the ecology of the goblin

August 14th, 2012

Wizards has an article where they talk about how they differentiate the goblinoid races – the goblin, hobgoblin, and bugbear. I think those creatures are actually reasonably well differentiated, compared to some humanoid races. You know what races really need differentiation? Goblins and kobolds. They both fill the same role:

  • They’re weak, and go down in one hit.
  • They prefer ranged combat to front-line combat.
  • If you catch one, it will probably snivel and beg.
  • They like traps. If the monsters are deadly, it’s because they have death traps in their lair.
  • They hate light and like sneaking around in the darkness.
  • They are sometimes used as cannon fodder by powerful creatures.
  • First level characters kill them by the dozen.

    Now, how are goblins and kobolds different?

  • They have slightly different appearances.
  • I guess kobolds like dragons?

    I decided that, in my game, I needed to add some flavor to make goblins and kobolds distinct from each other. I started with the goblin. Here’s what I decided to add:

    Goblins are producers.

    Goblins aren’t scavengers. If all the other intelligent races disappeared, goblins would like that just fine. In fact, they may be trying to hasten that end. Goblins are sort of like dwarves: left to their own devices, they mine and hoard money. Like dwarves, they make food by some obscure process that may involve rats or mushroom farms.

    Goblins have twisted treasure.

    I like the idea that goblins are just as avid miners and crafters as dwarves. There’s fantasy traction for that idea, from Warcraft to Harry Potter. However, it’s weird if a level-1 monster has oodles of treasure. So I thought that, maybe, goblin treasure comes with a price.

    More so than the other humanoid races, I decided, goblins are fairy creatures. They are masters of trickery and illusion. 2/3 of the coins and gems in a goblin horde are worthless or dangerous: not actually treasure but poison beetles, shards of glass, rat skulls. The treasure changes when exposed to sunlight. (You can cheat people in midnight transactions with stolen goblin gold.)

    Furthermore, goblins make artistic, but hideous, magic items, mostly weapons. Goblin magic weapons and armor are covered with horrifying but well-rendered details. Every goblin tribe has a handful of warriors armed with +1 magic items. In fact, goblin weapons might be the most common type of magic item in the world.

    Goblin magic weapons are worth far less than other types, though, because goblin magic is powered by pain, sacrifice, and hate. Every +1 item confers on its owner a minor curse. Here are some typical goblin magic items:

    Roll 1d4:

    1) Biting Mace: The goblin champion who fights with this weapon never retreats and never takes prisoners. There’s a toothy mouth on the side of this +1 mace, and another one on the handle. If you roll a natural 20 with an attack, it bites your enemy, doing 1d6 automatic damage per round until the enemy escapes. However, if you stop fighting or drop the mace while any foes live (including prisoners), it bites your hand for 1d6 per round until you escape.

    2) Club Foot Truncheon: Goblins are the only creatures who make magic clubs. This one, like most goblin weapons, was made as a cruel joke. Anyone who carries this +1 club walks with a distinctive limp, taking a penalty to speed of 10 feet per turn. The limp is also painful, although this has no game effect.

    3) Corruption Sword: These weapons are often wielded by misshapen, giant goblins with inflated Strength scores. A corruption sword is a short sword +1 with jagged, acid-chewed edges. Every time you score a critical hit, you do 2d12 extra acid damage. However, at the same time, one of your arms or legs becomes grossly oversized and muscular. For each oversized limb, you gain a +1 bonus to Strength and a -1 to Dexterity and Intelligence. If all four of your limbs are affected, you gain one of the forms of insanity from the 1e Dungeon Masters Guide. All symptoms are cured after a Remove Curse or six months without scoring a critical hit with this weapon.

    4) Mocker Shield: The champion who wears this shield can always be located by following the sounds of hideous, hysterical laughter. Whenever this +1 shield’s wearer doesn’t make an attack during a combat round, a jeering, laughing caricature of the wearer’s face appears on the shield on the next round. Instead of attacking the wearer, enemies can attack the caricature. To hit it, they must roll 6 on 1d6. On a hit, the wearer takes double damage from the attack – and the caricature laughs and laughs.

    Goblins have their own leaders.

    Although goblins are occasionally enslaved and made to serve as foot soldiers, that’s a role more often taken by kobolds or orcs. Goblin tribes are usually self-governing and have the following leaders:

    Goblin King: The biggest and toughest goblin, the goblin king, is nearly always armed with a magical goblin weapon. He’s usually about as tough as a third level fighter.

    Goblin Nobles: The goblin king is usually surrounded by big goblin champions, who are as tough as second level fighters, and often magically armed as well. Alternately, you can use hobgoblins for goblin champions, if your campaign world doesn’t have place for a separate goblinoid Roman Empire race.

    The hobgoblins-as-nobles scenario makes goblins into a feudal race, parallel to medieval human civilizations, with a pretty good spread of combat ability to provide increasingly difficult fights as the PCs venture deeper into the goblin lair.

    Goblin Smith: The goblin smith’s works in gold, silver, and iron are as detailed and skillful as those of any dwarf, but are horrifyingly ugly. Goblins value the work of their smith. They usually cripple him so he can’t leave the tribe.

    Goblin Shaman: As wizard magic requires study and discipline, the magic of the goblin shaman is powered by pain and death. The health and lives of captives and weak goblins are spent to fuel goblin spells. The goblin shaman has illusion spells to disguise traps and to create goblin gold, and enchantment spells that endow a goblin smith’s weapons with their cursed magic.

    Goblin Rabble: The rest of the goblin tribe are considered expendable by the goblin nobles – especially those who have been crippled by goblin shaman magic.

    Soon I’ll write up the changes I made to kobolds.

    • Posted in fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | 17 Comments »

    war is the only word i know

    August 10th, 2012

    The creature opened eyes like two red stars and looked at Ekmal. It opened its beak and cried out stridently the only word it knew: “War!” “Of course, war,” said Ekmal, holding out his arm.
    -Leigh Brackett, The Hounds of Skaith

    I used this detail in a game I ran recently. The players were sent to open diplomatic negotiations with the giants to the south. The giants – courtly, bejeweled – rode on fine, massive horses and carried man-sized hawks on their arms.

    The PCs’ mission was to prevent war with the giants. The birds’ constant cries of “WAR!” didn’t help matters.

    No visit to a foreign court is complete without a hunt. For quarry, I had the giants hawking dire al-miraj, horned rabbits so big that the players could joust with them.

    Naturally, diplomatic negotiations broke down (as they always do in D&D) and the PCs ended up fighting the giant king (as PCs always do).

    This last fight was notable because I’d given the PCs a one-shot item, a magic gem that let its owner roll 1d100 for damage instead of the normal damage die. This is kind of a silly item, but we were running a gonzo game. And it paid off in drama: everyone was excited when the fighter snapped the gem to his sword and challenged the giant king to single combat.

    The fighter rolled his attack. Hit. Rolled 1d100 for damage. And got a 3.

    But wait! Looking over his character sheet, he remembered that he had a power that let him reroll damage for one attack.

    He rerolled the d100.

    And got a 1.

    Such are the fortunes of war.

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

    Bright

    August 6th, 2012

    More than a year ago, I asked a question: “Who, or what, is named Bright?” I had an idea that that was a cool name for… something, but I didn’t know what.

    I’ve finally figured out the answer.

    Bright is the nickname of a mysterious man who lives in town. His face glows with beautiful radiance, so that looking at him is like looking at the sun. Bright is totally blind. He lives on the charity of those who believe he was touched by an angel.

    It’s whispered that Bright used to be a scoundrel, possibly even a bandit, before he was – cursed? blessed? He won’t talk about his past, although he occasionally tells fortunes for those who will pay him.

    Here’s the quote from the 1e PHB that explains what’s up with Bright:

    Continual light: This spell is similar to a light spell, except that it lasts until negated (by a continual darkness or dispel magic spell) and its brightness is very great, being nearly as illuminating as full daylight. It can be cast into air, onto an object, or at a creature… Note that this spell will blind a creature if it is successfully cast upon the visual organs, for example.

    Bright was clearly part of a bandit gang: just another random encounter in a dungeon. He tried to rob some fifth-level wizard who was almost out of spells: Continual Light was the only offensive spell left in the wizard’s repertoire. I wonder if the wizard made it out of the dungeon alive.

    Posted in RPG Hub | 4 Comments »

    who are the best of the best?

    August 3rd, 2012

    The most powerful known wizards in Wyre and its dependencies at the end of the Seventh Century were, in no particular order of precedence, Jovol the Grey, Hlioth the Green Witch, Waide of Hethio, Mostin the Metagnostic, Shomei the Infernal and Tozinak. They were, compared to those great names of history such as Tersimion and Fillein, a group of only moderate power. Nonetheless, they commanded considerable resources and, had they so chosen, could have exercised great influence in the temporal affairs of Wyre.

    Sepulchrave’s Wyre stories have a lot to tell us about D&D worldbuilding. One nice thing about reaching high level in his campaign is that you are officially one of the foremost adventurers in the world.

    I like the idea that, by around level 17 or so, a character might be familiar with the handful of people more skilled at his or her class. (In 1st edition, this was codified into some classes already, like the monk and druid: there was only one level 17 monk, the Grand Master of Flowers.)

    Even in 4e, where character level goes up to 30, I’ve assumed that the world’s top practitioners of each class might be around level 19. The epic tier is saved for legendary historical figures and for PCs carving out their own legendary history. There’s currently no living, epic NPC in my campaign world. Really, level 20 is plenty powerful enough.

    When the PCs’ levels start getting into the mid-teens, you might want to think about the world’s level 18+ NPCs. (In Sepulchrave’s example, there are only 6 wizards of the highest level. That seems like a good number to me.) As the PCs become powerful, the NPCs will become aware of them, as possible allies or rivals, and possibly make discreet (or violent) visits.

    As you construct your adventures, don’t feel constrained by your list of top-level NPCs. I bet that besides the six “most powerful known wizards in Wyre”, there are as many unknown masters. This might be even more true in secretive classes like assassins and thieves.

    I also like the fact that Sepuchrave’s world contains more-powerful (presumably epic) wizards from the past. Coming up with some of these might color your campaign world as well.

    Posted in fluff/inspiration, RPG Hub | 6 Comments »

    cantrips for PHB2 classes

    July 31st, 2012

    A few weeks ago I posted rules for cantrips for all the 4e Players Handbook classes: I thought that every class should get the benefit of out-of-combat abilities that a) defined the class and b) spurred creativity.

    Today I’ll do the same thing for the classes from the Player’s Handbook 2.

    The PHB 2 is a challenge: half of its classes are old favorites with well-established conceptual niches (bard, barbarian, druid, and sorcerer), and half are experiments whose flavor provides varying levels of inspiration (invoker, shaman, avenger, and warden.) Some of the newer classes are difficult to design for because I don’t have an intuitive feeling about their out-of-combat activities. In some cases, I made up new flavor.

    AVENGER: Avengers are scary dudes. Their deal is that they threaten people. Before they kill you, they let you know that they are GOING to kill you. The Oath of Enmity is a very flavorful class feature: all avenger cantrips need to do is tie some noncombat mechanics to the Oath of Enmity.

    Reminder of Enmity: Just because you’ve survived a combat with an avenger doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. Anyone who was ever subject to an Avenger’s Oath of Enmity, in combat or out, is subject to frequent reminders of the fact.

    An Avenger may send a vision to anyone who was once subject to the Oath of Enmity. The vision is typically of a) the avenger, b) a bloody weapon, or c) the avenger killing the subject with a bloody weapon. If the subject is sleeping, the vision will be woven into a dream. Each day, the Avenger may send one vision per level, but no more than one per day to each subject.

    BARBARIAN: People do not play barbarians because they want cantrips. They play a barbarian because they want to smash things. So I’ll stick to basics.

    I Hit It With My Axe: In one action, an armed barbarian can automatically destroy any inanimate object that another character might destroy in a minute. This includes almost all furniture, wooden doors, art, and stone walls less than 6 inches thick. If a barbarian destroys a large item, its square becomes difficult terrain. This action is extraordinarily loud.

    I Hit Them With My Axe In one action, a barbarian destroys any number of fragile items within weapon reach. This action is also extraordinarily loud.

    BARD: Historically, why have people wanted to play bards? It’s not because of how awesome they are in combat. It’s because they sing and annoy everybody. Bards are all about performance, and while they have a few music-related attack powers, it is really out of combat that they get to fulfill the promise of their class.

    Perform: As a standard action, the bard plays an instrument or sings. Until the end of the bard’s next turn, all willing listeners enjoy themselves. (There are no game statistics behind this, but NPCs tend to seek out enjoyment unless there is a reason not to.) During the performance, willing listeners suffer a -2 to perception checks.

    Compose: The bard writes a song and Performs it for at least a dozen strangers. The song becomes a well-known standard in the nearest city. (At bard level 11, the song is known country-wide, and at level 21, continent-wide.) People tend to believe the message of the song unless they have a reason not to. Be careful with the slander – if anyone is offended by the song, they’ll be able to get a description of the original performer.

    DRUID: The druid schtick is a defender of the wilderness. In my experience, druid players often want to behave like eco-terrorists, despite the fact that there is no real need to protect wilderness in a medieval or points-of-light setting.

    Grow: As a standard action, the druid may make small plants spring up in an adjacent square. The druid may make a square difficult terrain, or cause climbable ivy to appear on a wall. Furthermore, by concentrating, a druid can cause ivy and roots to do 1 HP damage per minute to adjacent stone structures. The druid cannot grow cultivable plants like grain, and cannot grow plants in barren areas where they would not normally grow.

    Command Animals: As a minor action, a druid can command a small natural creature, like a mouse or bird, in a burst 5, to do a simple task. Keeping the animal’s attention on the task requires a sustain minor. The animal cannot communicate with the druid except with very simple sign language, conveying “finished”, “impossible,” “I’m scared and need a pep talk” and similar messages.

    INVOKER: The Invoker description suggests that Invokers know some purer form of divine magic than clerics do. Their cantrips should feel like sparks from the living steel of Creation itself. Invokers should also be able to do things that make clerics jealous.

    Word of Creation: The gods can alter reality with a single word. Invokers have a shred of that power.

    The Invoker can utter the name of a nonliving object small enough to be held or worn. It will appear in the character’s possession. Sustain minor. It disappears when the invoker speaks any other word at all (or casts a spell). The object can be up to 5 feet in its largest dimension (at level 11 it can be up to 10 feet; at level 21, 20 feet). The DM should be careful to make sure that the character doesn’t speak while the object is sustained, or the object will vanish. The Invoker can’t be too specific in his or her invocation: he or she can only utter a single noun, not describe an object. However, the DM should generally honor the player’s intent and not try to subvert the cantrip with wilful misinterpretation.

    I’m curious if this cantrip is too powerful: I’d like to see it in play. People don’t play invokers that often, though, so I might never get to playtest it.

    SHAMAN: Out of combat, the shaman schtick is that they talk to spirits. In combat, the shaman is the guy who summons a giant bear to eat enemies. The giant-bear part generally overshadows the talks-to-spirits part, which is a shame because there is room in the D&D world for a shaman who is attuned to the messages of the spirit world. No NPC wilderness tribe should be without one. I tried to come up with cantrips that would let NPC shamen do the things you’d expect them to do: mutter to invisible creatures, pronounce taboos, and give mystical, yet maddengly nonspecific, guidance to PCs.

    Commune with Spirits: As a standard action, the shaman talks to the weak spirits in the area. They can unerringly answer any of the following questions:
    -What is the last creature or group to have passed, and what did they do? Spirits have no sense of time, and no sense of of the purpose behind any activity.
    -Is there currently anything that disrupts the natural order around, and in what direction? Aberrant, undead, and extraplanar creatures disrupt the natural order. A town doesn’t necessarily disrupt the natural order, but a sanctified temple does, because it is blessed with astral energy. A cleric doesnt, but a zone from a clerical spell does. Most arcane magic does not, but eladrin teleportation might, because it connects the world with the feywild. Spirits do not distinguish between good and evil, but they do give an indication of the strength of the disruption.
    -How may I end a magical effect? As a healer in touch with the spirit realm, the shaman can gain unique knowledge about ending curses and other magical effects. Any temporary or permanent magical effect may be banished, even those associated with magic items, curses, and magical diseases. The DM should come up with an appropriate rite to end the effect. To banish a magical zone in combat, it might take a round or two of ritual dancing and the expenditure of some ritual ingredients. To end a magical curse or destroy a magic object, it might require a quest of varying difficulty. The way to accomplish the quest might be clear or unclear (ranging from “fetch mountain moss to put on the wound” to “sacrifice 50 cattle” to “fly through a keyhole at the western corner of the world”.)

    Materialize: The shaman makes a local spirit visible to all, in glowing form, with the luminosity of a candle. Sustain minor. The shaman can also make invisible or ethereal monsters visible to all.

    SORCERER: A sorcerer is like a wizard who wields raw, barely contained magic. I thought it would be fun to use the same cantrips as wizards, but in undisciplined, destructive forms.

    The player is in control of the cantrip. It’s up to the player if the character is in control too; the cantrip’s effects might be latent expressions of the sorcerer’s unconscious power.

    Ghost Scream: Like Ghost Sound, but it can only produce the kinds of unsettling noises that would freak you out in the dark.

    Lightning Flash:     Like the Light cantrip but it provides light in irregular bursts of lightning (accompanied by thunder if the player wishes). It provides strobe light in an 8 square radius. Everyone in strobe light has partial concealment (-2 to attacks), and Hide attempts may be made.

    Mage Slap: Someone feels a pinch, slap, or tug from an unseen hand.

    Polterdigitation: Something fragile is destroyed in a flashy way. Glass might shatter, or papers might be thrown around the room. Light objects might be thrown harmlessly. An object might be stained with blood. Special: three effects may happen per turn.

    WARDEN: The warden is very difficult for me to get a handle on. As far as I can tell, a warden is like a druid who fights with a melee weapon: or maybe more like a magical ranger. (Of course, in some editions, rangers can already cast spells.) There’s not enough of a niche for me to hang much conceptual baggage on. I decided to do my best to add some class flavor with the Sentry Tree power.

    Sentry Tree: As a standard action, the warden turns into a tree (it’s the same tree each time). This can only be done in an environment where trees may grow. It takes a standard action to change back. As a tree, the warden is able to see in all directions, and 6 hours as a tree counts as an extended rest. As wardens get older, they often spend more and more time as a tree, and they age as a tree ages; many old oaks and willows are wardens of ancient days who might, in times of need, return to their original forms. (If you want, you can add 1-100 years to your character’s starting age).

    The last warden cantrip is interesting mainly in that I wrote it on a laptop on which the F key didn’t work, and it is thus extremely hard to read.

    eed: cause any nurturing plant to put orth ruit. the ood lasts or ive minutes. I eaten in that time, the ruit will provide sustenance or the ull day.

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    Posted in 4e D&D, game design, RPG Hub | 6 Comments »

    OD&D: tax paradise

    July 25th, 2012

    Now that I’ve read Chainmail, I thought I’d go back to the OD&D books and see if I had a new perspective on them.

    Chainmail was, for the most part, a historical simulation. It tried to produce results that were as plausible as possible given Earth’s military history. One of the inspiring things about OD&D is that it tries, in as few pages as possible, to provide an alternate world to simulate.

    As a new-school D&D player, there’s a lot of D&D history I’ve missed. Editing Cheers Gary, gaming with Mike Mornard, and illustrating the AD&D Dungeon Generator have helped, but there’s a lot in D&D that I still don’t understand. I’m going back to the OD&D texts to see whether they can help my new-school game.

    The few details on baronies and castles are tantalizingly incomplete if you consider D&D a stand-alone product, but make a lot more sense when you consider them as add-ons to the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement.

    On my read-through of the OD&D rules, I was struck by the fantasy world simulated by the taxation rules:

    “Top-level fighters (Lords and above) who build castles are considered “Barons”, and as such they may invest in their holdings in order to increase their income (see the INVESTMENTS section of Volume III). Base income for a Baron is a tax rate of 10 Gold Pieces/inhabitant of the barony/game year.”

    On the other hand, “Clerics with castles of their own will have control of a territory similar to the “Barony” of fighters, and they will receive “tithes” equal to 20 Gold Pieces/inhabitant/year.”

    Without much economic information to go on, the fighter’s 10 GP/year sounds like a pretty good profit from each peasant. But then we find out that the cleric’s “tithe” is 20 GP! Since a tithe is 10% of an income, that means that barons are levying a 5% tax on their peasants.

    From the section “Relatives”, we learn that “the relative would inherit the estate of the character, paying a 10% tax on all goods and monies.” Estate tax is 10%!

    Note to tax-hating libertarians: move to OD&DLand! Taxes are astonishingly low there. And no central government to speak of. But you might be eaten by a White Ape!

    Posted in legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 3 Comments »

    dnd with mike mornard: next level

    July 23rd, 2012

    With my DM Mike Mornard moving from New York (he finished school and got a job! congratulations!) my OD&D game will end. I’ve enjoyed the high-mortality dungeoncrawl during the six months or so I had Mike as my DM. It’s been a great complement to my 4e game.

    We got together for one last OD&D game: we all met up in the afternoon and played till 1 AM, ordering pizza at the game table. It felt like an archetypical game session to me, and Mike compared it to the games he used to play when he DMed for Phil Barker. Those games, which also typically wrapped up around 1 AM, were played at a time when the iron of D&D was still white hot off the forge. Sparks kindled. As Mike told us, “Whenever we introduced someone to D&D, they’d come back in a week or two with a dungeon they wanted to run.” Phil Barker, of course, came back to Mike’s group, after considerably more than two weeks, with Empire of the Petal Throne.

    our dungeon map

    One of the reasons we played so late (on a work night!) was that we wanted to finish our maps of level 1 of the dungeon. Tavis Allison and I were both mapping (his maps look nicer than mine do), and we both wanted to fill in the last dead-end corridors to complete the unbroken line bounding the borders of the dungeon. Like summoning circles, dungeon maps with gaps in the borders can be very dangerous.

    I’d like to give you a scan of the map, but I can’t find it at the moment. Anyway, it’s not necessary. If you saw it, you’d recognize it, in its general outlines, as the sample dungeon in the 1e Dungeon Master’s Guide, as it would appear if it were mapped by a somewhat inexpert cartographer.

    In session 1, a player realized that we were in the 1e dungeon. During the campaign, I made sure not to look at that dungeon: I wanted no refreshers about dungeon layout or contents.

    As it turns out, it wouldn’t have mattered much. There are only a handful of encounters in the DMG, and Mike changed several of them anyway. In the large central chamber, instead of a puzzle leading to a secret door, Mike put one of his NPC characters, Necross the Mad. Every interaction with Necross was a negotiation, where we traded something (usually not treasure) for passage through the room. By the end of the campaign, we were quite chummy with Necross, despite the fact that he claimed to have plans to destroy the universe.

    Actually, come to think of it, we didn’t map ALL of level one. Somewhere in the dungeon, we Charmed an evil cleric. He complained endlessly about how his superiors didn’t appreciate him (ah, the banality of evil). Between complaints, he warned us of a troll nest to the north. Later, when our dwarven fighter announced that he smelled a terrible trollish stench, we turned around. Sure, we wanted to complete our map, but low-level OD&D characters don’t become high-level by being stupid.

    arise sir roger

    My thief character, Roger de Coverley, was named, somewhat randomly, after an 18th century dance, the Sir Roger de Coverley, that appears in a lot of old novels. Having given my character this name, I decided that his destiny was to be knighted and then to invent the dance. Most of my character’s decisions were made with my knightly ambitions in mind. Figuring that every knight needed property and followers, I tried to gather money, hire troops, and have other PCs swear fealty to me.

    The gathering-money goal turned out to directly conflict with the gain-followers goal. In my attempt to keep everyone alive, I bought plate mail for everyone I hired. Furthermore, when NPCs died (and they died a lot, even with the plate mail), we felt duty-bound to get them Resurrected. It wasn’t good business to spend thousands of GP to resurrect a guy who earned a gold piece a day, but it kept the NPCs happy. In Mike’s game, it’s hard to keep NPC hirelings happy. (As he says, “Loyalty is a luxury the poor cannot afford.”) Our health care plan seemed to do the trick. It left me poor, though. By our last few sessions, we were starting each adventure trying to raise money to resurrect a dead henchman. In the dungeon, we’d raise the money we needed – but lose another henchman along the way. It was like a resurrection Ponzi scheme.

    Besides Necross the Mad, the other main NPC of Mike’s campaign was Lord Gronan. The dungeon was below his throne room: apparently he used the dungeon as a sort of Darwinian training ground for high-level heroes. When, at level 1, I offered to join his service as a knight, he told me, “Perhaps one day, if you prove yourself.”

    Before our last trek into the dungeon, a level-five Roger de Coverley was summoned to Lord Gronan’s audience chamber. “I’ve watched you over the last months,” he said. “You have displayed the knightly virtues: you’ve been honest and you have guarded and served your followers. Too few remember that knighthood is about service.” Lord Gronan asked for Roger’s oath of fealty and dubbed him knight.

    No sooner had Roger reached the summit of his ambitions than a new hireling joined the party: a female thief, a gold-digger who had clear designs on becoming Lady de Coverley. With Roger’s 7 Wisdom, I don’t expect he’ll be able to escape her toils.

    off the edge of the map

    The last time we passed through the dungeon, I told that unpredictable dungeon denizen, Necross the Mad, “It has been an honor and a pleasure exploring your dungeon.” I could have said that to Lord Gronan as well, since he sent us into the dungeon in the first place. And I could have told it to DM Mike Mornard as well. It’s true in all three cases.

    Our characters have survived the dungeon. We’ve finished the map (except for the troll den). Mike is off to re-explore the Midwest; Ben (the dwarf fighter) got a job in Virginia; Tavis (the pyromaniac fighter) will return with new OD&D tricks to his Red Box game; and, in our weekly new-school game, Andrew (the wizard) and I will explore the wilds of 5e. Time to start a new sheet of graph paper.

    Posted in legacy D&D, RPG Hub | 7 Comments »

    the wight land

    July 20th, 2012

    “The Ill-Made Mute” by Cecilia Dart-Thornton is somewhat of an odd novel. It’s sort of the counterpart of “The Night Land”, which I described as a better Shadowfell sourcebook than it is a work of fiction. The Ill-Made Mute is practically a Feywild sourcebook. It suffers some of the problems that you might expect if you tried to express a D&D sourcebook entirely as flavor text: it’s a bit of a world tour, and there are enough monster encounters to fill a bestiary. The upside is that there’s a lot of D&D inspiration to be mined.

    You really could construct very full Fey monster encounter tables just from the encounters in the book. Fey creatures are called “wights” (confusing to my D&D-trained ear), and each plays by its own rules. It works very well with the rules I offered for giving every Fey creature its own ritual.

    Here’s an essay in the novel that expresses the fundamental rule-bound nature of fey creatures:

    Wights, he had told Imrhien, had to obey their own natural laws. Just as men could not become invisible or shift their shape in the manner native to wights, so wights–save, perhaps, for the most powerful–could not move against mortals unless certain conditions were fulfilled, certain actions taken or words spoken. If fear was shown, or if a mortal should be foolish enough to let his senses be tricked, or should he break certain silences or reveal his true name or answer questions ignorantly, or if he should transgress against wights by trespass or other means, then the creatures of eldritch could strike. Then the unfortunate man might be torn apart, drained of blood, crushed, hung, or slain by any manner or means, or he might simply die of fright. Yet even then, there was a chance he might still be saved by fleetness of foot, quick-wittedness, valor, intervention from others, or pure luck.

    There are wight-encounter set-pieces of all kinds in the novel, but here’s a throwaway detail of some fairy creatures that can be used for some by-the-way fey flavor:

    Here, where fantastic dragonflies and glittering midges played, more of the little wide-mouthed toads with bat-wings were skipping over the water’s surface, making free among tall rushes growing along the shore. They were quite lovely in a loathsome way, their froggy hides spangled gold and green, their tails long and thin, barbed at the tips. The veined vanes of their wings were so translucent that light shone through them. Their eyes were great, glowing, amber jewels, their teeth were many, tiny, and pointed.

    Possibly this is a sight that can be seen on the way to the Temple of the Frog.

    Here’s a set-piece to be found in one of the book’s underground dungeon environments:

    Driven by an engine of rusted cogs forced into action, the portcullis began to descend, squeaking and clamoring with the reluctance of old age. It was halfway to biting the floor when, like an outrageous firework, a force came roaring around the bend and slammed into it. A current surged. Sparks exploded in a blistering snarl, and Diarmid was flung backward up the passage, where he lay motionless. Rent and twisted, metal screamed.

    The “wight” here is a being made of lightning. It could be expressed as a pretty cool D&D monster. It does electrical damage, obviously, and it’s incredibly fast. Its weakness is that it can’t pass close to metal without being diverted into it – and then it bounces the way it came. Therefore, a portcullis, even a half-open one, is an impassable barrier: it will try to pass through the gap but will be diverted to bounce off the bars (electrocuting anyone touching the portcullis).

    Another interesting combat effect of this power is that, if a wizard and a mail-clad fighter are standing next to each other, the electrical being can’t possibly attack the wizard: it’s, perforce, attracted to the fighter.

    I’d like such a fight to offer lots of possibilities for trapping and channeling the monster.

    Also handy: there’s an appendix describing the author’s sources for all the fairyland monsters, so you can skip the novel and go right for the folklore.

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    flying carpet, leveled

    July 18th, 2012

    Intelligent flying carpet: PCs who solve a runic puzzle woven into their carpet might discover that it can not only obey voice commands, it can be trusted on independent missions. While it can’t communicate with the user (beyond “fly up for yes, fly down for no,”) it will happily follow orders to rendezvous at certain places at certain times. Furthermore, when its owner whistles, the carpet will speed to his or her side.

    My old houserules for leveling magic items mean that every piece of magical treasure has the potential to gain power in ways that the players can’t predict. Furthermore, WOTC recently invented the concept of the “rare magic item,” but we don’t yet have lots of examples.

    While some items may get mechanically better (for instance, a +1 sword becomes a +2 sword), it’s more challenging to improve items that don’t have numeric bonuses. I thought I’d go through the Wondrous Items in the 4e Player’s Handbook and give examples of how each could gain powers that reflect their history.

    Roll 1d6 for personality quirk:

    1: The carpet hates one person in the party. It will tip upside down if that person ever boards the carpet first.
    2: It has knowledge of some ancient secret, knowledge which it can’t communicate verbally. It will occasionally disoebey orders and take the PCs to the site of important clues.
    3: It’s feisty and protective of one of the PCs. It will butt attackers in the knees. It has a small chance of tripping opponents.
    4: It has a bad sense of direction. Every time it travels independently, it has a 20% chance of getting lost.
    5: It was once a war carpet. It quivers with excitement when it scents battle. It can charge, in which case you do an extra die of damage with lance and spear hits.
    6: It is old and threadbare. It wants nothing more than to lie on a floor in a nice study. It rises from the ground grudgingly, often pretending not to hear its command word the first time.

    Caravan carpet: The problem with most flying carpets is that they’re not practical transportation for a family. They can only hold 1 person, or at most 1 person and a princess plus monkey.

    This carpet can be modified to hold up to 8 people in comfort on overstuffed chairs.

    Sports carpet: If properly tuned by an expert weaver, this stylish red carpet’s speed permanently increases from 6′ to 12’+1d4. Every time the carpet is tuned up, reroll the 1d4. When the carpet travels at a speed over 6′, the swooshing note of its passage is audible within 100 feet.

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

    against the patriarchs

    July 16th, 2012

    How about this as a pitch for a Dragon article:

    “AGAINST THE PATRIARCHS

    Born into an existence little better than slavery, most female humans in history are seen by the dominant males as mere resources to be used and discarded. This article details four character themes, each a path by which a female human might seek to establish herself in a world that is hostile to her very existence.”

    How about this pitch instead?

    Matriarchs really get the shaft. Can’t they even have Menzoberranzan? 40 years of Dragon magazine, and there is not even a single character theme designed to undermine the patriarchy!

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