D&D: Arcana Unleashed Coming Next Week, Bringing Back Renown With It

D&D: Arcana Unleashed Coming Next Week, Bringing Back Renown With It 3 Minute Read Advertisement Arcana Unleashed comes out next week for the wider world. With it? Nine magical factions and a system for grinding your rep. You don't have to wait until World of Warcraft to get a taste of what faction rules will feel like in D&D, it turns out. Arcana Unleashed is coming out one week from tomorrow, and one of the systems that gets a surprising amount of attention in the book is PCs working for one of the new magical factions introduced therein. Arcana Unleashed – Make A Name For Yourself There are nine magical factions introduced in Arcana Unleashed, one for every single school of magic, plus an extra one dedicated to keeping dangerous magic out of the hands of the other eight. Each of these factions comes with a network of relationships (mostly to the other factions) and a system of reputation, or Renown as detailed in the Dungeon Master's Guide, that gets you various rewards as a given faction thinks more and more favorably of you. Advertisement I want to point this out, specifically, because this is a mechanic that players of World of Warcraft will doubtless be familiar with. And with a WoW book on the horizon, I think it's not unreasonable to assume that the book will build on the Arcana Unleashed systems. So let's take a look at the Ninth Quill. The Ninth Quill is a faction dedicated to keeping powerful artifacts and dangerous knowledge out of the hands of mages who would misuse it. On the surface, at least. As the saying goes, a system is what it does, and what the Ninth Quill does mostly is steal magical items and artifacts and forbidden lore from the other factions. Joining the Ninth Quill can be a noble pursuit, or it can be something for the larcenous party, depending on how you want to play it. Which I kind of like; there is no 'hey, these guys are always good all the time' here. And joining them ostensibly gets you a lifestyle for free, but I don't know if your table uses the lifestyle rules in D&D. I'd bet they don't, though. Advertisement The real benefit comes from acquiring higher Renown with the faction. You do this by completing quests for them, helping out their members in need, and of course, turning in stolen magic items. Doing so can give you a number of benefits, which range from the smallest convenience, like being able to buy Common potions and Spell Scrolls from members (which is surprisingly handy), to getting magic items of varying rarity from the Ninth Quill's stores. There's nothing game-breaking here. But you can see the design framework at play: unlock a new tier of reputation, gain a benefit that either has a mechanical benefit (a magic item) or gives you something you didn't have before (access to safehouses, NPC aid). I imagine in the upcoming World of Warcraft book, we might see this turned up to eleven in terms of granularity. But for now, Arcana Unleashed is at least playing with more of the tools from the DMG toolbox. Look for Arcana Unleashed and Arcana Unleashed: Deadfall on September 16th! Advertisement Please note that BoLS may earn a commission when you purchase through links on our site. Author: J.R. Zambrano Bell of Lost Souls Staff Writer and DM, J.R. covers RPGs of all stripes and on occasion eats sandwiches. You can ask him about either at [email protected] Advertisement Read the Comments (0)