Dreamscarred Press announces "Third Dawn True20 edition"

[stormhierta]

DSP is proud to announce our major entry into True20 gaming in the form of Third Dawn, our all psionic setting in a world devastated by a disaster that changed their world forever.

Third Dawn offers dedicated Psionic support for True20 in the form of new Backgrounds, feats, powers and skill uses as well as an indepth look at the World of Ksaren and itsb inhabitants. Third Dawn features some of the content for our upcoming Psion's Handbook and will be our flagship for True Psionic gaming!

Link to OGL3.5 release: http://www.dreamscarredpress.com/dragon ... id=49.html

[Father of Dragons]

It looks interesting. Curiously, when I followed the link (and the link from that link), I could find no mention of True20 or any other system.

[stormhierta]

Hello Father of Dragons!

That is correct - this is the announcement that we're producing it. We expect it to be finished late December, early January (2009). The link provided is for the 3.5 OGL edition release (which we did first) in case people were interested and wanted to take a look.

Expect me to update this thread when we make a full release.

[PhelanMahoney]

You seem to be making psionics your niche in the OGL market which True20 is peripherally within. What sort of synopsis can you give of Third Dawn?

[stormhierta]

Yes, we are indeed niched towards psionics, because Dreamscarred Press was born out of a discontent with the amount of psionic support Wizards of the Coast provided. But that was 2½ years ago and we've grown as a company now.

I'd say that Third Dawn is a post-apocalyptic but, at the same time, advanced world; a fresh look at races and culture; a focus on conspiracies and backstabbing politics and with an alien species as a looming threat. To me, these things distinguish Third Dawn from others. Its a little of Dark Sun with a little of Eberron and a big dash of "our own" ideas.

Mechanically, we're going to include a lot of information for psionics in True20 here, I'd go so far as to call it an advanced preview of our upcoming Psion's Handbook release.

[PhelanMahoney]

A mixture of Dark Sun and Eberron? I am intrigued.

[stormhierta]

It is in parts a post-apocalyptic setting, set after a worldchanging event called The Impact which ended the reign of the Sorceror-Kings and devastated Ksaren for millenia. This devastating event came about because the Sorceror-Kings tried to capture the power of a falling star using their magic, but they failed to control it, instead bringing it crashing down on their world. So, a post-apocalyptic world devastated by magic and an uprising of psionics would be the "Dark Sun" part.

But on Femon, the western continent, civilisation has risen from the ashes and great empires have come and gone since that time. The most recent empire, the Alyrian Empire, almost united the entire continent with both diplomacy and war, but rebellion brought the proud Alyrian Empire down and now the continent is boiling from the outfall of the rebellion, even though it was some time ago. Relations are strained, but as the rulers smile and nod towards eachother, behind their backs plans of war are drawn and assassins sent in the night. Femon is also a world where psionics are an everyday part of the lives of people, with a range of examples in the book. While it hasn't taken on the same aspect of "technology-in-other-guise" as magic did in Eberron, it is still everywhere. This would be the "Eberron" part.

Then we added a batch of our own flavor, from an alien race that was released from their cosmic prison and now threatens the world, to a gateway to a gigantic cavern opening up and unleashing untold horrors upon the world. The Flow philosophy that permeates the world and guides how people view themselves and all things around them. These are our parts.

Any more questions?

[PhelanMahoney]

sounds interesting, I'll keep a third eye out for in print.

[stormhierta]

Thankyou! We hope to get our books onto CreateSpace before December 31st and through CS into Amazon's inventory, which should mean a lot of people should have easy (and cheap) access to our materials.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

I look forward to this version. Being these days leery of the full D&D/d20 system it's a factor in determining whether I wanted to pick up your d20 version. But since True20 doesn't scare me that much I'm much more likely to be interested now.

[stormhierta]

Good to hear! I've recently begun ripping out the D20 mechanics out of the base document and adding in appropriate True20 mechanics. Some races and concepts will be slightly different from one another.

One question though - Prestige Classes are a big thing in D20, would YOU as a True20 customer want to see us retain the "fluff" of these elite groups and organisations?

[Father of Dragons]

One question though - Prestige Classes are a big thing in D20, would YOU as a True20 customer want to see us retain the "fluff" of these elite groups and organizations?

Well personally, it depends on how well the groups and organizations are integrated into the setting. If they really represent actual groups of people working for a goal or organized for a purpose, then they'd be good with or without any mechanical reinforcement. The Nevermore and Blood Throne settings has several such groups mechanically represented as heroic paths (just combination of roles and feats with a typical order), and it seems to work pretty well.

[stormhierta]

Thanks, even though I have read Blood Throne, the concept of presenting a Prestige Class as a Heroic Path never occurred to me when working on Third Dawn. And yes, these groups are important in many ways - the only one which cannot really be called a group (more of an entire strata of society) are the Maquoran Reavers (pirates). The rest are well-defined, and integrated, groups.

Great idea - thankyou very much!

[cthughua]

Another thing that I do is having a feat serve as a qualifier (or rather grants the mechanical advantage). As we say in our games, you can be a Tekguard Paladin* but you have to take the feat for it to mean anything. So for example if one of our heroes’ takes "Benefit: Tekguard Paladin" it confers several benefits. For one it grants access to restricted military hardware, for another it provides situational modifiers to interaction checks. Feats such as these are only available upon narrator approval and I usually give them a value of about 1.5 feats worth of benefit to account for them being earned not simply chosen.

*The Tekguard Paladins are the Knights of Irongraad, the industrial capital of the Southern ex-United States in my post apocalyptic setting: Shadow Earth. (Incidentally the "South" is the Great Lakes area, since the Earth shifted its axis following the Day of the Shadow.)

[stormhierta]

Using the Benefit: CLASS/ORGANISATION NAME was actually a very good idea and would allow us to give out the associated benefits with being part of a certain roganisation. Thanks for the help with such great ideas!