Hello friends, in today's newsletter I will share some thoughts regarding the use of Lingering Injuries in our game, as well as try and give you a timeline of recent events so that you may better contextualize your character in modern history

AoD 2025 Newsletter #3- Timeline & Injury System // 16/2/2025

Timeline

The campaign starts in the year 59 AoD --- AoD stands for "Age of Darkness" which is the current world era and the namesake of the campaign.

Recent history spans two eras, which can be confusing. There's AoD, which you already know, and the era before is called "The Age of Stars" or AoS.

During the Age of Stars there weren't literal stars in the sky. There's a reason for the name, but I don't want to commit to it yet 100%, so I wont speak of it it here. The name of the era might change, but for now we will assume it wont.

Before the campaign started there was a The Great War between the 6 cities (7 if you count the neutral one). It's hard to pin down exactly when it started, because it's an intricate conflict with many involved parties, not all of which joined all at the same time. A common response from scholars when asked for a year is 449 AoS, approximately 303 years before the start of the campaign. I will now list chronologically the recent and relevant events of that war and delve loosely into the consequences.

Year 688 AoS - 64 years ago

Archon Krux, The Harbinger of Ruin destroys the first Arcstone.

Year 693 AoS/1 AoD - 59 years ago

Archon Krux, The Harbinger of Ruin destroys the 5th Arcstone along with his own, himself and the The Free City of Arwyn in the events of The Final Shattering.

Year 12 AoD - 47 years ago

The Free City of Calambrion, retainer of the last Arcstone, which up until this point had been entirely neutral joins the conflict.

Year 16 AoD - 43 years ago

The Free City of Calambrion puts an end to The Great War and establishes The Protectorate.

For the past 43 years these has been a forced peace between the cities, now bound to The Protectorate.


If you wish to know more about any of these events, let me know.

Injuries

In the past I said I was going to introduce an injury system to our campaign.

Why?

My reason for wanting to do so was not "realism", I think we're all over that phase after our overly complicated targeting system, instead I had a few reasons in mind:

• Grit: I wanted the game to feel gritty and brutal, to match the grimdark theme of the setting. Injuries are scary, they enhance the horror aspect and give you another thing to fear. It gives combat consequences that cannot be solved with a long rest. I want combat to feel dangerous, I want your characters to feel like they can't just punch their way through everything and need to be careful and cunning to survive in this unforgiving world.
• Narrative: Injuries are a strong narrative tool, they create drama and urgency. The injuries your character has survived will shape them physically and mentally, over time you will develop scars and other physical traits from your injuries that mark your story.

Disclaimer

I don't want you to be concerned about your characters being overly maimed, or made useless. I have no intention on permanently nerfing your character. Genuinely serious injuries, like losing a hand or an arm, a leg, or an eye should be very rare and deployed strategically in moments where it enhances to story.

If you do end up losing an arm, or suffering an equivalent injury, that will come with with serious adverse effects, undoubtedly. But this is a fantasy world, not only is there powerful magic, but also powerful technology. You will struggle with your injury for a while, but it's just another problem to be solved and when you do solve it you might even get something cool out of it.

Injuries like this will also add to your sense of character progression. If you were to lose a limb at level one that would be quite serious, realistically, you cannot afford a prosthetic or to hire a wielder who can cast the high level spells required to regrow it. You might have to go on a personal quest to steal one, pledge service to someone who will sponsor your limb, or exchange your services for it as payment. As you grow in power it will become more and more of a nuisance and increasingly more ephemeral a condition.

Finally, if you're genuinely not comfortable with extreme injuries, even if temporary, and you think you wouldn't have fun or enjoy the micro character arc that these injuries could bring then DM me and say so. If you say nothing, I will assume you're on board by default. If you do something extremely stupid It might still result in injury, even then.

The "System"

The official D&D lingering system is bad. It is ridiculously brutal and indiscriminate. It makes no sense from a narrative standpoint, and is way too deadly and punishing for my tastes. Likewise, any system I can find online suffers from similar issues, they're all inadequate. In trying to come up with a system of my own I have failed to create one that fully satisfies me, I have come close, but they all have small flaws that would make them unsatisfying at times.

It was in my search for the perfect system that I realized that I don't need a system at all. I can simply decide when it makes sense for injuries to occur, which injuries make sense in that situation and what are the consequences of those injuries. Of course this requires the DM to be impartial, unbiased and fair. But I trust myself to be that, and I hope you trust me too.

Most of the times injuries will be built into encounters ahead of time. Certain enemies will be more likely to cause injuries. Additionally, traps will be a common form of injury too. I think traps in D&D are actually somewhat boring, you step on a platform, take some fire damage, heal and move on. Injuries will be a good way to spice them up.

There will be saves to most injuries. I will not just hand them out outright, unless there's a reason for it.

Some situations are likely to cause injuries, like being downed. I still want being downed to be a big deal, both in the story and mechanically.

"Hitpoints" are an abstract concept, we don't really know what they mean, but getting hit is not necessarily getting hit, it can be imagined as your character sacrificing something to dodge a blow that would have killed them, like wasting a lot of energy ducking a blow, or getting pushed against a wall. But being downed, that's much more concrete and tangible a concept, that means you got actually hit and are now unconscious, so in those situations it seems natural for there to be consequences. I wont give out injuries every time you get downed, and there will almost always be a save when I do, but more often than not being downed will have consequences.

Regarding Your Characters

I am happy with how your characters have progressed. Most people already have pretty solid and fleshed out concepts. I have begun brainstorming your solo sessions, how your characters connect with each other and with the main story, and I am pleased to say that it is going well. Pretty soon we will be able to start our solo sessions. hype.

My goal is to get your characters fully fleshed out as soon as possible, then begin to solo sessions, so that when we finish playing Descent into Avernus we're fully ready to start Age of Darkness right away, rather than only then finishing your characters and me still having to run all the solo sessions and design the main campaign. We're definitely on the right track for that, yay.

Regarding the solo sessions, there will be many for each character, and not all of them will be fully designed multiple hour one shots with a complete story. It's possible on some "sessions" you just need to do something small, in maybe 30 minutes, or just have a conversation with someone. It's possible that we wont even need to do some "sessions" on voice chat, or even in real time, and can do them asynchronously through discord.

During this period between the solo sessions and the start of the main campaign you can already start thinking with the "downtime" mentality I explained (or the video explained) in the last newsletter. I wont reiterate on what that means, please watch that video it will really help.