Making Something out of Nothing

I will be working this evening at Playwrights Horizons, re-scheduled from last night, and doing some light work (in terms of hours and effort) tomorrow for a friend, so work is slowly trickling in, and there is much opportunity coming from auditions at Actor's Equity in the coming weeks. I have one on Friday, five next week, and more in the weeks moving into March.

Last night I made steady progress on the Vulgarian character class that I am developing for use with 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. The class started as a joke (and a disgusting one, at that), much as my first full-length play, Le Lycanthrope, started. Hmmm...anyway, just as with the play, the joke gets funnier to me the more seriously I take it by fleshing it out, which is what I have been doing.

Developing the class has been an inside-out exploration of the game mechanics of 4th Edition D&D as they pertain to the specific "roles" of the Adventuring Party (as opposed to the roles that people play as their character in the game), how the class functions as a class (with respect to individual builds, interplay in a combat encounter, concept flavour, et cetera) and what is required as a game designer in terms of its support. For instance, every power a character has in D&D has a power source. Makes sense, right? Power has to come from somewhere. Sorcerers, Warlocks, and Wizards use the Arcane power source that is sourced in a parallel plane called the Feywild (where elves and fey creatures come from), Clerics and Paladins use the Divine power source from the Astral Sea (where most of the gods live), Psions and Ardents use the Psionic power source from the phrenic planes (realms of the mind), et cetera. In April 2011, WOTC is unveiling Heroes of Shadow, their upcoming book on the Shadow power source (from the parallel plane of the Shadowfell). Every power source comes from some different plane of existence.

So I created the Defiling power source for Vulgarian character class, which is sourced from the Far Realm, D&D's version of the "other places" that the denizens of Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos hail from, which are known as "aberrant creatures". As far as I am aware, there is no power source from the Far Realm specifically, as of yet.
Deeper and deeper we go, for just as with the character class, the development of the Defiling power source makes me consider more:

• What are the other classes (that fulfill different Adventuring Party "roles") that may use it?
• What kinds of characters are drawn to using it?
• AND (taking definite cues from Lovecraft): What are the costs and perils of such usage?

What is also funny, is that what I am developing is turning into something that I can send to Wizards of the Coast (publishers of D&D) as a sample of what I am capable of as a freelance writer/artist: a creation that works within the mechanics of their system, while expanding it, that is both original and audacious and plainly presents an offensive thing as inoffensively as possible.
The Vulgarian class will not be the only thing that I present to WOTC, but it will be among the first, if not the first. As I believe I have made clear, I don't expect them to take the Vulgarian character class seriously, or to take the character class at all (i.e. buy it from me). No, I am creating the Vulgarian and its Defiling power source for 3 reasons:

1. To generate somethng solid for the WOTC people to understand what I could offer them as a freelancer.
2. To better understand the mechanics of the system of 4E D&D.
3. To have FUN by making something that is both ridiculous and workable!

Blessed Be