The Evil Ones

Back in 1980, Dragon magazine presented an Anti-Palidin. These guys were stereotypical black hat NPCs. The logic behind them was a Palidin pledged themselves to a dark god. The problem with the article was it presented a way to generate an Anti-Palidin. The same idea was repeated a year later with the Drow in Fiend Folio, character stats for monsters. 

The message was "These aren't exactly monsters, they are more like characters." 

People are going to generate evil characters for a lot of reasons. Giving them a tool to do so isn't always a great idea, but the genie is out of the bag. Having evil characters in the party is problematic. How can the party hold together if half the party is trying to kill the other half? 

I never exactly had this issue for a couple of reasons. I would allow mixed-alignment characters in the party. That is the players' problem to sort out. I have found that player characters tend to moderate themselves in a party. Somehow, people find an accord: 

"Out of the goodness of my heart, and 1,000 gold pieces, I can heal you."

"For a dirty thief, you keep good friends."  

The alignment system in D&D is wonky. It doesn't really mean anything. Good player characters can do bad things and evil player characters can do good things in the right circumstances. There aren't any consequences for being good... or evil. If you want to switch, there are even rules for changing alignment that in my opinion, suck. They are geared to a particular campaign in the mind of the author of the books. They don't make sense in every setting. 

I DO have a problem with inherently evil races in D&D and it's a problem you'd never expect. 

I do voices for NPCs. This creates memorable characters, monsters, and scenarios. The downside is it also conveys tone and information that might be a mismatch for players expectations:

Kobold: "I am going to cut your boots off and wear your feet like boots!" 

10th level Paladin: "Snicker. Just you? Or both of you?" 

Kobolds: "Shit." 

Obviously, 2 Kobolds mean nothing to a 10th-level party. Against first-level characters, they represent some sort of threat, but not for battle-hardened characters. This is villain decay large writ. It is inevitable.

In some respects, using voices and tone gives my campaigns a fairytale-like vibe. What was once fearsome has become childish. Kobolds, goblins, orcs, etc. all become not threatening no matter how evil they are. Yes, you can give them some punch by cranking up the number appearing, but that has nothing to do with evil. 1,000 rats, yaks, or kobolds are dangerous to anyone. Plus rats and yaks aren't evil regardless of their numbers. 

Once the player characters hit a certain level, things like "evil" become nuanced. One example is my character, Magarven. He is a Drow PC adapted to be an NPC. He is clearly evil, but he's also an excellent dinner companion. He (probably) won't try to kill you. But he is still evil. He is gunned up like crazy, but the thought of killing isn't the first thing on his mind. 

The same thing happens to the thieves' guild that harrassed the characters at a low level. Compared to a world-ending lich, exactly how evil are they in comparison? They represent a different threat that has nothing to do with what kind of evil they are.  

I think there is an impetus to conflate evil with competence or ability. There are a lot of evil things out there that simply can't be enacted because they are not well thought out. Selfish people sabotage themselves all the time. Sure, he is a go-getter, but what the heck is he go-getting? 

Why do I let "the evil races" like kobolds not behave evilly? Why do I let players play them? 

Really it is a combination of the fairytale aspect of my gaming plus I can't really force the players or the monsters to behave a certain way, despite labels. Honor is nuanced, just because someone does something "good" doesn't mean they are out for the betterment of others. 

The Great and Power Sauron once said, "Don't kill the hobbits! Bring them to me." 

Guess what? Orcs, goblins, and every other minion of his didn't try to kill the hobbits too often. Nice of them, isn't it? No. They are all still evil, no matter how much food and drink they provide Frodo and Sam.

Evil to me means someone isn't honoring the social compact and bonds between living creatures, but it doesn't mean blindly doing so. There is also a component of self-delusion, the idea that doing evil becomes normal and the actor honestly believes that it is totally normal to do evil things. They are going to say they aren't evil at every opportunity. That is yet another violation of the social compact, although this one is oddly internalized. Add in the fact that if the villain sucks at their life and you get a bit of comedy or tragedy. 

That is good storytelling without ramming the PC's into drawing your conclusions or messages. One player might find it funny, a second finds it tragic and the third simply wants to throw dice and fists and sees no problem with whatever these villains are doing so long as justice prevails. The DM has offered a situation to be considered without forcing a particular point of view. 

The same goes for good characters. Are Palidins expected to heal downed enemies because that is what they would do to be kind? Maybe, but probably not. The players may or may not think of it or have another response based on the situation. 

Brainless creatures are much easier to play as straight-up evil. Everyone gets that you shouldn't talk to zombies or skeletons. It's all about agency and the undead have none, but your average creature does have agency. 

If there is an Assassin and a Paladin in the party, and one is good and one is evil, what of it? The players have to decide what to do. It makes no difference if I say Half-Orc and Kobold. The players are in control of their actions, just as much as I am in control of the NPCs and monsters. If I decide to do something engaging and the players decide they don't want to fight, then maybe we have Tea with the Black Dragon. 

Which is a classic, BTW. 

Going Off the Rails - Part Six

It's been a while since I wrote about games that went off the rails, but here is another entry. I had a basic scenario where a small town needed an army to defend against a threat. To the west, there was an army fighting but would not directly support the town or kingdom they were in because the true heir to that kingdom had been usurped. Proof of heirhood was rather simple; it was possession of a particular magic sword. The town leaders located the sword and sent the party to go get it. 

The party should have obtained the sword easily. The trouble would come when they returned it and people started making claims to it. The characters would become the protectors of the sword and ultimately kingmakers. 

Of course, this was all contingent on the party, you know, actually doing the deed. And being a typical party, they did not do the need. They fought it hard, and in a moment of weakness, I resorted to railroading. 

The gist of the situation was that the party got lost because they didn't follow the road to the town where the sword was. Lost, they saw the proper town in the distance but believed it was a different town. Somehow, they also missed finding a road to both towns by just a few hundred feet. 

Goddamn it. 

The party set up camp for the third night in a row, just out of sight of the road. I decided to throw a double whammy at them. First, I threw a storm down on them to force them out of the streambed and towards the road. That didn't work, the party made a series of herculean efforts to secure their campsite. 

The second whammy was a group of bears. Lots of them. Somehow, the party won surprise over the bears, in the dark, in a storm, and fled to the road. 

Finally, Victory! 

No.  

One of the characters cast Speak with Animals, rolled a very positive reaction and struck up a conversation with the bears instead of fighting them. Rule One of RPGs should be "Random and Railroading are immiscible." 

Here is how the conversation went. The bears were attracted by the party's pitiful fire, they wanted it. There was a negotiation for "the fire starter". The party was confused but agreed thinking they were giving the bears a bit of flint and steel. 

The bears wanted and took the person who made the fire, "The Firestarter*" was taken back to their cave. The whole party follows and piles into the bear cave all warm and cosy and lets me stew with a bunch of failed plans. 

Sometimes, you have to throw in the towel and decide what you are doing is simply not viable. I made a snap decision to let the bears join their mission and go directly to the Army to plead their case for the town. On the way they obtained horses. It was an impressive display of power, a party of mounted magic using characters guarded by bears. 

In retrospect, this was way more impressive than a sword, even a magical one.  

The party still got to become kingmakers even though the general of the army obtained the sword. Since the sword was far less impressive than a band of bear-clan warriors, it didn't help him much. He remained the general of the army, but the army wanted the support of the Bear-Clan* alongside the general. And if the Bear-Clan* said go save the town, then dammit, that was what the army was going to do. 

This occurs a lot in history, where an army follows a general but the general follows the will of the average soldier. It is weird, but true to life. Great generals don't railroad the troops. 

*Notice that "fire starter" and "bear" suddenly got capitals. This isn't a typo. I tried to make the new capitalization of the words audible and largely it worked on this party.  

A 3 Way Hook

It's Tuesday night and I am painting some Battlemechs. I like to listen to books or TV when painting. I have this funny trait that the thing I am listening to is the opposite of what I am painting.  For example, when painting mecha, I listen to fantasy books. 

While waiting for a basecoat to dry, I got wrapped up in Terry Brooks' Wizard at Large. This is the third book in the Landover series. Questor Thews, Wizard at Large attempts to transform his friend Abernathy back into a human. It seemed like the right thing to do because he was the one who turned the Scribe into a Soft-coated Wheaten Terrier. 

Things go sideways and hilarity and terror ensue. This is one of my favorite series because it incorporates 80s sensibilities into a fantasy story. Oddly, the series makes some nods to the 80s and 90s but doesn't dive in too deep. There is an odd simplicity to the stories that somehow dodges the passage of time and advances in technology that would normally break a portal fantasy story. 

This gave me a great idea for a D&D hook. Locate Object is a bunk spell, the range is far too short. If this spell would be useful, they get down on their hands and knees and do it the hard way instead of magic. Invariably, if something is far away, the characters look for a sage or high-level Wizard to help. Or a Cleric with Commune.

So here goes the three-way hook. The scenario is, the party needs an item to fulfill some objective. They don't know where it is so they hire a scribe or Wizard to do the job. The characters assume they will be given some trivia about the object and a direction to go to recover the item. 

Wrong!

The sage or Wizard does give them that information on how to find the object but decides to toot his or her horn by pulling out a scrying globe or magic mirror to show the characters exactly what the item looks like and its immediate environs. Pleased, the characters thank the sage profusely. 

And then it happens. 

The sage drops his or her magic item and it shatters. In the discharge of failing magic, the sage disappears and the item itself appears at the feet of the characters. 

Surprise! 

Now, here are the three hooks: 

A) The characters feel obligated to bring the sage back home. 
B) The characters take the item and leave, forgetting about the sage. The enraged sage escapes on their own and hunts the characters down.
C) The owner of the item brings the sage home, searching for his or her stolen possession.  

The beauty of this is the triple hook is, in no way are you pushing the players to pick a course of action. They'll do it themselves by word and deed. Also, it doesn't tie up the DM too much. The forces against the players can have many motivations and goals, so it doesn't turn into a targeted TPK. You can play it for laughs, for growth, for horror, all based on what you discover your players like. 

Imagine the look on your player's faces when they discover the sage doesn't want to go home because they accidentally found the love of their life. Or what if they ran home just days ahead of a demon horde. What if the sage stumbles home and into the party just in time to save them from themselves? 

That is so much fun. 

Happy Accident - Fiend Folio times 2!

I made a point of getting Nathan physical copies of the D&D 5e rules. He has two different groups that play and it would be dumb if they couldn't do that due to an internet outage, lost computer, or other silly problem. 

Mechanically, 5e is very different than AD&D or any version of B/X but the lore remains largely the same. Drow are Drow, Goblins are Goblins, and so on. Sure some people would like to change that for everyone but once you put an idea out there, good luck changing it. 

Wayback in 2019, I had a campaign where elves and humans were hostile to one another. I couldn't sell it and no one bought it. 

Once an idea is out there, forget about changing it. 

Anyway, I mentioned to Nathan my world's main antagonist is a Drow named Magarven. You can read all about him here. 

Nathan was put back by the mention of Drow. He thought they were new to 5e. Nope. I grabbed my copy of Fiend Folio. His jaw dropped.

"Is that a Githyanki?!?" 

Hell, yeah it is. 

That was the last I saw or thought about my copy of Fiend Folio. Somehow, that struck me funny. I forgot I even had a copy and ordered one POD from DriveThruRPG. Of course, when it arrived, Nathan tried to return my copy. 

I took some pictures and made him pick one. 

The POD copy is a soft cover, but don't let that put you off. The pages are solid and crisp, the print is excellent and the binding is nice. It is a tiny bit smaller than the original, making it a standard-size book. The price for POD was also amazing, far less than the $20 I paid for the original copy back in the day. 

I hope you can tell from the images, the POD's paper is somewhat thicker and the black is very solid. The thicker paper is nicer from the get-go. The softer black ink in the original is likely due to the age. Even though I bought my hardcover 2-3 years ago, it was printed in 1981. No book will hold up over 40+ years.

Anyway, I thought I would share this title as it keeps bringing joy to new and old players. 

Another Character Class Idea - The Monomachos

(This is a bonus post, one I wrote back in September of 2022. I found it unposted while cleaning up.) 

Stephen Donaldson is known for using 10-dollar words when a single simple word would suffice. In his Mordant's Need series, the villain's right-hand man is The Monomach. He is one part warrior, one part assassin. 

Now I thought I knew what "monomach" meant, but it turns out I was totally wrong. I had thought it was related to nobility or being a monarch, making this guy "The Assassin King".  

Nope. 

It's Greek. "Monomachos" or "he who fights alone". A gladiator. That is not as cool as "The Assassin King" but makes so much more sense in context. I'd like to introduce one to a campaign. I posted as much a few years ago when I last read the series. I had a couple of ideas that I have refined over time. 

A Monomachos is like a fighter, but nothing like a regular Fighter, Elf, Dwarf, Cleric, Paladin, or Knight. They live for the fight, not for sustained warfare. 

In Donaldson's books, the Monomach is clearly evil because he assassinates people for the joy of it. When I first wrote about the character, I had a limited view of that type of character. If you didn't read that story, think of Darth Maul from The Phantom Menace without all the chattiness. Maul showed lust for fighting, maybe killing, but not for general mayhem.  

As a villain, a Monomachos only has one purpose... to cause death and terror before dying. But do they have to be the villain? 

Well, it certainly makes things easy if they are all villains. But they are not all villains.  

It was relatively easy to come up with superhero examples. Black Widow, Hawkeye, Daredevil, The Hulk, and so on come across as heroes who live for the thrill of the fight. To a lesser extent, you could add Tony Stark and Spider-Man to the list, but then also remove the MCU Black Widow because she was starting to believe the fight was too much of a bother. Hawkeye was also heading that way, only to be replaced by Kate Bishop which allowed him to leave the hero act behind. Baymax would be an interesting and scary addition to that list because he follows his programming as if it were a joy. 

Oddly, the Punisher is not a Monomachos as he has a different purpose for what he is doing. Fighting and aggression are not really his "thing". He is sorting criminal corpses into their proper circle of hell. It's a completely different purpose. He doesn't have to fight, just kill. 

So what about non-superheroes? 

Well, the list is short. Peter Pan, The Three Musketeers, Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica, Legolas, and Glimly. And my brain screeches to a halt there. I guess I could name more, but that is good enough. 

The surprising people from those two lists are Spider-Man and Peter Pan because they are characters who are loved by children. It doesn't mean their drives are kid-friendly. Parker is driven to take risks and engage in violence at great personal cost. Peter Pan is slightly more disturbing. He switches sides if the fight is too easy. He kills Hook and then forgets there was a Captain Hook to kill. Both do it for the same reasons, the drive to excel with their given skill set, that are in parallel with their personal goals. 

So what commonality do these people have if we take away alignment? 

Each person is an improviser. They may use traditional weapons but are fully capable of using a brick, a candlestick, and a doorknob if necessary. They are not subject to outside influences, such as social norms and certain types of magic. Being a bit of a sociopath helps. Oddly, this deviated personality may cause them to be in more control of their feelings and desires, leading them away from wasteful fights. If the fight isn't a challenge, why do it? 

Poor or malformed social skills are a hallmark of every character listed. 

None of these characters are especially good at ordinary, everyday skills. Peter Pan and Kate Bishop can't cook. Hawkeye tends to zone out at key moments and Bruce Banner retreats from the world. Stark is made of neuroses, everything from germaphobia to being a dick even when he means to help. 

In-game, what sort of traits would these characters have? 

They should be able to use any sort of weapon and armor, even if they don't personally like specific armor and weapon types. They can also use improvised weapons. It's not their first, best option but if there is a lot of rubble around, it's better than bruising your knuckles. 

Next, they should have some unique combat skills. 

The Monomachos should rarely be surprised in combat. Perhaps only a 1 in 6 chance and this is separate from the rest of the party's roll. They are itching for a fight in every situation. If the party is surprised and The Monomachos is not surprised, they move with the enemy. This could spoil their surprise round as there is one opposing person moving as they do. The enemy had to waste their surprise round to address the Monomachos. 

Their third combat ability is to refuse contact. If the Monomachos has the initiative and makes a successful attack roll, they may either proceed to the damage roll OR spoil their attacker's next roll. This also allows them to turn and face another opponent. This prevents them from being flanked, it does not permit them an extra attack. 

Fourth, they defy outside influences. They have trait that they can't utilize magic weapons to full effect. No bonuses, but the weapon still counts as magic to inflict damage. This is because they only rely on their own skills, not the assistance of a magic weapon. Of course, if the magic weapon has a secondary power or effect that is magical, like detecting evil or light, they can use that to the fullest. It's the assistive nature that they won't do. 

Armor is different, they do receive bonuses as they can't undo or refuse its basic nature to protect.  

Cursed weapons should fear the Monomachos character. These types of people aren't subject to outside influences, therefore a cursed weapon should be just as ineffective as a positive magic weapon. A cursed weapon should try to escape their clutches because the Momomachos may choose to sacrifice a weapon to win. Intelligent things fear destruction. 

I wanted something like this when I created my Swashbuckler character class but in play testing it was impractical. Based on this new character type, I will rewrite that document. 

To recap the character: 

Surprised only on a 1 in 6. They move and attack during their opponent's surprise round if not surprised themselves. 
Can use all weapons and armor, but receive no magical bonuses for weapons.
They are immune to cursed weapons.
They can also use improvised weapons if only to save their knuckles.  
Foil attacks on a hit and turn to face other opponents instead of dealing damage. 

Let me know what you think in the comments, especially if you have already purchased my Swashbuckler class. 

Review: Adventures in Dungeonland

It has been a while since I've posted. I have a lot going on but I would like to return to a regular posting schedule. As a head-clearing exercise, I would like to return to reviews, a process I enjoy. From the title, you know the module in question. 

Title: Dungeonland
Rule Set: AD&D 
Levels: 9-12
Year: 1983
Author: Gary Gygax
Publisher: TSR
Pages: 32 pages plus a map
Rating: 5 of 5 Stars

This is a classic module from 1983 by Gary Gygax. I recall two DMs running us through this module. One followed the note in the beginning to avoid Alice in Wonderland references while the other DM simply did exactly what he was told not to and introduced The White Rabbit as an NPC. 

It works both ways. I feel that back in the 80s, most people would have been familiar with either the Disney movie or the books but not both so it didn't instantly set off alarm bells. Back in 1983, you would have seen Alice in Wonderland in the theater or one of the smooshed-up, edited-down Disney TV shows. VHS wasn't even an option, as it didn't come out until '86. 

Gary Gygax mashes up Caroll's books with the Disney film Alice in Wonderland to great effect. The module is short and by necessity, almost feels like a single-session series of events. Everyone I've played with has been drawn in and wants to see what comes next as quick as possible. I guess I could have called it "engrossing" and saved some words. 

Now, this module isn't for every player but I think it is well worth a run-through. You can play this one a lot of different ways, with a bunch of different party types. One thing of note is that you cannot play this in a single session. Were I run this again, I might do it as a "special event" having several sessions a week.  

The intro is quick and to the point, so a DM has very little to set up. The high-level play, 9-12 levels of experience is sort of a drag for a DM who really wants to play this module. But with a lot of prep, you can dumb it down to any level. 

The module has six sections, one of which is "a blink and you miss it" intro, with all of the others lasting for several pages. The artwork is excellent and holds up over time. But there is strangely a lot of it for a book of this time period. I am going to circle back and blame the creative art team for enjoying this book too much. 

This module has so many creative scenarios, odd monster matches, and atypical magic that it really instills a sense of wonder, a dream-like experience for the players. 

I have personally used this module 3 times, once with the exact same party that experienced it as low-level characters before reaching the 9-12 levels as suggested on the cover. This is the third time with some folks who experienced Dragonlance burnout.

Here is a spoiler, the module starts with falling into a dream-like world. I mention this because the experience of falling and dreaming happens to people quite often and it can become a vehicle for launching the module with zero preparation as in getting the party to you know, actually fall down a hole.  

The first time I ran this module with low-level characters, I merged it with a Fritz Leiber story called The Howling Tower to make it survivable. 

 

The characters found a shrine with a crystal moon on an altar. I dropped some not-so-subtle hints as to what was happening. The walls of the shrine had a club and spades motif while the crystal moon prominently featured the rabbit in the moon and various areas noted with diamonds and hearts. When the characters removed the crystal moon from the altar, they were sprayed with a contact poison which they all misinterpreted as a gas as I hoped. 

This was done to force the players to all fail their saving throws as planned. Some characters made the first save only to be forced into a second or third save by touching downed characters. It didn't take long for them all to fall into Dungeonland.

The events of the module were their final moments of death stretched out in a bizarre hallucination. Escape from Dungeonland meant survival in the real world. 

Once in Dungeonland, if a character was dropped to 3 hp or less they got another save vs. poison. If they succeeded, they vanished from Dungeonland and reawoke in the real world. They had 3 rounds to consume wine, water, and food which magically healed their delusional wounds. Feeding others in the real world also heal them, too. Perhaps they could cast a spell before sinking back into Dungeonland. 

I had planned what I thought were obvious outs in the real world, such as leaving the room, placing someone on the altar and out of the poison would prevent another save, not touching other players or the crystal moon, and so on. Cleaning things or wearing gloves would have worked too, but no one caught on to this aspect as they really wanted back into Dungeonland. 

This party's second go-around in Dungeonland was brought on by one player mentioning the adventure while holding the Crystal Moon they found. 

For my hard-luck Dragonlance players, I yanked them down the rabbit hole via a nasty cabal attack. Each section of the module was the result of an alter reality spell being cast on them. Rather than being a total screw-fest, the Dragonlance characters had abilities and magic not accounted for in Dungeonland and they prevailed handily. 

Additionally, at the end of each sequence, they physically fought the illusionist who cast the spell for that part of the module before being thrust back into Dungeonland by the next illusionist's reality warping. As a consequence, they gained treasures from the dead illusionist cabal which they could use in the world of Krynn to equally deadly effect. As a nod to my first party's run, they also obtained the Crystal Moon device, which is a crystal ball. That is amazingly useful in Krynn. 

This was a confidence builder for getting back into the Dragonlance story after a minor setback which the party took as total failure. Funny how players think. 

This is one of the most fun adventures I have ever played as a player and as a DM. I may take a stab at it using Old School Essentials. 

Tired Thoughts on Tired OGL

I love posts that start with the Chaos Star

The OGL has attained the maximum cultural entropy. Even my wife has a passing familiarity with OGL, which is impressive as she is a nurse and doesn't do "nerd stuff". She's still pretty hot that our children's collective initials are NPC. 

Anyway, I took on this new project to write a campaign setting. And then I busted my shoulder, leaving me to do everything with one hand tied behind my back... literally. Now that I have the immobilizer off, I can start moving and thinking again. 

Here is the long and short of my thoughts on the OGL. 

I have 6 products on DriveThruRPG: 

1. Kobold’s Folly Mini Setting
2. Compass Rose Inn Mini Setting
3. The Hex Pack
4. Swashbuckler Character Class for D&D and AD&D
5. Zero to Hero: Uncommon Heroes
6. Character Sheet for AD&D

Three of these products have nothing to do with D&D, the OGL or SRD: Kobold’s Folly and Compass Rose Inn Mini Settings plus The Hex Pack. I can ignore these. 

The other three are directly tied to D&D. They are nothing without the original game. If push comes to they are either going to be withdrawn or go to "OGL version whatever". I have some decisions to make, I guess. The Swashbuckler Character class really needs to be burned to the ground and remade or dumped in the historical stupidity bin. I'm ok with either. I'd like to rework Zero to Hero into OSE, so I need to wait and see what Old Games Essentials does. The character sheet is a historical snapshot that assumes the use of a couple of books, I am not sure if it needs to be connected to the SDR or OGL because it is literally nothing but an image of a collection of words and numbers that are very context specific to a certain version of a D&D game.  

I have come to the conclusion that I need to abandon D&D and ignore three of my products linked to the SRD and OGL while reworking the other three into something that doesn't remotely touch the works of Wizards of the Coast. 

I have decided to come up with a completely new game system. One of my own devising. In the best case, I am the next WotC. The worst-case scenario is no one uses it. 

What I know now: 

• I have the basic idea of a game system. 
• Playtesting has started.
• It will be called "Zero to Hero", which I am 99.9% is not a copyrightable name. That's cool, I'll deal with it if I can. 
  EDIT - No, No, this is no longer correct. I think I will call it "The Hearts System". 
• My first book, "Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners" will be worked into this somehow. I don't know how. 
• I will press on with my new campaign setting and tool it to work with "Zero to Hero". 
  
• I need to come up with a better naming convention because if I find too many things referencing "Zero to Hero" I will have to change the name. 

So here we are. 

This is a cross-post with my Ko-Fi project. 

#CharacterCreationChallenge - Ruleset AD&D e1 - Regulus the F/MU/T

One of the more intractable problems for an AD&D e1 DM is the addition of a multiclassed character. They cause a variety of problems. First and foremost, it creates a capability challenge for the DM to work against. Having to plan for spells and abilities is hard enough, but when you have a Magic User and a multiclassed F/MU you might forget the party can do something twice. 

This problem could be its own post, so I'll rein it and move on to the commercial. I mean the character. Or both. 

I am using my own character sheet which you can download from DriveThruRPG for Regulus, the Fighter/Magic-User/Theif. This Regulus is one variation of the same basic character I used for a friend's campaign. I was the only person who didn't know we were in Narnia and died a zillion times. It got so bad that I stopped making up new names. 

Let's start at the top. This sheet has more than your typical slots for information. Its missing a phone number and a blood type, but that is ok. 

Not bad for a sheet designed by a committee. 

Moving over to the next part, we have class and level information which also has enough space for multiclass information: 

Next up is the attribute block. At the time we made this sheet, Unearthed Arcana was new and we wanted to use everything in it. Doug, the DM at the time wanted to use Comeliness for the big villain Jadis. It made perfect sense because that is 50% of how she works. 

Beyond this one time, it was a mostly ignored stat. It's too complicated and extraordinarily dangerous for Illusions and Bards to have. 

On the far left were armor class and hit points. 

There isn't too much to comment on here, except for the Armor condition box. We had this concept that your armor could stand up to about 10 fights without repair. If you didn't maintain your armor, it stopped working. It was basically the fighter equivalent of studying. Unearthed Arcana also had field plate which acted like bonus hit points that could be tracked here. 

The box for HP was dual-purpose. First, AE had a couple of spells that would act like hit points so tracking was necessary. 

Amusingly, what really happened was you'd burn a hole in the first box erasing and rewriting, so the second box extended the amount of time you could use the same character sheet. 

Ingenious, right? 

The middle of the page was dominated by the weapons chart. 

It had the weapons adjustments, but we never used it despite dedicating so much space to it. 

While we all loved AE's new character classes and abilities, somehow we forgot to at the Acrobat's abilities to the thieves' ability chart. 

Moving to the left again, we had the other Stats and abilities block. If you were non-human, this would be your favorite place. If you were human, you'd take notes here. 

See the weaponless combat table? 

Never used. Actually, we did use it once in a Shaolin temple setting and all of the characters died from open-handed Monk attacks. 

Silly system. 

Next up was the spell table. It was functional and handy, but we didn't have enough room for actual spell names. 

Honestly, we just wrote spells on index cards and called it a day. Reg only has 5 spells per day, but if you hop back up to the stat block he actually knows 6 per level.  

One odd thing that we did was allowed all magic user types to use the clerical bonus spells from Wisdom. It seemed to make sense. 

The other trick we used was magic users always knew Read Magic, Write and Detect Magic spells. If you lost your spell book, this knowledge was necessary to make a new one.  

On the second page, and we always had a second page because we used pin-feed printers, was the weapon proficiencies. We were also using the weapon specialization rules from AE. 

The second block was for non-weapon proficiencies. This was a block insisted on by me. Even way back then, I had an embryonic idea for a set of skills based on professions. What ultimately became my book Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners started with this tiny two-inch block. 

The book has 50 NPC classes and rules for PC to have secondary abilities. You can grab it on DriveThruRPG. 

Three-quarters of the second page was dedicated to encumbrance. 

Remember I mentioned that Bards and Multiclass heroes are the banes of a DM's existence? Bards and Multiclass characters have a tendency of dropping into the background because the other players have surpassed them in combat and magic abilities. When things go badly, they tend to pick over dead bodies. A fine inventory sheet can solve that. 

(Unless a sneaky person has 2 or 3 bags of holding...)

Now, I've said very little of Regulus himself, but if you look at this sheet, you can see a special level of trickery going on. In the backpack is a bag of holding. Next to the bag of holding, there is a quiver, a water and wineskin, rations, and a scroll case. 

With the quiver poking out the top, my character had virtually no reason to open his backpack at any time outside of camp. 

One of our DM's named Mark was driven buggy by characters toting around 3 pouches and a backpack plus a ton of junk in each hand. He said you could have a backpack OR a large pouch and two small pouches. So this is why so many slots appear on our sheets. 

For the numerically minded, we had a section for tabulation. Note that the items worn by Reg plus the items that were in the bag of holding don't count toward encumbrance. 

Personally, I always like the idea of a smallish pack and two hip-sized pouches. 

Anyway, I hope you liked the tour around my characters sheet. 

Remember, you can always click those links and download it for yourself. It is dated but I find it charming. 

A Vance A. Study in OSE NPCs

In the last post about OSE, Vance A. commented that the Old School Essentials had character generators, specifically for NPC, Travelers, and so on. He didn't know how the distribution went, so I took a shot to figure it out. 

Before I dive into that, I would like to take a moment to thank Vance and anyone else who took the time to comment. I find that comments and shares are far better than a random like or emoji that I get elsewhere. Comments let me in on the mind of the readers and they are a report of the reception of posts I share. I love the comments, thank you very much.  

The best tool seemed to be the Retainer Generator. I set it to 0 percent chance for normal humans and asked it to generate 10d10 characters at 1st and 10d10 3rd level characters. I will repurpose them for my upcoming campaign and other projects, so I didn't burn electrons for nothing. 

I used my NPC breakdown sheet as a tally sheet. 

01-02 Acrobat (5)

03-04 Assassin (7)

05-06 Duergar (4)

06-15   Dwarf (2)

16-25    Fighter (7)

26-30 Half-Elf (3)

31-32    Half-Orc (0)

33-38 Halfling (0)

   39   Knight (7)

40-50 Theif (8)

   51      Svirfneblin (4)

52-73    Magic-User (10)

73-74    Illusionist (4)

75-80    Barbian (3)

   81      Bard (18)

82-92      Cleric (6)

   93  Drow (0)

   94         Druid (10)

95-97 Elf (0)

   98   Gnome (1)

   99   Paladin (2) 00   Ranger (10)

And you know what I discovered? Random is random. 

I generated 111 characters and this is just not enough to detect anything but the most basic trends. Certain classes and races seem more popular than others. However, judging by the 18 Bards I rolled, I could just be ascribing a personal point of view to a small series of choices. 

It was an interesting experiment in Random.

While this generator was meant for retainers, the resulting characters seem just fine for PCs. I'll be using them for that and more. You can check out all of the OSE generators at this link. 

Divine Donative - Bartering for Lives

For some strange reason, in all of my years of playing D&D, not one of my players has expressed a wish for the reincarnation or resurrection of a dead character. Not even the player of the deceased character. In fact, on the few times, one character has wished another character back to life, the player of the risen character has expressed some remorse at returning to the land of the living. 

I think I know why. Very often player characters in my campaigns ascend to a beloved NPC state. In other words, they retire. The story hasn't ended for them, but the adventure has. 

One idea that I am trying with my next campaign is "Divine Donative", an offering to a church, temple, or another group that ensures resurrection or reincarnation should something befall the character. Many of the rules in D&D are geared toward such a transaction such as an oath of poverty which requires donations. There is even a list price for the casting of such spells, so why not pre-payment as insurance. 

Hit x amount and you get free services. It stands to reason that if the character or party is funneling huge sums of money into an organization, there should be an immediate benefit.  At low levels, it's a bed for the night or minor healing. Later, after pounds and pounds of silver have been diverted to the organization, another life. 

We don't know what happened.
We think he liked rabbits.

Now for the fun bit. Usually, characters die from player burnout. They get bored or goofy and do something stupid to get killed. This moment of death could be an opportunity for a side mission. Everyone rolls up new characters and campaigns to recover the body. It's a nice little break and offers a chance to be something different than normal.  

Then there is the possibility that they pre-paid for services they do not want. But it's a contract that must be fulfilled. 

Off the church leaders go to save one of their most beloved patrons, and upon their return to the land of the living, this guy doesn't want to leave the temple grounds. He wants to tend a garden rather than scalp orcs. 

And if push comes to shove, maybe he or she refuses to come back as a human. All of a sudden, the party picks up a wolf or dog or cat as some sort of guardian. While the players wouldn't control such a beast, having one makes them special. 

Over time, if the characters donate enough, a willing person could be given some sort of magical jar that could be opened in a time of great need for the ultimate healing right on the field of combat. Think, a Pheonix Down from Final Fantasy. 

While I wanted to try this idea for end-of-life situations, the concept really should appear more in my campaigns. If characters are in some sort of guild or association that they support, that support should be two ways. Especially if the character is on track to be an epic hero of many storied deeds. People should be jumping out of the woodwork to support them. Even lowly fighters may belong to some sort of veterans group which could prove a small benefit if support. 

My idea isn't to just fork stuff out to the players as much build continuity with the campaign world beyond what the players are directly experiencing. If the party has a Bard or a Magic User, they probably have associations that need answers, which the PC might have. This would create a series of barter situations that the characters could grant favors and call them in later. Rather than present the party with a list of spells and costs, I should have them intervene if they can so as to curry favor with some group or another... or they could pocket the cash. 

I really like the idea of swapping this for that instead of a list of prices and services. It may take a bit to flesh the whole idea out, so I'm sure I will revisit it as time goes on.  

PS: You can pick up a copy of Old School Essentials Characters, Magic, Monsters, and Treasures on DriveThruRPG. You can also try Wordlographer before you buy.  

Expanding the View - The Town of Manteva

I am continuing to work on this town, I think I have a name: Manteva. I am looking at some old maps of Italy and this one jumped out at me. Maybe it's misspelled, I don't know. 

We are looking at the southeastern edge of the town. I stopped the game in order to come up with some ideas for the flavor and layout of the town. I wasn't planning on a walled village, but it looks nice. 

Walls present some problems for generated maps. Computers are good at detecting collisions, but poor at the layout. Comparing this map to my last post, you'll notice some changes. First, there needs to be dead space around the walls, guard houses, and towers, otherwise, those bits don't work correctly. Providing cover to the enemy is bad, as is providing kindling for fire inside the walls. So, most of the trees have been pushed away from the structures. 

Stores, taverns, and inns should be near an entrance. Coopers and stables are good businesses to have near the gates. I like the Roman idea of bathhouses and outhouses, so this town has a couple. Furriers and smiths also appear near the gates. 

More interior to the town are market houses. These buildings have living space and shop space in the same structure. There is a public barn used for foodstuffs near the entrance. More than a few blocks contain public or private gardens. It looks like farmland, but really these would be a bit decorative and limited to herbs and small eatables like tomatoes. 

Since this is a fantasy town, the characters will find more than a couple of stationeries. Stationery shops sold books and paper. They were "stationary" because they didn't move on market day. The goods were too fragile. In addition to these types of establishments, there is also an Illuminator who would do the art for books. As a hidden feature, these shops are great for Clerics and Magic users. 

I've been labeling these so I can go back and populate each structure with a description. I can't wait to finish this town and move on to the next. 

PS: You can pick up a copy of Old School Essentials Characters, Magic, Monsters, and Treasures on DriveThruRPG. You can also try Wordlographer before you buy.  

Prepping A New Project

I have a handful of ideas in mind for new projects, hopefully, to offer on DriveThruRPG. This one requires a lot of stippling and some digital magic which means I need to start practicing now. The interesting thing about prepping is the samples I produce as the practice often don't look anything like the imagined project. 

For this item for example: 

Obviously, it is a spaceship in the theme of Star Smuggler. My project requires a fairly large map of a landscape so it is a conceptual mismatch. The other item I am working on could end up as framed art. Again, it doesn't remotely look like a map.  

But there is a method to the madness. I don't want to work on landscapes or maps while practicing so I don't burn out in the middle of a large project where I need to produce a large landscape map. 

As far as digital magic goes, I started this portion last year, before this new map idea came to mind. That was a simple test of my digital abilities, removing and then adding text to a series of extant images. 

These are the tiles for Star Smuggler. The original set came with a series of tiles that required flipping one tile upside down to create a planet. I flipped the images, removed all of the text, healed the background of that text, and added new text to replace the old text. They came out pretty nice, but once I was done, I noticed that my healing of the background image looked different than the original, so I had to repeat the process to get a complete set of matching tiles. 

A lot of people have created their own world tiles for Star Smuggler, but I have never seen anyone use the original art.  You can check out some nice ones on Board Game Geek in the link. These are very slick and modern looking as opposed to the 70s or 80s look of my copies. 

(I'm sorry, but due to the distro notices on this game, I can't share my files. Mr. Sustare didn't get paid for this game but has graciously allowed the above websites to produce digital versions of the game. It seems fair enough to me. If you know Mr. Sustare... maybe you can get us in touch so I can ask permission or give him the files to post. It's not really mine so they need a good warden.) 

So, what is this project? I have a B/X/AD&D campaign world that has 40ish years of history and I would like to see it in print. The first part of the project is the map of The Peninsula of Plenty. It is a vast area that does not lend itself to hex mapping. 

In this world, there are many strange things. For example, there are magical rail lines, newspapers, and consumer-grade magic items. I have reporters, treasure hunters, and historians of great renown populating the world. Magarven is the Peninsula's most outrageous self-promoter believing himself to be all three. Take a look at his Last Polyandrion, a map of a magical edifice of unknown meaning and purpose. 

I imagine that Magarven would very much like everyone to know what a smart and well-traveled Drow he is, so I would like to publish a series of books by him. This series will have an in-universe perspective and would contain 9 or more volumes. The collection is rules agnostic as it will be a traveller's handbook to the Peninsula. 

The reader would rapidly come to the conclusion that Magarven the Mad is not all there. As The World's Most Popular Drow, one who embraces both his heritage and fame, he will do or say anything to perpetuate being a hero when he is not. He is clearly not at fault when his human fans disappear, he has no idea where they went, and tales of sacrifices to Lolth are completely out of bounds. She was never a demon queen. How unfair to speak such untruths.   

The last part of this project would be to create a series of player's or DM's handbooks to account for noticeable differences between my campaign universe and the default B/X/AD&D setting. This would be a series that would stat out major parts of the world described by Magarven's Handbooks. 

I have rambled too much. But let me throw in one last plug. The notebook imaged above is available on RedBubble if you are into such things. There is a really good sale right now, so you can score one for less than 9 bucks.