Shadows of Heroes.

WotC published a new supplement for D&D 4e/Essentials this week. It probably won't surprise you to find that I've been eagerly awaiting it's arrival since hearing of it a few weeks back. Heroes of Shadow contains a host of character options for the players who want something darker. New classes like Vampire, Blackguard, Executioner (a rework of Assassin) and Binder (a warlock variant), new options for Mages to dabble in or master Necromancy, and a bunch of other stuff to fill out your anti-heroes.

One of the things that disappointed me most about D&D 4e was the limit on building darker characters. Sure, you could have a pact with Infernal entities (Infernal Warlock), and/or you could play the descendant of an empire whose leaders did the same (Tiefling), but besides a handful of items, that was pretty much it as far as creepy trappings of supernatural evil are concerned.

I love creepy trappings of supernatural evil on my (anti)heroes.

It seemed part of the design of the new edition--player characters were explicitly banned from taking evil alignments. Rules for more monstrous races were not (originally) included. And worst of all from my perspective, no Necromancy! Diabolism seemed one thing, but fooling around with dead things was somehow beyond the pale these days. Really? So I've been relegated to playing a series of unsatisfying neutral-to-good adventurers in one campaign, trying to find something that really catches my interest. No more!

So I've been drawing up characters left, right, and beyond using WotC's online Character Builder, seeing what makes these new classes and options tick. My all-time personal favorite fantasy concept--the heroish necromancer--is leading the pack. Death is just an evocative subject, even in settings where it can be reversed. I don't think of myself as emo or anything--I just recognize that death fascinates or scares the shit out of anyone who gives it any thought.

Nobilis tie-in: One of the Properties of the Estate of Death in my 3rd edition Nobilis game is "Death fascinates or terrifies." /nobilis

A tradition that began with D&D 2e and Planescape, the Red Dragon Inn free-form RP chat-room and numerous home-brew necromancy spells posted on AOL in early high school continues in D&D 4e with Hygelak the Necromancer. He's clearly the favorite to be introduced into whatever campaign I can get him into--I kept the the old screen name from my AOL days, and played a number of iterations (never very long--unfortunately, DMs and friends don't seem to want me to be happy in this specific way). I've been waiting for the chance to bring him back for a campaign full of creepiness, ambition, and dedication.

I'm crossing my fingers.

In yet another game--the one my fiance runs, the D&D 3.5 Planescape game--I play a vampire spawn with anmesia, and nothing but a peculiar black sigil on his forehead to give him any idea as to his true identity. They call him "the black-runed man," which he quickly adopted and shortened to "Blackrune." So, with the new supplement, I got to try my hand at recreating him for 4e. The Vampire class is pretty damned (pardon the pun) linear, with a choice in powers at 2nd level, a choice of two vampire-focused paragon paths, and another power choice at level 22. But the paragon choice is pretty sweet...do you want to be a charming, hypnotic noble of the night, or do you want to hunger, hunt and kill? I build the Stalker variant to stay faithful to Blackrune (I find the Hunger aspect of vampirism more compelling than the hyped sexuality--I prefer Stephen King to Anne Rice, thanks).

World of Warcraft didn't have an option for Necromancers when I started playing (shortly after the game went live), so I settled for a Warlock--wielding demonic minions and energies to lay waste to the enemies of the Alliance. Since then, Death Knights became a playable class, and declared that Hygelakus the Warlock had been captured by the Lich King and transformed into a Death Knight, only to escape and seek revenge. I haven't taken a serious look at the Blackguard class (a damage-dealing Paladin variant), but mayhap I should. I've definately enjoyed wielding dark magic via a really big sword recently.

Enough for now! I have characters to draw up, and a game tonight. Who knows--maybe my Artificer will be horribly slain?

The Life of Death.

Yeah, I have a new blog.

You might ask, "Why a new blog? You hardly ever write on this one!"

The Life of Death is all about a guy that doesn't exist. He'll talk about his fictional life as the Power of Death--he's based off a character I'm playing in my girlfriend's new Nobilis campaign, and a character that will be popping up in my Nobilis game. In both, he was chosen--inexplicably--to serve and protect a shard of the soul of the fallen Angel Samael; specifically, the shard of Death. His family varies from game to game--most of the time, he'll be the Matt Underwood from her game, but I'm allowing for the possibility that I'll want to write something about the Matt of Death from -my- game.

So, look for stuff there. I'll post other random rants and fiction here, but that one will mostly be fictional rants.

~j

Death TV.

I think I've mentioned that I really don't watch TV normally. I salute websites like hulu.com that understand that sometimes I can't, or don't want to, watch TV during normal prime-time. And because I watch TV online, often I can quickly catch up through a huge backlog of episodes, given a few days and sufficient interest in the show.

I remember seeing ads for Pushing Daisies when it first started, but I never buckled down and checked out an episode, so I missed out, until now. But, having run out of episodes I can get ahold of (and nearly out of episodes, period), I hopped over to another series by the creator--Dead Like Me.

Similar to Pushing Daisies, the show is all about death, and death is in every episode. But Dead Like Me is far from the cheesy, sunshiney world created for a show on ABC. The characters are closer to our world--dirtier sometimes, or more angry, or more screwed up. There are still odd, arcane rules about how things happen, or should happen. The main character, George, dies and becomes a "grim reaper," but just as important as seeing how that other half lives, we get to see how our half deals with George's loss, how her family copes and moves on, or not.

The pilot brought tears to my eyes--death is arbitrary and unfair, and the show acknowledges that. The people who collect souls don't know much more than the people dying, as it turns out. So far in the series, George, the new girl on the job (and rather disaffected in life) keeps asking "Why?"

Why me?

Why her?

Why not?

Why do some people get to keep living?

Why do I keep losing people?

Conversely, her "boss," a senior reaper, basically keeps answering "Because." And he has experience to back it up--but the answer is often "Because. Sorry, but deal with it."

I can't wait to keep watching. I love this cast, and I can't wait for the leader of the pack of reapers to be proven wrong by the new girl.

~j

Notebooks of Doom.

I've started watching the anime series Death Note. It is fun.

Things are totally turned around in this series. The protagonist is essentially a supervillain, out to rid the world of evil by having bad guys killed via supernatural means. He's an anti-hero supervillain protagonist. Ah.

Then we have the main antagonist. A hero detective with a secret identity--he's known only as "L"--who must put a stop to the new murder spree.

They both claim to be Justice. Very dramatically.

They show also features a demon who caused this whole mess but won't take sides and loves apples from the human world, some very dramatically drawn shots of a guy writing in a notebook, and some fun imagery during the opening credits. It's dark, I love anti-heroes, and the protagonist is as cold as they come, so far. I'm just wondering how they stretch this out into 37 episodes. Only four episodes in, the plot seems to be advancing fairly quickly.

More pros for the show include:

No giant mecha.
No magical girls.
No teams of people in similar but differently colored uniforms.

Also, no real violence so far. The last episode we watched had some gunfire, but it didn't hit anyone. People keep getting hit in less-than-random traffic accidents, though.

Anyway, I'll have to keep watching this one. It's a nice breathe of fresh air in the anime I've seen so far.

~j