A Tale of Two Sessions

Due to the complexity of scheduling, I now find myself with both my games being scheduled for Thursdays, meaning that most days I have no gaming at all and then two sessions in a day. Which isn't ideal, but it's better than most of the alternatives.

Last Thursday was an odd day, then, in that the two sessions were radically different in outcome and character.

The work game was deeply underwhelming. The major reason for this was that I was woefully under-prepared for the session, largely due to just not having the time required. The other problem was that the PCs decided to conduct their infiltration under cover of daylight, meaning that pretty much all of the material that I had prepared was rendered useless. As a consequence, the session started late, ended early, and contained almost nothing of any value. And given that this is one of the centre-piece adventures of the campaign as a whole, that's pretty disastrous. A real shame.

By contrast, the game in the evening went much better, despite also being under-prepared. At least in this case the material that I had in place did apply, and the game was generally fun for all concerned. Which is a win.

It's also worth noting that the evening campaign has established (I think) that it works best as a very 'classic' campaign style - what is needed is a succession of well-designed short quests and dungeons, rather than anything more nebulous. So keeping the runway going there shouldn't be too tough.

But "The Lists of Lamordia" is a challenge. I clearly need to put in some more work on that centre-piece adventure, which really needs to pull together from the mess that is currently in place.

Return to the Egg

For some time I have had a small issue with one aspect of Terafa's lore - way back in the day I decided it would be cool to allow bugbears as a playable race, an option that one player in particular took advantage of for two notable PCs. Unfortunately, I have since rethought the role that I want bugbears to play in the setting, which meant that they didn't really fit in the desired role.

In the interim, WotC provided me with another small headache, but fortunately each of these problems can provide the answer to the other. Specifically, I have decided to recast those two PCs I mentioned above as dragonborn, and allow them to fill the slot now vacated by bugbears. Which is nice.

Anyway, moving on...

In addition to the legend of "The Curse of the Dragon's Gold" (which is told more about dragonborn than by them), the dragonborn have another significant legend that they tell: The Return to the Egg.

The dragonborn call themselves "The Last People", and maintain that they have existed on Terafa for some twelve thousand years. This places the origin of that people long before the Arrival of Man, before the genesis of the Elves... and indeed before the supposed creation of the world, which is reckoned to have occurred nearly six thousand years ago. (More specifically, 5780 years ago.)

In that time before time, the dragonborn established a great empire, Talkalasa, the Empire of the Seven Sins. Founded in the honour of the seven great progenitor dragons, Talkalasa was a proud, powerful, and utterly degenerate empire. All of Terafa fell under its sway.

But, as with all things that have a beginning, Talkalasa had an end. As Cavcari's Last Invocation began to unfold upon the empire, the greatest seers and sages of the dragonborn developed a plan, a way for their people to evade their end. And so, the boldest and best of the dragonborn were selected. The paragons of the dragonborn people would return to the egg, entering a strange kind of stasis, to rest for an age and half an age, and to emerge once the threat had passed. Their destiny was to reestablish the lost empire of Talkalasa.

Alas for the dragonborn, things did not work out as their sages had foreseen. Whether because the calculations were incorrect or because the eggs were disturbed, the dragonborn paragons slept too long, and emerged into a world utterly changed. No sign of the ancient borders of Talkalasa remain, and precious few other signs.

Worst of all, the dragonborn paragons were themselves diminished by their long sleep, their skills regressed to the most basic level. And they find themselves scattered across time, with some few emerging in the distant past, some a millennium ago, but more and more of them over the past century. Now, almost all dragonborn have emerged from their sleep, but they find themselves lost in a world changed. The dragonborn of this age, descendants of the earliest paragons to emerge, are a poor shadow of the old people, bereft of the great racial memory that made Talkalasa what it was.

And thus is born the great tragedy of the dragonborn, the last people of Terafa.

To Humbly Go...

 While I'm recommending things, I really should point out that Humble Bundle currently have a bundle for the Star Trek Adventures RPG. For £12 you can get PDFs of about two-thirds of the game line, plus a voucher for 50% off the print version of the Core Rulebook.

It's definitely worth checking out if you're at all interested in the game: find it here.

My New D&D Soundtrack

Like many people, I enjoy listening to music while I work. My personal favourite, at least for that purpose, is anything that doesn't have lyrics, which means that soundtracks are always good. Naturally, the Star Wars soundtracks are a favourite. The only problem being that the Star Wars soundtracks are so well known that it's a bit easy just to tune them out, and for that reason I always find myself on the lookout for new Star Wars music and/or twists on the same.

This week I found a new soundtrack that is pretty much ideal for listening to when thinking about D&D, and when working on my campaign: Star Wars in a Medieval style.

Here's the playlist.

Five Things You Know... one of which is wrong...

For the new campaign "The Quest for Memory", I have taken to composing and sending out a "5 things you know about..." message for each session. I've found this to be a very useful way to reveal small chunks of setting lore, and also to provide clues, hints, and other details to the players. All of which is to the good.

Unfortunately, in the most recent update I provided some key information about Terafa, including such things as there being two suns, a ring system called The Fastness of the Divine... and two moons.

The only problem with that is that that fact was from an old version of the setting. In the "Ultimates" version (and, indeed, for several versions prior to that), Terafa had one moon called Melira. (What's more, that moon has since been associated with the named archmage Melira within the setting. There is no such name for the second moon.)

Still, never mind. I've now established that there are two moons, so for the duration of this campaign, two moons there are. I shall call the second one Kalas, and associate it with the dragonborn.

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.