The Key to Rebecca

April 15th, 2011

The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett

The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett


The desert was carpeted with flowers.
“It’s the rain, obviously,” said Vandam. “But…”
Millions of flying insects had also appeared from nowhere, and now butterflies and bees dashed frantically from bloom to bloom, reaping the sudden harvest.
Billy said: “The seeds must have been in the sand, waiting.”

During and shortly after a heavy rain in the desert (an event about as common as a rare planetary alignment, which is to say once during the PCs’ career), giant, extravagantly colored flowers carpet the desert. Bees, butterflies, and flower fairies seem to be everywhere. For a day, it looks more like the feywild than the desert. The flowers are called desert blooms, and the PCs will make a fortune if they harvest and preserve them. They’re a magical ingredient coveted by wizards. The PCs will have to hurry, though, because the blooms will have disappeared in a few hours. Desert blooms hold water like cups, so for a short time, the parched PCs will have as much water as they can drink.

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Ask an Atheist Day and D&D!

April 13th, 2011

In honor of Ask an Atheist Day, I thought it would be amusing to consider what atheism means in D&D. I suspect that whatever it means, it’s pretty great or at least hilarious!

  1. You don’t believe in ANY gods: SO MUCH HARDER IN D&D, where it seems pretty obvious that gods exist. For example, when a cleric or paladin prays to a god, they are granted awesome mystical powers. Epic level adventurers may even meet the gods! However, with that said, the average commoner might not have that much to go on to prove gods exist. Sure, magic exists, but how do they know that divine magic isn’t just another variation of arcane magic? Also, when those epic level adventurers meet up with these gods, maybe they’re just D&D’s equivalent of super powered space aliens, right? It doesn’t necessarily follow (to the PCs) that some being with awesome powers created entire races of people, after all. Maybe they’re just kind of bad-ass. Anyway, I understand Paul once played an atheist cleric, and it was AWESOME!
  2. You don’t care about the gods: This is a lot easier to get away with in a D&D world. The gods exist, but so what? Sure, Bahamut sounds like a nice guy, but in the end, it doesn’t seem like he actually does that much in the mortal world, aside from bestowing some followers with divine powers. So in this case being an atheist more means you don’t worship any gods or even feel particularly beholden to them. So a little different from how we’d normally look at the term, but close enough, right?
  3. You Worship Some Demon or Something: Demons aren’t gods and neither are evil creatures from the far realm, but people in D&D worship them all the time. I guess they aren’t technically atheists, because they usually worship them as gods, but let’s not get too bogged down in semantics here. I would be happy to clasp their non-god worshiping hand as a fellow atheist any day (well, not really)!

Have YOU ever played an atheist character in D&D?

Can YOU think of any other hilarious ways a character might be a D&D atheist?

Do YOU have any questions for ME, a real honest to God ATHEIST who plays D&D?

Then please respond with questions or comments!

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Table Cost

April 13th, 2011

Next time you design a new rule or game element, calculate its Table Cost. That’s a measure of the strain it places on the players around the table, in terms of time, brain stress, and suspension of disbelief. Rules with low Table Cost are less annoying to use. Rules with high Table Cost are more annoying to use, and they’d better have something else going for them, or they Get The Axe!

Recall Cost
+0: Not easily forgotten, because it’s obvious when should you should use it. (“I need healing, let me see what healing powers I have left!”)
+2: Somewhat easily forgotten. Your CHARACTER could be reasonably expected to remember it. When it’s not the focus of attention, you don’t have to think about it. (“I can activate Fire Form to get through the lava!”
+5: Easily forgotten. The PLAYER has to remember it, because it’s based on a generic or a meta-game trigger. May require something to be tracked from round to round. (“I became Bloodied, so my Animal Fury kicks in!”)

Speech Cost
+0: You don’t need to bother anyone else with the details (you roll 3d6 extra damage when flanking)
+2: Requires you to specify a game term aloud (“…and I do 15 fire damage”)
+5: Requires you to specify a game term aloud EVERY TURN (“…and I’m using my minor action to sustain the Flaming Sphere”)

Belief Cost
+0: Provides a vivid mental picture (“I slam into him and push him back a step”)
+2: Abstract (“When I hit this guy with my mace, I give you an AC bonus”)
+5: Defies imagination (“So I guess the fog is prone?”)
Read the rest of this entry »

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How to Design a Combat Encounter in Less than 1 Minute

April 12th, 2011

A while ago I gave a guide for designing a combat encounter in about 5 minutes. But what if you can’t be bothered to wait that long? What if your players are itching for a fight and you want to deliver it right now?

Follow these simple steps to get started immediately:

  1. Pick up the Monster Vault or Monster Manual of your choice.
  2. Go to the index. Spend about 20 seconds looking up a standard monster of the party’s level or up to +4 levels higher.
  3. If there happens to be another monster around the same level on the same page, you’ve lucked out and can add it to the encounter. Either way, you are using a number of monsters equal to the number of players in the party.
  4. If you have D&D dungeon tiles, draw 3 random tiles from your supply and arrange them in an interesting configuration. If you don’t, draw a weirdly shaped room on your grid map and put a couple of pillars in it.
  5. If you have minis, pick random minis the same size of the monsters you plan to use. Otherwise, use whatever tokens or dice you would normally use.
  6. Make everyone roll initiative while you describe the scene! If you are at a loss for words, say the following: “On your travels you suddenly encounter a group of horrible [INSERT MONSTER NAME HERE]. They are in no mood to talk. It would be a shame to die today, but every hero meets his or her end eventually!” See, it’s nihilistic. The players like that.
  7. Do your best to kill the players. That will really piss them off.

I recommended printing this list out and keeping it in your back pocket in case of an emergency.

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nervous giggling

April 11th, 2011

A hyena freaking everyone out.

A hyena freaking everyone out.

I’ve been working on the Bestiary for Mazes and Monster but don’t quite have it ready. Since I’ve been thinking about monsters and madness, I did have this creepy – potentially horrifying – D&D idea:

When you’re running a gnoll battle, keep up an irritating nervous giggle during the PCs’ turns. (Did you know hyenas giggle when they’re overexcited or nervous?) Then, during the gnoll’s turns, while you’re busy rolling dice, get the other players involved. Have all the PCs, except the one getting attacked, cackle at the targeted PC. What will that do to the psychology of the person being isolated? What about to everyone else? I can imagine it creating a weird Stanford Prisoner Experiment vibe.

Luckily 4e turns are too short to do lasting psychological harm. PROBABLY!

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Synnibarr Sunday: evil mutant baby

April 10th, 2011

“By the time Synnibarr was finished and ready to take off, the stellar storm was only 2 months away. But before Synnibarr could depart, a child was born whose heart was as black as hell itself. The young child was born a Mutant. Her powers were unknown and never fully understood.

After she was born, she aged to adulthood within 15 minutes. She appeared to be drawn, for no known reason, to the fusion reactor as a moth is to light. Once in contact with it, she attempted to draw and contain its power, but this proved too much for her abilities to handle; the resulting disaster almost forestalled the launch of Synnibarr.”

-The World of Synnibarr, introduction (page 2).
Excessively awesome passages are highlighted.

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Crossroads Adventures: stats

April 8th, 2011

I’ve mentioned Crossroads Adventures, the 80’s choose-your-own-adventure series. As far as I know, it didn’t have a D&D license. On the inside of my copy of “Warhorn”, it says “CROSSROADS Adventures are authorized interactive novels compatible for use with any role-playing game.” “Any role-playing game” is remarkably similar to D&D, because the Crossroads mechanics involve +1 swords, healing potions, and Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, and Charisma, all rated 3-18.

Each Crossroads book includes an essay explaining a bunch of gaming terms, including the six D&D attributes. The best part of this essay is that, unlike D&D, it explains each of the 16 possible values for each attribute, and for most of them, includes a real-life example. The examples are worth the price of the book. They’re pretty well thought out; they do a better job of letting you know what it means to have, say, a 15 in an attribute than does D&D. They’re also hilariously 80s.

Here are some highlights:

STRENGTH:
15 A top athlete or football running back [OR? Dis on football running backs?]
17 Changes tires without a jack
18 Wrestles Arnold Schwarzenegger and wins [OK, why not just peg Arnold at STR 17?]

The essay goes on to point out that an elephant “has a Strength of 23.” How do they know?

INTELLIGENCE
6 Curly (The third Stooge)
13 College professor/good quarterback [a lot of football in here!]
15 Indiana Jones/Carl Sagan
18 Leonardo Da Vinci (Isaac Asimov?) [Really? The author of the essay thinks that Asimov is maybe as smart as Da Vinci? I liked The Caves of Steel but let’s not go overboard here. Also, is Asimov verifiably 3 INT points higher than Carl Sagan?]

WISDOM/LUCK [Here’s where Crossroads becomes slightly incompatible from “any game”: it rolls “luck” into the Wisdom stat.]
13 Lee Iacocca
15 Captain Kirk (wisdom) / Conan (luck) [I take issue with both of these. Kirk, as far as I can tell, succeeds entirely based upon Charisma and maybe Luck. I don’t ever recall him making a wise decision.]
17 Sherlock Holmes (wisdom) / Luke Skywalker (luck) [Again, Sherlock Holmes’ skill is clearly Intelligence. And Luke Skywalker, luck? Apparently the author of the essay doesn’t believe in the Force. He thinks that hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side.)

CONSTITUTION
15 Olympic Athlete/Sam Spade [Sam Spade? I guess he has a lot of constitution… I don’t remember much about the Maltese Falcon but I’m willing to believethat Sam got knocked out a few times and survived it.]
16 Marathon runner/Rocky [I agree that Constitution is pretty much Rocky’s strong point.]
18 Rasputin/Batman

DEXTERITY
13 Good fencer/Walter Payton [ah, more football!]
15 brain surgeon/Houdini
16 Flying Karamazov Brothers
17 movie ninja/Cyrano de Bergerac
18 Bruce Lee

A dexterity of 20 is possessed, apparently, by The Waco Kid. From Blazing Saddles. BLAZING SADDLES.

CHARISMA [This one is my favorite.]
7 Richard Nixon today [I wish they had statted Nixon’s Charisma at various points in his career. In China, 14! Jowly appearance vs. Kennedy, 8!]
14 Magnum, P. I. [Only 14???]
16 Henry Kissinger/Jim diGriz [one of these is the Stainless Steel Rat]
18 Dr. Who/Prof. Harold Hill (Centauri) [I have no problem with Dr. Who, but it never would have occurred to me to chart his CHA as 18. And apparently Centauri is a lovable character from the Last Starfighter? and Prof. Harold Hill is from the Music Man? OK, The Music Man is (arguably) timeless, but The Last Starfighter must have JUST COME OUT when this essay was written.]

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ozymandias

April 6th, 2011

In honor of National Poetry Writing Month, here’s a monster poem in the tradition of the Monster Manual and Shelley and Horace Smith.

ozymandias

As I did tourist stuff in foreign lands
like stand on Giza taking polaroids
of camels; motor to Thermopylae
by autokinito so I could see
the place where, in 300, Leonoids
did beardly kill a man with crab-claw hands;
explore; find the Nile’s source; and so on,
I found myself in an expanse of sand,
a great inverted bowl of bronze its ceiling.
I can’t deny I got a funny feeling
when I unearthed this giant marble hand.
It had a plaque, which, rather like a koan,
forced one to re-evaluate the world.
“My name is Ozymandias,” it read –
and there was more along those lines – but here’s
the rub. ‘Twas not a visage wrapped in sneers
and trunkless legs, like Shelley’s; nor, as said
Horace Smith, a single Leg; but curled
fingers and a hand. Thirty fingers.
Plus we’ve seen at least three legs, from Smith
and Shelley totaled. What monster out of myth,
what spider god, what limb-discarding dread
was Ozymandias? … and is he dead?

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The Infamous DMPC

April 5th, 2011

DMPC. Kind of a misnomer, really. Also, more or less universally despised by those familiar with the term. In this article, I will explore the following questions:

  1. What is a DMPC?
  2. Why the hell would anyone ever run one?
  3. How should you play a DMPC?

1. What is a DMPC?

In D&D, a DMPC is a Player Character run by the DM. “Isn’t that an NPC?” you may ask. Well… kind of. A DMPC is built using the same rules as a player, generally sticks around over the course of a campaign, levels like a player, and often demands its fair share of loot. So, aside from the fact that it is played by the DM, who is running the rest of the campaign, it is basically another PC.

It should be noted that there is nothing specific to D&D about a DMPC. There could be one in any rpg with a traditional GM and Player structure. Read the rest of this entry »

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Mazes and Monsters: magic charms

April 4th, 2011

Gear up your Hanks with a chapter of magic items! Here’s the PDF of the full chapter.

Click to download the pdf.

As a sample, here’s a charm that, for sheer baroque old-school madness, knocks the Eye of Vecna into a cocked hat:

Graven Eye of Gellor. Level 8 charm. This is a faceted ruby with twelve faces. (It looks much like a d12.) On each face is carved the iris of an eye, along with a unique magical rune. To use the Graven Eye, you must actually put out one of your own eyes and put the Graven Eye in its place. From now on, you will probably want to wear an eye patch a lot of the time.

At the beginning of every day, a different face of the Graven Eye will face the world, and you will have a different power when you gaze through the Graven Eye. Each morning, roll on the following table:

Table 9-1: Graven Eye of Gellor
1: Eye of Understanding: You gain the benefit of Read Strange Languages all day.
2: Eye of Fear: You can make an attack on people in throwing range or closer. If you hit, they are Mazed (RONA 6). While Mazed, they fear you. They may either stand where they are, not moving, or spend their turn moving away from you.
3: Eye of Seeing: You gain a trait die on all RONA checks involving seeing or perception. Also, you can see invisible creatures.
4: Eye of Truth: When people are lying, you see them surrounded with a red haze.
5: Eye of Light: You can shine light from your eye as if it were a lantern.
6: Eye of Lies: You can change your appearance to that of any person or monster that is approximately your size. Whoever you change your appearance to must have the Graven Eye of Timor visible as one of its eyes. The change of appearance does not affect your abilities or the appearance of your clothes and equipment.
7: Eye of Change: For the entire day, whenever you go through a door you’ve never been through, you roll on this table (rerolling 7s), temporarily taking on a new power. Passing through the same door multiple times has no effect.
8: Eye of X Rays: You can see through anything within throwing range (walls, curtains, etc) except lead. This doesn’t let you see in the dark, so you can’t, for instance, see the coins inside a dark coin purse or treasure chest.
9: Eye of command: You can make an attack on someone within throwing distance. If you hit, you do no damage, but you may issue them a short command. They are Mazed (RONA 4). As long as they are Mazed, they must follow your order. The Maze ends when the order has been fulfilled. The attack will fail if following the order will obviously lead the creature to immediate harm. (Near future harm is OK. The Mazed creature will not stab itself but will insult a dragon.)
10: Eye of the Mind’s Eye: You may make any images or visions you want appear in the sparkling surface of the Eye.
11: Eye of Darkness: You are blind in this eye. You gain a weakness die on all RONA checks involving seeing or perception.
12: Eye of Flame: As an attack, you can shoot a fiery red beam from your eye. It can attack at bow range, but unlike a bow, can also attack people next to you. It does fire damage. You gain a Trait die on the attack roll.

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