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ruscumag.wordpress.com.web.brid.gy
Emergence Campaign Weblog
@ruscumag.wordpress.com.web.brid.gy
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Devouring Role Playing Games since 1975

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Eclipse d20 – Playable Dryads And The Other Nymphai
This was a question about Dryad’s in Eclipse, and possibly turning them into player characters. First up… Nymphai: (Female) spirits of nature/minor goddesses in general). Minor goddesses or spirits (daimonaissai) of nature. Many of the classes overlapped: for example, the Dryad nymph of a tree growing by a spring was also often the Naiad of […]
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December 15, 2025 at 1:54 AM
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Eclipse d20 – Crafting Based Magic
The painter labored for long years, painting a beautiful country manor, and into it placed images of the creatures and things she loved. And when it was near-complete, and she was growing old… painted herself into it as well. Today, that near-indestructible work, containing the spirits of the artist, her pets, and her children and […]
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December 8, 2025 at 1:53 AM
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Eclipse D20 – Opportunist and Reflex Training
For today, it’s answering a question from resqr414 which got far too long for the comments… So, do I understand that Opportunist not only lets you take an action you could not usually do, but also lets you arrogate the application of certain advantageous states (like flat-footing your target) to that action? Hopefully, you have […]
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December 2, 2025 at 1:48 AM
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Varjipiak, TARDIS and House On Realities Borders
Varjipiak – The Last Refuge – clings to existence at the borders of time and space, a cluster of flotsam from fallen worlds, lost realms, and forgotten times washed up from the cosmic sea upon the shores of reality. There… a few mortals gather, refugees and dimensional wanderers cast away from disasters across the multiverse. […]
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November 22, 2025 at 1:45 AM
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Eclipse, The Thu’um, and Paths Of Power
Here we have a video-game themed request from some time ago – the Thu’um. This, of course, is from The Elder Scrolls, and is the subject of an apparently endless supply of “Fus Roh Dah!” memes and youtube videos. While all characters in Skyrim can apparently learn spells – and all PC’s start with some […]
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November 16, 2025 at 1:34 AM
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d20 – Tomes Of Magic
It’s a pretty standard trope. The mage wielding a tome of magic that would normally be beyond him or her, whether it’s an apprentice using his or her murdered teachers spellbook to use second and third level spells when he or she has barely mastered a few cantrips, some poor fool who has laid hands […]
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November 2, 2025 at 1:03 AM
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Eclipse D20 – Lesser Masks
The question here is “Are there some lesser masks if the GM won’t allow the Masks of Ramujin?” Of course there are. I’m not going to bother with Wondrous Items though; those have plenty of coverage already. This time I’m going to focus on Charms and Talismans. While those are normally rather minor items with […]
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October 21, 2025 at 12:40 AM
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Eclipse d20 – The Masks Of Ramujin
The Masks Of Ramujin The Masks Of Ramujin While the greatest spellcasters may mold worlds, the greatest warriors clear and tame them, and the greatest skillmasters build civilizations, shaping those civilizations is the task of gods, innovators, and artists. For in Eclipse, the power of Art is almost unmatched in it’s ability to mold cultures. […]
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October 21, 2025 at 12:40 AM
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Eclipse d20 And First Edition: Practical Considerations and “Roll-Playing”.
Now that we have first-edition styled classes for d20, how can we use Eclipse – or d20 in general – to run a first-edition styled game? The biggest difference between the editions is philosophical. It’s the pretense that the world is independent of the characters. A lot of encounters – including potentially game-changing ones! – […]
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September 30, 2025 at 12:29 AM
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d20 – Realm Seeds
This question came up a while ago – but it basically amounted to “how to make a city-seed that grew into a city”. That’s actually not all that hard, so here we go… Minor D20 towns, manors, castles, villages, and similar places have short life expectancies. Sure, major settlements will have high-level defenders, but smaller […]
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September 22, 2025 at 12:24 AM
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Eclipse d20 – Poisons
And for today, it’s a question about buying and using Poison in Eclipse: It’s worth noting that – in baseline d20 – Player Characters really aren’t supposed to be using Poison. There’s the old presumption that it’s evil and dishonorable (“Paladin’s can’t use poison!” or “Good characters can’t use poison!” – although they can somehow […]
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September 14, 2025 at 12:16 AM
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Eclipse d20 Occult Skills – Menemonic Estate and Feather Gleaner
The Modun Setting – which gives an enormous price break to dabbling in Occult Skills – has, unsurprisingly, led to a lot of proposals for, and dabbling in Occult Skills. Who would have guessed? So here are a few more: Menemonic Estate (Occult, Int): A.K.A. Memory Palace, Menemonic Manor, Akhasic Realm, etc +2 Synergy Bonus […]
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September 4, 2025 at 12:16 AM
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Eclipse d20 and the First Edition Classes – Monks, C’hi Powers, and Bards (Bards, Minstrels, and Skalds)
The Monk: First Edition Monks… were just weird. They were actually quite powerful, but “there could only be three eighth level monks and only one of each higher level”. To reach that level you had to immediately go to one of/the current level holder(s), and defeat them – whereupon the winner got the level and […]
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September 1, 2025 at 12:15 AM
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Eclipse d20 and the First Edition Classes – Magic-Users, Illusionists, Thieves, and Assassins. The Schools Of Magic
The Magic-User and Illusionist: In first edition Magic-Users were a party luxury. They were frail, and rather ineffectual until they had some levels and decent items. Most parties didn’t start off with a Magic-User. They waited until they were hitting level five or six, and had accumulated some scrolls and an item or two that […]
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August 6, 2025 at 12:03 AM
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Eclipse d20 and the First Edition Classes- Fighters, Paladins, Rangers and Random Happenings.
And to continue… The Fighter: First Edition Fighters got an extra attack at higher level – and got one attack PER LEVEL per round against creatures with less than one eight-sided hit die! Thus a fourth level fighter in battle with a swarm of Goblins (1d6 HP) could attack four times per round. Admittedly that […]
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July 21, 2025 at 12:01 AM
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Eclipse d20 and the First Edition Classes- Basic Considerations, Clerics, and Druids
The questions come up several times – “So how do you run a first-edition or “old school” styled game using Eclipse?” Honestly that’s more of a philosophical question about the settings underlying assumptions than it is mechanical. Still, the secondary question of “how you can build the first edition classes in Eclipse?” is probably worth […]
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July 13, 2025 at 11:59 PM
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Eclipse d20: Save Points, the Elder Wand Style, and First Edition Wands
And for today, thanks to a bit of a time crunch, it’s a set of minor requests and some rambling to link them together a bit! The Save Point: The wondersmith has labored mightily, crafting an eldritch timepiece of alchemical crystals, of gears which turn through more dimensions than they should, of strange metals and […]
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June 26, 2025 at 11:45 PM
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Eclipse d20 – Lucifer Morningstar
This request was for Lucifer Morningstar, as shown in the Lucifer TV show. Well, I’ll have to rely on Wiki’s for most of that since I’ve only seen the first season – but there are some ground rules. The setting doesn’t pay attention to the wider multiverse or even universe. For example, Lucifer has met […]
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June 10, 2025 at 11:44 PM
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Eclipse d20 – Inventors
The topic of “inventors” in d20 is always a little awkward – but there’s been some recent discussion on the topic, so here’s an article! This has come up before – but it has been a while, so here are some new options. There are big inventions. Principles, creations, and processes that can be applied […]
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May 28, 2025 at 11:42 PM
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Eclipse d20 – Linguistic Magic
And today it’s getting started on the backlog of questions… While the Book of Vile Darkness had rules for “Dark Speech” (which was incidentally the last time we saw anything like the old “alignment tongues” in D&D), which itself seemed derivative of the Black Speech of Mordor, I’m curious how you’d build something like that […]
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May 4, 2025 at 1:38 AM
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Eclipse d20 – The Realmsmage Template
From the most ancient tales – the Epic Of Gilgamesh, the Book Of The Dead, the Rig Veda – to such near-modern or modern tales as the the Prose Edda or Chronicles Of Amber, games such as Master Of Magic and Magic: The Gathering, and countless movies – there have been tales of otherworldly power. […]
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April 28, 2025 at 11:03 PM
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Eclipse d20 – Actors, The Universal Chameleons
The Actor (32 CP / +1 ECL Acquired Template) There are a myriad of stories, and of heroes to match. The bandits are haunting the pass, villains are going to attack some quiet village, the local lords beautiful daughter has been kidnaped, the sacred object must be retrieved and returned to its place before disaster […]
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May 2, 2025 at 12:34 AM