Author Archive

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

the curse of the mummy’s curse

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

In honor of Halloween, it’s mummy week at blogofholding! All mummies, all week!

Mummies have had a rough ride. They’re the afterthought of the undead, in D&D as in pop culture.

It’s easy to drop a vampire in to an adventure because they’re generic; sure, Count Dracula is Transylvanian, but it’s easy to imagine a vampire from elsewhere. Mummies, on the other hand, are tied to a specific Earthly time and place. Just as you can’t have the party fight Franklin Delano Roosevelt without explaining how he got from 1930s USA, it’s hard to drop a mummy into an adventure without dropping in Egypt too. If you include a mummy, do you include heiroglyphics? Pyramids? A stripy King Tut beard?

There are 3 ways you can go with mummies:

Crazy Funhouse Dungeon Land. You roll on Wandering Monster table VII and get a mummy. You look up the mummy description: you see that the “No. Appearing” column says 2-8, so you roll the dice and the party fights 6 mummies. That’s just how it goes in Crazy Funhouse Dungeon.

Egypt Land. You put an Egypt-flavored ancient civilization in your campaign world. In a RPG that revolves around robbing tombs, that’s not terribly hard to work in. You probably throw the mummy into a trapped tomb into a desert; you might include a sphinx as well. Pyramids are optional, but maybe a little too much?

The problem with this approach (if it is a problem) is that this adventure will feel very Egyptian, and not very, say, Greyhawk.

Mummy in a Strange Land. You reflavor the mummy with a bizarre new origin, sufficiently different that it doesn’t read as an Egypt analogue. For instance, mummies are the keepers of a vast extradimensional library. When a librarian dies, he is swathed in book pages related to his area of expertise. He is then brought to unlife as a mummy so that he can continue his librarian duties, but as a mummy, he knows only what is written on the pages of his wrappings. Mummies are often encountered in dungeons searching for ancient books to add to their mummy wrappings. (Am I vaguely remembering this from something I read, or did I make this up?)

Reflavoring the mummy is an uphill struggle, because the Egypt mummy story is so well-established that it will take a pretty strong flavor to overpower it.

Posted in advice/tools, fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

Mazes and Monsters: Halloween Episode

Monday, October 25th, 2010
This entry is part 11 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

Jay Jay is throwing a Halloween party! Jay Jay is dressed as Noel Coward. Blondie is a naval officer. Kate is, uh, the naval officer’s girlfriend? (I forgot to mention, Blondie and Kate hooked up at the end of the last scene.)

The party also contains Frankensteins, maids, Darth Vaders, and pirates. (No mummies. Too bad. A mummy is, like, the easiest Halloween costume. All you need is gauze, or, in a pinch, toilet paper.) Everyone is bopping to generic 80s party music, except Tom Hanks, who is stalking through the party with the spooky asceticism of one who has been visited by the Great Hall. Hanks is dressed like a Holy Man. But it’s NOT A COSTUME.

You! Shall! Not! Pass!

Hanks leaves the party and closes the door. He lays his hand on the door in a mystic gesture.

This peculiar gesture is undoubtedly some Holy Man spell, meant to prevent his friends from following him.

Spells

Lock Portal: By laying his hand on a door, a Holy Man can lock it for a few hours. Anyone who tries to force the door or open it with a key must succeed on a RONA based on the Holy Man’s level.

At this point in my notes from the first time I watched the movie, I have the following puzzling scrawl:
(more…)

Tags:
Posted in game design, legacy D&D, news, other systems, RPG Hub | 2 Comments »

Circumnavigate the D&D globe!

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

In a comparison of the east and west coasts of Africa, the book mentioned that prevailing winds are southern on the west African coast. Until improved ship designs in the 15th century, ships could sail down the coast of Africa, but they could not sail back!

African Civilizations by Graham Connah

African Civilizations by Graham Connah

It must have sucked figuring that out. If you went south too far in a medieval ship, you’d probably never get home. You might try to land and walk back home, but good luck crossing the Sahara Desert.

D&D ships are probably of medieval design, and it is quite possible that, as in the real world, there may be one-way journeys for D&D ships. Here’s a natural way to impose the same kind of walls and one-way doors on the campaign map that exist in the dungeon.

Imagine the easternmost continent of a campaign world has a prevailing easterly wind along its deadly southern coast. Once you go too far, it’s impossible to sail back to the known world. Let’s say that there’s a tempting ruin right on the edge of the point of no return. Getting there requires a ship-based skill challenge. Success means that the PCs get to the ruin. Failure means that the PCs’ ship is caught in the current/prevailing wind and has no way of getting home except by circumnavigating the globe, which will take a year or more. Here is a skill challenge with major consequences for failure! Failing the challenge would change the nature of the campaign, potentially for many game sessions, into a ship-based Odyssey campaign. Failure in this case might be much more interesting than success.
(more…)

Tags:
Posted in advice/tools, fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | 1 Comment »

wading by torchlight

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

Here’s a fun dungeon room:

The room is a pool: everyone is kneedeep in water. On the other side of the pool are hooded enemies who, among their other attacks, shoot a ray that they use to dispel or suppress magic light (Light spell, sunrods, etc). The PCs must use torches or lanterns in order to see. It’s dark and shadowy and the light of the torches shines off the swirling water, making the room’s floor invisible.

The front-line enemies have an attack that disarms PCs. If you are disarmed, you have to waste time feeling around the bottom of the pool for your weapon. If the enemies disarm you of your torch or lantern, the room is potentially pitch-black.

In the middle of the room is a pit (invisible by torchlight because of the light conditions). The enemies avoid it, staying at the edges of the room. If someone falls in, they are swimming while everyone else stands, and must use move actions to climb out. Their light sources are extinguished.

Are there things in the dark water? Teeth that clamp onto swimming PCs? Maybe.

When I ran this encounter, I put away the minis. I described the blackness, the torchlight, the hiss and smell of water, and the echoes of combat in the room. No one wanted to be fighting in that room in the dark. And no one stayed in the water long enough to find out if they were alone.

Tags:
Posted in fluff/inspiration, play, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

blind decisions

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

I remember once, DMing a dungeon crawl, saying something like “The path forks. Will you go left or right?” The players looked at me blankly for a few seconds before someone said, “Uhhh, we’ll go right.” I realized I had just presented the players with an uninteresting decision. The players had zero information, so they chose randomly.

I don’t remember what was to the left or right in that situation, but let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I had said, instead, “The path forks. The left fork leads to a dead end, and the right fork leads to an encounter with a troll.” This would also have been an uninteresting decision. No party would ever choose the dead end.
(more…)

Posted in advice/tools, legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

when to count ammo

Monday, October 18th, 2010

Gamma World’s cool expendable ammo mechanic solves a lot of problems with expendable magic items. It doesn’t handle normal D&D ammunition (arrows, etc) very well though.

For the most part, I, and nearly every sane DM, handwave ammunition. Once PCs have looted hundreds and thousands of GP, no one wants to track the number of silver pieces expended on arrows.

There are a few times, though, where you might want to make the PCs count arrows.

Siege

In a siege, there is no way to replenish basic supplies. When everyone’s running low on arrows, you need to make interesting choices about when to take a shot and when to wait for a better opportunity. Also, you can make dramatic encounters out of raids made to replenish the ammunition stock:

gavroche getting shot

poverty

Especially at level 1, PCs may find themselves so strapped for cash that they have to struggle to afford basics like food and lodging. This works especially well in a “gritty” or “picaresque” game, where lack of money may force the PCs to take some dirty jobs. PCs may have to consider whether their target is worth the price of their arrows.

Remember the obvious point that arrow scarcity only hurts archers: you may or may not feel that it’s fair to impose a burden that only affects one or two PCs.

feeling lucky

Posted in 4e D&D, game design, RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

City altars

Friday, October 15th, 2010

Another interesting things from the cities of the West African forest: archaeological evidence from one city shows that there were altars built right at the side of their paved roads. That made me think of this:

Lovecraft's fountain

Lovecraft's fountain

This is a fountain in Providence, RI, H. P. Lovecraft’s home town and where I lived as a teenager. Local legend has it that if you drink from this fountain, you will return to Providence – and that Lovecraft drank of it before he went to New York, which is why he is buried in Providence.
(more…)

Tags:
Posted in fluff/inspiration, news, RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

a real photo of ents

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

ents attacking a monastery

DUDE, LOOK AT THOSE ENTS ATTACKING THAT MONASTERY

THEY ARE JUST RIPPING IT TO SHREDS

THIS ONE IS CLIMBING UP ON THAT ONE’S BACK SO IT CAN SMASH THE HELL OUT OF THE ROOF

LOOK AT THE WAY THEIR GNARLY FINGERS TEAR UP THAT FLIMSY STONE! I WONDER WHAT THEY ARE SO MAD ABOUT

DUDE I THINK WE SHOULD GET OUT OF HERE THERE ARE MORE TREES COMING

I found this picture in a photo gallery from Prah Khan, Cambodia at travelblog.org. The pictures are all amazing. You should use them all as visual aids in your D&D game. Every one could be the centerpiece of an encounter.

Tags:
Posted in fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | No Comments »

ammo rules from Gamma World

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

I never played Gamma World. I’m just not a post-apocalyptic guy, I guess. Some people’s inner psyche resonates to a brutal, hopeless desert world filled with mad Maxes. My “quiet place” is a verdant forest, dotted with wildflowers and limpid pools, and it’s being set on fire by orcs.

Although I’m not the Gamma World demographic, I do want to read the Gamma World rulebook. I like reading RPG combat mechanics. I have this 19th-century idea that RPG game rules are steadily progressing towards perfection. (That’s opposed to the classical worldview of old-school bloggers: that every RPG generation is a further-debased descendant of a Golden Age.)

WOTC preview articles have shown ff some of the Gamma World rules. One of my favorite of these mechanics is the rule for ammo use.

Ammunition is a problem in D&D. Do you make all the players count arrows? (Probably not.) Do you let people buy a sheaf of 20 arrows, and let them use that from level 1 to retirement? (Probably.) What about magic arrows? should PCs count them?

The Gamma World rule is this: when you use ammo, you may either try to conserve it or be profligate with it. If you conserve it, you can use it once per encounter. If you’re profligate with it, you can use it as many times as you like during this encounter, but at the end of the encounter, you’ve used it up.

This strikes me as a great way to introduce ammunition-conservation decisions without adding an irritating arrow-counting step to every ranged combatant’s turn. It wouldn’t work with normal arrows, of course: you can’t have a ranger who fires one arrow per encounter. I’d prefer to handwave normal ammunition and use this rule for what it was designed for: limited, powerful resources: a sheaf of magic arrows, perhaps. It could also replace the pre-4e rules for magic items with charges.

There’s an extra benefit of this rule, besides avoiding accounting. In video games as well as D&D, do you know how many times I use magic ammunition/items with charges? ZERO. I hoard. I like a rule that circumvents my hoarding instinct.

Posted in 4e D&D, game design, news, other systems, RPG Hub | 9 Comments »

Mazes and Monsters: mystery in the caves

Monday, October 11th, 2010
This entry is part 10 of 34 in the series Mazes and Monsters

Remember the caves? They were featured, ominously, in the first shot of the film, and then Jay Jay was going to commit suicide there, but didn’t, and then the players LARPED there without incident. It seems that something is finally happening there!

Katie drives by the cave and sees a car parked nearby. Panicked, she rushes in to save … Blondie? He confesses that he has been mapping the caves between official game sessions. “”I wanted to figure out where Jay Jay hid the treasure.”

Katie and Blondie get home safe. Another fake-out where no one gets lost in caves. Something is going to happen there soon, though, I can just feel it!

What we learn from Blondie’s confession about “the treasure”, though, is that there is just one treasure at the heart of every maze! It sounds like when you find the treasure, you win the maze. Players have a lot of motivation to find the best possible route to the treasure, avoiding unnecessary dangers and obstacles.

This is how early editions of D&D worked too. Most of players’ XP was earned from treasure; wandering monsters were things to be avoided. By third edition D&D, though, character advancement came primarily from combat. If you skipped the combats, you’d never level up.

We’d better codify this in our Mazes and Monsters rules.

The maze treasure

At the center of every Maze in Mazes and Monsters is a treasure! The object of Mazes and Monsters is to find this treasure. Only by finding the treasure will the characters gain the wealth, powers, and spells they need to gain Levels and defeat their personal problems. Be wary, though: every treasure will be guarded by formidable obstacles!

I think that, while the bulk of XP in Mazes and Monsters comes from finding the Treasure, you must also get some XP from incidental encounters. After all, everyone was excited when the party met a dozen bloodthirsty undead!

How long to level 9?

I have another question about gaining levels. All the players are so proud of having level 9 characters. How hard is this? How long does it take to get to Level 9?
(more…)

Tags:
Posted in game design, legacy D&D, news, other systems, RPG Hub | 10 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »