Synnibarr Sunday: adventurers

April 3rd, 2011

“After the avatar rested, it teleported all the animals from Earth to the new world. It then selected 400 men and women and transformed them into adventurers who were gifted with special powers and abilities. Each class of adventurer had different powers, yet each class was dependent on the others for survival. It created these adventurers to defend the seeds of Earth from potential dangers.

During the generations of deep space travel, the avatar knew that radiation could possibly alter human and animal life. It also knew that an alien race could discover Synnibarr and attack. Therefore, to defend the adventurers, it created a well-protected city for them to live in and enclosed the Worldship in a Werestorm to protect it during its initial takeoff and while in flight.”

– The World of Synnibarr, page 1 (introduction)
Things that I expected to be game terms, but are actually world terms, are highlighted. Also Werestorm.

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Warhorn: a crossroads adventure

April 1st, 2011

Warhorn: A Crossroads Adventure by Diana Kramer


“My plan,” Harold explains, “is to use the temples of the mountain cults for shelter.”

Crossroads Adventures are off-brand-D&D choose-your-own-adventures set in the branded fantasy worlds of established fantasy authors. This one’s based on some novels by Lynn Abbey.

TEMPLES OF THE MOUNTAIN CULTS has such an old-school ring about it I’m tempted to look for it on The Acaeum. So many old adventures used that name structure: “Vault of the Drow”, “Steading of the Hill Giant Chief”, “Dwellers of the Forbidden City”, “Queen of the Demonweb Pits”, etc.

The phrase deserves better than to be casually dropped in an 80s choose-your-own-adventure and never seen again. It’s begging to be made into a published module – or, if not a module, at least some DM’s adventure. An adventure with a title that the DM repeats as often as possible, preferably with reverb. “OK, let’s begin session 2 of… TEMPLES OF THE MOUNTAIN CULTS!” “You light your torch and descend into the… TEMPLES OF THE MOUNTAIN CULTS!” “We can play Shadowrun as soon as we are finished playing… TEMPLES OF THE MOUNTAIN CULTS!”

The temples in the book turn out to be safe places to rest where monsters won’t follow you. Not in my temples. Mine are old-school dungeons; and in the course of TEMPLES OF THE MOUNTAIN CULTS, the cover of the 1e demon-idol Player’s Handbook will be shown as a visual aid at least once.

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upcoming D&D books I’m excited about

March 30th, 2011
  • Unannounced Feywild book: Despite its dorky name, I like the Feywild. It’s one of my favorite parts of 4e cosmology. A DM can introduce fantastic elements in the Feywild: even larger-than-life than the usual larger-than-life D&D stuff. Still, three years into the edition, it doesn’t have a sourcebook.

    According to the D&D release calendar, there’s something called “Heroes of the Feywild” scheduled in November. That looks to be a book of “player options”, though: not details about unsettling faerie courts, clashing cliffs, palaces in strange intoxicating clouds, jeweled beaches, and haunting monsters both beautiful and terrible, but classes and feats that you can give your PC. Lame!

    There’s a shred of hope: This year, “Heroes of Shadowfell” and “The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond” are both being released. “Heroes of the Feywild” is at the end of the release calender. Maybe the next year will bring “The Feywild: The Court of Stars and Beyond” or some similar book.

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    Maze Controller’s Guide

    March 28th, 2011

    The Maze Controller’s Guide section of the Mazes and Monsters manual contains a lot of advice, some of it sound, some of it very bad. Perhaps the worst piece of advice is

    If a player is becoming uncomfortable, terrified, confused, or frenzied, DON’T BACK OFF! Keep on challenging the player by upping the stakes in the fantasy. Don’t let a player leave the fantasy until they solve their issue! If players can’t handle it, they will freak out, flake out, or drop out. These are acceptable losses! You can’t make an omelet without driving some people mad.

    But hey, it doesn’t go much further than Dogs in the Vineyard.

    Here’s a section of the manual about designing Mazes:


    (click for a larger version)

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    Synnibarr Sunday: Venderant Nalaberong

    March 27th, 2011

    “The powers of darkness had won the aid of the God of Time. This unholy alliance threatened to destroy the universe from the dread dimension of Shadarkeem.(1)

    (1) Shadarkeem is the birth dimension of the Gods. Only Venderant Nalaberong power works there. The Gods become mortals whenever they are in this realm, and no normal mortal can survive there because the dimension drains all forces, including the life force, except for God Power and Venderant Nalaberong.”

    -The World of Synnibarr, page 1 (introduction)
    Highlighted items have never been mentioned before.

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    the cave girl: earthquake fight!

    March 25th, 2011

    The Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs

    The Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs

    In Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Cave Girl, lovely cave girl Nadara is saved from the clutches of hideous cave man Thurg by a well-timed earthquake.

    An earthquake during a fight sounds like a fun complication to me, but we can’t be relying on all sorts of coincidences. Our D&D must be rigorously realistic!

    The obvious way to stage an earthquake fight – the way these things usually go down – is to have the PCs trying to stop a ritual.

    In order to provide full scope for earthquake fun, the fight should be in a setting with lots of earthquake-destroyable scenery. Perhaps a Greek-style temple with lots of pillars. Let’s put a river through the temple too: water or lava, depending in the god!

    After a turn or two, if the PCs haven’t killed the ritualist, the ground shakes – a fortitude attack that knocks people prone. A few turns later, the same thing happens, with a stronger fortitude attack and maybe some damage. If the PCs haven’t stopped the ritual by the third check, the whole battlefield changes.

    When the major earthquake happens, suspend the battle and, ignoring the battlemat, run a skill challenge where people try to avoid being swallowed by rents in the earth, run to high ground, etc. When the skill challenge is done, whip out a new map – a post-earthquake map, complete with chasms, fallen pillars, a water- (or lava-) fall, and a few pieces of unbroken ground. Depending on how everyone did, they’re at various places on the battlefield: hanging from exposed roots in a chasm, trapped under a pillar, or standing on one of the untouched areas of ground.

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    super simple mass battle mechanics: saving throws to save the world

    March 22nd, 2011

    Like any rules hacker, I’ve tinkered with complex mass-combat rules. The other day, when I actually ran a battle encounter, I threw away all my precious rules in exchange for rock-paper-scissor mechanics, and it was a great success.

    One of our players is moving away, and to see him off, I ran a one-shot epic adventure to kill Tiamat. Everyone took a beloved existing character, leveled them to 30, and I rolled the timeline forward a couple of years, to a day when Tiamat’s armies were poised for total conquest of the world. Only the PCs and their armies stood in the way.

    I decided to Epic It Up, and go for over-the-top heavy metal high fantasy. Here’s the plot. Over-the-top Epic elements are in CAPS.

    THE ENTIRE WORLD HAS BEEN CONQUERED by Tiamat’s forces, except for the encampment containing the PCs and their armies. The PCs are fiddling with a device that will let them TRAVEL TO THE MOON and KILL TIAMAT ON THE MOON surrounded by her DESERT EMPIRE OF DRAGONS AND DRAGONBORN SLAVES ON THE MOON. Tiamat is so big that, from Earth, she is VISIBLE SITTING ON THE SIDE OF THE MOON.

    Tiamat’s UNSTOPPABLE ARMIES contain LEGIONS OF PRIMORDIALS, EVIL GODS, legions of cultists, dragonborn infantry, and an AIR FORCE OF DRAGONS THAT DARKENS THE SKY.

    MASS BATTLE MECHANICS

    PCs Leading Armies

    There are 3 kinds of troops, set up in a rock-paper-scissors relationship: flying troops have +2 against infantry, infantry has +2 against ranged, and ranged has +2 against flying.
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    Mazes and Monsters manual: I wrote 40 spells

    March 21st, 2011

    …and tricks and powers. Here are 14 of them.

    I changed the way the Mazes and Monsters magic system works. Spells, Tricks, and Powers are now much more differentiated from each other. The changes were based on my RIGOROUS RESPECT FOR TEXTUAL EVIDENCE, not whimsy.

    Spells: Rory, who read the novel, told me that in one scene, spells were referred to as one-shot items, like scrolls. Now spells are fire-once items, available to any class, as opposed to tricks and powers, which are learned permanently, and class-specific.

    Powers: I originally had powers be unique to Holy Men, but I’d forgotten that Jay Jay says his Frenetic has “tricks and powers to take him far and keep him safe.” Now, Frenetics and Holy Men both have access to powers: healing powers are still unique to Holy Men, and I’ve added some tricky powers, like Sonar, for Frenetics. Some powers can be used by both classes.

    Tricks: To make Tricks unique, I made them work a little bit like Blue Magic from Final Fantasy: Frenetics learn them by harvesting items from defeated enemies. This adds a form of treasure that the Maze Controller doesn’t have to worry about placing. It also adds another income source: every time you kill a Dragon, you can harvest its magic tooth and sell it in town.

    Here’s Page 37, which contains half of the Tricks (along with the monsters they’re stolen from).

    Click for larger PDF version of this page

    Here’s page 39, which contains half of the Powers.

    Click for larger PDF version of this page

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    Synnibarr Sunday: In the beginning

    March 20th, 2011

    In the beginning, 800 million years ago, on a small planet, a mage was born. This mage became the most powerful mortal ever known – so powerful, he was granted Godhood. His name was Aridius, The God of Hope and Command.

    -The World of Synnibarr, page 1 (introduction)
    Phrases that can only be said in a faux British accent are highlighted.

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    the cave girl: turn that battlemat sideways

    March 18th, 2011

    The Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs

    The Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs

    The Cave Girl is an Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure that puts an effete New England blueblood on an island of cavemen. Hilarity ensues, as do over-the-top action set-pieces.

    At one point, Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones is chased by cavemen up the side of a cliff. The way to turn this into a D&D encounter is to have your battlemat represent a vertical plane.

    The battle starts with the PCs pursued by an overwhelming number of tough minions (they do 2x normal minion damage).

    Everyone starts at one end of the battlemat (ground level). The PCs are trying to get to the other end of the battlemat (the top of the cliff).

    Traversing most squares involves Climb checks. Drawn on the battlemat, however, are a maze of platforms connected by horizontal, diagonal, and vertical ladders. Movement along platforms and ladders follows normal walking rules.

    On every platform is a stack of rocks. The rocks attack everyone in a vertical line when dropped; this is useful because the pursuing minions often line up vertically, especially when climbing ladders. PCs can also push ladders over, sending climbers to their deaths.

    At the back of each ledge is a cave. The PCs don’t know whats in each cave, but the cavemen do. Some caves connect together; one has extra treasure; and one has an escape route from the encounter.

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