The Blessed Organization in Alan Wake II

 The Blessed Organization is not central to the plot of Control. It's something you can discover only by delving into the various heavily-redacted files, recordings, and other media around the Oldest House. But it's heavily implied that the organization was founded by a figure named Chester Bless, who has some connection with the FBC's Board - the otherworldly entity (or entities) that choose its director and seem to control the use of Objects of Power.

Bless is a Southern Californian hippie-like figure, with ties to Hollywood, but acting more as a kind of motivational speaker and... well, a cult leader. He has a surfboard that seems to be an altered item at least, if not a full-on OoP, and he talks about helping people with the "power of the board," which surely seems to call out to an important element in the Remedy cosmos.

Various companies and organizations that involve the word "Bless" have been targeting the FBC - in one case, an altered item in the form of a Fondue kit was mailed to a radio show secretly run by the FBC, and it reduced a producer of the show to ash when she opened the package. It's clear that the Blessed organization is willing to kill to further its goals, so it needs to be taken seriously as a major Paracriminal organization.

Spoilers Ahead:

Who The Hell is Thomas Zane?

 In the original Alan Wake, we're introduced to the character of Thomas Zane. Essentially Alan's cautionary tale, Thomas was a poet who came to Bright Falls with his girlfriend, Barbara Jagger, and his friend Emile Hartman, around 1970. After Barbara unexpectedly drowned in the lake, Hartman encouraged Thomas to use the strange powers of the lake to simply bring her back to life. When she came back not as his beloved girlfriend but as a monstrous vessel for the Dark Presence, he cut out her heart - which didn't actually kill her - and then grabbed her and jumped into the lake with her, sacrificing himself to keep the Dark Presence from conquering the world.

Unmarked spoilers ahead, but this is all speculative and questioning here.

That's the story.

Alan encounters Thomas Zane over the course of the first game, and Zane appears as a diver in an old diving suit that radiates light. Zane acts as an enigmatic guide to Alan, helping him along the path to defeating the Dark Presence.

But here's where things start to get weird:

In Control, we hear a recording made by the FBC (which does not believe in a right to privacy when paranatural phenomena are at play) of one of Jesse Faden's therapy sessions, in which she remembers the poetry of Thomas Zane, despite the therapist believing that Zane is a filmmaker, not a poet.

In the remastered version of Alan Wake (the version I played,) there's even a poster of a movie (admittedly in Alan's dream) for Tom the Poet, which has a diver on the cover and stars Thomas Zane and Barbara Jagger, and is supposedly based on a story by Alan Wake.

Also in Control, in the AWE expansion, Jesse glimpses Alan and a double of his that identifies himself as Thomas Zane through the Spiral door (a symbol that takes on more significance in Alan Wake II). That's not to mention the fact that when Alan first meets the Andersons, they call him Tom, as does Ahti.

In Alan Wake II, Alan is getting calls on a payphone in his nightmare of New York from an ally whom he eventually meets in Room 665 of the Oceanview Hotel.

Well, in a film he finds in room 665.

And here, he comes face to face with Thomas Zane, who is actually Thomas Seine, the Finnish filmmaker, and who looks precisely like him (though with a different hairstyle and no beard). Incidentally, it's a lot of fun to see Ilkka Villi get to perform with his own voice instead of just lip-synching, as he does for Alan Wake (though I adore Matthew Poretta's performance, both as Wake and as Control's Dr. Darling).

And this Zane fully commits to the story that "Tom" the poet is just a character he played in his movie, Tom the Poet. But he also claims that he's collaborating with Alan to create the story that will let both of them escape.

But why is Zane identical to Alan?

The implication at the end of the game is that Alex Casey, Alan's hardboiled detective character, was always just his interpretation of the real FBI agent, even before he got to Bright Falls. (Given how time isn't linear in the Dark Place, I wouldn't be shocked to find out that the visions of Noirish Casey we see in Alan's half of the game are actually the real Casey with the character grafted onto him).

As I see it, there are a few explanations for what Tom as we meet him is.

The first is that this is just another supernatural force (a paranatural entity to use FBC terminology) that is taking on a form derived from Alan, which fits into the narrative he's creating. This is consistent with the idea that he's the "Light Presence" that counters the Dark.

The second is that he's an invention of Alan's entirely - using some part of himself as inspiration. This does really raise some questions about the causality of it all - if Zane didn't exist, how did the Dark Presence manifest as Barbara Jagger?

The next potential interpretation is that Alan is, in fact, a creation of Thomas Zane's - that it's really been Zane who has been fighting against the Dark Presence all this time. If Alan is an "author avatar" for him, that would explain why people mistake him for Tom (maybe, as beings outside of the cosmic rewrites, because of their own paranatural natures or abilities). What does that mean for Alice, then? I don't freaking know.

EDIT:

There are more details that I've remembered, and feel relevant.

When Alan comes face-to-face with Thomas Zane the first time during the Room 665 chapter of the game, there are a few things to consider.

First is that Zane initially appears facing away from him, shirtless, before kind of glitching into a more clothed appearance. I believe we're meant to interpret this as being the same Alan-double Zane we saw in Control's AWE expansion, particularly because Zane's room has the same spiral painting found in that room (the spiral seeming to be a symbol of the Dark Place, and of course being very thematically important to the game's overall story).

There's some violent imagery amidst all the drug-taking and navel-gazing artistic brainstorming the two go through. I'm also given to understand that The Happy Song (whose lyrics are basically all "You know that I'm a psycho") were heard in Alan Wake's American Nightmare, scoring a sequence in which Mr. Scratch murders someone. Ultimately, there's a weird point later in the level when Alan goes to see him again and in which Alan seems to shoot Zane in the head, though this is then revealed to have been some kind of fake shot from a film, and that Zane seems fine.

But there's one last detail from the first meeting that I think is potentially very important:

The television in room 665 goes on the fritz, and we see a brief glimpse of first Dr. Darling and then a brief flash of Jesse Faden (both central characters from Control, the latter being both the player character and the current Director of the FBC - a position that goes beyond merely being an important bureaucrat but also involves being essentially a supernatural protector of the universe). And Tom Zane freaks the hell out, crawling away as if trying to avoid being seen from the television screen. Alan describes it in his narration as some kind of paranoid fit.

Why would Zane fear the FBC? Surely, the FBC has its history of acting shady, and he might not realize that in Faden's hands, the bureau is probably becoming more benevolent (though the influence of the Board, not to mention decades of problematic Bureau culture, could be a big hinderance to Jesse's efforts at reform).

One interesting question, though, is when all of this is happening. The timeline is sort of ambiguous, especially because people can enter the Dark Place and seem to be there are different relative times to one another. Toward the end of the game, Tor and Odin Anderson wade into Cauldron Lake to help get Saga out of the Dark Place, but their appearances (as younger versions of themselves) on In Between with Mr. Door would seem to have happened prior to Alan's initial summoning out of the Dark Place (let's also remember that the act of summoning him actually happens after he's already arrived, though unfortunately carrying Mr. Scratch inside of him).

And because time is not linear in the Dark Place, I've seen some speculation that this visitation by Jesse Faden is, in fact, the very same event that we witness when she peers through the Spiral door at the Oceanview Motel and Casino during Control's AWE expansion. Now, of course, those scenes play out differently, so I'm more inclined to believe that what Jesse witnessed was some earlier iteration of Zane's home in the Dark Place, perhaps before the Noir-ish NYC version of it became what Alan was seeing. But it's also clear that perception is extremely subjective in the Dark Place.

It's implied that the Oceanview Hotel where Alan goes in the Dark Place might actually be one and the same as the Oceanview Motel, as there are doors with the same symbols on them (though I think it's also possible that there are just multiple "Oceanview" hubs around the cosmos - I know that the WWII bunker in which you go after Cynthia Weaver is dubbed the Oceanview Hotel by local teenagers, though I don't recall seeing any of those symbols on the doors there. (If memory serves, the record that acts as the "portal key" for Saga to enter the Overlap is found by Alan in the Dark Place Oceanview Hotel, so that might be the main connection).

While it probably warrants its own post, one thing that's left a little unclear is whether the Oldest House is still on lockdown because of The Hiss. We meet Kiran Estevez, an FBC agent who works with Saga in the latter part of the game, who talks about how her work has changed since the "headquarters got locked down," in a way that seems to imply that the FBC is actually cut off from their leadership - and that Jesse hasn't left that building since 2019.

Alan Wake II: Working Through the Darkness

 Where does Alan Wake II wind up? Well, that's spoiler territory, which we'll cover in a moment. Stories, including those told in video games (and particularly in narrative-focused games like this one) have a number of important components, but I think that the two biggest are plot and themes. The plot, which can also be a representative of all the up-front elements like framing, visual design, sound design, and in games, the gameplay, is the easiest thing to get at.

Theme, typically, at its best, is conveyed subtly through those forward-facing elements. If your themes are too obvious, the work starts to feel preachy - more of an essay than a work of art. We feel more engaged with a story's themes when we are able to discover themselves. The "art" of art, in this sense, is in letting the audience discover it on their own, to arrive at their own interpretation and, perhaps, find a synchronicity on those themes between author and audience - to convey those feelings that cannot be so easily expressed in simple words.

Plot-wise, Alan Wake and its long-awaited sequel are about a supernatural force of darkness pushing its way into the world, trying to re-shape reality to make it dark and twisted and horrific. But this darkness requires creative minds to manifest itself because, on a fundamental level, the darkness is not creative in and of itself.

While these games use "The Dark Presence" to describe the evil force, the in-world Federal Bureau of Control uses the term "The Shadow," which is taken from Jungian psychology. The Shadow is the dark reflection of the world and all its elements. The cruel witch is the Shadow of old women. The werewolf is the Shadow of civilized, peaceful people.

On a deep, instinctual level we have ancient ancestors who feared predation by monsters that were nothing supernatural - just big animals that wanted to eat us. But as humans have become the dominant species on our planet, we're far more likely to see violence coming from others of our species. And we must grapple with that darkness, that Shadow that exists inside of ourselves as well.

Spoilers Ahead:

Alan Wake II's Conclusion

 It's not a loop. It's a spiral.

The absolute head-trip that is Alan Wake II goes far beyond the insanity of the first game or Control, all the while delivering the most devastating emotional gut punches and leaving you wondering what is coming next for the emerging Remedy Connected Universe.

Let's get into specifics, which means:

SPOILERS AHEAD:

Remedyverse Connections in Alan Wake II

 Again, I haven't finished the game yet, but with Control's AWE expansion, Remedy made it clear that they're looking to connect their games in a singular universe (multiverse?) So, I thought I'd touch on what I've noticed about connections to Control (and other games) in Alan Wake II.

This is certainly a spoiler-filled post, so here's a cut:

SPOILERS AHEAD:

Alan Wake II is One of the Most Artistically Ambitious Games I've Ever Played

 I am not finished with the game - I get a sense I'm building to a climax, but also that I might have progressed Saga's story faster than Alan's (I sense that for Alan's bit doing a "studio" segment followed by a "figuring out a plot" section could be the equivalent of one of Saga's regional explorations, so my alternating was short-changing Alan's side of things).

Admittedly, I'll confess to the fact that this is a game that hits me almost precisely in the sweet spot of my tastes (I think the one tweak required to make it dead-on would be less of a horror focus and more of a weird focus - which makes me very excited for Control 2 whenever it comes out). So any superlatives I throw out there should be taken with the usual grain of salt that one blogger's opinion is just that.

Still, a few things strike me as particularly ambitious about this game:

The first is its detail. The world of the game - worlds, really, given we hop between realities as we swap protagonists - is utterly plastered with little details.

The plot and characters, of course, are also deep and interesting - and Remedy seems to understand that a plot and its characters are really two sides of the same coin. The story is one of mysteries upon mysteries. Even knowing the context from having played the first game, there are elements here that will sneak up on you. There are difficult questions raised about grief and the value of our own lives.

Remedy, of course, has liked to play with mixed media - famously, they're one of the only studios using full-motion video with live actors in games, and allowing that to lend a strangeness to the various cutscenes. Like the first game, "chapters" end with a sort of end-credits song, which were all evidently written specifically for the game, often commenting on it. Naturally, Poets of the Fall (whose lead singer is an old friend of Creative Director Sam Lake) contribute a lot here, but a number of other groups also provide music, much of which is quite excellent (you'll hear multiple variations of a song by Poe, who is an artist I was vaguely aware of when I was in high school and just found out writing this sentence is the sister of House of Leaves author Mark Z. Danielewski (a book that had a big influence on Control).

It's also unapologetically abstract. There are elements that were a little ambiguous in the first game that have been blown out to become far stranger here. Whether we ever get concrete answers for the existential, ontological mysteries the game explores or not, the game invites players to really contend with and interpret what is going on.

There are also moments that I'm hesitant to spoil that will have you flabbergasted by the sheer audacity of what Remedy has put into this game (there's a sequence that will make Control's Ashtray Maze look conventional in comparison).

More than anything, this game feels like the work of a lot of different people who came together to pour all their passion and talent into it.

I'm not sure if I'm close to finishing the game or not (though given the hours I've put into it and the general sense of the tone we've reached, that seems probable) and while I'll be sad to have finished it after so much anticipation, I'm also really excited to see how it all comes together. And scared. Because just like the first game, I would not be shocked if we get a difficult, bittersweet ending.

Alan Wake II Goes Deeper into the Mindfuck

 When I was in high school, two movies really introduced me to an aspect of fiction that continues to be something I hold very dear: the Mindfuck (pardon the curse word).

The two movies were David Fincher's Fight Club and Christopher Nolan's Memento. Not to get too into the spoilers for these movies, but both involve major twists that reframe the entire story once they are revealed. Pointedly, both movies are also written, shot, and edited in a way to disorient you. Both involve main characters whose sense of reality is unreliable.

Being unable to trust your own perceptions is one of the major sources of horror in Alan Wake II - beyond the undead Taken and the sinister Dark Presence trying to conquer our reality.

I'm several hours into the game, in the middle of the "Local Girl" chapter, which is one of the first you can play after getting the ability to choose between progressing Saga's story or Alan's. My plan is to alternate between them.

Spoilers ahead:

Chapter One: Returning to the Prestige TV Drama That is Alan Wake II

 Alan Wake came out in 2010, in the midst of the "Peak TV" era in which episodic television was drawing critical attention that had in the past been reserved almost entirely for film. The game very much played on this idea, with each of its "episodes" ending with a preview of the next and beginning with a recap (despite the fact that, as a single game, you had just finished the previous episode and were able to immediately jump into the subsequent one, making these recaps simply a stylistic choice to evoke that feeling of watching a TV show).

In the last decade-plus since the original game, we've gotten more shows, and even if I think the "peak TV" era might have closed by this point, a number of new influences have emerged to inform this game. Notably, of course, Twin Peaks: The Return, the distant third season of the early-90s mindfuck emerged and was a far, far more bizarre mindfuck itself. We also got True Detective, whose first season is an undeniable influence here.

Spoilers for the beginning of the game to follow:

Gearing Up For Another Trip Into the Dark Place

 I've downloaded Alan Wake II to my PS5, so it's just a matter of waiting for Friday for the game to unlock so I can play it.

I'll be curious how I feel about the game. The original Alan Wake was inspired by the works of Stephen King and David Lynch (most obviously Twin Peaks for the latter) but in terms of gameplay, it was more of an action game, even if it had a weird horror aesthetic. The new game looks like it will be leaning more emphatically into horror.

My tastes, as I've come to discover in recent years, seems to align largely with the New Weird - an artistic/literary movement that incorporates elements of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy to present things that are strange more than they are necessarily terrifying (though these stories can get pretty scary).

The conceit of Alan Wake - a man waking up a week after he dove into a lake to rescue his drowning wife and then finds pages to a manuscript of a horror novel describing the exact events he's going through, apparently written by him - I'd say leans more into that "Weird" side of things.

Control, the Remedy Studio's 2019 game that first really established the idea of a "Remedy Connected Universe," explicitly drew its inspiration from the New Weird, and again, while the story has some disturbing and terrifying things in it, it really leans more into the idea that these things are strange and unusual more than there to elicit terror.

Of course, one of my biggest literary influences was Stephen King's Dark Tower series, which retroactively fits into that New Weird mold (or, it might be more accurate to say that some of the folks in the New Weird movement, like the creators of the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, were heavily influenced by King's work, and particularly the Dark Tower). King is, of course, known as a horror writer, but the Dark Tower incorporates elements of fantasy fiction, science fiction, and of course terrifying moments of horror (cosmic horror being an element that often fits into the other two genres fairly easily).

Given the Dark Tower's prominence in my personal library, I sometimes have to remind myself that King is known more for straight horror - though even his horror stories often incorporate strange elements. The Shining, for example, involves the evil presence in the Overlook hotel infecting Jack Torrance's mind, but unrelatedly (yet serendipitously) Danny's "Shining" ability - some kind of psionic ability - is what allows him to survive the story.

Alan Wake of course has scary shadow-monsters, but the way in which it really feels "Weird" is its strange conceit that this is all happening the way that Alan wrote it - whether he did so as some kind of prophetic prediction or if his writing it made it happen that way (and inviting us to ask whether there's any difference between the two).

What I've seen of the sequel in previews suggests that the rhythms of the game are going to be different - each foe you face is going to be a significant drain on resources, but there will (in theory) be fewer of them. Visually, the game looks more gruesome - wounds inflicted with your various weapons upon the Taken and other monsters are gory and gross.

That, I'll admit, is a little less my style - I think it's fine to make a point about the reality of violence, but I'm perfectly ok with video game enemies showing no real "combat damage."

Interestingly, they've cited a number of survival horror games as inspiration for the gameplay here, such as Resident Evil IV. This is a genre I've never really played, so I have only a vague, secondhand sense of what to expect.

I've been playing a ton of Elden Ring lately, so while my reflexes are well-practiced thanks to that, we'll see how I adapt to this one.

Going Full Pyro in Elden Ring

 Leveling up my Prophet character, I generally pushed her toward a kind of tank-y shield-based build. Ultimately this led to my using a build that split her stats quite a lot - a mix of faith, strength, dexterity, tons of endurance, some vigor, and no room really for things like Mind.

The build was working out pretty well, actually - with a greatshield and the Barricade Shield ash of war, I was able to often tank hits even from bosses. But this wasn't really what I'd wanted to do with the character. My first Elden Ring character was an Intelligence-based spellcaster, and while I later re-specced him to have some Strength so he could use the Darkmoon Greatsword, he's still at 80 Int and can cast all kinds of sorceries, and that ranged magic caster vibe is pretty fun.

Faith and Incantations, of course, are somewhat less damage-focused, but you have some options. And among those options are the Giant's Flame incantations, which are all about lighting everything on fire.

While I'm only a few levels beyond 100 on this character, I'm far enough into the game that I have most of the pieces required to make it work.

I'm at somewhere north of 60 Faith, high enough that the Erdtree Seal is giving me the best Incantation Scaling (I believe this is the seal that does the best with a pure faith build when you get into high numbers) but I also use the Giant's Seal in my off-hand to give the damage boost to these spells.

There are three primary spells I cast.

Flame, Fall Upon Them is the bread-and-butter, which tosses a whole bunch of fireballs out in a wide arc. This is very chaotic and unpredictable - if you're lucky, multiple balls will hit your target and they'll take an enormous amount of damage. If you're unlucky, they wind up in the gaps between them. But you can also hit a ton of enemies with this if you come across a big pack of them, and big targets often get hit by multiples.

Giantsflame Take Thee I've found useful when in one-on-one duels. This giant fireball explodes and knocks targets down, which can give you some precious time to run and get some distance.

Flame of the Fell God is very situational - you sometimes launch it at a target that's far away and if they're slow, they might be caught in the patch of flame they drop.

I haven't taken down the Fire Giant yet (and might focus more on lightning spells given that I doubt the Fire Giant takes a ton of fire damage) so I don't have access to Burn, O Flame! (I love the names of the Fire Giant spells).

Flame, Grant Me Strength and Golden Vow work as buffs for boss fights. And I like to put Blessing of the Erdtree on myself to keep my HP topped up.

I'm using light armor (really clothes) to let me Light Roll, so the idea here is that I should try to avoid being anywhere near the foes' attacks, and the little occasional nicks and cuts I get should be covered by Blessing of the Erdtree, so I can then allocate most of my flask charges to Cerulean Tears.

A lot of these spells can charge up, so Godfrey Icon is one of my talismans. I have the Faithful's Canvas Talisman (haven't gone to the Erdtree yet so I don't have the Flock's version) and then of course Fire Scorpion Charm. I think my fourth talisman is the Two Fingers Medallion just to pump up my faith a bit until I can level some more.

One of the fun and funny things about the build is that Flame, Fall Upon Them feels like it would be a more situational spell, but using it as your bread-and-butter means you're constantly blasting fire everywhere. (The Silver Tears in Nokstella never knew what hit 'em!)

Anyway, the build I'm using still has some Strength and Endurance to throw on some armor and a shield and greatsword if I need to, but for now being a pure caster is working out.

Planescape Review: Sigil & the Outlands

 Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse is the latest release from WotC for Dungeon & Dragons. It is a three-book box set that contains Sigil & The Outlands, which is primarily a lore book describing the ringed city of Sigil and the sixteen Gate Towns on the edges of the Outlands, along with a handful of new backgrounds and feats and some portal-themed magic items and spells. Morte's Planar Parade is a bestiary that provides stat blocks for various planar creatures as well as some options for how to transform other stat-blocks into creatures influenced by various Outer Planes, and Turn of Fortune's Wheel, an adventure book that draws on some of the philosophical concepts explored in the beloved computer RPG from the late 90s, Planescape Torment.

The first of these books, Sigil & The Outlands, is probably the first one that people who purchase this product will read through (though, if you're like me, you'll probably browse through Morte's Planar Parade first).

The book's primary purpose is giving a feel for the setting and the lore of it. Most prominent is the city of Sigil, which sits on the interior of a massive toroid (ring/donut shape) that floats above an infinitely-tall spire in the center of the Outlands, the True Neutral outer plane.

Sigil is home to many philosophical Factions, which perform certain important roles in the city but are also unified by shared philosophical premises. The factions are often at odds with one another, and will defend their perspectives with force if necessary, though some factions have good working relationships with one another if their philosophies are compatible with one another. For instance, the Harmonium (who believe that peace must be enforced at all costs, even at the expense of freedom,) the Fraternity of Order (who believe that by learning all the metaphysical laws of the multiverse, you can achieve ultimate power) and the Mercykillers (who believe that justice must be carried out with no room for mercy or forgiveness) collectively serve as the city's law enforcement.

Among the backgrounds in the book is the Planar Philosopher, which gives you the Scion of the Outer Planes feat at 1st level, which then unlocks various other feats depending on the alignment of the plane that fits your philosophy. Likewise, there is the Gate Warden background, that gives access to that feat as well, but represents people who spent a formative time in one of the Outlands' Gate Towns or anywhere with a planar portal. The backgrounds are a little one-size-fits-all.

Naturally, there's a comparison to be made with Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica - Ravnica being another setting with an impossibly huge city that is ruled over by various factions with extreme philosophical positions. Planescape of course pre-dates Ravnica by about twelve years, so I would not be shocked if the latter was inspired in large part by the former (while D&D had been owned by Wizards of the Coast at that time, there was very little crossover between it and MTG). GGR arguably spends more of its length going into dense detail about its guilds, but admittedly, Planescape has more ground to cover. Again, though, I think that I would have liked to see a longer book that could really get into all of the details.

Nevertheless, if you were worried that this would be a repeat of the Astral Adventurer's Guide, I think anyone looking for usable lore and locations is going to get far, far more out of Sigil & The Outlands. The city is described in reasonable detail, and then we get a couple pages for each of the Gate Towns.

The Gate Towns are cities found ringing the massive disk that is the Outlands, and each contains a portal to one of the other outer planes. The towns thus take on much of the character of those planes, but each has something couter-balancing it to keep it tied to the Outlands instead of getting sucked into the plane it is tied to. For instance, Automata, which has a gate to Mechanus, has a chaotic underbelly filled with crime and disorder that allows the town to remain neutral enough not to simply become part of the Lawful Neutral plane. Not all of these counter-balances are as fleshed out as others, and certainly some of the gate towns are given more compelling descriptions than others, but there are enough hooks here for a DM to be able to come up with some fun adventures in any of these locations.

There are additional Outlands locations that are mentioned, but this is a little bit like the "Other Domains of Dread" section in Van Richten's, meaning that you get a little glimpse of these realms - such as the Caverns of Thought, home to the Ilithid deity Ilsensine, or some of the homes of the Rilmani - the true neutral celestials native to the Outlands.

What we, notably, do not get is an overview of the other Outer Planes themselves. In fairness, this was also the case with the 2nd Edition original Planescape box set, which got later supplementary materials to flesh those out. I do think you could run a pretty extensive campaign set only within Sigil and the Outlands, but I would hope that any Planescape campaign would involve traveling between the many planes of existence.

The book does convey the weirdness of the setting, with numerous little details about how things don't always work the way you'd expect them to. As an introduction to the setting, this will give you plenty to work with. While the book is short at 96 pages, there is not a sense that any of those pages are wasted.

I'll maintain that I would prefer a return to the single-volume campaign setting books we were getting in earlier 5th Edition releases. Breaking this into multiple books is not as big of a boon as WotC seems to think it is, especially given the degree to which people use digital tools running games these days.

It's impossible to talk about this without returning to the disappointments of Spelljammer, but again, whereas the Astral Adventurer's Guide seemed to be filling its scant 64 pages with a ton of ship deck plans I really didn't care much about, and only really gave us details on the Rock of Bral location, rather than telling us what we might find in Realmspace, Krynnspace, Greyspace, etc., this book focuses on the setting itself.

And that does mean that it does not focus a lot on player options. If you were hoping for new playable races or subclasses, you'll be disappointed. Still, as much as I love getting new options like that, I also think that we've got a lot of options that already exist, and missing out on them for one release of this sort is not the end of the world (also, in terms of playable races, some of the classic "Planescape" races have already seen print in 5E, such as the Gith and the Tiefling. Perhaps we should have gotten Bariuar to round out the original three, but as a DM I'd definitely allow you to just re-skin a Centaur and change its hooves to a horn attack).

What I am very curious about is to what degree promises that, 2024-onward, D&D will be focused on its "multiverse." That term has gotten a bit of overexposure, especially with both major comicbook-movie studios getting really into stories about alternate timelines and versions of their characters. But I suspect that the intent here is more to explore the various planes - and that's something that I'm definitely into.

But Sigil and the Outlands is more of a primer - giving you the introduction to these settings. The Outlands is the Outer Plane that most closely resembles the Prime Material Plane, due to the way that all of its elements are in balance, but it is also infinitely large, and as a crossroads for planar entities from literally everywhere, there's a broad "welcome" sign for anything you ever wanted to include in a D&D campaign.

This book implies, and I'd explicitly allow, that anyone running or playing in a Planescape should be able to let their imagination run absolutely wild. Have a party that's got a Dhampir descendant of Strahd von Zarovich, a Plasmoid space-traveler, a Warforged veteran of the Last War, and a plucky Halfling cook-turned-adventurer from some small town in Exandria go tracking the Great Modron March.

Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse First Impressions

 I got my copy of the Planescape box set.

When it was announced that Planescape would be released as a box set rather than a single volume, a lot of people reacted with dismay. The reason for this was that its antecedent, Spelljammer: Adventures in Space, was maybe the most disappointing release in all of 5E - not the worst, mind you, but most disappointing because of the incredible hype and then the let-down.

The problem with Spelljammer was primarily that there was very little "setting" in its setting. There was a Gazetteer for the Rock of Bral, but a huge portion of the Astral Adventurer's Guide was taken up by the deck plans of various ships.

To be sure, one expected that adventures aboard Spelljamming vessels would be a big part of a Spelljammer campaign, but we didn't get any mechanical ideas of how to, for example, run ship-to-ship combat, and we didn't get details on what the systems around existing settings were like. The emphasis of the book felt totally off. And on top of that, despite being broken up into three books, the total page count was significantly less than what we had gotten in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, the previous big return to a classic setting.

So, how does Planescape compare?

Well, I think we're definitely looking at a more useful product than the Spelljammer set. That's a low bar, though, so let's go through what the set actually gives you:

Sigil and the Outlands has a couple of feats and backgrounds as character options, but dedicates most of its page count to introducing the Factions, Sigil as a city, and the various Gate Towns. While the Gate Towns only get a two-page spread each, we do actually get a rundown of all sixteen of them, which is more than can be said for the old 2nd Edition set. Other realms in the Outlands do get touched on here, in a similar manner to the "other domains of dread" section in Van Richten's - a couple pages of single- or double-paragraph descriptions of various regions in the Outlands. There are a couple of spells that allow you to sense or close off portals, but that's it for those.

The Sigil Gazetteer is fairly thorough, going through each of the city's wards and introducing interesting NPCs and groups one could encounter there.

So, this book is not a great fit if you're just trying to mine it for character options - the feats could be good, but this is more lore-focused.

Morte's Planar Parade is the set's monster book, and has a whole bunch of outer-planar entities. What I appreciate is that it seems to focus a bit on B-side fiends - we get three varieties of Demodand (the jail-warden fiends from Carceri) and Baernaloths - a special type of yugoloth from Hades that might actually pre-date the yugoloths of Gehenna. We also get some expansion on Celestials (fitting as antagonistic celestials feel far more likely in a Planescape campaign) including three kinds of Archons (the celestials specific to Mount Celestia) and a few types of Guardinals (native to Elysium). Indeed, I can now really see why the Ardling from early One D&D playtesting was animal-themed. It does seem like there are a lot of animal-themed celestials. The monsters here run the gamut of CR, though I didn't see any super-high CR monsters that could be tier 4 campaign bosses. Still, if you want some beefy Modrons for a mid-to-high level party to face, this has you covered.

Turn of Fortune's Wheel is the included adventure, and while I haven't read the whole thing (that's true for all three books) it does seem to really go for a high-concept premise, which bears a resemblance to, but is not the same as, the beloved late-90s CRPG Planescape Torment. This is truly unlike any other adventure I've read for 5E.

    So, overall, my general feeling is one of mostly relief. There's meat on these bones in a way that Spelljammer lacked, and I think this does actually give you the proper material to run a pretty dense and lore-heavy Planescape campaign.

That said, I hope that in the future, WotC will move back toward the "big thick tome" style of campaign setting book that we got with Van Richten's and Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica.

This set gives you a lot of equivalent content compared to 2nd Editions initial Planescape set - and if we're just comparing one with the other, I think there's no reason to be disappointed (at least in terms of bang for your buck).

But again, I think WotC's reluctance to expand upon these settings with supplementary products could be a big problem for Planescape in particular. From this product alone, you might think that "Planescape" as a setting is really just the Outlands and the city of Sigil. Now, the book explicitly tells you otherwise - that the setting is the entire D&D multiverse. But without getting old books (or pdfs) from the 1990s with a lot of rules text that is meaningless to a 5E player, there's nothing in the current edition that tells you what the various layers of Acheron or The Beastlands are. (Hell, I don't think that anything in 5E tells you that Acheron is a bunch of floating iron cubes or that Pandemonium is just a bunch of endless tunnels filled with howling wind where gravity just orients you to the nearest wall).

This is cool, cool stuff, and really important information for DMs who want to have a planes-hopping adventure or campaign.

I don't know if you would have been able to fit all of that in a book even if it had a page count comparable to Eberron or Van Richten's, but the choice to cram this setting into a box set that actually has fewer pages than earlier 5E setting books is... well, it's not the direction that I want the game to go in.

Still, if I don't let my pessimism get the better of me, and take this set on its own merits, I think you get a really great primer for the setting, with useful 5E-compatible elements (even if most of them are just monster stats).

I'll be honest: I wish that we got some of the Sigil Cant (the bizarre set of slang that the whole of 2nd Edition Planescape was written in - even the "just for the DM" rules and lore bits,) which is even seemingly absent in Morte's color commentary in the monster book.

Still, the set presents Planescape as the bizarre, weird, and deeply philosophical setting it's meant to be: there are no stats for the Lady of Pain and the book reminds DMs not to every try to give her them, and we've got the Unity of the Rings, the Center of the Multiverse, and the Rule of Threes, orienting us in the patterns and perspectives of planar folk.

But those of us who have read (or played back in the day) the 2E version will have to import knowledge about some other things, such as the planes themselves and ideas like Planars versus Primes versus Petitioners.

With the natural point of comparison being Spelljammer, I will say this, which I mean as an endorsement: the content of these books (or at least Sigil and the Outlands) prioritizes the right kind of content. I'd have happily had maybe like one or possibly two deck plans for ships in Spelljammer if we got those pages dedicated instead to the Wildspace systems around canon D&D worlds. Here, though, if the page count does limit how much of the setting they can actually fit in there, the choices as to what they include feels like it's much better this time around.

Tanking Godrick and When a Build Starts to Come Together

 While it's a build that I actually tried before, playing with a paladin-tank in Elden Ring has actually seemed to be working better for me than previously. With Barricade Shield on a Brass Shield, and the Curved-Sword Talisman, I was able to get through Stormveil Castle with little difficulty, even tanking the terrifying Grafted Scion in the big banquet hall with the painting of Godfrey and taking it down without any sort of cheesing.

Godrick has given me a little trouble in the last couple playthroughs, but I one-shot the mangled psycho this time, largely by trusting to my ash-of-war-enhanced Brass Shield to survive his strikes - including his big wind-storm ones - and striking back. I actually finished him off with a guard-counter while Nepheli Loux and my trusty jellyfish poured damage into him.

I'm currently using a +7 Lordsworn Straight Sword with the Sacred Order ash of war and Sacred scaling, so I'm getting a bit more holy damage out of my Faith. That said, at this level the scaling bonus to the damage is really tiny compared to the base damage. I've got, I think after Godrick, 24 Faith, which I'm planning to pump up to 28 so that I can use some of the Incantations I've found.

I did get Hurl Flame, which is a far better general-use Incantation than Catch Fire on the virtue of its being ranged, but I'm still getting way more of my power out of the tanking-and-guard-countering.

Anyway, apparently my copy of Planescape is available for pickup at the store, but we've got the game where I'm a player tonight, which hasn't met in I think over a month, so I'll probably get it tomorrow. You can expect that I'll have my comments on it once I've read through it (my roommate has his own copy, and I thumbed through the monster book).

Returning to Elden Ring With a Prophet

 I've got a lot of Elden Ring characters. And while most of them at this point are either in the post-game (not going into New Game Plus until they can check out the DLC) or close to it (I have a Strength/Arcane character who I recently got to Ephael) I decided to play around with a low-level character, and took an existing Prophet character I'd started but kind of stalled out in one of the very first mini-dungeons (the first Catacombs you can reach in Limgrave).

Especially early on, the game had a reputation for really screwing Faith-based characters. While Sorcery was plenty powerful (my first character was a pure mage, though respecced to use the Darkmoon Greatsword for the very last leg of the game - I think after beating Melania - though he still has the Intelligence to cast every spell that doesn't require Faith or Arcane) those who tried to go in as Incantation-focused spellcasters had a lot of difficulty.

In truth, if you could get a weapon that scaled with Faith you were kind of ok. Indeed, the second-easiest time I had beating a bunch of high-level bosses was when I specced into a Strength/Faith build using dual greatswords (Blasphemous Blade being the main one.) (The most absurdly easy build I ever used was Fextralife's "Gravity God," which just has you spam the skill on the Fallenstar Beast Jaw and kill basically everything by stun-locking them. I believe I one-shot Melania with it, because I just kept her staggered the whole time, and being a ranged skill, on phase 2 I could start blasting her as she recovered from her Scarlet Aeonia attack).

The thing is, Sorcerers (Astrologers, I think technically) start with Glintstone Pebble, a really solid main ranged damage spell. While casters don't make the game trivially easy, it was certainly a more straightforward style of play.

Prophets start with only one damage Incantation, and it's the melee-range Catch Fire. It's plenty powerful when you can land it, but it has a very short reach and, well, if you're casting spells usually you try to keep your distance.

So, very quickly I decided to alter course and build more of a melee combatant character, going with a Block-Counter focus, which required a lot of farming (for one, just to get decent armor) for the Brass Shield, which is a rare drop off of the guards at the ruins by the third Site of Grace, though seems to drop much more frequently if you get to Ephael.

She's still using Faith as her main stat, though I upgraded her Strength and Dexterity to let her use some of the weapons I've found. Indeed, I'm actually pushing hard on leveling Endurance so that she can fully kit herself out in heavy armor, but thanks to the Golden Vow ash of war, she's got a sacred weapon (with a pretty powerful buff, too!) and now feels if not totally ready to progress into tougher areas, at least on the road there.

As usual, I try to clear just about everything, so I'm working my way through the Agheel Lake environs and eastern Limgrave (I cleared Fort Haight with ease and need to go fight the Tibia Mariner and do a couple of caves and catacombs.) Then it'll be off to the Weeping Penninsula, culminating in Castle Morne, and then clearing out Stormcliff before heading into Stormveil Castle.

I actually did a build somewhat like this before, which used the Treespear as its main weapon. I might revist that, but that's a ways off. I think what I intend to do here is keep this character a faith build (which should also cut down on respecs) but we'll see to what extent she focuses on melee combat versus spellcasting. I'd kind of like to make her more of a caster, but it'll be a little before she can get her hands on the really solid ranged damage spells (not super long - I think you get your basic "hurl a ball of flame" spell early on in Liurnia).

Planes, Philosophy, and Breaking the Great Wheel

 One of the problems you run into with the Great Wheel cosmology is that there's kind of a clear answer to what plane is best and worst. Definitionally, Elysium is the best plane. And Hades is the worst. See, I'd wondered for a long time about how you reconcile the relative goodness of planes. Is Mount Celestia not as good-aligned as Elysium because it splits its values to also, equally, embrace Law?

In other words, is it a Great Wheel or a Great Square? See, if it's a Wheel, then Mount Celestia needs to sacrifice some of its goodness in order to value law. Likewise, the Nine Hells become not quite as evil as Gehenna because its adherence to Law diverts it away from pure evil.

If it's a Square, then, we only see the "in-between" planes forced to compromise on one of its values. It means that the Nine Hells, Acheron, Mechanus, Arcadia, and Mount Celestia are all equally Lawful, but on a spectrum of good to evil, with Mount Celestia perfectly good and the Nine Hells perfect evil.

And... I think that the Great Square fits the way that these planes are portrayed in most prime material-focused campaigns. The Abyss is certainly a realm of unmitigated evil, right?

Granted, in Planescape, the implication seems to be that these different values can dilute one another. The Order of Planes-Militant is a Sect (similar to a Faction but with no major presence in Sigil) based in Mount Celestia that seeks to expand the plane by incorporating parts of neighboring planes into it. As the name implies, there's a zeal to their work, and while they primarily try to accomplish this via campaigning and persuasion, they're still trying to basically rip away parts of neighboring (also good-aligned) planes to add to the Seven Heavens.

Notably, as well, Powers (the term used by Planars to refer to what Primes call Gods - probably as a response to the Satanic Panic but it's something I like about the setting, like how Devils were renamed Baatezu and demons Tanar'ri, and Daemons to Yugoloths, the latter of which stuck) don't have to match the alignment of a plane to have their realm within it. Gruumsh is typically portrayed as Chaotic Evil, but his realm of Nishrek is on Acheron, a Lawful Neutral/Lawful Evil plane.

And for this reason, I had an idea of how one might portray the planes in a different way. While we tend to arrange them in a wheel (and some means of traversal, like the River Styx, seem to reflect this,) there are also ways in which the planes seem more free-floating and not really physically existing in relation to one another.

And so, this alternative makes each a plane that focuses on a singular value.

Here's my initial list:

Elysium: Selflessness

The Beastlands: Instinct

Arboria: Passion

Ysgard: Glory

Limbo: Mutability

Pandemonium: Madness

The Abyss: Hatred

Carceri: Betrayal

Hades: Despair

Gehenna: Greed

The Nine Hells: Ambition

Acheron: Discipline

Mechanus: Logic

Arcadia: Harmony

Mount Celestia: Perfection

Bytopia: Industriousness

    Admittedly, some of these might be more of a stretch than others. Carceri is given Betrayal because the way that it traps people seems to drive them toward back-stabbing. The Abyss could easily be rage or anger, but I think Hatred does seem to drive a lot of what the inhabitants do there, and allows for more calculated by still chaos-driven expressions of evil. Mount Celestia's value is perfection, because the inhabitants believe their goal is to ascend and refine themselves to become ever-better.

What I think re-imagining the planes in this way does is that you open the door for more nuance. Elysium is no longer the ultimate good, but it's one expression of goodness. For certain sometimes selflessness does not achieve the best good outcome, but Elysium's whole vibe is that the plane encourages it - you'll get to your destination on a road there faster if you stop to help someone in need.

It also creates these weird little nuances that really fit with the Planescape factions. Hades is the plane of despair, and that's usually portrayed as the ultimate evil - and evil that doesn't even seek to accomplish anything except drag everything else down into its bleak darkness. But if you're a good-aligned member of the Bleak Cabal, you might see a kind of freedom in despair: by accepting the darkness of the cosmos and recognizing that it's never going to get better, you can live better in the moment and see things for how they are rather than how you wish they would be. Hades might be a place that reminds you of the need to find that compassion within, rather than without.

Alignment is one of the biggest cultural legacies of D&D, but I think that using it as a jumping off point, rather than an endpoint, can make for some far more interesting stories.

New True Strike (New Strike?)

True Strike is infamous as probably the worst cantrip in 5E. As an action, you give yourself advantage on your next weapon attack before the end of your next turn. Given that you can also typically attack with an action, there are very, very few cases in which this is in any way better than simply making two attacks. Attacking twice is basically just advantage, except if both succeed, you get the damage of both attacks. So why, why on earth would you spend an entire action just to give yourself advantage on your next attack?

(There are some scenarios where I could see it coming in to play, but these are real edge cases - something like if you have a really fancy "arrow of dragon slaying" that will do way more damage than your typical arrow, or if you're a Rogue using this to set up sneak attack in a scenario where you can't hide and aren't using the Tasha's rule Steady Aim. But unless you're using a spell scroll, you probably don't want to use up one of your cantrip options on this extraordinarily situational spell.)

The new True Strike in playtest 8 is a total redesign.

The format will be familiar to players who use Green-Flame Blade or Booming Blade, but there's one key difference.

The new version has you make an attack with a weapon, but rather than using Strength or Dexterity modifiers for its attack and damage rolls, you use your spellcasting ability modifier. You can also replace the damage type with Radiant, or use the normal damage. Finally, like other cantrips, this scales up at level 5, 11, and 17, adding a d6 of damage to the weapon's attack at each tier of play.

So, the ultimate upshot here is that this makes a weapon a very reasonable option for a spellcaster to use as their "default meat and potatoes" attack.

Light Crossbows are the highest-damage simple weapons (tied with versatile Spears and Quarterstaffs as well as Greatclubs, but with the obvious advantage of being a ranged weapon). They have the Loading property, but if we're playing a Wizard or Sorcerer, we probably don't have extra attack anyway, so that's not really a concern. If we start off with a +3 to our spellcasting ability, we're looking at a +5 to hit with this cantrip - the same as our spell attack bonus - and the damage is going to be 1d8+3, or 7.5 average damage. Compare this to Poison Spray, which is currently the highest-damage cantrip (tied with Toll the Dead, but we're comparing attack rolls, and the new Poison Spray is an attack) and our damage is 1d12, or 6.5 average damage.

So, we've got a higher average and on top of that we've got a higher minimum damage (4 versus 1). The Light Crossbow has a decent range with 80/320, which means that in most scenarios we have the range (and if we're willing to take disadvantage, we get a higher range than basically any cantrip that isn't enhanced in some way).

Furthermore, True Strike can turn the damage to Radiant, which not only very few things resist, but this also affects certain monsters (Zombies and Vampires) to shut down some of their regenerative/survival powers.

So, if we compare this again with Poison Spray (ignoring Poison Spray's low range and the fact that Poison is a very unreliable damage type) at level 5, Poison Spray's average damage goes up to 13. True Strike becomes 1d8+1d6+4 (assuming our Wizard/Sorcerer is spending ASIs to get their spellcasting stat up as quickly as possible - something that admittedly might not be as likely with the new feat design) which is 12, which is, admittedly, falling behind. But only against our beefy d12-based cantrip. It's still outperforming Fire Bolt. And if we start taking into account magic weapons, the benefits continue to stack up (even ignoring attack bonuses - we could be getting a similar Wand of the War Mage,) with a simple +1 Light Crossbow keeping pace in tier 2. At tier 3, Poison Spray is doing 19.5 average damage, Fire Bolt is doing 16.5, and True Strike without a magic weapon is doing 1d8+2d6+5, or 16.5 - which is the same as Fire Bolt, but with a far more reliable damage type.

In other words, True Strike has gone from an absolutely terrible cantrip choice to, actually, a pretty reasonable one. Even, if you have magic weapons (and enough gold to keep yourself rich in Crossbow Bolts,) a really good one.

So, I think this becomes one of the options - one of the top tier options - for pure spellcasters that don't mind the aesthetic of fighting with a weapon. If you're a classic Bard, Wizard, Sorcerer, and maybe Warlock (who also get this spell) this could be a great option.

But let's talk about who you might think would use this but actually shouldn't:

Eldritch Knights:

Given the structural similarity to this with Green-Flame Blade and Booming Blade, you might be tempted to think this is good for an EK. The problem, though, is that using your Spellcasting ability modifier instead of Strength or Dexterity is not optional with this spell - you have to do it. And EKs will still want to focus on making their main physical attack stat their priority. Even if you attack with Intelligence with this, you'll still be using Strength or Dexterity with your other stats, so unless you have those equal to one another, some of your attacks will suffer if you use this cantrip.

Arcane Tricksters:

This is actually less of a problem for ATs than EKs, as they don't have multiattack, so you could make a pure-intelligence Arcane Trickster that uses this with a finesse or ranged weapon - even if you're not using Dexterity, you can still get sneak attack. Still, Rogues are reliant on Dexterity for their AC and also important ability checks like Stealth, so I'd recommend still focusing primarily on your Dexterity for this subclass.

Artificers:

While True Strike isn't an Artificer spell (which is honestly surprising) you might be tempted to grab this with Magic Initiate or some such source if you're one of the spellcasting-focused artificer subclasses. The problem is that both Alchemists and Artillerists only get their damage boosts (1d8 for Artillerists and their Intelligence modifier for Alchemists) if using the appropriate spellcasting focus for their subclass - alchemy supplies or the special "arcane firearm." Now, the material component here does not have a gold cost nor is it consumed, meaning that in theory you can replace it with a spell focus, but that creates a problem: what is the damage die for a set of Alchemy Supplies? What's its range? As a DM, I'd for sure work with a player to custom-homebrew some stats for their weaponized tool kit (I'd even done some initial homebrewing to create a "alchemical sprayer" and an arcane firearm to have them focus on weapon attacks) but losing out on the bonus to their damage would mean this cantrip falls by the wayside.

Warlocks:

In general, I think this version of the spell is still not great for a Warlock. Pact of the Blade warlocks will get the biggest benefit from this by default, and Thirsting Blade is far better scaling than this cantrip gets. For those who just want a ranged option, Eldritch Blast is still going to scale better than this if you have Agonizing Blast.

    On the other hand, some classes will really like this cantrip.

Bladesingers:

You kind of have the same issue as the Eldritch Knight, though I think in the case of a Bladesinger Wizard, you are more likely to prioritize Intelligence over Dexterity (or Strength, if you're a madman) and so this actually starts to look pretty good. Indeed, while their second attack after level 6 will suffer, this might be perfect for them.

But overall, I think they've done a really remarkable job of turning the most infamously terrible cantrip in the game into something that's actually a reasonable choice for a lot of character builds. There are some ambiguities to clear up (such as the material component issue mentioned in the Artificer section above) but I think we're looking at something I genuinely think could see play, and that is way, way better than the old version.

...And Now an Arcane Playthrough

 I've now gotten pretty far into my Strength build playthrough of Bloodborne - beating Micolash means that I'm practically at the end of the main game, though I haven't taken down Ebrietas, and none of the bosses of the Old Hunters have gone down. I suspect that if you do pretty much anything after Eileen the Crow tells you about fighting Henrik in the Tomb of Oedon, she'll lose the fight. On this character I had to take her down instead of the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst, and it was sad to see the hands-down most badass character in Bloodborne ranting and raving about how she needed to kill all the Hunters. Apparently losing to Henrik really messed with her mind. Killing her gave me the Crow Hunter Badge, but I did not get the Hunter rune, which sucks because that's one of the best faction runes (giving you increased Stamina regen).

So, while I'm not abandoning that playthrough entirely, I went ahead and made a new character, named after my original D&D character (a Great Old One Warlock - appropriate for Bloodborne) and went full Arcane. I actually discovered that it's easier than even previously believed to get into the "cummmfpk" dungeon, as I didn't need to even go into the initial Pthumeru chalice. I even wonder if you need a chalice at all, or if you can go in the moment you get access to the Hunter's Dream. Perhaps if I make a Skill character to round things out I'll see (though of course you'll need to get an Insight before you can make use of the absurd number of runes. There is a Madman's Knowledge in the sewers if you want to get super-powered before you even fight the Cleric Beast).

Anyway, Arcane is really cool, but requires you get gems to give you something for your weapons to scale on, and elemental gems are not easy to come by. There's one you can get in Cathedral Ward that gives you fire scaling, but it's a Waning gem, and as far as I can tell any weapon you can get before Vicar Amelia has to be at +6 to open up a Waning gem. So, instead, I plunged into the labyrinth and finished the initial Phtumeru layer one dungeon, whose final boss drops a nice 8% fire gem. Slotting into my Ludwig's Holy Blade, I've got a little more to work with.

But while I've been putting off taking down Vicar Amelia (I even did two more chalice dungeons on the hopes that they'd drop some elemental gems) I think I really just need to suck it up and go in with my only partially enhanced weapon (the second gem slot I have a Tempered one, which is mostly useless but has a little bonus reduction in stamina costs. Better than nothing, I guess).

And, of course, prior to Vicar Amelia I think the only Hunter's Tool you can get is the Old Hunter Bone, which is fine but also doesn't actually do damage, so my 50 Arcane I've already got from... well, cheating isn't really doing anything for that. I do have the Flamesprayer, which is ok.

Actually, it occurs to me that while I don't have the Tonsil Stone just yet (this requires Amelia to be dead) nothing is preventing my from going to the path toward the Amygdala that takes you to the Lecture Building, and I think there are some wandering nightmares or whatever the crystal lizard equivalent are, and as I only need four more twin bloodstone shards to get my sword to +6, that might be the right call.

I think my intent is ultimately to maintain a Fire weapon, a Bolt weapon, and an Arcane weapon - while this latter doesn't do much for you in the main game, I might actually try to do more of the Chalice Dungeons on this character, both because that seems the best place to farm gems and also because it's something I haven't really done before, and while I think the main game is obviously the far better aspect of Bloodborne, it might be a fun "I feel like playing some Bloodborne" activity to come back to periodically (also, I've never fought Queen Yharnam).

As a Righteous weapon, I think I might make my Ludwig sword the Arcane one. Then, I'm tempted to make a fiery Whirligig Saw just because I love that weapon so much, though we'll see - I might just do something simple like the Saw Spear. For Bolt, well... we'll see. Of course, the challenge here is that you only get one Blood Rock on your first playthrough. Though I noted that in New Game Plus you can actually purchase one for Insight - it just costs a massive amount. But you can always make more Chalice Dungeons and just blast through a depth one dungeon if you want to farm it for Insight.

Given it's an 8 year old game, I have to remind myself that, unlike Elden Ring, there's no new content to look forward to here, and so the kind of "prepare for more progression" side of the game is confined only to the for-me-unexplored Chalice Dungeons. I've got several character in Elden Ring who are sitting in Roundtable Hold waiting for the DLC to come out, but there's little to fear being missed if I take Bloodborne characters into New Game Plus.

Planescape and the Lack of Product Lines

 So, the attitude toward Wizards of the Coast online has been on the hostile side. The OGL debacle did little to endear the company to D&D's fans, and the AI art fiasco, while more a case of negligence than malice on the part of the company itself, and finally the disappointment of Spelljammer - a more expensive box set that seemed to give us far less than earlier campaign setting books had, and especially lacking in much of the "setting" part of the campaign setting, have led a lot of people to look at the upcoming Planescape box set with skepticism.

Honestly, I count myself among the skeptics, even though I've already pre-ordered the thing.

Luckily, some of the early previews from people who have gotten advanced copies suggest that, while yes, there are no new races or subclasses, there's still a hefty amount of world lore in the book. That lore, however, is confined to Sigil and the Outlands, missing out on the grand expanse of planes - Inner and Outer - that Planescape promises to take players through.

Here's the thing, though:

The original TSR Planescape box set from 2nd Edition was also confined to Sigil and the Outlands.

What we remember (or, as a latecomer to D&D, what I've read recently) is the large number of supplements that came after that initial box set. There were other sets that included Planes of Law, Planes of Chaos, Planes of Conflict, the Inner Planes, and more supplements that went into greater detail about the factions of Sigil and the city itself.

And here, I think, we run into a structural problem that no single Planescape release could solve: WotC's strategy in 5E has been to touch on many things lightly and reduce the number of products put out in the name of quality over quantity.

I think reasonable people could differ on how that's worked out - the risk you run with a quality-over-quantity approach is that if something isn't good, like the Spelljammer set, you have a lot of disappointed people. And if you make a ton of products, some of them will be fantastic, even if you can't control consistency as much.

I think, moving into the new core rulebooks and the quasi-new-edition that next year promises, WotC might consider expanding the team that makes D&D and putting out more products (isn't the goal of most companies to grow their brands?) Especially with D&D Beyond serving as a big digital platform, I'm shocked that we haven't been getting more digital-only releases like Domains of Delight to supplement and expand on things that the game has introduced.

Ravenloft, a fabled and beloved setting, has gotten two books - the Curse of Strahd adventure and later the full setting sourcebook Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. But I could imagine an alternate timeline in which every four months or so WotC publishes a new Domain of Dread with new magic items, spells, and player options as a digital-only release. Even if 5E has had a lot of content for the Forgotten Realms, the setting remains only partially explored in this edition, with barely anything leaving the Sword Coast.

Sigil is cool, and the Outlands is an interesting location (at least the Gate Towns are) but I think that for something to really be Planescape, you need to have inter-planar travel, and to do that, we need to know what those planes are like.

Now, the lore in the 2nd Edition books is amazing, and I highly recommend that anyone who's interested in the setting read through the Planes of Law, Planes of Chaos, and Planes of Conflict supplements, as I have. But getting an update to those locations that works both thematically and mechanically with what D&D is in the 2020s is precisely what we want out of a Planescape sourcebook.

To be sure, as a DM, I like to invent lore, important NPCs, and locations. My Ravnica campaign has featured a ton of utterly non-canonical additions to the lore of the world (like the fact that a player character's previous incarnation was seduced by an archdevil and was the original cause of the Orzhov Syndicate's corruption from spiritual caretakers to greedy crime organization) but even if I'm going to invent new characters and conflicts and locations in those various planes when I run a campaign, getting a sense of how they truly work is something that I'd like.

As an example: in all of 5E, we get only a tiny description of the Plane of Carceri in the Dungeon Master's Guide. It's described as the ultimate prison, with deadly, hostile, and treacherous environments stacked upon one another. That's about it.

You know what we don't learn? That the plane is a series of sphere floating in space, and endless string of pearls that get farther apart the deeper into its layers you go. We have a spell called Armor of Agathys, but nowhere in 5E does it name Agathys as the deepest layer of Carceri! (One could assume that Agathys was a person.)

Now, of course those older sourcebooks exist already, and they are available. But while I loved reading through them, time and time again I had to let my eyes wander over references to the 2nd Edition rules that mean next to nothing to me (like, what the hell does it even mean for someone to have an AC of -1? I know there's a real answer to that, but my point is that I'd much rather see a 5E stat block that is something I'm trained to actually make sense of).

I think there are passionate and well-meaning people who work on the game, and even when they make decisions I don't agree with, I have a lot of respect for what they do. But given the massive popularity of the game - a game that I'd guess accounts for more than half of all the actual TTRPGs being played in the world - I'm really surprised that they aren't trying to put out more products, which the player base is actively asking for.

The Glory of the Accidentally Rudely Named Chalice Dungeon

 So, Bloodborne is eight years old, and I beat every boss in it on multiple characters. So I don't have any qualms about something that is nearly an exploit.

This is old news - perhaps over a year old - but a player discovered a Chalice Dungeon that, with nearly zero effort on the part of the player, yields about 80k Blood Echoes.

It took me a while to figure it out (I actually succeeded but ran past the place where the echoes drop too quickly) so here's a step-by-step set of instructions.

First: this is not going to be available from the very start. You'll still need to clear the game through the Blood-Starved Beast. But given that this is usually the third-fought boss, it's not too bad (there's no easing of the difficulty of that initial trip through Central Yharnam. Bless Elden Ring for having an actual tutorial and easy areas before sending you into the meat grinder).

Now, you're going to have to clear two of the three layers of your very first Chalice Dungeon, the Pthumeru Chalice (this is why you need to take down Blood-Starved Beast). After defeating the second boss in that one (a trio of giants, who are pretty easy - though the undead giant who is the first boss will be a little tough as he hits hard). These three drop the Pthumeru Root Chalice, and now you're qualified to enter the... sigh... "Cum Dungeon."

The reason for this gross name is that the Glyph Password for the dungeon is CUMMMFPK. Open up this Chalice in your next slot (do the "search by glyph" option and enter this code) and walk in. Now, before you even get to the Layer One lamp, simply step into the very first alcove beyond the lantern that you zone in on and walk up to the first metallic panel on your left - literally the first notable object in the first room past the lantern - and watch. You should see a health bar taking something like 717 damage from multiple hits, and then they die. And you get 80k Blood Echoes.

At this stage of the game, likely before you even get to Hemwick (the path from Hemwick Charnel Lane to Witch's Abode after the second shortcut is opened has historically been my early-game farming route, especially because if you can parry the executioners consistently you also farm a bunch of blood vials along the way) this is an absurd number of Echoes. My Strength-based character was a little farther into the game - I'd gotten past Vicar Amelia and into the Forbidden Woods, (and frustratingly either got the sequence of Eileen's quest wrong or it's bugged because while she did tell me about Henrik, when I go to the Tomb of Oedon she isn't there) and the first time I did this, I got enough Echoes to level up six times. In short order, I hit level 98 - at a stage when I only had a +6 weapon. That was only two shy of the unwisely-hybridized Skill/Bloodtinge character I'd gotten up to Laurence and Orphan of Kos. With ease, I traipsed through the Nightmare Frontier and Castle Cainhurst (though Martyr Logarius still managed to kill me once) and I zoomed through the first part of the Hunter's Nightmare to get my hands on the Whirligig Saw.

This character is meant to more or less replace my original character, because there's some bug in the transfer from the PS4 to the PS5 where my old characters can't play online, and so the Whirligig Saw is my main weapon (as a note, I was very hesitant to use its L2 Transformed ability before and going through Castle Cainhurst with it, I regret not being more liberal with the buzz-saw shredding that it's capable of. Utterly absurd and over the top. (As a note, I think I'd like to homebrew all, or at least most of, the Trick Weapons to be used in D&D.)

Going back to the Chikage-wielding character, I used the dungeon to correct his error (to an extent) by grinding it out to get his Bloodtinge to 50 (though I'd still wish I could reinvest the points I put in Skill into Vitality and Endurance - that said, having a bit of skill is nice to make Visceral Attacks more effective). I was able to take down Laurence after a few attempts (I want to say three - though that was just today, and I'd tried a couple times prior) but Orphan of Kos is... well, Orphan of Kos is a hard fight.

Given the Chikage's S-scaling with Bloodtinge I'm curious to see if it has less punishing diminishing returns past 50. Ironically, I have put a bit into Skill on my Strength character (up to 25) but in this case, there is actually some benefit to it (beyond visceral attacks) because physical damage does actually scale with both stats (though this was when I was primarily using the Hunter's Axe, which has more spread-out scaling, whereas the Whirligig Saw is much more definitively a Strength weapon, with poorer Skill scaling - but still some).

With this available to me, I'm tempted to re-make my Arcane character, which is honestly I think my favorite build for Bloodborne, though the game (at least outside of the Chalice Dungeons) is pretty stingy with the elemental gems that really make the build work.

Again, I'd love to see a Bloodborne II that adopts some of the elements of Elden Ring (and, honestly, even Dark Souls) that make hybrid builds perfectly viable if you have the right things to enable them. Bloodborne obviously has more simplified stats, without needing to worry about weight, for example (though Elden Ring making the Stamina stat and the Carry Weight stat the same thing was very welcome). I'd also like to see a system where there's either a stat that increases Quicksliver Bullets carried or that we get something like a Focus meter to power Hunter's Tools and special Trick Weapon abilities, much as we saw with Weapon Arts and Ashes of War. That was, of course, an innovation of DSIII (well, an innovation relative to the series - Mana Bars long-predate this entire genre), which came out a year after Bloodborne.

In essence, I'd be so excited to see FromSoft revisit Bloodborne with all the game design lessons they've learned in the last eight years.

Weighing in on Melina and the Gloam-Eyed Queen

 In my days of isolation, I went and watched literally every video by The Tarnished Archaeologist, which takes a rather novel approach to uncovering the lore of FromSoft games - primarily Elden Ring.

To summarize the theories he puts forth (they? I'm not sure if it's just him or a team that works on the channel, as the narrator usually refers to "we here at the Tarnished Archaeologist," but that could just be a linguistic convention) that are most relevant to this discussion, here is what we have:

First, he suggests that under Marika's rule, that people are literally born from the Erdtree - that just as they are absorbed into the Greattree roots that are (or rather were) linked to the Erdtree, that people literally blossom off of the tree like fruits. This is not the case for everyone - Boc the Seamster, our Demihuman friend, was likely born the way you and I would recognize. But the point is that TA suggests that the Erdtree is the giver of life in Marika's regime in a very literal sense. In a similar manner, it's implied that Millicent and her sisters were born as buds from the great Scarlet Aeonia in Caelid (which, unlike the ones found at the Haligtree, one next to Malenia boss chamber and one found only after we defeat her, has grown into a more complex plant-like structure) and are thus Malenia's "daughters." If the Erdtree is to Marika what the Aeonia is to Malenia, perhaps Marika's children are fruits of that tree.

Second, TA posits that the Gloam-Eyed Queen was the previous God, before Marika ascended, and ruled from Farum Azula, with Placidusax as her Elden Lord.

There are a few things to back this up. One of the issues, of course, is the timeline. It's very difficult to order the various events and causal chains. For example, was the Shattering War before or after Radagon replaced Godfrey as Elden Lord (or did that event happen around the same time)? Were the Eternal Cities ever on the surface during Marika's reign?

Melina is a key figure in the game, but one who is also shrouded in mystery. There are a few things that seem likely about her:

The first is that she's probably Marika's daughter. She says she was born in the Erdtree, and that seems to be Marika's privileged domain.

Second is that she is associated with flame. Not only does she have burns on her hands, but she is needed to burn the Erdtree as part one of our steps to get access to the inside of the tree to face Radagon.

Third, is that she tries desperately to dissuade us from taking on the Frenzied Flame, and if we do so before she burns herself (and we use the Frenzied Flame instead to burn the Erdtree) and then we do not purify ourselves with Miquella's Needle, and thus get the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending, we get a cutscene in which Melina opens her ever-closed eye to reveal one that is a kind of dusky blue as she vows to destroy us.

This dusky eye has led many to conclude that Melina is, in fact, the Gloam-Eyed Queen.

And that could be the case. But I have read some theories and considered some of the elements in TA's analysis along with other theories that suggest that perhaps there's another explanation.

So:

According to TA, and the evidence is there, Farum Azula is a city with Beast Men and Dragons. It also has funerary urns for ashes and carvings of human figures as well. We also see that the Godskin Apostles are semi-draconic in form, with the Nobles in particular getting these long reptilian tails.

The Godskins are affiliated with the Gloam-Eyed Queen. And their Blackflame is basically Death (Destined Death, or the Rune of Death) made manifest.

We fight Maliketh in Farum Azula, where he guards Destined Death. Maliketh is also a giant wolf - a beastman (not unlike Blaidd, and it appears Maliketh served a similar role to Marika). Maliketh is also, under his guise as Gurranq, someone who encourages the collection and consolidation of Deathroot, which is another manifestation of the Rune of Death.

Maliketh, being a wolf-person, might be related to the beastmen of Farum Azula.

It's said that he defeated the Gloam-Eyed Queen for Marika. And he's also known as the Death of Demigods - meaning that he likely killed many of the Gloam-Eyed Queen's progeny, if indeed she was the God of her age.

So, would it make sense for the Gloam-Eyed Queen to be Melina?

Possibly not. Melina seems to be of a generation with Miquella and Malenia, meaning that Ranni, Rykard, and Radahn are all older siblings of hers, along with Mohg and Morgott. All of these children were born after Marika ascended to godhood (at least I believe so - in theory Radagon and Renalla's children could have been born before Mohg and Morgott, but I've always thought of the Omen twins as being Marika and Godfrey's firstborn, during the Crucible era).

There is one way in which the Gloam-Eyed Queen could be Marika's daughter though, even if GEQ pre-dated her as the God and vessel of the Elden Ring. And that would be if a slain GEQ were fed into the Erdtree roots.

See, if some - perhaps specifically the demigods - are born via the Erdtree, it would make sense that this was how Melina was born. But if the Erdtree is also basically a big soul-recycler, reincarnating people after death, then it's not inconsistent that Melina could be the recycled soul of the Gloam-Eyed Queen. Marika, this god of life, getting the ultimate one-up over her erstwhile rival by making her live again now as her daughter.

There's another possible explanation, though:

One of the first things Gurranq gives us is the Beast Eye, which basically lets us know if we're near any Deathroot. The eye has a remarkably similar look to the blue eye Melina opens if we get the Lord of Frenzied Flame ending.

Thus, I've seen theories that the two eyes - one locked away by the tattoo on Melina's face and the other held by Maliketh - could actually be the eyes of the Gloam-Eyed Queen. In other words, Melina might have had this eye transplanted into her head.

This actually resolves some issues: Melina has lots of symbolic association, but aside from this eye, we don't really get much in the way of connection between her and the Godskin Apostles or other Gloam-Eyed Queen stuff.

Still, we are left with some questions:

It seems apparent that the Erdtree has burned before the game - Leyndell does have a lot of ash in it even before we unleash the rune of death (though clearly not as much) and Melina is already "burned and bodiless," meaning that she was probably involved in the burning of the tree before. Indeed, as TA points out, the Erdtree as we see it looks more like the illusory saplings at which we find Erdtree seeds than it does the Minor Erdtrees we find around the map, meaning that the giant tree (or at least all by the shard of it that seems more solid and real where the entrance is) is probably an illusion - an object of faith, rather than the very real provider of life-giving sap it once was.

The GEQ was said to have fled rather than being killed. Ranni speaks of a mentor character - Renna - who taught her some of her sorceries and also was the model for the doll her soul now inhabits. And Ranni seems to play a key role in the assault on Marika's bloodline, unleashing the Night of Black Knives. While Marika probably made a lot of enemies in her campaigns to assure the primacy of her Erdtree, is it also possible that Renna was actually the Gloam-Eyed Queen, empowering Ranni as a way to take her revenge.

There are some big questions about Marika's volition in all of this, of course. I'm of the opinion that Marika is actually urging us forward over the course of the game, as I think that the Radagon half of her (whether he was an alternate persona she created or a separate person who was merged with her) has taken control, and she's trying to break free. (Like in Bloodborne, it seems that the great horror is an attempt to control women's choices over their own bodies - Ranni slays her Empyrean flesh lest she be controlled, and Marika likely had Maliketh impale her womb with Destined Death, showing the lengths to which women can be forced to go to retain autonomy. Indeed, perhaps Godwyn's targeting in the Knight of Black Knives was because Ranni was going to be forced to marry him and make him Elden Lord - a theory TA puts forth).

Actually, just throwing this out there: Melina offers to play the role of Maiden to us, which mechanically means that she levels us up. But "Maiden" in a literal sense means virgin and - with one major exception in Christian tradition - virgins don't give birth. Melina merely "plays" the role of maiden with us. If she were, in fact, the Gloam-Eyed Queen, she would be a mother many times over, as we know that Maliketh slew a whole bunch of demigods that were the GEQ's family. (And, just to toss this at you: the Godskins might be those demigods of the prior age - their draconic features could be inherited from their father/Elden Lord Placidusax).

Man, I could keep going on here - TA suggests that all birds are descended from Dragons (not unlike how real birds are descendants of dinosaurs,) which could link the Storm Lord whom Godfrey defeated to take over Stormveil Castle might have been a dragon - maybe even the Elden Lord! That could explain the presence of the Banished Knights at Farum Azula.

See, the thing I love about these games is how utterly complex and deep the lore is, all fitting together shocking well if can find the connections. I'm tempted to attempt at timeline for Elden Ring, but that will be an arduous labor.

It'd be really cool to see the process by which FromSoft goes about actually determining all of this stuff (and how much of it is lucky coincidences, as a lot of people have speculated - though I'm of the opinion that it all works too well to actually be a mass hallucination of sense - this is the video game equivalent to the kind of novels English scholars will pore over for over a hundred years).

Playtest 8: Bastions and Cantrips: Bastions Round Three

 So, there are fewer options now that we're getting into the later tiers of play, but we're covering the Special Facilities for Bastions. This new system, described in the previous two posts, is something coming in the 2024 DMG that will more or less outline how players can attain, design, and use their own individual home locations. Each player character can get one of these at level 5, and can expand and upgrade it over the course of their leveling career. Bastions have "bastion turns" that happen roughly every seven days and can be used for new systems that allow for crafting and research, and can operate even if the players aren't able to spend lots of downtime there. The Bastions are staffed by NPC hirelings who can perform the work for them, and the whole system gives players a bit of an opportunity to do some design and creation like the DM does.

We've covered the facilities you can have at your bastion at level 5, and when you reach level 9. Now, we'll touch on the facilities you can unlock at level 13.

    Archive:

No prerequisite. Lets you Research to have your hireling or whoever did the work gain knowledge as if they had cast Legend Lore. Additionally, your archive acquires one rare  Reference Book that grants its benefits while you're in the bastion - the books, all with flavorful names, grant advantage on each of the Intelligence-based skills, such as Bigby's Handy Arcana Codex to give you advantage on Arcana checks. You can enlarge the Archive for 2000g, giving it two additional reference books (and upgrading it from Roomy to Vast).

    Meditation Chamber:

No prerequisite. Lets you Empower to then give another of your facilities an order even if it has already been given an order that Bastion turn (this also generates 1d8 BP, so I think this is a way to gain additional BP). Additionally, if you meditate here over a period of seven days you gain advantage on two types of saving throw, determined randomly, for the next 7 days (you roll on a table and reroll repeats).

    Menagerie:

No prerequisite. Let you Recruit creatures to add to the menagerie. Over the course of 7 days, your hirelings can find various kinds of beast to bring and house at your menagerie. These beasts will act as bastion defenders, or can act as they would with their normal stat block. There are different costs for different creatures, all of which are beasts or occasionally monstrosities (you can get an Owlbear). CR 0 creatures cost 50g, 1/4 cost 250g, 1/2 cost 500g, 1 cost 1000g, 2 cost 2000g, and CR 3 creatures cost 3500g. The menagerie is big enough to contain four large creatures, with four small or medium occupying the space of one large creature.

    Observatory:

Requires the ability to use a spellcasting focus. Lets you Empower for a 50% chance to get a Charm of Darkvision, a Charm of Heroism, or a Charm of Vitality. Also, if you spend a long rest in the observatory, you can cast Contact Other Plane once within the next 7 days without expending a spell slot.

    Pub:

No prerequisite. Lets you Research to send the bartender's spies to find creatures that are familiar to you within 50 miles that aren't too well-hidden for them to access or hidden by magic. Additionally, there's a Pub Special always on tap, which have magical effects when drunk. For example, you might have Bigby's Burden, which gives the effects of the Enlarge part of Enlarge/Reduce for 24 hours, or Sterner Stuff, which provides immunity to the frightened condition. You can enlarge the pub for 2000g from Roomy to Vast and gain a second Pub Special beverage on tap.

    Reliquary:

Requires the ability to use a Holy Symbol or Druidic Focus as a spellcasting focus. Lets you Harvest to produce a talisman that can be used as a spellcasting focus in place of any material component with a cost of 1000g or less, but only once. Additionally, if you spend a Long Rest in your Bastion, you can cast Greater Restoration once for free in the next seven days, without expending a spell slot or a material component.

    Moving on, we come to the final set of special facilities, which require you be 17th level or higher.

    Demiplane:

Requires the ability to use an Arcane focus as a spellcasting focus. Lets you Empower to grant yourself temporary hit points equal to five times (wow) your level after spending an entire long rest there over the next 7 days. Additionally, while in the Demiplane, you can use a Magic action to create a nonmagical object of your choice out of nothing, which can be no bigger than a 5-foot cube and must be made of wood, stone, clay, porcelain, glass, paper, nonprecious crystal, or nonprecious metal. You must finish a long rest before using this feature again. The Demiplane and its contents cannot be scried upon using Crystal Balls or Divination spells or similar magic.

    Guildhall:

Requires Expertise in a skill. Lets you Recruit to commission on or more members of your guild to perform a special assignment. These vary by guild type - you might earn gold or create something big like a ship (if it's a shipbuilder's guild).

    Sanctum:

Requires the ability to use a Holy Symbol or Druidic Focus as a spellcasting focus. Lets you Empower a creature of your choice to gain temporary hit points equal to your level when they finish a long rest. Addtionally, if you spend a Long Rest in your Bastion, you can cast Heal once during the next seven days for free. You can also make the Sanctum the destination of your Word of Recall, and one creature who arrives at the Sanctum by that spell also gains the benefits of the Heal spell.

    War Room:

Requires Fighting Style or Unarmored Defense. Can Recruit to add Lieutenants, who reduce the chance for your bastion to lose defenders, or to recruit soldiers, up to 100 guards or 80 guards all on riding horses, which require 1g per day per guard and per horse. The war room comes with two lieutenants (who use the veteran stat block) to work there, but you can recruit up to ten at a time.

    Now, we've been talking a bit about bastion defenders, which means we'll need to get into some of the other elements of the bastion.

Bastion Events happen when the player issues the Maintain order to their Bastion - which they only do if they're no using the facilities for other Bastion Actions. When this happens, you roll a d20 and consult a table to figure out what happens. 45% of the time nothing happens, while the others are a mix of good and bad. On a 10, meaning only 5% of the time if you aren't using your various Bastion Actions, it gets attacked, and you'll need to roll 6d6, losing a defender on any roll of a 1, and one of your special facilities is damage and forced to shut down until it can be repaired during your next Bastion Trun.

    Right, so let's do some analysis and feedback.

First off, I think that some balance needs to be worked on. For example, the Demiplane option grants an amazing amount of temporary hit points - at level 17, when you can get it, you'll be picking up 85 temp HP by taking advantage of it.  Why does the Sanctum give only a fifth as much?

Also, things like Barracks and Armories provide an effect that is important for your bastion defenders, who are really only relevant in the cases of two of the Bastion Events, meaning about 10% of the time you aren't actually using the facilities. I wonder why you would ever not use your facilities, given that there's usually no cost and sometimes you earn gold by using them.

Naturally, I'm looking at World of Warcraft's Garrisons as a cautionary tale for creating a mechanical system for player housing. I think this does it better - indeed, it creates a clear and usable center for downtime activities and crafting that D&D has kind of lacked. But I think too much of a focus on maintaining the Bastion itself and getting involved in all the bastion defenders could wind up giving us solutions in search of a problem.

What I'm very happy about is the way it encourages players to buy in to creating their own environments and NPCs. I know that if I ever get to play my Artificer, I'm going to really relish being able to come up with a workshop for him to build his armor suits and design spelljamming vessels.

Indeed, I actually think a system like this for one's spelljammer would have been a really cool thing to get in the sadly anemic Spelljammer box set. If your ship is meant to be your mobile base in those campaigns, it would stand to reason that you'd have some personal facilities aboard your ship (that are probably a bit more cramped).

Playtest 8: Bastions and Cantrips - Bastions Round Two

 Last post, we started looking at the new gameplay system: Bastions, which is essentially a system for player housing and downtime activities. As you level up, you can add new Special Facilities that have various actions they can take when your Bastion gets a turn (more or less every 7 days). These do two things: they accrue Bastion Points, which can be spent to get magic items or other bonuses, and they each do unique things like creating items or researching information.

Special Facilities can be added when you hit certain level thresholds, and you get access to more facilities as you get to higher levels.

We did all the special facilities available when you first get your Bastion at level 5 in the last post, but now we'll look at the more "advanced" facilities you get at level 9 and possibly beyond.

    Gaming Hall:

No prerequisite. Lets you Trade to turn the gaming hall into a gambling den. You roll a d100 to determine the house's winnings at the end of seven days, ranging from 3d6 gold (33% chance), 1d6x10 (15%), 2d6x10 (15%), 4d6x10 (10%) and 10d6x10 (5%). So... I guess on average that means 50.715 gold per week, with a fair amount of variation.

    Greenhouse:

No prerequisite. Lets you Harvest to create a Greater Potion of Healing or among the following poisons: Midnight Tears, Pale Tincture, Torpor, or Truth Serum. Both take 7 days and cost nothing. There's also a plant there that grows three magical fruits once a day (and which last a day) that you can eat to benefit from the Lesser Restoration spell. (As a note, the ability to get special poisons is so exciting to me, because they're far too expensive to make via the previous crafting rules).

    Laboratory:

No prerequisite (though some actions require some things). Lets you Craft to create a vial of Acid, flask of Alchemist's Fire, or a bottle of Ink, which takes 7 days at no cost. You can craft a vial of Basic Poison or you can spend the cost of a rare poison to craft it, including Burnt Othur Fumes, Carrion Crawler Mucus, Essence of Ether, or Malice.  You can also craft magic potions if you have the ability to use a spellcasting focus. The rarity of the potion you can craft is based on your level, and your hireling counts as half your level rounded up if you're having them craft it. Common potions cost 50 g, Uncommon requires 5th level and costs 200 g, Rare requires level 9 and costs 2000g, Very Rare requires 13th level and costs 20,000g. Legendary requires level 17 and costs 100,000 gold.

    Sacristy:

Requires the ability to use a Holy Symbol or Druidic Focus as a spellcasting focus. Lets you Craft a flask of Holy Water, for free after 7 days, or you can spend gold, to a maximum of 500g, and for each 100g you spend, the damage of the Holy Water is increased by 1d6 (so up to 6d6 if you spend 500 gold on it). You can also craft a temporary magic item that lasts 7 days, which works as a Pearl of Power, Periapt of Wound Closure, Ring of Water Walking, Sending Stones (a pair of them), Staff of the Adder, Staff of the Python, or Wand of Magic Detection. These take 7 days to craft and 200g. Additionally, if you spend a Short Rest in your Bastion, once per long rest, you gan regain one expended spell slot of 5th level or lower.

    Scriptorium:

No prerequisite. Lets you Craft a replica of a nonmagical book over 7 days. You can also craft Paperwork, which creates broadsheets, pamphlets, or other looseleaf paper products for 1g per copy (up to 50). Your hirelings can distribute the paperwork to locations within 10 miles. You can also craft a magic scroll over 7 days. These require a minimum level (and if your hireling does it, they count as half your level rounded up). The costs and level requirements are the same as the potions in the Laboratory section above. (As a reminder, spell scrolls of different levels have different rarities).

    Stable:

No prerequisite. Lets you Trade to buy or sell one or more mounts at normal cost over 7 days. When you sell a mount, you get a 20% profit, which increases to 50% at level 13 and 100% at level 17. The stables come with one Riding Horse or Camel and two Ponies or Mules, and can house three Large creatures (two medium creatures occupy the same space as one Large creature, so you can have twice as many Medium ones). For 2000g, you can expand the facility to double its animal capacity. If a beast spends 14 days or more in the facility, all Animal Handling checks made to handle said beasts are made with advantage (as they're basically domesticated).

    Teleportation Circle:

No prerequisite. Lets you Recruit to invite a Mage (or Archmage if you're 17th level or higher) to come and aid you. There's a 50% chance that they accept the invitation, and if they do, they teleport via the teleportation circle. They will not defend the bastion if it's attacked, but you can ask the visitor to cast a Wizard spell - up to 4th level for a Mage or 8th level for an Archmage. You must provide costly material components for spells that require them. And, of course, the Teleportation Circle counts as a location for the spell of the same name.

    Theater:

No prerequisite. Lets you Empower to begin work on a theatrical production or concert. Rehearsals take 14 days and the performance that follows goes for 7 days or longer (they can continue indefinitely). A player character can be a Composer or Writer, taking 14 days prior to the rehearsals to prepare the material. As a Conductor or Director, they must remain in the Bastion for the entirety of the production. Likewise, if they are a performer, they must remain there for the whole performance. At the end of the rehearsal period, each character that contributed to the production makes a DC 15 Charisma (Performance) check, and if more succeed than fail, each character that contributed gets a Theater die, which is a d6, or a d8 at level 13 or higher, or a d10 at 17 or higher. The Theater Die can be rolled and added to one ability check, attack roll, or saving throw (you can only hold on to one at a time).

    Training Area:

Requires either Expertise in a skill, Fighting Style, or Unarmored Defense. Lets you Empower, and spend 8 hours a day for 7 days to get a bonus based on the type of training, which lasts for 7 days. The training comes from different kinds of experts. Battle Experts lets you reduce incoming damage from an Unarmed Strike or weapon by 1d4 once per turn if you're not incapacitated. Skills Experts give you proficiency in Acrobatics, Athletics, Performance, Sleight of Hand, or Stealth. Tools Experts give you proficiency in one Musical Instrument or Tool of your choice. Unarmed Combat Expert lets you deal 1d4 extra bludgeoning damage when you use an Unarmed Strike to damage a target. Weapon Expert gives you proficiency in one Simple or Martial weapon, and if you're already proficient, you can use its Weapon Mastery.

    Trophy Room:

No prerequisite. Lets you Research to gain up to three accurate pieces of information about a legend, kind of creature, or famous object. You can also research a Trinket Trophy, which has the hireling search for a trinket that might be useful. There's a 50% chance that they find a trinket that lets you cast your choice of Clairvoyance, Death Ward, Find Traps, Locate Creature, Magic Weapon, Remove Curse, or Speak with Dead once without material components or a spell slot.

    So, that's the 9th level facilities. I definitely think some need refinement. The Greenhouse, for example, seems fantastic while the Trophy Room really relies on the DM having good lore to share with you for it to feel worth it (well, ok, the trinket could come in handy). The bonuses from the Training Area could be very strong - I can imagine a Monk would benefit grandly from the Unarmed Combat Expert, though of course you need as much time to get the bonus as it lasts, so you can't really exploit this to always have it up unless you have a lot of downtime.

Still, I'm very happy to see the variety of options to choose from here. Really the big question will be if players have the mental real estate to track of all of this. I really hope we see updated character sheets that have room to track Bastion elements like these. Adding any new system to the game can be tricky, as I've found with Renown in my Ravnica campaign (which has kind of fallen by the wayside). We still have the level 13 and level 17 facilities to go through, so again: lots of stuff to look at here. Indeed, some of the later facilities are actually pretty fun.