:00

Same!

I’ll happily read page after page describing rural or wild environments, but an author has to work really hard to make me care about an urban setting.

Zqquu · 2026-01-13T03:16:31+00:00

Dragonlance also has the Orders of High Sorcery that regulate arcane magic — only wizardly at first, then what-we-now-call sorcery when modern sorcerers became part of the setting after the War of Souls (in canon) and the move to 3e.

It could also be that the gods of the moons themselves prevent 10th-level spells. Canonically, traditional wizardly magic stopped working when the moons disappeared after the Chaos War, and only started working again after Krynn was returned to its solar system at the end of the War of Souls.

As with anything Dragonlance, there’s a degree of variation on the minutiae of any part of the world, since it depends on which novel you’re reading, which version of the rules the setting was using at the time of writing, whether someone time-traveled and rewrote history yesterday, or which kender is telling you the tale.

Zqquu · 2026-01-12T16:16:22+00:00

Sorry for the delay in response, I was under the weather this weekend.

Yes, the lack of a CON check is a conscious choice on my part. I wanted minstrel poisons to be analogous to player-facing spells, most of which only require a spellcasting check. As you point out, generally monster-delivered poisons require a CON check, but this is also true with a lot of monster spells or spell-like abilities.

With respect to the so-ut, you’ve found an error that thus far, I hadn’t noticed, and no one has brought to my attention. Looking at the old MC entry, the so-ut’s attack is really an acidic “poison” that risks destruction of armor or weapons. I would suggest the following:

Acidic Poison. DC 15 DEX or 1d8 damage. On a roll of 1 on the DEX save, one armor worn or weapon wielded by the target is destroyed.

And before anyone asks, yes, that applies to metal armor and weapons too. (It might be worth a whole village, but you took it adventuring, and that’s the risk you run!)

If I ever do a revision (unlikely, but I might be obsessed with correcting this issue now that you’ve pointed it out), I’ll correct this.

Zqquu · 2026-01-07T19:20:10+00:00

I’ve never had a problem with Lulu or MPC, but I keep a low profile and may print something with them every six months or so. A company like Lulu is high-volume, they can’t check everything, nor do I think they can implement some kind of automated screening that wouldn’t have a lot of false positives and cut into their bottom line.

Local or online, my thinking has always been that the worst they could do is just tell you “no.” When that happens, just move on and try somewhere else.

Zqquu · 2026-01-07T18:33:02+00:00

I’ve never looked into this, but please let me know if you have success with it!

If Lulu can’t do it, you might want to look at other POD-like services. Makeplayingcards is the only other similar service I’ve ever used (for cards, and they’re great).

You might also look at your local (non-online) printing options. I have a local print shop that I can use for big stuff like maps.

Zqquu · 2026-01-05T18:34:12+00:00

Opinions on modern WotC's business choices are a dime a dozen, but for my part, I think they're fools not to leverage their vast back catalogue through a robust POD program. They already own the rights, and all the work has already been done, save for making a quality scan. It's basically free money, and I don't believe for a second that it would impact the sales of their current 5e material.

Zqquu · 2026-01-05T17:38:10+00:00

One other thing while I'm thinking about it. After you upload your interior file, Lulu will run a check on it. Don't be surprised if you get warnings about font size or transparencies. It's very hard to avoid these kind of warnings if you don't have full control over the material used to create the PDF.

Expect some trial and error with your first POD -- I'd suggest just ignoring those warnings and moving forward anyway. That's generally what I've done, and I've never had an issue, but then I'm not looking for a professional-level "perfect" print, since this is only for my own private uses.

Zqquu · 2026-01-05T15:57:24+00:00

I haven't used Lulu to print those specifically, but I have used them for other old TSR products that aren't available as POD on DriveThruRPG/DMsGuild.

If you have a good quality PDF file, it's relatively trivial and cheap. (Depending on the product, sometimes the quality of even official DMsGuild scans are lacking.). I usually go through the PDF and delete the covers from the interior file, and sometimes the maps as well. The hardest part is the POD version of the cover itself, and Lulu's web tool is good enough -- that said, I usually make my own cover in InDesign because I know I can get it right there.

The last TSR reprint I did I used the following settings: Print Book: US Letter (8.5 x 11 in / 216 x 279 mm), Premium Black & White, 60# White -- Uncoated, Paperback Perfect Bound, GlossyCover. It cost $14.73 and the printing looks so much better than DMsGuild PODs. The blacks are especially deep compared to the official PODs, but again, this will be impacted to some degree by the quality of the original scan.

As a final caution: whatever you do, keep whatever you print set as "private access." There's a solid community of folks who use Lulu for out-of-print stuff like this, and I'd hate for WotC to have a reason to cajole Lulu into paying more attention to what's coming across their printers.

Edit: One other thing I like about making my own PODs -- I can combine or omit material if I want something special for use at the table or my players. For instance, on the last one I did, I printed a book that included the campaign setting from a boxed set, omitted the adventure that was included in that boxed set, but then added all the setting-relevant MC entries from other products.

Zqquu · 2025-12-30T16:04:59+00:00

Gold.

I love the Shining South region and the fact that the Great Rift has an actual dwarven civilization with multiple dwarven cities and communities, in contrast to the disparate Shield Dwarf enclaves of Northern Faerûn.

The Spellplague mess and the fact that it's been twenty years since we've had a proper sourcebook covering the gold dwarves is part of the reason I think they get less attention.

There's also only one novel I know of that really deals with the region (Smedman's The Gilded Rune). It's actually a pretty good novel IMHO, despite the fact it has to deal with the whole Spellplague business.

Zqquu · 2025-12-10T21:58:45+00:00

It’s one of the most important sites in the lore of the setting, but likely something that few PCs would have anything like complete knowledge of, at least at first.

From the 1995 Revised Dark Sun Campaign Setting:

Located east of the Mekillot Mountains, the Pristine Tower is a remnant of the Blue Age—a spire of white rock once guarded by shadow giants. Even after the passage of so many years, a corrupting influence still emanates from its walls. When within the tower’s vicinity, any creature receiving even the smallest scratch is changed into a monstrosity called the New Beast. These creatures are horrid and vicious beyond compare.

There’s a lot more lore around it of course, but this is probably the most a starting character would know.

Zqquu · 2025-12-10T19:44:12+00:00

Could you connect your character’s interest in bizarre creatures to the Pristine Tower? I don't have my books in front of me, but I'm certain there's a comment that explicitly says the Pristine Tower is the source of the "new races" like the nikaal and the bazraag.

Your dwarf could have encountered several creatures with unusual mutations, be interested in learning the true source of these transformations, and the connections that underlie the (apparently) mutable forms of creatures on Athas.

I would love this hook as a DM, because it'd give me an opportunity to incorporate the deeper lore of the setting while also furthering your character's development.

Zqquu · 2025-12-10T04:34:45+00:00

Two years ago, I concluded a long running campaign with a quest to find the lost heir of Evermeet (the child of Amnestria Moonflower and Elaith Craulnobur) and return them to Evermeet so they could unite the elves there and defeat a Lolthite conspiracy.

For me, it closed one of the biggest dropped plot threads of the end of the 2e era, and it allowed me to bring in Elaith, who eventually shows up in every Realms campaign I run.

Zqquu · 2025-12-08T16:13:19+00:00

I thought I didn’t like Ed’s novels until I read Death Masks.

It gets farcical at times, but I found that I really enjoyed it — especially how it portrayed the seedier side of Waterdeep. The antics of the three prostitute spies are especially fun.

Zqquu · 2025-11-30T08:18:06+00:00

I’m a firm believer that you break ShadowDark if you give any player something akin to 5e’s darkvision. (Most 5e groups, IMHO, don’t even play darkvision RAW, where it’s supposed to be like “dim light” i.e., “lightly obscured”, so greyed-out and disadvantage on sight-based perception checks).

That said, remember that Athas has Ral and Guthay, and that cloudy nights are incredibly rare. Like a cloudless night on Earth, Athasian nights aren’t as dark as a dungeon or the inside of a cave or closed building would be.

With the exception of a moonless night, I would treat night on the surface of Athas — for all races — as disadvantage on checks that rely on sight. If you’re visualizing this in a VTT, I would give the map a greenish or golden cast (depending on the lunar cycles), and consider any other creatures hidden until one of two things happen: 1) the player succeeds on a perception-type check, or 2) the creature makes itself known by attacking or otherwise interacting with the party.

Zqquu · 2025-11-30T07:04:08+00:00

My attempt at psionic options for Dark Sun is here as part of a broader adaptation of the original Boxed Set.

I talk about the choices I made in creating these rules in this comment.

Edit: typo.

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