DwD Studios

jasales Witcher skill.

Referencing jasales's The Elder Scrolls: Dominion conversion pamphlet.

jasales, I really think you have set the bar as far as both simplicity and beauty is concerned. I would buy this as a softbound pamphlet and buy any others like it. At 16 pages (2 signets) glossy, $5 would be reasonable.

Wow! That is some high praise Ascent. Thank you!

I'll keep plugging away at these things.

I think simplicity is a difficult thing to do. I tell my players that all the time. Simplicity is hard, complexity is easy. Strive for the first, reduce the second.

The best part of this homebrew thing? It's free! Oh and it is designed to be printed pamphlet style and stapled in the middle. You can tuck it in the front cover of your BBF book and you are ready to game in Tamriel!

[I see I need to move the bow down a bit and move the title for the two handed sword over. The edits never ever end.]

Perfection isn't easy.

By the way, for the "Name" thing to translate to print, you would need to provide the full link address.

Also, I think Dwemer Platemail is missing from the armor table.

"Name" thing...sorry. I don't understand what you mean.

Good Catch. I'll have to add that. I'm also thinking I need to lighten up the armor pics. They seem to print too dark.

Character Creation: 9. Choose a setting appropriate name - Name.

Agreed on lightening the armors.

Another good catch. Thank you. I know better than that. Can't prove it of course. :)

I really like the '1D per Rank' race specials jasales, that's a great way of getting variety in with a simple mechanic that doesn't need its own little reference section, but still scales up as the character progresses.

Just as an illustration of how unclear my thoughts were compared to yours, I took the PC empowerment thread I liked so much in BBF ("Hey kid, wanna multiclass in your second game session? Be our guest...") and was thinking something along the lines of:

Each race gets:

• +10 to an attribute from a relevant choice of two
• +10 to a Skill from a relevant choice of two
• +10 to relevant Resistance check (Keeping it BBF, but the variety of Elder Scrolls races seems to unbalance it)
• A daily reroll on a relevant skill (Spellcaster for Aldmer, Melee for Orcs) (Kinda nicked from Savage Worlds, yeah...)
• A Special Ability, either a constant effect or a cool special move
• Ditch vision perks from the game bar Khajiit's Night Eye means they can 'see in the dark'. Maybe have a flavour perk for the other races too

• And then an optional Star sign / Birthsign / Guardian sign for some little bonus.
• Then some fluff on the gods for Cleric characters so they can get the roleplaying side of it down.
• Fluff on factions to get a gang of PCs together and figure out what their motivation is

Of course though, the problem here with all the mechanics is that we're sort of getting into D&D territory with all the options, and we're getting away from what makes BBF so good to pick up and play. Oy!

The other stumbling block for Elder Scrolls GMs seems to be the high number of races on offer meaning there's overlap. Orcs and Redguards seem to end up a bit similar, as do Altmer and Bretons. And those pesky Argonians are just so inscrutable. Loose tribal culture and sentient trees equals... Bonus to Scout..? Hang on, sounds like a Bosmer... :) Hmm.

Anyway, forgive my ramblings - getting this down here makes me realise just how important it is to have a good GM and a focus on the adventure as opposed to what a bad D&D experience might give you: an insular little numbercruncher.

No no, your ramblings are excellent. they show the thought process. I too was going the route you did, till I sat back and just looked at the mess I was creating. There is definately overlap with the races you mentioned. Again, many of them take advantage of small numerical differences easily crunched by a computer. I don't find that kind of thing fun at the table.

So what I did is ask myself, how is it done in BBF?

Let's look. Ok, there are some stat bonuses, some resistance bonuses and one or two other things. So then I asked myself, what about the core concept of each race in BBf. Dwarf = tough. Halfling = sneaky. Human = versitile. Elf = I have no idea.

So I with that, I went back to the Tamriel races to find a one line definition of each.

Argonians - swamp people
Bretons - magically tallented
Dark Elf - strong ties to angry ancestors
High Elf - magically attuned
Imperial - the leaders
Khajiit - cool cat people
Nord - vikings!
Orc - berserkers
Redguard - ?? skirmishers??
Wood Elf - archers

Then with those I rewrote them BBF style and tried to keep what was esential to make them different. Do they copy the Tamriel races exactly as in the games, no. But they are close enough for the concepts to come through. And that is what we want. We want the themes and concepts to come through these conversions. Anything else is unnecessary bagage.

I struggled with signs. I finally finished them and realized they are very problematic. They aren't at all equal in power and they add one more level of complexity that I just didn't want. So I went back to the source. Signs only show up in Morrowind and Oblivion. They aren't in the other three main games. So are they really that important? Well, probably if the story hinges around one prophesised character. But this is group play. So I dropped them. There core concepts intact, extra stuff dropped. Ready for play that won't get hung up on looking things up during the game!

Which is the right approach, of course.
Good points all round!
I think it's usually a good idea for a play campaign to actually exist in the first place, instead of getting to chargen and then exploding messily under its own weight... :)

Sticking to flavour over mechanics, sticking to flavour of the most recent game because it was new, or throwing it all out was something I was wrestling with too.

Of course I should have said that BBF does work very well for Elder Scrolls for at least two reasons - the percentile skills correspond to levels, and the BBF Enchanter is a Tamriel Enchanter straight off the page!
I too had the idea of getting soul gems to count for golds-worth in Magic Item creation. I love the idea of the PCs actually going out to trap powerful souls to get good equipment, it seems much more sensible than trusting to a chest existing in a dungeon somewhere that might have some magic boots in it.
What I didn't think of yet was the mundane Alchemy though, so good on you for that!

Other good points (conveniently remembering whose website I'm posting on here) for Elder Scrolls BBF are the critter cheat sheet to generate all your Kwamas and Mudcrabs and what-have-you, and that BBF is simple enough for first time RPGers who've been doing plenty of dungeon delving on the screen, and just didn't know they'd be so good at it with real dice flying around a table.

If I ever get around to doing this pipedream Elder Scrolls BBF PDF, do you mind if I reference your work - with full credit and links obviously - jasales?

At this point I'm thinking the brief Gods, Factions, Geography and History section I could put in the back would be the most useful thing for gamers in it... :)

By all means, use the stuff I post as you want. That is why I post it.

I'll add monsters as I create them but a warning to everyone. I recycle monsters all the time, change the name, description and sometimes the stats to create a new creature. Works well.

As an example I had a BBF adventure recently where the players were magically transported to a shipwreck just off the shore of a desolate island. They could see large eels slowly swimming around the ship between them and the shore.

Needed electric eel stats - grabbed kobold, gave a shock power of 1D, 2 if in metal armor. Done.

Crafty players had one person very slowly enter water and wade to shore where they retrieved a boat and rowed it back. Boy I'm glad I didn't spend much time stating out those eels. :)

Larry - would you want something like this for a quick adventure in Decahedron? One where new monsters are not statted out but are listed as other mosters with changes? Kind of a "how to save time" kind of thing? If so I could whip this up in a few days from my notes. It would be a bare bones adventure, litterally.

That's great jasales, thanks very much indeed!

In the meantime, keep on doing that thing that you do.
In those dark and eel-infested waters...

Here is the final Version with updates suggested by you fine folks.

http://www.epicwords.com/attachments/11343

Game starts on June 10th! Can't wait!

Could this get added to the Conversions section of the wiki?

Fair play, this looks great

I'm impressed

Thank you for doing this and sharing

Glad you like it. I hope you find it useful.

Sorry I missed it before

Under Destruction, you have Offensive Strength rather than Strike

How do you see Soul gems working?

Under the weapons and armor, you have Dwemer listed. Is that correct? Or is it supposed to be Dweomer? I am not familiar with the game, so unsure, but I know Dweomer is a word, but I've never heard of dwemer.

I'll look more carefully later. I gotta get to work.

Thanks for the catch of the typo. ugh, stamping stamping stamping them out.

Soul Gems - during magic object creation, instead of the GM choosing a special ingredient(s) he chooses a Soul Gem. The player then must have a soul gem filled with the proper level soul. These souls come from creatures, not pc races. Creatures in this setting have a soul rating. When killed, an enchanter makes an enchanting roll to capture the soul. The soul will fill the smallest soul gem it can. IE a common soul will fit in a common, greater or grand sould gem but not a lesser soul gem. If the enchanter does not posess a soul gem great enough to contain the soul, the soul will not be captured.

Enchanters will learn which creatures have what types of soul by trial and error or trading such knowledge with other enchanters. Often enchanters will have multiple soul gems on their person during dangerous adventures.

Sometimes, you may be able to purchase filled soul gems. Any enchanter can tell what type of soul is in the soul gem. (I'm not dead set on the costs, I need to see how this plays out in the game).

Dwemer - also known as dwarves are a former race that lived in Tamriel. Their weapons, armor and other artifacts can still be found and manufactured.

And fixing the typo: http://www.epicwords.com/attachments/11680

Fair play, this is fantastic

Well done and thanks for sharing

There are 8 play reports in the play repots thread at the top of this forum and you can read character journals here is you are so inclined: www.epicwords.com/dominion

I've got 2 more play reports to upload (today) and we just finished the first "Chapter" which sets up the entire campaign.

I think it demonstrates just what a great rpg system is BBF. And what great players I have, and their cool characters, and the setting...but BBF lets us do it all with ease.

Would any of you like more Tamriel BBF Material?

I could share my GM guide, Paths of Power and other Documents I've handed out to players.

Please

A resounding "Yes please!" from over here, your work's great!