Alignments can become a sticky subject and can end up railroading players into making actions they don’t really want to, or causing group cohesion to fall apart. Rather than use them as a strict rule for a character think of it more as a general philosophy and take on the world. In addition it’s often hard to find good examples of each. We will be covering the 3.5e alignments today but within them contain the 4e alignments so it applies to both.

Lawful Good – This character is the by the books cop. She fights for what is good while upholding the law. Examples: Superman and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Lawful Neutral – Your average citizen. For the most part they follow the law and do what’s in their best interest, or perhaps they follow the law because it is in their best interest. Examples: Bounty hunters and Judge Dredd.

Lawful Evil – He wants to commit acts of villainy, but breaking the law or personal code is unacceptable. Again, self preservation might be the motivation or he might have an extremely strict set of rules guiding him or could have superior officers keeping him in line. Examples: Darth Vader and Dexter (his “code” being considered law).

True Neutral – This character does as they wish, if it is convenient they might steal but they don’t go out of their way to make a point of it. They are the Switzerland of alignments. Examples: Doctor Manhattan, mindless animals, and referees.

Chaotic Good – She fights for what is right but doesn’t mind doing some wrong for the greater good. Often take up an extremist cause. Examples: Robin Hood, Dr. Horrible, and Batman.

Chaotic Neutral – She is out for herself. It’s a very gray area which allows players to be selfish without having to take a fully neutral stance. Examples: Han Solo in the beginning (he later can be considered Lawful Good when he comes back to help on the Death Star assault), Wario, and the Joker (arguably).

Chaotic Evil – She wants to wants to maim and slaughter and do all sorts of evil deeds, and she will not be stopped by any laws. These characters are villains at their most pure. Examples: Serial Killers, Simon Pheonix of Demolition Man, and Darth Sidious/Emporer Palpatine.

Here it is! Pokemon D&D, or at least a game based roughly on D&D.

The top chart is of the first 3 of the 18 Pokemon character classes I have created. As you can see they are based on actual Pokemon abilities and incorporate some D&D features. Most damage is based on d6’s while leach and damage over time abilities tend to be d4’s.

You roll out your character as you would with D&D. Roll your abilities by taking the best 3 rolls from 4d6. Fill, in your saves as well as your AC, Grapple, and Initiative Modifier. The Level/BAB/Ability Pts chart is for your reference when leveling up. All players start with 6hp + Con modifier. At each new level they gain 1d6+Con hp.

Setting up combat is fairly simple. The players determine the order in which they will be in, and DM can either do the same or have the enemy trainer’s Pokemon randomly ordered. Once you enter combat each player is designated a “Slot.” The slot is from the order you choose. Each Pokemon is squared off against one other. You then go down the line with combat, and the initiative modifier determined which Pokemon in each slot goes first.

Players can use their turns to either use an ability, attack, or switch spots to a willing ally. When a Pokemon faints they are taken out of combat and that slot becomes empty and players may move into those slots as an action.

Combat is pretty straight forward, you roll an attack or ability and beat their AC or save. Its the same mechanics as D&D. Your “Ability Points” determine how many of each ability you can use per encounter. As you can see as you level you gain additional use of your abilities. Note that all Pokemon have a base attack of 1d4 Physical damage that can be used an unlimited amount of times. I know this is not on the cards, it will likely be included in the future.

Note that you can only have 4 abilities open at a time, and once you unlearn one you cannot use it again. Each level you gain new abilities based on your Pokemon and it is up to the player to determine which abilities to keep.

Apologies for the sloppily written rules, I made several changes while in the process of writing it. Feel free to question or comment, any feedback is highly appreciated.

The group arrived at the destination, a house in the city and found it inhabited by a rather charismatic albeit borderline arrogant man. He opened the box and removed a brooch which he then placed upon himself instantly turning him a little more likable. He introduced himself as Nuance Nor, stating that he was of minor fame for being the city’s arena announcer and gave his thanks for giving the box to him just in time. He then proposed to them that he could get them into the games so long as 10% of the prize money was given to him as a finder’s fee. The group managed to talk him down to 8% and the deal was made.

They then made their way to the registration office, and then to a third party bookie so that they could bet on themselves. In this town there is official betting at the arena however to bet on yourself you must go through a 3^rd party. The Paladin, Sorceress, and Scout pooled together 6g at 3:1 odds hoping to triple their money, the Rogue obstained and the Druid was acquiring a new animal companion.

The group then split a bit more with the Paladin visiting a temple then helping to feed the needy, the others besides the druid hit the bars in search of booty and free board. The Rogue managed to bag a gentleman who was a 3/10 but bad luck struck more than once. Upon asking her performance she rolled a 1 on percentage dice. At that point before I could even say something she asked if she was raped. At that point I really had no way out and said that, that was in fact the case.

The next day after hearing about the rape the Sorceress, Scout, and Paladin decided to confront the man. He answered the door but quickly shut it after the commotion. The Paladin upon realizing he could not enter illegally decided to go get some guards while the other two decided to barge in after the man and assault him. The Sorceress made it clear the area she was aiming for and managed a crit. They left quickly and the Paladin and the police arrived shortly after to find the man curled on the ground crying and shouting inaudibly.

…to be continued.

Thanks to StolenDataTapes for the inspiration for this question.

We started this session with the players eagerly awaiting their reward for slaying the ghouls. Once the mayor had collected items and presented them to the group the Paladin declined saying that the town would need any supplies more than they would, to the dismay of the other players. They then set on their journey to Noonday, the capital city of this island-state Arkus.

During the way they decided to camp very near to the path after rolling low on a survival check. During the first watch something was heard and the Druid cast Light onto an arrow and the Scout shot it in that direction, the noise scurried off and they went back to sleep. The second watch was not so lucky, after failing their listen checks they were ambushed by a handful of Derro. Derro are dwarf like blue creates that dwell underground and in my opinion look like a blue version of the Leprechaun from the Leprechaun series.

They managed to win the fight mostly with the Druid using her healing abilities for the first time and help from an NPC. Everyone in the group acquired a +2 short sword which provided the Rogue with a better weapon and everyone else with a backup weapon.

They made it the rest of the way without incident and soon arrived at the sprawling port city. Due to geography they are the primary place for ship repairs, and due to the mining operations on the volcanic (dormant) south end of the island it was rather booming. As they entered the heart of the city their NPC gave them a small box to deliver and said he would return with the final payments.

To be continued…

For session 3 and I decided to try some new music. After browsing the last.fm gamer stations I found that most of them were not all that great. After an hour or so of trying I decided to quickly try and find a John Williams station but because it was mid game and I was DMing at the time I settled on the Classical/Contemporary station. I have to say that it worked extremely well.

More than once someone would mention how fitting the music seemed, and indeed so when I had the players fighting ghouls in a graveyard it set the scene very nicely.  I think it fit better than the Minibosses station, and for tonight’s session I will attempt to find a John Williams station prior to starting.

(sorry for the delay)

That night they decided to investigate the graveyard, as they entered they hear eerie moans and soon discovered they were ghouls. One by one the ghouls emerged from the tree line until 6 of them were present, followed by a larger ghoul. The fight was close, and I admit was the first fully honest fight I’ve given them.  Metagaming become an issue, especially with one player. I ended up having to speak over him on several occasions and it became quite frustrating at times.

In the end the paladin was knocked unconscious but stabilized quickly. The druid fell right as well; right before they downed the large ghoul (loud cheering occurred). Since nobody else in the party had a healing spell to stabilize them the party searched for her potions while she attempted to stabilize. They ended up breaking one healing potion and then feeding her a potion that made her vomit. In the end she stabilized at -5.

The group went back to town dragging the paladin and druid, went to the house they were staying in while their main NPC berated them for doing something like that. In the morning they woke up and essentially demanded a reward from the mayor who was cooking them breakfast despite none being offered previously. She said she would ask around town to see what they could offer and that’s where the party left off.

I felt that for the first time the group felt as though their characters were in mortal peril. This is exactly what I planned for and hope that I can recreate that sort of feeling with the full group. Previous fights had all been made rather easy to allow them to get used to combat, and while they were unconfident in their ability to survive they seemed at home with their spells and attacks.

Session 3 saw a large decline in players due to 3 of them not being able to make it. We ended up with a druid, a paladin, a rogue, a scout, and a sorceress. It was a nice balance despite being without a healer. The makeup of 4 girls and one guy didn’t seem to factor into play much, the group worked fairly well together.

It started with the sorceress waking up from an extended nap (she missed the session prior) and meeting back with the group. They had all just finished a delivery to a small town located in the woods of an island state.  The town had approximately 80 people and was self sustaining, unfortunately for them there had been strange sounds coming from the graveyard and the townspeople had no real fighting force.

In the first session the sorceress used a Detect magic spell and saw that there was a faint glow in their cargo. After being paid the rogue and druid searched for this item but had no luck finding it. Everybody else did things like buy minor items and in one case a spear from the town store.

The mayor had invited them to a minor feast and bonfire that night and they kindly accepted. During the night nothing eventful happened, everybody investigate their own things (the paladin spoke with evil people, the rogue questioned about the item and boys, and the druid learned how to make potions from a mountain man).

The next day everybody but the druid decided to help out around town with things like chores and a bit of field work. The druid decided to create potions from plants she had found. She was able to make 2, +1hp pots as well as 1 pot that would make the person who drank it become ill. After this she joined the group until night came, when they had planned to head to the graveyard.

Music is a rather controversial issue surprisingly. Many groups play with no background music so as to have complete focus; however the majority of groups I have played with have some sort of music on. Generally it’s at a low level in the back and more often than not is light on lyrics. In one group I play with Dub-Step is generally the genre of choice and while I myself am not a fan of the genre it works well for this purpose.

This seems to be a general consensus for gaming. If there are no lyrics then you are far less likely to have people continuously asking what the song is or people complaining over the music. All in all it all falls back to the DM’s choice.

For the Alpha group session 1 was played without any music. This went unnoticed seeing as how most people were talking so loudly that the music would have been drowned out anyways. For the second session however I decided to tap into the depths of xbox live and use the Last.fm features. I’ve used them all of once before but after a bit of cruising I decided to try the 8bit channel. After about 15 minutes I decided it wasn’t right and went with a channel called Minibosses which I later realized was the band. This remained on the rest of the night.

The group didn’t seem to mind the music at all which I consider an accomplishment seeing as the musical preferences in the group range from Harry and the Potters to Skrillex. I expect to try another station for Session 3 though, its always good to experiment.