Shiny Sword: Cloudslayer d20 background campaign

Introduction

This section will contain a fully worked out campaign framework for the Shiny Sword computer game. It will contain heaps of information about the campaign world, the deities, the major characters and pretty much anything you can think of! The intention is to bring the whole campaign alive, so that people (including me ;) will become more enthusiastic about the endeavour. Most of the pages will be available for public access, and some of them will even be open for user input! A few sections, however, will either stay on my computer or be put online with restricted access. These "restricted" sections usually contain rather spoiler-sensitive information such as plotlines and detailed monster designs.


Changes to the old campaign setting

The Tassarian continent, created with AutoREALM

If you have no idea about what the old campaign setting of the Shiny Sword is, feel free to skip this section. The first thing I have to say is something most people will probably applaud. The setting in SSC is going to be essentially the same as in the Verge-version of the Shiny Sword. Seolean will be there, and so will Klunk and the Cloud ;). Having said that, the campaign will undergo a thorough revision.
First of all, the names will be reviewed and if necessary, altered. The original campaign contained quite some names ripped from other computer games, and I just feel that that's a big no-no :). In addition to this, the whole geographic area will be reassembled and the plot will be rewritten in the more crummy areas. Furthermore, the whole rules system will be ported to the d20 system of course. Other than that, most of the changes are additions really :).


Why the d20 system?

Initially, in Verge 1, the project started out with a rather Shining Force-esque stat system. However, this proved to be way too insufficient for the roleplaying aspects of the game. Seolean should get different replies from a horny peasant than Badedas, and that wasn't represented in the stats at all. Hence I thought up a stat system myself, which was rather simple and elegant, but also somewhat limited. Now that the d20 system has an open-gaming license I decided to use exactly that system for the background campaign, and an abstraction of the d20 system in the game itself. An additional bonus is that the information presented on these pages will be useful not only as reference, but also to set up your own d20 campaign!


You can participate!

Indeed! With the release of this site, you are granted the opportunity to not only comment on existing material, but also to add your own. In the past this was also the case, but it lead to a lot of misunderstandings and redundant work. To remedy this, I've actually developed a small system for your participation to make things easier, and to reduce the chance of you spending time creating unuseful or simply unwanted stuff. ;)
Like with the development of the project, the development of the background campaign happens in so-called "free chunks". Unlike the chunks in the project though, these chunks aren't bound by any scheduling or organization whatsoever. They can be done whenever someone feels like contributing to the project! Because they're not bound to a time schedule, I called the "free chunks" :). Anyone is allowed to do these chunks, and the only thing I will do is review them and check if they're consistent with the rest of the campaign.
Chunks are quite easy to recognize. They will look like this:





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