"It's better to ask a question before the studying than later, when you are already known for your wisdom,
and nobody dares to give you the answers."

Kory Starglow, Second Magister of the Magic House
 
 



  • What is a Role Playing Game?

    In a roleplaying game, each individual involved pretends to be an imaginary character, much the same as an actor plays a part in a film or a play. The big difference is that in a film, the actors are following a script - but in a roleplaying game, you and the other players are writing your own lines as you play out an adventure, and the ending of the story is not determined until you get there.

    One of the individuals in an RPG (short term for roleplaying game) game is the Dungeon Master (DM for short), the person who knows what the adventure is all about and tells the players what's happening as the story moves along. It's always necessary for someone to be the DM, but this doesn't have to be the same person every time you play.

    The other individuals are players, each one playing the role of his or her own player character (PC for short). In the Karanblade d20 game, player characters are heroic fighters, mighty wizards, and cunning rogues. They journey into lost ruins and battle fierce monsters.



  • What is the Third Edition Dungeons&Dragons?

    The Third Edition Dungeons&Dragons is the sequel to the most popular RPG ever created. After 27 years since the release of the first D&D rules, on august 2000, Wizards of the Coast finally released the third edition, with the Player's Handbook being sold worldwide.

    In this edition, many rules from the old system were changed, but these changes just made it even better. With the addition of feats, prestige classes and skills, the character creation process is much more intuitive, with a vast range of possibilities for it's development. As far as we know, the Third Edition (3E for short), is doing very well not only on sales, but also on industry reviews.



  • What is d20 system and Open Game License?

    In a brief explanation, the d20 system is a system of generic RPG rules, set with the Open Game License, that are open to any publishing company to use on their own products without inflicting any copyrights. Wizards of the Coast is satisfied with the fact that to use these products, you will also have to buy the third edition core rulebooks, published by them. It's curious, though, from where this whole idea derived. To explain this history better for you, we took some paragraphs of this Ryan Dancey (founder of Open Game Foundation.org) interview from Wizard's Official d20 site:
    "In about twenty years ago, a guy named Richard Stallman was a grad student at MIT. During his time there, he participated in a community of software developers who shared code between themselves and were at the cutting edge of computer programming. When those people started to leave the university and go into private enterprise, they stopped being willing to share their code, because the standard corporate philosophy is to keep secrets rather than share them.

    Stallman thought that was a mistake. He feels that the best way to get good software is to let everyone see the source code, and be able to make changes to that code if they think the changes necessary. Stallman in fact considers this a "natural right", up there with the right to free speech, the right to assemble and the right to practice a religion. He's a little on the extreme side, but his overall idea has been proven (at least partially) to be very compelling..

    Stallman left MIT and started an organization called GNU. Old-school programmers are a funny bunch, and one thing they like are nonsense acronyms that are self-referencing. "GNU" means "GNU's Not Unix". Trust me, if you don't get the joke, you're not missing anything. The GNU project was designed to create a completely "Free" version of Unix, and all the tools and utilities that a person would need to use a computer without having to use any "closed" or proprietary software. To facilitate that effort, Stallman authored a document called the GNU General Public License (known as the GPL).

    The GPL is the first use of a novel legal concept which has come to be known as the "copyleft". A "copyright" is a way of restricting the rights of others to use a given work. A "copyleft" is a way of forcing everyone to allow anyone to use a given work pretty much any way they want to, and not be able to restrict those rights.

    The GPL is the foundation of our ongoing attempt to create a similar license for gaming, currently known as the Open Gaming License."



  • What is the Karanblade d20 Campaign Setting?

    Glad you asked, the Karanblade d20 Campaign Setting is an original setting for the d20 system, being published under the Open Game License. It contains all the information needed for both the Dungeons Master and the players to start an entirely new campaign on the known lands of Near World, a realm plagued by the demon surge, where heroes fight against the disunion, corruption, and even racism of the city-states, which need to unite their forces and try to survive the second coming of the dreaded draconic demon Bamphozz'ah... This, and yet much more, are part of the innumerous plots and adventurers available at Karanblade.



  • What books are required to play Karanblade?

    To play Karanblade you need the Karanblade d20 Campaign Setting and the Player's Handbook. To run Karanblade as the Dungeon Master, you will also need the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual. All these books are available right here. On the menu side bar, at your left, you may find the Core Rulebooks, and buy them directly from Amazon.com (if you are using Netscape, you can find them at the Entrance). The Karanblade d20 Campaign Setting can be downloaded only, and it will soon be available at the Download! button, on the top of every page.



  • Can I play Karanblade online?

    No, Karanblade is just pen, paper and dice RPG, and unless you have a DM that runs a play by email campaign, you will have to play it at yours, or some friend's house, buying pizzas for lunch and spending hours on a playing table.

    If you have the Age of Wonders PC game, though, you may get the Karanblade scenario and play it online using your computer. If that's your case, get the scenario here



  • Can I read the old Karanblade for Advanced Dungeons&Dragons?

    Of course, it's online since may 98 and it's free! Just keep in mind that the new Karanblade d20 will be much, much better, not only on design, content and artwork, but also on grammar spelling (at least we hope so :o) Check out the Karanblade AD&D Campaign Setting now.



  • Is the stuff on this site free?

    Yes.



  • Where can I download Karanblade?

    You can download each finished chapter by clicking on the left menu of this site, and as soon as its whole finished, it will be available for download (At the Download! section, on the top of every page).



  • Why should I download Karanblade?

    Because you probably like the tales and worlds of high fantasy, with warriors, mages, rogues, priests, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, barbarians, ugly orcs, tatooed pirate orcs, oriental monks, black magic using assassins, masked roguish city leaders, cruel city-state lords, gorgeous nymphs and half-nymphs, enigmatic faerie beings, disappearing magical forest villages, forgotten ruins, long lost empires, murdered kings, evil liches and dark priests, demons, huge dragons, gargantuan demoniac dragons that awakens once every thousands of years, desperate adventurers, missing artifacts, swords of eternal fire, soluakh crystals, magic houses, and such stuff, not necessarily on that given order...

    If that's not your case, and you didn't liked the free stuff available on this site, then we think you really should not buy it, unless you are willing to help us on buying the pizzas...



  • How can I be notified when Karanblade becomes available?

    Yes, it will take a while, but we are working hard to finish it as soon as possible! If you want to keep in touch with us, and also be notified when it becomes available for download, the better way is to join our Karanblade d20 Mail List, at Egroups. This is a kind of newsletter, you can't post messages, just receive them. But don't worry, your mailbox won't get full of junk mail, as we also hate spam.



  • How did you came up with all these ideas for a world?

    Well, it wasn't from one day to another, it actually took years to be developed to such level. I started it all by doing a small amateurish novel, strongly based on Tolkien, Hickman and Weis books, but not copied from them. In about twelve chapters, I wrote the story of a barbarian that left his tribe at South Wood, looking for adventures at the fortified city of Bak, on the northern Stonebridge. He ended up being part of a brave group of adventurers, led by the Highmagister Biamindua (who were unable to cast spells without hurting his health, since the Magic House felt with the Demon Surge), whom found the lost Sword of Eternal Fire (also known as the Karanblade, because the legendary Galtar Karan used it to defeat the demons on the first Red War), and defied the dreaded draconic demon Bamphozz'ah... The end of this story I won't tell you, but you can write it by yourself, running one Karanblade d20 campaign!



  • Who made all these illustrations and design within Karanblade?

    Unless otherwise noted, Rafael Arrais. He's also the creator and designer of Karanblade d20 Campaign Setting, by the way... He used his fine arts college knowledge, paper, pen and pencils, eraser, ink, scanner, fireworks, photoshop, streamline, acrobat writer, word, dreamweaver, homesite, coffee cup html editor, flash, and finally, his imagination.



  • Can I aid the Karanblade project?

    Of course, we don't want to feel alone here... If you are a regular contributor of archive sites such as Community3e.com, DnDCommunityCouncil.org, or Eric Noah's Third Edition News, or have any other great example of your work, send it to us, and you may end up with your name on the credits of Karanblade.

    Submissions:



  • Why does I find so many grammar errors within Karanblade?

    Really? Well, perhaps it's because the writer isn't american, and his first language is portuguese instead of english... But don't worry, we won't publish anything without extensive reviews of spelling. If you still find errors, though, we assure that they won't prohibit you from understand what is being communicated.

    We think that you can take this page as an example. Everything here, as on the rest of this site, was written by the portuguese writer. If you didn't found errors here, you probably won't find them elsewhere at Karanblade d20.



  • Does the Karanblade campaign ends when the Bamphozz'ah is defeated?

    This is better explained within the book itself, but no, at Karanblade d20 the campaign won't end with Bamphozz'ah being defeated... To say the truth, it may be even starting to get real hot, since at the Third Edition we don't have a maximum levels anymore, and some folks can reach levels such as 30th or 45th!



  • Does Karanblade have any relation with Planescape, or any other old Advanced Dungeons&Dragons settings?

    Not really, since we now have to pay attention to copyright issues! But tell you, with a bit of creativity, you won't have a hard time on sending your Karanblade d20 PCs to Sigil, or beyond...



  • What is the second take on Karanblade d20?

    Beginning on earlier 2003, Gryphon joined us as a major writer of the book. Since he brought with him a lot of imagination and pro-writing capabilities, we decided to remake it all over again and, this time, post free on the site. We want it to be even better and it's surely becoming good so far.



  • Is the Karanblade d20 project dead?

    As many of you might have noticed, the Karanblade d20 project is kinda dead right now, but I still have good news for you... Because it's indeed dead as a english d20 project, but very alive as an undergoing project for an inprint d20 campaign in Brazil!

    Actually I never got so busy writing Karanblade, but unfortunately for non-portuguese readers it won't be available so soon. Thanks for the support and interest, I will sure look forward to translate the portuguese version to english as soon as I finish it, which will be hopefully in 4 or 5 months from today.

    For the brazilian fans, I can say that we are doing very good so far, with a couple of new races, a new variant sorcerer class, up to 15 new prestige classes and over 40 new feats... Right now we are describing the geohraphy of the world, which is being kinda exciting to do :)

    I'm writing it with Tzimisce (from Rede RPG), and of couse Gryphon (from Community3e) helped alot with conceptual ideas.






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    Copyright (c) 2001 Rafael Arrais. All Rights Reserved.
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