What struck me about the cities of the West African forest is the archaeological evidence of their religious sacrifices. First, there were sacrifices of wild, not domesticated, animals (animal type unspecified). I’m more familiar with European sacrificial traditions where domesticated animals like oxen are sacrificed.
African Civilizations by Graham Connah
Human Sacrifice
Human sacrifice was practiced in some West African forest civilizations:
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Read Jeff Rients’ hilarious description of one of his best D&D sessions ever. You’ll notice it involves the PCs DECIDING, FOR NO GOOD REASON, THAT THEY NEED TO BE IN A PARADE.
Let me tell you about two of my best D&D sessions ever.
THE RATLING PLAY
I occasionally run a one-shot “ratling game”, where everyone plays anthropomorphic rats. By unspoken consent, everyone always makes wisdom their dump stat (or plays like it). It always devolves into lunacy.
On one occasion, the ratlings discovered that their home city did not pay proper reverence to Smidanoonan, the Rat God. Smidanoonan’s statue was (pointedly, they felt) absent from the row of statues on Godsbridge.
The ratlings decided they needed to construct a Rat God statue and stick it to the bridge with a dot of Sovereign Glue. For some reason they decided that they needed to do this WHILE PUTTING ON A PLAY. I think the play was part of a previous plan that was abandoned, but by then they’d already printed up the posters.
The session culminated with the performance of the play. The capstone of the entertainment was the raising of the statue to the bridge: the statue was too heavy for the ratlings to lift, so they decided they’d tie one end of a rope to the statue, the other end to a horse, and then get the horse to jump off the bridge.
I, the DM, was privately sure they would not be able to get the horse to jump off the bridge. I didn’t have enough faith in my players. At the critical moment of the play, one of the ratlings used a fear-based attack to spook the horse; another, a Beguiler, created an illusion of a green field off the side of the bridge. The horse jumped over the bridge’s rail and fell into the river, raising the statue of Smidanoonan to amaze and horrify the assembled human audience.
Not only did this game session involve no combat encounters, it involved almost no DM work at all. The magic was all due to the players taking the bit between their teeth and doing whatever the hell they wanted to do: I just handled some light adjudication.
THE GOD MACHINE
I was involved in another D&D play, this time as a PC. A troop of hobgoblins had captured the children of the village. When we tracked the hobgoblins to their lair, we discovered that the children actually liked the hobgoblins better than the villagers and didn’t want to go back! We DECIDED, FOR NO GOOD REASON, TO PUT ON A PLAY to win back the children.
I believe the hobgoblins put on a rival play, but I don’t remember it. I do remember that, as the wizard, I provided special effects and lighting. The rogue and paladin performed some impressive stagefighting: the play was a morality play about the battle between good and evil, and the outcome was decided by an actual combat between the players. (I think evil won.) Meanwhile, the dwarf, again FOR NO GOOD REASON, had built a device meant to shoot fireballs. (Maybe it was a stage set for Hell?) A few natural 1s on skill checks caused the device to backfire and incinerate the dwarf and several nearby PCs. I think that actually helped us win the play contest.
All these sessions – Jeff’s parade floats, and the two games I described – involve what can only be categorized as “antics”. Here’s what they all have in common:
The above list is not necessarily a formula for how you should run every D&D session*, but it might be a reminder, for both DMs and players, that the DM doesn’t always need to lead. When the PCs decide they want to go off-course, they can lead the way to a Best Session Ever.
The horse passed his Swim check, by the way.
* Unless it is!
African Civilizations by Graham Connah
it is interesting to note that many of the savanna urban centres appear to have grown up at environmental interfaces, between transportation systems. Thus at Timbuktu goods were transferred from camel to canoe and at Kano from camel to donkey. (page 141)
When you’re drawing your map of the world, put cities at the border between two terrain types. That’s where traders change from one type of transportation to another. For instance, horses come in the north gate of the city, and camels go out the south gate.
It’s well known that cities grow up along coasts and rivers. That’s where ship- and raft-based travel meets road travel. But that’s just the most obvious example of this general rule.
We haven’t actually seen one of WOTC’s Rare magic items yet: we’ll get our first look in the DM’s Kit. I’d like every Rare item to come with
Here’s an example of what I’d like a Rare item to look like:
Smoke Turban
Julli ducked into a corner of the town square and donned the black turban. As the gossamer veils drifted down around her head, the noise around her ceased and noon became night. Through the turban’s obscuring veils, she saw the bazaar in ruins and the crowd in the square was suddenly transformed to shuffling zombies.
Julli skirted the square, avoiding the zombies. She ran through the broken doors of the palace, up a stairway so dark that she could not see the steps, and climbed over the rotting woodpile that had been the treasury doors. Inside the treasury lay rat bones, dead moths, and bits of rusty iron.
Julli wrenched off her turban. As the veils around her dissipated, she found herself in brightness once more: inside the tightly locked treasury chamber, and surrounded by ewers brimming with rubies and stacks of gleaming gold bars.
Smoke turban. Level 5 head slot item. Rare.
A black turban, trailing thin black veils that drift into smoke.
When someone puts on the Smoke Turban, they become translucent and smoky, and gain a +10 item bonus to Stealth against living observers. Against the living, the wearer may also make Stealth checks without requiring cover. However, the turban wearer’s perception of the world also becomes translucent and smoky, and they take a -10 Perception penalty. Furthermore, all living creatures are totally invisible and inaudible to someone wearing the turban.
Level 15: +15 bonus/penalty.
Level 25: +20 bonus/penalty.
Leveling Up
When its owner learns more about it (possibly by performing a quest), the Smoke Turban becomes more powerful. Roll a d6 to determine what extra abilities the Turban receives.
1-2: Hunter’s smoke turban
3-4: Shadowfell smoke turban
5-6: Desert smoke turban
Hunter’s smoke turban. The turban belonged to a hunter of one particular type of creature of the DM’s choice (for instance, demons). While everything else is hazy and dark to the wearer of a smoke turbans, these creatures stand out. The wearer takes no penalty on perception checks made to identify this type of creature or its trail.
Shadowfell smoke turban. This turban belonged to a daring thief who finally met her end when she phased into the wrong part of the Shadowfell. While wearing this turban, the wearer sees his or her normal surroundings at a penalty as usual, but is also aware of the contiguous portion of the Shadowfell world, at the same perception penalty. As a minor action, the wearer may spend a healing surge in order to temporarily phase into the shadowfell. While in this state, the wearer is fully in the shadowfell. The wearer is also in the natural world as well, but gains Insubstantial and Phasing in the natural world. This may allow the user to, for instance, pass through some barriers that don’t exist in the shadowfell. The wearer returns to the natural world at the beginning of their next turn. If they are not in a legal square when they return, they are moved to the nearest legal square and knocked prone.
Desert smoke turban. This turban belonged to a feared desert assassin who walked alone and unnoticed between caravans. While wearing the turban, the wearer gains fire and radiant resistance, and cold and necrotic vulnerability, equal to the Stealth bonus, and an equal bonus to Endurance checks related to heat.
The Ginger Star by Leigh Brackett
D&D-ready encounters of note:
Overall, the book gives the impression of a world, like Middle Earth, that has more and less dangerous “zones”. Eric John Stark is a typical pulp-fiction badass, and in the beginning of the book, in the South, he is the baddest ass in the room. As he heads north, he travels through progressively higher-level areas until he is routinely being defeated and captured.
The PCs find a map marked with a symbol that looks like an ornate X. Arcana checks reveal that it is the Vrksah, the tiefling symbol of the Crossed Tree. Nature checks reveal that wherever two living treetrunks cross is a weak place; here a gate may naturally form, connecting to a similar crossed-tree configuration somewhere else in the world. Thus, a farmer may go for a walk in his own orchard, and, before he realizes that he has left his property, find himself on an entirely different continent. No one knows the locations of more than a handful of crossed tree gates, except perhaps the druids.
Crossed trees can be used as a way for the party to collect fast-travel shortcuts to important parts of the world. They can be an alternative or supplement to 4e teleportation circles, perhaps one more suitable for primal parties. Less prosaically, they may also lead the party to haunted fey groves, shadow forests where trees with human faces scream and mock, or trapped apple orchards where adventurers enter but never return: or if they do, they come back sown with evil seeds.
We last left off with Tom Hanks and his friends in the middle of a new, LARP-enhanced version of Mazes and Monsters. They just encountered a skeleton, so we should finally get a chance to see how they’ll handle combat so we can find out how that mechanic works, and… oh. Oh. They’re not going to fight the skeleton. They’re going to talk to each other. Roleplay.
Girl: Perhaps there is a clue hidden in the skull!
Hanks: (in a squeaky, panicked voice) Beware of the sacrilege!
Girl: Glacia the fighter is not afraid.
As Glacia the fighter approaches the skeleton, it is suddenly pulled up, out of the shot; presumably by a system of ropes and pulleys rigged up by Jay Jay, who, in addition to free run of the Theater Department and Anatomy Skeleton Department, apparently has the key to the Ropes and Pulleys Department. Either things are invisible when they are on the ceiling, or the characters can only see things in-frame, or Jay Jay’s system of ropes and pulleys pulls the skeleton down the tunnel and around the bend, because the skeleton, mouth flashlight and all, is now gone.
Showing bizarre and amazing lumination-location memory, Blondie says, “Look! where the light was pointing!”
Look! Where the light was pointing!
This morning I described a king’s tomb, with a narrow hole at the top, under which is a seal that paralyzes all who step on it.
So how would you, a lone thief, rob the tomb? The room is a dome, with the only entrance a hole in the ceiling, 30 feet up. The seal is directly beneath the hole, and occupies a 3×3 square. Treasures are scattered around the sides of the dome. All you have is a weapon and an Adventurer’s Kit.
African Civilizations by Graham Connah
Some West African kings were buried in a manmade hill. First the king and his treasures, along with some unlucky servants, were interred in a wooden dome. Then tons of earth was piled on the dome. Finally the new hill was covered with clay and fire-hardened. This was a difficult tomb to rob – although a narrow vertical chimney was left. (Why? For the soul to escape, as in Greek tombs?)
This chimney could make a good tomb/dungeon entrance. It’s wide enough for one PC to squeeze down; then there’s, say, a 30-foot drop to the floor.
What’s to protect such a tomb against robbers? It’s easy to climb down to the floor on a rope. Let’s say that in the center of the tomb, right under the shaft, is a rune-covered seal; anyone standing on it is paralyzed and takes ongoing damage (no save!) until they’re somehow moved onto a safe square.
I’d play it like this: PC 1 says “I climb down the rope.” The DM doesn’t say that PC 1 is paralyzed; he says, “OK, we’ll get back to you” and asks the other PCs what they are doing. If they yell down into the tomb, they get no answer. Based on how long the PCs spend waiting and talking before they take action, the paralyzed PC might take one, two, or three rounds of ongoing damage. (A mean DM would secretly time the PCs’ discussions and dithering and deal damage every 6 seconds of realtime, but try as I might, I just can’t play D&D like a World-Class Jerkwad.)
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Be a wine snob!
Wine snobbery, along with an upper-class accent and a superciliously raised eyebrow, is one of the great, easy markers of the upper class. If the PCs hobnob with nobles, then they must drink wine. Invent a superior wine for the extra-elite to drink: it won’t take long before the PCs will know when they’re getting the best.
When giving PCs wine, let them make a History check. If they succeed, they know the wine’s quality, and the player may talk about its “oakiness”, “untertones of astral currant” and “tanens” for one full minute before anyone is allowed to hit them.
Wine snobbery, and overpriced vintages, have been around forever. A good Tokay was quite expensive in the medieval period, and Louis XV called it the “Wine of Kings, King of Wines”. Falernian is mentioned in a lot of Roman authors. On a wall in a Pompeii bar it says: “For one coin you can drink wine. For two you can drink the best. For four you can drink Falernian.”
In my campaign, I’ve invented a few beverages. The Talasay is the most sought-after: a bottle of the Talasay ’82 in a treasure horde might be worth more than the rest of the treasure. Its quality is only exceeded by the emerald wine of the fey lords, after drinking which, it is said, all other wines taste like ash. On the other side of the spectrum, there’s Dogsbreath, good enough only for dwarves to drink.
