Best of the Web - Coins, One Class Campaigns, City Adventures

Dansumpton at Peakrill has a post called Money and coinage in RPGs. It's an interesting post as it dances around the issue of historical simulation and gaming fun as Trollsmyth more or less points out in the comments. Games do a lot of unrealistic things to amp up the fun and remove the boring. Which circles back to coinage nicely in my mind, people talk about gold being unreal and the silver standard being better which is true, but to me misses the point. 

If you were in the USA and found a purse with 2 dollars in it would you tell the cops (or your dishonest pals you owe money too) that you found 2 dollars, or would you say I found six quarters, three dimes, two nickels and ten pennies? It is somewhat absurd to track coins separately unless there is something special about some of the coins (difficult to cash because of size or rarity) in which case the coin should be considered along with jewelry and gems. 

Personally I think a generic coins should be used with terms like Guilders, Florins, Crowns or Marks to give a horde some kind of color/history. I'd also say that Merchants in Venice would probably hesitate to take English Marks without an exchange fee, that sort of thing is very far on the dull side of the scale and it should just be assumed to be built into the value of the coin(s).

Noism has a post on Monsters and Manuals called The Single Class Campaign which is an interesting idea and I think would be a lot of fun as one-shots rather than as a campaign thing. Imagine a series of one-shots each starring a different class, or as a side adventure. For example if the group has a Druid, you have one adventure where everyone else rolls up a Druid and join the party Druid in some side adventure, that sort of thing could be a lot of fun, but I just can't imagine an entire campaign.

DwizKhalifa at Knight at the Opera has a post titled A Thorough Look at Urban Gameplay in D&D, and its pretty thorough and well worth a read. It really sparked for me at the end of Point 6 when he says:

In a way, the "answer" to how you should create a usable town or city for D&D in a sandbox game is to follow the same logic you do for anything you prepare in a sandbox game: create and provide lots and lots of information. You don't plan for what'll happen. You don't tell the players the steps to follow. You don't try to categorize their actions. You just give information to players and they decide what, if anything, they want to do with it. They'll come up with stuff that'll very quickly break your attempts to structure their actions. The more information you provide, the more they have to work with and, in all likelihood, the more they'll do. The real skill is in being able to know 1) how much information you need to provide for things to be satisfying (since no one likes doing more work than they have to), and 2) what kinds of information is useful and gameable to PCs. This is why providing every single shop in town is unreasonable, but providing a list of 5-15 "special, important, or otherwise notable landmarks" in town is a great starting point. A lot of players will gladly look at that list and say, "alright, I'll bite: let's go to this 'undead labyrinth bazaar' I see next to the river."

This seems the correct way to handle a city. Have encounter tables for when they enter streets (either from another street/alley or from inside) and combine with handouts (which he covers in Point 7) and you should have a workable and very fun city.

Don't describe the city beyond the basics (stone first floor, waddle and daub above, and shale shingle grooves with a cobblestone streets and dirt alleys for example). Give the players a map of the city with some details and let them decide what to do. Give them a handout from time-to-time with rumors and scuttlebut to help define factions and whats going on. With enough detail you could turn a boring trip to the sage to learn about some magic item into a trip into the district controlled by One-eyed Frank and his gang (that want the characters dead because of a bar room brawl they think the characters started that smashed up one of their places). The players can try to sneak in, pay an urchin to try to convince the Sage to come out, but hopefully the players noticed in the handouts that One-eyed Frank is the main distributer of Pipeweed in the city and that the Cult of Gax has forced the City Guard into a major crackdown so the load aboard the Northern Storm, a Carvel in port at the moment, is lingering and may go bad before long. The Toothless Wizard staying in the Sea Shanty tavern is believed to be going into withdrawals and has threatened One-eyed Frank over the delays. Or that the Red Princess and her gang that runs the dockyard have an ongoing rivalry with One-eyed Frank and might be willing to help take him out in order to take over the territory and the Pipeweed trade. 

That's the sort of thing that should drive day-to-day sort of things in a city. The entire campaign doesn't have to be based in the city but the campaign will be more memorable if the city isn't just an offscreen safe space.

Best of the Web - GM Challenge Compilation, Hommlet, & Politricks

 Hillcantons has a GM advice PDF called The GM Challenge Compilation which is a super-old post from 2011 but new to me and worth checking out if you missed it way back then, its well worth the time.

Greyhawk Grognard has a post called T0 Journey to Hommlet which includes a PDF download of a short adventures for characters on the way to T1 (or T1-T4). I ran across B4 expansion once upon a time and love the idea and wish more would take up the task to fill out areas that modules left blank (for lack of space I presume). The missing T2-T3 in the Temple of Elemental Evil seems ripe. I might have to create interior maps for a few of the T1 buildings if I ever get any time.

Matt Strom at Ice and Ruin has a post called Politricks about giving goals to factions. Its short and worth a read and mostly seems to deal with lower level politics. Politics can make a game, especially a high level game. I'm talking wars, civil wars, and secession crosses. Bback in the day I GM's a game on Harn and had Rethem fall to civil war and their neighbors Kanday and the Thardic Republic moving in to take advantage of things and I guarantee the players remember it to this day (the world of Harn made it easy with the high level of detail). This sort of grand scale gives lots of chance for players to get into the middle of things. Ice and Ruin does bring up one thing I somewhat disagree with:

If the players don't really seem interested in engaging in the politics of the setting, don't foist it on them. 

They don't need to be involved or know they are involved and the politics can still happen around them. They could end up working on behalf of a faction from time to time, or the bigger conflict could get in the way of their goals (enter the besieged city, or an army might show up and besiege a town if you take too long). 

I'm surprised that more games don't talk about this sort of thing. If you're gonna get out of the dungeon then make the world move around a bit and break things.

Best of the Web - LotFP and James Raggi

Travis Miller at Grumpy Wizard had an interesting post called The Best Thing LotFP did for RPG's. In the post he talks about how James Raggi of Lamentations of the Flame Princess fame changed things. I'll let Travis tell why:

He pays an advance and then a share of the profit to the designer. The designer retains copyright for the product and may choose to end the license when the term of service is over. This last bit is very significant and almost no other publisher offers that.

Most importantly he assumes almost all of the risk involved in the product. He pays for art, layout, editing, printing and shipment to the distributor. All of that before the first book is sold. If you haven’t seen LotFPs books, they are some of the highest production quality in the business. 

In short he does what most publishers do but gives the creator a lot more in return.

Why? Wouldn't it be far more profitable to profiteer off the writers? In Raggi's words:

So anyway, this has good and bad effects. Good, because after years of running my metal zine and talking to musicians who didn't have the rights to their own work and were making pretty much no money while their record label was, when I got into RPGs I wasn't going to do the same thing. Even if that means certain titles going bye-bye because their creators weren't sticking around.

So he saw how it sucked and had integrity to not pull that same shit on others even when he was small time and could easily justify it as the way the system worked. Raggi gets a lot of grief online because of the shock aesthetic of LotFP artwork, and because he took a goofy picture with Jordan Peterson, and because he mostly sided with his most successful writer who was unpleasant online and accused of horrible things by his girlfriend. 

I've always been a bit neutral towards Raggi, but now looking at the way he does business when he didn't have to, without bragging about it as far as I can tell, makes me like the guy. I wish him success and hope LotFP survives.

Best of the Web - Furca, Design Layout, and Religion

Phil Viverito has a post on Furca called The Hobos Have Them... The title wasn't particularly interesting but I clicked through anyway because Phil writes good stuff. I was surprised and amazed. I've read a lot of history and yet never came across such wonderful usable detail into a piece of equipment. The Roman Furca should have been part of everyones campaign long ago.  

Brian C. Rideout at the Blog Welcome to the Deathtrap has a post called Designing Layout and Information in Adventures. I think we need more of this type of thing, including designing for PDF (which seems to have been skipped but is all over the place and has certain different requirements). The game world is filled with awful design (some of it self-congratulating itself on how great and useful the design is) and bad design can cause folks to hate a great book or great game.

Great Job! at boxfullofboxes has a post called Those Faiths Which Bind -- A Religion generator. The generator is a great start giving an overview of a religion. It goes nicely with a few other boxfullofboxes generators. 

Create some religious myths and the Holy Books using So what do we do 'till the stars are right? and Step on a crack and you'll break an Elf's back! -- A superstition and myth generator and Hey, what's with this weird book? (with a wee bit of judicating unfit results).

Generate some holidays & game and food enjoyed at those festivals with A Red Letter Day - a holiday & festival generatorOh, What Games they Play - a Contest and Diversion generator. and with a slight bit of effort the Yeah, but what do they eat? - A Local Cuisine Generator.

I think Religion and Cults (or lack thereof) are one of the primary ways to define a campaign area and I'm surprised I haven't seen more of this sort of thing.

Best of the Web - GLOG Domain play

Reading through the Manse still and I found an older post called Small GLOG Critique + 20 GLOG 'A' Templates in which Cacklecharm discusses adding a 5th level to GLOG play. This E level template would be for domain play. The idea is a good one and goes along with my own thinking actually. I find 4 levels too limiting and was thinking of 6 levels (keeping the 4 template per class though) to force some kind of multi classing. 

I was was also thinking some classes should have pre-requisites. So as you get into higher levels of play those become options. That is where Noble class could come in, you don't start as a noble but might be knighted during play, or High Priest (must have 4 Priest templates to qualify). The way I understand the GLOG you get 4 templates and then can continue play up until 10th level, you just don't get any more templates, so this would be setting you up with something different as you enter that template free late game. I was thinking these late game templates would have things like Followers (you take cultists, crew, or many goblins as a second character you control) as well as a few negatives (gotta pay money fight off schisms in your church, or duplicitous nobles, I'm not really sure about the negatives yet). The templates could also be full of much more role playing type skills (such as the Get out of Jail Free card that comes with nobility). Also these late game templates could be 2 templates or 3 templates instead of the usual 4 since you already had to earn your way.

Best of the Web - The Goblin Law of Gaming

Anyone that reads my blog probably already knows about the GLOG but I'm gonna mention it anyway because the GLOGsphere has been consistently some of the most creative content.

I have conflicting feelings about the GLOG (Goblin Law of Gaming) by Arnold K at Goblin Punch.  Conflicted because I love the way the magic works. I love the way multi-classing works. I love the way a lot of it works but the core skill system just didn't sit well with me. But I love DIY games and GLOG is as easy as any other game to swap out components like that.

I'm not alone, for some time the GLOG was one of the most vibrant bits of online RPG activity as people created a metric shit-ton of classes (here and here).  It is a lot like the Black Hack except things are shared for free, which creates more of a sense of community. It's like a big buffet of great ideas that you can pick and choose from and then tweak as needed. 

DIY & Dragons has a post detailing Who is the GLOGosphere? that gives some history on who and what has been writing what.

The whole thing is designed for low levels and to be compatible with most OSR compatible games. Arnold K has even written a scenario Lair of the Lamb: Final specifically for GLOG (which includes some rules) which made Bryce Lynch's Best list at Ten Foot Pole.

Wizard Background

Wizard Background

Wizards must join a chantry or School of Wizardry in order to learn their craft. Typically the wizarding chantry's only allow students they have scouted out. Such students are pulled from a small range of occupations. A Wizard could pull out and go Adventuring at any point, or they can continue to add up the years, it is up to the player.

1d6
Before Being a Student
01-02
Astronomer
03-04
Herbalist
05
Hypnotist
06
Other  (Noble, Barbarian, anyone with very high INT)

Once in a Wizarding school or chantry there really isn't much variety. Most Apprentices face years of chores and verbal abuse with little study indirectly linked to Wizardry. Every year the Apprentice Wizard should roll on the Apprentice Advancement Table to see what happened that year.

1d6
Apprentice Advancement Table 
01-03
No change, chores, chores, chores
03-04
Mishap, roll on Mishap Table
05
Doing well, roll on Journeyman Advancement Table next year

Once advanced to Journeyman level the future wizard learns cantrips to help with the chores and starts to study magic in earnest. Every year the Journeyman Wizard should roll on the Journeyman Advancement Table to see what happened that year.

1d6
Journeyman Advancement Table
01-02
No change, study, study, study.
03-05
Mishap, roll on Mishap Table
06
Leave the school to become an Adventurer.

1d6
Mishap Table 
01
Wizard was injured in a Wizard duel between students and takes a year to recover. Roll on the same Advancement Table as last year.
02
Zealot clerics burned down the School. Classes continue in alternate location. Half the students flee. Roll on the same Advancement Table as last year.
03-04
Wizarding mishap causes one of the teachers to be pulled into the void by a deamon. Half the students flee. Roll on the same Advancement Table as last year.
05-06
Wizard war with another school ends with victory. No change in table but +5 on the next advancement roll.   


Thief Background

I mostly like 5e backgrounds but I think Traveler did it better (except the whole death during pre-game part which seems like a big waste of time). I have seen people suggesting fantasy games need something similar so I decided to take a shot at it. I'm not entirely satisfied because I made them somewhat generic and this sort of thing really needs the setting (wars, leaders, nations) and maybe some kind of skills baked in. Still, here's the first shot. I consider it Public Domain so if anyone can improve it, feel free.

Thief Background

Nearly all thieves exist in a gang of some kind so the tables assume that. An independent thief is on their own. A thief can quit the tables and become an adventurer at any point tor they can keep rolling and add up the years.

The Thief Initial ROlL TABLE shows where the thief came from.

1d6
Thief Initial Roll
01-02
Born into city gang, go to the Street Rat Occupation table
03-04
Orphan in city, gang became family, go to the Street Rat Occupation table
05
Fled abusive home, joined gang to survive, go to the Journeyman table
06
Wanted for a crime, go to the Journeyman table 

Once in a gang the thief isn't really much good. They will mostly be put out to beg or act as a fast talking distraction to assist pickpockets. If they show some aptitude for violence or have decent size when they become a teen they will be made a Thug/Bodyguard (one of the gangs footsoldiers). 

1d6
Street Rat Occupation table 
01-02
Beggar
03-04
Bagman/Fast talker
05
Pickpocket
06
Thug/Bodyguard   

Each year the Street Rat should roll on the Street Rat Advancement table to see what happened.

1d6
Street Rat Advancement Table
01-03
No change, same as last year.
04
Re-roll on the Street Rat Occupation Table next year.
05
Mishap. Roll on the Mishap Table.
06
Doing well. Roll on the Journeyman Occupation Table next year. 

1d6
Journeyman Occupation Table
01-02
Agitator
03-04
Burglar
05-06
Thug

Every year the Journeyman should roll on the Journeyman Advancement table to see what happened that year.

1d6
Journeyman Advancement Table
01-02
No change, same as last year
03
Re-roll on the Journeyman Occupation Table for the next year
04
Mishap. Roll on the Mishap table
05-06
Leave the gang to become an Adventurer  

1d6
Mishap Table
01-02
Injured in a turf war. Skip a year recovering and laying low then roll on the same Occupation table as last year.
03-04
Fled the city to live in the wilderness for a year then roll on the same Occupation table as last year.
05-06
Locked up or laid low for most of a year then roll on the same Occupation table as last year.



Best of the Web - MSJX Maps

This week's Best of the Web is dedicated to maps by m.s.jackson at msjx. Specifically dungeon maps. I've never really been happy with my own dungeon maps which tend to look like the sample in the back of the original DMG. I've always kept my eye out for better style (isometric, top-down 3-d, or standard) but I get attracted to overly complicated looking maps which take too long. As I look around I keep coming back to msjx's maps. The older ones are a bit different style but the newer ones are beautiful. They are simple, clean and clear (especially the 'infamous Fuck Your Printer versions'. 

Here is a selection of the top-down dungeon maps I like:

The Eternal Grave of the Elaborist Saqqara

The Great Hall redux

Vinjeøran Burial Tomb

The Temple of Sorrowed Ladies

No man is an island, a dungeon tomb

The Mines at Torgath

Sigyn's Kurgan

A dungeon

There is also an isometric map that I really like. Bath House of Blonin Breasthaven is for Far Away Lands and it perfectly matches the aesthetic feel of that game and is the prettiest isometric map I've seen. Simple, clean, and clear.






Best of the Web - RIP Steve Perrin

Steve Perrin has passed on August 13, 2021. He was one of the founding members of the Society for Creative Anachronisms and took that knowledge of combat into the RPG world working on the original RuneQuest and Stormbringer games.

I loved RuneQuest and would have loved Stormbringer even more if I gave it a chance at the time. Seems Stormbringer fixed some of the thing about RuneQuest that I didn't like (everyone had magic in RuneQuest and hit points by location, and Glorantha).

I never met the man, I have now quirky anecdotes, but he had an influence on my gaming by providing such a solid alternative to the game that has always dominated the RPG industry. Thanks Steve.




Best of the Web - Dragons Lair, Ghost Generators

Cacklecharm at The Manse has a post called "Dragon's Lair is a pretty cool dungeon" which spiked my nostalgia levels through the roof. At one point I'd mastered the game. It was a beautiful game, but kind of crappy as an actual game because all you did was memorize things. Once mastered I could finish the game with all my lives left, which by that point meant a small crowd had formed to watch the big dragon fight. Then to maximize the score you let yourself die once, twice (and then don't screw up the last one or you look like the biggest idiot) then kill the dragon and its over. Like I said, the game was beautiful, but I'd never considered as a dungeon before. The post makes a fun read.

Cacklecharm also has a nice post called Ghost Generator + New Ghost Rules that is worth a look. I've never liked the way ghosts, wraiths, spirits, and such were codified in D&D. That takes the mysterious of them which kills any horror they might generate. I understand the codification in most cases but for ghosts and demons it doesn't really work for me. Something like the Ghost Generator is better.

Mix Cacklecham's tables with the ones created by Noism in his Random Ghost Generator post over at Monsters and Manuals and the Three Step Modern Haunting Generator over at Role Playing Tips (really like the desires of the Ghost table) and you'd really have something to build an adventure or two around.

 


Best of the Web - Divine Trickery & Modular Rulebook

Over on his blog Blackrazer JB has a post called Killing Gods, Part 4. It's an interesting series and even more so because he links to older things he's written on Clerics which I hadn't seen before. I don't think Clerics, and their position in the game, have been discussed enough to be honest. I've stated before I think TSR blew it in the way they built Dieties & Demigods (and Gods, Demigods, & Heroes before it) around the Gods and not around the religions and how they relate to Clerics and Druids (and now Warlocks I suppose). 

In that vein their was a comment on the post and JB's response that just lit off the creativity in my head.

Fair enough, but my point is more about one divine being pretending to be another, or even a false one. Since clerics receive their spells from divine beings, would it fit for one god to start granting cleric spell to someone as something akin to a divine false flag operation?

Reply

Replies
  1. Hmm. I have to say I don’t find it very sensible given the parameters of the rules. Doing so, even for a trickster type god (think Loki) would undermine the faith of both the devout and the deluded. 

    In the end, I have to think ALL the gods have a vested interest in “playing by the (divine) rules;” the consequences of doing otherwise would be a widespread loss of followers.

I think McGrogen is onto something and JB misses his point. I think this false-flag idea could make for an amazing campaign. Imagine a God of Law has a church that dominates a continent, crushing other religions whenever they can. Like the Catholics in Europe back in the medieval period. Then imagine one of those other, weaker Pantheons, facing extinction works to divide that God of Law's church. They could support false prophets and grant spells to prove it. They might convince an Emperor in the East that they are the direct conduit to the God and the Pope is being controlled by demons. They might convince leaders outside the sphere of the God of Law to start a Holy War. They might go for regional religious leaders forcing the main god to play whack a mole trying to stop the faith from fracturing. These false flag ops might simply be distractions, a delaying action to give that Pantheon more time to do something, they might be an attempt to weaken, divide, or destroy that God of Laws church. 

I think it could be interesting if a character was a Cleric of the God of Law or if they were aligned with that Pantheon (possibly unaware of the grand scheme). I think one could write up dozens of adventures along these lines and roll things out over years. 

Anyway I think that would be a good way to really put the religion into the Divine classes and make them front and center from time to time.

Buildings are People had a short post in 2018 called Modular OSR Rulebook

The post links to a G+ discussion which is naturally gone since Google crapped on everyone by cancelling G+ as well as a link to a GitHub site that also has a broken link, but appears to have unrelated (at least the design goals are nothing similar) stuff linked on the right side of the page.

So this appears a dead project, so why link it? Because the concept is brilliant and something the OSR should have done long ago.

The Idea

We are making a modular BX document that includes multiple versions of every mechanic for you to pick and choose

This makes choosing house rules and creating the best game for your own table easier, particularly for new GMs. Browsing endless blogs for endless hours to gather ideas is fun for me, but it's not appealing to everyone, nor is it an option that everyone is aware of. Think of this as a library of BX rules and procedures.

Someone should create a wiki. Start with an outline of BX using mil spec, that is every chapter is numbered, every subsection, and sub-subsection has a number as well. Then folks submit house rules under the appropriate number. We'd get a dozen different ways to generate attributes, Roll Initiative and angle Encumbrance slot ideas right off the bat.

If the site encouraged people too submit their own ideas, and noted Fonts and a few other things to promote some consistency it could make designing a home brew trivially easy. It would also create a lingua franca to assist in communication. "I use Inititative 7.3.3, thats the 1d6 for each side, highest goes first." That sort of thing.

 

Best of the Web - Top 10 Tactics, Humanizing Monsters, And Saying No to RageBait

Courtney at Hack & Slash has a nice post called On the Top Ten Tactics for Hostile Dungeons in which he lists off some old but vital strategies to keep players alive in a nasty dungeon.

Brent, a Glass Boy, at Glassbird games has a post called Humanizing monsters. He talks a bit about an encounter in Tomb of the Serpent King which is interesting enough, but the real gold is the table at the end with Humanizing Trait and Monstrous Trait columns (I'd ignore the Monster column and roll every monster independently) designed to make beasts more interesting to talk to. The entrees in the table aren't the normal personality things but seem more gamble than usual and nicely applicable to intelligent monsters. I'll be using this, or cooking up something similar.

Along the same lines d4 Caltrops has done something similar with Monster Meins by type which looks to be super-useful. I'm thinking of naming beasts using the adjective.  For example Odius Hill Giant and Smug Hill Giant are better than Hill Giant #1 and Hill Giant #2. No additional description are needed, the personality is in the name and sort of implies these are folks to talk. For folks that are unlikely to be talkers I'd go with a description: Big Nose Hill Giant and Bearskin Cloak Hill Giant for example.

The Last Redoubt has a post called Just Say No to Ragebait which makes a good point that people forget. That sort of link would disappear if people stopped clicking the stupid things. I'd expand this well beyond ragebait to the plaque of the internet, those lists that use a false thumbnail to suck you in and then spread a tiny bit of content over three dozen linked pages. 

Long ago Apple mail had a feature where you could right-click on spam and send back to sender as if your email address wasn't correct, which had the result that the spammers removed your email address from their spam lists because they don't want their own mail servers filling up with useless email. This had the result of eliminating nearly all of my spam, for awhile, then Apple removed the feature and the floor returned. I'd love someone to create something similar for links. Allow you to mark a link so that whenever it appears on any webpage it is crossed out with a little red X, perhaps with a note from you on why you blacklisted that link. Fake thumbnails, millions of links, ragebait, whatever. I think the internet would rapidly become a better place as those sites stopped getting hits (and hopefully improved their content). I'm probably being overly optimistic, they'll probably just buy up a new address to fool everyone once again rather than change.


Best of the Web - Simulacrum, Post-Apocalyptic Maps, and Rules as Written

Simulacrum has posted the beta version of their Fantasy Heartbreaker which is also called Simulacrum. I haven't had time to read through it yet, but one aspect I really like is he's included a Designer Notes document. I really like this idea. In fact I'd considered doing something similar myself but petered out before I had anything worth posting. I will take up the project at some point. Anyway, I hope this becomes a thing with every Fantasy Heartbreaker providing rationals for some decisions, even if its just for consistency and backwards compatibility. 

Trollsmyth has a nice post called Using the Real World to Create Post-apocalyptic Maps which provides a quick serious of steps on how to do exactly as the title says. For some reason it didn't occur to me before but D&D or any of its variants would work nice enough in a Thundarr the Barbarian campaign. The only difference is the addition of cyborgs and post-apocalyptic maps.

Christopher Stogdill posting over at Tenkars Tavern has a post called Is Rules as Written Really Still a Thing? I'd ask, was it ever a thing? Speaking of AD&D in particular. I never met anyone that used weapon speeds, weapon adjustments by AC or segments. These were rule-rules, not optional like Psionics (which I've never met anyone that used either). I don't think Gygax used that stuff. DIY was built into the thing from the start by adding that sort of incompressible rules in order to differentiate it from anything Dave Arneson was a part of. 



Best of the Web - Zihindia, Fantasy India

Over time Greyhawk Grognard has published a series of posts about the lands of Zihindia, an Indian based campaign area in the World of Greyhawk

  • A Catalogue of the Lands Beyond the Flanaess / Map of Zihindia
  • Demihumans and monsters of Zihindia
  • The Zihindian Pantheonn (part one)
  • Zihindian Pantheon (part two) / Zihindia, Land of Illusion
  • The Sagacious Swami / Zihindian Pantheon (part three)
  • Yoga in AD&D / Zihindian Pantheon (part four)
  • As far as I know this, and Arrows of Indra are the only attempts to create a fantasy India setting. I've seen attempts at the Far East and Arabia but not many regarding India. This is a shame because in many ways India is a better model for the typical Fantasy World (I'm talking Victoria-era India mostly because I know more about that time frame). The place is filled with ruined forts and temples and shrines. They had multiple religions (Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs) living in the same region and getting along most of the time, more or less. You had bandits, hill raiders! and lots of factions and politics. And you had them all hiring as soldiers to each other (the British and the Sikh Khalsa hired soldiers from all religions and cultures). The place is ripe and I applaud Greyhawk Grognard for doing the work.


    Best of the Web - Would you Burn, Red Teams, Megadungeon Explorers

    Hall of the Grymlorde has a thought provoking post titled Would you burn hit points to hit harder? It is a post in the form of a question, not actual mechanics behind it. I find the idea intriguing. If you read the magic rules for my Fantasy Heartbreaker of the moment (Not Dead Yet)  you'd see I have a similar idea for spellcasting. Spellcasters ante up stats as a sort of spell point. Ante up more and your spell can be more powerful (range, duration, power, etc). If you succeed, its all good, if you fumble your casting you lose that many points in a stat.  I can imagine a similar mechanic for combat using Hit Points. Since HP heal quicker it'd be less risky in the long term, but since they are eaten up quickly in combat the short term could be bad, really bad.

    But sometimes you really need to hit. Sometimes you really need to do as much damage as possible. Being able to exert that extra effort just seems like an idea the game has been missing and I think if I ever update my game (or create a GLOG Heartbreaker) I'll probably add this mechanic. Damn I like this mechanic conceptually and hope to hear back from anyone that uses it in play.

    Seed of Worlds has a post called Villainous friends: using Red Teams in your game. The idea is to have Factions in your gameworld and let another control that factions plans and reactions to the players. The folks controlling the factions don't even have to be at the table as everything is more about the big picture goals of the faction. If you had the right people involved this could work out really well. Initially I thought the post was going to be more along the lines of an old idea I had of the Joker. The Joker was the extra player at the table, who would speak for the enemies (at least some) so the GM didn't  have to do it themselves. I like the idea but never implemented it as speaking for the enemies is one of the joys of being a GM so I have always been reluctant to give that part away. With Seed of Worlds idea that isn't an issue and you'll get factional plans and development that a single GM might never have considered.

    Beyond the Black Gate has an old post with a new class called Megadungeon Explorer. It seems to be a bit of a blend of fighter, wizard, and thief. I think the concept is intriguing. I'm thinking 5E with all those little abilities each level, do they make sense in all environments? What if are Ranger is stuck in a city the entire time they are earning XP to go up to 3rd level, does it make sense you'd learn Primeval Awareness the way you normally would? What about a Thief in the desert or a Wizard on a ship? It seems like there are times when the normal progression should take a pause, or those level abilities could be swapped for something more appropriate for the new environment. This idea would work better with a GLOG class with the easy multi-classing as is it is probably more effort than its worth but it seems there might be something there I'm just not sure how to form it yet.


    Best of the Web - Gamma World, Chaos Beasts

     Geeknative has a post called: D&D: Wizards of the Coast release a first edition post-apocalyptic Gamma World bundle. He suggests its a D&D setting but its not really, it's a game of its own and somewhat different than D&D but it doesn't have to be. I like the idea of them releasing older stuff to check the interest, but they should follow this up with a 5E version of Gamma World. Treat the game as a setting for D&D. Follow that up with Dark Sun and really expand D&D beyond the Vanilla Fantasy. Release a new Monster Manual dedicated to mutant future and more psionic oriented beasts and I think they might really have something. Then again maybe it's just me and Vanilla Fantasy is where the big bucks are, what do I know.

    Remixes and Revelations has a post called OSR: Chaos Beasts in which he stats up a Chaos Beast along with (and this is the best part) a bunch of tables to customize the beast. Anything with Chaos in the name should be unique.

    I'll take a moment to outline my own 'chaos ooze' of sorts, creating a bit of a life cycle of different monsters. See whenever you fumble while casting a spell it creates a spray of 'chaos snot' which is a bunch of tiny molecules that cover everything. It's mostly harmless at first and not worth mentioning except as part of the life cycle. If left alone the chaos snot turns into a grey ooze, if the grey ooze is left to grow it becomes a gelatinous cube (shaped that way because of traveling through square shaped corridors all the time, if the thing travelled through a corridor with a triangular shape they'd be gelatinous triangles. The next phase of life is a gibbering mouther and then a shibboleth (which would mostly be too large to easily leave whatever room they'd ended up in). Of course this is all GM nonsense characters are unlikely to ever know about unless they captured and studied one. Also it creates a dynamic that Adventurers (or at least magic users) are at fault for the potential chaos destruction, and if ignored the chaos will grow and get horribly worse. I find it strangely satisfying to have a lifespan for certain things (like dragons with their young, elder).

    Another thought was that chaos snot, or grey ooze, if consumed will create beastmen. So if chaos snot covered grass and a cow ate it, anyone that ate that cow would mutate into a minotaur type beast man. If a goat ate the snot, eating that goat would create a satyr-like beast man. You could create almost any combo-with the same justification. This helps satisfy my own brand of Gygaxian naturalism (and I don't particularly like the Greek myths as is, they are just too well known).

    Best of the Web - Religion & Octopi

    Elfmaids & Octopi has a trio of nice posts about Religion.

    Ye Gods! Cosmological Musings on the New Gods which lays out the cosmology and 12 gods for the home campaign.

    Common Cults of the Elder Evils which gives 4 different 1d12 tables of cults that could be developed and dropped into any campaign.

    Local Harmless Cults which provides 4 different 1d12 tables of colorful, quirky cults, some of which are actually harmless and most of which might seem dangerous to information starved adventurers.  

    It would be nice if someone put together another book like Pettygods filled with deities like the ones linked above. Fantasy Worlds should be filled with a few big religions and lots, and lots, of little ones. The more a GM has to choose from the better.



    Best of the Web - Aggregators & Sorters

    Now that Google+ is gone the web is starting to slowly come together. First we have aggregators like RPG Planet and Old School RPG Planet (both by Alex Schroeder one of the indispensable figures in the RPG web) that take the posts from hundreds of gaming sites and list them so you can glance over and click on posts of interest. Finding blogs can be nearly impossible, this makes it super-easy. The only draw-back is the site is like a river and if you ever try to find a link (that you didn't bookmark the other day) it can be impossible to find again. Also it lists everything (as it should) so a lot of stuff you like will be mixed in with stuff you don't care for while someone else will love that stuff you didn't care for.

    Then we have sorters. Like these Best of the Web posts a sorter plucks out the best bits the've found. The advantage to this is that it is more selective. If you find a sorter that has similar interests you are gold, it's like a Pandora channel playing the music you like and ignoring that other stuff. It can also be far easier to find an old post because they are posts themselves and thus searchable (the main reason I created my own Best of the Web series, so I can read old stuff).

    This week I ran across a few other sorters (Found through Alex Schroeder site). This makes me very happy but also means I'll be reading their back catalogs looking for the gems and nuggets.

    • Seed of Worlds has a weekly collection called Shiny TTRPG links collection
    • Take on Rules by Jeremy Friesen has a new daily post called Amplifying the Blogosphere that has become a must read (and not just because he mentioned Best of the Web recently, thx)
    • Weaver.skepti.ch has a series of posts called EOW for End of Week (he also mentioned me, thx) that does the same

    Thoughts on Combat Momentum

     I was reading about the Encounters Die and it occurred to me that no games really capture momentum. If you read a story about sports (or even combat) the side doing well is said to have the momentum. This is mostly confidence for those that have momentum combined with lack of confidence for those that do not have momentum. That is where the momentum die comes in. 

    The Momentum die is an old-style d20 numbered 1-10 twice. One color is dedicated to each side in the combat. If the die is one sides color they add the value to their To Hit rolls (fighters can take it as a addition to damage instead if they want), and the other side subtracts the value. 

    1. When combat starts the d20 is at 0 (placed where everyone can see it). 
    2. During the first round of combat the GM compares the successful hits for each side. Subtracts one from the other and moves the Momentum dice total that many numbers in that direction. For example the characters hit 4, their enemies 1, so the die moves 3 points in the characters direction. The Momentum die goes from 0 to 3 in the Characters color (characters now get +3 To Hit, enemies are -3 To Hit. The next round the characters hit twice, the enemies hit 3 times. 1 point in the enemy direction turns that 3 to a 2 (characters now have +2, enemies -2). The characters still have momentum but not as great. This repeats every round until the numbers are high enough one side always wins momentum which should move the die to 10 before long.
    3. If one side gets a 10 momentum the other side rolls morale.
    That's it. This makes being outnumbered particularly hairy, it might shorten combat or make it extra long, I can't be sure until its tested. I'm willing to take suggestions if anyone has any ideas that might improve it.

    Thoughts on Alignment

    There has been a bit of talk about alignments now that Wizards seems to be moving away from the idea. I've played enough non-D&D game that I'm not sure I care all that much what the do, but I thought I'd lay out some of my own thoughts on alignment. First, I think in terms of two types of Alignment.

    Personal Alignment - For lack of a better term, personal alignment means the 9 alignment grid. It is a general graph of the character or NPCs personality. There are no alignment languages of this type and a spell can't tell if one is Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil, that stuff is for the Religious Alignment. 

    Religious Alignment - The term isn't really all that fitting but it'll do. This is the old Chaos vs Law conflict that happens throughout the Multiverse. These groupings allow for alliances for the greater cause. Alignment languages might be a thing, allowing the disparate allies to communicate. Each alignment is marked by their loyalties (or lack of) and a Know Alignment spell would tell you which side they stand on. 

    You can't gain Clerical Healing if you are not of the same Religious Alignment as the Cleric and don't expect to be brought back from the dead unless you're the same Alignment and Religion as the Cleric. The hope here is to make it beneficial for characters to get involved in religion beyond just befriending a Cleric to act as a dutiful healer. Also I'd assume there are areas that are Holy or Unholy Ground. These areas will prevent healing and resurrection if one is not of the correct alignment and give a boost to those of the correct alignment.

    So basically you could have someone that is Chaotic Evil aligned with Law for whatever reason and nobody would know until they got caught doing something Chaotic Evil. People lie, especially to themselves, that Chaotic Evil bastard may not even really know how bad he is until the opportunity presents. That Chaotic Evil guy couldn't be a Cleric or Paladin of a religion demanding they be Lawful though as the God in question, the one dealing out the spells, would certainly know.

    Anyway that's the way I look at alignment, when I do look at alignment which isn't very often.

    Best of the Web - Old Style and 3D Printing vs Games Workshop

    Donato Giancola of Dweller of the Forbidden City has two brilliant articles. The first Running D&D the Role of the Ref lays out how Donato runs games. It's the old style approach stripping out the Game Masters need to handle story and narrative and just presenting the world. This says a lot about how games have changed over the years because anyone that started playing in the old days will recognize the play style immediately. 

    The second post is Randomization - It's Not What You Think. Well it is what I think, and it is what most Grognards would think, but a few of the things were abandoned long ago by most in the hopes of streamlining things or making players happy and Donato lays out the points with very convincing rationals why they should be reconsidered. I've never liked individual initiative but the case is made and I can't really deny it is a good one worth exploring. Also Spell Distribution, my games have never had a lot of spell casters so this hasn't been a thing but I like the way its laid out and I'll be giving it some thought. 

    Ran across an old article called Games Workshop Takes Legal Action over 3D printing on Greyhawk Grognard.  It made me wonder how the case turned out. It also got me thinking how Games Workshop should be embracing the technology. Imagine if they didn't have to make led figures and ship them around the world, but instead could send out the plans and have them printed up in the many Games Workshop stores. Certain figures are super-popular, print up more of those. It really would solve a lot of supply/logistics problems. Assuming the 3D mini's are of equal quality to the ones they normally make.



    Thoughts on To Hit and Damage rolls

    To Hit rolls are binary, you hit or you do not. Yes you might have critical hits and fumbles but there is a lot of wiggle-room there that nearly every game just discards. Rolling a 19 and adding all bonuses resulting in hitting easily is no different than getting the exact number required to hit. So I was wondering how practical it would be to take that number (the amount above required to hit) and add that to the weapon damage.

    This might be lethal at low level, but then DCs and ACs should make it harder to hit and thus there will be less overflow to add to damage.

    I also think it would work particularly well in any game that uses Armor Points that absorb damage instead of AC.

    Okay, its a bit of extra math but hardly difficult math. Also if you went with straight weapon damage instead of a roll you could reduce things to a single roll. 

    Best of the Web - Judge Dredd Random Crimes

    Tony Bro001 at Roleplay-Geek has a fun table for determining random crimes in Judge Dredd including the penalties called Judge Dredd Random Crime Drop Table.  I don't play Judge Dredd but I love this and I'll be making something similar for medieval type crimes for my Thule Marches campaign since the characters will start off working for the March Lord and will have some kind of law enforcement function (if they choose to enforce or not is on them). 

    As I said, I love what he's done but what I don't get though is why a drop table? Why not a regular table with higher crimes as higher number results so modifiers can be added to increase the likely hood of serious crimes or not (-3 to roll during day, +3 to roll at night or in alleys for example). I can see the value of a dice drop table when generating a random dungeon or village, you know, to pick out the location of the buildings, but beyond that I've never understood this type of table. If someone has a semi-convincing reason why these type of tables are valuable let me know. 

    Thoughts on Adventure Design (Part 2)

    In yesterdays post I talked about dividing modules to separate the Map and Overview from the Encounters so that multiple Encounters sheets can be drafted for the same Map and Overview. This time I'm thinking about those Encounters and more specifically the use of Monster Manuals. I love Monster Books but they aren't useful in quickly populating a dungeon. This is an idea for a supplement to that. A pdf that would be super-useful in populated an adventure. 

    5E srd has some prepared stat blocks that enable a GM to simply state GOBLIN in their adventure. This is a decent start but I don't like it for three reasons. 

    1. The Stat block should be in the adventure, you shouldn't depend upon cross-referencing to another book. That is great design to create slimmer books but horrible design for usability at the table. I know some folks like hardcover books but they are limiting as the kind of thing I'm talking about works far better in PDF where you can copy/paste to quickly populate a module.
    2. The Stat blocks have too much info. Does the GM really need to know the Knights skills? Or their passive perception? or even all of their weapons when they are most likely to use their most damaging go-to weapon?
    3. One GOBLIN is insufficient. Back in 4E's monster manual they listed different varieties of each beast to create variety to the encounter. This is the best thing in 4E and they didn't carry it forward. Imagine if that GOBLIN was actually a page or two of WEAK GOBLING, VETERAN GOBLIN, SKIRMISHER GOBLIN, WARRIOR GOBLIN. So the GM could just copy/paste out one or all to create a group of goblins, or to put a different Goblin in different rooms to customize encounters.
    So this supplemental book would be a pdf, full of statblocks, with multiple statblocks per beast. include a table of weapons used by the group, and tactics and you have a very useful entry. Yes this book will be a lot longer, and it'll be a dull read, but it should be super-useful and super-fast when it comes to populating an adventure. 

    Yes there are probably online generators that do all of this (they have them for RuneQuest which had far more complicated stat blocks, but I've never seen them for D&D). If there are generators it should be easy to cook up what I'm looking for.

    Thoughts on Adventure Design (Part 1)

    Most old school adventures had an idea, a map, and 30ish pages of fluff that a GM had to sort through (and often cross-out) before they could use the thing.

    All Dead Generations has  post called One Page Dungeon Design that is all about good One Page Dungeon Design. The One Page Dungeon is an interesting concept because in most cases they don't provide enough detail to run right away either, but they basically skip the part where the GM has to hack out the fluff and provide the kernel of good stuff directly so the GM can add in their own details right away (much of which can be improvised) allowing for a bit more usability.

    All this got me thinking. Does anyone run modules as written (outside a convention setting that is)? If the answer is no, not really then we should all be doing some thinking on how to fix this. B1 In Search of the Unknown created a starting adventure designed where a GM would populate the dungeon, thus learning how that sort of thing is done. This was a good idea but I don't think it was ever duplicated so maybe it wasn't so good, but I tend to think it was and my mind ran with it, a bit.

    Imagine a one-page dungeon with just enough info. Nothing about the encounters, just a bit of history, some notes on the location and traps or dressing or unique challenges. Then imagine 2-3 pages listing the encounter table and contents of each room (with stats). Then imagine another 2-3 pages listing an alternate encounter table and contents of each room (with stats). Then maybe a third for a higher level. The same location could be filled with Orc & Ogres in Option 1, Bandits & Bugbear in Option 2, and Drow & Dueger in Option 3. The GM then picks the option they prefer for their campaign. They might end up using all three options as a campaign goes on over the year. Do it right and you might find half the RPG blogs adding their own option to give a location life again, and again.

    Anyway I think that might be a useful way to package adventures.

    Note, clearly I'm mostly talking about location type adventures here, anything more than that could be cobbled together out of multiple locations with Encounter Option designed to go together in some way. 


    Best of the Web - Barbarians and Abstract Combat

    I read two posts recently that separate were okay, but when put together got my imagination churning. 

    The first was an old post (July 2008) by Noisms at Monsters and Manuals called I hate Barbarians [Warning: Rant] in which he rants (he did warn you) that Barbarians should be a fighter combined with role playing and not a class of their own. For reasons or archetype and potential racism. He makes a lot of good points but I'm not sure I'm sold, still it was on my mind.

    The second was on the blog Ongoing Campaign by faoladh. The post was called Abstract Combat in AD&D 1st Edition. I played a lot of 1E back in the day and we always called who we would attack so it was a surprise to read a quote from the DMG basically saying it should be more random than that. Then in the comments faoladh says: 

    "Specifically notable, there is no situation for a "set-piece battle" as opposed to a "swirling melee". The only thing described is a melee, which is described elsewhere (I think in the missile rule) as everyone within 10 feet of an opponent, and a single melee is all of the combatants who can be connected by being within 10 feet of anyone in that same melee."

    That bit was the chocolate in my peanut butter bit. Basically we have two types of battle, the set piece as most people already play it, and the swirling melee as 1E was written. We also have two types of fighters, the fighter (set-piece) and the Barbarian (swirling melee). 

    Set Piece Battle Rule
    If 3 or more fighters (optionally a Cleric might count) work together they turn any melee into a set-piece battle. They become an island of stability in the chaos of battle. Enemies will come to them to attack, movement in combat and attacks of opportunity are a thing, and their allies can select targets (most notably thieves and archers can better do their thing). If the number of fighters drops in numbers due to wounds or whatever the battle devolves into a swirling melee in which nobody can pick targets, movement and attacks of opportunity are ignored and considered just part of the melee, and basically everything is a lot more random. 

    Barbarians don't have the discipline to fight in units, they do not count as part of a set-piece or take advantage of the set-piece even if they are allies. No matter what they do they fight swirling melee style, always fighting random enemies in the melee.

    Lastly Barbarians should be called Berserkers as that's really what the class is talking about with the Rage business anyway. 

    How To Run Combat

    James Young at Ten Foot Polemic has a nice post on combat called TFP DMG: How To Run Combat. It's good stuff, especially the idea of the wrestling. 

    Tiger's don't stand off 10 feet away swiping with their claws, they jump on their opponent in what is a bit of a blend between wrestling and melee. If you treat their claws like daggers the wrestling rules in the post should work nicely. I use Tiger's as an example but really any animal you can imagine is likely to bull rush their target making stand-off weapons more difficult. This would make fighting animal-like beasts feel very different than fights against armed opponents as it should be and could make fights against Ogres (who are very bear-buggy) or some other weapon-less humanoid feel very different.

    .


    Hayston - AI City Map

    The Hayston map provides a good example of the mushy roofs I mentioned in the AI City Map intro post. Look at building 4. Fishmonger, the wh...