World Building Vignette #0

I am working on a new D&D campaign world, largely based on the Romans. This is an interesting scenario as it is so different than the typical D&D setting which is often based in medieval times. This is wildly different than the Greyhawk setting or anything else I have encountered.

I plan on posting a series of vignettes on this process. Next Saturday, I plan to introduce a magic item unique to one town in this world: "The Rat Bag". The town has an interesting name and history, which explains the rational for this item. It is a mass produced magical device, which is strange to say the least. 

My planned schedule for posting is Friday and Saturday nights. The first post will be vignettes of this campaign world and the second will continue my 52 Weeks of Magic Series. As time permits, I may increase my posting rate. 

Please join me this weekend for world building fun.

Click the link to read Vignette #1. 

Overpowered Spells and Obvious Consequences

Meteor Swarm is one of those that has some very obvious societal consequences, even more than teleport or fly spells. Magic users anywhere nearing the ability to cast this spell should immediately become a "priority" to anyone operating an army in the area.

I've never ran a magic user from 0 to 18, nor had anyone in any of my campaigns done so. I was unfamiliar how effective Meteor Swarm was until I played a game with a pre-generated, 21st level magic user. The DM was an old school wargamer. He loved the Chainmail rules and WRG. He intended to start the game with a prison break, but as a twist, let us play out our capture. Our party encountered what could only be described as hoplite phalanx, a seemingly overwhelming force that would easily capture our tiny party.

As the DM described the situation, I read the description for Meteor Swarm. I asked if they were in bow range. The DM advised that they were not. he smugly informed me it didn't matter because magic users use darts, not bows. As they got closer, the party loosed arrows. A few arrows hardly did anything, there were several hundred guys. At 180 yard... yards(!), I cast Meteor Swarm.

Meteor Swarm vs. Phalanx

The DM consulted the Player's Handbook as I rolled damage. He read that description back and forth, over and over again, as I rolled die after die. The zig-zag of range in yard and area of effect in feet confused him, but not me. The AoE is massive for this spell. The rolls didn't matter, there were only a few hundred guys. The DM ruled that anyone hit by the spell was dead. The overlapping pattern of damage made saving throws moot.

What happened next was even more horrifying. I cast it AGAIN! The DM walked away from the table. Even assuming the phalanx scattered to the winds, I was killing survivors by the dozens. The few that ran towards the party were running into a hail of arrows and in the very next round, I would be casting a fireball.

As it stood, the DM decided to allow this insanity to stand. The second, third and forth phalanx captured the party. Funny how they snuck up on us. My character was put to the sword. I played a 5th level thief for the remainder of the session.

If there is a smart lord or lady of the lands, they would be wise to kill any and all magic users before 18th level.

Be Careful What You Wish For...

My first offering on DriveThruRPG is Zero to Hero. In the past 5 days of sales, there have been 80+ downloads. Thank you so much for your support, but do you know what I really need? Reviews.

I am in the process of coming up with a second title by October. The reviews would certainly help me craft a quality product for you.

Again, thank you for downloading. But please let me know what you think.

3.5 House Rules - Arrows

I don't like tracking arrows. Treasure Hunters HQ has posted on this very issue. Treasure Hunters HQ has a whole collection of posts to make your game more interesting and flow better than ever before. Everything from shields to magical unguents. Go ahead and follow them, the HQ is full of good ideas.

Ah... back to the point. Arrows. Tracking arrows on character sheets simply burns holes in the sheet. It is annoying and subject to abuse. Many years ago, I realized that player's will cheat on ammo more than any other thing. Why? Because, it is annoying. To avoid it, I tended to have the players encounter lots of arrows, either because the enemy had them, they were working from a fortification, or they had a natural pause to collect up their used arrows. Some players will want to roll a number to see if the arrow broke, but that is as exciting as my other pet peeve, save vs. drowning.

After a while, I decided to impose a rule that if a player rolled a 1 with ranged weapons, they fumbled the quiver and dropped all of their arrows on the ground. Picking one up, pulling one from a target or returning an arrow shot at the player takes time, a single action. If the character doesn't take any other action, they can refill a quiver in a single round. It seemed reasonable, since the standard has been changed from a quantity to have something or don't have something.

My primary issue with running out of arrows as a DM is, the rules don't take "out of ammo" into account. It is assumed the characters have a functional method of attack, and a certain quality of weapons. But if the requisite ammo is missing, they have neither. Suddenly striping the characters of missile weapons isn't really accounted for in the rules. While a good DM will give players and characters time to reprovision, the DM really can't account for 4 character's missile counts on the fly.

A not so #miniaturemonday post - Figures with Flair - January 18th, 2017

I missed #miniaturemonday, but I do have some figures to show off. Please excuse the blur as I haven't had time to get out the nice camera.

First, two D&D figures.

This rogue is one of my favorites. He is based off of Jubal in the Thieves World series of books. He has a bit of grey hair and a multi-colored outfit. He holds a dark colored staff.

I wish I could remember the manufacturer of this figure. This figure is pretty old, and the base shows signs of age. I will likely rebase this figure and give him a new coat of gloss coat.

I especially liked doing the mismatched green and red. for his sleeves. It's a hint of flair for an otherwise normal rogue.

From about the same time period, I have a simple bard with lute. He was my character in several AD&D adventures.

When my friends and I played AD&D, we rotated turns as DM and had a shared world. It was rather interesting as your "main" would become an NPC. One of our rules was to have NPC acquire wealth and experience, but never any magical items.

As a result of this rule, we had many game breaking characters and magic items. The main issue was not power creep as you would expect, but a combination of unique magic items and the courtesy of returning favors. The end result was a bunch of characters with very non-standard gear in large amounts as six DM's doling out goodies was a little too much.

The last item is a cool "unseen" mecha from Battletech. As you can see, he has taken a lot of damage. Before painting this figure, I took a Dremel to the nose and wing. I then washed a propane torch over the entire figure to give it a bubbled and softened look, as if it had walked through fire.

The figure rippled a little too much under the torch, but I still liked the effect.

I would imagine that the pilot was lucky to be alive as the cockpit was very nearly holed. I like figures with character that hint at a little background and story.

Module Review - S2 White Plume Mountain

Title: White Plume Mountain
Code: S2
Author: Lawrence Schick
Rule Set: D&D
Year: 1979
Pages: 16
Number of characters: 4-10
Levels: 5-10
Rating: ★★★★☆

White Plume Mountain is part of the Special series. It is meant for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and expects a large number of characters at relatively high level. Interestingly enough, the scenario spells out that many adventures into the dungeon will be required and may cause a rotation of adventurers through many sessions. That is a nice touch. I like the long term play and replay-ability.

This style of play is engrossing as early failures and setbacks to the player characters are muted by the ability to retreat to complete safety of the nearby town. This is very different than most dungeon crawls, where characters must horde limited resources. Instead, players find themselves on a quest to obtain 3 magical items: Wave, Blackrazor and Whelm, protected by powerful masters and inventive puzzles and challenges. Backtracking enables inspired progress, resupply and fairly realistic game play. This adventure takes the learning curve for games and makes it a positive. White Plume Mountain is more like The Moonshot than D-Day.

This module also features wonderful artwork. My personal favorite is the fighter on page 6. It isn’t the best, but captures the character's reaction so perfectly. The fighter’s “WTF” look is classic: “Who jumps platform to platform over hellishly hot mud? Everything in fighter school trained me not to do this.” The images for Blackrazor, the Mountain itself and Keraptis are iconic of classic Dungeons and Dragons.

Where to Buy:
DriveThru RPG
As a part of a set, S1-4. or as a stand alone product. I really must by this. I really need to stop impulse buying. I'm am so gonna buy this.
DriveThru RPG also has Dungeon Tiles and a new version for 3.5 Adventures.

Google Docs Templates for D&D

Google Drive shared files and templates are a rich find for gamers of all types. Under templates, you can find a ton of D&D resources.

My personal favorite is Benjamin Connell’s 3.5 Character Sheet. I plan on making the standard for my 3.5 campaigns.

As time permits, I will be loading pre-genned characters in the top bar. Right now, I have characters for D&D and AD&D. I also have a link to my own AD&D character sheet for Unearthed Arcana pictured on the right.

Additionally, if you like having secondary skills for PCs or stat'd up NPCs, try my book Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners.

Feelies

When I was seriously into gaming, I made feelies.

This document was made in 1988 or so. It references the Castle Amber module, The Order of Light from Gemstone III, and Louise Cooper’s Time Master Series, plus the city of Charn from my home-brewed campaign.

(2024 update - Back in 2015, I didn't mention Charn is from the Chronicles of Naria. I have no idea why, that is my favorite book in the series.) 

The punchline to many of these references was that the characters AND players were aware of all of these references as works of fiction. The characters had copies of the Time Master Series and Averoigne stories. Each character has ring of wishes to enter the stories themselves.

When I was in high school, this seemed like a great hook.

A Study in Recreation: Fear Itself

Today’s update is about Kippers and Jam‘s blog post on recreation. Adrian BK and company has revisited a module called Fear Itself, created back in 1999.

The authors lost the original copy and rewrote it after reconnecting with each other.

The details:

Module: BK1 Fear Itself
Author: Adrian BK
Level: 2-4 (AD&D)
Pages: 18
Price: Free!

You can download a copy from Kippers and Jam. This module features enough leeway to plug into nearly any campaign or play style. Fear Itself features glorious artwork from many artists and professional quality layout and formatting.

Take a look and don’t forget to thank the folks at Kipper and Jam for providing high quality game products.

Reshare – Billiam Brabble and Inked Adventures

Reshare my butt… this is a total post theft.

Billiam Babble on Google +, posted about Inked Adventures, a set of 3d paper dungeon morphs. These sets are available on DriveThru RPG and retail for less than $10.00 a set. In many cases, much less than 10 bucks. You can also check out Inked Adventures link above for free items, support, and errata.

What a deal for a creative and easy way to enhance your dungeon crawl.

For the record, my payday is Friday so sadly I have to wait to order my set.

The One McGuffin

In RPGs, magic can be problematic, even chaos-inducing. A DM must carefully consider each and every spell and trinket given to the characters, otherwise he or she will break the campaign. The lesser magics are troublesome sometimes, but it is relatively easy to adjust for them. Let’s face it, DM’s can’t and won’t think of everything, every time.

Sometimes you just have to let things play out and laugh at the mistake. However, I blame many bad endings on The One McGuffin getting loose.

A McGuffin is a device to further the plot. It has no other function and DM’s are well advised not to create and define an item so that it is both a solution and closure to the campaign storyline.

In AD&D, artifacts were vastly overpowered magic items that really should have been left undescribed. Instead, they were tacked on the end of the magic item list, as if they were a viable option.

There is a temptation for all DM’s to use The One McGuffin as a solution to wrap up the scenario. Never, repeat, never allow characters to use an evil item for good. First, it doesn’t make sense for good to use evil for good ends. Second, as a wise man once said, “Power corrupts and absolute power is really, really neat.”

The second pen hits paper and the McGuffin is clearly defined, somewhere deep down inside, you have decided the magic needs to be used. In all cases, this is very much a Deus ex-Machina story ending. If you build the characters up to the pinnacle of power, yet even from that great height, they can’t make a good ending of their own, what is the point?

Beware of The One McGuffin.

The Random Wizard

Anyone who has DM’ed a campaign has partnered the characters with a random wizard to save their bacon if things go south.

I had no idea that Random Wizards existed in real life, but here’s one. His latest post brings back classic D&D modules with news on the latest offerings from RPGnow. 

(2024 Update - This website is long gone, but thanks to the Wayback Machine, you can still access some of the content.)