Telecanter's Receding Rules

Character Background Weight

2012-01-31T08:22:00.000-08:00

Here's a hypothesis: If there are some character background details that

a) impose less on the imagined world and other players, and
b) are more interesting, compelling, or challenging for players

there might be a subset that is true for both a) and b) that we could utilize even in old school games.

Assumptions
By imposes on the world I mean you want something for your player that will make certain things have to be true for our imagined but unexplored world. I had a player that wanted to play a Drow exiled because he was good. So, if I let him do that, first, it means there are Drow in my world, second, they are not innately evil, or at least their evil can mutate like hair color or something. It would also mean his character would have special racial powers, infravison, languages etc. It seems that impositions on the world fall into these two main categories assumptions about the greater world and personal power increases. Well, maybe a third as well-- player desire for the spotlight.

Fun Characters
I don't have a lot of experience trying to inhabit different creative and interesting characters in rpgs. I usually just play me with magic. Though I have played an alcoholic mage, a naive robot, etc. Still, I'm no expert on what someone who detests OD&D style "faceless pawns" wants in a character background. Is it hooks that can help them decide what this imagined person would decide in different situations? "He was an orphan so he's doesn't want to leave the kids behind." Or, is it more about a challenge? "Hold on, my priest's 23 strictures make this one tough."

I'm running out of time and have to get to work, but what would be some background details that might be true for both a) and b)?

Things common to all humans or societies seem like they would work: having a parent die young, being a member of a big family, moving a lot as a child, being an only child, etc.
Pseudo-medieval jobs might be safe (but even this depends on the weirdness of the world) : farmer, blacksmith, ostler.
Privileged backgrounds seem more in danger of assumptions: if you're a member of royalty how does that work in this world? How much money do you have? If a lot, why are you risking your life in the caves? Maybe you like adventure but your party members could probably make money safer by just holding you ransom.
Personality or physical traits seem like a good bet. I think my hireling traits chart does a good job of hitting the biggest ones. You're really tall, or never drink, foolhardy or sullen.
Crimes seem like a pretty universal thing too: did you murder someone in a fit of rage, commit adultery, are you a secret arsonist?

What else?

Serendipity XV

2012-01-25T17:05:00.000-08:00

Okay, you sweet bastards I'm still here lurking, though unable to do much because of work eating my brain. Here's a series of pictures I call "Mr. Raggi's Players Interact with NPCs." (I kid, James, I kid, haha).

"Where are the copper pieces!?"

And the orb of annihilation:

Actually that first one is the most brutal public domain pic I think I've ever seen. It's supposed to be the legendary way Marguerite de Bourgogne died but Wikipedia failed me here. What's the legend, history buffs?

Answers

2012-01-22T10:25:00.000-08:00


Questions we have given Thee, in the number Twenty-three.

Can I answer these and still be a rebel? Hah. Here you go:

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?
I like all my fairy-tale logic magic items and spells. I think people would benefit from more of these kinds of things in game rather than paragraph long descriptions trying to lay out every eventuality. And, hell you can't beat when a player cuts his own eye out with an obsidian blade to give his blind friend back one of her eyes. But you said pick one, so how about the Angel of Geometry.

2. When was the last time you GMed?

Not this Friday, but the Friday before. (I could have played this Friday but cancelled because I was exhausted from work.) I could probably be playing three times a week if I was independently wealthy which is crazy when I think about how hard it seemed to find kindred souls just 10 or 15 years ago.

3. When was the last time you played?

This Friday, eeeearly my time. (But wait, didn't you say you were exhausted. Hey, I couldn't pass up a chance at the Caves of Myrddin, and it paid off I got the Spaniard's Orb of Inversion!)

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.

This one seems kind of odd to me. Why is it we haven't run this adventure? I guess this assumes DM's having gamer ADD or something. If I think of a cool adventure it usually happens in the next week. I'm trying to run the best game I can. (I suppose you could think of an adventure that would be too high level for the current party, but I don't have any high level play experience so I'm not yet. I suppose you could think of an adventure that you don't think fits your world's genre/tone, but I pretty much mash all my interests into my one psuedo-medieval/ Sinbadian smoothie. I suppose you could just be bubbling with ideas for adventures, but why not buckle down and develop the one that's coming up in a week. Maybe I'm just of a different temperament.)

But also, doesn't this question push more towards adventures as stories DMs prepare? My PCs end up having adventures shopping in Nidus. Ok, enough, moving on . . .

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

I don't like waiting for them to do things, (unless it is part of the fun, like heist planning- but usually it's bickering about which way to go in a corridor or whether they should leave the dungeon or explore just one more door) So I say "Ok, what are you doing?" and I roll for wandering monsters. In combat I'm even less patient; if it's your init I start counting to 5 before I move to the next person. I really want the combats tense and snappy.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

Sometimes my players have cooked things-- potato skins, chili. We had some nice games where everyone ate dinner together, chit-chatting before we played. But usually just beer.

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Yes. I try to dramatize the abstract combat dice rolls and riff on previous events. That takes attention and creativity. It' true that I get adrenalined-up and have a hard time sleeping afterward, but I'm still wiped out. It would probably be better if we didn't start at 7:00 pm at the end of a day, at the end of a long week, of work. But I imagine even if we played during the day I'd just take my extra energy to try to up my game.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

Climbing up a Cthulhuoid horrors's cloaca and stabbing its brain from the inside, haha.

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

This is a very good question. I find that sometimes I undermine the mood of a game by taking a joke opportunity when things were getting creepy. Tone is tough. But usually, goofiness and joking is meta, and my game tries to maintain a dry brutal, serious, creepiness. You can laugh at what the goblins were doing but you're still dead.

10. What do you do with goblins?

I came to despise the idea of humanoids. But I guess I reconciled with goblins by making them my own (which is sort of the whole point of OD&D style DMing, right?) I reinserted kobolds and goblins as something from the mythic underworld-- hard to predict, odd, and offputting. Why are they here? Where do they come from? Why are they slathering that zombie abbot's pale naked body with honey? Of course I don't call them "goblins" and my "kobolds" are just weaker versions of the same things.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

Not sure, but probably the South Pointing Chariot, except it points to a tower in the middle of some lava-tubed, broken lands (hard to pull a chariot there).

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

Have a lot of these, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the funniest, but what comes to mind was when the PCs were running a heist on a shrine and the Cleric Toral tried to rile up the crowd of pilgrims to cause a distraction. He succeeded so incredibly (I think he rolled the big d30, and my reaction roll was max, and he had high Char) that the crowd wasn't just distracted but became incensed and started ripping the guards limb from limb.

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?

The GURPs Goblins book at the recommendation of Richard Guy and Chris Hogan. I'm on the lookout for any cool game innovation and it sounds like this book has several. But I have to confess, I have a hard time sitting still and reading any more. I think all this internet and blog reading has atrophied my attention span and I have a hard time reading more than a page before my head's spinning with other ideas and I want to get up and walk around, go do something.

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

Someone that makes illustrations that tell a story. I am so sick of pictures of people looking "badass." Remember "no honor among thieves," from the DMG? Or the one with the guy trapped in water and cell bars with a skeleton coming. Or the one (from a White Dwarf ad?) that showed all the dead skeletons reaching for the huge diamond? Or, hell even the alignment illustration from Moldvay. Yeah, more pictures like that. Here, illustrators, I'll even give you one: couple down and out guys trapped behind iron bars, using a golden sceptre as a lever, golden crown as a fulcrum, to try to lift the bars. Sceptre is just starting to bend.

I should say, the best art wouldn't have to have a little scene in it. Your picture (Zak) of the obese succubus has a lot of story just in her expression for me. She looks bored or wistful and, under the conditions she is experiencing it, that is interesting.

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

I think so. As much as any movie does (if not more). You'd have to ask my players, but there was a time where a naked, female ghoul picked the party off one by one in the darkness. And the time a pc who's player has arachnophobia (I didn't know) was climbing up onto a ledge and a giant spider bit his face, killing him.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)

I haven't. Part of it is NIH syndrome, a kind of cocky, thinking I can do better. But part of it is the opposite; a complete lack of confidence "how can I remember all these facts and get this right?" I do love looking at adventures because other than after play reports it's really the only chance you have to learn how people do this DM thing. This usefulness is undermined by people who write modules throwing everything they do at the table out and creating something completely different, like railroads and tournament modules, because they think that's what a module is.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

Big oval table seating 10, felt covered. Side table for my junk. Room for me to walk around the whole table. Well-lit. Walking distance from where I'm staying.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

I haven't had much gamer ADD, been pretty happy with D&D and trying to make it work but I was really impressed by the way DC Heroes fit Ma Kent and Superman on the same chart. I would like to look at that again. And I spent a few years developing a system of magic that used sentence like structure (SVO) to cast on the spot spells, only to find Ars Magica beat me to it. Haven't played it but was impressed.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

The Bible and Walt Disney. (that last one completely surprised me right now, but the genre-summing-up that the original Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion do, seems a lot like what I'm attempting in my D&D. I mean, "what does the perfect haunted house need in it?", seems very similar to "what does the perfect classic dungeon need in it?").

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?

I guess the kind of person you'd want at a party; friendly, interesting, funny. I almost said I want people that won't sit there quietly, but will be active, but I changed my mind, I want quiet players too, as long as they enjoy the game, the company, and my DMing. It's just with quiet players it's hard to determine that.

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?

Hah, this terrifying raccoon.

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?

A book on DMing. Everything I've ever read on the subject was so abstract or light as to be useless. A lot of good questions get in depth discussion on blogs, if only they were compiled, arranged, and added to. And I don't mean DMing tips, as if we were homemakers wanting to know how to better clean our whites (that we already know how to get partially white), I mean stuff like how do you run a campaign, when, in the real world you will have different players every week? How the hell do you start a campaign as a newbie DM? How do you organize your junk so it doesn't slow play enough to start affecting how fun the game is? What do you do when players show up an hour late to a session? These probably go the opposite way and are too specific, but I guess what I want is someone to lay out DMing theory-- show how you can devise practices from it, and vice versa, show some DMing lore that has worked for a lot of DMs and try to figure out the underlying reasons.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?

Yeah, my blog is pretty important to my sanity and enjoyment these days. And not just because of gaming (I've learned a lot about audience, writing, and the blog post as genre). So, if you're in my life I'm going to be talking about it at some point. Unfortunately, it is so alien that these folks just don't understand. My parents and my boss don't even grok video games, so they can't even use that as a metaphor to understand our game. In the end, I think they know I like to try and minimalize and innovate in all things and they figure I'm doing something similar in the realm of a child's game. But there is always that sense of being wary-- wasn't this that Satanic game with demons and magic?-- which I suppose is partially warranted with some of the godawful creepy things I have goblins doing to try and mess with my players.

Serendipity XIV

2012-01-12T00:11:00.000-08:00

These images are all public domain.

Work is brutal; spent the last two days trying to find a way to not lay off people while maintaining minimum services with a cut budget. Know this isn't really a personal blog but I want to explain why my posting will suck for a while because I come home with a head like a scraped-out melon.

Five

2012-01-09T08:34:00.000-08:00

So, I called it three years ago. I don't think the reboot has so much to do with a failure on 4e's part as a natural part of selling game rule books. Once you've sold all your players books, you have to change the rules to sell them more. (I'll go out on a limb again and say that even the fan-beloved Pathfinder is getting long in the tooth, expect a revamp in the next year or so). Sure, 4e might have underperformed what Hasbro hoped for, but 5e was inevitable.

But that isn't why I wanted to post. I've learned a lot in the last three years and one of the biggest things is that even if every roleplayer in existence is wowed by whatever 5 turns out to be and switches immediately and unanimously, there are plenty of players available to play in games of whatever homebrew you want to use as long as it's relatively simple and fun.

I was afraid before. Afraid the shifting of the official game culture would leave me outside of the conversation, excluded, playerless. But with some more DMing experience under my belt and some confidence because of it, I know I can have players till the day I die.

So, I hope people that love 4e aren't bummed out too much-- you can keep on playing-- and I hope people don't get too excited to see what Hasbro's going to make for them next. Hey, roll your own.

Character Sheet 2.0

2012-01-08T16:44:00.000-08:00

I love index cards. They're cheap, common, and standard-- all great qualities for a DIY material. But as I've gotten more play under my belt, keeping track of player stuff has become a problem. Players have cards I give them for treasure (potions, scrolls, gems, etc), poker chips to track ammo, little notes they've found in dungeons, and hireling cards.

The party was finding torn out pages all over Animal Island

How do you keep track of all that junk? Especially if you have a player base that rotates and changes a lot (like mine) and you don't have a stable place of your own to game (like me)?

I sat down to try and come up with a solution. I wanted it to use a single sheet of paper, require only folding, and be simple. And I wanted that sheet of paper to also function as the character sheet. I think I've got it:

Here are pdfs for Fighter, Magic-User, Cleric, and Thief. These are probably too specific to my own game to be of use to anyone else, but print one out and try it to see if you might want to make your own (you can also import the pdfs as images into an editor to make sure you've got the dimensions right before making it your own). They're pretty simple to fold but I'll walk you through it:

Fold in half lengthwise.

Then fold that in half so the heart shows.

Fold along the dotted line.

Unfold everything, turn graphics-down, and fold the corner up.

Fold over the flap at the same dotted line.

Fold it back lengthwise again.

And in half again.

Now you've got a little pocket:

It's not perfect, but doesn't require staples or anything.

I made the backs so I could store them opening-up (maybe in a coupon holder). I think I'll use colored paper clips to help distinguish which sheet is which player's (yes, sorting this out takes us a lot of time) and also to make sure the stuff doesn't fall out:

I might make some revisions later but that took me all day and I'm happy that at least it's better than my groups' current situation.

Grab Bag Storerooms

2012-01-02T09:29:00.000-08:00

Happy 2012! Wow, the last few days flew by. At ze Bulette's recommendation I finally took the plunge and bought Minecraft. I'm just about to go back down in the mine but I had a thought.

One of the places that's difficult for me in DMing is a room full of junk, because, invariably, through tone of voice or body language I tip off whether there is something valuable to search for or not. And when players find something, whether that was it or that they should keep searching. I wish that was more of a player choice.

How about listing all the items in a room on index or business size cards and when players say they want to search the room you flop them all on the table. So, not grab bag in the sense of players inputing creatively like with the treasure post, but in the sense of physical items they can paw through in real time.

Who is busy searching when you roll that wandering monster encounter? Well, the players actually physically looking at the cards. How long does it take them to search? Maybe a turn per card. That way you know this room stuffed with junk like Tut's tomb, with each item on a separate card, will take hours to search. This, still-used storeroom with things organized on shelves has each shelf on a card, 2 turns.

Or I suppose you could time players in real time. You might put several layers of information on a card-- say , the front just says small cask, but the back says weight in stone, smells sticky and sweet, estimated price if it's unfouled honey, etc. Players can quickly glance at the fronts to see if anything interests them. To turn a card over will coast another half a turn or so of search time.

The Pre-Mapped Dungeon

2011-12-29T09:09:00.000-08:00

The pre-mapped dungeon has come up a few times in conversations on this blog. I think one place was regarding heists and the other was involving tactile maps. I thought of it again in regards to hobo signs and cadger maps (more on those later). I thought it might be good to think a little about what qualities a pre-mapped dungeon would have that are different than the normal unknown dungeon. What I'm talking about here is when players receive a map of a dungeon with rooms, traps, and creatures marked on it.

The pre-mapped dungeon is more about strategy than exploration. Knowing what is in a dungeon means players can plan a course through it and decide which spots they most want to visit. Or, more likely, which spot might hold the item they seek. In this sense assaulting the pre-mapped dungeon is very heist-like.

Dealing with dangers you expect lends more of a fairy tale quality to this kind of dungeon. Knowing there is a roper in a cave you must pass through means you can try to plan for how to neutralize it. You have to decide what items to bring. You might perform several side-quests to acquire items and people you'll need to succeed. Maybe the Flute of Resting will put the roper to sleep, but it's in the Grove of Sighs . . .

Because the point is planning, I think it would be very frustrating for the map of a dungeon to be deceptive. If, for example, it says "no traps here" on a corridor and you, as DM, decide a new kobold tribe has filled that corridor with traps. Well, that kinda sucks. Because you've taken away both the fun of discovering a new place and undermined the player's ability to strategize. (Also, anything that would make the players want to ignore their map seems counterproductive if you're going to got to the trouble of giving them one)

It could be interesting if players knew that the map they'd been given of a particular dungeon was intentionally false. They would still be able to strategize, just everything becomes more complicated. Is the falseness of the map in saying there are traps in corridor 1 because there are none actually, or that the type of traps is incorrect (not pits but darts)? I don't know that this added complexity is worth it. It might be based on the context of who gives the players the map and why.

While giving players a map of a dungeon just to screw with what they expect doesn't seem worth it to me, the difference between expectation and reality in a pre-mapped dungeon can lead to surprise, which is one of the joys of exploration. So, what are some differences that might be more interesting than frustrating?

I think changes that are not due to deception:

The dungeon has aged
the environment has changed (wetter, drier)
a new culture has moved in (elves, social insects)
the mapper misunderstood (he couldn't read the native language)
the map is from memory (and some things are slightly distorted)

I also think changes that allow for additional, on-the-spot strategizing could work. So, if you know where traps are, maybe you can try to lead the ants into them. If you know water has filled the Southern portion of the dungeon, you can revise your plans. Was there anything down there worth retrieving? If so how will you maneuver through the submerged halls? Does this require leaving the dungeon altogether and returning with more supplies?

Change of function could be a quality to focus on, too. I'm learning as a DM that a key aspect of exploratory dungeon delving is player recognition of what a place was for. And there really aren't too many possibilities (probably less than 100 clear functions we humans use places for in a lower technology setting). One way to change a dungeon that could be interesting is to juxtapose these. Have what your map says is a shrine be the orcs' jacks now. The jail is now a menagerie. The old kitchen is now a crude alchemical lab, etc. Discovering and interpreting this repurposing adds back some of the exploration element to the pre-mapped delve.

I think you can give players a sense of this repurposing in a dungeon without them having a map of the dungeon but, it's more complicated. They have to discern both "This looks like their throne room" and "But I think it used to be a chapel." With a map that has functions like "chapel" written on it, the players can have a sort of narrative of a place-- how a fortification is set up, how creatures lived day to day-- and the differences they discover will emphasize how things have changed, perhaps giving a sense of time passing and verisimilitude.

Another way to make a dungeon feel real and have a sense of history is to give the map a history. Where has the map been kept all these years? Who know about it? Has anyone used it before? But most importantly: who made the map? Were they famous? Might there be other maps out there made by the same person? What marginalia or quirks of drawing does this person have? Did they leave markings or carvings in a dungeon that correspond to the map. Maybe the map is more than a map-- a whole narrative, a journal, a diary. Maybe there is no map but a narrative. This could lead to players having to interpret metaphors "First, fly down the hall of the fire worms" What the heck does that mean? This seems like it would be more puzzle-like than allowing for strategy. The payoff becomes less the sense of surprise than that of understanding. Not "the altar is being used as a bed!" but "Oh, the Plate of the God is an altar."

A few ideas to leave you with:

a map made in stages by generation of monks
a map recovered from a corpse by their adult child
a found map that relates the tragic failure of an expedition
multiple maps of the same dungeon with slight differences
a metaphorical map: images of serpents indicate halls, birds chambers
map as a cultural artifact: like the polynesian maps of currents around islands (maybe dwarven maps focus on veins of ore, not chambers)
Odd maps: the tattoo, the map woven into beautiful clothing, the map etched in the metal of a sword or shield

Grab Bag Treasure

2011-12-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

A comment from fluerdemal blew my mind. What if you enlist players in determining treasure? Here's the idea:

Print a sheet with potions, spell scrolls, protection scrolls, monetary amounts, and maybe a few minor magic items. Let each player choose two and put them in a communal grab bag. Next treasure found, a player gets to pull from the grab bag to determine what it is.

I think it might work better if each player doesn't know what the other players picked. That way they can't game the system and fill it full of the same spell that the party mage most desperately wants (though, the other players might not want to do that anyway if there are items more attractive to their class).

I think it might work better also, if, when the players draw from the grab bag, they just hand their draw to the DM and don't look at it. This allows for the risk and excitement of potions and unidentified magic items.

I don't think all treasure needs to be determined this way, maybe one player determined item per cache. That allows the DM to balance risk to reward better and still include artifacts and cursed items that players might never pick.

Okay, with all those qualifications, why bother? 1) I think it might be fun and exciting to physically draw something out of a grab bag during play (though, the second qualification above undermines this, hmm . . .) 2) if you don't replenish the grab bag until it's completely empty it gives the game a quest like quality. Players will know that they are getting closer and closer to a cache containing a scroll of mirror image and will be excited to search for it.

Have you done anything similar in your game? How did it work out? What if you let players come up with their own spell names, npcs, or traps too? A lot of the burden of player creativity is having to do it on the spot, but spending some time creating together, putting off the reveal until later, and especially keeping secret who made what might make players feel easier about contributing to the imagined world.

Happy Santicore

2011-12-26T14:09:00.000-08:00

Santicore has come and left a shiny, free gift. Go here. The entries look nice & interesting. Thanks to Jez and all the contributors.

If you already saw my post about goblin alchemical mishaps, know that the version in Secret Santicore is revised and expanded. The chart of pre-made mishaps is now 40 entries.

For best results with my dice-drop chart, print two, cut out the inner circle and then secure it on top of the second with a paperclip. Spin with each roll. Otherwise you'll get overly similar results.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T11:30:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, friends.

Status Markers

2011-12-23T17:37:00.000-08:00

Players running around maimed, drunk, or infused with cheetah DNA? This might help keep track of all the shenanigans. This pdf is a sheet of business-card size markers. Print, cut.

To display in front of players, the two simplest ways I could think of: 1) take an index card. Fold in half lengthwise like a little tent. Cut two slots. Insert relevant markers:

Deaf & Poisoned

Downside is it's limited to two, upside is you can write the PC's name across the bottom.

2)Second option, just fold the marker in half and put a paper clip on it:

Downside is they might get shuffled around the table, upside is super simple, and your players can have tons in front of them.

I've seen Cyclopeatron use a little yellow slip with a lantern on it to indicate light bearer. I need to make some of those.

If you're using minis, Dan C. over at Dungeoneering Dad suggests the little color rings around milk and soda as easy to get, multi-colored markers.

What effects do you need? I'll try to make them.

Discovery!

2011-12-23T04:34:00.000-08:00

Look Familiar? If you're a grognard it should. I was trawling through the public domain books at archive.org when I found this picture by H. J. Ford in the Green Fairy Book. I recognized it immediately as the model for Dave Trampier's cloud giant:

It's cool how many features he kept, though I think Ford's tilted torso seems less static, has more character. And I'd always wondered a bit about those long canines, but it makes sense now, Ford uses them a lot to indicate non-human bugaboos: goblins, djinn, giants etc.

It's odd because I thought I'd gone through all the colored fairy books looking for art already. But I must have missed the Green book, because I don't recognize the other illustrations.

Silhouettes XXXIV

2011-12-22T20:20:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty proud of this one. I had a skeleton but, though its crawling pose was creepy, it wasn't a classic Harryhausen D&D skelly. The source pic:

came from a Swords & Dorkery post I can't find any more. As you can see, I gave him the sword, shield and did a little chiropractic on his spine.

I just methodically went through the zip file of silhouettes cropping, scaling, cleaning, and even renaming some. I hope the tighter files will work better in Jensan's Telemonster generator and reduce the size of the archive as a whole.

These others aren't essential as monsters, but were easy to convert. The baboon can be another stand in for the "ape" monster:

Silhouettes XXXIII

2011-12-21T20:55:00.000-08:00

The dreaded Dimetrodon:

Rhamphorynchus:

And a War T-Rex:

And finally the dread of all sailors, the man-eating manatee:

And the formidable manatee-cavalry:

Map Insets

2011-12-21T07:59:00.000-08:00

I watched the Lord of the Rings again with family over the weekend. And when Strider points out Amon Sûl, something struck me. An icon on a map isn't going to give players as evocative of sense of that place as an actual image. And I thought of Victorian illustrated texts with their illustrations framed in circles and rectangles that nestle right into the text. Why not do that for a player map?

I'm pretty sure I've seen these on tourist maps and historical ones, but I can't seem to find any. And I don't remember ever seeing a module with a player map that utilized this kind of zoomed in insert. I hope you correct me with a bunch of examples in the comments. Anyway, I wanted to mock up a crude proof of concept:

I realize now that this is basically the same as Zak's illustrated dungeons. But then those are meant for the DM, and what I'm imagining would be meant for players, to help them decide where they wanted to go in a sandbox.

The inset pics would need to be things that were fairly common knowledge to the surrounding communities. Essentially, the pics are a stand in for the rumors, descriptions, and lore people tell the players about locations. If players are exploring new territories, and you feel up to it as a DM, you could add insets as players pass close enough to featured locations.

Update: I played around with the idea a little more. Imagine these insets bordering the whole map, those near the starting point of the campaign filled in, those farther away unknown. But, you know something is there. You could give players XP for every Wonder of your campaign world they uncover.

Email Hacked

2011-12-20T11:12:00.000-08:00

Apparently someone took over my Yahoo account last night and changed the primary email address by adding an extra "r" then spammed the contact list. I got back in, changed the password. But if you ever emailed that account you probably got a spam message. Sorry.

I understand people breaking into accounts and spamming to get $$, I don't get why they would then delete all my email and contacts in that account. Unless it's a side effect of the hacking method, just seems spiteful.

Anyway, here are a few silhouettes to try and be positive and keep moving forward:
A second humanoid:

Gnoll

His forebear:

And where they live:

Spell Research for Players

2011-12-19T22:53:00.000-08:00

Here's an idea to get players more involved with investigating new spells: reveal the actual spell info to the player as they successfully learn more and more.

It's not as exciting as a player coming up with their own spells, but not everyone wants to get as creatively invested. It could also be good if you want more control over the spells that will be possible in your campaign, or even if only a single caster can know any one spell at a time (wasn't that Mr. Rient's idea?).

(Why make players go through the process of research if you already have a list of spells? Well it can still be engaging as a mini-game, especially if you have some kooky random failures possible during research.)

Anyway, let the player see a list of possible spells they can choose to research. They'll have to make a decision based on just the name. Maybe you'll allow them to research incrementally into different spells, finding out a little more about each one before sinking all their time and money into learning one. Maybe you'll allow them to try casting a spell before it's fully researched, but if you, the DM, carefully craft the spell ahead of time you can make this very risky.

Let's take the Fortunate Punishment as an example. And I should pause to say the last time I wrote about this spell, I made it seem like I invented the spell in the comments (hell, I didn't remember if I had, or one of my players, or . . .). But it was actually invented by the brilliant Stuart. So thanks to him, and sorry about that, sir. Now the example:

If each line of text corresponds to 100gp, or maybe a week of research, then giving players just a list of titles would prevent them from knowing even how much work they have to do to unravel that spells mysteries. If you want to be easier on them you could start with the whole spell text blurred out. In the case of our example it would mean about 5 successful steps to know everything about the spell. Each week, or research roll, or however you want to do it, you show the player the next image with another line clear.
Now, this would take a lot of work on the DM's part to make each reveal dramatic or a tease. But then, you could probably even take the standard spells and hide range, material components, and casting time, to be dramatic too, depending on the spell.

Silhouettes XXXII

2011-12-19T16:46:00.000-08:00

Here you are, good people, finally a dragon. Below, a tower, a dragon turtle and few extras.I also clipped the halfling's feathered cap and tweaked the goblin to look more gobliny (big ear, big nose). These are all in the zip file linked to the right.

Serendipity XIII

2011-12-19T12:13:00.000-08:00

I've got some time off work now and so I went back through my hard drive seeing if there were any pictures I never shared that might be worth sharing. These are what I found:

These are some possible tomb entrances:

I really like this last one, a ship as a hut, or covering a tomb entrance, but the text from the page behind the pic is showing up as banding. Graphics wizards, is there a way to get rid of that? I've tried messing with the contrast and the levels, but they're still there:

Silhouettes XXXI

2011-12-17T10:26:00.000-08:00

Saw a cool Brontosaurus with howdah here so I wanted one:

I was going to put a rider on a T-rex but realize I don't have any riders (other than the camel nomads) , I'll have to try and rectify that. Another OD&D monster:

Medusa

A dragon of the Asian persuasion:

A little feller for the halfling rogue lovers among you:

And this cobbled together, demure, young female is what I used as the middle of the age progression I posted yesterday:

Blog Archiving

2011-12-16T12:25:00.000-08:00

A quick question. As far as I know the export blog feature on Blogger just saves the text and links to the pics, right? It must, because my xml file is only 10megs. Are there any good tools you know of that will archive posts pics and all? Maybe even slurp down linked files?

Here's a little silo for your time:

Serendipity XII

2011-12-15T21:07:00.000-08:00

Been a while since one of these posts too. I like the colors of this first one. I suppose it could be dear old Nidus.

Here is George Carlin investigating which of his apprentices hung the alligator:

The Tomb of Darius, Nahkli-Rustam:

Silhouettes XXX

2011-12-15T13:42:00.000-08:00

I wanted to have a dragon for the 30th installment of this silhouette series, but didn't find anything that looked like the D&D conception of a dragon. Oh well, there lots of other stuff. Here we have another OD&D monster:

Lion

And possibly our very first humanoid! What does this look like to you?:

That came from a children's book monkey, haha. Here's a war elephant:

What follow were silhouettes already and so preparing them was much faster:

Here is my attempt at an icon to represent age or npc background:

And now for more mashups:

Remember these are all public domain and yours to make cool stuff with. These have all been added to the zip file in the sidebar to the right (the last batch too, Theodric). Hope things are winding down for you all this year, cheers!

Secret Santicore!

2011-12-14T12:42:00.000-08:00

Here's my gift of Goblin Alchemical Mishaps. First a chart:

And next something a little more ambitious, a game where you drop your dice and generate mishaps with the whole family:

I think it would work better if the two wheels could spin independently, but I ran out of time. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

Jensan's Generator

2011-12-11T17:34:00.001-08:00

The Forging of Telemonster

If you haven't yet, go check out telemonster.pushingcows.se I reluctantly offered some suggestions to Jensan to make the web tool more useful to me as a DM. He implemented them better than I imagined.

If you visited before, you'll need to clear some cookies for it to work. But clicking on a monster silhouette now brings up a box of possible monsters and a little text box which narrows the possibilities as you type. It also allows for blanks in case there isn't a silhouette for your creature yet.

I offer a lot of ideas up on my blog, but this is something I think will actually be handy for me in DMing Wandering monsters in different dungeons.

The whole site is downloadable. I'm guessing that it wouldn't be too hard to use whatever images you want to plug in, but better hear from Mr. Jensan about that. Thanks, Sir!

Silhouettes XXIX

2011-12-10T23:41:00.001-08:00

Looks like my computer is good to go which makes me quite happy. Here's my first silhouettes post in a couple months. OD&D monster:

Ent

Plus a harpy and a hippo:

Could've sworn I'd done a hippo before but couldn't find one. Now you can have your hippo trap in the dungeon with the luring hippo. And here's another mashup:

I'll put these in the zip a bit later, have to figure out some ftp issues.

Alchemical Mishaps - Brainstorming

2011-12-10T09:35:00.001-08:00

This is towards my super secret Santicore request-- I'm running out of time and I'm kinda drawing a blank so I need to brainstorm with an audience. The actual request was "goblin alchemical mishaps." When I see "goblin" I think, "oh, so it's probably not a player character, but then how will we know about this mishap?" Perhaps evidence of the mishap will be encountered in a dungeon? I suppose you could stretch mishap to mean a weird potion result that players find. But interesting potions would require completely different mechanics than interesting scenes/damaged goblins. And when I hear "alchemical mishap" I immediately think of an explosion, not a ruined potion. So, I'll forge ahead with the catastrophic accidents angle and leave weird potions for some later potion miscibility table.

So, one way to brainstorm is to tear your immediate easy answer into its component parts and then use them to come up with more ideas. With lab explosion I'm thinking:

size: is it like snap crackle pop, or nuke in the dungeon?
shrapnel: bits of glass, color, bits of alchemical agents universal solvents, universal adhesives, vacuum
what caused it: gases, flame, liquid chemicals, helper spirits, helper beast like a flame salamander
resulting damage: broken walls/windows, fires
other lab-type accidents: think back to college chemistry-- spills, over-titrating, cuts, broken glass, setting fire to alcohol on the bench (hah, that was always fun)

That's got me several table entries already, I think. The problem with this kind of generating is that I feel like I'm approaching it like an engineer rather than a poet. Maybe letting the reins loose with some associative brainstorming would be good. But I still feel like I need a clear angle, so, "What would be cool for players to encounter as evidence of a past alchemical mishap?"

permanent shadows on the walls
tiny, floating, pea-sized planets orbiting a tiny star
bits of vacuum everywhere
a void-- just a black hole, 1', to nothingness
living murals, pulsating red hearts, blue lung fairies
coalescing, colored, permanent gases that explode infrequently
everburning fires
puddles of potion

I'm realizing that language can be generative for me too, like the alliteration in that last bit, should try just playing with words and see if anything cool comes up, worry about interpreting it later:

a fountain of spirit
a stone of change
sixteen shattered spheres
aromas of the seven true feelings
the mother of man
the evergenesis
fire nests
a talking toad

Now I'm realizing I'm drifting from accident scenes to artifacts left over. I could try to push more in that direction. What crap do alchemists work with/on?

brass head
golem
philosopher's stone
universal reagents
potions/powders
alembics
still
oven
elements/chemicals
homunculi
lead to gold transformations

So, what if you had homunculi of the pcs, I mean they will grow into perfect clones, or of the pcs parents (hat tip to Mr. Sabbath)? Or:

lead coins embedded in walls
sulfur snakes
a drunken golem
glass head terrified of being broken
globules of hovering mercury
everburning oven
distillate of memories of emotions

Now I'm thinking that I haven't really dealt with the adjective "goblin" yet. I'm guessing that means they will be kooky, ne'erdowells sort of like tinker gnomes always messing stuff up. Adds a bit of humor. Not really to my gaming taste, but if I think of them more as gremlins-- being in blenders, electrocuting themselves-- maybe that more sinister angle I can do. I think I might use this as an entry point for some more brainstorming tomorrow.

Victorian Hugos

2011-12-08T18:25:00.001-08:00

I spent a lot of time searching for and collecting the books in James Cawthorn and Micheal Moorcock's Fantasy: The 100 Best Books. I don't remember how many I managed to find before I got distracted doing other things, 70, 80? I also had the Horror version and that added 100 more titles to be on the lookout for.

If you like that kind of thing, hunting out both the classics and the origins of genre fiction, you should really check out a series by Jess Nevins at io9. It speculates on what the Hugo awards might have been given to if they'd started back in the 1880's rather than the 1950's.

Here is:

hat tip to Metafilter where I saw this.

Web Generator for Wandering Monster PocketMods

2011-12-08T09:38:00.001-08:00

Jensan made an awesome generator for wandering monster type pocketmods. Go here. Click on the images to randomly cycle through the silhouettes, click on the text to change it.

You need Chrome or a newer Firefox to take advantage of the awesome, but I thought it was a pretty slick meeting of the newness of tech and the oldschool of paper folding. Thanks Jensan!

A PocketMod Portfolio

2011-12-07T11:38:00.001-08:00

Sick of these yet? Hope not. I realized old manila file folders are a great solution here because they are heavier than 32lb paper and slightly bigger than the letter size paper they are meant to hold. So, if you've got an old file folder and a razor blade you can make a little portfolio and hold up to 4 pocketmods open to a certain page:

6 closed little booklets, or combinations of the two:

That's assuming you are using one page and the other page is taken up by an annotated map. If you use both sides of the file folder double the number it will carry.

The cool thing is that the razor slits don't interfere with each other. I'm not sure I would use this for wandering monsters, this is sort brainstorming what the tools are capable of rather than filling a need (what I started with).

A Pack of PocketMods

2011-12-06T17:17:00.001-08:00

Ok another idea: what if you made a master sheet to hold, not business-size cards, but pocketmods themselves?

Now, the whole point of the pocketmod is its convenient size so it makes no sense to then go and put them on a normal size piece of paper . . . unless sub-organization that doesn't require flipping through pages to utilize is somehow helpful. In the pic I imagined having a different set of wandering monsters for night, day, and rainy weather. Yeah, you could probably still have separate pages for those things, but it was fun and maybe you can think of an even better use.

Programmers . . .

2011-12-06T08:49:00.001-08:00

So, the original PocketMod was about customizing your own booklet by plugging in your choice of a bunch of different pages. How hard would it be to make a tool like that for wandering monsters cards? If you had a directory full of images, one for each monster, you could select whichever ones you wanted to appear in the booklet pdf that is created.

Alternatively, how about, not a pocketmod booklet, but a single page, something like Dave's Mapper, but instead of geomorphs it pulled up from a pile of different wandering monster cards. How hard to do that?

Wandering Monsters PocketMod

2011-12-05T20:48:00.000-08:00

Okay, you're hanging at you friends and they say "Hey, let's play some D&D!" and you're all "Dude, I don't have any of my books." But then you remember you have Citadel of Evil in one pocket and your custom made wandering monsters booklet in the other. Game On!

Hah, it could happen. Okay, as before, this is a proof of concept-- you could put more info on each creature (dmg, AC, HD).

Wandering Monster Cards cont.

2011-12-04T08:10:00.001-08:00

Continuing my project of trying to streamline the wandering monster process in my game. I thought of a few things since the last post: 1) I love the simple white HD number on a black silhouette, nothing easier for me to read, but I realize different systems might have different numbers for creatures or that you might want to tinker as a DM with variant and such. So we could leave a blank circle to write in HD like this:

I don't think I would even need explicit spots for attack and defense #s, you can just write attack high and defense low. But if you think it is necessary I think a greyed out sword and shield would indicate where to write the numbers.

2) I realized the silhouette of a creature might not give you important information without more context. I was thinking mostly of how traditional D&D has different sized spiders. Sure, the HD number might give you the tip off but it isn't going to be easy to read at a glance. So how about something like this, with multiple sizes and the one for this encounter is darkest:

Update: How about a master sheet that looks something like this:

It assumes 2d6 with a variety of probability categories.

Update2: Here are cards cut out and placed in the master sheet:

Of course I haven't put any of the HD or stats for the critters or rolled hit points, just wanted to see how they'd look. Pretty good if I do say so myself. I'm using 32 lb paper for the master sheet and the cards, and a razor blade to cut the places the cards slip into. Easy and sturdy. I realize this may be too fiddly for everyday gaming, but maybe not. And if nothing else it could be handy for con games or beginning DMs.

Update3: I realized the card corners were unused space anyway, so no need to scrunch the numbers on the side. Also, the little ear icon is showing how you might put the kind of explicit triggers mr. Zak mentioned (sound, magic-use, pull the lever) next to the encounter they would bring. Of course you could just scribble them in.

Wandering Monsters Mock-up

2011-12-02T11:31:00.001-08:00

So, combining the ideas from several recent posts, here is a mock-up of how I'll try to do wandering monsters (disregard the little house pictures that's from a previous unrealized idea and I'm just using them because they're business card size).

The page on the right will have the map and most of the info I need will be on the map. Of course some charts will be necessary for magical pools and stuff, but they will only become important when they're fiddled with so they can be put behind the map.

I'll write in numbers beside the cards. If a wandering number is called for I'll roll and the first card in that slot is the encounter. I can have a coupls cards in each slot. I'd like to have a silhouette of the creature on the cards with their hit dice in white. Then a bunch of checkboxes for hitpoints for each creature, tallied xp, etc. If I make the numbers beside the cards correspond to broad categories of probability: common, rare, etc-- then I can just re-use this same sheet for every adventure, just change the cards for what I consider encounters in that place (hmm, it would be good to record which creatures somehow, so if I come back six months later I won't have to remember what cards I'd used, and what I said was common in that dungeon).

Update: Here is what a card will probably look like:

Also, one of the cards could be "Monster roaming from room 12" etc.

p.s. my computer hasn't crashed in a few days (knock on wood) so maybe I can get back to silhouettes soon.

Update2: No way anyone is going to create unique cards for every batch of creatures, so I put a grid that you can use to outline hp amounts with a marker or pencil after you roll them but before play. (I suppose you might use these little grids to draw a micro lair too if these are wilderness adventures). Anyway, here is an image of a few more silhouettes with grids. I'm using a business card template in OpenOffice and Gimp:

Chart Refills

2011-11-30T08:33:00.001-08:00

Here's another idea: for every chart you make, make a more abstracted chart that will provide new entries once those in the first have been used up.

The good thing about a more abstracted "spur" type chart is that it can generate scores more results and how you interpret those results can very from day to day (and whether you get help from your players) meaning even more possible results. The bad thing is that it requires that you interpret those results. And that requires some confidence, mental clarity, and maybe time and some of them may just end up being duds.

The good thing about the specific chart is that you can put what you know are the most badass, fun, and appropriate to the unique qualities of that topic. The Bad thing is you may not be able to think of all the most badass possibilities. Or, you may just use them up in play. And then what?

Make both. Now, that means more work, but you want the best "What the Gnome Bard Has in his Pockets" chart possible right?

(Extra credit: Zak lays out some chart taxonomy here)

Sand Box Stalling

2011-11-29T06:59:00.001-08:00

The unspoken assumption (when it isn't explicit) seems to be that a DM will design at least a continent, decide on geography and terrain types, maybe even political entities, trade routes and epic histories.

Yeah, that's not how I started this campaign. First it's a ton of work. But more importantly, it makes a bunch of decisions before play that shuts off the possibility of shaping the campaign as we go, as I receive input from players, etc. It limits the ability to adapt and react. So here is quick and dirty way to put that off till later.

You have a mysterious pylon appear near civilization. In it is a control room with little dioramas of various places that appear to be ruins. Working various levers/switches allows for travel to these locations. There is either a similar pylon at the location, or a simple mechanism for returning directly (break a crystal, chime a gong). (yep, like video game fast travel-- though you might decide later that some of these locations are actually in different times or planes [they didn't fit in your conception of this campaign world]).

Now you can have 2-10 locations that are whatever seems coolest to you when you start, or, whatever module you want to use, and you don't have to worry about where they're located in relation to each other or how they fit into your world's history. If players decide to come back from a location the old-fashioned way, by land/sea travel, you'll build the world as they go. Otherwise, you have time to decide what you want the greater world to look like while the players are exploring these hot spots. Essentially it's a stalling technique that allows fun play now that can still be situated in your world to whatever degree of simulationism you desire later.

Idea

2011-11-28T08:14:00.001-08:00

Think of something you're pretty good at as a DM (or hell, as a player). What's one of your strengths? Got one? Okay:

What tool could you make that would help others do better at that same thing?

What are the Monsters Doing?

2011-11-27T10:35:00.001-08:00

So, If we put a relatively small number of creatures that can be randomly encountered in a particular area it will give it a flavor, a sense of verisimilitude. But then you get to the point where your players are groaning "Ugh, not skunkbats again!" So after one or two random encounters rolled for the same creature type roll on the following chart to add something interesting to the encounter:
Okay, some of those are not actions but states of being (trained, diseased) but you get the idea. I wouldn't make this mean the encounter is necessarily harmless, just distracted perhaps. And if you start taking pot shots at them it turns into your typical skunkbat strafing run.

Also, it may seem this is skewed towards simulationist creatures, but I think you could get some real weird stuff if you try to make it work. Here are some notes and ideas:

At Play
Because you know you play D&D to imagine young beholders frolicking.

Decoy / Construct
It isn't a real skunkbat after all, someone must be hunting them. Or it's a mechanical wonder. If you catch it might be worth a lot.

Disoriented / Mourning
Like dolphins beaching themselves, sometimes gelatinous cubes will push themselves into the acid pools. Or maybe it's a sabretooth lying on its dead, giant master's chest

Displaying / Singing / Calling
What would the display of a gelatinous cube be? Iridescent colors playing across its surface? Or maybe it fluctuates between sphere, cube, and toroid shapes.

Fighting
Like mountain goats butting each other for superiority ( or flailsnails!), or maybe like crows mobbing a hawk. You really wanted to see a dragon, right? Well, these skunkbats are trying to drive one off.

Giving Birth / Hatching
Okay, no, you play D&D to experience the miracle of beholders being born. Happening daily this season at the beholder calving caves.

Mating
Lots of weird possibilities here, think zombies, men and women of wounds, etc.

Migrating
Ever heard of migrating tarantulas? How about grunion runs? See, these particular gelatinous cubes aren't interested in eating you, they're just trying to get up-dungeon like transparent, cubic salmon. Multiply the number encountered by 10.

Trained / Tamed
Wearing collars or ribbons, these things could be worth money, or it could mean their masters are nearby. Maybe someone uses stirge like hunting falcons. Also, can you train a gelatinous cube?

Undead
Same creature except it's an undead version. What is an undead gelatinous cube? Maybe it's got a yellowish tinge to it and is extra rubbery (read more hd)

How Many Wandering Monsters?

2011-11-26T07:43:00.001-08:00

Okay, this is not about frequency of random encounters in a dungeon. I delved into that here. This is more about variety. What I'm curious about now is: How many types of distinct creatures are on your wandering monster table? And, also, how likely is it to encounter each?

I'm asking because I'm trying to streamline my DMing. I was thinking of even pre-rolling encounters and having them appear one by one as encounters occur (I'm pretty sure I saw this in action on Jim's Carjacked Seraphim blog).

I actually like better not knowing as a DM what will show up. But I tend to forget how many stirge attacked the party, and in worst case scenarios I'll lose track of which creature had been hit/how many hp they have left during the combat because I'm just scrawling on scratch paper. I've tried the using-8-siders to keep track but this assumes you have a nice clean space at a table to keep them separated from your regular dice. I'm usually standing or even perched over a sliver of end table.

Anyway, if I have only 4 to 6 types of monsters to randomly encounter, maybe I can pre-roll several different batches of stirge and have them ready to roll. So I'm wondering if your tables are sparse like that or tend to be d20 or d100 affairs. Any other details on tracking hp/xp would be of great interest too. Okay, I'm off to forage on the tundra (Skyrim).

Windowed Maps & Room Content Cards

2011-11-25T11:49:00.001-08:00

I'm at the folks', on a guest account. Had a couple ideas I thought I'd share. See, I'm never as organized as I want to be with my game stuff and I have to carry everything to someone else's house so the fewer papers I have the better.

Also, the fewer bits of paper I have to fiddle with during play the better too. I try to have a map on one side and an random encounters key sheet on the other in a report cover. That way I can carry it with me if I pace around, whisper in a player's ear, or close it when we take a break. But invariably there are other things I need to access: npcs, monster hp tracking, random tables. If I could compress some of the data it would help.

So, what if I print my map on a thicker bit of paper and cut flaps in the major encounter areas. Then if players go there, I fold open the flap and the info on the creatures/features is right there. This could be printed on the back side of the map or, if, it's easier, on another bit of paper stapled to the map.

Another idea is to print business card size room contents and staple or paperclip them to the back of the map near their encounter area. I think this, while cumbersome, might help in two ways: 1) I wouldn't have to go rifling through papers searching for monster hp 2) I could keep track better of what players fought for xp purposes-- put a check mark on the ones they've killed and stash them all in one place for after game tallying. I could have treasure troves ready made in lettered envelopes, then just have a letter on the business card.

Not as elegant as I'd like but I might try one or the other to see how it works for me.

The Liquid Library

2011-11-24T07:20:00.001-08:00

Here's another waking-up-from-sleep idea: A long forgotten cult knew how to extract and distill knowledge into liquid form. Somewhere there is a library of what is left of their art. Tiny vials hold passphrases, bottles maps, and casks the genealogies of extinct families. Far in the back, through double doors, is an entire lake. And a woman who has been there for decades, trying to drink it all.

Triggered Player Notes

2011-11-20T07:10:00.001-08:00

I've never used this, don't know how useful it would be, but as I was falling asleep last night I thought of giving a player a sealed envelope with "Open When __________" written on top. So let's think about the possibilities. What could be the triggers?

Open when you next score a critical
when you next critically miss
next session
when you are at half-hp or less
when a spell is cast on you
when I ask you to make a save
when I ask you to roll any dice
when another player is hurt
when you're in water

Let's pause there and think about some reasons you might do this. Because with the last one I realized you could set up some real tension for a player-- should they seek out water or desperately avoid it-- if you make the triggers something they have control over. And that's a great meta reason. But what are some possible in-game reasons for the sealed message?

the pc is cursed
has lycanthropy
will go berserk
is suffering hallucinations
has a magical ailment
has a regular disease which will start manifesting itself (maybe this obscures the causes-- my critical miss game me the black pox!?)
something about prophecy, or foretelling
maybe they fulfilled some aspect of a legend
maybe it's a tricksy way of introducing an adventure hook (the open next session, for example, tell about a specific merchant that seeks the player out)
they have learned a new ability
a newly found magic item will manifest itself
maybe a tricksy way of adding a plot complication ("open if attacked at night" could reveal the info that npc Bob is not in his bed, where is he?)

Okay, I also thought last night of printing a pocketmod with taped together pages. The cover would be a trigger, the first page the info revealed, the second page would be an additional trigger, and so on.Why? I don't know it just seems like it would be incredibly intriguing. You could make something happen based on player choices, but shrouded in mystery. Maybe the little booklet is for spell research-- "Open page if you spend more then 2000gp", or "Open page if you fail to maintain your experiment with 1000gp per session." Or maybe this could be an abstracted way to deal with an npc relationship that isn't really the focus of the whole party, maybe a romance.

Wheeled Fountains & Wandering Traps

2011-11-19T06:56:00.001-08:00

My last post made me realize that I conceive of traps as stationary. Then I began wandering what a mobile trap might be like. Or a mobile trick. Here's some brainstorming:

Is a mobile trap just a monster?
If traps are meant to keep folks out of certain areas is a moving trap just a patrol like a guard or robot?
maybe it follows the party from room to room making things more difficult somehow.
maybe it makes a timed sweep through the dungeon and knowing its path and timing could be a kind of treasure map players need to find or info to get from npcs.
I'm thinking of Labyrinth now, weren't there rolling grinding machines?
a mobile trick I have an easier time imagining, a fountain on wheels, an altar that teleports. One reason is if players discover that they grant a boon, needing to find them later would be a task.
Or, I'm very interested in squeezing more exploration from the same location (see tumbling dungeon) what if this mobile trick did something to a room that made the room different? Infrared light that reveals runes on the walls. Floor level fog that hides holes in the floor. Soft music that obscures the soft ticking of secret mechanisms (find secret doors).
Heh, what if the mobile trap was just a cage that traps a pc and then travels slowly through the dungeon making it hard to find and free them? I have no idea why the maker would want that, maybe a crazy mage.
Oh, maybe it was some kind of practical tram that has gone haywire. If the players figure out its buttons they can toodle wherever they want in the dungeon in relative safety, but experimentation might just dump them in the troll den.
Back to the mobile room changer- anti-gravity seems like a good one, two dungeons for the price of one mobile trick.Very similar to the tumbling dungeon idea except the people tumble not the dungeon.
trying to come at it from the simulationist why-would-it-be-there-angle: maybe that wandering fountain is a kind of aid station/refreshment center in the dwarven mines, rotates through the shafts efficiently so that work never stops in more than one place at a time. Maybe gather data on the denizens-- a watcher in a prison, a kind of nature observer set by a mage guild in a monster ecosystem. Perusing the data could help players crack the patterns of a dungeon.
Cleaning! That seems obvious now, brushes pushing pcs out of rooms, water sprays hosing them down, heat to sterilize.
Are gelatinous cubes just mobile traps?

Okay, that's all I got right now. Hope you're having a great weekend.

What's an Encounter?

2011-11-15T09:01:00.001-08:00

I've learned stuff reading Justin Alexander's blog but a recent post of his just seemed odd to me. Comments were closed on that post so I'll comment here. He writes about the sample adventure for WotC's latest Gamma World and notes that the later part of the adventure is just combat encounters without even connective tissue to string them together. To me that is the exact opposite of what I'd want from my game, more akin to a first person shooter than the rpg I grew up with, but Justin takes it in stride. Then he ends with this:

"How else could you structure and/or connect a sequence of encounters?
By this I mean, what’s the actual interaction — mechanical or otherwise — which happens at the table which moves you from one combat encounter to the next.
And this is, of course, the simpler version of this question. Remove the assumption that you’re moving from combat encounter to combat encounter, and suddenly we’d also have to take into consideration how each “chunk” of content is structured… and how are we deciding what an appropriate “chunk” is?
This is an area that I don’t feel gamers actually give much conscious thought to: We’ve learned a few forms subliminally and by chance, but because it’s largely an invisible bias we rarely consider whether there might be a better way of structuring scenarios."

     First, this reads to me like a person who hadn't heard of D&D until they bought a copy of fourth edition. The assumptions here are 1) the game is encounters, and encounters are combat, 2) a DM's job is to orchestrate those encounters, 3) this is what gamers expect.

     Second, I've seen Alexander comment on OSR blogs, he must know this community exists. And, unless I am horribly misunderstanding this, how has the OSR not explored the questions he poses repeatedly and innovatively? The whole discussion of Western Marches style campaigns and the constant investigation of sandboxes is about how players interact with the game world and how they "encounter" stuff right? Or if you want to zoom in and be a little less granular you can look at the dungeon map and all the discussions of chokepoints and Jaquaying the dungeon (a term Alexander invented!) . Heck, even my posts on door priority and heat maps were trying be aware of how players interact and make choices in a dungeon thus leading to or avoiding "encounters." And now I'm just remembering the fascinating examination -C started with the quantum ogre, that was thinking about "encounters" and their relation to player choice and agency.

     So it seems he is completely wrong about assumption 3; some gamers have spent a great deal of brain cycles thinking about what players encounter in the game, how, and why. Now I want to look at the other two assumptions.

Combat is Not the Only Encounter
     Players can encounter lots of things while playing an rpg, from descriptive details (the dungeon ceiling is covered in damp moss) to violent physical conflict. You could set these on different continuums depending on what you want to privilege. Are you more concerned with things that can kill pcs (That is a pretty big one)? Then you'll have things like dungeon dressing on the less important end of the scale and creatures that attack on sight on the other. But, that dungeon dressing could be very related to mortality if it's hiding traps (a spiked grate falls out of all that moss), or if it's a signpost suggesting danger lies ahead (it's getting hotter and hotter). And also, are you sure player mortality should be supreme concern? Getting taken out of the game is a big deal, but surviving to play in a dull, plodding game is a pretty big concern too. So you could chart out a different continuum that goes from less important to more important in relation to: engaging players, creeping them out, making them feel empowered with choice, or allowing them to exercise their own creativity in the campaign world. Privileging any of these would result in completely different discussions and different ideas of what an encounter is. But people almost always focus on combat.
What about encounters with sentient beings that don't want to fight? Heck, what about a speaking thing that players can't engage in combat even if they want to, like, say . . . a giant stone head. Sound familiar? Is that Castle Greyhawk classic not an encounter?
      What about two other classic dungeon features, traps and fountains? Traps can be telegraphed and then players get to be creative trying to circumvent them. Fountains are a temptation and an example of the mysterious underworld that players can choose to engage with or not. It would be nice to have the tension of combat encounters make time an element when dealing with the traps and possibly make players desperate enough to drive them to drink from the fountains, but I propose you could have an entire dungeon with no combat encounters at all, just traps and magical fountains.   In fact, I challenge you all to make one.
     What about the lowly "Dungeon Dressing"? The term implies you could run the dungeon perfectly without it. Or that you might replace it with entirely different details according to whim. I think this is wrong. I propose that if you're "dressing" is dispensable, you don't know what it's for. Even if you just want your dungeon to be weird, there are different flavors of weird. These details can help one location feel different from another, help define the denizens of that place, can set the mood or tone of the exploration, as well as making the place seem tangible and plausible. So I guess what I'm saying is that even the lowly dungeon detail often dismissed as "fluff" is an encounter with the imagined world and to only focus on the things that can swing an axe at you is missing a lot of the point of the game.
   Who decides when an encounter becomes an encounter? Players in my last session went into an abandoned monastery and saw lots of odd, otherworldly things. Whether these would become combats was not a cut and dried as latter day gamers like to make encounters out to be. The party found a monk's body stuffed entirely with feathers, but approaching it, they thought it might be undead ready to spring at them. They prepared themselves for what might be a surprise combat. The party also encountered a little man riding a pug with reins in the dogs mouth that ended in fish hooks. This little man gestured and rode off into the darkness. While I had it appear mostly for atmosphere, had the players pursued, shot missile weapons at it, or cast a spell, I would have allowed it-- it was real enough to be engaged. They could have turned that and several other experiences they had in the dungeon into combat encounters and chose not to.

DMs have More Tools than Just Plotting

     In mentioning the little pug-rider, I want to point out something I realized in that last session. I actually determine what players encounter in three different ways: 1) I tie things to a location on the map. The sick bear is behind the alter in the chapel, it doesn't roam. There are plenty of details that indicate a large smelly animal is in there, but if the players don't go there they won't ever see it.    2) I roll for random encounters. A sick wolf wanders the halls, as do rats and stirges. Now the list of things that might be encountered was crafted by me to fit the location, but if and when they occur is entirely out of my hands. 3) I had several mobile, set pieces that I employed at times I chose. The kobold riding the pug, the lost little girl. These appeared when the toughest pcs are engaged investigating inside a monastic cell, leaving the weaker members of the marching order in a hallway with darkness on two sides. I intentionally employed these to try and make my players feel vulnerable, to show them they were not in control of this environment, they were interlopers and in danger.
     Now, we're all familiar with random encounters and certainly with static location based encounters, but I stumbled into that third, when-I-thought-it-best-to-happen mechanic on my own. And I like what it allows me to do. But I would never just make stuff happen off the cuff any more than I would pre-script battles in a certain order the way the Gamma World adventure Alexander is reviewing does. It seems to me that a DM will want to use all three of these tools for determining what players experience-- the static, the random, and the DM orchestrated-- at the same time. The first makes locations and choices about exploration real, the second is what story emerges from-- surprising even me and making the world seem alive, the third allows me to do something a computer game could never do-- make things happen based on what I'm observing players are feeling. I think a good DMing "how to" would talk about how to get these three methods working together.

Conclusion
     After writing this (it took several work mornings) I think I have a better idea why latter day D&D focuses so much on pre-prepared, balanced, combat encounters. It's hard to DM. It takes some sensitivity to notice a certain player is getting left out and then make them be the one that sees the creepy girl in the shadows. It's hard to design dungeons. At least, a dungeon that has danger and emptiness laid out in a way that lends itself to creating rising and falling tension in a group of players. It's hard to have faith in a random dice roll, "What if something comes that kills everyone?" I realize that the scientific systematization of D&D into pre-scripted combat encounters is about control.
     But I think this approach, while comforting, is a gross oversimplification. Like thinking writing can be parceled into discrete types-- persuasive, descriptive, informative-- or that people are different brained-- left, right-- or that taking vitamins will help you with a cold, oversimplification gives you the feeling of control while misunderstanding the complexity of the world underneath. Trying to reduce D&D down to a set of prepared, carefully controlled combat encounters can be done, but the D&D it results in is a pale image of the D&D that is possible.

Please Stand By

2011-11-14T08:21:00.001-08:00

I'm having first world problems over here. My computer at home randomly barfs. If it was predictable I could work around it, but it isn't and it's stressful to be just about to post a comment on someone's blog and have it segfault or whatever it's doing. Anyway, here are some things going on:

I have a one page disease pretty much done, just need to nail down the contagiousness and fatalness of each.
Our session on Friday went swimmingly. I was concerned because this batch of players was going back into the Monastery of St Eudo, which had been pretty much cleared before. That place is all about creepy redcap-like kobolds and goblins. I wasn't sure if repeating the same creepy scenes would be fun for me, but it was. And knowing the scenes I could focus more on when to make them happen and who would witness them. I rolled on my creepy combat commentary chart to give the things different personalities. The masochist was pretty creepy.
I didn't get a chance to finish tweaking the Nidus shopping charts before play. The way it works now, you roll to see if you find what you want and then you roll a wonder to see what you encountered during the search. The second step saves the whole set up, because players would be frustrated trying to locate a jeweler and then laugh, or be creeped out, by the weird stuff they saw.
I've been trending this way for a while but I'm convinced now that players should have access to a little booklet dedicated to their character's class. For mages it would let them know how to scribe scrolls, research spells, gather material components etc. For fighters it would talk about shield walls, splintering shields, hiring combatants, etc. For divine-petitioners it would layout how petitioning works, permanent miracles, atoning, and some of the saints, gods, and totems in my world in broad brushstrokes (though, as I write that last bit I'm resistant, I'd like players to feel free to come up with their own powers and having mine all nailed down would probably work against that)
I bought Skyrim. Times are monetarily tight, but I figure I'll save money on the beer I'm not drinking while I play the game. Thoughts so far? Quite nice, the dragons are impressive and scary, I find it engaging to just roam around hunting deer, collect plants and insects, and smithing stuff. But they scaled the damn world again. I'm intentionally not leveling up because I don't want all the deer and wolves in the world to inexplicably transform into bears and trolls as I get more powerful. Surely I'm not the only one? In Oblivion, past a certain amount of scaling, horses became useless because trolls and minotaurs would kill them out from under you wherever you rode. In Fallout 3, I never explored the entire map because I leveled to the point that everywhere you went was teeming with deathclaws. Surely the gain from leveling a world is less than this loss of these things.

Sea Trade from Dragon #6

2011-11-08T21:24:00.000-08:00

This is the sea trade system from Dragon #6 Ωmega mentioned in my previous post. I've read it before, but, looking back, I have to say I'm impressed. The whole thing fit on one page, was clean, and easy to understand. Kudos to Ronald C. Spencer, Jr. It feels very DIY OSR to me.

I've reformatted the data here for scholarly purposes. I changed "Ports Skipped" to "Port Distance" (it just makes more sense to me, unless there's some kind of race for time related to profiting). I've also tabulated the returns and odds in a second chart. As you can see the sting of failure is ameliorated by including the brutal chance of ship loss with just getting poor returns on your cargo. The biggest risk giving a 35% for the former, 25% for the latter. But if you take that risk, you have a 5% chance of getting one of those dreamed of 500% returns on your investment.

I don't think I would use this as is. The minimalist in me wants to at least cut it down to short, medium, and long hauls. But it's cool to see what they thought the probabilities should be. If you can get a hold of a copy, the system also includes simple rules for pilot fees, time spent, and import taxes. Cool stuff.

Magic Circles & Assumptions

2011-11-08T09:04:00.000-08:00

I'd never heard of the term Magic Circle in regards to games before, but ran into it in a discussion on Metafilter today. The explanation on Wikipedia had me thinking about the recent post by -C on player assumptions.

"Castronova uses the term 'synthetic world' because a synthetic world 'cannot be sealed completely; people are crossing it all the time in both directions, carrying their behavioral assumptions and attitudes with them.'"

If you think of each campaign along with whatever ruleset is being run as a "synthetic world" then players moving from one campaign to another would be similarly carrying over assumptions from one world to another. Sounds pretty obvious, I guess. But it's interesting to me that video games might drive scholarship that can apply equally to our rpgs.

Other thoughts, the flailsnails conventions and the conversion rules in the 1e DMG seem to be the analog of this allowing of movement between circles, but I find it hard to imagine video game companies doing that now. Though it would be cool to head West in Fallout 3 and end up in New Vegas, or to head North (?) in Oblivion and reach Skyrim. Even the old Baldur's Gate games allowed some of this. Is it just console games that allow no transfer from circle to circle? You can't take a Sim from the Sim 2 PC game to Sim 3 can you?

I realize there's a big difference in technologies from one title to another but find it curious that there is no market for sequels that a person could take a character through. Note, no mention of MMORPGs from me because I have zero interest in paying a monthly fee to grind (to be honest, I'm sure my lizard brain I would get wrapped up in it, but my rational brain has so far prevented this from happening).

About Trade

2011-11-06T22:28:00.000-08:00

What's the simplest system we could come up with for trading goods by sea that would still have some of the flavor of the real deal? I figure some of you are very knowledgeable about this stuff (looking at you richard).

I'm thinking 3-4 tiers of. More risk = more return. More risk will mostly = ports farther away. Maybe have the player roll each session we play to check on the trade voyage's fate.

1. What should the probabilities of succeeding be for low, medium, high risk? If you stick with a single d6 and have the roll be 4-5-6, 5-6, or 6, that would be a fifty-fifty chance of losing a cargo even at the lowest risk.

2. What returns should I be looking at? I'd like no chart necessary, so numbers like +10%, +25%, +50% are more attractive, because I can do them in my head. I have no idea if those are way too much or too little.

If we stick to general rates of return based on distance, we can decide later what ports have what goods and just plug them in and you could always layer shortages and rarity on top of the basic system bones.

Yeah, I realize this could ruin everything and let people make their fortune without needing to enter dungeons. But investigating the loss of a vessel, or even traveling on your own trade vessel à la Sinbad, is right down my campaign's alley.

What You Did While You Were a Werewolf

2011-10-31T09:27:00.000-07:00

Who wouldn't want to be a lycanthrope? You get strength, invulnerability, near immortality for just a bit of anger issues. Point your aggression at foes and it's win-win. But, what if characters that catch lycanthropy have no control over it whatsoever and in fact only learn after the fact what they did while changed. This seems more in line with the original folklore than later Hollywood and D&D renditions. I'm imagining this as a Rientsian carousal type table. Some ideas:

Killed the party's livestock
Killed all the livestock in a campaign hex
Killed a party member's animal friend
Killed a random hireling
Smashed up the local tavern/hangout
Infected a family member
Killed the local priest/clergy
Infected the local priest/clergy
Killed the local ruler
Infected the local ruler
Wake up next to unconscious young person (infected?)
Wake up next to unconscious child(ren) (infected?)
Wake up next to sleeping animal of lycanthropy type
Wake up in a bell tower
Wake up under a bridge
Wake up on a an altar
Stashed bodies in a bell tower
Stashed bodies under a bridge
Left bodies on a an altar
Infected all of a local orphanage
Infected all of a local brothel
Destroyed local apothecary gardens, good luck finding healing/potions
Accidentally set fire to childhood home/friend's home
Accidentally set fire to local place of worship
All your equipment is missing/scattered
Accidentally set fire to the docks
Dug up a corpse from local cemetery and brought it back with you
Dug up all dead in local cemetery
Slaughtered a city guard patrol
Let yourself be seen clearly from the highest point nearby, hunted now

Symptoms & Side Effects II

2011-10-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

Follow up from here. I've given mechanical effects to symptoms that could come from diseases, drugs, or just magical traps. These are temporary physical effects mostly. Mental afflictions will need their own separate madnesses chart. Here is the pdf.

I realized that in a campaign world where disease matters, where it can spread and kill people, visible symptoms will have serious in-game effects. Rashes, pustules, or skin coloration might prevent you from shopping, or even entering town depending on the context. I suppose that means that neither this nor the disease chart I've been working on are truly "one-pagers" because they are dependent on each other. The more deadly the pox causing disease is in your campaign the more npcs will freak out when they see Joe fighter has them.

I think another big effect is interfering with spell casting. I put "miscast" in the chart to make things more interesting I might interpret that as:

Wrong memorized spell cast
Wrong target
Too weak, half power
Too strong double effects

I suppose you could make all those symptoms interfere with prayers and petitions too. Hard, with a blasting headache, to pray for anything but relief.

The specific number mentioned for seizures is taken from Zak's lucky numbers-- player chooses a number, say 9, any time they roll it they have a seizure, whether its from trying to hit in combat or trying to save from something else. Though, maybe it should be a number from 1-6 to include more possible rolls, like listening at doors etc.

Escape from Animal Island

2011-10-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

This is from the session last Friday.

Z - F
    Pita - hireling
    Mika - hireling
Spike - F
Darkyo - F
Derrick - F
    Jimbo - hireling
    Zigfried - trained baboon
Athydas - MU
Gessup - DP

G's player decides to try out a cleric (divine petitioner) so his one-eyed fighter and hireling are shelved for the time being. The rest of the session is essentially one tense battle. The party realizes there is a room with bent bars that no one has ever gone into. Spike and Athydas then impulsively enter said room to get the action going.

In the room is a puma-pheasant, the most beautiful of all beasts. Just the sight of it charms Spike, Athydas, Darkyo, Derrick and his hireling Jimbo. Zigfried the baboon saves but runs off in terror. Z and company are outside. Gessup doesn't look.

First round the creature drops Athydas to 0 with one blow. Next round it drops spike to -1. Next round it breaks poor, faithful Jimbo's neck. Gessup has saved and gotten off a few sling stones in the meantime wounding it.

Z manages to drag Derrick outside, his hirelings trying to rouse him. Gessup is then mortally wounded. Darkyo broke the charm and begins to flee. Then Z puts on his beautiful cap and re-enters the hall (the cap worked the last time one of these was encountered). There is a tense "charm-off," but both Z and the creature save. A few rounds and Z slays it in combat. Gessup cries out to his god for aid and is answered! The party tends to Athydas. Spike's player doesn't want him saved, chooses to roll up a new character.

After discussion and poking about, the party finds a passage heading down, a boarded up door, some shining objects on the ground. Derrick falls into some soft, burrowed-out earth in front of a door injuring himself. In the chamber they find a chest. Z has suspicions that it is similar to one they saw long ago, they test it and it teleports each of them back into some catacombs in the Maw, next to Nidus.

Some thoughts
_____________________________________________

The last time the party saw the other of the pair of chests was almost a year of real time ago, Nov 25th, 2010. The last time they've been in Nidus was in February this year.

There is unexplored stuff on the island, I wonder if they'll go back, now that they know they have a way. Though, I think they are sick of it.

The mage, who just died last session, reaches death's door again! In talking with him about it, he feels someone has to do something or the rest of the timid/undecided party will never move. They need to work this out as a group or play will never be fun, bursts of annoyed action that results in deaths because it was incautious.

I didn't like so much that Gessup managed to escape a mortal wound the way Athadys did just last session. Maybe this mortal wound thing isn't a good idea after all. Although, it was just a chance. His petition had to be answered and he then had to roll enough hit points healed to live. Both happened. Maybe I'll let it ride. I think it's much less likely to work again.

I really like the charming monster, that thing is dangerous. I also like Z's cap. I thought it would be too powerful, but when I started making all his hirelings and party members roll to save or just following him around dumbfounded it limited greatly when he can use it to good effect.

I screwed up with Spike's character. She didn't want to play him any more so, sure, roll up another character. But the one she rolled up was a total scrub with multiple stats below 7. I said, sure roll another character. This one got multiple 14s. I should have made her stick with the scrub, if she wanted to switch, but I was distracted with the rest of the game (still ongoing) and wanted her to have fun (but thinking high stats will make play more fun is the wrong philosophy if you ask me, she could still fail her save versus the puma-pheasant with this new character if she's just going to run into rooms willy nilly).

Have no idea what they'll want to do tonight in Nidus. I'm trying to make some NPCs and rumors.

Cleric Petitions Again

2011-10-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

Here's a pro-tip for you rules system designers, try explaining your rule to a drunk. Last Friday, one of my players decided he wanted to try a cleric to mix up the fighter brigade. He'd been imbibing before I even arrived. And I had to explain my cleric petition rules about five times. Now, I'm not saying all rules should be so simple that buzzed folks understand them, but the multiple attempts at explaining how my petition rules work certainly forced me to think of them holistically and from every angle. I've never really been satisfied with them anyway. The difficulty is that I've wanted to incorporate diminishing returns for asking for miracles over and over and for asking for miracles of more and more power. I've found it hard to be simple and work with both axes. Here's another attempt:

I'll give a cleric 3 glass beads and this little chart. They can put their bead anywhere they want but only three times. Any miracles of an order below their level will work 70% of the time. I think I'll give them 3 more beads at 4th and then again at 8th level. I also give permanent miraculous powers to these holy people at those levels (think halos, healing touch that works 100% but limited times per day etc.) This is weaker than a traditional cleric, but maybe not too much. An 8th level cleric in S&W Core has 10 spells, and my cleric will only have 9 and then no guarantee they will work. But then, my clerics could choose to use 4 6th level spells at 70% where the S&W cleric can't even cast that level spell at all. So I guess what I'm trying to do is inject power and uncertainty; if the entities you're petitioning listen, a cleric in my world can do powerful things, but you can never be so prideful to expect things to happen for you.

The Resurrected Mage and The One-Eyed Fighter

2011-10-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

Wanted to capture what happened last Friday before we play again tonight.

G - F
    La Bouche - hireling
    Janis - hireling
Z - F
    Pita - hireling
    Mika - hireling
    Fabrino - hireling
Spike - F
Darkyo - F
Athydas - MU

The lineup keeps changing, and Z and Spike's players coming late, so information sharing has been a problem. So, not too much accomplished. Some poking around the outbuildings of the villa at the top of the terraced island they were shipwrecked on. Then the party decided to mess with the animal hybridization machine some more. G decided he wanted a little dog.

The machine is upstairs, the animals appear in a large room downstairs. So G tells Athydas, to go downstairs an wait for it to appear. It appears, I roll dice and it streaks off into the jungle. Athydas yells up "your dog ran away." I rolled for wandering monsters and sure enough got one. Now I had rolled earlier that some Headless tribesmen had been encountered and gotten complete surprise on the party, but that they were 70 feet away. So I ruled that they were going to watch, wait and look for an opportunity to strike. Apparently this was that time.

Three headless with spears entered the front door of the villa's main building. Athydas saw them, got initiative and took off running for the stairs. The headless all threw their spears miss, miss, hit. Roll damage. Max at 6. Athydas has 3 hitpoints. I looked at that roll and was sorely tempted to fudge it-- here was the only mage back to play and he was dead in one blow. But they had sent him foolishly off on his own, he was hollering foolishly in an unsafe place, and he had chosen to memorize magic missile instead of sleep which might have saved him here. So I let it stand, but I remembered musing on mortal wounds to make death less anti-climactic. So I told Athydas' player: "you have a spear through your gut and you are dying, you'll be dead in a few rounds. What do you want to do?" He asked if he could cast magic missile at his killer. I said sure, he did and killed that headless.

At this point the rest of the party is rushing down the stairs and engaging the remaining two headless. Everyone is rolling bad and Fabrino, Z's long-time hireling is killed. The other headless are finally dispatched. I ask Athydas' player, if there is anything he wants to say this round. He says "Can I cast The Fortunate Punishment?" Aha, I realized the genius of this. This was a scroll the party had found in his absence and given to him this session. He actually has this spell in his book but had not memorized it. The spell allows the casted upon, instead of dying, to lose 1d6 points from a stat of their choice permanently. So, I ruled that with his dying breaths he could cast this spell. He chose strength and rolled a 2, (can't remember if that leaves him with 7 or 5 now). He saved himself in a completely badass and unexpected way.

Later, G who has had to lead Darkyo around everywhere because she was permanently blinded by a spitting cobra, decided to try something drastic to help her. He has an Obsidian Blade, that will heal someone for as many hp as you bleed out of yourself. He decided to try and cut out his own eye for Darkyo. I though this is crazy, it wasn't meant to be used that way, but I liked his boldness. I rolled to see if it worked and the dice said no. But even the very next day, I decided it was too cool to not let work. So tonight I will tell them them both have vision in a single eye.

The Staff Shall be Splintered

2011-10-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

A magic-user with a magic staff or wand can choose to use it to absorb an incoming spell, ruining the wand or staff beyond repair.

What do you think? I imagine it as a last ditch attempt to survive a powerful foe. I didn't put anything about level because that probably would depend on how rare and dear a magic staff is in your campaign. If they are hard to come by, it would seem okay to sacrifice one even to a high level spell such as finger of death, and regardless of the level of the staff's owner.

Alternatively, you might let them absorb multiple spells with a chance each time that it will blow up catastrophically, say 25% chance for each spell, though I don't know that those would look like worthwhile odds to me as a player.

More Thoughts on Old School Dual Classing

2011-10-15T20:24:00.000-07:00

It seems there are two reasons a player would want to dual class: 1) to intentionally obtain the powers of both classes-- become the sword wielding mage, for example, or 2) because they became dissatisfied with the class they started with.

I'm not really interested in 1. You can do a ton to personalize your characters before needing to slide into another archetype's realm. Want to be a badass fighting mage? Research a lesser version of a spell like 1e's Tenser's Transformation, get a magic staff or darts, learn the protective spells that will enable you to enter combat. Want to be a magic wielding fighter? Find some potions, protection scrolls, some magic rings and learn how to use them.

1 doesn't really make sense to me either in that you are gaining your experience serially, so if you want the fighting mage you have to plan several levels of one class and then a switch. See here for my personal experience with that.

2 I'm quite sympathetic about. My players starting out usually have no clue what the classes can do. Fighters are a straightforward safe bet. If, after three levels of fighter they realize they are missing out on a lot of cool stuff available to magic-users, and wish they had tried that class many months ago, I am quite tempted to let them switch.

The interesting thing is that the rules seem to assume situation 1. By raising the bar for dual classing to a 16 required in the second classe's main attribute, it seems intended to limit the occurrence of these potent combined power characters. And yet, this rule makes 1 much more likely to happen then 2. Unless you are doing a newer school style of stat rolling, 16's will be rare. My fighters wishing to switch are out of luck. The more experienced player who knows the rules will see the 16 when he rolls it and know he can dual class this character.

Another thought is, for situation 2, why not just give them a new character of the class they desire? I see two sticking points. One, if they roll up stats the way we do there is no guarantee they will get the numbers needed for that class, and two, they will lose all the experience they gained unless you jump the new character in level. I hate jumping people up in levels. Yes I know Gygax did it, yes I know there are con events that play high level pregens. To me that is like setting up a Jenga game with half its blocks already missing. D&D is about progression, about the hard-scrabble gaining of power, no one is jumping to third level in my campaign (will I change my mind on this as I become more enlightened, maybe, but it's how I feel now).

Maybe a compromise for me is my player could switch classes and keep their hitpoints and save but nothing else from the original class and ignore the stat requirement. This would mean all the experience they earned was not wasted, those hitpoints will help buff their feeble apprenticeship in the new class. That doesn't solve the problem of having appropriately high stats for the new class, but heck, maybe my world needs some dumb magic-users and puny fighters.

Old School Dual Classing?

2011-10-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

If one of the many fighters in my campaign said they wanted to become a cleric, how should I handle it? How about magic user? I think my conception of the latter involves years of book study and it wouldn't be possible, but maybe I'm thinking too narrowly. Do you have any simple dual/multiclass rules for old school play?

Technical Difficulties

2011-10-13T11:48:00.000-07:00

Having problems with my desktop. I'm limited to dinky netbook, phone, or work computer until I figure something out. Quite frustrating and stifling, especially since I have an idea of how I might do a visual encounter chart in the shape of the probability curve for that chart.

The Drug is Actually . . .

2011-10-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

At work, so I'll make this into a nicer chart later. So, tired of the drugs in your campaign being plant parts that are smoked or chewed? Here are 30 other possibilities. Actually the ideas from alternate potions might work too, but here I worried less about the strict time limit implied in many of those options and tended more towards rare and slightly taboo stuff. Keep in mind they aren't spells, I would make them all still addictive to varying degrees.

the bite of a live ant, tiny farms must be carried around
a mantra from a forgotten language chanted several times
tiny human-like creatures that are gazed at in wonder
a lamprey the size of a mouse, attached to the body under clothes
feathers burnt
tiny pastries made exquisitely with rare spices
the exudations off the back of a giant toad
ashes of ancient heroes snorted
paste made for the fat of the executed
entrancing figure made with string as in cat's cradle
the rarest drug, only the blood of someone previously intoxicated
reptile scales held under the tongue
animal spines used to pierce the flesh
clothes woven from the hair of an anti-saint
dust taken from the footprint of witches/giants/demons
nymph tears
centaur milk
a Feng shui-like arrangement of furniture, candles, and flowers
a temporary tattoo from plant sap
an arcane pattern painted across the face
plant pollen of low efficacy so that the user must be covered with it
breath of a dying mage
heavy water
distillation from the scraps of an ordination feast
Yogic-like poses performed in a particular sequence
pink crystals from deep in the earth
palm-sized clay coin, broken for effect
Ent water
Tomb salt, scraped from the mineral buildup on tombs
Temple tar, scraped from the smokey residue in the dark corners of busy temples

Update: I made it into a chart and bundled it with the one-page drugs for your phone or tablet here. I'm not too happy with the "drugs" icon, doesn't seem as iconic at a small size, but I'll worry about revising it a little later.

I was thinking the mantra and yogic poses would be a little different because the character can partake any time they want. I might adjust the addiction rules to make them require them more and more often, until the mantra chanter would be unable to pray, cast spells, or be quiet in the dungeon. The yogi would have to withdraw from adventuring to perform the postures full time.

The lamprey seems gross to me, I might roll randomly to see what it does, then make it a fad in Nidus.

More Castaways

2011-10-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

Saturday night I had two brand new players. One had played D&D long ago and some Vampire, the other no rpg experience as far as I know. They both rolled up fighters. Which means the party looked like this:
G - F
    La Bouche - hireling
    Janis - hireling
Z - F
    Pita - hireling
    Mika - hireling
    Fabrino - hireling
Derick - F
    Jimbo - hireling
    Zigfreid - trained baboon
Spike - F
Darkyo - F
Gilda - F
Didi - F

That's 7 fighters my friends, and 12 if you count the combatant hirelings. Also, all but two have plate and shield. This is more a little army than adventure party. How did this happen? I think mostly because brand new players tend to pick fighters as an easier option to try out -- they have enough to pay attention to without figuring out spells. And my new players have trickled in over time. My most experienced players were generally the ones that picked mages or clerics and they've had to move and leave the game group.

I think this is actually pretty survivable at low levels of my old school D&D (my interpretation of it anyway). Low level magic users are good for that sleep spell to knock out a lot little critters, or you could just have a lot of fighters and kill them. My players also have some interesting magic items that give them choices- one can turn into a wolf, etc. As for clerics, well, I probably need them to meet some more undead. As for the plate mail, yeah, maybe a rust monster.

Anyway, G and Darkyo reached the top of the island fresh from burning down a village of legless creatures. They met two tough but dashing looking women, Didi and Gilda, and their old compatriot Derick. (people that like plotted games would probably have an aneurysm at the dream logic of my players popping in and out of play, but I see no other way to handle it with a shifting player base).

At the top of the island is a villa with quite a few buildings, some large. G and his hirelings proceeded to investigate an unfinished but large barn, Derrick and the new women headed off to investigate a peacock cry, and Darkyo circumnavigated an out building looking for a door. She found one, entered, and was engaged in combat by a spitting cobra amidst the wreckage of a kitchen. She was blinded and her trained ferret Otto was killed before she retreated.

The other crew found a huge set of double doors with a big crude pad lock on it. Didi tried picking it open and did ( what the hell, I gave her 5d6 and had her roll under her dex of 12, is that ~10% chance? I did say it was big and crude). Opening the doors revealed a huge room with mother and baby Pit-Elephants, yes that's elephants crossed with pit bulls. They seemed unperturbed, until a giant pit bull appeared amongst them and they started to fight.

This was created knowingly by Z and Spike inside the villa at a animal hybridizing machine they had figured out. The ruckus eventually led the party to all get together outside. G wanted to hunt so they could cook something (and heal an extra hp during the night-- thanks Talysman) He saw and bagged a zurkey with his bow, its white and dark meat in stripes, was delicious after roasting. The party all ate, and slept in the barn.

The next day the traveled to the opposite end of the main building to an identical but finished barn. Inside the saw a pile of bodies. They quickly formed an imposing shield wall. A Stitcher appeared out of the straw and managed to stitch the trained baboon's arm to his chest before being slain by a battle axe blow from Didi. They found a treasure cache and that was it for the night.

Some thoughts
_________________________________________________________
All this time I've been using reaction rolls for when I don't have a strong preconception of what creatures/npcs will do. It's nice to off-load that responsibility and inject unpredictability into the world and the emergent narrative. Except the more I play, the less unpredictably the damn reaction rolls appear to be. More often than not monsters are confused/uncertain, which means players get the drop on whacking them to death. I think I'm going to have to move that result to the lower end of the bell curve and replace it with violent reaction to reflect the dangerous world I imagine my campaign to be.

My players were telling me Didi's player was really skeptical about D&D and didn't want to come, but after the night was having fun and wants to come back next week. It probably helped that she picked the big lock successfully and got the killing blow on the Stitcher, neither of which I planned. Gilda said she had a great time to that this was a "new side of me" she'd never seen (yeah, I'm her boss). I gave both the new players magic items to try and give them a buy in, an amethyst ring to Didi, a bone stylus to Gilda. I also told them they'd heard of pirates around this island . . .

The party seems at a loss of what to do next, there was talk of building a boat. I asked "Do any of you know how to build a boat?" They seemed puzzled about where to go on the island which is odd because the two who went inside the villa's main building know there are places unexplored. They may have forgotten since it's been weeks since that session.

Silhouettes XXVIII

2011-10-10T21:27:00.000-07:00

Tired tonight, but figured why not post what I got rather than letting the blog go quiet. Here is a female fighter:

And what the book called a Nima Nima warrior, couldn't find info on that tribe:

Here is a deadly hare:

And here is what a deadly hare tribesman looks like:

I've added these to the zip file found to the right. I also added a license text to try and clarify that these are all in the public domain, and free and clear.

One-Pagers for Phone

2011-10-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

I've come to realize my phone is quite handy on game nights. If I forget something I have pretty much everything I've made on my blog somewhere. I've also put some pdfs directly on myphone for expediency's sake-- no need to search the blog.

The new pdfs upper left, then a draft. Hard-to-read chart example lower left.

But the problem with those pdfs is that, at that tiny size, my charts tend to all look alike. So I used my silhouettes and blew them up so you can easily see what each chart is about. I also added in the "The Potion/Ring is Actually . . ." as a third page. That way my base and possible weird variants is right where I need them.

The only hiccup I had was learning how to create my own page style to switch from portrait to landscape to portrait again. Otherwise, you should be able to customize the one pagers to your heart's content and do this for yourself.

Here is my phone pdf for Potions and for Rings. This makes me think, what would a chart of "The Drug is Actually . . ." look like? Better get on that.

My First Real Character

2011-10-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

My first real character was . . . wait for it . . . a bard. Now if you're someone who hates the class, relax, my poor dude never got there. That's right, I was playing the 1e bard which is more an aspiration than a class.

You may wonder what I mean by my first "real" character. I just mean we played tons as kids that I don't even remember. We played crazy Monty Haul campaigns. I had a 27th level ranger at one time. But as we matured and got closer to high school we took things more seriously and this bard character of mine would serve me all through those years-- the bulk of my play.

Why a bard? Well, it was a mysterious option in the back of the players handbook. Keep in mind we rolled up hundreds of characters of all races. We had evil parties made up of Anti-paladins, and half-orc clerics. I had thieves of every kind of demi-human. But the bard, the bard you had to work for.

For those of you that don't recall, here is how the bard worked:

Bards begin play as fighters, and they must remain exclusively fighters until they have achieved at least the 5th level of experience. Anytime thereafter, and in any event prior to attaining the 8th level, they must change their class to that of thieves. Again, sometime between 5th and 9th level of ability, bards must leave off thieving and begin clerical studies as druids; but at this time they are actually bards and under druidical tutelage.

So, what did I do after reading his? I thought, "Hey, if I want to be a powerful bard, then I should get to 7th level fighter before switching." And so I played seven long levels of D&D, all through high school . . . as a fighter.

Then the moment of triumph came, my DM said I needed to find a guild and join. I somehow did and became a lowly 1st level thief. ?!?! It made no sense. Why would I, a powerful warrior, decide to become less effective in fighting, suddenly limit myself in the kinds of weapons I would use, and decide, "Hmm, I'm a great warrior, but I really would like to learn some petty thieving skills."

I'm sure someone might come up with a character it would work for, but as an archetypal class it was an abysmal failure in practice. It was one of the many small lessons I've had in my several decades with D&D about how what is "logical" or "makes sense" (a bard would be a combination of fighter/thief abilities) often has little to do with how the game plays at the table.

And bards? Well, I have no desire to play one. I suppose you could say my fighter was a bard in some ways. He carved our adventures on his oaken staff, the keeper of our tale. He had a rare and beautiful harp he would play around the camp fire. But mostly he just cleaved the skulls of monsters with his bastard sword.

Bard was never really an archetype for me. I'm not sure where it came from (in D&D). Most discussion around bards seems to be just an attempt at justifying something that has been around for a long time in the game. But, hey, some people don't grok clerics, and as a boy raised on stories of biblical miracles and Knights Templar, they was never a problem for me. So maybe someone feels similarly about the bard. I think I found how I'd like to handle bards in my own campaign, though. Check out the bard as hireling.

Magic as an Old Language

2011-10-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

I know the idea of language being magic is not new- heck, it goes back to the bible being the Word, and I'm sure beyond that. And I'm sure some of you might give me examples of this very idea: magic being the use of a older, more primal language. But I want to think a little about what the implications might be.

So, what if spells were just sentences in the right language? The language of the long lost elders? You would need to find examples of that lost language: inscriptions, scrolls, books. Even second-hand citations might be valuable.

You might find a book written in that tongue and use it to reverse engineer things: nouns, verbs, sentence structure. What you could do would be very limited and simple. Saying the word for light would create light.

You might find a dictionary written in the old tongue. Now it is more clear what the names of things are. Perhaps with its help you can learn more verbs too. You can affect more things now. When you say flee, foes flee. When you say "light flee" light sources are extinguished.

You might find a grammar book, or rhetoric. Now you can learn the structure of the language to make more complicated utterances. You can have multiple effects happen to multiple things. You can include contingencies and qualifications. "Take me to safety." Or maybe: "Make the tracks of he who wishes me harm visible to me."

With a magic system based on this concept, all spell effects would essentially require some research. Well, unless that's what guilds are, the accumulated, simple knowledge. But leveling would be based on treasure. Because to learn how to do more complex things would require the finding of the books in the old tongue, the grammars, etc. This might be a kind of individualized achievement based leveling for magic-users.

That all being said, the more I write about it the less different this seems than the way the game is set up now: spells being kinds of arcane "recipes," and guilds being centers of recipe knowledge, and magic-users hunting the wilderness for lost and rare recipes. Hmm. . .

The Silent Horn

2011-10-05T08:09:00.000-07:00

Blowing into it makes no noise. But every person told its magic phrase will hear it sound, deep and clear. Its signal has been used to win battles and in the assassination of seven sultans.

Serendipity XI

2011-10-04T16:18:00.000-07:00

These posts are about the weird, cool, or beautiful images I find when I'm looking for a completely different weird, cool, or beautiful image. So, they aren't necessarily going to be useful in a game. But they don't take long to save, clean up, and share. And they're in the public domain, which means they're yours, so I figure it would be a shame not to share them every now and then.

A rendition of the, now, classic mushroom forest:

1d6 fez-wearing hirelings:

uhh . . . a friendly ghoul?

This one is crying out for t-shirtization:

Finally, some little stuff maybe useful for decorations in text:

Update: Ha, that gave me a laugh I needed fictivefantasies, so here is your new friend in yoga pants:

Memory Palaces

2011-10-03T08:51:00.000-07:00

Ever since I first read of these I've been fascinated by them. If you aren't familiar, the story goes that Simonides of Creos was at a banquet and happened to step outside just before the roof collapsed. He realized he could remember who was at the banquet and which body belonged to which person based on their location around the banquet table. This became known as the method of loci, a way to memorize a great amount of information by relating each bit to imagined locations in our minds. Later, it became quite a fad, with the locations known as memory palaces.

What if you could access someone's memory palace? Find the magical phrase, use the proper ritual and you are transported to a structure. Each room might have odd objects, texts, and maps that the creator wished to remember. It might be a kind of mini-plane the players are actually transported to, or more an ethereal dream. I like the former even better, but would limit time in the palace to an hour a day and exiting would drop you back in the mundane world exactly where you entered it from.

Why visit there? It's the dungeon of a mind. You might find there:

unique spells
alchemical recipes
secret treasure locations
martial arts techniques
battle plans
secret trade routes
faction relationship maps
blackmail secrets (of others or the palace owner)
serial killer burial sites
Western March style maps of a region unexplored
monster classification schemes, along with the monsters!
daily routine (for assasinations)

You might use it as a way to set up a classic murder mystery where, in addition to the scene of the crime, investigators have access to the murderer or victim's palace. Perhaps multiple people knowing the incantation can access and change the contents of a palace from different locations, making it a means of long distance, although cryptic communication. Perhaps you could perform Mission Impossible style (the original cool version) missions where you acquire the incantation, access the palace of a living person who is still using it, and change it without them knowing to influence them politically, romantically, financially.

The palaces themselves could be locations the players are familiar with. Perhaps the palace owner is very familiar with that Snake Cult Temple. Imagine how freaky it could be for players to revisit a dungeon they had cleared, or a tavern, or keep they are familiar with.

As a treasure item, allow a player to create their own palace, and only thus become an alchemist. Or maybe require one for the vast amount of data needed to research a spell.

Silhouettes XXVII

2011-10-01T20:10:00.000-07:00

Here's an alternate mammoth:

And a terror bird!:

I revised the boar to look more fierce:

and here is a possible female mage or priest:

some goofin' around:

Computer Woes, Lost Character Sheets, & Animal Island

2011-10-01T10:06:00.000-07:00

I thought my 3+ year old hand-me-down computer was a goner. Crashing like the ram was bad. Which sucked because I came home from work and could work on silhouettes or anything. But it looks like it was a buggy version of Firefox (fingers crossed).

Yesterday before game time, I was frantically searching through all my stuff for my players' character sheets. I usually keep them all because I figure I'm less likely to lose them. But they were gone!

After a few texts, turns out that one player in the mountains thought that would be our last game we ever played and kept the sheets for sentimental reasons. Okay, go to the house. No sheets. Where are they? Must be here. Finally decide to just improvise, start writing down ACs and probable amounts of hit points. And begin playing.

Then, another player arrives with all the character sheets. Everyone is happy to have their trained ferrets and fairytale spells back.

The session was short
"G" - F
La Bouche - hireling
Janis - hireling
Darkyo - F
Athydas - MU

We last left our heroes washed ashore on a weird animal island. There were four players involved. Two of those players are now gone. The three players I was with yesterday had not been there. It seemed to make sense to have these three wake up on the shore and explore the island a bit and meet up with the two remaining from the original crew. Because those original two arrived a little late, events were already rolling and they ended up sitting around observing and probably bored.

Ah, for a dungeon and a nearby tavern. Who knew rotating player rosters would be such a challenge. I suppose if I was a better DM I could have switched the spotlight to the two late arrivals, but a) I was afraid they would be at mortal risk with just the two of them and b) they are at a part of the island which is sort of central to everything so I wanted all the players together when they tried to figure out the animal machines and such.

So what happened in play? The three wander through a coastal forest a bit. They stumble upon a village of strange creatures that walk on their hands and have no lower torsos. They spot the two hirelings tied to spits near the fire.

G moves into the village, throws some fireworks into the fire- which shocks all the creatures and blinds them. Then begins walking on his hands-- which, for some reason, enrages them. Battle ensues. Darkyo is laying down bow fire from the trees. Athydas closes to throw some darts and is knocked out. G manages to cut one hireling free before getting knocked out. Darkyo's missile thins the ranks of the enemy. The first hireling frees the second and they manage to turn the tide of battle. The unconscious are roused and the huts are set afire as the sound of more of the creatures approaching comes from the forest above.

Some Thoughts
__________________________________________
I need to figure a way to put character sheets on my blog so I can access them anywhere from my phone. I thought of uploading photos first, but I suppose I could just type up the stats in the barest numerical form.

I wish I could reboot my whole campaign with a B2-like area and central homebase. Starting at Nidus on an island has made where players go pretty unpredictable and meant I had to have an idea, not of just one or two cultures, but pretty much what the heck is going on in the whole world. Once they figure out a mode of travel to get off this island I have only the vaguest idea of where they might head.

I hate nothing more than seeing bored players. But there was a lot of confusion and it's been months since we've played so I'll go easy on myself and strive to do better next time.

Sæthryth's Salve

2011-09-29T15:38:00.000-07:00

That last post was kind of ranty and thin. Here's my coin for joesky :

Sæthryth's Salve is a thick green paste that smells of mint and fish. Applied to a freshly cut body part, even a head, it will keep that part alive and viable for up a week. If the part is bound to a fresh wound within that week it will grow a healthy connection.

Let your players find a dish of this next to a severed, living head. The head can talk in a quiet wheeze. Where will the party find a body to keep this head alive? Who does the head belong to that they would want to? Where is its body?

Hypothesis

2011-09-29T08:39:00.000-07:00

Hypothesis: Anyone complaining that magic-users are too powerful in comparison to other classes-- especially fighters-- has never played an old school magic-user.

Why do I say that? I find it hard, hard, hard to believe anyone would complain if they had actually experienced how hard an old school MU has it. Hell, one of my players has a MU with 1 freaking hit point! He's already died twice and only lives because the party encountered a time travel tower. And, because it takes so many more XP for him to level, the fighters are all 2-3 levels higher than him.

He has to hang in the back of the party (but not the rear!) because one hit will kill him. He has to bide his time because he has only one spell to cast. The time he does cast it will be terrifying because it means there is something the party's multiple fighters couldn't take out.

Will he be more powerful than the fighters come 8th level? I damn well hope so.

2011-09-27T20:31:00.000-07:00

More on One-Pagers

2011-09-27T08:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, so I thought I'd write a little about my continued thinking and also get feedback on some other one-page ideas.

Poison
The more I think about poison the less I think it needs a subset of rules like these one-pagers are, unless poison is a tool used by the players. Because really all it will amount to otherwise is a chart of modifiers +/- to save versus poison. Well, that's assuming that poison doesn't do a wide array of things like cause damage instead of death, etc. Yes, I've seen those articles-- including the one way back in the Best of the Dragon II. But to me that makes poison . . . not poison. So it doesn't interest me and I am assuming that it would, weaker or stronger, be killing you.

To use it as a tool other things become important: how it enters the body, how hard to get, how much it should cost. The last one especially gives me pause because if I get it wrong I could break my whole campaign. It would need to cost enough so that one dose would be about equivalent to the amount of treasure you would gain from killing a creature. Well, maybe a little less for missile weapons because you can miss. I'm away from my books, but I imagine later versions give poison a specific price. Has anyone got experience with how that has affected player use of poison?

Disease
After Coming up with the Drug one-pager that listed some common base drug effects and then allowed you to use those as building blocks to make your own I was pretty happy. That seemed to do exactly what I'd hoped for-- make a stable, simple system that tons of variety and customization could come out of. I thought I could do the same thing with disease, building diseases from a core of common symptoms. But two problems 1) there are many more symptoms than I had drug effects, and 2) symptoms aren't usually the important part of disease, they just let you know you've got it. Sure leprosy, might be about the symptom, but unless you want your campaign world to be quite horrible, fingers-dropping-off is not going to be a building block type of symptom to be used over and over.

Here is what matters about disease in a game:

How easy to catch
how does it handicap you when you've got it
how fatal
how long before you die once you catch it

If you limit the possible values for each, you can make a matrix that gives you some minimum number of diseases to have in a game world and still have a realistic flavor. For example an easy to catch less deadly disease, and a hard to catch very deadly disease, etc.

Some other considerations:
I think another part of disease flavor is having a lesser disease give you immunity to a more dangerous disease, and also scaring the crap out of players catching that lesser one. So a couple of those would be nice.

That being said, I think the actual vectors should be uncertain and mysterious. Maybe the way you possibly catch them is very broad: Being in a swamp, being on a ship for a month. That way players can be scared of the vapors and such and not go around lecturing the peasants on bathing.

Chris Hogan reminded me of something I totally forgot, that things like Jungle Rot, could be very important in an exploration game. So there should be room for maladies that may not be fatal at all in themselves, but hamper adventurers in important ways.

Also, how can you talk about diseases without thinking of the terrible brain rot of syphilis. So, at least one or two on the list would need to be STDs.

There is the possibility of campaign altering diseases like a plague killing all the oaks or livestock, but I think that could probably be easily extrapolated from the four points above and not need much extra in the way of mechanics.

Other Possibilities
I think anything that forces me not to try and tackle it at all because the possibilities seem so vast is a good candidate for boiling down to a one-pager. I feel like I can use drugs in my campaign world now, before there were just too many possibilities and variables, I was always thinking "I need to sit down and work out how I'll handles those." What else would I like to have but feel similarly about:

Martial Arts
Herbs (much weaker than potions, probably nicely corresponding with symptoms)
Gambling Games (for taverns and such, but there are so many and often hard for me to grok)
Dogs (noisms went a nice way towards giving me what I need here)
Horses (Michael Curtis had a perfect 2 pager, I'd just want to shrink it a page for compactness)
Pantheons/Cults (I really crave something like 2e's domain system so I can randomly determine religious powers for many different cultures)
Trading!
Property (maybe not the full blown building a castle, but what about buying/renting a house, upkeep etc.?)
Other Magic Item Categories

Okay I need to get to work.

Animal Mash-ups

2011-09-26T08:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, if you're my player stop reading. That goes for you G, and Tyler!

It looks like my long dormant campaign will resume this Friday. We last left the party stranded on an island populated by weird animal hybrids. In fact the last thing that happened was the party discovered one of the machines that could do this (I never wrote this session up, and yes, there is more than one animal combiner).

I had great fun having the party be sprayed by skunk-bats. They had a dangerous encounter with a golden puma of sorts-- with tail feathers and the ability to charm. They also encountered some screaming cobras with little peacock tails around their heads instead hoods and a scream that makes you dumb if you fail your save. And the tragic parrot pig, pushed so cruelly into quicksand.

So, I thought I would generate some more possibilities for them to encounter. Which means I keep rolling on this table until something strikes me as a cool possibility. Here are a few:

rattle heron - "Look at those graceful birds feeding on the fish in that pond. Wait, they lifted their heads. Aggh, flying snakes."
striped monitors - Zebra + monitor lizards. These seem terrifying to me, imagine a galloping herd of creatures with the heads of those things that race up and tear prey to shreds.
sloth hawk - this seemed hilarious. How slow can a bird fly and still be flying, haha. Maybe it can hang about and be a mascot.
humming panther - A puma with humming bird wings, think blink panther + displacer panther, terrifying.
chameleobear - grizzly + chameleon, run muthafutha's
turtle vultures - I think these could be like shriekers-- they make a lot of noise and draw other encounters, except they come to your recent kill, and their are hard as hell to kill, pull back into their shells.
buffalo swans - think water buffalo with huge black wings. Man, this island is getting less and less hospitable.
pachylion - Elephant lion hybrid. If I can pull off the description, this would be terrifying. Basically a giant thick-hided lion.
beaked rats - toucan beaks on rats. might just be local color, maybe they snap too.
moosepecker - haha, another goofy one. Although, if it's territorial and stil has the antlers maybe not.
fisheater - anteater + hippo. It just wallows around vacuuming up fish in its long snout. Probably not dangerous if you leave it alone.
yellow beaver - canary + beaver. Hah! These little yellow things swarm and cut down trees. That might block a trail. Also their dams are said to be filled with golden pebbles they've picked up.
Kroalas - crow-headed bear-things climb trees very slowly. Make a lot of noise, like shriekers.
Furred Frogs - frog-sized but with enough black bear in them to have teeth, claws, and fur.
Owlamanders - I guess just local color, slimy brightly colored things that fly silently past.
Golden Cobras - canary-yellow feathers. No wings, but a sweet bird song as their warning, then bite!

Okay, that's enough for now. The online roller I'm using doesn't seem very random amd I'm tired of getting the same results again and again. I need to make a swimmer/insect chart to give me more unique results. But that gives me some to think about. I may just use a few of these that stick in mind most. Keep in mind that one of the players has a beautiful cap and when he puts it on stuff tends to follow him, even non-predatory animals come out of the jungle in wondrous awe.

Silhouettes XXVI

2011-09-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

Look familiar? Thanks to James at The Underdark Gazette I now know the familiar DMG illustration by Darlene was actually a copy of one by Aubrey Beardsley. Found it. Extracted some silhouettes:

Elf

The last figure is Perseus from a different book. Beardsley's figures look graceful and lithe-- elfin-- to me. I think these could represent High Elves, no? Now, here is a second OD&D monster:

Nomads

I know there are other conceptions of nomad-- Mongols, the Sioux-- I'll be on the look out for them too, so your nomads won't have to always be desert tribes.

And here's another human fighter-- he was a blacksmith fighting off fairies, seems appropriate-- or, if I made him squatter and lengthened the beard, could be another Dwarf.

These have all been added to the zip file located in the sidebar.

Silhouettes - Taking Stock

2011-09-23T21:24:00.000-07:00

Okay, I have at least passing silhouettes for 42 of the 77 monsters found in Original D&D's wilderness encounter charts. That's more than half way!

I actually have tried lions twice, and stegosaurus twice, but the source pictures weren't very good and the resulting silhouettes just didn't seem good enough. There are tons of beetle pics from directly above but I'm looking for an action shot like the ant, crab, and spider. I think I finally found an image for iconic nomads.

I've mentioned before that the humanoids will be difficult. If you put a gun to my head I'd make some shields with different totemic images to represent their tribes.

Some of the remainder are pretty classic mythological creatures but I haven't been able to find representations of them that give a crisp, recognizable silhouette.

I actually forgot that I started out just trying to provide images for creatures encountered in the wilderness. I started thinking my list was all the monsters. But the Monsters & Treasures book also has some dungeon monsters:

Lycanthropes (4)
Purple worms
Invisible stalkers (haha, that one's done)
Elementals (4)
Djinn
Efreet
Ochre Jelly
Black Pudding
Green Slime
Gray Ooze
Yellow Mold
Medium/Heavy/Draft horse (I have the medium)
Mule (I have this)
Small insects
Large Insects

So if I expand my project to include them, the various puddings will be challenging to say the least. I could do the were-creatures by placing human figures next to the animal shapes, but that's not the Hollywood-type wolfman. The rest seem doable. This brings the total to 44 out of 100 creatures. That's not quite half way.

As for character-type silhouettes, I know that I have a real dearth of females and have actively been looking for some.

I know that the actually work I'm doing is pretty crude (if there's artistry it's recognizing the pictures that will yield the most iconic silhouettes) but it's cool to think I'm plinking away at the same image, blown up to 800%, that Aubrey Beardsley or one of the other great illustrators was stooped over so many, many years ago.

Adventures I'd Like to Have

2011-09-22T08:32:00.000-07:00

Work is tough, here is me daydreaming to stay sane:

Adventures I'd like to have as a player, places I'd like to explore:

A library heist, where the books are the loot. Also an alchemical laboratory. The packaging and movement of these is a logistical challenge. Be even better if the goal was to get them tinto my own wizard tower.
Visit a Yellowstone analogue with hot springs and geysers and magical springs.
Landing on a continent undiscovered by my character's known cultures-- exploring, mapping.
Visit a city on a great moving beast or within one
Found a guild/university, get it going, and try to ensure that it's self-sustaining
Lead a revolution against a tyrannical regime
Visit a 3d city in the elemental plane of water, I imagine it called the Verdigris City
Zoological expedition to collect and bring back rare beasts and monsters
Build my own lavish tomb complex
Explore a living cave system that feels like real caves and not just abstract 20'x20' spaces in my mind.

Indiana Jones & the Module of Doom

2011-09-21T08:33:00.000-07:00

I bought my brother the Indiana Jones rpg one Christmas. It either came with the Temple of Doom module in the boxed set or I bought that too.

We never played it, but I spent some time reading through the game and that module. Even then I was boggled by that module. It was exactly. The same. As the movie. Scene for scene. Let me get this straight, you watch a movie and like it so much that you want to play through the same exact movie. Except, there will be no tension because you know everything that's coming. The only tension is whether Indie dies in your version rather than making it through. There must have been enormous pressure on people who did play it to fudge rolls: "No, he can't miss. He totally sends the big guard into the crusher!"

My Brother's First GMing Gig

2011-09-20T08:23:00.000-07:00

My brother's first GMing gig was also Top Secret, but the newer version that had the Casino Royale gambling rules. I believe he was running an adventure that came with the boxed set. My friend and I were the only players.

We were tipped off that someone was going to blow up a national landmark in San Francisco. We could never figure out what the target could be. Chock this up to player brain-fart, but it probably didn't help that we were more interested in gambling at the casino (not sure where, I thought we were in California) than hoofing around investigating.

So, yeah, we played roulette while terrorists blew up the Golden Gate Bridge. End of adventure.

Ant Heads

2011-09-18T16:38:00.000-07:00

There just happened to be twenty of these:

Roll to see what the potion of ant-headedness does to your pc, or maybe what the aliens boarding you tramp trader look like. (I've got no idea what the deal with M is, something beyond our ken I guess)

Here's me messing around to see how they'd look as coats of arms:

My first GMing Gig

2011-09-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

I think the idea was that I would become the Top Secret Administrator because my two friends were running D&D and Traveller. I didn't even own Top Secret, had to borrow it from one of them.

There were four(?) players. We were at my friend's house.
I remember a vague sense of not knowing what a game was supposed to look like. I wasn't exactly steeped in James Bond movies. But there was a module. With a location. It assumed a stealthy approach. I remember reading it and rereading it with a bit of anxiety because I did know I would have to be prepared for whatever entrance they might attempt. And I have a vague recollection of worrying about the locks, I probably wanted to be ready for when they tried to pick a lock to gain entrance.

The first thing the PCs did was ram their van full speed into the front door.

I was filled with dread. I had no idea what to do. I awkwardly said something along the lines of "this is boring, let's go outside." They wanted to keep playing but I was insistent. "Nah, I don't feel like playing this right now."

I don't think I even tried to run a game for another 10 years.

Silhouettes XXV

2011-09-17T18:39:00.000-07:00

Ant

Another original monster as I slowly try to gather silhouettes for them all. Odd to think rats weren't in the original crew but here are some of those too:

And here is a cobbled together attempt at a more post-tolkien dwarf for ya'll:

These have been added to the zip file in my sidebar, along with all my previous silhouettes.

One-Page Wands of Detection

2011-09-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

Here is a pdf of 20 wands of detection. Here is an editable file so you can use this framework but make it your own.

Wands of detection seem like a really cool, old school item because they are leading you somewhere-- you have a hook and direction-- but you don't know where or what to expect along the way. I especially like the idea of the party having to identify the wand by following it to its target.

Blasting wands can be limited to magic users but I think everyone should be able to pick up one of these things to see where they lead.

Some versions of D&D give these charges and limited ranges as if they were powerful tools, but knowing a trap is about isn't the same as knowing how to get past it safely. Likewise, knowing a cache of gems is somewhere in the next room in no way helps you deal with the bugaboos that might own them.

One kind of wand I didn't fit that I think would be cool is the breadcrumb wand, set a location and then later be able to find your way back to it. One signal I wasn't able to fit but think might be interesting, is: the wand gives the bearer a permanent idea of the location of the target until that location is visited. They don't need to have the wand any more. That means you could be searching for an NPC that knows exactly where the tomb of Zarglfarger is, but has never been there, etc. Wands with this kind of signal might be kept in mage guilds and used only by appointment or membership.

Serendipity X

2011-09-15T19:56:00.000-07:00

In a forked glen into which he slipped at night-fall he was surrounded by giant toads

Good reaction roll? Saw this on the always awesome OBI scrapbook blog. A Rackham.

From this book which I find hypnotic. Also via OBI SBB, bless them. Hope your week is going well. More one page goodness in the works.

Update: crap, I didn't notice, Mucha was involved in the designs of that last one!? Figures.

Ranulph's Veil

2011-09-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

Make me a ring so I can slip through the crowds silent and unseen he asked the Dwarves. For weeks. Make me a ring that will let me go where I wish, quiet as love, as regret. He asked week after week after week. Finally, they called him to the forge. We have heard your petition, and they locked the veil on him, and he slips through the crowd silent and unseen.

Magic Items as Gygaxian Building Blocks

2011-09-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

One of the cool things about D&D, and probably why it's survived so long, is that you can tinker with different subsystems without breaking the whole. Classes, for example, are a lot easier to plug-in or cut out than reshaping a whole skill system. Septimbrini called these parts you can fiddle with Building Blocks (I first heard of this at Jeff's). The traditional magic items are great examples, and they've been that way from the beginning. I've been trying to spotlight how within the building block of magic items are sub-blocks that serve different functions-- have done potions and rings so far. I thought I might pull back a little and think about the whole field.

Here, I made a matrix with number of uses mapped against who it effects. I think the magic items tend to fall into these categories rather nicely. The single-use other hasn't been used quite as much, but oils, powders, and dusts fit here. Scrolls of control would fit here too.

I don't know why I put scrolls for charges/self, that seems wrong now, and there must be some room for exploration there.

I think most, if not all, of the magic apparel would fall with the rings. I think the wands can be broken down into two types, at least, the spell guns and the dowsing rods. I'm thinking about doing a one-page on the latter because they are pretty easy to define and describe-- detect enemies, magic, gold etc. I'm not sure I can come up with 20 different types though.

These simple categories aren't the whole picture. In looking at potions, I realized they existed to be short-term dungeon tools, too. Potions provide a toolbox that gives players choices in how to approach dungeon hazard/obstacles. And rings, because of their always on nature, turn out to be good defensive items, defending even when the wearer isn't prepared (feather fall).

I really like examining the magic items like this because it's possible we might discover another type of magic item that hasn't really been used to its potential. Also, If we're clearer about what makes the types unique we might be able to invent new items along those lines (like my idea of a ring of Force, though I'd be happy with a clearer name).

The Ring is Actually . . .

2011-09-12T19:37:00.000-07:00

The angles I took here were: permanent effects, on and off binaries, and weird stuff to wear. Pdf.

Ioun stones are my favorite magic items of all time. Who came up with them?

One-Page Rings

2011-09-11T12:59:00.000-07:00

First, you should check out the great posts by heyjames4 on rings here, here, and on wands and staves.

I took what he did and tweaked it for my own campaign. Here is a pdf and here is a file to edit to your own taste.

So, in trying to differentiate magic items into distinct Gygaxian building blocks, rings are different in that their effect is infinite. Any ring with charges should be a wand. Because of their always-on nature they are the magic item best for contingency-like effects. I think Feather Fall is the quintessential magic ring.

Once I realized this, I invented a ring of Force that produces an impervious forcefield around you when being crushed. The idea is to provide protection against deadfall traps the way Feather Fall does against pits. I also ported the amulets, Life-Protection, and Non-Detection to rings.

I like the X-Ray power but think it should be some crude spectacles a character has to wear. I took out Telekinesis because it just seems to damn powerful. Maybe it will feel better to me as a charged item like a wand.

I think invisibility is pretty damn powerful too and should probably be a potion, but I can't escape the tradition of the One Ring. I did duplicate the Water Breathing power that I had previously as a potion, because it seems like a good one to be able to use continuously. Maybe I can replace that potion with something else to keep the lists distinct.

Rather than side-effects, I thought inscriptions might be more appropriate for rings. I plugged in a few Latin mottoes, but you could put in riddles or Esperanto or whatever.

I have to give heyjame4 props, I never thought of a ring made from mercury and the image of the ever-shifting stuff around a finger is cool.

A couple ideas for rings that this page doesn't get at: 1) Harmonious or negative effects when two ring types are worn together, so for example, you put on a Ring of Non-Detection at the same time as a ring of Invisibility and you become ethereal (but that could be as many as 400 possibilities!), and 2) ring pairs that function together. ze Bulette's portal rings spring to mind, my rings of the joined, and heyjames4's idea which I call: Rings of Friendship: pool HP with the person that wears the other ring.

Symptoms & Side Effects

2011-09-10T17:10:00.000-07:00

It's a new retroclone where you play hypochondriacs and pharmacists, haha. Okay, not really. I explored before the idea of how few effects we can put on characters based on mechanics. I don't know why I didn't think about coming from it the other way-- start with effects we want and try to generate reasonable mechanics for them. So that's the intent of this post.

Here is a pdf of 30 symptoms. Some of these came up in reference to potions being mixed, some in drugs being used, and some are coming up in the disease rules I'm working on. I think these 30 can go pretty far for us. There are some other minor malevolent effects, but I'm not sure I could squeeze out 100 interesting symptoms.

I have some ideas for mechanics, but I thought I would give you a chance to try it out. So, at the risk of seeming coy, what mechanical effects would you use in your game for all these symptoms? You don't have to list them all in the comments, but if you're stumped or come up with something cool I'd love to hear about it.

Also, if you can think of other symptoms or side effects you would definitely want, I'd like to hear about them too.

The Potion is Actually . . .

2011-09-09T15:14:00.000-07:00

Having the one-page potions doesn't mean I want a boring, standard fantasy world. I mostly just didn't want to miss out on the useful subsystem that has been tested and known to work.

Here's a table to add some spice on top of that potion subsystem. I was riffing on one-shot devices, items that last a limited amount of time, and things you have to consume. That could probably be three charts right there, but it was hard enough to squeeze these out of my tired brain so I'll leave those charts to you. Have a nice weekend.

Update: Whoops, I forgot to put an icon to distinguish this from the 400,000 other charts we all use so I added one.

Also, umm, many of these complicate, if not do away with, the "sip to indentify" technique. Forgot about that. You may want to have little "eat me / drink me" type labels identifying what these do, or else have them come to the party by way of knowledgable NPC

One-Page Drugs

2011-09-05T15:09:00.000-07:00

I've praised Chris Hogan's Small But Vicious Dog before. One thing about the drug rules therein is that I doubt my players would every risk taking them. I know that not all drugs offer mechanical benefits and that those drugs as Chris has them are probably well suited to the darkness of Warhammer Fantasy, but I wanted drugs that would tempt players.

Here is a single page that combines Chris' rules on addiction with 10 basic drug types. You can name these types for your campaign or you can mix and match them for more complex drugs below. I made a few as examples.

The only thing I wish I could have but don't know how to fit, is how the drug is taken: smoked, drunk, sniffed, etc. The complex drugs below have more room, so you could enter a note there.

Here is the Write file so that you can mold it into something that works for you. Note, more undefined side-effects. Disease will have some too. Maybe a one-page side-effects is the answer.

One-Page Potions

2011-09-04T18:32:00.000-07:00

Here is a single page that has the rules for potions, and 20 standard potions with flavors and qualities for a certain region/culture.

I had a vision of the perfect blogging product. It would be a clean minimal framework like this that was entirely editable. I hoped to do this with LibreOffice's Write, but the form text boxes are just too clunky. Maybe you can do it with Adobe software or something else.

Imagine that you could edit each of the numbers on this list from d20 to percentile so you could weight entries to your liking. Imagine leaving all these potions the same and changing their qualities to that of potions of goblin manufacture.

Anyway, I couldn't achieve that, so I'll give you the Write file that you can edit if you want.

I had a heck of a time fitting the info. The side effects probably need some description, the potion mixing chart doesn't gives specifics, etc. I even cheated a little by allowing for fire/cold/acid resistances to be listed under one potion. I did the same for elemental form, figuring Elasticity could fit under it too.

But I really wanted a single page so I can find it in the heat of play. I put the bottle pic because I noticed that the more charts I have the harder it is to find something because they all look the same. So a simple image to signal what each chart is about.

Update: Trying to minimize more, I was able to cut the whole Color column by making the Quality backgrounds the potion color. But it might look better if you just printed in B&W and then use markers or crayons to color. I'm going to do this for myself because seeing red is faster than reading red.

John made the great suggestion that there should be a place for the hints of clues players will get when they sip the potions. I'm having a hard time fitting it, even after cutting the Color column, but if you care less about the Qualities/Flavors see the comments below for an example of How he did it.

The Story of Potions II

2011-09-04T11:45:00.000-07:00

Last post I listed which potions existed from version to version. Now I'd like to look at how those versions handled them. I'll be specifically looking at developments in Identification, Duration, and Miscibility:

OD&D

All potions come in a quantity sufficient to perform whatever their end is, although a small sample can be taken without effecting the whole. For those with limited effect the time will be six turns plus the number of pips rolled on a six-sided die.

Right from the start we see that sipping a potion to test it doesn't use it up. This allows for players to have some idea of what potions they have so they can make decisions about when to use them. Also note the time, an hour with a d6 in variability with a two hour maximum.

Holmes

Potions will affect anyone who takes them. Some method of detecting the effects of the potion must be found. If the characters lack a detect magic spell, they may dare a tiny sip to see what the result may be. This would leave enough potion to accomplish its complete effect. Most potions come in small vials or flasks containing a single dose. The effects of most potions last somewhat longer than 6 turns. The Dungeon Master rolls a secret die to determine the number of additional turns and only informs the player when the effect of the potion has worn off.

Not sure about the first sentence here. Does this mean you don't get a save? But you do if it's a potion of poison. Does it mean once you've drunk it you can't decide to not use the flight powers you been granted? Not that I want more specificity, just not sure why that sentence is needed.
Detect magic to identify a potion? Or just to show that the vial of liquid is magic? Notice a potion gets defined now as a small vial and the roll for duration becomes explicitly secret, the DM's purview.

Moldvay

Potions are usually found in small glass vials, similar to Holy Water. Each potion has a different smell and taste - even two potions with the same effect. Unless stated otherwise, the effect of a potion lasts 7-12 (1d6+6) turns. Only the DM should know the exact duration. The entire potion must be drunk to have this effect. A potion may be sipped to discover its type and then used later. Drinking a potion takes one round. If a character drinks a potion while another potion is still in effect, that character will become sick and will be unable to do anything (no saving throw) for 3 turns (1/2 hour) and neither potion will have any further effect. A potion of healing has no duration for purposes of the sickness described above.

Now potions have different smells and tastes. Is this to help a young DM add detail to a world? Everything else seems familiar except, now we get the first miscibility rule. "Don't try to use Invulnerability and Heroism at the same time you little cheaters." Notice when you add this level of specificity in your restrictions it requires even more specificity for the exception; "healing potions are cool, though"

Mentzer

Potions are usually found in small glass vials, similar to Holy Water. Each potion has a different smell and taste - even two potions with the same effect! Unless stated otherwise, the effect of a potion lasts 7-12 turns. Only you, the DM, should know the exact duration, and you should keep track of it when the potion is used. The entirepotion must be drunk to have this effect. A potion may be sipped to discover its type and then used later. Drinking a potion takes one round. Sipping a potion does not decrease its effect or duration. If a character drinks a potion while another potion is still in effect, that character will become sick and will be unable to do anything (no saving throw) for 3 turns (1/2 hour) and neither potion will have any further effect. A potion of healing has no duration (for this calculation).

It's interesting to see how Mentzer has taken Moldvay and tweaked it. Check out the exclamation point in sentence 2 and the DM being addressed directly as "you." Cool departure from the neutral corporate-rule speak. I need to get a physical copy of this and look closer. But, look, we have one new addition here: someone wondered how long it takes to drink a potion and now it's become set in stone.

1e AD&D

Potions are typically found in ceramic, crystal, glass, or metal flasks in enough quantity to provide one person with one complete dose so as to be
able to achieve the effects which are given hereafter for each type of potion. Potion containers can be other than as described at your option. As a general rule they should bear no identifying marks, so that the players must sample from each container in order to determine the nature of the liquid. However, even a small taste should suffice to identify a potion in some way- even if just a slight urge. As Dungeon Master you should add a few different sorts of potions, both helpful and harmful, of such nature as to cause difficulties in identification. In addition, the same type of potion, when derived from different sources, might smell, taste, and look differently.

Unless otherwise stated, the effects of a potion will last for 4 complete turns plus 1-4 additional turns (d4). If half of a potion is quaffed, the effects
will last one-half as long in some cases. Potions take effect 2-5 segments after they are imbibed.

While potions can be compounded by magic-user/alchemist teams at a relatively low cost, they must have an actual potion to obtain the formula
for each type. Furthermore, the ingredients are always rare and/or hard to come by. This aspect of potions, as well as the formulation of new ones by
players, is detailed in the appropriate subsection of the MAGICAL RESEARCH rules.

(from pg119)
The magical mixtures and compounds which comprise potions are not always compatible. You must test the miscibility of potions whenever:
1) two potions are actually intermingled, or

2) a potion is consumed by a creature while another such liquid already consumed is still in effect While it is possible to prepare a matrix which lists each potion type and cross references each to show a certain result when one is intermingled with the other, such a graph has two drawbacks. First, it does not allow for differences in formulae from alchemist and/or magic-user. Second, it will require continual addition as new potion types are added to the campaign.Therefore, it is suggested that the following table be used - with, perhaps, the decision that a delusion potion will mix with anything, that oilof slipperiness taken with oil of etherealness will always increase the chance for the imbiber to be lost in the Ethereal Plane for 5-30 days to 50%,and treasure finding mixed with any other type of potion will always yield a lethal poison. Whatever certain results you settle upon for your campaign, the random results from the table apply to all other cases.

Now we get the longest description yet of identifying potions through taste-testing. So, no identifying marks, you have to sip. Why? Well, poison won't work otherwise, right? It does allow for interesting and funny tastes related to the potion effects. But I think you could have just as much fun with cool, punny names on bottles.

For the first time duration has changed, cut to 50-80 minutes. The fact that mages can compund potions at relatively low cost seems an odd and risky addition.

Now we also get a complication on miscibility. Instead of the simple universal effect we have a random chart now. If you look at the chart (not reproduced here) you see that 54% of the time both potions work as normal, there is a 3% chance of death and a 1% chance you'll get a permanent power out of it. I like the randomness and the fact that you could end up getting a power, but it does add complexity. I wonder what potion mixtures were so problematic to the game that they required these rules. Players loading up on treasure finding, invisibility and speed? Seems like, if they had the potions to do it, more power to them. Is this a result of too many potions in a campaign. My Telecanter sense is tingling, probably.

Notice again, detail requires more detail, with the suggestion that Treasure Finding never mix and the specifics about the oils.

2e AD&D

Potions are typically found in ceramic, crystal, glass, or metal flasks or vials (though you can change this, if you want). Flasks or other containers generally contain enough fluid to provide one person with one complete dose to achieve the effects described for each potion below. Opening and drinking a potion has an initiative modifier of 1, but the potion doesn't take effect until an additional initiative modifier delay of 1d4+1 has passed. Only then do the full magical properties of the potion become evident. Magical oils are poured over the body and smeared appropriately; this imposes a speed factor delay of 1d4 + 1. Potions can be compounded by mages at relatively low cost. However, they must havea sample of the desired potion to obtain the right formula. Furthermore, ingredients tend to be rare or hard to come by. This aspect of potions, as well as the formulation of new ones by players, is detailed in the Spell Research rules.

Identifying Potions
As a general rule, potion containers should bear no identifying marks, so player characters must sample from each container to determine the nature of the liquid inside. However, even a small taste should suffice to identify a potion in some way. Introduce different sorts of potions, both helpful and harmful, to cause difficulties in identification. In addition, the same type of potion, when created in different labs, might smell, taste, and look differently.

Combining Potions
The magical mixtures and compounds that make up potions are not always compatible.The compatibility of potions is tested whenever two potions are actually intermingled, ora potion is consumed by a creature while another such liquid, already consumed, is in effect.Permanent potions have an effective duration of one turn for mixing purposes. If you drink another potion within one turn of drinking one with Permanent duration, check on Table 111. The exact effects of combining potions can't be calculated, because of differences in formulae, fabrication methods, and component quality employed by various mages. Therefore, it is suggested that Table 111 be used, with the following exceptions:
1. A delusion potion will mix with anything.
2. A treasure finding potion will always yield a lethal poison.
Secretly roll 1d100 for potion compatibility, giving no clues until necessary. The effects of combining specific potions can be pre-set as a plot device, at your option.
Potion Duration
Unless otherwise stated, the effects of a potion last for four complete turns plus 1d4 additional turns (4+1d4).

The only difference from 1e here is that the time to drink/take effect is tweaked to the 2e initiative system. Oh, and the 2eism hidden in the explanation of how to use the miscibility chart. Pre-setting a result as a plot device does not sound good to me. So the big bad is going to drink two potions and you scripted something dramatic. Nah, roll when he drinks it, drama is in not knowing what will happen.

3.5

A potion is a magic liquid that produces itseffect when imbibed. Magic oils are similar topotions, except that oils are applied externallyrather than imbibed. A potion or oil can be used only once. It can duplicate the effect of a spell of up to 3rd level that has a casting time of less than 1 minute. Potions are like spells cast upon the imbiber. The character taking the potion doesn’t get to make any decisions about the effect—the caster who brewed the potion has already done so. For example, a potion of protection from energy is always designed to protect against a specific energy type chosen by the creator, not the drinker. The drinker of a potion is both the effective target and the caster of the effect (though the potion indicates the caster level, the drinker still controls the effect, such as with levitate).The person applying an oil is the effective caster, but the object is the target. When a character applies oil of speak with dead, the character is the one asking the questions.

Physical Description:
A typical potion or oil consists of 1ounce of liquid held in a ceramic or glass vial fitted with a tightstopper. The stoppered container is usually no more than 1 inch wide and 2 inches high. The vial has AC 13, 1 hit point, hardness 1, and a break DC of 12. Vials hold 1 ounce of liquid.Identifying Potions: In addition to the standard methods of identification, PCs can sample from each container they find to attempt to determine the nature of the liquid inside. An experienced character learns to identify potions by memory—for example, the last time she tasted a liquid that reminded her of almonds, it turned out to be a potion of cure moderate wounds. (You canreward players who keep records of potion sampling by always having the same type of potion taste the same—or you can cross them up by occasionally having the almond-flavored potion besomething other than a potion of cure moderate wounds.)
Activation: Drinking a potion or applying an oil requires no special skill. The user merely removes the stopper and swallows the potion or smears on the oil. The following rules govern potion and
oil use. Drinking a potion or using an oil on an item of gear is a standard action. The potion or oil takes effect immediately. Using a potion or oil provokes attacks of opportunity. A successful attack (including grappling attacks) against the character forces a Concentration check (as for casting a spell). If the character fails this check, she cannot drink the potion. An enemy may direct an attack of opportunity against the potion or oil container rather than against the character. A successful attack of this sort can destroy the container (see page 165 of the Player’s Handbook).A creature must be able to swallow a potion orsmear on an oil. Because of this, incorporeal creatures cannot use potions or oils.Any corporeal creature can imbibe a potion.The potion must be swallowed. Any corporealcreature can use an oil. A character can carefully administer a potion to an unconscious creature as a full-round action, trickling the liquid down the creature’s throat. Likewise, it takes a full-round action to apply an oil to an unconscious creature.

When I started doing this I just wanted more insight into how potions might work by the way they've been handled over the years. I didn't realize they would be a perfect example of the encrustation of rules as the system tries to standardize things and make rulings unnecessary. We've gone from 2 sentences to multiple paragraphs.

I never played 3.x D&D and reading this excerpt I'm a little ashamed that any of you did. You have a rule system that tells you the way to use a potion is to drink it! Really!? Why was this necessary? Did someone try pouring it on their head? Try rubbing a potion and drinking an oil?

The potion has a volume now, the container suggested dimensions. Apparently there really is no such thing as potions in 3.5, they are just liquid spells, which requires the whole section on who the caster is and who the target is. Now it is very clear that you can't use potions while incorporeal but you can feed a potion to an unconscious person. What worries me is what if a gaming situation arises where there is an incorporeal unconscious person!? Can you feed them a potion? What if, GASP, I become incorporeal midway through drinking a potion? Is it possible to feed an incorporeal potion to a corporeal unconscious person? Why couldn't this system be more complete? How slipshod it is to not cover the infinite possibilities that might arise in play!

Conclusion
Okay, enough of that. What did I learn?

There was always an assumption that, though there might be other ways, the primary way players would identify potions was by tasting them.
The standard duration was 1 hour + 1d6 additional turns until 1e when it was cut to 40 minutes + 1d4 additional turns.
Somewhere along the way the idea came about that mixing potions should be more risky and uncertain. (I don't know if this was because players were "abusing" them somehow, or just in an attempt to add some mystery back to the magic.)

Some ideas for my own campaign:

Duration is at least an hour. After that, the player rolls a d6 eachturn. A 1 on the first roll means the effect ends. A 2 or lower on the second rollthe same, and so on. The max duration will be 2 hours.
Potions have a side effect that takes effect after the duration ends. You can stack potions as much as you want, but in about an hour you'll be hurting.
Potions mixed together (outside the body) get a roll on a miscibility table. Bad things usually happen (i.e. no 54% chance of the two working together normally).

The Story of Potions

2011-09-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

I went looking at how potions have changed over the various versions in order to decide on a standard set of potions for myself. I was quite surprised at how conservative they've been. Here is a pdf from OD&D to 1e.

(I'm skipping the oils as they seem a different thing to me than something you ingest)

Holmes and Moldvay are meant to only cover the first 3 levels of play. It's interesting that they streamlined the list of potions (10 for Holmes, 7 for Moldvay) which implies some potions are considered higher level, like spells would be-- or maybe some are less essential archetypally if you're streamlining. But, with the Marsh/Cook expert set, every streamlined potion has been added back except ESP, Extra-healing, and Super-heroism.

And with AD&D not only are those added back, but all name changes (mostly the Control potions) are reverted. So, really, the only difference between OD&D+Greyhawk and AD&D is the addition of 5 new potions:

Climbing
Philter of Love
Philter of Persuasiveness
Sweet Water
Water Breathing

2e cut Extra-Healing and added 10 more, but only Armor wasn't already seen in Unearthed Arcana:

Armor
Elixir of Health
Elixir of Madness
Elixir of Youth
Fire Breath
Glibness
Stammering/Stuttering
Rainbow Hues
Ventriloquism
Vitality

It seems that some of these are drifting into the realm of too specific to be standards, Rainbow Hues? Where would that be useful outside of Carcosa? Elixir of Youth is a weak Longevity. Glibness doesn't seem different enough from Persuasiveness to warrant another potion.

I don't have a 3.x era DM's guide (anyone got one lying around?) but I looked at the Rules Cyclopedia too. There, 16 more potions were added:

Agility
Antidote
Blending
Bug Repellent
Defense
Dreamspeech
Elasticity
Elemental Form
Ethereality
Fortitude
Luck
Merging
Sight
Speech
Strength
Swimming

Philtre of Love and Sweet Water don't make the transition. Speech looks to be a replacement for Philtre of Persuasiveness. Note that Oil of Ethereality has become ingestible. Merging is another odd specific one. I'm guessing it's meant to be drunk by a thief who can then sneak the whole party past guards or something? Dreamspeech is like a combo of Speak with Dead and ESP. I do like Antidote and wonder why it took so long for it to appear.

Potions as Gygaxian Building Blocks

I like that you drink a potion and it gives you a limited time tool to use against the challenges of the underworld.
I like that the effects are often limited to the imbiber's body.
I wonder about some of these effects being replicated by other magic items; I want the different building blocks to feel different.

For example, I want all the Control Potions to be scrolls. Why would drinking a potion let me control something outside of me? Yes, I know it's magic, but I mean the literature seems full of counter examples-- shapeshifters and Mr. Hydes. You don't use a potion to affect someone else, you use a wand.

Following those three points, I really like the later additions of:

Antidote
Climbing
Ethereality
Water Breathing

I wonder if there are other effects that would be good to add? Maybe the traditional ring power Water Walking?

I don't like the idea of potions specific to certain classes, for example, fighters. It seems too fiddly. Besides, something like Invulnerability allows for a weak mage to be fighter-like, while Levitation allows the fighter to be mage-like.

I would like to have 30 or less standard potions. Maybe 20 if I can trim it that far. I can always add weird oddities on top, but I'd like to have a stable base that players can learn about so they can start making decisions based on them. This is all a culmination of using random charts to determine potion qualities and magical effects. It was getting too random. And seems odd to ignore the building blocks that have worked for decades in play.

The Tracks of History

2011-09-03T11:06:00.000-07:00

Arkhein posted about an interesting book that goes into how geography shapes history. Well, that history then leaves traces of itself on the geography in the form of names.

This probably isn't new to you if you've been interested in making your own worlds, but I thought these were a couple cool examples of the linguistic evidence historic events leave on a landscape.

Here you can see the various names used for waterways as evidence of the different languages used by the colonizing cultures.

And in the U.K.

So, once you figure out your geography, then figure out how that shaped historical events, then figure out what languages your various cultures used, you can name places based on that information. Piece of cake!

via here.

Serendipity IX

2011-08-30T22:23:00.000-07:00

Before "Orc with Pie," there was "Leopard on a Chest."

Megadungeon exploration.

This is supposed to be a spider catching a fish, but to me it looks like a spider riding a fish. Which might be another nice pattern for dinnerware.

Improv

2011-08-30T07:08:00.000-07:00

I was talking with my player at work about the D&D trip he missed to the mountains. Well, actually I was telling him about this bold as hell raccoon that got so close to us by the campfire I thought it might run up and snatch a hot dog off the grill. It showed no fear at all. At one point it even did a flanking maneuver before eventually disappearing under our porch. It came back again the next night, even with four players and a dog nearby..

My Player: Did you put it into the game?
Me: Of course . . .

Haha, I loved that he knew I would do something like that. I've used player initials on tombs, made a whole adventure based around the job many of us share, and probably other things that were amusing and now forgotten. The raccoon went on the wandering monster list, showed up while the party was in the Villa of the Terratomancer, but, unfortunately for it, Z was in the form of a wolf and sent it packing. The real raccoon still lurks. . .

Update: Actually is improv the write term here? I'm talking more about weaving things about the audience and things the audience knows into the shared world. Seems like there would be a term for that. Probably Greek. Seems like I should know it.

Faction Spice

2011-08-29T17:34:00.000-07:00

Give your next megadungeon faction a little zing. Hell, roll multiple times.

I tried to think of features that would make a faction (not necessarily demi-human/humanoid) interesting in the context of a megadungeon. What other traits would you include?

The Flavor of Death

2011-08-28T15:46:00.000-07:00

Last night, as I crashed, I had an image in my head of a circle with five positions- one for each sense- and a monster hovering near each. The monsters killed using those senses of their prey. The list was like this:

sight - medusa
touch - carrion crawler (ghoul)
sound - sirens
smell - ghast
taste - ?

Okay, the ghast doesn't exactly kill you with smell, and I suppose the others aren't as direct as petrification either, but I still wonder, what would be a monster that kills you through taste? The most immediate idea that comes to my mind is some kind of poisonous fruit, but my creepier nature jumps to withered teats that are somehow addictive. How about you?