The Final Session

The final session of the year proved to be quite successful - the party had finally reached the end of their investigations and were able to take action. So they kicked in the door, dealt with some of the Stitched, interrogated a survivor, and then descended to the surgery below.

We left with a tense standoff between our PCs and the disguised imp Malewrath (because I reuse names extensively). Next time should see more action, and then we can move on to the wider campaign. Huzzah!

Another possible lesson to be had from this: D&D really handles action well, and is less good at everything else. So apply the focus there!

Anyway, the upshot of all that is that I was happy with the way things went today, happy with the way the year ended, and I'm confident with the way things are likely to go in the new year.

What Went Wrong?

As I said in my previous post, "The Mists of Lamordia" has gotten off to a somewhat shaky start. I'm hopeful it can recover, since I have a fairly clear idea of what to do with it, but the question remains: what went wrong? And, more importantly, what should I do differently in future?

I think the problem is really threefold:

Lack of Action

I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. In a dungeon design, most rooms will feature some sort of an encounter. In a mystery adventure, the dungeon rooms are replaced by the nodes of the investigation. Consequently, most of these should also feature some sort of an encouter. Unfortunately, while I did a good job of constructing the mystery, I neglected to insert appropriate encounters.

An Urban Mystery as the First Adventure

That said, I'm inclined to think it was a mistake to use an urban mystery as the first adventure. I would probably have been better to insert a more combat-based adventure, ideally in a wilderness/dungeon setting, prior to reaching the town. (And then using the mystery. It's not a bad adventure; it's just the wrong adventure at this time.)

I think a key part of the problem here is that PCs act differently in a 'civilised' region than in the wilds - in a dungeon they're happy to kick in the door, kill things, and take their stuff; in a city they're much more aware of social nuance and less prone to those decisive actions.

(That said, maybe one of the things I should have noted up-front is that while they're in a 'civilised' region, it's not that civilised. And, indeed, part of the joy of being a PC is the opportunity to be Batman, Dirty Harry, or other not-quite-legitimate authorities. So, actually, it is appropriate for them to throw their weight around. Even though, or perhaps especially because, it's not something they would ever do in reality.)

Anyway, I digress. Basically, I think I went for the wrong adventure at the wrong time.

Lack of Investigation Skills

One of the things I really considered, and then decided against, was advising the players that there is a set of knowledge/investigation skills in the game (Arcana, History, Investigation, Medicine, Nature, and Religion; and to a lesser extent Deception, Intimidation, Perception, and Persuasion), and that it would have been really useful if they'd tried to have someone with proficiency in each of these.

Making sure they collectively had a grounding in these subjects would have gone quite a long way to helping get information into their hands, and information is absolutely key to dealing with a mystery adventure. (And since the entire campaign is, to an extent, one big mystery adventure, that's a bit of a weakness!) As it is, the party is well versed in a few of these, but sorely lacking in several others.

Still, I might have a quiet word with a few people, and maybe suggest some gentle tweaking of the skills list to help cover the bases. And I'll also make sure to provide more information associated with the areas they're strong on than I otherwise might.

All in All...

I think perhaps the biggest problem is perhaps one of improperly set assumptions - given that I didn't mention that it would be good to have coverage of some specific skills, they didn't realise the benefit of doing so; and given that it's entirely realistic for people to operate differently in a 'civilised' region than an untamed wilderness, of course they did exactly that.

For next time, then, the main thing that I need to do is to properly set expectations. Where there are particular skills that would be especially useful, these should be flagged up. Where there are things that are counter-intuitive, it wouldn't hurt to actually mention these. And so on and so forth.

And, yes, run an initial adventure somewhere suitably isolated, so the party get to know their own skills and interactions before they have to deal with a whole world!

Gaming in 2019

This will be a short one, as there has been very little to tell, and the blog captured most of it as the year went on.

2019 started with one game in the works: "Storm King's Thunder" as the Work Game. This eventually came to an end with a TPK, with maybe a further 6 months to play before the planned conclusion. In truth, I wasn't too sorry to see it go - SKT has some good material, but it gets really same-y after a while. My feeling is that the adventure could really do with a good rewrite, bringing the key material front and centre, and maybe getting to the point rather more quickly. (Plus, it suffers from having too much extraneous material built into the structure of the adventure. Which is good for replayability, I guess, but then I doubt too many DMs are really going to replay this adventure start to finish.)

2019 ended with one game in the works: "The Mists of Lamordia" as the Work Game. In truth, it has gotten off to a somewhat shaky start, but it does have some real potential. My hope is that I'll get a chance to put in some work over the Christmas holiday to tighten this one up, and thus get a more satisfying experience for 2020 (and beyond?). That's assuming, of course, that the game survives long into the new year, which is by no means certain.

There will be no Christmas Game this year, so I'm officially calling that tradition kaput. And I didn't get any chance to play anything other than D&D this year, nor do I foresee anything in the next year.

In terms of purchases, this year has seen the end of the 1st Edition Pathfinder materials, and therefore the end of my Adventure Path subscription. That was good while it lasted, and I do rather miss it, but the truth is that I probably should have cancelled a long time ago - I've never run any Pathfinder, and I long ago concluded that it was not for me. I doubt I'll ever make real use of all those volumes I've built up.

(One thing I'm considering is whether I should get rid of the various 1st Edition Pathfinder books I've accumulated. There aren't a huge number of these, I've had all the use from them that I'll get, and I know people who would get some use out of them. So maybe it's time...)

On the D&D front, I purchased a few electronic products (mostly Dark Sun, and a little Eberron) and two physical products, though both of these are actually Christmas presents. So expect reviews of "Rising from the Last War" and the "D&D Essentials Kit" at some point in the new year. I did also purchase "Fantasy Mapmaker", which is probably the best and most useful product of all.

In 2020, my intention is basically "more of the same". I'll continue "The Mists of Lamordia" until it comes to a conclusion, and then regroup and come up with a new plan. I don't expect any other gaming to be forthcoming. I'd also like to do some reading into one of the settings, probably Spelljammer, but we'll see. And I might do some work to formalise the things I have been doing informally with Exploration, Interaction, and Tension Pools for D&D. (Giving credit where it is due, that last is an innovation of the Angry GM.)

And that, I think, is that.

Fantasy Mapmaker

A few years ago I read a book called "How to Draw Fantasy Art and RPG Maps", by Jared Blando. It was one of those "I didn't know I needed this until now" moments - a step-by-step guide to a subject that had long vexed me. While some of my older maps were okay, I had become rather dissatisfied with them, and especially given the availability of electronic tools that should have made the task much easier.

When I finished that book, the one other thing that struck me immediately was that it could do with a companion volume, dealing with how to draw fantasy cities and settlements. I guess Jared Blando realised the same, as he has now produced that book: "Fantasy Mapmaker". I finished reading this one over the weekend, and intend to try some of the techniques out over the winter break, time permitting.

My review of this book is slightly mixed. On the one hand, this one did not have the same transformative impression on me. How could it, given that the first volume already did that? On the other hand, it is probably the superior volume - perhaps Jared Blando has refined his techniques and/or style over the past few years, or perhaps he just has a greater passion for cities and settlements?

Either way, this is a great book, and highly recommended for any GM - it joins "The DC Guide to Writing Comics" and "How to Draw Fantasy Art and RPG Maps" on my list of unexpected resources.

Now, if he could only produce a third volume, dealing with dungeon maps...

The Prism Pentad

Aftre re-reading the Spelljammer novels last year, I decided this year to re-read the first series of Dark Sun novels, "The Prism Pentad". I first read these when they were published, so it had been about a quarter of a century, with my memory of them being that they were pretty good but pretty tough to get through. I had also of the opinion that publishing them was a big mistake, but I'll get to that...

I re-read the novels across the space of five months. My intention had, of course, to spend about a week reading each novel, allowing me to fit them easily in my "60 books" pattern. However, I found that this rate was over-ambitious. In general, the books took me about 10 days each to wade through. My assessment of them being a bit of a slog was basically spot-on. I also found that they haven't aged terribly well - it's fair to say that Troy Denning's writing has improved very significantly since then!

Unfortunately, I'm still of the opinion that these novels probably should not have been published.

The problem is this: TSR published their exciting new Dark Sun campaign setting - a new banner setting for the AD&D game. There was great fanfare surrounding the setting, and especially the (very good) boxed set that introduced the setting.

They then published the Prism Pentad that, in the very first novel, upends one of the key pillars of the game. Suddenly the core starting area was changed almost beyond recognition! Further novels in the series led to further massive changes, such that by the end pretty much everything that made up the setting was different. (Not necessarily worse, but different.)

TSR did eventually publish a revised version of the setting, but if really didn't get anything like the same push, or the same traction, and Dark Sun basically died a death until the 4e reboot. (There was a semi-reboot in 3e, in Dragon and Dungeon magazines, but given the scope of the setting this wasn't the support it really needed. And there was also a fan-led effect that did rather better, but again was limited to people who were already familiar with the setting.)

When WotC revived the setting for 4e, they did what I felt was the right thing - they reset the setting to what is probably the most interesting instant in it's history (that is, just after Tyr becomes the free city), and basically ignored everything that didn't fit their revised vision. I do feel they made another mistake by over-explaining everything. (They saidthat it was a setting where the Primordials won the great war at the dawn of time. That's absolutely fine, but we don't need to know that. And, actually it undercuts one of the major themes of the setting - that it has been ruined by uncontrolled abuse of magic.)

My overall opinion of "The Prism Pentad" is quite negative after the re-read - they're okay examples of "game fiction" (which is hardly a genre noted for excellence), but they're not great reads in their own right. And as tie-in fiction for the setting, I'm afraid they're mostly counter-productive. The very first novel is probably worthwhile as a lead-in to the 4e campaign setting (which IMO is probably be best version of that setting), but even that is not essential... and the DM may well prefer to come up with his own backstory anyway.

The Beginning of the End?

It looks like my work game may be coming to an enforced end. Nothing to do with the campaign itself, and indeed it's not certain yet. But there was a conversation yesterday that decidedly felt like the beginning of the end.

I'll keep you updated. I do hope I'm wrong though, given that this game is now effectively my only connection to the hobby, and I see little chance of that changing.

How to Mess With Players' Heads

One of the features of the domain of Lamordia is the presence of "weird science" - the influences are very much Frankenstein and Doctor Moreau. As a consequence of that, I've inserted various weird science elements into the setting - the university has a Tower of Astrology (rather than astronomy), there's a Guide of Ressurrectionists, one of my villains will be a rogue phrenologist, and so on and so forth.

Of course, as far as the inhabitants of the setting are concerned, all of this is just 'science'. Especially since, in the context of a fantasy realm, it all works (at least sort of).

Unfortunately, one of my players suffered some fairly serious congnitive dissonance at all of that - I think he wants his magic labelled as such, and therefore had some real difficulties with my description. I suspect invoking Arthur C. Clarke's third law (about "sufficiently advanced technology") is unlikely to actually help.

All of which is rather unfortunate. I don't think I have any solution to that - I'll just need to try to work around it as best I can.

Designing a Mystery - one thought, and one mistake

My first adventure for the new campaign is a mystery - a young woman has been attacked and maimed, and people want revenge. So far, so obvious.

My approach for designing a mystery is basically to draw up a bunch of nodes and lines - the nodes show all the likely vectors for investigation and the lines show where they point. I try to make sure that there are at least three lines pointing to any node I want the PCs to reach, in keeping with the "Three Clue Rule".

The consequence of this is that the web that describes the mystery looks awfully like the web of room connections I would make prior to drawing a proper map for a dungeon.

Which is the observation I would like to share: designing a mystery is basically the same as designing a dungeon. It's just that instead of exploring the rooms of a dungeon, the party are exploring the web of interactions between NPCs.

(I don't hold with the notion that the DM should only design half the mystery, on the grounds that the players will come up with a more compelling resolution anyway. Because they might well not do that, and end up meandering aimlessly through the setting instead. It's much easier to provide them with an enjoyable journey if you know the landmarks along the way.)

Anyway, that brings me to the flip side of this observation, and the mistake I've made in my first session. In a dungeon, you have a bunch of rooms, and in most (though not all) of those rooms you want something to happen - some sort of an encounter, a trap, and what-have-you. And perhaps some wandering encounters in the corridors between rooms, or something like that, but I digress.

What I'm saying is that in dungeon design it's a mistake to have too many empty rooms - rooms where the PCs search and just move on. When designing a mystery then, and more importantly when designing a mystery adventure it's a mistake to have too many nodes where nothing happens. If the PCs go back to the scene of the crime to see what they can find, it's probably a good idea for them to meet some resistance at that point - maybe a glimpse of the killer (and an exciting chase), maybe some hired thugs sent to dissuade them from their investigations... something.

And so, the first "real" session of the new campaign got off to an okay start, but not a great one. It was just filled with too many 'empty' nodes, and therefore not enough action. Fortunately, that's easy to remedy for next time.

I hope.

Racism in Ravenloft

Note: this post isn't about real-world racism at all, be it the hadling of different ethnicities, elements of the setting design that could be considered racist, or what-have-you.

Most of the best D&D published campaign settings originated in 2nd Edition days, and suffer from a weird disconnect - the settings tend to be written under the assumption that the vast majority of the PCs will be human, while the 2nd Edition rules made humans the least appealing character option. (The only advantage to a human PC was that you didn't suffer level limits - but level limits were very rarely reached and even more rarely enforced.)

From 3e onwards, the game has done a much better job of balancing the PC races, to the point where humans are a perfectly respectable choice. However, my experience has been that players will tend to go for something different for their PC - very often the more outlandish the better.

In the Ravenloft setting in particular, this is something of an issue, as the setting assumes that 99% of all NPCs are human and they have an almost xenophobic hatred of the different. Combine that with a largely non-human PC group, and you have issues. (In fact, my party in "The Mists of Lamordia" is entirely non-human.) And given that I really can't be bothered dealing with racism in my fantasy any more, that's just not something I want.

Fortunately, the solution to this one is pretty easy, especially in the domain of Lamordia - change it. Where it comes to Lamordia, the people are noted as being rational to a fault, so it's a simple matter to have them simply accept the different as it is, and move on.

That's not to say that the matter will be entirely absent. I have a story point related to the absence of elves, in particular, in the setting, which means that the presence of the elven PC will lead at least to some comment. Additionally, part of the tiefling's shtick is about them being outsiders and shunned by society. Since the player in question chose that race knowing that, I'm assuming that that's something that will want at least some mention (and, again, it's easy enough to incorporate into the story). But for the half-elves and the dragonborn (and, later, if we have any gnomes, dwarves, or halflings), it will simply be a non-issue.

All that said, I do kinda wish we had an all-human party for this one. But it wasn't to be - and I'd much rather my players choose characters that they'd like to play, rather than ending up with something they're unhappy with just to fit "my precious campaign".

The Second Map

After I finished my map of Lamordia, my attention immediately switched to the capital of that realm - the town of Ludendorf. That one took a bit less time, largely because I got halfway through and then decided I had to up the pace very significantly. But the most important consideration is: it will do.

Having completed those two maps to my liking, I'm now starting work in earnest on the campaign notes, which is much more familiar ground for me - I'm pretty good with simple writing tasks. It's just a shame that there's so much work and not enough time!

Looking forward, I'm now feeling much happier about my ability to produce good quality campaign maps for the future - they're a lot of work, and eat up a lot of time, and the results are obviously far from professional quality, but they'll do the job I'm looking for. Which is a nice place to be.

Laying Some Groundwork

While I had some free time last week, I put a significant amount of that time into planning the upcoming campaign. One part of that was to review the available source material, and notably the official maps of Lamordia.

Unfortunately, my conclusion was that that official map is, to put not to fine a point on it, pretty lousy. And while there are a few fan-made alternatives out there, none of them really filled me with any great confidence.

This did provide me with an opportunity - about eighteen months ago I invested in a Wacom graphics tablet, and have been looking for a good project on which to use it since then. Crafting a new map of Lamordia was just the opportunity that I needed! I'm reasonably pleased with the result - if we accept that I'm not, and won't ever be, a professional cartographer, and if we accept that my artistic abilities are hugely limited, it does at least reach the standards of "not bad" and "functional". Which is probably enough.

Here it is:

Of course, there's another factor in that: constructing that map took the vast majority of the time I had available, and therefore constitutes the overwhelming majority of the preparation I'll be getting done for the campaign. Which is far from ideal. On the other hand, the absence of a good map was a glaring weakness, so I'm inclined to call this a step in the right direction.

The Mists of Lamordia

The next campaign has been chosen, and the group have gone for "The Mists of Lamordia". Our plucky band of heroes are smuggling themselves into Luskan for purposes unknown, when a thick mist springs up. As the mist rises, they find the world is not as it should be - the terrain has changed, the moon is far larger (and the Tears of Selune are entirely absent), and they find themselves coming into a port that should not be there.

My next challenge is to flesh out the campaign. Fortunately I have lots of source material to lean on, courtesy of the Ravenloft books, so it's mostly just a case of pulling those sources into a coherent whole.

And I have three weeks in which to do it.

Latest 5e House Rules

These are mostly aimed at the next work game, but they're what I think I'm going to be using for the foreseeable future anyway...

General
These apply to all three of the proposed campaigns:

• No options outside of the PHB may be selected. (Note: if and when I run a campaign in Eberron, or other published setting, any options that are considered iconic to the setting will also be permitted.)
  
• Ignore alignment, traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws. These don't really attach to anything, so the player can give them exactly as much, or as little, attention as he or she sees fit.
  
• Each time a level is gained, the PC will gain an Inspiration token. This can be used on any one d20 roll, at which point it will cancel disadvantage (if applicable) and then grant advantage on the roll. The token can be used at any time, even after the die has been rolled and failure declared, and can be given to another player if desired. If it is not used by the time the character gains another level, however, it is lost.
  
• Feats are permitted, multiclassing is not.
  
• All characters must use fixed hit points per level.
  
• Clerics may choose any Domain, regardless of their patron deity. Ideally, the selection should make at least tangential sense, but even the extreme case will be permitted.
  
• Starting equipment is as granted by class and background, plus one randomly-rolled trinket. Players may not opt to take the starting money instead. However they may choose to spend some or all of the money granted by their background.
  
• Characters can carry ten 'things'. Multiple identical items count as a single 'thing', but they do need to be identical. However, rations and water, torches and lantern oil, and treasure do not count as 'things' - these will be tracked separately on a whole-party basis.
  
• XP will be granted immediately after it is earned. Levels are gained at the end of the session. All PCs will gain the same amount of XP, regardless of actions, whether the player is present, and indeed whether the character is present.
  
• XP is not granted by slaying monsters. Instead, it is granted for completion of goals. The exact nature of the goals, and the specific awards will be campaign dependent (see below).
  
• The Tension Pool will be used for tracking various things.

Quest for Memory

• Factions will be ignored.
  
• Each PC will be assigned a personal quest. It is up to the party whether, and when, to pursue these quests.
  
• XP will be granted for completing encounters and completing quests (including a PC's personal quest). The award granted will be per the 'Medium' encounter budget for the PCs' level, with a half award granted for only partial success. Note that how the encounter or quest is completed is not considered.
  
• In addition, a quarter award will be granted for finding an unattended cache of treasure. PCs are therefore encouraged to explore!

Mists of Lamordia

• Factions will be ignored.
  
• Each player will be tasked with devising a personal secret that their PC does not want to see revealed.
  
• XP will be granted for completing encounters and completing quests. The award granted will be per the 'Medium' encounter budget for the PCs' level, with a half award granted for only partial success. Note that how the encounter or quest is completed is not considered.
  
• In addition, a quarter award will be granted for learning secrets. This includes the revelation of each PC's personal secret.

Blades in the Desert

• Each player will be tasked with devising an anchor NPC associated with their PC. The nature of that character is largely up to the player.
  
• XP will be granted for completing encounters and completing quests. The award granted will be per the 'Medium' encounter budget for the PCs' level, with a half award granted for only partial success. Note that how the encounter or quest is completed is not considered.

Factions

I'm surprised that I haven't really talked about 5e's use of Factions previously. So, here it is...

To it's credit, 5e at least tries to build some roleplaying elements into characters - they have Traits, Bonds, and Flaws that tie into the Inspiration system, and there's a space on the character sheet for a Faction. "Lost Mind of Phandelver" then introduces representatives of five factions which PCs can then either join or not (and later adventures then use those factions to a greater or lesser extent).

Unfortunately, almost all of those roleplaying aspects don't really go anywhere in the game - the Inspiration system really depends on the DM paying attention to five unique elements for each of the 4-6 players at the table and remember to actually award Inspiration (yeah, right...), while the Factions mostly don't actually do anything in the game - they just kind of sit there once introduced.

Which is all rather unfortunate, as it's really quite a neat idea.

Building Better Factions

My inclination with Factions is to largely ignore them for most campaigns, but for campaigns where they are important to put in the effort to make them really important. For example, my proposed "The Quest for Memory" campaign doesn't really have a place for Factions. They'd just be taking up headspace that could be better used for other things, so I'll just ignore them. By contrast "Blades in the Desert" puts Factions front-and-centre, so I want them to actually matter.

With factions, my feeling is that less is more - I think a small number of well-detailed factions is better than many shallow ones. Additionally, all factions need to be somewhat ambiguous in their motives. That is, you probably don't want a clearly 'good' faction or a clearly 'evil' faction, as then the players will find themselves guided by what they 'should' do, which rather negates choice.

In fact, I'm inclined to think that the ideal number of factions is five. And, as the diagram below shows, each faction should be allied with two other factions (the blue arrows) and opposed to two others (the red arrows).

This means that the factions are inherently in an unstable balance, which is rife for generating adventures - no faction can become dominant alone, due to the two opposed factions, and if two factions together become too powerful then a fragile alliance of the other three will move to oppose them. But as soon as the need ceases to be desperate, that fragile alliance will break up due to inherent tensions, and the status quo will be resumed. (Of course, the PCs are a wild card in this - by their efforts they may be able to secure outright victory for their faction(s)).

Of course, each faction then needs goals - what do they want to happen? What do they want to not happen? (Of course, putting the goals at odds is an easy way of generating opposition, though not the only one.)

Factions also need an internal structure, be it a loose collection of cells, a formal hierarchy, or whatever. There needs to be a way for PCs to get involved, and there probably need to be some ranks within the faction, and ways of rising through those ranks. And, ideally, there need to be some sort of benefits associated with rank, so that the PCs want to actually rise through them. That's especially true if there are obligations associated with being in a faction; the benefits need to outweigh the costs or PCs will just walk away.

My gut feeling as regards Factions, at least in a normal campaign, is that they are probably best left in the sidelines for most of the early levels. By level 4 you probably want to have introduced all the factions and have most PCs formally joined to one of them (not necessarily the same one throughout the group, but be wary of conflicts).

The majority of play with Factions probably takes place in levels 5 - 10 (the second tier). In these levels, I would expect the PCs to fairly rapidly rise through the ranks within their Faction, perhaps as often as one rank per level. By 10th level, they should probably be amongst the movers and shakers within their faction. As they move into the third tier, then, one of two things can happen: either the PCs become the leaders of their faction, or the PCs simply transcend their factions as they move on to bigger and better things. Either is valid; it really depends on the needs of the campaign.

And that, I think, is that. In a later post I'll flesh out the five factions in the "Blades in the Desert" campaign... unless those cease to be relevant.

The Side Dishes

An age ago, I posted to the effect that a good campaign really should have something more than just "orc and pie" searches for things to kill and stuff to take. I referred to this "something more" as the side dish.

Given that I'm now prepping the next campaign for the work game (actually, three such campaigns), I find myself in need of those side dishes. So, here they are:

Blades in the Desert: This campaign focuses on interaction and the five factions. Therefore I will prepare five factions (two merchant houses, the local lord and his men, a hostile foreign power, and the criminal underworld) that PCs can join or oppose. In addition, each player will be challenged to come up with an "anchor NPC" tied to their character; said character will also be tied somehow to one or more of the five factions, thus immediately involving the PCs in the events of the campaign.

The Mists of Lamordia: This campaign focuses on the finding and keeping of secrets. As such, each major element, be that a key NPC, a faction, and indeed each PC, will have a secret to be found and/or kept. At character creation, each player will be challenged to come up with a secret about their character - at a key time they may then choose to reveal that secret to the group, with the corresponding award of XP.

The Quest for Memory: This campaign is the most classic D&D experience, and as such will focus on the completion of quests. The environment will therefore be studded with quests, major and minor, that the players can choose to follow up on or not. In addition, I will prepare a dozen quests prior to character creation, and at the outset of the campaign each player will roll a die to determine their character's individual quest - these can be followed or ignored as the party wishes, and will grant XP as for any other quest.

My Granny's Parrot

I always love planning a new campaign. It's like starting with a blank character sheet - endless possibilities, dreams of what it could become... and without input from those pesky players ruining it all. I've therefore been enjoying giving a lot of thought to the topic of the new campaign over the last couple of days, and I've now firmed something up.

I've decided that the new campaign will be a homebrew job. Frankly, I've not been impressed with WotC's output ("Lost Mine..." aside), and converting a Pathfinder campaign isn't going to be less effort that doing the whole thing whole-cloth. I've also decided to give the players a choice of three campaigns at the outset:

The Quest for Memory: The most classic of the three, this is standard dungeon-crawling and treasure finding, with not a huge amount else going on. It will have a somewhat Hobbit-y vibe, and will be centered around an ancient, abandoned dwarven citadel. This one will have some interaction, quite a bit of exploration, and a number of hidden treasure caches - PCs will gain extra XP for finding those caches (in addition to the money itself, of course).

The Mists of Lamordia: Ravenloft, but not in Strahd's domain. The PCs were once smugglers plying the trade in the Realms, but one moonless night they find themselves enveloped in a thick mist. When the mist clears, they find the terrain around them changed, and a silent dock beckons. This one will be a horror/adventure campaign, similar in tone to "The Evil Dead" or "Van Helsing". This one will be balanced between interaction and exploration, and the focus on discovering secrets - PCs will gain extra XP for discovering secrets. Further, each PC will have a secret, and will gain XP from revealing it at an opportune time.

Blades in the Desert: Swashbuckling adventure in Calimport, with the PCs working for one of the five factions in the region. The emphasis here will be on fast-moving adventure, with quests against villainous sorcerers, feral gnolls, and rogue elementals. This campaign will feature some exploration, but will focus more on interaction. The PCs will gain extra XP for advancing the agenda of their faction, and also for rising within the faction.

Obviously, preparing three different-sounding campaigns is a lot of work, and work I just don't have time to do. Which brings me to my own dirty little secret: these are actually fundamentally the same campaign just skinned differently - I'll be using a mostly common map, be reusing the same structure of adventures, and will be placing the key obstacles in the way of the PCs with the same cadence. There are some differences, of course, but those are actually detail work that I can flesh out once I know which way they've jumped.

(Added bonus: whichever way they go, I'll then have the skeleton of two more campaigns to use later. Robust recycling facilities are a must for any busy DM!)

FWIW, the title of this post is from a probably-apocryphal story told me by an old English teacher, about a pupil who wrote one amazing essay, "My Granny's Parrot". Thereafter, he found a way to shoehorn this same essay into being the answer to any and all questions.

Final Thoughts on "Storm King's Thunder"

In no particular order:

• It was okay, but not great. The theme, "Shakespearean Giants" really didn't seem to come through in the material we got to. It's better expressed once the party get to Hekaton's court, but by then you've been playing for a year! That's too late to be introducing your theme.
  
  
• The early chapters really benefit from the DM being willing to flesh out the skeleton that is there. That suited me well enough, so that's all to the good.
  
  
• 5e's Exploration mechanics pretty much suck, and Interaction are little better. Given that that's two of the three pillars of the game, that's not a great showing. Again, the DM really needs to shore up those weaknesses.
  
  
• Giants make for fairly poor opponents - they're basically a big bag of hit points with limited ranged attacks and almost no spellcasting or other interesting features. This weakness becomes especially noticable when you're fighting them over and over again, and when running short sessions that don't favour long grindy combats.
  
  
• The TPK was unfortunate, but was an entirely sensible outcome given the way the dungeon in question was structured. If the PCs give warning, it made sense that the fire giants converged with overwhelming force, and the PCs' ability to meaningfully retreat was always limited.
  
  
• Yeah, I was most definitely ready for something new!

It was a fun campaign, and the dynamic around the table was good. That said, "Lost Mine of Phandelver" was vastly superior. My inclination for the future is that a year-long campaign spanning the lower levels, and featuring a wider variety of opponents, is definitely the way to go with this group.

Smitten on Zalto's Anvil

We were finally able to resume our campaign today, and as feared the result was indeed the dreaded Total Party Kill. As is frequently the case with D&D, as soon as the first PC hit the deck the writing was on the wall - the party was then torn between sacrificing actions to bring people back into the fray or just letting them bleed out. And lacking a dedicated healer who could give meaningful amounts of hit points back, any recovery was short-lived.

The group therefore suffered a domino effect, and just found themselves overwhelmed. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

That brings the question about the next campaign into rather sharper focus. And I'm no closer to a resolution - on the one hand, running a pre-written campaign (and, ideally, a D&D 5e campaign at that) has a great deal of attraction to it as it would reduce the workload I have to face. On the other hand, I'm definitely attracted to the notion of running a campaign designed for about a year of play, which probably means going from 1st to about 8th level, and then coming to a definitive conclusion. That suggests that homebrew is probably the way to go.

I have a couple of weeks in which to come up with three options to put to the group, and then a couple more weeks before the campaign is due to start. (In reality, character creation will probably take a couple of weeks, so add a little more again.) That's really not long, especially if going the homebrew route.

All Quiet on the Gaming Front

If you're wondering why there have been no updates on this blog for a while, it's because I'm still waiting for the resolution of the cliff-hanger from the previous session. For some reason, work is considered a higher priority than getting together over lunchtime for a fun game, which means we've been down a person or two, while the tail-end of the holiday season has also conspired to rob us of a quorum.

There is one key lesson from this: you should probably take the view that the game will go on regardless (or as close to regardless as you can manage). Skipping sessions can become a habit that is surprisingly hard to break. (Also, it's much easier to get a quorum with six players than with five - previously, we've gone on up with two people missing, leaving four; having dropped to five we're now skipping when two people are missing, leaving three.)

However, the basic upshot is that we've had three weeks without the game, and it will likely be at least another two before the next session.

What Would Make Them Stop?

One of the things I'm less than keen about in many published adventures (and, if I'm being honest, in my own adventures too) is that just about every opponent the PCs faces will fight to the death. Part of this is because D&D no longer has morale rules, and part of it is that the game is so punitive of attempts to flee or surrender. Nonetheless, it's something I'm not keen on.

As a corollary to that, I always see at least some thought given to what the villains of the piece want, and usually some thought given to why they want that. However, it's far less common, to the point of being unheard-of to see any thought given to the question of what would make them stop.

But that question is probably one that would give rise to better fleshed-out villains. Can the evil inquisator be persuaded of the error of her ways? Can the warlord be redirected from this conquest to a greater quest? Does the mafia boss have a favoured child who could persuade him to change his ways?

By asking, and answering that question, the door is then opened to solutions other than just fighting through hordes of minions before putting the Big Bad to the sword.

And sometimes the answer might well be "nothing". Some hurts are such that there's no stopping the revenge. Some insanities might not allow for being talked around. And that's fine, and it might even be the norm. But maybe it shouldn't be the only scenario?

Boxed In

We ended yesterday's session on a major cliffhanger - the PCs have brought the full force of the fire giants down upon them, and find themselves boxed in to a corner. Worse than that, the room they're in doesn't have a single entrance they can block up as a choke point - it has two such entrances just far enough apart to cause them grief.

In addition to this, they're in a position where their front-line warrior is really low on hit points and their Warlock is now out of spells.

I really don't see how they're going to get out of this one. Maybe this time it really is going to be a TPK, campaign wipe, and start over.

Of course, my experience has generally been that a TPK comes only when you least expect it, and generally when a sequence of bad rolls lead to a key PC going down unexpectedly, which provokes a cascade of deaths. If I'm expecting that outcome, that probably means it won't happen.

Either way, suddenly things got really interesting!

Rethinking the Next Campaign

I suddenly find myself in a position where I'm looking to finish up "Storm King's Thunder" as quickly as reasonably possible and much less sure that my decision to go with "Legacy of Fire" as the next campaign.

My feeling is that D&D 5e doesn't actually handle high-level play much better than any other version of the game, which means that the current campaign has started to drag. And given our current session times (1.5 hours, weekly), that drag is only exacerbated.

The other issue that I've found, actually with just about every edition and every game, is that a campaign simply has a "shelf-life" - except in very rare cases, once you get towards or over a year of continuous play, people just want to move on to something else.

All of which is probably a reason why so much campaign play, across the board, is in the low-mid levels.

Given that, and given that "Legacy of Fire" is intended as a campaign to run from level 1 to approximately level 20, which probably means 2-3 years of game play, it would seem a poor choice for the next campaign. Indeed, pretty much any of the published campaigns would make for a pretty poor choice.

Actually, the ideal adventure for the current group is "Lost Mine of Phandelver". It's just a shame that we've already used it!

What I'm now thinking we'll probably end up doing is a homebrew campaign, probably set in the Forgotten Realms, sticking to some fairly simple themes of exploration, finding treasure, and defeating evil.

The Emerald Spire Superdungeon

As mentioned in my previous post, I had one last Pathfinder PDF to read through. "The Emerald Spire Superdungeon" was something I had had my eye on for a long time, and when Paizo issued me with some store credit (for a delay I hadn't even noticed), and with my subscription benefits coming to an end, it was an ideal time to pick it up.

As the name implies, the adventure details a 16-level superdungeon. This was a product put together for one of their Kickstarters, and Paizo therefore used their contacts to arrange to have each level written by a different author, being a whos-who of some of the big names in the industry (excluding people working for WotC... can't think why...) The upshot is that each layer has a distinct feel, which may or may not be a good thing.

All in all... it's fine. It's one of those products that I suspect is of more interest as an artifact rather than as a gaming product - perhaps as a guide to how those big names would go about putting together something like this. From a quick glance, it really looked like many of the challenges, especially in the first half-dozen levels, seemed rather weak.

I did feel that there were some levels, notably in the middle of the pack, that were really great - lots of clever ideas, and it just generally seemed like fun. Given that this also matches up rather neatly to the 'sweet spot' that just about every version of D&D (and Pathfinder) has, that's not really a surprise.

I don't think I would recommend this product, those I certainly don't regret the purchase. It's just that there are better adventures out there. It's interesting, but something else would probably serve your needs better.

(And with that, the era really is ended. No more Pathfinder for me.)

End of an Era

On Friday I finished reading through my final Pathfinder Adventure Path volume. (I still have one final PDF, "The Emerald Spire Superdungeon" to read, but that's not part of the subscription and was something I bought to use up some store credit I had on Paizo's site.) That marks the end of the 24th Path they've published, and also the end of their content for 1st edition. As I've decided not to follow 2nd edition, both due to a dislike to some of what I'd seen and also because I'd be unlikely ever to play it anyway.

"Tyrant's Grasp" was probably a perfect place to end 1st edition - not only did it pit the heroes against the biggest Big Bad in their setting, and a figure they've been teasing for a decade, but it also really summed up everything that has characterised the Paths in recent years, for good and ill. Basically, I've found they've been becoming rather same-y of late, and so it was probably time to bow out regardless of the edition change... and so good to have that motivation.

Still, I do feel a bit bad about it. This marks the first time in a couple of decades that I haven't had a regular delivery of RPG-related material (first the Dragon/Dungeon magazines, and then Pathfinder). And with D&D dropping down to a trickle of new material, and my not really following any other game, that means I'm suddenly adrift.

5e Wands: Nice in Theory

One of the aspects of 5e that I really liked on my read-through was the handling of wands (and staves, and similar items), which I thought was a marked step up from their handling in 3e. In particular, I liked that wands had far fewer charges, I liked that they slowly recharged overnight, and I liked that they had a chance on crumbling away when the last charge was expended (but, crucially, that it wasn't guaranteed, thus encouraging PCs to take that risk with the last charge).

However, having played through a fairly long campaign now, I've found that I'm not so enamoured with the way wands are handled. My reasons for this are two-fold: firstly, the PCs have a bit too much certainty when it comes to tracking the number of charges; and the chance of the wand crumbling with the last charge just isn't high enough.

They're just that bit too generous and too controlled.

My inclination is the make the following four changes to all wands (and staves and similar items):

1. The user does not know how many charges they have.
   
2. Each time a wand is used, there is a 50% chance that one additional charge is expended. (Also, see below.)
   
3. If the last charge is expended, there is a 25% chance of the wand being destroyed.
   
4. The wand recharges 1d3 charges overnight.

In the event that there are not enough charges remaining to power the desired effect, whether due to the use of an extra charge or simply because there were fewer charges remaining than the user expected, nothing happens - the wand does not lose any charges, but no effect occurs. The effect of these changes should be still leave wands as a valuable treasure, and one that PCs are reasonably confident of using fairly regularly. However, they're less controlled than before, which should mean either that they will rely on other powers more often or they'll incur that chance of destruction more often. And, indeed, wands will probably become a treasure that is useful for a few levels but that then eventually drops out of the game - which is also no bad thing.

Of course, I haven't had a chance to test any of these changes in play as yet, and won't until my next campaign. So for now, consider them as random thoughts and little more than that.

Common Resources

For the next campaign, I'm definitely inclined to start using the ultra-simple "ten things" encumbrance rule. Which has the virtues of being really simple, being restrictive enough to be a real constraint, and being generous enough as to not hamper the characters excessively. All of which is to the good.

However, I'm increasingly of a mind to think that there are some things that are probably best not counted as "things" but rather are included as a common resource - the assumption being that everyone carries some of these items, but that they're generally spread out amongst the group so that nobody is overly burdened. Tracking these as common resources also means that it's easier to keep a global track of the resources, which removes the concern of players forgetting (or "forgetting") to track these themselves.

Specifically:

• Food and Water: Track food as a number of person/days of rations in a common pool. Assume also that each person has a waterskin (or similar) containing enough water for one day. Carrying more water than that would count as a 'thing'.
  
• Torches and Oil: Track these as a common pool of each type. Track also how many lanterns the party has (for the oil). Finally, keep track of who is carrying lit light sources - each requires a hand.
  
• Treasure: This is just a common pool of all the stuff that the party has gathered that has not yet been divided up. It is assumed to be in one or more sacks - keep track of who is carrying a sack - each requires a hand.
  
• Gold: Probably rather more controversial, but I've found it's probably best if the party has a single pool of their gold that PCs can dip into as required. It is assumed, of course, that each PC is carrying an equal share in a belt pouch.

If a party member is lost or separated from the group, it is assumed that they are carrying an equal share of food and water, torches and oil, and gold. Also, they may or may not have a lit torch/lantern and/or a sack of treasure - this will be noted.

The other key thing of note is what happens when an encounter starts - some PCs may start with one or both hands full (with a lit torch/lantern or a sack of treasure). This only matters if they then need that hand for something - they can drop the items easily enough, but doing so runs the risk of a light being extinguished and/or a sack of treasure being stolen.

My Current Thoughts on XP

As with many things, I've gone through a few different approaches to awarding XP and/or levels over the years. Until recently, I had taken the view that the thing to do was to not award XP at all, and instead give out a level every three sessions (or, in 5e, one session for 1st level, two for 2nd, and three thereafter).

However, I've gradually settled on a solution that I think works, which I intend to stick with long-term.

#1: XP Should be Awarded, and Should be Awarded Immediately

I've concluded that it is indeed better to award XP. As discussed previously, I divorce the XP budget for encounter building from the reward, and this allows me to give awards for other goals, but the principle is sound.

The other thing I've concluded is that it works best if XP is awarded immediately - as soon as an encounter is won, a quest is completed, or whatever, the PCs get the XP. That way, the PCs get immediate reward, which is a good thing.

#2: Levels are Awarded At the End of a Session
This one is fairly straightforward - once the PCs gain enough XP to gain a level, they gain that level at the end of the session, with the consequences applying immediately at the start of the next session.

Ideally, I think I'd prefer to handle this by awarding levels at the end of the adventure, and certainly requiring the PCs to be taking a long rest. However, given the prevalence of multi-level adventures, enforcing the between-adventure principle would be difficult. Likewise, I don't want to enforce a long rest because it's entirely possible that the session-break won't match up neatly with that - especially in the current paradigm of very short sessions.

#3: Everyone Has the Same XP (and Levels)

Again, this one is straightforward - everyone has the same XP total and level, regardless of actions in the game, attendance, or any other factor. I just don't see any benefit of doing things otherwise.

#4: Sessions Per Level

Assuming a session of 3-4 hours played once a week or once each two weeks, I'm inclined to think that the approximate rate of advancement that gives the best results is indeed one level per three sessions (except in 5e, where 1st level is probably one session and 2nd level is two).

#5: About Level Drain

Level drain has, of course, largely dropped out of the game, which is probably a good thing. However, for editions that do retain it, my inclination is that this should not reduce the character's XP total. Instead, a lost level should indeed be just that. However, as the characters go forward, each time they gain a new level they should instead gain two such levels until such time as they have again caught up.

However, that does need some further thought, as I'm not entirely convinced that this is the best approach. I do like the "catching up" approach, and I do also like the "you don't lose XP" approach, but the rate of recovery may need tweaked.

Double Figures

The PCs in my "Storm King's Thunder" campaign have recently hit 9th level. Given that we're nearing the end of the campaign, my expectation is that they'll probably reach 11th or 12th level by the time we're done (which is a little higher than the 10th level the book nominally expects, but given the 'cheat' in the final encounter and my preference to remove it, that's a good thing).

What that likely means is that this campaign will join the very short list of campaigns I have run where the PCs reached the double figures in terms of level:

• There was a pretty dire 2nd Edition Dragonlance/Spelljammer campaign that hit 15th level and then proceeded to have the PCs attain divine ascension. I'm not sure that really counts, as by the end of the campaign we were cheating the system pretty wantonly, basically to rack up those XP to 15th level as quickly as possible. But we did it, so I guess...
  
• The first full 3e campaign I ran got to around 12th level, I think. I don't seem to have the most recent character sheets any longer, even in scanned form, and don't really have the interest to go and search for a definitive answer. It was a reasonable campaign, although one beset with a number of problems - it was lucky it ended when it did.
  
• The highest level I've ever run to was the "Shackled City" adventure path, which I still number as one of my best-ever campaigns. In the last session the PCs were 18th level; they would have hit 19th if we'd bothered to run the numbers after the final victory. Also of note is that this campaign saw XP calculated meticulously - they most certainly did earn that level!
  
• Also in 3.5e, the "Eberron Code" campaign ended with the PCs at 15th level. Again, the XP were calculated and the levels 'earned'.
  
• As noted, if everything goes to plan, "Storm King's Thunder" is likely to hit the low double-digits. Here I'm using a slightly customised approach to XP, but the upshot of that is that the PCs are quite possibly getting less than they 'should'. In any event, I'm happy to claim that the levels have been 'earned', in a way that I wouldn't for that 2nd Ed campaign!

And that's it - in 30 years of play, only four (soon five) campaigns have hit double digits in terms of levels.

(Of course, it's worth noting that five of those years were spent running an epic Vampire game that ran right through that game's power range. Vampire doesn't have levels as such, but if it did then "Rivers of Time" would most certainly qualify!)

Tweaking XP Awards

I've been using my system for awarding XP for about a year now, and it's working pretty well. However, I have concluded that there are a couple of things that need adjusted for a better fit:

1. I've been in the habit of awarding quarter XP for random encounters. This is a mistake - these should really grant no XP (and very little treasure). Again, they're a bad thing.
   
2. The XP awards in general are too high. While I'm inclined to stick with the 'hard' XP budget, I'm inclined to think the awards should be based on the 'medium' budget, thus slowing the game down a little.
   
3. Conversely, quest awards aren't high enough - I've been giving a quarter award here, where they should really be set to the standard level.
   
4. I've concluded that 'standard', 'pivotal', and 'climactic' encounter types are one too many (and especially when the 'climactic' type ofter aligns with a quest award!). I'm inclined therefore to have only two - the 'standard' and 'climactic' (but where the latter gives double the award of the former, not thrice).
   
5. The quarter awards are generally good.

That being the case, the revised table would look like this:

Level	'Hard' Encounter Budget	Milestone/Quest XP	Climactic XP	Quarter-Milestone
1	75	50	100	20
2	150	100	200	25
3	225	150	300	40
4	375	250	500	65
5	750	500	1,000	125
6	900	600	1,200	150
7	1,100	750	1,500	190
8	1,400	900	1,800	225
9	1,600	1,100	2,200	275
10	1,900	1,200	2,400	300
11	2,400	1,600	3,200	400
12	3,000	2,000	4,000	500
13	3,400	2,200	4,400	550
14	3,800	2,500	5,000	625
15	4,300	2,800	5,600	700
16	4,800	3,200	6,400	800
17	5,900	3,900	7,800	975
18	6,300	4,200	8,400	1,050
19	7,300	4,900	9,800	1,225
20	8,500	5,700	11,400	1,425

An Annoying Omission

We've now reached the point in the campaign where the PCs are picking up some powerful shapechanging and conjuration spells. These tend to allow them to "turn into a creature of type X of CR Y or less" or "summon a creature of type X of CR Y or less". Which is great - I'll just look up the tables cross-referencing creatures by type and CR. And, conveniently, those tables are gathered together into an appendix in the DMG.

(That's a whole other rant - those tables should be in the MM, neatly dividing material by topic. But 5e chose to copy the example of 1st Edition in this regard, neglecting the fact that 1st Edition did this by necessity, as the MM was published before Gygax realised the tables would be a good idea, so he had to put them in the DMG.)

So, anyway, I looked up those oh-so-useful tables in the DMG... and found them missing. The book has tables listing monsters by terrain type (good), and listing monsters by CR (also good), but doesn't feature the tables that I actually needed, cross-referencing monster type by CR.

Brilliant!

Tricky (Pathfinder)

Well, the time has come for me to cancel my Pathfinder Adventure Path subscription - we're now coming to the end of the 1st Edition materials, and I've decided I'm not going to move on to 2nd Edition (partly because I've not been terribly impressed with what I've seen, but mostly because I'm basically never going to play it). There's one final volume coming, being issue #144, which brings an end to the current Path.

However, there's a small problem: the next subscription package contains both that final volume and also issue #145, the first volume in the next Path (and therefore the first 2nd Edition Path).

This is slightly tricky: I definitely do want volume #144, but definitely don't want volume #145, but they come together, so...

(What I think will most likely happen is that I'll cancel, and then use some store credit I've somehow accumulated to purchase the final volume and its PDF. But we'll see - their customer service has generally been outstanding, so it's possible they'll have this covered.)

Zodiac

I've been musing on the set of constellations for Terafa - this was something that never quite got defined in all the previous versions of the setting, but is definitely something that should be covered. Broadly speaking, what's needed is twelve or so nice, iconic figures around whom you can spin all sorts of legends, stories and material.

It also occurs to me that the latest version of D&D just happens to have twelve classes...

So, let's have the sign of the Barbarian, the Bard, the Cleric, the Druid, the Fighter, the Monk, the Paladin, the Ranger, the Rogue, the Sorcerer, the Wizard, and the Warlock. That should do rather nicely...

Morgrave Miscellany

I've largely taken to ignoring the DM's Guild, mostly since I'm barely gaming any more, because the quality is necessarily very uneven, and because frankly I've got no chance of keeping up anyway. However it does have one extremely nice feature, which is that as WotC open up the various settings it gives scope for an interested creator to expand his or her creation, potentially in ways that WotC never would (due to market pressures). And so, very occasionally there will be a product on there that screams "must have" to me.

That is the case with the "Morgrave Miscellany", an Eberron sourcebook from the creator of the setting, Keith Baker, with mechanical help from Ruty Rutenberg (who is a new name to me).

The Miscellany comprises four chapters: one on classes, one on other character matters, a third on running a game in a noir style, and then a set of noir-ish adventures (actually, for 0-level characters).

As the name perhaps implies, this one is very much a mixed bag. The material for the classes is generally good (and, since this represents the bulk of the document, it is probably worth the price of entry by itself). Likewise, the expanded options for Dragonmarks (in chapter two) are also interesting and likely to see use. On the other hand, I'm unlikely ever to use the new feats (not a fan of feats in general), and I found the material on races rather bland.

The chapter on running a noir game was interesting, but should be filed under "you'll probably never use this" - it's mostly techniques that should only be attempted by a pretty skilled GM... but a pretty skilled GM will probably be aware of them without this book. I was also very much not a fan of the adventure material that rounds out the book, partly because I have no interest in 0-level adventure material, but mostly because it all struck me as too short and far too linear to be worthwhile - there's very little inspiration on offer here.

The upshot is that this is one has a conditional recommendation. It's good if you want more material for classes, especially material slanted towards Eberron. And there are some good ideas here. But it's not as polished or as consistent as most of the published Eberron books, or indeed the "Wayfarer's Guide".

Bottom line: I'm not at all unhappy I bought this, but I suspect it's unlikely ever to see any actual use.

Legacy of Fire

At the weekend I had an epiphany that led me to the realisation of the next campaign: I've decided to convert and run the "Legacy of Fire" adventure path. (Huzzah!) This is the third "Pathfinder" path, although it's actually a set of D&D 3.5e adventures (as it predates the publication of the Pathfinder RPG). This is largely irrelevant - as I am, and would be, running 5e I would need to convert the path anyway.

Anyway, it's good to have the decision made, and in plenty of time so that I can get a conversion together before it's needed. Although, actually, it's only 90% made - there's a slight possibility that WotC might happen to publish a must-run adventure some time between now and the end of "Storm King's Thunder". Though if they do, they haven't announced it yet - "Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus" is not that adventure.

Curse of the Dragon's Gold

Legend has it that when the world was new, seven great progenitor dragons soared in the skies. Their names have become legend: Pride, Wrath, Greed, Sloth, Gluttony, Envy, and Lust. These were in the days before the Arrival of Man, and even the sundering of the elven people was yet to come.

In time, the great dragons amassed hoards befitting their might, and they retired to their slumbers, ever wary of those who would dare steal from them. But in doing so they made a fatal mistake, for by departing the skies they abdicated the fear their presence engendered, and in time all the great dragons fell before heroes who should have feared them. (Some versions of the tale tell that the great wyrm Sloth was never slain, but slumbers still within the deeper places of the world.)

However, the ancient legends also tell of the curse of the dragon's gold. So long did the beasts slumber, and so mighty were they, that their hordes became imprinted with the essence of the beasts. And, in turn, that essence was communicated to the heroes who stole from them.

And thus were created the Dragonborn: children of the great dragons, infused with the elemental powers that they possess, but also intrinsically bound to the same curses of their progenitors: pride, wrath, greed, gluttony, envy, and lust.

(For their part, the Dragonborn tell a different story. They claim to be the oldest of all the races, predating even the elves, and to have ruled a great empire across all the lands. As they were displaced by the elven people, so to was the legend of the dragon's curse popularised. As with all such things, the truth is unclear.)

Aftermath

One of the DMing rules of thumb I adopted a few years ago (actually as a consequence of "The Eberron Code" campaign) was that a successful campaign should change the world. Where in this context 'successful' refers to the quality of the campaign, not whether the PCs actually succeeded in their goals or not.

That is, if the PCs are busy investigating a series of mysteries that lead them to a final showdown with Bel Shalor, that conflict should have a lasting impact on the world. If the PCs triumph, they exorcise the Shadow of the Flame; if they fail, Bel Shalor is freed from his bonds and unleashes a reign of terror on the world.

Since the final conflict inevitably comes at the end of the campaign, I feel it's also important that that impact be carried forward to future campaigns in the same setting. And so, when I run Eberron I now include the cleansing of the Flame as something that has happened in the world - Bel Shalor is defeated and won't be causing anyone much strife any more.

In the context of my current campaign, then, "Storm King's Thunder" is likely to make two lasting changes to the setting. Firstly, the PCs actions are likely to thwart the schemes of some but not all of the giant lords. The ones they choose not to engage will be assumed to be at least partially successful in their designs.

The second consequence concerns the Ordning, which imposes a strict heirarchy on the various types of giants. As above, this will be directly related to the PC actions - the first giant lord defeated will be lowest in the new Ordning, then the next defeated, and so on. Any the PCs don't confront will be higher than the ones the PCs defeat, and will retain their existing positions.

(So, for instance, if the PCs defeat only the fire giant Duke, the new Ordning will be Storm > Cloud > Frost > Stone > Hill > Fire.)

Though there is something a little tricky there: it is by no means certain that I'll ever run the Forgotten Realms again, since I'm not a fan, so this may be a change that has no effect.

Incidentally, I think "Storm King's Thunder" has now reached the point where it can be considered successful. That being the case, I should give some thought to the consequences if the PCs just fail. In this case, I'm inclined to posit a new Ordning with the Cloud giants at the top, then the Storm, Frost, and Fire giants, then Stone and then Hill giants. All the giant schemes are successful, and the race remains considerably more hostile to smaller folk than has previously been the case. And much of the Sword Coast will have been devastated.

I kind of hope the PCs don't completely fail at this point!

Bring Me the Heads of the Giant Lords!

One of the things I like least about "Storm King's Thunder" concerns some of the best material in the book. After the wandering around in chapter 3 and the visit to the Eye of Exposition in chapter 4, the book then presents lovingly-detailed lairs for the five giant chiefs who have been causing all the trouble thus far. These are all really good material.

And then the PCs are encouraged to choose one of the giants to face, with the promise that if they thwart only one of the chiefs' schemes, they will all fall. And so of these five lairs, which represent both a very large part of the book and also represent pretty much the best part of the book, four are expected to be ignored. (The theory here, I think is both so that when groups meet to trade war stories they'll each have had very different experiences, and also so that groups can reuse the same adventure and take another route. The problem with that latter notion being that surely reuse of the same adventure with the same group must be fairly unusual - wouldn't you prefer to do something else.)

On the other hand, I also don't like adventures where the PCs either must deal with everything in the adventure (often because area A leads to area B, which leads to area C, and so on), or where they have a "choice"... of what order to face the various challenges. My ideal would be for an adventure where the PCs will face most things, will only deal with everything if they really look for it, and are likely to miss some things.

To that end, I'm looking at how to address the issue with SKT for my current campaign. And, as the party are just about to enter the Eye of Exposition, now is the time.

My thinking is that the Oracle will inform them that they must face one of the giant lords (to get the required teleportation device), but that they can face more if they choose. Obviously, any giant lords they don't face will be able to complete their nefarious schemes, and will stand to make gains when the Ordning is restored. The giant lords they do defeat will come lower down.

But, in addition, with each giant lord the PCs face, the Oracle will imbue them with some trait of that species (the size, the ability to throw boulders, immunity to fire/cold, a stone skin...) which they will then carry for the rest of the adventure, and which will improve their standing in the Storm King's Court.

That way, the PCs have an incentive to face down the giant lords without being required to do so. They will then be free to choose their own path - especially useful as only three of the giant lords have really been introduced thus far, while a fourth subrace has featured but not to the same extent. So my expectation would be that they'd deal with most, and not all, of the five lords.

Which is nice.

The downside is that the PCs will likely end up at a considerably higher level than the adventure supposes, which means I'll need to beef up the last chapters.

(However, one of my other objections to the adventure is that the final conflict is yet another example of one of WotC's bad habits: an overwhelming challenge, with a built-in 'cheat' to make it manageable. If the PCs are considerably higher level, the 'cheat' can perhaps be removed, and certainly downgraded, making for a more satisfying (for me) final battle.)

Giants

Alas, I have decided that I'm really not a fan of giants in D&D. In principle, they're pretty great - a semi-civilised race with a distinct and unusual culture, with several different factions that are mutually-adversarial (though not necessarily mutually-antagonistic), and indeed a well developed religious and spiritual role. It's all good stuff.

Unfortunately, when it comes to practice, giants fall down due to one fatal flaw: they're basically big bags of hit points that have to be whittled down a bit at a time. And, indeed, they're big bags of hit points, and they have very little else going on. Which means they're really dull in combat.

In my opinion, what giants really need are more terrain/movement powers, plus possibly an area attack with their boulders. Oh, and more mobility. This might well come at the price of fewer hit points, but that's no bad thing either.

(Of course, the DM can always add these things, and "Storm King's Thunder" does a decent job of making some likely suggestions. But, really, these things should come as standard. Plus, if I'm adding them to giants, could I not do a similar addition to other monsters and get an even better return on investment?)

Of course, this might also be a worthwhile time to note that the first Monster Manual of any edition pretty much sucks, which is largely an inevitable consequence of it being written before the edition is fully understood. Unfortunately, that first MM is also the place where all the most iconic and best-loved monsters are going to be found. I'm almost inclined to suggest that the 4e/Essentials approach is a reasonably decent one, with the entire set of monsters getting a thorough overhaul/rewrite midway through the edition for a better game experience. But that's another rant...

Excommunication

In standard D&D, Clerics receive their spells from a patron deity or, in some less common cases, from a force, philosophy or similar agency. One consequence of this is that should a Cleric fall away from their patron (generally by shifting to an incompatible alignment) the Cleric will lose all access to spells and powers.

(In some older versions of the game, the DM was actually encouraged to keep an eye on the spells the player of the Cleric chose to prepare, and potentially to substitute some or all of these for spells of his own liking.)

I'm not really a fan of this notion, partly because of the interference with player agency, partly because I simply don't want to use alignment, but mostly because I would prefer my religions less monolithic than that implies (since it's hard to have a heresy when the deity is giving a clear and immediate guide to his intent).

For that reason, in Terafa Clerics will not be granted their spells and powers by their deities directly. Instead, those powers will be granted by some unknown and unknowable Source. The Cleric taps into that Source in the name of the deity and is granted spells. And, as a consequence of this, it is impossible for the deity to interfere with the granting of spells - the Cleric's player chooses his spells, and that's that, and also the Cleric can't fall away from the deity by changing alignment or similar (of course, the Cleric could fall away from the church and suffer all manner of social consequences, but that's another matter).

But... One of the key features of this arrangement is that the Cleric must tap into the Source in the name of a deity. They can't call on it independently, or simply create a new deity (or force or philosophy, or whatever). And if a deity is killed or otherwise ceases to be active his Clerics no longer have the ability to tap into the Source. (The DM must take care with this - it would be hugely unfair to rule that a Cleric PC's patron deity had been killed, and thus strip the player of his hard-earned powers. But it is a plot point that came up in one older campaign, so I do want to keep it intact.)

The upshot of all of this is that excommunication doesn't exist as such in Terafa - a Cleric cannot be severed from his or her deity in the manner common to other D&D worlds.

The Arrival of Man

In Terafa humans are unique amongst the races in that they alone do not have a creation myth. While elves and dwarves each maintain that they are the oldest of all the races, halflings trace their origins back to a single forbidden love, and dragonborn trace their ancestry to the hoards of the oldest wyrms, humans have no such tale.

Instead, the very oldest human myths speak of their arrival on Terafa from somewhere else. Those myths are inconsistent on whether humanity was driven out of their first home by environmental catastrophe, by the wrath of their first gods, or due to a rebellion against ancient masters (and, indeed, whether that rebellion was successful or failed), but the tale has it that they were forced to leave in a great Ark.

After many years of travelling in their Ark, humanity were discovered by the benevolent deity Choriim, himself wandering in a self-imposed exile from Terafa, and guided to their new home. For this reason, humanity will always count Choriam as their most faithful patron, while Choriam prizes humanity above all other peoples of the world - though he did not create them, it was he who brought them home.

Of course, shortly after the Arrival, the Usurper tried to sway the hearts of humanity to his cause, bidding as always to overthrow and drive out Choriam. But that is another story...

Psionics in 5e

One of the things that bugs me (very slightly) about 5e is that WotC still haven't published rules for psionics, outside of a couple of Unearthed Arcana articles. The reason this bugs me is that two major settings (Dark Sun and, to a lesser extent, Eberron) make use of psionics in the core of the setting. Omitting the rules for psionics takes something away from those settings - they just work better with the option in place than without.

The reason this only bugs me slightly is that I'm not running either of those settings, not likely to be running them in the foreseeable future, and disinclined to make use of psionics in any other setting. Indeed, even in Eberron I'm mostly inclined not to use it unless a player asks about the possibility (my 1984/Demolished Man/John Le Carre mashup notwithstanding).

All that said, I'm also starting to come around to the opinion that the best way to handle psionics may well be to reskin the Warlock - basically, introduce one or more psionic Pacts, and then just go from there. Or, just possibly, do the same with the Sorcerer. That gives you pretty much everything you need with a minimum of fuss.

And if you insist that each player choose a different class for their character (which I'm also increasingly leaning towards as a good idea), you get to sidestep the possibility of another player also playing a Warlock and the characters feeling too samey.

Resuming the Campaign

Due to holidays and other events, the "Storm King's Thunder" campaign has been on hold for a month. Conveniently, the last session before the break saw the party reach the end of the current mini-arc, reach 8th level, and generally get to a really good break point.

We're due to resume next week, at which point it is my intention to advance the campaign timeline by several months. This has several advantages: firstly, it advances the calendar past the winter months, when travelling would have been difficult. Secondly, it allows me to clear out the remaining legacy quests, none of which were hugely interesting, and lets us jump straight to the next section of the campaign book. And, thirdly, it allows those players who have been absent for a little while to jump back into the action with a minimum of backstory to assimilate. It's pretty much a win on all counts.

For that reason, the action in the next session will pick up with the party meeting Harshnag the Grim outside of the citadel of Mirabar, and from there they can begin their journey to the Eye of the All-father.

I'm not entirely sure how much remains of the campaign. I think we're now closer to the end than to the beginning, and certainly it is now my intention not to pad out the next sections as I have the previous wanderings. However, it is also my intention to have the PCs tackle more than one of the giant chieftains - I'm not a fan of the storyline's design decision that the campaign should only use one of four chapters provided for that purpose.

I think my hope is to bring this campaign to an end by the end of this year, with a view to starting a new campaign early in 2020. However, whether that is actually practical remains to be seen. Most importantly, though, is picking the action up for a new season...

The Next Project

With the epic scan-and-shred task now done, with the digital declutter now done, and with the shelves of RPG books culled somewhat (though pretty effectively), I find myself in need of a new project.

After some consideration, I think the time has come to finally bite the bullet and tackle something that's been bugging me for a fairly long time, but that I've never quite felt motivated enough to try to fix.

It's time to look at create a 5e character sheet that's better suited to my needs.

The Threefold World

The "Ultimates Edition" of Terafa has been on hold for some months, in which time I have completed my scan-and-shred clear-out of my old RPG notes. In the course of doing that I've made two findings, concerning the evolution of the world itself.

In the most recent 'full' version of the world, I decided that there would be three major continents - Talara, Talrania, and Sarinia. However, I also came across maps of two additional continents from previous versions, one an pseudo-Africa that I drew up and very vaguely recall (and recall dropping for good reason), and another that I have no memory of.

Reflecting on this, I'm inclined to stick with the most recent vision of the "threefold world" - that is, I'll retain the three continents (as named). I do intend to make some fairly extensive modifications to these, but both the numbers and the names will remain as-is.

My Grandfather's Grandfather

A few years ago, my grandfather was persuaded to write his family story. This was largely intended as an exercise to help keep his mind sharp, but the end result made for interesting reading for a number of reasons. In the context of this post, however, it's worth noting that the earliest parts of the story contained some discussion of even earlier generations of the family history - and, notably, they began with my grandfather's grandfather.

This largely tallies with my own experiences - I have fairly extensive memories of my own grandparents, but almost no recollection of great-grandparents. I did meet both my mother's grandmother and my father's grandmother, but in both cases they died when I was still young. Similarly, it is likely that my oldest nephew will just about remember his great-grandfather, with those memories becoming much less pronounced as we step through the cousins - as they get younger, the memory they have will be less.

What I'm getting at here is that "living memory" probably extents, at the very most, to the time of my grandfather's grandfather. Allowing for very a small number of very long-lived people, that probably means about 150 years at the very most.

For that reason, when codifying the history of an RPG setting, I'm inclined to think that the multi-thousand year history is probably the wrong approach. Rather, a setting should probably include:

• About fifty years of fairly well understood recent history.
  
• A further hundred years or so of less well understood, but not totally obscure, history.
  
• A very brief sketch of known history before that. But it shouldn't be detailed, may very well be inaccurate, incomplete, and even contradictory. People probably know about the equivalent of the Roman Empire, but probably don't know much about it.
  
• A whole bunch of myths, legends, and other stories that may or may not be true, stand at odds with actual history, and that are more widely accepted than the truth - King Arthur, Atlantis, and so forth.

And, crucially, the last two items probably shouldn't have dates associated with them, or even be placed into a particular order. The past is another country. Of course, it's also worth considering how this interfaces with other, potentially very long-lived races. If an elf lives ten times as long as a human on average, does that then multiply the "50 years" and "100 years" by a factor of ten? Well, perhaps. Alternately, you could take the view (as I do) that elves are generally much less bound by time, and so don't bother with keeping detailed histories in the same way. Dwarves tend towards oral histories, and so although their histories are much longer, they are also more error prone (and, indeed, focus very much on the stories rather than the facts - hence tending towards myths and legends anyway). Besides, I quite like the notion that dwarves maintain a lot of feuds but have, very often, forgotten quite why they bear those grudges.

And, of course, it's worth considering that just because a dragon knows exactly what happened 4,000 years ago, it doesn't follow that you can just go and ask, or that the dragon would tell you!

In other words, I'm inclined to largely ignore the longer-lived races when composing the history of the setting. If nothing else, it's not like the players are going to read it anyway.

Lessons from Literature: Nothing

A little over a week ago I started reading "The Chronicles of Narnia" to my daughter, starting with "The Magician's Nephew". (Purists will argue over the 'correct' reading order, and seem to come down in favour of publication order. However, this makes TMN a prequel, and prequels suck, so I'm sticking with chronological order.) Now it's fair to say that the Narnia stories are of little relevance to gaming for the most part - Gygax was aware of them but didn't really rate them, the setting is overly allegorical for consideration, and so forth. However, there are some things that are of some use...

Early in TMN, before even the founding of Narnia, the two protagonists find themselves transported to "the wood between the worlds". As the name implies, this is a gateway realm between different worlds (that takes the form of a great wood filled with many pools). That is, it's another Transitive Place, like the Infinite Staircase, the Astral or Ethereal Planes, and so forth. That's probably one that's worth borrowing.

The other idea that's worth lifting comes a bit later in the book, where the various characters step into a pool and find themselves in... Nothing. That is, they've stepped into a realm that hasn't been created yet, and so they aren't really anywhere. (From there, of course, the story is heading towards the founding of Narnia, but that's not important right now.)

That's got to be an intriguing notion worthy of some thought - some areas in the multiverse that are still, somehow, 'blank', and that are therefore open for a passing divinity/wizard/villain to fill with whatever they see fit. Or, to put it another way, they're demiplanes ready to be established.

D&D has lately become a game of epic quests to save the world from the latest Big Bad Evil Guy du jour. Traditionally, though, although that was always an option the game also featured such things as establishing a keep, running a kingdom, attaining divine ascension, or even establishing an entire demiplane. The quest for Nothing would seem to be a useful step in the pursuit of that last... and may be a worthwhile thing to add to the multiverse.

The Final Phase

My efforts at scanning and shredding all of my old RPG notes have reached their final phase. I've now scanned all the setting materials, all the old character sheets, a million pointless rules revisions, and a lot of other assorted dross. All that remain are some maps.

Nine maps, to be exact, each of which is made up of two or four panels taped together.

That's not too bad - in each case it's a matter of scanning each panel, then using Photoshop to combine the resulting files into a single large file. Then archiving those. Each map should take about half an hour to get through. Compared with the efforts to date, that doesn't seem to bad.

What has been interesing about going through the maps, though, is that it has shown up something surprising: they're not actually too terrible. Granted, they're not publishable quality, but there's a reason for that - I'm not a professional artist. But they do provide a lot of useful information, do so clearly, and aren't an utter embarrassment.

A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.

The upshot of this is that I'm reconsidering my previous position that I was generally terrible at this aspect of the game. It's entirely possible that my issues with mapping have actually been more to do with determining what to map (and applying the necessary time), rather than an inability to actually draw the resulting map.

Still, I'll be glad once this task is done and over with!

Perform Skill vs Tool Proficiency

One of the biggest proud nails in the 5e ruleset is the overlap between the Perform skill and the various tool proficiencies in musical instruments. This isn't helped by the fact that the Bard is the character most likely to take either proficiency - and indeed is likely to have both.

There are a few possible ways to nail this one flat:

Option 1: Just Ignore It

As the name implies, you could just ignore it. This is especially attractive because, as noted, the character most likely to have the relevant proficiencies is the Bard, who is likely to have both. Moreover, the Bard is most likely to make the checks using their most favoured instrument, so they'll almost always both apply.

Option 2: Remove the Perform Skill

A second option is to remove the Perform skill entirely. Make 'singing' another tool proficiency (effectively, just another instrument), and likewise 'oratory', 'acting', and so on. The downside of this is that the lines between the various different 'tools' are not immediately obvious.

Option 3: Perform Trumps Everything

In "Xanathar's Guide to Everything", a mechanism has been added to allow characters to learn new tool (and language) proficiencies. However, no similar mechanism exists for skill proficiencies.

Therefore, there's an argument for treating the Perform skill as proficiency in all instruments. A character who doesn't want to expend one of their very limited skill proficiencies on that can choose to pick up an odd instrument here or there, but it's less efficient. (That feels somewhat unsatisfactory, but it would work.)

Option 4: You Need Both

Alternately, there's the argument that you should need both - if you're performing using a lute, you need to be proficient in both Perform and the Lute. If you're missing either, you don't get the bonus. (I would, however, argue that expertise should apply if you have it in any of the appropriate areas.)

The appeal of this is then that you can apply the same to language proficiencies and social skills (so you can only Persuade the orcs if you speak Orcish), which has a certain neatness to it. And it also feels right - I know only too well that simply playing an instrument reasonably well doesn't automatically imply you can do so under the pressure of an audience's gaze. But it is rather inefficient, especially since it applies only to one fairly narrow niche area.

Conclusion

On balance, I'm leaning towards solution #1 (that is, just ignore it), unless and until it bugs someone in the group. However, if the players were to demand a solution, I'd probably lean to solution #3. And, if I were writing a theoretical 6th edition, I'd go with #4.

My Worst-Ever GM Mistake

Like most long-term GMs, I have a lot of war stories to tell. And, also like most long-term GMs, I prefer to tell the stories of all the times the game was awesome, when everyone went away happy, the dice fell just so, and the bad guys made a satisfying thump when they hit the ground.

This isn't one of those stories. This is the tale of my worst-ever screw-up as a GM. Fortunately, it was a mistake I only ever made once, and it's one that I learned a great deal from. As Yoda says, "The greatest teacher, failure is."

(I'm no fan of "The Last Jedi", but Yoda's scene is truly great - in those few minutes he has the two best lines in the film, and indeed the two best lines in the whole of Disney-SW. The above is one.)

Anyway.

The campaign was my long-running "Rivers of Time" chronicle for "Vampire: the Dark Ages" (we went through various eras and various rulesets in that campaign, but at that time it was V:tDA). Having thoroughly run out of ideas for the campaign by that point, I came up with what I thought was a clever approach: one of the PCs woke up one morning stripped of all his hard-earned supernatural power. For reasons unknown, he was suddenly mortal once again.

Now that, by itself, was already a hugely risky move. If there's one thing players hate, it's losing stuff - they've 'worked' hard to earn all these powers, and levels, and magic items, and so on, and to have the GM suddenly strip those away tends to be the opposite of fun.

But I was lucky enough that my players trusted me with this, and did so on the understanding that it was going to be a temporary thing. Which was fair enough. The story progressed with the character gradually settling back in to a mortal life, enjoying a little peace and serenity, and things being generally good.

But the character was also approached by one of the villains of the campaign, who told him that he knew what had happened, and was willing to teach him how to reverse it, in return for "just one small thing" - a favour that the PC could now do that would normally not be possible. So far, so good, and the player duly played his part, carefully considering whether to go for that deal with the devil, or whether to instead retire to a mortal life. In the end, he went for it.

Now, what the player didn't know was that the aforementioned villain was lying. He had no special knowledge, he had no way to restore the character's abilities, but he'd seen an opportunity to carry out his agenda, so he took it. (It is worth noting that this was a long-established villain with a history of lies and villainy. So this shouldn't have been a totally unexpected betrayal.)

Thus far, everything was okay. I was on thin ice due to the "you've lost your powers" thing, but otherwise okay. Then came the crucial moment when for the bad guy to reveal his betrayal. And that's where it went wrong.

We were role-playing the scene in the first-person. Thus, when the villain asked whether it was done, I said "is it done?" And so on, and so forth. And then the moment of truth - the player stated that he'd done what was asked, and therefore it was time for the villain to make good.

And the villain laughed in his face.

Now, the reason that this was an especially shitty thing to do was three-fold. Firstly, the immediate impact was that I laughed in the player's face. Which is never a good approach. The second problem is that we then had a screwjob within a screwjob - I'd screwed the player by 'stealing' his character's powers, and then my NPC had screwed the PC by tricking him. That conflates the two things, to a point where I was, in short, being a right bastard about it. And then the third problem was that the PC, having lost his powers, wasn't in a position to actually do anything about it - the NPC in question was vastly more powerful than that PC at that time.

All in all, it sucked. And it was a rotten thing to do to a player. (As I said, my worst-ever GM mistake.)

As it happened, it all worked out okay. The PC promptly got his powers back by other means, and shortly thereafter got his revenge on the villain for that humiliation. So at least there was some catharsis. Plus, that plot point then proceeded to pay off for the remainder of the campaign, which ran for another eighteen months or so (despite my having almost completely run out of ideas already).

So that story does have an ending that maybe isn't 'happy' but is at least not a disaster.

Anyway, there it is - my worst-ever GM mistake.