Product Update! New, remastered maps for the Kobold's Folly Mini-Setting

Welcome to the Kobold's Folly. This map set is a mini-setting for your campaigns. It is rules agnostic, containing no references to rules or settings.

This set of maps is easily plugged into almost any campaign as a strange and wondrous location for your players to explore.

The Kobold's Folly is a small community of strange creatures, with an even stranger background and outlook on life. Explore the House of Minwan, the first civilized kingdom of kobolds.

An updated version of this title is now available as of Dec. 12, 2019. All images in the booklet are remastered to a higher quality as have all maps files. The Exterior file contains 18 pages of maps which can be printed as 1 inch equals 5 feet. The Interior is to the same scale. Additionally, a single page map is available for each floor plus the exterior, to no particular scale. Total page count is now 41, up from 13.

The images below are the small interior artwork from the book.

The exterior map of the Folly is 36" by 30" with 1" equaling 5 feet. While the interior is much smaller, it is to the same 1" to 5 foot scale.

Available as Pay What You Want with a suggested price of $3.99, it will make an excellent addition to many campaigns. While I envisioned this tribe of kobolds as the classic dog-reptiles of D&D, there are hints of the mine dwelling little men of legend.

If you have already downloaded this set, please go log into DriveThruRPG and download your newly updated product from the library. If you enjoy it, don't forget to throw some coppers in the tip jar.

Improved memory... Better Maps

Just in time for Christmas, I updated my computer and can now do better maps for some of my products. The first update is for The Kobold Folly, which might fall under the category of "most improved".

Newest Map, throne room created with Inkwell Ideas Worldographer

1st map of all three floors and surrounding orchard.

By updating my computer to Linux 18.04 and doubling the memory, I can get 1" = 5 feet scale maps. Before the update, I didn't have the horses to do that.

Check back later for updates as to when this change goes live. 

Session Update - Just Let It All Hang Out

After very nearly wiping out the party by accident and the players loving it, I decided to put the pedal to the metal and crank up the intensity. Many of the characters leveled up on the last adventure, so there was some give to the take. 

The characters broke into two groups, then four by necessity. The plan was to meet up at Five Tree Hill, just outside the city gates by lunch time, but it was lunchtime when the first group arrived. Jaime, Jim, Matilda, Megen and Melvin arrived on horse. Jaime made arrangements at the inn and stable for the care of the animals and kicked back to wait for the wagons out on the hill.

Megen and Matilda went to see the sights in Nace. Jim just declared himself to be a 1st level ranger and needed better supplies, so Melvin joined him on a shopping excursion.

The players were given several hints that something was amiss, and everyone but Jaime went to check out the "problem". The denizens of Villa quickly came to the conclusion (click for last pre-session update) that Guilbert should be sent north for trial and execution. Ortaire would be quick marched south to Nace for a mini-Triumph then sold in to slavery.

The four raiders in town were not too pleased by this. Ortaire could rat them out. The elven warband also encountered the sad Triumph over Ortaire, and were thinking of doing something about when Megen noticed them.

The players have an issue with this campaign in respect to the status of non-humans. They have been told elves and dwarves are evil enemies, but they just don't believe it. I decided to let fun and intrigue rule the day and the elves bolted as soon as she pointed them out. The players pursued them using a set of racing min-rules I invented. It was a chase as opposed to combat, which both amused and frustrated the players. It made them believe that the elves were shadowy antagonists without ham-fisting it. The players are probably not inclined to kill off elves for the heck of it, like most citizens of the Empire, which is fine by me. But now they are wary of them.

In the meantime, several other events occurred. All of the characters met up at Five Tree Hill just in time for the wagons to arrive. The raiders also came to Five Tree Hill to see if they could recruit help to free Ortaire by force or maybe just kill him to keep him quiet. Neither was a good plan for the raiders.

In the final act, the characters had not identified the raiders as such, but believed they were cut-purses or something and watched them closely. At this point, all players were playing their main character plus at least one NPC. It takes a load off of me, plus they seem to protect the NPC's better than I do. 

Queue up the finale. The Coven of Ash are the self-appointed defenders of the Empire. They are much higher level than the characters. I figure, why would a high level antagonist hide from the player characters when they have an advantage? This is the opposite of respect and should be every big-bad's operational standard. 

The Coven has walked right into the midst of the party, invisibly. As the party passed near the raiders, Caecilia, the youngest of the 3 witches, dropped her invisibility to cast Stinking Cloud on the raiders. Her intent was to set up the party as aggressors against the town and cause them all kinds of problems when they try to re-enter Nace. 

The Coven knows who and what the raiders are and thinks of them as useful pawns. They also know that the player characters are agents of the Emperor. And the Emperor intends to upset the "natural order of Empire", which cannot be allowed. 

We rolled for surprise. Guess what? 6 siders either hate me or love me*. No one was surprised by Caecilia. The player covering Melvin was living it up by doing some real role-play. He was eating an apple with a knife and managed to hit Caecilia before she could cast. 

Foiled, the other two witches helped Caecilia escape by invisibly tormenting the players, guards and raiders. The guards and raiders lost morale and slammed the gates shut. The players managed to convince them to open up, but only after suffering several rounds of invisible high jinx at the hands of the witches. Wails, loud claps and pokes sent the oxen into a tizzy and annoyed the players.  

The party ended the session in front of a warm fire at the inn, with mugs of beverages to sooth their nerves. The players seemed both frazzled and amused. 

*I have a bad time with surprise dice, but this outcome was even better than the one I planned. I can't wait for the next session. 

The Movement Game

In AD&D, movement is not real clear. On page 39, of the PHB distance is covered. 1" is 10 yards outside or 10 feet inside. Ah, easy. Next it says: "Your referee will have information which will enable him or her to adjust the movement rate to the applicable time scale for any situation".

Actually, that's not true. The information is on 101 and 102 of the PHB. Characters move 12" per round or 120 feet per minute. Outside, the rate changes to 12" = 12 miles per half day of travel, where "day" is defined as "daylight hours". Encumbered characters move less.

It is all very reasonable, so long as one doesn't ask "how fast can I move?". If you can run an 8 and half minute mile, you're moving at 62" in game terms or 621 feet per minute. An Olympic runner would be much faster. That is totally nuts.

But why break the math like this? This is AD&D, not a running simulator.

Last session, my players got in a dice heavy combat that came dangerously close to killing several of them and as the DM, I didn't realize how bad it was. 8 NPCs were actually killed, in some cases over-killed.

In this session, I wanted that fun without the element of danger and without railroading the characters with imaginary danger. The players realized the scenario was good fun without too much danger.

Here are the rules:

1. A character can move 12" per segment, or 6 seconds. Encumbered characters move less fast.   
2. At these speeds, no weapons can be used. 
3. Turning 45 degrees costs 1" of forward movement. 


1. Diagonal movement on the ground has no penalty other than the loss of distance covered, as the character moving parkour style. 
2. Diagonal movement for flying creatures is doubled. One unit at a 45 degree angle counts double as they need to avoid things to stay airborne. 
3. Turning 90 degrees costs 3" of forward movement.
4. To stop, one must roll a 1d4 to see how many inches they will travel before stopping. 
4. You can hit people with things in the environment, such as tree limbs, baskets, boxes, etc. 
5. Everyone is AC 10 to these attacks, less Dex bonus and magical item bonus.
6. These attacks don't do damage, they change the target's facing. 
7. Roll to hit vs. AC 10, then roll a 6 sided die for effect. Consult the following table: 
1. Turned 90 degrees to the left for free, but returning to your previous course costs 3".
2.  As above, but to the right. 
3. Turned 45 degrees to the right for free, but returning to your previous course costs 1". 
4. As above, except to the left. 
5. You hurtled the object and moved one 1" forward for free. 
6. You are knocked down. You are motionless for the remainder of the segment. 
8. Repeat as long as the fun allows. 

What is great about this system, is everyone can participate with little danger of death. Of course, wiley characters will invent ways to kill each other like this.

As near as I can tell, there is no good way to implement normal combat with this set of mini rules. Some rules of thumb. Bow fire could come once every 5 segments, twice per round and always comes last in the order above. Crossbows can fire immediately on segment 1, but then have to reload over the next ten segments. The interesting effect of bow fire and crossbow fire, is the environment itself. In a crowded city street, even a slow character can step around a corner preventing a shot from landing or even being fired.

As far as melee weapons go, even a lowly magic user or urchin should be able to stay one jump ahead...

Meet The New Antagonists - The Coven of Ash

For tonight's session, I added a few more problems for the players. These three self-styled witches are dangerous magic users. 

Looking at the pre-generated character lists, I am missing druids, illusionists and assassins. Druids and Illusionist are coming soon, but assassins will only appear as a historical footnote. In this campaign, the Praetorian Guard was made up of regular soldiers under the leadership and guidance of assassins. The Coven of Ash is a collection of magic users that believe they can do the Guard's job better with magic. 

About 3 years ago, all of the assassins were eliminated by the Coven. The city of Nace recorded 37 dead in just 7 days. Exactly how this happened was a mystery. The main headquarters was the focal point of these attacks, but the last several bodies were found in the Temple to Jupiter. These witches know no bounds. 

The Coven has the same purpose of the Praetorian Guard, except they answer to no one or no thing except the concept of Empire. The do not take orders from the Emperor, as he is only human. The Coven strives protect the Empire against all threats, foreign and domestic, with dark magic and terror.  

In reality, our plucky heroes didn't
 come close to landing a hit.

After a close call with the Coven and the Elven warband, the heroes knocked heads with the raiders failing to lay low in town.