by W. Eric Martin

• UK publisher Play For Keeps will release a new edition of Daiki Aoyama's trick-taking game Eye My Favorite Things under the name My Favourite Things.

Aoyama's design, which first appeared in 2016 from Japanese publisher するめデイズ (Surume Days), combines card play with a party game spirit. In this game for 3-6 players, each player gives their neighbor a topic, and their neighbor writes their five favorite things and their least favorite thing for this topic on six cards, secretly ranking the cards from 1-5 and 0. You get these cards as your hand, then you play a round of trick-taking, trying to figure out what to play based on how you think your neighbor ranked what you hold.

You score a point per trick won, then you play a second round by giving the neighbor on your other side a topic. Whoever scores the most points wins, but beyond that you get to learn about your fellow players.


Play For Keeps will run a Kickstarter campaign for My Favourite Things in 2023 for release in 2024. (PFK notes that its edition will have new artwork and "deluxe components designed to improve usability", but it's not clear whether anything about the gameplay has changed. If not, we'll merge these two listings.)

• Play For Keeps debuted in 2022 with Overstocked, a card game for 1-6 players from Mandela Fernandez-Grandon that seems reminiscent of Jog Kung's Magazynier, a.k.a., Veggies, yet turned inside out:

In Overstocked, players must stay up to date with the latest 90s toy crazes, filling their warehouse with the most in-demand toys and avoiding stocking the least popular.

Each turn, players place cards into either their personal warehouse, which increases the number of each toy they have to sell, or into the central area, which is shared by all players and represents the popularity of each toy.

Sample game
Once everyone has played all the cards in their hand, players score points for all the toys in their warehouse. The more popular the toy, the more points it scores. However, the toy with the largest area in the central area scores negatively! The craze for this toy has peaked and as with many 90s crazes, everyone is ready to move onto the next thing.

In Magazynier, which I covered in March 2022, each player builds their own grid of cards, then you choose one of the items in your grid and score points equal to the size of your largest group multiplied by the number of groups of that item — but everyone else scores that item as well, so you're trying to build a grid that will maximize points for what you think others will score while trying to monopolize one item for yourself.

Overstocked flips that concept so that everyone builds their own multiplier for a shared area, while slipping in a poison pill that can tank your score. The game also includes three expansion modules and a solo variant.

• And since I already mentioned Veggies, I'll follow up my recent post on Devir's 2023 line-up with two small games not covered there.

Yokai Sketch is a two-player game from Ignasi Ferré due out in 2023 that is probably more intuitive to play than the description below makes the game sound:

Children who go into the forest may come across some yokai, that is, supernatural creatures and phenomena. Moved by boundless curiosity, the little ones draw these spirits in their notebooks to understand their nature and learn from them.

With a set-collection core mechanism, the goal of Yokai Sketch is to score more yokai points than the other player by completing sketches of the elusive forest spirits. The game consists of two decks of cards: in one are four types of yokai, each associated with an element (water, fire, earth, and wind) and a numerical value that corresponds to victory points, and in the other, sketches made by humans, two of the four elements, and possibly a special ability.

At the start of the game, the yokai cards are stacked in four decks (one for each element) and three sketch cards are dealt face down to players. On their turn, players draw a new sketch card and slide one of their four cards under one of the four decks in the center of the table so that it reveals the element associated with that yokai. If by doing this the yokai reaches or exceeds the number of sketches needed to draw it (adding the sketches on both sides of the card), the player who has accumulated the most sketches on their side of the table takes it.

Sample cards
The winner's sketch cards will be placed in the discard pile, and the other player's will stay where they are as they will be used for the next yokai card of that type. If there is a tie in the number of sketches on both sides of the card, the yokai is frightened and lost. In this case, neither player manages to finish the drawing and all the sketch cards on both sides of that yokai pile are discarded. Sketch cards can also include powers: calling the yokai or distracting it to move cards. The game ends when one or more yokai decks are empty.

• The other Devir title is Blind Business, a 2-5 player game from newcomer Andrew Roy that will have you making wild swings for points:

There's festivity in the air! Ricky is also in the air, the 10-foot-tall donkey-shaped piñata that is the mascot and symbol of the town. The mayor has announced a contest to take down Ricky, and the whole town is invited to participate.

No one can break Ricky open by themselves, though, so you have to gather the best teammates from the four districts of town, each bringing their own abilities to the challenge. Snatch the right people from the hands of your competitors and gather the best team of piñata-poppers — but you never know who could be on the other teams until it's too late. Hurry up and pop Ricky before anyone else can, and you'll win all the candy inside, the Big Trophy, and never-ending prestige!

Blind Business is made up of a deck of 50 cards that are numbered from 1 to 11 in four colors, along with six jokers. You start with four cards in hand; after seeing them, shuffle them and place them so that all other players can see them, but not you.

On a turn, the active player requests a card from an opponent. If the opponent refuses to hand it over, they keep in their area for scoring at game's end; if they do hand it over, they can try to claim a card from the active player's hand — and the active player can then agree to this trade (with players swapping cards and scoring them) or refuse (with each scoring their own card). Whatever happens, players refill their hands to four cards.

Each player arranges cards in columns according to their color, with colors corresponding to the four zones in which the city is divided: the playground, the boardwalk, the central station, and downtown. At the end of the game, depending on the majorities, players earn points based on their card combinations. You can also win instantly by collecting five consecutive cards of a single color.

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by W. Eric Martin

Publishers have been previewing games that they plan to release at SPIEL '23, so let's take a peek at what they're offering:

• Drachenhüter ("Dragonkeeper") appears to be a small card game from KOSMOS with design and art by Michael Menzel.


Here's the brief pitch on this 2-4 player game:

Two stacks of cards form the "Magic Book", which indicates which and how many dragons can be herded. With each card taken by the player magicians, this information changes, but luckily you can cast spells and return your cards to the Magic Book to change it in your favor and score! But which of your dragons can you spare to cast spells?

• The second title revealed by KOSMOS is Nunatak, which is a geological term for a hill or mountain completely surrounded by glacial ice.


In this three-dimensional construction game for 2-4 players from Kane Klenko, you build a step pyramid together in a mountain of ice — but this game isn't co-operative, so watch your step! In brief:

For each pillar stone placed, you receive cards with different values that will affect your score at game's end. For every four pillars built in a square, a new level of the monument opens up, with the temple of ice growing step by step. Who can place their stones most wisely and rise to the icy challenge?

• After debuting with Applejack at SPIEL '22, German publisher The Game Builders is going larger with its next release: Arbor, with design courtesy of Uwe Rosenberg, Michael Keller, and Andreas "ode." Odendahl.

Here are pics of the prototype from LeiriaCon 2023, a game convention in Portugal that took place on March 23-26:

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• Speaking of Portugal, designer Orlando Sá and publisher PYTHAGORAS are prepping the 1-4 player game Celtae for release at SPIEL '23. Here's an overview:

Celt — Latin Celta, plural Celtae — were an early Indo-European people who from the second millennium BCE to the first century BCE spread over much of Europe. Their tribes and groups eventually ranged from the British Isles and Portugal to as far east as Transylvania, the Black Sea coasts, and Galatia in Anatolia, and they were in part absorbed into the Roman Empire as Britons, Gauls, Boii, Galatians, Celtiberians, and Lusitans.

Cover artwork by Mihajlo Dimitrievski
Celtae is a "worker swapping" game powered by a rondel in which players choose actions to perform during their turn. On their turn, players swap one of their three active workers with one of the three workers on the action space they wish to perform, then they perform the action — which will be boosted if they have in their worker pool specific types of workers: farmers, builders, soldiers, and nobles.

—The farming action allows players to draw cards, and it's boosted by farmers. Cards have three types of uses in the game: building, preparing for battle, and engaging with the druid order.

—The build action allows players to build and expand citadels on the board by placing their discs on them, and it's boosted by builders. At game's end, only completed citadels will score, and players have to work together to complete them and score their presence on them.

—The battle action, which is boosted by soldiers, allows players to defeat increasingly stronger Roman armies and to garrison the outskirts of the citadels on the map.

—The recruit action, boosted by nobles, allows players to recruit workers to their tribe, increasing the number of available workers to boost future actions. However, if you manage to send certain types of workers from your tribe into the druid order, you'll get their favor and a druid worker who functions like a joker and boosts almost every type of action.

Each time players engage with the druid order, battle a Roman army, or build in a citadel, they gain a bonus that was randomly assigned during set-up. The combination of these bonuses with a timely performed action often results in powerful combos.

Playtesting the game in March 2023
Every player has a leader card assigned to their tribe at the beginning of the game. If the player meets the requirements of their leader, they can decide to leave it like that and gain a small number of points at game's end or forfeit those meager points and flip it to its heroic side, which has much harder requirements for much larger endgame points.

Each time the action marker on the rondel completes a full turn, the player who currently holds the favor of Teutates places a progress marker on one of the progress cards next to the game board. At game's end, only progress cards with progress markers will score, so as the game advances, players determine what will score...and what will not.

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by Scott Brady

With the pending arrival of the second print run of boop. by Smirk & Laughter Games, I thought it might be interesting to document the journey this game took since conception. I wish I had kept a formal diary, but I do not work that way. I hated journaling in middle school and would crank out months' worth of entries the night before the assignment was due. Here I am, 45 years later, doing the same thing.

Shortly after I signed my first game, Hues and Cues, in August 2019, I began thinking "What's next?" I had caught the design bug and wanted to challenge myself to create more. I've never considered myself a "creative", but I found board game design to be much more. Logic, intertwining of mechanisms, building depth and escalation (and ultimately, fun) – there's so much more to a game than just an idea...and creating that takes much longer than most realize.

Conception

While I proudly put my name on Hues and Cues, abstract games have always been my favorite. Like most, I grew up on Chess, Checkers, Cribbage, Chinese Checkers, and more. As an adult, I own and enjoy the entire GIPF series, Tak, Onitama, Santorini, and countless 1970s and -80s examples of the genre. Having stared at the colorful square board in Hues and Cues for over a year, I couldn't help but imagine a game using a standard grid.

I began thinking about mechanisms I had never seen used in a published abstract game before. I tinkered with many different ideas and ultimately rejected most because they had been overused or I didn't find them interesting. Going back to the grid-based layout of Hues and Cues, I got to thinking about meteors dropping from the sky and hitting the ground. The result would be a crater. I imagined a piece striking the board and pushing any pieces away by the force of impact.

This idea of one piece affecting everything directly around it became an experiment of different outcomes, especially if the theme were different. Maybe things are magnetic, and some would push and some would pull. Or maybe only one would push. Maybe they would flip. I ran through at least a dozen variations over the next month or two before settling down with a played piece simply pushing all adjacent pieces — unless there was a piece next to it that prevented its movement. I would run with that and keep it themeless (for now).

Building the Game

Now that I had decided on a base mechanism around which to build the game, the real work began. At this point, I didn't know how many pieces I would use, the size or shape of the board, winning conditions, or even how many players were at the table! The next two months would see many attempts to play up to four people (didn't work), employ different ways to win (simpler was better), come up with an ideal board size (more on this), and number of pieces per person.

Board size was something I fought with a lot. Remember, at this stage I had no constraints. A larger board would accommodate more pieces, but would also increase the manufacturing cost. Additionally, I wanted to allow pieces to fall off the edge of the board instead of clogging it up, and a larger board made that happen rarely.

Once again I went for simpler, which as is turns out is what makes the game so elegant. A six-by-six square grid was my final selection, and I was leaning towards seven pieces for each player. (I had narrowed it down to two players by this time.) Multiple playtests showed that seven was too few as players ran out of pieces too soon. One more was added, and I found that the eighth piece got played only around 10% of the time; this is when having eight-on-the-board became an alternate win condition (in addition to three-in-a-row).

Gekitai

It was now shortly after the holiday season of 2019, and I was pretty satisfied with how the game was fleshing out. I had already devoted hundreds of hours to the design and hadn't even given it a name. The playstyle reminded me of classic Japanese abstract games, so I enlisted the help of my daughter's boyfriend who had four years of Japanese under his belt. I also consulted a subreddit devoted to helping with translations.

I wanted a name that referred to the pushing mechanism, and several were suggested. "Hanpatsu" was a leading contender, as was "Oshi" (which was already taken). After also considering a couple of European-style names, I settled on Gekitai, which means "push away" in a military sense.


I made a batch of high-quality boards using wood from the craft store. I covered them in marble vinyl and used a Cricut to cut out the grid and name. Glass beads were perfect and gave the game the style I was looking for. By this time, the game had over four hundred playtests with friends and family, and I was ready to show it to the world. I elected to release it as a free print-and-play on BoardGameGeek and listed a few handmade copies in the GeekMarket. Those sold out quickly.

Things began to take off from there. Hundreds of people downloaded the rules and began playing. They helped me catch one rare gameplay occurrence: four-in-a-row. A new set of rules corrected this oversight. BGG ratings began being submitted, and I was overjoyed with the high rankings. One fan took it upon themselves to implement a digital version on Chessicals. Another asked whether they could publish the ruleset in their local newspaper...in Japan! I began seeing reviews on YouTube from Russia, Latin America, and other locations. Others uploaded photos of their homemade boards to BGG. Gekitai was gathering a small, but dedicated, fanbase.

What Next?

After I signed Hues and Cues, I got a lot of grief from a friend who is also a game publisher for not signing with them. Truth be told, they had skipped the convention where I had been showing the prototype, and I was too reluctant to reach out to them. We have had such a wonderful relationship over the years that I didn't want to jeopardize it by showing them something they might think was not worthy of publication.


So now with Gekitai ready for primetime, I mailed a physical copy of the game to the house of Curt Covert of Smirk & Dagger without warning. I didn't realize he was traveling, so it sat on his doorstep for the better part of a week before he discovered it. This was late winter of 2020, so I guess I was lucky the elements didn't ruin things. At the same time, I also sent copies to a couple of other friends in the industry to garner their opinion on the game and its marketability.

Long story short, Curt did immediately play the game a few times and further tested it when he could, which was difficult due to Covid. Ultimately, six months later, he elected to pass on Gekitai. While this was discouraging, I had already moved forward, submitting it to another publisher for which I thought it would be perfect: Gigamic, which has a well-known line of wooden abstract games.

Gekitai²

Even though I was very happy with the state of Gekitai, I wondered whether the games were too short (5-10 minutes) for serious abstract players. I had been working on ideas of how to increase the complexity of the game without also introducing a more difficult ruleset. This version didn't take long to create, with players adding eight more pieces to their pool, pieces that they would have to earn by upgrading, with the winning condition now being three-in-a-row of the upgraded pieces.


This small change took the game to 20-30 minutes and really amped up the strategy. In the middle of 2020, I submitted both of these versions to Gigamic, which began testing them in earnest. In September 2020, they sent the game to their mathematicians for their opinions. By January 2021, they stated they preferred the shorter version (Gekitai) and would let me know more soon.

Finally, in April 2021 I received notice that the mathematicians "loved it" and that the company felt it was a good abstract game — but they would be passing. Ouch.

Health

On January 1, 2021, my life changed. Thanks to a gallstone that became lodged in the worst place possible, I spent the next 21 days in ICU fighting for my life. Needless to say, all game design and any worries about getting anything published were put on hold. I did have some interesting drug-induced game concepts while laying in the hospital, but I don't believe there's much of a market for games that pit blood droplets against floating cartoon characters.

And yes, being in ICU during Covid is as bad as you would imagine.

Square One?

No. During this time I had gotten amazing feedback from Scott Morris (GTS Distribution) and Chris Leder (Calliope Games), who I had sent copies of Gekitai to knowing they'd play with their kids. They both told stories of multiple plays back-to-back and how much they enjoyed it. We began talking about what might make the game more attractive to consumers, and it was agreed that a theme was needed.


Much like the name, the theme needed to relate to the mechanism and not just be slapped on. I considered a number of options: meteors from space, sumo wrestlers in a ring, drops of water raining down. Then the obvious hit me: CATS!

It was around this time that Gekitai was added to the AiAi software system. AiAi is a downloadable program that allows you to play hundreds of different abstract games against either another local player or a reasonably robust AI. It also has a feature that pits two AI players against each other, which allowed me to run thousands of games per hour and tally hundreds of statistics. This data proved everything I had calculated and probably what the mathematicians at Gigimic had loved. There was little to no first or second player advantage, draws didn't happen, the average game lasted around 20 moves, and there were no repeating loops to cause the game to stalemate (assuming at least one AI is trying to win).

Pounce House

The idea of cats jumping on a bed came to me from a commercial that shows a salesman balancing a glass of wine on a mattress to demonstrate how the wine won't spill when their product is jumped on. This theme fit perfectly. Cats will spook when startled, so having them jump away when another cat lands was thematic. Going over the edge and off the bed, then returning also fit the theme.


I struggled with a new name for an evening or two before landing (pun intended) on "Pounce House". I took one of the wooden boards, recovered it with a printout of a duvet, and surrounded the edges with crepe paper to simulate a bed skirt. Scott Morris offered to test out his new 3D printer by manufacturing cats to replace the glass beads. When they arrived, I hand-painted them in traditional cat colors (black and orange) and had a more interesting prototype to share!

Waiting

I shared my progress on BGG, but since we were still in the middle of Covid, there were no conventions to show off the game in person. I was working on other projects in the meantime and was deflated about the future of Gekitai/"Pounce House" after the Gigamic rejection.

The first convention to resume was Gen Con in September 2021. While I did attend and had "Pounce House" (and other games) to pitch, I didn't. I wasn't 100% after my health scare and preferred to skulk around the demo hall watching people play Hues and Cues. This was the first time I had gotten to see retail versions being played in person. I sat in with a few groups without disclosing my relationship, soaked up the laughter, and took note of unique clues.

We elected to skip the Origins Game Fair because its dates were too close to our favorite convention: Geekway to the West. It, too, had been delayed until the third quarter due to Covid. I chatted with Curt Covert of Smirk & Dagger beforehand and asked whether he would be attending. He was worried his schedule (and wife) wouldn't allow it — until I reminded him of what happened when he missed the same convention in 2019. (Hues and Cues was demoed.)

My ulterior motive was to show him a couple of other projects I was working on and get his honest opinions. As we were chatting at the show about life, games, and more, he asked where I was with Gekitai. I remembered he hadn't seen the advanced version, Gekitai², nor the themed example. I pulled my only prototype out of my bag and began explaining the minor changes and the marketable theme.

I think he was hooked right there and then, but if you know Curt, don't play poker with him. He doesn't project until he's sure. He asked to take the prototype home to test. I sheepishly agreed, knowing it was my only example. It was only a few weeks later when he called to tell me he wanted to move forward with it immediately!

boop.

In the succeeding months, Curt took the prototype to PAX Unplugged and other gatherings to gauge consumer interest. It was at one of these shows that a discussion about the name came up. "Pounce House" was good, but Curt thought he had come up with something better. He showed me his idea for a name and a mock-up of a box, and I was sold. I had learned from Hues and Cues, formerly "Guess Hue", not to hold on to a name. Publishers know the market better than designers, and if he thought boop. would get people talking better than "Pounce House", who was I to argue?!


The next few months I didn't have to do a whole lot of work on boop. other than to peek at the progress Curt was making on the design of the box, the rulebook, and the quilt! Yes, instead of a crepe paper ruffle, boop. would include an actual stitched quilt as the board in every box!

Previews

The last stages before production were to preview Smirk & Laughter's handmade prototypes at trade shows such as GAMA Expo 2022. I was in attendance, and Curt and I were blown away by the retailer excitement. Preorders were pouring in. In fact, boop. had become the most preordered game in the company’s history.


Because of this, the production run was more than doubled and was now the largest first print run Smirk & Dagger had ever ordered. It also didn't hurt that both Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million wanted in on the first run as well!

Present Day

boop. released in November 2022 and sold out in just a couple of weeks. A second print run was quickly placed in order to beat the Chinese New Year season, and this is now hitting distributors and retailers and proving to be still as popular as the first run. I expect to hear about a third print order very soon. I hope people will give this simple-to-learn, but deeply strategic game about cats and kitten a try.

And while I haven't been given clearance to officially talk about the future of boop., let's just say there's already more great things in the works!

Scott Brady Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

Time for a round-up of games from one Reiner Knizia, a game designer who is famously prolific, especially when it comes to re-purposing past designs to fit current demands. To wit:

• On April 14, 2023, CMON will release Knizia's Classic Art, a re-working of 1996's Members Only that was previously re-released in 2010 as Glenn's Gallery.


Here's an overview of the title, which unlike those previous games includes rules for play with two, albeit in a way that can be retroactively added to those games:

The International Art Gala is inviting leading galleries and their curators to contribute classic art pieces towards their event. It is time for these savvy art connoisseurs to put their money where their mouths are and predict which works of art will attract the largest crowds and inspire them.

Classic Art is a competitive game of prediction in which 2-5 players take on the role of curators striving to assemble the best art collections. Each season, players must anticipate the number of famous artworks to be featured in each of the five exhibitions. Only the most intuitive curators will be decorated with prestige by the savants of the art world.

Aside from the two-player variant, the only difference in these designs is that Members Only and Glenn's Gallery give each player a "double bid" token that pays out twice as much for a correct bid, whereas Classic Art gives each player an additional prediction token and allows players to make a double bid once per season by placing two tokens in a single space.

• Dutch publisher 999 Games has announced a trilogy of roll-and-write titles from Knizia, with all of the Pick a Pen games using the same playing method, one that will also appear in the 2023 release Takenokolor from Antoine Bauza and Corentin Lebrat.


On a turn, the active player rolls five colored pencils, then drafts one of them and uses it to color spaces on their individual player sheet. Each other player in turn drafts a pencil and uses it. Pencils show symbols on their different sides, and the symbols on top of the chosen pencil determine what players do on their sheets.

—In Pick a Pen: Crypten, you want to fill in as many rows and columns as possible in an ancient crypt. You must progress in a row from left to right. When you fill a row, you can color in a symbol of your choice — and if you color a bold-framed symbol with the correct color, you can color another symbol as a bonus. Fill three spaces in a row or column with the same color, and you get a 3-point bonus; place every color in a row or column, and you score 5 bonus points instead.


When one player has filled all of their symbols, the game ends, and whoever has the most points wins.

Pick a Pen: Crypten includes three difficulty levels of player sheets, with different bonuses and effects on these sheets.

—Each sheet in Pick a Pen: Riffen shows colored dive locations in the reefs. You can have only one route per color, so if you don't yet have a route of that color, you start one at an empty dive location; otherwise, you extend your existing route of that color. The symbols on the pencil indicate how many steps you can color in and whether you have to go straight or can choose freely. If you reach treasure chests or coins on your route, you can color in bonus points on your sheet. The game ends when one of the players has colored a certain number of treasures or all of their coins.


You each have a score sheet of the same level, on which you color in routes from different dive locations. The starting player first rolls all the pencils, each of which has a different color. There are different symbols on its sides. They show how many steps the route consists of that you can color on your score sheet.

Pick a Pen: Riffen includes three difficulty levels of player sheets, with sheets 2 and 3 featuring vortices and propellers that can hinder or help you in different ways when coloring routes.

—In Pick a Pen: Tuinen, each sheet shows bordered gardens, and on a turn, you fill in the indicated number of spaces in that color; all of those spaces must be adjacent to one another, in addition to being adjacent to everything colored previously. Your goal is to fill gardens with only a single color or with five different colors, scoring bonus points as you do so. The game ends when a player has completely colored all of their gardens or failed to color in five times.


Pick a Pen: Tuinen includes three difficulty levels of player sheets, with flowers and trees on sheets 2 and 3 to help you earn bonus points in different ways.

• In early 2023, Korean publisher Mandoo Games released FantaSticks!, which had debuted in 2015 from SimplyFun as Sticks & Stunts and in 2014 from Trefl as Family Bingo. (I'm not sure how similar these releases are, but they're all of a kind.) If nothing else, the cover of the new release is bizarre genius:


Here's an overview of this 2-6 player game:

FantaSticks! comes with 15 stunt sticks in each of six colors, a deck of cards with one of eight activities displayed on each card, 16 tokens numbered one through 16, and, for each player (or team), a 4X4 board with spaces numbered one through 16.

At the beginning of each round, a token is flipped face-up, a card is drawn, and all players (or teams) then try to complete the activity shown on the card. Successful players place a marker on the space on their boards that corresponds to the number on the token. The first player to place four in a row wins.

Activities involve the sticks in some way, usually by building structures that don't fall or that are produced from memory or instruction or that others try to guess. A few activities use the sticks differently, e.g., to indicate answers to trivia questions or to prompt Liar's Dice-style guessing.

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by W. Eric Martin

• I feel like I should wait a week to post about this game, but let's write about it now:

Ierusalem: Anno Domini is the debut title from designer Carmen García Jiménez, a game that publisher Devir plans to release in Europe at the end of March 2023 and in the United States sometime later in 2023.


Here's an overview of this 1-4 player game

Jerusalem, spring 33 AD: A crowd gathers at the city gates to welcome Jesus of Nazareth as he prepares to celebrate the Passover seder with his apostles and followers. With a revolutionary message, he has garnered supporters everywhere but also looks of suspicion among religious authorities. The Last Supper will soon be celebrated, and the fate of one of the most influential characters in human history will be sealed.

In Ierusalem: Anno Domini, we represent one of the communities of followers of Jesus of Nazareth who, coming to Jerusalem from nearby towns and villages, want to approach the place of the Last Supper and position ourselves as close as possible to the seats of Jesus and his apostles. The closer we are, the more points we earn at game's end. We also score for offering tokens and parabola tiles we've accumulated.

Individual player board
Different locations are shown on the board: the market, the desert, the mountain, the lake, and the temple. After sending our followers to one of these locations, we obtain stones, bread, and fish, as well as denarii or cards that allow us to do more than one action. Among these actions, players can choose between listening to a parable, going to the table, changing seats, or doing a favor, among other things. All this happens while the patience of the Sanhedrin runs out. When this happens, as symbolized by a tile moving in a marker, the endgame is triggered.

However, the main element of the game is the cards. Each card has a symbol corresponding to one of five key locations in the game. As we play them, we form combinations that allow us to bring the apostles to the table of the Last Supper. The optimal placement of our followers around Jesus and the apostles will also be done through the management of letters, as well as various resources at our disposal.

Behind a very immersive theme, Ierusalem: Anno Domini will not disappoint lovers of good challenges. Players have a wide range of possibilities at their fingertips and multiple ways to earn points. Preparing the best strategies to get the most out of your followers will be one of the keys to victory.

• Other titles coming from Devir in 2023 include the path-building game Savernake Forest from Rodrigo Rego and Germán P. Millán's Bamboo, which is set in the world of Silk and Bitoku, both of which I covered in an August 2022 Gen Con report.

• Beyond that, in Q3 2023 Devir will release 3 Ring Circus, a 1-4 player game from Remo Conzadori and Fabio Lopiano:

The circus has come to town! Under the tent, jugglers, clowns, magicians, strongmen and wild beasts capture the curiosity of a dedicated audience that applauds non-stop. After each performance, your little troupe accumulates fame and may one day pique the interest of P.T. Barnum, the greatest circus mogul of all time.

In 3 Ring Circus, players take on the role of a circus director who tours the United States at the end of the 19th century. Your objective is to hire artists and offer performances in various towns and cities with the intention of gaining fame. In towns, features are easy to set up and give you starting resources to upgrade your cast; small cities are somewhat more demanding, but they allow you to come into contact with better artists; audiences in big cities are even more demanding and want to see very specific numbers, but performing there brings you much more fame!

On their turn, players can hire an artist or host a performance. At the beginning of the game, each player's circuses are empty, so it will be necessary to contract to form the company. The artist cards grant more or fewer benefits depending on the order in which they act, so one of the keys to the game is planning the shows that will be offered.

If they decide to act, the players must move to a free space on the map. If it is a town, they receive the most basic currency cards as a prize. If you perform in a small city, depending on the number of pedestals you have in your company you can claim more or fewer entry cards (the second most valuable) or fame points. In the big cities, you get a lot of fame points, but the public always demands a specific type of artist.

While your little circus tries to survive, the great and splendid Barnum Circus travels across the country, and when it arrives in a big city, a score is held in that region, and the circuses that have given the most performances there will gain even more fame.

• Designers Shei S. and Isra C., who partnered with Devir on 2020's The Red Cathedral, have a new strategy game coming in Q3 2023. Here's an overview of The White Castle, which is for 1-4 players:

The heron flies over the Himeji sky while the Daimio, from the top of the castle, watches his servants move. Gardeners tend the pond where the koi carp live, warriors stand guard on the walls, and courtiers crowd the gates, pining for an audience that brings them closer to the innermost circles of the court. When night falls, the lanterns are lit and the workers return to their clan.

In The White Castle, players control one of these clans and want to score more points than the rest. To do so, they must amass influence in the court, manage resources boldly, and place their workers in the right place at the right time. All of the action takes place in the most imposing fortress in modern Japan: Himeji Castle, where the banner of the Sakai clan flies under the orders of Daimio Sakai Tadakiyo.

The White Castle is a Eurogame in which players use resource management, worker placement, and dice placement to carry out actions. During the game, over three rounds players send members of their clan to tend the gardens, defend the castle, or progress up the social ladder of the nobility. At the end of the match, these activities award players points in a variety of ways.

The central panel shows Himeji Castle in all its splendor, divided into several zones. The largest is inside the castle, with the Room of the Thousand Carpets, where the courtiers must ascend socially until they reach the circle closest to the Daimio to enjoy his favor. There is also the pond and the gardens, patiently tended by the gardeners where everyone can relax and contemplate its beauty without restriction. Another important area is the wall and the outside of the castle, where the warriors patrol and stand guard. Finally, we find the area of the three bridges, where the three types of dice that can be used to carry out actions are accumulated, and the personal domain of each player, where they will keep track of their resources and where they will have a reserve of workers.

That was not what I thought it would be. Maybe the hamburgers will show up in the expansion? Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

• In Q4 2023, Hungarian publisher Sorry We Are French will release Zhanguo: The First Empire, a new edition of Marco Canetta and Stefania Niccolini's 2014 game ZhanGuo from What's Your Game?


Here's an overview of the setting in this 1-4 player game:

In 221 B.C., all the so-called Warring States are brought together. This is the birth of the vast Chinese empire, ruled by Qin Shi Huangdi. A skilled and determined strategist, but also a shrewd governor, he undertakes actions aimed at standardizing all the elements at the basis of Chinese society and culture; he imposes a single script and a single currency, then he establishes a new system of laws equal for all. He also builds palaces, installs local governors, and above all, starts the works for the construction of the greatest building in the history of mankind: the Great Wall.

A single life cannot suffice for such a vast empire. He sends ships to distant lands in search of the legendary elixir of life, and he builds a huge mausoleum containing the scale reconstruction of his empire. In defense of it for eternity, he deploys an impressive terracotta army...

In Zhanguo: The First Empire, you go along with the Emperor's plans to offer your family a place in the terracotta army. To help you in this challenging task, six cards will be at your disposal every round. They will give you permanent support during the rest of the game or will obtain the Emperor's approval for your actions.

At the end of the game, the player who made the greatest contribution to the Emperor's cause by scoring the most points wins!

How does this title differ from the 2014 design? For one thing, it contains solo rules, whereas the previous game was for 2-4 players. As for other differences, Niccolini teased on Facebook: "You'll discover them soon; by the way the ship and terracotta army on the box should already be a clue."

• Another 2014 title making it back to the market in 2023 is Formula E, which Brazilian publisher Conclave Editora will release as Elephant Rally.


This design from Bruno Faidutti, Sérgio Halaban, and André Zatz has 3-6 players racing their elephant through a village, over mountains, and across a desert:

Every year, villagers gather from far and wide for the harvest festival. They bring fine carpets to the market and share delicious mango juice while praying men honor the holy cows, and the children tease mischievous monkeys and gasp at the snake charmers. But the main event of the festival is the elephant race. Young men and women of the region spend days painting joyous and reverent decorations on their elephant partners for this one moment when they can surge through the crowds of festive villagers, push and shove their way past other racing pachyderms, and brave the tiger-filled forests to win honor for themselves and their proud elephant friends. The bell rings, the elephants trumpet their excitement, and the race begins!

The primary game mechanism in Elephant Rally is hand management as players use their hand of cards to advance their elephants through the course. Elephants move in a unique manner – they push elephants in front of them until those elephants hit an obstacle, then the active elephant pushes sideways until a path is clear for it to move forward again. Certain move-adjusting cards and tactical-screwage cards can be played to trigger events like diagonal movement, obstacle movement, and nasty little screw-your-opponents effects. Elephant racing is not necessarily a sport of honor!

• What else do we have in the way of re-issues? Polish publisher PHALANX has revealed a work-in-progress cover for a new edition of Charles Vasey's Unhappy King Charles!, which debuted from GMT Games in 2008.

Non-final cover
PHALANX developer Jaro Andruszkiewicz notes that only the art is changing — nothing about the design — with the intent being to release this edition in the latter months of 2023. Here's an overview of this two-player game:

Unhappy King Charles! allows two players to decide whether Commons or Cavalier shall rule in England. Both seek to establish control over the country and of its economic structures. They seek not only to defeat their opponents in battle but also to seize control of the local government of England and Wales.

The game is based on We the People, Mark Herman's ingenious game on a later rebellion. As the organization of armies and states was often desultory, the cards do not provide a wide range of choices (as in Paths of Glory). The players in Unhappy King Charles! must make do with what they have. The three decks of cards — Early (1642-1643), Middle (1644) and Late (1645) — have been developed to give the correct feel for the early, middle and late war, based on storyboarding techniques. As befits a Civil War, there is treachery, bravery and stupidity in the events on the cards.

• In April 2020, I wrote about Suzie-Q, a double-blind, bluffing/guessing game of sorts for 2-5 players from Hisashi Hayashi of OKAZU Brand, and Belgian publisher Repos Production has apparently picked up the design for release as The Number.

Repos hasn't announced anything officially, but Hayashi tweeted the following in December 2022:

[twitter=1608988412295671812]
Translated caption: "I received a Christmas present from Repos Production, the publisher of 'The NUMBER', the overseas version of 'Suzie-Q'. thank you." What's more, this edition will apparently be released in at least ten languages:

[twitter=1597039852079697924]
So how do you play? Here's the overview from my earlier post:

In each of the five rounds of Suzie-Q, players choose and write a three-digit number on their secret sheet, hoping to score points based on the numbers that other players have written.

At the start of each round, you write a three-digit number using the digits 0-9, repeating numbers as you wish, but not using any number that you've Xed in a previous round. Everyone reveals their number at the same time, then you arrange them in order from high to low.

Starting with the highest number, you check to see whether any of the digits in that three-digit number appear in any three-digit number of lower value. If they do, then that player takes back their board and scores nothing; if not, then the player scores points equal to the first digit in that number and places an X through each digit used in their three-digit number. For example, if the highest number were 882, and no one else had included an 8 or a 2 in their number, then the player would score 8 points and X out the 2 and 8 on their board. This player also circles the bonus number for that round, a bonus given only to the player with the highest number who successfully scored points.

Player boards in the OKAZU Brand edition
You then look at the next highest number, and so on, with the lowest number automatically scoring points equal to its first digit and Xing all of its digits. In the fifth round, players double their score.

After five rounds, players sum the points they earned over the five rounds. To this sum, they add the quantity of digits that they Xed out. Whoever has the highest score wins!

Suzie-Q includes a variant in which numbers are evaluated starting with the smallest number. Whoever has the smallest number automatically scores, then for the player with the next lowest number, they score only if one or more of the digits in their number is used by the player with the smallest number, etc.

The originals Read more »

by Candice Harris

• On my last day at SPIEL '22, I spotted a unique-looking game titled Scharz, that I had to stop and ask about. Scharz is a hybrid area control game for 2-4 players from designer Jakub Kunčík, which blends the economics found in eurogames with the conflict and historical settings found in wargames. As Kunčík described it to me at SPIEL while I gazed at the map and slew of unique components, I was intrigued and I couldn't help but get Feudum vibes. At the same time, it also seemed like it was inspired by mix of Agricola, civilization-building games, and wargames, which sounded really cool.

Scharz is a three-part series of games, and when combined you can play an epic game with up to 12 players. Kunčík is crowdfunding Scharz: Part I on Kickstarter (KS link) through March 30, 2023. Scharz: Part I comes with 2 maps and features a mix of combat with logistics, with sandbox-style gameplay inspired by history. You'll construct buildings, manage your agriculture, and fight in battles, all with the goal of establishing yourself as a nation with either military or economic force since there are multiple victory conditions.

Here's a high-level description of Scharz from the designer, but you can also learn more on its Kickstarter page:

Symmetrical War-Euro, a game about balance and efficiency. Playable in any number of players without waiting (simultaneous play). No cards. Sober planning and maneuvering. Controllable element of luck. Multiple ways to win. A feel-good classic computer RTS on the cycle of the seasons as the board game (gain the upper hand within five years in the area of power fragmentation). Complex, but not complicated.

In this area control game, the player must master the management of their own empire, its development and conflict with other players. Time in each year, resources and human capacity are limited. Expanding the economic base, building more footholds, improving them, buying better livestock and soldiers, developing trade and fleets - all this is possible and beneficial, but it also requires expensive military protection. Because even those who feed their large army on the snowball principle from the resources of others can win.

Game time 15 - 40 minutes per player, recommended for ages 10 and up.

• If you're looking to battle in Sicily, La Famiglia: The Great Mafia War from Maximilian Maria Thiel, Feuerland Spiele, and Capstone Games is available at retailers. Eric originally mentioned La Famiglia in a SPIEL '22 preview post. La Famiglia plays in 2-3 hours with exactly 4 players in 2 teams of 2 players each. Each player represents a head of a mafia family vying for control over Sicily.

Here's a little more about how it works from the publisher:

In the 1980s, a merciless battle raged in Sicily that would later go down in history as "The Great Mafia War". Different mob families fought with and against each other for supremacy in southern Italy.

In La Famiglia: The Great Mafia War, you play against each other in teams (2 vs. 2) to take control of Sicily. Six different mafia families, each with special abilities, are at your disposal. The game rounds are divided into two phases: In the planning phase, you develop your abilities and bring fighters as well as secret orders to the board. In the combat phase, these orders are revealed and executed. Here, you use your fighters and bombs to dominate as many regions as possible. The combat system is both simple and innovative, making every fight an exciting psychological duel. The team that best combines and coordinates its abilities will finally dominate Sicily.

La Famiglia is an extraordinary team game that provides lasting excitement through asymmetric abilities and a variable game set-up.

• Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East is a new standalone civilization game for 1-6 players from GMT Games, designed by Mark McLaughlin (The Napoleonic Wars, War and Peace) and Chris Vorder Bruegge, the designer-duo behind the 2019 release Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea.

Here's the lowdown from the publisher on what you'll experience in this, big, yet accessible civilization game:

Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East (ACME) is brought to you by the same team that created Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea — designers Christopher Vorder Bruegge and Mark McLaughlin with developer Fred Schachter. ACME is not a sequel nor an expansion but a standalone game using the same multiplayer and solitaire systems as its predecessor with many new and exciting features to intrigue its players.

ACME is a game of the chaos-inducing wrath of gods & men—a chaos each player does their utmost to manage, survive, and guide their civilization through to triumphant victory. Spanning the ancient world from the Hellespont to the Indus, from the Caspian to the Red Sea, and from the early Bronze Age to the Hellenic Age, Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East allows you to command not just 10 but 17, SEVENTEEN CIVILIZATIONS!

A War Game Only If And When You Want It To Be
If you want a War Game, you got it. If you want a friendly game, this is it too! As in Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea, Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East can be all about war, but it doesn't have to be. It can be a friendly game of exploration, city building, trade, and faith. Players (solitaire, a group of up to six, or even a mix of live players with a system-driven civilization of two or more) can make of ACME what they wish or imagine. Competition can be martial or cultural, warlike or friendly, or a combination of both—how the game unfolds depends entirely on how the players want it to play. The duration of the game is also up to the players: from a multi-hour odyssey of all four Epochs to a pre-arranged shorter contest of an hour or two or to an agreed Sudden Death Victory Point threshold.

For Those Who Want A War Game, There Is Plenty Of War To Be Gamed
Historical War Game Scenarios are just that—fun and entertaining scenarios that recreate wars from the dawn of civilization to the conquests of Alexander the Great (and more!). Take on the role of Agamemnon as he sacks Troy, Solomon as he builds the Temple, or Ramses as he leads his chariots on the plains of Kadesh. Become the great law-giver, Hammurabi, the inspiring Persian empire-builder, Cyrus, or the legendary hero, Rostam (and more!). There are even double-sized (twice the usual number of disks) civilization options for those who want to conquer the world of Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East and become—as Assyrian kings Akkad and Sumer claimed—the king of the four corners of the world.

Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East is suitable for players of all ages, offers great family fun, and is easily and quickly teachable. It can serve as a kind of gateway to the more complex games our wonderful hobby has to offer.

• SPARTA!: Struggle for Greece is an upcoming asymmetric historical area control game on the Greek Wars for 1-2 players from Kris Van Beurden (Europe in Turmoil, Barbarians at the Gates), and publishers Plague Island Games (English edition) and Draco Ideas (Spanish edition). SPARTA! plays in 2-3 hours, was successfully funded on Kickstarter (KS link) in October 2022, and is open for late pledges.

Here's the publisher's description of what you can expect as you battle in Ancient Greece:

In SPARTA! command Athenians or Spartans in a battle to rule the Greek world. Achieve dominance and control valuable regions that grant unique benefits - be it the wealth of Sicily, the fleets of Corinth, or alliances with larger cities like Thebes or Syracuse to provide fresh recruits for battle. You might even rally the Persians and Macedonians to your side.

Command The Conflict!
March armies and sortie fleets to raid enemy territories. Siege valuable cities, and engage your foes in fierce battles. Steel your nerves when you enter the fray of battle, as it is bloody and swiftly resolved using an elegant card-based system.

Who Will Head Your Efforts?
Lead your forces with legendary characters such as Pericles and Cleon. Each leader has a unique ability, be it combat prowess or cunning diplomacy.
Characters may become experienced— flipping the leader to their upgraded form with a more powerful ability.

Meet your foes on the bloody battlefield
Balance diplomacy, economy, and military might in this card-driven game of historic conflict!

The Splendour Of Greece Is Yours For The Taking!

SPARTA! is for 1-2 players (SOLO bot is included) & plays in 2-3 hours.

Includes all of these historical scenarios:
- First Peloponnesian War
- Second Peloponnesian War
- Theban/Spartan War
- Cleomenian War

Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

• Distilled is the debut title from Dave Beck of Paverson Games, and it's just started to reach backers following a Kickstarter campaign in mid-2021.


Here's an overview of this 1-5 player game:

Distilled is a highly thematic strategy card game about crafting spirits in a distillery, with resource management and push-your-luck elements. In the game, you have inherited a distillery and are hoping to someday achieve the title of master distiller through purchasing goods, building up your distillery, and creating the world's most renowned spirits.

Use cards to purchase new ingredients and invest in upgrades to your distillery, all while eventually distilling the spirit and sending it to the warehouse. Once in the warehouse, age your spirit to enhance its flavor and bottle it to sell it for major profits!

Achieve the title of master distiller by having the most victory points at the end of the game. Points are obtained by distilling and selling spirits.

• With the release of Distilled now rolling out, Beck plans to demo his next title — Luthier — at Origins, UK Games Expo, and Gen Con in 2023. In this 1-5 player game, you're once again crafting something, but in a far different environment:

Luthier transports players to the height of classical music in Western Europe, when the art of the instrument was upheld equally by skilled craftspeople, noble patrons, virtuoso performers, and famous composers such as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven.

Promotional image
Using a new, unique combination of hidden bidding and worker placement, players manage resources to craft various musical instruments in their workshop, while also courting actual historic patrons through an ever-changing personal tableau of actions and bonuses. Each player chooses how to balance improving skills across multiple tracks, unlocking specialized worker abilities and other bonuses. The choice to concentrate on varying gameplay strategies and goals, such as musical performances, instrument building and repairs, apprentice training and workshop expansion, and overall reputation as an instrument maker, provide multiple paths to victory.

• What else can we craft? How about robots, as in the game Raising Robots from Brett Sobol, Seth Van Orden, and Nauvoo Games, for which a crowdfunding campaign will take place in 2023:

In Raising Robots, a competitive, simultaneously played, engine-building game for 1-6 players, you are a famous inventor seeking to assemble the greatest collection of robots. Each round, you simultaneously choose and perform two or more actions: upgrade, assemble, design, fabricate, recycle. Every action will be performed with a variable amount of power to make the action better or worse. However, the most powerful actions will also help your opponents.

Whoever has the most points after eight rounds wins.

I only hope the game includes a "Beep Boop" card to ensure 100% authenticity.

• I don't normally feature RPGs in this space, but an upcoming project from Banana Chan caught my eye and fits with the "crafting" theme, so here it goes: Forgery is a solitaire, horror-based RPG in which you take the role of an art forger who is commissioned to recreate a demonic painting, a painting that you will create during play in a paint-by-numbers manner. Here's the setting:

It's 2023 in New York City. You graduated from art school with dead prospects and too much talent. Nobody wants to hire a painter who doesn't have extraordinarily rich parents. The art gallery scene in New York City only takes the wealthiest, most well-connected people.

Unfortunately, you're a nobody. Sure, you aced all your classes, and you have a great eye, but it's hard to make it into Art Forum magazine. Instead, you've found contract work in replicating famous paintings and selling them online, which is actually legal as long as you specify it's a reproduction. The pay hasn't been great...until you receive your latest commission.

Forgery is a story of a down-on-her-luck art forger named Tempest, who receives a new commission to recreate a painting that they discover is cursed over time. It is a solo tabletop role-playing game in which the player (you) will be coloring in a paint-by-numbers image. The colors that you choose determine the outcome to the story.

The game comes in a ~125-150 page book that has 26 chapters that you will go through in a choose-your-own-path style of play. As you choose from the options provided, you will fill in noted parts of the picture with colors of your choice.

If you feel conflicted over some of the options provided, you may roll 1D6 to determine which option you go with.

For more details, check out Chan's Indiegogo crowdfunding project, which runs through the middle of April 2023. Read more »

by W. Eric Martin

In late 2023, UK publisher Osprey Games will release Sankoré: The Pride of Mansa Musa, a game for 1-4 players from designers Mandela Fernandez-Grandon and Fabio Lopiano.


The game plays in 150-180 minutes and features the following setting:

In Sankoré: The Pride of Mansa Musa, a dynamic, interactive, mid-weight Eurogame, players manage the prestigious University of Sankoré in 14th-century Timbuktu, tasked by the emperor Mansa Musa with spreading knowledge throughout West Africa, even as the great university is raised around them.

By enrolling and graduating your pupils, teaching classes, adding to your curriculum, and filling the great library with books, you will advance knowledge in four main disciplines: theology, law, mathematics, and astronomy. Once construction of the university is complete, the value that the empire places on each discipline will dramatically affect how you score the knowledge you have passed on.

In a dedicated solo mode, you compete against the "Distinguished Scholar", a passionate and ambitious academic controlled by an elegant automated system. They may not be as nimble as you, but they are focused and driven and will strive to produce the best possible students.

Can you navigate the corridors of academic competition and bring renown to Mansa Musa's prized university?

It's unclear from the description whether the design shares anything with Merv: The Heart of the Silk Road, a 2020 Lopiano design from Osprey Games, but the graphics in both titles by Ian O'Toole are striking and invite speculation, both for this title and future ones.

Read more »

Publisher: Atelier Clandestin

Rather than treasure, adventurers often come across uncanny items of little monetary value but great sentimental value. Find out what those may be with the help of this generator!

This product contains:

• 1 table for the type of trinket (small sculpture, natural item, fashion jewelry, other),
• 3 tables to generate small sculptures (condition, material, shape),
• 2 tables for small natural items (items, container),
• 2 tables for large natural items (items, finish),
• 8 tables to create fashion jewelry (type, bracelet/necklace, circlet, earrings, ring, beads, charms, pendants),
• 100 other trinkets,
• 6 miscellaneous tables to go into further detail (animals, gemstones, metals, rocks, tableware, woods).

It is in A5 format and has a black and white cover page.

Price: $1.25 Read more »

Publisher: WHITEFRANK

LIMITATIONS is a small document listing all Limitations currently in use in FASERIPopedia its associated sourcebooks and the current TIDAL WAVE PRODUCTIONS licensed sourcebooks and new sourcebooks not yet complete.

This small document can be printed out for personal use as needed. All FASERIPopedia Limitations are included in the alphabetical list in this product as well as quite a few new ones, many of them from the as yet unpublished EVIL sourcebook.

When enough new Limitations have been discovered in play this document will be updated with them.

This document is mainly for "basic" FASERIPopedia users who just want more enumerated Limitations and aren't as interested in all the other sourcebooks. 🙂

Price: $0.00 Read more »

Publisher: Paizo

Tasks & Deeds: 4 - Safehouse Scouting

Introducing a series of small format Pathfinder Second Edition encounters, Tasks & Deeds are simple encounter scenarios suitable for a single session. Each release uses a map from the Paizo Pathfinder Flip-Mat line of products (available from the Paizo website) and includes an adventure background, location information, combat encounters including stat blocks, and a conclusion.

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Safehouse Scouting is suitable for a party of 4 players with a party level of 3.

• Simple and easy to run combat based encounter.
• The encounter takes place within an abandoned village that has been taken over by zombies.
• Location is based in the lands of Ravounel and involves working with a group of Firebrands, the Silver Ravens.
• Simple application of the Weak and Elite creature rulesets allows the GM to scale the encounter.

NOTE: The encounter has been designed around Paizo's Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Ghost Town (PZO30117) map, available on the Paizo storefront or at your local gaming store. The encounter also utilises Lost Omens: Firebrands reference material.

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Price: $2.50 Read more »

Publisher: Sean vas Terra

To make in-person character creation easier and faster in the Cypher System, this set of handouts collects the Descriptors and Foci onto single-page printable handouts.

The Descriptors are two to a page and include the full text of their features and intial links to the starting adventure.

The abilities for each foci are printed in full and fit onto a single page, so you only ever need to reference the one handout to know what your Focus provides from tier 1 to 6. Checkboxes are provided for each ability so that players can check off the abilities as they gain them.

Made using the Cypher System SRD.

Features the Atkinson Hyperlegible font for enhanced accessibility.

Price: $0.99 Read more »

Publisher: Dime Novel Adventures

Dime Novel Adventures May 2022: Temple of the Horse is the fifth in the Zodiac Series. In this One-Shot, the party will traverse the treacherous Temple of the Horse to retrieve a stolen Stone of Rebirth. This adventure can also serve as a primer Dime Novel Advenure's Great Game series.

Price: $1.00 Read more »

Publisher: Dime Novel Adventures

Dime Novel Adventures April 2022: Temple of the Serpent is the fourth in the Zodiac Series. In this One-Shot, the party will traverse the treacherous Temple of the Serpent to retrieve a stolen Stone of Rebirth. Througout this adventure the party will solve puzzles, avoid traps, and chase the Serpent Guardian throughout its lair.

Price: $1.00 Read more »

Publisher: Goraan’s Goods

A fighter subclass that taunts enemies and empowers themselves and their allie, compatible with 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons!

Price: $1.00 Read more »

Publisher: Goraan’s Goods

A barbarian subclass that wields the power of winter to slow, freeze, and launch icicles, compatible with 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons!

Price: $1.00 Read more »

Publisher: Logical Fantasy Gaming

The Wizard Player Character Pack is a supplemental resource for Logical Fantasy Gaming.

-This packet includes the full Wizard Class and quick access to everything you need to know about how to cast spells in LFG. It comes with a full list of spell-casting feats and summaries of skills frequently used by Wizard characters.

-The packet also includes a set of ready-to-play level 1 Wizard starter equipment, our Caster Character Sheet, and the supplemental Spellbook Sheet to keep track of the spells available to you on your adventures. Enjoy!

Price: $1.00 Read more »

Welcome to the GnomeCast, the Gnome Stew’s tabletop gaming advice podcast. Here we talk with the other gnomes about gaming things to avoid becoming part of the stew. So I guess we’d better be good.

Today we have myself, Ang, along with JT and Senda and today we’re going to talk about introducing new players to roleplaying games.

Read more »

In the days of yore (e.g.: prior to my introduction to the Internet in 1994), I’d spend countless hours at the library doing world research for RPGs and game design and generally educating myself. Sure, there were some “crossover years” where I tried to do research on the Internet, but eventually found myself at the library again. This was in the nascent days of the Internet where search engines were rudimentary, Wikipedia didn’t exist, Encyclopedia Britannica wasn’t online yet, and the billions of resources at our modern fingertips had not been imagined yet, let alone created.

Even though we have those billions of resources ready for access from the comfort of our home, I’m going to encourage you to head off to your local library for a field trip. Make a day of it. Plan for hours and hours of wandering the stacks, making piles of books, and delving into the wonderful, musty smell of old tomes. If you happened to have a family or partner, take them with you and cut them loose in the library. Maybe even take your gaming group with you and see what they can discover.

Dewey Decimal System

Libraries organize their collections according to the Dewey Decimal Systems. Books are classified using numbers that range from 000 (Computer science, information, and general works) through 999 (History of other areas; extraterrestrial worlds). There are sub-categories in each of the 10 major classes of books, and even more sub-sub-categories below those.

It’s lots to take in and ingest. If you have a good library, there are going to be tens of thousands of volumes. If you have a great library, you might even get upwards of a million (or more!) books to crack open and learn from.

It’s also difficult to know where to start. That’s where the card catalog comes into play.

Card Catalog

In my heady days of almost living in the library, I knew the card catalog system inside and out. You could search by author, topic, or book title in the highly organized physical cards that lived in really long drawers. You had to write down the Dewey Decimal System classification number and sub-category information on these little slips of paper using pencils like you find at mini-golf locations. (Author note: I can smell the paper and wood/graphite in my memories as I describe this.)

At modern libraries, the bulky, hard-to-update, sometimes missing cards have been replaced by computerized terminals that allow more precise searching. They allow searching by all the different criteria books can be organized under, and a good system will even provide related material. This might allow you to find resources you’d never thought about searching for.

Focused Areas

Even with the computerized systems, it’s good to come in with a focus. If you type “history” into the search, you’re probably not going to find anything directly useful. Come into the library with a general world or setting concept. Let’s give it a try on my local library system.

Let’s say I’d like to emulate the culture, society, holidays, religions, and other aspects of ancient Korea. I hit my local library’s web site and enter “ancient korea” under the catalog search. Two books about modern events related to Korea show up. Fail.

I shift gears to search for “korea history.” This brings up lots of noise to the signal that I’m looking for. Quite a few items on the Korean War, North Korea, various battles of the Korean War, K-Pop, and so on.

Shifting again to the advanced search, I enter “korea history” in the “search for” field and then I enter “north” in the “exclude field.” Apparently there is a whole series of graphic novels fictionalizing Korean history for young children. This dominated my search results, so I used some filters to get down to a single book that is 256 pages long that covers the “entirety” of Korean history. Somehow, I think Korea has a deeper, richer history than what can be captured in a single tome.

This example has been, quite frankly, a failure, but this is where your local, friendly librarian can come into play.

Personal Assistance

I’m not a librarian, but I know a handful relatively well. They’ll take tall and proud about the stories where they helped a library patron find some strange, obscure, or downright hidden resource for the patron’s research efforts. They live for this. They love these moments.

Since my online searching failed to find any great resources for “ancient korean history,” I’d next turn to my flesh-and-blood librarian to help me out. I didn’t do it in this case, but every time I’ve approached a librarian for assistance, they’ve come through with amazing results.

Comfort of Home

Most library districts also expose their book search functionality over the Internet. This allows you to dig into concepts, ideas, books, and thoughts from the comfort of your own home. You can also leverage the “hold” system where a librarian will generously pull the book(s) you desire and hold them for you for pickup at a later time. Then you can take the books home and really delve in.

Gems in the Rough

Using the “similar books” references in the online catalog search can also expand your reading selections. I tried that with my above example for Korean history, but since the offerings from my local library district were so poor, the references were equally poor. However, if I do a search for “german history” the referrals to other books is glorious in nature.

You might also find resources and other materials (like DVDs, documentaries, CDs, audiobooks, ebooks, and more) that you might have never considered in your search for information.

Using the Books

Once you have the materials in hand, you’re going to be as overwhelmed as when you started looking for the books. That’s okay. Just take a breather. Make a list on your own of various things you’d like to learn about the part of the world or culture that you chose. Here’s a starter list for you:

• Geography (including maps)
• Social Hierarchies
• Major Cities
• Minor Cities
• Important Locations
• Food/Diet
• Industries
• Imports
• Exports
• Wars (either being invaded or invading others)
• Rebellions
• Other Important Events
• Important Political Leaders
• Important Influencers
• Education
• Religious Beliefs
• Important Religious Leaders
• Strange Laws
• Money System
• Clothing

Once you have your list, focus on one element at a time. Fictional stories are usually meant to be read from front to back without deviation. Non-Fiction books, however, are meant to be read scattershot. Read chapter 11, then 8, then 47, then 12, and so on.

As you’re doing a deep dive into the element of your choice, make notes. The notes are like your session prep for an RPG. Write down what you think you might not remember. Jot brief notes on ideas that are clear to you to remind of you of those ideas. There’s no need to transcribe the book. Just make sure you can ingest and recall what you’re going through.

Once you have your notes, ideas, thoughts, and concepts all together, then you can start playing with them. Change the historical events, change the industries, change the food, change the money system, and so on. Just be aware that every change you make will have a ripple effect that cascades into other areas. If you read that a region produces lots of beef, but you change the diet to vegetarian, then you’ll probably have to do something with all that beef, either as an export or eliminate it from the industry section.

Be Respectful

By using a real world basis for your fictional settings, you can provide a true “lived in” feel for your players. This is a great thing, but please be respectful of the source culture. You have two options here. You can “file the serial numbers off” and make your creation completely unrecognizable as being soured from a real world culture. If you’re going to this extreme, then you’re probably better off just making up things from whole cloth.

If you’re going to leave glimmers and aspects of the original culture intact for the players to recognize, do your best to not abuse or abscond with in a negative way something from the culture or region that you’ve researched. Plenty of harm has already been done to various peoples around the world via poorly worded RPG products. Even if you’re going to only use your efforts in a home game, I urge you to do your best to avoid abusing existing (or past) cultures for the sake of enjoyment.

Conclusion

Hit that library! Have fun! Do some research and take some notes. Make sure you take a good notebook (or a well-charged electronic note-taking device). Don’t forget to take at least two pens with you in case one gives out on you. I also recommend a small pencil bag that contains different colored pens/pencils and maybe some highlighters. Just don’t write in the books belonging to the library, please.

I hope you enjoy your journey into the wonderful world of researching topics in person instead of just online.

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Before I ever had a chance run a game of Dungeons & Dragons, after acquiring my sister’s copy of the 1981 Basic Set, I received my very own copy of the 1983 version of the D&D Expert Set. The Expert Set is what introduces wilderness travel as a key aspect of the D&D experience, and wilderness travel felt very important to my D&D experience from that point forward. This was only reinforced by acquiring the Wilderness Survival Guide as soon as I started playing AD&D, and interestingly, by the clear plastic overlays packaged with the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting boxed set in 1987.

All of this focus on overland travel reinforced to me that traveling between locations was almost as important to D&D as what existed at those locations. I was amazed at the concept of being able to determine who or what was on the road between locations, and even the exact weather for each day of the trip. The problem was, the novelty of knowing exactly what was going on each day wore off quickly. At the very least, I was having more fun if I could roll all of those weather rolls and random encounters as part of my prep, so I could streamline the descriptions and emphasize fun set pieces. But the PCs could easily do things that could obviate all of that prep work.

Modern D&D hasn’t done a lot to address this paradigm. The biggest change in D&D 5e, oddly, was in the Dungeon Master’s Screen–Wilderness Kit, which consolidated rules that appeared across different relevant chapters, as well as introducing the Journey Cycle, an option that explicitly told the DM to use a “per day” cycle for short trips, and a “per week” cycle for longer journeys, effectively telling DMs not to worry about the day to day details if your PCs are traveling halfway across Faerun. But only if you picked up the Wilderness Kit.

Expanding our look at D&D 5e into third-party SRD releases, if there is one thing you would expect in a game based on Middle-earth, it would be a focus on travel. The One Ring RPG had a Journey phase, but that was built into the game from the beginning. When Cubicle 7 published Adventures in Middle-earth, a 5e adaptation of The One Ring, it created Journey rules that married the spirit of The One Ring’s Journey rules with the mechanics of the 5e SRD. Uncharted Journeys is Cubicle 7’s product that adapts the Journey rules, not just to the mechanics of the 5e SRD, but to all of the assumptions of a “standard” D&D setting, rather than a setting with the same assumptions of Middle-earth.

Disclaimer

I purchased my copy of Uncharted Journeys from the Cubicle 7 website, and did not receive a review copy. I have not had the opportunity to use the rules in this product, but I did adapt a version of the Journey rules present in Adventures in Middle-earth for use in a Storm King’s Thunder game that I ran.

Uncharted Journeys

Writing and Design: Emmet Byrne, Alex Cahill, Dominic McDowall, Josh Corcoran, Cody Faulk Editing: Calum Collins, Bryce Johnston, Christopher Walz
Additional Writing: David F Chapman, Walt Ciechanowski, Chris Colston, Zak Dale Clutterbuck, Eleanor Hingley, Elaine Lithgow, TS Luikart, Jessica Marcrum, Pádraig Murphy, Ceíre O’Donoghue, Ross Parkinson, Andrew Peregrine, Jacob Rodgers, Shu Qing Tan, Sam Taylor, Graham Tugwell Editing: Calum Collins, Phoebe Hedges, Brian Johnson, Roz Leahy, Christopher Walz
Production and Development: Emmet Byrne, Alex Cahill, Josh Corcoran Cover: Antonio De Luca
Illustration: Mauro Alocci, Nicola Angius, Carol Azevedo, Alberto Besi, Giuditta Betti, Federica Costantini, Antonio De Luca, Emanuele Desiati, Mirko Failoni, Runesael Flynn, Mariusz Gandzel, Michele Giorgi, Daniela Giubellini, Eve Koutsoukou, Dániel Kovács, Roman Kuteynikov, Vincent Laïk, Christine Leone, Andrea Tentori Montalto, Clara-Marie Morin, Sam Manley, JG O’Donohue, Michele Parisi, Giulio Perozziello, Martin Sobr, Eveline Skibrek, Darko Stojanovic, Kim Van Deun, Mike Wolmarans
Graphic Design and Layout: Emmet Byrne, Diana Grigorescu, Rory McCormack
Proofreading: Alex Cahill, Josh Corcoran, Tim Cox

Format

This review is based on the PDF of Uncharted Journeys. The PDF is currently only available with the preorder for the physical version of Uncharted Journeys, with the physical version arriving in Quarter 3 of 2023. The PDF itself is 294 pages long. This includes a credits page, a half-page table of contents, two pages of special thanks, a redesigned 5e character sheet with room to record the character’s Journey role, a Journey Chronicle with places to track the elements of the current Journey, a full page Cubicle 7 ad, and a full page OGL statement.

The book is laid out in a two-column format, with lots of sidebars and tables. The book is full color, and includes a copious amount of half and quarter-page artwork. A particularly fun bit of thematic art direction is that there are two statues that appear as the borders of facing pages throughout the book. However, these statues have different details based on the type of terrain being detailed in that part of the book. For example, they are spikey, dark red, and surrounded by flames in the Hellscapes chapter, but appear more like angelic cemetery statues in the Haunted Lands chapter.

Layout

The book is organized into the following sections:

• Roles
• Journey Rules
• People Along the Way
• Ancient Ruins
• Encounters

The Encounters section, in particular, has a lot of subdivisions, going into many encounter types as well as encounter locations.

How Does This Work?

Journeys are divided into broad categories based on how long they take to resolve. These are given example distances in miles and travel times, but there are several sections of the book that reinforce that these are general guidelines, not hard and fast requirements. All Journeys are Short, Medium, Long, or Very Long. A short Journey may be one that takes 15 to 150 miles or two days to a week to complete, while a very long Journey is a trip of more than a thousand miles or one that might take two or more months.

Journeys have a difficulty rating. The base difficulty is 10, modified by weather, terrain, and other circumstances. This is the difficulty used for any check referenced in the resolutions later on in the book. The length of the journey sets the number of encounters that will happen, from 1 to 4. But wait . . . there are a few instances that can increase or decrease the number of encounters in the Journey.

The encounter type is rolled individually, and includes the following themes:

• A Chance Meeting (convey information)
• Hidden Reserves (add or remove Inspiration or Exhaustion)
• A Bump in the Road (avoiding Exhaustion)
• Needing Assistance (add Inspiration, lose Supply Dice)
• Danger Afoot (a hostile encounter that starts with the PCs or NPCs acting with surprise)
• Natural Wonders (advantage or disadvantage on checks made in other encounters)
• Monster Hunt (avoiding or surprising a monstrous encounter)
• A Place to Rest (gain a long rest, a short rest, or pick up a level of Exhaustion)
• Old Memories (add or subtract an additional die when resolving other encounters)
• A Dark Place (regain hit dice or lose hit dice)
• Deadly Fight (hostile creatures looking for a fight)
• Fateful Encounters (introduce contacts and impart information)

The themes on this list touch on the three pillars of D&D, roleplaying, exploration, and combat. It’s also worth remembering that some of these encounter types involve getting something extra if you engage with the environment, for example, whenever an option in the rules mentions that an additional encounter may happen during the Journey. This isn’t always going to be something that involves negative consequences (but it might).

Characters can abandon a Journey, so if your players decide that they aren’t going to travel all the way from Waterdeep to Silverymoon in one go, there is a way to adjudicate this change of plans. That said, abandoning a Journey early can involve picking up a level of exhaustion as well as potentially losing hit dice.

The Arrival chart determines how the PCs arrive at their destination. There may be dangerous opponents waiting for the PCs at their destination, looming threats the PCs can detect and avoid, or they arrive at their destination able to take either a short or long rest before the action continues.

The above is an important aspect of the Journey rules to note. You can’t take as many short rests as you like during a Journey, and you can’t take a long rest at all unless you get a particularly favorable result from one of the encounter types. This is an understandable rule to add to the Journey rules, because if you don’t outright kill a party member or inflict an ongoing condition on them during an encounter, long rests wipe out most of the consequences of an encounter in the standard rules. That said, getting that buy-in for suspending the way short and long rests work is important, and ultimately was the biggest problem I had when I adapted the Adventures in Middle-earth rules to my Storm King’s Thunder game. We’ll get back to how the book attempts to bridge the gap toward that buy-in soon.

At the end of the Journey rules, we have rewards, something that the PCs may get for surviving the Journey they just finished. These are broken down by Narrative Rewards, Short-Term Rewards, and XP. Narrative rewards usually take the form of new contacts, while short-term rewards involve getting inspiration or bonus dice they can use on upcoming checks. The XP chart awards XP based on the overall difficulty of the Journey, multiplied by the number of encounters on the trip. While I’m glad to see an additional XP table in the game, I’m not sure how well these XP awards scale, in either direction. As an example, the chart ranges from 100 XP for a Journey with a DC of 11, to 25,000 XP for a Journey with a DC higher than 30. There are a lot of dials beyond just the DC of the Journey, which means you could have low level PCs that get knocked around hard with a DC of 30, who still survive, and then get a staggering amount of XP.

Roles and Class Interaction

The Journey system is predicated on having four roles. If you don’t have one PC for each role, someone can double up on a role, but the PC will be making their checks at disadvantage. If you have more PCs than roles, you can have more than one person in a role, which will usually allow checks for that role to be made with advantage. Each of the roles has a list of skills they can choose from when making the group skill check for resolving the Journey. These are:

• Leader
  • Charisma (Persuasion)
  • Wisdom (Insight)
  • Charisma (Performance)
• Outrider
  • Wisdom (Survival)
  • Intelligence (Nature)
  • Cartographer’s Tools
• Quartermaster
  • Constitution (Athletics)
  • Blacksmith’s Tools
  • Leatherworker’s Tools
  • Cook’s Utensils
  • Brewer’s Supplies
• Sentry
  • Wisdom (Perception)
  • Dexterity (Stealth)
  • Disguise Kit

Each one of these ability checks allows the character to explain how they contributed to the expedition in a different way, which can be unique depending on who adopts the role. Depending on how well the party succeeds, they might end up with anywhere from one fewer encounter to two additional encounters.

In addition to being the party member responsible for making one of the checks to resolve the Journey, each one of the roles has a special ability that functions in context of the Journey. The leader can grant a party member a reroll on a save or an ability check once per party member per Journey. The Outrider can have another dice rolled for an encounter and pick the one they would rather have occur based on the title of the encounter (A Chance Meeting, Hidden Reserves, etc.). The Quartermaster gains Supply Dice that they can spend as a reaction to add to an ally’s ability checks, and the Sentry has Focus Dice they can spend in a similar manner to add to saves or initiative checks.

You may be asking, what about those classes or backgrounds that have “absolutes” that interact with traveling cross country? Because it’s the individual encounters that determine if a character gets lost, a class ability doesn’t obviate the character negating a consequence. Characters that can always find food may count has helping provision the party (see below), and that may be useful for setting the DC of the Journey, but it doesn’t remove potential consequences, either.

Now, let’s talk about pushback and buy-in. The Adventures in Middle-earth version of the Journey rules didn’t allow for short or long rests, unless they were a reward from successfully resolving an encounter. While there are still some additional rests bestowed by encounter resolution in this version of the Journey system, this updated version allows the PCs to take one short rest, in exchange for an additional encounter. They can also spend hit dice to recover special abilities.

While there are specific examples given for all of the SRD classes, in general, regaining a single use of an ability that recharges on a short rest costs a hit die, while recovering a single use of a class ability that recharges on a long rest costs two hit dice. This same structure can be applied to subclass or species abilities in addition to class abilities. The most expensive hit dice expenditure, however, is the recovery of spell slots, which cost one hit die per spell level of the spell.

This recovery of class abilities using a finite resource is essentially an olive branch. The Adventures in Middle-earth rules didn’t really account for how many toys a class has at their disposal, and how limiting it might be to not have a means of recovering those toys. This allows PCs to be a bit freer with a wider range of abilities in the resolution of encounters, while still maintaining the consequences of the events on the trail.

PCs can each make a single preparation before the Journey starts, which can range from charting a course, consulting omens, getting mounts or beasts of burden, procuring supplies, or studying the weather. These different preparations can grant specific bonuses or extra benefits during the Journey, or they can reduce the overall difficulty of the Journey itself. In some cases, the form of preparation has a built in quick resolution for how the PC wants to engage with that preparatory work. For example, if you have someone in your group particularly good at acquiring goods without paying for them, they might attempt a Slight of Hand or Stealth check when Procuring Supplies, Beasts of Burden, or Mounts.

Resolving Encounters

Each of the encounter types has a broad explanation of what should happen in those encounters. There are two ways to resolve these encounters. One is a more standardized resolution, where a character in a particular role is setting the scope of the encounter, and the party rolls a group check to resolve the encounter.

There is still some degree of variability in this form of resolution. For example, a Danger Afoot result determines if the PCs can act with surprise when a fight starts, or if the enemy can act with surprise against the PCs, but what the PCs encounter still needs to be determined.

The second form of resolution is to read one of the prompts that is given in the book under the various locations, and to roleplay out the situation. These scenes are long paragraphs that may have a suggested check and a suggested reward, but don’t include the two-step resolution of the Role character making an overall check, followed by a group check.

Using the more mechanical resolution doesn’t remove roleplay from the situation, but it does mean that there will always be a specific means of resolving that type of encounter, which the DM and the players can work together to detail. Using the prompts creates a more detailed opening scene that may provide enough details that PCs will find ways to resolve the encounter that aren’t as obvious.

The Details

While extensive, the above rules don’t take up that much of the book. So what makes up the majority of the page count? This book provides a lot of examples to plug into encounters in different ways.

There are tables for determining the time of day and location of an encounter, as well as the species, age, demeanor, and purpose of an NPC. There are also several bullet points to walk a DM through information they may wish to have ready for an encounter.

There is a section on ancient ruins that allows you to generate locations with charts for who built it, how old the ruin is, what the ruin’s purpose was, what it looks like now, and how it might have been repurposed. The list of who built the ruin runs the gamut from typical PC species, to wizardly conclaves, evil cults, giants, fey, undead, fiends, celestials, or aberrations. That’s going to affect how old the ruin is, and may make it more or less likely to be used for different purposes on the later charts in this section.

But by far the most extensive section involves the encounter prompts for different types of terrain. These are divided up into tables of ten different events underneath the categories of encounters given above. For example, for each of these terrain types, there is a section on A Chance Meeting which includes ten different detailed paragraphs of an encounter under that theme, for that location. That means each one of these locations has 120 example encounters. The different locations in the book include:

• Coasts
• Deserts
• Farmlands
• Forests
• Frontiers
• Grasslands
• Great Cities
• Haunted Lands
• Hellscapes
• Jungles
• Lands of the Fae
• Mountains
• Open Waters
• Underground
• War Torn Lands
• Wild Magic Lands

In addition to the example encounters, each section has a table of example weather, flora and fauna, local inhabitants, points of interest, and possible reasons to travel through that location.

Something that occurred to me as I was reading through all of these different locations is that many of these locations, especially some of the more fantastic ones, correspond with some of the official WotC adventures that have been released, giving you some built in encounter examples for Journeys using those adventures.

For example, Coasts and Open Waters work well with Ghost of Saltmarsh, Haunted Lands provides some solid Ravenloft support, Great Cities dovetails well with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the opening sections of Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, and Hellscapes works well for the Avernus portion of that adventure. Underground provides encounters for the many, many days of travel in Out of the Abyss, Lands of the Fae is a good companion to The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and War-Torn Lands provides a lot that can be used for traveling through the war-torn sections of Ansalon in Dragonlance Shadow of the Dragon Queen.

Positive Elements

 While I personally am a big fan of the Journey system, the fact that it’s useful beyond its implementation of that mechanic, by providing so many encounter ideas and randomized details, is a great draw. 

There is so much material in this book, it’s going to be hard not to find something useful even if you don’t use the Journey system exactly as written. As written, it greatly expands instances where the PCs can use skills to make an impact on the story of the game. I appreciate that the abstraction doesn’t feel too abstract, but is still loose enough that it allows for some workarounds when compared to the absolutes presented in some of the classes and backgrounds. Examples of weather for the different terrain types do what all of those random weather charts from AD&D didn’t do for me–provide me with context for an encounter.

Considerations

While this modification to the Journey system does do a lot to address allowing players to use and replenish their class abilities, the spell slot recovery cost, in particular, is really harsh. While the book provides some adaptations for using the rules for naval travel, the suggestion to use them for traversing a large city leave a lot to be desired, because many of the options in the Journey system, for example, preparation, don’t work if you try to change the scale of Journeys to minutes through hours.

Strongly Recommended–This product is exceptional, and may contain content that would interest you even if the game or genre covered is outside of your normal interests.

It is going to be really easy to recommend this product to anyone that plays D&D and is looking for a whole lot of broadly useful encounters. While I personally am a big fan of the Journey system, the fact that it’s useful beyond its implementation of that mechanic, by providing so many encounter ideas and randomized details, is a great draw. In fact, there are a lot of fantasy games where all of these examples and details might be useful.

What are some of your favorite ways for handling travel in your games? How do you make it feel important, without having the game grind to a halt? What do you do to streamline random encounters into meaningful narrative elements? We want to hear from you in the comments below!

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If you haven’t been living under a rock, you have probably heard about ChatGPT, the new(ish) AI chat bot released in late 2022. You can access ChatGPT for free here, though you do have to make an account.

I recently experimented with ChatGPT as a means of helping game prep and here are some of the results:

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Welcome to the GnomeCast, the Gnome Stew’s tabletop gaming advice podcast. Here we talk with the other gnomes about gaming things to avoid becoming part of the stew. So I guess we’d better be good.

Today we have myself, Ang, along with Jared and JT. Today we’re going to talk about how one bad player can make you change how you GM, in both good and bad ways.

CONTENT WARNING: There is a conversation about a child predator and potential grooming within this episode. If that’s a trigger for you this might be one you may want to skip.

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This past week I managed to try out a game I’ve been looking forward to play for a long time: Mork Borg. It was a one-shot with a group of 5 friends, only one of which having played with me before (and only once). Mork Borg, for those who don’t know, is very different from your usual fantasy roleplaying games, as it relies much more on horror and the grotesque, the player characters die extremely easily, and is mostly made for dungeon crawling. People looking to play an elf, and having it live for numerous sessions, ending up a hero might not get what they are looking for, and that should be addressed before you start playing.

Game theme,  Simplicity, Mortality

I believe these three concepts go excellent together when setting expectations, and should be the very first thing you communicate your players. Bringing a cyborg with a machine gun to a detective game in the 60s doesn’t make much sense (in most cases). That’s why the game theme must be stated first-hand. Usually when pointing out which game you are playing it’s not that difficult to state the theme. However, it might also be important to indicate if you are going for more of a goofy experience at the table or you intend it to be very serious.

Once the players know which game they are playing, make sure they know if it is more of a complex rule system, or one that barely has rules. Players need to know what they are getting into, and some people may not enjoy the aspect of bringing a calculator to the game to know how much money their character took from an attack. This, additionally, is tied to knowing how punishing the game might be with the players. OGL games such as Mork Borg are based on the first D&D editions, which were much deadlier than the newer editions. If there is a higher chance the player character doesn’t survive the session, players should know about this, so they don’t end up griefing the player character with 8 pages of backstory for months!

Session 0

One of the main ways to set expectations straight in any game you are planning to run is having a session 0. This doesn’t make much sense if you only intend to run a one-shot, but some sort of session 0-style-minutes before you start can work as well for that. You need to indicate the game theme, simplicity, mortality, as stated above, but it is also vital to discuss what everyone wants to get out of the game. I’ve suffered from not indicating enough that I was about to run a city-based adventure in which PCs are not expected to leave at any time, only for them to want to run away from it the first chance they have. It is also an excellent time to state if you want the game to be more or less horror-themed, filled with political intrigue, gory combat, or something  more similar to a slice-of-life movie. Once everyone at the table have the same expectations of the game, I’ve started to consider extremely important to talk about the safety tools at the table:

Safety Tools

Safety Tools have started to gain a lot more track in these past years, and for a good reason! Many people think of them as a way to limit the game you are playing. This couldn’t be further from the truth in my opinion. While people use it to state they are uncomfortable with and don’t want to see anything close to it at the table, they are also indicating which things they have no problem for you as a GM to toy with. One great way to make sure of this is to use the Safety Toolkit from MCDM. Limits are stated from the very beginning, and that way everyone can better expect what the game is going to be about. If you are a bit short on time, I find the Lines and Veils system to be a great replacement. In both of these methods, if something is not contemplated it must be talked to the GM just in case, for them to make the necessary changes to the game if needed be. Lastly, as a last resort, I always make sure to add in the X Card. While this is more of a way to put a stop to a moment a player don’t want to play in the table, and it is not to set expectations in advance, a GM must then talk about the situation with the player if they feel comfortable with that, and adjust the game to set the new expectations. It’s more of an emergency button that has everyone feel safe just by knowing it is there. You can learn more about the X Card and Lines and Veils in the Safety Toolkit linked above.

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Conclusion

Any time you want to run a game you will need to make sure that expectations are well forwarded to all players, and that all players inform the GM what they want out of the game. Using the tools and methods indicated above, you are to get a great game out of whatever you get to play.

How do you usually indicate your players the style of game you intend to run? Do you make use of methods that aren’t indicated here to set expectations? Make sure to let us all know in the comments below!

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If you follow my reviews, it’s probably fairly evident that I like modern urban fantasy, especially when it comes to the monster-hunting aspect of the genre. There is another aspect of modern urban fantasy that often seizes my imagination, as well, and that’s stories about how gods and demigods interact with modern life.

Today we’re going to take a look at the theme, viewed through the lens of a Powered by the Apocalypse game. We’re going to dive into Demigods.

Disclaimer

I helped to crowdfund this game, and I have run this game in different phases of pre-release. I was not provided a preview copy of this game for review.

 Demigods

Created by Jason Mills
Cover and Interior Art by Minerva Fox
Character Art Amelia Vidal
Art Direction Adam West
Writing Jason Mills
Copy Editing & Developmental Editing Lauren McManamon
Layout Kurt Potts
Safety Tools Kate Bullock
Project Management Christopher Grey
Contributors Danielle DeLisle, Christopher Grey, Alastor Guzman, J. Holtham, Aabria Iyengar, Sam Saltiel, Pooja Sharma, Samantha Terry, Camdon Wright

Bibliographic References

This review is based on the PDF version of Demigods. The PDF is 189 pages long, including a credits page, a table of contents, a page of acknowledgments, and 10+ pages of artwork in an appendix, showcasing artwork that didn’t make it into the rules proper. Additionally, the PDF version comes with the playbooks, basic moves, and example scenarios all in their own PDFs.

The book itself is in a single-column layout, with gold and blue borders, and full-color interior art. The formatting is clear and easy to follow, and is one of the better-looking RPG books that I have seen. The artwork, which largely features the iconic characters representing the individual playbooks, is wonderful. The chapter breaks contain full-page black and gold artwork inspired by tarot cards.

On the Inside

The book is divided into the following sections:

• What is Demigods
• The World of Demigods
• How to Play
• Creation’s Forge
• Basic Moves
• Gifts
• The Playbooks
• The Herald
• Love Letters
• The Bestiary
• Scenarios

The Setting?

The game takes place in the modern world, with only a few assumptions that inform the general gameplay, allowing individual tables to customize as they see fit. The gods need mortals to believe in them, not know they exist because mortal imagination is where magic comes from. Some gods or families of gods that have few modern followers are a little more likely to still be worshiped in the modern day.

Gods can’t stay on Earth for too long, or they start to warp reality around themselves, so they often have to work through demigods. Too many demigods in one place also start to warp reality, but the PCs have a special bond that allows them to work together without reality collapsing under the weight of their combined presence. The PCs will have a Spindle, a special place that drew all of them together, which is part of their ability to work together.

There are also two modern “pantheons” that have arisen from the (sometimes accidental) worship of mortals, the Science Pantheon, and the Religion of Media. The Science Patheon is composed of a number of gods that embody things like Physics or Chemistry, and who are chagrined that they exist at all, because their existence comes from the belief of humans that science works a certain way, rather than an understanding of actual scientific principles. Media is a monotheistic religion, but Media is served by Celebrants who are aspects of Media that can shift and change over time.

The crew of Demigods will generally have some gods that are nudging them towards making sure the world keeps working the way it should be working, and will likely have a deity that they may not be on particularly good terms with.

I’m going to go ahead and say here that I’ve been amused by the concept of the Science Pantheon from the first time I read these rules, and sadly, the concept that lots of people believe things about science that have nothing to do with actual scientific rigor has only gotten more evident.

Playing and Playbooks

In case you haven’t seen a Powered by the Apocalypse game before, only players roll dice in the game. When a player describes their character doing something that matches one of the moves described in the rules, the player will roll to see what happens. Players roll 2d6 + an attribute. Sometimes they will have Fate’s Favor (roll 3d6, take the best two), or Fate’s Disfavor (roll 3d6 and take the worst two):

• 6- (a significant complication happens)
• 7-9 (a partial success, or success with a complication)
• 10+ (a success without complications)
• 13+ (only unlocked by certain advancements–an exceptionally successful move)

Characters have gifts, items granted to them by divine patrons, which may just give them narrative permission to do certain things, or they may interact with other rules to provide a greater effect (like rolling with Fate’s Favor under certain circumstances, or adding or subtracting harm in combat). The playbooks available to the players include:

• The Arcane
• The Artisan
• The Celestial
• The Elemental
• The Muse
• The Reaper
• The Trickster
• The Verdant
• The Warrior

All of the playbooks also have a Death Move and an Ascendence Move. The Death Move is what the character can do to interact with the mortal world while they are dead, since they only die permanently if nobody “fixes” their condition before 28 days have passed. The Ascendence Move is a big narrative thing that they can declare, but once they do it three times, they have become fully divine, and leave the mortal plane (and play).

Threads are both a player currency for doing things like altering a scene, avoiding harm, or rolling with Fate’s Favor, and the currency you spend to buy advancements for your character. You can gain a thread whenever you roll doubles, and there are also four “once per session” triggers that can also grant a thread, which varies based on the playbook involved.

I have fully enjoyed games that use the same currency for advancement and for modifying aspects of the game in play, but I don’t think I have ever enjoyed those games because they use a dual-use currency. I always have a hard time feeling like the meta-choice between advancing a character and changing what happens in a scene isn’t an interesting choice for the story of the game and just kind of increases player stress.

Many aspects of the playbooks are discussed in terms of how the rules work surrounding those playbooks, but the playbooks do not appear in a generally usable form or template in the book. I know this is a tug-of-war in PbtA game design. They are freely available as downloads, so this isn’t an impediment to running the game, but since inclusion or exclusion has been the topic of discussion in the past, I wanted to mention it here.

The Herald and Running Games

One thing I really appreciate about Demigods is that it spends a good amount of its word count on discussions of safety. Not just general best practices, like lines and veils or active safety and calibration tools, but also addressing the care that needs to be taken when using elements of other cultures, religions, and the aspects of ancient folklore that involve things like the lack of consent by godly beings, as well as their abuse of authority.

In addition to presenting the familiar game facilitator’s elements in a PbtA game, in this case, the Herald’s Agenda (the philosophy of what the game should be doing), and the Herald’s Principals (how to go about reinforcing that philosophy), there are some additional tools. Some of these include:

• Love Letters
• Sample Spindles
• The Bestiary
• Scenarios

Love letters are a custom move that shows that time passes and allows the player to make a meaningful choice about what happened in the interim. The sample spindles show some locations where the supernatural may have occurred, and where the PCs first met one another. The Bestiary has a list of example creatures, as well as guidelines for creating creatures that might be a physical threat to the PCs, including those that should only be handled with special actions rather than by tracking armor and harm.

The sample scenario not only provides a starting scenario for the group to use but also provides a general structure to serve as an example of how to format a scenario for the game. The example scenario involves a Celebrant of Media that suddenly removes all anonymity from the internet, as well as the daemons that serve her. The structure of the scenario goes like this:

• Herald Intro (the behinds the scenes reality of what caused the scenario)
• Relevant Pantheon (some notes on what gods are involved and why)
• Player Intro (what the players know about the scenario)
• Plot Hooks (why the players will want to get involved)
• Investigatey versus Fighty (elements of the scenario that can be resolved via physical confrontation versus elements that can be resolved with problem-solving and negotiation)
• Rewards (what the PCs get out of the situation once they resolve everything)

In addition to the example scenario in the book, there is a 59-page PDF with seven more scenarios, in addition to the scenario in the core rulebook.

Fate’s Favor

Even beyond the PbtA implementation, I think it gets the basics of what you need in a game about modern demigods down, and serves as a solid template for what other games in the genre should be striving for.

I really like how this book looks, and I appreciate how it reads. It’s a very approachable way to address the genre of modern-day gods. The nine playbooks offer a good variety of deific archetypes, and I really like both the existence and the variety of the Death Moves. I appreciate the temptation presented by using the Ascendence moves as well, and it reinforced the genre tropes of trying to balance the godly and the mortal in a single life.

Fate’s Disfavor

There isn’t much that doesn’t hold up well for me. The biggest thing that stands out is the dual purpose of threads as a currency in game and for advancement. I think overall they all lead to a better game, but there are a few places where it feels like the interaction of gifts and extra abilities granted by gifts when combined with different moves could get a little complicated.

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

I think if you are looking for something that is Powered by the Apocalypse, that is in the modern urban fantasy mold, Demigods offers you something distinct to play with. Even beyond the PbtA implementation, I think it gets the basics of what you need in a game about modern demigods down, and serves as a solid template for what other games in the genre should be striving for.

What are some of your favorite properties that deal with modern divinity? What does a game absolutely need to do in order to emulate those properties? We want to hear from you in the comments below!

 

 

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Welcome to the GnomeCast, the Gnome Stew’s tabletop gaming advice podcast. Here we talk with the other gnomes about gaming things to avoid becoming part of the stew. So I guess we’d better be good.

Today we have Ang along with Phil & Senda. Today their going to talk about playing for an audience. With Panda’s. No. Wait. They’re the Panda’s. Just listen. It’ll make sense quickly.

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B2: The Keep on the Borderlands, Part Two

I’m not going to summarize the history and purpose of the venerable module know as “The Keep on the Borderlands” again. You can check out my previous article on this topic for that information. Instead, I’m going to dive into the section entitled “Tips to the Players” on page 25 (out of 26) of the module.

Tips to the Players

First off, this is a horrible place to put player tips. It’s after the adventure. A player that’s picked up this module and wants to play it without spoilers probably stopped reading the text somewhere around page 2 where it explicitly tells the players to stop reading. There is no mention of reference of this section in the introductory text, so there’s no way for a player to find this section prior to playing.

My guess is that TSR needed some “filler text” to get rid of some whitespace at the end of the book. Someone put together these brief tips and dropped them into the whitespace. I could be wrong. I could be right. I don’t know. Regardless of the cause of placing player tips at the back, it’s not a good area to drop this kind of advice.

The section is broken into an introductory paragraph followed by five brief paragraphs of actual advice, so let’s dive into them!

Organized and Cooperative

The advice given in this paragraph is spot on and still applies to this day. The “organized” section of this piece of advice basically boils down to “know your character and be ready to respond.” The DM can’t know everything about every ability of every character. They have enough to worry about on their side of the screen. This means you, as the player, need to know your character well enough to be able to quickly answer questions like, “Does anyone have [insert ability here]?” If you need to glance at your sheet to determine your answer, that’s fine, but know where on the character sheet that information can be found.

The cooperative part of this section leverages the phrase “… a variety of alignments and classes.” This is a fairly narrow perspective of the differences between characters (and people in general). This shows how focused that game was on alignment and class choice back then. I’m glad we’ve moved on to incorporate more subtle aspects of characters in modern gaming, but that’s probably a different post. The point of this paragraph is that the players need to have their characters work together in a tight-knit team despite any differences the characters may have. If cooperation is not part of the party’s game play, then this will, “… cause delays, attract monsters, and often result in the deaths of some or all of the members.” This closing statement is still valid and very true for modern D&D.

DM Rulings

This paragraph is worded a bit too harshly for my tastes. It basically implies that players can be whiny and disruptive if they disagree with the DM. The advice is solid, but I don’t like the wording used. Let’s update it a bit, shall we? Here goes.

The DM is the final arbiter of rules and rules conflicts, but the DM should welcome your reasonable input and ideas while considering the final ruling. If a player disagrees with the ruling, then disruptive and abusive behavior should be avoided. The player should accept the final ruling and move on. If the final ruling is egregious, unsafe, or harmful, the player always has the option of quietly stepping away from the game or not returning to the game with the DM at the next session. Being disruptive at the table over a rules disagreement drains the fun for everyone, even those not involved in the disagreement.

Planning

This paragraph is equipment-focused, which is fine, but it’s the final sentence that really stands out to me. The closing of the paragraph says, “Plans should be considered for encountering monsters and casting spells.” I wish there were more advice in this vein, so I’m going to expand that statement.

The PCs should decide a watch order while resting and a marching order while moving across open land and through dungeons. This will assist the DM in running a smooth adventure, especially when encounters occur. The players should also be aware of all abilities of all characters, but they don’t have to have everything memorized. Just know that the wizard has low hit points, but can cast powerful spells. Know that the cleric can heal and that the fighter has the best armor class in the group. These key points can help keep everyone as safe as possible when encounters happen.

Knowing which spells are available to the party at a given time is also key. The spell casters should also know when it’s appropriate to use certain spells. Fireballing two goblins that are surrounded by the rest of the party probably isn’t the wisest choice, but casting Magic Missile at the goblins would most likely work out well. Clerics should also know when to apply their limited healing. Casting powerful healing spells on someone that is only down a few hit points would be a waste, but that same spell could get the almost-dead fighter back into the fray in a moment’s notice.

Caution

I love this paragraph and it still stands true today without modification, with one exception. The exception is that dangers can also come from within the party by way of lying and trickery. That might still be true with some groups, but not in groups I like to play with. The party is a team literally fighting for survival. Lying, trickery, backstabbing, and duplicity from within the party will guarantee failure, and possibly character death. Avoid that at all costs.

The remainder of the paragraph, though, is strong and well stated. Basically, it says that caution is necessary. Don’t charge forward with preparation or be ready to meet doom. It also says that too much caution is as dangerous as too little. Bold and quick action is sometimes necessary before all is lost.

Thinking

This is a good closing paragraph. It tells the players to think through problems and that their minds, wits, and imaginations will carry them further through the game than luck or brute force. The last sentence says, “The challenge of thinking is a great deal of the fun of the game.”

I couldn’t agree more with that last statement.

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We're on the last week of the Forge of Foes Kickstarter! If you haven't yet checked out the 30 page free preview and pledged to get the book, now is the time! If you're as excited about the project as we are, please share this link wherever you think you can help get the word out:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/slyflourish/the-lazy-dms-forge-of-foes-for-5e?ref=e3rd14

Forge of Foes is built to address a lot of hard parts of running monsters in our 5e games. Many times these problems don't have one single solution. If they did, we'd be using that one and it wouldn't be much of a problem anymore. But some things are hard. How do you balance encounters? How do you design encounters? How should you modify monsters? How do you choose monsters? How do you run great boss battles? What parts of a monster can you modify during play and when should you? How do you run dozens to hundreds of monsters in a single battle?

There's no one perfect solution to the problems above, so we offer multiple. In Forge of Foes you'll find multiple solutions to these common problems. We don't just offer one way to run hordes of monsters — we offer three ways of both managing damage done to monsters in a horde and handling a horde's dice rolls. You pick and choose the tools that work best for running hordes at your own table.

We have entire chapters looking at problems from different angles. Do you choose monsters based on the story or build a story around cool monsters? We talk about both approaches.

This idea of having multiple approaches to a single problem doesn't just define how we write about the topic in Forge of Foes — it's also how you can think about your own GMing toolbox. We each have so many ways we can run our games. There are so many ways we can build and develop NPCs, run scenes and situations, spice up encounters, build magic items, and share the story of the game at our table. There's often no single right solution. There are many right solutions for different circumstances.

When you're putting together your own toolbox of GMing processes and ideas, don't feel like you must have only one solution for each problem. Keep a wide range of tools — choosing the best one at the moment to share our fantastic tales with our friends.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

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

• Forge of Foes Material Going to Creative Commons
• General-Use Stat Blocks for 5e in Forge of Foes
• Shadow of the Weird Wizard Kickstarter June 2023
• Arcane Library Adventures for 5e
• Kobold Press Black Flag Playtest 2

Patreon Questions and Answers

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

• Why Make a Book About Building Monsters?
• Playing D&D with Small Children or Obstructive Pets
• Helping Players Synergize Character Creation

RPG Tips

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

• Ask your players to take notes. Refer to their notes during your recap.
• Write down one cool character-focused event for each character in your next session.
• Ask players for a loose wishlist of magic items every few levels.
• Give magic items a unique name and history.
• What is the history of your fantastic location? What happened here before?
• Offer choices. Ensure the characters have something to do.
• Leave mysteries unanswered.
• Spotlight character traits and backgrounds through the eyes and actions of the NPCs.

Related Articles

• Twenty Things to Do Instead of Checking Social Media
• Use Static Initiative for Monsters
• Describe your GM Style
• Build a Quick Monster with the Forge of Foes
• What 5e in the Creative Commons Means to You

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Read more Sly Flourish articles
• Buy Sly Flourish's Books
• Watch Sly Flourish's YouTube videos
• Subscribe to Sly Flourish's Podcast
• Support Sly Flourish on Patreon

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• The Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Fantastic Lairs
• Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures

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

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There are lots of little lazy tricks we can use to streamline our 5e RPGs. I'm a big fan of using static monster damage for example. I find anything to help speed up and streamline the game worthwhile.

Forge of Foes (currently on Kickstarter!) is packed with tips and tricks for running awesome 5e monsters. Some tips offer fast and dirty tricks for streamlining your game. The book also has lots of tools and advice for adding detail, changing up tactics, and building big and engaging encounters. If you're a tactically-focused GM, you'll find as much to love in Forge of Foes as those who prefer the simple tricks to speed things up. Take a look at the free preview and back it on the Forge of Foes Kickstarter page!

One trick I've been using, which shows up in the "Lazy Tricks for Running Monsters" chapter of Forge of Foes, is static initiative for monsters. I started doing this a year or so ago and I really like it.

For a video on this topic, check out my Use Static Initiative for D&D 5e Monsters YouTube video.

With static initiative, you skip rolling initiative for monsters and instead give monsters an initiative of 10 + their dexterity modifier. If you want to group different types of monsters together, use the best dex mod of the group, or split them up with their own static initiative scores if you want.

Want an even easier way? Just make it 12.

There are some big advantages to static initiative. First, it saves you the time of rolling initiative. If someone else at the table is managing initiative for you (another lazy trick I really love), tell them the monsters have an initiative of 12. Like static monster damage, it's fast and it's easy.

Static initiative also puts monsters in the middle of the initiative order. This ensures the characters don't destroy half the monsters before they ever get a chance to act. Acting in the middle of initiative gives monsters a small but valuable edge, especially at higher levels.

Also, in my experience, players don't tend to care. In years of doing this for multiple groups, I've not had a player even mention it. I'm sure they know it's going on, but it just doesn't matter to them. Beating the monsters' initiative matters to them but when they know it's a static number of 12, they now have a reasonable number to beat.

You'll still have circumstances where all of the characters go before the monsters. That's fine. But it won't be because the monsters rolled low. It'll be because all of the players rolled high and that's cool and fun.

If you're more of a tactical DM who likes all the nuances of 5 foot squares, prefers rolling for monster damage, runs lots of different types of monsters in a battle, or likes rolling individual initiative for every monster in a battle — you can still do so. You might keep this idea on hand and use it for some of your battles where speed is more important than detail and tactical accuracy. Battles with less consequential outcomes or battles against easier opponents might benefit from static initiative. If you're like me, though, you might end up using it all the time.

So, to speed up your game and balance things out a little bit, try using a static initiative score of "12" for your monsters. It'll surprise you how much it streamlines your game.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

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

• Forge of Foes Kickstarter Continues
• Radiant Citadel Nominated for a Nebula
• Tome of Beasts 1 Revisited
• Campaign Builder - Cities and Towns by Kobold Press
• D&D Community Update
• D&D Content Creator's Summit
• How Can Wizards be a Stronger Positive Force in the RPG Community?

Patreon Questions and Answers

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

• Modifying NPCs with Species Traits
• The Challenge of Discovering Secrets
• Integrating In Disconnected Characters
• Using Dice for Other Things In-World

RPG Tips

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

• Put big decisions towards the end of the game so you know where things are heading next.
• Always consider what the characters can do in any given scene.
• End just before a big battle and you have a strong and meaty start to your next game.
• Aim for four players at your game. It's the ideal mix of character synergy and focus.
• Build fantastic locations. You have an unlimited special effects budget.
• Instead of rolling monster initiative, just give them a static score of 12.
• Ask your players to take notes. Refer to their notes during your recap.

Related Articles

• Simpler Initiative Options
• Multiple Solutions to a Single Problem
• Twenty Things to Do Instead of Checking Social Media
• The Case for Static Monster Damage
• Describe your GM Style

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Read more Sly Flourish articles
• Buy Sly Flourish's Books
• Watch Sly Flourish's YouTube videos
• Subscribe to Sly Flourish's Podcast
• Support Sly Flourish on Patreon

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• The Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Fantastic Lairs
• Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures

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

Read more »

The Lazy DM's Forge of Foes is live on Kickstarter right now! Back the awesome 128 page book of guidance, tools, tips, and tricks for building, customizing, and running awesome monsters for your 5e RPGs. Check it out and download the jam-packed 30 page preview absolutely free.

The Lazy DM's Forge of Foes lets you actually build monsters faster than you can find most monsters in your various monster books. Forge of Foes gives you the tools to stat out a monster at any CR in under a minute then fill it out with custom abilities in just a minute or two more. It's fast enough that you can improvise a monster right at the table. I know because I've done so.

Today we're going to look at an example I used in my own game — the dwarven flesh cultist built for my Empire of the Ghouls campaign.

For a video on this topic, see my Build Quick D&D Monsters with the Forge of Foes YouTube Video.

To build our dwarven flesh cultist, we're going to use the Forge of Foes sample PDF and the "quick monster builder" on page 4.

Choose a Concept and Challenge Rating

The first thing we do is start with a quick concept. Dwarven flesh cultists are nasty cultists who eat the flesh of other humanoids and follow the Creed of All Flesh. They're no pushovers, attacking with whatever nasty cannibalistic weapons they have on hand and filled with the unholy strength of the Creed of All Flesh (a mask of the ghoul-god Vardesain from the Midgard setting).

Given it's story, we're going to give our dwarven flesh cultist a challenge rating of 3. This one challenge number gives us most of what we need to build it out.

With that challenge rating in mind, we write down the base statistics we need found on the "Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating" table on page 6 of the sample. Here's what we get:

• Dwarven Flesh Cultist (CR 3)
• AC / DC 13
• HP 65
• Primary Ability Bonus: +5
• Damage per Round: 23
• Attacks and Damage: 2 x 12 (2d8 + 3)

With just that we're ready to go and it took about 30 seconds. We can improvise almost everything else when we run our flesh cultist at the table.

Here are some important things to note. First, the AC / DC number represents both the AC of the monster and as the monster's primary DC when forcing any sort of saving throw against a character.

The same is true for the primary ability bonus. It serves as the monster's attack bonus, their very best saving throw (if they're proficient in such a save), and skill bonus for their best skills. We can think of this number as the very top of their potential saving throws and skill checks.

Determining Saving Throws — the Lazy Way

What about it's other abilities or saving throws? Make them up. There's no simple curve for saving throws based on CR other than their highest possible one (the proficient ability bonus above). High CR monsters often still have lousy saving throws in some areas and many monsters have no proficient saves at all.

So we make up monster saving throws based on what we think makes sense for the monster right when we need them.

Here's a really lazy trick for you. Don't bother figuring out a monster's abilities and saving throws until you need them during the game. Often they never come into play. When a monster does need to make a saving throw — say a Wisdom saving throw — roll the dice first and see what the roll is. If it's really low or really high, it doesn't matter what the bonus is. They've already either succeeded or failed. Only if the roll is somewhere in the middle do you bother to determine a creature's saving throw bonus and you do so by asking yourself what sort of save the monster would have in that ability from -2 to a maximum of their proficient ability bonus.

Let's say a wizard casts a DC 14 Hypnotic Pattern on our dwarven flesh cultist. We roll a Wisdom save and the die is a 12. That's in the middle enough that we probably want to think about whether they failed. If it were a 5 or a 17, we wouldn't bother to figure out the bonus. But it's a 12, so we need to know if a bonus would have helped it.

So we go back to the monster's story. Based on our story of the dwarven flesh cultist, do we think them particularly wise? Not really. So we give them a +0. A 12 would then still fail and the flesh cultist is indeed affected by the hypnotic pattern.

This concept of "going back to the story of the monster" is a totally different way of thinking about our monsters but a great one for improvising monsters right at the table. Get comfortable with it and it'll take you far.

Customize Armor Class

Sometimes the baseline AC of a creature at a particular CR doesn't make sense based on its story. We can raise or lower a monster's AC however it makes sense for the story of the monster. I like to keep in mind that a non-dexterous creature wearing leather armor is an AC of 11 and a knight in full plate with a shield is an AC of 20.

If our flesh cultists wore heavy armor we might increase their AC to 17. If we want to keep it from being too much of a pain to kill, we can reduce their hits points in exchange. Don't worry too much about the mathematical rigor of such a shift. In the end it really doesn't matter.

For the story of our dwarven flesh cultists, though, an AC of 13 makes sense so we'll stick to that.

Improvising Attacks

We have most of the stats we need, but what about the details of their attacks? Like much of what we've done so far, we improvise them. Let's make them creepy by giving the flesh cultists bloody curved disemboweling blades, heavy meat-tenderizer mauls, and big chopping cleavers. This is all just flavor. The attack and damage are already in our stats. A flesh cultist might hack twice with a big cleaver for +5 to hit and 12 (2d8+3) slashing damage. Improvise the damage type along with the damage.

If you want to flavor it a bit more, you can split the damage type. Maybe the flesh cleaver inflicts 7 (1d8+3) slashing damage + 4 (1d8) necrotic damage because of their connection to the Creed of All Flesh. We can take the damage dice in the damage equation included in our quick monster stats table and split it among different damage types.

It's almost always worth including some sort of ranged attack. Maybe the flesh cultists can throw barbed harpoons. We use the same damage equations we would use otherwise or we can lower it a bit if we want based on what we think about the story of the flesh cultist.

Filling Out our Flesh Cultist with Powers

We can go with what we have but for more fun, let's give them some extra powers and abilities. Forge of Foes and the free sample include a bunch of "monster type templates". One trick is that we don't have to stick to only the monster type template that fits our monster's type. We can steal powers and abilities from any of these to fit our creature's theme.

Maybe our flesh cultist can throw out a fleshy barbed tendril Hellraiser-style by using the Aberration's "Grasping Tentacles" ability. Maybe we grab the beast's "Empowered by Carnage" power or the Monstrocity's "Devour Ally" power or the undead's "Stench of Death" trait. There's a lot to choose from if we want to customize our cultist.

If none of those feel right we can jump right to our "Common Monster Powers" list. Think of these like feats for bad guys. Choose one that makes sense for the monster you're building. Our flesh cultist might benefit from any of these:

• Delights in Suffering
• Frenzy
• Goes Down Fighting
• Refuse to Surrender

You can customize any of these powers to fit the theme of whatever monster you build.

Don't to overboard with these powers. Usually one special power is enough for a typical monster.

For our flesh cultist, we're going to use the Hellraiser-style barbed tendril and give it the ability to pull the target towards the cultist as well as restrain them. Fun!

A Final Look at our Flesh Cultist

In the end of our experiment, we have a fleshed out flesh cultist that looks like this:

• Dwarven Flesh Cultist (CR 3)
• AC 13
• HP 65
• Primary Ability Bonus +5
• ATTACKS
• Multiattack. The dwarven flesh cultist can attack with two meat cleaver attacks. It can replace one of these attacks with a barbed fleshy tendril.
• Meat Cleaver. +5 to hit; 7 (1d8+3) slashing damage and 4 (1d8) necrotic damage.
• Barbed Fleshy Tendril.: +5 to hit; 30 ft., 7 (1d8+3) piercing damage and 4 (1d8) necrotic damage. The creature must succeed on a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw or be pulled adjacent to the Dwarven Flesh Cultist and is grappled and restrained (escape DC 13).

That's a solid and really fun stat block to run.

What do you want to build next?

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

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

• Forge of Foes Kickstarter Going On Right Now!
• Shadowdark RPG by Arcane Library
• Open5e.com

Patreon Questions and Answers

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

• How to Handle Maps for Exploration
• Teaching New Systems to Players
• Taking Notes while Running a Game
• Helping Players Balance Character Types and Skills
• Not Offering Custom Lineage or Variant Humans -- Is that Wrong?
• Accomidating a Players's Spirit Being In Your Game
• Overwhelmed by Midgard Lore
• Dealing with Shopping Sessions
• Balancing Encounters in High Magic Item Campaigns
• Adopting the Eight Steps to Gumshoe Games

RPG Tips

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

• What's the coolest part of the next session you're going to run?
• Print or share overland maps, NPC art, and captured letters as handouts to your players.
• Build monsters on the fly with the Forge of Foes quick monster builder!
• Embrace 5e adventures, character supplements, and monster books from many publishers.
• Understand how the species and backgrounds of the characters tie them to the world.
• Let the characters get away with shenanigans.
• Add monsters intended to be crowd controlled.

Related Articles

• Multiple Solutions to a Single Problem
• Improvise D&D Monster Abilities
• Twenty Things to Do Instead of Checking Social Media
• Use Static Initiative for Monsters
• D&D 5e Numbers to Keep In Your Head

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Read more Sly Flourish articles
• Buy Sly Flourish's Books
• Watch Sly Flourish's YouTube videos
• Subscribe to Sly Flourish's Podcast
• Support Sly Flourish on Patreon

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• The Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Fantastic Lairs
• Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures

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

Read more »

1. Read a sourcebook, campaign book, or world book.
2. Read some third-party campaign books.
3. Think about what your villains are doing right now.
4. Watch a movie or show with great characters and fantastic locations.
5. Read a fun fantasy novel.
6. Listen to an audiobook and practice your voices.
7. Call a friend and chat about their game.
8. Fill your campaign's geography with little-known dungeons and lairs.
9. Come up with three fun sidequests.
10. Read a monster book seeking fun lairs and encounters.
11. Read the descriptions of the characters' race, class, and background.
12. Write down a personalized quest for each character.
13. Find evocative art for your campaign.
14. Share an experience from your last game with fellow DMs.
15. Update your campaign journal.
16. Write down a character-focused summary of your previous game to deliver at the beginning of your next one.
17. Make a cool handout.
18. Write and email short flash fiction to your players showing the movement of the world.
19. Find music to build a great soundtrack for your game.
20. Flesh out the details of NPCs the characters know and love.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

The Lazy DM's Forge of Foes is live on Kickstarter! Back it today and grab the 30 page sample PDF!

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

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

• Forge of Foes Kickstarter This Wednesday!
• Arcana of the Ancients Bundle of Holding
• Mastering Dungeons on Shadow of the Demon Lord
• New One D&D Playtest
• Iskandar Player's Handbook

Patreon Questions and Answers

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

• Co-DMing Two Groups in the Same Campaign Adventure
• Managing and Referencing So Many Monster Books
• Updates to the 5e Artisenal Monster Database in Notion
• Worldbuilding Book recommendations
• Sharing RPG PDFs with Google Drive
• Running D&D for a 5 year Old
• Getting Players to Be More Tactical

RPG Tips

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

• Never forget. The number one goal of an RPG is to get together and share some laughs and tales of high adventure with your friends.
• Your friends love you. You're game will be great.
• Stack multiple encounters together. Mix in roleplaying and exploration.
• Monsters often aren't tactical masterminds. Play them dumb.
• Provoke opportunity attacks.
• Keep tools on hand to improvise monster statistics at the table.
• Keep a handful of basic monster powers you can drop in when you need them.

Related Articles

• Multiple Solutions to a Single Problem
• Describe your GM Style
• Use Static Initiative for Monsters
• Sandwich Mechanics with Story
• Write Down Page Numbers on D&D Prep Notes and Character Sheets

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Read more Sly Flourish articles
• Buy Sly Flourish's Books
• Watch Sly Flourish's YouTube videos
• Subscribe to Sly Flourish's Podcast
• Support Sly Flourish on Patreon

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• The Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Fantastic Lairs
• Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures

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

Read more »

Fengh, a Patreon of Sly Flourish asks:

"How do I describe my style of play to players I don't really know?"

This is a fantastic question.

Just as we should try to define the characteristics we look for in our ideal players (recognizing that our ideal players aren't necessarily everyone's ideal players), I think it makes sense that we, as GM, describe our style in a way that clarifies to potential players how we're different from other GMs.

When I describe my own GM style to new potential players, I clarify the following:

• I'm a GM who focuses mostly on the evolving story of the game itself.
• I play either online or in-person.
• I run a mix of abstract and "theater of the mind" combat styles. I'm not a tactical GM who focuses on the 5 foot grid. Half or more of battles are in theater of the mind (this immediately filters out a lot of players which is fine).
• I use Discord, D&D Beyond, and Owlbear Rodeo. I don't use Roll 20 (this also filters out a lot of players).
• I'm a loosy-goosy GM. I don't hang on too tight to the story, the characters' story, the rules, or just about anything else.
• I make mistakes but keep rolling on. If a player is looking for a tight cohesive narrative arc, I might not be able to provide that.

In many ways I try to think about my style of GMing and how it would turn players off. Instead of selling myself as a GM, I'm happy for them to recognize how I might not be a good fit before we start.

If I'm looking for a GM, I'd probably look at the following criteria:

• Are they a tactical or story-focused GM?
• Do they consider themselves a "killer" GM?
• Is everything on a grid or do they run some combat in the Theater of the Mind?
• Do they consider themselves opponents or fans of the characters?
• What parts of the game do they enjoy most?
• What bugs them?
• Where do they spend most of their prep time?

Of course, nothing works better than running a one-shot or a short number of games with potential players and GMs to see if things gel.

Friend and Sly Flourish Patreon Rangdo offered up this Same Page Tool which discusses how players and the GM can work together to build the style of game they're all interested in. It's another good source to think about your style and how you might describe it to potential players.

How do you describe yourself as a GM?

More Sly Flourish Stuff

This week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on the Preview of Forge of Foes and Scarlet Citadel Prep for Session 16.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

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

• Forge of Foes Kickstarter Coming March 1st
• Valikan Clans by Ghostfire Gaming
• Kobold Press Black Flag Playtest 1
• Demiplane 5e Nexus and the Future of Digital 5e Tools
• Level Up Advanced 5e Trials and Treasure by EN World Publishing

Patreon Questions and Answers

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

• The Future of RPGs -- 5e or Independent RPGs?

RPG Tips

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

• Steer the game towards the decisions and actions of the characters.
• For each scene you plan, write down a few things your specific characters might do in the scene.
• Show the results of the characters' actions.
• Not all dark magic items are cursed.
• Let the characters take a specific part in a larger war or military campaign.
• Shake up stereotypes.
• Run phased battles. Lots of minions followed by some big bruisers followed by a boss.
• Share art, either printed or shared online.

Related Articles

• Twenty Things to Do Instead of Checking Social Media
• Multiple Solutions to a Single Problem
• Use Static Initiative for Monsters
• Sandwich Mechanics with Story
• Write Down Page Numbers on D&D Prep Notes and Character Sheets

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Read more Sly Flourish articles
• Buy Sly Flourish's Books
• Watch Sly Flourish's YouTube videos
• Subscribe to Sly Flourish's Podcast
• Support Sly Flourish on Patreon

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• The Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Fantastic Lairs
• Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures

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

Read more »

Thinking back over the games you've run, which ones do you consider your near perfect games? Which ones hit just about every mark? What was it that made them near-perfect?

We're avoiding "perfect" games because often our self-defeating attitudes won't let us pick any game as perfect. But near perfect? We've had a few of those.

What criteria define a near-perfect game? Only you get to decide. Write down your own list and see what you come up with.

Here's my own list of criteria for a near-perfect game:

• The players are all engaged most of the time.
• Players walk away excited by what happened and excited for what happens next.
• The characters have agency to make meaningful choices.
• Every character had an opportunity to shine both mechanically and in the story.
• The pacing of the game was spot on and the game ended on time.
• When the story and direction of the game goes in an interesting direction no one could have predicted.

What Brings You the Most Fun?

A Reddit thread entitled "What part of GMing gives you the greatest pleasure?" covered similar ground to this question. The top comments offer comparable results to our near-perfect-game criteria. These included:

• When the players are so in the moment that THEIR emotions rise to the front.
• When finally revealing a big secret or plot twist.
• When a player wants to talk about the campaign even outside of the session.
• When the players "live" in the world by interacting with NPC's when they don't have to.
• When we GMs get to shut our mouths since the players are so engaged in talking to each other in character.
• When something happens we didn’t plan or expect.
• The table wide cheer that goes up on a natural 20 or when a hard enemy goes down.

There's some common ground in these top comments and my own list. It leads us to the practical question for this thought exercise:

What can we do to pave the path for a near perfect game?

How can we focus our preparation towards a near perfect game?

It's important to consider that a near-perfect game relies as much on the players, maybe even more on the players, than it does for DMs. We must also consider that some players may love a game that others didn't care for. That's ok, we can still pave the path. How?

Prepare to Improvise

I think the greatest fun during a D&D game comes when the game takes a turn no one expected. We can prepare for this by focusing our preparation to support improvisation. This means having what we need to react as things change. Here are a few things we can do (some of which will be very familiar):

• Write out one-line secrets, clues, bits of history, and other lore the characters can discover anywhere.
• Prepare interesting locations, populate them with NPCs, plan some goals, and set up situations. Let the players choose their course.
• Have a list of monsters the characters might encounter anywhere.
• Have a handful of locations ready to run should the characters go somewhere you didn't expect.
• Be prepared to build NPCs quickly and easily depending on which NPCs catch the characters' attention. At least with a list of random names.
• Know what your villains are doing and how they'll react as things change. Get into the heads of your villains.

Focus on the Characters

Players love their characters. A character is the focal point and interface between a player and the world. The more time you spend understanding the characters, both mechanically and in their own story, the more you can draw the players into the game through their characters. Here's a few things we can do:

• Read up on each character's story.
• During downtime and rests, ask the players what their characters think of the current situation and how it reflects on their past.
• Ask the players what mechanics they love about their character. Write it down.
• Build encounters that show off those well-loved mechanics.

How will you prepare what you need to set the stage for a near-perfect game?

More Sly Flourish Stuff

This week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Scarlet Citadel Session 14 – Lazy GM Prep and Designing Vampires for MCDM's Flee Mortals.

Last Week's Lazy D&D Talk Show Topics

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

• Pathfinder 2 Humble Bundles
• Kobold Press Worlds Humble Bundle
• What's Normal in the Post OGL Fiasco RPG Hobby?
• Keys from the Golden Vault Free Adventure
• Raiders of the Serpent Sea by Arcanum Worlds
• Kibbles Compendium of Legends and Legacies

Patreon Questions and Answers

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

• Lazy Encounter Benchmark for Solo and Legendary Monsters
• Players Making Choices Against a Chracter's Alignment
• Converting Monsters Across RPG Systems? Reskin!
• Worried About Making Mistakes with Big Published Adventures
• Free to Use Dungeons of Fate?

D&D Tips

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

• Develop locations, fill them with inhabitants, give the characters a goal or two, and enjoy how the game unfolds.
• Let the characters of missing players handle secondary activities off-screen. Maybe they’re keeping the get-away clear or maybe they’re transferring useful information from a high tower.
• Build encounters from what makes sense in the story. Worry about difficulty only if you may inadvertently kill all the characters.
• Guards are guards whatever level the characters are. Just because the characters are 7th level doesn’t mean all the guards turned into veterans.
• Your 5e game is your own. There’s nothing “official” and nothing “third party”. Use any 5e material you want to make your game awesome.
• Have a backup plan if your favorite digital tools fall apart or start to suck. Relying on only one platform puts your joy of the hobby at risk.
• Enemies don’t always act optimally. They can be as confused as the characters are.

Related Articles

• Describe your GM Style
• Sandwich Mechanics with Story
• Build Cities Around the Characters
• Reach Satisfying Campaign Conclusions
• Twenty Things to Do Instead of Checking Social Media

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Read more Sly Flourish articles
• Buy Sly Flourish's Books
• Watch Sly Flourish's YouTube videos
• Subscribe to Sly Flourish's Podcast
• Support Sly Flourish on Patreon

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• The Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Fantastic Lairs
• Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures

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

Read more »

On 27 January 2023 Wizards of the Coast released the 5.1 System Resource Document, a 400 page PDF of the core rules, races, classes, monsters, and magic items for D&D 5th edition, under a Creative Commons Attribution license. This means that, by simply crediting Wizards of the Coast in a product, you can legally use any of the material in that document, including making derivative works from the material in that document. Forever.

Download your own copy of the 5e SRD with the Creative Commons license. Save it to your computer. Back it up. And it's yours. Forever.

This is an incredible step in the Open Gaming License saga — one of the craziest months in the hobby of roleplaying games.

But what does the release of the 5e SRD into the Creative Commons mean for us dungeon masters and game masters?

A lot.

It means RPG publishers can use and build off of material in the 5e SRD to make anything they want and make it compatible with 5e. It means 5e became an RPG system separate from Wizards of the Coast. It means publishers can write 5e compatible systems, supplements, adventures, class options, monster books, and more — forever. And, unlike the attempted "deauthorization" of the Open Game License, WOTC can't take it back. The Creative Commons license isn't owned by Wizards of the Coast and it's been in use in various industries for decades. All of Wikipedia, for example, uses a Creative Commons license. It ensures content owners can share their work and know it can always be shared thereafter.

And now that's happened with 5e.

We've already seen tons of awesome 5e products over the past eight years. Huge adventures, awesome monster books, tons of character options, deep campaign worlds — there's more 5e material than we can ever use in our lifetimes and now far more to come.

An open 5e SRD means there's no limit to the amount of quality 5e material we may see in the future. No one company can stand in the way.

The 5e SRD in the Creative Commons means D&D is safe and secure. No matter what path Wizards of the Coast takes with D&D, we always have 5e. Not just because we have the physical books, which alone can last beyond our own lives, but because anyone can write, publish, and sell new 5e material — forever.

Whatever direction WOTC takes with One D&D, it's only one option we can choose to accept or not. Maybe we move to One D&D and keep using the rest of our 5e material. Maybe we take a few ideas from One D&D as house rules for our existing 5e games. We get to choose what we want based on the merits of those products.

And One D&D is only one path forward. Kobold Press announced their own 5e compatible RPG codenamed Project Black Flag as did Cubicle 7 with C7D20. We already have Level Up Advanced 5e which is likewise moving to an independent publishing license (I'm hoping it's Creative Commons as well!) and opening up their content to other 5e publishers.

This means we don't have to choose a single 5e system. We can treat each 5e system as extended sets of house rules from which to pluck our own preferred rules for our group and our game.

It also means should WOTC decide to pull their support for Roll 20, Fantasy Grounds, or Foundry; we'll have three other compatible 5e systems on those platforms.

There's also something extremely powerful about being able to write derivative works from the 5e SRD. It's this idea that let Necrotic Games write Old School Essentials — a classic D&D BX-compatible game written from the bones of the 3.5 SRD. They reverse engineered common D&D terms and concepts like the six attributes, armor class, and build an updated clone of the oldest version of the game without fear that WOTC might sue them. They did so under the original OGL but now anyone can do it with this CC-released SRD without fear that WOTC tries to "deauthorize" it again.

Being able to use the material in the SRD is great. Being able to write derivative works off of it is limitless.

5e is its own RPG now. It's own platform from which thousands of products can spring. It's an RPG independent of any one publisher.

What does the 5e SRD under a CC mean for us game masters? It means 5e is ours. Forever.

Last Week's Lazy D&D Talk Show Topics

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

• WOTC Releases 5e Into the Creative Commons
• What Does Trust Mean with Wizards of the Coast?
• Lazy RPG Podcast Awarded Best Talk Show Podcast by EN World
• Oracle Character Generator Deck by Nord Games
• Zobeck Clockwork City by Kobold Press

Patreon Questions and Answers

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

• Running Rich and Dynamic Combat Encounters
• Not Exposing a Movie-Based Adventure Plot
• Building a Villain or Monster from a PC
• How Many Rounds Should Encounters Go?
• Other RPGs I'm Running This Year?
• Finishing Writing One-Shot Adventures
• Balancing the Action Economy with Big Solo Monsters

D&D Tips

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

• When running a heist-style adventure: clarify the goal, give them useful information through recon, understand the typical behavior of the inhabitants, be ready for a complication.
• When playing online, call on individual players instead of asking the whole group.
• Know which decisions require a unanimous decision and which can be made by the majority.
• Show pictures of NPCs.
• Have friendly NPCs help the characters off-screen instead of becoming tag-along NPCs.
• Act how the NPCs would act.
• Underground sewers and caves are a great way to infiltrate a fortified castle or keep.

Related Articles

• Feedback to WOTC on the OGL 1.2 Draft
• You, Me, and the D&D Open Game License
• Notable 5e Products
• Top Ten Notable 5e Products for 2022
• A D&D 4th Edition DM's Guide to 5th Edition

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Read more Sly Flourish articles
• Buy Sly Flourish's Books
• Watch Sly Flourish's YouTube videos
• Subscribe to Sly Flourish's Podcast
• Support Sly Flourish on Patreon

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• The Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Fantastic Lairs
• Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures

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

Read more »

More people than ever play RPGs online. Over the past few years the suite of tools to play RPGs has grown and improved as well. Today we're going to look at one "stack" of tools to run awesome games online. There are many such stacks, and some tools containing almost all of the features below in a single tool. This stack doesn't contain the most popular tools you can find but I recommend it none the less. It's a fantastic suite for the lazy dungeon master.

Game Prep: Notion

I've been using Notion for more than two years now and love it for campaign planning. If you've used Microsoft OneNote, this will seem familiar. Notion lets you set up a suite of interlinked pages with text, pictures, and other embedded items organized however you want to organize it. I've built a Notion template for Lazy DM prep and have used it for more than three hundred game sessions and I continue to love it. You can read my article on using Notion for Campaign Prep for more details.

If you're looking for something less commercial, less locked-in and more expandible; check out Obsidian. It's equally popular for RPG campaign prep.

Communications: Discord

Discord is an extremely common platform for communications with text, audio, and video. Over the past few years its audio and video functions greatly improved. You can set up a server for your game, with an audio and video "room" for the actual game and text channels for things like dice rolls, sharing pictures, and keeping a persistent game log. I have a Discord server you can clone to create your own RPG-focused Discord server and an article describing how to use Discord for online D&D games for more information.

Virtual Tabletop: Owlbear Rodeo

You can go far just sharing pictures of maps or art over Discord but if you want to actually move tokens around a map, Owlbear Rodeo is my favorite virtual tabletop. It's extremely lightweight with no game rules built into the platform. It's fast enough that I can prep a map in the middle of a game. It doesn't have the heavyweight features of bigger VTTs like Foundry, Fantasy Grounds, or Roll 20; but you and your players will love the speed and ease of use. Here's an article about using Owlbear Rodeo and a video on Owlbear Rodeo and how I set up all of Castle Ravenloft in Owlbear Rodeo in ten minutes.

Maps: Dyson Logos

As a lazy DM, I always recommend finding a good map instead of making your own. If you ever need a dungeon or overland map, my favorite maps are those by Dyson of Dysonlogos. There's over a thousand maps, mostly dungeons but some overland maps, we can repurpose for so many different locations. I've used them for Eberron, Midgard, Forgotten Realms, and Numenera. Because they're lightweight on theme, you can easily reskin them. The same map can be used for an ancient tomb or the ruins of an old tech power generator. Dyson maps, of course, work very well in Owlbear Rodeo.

Tokens: Token Stamp

Google's image search mixed with Token Stamp by RollAdvantage lets you build virtual tabletop tokens for just about anything in a few seconds. I often use it to build tokens in the middle of the game when I need one. I'm able to google for an image, take a screen shot, import it into Token Stamp, dump out the token, and import it into Owlbear Rodeo in about a minute.

Making custom tokens in Token Stamp lets you pick a particular style you like and stick with it. I, myself, like big face-focused tokens instead of full-body shots that are harder to recognize. Token Stamp lets me stay with that style whatever monster I need.

Music Sharing: Kenku.fm

A good musical backdrop can add a lot of atmosphere to a game but sharing music online can be tricky. The fine people at Owlbear Rodeo built a music sharing application called Kenku.FM. With Kenku you can share music through Discord as though it's another member of your audio channel. Setting it up is tricky, requiring that you set up your own Kenku bot in Discord to allow the streaming. The folks at Kenku have a good instruction page to walk you through the process. You'll want to warn your players that they can control the volume level of the Kenku service themselves by right-clicking the Kenku member of the audio channel and setting their own preferred volume.

Kenku lets you stream anything you can find over the web including Tabletop Audio, YouTube, and others. If you can hear it over the web, you can stream it to Discord.

For an advanced trick, let one of your players manage the Kenku service and DJ your game for you.

Rules and PDF Sharing - Google Drive

If you're playing D&D, [D&D Beyond] is the most likely way you'll want to share material with your players. However, if you're using third party material or playing other RPGs, there's a great way to legally share PDFs with your players using Google Drive. Upload the PDF you want to share to Google Drive and share it specifically with your friends in your group identified as "viewers". Before you exit the window, click the little gear icon on the upper right corner of the share window and un-check the option for "Viewers and commenters can see the option to download, print, and copy". This way your players can view the PDF through Google Drive but can't download their own copy or print it out. It's the digital equivalent of handing a book around a table and far safer (and more legal) than sharing the PDF directly with your friends. Here's more about restricting sharing on Google Drive.

Build Your Own Stack

The above tools are my own personal and recommended stack of software but it's far from the only one. Each of us can decide which tools serve us best. Choose the tools that help you and your friends enjoy the most of this game we love so much.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

This week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on the Cure to the OGL Blues and Scarlet Citadel Session 12 – Lazy GM Prep.

Last Week's Lazy D&D Talk Show Topics

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

• OGL 1.2 Feedback and Suggestions
• The Industry Responds to the attempted OGL 1.0a Deauthorization
• Rebranding the Lazy RPG Talk Show
• I'm Here For You Whatever RPG You Play
• Curing the OGL Blues
• Deep Magic 2
• Two Huge Bundles of Holding and Humble Bundles

Patreon Questions and Answers

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

• Keeping Your Games on Track
• Running Games for Seven Players
• Introducing Lots of NPCs at Once
• Fueling Creativity
• Identifying Relics and Single-Use Magic Items
• Improving Representation in Older Material

D&D Tips

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

• Occasionally run big multi-wave battles where the characters defend a ruined keep or fortified town or some defensible position.
• Add a starving vampire trapped in an oubliette and see how the characters respond.
• Bathe monuments in interesting lore, religions, and histories of the region.
• Ask your players what character options they're excited to use.
• Let any player (and yourself) use "pause for a minute" to break character and clarify things as players around the table.
• Write down page numbers in your prep notes.
• Use a mixture of theater of the mind, abstract combat, and big tactical encounters. Don't limit yourself to just one style of combat.

Related Articles

• Owlbear Rodeo: A Simple D&D Virtual Tabletop
• Two Years Playing D&D Online
• Shared Experiences Playing D&D Online
• Play D&D Over Discord
• Sandwich Mechanics with Story

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Read more Sly Flourish articles
• Buy Sly Flourish's Books
• Watch Sly Flourish's YouTube videos
• Subscribe to Sly Flourish's Podcast
• Support Sly Flourish on Patreon

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• The Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Fantastic Lairs
• Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures

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

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Over on the Lazy D&D Talk Show I spotlight 5e products — primarily third party products but also those published by Wizards of the Coast.

Looking back, here are the top ten 5e products that caught my attention over 2022. This is just my view, of course. There are many products I never got a chance to look at and many products you may love more than the ones I outline below. Like everything I produce, hang on to this list with a loose grip.

These are also listed in alphabetical order — not in order by quality or preference.

Crown of the Oathbreaker by Elderbrain

Elderbrain, the publisher of Crown of the Oathbreaker used a survey of over 2,000 respondents to guide the construction of this massive 917 page hardcover and PDF adventure book. Both versions include extra digital books with player options, location gazetteers, maps, and more. It's a dark fantasy adventure with a focus on twisted histories of former noble families, fallen celestials, and other grim figures. The art is fantastic and the layout is excellent. A steal at $25 digitally and $75 for a digital and physical version.

Dungeons of Drakkenheim by the Dungeon Dudes and Ghostfire Gaming

A collaboration between the Dungeon Dudes and Ghostfire Gaming, Dungeons of Drakkenheim is an excellent campaign adventure for dungeon masters by dungeon masters. It's built by DMs who know what DMs need to run the campaign. The story is a mixture of dark political intrigue and horror-themed dungeon delving — definitely a dark fantasty focused adventure. The quality of the book is excellent with grim artwork, a solid design, and lots of accessories should you choose to buy them and run it.

GMs Miscellany Dungeon Dressing for 5e by Raging Swan Press

Raging Swan puts out amazing books of inspirational tables and tools to help us fill out our fantasy RPGs. The GM's Miscellany: Dungeon Dressing for 5e is the 5e version of the more system-agnostic Dungeon Dressing book but includes pre-rolled 5e-compatible treasure parcels and other 5e focused material. It's an excellent book from an excellent publisher and well worth a DM's money to help fuel ideas for future adventures.

Level Up 5e Monstrous Menagerie

A drop-in replacement for the standard Monster Manual, the Monstrous Menagerie is one of the three core books of the Level Up Advanced 5e RPG system. Developed by Paul Hughes of the Blog of Holding, the mathematics behind the monsters in the Menagerie is top-notch — far better balanced than what you'll find in the Monster Manual. The monster design leans towards complexity, so if you prefer simpler monsters, this might not be for you. Advancements like epic monsters gives you true powerhouse boss monsters sure to put your heroes on their toes. This book is absolutely packed with awesome monsters and gets my personal award for best 5e product of 2022 even though it came out in late 2021.

Path of the Planebreaker by Monte Cook Games

Monte Cook Games's take on worlds like Planescape and, to a smaller degree, Spelljammer; Path of the Planebreaker gives us a high-fantasy sourcebook with dozens of worlds the characters can explore along the path of a multi-planar moon crashing through the cosmos. Monte Cook Games's products are always exceptionally produced with amazing high-fantasy artwork, an excellent physical design and layout, and a wonderful approach towards indexing and cross-referencing that I wish every book included. My only complaint is that 5e design, both for monsters and magic items isn't MCG's strength. Often monster design is head-scratchingly bad and requires a lot of work if you want to use it. Easier is taking their story concepts and wrapping them around monster stat blocks from other producers. Regardless, Path of the Planebreaker is an awesome book with an awesome theme and one I highly recommend.

Planegea by Atlas Games

A massive 380 page sourcebook set in the stone age, Planegea shows us how far we can take 5e's design into campaigns and worlds beyond those published by Wizards of the Coast alone. Another "for GMs by GMs" sourcebook, Planegea includes awesome reskins of existing classes and races, a wonderful awe-inspiring setting, and tremendous artwork and design. If you're looking for a very different setting in which to run your 5e games, definitely give Planegea a look.

Southlands Worldbook by Kobold Press

Set in the south of Kobold Press's massive Midgard setting, the 300+ page Southlands Worldbook includes ancient tombs, powerful villains, old gods, detailed cities of intrigue, and vast histories. With a clear inspiration from our real-world middle east and Africa, three cultural consultants helped steer the Southlands Worldbook from potentially problematic topics such as racism and colonialism. The book's descriptions of slavery, however, warrant a solid discussion during a session zero. The Southlands Worldbook is an awesome spotlight and deep dive into a major region of Midgard — one that can lead to years of campaigns and adventures.

Tal-Dorei Reborn by Darrington Press

The latest refresh of the Tal-Dorei setting popularized by Critical Role, Tal-Dorei Reborn is an amazing and beautiful sourcebook of Matt Mercer's fantastic setting. The nearly 300 page sourcebook is packed with incredible artwork and a modern world design ripe for adventures. Clearly this book appeals more towards fans of Critical Role. It's a wonderful gift for a Critter whether or not they play D&D but for DMs it offers a wealth of ideas to either harvest into your own world or a whole world you yourself can set your adventures.

Tome of Beasts 3 by Kobold Press

Probably my favorite monster book to date, Tome of Beasts 3 is packed with fantastic monsters using the latest 5e design style of Monsters of the Multiverse. Unlike Multiverse, high challenge monsters in Tome of Beasts 3 have real teeth to challenge high level characters. A new set of NPC stat blocks offers tremendous reskinning potential and the rest of the 418 page book is packed with more than 400 monsters to drop into your 5e game and scare even the most grizzled veterans who can describe every feature of a shambling mound.

Venture Maidens Campaign Guide

Written by Celeste Conowich and developed for the Venture Maidens liveplay game, the Venture Maidens campaign guide builds a high fantasy world of epic quests in a land where the borders of the world grow thin. The Venture Maidens Campaign Sourcebook includes all new character creation and mechanics for following the epic quests held in the hearts of our heroic characters. The book expands out into some excellent gamemaster suggestions sure to improve any game. It's a beautiful book encapsulating a wonderful realm of high fantasy and the heroes who walk within it.

Tremendous Books Bringing Life to D&D for Years to Come

Looking over these ten books I'm amazed by the amount of material we have for this game we love. Though we sit less than two years away from a new version of the game, we still have tons of settings, campaigns, and monsters to fill out our 5e games as long as we want them to run. Because may of these books focus on settings and campaigns, we can be sure to find value in them regardless of which system we choose to run.

Pick up one of these books, sit back, and fall into another world.

Related Articles

• Notable 5e Products
• What 5e in the Creative Commons Means to You
• You, Me, and the D&D Open Game License
• A DM's Reading List
• Wolfgang Baur on Worldbuilding

Get More from Sly Flourish

• Read more Sly Flourish articles
• Buy Sly Flourish's Books
• Watch Sly Flourish's YouTube videos
• Subscribe to Sly Flourish's Podcast
• Support Sly Flourish on Patreon

Buy Sly Flourish's Books

• Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
• The Lazy DM's Companion
• Lazy DM's Workbook
• Fantastic Lairs
• Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot
• Fantastic Adventures

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

Read more »