by W. Eric Martin

• Canadian publisher Next Move Games has previously challenged you to arrange ceramic tiles, coral reef, and stained glass, and now it asks: How do you feel about rocks?

Next Move's next release will be Tuki by designer Grzegorz Rejchtman, best known for the Ubongo game series. Here's an overview of this 2-4 player game that will debut at the 2019 Origins Game Fair in June:

In the Inuit language, "tukilik" is used to define an object that carries a message, and the northern landscapes are densely populated with such objects. The most well known of these are the inukshuk, that is, structures of rough stones traditionally used by Inuit people as a landmark or commemorative sign, with the stones often being stacked in the form of a human figure.

During each turn in Tuki, you attempt to construct an inukshuk based on the die face rolled using your stones and blocks of snow. Players have only a limited number of pieces with which to construct the inukshuk, so you'll need to be creative and use the three-dimensional pieces in multiple ways, such as to counterbalance other pieces or even build on top of existing pieces. A solution always exists — you just need to discover it!

You can choose from two levels of difficulty when playing Tuki to level the playing ground between newcomers and experts. Be swift, yet precise, and transform your stones into messengers of the north...

• Red Peak is a Carlo A. Rossi design due out from Ravensburger in the first half of 2019, and while I have only a brief overview of the game for now, it's enough to get you grounded on this 2-6 player that features a Vincent Dutrait cover of all things. Strange seeing his work on a non-French, non-Korean box! Here's that summary:

In Red Peak, the players are daring adventurers who have discovered a new volcanic island — but then "Red Peak" on the north of the island decides to live up to its name and starts rumbling. An eruption seems imminent! Salvation is possibly only by returning to the beach as quickly as possible where — fingers crossed — a boat awaits the group. Players will be fighting using every means possible to make their way through the jungle, with the lava ready to spill onto their necks at any moment. Who will reach the boat in time before lava engulfs their camp on the beach?

• Another early 2019 release from Ravensburger is the Leo Colovini card game Heul doch! Mau Mau, with the title meaning something like "Go Cry! Mau Mau", with Mau Mau being the German equivalent of Crazy Eights. The rules are available for this 3-6 player game, and I'm a sucker for both Colovini and card games, so here it is in detail:

Game play in Heul doch! Mau Mau is simple, but it may bring you to tears all the same when you give points away to other players.

The game consists of 98 cards, with 1-7 each appearing twice in seven colors. Each player starts with a random card face up in front of them as a personal discard pile as well as a hand of four cards. On a turn, you must play one card from your hand following the familiar game play rules of matching the color or number. Ideally you want to play on your own pile, but if the card you would play matches the top card of your left- or right-hand neighbor's discard pile, then you must play it there instead!

Maybe you can choose a card in hand that matches only your top card? If you have no valid play or don't want to give points away to someone else, you can play the card face down on your stack, showing the weepy onion on the card back. On your next turn, you can play any card you like on your pile — except if it matches a neighbor's top card, of course, in which case you must give it away. (You can't play on a neighbor's onion card.)

Once all the cards have been played, everyone scores for the cards in their pile — but first they must count the number of onion cards in their pile. However many onions they have, they must remove all matching number cards prior to scoring. If you have four onions, for example, you must discard all 4s — and this is bad since all cards score points equal to their value. If you have ten onions, then you first discard all 7s, then all 3s. Whoever has the most points wins!

The game includes four types of special action cards you can shuffle into the deck to make gameplay more dynamic.

• ThunderGryph Games puts a lush look on most of its game releases, and the just-announced Iwari from Michael Schacht continues this pattern.

Iwari is a revised version of Schacht's classic game Web of Power, which was previously remade as China, then briefly appeared as Han. All the games feature the same basic gameplay: A landscape is divided into regions; these regions have lines throughout them with various building points, as well as more than a dozen connection points between regions. On a turn, you can play cards to place up to two pieces in one region. The color of the cards must match the region in which you're playing, although you can use a pair of cards as a joker.

You're trying to achieve majorities in a region and in the connection points, but the trick is that you want to expend as few of your own resources to win as possible. (I imagine this is also true of Iwari, but I haven't seen the rules of that game yet.) When you have majority in a region, then you score based on the number of units that all players have in that region; when you place second in a region, then you score based on the number of units that the winner has in that region.

Thus, if a region has five spaces and you control four of them, then you score 5 points and the second-place person scores 4. Hmm, you did more work and used more resources, but you barely scored more than they did! Better to win that region with only three pieces while still scoring 5 points, yet if you wait too long to dominate a region someone else might carry it instead. Scoring for the connection points between regions works similarly.

For Iwari, Schacht and ThunderGryph have moved to a new setting and added twists to the gameplay:

Evermore have they walked the world of Iwari. Evermore have they embodied its spirit and shaped its lands. They are stewards of the earth. Five Titans that make the cosmos breath. On Iwari, there are no teeming masses, no continent-wide civilizations. Humanity is in its infancy, living in scattered tribes in forest, tundra, and desert. Now we have left our ancestral homelands to explore the vast uncharted regions, encountering other fellow tribes and exchanging knowledge, culture and wisdom. In our journey, we all live in harmony with the Titans, and though distant to us, they decide our fate. And yet only we don't know if they created us, or we created them.

Iwari is an abstract-like Eurogame in which players represent different tribes looking for their identity by traveling around far lands and expanding their settlements into five different regions on the board.

During the game, players can complete missions that grant small perks and score points by having the majority of tents in each territory after the end of the first card cycle. At game end, the majority of tents will be scored again, along with the majorities of nature totems in two adjacent regions and settlements that players have created (i.e., four or more tents in an uninterrupted sequence along one of the roads on the board).

Iwari reimagines the earlier games in this series by adding new layers of strategy, tribe player boards, different maps with their own set of rules, modules that can be added to the game, and unique co-operative and solo modes.

Schacht and ThunderGryph previously collaborated on a Kickstarter project for Spirits of the Forest, a remaking of his earlier game Richelieu, and during that crowdfunding project many extras were added to the game. I imagine the bling will be flying as well for Iwari as well once that project hits KS...



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by W. Eric Martin

• Nearly two decades after Reiner Knizia's co-operative game Lord of the Rings debuted, with a Fantasy Flight Games version of that design hitting the market in 2001, FFG is now taking another crack at a co-operative game set in J.R.R. Tolkien's greatest creation with the announcement of The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth, a 1-5 player game from Nathan I. Hajek and Grace Holdinghaus. Here's an overview of the game:

Embark on your own adventures in J.R.R. Tolkien's iconic world with The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth, a fully co-operative, app-supported board game. You'll battle villainous foes, make courageous choices, and strike a blow against the evil that threatens the land — all as part of a thrilling campaign that leads you across the storied hills and dales of Middle-earth.

Each individual game of Journeys in Middle-earth is a single adventure in a larger campaign. You'll explore the vast and dynamic landscapes of Middle-earth, using your skills to survive the challenges that you encounter on these perilous quests. As you and your fellow heroes explore the wilderness and battle the dark forces arrayed against you, the game's companion app guides you to reveal the looming forests, quiet clearings, and ancient halls of Middle-earth, while also controlling the enemies you encounter. Whether you're venturing into the wild on your own or with close companions by your side, you can write your own legend in the history of Middle-earth.

The game includes six heroes in its "Core Set", a term that shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with FFG's publishing model, and each hero has a unique skill deck that they use to pass skill tests or play from to provide themselves with permanent special abilities, although at the risk of failing skill tests since those cards are now removed from their deck. In each adventure, a hero takes on one of six roles, such as hunter or pathfinder, giving players the chance to put their skills to use in different ways based on what they expect to find — although the app promises wide variety in the make-up of the landscape, the foes you'll face, and more.

The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth retails for $100, and according to FFG's most recent press releases, it's due out in April 2019.

• Designer Richard Breese of R&D Games has noted on Facebook that he's working on a Keyper expansion — Keyper at Sea — for release at SPIEL '19 in October. Writes Breese, "The game has two scenarios, 'shallow water' for those new to Keyper and 'deep water' for the Keyper experts!" If you can get yourself to HandyCon in Maidenhead, UK on Jan. 18-20, 2019, then maybe you can dive in for a first look.




• In June 2018, Capstone Games announced a licensing deal with designers Christina Ng Zhen Wei and Yeo Keng Leong for Race for the Chinese Zodiac, and now Capstone has announced that the game will be released through its Simply Complex brand and the designers own Starting Player brand, with a Kickstarter campaign to fund the title starting in late January 2019 ahead of a November 2019 retail release. Another title for the SPIEL '19 Preview!

Here's an overview of the setting and gameplay:

Legend has it that a long time ago, mankind was ignorant to the extent of not knowing how to count or tell the years apart. The ever-benevolent Jade Emperor wanted to help mankind out. From there, the idea of a twelve-year cycle and the naming of each year in the cycle after an animal was born.

But how should the Jade Emperor choose twelve animals from among so many animals in the living world, while remaining impartial? To resolve this equitably, the Jade Emperor decided to hold a race involving all animals on his birthday. The first twelve animals to cross the river and reach the Heavenly Palace will have a year named after them, in the order of how they finished the race. The race became known as The Great Race and the twelve-year cycle was named the Chinese Zodiac.

Race for the Chinese Zodiac is a board game that recreates The Great Race. Each player has a hand of eight action cards (numbered 1-8) as well as energy cards of different values and karma tokens. Each player selects one animal token and takes the corresponding animal card, which grants the player advantages during the race. All players place their animal token on the start space of the racetrack. Players assemble the dual-layered and double-sided action wheel that's used to determine the effectiveness of each action and place it in the center of the table.

On a turn, all players select an action card and an energy card from their hand, then they reveal these cards simultaneously. If the action card selected is one value lower than the player's previously played action card, the player must spend one karma token; if two or more values lower, they must spend two karma tokens. Players then resolve all played actions based on the orientation of the wheel, ideally gaining movement, new energy cards, and karma. Everyone places their played cards face up in front of themselves, then rotate the wheel clockwise by one space and start a new turn.

The first animal to complete the race earns the coveted right of having the first year of the Chinese Zodiac named after it!

Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

To add on to all the recent news from Rio Grande Games, the U.S. publisher has announced that in April 2019 it will release Puerto Rico: Expansions 1 & 2 – The New Buildings & The Nobles, a collection that contains The New Buildings and The Nobles expansions for Andreas Seyfarth's Puerto Rico that last saw print in 2009 as part of alea's Treasure Chest collection.

Here's an overview of these items for those who have missed out in the past decade:

• The New Buildings adds forests to the game and introduces the following new buildings: Aqueduct, Forest House, Black Market, Storehouse, Guesthouse, Church, Trading Post, Small Wharf, Lighthouse, Library, Speciality Factory, Union Hall, Cloister, and Statue. These buildings can be mixed and matched with the existing building in the Puerto Rico base game.

• The Nobles includes tokens that are used like colonists, but some of the seven new buildings provide different properties depending on whether they are occupied by nobles or colonists.

From the press release announcing this release: "We have wanted to bring these expansions back into print so fans of the game, both new and old, would have the opportunity to play and own them", says Jay Tummelson, co-owner of Rio Grande Games. "We are happy that they will be available again to all of the fans of the game: past, present and future." The tentative MSRP for this expansion is $15.


The New Buildings
The Nobles and more new buildings Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

• How did I miss this?! In December 2018, Z-Man Games announced that the fifth title in Shadi Torbey's Oniverse series of solo/co-operative games for 1-2 players would be released in early 2019. Here's an overview of Aerion, which as expected features artwork by Élise Plessis and which now has a March 2019 release date attached to it:

You are an air-shipwright, that is, an inventor of flying machines used by the dreams to traverse the skies of the Oniverse. You have been challenged to build a new fleet, the most beautiful ever seen. Now you must roll the dice to acquire the components you need to build airships.

In Aerion, you must find the best blueprints, acquire the finest construction materials, and recruit the best crew. Discarding cards can adjust your die rolls, but be careful not to exhaust your resources! Can you build the best fleet?

Aerion includes six expansion modules with new options and challenges.

• Z-Man Games has also attached a March 2019 release date on the English-language version of Lift Off, a 2-4 player design from Jeroen Vandersteen that German publisher Hans im Glück debuted at SPIEL '18 in October. Here's a summary of the game's setting and principles:

1950/1960: The race into space is in full swing! We're making great progress on the techniques for supplying astronauts and space-ready machines, for optimizing launch conditions, and of course for designing the much-needed rockets. All this to explore the sheer vastness of space.

But in Lift Off, not only are two superpowers competing for the most glorious milestones of space travel, no, we players are also very involved. In this game, we each play a private space agency that wants to develop in their own areas. We must hire specialists, improve our rockets, and expand our capabilities because soon we have to decide which missions we want to carry out and what we want to bring into space. Only those who plan ahead and properly manage the resources available will win this race to the stars...

BGG recorded an overview of the game in our booth during that game fair if you want to see more:

Youtube Video

• Bruno Faidutti's Miaui debuted in 2017 from French publisher Superlude Editions under the name Chawaï, which is formed from the combination of "chat" (French for "cat") and "Hawaii". The English-language edition due out in February 2018 from Z-Man Games keeps this title wordplay intact along with the art from Paul Mafayon. Here's an overview of the gameplay in this 3-6 player design:

Each round in Miaui, players choose one of the cards in their hand — and everyone starts the game with the same cards numbered 1-12 — to show how deep they dive in the hope of catching the best fish. All kinds of fish are served at the feast but beware the gooey jellyfish and the thieving seagulls.

In more detail, three cards are laid out from the catch deck from the surface of the water to the depths. Each players chooses a card and plays them simultaneously. Whoever plays the highest card dives deepest and grabs the card at the bottom of the lake, while the next highest card grabs the card just above this. Whoever played the lowest card collects what's at the surface. Sometimes this isn't good since jellyfish cost you points and seagulls steal your most recent catch.

Bruno Faidutti presented the game in the BGG booth during the 2018 Cannes fair, relating its history to Alex Randolph's Raj, along with a brief history of that game as well:

Youtube Video

• Z-Man also has a Shem Phillips title due out in 2019 that's quite different from the North Sea/West Kingdom titles that he releases through his own Garphill Games. Noctiluca is a somewhat abstract game for 1-4 players in which you try to collect the luminescent sea creatures to complete requests by healers. In slightly more detail:

On the warmest nights of the year, the otherwise quiet waters are filled with shimmering lights as the dormant noctiluca awaken. Renowned for their restorative properties, the noctiluca are desired by many dealers. Only the most skilled divers can navigate the waters to collect these mysterious glowing creatures and deliver them to healers across the land. Can you catch the embers of the sea?

In Noctiluca, 104 colorful translucent dice fill the pool on the game board to represent the different glowing noctiluca. Players take turns diving into the water from the edges of the shore to collect the noctiluca dice from the board and keep them safely in jars until they can deliver them to healers. After two rounds, players compare points from their successful deliveries and the player with the most points wins.

Thanks to a double-sided game board, Noctiluca also includes a solo mode in which one player must rescue the noctiluca from the tempest.

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by W. Eric Martin

U.S. publisher Rio Grande Games is going through something of a renaissance right now. Over the past few years, the company has released only a few new games — mostly Dominion titles and Tom Lehmann designs — having shed the co-publishers and licensed titles that constituted most of the titles it released throughout the 2000s.

Now Rio Grande is continuing the partnerships that remained, adding new licensing partners to the line-up, and releasing a wider range of original titles. Ken Hill, who was hired as production manager in Q4 2018, detailed some of the changes underway, while also giving an update on some of the titles hitting the market from RGG in the first half of 2019.

• To start, Lutz Stepponat's Gambit Royale — an English-language version of
2018's Kabale und Hiebe: Setzt dem Ganzen die Krone auf from German publisher LuPri, which is itself a revamped version of the 2006 title Ruse and Bruise — was released in December 2018, along with Tom Lehmann's New Frontiers (which the designer covered in detail in this development diary on BGG News).

• Mac Gerdts' Concordia Venus, which debuted from PD-Verlag at SPIEL '18 as both a standalone game and an expansion for the Concordia base game, reached the RGG warehouse in mid-January 2019 and should be available at U.S. retailers by the end of the month given the one- to two-week turnaround time needed for receiving, re-shipping, and handling via distribution. The Cyprus game board that's unique to the standalone game and not included in the expansion will be available later in 2019 paired with a new map yet to be announced, according to a PD-Verlag representative, and Hill verified that RGG will also release this double-map expansion in the U.S.




• Vladimír Suchý's Underwater Cities was another SPIEL '18 release, this time from newcomer Delicious Games, and Hill anticipates having this title available on the U.S. market before the end of February 2019. He notes that this version incorporates a few production improvements such as thicker player boards, and based on preorders he anticipates placing a reorder for this title as soon as it reaches stores.

• Another February 2019 release is Tom Lehmann's Roll for the Galaxy: Rivalry, which I covered in detail here.

• Friedemann Friese's Power Grid Recharged, covered in this BGG News post, reaches the U.S. market in March 2019.

• In terms of non-Lehmann new releases, Joe Huber's Caravan is due out in March or April 2019. This 2-4 player game sounds delightfully minimalist, and I offer this summary of the setting and gameplay:

1300 A.D., Western Africa — the desire for goods such as ivory in Europe drives the development of many trade routes here, with caravans of camels delivering goods across the desert landscape.

In Caravan, players must use their camels to deliver goods where they are wanted. Each player starts with five camels in their color (or six in an introductory game), and the game board is seeded with eight goods on the spaces numbered 1-8, with demand markers placed on the goods at spaces 1, 2, 7 and 8. The first player in the game takes one action, the second player two, and so on until someone takes four actions, after which each player can take up to four actions on their turn. Actions are:

—Place or move an unladen camel of your color into an empty space: 1 action
—Place or move an unladen camel of your color into an occupied space: 2 actions
—Pick up a good and place it on the camel in that space: 1 action; if any demand markers are on this space, you keep them.
—Move a good along a chain of your camels, ending with it on top of one of your unladen camels: 1 action
—Steal a good from on top of an opponent's laden camel, placing it under one of your camels in the same space: 1 action and a theft marker; if you have no theft markers, you can't do this.

If you move a good to a camel located in the city that wants that good (as indicated by color), then you remove that good from the board and keep it. As soon as four goods have been picked up (not necessarily delivered), pause the game and place a demand marker on each good still on the board; in addition, refill the empty numbered spots with a good from the bag.

Once the final four goods have been drawn from the bag, the game ends immediately following the next delivery. Players score points based upon what they've collected: Rare goods (of which there are three each of four types) are worth 6 points each; common goods (nine each of four types) are worth 3 points each; and each demand marker is worth 1 point. Whoever scores the most wins.

• A much larger game in the pipeline is Alan D. Ernstein's Nevada City, which Hill says they've been working on for more than three years. Hill adds, "The basic game is a nice twist on the worker placement genre, with an interesting market mechanism and some other fun mechanics. We packed a lot in a 90-minute game but not too much." Here's an overview of this 2-4 player game, which will debut in Q2 2019 no later than the 2019 Origins Game Fair:

You and your family have come to Nevada City to set up a homestead and help the town grow. Will you be able to outperform the other homesteaders?

Each player in Nevada City starts the game with a nuclear family — mother, father, daughter, and son — and a homestead mat where you can establish farms, fence in livestock, and develop silver mines. You start the game with one mine, one farm, and one ranch, along with some money and an assortment of commodities. The town consists of a few buildings, and other buildings will become available for construction as the years advance, with the game lasting four years.

A year lasts a number of turns until all players have used all of their characters and hired workers. On a turn, a player chooses one of their characters and takes actions until all of that character's actions are spent; a character can't take the same action during a turn. A character can buy new property from city hall; mine, farm, or ranch their own property; claim a building; construct a building; use an existing building; reserve a contract that has conditions for improving the city; or work to fulfill that contract. Each character and worker has a different set of skills that can boost the actions they take, such as finding additional silver in a mine or bringing lumber to a construction site.

You earn victory points (VPs) for constructing buildings, in addition to fees from those buildings when other players use them. You earn VPs for completing contracts as well, with those contracts having different values depending on which buildings are in place at the time. Each player receives a private goal card at the start of the game, and all players score points for these goal cards based on how well they do relative to other players, so pay attention to their choices.

Each year, various events pop up, leaving players to suffer drought or reap the benefits of fertile land, among other things. At the end of a year, workers leave unless you marry them into a family, which will require spirits and other resources.

Nevada City also includes advanced rules that add additional buildings and events to the game, a gambling subgame of sorts, a more volatile production market to make life in the West less predictable, and extra sons and daughters. On top of all that, the unhired workers at the end of a year get rowdy and start shooting up the town, so you need to use your gunslinging abilities to bring them to heel and try to avoid getting wounded since you might lose out on a character's abilities in the subsequent year.

• Aside from these titles, Hill says, "We're going to be actively going after partnerships again, and I'm on the prowl for other titles." In addition to at least one more title due in Q2 2019, other games currently in the RGG pipeline include an Andreas Steding design (due out at SPIEL '19), an Arve D. Fühler design, a two-player title from Phil Walker-Harding, and two designs from Daryl Andrews.


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by W. Eric Martin

For our early 2019 convention preview, I'm pulling together info from companies in Germany, the U.S., France, and elsewhere, and it's interesting to see the contrasts in who is doing what. Here's a sampling of games that will be shown or sold at Festival International des Jeux in Cannes, France:

• Mū is a drafting game with an area-majority element of sorts from Johan Benvenuto, David Paput, and Bankiiiz Editions for 1-5 players. The game is due out March 11, 2019, but I would assume it will be at FIJ for demos, if not for early release. Here's what is going on in more detail:

In Mū, you build a city composed of nine building cards, with these cards coming in five types adorned with "source symbols" for strength, faith, and food. Each edge of a building card has a semi-circle on it showing half of a source symbol. Cards also have complete symbols for strength, faith, and food on them.

Each player starts the game with two project cards — cards fueled by source tokens — and an empty 3x3 grid that shows semi-circular source symbols around the edges. The game lasts four rounds, and in each round you draft three cards. At the end of the second, third, and fourth rounds, all players compare their strengths in various horizontal or vertical rows on their grid.

In the first round, you draft three project cards, each with special effects that can be used if you fill all the source symbols on it. In each of the next three rounds, you draft and play three building cards. When you play a building card and complete one or more source symbols (by matching the colors on each half symbol), you receive a source token of that color for each completed symbol, which you must immediately place on a project.

After the third, sixth, and ninth building cards have been placed, you compare your strength in the row or column indicated on battle cards. (You have two such challenges after rounds six and nine.) The player with the most strength in the appropriate row or column receives 3 achievement points (AP), while the loser marks that row or column with a damage token. If a building card has damage in both its row and column, it's destroyed and removed from the game.

At the end of the game, players feed their city, scoring based on the number of food symbols they have and the number of non-destroyed buildings. Players also score AP for faith symbols in their city.

Mū also contains rules for a solitaire game.

• At FIJ, Bankiiiz Editions will also demo Julien Griffon's Yōkai, a 2-4 player game due out in Q2 2019. Game info is brief for now:

There's confusion among the Yōkai!

These Japanese spirits have become intermingled in Yōkai, and to calm them, you have to group together members of the same family. They're hiding, however, so to carry out your task successfully, you have to be clever and not make any noise to avoid frightening them...

Sample cards in Yōkai

• Designer Julien Sentis has specialized in quick-playing party games, and Stay Cool is a new design for 3-7 players that will debut from Le Scorpion Masqué at FIJ. The game will be released only in French initially, but the Canadian publisher often releases games in English as well, so perhaps we'll see this in the U.S. later:

Stay Cool is easy. We ask you to do nothing complicated — but you must do it all at the same time...

When you are the active player in the first round, you must answer verbally the questions asked by your left-hand neighbor while you "write" answers to the questions asked by your right-hand neighbor, using seven letter dice to "write" three- or four-letter answers. While you're doing this, another player flips a 30-second sand timer four times, giving you two minutes to answer as many questions as possible. At the end of that time, multiply the number of answers you gave for the questions from the left and from the right to determine your score.

In the second round, you do the same thing once again with new questions, but you must tell the player watching the sand timer to flip it before it runs out of sand, with a maximum of two minutes of playing time. If you fail to tell the player to flip the timer before it runs out of sand, your turn ends immediately. However your turn ends, you score points as described above.

In the third and final round, you must do everything described in the third round except now the sand timer is hidden from your eyes!

• Lumberjacks Studio released two titles in late 2018 that, as far as I know, exist only in French editions, and while the games were apparently available at SPIEL '18, they're essentially still new on the market, so I've listed them for sale on our con preview.

One of those two titles is François Bachelart's La Petite Mort, a 2-4 player game in which everyone plays a junior grim reaper who is attempting to take over the role of Death itself because Death is finally retiring to greener pastures. Yes, this is another "replace the king" game, but at least the setting offers something new!

To win the game, you must be the first to achieve any four objectives show on the "Reaping Diploma", a diploma that means you've graduated from death school and are ready for the job. An overview of the gameplay:

During the game, each player will have characters in their playing area who will be born, grow, age, and enrich their personalities or acquire skills that will bring them strengths and weaknesses throughout their lives. You will see your characters live and guide them gently onto their deathbed for the liberating reap. It is by guiding your characters to their "natural death" that you will have the best chance of achieving the objectives required to get your Diploma.

You can also reap an opponent's character with reap cards as long as these cards meet the requirements — i.e., weakness symbols — present on the targeted character cards. Reaping your opponent's characters is easier, but is less rewarding because you have to share these cards with one or more of your opponents. Naturally the characters in your playing area will be targeted by others, but some cards with strength symbols will protect your character from another similar weakness symbol, so they will be be harder to reap!

Some of the characters who await your guiding hand in La Petite Mort Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

Rio Grande Games has announced a release date for the long-awaited second expansion for Wei-Hwa Huang and Tom Lehmann's Roll for the Galaxy, with production manager Ken Hill telling me that Roll for the Galaxy: Rivalry will be printed in February 2019, so it "should be in stores by the end of the month".

Here's a summary of what Lehmann has revealed about this expansion to date:

Roll for the Galaxy: Rivalry consists of three expansions in one box.

• The Deal Game has a new deal phase in which players assign $ dice to a new deal board in order to swap assets they don't want for those they do — and pretty much everything is fair game in terms of possible trades. Not using all your credit track? Why not trade in the top part of it to get a useful die? Or, if you're running a large economy and need a credit track that goes to 11 (or even 16), why not trade away a couple of white dice to get a larger track?

Have a bunch of extra tiles clogging up your construction zones from previous Explores? Why not trade them in for new dice? Or, a chance to draw from the bag until you find a 6 cost development? Or a pair of VP chips? Or a talent counter? Or some credits? Or, another Leader die? Or, a chance to draw a world of a desired color from the bag? Or, to turn some Citizenry dice directly into Developers or Settlers? Or...

Seven deal dice are rolled each turn before players assign their workers to determine what asset types can be potentially gained or traded in that round. After you swap assets, your deal will start to mature over several rounds. If you (or someone else) calls "Deal" again before your deal expires, then you might want to send another dealer in to reverse your trade, trading back for what you originally spent and making some credits and talent counters along the way. Of course, while your deal is maturing, some other player might swoop in and reverse it before you wanted to, taking their cut and converting your attempted temporary loan into a permanent exchange. These things happen...

• The Orb Game gives one yellow "Alien Orb" die to each player, and the faces of these dice can be popped out and upgraded to various "lines" of faces that allow you to customize what you can do in the game. (Think of the lines as being akin to a tech tree.)

You can assign dice to become researchers in the Research phase, and for each assigned researcher, when someone calls Research, you get two "dots" of upgrades to your dice. The first dot gets you a 1-dot face in any line; extra dots get you better faces in that line. (If you want to switch lines for a given face after entering a line, pay 1 dot more.) These upgraded dice affect your play. For example, if you roll the 2-dot beige -1 develop face, you receive a -1 die discount on all developments you build that turn.

Orb dice are rolled in front of player screens at the start of a round. If, for example, you roll a face that grants virtual workers, then everyone knows that you will benefit if Explore occurs and can plan accordingly as they assign their dice and decide which phase to call.

To allow improved Orb dice more opportunities to affect play, the Orb game ends at 15+ tiles or when the initial VP chip pool is exhausted, which is increased to 15 VPs per player. At game end, each 2-dot and 4-dot face on your Orb die is worth 1 and 2 VPs, respectively.

• The third game is yet to be revealed.

Hill notes that Rivalry carries an $80 MSRP, $20 more than the Roll for the Galaxy base game. "We could have released it as three expansions, each roughly the size of Ambition for $35 each, or we could put them all in one box", which is what they chose to do. Rivalry comes in a box sized between the base game and Ambition.


Production image from Tom Lehmann showing the non-final dice, with the colors being off in these samples;the Deal dice are the one black die and six white dice at left Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

"Everything old is new again" seems to be a common practice in today's game industry. The market is hungry for titles — possibly due to so many titles being released, which exacerbates the speed with which titles disappear from shelves in order to make room for all those new games coming down the pipeline — so in addition to signing previously unreleased designs, publishers are revisiting older games and bringing them out anew.

The latest title to see new life is Corinth, which probably doesn't ring a bell, but if you were to learn this design's playtest name — "Yspahan: The Dice Game" — you might start nodding your head in recollection. Sébastien Pauchon's Yspahan debuted in 2006 from French publisher Ystari Games, its third release following Ys from company founder Cyril Demaegd in 2004 and the market-changing Caylus from William Attia in 2005.




In Yspahan, players tried to deliver goods to market stalls in various areas to score points, with the novelty of the game coming from how players delivered those goods, in addition to acquiring gold and camels. At the start of a turn, the active player rolled nine dice, then placed all the dice with the highest value on the gold space of a chart, then started placing dice from the bottom of the chart up, with each value of dice being on a separate level. The active player would take all the dice on one level, then take some action with them: collecting gold, delivering goods stalls, collecting camels, drawing an action card, or moving the supervisor, with the possible actions differing depending on which dice they took. The active player could spend gold to roll up to three extra yellow dice and thereby increase the odds of getting to take a desired action; if the active player didn't take any of these yellow dice, they were removed from play, preventing others from benefitting at that player's expense.


Image by Ivan Kosak

Corinth keeps this dice chart at the core of gameplay, with the active player rolling nine white dice as in the original game and possibly spending gold to roll up to three extra yellow dice. Players take turns selecting all of the dice on a level, but the choices are streamlined compared to the original Yspahan game. The top level gives the player as many gold as the number of dice they took; the bottom level gives camels instead of gold; and the middle levels allow a player to deliver goods to a number of market stalls on their personal player sheet equal to the dice claimed.

Yes, Corinth is a roll-and-write game, with each player marking off stalls on their sheet. You have four colors of stalls as in Yspahan, and once you start marking off, say, rugs in one of the blue areas, you have to finish marking off all the rugs in that area before you can start marking off another blue area. This mimics the gameplay decisions of the earlier design: If you have two dice, do you mark off the easiest stall now to claim a few points or do you mark off some spaces in the largest stall, hoping to take more dice from the same level in the future in order to complete that stall and earn more points per die claimed?




Instead of marking off gold, goats, or goods, you can use the value of the die or dice claimed (1-6) to move the steward on your personal score sheet. The steward starts in the middle of a 5x5 grid on your sheet, and you must move it as many spaces as the number of pips on the die value claimed, not crossing over any line you've drawn previously. You can pay 1 gold to move the steward one more or one fewer space, and you can pay as much gold as you want to do this. You can receive gold, goats, or goods from where the steward stops, but beyond that, you can earn points. When the steward stops on a corner space of this grid, you count the number of spaces circled to this point, with some spaces counting twice, then you write down that number, scoring that many points at game's end. If you stop in another corner later, you do the same thing again, which compounds the value of all your previous movement.

As in Yspahan, in Corinth you can spend gold or goats to construct buildings that give you bonus powers, such as collecting two additional gold whenever you collect any gold or moving the steward up to two spaces more or less without paying.

After 16 turns (with four players) or 18 turns (with two or three players), the game ends and you tally points for goods delivered, spaces visited by the steward, buildings constructed, and goats and gold still on hand.

Corinth retails for €20/$20, and it will debut from publisher Days of Wonder in March 2019 in Europe and in May 2019 in North America.


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by W. Eric Martin

• Another day, another announcement or seven from one publisher or another, with Queen Games teasing info on three early 2019 releases for now. Let's start with the trendiest title of the bunch: Cøpenhagen, a 2-4 player game from the familiar design duo of Asger Harding Granerud and Daniel Skjold Pedersen that plays in 20-40 minutes.

Why does this one get the "trendy" tag? Because the game features polyominoes, which seems to be the go-to component for designers and publishers worldwide. That said, I have no idea when Queen signed this design and how long it's been in development. Perhaps Asger can reveal all in a designer diary down the road. For now, here's a summary of the gameplay:

The Danish city of Cøpenhagen is traversed by canals and harbors, and part of it — "Nyhavn" (New Harbor) — is famous for the colorful gabled houses along the water.

In the game Cøpenhagen, players must design new façades for these houses so that they fit seamlessly into this beautiful harbor setting. By using the cards on displays, players receive the corresponding façade polyomino tiles, with which they beautify their houses. Overbuilding certain spaces and floors gives them additional skills for the rest of the game. Floors that consist of a pure window front are particularly rewarding and bring the players many points.

• Luxor: The Mummy's Curse, due out in May 2019, is an expansion for Rüdiger Dorn's Luxor, which was nominated for the German Spiel des Jahres award in 2018. Queen is attempting to fund this title on Kickstarter through the end of January 2019 (KS link), and as is the habit with many a Queen title, Luxor: The Mummy's Curse contains multiple modules that can be mixed-and-matched as desired, as well as components to allow up to five players at once. Here's a rundown of the modules:

—The Mummy: An ancient cursed mummy has woken and is not amused at the adventurers intruding on her temple. Whenever an Osiris card is played by any player, the mummy moves forward as many spaces as the number of eyes on the card. Any adventurer she lands on or passes through falls into a deep slumber and must be woken up by spending an activation. The player controlling the mummy receives Talisman tokens that grant them a one-time special ability.

—Equipment: Players choose their starting hands from five of seven equipment cards. Once played, the equipment cards are discarded as normal and will be shuffled into the deck. Each equipment card is a variation of the normal movement cards and allows players to choose a starting strategy.

—New Treasures: A fourth treasure type is added to the game, along with new rules for set collection.

—Special Adventurers: Each player chooses from one of eight special abilities that are unique to them for the entire game.

• As you can tell from a glance at the cover, Voll Verwackelt is the Queen title in this batch aimed at young players, and like many such titles from Queen's past, this Wolfgang Dirscherl and Manfred Reindl design has a dexterity element:

Tim Löwe and his friends have found the tastiest coconuts imaginable, but unfortunately these coveted fruits are growing on a palm tree that stands in the middle of a shaky rock.

In Voll Verwackelt, players must balance the animals constantly as they move them gently across this unstable rock because only if the balance is kept do you receive coconuts as a reward. Collect the most coconuts by the end of the game, and you win!

• Ravensburger has posted information about the children's games that it plans to release in the first half of 2019, but information about its titles for more general audiences has been scarce so far. Las Vegas Royale appears to be a new edition of Dorn's Las Vegas, which debuted in 2012 from Ravensburger's alea brand, but there's no sign of anything new in this edition other than the title and (possibly) the artwork since nothing has been posted for this release yet.

• Even less info is available for Minecraft, a 2-4 player game for ages 8+ that plays in 30-60 minutes. All I know now is the brief description below:

The video game phenomenon comes to your table with the Minecraft board game, in which you try to grab rare resources from your fellow players and avoid getting surprised by monsters like creepers and zombies. Craft your collected resources into new, better gear, and design your personal dream home to secure victory!

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Publisher: Northern Cartography
Price: $1.00 Read more »

Publisher: Northern Cartography
Price: $1.00 Read more »

Publisher: Northern Cartography
Price: $1.00 Read more »

Publisher: Creepy Assassin

Introducing the Map of Badendale, a Setting Supplement for the The Dales of The Great Wyrm Lake Roleplaying Game. Originally created by Glenn Joly and updated by Greg Schulze, this map includes the region for the The Society of Masks adventure for the The Dales of The Great Wyrm Lake RPG, plus enough areas for many more urban adventures.

This map supplement and The Dales of The Great Wyrm Lake RPG introduces the Gamemaster and Players to a world of sword and sorcery fantasy. This setting can be used in a number of different ways that may fit your gaming style. It can be used as a starting point for adventures in your own home setting, as a reference for expanding this setting for your own uses, or simply as background information when playing The Society of Masks adventure or any future The Dales of The Great Wyrm Lake adventures. Pick up your sword and shield, prepare your Wyrm Magic, concentrate on your Psi, and enter the The Dales of The Great Wyrm Lake.

Each square on this map represents 30 feet.

Price: $1.00 Read more »

Publisher: Creepy Assassin

The Society of Masks, an 8th level adventure for The Dales of The Great Wyrm Lake Roleplaying Game, which introduces the Gamemaster and Players to a world of sword and sorcery fantasy. The Society of Masks uses the D10 Pentra System, of which only a 10-sided die is needed to play this RPG adventure. Pick up your sword and shield, prepare your Wyrm Magic, concentrate on your Psi, and enter the The Dales of The Great Wyrm Lake.

The Dales of The Great Wyrm Lake RPG rules are needed to play this adventure, plus the Map of Badendale free download. Other products include The Draconic Schism, The Cavern of Calamity, The Gildwest Pass, Souls of Black, Threshold of Power, and Queen of the Dark Moor adventures.

Price: $1.95 Read more »

Publisher: Happy Monster Press

Superheroes in the American Revolution for Savage Worlds Adventure Edition!

Legion of Liberty: Superheroes of 1776 follows the adventures of a group of young superhuman heroes fighting for independence in the American colonies. As the war progresses, the heroes will develop new powers and find new enemies - and their actions can change the course of history.

Price: $0.00 Read more »

Publisher: Happy Monster Press

UPDATED FOR SAVAGE WORLDS ADVENTURE EDITION!

In the ruins of an ancient city, a band of treasure hunters seeks ancient artifacts to fuel the creations of a powerful Tinker Mage.  Armies trade musket fire across rolling hills as pikemen brace to receive a charge of monstrous shock troops.  An assassin in the service of the Goddess of Death and Disease sets a gunpowder charge beneath the foundations of a rival church.  A wizard faces down a psion in an arcane duel for possession of a trove of ancient texts.  All these adventures and more are daily occurrences in the world of Children of the Apocalypse, a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting for Savage Worlds Adventure Edition.

Legend tells of how the ancient, technologically advanced civilization of Earth fell in the devastating War of the Gods.  The final blow in that war was a devastating plague that wiped out almost every living humanoid, with only a tiny fraction left to rebuild civilization.  Much has been achieved under the auspices of the Four benign deities, Iset (Justice and Learning), Edward (Magic and Psionics), Jonas (Tinkers and Scientists), and Rahel (Law and War).  New cities have risen, far from the haunted ruins of the old.  Lost technologies have been rediscovered, including the recent addition of gunpowder as a tool for construction and warfare.  Alongside these cities have also risen dominions of beastmen and other twisted creatures, some building cities and civilizations of their own.  There, and also in the shadows of the humanoid cities, the dark gods plot and plan, always seeking advantage but never pressing to the point of triggering another war of the gods.   But such a war is coming, and it will forever change the shape of the world.

Children of the Apocalypse Second Edition is coming to DriveThruRPG later in 2019.

Price: $0.00 Read more »

Publisher: Chaosium

Against the Mythos in the Down Darker Trails Setting

Shadows Over Stillwater is a collection of scenarios and locales for Down Darker Trails—the Wild West setting for Call of Cthulhu and Pulp Cthulhu. Contained within are further insights and challenges for those seeking bold adventure in the American Old West.

Featured is a three-part campaign—The Shadow Over Stillwater—set in the mountains of the New Mexico Territory. A hunt for a fugitive murderer leads the investigators into a mystery involving odd townsfolk, strange lights in the sky, walking corpses, and the machinations of a once-powerful and ancient race seeking to reclaim their lost glory.

The campaign is suitable for groups of any size, as the Keeper can easily scale the opposition to reflect the number of investigators. An apparently simple task, bringing a wanted man to justice, brings the investigators to a town suffering an epidemic of bizarre events, from crazed residents to the dead rising from their graves.

Contents

Shadows Over Stillwater opens with a three-part campaign called The Shadow Over Stillwater:

Part 1: Lazarus, in Spades, the first scenario in the campaign, sends the investigators to Stillwater, New Mexico. Stillwater’s sheriff has alerted the authorities that a wanted man, Hank Hanratty, has been spotted in the town. The investigators are hired to the outlaw but, on arrival in Stillwater, they are faced with a situation that threatens to plunge them into chaos and death.

Part 2: Trouble on Knife Cut Mesa immediately follows with the investigators heading to the mesa north of Stillwater to seek the source of recent strange events where a band of Mescalero Apache may aid or confuse their investigation. Tracing their quarry into mountains, the investigators come face to face with an ancient evil.

Part 3: Shattered Earth, Poisoned Sky brings the campaign to a potentially explosive finale. Santa Rosita has been wracked with earthquakes—the residents fear that their town will soon be destroyed. The investigators’ efforts to uncover the secret behind the situation may be hampered by the growing paranoia among the townsfolk. The investigators must delve deeply to thwart a plan designed to remake the Earth.

Following the campaign is another adventure, Beneath the Burning Sun, that can be played as a standalone adventure or as a continuation of The Shadow Over Stillwater. The investigators arrive in the town of Shade in Silverhole County, New Mexico where they become embroiled in a desperate bank robbery and join a posse to track down a gang of ferocious outlaws led by a crazed preacher. A bloody trail leads to an abandoned Spanish fort high in the Cebolletas where death awaits.

A new locale for the Down Darker Trails setting follows: Stonegarden expands upon the Down Darker Trails setting. A booming mining town in Arizona, tucked away in the Coyote Mountains, this locale provides a new and fully realized town in which to base adventures. The history of the region, its locations, and people are detailed, as well as its secrets, threats, and Mythos connections. Whether venturing forth to unlock the riddles of Stone Garden Mesa or enjoying the hospitality of the Ralston family, this new campaign setting presents a community with one of the most violent reputations in the entire West. A place of danger, wild adventure, and dark secrets.

Finally, The Devil’s Round-Up provides an extended adventure seed set in a location that may be familiar to long-time Call of Cthulhu fans. A roster of detailed characters, along with their foul agendas are described, ready to darken the day of any investigators who venture into doom-haunted Castronegro.

That’s plenty of adventure to keep your gaming group immersed in the horrors and terrors of the Old West.

According to your preferred style of play, Shadows Over Stillwater can be played using classic Call of Cthulhu, but can also be enjoyed with the Pulp Cthulhu supplement. This book requires the Call of Cthulhu Keeper’s Rulebook (7^th edition) to play. Having access to the Down Darker Trails core setting book is highly recommended.

Price: $17.99 Read more »

Publisher: Silver Games LLC

Easily make a character using the options laid out in the Ponyfinder Campaign Setting. Supports all the races, spells, class options, feats and equipment from the book for new and existing characters.

Requires Hero Labs with DnD 5E to use.

Be sure to visit https://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=55090 and grab the community pack (free) for 5e.

Price: $9.99 Read more »

I, like I suspect many GMs, have a “player” that I have difficulty actually getting into a game. There are many reasons for this, but the one I want to focus on is a specific type. They want to play. They like to play, BUT:

• Read a rulebook?
• Fill out a character sheet?
• Come up with a concept that plays well with others and fits your game?

To that you get a resounding: “No THANK you.”

So what’s the solution other than telling the player: “Well, guess you don’t really want to play that much. Bugger off then.” Assuming for some reason that’s not the answer you WANT to give? In this case, the answer is: Pregens.

These can be new whole cloth characters, OR you could grab likely NPCs that you didn’t really flesh out for game play: Jondo the overeager town guard from last session, that genius whiz-kid inventor the PCs had to save from his own creation, that sort of thing.

O.K. Article over. Go make a bunch of pregens so that your one player who’s kind of non-committal can play one, or on the off chance you get a drop in. Shoo!

…

Oh. Still here? So depending on system, making a bunch of pregens can be a pain in the rump, and maintaining them over time to be a good match for your party can be yet more work. Every time your party advances a bit you have to go and update all those pregens. And while it’s fine if you don’t mind the work, I’ve never been much of a “Do a bunch of work on the off chance you need it” kind of guy.

So from here, there are a couple options:

1. Steal them: So you could find a set of already made characters appropriate to your game and just steal them. Depending on your game that could be easier or harder to find. If you’re lucky you can even find a variety of levels so that you don’t have to do advancement either. You can just grab the selection that fits. Some systems even have entire books dedicated to pregens.
2. Bribe your players to do the heavy lifting for you: Not everyone is into lonely fun anymore, but chances are you have a player or two that would love to crank out a few basic pregen characters and/or update a few from the stable you already have. Just toss them a few xp, hero points, or heck, let them choose the pizza toppings next session and you’re good to go.
3. Some mix of the above: Steal some and update them yourself, Have a player make them and you update them, You make them and let a player update them, etc… Whatever matches your bandwidth.

O.K. Article really over. Standard closing questions: Have you used pregens at your table? What’s a new and clever way to apply this that I didn’t think of? And as always, anything you want a gnome to wax philosophical about? We’ll write about pretty much anything if it keeps us out of the stewpot.

Read more »

 

Do you have too many games just collecting dust on your bookshelves?

Is it a struggle to get your players to try something new?

Are you just too busy to finish reading that new tome of a game book?

 

You are not alone.

As Convention Coordinator for the Indie Game Developer Network and as a self-published game designer, I travel to monthly conventions to sell and run role-playing games. I’m always asking what games people are playing, running, and are interested in. And, let me tell you, there are plenty of others who feel the same as you. They face the same challenges, the same struggles.

You don’t have to go it alone. 

Together, I think we can build/borrow a system to help solve all of our (current) problems. It won’t cure them overnight, but it will treat the problems and help to create a foundation for other like-minded locals. Together, we can unite to build more than a gaming group. We can create a movement! One to tackle the difficulties of having too many unplayed games, of luring players to try something different, or the reoccurring learning curve of each new game.  First things first, we start by building a community. To meetup and game together, we’ll need a pool of potential players and Game Masters. Thanks to social media, this is surprisingly easy to start, however, difficult to master.

Build a Community?

We need a place for people to gather in order to build interest in our idea—our movement. With the utility of social media, we can easily recruit, message, and share ideas (posts) at times that are convenient for one another. A community can be fostered in something as simple as a Facebook Group. You could start today. Add the people you game with, the people that you know game locally, and the Game Masters that run events at local stores or gaming hangouts. Most game stores have their event schedules posted on a website or community board in their store. Take advantage of these to help you find where people are gaming and who is facilitating these games. Talk to your local game store owners about what you’re working on and who else they think you should talk to. Don’t assume that every game played will be publicly posted. Also, dig around for other local gaming groups on Facebook. Search the name of local game stores for  groups that share their name. Search for groups that prominently state your city, town, or region’s name with the keywords RPG, Tabletop, Geek, or D&D. You may be surprised to find how much is already going on right under your nose.

 

How Will This Solve My Problems?

A model that I’ve adopted in Northwest Indiana is that of Games on Demand. You may have heard of their work or participated in a game with them at Gencon, Origins, or Pax. Their model consists of several Game Masters, each offering up two or more different games per time slot. Players that attend the event(s), pick from the games offered in a first come, first served basis. They generally select from table tents that give a blurb of each game with a picture. As games are selected, the choices begin to narrow, and focus shifts to filling the games selected.

To solve your problems, you need to foster an environment that builds demand for new games and that attracts players who want to be involved in those games. The Games on Demand model is attractive to players and Game Masters looking to play and run new games. It has an easy to understand structure that clearly defines what a Game Master needs to prepare for (two different games, two different one shot sessions, expect new players). Not to mention, with other Game Masters sharing games, you can learn more of them without having to read or research them one at a time.

What Do I Need for This to Work?

• Game Masters: With the help of another Game Master or two, you could offer up to six different games for a game night. Each Game Master already has games they know how to run and games on their shelf they are just dying to put to good use. Creating a community with game nights and a Games on Demand model provides the opportunity you’ve all been waiting for. Give yourself and other Game Masters the opportunity to share all of the cool games you’ve been collecting.
• Public Places to Play: Potential players need to feel safe before they will join you for a game. Playing with strangers can be very intimidating, especially if it is at a private home where you don’t know anyone. Reach out to your local game stores or anywhere else people are gaming in your area (coffee shops, tabletop friendly bars, churches, the local library) and schedule a time for 2-3 free tables. You may be asked to institute a rule that everyone buy their drinks and snacks from the establishment. That’s only fair, besides, you want the opportunity for there to be foot traffic. Shopping customers and regulars can be recruited to play and invited to future events. They may even have friends…
• Game Day Events or Meetups: What good is the community if we have nothing to rally around? Create events to attract people in your local area. Ask your friends to share the events with their friends and families. Spread the word on Facebook in your local groups with similar interests. If you have the skills to make a flyer, put some up in your local school and game store bulletin boards. It takes time for people to understand what you’re doing and also to carve out time to attend. Don’t be discouraged! Some people will need time to find themselves in a situation where they are also looking for new people to game with or new games to play. I have had more than one Game Master tell me, “I’ll be there when I’m no longer running two games a week.” That’s fair!

Tales of the 219

My local contingent is called the Tales of the 219. Yep, that’s our area code! Northwest Indiana Story Gamers just didn’t win over the hearts and minds of our founding members.

On January 31st, we mark our one year anniversary of running events at local game stores on a monthly (and more) schedule. Setting out, I found other Game Masters interested in diversifying the games that they play and struggling to find players for their games not named D&D or Pathfinder. Sharing my vision for a more vibrant, inclusive, and variety rich gaming community, I reached out to local game stores. To their surprise, we didn’t want money or to sell attendees something physical. We just wanted to grow the community of role-players in Northwest Indiana, to bridge RPG enthusiasts beyond their favorite game store, gaming group, or routine game of choice.

I remember speaking to Matt and Jared, two of my friends and early adopters of our vision.

“This (Tales of the 219) is probably going to be like four of us running games for each other for a year or two. But, one day, there will be others, and they’ll talk fondly about how they found the Tales of the 219. We’ll be like forefathers that paved the way to make a more vibrant and diverse role-playing game community possible. This will work. We just need to be persistent and deal with the inevitable trying times that will come with the occasional successes.”

I’m happy to inform you that it never did end up being just the four of us playing each others’ games. We’ve hosted events at six different game stores and one local convention for a total of fifteen events in 2018. Attendance varies from 5-15 individuals with an average of 8-9 folks attending per gathering. At our local convention Arcticon, we held eight games seating over 40 players! It’s a good feeling to not only play more games but to help others experience brilliant games they never knew existed. 

 

Some things I’ve learned so far:

• Meetup.com was an excellent tool for engaging and managing a growing role-playing game community. It isn’t anymore. Some Meetup accounts are doing very well and holding strong to the format, but they are mostly groups that have been around for years. All the action is on Facebook these days, even if respondents ARE flaky. If you aren’t familiar with people checking interested instead of going for your events, get used to it. Phone based Facebook users  really gotta dig to find the illusive going option. So, don’t be too hard on those that mark interested. Searching Meetup for other gaming groups in your area can be very useful, though. You can reach out to them and talk about consolidating efforts.
• D&D can be a powerful tool for recruiting and finding new players to join your burgeoning RPG community. It can also lead to exactly what you may have been trying to avoid—people only interested in D&D(or Pathfinder). I’ve spoken to a few of the larger role-playing game Meetup leaders about using D&D as a gateway for players. It will inflate your community numbers but may not convert many people over to trying out new games. People like to like D&D in this day and age! Experiment at your own risk.
• Going to where the people are is worth it. Finding your people takes good word of mouth, a little luck, or consistency. Hopefully, you can find two of the three! Sometimes, it takes several events at a location to find the people who will become a core part of your new community. Most of us have busy adult lives and might skip a few of these events until it fits nicely in our schedule.
• A lot of role-players choose not to be on Facebook or social media in general. Form an email list to keep them in the loop. You may be stunned by how many people that is. I certainly was!
• It’s a win-win for game stores, you attract RPG enthusiasts to different stores and show them new games to purchase and run for others. Don’t be afraid to approach them. Also, don’t be surprised at how many still want telephone calls to schedule or are bad at email conversations. I like reaching out with Facebook Messenger as that tool trains businesses to reply timely. It has been very effective, for the most part.
• Giving prizes to first time attendees and Game Masters for running games has been far less of an incentive than I had hoped for attracting players. I’m always giving away full games to new players and it doesn’t seem to really sway whether they return or not. Convenience seems to be king.

Building a Community…Online?

Don’t have a game store nearby? Can’t find role-players locally? Have you thought about building an online community or joining something like the Gauntlet? An earlier conception of this idea, this movement, was to build a role-playing game group with a rotating Game Master dynamic. On G+, we called ourselves the Janus GM Project. The members would announce games they wanted to run for the next round of games (like 3 rounds a year) and then we would vote on our favorite titles per Game Master. Each Game Master then knew what game to start reading with months to prepare, read up, or research the game. We’d play each game every other week for a 3-5 session story arc. It was a ton of fun and very effective! We played over twenty-five new games in about two and a half years.

What Are You Really Doing This For?

Maybe, you’re a Game Master overloaded with games that just need to be played. Maybe, you’re a game designer and want to build an audience that will playtest and buy your game(s). Maybe, you are a new player looking for the game that is uniquely your fit, your niche.

Don’t settle for the status quo. Build a Games on Demand community where you live! Grow the community YOU want to be a part of. Build something for the future players of your neighborhood.

I’ll be there for you. Together, we can build a network that communicates and shares best practices. You just need to be persistent and share your love for RPGs with those near you. I believe you can do it, and this is a fun way to grow the hobby we love so dear.

Imagine…Create…Love…

 

Special thanks to the crew at the Tales of the 219 (Sout, Matt, Jared, Adrienne, Pedro, Tom), my local game stores (By the Board Games & Entertainment, The Librarium Cafe, Galactic Greg’s, Tenth Planet), and the RPG enthusiasts of the region! Thank you for the added joy to my life!

 

I want to know:

How have you brought people together in your local area?

How do you attract new players or sway your gaming group into trying something new?

Where do you game and who else could you invite?

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I’ve written about the agony and frustration of organizing a gaming group before, offering advice on how to coordinate schedules and expressing my frustration when the rest of the group isn’t on the same page. Recently, I was talking with a friend about this subject again and we were commiserating on how hard it is to get a group’s schedule to line up and how frustrating it can be when it isn’t the same level of importance to everyone involved.

I said, “I love gaming because of the people, but dammit people make it hard to game.”

Over the years, I’ve seen how groups live and die based on scheduling and how much the group respects that scheduling. My first group that started in high school was a loose collection of people the GM would wrangle. It all revolved around him and because of the nature of what we were playing (usually super lethal 1e and 2e D&D) there were rarely campaign concerns that needed a consistent group of players. The folks I found in college were much more static about who was involved, but there was still only one GM and he often had difficulty maintaining a commitment to any one campaign. Eventually, we all stayed close friends, but the gaming faded away as adult lives got in the way. Today I have a local group that has been going strong for well over a decade, but that has taken a lot of determination from a couple of us that are too stubborn to fail. I also have a couple of online/remote groups, but scheduling is still tough and though our campaigns are wonderful, they’re sporadic.

Over the years, to maintain my own sanity, I’ve had to accept that not everyone is going to rank their commitment to a game group as high as I do. Gaming means a lot to me and it’s a hobby I have obsessed about for literally decades. I mean, I do write for a blog about this stuff after all. Not everyone who enjoys gaming is going to hold it to the same lofty pinnacle that I do. Many of these folks are still totally worth gaming with, but they’re not going to be the ones to initiate organizing and wrangling a group into playing. There are also of plenty of folks who love gaming just as much and will do it whenever they can, but simply do not have the right temperament or skills to be good at organizing. The struggle is real.

If you’re organizing your game group:

• Be patient but persistent. When you’re trying to herd cats, patience is a virtue. Even if you’re working with a small group of gamers, it can be trying to try and balance everyone’s schedule and make the timing work. Finding a time that everyone can make requires patience or it will drive you insane. You also need to be persistent that a decision is made. So many groups will debate things endlessly and never actually decide on anything. Or worse, some folks will think a time was set, but the rest didn’t get that same message. Your persistence also helps in making sure everyone stays on the same page. Even though my group has a nominal ‘every-other-Friday’ agreement, I still send out a reminder at the beginning of the week to make sure everyone remembers what, when, and where.
• Find the method that works for you. This should go without saying, but if you’re in charge of keeping the group organized, you have to find a method of organization that works for you. Honestly, if you’ve stepped into the role as a group’s organizer, you’re probably pretty organized to begin with, but everyone needs to start somewhere. My group uses a shared Google calendar, but relying on only that doesn’t work. At the end of every game session, I check in with folks about the next session. This helps remind folks to bring up things like vacations, cons, or special events, and it lets us potentially reschedule which night we play on if necessary. There’s also that ‘week-of’ reminder I send out.
• Don’t burn yourself out trying to accommodate everyone. This is important. As I said above, not everyone will or can rank gaming at the same level of importance as you or I do. This doesn’t mean they’re not fun to game with, but their priorities may be different for a wide variety of reasons. Be honest with yourself when you’re struggling to coordinate and one person is consistently the problem. Maybe it’s worth it because you love gaming with that person, but maybe they shouldn’t be part of a weekly group. If the problem is they often forget about the game or have to frequently cancel, it might be time to say goodbye. Find the people that are at least in the same ballpark with your priorities. I accept that not everyone in my group will be as dedicated as I am, but they’re all willing to try and maintain our schedule.

If you’re agreeing to join a game group:

• Respect the efforts of the organizer. I don’t say this just because I am an organizer, but you will absolutely frustrate and burn out your group’s organizer if you’re dismissive of how much work they do to keep things going. Or, if you constantly brush off gaming because something else came up, you’re disrespecting the time and effort of not only the organizer, but the rest of the group. If you’ve agreed to be part of a group and agreed to a time to game, you owe it to them to do your best.
• Give as much warning as possible if you need to cancel. Life happens and things do come up, so it should be common sense to let everyone know as soon as possible when you have to cancel gaming. Unfortunately, I’ve seen the last-minute cancel that shouldn’t have been last-minute way too often to not bring it up. It’s incredibly disrespectful to the group as a whole and to the GM of the group. Do you know how much it sucks to be the GM who planned an adventure with a focus on a particular character only to have that character’s player not show up for game?
• Be realistic about your availability. Folks really want to game, so they sometimes agree to games that almost immediately fall apart because no one could admit they really didn’t have the time for it. Recognize when you’re the one consistently making scheduling difficult and take a moment to think about whether or not this group is going to work. Sometimes difficult scheduling is okay because everyone is on board with it, but sometimes it’s just getting in the way of everyone else’s fun. I have one online group that has difficulty with scheduling, but we generally still make it work. Another fledgling group I was part of last year died essentially on the vine because we as a whole weren’t realistic about what our time commitment could be. Understand your own limitations and find the group that fits that.

I think this is a pretty universal struggle for all of us who try and game regularly. There’s a reason there’s a ton of memes out there about the impossibility of game scheduling. I’m curious about your struggles and what you and your groups have done to get past this issue. I’d love to hear your advice on the subject.

 

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It’s a new year, which means you’ve got an excuse to look for cool new people to inspire you. I’ve curated some of my favorite creators doing cool stuff right now in ttrpgs, and what projects they’re working on.

Jabari Weathers

Jabari Weathers has been killin the rpg illustration game recently. Their vibrant colors and geometric linework brings a somewhat abstract and art nouveau look to traditional fantasy style pieces. Jabari’s artwork is gorgeous and inspiring in it’s interpretations of genre and style. I love the character portraits, and the inherent evocative romanticism in each piece.

Two recent projects they’ve worked on include a tarot deck for Seven Seas, and Joshua AC Newman’s newest game in production The Bloody Handed Name of Bronze. They’ve also done gorgeous tarot illustrations for Bluebeard’s Bride!

You can follow them on Twitter, Instagram

Artwork:

 

DC

DC has just released the design for a Blades in the Dark hack called Mutants In The Night. As a streamer, game designer, and community organizer, DC is creating a massive amount of stuff for the ttrpg world. They’re currently streaming a campaign of Mutants In The Night on Twitch, but you can watch on YouTube if you can’t keep up with the live streams. DC also has a Patreon where they’re sharing behind the scenes design process and drafts of their rpg work. Their Patreon says a lot about their beautiful game philosophy: “Role-playing games are transformative. On a small scale, these games can begin in a place you’ve planned and controlled, but end in a place you’ve built. As the scale grows, people find themselves with more heart, courage, and understanding than they’d ever expect to gain from pieces of paper and small dice. ”

If you want to support DC here’s some links and also their Twitter at @DungeonCommandr:

Twitch: Twitch.tv/dungeoncommandr 

Mutants in The Night:dungeoncommandr.itch.io 

Patreon: Patreon.com/DCrpgs 

Allie Bustion

Allie Bustion is a GM, streamer, game designer and artist who’s currently working on a game called Misbehavin’, a Blades hack alternate history/urban fantasy set in the Prohibition Era United States. It seems rad as hell and I’m sad I’m not playing it right now. Her streams focus on game dev and story driven games, and her art is this gorgeous colorful digital illustration. Over at her Patreon you can see some of her design thoughts as she creates and even playlists and inspirations that she shares as she works. Her games on itch.io include themes of relationships, monsters, and buddy cops.

Check out her links and follow her @madpierrot

Games: http://madpierrot.itch.io

Twitch: http://twitch.tv/madpierrottv 

Art: http://madpierrot.threadless.com

 

Tristarae

Tristarae streams and guest stars on numerous ttrpg streams on Twitch! Recently starring in the aforementioned Mutants In the Night, as well as Blades in the Dark, AGON, and several other ttrpg playtests. She’s a delight to watch, her wit sharp and hilarious, and her perspectives fresh and relatable. The best place to find her streaming schedule is on her Twitter: @trist_chi

Twitch: twitch.tv/tristarae 

 

Laura Simpson

Laura Simpson designed the game behind the hugely successful Kickstarter A Companion’s Tale, a mapmaking game where you play the companions of the hero and construct the hero together. She’s one half of Sweet Potato Press, which has also created Love Commander and The Dance and the Dawn. Laura also has a game in the #Feminism anthology about four black women driving together to their reunion. Her games have a focus on diversity and protagonists that we don’t normally see at the forefront of the narrative.

Find her work at Sweet Potato Press

Misha Bushyager

Misha Bushyager is a game designer, writer, and GM who’s currently working on the Afrofuturist space opera Orun. Orun had a great Kickstarter campaign and one of the most compelling elements of the game to me is that everyone plays an alien! Misha’s own project is under the name Black Girl Gameworks and is also 1/3rd of New Agenda Publishing, both of which are making and supporting games by diverse creators. Misha’s written for multiple games including Chill: SAVE, Lovecraftesque, and Dead Scare and was an editor of the award winning #Feminism collection of nanogames. She’s also a curator with me on More Seats At The Table. Check out her Twitter which is always on fire at @BGGameWorks

And check out her work at: Black Girl Gameworks and New Agenda Publishing

 

Tanya DePass

Tanya DePass’s work in game communities is so, so important. Her project I Need Diverse Games highlights projects, work, and articles by marginalized creators across many platforms and types of games. I’ve seen her at booths and panels at conventions, streaming games as a partner on Twitch, and generally being a badass on Twitter. Her feed enriches and educates my understanding of marginalized communities in gaming. INDG also hosts a variety of support projects for marginalized creators, like scholarships to visit conventions, pay for articles, and boosting the signal on games. Tanya also helps organize Orcacon, an inclusive game convention in Washington. There are few projects in gaming that I think are as important as this one, definitely support, follow, and share Tanya’s work.

Find her on Twitter at: @cypheroftyr

Twitch: http://twitch.tv/cypheroftyr 

main site: http://cypheroftyr.com 

Patreon: patreon.com/cypheroftyr

 

Whitney Delaglio

Whitney Delaglio is a game designer who recently Kickstarted a game called Prism, which is basically about the relationships among fantastic aquatic creatures. The game focuses on relationships and feelings as a way to navigate both the story and the mechanics. Whitney did not just the game design for Prism, but also all the artwork, which is whimsical and delightful.

You can find her work here:

 

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Enc

I had a lot of early influences that led to my later interests. I can just barely remember seeing Star Wars at the drive-in when it came out. The first birthday present I can remember is a toy Batmobile. More to the point, one of the first non-Star Wars movies I can remember seeing was Clash of the Titans. While I had already started hearing stories about King Arthur and his knights, this was something else entirely — a whole different scale. My love of mythological stories was born, as was my deep abiding affection for mechanical owls.

It’s not much of a leap for me to gravitate towards roleplaying games that allow you to build your own mythology. This led me to my current review, Part-Time Gods Second Edition.

Content Warning

While I’m not going to spend much time on any of it in this review, the game itself does have some instances of discussing adult professions, cannibalism, potentially compromised people put in dangerous situations, and occasional descriptions of violent acts. It isn’t constant, but each of the above pops up in a few places across the course of the text.

Manifestation

This review is based on the PDF of the game. The PDF is 318 pages, with a four-page index, 12 sample characters (in addition to the sample characters used in the text), two pages of Kickstarter backers, three pages of random tables, a blank territory grid, and a blank character sheet.

The cover has gorgeous full-color art, with similar black and white art in the interior. While the interior art is black and white, interior headers and borders are rendered in gold and purple, and the overall effect looks very sharp.

Introduction

The introduction gives the quick pitch of the game, which is that the player characters are portraying modern-day gods that must balance their responsibilities as everyday people with the responsibilities inherent in the divine spark that they possess. Complicating this is that mortals that aren’t worshippers that get too close to the gods usually don’t have a happy ending in store.

In addition to the pitch, there are brief sections on what a roleplaying game is, what is needed to play, and the core resolution mechanic. That mechanic involves assembling a dice pool of d10s, counting 7-9s as successes, counting 10s as two successes, and counting 1s with no successes in the pool as a critical failure. This section wraps up with a glossary of terms that will be introduced in the upcoming chapter.

Between chapters, there are one-page pieces of fiction illustrating how the lives of modern gods play out.

The Descending Storm

The next section delves a bit deeper into the lore of the assumed setting. The first mortal touched by the power known as The Source spent time with other mortals, and those mortals became gods. In order to keep a tighter rein on who gets to become a god, the existing gods locked up The First Mother.

This leads to some bad consequences that result in the creation of Outsiders, mythological monsters that originally just wanted to wipe out the gods (although some of them lost this drive over time).

All of this means that modern gods are a generation of people with amazing potential but burdened with the consequences of the actions of an older generation that was unwilling to fully share their power. Why does that theme feel somewhat familiar?

In addition to the broad history lesson on the gods and their origins, there are explanations of theologies, dominions, territories, pantheons, worshippers, outsiders, and why modern gods are less overt than their predecessors.

I really enjoyed the way the history weaves in and out of matching and diverting from what might be common knowledge about different mythologies. It is a history section that hits the highlights and lets you know what happened in broad terms but doesn’t assign specific fates for all of the old gods or go into details that a GM may want to provide in their own campaigns.

Spark of Divinity

This section of the book walks the reader through creating a character. This involves the following steps:

• Occupations (what you do for a living)
• Archetype (the type of character you are)
• Dominion (what you are the god of)
• Theology (an organization that has a specific philosophy on what gods should be doing)
• Attachments (your ties to the mortal world)
• Final Touches

Each of these steps adds different ratings to a character. By combining them, you end up with what skills a character has, how much wealth and downtime they have, what their truths are (abilities that are either always true, or can be activated, but don’t involve rolls), and the people, places, and things that are important to them.

At the end of each of the Theology sections, there is a sample character sheet for a god that belongs to that Theology. After walking players through the steps of creating a character, there is a section on XP, including how it is awarded, and what can be purchased with it.

At the end of this section is a summary of character creation. I was glad this was included, as the individual items are simple enough, but they are being accumulated across a lot of different options, and it might be easy to miss something that a character should have received from some section of character creation.

While I liked some of the items that will net a player XP for their character, I have become a much bigger fan of having tailored questions that trigger XP when answered. It’s great to award XP for characters being present, having scenes with their bonds, and highlighting their curses. I feel less excited about trying to determine spotlight awards, teamwork awards, or memorable moments. I would have rather had more specific questions tailored to the different aspects of the character as chosen through character creation, as some of the triggers feel too open-ended to me.

Divine Expressions

This section engages how to use the “big picture” aspects of the rules, such as how sparks work, legendary acts, hearing prayers, the limits of immortality, how manifestations work, rituals, and other worlds.

Legendary acts are big narrative things that gods can do to make a major change, but that drain them whenever they are done. Gods have to recover after they do these, and there are mechanical penalties assessed afterward, but the legendary act itself is a narrative thing that fits within the god’s dominion.

Whenever a god does something that isn’t a “standard” thing, such as using more mundane skills, they can use their manifestation skills to attempt to do supernatural things. The further away from their dominion the manifestation is, the more a god might take a penalty to their die pool to create the manifestation. There are example costs for things like magnitude and effect which a god must spend to create the manifestation, and if used against another creature with a spark, they must spend successes to overcome that oppositions defense before they can spend for effects.

The final section of this chapter explains how a god can create their own realm away from the mortal world, as well as detailing a few previously existing supernatural realms. There are also rules for detailing what happens when gods go exploring realms beyond the mortal world.

Blessing the Dice

The next section gets more into the rules for doing more day to day actions in the game. The group has a pantheon pool of dice that can be drawn upon when the entire group agrees and invoking a character’s curse (narratively suffering the effects of that curse), adds to the pantheon pool. Blessings often involve giving a character extra dice when they attempt certain skills or in certain circumstances.

Instead of adding a skill to an attribute, as many dice pool systems do, in Part-Time Gods 2nd Edition, you explain a primary skill related to what you want to do, and then explain how a secondary skill could supplement that skill, and the number in these two skills forms the number of dice that make up the dice pool. Higher difficulties require more successes.

Tools that are high quality or especially helpful to an action add additional dice as well. Getting three more successes than needed for a given result gives a character a boost and getting a 1 on one of the dice without getting any successes creates a critical failure. There are example boosts and critical failures given in this chapter to guide what should happen when those come up.

There are derived statistics for strength and movement. This was actually a little baffling to me, because so much of the game is abstract–the territory grid, wealth, downtime. It feels odd to quantify exactly how far characters can move, or exactly how much they can lift and carry, and it feels a little at odds with the overall feel of the game.

Moving around the territory grid and entering a scene causes a character to spend downtime. Characters can go to their job to get back some wealth or downtime instead of participating in a scene, and when a character is out of downtime, they have to spend time with their bonds, or risk damaging the relationship with that bond (bonds take stress a certain number of times before being broken, and a broken bond creates new penalties for the god). Some obligations can be met by spending wealth, but not all.

Divine Battles

This section sets up how to structure a scene when player characters are in direct conflict with NPCs. There are different, but similar, rules for Battles of Fists and Battles of Wits. Characters have both health and psyche to track how much harm has been done in these conflicts.

When entering conflict, characters roll individual initiative, and they pick a major and minor action, and when they must defend against an action, they take a minor and major defense.

In addition to taking straight damage to health or psyche, characters can opt to take on conditions, which have specific consequences, but keep a character from using up all of their resources to stay viable in the scene.

Armor and weapons are a bit more granular than the overall description of the tools in the previous chapter, although most of the interactions deal with specific instances where they are more or less effective, and ways to mitigate costs for an item.

I’m a little torn, because I really like the depth that the interaction of major and minor choices adds to the narrative but coupled with the individual initiative rolled each round of combat, it feels like this could bog down quickly. It is noted that players could roll initiative once and keep the same turn order if they like, and I’m inclined to think this is what I would do, even though I like to run systems as written first, before introducing any modifications.

At least one of the defense options had me really confused, until I reread the actions sections and realized that (I think) it chains off of a character picking a certain action on their turn, which in turn allows them to then have the option to benefit from a defensive option when they are being acted against.

The Opposition

This section presents statistics for noteworthy mortals, mortals touched by the gods, other gods, and outsiders. While there is plenty of room to customize these stat blocks (and the GM is encouraged to do so when a character becomes a recurring character), there is a wide enough variety to present any number of threats on the fly. In addition to the specific examples, there is a chart giving “generic” dice pools, defenses, and resistances for different threat levels, to help GMs build and improvise anything that doesn’t appear.

The outsiders are drawn from a number of different mythologies and folklore, many of which have just a slight twist on what might be expected of them. Like the section on deific history, similar monsters from different mythologies are given more of a streamlined and common origin, such as the giants all originating from Atlas.

Creating New Myths

This section includes inspirations for the game (which draws on a wide variety of media), tips on developing stories, pacing a campaign, and utilizing story tricks. In several places it addresses specific game elements, such as getting the best use out of curses in the narrative.

There is a lot of solid advice in this section, and I particularly liked the range of inspirations for the game, citing comics, television, books, and movies, some of which may be obvious, but others that clearly have a similar theme to the game as presented.

I was a little surprised that there wasn’t a dedicated safety section in a narrative-heavy game such as this one, especially with some of the topics introduced. I do not want to give the wrong impression — the text definitely talks about paying attention to what players want and do not want in a game and building the story together, but this is interspersed, rather than concentrated in a specific discussion on safety.

I was also a little sad that there wasn’t more time spent on an idea briefly touched on in this section about starting the characters as mortal for one session, then layering on their deific powers and their association with the various theologies. While I understand what was said from a mechanical standpoint, I would love to see this as an alternate path to starting the game, with an expanded exploration of what this would look like and how it should unfold.

Divine Domain

 Part-Time Gods Second Edition manages to ignite a spark for modern urban fantasy roleplaying, creating a nice balance of game mechanics to drive the themes of the game. 

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I enjoy the exact level of detail given, that manages to give a strong feel for the setting, while leaving plenty of room to expand the campaign. Wealth and free time provide a great ebb and flow for driving the kinds of plots that the game describes. There is a broad cross-section of different cultural influences to create a richer tapestry to draw from. 

Mortal Concerns

The more granular rules about strength and movement feel a little at odds with the more free-form aspects of the game. It feels as if there is some potential for slowed pacing with individual initiative and multiple choices for both the attacker and defender in combat. I wish there had been a little more time spent on detailing the concept of playing characters as mortals discovering their sparks, and I wish there was a little bit more of a dedicated safety section in the rules.

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

Part-Time Gods Second Edition manages to ignite a spark for modern urban fantasy roleplaying, creating a nice balance of game mechanics to drive the themes of the game. If you aren’t interested in urban fantasy, this may not change your mind, but it may still be worth a look just to see how the grid, wealth, and downtime are utilized.

When you want to play god, what games to you enjoy? What are your favorite urban fantasy settings, and what is compelling about them? What kinds of mechanics do you feel support the themes of a game? We want to hear from you, so please leave a comment below! We’ll be waiting for you.

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WHERE you play the game is important. I mean, it’s not as important as having good people, and a good game, but a well-thought-out game space can enhance the enjoyment of any event. Here are a few design principles that I’ve uncovered in the process of creating game spaces in my own home, and in surveying game spaces in other people’s conventions, stores, and homes.

Every devoted gamer has spent time wistfully daydreaming about their PERFECT game room. Here are some ideas to help you design a comfortable, efficient game space in your own home.

Here’s our game space with some important elements labeled.

Shelf Space

Think of how much shelf space you need.

Now double that.

Nope, still not enough.

No, you still need more than that.

Your collection of gaming, and gaming-adjacent stuff is likely to outgrow your shelves, so when you’re designing, you’re going to have to think through what happens when you get more shelves. Our game area is part of our open-plan dining room/living room area. We have overflow shelving on the opposite side of the room on either side of the TV. It’s still not enough.

Cheap shelves will bow and buckle under the weight of your books and other supplies, but that might take a few years. The more expensive your shelves, the less frequently you will have to replace them. If you’re in a space and you think you’ll be moving within 5 years, the cheap shelves are probably fine. They almost always disintegrate when you try and move them anyway. If you’re planning on being in place for 10 years, consider the next grade up of assemble-it-yourself shelves. If you’re planning to be in the same game room for a couple of decades or more then find a local carpenter or cabinet maker and ask them about making custom built-in shelves that will house your collection without ever buckling under the weight.

In addition to hundreds of pounds of books, your game space will accumulate props. In our case, hats from our Deadlands campaign, various hyena-related costuming bits, a jester hat that once belonged to my friend James, a bag full of badges from every con we’ve gone to, and so much more. You’ll also need to store notebooks with game and DMing notes, extra dice, board games for when not everyone can play D&D, and other essentials. You should have a plethora of writing utensils and scratch paper at hand for your guests.

Natural Daylight

I started playing D&D when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Therefore, I spent a lot of my formative years in the 80s playing D&D in dark basements where it could be safely hidden from adults who might get excited-in-a-bad-way about a bunch of kids playing D&D as well as any cool kids that would make fun of us.

Times have changed. D&D is now socially acceptable and maaaybe even kinda cool!

Get your D&D outta the basement! It’s okay if your friends, parents, in-laws, and visitors know you play D&D. Natural daylight helps keep people alert and awake while they’re playing, and is generally better for people than being in a space that is dim and without natural sunlight. Of course, the price you pay for natural daylight from a wall full of windows is that you’re giving up that wall space where you could put shelving, but you have to weigh your tradeoffs.

Chairs are Mission Critical

Give your gamers chairs that they can stand on without breaking. Sometimes the drama calls for standing on a chair. Most importantly, get chairs that are comfortable enough to sit in for 8 hours. That means your chairs might be expensive, but it is SO worth it for the comfort. Before you buy seven or eight of them, buy one (and confirm you can take it back in 48 hours if you don’t like it) and spend 8 hours sitting in it. Have someone else try it as well. Is it comfy? If not, take it back. If the chairs are rickety or uncomfy after an hour, no one is going to care about your shelves, your expensive table, your lovely game space, or your game.

Game Table

This is worth it’s own post. I’m only going to go into the basics here. You need a table that is big enough to seat 8. You need to buy a home that has a space big enough to seat 8 people. Seriously, if gaming is Your Thing, then go all-in with it. When you’re looking at houses, know how big your table is, with chairs and shelves, and make sure the house has a room with natural daylight that will do.

Our table is a Geek Chic Vizier game table for 8. The center slats come out of the table and we have a lexan grid underneath for wet- or dry-erase markers. Geek Chic has since (sadly!) gone out of business but an upright citizen at Board Game Geek has done the homework to compare and contrast custom game-tables here: and I can’t give you a better or more thorough analysis than that one.

Ben looking lovingly at the table after we’d just vacuumed the crumbs out of it. The grid is covered with a lexan sheet so we can use dry erase markers. We can also slip big poster maps under the lexan for display.

WiFi for the Masses

Some people have a no-electronics rule at their tables. My only advice is to turn off wifi during games. Otherwise, skip this section and carry on.

We like using D&D Beyond so we use computers. Therefore we need wifi. Our wifi was terrible and we couldn’t figure out why, but we did some math.

We have 2 desktops, lights, fire alarms, thermostats, 1 TV, 1 Xbox, 2 work laptops, 2 personal laptops, 2 tablets, 2 personal phones, 1 work phone, and 1 data watch on our wifi. Then our players each bring a personal phone, some bring work phones, and they each bring a tablet or computer, and some have data watches. Our wifi was absolutely inadequate! We ended up having to buy a router that would support a lot of devices. Make a mental note of how many devices you have and guesstimate how many more your guests will bring, then add another 10% on top of that for all the new stuff that will need to be internet enabled, and get wifi resources accordingly.

Having a stash of charging cables and LOTS of plugs is definitely a great way to treat your guests. Consider buying the plug covers that include a USB port. (Look up “electrical plugs with usb ports” on Amazon and you’ll find an abundance of them.)

Easy Access to Kitchen

We bought this house because someone could be in the kitchen and still participate in the game. (Which took a lot of looking!) Being able to get a drink or snack and not miss a word is great! It’s only human to want to bond over food and drink, so it’s an integral part of gaming culture. It’s polite to have a variety of drinks for your guests, and it’s also okay to ask them to contribute.

Health and Safety

You should have, and your guests should know how to locate, the fire extinguisher and first aid kit. Paths to them should be clear and uncluttered. You should also have a well-stocked restroom with plenty of paper, air freshener, and Kleenex. If you have women players, having a few pads and tampons in a plastic box under the sink is kind. Parking is also Always A Thing at most people’s houses. Have enough parking and clearly communicate where and when your guests should park.

Cats (also Dogs!)

Pets are a lovely part of the family and are often welcome in gaming spaces. Make sure your pets are good with having strangers in the house. If not, they need to be safely put up while guests are around. Make sure your guests are good with having pets around (and definitely let people know to bring allergy medicine as needed.) This is Fluffy, aka Giles. Note that he is NOT allowed on the table, but he IS allowed to sleep on my computer bag. He jumps up on the bag without touching the table. I am so amused by his rules lawyering I let him do it.

The cat is not allowed on the table. However, he is not ON the table. He’s on my computer bag, which is fair game.

 

What about YOUR game space?

While this game setup is great for the games at MY house, everyone’s game table has different wants and needs. What is the most important element of your game space? What’s one thing you LOVE about your game space that really works well for you? What’s something that you can’t wait to CHANGE about your game space?

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As any number of language classes have taught most of us, stories are what happens when characters who have goals meet people, places, things, or ideas that prevent them from accomplishing those goals. Most of us can probably name off a handful of the more famous ones: “Gnome vs. Nature,” “Gnome vs. Gnome,” “Gnome vs. Self,” “Gnome vs. Intriguing Cave Filled with Goblins.” But when it comes to games, particularly the ones that always seem to be on the shelf in your Friendly Local Gaming Store, it seems that we default to a certain kind of conflict — the kind that results in careful tracking of resources like hit points, status effects, and positioning. In short: combat.

In case it isn’t already clear, I am a really really big fan of this kind of gaming. There are few things I enjoy more than making and playing characters (okay, villains) with new and exciting ways to beat up heroes, move them around, and thwart their ambitions — but variety is the spice of life, and no matter how much I enjoy those kinds of games, once in a while it’s fun to pull out something a little different.

Of course, there are a ton of games that do things other than physical combat brilliantly. Some concentrate on using the defining qualities of characters in ways that mechanically advantage them, or focus on exploration, or mystery, or drama, or dozens of other different (awesome) things, using games as metaphors and tools and vehicles for experiences. Those games are also great, and I can’t encourage you strongly enough to go out and play those games. Seriously: go play one now.

But not everyone has the energy or (frankly) gaming group it takes to learn, make characters for, and play an entirely new system. In those cases, it can seem like your only option is to continue playing the same games you’ve always played, occasionally leavened by the introduction of a new module or character option.

Often, your best option is often to identify the tools that you have available to you in your group’s preferred game, and like Lego (or Taco Bell), put them together in a new and exciting way, or at least a way your group hasn’t seen before.

For pulse-pounding action, tension, and the potential for gruesome character death, natural (or unnatural) disasters can provide an alternative way for your characters to struggle against forces they can’t swing a sword at. The remainder of this article is devoted to two approaches focusing on natural disasters: the first is a kind of challenge-within-a-challenge that pits your characters against the relentless growth potential of a fire, and the second is a set of hooks and emotional notes to hit when dealing with a flood.

These tools can also be used to give players a sense of scope for the magic, superpowers, or feats of mad engineering that their antagonists bring to bear. It’s one thing to dodge a fireball, but quite another to turn around and realize that the fireball hit a building. In a land without fire codes, every such mishap can endanger innocent bystanders, rivals, or (for incredibly goal-oriented groups) an important MacGuffin.

Note that both fires and floods are real disasters, and none of this is intended to trivialize the very real suffering that actual human beings go through when these disasters happen. With that in mind, I’ve linked to a relevant charity next to the two disasters examined in this article. If your group feels particularly moved after a given session, or even if you just have some extra to give, consider donating to these charities. Money doesn’t solve many problems, but for a struggling nonprofit, it rarely hurts.

Fire:

Charity: Operation USA

Charity Navigator Rating: Four Stars

Fire has a pretty central role in the mythology of our games. From fireballs to ancient fire gods to The Human Torch, the idea of shaping and using flame through means magical or mundane is where any number of games start. At the same time, consider how devastating fire has been in the United States in 2018, despite our relatively robust infrastructure and the truly heroic efforts of firefighters and first responders.

When a villain (or even a hero) carelessly tosses out a spell or power with the deceptively simple warning that it may catch objects on fire, institute rules that cover just how destructive and uncontrollable fire can be.

The excellent board game Flash Point has excellent mechanics that illustrate just how easy it is for a fire to rage out of control. The below rules are (very) loosely inspired by the way that this game handles fire.

• After a triggering event occurs (an out of control spell, a fumble, or even a candle setting fire to bed curtains), and if no player has taken action to put out the blaze, roll a 6-sided die at the end of players’ turns to determine whether the fire spreads, roughly in size or intensity. On a 1-5, the fire stays where it is. On a 6, the fire spreads to every adjacent space (or doubles in intensity/size if you’re not using tactical grids).
• Track the intensity/size of the fire like a fire’s “hit points” with character actions decreasing that total, and inaction allowing that total to increase through the d6 roll. Note that even stone construction often has wood joists and floors, and most wall materials are at least somewhat flammable — the key is that there’s something that can catch on fire nearly anywhere, and getting finicky about whether this thing or that thing can catch fire takes a lot of the urgency out of gameplay.
• If a fire is particularly intense or large (as any fire will become if left alone), add to the roll based on its intensity. The longer a fire is left alone, the more distinct actions are required to put it out. The below numbers provide for both “theater of the mind” (requiring distinct “actions” to put out a given level of fire) and tactical miniatures-type combat (showing the number of “squares” a fire occupies). Clever actions or actions that create areas of effect may (at the game master’s discretion) put out more than one square or count as more than one action.
  • +0: a candle flame (1 action/square total)
  • +1: a torch or other open flame (2-4 actions/squares total)
  • +3: a fire of roughly the size and intensity of a campfire or fireplace fire (5-16 actions/squares total)
  • +5: a raging conflagration (16+ total squares)
• For every round that an open flame begins and ends a turn next to a wall or other structurally important part of a building, do one point of damage to that building. Buildings have a number of points of damage based on the size and relative quality of construction. For games that do not track movement using tactical grids, every point of total intensity over a certain threshold counts toward the building’s limit.
  • 6 points: A one-room shed (every point of flame counts as being next to a wall for as long as the fire is burning)
  • 12 points: A normal-sized house, or a small building that’s relatively well-constructed (every point of intensity past 6 points counts toward the building’s limit)
  • 24 points: A large house, or a particularly well-constructed smaller one (every point of intensity past 9 points counts toward the building’s limit)
  • 48 points: Large public building, or another building particularly well-shielded against fire (every point of intensity past 12 counts toward the building’s limit)
• If a building runs out of hit points, it collapses. Depending on the level of lethality in your game, NPCs or even characters may die instantly. At minimum, everyone involved should be completely out of commission until the next scene.
• If the fire occurs outside, there is no limit to the potential spread of flame, and without quick and clever action, characters may well find themselves surrounded by towering walls of flame they have no hope of escaping.
• Adjudicate fire damage to characters according to the rules of the game you’re using, and encourage players to think creatively about ways to put out the flame in efficient ways. Note that unless characters are fireproof or otherwise able to bypass areas that are currently on fire, aiding each other or escaping will likely be thwarted by burning walls, floors, doors, or trees.
• The fire continues to burn (and potentially spread) as long as it has even a single point of intensity remaining. The key to this conflict is that every instance of the fire spreading requires distinct action by the players, and the problem compounds the longer characters do not take action.

Particularly sadistic game masters or those with groups that enjoy especially grueling challenges may institute other potential obstacles — even after they’ve been put out, fires produce a lot of smoke that may require rolls to avoid conditions like being sickened or poisoned, and areas that have been devastated by fire can easily be difficult or treacherous to move through, especially if players are attempting to rescue bystanders, priceless objects, or gigantic handfuls of snakes. Game masters may also require a roll for all or some approaches to putting out a fire, though note that doing this may well risk exposing your players to spectacular failure.

Water:

Charity: SBP (Saint Bernard Project)

Charity Navigator Rating: Four Stars

If you’re going to destroy the world, flooding is really the way to do it;

Cultures all over the world are intimately familiar with the damage that can be done by out of control water, Atlantis and Noah’s famous Ark immediately spring to mind. Characters might face flooding through the actions of an angry god, demon, or godlike sorcerer. Weather magic or super science might cause endless rain, or local dams can be threatened or destroyed by careless magic or powers, or by deliberate sabotage. For an unusual flood, consider a substance other than water, and the damage it can do — studying up on the Great Molasses Flood of Boston is a great place to start.

Unlike with fire, when a flood is under way, there’s little any but the most powerful characters can hope to do. Instead, characters should face challenges in two distinct phases: during the flood, and afterward.

During the Flood: Survival

During the flood, characters’ main focus should be escape and rescue — disaster is happening, and the characters can only hope to survive it. If using tactical miniatures or similar combat, consider restricting movement in one direction — characters may be able to move north, south or west, but cannot move east, due to the relentless pressure of water forcing against them. Terrain should be difficult or impossible to navigate through, and characters should constantly be forced to make decisions between things that they value.

For an especially bleak experience, linger on locations, objects or buildings that have been important to characters in their previous stories as they wash away. As always, be conscious of your players’ feelings, and know when too much is too much. The X card is an excellent tool (though by no means the only one) for helping navigate this kind of scene.

After the Flood: Recovery

Rebuilding communities and the buildings that house them is only the most obvious part of recovering from a disaster like a flood. In modern floods, rebuilders are forced to deal with the logistics of moving new materials into ruined and impassable areas — something that can take weeks or months, even with modern technology.

During that time period, even basics like food become scarce, and people can fall to desperation. Game Masters may want to play up the potential for conflict inherent in this, and allow players who specialize in the social elements of game play to step up and prevent riots or other forms of violence.

For external threats, opportunistic villains may step in and make impossible promises, or a warlord may see a population that, though poor, is ripe for plunder.

All of this is to say nothing of how such a weakened population deals with disease or injury — or with the health problems that can easily arise when waterlogged crops lay rotting in the fields and sodden soil sprouts disease, fungi and mold.

Stories of disaster can give heroes challenges that they know they stand no chance of fighting against — neatly avoiding the unspoken assumption some groups have that “if it has hit points, I can kill it.” Such encounters or stories can break up combat and even social encounters in ways that can make a world feel more real and lived-in. As with any topic that has real-world equivalents, game masters should pay attention to the emotional states of their players, some of whom may have directly or indirectly experienced these disasters, and make sure that everyone is on board with the inclusion of these kinds of elements. With the whole group on board and sharing in an understanding of what they’re in for, this kind of game can be a great way to spice up your sessions.

Do these kinds of disasters have a place at your table? If so, how have you used them in the past?

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Join Ang, Kira, Senda, and Wen for tools and tips for maintaining game tone at the table. Can these gnomes keep their tone steady enough to avoid the stew?

As highlighted in a recent GnomeCast, Ang, Matt, and I talked about how to approach session zero and handle launching a campaign. Near the end of the recording, Matt pondered about how to handle a missing player. I decided to create an article (this one!) about that very occurrence.

In case you missed the episode, here’s the basic run-down of what session zero is for. Session zero occurs before the campaign launches. It sets the groundwork for genre, system, play style, social contracts, safety measures while at the table, setting agreements (or even creation), character creation, tying the disparate characters together into a cohesive unit via backstory or hooks, and so on. It’s building the foundation the campaign will stand upon for the weeks, months, or years to come. Another thing that I like to do during session zero is to have an introductory encounter (not always combat) between the party and either the world or some NPCs to set the tone and drop some adventure hooks in front of the players.

Now to Matt’s question: What does the GM do when a player misses out on session zero? I have two different answers based on why the player was absent.

Intentional Absence

If the player, for whatever intentional reason, decided to drop out of the session zero experience, I tend to be a little more stern with them. All of the players need to be involved in session zero for it to be as effective as possible. I’ll take the world, setting, city, NPC, party, and introductory hook notes, compile them into a PDF (or several of them if necessary). Then I’ll email the PDF(s) to the player and tell them that the reading is mandatory in order for them to know what is going on with the future of the game.

The reason I make the reading mandatory is that we had a player miss session zero once. This included a high-level lesson from the GM on “string theory” and quantum physics. None of us came out as experts, but it was the foundation behind why our spacecraft had faster-than-light travel built in, and all other spaceships had to use jump-gates. During the course of play during the first session, the player who was absent from receiving this foundational knowledge, really goofed up on the controls of the ship (this was player ignorance, not a bad roll or an in-character moment). We ended up shooting across the galaxy and away from our objectives the GM had carefully planned out. Oops. Yeah, we could have stepped in and retconned the poor decision on the navigation of the ship, but that’s not our game style. We ran with the change in the story arcs, but I felt bad for the GM who had to toss aside sheafs of paper with his meticulous notes.

I’m not a huge planning GM. I do more improv, but there is some planning and prep work that goes into getting ready for the gaming session. Having a player completely disregard the group’s efforts to get together during session zero is inconsiderate and rude, to be honest.

What about the player’s character? When I email the PDF(s) to the player, I give them a narrow scope of character types to pick from to round out the party. Then I tell the player to create the character within those narrow scope of choices, and make sure to show up with a completed character (ready for me to review and approve) when they arrive for the first session.

If possible, I try to keep an open email dialogue going on with the player to see if they can get ideas, their character, etc. to me via email sooner than later. This will give me time to get through the new character and provide feedback before the first session kicks off.

Unplanned Absence

There are times where real life gets in the way of gaming. I completely understand that. Just a few weeks ago, we had two players carpooling to the game after a snow/ice storm. Weather was clear, but the remote roads were not. They ended up in a ditch and against a fence. Even though someone pulled them out and they got to the gaming location, they were no longer in the mood to roll some dice. I get that. I probably wouldn’t want to game either after a harrowing experience like that. (Note: Neither person was injured, so we were very thankful for that.) The litany of ways real life can intercede on our gaming plans is as lengthy as the history of the universe is old.

Be understanding. Be generous. Be kind. Know that the player wanted to be there, but could not because of whatever legitimate reason came up. My approach here is drastically different from the “intentional absence” response.

The first thing I do is see if I can set up some time to meet, one-on-one, with the missing player. If we can get together before the first session, great. During that one-on-one meeting, I’ll outline what’s been decided, ask them if they would have any input and/or changes to make with what has been put down. Then I’ll give them a quick run-down of the characters that already exist in the party, and work with them on making a character that they’ll enjoy but will still fit into the party and mesh well. I’ll also work with them on background information for their character to try and tie their new character to at least two other party members.

Once we finish up the meeting, I’ll reach out the rest of the players with any world/setting changes, so they won’t be surprised. Then I’ll email (on the side) the players who have had the new character’s background “attached” to their own, so they can hash out any further details via email before we sit down at the table again.

If I can’t get a meeting together with the missing player, then I resort to emails. Lots of emails. I’ll compile the same documents into PDF(s) and email those to the player and ask them to read through it before determining their character. I’ll leave the character concepts as wide open as I can, but still with the limitations that the new character fit in with the rest of the party. In other words, if the entire party is made up of rangers, paladins, and cavaliers, I wouldn’t allow the new character to be an assassin… because…. well… That’s just asking for trouble, right?

If things work out well, we’ll have everything nailed down and the player will have a character they like when they show up at the table for the first session.

Conclusion

It sounds like I’m harsh with the “intentional absence” player, but I like to set the tone of expectations early on. If I allow the player to slide early on, I’ve found through experience that they will be problematic throughout the campaign’s run. By nipping it in the bud early on, things run smoother.

I’m also completely understanding of things getting in the way of gaming. It happens. I don’t have to like it, but I get it. I won’t punish a player for missing any session because their work, children, loved ones, car troubles, or just life in general get in the way. As a matter of fact, I’ll go out of my way to work around all of that to see if we can get back on track.

How do all of you out there in the Internet gamer land handle folks who miss key or vital sessions?

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Gamingbolt takes a look at the second episode of Legacy of the First Blade called Shadow Heritage for the game Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. ...Shadow Heritage also provides a new Hunter ability called Rapid Fire. This lets you unleash a volley of arrows at enemies as long as your Adrenaline meter holds up.... Read more »

Gematsu reports on Dysmantle, which is an open-world action RPG that has been announced for PC, Switch, PS4 and XBOX One. loading...As you ascend from your shelter after the long long years, a brave new old world awaits you. A world inhabited with nasty and vile creatures.... Read more »

INSOMNIA: The Ark has answered some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about what to expect from the game going forward. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) If you are reading these lines it means you want to know something specific about INSOMNIA: The Ark, right? In this case you are at the right place in the right time! Below you can see our attempt at collecting the most popular questions about the game and tried to give meaningful answers to them.... Read more »

The Band of Bastards DLC for Kingdom Come: Deliverance will release February 5th. loading... Band of Bastards releases on February 5th Ready for a new adventure? The roads aren’t safe anymore and now a new threat has reared its ugly head... Read more »

PCGamesN reports that Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire will be going turn-based from the 24th of January. loading... Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire players are no strangers to choice. But when you boot up the game from January 24 onwards, your first decision will come even before character creation – real-time or turn-based? Since the inception of the series, Pillars has been firmly rooted in the wonderfully messy but deeply tactical real-time and pause paradigm of the Infinity Engine games.... Read more »

There have been a number of design diaries for Heretic Operative that explain how the game works. Mechanics #1 – Story Decks In every game of Heretic Operative, there is a primary crisis or disaster you are trying to avert.  During game setup, you pick which of these challenges you want to face by selecting the “Story Deck” you will be using.... Read more »

The Turnbasedlovers made a list of upcoming turn-based RPGs : Top upcoming tactical turn-based RPGs of 2019 2019 will be a year full of interesting turn-based games, both indie and not so I prepared a list with some of the games I’m following.... Read more »

TechQuila checked out the Definitive Edition of Tales of Vesperia: Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition (PC) Review Lately, Eastern publishers like Bandai Namco and Sega have been investing more and more in the PC platform. Statistics say that Zesteria and Berseria sold exceptionally well on Steam, further encouraging the publishers.... Read more »

A new update for Telepath Tactics details the progress being made on the new engine. More progress on the new engine! Posted by Craig Stern (Creator) Hey all! It's been a little over a year since our last update on the new Telepath Tactics engine, and I'm still plugging away.... Read more »

Warning, this article contains spoilers for Tomb of Annihilation.

Tomb of Annihilation is a fantastic D&D adventure. It's an adventure of high fantasy in an interesting environment (the jungles of Chult). It has awesome locations to explore, cool NPCs to meet, a powerhouse villain, and the deadliest dungeon published in the fifth edition hardback D&D adventures to date.

Tomb of Annihilation isn't without its problems. For the most part, these problems are manageable. Let's take a moment to review two of these problems.

First, as written, the death curse (the main driver of the adventure) has too much urgency tied to it. If this urgency isn't tweaked by the DM, the best course of action the characters can take is to run as fast as they can to the Tomb of the Nine Gods to stop the curse from quickly killing off oodles of rich and powerful people all over Faerun (hmmm). Luckily, this problem is easy to deal with. We discussed a few options for managing the death curse in the Urgency of the Death Curse by using it as an urgency dial instead of a fixed countdown timer. Simply forgo the hit point loss-per-day and describe the progression of the curse in a way that better fits the pacing of the game you want at the moment. If you want the characters to feel free to explore Chult, mention that the curse is little more than a concern at the moment. A rash, really. If you want them to laser in on Omu and the tomb beneath, explain how the powerful curse has escalated.

The second problem comes with the many NPCs that can join the characters throughout the adventure. In most cases, these NPCs are just fine but in a few they can either overshadow the characters with their raw power (I'm looking at you Artus Cimber and Dragonbait) or they can end up steering the characters too far away and waste a lot of valuable time on errands that have nothing to do with the plot. We've discussed this problem in the article Handling Tag-Along NPCs. The best solution here is to be careful when introducing these NPCs, ensuring you have an exit plan for them, or skip them all together.

Both of those problems are easily managed. There is a third problem, however, and one not so easily fixed. When the characters actually enter the Tomb of the Nine Gods, the whole atmosphere of the adventure changes. Instead of being a character-driven narrative story of exploration and intrigue, this adventure becomes a puzzle and deathtrap killfest. That's the problem we're going to talk about today.

The Atmospheric Shift of the Tomb of the Nine Gods

It surprises no one that this adventure's dungeon is actually deadly. We all knew it. It says so right in the beginning and if our players are paying attention at all, they'll know it's deadly too. But we say that a lot when it comes to challenges the characters face and most of the time they can pull out of the danger and survive anyway. If you're a soft DM like me, you can probably count on one hand the number of times characters have died in your D&D games. If you're harsher, actually killing characters often, and your players don't mind, maybe this isn't a problem for you.

For some of us though this shift is a big problem. Here at Sly Flourish we take a "character first" approach to our D&D games. It's the first step in the preparation checklist in Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. We follow the guidelines of Dungeon World and become fans of the characters. These characters have histories. They have arcs. We love them and we love watching them go on adventures. We don't love it when they get in a black box, a friend hits a button, and they're turned into dust. Literally. Well, I didn't love it.

Death sometimes comes to characters in our character-driven games but often it's part of their character's arc. In this dungeon, though, their arcs can come crashing down with no warning at all. Again, maybe you're cool with this. Maybe so are your players. If that's the case, you need not change a thing.

For many of us, though, it's a big change in the style of the game and one we need to manage.

Telling Them Isn't Enough

We might think that telling the players how deadly the dungeon is will be enough. We think they'll be ready for their characters to die. Sometimes this is the case. Sometimes they're even upset when they don't die. Often, however, the warning isn't enough. Hearing that a dungeon is deadly and actually watching your ninth level character get disintegrated are two very different things. Seeing a character actually die will feel very different to the player. Players might even say how much they love hard D&D adventures and love the threat of death—until it actually happens. At that point none of us know what to do.

When I ran Tomb of Annihilation and my groups got to the Tomb of the Nine Gods, I had everyone roll up secondary characters whose backgrounds had brought them to the tomb over the past century. Making them former members of the Knights of the Yellow Banner gave them a connection to other dead Banner members throughout the adventure.

Still, this wasn't enough. Even having secondary characters doesn't mean that shock and hurt will come when a beloved character gets cut in half by a giant grinning stone skull door.

Many players just aren't prepared for a character's death. I know I'm not.

Solution 1: Send in the B-Team

One way to potentially fix this problem in the adventure is to send in two separate teams of characters. The first characters aren't given the job to stop the death curse, their job is to open the Tomb of the Nine Gods. When the tomb is open, it's up to another group of dungeon delvers to go inside. The nearby wreck of the Star Goddess could be one way that a bunch of dungeon delvers have come to the tomb. The Red Wizards might also have their own group of dungeon delvers ready to go into the tomb. Even Ras Nsi might send his own Yuan-ti Pureblood characters in there as part of a team intending to stop the death curse.

These new dungeon delvers are the expendables. Our players know they might not last and that's ok. They've only had them since the beginning of the Tomb of the Nine Gods. If the die, they die.

Still, it can be hard to put aside characters the players love. Opening the tomb doesn't feel like the end of the adventure. They want to stay with their main character and send them into the tomb. From a story perspective, why should the characters who traveled all this way send some other poor saps into the death trap? If they're heroic at all, sacrifice is part of that heroism. That won't matter to the player when their character is crushed under a big door but it makes sense and it would be disappointing to do it any other way. Thus, switching to new characters at the tomb's door isn't a perfect solution.

Solution 2: Build the B-Team Switch In Early

One way to ensure your players don't get stuck on the decision to send in their main characters or switch to an alt is to wire in that choice from the beginning. Instead of giving the characters the quest to seek the source of the death curse and end it. The quest can be to seek the Tomb of Annihilation and open it. Those who send the characters into the jungle will know that the heroes who find the tomb aren't the same ones who will enter the tomb. Those who enter the tomb are better suited for tomb-delving, not jungle explorations. The main characters can become patrons of these tomb-delvers instead of the tomb delvers themselves.

If this switch is wired in from the beginning, players will feel less like they're abandoning their characters halfway through an adventure and understand that a character switch is built into the story. They'll know their other characters will be stepping out of the spotlight.

This too is not an ideal solution but it might be the best way to make the transition from a deep character-driven exploration adventure to a deathtrap dungeon.

Solution 3: Shaving Off the Sharp Edges

Here's a solution many DMs will hate: shave off the rough edges. Much of what makes the Tomb of the Nine Gods deadly are the situations where characters who drop to zero hit points are outright killed instead of simply rolling death saves and requiring a heal.

We can likely shave off the rough edges in a few different parts of the tomb to keep the characters alive, at least a little bit more alive, than they might be otherwise. We can still run a dangerous adventure where the players must make hard choices to stay alive without the direct threat of the one-button deaths that can be found in a lot of these chambers. The four elemental chambers are known to be quite deadly but they can be a little less so if we make it easier for players to navigate the puzzels as the characters flounder about.

Some of the more deadly rooms and traps to watch include:

• The onyx chest in Wongo's Tomb (room 16). Consider removing the instant death from the onyx chest.
• The elemental cells before Shagambi's Tomb (rooms 47A-D). Give plenty of clues about how to navigate the cells.
• Belchorzh the beholder (room 44). Play him sub-optimally. He's more interested in tormenting the characters than killing them. Get rid of the instant-deaths on his finger-of-death ray and his disintegrate ray. He wants to have fun, not turn them to ash. Maybe have those spells inflict permanent injuries instead of outright deaths.
• The gargoyle guardians (room 45). Give the characters a chance to flee from the room or lower the gargoyle's hit points. Like the beholder, play them sub-optimally.
• Any of the "if this damage reduces a character to 0 hit points, they die" effects. Ignore that line or add a permanent injury instead.
• The devil onslaught in the Hall of the Golden Mastodon (room 67). Put in fewer devils, lower their hit points, or play them sub-optimally. Embrace it when the characters cast save-or-suck spells on them. The deal the Erinyes offers doesn't have to kill a character outright. Instead, they could sign a contract for their soul when they die, after the threat of the tomb is defeated.

Frankly, this is my recommended method. People just don't like to see their characters instantly killed in my games. Maybe some do, but I haven't seen them.

Solution 4: Run As Intended and Come What May

Finally, you can ignore all of this and run the adventure as it is. I've seen a lot of discussions from DMs who have run the Tomb of the Nine Gods and described the dramatic shift in lethality. They talked a lot about how it hurt peoples' enjoyment of the game. That was the case in the two groups I ran it for as well.

Tomb of Annihilation is close to the best D&D hardback adventure Wizards has released. This tonal shift from fantasy exploration to deathtrap hurts it. Otherwise, this is a nearly perfect adventure. The exploration is awesome. The setting is fantastic. The story is solid. The tomb, setting aside its lethality, is incredibly well designed. This adventure hits the exact level of focus I love in published adventures. I can deal with the warts regarding the urgency of the death curse and the issues bringing in problematic NPCs but the deadly shift of the adventure can kill a lot of fun after months of play if we're not careful. That's a hard problem to get past. Hopefully this article has given you some ideas how to deal with this shift so you and your players can get the most out of this otherwise fantastic adventure.

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In the beginning of Hoard of the Dragon Queen the characters face off against Lennithon, an adult blue dragon, when the characters are likely level 1. It doesn't take any powerful encounter building to realize this isn't a fight the characters can win.

The same thing occurs in Tomb of Annihilation when the characters come into contact with Valindra Shadowmantle, a lich in service to Szass Tam of the Red Wizards of Thay. The characters are likely around level six at this point.

Putting the characters in the presence of powerful villains is common in a lot of adventures, published or not. Sometimes it's fun for the characters to actually face the true villain of the adventure early on, such as meeting Strahd in the beginning of Curse of Strahd. Other times, like when Demogorgon steps out of the Dark Lake in Out of the Abyss it serves as a powerful backdrop for the plot of the adventure.

There's a big problem with scenes like this, though: facing insurmountable foes removes player agency.

(Cover to Volo's Guide to Monsters by Tyler Jacobson)

When our characters face off against foes they can't beat, we've removed one of their options—combat. For some players, this is simply unfair. D&D games shouldn't pit characters against foes they can't beat. Many DMs who focus more on the story of D&D than the balance of encounters know that yes, sometimes the characters will face foes they can't beat. It depends on how things go.

However they got there, when the characters face these foes and combat is off the table, the players might find themselves limited in the options from which they can choose. Sure, they can negotiate, but how good is the negotiation when one side can completely obliterate the other? How well has it worked out for the goblin the characters captured after slaughtering fifteen of its friends? That goblin doesn't have a lot of options to choose from.

Neither do the characters when facing an adult blue dragon at level 1.

So we come to an easy high-level piece of advice for situations like this: give the players options when facing insurmountable foes. If the story has worked itself into a position where the characters face an insurmountable foe, it's up to us DMs to make the options clear. It's up to us to return agency to the characters so they can actually make some meaningful choices.

Agency Returned

What agency we can give depends on the story, as does the encounter in the first place. Perhaps the characters have some information the villains need but do not have. Perhaps the characters know where something is that the villains must have. For example, maybe the characters know of the location of a number of puzzle cubes in Tomb of Annihilation that the villains desire.

Perhaps the villains have a weakness the characters are aware of. For example, what if the characters know about a lich's phylactery or a vampire's coffin. Maybe they even have control of it, putting the two opposing sides on more even ground.

We can also expand the options for the characters in a few other ways. Maybe the characters learn of a traitor in the enemy's forces that they can exploit. Maybe they learn how they can steal what they want instead of needing to negotiate for it directly. Maybe they learn that, buried deep within that ancient black obelisk, is a nalfeshnee just waiting to burst forth. Should something go terribly wrong, a good crack on the obelisk will complicate things for the villains.

Example Character Angles

So what sort of angles might the characters have when facing an insurmountable foe? Here are some general examples:

• The characters have information the villain needs.
• The characters have possession of something the villain wants.
• The characters are aware of a traitor or weakness in the villain's forces.
• The characters have something vital to the villain's well being.
• The characters have a weapon that greatly threatens the villain.
• The characters have a powerful ally that the villain fears.
• The characters can bring the house down on top of the villain.
• Disrupting the characters or their actions would throw the villain's own plans in disarray.
• The villain needs the characters to perform some task that no one else is capable of doing.
• The villain has enemies worse than the characters and need their help to defeat it.
• The characters are able to steal what they need from the villain.
• The villain isn't aware of the characters' presence.
• The characters discover a weakness of their insurmountable enemy.

If a villain is on the horizon in our games; if we think they're going to come into play and there will be a stand-off between the insurmountable villain and the characters; it helps if we lay out perhaps three angles the characters can capitalize on when that confrontation occurs.

Bending the Story to Our Will

When we're building out a D&D game from the story that unfolds, sometimes these situations appear and we don't have a good or easy approach to give that agency back. If we're letting scenes unfold how they unfold, we might not have any options prepared ahead of time. It might turn out, as the course of events takes place, that the characters find themselves face to face with an insurmountable foe.

In cases like these, we have to remember that fun comes first, even before staying true to the continuity of a story. Stephen King fully expected to kill off Paul Sheldon in Misery until he realized that no one wants to read a novel only to have the main character killed off at the end. He must not have read No Country for Old Men yet (spoilers!). In any case, when it comes to our D&D game, no one will care if you stay true to the direction of the story if it's not fun for the players.

Therefore, moments like this give us license to alter the world. This is a good time to stop for a minute and think about how we can give agency back to the players when they face an insurmountable foe. We can manipulate the world to give them an edge. We can reveal a weakness. We can reveal a nearby doomsday device. We can have the villain realize that an ally of the characters is too important to anger. This is one of those times where tweaking the reality of the story is ok because we're doing it specifically to make the game more fun. Like adding hit points to a boss monster that's dying too fast we can bend space and time for the sake of the fun of the game.

Giving Characters Fair Warning

If we're used to previous versions of Dungeons & Dragons, particularly third and fourth editions; we're probably used to focusing on balanced combat encounters. It is hard for us to break away from clear encounter-focused D&D adventures and letting the story take us in directions we weren't used to. As we get used to letting the story go where it goes, situations like facing an insurmountable foe can become more likely.

As hard as it is for us to change our thought process when running fifth edition D&D games, so to might it be hard for our players. When the characters end up facing an insurmountable foe, it's up to us to telegraph the danger. We have to let them know that we don't expect they'll go toe to toe with a villain like this and kill it. They might very well die if they try. It's possible, even likely, that players will think they're getting manipulated. They'll think that it isn't fair that they're facing such powerful monsters. If there isn't a good story reason why they're facing such a foe, they might be right. The adult blue dragon in the first chapter of Hoard of the Dragon Queen felt like this to me. Why would an adult dragon need to go poke around at a village? Why not leave that to the cultists?

When the story does support a confrontation against an insurmountable foe, we have to make it clear to the players that the foe is indeed insurmountable and also telegraph the other options available to them. If they're a combat focused group of players, we may really need to make it clear what other angles they have available. If we took combat away as an option, what was that option replaced with? If the answer is nothing, we've probably railroaded the story too much. The characters really don't have a choice other than 100% capitulation. That's not our job. Our job is always to put fun choices in front of the players.

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This is the first in a new series of articles that focuses on how particular spells in D&D can tell stories all by themselves. The core D&D books are full of fantastic ideas for stories but sometimes its easy for us DMs to focus too much on the mechanics to think about what they mean in the worlds we share.

Each spell has its own particular story to it, it's own way that it alters the universe in some way that might have effects both small and profound. Consider the humble prestidigitation spell, a cantrip that keeps things clean. Imagine a whole business built by hedge mages, failed wizards, and sorcerer outcasts who make a living keeping things clean with this spell on its own. It's the world's best dry cleaning service. This simple spell can lead to a whole place ("Percy's Palace of Prestidigitation") that might find its way as a storefront in a game we run. We might even tie another story into it. Maybe that aged wizard who supposedly failed out of the academy isn't as frail as he appears, he's just been in hiding for the last two hundred years.

Spells can each tell an interesting story and we're going to explore this idea in articles to come where we look at a particular spell and the stories that might evolve from it when we look at them under a new lens.

Today we'll do so with the spell fireball.

Fireball is an incredibly common and popular spell. It's been in every edition of D&D since the 1970s. Fireball is one of the most basic spells we can imagine too. Players love it because it's so simple. You point a finger and things explode. But there's a story in there too. A story with many facets.

A Story Driven by a Fireball

The D&D adventure Waterdeep Dragon Heist has a whole chapter built around a fireball. The chapter is actually called "Fireball". Things are perfectly smooth in Trollskull alley, everyone's going about their business, and then boom. The world is in chaos.

We don't think much about a fireball but such an explosive spell can change lives in a city setting. A fireball in a crowded street is an event of great note, as it is in this adventure. It begins a great mystery. Who cast it? Who was in it? What did people see? Will it happen again? A single fireball like this can drive a whole story forward, bringing danger and mystery to an otherwise peaceful day.

Imagine a royal ball in which the characters are trying to uncover the assassin who plots to kill the local lord. What if that very assassin, to cover her escape, draws a bead from her necklace of fireballs and blows up half of the ball. Now the characters have to make a hard choice of chasing their quarry or saving the people who remain alive in the burning ballroom.

The Sign of a True Wizard

We can use fireballs in other ways in our story as well. If the characters are exploring a chamber and find a room with singed walls and dozens of dead charred goblins, they'll know what might have done it and they know what sort of being they might face. Not everyone can cast a fireball in the first place. Such a sign is a clear indicator that a wizard is near, and not just an apprentice but a seasoned mage.

The fact that fireballs are third-level spells cast by fifth-level NPCs means something important on its own. If we assume a rarity to wizards the higher they go up in level, fireball-casting wizards are not all that common. Even cult fanatics can't typically cast them. These are the spells of true and powerful villains.

Environment-Changing Spells

Fireballs can also do more than just blow up rooms full of kobolds too. We often forget how these spells can change the environment. A fireball cast inside a building or tavern will likely set it ablaze or blow it apart. We might watch buildings explode outward from a mage battle taking place within it. A fireball in a sealed area might suck out all of the oxygen and make the whole area difficult to breathe in or difficult to see through. In the right environment, fireballs can completely change a situation.

We can't forget about the noise either. Fireballs aren't quiet. Spellcasters who cast it are going to be heard and those who hear it may come running or might run away. The noise created by a fireball can dramatically change a situation in many ways.

An Explosive Shift in the World

Though a common, popular, and relatively simple spell, when used as a vehicle for the story, a fireball can cause a dramatic shift in a campaign. As we saw in Dragon Heist, it can be the catalyst for an entire arc of a campaign. The more we think beyond the mechanics; the more we look at how spells affect the world, the more those stories can drive the direction of our shared stories.

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One of the interesting things about Dungeons & Dragons is the incredibly wide range for its potential costs. The cost to play D&D can go anywhere from free to potentially thousands of dollars (look at Joe Magenello's dungeon if you don't believe me).

I expect most people spend one to two hundred bucks for the three core books including the Player's Handbook, the Monster Manual, and the Dungeon Master's Guide and maybe some secondary books like Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Volo's Guide to Monsters, and published adventures such as Curse of Strahd or Tomb of Annihilation. Some probably spend a few bucks on dice and a flip mat.

Then there are areas where the D&D hobby can get really pricey. The first is miniatures. We might drop $50 for a good set of player character miniatures at first but if we start to fill out our set of monsters, we're looking at hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars until we have a "full collection". Secret tip: there IS no full collection of miniatures. No one ever has enough of that one monster they need at the time.

Pathfinder Pawns, Arcknight's Flat Plastic Miniatures, Printable Heroes, and Trash Mob Minis can save us from this financial runaway train by giving us a lot of two dimensional miniatures for a lot less than it would cost us to get fully 3d plastic minis. The occasional Reaper Bones Kickstarters can get us a large pile of unpainted miniatures for less than we'd pay for them individually but even then we're going to be missing out on a few. They've been running these Kickstarters roughly once a year.

Another area where the sky is the limit when it comes to costs is in three dimensional terrain. My favorite is Dwarven Forge, the Ferrari of D&D terrain. Having quite an investment in it myself, I can attest to its incredible quality and "wow" factor. There are other terrain options as well such as card board 3d terrain, 3d printed terrain, and other options. As I mentioned, the price of this stuff knows no bounds. The average pledge for the latest Dwarven Forge Kickstarter was $1,000.

Luckily, the true joy of D&D is in sharing stories with our friends. Miniatures and terrain are really cool but they're not necessary for us to run some fantastic adventures. In fact, the more accessories we have, the more they can sometimes get in the way of that story. We'll talk about this more later.

Playing D&D For Free

How could someone go about playing D&D for free? There's actually an answer to that question. While Wizards of the Coast sells the core D&D books, they also give away D&D rules online. This includes a D&D Basic Rules and the Dungeons & Dragons System Reference Document. While these PDFs omit much of what you can find in the actual core books, they have enough to run a D&D game. The D&D Beyond website also offers these rules for free in the same interface used for the digital version of all of the other D&D books. One need not spend a dime to use these rules.

Online Resources for Campaigns and Adventures

What about campaigns and adventures? According to our 2016 Dungeon Master Survey, most DMs run their own campaigns in their own worlds and with their own adventures. If we follow these folks, we too don't need to buy expensive adventures and campaign worlds. We can spend some time thinking about our world and writing down what works.

If we do want to play in a world like the Forgotten Realms, we can use the excellent Forgotten Realms Wiki as our own sourcebook complete with a search and hyperlinks to connect it all together better than a big book.

There are numerous free resources for DMs to run great games beyond campaign specific material. The suite of Donjon tools gives us a host of dynamically created material including names, treasure, monster encounters, dungeons, adventure seeds, and more. It's a great place to spark ideas in our minds as we build out our own adventures. A nearly infinite supply of dungeon maps and artwork are just a Google search away. They work well for both inspiration for DMs as well as visuals to show players.

Wizards of the Coast has released a couple of adventures for free as well. Death House is one of my personal favorites, though themed specifically for Ravenloft and the Curse of Strahd published adventure. Wizards also released the first part of Princes of the Apocalypse for free which contains enough material to get characters to level 5 including a fight against some cultists of the elemental prince of air. It's more universal than Death House and easier to plop into your own campaign world. A Great Upheaval, the first chapter of Storm King's Thunder is likewise available for free.

Accessories

We're going to assume of the sake of this article that one can acquire something to write with and something to write on. Go raid a horsetrack for small pencils and a library for scrap paper if you need. For drawing out maps and descriptions of combat, we can use Theater of the Mind combat to save us a ton of money on miniatures and maps. According to the 2016 survey we mentioned earlier, about 40% of dungeon masters use either abstract maps or theater of the mind when running D&D combat so you won't be alone. Not only is it much cheaper than maps, minis, and terrain but it also gives us nearly infinite flexibility in our descriptions and in letting the game take turns we didn't expect when preparing for our game.

There are a number of online dice roller apps that can save us a few bucks buying dice but this probably isn't realistic. Instead, for the $12 of a D&D Starter Set we can get a set of dice, a set of pregens, a solid rulebook, and a wonderful D&D adventure. Sure, it isn't free, but its a low cost investment for the best entrypoint into D&D available. The maps and monsters contained in the starter set can keep a campaign going for months.

I'm a huge fan of the Pathfinder Flip Mat. It's cheap, lightweight, and super-usable in our gaming kit. That and a couple of dry-erase markers can build just about anything we can imagine for under $20. It's a great investment for our DM kit.

If you want to play D&D online, you can play for free at Roll20. They have the entire 5e D&D SRD rules in place there and access to lots of official D&D sourcebooks and adventures if you do eventually want to pay for it.

Pooling Resources with D&D Beyond

"My rule of thumb is that in a group of 6, 3-4 don't spend any money. But they enable a group to form & play. Free players enable spenders. Even if no one at a table is spending, there's huge benefits in simply making more D&D players and DMs."

- Mike Mearls, D&D Design and Development Lead

Being a game focused on a group of players, it makes more sense that the players might pool their resources together to get what they need. For example, a group can pool together to pick up a subscription to D&D Beyond and the core books through the D&D Beyond Marketplace. A single DM subscription can share all of its books with up to eighteen players in three campaigns. These digital books are often on sale and, when the cost is split up, they can be very cheap for each player.

A Focus on the Fun

There's another big advantage to keeping our D&D kits small: flexibility. The less stuff we have to run our games, the more we can focus on the game itself and the fun to be had with our players. Maps, terrain, miniatures, and all sorts of accessories look great but there's an overhead with them beyond money. They take up physical and mental space. They take up time. Instead, we can keep our materials down to the thinnest possible and focus on the fun of the game.

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In an interview on D&D Beyond, legendary adventure writer Chris Perkins describes the requirements for a solid adventure:

• Good villains and monsters.
• A location for the adventure to take place.
• A clear reason for the characters to take part.

It's this last one we're going to talk about today. Getting the characters involved in the adventure is likely the most important part. Why do they care? Why put themselves at risk? When running Tomb of Annihilation recently, I threw in a dream sequence so horrible that the whole group nearly abandoned the idea of stopping the death curse to return to the safety of Port Nyanzaru and leave the world's woes to someone else. That's not a great way to motivate them.

There are many possible motivations that drive characters to adventure. Chapter 3 of the Dungeon Master's Guide includes three tables full of adventure hooks for both overland adventures, dungeon adventures, and general adventures as well. They're worth a read. In fact, I'd recommend going back and flipping through the Dungeon Master's Guide every couple of months just to remember all of the awesome stuff that's in it.

I also culled a number of potential motivations from a Twitter discussion on the topic which you can see below.

• Recover lost artifact
• Stop a villains evil plot
• Rescue someone
• Hunt someone down
• Recover lost lore
• Prevent someone else from finding lost lore
• Release someone imprisoned
• Keep someone imprisoned
• Imprison someone
• Recover a powerful weapon
• Clear out monsters
• Destroy dangerous artifact
• Sanctify unholy site
• Escape
• Prevent war
• Uncover treachery
• Riches
• Fame
• Protect someone
• Cure someone
• Uncover mystery
• Solve murder
• Prevent apocalypse
• Restore artifact
• Fulfill prophecy
• Get gold
• Return gold to owners
• Give gold to needy
• Prevent gold going to villany
• Get rid of gold
• Hide gold
• Prove innocence
• Peculiar inheritance
• Missing friend or relative
• Trailblaze a new trade route
• Escort settlers
• Survive another day
• Save the lands ruler
• Murder the lands ruler
• Owe someone a favor
• Castaways
• Research
• On the lam
• Stop a terrible ritual
• Lift curse
• Researching an invention
• Overthrow a corrupt power structure
• Help a new ruler come to power
• Negotiate a trade deal
• Exchange prisoners
• Change the past
• Find a way home

These are all just models for the motivation an adventure might contain. We'll have to tune these for our particuar adventure and the characters within it. In fact, let's talk about characters for a moment.

Character-Driven Adventure Hooks

One of the easiest ways to sink in an adventure hook is to make it part of the character. There are a couple of ways to do this. The easiest is to tie in the hook during character creation. For single-session D&D games, like convention games, we can tie in adventure hooks right into the pregenerated characters. If players are making their own characters, we can give them a list of potential character hooks that tie them into the adventure or campaign as well. The earlier we tie in these hooks into character creation, the more these hooks will matter to the players.

We need look no further than the pregenerated characters for the D&D Starter Set. These characters have ties right into Lost Mine of Phandelver that give each of them a reason to care about what is going on in the town of Phandalin.

We can also flip this whole idea around and build an adventure from the backgrounds of the characters. Likely you'll still want to bring up a theme from your campaign's session zero but the players might build in interesting hooks into their characters that you didn't expect. You can use these hooks to build out connections to existing adventures or build entirely new adventures from those hooks alone.

The important part is ensuring that the characters have a reason to go on this adventure.

Anytime you're pondering the adventure you're going to run, ask yourself "why the characters care?"

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The fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons adventure Tomb of Annihilation has an interesting and wonderous structure. It begins as a city adventure in Port Nyanzaru, expands out into a large overland exploration sandbox as the characters travel through Chult, narrows down to the exploration of the city of Omu and a potential trek into the Fane of the Night Serpent, and then drills down deep into the dungeon crawl to beat all dungeon crawls, the Tomb of the Nine Gods.

In today's article we're going to focus on the characters' exploration of the city of Omu. How can we dungeon masters get the most out of running this section of the book? Let's find out.

A Refined Sandbox

When the characters journey to Omu they will be going from a large sandbox—the journey through Chult—into a more refined sandbox style adventure. Like Chult itself, Omu has a nice defined boundary to it but multiple ways characters can travel within and through it. To begin with, they can enter from either the south-west corner (a grand staircase) or the north east (down a large waterfall) so even their entry into Omu is their own.

Side tip: When creating sandbox adventures, include two entrances. If you, as the DM, don't know how the characters will enter a dungeon or other area, you're a lot less likely to railroad them overall.

Design two entrances.

Once in the city, the characters can choose how they want to approach the city and accomplish their goals. They won't be the only ones.

The Fronts of Omu

Here at Sly Flourish we like to steal the concept of "fronts" from the game Dungeon World. A front is a driver of the story of our game. It's an actor, often a creature but sometimes an environment or even a whole planet, that has its own goals and leaves indicators to the characters. These indicators are called grim portents. They show the progression of a front as it heads towards its goal.

In the city of Omu, we have two main fronts working alongside the characters. The first is the Red Wizards of Thay. Like the characters, they are trying to acquire the puzzle cubes from the nine trickster gods to get access to the tomb of the nine gods. The Red Wizards might be sending mercenary forces out to the various tombs to collect what cubes they can.

The second front are the yuan-ti from the Fane of the Night Serpent. Their leader, Ras Nsi, seeks the cubes as well because the death curse is eating away at him. His second, a nightmare speaker named Fenthasa, might not have the same goal as Ras Nsi and this can become a fun complication for the characters to explore.

Both of these factions offer opportunities for conflict within Omu but they offer something more interesting too. Their goals are not necessarily in opposition to the characters. The Red Wizards, led by Valindra Shadowmantle, seek to end the death curse but they also want to learn about the Soul Monger. It is possible the characters can work out a deal with them instead of just fighting them.

Likewise, Ras Nsi might be willing to work out a deal with the characters since he too wants to stop the death curse. Of course, Fenthasa might not like that idea which gives us multiple factions within the yuan-ti to work through. If the characters are willing to kill Ras Nsi, Fenthasa might be more willing to work with them.

This offers up an interesting observation for our D&D games. When we have fronts with motivations that can be potentially turned to fit the motivations of the characters, we can build in ways that the characters can use all three pillars to interact with these fronts. In this case, we can see how the characters might use subterfuge, stealth, careful conversations, or violence to work with these fronts. The characters have lots of potential paths and options to take when dealing with this front that aren't just combat. That's awesome.

Give players the option to interact with fronts using roleplaying, exploration, and combat.

The Other Actors in Omu

Beyond the Red Wizards and the yuan-ti, there are other actors in Omu that can come into play and bring some fun with them. The big one, both figuratively and literally, is the King of Feathers. This epic t-rex can be a continuing threat in Omu for the characters. In my game, I modified him a bit. First, I gave him legendary actions so he can have one action between characters' turns. I also gave him legendary resistances as well. I increased his hit points to 200. Finally, I gave him some psionic abilities unique in Chult. He had misty step and invisibility as actions he could take. This let him disappear from combat, shift to a new spot, and attack with advantage. As the characters traveled through Omu they learned more about his abilities and how dangerous he was. When finally faced, he was a real powerhouse villain.

Other actors include the three tabaxi hunters: Bag of Nails, Copper Bell, and Hooded Lantern. These are wonderful NPCs whose history, backgrounds, and motivations you can change for your own game. In one of the two Tomb of Annihilation games I ran, Bag of Nails was a fellow assassin to one of the characters who served Prince Jessamine in Port Nyanzaru. In another, the three taxabi were former companions of the taxabi rogue player character. Reskinning NPCs like these is a great way to bring some relevant stories to the characters as they explore Omu.

There are lots of other actors in Omu worth bringing up such as the kobolds in service of Acererak and the strange vegepigmies conducting a grung sacrifice at the lava pit. Read fully through the chapter and highlight the encounters you want to bring up in your game.

Gathering the Cubes

The primary goal of the characters in Omu is to acquire the nine cubes required to open up the doorway to the Tomb of the Nine Gods. Each of the nine cubes rest in one of the nine shrines to each of the Trickster Gods.

As the adventure states, the characters need not be the ones to collect all nine cubes. The Red Wizards may have recovered some. The yuan-ti might have some. Other random adventurers may have some.

This is a great opportunity to ensure that the characters interact with these other groups and they get to choose how. Maybe it's negotiation. Maybe it's theft. Maybe it's blinding violence.

You can choose how many of the cubes have already been recovered or decide that, as the characters uncover one cube the other fronts acquire another. One good way to choose this is to read through each of the shrines in the adventure and if any of them don't resonate with you as a DM, you can make that one a shrine whose cube has already been pilfered. How may cubes have been recovered also shortens the time spent in Omu so it's a nice dial to turn if you want things to move forward faster. You'll have to ensure the characters learn that the cubes have been recovered before they waste a lot of time trying to get them.

The Ruins of Omu

As the characters travel through Omu, it's likely they'll want to explore some of the notable ruins of Omu, either to take a rest, escape a pursuer, or just take in some of the dead culture of Omu.

Here is a list of twenty notable ruins the characters might encounter while exploring Omu. If you're not running Tomb of Annihilation, you can use this same list for other ruined cities as well.

The Collapsed Cellar. A floor of one of the buildings has collapsed into a strange cellar. The cellar contains a small shrine to a trickster god (roll to randomly determine the trickster god), a sacrificial stone, and scrawlings in old Omuan begging for the life of a sick child.

The Ashen Family. This ruin contains bodies of ash still standing with looks of horror on their face. An ashen body of a mother cradles her doomed child. All of them appear to have been hit with a disintegrate spell.

The Noble Treasure Vault. A house of nobility has trapped bronze door in the cellar guarded by two animated armors. The door has two DC 15 glyphs of warding including a fear glyph and another glyph that animates the statues. If the trap is defeated, the adventurers find the noble house's treasury. The treasury includes 832 cp, 3490 sp, 2087 gp, 28 pp, 2 x Chalcedony (50 gp), Citrine (50 gp), Jasper (50 gp), 3 x Moonstone (50 gp), 5 x Sardonyx (50 gp), 3 x Zircon (50 gp), Potion of Resistance (thunder) (uncommon, dmg 188), Spell Scroll (Sleet Storm) (uncommon, dmg 200), Potion of Water Breathing (uncommon, dmg 188), and a Rope of Climbing (uncommon, dmg 197) Use the treasure tables in the Dungeon Master's Guide to determine the treasure instead if you prefer.

Desecrated Shrine to Ubtao. This ruin contains a shrine to the god Ubtao. The statue's head has been removed and lies in the corner covered in rubbish. Dark sigils have been etched into the statue's surface. Examining the glyphs begins to fill the examiner's visions with the people of Omu destroying effigies of Ubtao after he turned his back on them two centuries ago. The cacophony of blasphemy fills the investigator's head with madness. The character must make a DC 14 Wisdom saving throw or suffer a short-term madness effect.

The Crystal of Calling. The basement of this ruined building contains an arcane circle. In the center of the circle is a large violet cracked crystal. A DC 14 Intelligence (Arcana) check reveals that the crystal was used by arcane spellcasters to call across the multiverse to help find a god who would save them from their downfall. Any creature that touches the crystal can see visions of the Omuians using the crystal to call out across the Astral Sea and then later witnessing the arrival of Acererak.

Access to Underground Sewers. Deep cracks in the basement of one of the ruins reveals access to narrow sewer passages that lead to various areas of Omu including the palace, the flooded rivers to the east, the amphitheater, and the enclave to the south-west. Traveling through the sewers has a chance to encounter monsters. Use the random encounter table for level 1 to 4 swamp monsters in [Xanathar's Guide to Everything] re-rolling if the monsters make no sense for Omu.

Altar to Dendar the Night Serpent. The ruins of this building contain a carving depicting a massive serpent eating its own tail surrounding a globe that looks like Toril. The rotting remains of a female dwarf lie on a bloody stone altar, her ritually dissected innards in a series of clay pots surrounding the altar.

Abandoned Red Wizard Refuge. This ruin contains the remnants of a campsite for roughly one dozen people. The signs of a conflict litter the area including the bodies of Thayan mercenaries, mercenaries of Port Nyanzaru, and dead yuan-ti purebloods. A cracked silver mirror with arcane glyphs surrounding its edge used for scrying remains in the area. The broken mirror is worth 200 gold pieces.

Ruin of Grasping Vines. Thick yellow throned vines fill this ruined house seeming to come from a central stalk in the center that throbs like a heartbeat. The stalk itself (a yellow musk creeper with double the normal hit points and a reach of 15 feet) grows from the ruins of the basement below and only there can it be truly destroyed. The remains of a dead adventuring party lay within the ruins possessing a Philter of Love (uncommon, dmg 184), a Potion of Animal Friendship (uncommon, dmg 187), and two Potions of Growth (uncommon, dmg 187). 1d2+1 yellow musk zombies rise from the thick vines when someone enters.

The Trapped Incubus. The characters fall into a ruined pleasure den where an incubus has been trapped for nearly a century within a summoning circle. The incubus begs for its release and will give the characters a clue about Acererak's arrival and the building of the Tomb of the Nine Gods in return for his freedom.

Your Own Mini-Campaign

Tomb of Annihilation is an amazing adventure for a bunch of reasons but one of them is because it contains all sorts of sandboxes within sandboxes. Omu is itself a full sandbox adventure packed within Chult, a much larger sandbox adventure. And, of course, Omu leads to the Tomb of the Nine Gods which is its own evil sandbox.

Above all, keep the options open and let the characters interact with the forbidden city however they wish.

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I love the roleplaying game 13th Age by Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet. Written as a love-letter to D&D by two designers who worked on two different editions of D&D, 13th Age has some of my favorite rules for running great roleplaying games. Like Dungeon World, it's a RPG that often gets pilfered for great ideas DMs can bring into our own games like the "one unique thing", the escalation Die, and their method of abstract combat.

I also love the monster design of 13th Age. As a simplified version of 4th Edition D&D's monster design, monsters in 13th Age are easy to use and are some of the most well-balanced monsters in any d20 game I've played.

It also has a really cool feature that, like the others mentioned above, we might pilfer and use in our 5th edition D&D games: the nastier special.

Many monsters in 13th Age include a way to beef them up to build a really tough challenge if the GM wants one. Here's an example for the Hezrou:

The fifth edition of D&D doesn't have clear dials like this we can use to change the threat of a monster. The system, however, is flexible enough that we can come up with our own, often improvising them right on the spot if we want. Once we have some experience built up, if something feels right, we can drop in our nastier specials without any work at all.

We've talked before about building stronger encounters and how to improve boss fights. This article goes hand-in-hand with both of those.

A List of Nastier Specials

The following is a list of a few potential nastier specials we might add to our monsters. My hope is that these are simple enough that we can keep them in our head and use them when the time feels right for it. We shouldn't need to write them down. Above all, these specials need to make sense within the story. Why are these specials in place? We're not doing it to be mean to our players, we're doing it to add fuel to the fire of the story.

Maximize damage. One of the easiest ways to dramatically increase the threat of a monster is to maximize its damage output. Monsters suddenly start hitting for a lot more, sometimes nearly twice as hard, when their damage is maximized. Are you worried that your high level characters are going to kill Tiamat when they face her? Not if she's breathing for 156 damage as a legendary action! Ok, that's an extreme example, but you get the idea. If you really want a monster to be dangerous bordering on lethal, max it's damage output.

Add extra attacks. Along with or instead of increasing damage, we can give a monster extra attacks. Maybe it attacks faster than others of its ilk. Maybe it's hastened. Maybe it has more appendages available for such attacks. More attacks increases the number of times a monster will hit so you can spread its damage around to multiple targets instead of hammering on one target all the time. This is a good nastier special when a creature is fighting by itself against a full party of adventurers.

Maximize or double its hit points. Bigger nastier versions of a monster could have significantly more hit points than the average listed in the Monster Manual. We are free to change these hit points as much as we think fits the story within the range of the hit dice. We can also just ignore it and double a monster's hit points if there's a good reason. One dirty trick that helps us maintain pacing is to keep in mind the maximum hit points a monster might have and, if it fits the story and the pacing, change those hit points during the fight so a monster sticks around a little longer or drops at the right moment. Yes, it's cheating, but it's for the good of the pace of the game.

Add Legendary Actions and Resistances. We can make any monster a legendary foe by giving it legendary actions and resistances. Typically legendary actions will let a monster attack or move up to three times between its opponents turns. Keep in mind that the power of a legendary version of a monster will be much stronger than it otherwise would be. Legendary resistances also help monsters, particularly monsters fighting alone, to break out of nasty save or suck effects like hypnotic pattern or dominate monster. Again, these should be used sparingly and only when they make sense within the fiction of the story. Why are these monsters legendary?

Damage shields. The spell fire shield is powerful on its own but it's really powerful if it's on a monster that everyone is going to hit. Put it on a dragon and that dragon becomes a lot more dangerous. We don't need to stick to fire or cold either. We can add any element we want to the damage shield. A lich might have a necrotic damage shield or a demon might excrete poison or acid. We can also increase the damage on this, maximizing it to 16 or more if we think it's right. Note that this is particularly hard on monks who attack about seventy times a round and will take damage every time.

Give Monsters Spell-Like Abilities. If you're looking for a nastier special, look no further than the hundreds of spells at our disposal in the Player's Handbook. These spells aren't just for player characters. We DMs can build entire stories around the spells found in that book. And they make fantastic ways to customize monsters. Spiritual weapon, shield, misty step, wall of fire; the list of useful spells for monsters goes on and on. We can reskin and reflavor these spells to fit the theme of the monster as well. A powerful devil might invoke a wall of screaming souls that acts very much like a wall of fire except it does psychic damage instead of fire damage.

We can make these spells more useful by making them part of a monster's attack action instead of using up a whole action for the spell. A drow spellblade might be able to hurl a lightning bolt right after slashing with its own lightning-enhanced scimitar, for example.

We can also give monsters spells that might not otherwise be in our game, like spells from third-party publishers. Unlike giving them to characters and potentially changing the face of our game permanently, a monster with a spell like this will only hit the table once and then be gone. My current favorite monsterous spells are the Blasphemies of Bor Bwalsch by D&D writer and creator of Shadow of the Demon Lord Rob Schwalb. They're awful spells that are perfect for lichs, vampires, demons, devils, hags, and any other hideous spell casters.

Give Monsters Exotic Potions. Monsters don't always have to have access to spells to gain some interesting new abilities. Instead we can give intelligent monsters access to potions or scrolls with some interesting and dangerous abilities. Potions of displacement could give a monster the same trait as a displacer beast. Potions of greater invisibility could give an assassin a seriously dangerous edge. Potions of giant strength can turn monsters or NPCs into mountain-crushing horrors. It makes sense that powerful NPCs like the gladiator or champion would have access to a potion like this. A champion with a potion of storm giant strength is a true foe to be feared. It doesn't hurt if the characters get access to reserve potions like this so they can gain the same benefit even if it's only for a few minutes.

Building Your Toolkit of Nastier Specials

All of these are just examples of the sorts of ways you can tune monsters to be something interesting and unique. New armor, magic weapons, potions, scrolls, and spell-like-abilities are ways to change monsters within the fiction. Simple mechanical effects like increasing it points, increasing damage, and adding attacks are easy to implement and turn a normal monster into a brute.

Build your own mental list of nastier specials that make sense for the situation and are relatively easy to implement. With a good set of nastier specials you can turn the hundreds of monsters in the Monster Manual into tens of thousands of monsters your players will remember their whole lives.

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Note, this article has been updated since the original written in 2012.

Many DMs like to use tent cards hanging over a DM screen to run initiative and this is a fantastic way to do it. There are a few small businesses out there who sell very nice tent cards for characters and monsters to use this way and custom character cards look great when printed nicely.

There's a lazier way, though. It's one I've been using for the past six years or so and, though it isn't nearly as beautiful and elegant, it's fast and easy. It requires very little preparation, no upkeep, and you don't need a DM screen to use it.

I first learned of this technique from Teos Abadia (Alphastream on twitter) who learned it from Paul Ellison, one of his long-time players back during the Living Greyhawk days. I've since had the opportunity to meet and play with Pual at a couple of gaming conventions. His fan-dance larping is second to none.

But I digress. Here's how these easier initiative cards work.

Preparing the Cards

Take nine or so 3x5 note cards and fold each one in vertically in half. Then number them on both sides with the biggest black marker you can find, numbering them from 1 to 9. When you're done, you should have a set of folded 3x5 tent cards numbered 1 to 9 written on both sides.

Rolling for Initiative

When it comes time for initiative, have everyone roll their initiative result and then hand out the cards, with the highest initiative winnner starting at 1 and counting down. Each player puts their initiative card in front of them at the table. Now everyone can see who goes in what order.

Monsters too get their own initiative card which goes in front of the DM. The nine cards will cover six players and up to three different monsters. Any more than that and you have far bigger problems than how to handle initiative.

When you begin combat, look around the table to see who has card 1. After that person takes his or her turn, look for the next card down the list and so on.

At the end of the battle, have the players throw in their initiative cards to prepare for the next battle.

Delegating Initiative

One way to make your life easier and help keep your players' attention on the game is to delegate the handling of initiative. At the beginning of your game, ask for a volunteer to handle initiative. If no one is forthcoming, ask someone in particular to help you. With the initiative cards in the player's possession, he or she can call for rolls and pass out the cards. This makes it easier for you to roll monster initiatives and give your scores to the delegated lord of initiative. It also spreads around responsibility for the management of the game which has side benefits as well. Players may be less competitive with the DM when they're helping to manage things outside of their character.

No DM Screen Needed

Unlike previous initiative card systems, this one requires no DM screen. Some DMs, myself included, now forgo the screen to keep dice rolls open and knock down the physical barrier between DMs and players. Letting go of your DM screen also keeps your DM kit small.

Caring for your cards

To keep your cards always standing upright (*snort*), use a binder clip to bind them together when not in use. Make sure to bind them in the folded position, not flattened, so they'll hold their shape over time. If treated right, this single set of cards could last the rest of your life. These cards are an excellent accessory to throw into your DM walk-away kit.

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There is only one real wandering monster in the Tomb of the Nine Gods in Tomb of Annihilation, the Tomb Guardian. These armored flesh golems are no joke but they can get stale if we run them again and again.

Today we'll offer a generator to create enhanced tomb guardians. Each of these still uses the default statistics for the flesh golem with an armor class of 18 for the armor bolted onto its body, though some might be more dexterous and wearing leather armor but we can still give them an AC of 18. Each of them is also empowered beyond the normal tomb guardian as Withers enhances his creations, all with different races, with enchanted weapons and armor.

A Random Enhanced Tomb Guardian Generator

Here are twenty randomly generated enhanced tomb guardians. Reload the page for a new set.

var guardian = {origin:[""], weapon:[""], element:[""], spell:[""]}; guardian.origin = [ "dragonborn", "dwarven", "elven", "abyssal", "orcish", "dark elven", "demonic", "human", "gorilla", "ogre", "giant", "hobgoblin" ]; guardian.element = [ "flaming", "icy", "electrical", "thunderous", "poisonous", "necrotic", "acidic", "forceful", "psychic", "radiant", ]; guardian.attack = [ "dagger", "mace", "spear", "battleaxe", "flail", "longsword", "morningstar", "scimitar", "shortsword", "warhammer", "spiked gauntlet", "spiked chain" ]; guardian.spell = [ "shield", "lightning bolt", "fireball", "spirit guardians", "cloudkill", "sleep", "fire shield", "cone of cold", "improved invisibility", "haste", "globe of invulnerability", "glyph of warding" ]; function GuardianGenerator(origin, element, attack, spell) { function shuffle(o){ //v1.0 for(var j, x, i = o.length; i; j = Math.floor(Math.random() * i), x = o[--i], o[i] = o[j], o[j] = x); }; this.generate = function(length, targetDiv, write_out){ var output_list = []; for(var i = 0; i < length; i++){ shuffle(origin); shuffle(element); shuffle(attack); shuffle(spell); output_list.push("A " + origin[0] + " tomb guardian armed with a " + element[0] + " " + attack[0] + " and a " + element[1] + " " + attack[1] + " empowered with a " + spell[0] + " spell.") } if(targetDiv && write_out) $("div#" + targetDiv).html("

• "+output_list.join("
• ")+"

"); } } $(document).ready(function() { var count = 20; var output = true; var guardianGenerator = new GuardianGenerator(guardian.origin, guardian.element, guardian.attack, guardian.spell); guardianGenerator.generate(count, "guardianlist", output); $("#reload").bind("click",function(){ trapGenerator.generate(count, "guardianlist", output); }); });

Each enhanced tomb guardian uses the statistics of a flesh golem with an armor class of 18. Enhanced tomb guardians add 7 (2d6) damage onto each weapon attack of the damage type defined by descriptors on the weapons. You can use the proper dice for each weapon, doubling the normal dice and adding the flesh golem's strength bonus, or, if you're lazy, you can just use the default damage the flesh golem already inflicts plus the bonus damage.

The spells the enhanced tomb guardian can cast do not require any components and are cast at 5th level. They have a DC of 15 and a +7 spell attack bonus. Spells with a duration are cast before combat begins and the enhanced tomb guardian does not need to concentrate to keep a spell going.

Want to build your own enhanced tomb guardians at the table? Use the tables below to roll for your tomb guardians.

Origin

What creature or creatures make up the tomb guardian? Roll 1d12 and consult the following:

1. Dragonborn
2. Dwarven
3. Elven
4. Abyssal
5. Orcish
6. Dark Elven
7. Demonic
8. Human
9. Gorilla
10. Ogre
11. Giant
12. Hobgoblin

Weapons

Roll 1d12 twice on this list to determine what weapons the tomb guardian wields.

1. Dagger
2. Mace
3. Spear
4. Battleaxe
5. Flail
6. Longsword
7. Morningstar
8. Scimitar
9. Shortsword
10. Warhammer
11. Spiked Gauntlet
12. Spiked Chain

Elemental

Some tomb guardians might have an elemental bond. Roll 1d4, on a 4, roll 1d10 on this table to determine what elemental condition it might have. If Withers feels like the characters are having too easy a time, he might send more tomb guardians with these bonds.

1. Fire
2. Cold
3. Necrotic
4. Poison
5. Acidic
6. Thunderous
7. Lightning
8. Radiant
9. Force
10. Psychic

Spellbound

Withers has implanted spells on some tomb guardians as well. If the characters are having an easy time, he might send these spellbound tomb guardians to thwart the party.

1. Shield
2. Lightning Bolt
3. Fireball
4. Spirit Guardians
5. Cloudkill
6. Sleep
7. Burning Hands
8. Cone of Cold
9. Improved Invisibility
10. Haste
11. Globe of Invulnerability
12. Glyph of Warding

Adding Flavor to Tomb Guardians

These enhanced tomb guardians are intended to change up the threat the characters face when facing one of these thematic tomb guardians. We add these interesting abilities not to punish our players (that's Acererak's job) but to keep things interesting. Each time our players see one of these enhanced tomb guardians coming for them, they'll know they're going to be facing something unique and chaotic.

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