An Idea: Social Proficiencies

I have a bit of an issue with social skills (Intimidate and Persuasion) - by and large, what happens is that the party has a 'face' character, who has a high Charisma and will take proficiency in one (or even both) of these skills. That character will then stand front and centre in all social interactions the group faces, and basically run the entire Interaction pillar of the game.

My idea to fix this, which I'll grant you is currently half-baked at best, is to remove those skills in favour of Social Proficiencies - these work much like Tool proficiencies, in that they apply every time the character is interacting with a particular group. For instance, the Noble might have proficiency in 'nobles' (surprisingly enough), meaning that he applies the bonus in all social interactions of that sort. The Warlock might have a higher Charisma, but without the proficiency he may still not be the optimum choice. (Indeed, if you combine that with rules that there are some things you can only do if you have the proficiency, it's an even stronger mechanic.)

Once that's in place, the next step is "Social Expertise", where a character will be considered an expert in certain social environments - parties, command, negotiations, gambling, and so on. When in an environment where the character has expertise, double the proficiency bonus applies... provided it applies at all, of course!

The net effect of all of this should be that the Interaction pillar becomes at least a bit more spread out - it becomes much harder to have a single nominated 'face' character. Additionally, since the Social proficiencies are less tightly tied to ability scores than the existing skills, that at least potentially gives rise to using Intelligence and Wisdom in place of Charisma as the key characteristic (or even other attributes... though Charisma is likely to be the default).

At the moment, it's little more than a half-baked part of an idea. But I'm definitely of the opinion that the game would be better for having as many characters as possible involved in all three pillars (Combat, Interaction, Exploration). At the moment, the Combat pillar is quite good, the Exploration pillar isn't quite so good, and the Interaction pillar is worse still. So if this helps redress that somewhat, so much the better.

Perception and Investigation

Something I've been doing wrong with 5e since I started:

The purpose of the Perception skill (technically a Wisdom (Perception) check) is to determine what the character's senses can detect - does the character see the tripwire, smell the gas, hear the voices in the other room, taste the poison, feel the gust of cold air... or intuit the presence of magic, hearken the the presence of a god, or similar.

The purpose of the Investigate skill (technically an Intelligence (Investigate) check) is to assemble known facts into conclusions: this funny smell combined with the lantern flame turning that colour means we're about to encounter flammable gas; this taste could just be almonds... or cyanide; the tripwire, coupled with these holes in the wall, indicate a poison dart trap... and so on and so forth.

This means a few of things:

• When the PCs enter an area, the DM should describe all the things that they see, hear, smell, etc, depending on their passive Perception scores... but should not indicate what these mean.
  
• When a PC searches an area, the DM should first ask how they go about doing that (in broad terms), and then call for a Perception check, and then describe what they now see (but, again, should not indicate what these mean).
  
• PCs should probably also have a "passive Investigate" score, calculated in the same way as for passive Perception. And based on that, the DM should probably also explain how some of the things detected fit together.
  
• When PCs search an area, the DM should probably also call for an Investigate check (in addition to the Perception check) and use that to describe how some of the things detected fit together.

To give an example of something that's likely to come up in my next session...

Player: I'll examine the clock. Is there anything of interest there?
Me: It's a very large, very ornate clock. It's a very modern construction, but made to look considerably older. The mechanism appears to be extremely complex. It also looks like the back of the clock is recessed into the wall itself.
Player: I'll open it up to take a closer look at the mechanism.
Me: Make a Perception check, and also an Investigate check.
Player: I rolled a 17 for Perception, and 13 for Investigate.
Me: You note that several of the components are free moving - they don't appear to be part of the mechanism for the clock itself. You also note that the back of the clock is hinged. You don't know what this means.
Player: Ah, there must be a secret door. Can I check for traps?
Me: You've already checked. You didn't detect the trap.
Player: The trap?
Me: {grins}
Player: Okay, can I move the mechanism to open the door?
Me: Sure, roll a Dex check. Your proficiency with Thieves' Tools applies...
Player: 24.
Me: Manipulating the device is easy. You move the various levers around, and... well, you know I said you didn't detect the trap?
Player: Yes...
Me: Click...

I guess I should maybe provide some context to this: in the example given, the clock contains both a secret door (DC 15) and a trap (DC 20). The player rolled well enough on Perception to notice the moving parts associated with the first but not the second, but didn't roll well enough on Investigate to understand either. If the latter roll had been a 15 or higher, I would have told him that this was all part of a secret door.

You'll notice that in the example I didn't allow the player a second roll to search specifically for traps. To get a second roll, the player would have needed to significantly changed the scenario - by smashing apart the clock, by taking an age to break it all down, or similar.

Lastly, I've adopted the "click" rule described by the Angry GM: when a trap is triggered the PCs have an immediate chance to declare an action. They don't get told the context, and so effectively have to guess - dive to the side, jump straight up, stop breathing, etc. If they guess right, they gain Advantage on the resulting save (or the trap has Disadvantage on the attack); if they guess disastrously wrong they suffer Disadvantage; in most cases, or if they dither, they just get hit normally. (In extreme cases, Dis/Advantage may turn into auto-success/failure. But that's less common.)

Conditions for Resting

As the "Storm King's Thunder" involves considerable overland travel, I'm gradually working on a set of house rules associated with such journeys. In particular, I've been looking at rules for resting.

Short Rests

In general, you can take a short rest at any time, unless the environment is actively hostile. It is assumed you can hole up reasonably securely, post a watch, and remain sufficiently alert to get some rest. The only real downside is that a short rest takes an hour.

Long Rest

The prerequisites for a long rest are considerably more arduous than for a short rest.

In the Dungeon

In general you cannot take a long rest in a dungeon - you will have to retreat from the dungeon and make camp outside. There may be some exceptions to this, especially if you have cleared large sections of the dungeon or if you can find an easily-isolated room.

In the Wilderness

In order to take a long rest you require food and water, warmth, shelter, and appropriate clothing. The requirements for food and water are simple enough - characters must carry or find rations and must carry or find water. Likewise, appropriate clothing will be determined by the terrain, but is generally something that can be assumed (unless the party find themselves teleported, or similar!).

The requirements for warmth and shelter generally means that the party must keep a fire for the night and must have sufficient tents for all members. The latter requirement can be omitted between late spring and early autumn in temperate climes, provided the weather is cooperative.

If the party cannot meet the requirements for a long rest, they can still be assumed to get sufficient sleep to stave off exhaustion, and can enjoy the benefits of a short rest.

Urban Environments

Under normal circumstances, a party should be able to benefit from a short rest in any urban environment (includes inns and way-stations in the wilderness).

On the Planes

Naturally, the requirements for a long rest vary wildly in planar environments. The requirements of "food and water, security and shelter" remain unchanged in broad terms, but what these mean in specific terms will obviously depend on the precise nature of the planar environment!

Mysteries: A Golden Rule

One of the classic problems with mysteries in D&D was the Paladin's ability to detect evil at will - he could just scan everyone, identify the one person who pings as evil, and that's your bad guy. (I exaggerate, but only a little.) The other classic problem that I've seen when people construct mystery scenarios is that you tend to have the Big Bad and a bunch of other NPCs. And because those NPCs are not the Big Bad they're always open and helpful - and so identifying the one guy with something to hide becomes easy.

Well, there's a shock.

Of course, if you actually read some mysteries, especially by people who write them repeatedly and well, you find that it doesn't work like that. Instead, the protagonist meets resistance on several fronts, as people simply refuse to speak to him, or they're evasive on particular subjects, or they warn him off of investigating some topics (which, of course, encourages the protagonist to investigate exactly that).

And the reason for this is that there's a golden rule for writing mysteries: everybody has something to hide.

What that means is that every character should have some subjects they're just not willing to discuss, every character should have some things they're willing to lie about, and every character should have some secret that they don't want to be revealed. The PCs' job, then, is to tease out the truth from the set of inconsistencies - if A say this and B says that and the physical evidence says this other thing, then the truth must be...

(Once that's established, it becomes a matter of applying the Three Clue Rule - for every conclusion that you want the PCs to reach, you should provide three big clues. That way, they'll miss one, misinterpret a second, and get it on the third.)

It's also worth noting that all those lies and secrets should not (or at least should not necessarily) make the person doing the lying a villain - a person might well have made a stupid but innocent mistake that they're now hiding.

Of course, for extra credit you could set it up such that the person is willing to reveal the truth, but only in the right circumstances. For instance, a man might not be willing to discuss his whereabouts, and therefore his alibi, in front of his girlfriend if his whereabouts were "buying an engagement ring for her" - but might well be happy to discuss that when she's not around. (You'll note that that is also a secret that doesn't make him a villain - see above.)

As regards the problems created by detect magic, these are usually caused by people forgetting that the PHB specifies that humans don't have a tendency for any particular alignment, including Neutral. Therefore in any settlement fully a third of everyone the PCs meet should ping the Paladin's spell.

(And, yes, it's also the case that in addition to the 'main' evil that the PCs are confronting you'd also expect them to happen upon a whole load of other nastinesses that they might or might not want to clear up as well. So maybe that creepy old man isn't the murderer, but if he's instead using his business contacts as a front for drug smuggling, maybe the PCs want to stop that as well?)

Anyway, that's that. To recap:

• When writing a mystery, be sure to include plenty of people who might be the villain.
  
• Every major character should have topics they don't want to talk about and secrets they don't want shared. (They might be willing to talk about some or all of these under particular conditions.)
  
• Those secrets don't necessarily make the person a villain, and even if the person is a villain it doesn't necessarily mean they're the villain.
  
• In the course of the investigation the PCs will likely uncover a bunch of other issues. They may or may not want to fix those at the same time.

A Strange Observation, and Some Thoughts

For reasons that now escape me, I found myself looking back at the pregenerated characters for the D&D Starter Set, specifically to look at how much food and water they carry. What I found was odd - different characters may carry 10, 5, or 2 days' worth of rations. One character carries no rations at all! Likewise, four of the five characters have a waterskin.

(Actually, there is a good reason for this - depending on the chosen background, each character will have a different 'pack', and those packs contain varying amounts of food and water.)

Incidentally, it's worth noting that D&D (at least in 5e) says that characters need a gallon of water per day, while the waterskin contains half a gallon of liquid. So by RAW four of the five characters have enough water for only half a day. However, I'm inclined to adjust this - apparently the recommended intake for an adult is about half a gallon a day, so a waterskin should be enough for one day.

Anyway, the reason (I suspect) that the characters have food and water, but have it assigned with no particular rhyme or reason, is that that's one of those things that D&D has as a "nod to realism" - characters have food and water because of course they need to eat and drink, but who really cares? Just write them down and forget about them!

But this is one of the areas where I think the game could (and probably should) be doing better - and especially in a Starter Set adventure like "Lost Mine of Phandelver", where there is a perfect opportunity to do better. Here, the game starts with a fairly simple dungeon (which is good), then has a largely 'urban' section (which is also good), and then has a section of exploring a wider wilderness area. So by the time the group are on to that exploration, they're already used to much of the core of the game, and ready for some of the resource tracking that could come with that process.

(Then again, D&D's rules for wilderness travel have traditionally sucked, and although 5e is slightly better than previous editions they're still not good.)

The reason that I'm pondering all this is that "Storm King's Thunder", the adventure I'm running at the moment, features a lot of overland travel. And while at the moment that travel is all on roads and is easily handwaved, before too long the party will want to be going off-road, at which point it would be really good to have something better to offer.

Plus, at some point I'm keen to move over to my "ten things" approach to encumbrance. At which point I'm inclined to consider rations for 5 days to be one "thing" and a waterskin likewise to be one "thing". (Then again, right now they have a wagon, so don't need to worry about 'things'. But once they go off-road...)

The Beginning of a Thought

I was musing about single-use magic items, and in particular the tendency of PCs to just horde these items - because they might be needed later, or because the Cleric has the ability to cast the spell at no cost, or for whatever reason they're never the best use of resource, so they just sit there. It's something that bugs me just a bit (though not too much - it's not something I give much thought to). Certainly, I would much rather that characters use these items!

My initial solution to this had three parts:

1. Use of encumbrance rules such that the characters' ability to carry lots of potions is limited. Especially when using the "ten things" rule, carrying lots of individual potions or scrolls becomes prohibitive.
   
2. Use of some sort of 'expiry date' mechanism to foster a use-it-or-lose-it mentality. The big problem with this is that it limits the ability to place potions within a dungeon, since they'd probably have expired by the time the PCs get there.
   
3. Allowing PCs to trade in unwanted potions and scrolls. Initially, this would just allow them to sell them for cash. However, if I ever sort out my revisions to item crafting, it may be possible to break down potions into Reagents and scrolls into Lore, and thus reuse them on other items.

However, I have recently been exposed to a fourth option that I think has some considerable merit: when a PC uses a one-use magic item (potion, scroll, or similar), they are awarded a small XP award. This needs to be a small award, in order to avoid totally blowing XP budgets out of the water, but it should provide a small incentive to persuade PCs to actually use these items, rather than just hording items for a rainy day.

(My initially proposed award would be 50 XP per member of the party per item. Again, though, if and when I revise item crafting, I'm inclined to think that each item will be assigned a value - you can trade it in for gold, break it down for Lore or Reagents, or expend it to gain XP, and in each case it is worth the same numeric amount. But that's a long-term project I'll probably never get around to.)

Who Builds Dungeons?

I was thinking about secret doors, and so I was all set to write a post about how ideally in a dungeon the DM should establish a consistent pattern for secret doors for clever players to pick up on and thus work out where they 'should' be. (This also applies to traps, by the way.) But then I made the next logical leap and considered that there really should also be consistent motifs across multiple dungeons - if Saul Stonehammer builds several dungeons, it's likely that he'll develop a common motif or calling card. Thus, players who are really paying attention should be able to figure out "this is a Saul Stonehammer" and thus "there's a secret door here". Well, maybe.

But then two things occurred to me:

• This should apply to a lot more than just secret doors. Traps as well, of course, but also dungeon dressing, the layout of rooms, and even which rooms exist in the dungeon in the first place.
  
• Attaching this to a single named creator is way too obscure - it's unlikely that a single group of PCs will adventure in enough "Saul Stonehammer" dungeons to warrant learning those motifs and calling cards. But if the motifs are done by race, and especially if that lore is at least somewhat known and becomes available to (some) PCs - dwarves and artificers in particular, but perhaps others... well, that might be interesting.

So I was then thinking about likely candidates for who would build all those dungeons. A partial list, specifically tailored to Terafa, might be as follows:

Dwarves: The first and most obvious candidate, I can picture dwarves building lots of little way-stations and tombs on their escape from the Underdark. Features are likely to be strong defences, but also multiple exits, including well-hidden secret back doors.

Goblins: I envisage the goblins being a somewhat fallen race, given to cunning but not craft, at least in the modern age. But that suggests there may be all sorts of old goblin ruins out there, filled with crafty tricks, traps, and treasure for the daring adventurer.

Kobolds: The theme here is warrens, narrow winding passages, and lots and lots of traps. These are dangerous places, but they also hide all manner of arcane lore.

Humans, ancient: The people of the ancient world were masters of techniques and technologies far beyond their modern kin. Ancient human dungeons are old but they are well made, and they are places of wonder.

Humans, modern: By comparison, modern humans build dungeons that are plentiful but which are, comparitively speaking, shoddy construction.

Giants/Dragons: These dungeons are monuments to hubris - places built on a grand scale to show off the power of those constructing them. But they were also largely assembled by slave labour, which means that the work is not terribly well done, and leaves them prone to collapse or worse. Beware!

Wizards: Speaking of hubris, wizards have enough of it to demand their own category. The theme here is on strangeness - you might well find a staircase here that only goes up, or 'doors' that connect to wildly-separated places. Basically, in a wizard's construction all bets are off!

Unknown: The ancient world had at least one empire that is no longer recorded in history, and they left behind several ruins. Little is known about these builders, except that they made extensive use of a snake motif, and were great believers in strange angles and curves.

And that's where I am so far. Eight sub-groupings is more than enough (indeed, might be a few too many), but should give plenty of variety. There's more to be gained from this topic, but doing so would need more work than I'm ready to put in.

Refining My Spelljammer Campaign Idea

Last month I wrote about an idea for a Spelljammer campaign. One of the things I wasn't terribly happy about was the notion of starting off the campaign with the PCs being abducted as slaves - I'm not keen on that sort of loss of agency early on. Plus, the existing Spelljammer lore makes starting in the Forgotten Realms a suboptimal choice - that sphere is too well known, so that the campaign can quickly become a railroad, as there's probably a 'best' way to go (hire a navigator, and enjoy the ride!).

That being the case, I've given the notion some more thought, and here's what I've come up with.

First off, make sure to tell the players that this is going to be a Spelljammer campaign! Otherwise, this next step is going to feel like a big bait-and-switch.

Have the players create characters for the Eberron setting. They're going to be a group of adventurers hired by an ultra-rich nobleman - his daughter (and heir) is about to depart on a Grand Tour of the Five Nations, and the PCs are charged with going with her and bringing her back safe and well. To that end, the nobleman has hired the use of a very large airship for a year. The airship, like the Golden Dragon, has two bound elementals - a hostile fire elemental that provides the motive power and a 'friendly' air elemental. That combination makes for some planar instabilities, making it vulnerable to a disjointing ritual...

(Whether the daughter in this case should be one of the PCs or not is an open question - the campaign will work either way. However, it should be made clear that the daughter is not in charge of the expedition - the whole reason for agents being hired to protect her is her lack of experience! I would also check whether there are any players who really want to run characters of spacefaring races. In such a case, I would give that player the chance to switch out his character after the first adventure.)

Also accompanying the party will be the noble's court wizard, also charged with keeping his daughter safe. Unfortunately, what the nobleman doesn't know is that the wizard is in league with his younger son, who seeks to remove an impediment to his inheritance. The wizard has a ritual available to transport the airship "to the outer darkness", thus removing the problem.

Anyway, the voyage starts, the wizard performs his ritual, and the party find themselves Lost in Space - the airship disappears from Eberron and instead finds itself in a junk-field of fantastical ships. The fire elemental has been released as part of the ritual (and is gone), while the air elemental is rapidly dying, but can sustain the ship's air supply for a few hours. Perhaps one of these ships has something of some use?

The first (second?) adventure is therefore to investigate a broken Spelljammer for salvage, which will just happen to include a helm (thus fixing the air supply, giving them a means to get home). And it will give the party some guidance as to their next step.

From there, as discussed in the previous post, it's mostly a case of navigating home. However, because the Eberron sphere is isolated, they can't just hire a navigator. Instead, they must follow some clues and generally find their way. The last step in the campaign, and the penultimate adventure, sees them making a literal leap of faith, crossing the Phlogiston where there is no longer a path, and getting back to the Eberron Sphere.

And then it's finally a journey home, a confrontation with the evil wizard, and time for tea and biscuits. Huzzah!

My Top Games of All Time

Firstly, I should note that these are the games that I, personally, have had the most fun playing. I don't claim this as a definitive list of the best games ever! Still, with that caveat in place, here are my top five RPGs of all time:

1. D&D (in its various forms): Of course this had to be number 1. Ranging from the heady days of the BECMI Red Box back in high school, through the dark times of the cancellation in the late 90s, the resurgence with 3e, the dark times of 4e, and then the resurgence with 5e, this is the game I've always come back to. It's the game I've logged the most hours of play with, and the game that has given me most of my best campaigns. So, #1 it is.
   
2. Vampire (in its various forms): The game I played in university, and for years afterward, Vampire caused a fundamental shift in my thinking on how an RPG should be played, how a campaign should be structured, and so forth. Great stuff - even if I find I have no real desire ever to play it again.
   
3. Star Wars: Another obvious big-hitter, for me Star Wars has two flavours of 'good' RPGs - the original d6 incarnation (mostly as expressed in the very first edition), and then in the final d20 "Saga Edition" version. These are very different, and do different things very well, but they're both great fun to play.
   
4. Firefly/Serenity: The newest game on the list, this one gave rise to several wonderful "Christmas Games" and also the "Lost Episodes" open tabletop campaign. This game has the particular distinction that the rules fit the setting almost perfectly - playing this game feels like running an episode of the show. It's just good fun.
   
5. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: I've run two good campaigns with this game - the "Path of the Damned" trilogy of published adventures, plus a homebrew "Company of the Black Hand" campaign. The latter went particularly well - it seems that for playing a game that feels like the "Black Company" series of novels WFRP cannot be beat.

And that's it; the top five. An honourable mention should go to "d20 Modern", and perhaps also to "Exalted".

I don't have, and don't intend to compose, a list of games I don't enjoy. I've only had a small number of bad experiences, each of which can be mostly explained by other factors than the choice of game - my policy still remains that if someone wants to run a game for me, I'm willing to play just about anything.

Where No-one Has Gone Before

On Saturday I watched "The Undiscovered Country" again, and once again I was stuck by just how good a seam of material there is for role-playing purposes. By the end of that film you have an uneasy peace breaking out between the Federation and the Klingons, albeit with plenty within both civilisations more than willing to bring it down; you have the Romulan Empire scheming constantly; you have whole regions of space out there to be explored; and you have the Enterprise-A and its crew being decommissioned and the Enterprise-B being brought into service.

All in all, that's a great environment for role-playing! And, as an added bonus, that era also has the best uniform design of all Star Trek. Really, what's not to like?

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I want to run that campaign. Sadly, chance would be a fine thing...

Review: Dungeon Crawl Classics

Last week I finished my read-through of "Dungeon Crawl Classics". As I've mentioned before, this was a somewhat odd experience, as I concluded part way through that I would most likely never run this game. Still, it's worthy of a review.

This is a black-and-white hardback book of some 466 pages of text (plus a detailed index and some adverts in the back matter). It presents a complete RPG in those pages - at present there are actually no supplements for this book, at least from the original publishers, although there are many adventures and a setting available for use. That's pretty cool.

The book really is a work of art, with lots of illustrations throughout, all geared to give a very particular atmosphere. In that regard, this is one of the very best RPGs I've seen - so many of them follow the standard fantasy glamour aesthetic (which is fine, but gets rather same-y).

The rules material is presented clearly and with a minimum of fuss. And, despite the obviously love of the designers for Gygax's work, the language used throughout is nicely clear and comprehensible - no High Gygaxian text on offer here! That's all to the good. The mechanics are a little table-heavy for my tastes, but that does allow a lot of information to be presented concisely.

All in all, this is a great book and well worth the money, if you're going to actually play the game. As noted, this game is very much not for all, and indeed is very much "not for me". So the reader is advised to consider carefully whether they'll actually play it - and indeed should seek out the free Quickstart rules if in doubt (these give a good taster of the game, so are well worth a look).

(One thing I would be really curious about: this game very clearly states that it derives its influences from Appendix N. Which is cool. It also starts the PCs are level 0 nobodies, raw newbies off the farm with no skills to speak of. That's also cool, although a definite instance of "not for me". However, I would very much like to know where that particular bit of inspiration comes from - it's certainly not a feature in the Appendix N works I have read, where Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and Elric are all badasses when we first meet them, while the Fellowship of the Ring is positively heaving with warriors and wizards. Is it just the hobbits, or is there some other antecendent for that design choice?)

Christmas Game: No No No

One of my better ideas in the field of gaming was to run an annual "Christmas Game". Somehow over the years this became an annual game of "Firefly" (or, before that, "Serenity"), which was invariably good fun.

Unfortunately with all the chaos surrounding the house move, we didn't manage to get around to a Christmas Game in 2016, and then last year there was just no time to fit one in. Unfortunately, this year will make three years in a row that this tradition has not been observed, which sadly means it is probably over and done with.

(That said, it's not entirely impossible that it might be reincarnated in some later year. In which case I suspect I may also adopt a slightly different tack, hearkening back to an even older, and now obsolete, tradition: ghost stories at Christmas.)

We'll see: either I'll run a Christmas Game in 2019 or it really will be time to declare that tradition ended.

Bringing a New Player On Board

One of the players from the Work Game has left the company, having chosen to pursue a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Which is a shame, but also quite cool.

I had expected to deal with this by writing his character out, with the potential of having one of the other players possibly switch role to take on the Cleric (as he'd previously indicated a slight dissatisfaction with his Fighter). However, in a useful bit of timing, another colleague has expressed some interest in joining the game.

The only downside with this is that he's jumping in at 5th level, and will be taking over the Cleric - possibly the most complex of all the characters at the table.

So, what to do?

Well, my plan is three-fold.

Assuming he sticks it out after his first session (which was okay but not stellar), I think my plan is to start really small and build from there.

As I think I've mentioned before, I tend to introduce the character sheet across three weeks - the attacks and defences first, then the skills and abilities, and then "everything else".

Similarly, the rules are introduced a little at a time, starting with the dice and the three types of roll, then the action types and combat system, and then the rules for spells and magic.

For the spells, as they are the most complex part of that most complex character, I'll start by giving just three to start - Cure Wounds (of course), Call Lightning, and Spiritual Weapon (since those are the character's two most iconic abilities) - and allowing him to use any of them as he wishes. In the second week, I'll introduce the Cantrips, since they can also be used at-will. From there the different levels of spell and the uses per day. Then the domain spells, since those are always prepared. And then, finally, the full set of spells.

But the key and crucial thing will be to take it slowly - introduce a bit at a time, and make sure to indicate that some things have been cut down significantly for simplicity!

(The other concern, of course, is the possibility that other players may 'help' by throwing random bits of explanation at the new guy, without any sort of rhyme or reason. But I'll deal with that if and when it comes up!)

Retries

One of the key features of 5e is something called "bounded accuracy". Effectively, what this means is that the bonuses to various rolls are much more constrained - a character who is 'good' at something will generally find he gets most of his bonus in the first few levels, and will then only see a fairly moderate increase as time goes on. This is matched, of course, with a much more bounded set of DCs.

(There are exceptions, of course, especially if a player wants to burn a lot of resource on a particular speciality. And I exaggerate somewhat, too. But the above is a reasonably good description.)

In real play, what that means is that if the whole group rolls for something (initiative, for example), it's likely that whoever rolls best on the die will end up with the best overall total. This differs from 3e, in particular, where it was not uncommon for a character who is 'good' at something to have a bonus +20 or more higher than the character who is 'poor' at that thing.

That, of course, is something of a mixed blessing. In my opinion, though, it's a net good.

But it does have two important consequences. Firstly, the DM needs to be very wary about allowing retries, and likewise the DM needs to control group rolls quite carefully. Otherwise, the likelihood is that some of the dice will come up especially well or badly, skewing the results quite harshly.

So, here's what I recommend:

Firstly, you should only roll where there's a meaningful chance of failure. If the party want to search a room and they have all the time in the world, there's no point in rolling - they should find whatever it is that is there to be found. (Of course, it's possible that there might be something so well hidden that they can't find it, no matter how they search. But even in that case, why bother rolling - they can't find it!)

Secondly, retries should only be allowed if the situation significantly changes. (In combat, of course, the situation is constantly shifting, hence the "why can you retry an attack roll?" concundrum doens't apply.) What that means is that if the Rogue fails to open a lock, he does not get to retry unless his bonus increases, he gets a better set of tools, or something else significantly shifts - that first roll represents his best possible effort. (And note that the whole situation has to change. So if the Rogue packs a set of 'normal' tools and a set of 'masterwork' tools, he can't use them in that order to get two rolls. That is, to put not too fine a point on it, cheating.)

Thirdly, as much as possible there should be consequences for failure, and those consequences should be spelled out as clearly as possible. If the party fail to break down a door, this will notify whoever is beyond the door to their presence. The party should probably know that before the first roll. (Incidentally, this is a case where I would allow a retry... sort of. I actually wouldn't bother with the second roll - after the first failure, they can automatically break down the door, if that is at all possible... they just suffer whatever the consequences of that first failure were.) Of course, in some cases it's valid to have hidden consequences for failure - in the case of a hidden trap, or similar. But that should be the exception, not the rule.

Fourthly, in situations where the whole party engage in a single task, don't have everyone roll. Instead, have whoever declared the action first roll (since it was his idea) with advantage, representing the assistance of the rest of the party. (Conversely, if it's something like sneaking around, you probably want one person to roll with disadvantage - representing the Rogue using his advanced skill, but being hampered by the need to help the others. That gives slightly odd results, since the full-plate-wearing Fighter thus benefits from the Rogue's advanced skill, but it's not too horrible.)

Of course, don't forget that the game already has some helpful mechanisms in place for this purpose. In some cases a group check may well be appropriate (everyone rolls, and if half the party succeed then everyone succeeds; otherwise everyone fails). In other cases, Passive Perception may well apply (in an ambush, roll Stealth for the enemy and compare with the PCs' PP scores - this allows some to be surprised and not others).

I should note one other thing: unlike some DM's, I'm not of the view that you should seek to minimise the roll of the dice in the game. Rolling dice is fun, and provides a degree of uncertainty that is generally beneficial to RPGs (in my opinion). But I am aware that the dice should be used carefully, lest bizarre and unwanted results crop up and start derailing things.

Adherent of a Repeated Meme

One of the things that has become evident during my scan-and-shred exercise is that I repeat the same ideas and motifs a lot. Quite a bit of this seems to come from aping what I thought I saw in published campaigns, but it's fair to say that even back in the day those published settings weren't quite so repetitive. (Seriously, every one of the settings I've tackled has had a number of cities, each with exactly three taverns detailed - one that is a good haunt for adventurers, one that is of moderate quality, and one that is a dive. And that's only the most easily explained repeat...)

Of course, I was aware of that to a certain extent. I've always had particular ideas, characters, and symbols that I like to come back to again and again. And in some cases, that's no bad thing. As I've said before, my favourite one-time author (David Gemmell) basically retold the same story again and again - but it was a good story.

Still, what this highlights is that I would certainly benefit from more variety in my thinking. Though that might be tricky - even being aware of the internal biases, it's tricky to recognise them when applying them in practice, and it's also hard to train the brain to produce new ideas.

(On the other hand, the exercise has thrown up some ideas that I hadn't revisited in quite some time, and some of the other stuff has fired some interesting notions, some of which had never occurred to me before. It has certainly been an interesting and worthwhile process!)

A Spelljammer Campaign

WotC keep dropping hints that they want to do something with Spelljammer. Which is fine, but does fill me with a little trepidation: I haven't exactly been thrilled with their storylines so far, there's a suggestion that they're going to merge Spelljammer with Planescape (which sounds about as appealing as putting fish sauce on cherry ice cream - two strong flavours that just don't go together), and there's also the issue that every time they've looked at Spelljammer since they original they've contrived to mess it up.

But apart from that, it should be great!

Anyway, having given it a little thought, I think I would suggest approaching such a storyline in the vein of "The Odyssey", the saga of Cugel the Clever, or indeed "Star Trek: Voyager".

That is, start the PCs are adventurers somewhere in the Forgotten Realms, and be sure to given them very strong ties to that setting. Then, have them fall into a magical portal/be banished by an angry wizard/get captured by Neogi slavers and stolen away.

The bottom line is that they must quickly find themselves far from home, preferably at a Spelljammer hub, and motivated to go on a journey. Then give them ready access to a ship, and probably some friendly NPCs to help crew it until they're ready to take the Helm, and off they go! Thereafter, each chapter can be a visit to a separate Sphere, with some adventure to be had therein, culminating in them getting home and fighting off the Big Bad.

(Actually, thinking some more, I'd maybe run with the "captured by Neogi" approach. Then have a "training montage" as they learn the operation of a Spelljammer vessel, followed by their sale to a cruel pirate near the Rock of Bral. And then you give them an opportunity for a quick mutiny, a visit to the space port, and off you go! In addition to getting them up and running with their own ship quickly, and equipped with the skills to use it, it also establishes an ideal Big Bad - on returning home they can take down those same slavers who got them into this mess in the first place.)

And now I feel bad that I don't have a group ready to hand - I quite fancy the notion of running that campaign!

Bit of a Problem

Over the past couple of years, I have become increasingly convinced that D&D just has a bad set of ability scores. Indeed, I'm increasingly inclined to think that characters should have three: Body, Mind, and Soul (with the possible inclusion of a fourth, in the form of Luck).

That's not a perfect arrangement, of course - under that model it's not really possible to differentiate between the guy who is really strong, the guy who is just really tough, and the guy who is really agile. And it probably suffers from a certain amount of blurring between Mind and Soul (though no worse than the current blurring between Int and Wis). However, I'd be inclined to resolve at least some of this by having each player pick a Trait for his character - either in addition to the current Race, Class, Background trio, or perhaps instead of the 'Race' option (in which case 'Dwarf', 'Elf', and the like would become Traits).

All that said, there's a bit of a problem with this: the six ability scores used by D&D are one of the few truly sacred cows of the system - the moment the game switches to something else, it ceases to be recognisably D&D (the others are classes, levels, and hit points).

What that means is a couple of things: Firstly, D&D is probably stuck with a set of ability scores that really isn't too good. And where D&D leads, the rest of the RPG market follows. Secondly, I'm most definitely not in the market for any RPG that uses those ability scores or any near variant of them - I'm just not in the market for any near-D&D game. That said, at the moment I'm pretty much not in the market for any RPG at all, so there's always that to consider...

Rulings Not Rules

About a week ago, I was involved in a discussion concerning Sage Advice - the semi-official rules-clarification service performed on Twitter by a WotC rep. One of the comments that was made was from someone who said they would require their DM to follow Sage Advice, a position that I found to be... odd.

My position on Sage Advice is largely forged by decades of reading the column in Dragon magazine, and then online. In that time, I saw more than a few cases where the Sage got things wrong. That should hardly be surprising, given the sheer volume of rules and the sheer length of time involved. The upshot, then, is that I describe Sage Advice as having "a long and glorious history of getting things wrong". It's not that the Sage is always wrong, or even wrong the majority of the time. But traditionally he's been wrong often enough for me to take his rulings with a hefty pinch of salt.

Besides, there's the small issue that the Sage isn't running my game, I am. If a player wants to insist on a DM following Sage Advice, he's welcome to go and lobby the Sage for a position at his table!

All of that is largely meaningless introduction, though. What I mostly want to talk about is how I handle rules ambiguities at the table.

The scenario in question is this: we're playing the game, and something comes up where I'm not immediately certain how the rules should operate. How to proceed?

Well, firstly, I might go look up the relevant bit of the rules. However, I'll only do this if I have a fairly solid idea where to find the relevant text. Unfortunately, most RPG books are pretty badly organised, and 5e is no different in that regard. And although 5e is better than most in that it has an index, unfortunately that index is almost entirely useless - to the point where I consider it wasted pages. So I won't go hunting for rules - I can either find them quickly or we move on.

If I don't have a handy rules reference, or if I do but the rules still aren't clear, then I'll make a ruling and we'll move on. I'll always try to err on the side of the PCs in this regard - the game can generally bounce back from rulings that are over-generous; it's harder to come back from a TPK! But my over-riding principle is that it's better to keep the game moving than to get it absolutely spot-on.

Of course, that means there is the real possibility that a player might not agree with my ruling. So, what happens then?

Well, it depends.

If the player just feels it should have been ruled otherwise, he can state his case... quickly. But it's unlikely to change my mind, and I expect him to accept the eventual ruling in good grace.

If the player comes armed with a reference to the RAW, especially if I haven't bothered to look for that rule, or if I looked but didn't find it, then he certainly gets a hearing. And under that circumstance it's much more likely I'll reconsider. But it's not certain that I'll do so. Again, though, the DM's eventual ruling is final.

(Tweets from Sage Advice aren't references to RAW, so see the first case above. As I noted, the Sage isn't running my game.)

Of course, once the game is done, I'm quite happy to discuss the matter much further. And if I made the wrong ruling, I'm not overly averse to admitting as much (and will endeavour to rule correctly if that scenario comes up again). The point is not to enforce some sort of tyrannical "my way or the high way" style of game - it's purely that experience has taught me that it's usually better for the game to flow quickly than to proceed with 100% rules accuracy. I'm not sure that latter case is even possible anyway.

Interesting Deal-breakers

Reading through the "Dungeon Crawl Classics" core rulebook is an interesting experience. On every other page I seem to come across something that makes me think 'cool'... but I'm also pretty clear that I'll never actually run this game.

On the one hand, it is a lovely book, full of evocative and fun artwork. And things like the critical hit tables leave me thinking that it could be a heap of fun to play. The dice chain mechanics are very interesting, as indeed are the rules for multiple actions. And capping the game at 10th level is a really good idea, one that I wish D&D had adopted at least two editions ago.

However, the game also has at least two deal-breakers that say it's just not for me. The first is the blunt fact that if I ever run a D&D-like game again, it will be D&D (and almost certainly 5e, unless and until 6e comes out). The simple truth is that anything else is just more hassle than it's worth. (And while it's true that 5e is very far from being perfect, and indeed has some extremely annoying imperfections, that's true of pretty much all RPGs.)

The second deal-breaker, at least thus far, has been the use of race-as-class. This is one of those decisions that I can kinda-sorta understand from an old school point of view... but it's also not something that appeals. And it's something that's just embedded enough that removing it would be a real pain. (I actually really like what they've done with halflings in DCC, but still...)

The net effect of this is that I'm busily reading a book while knowing full well that I won't use it. And, given my recent efforts to clear out a load of dross from my shelves, I'm also sorely aware that this is a book I wouldn't buy now. Indeed, if it wasn't for the fact that it's so very new, it's almost certainly a book that would be currently heading out the door.

It all makes for a very weird experience.

Stuff Nobody Ever Uses

In my scan-and-shred exercise, I've taken a short break from dealing with old settings and have instead been working on old rules notes for the past several days. In that time I've been archiving old hand-written notes detailing new classes, kits (2nd Ed's version of sub-classes), spells, equipment, and so on.

And the really depressing thing in amongst that is that, with very few exceptions, nobody ever used this material. Most of the spells were never cast, most of the kits never saw use, and so on and so forth. They just soaked up time (which, thankfully, I had in abundance) and paper, and then soaked up space through several moves.

There's a lesson there: material that nobody ever uses has no value. Which in turn means one of two things:

If generating that material is enjoyable in its own right, or it serves to train you in some skills that you will put to good use later, then generating that material has some value in itself - carry on. (But you probably shouldn't be particularly sentimental about it - once you've generated it, it has already served its purpose and can go.)

But if generating that material doesn't have some intrinsic value, it's better not to bother. Go do something that does have value instead - be that creating something that will see use, honing some other useful skill, or doing something else entirely. Doing work just for the sake of doing that work is a waste of time.

Basically, it all comes back to value-add again - does an activity provide enough benefit (of some kind) to justify itself? Does buying a sourcebook provide enough benefit to justify the sticker-price? Or would the resources be better employed somewhere else?

(One thing amused me, though: in among my notes I found a revised spell memorisation/casting system for 2nd Ed AD&D. Almost exactly the same rules are now found in the 5e PHB.)

Revising as You Go

During the writing of the previous post I checked back at a some of the older work on the "Ultimates Version", and I've noticed a number of inconsistencies that have already slipped in (notably references to non-human deities and monotheism). That's probably inevitable when you work on things over time.

They also illustrate a massive danger when working on a big project like this: the temptation to go back and fix the inconsistencies as you go. The problem is that if you do that you end up going on to fix "one more thing"... and one more, and another, and so on. And so forward progress largely becomes impossible.

So, I won't be doing that. Best to try to ignore any inconsistencies for now - just assume that later stuff always supersedes the old. (One of the better bits of advice I got in school came from an English teacher, who advised just getting an essay written in any form. Once that's done, it's much easier to redraft, since at least all the ideas you need are out there for you to see.)

These posts are very much a first draft anyway. Eventually, I hope to gather them all up and write up the whole thing in some final version.

Terafa's Named Wizards

One of the cleverer bits of world-building in D&D, going right back to 1st edition, is the use of a small number of 'names' in spell descriptors: Tenser's Floating Disc, Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer, and so forth. For the most part, these are named for PCs back in the first campaign (and one real person), but they serve to provide just a smattering of world detail in the game (just why was Bigby obsessed with hands?), without being obtrusive.

(Of course, there's a downside - if you're playing in a setting where Mordenkainen is unknown, what do you do with his spells? Though there's an argument that it's best just to not worry about it - after all, Nystul is unknown in every setting.)

Anyway, for the purposes of Terafa, I am similarly inclined to introduce a number of 'named' wizards. I will almost certainly not get around to populating spells for all, or perhaps even any, of them, but they'll serve as a useful set of names to drop in whenever I need a name for a spell, book, magical theorem, or other bit of weirdness. And, of course, we've already seen one: Cavcari famously has his Last Invocation.

At this point, the bit of my mind that likes things neat and orderly notes that there are traditionally eight schools of magic (Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, Necromancy, and Transmutation), and so the ideal would be to have eight 'named' wizards, one for each school. So that's what I'm not going to do...

• Alendra: A contemporary of Drachias, Alendra attempted to prevent his ascension to godhood but was thwarted as her alliegance to The Usurper was exposed. She was a mistress of the arts of compulsion and manipulation, and an Archmage of the school of Enchantment. Alendra is believed to have been slain by Drachias, although some suggest that she instead stole immortality from a Fae queen.
  
• Cavcari: Despite being best known for his famous Last Invocation, Cavcari was actually an Archmage of the school of Necromancy - his obsession was with death and its avoidance. He was counted as a master of the black arts, but is also credited with ending the Necrotic Plague. It is whispered that he finally found en exception to his own Last Invocation, and thus found a means to cheat death. However, it is also suggested that he was finally struck down by the gods themselves. Whether this was due to his hubris at including them in his Last Invocation, or out of frustration that they could not escape it depends on the teller of the tale.
  
• Delericho: In life, Delericho was an Archmage of the school of Abjuration. He was always noted for his paranoia, and with good reason - his list of enemies was long, and his every effort to shorten the list only served to multiply it. Eventually, Delericho was slain by a vampire lord he had offended... and reborn as one of the undead himself. Fortunately for him, one of the wards he maintained prevented him from falling to any sort of compulsion, and so he was able to destroy his sire in short order. Delericho is believed to remain active to this day, ever attempting to chart a return to life.
  
• Drachias: Before he became a demigod, and then rose to become God of Ambition, Drachias was a powerful archmage. His focus was on order and rulership, and he stood as an Archmage of Enchantment. Drachias was a contemporary, and some say lover, of the wizardress Alendra, although they later came to blows over his attempted apotheosis.
  
• Marna: The Lady of Stone, Marna was one of the first dwarves to embrace wizardry after the Great Awakening. She helped to guide the nascent dwarven clans to the surface, developing several powerful spells in their quest. Melira never held formal standing, but she is generally counted as one of the founders of the school of Transmutation.
  
• Mantakalasa: An ancient red dragon whose greed ran towards arcane might rather than simple gold, Mantakalasa's spells typically unleashed extreme force, and frequently her preferred element of fire. Mantakalasa adopted a human guise, in which she became a noted Archmage of Evocation. She eventually disappeared, although no record of her demise has been found.
  
• Melira: The oldest of the mages of legend, so great was Melira's influence that the moon is named for her. She was instrumental in the founding of the school of Illusion, and is formally recorded as the first Archmage of that tradition. Eventually, after several very long lives, she died. Her corpse was taken to the moon that now bears her name, and buried in a secret and unmarked location.

Behind the Curtain

Alendra, Drachias, and Mantakalasa are actually elements of Terafa from way back - two of them actually featured in a (really bad) novel I attempted to write some twenty years ago. No, you can't see it.

I named the moon Melira some years ago, but hadn't associated it with an archmage until now. I quite like that association. Likewise, the name Cavcari is one I've had floating around for a little over a decade, but haven't fully fleshed out until now. Of course, he's been part of Terafa since the start of this "Ultimates Version" effort. Marna is new.

Delericho was originally one of the major villains in the "Vampire: Rivers of Time" chronicle I ran during my university days (one of my "Big Four" campaigns). He was a vampire lord who was revealed as the sire of one of the PCs, and who eventually was slain after some years. Delericho is also the name I use online in a number of places.

Better Player #6: Quick Personality Generation

Been a while since I did one of these...

So, you're creating a character for a new RPG campaign. You've decided on the key mechanical aspects of the character, and have quickly fleshed out your PC's background. But what about personality? How can you quickly put together something that will give good results?

First up, I need to add a really important caveat: this is one way to quickly create a satisfying character; I don't claim it is the way to do it!

My basic rule of thumb is a "two alike, one different" method. What does that mean?

Well, first, think of two ways in which your character is like you, and then one way in which he is different. The truth is that most RPG characters will, most of the time, be pretty much like the person playing them. That's almost inevitable - very few of us are actors of a calibre where we can just sink into a character entirely unlike ourselves!

So, rather than try to adopt a character who is completely unlike yourself, it's probably more effective to think of one big way in which the character is different, and then really try to highlight that.

Similarly, I would suggest trying to think of two ways your character is like other members of his race, and one way in which he is different, and two ways in which he is like other members of his class, and one way in which he is different.

The goal here is to create a character who is both recognisably a dwarf (for example), but who is also not just like all other dwarves. So maybe he is indeed inordinately fond of his beard and is likewise loud and boisterous... but maybe he also never drinks. Or perhaps he's fond of gold and dislikes boats, but also hates going underground. Or whatever. (And likewise, we get the studious and bookish wizard... who also takes great care to maintain his physical fitness.)

Once you've got those three things done, you've probably got a fairly good picture of the character - he's like you, but not; he's like other dwarves, but not; he's like other wizards, but not.

Then, when the time comes to play the character, it's just a job of trying to remember these traits as often as possible. It's likely you won't be completely consistent, especially in all those areas where the character differs from yourself, but that's fine - people are seldom totally consistent in their behaviour anyway. But by being sure to emphasise both the ways the character is both similar and different, you should have something that will make for a memorable character.

(One last note: I'm very much a believer that even when "playing against type", a character should probably still be recognisably of the type he is working again. Although Worf is very much not a cookie-cutter Klingon, he's still recognisably a Klingon - his rebellions against the norm are very much Klingon rebellions against the norm, and that's a good thing. Simply ignoring everything from the race/class/whatever you've chosen and declaring that you're "playing against type" is unlikely to work very well - you'll most likely be assumed to be playing a human with funny ears (though, in fairness, Star Trek had plenty of those, too...). That's in my opinion, of course. And don't forget that it is also my opinion that it's you're right to 'roleplay' as much or as little as you see fit. So the above is relevant only if you care what your audience thinks!)

The First Cut is the Deepest

This week one of my big tasks is to take a look at my RPG books and select some that I'm going to let go. On the one hand, this should be a fairly easy task: I'm well aware that there are an awful lot that I've never used, will never use, and indeed in some cases can never use. Some of them are actively bad, and there's a good many that have the opposite of their intended effect: instead of making a game better, they make it actively worse.

My intention, with this first cut, is basically to cull almost all of my third-party D&D supplements, which include such gems as "The Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils" (one of the worst books I've encountered), Green Ronin's "Advanced..." books for 3e (which I've never used and will never use - they make a too complex game even more complex), and Mongoose's "Quintessential..." series (which are deeply unbalanced - though there is some interest in that they include some of Mike Mearls' first published works).

Additionally, I've identified some of my games that are ripe for a cull - "Mage: the Ascension" Revised edition (I have, and prefer, the "Sorcerer's Crusade" iteration of that game, so in the unlikely event I play Mage again, it will be that version), "Vampire: the Requiem" and "Dark Ages: Vampire" (same logic), "Shadowrun" 3rd and 4th editions (I had a really bad experience with this one), and a number of near-D&D fantasy games (again, if I play a D&D-like game in future, it will be D&D).

All in all, it actually amounts to about a quarter of the collection. Which is about consistent with all the rest of the decluttering I've been finding myself doing of late. It's also somewhat horrifying, given the sheer amount of money that that represents relative to the amount of use they've seen (not to mention the hassle of lugging all those books through several house moves).

On the flip side, the end result of all of this is that the collection should be a whole lot more compact and should contain a whole lot less dross - the average quality level will be that much higher as a result. And it will free up quite a lot of much-needed space. So that's all to the good.

Still, it's a painful step to take!

How Much Fantasy in Your Fantasy?

Over the years, I have encountered some really good DM advice, but I've also encountered some really bad DM advice. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to tell the good from the bad, especially since very often they're right there in the same book.

One of the worst bits of advice I laboured under for many years was from the otherwise-excellent "Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide" for 2nd Edition AD&D. In that book there is a discussion of how many and how prominent fantastical elements should be in a homebrew setting, with the conclusion that such elements should be few and far between, in order to enhance their mystery and wonder.

Hogwash.

If we look at the various published settings, we find that the Forgotten Realms is probably the least fantastical, and is absolutely saturated in fantasy elements. Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Al Qadim, and Eberron are all entirely fantastical in nature, and Spelljammer is a whole new level of crazy. Even something like "Game of Thrones", which starts off largely mundane, has several key fantasy elements front and centre (c.f. "winter is coming").

In fairness, I do think the advice given comes from a good place - it is important that a setting has at least some grounding in reality. If nothing else, it should fundamentally be about 'realistic' people dealing with problems in a 'realistic' manner. Wonderland would make for a fairly poor setting, for anything other than a brief sojurn.

However, for the rest it's no bad thing if adventures very clearly take place in a place that is somehow 'other'. It's a good thing that Eberron has Dragonmarks and Warforged and Manifest Zones, and that these things are front and centre in the setting. It's a good thing that Dark Sun has Defilers and Half-giants and widespread Psionics. WHen you step into these worlds, you know it. (And, yes, this ties into my previous post about salient points - very often, the fantasy elements built into the core of the setting are the same ones that are going to be encountered.)

But the discussion is also not just about the key things that make the world what it is. Consider "Lord of the Rings" - it's not about the adventures of Tom Bombadil and yet he's given a fair amount of significance in the story. The Watcher in the Well is likewise a fantasy element that is not strictly required for the story. And so on - Middle Earth is full of magic items, ancient lore, and other fantasy elements, without those necessarily being the defining features of the setting.

So my revised advice would be something along the lines of suggesting that fantasy elements are like salt in a meal - it's important to add the right amount. Too much, and the game can be ruined, but too little makes for blandness. Additionally, you can indeed always add more... but it's more effective to bake it in from the outset.

And, yes, your setting will probably benefit from more than you think.

Demigods, Quasi-deities, and Remnants in the Unbalanced Pantheon

Completing the work on the unbalanced pantheon, I want to take a quick look at demigods, quasi-deities, and remnants. For the purposes of Terafa these are distinct, but closely related, things:

Demigods are the lowest rank of gods. These come about in several different ways: they could be a child of a god with a mortal, they could be a mortal who has ascended to godhood through acclaim, or they could be a lesser god who has further fallen in rank.

Quasi-deities are things that in some sense should be gods but which are not, for whatever reason. This typically includes extremely powerful monsters, and some mortals who are on the cusk of reaching demigod status. The distinction between demigods and quasi-deities is flexible, but typically it is that demigods enjoy the immortality of gods while quasi-deities are mortal (albeit extremely powerful). However, as with all things divine that distinction is not absolute.

Remnants are what is left over when a god dies or is killed. It is not clear whether a remnant is in any sense a part of that god, or if it is instead simply a pooling of the remaining worship ascribed to that god.

Demigods, quasi-deities, and remnants all have something of the divine about them, even if none are true gods. They are all able to grant spells, although none tend to have established churches or more than a few Clerics. (Technically, none of them should be able to grant spells above about 5th level. However, that's something of a moot point - if any of them ever had a Cleric powerful enough to receive higher level spells, that would generally indicate that they have themselves been elevated in rank. Either that, or some higher power has taken an interest in that Cleric and is therefore granting spells on the demigod's behalf.)

For the most part these lesser powers are local heroes and myths. However, a small number are of wide enough interest to be discussed futher here:

Randor: A half-elven hero from the old empire of Solrakion, Randor is said to have led a successful resistance against the tyranny of the elves. Unfortunately, no record of his mortal life remains to corroborate this story. However, Randor is fairly widely revered as the patron of all those who stand against tyranny. He was thus elevated to demigod status over time, as his legend far outlived his mortal life.

The Stonefather: It is not at all clear what happened to the being known as The Stonefather, or indeed if such a being ever truly existed. However, so many dwarves cite The Stonefather as the ultimate progenitor of their race that the existence of The Stonefather as a remnant was inevitable.

Memory: During the Upheaval, The Usurper broke free of his bonds and attempted to overthrow the pantheon. During this time, the being now known only as Memory was slain - it was out of this void that The Thought was brought into being. Memory is therefore a remnant, albeit a rapidly fading one. Those who continue to worship Memory are confounded by confusing visions that things are not right in the pantheon...

Behind the Curtain

Demigods, quasi-deities, and remnants mostly exist to soak up all the other messy bits that don't really fit elsewhere, and to allow for the injection of local colour into the setting.

Salient Points

My scanning/shredding quest has now reached one of my biggest creative failures.

The setting in question was envisaged as a "binary planet" - two planets orbiting a common point, each effectively acting as the moon of the other. I don't claim it's a particularly original thought, given that I nicked it from an episode of "The Transformers", but it wasn't terrible.

Where it went wrong, though, is that I proceeded to create the two worlds, Luminious and Vorgania (yeah, I'm bad at names, too), almost entirely in isolation of one another. In each case, the other world was just there - there isn't really any interaction between the two, there isn't a shared mythology, there aren't many shared gods (and those that are shared are pretty much just a set of names).

Such a wasted opportunity.

The thing is, it's not a bad idea. But that key defining feature should have been something that absolutely saturates the setting - there should be myths about how it came about, the two worlds should in some sense be reflections of one another, there absolutely have to be interactions between the two, and so on.

Basically, what I'm saying is that any setting will have certain key features - things that are unique to, or otherwise distinctive about, this setting. A really good example would be Eberron's "ten things" list that really serves to set the tone of the setting. And whatever those unique features are should be interlaced throughout the setting. They don't all have to appear everywhere, but they should all appear somewhere, and there should be some reflection of at least some of them everywhere.

(Incidentally, that's another reason I'm not keen on WotC's "multiverse" thing - I'm a fan of Dark Sun and Spelljammer and Ravenloft, but they're not the same. Each has features that makes it distinct. By forcing them all into a multiverse, especially if they link them up too tightly, the distinctiveness is necessarily reduced. And, yes, that's a criticism that can be levelled against "Infinity War" also, though that gets lost somewhat in the fact that that film is already trying to do too much in too little time.)

Lesser Gods of the Unbalanced Pantheon

The lesser gods are more numerous but less significant than the greater gods - whereas most of the greater gods appear in most of the legends of the world, lesser gods tend to appear only in a few such legends. Collectively, the lesser gods are less important than any single greater god. Indeed, there is a body of thought that indicates that the universe has an existential need for exactly five greater gods, while the lesser gods have no such restriction.

Theologians believe that each lesser god draws some measure of power from the overlap between two greater gods. As such, there is scope for the existence of no more than ten such gods, as there are ten potential overlaps between greater gods.

The current lesser gods are as follows:

• Chronicle: The god of legacies, Chronicle was the son of Klos and the predecessor of The Thought. He is one of the few beings capable of accurately recalling the events of the Upheaval, including the death of his mother, but is rendered unable to pass this information on to others - the hearer can only comprehend the reality of the new paradigm.
  
• Cyrene the Liar: the herald of the Usurper, Cyrene travels Terafa poisoning right-thinking mortals against the true pantheon. She has been rendered mortal by her travails, but has a strange power over even greater gods such that Choriam dare not strike her dead.
  
• Dolowrath, child of lies: The youngest of all the gods, Dolowrath is the youngest son of Choriam and Li. However, he finds that his power is not as it should be, and his standing as even a lesser god is tenuous at best. Dolowrath is known as a great deceiver, and is the god of seduction.
  
• Drachias: Once a mortal mage of great power, Drachias siezed the mantle of demigod by pure will, and then rose to the standing of lesser god during the Upheaval, slaying and usurping a now-unknown lesser deity. He is the god of ambition, and now has his sights set on further advancement.
  
• Illusta: The goddess of joy, Illustra is the daughter of Li and Choriam, although she is utterly unlike her father.
  
• Horizon: The goddess of wanderers, Horizon appeared at around the same time as The Thought, although there is no indication of a relationship between the goddesses. None know whence Horizon came, including the goddess herself, but it is known that she is not native to the pantheon, and expected that in time she will again depart.
  
• Jolin: One of the original greater gods, Jolin was once the god of the sun, patron of the arts, and lord of all magic. However, when the schism with Lorissa occurred and the sun was split in the sky, Jolin and Lorissa were each reduced in stature. Jolin is now the god of the elves, music, and swordplay.
  
• Kuebe: The daughter of Klos and Li, following a brief and unhappy dalliance, is the goddess of regret. She is a quiet, unhappy creature.
  
• Lorissa: It would be a mistake to label Lorissa the daughter of Jolin, or even to say that she is the younger of the two - she was once a part of Jolin that was forced out in the schism over the fate and souls of the elves. At that time, she was reduced in stature to a lesser god. She remains the lover and partner of Jolin, though their relationship is poisonous in the extreme. Lorissa is honoured as goddess of elves, magic, and poison.
  
• Morr, the static god: The whispered legend has it that Li once had an affair with the being known as Stonefather and conceived a child. However, unlike her other pregnancies, this one was anything but smooth - she remained pregnant for twenty years and was unable to birth the child. Eventually, in extreme pain, she sliced herself open and birthed Morr - fully-grown but already frozen in stasis. Morr isn't so much the god of anything, he's rather just a fact, and as such is worshipped by those who crave stability in all things.
  
• Nemesis: The second interloper of the gods, Nemesis arrived at Terafa from elsewhere at the time of the Rebirth. She is the goddess of revenge, and as such is widely called upon if not truly worshipped.
  
• Shallanah: The second daughter of Li and Choriam is no more like her father than Illusta. Legend has it that her heart was once stolen by a mortal rogue, and that she therefore birthed him a race of children. However, fearful that Choriam would persecute her children for the sins of their father, she reduced them in stature and ordered them to remain wanderers, that they might go unnoticed. Shallanah is therefore the patron goddess of halflings, as well as the goddess of rogues and luck. Finally, she is the goddess of money - she inherited that portfolio from her twin sister, who was slain by The Usurper.

In addition, the Fastness of the Divine is home to some lesser gods:

• The Jailer: The son of Choriam and the predecessor of The Thought, The Jailer is responsible for ensuring none leave the Fastness of the Divine. Although weaker in stature than The Usurper, he has special power in his own domain to allow him to restrain even a greater god. The Jailer rides a two-headed dragon.
  
• The Four: Sometimes named as the North, South, East, and West, these are the followers of the Usurper. Forbidden by divine edit from ever venturing near one another, they are bitter rivals of each other as well as of the true pantheon. It is whispered that if ever they were to unite their power, The Jailer would not be able to contain them.

The Secret

As noted at the top of the post, Terafan theologians believe there is scope for no more than ten lesser gods, representing the overlaps between the five greater gods. They are almost correct - there are actually six greater gods, leading to fifteen such overlaps. Of these, five are contained within the Fastness of the Divine: The Jailer and The Four.

However, a careful count of the other lesser gods will show that there are twelve named, not ten. There is a two-part reason for this. Firstly, neither Cyrene nor Dolowrath fully has the mantle of lesser god - Cyrene lacks the immortality that might be expected, while Dolowrath's standing is noted as being tenuous at best. This is due, quite simply, to their not being enough power to go around.

Additionally, this seeming discrepancy ties into the notion of the Unbalanced Pantheon - such is the nature of the imbalance that even its internal rules are subject to being broken.

The consequent effect of the pantheon not quite working is that the world as a whole likewise doesn't quite work - the whole is spinning slightly off its axis, and the chaos that that inflicts should grow more pronounced with time.

At least, that's the theory.

History is Written By the Victors

The titular adage is as true in Terafa as everywhere else. However, in Terafa it is also metaphysically true. This means two things:

Firstly, where there is a change to the pantheon, such as the death of a god, the rise of a new god, a promotion, demotion, or other change, that is very quickly reflected in the world - where a god rises, there will very quickly be temples and priesthoods springing up, cults, believers, and indeed heresies associated with that god. It is almost as if these things come into being whole-cloth. Conversely, when a god falls her temples will very quickly fall out of use, becoming decayed ruins, and either be abandoned or indeed swept away.

Secondly, however, any such changes are actually retroactive, both in that the legends surrounding the god will be edited to match the new reality (although such things are rarely done in a truly comprehensive manner - some vestiges of the old order almost always remain), but also in the history itself. Thus, if one were to cast a spell to travel back in time to the founding of the universe, one would find that the greater gods were Choriam, Li, Klos, The Thought, and The Twins (and there would be two suns, not one), and The Usurper would be confined to the Fastness of the Divine. That applies even though mythology (correctly) identifies that The Thought came into being following the Upheaval, and that Jolin was originally the greater god of the sun.

This of course means that there are effectively some break points beyond which time travel is effectively not possible - any time the pantheon changes, this closes off the past that has led to that point. Any attempt to time travel back beyond that point won't take you back to the way things were originally; it will take you back to a very similar parallel timeline where the pantheon matches the way things have always been. Or something - time travel just gets weird.

Greater Gods of the Unbalanced Pantheon

Before I start digging into some of the myths of Terefa, I thought it best to outline the greater gods of the pantheon. I'll explain the "unbalanced" bit below...

• Choriam: The primary god of the setting, Choriam is the king of the gods. Depicted as a wise and fair ruler, always smiling and always truthful, Choriam is allied with his blood-brother Klos, and united with his wife Li. He is opposed by The Twins out of their avarice for his position, and by The Thought for no reason either can articulate. Of course, he opposes and is opposed by The Usurper.
  
• Klos: The god of community and tradition, Klos is the deity most commonly worshipped by dwarves, but he is favoured in all civilised lands. He is an implacable enforcer of laws, and protector of civilisation, but he can be hide-bound and slow to change. He is the blood-brother of Choriam, having fought at his side for millennia to bring order to an unruly creation. Klos is allied with Choriam, and respects The Thought most highly for her wisdom and her work-ethic. However, he opposes Li, as she is always trying to poison Choriam's mind against him, and by The Twins, as they would undo all that he has made. Of course, he opposes and is opposed by The Usurper.
  
• Li: Ah, Li, goddess of passion, beloved of artists, poets, and degenerates of all stripes. Li is married to Choriam, but her nature is fickle and so she has dallied with many other deities, demigods, and mortals. Li is allied with her husband Choriam, and with The Twins as both she and they have strong appetites. She is opposed by Klos as she spurned his advances in ages past, and by The Thought whom she finds staid to the point of boredom. Of course, she opposes and is opposed by The Usurper.
  
• The Thought: The youngest of the greater gods, The Thought sprang into being following the Upheaval, due to an unmet need in the universe. She is the goddess of wisdom and industry, ever busy with a philosophy or a task. The Thought is allied with Klos, as her love of industry parallels his guardianship of community. She is opposed by The Twins and Li, all of whose passions she deplores, and by Choriam for reasons neither of them can articulate.
  
• The Twins: Inseparable since their birth, The Twins are depicted variously as brother and sister, two sisters, mother and daughter, as friends closer than siblings, or even as lovers. They are the goddesses of the sun, of change and of want. The Twins are constant and yet ever-changing, as their orbits cause them each to wax and wane in turn. One, the older of the sisters, is regarded as the more stable of the two, bringing constancy and plenty, while the rise of her fickle sister brings great change and upheaval, and the denial of many wishes. The Twins cannot truly be divided, and are never worshipped or even named independently. They are allied with Li, as their passions are often aligned, but are opposed by the more hidebound gods Klos and The Thought.

In addition to the five greater gods, there are four additional powers of note:

• The Usurper: Trapped within the Fastness of the Divine since the time of the Upheaval, The Usurper once attempted to overthrow the order of the universe by deposing Choriam. However, he was defeated by the combined might of Choriam, Klos, and Li. Some heretics claim the The Usurper was once married to Li, but that they quarrelled, leading to his downfall.
  
• The Stonefather: The lengendary forefather of the dwarves, none know what happened to the Stonefather, or even if he ever existed at all. If he ever did exist, he is certainly no longer accessible to mortals of Terafa.
  
• Jolin: The creator of the elves, Jolin was once the god of the sun. His portfolio included both art and magic. However, following by schism with Lorissa, Jolin lost his standing with the greater gods. Jolin will be detailed further with the lesser gods, in another post.
  
• An Unknown God: The Thought was brought into being after the Upheaval due to an existential need in the universe. This need was caused by the death of a previous god or goddess that was slain at that time. Nothing else is known about that deity, and all attempts at divination fail, with those who attempt such blasphemies risking insanity or worse.

The Unbalanced Pantheon?

The fact that their are five greater gods means that the setting can never be truly balanced - as the ego of the gods is such that they will always have an opinion on any topic in question, they will forever find themselves taking sides... and with five of them there can never be even numbers on each side. At present, the triumvirate of Choriam, Klos, and Li stand pre-eminent amongst the gods, but their hold on matters is tenuous at best, not least due to the emnity between Klos and Li. However, it wasn't always like this. By rights, the pantheon should have six greater gods, thus providing the necessary balance and giving the universe harmony. Unfortunately, that harmony was shattered by a conflict between Choriam and The Usurper over the stewardship of the souls of humans. But more of that later.

Secrets

There are several secrets buried in the list of deities, including some that go right to the heart of the setting. I may address some of these in a later post. Though I may not, under the philosophy of "don't show all your working." We'll see...

Building a Pantheon

Of all the aspects of Terafa I'm inclined to redo with my proposed "Ultimates Version", the pantheon of gods is the most tricky. There are two reasons for this: there are some bits I'm very unhappy with, but also some bits that I'm very pleased with; but... the changes I'd like to make to the bits I'm unhappy with would inevitably have a knock-on effect on the bits that I am happy with (or, more accurately, would complete rewrite them). So that's been difficult to resolve.

Where I've come to is a belief that there are three key mistakes that RPGs tend to make when constructing pantheons (though the number is questionable - these are all bound very much together...):

1. Too many deities, and too many poorly defined deities. I mentioned this in my review of "Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes" - an awful lot of settings have massive pantheons that mostly consist of a big list of names coupled with absolutely minimal detail.
   
2. Individual pantheons for each race. This feeds into the above, but also opens up a big dilemma - what happens if a human PC wants to be a Cleric of an elven deity? You can allow it without restriction, and thus lose some of the flavour of your pantheons; you can ban it, and have an unhappy player; or you can allow it but make it a big thing in the campaign that this PC is very much an exception (which may or may not be desirable). But, really, what you have is actually one set of deities, some of whom take a particular, and perhaps exclusive, interest in only one of the races.
   
3. Too often, RPG pantheons look to real-world polytheistic religions for the model of how it should be done. Now, that seems like a strange thing to say, but here's the thing: real-world polytheistic religions did not come into existence to serve the needs of a game. (It's also important to note that I'm not saying we shouldn't look to real-world pantheons for inspiration; I'm just saying we shouldn't seek to simply ape them.)

The problem I had was that I had individual pantheons for several of the non-human races, and I was actually very happy with these, while I felt that my human pantheon was particularly poor - in fact, that was where I ran out of steam and just waved my hand and said, "oh, they're just monotheistic I guess".

After quite a lot of thought, I think I've now come up with the core of a pantheon that works. I still have quite a few details to work out, so can't present it here yet, but I'm looking at five main deities (plus the inevitable exiled god), a dozen or so lesser powers, and then a small number of quasi-deities and demigods (though most of these will be detailed as adventures need them - such deities tend to be very local). Plus three divine philosophies not associated with the gods (ancestor worship, mostly practiced by the dwarves; nature worship, mostly practiced by druids and their followers; and The Way - a philosophy dedicated to the notion of the divinity of man).

As a consequence of this reorganisation, the individual racial pantheons I had established will be removed. However, most of the aspects of those that I liked will be retained and brought into the new unified structure. For instance, the elven gods will have started as one of the Greater Gods (specifically, the god of the Sun) but due to the schism in their nature it will have split into the Two. This division led to the demotion of these gods to become Lesser Gods, the Sun itself was split into two, and a new Greater God, The Twins, has adopted that portfolio (amongst others).

Anyway, I still have quite a lot of thought to give to the subject, so I'll stop there while I tie things down.

Gods and Domains

One of the character rebuilds that was requested recently was a change to the Domain selected by the Cleric character - the player posited that the character might have had a crisis of faith due to recent in-game events, and consequently emerged rather angrier (and changed from a Cleric of Life to one of Tempest). I was quite happy with this, especially given the in-game reasoning, but there was just one problem... his patron deity had Life as a Domain but not Tempest.

My conclusion was not only that I would allow the change, but also that I'm minded to think that it would be better if deities generally did not have specified Domains, or if they must have them then they should be considered suggestions only. Any Cleric of any deity should probably be able to choose any Domain they can justify. (Of course, some combinations are really tricky to justify - a Cleric of the god of darkness who chooses the Light Domain?)

Not only does this grant a bit more flexibility, and especially in the case of character rebuilds like the above, but it also has a key advantage in future-proofing the setting - it's likely that one day there will be a sixth edition, and it's entirely possible that that sixth edition will change Clerics again (after all, every edition since 1st has felt the need...). If a setting has a long list of gods with a Domain assigned to each, that's a long list that will need changed over to match the new paradigm. If instead the setting has a list of gods but without assigned Domains, there's nothing to convert.

(It's also worth noting that Clerics are more or less unique amongst the classes in that their powers are tied to specific setting information, in the form of the gods. Paladins have Vows, but these are not associated with anything in particular, while Warlock Pacts are likewise with broad and somewhat-undefined entities in the game. Only Clerics have to identify a specific, named source for their powers, and that source needs to then match up with the Domain they want. With the curious effect that a player will probably choose the Domain first and deity second, rather than picking a deity that would be interesting to follow and proceeding from there. But I digress...)

Lunar Colonies

I started the process of scanning and shredding my accumulated RPG papers over the weekend. The biggest takeaway from this is the sheer scope of the task - there are four big folders almost entirely filled with old campaign notes, plus a big box fill of old character sheets. As anticipated, even a lot of the material that was originally printed out (and so already exists on my PC) has been edited by hand and so requires some attention.

The other thing that I had fully expected was that a lot of the old setting material is unalloyed dross, or worse - I wrote much of it in my teens, and was labouring under some really bad setting-design advice at the time, so this isn't entirely unsurprising.

But I have, thus far, stumbled upon one really good idea. And while it's something I've seen in sci-fi reasonably regularly, it's not something I've seen in fantasy settings previously (this is, of course, where if I mentioned this on a discussion forum, it would immediately be met with a chorus of people listing settings where it is a common feature...). Specifically, one of the settings I developed all those years ago had colonies on two of the planet's moons.

(I should note also that I have seen settings where a moon or moon has life on it. I'm not aware of any that specifically have colonies, or widespread trade with those colonies. Again, in fantasy rather than sci-fi - it's quite common in the latter!)

Of course, that doesn't mean that the material is useable as-is. Effectively, this is one cool idea, but something I'll need to re-purpose and re-develop if I'm ever planning to use it. But I like it - gives a really nice pulp-y feel to proceedings. But how to use it...?

Showing Your Working

As an engineer, I like things being presented clearly, with as few ambiguities as possible. Ideally, I'd like to see all the working - show me not just how the rules fit together, but also the reasoning that led to them, the various break-points that have been applied, and so forth. This gives a much stronger foundation for running the game (since I can understand why as well as what the rules are saying), and also gives a much better foundation for modifications.

On the other hand, there are some key areas where it's better not to show the working - basically, in anything player-facing, and most of the setting details regardless of source, it's probably better not to have the underlying themes shown up - yes, if orcs represent the rejection of social norms while hobgoblins represent the corruption of those same norms, that allows for a lot of cool storytelling... but the DM should know that and use it to tell his stories; the players probably should not be beaten about the head with it.

Basically, while the 'why' is really useful, sometimes it's better just to have the 'what' and thus retain more of the magic.

(See also the dichotomy between symettry, which is aesthetically pleasing, and creative asymettry which is more interesting...)

Ephemera

Over thirty years of gaming I have accumulated a considerable number of books, dice, and other items associated with the game. However, I have also accumulated a whole lot of paper - old character sheets, campaign notes, and other bits and pieces that have been written down and never discarded.

Obviously, none of these things have any value to anyone else. However, as things that I have created they have considerable value, if only sentimental value, to me. That makes discarding them tricky.

Over the past several years, I have thankfully seen the rate at which I create new items of this sort drop drastically - I've taken to creating almost everything using a PC, which means that any paper generated is just a physical representation - the master copy is the one on the PC. However, that's not yet true of everything, and it doesn't really help me with the accumulated cruft. (Most damning of all, of course, are those documents that started life as electronic copies but were then heavily edited in pen/pencil in their physical versions, such that the master copy is the paper version...)

As I've mentioned on Part Five, I'm now at a point where my accumulated stuff from past lives has started to impact on the quality of the life that I'm living now. And that means that those past lives have got to go, or at least be sharply cut down to size. I need the space a whole lot more than I need the stuff.

So...

Actually, I don't have a clear way forward here. I think that what I want to do is to gather together all the paper I've generated over that time (but specifically all that paper that I have generated - not published materials of any stripe), and then gradually deal with it. In many cases, this means scanning it, potentially front and back, and then discarding it. In some cases, it may mean tracking down and editing the electronic version (so that that returns to being the master copy), and then discarding it. And in some few cases, it just means discarding it.

(I think what I'll do is get everything transferred to electronic format and then work on sorting that into a sensible arrangement of files, rather than trying to sort as I go. Because otherwise the job is going to get bogged down in the organisation state. But I may rethink that.)

One other thing: As a corollary of this clear out comes a new policy for creating new paper. Specifically, don't. Where some sort of note or other paper is generated (and sometimes that is appropriate, when scribbling a map or similar), it should be scanned promptly, and the electronic version should be considered the master. Once the paper version has outlived its usefulness, it should probably be rescanned for archive purposes, and then discarded. (And going forward, any game that does not have a form-fillable electronic character sheet need not apply!)