by W. Eric Martin

The Indiana Intellectual Property Blog serves as a marketing vehicle for intellectual property and business attorney Kenan Farrell of KLF Legal — no, not that KLF — and he notes on the blog's "About" page that it's "intended to educate, entertain and enlighten readers on Intellectual Property law, news and events, particularly focusing on stories that directly affect Indiana".

Turns out that one of those stories might be of interest to you, fellow BGG user. On April 18, 2019, Farrell wrote about a lawsuit filed by Indie Game Studios, LLC d/b/a Stronghold Games LLC against Plan B Games, Inc. and Plan B Games Europe GMBH on April 15, 2019 in which Stronghold "seeks monetary relief for Defendants' acts of trademark infringement and unfair competition under the federal Lanham Act, trademark infringement and unfair competition under Indiana common law, and common law conspiracy". Here is Farrell's initial summary of the lawsuit:

The Complaint (below) [Ed. note: Viewable on Scribd here] references a contract by which the plaintiff, Stronghold Games, would exclusively publish a board game called "Great Western Trail" from August 3, 2016 to December 31, 2018. At that time, the game was owned by a German company called eggertspiele. The Complaint alleges that one of the obligations eggertspiele agreed to in the contract was it "will not during the term grant to any other person, firm or company any rights that would derogate from the grant made" in its contract with Stronghold Games.

Stronghold first released Great Western Trail in the U.S. in November 2016. It was very popular and quick sold out. However, while seeking permission for a second print run of the game in June 2017, Stronghold learned that all assets of eggertspiele had been purchased by Plan B Games, the defendant.

Plan B Games asserted that it had no contract with Stronghold and it did not grant reprint rights to Stronghold. Subsequently, in January 2018, Plan B Games released its own version of Great Western Trail, seemingly identical but removing Stronghold's logo from the packaging.

Farrell included this image in his post, with this image coming from Indie Game Studios' complaint:




Farrell might not realize (or perhaps simply didn't state) that this similarity of imagery and layout is often common in licensed games.


Original German/English version co-published by eggertspiele/Pegasus Spiele
Current (as of 2019) German-only version of GWT from eggertspiele/Pegasus Spiele
Other editions of GWT w/ 2D covers not available for all, alas

To continue with Farrell's remarks:

I think this paragraph from the Complaint nicely sums up why Stronghold is unhappy with the current state of affairs: "Plan B was well aware of the pent-up demand for the Stronghold Version of this game in 2017, and the introduction of the nearly identical Plan B Version in early 2018 to satisfy the pent-up demand for the Stronghold Version improperly traded on Stronghold's goodwill and has led to consumer confusion."

Unfortunately, while the Complaint references the initial contract between Stronghold and eggertspiele granting publication rights, it didn't include a copy of the contract for review. Although the contract apparently included language about minimum duration and exclusivity, it's unclear whether the contract granted any property interest in the Great Western Trail trademark to Stronghold.

As general information, license agreements can give licensees standing to sue for infringement, provided that they grant an exclusive license and a property interest in the trademark. A trademark licensee's proper use of a mark benefits the trademark owner, not the licensee. This allows trademark owners to rely on use by controlled licensees to prove continuing use of a trademark. Section 5 of the Lanham Act explicitly recognises the acquisition of trademark rights by a licensor through first use of the mark by a controlled licensee.

However, in this situation, Stronghold appears to assert its own claim to property rights in the GREAT WESTERN TRAIL trademark distinct from the licensor, based on its own exclusive marketing efforts in the United States.

I look forward to reading the Answer, which hopefully will include the original contract. Stay tuned for updates.

The complaint states that the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana has jurisdiction for this matter "because the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000 and this civil action is between citizens of a State and citizens or subjects of a foreign state", while adding that the court has jurisdiction over the defendants "because they purposely directed the activities at issue in this case towards this District, as evidenced at least by their presence and activities at the 2018 GenCon [sic] convention that occurred in this District and the offending sales that occurred in this District".

H/T: René Raps Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

• Let's check out more teasers for games that will debut at the Tokyo Game Market in May 2019, as well as games that have appeared from independent Japanese designer/publishers in the past year.

Three Magic, for example, is a card game from Kei Tsukahara and Mahoroba that's designed solely for three players. Here's all that I know about the game so far: "Your goal in Three Magic, a.k.a. スリーマジック, is to collect three cards of mana (the power of the nature) in order to create a spell; create three spells to complete your magic. Do this first, and you win."

If you speak Japanese, you can visit the publisher's blog on the Game Market website and probably get more out of what's posted there than I can. Artist Makoto Takami has also tweeted background info on the card illustrations and design.

• Joraku designer Iori Tsukinami won first prize in the Board Game Grand Prix design competition for "Bird Watching", winning ¥20,000 (approx. US$200) and publication of the design by the competition organizers, online retailer Bodoge and brick-and-mortar retailer DEAR SPIELE. The design will debut at TGM in May 2019 under the name Photome's, with players now looking for cats instead of birds. An overview:

Photome's, a.k.a. フォトムズ, is a co-operative game in which you place animals to be visible — or place 3D buildings to hide certain animals — to create your ideal city. Use your smartphone to check whether your ideal city is being built properly.

Games in the competition had to have a theme based on housing, and in the award announcement, the designer notes that this game was inspired by a favorite children's "search" picture book: "...it was conceived from the thought that I want you to create a three-dimensional cityscape and enjoy it from 360º". To do this, you fold two-dimensional cards to create that 3D city in which the animals live, whether seen or unseen depending on the game conditions.

• Although One Draw debuted Hayato Kisaragi's Psychic Pizza Deliverers Go to the Ghost Town debuted at the November 2018 TGM, the game is still new and unknown by most people, but to rectify that situation James Nathan has published an excellent introduction and overview of the game on Opinionated Gamers.

To sum up, one player is mayor of the town, creating its layout or using one of the pre-created layouts, while everyone else is a pizza deliverer who cannot see where they're going and must learn where things are by stumbling around and paying attention to what other players are doing. On a turn, a player can move one space orthogonally, attack orthogonally to attempt to banish a ghost, or use a psychic power. The mayor then resolves the action, tells the player the location of any barriers adjacent to the player, and whether or not the player senses any ghosts/pizzas/houses in any of the eight spaces surrounding the player. The players have only twenty turns to locate a pizza and deliver it to the matching house, and the first deliverer to do so wins.

• にゃんこパイレーツ (Nyanko Pirates) is the second title from the father-and-daughter design team of らなとパパ (Lana&Papa), and the 2-5 pussycat pirates in this dice-based game journey along the shores of multiple islands where danger and treasures await. In the designer's words: "Will you dare fight for treasures by yourself, or will you take someone else with you? Two adventurers' worth of shields and swords might be of great help to succeed in beating the danger, but it also means sharing everything you find!" The game will have English rules on BGG at the time of its debut at TGM.

• To travel a bit in southeast Asia, I'll point out 花式自殺, a February 2019 release from Hong Kong publisher TIME2PLAY GAMES with a title that translates to something like "Fancy Suicide". The game bears the subtitle "十萬個激嬲女友的理由", which could be translated as "1001 Ways to Provoke Your Girlfriend", and someone pointed out to me that this subtitle belongs to a Facebook group "that posts dialogues of guys angering their SO with bad jokes or innocent things (to a guy)". The cover image makes so much more sense in light of this information.

As for what the game is about, well, I'll just say this is one way to provoke the BGG News audience...

• Let's close with the first title from INTELLIGENT MONKEY, a new publisher founded by someone from Taiwan Boardgame Design who would (as best as I can understand it) set up Japanese information on the TBD website ahead of that group's appearance at Game Markets in Japan. That individual has now founded a design circle with both Taiwanese and Japanese members, and its first release will be Zoomate, with the title currently undergoing funding on the Japanese crowdfunding site Campfire. Here's an overview of this game for 4-7 players:

In Zoomate, the country of fire and the country of water — rivals who recently conducted a worldwide conflict — are in an uneasy peace thanks to a neutral third party that wants to wield power in order to maintain that peace.

Unfortunately, the central power plant has been hacked, and now all three parties are grabbing for whatever power they can in order to bring victory to their side or (in the case of the third party) lock in a permanent stalemate between fire and water. If fire or water gain control of three or more power switches by the end of the fifth turn, then they win; if neither does by game's end, then the neutral party has preserved peace and won.

Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

Urtis Šulinskas' Planet isn't a new game as Blue Orange Games debuted the title at SPIEL in October 2018 — and yet Planet is indeed a new game as (1) October 2018 was only six months ago and (2) the game is debuting in the U.S. market on April 22, 2019 to coincide with Earth Day.

(You might argue that in honor of Earth Day a company might vow not to release something that could be regarded as disposable entertainment, but since 2006 BOG has had a policy of planting two trees for every tree used in the production of its wooden games, and in addition it works with PUR Projet in France to plant trees to offset the carbon emissions the company creates while driving across the U.S. to visit retail stores, and that's far more environmental-boosting work than I've done in response to my activities, so who am I to talk?)

In Planet, each player has a dodecahedron with magnetic faces that serves as a planetary core, and in each of the twelve rounds of the game, you add a magnetic landscape tile to your world to create habitat regions. Five types of landscape are included in the game, and starting in the third round animal species cards are awarded to the player who meets the landscape condition stated on that card:

• Largest region of landscape type X that touches landscape type Y,
• Largest region of landscape type X that doesn't touch landscape type Y, or
• Most regions of landscape type X.

In case of a tie, the animal card moves to the next round, giving everyone a second chance to call dibs on the walruses.


Ready to divvy out the animals in round 10

Each player also has a secret landscape card that gives you 0-10 points at game's end depending on how many triangles of that landscape type end up on your planet, and that landscape type determines how many points you score for each animal card that you collect. If the animal is from the same landscape as your secret card, you score only 1 point for it; otherwise, you score 2 points.

This scoring rule keeps you from mindlessly focusing on collecting one type of landscape at the expense of all others. You want to both maximize your endgame scoring and scoop up as many animal cards as possible, but you can't do it all, which is a basic feature of good games. The rules pull you in different directions, creating tension over what to do and driving interaction with others since you're competing for the same things and one or more players will lose out to the benefit of someone else.

Planet isn't complicated, but your playing time will differ depending on how much you want to grab other players' worlds and spin them around to determine who has how much of this and that landscape ahead of each epoch of animal distribution. You could calculate every possibility for who can score what depending on which landscape tiles were revealed at the start of a round, but I predict you'd catch a dodecahedron in the face before too much calculation ensued — which means you'll have to wing it to some degree, slapping on the tiles, then seeing how you measure up, each creator in a universe apart from others, ideally satisfied with what you have since it's the only world you've got...


Youtube Video Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

• I'm not sure how many global disasters we'll encounter in the next few decades, but if they do occur, we'll have had plenty of practice surviving their effects thanks to all the co-operative post-apocalyptic games on the market.

Until Daylight is yet another title in that genre, with Canadian publisher Flyos Games having funded this Thomas Filippi and Gary Paitre design on Kickstarter in October 2018. Asmodee North America has now picked up this title for distribution, with an expected retail release date of July 2019. Here's an overview of this 2-6 player game:

Until Daylight is a co-operative survival card game. During the game, you can find and exchange objects, weapons, and ammunition with other characters and build traps or barricades to protect yourself and ensure your survival as a group. Your reflexes, your sense of strategy, and your ability to survive will be tested. Players might disagree on which strategy to adopt, and in these circumstances, the group leader — that is, the player wit the most experience points — decides which action will be carried out for the party. Every character you may embody is unique and has its advantage and drawback that will enhance the game with strong and intense moments. "Search, fight, survive" will quickly become your motto.

Your first games should be difficult, and you will probably die. Don't worry — it's normal because surviving the apocalypse is anything but easy. Every attempt will teach you a little more about the game mechanisms and strategic priorities. Until Daylight is a game in which every action counts and where time will be very cruel. In some phases you will have only a few seconds to react before the horde falls on you. You win the game if the following three conditions are met:

—All characters survived the ten rounds of the game.
—All enemies revealed in the game were eliminated.
—The group saved at least one survivor.

• It's war amongst the animals once again in BattleLands from Andrea Mezzotero, Jerry Hawthorne, and Plaid Hat Games, with this post-apocalyptic game having no humans at all. Consider this July 2019 release preparation for situations in which our descendants are all mutated into four-legged critters:

BattleLands is a fast and furious game of turf warfare for 3-5 players. Send your fighters to seize key locations, or recruit even fiercer warriors who can help you turn the tide! Use your faction's abilities to play dirty and keep your opponents guessing your next move!

Set in the world of the upcoming Adventure Book game ''Aftermath'', in ''BattleLands: Aftermath Edition'' the animals of the world try to survive by competing for territory, food, and precious technology.

Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

Time to round up more game announcements and pseudo-announcements from the past few months that have slipped by me while I was focused on conventions:

• Designer Mike Selinker announced in late March 2019 that for the past two years his company Lone Shark Games has been working with Justin Gary of Stone Blade Entertainment "on my first game with a traitor mechanic since Betrayal at House on the Hill". This game, tentatively called Hyde Society, is a fantasy game set during the Victorian era. Beyond that brief description, nothing else has been announced so far.

• U.S. publisher Capstone Games is partnering with Dutch publisher Splotter Spellen to release a twentieth anniversary edition of Bus from designers Jeroen Doumen and Joris Wiersinga

• In June 2019, Z-Man Games will release a new edition of Seiji Kanai's Love Letter that contains five cards more than the original Love Letter — which might not sound like much, but since the original game has only sixteen cards, it will now be 31% larger! This 2019 edition of the game has all new art and two new characters: the Chancellor (value 6) allows you to draw two new cards, add those to your hand, then place two cards of your choice on the bottom of the deck, while the Spy (value 0) wins you a favor token if you were the only player to play or discard a spy during the round.

• CABO is a variant of the public domain card game Golf that designers Mandy Henning and Melissa Limes published through Eventide Games in 2010. Now Bézier Games has released a second edition of CABO that keep the fundamentals of the game while changing some details of the gameplay and scoring.

The gist of the game remains the same: Start with four face-down cards from a deck numbered 0-13, looking at two of those cards. On a turn, you can draw from the deck or discard pile, look at the card drawn (if from the deck), then decide whether to swap it for one of the cards in your display or use it for its special power (assuming that it has one). If you have matching cards in your display, you can remove them both and replace them with a single card, ideally lowering the total of the cards you hold. If you think you have the lowest total, you can call for the round to end at the start of your next turn, with you scoring no points if you're correct and scoring the sum of your cards and a penalty if you're wrong. Everyone else scores for their cards' value, and you play multiple rounds, trying to have the lowest score.

Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

CMON Limited has announced a new video-game-to-tabletop-game in its line-up — God of War: The Card Game, a 1-4 player game from Fel Barros and Alexandru Olteanu that's due out Q3 2019. Here's an overview of the setting and gameplay:

Ragnarök is coming. The fate of all existence is at stake. Is destruction inevitable, or are there ways to avoid ultimate cataclysm? The Norns, mystical beings of great power, have decided they will not go quietly into oblivion and have turned their attention to the well of Fate, Urðr, in order to find any possible way to stop Ragnarök. Looking deep into the swirling waters, they can foresee which potential combination of heroes, villains, battles, victories, and defeats might stop the end of all that is known — but will they find the right combination in time? Is there any true path to salvation at all? They must hurry and seek the true way through, before all is lost.

In God of War: The Card Game, players take on the role of the Norns as they try different combinations of heroes and events in order to stop Ragnarök. Each game is a new attempt to find the right key to saving Midgard from destruction. Players must work together, embodying mighty heroes such as Kratos, Mimir, Atreus, Brok and Sindri, and Freya. They will fight enemies and bosses from the popular God of War video game, but combined and remixed in exciting new ways, creating unique "What if...?" scenarios each time they play. If they succeed, the way forward has been secured and Ragnarök can be halted. Failure means the Norns will have to try again as only death and destruction lay along that particular path.

Each quest in God of War: The Card Game is made up of a mosaic of cards that recreate monsters and locations from the video game. Each quest's mosaic is different, and each card is double-sided, depending on whether a section has been destroyed or not, and each has special rules that go into effect when it is face up on the tabletop. Learning how each quest is won, as well as what strategy to employ, is key to victory.

As players progress, earlier quests have an effect on what comes after them. At certain points along their path, players must choose which quest they will complete. Completing one might grant a bonus, but quests left untouched result in dire permanent consequences as the players move forward.

Heroes in the game have several elements that make them unique. Each comes with their own dashboard that explains their special abilities and health totals, in addition to tracking the number of cards a player can keep in their hand from round to round. Tokens are used to keep everything clear as heroes gain and lose health and build up their power so they can unleash a mighty special attack. Heroes begin the game with a unique starting deck of cards that will be augmented from additional decks as the game progresses. Players can construct their deck to focus on their strengths or look for ways to generalize their approach, preparing for future quests that lie ahead. Each hero also has a unique standee that indicates which portion of the mosaic they are facing. With multiple heroes from which to choose, numerous ways to build their deck, and various different quests to attempt, each game of God of War: The Card Game will be a new experience that will echo throughout eternity.

Echo throughout eternity? That sounds like a tall promise.

This announcement comes one week ahead of the April 23, 2019 launching of a Kickstarter project for Bloodborne: The Board Game, a 1-4 player game from Eric M. Lang and Michael Shinall that I missed earlier while I was in the midst of February convention madness. Shinall has been posting a diary about this design on the CMON website — here's part one of five to date — but here's a game summary to get you started:

Revered for its healing techniques, the town of Yharnam is rapidly degrading as a plague that turns people into beasts spreads uncontrollably. As a Hunter, it falls to you to quell this growing threat. You will have to fight through beasts, monsters, and townsfolk alike to survive the night and discover the source of this madness.

In the campaign-based action-adventure Bloodborne: The Board Game, players take on the role of Hunters, working together against the game to uncover the mysteries hidden within the city of Yharnam and beyond. Featuring unique Trick Weapons, each with various forms and powers, Hunters have to think quickly and adapt their tactics to overcome the multitude of foes that stand in their way. Learn their behavior, exploit their weaknesses, and strike them down! Featuring unique card-driven combat, luck has little place here — success or failure depends on your choices and how you approach each engagement!

Of course, against such horrific foes, death is a common occurrence, but worry not as death is no end for a Hunter. Those who fall in combat awaken in the Hunter's Dream, ready to return fresh to the fight. Be warned, however, that upon awakening you might find previous foes and obstacles returned, Worse, time is not on your side as the Blood Moon rises ever higher into the sky, spreading its madness across Yharnam. You must press ever forward if you and your comrades hope to complete the Hunt before the city meets an unfortunate end.

Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

I haven't posted an episode of The BoardGameGeek Show recently, but they've been rolling out on a fairly regular schedule every two weeks on BGG's main YouTube channel. Thankfully I managed to find my camera and audio equipment amongst all the boxes in the game room of my new house just in time to join Scott, Steph, and Lincoln on camera. Now I just need to tackle the dozens of boxes still untouched...

One topic I'd like to explore more in the future is the limited shelf life of games, which we touched on in this show following a distributor's comment that I saw. That comment mentioned that a game has a retail shelf life in the U.S. of only a few weeks — unless the game is great, in which case the game might last two or three months.

The problem, of course, is that you often can't determine a game's greatness within such a limited time because the potential audience for it is unlikely to descend on the game store within that short window, play it, then spread awareness of the game to others before it's already been moved out of a distributor's catalog. Publishers have a tough job of spreading awareness of their game releases, and beyond that continuing to spread awareness of a design instead of simply dropping it in favor of next month's release. You're not going to develop evergreen titles in your catalog if you don't give them a chance to plant roots.


Youtube Video

00:20 Opening and intros
00:55 Tickets! Get your tickets for BGG.CON!
02:52 2018 Golden Geek Award winners
06:59 What Have You Been Playing?
Doppelt so Clever - Wolfgang Warsch - Schmidt Spiele, Stonghold Games
08:42 Subtext - Wolfgang Warsch - Edition Spielwiese, Stronghold Games
12:53 Museum - Eric Dubus, Olivier Melison - Holy Grail Games & Luma Games
18:02 Two Stacks - Edward Doreau - (Self-Published)
21:24 Sorcerer - Peter Scholtz - White Wizard Games
26:50 Board Game News:
Ticket to Ride London - Alan R. Moon - Days of Wonder
28:18 Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein - Dan Blanchett - Plaid Hat Games
29:22 Sarah’s Vision - Anthony Howgego - Baloise Group
31:23 The limited shelf life of games
35:07 Kickstarter News:
Blood on the Clocktower - Steven Medway - The Pandemonium Institute
37:38 Fuji Koro - Jerome Demeyere - Game Brewer
38:18 Cheapass Games in Black & White
40:11 Goodbyes Read more »

by Shadi Torbey

The Cruelty of Solo Game Designers

Aerion started with a simple (and rather mean) idea: Create a solo/two-player co-operative dice game in which you had to acquire resources by rolling different results (double pair, full house, street, etc…), but without getting any free re-rolls to improve the results of your dice. Instead, you'd have to pay for those re-rolls by discarding the very resources you were trying to acquire!

The Basics

In Aerion, you are an air-shipwright tasked to build a new fleet of ships to traverse the skies of the Oniverse. The object of the game is to build six airships before your resources run out. You need three different resources (cards) for each ship: a blueprint to work off of, materials to build it, and a crew to fly it.




You have to manage your resources carefully as you construct each ship: There are two different crew types (each crew can man three types of ship), three different material types (each material allows you to build two types of ship) and six different blueprints (each ship has a specific blueprint).

You also have one more powerful asset that won't directly help you build ships, but does have multiple powerful effects: books. Book cards can be used to re-roll dice, recover discarded resources, or stockpile resources for later.

With the right roll, you can acquire one of the six available cards in the display. If you need a different roll to acquire the card you want, you can discard cards from the display to re-roll. You can keep trying until you either acquire a card or burn through all the cards currently in the display trying! The display isn't refreshed with new cards until the end of your turn, so you need to work with what's in front of you. Discarding cards from the display doesn't just limit your options; it brings you closer to defeat. If all the cards run out before you complete your task, you lose the game!




The airships take shape in your workshops, where you place the resources you've acquired. You can gather the materials and blueprints in any order you want, but your crews won't sit around waiting for the ship to be skyworthy, which means that you need to recruit them last once your ship is built (unless you have a game room, but more about that later). Note that you have only two workshops, so you won't be able to haphazardly accumulate resources that don't fit together.



For an example, let's say that last turn you acquired the cocoon material card and put it into one of your two workshops. Now you roll the dice, and this is what you get: 2/2/5/5/3/6. What should you do? Your dice result has two pairs which lets you acquire the incubus crew, but you don't need it yet as you would have to get a fitting combination of blueprint and material in one of your workshops first — and so far you have only one material card (the previously acquired cocoon).

If you could roll another 5 or 2, you could get the blueprint that goes with the cocoon you already have. Or if you could just roll a 4, you would have the series of sequential numbers necessary to acquire a different blueprint to put in your second workshop space. Or you could even try to get four of a kind to take the always useful book card.

Now, which dice should you re-roll? And, more importantly, which card from the display should you discard to do so?

Divide to Clarify

From the start of the design process, it was clear that I did not want to have all the resource cards in one single deck since this could lead to cards being drawn in unwinnable or unfun combinations, so I separated the cards into several pre-determined mini-decks, based on the combination of dice needed to acquire these cards.




As expected, this led to a much smoother and regular distribution of the cards into the display.

A happy side effect of this decision was that Aerion became something more than just a dice game. The decks are quite small, their composition is known (the symbols on the back serve as reminders), and the discarded cards visible, so the discard-to-re-roll decisions are made not only by determining which card on the display you want, but also which are the most expendable, which cards you could hope will appear next, and the general compatibility of the cards in the display (and, possibly, in the workshops). Aerion is a dice game, certainly, but also a game of...

Should we call this "deck management"?

Expanding: It's About Time!

When designing Oniverse games, building the expansions is always a fun and stimulating challenge: How far can I push the game's core mechanism and add (or, in certain cases, remove) elements without the whole thing falling apart? Aerion includes six expansions to present new challenges for players to conquer.

One of the first elements I wanted to explore was time. The game may put you in some excruciating situations, but it never really puts you under time pressure. If the dice don't seem to go your way, you can often adapt by getting another card than the one you were aiming for, then trying again later. None of this with The Hourglasses expansion! Now you must also acquire the six hourglass cards that remain on the display for only one turn!




The Hourglass expansion elicited its mirror concept: What about cards that you would like to keep in the display as long as possible? This led to The Stone Clouds expansion: Clouds (in the form of tokens) block the skies, and you have to get rid of them! To help you, you have the faithful hammer birds, but these bird cards cannot be acquired, only discarded, either to improve your rolls (so, basically, more free re-rolls here) or to destroy the stone clouds.

And here's the twist: The more hammer birds you use, the more stone clouds you can destroy — exponentially! But how long are you able to play around those bird cards without discarding them for a tempting re-roll?

Expanding: Highs, Lows, and the Villain!

Aerion's base game presents the player with this fundamental dilemma: Which card should I try to acquire, and which cards can I afford to discard for re-rolls to make that happen? The Stone Clouds expansion introduced an incentive for keeping cards in the display until you had multiple copies available, but I wanted to try a different twist on this dynamic as well: What about a card that you could discard for a more powerful re-roll, but with a cost?

The workers featured in The Piers expansion can work overtime to give you three re-rolls instead of one when you discard them, but you must give them their payday later in the game with a roll totaling 26 or more. The workers come with their own additional challenge: Building the piers necessary to properly launch the airships you've built.




The Piers expansion (and, to some extent, The Stone Clouds expansion) make high rolls valuable. But one quality I've always admired in dice games is finding ways to make low rolls useful in their own way. In Aerion, your low rolls can be used for one of the most difficult tasks of all: Hunting our newest villain, The Hellkite!

This vicious predator of the skies lurks in far-flung outposts, preventing you from acquiring the card type shown on the outpost where he currently sits. Fleeing from your hunt to lairs packed with the plunder of past raids, the Hellkite must then be confronted in the heart of his domain where you can reclaim stolen resources and liberate captured crews.




Expanding: Digging Deeper and a Bit of Cheating

When designing expansions, I always aim to ensure that they are fun to play in any combination — including all of them at once! Playing with the workers, hammer birds, and hourglasses together almost doubles the card count in each deck, so a bit of judicious deck manipulation was in order. Plus, there was another facet of the design I still wanted to explore: cards that could never be discarded from the display (in contrast to all other cards of the game, which can always serve as re-roll fodder).




Your friends, the hammer birds, have now laid Eggs all around. You have to retrieve them, being careful not to break a single one! Egg cards can never be discarded (on pain of losing the game!), but once acquired, you can use them to look at top cards of a deck, allowing you to chose a better card to put on the display. You can even do that after a dice roll to try to adapt the display to your roll!

(Thematic — and moral — footnote: Obviously, you are not holding the poor eggs for ransom! You give them back to their parents right away and, later on, the grateful hammer birds will help you see what is coming next. It is only the in-game mechanism that translates into you keeping the cards and using them when needed!)

Once I established a core concept and a series of variations on the central theme, it was time to throw all of that out the window and let players cheat!

The obligation to put acquired cards into the workshops? Gone! (Well, almost.) Now you have a seventh ship to build: The Flagship, which serves as its own workshop and blueprint. All you have to do is gather one copy of each material and of each crew. This additional ship clearly makes the game harder, so players get two cards that let them bend the rules a bit: the factory cards.

Each factory card gives you new capabilities that let you break some of the core rules of the game. No free re-rolls? The geniuses down in the Research Lab can shake that up! You must continue to discard cards until you can acquire something? The Security Department can put a stop to that! The crew has to be added last? Not if you can keep them entertained in the Game Room!




Other factory cards can make your books more effective or modify your re-rolls to let you turn a die to its opposite side. (This one's a special treat for players who prefer a little less randomness in the game.)

Final Destination, or the First Step of a Journey?

With six expansions (each with an optional difficulty setting), one could think that I explored all aspects of this "deck management" system. I actually had just got started. The next idea: What about getting rid of the dice altogether?

But this led to another chapter in the Oniverse and may (hopefully) be the subject of another diary someday.

For now, the skies are waiting! Grab your dice and build some airships!

Shadi Torbey


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by W. Eric Martin

Following its two-day Mensa Mind Games event in which approximately three hundred participants played and rated games released in the past twelve months, the U.S. branch of Mensa has announced the winners of its 2019 Mensa Select award:

• Architects of the West Kingdom, by Shem Phillips and S J Macdonald (Garphill Games)
• Gizmos, by Phil Walker-Harding (CMON Limited)
• Gunkimono, by Jeffrey D. Allers (Renegade Game Studios)
• Planet, by Urtis Šulinskas (Blue Orange Games)
• Victorian Masterminds, by Antoine Bauza and Eric M. Lang (CMON Limited)

This marks the fifth year in a row in which Renegade Game Studios has landed a Mensa Select award, following Lanterns (2015), World's Fair 1893 (2016), Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure (2017) and Ex Libris and Raiders of the North Sea (2018). Blue Orange Games won the award in 2018 for Photosynthesis, with an earlier win in 2016 for New York 1901.

Game publishers submit titles to the Mensa Mind Games event, paying a fee in the process in addition to giving copies of the games to the organizing Mensa branch. The 2020 Mensa Mind Games will be hosted by the North Texas Mensa chapter.

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Publisher: Precis Intermedia

This weekly OSR periodical from the mind of RPGPundit features a different theme or topic in each issue.

Price: $2.99 Read more »

Publisher: Rogue Genius Games

The Power of Peace

The life of William Fehr, an actor, a husband, a father of three, came crashing down when his wife lost her arm, and the couple lost their children, during the NYC battle between Hecate and the founding members of the Sentinels. In an effort to avenge their slain children, William allowed himself to be bombarded by N-Ray particles to become Neutronium (PL 9), the Indestructible Man!

Neutronium came to his senses when he had the Sentinels at his mercy and decided slaying them was not justice. In fact, he ended up joining them for a short time. Now, William continues to operate as both an action hero actor, and a part-time costumed hero.

Super Powered Legends. Because sometimes what you need is a character everyone will recognize, even if they’ve never met her before.

Written and illustrated by Jacob Blackmon. Super Powered by M&M.

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Publisher: SideQuests

SideQuests: The Stories Thus Far (Vol. I and II Collection) compiles all ten acclaimed SideQuests one-shot campaigns into a single comprehensive PDF. This tome of single-night campaigns is the perfect way to introduce a brand new adventure into your world, all while including all of your own original content and characters. Why choose between a single SideQuests adventure when you can now have them all? 

This supplement includes: 

• SideQuests: Insurrection At The Abbey 
• SideQuests: Portrait of Ruin 
• SideQuests: Mausoleum Madness 
• SideQuests: Escape From The Neverwoods 
• SideQuests: Prisonbreakers 
• SideQuests: Tritons of Mistvalley River 
• SideQuests: Pirate's Plunder 
• SideQuests: Assassin's Hideaway 
• SideQuests: Carnival of Terror 
• SideQuests: City of the Dead

SideQuests are a collection of short adventures designed for 5E. These one-shot style campaigns are designed to be compelling standalone stories that can be implemented, played through, and completed in just a few sessions. Whether you're using them as a filler adventure between major story arcs, as a continuation of your own adventures, or just because you forgot to plan the session last Wednesday... SideQuests are an invaluable tool for any DM! 

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Publisher: Decagon Design

The Megahexes collection is a set of 22 3D-printable STL models designed for games needing a hex grid.

The hexagons are 1.75” center-to-center, and the hexagon sides are 1” long. All parts will fit on an Ender3 buildplate. A seven-hex “Megahex” requires a build footprint of 5” x 5.25”. The largest piece in the set, the rock bridge, is 8” x 5.25”.

The models make use of the Dragonbite link system created by Fat Dragon Games. The connector model is available at www.fatdragongames.com.  Compatibility with Dragonlock terrain sets is aided by the Half-megahex model, which has a 4” edge with two connector attachments spaced 2” apart to allow easy connection to tiles based on a 1” square grid.

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Publisher: Wannabe Games

In Some Assembly Required, you play as action figures pitted against household dangers like pets, people, and other playthings. Are you a superhero, a soldier, and alien, or something else? And just how durable is your plastic?

This game was created live on Twitch (with some editing latter on) on 4/21 by Alexander Sprague and Jessica Geyer of WannaBeGames. We are working on flexing our creative muscles and making new fun things for people. Follow us on twitter @jawska and @kittycrusade and drop us a suggestion for a game idea. We make them every Sunday!

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Publisher: Elena Lasker

This battlemap includes 2 layers: the top layers, a skull island (40x40), and a cavern layer (45x33) that opens up into the right eye of the skull island. Each layer also has 3 variations: Skull Island during day, night, and rain. Cavern during day, night, and with a shipwreck inside of it (see preview)

The pack includes grid and gridless versions of all variations + large, high resolution print files in jpg format, as well as PDF files for tile printing if that's your kind of thing.

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Publisher: Elena Lasker

This battlemap includes 5 variations and an asset pack: day, night, fall, winter, and excavated dragon bones in the mountain + a horse and cart asset pack for day and night time.

The pack includes grid and gridless versions of all variations + large, high resolution print files in jpg format, as well as PDF files for tile printing if that's your kind of thing.

Price: $4.99 Read more »

Publisher: Sandman

BRoll fast! to prosta i szybka mechanika uniwersalna, którą można bez problemu dopasować do sesji w dowolnej konwencji. Najważniejszą jej cechą jest elastyczność, dzięki czemu każda drużyna może dostosować ją pod swoje oczekiwania.

W podręczniku znajdziesz zasady potrzebne do przeprowadzenia rozgrywki oraz przykładowy świat z potworami i osadzoną w nim przygodą. Znajdziesz tam również przykładowe modyfikacje mechaniki.

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Publisher: Elena Lasker

This battlemap includes 3 levels: rooftop level, ground level with crypt and chapel interiors, and underground level with a large crypt and a dug out tunnel.

The pack includes grid and gridless versions of all levels + large, high resolution print files in jpg format, as well as PDF files for tile printing if that's your kind of thing.

This map also fits into my Fantasy City Street Modular Map (which is pay what you want), so you could build a few streets around this cemetery if you wish.

Price: $2.99 Read more »

Powered by the Apocalypse games have been a major force in the RPG hobby for years, but it took me a while to fully understand how they really worked. One of the first Powered by the Apocalypse games that helped me to understand the concept, as a whole, was Monster of the Week. Given that it was also a game about one of my favorite genres, the text of the game really spoke to me.

An interesting aspect of the product that I’m looking at today is that I saw various bits and pieces of it take shape in the Monster of the Week Roadhouse, a Google+ community for fans of the game. Monster of the Week Tome of Mysteries is a little bit of everything, and serves as a supplement to the core rules of the game. It contains new rules, playbooks, advice, and mysteries.

Now that we’ve scoped out the location, let’s find out what we’re dealing with.

The Tome Itself

This review is based on the PDF of the product, which is 278 pages long. The PDF has a full-color cover, with black and white artwork throughout. The formatting is the same single column setup of the core rules, with bolded headers in a different font than the regular text, making it easy to follow the information on each page. There are several full-page illustrations marking the individual sections of the book.

Foreword

Often, the Foreword is just a brief set of comments that flow right into the introduction, but I wanted to specifically call out the foreword in this book, because in addition to reflecting on the history and creation of the game, it is written in a manner similar to the moves in the game, and is one of the most on-point forewords I have read in an RPG product.

Rules 

The next section in the book contains new alternate rules that can be implemented in a Monster of the Week game. These include the following:

• Alternate Weird Basic Moves
• Phenomena Mysteries
• Special Moves
• More Flexible Investigations

Monster of the Week is based on tropes established by monster hunting television shows over the years, and in most of those shows, the heroes are capable of performing various rituals when the plot calls for it. Alternatively, they can tinker with super science to do what needs to be done in a more science fiction-based monster hunting story. These are represented in the current rules with the “Use Magic” move.

The alternate weird moves introduce a more granular approach to hunters and how they do that “something special.” A character that doesn’t take use magic as the thing that “makes them weird” can still perform magic, but it’s more difficult and has more consequences. In exchange, they get the ability to choose one of the following options:

• Empath (reading emotions)
• Illuminated (connected to a secret conspiracy)
• No limits (pushing beyond physical limits)
• Past lives (remembering past lives at convenient times)
• Sensitive (minor psychic abilities)
• Telekinesis (moving things with your mind)
• Trust your gut (getting hunches to act on without formal investigation)
• Use magic (the default from the core rules)
• Weird science (kind of like use magic, but explicitly with scientific trappings)

What is interesting about these moves is that they serve to “customize” playbooks in a way that goes beyond the options for the individual characters. You can have a wronged that will never think of touching magic but has trust your guts, and they will seem very different than one that gets flashes of past lives to guide them on their quest for vengeance. Although I have always loved how flexible the use magic rules are in the game, I’m really interested to see the freshness that some of these options may add to a playbook that has seen a lot of use over time.

Also in this section is a discussion of “phenomenon” mysteries, mysteries where the hunters aren’t trying to stop a specific kind of monster, but rather, they are trying to reverse some adverse supernatural effect plaguing an area. These call back to shows like Fringe that feel very much like a monster of the week style show, but the weirdness isn’t a monster, but a device or cross-dimensional rift. It also models television programs like Eureka or Warehouse 13. This section includes phenomenon types, threat moves, and modified questions for investigating a phenomenon.

Many of the playbooks in the game include a move that triggers when Luck is spent, and there is a section of the new rules dedicated to making sure that all of the playbooks (including some of the expanded playbooks available online, and the new ones included in this book) also have moves that trigger when Luck is used.

The section on more flexible investigations is one that I know some of my players would have appreciated. It is a discussion on making the investigate a mystery move results a little less rigid, for when players have questions they want to have answered that don’t fit into the assumed template.

Overall, I’m really interested to see everything in the section at play at the table.

New Hunters

The next section of the book introduces new playbooks to the game. The new hunters include:

• The Gumshoe (a regular private eye caught up in supernatural cases)
• The Hex (a general magical practitioner, more flexible than The Spooky or Spellslinger)
• The Pararomantic (a hunter with a romantic tie to a monster or supernatural creature)
• The Searcher (someone that has become a hunter after a brush with the unknown)

The Gumshoe draws on a lot of different private investigator tropes, even beyond the monster hunting genre, and revolves around following a specific code. The Hex is based around creating custom use magic moves and turning them into predictable rotes. The Pararomantic has a special track for determining the path of the relationship and the fate of the playbook’s significant other. The Searcher gets slightly different abilities based on the encounter that first introduced them to the supernatural (for example, if they saw Bigfoot, or if they were abducted by aliens).

It is interesting to see how some of these playbooks encompass an aspect of characters that served as the basis for other playbooks. For example, Harry Dresden is almost as much Gumshoe (at least early on) as he is Spellslinger, and Buffy is both The Chosen One and a Pararomantic in early seasons. Beyond playing the playbooks “straight,” it is interesting to see what kind of customization might come from taking advanced moves to access bits and pieces of these.

 

On their own, I like all of these, although the Hex feels the fuzziest. I think there is definitely a space for a dedicated spellcaster that isn’t as flashy as The Spellslinger or as touched with potential ruin as The Spooky, but I’m not as excited as I should be over customized use magic moves being the core conceit of the playbook.

Advice

The Advice section is a series of individual essays on various topics that touch on Monster of the Week specifically, and more broadly, on urban fantasy tropes and running games in different environments.

Some articles are more about topics like convention games, one-on-one gaming, sub-genres like gothic horror, less structured games, and the intersection between monster hunting and kids on bikes. Other articles are more specific to the game itself, introducing moves for things like spellbooks.

This section has some of the most specific language about safety in the book, which is not so much a separate section, as interspersed into discussions on other topics. The rules on spellbooks can be carved up rather than used whole, but the advice that really jumped out at me involved the advice on running at conventions, which has very detailed discussions on timelines and how to pace a game, and the detailed checklists of items to introduce at various stages of a mystery that appears in the article on less structured games.

Mysteries

There are almost thirty mysteries that are outlined in the final section of the book. These involve concepts, hooks, the countdown (the developments that will happen if the hunters don’t intervene), monsters, and in some cases, custom moves.

This section is a good resource, not only for mysteries to run, but to see how mysteries should be structured, how custom moves can play into them, and for monsters that can be cut and pasted into other mysteries. I am especially fond of The Circles, a mystery that puts a spin on crop circles and utilizes a classic monster in a way that really feels like an episode of the source material. The Curse-Speech is an attention grabber, utilizing a migrating evil language as one of the plot hooks. Everybody Get Psycho is another favorite, as it has a great twist on the classic trope of a cursed object and heavy metal music. The Quiet is a creepy, cult focused mystery with a great custom move and lots of atmosphere. By no means are these the only mysterious I would recommend checking out, but these are some of my favorites, that walk the line between calling back to great tropes while doing something fun and different with how the plot might advance.

Because the concept of “Monster of the Week” is very broad and can cover a wide range of stories, there is a great deal of variety in this section. Some, like the opening mystery, are a little bit too gonzo for me. Time travel and futuristic AIs push a little outside of my comfort zone for expected Monster of the Week stories. I also know that for my own tastes, homages that are a little too on the nose aren’t my favorites.

There is a wide variety of authors on these mysteries, so I don’t think this was a conscious design decision, but a few too many of the mysteries veered into very traditional roles for women in horror scenarios (vengeful spirits from relationships, witches tampering with powers beyond their control, etc.). No individual mystery is especially insensitive in how it utilizes these tropes, but similar tropes become a recurring factor. I also would have liked a content warning for the issues dealt with in the various mysteries at the beginning.

Those disclaimers in place, there is a ton of material to use, either for a quick night of play or to pull bits and pieces from to construct other mysteries. There is a lot of material here to use for resources.

Successful Hunt

 The material in this book is equally suited to add excitement and variety for veterans of the game, and to give someone brand new to the genre plenty of tools to work with. 

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The material in this book is equally suited to add excitement and variety for veterans of the game, and to give someone brand new to the genre plenty of tools to work with. While it’s a great resource for Monster of the Week, the material in this book is also a great resource for urban fantasy games in general, along with some really strong advice for convention games.

Out of Luck

The book is very strong, but if you aren’t a fan of gonzo or obvious pop culture references, some of the mysteries may not be as useful to you. A few too many mysteries lean heavily on some specific roles for women, and individually these are fine, but it is a bit of a recurring, if unintentional, theme. Safety, as well as appropriate topics for individual tables, is discussed, but not specifically called out in their own section of the book.

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

I think this is going to be a solid purchase, not only for anyone that is already interested in Monster of the Week, but for anyone that wants more material to build on for monster hunting and urban fantasy stories. There is a lot going on in this book, and so much of it provides a solid basis for telling stories at the table, as well as best practices for setting up those games.

Do you have a favorite monster hunting scenario that you have played through? A particularly fun twist that your group experienced? We want to hear from you in the comments below, so please let us know what you think.

 

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Beneath the soil they wait, oozing digestive juices to liquefy and absorb any edible material hapless enough to fall in their path. Silently, patiently, they spread hidden tendrils thinner than a hair under the ground, linking threads to form an invisible net below the feet of the hapless humanoids lumbering above them. Relentlessly, they burrow through the ground. Growing, consuming, they bide their time over months, years, centuries, even millennia until the time arrives that they burst through the ground, hurling copies of themselves into the air and preparing to begin the cycle once more.

Sure, this is a workable description of any number of ancient evils in fantasy gaming, but it’s also a pretty solid way of talking about the fungi you probably have in the patch of ground nearest to you right now. What we think of as “mushrooms” are really only formed by a small fraction of fungal species;

in fact, the “mushrooms” that we see are just the mechanism by which fungi spread. This means that Toad from Super Mario Brothers, myconids from D&D, and any other mushroom creatures you can think of are just ambulatory reproductive organs, and the Smurfs village is basically a scene from a Saw movie.

The majority of the “body” of a fungus is its mycelium (yes, like the network in Star Trek), which grows out in all directions, seeking food and forming a network within the soil. This underground network exists in nearly all areas with vegetative life, and in addition to decomposing materials that would otherwise pile up, it is used by plants as a kind of external digestive system, forming a symbiotic relationship whereby plants can gather food and nutrients that they can’t reach with their own root systems. There is even evidence that this network of fungi is also used in a form analogous to communication between plants, forming what is sometimes called (and I could not possibly be more delighted to tell you this) a “wood-wide web”.

Until around 1960, fungi were considered to be plants — which makes sense; they grow from something that looks like seeds, and they don’t move on their own. However, later science determined that they were much more closely related to animals, just completely immobile and without any sort of muscle tissue — which really makes me wonder whether I might technically be a fungus. They store energy as glycogen (like animals) rather than starch (like plants), and their cells are given rigidity not by plant-based materials like cellulose but instead by chitin, the same material that makes up the exoskeletons of insects like cockroaches. Yum!

Fungi can be medicinal or poisonous or delicious (or sometimes a combination of any two of those things), and the difference between a good dinner and an early grave is sometimes a matter of how they’re prepared. Indigestible or poisonous mushrooms can be rendered edible (or at least less harmful) by any number of techniques. I’m not going to go into more detail than that because a) this is the Internet, and no one should try to do this kind of thing based on the advice of an RPG blog, and b) even if that were a good idea, I’m the absolute last person who should be giving that kind of instruction. With that in mind…

Warning: mushrooms can kill you, just like they were rumored to have killed the Roman emperor Claudius, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, Pope Clement VII, and the composer Johann Schobert. And that’s just some of the famous people. About seven people per year die of mushroom poisoning in the U.S, and hundreds more are made seriously ill. Even though there are pictures in this article, and for the most part I tried to find reasonable approximations of what the fungi in question looked like, this is not an identification guide. I can’t even match my socks in the morning, and I can barely avoid killing my family when I cook for them even when I don’t use potentially poisonous ingredients — do not take anything I say as adequate reason to put these things in your mouth.

However, describing such things is not only safe, but extremely cool. And with that in mind, I present to you 8 Funky Fungi To Liven Up Your Game (And A Few Ways To Use Them).

Mind-Controlling Ant Fungus (ophiocordyceps unilateralis)

By itself, there’s nothing especially new or interesting about a fungal infection. If you’re alive, which I assume most of you reading this are, you are already host to a dizzying array of fungi, yeasts, and other creatures that call you home. They’re like roommates (good or bad). They do their thing to varying degrees of intrusiveness and stink. You also do your thing, and if you’re too incompatible, one or the other of you gets evicted. Cordyceps is more like that friend who visits from out of town and suddenly surprise! They’re moving to your city and need a place to stay. First they start eating all the food out of your fridge, then they start making demands, and before you know it, they’re trying to hollow you out and turn your body into a nutrient paste they can use for reproduction. Which is not, in fact, something that everyone does, Harold.

This particular species of Cordyceps infects carpenter ants, and then even while eating them alive, hijacks the nervous and muscular system of the ant, forcing it to travel to an appropriate piece of plant cover, climb to the ideal elevation for reproduction, clamp on to the grass with their mandibles, and then die. The fungus continues to spread within the ant, before eventually sprouting out of the long-dead husk and throwing its spores to the wind, beginning the cycle all over again. Some scientists think that the ants may be cognitively unaffected during all of this, and that the mechanism is actually a little less like mind control, and a little more like being controlled like an agonized marionette from within. Nature is amazing.

Potential Game Use:

A prodigal son from a local farming community finally returned, but the day after his tearful homecoming, he wandered into the woods and disappeared, only to be found again a week later dead, hollowed out, and filled with a mysterious powdery substance that creates a powerful feeling of well-being when inhaled, even accidentally. The heroes have been called in to investigate the case, as local law enforcement has no idea what is going on.

At first, all signs point to a horrible drug deal gone bad, until the characters find several locals attempting (and maybe succeeding) in stealing the mysterious powder, claiming that they feel compelled to share with their friends and family. “Addicts” at first violently resist any attempts to prevent them from taking or spreading this powder, eventually becoming a kind of hive mind that exhales spores onto the PCs. If not helped, the entire village will die in agony, possibly spreading the infection to other nearby areas.

In such a story, there are plenty of opportunities for medical or nature rolls (to determine the nature of the illness or the drug), social rolls (to determine that individuals are being non-magically mind-controlled) and constitution-type rolls to avoid infection. Potential solutions include spells curing disease, exotic alchemical reagents, introducing another fungal or bacterial species to counteract the infection, and good old-fashioned fire (for games that tend to be a little darker in tone).

Candy Cap Mushrooms (lactarius rubidus)

Edible mushrooms, by themselves, aren’t all that much to write home about (unless “home” has a mycologist, in which case you should definitely write home to make sure you’re eating the right ones). Edible mushrooms that make for a workable ice cream flavor start to get a little more interesting. Where lactarius rubidus gets really fun though, is after the initial consumption. When dried and then reconstituted, this mushroom tastes like maple syrup (because, it turns out, it produces the same chemical that is used to make maple syrup flavoring—now who’s being unnatural, Canada?). The real magic happens later, when the sweat and tears of people who eat the mushroom start to smell like maple syrup as well. It’s like someone with more imagination than impulse control stumbled across a wish-granting leprechaun and demanded a combination of dessert and cologne, and I’ll be darned if the little guy didn’t make it work.

Potential Game Use:

The characters are invited to a feast by a local fae noble. Because interactions with faeries in folklore and fiction are one part entertainment to three parts weaponized manners, eventually, a character is going to insult someone. To keep this adventure from feeling too “on the rails,” feel free to use a character loosely associated with the fae whom the PCs have insulted or irritated previously. For a little foreshadowing fun, include some sort of massively dangerous but largely mindless beast in a cage, leashed or otherwise bound near the tables as the characters eat. After the feast, the heroes are offered an especially delicate and exotic dessert mushroom, which is also given to the dangerous creature. The creature immediately tears into the dessert mushrooms with terrifying abandon: think “Cookie Monster” meets “Sharknado.” Because players aren’t dumb, they will almost certainly check the dessert to make sure it’s not poisonous, magically or otherwise trapped (which of course, it’s not), and/or wait to see what happens with the Hungry Hungry Horror. Offer the character some sort of minor benefit for eating the mushrooms — healing, one additional use of a power, or whatever form of play currency is used in your game (e.g. inspiration, conviction, XP). Keep track of what characters eat the mushroom and how many they eat.

Following the meal, the characters discover the delightful side effect of the mushroom — they smell exactly like the delicious dessert they just consumed thanks to their unrefined humanoid biology. Their fae hosts, of course, have more refined digestion. As the characters look on in horror, the fae lord at the head of the table lets the leash slip on their pet monster, who lunges at the nearest character while the nearby court of fae watches and applauds. This is a fairly straightforward mostly-combat encounter, but with a lot of potential fun in the form of set pieces for combat. Think flipped tables, improvised weapons, flying crockery, and lithe, mocking figures darting in and out to make things more “interesting.” This may also be an opportunity for more socially-oriented characters to use their charm to request assistance from particularly engaged onlookers.

Octopus Stinkhorn (clathrus archeri)

To the right, you will see a picture of what I absolutely swear is not only a fungus, but the single grossest fungus I have ever read about (and that’s including a species coming up in the next article that grows exclusively on herbivore dung). The Octopus Stinkhorn begins its visible life as a slime-covered bolus of egg-like material with its forming tentacles barely visible. Eventually, the tentacles strain against their “egg” and burst outward, covered in a thick, black-brown goo that smells like rotting meat. The stench attracts nearby flies and other decomposers, which wander around on the surface of the tentacles, picking up spores that they drop elsewhere (basically pollination, as imagined by Clive Barker).

Potential Game Use:

Look. If you’re going to have something sprout up unexpectedly from the ground that looks like Cthulhu’s dust bunnies, you might as well lean all the way in. Something unclean has been here before. “Here” can be the site of some sort of horrible sacrifice, sacrilege, or slaughter, or it can just be a case of “wrong place at the wrong time.” As another straightforward combat encounter, it’s hard to beat a tentacled creature that can unpredictably reproduce from any spot on the ground, but the real challenge will come in the form of the creatures that are attracted to and defend the Supernatural Stinkhorn. Take this as an opportunity to drag out every gross monster you’ve ever wanted to use. Giant cockroaches? Go for it! Slime molds, gelatinous cubes, worms that walk? They’re all fair game, and they’re all making heart eyes at this festering mound of thrashing goop. Every successful strike results in everyone within 10 feet getting splashed with putrescence, triggering some sort of constitution-type roll to avoid either taking damage or losing the next round heaving breakfast onto the ground.

What’s more, who’s to say what characters who take damage from such an attack might not themselves be the source of the next infection?

Bioluminescent Fungi (~80 species)

I almost didn’t include bioluminescent fungi in this list. They’re such a cliche that it’s almost not worth it. But there are about 80 species of bioluminescent mushrooms, and that’s a pretty big chunk of the fungal kingdom to just leave out because everyone already knows about them. So, with that in mind, yes. Glowing mushrooms are real, and there are a bunch of them, and yes, they all look very, very cool. Do yourself a favor and do an image search of them sometime.

Potential Game Use:

Lighting is a sometimes-underutilized part of adventure and encounter design. I can’t count the number of modules and supplements I’ve read that treat lighting as sort of a throwaway — there’s almost always magical ambient lighting, or unexplained torches (which are, if you’re a sucker for verisimilitude, extremely unlikely), or sometimes no lighting  at all. Which makes sense on a certain level — much like encumbrance or precise weapon details, not everyone likes thinking about and tracking questions of visibility in exploration or combat. However, I propose that if you’re looking for a quick and easy way of making things interesting in an otherwise bog-standard dungeon or cave, start caring about lighting. Have unseen things chittering in dark corners, or drips just out of eyesight, or things darting out of view as soon as the characters get too near.

Another consideration: do your players have darkvision? Of course they do. If it’s a fantasy game, pretty much everyone has darkvision. Things without eyes have darkvision. A soup tureen has darkvision in some rulesets. You know who doesn’t have darkvision though? The large group of frightened prisoners the characters may have just freed. Alternately, some puzzles or clues may only become visible when viewed under the light of a specific species of mushroom, the identification and gathering of which can be an encounter all by itself. For an extra “wow” factor, consider making a homemade blacklight to represent the mushroom’s glow, and using lemon juice to write a hidden clue, message, or even whole puzzle.

In Conclusion:

Fungi are really, really neat and can add to just about any fantasy game, above or below-ground. They’re terrifying, dangerous, delicious, poisonous, useful and frustrating in equal measure, and if you let them, they can give your game a touch of alien whimsy that few other things in the real world can. If you’ve enjoyed this article, come back in a couple of weeks for Part 2, where I give four more kinds of fungi you might want to use in your game.

In the meantime, do you think you’ll be using more mushrooms in your games? Do you have a favorite fungus (or a suggestion for me to cover in the next piece)? Let me know in the comments!

Further Reading:

1. Six Bizarre Things about Fungi : A cool, quick little article about the weirdness of fungi, prominently featuring three of the species that made this list (h/t Luke: thanks for the heads up!).
2. Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms by Eugenia Bone. There aren’t a lot of books on mycology out there that aren’t aimed at mushroom hunters, farmers, or people looking for psychedelics. While this is an engaging and entertaining overview in a field that isn’t exactly crowded, I can’t entirely recommend this book, as it contains some flip statements about several vulnerable populations that have little if anything to do with fungi, and that kind of soured the read a bit for me. Your mileage may vary.
3. The Magic of Mushrooms. A documentary available in the US on Netflix (as of the time of this article), this fairly short but fun film walks you through the basics of fungal biology, as well as introducing some of the ways fungi may well shape our future. Fun, quick, and relentlessly British, I can’t recommend it highly enough for someone who likes documentaries.

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Let us continue our look at the town of Foot from last article.

7. The Carpenter. This shop smells like sawdust as soon as you enter it. There’s wood, stain, saws, hammers, levels, crank drills, chisels, and all other manner of tool and wood around the shop. Sarah Hanner is a short, stocky, and well-muscled woman in her late 30’s who is healthy and always wearing a wry smile. Sarah specializes in furniture and the wooded parts of a wide variety of farm equipment, while also being able to patch up buildings that have seen better days. She loves her work and does a wonderful job, even if she’s sometimes a little late.

8. Fredmon’s Thread and Stitch. Fredmon Tailor comes from a long line of tailors but came to the Airy Peaks to seek adventure. Then he lost his foot to a spikey mawed beastie. After that he decided to get back to his roots and sew for adventurer’s instead of going on adventures. Fredmon can work with cloth and leather while being quite versed in the layering of a variety of materials and cloths. He often works quite close with Kurnig on the undergarments of armor.

The shop is a clean place with a variety of different sets of clothing displayed on wooden mannequins. It’s all functional dress for farmers and adventurer’s, which gives the clothing a high contrast. Fredmon also specializes in bags and pouches for every day adventuring, seed carrying, and any other function a bag could serve.

9. The Torn Page. Lillard Copse is a wizened old man who wears glasses, can barely see, and is stooped over with age. That is, until the sun goes down. Once the sun dips out of view this old man straightens up, moves with the vigor of someone half his age, and can see just fine.

The shop is filled with books and maps which he buys and sells. Some are from adventurers and others are more mysterious in origin. Even though he has tons of maps, those maps are all quite contradictory in their descriptions and depictions. If asked, Lillard is convinced the Peaks might even move and rearrange themselves, or at least the Fire Tube Tunnels do.

10. The Goblin Wares. Jacob Flack is a thin, unassuming man with brown hair, who runs one of the most common shops in town in one of the more unique locations. His shop is in a tunnel just inside one of the entrances to the Airy Peaks. The shop’s entrance is marked by a wooden sign with a goblin painted on it with its eyes x’ed out.

The shop is just a small cavern lit by oil lanterns and a torch that burns with a magical light that never consumes and never goes out. On the walls are mesh nets and hanging from them are all manner of weapons, larger adventuring gear, and armor. There are crates stacked in rows with potions, rope, pouches, trinkets, small devices, and the other smaller, more portable things one might find useful when traversing the Airy Peaks.

Sometimes special things find their way into the Goblin Wares, sold to Jacob by adventurers who don’t know what they have. This is also the place that gear gets shipped to from the outside world. If you want to show how the gear changes from week to week in the Goblin Wares you can make this move every third time the party makes camp or when you have decided that a week or so has passed.

When time has passed roll 2d6 + nothing. On a hit a delivery occurs and restock according to the refresh. On a 10+ roll a d10 twice. Each roll adds the interesting item listed below to the Goblin Wares. On a 12+ a magic item finds its way into the Goblin Wares. Create the magic item and place it in the shop. On a miss the refresh doesn’t happen.

Special Item List

1. Hunters Bow
2. Dueling Rapier
3. Elvish Arrows
4. Elven Bread
5. Oil of Tagit
6. Bloodweed
7. Goldenroot
8. Serpent’s Tears
9. Bag of Books
10. Edged Black Steel Weapon. Add 2 piercing and 100 coins to any edged weapon

Black Steel Weapons come from the Dragon Fire Forges within the Airy Peaks. Edged weapons forged there have 2 piercing.

Jacob’s has the following on hand when an Airy Peaks campaign starts:

Dungeon Gear

• Adventuring Gear (x100)
• Bandages (x10)
• Healing Potion (x4 refreshed 1d4-1 to a max of 4)
• Antitoxin (x1 refreshed to a max of 1)
• Dungeon Rations (x 50)
• Dwarven Hardtack (x3 refreshed by 1 to a max of 3)
• Halfling Pipeleaf (x1 refreshed to a max of 1)

Armor

• Leather (x3 refreshed by 1 to a max of 3)
• Chainmail (x3 refreshed by 1 to a max of 3)
• Scale Mail (x2 refreshed by 1 to a max of 2)
• Plate (x1 refreshed by 1 to a max of 1)
• Shield (x3 refreshed by 1 to a max of 3)

Weapons

• Ragged Bow (x5 refreshed by 5 to a max of 5)
• Crossbow (x3 refreshed by 3 to a max of 3)
• Bundle of Arrows (x20 refreshed by 5 to max of 20)
• Club (x5 refreshed by 5 to a max of 5)
• Staff (x5 refreshed by 5 to a max of 5)
• Dagger (x5 refreshed by 5 to a max of 5)
• Throwing Dagger (x3 refreshed by 3 to a max of 3)
• Short Sword (x5 refreshed by 5 to a max of 5)
• Axe (x5 refreshed by 5 to a max of 5)
• Warhammer (x5 refreshed by 5 to a max of 5)
• Mace (x5 refreshed by 5 to a max of 5)
• Spear (x3 refreshed by 3 to a max of 3)
• Long Sword (x3 refreshed by 3 to a max of 3)
• Battle Axe (x3 refreshed by 3 to a max of 3)
• Halberd (x3 refreshed by 3 to a max of 3)
• Rapier (x1 refreshed by 1 to a max of 1)

Ok folks. I’ve reached my word count limit for this installment so next time we’ll be talking more about the town of Foot. Enjoy and we’ll get back to it next month.

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Join Jared for an interview with Mike Olson and Morgan Ellis, two of the developers who worked on Shadow of the Century from Evil Hat Productions as a follow-up to Jared’s review of the product here. Will this interview be enough to keep the Review Gnome (and his guests!) out of the stew this week?

 

In 2011 I offered to DM a 4-hour session of DnD as part of a silent auction for NAMI. My friend Toni bid on it, totally not out of pity. On the successful note of raising a whopping $20, Toni told me she wanted to play with her wife and two friends except… none of them had ever played DnD or any other TTRPGs before. Without thinking it through, I said yes. Then when I started to plan the session, I stared at a blank page for what seemed like hours realizing I had no idea how to teach someone else how to role play.

It’s easy to overwhelm someone new in any hobby especially if it’s something you love and understand. Often we unintentionally miscommunicate for a very simple reason — the newbies don’t speak our language yet. Did you glaze past the terms “DM,” “DnD,” and “TTRPG” in the paragraph above? That’s probably because you know those abbreviations mean Dungeon Master, the one who plans and leads a tabletop role playing game specifically Dungeons and Dragons; Dungeons and Dragons, the flagship game of the role playing industry; and tabletop role playing game, the more generic term for the entire hobby. On the other hand, did you know what NAMI is? From context you know it’s a charity, but unless I spell out the full name as the National Alliance on Mental Illness you may not know what they focus on.

Before You Teach…

If you’re fluent in RPGs, there’s a step I recommend before planning a session for newbies. Play a game you’ve never played before. Preferably something radically different from what you normally play. If you’ve played from levels 1-20 in the same DnD 3.5 edition campaign for the past five years, try picking up something story-forward like Protocol or Fiasco. If you normally play the serious Dark Heresy, try the hilarious Crash Pandas. If you have local conventions, you can look for someone new there. If you don’t, ask your normal group to take a session off and try something different. Or, ask online or find a community like the Gauntlet where you can sign up for online games. If you have no idea what game to play, I recommend John Harper’s Lasers & Feelings or one of its hacks like Love & Justice by my copodner (co-host podcast partner) Senda Linaugh. Handily, you can listen to an adventure of Love & Justice on my podcast She’s A Super Geek BUT don’t just listen — you need to actually play something new. 

I get to play new games all the time because of She’s A Super Geek, which does one-shots of different games focusing on women as GMs (that’s Game Master, similar to the term DM but considered more generic). When we started SASGeek almost 4 years ago, Senda and I were learning and running all the games. We’ve gotten to a place where a lot of creators, writers, or someone who has run the game a lot come onto the show to run those games for us. It’s amazing, and it means I’m constantly learning new games from the point of view of a player. It can be hard to break out of our fluent understanding of RPGs, so forcing yourself back into that newbie space can break you out of your fluency and give you some insight into what newbies at your own table might be experiencing.

But I didn’t have that experience back in 2011 when I sat down with Toni, her wife, and her two friends. I’m actually not sure of how good of a job I did teaching DnD to them. I remember that we told a good story, and they all had fun. The bard embarrassed herself in front of her crush. The rogue got to backstab their rival (emotionally and literally). The cleric had a dramatic moment of healing a near-dead NPC. In the end, that’s what we want newbies to experience. We want them to understand why we spend time in this hobby, what draws us deeper into it, and why it’s worth continuing to learn. We don’t want to bog them down in rules, hard math, or (Cthulhu forbid) table lawyering. We want them to walk away with a hilarious story they want to tell others. So here are a few tips for you as the GM to ensure that happens.

GM Tips

1. Make the characters — there’s nothing worse than wanting to learn a role play game only to get bogged down in details you don’t understand with the promise of ‘it gets more fun later.’ Create character sheets before hand with gentle role play prompts. If your newbie runs with another idea, that’s ok; but try to give them somewhere to go since they haven’t had experience building a character’s personality. Feel free to use pre-made characters from your system if they’re available.
   
2. Plan a straightforward adventure — we all love red herrings, but we’re focusing on teaching the game. Make sure there’s an obvious thing they’re supposed to do. Don’t be afraid to use simple ideas like stealing a magical item from that castle, protecting a caravan as it travels to another city, or rescuing a kidnapped prince. Having a clear goal makes it easier to think of ideas about how to get there. Asking players to think of classic tropes from movies and tv shows can give them a reference point if they become a deer in headlights. A newbie may not know how their character would get into an exclusive club, but they may know what Buffy, Luke Skywalker, or Steven Universe would do.
3. Have an experienced player at the table — newbies will look to an experienced player to set the tone and show them what’s possible. Just don’t let the experienced player take over the spotlight. Have a talk with them before the game and make sure they’re ok playing with newbies and either holding back or pushing forward depending on how the newbies react.
4. Don’t overwhelm them with rules — don’t try to explain all the rules in the game up front. Assure the newbies you will teach them the rules as they come up in game. Let them choose their character’s name and go over the basics of reading the character sheet.
5. Don’t overwhelm them with jargon — don’t use acronyms if you can help it. Try to explain things when the newbies are confused. Ask them if they’re confused. Encourage them to call out when you’re using a term they don’t understand.
6. Create an inviting first scene — Give the players a reason to interact with each other. Are they all stuck in the same jail? Do they all know a retired adventurer who’s called them together for an unknown reason? This doesn’t have to be a traditional go-around-the-table-and-introduce-your-character-scene, but there’s nothing wrong with that!
7. Create a skill challenge or small combat as the second scene — It doesn’t have to be an all-out battle. It could be a patron asking the characters to prove that they can handle a task or a simple go kill that low-level monster over there. They’ve stretched role play legs in the first scene. Now they get to work those mechanics a little. If it gets overwhelming, cut it short and move on. You just want to give the new players a chance to get a feel for the mechanics so that they know what’s possible within the game. 
8. Make sure every character gets the spotlight — since you’ve made the characters, you know what they’re good at. Make sure everyone gets some spotlight time to do what they’re good at. If you’ve got a hacker, make sure there are computer locked doors in the way. If you’ve got a wizard, make sure there’s a book that only they can read. If possible you want the light to shine on each character for something both mechanical and role play-focused. 
9. Laissez les bons temps rouler* — It’s ok if your straightforward plot goes off the rails. If they’re not having fun, do something different. A bad guy kicks in the door. A distress cry is heard from the next street over. Someone’s sword leaps out of their hands and starts singing. Just keep the game moving and make sure people are having fun!

Giving someone a window into our hobby can be amazing. Don’t be afraid to ask new people to play. You can teach them. After all, we were all newbies at some point. Someone else helped us learn how to play, probably multiple someones else. Being that person for someone else allows us to pay our experience forward, and hopefully they will do the same when the time comes. 

What games have you found the easiest or most difficult to teach? What did someone teach you badly or goodly when you started gaming?

 

*Let the good times roll

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The Obvious: Distraction

I know a few (probably more than a few) GMs who don’t want or allow technology at their table. That’s their call, and I urge players to respect it. This is because devices, especially those with online capability, can lead to distractions in the form of text messages, phone calls, social media, web browsing, and watching funny cat videos. I get it. I really do.

However, there is a place and time for technology at the table. If you, as a player, have a GM that doesn’t want technology at the table, build a case for streamlined play, quick rule lookups, online tools/utilities, electronic character builders/sheets, and easy-to-reach references. If they still don’t relent, respect their desires and move on.

Having said all that, let’s assume technology is allowed at the table and explore its extensive capabilities and uses.

Technology and Limitations

For the purposes of this article, I’m going to use the word “technology” quite a bit. What I’m referring to here are the portable electronic devices most of us carry everyday. This will include laptops, tablets, smart phones, and the like. I’m mainly going to focus on using a tablet, though.

This is because I find smart phones too clunky for smooth use at the table when information is needed on-demand. Character sheets are too small (or require massive pinch-zooming and swipe-scrolling) to effectively make use of. PDFs can be read on smart phones, but when you’re reading half a paragraph per screen, it’s not that speedy. Also, taking notes on a smart phone just isn’t efficient. I have a hard time composing a tweet in any reasonable amount of time on my phone, let alone trying to capture the rapid-fire events of what’s going on at the table. Of course, you may be a world-class typist on your phone, so give it a whirl.

On the flip-side, laptops tend to be too large and consume tons of table space, especially if someone lugs out their massive 17-inch gaming laptop. They can’t easily be set aside and then pulled back out for quick reference. They’re great for note taking because of the keyboard, but doing dynamic notes (like maps) on a laptop is still problematic unless you have a touchscreen variant.

In the middle-ground between smart phones and laptops exist, of course, tablets. They’re great. They lie flat on the table, don’t take up tons of room on the table, and can be set aside or propped against a chair leg when space is needed. Tablets also have the same advantage of laptops with a larger screen allowing for easy reading of rulebook PDFs, interacting with electronic character sheets, and taking notes in a document, especially if you have a stylus or other writing device that works with your tablet.

Specifications

For the remainder of this article, I’m going to dive into details about how I use a tablet and stylus at the table. I currently have a an 11-inch iPad Pro and use an Apple Pencil. The screenshots I’m going to throw your way come from an app called GoodNotes 5. I also use an app called GoodReader for viewing, bookmarking, and annotating PDFs. With these bits of technology and just these two apps, I can do everything I need at the table as a player or GM. I still keep a small notepad and pencil nearby for passing notes when appropriate. Oh. Dice. Yeah. Lots and lots of dice are part of my kit, but that’s not the point of this article.

For you Android/Microsoft users, I apologize for focusing on Apple products here. I don’t like recommending or pointing people to apps or hardware that I have no experience with in case I lead them astray. I’m certain there are options out there for Android and Microsoft tablets, styluses, and applications that can perform in a similar fashion to what I do here. A search along the lines of “GoodReader for Android table” or “GoodNotes for Microsoft Surface” might lead you in the right direction.

GoodReader

When I can, I buy the PDFs of rulebooks. This is because my days of carrying 150+ pounds (no exaggeration) of books with me to the FLGS are over. I’m tired of doing that, and my back isn’t getting any younger. Where I can’t find legal PDFs, I suck it up and lug the books, but this article is about electronics, not calisthenics with a bag o’ books.

GoodReader is my application of choice for reading and marking up PDFs. It’s fast to load even the largest books. In my current campaign, I’m a player in a game of Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea. The PDF is 68 megabytes in size. Not small, but I’ve seen bigger. If I don’t have the PDF open, it takes about 5 seconds to load. Once loaded, page transitions and scrolling through the document is rapid-fire fast. It can also have multiple PDFs open at once in tabbed layout like in your web browser. That’s super handy for leaping between multiple source materials.

There is also a bookmark feature where you can save links to pages that are frequently referenced, and if the bookmark is properly outlined with an electronic table of contents, then the outline feature comes in very handy.

Here are some screenshots with captions about what the various functions do:

GoodNotes 5

For my handwritten notes, I use GoodNotes 5. Version 4 was great, but the upgrade to version 5 is a whole new world of note taking! I use it at the table, during classes, at conferences, and anywhere else I need to scribble something down for later review or sharing.

GoodNotes comes with a wide variety of “backgrounds.” Of course, I go with the gridded background for all RPG notes even when I’m not mapping. It helps me align the notes and indentations and such as I go. For mapping, the obvious choice is the gridded background. Another fantastic feature is that you can use a PDF as a “background.” Just import the PDF and start writing on it. The “eraser” feature won’t delete the PDF text/lines because it’s the background. This allows me to import the PDF version of a game’s character sheet and just use my iPad for the character sheet as well. This importing of a PDF as a background also works great for your GM maps. This allows you to take notes on the maps and highlight areas without worrying about accidentally erasing or messing up the original map.

GoodNotes, like GoodReader, allows multiple files to be open at once in a tabbed interface. In addition to being able to track notes, maps, and character stats on the fly, I can export the files to PDF format and save it on a cloud drive for sharing with the rest of the group between sessions. This is a fantastic feature since I track the campaign notes, treasure gained, maps, and my character in GoodNotes.

The main features I like about GoodNotes is the different line widths and colors available for the pen. I can also highlight in different colors. The eraser tool is handy when my handwriting gets super messy or I misplace a door on the map and need to redraw it. There is also a lasso tool that allows you to select an area and then drag ‘n’ drop it or cut/copy/paste it to another page or elsewhere on the same page. If you’re into type-written notes, but still want the ability to draw lines between text boxes to link things together, you can do that too.

Here are some screenshots of files I’ve created in GoodNotes, so you can get a flavor of what they look like. I apologize for the horrid handwriting, but I want you to see the different pen colors, highlighter colors, and so on.

What Do You Use?

What technology do you use at your in-person games? Let us, and your fellow readers, know what you have in your hands!

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Recently, I signed up for DC Universe, primarily so I could watch the new season of Young Justice, but I’ve also taken advantage of all the DC animated movies available on the streaming service. There’s also an excitement in the air related to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, what with Captain Marvel having come out last month and Avengers: End Game arriving in just a couple weeks. It’s made me think quite a bit about superheroes and gaming.

Anyone who’s gamed with me for any length of time knows I love superheroes and their games. In recent years, I developed a reputation for running Masks at cons, and my regular group often asks me to pick up the GM cape once more and run a supers game for them. Heck, the very first campaign I ever ran was a Mutants & Masterminds campaign.

Thing is, superhero stories are not this monolithic, single type of story or game. While it is easy for many to mistakenly make this assumption, when you really dig down into it, superhero stories are more of a framework you hang over other stories. This is one of the secrets to the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They’ve focused on telling interesting stories with compelling characters that just happen to have special abilities, rather than focusing on only the special abilities. It doesn’t matter how cool the costumes are or how awesome the special effects for the abilities are, if the story is boring or the characters just caricatures of people no one is going to care.

(Another open secret to MCU’s success is in how they know how to be true to the essence of the characters and then nail the casting for that character. I could wax poetic about these movies for hours, so I’ll keep a lid on it.)

Back in the late 80’s and 90’s, when RPGs all seemed to be obsessed with simulation, superhero games like Champions did everything they could to provide meticulous ways to emulate the powers of all our favorite heroes. Unfortunately, this often pushed the heart of the story and characters into the background, losing the spark that makes us love super heroics. I’m very careful about the superhero games I sign up for at conventions, because too often, that spark is lost and the game just ends up being a simulation for a superhero smash up fight. There’s nothing wrong with a fun, bombastic combat, but that’s not necessarily the only kind of game I’m looking to play or run.

If you, like me, are considering running a supers game in the near future, here’s a few things to consider before bringing the game to the table for your players:

• Tone: Once you decide the tone of your game, other things will fall into place easier. Are you looking for a light hearted romp around the cosmos, or a gritty and complicated story of difficult choices? Take a look at the first season of the Justice League animated series from the early 2000’s compared to the first season of Daredevil on Netflix. Yeah, they’re both superhero stories, but that’s about the only thing they have in common. If you don’t establish the tone you’re looking for from the get-go, you’re going to have problems. Your players also have a wild and wide understanding of the superhero genre, and they may be all over the place in the tone they’re expecting. Their characters will reflect that and while it’s not impossible to make a game work with characters of varying tone, it’s difficult to maintain that for the long haul.
• Setting: Some superhero stories take place in a single city, or even just a single neighborhood. Others span galaxies, taking the heroes from planet to planet, galaxy to galaxy. As you can imagine, deciding the scope of your game’s setting can help determine the types of stories your game is going to be telling and the types of characters that should come into play. Setting a game in an afro-futuristic city like Wakanda guides the themes and characters in very specific ways. Or imagine using a setting like Smallville, telling the stories of some young heroes learning who they are and what they can do.
• Don’t let them get lost in the minutia of what powers they have and what those powers do, because WHO the character is beneath the costume and abilities is what makes the game truly heroic.

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  Limits: What are the limits of the characters you want in play? Can your game handle Batman and Superman in the league together? Can you provide a variety of challenges for both Thor and Hawkeye? Or do you want to limit the origin stories for your players and have them all have some common bond like being students at an upstate boarding school for ‘special’ students? The options for this are almost limitless (ha!), but if you take a look at the best superhero stories, they keep all the characters within a certain framework, at least to start with. We may enjoy the idea of having Captain Marvel and Jessica Jones in the same universe, but you’re going to have to sacrifice something to run a game that includes both of them. Put Jessica in the far-flung cosmic encounters Carol is capable of and she’s going to be a little lost. And annoyed since there’s no alcohol. Put Cap in Hell’s Kitchen and she’s going to have to limit her capabilities to not just obliterate the neighborhood. It’s not that it can’t work, it’s just that you’re going to have to make choices and sacrifices with the stories your game tells.
• Character: Last, but absolutely not least. Don’t forget that everything you do still boils down to the characters the players bring to the table. What I mean is that while Captain Marvel’s powers are cool, she wouldn’t be nearly as interesting without her in-your-face determination to do what’s right. Batman may have all those wonderful toys, but his best stories are fed by the gravitas of his tragedies. When your players start working on their characters, don’t let them get lost in the minutia of what powers they have and what those powers do, because WHO the character is beneath the costume and abilities is what makes the game truly heroic.

There are so many options out there for superhero games. So many. Many games come with tone, setting, and limits established within the design of the game, while others come to you more as a toolset to build your own world. Another consideration is the level of crunch that you’re comfortable with. I lean more towards the narrative games these days, but I can understand the draw of a crunchier game. Make sure whichever game you pick actually works with the tone, setting and limits you want to try for in your game. The wrong combination can be painful to work through.

After several of my regular group saw Captain Marvel, they cornered me and said, “Ang, you’ve GOT to run another supers game.” Honestly, I can’t disagree with them, because I certainly feel that pull as well. Between now and when I start, I’ve got quite a few things to figure out. What about you and your gaming crew? Any super heroics on your horizon? We’d love to hear about it.

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Welcome to the first installment of The Indie Game Shelf. Each article in this series will highlight a different small press roleplaying game, and the series as a whole aims to increase the visibility of the wide variety of games available today. Whether you’re a veteran gamer looking for something new or brand new to the hobby and wanting to explore what’s out there, we hope The Indie Game Shelf holds something fun and new for you to enjoy.

BLACKOUT: A Game about Women & the Blitz

BLACKOUT by Erika Chappell/Newstand Press is a game Powered by the Apocalypse and designed to take one GM and 2-5 players through a one-session scenario. Each session of the game represents one night during the Blitz, 8 months of World War II during which the German Luftwaffe made nightly devastating bombing runs over London. The characters in the game are women who have volunteered with various civil defense organizations and respond to the constant danger and harm that results from these air raids.

The Story

BLACKOUT is a game designed to tell a specific kind of story. It is undoubtedly a game about war, but rather than the glories of battle, characters are instead concerned with the tragedies of destruction. The characters’ party (called a “Section”) is made up of people from various walks of British life and a variety of larger organizations specialized in dealing with specific kinds of danger. The Section is one of many dedicated to the safety and care of a “Community,” a specific part of the city under attack. Character relationships are also important to playing this game, as much of the story is about teamwork and solidarity. Not only is it important to know how the main characters relate to one another, but also how they relate to the community.

As mentioned, a single session of BLACKOUT represents a single night of the Blitz. Over the course of this night, you can be sure that an air raid will occur, but you can never know when the attack will come, how severe it will be, or how long it will last. There are no rules for stopping the raid. You play the game until you’ve told the story of that night and, hopefully, have taken a look at the stories yet to come.

The primary task of the characters is to provide assistance at bomb sites and other disasters, but they may not be able to finish at one site before another appears. Characters must choose not only who to help, but also how much to help before moving on. In addition, they also must care for each other and, just as importantly, themselves. Disaster relief is difficult work. If a person gives too much of themselves in an attempt to help everyone, they’ll quickly become less able to help anyone. At the same time, any moment taken for valuable rest is another moment during which a new bomb might fall. This is a game about help and survival in a time and place sinking under the horrors of war.

The Game

BLACKOUT is Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA), meaning that the rules are inspired by Apocalypse World. Players of that game or any similar games will be familiar with the core mechanics of BLACKOUT, namely that gameplay is governed by discrete rules packets called “moves” which almost always call for a roll of the dice, modified by a character stat, that results in one of three result states (a miss, a partial success, or a full success) which then informs the fiction of the game.

Where the core of characters in many other PbtA games is contained in a character’s playbook, BLACKOUT uses a combination of two playbooks to create a character. One type of playbook, the Identity, describes your character’s nature as a person and provides a baseline of character stats. Examples include “The Working Lass” or “The Old Bird.” The other type of playbook, the Role, describes the organization for which the character has volunteered and provides professional skills and other abilities relevant to rescue work. Examples include “Rescue Services” or “Fire Guard.” By combining a playbook from each set, a complete character is created for use in the game, with many different combinations possible.

The driving force of the game is having disasters occur for the characters to respond to, and these disaster are governed by a central mechanic called “The Raid Clock.” The Raid Clock moves based on various triggers during the game, and a die roll against a target number set by the Raid Clock determines when disaster strikes. The Raid Clock also indicates how bad the disaster is, and therefore how much attention it requires from the characters.

Over the course of the game, characters can suffer not only physical harm, but simply the nature of relief work itself can incur Exhaustion. If left untreated, Exhaustion may lead to a Break, which is some additional burden the character must now shoulder. In contrast, characters may also accomplish Victories for successful work. At the end of the session, Breaks detract from Victories, but any Victories remaining provide narrative rewards which allow players to tell the stories of character’s survival of the night, the Blitz, or even the entire war.

The Shelf

BLACKOUT is currently available for purchase in both print and PDF formats from DriveThruRPG. For other games along similar thematic lines, one can firstly look to other work by the same designer, namely PATROL, a game about the Vietnam War. Additionally, further similar recommendations include Night Witches by Jason Morningstar/Bully Pulpit Games, a mission-based campaign game based on an all-woman regiment of Russian bomber pilots in World War II, and The Watch by Anna Kreider and Andrew Medeiros, a fantasy game of women and non-binary folks fighting a war against an invading supernatural force. If you’ve got something on your shelf you want to recommend as well, let us know in the comments section below. Let’s fill our shelves together!

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I grew up in the 80s, but I was a latecomer to cyberpunk. I loved Blade Runner, and read a few Philip K. Dick short stories, because at one point in the 80s I think 98% of all movies were adapted from one of his stories (this figure may be slightly exaggerated). But I didn’t read Gibson’s Neuromancer, and I never got into the crop of cyberpunk RPGs that I saw popping up in Dragon Magazine over the years. Shadowrun was that game that my friends learned without me when they went off to college.

In fact, what finally got me into cyberpunk was reading collections of Transmetropolitan in my late 20s. When I later picked up on a few more of the staples of cyberpunk, what struck me about Transmetropolitan was that it could be very cynical and grim about its world, and yet have some glimmers of hope in the stories. Life could be terrible and strange, but it could also still be strange and wonderful.

Having set the parameters of my primary interface into the subsystem of science fiction indexed as cyberpunk, let’s plug into the specific coordinates of my vector for this review run, the Fantasy Flight Genesys supplement Shadow of the Beanstalk, a sourcebook for playing in their Android setting.

How Much Chrome Does It Have?

This review is based on both the PDF of the product as well as the hardcover. The product is 258 pages long, with a two-page index in the back. Both formats are in full color, and there are full page pieces of art introducing each chapter, as well as several half-page images, maps, and illustrations of gear throughout the book. Like other Fantasy Flight products, the artwork is high quality, and many of the images may be familiar, as they appear in multiple product lines associated with the Android IP.

Most of the pages are shades of blue, with darker “file folder” sidebars to call out special information. A few sections, such as the section on the net, have a different color scheme, with the net pages appearing almost black, and the adversaries’ chapter being largely in golds and orange.

Introduction

The introduction sets the stage for what this book is, what it details, and what else you will need for a campaign. As a supplement to the Genesys RPG, this product is assuming you will have a copy of both the core rules and at least a set of the narrative dice that Genesys utilizes (experience tells me that you may need more than one set).

Fairly early into the introduction, the book suggests that for a more detailed look at the setting, you may want to pick up a copy of the Worlds of Android art and setting book. This immediately made me wonder how “table ready” this book was going to be, but we’ll revisit that later.

The rest of the introduction outlines the core concepts of the setting. Some of this information is delivered as online articles complete with digressions from a character that is currently hacking into the site. The actual date is never mentioned, but the setting revolves around New Angeles, a mega-city in Ecuador dominated by multi-national corporations, and home to a massive space elevator that provides access to the lunar colony of Heinlein and allows for shipping to Mars.

Why is the setting called the Android setting? One of the defining aspects of future society is the invention of androids. Androids are a term used for competing technologies, fully synthetic mechanical constructs called bioroids, and genetically engineered, purpose-built clones, neither of which have full rights as citizens.

While the setting clearly has cyberpunk elements, including multi-national corporations and a world-spanning computer network, the wars, colonies on Mars and the moon, and social issues like clone and bioroid rights also remind me of science fiction stories like The Expanse series of novels.

Chapter 1: Character Creation

Character creation unfolds in a manner similar to the process outlined in the Genesys core rules, but this section addresses changes in the process. The main points of divergence are the setting specific archetypes, careers, skills, and talents, and the introduction of factions and favors.

Factions are important for the favor economy because they will determine who you owe, and who owes you. Favors are divided between small, regular, and big favors, and you can owe bigger favors to get more resources at character creation. It’s not entirely unlike Obligation in FFG’s Star Wars Edge of the Empire, except the discreet favors and their size are tracked, rather than creating an obligation score that can be triggered.

Archetypes include the following character types:

• Natural (unenhanced humans)
• Bioroid (synthetic constructs)
• Clone (purpose-built biologicals)
• Cyborg (mechanically enhanced humans)
• G-Mods (genetically enhanced humans)
• Loonies (humans native to the lunar colonies)

The careers specifically detailed in this book include the following:

• Academic
• Bounty Hunter
• Con Artist
• Courier
• Investigator
• Ristie (rich heirs to the corporate elites)
• Roughneck (blue collar space workers)
• Runner (people that stick their brains into computers for fun and profit)
• Soldier
• Tech

Since Edge of the Empire is my favorite expression of FFG’s Star Wars RPGs, I’m not surprised that I really like the concept of favors and the rules surrounding them. I did find it a little ironic that the rules note that you can reskin the Animal Companion talent from the core Genesys book to account for drones, but the rules also subdivide the core Genesys computer skill into Hacking and Sysops. While I realize that in the real-world computer skills are definitely more granular than a single skill, I’m not convinced that they need to be broken out for an RPG. There are a few more details on what each skill gets used for later on in the book.

Chapter 2: Equipment and Vehicles

This section has a few more details on the favor economy but also details a slew of cyberpunk style equipment for the player characters to interact with. This chapter is also the home of the single most 90s piece of equipment I’ve ever seen, the charged crystal katana. Most of the weapons skew more towards monofilament blades, flechette guns, mass drivers, and masers.

There is a section that details various substances that may have addictive properties. There is a sidebar that discusses treating this topic with care, and being mindful both of real-world issues and any concerns players may have at the table, and I appreciated that inclusion.

Because this is a Genesys game, various pieces of equipment have hardpoints that allow for equipment to be customized in various ways. If you are familiar with cybernetics from the Star Wars RPGs, one way that cybernetics differ in this setting is that strain threshold is very important to their installation and operation. Augmentations lower strain threshold, limiting the number a character can have. Additionally, various special effects are triggered by spending strain.

The good news is that Shadow of the Beanstalk avoids old school concepts like “humanity” or “essence,” and doesn’t imply that enhanced people lose hold of their humanity with too many augments. There is just a limit to how many major augmentations a character can reasonably utilize. Unfortunately, there are still a few lines of text that imply having an altered emotional state is “creepy,” and the tone feels overly harsh and judgmental.

Chapter 3: The Network 

Since a large portion of the setting is based on cyberpunk vibes, we have a chapter on The Network, and what it looks like to hack into various systems. This chapter gives a history of the global Network, as well as details on evocative things like God Code (programs that spontaneously write themselves in the Network), “ghosts” of runners that lost themselves while submerged in the Network, and religions that have arisen from these quirks of the virtual world.

There are also rules for hacking. This is not shocking for a cyberpunk setting. While they are a little more involved than I would like, a big benefit of how the rules work is that everything is framed in a manner similar to other aspects of the rules. ICE programs have a program strength that operates in a similar manner to character health. Icebreaker programs work in a manner similar to weapons in the “real world.” Remember earlier in the book where they split the computer skills up? If you are intruding on a system, you are using hacking. If you are defending against intruders or acting against someone entering a computer that you are “supposed” to have access to, you use sysops.

What I really appreciate is that there is a simplified version of hacking included in this chapter as well, which the GM is encouraged to use in situations where a more involved run would be cumbersome, which still gives benefits for having icebreakers and ICE installed.

Chapter 4: New Angeles and Heinlein

This section goes into more detail on the setting. While it briefly mentions a few areas outside of New Angeles, the Beanstalk, and Heinlein (the lunar colony of New Angeles), the main focus is on those core areas of the setting.

Each of the main districts of New Angeles is detailed, and each of them is essentially a small city in its own right. The various districts have information on the undercity, plaza, and penthouse levels of the area, and most of them follow a format of presenting general information, then providing a specific example location, and NPCs native to those locations, rather than giving exhaustive details on every major business and location.

In addition to the city districts on Earth, there are sections on Midway Station (the space station halfway up the space elevator that dominates the city), the Challenger Planetoid (a rock towed into geosynchronous orbit to facilitate the shuttles launched from the elevator), and Heinlein, the lunar colony that provides Earth with He-3 from its mines.

Despite mentioning the additional details in the Worlds of Android setting book, there are plenty of setting details in this chapter, with a ton of adventure hooks. There should be more than enough for multiple campaigns worth of material in what has been provided.

While I really like these details, I would much rather have a few more out of setting sidebars discussing potential issues with introducing topics like war, labor disputes, and slave labor that is a constant part of the setting with bioroids, clones, and even AI. Players may even be playing characters that don’t have full rights as people, or characters that are marginalized as being on the losing side of a war, so a little more discussion on safety would have been appreciated.

Chapter 5: Adversaries

The adversaries chapter gives a whole range of stats for security guards, drones, cyborgs, gang members, animals, and criminals that PCs might run into in the course of a game. These are organized in the standard Genesys groupings of minions, rivals, and nemeses, meaning that the NPCs work better in large groups, are fairly similar to PCs, or are more formidable than any single PC, in broad terms.

By far, the best entry is the teacup giraffe. Not because it’s a fearsome beast, and not just because it’s adorable. The Too Cute and Way Too Cute abilities are just too good not to enjoy.

Chapter 6: The Game Master

The Game Master chapter opens by explaining the mindset of people that live in the setting, and how that mindset changes based on the character’s position in society. It also includes advice on descriptions, the importance of social encounters and capitulation, referring to the social encounter rules in the core Genesys rules. It then wraps up with the Android Adventure Builder, a section that has several base jobs, escalations, and climaxes. While the hooks have a fairly linear outline, the escalations and climaxes can be mixed and matched with different hooks to create different adventure progressions.

I normally like a setting book to have a sample adventure, but in this case, I think the Adventure Builder is a solid toolkit for outlining what adventures should look like in the setting, with enough flexibility that it can be used multiple times. What I do think was lacking in this section was a discussion on how groups get together. Most of the hooks broadly assume PCs that are sort of outlaws, maybe mercenaries, but I would have loved to have had a few group templates to give examples of how the disparate archetypes might come to work together.

There is also some discussion on how there isn’t much discrimination based on nationality or ethnicity in the setting, with the exploration of similar topics being focused on android and clone rights, and societal stress between loonies and humans on Earth. That said, there are definitely some nationality-based stereotypes that echo in the setting, including Russian, German, and Japanese companies and neighborhoods that both feel a little too one dimensional in places, and belie the concept that only the manufactured prejudices are present in the setting.

There are a handful of paragraphs about creating micro-cultures in the setting, neighborhoods that are based on cultural backgrounds, religious affiliations, or other signifiers. There are examples of these in the setting chapter, and the book encourages players to use those as examples to make more, but three paragraphs of discussion feel really thin to fully convey the care you would have to use in creating a micro-culture based on any existing modern-day signifiers. I feel like this section would have been better served with advice on keeping these micro-cultures based on unique setting elements or exercising care and collaboration with those that understand the real-world foundations of such cultures.

Strong Signal

 While the setting draws heavily from cyberpunk tropes, it also draws broadly and allows for a wide variety of campaign styles. 

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While the setting draws heavily from cyberpunk tropes, it also draws broadly and allows for a wide variety of campaign styles. The setting information is concise enough for campaigns, but evocative enough to inspire further research. In general, rules for limiting cybernetics avoid some of the pitfalls of other cyberpunk games, and the mechanics for gaining benefits give similar items in this setting a different feel than, for example, cybernetics in the FFG Star Wars games. There is some very solid advice on structuring jobs in a manner appropriate to the genre, and while the opening scenarios are very specific, the twists to be introduced later are broadly applicable. This is a deep mine for campaign material.

ICE

The only real content warning in the entire book is about addiction, but the setting has many points that could cause safety concerns, including politics, religion, class, and national origins coming into conflict. The section on creating micro-cultures introduces the concept of creating a micro-culture and is especially thin and potentially fraught. While it is great that the setting is wide open for many kinds of stories, there isn’t much time spent examining how to bring together disparate character types, or examples of what different teams of player characters may look like, beyond assuming they will be criminals doing jobs, defaulting to one of the most common cyberpunk tropes.

Qualified Recommendation — A product with lots of positive aspects, but buyers may want to understand the context of the product and what it contains before moving it ahead of other purchases.

The setting really speaks to me. It manages to be grim and dystopian without being so cynical that it doesn’t allow for some feeling of hope. It leaves room for more heroic goals, instead of painting a life of endless jobs for the sake of survival. It does fall into the same pattern that many setting books fall into, presenting the setting without diverting enough to discuss how the various parts can be used at the table.

The GM advice is solid but could be fleshed out more, and for a cyberpunk setting, there isn’t nearly enough discussion on safety and the potential problems that could come up when introducing elements of the setting at the table. Because of that, anyone bringing this to the table should know that they will be doing the safety work on their own.

What are your favorite cyberpunk settings and games? What cyberpunk media informs your enjoyment of the genre? We would love to hear about it in the comments below!

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An expansion for BattleTech has been announced called 'Urban Warfare'. loading... GEAR UP FOR A NIGHT ON THE TOWN! The second expansion for BATTLETECH is coming to a city near you on June 4. Learn more:  https://store.steampowered.com/app/1047180/BATTLETECH_Urban_Warfare/ KEY FEATURES -City Fights - Urban Warfare introduces destructible buildings, changes to line of sight, and ‘Mechs that can now affect the battlefield around them using explosive fuel tankers, water lines and broken electrical transformers to their advantage.... Read more »

Yippee Ki Yay Mr Falcon showed off some gameplay for Dark Future: Blood Red States. loading... Step into the extraordinary, dystopian world of Dark Future, a game of both action and strategy unlike any other. Let's Play Dark Future Blood Red St... Read more »

The release date for Battle Brothers DLC Warriors of the North will be May 9th. Release Date Announcement What started out as a small DLC has become a sizable expansion again. We’re happy to announce that the ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC for Battle Brothers will be released on May 9th for the price of $8.... Read more »

Dev Diary #1 for Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2 asks the question 'Who is Hardsuit Labs?' Hello, my name is Liz Starr, I am one of the Producers at Hardsuit Labs, and I have the dream job of working on Bloodlines 2. I am very happy to bring you this dev diary about Hardsuit Labs and the story behind our fantastic team.... Read more »

Sigma Theory is described as a turn-based strategy game set in a futuristic global cold war. The game is currently in Steam Early Access and 10% off. loading... STORY From the creators of the award-winning sci-fi game Out There...In the near future, a paradigm-shifting scientific discovery looms over the world, promising radical new technologies.... Read more »

A new update for Tales of Maj'Eyal answers the question of what's next and announces a new expansion called 'The Lost Land.' What's next for Tales of Maj'Eyal! A lot, and then some! Hello my minions!Recently I was surprised to find some people wondering if Tales of Maj'Eyal was dead (as in not developed anymore).... Read more »

PC Gamer reports that the Epic Store deal is worth $2.25 million: Phoenix Point's Epic Store exclusivity deal is worth $2.25 million, says Fig investor "Snapshot's distribution agreement has brought in significant resources," says Fig. Epic Games paid more than $2 million to Phoenix Point developer Snapshot Games to secure a timed exclusive on its Epic Games Store.... Read more »

The action RPG Fade to Silence will be released on April 30 - here's a new trailer: Fade to Silence - Where Is My Mind Trailer loading... Read more »

Lucky Day spotted a short article about Neverwinter Nights on Rock Paper Shotgun: Have You Played... Neverwinter Nights? More like AriBEST!Neverwinter Nights is a Dungeons & Dragons RPG from the early 2000s and it very handily got an enhanced edition last year.... Read more »

Warning, this article contains spoilers for Tomb of Annihilation.

This is the final article of a number of articles discussing the Dungeons & Dragons hardback campaign adventure Tomb of Annihilation. Other articles include the following:

• Session Zero of Tomb of Annihilation
• Running Port Nyanzaru in Tomb of Annihilation
• Exploring Chult
• The Urgency of the Death Curse
• Acererak's Prepared Spells
• The Lost Temple of the Eshowdow
• Lost Monuments of Chult
• Running Omu
• Handling Tag-Along NPCs
• Generating Enhanced Tomb Guardians
• The Deadly Shift in Tomb of Annihilation

Today we're going to focus on the campaign's conclusion: the battle against the atropal and the arrival of Acererak.

Story Versus Challenge

Almost everywhere else when running D&D games, I'd argue, we're better off focusing on the story instead of tuning the game to fit a particular mechanical challenge for the characters. When building encounters I recommend building encounters from the story and not to simply select monsters based on the particular level of the characters.

Boss fights are different. Boss fights and campaign closers have a particular feel for them, one that requires some mechanical attention.

Maybe this isn't always true. Maybe, even in boss fights, we're actually better off just letting the story go how it goes just like we do with the rest of the game. Maybe I'm not wise enough to let go completely. I want to see a solid challenge. I want to watch the characters struggle but end victorious. I want a continual feeling of fear and hope rolling through the battle. I want something as powerful as the end of Vox Machina.

As it stands now, though, when it comes to boss fights and campaign closers, I tune things around the characters and their capabilities to keep a continual feeling of hope and fear.

On the Atropal

The atropal encounter in Tomb of Annihilation can be swingy. The atropal a powerful creature with a lot of options—a lot of options to remember. It also has a huge vulnerability: radiant attacks. A paladin who smites the atropal can drop it very quickly. In some circumstances that may be just fine. They still have to deal with the Soul Monger itself and Acererak's arrival.

We can keep a handle on this dial if we want to. The average hit points of the atropal is 225 but its maximum hit points within its hit dice is 324. We can also ignore the radiant vulnerability if we think it's going to get nuked too quickly. Keeping a hand on the hit point dial is a good way to maintain a consistent challenge during a boss fight.

The atropal's necrotic aura is also worth remembering. The atropal floating around the room blocking healing and damaging characters by its mere presence is a big part of the fun. We can remember all of these special abilities if we grab a 3x5 card and write down the atropal's important actions and features so we don't forget it during the fight.

The atropal is also missing legendary resistances but we can always throw them back in if we think it will get knocked out of commission too easily. We can also turn its ability to summon a wraith into a bonus action so its dropping wraiths every round. When the atropal dies, so do the wraiths.

We might replace the atropal's wail with a maddening wail instead. I'm a huge fan of madness and gaining levels of exhaustion felt like it could be too much. This form of madness could be removed if, at the end of their turn, the character succeeds on their saving throw. Or, if they chose to, they can take 28 points of psychic damage at the beginning of their turn to break out of the maddening effect and get their full round of actions. This is a nice hard choice for players to make if they get stuck by this ability.

Most of the time we can focus its legendary actions on its ray of cold attack and increase the damage of this attack from 21 (6d6) to 28 (8d6).

The tentacle attacks from the soul monger are also important to remember and can do a lot of damage. Every turn the soul monger is attacked, it attacks with a tentacle. Thus, its attacks scale up nicely with the attacks of the characters. I gave the tentacle the ability to hit someone for damage and pick them up, threatening to drop them in the lava at the end of their next turn if they don't do something about it. This added a lot of interesting pressure on the characters to save one another before they're tossed into lava.

In this battle we can also tweak the pacing by considering the hit points of the soul monger itself and how many rods need to be broken to send it into the lava. If you have more than four characters, its probably fine to require two of the struts to break or even three if they're having an easy time of it. If they focus on the soul monger, we can increase its hit points as well.

Thus, we have a lot of dials we can turn in this combat to keep the pace nice and threatening without wiping out the characters in the last scene of a year-long campaign. Here are a few we might consider:

• Tweak the hit points of the atropal and the soul monger.
• Give the atropal legendary resistances and remove its radiant vulnerability.
• Let the atropal summon a wraith as a bonus action.
• Add a maddening wail that inflicts short-term madness. This can be removed by taking psychic damage.
• Let the tentacles from the soul monger inflict damage and grab on a hit.
• Don't forget about the atropal's necrotic aura.

On Acererak

It's hard to offer meaningful advice for running Acererak at the end of this campaign. What happens in this battle and how you end up handling it will depend very much on each individual campaign.

I ran this encounter twice for two different groups and it went completely different each time. Neither time did they face off and try to fight the archlich directly. Smart thinking on their part.

In my versions of this encounter, Acererak becomes aware that his creation is under attack. I foreshadowed his coming arrival, describing how he was interrupted while carving a billion-year-old temple out of a dead rock of a planet with some of his lich apprentices and his sphere of annihilation. He arrived in my game when both the soul monger and the atropal were killed.

At that point, both the discussions and the disintegrations began.

In one group, we had an ongoing story thread in which our warlock character, Ogechi, was slowly turning into a lich himself. He pulled the black key in the maze room and gained a powerful necrotic spell attack as a result, along with an arm that looked like a lich.

When Acererak showed up, he wasn't so quick to kill Ogechi since this warlock proved to be a potential apprentice. All Ogechi had to do was sign an infernal contract scribed by one of Acererak's succubus lawyers. One of the other characters, the bard Tharmond, secretly charmed the succubus who forged Acererak's own signature on the contract, thus freeing Ogechi without Acererak knowing it. They then convinced the succubus to tell Acererak to return to his former work and they would take care of things here.

While this is going on, Acererak is hurling his sphere of annihilation (which has a terribly low DC and is easily avoided) at one of the other characters who is tossing phylacteries into the lava. He eventually lost the save and got disintegrated only to have the trickster god within him restore him only to be disintegrated AGAIN and so on. That was weird.

A couple of characters got a couple of hits on Acereak but eventually he left knowing he had a new apprentice with a tattoo key to open up the doors of the world of the night serpent.

So there was no real fight against Acererak.

My other game took a similar turn. In this campaign, Acererak discovered that one of the characters carried a dagger that acted as a key to open up the doors to the lair of the Night Serpent. He was willing to spare their insect lives if they handed over the dagger. They did, but, at the last second, threw it into his sphere of annihilation and ran for the portal. Thus they escaped into the jungle with an archlich's dark gaze upon them.

One way to handle this encounter is to ask yourself what the characters have that Acererak may want as much as he wanted the soul monger and the atropal. If you can throw this in earlier in the campaign, all the better.

Other than this, I have little good advice on running the encounter with Acererak. It's a strange fight to face a monster this powerful in the final scene of the game.

Skipping the Final Puzzles

In both of my games I ended up skipping the final rooms of the lowest floor. I felt that, after the fight against the atropal and Acererak, it was time to be done. Your results may vary, of course.

One Year Later...

One trick I've learned for ending a campaign, one that has served me very well, is asking the players to describe where their characters are one year after the end of the story. Some of the best stories I hear in the entire campaign come from these one-year-out montages. The bard, Tharmond, started a hit play in Waterdeep called the Tomb of Annihilation. The paladin who sold his soul to Grimfinger the Erinyes, built a temple to Torm on the edge of the Anauroch desert doing his best to serve his god before his soul belonged to a devil. The restored druid Warryn transformed himself into the new King of Feathers hunting undead in the jungles of Chult. The cursed warlock, Ogechi, went to the doors of the night serpent with Fenthasa, just as she predicted, and murdered her at the door, which she did not predict.

In my other game, Shelby, our tortle ranger returned home to his tribe on the coast of Chult. Tysabri returned to the graves of her parents. Truth and Sirzek returned to Sirzek's tribal home in the Spine of the World to restore honor to his tribe. Feski wrote a best-selling book on her adventures in Chult, nearly knocking Volo's Guide off the best seller's list. Fromash the lizardfolk death cleric built a new temple to a benevolent god of death in the city of Omu and helped the city return to its former glory.

Amazing stuff.

If you get nothing else from this article, ask your players what happens to their characters one year after the end of the campaign. They almost always have ideas and they're almost always way more awesome than you can think up.

An Incredible and Strange Feeling

Over the past few years I've finished a handful of large campaigns. I finished a four-year campaign battling against Orcus the God of Death. I finished one-year campaigns for Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Rise of Tiamat, Princes of the Apocalypse, Out of the Abyss, two Curse of Strahd campaigns, two Storm King's Thunder campaigns. Now I've completed two Tomb of Annihilation campaigns. I am very lucky to have run them.

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"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone."

- Tyrion Lannister, Game of Thrones

Over the past year, this topic has shown up in lots of other articles here at Sly Flourish and many of my DM tips on Twitter as well. For some, this seems completely obvious. For others, it can come as a surprise. This big tip?

Read the books.

One might be surprised by the fact that some haven't read their D&D books all the way through. I admit, only recently have I finished reading them all the way through. That is not something I'm proud of.

This isn't a tip just for new DMs. This is a tip for all of us. New or old. DMs or players. All of us can draw a great deal out of this game if we take the time to dig into our D&D books and enjoy what they have to offer.

New DMs, Read the Starter Set Books

If you're new to D&D, start with the D&D Starter Set. The D&D Starter Set is the best way to get into D&D for a low cost and begin to digest what D&D has to offer. Instead of suddenly finding yourself with over a thousand pages of material from the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual, the Starter Set comes with only two books. A main rulebook and the adventure Lost Mine of Phandelver. It also includes a set of pregen characters which means you don't have to suddenly know every ability of every race and class found in the Player's Handbook.

The value of the Starter Set cannot be overstated. The adventure, as written, is awesome, but it also includes a great set of monsters that you can use for your own low-level adventures. The maps in Phandelver also span the range of maps you might drop into your own campaigns including a bandit lair, goblin caves, ruined castle, ruined village, and dwarven mines. These maps are reskinnable for your own adventures as you need them.

Because the Starter Set books are relatively slim, it won't take you forever to read them and understand how D&D works. Thus, when you begin, start with these books before trying to tackle the full set of core books.

A Reading List for Dungeon Masters

As you get more experienced, or if you are experienced already, it's time to get into the core books. While it's definitely worthwhile to read all three books cover to cover, you can triage your reading to the parts of highest direct value while running your games. Here's a reading list:

Player's Handbook. Read the intro, chapters 7, 8, 9, 10, and the appendicies. You can skip over the chapters on races, classes, backgrounds, equipment, customization options, and spells for now. They're definitely worth reading but your players can also dig into these chapters and tell you what you need to know to run a game. Again, you'll want to read these eventually.

Dungeon Master's Guide. You'll want to give this whole book a solid skim read. You might not have to read it cover to cover right away but you should at least know what you have in your hands. There's tons of fantastic stuff in this book but it does you no good if you don't know that you have it. When you can, read it through. This is also a book worth re-reading every year or so to remind yourself what is in it. Many times you might think of an option or sub-system for running your game only to find that it's already in the DMG.

Monster Manual. This book is also worth reading all the way through but you can focus primiarly on monsters you're likely to use in your campaign. Start with low challenge monsters and work your way up to the ones likely to show up in future adventures. The monster book is packed with awesome adventure and campaign hooks so worry less about the stat blocks and more on the lore of monsters. We can come up with hundreds of campaign ideas from this book alone.

Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. When you're able, read these all the way through as well. Like the Monster Manual, they're packed with adventure and campaign ideas. Unlike the Monster Manual they spend lots of time focused on specific monsters like hags, mind flayers, beholders, and githyanki. Read them. Enjoy them. Let them seep into your DM's mind castle.

Xanathar's Guide to Everything. Like the DMG, this book is packed with great ideas for DMs, both from a mechanics standpoint and from the lore of the game. In an episode of Dragon Talk, Jeremy Crawford mentioned that the design of spells in Xanathar's (and those in the Player's Handbook as well) are designed not just to give toys to players but for the DM to weave into the story. Spells like Druid's Grove and Mighty Fortress are as interesting to witness from powerful NPCs as they are when cast by a player character.

Read Published Adventures

If you're running one of the published D&D adventures (Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation are my two favorites) it helps significantly to read through these adventures cover to cover before we run them. Reading the full adventure means knowing which secrets and clues to put in front of the players from session to session. It means knowing how to tie the adventures together. It helps inspire you to hack it yourself into the adventure you want it to be for you and your group.

It takes time to read through a full published adventure but the return is worth the effort.

A Reading List for Players

If you're playing D&D but you're not the DM, you're reading list isn't as large but can still give you a great deal of enjoyment out of the game if you take the time.

Player's Handbook. Read the chapter on your race and your class. Read the spells your class has access to for level 1 and the next couple of levels above your current level. Take note of spell components and describe them when you're playing your character.

If your race is one of the races from Volo's Guide or Mordenkainen's, it's worth digging deep into your race's background and history. Learning how the elves are connected to Corellon or how the halflings see their gods as extended family members with legendary exploits can enrich your character to the full.

Players likely spend a lot of their time focused on the mechanics of their class but getting into the story and lore of their race, class, and background can make the whole game much more enjoyable.

Read to Inspire, Not to Memorize

When we're digging into these books, our goal isn't to memorize every single rule in them. Our goal is to let the worlds of D&D flow over and through us so we can drop into it when we're running the game. That sounds pretty hippy but it works. The more we digest this game and the worlds it encapsulates, the easier it is to help us improvise when we're running our game and our ability to improvise may very well be the most important skill DMs can have.

Even if it doesn't help us memorize every aspect of the game, reading through the books will let us know what's there so we know what we have and where to find it when we need it during the game.

We don't read these books to memorize them. We read them to let them inspire us.

Read On the Go

Finding large solid blocks of time in our days is, for many of us, quite hard. Being able to sit on our nice couch with good lighting and read our books for a solid hour may be impossible for a lot of us. Yet, as busy as we are, we find time to surf through Facebook or get enraged by the news or get lost in cat mischief on Reddit. With D&D Beyond it's just as easy to read a bit of our core books as it is to read anything else on the web. Having the core books on our phones means we can read part of it whenever we have free moment. Keep your current book in your browser window and maybe skip the social media for a bit while you read up on Merfolk. Every monster description is about as long as a Facebook post already so it's not a stretch to read one monster block at a time all throughout the day.

Know the Rules Before You Break the Rules

We DMs are often a super-creative bunch. D&D becomes our outlet to share the stories we've had bottled up in our heads all our lives. We're also likely to have a different game in our head than the ones in the books so we immediately want to start tweaking and twisting and cutting and pasting all sorts of new house rules. I see this come up often on Facebook: "What if we got rid of charisma scores?" or "I'm going to completely redo the fighter class" and the like.

This isn't inherently bad but we should be cautious until we actually know what we're talking about. Of course, in our own games, we can experiment however we want but it helps if we actually know the rules before we break the rules. Before you start rebuilding your own fantastic 5e game, maybe read what the designers have put in there already.

The Hardest Step for the Lazy Dungeon Master

We're all about cutting corners here on Sly Flourish to get the most value out of our game for the least effort. Value, return over effort, is our ultimate goal. Reading over a thousand pages of rules isn't effortless. It takes a lot of time and a lot of work. Hopefully this article gave you an idea where to start. As much time as it takes, the value we gain by reading these books is well worth the effort. For that reason, reading the books is a core staple for the way of the Lazy Dungeon Master.

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Over the past year I've been recording my own game preparation using the eight steps from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master. I broadcast these these shows live on Twitch Sundays at 10am EST and then post them to Youtube right afterwards. I used to begin each show by describing the eight steps but realized that was getting redundant.

Now I have a series of ten videos that summarize the eight steps of game prep from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, review the rest of the chapters in the book, and ten dig into each of the eight steps one-by-one in more detail.

You can watch the first video reviewing the eight steps below or see the whole playlist of all ten videos on Youtube.

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These videos don't cover everything in the book. If you want that, you're still better off buying the book itself but the videos will give you a good deep look into the process and the material you'll find in the book itself.

Enjoy!

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If you read deeply into Tomb of Annihilation and Dungeon of the Mad Mage, you'll notice that Wizards of the Coast has avoided a common problem in older adventures. Older adventures often focused on rooms full of monsters that reacted to the characters in basically one way—by attacking them.

The fifth edition of D&D focuses on three pillars of play: exploration, roleplaying, combat. While previous versions of D&D arguably focused more on combat than the other two pillars, 5e has definitely shifted more towards roleplaying and exploration as at least equal partners to combat.

When we're thinking about and preparing for our D&D games, we might break down the scenes we plan to run by the scene's type. We might think of it as a roleplay scene, an exploration scene, or a combat scene. Previously on this blog I brought up the idea of an adventure template with prescribed scene types to maintain the beats at the right time. I no longer believe such a template serves our game. I believe that we should build situations, not scenes. We should build situations that allow for all of the three pillars and let the players choose how they want to interact with it.

Examples in Published Adventures

In Tomb of Annihilation there is a den of scum and villainy in the forbidden city of Omu called the Fane of the Night Serpent. This temple to a dark and terrible elder evil is a clear example of a location that seems ripe for combat. Yet, as written, the characters have many different ways they can interact with it. We learn of many interesting personality quirks between Ras Nsi, the leader of the Fane and his second-in-command, Fenthasa the Nightmare Speaker. Other interesting social connections include Ras Nsi's bodyguard and the bodyguard's love for one of Ras Nsi's concubines.

The physical construction of the Fane also offers options for exploration. The doors have cut-outs at the bottom allowing the passage of snakes or those in snake form. A druid with shape shift could likely slide on in and spy on the whole den. There are also multiple entrances into the Fane and lots of ways to travel within it. There are lots of things to discover and many secrets to uncover.

The Fane is built so that characters (and players) can choose how they want to approach it. Do they want to pretend to be prisoners? Do they want to sneak in the back? Do they want to talk their way into Ras Nsi's throne room? Do they want to kick in the front door and start cutting down snake people? All of these are viable options.

In Dungeon of the Mad Mage, nearly all of the 23 levels of the dungeon includes multiple factions that interact with one another in different ways. Instead of each level being a monster closet slaughterfest, the characters can work with or against these factions as they see fit.

This idea extends through many recently published adventures. Instead of rooms full of monsters to fight, there are factions at work with goals that may run parallel or perpendicular to the goals of the characters. Combat is still an option but it is often only one of many.

Expanding Your Scenes

We can use these examples to help us build our own situations when preparing and running our games. Whenever we're putting together a scene or situation in one of our games, we can ensure that the scene allows for multiple solutions instead of just one.

One great way to ensure there are opportunities for roleplaying are to add factions to your enemies. This might be subordinates who secretly hate their leader. It might be two warring factions. Factions, even more than two, are excellent tilled earth for your characters to plant seeds of intrigue instead of just slitting throats the whole time.

We can also ensure our scenes have something to discover in it. This might be interesting murals, tapestries, or frescoes on the wall that someone can investigate with history or religion. We can layer the scene with all sorts of stuff the characters can investigate. If we've prepared some secrets and clues you can drop in these secrets whenever a character successfully investigates some interesting part of the area.

Bored guards and lots of shadows make for some great stealthy work. Because group stealth can be hard and a wrong move can alert an entire castle, we might go a bit easier on the characters if they choose subterfuge instead of combat by helping them fail forward on unlucky rolls. A failed group stealth check doesn't lead to an alert but it means the group gets split up as sleepy guards walk through or that they collapse into the sewers beneath the castle.

When building for the three pillars, we can keep a little checklist to help us ensure we're building around the three pillars:

• Is there a way to sneak around?
• Are there NPCs to talk to?
• Are there factions within the monsters and villains to exploit?
• Are there areas to explore and things to learn there?
• Are there things to fight without bringing the whole place down on top of them?
• Are there different ways to get into and explore the area?

These aren't perfect but they're a good start.

Understanding the Goal

One way we can keep our scenes open to all of the possible options characters bring to the table is to focus on the goal. If the goal is "kill everything in the dungeon" that will probably force combat. But if the goals are more specific like "steal the bowl used in the dark ritual" or "remove the enchantment possessing the king", it lends itself to other alternative paths.

In the 4th edition D&D days, Dave the Game talked about the "early out", a way to make overly long battles go faster. Instead of having a goal of killing everything in a battle, the goal was something else. It might be "stop the ritual" or "blow up the bridge" or "close the portal". The goal went beyond simple slaughter.

That same idea can be expanded to situations in our fifth edition D&D game. What is the characters' goal in the situation? What do the characters need to do? Can we foresee ways to accomplish that goal that aren't just killing things?

Relax

When we think about building scenes for our games, it's easy to fall in the trap of overpreparation. As written in Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master we might get more out of our game by preparing less. It's important that we set up scenes that allow for many different approaches but we don't have to plan for every one of them. Instead, we can place in the components that help ensure there are options available for the characters to choose from.

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A while back I asked newer DMs on Twitter to describe the hard parts they encountered when running running D&D games. I got back a lot of interesting responses many of which focused on learning the rules, finding players, how to prepare for a game, and learning how to improvise. A few people brought up the difficulty in gaining the confidence to run D&D games. Since we've yet to cover this topic on Sly Flourish, I thought we would do so now.

Confidence is a hard to muster in many situations but it can be particularly hard when running Dungeons & Dragons games. We're already not necessarily confident creatures but when running a game of high fantasy in front of our friends, it can feel like we're in a room full of adults playing make-believe (which is, of course, exactly what we're doing). All our lives we're pushed to act like adults. Its hard to be confident and grab on to the imagination of a child again.

Yet DMs break past these confidence barriers and run some fantastic games every day. Today we're going to offer some tips and tricks to help muster up the confidence required to run some great D&D games.

How do DMs Get the Confidence to Run Games?

Much like the question on the hard parts of running D&D games, I took to Twitter to ask how DMs got the confidence up to run D&D games. I got more than two hundred responses to this question. I took these results and categorized them into a handful of common themes. The top results included the following:

• I did it because no other DMs were available.
• I had a supportive group of friends or family.
• I gained confidence through continual practice.
• My drive to tell a story outweighed my nervousness.
• I watched liveplay games and advice videos particularly Matt Mercer and Matt Colville)
• I saw examples of either good or poor DMs.

There were many other answers as well but those above got mentioned repeatedly, with the top two getting nearly five times as many responses as others.

We're not going to focus on the results above in the rest of this article but we will use them to help guide our discussion on how DMs might get the confidence they need to run great D&D games.

Surround Yourself with Allies

D&D works when everyone around the table trusts one another. This means, first and foremost, bringing the right people to the table that you trust and that want to enjoy a fun game. Assuming that you have the right people at the table, your next goal is to build an environment of trust by removing our competitive nature from the game. Everyone at our D&D table has the same goal—to witness a great story. Focusing on the story instead of worrying continually about challenge and mechanics is a good way to break down the walls. Enjoy the successes of the characters, not the monsters. Let players narrate parts of the story as it plays out. Say yes.

If we have surrounded ourselves with people supportive of our time in the DM's seat and we build an environment focused on collaborative storytelling, we'll get the support we'll need to feel confident as we run the game.

Above all, everyone we bring to the table is there to have a good time. We all want to get together and play games with our friends. Our players aren't here to make fun of us or pick holes in our understanding of the rules. They want to share a story together as people have done for tens of thousands of years. There is little greater joy in our lives beyond sharing stories with some friends and a handful of dice.

Fake It Until You Make It

Going all the way back to Aristotle, the idea that to be virtuous, we must act virtuous works just as well with the confidence we need to run our D&D games. We might not feel confident, but if we did, what would that look like? How would we act then? What if we pretended to be confident? This essentially has us diving into our games with both feet, waving our arms and trying out our silly voices even if we totally suck at them. Who cares?

I found the final sentence in the Wikipedia page on this topic particularly interesting:

In the 1920s, Alfred Adler, a disciple of Sigmund Freud, developed a therapeutic technique that he called "acting as if". This strategy gave his clients an opportunity to practice alternatives to dysfunctional behaviors. Adler's method is still used today and is often described as "role play".

Holy shit! Role playing! That's what we're trying to do already! So maybe we're nesting our roleplaying a bit, first roleplaying that we're actually fully competent and confident DMs who then roleplay the NPCs, villains, and monsters in our game. Every layer of our roleplaying, however, buries our self doubt a little more.

Faking it until we make it also helps us actually make it the more games we run. The more games we run the easier it gets.

Avoid the Resistance

Author Steven Pressfield wrote a book about writing called The War of Art. In it he describes "The Resistance" as anything, real or imaginary, that gets in the way of creating art. DMing is one such form of art and the Resistance continually gets us to doubt ourselves and our ability to run a good game. If we can see this shadowy demon for what it is, we can recognize when it's sinking its claws into us and realize that it is simply getting in the way of us running great games.

When we hear voices in our head saying things like "it's too hard" or "I'm not good enough" or "I'll never be Matt Mercer", that's the voice of the Resistance and it's there to always keep us from making art. Put it aside, run a game, and then run another one.

Learn from the Best

Many people worked up the confidence to run D&D games by watching excellent dungeon masters run their own games online. This is a relatively new way to learn about this hobby, one we've only had for the past few years in the past few decades. Yet it is also likely responsible for doubling the amount of people playing D&D.

In particular, the Critical Role series by Matt Mercer and Dice, Camera, Action by Chris Perkins are excellent examples of D&D run by masterful DMs. The D&D advice videos by Matt Colville also come up often as sources for DM advice and as examples to help new DMs get into the seat. Even for veteran DMs, watching other DMs practice the craft can teach us a lot about how we might better run our own games. Will our style mimic these DMs? No. Will our games look like these? Maybe not. Can we learn from them? Hells yes.

Grab On to the Story

Losing ourselves in the fiction is an excellent way to forget about the stress of running a game. Many DMs said that they began DMing because they had stories to share. When we lose ourselves in the stories, when we go there, we'll forget how nervous we are and just run with it. When DMing goes well, we're in the flow. We lose track of time. We're fully engaged with the game. I can't speak for everyone but when I'm running a good D&D game, there isn't any other place I want to be.

Thinking Clinically About Our Games

Sometimes our games don't go well. Maybe people didn't have such a good time. Maybe we didn't have such a good time. It's easy to fall into despair, thinking we're horrible DMs and taking ourselves out of the chair. Instead, we can take a step back, look at the details of the game, and work on the specifics. Maybe we didn't suck as bad as we thought but we mis-matched the expectations we had with those of the players. Maybe we got too wound up in a battle and shut down a player's idea when we should have let it work.

Likewise, when we're playing in games, we can look at what is working well and what is going poorly. It's probably easier to do the latter. When games go well we're not likely thinking about why, we're just enjoying it. The tips and tricks we pick up from both good and bad games can help us polish our own.

We can learn from all of these experiences. If we see the path of DMing as a continual lifelong journey of learning and discovery, not a state we're going to one-day find ourselves in, these speed bumps won't turn into brick walls. We can take feedback one piece at a time and make our next game a little better than the previous.

Step back from the emotions we feel, study them, study the situation, and make small changes to your game.

Watch, Learn, and Do

When we look at what has helped DMs gain the confidence to run games along with the sorts of things that help people build confidence in all aspects of life, we can come to some simple advice. Yet many times the best advice (eat less, exercise more) is easier said than done. Still, when we focus on it and remember where it came from, such simple advice can sometimes push us in the right direction.

Watch people play D&D. Learn from other DMs. Think about their advice. Watch them run games. And then do it. Run games. Act as if. Grab on to the story and the fiction of the game. Become a kid again. Run some D&D.

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Waterdeep Dragon Heist is a different kind of adventure than other hardback adventures. This is a more focused adventure in two ways: it only takes characters up to level five and it takes place almost entirely within the city of Waterdeep. Thus, running this adventure is likewise different than other adventures. In this article, and additional articles in this series, we'll go over Waterdeep Dragon Heist chapter by chapter to look at some interesting ways to run it.

For another in-depth guide to running Dragon Heist, check out the Powerscore Guide to Waterdeep Dragon Heist.

In a previous article we've talked about setting up the Session Zero for Dragon Heist. Take a look at that if you haven't yet begun running this adventure.

(Dwarven Forge Yawning Portal by Shad Ross)

Fun in the Yawning Portal

The adventure begins in the most popular public house in the Forgotten Realms, the Yawning Portal. The tavern gets its name from the huge gaping maw that leads hundreds of feet down to the bowels of Undermountain.

So obviously we want this portal to come into play.

As written, Dragon Heist has a nice strong start. The characters meet up with none other than Volotham Geddarm, the author and explorer. While they converse, a couple of factions get into a fight in the brawl before a nest of stirges and a troll come out of the gaping portal into the inn itself.

This sets up a nice multi-stage fight in a cool environment. If you can get a hold of it, the fourth-edition D&D Halls of Undermountain included an awesome Yawning Portal poster map. That's not easy to get so you might instead grab a digital Yawning Portal map by Elven Tower and either print it as a poster or display it on a tablet. Otherwise you can draw it out on a dry-erase battle map.

This battle is the first time we can see some of the factions come into play. You might change things up to reinforce one faction over another. For example, when running the summer scenario with the Cassalanters as the villains, you might have a devil come out of the pit. I chose a Merrigon devil summoned from the nine hells to protect the Cassalanters that, somehow, ended up coming out of the yawning portal and causing a fuss. It's a very hard monster for first level characters so help them out with some NPC buffs like magic weapon and some heals.

The NPCs in the tavern are the first ones our characters will meet so give them some flavor and have them come back later on in the campaign.

Level Them Up to Level 2

Be nice at the end of this scene and level up your characters to level 2. It's earlier than the book dictates but first level can be a drag both in limited abilities and in limited hit points. First level characters can drop fast so get them to level two and let them enjoy themselves in the rest of the chapter.

Using Waterdeep: City Encounters

The minute the characters start heading out into Waterdeep, it's time to whip out our copy of Waterdeep: City Encounters. This excellent book, designed by Will Doyle and many of the DM's Guild Adepts has seventeen pages of random events taking place in the city streets, from accidentally getting hit with the contents of a chamber pot to finding a dead body flayed by the cult of Loviatar. This book is packed with awesome events you can roll on right during your game, twist to suit the situation, and drop it right into the story. You can get either the PDF or the print-on-demand softcover version so you can bring it right along with your copy of the main adventure. It's a wonderful accessory and I cannot recommend it enough.

Adding the Fantastic to the Zhentarim Hideout

Skipping ahead in the chapter we come to the infiltration of the Zhentarim hideout. There are a few ways we might tweak this encounter. First, it might not even BE a Zhentarim hideout. If we're running the summer Cassalanter-based game we might turn it into an old warehouse owned by the Gralhund family as a front for the Cassalanters. This ties in the whole idea of old money and old blood from previous aristocratic Cult of the Dragon worshipers who changed their allegiance to Asmodeus when Tiamat fell.

To add to that, we can make the whole warehouse more exciting if we drop in a skeletal dragon in the center. This fallen dracolich might be a part of a fantastic collection by the Gralhunds that still exudes some horrid essence. When a creature first sees the skeletal dragon it must make a DC 14 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. If a creature's saving throw is successful or the effect ends for it, the creature is immune to this effect for the next 24 hours. This can add a bit of fun to the encounter.

You'll also want to play up the kenku's mimicry. Having them repeat phrases of the characters or speak with the voices of their previous victims can be a lot of fun. You might also replace one or two of the kenkus with hired thugs. The characters can watch the thugs arguing with the kenkus who simply repeat back whatever the thugs say. The mimicry of the kenku is one of their interesting traits, don't forget about it.

Dealing with the Watch

After they're through dealing with the kenkus and save Raenar Neverember, it's time for the watch to burst in. From a roleplay perspective, I like to think of Sergeant Stagat, the watch commander for the dock district, like Sergeant Dignam from the Departed. 100% raw confrontation and four letter words (keep an eye on your audience in your friendly local game shop). Good times.

This is a good chance for a verbal confrontation that the characters can't simply fight their way out of. It's also a good time to give them a copy of the Code Legal.

Navigating the Sewers

Once the characters move onwards, it's into the sewers they go. There's a period of time between the characters entering the sewers and actually getting to the Xanathar hideout which you can handle in a brief description or you can drop in a fun random encounter here. I threw in two ghoulish crocodiles to foreshadow some hag fun I want to throw into my Dragon Heist game. If you have some other plot thread you're going to weave in, this is a good time to foreshadow it.

I had a bit of trouble recognizing the transition from the gazer scene to the hideout. The text mentions a ladder that goes up into a tavern but the three-way intersection continues to lead on to the hideout. Really you just want the characters to get to the hideout.

The Xanathar guild hideout runs well as written. Have some fun roleplaying with the goblins. This doesn't have to be a pure slaughterfest.

As an apprentice, Grum'shar is a bit weak. I gave him about 20 hit points and that worked out pretty well.

Returning to the Yawning Portal

With Grum'shar dead and Floon rescued, it's time to head back to the Yawning Portal and get that sweet gold Volo promised! But it appears he's a little short and instead has a property to pass along—Trollskull Manor!

This is a great time to print out a copy of the Trollskull deed and drop it on the table! If the characters try to muscle money out of Volo, he might use the distraction of a bunch of flying snakes and a giant bat coming out of the portal to make his daring escape.

With the deed in hand, it's time to move on to chapter 2. We'll cover chapter 2 in a future article.

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Back in November 2018 I had the great pleasure to talk with Adam Koebel, a co-creator of the mind-blowing RPG Dungeon World, to talk about his game and what it meant for D&D.

You can watch the whole interview on Youtube, watch it below, or listen to the podcast on the Don't Split the Podcast Network.

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The rest of this article contains notes from the show.

Three tips from Adam Koebel on running great D&D games.

If you're a new DM and you don't feel like D&D is telling you how to run the game—you are not alone. (some people wrote a whole book about this!)

Turn over as much of the the mechanics to your players as you can. You don't have to know all of the rules, let the players help.

Play other games. Try out a bunch of different games (Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World, Fiasco, Microscope, Stars Without Numbers). Your D&D game will be dramatically different once you've scoped out other games. 5e gives you a big hole to fill when it comes to running the game.

What's Good about 5e D&D?

The D&D Starter Set is the best starter set Wizards has ever put out.

"Fifth edition is everyone's second-favorite version of D&D." - Sage LaTorra (according to Adam).

5e is easy to get started and easier to master the mechanical complexity.

Where does 5e not hit the mark?

Inspiration sucks. It feels detatched from everything else and has the same name as another ability "bardic inspiration". In groups where everyone's running really well, no one gets inspiration. If someone is shy and someone else has an Irish accent, the accent guy gets inspiration. Your players aren't kindergarden students.

Mike uses inspiration to reward players who choose to go into danger to move the story forward.

Where did the principles for GMs come from in Dungeon World?

We stole it from Apocalyse World. The principles and agendas in Dungeon World are there to steer the GM and player to the style of game that Dungeon World offers.

Pushing characters with challenging monsters and throwing monsters at the characters to look awesome are the same thing.

Not all systems are designed for all types of games. There's not a lot of five-foot steps in Game of Thrones.

"Be a fan of the characters" doesn't mean they get everything they want. It might mean pummling the shit out of them and watching them come back from it.

Your job is to put characters in rough situations and letting them come out of it.

D&D struggles with how lethal or not lethal it should be.

On Fronts

All of Adam's GM prep includes fronts. They're the one part of Dungeon World that Adam would like to rewrite.

Fronts are a great way to make the game feel like a bunch of spinning plates.

Fronts are not for every game. Not all games work well with the anxiety of fronts: "glad you finished that one thing but two other things went to shit".

What would happen in the world if the characters didn't show up?

What are three RPGs in the past two years one should check out.

Adam

• Blades in the Dark
• Stars Without Number
• Tales from the Loop

Mikes:

• Shadow of the Demon Lord
• Numenera

What does your PC look like when you have time to play.

Adam:

• Feisty murder lesbians
• Assholes (who make others look good)

Thanks to Adam for a wonderful interview!

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Chapter 6 of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master focuses on defining secrets and clues in our D&D games. In many ways secrets and clues are the anchor of the 8-step game preparation process in Return and they were one of the main reasons I felt the need to write a new Lazy Dungeon Master book at all. Secrets and clues are powerful magic.

To get us all on the same page, here's how I define a secret and clue in the book:

Secrets and clues are single short sentences that describe a clue, a piece of the story, or a piece of the world that the characters can discover during the game. You dont know exactly how the characters will discover these clues. As such, youll want to keep these secrets and clues abstract from their place of discovery so that you can drop them into the game wherever it makes sense. This lets the game flow freely, while still allowing you to reveal important pieces of the story at any point where the characters might discover them.

The powerful magic behind secrets and clues come from a few different key points in their design:

1. They're short. Usually no longer than a sentence.

2. They convey useful information to the characters, thus helping us focus their world view around what matters to them.

3. They don't assume how they will be discovered. This makes them ideal for improvisational play.

It's this last part, how they get discovered, that we'll talk about today.

Ideal Tools For Exploration

Secrets are an ideal tool for exploration, one of the three pillars of D&D gameplay. Exploration is about discovery. It's about seeking things out and finding them. It's about learning. Of the three pillars exploration is probably the least well defined. We know what combat looks like. We know what roleplaying looks like. Exploration is everything else. But how do we prepare for that? How do we run that?

This is where secrets shine.

Exploration can take place in many different ways. It can be studying a mosaic on a wall. It can be about figuring out the mystery of a magical sword. It can be overhearing gossip at the local bar. During the game, we don't know how things will get discovered. But we can figure out ahead of time what will get discovered and then wing it when we're running our game.

But winging discovery might not be that easy for all DMs. This is a new technique we're talking about. Once you get it, it will click into place. Until then, here's a nudge in the right direction.

Twenty Ways Secrets Can Be Revealed

The following is a list of twenty ways secrets might get discovered by the characters. These aren't meant to be used directly but instead help wire your mind into considering how secrets might be discovered in your own game. Only in the context of the game will the revelation of a secret make sense.

• A mosaic on a wall
• A dream imposed by a magical weapon
• A blind man's prophecy
• The remembrance of time studying an old history book
• A statue of a hero
• A witness's statement
• A rumor overheard at a bar
• Whispers of gossip among the staff
• A secret note from an anonymous source
• A half-burned scroll in a fireplace
• Carvings on an old sarcophagus
• A vision from an ancient obelisk
• Taunts from lizardfolk
• Oral histories shared over a campfire
• A battlecry
• The last words of a dying foe
• A message from the servants of the gods
• Wise words from an old tutor
• Glyphs embroidered on a magical cloak
• A fable told to children

Again, these are all examples just to get your mind working in the right direction. They're not meant to be used literally. Customizing how characters find secrets is how they're designed to work. Once your mind gets wired around revealing them, it becomes second nature.

Ten Secrets Written, Five Revealed

One of the interesting side benefits of preparing my game on Twitch each week has been being able to go back and look at how things worked out. Over the weeks, I've seen that, of the ten secrets I prepare, about five of them usually get revealed. This is perfectly fine and healthy. We don't have to expose all ten secrets every game. We reveal the ones that make sense when it makes sense to reveal them. For the rest, we can simply let them go.

Next week, we start with a fresh list of ten secrets and do the same thing. Secrets we haven't revealed may come back to us from week to week or they might fade off into the ether from which they came.

A Clear Example Tool for Preparing to Improvise

When we try to run open D&D games where the players are empowered to take the direction of the game in drastically different ways, we DMs have to prepare to improvise. We need to focus our preparation on activities that help us run the game wherever the game tends to go. Designing secrets this way is a perfect example of the sort of activity we can engage in that gives us interesting details to reveal during the game without worrying how the characters will discover them. It lets the characters travel in many different paths, exploring many different things, and still learn important details of the world and the events taking place within it.

How we reveal these secrets is the part of actual improvisation. We wait for the right moment to reveal the right secret. When it works well, it's pure magic.

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Back when Fantastic Locations came out we released a one-page campaign worksheet intended to help DMs focus on the characters and have a bit of a cheat sheet at the same time. It's served well but it didn't have everything I wanted in a 5e cheat sheet.

When Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master's Kickstarter ran, we funded the creation of the Lazy DM's Workbook a book intended to help DMs improvise their games as they're playing. It's packed with charts, tables, tools, and ten maps with descriptions all designed so DMs can grab some ideas, let the dice push us in a new direction we might not have thought of on our own, and run an awesome and unique game.

This book is the sort of accessory I always wanted (and now have) in my bag but I'm also a sucker for simplicity. Using a handful of the tables in the Lazy DM's Workbook, I put together a single-page laminated page with a 5e D&D cheat sheet on one side and blank drawing surface on another. I printed it on copper resume paper, cut it down to 8x10 so it fits more nicely in my canvas DM pouch, and laminated it so I can draw on the back of it with dry-erase marker.

The cheat sheet includes a bunch of references I find most useful at my game. The sections include:

• Improvised statistics for objects, traps, and hazards
• Quick encounter building guidelines
• Minimum targets for areas of effect
• Task DC ladder
• Successful attacks for large numbers of monsters
• Lots of random names
• Condition descriptions

All of this fits on one side of a single sheet of paper that can be cut down to 8" x 10" and laminated for a great 5e DM accessory.

Understanding the Monster Group Attacks and Saves Table

Of all of these tools, the success results for large numbers of monsters is the most difficult to understand. This table is designed to make it easy to adjudicate attacks and saving throws for large groups of monsters.

To use it for attacks, compare the AC of the target to the attack bonus of the monster to come up with a result on a d20. Then cross reference this target number with the number of attacks required for a single attack to hit. Divide the number of attacks by this monsters-per-success result to see how many hit and then multiply the damage of any one attack by the number of successful hits.

For example, if six ogres with an attack bonus of +6 are attacking a fighter with an AC of 20, they need a 14 or better. The chart says that 3 monsters are required for a single one to hit when the target number is 14. Thus, of the six ogres, two will hit for a total of 26 damage.

If eight thugs (each with two attacks of +4) are attacking a wizard with an AC of 18 (including shield), five attacks will hit for a total of 25 damage. Thugs, however, have pack tactics so they should be making all attacks with advantage. Instead, we'll add +4 to each attack which increases it to two attacks required for one success. Thus the wizard gets hit with eight attacks for 40 damage. Ouch!

This chart works for saving throws as well. If a wizard casts a DC 15 fireball on six ogres with a -1 dex saving throw, it takes four ogres for one success thus only one ogre succeeds on the saving throw and the other five take full damage. If you mix this with pooling monster hit points, it is a very effective way to run a lot of monsters.

Again, this is a tricky chart to use but, with a little practice, it's useful for running large numbers of monsters against the characters when such a large number of monsters makes sense for the story. Spend a little time trying to understand it and, when it clicks, you'll find a whole new option for mass combat in your tool kit.

A Powerful Tool for a Lightweight DM Kit

The smaller we keep our DM kits, the more freedom we have to run our game quickly and easily. We need not be constrained by our tools. Instead, our tools should free us to shepherd the stories that happen at the table. This simple tool, an 8x10 laminated sheet with a cheat sheet on one side and a dry-erase writing surface on the other, is intended to simplify our kit and give us the tools we need to run awesome games. I hope you find it as useful as I do.

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