It’s a witch! (They didn’t weigh her, or burn her) Our 9th session…

April 11, 2016April 11, 2016 rasmusnord01Leave a comment

We had a really enjoyable 9^th game session, where we managed to get closer to the kind of games that I would like to run, and where I (mostly) followed the ‘say yes doctrine’ for game masters. I also really enjoy the characters the players have made. I think they are a fun and dynamic group – and it works with 7 players, although it is hard to discuss plans where everyone gets their voice heard.

A few of the things that I would like to keep doing was:

When the characters get an idea, go with it.
If a spell or action seems like it should have an effect not written in the rules on a character or environment, go with it.
Keep the players guessing and hungry for information.
Keep making NPCs and monsters that fit with the story, and ignore the monster manual and rules (to an extent).

Events of session 9

In the session the characters met the elf woman, whom they suspected of being a hag, and notice that humanoid forms were inside the water, close to where they met her. After some conversation, where she confirmed that she had rescued the man-at-arms, Renald, and that they were in love. They exchanged information and they were invited into her lair, inside the giant tree stump, so they could meet him. They were very worried about giving information away, but as she did not speak any language that everyone in the group spoke, unified communication was a bit of a challenge.

Inside the giant tree stump, they can tell it is a big lair, with many rooms carved inside the tree, with platforms and bridges linking them. Inside the hollow part of the stump was also a camp of almost a dozen lizardmen, who were her allies. After they’ve made camp, she came down with Renald, and they exchanged more information about the land around them. For example, that a great dragon lives in the southern part of the forest, that there are plains to the west with hobgoblins and somewhere north a forest made from crystal. They challenged Renald, as they saw it as his duty to return to the settlement, but some could see that he was conflicted, but refused.

When they went to rest, the group sort of decided to break their word to her, that they

lizardmen — In this case it was a handsome male fighter who was captured. The picture reminds me of the only ‘real’ D&D modules I ran in elementary school. Can’t remember the name. It was 1-3 lvl. and about a kidnapped elven princess. Wish I still had that stuff…

would maintain peace with her, when they entered her home. They used the newly acquired Alchemy Jug, to produce 4 gallons of beer, and the half-orc, the half-elf druid, who could speak with them, and the dwarf bard, who added a wineskin of brandy to the mix, went and partied with the lizardmen, who, unused to alcohol, got roaring drunk, with a couple passing out, and all the while the dwarf bard is using his bagpipe to mask the noise with his…music. The group arcane trickster sneaked up on the lizardman guard, standing on a platform above the whole thing. His sneak attack fails, but the bard manages to conceal his cry for help with his music, and they manage to overcome the (neutral) lizardfolk.

Subsequently, the party crashes into the bedroom of the (almost), unsuspecting couple. The witch orders her man to protect her, while dispels the grease cast at her feet and turns invisible and flee further up the winding passageways of the tree. A battle ensues. It is a complicated affair, but they pursue her to a menagerie of strange beings, including two cockatrice, a bear with poison fangs and a snake tail and a giant vulture. The hag, who finally shows her true self, tries to flee on the vulture, but is finally brought down, and the bear is killed as well, before we end the session.

Thoughts on the Encounter

All in all, a fun encounter, that highlighted the hag’s ability to deceive and spell bind. I ignored the rules as written about Charm Person, as I think it went against the story I had in mind (and why would people always know they’ve been under the influence of a charm spell? It seems pretty pointless to me then, unless it is simply to get past a guard or something). I also gave her more HP and spells, and plenty of weird pets, as a single monster quickly run out of HP against 7 PCs. As always, they also often had to make all kinds of saving throws (mainly Con). I think rolling a save highlights either a characters strength or weakness, and players either enjoy rolling something their character is good at, or dread rolling saves, when it hits one of their weak sides. This emphasizes the choices they’ve made in character creation, which I think is important.

It was wise of the characters not to take the fight up front, as outside, or flying on her vulture, her Call Lightning spell would have been a big problem for the 3^rd and 4^th level characters. I thought however, that her interest in learning more from them, outweighed her own caution of inviting an armed group into her home.

Next time, we will see what they find in the hags lair, and how the discussion about breaking their word ends up. Furthermore, the group has to figure out what to do next, as no one is there imposing another mission on them.

Session 8: Scorpion trouble and a shield

March 30, 2016 rasmusnord01Leave a comment

The session had a full group of 7 players, and it is very enjoyable, but naturally leaves less time for individual attention and combat takes longer.

It began inside the small (randomly found) adventuring site the group discovered in session 7. They began the evening by identifying the treasure they found – a wand of secrets and an Alchemist Jug. The jug is actually quite a nice wondrous item, when you are in new settlement on a far away coast, as it can produce one type of liquid each day in various quantities, including water, mayo and honey.

alchemy-jug — The Alchemy Jug from the DMG pg. 150.

I like the Wand of Secrets, as it helps me avoid the awful situation where players decide to search after secret doors in the right spot, but rolls too low on Investigation. Secret doors are fun when they are found!

Abbott – the strange warlock and noble son – also drew a question from my stack of background questions, and told us that his most significant memory from the war in their homeland was going through a village that had been pillaged and slaughtered. He declined to say, why that was significant…

From that point they travelled north, and I rolled an ambush in my random encounters, an Ettin in this case, who was arguing with himself. They relatively quickly dispatched him (80-ish HP doesn’t last long against 7 characters), and Arak cut off his heads and put them on a pole as a warning. The wizard, Welk, was a bit upset, as he spoke the language of the giants, like the ettin, and would have liked to gain information from him.

I rolled another encounter for the next day, and this time it was another minor adventuring site, and it turned out to be the lair of a huge giant scorpion with weird lichen and toadstools growing from its carapace. It was lurking in a large copse of toad stools with Shriekers around it. Down in its lair, they discovered a magical dwarven shield, with a throne marked on it, which confirmed to them, that there must be dwarves somewhere in the land they’ve settled in. They were also attacked by 6 scorplings, and was another reminder that 6 smaller foes – particularly when they can grapple and poison you – can be much harder to deal with than one large foe. The encounter had several of the players below 0 HP.

The next days of the journey was uneventful, and Korrick the dwarf bard and warrior, got to tell them, how he was accompanying a dwarven expeditionary force as a record keeper, when they were ambushed, and he was forced to pick up arms and become a soldier. Eventually, they found the old track of the lost man-at-arms,and followed it to a large ruin where a lot of colorful flowers and toadstools were growing. There were many low ruins, but the main one looked almost like a base of a meso-american pyramid with several entrances in it and vegetation growing out of it from within.

Swamp — A dark dank swamp – always a nice place for adventure…

They found two sets of tracks leading away from the ruin and decided to follow the track instead of going into the ruin, which they wanted to return to later. Some miles from the ruin the area became more marshy, and they saw charms in the trees and elven runes in the tree, which they translated into warnings of an ancient fey creature living in the area.

Jarn, the nominal leader of the group, could tell them of how his order once fought a coven of hags, and how badly that went, and that they can take the form of other humanoids. After some deliberation, they wearily decided to move forward and find a small swamp with a 150 foot tall tree stump growing in the middle, which is clearly the home of someone.

Next session is tonight! I look forward to seeing how they approach this challenge?

Session 7: Let the Hexcrawl begin!

February 22, 2016 rasmusnord01Leave a comment

My firstborn arrived last week. I now hope to raise a girl who loves games! Time will tell if she will play role-playing games like her dad. Her arrival means a temporary suspension on my bi-weekly game, but my brain – despite being sleep deprived – is still overflowing with ideas for my campaign world. The challenge will be getting the time to write them down. Part of my current inspiration comes from watching a great blind Let’s Play of Dark Souls by the gamer Kay Watch Kay plays Dark Souls while I cook baby bottles and the like. I enjoy her focus on the lore, which I didn’t dive as deeply into when I played it, and it stokes my brain.

The Session:

The session started after the group defeated the undead that attacked them in the

isle of dread DM map — My own first hex crawl experience was on the infamous Isle of Dread with my first ever RPG character, the thief Falvin. Unfortunately, we only had one session on the island…

previous session. We spoke out of character about how each character probably experienced the last encounter, and consequently what they might suspect the wizard to be carrying in his backpack, which the undead sorcerers were clearly interested in (I chose this approach to avoid differing perceptions among the players creating disruptive conflicts in game. Conflicts between characters can be great, but they can be difficult to handle if players aren’t reasonably aligned on what is happening in the game, in my experience).

After some in-game discussions of the events, no big conflict erupted, as the gnome rogue was concealing the item the undead were after, but Jarn suspects that the wizard Welk has demon-summoning spells in his grimoire, or the like. The group was smaller than normal, and they decided not to investigate where the undead came from (to my surprise).

They continued back to the settlement, forded a rapid flowing small river and encountered a glade with a huge butterfly swarm. Jarn, who scouted ahead, felt tired when they landed on him (exhaustion level), but nothing happened. The druid investigated, and found a sleeping doe in the glade, but nothing inside the glade was dead.

After several days they finally reached the settlement, and were greeted as heroes. The new arrivals had settled a bit, with the tavern being open under a large piece of sail cloth. They reported back to the governor, and staked out a site for their home (more on that in a future post). They also got a scroll that could heal the wizard’s burnt lungs and remove his exhaustion level.

After some deliberation, they decided to go back north to find the lost bodyguard, who’s trail they were on. They skirted the massive ruined city nearby, and could see that it had been under siege long ago, and that walls and a tower were breached, but that one breach was sealed by a massive wall of fire.

A few miles from the city, they found a small ruin with a hidden staircase to a cellar (random adventuring site). In the cellar there were three rooms, one was empty, another they had to hack their way into as it was blocked by giant mushrooms, and a giant constrictor was lurking inside, and the third they had to dig free. The third room turned out to be a wizard’s laboratory, and a strange stitched creature was huddling in a corner. It was indeed a flesh golem, but the four characters managed to defeat it without too much trouble, and they discovered 2 magic items and some potions and loot.

**A major part of the map, with a small area filled out in advance for the players.**

Hexcrawling:

When the group returned to the settlement I brought out my largest handout to date: a copy of the map I have done using Hexographer (http://www.hexographer.com/), but with more than 99% blank. The map contains 22500 numbered hexes, and I have no ambition that this campaign should reveal even a significant proportion of them. I hope that by providing the blank map, it will inspire them to go and explore, have fun annotating the map, and that it will provide a sense of accomplishment, when they reach new land marks and fill out hexes.

As my players read this blog, I unfortunately can’t share the original…

One thing is pulling in a different direction though. The huge ruined city I placed close to the settlement has a magnetic effect on the players, and I think it will consume many sessions going forward. A lot of my current thoughts are going into how I will run that ruin, and what is contained within. Currently, I’m working with an approach like the Parlainth box set from my beloved Earthdawn game (A Black Gate post on Earthdawn), where each section of the city has certain characteristics, but aren’t mapped in detail (unlike e.g. the Ruins of Myth Drannor box set from AD&D). I think I will add – if I can find the time – random encounters to each section and a few significant land marks. And improve my winging ability…

D&D Session 5: Prison Break!

January 11, 2016 rasmusnord01Leave a comment

Last week we returned to D&D after the holidays. It was an interesting session to me, as I felt it demonstrated some of the strengths in the campaign decisions I recently made, and perhaps showed a couple of places where I need to adjust. I will insert a couple of observations below.

The session was attended by 5 players. The druid and wizard were not present.

The Session
The game started inside the caves of the kuo-toa. They had not yet found prisoners, but had also seemingly avoided discovery. However a guard further down a tunnel had heard the final battle in the last

LeoCarrilloBeachCave-01 — The Kuo-toa caves had a permanently dry section, a section flooded at high tide and a permanently flooded section, which the characters couldn’t access (right now).

session and gone to the nearby priest (known as Whips in the kuo-toa culture). They sent the gnome rogue to scout ahead, who spotted the posse coming at them. He retreated and they made an ambush and relatively easily defeated the kuo-toa, but a couple of them escaped (and ran back to their mama).

However, the gnome who was sent down the tunnel to investigate failed to see the tracks going into an underwater tunnel, where the prisoners had been led. Therefore they moved quickly on, and found beyond some barricades a spawning pool for tad-pool-like kuo-toa. The mama-kuo toa and some friends came and attacked them as soon as they disturbed the pool. She was pretty tough with 3 attacks and high damage and poison. Luck was with the players though, and no-one were knocked to zero. They did expend a couple of the potions they found. After the mama-boss the group retreated, as they were pretty low on resources. As they had not found the prisoners, they decided to go back in, to see if they couldn’t locate them.
They actively investigate the water logged tunnel, the ranger saw the trail and found prisoners in a stockade beyond 10 meters of flooded tunnel. There were 8 or 9 prisoners, some of whom were wounded, and some who were combat able. They gave them weapons and fled from the loot the kuo-toa took from the wrecked ship, and went back to the forest. Here they decided to do a short rest and then take the prisoners along the trail of another survivor for a couple of hours, before they made camp.

murloc Xr9nxAo — Hard not to say like a World of Warcraft murloc when DMing Kuo-toa!

The kuo-toa sent out a strong patrol to catch their escaped prisoners, and caught up with the group shortly after they made camp. The kuo-toa attacked with numbers in their favour, and with a couple of crits by them, the group was quickly reduced to the Warlock, who used a Darkness spell to conceal himself in, while being able to fire Eldritch blast out of it, and the half-orc fighter/cleric. However, when only the Warlock remained, the kuo-toa had taken heavy losses and had no counter to the darkness, they fled. Leaving the group with one prisoner dead, and a missing finger on the ranger/paladin.

Observations:
I have stopped thinking about balance, and award less xp for fighting monsters. It works very positively in many ways.

– I spend much less time trying to make encounters and monsters and figuring out CR and xp awards. With 5-7 PCs its nearly impossible anyway…
– I worry less that the group easily defeats or are hard pressed by an encounter, and let the dice fall where they may. I’m simply not invested
– It encourages the players to think, and get scared and worried, because they know I haven’t ‘balanced it’ for their sake.

For the big final encounter, I looked at the number of kuo-toa left in the lair, and sent out a good strong group that felt realistic. I counted out a few regular kuo-toa, who would be fighting the NPC prisoners, but 12 kuo-toa, 2 whips and a monitor were a problem for five 3rd level characters.

The Warlock was highly effective the entire session with his darkness/spell sniper/eldritch blast combo. That was good from my point of view. He has built something effective, and he and the group should be rewarded for it. Of course, it could turn into a problem if the entire group feels outshined by it, or if it just becomes a default strategy. At slightly higher levels the opposition can have various counter moves, such as area spells, blind sense, dispel etc., so I’m not overly worried.

All of the characters got to use their special abilities, and getting those into play is important to me as a DM.

I did love that they overcome a very difficult encounter. With only 25% xp given, I felt it was a bit low. That kind of success should perhaps be separately rewarded.

A couple of things could have gone better.
– I would have liked to have had the tidal dynamics in the dungeon more in play.

– The paladin/ranger player felt bored some of the time, partly because he was hit by a couple of crits in the final encounter, and was down in round 2. I really hate when a player is bored.

– Based upon my descriptions the players made some more or less mistaken assumptions. Obviously my descriptions aren’t perfect, and a solution would be to tip our play style a bit more towards how Chris Perkins does it with his Acquisitions Incorporated. The players ask more clarifying questions, if they want information about a feature that is mentioned in the description. I like that a lot, as it lends itself better to improvisation, and the players potentially makes less faulty assumptions.

An Example of Chris Perkins DMing

For next time:
– Encourage players to ask more clarifying questions, instead of making false assumptions.

– Be mindful of the warlocks powerful combo and group dynamics.

– Make a separate xp award for victory against all odds.

*The featured image is a kuo-toa whip and from the 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual.

D&D Session 4

January 4, 2016 rasmusnord01Leave a comment

These are the notes from the latest session of our D&D campaign, which was in December. Our next session is Wednesday and should continue at a regular interval of two weeks.
The notes are not an attempt to be literary or to make for an exciting read. It is mainly a tool for me and my players, so they have a chance to remind themselves what happened last time.

For me, as a DM, I also find that writing a short synopsis of last session is a good way for me to start preparing for a new game session.

Session 4:
The party decides to investigate the grounded ship, leaving behind the female guard and the warlock (as he wasn’t present) at the camp. They make their way along the rocky reef to the wreck and are attacked by giant crabs. After they defeat the crabs they search the ship and locate a document sent for the governor of the settlement, Erin de Vin, and they find a batch of potions in a secret compartment in the captain’s cabin.

Someone, relatively powerful, has also animated the corpses on the vessel and suddenly they spring to life as zombies. They defeat them without too much trouble.

A discussion erupt over the gnome opening the sealed document from the Queen to the Governor. They re-seal the letter with mend, but after the letter is transcribed. It is however in a cipher.

They search another cave along the beach, and find the body of one of the elite body guards and a sailor. They loot them for their valuables.

The group continue their search for survivors, and at the top of the cliffs they look into some ruins and find a small campsite. The campsite had see

big kuo-toa — Big Kuo-Toa. They haven’t met one this size, yet… This illustration is from the 3rd Edition Underdark book for the Forgotten Realms, which I can recommend.

n combat recently, and booted prints flee away from the site and into the forest. After some deliberation, they decided to not pursue the trail now, but investigate the entrance to the cave where the Kuo-Toa probably lives in order to try and find more prisoners from the ship. They send in Horziwer, the gnome rogue, to investigate, is magically disguised as a kuo-toa. He wanders in, meet some guards and finds and odd labyrinth like area, made of drift wood, sea weed and skulls and bones, overlooked by a guard on a platform. The group decides to sneak in using Pass Without Trace. They take out the first two guards and manages to kill the two guards on the other side of the labyrinth and surprise and take out the kuo-toa reinforcements nearby. Here the session ended.

Gaming 2015 in Retrospect and looking forward

January 3, 2016 rasmusnord01Leave a comment

Looking back at my 2015 gaming year, the grand event was the end of my long Warhammer Fantasy Role-play campaign. It ended magnificently. We tied up many lose ends. The characters saved their home town from a chaos horde as commanders of a large army, and they brought their long standing rival, Baron Pleskai von Wallenstein to justice, after he sired a child on a demon-worshipping witch.

This is what my 6 years of notes look like. I was also awarded a Purity Seal by my players for my efforts. It is one of the best gifts ever.

The satisfaction of ending the campaign is immense. My players have enjoyed it a lot, and we’ve really explored the game world and the system. At the end, they were among the most powerful individuals in the Warhammer world, and even those with more individual strength hesitated to tangle with them. At the same time we retained the low-fantasy mood in their day-to-day lives, and by playing some of the NPCs.

It was, intentionally, a relatively rail-roaded campaign with a set ending – the consequences along the way were not cut in stone though. When people meet on a Wednesday night every other week after work, many with kids and family at home, I think there is a lot of merit in playing an action-packed campaign, where the amount of intrigue and investigation is relatively limited. My players really need to roll some initiative and have some memorable moments in order to stay focused and entertained. I will bring that to my D&D campaign.

In 2015 we also had 9 sessions playing the original Temple of Elemental Evil module with D&D 5ed rules. It was more popular than I anticipated and often we were 6-8 people around the table. It is very much a ‘kick in the door’ style of play, and we add a few beers and lots of minis to the mix. It is well suited for Friday night! I think we will continue with more sessions throughout 2016.

Looking at 2016
I started my D&D campaign in 2015, before my Warhammer game was done, because I thought a core player from my Warhammer group was supposed to be in Asia for a couple of months. But as that didn’t happen (due to a snapped collar bone), we got it started, but then reverted to Warhammer to finish it. I would have liked to have kept the focus on one and then the other campaign, but for 2016 I can keep my mind on this D&D homebrew and really get cracking. I do love world building, but it is a lot of work! And as we are expecting our first child in a month’s time, I will have to figure out how to manage it in the best way. Less video gaming will probably be a component!

My D&D homebrew is much less railroaded than my Warhammer game. I have to improvise more and run with it, and try to be a little less detailed in my planning. To do that, I’ve decided to work with the 5×5 Campaign Design method [Read more on 5×5 Campaign Design]. In essence, you have a matrix of 25 adventures, where you know the basic plot for each one, but the characters can shift from one to the other more or less as they see fit. It should help me always have a plot thread ready, so my players experience freedom, but never are in doubt about what they could spend their time on.

In 2016 we also have to play many new board games. And replay some of the old ones. Hmm. Maybe another bout of Twilight Imperium – a favourite in my gaming group?

twi — Awesome game. But don’t believe Fantasy Flight Game’s claim that you can play it in 3-4 hours. That is silly. Twilight Imperium home page

Thanks to the all the people who I had the pleasure of gaming with during 2015! I really look forward to 2016.

Exploration Experience Model

December 2, 2015December 2, 2015 rasmusnord01Leave a comment

I intend to introduce a different experience model in my D&D campaign.

To support the exploration theme of the campaign and to encourage non-combat solutions and a varied approach to encounters, I will grant experience using a variation from the standard monster awards. Awards for exploring will be the main source of xp, while surviving significant encounters – not defeating enemies – will be the secondary source.

Exploration Awards:

It should be important for the group to go out and explore and discover the world around them. Finding strange new magic, travelling across unknown lands, recovering rare magical items, discovering new places, ancient ruins and cultures and delving into the history, myth and legends of the unknown continent is a significant part of learning and personal growth. Therefore these types of discoveries are awarded with experience according to the XP Threshold by Character Level (DMG pg. 82). The

old-compass-map-9089915 — As my campaign takes place on a – for the characters – completely unknown continent, exploration is a key element.

significance of the discovery determines the difficulty and the character level is the average of the group. It will be a main source of experience for the characters.

The following types of discoveries results in experience awards. It is not a definitive list, but a guideline. It has the slight problem that finding the rarer magical items is easier in the later half of the campaign, which means they will higher experience awards when rare and very rare items are more accessible.

Easy: Discovering a minor unknown location, finding a minor or uncommon magic item, discovering minor historical information or finding one or more low level spells.

Medium: Finding a rare magical item, discovering a significant location, portal or dungeon, meeting important societal figures for the first time, uncovering important historical information, figuring out a plot or plan, finding valuable historical artifacts or medium level spells.

Hard: Encountering a new culture for the first time, discovering a major ruin or location, recovering a very rare or legendary magical item, discovering a nation threatening evil plot, finding a demi-plane or a new safe(ish) path through the Warrens, uncovering a major historical truth, fact or secret and finding high level spells.

Deadly: Being the first to make contact with a new nation or state, discovering a central ruin or location (such as a capital city, legendary dungeon or unknown plane of existence), learning a potentially world altering truth, a paradigm shifting fact or an ancient and dangerous secret or recovering an artifact.

Surviving Encounters:
Whenever the group survives a significant encounter the group is awarded

CoC_55 — Sometimes running like hell should be considered.

experience worth around 25% of the standard approximate value. A series or easy combat encounters could result in an award as well, as the attrition is what makes encounters in D&D very dangerous. This method serves both a purpose for the fiction, the meta-game and for my preparation.
1) In the fiction, I would like the adventurers to not know what level of difficulty opponents that they are facing, and have them use whatever approach they see as optimal to resolve it, and get rewarded for it no matter how that turns out.

2) On a meta-level I would like to avoid the characters charging into every situation simply to earn experience. As when you use the standard system the defeat of the opposition is the only option.

3) On a preparation level, I would like to avoid going through all the calculations to find the encounter difficulty, or to find the monster experience level, when designing or re-working a creature. It is anyways quite inaccurate in my experience when have a large number of player characters.

Is 25% the right amount? Time will tell!

Participation Award:
I will award a medium difficulty award to everyone turning up for a 4 hour gaming session. It will ensure some advancement no matter what happens, and add to the overall speed of advancement, which I think will be somewhat slower using this model.

I intend to see how it goes and adjust accordingly. Any feedback or suggestions are also more than welcome!

Books that Inspired my Campaigns – Part II

November 23, 2015November 22, 2015 rasmusnord01Leave a comment

Song of Ice and Fire

This series made me step out of the traditional mold when it came to world-design. Before I read the first novels of the series, my campaign worlds had been pretty standard “European” or it had been Earthdawn (which as a game itself also inspired me a lot). Westeros was not what I found most inspiring, but the decadent and old lands of the east are very cool with places such as Astapor and Mereen. I made a campaign called the Far Seas, a maritime campaign with a lot of islands, where I put in big Jade pyramids, nomadic Halfling armadas, lost gods, fantastic cities with ancient monuments and strange magical effects. Looking at many published campaigns today, Far Seas isn’t exceptional, but it was a good step for me, and it was so popular that when I moved to another town, a friend of mine ran a campaign in that world. That is a pretty big compliment.

“Aggo was back next. The southwest was barren and burnt, he swore. He had found the ruins of two more cities, smaller than Vaes Tolorro but otherwise the same. One was warded by a ring of skills mounted on iron spears, so he dared not enter, but he had explored the second one as long as he could. He showed Dany an iron bracelet he had found, set with uncut fire opal the size of her thumb.”
– A Song of Ice and Fire

Dark Souls

The fantastic video game Dark Souls is a masterpiece of game design. I’m intensely inspired by the level design. The way the world seamlessly flows together and slowly reveals new secrets and connections has to be experienced. The story of the world, its mythos, and the NPC’s stories and motives are extremely opaque and are only revealed by examining all objects and if certain specific steps are taken in the right order. And in Dark Souls outcomes and decisions are permanent, so if you attacked that NPC or he died in a battle, you will have to start a new game to try a different path. This is an exploration element that I really like as well, and is an approach I’m attempting in my current D&D campaign.

Watch the show ‘Extra Play’ on Youtube play and deconstruct Dark Souls game design.

They way that you avatar’s experience mirrors your experience as a player is masterful design. The setup of many of the monster encounters is also very interesting and can easily be used in D&D.

Dark Souls II has less interesting level design (it is still great), but it is also visually very inspiring for my current campaign.

When it comes to video role-playing games, it is – in my experience – when it comes to mechanics and exploration the closest you can come to a pen & paper game. The reason is that you can approach enemies and problems in many ways, which is close to your experience in a pen & paper game.

For my current D&D campaign I’ve not fully taken the plunge into making my own version of a coherent world where the campaign basically all takes within a dungeon. I’ve more tried to let myself be inspired by the design philosophy behind it. If I were to go all the way, D&D would not necessarily be a great system, as many of the spells would need to be modified. But any system would probably need to be modified, in order for the system to emphasize the way the world and campaign should work.

Playing at the World
This book is about the history of D&D and the games that led to this revolution. It led me deeper into the ideas in the original D&D and made me want to go back to basics – although without going back to some of the OD&D versions of the game, as I have a preference for the smooth mechanics of 5^th edition. It is a massive book (600+ pages), and you will learn something you didn’t know.

One thing that I’ve taken directly to heart in both my home brew campaign and in our Temple of Elemental Evil game is that D&D originally had three core aspects: combat, exploration and logistics. Exploration is of course a cornerstone of my new homebrew. The last part I also find very interesting. I think it is quite apparent that among my players there are different preferences for these elements. Logistics is about how much ammunition to bring, what spells to select and dividing treasure. I have previously skipped this somewhat, but I will try to have it as a more intentional element, for example by using the construction rules from Pathfinder Ultimate Campaign.

It led me to buy many vintage modules online, and there are some great ideas in them as well.

“Into the dramatic structure of Dungeons & Dragons, the mode of logistics injects some much needed banality: after the suspense of exploring and the adrenaline of bloodshed, the chore of logistics, even when they border on tedium, serve as an important counterweight to adventures.” (In Playing at the World, by Jon Peterson)

The Scramble for Africa

Africa is a vast and extremely varied continent, and both its nature and

history is an inspiration to me. Recently I read this history of how the European Powers explored and carved up between them the many independent kingdoms and more or less inhabited wilderness of Africa. The exploration element is as always interesting to me – the hardship in traversing deep jungle and the couple of years that Stanley spent traversing the continent East to West. The brutality of the conflicts and of the rule of some of the African kings can also be used in D&D, as can the power play between the nations trying to grab as much land as possible.

“Stanley looked at the majestic brown river flowing past the tall square houses and the baobab trees. Its calmness seemed to him a kind of hypocrisy. It had robbed him of so many of his best men, including Frank Pocock, the last survivor of his three white companions. Even now Stanley felt the hollowness of his triumph. He had sailed from Zanzibar with more than 250 men, women and children. Only 108 would now return safely to their homes.”
The Scramble for Africa, Stanley arrives at the west coast of Africa

The Italian Renaissance

Italy, before it became a nation and was a collection of city states, is so full of intrigue, war and conflict that period has near limitless potential for inspiration for almost any role-playing game – but for Warhammer Fantasy Role-play in particular. As there is so much surviving art and written works from the region and period, there is a lot of potential reading to do. I just needed an overview before a visit to Florence, and I picked up The Italian Renaissance. It deals with both a few central topics such as Women and Princes and the State, and has a chapter on each of the major city-states, and for someone growing up in a modern democracy; I find it helpful to be reminded of the attitudes, government structures and social structures of other people and other times. It can add some memorable tweaks to your NPCs and campaign setting.

Monument to the most feared mercenary genral in Italy John Hawkwood (Fading Suns, anyone?), who fought for Florence

“On this knowledge the Council acted swiftly and silently, for no public trials enlivened the Venetian scene, and there were no appeals. Once found guilty, the prisoner was sometimes quickly and efficiently strangled in the dungeons or thrown into a part of the lagoon reserved for the purpose, where no fishing was allowed; or hanged by one leg from the pillars of the Doge’s Palace; or quartered and distributed about the city; or buried upside down in the Pazetta, legs protruding; or beheaded – as a public spectacle – between the great pillars on which stand Saint Theodore, with his crocodile and the winged lion of Saint Mark.”
– The Italian Renaissance, on how its Council of Ten kept power through its intelligence system.

Dresden Files

The Dresden Files didn’t make it to the top-10 list, but I include it as an honourable mention, as I think it can teach you a thing or two when it comes to upping the stakes and making the stories more action packed. The Dresden Files demonstrates that you can always kick it up a notch!

So, I found a great fantasy art book in Paris…

October 7, 2015October 7, 2015 rasmusnord011 Comment

Front cover of the art book of Oliver Ledroit.

I was in Paris this weekend, and was recommended by my friend Adrian, who is also one of my player’s in my own group, to go to Rue Dante and check out the comic book stores there. It was a great suggestion, and I dragged by girl friend to a number of them, while looking at the great French and American comics and graphic novels (not that there is clear verbal a distinction in Europe), as the French, Dutch and Belgian artists have always made comic books for both children and adult audiences, with some stories very adult.

I was exiting a store, when my eyes fell on an art book, which struck a chord, and I open it, and I see the illustrations from one of my favorite dark fantasy comic books The Black Moon Chronicles (also available in English). The artist is Oliver Ledroit, and it turns out he only did the first few albums, but has done a number of other things since then. It was his first job as an illustrator and got it by showing his portfolio at a convention, when he was only 17.

Inside the book I learned that there is a whole line of miniatures for the setting, and that Ledroit, was inspired by the early Conan comics and has worked on role-playing games and the video game Heroes of Might and Magic

Half of one of the big double page battles, which you also see in Prince Valiant.

He has these vast tableaus of thousands of troops, and is mentioned to be inspired by Prince Valiant, which is also clearly evident.

“If you ask him to represent 5,000 guards, you will get an outpouring of millions of men.”
(author of Black Moon Chronicles, Marcela-Froideval)

I can’t say that my own games are directly inspired by these stories directly, but I would recommend them to any fantasy fan. Even after Ledroit left to pursue other projects the artistic style has been retained, and it is really epic, where the good-guy templars are cast as the bad-guys.

The art book was reduced in price from 50 to 20 euros, and was a bit of a steal, in my view.

It has also left me wondering about the French role-playing scene. It turns out the author of Black Moon Chronicles also makes role-playing games. What does that look like? What other games do they make? How big is it? Are any of them in English? It is a big market, and a country like Sweden, which is significantly smaller, has a number of very successful home-grown games, like Drakar och Demoner (which I’ve played a lot!), which leads me to assume that France must have many.

When I return from Internationale Spieltage in Germany, I will have to look into the other projects Ledroit has worked on, such as the science fiction SHA and the noir story XOCO and perhaps I will see some new RPGs at the convention in Essen.

I will conclude this post with a few more samples from the book. But it is full of awesomeness, so I recommend to check Ledroit out yourself.

It shows in his fairies sketches that he was interested in butterflies when he was young.

Character sketches for a SF universe by Ledroit.

Awesome elf character sketch for Heroes of Might and Magic by Ledroit.

Books that inspired my campaigns (part 1)

September 19, 2015September 19, 2015 rasmusnord01Leave a comment

My friend, and sometimes Game Master, Johannes, described some of the books that inspire him as a GM on his blog Sort Forsyning top 13 books (it’s in Danish). That in turn inspired me to share some of the books that I find are great inspiration for role-playing games. I think it will be a (current) top ten. I hope you get inspired too!

Malazan Book of the Fallen

These 10 books have so many cool ideas that it is mind boggling. It shows in the stories that the author has a background in anthropology and archaeology, as cultures and lands have layers upon layers of history, with different technology levels and magic. The world building was very interesting to me. It is very far from the traditional Gary Gygax medieval knights world.

I love them, but the books aren’t equally great, and were hard to read as they came out, as the amount of people and plot lines you have to keep track of is staggering. That said, I’ve lifted a number of ideas from these books straight into my current D&D campaign. I also wanted to replicate the magic system, where each “school of magic” (sort of) is drawn from a particular plane. But it was too much work for D&D spells and planes are so heavily integrated into the rules.

It is also dark, gritty and funny. The second book, Dead House Gates, and its story of the Chain of Dogs, remains the most riveting and gut wrenching fantasy story I’ve read.

Duiker was well past astonishment at anything he saw. Like the Tithansi tribesmen he’d occasionally exchanged words with, he’d begun to believe that Coltaine was something other than human, that he had carved his soldiers into unyielding avatars of the impossible. Yet for all that, there was no hope of victory.
(Deadhouse Gates)

Sharpe
Bernard Cornwell has written 21 novels with the hard as nails British soldier Sharpe, who has his career during the Napoleonic Wars – mainly in the Peninsular Wars under Wellington. They are great adventures, full of good plot ideas, and they were the main inspiration for my Warhammer campaign. Cornwell’s insight, that to make the story interesting, he had to make enemies and obstacles on Sharpe’s own side just as big a feature as the enemy, is something I used. I also drew a lot of inspiration for the military campaign side of things, with the size of the army train, the unwieldiness of the artillery and the chaos and confusion of battle that Cornwell describes so well. Being part of a military organization is obviously also a powerful motivator for going on ‘missions’. Cornwell writes great action, and there are a lot of skirmish battles with company sized units, that I also drew upon for my campaign.

“Powder smoke spurted from the orchard, showing that Dragoons [no, not dragons!] barred that escape, yet it was his only hope. He shouted up the ladder. ‘Come down!’ He turned to Harper. ‘We’ll take the Spaniards with us. We are breaking southwards.
‘They’ll catch us.’
‘Better that than dying like rats in a pit. Fix swords!’
(Sharpe’s Rifles)

Lord of the Rings (and Silmarillion)
It needs no introduction. For years it was one of the few fantasy novels available to me, because we had it at home in Danish. When I became better at English as a teenager, they whole fantasy field opened up, and I’m still trying to read through all the Fantasy Masterworks. But Tolkien will always be there, with the magic, orcs and journeys, and I still love ancient dwarf keeps full of secrets, treasure and ancient evil (and so does many of my players!). Don’t think I’ve ever made a fantasy campaign without a lost dwarf keep.

“The orcs have often plundered Moria; there is nothing left in the upper halls. And since the dwarves fled, no one dares seek the shafts and treasuries down in the deep places: they are drowned in water – or in a shadow of fear.
(Gandalf, in the Fellowship of the Ring)

The Fall of the Roman Empire – A New History
This book is fantastic. It really inspires my world-building in many ways. Fundamentally, it provides insight into how that empire was ruled, from a variety of perspectives, including logistically and politically, and how half of it ultimately collapsed. Some of the key points I have taken from it are: rampant corruption, civil war every 20 years, high level of autonomy because of the limits of the administrative system, and the size of armies that could disrupt it -around 10,000 displaced tribal warriors settled in the Balkans created a domino effect that contributed heavily to the fall of the Empire.

Then there are some practical details around travelling, where I think in most fantasy games the logistics and time involved is underestimated. Theophanes had to travel from Egypt to Antioch (in Turkey). The trip was on great roman public roads, which made it very quick – he travelled 40 kilometres (around 25 miles) per day. With him, he brought a group of slaves, and soldiers for parts of the trip. This meant that the journey lasted almost a month. For his slaves he bought 160 litres of wine for the return journey, and bought two bottles for the same price for himself (obviously a better vintage). As he hardly knew anyone along the way, he also had to bring dozens of valuable gifts for other important Romans that he met.

“Running the Roman Empire with communications then available was akin to running, in the modern day, an entity somewhere between five and ten times the size of the European Union.”
(The Fall of the Roman Empire – A New History)

Undaunted Courage

This is the story of the legendary Meriwether Lewis who, together with William Clark, Sacagaewea and their party, was the first to cross America over land from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It is an adventure of the highest order, and really gave me a lot of inspiration for exploration of the untamed wilderness, and you see how resourceful humans can be. It is a direct inspiration for my current D&D campaign, where the characters help settle a new an unknown land.

“Together, under the leadership of the captains, they had become family. They could recognize one another at night by a cough, or a gesture; they knew one another’s skills, and weaknesses, and habits, and background: who liked salt, who preferred liver; who shot true, got the cooking fire going quickest; where they came from, what their parents were like, what dreams they had…They would triumph, or die, as one.”
(Undaunted Courage)

In the next part I will be touching upon The Song of Ice and Fire, a book about Africa and a video game, among others.

mindlands

Where the mind meets dice and paper

Category: The Campaign