The One Ring RPG versus D&D 5e – a Review

December 3, 2021December 5, 2021 rasmusnord01Leave a comment

This article could also be called: Why should I try The One Ring RPG? But I picked this title, because there are 50 million D&D players and many have never tried another roleplaying game. Many would like to, but which one to pick? I think there are many arguments for why The One Ring RPG should be a top option.

This article is also a review, but it is NOT a comparison as to which game is best. I love D&D, but the One Ring does things differently – and sometimes better – than the most popular RPG in the world. I have used D&D 5e as context for The One Ring’s mechanics, because that helps explain them to a large audience.

Reading this article, I hope that you get a taste for this game, or get inspired by the mechanics, whether you are a D&D player or not!

In short, I think the One Ring 2nd edition is an excellent fantasy RPG and a great pick for D&D players who want to try something new, yet familiar. The game will appeal to a lot of fantasy lovers, and I think it can be a great way to introduce new people to roleplaying games. The game is designed by Francesco Nepitello and Marco Maggi, and now published by Free League Publishing (Mörk Borg, the Alien RPG, Tales from the Loop, Vaesen and many other award winning, great games).

The rules are fairly simple and the setting is familiar to anyone interested in fantasy. Furthermore, the game system facilitates characters and stories that fit the world and captures the mood of Middle-earth perfectly. The artwork is amazing and the writing oozes of the designers’s love for Tolkien’s world.

This game lets you step right into the Prancing Pony, smell the pipeweed, hear the songs and meet an intimidating Ranger. Or perhaps you cross the cold Misty Mountains as a homesick hobbit alongside a couple of doughty Durin’s Folk to recover lost treasure while being hunted by orcs of Angmar? I could go on but you get it!

Below, I’ve listed some of the things that the One Ring does well, and less well, for quick reference.

There are two major reasons, why the two games are very different: their design history and being generic versus focused on one setting.

The original D&D was a system cobbled together as they invented it – and expanded upon it gradually – ending up with a hodgepodge of mechanics. More than 30 years later, the designers of D&D 5th edition created a game that is faithful to the first editions of the game, but fairly modern in design, with a very robust and fun tactical combat system.

I have not played the One Ring 1ed, so I can’t compare it to that. I can compare it to Adventures in Middle-earth, which was the D&D 5e edition conversion of The One Ring 1st ed. I have written several articles about it. It was not without flaws, but if you really want to stick to 5e rules that game is an option for you. As the books are out of print, they have become fairly pricey, though.

D&D is also a fairly generic fantasy roleplaying game which can be used to create many types of heroic fantasy games, and is easy to homebrew monsters, magic and worlds for, which is a big advantage. It can also be used for gothic horror, low magic fantasy etc., but isn’t really tailored for it.

The One Ring is different. It is a consistent modern system that focuses on creating a very particular game experience. The rules are interlinked to enhance the game’s particular focus, mood, tone and themes. After the bullet points below, I will go through the major parts of the core rulebook and provide insight into how the new edition of The One Ring works – using D&D to provide context. Players who aren’t D&D fans will still get a solid understanding of the game. If you are used to many different games, many of the mechanics will be familiar to you.

First, a quick summary.

What does The One Ring 2ed do well?:

Low magic, high fantasy
Mood, atmosphere and epic adventures (with a taste of sorrow and futility)
Provides a perfect “Middle-earth experience”
Character development in the hands of the players
Travel and exploration
Combat and logistics at a more narrative level

What does The One Ring do less well?:

Tactical combat on a grid
Hackability – this is not meant to be a generic system, but is tied closely to the source material
Long dungeon crawls and hack & slash

The One Ring (2ed) is probably for you if:

You want to adventure in Middle-earth
You want to try a low-magic fantasy RPG
You want a fantasy RPG with more focus on narrative and less focus on tactical combat
You want to try an RPG with interesting mechanics that support the core aspects of the game

The One Ring (2ed) is probably NOT for you if:

You don’t like the Middle-earth setting
You prefer high magic games, with lots of flashy spells, magic loot and big BOOMS!
You just want to relax bashing monsters and looting their stuff (I love that too, sometimes)
You prefer games with extensive character customization options

If you are already sold, you can pre-order the game or purchase the PDF.

That was the short version. Do you want to know more? Then, read on dear guest.

Where and when does the game take place?

The default game is set between the events of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings in the Eriador region, where you find places like Hobbiton, Bree, the Old Forest, three petrified trolls, the Barrow Downs and many other locations known from the source material. It also contains a number of locations not featured prominently in the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit, such as Fornost and Tharbad.

More specifically, the game is meant to begin around 2965. This takes the setting forward from the 1st edition (and Adventures in Middle Earth) which begins around 2947, and shifts the geographical focus away from Wilderland – the region beyond the Misty Mountains with Mirkwood and the Lonely Mountain. At least for now.

That said, you can use the rules to play in any area of Middle-earth, and even shift the time to the Second Age or the Fourth, if you find that suits your purpose.
Sourcebooks for many of the well known regions came out for the previous edition of the game. Furthermore, you can pick up sourcebooks for Middle-Earth Role Playing, which came out in the early 80’s.

Core system

The system in The One Ring is very player-facing.

Characters in The One Ring have three attributes: strength, heart and wits. They range from 2-7 – rarely 8. For each attribute there are six associated skills. As strength covers everything physical, from keen eyes to a great singing voice, skills associated with strength include things like Awe, Athletics and Awareness. Heart covers skills like the Travel, Insight and Courtesy while Wits has skills like Lore, Riddle and Persuade. Combat skills are separated and there are only four: axes, spears, swords and bows. Ranks in skills go from 1-6, but beginning characters typically have ranks from 0-3.

The game uses a dice pool system to resolve actions. Players roll one or more dice and if the total added together reaches the target number, you succeed at your task. The player rolls one Feat Dice (D12) and any success dice (D6) they get – which usually comes from your skills or combat abilities – or two D12 and take the highest/lowest if the character has advantage/disadvantage, which is called ‘favoured/illfavoured’ in this game.

EXAMPLE: Let’s say the Hobbit Mirabella tries to sneak past an orc guard. She has three ranks in Stealth, so you roll 3D6, but the player has picked Stealth to be a favoured skill, so she rolls 2d12, picks the highest and adds the result of the 3D6.
Does she succeed? In The One Ring, the Target Number isn’t decided by the game master, it is player-facing. As a player, your target number is derived from your own character. If you try a Wits skill, you roll against 20 minus your wits. As Stealth is a wits skill, Mirabella with Wits 5, would need to roll a total of 15 to sneak past the orc. Certain conditions may make rolls harder or easier, of course, usually by adding or subtracting success dice.

However, the dice have some additional features. In the accompanying dice set, the 12 on the D12 is marked with the G rune and if you roll a 12 your action always succeeds. The 11 on the D12 is the Eye of Sauron and counts as zero – or worse depending on circumstances. On the D6, sixes gives you a superior success, and you can convert sixes to bonuses in the game, such as doing a task silently, more damage or cancel a failure for another character. You can use normal D12s or D6s to play, or get the special dice for the game.

On the surface, the core system of The One Ring is more complex than rolling 1D20 and adding a number. But in play, The One Ring doesn’t have dozens of complex special abilities and hundreds of – cool – but complex – spells. Looking at the sum of its parts, the One Ring will be simpler for the vast majority of players.

The gameplay has a structure divided into an Adventuring Phase, where the Loremaster (DM/GM) has primary control, and a Fellowship Phase, where the players have primary control. You could say it is the ‘play’ and ‘downtime’ phases. Unlike D&D however, the One Ring has different rule structures for three important aspects of the adventuring phase: combat, journeys and councils. Further, there are concrete rules for their downtime, which fits the setting and interacts with the recovery of the characters, advancement of the characters and further exploration of the setting.

Below, I will try to describe – as briefly as I can – how the different parts work, and what makes them cool.

Characters

The characters you can play are explicitly heroes. However, they can be lost to The Shadow through greed, pride, wrath and a few other things.

Cultures and Callings
The character’s abilities are mainly defined by their Culture, not by their “class” which is named Callings. Examples of Cultures include: Men of Bree, Hobbit of the Shire, Elf of Lindon and Dunedaín.

When you create your character, each Culture has six different distributions of attributes you can pick from (or roll a random distribution). How these are distributed depends on the Culture, but all of them contain 21 attribute points, so they are equal, but different. For example, Men of Bree get a maximum of 4 in Strength whereas Dwarves of Durin’s Folk get 7, but max 4 in Heart.

On top of the three primary stats (strength, heart and wits), you also calculate three derived stats: endurance, hope and parry.

This distribution are for Durin’s Folk – meaning dwarves.

Endurance is basically your hit points (but more interesting, so I will get back to that). Hope you can spend to get bonus D6s and Parry is the target number for monsters to hit you – ie your armour class.

These three derived stats differ from Culture to Culture. Bardings have an Endurance score of their strength +20, but Hobbits only get +18.

Finally, each Culture comes with a couple of special bonuses called Cultural Blessings. For example the Dunedaín gets: Kings of Men, and receives a bonus attribute point.

After picking Culture, you select your Calling. The calling is what motivates the character to go on adventures. The six callings are: Captain, Champion, Messenger, Scholar, Treasure Hunter and Warden.
The mechanical effects are slight, but they define their Shadow Weakness, such as Lure of Secrets and Path of Despair (more on that later).

Virtues, Rewards and Gear
The One Ring operates with equipment and treasure at a higher level of abstraction than most fantasy RPGs, such as D&D. All characters are expected to have normal travelling gear, but are allowed a number of “useful items”, depending on their culture’s prosperity level. These items can help the character using a particular skill under certain circumstances, such as a great pipe or a liquor to infuse strength. Characters also start with the weapons and armour they desire, again based on their prosperity.
The abstraction also applies to treasure which isn’t counted in an exact number of coins, but Treasure Rating. When you gather a specific amount of treasure, your prosperity rating goes up.

At the beginning of the game each character gets one general Virtue and one Reward. As the character gains experience they can gain more virtues and rewards.
Virtues are akin to Feats in D&D 5e. and includes general abilities such as Dourhanded and Prowess, and virtues tied to your culture, which you can’t begin the game with but must buy with experience, such as: Dragon Slayer, Elbereth Gilthoniel! and Brave at a Pinch.
Rewards are special gear with a mechanical advantage, typically weapons or armor you have earned, such as a Keen sword or Cunningly Made mail shirt.

Derived stats

I want to mention the three derived stats in a bit greater detail, because, particularly Endurance, is a very interesting mechanic.

Your parry rating is the value which adversaries must roll to hit your character. Enemies don’t have a parry rating though. Instead, players roll against their character’s Strength target number, to see if they hit modified by the adversary’s parry rating – normally 0-3. Shields and other factors can add to a character’s parry rating, whereas armor helps you avoid Wounds.

Hope are points players can use to fuel certain abilities (sometimes to make a success ‘magical’) and to add additional D6’s to their rolls. Characters don’t recover Hope that easily, so they should be spent wisely.

Endurance is like Hit Points, and you can lose them from attacks or simply from events on your journey. When you reach zero you drop unconscious. But it is also related to your encumbrance rating (which is called Load in The One Ring). So, when you don gear or armor or carry treasure, you add Load, and when your endurance rating drops below your Load score, the character becomes Weary, which is bad because all rolls of 1,2 and 3 on the D6 then counts as zero.

The mechanical effect of this is that players must weigh carefully the benefit of more armor, shields, weapons etc. versus their ability to fight after a long journey or last through multiple encounters. In D&D, and many other games, more armor is almost always better, but that is not the case in The One Ring. The core mechanic is further supported by the explicit action of dropping your shield or helmet, to decrease your Load during combat, and the explicit rules for pack animals (if your prosperity rating is high enough) or you can bury the treasure you found, because each point of treasure counts as one Load point.

The Endurance mechanic beautifully creates interesting choices for the players AND it means that the fiction of the game will emulate the source material, where few characters wear armor and treasure is buried for later or left behind. I really dig that!

I am a bit baffled, however, that it seems like a strong starting character with 26 in Endurance, who wears a mail coat, helmet, spear and great shield is left with only 1 point of Endurance. That figure can be mitigated with Virtues and Rewards, but still. It might work mechanically for player characters, but it seems like the heavily armoure bands of Bardings or Gondor aren’t viable (dwarves halve the Load, so they are).

The Shadow

The concept of Shadow in the game affects both the characters and the adventure, so I’ll deal with it here at a high level.

There is one overall foe in the game and that is obviously Sauron and all his servants. In The One Ring, player characters are heroes and explicitly adversaries of Sauron.

In the game, there also is a very clear dichotomy between Servant’s of the Enemy, which are irredeemably Evil, and other foes like regular robbers, haughty elven guards or Dunland raiders, which are not.

I very much subscribe to the views that Matt Coleville lays out in the video “Everyone Loves Zombies”, basically saying that players sometimes need to face foes they can unambiguously fight and slay without feeling bad about it, and sometimes they should face foes where there are moral complexities. I am therefore very happy with how explicit this is done in the One Ring, and the support it has from the game system.

The mechanic to support this for characters is called Shadow points. Characters will gain Shadow points when they indulge in their darkest desires or from the fear and despair which the Enemy can induce. Players can roll to resist gaining points of course. Simple Greed, whenever the characters discover treasure, can result in Shadow points and they can gain them from Misdeeds: actions that are unheroic, such as stealing, threatening with violence or ending the life of a foe who isn’t evil. Further, dark sorcery can cause shadow point “damage”.

The result of accumulating shadow points is a descent along your character’s Shadow Path and into madness, and ultimately the end of the character as a PC. Whenever a character’s Shadow points reach the level of their Hope they have a Bout of Madness – a loss of control to their worst inclinations, like Boromir trying to take the ring or Thorin being overcome by greed for a while. This takes the character one step down their Shadow Path.
A character’s Shadow Path is determined by his calling, and they have evocative names like Dragon Sickness (greed) and Lure of Power. Each path has four stages of character flaws – roleplaying traits for the character. As an example, Lure of Power goes from resentful to tyrannical.

Mechanically, it has more features than this and ties into the down-time phase for example, but this covers the basics.

There is also a group-level mechanic. When more experienced heroes work against Sauron, it is possible that the enemy will respond. This is governed by the Eye of Sauron mechanic, which is a meter that slowly fills during an adventure when the heroes use magic or gain shadow points. When it reaches a certain point – depending on a number of factors – it has a negative narrative impact on the characters. It could be a direct attack on them, or perhaps the quarry they chase gets away or someone they thought an ally becomes an enemy.

I will need to play a longer game to really judge how the shadow points mechanic works in practice. In Adventures in Middle-earth (the 5e version of the game) the accumulation of shadow points seemed too slow to have a big impact, but it seems to be a bigger factor in this edition.

Adventuring

The adventuring phase has three major mechanical components, but in practice works like any other RPG with an adventure composed of various scenes or with the group exploring a location, like a dungeon.

Combat
Combat in The One Ring has been designed for play without miniatures, but using minis or drawing on a mat or screen can still be helpful.

When combat begins, there is usually first an opportunity for both sides to use missile fire before the melee begins.

Subsequently, during the melee, each character selects one of four stances: forward, open, defensive and rearward. The stance you pick also determines the order in which you act and gives access to particular actions, such as intimidate foes or rally comrades. Only the rearward enables characters to use ranged weapons, and it can be restricted, depending on how many enemies there are compared to the characters. The enemies are then distributed between the different PCs.

I will not go into great detail on the mechanics, but there are some interesting features:
Players can decide to halve the endurance damage they receive by deciding to get knocked back (an fall prone), and rolling sixes enables special bonuses/effects, depending on which type of weapon you use.

I did however find that the combat example in the game was so short, it wasn’t useful, so I created a more comprehensive example of the combat mechanics.

Endurance represents grit and the slow grinding down of your ability to defend yourself, where the final blow knocks you out of the fight – just like hit points in D&D. BUT! in The One Ring you can also get Wounded (similar to the Major Wound mechanic in Call of Cthulhu 7ed). Rolling 10 or 12 on the D12 causes a piercing blow (some effects can modify this) which can cause a Wound. Characters now roll a Protection roll – 1D12 and add the D6s they get from their armor. To avoid the Wound they must roll equal or higher than the Injury Rating of the weapon they were hurt by.

Only by getting Wounded can your character die. At the first Wound there is a 1 in 12 chance that you go down and is dying. A second wound always causes the character to drop and become “dying” and only a successful heal check will prevent them from dying within the hour.

One of the things I really like about the weapons is that spears are very viable and more likely to cause Wounds, if you roll 6s on your attack. Too often in fantasy games, swords are the superior weapon. Furthermore, I like that missile weapons don’t have a range. It is rarely relevant in RPGs anyway and just an annoying thing to track.

In addition, weapons that are special or magical can influence many aspects of combat, and characters can perform additional actions based on their stance, certain virtues etc.

Councils
Whenever the group tries to convince one or more important NPCs to aid them, the Loremaster can use the rules for councils. It works like a skill challenge or an extended test, where the characters have to gain a number of successes using different skills to convince for example Lord Elrond, a village council or the Shire Mayor to do what they want.

Journeys
Travel is a huge part of Tolkien’s writing, and it is supported by rules for travel. When the group is on a journey, the players designate four roles between them: Guide, Hunter, Look-out and Scout (similar to the Forbidden Lands RPG).

The group decides on a path, and the game comes with a hex map of Eriador, where the different areas are colour coded depending on their difficulty, and a few places have additional dangers.
When the group starts marching, their Travel skill determines how long they get before they encounter an event.

*The maps for the game are beautiful*
*and evocative!*

The events aren’t combat encounters (they could be in Adventures in Middle-earth), but things like Ill Choices, Mishaps and Shortcuts that the group must face. The events are randomly determined and targets one of the four roles. Through narrative and a skill roll, the group determines how they overcome the event. Failure can result in fatigue, which counts as Load, and can make the characters Weary. With luck, the events can also be beneficial by meeting a potential friend on the road, for example.

The game also comes with a nice Journey Log, where players can record their journey’s and any sights they might see or people they meet.

This system does not prevent you from springing combat on your players or adding more complex locations or events to the journey. I think it has been designed to add story and mood to the game, while not preventing your characters from ultimately reaching their journey’s goal – they might be weakened by their fatigue when they get there, though.

The Fellowship & the Fellowship Phase

In keeping with the source material, the group of characters isn’t a group of self serving sell-swords or loot happy anti-heroes. They are a fellowship – a Company working together – and there are some mechanics to support that.

First of all, each character has Fellowship focus – another character whom he or she is has a special bond with – and when they aid that person with Hope, the character gains two dice instead of one. However, if the character is seriously injured or suffers a bout of madness the character who has a bond with them gains a point of Shadow.

Typically the Fellowship is supported by a Patron – a benevolent and experienced NPC who aids and guides the group. This could be one of the very well known characters from Middle-earth such as Bilbo, Gandalf or Elrond or one of the lesser known figures, such as Círdan the Shipwright or Gilraen (Aragorn’s mother).

The players normally decide which Patron they wish to have at the outset of the game. Each patron comes with a special ability the group gains and adds a bonus to the group’s Fellowship Rating.
The Fellowship Rating is a pool of points the group has which they (most often) can use to regain Hope, but having Gandalf the Grey as Patron allows them to spend Fellowship points to make Shadow rolls favoured, for example.

*Bilbo is a potential patron of the Fellowship.*

In the Fellowship Phase – the down time period of the game – the players take more control of the narrative. They normally stay at their Safe Haven – such as Bree or Rivendell – and can then select a few actions (called Undertakings) they wish to do during this period. During the winter season (Yuletide) there are also some additional special options, as that period is typically several months, and allows the characters to go back to their families or kin, visit far off patrons and the like.
Undertakings include Gather Rumours, Study Magic Item, Strengthen Fellowship and Write a Song (yes, songs have a mechanical effect!).

The Fellowship phase is also the time where Hope can be renewed Shadow scars can be healed – and it is the time that players can spend their hard earned XP!

If a character gets a reward from his culture – an grievous weapon, close fitting armor or the like – this is where the player narrates how they get it.

Lastly, the character can raise an heir. By spending XP and Treasure on raising an heir, the player can prepare a new character for when the current one dies or retires – a fun feature for a long campaign, and completely in keeping with the novels.

Adventures, Monsters, Magic & Lore

The game also comes with around 30 pages of information about Eriador, rules for generating magical treasure and Nameless Things from the dark, monster mechanics and 21 monster stat blocks and an example of a Landmark – an adventuring location with lore, NPCs, plot, treasure and monsters.

As is clear from the rules, the game is focused on adventures consisting of a number of scenes, potentially with a ‘dungeon style’ location. It is however not meant to be 4-6 encounters per adventuring day. I would expect to have combat in most sessions, but certainly not every session.

Lore & Landmarks

The lore in the book is a good foundation for gameplay briefly covering Bree-Land, the Shire (which is fully developed in the Starter Set), the Great East Road, the Green Way, the Barrow Downs and a few other locations.

It contains additional random tables for some of the locations and plenty of hooks for adventure. The tables include what you might find in a Troll Hole, what happens that night at the Prancing Pony or what you discover in an ancient ruin along the Green Way – could be a crumbling tower or a recently torched homestead? There are also NPCs for the characters to meet and problems that they need solved.

Looking at the original maps, they seem fairly empty of “civilization”, but in the lore and in the game, these regions contain many small villages and holdfasts, ruins of ancient keeps and so forth.

I like the tables, as they are a quick way to add the right flavour and a touch of something surprising to your game.

*The Star of the Mist is a fully fleshed out adventuring location in the core rules. An additional book on Ruins was part of the kickstarter and in the works.*

Adversaries
Compared to many fantasy games, the list of monsters is shorter in Middle-earth, but there are several variations of trolls, orcs, undead and spiders the characters can face.

The rules governing monsters differ from characters, as they don’t have three different attributes, but only one, and they don’t have Hope but points of Hate or Resolve depending on the type of monster. These points can be used as additional dice, just like Hope, or to power special abilities – akin to Legendary Actions from D&D.

Personally, I wish the monsters had 2-3 abilities instead of the typical one to make combat a bit more interesting. The method for creating Nameless Things in the appendix actually contains quite a long list of abilities, which is good inspiration for mechanics to add to monsters.

The designers also left out several groups of monsters for future publications, such as Giant Spiders and Dragons.

I would also have liked stats for at least one very powerful creature, like a Ring Wraith or a dragon, to put things in perspective.

Magical items
Characters are expected to find 1-3 magical treasures over the course of their adventures, but in The One Ring these items aren’t random – the characters are fated to find them.

In game terms, it means that the Loremaster is encouraged to draw up a list of 2-3 items for each character including names, a bit of lore and stats for each item. And when they find an appropriate treasure, the LM can pick one or more items from that list. This means that items are narratively bound to that character: they can’t be traded within the group and they will go with the character to her death, or into retirement (unless an heir has been raised).

A neat little feature is that you can spend an action in the Fellowship phase to unlock the next ability of the item, and if the player has spent valor in getting heirlooms from his culture, these “gifts” can be handed back, and in effect be “traded in” for upgrades to the wonderous artefact or magic weapon they recovered. It means the effort/xp spent earlier isn’t lost when they discover something better.

Final comments

I think The One Ring RPG 2nd edition is an excellent game fully focused on delivering the Middle-earth experience, enabling players to immerse themselves in Tolkien’s setting and have their own adventures meeting all the famous characters and foiling the plans of the Enemy. My imagination is certainly spurred.

The game is medium – towards light – crunch, and aims towards using rules to drive the narrative forward and make sure the game hits the right mood and atmosphere.

There are a lot of mechanics that I really like, and from my – very limited – experience the combat moved smoothly.

Reading the official forums, some fans of the 1st edition liked some aspects of the previous edition better. The previous edition had more mechanics for example for Councils and more uses for Hope. I can see that. As I understand it, in this edition, the designers have moved towards less rules for councils and more focus on letting the group narrate how it plays out. I think it is a matter of taste what you prefer.

If you have mostly played D&D 5th edition, I hope this article inspires you in your own game, and perhaps to pick up one of the many other great RPGs.

If you want to run a game with the same tone and mood as in Middle-earth, but in your own world with your homebrew evil overlord – whom the characters can actually defeat, instead of this other more important adventuring party! – I recommend the indie game Against the Darkmaster. It emulates the design of the old MERP/Rolemaster rules with more magic and crit tables, but with modern design. Funnily, also designed by Italians!

The One Ring 2nd Edition certainly touches the Middle-earth fan in me, and I hope to try it out as soon as I return to Copenhagen and my regular circle of gaming friends.

Between Realism & Fantasy: my dungeon design

August 5, 2016 rasmusnord01Leave a comment

As I was working on the Iron Mine dungeon for my own campaign, and reading various things online (including the AngryDMs articles on his MegaDungeon) I decided I wanted to write something about my high level dungeon design approach, and some pet peeves.

Obviously, every dungeon should have a story, and a history, which explains why it was built, what its function was and what has happened with it since it was built. Knowing these things will help you add the small details that makes the dungeon come alive.

Two Extremes

To me, there are two extremes of dungeon design – the realistic and the fantastic – and a

Deathstar_negwt — It is hard to explore the Death Star room by room. And all the random encounters with Storm Troopers would become quite boring.

whole lot of variations in between. Another way to look at them are complete dungeons versus ‘just the cool bits’ dungeons. An example of a complete dungeon would be Temple of Elemental Evil, where every little corridor is described and the Death Star, where we just see a couple of important areas, would be a ‘cool bits’ dungeon.

Gary Gygax leaned towards the realistic and complete dungeon. His gaming and inspiration starting point was actual medieval castles, and therefore many of the early published dungeons look somewhat like something you could find in real life – an example would be the Moathouse in The Village of Hommlet module.

Mausoleum — The catacombs beneath Paris has 2 km of tunnels (which isn’t counting the rest of the lime stone quarry) keeping the bones of 6 million dead. Good place for a lich…

The biggest problem, in my view, with many of the old school designs is that many of the dungeons are actually far smaller than the “dungeons” – in the broad sense – that you can find in real life, and Gary’s sources of inspiration are focused on medieval Europe, which limits the imagination. However, humans have built vast fortresses, palaces and constructions that dwarf what the early designers came up with for D&D. And until the Underdark became a thing, the natural caves in the real world were far more extensive than e.g. Keep on the Borderlands. Real world strongholds are also often very complex buildings with many complicated passageways and interconnecting rooms.

Furthermore, it is obviously not realistic to have 5 goblins living 20 yards and two doors away from a ferocious owl bear. Would you be living in an apartment if there was a wild bear living a couple of apartments away… even if you had a spear?

The influence of the real world architecture has also prevented many designers from actually thinking about how things would look in a high magic fantasy world. A castle is designed to take as many lives from the enemy as possible, while protecting the people inside from the attackers as much as possible for as long as possible. Therefore, you typically only have one or two access points from the ground level and towers from where you can better attack the enemy. But if you are a wizard who wishes to create a flying citadel using a castle seems to be a terrible design. Why would you want towers and battlements on your Citadel, when you might as well carve out a big rock with whatever you need. It would be much safer from dragons and armies of knights on griffons.

In my current campaign I’ve tried to think more about this for current and future dungeons.

The Published Designer’s Constraint: paper

The issue for designers who have to publish their stuff is that they are limited by the medium: for example, the paper size and the number of pages you can publish limits the designer. That seems to be one of the reasons why Gary G. cram so much stuff into each level of the Temple of Elemental Evil. Obviously it is also fun that every time you open a door to a room there is something interesting.

The designer also has to be able to communicate his vision with a map and text, which can be quite difficult. At home, you don’t need to explain to other people in text.

Your GM notes only needs to be understood by you. That’s a big advantage.

1929306_6520803106_6434_n — The beautiful Caerphilly Castle. A big dungeon, but I wouldn’t want to use it as a flying Citadel.

The realistic dungeon just doesn’t seem Fantasy-like to me, when you play a high fantasy game like D&D at least. With massive magocracies and enslaved giants, why would you build those tiny structures. As a lich, with endless amount of time, I would build something more imposing than Caerphilly castle in Wales – even though it is very grand in real life.

In your home game, if you want to make a big fantastic dungeon in a ruined city, you can make sections of the dungeon and cut out the boring parts. If your dungeon has a massive slave pit, make one big encounter against the slave masters and their pets, figure out how it connects with the rest of the dungeon, and then simply narrate the rest of the trip there.

The Iron Mine

Gates — Build it bigger! These are the Roman gates to Florence. Why make a lousy 20 foot gate, when you can make it 50 feet tall?

For the Iron Mine in my campaign I used the approach I’ve described. The site has a historical background and fits into the world, and it has a twist, that I can’t reveal here. But it relates to a couple of the greater narratives in my world. For example, last session they found the foreman, who had locked himself up in a room and killed himself. The question is why?

The mine has been worked by the elves for perhaps centuries, so it wouldn’t make sense to have one page of graph paper with some 10×10 corridors and a few rooms. Therefore, I made several sections of the mine, connected with tunnels that were 30×30 feet, and hundreds of feet long, and explained to the players that there were numerous small side corridors, shafts and tunnels, which their characters would be looking into and checking out superficially along the way as part of the story, but that we would only go into full dungeoneering mode, when they arrive at significant parts of the dungeon.

Each section I made is sort of a mini-dungeon by itself, with typically 3-5 separate locations/rooms, and the sections function and history is incorporated into the overall backstory of the dungeon. And each section has its own map. The map connecting the sections is basically a flow-chart.

Some of the advantages with the approach are:

The mine seems like a more grand, fantastic and scary place, in my view.
The dungeon ecology becomes more realistic. The eco system comes more alive with more realistic space.
There is room for wandering monsters, as the players will never explore it all, and things can move around them, without the party noticing.
Time becomes more realistic. The characters have to move carefully hundreds of yards between points of interest, with resulting consequences for spells, light sources and resting.
Each section is easy to grasp by the players when they get there and I can explain and draw it quite easily.

When my players get deeper into the Iron Mine, I can write more about how I work with stories in my dungeons.

This is what I see as at the core of my design philosophy. Let me know if I’m off the rails, or what else should inspire me.

AD&D-Dragonlance-Dragons+of+Desolation+-+9139+DL4 — Flying castles against dragon armies seems to make very little sense.

Goodberries and Mayonnaise

May 24, 2016 rasmusnord01Leave a comment

The group spent one month in the settlement, working on down-time tasks and talking to NPCs, while eating Goodberries drenched in mayonnaise.

To make the timeline move forward and to make sure that the characters have a more natural progress these interludes are important. Often, players have this sense of urgency, and think if they don’t spend every day adventuring, somehow they are going to miss something or become penalized in the story, for example by bad guys spending that time plotting against them and building their strength. I hope they will learn that that is not the case. As one of the goals of the campaign is for the characters to become older and the settlement to grow around them, spending down time, building a home, or a base of operations even, and gathering resources is important. It is also good from an overall pacing perspective. And lastly, I dislike characters going from 1^st to 20^th level over a few busy months. That just seems quite unrealistic – if such a word can be used for fantasy roleplaying.

A significant element of the 12th session was the practical issues when you are an adventurer in a small settlement, on a far off continent, with no trading partners and everyone being self-sufficient: How to get food, build a shelter and craft better armor and other stuff?

Mayonnaise_(1) — A liter of mayo is about 9000 calories, or 3 times the need of an adult male.

The adventurers decided to solve the food issue with the Goodberries spell, which can sustain their entire group every day. The joke was that since the have the wonderful Alchemy Jug which can produce 2 gallons (8 liters) of mayonnaise every day they would be supplementing their diet of a single daily goodberry with a liter of mayo – each – which turned into jokes about offering presents of mayo and goodberries to the honoured elven guests and what the characters would look like when they started adventuring again after eating mayo non-stop for a month. Jokes aside, the Alchemy Jar continues to be a valuable item, as it can produce a lot of valuable liquids, when you are in an isolated settlement, such as honey, wine and vinegar.

There were a few key events and discoveries during the session:

It was a surprise to some that their gold and silver was worth very little in the settlement, but that everything had to be bartered for. I hope it provides a different perspective on what is valuable to them.
The group read the books they discovered in the hag lair, and the wizard, who wisely picked cartography as a proficiency, was able to determine the approximate location of some of the places named in one of the books, including the Colourless Bridge, which is inside the forest, and they learned the name of the ruined city nearby: Ivanith’laril. They could also see that the elves had made war against the Bones of Sarakhon and that they were undead.
The druid learned the local elven dialect, so now the risk of confusion is minimized when parlaying with the elves.
Iron ore: almost as valuable as gold at this stage in the campaign.

They wanted to craft a full plate armour, but were horrified at the time it would take them to craft it themselves, so they made a deal with the dwarf family living in the settlement. The dwarves would help them craft 2 full plate armours during the coming year, and they would assist exploiting the iron ore deposit that the group had learned about from the elves, and in return, the dwarves would get 1500 gp. and their iron bars. The gold they could send back to their clan, who could use it to get more dwarves to migrate to the settlement.
A trio of goblins scouts snuck into the settlement, but the characters captured one and killed the rest, and learned of some of the other goblin tribes and that their own tribe the Red Fangs, had an ettin ally and powerful goblin witches. And more importantly, that there is a town at the edge of the forest where the goblins trade with the hobgoblins of the plains.
The elves visited with an ‘official’ delegation, and they told them the location of the site with iron and that there is an ancient road leading there. They also learned that the edge of the forest was about 400 miles from the settlement, and that the area around the Colourless Bridge is haunted.

Displacer_Beast_MM_4e — Roll initiative losers!

At the end of the session the group began their journey south through the forest along the ancient road, and during the first night Sir Jarn was jumped by a couple of Displacer Beasts – which means next session begins by rolling initiative.

I actually love starting a session with combat, and in one campaign had the rule, that all sessions started with an initiative roll, potentially as a flash forward scene, because the combat really gets the players focused right away.

Positive aspects

A couple of things worked really well this session:

Letting them research old books and speak to the locals and from that begin to fill in some blanks on the vast hex map is fun and tantalizing. The only down side is that every time I bring up a new location they haven’t visited, half the group immediately wants to go off and explore it right away… But that is also kind of the point of the campaign!
The moral and societal choices that happened when the Europeans came to the Americas are beginning to show themselves. For example, it is clear that the goblin tribe nearby will never let them farm and prosper in peace, so at some point they have to be destroyed, even though they are the natural inhabitants in this place – the situation is very similar to the one describe in this podcast Apache Tears between the Apache and the Mexicans and U.S. settlers. Furthermore, the friendly elves certainly don’t mind some powerful allies against the hobgoblins, as the settlement has a minute impact on the forest, but what happens years down the road when more and more settlers arrive?

Negative aspects:

It isn’t negative as such, but the reality is that if you have a large group doing down time and NPC interaction in a settlement, the actual ‘screen time’ of each character is reduced significantly. As a change of pace the session was good, but we all prefer more action and adventure.

Session 11: A big signal fire

May 9, 2016 rasmusnord01Leave a comment

The game session became a sort of ’in-between game session’, where the group finished looting the dungeon, met the local elves and had a long talk with them for the first time, and got into another big fight with the undead, where the power of the Staff of the Woodlands was demonstrated.

I’ve also been looking at making a post about magic items, and how you can make the discovery of powers progressive, spurred by the comments in for the last post (here The last post), but I haven’t had enough time to finish it.

Events of the session:

At the end of the previous session, the group had killed the aberrant plant monster that lived in the ruin, and they commenced looting and exploring the final sections. They went outside a couple of times, but neither the ranger nor druid passed their wisdom check, so they failed to notice something important. They discovered a statue of an elf, which held out a stylized map with a mountain chain with the mark of the throne on it. They found a secret room with treasure, including 50 pounds of iron and finally a room where dark seeds of the abomination were grown. They decided to burn the seeds, but the group was low on resources and had no fire magic left, so Arak, the strong half-orc cleric and Jarn, the ranger and leader, goes into the forest to get firewood. That is when they see the column of smoke that rises from the pyramid from all the burn vines inside the dungeon. They drop all the collected firewood and race back to the pyramid (I must say I liked this moment, when it dawned on the players what their actions meant).

The wizard’s familiar, Steven the sea gull (pun intended), is sent out to scout and Arak stands guard on top of the pyramid. Steven spots a large-ish band of goblins heading towards the pyramid, and Arak actually notices one of the local nomadic elves hiding in a tree. As the group is low on HP and spells they decide to retreat. After a while they make a short rest, the druid gains access to ‘pass with out trace’ and they escape the goblins, who spent some time scouting the ruin (if the characters had decided to stay other interested parties would have shown up, which would have been all kinds of fun!).

dead undead — I’ve never regretted getting the undead army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle back in the mid 90s. Those minis have been used countless times!

After escaping the goblins, on their way to the place where they met undead the first time, they are attacked again by a group of more than 20 undead, marching towards them. There is a 5^th level spell caster and the equivalent of a boosted Wight among them. It turns out that even though skeletons aren’t that dangerous to 4^th level characters, if enough attack, they become a problem…

This is where my concern from last time, concerning the Staff of the Woodlands, was partly laid to rest. The druid use the Wall of Thorns spell from the staff and kills 6 skeletons with it, and a further two are pushed into the wall with a Gust of Wind spell. It doesn’t break the encounter at all, but it takes it down to a more manageable level. They are still under a lot of pressure, but they survive. If he had used it on the two ‘bosses’, they would take significant damage, but wouldn’t be killed outright. Obviously, in open terrain it is less effective than in a dungeon, where you can seal off passage ways.

The leader, who seems to be an undead orc with a magical scale mail, has a message crystal (like a simple recording device) with the following message:

“Deploy your companies north west of the city, and keep our lines of communication open with Fort 25. Commander Osandros will deploy to the south towards the Colorless Bridge. Reinforcements will be allotted as they arrive. This is the order of Belsokh Six Fingers. For Sarakhon!”

The characters who have been studying the books they found in the hag lair, recognizes Sarakhon from the name of the enemy an elf led an army against – they were called The Bones of Sarakhon.

The next day they locate the cave where the undead came from, and where they had been lying for several centuries. They also find a copper sheet, with an etched map showing the location of both Fort 25 and Fort 26 and the ruined city they’ve passed by earlier. They speculate that the undead were making war on the elves in the area long ago.

When they emerge from the cave, an arrow with a flower attached to it, is shot at the feet of Jarn. He shoots the arrow back, and a small group of elves emerge. They proceed with a trade, and then they begin talking. The elves clearly find their settlement unwise.

The group learns some important information though:

Hobgoblins live on the plains beyond the forest, and come into the forest to capture slaves. At some point, if they wish to live in peace, they have to deal with that threat.
There are many goblin tribes and they are sure to end up fighting them.
To the south lives Osganithmoth Suneater, an old green dragon, which fortunately sleeps right now, but its offspring infests the forest.
They watch over the ruined city, to guard against the creatures coming out of it. The demons that dwell within cannot get out though for some reason. Inside there are many monsters, among others a group of giants that wandered in from the hills to the south west.
They don’t have access to metal and are interested in trading.
They know of a source of iron, but it is a dangerous place.
The location where Fort 25 is supposed to be is a dangerous ashen wasteland.

When they were done speaking with the elves, we ended the session.

Perhaps Osganithmoth looks something like this… Scale seems pretty accurate! Art by Mike Azevedo. Check out more of his very cool stuff here: Link to Mike Azevedo’s art

Next time:

We will finally have an extended period of down time, and they can use some of the time to get to know more of the local inhabitants. It should strengthen their connection to the community and make them feel more a part of the settlement.

The campaign also opens up, and they discussed what should be their next target: the iron mine, fort 25 or the ruined city. They decided upon the iron mine, as it would be an important resource for the settlement.

Perhaps this will be our first session without an initiative roll…? But then again, maybe not…

D&D Session 6: Random Encounters (or is it?)

January 25, 2016January 25, 2016 rasmusnord012 Comments

Wednesday we had one of the best sessions of the campaign so far. The characters have to make their way back to the settlement with the seven survivors of the wrecked ship. It is a week-long trip (at least), and here is where my extensive list of random encounters, locations and events comes into play.

It is a topic I’ve been reading about on the excellent DM David blog (for example: http://dmdavid.com/tag/three-unexpected-ways-wandering-monsters-improve-dd-play/) and I’ve used the same approach without fully realizing all the advantages. One advantage is that the random encounters create a real sense of threat when travelling, but they can also be a reward for exploring, by adding wondrous and strange locations with potential treasure and lore.

I’ve decided to post the random encounter table below, where my players can also see it.

Knowing the rules and being able to make decisions based on rules is already a core part

wilderness survival — I want wilderness exploration to be fun, rewarding and to drive the plot forward.

of D&D. Having a mechanical understanding of the encounter system can add a level of tension and excitement in my view. It should add depth and interesting discussions when the players understand the dangers and potential rewards of travel into lands where they don’t know what awaits over the next hill. It is certainly much more interesting than players with meta-knowledge of the monsters, which is why I alter monsters in almost all encounters in a meaningful way.

Session 6:

The game started after their hard encounter with kuo-toa. The half-orc Arak buried their casualty, while their aspiring leader, Jarn, tries to instill some confidence in the surviving NPCs without much luck (his character is only 16 years old, so that seemed very reasonable). They move their camp away from the carnage and successfully gain a full nights rest while scavengers of the forest fight over the kuo-toa corpses. In the morning they decide to split up (I don’t know how they dare…?). The ranger and druid will try to follow the trail of the final survivor of the ship wreck – a bodyguard of the royal envoy – a little longer, and return to the group before nightfall, as they travel much quicker in the forest. The rest of the group with the NPC survivors travel south.

The druid and ranger follows the trail, find a goblin trap the bodyguard walked into. A little later they find a pink giant mushroom that glows (random encounter), and avoid it out of fear. Finally, they find a place where he rested and were set upon by a goblin hunting party who followed his blood trail. He managed to defeat them, but retreated further into the woods. The two characters decide to turn back and catch up with the rest.

The main group reaches a wide gorge (random encounter), which is basically a skill challenge, which they can decide to forego and spend an extra day travelling, or attempt, where failure means a longer delay. They attempt the skill challenge and manages easily (natural 20), to get all the people across the gorge.

They camp and the ranger and druid catches up with them.

The next day I decide that the next time I roll a random encounter, I will introduce a significant random encounter that has a plot relevance. That happens the second night. They camp on a large cliff, and during the night the wizard is haunted by nightmares. He awakes with the sound of claws on rock and seeing empty eye sockets. He immediately casts a spell, and the two characters on guard notice that something is coming up the cliff.

943328-lich — The undead had many game features which interacted well with player abilities.

Combat begins with 15 skeletons and two undead spell casters (5ht level sorcerers) arriving a round later. The plot hook is that they are after an item which the wizard has brought to the new lands (or more accurately, fled…). The two sorcerers are have cast fly, and are only interested in that item, and attacks the wizard. When they defeat him, one of them lands and grabs his backpack. The rest of the combat the undead tries to get away with the item, the fly spell fails however, and the gnome arcane trickster (who helped “procure” the item in the first place), manages to get the item out of the pack. Ultimately, the group defeats the undead, and that is the end of the session.

Next session will feature some pertinent questions for the wizard, and perhaps exploration of where the undead came from. And more travelling and random encounters!

Thoughts on the session:

Several things worked well. The random encounters, and the combat situation were fun and added a lot of flavor. The players were challenged and surprised by the dispel magic and other spells the undead cast. The combat was quite dynamic and tactically interesting, with various spells such as darkness and fog cloud used to protect the NPCs and characters. It worked almost as a game of ‘tag!’ and everyone played an important role.

I also use a bunch of notes with written questions to the characters, which players draw at random, typically when they’ve camped. Questions like: Who do you know who’ve been killed in the war? And: What is your fondest childhood memory? The first question came up in the session, and was great characterization for Jarn Ashford III.

The fact that there had been random encounters meant that the players seemed initially unaware that there was a plot reason for the combat. I really like that. Keeping players uncertain of what is planned and what is random I think will create a very interesting campaign. The players won’t feel the same inclination to go with what the DM presents, because they assume that it is where the plot is leading them, but will go with what their characters desires and thinks (I hope).

The random encounters also add fun for both me and the players, as I won’t know how the session and story will turn out either. I need to add a few things though: more lore connected to the world in the encounters, either via minor sites of interest or NPCs. I should also add actual random events/encounters with deeper plot hooks.

I also need to introduce rules for disengaging/fleeing from combat, as D&Ds movement rules are not useful for that. As there are overwhelming encounters on the list, there has to be a way to also withdraw or flee.

I need to add encountering NPCs to the list, to add variety to the list.

I have to keep being patient and let each session play out at the pace the dice dictates.

The Current Encounter Table:

This is the current encounter table I use. I’ve removed specific names from the list to avoid spoilers for my players. I try to include the distance of the encounter in the encounter description instead of having a separate random table. There is also another list with random monsters for the area they are in, when I roll 7, 10 or 13.

Encounter chance per day is 1 in 6 if in stealth mode or 2 in 6 if travelling normally. Roll twice if forced marching.

Roll (1d6+1d8)	Encounter
2	An XX is devouring its prey, but might become more interested in the characters.
3	They run into a webbed area of the forest. There are X hiding among their webs.
4	The weather suddenly takes a turn: 1: heavy rain, 2 high winds, 3 fog 4 storm 5 roll twice 6: storm. Survival check DC 15 to maintain travel speed. Failure they have to make camp and loose 1 day.
5	The group finds a major random adventure site.
6	The camp is attacked or approached at night
7	The Group finds a site of interest
8	A party member encounters a goblin trap (Dex DC 15 pit trap with spikes 3d6+3 damage)
9	The group encounters an unanticipated obstacle, such as a fast flowing stream, a deep gorge or an area of marshlands. Moving through it requires a survival check DC 15. A success keeps up their speed, failure costs them 2 days of lost time. Moving around it takes 1 additional day.
10	The group is found by a hostile monster during the day.
11	An X approaches (plot relevant)
12	The Group encounters a group of elves, if they can spot them
13	The group is ambushed by goblins or hostile monsters
14	(Something extremely dangerous) approaches.

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.

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.

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

Tag: fantasy roleplaying