Divine Intervention and the Nature of Dieties

How do you do divine intervention in your games?

Following up on the post about Clerics I have thought about how Gods interact with mortals.  Typically I give any character a base 1% chance to get divine intervention when they ask for it.  This is modified by how well they adhere to the tenets of their faith, the nature of their god, and even level (higher level characters can do more).  Of course nothing comes without a price.

In my 4e game coming up I am thinking that that the players will be visited often by the Raven Queen's avatar, in the form of a young girl ala Death from DC's Vertigo line and borrowing heavily from Amber Benson's "Death's Daughter" books.   I might even introduce her in the current adventure arc.

Presently the Dragonslayers are going after Tiamat. While they acknowledge that she is the "Goddess of Evil Dragons"  to them that just makes her bigger and more powerful to kill.  I am thinking I am ok with that for the most part.  It could be that Gods in my game are beings that just got really, really powerful.

If that is the case why do they need worshipers?  What purpose then is divine intervention for?

I had a character once who I took briefly into the Planescape setting.  Basically he was a jerk and didn't think that gods were anything special (sound familiar?), just powerful humans (or humanoids).  I later expanded his belief into an entire Plansescape faction, The Hermetic Order of Sigil, though he was not a member.

Interesting that all these years later I am still going back to the basic assumptions of my games and trying to figure out the underlying realities.

I'm with D&D

This is not a big surprise.

I saw this banner again today on Christian Lindke's Cinerati blog about to uselessness of edition wars. The image is from TheWeem.com and it is to support D&D, any D&D, any edition.  Even if your D&D is actually called Basic Fantasy, S&W or Pathfinder.

Enjoy your game!

Spell Lists, by level or Alphabetical?

I was reading over the newest version of Swords &Wizardry over my brief lunch break today.
It is neat and has some cool ideas but one thing struck me.

Like Basic Fantasy and some others and most notably D&D 3rd Ed and Pathfinder, S&S IV lists all the spells in alphabetical order and not by class and level.  While I get this is very good way to organize the spells, it doesn't quite feel old school to me.

For me I guess it is one of tone.  If this were a 3.x era book then I would want the spells in that format.  If it were an OSR book, then do it like they did it when Gary and Dave were still rollin' 'em.

What are your preferences?
Do you like books were the spells are divided up by cast then level or do you like the alphabetical approach?

Sorry, I was OUTSIDE!

Yeah it's springtime in Chicagoland, which means it is just as cold as winter, but we have a few more hours of daylight.   I wanted to do some more White Plume Mountain today, but yardwork calls.

Though while cleaning out gutters today I did think of how first contact happened between the dwarves and human of my world.  Much better than the first contact between dwarves and elves.

Going out to fertilize the lawn now.  Who knows what I'll come up with then.

Zatannurday: Zatanna by Chris Evenhuls

Magic Dance by Chris Evehuls.

13 Magazine for WGA

Just in time for Friday the 13th comes the newest supplement for Witch Girls Adventures.

13 Magazine

This is a fun little product.
Designed to be a magazine for young witches in the WGA world, it looks like any number of tween and teen mags that talk about fashion, boys and school. 13 is no different except the advice section deals with how to deal with your vampire boyfriend to a bunch of new spells no young witch should be without. IT looks like there will be regular features such as Aimee the Alchemist, Cryptid Database, advice from Denora the "Wicked Witch of the West Coast" and dating advice from Desdemond. Everything is presented with a little sidebar of notes for the Director of a WGA game on how to use.
I particularly liked the "First Jobs" article which dealt with baby sitting, but provided material to play or run younger witches than the core book had.

The layout is really good, full color and looking like a glossy fashion magazine. There are a few typos I noticed, but nothing that distracted me from the text or the fun.

If you like Witch Girls Adventures (and I do), then this is a good buy.
5 out of 5 stars


Again, I am inordinately fond of this game so anything new for it is great in my mind.

Happy Friday the 13th!

Hey!  It is Friday the 13th which is usually pretty good for me.  We will see if that holds today. ;)

On the down side all my posts since Wednesday are gone, but I think I can bring them back if I want.

Hope your Friday is a good one.