Philosophies Dreamt Of

I've been musing more on the topic of Clerics and gods in D&D, and especially in my Terafa setting, and I've decided to move away from requiring (or even encouraging) Clerics, and Paladins, Druids, and anyone else, from selecting a patron deity. They of course retain the right to do so if they choose, but they will not be required.

Instead, Clerics will be members of mystery cults dedicated to one of five Philosophies (that I'm yet to define). Their powers will remain unchanged, with any Cleric being able to select any Domain. However, since they're steeped in philosophy, rather than being servants of a deity (or anyone else), there will be no implied behavioural restrictions - it is up to the player to determine their actions... and likewise it won't be immediately apparent how an NPC Cleric is likely to behave.

This has some knock-on effects to the place of organised religion within the setting, but that's probably a good thing - a lot of the trappings that D&D has adopted are borrowed from a monotheistic tradition and then adapted, generally poorly, to a polytheistic set of assumptions.

The key reason for this is that I'm now leaning towards casting the gods as being closer to the Norse Aesir than the Christian God - that it, they are extremely powerful but they're not all-knowing, all-powerful, or indeed ineffable.

There is one other knock-on effect of this change: the religion proficiency will be replaced with a philosophy proficiency. Mechanically, these will be functionally identical - it's just a matter of a name change.

The "Maybe" Die

I was musing more on equipment, and especially my most recent thoughts on the topic (found here). In particular, I was thinking about how I would handle things that the party might have available.

Having considered it some more, I'm inclined to be both a bit more generous when determining if the party have an item, but correspondingly less generous for multiple items. The basic principle is the "maybe" die.

As before, characters can carry ten "things", not including their rations and one set of clothing. Multiple identical items count as a single "thing", but they do have to be identical - a potion of healing and a potion of greater healing count as two "things".

In addition, characters start with a "maybe" die rated at d12.

When the time comes to determine if someone in the party has a given item, one player can choose to roll their "maybe" die. On a roll of anything other than a '1', the party have one of the item, but the character's "maybe" die is reduced by one size (d12->d10->d8->d6->d4). Once they reduce the "maybe" die below a d4, they have no further items.

(If they do roll a '1' then they don't have the item, but the "maybe" die remains the same.)

There are a few more caveats: items covered by the "maybe" die must be about the size of the character's fist or smaller. Weapons (including ammunition), armour, and shields cannot be generated using the "maybe" die, nor can any sort of magical item. Items greater in value than about 5gp cannot be generated. Rerolls, either by the same character or another, are not allowed. And the DM can veto any specific item at any time - you can't use the "maybe" die to randomly summon the key that just happens to fit that lock you've found.

When the character reaches any settlement, all temporary items generated by the "maybe" die disappear. (Characters are, of course, free to declare some or all of them as one of their ten "things", of course. But they cannot keep the item only long enough to sell it!) However, each character's "maybe" die resets to d12.

About the bag of holding: Simply put, the bag of holding allows the character to carry any number of "things", but accessing a "thing" from the bag is an action. The character also has a second "maybe" die, also rated at d12 - when rolling they can roll both dice, and only one of them (always the smaller) is reduced by a successful roll.

The Quest for Memory is Back On

I forgot to mention: that proposed second campaign is suddenly back on - it turns out that the delay in responses was just that, and so things have come together. We start on Thursday.

Well, I say "campaign" and "start". Initially, we're setting up one session, which will probably be part of an adventure. Which will be fine. If it goes well, there will obviously be scope to carry on with the conclusion of that one adventure, which would be good. And if that goes well, we can expand from there.

The upshot is that I'll be doing some work on it in the next little while, and especially this weekend, but I won't be racing to do ridiculous amounts of stuff. Except perhaps for some maps.

Player vs Player

We're now in a position in our campaign (though hopefully not for very long) where one of the PCs very definitely has a different agenda from another. This may or may not lead to direct conflict. I have a few thoughts on the topic.

Firstly, it is extremely important that everyone at the table be able to trust each other to play in good faith and to approach things in a muture manner. This is certainly not something that I would tackle with every group, nor with the first campaign with any new group (no matter how mature). Let everyone get into a good place before going down this route.

I'm also very much of the opinion (these days) that any such discussions are better had out in the open. There's a strange combined status in RPGs that is, I think, unique to the form: the players are both participants in the action and the audience. So by all means include individual storylines and crossed motivations in play, but allow everyone to enjoy watching the story unfold.

The doesn't mean that everything has to be out in the open, of course. My campaign also includes PC secrets as a factor, and some discussions really are best held in a one-on-one manner. However my default, and very definitely my default for potential PvP opposition, is that it should be done openly. If nothing else, that serves as something of a brake on the more egregious excesses.

I also strongly recommend that this is something that is done very sparingly. Dip a toe in the water, by all means, but don't throw your players bodily into a vat of acid! So while it's probably no bad thing that the PCs have differing agendas, it's probably best if those are focussed on possession of some third-party McGuffin rather than being a matter of besting one another in combat, and it's definitely better that any combat that results stops short of lethal damage.

And when in doubt, stop. It's better to call a halt to things, even if it leaves the story unfinished, than to damage real-life friendships!

I'll let you know how it goes.

Just When I Thought It Was Out (Alignment)

Alignment has had a storied history in D&D. It actually started back in Chainmail (the precursor to D&D) as a simple faction system - Good armies could ally with either Lawful or Chaotic ones (but not both at the same time), but not Evil armies. For that purpose it worked reasonably well, although if designing Chainmail now I would instead opt for five much more 'generic' faction names - White, Green, Black, Blue, and Red (or something), each of which had two potential allies and two sworn foes - the standard Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock configuration. (Actually, I'd probably include a secret sixth faction that was opposed to all the others...)

Anyway, ever since its origin as an almost pure team-shirt view of things, D&D alignment has accumulated a whole load of stuff... most of it awful.

Eventually, D&D 4e dropped all the residual mechanical implications of alignment, but failed to take the final step of disposing of it entirely. And 5e then repeated that mistake. (I find myself in the odd position that I was actually fine with alignment as it was, mechanical teeth and all; or I'm fine with it being removed entirely. But leave it as a withered appendix, and it infuriates me.)

I've now reached the stage where not only did I drop alignment from my character sheet redesign entirely, but before that I actively advised players to leave the box blank - that is, I advised against stating any alignment even for their own use. The big issue there being that those two words seem to exert an obscure power - put them on the character sheet and they seem to affect the way the player runs the character, even where they really should not. Better just to get rid.

And yet...

One of the quite nice features of 5e is that players are encouraged to give a bit more thought to role-playing than previously, with the character sheet including little boxes for Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws. In some of the later books they've introduced a few new flavours of these things. I find I like those, even if I have divorced them from the Inspiration mechanic. (And that, of course, means they become a matter of "you can pay as much, or as little, attention to these as you want".)

And yet, and yet... I have found in my recent campaign that some players painstakingly fill in every box on the character sheet, some completely ignored Traits et al, and some filled in some of them. This left valuable character sheet real-estate unused and wasted. And, of course, if you're using some of the alternatives, there was then no box at all.

The way I've dealt with that in my redesign is to place a "role-playing notes" box on the second sheet, freeing up much-needed space on the front for more class features. That largish box then allows the player to define as much, or as little, about the character as they wish.

And now, to the point. For various reasons, I've found myself working with a whole load of pre-gen characters recently, and one of the things that I've suddenly found quite useful is to add an alignment to the box - crucially including a few words on what that alignment means to that character. That means that two Lawful Good characters could have significantly different statements of their alignment, but that's a feature rather than a bug. (And, actually, there's nothing to stop a player declaring an alignment and then immediately subverting it, giving a character who thinks of himself as Good but who is anything but.)

Which I actually find I like a lot more than I thought I did.

The other thing I use that box on the character sheet for is some sort of a tie to the campaign's "side dish". For instance, in "The Mists of Lamordia" the box contains a note about the character's personal secret. For the pre-gens for "Lost Mine of Phandelver", each of the pre-gens has a Personal Goal. And for "The Quest for Memory", each of the characters would have been assigned a Quest. Technically, this also falls into the category of "use this or ignore it as much as you want." In practice, though, since the "side dish" ties into the way I award XP these days, it is unlikely to go completely ignored.