Post/Author/DateTime	Post
jjake 12-26-07, 04:07 AM	If anyones ever played the game Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind then they'll understand my thinking. I want my campaign setting to have a strong and solid guild presence and influence. My thinking was to take the thinking behind teh mages guild in Morrowind and add it to the campaign with a few twists. If you havn't played the game the point I want to take is the idea of being able to have someone train you to use a certian spell. Say if you've just completed a quest then the person who sent you would teach you a spell. Or as you progress through the ranks of the guild you are required to know and thus someone will teach you certian spells. Or the PC could just plain have the ability pay someone to teach him a spell. The point I want to get across is that I think spells should be availabe from sources besides leveling up, any thoughts?
Naderion 12-26-07, 06:08 AM	Depends: As a bard or sorcerer, your number of spells known is limited, so you'd have to leave a slot empty and then see the guild to fill it with a new spell. In my campaigns, I usually make three rough categories of spells. Common spells, uncommon spells, and rare spells. Every cleric knows every common spell, every sorcerer can learn them and there are scrolls of them in any magic shop that sells scrolls of that level. Uncommon spells are not part of the usual reportoir of every cleric and you need some luck or contacts to get a scroll of tem. Some spells are very rare and are only known to special clerical orders and almost never available in shops and rarely merely sold to others by the mages who created them. Sharing secret spells with each other might be one of the several benefits a guild provides. What spells are comon or not depends o the campaign. My campaigns are usually low-level worlds with very few people above 4th level, so I make all 5th level spells uncommon and all 7th level spells rare, simply because there are just to few spellcasters ho could understand them and make scrolls of them.
fodigg 12-26-07, 03:59 PM	What do the oblivion guilds have that you find unique? I think of thieves' guilds much the same way, except that there are multiple guilds for each profession and not one giant guild for thieves/fighters/mages.
jjake 12-28-07, 03:46 AM	That's a great idea Naderion, I'm gonna try that out. I was thinking about it, and I guess it's not the guild I was thinking of directly it's the way the gave uses the skills. How you can level up each individual skill and when you level up six skills your character goes up a level and can increae an ability. I've never played oblivion, I want to though I thinks it's gonna be the best offline RPG that's out right now. I was talking about Morrowind. Your right also fodigg. The central theme I'm talking about (which isn't what I started out talking about) is the way you can update certian skills individually, I mean like the long blade skill, hand to hand, speechcraft, short blade, etc. I was just trying to see if anyone had a good idea I could use to get the idea off the ground. If I've even expressed what I'm trying to say right. So the idea: take the central character building theme and reconfigure D&D to be compatible. Any help?
Naderion 12-28-07, 09:19 AM	I think Unearthed Arcana is your friend for this. It's a book exactly about this topic, creating alternating rules, and it does have a skill training section, I think.
coconut_ddd 12-28-07, 04:43 PM	I think your looking at a different way of earning spells. I am very familiar with all of the Elder Scrolls series. A different guild presence would mean a guild house in each city and a Guild Council (mages council) to discuss matters ect ect. It is the guilds choice on how they reward the PC for completing a task. However, i think that if you need to give them a spell to complete a task it could be a scroll so that things remained balanced.
elderdrake 12-28-07, 09:27 PM	This actually was the original concept in Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition if I am not mistaking. The same kind of held true for all character classes. Having enough experience points was not necessarily enough to advance the player a level. One had to also obtain the services of a higher level master who would then train the character in the skills necessary, or the spells obtained, from the new level. Once this training was complete, the character would advance. Of course, now adays WOTC has given into the concept of "immediate gratification" so common in our society these days. Players fly through levels in just one sitting. :weep:
Rockjaw 12-31-07, 10:37 AM	It's a great concept, I've been tossing around the idea of a 'guild-city' for years now. the mechanics are workable but I would be tempted to flesh out the entire concept first, from the initial application to a guild to the inner workings, then run a mini-game just within the guild itself. I think that the common factor would be the relaiance or revelance of the guild. Either from a point of continued training or the relationship of the 'employer-employee' that all guild structures have. I guess it just depends how detailed you want to get...but again good concept.