I've finally gotten the Rune Warden into good enough shape to make public, and converted it to PDF.

You can download the Rune Warden in PDF format -- it's about 700kb. Clicking on the cover image will do the same.

As you can see, I tried to format it so that you can easily slip it into a folder if you printed out the PDF version of the Second World Sourcebook.

  The Second World Sourcebook

On Sale Now

RPGNow Edge

ENWorld Gamestore

• Trade Paperback: 288 pages
• Product Number: 2WS1000
• ISBN: 0-9718397-1-9
• Release: Late December 2002
• MSRP: $29.95
• Author: Steven Palmer Peterson

The Second World Sourcebook is a complete guide to multi-genre roleplaying in the d20 universe. Drop a team of Special Forces Ops into any fantasy world, trap your wizard, thief and cleric in a near future cyberbased metropolis run by greedy corporations. The possibilities are endless for how you can cross or jump genres adding hundreds of new and exciting options to your game.

The Sourcebook supports both the d20 Modern Rules and the standard d20 rules and provides a complete set of genre and technology rules for customizing the way reality works in the two worlds, in alternate planes, or even in your own game world. Over 200 powers spread across 8 prestige classes (with an alternate, feat-based system)are detailed. Each class gets to pick one ability per level from a list of at least 25 special powers; this provides maximum customizability in character development. It also includes a complete set of influence rules with over 30 organizations and 100 favors to request; this system provides a nifty method for adding crunch to the political aspect of a game. The Second World Sourcebook also provides a basic campaign setting designed to show off the full potential of genre jumping.

Here's a color version of the map of the Northeast (click on it to see a larger image):

Occasionally a person steps around the corner of an alley, finds a hole in the back of their closet, takes a shortcut down a wooded road at night, or simply turns their head at just the right moment to watch a falling leaf and then finds himself elsewhere. These people are called Exiles; they step or turn out of our world, the world of crowded freeways and glittering convenience stores and into the Second World, a place of magic, mystery, danger, and more than a little bit of terror. There are two worlds you see, separated by a roiling gulf of chaos called the Forge.

The Second World Sourcebook bridges the gap between modern day adventuring and traditional fantasy roleplaying. It provides a "campaign template" for running a dual-world game. By combining the sourcebook with your own favorite setting you can take your fantasy characters and run them through a modern day scenario, or take your modern characters and run them through one of the many fantasy modules currently available. Most modern settings already describe the impact of fantasy elements on them and include rules for handling magic. But what would happen if people from the modern world regularly trafficked with those in a more traditional fantasy world? What impact would it have if powerful wizards originally studied computer science at UCLA? What would the social institutions look like if the progress of ideas and politics we've seen in our world carried over to a place where electricity and gunpowder simply didn't work, but magic and divine power did?

One thing I think we lose sight of with high definition televisions, computers that double in power every 18 months or so, and medical technology that has progressed so rapidly that it outstripped the imaginations of science fiction writers from just 30 years ago, is that a more subtle kind of technology has progressed alongside the hardware and wetware we normally associate with scientific advance. Economic theory, the advantages and limitations of free market economies, the growth of corporate powers, the art of conventional and covert war, espionage, intelligence gathering, forensic science, the dangers of republics and the individual empowerment they provide, all these are no less technological advances than new ways to hurl lead and these sorts of technologies would spread no matter what your physics.

To answer these sorts of questions I include a rich system for dealing with social influence and 30-some organizations that use that system. I also include a cosmology of the world that explains why you'd have two parallel worlds of this sort and how to resolve interactions between them. I also include guidelines for how to handle characters from a modern setting when they translate to the fantasy setting, and vice versa. This should make it easier to run an occasional modern adventure with your regular fantasy characters or a fantasy adventure with your regular modern characters. Finally, I include a set of special prestige classes called Wardens; I make these as customizable as possible by including a menu of at least 25 abilities each that they choose from as they advance. In some ways they'll feel like the player-ready templates from my first product, "Bodies and Souls: Twenty Templates".

Reviews

"The prestige classes in the Second World Sourcebook are uniquely original and compellingly interesting." - John Grigsby, d20 Magazine Rack Review (A)

"The book is well written, and I like the setting tremendously." - Lars Sukka, RPG United Review (4/5)

"Steven Palmer Peterson’s writing is brilliant. If you have to read this much (which you do), this is the way to do it." - Kithmaker, Mortality.net Review (9.6/10)

"For about thirty buck this is an excellent supplement for DM’s that are looking for a campaign universe that’s just a bit more than a little different." - Mark Theurer, March issue of Fictional Reality magazine.

"It's big, complete, and packed with information..." - Jeff Ibach, Role-Play News Review (13/20)

"The writing style is fairly unique - at times it has the ambience of a Charles De Lint novel, before switching through an academic-style discourse on metaphysics to an informal chat about game mechanics and occasionally into raw creative flow. At times its annoying, sometimes confusing; mostly its damn impressive." - Simon Collins, ENWorld Staff Review (4/5)

"2WS approaches the idea of parallel worlds in a unique, interesting fashion, and provides you with the rules to back it up." Butch Curry, Gaming Report Review (8/10)

"I think with wardens and warden powers, Steven Palmer Peterson has again shown his unique talent to twist the d20 System rules in unique and compelling ways." - Alan "Psion" Kohler, ENWorld Staff Review (4/5)

"It’s really quite easy to see The Second World Sourcebook becoming the seminal advanced d20 product." - Gamewyrd (9/10)

"It's certainly a unique product, in a good way. Part of the reason I like the d20 license and OGL so much is that we see things like this." - Review by Trancejeremy (4/5)

Links

Notes from the Second World

Second World Sourcebook FAQ

Second World Sourcebook SAQ

Using other d20 Books with the Second World

Downloads

Adventure Toolkit: Amethyst Legion (PDF) or Zip

Adventure Toolkit: Black Fist Orcs (PDF) or Zip

Second World Campaign Form (PDF)

Plain Campaign Sheets (PDF)

Warden Requirements (PDF)

Small Worlds and Exiles Scenario (PDF) or (Zip)

Ved Qayat Preview

Influence Preview PDF or (Zip)

Lightning Warden Preview PDF or (Zip)

Many thanks to Chris Kobbe for his detailed questions and suggestions in these matters.

What External Access Represents.

The rules are pretty agnostic about what External Access represents. I assume it typically means that you're behind the scenes pulling strings and corrupting their young agents, a bunch of them if you've got full access. As such you're not so much a partner as an infiltrator. After all, you get stuff from them and they get nothing from you (if you picture commitment as you working for them and influence points as simply the cost to bribe and blackmail employees).

Most external access should occur at the -10 or -5 level since -0 is essentially unity with the org (or at least that level of the org is completely beholden to you).

Joining the organization and devoting Commitment is the main way to go. I just wanted to offer an option for those who prefer playing the Cigarette-smoking man.

The High Cost of Influence.

They feel pretty steep to me too, but they effectively give characters several uses per week from a range of special abilities in the form of requests. For example, it costs 8 ip to become a BlueCom Executive but you get access to First World Transit and Shift Gates, these are like plane shift spells, The Blue Room, flying steeds, and so on. Pure numbers-wise that sounds a bit better than many 8,000 gp magic items (like the cape of the mountebank). In addition the external access is pretty good for some of these positions and, depending on how you handle magic items, the artificer access is useful. Anyway, again, going by the numbers, a magic item granting those benefits would likely have a similar cost.

One thing that has occurred to me more since then is that gamemasters already give out this stuff in their games. We normally grant informal access to favors; do a mission for the local temple and I'll let the players get a few curing spells and other stuff from the priests there. But I don't quantify any of that. Anyway, this means that when I use the formal system from the Sourcebook I'm now charging for something that I used to give away for 'free'.

Instead of giving out unquantified social benefits it can help to give out some extra influence points just for spending on organizations and temporary benefits. One way to do this is simply by using the roleplaying access systems (SWSB pg. 187).

A better way is to give out additional influence points specifically for use in requests and organizations; I set this at half the normal gold reward a character would usually get for their level. Thus, overcoming say, four 6th level encounters on a mission for the Blue Conglomerate would give 8,000 gp plus an extra 4 ip for use with BlueCon (or a related organization). These numbers are just from DMG. The 4 extra ip represent the social benefits that I would normally hand out informally. If going this route you can use the extra ip in place of the roleplaying access methods since they amount to the same thing.

Reducing Commitment Costs. (by Chris Kobbe)

Chris has suggested this option for reducing the Commitment cost of holding a position.

If a position has a Commitment requirement of 2 or 3, a character may reduce the Commitment requirement by 1 by spending 5x the normal Influence cost for the position. E.g. it normally costs 3 ip and 2 Commtiment to be a College of the Interstice Researcher. By spending a total of 15 ip you can reduce the Commitment cost to 1.

This could represent investing additional influence to recruit assistants or the way that as a person increases in rank and authority it's more likely that you'll see the person on the board of directors in more than one organization.

One of the main things Commitment does is place the character inside the organization; it means the organization can ask the character to do something (and thus give the GM an adventure hook).

A core reason external access to a position has a separate cost listing is that some organizations command greater or lesser loyalty; it's a lot easier to get a Clim's gang guy to sell out than a member of the Chanask. But since external access largely represents that kind of selling out it isn't as good at representing friendly alliances; Chris' solution is a nice way to fix that.

Note:

Some positions have a slightly higher Influence cost than normal since they come with a magic item (e.g. the Chen Family Silk Tiger). For example, the external access cost to a Silk Tiger would normally be at leasts three times its regular access cost since the Chen Family has tight bonds of loyalty; however, you don't get a tattoo with External Access, thus the relatively cheap cost. For those positions you'll want to do a bit of massaging on the numbers. Reducing the cost by half the value of the item (round down) then multiplying works well.

Example: It would thus cost 5x (3 ip base) + 2 ip (for the tattoo) to be a Silk Tiger at -1 to the normal Commitment requirement. Final result: 17 ip and 1 Commitment.

This won't work for all positions though. For instance, a Goal Oreinted Energetics Dynamic Agent gets a powerful item for almost nothing. This is because GOE recruits with a vengeance and once you're in you're never out.

Quick Thinking's Benefit?

(Quick-Thinking: Vector Warden power)

I didn't have it as providing a game mechanical impact. It's a method of using a metagame effect to generate an in-game benefit. It can be pretty tangible too; I've used this power in a number of games and the ability to tell the GM that you want to think for a bit longer about what you're going to do this round, or what you're going to do when reacting to the building exploding around you, can be really useful; while looking through your character sheet you might finally remember that potion that would be useful in this situation. This is even useful while roleplaying since the player can ask for a time-out in the middle of a conversation to figure out what he wants to say next. Anyway, it's a strange but convenient power and I figure that falls into the token expense realm (the real expense being using up one of your available bindings).

I'll keep a list of questions, answers, and alternatives recommended either by me or players here. If you have something you think ought to be added to this page feel free to contact me. This FAQ includes game related errata, some of which, unfortunately, made it into the book.

There is also a Seldom Asked Questions page for the Sourcebook. That page focuses more on design considerations and variant rules.

What's this Surprise Strike thing?

On page 42 the Second World Sourcebook includes an option called "Surprise Strike already does Wounds." Surprise Strike should be Sneak Attack; the author frequently confuses Surprise Strike with Sneak Attack and Gregory Peck with Cary Grant.

The Armor in the Sourcebook is a little different from that in d20 Modern.

When developing the Second World Sourceook we had to work off the draft d20 Modern rules and couldn't find the Max Dex bonus listings in them. Guessing worked out okay though since the only Max Dex bonus that was off was the one for the Undercover Vest; it should be +5 not +6. Also, the d20 Modern rules assign spell failure chances based purely on armor size (i.e. light, medium, or heavy) and proficiency. Assume the d20 Modern versions take precedence unless your gamemaster decides otherwise. If you don't have the d20 Modern rules, the armor listing in the Second World Sourcebook should suffice.

Where's that cool image Jeff Doten did of an Orca fighting a Ved Qayat?

The page count kept climbing and Chapter Two was particularly tight on space. Here's the image:

Orca with Auroran Lance fighting Ved Qayat by Jeff Doten

The Digging up the Dirt favor for the Red Society seems to be missing.

Oops! That should refer to the "Passing the Word" favor.

What are the Modern Requirements for the Warden Classes?

The Second World Sourcebook needed a much more extensive discussion of this. I've uploaded a PDF with more detailed alternative skill requirements for all the Warden classes as well as some discussion of cross-world skill use and issues.

Warden Requirements (PDF 230 kb)