by Christophe Le

"Gold is the lifeblood of the war!"

As the Hun horde swept across Europe, the Germanic tribes moved within the borders of the Western Empire, ultimately causing its collapse. In the twilight of antiquity and at the dawn of the Middle Ages, these so-called "barbarian nations" founded kingdoms on former imperial territory.

In Barbarian Kingdoms, an asymmetrical and competitive strategy game, each player controls a nascent kingdom vying for supremacy over Western Europe. The first player to control seven territories or eliminate two opposing kings is declared the winner.

Players can recruit warriors, collect taxes, invade provinces, reposition units, or claim control of provinces. The most original and surprising mechanism of the game is the bribing system used during battles, which balances the battles while adding chaos, bluffing, and a lively atmosphere to the game.

In this developer diary, we delve into the intricacies of the bribing mechanism, exploring its inspirations, the design process, and the refinements that shaped it into a core element of Barbarian Kingdoms. By understanding the evolution of this feature, you'll gain insight into the strategic depth and dynamic gameplay it brings to the table.

Battle Resolution

In Barbarian Kingdoms, battles are resolved by determining the majority of battle points. Players first commit their units to the battle, with kings worth 6 points and warriors worth 3 points each. The player controlling the province in conflict receives an additional 2 points. After this, both players secretly place a portion of their treasure (tremis) into purses, which are then exchanged. Each tremis wagered adds 1 battle point to the player's total. Battle points are calculated by summing the unit values, the province control bonus, and the bribed (i.e., bid) tremis. The player with the most battle points wins the battle. Regardless of the outcome, the money wagered is kept by the opponent, adding a strategic layer in which players must balance immediate gains against future resources.


The Genesis of the Bribing Mechanism

The idea for the bribing mechanism was inspired by Poker, particularly its zero-sum nature in which what one player wins is lost by another, as well as the continuous stack management throughout the game.

I aimed to capture a similar sense of resource management throughout Barbarian Kingdoms. Initially, players had visible stacks of money, and during battles, they would hide their stacks to secretly decide the amount to bet. They would then swap their bets, essentially exchanging the difference from the higher bettor to the lower bettor to balance the outcome.

Originally, this mechanism was themed as paying mercenaries and collecting weapons post-battle. However, this theming wasn't convincing. Early feedback highlighted the fun of the swapping mechanism and the preference for hidden stacks, which was quickly tested and approved.


Refining the Bribing Mechanism

Some early testers felt that being able to bet everything was too harsh, so I experimented with dials and cards to bet discrete values, with players needing only to swap the differences between bets. However, this led to issues with players betting more than they owned, often unintentionally, introducing an unintended bluffing element.

Managing this within the rules became overly complex and punishing for calculation errors, so I reverted to the idea of betting only what players physically owned. This decision was motivated by the fact that, even if the "no limit" betting was not to the taste of some expert players looking for more control, the fun it provided was highly appreciated by the target audience of the game.

The game was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, influencing the decision to use purses for the money swap, tying into the new theme of paying bribes. This ensured bets were secret, was manageable even with small hands, and prevented betting more than one owned, simplifying the rules and removing unintentional bluffs.


Comparison with Rising Sun

Barbarian Kingdoms' bribing mechanism is often compared to that of Rising Sun, a favorite of mine. Here are the key differences:

• Single Bet: Unlike Rising Sun's four separate bets resolved successively, Barbarian Kingdoms features a single, simpler combat system.
• Zero-Sum: In Rising Sun, the winner gives their bet to the loser, while in Barbarian Kingdoms, each player takes the other's bet, circulating money without changing the total in play.
• Persistent Stack: Players in Barbarian Kingdoms manage their treasury throughout the game, similar to poker, unlike Rising Sun where money resets after each war phase.
• Hidden Information: In Barbarian Kingdoms, players do not know their opponent's total money before betting, adding uncertainty and strategy.


Testing and Final Adjustments

In early designs, stacks were visible, so there was no need to track them. After changing to hidden stacks, some expert players still engaged in counting because all money flows were publicly known.

To discourage this behavior, which wasn't fun and extended playtime, I introduced random placement of secret chests and a unique diamond treasure. These changes added uncertainty and made precise calculation difficult, even for skilled players, emphasizing intuition and strategy over memorization and calculation.


Discussion of a Suggested Variant

While some players have suggested making bets secret and revealing them only between the two players involved, this variant introduces several potential drawbacks. It would add excessive chaos, diminish the strategic depth, and disengage other players from the outcomes of battles.

Moreover, it could make the game less accessible to those with dyscalculia and reduce the overall enjoyment for players who thrive on the balance of strategy and fun.

While players are always free to adapt the game to their preferences, I firmly believe that the existing implementation of the bribing mechanism is the best fit for our target audience, providing an optimal blend of excitement and tactical depth.

Conclusion

The bribing mechanism in Barbarian Kingdoms is a core element that enhances the game's strategic and atmospheric appeal. Its current design brings a unique touch to the game, offering a well-balanced mix of strategy and fun that resonates with casual and intermediate players. By encouraging both bluffing and strategic thinking, it creates a lively and engaging experience that keeps players coming back for more.

Christophe Lebrun

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by W. Eric Martin

At the 2024 Spiel des Jahres ceremony on Sunday, July 21, Daybreak from Matt Leacock, Matteo Menapace, and CMYK won the Kennerspiel award, which is aimed at somewhat experienced game players.

The ceremony was livestreamed in both German and English, and on the German broadcast, some viewers commented on a logo or symbol that was visible on Menapace's shirt.

At a press conference the following day, SdJ chairman Harald Schrapers issued a statement about the Kennerspiel ceremony, with that statement being reprinted on the SdJ website, along with background information to give context to that statement. Here's a Google-assisted translation of the statement and background information:

"The Spiel des Jahres Association has been supporting the 'Spielend für Toleranz' ['Playing for Tolerance'] initiative for years and thus unequivocally positions itself against any form of racism and anti-Semitism. We find it intolerable that a game author we invited wore a symbol on his clothing on stage that must be perceived as anti-Semitic by Jews. With his action, the author also behaved in an extremely uncollegial manner toward the others involved in his game (author, editorial team, publisher)."

A screenshot of Matt Leacock (l) and Matteo Menapace during the ceremony
Background:
An author who received an award from the association wore a sticker in the Palestinian national colors, depicted as a watermelon, on stage. Because the sticker shows the outline of a "Greater Palestine" that denies the existence of the State of Israel, it has exceeded the limits of what must be accepted as a legitimate political expression of opinion. During the stage event, the relatively small sticker attached to the T-shirt did not attract the attention of those involved in the program. Immediately after the event, Harald Schrapers and Christoph Schlewinski [chairman of the Kinderspiel des Jahres jury] asked the author to hand over the sticker to them and prohibited him from showing this symbol in the hall or in the photographs taken there. Matteo Menapace is no longer welcome at events organized by the Spiel des Jahres association.

I contacted Menapace to see whether he had a response to this statement, and he wrote that he was "working on a statement to clarify that my intention was to express solidarity with Palestinians, not to suggest solutions like dissolving Israel (which people extrapolated from the shape of the melon)." On July 26, 2024, he posted the following response on Medium that I'm reprinting in full:

My decision to wear a watermelon sticker on the Spiel des Jahres (SdJ) stage on Sunday was to show solidarity with Palestinian civilians.

The watermelon is a symbol of Palestinian resilience in the face of decades of oppression. I bought the sticker from Wear The Peace, an organisation that donates 100% of their profits to humanitarian aid.

I acknowledge the current and historical context that has led to SdJ as a German institution to respond with heightened sensitivity to allegations of antisemitism. I take those allegations very seriously.

However, debating the shape of the sticker and pushing for an antisemitic interpretation is a distraction. Instead, I want to draw attention to the reality of thousands of Palestinian people who are being wiped off the map, and are in dire need of humanitarian and medical services.

No human being or group of people should be erased because of their ethnicity, religion or nationality. I hope we can all agree on that.

All humans deserve peace and justice. I believe this won’t be possible until the end of what the International Court of Justice has recently defined as unlawful occupation. What we can do as citizens of Western nations is to put pressure on our governments to take responsibility for their historical role in this injustice, and end our complicity with their funding and enabling of war crimes.

These actions and views are entirely my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of anyone else involved with Daybreak / e-Mission.

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by David Carmona

Our First Game

We entered the world of gaming thanks to a dream I had in June 2019. That morning, upon waking, I told Karen about my dream, describing in detail the game's rules and the universe surrounding it. Enthusiastic about the idea, we spent the afternoon in a park writing down the rules in a notebook, giving free rein to our imagination. A few days later, we created the first prototype, which we presented to our friends and family.

Following the enthusiasm and positive feedback, we decided to self-train in the profession of game designer and publishing.

We dedicated countless hours to research, learning game design techniques and understanding the intricacies of publishing. Our passion and determination allowed us to overcome challenges and turn this dream into reality.

Virus War was born, and we were delighted to share this creation with the world.


Nekojima

Nekojima was born one evening in December 2021. It all started during the renovation of our house in the Vercors mountains in France. As we transformed our living space, we had the idea to create an original dexterity game requiring the use of both hands, a concept still largely unexplored.

The initial idea was simple: stack wooden dowels connected by a string. The resulting structure strangely resembled electrical poles, which led us to think more deeply about the theme of the game. Our cultural backgrounds played a role in this reflection. Karen, of Vietnamese origin, and myself (David), having lived in Japan, naturally integrated elements of these cultures into our creation.

The name "Nekojima" naturally imposed itself. These islands, famous for their cat populations, inspired the final concept: cats hanging from electrical cables.



Self-Publishing

Aware that our project required a significant investment, Karen and I decided to launch a Kickstarter campaign to finance the production of Nekojima. We spent the year 2022 presenting the game prototype at various gaming events, generating such enthusiasm that Nekojima received several awards that same year.

We discovered the illustrator, Gilles Warmoes,Gilles Warmoes on the platform Behance. A French artist, Gilles had never worked on a board game before, but he was immediately captivated by the project idea. His geometric lines perfectly matched the structure of Nekojima, adding a unique visual dimension to the game.


At a festival, we met Blackrock Games, which quickly recognized the potential of Nekojima. They invited us to the SPIEL trade fair in Essen, Germany for their team to test the game. Following a unanimous decision, Unfriendly Games, consisting of David Carmona and Karen Nguyen, became a member of the Blackrock family.

After a year of intense communication, the time to launch the campaign finally arrived. Nekojima was supported by more than 3,700 people worldwide, confirming its upcoming release.


David & Karen

Within our team of self-taught individuals, it is often said that David plants the seed and Karen nurtures the tree:

• Karen handles the creation of game mechanisms, artistic direction, layout, social media, video editing, production oversight, and game events.

• David is also responsible for the creation of game mechanisms, 3D modeling, photography, commercial exchanges, logistics, administration, and game events.

Together, we form a complementary and dedicated team at Unfriendly Games, bringing games with original mechanisms and materials to life.

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by W. Eric Martin

• Designer Scott Almes has a fair number of game series — Tiny Epic..., Claim, Boomerang — in his catalog, which makes sense from a designer, publisher, and player perspective: as a designer, you can use the foundation of one game when building another; as a publisher, marketing each new game effectively markets the entire line; and as a player, you get a chance to explore more of what you liked.

In 2022, Almes and publisher LudiCreations released So, You've Been Eaten., a game for 0-2 players: two players can play against one another, one player can compete against a bot in either of the asymmetric roles, or a human can have the two bots play one another, which could be ideal for learning the game's mechanisms.

Now the pair are coming together again for So, You've Been Cursed., which will be crowdfunded in 2024 with release coming in late 2024 or early 2025. Here's the setting:

So, you've been cursed.

It happens in the wizarding business. Occupational hazard. It is also the only logical explanation. At first, it seemed like that feast last night must have caused the headache and the heartburn...but as you were about to brew the third digestive potion of the morning, it dawned on you.

You can't remember how you got home, and what you actually had for dinner. Then, you noticed the sheep bones in the kitchen, the sheep bones on the dinner table, the sheep bones in the washroom, the unidentified bones in the bedroom, the blood stains in...just about everywhere in the house.

It did not help that the town crier passed by your house, announcing the missing sheep from Scott's farm, the gouged-out stonework at the town hall, the missing merchant from across town.

So, there is a monster running around town at night, terrorizing the villagers and what's worse, eating them. Luckily for them, it seems to be a nice, local monster rather than one from out of town, so no worries there, they are safe from outsiders. Unluckily for you, it seems that the monster is, well, you.

But no need to despair! There is a cure! Maybe! You just need a whole lot of ingredients to brew and mix the potions listed in your spell book, and you need to get them by any means necessary before it is too late and your nocturnal form persists in its ravenous pursuit for long enough to permanently transform.

And who knows what the monster inside of you is thinking?

Or, rather, who knows what the monster is eating?

So, You've Been Cursed. is a game for 0 to 2 players: two players can play against one another, one player can compete against a bot in either of the asymmetric roles, or a human can have the two bots play one another, which could be ideal for learning the game's mechanisms.

• Continuing the wave of games getting new two-player versions even though said games already can be played with two players, we have Everdell Duo from James A. Wilson and Clarissa A. Wilson, with Starling Games running a crowdfunding campaign for this title in 2024.

Here's an overview of this 1-2 player game:

In Everdell Duo, you either compete against your single opponent or play co-operatively with another player to earn the most points. You accomplish this by placing workers to gather resources, then use those resources to play cards face up in front of you, creating your own woodland city.

Cards may be played from your hand or from the face-up area on the board called the meadow. However, only cards touching the sun or moon token may be played from the meadow, and players move these tokens each time they perform a turn. Therefore, planning for and timing which cards you play is critical.

Each game you try to achieve various events, the requirements of which differ from game to game, making certain cards and combinations more important to pursue.

The game lasts for four seasons, then players add their scores to determine the winner. If you're playing co-operatively, check the requirements for the chapter you are playing to see whether you have won.

• Still another game line seeing a spinoff title is the long-lived Spot it!, which will be joined on July 26, 2024 by Zygomatic's Spot it!: Connect


As in Spot it!, the game features a deck of cards, in which each card features exactly one object in common with each other card. Each player has their own hand of cards, and at the same time, players race to name what a card in play has in common with a card in their hand, after which they add their card to the table. If you create a row of four cards in your color, you win the round, and if you win a certain number of rounds, you win the game.

• Rolling Realms Redux is a standalone game from Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games and designer Karel Titeca that's compatible with 2021's Rolling Realms and the dozens of promo packs that have been released.

To play this roll-and-write game, take any three realms and give an erasable board from each realm to each of up to six players. (Redux features twelve realms based on games from other publishers, whereas the original RR features eleven realms and each of the promo packs one realm.)

On a turn, someone rolls two six-sided dice, then everyone writes one die result in an empty space in one realm and the second die result in another realm. Each realm has a puzzle of sorts related to the game being featured, and as you enter numbers, you earn resources (that you can spend for special abilities) and stars. Whoever scores the most stars wins.

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by Ryoko Yabuchi

In this diary, I'd like to introduce The Fashion Game, a fashion-coordination game that was successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter in 2022. I'll cover:

• An overview of the game
• What makes it interesting
• How it was conceptualized and developed

Excitingly, the game is currently being developed for the U.S. market and continues to evolve, so stay tuned! I'll also share some images of this new edition at the end. I hope you enjoy it.

•••
Hello, I'm Ryoko Yabuchi, a board game creator from Japan. As an indie designer, I handle everything from planning to art, manufacturing orders, and shipping. (By the way, this article was originally written in Japanese and translated by AI. If anything is unclear, please let me know!)

What Kind of Game?

This game involves combining cards shaped like clothing with pattern cards to create fashion coordinates and enjoy them together. It already sounds fun, right? And trust me — it really is fun!


Manga on How to Play the Fashion Coordination Game

Curious about how to play this coordination game? Check out this manga for a rough guide on how to play.


Looks fun, doesn't it? It certainly is! But getting it from initial idea to completion took some time...

When Did I Start Thinking about This Game?

It all started around 2019. While creating Yura Yura Penguin with a home cutting machine, I began to think about this game and experimented with card cutting. Although I found the idea of a fashion-coordination game intriguing, I faced challenges in mass-producing these uniquely shaped cards and determining the number of pattern cards required, so I focused on completing Yura Yura Penguin, my first game with uniquely shaped cards.

However, the allure of fashion coordination persisted in my queue of game ideas. In 2022, I realized I could create die-cut cards and produce them in large quantities. After prototyping and conducting playtests with family and friends, the game received positive feedback, prompting me to move forward with production.

There were trial-and-error phases in refining both the game rules and card production.

Rule Development 1: The Initial Version Was a Huge Hit, But...?

During playtesting with family and friends, ranging from my five-year-old daughter to university students and those in their 40s, 50s, and 70s, we experimented with different playstyles. One version involved appointing an editor-in-chief to set a fashion theme, with others created outfits based on their hand of cards. The editor-in-chief then judged and awarded points for the best coordination. This approach survived as an alternative way to play.


Even my daughter surprised us with her ideas, skillfully layering and expressing herself cutely. We engaged in lively discussions, praising or critiquing each other's coordinations, discussing mismatched patterns, and why they turned out that way. The feedback — "You should definitely make this!" and "I love it!" — encouraged me, but also highlighted some issues...

Rule Development 2: Making It Enjoyable for Those Not Interested in Fashion

One challenge surfaced during family playtests: Men showed less enthusiasm compared to women. Recognizing the need for the game to appeal to mixed groups, I delved into what caused this hesitation.

While creating and expressing ideas through cards appealed to both genders, not everyone felt comfortable presenting final outfits. To address this, I introduced a rule in which players guess the theme of the coordination, which became the primary gameplay rule. This adjustment eliminated the need for explicit fashion discussions.

This change made the game enjoyable for both men and women, even those less interested in fashion — a decision I'm glad I made. We also refined how themes are selected and shape cards are used, a process that took considerable time.

Production 1: Pattern Cards and Theme Cards

The game includes sixty pattern cards.

Creating and selecting pattern cards
With countless patterns worldwide, covering them all is impossible. To balance gameplay and cost, we settled on sixty cards, categorizing general clothing patterns and selecting representative ones, including solids, characteristic fabrics, and fun patterns. Many patterns were created and rejected, honing my knowledge of their origins.

For those needing who want patterns unavailable in the game, I suggest printing or drawing your own! Different paper textures won't affect gameplay, so mix in your favorites. Kickstarter backers received original pattern creation sheets, and a printable PDF allows for custom patterns.



Choosing Themes

To cut costs, theme cards are on the back of pattern cards, their selection proving challenging. I delved into fashion magazines, books, and even bought some, blending serious themes with playful ones like "Meeting an Oil Tycoon", "Horror", and "Isekai Trip". Playfulness is vital — it's a game, after all.


Players explore creative ways to express themes with limited pattern cards through layering, rotating, and peeking. Experimentation is key.




Production 2: How Do You Make Uniquely Shaped Cards?

Learning card mass production for Yura Yura Penguin, I discovered the need for die-cutting dies: Thomson or Bic, depending on region.

Japan hosts various processing firms, with options in Taiwan or China that often requiring minimum orders of 500 to 1,000 units. Opting for a Japanese firm offering die-cutting and combined printing, I prioritized stability despite higher costs, mindful of currency fluctuations and the occasional die-cut printing misalignment.




Using samples, I chose sturdy material to prevent bending. Though cheaper, printing on transparent cards didn't match die-cut cuteness. Cards feature a white back for use in black or white modes, enhancing versatility.

Don't discard the inner die-cut parts because they double as score chips and theme tokens!


The game successfully funded on Kickstarter, so thanks to all supporters! I hope you enjoy it.

The Fashion Game has now been developed for the U.S. market by Wonderful World Board Games as Fashion Police:






Isn't the card shape ingenious? Customization is rising — an exciting prospect!

Look out for the latest version of this design at Gen Con 2024. Thank you for reading this far. I look forward to meeting you again through my board games...

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by W. Eric Martin

Let's take the tracks to see what's been rolling along in the background when I wasn't looking:

• Station to Station is a 2-4 player game from designers Steven Aramini and Jonny Pac that Alley Cat Games will debut at SPIEL Essen 24 in October, but little information about the gameplay has been released so far:

The Steam Age is at its height, and you are an ambitious new train company determined to turn your upstart venture into a booming success. You don't have much to begin with — just a small amount of cash and coal, a train engine, and an iron will.

In Station to Station, a pick-up-and-deliver game that features engine building and set collection, you need to carefully plan your route, hire the right crew, and manage your cargo if you want to have the most legendary locomotive of all time.

• Another 2024 release with similarly minimal information is Train & Railway from designer/artist Zong-Ger(蔥哥) of Good Game Studio. Here's the briefing on this 2-4 player game:

Whoo—whoo! GG Island boasts abundant natural resources, yet suffers from inadequate transportation infrastructure and scarcity of resources among nations. As a developer, how would you satisfy the needs of various countries?

Throughout Train & Railway, players must draw railways, transport goods, or produce manufactured items and deliver them to different nations to earn points. To enhance commercial efficiency, how can you strengthen your own abilities? Take on various missions and become the top railroad tycoon!

Maybe this excerpt from the back of the box adds a thousand words to what's written above:


• Taiwanese publisher Moaideas Game Design crowdfunded Cargo Empire, a 1-5 player game from Alexander Bogdanovsky and Pini Shekhter, in December 2023 and expects to have the game on the market in Q4 2024. Here's what to expect:

Cargo Empire is a pick-up-and-deliver board game with point-to-point network building. Players immerse themselves in a complex world of transportation networks, striving for glory, wealth, and power as leaders of one of the four major families on the continent of Dyorle.

There is only one action in this game, and that is transporting cargo. Players must navigate a changing landscape, weaving between cities and using various transport modes to score points. To dominate, players must plan their network of trading posts meticulously and keep a sharp eye on long-term rewards.

Can you build the mightiest cargo empire? Simple choices derived from an intriguing combination of mechanisms will challenge your skills in resource management and strategic thinking. Only one can become the king of commerce!

• In early July 2024, Days of Wonder teased a late 2024 release to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Alan R. Moon's Ticket to Ride: five new limited-edition collectible train boxes, one for each of the colors in the base game.

Is that a mechagiraffe?! Oh, wait...
• Finally, in addition to the previously announced new editions of John Bohrer's Colorado Midland (released in June 2024) and Southern Pacific and Han Heidema's West Riding Revisited (both now due out in Q3 2024), Rio Grande Games has announced forthcoming editions of three more titles from the Winsome Games catalog, all designed by Bohrer: Prairie Railroads from 1999, Baltimore & Ohio from 2009, and SNCF: France & Germany, a 2010 publication that Queen Games had on the market for a few years as Paris Connection.

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by Phil Gross

I was reading Cole Wehrle's designer diaries for Arcs when a non-sequitur exploded in my mind: There ought to be a social-deduction word game. I dropped my breakfast fork. I prodded at the idea, or perhaps it tackled me. The idea held firm.

In the past, my dabbles in game design had fizzled out. A couple of dusty, stalled-out prototypes languished downstairs. For the first time, I had a recognizable, fully-formed premise — there was something inherently funny about needing to say secret words — and the premise sounded novel, maybe even unique. (Apologies to Ted Alspach as I still haven't played Werewords.)

I knew right away that I wanted players to say multiple secret words repeatedly so that players would be forced to say them sneakily.

As simple as that sounds, ideas have a funny way of needing to be de-synthesized. At first, my brain was too focused on social deduction as a matter of genre. My initial ideas involved hidden roles, with androids hiding secret words and humans being tasked with identifying their robotic peers — like a Blade Runner party game. But the hidden roles didn't survive beyond an alpha prototype. Crucially, my first playtest was with my extended family, who hasn't played The Resistance or Werewolf. I felt instinctively they would not grasp the roles element, so I stripped the roles out of the prototype right before the teach. I had my first taste of the exhilarating kinship between playtesting and improv comedy performances; I changed the rules on the fly, and the game was a hit.

That first playtest with family was a revelation. Everyone was laughing, hard — and not in a nice "Let's appease Philip" sort of way. This was a comedic party game, and glimmers of strategic depth were already showing. I learned a couple of key lessons from the gameplay: first, common words like "shark" were more fun to bluff and smuggle than complicated, seldom-used words like "discombobulate". Second, listing words in the same category was a dominant strategy. Certain domains of words, e.g. foods, made listing easier, so I cut them.

Prototype elements from multiple iterations, including Connie The Word-Sniffing Dog, who you grabbed to make a guess
In that test, the core loop of ContraBanter was established as you still see it today: Players sneak secret words into regular conversation in the form of Q&A rounds; you win by guessing your opponents' words or sneaking your own words past them.

Before the next playtest, another bold idea wrassled me, and I listened. It became the game's unique, playful hook: You're smuggling words, and you can hide words inside one another. To wit, the sound of a word can be nestled within a similar or larger word. A rule was born: As long as I can hear the whole sound of your secret word, it counts. It's my favorite kind of rule: dead simple, while opening up so much expressive play. Homophones, malapropisms...all manner of creative smuggling are legit.

I teach the rule with this example: if your word is "Con", you might say, "I'm in this for the long con", or "That's a contradiction", or, "The best Star Trek movie is...?" And after someone says "KHAN", I let them know I'd also accept First Contact.

When we first playtested with my improv buddy Dan, he snuck the word "Tokyo" right by us with a ridiculously dumb statement: "I was babysitting, and I Tokyo kids to the zoo." He manipulated the pronunciation just right, and the malapropism was so absurd, we couldn't believe what we heard and let it go. After every game there's a natural debrief session ("What were your secret words?"), and we still laugh about Dan's toke-yo over a year later.

Changes and Development

I resisted making ContraBanter a team game for several months. When I tackle something new, my cursed instinct is to reinvent the wheel. I thought, "I don't want to copy Codenames", as if that were at all relevant.

But when I finally made the switch to teams, the advantages were obvious. Introverted players who felt uncomfortable blathering on their own got to focus on listening and guessing, and teammates developed fun strategies, setting up softballs and bluffs within their conversation. Finally, humorously, players sometimes don't hear when their teammate has already said a secret word, and repeat the word unnecessarily — a welcome comedy of errors.

A sample hand of words that you and your teammates will smuggle into a sentence
For over a year, the game operated with a different progression/victory mechanism than you see today. At the end of a round, players who said all of their secret words earned another word card. You could win in one of two ways: by earning a sixth card for a Long Con, or by guessing correctly three times for Confiscation. I loved the absurd comedy of needing to sneak four or even five secret words into a ninety-second round. This was far more challenging than the current system, and it could lead to a snowball victory for a dominant team.

I think the system survived so long because the core loop is enjoyable. Players didn't report on feeling snowballed. When a game is getting great responses and feedback (perhaps especially in a party game), it can be hard to see opportunities for improvement.

It took the wise input of Ben Kepner, Dan Stong, and the rest of the Skybound Tabletop team to turn this ship around. Their insights led to the simpler point system you see today. Skybound also wanted to give players the opportunity to discard words they didn't say, an escape valve in case a word seemed too difficult. I remember the day I tested the new system with total strangers at Flag Con in Ithaca, New York. I was secretly nervous the changes would defang the game. To the contrary, dozens of players showed me time and again the new system was challenging, snappy, and simple — without the old vulnerabilities.

Other changes made in development seem face-palmingly obvious now. It used to be that players could sneak their secret words into any part of the round, including questions and cross-talk. This offered neat strategies, but playtesters were confused about timing and what counted as a round. Now you can use only the timed answer section — simple. I also toyed around with advanced words, which were either harder to say or easier to hide, and both directions ruined the core play. Attaching more points to ill-fitting words didn't magically make them worth playing. The final advanced mode is bonkers, and I hope you try it and let me know what you think.

One of the last big changes was prompted by designer Corey Andalora in a playtest at CuseCon. Originally, making an incorrect guess rewarded your opponent; the accused team got to discard and replace one of their word cards. Corey astutely pointed out he was discouraged from guessing — indeed, would never do it — because that penalty benefited the opponent too much. I never recognized the problem because I was too wrapped up in the positive reaction from players. On further consideration, I realized Corey was right about the imbalance; the guessing system was shooting my design in the foot! Replacing a card rewarded players for bluffing, but in a way that undercut the central promise of saying secret words again and again. Skybound and I went through a few iterations on the guessing resource system you can play with now — a nice, simple source of tension.

Guess cards and optional prompt cards were two of the final pieces added to the game
In Conclusion

I'm a gamer dork who reads Arcs diaries, shops on GameFound, and will try 18XX for the first time soon. I also love party games, playing them often with family, friends, and fresh acquaintances. I love many of the "low input, high output" party games that dominate the market now, but I also believe there's room for party games with a little complexity and teeth. I also believe chatting with friends old or new doesn't have to be "high input".

ContraBanter is a trojan horse design. The secret words and rules are the trojan horse. The real substance is the joy of conversation.

It was liberating to make this game a year after the pandemic shutdowns. I've witnessed and taken part in so many delightful and enriching conversations that never would have happened without this game's provocation. ContraBanter has an agenda. This is a game that dares to claim that despite all of our anxieties, despite all of the ways our technologies and modern lifestyles isolate and separate us, we still fundamentally want to play at talking with each other. For thirty minutes, we can laugh and gab and spin yarns; we can exercise that fundamental human connection to spark joy.

The greatest compliment I've gotten from testing ContraBanter is the same feedback I've heard a dozen times: "I forgot how fun it was to simply talk to one another. That was hilarious."

Enjoy,
Phil Gross

The final game with art by Curt Merlo Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

• At BGG.CON 2023, I got to play a fantastic prototype from CMYK, and now I can finally talk about it: Wilmot's Warehouse is a co-operative game for 2-6 players from David King, Richard Hogg, and Ricky Haggett that's based on a video game from Hogg, Haggett, and Finji. Here's an overview:

In Wilmot's Warehouse, your team will work co-operatively to organize the warehouse, using memory, imagination, and silly stories you make up.

Draw product tiles from the stack, discuss what they look like, and place them somewhere you'll remember. After you place each tile, you flip it over and can't look at it again until the end of the game, so your team has to remember where you've placed previous tiles as you decide where to place new ones.

At the end of the game, in a five-minute rush, your team has to match all 35 face-down tiles with customer cards. Consult your performance review to see how well you did!

I've now played Wilmot's Warehouse 2.5 more times on a review copy from CMYK, and the game is a blast. Similar to Link City, which I covered in mid-July 2024, you have a final ranking based on how well you did in the game, but you will likely forget that ranking immediately because the thrill of playing comes from the ridiculous story elements you put together as you're trying to remember how everything links up and what exactly was in each warehouse stall...or sometimes outside of the warehouse as event cards present midgame challenges, as in the game below when we suddenly had to drop a day's worth of goods in a line outside the warehouse:


I'm on the road right now, and this is one of only two games I brought on the plane with me — The Game: Extreme being the other for reasons explained here — because I want to experience this design with as many people as possible, both to see what they make of the challenge and to experience what we create together.

• Co-operative narrative games have been a large part of Italian publisher DV Games' catalog since the Deckscape line debuted in 2017, and it will feature three titles in this category at Gen Con 2024:

— Decktective: Lock Up Sherlock Holmes! from Martino Chiacchiera and Silvano Sorrentino is the seventh title in the Decktective series that challenges players to solve a crime. Here's the pitch for this release:

A mysterious inscription stains the floor of 221B Baker Street. Does it have something to do with the theft at the Royal Palace? Is the arrest of the most famous detective of all time really the right solution?

First, you must discover what has happened to Sherlock himself!

— Until Proven Guilty: The Starry Sky Necklace, a 1-6 player design from Enrico Procacci, fells like the start of a new game series, although it might be challenging to have the Ace Attorney-like protagonist pointing in a unique way on each cover. An overview:

Until Proven Guilty is a narrative co-operative game inspired by court-themed visual novels, television series, and video games.

In the game, you take on the role of Peter, a brilliant lawyer who's still a rookie, yet now involved in complicated criminal trials. Can you help Peter defend his client? Each turn, read the trial card and choose an evidence card to refute it. Enter the evidence number into the web app and read the result: if it's correct, some jurors will side with you, and you can continue in the trial; if it's wrong, some jurors may side with your opponent, and you will have to try again. Depending on the evidence you choose, you may even receive personalized answers!

Using a gavel for the "T" is a nice touch...

— Marco Pranzo's Lost in Adventure: The Labyrinth is another 1-6 player design that launches a new game line, this one inspired by point-and-click graphic adventures:

In the co-operative game Lost in Adventure, you and your fellow players will together explore an unknown world where your every action impacts how the story unfolds. You discover the game scenery as you go, placing cards side by side, talking to characters you meet, collecting clues, and using objects wisely. Your decisions will affect the adventure and lead you to one of the possible endings. Your goal is to fulfill all the prophecies and complete the adventure with as many favors as possible.

In Lost in Adventure: The Labyrinth, you take on the role of a legendary hero who is searching for the mythical minotaur at the heart of a labyrinth as well-known around the world as it is challenging to navigate. The game map reveals itself throughout the game, one scenario card at a time, as you progress in an adventure astride the edge of legend and reality.

Read more »

by Jackie Fox

The Five-Player Problem

Rock Hard: 1977 came about as the result of a common situation for board game groups.

My regular game group had five people. Usually someone wouldn't be available, leaving us at three or four most of the time — but every once in a while, all five of us would show up, then we would all sit and stare at my 100+ game collection trying to find a game that we were all willing to play. One of us strongly preferred heavy Euros but disliked anything involving negotiation or bidding, another preferred lighter games, and almost everyone but me hated area control.

I'll play almost anything, but if there's too much downtime that doesn't involve planning my own move and I'm not engaged in what the other players are doing, I generally won't like the game. I'll start itching to pick up my phone and check email during other people's turns, and for me that defeats the whole purpose of playing board games, which is partly to give myself a break from all those screens.

I wondered why it was so hard to find a game that ticked all the boxes for me: the strategy of a good Euro; the "fun" factor of an American-style game; true integration of theme and mechanisms; quick turns even at full-player count. It was at that moment I decided to design the game I wanted to play.

Are You Ready to Rock?

I am very much a "top-down" designer. For me, while the mechanisms are super important, theme comes first.

I have led an interesting life, to say the least. Perhaps nothing has been more interesting (at least to other people) than my having been the bass player in the "Famous Five" version of the all-female rock band The Runaways.

Worker placement is my favorite game mechanism, and the music industry is a natural fit. Everyone can wrap their heads around what rock musicians do: interviews, gigs, songwriting, making records, etc. These were natural action-selection spaces that would make it easier to learn and remember the game.

And, of course, my game had to accommodate five players with little downtime between turns and a lot of engagement in what the other players were doing.

With all that in mind, Rock Hard sprang into my head almost fully formed. I grabbed a notebook and started writing, keeping in mind the experience I wanted to create for players: what it's like to be a fledgling rock musician trying to break into the big time.

Rock Hard: 1977 – the early days
Why 1977?

1977 was a watershed year in music in which a variety of styles of rock music all co-existed and flourished, from what we now think of as classic rock to glam to funk and early punk and metal. Even disco was still around.

It's also a period people often feel they missed out on. "Cancel culture" was far in the future, and creative people were pushing boundaries in every form of artistic expression. In music, the era would come to be defined as that of "sex, drugs and rock and roll".

From a gameplay perspective, setting the game in the 1970s also eliminated the complications of later technologies such as music videos, Napster (early unpaid music streaming), social media, and YouTube. It streamlined the choices you could make and left those things for later expansions or standalone games.

The Basics

There was still plenty to deal with in 1977. First and foremost, being a musician wasn't cheap, so I knew you'd have to work a "day job" until you could support yourself with your music. I also knew from the start that my game would have day, night and "after hours" phases.

As a musician, your life is defined by the clock. During the day, you rehearse and conduct business. At night, you mostly play gigs. And when the show is over, you hang out, have fun, and meet people, and in the era before home recording was common, you tried to get into a studio to record a demo on the cheap.

Jackie in the studio in the '70s
I spread the jobs out across the various phases, with pay on each averaging $2, but some being swingier and potentially more rewarding (like working on commission) and some being salaried and more reliable. Some had limitations like a demanding boss who could change when you had to work, and some had perks like free studio time if you were a recording engineer. I wanted each job to feel real.

And I knew that a big part of the game would revolve around managing when to blow off work: three strikes, and the boss would tell you to take a hike. Lose your job too soon, and you wouldn't have enough money to hire crew and pay your manager. Keep it too long, however, and someone else would get that record contract first.

At the same time, there would be things that the industry wanted you to do. You'd score fame (how the game tracks points) if you did those things best or first. These bonuses would change from game to game so that no two would play alike.


You'd also have personal goals that only you could score. Sometimes they'd synch up with the public bonuses; sometimes you'd have to choose between them or hire a manager who could help you do both.

I also knew you were going to need a player mat to keep track of things and that it was going to be in the form of an amplifier with knobs you could actually turn to track your stats. More on that later.

The Darker Side of the '70s

While I wanted the game to focus on the sheer fun factor of the late '70s, I also wanted to acknowledge in some small way that the '70s rock scene could be hard for anyone who wasn't straight, white, and male.

As a woman, I faced prejudice that's hard to imagine nowadays. The review of my band's second album in Creem magazine (a huge rock magazine at the time) started with the sentence "These bitches suck" and went downhill from there.

And although David Bowie, Elton John, The Rolling Stones, and The New York Dolls had already gone a long way toward making androgyny acceptable — the word "non-binary" wasn't in common use then — that was mostly because they still read as male. Non-gender-conforming people weren't always treated well. Musicians who people thought "looked gay", whether or not they actually were, often got booed on stage and threatened with violence when off it.

In actuality, in the '70s all types of people played clubs in major cities. I wanted the characters in the game to look more like my friends and less like my period record collection.

The ten characters I created are loosely based on combinations of people I knew or know, though changed to reflect a diversity of characters who play one of five different instruments (drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, or vocals) and are one of three different genders (male, female, or androgynous). Each has a unique ability that gives them a slight edge in certain situations. By the time we emerged from the self-isolation of 2020, I knew these characters better than the people who'd inspired them.

While I was never going to include the rougher edges of the era, gender was definitely going to play a role. It became less important to the game as it evolved, but my thinking about it resulted in one of the more important mechanisms in the game.

Let's Have That Talk About Candy

One of the first gender differences that occurred to me was that women almost never had to pay for drugs in the '70s. Men had a higher tolerance, and androgynous people better situational awareness.

But while drugs were the original inspiration for candy, they quickly morphed into something less specific as I realized that drugs weren't the only thing that got people pumped. It could be sex or gambling or the adoration of ever-bigger crowds. It could be video games or shoplifting or lying and getting away with it. It could be actual candy. (The book "Sugar Blues" had come out in 1975 and made a strong argument that sugar was as addictive as nicotine or heroin.)

So candy became whatever, in the infamous words of The Rolling Stones, gets you through your busy day. It was a thematic way to give players the ability to gain extra actions in a game in which you usually get to do only one thing per turn.


But candy had to carry some risk because with any of these things you're always pushing your luck if you do it too often. You never know when that little switch in your brain is going to get tripped and that thing — whatever it is — becomes something you can no longer live without. It isn't going to happen the first time you do it. If you're careful or lucky, that switch may never get flipped at all.

It's risky behavior, however, and the more of it you do, the greater the risk becomes. I represented this with a stat called "craving", which would increase by one every time you consumed candy. You'd then roll a d6 to see whether you hit at least that number and satisfied your craving. If not, you'd need to spend some time recovering.

Obviously, you couldn't overdo candy the first time you used it, but your odds got worse every time your craving went up. It was a perfect representation of the push-your-luck aspect of the '70s — a small part of it to be sure, but definitely there.

In my first version of the game, candy was hard to get, and if you got a bad roll, you paid for it by having to spend the next round recovering. It was too punishing, especially in the edge case when you drew the one "sugarless" card in the deck and didn't even get any extra actions. After seeing how players reacted, I realized it was okay to sacrifice theme a little in order to minimize negative gameplay experiences.

I did this by putting an extra +1 action card into the "Sugar Rush" deck while reducing the punishment for a bad roll to losing a single action at the beginning of the next round. I also threw in some cards and abilities that could mitigate bad die rolls.

These changes took on additional importance when the game eventually got reduced from twelve rounds to nine, making every action count. Losing an action was still bad, but not so devastating that you couldn't still win. In the end, the mechanism felt quite balanced, yet still thematic.

Making a Prototype

It's said that designers don't need to spend a lot of time and money on their prototypes.

I never got that memo.

I ended up spending a LOT of time on Rock Hard. Part of that was because I had never learned Photoshop; part because I didn't understand that you don't need anything fancy; and part because I was afraid to put my design in front of other people until I was sure it wouldn't "break".

By the time I had a game that wouldn't break and a prototype that looked halfway decent, Covid-19 hit and we went into isolation.

I tried to make the best possible use of my time in self-isolation by playing the game some one hundred times on my own at every different player count and with as many different combinations of characters as I could. Surprisingly, I never got sick of the game.

Part of that was down to the great temporary character art drawn for me by Mona Shafer Edwards, one of the top courtroom artists in Los Angeles. She literally cranked out the characters I had envisioned overnight.

Mona's prototype art for Kimmy Kim
I also entertained myself by using the zombies from Pandemic Legacy as a stand-in for the roadie tokens. That still cracks me up, and I'm sure our former crew can relate.

And finally, designer Geoff Englestein generously gave me tips on using icons instead of text on my game board. That took my board from one with a ton of overwhelming verbiage to something that looked like an actual game board.

An early version of the Rock Hard game board
The game board after the first big overhaul
The final board as re-designed by Devir and Meeple Foundry
But while the board was obviously important, the critical element for me was still the player mats.

The Player Mats

I got the idea of using amplifiers to track stats after playing Dan Blanchett's Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein. There was something satisfying about the 3D look the spinners gave the player boards and how much they added to the feeling of being a mad scientist. I wanted to take that tactile interaction a step further and give players the satisfaction of cranking their amps to 11.

Only...how do you actually make amps with knobs?

I tried a lot of different things, from water bottle caps to replacement knobs for video game controllers. Nothing worked.

Then one night while putting on lip balm, it hit me: Chapstick caps. Turns out they come in all different colors, and you can buy them in bulk on Etsy for a price that isn't too awful.

While it wasn't a perfect solution — no type of glue works on polyethylene for long — the caps did prove that the idea was feasible and wouldn't be prohibitively expensive...and it was the wow factor that got people's attention.

The prototype player mat in action
The final player mat as designed by Devir and Meeple Foundry
Selling the Game

As I noted above, my Photoshop skills were pretty non-existent when I started designing Rock Hard. A friend found me a template that looked like a '70s concert poster, and while I wasn't crazy about the color scheme at first, the longer I looked at it, the more it grew on me.

I read everything I could find about sell sheet design. The one thing that stuck out was that I needed to answer the question: "What makes this game unique?" I thought about it and realized that a big part of the answer to that question was me.

It felt super awkward selling my game on that basis, but I knew that because of my history, it would grab people's attention.

Once I had a sell sheet I was happy with, I plunked fake coffee stains on the "poster" and stuck it to a digital wall with a pushpin and some tape, slightly ripped and off-kilter. It was a bit rough, but it stood out.


The First Major Changes

Originally I had two "after hours" decks: You could have a backstage encounter, which improved your reputation, or you could hang out and gain a random benefit. Things basically just happened to your character, and the first publishers who looked at the game at Pax Unplugged were adamant that players should have more agency over what their characters do.

I redesigned the "after hours" phase on the flight home from PaxU by making backstage into just one of five different venues where you could hang out, adding an element of set collection. Four of the venues were likely to grant you a particular type of benefit (though the precise benefit wasn't guaranteed — hat tip to Dead of Winter). The fifth gave you no benefit, but could stand in as a "wild" for set-collection purposes.

That Pesky "First Player" Problem

In Rock Hard, going first in a given round is a huge advantage. It means that for an entire round, no spaces are going to be blocked to you unless an event card makes them unavailable.

My initial design had a "Go To Bed Early" space that let you use an "after hours" action to take the first player token for the next round, then play would proceed clockwise from them. Players didn't like this much, especially if they were seated to the right of someone using the space aggressively. Plus, it cost an action to use.

I played around early on with having the first player token rotate clockwise to keep things simple, but it made planning ahead too hard. I then tried mixing up the player order by letting you get in line for the bar or the bathroom to go first (no pun intended) next round and taking your "after hours" actions when you were through. This change got me closer, though it still didn't solve the advantage that went to whoever went first in round 1.

Enter Devir

It was at this point that I brought the game to Devir.

They weren't an obvious choice. Aside from the fact that they usually work with European designers, their "family plus" games are typically language-independent, which Rock Hard is not.

But Devir is known for strong and diverse themes, and those player boards in Lacrimosa just sang to me. I knew Devir would be able to bring my amplifiers to life. It didn't hurt that the Devir team are also die-hard rock-and-rollers and that they thought they could get everything ready in time for Gen Con 2024, which was super-fast.

The tight schedule meant I'd be doing a lot more additional work than I'd planned for, however.

Late Changes to the Game

One of the biggest changes Devir asked for was a game that was both shorter AND more complex. These two things don't normally go together. In my original version of the game, you started with nothing but $1 and a candy token and played for twelve rounds. Working was important, and there was a difficult choice early on as to whether to spend your first paycheck on a demo tape or a manager.

The solution I came up with was to start you several months in. Your base stats would start at 2 instead of 0, you'd already have some notable life experiences, and most importantly, you'd have a manager, which you'd select in reverse player order, thereby balancing out the advantage of going first in round 1 and solving my first-player problem.

Another smart change Devir made was to remove the life experience tokens and place the icons for life experience directly on the "after hours" cards. That saved on production costs, meaning the game could sell for a lower price, something we all considered important.

More Cowbell, er, Cards!

Devir did, however, want more cards – lots of them. I doubled the number of cards so that the "after hours" decks would never run out during the game. Devir also asked for more variety in the bonuses. To do so, I divided the bonuses into three types that correlated roughly to what you were trying to achieve during each during phase and created eight in each category.

While I was at it, I added more personal goals and had people draw three, keep two. This combination of bonuses and goals made every game play out differently and added more tension between the two while still keeping the game shorter.

We also added a spot for random gigs of the type you wouldn't normally play, except that they usually paid better. At first, they might be bar mitzvahs or frat parties, but eventually you might get invited to play at parties in the hills and, after getting better known, on TV and at festival slots. These random gigs would earn fewer points but have greater benefits than you could otherwise get — and unlike regular shows, which would have limited slots, anyone could play a random gig.


There's No Such Thing as Too Much Flavor

The last change we made — and the one that almost gave me a meltdown — was to add flavor text to everything. This was very last minute, so I cribbed from things that had happened to my friends and me over the years I spent in and hanging around the music industry.

I created so much flavor text so fast — I'm talking hundreds of cards in one night — I didn't have time to think about it too much. Without the time to edit, what popped out was much funnier than the few I wrote early on. Hopefully, people will find the sheer absurdity and the knowledge that most of it actually happened amusing.

The One Change That Didn't Make It

Devir had a cool idea at one point. Since the knobs went to 11, one more than on most amps, why not make it harder to push them from 10 to 11?

Thematically, the '70s way to get that last little bit of volume was with an overdrive pedal. I introduced overdrive tokens and required players to discard one whenever they wanted to push any stat from 10 to 11.

It was a great idea, but proved to be a bit too much to pull off in a nine-round game. But who knows? Maybe the overdrive tokens will make an appearance in an expansion someday.

Instead, we decided to reward players with extra cash if they increased a stat that was already maxed out. Thematically this made sense as maxed-out stats would mean you were at the top of your game and therefore making more money...and since money converts to points at game's end, this change worked. You'd still be more incentivized to try to hit other goals, but at least you'd always have something to do at the end of the game that could make a difference.

The Art

This was probably the most challenging part of bringing Rock Hard to life.

We all agreed that the right artist for the characters and cover was Spanish artist Jennifer Giner. I urge people to check out her art on Instagram. She has a lot of followers for a reason.

Jennifer, however, is young. She wasn't even born in the '70s, and she isn't a musician. She had to go through a crash course on '70s style as well as the workings of rock-and-roll instruments, all while she was moving and attending conferences to sell art.

I had only one "conversation" with Jennifer as she doesn't speak English and my high school Spanish is limited. I managed to say "mas grande que la vida" (larger than life) and "sucio" (dirty), but I had no idea how to say things like "In the seventies, we flowed", so I sent a lot of photos of '70s artists to my editor David Esbri at Devir, who ended up being the conduit between us.

The process was frustrating at times, but the results were so worth it. The artwork is stunning. Making it even more amazing is that Jennifer did both the characters and the cover as original works in watercolor.

Seriously, I've watched time-lapse videos of Jennifer painting characters, and I honestly can't imagine her creating images as complex as the ones in the game this way. One serious mistake, and the picture is ruined — and yet she created ten characters (eleven if you count my promo card) and one simply gorgeous box.

Jennifer Giner's final art for Kimmy
The last decision was the color scheme for the board. By 1977, fashion in music was moving toward the aesthetic of punk and metal. Metallic colors were big, as was black and white and bright colors such as red and turquoise.

But people have an idea of what the '70s look like, and even though it tends to be based on the early '70s and late '60s, we took a cue from the band Nazareth's 1976 album "Close Enough for Rock and Roll" and went with the color scheme people associate with the '70s: avocado green, harvest gold, and warm orange/red.

So...Are You Ready to Rock?

I've already gone on too long here, kind of like Tom Petty (RIP, friend) as an opening act. There's so much more I could write about this journey, but now it's your turn to take the spotlight. If you have any questions, pop them into the forums below and I'll try to answer.

In the meantime – long live rock!

Jackie Fox Read more »

Publisher: Limithron

Law-abiding citizens of the Caribbean need protecting, so the military powers that be created these Coastal Gun Battery locations to fortify important port cities. Massive stone strongholds, stretched out along the water's edge to give every cannon the best angle in a fight. Did these forts discourage piracy in the area? Probably so. Will they do the same for your campaign? Time will tell!
       

To provide a wide range of options, there are 16 variations of my Coastal Battery map. Among these are a version at sunset; a "no guns" option; day and night versions where the battery has caught fire; and several other adventure inspiring situations. All are non-gridded, hi-res JPEG files.
       

Variations for this map (50 x 30, Hi-res JPEG files) include:
- Coastal Battery: Dark
- Coastal Battery: Fire (Day)
- Coastal Battery: Fire (Night)
- Coastal Battery: Fog
- Coastal Battery: Haunted
- Coastal Battery: Night (No Lights)
- Coastal Battery: Night (Torches)
- Coastal Battery: No Cannons
- Coastal Battery: No Props
- Coastal Battery: No Water
- Coastal Battery: No Water, No Trees
- Coastal Battery: Original
- Coastal Battery: Rain
- Coastal Battery: Sunset
- Coastal Battery: Temperate
- Coastal Battery: Temperate (No Guns)
       

Come have a look at what else I'm creating at my Patreon page. You'll be the first to see all my upcoming projects, and be able to weigh in on polls to guide my efforts! Hope you'll come join our crew!

Price: $5.99 Read more »

Publisher: Limithron

Ah, to spend your days down at the docks. Crack open an old bottle of rum, go fishing on the docks, sell your catches in the marketplace, then pass out in an alley under a palm tree. It's a pirate's life for me!

Whether you envision a confrontation over smuggled cargo, escape from a military embargo, or pirates just being pirates, the City Port Docks have something for you. This might be my favorite map yet.... I just love the vibe. I want to live here. Hopefully your players will love it just as much.
       

11 Variations for this map (55x40, Hi-Res JPEG files, no watermark) include:
- Original Docks
- Empty Docks map – set up your own port to meet your scenario's needs.
- Night
- Temperate Climate
- Docks with Ships (my speciality)
- Mörk Borg
- Grim Dark
- No Lighthouse – let ship captains beware!
- Haunted
- Bioluminescence – a jellyfish migration, perhaps?
- Stormy
       

Plus I've created 27 PNG assets – buildings, the lighthouse, docks, and more – to customize your docks just the way you like them, or use on other maps.

Want more great maps like these? Come join my crew and support me on Patreon to get all my map releases and hear what I have in the works.

Enjoy, and happy sailing!

Price: $5.99 Read more »

Publisher: Minish Cartography

This pack contains a collection of accessories to create borders, labels, and other decorations for your maps. The theme of this pack and some of the assets were chosen by my Patreon community. All the assets have transparent shadows to allow layering over any ground material on the base map.

The assets are provided as a single large sheet and a zipped folder containing individual asset files. The assets are also provided in up to 2 variants, depending on what makes sense for the asset in question. The variants are regular and wireframe. All my assets are provided under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license from Creative Commons, this license allows commercial use with attribution, see the Creative Commons site for more information. If you like my assets consider supporting me on Patreon, the patrons allow me to continue producing asset packs

The pack contains the following.

 - 10 map border corners

 - 2 map border decorations

 - 11 different map border styles provided in a variety of lengths and in horizontal and vertical orientations

 - 2 map compasses

 - 2 flower decorations

 - 13 map labels

 - 1 map legend

 - 1 map portrait frame

 - 2 map shield decorations, both with transparent options to place your own heraldry within the shield frame

 - 3 vine sections

 - 1 "Assets by Minish Cartography" label

Price: $4.00 Read more »

Publisher: Chaos Drake Press

This is a table of 100 locations for use with Ironsworn, the fabulous RPG by Tomkin Press available for free at https://www.ironswornrpg.com/. 

The locations can also be used for any Viking themed RPG. There might be some game mechanics that can be ignored. 

This is a guide. You may, of course, modify the locations as you wish. 

I hope you enjoy this supplement. 

This work is based on Ironsworn (found at www.ironsworn rpg.com), created by Shawn Tomkin, and licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Cover Photograph by Sami Matias from Unsplash

Price: $2.00 Read more »

Publisher: Frontier Gaming

HOW TO PLAY

In this Solo Adventure you assume the role of an adventurer in a Medieval Fantasy setting. You will  require The Dark Age: Legends Core Rulebook (CRB), the Dark Age: Otherworld Expansion, and any associated Expansions you wish to use to assist you, along with a pen and paper or word-processing document, to play.

The story is set up with an Introduction, a handful of location details and a few pertinent Story Points. The rest is down to you and your imagination.

The Actions you take should depend on who and what you see, and how you wish to interact. Keep a record of your story and adapt it as per the result of each Action. As you progress you will see that you are behaving as your own Storyteller, creating the interactive world in which you are playing.

Use the Character Creation section of the CRB to create your Character and use the Storyteller section of the CRB to assist with generating NPCs.

Once you have familiarised yourself with the  following few pages, you are ready to begin.

THE BONUS DIE

When allowed to roll a Bonus Die, roll two of the same required Dice and choose the most beneficial result.

_____________________________________

In the kingdom of Wessex lay the peaceful town of Keldara. This serene haven, once a vibrant place of trade and camaraderie, now groaned under the iron-fisted rule of the vengeful wizard Azru-Kai. His intent as dark as his sorcery, Azru-Kai had descended upon Keldara with a fury, driven by a vendetta against the liege-lord of Keldara and his faithful mercenaries who had thwarted his ambitions. The streets of Keldara, once filled with laughter and song, now echoed with the cries of the enslaved and the crack of the wizard's whip. Among the oppressed was Asahel, a former mercenary captain and the sole survivor of Azru-Kai's wrath. Stripped of his comrades and freedom, Asahel languished in a makeshift prison, his heart heavy with the weight of his fallen brethren. Yet within him, a flicker of resistance sparked, ready to forge a rebellion from the courage and resolve of the townsfolk, to overthrow the tyrant and reclaim their stolen freedom.

Price: $1.49 Read more »

Publisher: Alex Fouache

Every Game Master has dreamed of running a session without spending hours on preparation, right? That's exactly what this scenario offers! Designed to fit any game system, it promises unforgettable adventures for both novice and experienced players. 

Synopsis:

Curiosity is a nasty flaw, but it sometimes leads to stories beyond comprehension. This is what players discover after listening to the rumors circulating about an abandoned building where unclear events occur. After exploring the place, players seem to have uncovered the truth: it’s just a simple squat, and it is enough to stay away from it to avoid problems. But the damage is done, on the way back, they are attacked by mercenaries and notice that a child has sneaked into their car.

After calming her down, players learn that she has escaped from a research lab where she was held. But it doesn’t end there, as they are quickly contacted by Lina Beine, the girl’s mother, Petunia, who explains the situation: the latter is the host of numerous nanorobots capable of eliminating any drug addiction. The woman asks players to protect her daughter and to stop the actions of this laboratory by any means necessary.

But the group discovers that nothing is ever black or white when they realize that this mother is not so innocent in this whole story. The fate of this little girl is in their hands.

Price: $3.95 Read more »

Publisher: Alex Fouache

Tout Maître du Jeu a toujours rêvé de jouer à sa table sans avoir à préparer ses séances pendant des heures, n'est-ce pas ? C'est exactement ce que propose ce scénario ! Écrit pour s'adapter à tous les systèmes de jeu, les joueurs novices comme aguerris vivront des aventures inoubliables !

Synopsis :

La curiosité est un vilain défaut, mais elle permet parfois d’être embarquées dans des histoires qui dépassent l’entendement. C’est ce que les joueurs découvrent après avoir écouté les rumeurs qui circulent sur un immeuble abandonné où des évènements peu clairs se produisent. Après avoir exploré l’endroit, les joueurs semblent avoir découvert la vérité : il s’agit d’un simple squat et il suffit de ne pas s’en approcher pour ne pas attirer les problèmes. Mais le mal était fait, sur la route du retour, ils se font attaquer par des mercenaires et remarquent qu’une enfant s’est introduite dans leur voiture.

Après l’avoir rassurée, les joueurs apprennent qu’elle s’est enfuie d’un laboratoire de recherche où elle était détenue. Mais cela ne s’arrête pas là, puisqu’ils sont rapidement contactés par Lina Beine, la mère de la fille, Pétunia, qui leur explique la situation : cette dernière est l’hôte de nombreux nanorobots capables de supprimer n’importe quelle addiction à la drogue. La femme demande aux joueurs de protéger sa fille et de mettre fin aux agissements de ce laboratoire, par tous les moyens.

Mais le groupe découvre que rien n’est jamais tout blanc ni tout noir quand ils se rendent compte que cette mère n’est pas si innocente dans toute cette histoire. Le destin de cette petite fille est entre leurs mains.

Price: $3.95 Read more »

Publisher: Chaosium

This year there will be no encore ...

It is August 2023 and the world-famous Edinburgh Festival is in full swing.

The city is full of colourful sights, weird & wonderful acts, and visitors can expect the unexpected at every turn!

... and it's the perfect cover for the depraved and debauched schemes of a madman.

Investigators are enjoying a show during the Festival when the finale proves to be much more horrifying -- and more final -- than anyone expected.

Soon they find themselves uncovering the details of a plot being enacted in and around the packed venues and streets of Scotland's capital city -- a plot that could end in the most tragic and terrifying way imaginable.

Can the investigators avert disaster before the curtain falls for the last time, or will they succumb to the earthly delights of the largest and most unpredictable arts festival in the world?

Festival Of Terror is a modern-day scenario for Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition, suitable for 3-5 investigators and designed to be completed in two or three sessions of play.

In it you will find:

• a dangerous and depraved modern-day investigation set amidst a unique and unforgettable setting
• Magic, mime, puppets, clowns ... and other terrifying sights of the Edinburgh Festival!
• over 10 full-colour handouts and evocative imagery throughout
• a diverse cast of unique characters who the investigators may meet, including one potential replacement investigator (full stats provided)
• Keeper notes and background information that help those running the scenario get the most out of it 
• Six detailed maps of Edinburgh and the locations the investigators visit
• full statistics for all non-player characters and creatures
• separate handouts and maps file included in purchase

Price: $3.99 Read more »

Publisher: Splintered Realms Publishing

Stalwart Team Up is two things in one no matter how you look at it! It is a prose adaptation of a comic book that doesn't exist - along with the solo RPG adventure that goes with it. This adds to and expands the world of Stalwart: The World's Niftiest Superhero RPG, introducing new characters while enriching and expanding the setting materials presented in the World of Stalwart and the Guide to Meridian. This resource includes new mechanics to enhance the solo play experience with role playing and character building elements.

In this introductory issue, Tipo Orro enters the ranks of earth's superheroes, joining Doc Stalwart on a two-fisted adventure. 

Price: $1.00 Read more »

I love a campaign with a good central plot, but as much as I love those, some of my favorite times and revelations at the table come from the B-plots; those small scenes and stories that are tailored to one or a few characters. I find a place for them in nearly all my games. Over the years, I have a formula for working them into my games. So let’s talk about it…

What are B Plots? 

The B-plot, according to Google, is a subplot or secondary narrative, that runs parallel to the main plotline (sometimes known as the A-plot). In RPGs, these are little side scenes or stories that you work into the session. While they can occur at nearly any time in a story, they tend to appear more when the A-plot is not actively being worked on. This could be before or after the A-plot or during a break in the A-plot. 

A B-plot can center on a single character or a group of characters. My preference is 1-2 characters, otherwise, it’s creeping up on an A-plot. More about that in a few min. 

In the games I run, the B-plot gets 1-2 scenes before we move back to the A-plot. However for a full table of 5 players that may be 5-10 scenes, in which the entire session could be just various B-plots. I am comfortable with that for my home games, but in a one-shot or convention game, I may not run a B-plot and if I did I would not go past 1 scene per character.

What do they do? 

The B-plot can do a few things for your players and the session. Here is a short list:

• • Spotlight Time – When you create a B-plot scene focused on just one character, you are creating spotlight time for the character. You are dedicating a portion of the game for them to shine, to have the attention of the GM and the table. 
  • Depth of character –  Often the A-plot is about some larger thing happening in the world, and while the characters will grow by their interaction with the A-plot, with the B-plot you can narrow in on just one character and focus on their personal stories. The things you make up for these scenes and the actions the character takes will help to make the character deeper. 
  • Engagement – Combining these first two things…spotlight and personal stories create player engagement. The player will become more attentive and will be emotionally engaged. This will raise the quality of play at the table for that player and everyone else.
  • Experimentation – A-plots have a lot riding on them, and need to progress for the main parts of the campaign to be successful. Not B-plots. B-plots can be nearly anything, something taken from the character’s background, a wish the player had, or a GM thought experiment (i.e. I wonder what they would do if someone tried to steal their staff?). You are free to try stuff out, and if something doesn’t work, no worries it was just one scene in the game, you can find something new next session.

Some Tips for Good B-Plots

These are just some of my tips for making a good B-plot. They may or may not work in your game, story, campaign, or group. Like any buffet, take what looks good… 

• Simple – I keep my B-plots simple; few twists, no red herrings. They typically have a single large goal for the whole plot. For example: Chad will discover his uncle is embezzling from the family business.
• Episodic – My B-plots are episodic, meaning that whatever scene or two is played in that session, incrementally moves along the overall plot. In future sessions, the plot will be moved further until its conclusion. For example: In tonight’s session, Chad will see his uncle skulking around in the office after closing. He will have a chance to confront him or observe.
• Not tied to the main plot – My preference is for the B-plot to be something independent of the A-plot so that the player feels free to do what they want without worrying that it will affect the whole group. It also gives a break or a beat change from the A-plot.
• Only a Scene or Two – Most of the time, I have about a scene-worth of material prepared for this, and then break it into two parts to keep the spotlight moving.
• A B-plot for everyone – Every player character in my game gets a B-plot so that everyone can have some spotlight time.
• Phone A Friend – Sometimes, I like a B-plot to be for a single character, but if they want to pull others into a scene I welcome and at times encourage it.

Where to fit the B Plot?

I have a preference for where I put my B-plots. This is not the only way to do it. It is my preferred way to do it. 

I like B-plots between A-plot stories (not sessions). After an A-plot story has concluded, after any leveling up, and before the next A-plot story starts, I like to put in a round of B-plots. It looks something like this:

• Session 1: A-Plot Story 1 (start)
• Session 2: A-Plot Story 1 (middle)
• Session 3: A-Plot Story 1 (end), Experience, Advancement, etc
• Session 4: B-plots & Start of A-Plot Story 2
• Session 5: A-Plot Story 2 (middle)
• Etc

This way we have finished an A-plot story, the characters have progressed, and in most of my campaigns, some time will pass before the next A-plot story starts. This place, where time has passed, is a perfect place to put in these B-plots. 

It is not the only structure that works, it’s just one that is easy because the A-plot is out of the way. Depending on your game there may be other places where those could occur. For instance, if your starship was on a long warp jump, in the middle of the A-plot, you could switch to B-plots to see what the characters are doing during the jump, and then return to the A-plot as they come out of warp.

Just A Small Plot… it’s Wafer-Thin

B-plots are a nice break from the main plot of a campaign and are a great way to spotlight and build engagement in your players. Good B-plots are simple and incremental, moving along a larger plot or question, a scene at a time. An easy place to place B-plots is between larger A-plot stories, but with some creativity, you can fit them into other parts of the story.

Do you like B-plots? What is your favorite B-plot in a game you have played/run? Where do you like to run your B-plots in your overall campaign? 

Read more »

After you have your story arc put together, you’ll notice that the PCs will need clues and information to get between the various plot points. The first bit of information they receive is the story hook. This launches the whole adventure. If the story hook doesn’t grab them, then the adventure screeches to a complete stop before it gets up to speed. You don’t want this to happen.

Your opening salvo of information needs to be timely, pertinent to the PCs, actionable, achievable, and not too horribly risky at first glance. Once you have momentum in the story, your future bits of information can be helpful in nature, but if you can make each piece of information along the way as vital to the PCs as the opening story hook, all the better.

Timely

If your opening story hook does not have a sense of immediacy or urgency, it’s going to fall flat, be ignored completely, or the PCs will decide to “deal with it later.” In gaming terms, the “deal with it later” category is a death knell for an adventure hook as now it becomes a casual side quest that will most likely be forgotten. Get the hook in their face and demonstrate to them how urgent the hook is.

Pertinent

Even if the plot hook is urgent, it needs to be pertinent to the PCs. A plot hook of “A scout has discovered that the goblin tribes are going to attack the village on the other side of the range of hills in a week,” will most likely not entice the PCs into action. Sure, it’s timely. They have a week to stop the goblin incursion, but it’s going after “that other village over there” not the village the PCs live and breathe in.

However, if the PCs have NPC connections to that village on the other side of the hills and it’s a four-day travel to get there before they can setup defenses for the village, then you have a pertinent and timely hook.

Actionable

Make sure the story hook has some action in it the PCs can take. If they have an unmarked, barely decipherable treasure map to a section of the world they’ve never seen, heard of, or can get to, that treasure map will go in someone’s pack until such time they feel like figuring out where the treasure map leads.

In my example above about the goblin tribes attacking a nearby village, the PCs can take a variety of actions to save their NPC friends in that village. They can travel to the village and setup defenses. They can venture into the nearby wilderness to directly confront the goblins and disrupt the tribes’ abilities to mount an attack.

Regardless of what actions the PCs can take, make sure the action that is similar to “I go to the capital city and beg the king to send his army to defend the village,” is off the table. Make sure the king or capital city are too far away to be of assistance. Make sure any “powerful wizard” (you know the ones I’m talking about) are conveniently out of town or away on vacation or some such. This will allow the immediate, pertinent actions to land squarely in the PCs’ laps.

Achievable

When presenting the story hook, make sure the PCs have a clear, understandable, and calculable chance of success. If “the goblin tribes” are too much, maybe scale it down to “a goblin tribe,” but definitely don’t use “all twelve hordes of demons from the underdepths below are going to wipe out that village.” Of course, if the party is higher level, then multiple goblin tribes may be what the adventure calls for. Likewise, if the party is very high level or has a great deal of competency and/or prowess, maybe they could face down all twelve hordes of demons.

Regardless of what power level you’re playing with in your game, do not throw the impossible (or something perceived as impossible) in front of the players. This will almost guarantee that they will call upon someone or something more powerful than themselves (like the king’s armies or that vacationing mega-wizard) and this will then make it “someone else’s problem.” You’re trying to create a cool story with obstacles for the party to overcome, not for them to circumvent by recruiting others to blow up the obstacles for them.

Risk

If a venture is not risky, then it’s a travelogue with lots of walking (or riding a horse or transporting in a spacecraft). There will be risk involved. The risks you are going to plant in front of the party do not need to be called out in the story hook. The risk should be implied in the presentation of the hook, but you as the designer and/or GM do not need to lean hard into this area. Here are some segments of sample hooks that imply risks. Can you figure out what risk (or risks!) these segments imply?

• The night of the lawless purge will arrive in the city in four nights, and you’ve been hired by a noble family to secure and protect their home.
• The treasure map you’ve found clearly marks the loot’s location as being in the center of a cemetery in the ruins of a large city five days horse ride to the north through the Gray-Finger Forest.
• The full moon is coming in five days, and your faction’s benefactor was bitten by a werewolf last night. You must find the cure before the full moon or prepare to kill your benefactor.
• A pyramid has risen from the sands outside the city, and demonic forces have poured from openings on all sides. While the demons aren’t approaching the city, they are disrupting trade, travel, and supply trains. Also, the largest oasis in the area happens to reside immediately next to the pyramid, and water supplies are running low. You are the city’s best, and perhaps only, hope of chasing the demons back into the pyramid.

See how easy that was? Of course, a hook can have more elements to them than my above samples, but I was trying to illustrate risk more than any other component of a hook.

Momentum

Once you have your initial story hook in place, you need to continue dropping clues that will get you and your PCs to the next section of the story in the adventure. This is where designing the adventure from back to front makes setting clues and hints easier. If you’ve followed my advice on this topic, you already know what is happening next. You just need to establish a set of clues that will point the party in that direction.

What kind of clues work as continuing story hooks? Well, I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait around a few more months. This is the fourth installment of this series, and I do a deep dive on the clues, rumors, and connective tissues of adventure design in the eleventh installment. I apologies for you having to wait until then, but it’ll be worth it. I promise.

Upcoming Months!

The first set of information you established for your adventure was mood, tone, and theme. In the upcoming months, we’ll be breaking down the thematic elements of adventure design. Namely, I’ll be looking at thematic environments, thematic bosses, and thematic mooks across the next three months.

Read more »

Since the beginning of the hobby, starting at a tavern has been the most cliche and stereotypical beginning for medieval fantasy campaigns in TTRPGs. They are that way for a reason! Taverns are meeting places for all different kinds of people to group up and find missions to get started. The tavern keeper always has some gossip or information to give, maybe some rats to kill in the attic. There is always that mysterious person in the shadows as well, ready to approach the group of wacky individuals and make a team out of them. I, however, come here to offer you something that is far better (in my opinion) than the tavern beginning, and it can easily be applied to any TTRPG.

The Wedding

Note that even though I say a wedding, many sort of similar parties apply. A “fiesta de quinceañera“, a funeral, a bachelor party, or any sort of meeting that encompasses people from different areas connected to one same person or group of people works fine. All of these usually have events going on during the meeting in which everyone is invited to participate. Apart from that, people are put in groups or they self-gravitate into forming smaller groups of people to chat with. Once they are all together in one same spot, within the same subgroup, it’s time for something to go wrong or have someone recruit the group.

I tried this approach at the start of two of the last campaigns I ran: one for Pathfinder 2e, the other for City of Mist (which you can see in a soon to come Spanish Actual Play by RolDe10). The Pathfinder campaign involved the wedding of the Emperor’s right-hand man, having all party members meet up and put into one table together with one NPC that was going to be important to the story. During the event, there is an assassination attempt on the Emperor’s right-hand man, and the story starts from there. For City of Mist, all player characters meet during the “fiesta de quinceañera” (an event celebrated in Latin America when a woman turns 15) and the birthday girl never appears, because she was kidnapped. Both events are kind of similar, having the players meet at an event without knowing each other (or having a few connections with each other), and something happens that kickstarts the campaign.

The best tutorial

Both times I ran this kickstart event for a campaign, I was teaching the players how to play the game. At the same time, they were getting to better know their characters. These meetings usually have events going on in them. It is pretty usual for weddings to have games, or have the classical “grasp the flower bouquet”. Think of them as the first checks or interactions the players will have with the system. It’s a no-risk situation that players always want to participate in because they are just fun. Even if they decide to have their character not participate in it, that also shows the kind of character the player is playing.

In Media Res

In media res, which is Latin for “in the middle of,” means dropping the players into the action from the very start. I have tried this several times, and it has never failed me. It immediately hooks the players and gets them into character. Being in the middle of a celebratory event, you can have them start in some low-risk but action-heavy event, such as dancing with an important NPC, or carrying a plate full of food as a waiter. Once you have them there, they describe their character, what they are doing and how, and they make a first roll. Players get to know a bit about the system immediately, allowing them to better know how their actions have consequences.

Campaign Kickoff

Once the big meeting has occurred, and all the key parts of the campaign have been introduced (players and important NPCs), it’s time to show what the campaign will be all about. This can happen by having something or someone break into the meeting, or by having an NPC approach the player characters to fill them in with information. As I said, I used both an assassination attempt, and a kidnapping as past examples and both worked excellently. Having a knight of the king break in, having the mother of the birthday person abducted by an alien, or having an NPC approach the PCs because they did extremely well in an event that transpired there could work just as well.

---

The 4 steps to make it work

In essence, this meeting will be separated into 4 different steps:

1. In Media Res Start. Start with a bang to instantly drop the players into the game. Have them rolling from early on and you will have them interested in no time.
2. The First Meeting. Players are put together at the start of the meeting. Maybe there was no one else they knew at the party so they are put with each other, maybe it’s a mere coincidence. Note that not all player characters must be together at the start, but it is recommended most of them do. That way it is not as difficult to put them together to continue the campaign.
3. The Mini Events: Just like minigames, the mini events are risk-free reasons for the players to interact with the system through their characters, as well as getting to know important NPCs. In funerals this may be doing a whole oratory about the now deceased person, in birthday parties hitting the piñata, etc.
4. Campaign Kickoff: Have something happen that sets the player characters in motion to work together for the duration of the campaign.

Conclusion

Simple, right? Next time you start a campaign, no matter the game system, try doing so with a wedding or similar event! You will see in no time how great of a campaign starter it is. It will also catch your players by surprise, who might be expecting another tavern beginning!

Have you ever started your campaign with a similar event? If so, let me know in the comments below, so we all can inspire each other campaign starters!

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Join Ang, Josh, and Phil as they talk about GMing for Turtles. No, not those charming reptiles with a house on their back, but the players that end up not wanting to engage with what you’re putting down in front of them!

LINKS:

Sandra Taylor’s ‘Structuring Life to Support Creativity

2024 D&D

Daggerheart

Meguey Baker

Read more »

What are Jared’s weaknesses? Epic fantasy, check. Space opera, check. Pirates and swashbuckling? Absolutely.

Considering all the above, it may not be a surprise that the product we’re looking at today, Sundered Isles, is a high-seas swashbuckling supplement for Ironsworn: Starforged, which itself was an updated version of the fantasy RPG Ironsworn. Ironsworn must be evolving entirely based on my taste in adventure genres. Allow me this brief moment of pretending the world revolves around me.

Sundered Isles is not a stand-alone game and requires Ironsworn: Starforged for its core rules. It does provide additional character resources, new moves for resolving circumstances unique to the setting and genre, and a host of new oracles.

Disclaimer

I received my copy of Sundered Isles from backing the crowdfunding campaign for Ironsworn: Starforged. I have not had the opportunity to run or play Sundered Isles, but I have played a lot of the solo rules for both Ironsworn and Ironsworn: Starforged.

Credits

Sundered Isles Writing And Design Shawn Tomkin
Additional Writing, Proofing, And Editing Matt Click
Lead Artist Joshua Meehan
Cover Art Bryant Grizzle, Joshua Meehan
Interior Art Bryant Grizzle, Joshua Meehan, Nello Fontani, Phill Simpson, Reza Bagheri, Shawn Tomkin, Vyacheslav Milinchuk, Yifei Li
Icon Design Nathen Græy
Cultural Consultant Liam Stevens
Safety Tool Development And Consultation (FOR STARFORGED) Kienna Shaw, Lauren Bryant-Monk
Consultant For Disability Sensitivity (FOR STARFORGED) Mark Thompson
Digital Tools Ayethin, Nick Boughton, rsek
Illustrated Character Sheet Design Galen Pejeau

Our Booty

The digital version of Sundered Isles includes the following:

• Character Sheet
• Playkit
  • Moves Reference
  • Navigation Chart
  • Connections & Specialist Page
  • Combat Challenge Page
  • Treasure ledger
  • Character Sheet
• Asset Sheets
  • 8 pages of asset cards, 9 to a page
• Asset Sheets (Singles)
  • 63 pages, one asset card per page
• Guide Book
  • 132 pages (facing pages printed as single pages)
• Guide Book (Spreads)
  • 261 pages (each page separate)

The Guide Book PDF is in color, with multiple images of ships at sea, swashbucklers, and weathered maps. The pages with assets and moves are color-coded to help delineate what phase of the game is related to the section at hand.

Navigating the Book

The book is divided into the following distinct sections:

• Adventures Among the Isles
• Getting Underway
• Oracles
• Moves Reference

The first section of the book is dedicated to converting concepts imported from Starforged into ships at sea, as well as introducing some rules modifications when performing similar functions. The second section presents the base assumptions of the game, in a modular format that allows for different elements to be added or subtracted. It also covers the creation and managing of factions, setting tone, and establishing content to include or exclude. The last two sections are some of the most extensive parts of the book.

The Oracles section includes the tables that are the heart of the solo game and games without a GM. There are Oracles to help determine what’s going on, how plots develop, as well as the fine details. The oracles are divided into the following tables:

• Core Oracles
• Seafaring Oracles
• Weather Oracles
• Ship Oracles
• Island Oracles
• Overland Oracles
• Settlement Oracles
• Faction Oracles
• Character Oracles
• Shipwreck Oracles
• Cave Oracles
• Ruin Oracles
• Treasure Oracles
• Miscellaneous Oracles

The Moves Reference section collects the mechanical meat of the game in one place. While each type of move isn’t used in every game, the moves are grouped in a manner to make it obvious where to look. The Moves are grouped in the following sections:

• Session Moves
• Adventure Moves
• Quest Moves
• Connection Moves
• Exploration Moves
• Combat Moves
• Suffer Moves
• Recover Moves
• Threshold Moves
• Legacy Moves
• Fate Moves

As an example, if you are exploring the isles and mapping new trade routes, you may be using rules in the Exploration Moves section. If you get into a duel with another pirate captain, you will be using the moves in the Combat Moves section. In both cases, if you fail and the move indicates that you have a consequence for failure, you will find the different moves showing consequences for exploration and combat under the Suffer Moves.

Quick Overview

While this product doesn’t present the core rules, for those that are curious, let’s examine how you determine what happens in Ironforged-derived games.

Characters have five stats. The stat you use to resolve a roll is detailed in the move description. Characters have multiple tracks to manage, which include Momentum, Health, Spirit, and Supply. As characters are injured, demoralized, or use up their resources, their Health, Spirit, or Supply goes down. There are specific moves you can attempt to recover each of these resources.

Whenever a character attempts to do something, if it matches one of the moves in the game, you reference the rules for that move. Resolution involves rolling a d6 and two d10s (not percentile). If your d6 + the relevant ability is greater than one of the two d10s, you get a weak hit. If it is better than both d10s, you get a strong hit. The d6 is the Action Die, and the d10s are the Challenge Dice.

If you are familiar with Apocalypse World-derived games, the move structure should sound familiar. The moves are arranged with results for total success, partial success, or failure.

Momentum is a resource you can burn, which lets you swap your Momentum score for your Action score. You can have negative Momentum, and in that case, when the integer equals your action die score, it is negated.

While there are many moves that are resolved immediately with a single roll, anything that is meant to represent a significant challenge involves creating a progress track. Your success on some moves allows you to mark a number of boxes. In some cases, you can attempt to complete the task before reaching the end of the track, but the more boxes you fill in, the more reasonable the difficulty of the move to resolve the action measured by the track.

Progress tracks are different lengths based on the amount of effort required to resolve them. The challenge ranks are:

• Troublesome
• Dangerous
• Formidable
• Extreme
• Epic

Dueling a skilled opponent may require a dangerous progress track. Sailing from port to port trying to track down the location of a fugitive could be a formidable task. While a task like a duel with a hostile opponent will be something you work on until it’s resolved, a task like hunting down a fugitive would see you roll each time you put into a port, in between resolving other actions and engaging other action tracks.

Characters have Assets, which are discreet rules that introduce different moves related to that Asset, or that modify the rolls you make for existing moves. There are several categories of Assets:

• Vehicle–details of vehicles you possess
• Module–new parts you can add to modify your vehicle
• Path–your core talents that represent your profession or archetype
• Companion–NPCs that accompany the player character
• Deed–new abilities you gain for performing specific momentous events

Sundered Isles assumes that you are using some of the assets from Ironsworn: Starforged. While some Assets, like Engine Upgrade, may not make sense, others, like Heavy Cannons, function the same whether you’re firing cannonballs or energized plasma.

Setting Assumptions

If you are familiar with Ironsworn or Ironsworn: Starforged, you may be used to the format in which the setting is presented. The setting assumptions are more about facilitating play by determining the active tropes. Some tropes are more important than others, and the game assumes some specific truths about your character. There are several places where the game asks questions and presents some possible answers.

Player characters are assumed to be privateers. There is a starting ship, and if you aren’t playing solo, all of the PCs operate off the same ship. You may or may not start to acquire other ships under your command, creating your own fleet. There are assumed to be multiple factions, including an expansionist empire of some kind. While the game assumes diverse cultures living on various islands, the tyrannical empire hasn’t colonized the region and exists as a threat to fight against.

While those are the thematic elements that are assumed, there are a few specifics, but those specifics can exist in different contexts. There are two moons, Cinder and Wraith. The interplay between the moons causes the tides to be less predictable, allowing for more variability that can come from various moves. The islands are assumed to be spread out into three broad regions, the Myriads, the Margins, and the Reaches. The different regions can facilitate different aspects of play, from piracy, exploring ruins and locations, charting new routes, and finding new islands.

One of the biggest decisions is what Realm you are adventuring in. The options provided are the Seafaring Realm, the Skyfaring Realm, and the Starfaring Realm. The Seafaring Realm resembles a setting not unlike the Age of Sail adventure stories featuring pirates and privateers in our world. The Skyfaring Realm still assumes that your players are heroic pirates, but they fly skyships between floating cities that rose to the sky when the surface of the world suffered some great calamity. The Starfaring Realm assumes that islands are floating in the void of space, and that you can use a magical version of a sailing ship to travel between islands and asteroids, a wee bit like Spelljammer.

There are a ton of tables for fleshing out different aspects of the setting. They include the following tables:

• The Sundering–how the setting came to be how it is now
• Relics–what remains from before
• Modern Era–what does technology look like
• Iron Vows–what does it look like to swear a vow to complete a quest in this setting
• Navigation–how do people navigate and what are their unique challenges
• Empires–how powerful and active are the imperial powers you fight against
• Piracy–how do pirates behave, and are there wider trends
• Religion–how do people interact with the divine or the supernatural
• Magic–how magical is the setting
• Beasts–noteworthy creatures that are special, but not legendary
• Horror–terrifying legendary elements of dread

In addition to these setting details, there are also tables for origin stories both for your character and your ship, potential curses you may be dealing with, random islands you may find, the details of different beasts the PCs can encounter while exploring, and what the various active factions are. The factions are organized into the following categories:

• Societies–shared traditions and/or ways of life
• Organizations–groups working toward a common goal
• Empires–what the villains of the setting look like
• The Cursed–people bound together by supernatural misfortune

Compared to Starforged, Sundered Isles introduces new resolution frameworks to reinforce the themes and tropes of seafaring and swashbuckling. This includes a multi-step process for naval combat that involves closing on ships, engaging, and boarding. There are procedures for tracking your wealth, repairing your ship, and exploring caves and ruins. As with other elements in the various Ironsworn games, none of these additional procedures are mandated, and there are single roll resolutions for most of the scenarios that have more detailed procedures. You may use individual moves to close in on and loot a standard merchant ship but decide to use the full procedure for naval combat when encountering the imperial dreadnought that serves as the flagship of one of the oppressive nations pushing into the region.

The game has a few assumptions about who you are and how you operate, and some of these assumptions are reflected in how the moves work. You are assumed to be heroic pirates. You may not be angels, but you aren’t bloodthirsty killers. You are assumed to be in opposition to the expansionist powers in the region, which helps to present you with some guilt-free targets for your piracy. When you explore ruins, you are not looting the ruins. The moves are focused around finding out who lived here, and what happened to them. Instead of looting, you may end up finding the descendants of that culture to share your findings.

The wealth rules are simple, tracking a wealth level from 1 through 5, and providing situations where you lower your wealth level to perform tasks like doing regular upkeep or repairing damage to your ship, and increasing when you loot a target vessel. This wasn’t the first time I was reflecting on my 7th Sea 2nd edition games while reading these rules, and I appreciate that there is just enough to the wealth rules to make them meaningful, and to remain logical in their abstraction. You can make wealth rules too minimalist, where the questions about the lack of rules cause more problems than a more detailed system causes.

The Oracles

You can engage with the rules for quite a while without consulting the oracles in the game, if you know exactly what you want to do, and what you want to include. Sometimes, even in solo play, you have some ideas of what you want to accomplish to establish your character in the setting. However, the Ironsworn games have a reputation for their oracles. These are the keys to being able to either play solo, or to play without a GM. While the PCs still need to have a broad idea of what they want to do, they can still be surprised by rolling on the oracles to learn the nature of their challenges and the evolving story of the world outside of their immediate quests.

The Core Oracles can be used to give you momentum. These include what kind of action the PCs need to take, what the theme of the current adventure should be, what kind of descriptors you should add to more mundane elements, and what the focus of the adventure should be.

Sundered Isles includes a new wrinkle, the Cursed Die. If you want to introduce more sinister elements to your game, but you still want them to come into the narrative at surprising times, you add a d10 Cursed Die to your d100 rolls. If the Cursed Die comes up a 10, instead of rolling on the regular oracle tables, you instead use the more sinister results on the Cursed Oracle tables. For example, while the standard weather results may include things like stifling heat or raging storms, the Cursed Weather oracle may result in blood rain, mist that displays the crew’s darkest secrets, or shifting clouds of pulsing arcane energy.

Something true of all the Ironsworn games is that these oracles can be used even if you aren’t currently using the Ironsworn rules. If you’re running a fantasy game where the characters are sailing dangerous waters, or even if you’re playing a semi-historical game set in the Age of Sail, if you want a mass of adventure seeds and random thoughts to trigger your own creativity, these oracles serve that function very well.

Wind in the Sails

 Engaging with the game shows how well it hangs together, but the Oracles are a great gateway to get eyes on the inside of the book. 

If you’re already a fan of the previous Ironsworn incarnations, this is going to provide more of what you already enjoy about the system. The Curse Die is a solid addition to the rules. It adds another dimension to the utility of the oracles, and it provides pacing for your nasty surprises when you don’t want to trust your gut instincts on how often you should be introducing nasty escalations to the narrative. The oracles are useful beyond their functionality in the game and can be used for all manner of thematically similar games.

Becalmed

This game knows what it wants to do, how to resolve things, and how to introduce more elements to the game to represent new narrative additions. While that’s not bad, at times it can be a little overwhelming. Even with the clear organization and color coding, the fact that the game has that level of organization in the first place can sometimes be off-putting to someone new to the system. Reframing the exploration of ruins as solving the mystery of the lost culture is an approach I appreciate, but while I can envision complications for adventure stories, it’s harder for me to picture emergent mysteries as satisfying.

Recommended–If the product fits in your broad area of gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.

Ironsworn is an interesting conglomeration of gaming concepts, from adding elements of Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games to providing solo and GMless experiences. While it does those things well, from the outside, it can sound like a bit of an experimental activity. Engaging with the game shows how well it hangs together, but the Oracles are a great gateway to get eyes on the inside of the book. They are consistently full of interesting options, and those options just beg for you to roll a die and see what comes up.

If you want adventure fuel for your fantasy privateer game, or even if you may want an alternate way of telling stories in existing swashbuckling settings, you shouldn’t be disappointed with this purchase. Even if you only have your fantasy crew take to the waves intermittently, the oracles alone may make it worth the price to you.

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The fates are conspiring against me, working in the background to tempt my inner dice goblin to indulge his baser instincts. How else would you explain the plethora of shiny math rock kickstarters, fundraisers, videos, and freakin’ cool STL files that have made their way across my feeds as of late? Surely it can’t be some cold, unfeeling computer algorithm. No, it must be fate, and it must be my destiny to find a way to master all of these funky weird dice.

Seriously, though, the last few months, I’ve been thinking about dice a lot. Specifically weird dice. It all started back at the end of 2023, when my husband gave me this awesome dice spinner for Christmas.

It’s beautiful. It’s fun. But most important – it’s weird, and I love weird. So I started thinking about how I could use this weird artifact for more than simply generating a random number. A die (or dice depending on how you’re counting it) so unique deserves a special place at the table, in my opinion. Using it for every random guard’s sword swing or royal vizier’s bluff check would lessen the impact.

This train of thought took me to a lot of offbeat places I didn’t expect – like spending a week musing over the act of building a Cortex system dice pool and how just choosing the stats you’re going to roll with in that game becomes a kind of role play experience on it’s own – but ultimately it coalesced into philosophizing about the purpose of dice.

Because if we really dig into the raison d’etre of the math rocks it becomes clear that they’re not just randomizers. They are tension-makers. Suspense-creators. Engines of uncertainty.

That’s how all the systems tell us to use dice, isn’t it? When you don’t know what will happen, when you’re playing to find out, when success is uncertain – roll the dice.

Dice are the unknown. They’re luck. They’re – dare I tempt it by saying – fate.

Incarnate.

And fate can be fickle.

When we’re rolling dice, we’re taking a chance, and chances are dramatic. Chance creates tension, and when I understood this, I knew how to best use not just my dice spinner, but a bunch of different kinds of dice in weird and unique ways.

Below, you’ll find five weird ways to up the tension at your table using dice. I’ve collected these ideas and arranged from least to most weird. I’ve also tried to include links to the inspiration for the methods when I could provide them.

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HIGH – LOW – EVEN – ODD

Credit for this one goes to my old college roommate (thanks, Jeremy!). I don’t know if he came up with it first, but he’s the first GM I’d ever seen use it.

The process is simple, take a D20 (or whatever die your system uses) and point at a player (preferably the one attempting to do the risky action that required a die roll) and say, “High, low, even, or odd.”

Let them call it. Roll the die. If they managed to call the roll, the action goes in their favor.

Essentially, it’s a coin flip and it works well in situations where pure luck determines the outcome of an action. But this works better than a coin flip because the player feels like they have more agency. Not much, but four options are better than two even if the math works out the same. Plus, it plays into dice superstitions such as “I never roll high” or “I really don’t want to ‘waste’ a twenty on this.”

If you really want to play with their emotions, grab a D20 from their dice jail and call for a high-low-even-odd roll. (This is the most evil version of this roll, and is only recommended for GMs who are willing to tempt every god of fortune at one time.)

ROLL UNDER A CUP

Inspired by Liar’s Dice, Yahtzee, but mostly this video on the Quinns Quest Patreon. (It’s a fun video and I highly recommend watching it if you can.)

Imagine this: the rogue has split off from the party to scout the villain’s keep. They’re sneaking through darkened hallways and creeping around corners, when they run into a guard patrol. You call for a stealth roll, BUT you tell them to roll under a cup (an opaque cup. Otherwise this doesn’t work) and tell them not to look at it until you say so.

Then you cut back to the rest of the party. You run a scene. Maybe even an encounter. All the while, the rogue’s player is staring at the cup. Wondering if they’ve been spotted.

When I heard Quinn describe this method, I immediately ran out and bought a set of special little bowls for my home game. I can not wait to watch my players squirm under the tension of not knowing if they succeeded or not.

And yes, you could just roll in secret, but then the answer is an ephemeral result in your brain, not a tangible die sitting just out of reach.   

ADD SOME DESPAIR (Dice)

Adapted from Edge of the Empire/Genesys.

Lots of games have their own custom dice – like Edge of the Empire’s Task dice or Fate’s Fudge dice. You can easily steal the special dice and import them into your game to add a little spice along with some nuance.

When a character goes to hack a computer system, toss them an Edge of the Empire difficulty die to roll along with their D20 and interpret the resulting narrative complications as you would if you were running that system. Or have them roll a Fudge die. On a minus they set off the alarms, on a blank they succeed with a “yes but,” on a plus they get extra information.

Sure, you can bake these gradients of success into a normal D20 roll based on how far below or above the target number they roll, but adding a special die points a huge ass spotlight on the action. It adds another layer of importance to the action and dials up the tension along the way.

ROULETTE DICE COUNTDOWN

Inspired by my Christmas present.

I timed it, and with a really good flick my roulette die will spin for about one and a half minutes, but that’s just an estimate. I’m not certain exactly how long it will spin. And what does uncertainty create? That’s right. Tension.

So, imagine this: you set up a scenario where your players have a limited amount of time to make decisions. Let’s say the jackbooted troops of the evil empire are hunting them through back alleys, trying to catch them before they reach their hideout. The group has to either act together or separately, but they only have until the spinner stops to tell you their actions. You set the stakes and give them the parameters of the situation, and then you start the spinner spinning.

“You have until this stops spinning to make your actions. The result on the die will represent the evil empire’s perception check to find you. Go!”

Will the empire succeed? Who knows! You don’t. Your players definitely don’t! All you know is that there is a limited amount of time to choose.

Now THAT’S dramatic.

SKILL-BASED DICE TOYS

Inspired by these incredibly awesome 3D prints.

These 3D prints turn standard dice rolls into actual real-life skill checks. They take the nail-biting challenge of those old tilt and spin puzzles where you try to navigate a ball bearing through a labyrinth without dropping it through a hole and combine them with either a D20 or a D6. The more dexterous you are at guiding the ball bearing through the maze, the higher your roll result.

Tons of fun on it’s own. Especially if you use it for something like disarming a trap or activating a complicated magical puzzle. But what if you added in a push your luck mechanic?

“The room’s ceiling is coming down and will crush you in three (real time) minutes. If you can ‘roll’ a 13 on this skill-based die, you can unlock the door and escape. But if you get a 17 you can stall out the mechanism completely and find the secret passage that will let you bypass the rest of the dungeon’s traps. If you get a 20…well something extra special will happen.”

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These weird dice rolls can add spice to your sessions, drawing attention to pivotal rolls and heightening the tension to astronomical levels of excitement, but do remember to use them in moderation. After all, if every roll you call for has its own gimmick, they’ll lose their specialness real fast.     

I’m also still trying to find ways of adopting these methods for online play. The “roll under a cup” method can be replicated in the Foundry VTT by having your players make blind GM rolls and then you can reveal them in the UI when the timing is appropriate. Including Genesys or Fudge dice into the system could probably be done with a moderate amount of coding, depending on the VTT. Mailing your players care packages with the 3D printed skill dice could be an interesting way to add mystery to the session as well, but it of course has its own limitations.

Would you use weird dice like these in your games? How? Let us know in the comments.

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Join Ang, JT, and guest Andy Jaksetic as they talk about the art of pregenerated characters. They cover everything from why you would want pre-made characters to what details you need to give your players.

LINKS:

Untold Stories Project Twitch

Untold Stories Project YouTube

Victoriana Kickstarter

Worlds Without Number

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Planning in RPGs is not a fun activity, so don’t do it.
Planning in RPGs is necessary so that we don’t get our characters killed.
Both of those statements are true.

The optimal way planning should work in your game is somewhere in the middle of those two statements. The optimal way is a combination of genre and play style. And if we were to discuss what that looked like up front, we could define how much planning was necessary for the game we were playing, so that our games had the right amount of planning, minimizing the un-fun-ness (take that Bob, our editor), and making it effective enough to keep the characters alive (at least most of them). Let’s talk about how to do that.

Is Planning Un-Fun?

I think so, and I say that as a person whose day job is planning things, and outside of work I plan everything else in my life. In RPGs, planning is just not that fun of an activity. It often consists of the table coming up with ideas and then saying “…but what about this?” going around and around in circles. If you are a player participating in the process, it can be a bit draining, but if you are the GM, waiting for the players to come up with a plan, then you are just sitting there on the outside. It is not how I want to spend my gaming time.

Is Planning Necessary?

Having a plan is a good idea because it aligns the group in terms of their goal and how they are going to achieve it. It allows the group the time to figure out how to best use their resources (equipment, powers, etc). These things greatly increase the group’s chances of being successful and surviving. 

The Components of a Plan

Let’s take a few moments and discuss what makes up a plan. A good plan has all of these, and lesser plans lack detail or are missing some of these parts: 

• The Goal/Objective – A plan must have an objective. What are we doing? This goal should be shared by the entire group. Are you going in to steal the money? Or are you here to rescue your ex-wife from the Prince? If you are not on the same page about the goal, the group may pursue different goals, split up their resources, or at worse come into conflict.

• Milestones – The smaller objectives you need to achieve to build up to the goal. It could be disarming the alarm system, or stealing a key from the guard. Some milestones will be in temporal order while others may occur at any time.

• Information/Intelligence – plans run on information. You can’t plan if you don’t know where you are going, what to expect, how many guards, the terrain around the location, etc. When you lack information you start to make guesses (see below).

• Risks – Risks are the things you don’t know but think are possible. Risks can be things like a hidden alarm system. Or something like, “What if we can’t take out the guards quietly?” In addition, Risks have a probability (how likely they are to occur) and an impact (how big of a problem it is when they come true). A lot of people who are bad with risks spend too much time worrying about how to handle low probability/high impact risks over high probability/lower impact risks. 

• Mitigation and Contingencies – Hand in hand with risks are Mitigations (how do we make risk less likely to occur — lower probability) and Contingencies (what do we do if that risk comes true — lower the impact). You can manage neither, one, or both of these. The trick is deciding for each risk what you want to manage. 

This is why Planning is difficult and may not be fun. It is a lot to manage and done well it takes time – time that you are not playing the game. 

The Trust Issue 

The reason that people tend to over-plan is that they fear that there is some piece of information that if the players knew before they put their plan into action, would ensure the success of the goal or prevent excessive harm/death to the characters. To combat this, players do one or both of the following: 

• Collect as much information/intelligence as possible; at times to excess. 
• Perform excessive Risk mitigation — naming risks, and coming up with mitigations and contingencies. 

In fact, as a GM, you will know this is happening in the game when these two actions take over the session. When characters feel like they know enough, is when they are ready to switch from planning to action. 

Genre and Playstyle

Before we get to the social contract part of this… we need to discuss two more things. 

Some Genres have plans as one of the tropes. If you are running a game about thieves and heists, or a military game about Spec Ops missions, then those genres require some degree of planning. These games are also best served by mechanics that help compensate for suboptimal planning or help mitigate the lack of planning that occurs at the table. Look at how Blades in the Dark and other Forged in the Dark games remove the need for extensive planning by using mechanics to simulate good planning done by the characters rather than the players.

The other thing is play-style. Some groups get off on playing the cat and mouse game, where the GM comes up with a plan and twists and the players face off to come up with a plan to outsmart the GM. Others want nothing to do with planning. Whatever brings your entire group joy, then there is no wrong-bad-fun, as long as you all, as a group are on the same page.

The Social Contract of Planning

The truth is that not all RPGs need the same level of planning, but unless you establish that fact, most players will assume they do. 

Some genres do not lean into detailed plans. Superhero games often rely on bold action and powers to overcome problems, not intricate plans. Pulp games also favor action over plans as well. So as you establish your game, consider what the genre and your setting should favor and then combine that with your play style. 

An example: My players had recently finished a Night’s Black Agents campaign. It was a game where planning was key, and the game had some mechanics to support planning. The players knew not to move from planning to action until they had enough intel. They would sometimes spend a session collecting intel and making a plan. Currently, we are playing Mutants in the Now, a game inspired by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game and comic. In our most recent session, the players were working on a plan for how to attack a Yakuza hotel where some mutant animals were being trafficked. They started to work on a plan worthy of Night’s Black Agents when I reminded them that this game was more action-based. They quickly simplified their plan to “We rappel to the top of the hotel and fight our way to the bottom while rescuing the other mutant animals along the way”. A perfect plan for the setting and genre. 

The key to having players not over-plan is trust between GM and the player. As the GM, I am telling the players that I am not going to punish them for choosing a simple plan. For the players, it is trusting that I am not withholding some key piece of information that would break their simple plan. 

That is not to say you cannot have a twist. The twist is a time-honored trope in all plans. The twist is the unexpected thing that the players have to deal with in the middle of executing the plan which can cause the plan to alter it on the fly. The difference is that what I am promising, as GM, is that the twist will not up-end or thwart the plan. Rather it will be a fun surprise that the characters can deal with.

This is the social contract of planning as a group, for the game you are running (genre and mechanics) and the way you like to play (style). Agree with how much planning is necessary for this game, in general. You can come up with things like this:

• This game is about a sci-fi Spec Ops team, and the mechanics are gritty, you are going to want to have a good plan before executing an operation. 
• This game is about mutant animals fighting other mutant animals and criminals, you don’t need more than a simple plan, as most things you encounter are going to be resolved by fighting.

By doing this you are creating expectations for the whole group on how you should handle planning. This is the social contract that you agree to and guides how you play. Establish this in Session Zero and you can set the tone for planning in your campaign, and help keep planning to exactly what it needs to be for your game.

A quick note. Even after you establish a level of planning as part of your game, you can have a story where you change the amount of planning for that session. All you have to do is indicate to the players the change so that they can reset their expectations.. 

Plan Out Your Planning

Planning is not always fun in games, and it can be worse if you are over or under-planning based on the game you are running. But like most things in RPGs, if we do some upfront communication and set some expectations we can dial in planning to just the right amount for the game we are playing. 

This expectation along with any planning mechanics that the game provides can make planning far less tedious while being effective, and make for an overall play experience. 

How do you handle planning in your games? How do you set those expectations with your players? What planning tools do you use or what planning mechanics do you employ?

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Onyx Path has been around since 2012, taking over the publication of the New World of Darkness RPGs from White Wolf via a licensing agreement. They rechristened the New World of Darkness the Chronicles of Darkness and began producing updated anniversary versions of the original World of Darkness RPGs. All of this got a little more complicated in 2018, when White Wolf’s new owner Paradox Entertainment launched Vampire: the Masquerade 5e and has handed development of the new “fifth edition” versions of Hunter: The Reckoning and Werewolf: The Apocalypse over to Renegade Game Studios.

Onyx Path hasn’t been locked into only producing classic WoD and current CoD RPG supplements. Their RPG IP has been growing with games like Pugmire, the “They Came From . . . “ line of RPGs, and Scion 2e, which is powered by the Storypath System. This is a system that looks familiar to people accustomed to the Storyteller System that powered the classic WoD games, but added some currency spends that allowed for more flexible narrative elements as well as providing the basis for complications and conditions.

Curseborne is a modern-day horror RPG, set in a world of the supernatural known as The Accursed World. Player characters portray afflicted characters who acquire supernatural abilities that recall ghosts, vampires, demons, angels, and sorcerers. What we’re looking at today is the precursor to the full game.

Disclaimer

I picked up the Curseborne: Ashcan Edition when I saw it pop up on DriveThroughRPG and I am not working from a review copy. I have not had the opportunity to play or run Curseborne, but while it utilizes a newer iteration of the Storypath System than the one used for Scion, I do have experience playing Scion in the past.

 Curseborne: Ashcan Edition

Developed and Written by: The Curseborne Team
Editor: Reginald Pewty
Art Direction and Design: Mike Chaney
Layout: Dixie Cochran
Creative Director: Richard Thomas

What’s in an Ashcan?

This PDF is 60 pages long, with a color cover. The interior punctuates the two-column layout with what looks like the Rorschach version of a moth. This includes a Table of Contents, and four ready-made characters. These characters are presented as stat blocks in a chapter, rather than being formatted in character sheet form.

The listing on DriveThroughRPG mentions that a more finished version of the ashcan will be added to your library if you purchase it now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that didn’t include the Ready-Made Characters in character sheet format. If you read this in the future, some of this summary may not match what’s currently available, but I wanted to cover this sooner rather than later.

Concept

As mentioned above, the setting for this game is the Accursed World. It’s named such because all of the supernatural creatures you portray are the result of curses. The types that the ashcan details are:

• The Dead–a dead person who is animating their own body, but can jump to others
• The Hungry–a cursed person that needs to feed on others to empower themselves
• The Outcast–a person with something lurking inside, which could be angelic or demonic
• The Primal–a person with shapeshifting abilities and impulse control issues
• The Sorcerer–a character type that is in the final game, but only gets broadly described here

Each of these lineages can look a lot like the traditional version of, for example, a vampire or a werewolf, but the final rules will have additional options that introduce other wild forms beyond wolves, and other things that The Hungry feeds on that may be more esoteric than blood. If you’re familiar with The Dresden Files books, this is a similar concept to the White Court vampires.

There aren’t a lot of example opponent adversaries in the book, but the ones that appear all tie into the example scenario. This also brings up another aspect of the game, that you may not just be fighting invaders from other realities, other cursed individuals that are less than benevolent, or dangerous non-cursed individuals, but also malevolent conceptual locations.

Threats include Interstitial Zones, liminal spaces that may trap people within them if they cannot determine how to leave, as well as Shattered Spaces, spaces on the borders of reality that actively seek to feed off the people trapped within them and possessed of an antagonistic intelligence.

It’s not explicitly stated that characters are meant to be teenagers or young adults, but there are various passages that reference “adults” as clearly “not you,” and all of the Ready-Made Characters are high school-age people.

How Are We Doing This?

Your successes or failures are based on rolling d10s, with a success on an 8 or higher, or two successes on a 10. You roll a pool based on adding your attribute score to your skill rank. Most checks don’t require you to have multiple successes, however, you may have a number of complications that trigger even if you are successful. You can use extra success to pay off these complications. There are also tricks that you can purchase to enhance what you accomplish. One example of a trick is to do additional damage with an attack.

Some situations will grant the characters Enhancements. Enhancements are bonuses that you add to the successes on the dice, but you can only use them if you have at least one success. You may also have Advantage, which only comes up in contested situations. If your Advantage is significantly higher than your adversary, you may get what you want automatically, without rolling.

The game defines about twenty different conditions. The variety of conditions helps determine the kind of complications that might arise when the Story Guide is setting the stakes of a roll. While there are combat-related conditions like Agony (increased difficulty on tasks) or Bleeding (you take additional injuries if you don’t pay off the ongoing complication), there are also conditions like Guilt-Ridden (you feel so bad about something you need to address, everything that isn’t addressing that situation has an increased difficulty). I’ll just point out, I’m pretty sure I suffer from Confusion, Ennui, Exhausted, and Guilt-Ridden regularly.

One of the game currencies is Momentum, which can be spent to add Enhancements to your rolls, or to move your dice result one step up the ladder (turning a success with complications into a straight success, for example). You can also spend momentum to find evidence when you are in an investigation, or to add a story element to a scene. Every time you fail a check, you add a point of Momentum to your pool.

Characters also have Bonds, which can be positive or negative. These provide a pool of Enhancements that you can add to rolls whenever your action has something to do with the person with whom you have the bond. You have a limited number of bonds, and you can strengthen bonds by spending scenes with the subject of your Bond.

Throwing Down

When you get injured, you move through Injury Levels, which include the following:

• Bloodied
• Wounded
• Maimed
• Near Death

You get bonus dice in certain skills as you get beat up more, until you are Near Death, which gives you bonus dice and Enhancement, but you immediately gain the Taken Out condition after this. Armor, if you have any, adds boxes you can fill with damage before you start taking levels of injuries. I haven’t seen injury levels adding to your ability to succeed in many games outside of 7th Sea 2nd edition, and I like to see it here.

You roll initiative for at the start of an encounter, but that’s only to see who goes first. After that, the player that just acted hands off to the player or character they want to go next. This hybrid of traditional initiative rolls and hand-off initiative is used in Pugmire, and it is welcome to see it appear in these rules, as well. Weapons, like tools, grant Enhancement, and there are several modifying tags that weapons can have, usually no more than two. For example, the Brutal tag makes it cheaper to buy additional damage when you hit an opponent.

Combat uses range bands. Characters can move from Close to Short or Short to Medium as part of whatever else you’re doing. You can Rush as part of a combined action allowing you to charge further and make an attack at the end of your movement. Some areas can have effects applied to them, like Crowded, Darkness, or Overstimulating, which may add complications that you need to buy off when taking action.

Exploring the Curses

Characters have an Entanglement score, which starts at one, and sets the limits for some point spends and resources. Entanglement represents how intertwined you have become with the curse of your lineage. In addition to setting spending and pool limits, Entanglement also sets the number of Curse Dice you start with.

Curse Dice represent potential supernatural power. For each one you have, you replace a regular die with a Curse Die. In addition to the Curse Dice you get for your Entanglement rank, you can accumulate others by playing into your Torments (we’ll come to those below), whenever the crew comes together to start troubleshooting, when you enter certain locations, or when you hit certain roleplaying triggers.

If your Curse Die is one of the dice contributing to your successes, you may do what you intended to do, but too well. You may also attract the attention of various supernatural beings, from otherworldly creatures to the members of your Accursed family. If you fail a check, and none of your Curse Dice are hits . . . the same thing happens except it’s worded more ominously? I understand the narrative concept here is that you may get yourself into trouble because you’re too good, or you may look bad because your power draws attention to you, but it feels a little functionally clouded. If the Curse Dice are too hot or too cold, it may mean the Story Guide will be spending time trying to think of what kind of supernatural attention you have drawn to yourself or sourcing the table for ideas a lot, to the detriment of the current narrative.

When you roll hits on your Curse Dice, you have access to tricks that you can buy with extra successes, that are only available in that circumstance. You can only spend hits from the Curse Die successes for these tricks. Some examples include forming immediate bonds when interacting with others in a social test, hitting everyone in an area with an attack, or picking up on supernatural clues while looking for mundane ones.

You can also Bleed your Curse Dice. That means that you trigger some kind of special ability, roll your check with the Curse Die still in the pool, then remove it after the roll. Some of your special abilities are triggered by Bleeding a die, while others may depend on you having a set number of dice in your pool.

I’m going to slip in a discussion of Damnation here, because it interacts with your Curse Dice. When you no longer have any Curse Dice, you are subject to your Damnation. Most of these have a roleplaying component, as well as the more mechanical provision that the character can’t use spells or gain any new Curse Dice until they perform the action that resolves this instance of their Damnation.

The Dead take risks to make them feel more alive, The Hungry are driven to feed, The Outcast manifest outwardly visible signs of their angelic or demonic glory, and the Primal shifts into their alternate form and tries to establish their dominance in any given situation. The Dead can end this Damnation by performing a meaningful and thoughtful action, The Hungry must feed, The Outcast has to spend time establishing a bond with a normal person to ground them, and The Primal has to inflict one of a number of conditions on a victim for the primal form to be satisfied and recede. All of this reminds me of Monsterheart’s Darkest Self rules. That’s not a bad thing from my point of view.

I’m a little confused at the relationship between Entanglement and your Curse Die limit, because if your Curse Dice are limited by your Entanglement, and starting Entanglement for a game is usually 1, that means you can only have one at a time. If that’s the case, that means any time you trigger one of your special abilities that requires that you Bleed the Curse Die, you’re going to be thrown into your Damnation, some of which would subvert what you are trying to accomplish by triggering those abilities. I feel that what’s actually going on is that at Entanglement 1 you can have X number of Curse Dice, but I can’t find a reference to that in the PDF.

Torments

Different lineages have unique torments, although the final rules will have multiple Torments from which the character can select. Torments are the nagging weight of the reality of your situation, which can drive you to certain actions. Unlike Damnation, these aren’t triggered when you run out of Curse Dice, these exist as roleplaying hooks that you can use to add momentum to the Momentum pool, although in the section on Curse Dice, it also mentions gaining a Curse Die when you roleplay your torment. That’s not mentioned in the explanation of the torments, only in the Curse Die section.

The torments that we see associated with the lineages in the ashcan are as follows:

• Yearning for Life (The Dead)–you become obsessive in making sure the people you care about remember you
• Take What’s Mine (The Hungry)–you claim something that you want that isn’t currently yours, because you deserve whatever you can seize
• Show of Force (The Outcast)–you use disproportionate means to achieve your goals, showing off how much power you have, even if it causes collateral damage
• Elemental Fury (The Primal)–you pick the biggest target to attack, and can’t break off to help your friends or do anything other than take your target down

All these play into the archetype of the lineage well, and I like the ability to trigger your bad habits to build up your resources for later, as a means of rewarding roleplaying. It’s like a more focused version of invoking your own traits against yourself in Fate. The Outcast and The Primal feel a little less varied between their Damnation and their Torments, so I’m interested to see the additional Torments in the full game.

All of these Torments are listed in the section detailing the Accursed, and showing us Torments tied to those themes. The Ready-Made characters also have another Torment on the character sheet that has a title, but no definition in the ashcan. These are referred to as Personal Torments. The additional Torments we see on the characters are:

• Being Denied a Desire
• Elder Abuse
• Seeing the Innocent Harmed
• Being Left Alone or Singled Out

Two of those seem like perfectly normal roleplaying triggers, and two of those really concern me. I don’t know if these are meant to show that the character is tormented by seeing these things, or by performing these actions, but either way, that’s some very loaded content to add into your game. You may say, “different tables need to determine their own boundaries, as long as they are being safe,” and to that I would say, these are example characters meant to be played in a short scenario to show off the system. Maybe don’t hit the accelerator quite so hard.

Edges and Practices

These are straightforward, especially if you’ve seen other Onyx Path games. Edges are like edges, feats, or talents from a variety of games. They’re special abilities that thematically modify the game rules in your favor.

Practices are spells, supernatural rituals or actions that characters can take, some of which are native to a single lineage, and some of which can be broadly learned by students of the occult. Most of these require you to Bleed your Curse Die, but some can only be accessed if you are holding a set number of Curse Dice.

Qualities and Dread Powers

There aren’t a lot of adversaries in the ashcan, which is understandable. On the other hand, there are several Qualities and Dread Powers, rules modules that you can plug into an Adversary to help define what they can do in the game. You may get some extra mileage from the few stat blocks in the ashcan by mixing and matching these. Some examples include Clear Vision, which means the Adversary can see through magical and mundane disguises, or Invulnerability, which means the Adversary can only be harmed by a specific weakness.

The active side of traits, the Dread Powers, includes things like Bend Minds, which can allow the Adversary to take control of its opponents, Consume, which lets the Adversary chew on something substantial from a victim to remove injuries, or Devour, which allows large Adversaries to completely swallow their foes.

The Scenario

This one is short, and I won’t go into too many details, but it touches on some of the things explained about the setting in the rest of the ashcan. Some of the challenges are dealing with everyday frustrations, there is some investigation to find out what has happened to a missing friend who isn’t Accursed, and the characters may have to reckon with a malevolent location to find out what’s going on.

Style

I did want to touch on an aspect of the rules that may not be relevant for many people and is the most subjective part of what I’m writing in this First Impression. The chapter that introduces you to the lineages has introductory fiction where characters speak directly to you, the reader, as if you are a character in their world. This isn’t particularly strange for this style of RPG, and it’s been the custom in one way or another since the 90s.

I’m worn out by it. Having the in-world narrator talk to me, as I try to put myself in the place of someone in this world, and immediately begin to berate and belittle, while also talking about how tough they are leaves me cold. When I’m trying to acclimate to a new setting, I don’t need the default view to be someone that is hopelessly naive, probably doomed, and definitely pathetic, and I don’t need the person introducing me to that world to be cool and tough and edgy and to put me in my place. It feels like the pervasive adversarial tone says more about how to roleplay in the setting than anything in the Story Guide section. It also feels like a misplaced remnant in this book.

In a lot of the World of Darkness games, you have a reason to be associated with others. You’re part of a vampiric tradition or a pack. You can all hate each other and still be forced to work with one another. In this book, you’re people that are striking out away from their families, trying not to fall into the same negative patterns embraced by a lot of the Accursed. You’re forming bonds and working with friends. Even the example scenario is about trying to find out what happened to one of your mortal, non-Accursed friends. The adversarial in-world introductions seem at odds with the narratives introduced in the setting and reinforced in the example scenario, and feel like a misplaced remnant of World of Darkness games.

Final Thoughts

 I like that this feels a little scaled back and built to mix supernatural creatures from the start. 

As someone with a lot of affection for Scion 2e, and who appreciates the changes made to the core system compared to Scion 1e, I enjoy seeing the Storypath System being used for a wider number of games. As someone who enjoys the contemporary fantasy/horror genre, a game setting with monsters, magic, and supernatural complications is something I’m on board for.

I like how some concepts have been taken into this game and remixed to do something different. I like that this feels a little scaled back and built to mix supernatural creatures from the start. Even the means of introducing lineages that can look like the most traditional versions of the things you know but allowing them to swap in abilities that drift them from their expected archetypes is appreciated.

I like a lot of the components that make up this system. I think the bonds are a great way of mechanically reinforcing the connections your players will want to have with each other and NPCs. I am a fan of the general concept of what the Damnations and the Torments are doing, and I think they are moving in the right direction. I think I’ll like the ebb and flow of trying to decide if I want to Bleed Curse Dice or use them for stunts or other effects, once I understand what the actual economy of those dice looks like.

I’m hoping for some additional calibration to take place. Individual rules are easy to grasp, but a few connecting points are a little blurry to me. I need to know if this is a game about high schoolers trying to figure out who they are as they realize the world is worse than they thought, or if this is a game that is meant to be about people of different ages navigating supernatural politics while potentially becoming more monstrous, because some of the tone introduced in the book leans one way, and some of it leans the other. I also really hope that some of those Torments get reworked in their wording to make them less aggressive and that we get a clearer idea if this game wants you to be someone regularly doing not just bad things, but very uncomfortable things, to build up game currencies.

There is so much in this ashcan that is intriguing, I had to move it up to the top of my pile of first impressions and reviews. There is so much potential for this game to be exactly the kind of game I want. I just need to see the edges defined a little bit more before I know for sure.

Update: It slipped my mind that some of the Ready-Made characters have references which clearly place reference college. For some reason I took the coffee shop antagonists as older than the Ready-Made characters. Sorry for any confusion.

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The devs of Coridden want your feedback: We need your feedback! Greetings, Shifters! We wanted to give you a quick update on what's going on at Coridden  Right now, we're in the middle of a playtest, and we're testing out an Alpha build of the game.... Read more »

Ye Old Entertainment checked out SKALD: Against the Black Priory: Skald Review: How does it compare to Moonring? Is this RPG worth getting? Thanks Couchpotato! Read more »

 The Crucible update for No Rest for the Wicked is now live: The Crucible | Community Update The Crucible update is now live! Check out what’s been added to No Rest for the Wicked. Greetings Cerim, we appreciate your patience as it’s been a while since our last official communication.... Read more »

After many years 7 Days to Die is out of Early Access: 1.0 is Now Out! The 1.0 release of 7 Days to Die is out! The Fun Pimps are pleased to announce the 1.0 release of 7 Days to Die is out on Steam, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Windows platforms.... Read more »

RPFan talks about RPGs that haven't reached Europe yet: The Classic RPGs that Skipped Europe I got my first console back in the late nineties when I was around twelve — a PS1. In the preceding months, I spent hours thumbing through gaming magazines and getting excited about specifically playing Final Fantasy VIII (which was due out soon) and Final Fantasy VII (which I’d bought a magazine walkthrough for even though I didn’t yet own the game).... Read more »

RPG Site interviewed Toshihiro Kondo: The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak & Ys X: Nordics Interview - A conversation with Toshihiro Kondo Right before Anime Expo 2024, we were offered the chance to sit down with Nihon Falcom's president Toshihiro Kondo to discuss the recently released Trails through Daybreak, the upcoming localization for Ys X: Nordics, and much more.... Read more »

The 2D-Platformer Metal Slug: Awakening is now available: Metal Slug: Awakening - Official Trailer Thanks Couchpotato!   Read more »

Mortismal Gaming checked out Drakensang: The River Of Time: Drakensang: The River Of Time - First Impressions Thanks Couchpotato! Read more »

Mirthwood will be released on September 11: Mirthwood - Official Simulated World Trailer Read more »

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The Kickstarter for my latest book, The City of Arches, begins August 6th! Sign up to be notified on the launch of this high-fantasy city sourcebook for Lazy GMs!

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1. The DM describes the environment.
2. The players describe what they want to do.
3. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers’ actions.

The above list is taken from page 6 of the 2014 D&D Player's Handbook. It's the core interaction of D&D 5e.

It seems simple – almost too simple to be worth paying attention to – but it's critical to the game and things can go sideways when we forget about it.

5e, and probably most RPGs, might be described as a large network of nodes, each node containing those three steps within them. An adventure or session is built from dozens of those three-step nodes. Each node leads to new nodes based on the results of the previous node.

And here's a key point to internalize:

*We don't know which path of nodes we'll follow until they happen.

It's folly for us to hang on to the idea that we know exactly what's coming — what the players are going to do and how the world reacts to their actions. We rarely do.

Adjudicating the Results of the Players' Actions

For GMs, the biggest step of the core mechanic is step three – narrating the results. We describe the situation, the character describes their intention, and we figure out whether they can do what they want, what other options we might present as alternatives, and what happens afterwards.

If their action is easy, they just do it. You don't need to roll to put your pants on. Not all GMs get this. A lot of player intentions and character actions fall into this category. The GM describes the situation, the player describes what they want to do, the GM determines if there's difficulty or risk, and the character does it if not. The situation resolves and we're on to a new node.

Sometimes players want their characters to do something risky or difficult. This situation is where ability checks come in. If something is risky or hard, the DM determines the difficulty and applicable ability or skill, and the player rolls a d20. Based on the roll, the GM adjudicates the result, leading to a new node.

Lots of other things can happen based on what the player wants to do. They could cast a spell or punch someone or do anything else. We adjudicate those actions too and the story moves on.

Studying the Basics

It's important to review the core mechanic from time to time. It's easy to get caught up in sub-systems or big world plots or detailed combat encounter building and forget what makes the game move forward. It also gives us a great reminder that the thing we should spend the most time doing is understanding what's going on in the world so we can describe it accurately to the players. When the game feels complicated, remember it's all about those three steps and the unforeseen network of actions and results that propels the story forward and makes our worlds unique.

• Describe the situation.
• Let the player describe what they want to do.
• Adjudicate the results.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Using an Oracle Die and The Death of Moragin – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 37 Lazy GM Prep.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

• ENnie Voting Goes Live!
• Dyson Maps Bundle of Holding
• Level Up Gateway Online Character Builder
• City of Arches Kickstarter Coming August 6th
• Top Ten Lazy 5e Tricks

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

• What Would I do If I Was In Charge of D&D?
• Magic Numbers to Keep In Your Head

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• Shake up adventure types across your campaign: dungeon crawls, infiltrations, investigations, intrigue, overland exploration, and so on.
• Include upward beats in your dungeon crawls.
• Plant future adventure seeds in your existing session. Outline three possible adventure options revealed and decided upon before the end of your next session.
• Clarify where rests can take place and where they can’t.
• Show pictures of NPCs.
• Give characters a home base or common hangout. Don’t constantly threaten it.
• Ask players how much leeway you have to integrate their backgrounds into the campaign. Don’t change a player’s character away from their intent.

Related Articles

• What Does Your Room Look Like?
• High Value Prep
• Running Dungeon Crawls

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

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The Kickstarter for my latest book, The City of Arches, begins August 6th! Sign up to be notified on the launch of this high-fantasy city sourcebook for Lazy GMs!

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Over at the Sly Flourish Patreon I get asked where ideas for our games come from. For me, great ideas come from great fiction.

Chapter 25 of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master offers a list of fiction I found fueled my own GM's brain attic. It's been a few years so I extended the list with the one below.

These books, TV shows, movies, and games are sources of fiction that spoke to me. They may not speak to you. Instead, write up and share your own list.

Books

• Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames
• East of West by Jonathan Hickman
• Fairy Tale by Stephen King
• Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
• Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin
• Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

TV Shows

• Andor
• Book of Boba Fett
• Castlevania
• Dark
• Dracula by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat
• For All Mankind
• Good Omens
• Locke and Key
• Love, Death, and Robots
• Mandalorian
• Midnight Mass
• One Piece
• Peaky Blinders
• The Expanse
• The Outsider
• The Witcher

Movies

• American Werewolf in London
• Avengers Infinity War & End Game
• Blade Runner 2049
• Clash of the Titans (the old 1981 one)
• Color Out of Space
• Doctor Sleep
• Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves
• Dune part 1 & 2 (Denis Villeneuve)
• Eternals
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Hereditary
• It Chapters 1 and 2
• John Wick 1-4
• Midsommar
• Nope
• Pan's Labyrinth
• Prey
• Snowpiercer
• Tenet
• The Endless
• The Green Knight
• The Witch
• Thor Love and Thunder
• Wakanda Forever

Games

• Baldur's Gate 3
• Diablo 4
• Elden Ring
• Horizon Forbidden West
• Remnant 2

Other RPG Products

The amount of material published for fantasy RPGs is tremendous and it's all useful to fire up your imagination. Borrowing ideas for your game from published RPG material is a time-honored tradition. Wolfgang Baur, lead kobold at Kobold Press, said that people stealing ideas from Midgard and bringing them into their own world was his greatest hope for the setting.

For some excellent 5e-based products to boost your creativity, check out Notable 5e Products and Ten Notable 5e Products for 2022.

Shaking Up Your Brain with Random Tables

Another great tool to shake up your brain and generate some great ideas are random tables and generators. Whether it's a random monument, NPC generator, magic item, or something bigger like a whole world; random tables get your mind out of a groove and push it in a new direction.

I built the Lazy DM's Companion with this need in mind. It offers story-based adventure ideas, each with lists of twenty options for several variables to give you all new ideas.

It's Jaws but with a chaotic chimera awoken from a long slumber that sprays acid living in a volcanic cave protected by hags and hunted by greedy bandits.

Raging Swan has some awesome random tables if you're looking for random tables beyond those in the Companion.

Fill Your Mind Palace

Generating good ideas comes from all of the sources you let into your brain and the practice of transforming them into new ideas. Our favorite RPGs let us do this transformation every week if we exercise it. Watch some great shows, play with some random tables, and draw upon your own list of awesome ideas for your game.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Excellent Short-Form 5e Adventure Publishers and Ulgar – Champion of Ramlaat – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 36 Lazy GM Prep.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

• City of Arches Kickstart Coming August 6th!
• The Negative Feedback of D&D Beyond's Exclusive Offers
• The Lost Modularity of D&D and How to Get it Back
• Is Shadowdark the Best D&D Starter Set?
• The SlyFlourish.com Downloadable Archive

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

• Lazy DMing with Virtual Tabletops (VTTs)
• How Do We Feel About D&D 2024?

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• Give two or three paths for longer journeys to adventure locations.
• Break up travel with interesting encounters at fantastic locations.
• Add interesting lore to typical random encounters.
• Stage random encounters at notable locations.
• Give the characters the latest news through town or city heralds.
• Let the characters see the long term results of their heroic actions.
• Give the characters a nice coffee shop they enjoy hanging out at between adventures.

Related Articles

• Good Books of Random Tables
• What Is 5e?
• My Favorite TTRPG Products of 2023

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

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The Kickstarter for my latest book, The City of Arches, begins August 6th! Sign up to be notified on the launch of this high-fantasy city sourcebook for Lazy GMs!

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I'm not going to spend a lot of time on details but I wasn't a fan of the plot of WOTC's Vecna – Eve of Ruin adventure. Without spoiling, I'll say that the adventure hinges on one bit of deception that, when revealed, unravels the whole purpose of the rest of the adventure.

But fear not! We can build our own Vecna adventure!

This article contains a campaign outline you can use directly or use to inspire your own Vecna-based multiverse-spanning adventure. You can use it to refactor material from Vecna – Eve of Ruin or you can save yourself $60 and build your own Vecna-based adventure exactly the way you want it.

Here's one potential outline for your own Vecna-based adventure.

Vecna's Motivation

As a mortal-become-god, Vecna continually sought the one thing he wanted most – power. Until, at the culmination of his might, he realized his folly. In his quest for power, he lost his happiest moment forever – a moment side-by-side with his partner, Kas, before the two of them began their individual quests for power. This drive for power destroyed them, sending Kas to the domain of Dread known as Torvag after his betrayal of Vecna and Vecna on his insatiable quest for godhood.

Realizing his loss and recognizing he can never find that happiness again, Vecna seeks to undo reality. He wants to roll back the multiverse to the moment before he and Kas focused on power above all, leading to Kas's betrayal. In doing so, he will destroy everything and everyone in all worlds that followed after that one moment.

Thus, Vecna travels to Pandemonium to conduct the ritual of unmaking and it's up to our heroes to stop him.

Kas and the Cult of Vengeance

In their search for power, Vecna and Kas once stood side by side. Vecna forged a powerful weapon and gifted it to Kas, the legendary Sword of Kas. None know what led to Kas's betrayal. Some say the sword itself suggested it to Kas. But it's well known that in his attempt to slay Vecna and usurp his power, Vecna lost his eye and his hand while Kas lost his life – becoming a vampire trapped in the prison world of Torvag, bound by the chains of the Dark Powers.

Kas now believes he has escaped his prison world of Torvag not realizing the Dark Powers holding him there wanted him to escape. Along with his fanatical followers, Kas plots revenge against Vecna. He seeks the Rod of Seven Parts, spread across several worlds of the multiverse: Oerth, Athas, Krynn, Toril, Eberron, Barovia, and the Astral Sea. Kas knows only the rod, and the entity it releases, can give him the power needed to defeat Vecna. With the Rod of Seven Parts in his possession, he can call forth one of the most powerful horrors in the multiverse, Miska the Wolf Spider.

Kas's Cult of Vengeance spreads out across these worlds seeking the pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts.

Heroes of the Wizards Three

Our heroes begin by infiltrating a forgotten temple deep beneath Neverwinter where they face a powerful cult of worshippers of Vecna, including a lich in his service. After the lich's defeat, the characters discover that Vecna has begun a ritual of unmaking in the plane of Pandemonium. They are contacted by three wizards – Mordenkainen, Alustriel, and Tasha.

The wizards three know the only way to defeat Vecna is to gather the pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts which can pierce through his divinity and bring him down to his original archlich self. They are currently unaware that Kas too seeks pieces of the rod. The wizards aid the characters by discovering locations where the pieces might be found, teleporting the characters to those locations, and attempting to contact the gods for aid (which is unsuccessful – the gods simply don't believe them or the severity of the threat.)

Quests Across the Multiverse

The wizards offer three locations to the characters where the wizards know pieces of the rod might be kept. When the characters reach the second location, they run into members of Kas's Cult of Vengeance also seeking the pieces of the rod. The piece at the third location, the wizards discover, has already been captured by Kas's cultists. The wizards then offer the next three locations.

After the characters return from their fourth world, the cult of Kas has recovered two pieces from two other worlds, leaving a final piece in play. At this final location, the characters face the strongest followers of Kas and attempt to recover a fifth piece.

Final Confrontations with Kas, Miska, and Vecna

With their own pieces in possession and knowing that Kas has the remaining two pieces, they travel to the prison realm of Miska the Wolf Spider. There they face Kas, weakened by his lack of pieces of the rod, and Miska. Should they successfully defeat the two forces, the characters receive all seven parts of the rod.

With all seven pieces in hand, the characters assemble the rod and face Vecna himself in the center of Pandemonium. Their use of the rod makes the elder god mortal once again, though extremely powerful. If the characters succeed, the multiverse is saved. If they fail, all reality is unmade to a time thousands of years previous – the last happy moment for the archlich.

Level Progression

This campaign would begin at 12th level and take the characters to 20th level before they face Vecna. Adventure progression is as follows:

• Defeat the Cult of Vecna – 13th Level
• Recover the first piece of the rod – 14th Level
• Recover the second piece of the rod – 15th Level
• Recover the third piece of the rod – 16th Level
• Recover the fourth piece of the Rod – 17th Level
• Recover the fifth piece of the Rod – 18th Level
• Defeat Kas – 19th Level
• Defeat Miska – 20th Level
• Face Vecna

Choosing Locations

This campaign outline lets you choose which worlds you want to offer to the characters. You can choose whatever worlds are meaningful to you and your players. This way the players can choose which ones they want to visit. Let them know that they only get to choose two of the three before the piece of the rod at the third is taken by the cult.

You can choose one world for the final piece of the rod if you have a favorite.

You can add your own side-quests as well. Perhaps the wizards send the characters to worlds where Kas's cult already acquired a piece in order to learn more information. The characters might also go to Kas's former prison domain of Torvag. Perhaps the characters can unravel why the Dark Powers released Kaz in the first place. Perhaps those Dark Powers seek Vecna himself to add to their terrible menagerie of villains. You can expand this campaign wherever your shared story takes you.

Your Own Take on Classic D&D Worlds

This outline gives you freedom to build a flexible campaign for your players based on the material you want to run and your players' choices. Choose the worlds and sites you want to visit. Choose a map, select inhabitants, add some secrets and clues, reskin some monsters, and bathe it in the lore of these classic worlds to build awesome adventures for your group.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Splitting Up Components of your Game Prep and Last Watch – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 35 Lazy GM Prep.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

• Dyson's Delves Bundle of Holding
• Monte Cook Games 50% off 5e Products
• D&D 2024 Class Videos
• 2024 D&D Needed a DM Advocate
• WOTC Says the Quiet Part Out Loud
• Is Tales of the Valiant the 2024 D&D We Want?
• Comparing Four Versions of 5e
• Expanding Tales of the Valiant's Doom Points

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

• Running Games for Young Neurodivergent Kids
• Comparing Monster Spellcaster Styles
• Asking Questions to Players Without Tipping Your Hand
• Tips for On-Call Players and Their Characters
• Tips for Evaluating Published Adventures
• Missing Stat Block Info When Running Monsters
• Why Are Gaming PDFs Crappy for So Many Devices? Publishers, Publish ePub!

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• If players have a name for an NPC different from yours, go with their names.
• Build NPCs from goals and motivations. Get into their heads and react as they would.
• Reskin monsters often to make each one unique. A simple skeleton can be a skeletal jailer with a cage over their skulls or a blackfire skeleton that does necrotic damage instead of piercing and slashing.
• Assume one scene for every 45 minutes of gameplay.
• Take breaks every 90 minutes or so.
• Leave time at the beginning and end of your game for chit-chat.
• Add environmental effects and options that showcase the characters and their abilities.

Related Articles

• Bathe Your World in Lore
• Spiral Campaign and World Building in D&D
• Lightning Rods – Showcase Powerful Character Abilities

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

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The Kickstarter for my latest book, The City of Arches, begins August 6th! Sign up to be notified on the launch of this high-fantasy city sourcebook for Lazy GMs!

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Though the technology is 5,000 years old, there are new tricks we can learn to more effectively use paper character sheets in our TTRPGs. Using paper character sheets gives us a degree of flexibility and resilience we lose when relying on digital tools. Get used to using paper-based tools and find ways to make them as easy and fun as possible to use.

Why Use Paper?

With all of the awesome technology we have these days, why would we ever consider using paper-based character sheets? Here are some reasons:

Flexibility. Paper character sheets don't lock you into whatever a digital tool wants you to fill in. You can write anything you want, any way you want, on your paper sheet. It fits core rules, rules published by other publishers, or your own house rules. Nothing is locked in.

Disconnection. In our always-on digital world, sometimes it's nice to set our electronics aside and live in the moment with our friends and our physical character sheets. Even for the roughly half of surveyed DMs and players who play online, you can still enjoy using a paper-based character sheet and keep your online tools focused on communication instead of game management.

Resilience. Paper-based sheets can last a long time – far longer than electronic records, tools, services, or devices. If you care for them, your character sheets can last your whole life. You can also take pictures of them if you want online versions.

Independence. Removing your reliance on digital tools means you never need to worry what direction a particular digital tool takes. If you're comfortable using physical books and paper-based character sheets – nothing can change that situation. No one can remove or edit your existing physical books. If you rely on remotely managed digital tools, you must live with whatever the company running that tool wants to do with it.

Nostalgia. There's something fun about playing these games we love the same way people played them fifty years ago. Regardless of the technological advances in that time, we can still enjoy the game the same way it was enjoyed half a century ago.

Top Tips for Paper-Based Character Sheets

Here are some top tips for using paper-based character sheets.

Write Down Page Numbers. Write down page numbers of spells and class features on your sheet. Use your character sheet like a custom index of the rules in your RPG sourcebook you need to run your character.

Use Index Cards. Use index cards to track continually changing features like hit points, damage, short rests, luck points, spell slots, and other consumables. GMs can write down magic items and their effects on index cards or print them out on small pieces of paper you can hand out to players when they're acquired. Use paper clips to keep index cards organized.

Use Sheet Protectors and Dry-Erase Markers. Some players use sheet protectors to make their entire character sheet a dry-erasable white board. Others put pieces of packing tape or dry-erase tape over key areas of their character sheet like the hit point box.

Use Quality Paper. Print character sheets on good quality 32 pound paper. It's more durable and feels great.

Other Quick Tips

Here's a selection of other quick tips from players and GMs on EN World and YouTube:

• Write lightly with a pencil so it's easy to erase.
• Use a kneaded eraser so you don't wear out your sheets.
• Transfer character info over to a new character sheet when your current one gets too messy but keep your old ones.
• Use different colored pencils or highlighters to note different features, abilities, or action types.
• Use a pen to draw boxes for limited abilities like long rests, short rests, or spell slots. Use a pencil to mark them off so you can erase only the checks.
• Track damage received, not hit points remaining. It's faster to add than subtract.
• Organize actions by action type – actions, bonus actions, reactions, etc. Note action types next to abilities (Action, Bonus, Reaction, Move, etc.)
• Make quick-reference sheets or cards to remind you of your character's primary actions during the game.
• Draw pictures of your character. Let yourself be a kid again.
• Enjoy the soda stains, scribbles, and other bits of wear and tear. These marks make your sheet unique in the world.

Enjoy Your Analog Game

Tabletop roleplaying games are so different from the digital entertainment that surrounds us. We control our games. We run our games. No one but us and our group decides what game to run or how to run it.

Embrace pencils, papers, and books. Enjoy the game using tools humankind has used for thousands of years and keep your game flexible, resilient, and fun.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on the Two Different Games at our RPG Table and War on Nighthaven – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 34 Lazy GM Prep.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

• Esper Genesis on Bundle of Holding
• Magic Item Card Generator by Inkwell Ideas
• 2024 D&D Core Book Videos
• D&D 2024 Monster Stat Block -- Yuck
• The 2024 D&D Players Handbook is the Only Book that Matters
• The Specifics of D&D 2024 Compatibility with 5e
• Mobile Character Builder for D&D 2024 on Roll20
• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master On Sale
• Use NPC Archetypes from a Single Show

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

• What Digital Tools Would Help Us?
• Managing Teleportation in Campaigns
• How Would I Run Vecna Eve of Ruin
• How Do You Run Maps?

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• Know your players’ tolerance for tales of horror and gore.
• Ask yourself what worked well in your last game. What can be improved?
• Draw small maps on a dry-erase mat as players explore a dungeon.
• Shake up your ideas with random tables.
• Print and collect your favorite random tables from your most valued sources of such tables.
• Write down notes at the end of the game you know you’ll need in your next game’s prep.
• State clearly the goal and reward for the characters’ exploration.

Related Articles

• Write Down Page Numbers on D&D Prep Notes and Character Sheets
• Using Maps for In-Person Games
• Tools of the Lazy Dungeon Master

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

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The Kickstarter for my latest book, The City of Arches, begins August 6th! Sign up to be notified on the launch of this high-fantasy city sourcebook for Lazy GMs!

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Having your players build out parts of the world in which you play can seem daunting. The world's a big place! What if they take off in six different directions? You now have to tie these scattered ideas together and make them true.

There are, however, a few ways to draw on our players' imaginations to build out smaller pieces of the world.

"Describe your killing blow" is an easy way to draw players into the fiction of the game instead of thinking just about their mechanics during combat.

"Describe an interesting physical characteristic of this enemy" gives players agency over a small part of the fiction that also helps manage combat by giving unique ways to identify enemies. See A Troll Named Handbag.

Here's another one:

"What does your room look like?"

When the characters get some sort of home base, be it a room at an inn, a fancy manor, or a flying airship; give each of the characters their own spot in this home base. Then ask them "what does your room look like?"

It's like giving the characters a chance to build out their own dorm room however they want. Do they build a nest? Do they set up a secret passage to the cargo hold below? Do they adorn it with trophies of their defeated foes? Each character's room often matches their personality. Thus, as they describe it, you learn more about the characters.

Write It Down

Write down your players' descriptions of their new domiciles so you can draw upon them in later sessions. Don't put these areas under threat without careful thought. Bring up scenes in their rooms and recall what they described so they remember it and they know you paid attention. When you describe it, it feels that much more real.

Find ways to draw our players into the world – even if it's just one small detail. When you tie those things to the characters, it strengthens the whole game. Players relate better to their own characters. You relate better to their characters. Their characters bond more with each other and the world around them. The whole bond of the game gets stronger.

Next time they're in their home base, ask your players to describe what their characters' room looks like.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on The Skull of Memnon – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 33 Lazy GM Prep.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

• WOTC Begins Posting to EN World
• Solodark for Shadowdark RPG
• More Purple More Better Character Builder for 5e
• 5e Artisanal Monster Database
• Finding Players and Building a Resilient Group

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

• Allowing Alternative Character Options
• Uses for Generative AI and RPGs -- Is it Cheating?

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• End the current session after the characters have chosen a clear path for the next one.
• Prep one scene per 45 minutes of gameplay.
• Build scenes from fantastic locations, interesting NPCs, and intriguing secrets.
• Try to include one battle, one roleplay scene, and some interesting exploration in a session.
• Build secrets from the characters outwards.
• Ask players what their characters’ dwelling is like.
• Write down where your session ended and any major plot arcs or NPCs the characters met.

Related Articles

• Focus Extra Prep Time on the Characters
• Build from the Characters Outwards
• Calm Pre-Game Nerves with Session-Focused Character Hooks

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

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The Kickstarter for my latest book, The City of Arches, begins August 6th! Sign up to be notified on the launch of this high-fantasy city sourcebook for Lazy GMs!

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I've been enjoying running a lot of Shadowdark RPG games recently, the prep of which you can watch on my Shadowdark Prep YouTube Videos channel. During this campaign we began the process of crawling hexes through the Gloaming, the setting from Cursed Scroll 1. It's a lot of fun but I wanted to refine the process for more easily running the hex crawl.

There's many tools and processes for running hex crawls – and the whole topic is new to me. I wanted an easy and straightforward process for running hexes and here it is.

While I put this together in consideration of my Shadowdark RPG, these thoughts and steps can be just as easily used in a 5e fantasy game like D&D.

Planning a Hex Crawl

Here's my abbreviated list of steps for planning out a hex crawl. When prepping a hex crawl determine

• the planned destination, direction, distance, speed, and terrain covered.
• the roles each character takes in the exploration.
• the risk and danger of travel.
• the weather.
• the possibility of getting lost.
• interesting monuments they might find along the way.
• potential random encounters.
• the expense of rations or other consumables.

Let's look at each of these as steps for our hex crawl.

Plan the Destination, Direction, Distance, Speed, and Terrain

Where do you want to go? What direction will you take? How far is it in hexes and how much does each hex represent? What terrain does it cover? How fast are you going to go? How easy is it to get lost?

We can offer meaningful choices here for the characters. Do they want the well-maintained road but run into gossipy or shady travelers more often or take the back paths and risk dangerous monsters?

You can usually determine the answers to these questions once for the whole journey.

Choose Character Roles

What roles do the characters take during the hex crawl? I like the following three roles, each which results in a potential ability check. Multiple characters can take on a single role, granting advantage to the character with the highest ability bonus for the check.

• Pathfinder. Intelligence (History) or Wisdom (Nature, Survival). Characters taking on this role help ensure the group stays on track and heads in the right direction. They reference maps and physical distinguishing features to ensure the characters don't lose their way. The harder the path they follow, the higher the DC will be. Traveling along a road or well-known path is an automatic success but can become dangerous if hostile creatures control the road.

• Scout. Wisdom (Perception, Investigation). Characters taking on this role keep an eye out for nasty creatures and signs of recent activity (or activities yet to come). They're watching out for trouble.

• Quartermaster. Wisdom (Nature, Survival). Characters taking on this role ensure the health and well-being of the party. They make sure food stays unspoiled, enough water stays on hand, everyone's staying well-fed and well-hydrated, and everyone's socks are clean.

You can usually determine roles once for the whole journey.

Determine Danger

How dangerous is the path? In Shadowdark, the level of danger changes how often you roll for random encounters. You can do the same thing in your 5e games. The scout's job is to try to detect these dangers before they run right up and bite you.

You can usually determine the overall threat once for the whole journey unless you're traversing different biomes where the threat of danger changes.

Determine Weather

What's the weather like? You can use a simple table-less system of rolling a die. The higher the result, the more extreme the weather.

You could also come up with your own custom weather table for your particular region. The book Uncharted Journeys has a lot of outstanding examples of weather for different regions (as well as lots of other material related to making longer journeys across the land).

Determine weather daily.

Determine the Risk of Getting Lost

If the characters are going off the beaten path, your pathfinder determines whether you get lost or not. Depending on how nit-picky you want to be about checks, you can roll on behalf of the pathfinder so players don't know how well they did. If they fail, you decide which direction they headed towards instead or roll for it.

Determine the risk of loss once per hex.

Choose Monuments

If you want to fill in the hex with something interesting, you can drop in a monument flavored with lore from your campaign or world. Monuments are fantastic vehicles for secrets and clues and create a backdrop for any potential encounter the characters run into.

Select monuments once per hex.

Roll or Drop In Random Encounters

For Shadowdark you roll random encounters based on the danger of the situation and the time taken for travel. On a 1 on a 1d6, the characters face an encounter. You might instead determine that an encounter fits well for the pacing of the game and drop it in. You'd want to roll for or determine the distance, potential detection of the characters, and behavior as well. An easy table-less way to do this is to roll for distance (the lower the roll, the closer they are) and motivation (the higher the roll, the more hostile they are).

Even if the characters don't run into a random encounter, they might find indications of one – either one that already passed by or one coming soon. You can roll for two encounters and find the remains of the situation in which those two encounters clashed. Combining two encounters is a fun way to give the characters something to investigate without running an entire encounter.

Shadowdark has random encounters right in the book. If you want some excellent 5e random encounters, check out A5e's Trials and Treasure.

Determine random encounters once per hex. The more dangerous the terrain, the greater the chance based on your roll (1 on 1d6, 1-2 on 1d6, or 1-3 on 1d6).

Expend Resources

If you're tracking rations and other consumables, track expended resources daily. How many torches did it take to start a fire? How many rations did the characters need to eat to get a full rest? If you're looking to add resource management to your 5e games, Level Up Advanced 5e has a "supply" system for doing so.

If your game is more heroic, high-fantasy with all your goodberries and create foods and drinks, you may not need to worry about it.

Determine resources expended daily.

Summarizing the Steps

Here's a checklist for running our simplified hex crawl:

1. Each journey – determine the destination, direction, distance, speed, and terrain.
2. Each journey – have players select roles – pathfinder, scout, or quartermaster.
3. Each journey or change in terrain – determine the overall danger level.
4. Each day – determine weather.
5. Each hex – determine the risk of getting lost.
6. Each hex – choose or roll for a monument if desired.
7. Each dangerous period – roll for or select a random encounter, signs of previous activity, or signs of activity yet to come.
8. Each day – expend resources.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Reach and Run Awesome Campaign Conclusions and Vault of Memnon – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 32 Lazy GM Prep.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

• Happy Pride Month
• How to Get More Engagement on YouTube!
• Roll20 Buys Demiplane
• Voidrunner for 5e by EN World Publishing
• Infiltration of Bonespur Keep
• Organize Your Gaming PDFs
• Searching PDFs on MacOS
• Search PDFs with Finder on the Mac
• Alfred for Searching PDFs on a Mac
• Search PDFs with Ripgrep All

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

• Getting Excited for Longform Campaigns
• Contingencies for TPKs

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• Build a resilient group by having six full time players and two on call players. Run with as few as four and it takes five cancellations before you can’t run a game.
• Build episodic campaigns like a tv serial so it doesn’t matter too much if a particular player can’t make it.
• Keep lair-style adventures on hand for side quests and improvised sessions.
• Describe, don’t define.
• Keep passive perceptions in front of you. Tell players what their characters see.
• Add healing potions to loot hoards generously.
• Tie NPCs the characters saved to more important NPCs so the players can see the benefits of their actions.

Related Articles

• Running Overland Exploration and Travel Adventures
• Exploring Chult
• Running Travel Scenes in 5e

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

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The Kickstarter for my latest book, The City of Arches, begins August 6th! Sign up to be notified on the launch of this high-fantasy city sourcebook for Lazy GMs!

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Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master offers eight steps for game preparation to help GMs focus on the most valuable material one can prepare to help them improvise during their game. These steps include:

• Review the characters
• Create a strong start
• Outline potential scenes
• Define secrets and clues
• Develop fantastic locations
• Outline important NPCs
• Choose relevant monsters
• Select magic item rewards

Not all steps make sense for all games or all GMs, of course. They hopefully help GMs focus on the critical aspects we often need to run our games.

But how do we actually use these steps at the table? Preparing them is one thing – how they manifest during the game is something else. Return discusses this topic too – and if you're having trouble, consider giving the book another read – but it doesn't focus on how we directly use these steps to run a game.

Prepping Dishes to Cook at the Table

I like to use the metaphor that using the eight steps during our game is like preparing ingredients ahead of time to cook at the table – like a big hibachi dinner. We don't cook the full meal and just plop it out. We have our dishes ready to improvise the meal as we go. It's not a perfect metaphor but it may help clarify that we prepare components to piece together during the game.

Preparing to Improvise

Often GMs prep scenes intended to be run one after the other. Each scene has all the components it needs to run like the location, NPCs, situation, monsters, and other stuff. This style doesn't lead towards the flexibility we often need when the players make a choice we didn't expect.

The eight steps don't help you build a procedural set of scenes run one after the other. Thus, the material you prepare doesn't fit perfectly into each scene of the game. Most of the steps give you materials you can drop in at the right time. Secrets, locations, NPCs, monsters, and treasure can come up at different times depending on how the game plays out. This lack of a clear procedural matchup between the eight steps and the scenes in the game we run can be hard to understand – but it's a feature, not a bug.

When do you typically use these steps at the table? Let's look at each step.

Review the Characters

This step often doesn't come into direct play at the table. Instead, this step helps you frame the rest of your prep around the characters. Reviewing the characters puts them into your mind so you can fill in secrets, NPCs, treasure and other components with direct character hooks. It helps you focus on the most important actors in the game – the characters.

Create a Strong Start

This step definitely has a clear place at the table. Once everyone's sitting around the table – after you've asked the players to catch everyone up on what happened last time (or you've done it yourself) – you jump into your strong start. Something happens. What is it? What can the characters do? What do they do? Make something happen and then put choices in front of the characters fast.

Outline potential scenes

Scenes are a catch-all for lots of different potential elements of our prep and our game. It could be a list of the five big scenes you plan to run or it could be a nest of scenes that might happen. It could be a strong start and a big catch-all like "explore Bittermold Keep". It might be a list of scenes and then three possible options you want to drop in at the end of the session.

Because it's a catch-all, outlining scenes could be used many different ways at the table. You might review it to know where to move to next after one scene is done. You might reference the three possible options for the next steps at the end of the game. It's mostly there to help you understand the framework of the game you're going to run – not help you run it directly.

Define Secrets and Clues

I often get feedback asking for better definitions on where to reveal secrets and clues but the answer really is "anywhere they make sense". During play, you may have them in your mind or in front of you in your notes. When the characters explore somewhere, discover something, talk to someone, or otherwise pick up a clue – that's the time to drop them in. Think of secrets like treasure you reward the characters for doing stuff.

Remember, you don't have to reveal all your secrets. I typically reveal half of the ten in a session. It's totally fine to only give out a few of them. Secrets serve you. You're under no obligation to use them or reveal them. They're there to help you fill in the lore of the game when it makes sense to do so. But it's still important to have enough secrets to fill in the blanks during the game. you may only give out half of your ten secrets but you don't know which half.

Develop Fantastic Locations

How you develop your fantastic locations and how you use them at the table depends on the kind of adventure you're going to run. A dungeon crawl with lots of rooms means you can focus on a map and add a few one- or two-word descriptions for each room. These short prompts give you something to riff off of when you're running the game. If your session focuses on a smaller number of more detailed locations, you probably want to fill them out with names and three notable features the characters can use.

At the table, you'll have the map in hand and use it to draw out or reveal rooms for a player-focused version of the map. Using maps at the table is its own challenge. However you use maps with your players, though, you'll still want your list of locations and notable features in front of you during the game. Use these maps and notes to help you fill out the room when the characters get there.

Outline Important NPCs

How you use this step depends on how much help you need when running an NPC at the table. Some GMs can get away with just a name. Other people need a list of appearances, mannerisms, goals, maybe even notable quotes they might say. I think it's worth getting better at improvising NPCs since you're likely to need to do it anyway. The most important aspect of an NPC you're going to need during prep and during play is the NPC's name. It's easy to forget names and they're really important. Write them down when they come up during your prep and write down new ones when they pop up during the game itself.

Like locations, you can reference your list of NPCs when it's time for them to step into the scene – using any of the notes you find useful to flesh them out as you describe them. During your prep, consider what you needed to run the NPC during the game and what you ignored. Now skip the stuff you ignored.

Choose Relevant Monsters

You'll find a trend here. How you use your list of monsters depends on the sort of game you're going to run, but most often it's a simple list of monsters you think you might need and either links to digital stat blocks or page numbers to monster stat blocks in the books you plan to run. During your prep you might also use your list of monsters to select miniatures or prepare digital tokens. A set of generic monster tokens is a fantastic aid for improvising combat encounters.

At the table, you decide which monsters and how many monsters make sense for the situation. Then you use your list and references to look up the stat blocks and run them at the table.

Select Treasure

During your prep you might outline some interesting treasure and magic items the characters might find. Write down these parcels of treasure including links or page numbers where needed.

During the game, you decide if a situation warrants the discovery of treasure and use your list to drop in the treasure that makes sense. You can split up treasure parcels if it doesn't make sense for so much money to be in one place or to pick particular magic items that suit the situation.

Little Dishes of Flexible Prep

The eight steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master intend to help you get your hands around the most important stuff you may need during the game. They're focused on things to help you improvise during the game. You're not planning the game when preparing them. You're not building a story. You're setting up little dishes of pre-cooked food so you can improvise the meal at the table. Each of these items, and each of the lists they contain, are intended to help you quickly reference the stuff that's hard to improvise without putting in so much detail that improvisation is hindered.

Prepare what you need to run an awesome game.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Which Prep Steps for Which Situation and Nighthaven – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 31 Lazy GM Prep.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

• Cover Art for 2024 D&D Dungeon Master's Guide
• Sly Flourish and Elderbrain Video on Adventure Design
• Are Actual Plays Building False Expectations?
• Dwarven Forge Virtual Tabletop Backdrops
• Leaving Blanks

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

• GM Tips for Players
• Managing Monster Stat Blocks
• Integrating Prophecies and Fate into D&D Games
• Medium-Length Campaigns
• Players Projecting Micro-Aggressions
• Committing Time and Energy to Prep a Game

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• Show pictures of NPCs.
• Tie loot to the story of the campaign.
• Write down improvised NPC names.
• Note new character features when they level up.
• The smallest dungeon can have one open path and one secret path.
• Roll for a monster's motivation.
• Build handouts to focus both you and your players around the oncoming story.

Related Articles

• The Eight Steps of the Lazy DM – 2023 Review
• Prepping a Dungeon
• High Value Prep

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

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The Kickstarter for my latest book, The City of Arches, begins August 6th! Sign up to be notified on the launch of this high-fantasy city sourcebook for Lazy GMs!

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"Get more out of your RPGs by preparing less."

This is the core motto of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master which follows with eight steps designed to help you get the most value out of your prep.

There's a near limitless set of activities we could work on when prepping our tabletop roleplaying games. Yet all of us have limited time to focus on that prep.

Where do we focus that time? What activities matter the most?

The eight steps are my best take on the areas most vital for running a great game – and even all eight aren't needed for every game. See Choosing the Right Steps for a discussion about which steps help with which types of games.

Today, though, we're going to look at the question of high value prep from a different angle. I don't know that I can help overlapping with some of the steps from Return but I'm going to do my best to take a different look at the problem.

Where is your time best spent when prepping your RPG?

The Characters

Well, shit. I already failed. Reviewing the characters is clearly the first step from Return but boy howdy is it important! The characters are the focal point of the game. They matter because their players matter. No one really cares that deeply about any given NPC but characters are the players' representation in the world. They really matter.

So what should we focus on with them?

Their backgrounds and stories. Who are they? What do they want? Where did they come from? What matters to the players about the backgrounds of their characters? How can we know this? Ask your players. Run campfire tales. Or just ask them about their character and what matters to them. Write it down.

Their mechanics. What do the players enjoy about their characters from a gameplay standpoint? Watch their behavior and see. What do the players get excited about using? What sort of fun mechanical effects do they enjoy? When they leveled up, what new things did they pick up? What new feats or spells or abilities did they choose? Ask them and write it down.

Their treasure wishlist. What sort of loot are they hoping for? What types of magic items make their character complete? Write it down and think about it while prepping your session's treasure hoard.

Character-focused secrets. Yes, another tie to one of the eight steps. When we're thinking about the characters, we can gain some efficiency by thinking about what secrets tied to that character might be revealed in the next game. Character-focused secrets are a great way to make our session richer and tie the characters closer to the game at the same time.

The Hook

Ok, I'm cheating a bit here too. The "Strong Start" is the second step from Return and what is a strong start if not a hook to draw the players into the adventure. But we'll take a different angle on it here. Yes, you want to grab the players and draw them into the game but you also want them to get hooked into the adventure you have planned. Focusing on a strong hook isn't a railroad. They should have choices about how they approach the situation, but you want them to at least follow loosely to whatever you had planned for an evening of adventure.

Think about the hook. Think about where it leads. Think about how it draws them out of our real world and into our fantasy world. How can you tie the hook back to the characters?

The Situation

Situation-based adventures are just plain fun. Pick a location and a map. Add inhabitants. Give the characters a clear goal. Think about potential complications. Set the stage for the adventure and then let it play out at the table.

Situation-based adventures break away from adventures focusing on a story or plot. With plot-based adventures, the story goes in one direction. Character choices have small effects but not big ones. Situations change that dynamic. You don't have any idea what the characters might plan. You might have thoughts about potential directions but nothing concrete enough to write out in an outline or build scene-by-scene.

Setting up a situation also covers other steps from Return including the location, NPCs, monsters, and probably some secrets. In this case, though, we're munging it all together to focus on the overall situation itself.

Spending your time thinking about the situation in your next session is time well spent. The more details you add – details not dependent on particular actions of the characters – the better.

The Next Adventure

When you're planning this adventure, think about what you need to put in front of the players so they can select the next adventure. I like to offer three choices for where they might go next. We often want to put these in front of the players when they're done with whatever arc of the adventure they're currently on but before they leave for the night so we know what to prep next. I talk more about this advice in Two Horizons Out. What's in front of us now and what's over the horizon? Where are things going to go next?

What Do You Need for Your Next Game?

What do you need in front of you when you're ready to sit down for your next game? Sit down and think about it. If you can, sit down where you plan to run your game and imagine your friends around the table (physically or virtually). Visualize that game, think about what you wish you had, and work on those ideas. Focus on what you know your players enjoy, what makes your game run smoothly and what you can put down that empowers the players to make interesting choices and show off their cool characters.

Focus on what matters for your game.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Taking Notes During and After your TTRPG Session and The Vile Well – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 30 Lazy GM Prep.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

• Iskandar Adventures Volume 1
• Torrents of the Spellhoarder by Elderbrain
• Rob Heinsoo on Mastering Dungeons
• Scroll for Initiative on Pass Without Trace
• Bob World Builder on Gridded, Abstract Maps, and Theater of the Mind
• New Poll Results on Combat Styles
• The Lost Art of Abstract Maps
• Running a Quick Conclusion to a Campaign

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

• Are Secrets Always True?
• Upward Beats for Dungeons
• Appropriate Challenges, Quests, and Adventures for 1st Lvel Characters
• Taking Away the Characters' Stuff
• Buying Material Multiple Times on Different Platforms

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• Leave blanks. Let your players fill them in with their imaginations.
• Describe monsters, don't define monsters. A hulking behemoth covered in rough tattoos wielding an axe the size of a carriage door is far scarier than an ogre.
• Sandwich mechanics with fiction.
• Write down ten fictional characters you dig. Keep them handy as NPC archetypes. Change appearances and genders to keep them fresh.
• Use a mixture of theater of the mind, abstract combat, and tactical combat. Keep all the tools in your toolbox.
• Try using backdrop pictures in your VTT instead of grid-aligned battle maps.
• Write down the factions of your campaign setting. Roll on this list to flavor items, monuments, encounters, NPCs, quests, or situations.

Related Articles

• The Eight Steps of the Lazy DM – 2023 Review
• Focus Extra Prep Time on the Characters
• Using the Lazy DM's Eight Steps At the Table

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »

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The Kickstarter for my latest book, The City of Arches, begins August 6th! Sign up to be notified on the launch of this high-fantasy city sourcebook for Lazy GMs!

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Tying characters to factions is a great way to connect characters to a central hub in your campaign. Building and using these realtionships in game give players a choice in how they want to approach that campaign.

I've been running a lot of Shadowdark recently and I love it. Characters, however, die often and sometimes their quests die with them. This situation can get awkward when a group of characters enters a dungeon driven by a quest and then die off, leaving their replacement character to wonder why they ever bothered coming to this terrible place.

Linking new characters to existing factions can avoid this problem. A faction acts as an abstraction between quests and characters. A character might be allied with a local adventurer's guild. The guild has the intention to find the cure to a terrible curse. Thus, the character tied to this faction has this quest but so does their replacement character since they both come from the same faction.

I used a similar system in my 4th edition D&D Dark Sun campaign. Players had a choice of a stable of characters they could use for any given adventure, all coming from a guild of former gladiators. It made perfect sense when a player switched from their wizard to their fighter – they're just two different members of the same guild.

Eberron's dragonmarked houses and the five Forgotten Realms factions described on page 21 and 22 of the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide also work well. That whole section of the DMG has interesting advice for earning and benefitting from renown with particular factions.

Offer a Choice of Factions

There are a few ways to introduce factions and different reasons why you might choose one over another. You might choose a single faction the characters are all tied to as part of your campaign. That's a little forced, though. Instead, you might offer several factions and ask the players to pick one for a whole campaign. Turning the decision over to the players gives them a choice about how they want to shape their approach to the campaign.

For example, you might offer four dragonmarked houses the characters can be tied to for an Eberron game – each with their own take on the world around them. You can tie these choices to specific alignments – the lawful good House Jorasco, the lawful neutral House Lyrandar, the chaotic good House Tharashk, and the chaotic neutral House Deneith (I'm almost certainly going to receive email and comments about getting those alignments wrong but you get the idea).

One Faction per Character

Another more complicated way to do it is give each character a connection to a faction of their own choosing with their own quests, hopefully overlapping with those quests from other factions and NPCs. This system can get complicated, however, and there's no guarantee that the motivation of one faction syncs perfectly with the motivations of another faction. Choose this option if the quests overlap enough that you can still get some individual flavor but the group as a whole is moving in the same direction.

A Simple Abstraction between Characters and Quests

Tying characters and quests to factions is a great way to ensure that quests don't get lost should characters change. It gives players a common source for quests and the agency to select which faction they want to support.

The next time you're starting a campaign, select a handful of factions and ask players to choose one. Use that faction to drive the quests and direction of the campaign, keeping continuity should old characters depart and new ones jump in.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Character Faction Tips and The Green Knight Queen – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 29 Lazy GM Prep.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

• Cypher Humble Bundle -- $570 of books for $25
• New Covers and Greyhawk in 2024 D&D Books
• Support Victims of Rio Grande Flooding with this $20 RPG Bundle
• Rob Heinsoo Interview on La Taberna de Rol
• Tales of the Labyrinth by Kobold Press
• Tales of the Valiant on Shard Tabletop
• Myre's End Adventure for Patrons
• One Night with Level Up Advanced 5e

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

• Three House Rules for Shadowdark RPG

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

• Typical scenarios become unique with the lore and details you include.
• Spread around the threat and damage in combat.
• Keep the characters’ names in front of you.
• Replace NPCs in published settings with NPCs important to the characters or even the characters themselves.
• Drop in magic items that fit the characters.
• Write down a quick summary of important events and where the session ended right after the game.
• Keep two or three options in front of the characters.

Related Articles

• Giving Characters Hard Choices
• Award Treasure and Magic Items in 5e
• Five Ways to Integrate Characters Into Your Campaign

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Articles
• Newsletter
• Bookstore
• Patreon
• Podcast
• YouTube

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Forge of Foes
• Fantastic Lairs
• Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures
• Fantastic Locations

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

Read more »