Once upon a time, one of my gaming groups asked me to run a campaign for them. Their one proviso was it had to be D&D 4e. At the same time, I was trying to develop some of the mythology for a world in my Traveller universe. So why not kill two birds with one stone?
Yori is a small desert world in the Spinward Marches. The astrography has been extensively developed: this world is actually a moon of a gas giant. The local day is 29.5 hours, a month is 22.4 local days, and a year is 1005.25 local days.
In the ‘modern’ day of the Traveller universe, it is a high-tech world ruled by a religious order that functions as a ‘feudal technocracy’ (think of a university staff, where your ‘rank’ is based on your expertise in a given field), and an active member in interstellar politics.
But a thousand years ago, before first contact with the interstellar community, it was a world ruled by the integrated descendants of two colonies that arrived by sleeper ship: one human, the other Zhurphani. Once the colonists were landed, there was no going back. And on 999 of 1000 worlds, the result would have been racial animosity and even war. But not on Yori.
Rules:
Standard D&D 4e rules apply except …
Character Generation
- Only ‘divine’ magic exists; there is no ‘arcane’.
- Attribute mods during character generation should add up to between +4 and +8.
- The only races allowed were Human or Dragonborn (as a stand-in for Zhurphani).
- Given the magic restrictions, the only classes allowed were Cleric, Fighter, or Rogue.
- For equipment, there is no wood (apart from one item described below) and no beasts of burden (this includes no horses). And given the hot climate, heavy armour would not be advisable.
- One cleric (if any) will get a vaothoi (+1 quarterstaff, wooden, counts as a holy symbol).
- Each player, on a roll of 6 on 1d6, will get a shankril (rune stone, +1 luck bonus once per day).
Experience Points
A simplified XP system is used with 10 XP needed to level up. XPs are awarded as follows:
- 2 XP for completing a major quest
- 1 XP for completing a side quest
- 2 XP for a boss-level combat (either winning or successfully bypassing)
- 1 XP for a regular combat (either winning or successfully bypassing)
- 1 XP for exceptional role-playing (max one award per session)