About DEEP SEKH

The history of DEEP SEKH begins at the end of the year 2003, only a few months after the release of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition.

DEEP SEKH is a convention-based, tournament-style game. It is both a competitive and cooperative game, and draws inspiration from more sources than can be listed here (though such attempts have been made in the past).

• Arcanum by Troika
• The Arkham Horror board game by Fantasy Flight Games
• Big Eyes, Small Mouth by Guardians of Order
• Cosmic Osmo, The Manhole, and the Myst Series, by Cyan
• The Diablo series by Blizzard
• Disgaea by Atlus
• Dungeons & Dragons by TSR/Wizards of the Coast
• Slaves to Armok: God of Blood, Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress by Bay 12 Games
• Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Fallout 3 by Bethesda
• Fallout 2 by Black Isle
• The Final Fantasy series by Squaresoft/Square-Enix
• Neverwinter Nights by Bioware
• Shin Megami Tensai: Persona 3 by Atlus
• The Soul Calibur series
• The Talisman board game

History of DEEP SEKH

DEEP SEKH began as a homebrew campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, and has evolved into something substantially different since those early days. As of Spring 2009, the game has progressed through at least seven distinct stages of development.

Season One

(Fall 2003)

Sometimes, when a feisty D&D group gets anxious waiting for the weekly game, they congregate outside of their regular play hours to get their gaming fix. This is how DEEP SEKH was born. Roughly two and a half months after beginning the "Seashire" campaign, Don, Keith and I came to the conclusion that we just weren't getting enough D&D. A hallmark of those days was the "Eleven-PM Phone Call" on Saturday that went along the lines of: "I'm bored--Do you want to get together and play D&D?"

Around that time, a debate had sprung up about the fundamentals of "Evil in Gaming" and we collectively came to the conclusion that most players who bragged about their evil characters were full of themselves. As a group, we decided we would set new standards for evil characters to live up to. Don elected to run the campaign for us. Don proposed that we begin the game at 12th level, which was higher than most of us had played of the new edition. Most of us wanted to play monsters, but he had yet to fully comprehend the concept of "Effective Character Level." What logically followed was a level of humbling hilarity.

Our first feat was to escape a drow prison in the Underdark, which took us to a city in the Outer Planes. As we approached the enormous city gates, a telepath welcomed us with the immortal words "We eat." We soon met "Glog," who registered us for the DEEP SEKH tournament. Don, raided innumberable third-party sourcebooks for the various chambermaids, slaves, healers, merchants, and enemy combatants. Ah, the good old days.

Season Two

When we learned the error of our ECL calculations, we decided to retire our previous characters and begin anew. We picked up another couple players -- during one notable session, we had a free-for-all that lasted for over six hours; most of the combatants died out in the first hour, but the battle raged on for another five hours with only two fighters remaining. Truly an epic battle worthy of the bards' tale. Our DEEP SEKH days drew to a close following a climactic battle with a drow priestess and her retinue. We scheduled a rematch which never happened.

Though we were playing the same game between seasons one and two, our comprehension of the intricacies of the Dungeons & Dragons system grew exponentially. We became increasingly proficient with many of the more obscure rules, and several of us became masters in more than a few specialized varieties of combat. We also became much, much more vicious in our play styles, as we took fewer risks and capitalized on more advantages. The level of depravity we reached in our DEEP SEKH battles would later serve to contrast with the humbler, devout characters some of us would later go on to play. Others, however, remained rooted deeply in the realm of chaos and evil...

Season Three

When we at last found time to revisit DEEP SEKH, we were no longer content with roleplaying in an ongoing story; we were only interested in waging constant battles with a continuous stream of characters at varying levels. We randomly determine ECL, built characters, and fought in one free-for-all death match after another. This series of games helped form the basic structure for the rules which DEEP SEKH tournaments would run for years to follow, such as rules with respect to invisibility and the ability to "pre-cast" spells for when the fight began. There was no DM and we sought to exploit every obscure rule we could find, going so far as to learn flying maneuvers, underwater combat rules and a wide variety of commonly misinterpreted and unused rules.

Don, Keith, Jack, Scott and I were the major players throughout these games. We learned a lot about D&D and how the rules interacted. And forgot a lot. Dozens of new characters and ideas came from these games. And lots of arguments, too. Since we kept our character concepts secret from one another, when a rule was misunderstood and came to light during a battle, tempers would flare and character sheets would be ripped to shreds. Voices were raised and dice were thrown. Oh yeah, we learned a lot. This series came to an end when the fighting tournaments eventually became far too stressful to continue.

Seasons one, two, and three are divided by periods of time and stages of development in our growth as players and game developers. Sure, we were playing the same game, but it didn't take long for us to find hard-and-fast fixes for the many problems we encountered in our games. And oh yes, 3.5 does have its issues.

Season Four

(Spring 2006)

Some time passed before DEEP SEKH picked up again. Life happened to several of us, and most of us were no longer available during the customary hours on Saturday nights. After another unsuccessful campaign concluded, Don picked up the Thursday night game slot (formerly our "real" D&D night). He ran another DEEP SEKH campaign at ECL 18, though I didn't participate in the campaign to any great length. From what I heard said about the campaign, Don fleshed out the city of Deep Sekh a great deal more and created a number of dungeons and notable NPCs.

Season Five

THE BRAVE DO NOT FEAR THE GRAVE

The final season of home-run DEEP SEKH tournaments was the most structured of our games. We created rigid character creation rules, set the standard ECL 2 for characters and set down precedents for how matches and team events were played. The Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game Guild Wars influenced the new DEEP SEKH tournaments heavily, as the concept of symbiotic character builds was realized. We began to play with two characters instead of one and we found that there was a lot less arguing when all of one's efforts were no longer focused on just a single character.

This incarnation of DEEP SEKH saw major changes to the playability of the game on a player-versus-player level, but also saw the breaking and re-making of a number of hard-and-fast fixes aimed at making particular Dungeons & Dragons rules items simpler, easier, and more enjoyable. The new Concealment rule made Concealment less of a hassle and cut down the number of dice rolled. Certain rules were established for determining just how much equipment would be assigned to characters, partly based on the Item Level system set down in the Magic Item Compendium. These were all fantastic new developments, but further evolution was inevitable.

Spring saw the beginning development a new magic system in an effort to simplify the existing system. This effort later became known as the Revised Core Magic System Project. It continued until the end of Fall 2007, when it became apparent that changes needed to be made to the core rules of the game, not just the magic system.

Season Six

(Winter 2007)

The new wave of DEEP SEKH Tournaments wasn't Dungeons & Dragons anymore. They use the basic conflict resolution of the d20 System, being that you "roll a d20, add modifiers, and beat a number." Anyone who followed along on the News page from the months of September-December 2007 (read Archived News) could tell you things were changing; things continue to shape and evolve. The skill list shrank and evolved. D&D deities, classes, and even the setting were thrown out in favor of a new setting based on Ancient Greek mythology. All the races of the first release of the DEEP SEKH Tournament underwent revisions; classes also saw radical changes, in light of structural changes resembling the Star Wars Saga Edition. The goal is fast-paced, team-based, strategic roleplaying. With the DEEP SEKH Tournament, we hope to evolve the cooperative, competitive, tabletop roleplaying genre, which we refer to as "Strategic Roleplaying Games."

Season Seven

EVERYTHING CAN BE EATEN

(Spring 2008)

The idea is to make a boardgame-inspired roleplaying game, one in which every player controls her character and participates in quests, interacts with NPCs and other characters, and progresses along the path to higher levels in a manner that is more gradual and less lethal. A clear, goal-oriented game doesn't intentionally pit players against each other, but instead serves as a platform to unite their characters and act as a springboard for future adventures and campaigns.

The first few levels of a character's career are the most difficult and tumultuous, as she faces hardships above and beyond what "commoners" face in their entire life. Though the hardships only increase after those first few levels, she has acquired power to aid her in her journey ... unlike those first fateful adventures where she has only slightly more power than the hapless monster-chow "level zero" commoners around her.

So what if the game was designed to facilitate a low-level character's growth? D&D's always been about telling the hero's story (whether the hero is truly a "hero" or not), so my question is: "What kind of story ends five minutes into the first dungeon when the heroine misses a Search check and a Reflex save?" In my opinion, that's the kind of fate that befalls hapless commonfolk and "red shirt" NPCs.

It remains my belief that DEEP SEKH wouldn't have reached the point of being a competitive/cooperative, adventure-oriented game without its beginnings as a fighting tournament. It has taken years of testing and constant building and reworking to evolve DEEP SEKH to this point, and I'm looking forward to a bright future.

(Winter 2008)

The boardgame-inspired roleplaying continues to grow and evolve. Many of the original concepts of DEEP SEKH, spawned during the first season of play and seen in various incarnation since then, are coming back; the war between opposing factions, different tiers of characters organized by complexity, etc.

A whole new city is being designed for the new year, based on a D&D campaign that began in November. The ruleset has been ruthlessly simplified and streamlined even further, and complexity in rules will be replaced with complex and evolving characters and stories. Expect 2009 to be a year of even greater progress in the world of DEEP SEKH than before!