Musings from the Dungeon

Twenty Dungeon Entrances

2012-02-20T13:14:00.000-07:00

For your enjoyment here are twenty images to use as inspiration for your dungeon's entrance. Many of them come from _Subterranean Design_, a tumblr blog that I can't recommend too highly.

1.) A small hole in the side of a hill

2.) A sea cave

3.) What's behind the doors?

4.) A hole in the ground

5.) Old mine shaft?

6.) Underneath the tower is the entrance to the dungeon.

7.) At least three ways into the dungeon--or are there three separate dungeons?

8.) Even mega dungeons have separate entrances for servants.

9.) Another sea cave.

10.) The guardian of the entrance

11.) Hopefully you can pick the lock--I don't think this door can be broken down.

12.) Creepy entrance

13.) A jungle entrance

14.) Hobbiton?

15.) This looks like something that Bran Mak Morn would take on. Not me though.

16.) This doesn't look safe.

17.) The way is shut. It was made by those who were dead, and the dead keep it. The way is shut.

18.) Sometimes even the wizard is helpless.

19.) Ice cave

20.) Secret fortress for the super villain?

And a bonus. I hope there aren't any alligators down there.

Five Minute Maps: Doctor Teslo's Amazing Circus & Carnival

2012-02-18T00:27:00.002-07:00

Matt Jackson over at lapus calumni has done a great thing. Just recently he's started drawing a map every day in a new moleskine that he purchased. He's then come up with an idea to get everybody involved in doing maps and he's called it Five Minute Map Friday. The idea behind it is as simple as the title. You have five minutes to draw a map of whatever you want. At five minutes you're done with it. If you want to share it on G+ use the hashtag #fridayfiveminutemap. If you don't want to share it, no big deal.

I suck at drawing maps. While they do all manage to convey the information needed (where things are at and how far apart things are from each other) they look awful. Despite this (or maybe because of it) I absolutely love looking at maps. I love maps that are of historical value, I love maps that have interesting information and maps that don't. In fact, one of my favorite D&D characters that I ever played was a ranger who was basically sent out to explore and map new lands.

My goal is to do a map every day. Since I actually want to learn how to make them pretty I'll probably spend longer than five minutes on them, but every Friday I'll do a five minute map. Some of them I'll show here, some of them I won't.

Today's map is of the traveling circus of one Doctor Teslo. Nobody knows what he actually looks like--he keeps hidden in his big tent all the time. Most of the performers have never seen him because the ringmaster Darakshan Anayis does all the hiring and firing. She's not to be crossed. Foul tempered, quick with her curved daggers, and some say she has magic that she stole from a djinn.

The circus keeps to it's own schedule. It never posts times when it'll be in town and it disappears at a whim. Sometimes it stays in a place for weeks, sometimes barely 24 hours. Townsfolk will see an empty field one day and then the next a fully set up circus and they'll have no idea how it happened.

Even with the sudden arrivals and departures the circus is always packed. Those who go there are drawn like moths to a flame. Work, family, pleasure are all unimportant--what they know is that something that they must see is in one of those tents.

They're correct. Every tent has something unusual and unique. The trained horses do impossible tricks. The food stalls sell food that seems to enhance the senses. The freak shows are truly freakish. As special as these attractions are, there are a few tents that are even more amazing and that only a few manage to find.

The tent of Arjeta the Toothless

Arjeta is an old crone with no teeth. For the right price she'll cast her bones and tell your fortune (it's rumored that she yanked out her own teeth to use as her bones for casting) or answer one question. Her answers are always correct, even if the listener can't understand them.

The tent of Esaro the fat

Esaro is an enormously fat man, but don't let that bulk fool you. He's surprisingly quick and nimble and has prodigious strength. In his tent you can find your heart's desire. If you don't know what your heart's desire is, he'll gladly show it to you. Be careful about bargaining with him, because his price is always the thing that means the most to you.

The tent of Blanat the Ageless

If you manage to find Blanat's tent then you are a special individual indeed. Those who find her tent have a wandering spark inside them that drives them on. These are they who are not happy with the mundane and ordinary and who want to achieve great things or see wondrous lands. Blanat has the power to send travelers to worlds beyond mortal knowing. She holds to a higher oath and seeks those who will labor for a cause in a strange land. Time works differently in other worlds, so if you accept the call to go and fight if you return you may find that no time at all has passed or that decades have passed.

Every traveler who has completed a mission she has set them to will find themselves immortalized by the bards and poets of that world.

Real Life Megadungeons: Chavin de Huantar, Peru

2012-02-17T20:27:00.001-07:00

At first blush Chaven de Huantar isn't much to look at. There aren't any really grand buildings or huge underground tunnels. The site was first established sometime around 1200 B.C. and abandoned around 500 B.C. It was occupied by a number of different cultures but the last one to occupy it were the Chavin culture, one of the many pre-Inca cultures in Peru.

What makes the place unique in my opinion is how it was designed. The builders specifically included acoustical properties in the complex so that the priests can manipulate sound so that worshipers can hear it at a stele located in a central place.

From an article on the subject from Popular Archaelogy:

Says Miriam Kolar, Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow, PhD Candidate  at Stanford University and leader of the study:   "At Chavín, we have discovered acoustic evidence for selective sound transmission between the site's Lanzon monolith and the Circular Plaza: an architectural acoustic filter system that favors sound frequencies of the Chavín pututus [conch-shell trumpets] and human voice."

The Lanzon is a sacred statue or stela depicting the central deity of the ancient Chavín culture. It is housed in the central chamber of a series of underground passages within the Old Temple of the ceremonial and religious center of Chavín de Huántar. A central duct was built to connect the area of the monolith with that of the Circular Plaza, a place of ceremonial activity and significance. The duct was specifically designed to filter to a certain sound range -- namely, the range emitted by the Chavín pututu instrument.

Some images:

The outside.

Some tunnels:

A denizen? A goddess? A demon?

This guy is too cheerful to be a head mounted to a wall. I wouldn't trust anything he says.

A conch shell used in ceremonies. Maybe to summon the goddess or wake the stone heads?

Something that I find particularly interest is this glyph of some sort of winged creature. Maybe another denizon of the dungeon or a god watching over it? However I also had a thought--what if you used this as a framework for a city? It could make an excellent map for a city center I think.

Same image cleaned up a bit

And now made very recognizable:

And now a map of the complex:

Real Life Megadungeons: Ayutthaya, Thailand

2012-02-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't figured it out by now, I love to use real life as inspiration for my gaming. Yesterday this image popped up in my RSS reader courtesy of the tumblr blog Subterranean Design (a blog that everybody needs to be following):

The head is normally above water

The image immediately resonated with me, so 45 minutes later and the magic of Google I learned the following. The image is from the city of Ayutthaya in Thailand, which was founded in 1350. The dynasty ruled until 1765 when an invading Burmese force of some 40,000 soldiers sacked the city. Just a few years later the Burmese army was forced to withdraw because of the threat of an invasion of Burma by Chinese armies, leaving the city of Ayutthaya in ruins.

The founders of the city chose well in picking the site. It's at a junction of three rivers, as well as being placed on a main trade route. Part of the city (the "old city" as it's called) is actually located on an island.

Some examples of the city's architecture:

(photo by Justin Gaurav Murgai)

A possible dungeon entrance?

Another oracle?

Painting of the city that was ordered to be done by the Dutch East India Tea Company:

And another one

Where's the dungeon you ask? Simple--just imagine that all the pagodas and towers are linked with underground tunnels and passageways. Or better yet don't even imagine that there's a dungeon--there's enough ruined structures and buildings to keep a party busy for awhile.

Elephant Man

2012-02-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

So there's this German guy by the name of Talhoffer. He wrote a really famous book on medieval fighting techniques that's simply called the Fechtbucher, or as it's translated "Fightbook". He actually wrote several of them, but the one I'm going to talk about was written in 1459. In it he illustrates different fighting techniques for just about every kind of personal combat you can imagine. He also illustrates a few different siege machines for good measure.

However, what caught my ey most of all was this particular illustration:

At first glance it appears to be some sort of weird hybrid between an elephant and a human, i.e. "Elephant Man". Perfect for a weird and unsightly creature for your players to run into in their journeys and adventurings.

It's actually a design for a diving suit. The long nose is actually a tube that would run above the sufarce of the water and then attach to another tube, which would then be attached to a set of bellows. The bellows would be pumped furiously to allow the diver to breathe while underwater.

Not too long ago the National Geographic channel ran a special on Talhoffer and the Fightbook, and one of the things they did was to test the dive suit out. Surprisingly enough, it worked perfectly, though I don't know if they used modern materials or period accurate materials in it's construction.

If you want to look at the Fightbook, you can as the whole thing is online in all it's lavish detail.

http://www.kb.dk/da/nb/materialer/haandskrifter/HA/e-mss/thalhofer/thott-2_290.html

Modeling a fight in 7th Sea: Inigo fights Count Rugen

2012-02-06T22:06:00.000-07:00

If you're looking to gain a deeper understanding of your game system (whatever it might be) a useful tool is to find a fight scene from a movie that's appropriate to the genre and then model it using the game you play.

7th Sea was written by the good people at AEG (makers of Legends of the 5 Rings), and uses d10s and the roll & keep system. I love the genre, and I love the mechanics of the game, so I decided some time back to model a fight sequence out of The Princess Bride. The fight sequence I chose was the final showdown between Count Rugen and Inigo. This is after Inigo has beaten off hordes of mooks, has chased Rugen into the dining hall, and then been struck by a well thrown dagger from Count Rugen.

Inigo has 1 Dramatic wound due to the knife in his gut from Count Rugen's earlier throw. My 7th Sea house rule states that players lose one die for every Dramatic Wound up until they hit the number of Dramatic Wounds equal to their Resolve, at which point the normal rules of 7th Sea come in to play. Since Inigo has one Dramatic Wound he now loses one die on each of his rolls (so an attack that would normally be r7k4 is now r6k4). He has 3 Drama Dice available to him (2 from his lowest Trait of Brawn and 1 from earlier actions in the sequence).

Inigo leans against the wall, his hand shoved into his stomach to keep his blood from spilling all over the floor. Through the pain he can see Count Rugen just out of reach. "To come so far, only to fail now?" What must his father think of his quest now?

"I've got to get up!" he tells himself, and he forces himself to his feet.
Count Rugen looks at him "Are you still trying to win?", he asks scornfully, as Inigo falls back against the wall again.

"You've got an overdeveloped sense of vengeance," spits Rugen, as he draws his sword. "It's going to get you into trouble someday."

Combat begins with the two rolling iniative. Rugen does not have any of his Brutes around, so he must rely on his Henchman skills to defeat the Hero Inigo.

Rugen rolls 5 dice for action (Panache 2, Attack (Fencing) 3). Inigo rolls 6 dice for combat (3 Panache, 4 Attack (Fencing). The -1 penalty is due to his Dramatic Wound.

Rugen gets a 5, 6, 6, 6, 9 on his roll. Inigo gets 1, 4, 4, 6, 9, 9,

Phase 1: Inigo would normally get to go first, but he decides to hold his action.
Phase 2: Neither player has an action die in this phases, and Inigo continues to hold his
Phase 3: The GM decides he'd better spend a drama dice to allow Count Rugen to act (The GM has 3 DD available to him. 2 for Inigo's lowest Trait, plus 1 for the sole member of the party). Rugen makes an attack on Inigo, who is using his passive defense. Rugen rolls exceptionally well, getting a 10, 10, 6, 5, 3. He can only keep two of those, so he keeps the 10s and rerolls them. The results are an 8 and 8, for a total of 36. Inigo takes his held action from phase 1 and spends an action die from phase 4 (since he's lying against the wall it takes 2 action die to mount an active defense instead of 1) to mount an Active Defense. This allows him to roll 6k3 (3 Wits + 3 Parry). The results are a 10, 8, 7, 6, 6, 2, 1. Re-rolling the 10 gives him another 6, for a total of 35, which is not quite enough to beat Rugen's attack.

Inigo lays against the wall to support his shaky legs. Pain clouds his vision, making it difficult for him to concentrate. He sees Rugen draw his sword and lunge, but he has no hope of blocking that attack, merely thrusting it away from his heart.

The tip of the sword pierces his shoulder, doing 2k2 damage (12 flesh wounds). Inigo has to roll to see if that Flesh Wound becomes a Dramatic Wound. His Resolve is a 3, allowing him to roll 3k3. He rolls poorly: 2, 2, 4, for 8 total. He decides to spend one of his Drama dice to add 5 to that result. He now has 12 points of Flesh Wound to deal with, but no additional Dramatic Wounds.

Phase 4: Inigo has one action die this phase, but again decides to hold it.
Phase 5: Rugen again attacks Inigo. Rugen does not roll as well this time around as he did his previous attack. This result is 9, 7, 7, 4, 1. He keeps the 9 and 7, which is still enough to beat Inigo's passive defense of 5. Inigo decides to spend one of his action die from phase 4 and one from phase 9, to mount an active defense, with a result of 6, 4, 4, 2, 3, 1, which is not enough to beat the attack. He holds on to his remaining 2 Drama Dice figuring he'll probably need them to soak damage. Again Rugen rolls 2k2 for damage for a total of 6. Now Inigo must beat a target number of 18 Flesh Wounds to prevent another Dramatic wound. He rolls his Resolve and gets a 10, 4, 2. He re-rolls the 10, getting a 7, for a total result of 23, more than enough to soak that final wound.

Rugen looks down on Inigo "At last I can finish this insolent fool off", he mutters as he lunges at Inigo again. The blade sinks into Inigo, but instead of into the heart as Rugen expected, Inigo has somehow managed to move the point of his sword into his shoulder. Another flesh wound, but not a killing blow. Rugen is now starting to get worried. Will this damn fool not realize that he's finished?

Phase 6: Rugen has 3 action die this phase, and Inigo has one. Since they both have action die, the total remaining die are added up to see who goes first. Inigo has his action die from phase and from phase 9 for a total of 15. Rugen has 6, 6, and 6, having spent his action die from phase 9 to move earlier for a total of 18. Rugen gets to go first. The GM decides to use another Drama Die to add to Rugen's roll, allowing him to r6k3. The results are 10, 9, 8, 4, 3, 1. Rugen re-rolls the 10 for an additional 6, bringing his attack to a total of 25, which beats Inigo's passive defense by five Raises. Inigo uses the action die from this phase and the last one from phase 9 to make an active defense. He also spends a drama die to add to his roll and he rolls 7k3. 10,3,3,4,2,1,4. The result of the re-roll of the 10 is a 6, for a total result of 24. Not enough to escape the wound entirely, but at least it doesn't give Rugen a Raise.

Again Rugen lunges at Inigo, this time with a sense of panic. What is keeping this man going? Surely he can't have any more strength to fight back, so why is he? Count Rugen makes sure this lunge is correct, but again is thwarted by the blade of Montoya, who somehow manages to divert the point of his sword from a killing thrust to the flesh of his arm.

Rugen rolls a 15 for damage, making for a total of 33 Flesh Wounds that Inigo now has to soak to avoid another Dramatic Wound. Inigo spends his last Drama die to add one to his Resolve roll, giving him a total of r4k3. Results are 10, 8, 3, 7. Rerolling the 10 gives an 8, for a total of 33, barely enough to take the damage. Inigo can not afford any more flesh wounds.
Phase 6: Panicked, Rugen now spends his last Drama Die for a chance at another attack on Inigo. 6, 5, 5, 2, 2 are the results. An 11 is not nearly enough to take on Inigo, and he's able to easily block Rugen's thrust. He then launches an attack of his own on count Rugen with a result 14, not enough to beat Rugen's passive defense.
Phase 7: Inigo activates his Arcana of "Focused", to temporarily shift one point from his Brawn to his Panache to give him another die on his attack. He then launches one more attack.

In a blind panic Rugen thrusts with his sword at the bleeding Inigo Montoya. Montoya easily parries this blow, and stumbles to his feet.

"Hello," he says. "My name is Inigo Montoya, prepare to die."

This line draws appreciative chuckles and applause from the group and the GM awards Inigo a Drama die, bringing his remaining total to 2.

Round 2
Rugen: 1, 1, 1, 5, 7
Inigo: 1, 2, 2, 7, 7, 7, 9 Inigo can now roll 7k3, instead of 6k3 since he activated his Arcana.
Phase 1: Inigo holds his action. Rugen attacks and the two highest dice only total 12, not nearly enough. Inigo easily parries. Rugen attacks again, scoring a total of 18, enough to beat Inigo's passive defense (restored to 15 now that he's standing up). Inigo spends his held action die to mount an active defense, totaling 21, easily enough to parry the attack.

"Prepare to die". The statement chilled Count Rugen to the bone. He thought that he had Montoya at his mercy, and here he was standing up and getting ready to attack. He knew he could still beat him, as he was healthy and Inigo had a gaping wound in his stomach and three other wounds

"How does he manage to stay up?" he screamed to himself. "It's not natural!" He launched a series of attacks on Inigo, which were easily parried as his sword was driven into the massive dining table.

Phase 2: Rugen panics and spends his last two action die of this round to attack. The first attack results in a score of 20. Inigo spends his first die from this phase to mount an active defense and easily beats that. The second attack from Rugen results in 14, which is not enough.

Inigo stands up, advancing on Count Rugen. "Hello", he says with a sneer on his lips "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." Rugen lunged wildly at Inigo, but his sword was easily beaten aside. Inigo felt his father's presence with him, guiding his sword. It seemed to have a life of its own, as he advanced on the craven Count Rugen.

Phase 2: Inigo attacks Rugen. He gets to r3k7, and scores 10, 7, 7, 5, 4, 2, 1 and a re-roll of 9, for a total of 26. Rugen's passive defense is 15, so Inigo beats him by 2 raises. He rolls poorly on the damage, for only 2 points of damage.

It's now Inigo's turn to attack. After the brief flurry of blows from Rugen, he launches himself at Rugen, easily brushing aside Rugen's defenses and slamming Rugen into the table. "Hello," he says again with a smile. "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

Phase 3 thru 6: Inigo continues to advance on Rugen through the cluttered dining room. "Hello", he says with growing conviction. "You killed my father. Prepare to die."
Phase 7: Inigo has 3 attacks this round and plans on using them all. He rolls 20 on the first one and jabs Rugen in the right shoulder for 16 Flesh Wounds. Rugen does not make the soak and takes one Dramatic Wound. He rolls 18 on the next and jabs Rugen in the left shoulder for 13 Flesh Wounds. Rugen rolls a 12 and does not soak these, taking another Dramatic Wound. Rugen's dice now do not explode since he has taken a number of Dramatic wounds equal to his Resolve.
Phase 8: Inigo backs Rugen up to the last table.
Phase 9: Inigo is going to make an all out attack. He calls for 2 Raises because he wants to make a dramatic disarming of the count. He spends his 2 Drama dice to add to the kept dice on his roll, meaning he can now roll 9 and keep 3. Count Rugen doesn't stand a chance. Inigo's roll is a 10, 10, 9, 8, 6, 4, 5, 7, 1. The re-rolls are a 10 and a 9. The final re-roll is a 9, for a grand total of 57. Inigo's success is legendary, beating Rugen's passive defense by 42 points!

Inigo's last attack is all out. He attacks Rugen, his blade singing with his father's spirit. A complicated wrist maneuver and Rugen is now disarmed, and at his mercy.

A quick slash and Rugen now has a scar on his right cheek to match Inigo's.

Another slash and there's a scar on the left. Rugen begins begging for his life, offering Inigo anything he wants.
"Money?" asks Inigo
"Yes!" cries Rugen
"Land? Wealth? Power?"
"Yes, yes. Anything you want!" cries Rugen, oblivious to the cold glare of Inigo.

"I want my father back, you son-of-a-bitch" says Inigo as he thrusts the blade of his sword into Rugen's heart.

Sedlec Ossuary

2012-02-02T00:19:00.001-07:00

I mentioned Sedlec in Monday's blog post. I figured it would be good to give a bit more information about this rather famous (and creepy) place.

In Prague there is a chapel that contains the bones of up to 70,000 people. These bones are laid out in geometric shapes. Some of them have been crafted into various objects such as chandeliers or coats of arms.

The story goes that in 1278 the abbot of the monastery was sent to the Holy Land by King Otakar II of Bohemia. When he returned he brought back some dirt and sprinkled it in the abbey.

This association with the Holy Land led to many people, especially aristocracy, seeking it out for their burials. During the 100 Years War. The 14th century saw the Black Death kill many thousands of people, and the 15th century saw the Hussite wars do the same. Eventually the cemetery ran out of room, and in 1511 (according to legend) the task of exhuming the bodies was given to a half blind monk.

In 1870 František Rint was hired to bring some semblance of an order to the tens of thousands of bones.

I don't know why it is that so many early (for relative values of early) Christian churches and monasteries have this bone fetish. Sedlec may be unique in the sheer number of bones that are collected there, but it's certainly not unique in collecting and displaying bones or other remains.

How to apply this to your game?

--that many bones is just plain creepy, no matter how jaded your explorers are

--maybe the geometric shapes formed by the bones are actually Shapes of Power designed to do nasty things?

--why make the objects out of bones? Maybe they have some magical properties?

--what if a necromancer commanded all of those bones to rise at once? I don't think there's a group alive that wouldn't run in terror.

Such an a normal looking church for the weirdness that lies within.

Things in the dungeon

2012-02-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

Another random list for your enjoyment (roll a d20)

*Creatures in the Dungeon*

1.) Rodents of Unusual Size
2.) Lizards
3.) Snakes
4.) Large spider
5.) Hundreds of thousands of small spiders
6.) Trolls
7.) Gnomes
8.) Homeless people
9.) Other adventurers
10.) Cockroaches
11.) wild dogs
12.) eels in the water
13.) you're not sure but it had really large teeth
14.) salamanders
15.) Nothing at all. It was a fruitless trip
16.) lots of random bones
17.) mummies
18.) These guys

19.) a smith with his forge

20.) bats

D&D 5e: I finally speak

2012-01-31T09:00:00.000-07:00

I've been mostly silent about the topic of D&D 5th edition, rarely chiming in even on G+. I've not talked about it at all in this blog. Like many (most?) people in our hobby I started out with D&D. For me it was AD&D when I was about 12 and I had absolutely no idea what the heck was going on. I didn't game again until my sister's boyfriend invited me over to play WEG Indiana Jones and I was hooked. My next experience with D&D was 3.0/3.5. I then burned out on fantasy rpgs for awhile.

You might liken it to a break-up with your significant other. First there's the bitterness and hatred "D&D sucks and is a horrible rpg. Especially 3.5!". Then there's apathy "Eh, I don't particularly care about D&D at all. They can do their thing I'll do mine". Finally there was rapproachment "I'm kind of digging this OSR thing. I think I can handle some old school D&D and I think I even like it."

Thus I've been following the news of 5e with some interest, because it could do a great deal to unite the various factions of D&D players. I was intrigued when they said that one of the goals was to allow players of any edition to take their character and play with 5e. That seemed like a tall goal to me, but I'm encouraged by this report from the D&D Experience by bspauls at dndfifthcolumn. Quoting his report of the event:

"First, the prototype of D&D Next absolutely captures the feel of classic D&D. Since I started with the Moldvay Basic Set in 1980, to me the game felt very much like Basic D&D–but there were elements which I knew would resonate with someone for whom 1e was the baseline. Talking with one of my traveling companions, who had played mostly 3.x, I found that he had gravitated to parts of the new system that evoked the feel of 3rd edition."

This is interesting to me. What it tells me that is that ether A.) the player's own preconceptions will fuel the game (something always true), or B.) the style of play will be determined by the DM/group. There were some things I like a lot about 4th edition, but I didn't care for the way it felt like so much of a tactical game to me. I like the earlier editions because of that feeling of not ever knowing what's going to come around the corner or if it's going to be too big for you to handle. I like 3.x because of the ability to customize your character.

If 5e can provide the feel of all those editions at once it'll be a miraculous accomplishment.

Another juicy quote:

"And that, right there, is why I feel the current manifestation of D&D Next nails the feel of classic D&D. My friends and I were on the edge of our seats during the whole adventure. At no point did we feel like “we’ve got this in the bag,” but we didn’t feel like we were in over our heads, either–right up until the point where it all went pear-shaped. And when things did go south, no one felt that it was because the cards were stacked against us (that’s a figure of speech–I am unable to confirm or deny whether actual cards played any role in the playtest.) We could look back and see very clearly where we had gone wrong–and it was us, the players and our characters, not the rules or the DM.

Coming out of the B/X and 1e eras, this is really the essence of D&D for me. A skillful Dungeon Master offers the players a challenging scenario, with the potential for both serious consequences and significant reward. It is up to the players to decide when, where and how they tackle the challenge. If they succeed, it’s on to bigger and better things. If they fail, then they learn from their mistakes and perhaps take another crack at it on a different day. Either way, the fun of the game lies primarily in the story the players and the DM build together–not in whether the players prevail in any given situation."

Read the whole thing--it's well worth your time

Real Life megadungeon: Odessa catacombs

2012-01-30T22:03:00.000-07:00

The catacombs of Rome are world-famous, and justly so. The Sedlec Ossuary is also very famous for it's thousands upon thousands of skeletons and bones. A lesser-known (and much neglected) series of catacombs can be found under the city of Odessa.

According to the font of all knowledge, the catacombs under Odessa total some 4,000 km stretching under the city and surrounding area of Odessa. The area has never been fully mapped (really it's barely been mapped at all). Apparently the first tunnels were built as a result of mining the soft limestone, then as tunnels were expanded they hooked into each other in a vast network that has housed everything from smugglers to Nazis (and apparently even housed a wine cellar at one point).

The tunnels are starting to become flooded, which adds an extra element of danger for your dungeoneering party. Not only do they have to navigate 4,000 km of territory (with whatever might lurk beneath), they now have to avoid flooded areas and sudden washouts.

Some pictures for inspiration:

The entrance

Some early rewards for the party:

Some interior glamour shots:

I wonder where the train goes . . .

And some bits of what's been mapped.

In a place as old as this there's no telling what you're going to find.

Random List: Magic Missile

2012-01-24T09:15:00.000-07:00

So the magic missile is boring? Here are ten ways to describe the effects of the spell for your players so that don't roll their eyes when you say "you get hit with magic missile for 3 points of damage".

1.) smoky tendrils come from the hands and head fo ryou

2.) the wizard stands there and shoots black bars at you

3.) he opens his mouth and a stream of bees comes flying out

4.) hundreds of spiders drop from the ceiling and come up from the cracks to bite

5.) he makes a gesture and the nearby _______ (fill in the blank with whatever material is handy) splinters, attacking with devastating force

6.) flame comes from his finger tips

7.) fluorescent green slime balls

8.) bursts of acid

9.) birds appear from nowhere and viciously peck

10.) streams of venom

The point is not to extol the virtues of magic missile but to get the brain thinking about different ways of describing things. An effective technique for a GM is to get the players to describe what they do in a way that's not boring. Instead of them saying "I throw a fireball", ask them to describe what they're doing, or do it for them. It can really help with the immersion.

As a GM, you'll want to keep your spells consistent with each wizard, or have your players up in arms. For example if they meet one wizard who casts magic missile and it comes in the shape of a stream of bees and then the next time it's 100s of tiny daggers, they'll think it's a different spell, and rightly so.

Magic Users and Spell Levels

2012-01-23T22:36:00.000-07:00

One of the things I disliked about D&D 3.x was the fact that you had to level up to get the next coolest thing, especially if you were a magic user. I find that boring and tedious. If I'm a magic user I should have access to all the spells/powers available to me and not be restricted by some invisible barrier.

A consequence of this leveling up process is that a magic user at 10th level is really no different than a magic user at 1st level. The spells aren't harder to cast, they don't require more from the magic user, they simply do more damage. Accepting this as a basic premise, why not make all spells available at the start and then adjust how they work?

With that in mind here are some thoughts that I had about how to let magic users have access to everything at first level, but not make them overpowered, or boring because there's no challenge.

--change the damage done by a spell. As a magic user increases in power and knowledge his spells also increase. So he might start out as a d4, then move to a d6, then d8, d10, etc.

--change how many spells per day the magic user can do. Maybe at the beginning he can only do two spells per day and he's worn out and drained. Later on he can do four.

--increase the chance of failure at lower levels. If the casting of a spell had a difficulty of 15 normally, maybe a 1st level user could only cast it by hitting 18.

I also like the idea of a lower level magic user still being able to cast a higher level spell, just making it more difficult to do and more draining once it's been done. Similar to someone drawing on those last reserves of strength and will to accomplish things and get them done.

On G+ Ken Austin had a great solution for Pathfinder, where the magic user could take a feat of something like "Over Achieving Spellcaster". The magic user could cast a spell at any level, but would have to make a Fortitude save of 15 plus the spell level, plus the damage done by the spell or remain unconscious for the number of rounds equal to the damage done. This would allow a player to sacrifice himself for the good of the party in a grand heroic gesture.

GM Questionnaire

2012-01-21T21:12:00.001-07:00

Zak S of Playing D&D With Pornstars (one of the best role playing blogs on the internet--if you're not reading it you should be) asked some questions for GMs. Here are my responses.

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?
Either a were-centaur, or the Sword of Vegetation.

2. When was the last time you GMed?
A month and a half ago? Within the last two months anyway.

3. When was the last time you played?
Sometime in the last three months.

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.
Shared city/country a la Thieves World with different GMs running the same characters in different campaigns. Either that or Toypocalypse meets Hollowpoint at the North Pole.

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?
Review any notes I have or figure out what's going to happen next.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?
Nothing really. I drink copious amounts of Mt. Dew though.

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Yes.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?
Trying to use "Cast Light" as an offensive weapon by focusing it on someone's eyes.

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?
Neither. Mostly they play it the way I intended.
10. What do you do with goblins?
They're nasty and brutish with a low level cunning.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?
The Mask of Manza Sha'et Based on a picture of a jade mask discovered at The Pyramid of the Sun temple in Mexico City.

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?I was running a game of Hollowpoint. My players did the completely unexpected and neatly side stepped my deadly trap. It was so awesome it was funny. Before that the funniest were several moments during David Hill's Kicking Historical Asses (designed to give you the feel of playing in the world of Army of Darkness) that were genuinely laugh out loud funny, including one during character creation when we realized that the two members of the party were a tall, skinny black guy who likes to go to SCA events on the weekend is paired up with the auto work he just laid off who is a biker guy with a shaved head, tribal tattoos, a love of karaoke, and the words "Peace" and "Love" tattooed on the knuckles of his hands.

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?
7th Sea GM guide. I was looking up the rules for Mass Combat to make sure I remembered them right when explaining them to someone else.

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?
I don't have one. It really depends on the game, because some illustrators are great for some subjects and not for others.

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?
I never tried to make them afraid.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)
I've never run an adventure I didn't come up with on my own.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?
Large table, lots of room for books, pens, dice, etc. Decent light, but not too bright. The most memorable game I've ever played was D&D 3.5 around a campfire.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?
7th Sea and the various OSR clones. In 7th Sea you play swashbuckling heroes who can take on dozens of bad guys and not get touched. In the various OSR clones your character could easily die in the first session if things go wrong. On the other hand they are more alike than they would first seem, because they're both about going out and adventuring.

My other answer would be Vornheim and Argyle and Crew, because how much more disparate can you get than a somewhat gonzo, very weird, fantasy city and an rpg about sock puppets? Then I realized that one of the reasons I like both of them is that they're both part of the indie movement in rpg publishing and both do a great job of it.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?
Fantasy novels and historical events. I love to read just about anything and I have a deep and abiding passion for history. One of my favorite things to do is take ideas from a book I've read and implement them in a game (my first GM session ever was based on a Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser short story). I also like taking historical things and asking "what if".

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?
Someone willing to put themselves into the game. I don't want to be out there trying to coax the player along (and I'm not talking about helping a new player get adjusted). I also want players who are willing to think outside the box when coming up with solutions to problems.

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?
I don't think I've ever had a real life experience that I've consequently used in a game. The closest I've come is when I mis-heard something on a podcast and then created a magic item around it. Someone said something about "all sorts of vegetation" and I misheard that as "A sword of vegetation".

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?
An equivalent to Vornheim but for wilderness adventures.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?
My wife. At first she just gave me that look that said "I have no idea what you're saying but I'll listen." Lately she's actually participated more and even lurked at some G+ Hangouts where we did some gaming. She's expressed some interest in actually playing. I'm amused that the first rpg book she ever looked at was Vornheim.

2012-01-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

Last week I drew up a map at working using the technique from Zak Smith's Vornheim (quite possibly the best city supplement I've ever read).

Here's the first version of the map.

After some cleaning up and colorization and such here's the current version. It still needs a great deal of work to get where I want it to be. My plan is to do a smaller map of each of the various districts and neighborhoods. I'd also like to have floor plans of a few of the major sites in each district. For example, The Flying Pony's floorplan is already done and the notorious inn is strategically situated at the intersection of three of the major roads in the city.

Each district will have a name and function, though what those will be I've yet to determine. I have the name of the bay, which is called "The Claw", or sometimes simply "Claw".

Wandering Minstrel Table

2012-01-18T23:49:00.000-07:00

A random list for you.

*Wandering Minstrel Table (roll a d12)*

Roll a d12 on each list and then combine the results. Or mix and match. Really you can do whatever you'd like with it.

Instrument
1.) Silver lute
2.) Wooden flute (think Native American)
3.) Pan pipes
4.) Guitar
5.) Wooden Harp
6.) Mandolin
7.) Drums
8.) Violin
10.) Silver flute
11.) Small silver harp
12.) Sackbut (feel bad for this one)

Appearance
1.) Finely dressed in bright colors
2.) Fat and shabbily dressed in dull colors
3.) Extremely tall
4.) Wears an extremely brightly colored cloak
5.) Clown shoes
6.) Statuesque woman
7.) Tiny woman
8.) Wears drab colors in shades of brown and gray
9.) Lots of jewelry
10.) Funny hat
11.) Scruffy beard
12.) Missing a finger

Musical style
1.) Love songs sung ironically
2.) Martial tunes
3.) Bawdy ballads
4.) Lovelorn songs
5.) Religious hymns
6.) Popular dance music (but played a dirge-like pace)
7.) Dirges and other funeral music
8.) Popular dance music
9.) Everything
10.) Lullabies
11.) Wedding songs
12.) Anthems (these are religious anthems as used in the Baroque period and brought to perfection by Handel in his Chandos Anthems)

Magical R

New Class: Necromantic Investigator

2012-01-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

This idea originally started out as a question about how to make clerics more interesting, then became more involved as time went on. The idea is to make necromancy something that's not evil. It seems that in every fantasy rpg necromancy is something that's inherently evil. This is understandable if we go with the premise that a necromancer causes death or gains power through causing death.

What if a necromancer was something different? Here are some ideas that I've fleshed out. This is still very nebulous, but I'd actually like to develop this into an actual class, I'm just not sure for what system yet. (The system will be difficult for me to choose since I tend to be very system agnostic and would like this blog to be system/setting neutral)

Necromantic Investigator

Job Description
--investigates death. This could be anything from raising the spirits of the dead to answer questions or simply "reading" the bones of the dead person to see their last moments of life

--solve family disputes. The kids are arguing over who gets to keep what from the estate because Grandpa Bob didn't leave a will? Call in a Necromancer to raise Uncle Bob's spirit and ask some questions.

--my thinking is that a necromantic investigator would really be a sub-class of necromancy. This would be all that they do, with no other necromantic powers except communicating with the dead. Can they communicate or speak with ghosts or other types of spirits, or is this a gift that has to be focused? If it's the latter how is it limited? Through training/lack of talent? Magical item that grants the power?

--what kind of laws are there that prevent a necromantic investigator from going into private practice? Are there any?

--I could see them becoming quite valuable as a part of society. If a murderer will always be found out will that decrease the level of violent crime, or will that simply cause violent people to hide the evidence more thoroughly?

--How much of a person's remains would there need to be in order for anything to be learned? Maybe that changes based on a necromancer's skill level?

--I could see a necromantic investigator developing an "affinity" for other violent crimes as well. A skilled necromancer might be able to sense when someone was beaten or raped or something else?

--If a necromantic investigator has that much contact with death, and can presumably lay the dead back down again, can that power to lay the dead down be used on the living? In other words, could they cast a death curse if needed?

--how much power do the necromantic investigators have? Are they the sole arbitrators of death cases, so that the rich and powerful are not immune? If so how are they kept in check so that they don't abuse the power?

Uniform
Of course the uniform is important.

--since it's necromancy it has to be black. Black boots with silver trim. Black pants with silver belt. White shirt with blood red trim. Black cloak, with the inside being deep, dark red (almost maroon). The necromancer symbol in dark red stamped on the sides of the boots, woven into the hip at the pants, used as a belt buckle for the belt, sewn in read thread on the right breast of the shirt, and used as clasp for the cloak (with red stitching on the back of the cloak with a large symbol).

--the symbol of the necromantic class is a scale with a skull resting on one of the balances and a pile of bones on the other.

Other Necromancy
In a society where necromancy was used for investigation I could see some other things being affected as well.

--a cleric who practices necromancy as a way to "help" or "guide" a restless soul to their final destination.
--In this case I could see the necromancer needing some sort of "payment" from the dead soul. Maybe a
future favor or piece of information. A necromancer who's been at it for awhile could become incredibly
powerful.
--a cleric who practices necromancy to help bring closure to the living. Maybe a loved one didn't get to say goodbye and the cleric is there to provide that opportunity
--a necromantic battle cleric who's there to ease the death of those mortally wounded.
--maybe in such a society raising the undead to perform menial labor is seen as the morally right thing to do. After all, why should the living be forced to build that great monument when the dead don't care?
--I could also see such a society allowing anyone with the cash and proper permits to be able to "hire" undead to do the low level tasks that the rest of society doesn't want to do. Of course the relatives of the undead must be contacted and permission given/bought, but that can sometimes be hard to do . . .

I guess it's not so nebulous after all. However I still have no thoughts about what kind of spells/powers are available at the various levels, or if I even want to do it that way.

Sunday Stats (1/15/2012)

2012-01-15T16:00:00.000-07:00

I skipped last week's Sunday Stats because I'd barely posted during that week. I did slightly better this week, but not all that much.

Brand new year, brand new stats. I skipped last week's stats because I basically had gone a week without writing a post.

Previous Reports
January 1, 2012
December 18, 2011
December 11, 2011

General Stuff
The first post on this blog was November 27, 2011 (Creating NPC's with depth). This is post number 30. I'm still maintaining my posting average of one every other day. However I'm still having the problem where my posting is not as consistent as I'd like. At the time of this writing I have 1461 page views, 406 more than my last report. That's about 200 a week. My actual play report of Hollowpoint continues to be my most visited post by a rather large margin (it would probably decrease a bit if I didn't keep on posting a link to it in these updates). Some competition seems to be emerging though, as my post Things From the Inn: Fun With Random Tables is starting to make some inroads. It's been at number 2 for quite some time.

Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?

The international scope of my visitors log continues to surprise me. The United States and the UK continue to be the countries sending the most page views my way. Uruguay! is creeping up the list and may end up overtaking the UK.

The past week's visitor logs have shown visitors from Belarus, as well as the Philippines.

Firefox remains the most popular browser (37% to 32%), while Windows remains easily the most popular operating system (69%), with Mac a very distant second (13%).

What Are You Thinking?
and the blue sky lit with deep
geomorphs
caverna
dungeon curse (I'm rather pleased with this searcher)
there was a hill that ate people
the dungeon of eternal doom (sounds like a great name for someone's FlaiSnails campaign)

Being a Better GM part 4: Names

2012-01-15T13:27:00.000-07:00

As a GM coming up with names has always been the toughest part of running an adventure. I always feel like my NPC names are boring, or I sit and stare at my magic object and can't figure out what to name it. Here are a few quick and dirty tips to easy naming.

1.) Check your email spam filters. You can get some good names that way. From my spam filter here are some names I'd use for an NPC.

Esmerelda Odo
Libbey Newsome
Rick Eden
Shal Nelida
Shay Johnson
Rey Goodlatte
David DeSimone
Chris Duncan

2.) Name generators and naming sites. Here are a few good ones that I use.

Behind the Name. I like this one because you can choose the nationality of the name you want to use as well as the sex. It's got a pretty good database of names and it has a meaning for each name as well.

Kate Monk's Onomastikon This site breaks names up by civilization and region of the world. Some of the links are broken on the site, but it's still an interesting read (even if the design is hard on the eyes).

Wizard's Community List of Names This one is put together by the users at the Wizard's forums. It's separated by first and last name and tends to be more fantasy themed.

List of Random Names This one is great because you can choose between several options before submitting your request.

Fake Name Generator I love this one because you can choose everything from sex to nationality and it will give you an entirely pre-generated history for the person down to a fake email address and website.

3.) Things

I find that it's pretty easy for me to come up with magical items. I look at something and then say "what if?" until I get it figured out. Naming is quite another thing. There are a couple of tricks that I like to use though.

I like to use Google Translator to come up with a name for something. Let's say we have a magic item that will blast fire when a command word is spoken. Take the meaning of the word and translate it into another language. Putting "fire shooter" into the translator and selecting something like Welsh you end up with saethwr Tân. The next step is to switch up a few letters or take them out. The final product is the wand of the ancient wizard Saewr Tan, who loved fire.

The Forge Fantasy Name Generator This is geared more towards fantasy play, but it's a name generator that does more than people names. You can also get a random name for animals, lands, spells, and magic items. It can be very useful.

Online Etymology Dictionary Use this one the same way you'd use Google Translate. Plug in the meaning of the word and see the history of it and choose something from the list. Plugging "fire shooter" into the OED generates several diverse results, but I ended up liking the word agnih (from the Sanskrit for igneous, aka firey) and the word heorð (from the Old English for hearth). This gives us the name Heoran for either the name of the wizard or the wand itself.

New Year, New Game

2012-01-11T19:21:00.001-07:00

The fine folks over at Gnome Stew have issued a challenge to every GM out there. Rather than try to paraphrase it, I thought that I'd quote them:

New Year, New Game (NYNG for short) is a new Gnome Stew venture — an annual challenge to GMs all over the world: Run a new game this year.
New Year, New Game is an idea that we hope will catch on with gamers all over the world, much like GM’s Day did (it’s celebrated on March 4th every year). It has a simple mission:

To inspire game masters to run at least one new game each year, because trying new games broadens your horizons, challenges your skills as a GM, and can deepen your enjoyment of gaming as a hobby.

There's a website set up, called appropriately enough New Year, New Game. I've decided to take them up on this challenge.

I'd like to add a secondary challenge to the New Year, New Game challenge. If you've never run a game before, why not make this the year that you take the plunge?

Here's my entry on why I'm going to run Jeremy Keller's Technoir.

There's nothing angelic about life in the City of Angels. If you're wealthy or powerful (and really, aren't the two the same?), you have access to all the good things in life. If you're part of the rest of the 99%, life is a daily grind as you try to avoid the people that you owe favors or money too, while collecting the money and favors owed to you.

There are huge technological advancements and for a few Kreds you can have just about any kind of tech implanted into your body. It's getting those Kreds that's the problem. You have to borrow money to finance the jobs you take to get more money. You end up giving promises to nasty people and one day they'll be called in. That "one day" is not today, and thankfully you're owed a few favors of your own, and if you can call them in at the right time you might just be able to break even or pull ahead with this next job.

Only now you're in way over your head. The job turned out to be not nearly as straight forward as you thought it would be. You don't know where to turn, and you can't trust your contacts. The only way to get any information is to start shaking the tree and see what falls out.

+Jeremy Keller's Technoir is a cyberpunk game that's designed around the noir genre. The singular characteristic about a noir hero is that she's not afraid to get beaten up, if it will get her the information she needs. She's may not be the smartest, or the richest, or the most well-connected, or the prettiest, but what she has in spades is grit and determination. Once on the trail she'll never give up until she's figured out what's going on.

There are several things that excite me about Technoir. First is that it's cyberpunk. I love the cyberpunk genre . Some of my fondest gaming memories are of playing Shadowrun. Secondly I love that it's noir. The noir style of film and book is awesome. I love the whole concept of noir, which is that a person is in way over their head, whether of their own doing or because of forces beyond their control who are trying to set them up. I love that noir heroes aren't the brightest, or smartest, prettiest, or richest, but what they've got is an intractable will and no fear of bodily harm. The primary strategy of a noir detective is to go shake a tree and see what happens. No Sherlock Holmesian investigations here.

I also love the system that Jeremy Keller came up with, which is designed to reward players who get their characters hurt. I also love that the system is built around describing things.

Challenges in running this? There are more than a few. First, it's a new game. That means most people will not have even heard of the game, much less played it. Second is my work schedule, which makes it difficult for me to participate in games via G+. Currently I have no meatspace gaming group, and even if I manage to get my group back together I'll probably be running something like Earthdawn or 7th Sea with them, because they're not the most adventurous of gamers.

Ten Magic Rings

2012-01-10T20:26:00.001-07:00

Roll a d10 (or just pick one).

1.) Plain gold men's ring.
Beggar Knight's Banquet. Wear it when preparing a meal and it will taste deliciously, no matter how poor the ingredients. Easy enough to find out though, it should taste of basil and thyme. I suggest you wash it before tasting however, who knows where it has been.

2.) Large man's ring with a ruby in it (looks like a signet ring, only there's no seal)
Arcane Signet Ring, the seal can only be seen by those able to see magic. It is a common ring for wizards to keep around

3.) Women's gold ring with a small pearl
Demeter's Sigh. Has the power to acellerate the growth of any plant to full fruition overnight.

4.) Stone ring with a pair of ravens etched into it (one on the outside, the other on the inside)
The Lost Eye. It grants a plus to your wisdom, but you lose the sight in your right eye while wearing it.

5.) A woman's bracelet/ring combo. It's three rings, connected by fine silver chain to each other and also to a bracelet. The rings go over the ring finger, the middle finger, and the index finger. Jewels in order appear to be jade, onyx, and diamond.

Soulcaster. When the wearer touches the jade stone followed by the onyx and diamond, she will be able to view any ghosts or other spirits who are around. When she touches the onyx, and then the diamond and then the jade, she will be able to help those souls leave the world and move on to their final resting spot. When she touches all three at once she will be able to disassociate herself from her body and travel the world as if she were a ghost.

6.) A man's silver ring with a fox etched into it.
Huli-jing Snare. Don't put it on, or you'll release the fox spirit contained in it and be trapped yourself.

7.) A man's gold ring with etched knotwork

8.) A woman's ring with etched knotwork. It appears to be a matching set with the man's ring.
#7 and 8 are a pair of Lovers' Quarrels. Highly specialized, the rings require two people who are wed and are also using ranged weapons. As long as the pair wear the rings and remain within hearing distance of each other, their ranged weapons will not run out of ammunition.

9.) A ring made of fur or hair woven together in a complicated braid. In the center is a large emerald.
Promise of Youth The ring grants a plus to your con and a minus to your wisdom. Once put on, it does not come off until the fibers wear through, at which point it becomes disenchanted.

10.) Another braided ring, only this one is made of three strands of finely beaten gold strands.
Protection Ring. Grants a bonus to the wearer's armor.

New Year's Resolutions: Gaming Goals for 2012

2012-01-09T22:45:00.002-07:00

I originally posted this to G+, but I'd like to have it in a more permanent place.

1.) Actually finish an idea that I have. I have serious issues with completing projects--I come up with a cool idea and then let it wilt. I work much better collaborating with someone else in an editorial/brainstorming type of way.

2.) Finally force my old gaming group to get back together and start gaming again. They've all said "Yeah, that sounds great," and then I tell them "Your schedules are the ones that are weird, not mine, so contact me." Of course they never do. Failing that I'll get a new group started.

3.) Get involved in a long term campaign via G+ Hangouts as a player.

4.) Do a blog entry every other day. I've been averaging one every other day but it tends to be 5 in a row, 3 or 4 days off, 5 days in a row.

5.) Put my money where my mouth is and help fund a Kickstarter/IndieGoGo project each month (at whatever level I can afford to do, whether it's $5 or $50).

6.) Play at least 6 new games.

7.) I have a hard drive full of rpg pdfs. It's time to actually start reading and stop collecting.

8.) Convince my wife to play a board game that isn't Scrabble.

9.) Expand my dice collection by purchasing a set of Hollowpoint d6s from +Abraham Neddermann

10.) Convince +Abraham Neddermann to finally get a 7th Sea set of d10s created. :-)

Real Geomorphs: Marble Cave MO and Wind Cave, SD

2012-01-08T15:07:00.000-07:00

Two geomorphs for you today, both of them a bit unusual in my opinion.

The first is that of Wind Cave from western South Dakota. This one is unusual and that there are over 135 miles of mapped and explored caves in the system, making it one of the longest in the world. It sits beneath the largest natural grass prairie in the United States.

The second is Marble Cave, located in Missouri. This one is unique because these drawings were done in the late 1800s and there's a book about the cave available via the Gutenberg project.

Longitudinal and Cross-Sections of Passages in Marble Cave, Stone Co., Missouri. Plotted by Fred Prince, 1894.

Geomorph done in 1894 by Fred Prince

The Surveyed Portions of Marble Cave, Stone County, Missouri. Surveyed and Plotted by Fred Prince, 1894. Scale of 100 feet.

I think this next map is particularly evocative simply because it shows the massive amount of space in the Wind Cave system in South Dakota.

This one isn't so evocative but is perhaps more useful as a regular survey/map of the Wind Cave system in South Dakota.

The Flying Pony floor plans

2012-01-06T10:00:00.000-07:00

Way back in November I wrote a post called Tales From the Inn. It was based on three separate random lists that were relating to an inn. I posted three elements to G+ and got some great feedback as to what might be happening.

I then asked Matt Jackson of Lapsus Calumni to draw me up a floor plan since he was doing a series of maps in his new moleskine. This is the fantastic result.

Matt posts a new map nearly every day, sometimes twice a day and they're all great. If you're ever needing a random map for your campaign I suggest stopping by his place and checking his work out.

Ta Prohm, Cambodia and Copan, Honduras: Perfect Megadungeons

2012-01-05T22:22:00.000-07:00

I've often talked (preached?) about how much inspiration I get from simply looking at existing things in the world and then twisting them to my own purposes. There is such a huge amount of variety in architecture, religion, ceremonies, art, etc. throughout the history of the world that the well of inspiration should never run dry.

As such I present the temple of Ta Prohm at Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is one of the most famous architectural wonders in the world. It sees some 5,000 visitors per day, which is hardly surprising given the incredible buildings and temples that are there.

Ta Prohm was built in the late 1100s and early 1200s, and has stood since then, though if you search the Google images for the temple you can see the vines and forest creeping and overtaking the temple.

The temple of Ta Prohm is one of these. My guess is that almost everybody has seen this photo, or one like it, even if they don't know where it's from.

Check out redswept's Ta Prohm gallery for some more great pictures.

How could you not see that image and not be immediately inspired? The mystery of what might lie within those doors pulls at me and I want to find out.

Heading to the other side of the world I give you the artistic aesthetics of the Maya. Every time I look at them I think to myself how perfect they would be for any kind of game with horror themes, or any kind of weird fantasy type of campaign.

There's an incredible temple in Honduras that was built by the Maya around 500 A.D. At it's peak there were some 20,000 people living there. A couple of things that make this complex unique. The first is that the main temple is actually two temples. There's the temple of the original ruler and his wife. Unlike other cultures which would build a separate temple nearby, or perhaps tear down the stones of the old temple for use in the new one (the Egyptians did that all the time for example), the Maya at Copan built a temple around the original temple. Basically it's a temple inside the temple.

The other incredible feature of this temple is that the steps of the temple are inlaid with glyphs from the bottom to the top. These glyphs tell the history of the rulers. There are some 2200 glyphs and the represent the most complete collection of Mayan text known.

The third thing that makes Copan unique are the literally hundreds of stele scattered throughout that are carved with all sorts of fantastical images.

I find the idea of a temple within a temple to be incredibly cool. I also love the idea that the entire history of the city is carved into the steps of the temple.

The other thing I find fascinating about this place are the weird creatures and faces carved into the stele that are scattered throughout the complex. Some examples:

How can you not be inspired by this kind of thing?

What I want from magic

2012-01-03T09:10:00.000-07:00

Inspired by several lengthy debates on G+.

What I want from magic.

Magic Is Part of Me
In my ideal magic system, magic is an inherent part of the person wielding it. It's an attribute just like Strength, or Intelligence, or Speed. You can increase it by working out, you can learn ways to maximize your inherent abilities, but you're not going to go much beyond what your natural limits are unless you have help. It's part of someone's DNA basically.

Magic performs as part of a set of "natural" laws. The magic user might not know all of those laws, the reader might not know all of them, but they exist.

The first manifestation of the user's magic is almost invariably by accident. Something happens that the magic user can't explain or control. After further training and guidance they are able to learn how to control the maic.

The Wheel of Time, and The Wise Man's fear are both great examples of this.

Behavior isn't important
I don't really care how the magic acts. Flavor isn't important to me, as long as it fits the setting. The strange and mysterious magic of The Lord of the Rings is as exciting to me as the not so mysterious magic of The Wheel of Time.

Magic Has a Cost
Magic is dangerous. It should be treated with respect. Either you can go mad from the wielding of too much magic, or it can burn you out completely (e.g. Wheel of Time). When you've used magic you should be exhausted both mentally and physically. I wouldn't expect someone to run a marathon without needing extensive rest, they shouldn't be able to wield magic without doing the same.

Magic is Rare
Magic users are a rare breed. In my perfect world a person who can use magic is less than 5% of the population and someone who's actually powerful at it is less than 1% of the population. This brings along it's own set of consequences for the magic user.

Magic isn't Boring
I don't particularly care if magic items are rare or not. I do care that they're not boring. They should be useful, and they should have interesting histories. Sting isn't a great blade because it's a +2 sword with a +3 against it's chosen enemy orcs (as well as detection). Sting is interesting because of the history of the blade and how it's used. All magic items should be this way.

Magic Item: The Mask of Manza Sha'et

2012-01-01T15:55:00.000-07:00

Magic Item: The Mask of Manza Sha'et

The sun was setting. It was time to begin the ceremony which must be completed before midnight. Tonight was the winter solstice, the time when the earth was reborn and renewed for another year. All willing tonight would also be the rebirth of his beloved. Carefully picking up the jade mask that had been constructed specially for this night Sha'et put it on, using the leather straps. Raising his arms he began to chant . . .

Manza Sha'et was a sorcerer of the ancient arts. When his wife died he slowly became consumed with the idea that he could bring her back from the dead. It did not work, and he was only able to raise her spirit.

This magic item is in the shape of a delicately crafted jade mask. When used properly it can communicate with the recently deceased (those who have been dead one year or less). To activate, the user puts the mask on and simply murmurs the name of the person with whom they wish to speak. If they do not know the name of the person they can use it by touching a body part from the deceased.

If the wearer isn't a trained necromancer, the mask will fail one out of every four times. Roll a d100 and if the result is a 25 or less it doesn't work.

The dead are not part of this world, so they can not stay long. Roll 1d10 to determine how many minutes you can speak with them. The dead are not concerned with earthly things, so communication can be tough and hard to understand.

As a result the player can choose to sacrifice 10% of their remaining hit points (or 1, whichever is greater, always round up) to extend the time by one minute. Alternatively they can expand the same amount of hit points to seek to gain some understanding of what was said, if the advice given was too cryptic.

Regardless the mask will demand a payment of 10% of a player's hit points. Using magic is difficult. Using death magic is even more difficult and can potentially be deadly.

Sunday Stats, Week 3 (January 1, 2012)

2012-01-01T12:31:00.000-07:00

Brand new year, brand new stats. I skipped last week's stats because I basically had gone a week without writing a post.

Previous Reports
Week 2--December 18, 2011
Week 1--December 11, 2011

General Stuff
The first post on this blog was November 27, 2011 (Creating NPC's with depth). This is post number 19. That's just one every other day, which is at least the pace I'd like to maintain, though I'd like to be more consistent with the updates. As of this post I've had 1055 page views, 264 more than the last update. My all time most popular post continues to be my review and actual play report of Hollowpoint (by a rather significant amount actually).

Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?

The international scope of my visitors log continues to surprise me. The list of the top countries is the same, though there has been a bit of shakeup outside the top two.

United States--659
United Kingdom--62
Australia--59
Uruguay--45
Russia--43
Germany--37
Canada--28
Switzerland--23
France--19
Taiwan--16

This week's visitor log

United States--117
France--14
Taiwan--8
Australia--6
United Kingdom--6
Russia--5
Germany--4
Switzerland--3
Canada--2
Uruguay--2

Last report Japan, France, and Mexico were all new. Now I've got Taiwan added to that list.

There's been a big upset in the stats for the blog--Firefox has now supplanted Chrome as the most used browser (37% to 33%), while Windows remains easily the most popular operating system (70%), with Mac a very distant second (13%).

What Are You Thinking?
fairytale forest wanderers--3 (someone used this search and stayed for 3 blog posts. I think I'll take that as a compliment)
"steven r boyett"--2

hollowpoint actual play--1
urban fantasy book review--1

Real Geomorphs: Voronja Caves

2011-12-31T21:26:00.000-07:00

The Voronja Caves are the deepest caves in the world. Located in the Caucasus mountains it's the only known cave in the world that's deeper than 2000 meters.

The caves are spectacular.

If you need an actual map or geomorph you might as well use one of the actual cave system. If you don't want yours to go down, flip it 180 degrees. Don't want it that long? Add loops and caverns and other exits.

And for those interested a National Geographic feature on the expedition that pushed the known depth of the cave to 2,000 meters.

Game Reviews: Gentleman's Entomology Club

2011-12-30T20:44:00.000-07:00

The Gentleman's Entomology Club is a role playing game written by Michael Sands for 2005's Game Chef competition. The game has this to say about itself:

"The Gentlemen’s Entomology Club is a roleplaying game of wine-drinking, boasting, beetles and some incidental rationalist philosophy. You take the role of an aging eighteenth century entomologist attempting to impress his peers with tales of adventures seeking bizarre insects in far-flung corners of the world. Your objective is to tell the most diverting stories of the evening."

This is one of those games that caught my eye one day. The title was intriguing, the fact that it's free sealed the deal. After downloading and reading it I have to say that I think this could be loads of fun to play if you had the right group.

Concept

The idea behind Gentleman's is that you are a member of an exclusive club somewhere in Western Europe during the Enlightenment. During your younger years you were quite the adventurer, and now you meet with some of your peers to reminisce about the old days while drinking a fine alcoholic beverage and slipping in some observations about the nature of man.

Mechanics

Gentleman's uses plain old d6s as the driving mechanic. There are no character sheets. A deck of cards is provided with the game. This deck will drive the mechanics of the game.

The first step in playing the game is to decide on the nature of the club, the location, the time, and the city. For example the club might meet in a private room of a local private "members only" club, or it might meet in the billiards room of one of it's members.

Character creation simply involves each player determining the age of the player, a few locations he's traveled to, and some insects he may have captured or purchased. As per the conventions of the era, the characters are almost always men.

Game Play

Game play is driven by use of the special deck of cards. The cards are prompts for the stories, containing various insects, modifiers, and themes. Whoever plays the insect card is the Storyteller, while the players who put down the modifier and theme cards play different roles. For example, the cards played might be "butterfly", "farmer", and "Machines can tame Nature".

The Storyteller begins his tale with the statement "I remember the time" and then tells the story about the rare butterfly or crazy adventure he had. The player signifies the end of the story by saying "And that's how I got the "modifier" "insect".

During the storytelling, the Skeptic can add a difficulty "I seem to recall that you ran across a difficulty" At this point the narration stops, the Skeptic introduces the difficulty and they roll a d6 each, with the highest score "winning" and being able to narrate the conclusion of that difficulty.

At some point it's possible that the storyteller may be telling an out and out lie, at which point the Skeptic can say "Sir, that can not be true" and then narrates what really happened, making sure that the details are as embarassing as possible. The narrator can rebut with his version. The person playing the Companion can accept either version, or tell what both are trying to hide.

There's more to the storytelling of it than that, but I can't put it all here or there would be no point in getting the pdf.

Thoughts

--I think that this could be loads of fun if played with the right group.

--This seems very much to me to be more improv than rpg, though in a certain sense you could argue that all improv is role playing

--I think the use of props could greatly increase the fun of this. Top hats, monocles, canes, etc. all add to the spirit of the game.

-- same with the setting of wherever you're playing.

Being a Better GM part 3: NPCs

2011-12-27T01:30:00.000-07:00

Creating effective and interesting non player characters can be a difficult challenge for some people. Here are a few tips and tricks that I've learned over the years.

Motivation
Remember that what drives your player's characters also drives your NPCs. The prime motivators for people are wealth, power, and other people.

--npcs want to be rich too. If the party hears about a dungeon with rooms full of treasure, chances are that there are others who have heard this as well. This could set the scene for a rival adventuring party becoming a major protagonist for the long term.

--power. If it's not money, it's power. Power can come in many ways, depending on your setting. Perhaps it's simply being wealthy and visible with your wealth. That's a fleeting sort of power though, and one that you have to work hard at to keep. There are other kinds of power too. There's power of position--maybe an npc wants the party to help her gain a position of power in an organization and promises favors and friendship. Maybe the party stopped someone from getting the position of power they wanted, and have earned that person's emnity. There's also the power of knowledge, specifically the knowledge of secrets.

--people. NPCs have relationships with other NPCs (shocking isn't it?). My very first post explained a great way for generating a depth of relationships for your NPCs. Now it's time to use those relationships to your advantage. Hatred, love, envy, jealousy, respect, fear, etc. are emotions that everybody feels, whether they're a member of the party or not. Having a protagonist being driven by an emotion instead of a pursuit of wealth or power can be a very effective way of disarming your players and leaving them vulnerable.

Affecting the people that an NPC cares about can be a great way to develop depth in them as well. Threaten a family member and you've got an NPC who's motivated and hard to resist.

Some other motivations for NPCs. A simple misunderstanding between a member of the party and an NPC that might result in lots of conflict. Another method that I really like to use is having antagonists who aren't evil in any way, but who have goals that are opposite of the party.

Additional Thoughts
--Very few people in the world are truly evil straight through. Almost every person likes to think that their actions are justified. Use this to help add depth to your NPC's actions.

--Just like one dimensional player characters are boring so are one dimensional villains.

--duped or enslaved minions can make great contacts for the party.

Description
--As a personal preference when describing NPCs I try to avoid getting too detailed. I try to focus one one thing that will make them memorable, because the players most likely won't remember any of the rest anyway. Whether it's a distinct physical feature (nose broken in a fight and never healed properly), a physical quirk (he shifts his eyes nervously when talking to authority figures), etc. I find that this sort of description is easiest on me as a GM, and generally more effective in helping players remember characters.

Finally, remember that NPCs aren't stuck in time and activated only when the party comes by. They have their own plans and goals and desires. Things happen in the town, plans proceed, people get older, etc. This will probably be worth a post on it's own but it's something to remember about creating NPCs. Figure out what it is that they want and then have them work towards that. Doing so will help provide natural plot elements for your game.

Real Geomorphs: Blue Cave, WV

2011-12-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

What's the saying "The truth is stranger than fiction?" I often find that using real life as gaming inspiration is the most fruitful, because the vast majority of the work is already done. I just have to file of the numbers and repaint it.

In that spirit I present to you some geomorphs for your next adventuring session.

The Organ-Hendricks Cave System is one of the largest in the state of West Virginia. Giant ground sloths, sabre-tooth cats, grizzly bears and all other sorts of bones have been found in the cave to add flair and adventure to the trip.

Here are two different geomorphs of the caves, sourced from the Flickr account of G.S. Springer.

Sunday Sampler, December 18th 2011

2011-12-18T18:30:00.000-07:00

Over on G+ I'll occasionally post pictures or stories or phrases that spark my imagination. Basically anything that I think might make good game fodder for a GM (or alternatively good story fodder for a writer). When I post them to G+ I'll prompt discussion by asking questions about the items. The thing is, I don't post everything I find. In fact, I probably post less than 1/4th of what I find to be interesting (and now with the new work schedule it's even less).

Every Sunday one of the things I'm going to do is use this blog as a place to share those things that I find cool or interesting or weird.

Jewel Encrusted Skeleton

The treasure is there, but you have to defeat the skeleton lord first.

(Found via fustians)

Ghelston, City of Wanderers

I love the idea of a nomadic people who suddenly decide to stop travelling but keep most of the customs, style, housing, etc. of their nomadic past.

(found via lawfulindifferent)

Haunted House

(found via the subreddit "Abandoned Porn")

Shelob's Cousin?
I always thought that Shelob preferred the dark and dank corners of the world. Maybe this is her cousin?

Fairytale Land

Very creepy forest. All the worst fairy tale creatures probably live down that road.

High Fantasy Intrigues

I think this hall is a perfect location for your game that involves high level politics.

Monster from the depths?

I'm especially curious to know what kind of creature left that ooze behind as it slithered into the hole.

Fire Salamander

Sunday Stats, Week 2 (Dec 18, 2011)

2011-12-18T12:03:00.001-07:00

Weekly statistical report for December 18, 2011

Previous Reports
Report 1--December 11, 2011

General Stuff
The first post on this blog was November 27, 2011 (Creating NPC's with depth). This will mark lucky post number 13. That's just over one every other day, which is at least the pace I'd like to maintain. As of this post I've had 711 page views, 194 more than last week. My all time most popular post continues to be my review and actual play of Hollowpoint.

Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?

The international scope of my visitors log continues to surprise me. The list of the top countries is the same, though there has been a bit of shakeup outside the top two.

United States

429

United Kingdom

Australia

Uruguay

Germany

Russia

Canada

Switzerland

Taiwan

Mexico

The week's visitor log

United States

Australia

Germany

Canada

Russia

Switzerland

United Kingdom

Japan

France

Mexico

Japan, France and Mexico are all new on the weekly list compared to last week.

Chrome is still the most popular blog, though it's losing ground to Firefox (38% to 32%). Windows and Mac both increased their dominance on the blog by 1% each (71% and 11% respectively).

What in the world are you thinking?
and the blue sky lit the deep--2
musings from a dungeon--2
"larry correia"--1
musingsfromthedungeon.blogspot.com--1
the captain of the guard--1
the captain of the guard i--1

The same search terms as last time, except for the addition of an extra "musings from the dungeon". I'm expecting that those who are entering that term into their search engine are looking for this blog since it's a rather unusual combination of words.

Book Review: The Urban Fantasy Anthology (edited by Peter Beagle)

2011-12-17T15:47:00.002-07:00

Peter S. Beagle is probably best known for his book The Last Unicorn though I think my favorite novel of his is A Fine and Private Place. His work has a certain quality about it that makes it unique, so when I heard that he had edited a collection of urban fantasy short stories I was definitely intrigued by the notion.

The title of the collection is The Urban Fantasy Anthology, and is divided into three sections covering three broad sub-genres of urban fantasy.

There's the kind of urban fantasy that Peter Beagle wrote in A Fine and Private Place. Charles de Lint writes the same kind of thing as does Emma Bull, Terri Windling and many others. I've called this kind of urban fantasy "contemporary fantasy" because it might not be urban and it probably doesn't feature things like werewolves or vampires.

Then there's the paranormal urban fantasy. To paint in broad strokes this kind of fantasy is at least nominally noir in style and centers around a mystery that needs to be solved. Most of the heroes are women, with a few notable exceptions (chief among them Harry Dresden). They also tend to run towards long series.

Finally we have a category that's a bit harder to define and explain, but which I like to refer to as the New Weird (though I know that there are others who dislike that term). Authors like Chuck Wendig and Joe Landsdale write in this category. Tim Powers might be classified as New Weird, because his novels aren't "urban fantasy" in the sense that's been made popular, but they aren't really the same style as de Lint or Beagle either.

In this collection Beagle has stories from each of these types of fantasy. Since it's Beagle I tend to expect both a certain type of fantasy as well as a certain quality. The first expectation was shattered. The second wasn't.

The book is laid out by sub-genre, with an essay before each section and an overall introduction by Beagle. The introduction gives a brief history of the genre, and does a decent job of it. Charles de Lint provides an introduction for the contemporary fantasy section (which he calls 'mythic fiction'). Paula Guran writes an introduction to the paranormal fantasy section and Joe Landsdale writes an introduction to the "New Weird" section.

I was mostly disappointed in the introductions. I like de Lint's best of all because he actually gives some history of the sub-genre. In my opinion if you're going to be writing an introduction to a section in a short-story collection you should at least provide some sort of connection to the short stories in the collection. If you can't do that an interesting or new take on the genre would be great. By far the weakest portions of the book were the introductions.

Of the three sections I thought that the Paranormal section was the strongest. Some of the other sections had better stories, but I don't think there was a story in the paranormal section that I didn't like.

My notes are a bit jumbled from my reading but I did want to highlight some of the best stories from each section.

Mythic Fiction

Bird That Whistles--Emma Bull
What can keep a fey creature tied to one location except for excellently played music?

Make a Joyful Noise--Charles de Lint
Great little short story based on Native American mythology and centered around two raven sisters in the big city who try their hand at doing a good deed with their trickery.

Goldfish Pond and Other Stories--Neil Gaiman
A screenwriter goes to Hollywood to work on his script and learns about the history of the town.

Paranormal Fiction

Seeing Eye--Patricia Briggs
A blind witch needs to help a policeman find his werewolf brother.

Companions to the Moon--Charles de Lint
A woman thinks her husband is cheating on her and finds that it's not quite what she thought it was.

Hit--Bruce McAllister
A hit man is given a job by an angel (and by that he means a real live honest to God angel).

New Weird
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown--Holly Black
Some people try to get into Coldtown to become vampires. Some try to get out.

Talking Back to the Moon--Steven R. Boyett
In a post-apocalyptic landscape two odd companions wander.

The Bible Repairman--Tim Powers
He doesn't do that kind of job anymore, but he has extra incentive this time.

Overall I'd rate the book at 4 out of 5 stars. There are some big names in the urban fantasy field who have contributed stories, and almost all of them are worth reading.

Magic Item: Skod's Shield

2011-12-14T13:21:00.000-07:00

One of the things that's always bugged me about fantasy games is the prevalence of magic and magic items. Magic should be rare and exciting. Picking up a +2 sword at the magic shop is boring. Finding a sword with a long history and a name is exciting.

I love the show Warehouse 13 for this reason. Yeah it's all about chasing down cool magic items, but the show never says "Look, there's this thing that turns people into zombies, go and get it." Rather they say "There's the artifact that's a mason jar recovered from the site of the infamous Donner party. It was used to store valuables through the winter. Now this taco wagon is using it as a tip jar and everybody who puts money in it gets turned into a zombie and will eventually freeze to death."

In other words there's a reason for the item to have unusual powers because of the history of the object. As such I give you a new magic object, Skod's Shield.

This was an interesting project for me to do. I started thinking about the history of this object and then found that trying to figure out what the powers would be was far more difficult than I thought it would be. It's easier to come up with the powers and then do the history, but I like doing it the other way around.

Oh, and I have to say that there were several conversations on Google Plus that were invaluable (as well as interesting) in helping me out with this

Skod winced as another sword slammed into his shield, sending shards of pain up his broken arm. He couldn't remember when the arm had been broken, it may have been when he braced himself against that last horse charge, but now it hurt like the fires of hell every time a blow landed on the shield. Glancing around he felt despair. 'There are too few of us to hold them off longer' he thought. 'We have to get the prince away!'

At that moment the object of his thoughts picked up a spear and threw it at the approaching hordes. 'What a king this one could've been' Skod thought with a smile. 'Only 11 and fighting alongside the shield wall like a man'.

There were only 6 of them left now, out of the 27 that had set out to bring the prince to the summer castle. Then they'd been attacked by the men of the prince's uncle who had sworn vengeance on the royal family after being exiled for cowardice on the battle field.

'Should've just cut the bastard's head off' muttered Skod to himself. 'Then we wouldn't have this problem'. The bastard's men had attacked them on the road mere hours after the group had set out. The bastard kept getting reinforcements from somewhere, because Skod knew for a fact that his men had sold their lives dearly.

"Fall back!" he roared. "Protect the prince and fall back!"

The group took another 6 or 7 paces back, setting up a defensive position in front of the bridge. Skod took a deep breath and then made the decision that he knew had to be made. Grabbing his second in command, Ulric, he whispered in his ear. Ulric paused, looked Skod in the eye and then nodded briefly. That was all that needed to be said.

"Come and get me you sons of whores! Today is a good day for me to die. Is it a good day for you to die!?!"

Behind him he could hear the rest of the men grabbing Prince Eric and bodily carrying him away, despite Eric's screams and demands to be put down.

"What's the matter you cowards!?!" he bellowed again. "Are you afraid to meet me in the field of battle?"

Skold smiled contentedly ss the remainder of Leifr's men charged towards him.

Three days later a large party bearing the prince's sign of the One Tree set out from his mother's summer castle. Coming to the bridge where Skod had made his last defense they stopped and stood in awe. Skod was dead of many wounds, but he was surrounded by at least 20 dead men, and there were signs that another 10 men had been drug away. In one hand he held a shattered with blood on the jagged end and in the other was his shield.

Skod's Shield
Skod's shield is named after the legendary fighter who sacrificed his life to save that of his prince. It's a simple shield, round with an iron cross bar and a metal dome in the middle. On the outside of the shield there is a large red stain that can not be removed, no matter how much cleaning is done. One of the metal cross bars is chipped away. There are splinters from the wood of the shield and chips around the edge.

Benefits
Constant power: When in use the shield grants an automatic 20% bonus to all defensive abilities (convert appropriate numbers to the system you're using)

Minor power: When the bearer is down to 50% or less of their hit points, the shield will soak 1/3rd of the damage rolls of any successful attack.

Major power: Once per session the player may declare that a Shield Wall is now in affect. When that happens all of members of his party get a 20% bonus to their defense for 4 rounds. However, choosing to activate this power will stop the minor power. The Shield Wall is an act of great sacrifice and should feel like it.

Review: Effin Fairies

2011-12-13T09:28:00.000-07:00

This will be a somewhat regular feature of this blog. At least once a week I'll be doing a review of something. It might be a tv show, movie, book, gaming supplement, core book or something else. This time it's gaming material.

Title: Gangworld: Effin Faires
System: d20 Generic
Author: Uri Kurlianchik
Publisher: Postmortem Studios
Format: pdf
Length: 5 pages
Corebook/Supplement: Supplement
Price: $.99 (Disclaimer: I received my copy for promotional purposes. Plus I consider Uri a friend so this review may not be the most un-biased review out there)
Where to get it: At DriveThruRPG

Premise: When it comes to supplements they're almost always just pure fluff. However there's the good kind of fluff which is interesting, brings a new idea to the table, is entertaining, etc. Then there's bad fluff which is none of those things. Effin' Fairies is the good kind of fluff.

The premise be hind the supplement is that there is a criminal organization made up of fey. Most fantasy settings will have the fey remain mostly aloof or cause mischief just for the thrill of it. These fey cause mischief but they do it for the loot. Originally calling themselves by the more prosaic term "Weather Solutions" they offered their services to people in the area as a type of insurance. It quickly went from real insurance to mobster insurance, i.e. pay us the money or something bad will happen to you.

I love the concept. It's one of those concepts that on reflection should have been absolutely obvious but isn't it. That's either genius on Uri's part or stupidity on mine--I'll leave the reader to decide.

Layout:
Generally the book is laid out very well. The cover has some artwork which I didn't care for, but that's my personal taste (the fairy reminded me of an anime character, not a wild fey). Then there's a history of the organization from it's founding to the current status (the leader in jail where he continues to run the operation). There's a brief section on some of the activities they do now, followed by another section on the organization of the group. This is a great little detail that I love, having 12 under-bosses of the fairies named after each of the months and responsible for a certain type of racket.

Following this there's a random chart (roll a d10) for adventure seeds. Some examples:

3.) Gangsters and officials are routinely found gnawed to death. Investigation reveals that March has awakened rats to serve as assassins and unleashed them upon the enemies of the Fairies. Even if March is killed, the rats, now sentient and malicious, will continue to kill, possibly even starting their own gang.

10) A discussion on classic Seelie poetry leads to a rift between Winter and Summer. Before this escalates into fighting, and the inevitable insane weather that will accompany it, the Seasons ask the PCs to serve as neutral mediators. This task is not easy, since fairies on both sides have completely skewed sets of priorities and very alien morality.

There's a new fey called The Winter Fey with some pretty cool powers, one of them being the ability to inflict the common cold on anybody. There are some great special abilities too. There's also a Summer Fey that has the ability to cause dehydration with a touch, along with some other major powers.

Dislikes:
Not much. I didn't care for the artwork. Based on the description of the fey the artwork didn't fit the image. I didn't care for the stats of the fey either--they seemed underpowered. Had I seen the stats without a description I would've been bored and not wanted to read more.

Should You Buy It?
Yes, especially at only $.99. That's less than a pack of gum or a soda.

Sunday Stats week 1

2011-12-11T13:30:00.055-07:00

This post is both lazy and narcissistic.

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

My first post on this blog was November 27, 2011. This post will make 9 since then, which averages out to just over 1 every other day, a pretty good rate if I do say so myself. As of this writing, I've had 517 pageviews, with my most viewed post being my review of Hollowpoint. Apparently I'm an international superstar, or so my audience visits seem to indicate.

The big surprises on this list for me are Urugay and Taiwan. Russia is somewhat of a surprise as well.

United States

321

United Kingdom

Uruguay

Australia

Russia

Canada

Germany

Switzerland

Taiwan

Mexico

The visitor's log for this past week is quite different.

United States

Uruguay

Russia

Australia

Germany

United Kingdom

Taiwan

Canada

South Africa

Switzerland

It appears that whomever it was that visited from Uruguay found the blog this week and then stuck around. I'm at a loss to explain South Africa and Switzerland,

Chrome is the most popular browser with a 40% market share, followed by Firefox with 30%. The least popular browser being used is RockMelt, with 1 page view.

Windows is by far the most popular operating system with 70% of the market share. Surprisingly Macintosh is next at 10%, but Android is hot on it's heels with 9%. The least popular operating system viewing this site is the iPad, with 1 view.

What in the world are you thinking?

I haven't been around long enough to generate much in the way of search terms, but these are the ones that have landed viewers on the blog.

and the blue sky lit the deep--poetic, but I don't recall ever using the phrase in any post
"larry correia"--I find it odd that someone would stop here after searching for Larry Correia since my only mention of him is in my Hollowpoint review
musingsfromthedungeon.blogspot.com--If you know the name of the blog and search for it directly why not just enter directly in?
the captain of the guard--I hope whomever was looking for the captain of the guard managed to find him. I'm surprised the search landed here, as it's a pretty generic search (though the post in which I used the phrase wasn't generic at all).
the captain of the guard i--maybe it was a corporal looking for a promotion?

A Curse Upon Thee Plotius

2011-12-11T03:13:00.000-07:00

I think poor Plotius may end up being an NPC in any fantasy themed campaign that I run. In ancient Rome it was common practice for people to write or scratch out curses on tablets and then bury those same tablets in graves. The tablets would have an iron nail or pin driven through them because “The Latin name for a curse is defixio which means ‘to pin down.’” This particular tablet is extremely detailed and quite eloquent in the owner's hatred of Plotius and what needs to be done to Plotius (including the cursing of his "sacred organs").

Good and beautiful Proserpina, wife of Pluto, or Salvia, if you prefer that I call you so, snatch away the health, the body, the complexion, the strength, and the faculties of Plotius.

Hand him over to Pluto, your husband. May he not be able to escape this (curse) by his wits. Hand him over to fevers—quartan, tertian, and daily—so that they wrestle and struggle with him.
Let them overcome him to the point where they snatch away his soul.

Thus I give over to you this victim, O Proserpina or Acherusia if you prefer that I call you so.
Summon for me the triple headed hound to snatch away the heart of Plotius. Promise that you will give him three victims (gifts)—dates, figs, and a black pig—if he completes this before the month of March. These I will offer you, Proserpina Salvia, when you complete this in an orderly fashion.

I give over to you the head of Plotius, the slave/son of Avonia. Proserpina Salvia, I give over to you the head of Plotius. Proserpina Salvia, I give over to you the forehead of Plotius. Proserpina Salvia, I give over to you the eyebrows of Plotius.

Proserpina Salvia, I give over to you the eyelids of Plotius. Proserpina Salvia, I give over to you the pupils of Plotius.

Proserpina Salvia, I give over to you the nostrils, lips, ears, nose, tongue, and teeth of Plotius, so that he may not be able to say what is causing him pain; the neck, shoulders, arms, and fingers, so that he may not be able to aid himself in any way; his breast, liver, heart,and lungs, so that he may not be able to discover the source of his pain; his intestines, stomach, navel, and sides, so that he may not be able to sleep; his shoulder blades, so that he may not be able to sleep soundly; his “sacred organ” so that he may not be able to urinate; his rump, anus, thighs, knees, shanks, shins, feet, ankles, heels, toes, and toenails, so that he may not be able to stand by his own strength.

No matter what he may have written, great or small, just as he has written a proper spell and commissioned it (against me), so I hand over and consign Plotius to you, so that you may take care of him by the month of February. Let him perish miserably. Let him leave life miserably. Let him be destroyed miserably.

Take care of him so that he may not see another month.

That's some serious hatred going on. The article explaining this custom is fascinating, and I highly recommend that you read it for the rest of the details.

There are several things I love about this practice for a fantasy themed game. First the idea of casting the curse into the grave so that the dead can carry the message to the gods. What if the dead were to rise from their graves to carry out the curse? That could be all sorts of interesting.

I love the idea of the triple headed hound and that the hound can leave his guarding of the river Styx to attack a living person. The person casting the curse promises a specific offering of "dates, figs, and a black pig". These all seem a little light for what's being asked, but maybe a black pig was hard to come by.

I also love that this is a curse offered to counter an original curse. How did the owner of this curse learn of Plotius' curse? Did Plotius' enemy escape the curse? Defeat it? Lose to it, but because it wasn't a powerful curse he's still around?

What are the costs and benefits of offering a counter-curse? What if Plotius offers a more detailed curse, with a higher offering to the same gods? What if it's to a different god?

The biggest question of all, is what started this whole thing. What was it that made Plotius desire to curse the unknown owner of this tablet? Why did this person hate Plotius so much? Great stuff.

Being a Better GM part 2: Feeling and Thinking

2011-12-08T22:25:00.000-07:00

The titles are a bit cutesy but they fit with the theme I've got going on here (and besides, one of my son's favorite books is Bug House, Snug House). The next two parts of coming up with plots for your game are what I like to call Feeling and Thinking. More accurately it would be connections and re-thinking. Let me explain.

Feeling
This one is really about the connections between your NPCs and your PCs, as well as connections between the various NPCs and factions thereof. Most games seem to leave this completely in the imagination of the GM, but there are a handful of games that handle this very well. Spirit of the Century is one that handles connections between players and villains extremely well. These are set up during character creation, which is built into the campaign as a complete session. Another game that does this well is Dresden Files, which sets up factions in the city vying for power and running their own agendas. In my opinion the game that does this best is Technoir, which is a cyberpunk game. Technoir uses a relationship chart that the GM rolls on to set up the beginning of the plot. This relationship chart includes factions, events, things, and people (rather reminiscent of Fiasco). To get started the GM can roll on the chart and pick a couple of relationships (maybe the relationship is between a gun and a powerful NPC.) During character creation the players form relationships with NPCs as they ask them for favors or borrow money.

When you know this information, generating plots is easy. In my Technoir example, if we know that a powerful NPC has a connection with a gun we just have to figure out what that connection is and go from there. Maybe the gun was used in a crime that the NPC wants covered up and the plot revolves around the party solving it. To flip it around, maybe the NPC plans on using the gun to kill someone and the party is hired as protection detail.

Then there's my very first blog entry which describes a way of setting up relationships using a deck of cards.

Thinking
This one is really re-thinking. It's taking something that you see and asking questions about it. The item could be a piece of art or a photo or something that grabs your attention on the street. My favorite things to use are photos and historical events. Some examples:

Take this image. It's all sorts of evocative. The trick is to start asking questions about it. Where is this tunnel at? Is it in a building or some sort of underground complex? What was in that building or complex? What's behind the doors? Is the photo from the point of view of the jailer (assuming the doors are cell doors), or the party? Why is the party in this tunnel?

For this example I'd say that the most important questions are 1.) What was/is in the building. 2.) What or who is behind the doors? Once you know the answers to those two questions the plot reveals itself. Of course the type of game you're running is really important in answering the questions. Let's say I'm running a Hunter: The Vigil game. Immediately that tells me that the focus of any session is going to be investigation and monster hunting, which right away tells me that what's behind the doors is some sort of monster. I'm going to say that the party has stumbled upon an underground lab/prison where humans are being genetically tested to create monsters. Real monsters are being kept next to the humans so that the owners of the complex can test their results. The complex is going to be in an industrial city (I like the idea of playing it in industrial Detroit), underneath an abandoned car factory. Now you have the basics of the plot.

The other part of re-thinking is to pay attention to weird news stories (or even not-so-weird ones) and adapt them to your game. This is a news story that I stumbled across some time back but haven't had a chance to use yet:

The Hum

"Residents of Woodland, in County Durham, claim that every night a noise permeates the air similar to the throb of a car engine.

It is sometimes so strong that it even shakes the bed of one of the householders.

But no matter how hard they look, the community cannot find the source of the problem and, at their wits end, have called in the council to investigate."

I don't think I need to lay out the many ways to turn this into a plot do I?

Being a Better GM part 1: Stealing and Skinning

2011-12-07T12:51:00.001-07:00

One of the things I hear a great deal when I ask people to GM is "I don't have any good ideas for a campaign/session." My response to them always comes in two parts. First I tell them that plot ideas for gaming sessions don't have to be good, just fun. Secondly I give them some advice on how I come up with plot ideas. My advice might not work for everybody, but I figure I'd pass it along anyway (because really, this blog is about me, right?).

The things I do to come up with plot ideas generally fall into four broad categories. Steal it, Skin it, Feel It, Think it.

Steal It:
This is as basic as it sounds. Simply steal an idea from an existing story and use it in your own game. TV shows make excellent fodder for plots because of the serialized nature of them. Books can work great, though the larger overarching plots of most of them don't tend to work quite as well for new GMs. I find short-story collections work great for this kind of thing. Here are some examples of what I mean.

My first GM experience ever was with D&D 3.5. My gaming group had decided that it was time for me to spread my wings and run a game. I was slightly nervous. I had a week to prepare and spent a lot of time thinking about what I was going to do, coming up with scenarios and then rejecting them. Finally inspiration struck and I turned to my bookshelves, looking for tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Fritz Leiber's duo are a classic sword & sorcery combo, so their adventures work well. I pulled out Swords Against Deviltry, the second of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser books and used the short story "The Howling Tower". The climax of this story concludes in a wizard's tower where Fafhrd had been driven to escape the elements. He meets an odd character and even odder building, but there's a jewel that's heavy enough to make Fafhrd have trouble hanging on to it.

To quote from the story itself:

The tower. The tower! It was falling. It was falling toward him. It was dipping at him over the dome. But there were no fractures along its length. It was not breaking. It was not falling. It was bending. Fafhrd's hand jerked back, clutching the great, strangely faceted jewel, so heavy that he had difficulty in keeping his hold upon it.

If you haven't read the adventures of Fafhrd and the Mouser yet, you really need to. You'll find lots of inspiration for any fantasy themed campaign you're running, especially if your campaign is of the dungeon crawl or sword & sorcery type. (I actually think that the characters in the great 80s film Ladyhawke were modeled on Fafhrd and the Mouser, with Matthew Broderick's character even being called Mouse.)

I threw in a couple of encounters before the tower, but the tower was the main focus as the players had to figure out how to avoid getting crushed by the tower while still managing to get away with the loot.

Skin It:
Technically this should be "reskin", but I like the way Skin It rolls off the tongue better. What do I mean by this? Take a story from another genre and make it work in your campaign and genre. TV and movies do this all the time. The Magnificent Seven took the plot of The Seven Samurai and didn't even bothering changing it, simply transplanting it into the Old West. Let's say I wanted to take a Firefly episode and recast it for Shadowrun. One of my favorite episodes is The Train Job. Mal and the crew are hired to steal some Federation supplies for a ruthless crime lord, only the discover that the supplies are actually medicine for a dying town. In the show they given the towns people the medicine and then deal with the consequences.

For a Shadowrun game you could keep some of the elements and discard some of the others. Here's how I'd do it. I'd keep the crime lord, since that is how characters in Shadowrun get jobs. I'd even keep the medicine, but I'd switch it up to high-tech nanobots. Instead of a mining town that's dying, let's make it an orphanage or a hospital. What happened is that the inhabitants of this orphanage/hospital (maybe it's both) were subjected to some illegal testing by one of the pharmaceutical giants. This company was testing for a few things, one of them being a pathogen that only targets magic users. They kind of succeeded, only the pathogen actually infects anyone who is not fully human. This includes all the demi-humans, magic users, and modified humans. In other words 90% of the world. If the anti-dote isn't delivered in time the virus will spread, wiping out vast amounts of the population.

The crime lord wants the anti-dote so he can hold it for ransom. This is a great scenario because it sets up lots of follow-up episodes. Does the party deliver the anti-dote to the crime lord? Then perhaps they're now targeted by the pharmaceutical company. Do they deliver it and then realize what happened? Now they can perhaps go in and try to steal the anti-dote back. Do they not deliver it to the crime lord? Well now they have an enemy.

This one plot is good for a whole bunch more plots, as well as developing connections that could be used even more down the road.

Hollowpoint: Review & Actual Play report

2011-12-04T14:44:00.003-07:00

One of the great benefits of G+ is the connection with so many different gamers from all over the world. This allows you to both play and run all sorts of different games using the Hangout feature. The Hangout feature lacks a bit of the interaction you get from face-to-face gaming but the advantages are numerous. There are games going on at all hours of the day or night, in a huge variety of systems. It also allows people to run games that they might not otherwise be able to run.

This brings me to the point of today's post. I picked up a copy of Hollowpoint some time ago and have been able to run it and play in it several times. My face-to-face group would not be interested in such a game, but the power of the internets allows me to run a game for people from all over the world. Last night I ran a session set in the world of Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International series.

Hollowpoint is a cinematic, action game published by VSCA publishing and created by Brad Murray and C.W. Marshall. The idea of the game is that you are a team of highly dedicated, highly skilled, and unscrupulous agents of The Organization. What the organization is doesn't matter--no requirements are given in the book, other than that there should be a mission statement (that may or may not have anything to do with the name of the organization) and an Enemy. The team is given the mission briefing and given a Primary and a Secondary objective.

Character generation is easy, taking about 5 minutes yet still giving detailed characters. Your character has 6 skills and 5 "traits". The traits can be "burned" during combat to allow extra dice to be added to the player's pool of dice. Both the skills and traits are easily adjustable, depending on the type of game you wanted to run.

Traits
The traits by question method given in the book starts out with these five questions. I modified them slightly to fit the world of the game.

1. You wear a black suit over a clean white shirt and a skinny black tie. No hat and well groomed. Nothing to make you stand out, except “this”.
1a. The MHI uniform is black fatigues, black t-shirt and black combat jacket. You have "this" as a memento of your first monster encounter. What is it?

2. You don’t have a lot of scruples, but you would “never do this”.
3. That one time in Utah you took a souvenir; it was “this”.
4. This is a hard job, but you love it because “you get to do this”.
5. You’re a pro and you know you’re a pro because you always “do this”.

Skills
Determining your character's skills is even easier. There are 6 of them. They are:

• KILL — killing people by shooting them, stabbing them, or driving them over with a tank.
• TAKE — stealing things that do not belong to you.
• TERROR — causing terror and making people afraid of you by acting very badly indeed.
• CON — tricking people into giving you what you want.
• DIG — finding out things that others do not want you to know, or otherwise investigating or getting information.
• COOL — being just that awesome. This is what you roll to lead a team, to smile in the face of danger, or disarm a bomb on pure instinct and grit.

These are also customizable depending on the genre you're playing. Are you playing in an urban fantasy game and you're a team of wizards? Perhaps you replace CON with Magic. Skills are rated from 5 to 0, with 5 being your best skill.

That's it. You're done with character creation. Now it's on to the action.

In my game last night the Primary Objective of the mission was to retrieve or destroy "The Nameless Book", an ancient tome that opens the doors to eldritch horrors and which was stolen from Monster Hunter International's vaults a couple of weeks ago. The Secondary Objective was to neutralize Jim Brown, aka "The Scorpion", a former MHI agent who had gone freelance and who was suspected of taking the book.

The characters were Lucinda Mach, Nathan Ellis, Grant Stone, and Joe Black. After doing some cursory hacking the team discovered that Jim Brown had received two payments in the last week, one of $200,000 and the second of $300,000. One payment was made about 3 days before the book was stolen, the second was made about 3 days after the book went missing. The payments were made from the account of one Hyrum Williams, the pastor of a church called "The Church of the Golden Cross", which had it's business address listed in a small town in upstate New York.

The team headed up to New York to do some further investigating and kicking of asses. They spend two days gathering information, including a memorable scene between the married secretary of the church's lawyer and Grant Stone, and another memorable scene between Lucinda Mach, and Lucille (Lucy) Stone the daughter of one of the members of the congregation. Lucinda was invited to the Wednesday night Bible Study, and agreed to come with her "husband" Grant Stone.

The Bible Study started off weirdly as they congregation filed into the chapel, and then separated, men on one side and women on the other. When the pastor stood up to talk things got even weirder. The pastor was a huge man, 6'4 or 6'5 and weighing well over 300 lbs. Red headed he had a beard that would do a mountain man proud. As he started to preach in a deep, raspy voice, a cross came up from the floor and started to glow. The preacher's eyes started to turn green, which freaked out Grant and Lucinda, who were the only ones in the church.

Grant turned to the man next to him and asked if this was normal and saw glowing green eyes, at which point he snapped the man's neck. Lucinda stood up speaking gibberish, but really calling for help from the backup in the van. As they did this the pastor turned and glared at her and in a deep voice declaimed "There are impostors among us!", at which point things got really hairy. After some truly epic violence, which included a fantastic scene involving the team van crashing through the side of the church and running over the cultists, the team managed to take both the golden cross and the book. As they were recovering from their wounds (all of them but Joe had been seriously hurt during the fight), the team heard the screeching of tires, and then a rocket propelled grenade came crashing through the stained glass window. Luckily it went completely through the church missing them all.

The team dashed out to take on this new conflict.

The last scene of the session ended with Lucinda Mach driving the van while being pursued by three black SUV's full of hired mercenaries. Joe Grant opened up the back doors of the van and filled the first SUV's engine full of lead, causing it to flip and go off the road. The passenger in the second SUV put two bullets into him, one in his left shoulder and the other square into his torso, knocking Joe back into the van. Grant Stone was busily making explosive devices out of C4. The first one he threw hit the second SUV's windshield and got stuck between the windshield and the hood. When it blew it shattered the window and caused the hood to crumple. The second explosve landed with deadly accuracy in the driver's lap. When it went off that was that for the occupants of the SUV and the vehicle.

After that explosion Lucinda Mach spun the van around so it was going in reverse. John fired several shots at the passenger of the last SUV who was trying to line up another shot with his RPG launcher. This caused him to dodge, then Lucinda Mach threw the car into drive, causing the gears to grind horribly and smoke to come from the engine. She drove at ramming speed, and just before hitting the last SUV she slammed on the breaks. The glowing cross came hurtling forward, smashing through the windows of the van as well as the windows of the last SUV. When it impacted the last SUV the bars of the cross snapped the necks of the passenger and driver causing the vehicle to flip and explode in a ball of flame.

The last thing that Lucinda saw before the van exploded was a tattoo of a scorpion on the rocket shooting passenger's neck, which positively identified him as the object of their secondary mission.

The scene faded to black with Lucinda Mach dealing with a wrenching shoulder injury from a possessed cultist, Joe Grant wounded (perhaps dead), on the floor of the van, and Grant suffering from a serious stomach wound. Nathan Ellis was no longer with the party.

As a player I love the simplicity of the set up and the fact that I can be hyper competent and completely bad ass. As a GM I love being able to set up conflicts for my players and as they succeed I end up with more dice in my pool to use later.

The biggest difficulty I have as a GM is getting the players to realize that the preliminary stuff really isn't important in the game. Last night's group spent an hour doing investigatory stuff, with each character doing their own thing. I think it's hard for players to get out of the mindset of needing to do all that preliminary work to avoid having it come around and bite them later on. That was probably my fault as a GM for not making it clearer, though I'm not sure what I could've done differently.

Street Art or Urban Monster?

2011-11-30T16:11:00.001-07:00

So is this a piece of creative street art or an urban monster?

Alan Garner has put together a collection of old folk tales, title appropriately enough Collected Folk Tales. Yesterday on G+ we had a great discussion about what kind of world it might be where such a creature existed. Then I started to read Alan Garner's book (which I'd picked up because of fond memories of Weirdstone of Brisingamen). The first story in the collection was this one.

Gobbleknoll

There was a hill that ate people. The Rabbit's grandmother told him never to go near it. So the Rabbit went to the hill, and shouted, "Gobbleknoll, swallow me! Come, devour me!"

But Gobbleknoll knew the Rabbit and took no notice.

Later that day, a group of travellers came by, looking for a place to shelter from the rain, and Gobbleknoll opened his green and ferny lips, and the travellers thought that they had found a cave. They went in, and the Rabbit slipped close behind them. But the hill felt hairy pads on his tunnels, and before the Rabbit could reach the middle, Gobbleknoll threw him out, and the grass shut.

The Rabbit went and hid behind a tree, and a few days later a hunting party arrived at the hill just before night, and Gobbleknoll opened again. This time the Rabbit used magic art, and took the shape of a man except for his ears, which he tucked down his shirt, so that they would not brush against the roof and make Gobbleknoll sneeze.

He went down long and horrid passages, until he came to the hill's stomach, and there were the remains of all the victims, and some who were not yet dead.

"Hey hey hey!" shouted the Rabbit. "Why don't you eat? You leave the best! Here's a delicious heart. What's wrong with that?"

Gobbleknoll set up a dismal howling, for it was his own heart that the Rabbit had seen. And the Rabbit knew this, and took out a knife, and stabbed the hill dead. The ground split, and the blue sky lit the deep hollows, and the living came out and wept before the Rabbit, and wanted to give him power and ricxhes. But all the Rabbit would take was Gobbleknoll's fat, and he went home with it on his back, and he and his grandmother were fit to burst from it for many days.

Buy the book here.

Tales from the Inn

2011-11-29T19:00:00.000-07:00

The last blog post was all about randomizing your adventure by creating lists of objects. In the post I went and created a bunch of lists that were related to each other. In this case it was items that you might see in that standard of fantasy gaming, the inn. I then took out a d10, rolled on each list to get a handful of elements and posted the element list to my stream on G+ to see what people would come up with.

I love this kind of brainstorming because the adventure hooks/writing exercises that I end up with are all different and cool.

The Elements:
Name: The Flying Pony
Occupants: A bard and the Captain of the Guard (I decided to roll twice to have a few more elements)
Innkeeper Description: Tall and skinny with a long scar down his face
Notable Items: In the corner are two large bookcases full of books
Secret: You know that the innkeeper is the leader of a gang that kidnaps people and holds them for ransom.
Special of the day: No special, but the pie is half off

Along with the elements I came up with a handful of questions that needed to be answered. Why is the inn named The Flying Pony? What is the Captain doing there? Is he part of the gang, or is he there to investigate/arrest the innkeeper? How did the inn keeper get his scar? Why does he have two large bookshelves? Does his gang have a name? How many people are in it? Who are their primary kidnapping targets?

The Creative Geniuses

Laston Kirkland:

the flying pony? why It got it's name back when Johanson was doing all tha' alchemestery stuff.. well, seems he was collectin' tha' white stuff you find at the bottom of old manure, an' mixin' it with charcoal and brimstone, and makin' bags of powder.

well he had three big sacks of powder stored on tha' cart, and some damned fool dropped a candle... well we all ran fer it... but Shem the Pony was still hooked up to tha' cart,

The bags all made a trurrible racket when they went up... and pushed that cart straight down... well, seeing as Shem was hooked up to tha' other end in front of the wheels... well, he went straight up...

Landed on tha' roof of this here building, not a hair harmed on him... Took us a hell of a time gettin' him down...

B'for that, the place was called the dancing cups... but, tha's another story.

My response: Why was the place called The Dancing Cups?

Well you see The Captain over there knows we got some side business going on... Doin’ a little trade on things the Captain would rather we din’t... So he thinks he can slow us up by parking his fat on top o’ tha’ stool by the fire, and watchin’ us like an owl watches a snow bank... just waitin’ fer tracks he can pounce on.

Y' see. One of them things we do a little tradin’ fer is elf-wimsy powder. Put a little bit in wine, and yer drunk in two sips.

So, we got a couple wimsy cups we hand out to people we don't particularly like, and no one particularly watches out fer. who’re about ta make fine sailors on an outbound ship for a year or two, whether they like it or not, after we seen what they have in their pockets.

So anyways, the captain one night sees us givin’ free drinks to a farmer or two, and starts to put tha’ wheels on the cart in his head. He comes over demanding to taste whats in the farmers cup....

Well woudn’t you know it, that’s when alla sudden Johanson thinks fast, and does a little hand trick or two, and now the cup in fron’ of the farmer hain’t the one that was there before... and the one he had is behind Johansons back.

The Captain catches a little in the corner of his eye, and wants to know what in hell Johanson’s got behind ‘is back... and tha’s when I skipper the cup over to Jimmel. Soon enough, them farmers start to think somethin’s fishy, and want to know what the hell is in the cups too. and so we start swapping cups all over the inn... back and forth, back and forth. The farmers and the Captain on one side, and us on t'other.

Till finally, turns out WE forgot which ones was the wimsy cups ourselves. and the Captain know it.

So he makes us all sit at the long table, an’ hes got ever’ full cup in the room on that table... and he starts makin’ us drink from ‘em one atta time...

Ands wouldn’t ya know it... THAT’s when that table there starts to shake somethin’ fierce. knocking ev’ry cup right onto the ground, dancin’ 'em all empty.

Now some say it's a trick that Johanson knows that made the cups dance.

And some think it was me and Jimmel with a knee under the table bobbin up and down.

And some say it was an earthquake.

But I’ll say this right now... There hain’t been a time I was so thankful to see a cup dance than at that there moment.

And right then and there I changed the name of tha’ Inn to The Dancing Cups

David Reichgeld:

The Flying Pony - It often happens, that the Inn keepers does not get his ransom for the kidnapped travellers (picked the wrong victim, nobody pays,...). If that happens he organizes Fights to the death in a small arena under the tavern and sells tickets to shady people to watch. A small golden winged pony is placed on a pole in the middle of the arena, and the first combatant to reach it has earned his prize to survive another night. Possible story point: The heroes are kidnapped and placed into the arena to fight for the flying pony, or they are offered tickets and recognize a familiar face in the arena (Is that your long missed brother fighting down there?). People can enter the tavern and say the words "I want to see the pony fly" to buy tickets.

My response: Love the idea of death matches being held underneath the tavern. The bookcases are really a secret door that leads to a stairway down to the arena. Maybe the scar on the innkeeper's face came from a kidnapping gone bad, where the would be victim managed to get in a nasty slice and then escaped.
What's the Captain of the Guard doing there though?

Quinn Conklin: So what if the innkeeper is not the bad guy. Instead he is part of a secret society that is fighting a war against doppelgangers who are trying to invade the city.

The people they kidnap are individuals that the doppelgangers (or other shapeshifters) have taken prisoner while they emulate them. They are leaving them alive so they can be returned if the doppelganger is caught. The real person can stand trial for the crimes they have committed while being duplicated.

The ransom that the gang charges is little more then what it costs to keep there war going, while at the same time does not alert the general populous to the shape-changer threat.

The captain of the guards is part of the society.

The party is there to stop the gang. (possibly hired by a doppelganger with out knowing it)

The inn is called the flying pony because the innkeeper likes ponies but felt that a tavern named the pony would be to forgettable.

The books belonged to his wife, who died recently, she came from rich family and was well educated. She was a champion of literacy for everyone and would teach reading and writing classes at the pony. The books are also used as a code between members of the gang. The placement of books on the shelves indicates meeting times.

The pie is half off because a new target was located this morning and the innkeeper was distracted while backing. The bottom is burned, but the filling is quite tasty.

Humza Kazmi: The Captain of the Guard is there because they've got his niece hostage. To avoid her being tossed to the death matches, he's got to cooperate, and that means looking the other way when the kidnappers are hitting somewhere.

He's in the inn right now to get new places to have his guards avoid.

As for the pie being half off - well, you've got to do something with those corpses from the pit fights...

Ernesto Ivan Ramirez : The Flying Pony got his name due to a famous party/fight that happened in the hall. Some of the patrons were so intoxicated that they swear the fight was stopped when a blue-pink flying pony jumped into the room. To this day some of them still swear that it happened. The truth is that a girl, an apprentice for bard was so afraid for her life that she used her magic to bring an illusion of something to help her... of course ebing young and still dreaming of cute things the first thing that came to mind was the blue-pink flying pony. After the fight the Captin of the Guard closed the place, but soon enough it reopened when Duran bought the place and as a way to bring customers back he renamed the place in honor of the rumred flying pony.

Originally, Duran planed to use the place as form of retirement, but men like Duran only know one way to retire, and that is 6 feet under. Slowly he meet some of his old associates and organiced them, then they brought over some of the shaddier individuals in the district until they numbered at least 13 and chose the name "black hods" as they used to wear black executioner's hoods for their works, they planed to racketeer, to smuggle, to intimidate the neighbours, but in the end Duran decided not to act against the surrounding populace, not only he had taken some endearement to the locals, they thrusted him, and that... well that was something he liked for once. So what they do is attend the local populace with good food and drink, but when some rich patron came to the inn, the make an assessment: how rich? how dangerous? who would pay for them? if they could just kill them and dump the bodies?

Three more people from the band work in the tabern: both serving wenches, both the blond and plum girl from afar, and the redheaded beauty that everyone can get her affection for the night (if the price is right), both check the new patrons, check their interest and weakness, assess how dangerous and rich they are, then they egt information back to Duran who decides what to do. If they are completly forgettable, they kidnap them in the middle of the nigth, with the help of the guys takin care of the horses and the manure, and the cook ( a master of both cooking and poisoning) and when the deed is done they took their prey to the secret unde rbehind the bookcase (which being a town of ignorant is almost seen as mockery or a place pwople better stay away, everytime anyone ask about the books, he only says that his babydaughter loved to collect books, which is a lie to the point of im never having kids).

When the prey is to dangerous or people in the town will miss them Duran sends with one of the guys in the stables a message to his right hand, Merill, a dangerous bastard that has the rest of the bands in a cave in the woods, with his knowledge of magic and of the woods few of his preys have any real chance to escape or resist once Duran sends Merill the signal of his prey.

The Captain of the Guard has been investigating some dissapareaces, but being an old friend of Duran has never thought his old friend was the main cause of them, instead he came every third night for a pin of beer a bowl of stew (which the cook always spices with sleeping herbs so those nights are the safest for the band) and few hands of cards (which he almost always lose, except when Duran let him win so he won't be a sore or bitter loser).

But after so many years away, the girl who studdied to ebcome a bar, and who was the sole children of the last's inn owner, is coming back, but she has become more than a bard, she seeks for the truth, and she had heard of the dissapearance of one of her briends after visitng the town and more specifically "the flying pony" and she is sure to discover what is happening, whatever the cost.

Richard Lorenz: The bard is married to the Captain of the Guard's sister. The Captain doesn't really trust him or like him, and prefers it when he travels out of town so the bard isn't around his sister.

The bard is actually part of a secret organization investigating disappearances in the cities and brings the info back with him. The Captain is his handler, but they don't really like each other.

The innkeeper is part of the gang of kidnappers. His code name in the gang is the Flying Pony. Two of his partners are the Pink Elephant and the Grape Ape.

The target untrained magic users and sell them to necromages who drain their inherent power. The book case is full of blank books, each of which is covered in human (or elf or dwarf, etc) skin, taken from the corpses of the drained unfortunates.

Other members of the gang kidnap for ransom, or slavery. They are specifically paid for young magic users.

Quinn's question: Why the blank books
Richard's response: To sell. They still have some inherent residual magic, from those whose skin they took. Perfect for mages.

My question: Are books made from the skin of a human more valuable than those of say an elf or orc or some other intelligent creature? Is there a hierachy? What about intelligent beings that aren't demi-humans?

Richard's reply: I guess the answer concerning value would depend on the magical ability in each race in your system versus the talent of each individual that was harvested. Stereotypically speaking, elves are seen as magical by humans, but not so much by themselves, whereas most orcs are barely literate, let alone magical. But, an orc shaman's skin would be more valuable than that of a blighted elf who was born without the spark necessary for the most basic spells.

As you can see this simple exercise came up with a whole bunch of different options for running adventures. You could actually have a whole host of adventures out of this inn. You could rescue the captain's niece, or put down the evil gang that's skinning magic users and having death matches. There might be a doppleganger running around that needs to be put down. All from a few simple elements and some brainstorming.

Things in the Inn: Fun With Random Tables

2011-11-27T14:36:00.001-07:00

When you talk about random tables with gamers you get a wide variety of opinions on the matter. Personally I love them, simply for the randomness they can provide and sheer terror that they can invoke in your players. Even if you don't use them in your own games I think it's a good idea to create them on a regular basis. Random tables force you to think about a particular topic and come up with a bunch of different options. For example if you were creating a "Random city encounters" table and came up with a dozen different items that's great for you as the GM. You may never use the table, but now you have a dozen different encounters bouncing around in your head that you can whip out when you need them. I also think that thinking about a subject like that also exercises your mind so that you'll be able to come up with things on the fly if your players go off the rails.

As such I present random tables related to Inns. Roll a d10

Names
1.) The Flying Pony
2.) Easing the Badger
3.) Iron Horseman
4.) The Fat Lady
5.) The Rushing Boar
6.) Nine Warrior Lodge
7.) The Sword & Lance
8.) The Cheerful Rat
9.) The Waystone Inn
10.) The Lame Dancer

People in the Hall
1.) Group of travelling merchants
2.) Grizzled veteran
3.) Town drunk
4.) Town blacksmith
5.) Innkeeper
6.) Old woman in the corner
7.) Barmaid
8.) Captain of the Guard
9.) Family moving to a new town
10.) Bard/Entertainer of some sort

Specials of the Day
1.) Roast beef
2.) Mutton sandwich with lettuce and tomatoes and crispy bacon
3.) Potato soup
4.) Fresh venison
5.) Porridge
6.) "There ain't no special. What kind of establishment do you think this is?"
7.) Stale bread and last night's left over beef stew
8.) Freshly fried trout
9.) Meat pie
10.) No special on the meal but we'll sell you an apple pie at half price.

Innkeeper Descriptions
1.) Fat and jolly
2.) Skinny with a long scar down the side of his face
3.) Fat and surly
4.) Short halfing/midget. Don't comment on his height or he'll have the bouncer throw you out.
5.) Statuesque woman with a broken nose.
6.) Fat woman with a tiny dog in her arms
7.) Skinny as a rail, with a parrot perched on one shoulder
8.) Missing an eye.
9.) Missing three fingers on his right hand
10.) The left hand won't close. Looks like the tendons may have been cut at some point.

Notable Items in the Inn
1.) Swivel gun on the bar. It may or may not work.
2.) Crossed bastard swords behind the bar
3.) A mirror
4.) Tables are bolted to the floor and are giant slabs of wood
5.) The common room is surrounded by a balcony. The doors of the rooms open to the balcony
6.) Somewhere there is a trap door leading to river/ocean.
7.) Giant statue/figurine/totem
8.) Arena for boxing/wrestling/death matches
9.) Large bookcase full of books.
10.) Large bear's head on the mantle. The innkeeper will regale you with stories about his dangerous hunt if you let him.

Secret Occupations of the Innkeeper
1.) Smuggler
2.) Fence
3.) Part of the rebellion
4.) Kidnapper/ransomer
5.) Informant for the Guard
6.) Cultist
7.) Librarian/Teacher
8.) Former war hero trying to keep his past hidden
9.) Member of the royal family in hiding
10.) Captains of all sorts of vessels pay him to Shanghai patrons for their crews

Creating NPCs with depth

2011-11-27T03:08:00.001-07:00

More and more I've come to the conclusion that the best possible plot generator for a campaign is fully fleshed out non-player characters. Knowing who the major players are and what their relationships are to each other informs the next stop of the process which is plot generation.

The traditional method of developing characters is to fully flesh out everything before hand. This requires a great deal of work by the GM, and in my view it's boring. I like "discovering" relationships just as much as players do (probably more). In other words I'm more of a "connect the dots" kind of guy. To help out with this method of character generation I created a way of setting up relationships between NPCs by using a deck of poker cards and playing a hand of Texas Hold 'Em with yourself.

In this example I'm using a character from an adventure I set up for the role playing game 7th Sea, which is all about swashbuckling adventures. The first adventure took place in the city of Paix. One of the NPCs involved in the adventure is named Lord Au. He's a fairly powerful noble in the city of Paix, but Paix is a small pond. He'd like to be come a large fish in a larger pond. During the course of this adventure (which had the PCs finding out what had happened to a bunch of children who were disappearing from the street and an orphange) the party had met three NPCs.

The first was the previously mentioned Lord Au. The second was the woman in charge of the orphanage. Her name is Joy Zengo. The third was Lord Au's majoromo and all around go-to guy. His name is Monsieur Zuma.

Now it's time to set up a bunch of other NPCs with built in backstories, relationships, and motivations.

Instructions:
The value of the card represents the NPC's social status. A face card would represent high social status, a low number card would indicate a commoner. Aces are unique. In blackjack an Ace can either be a 1 or an 11. To reflect this an Ace can represent a person who seems to have no power, but perhaps really does. Maybe it's the secretary sleeping with the CEO and is blackmailing said CEO. Perhaps the prostitute on the corner is actually the Mayor's stepdaughter and the exposure of the relationship will damage the Mayor's further political aspirations.

The card's suite will determine the primary motivation of the NPC

Hearts: Motivated by strong emotion (love, jealousy, hatred)
Diamonds: Motivated by wealth or valuable things
Spade: Motivated by adversity of some sort
Clubs: Motivated by creativity

To fill out the NPC's background, pick the card that's closest to the social status of the central character. Draw 6 more cards to make a Texas Hold 'Em hand.

Lord Au is a fairly powerful figure in Paix, but minor elsewhere. His power level is probably a 10 or a Jack. His primary goal is to move up the social ladder to increase his family's holdings, so his suit would be a Diamond. My first step then is to pull the Jack of Diamonds from the deck.

I then draw six more cards to fill out the Texas Hold 'Em hand.

The cards I draw are an Ace of Clubs, 3 of clubs, King of clubs, 7 of spades, 6 of spades, Jack of hearts. Looking at the cards I use them as inspiration to create a relationship with Lord Au.

NPC 1 (Ace of Clubs): has a relationship with Lord Au that is motivated by creativity. Lord Au tends to hold his fortune over his family to bend them to his will. His oldest son would have no part of this and left to pursue his dream of being a painter. He changed his name, but Lord Au would be mortified if knowledge of his son's vocation were to be made public

NPC 2 (3 of Clubs): also has a creative relationship with Lord Au. This is Lord Au's cobbler. Au has met the man only once and has no recollection of his name.

NPC 3 (King of Clubs): is the most famous courtesan in the city of Paix. Lord Au is secretly one of her sponsors. (For a man with a disdain of the arts Au sure is involved in them)

NPC 4 (7 of Spades): is the matron of the Baker Street orphanage. She never has enough money to take care of the children. Her love and devotion to the children come because she was never able to have any of her own.

NPC 5 (6 of Spades): Lord Au's majordomo was an orphan. He grew up on the street, which is why he employs beggar children as his sources. He knows first hand the things they can find out. Living on the streets destroyed his health, and now it's flared up into major consumption. His whole life was spent beating the odds and surviving and he's sure he can beat this one too.

NPC 6 (Jack of hearts): Lord Au is madly in love with the daughter of one of the other royal families. Problem is the daughter is the third daughter, and the other two daughters have not been married off yet. It would be an insult to the family if the two oldest were not married and the youngest was.

Additional Connections:

Suits
All the members of the same suit know each other in some way. In this case it would be NPC 1, 2, and 3 and NPC's 4 and 5. The closer together the value of the cards, the closer the relationship between these NPCs.

In the case of NPC 1 and 2, Lord Au's son could have a relationship with the daughter of Au's cobbler, tying them together. Neither the son nor his girlfriend know the courtesan other than by reputation, but she's connected to them via her older brother.

NPC's 4 and 5 have a very close relationship, and we can see why. Maybe they were lovers earlier in life, or maybe it's simply the shared knowledge of what being an orphan is like.

NPC 6 has a very familiar relationship with Lord Au. Her father is also his business rival, making the two men equals and rivals at the same time.

Sets
Any cards with the same face value share common goals or have a good relationship with each other. Three, four, or five of a kind all know each other intimately. Also the closer the cards are to each other in value the better the relationship of the two characters.

Time to Deal
Make the best poker hand possible, being sure to include the original card. In this case it's the ace, 3 and king of clubs along with the two Jacks. Look at the hand and determine which card is the lynchpin and build relationship with the other NPCs around it. In this case I'm determining that the King of spades is the lynchpin. She's the most visible and scandalous courtesan in Paix. She's receiving funds from Lord Au who doesn't want that information to come out to avoid embarrassment. Lord Au's love interest met the courtesan by accident one time and they now have a friendship that Au doesn't know about. The courtesan has seen Lord Au's son paint and thinks he's incredibly talented. She's been speaking the right words to people she knows and as a result he's been getting more and more attention. She intends to have him paint her portrait. Lord Au has no idea that the cobbler is actually the courtesan's older brother who raised her when both of their parents died.

Now that the connections have been established there are all sorts of possible plots that could come because of the relationships. The matron of the orphanage could call on the major domo for further favors. Perhaps Lord Au leaves something of value with the courtesan and needs to have it retrieved before his true love finds out and causes him to lose any chance of a marriage. Maybe the son was painting the portrait of someone at the park when he saw a powerful political leader consorting with the criminal element. Now his life is in danger because of what he saw.

You get the idea. There are all sorts of possible plots because there are now people connected to this major NPC who are tied to every walk of life. In my view the NPCs surrounding Lord Au now have more interesting connections because of the elements of chance involved.

What do you think?