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- ● Designer Diary: Evil Corp.1. The General Idea
February 2021: My game Daimyo: Rebirth of the Empire comes out in stores, which paradoxically leaves me with a big gap in my schedule. I need to quickly find a project that excites me to occupy my free time. Unfortunately, no old prototype seems worthy of interest to me now.
Starting from a blank sheet, I'm going to try to make the game I want to play:
Idea 1: Deck-building with alternating activation.
I want to offer confrontational deck-building (Star Realms-style) but more strategic in the way of playing the cards. I don't want to "empty" my hand every turn, but the order of play of the cards has great importance and is strongly influenced by the actions of my opponent. This naturally results in the idea of creating an alternating action system in which after drawing five cards, each player plays one card alternately until their hand is exhausted before drawing again and starting a turn again. This should bring about the desired action/reaction feeling.
Idea 2: A very tactical game in which each action is a strong dilemma.
I want to get closer to the feeling of the Legend of the Five Rings-style confrontation TCGs, one of my best gaming memories. I try to remember what I liked so much about this game: a constant tension that came from managing timing and priorities. I want a game in which timing is essential, in which we will delay an action in order not to be countered, a game in which we will try to offer a target to an opponent to make them play actions that could counter us in order to be able to play our showpiece quietly. Also, I would like us to be able to use the cards in different ways to offer choice and dilemma. The card will necessarily be of interest for its power, but it must be able to be used in other ways at the same time. I don't know yet how...
Idea 3: Not a deck-building game, but bag-building.
One day, I ordered some coin capsules, thinking it would make interesting hardware for a game. I wondered whether this hardware would be relevant for this new prototype. What is initially a material desire quickly influences the game design because using round 2cm tokens allows me to quickly consider having a board and different locations that take up little space. I wrap this concept up quite quickly with the previous idea: these locations could offer an action or a bonus, a bit like a worker-placement game. I am therefore going with the idea of having several colors of tokens (in place the cards), colors that will mainly be used to define on which location they can be played. It’s taking shape...
Well, I don't have a game, but I know precisely where I want to go and the main idea is very clear:
confrontational bag-building with alternate activation, timing management, and priority management.
2. From the Idea to the First Tests
I gave birth to a first prototype quite quickly. I'm going with a space opera atmosphere. (Who knows why? It's not at all a theme that fascinates me.) The goal will be to conquer planets (plateaus) to dominate the galaxy. The planets will have to be conquered over several turns to create the feeling of "I lost the battle but not the war", while allowing players to abandon positions for a while, then return to them later. To take the planets, I will use a tug-of-war mechanism. Whoever has the most strength at the end of the turn wins the effect of the planet, then advances the conquest marker, and at a certain level, the planet is definitively mine and a new planet opens. There must always be several battlefields simultaneously.
I'm going on the principle of having three types of ships (tokens/cards). Each color has a specialization: combat, technology, and purchase. That's good as it comes full circle with the idea of locations that allow effects to be triggered, and it allows strategies to be combined.
I grind it all out and get a first prototype:
First test at the end of May 2021
I am excited about the test! The feeling I want is already quite present...
...but everything is heavy/complex, there are lots of useless powers, the development part is poorly integrated into the game, and the balance is obviously very random. Also, my partner hates the theme — a bit like me in the end! I do a huge cleansing and switch to a classic medium/fan theme, which is important to be able to put the design through the dozens of tests to come.
Second test on June 1, 2021
The test is super conclusive. There are obviously plenty of flaws, but what I'm trying to check at this moment is the overall feeling, the feeling of how it plays and the interest in the game — and on these points, I am more than satisfied. If only all my prototypes were like that...
At this level, we will say that 80% of the game's mechanisms are present: The bag-building, the four different locations, the tug of war, and the deploy/activate/recruit action triptych. The game now needs to have better balancing to start seeing the flaws more deeply. In any case, we're already having a lot of fun playing it.
3. The "Improbable" Signature and the Final Edition
It turns out that at the end of June 2021 I have to see Benoit from La Boîte de Jeu, publisher of Daimyo. I'm curious to show him this work-in-progress to get his feelings, to know whether I'm imagining things or I actually have something promising. As a Magic player, his advice will be invaluable. At this moment, I'm not thinking about publishing; I'm just happy to have a project that motivates me.
Anyway, at the time, I knew almost no one else in the gaming world. The fact is that the day before seeing Benoit, after a few balancing tweaks and a pretty cool last game, my brain said: "And if he likes it?"
The presentation to Benoit at the end of June 2021
We test the game, and as it progresses, I think I can see interest in Benoit's attitude. We don't finish the game for some reason, so we play it again the next day. Quite a good sign to want to play again...
After the second playing, Benoit shows a real interest in the game, editorially speaking. We talk a lot about the design, how it could be published, the possible artistic directions, and (obviously) the points to work on. There is no commitment, but we still went very far in the discussion.
A few weeks later, La Boîte de Jeu comes back to me to validate this interest and offer me a contract. I am very satisfied to be setting out again on an editorial adventure with a team for whom I have a lot of respect, both personally and professionally.
We found the artistic direction of the game early after deciding to reverse the roles. We will play the "bad guy", and our goal will be to terrorize human villages, with a little quirky side. It takes around three months of intensive work to complete the game's development. During this period, I was able to benefit from the expertise of the publisher to remove all the blocking points in the game. Changes will mainly occur on three major points:
• The beginnings of turns are too often identical => We add the chests to loot and the power stone. This allows for more varied openings and adds tension and rhythm between the players.
• Magic poses a lot of balancing problems => Its management was personal, so we implant the demons to stabilize the balancing and once again bring tension thanks to a "race" effect on their activation.
• The game's increase in power is too slow => We go to eight monsters in the bag (instead of ten), and we reduce the purchase cost of all the monsters to make the game more explosive from turn one.
Most problems are therefore resolved within three months. Game balancing and micro adjustments will then be made throughout the edition, which will last more than a year. I would like to take this opportunity to thank La Boîte de Jeu, who did some crazy editorial work — and a big thank you to Djib and Olivier Derouetteau, who brought the game to life with superb graphic work!
A very striking anecdote: Evil Corp. was the strict opposite of Daimyo on all points. Daimyo took seven years between the idea and its release, whereas Evil Corp. was signed three months after the idea in a version quite close to what the game is today. In short, day and night...
Now It's up to You!
I hope you like the game. From now on, the game is in your hands; it no longer belongs to me. How will you welcome it? In which configuration will you play it the most?
In any case, for my part, it is a satisfying feeling to be able to offer you a game which is the exact feeling of what I had in mind on the first day.
Jérémy Ducret Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 23, 2024 - 6:00 am - ● BGG's Origins Game Fair 2024 Preview Is LiveGiven all that happened today — Asmodee becoming (sort of) independent again, Goliath buying Lucky Duck, me gushing about a game that's both new and nearly thirty years old — I almost forgot to publish BGG's Origins Game Fair 2024 Preview.
Thankfully, I caught that oversight in time to meet my self-imposed publication deadline. Go, me!
The preview has only sixty titles at the moment, with more than a dozen of those titles available solely for demo. The Origins 2023 Preview ended up with "only" 124 titles, so maybe I'm halfway done at this point, roughly two months before Origins Game Fair 2024 opens. If so, that would be odd — but also normal, given that the not-yet-live Gen Con 2024 Preview already has more than one hundred listings. That show is the centerpiece of U.S. tabletop gaming events, so everyone's already looking ahead to that show in August. If you're looking to look ahead, too, look for that preview to go live on Monday, June 3...assuming that I remember in time.
Some of the titles you can lay your hands on at Origins Game Fair 2024 Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 23, 2024 - 2:00 am - Asmodee's Parent Company Embracer Group Will Split into Three CompaniesAsmodee's parent company, Embracer Group, has announced — and I quote — "a transformative step for value creation through a separation of the group into three market-leading games and entertainment companies: Asmodee Group, 'Coffee Stain & Friends' and 'Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends'". (The official names of the final two groups will be announced later, which makes me wonder why Embracer was so rushed as to make this announcement before it knew precisely what it was announcing, but I'm not a business owner who must make such decisions, so what do I know?)
Currently, Embracer Group consists of eleven operative groups:
• PC/console games: THQ Nordic, PLAION, Coffee Stain, Amplifier, Gearbox Entertainment, Crystal Dynamics / Eidos-Montréal
• Mobile games: DECA Games, Easybrain
• Entertainment and services: Dark Horse Media, Freemode (with PLAION also being listed here)
• Tabletop games: Asmodee
But Embracer made a deal in late March 2024 to sell Gearbox Entertainment for US$460 million so that group will soon be leaving, similar to how Embracer sold Saber Interactive for US$247 million in mid-March 2024.
What's left will be reorganized into three groups:
• "Coffee Stain & Friends", described as "a diverse gaming entity with a dual focus on indie and A/AA premium and free-to-play games for PC/console and mobile, with a high degree of recurring revenues", with net sales for the parts of this group over the previous twelve months being SEK 10.9 billion (approx. US$1 billion).
• "Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends", described as "a creative powerhouse in AAA game development and publishing for PC and console, as well as the stewards of The Lord of the Rings and Tomb Raider intellectual properties, among many others", with net sales of SEK 14.1 billion (approx. US$1.3 billion).
• Asmodee, "a global leading tabletop games publisher and distributor with an extensive studio network and IP catalogue", with net sales of SEK 14.8 billion (approx. US$1.35 billion).
The parent companies of these three groups will be headquartered in Karlstad, Sweden, while Asmodee's operational headquarters will remain in Paris.
Embracer Group is currently listed on stock exchanges as EBCRY, but under this reorganization into three groups, the listing for Embracer Group will be changed to whatever "Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends" will finally be named, and shares of Asmodee and "Coffee Stain & Friends" will be distributed as a dividend to the shareholders of Embracer Group, with the distribution of Asmodee shares taking place within the next twelve months and the distribution of "Coffee Stain" taking place in 2025.
Why is Embracer doing this? The short answer: "it is the assessment of the Board of Directors that the current Group structure does not create optimal conditions for future value creation both for Embracer Group's shareholders and other stakeholders". From the press release:"The Board of Directors, together with executive management, propose to transform Embracer Group into three separate, listed companies. This transformation is an important step in unlocking shareholder value. With this new structure, the three entities will be able to focus on executing their core strategies and leveraging their own strengths, providing more differentiated and distinct equity stories to both existing and new shareholders. After careful evaluation of various strategic alternatives, we strongly believe that this decision will benefit all stakeholders and position us for continued success in the future", says Kicki Wallje-Lund, Chair of the Board of Embracer Group.
"This move has been made with the intention to unleash the full potential of each team and provide them with their own leadership and strategic direction. This is the start of a new chapter, a chapter that I intend to remain part of as an active, committed, and supportive shareholder of all three new entities, with an evergreen horizon. This move towards three independent companies reinforces Embracer's vision of backing entrepreneurs and creators with a long-term mindset, allowing them to continue to deliver unforgettable experiences for gamers and fans across the globe", says Lars Wingefors, co-founder and Group CEO of Embracer Group...
The Board of Directors have concluded the following:
• The entities will have sufficient scale, coupled with clearer operational strategies and financial profiles that enable simplified equity stories to attract a larger pool of investors. Current shareholders can freely decide on their capital allocation between the three entities.
• Each entity will be able to fully utilize its own balance sheet, its own set of financial targets and optimal financing structure and capital allocation strategy that enable their growth ambitions.
• The new structure enables the best possible greenlighting models, portfolios and go-to-market strategies for indie games as well as AAA games through two separate, more focused entities.
• Ongoing and future collaboration around IPs, companies and people will still be enabled and encouraged across the entities on market terms.
What will Asmodee consist of as a standalone company? Here's how Embracer describes it:Asmodee is a leading international publisher and distributor of board games, trading cards and digital board games with 23 fully owned studios and 300+ IPs and constitutes the Tabletop Games operating segment of Embracer Group. As per LTM December 2023, Asmodee generated net sales of SEK 14.8 billion, with Adjusted EBITDA of approximately SEK 2.3 billion, EBITDAC of approximately SEK 2.0 billion, Adjusted EBIT of approximately SEK 1.9 billion, and free cash flow after working capital of approximately SEK 2.1 billion.
After FY24/25 Asmodee has an ambition to grow organically in line with the market, which translates into a mid-single digit organic growth in addition to any acquisitive growth. Asmodee's ambition is also to expand its margins from current levels as a result of an improved revenue mix and continued cost management while maintaining a high cash conversion.
The spinoff of Asmodee with a listing on Nasdaq Stockholm is expected to have value-enhancing benefits through greater focus on its core strategy, portfolio and markets. The ongoing transmedia collaboration around Middle-earth and many other IPs is expected to continue after the completion of the spinoff. As a global leader in board and trading card games, with a proven track-record of profitable growth, Asmodee is well-positioned to build on its strategy and continue to prosper as a standalone entity. The spinoff is also expected to enable Asmodee to quicker resume its value accretive M&A strategy.
23 in-house studios develop tabletop games for all types of players across Social, Tabletop and Lifestyle, including a steady addition of new content to key brands. The catalog of 300+ owned IPs include the beloved board games Ticket to Ride®, 7 Wonders, Azul, CATAN, Dobble, Exploding Kittens, and an extensive number of distributed games and IPs. Asmodee is also developing a wide range of licensed tabletop games based on The Lord of the Rings, Marvel, Game of Thrones, Netflix, Lego® and Star Wars™, including the recent successful trading card game release of Star Wars: Unlimited...
Ahead of the initiation of the separation process of Asmodee and in line with already planned governance evolutions, Stéphane Carville, current [Asmodee] CEO, and Marc Nunes, current COO and founder, will join and play active roles in the Board of Directors of Asmodee. Thomas Koegler, a longstanding operational and executive leader at Asmodee and current deputy COO, will in the coming months become Asmodee CEO supported by key leaders within Asmodee.
However, as part of this restructuring Asmodee has entered a financing agreement with JP Morgan, BNP Paribas, SEB, Societe Generale, and Swedbank for a loan of €900 million (US$958 million) that must be repaid in eighteen months, with Embracer noting that this loan "is an important part of the debt refinancing of Embracer Group following its restructuring program, which was finalized 31 March, 2024." Embracer currently has a loan for SEK 8 billion that matures in February 2025, and this new loan will help it refinance the current one.
Importantly, from the perspective of someone who cares about tabletop games over video games, the press release for this agreement notes that "[t]he loan is ringfenced with no recourse to Embracer Group, separating Asmodee's assets and funds from those of Embracer Group, and it is only secured by Asmodee assets." To quote more from this press release:The intention is to continue to deleverage, through both the expected significantly improved Free Cash Flow in the remaining Embracer Group (excluding Asmodee), as well as the proceeds from the divested assets of Saber Interactive and Gearbox Entertainment in the course of FY24/25.
On a pro forma basis as per LTM [last twelve months] December 2023, Embracer Group, including the expected sales proceeds from the divestment of assets from Saber Interactive and Gearbox Entertainment, but excluding Asmodee, will have a Net Debt-to-Adjusted EBIT of around 0.6x. On a pro forma basis as per LTM December 2023, Asmodee will have a Net Debt to Adjusted EBITDA of approximately 3.9x. As part of the transformation and ahead of each separation the full capital structure, including both equity and debt, will be reviewed in Asmodee and "Coffee Stain & Friends" to create the best possible long-term foundation for each entity as a separately listed company.
Hmm, so Asmodee is taking on debt to lessen the burden on the non-Asmodee parts of Embracer? That's my takeaway as a non-finance person who is likely reading all of this material at a surface level. I welcome comments on what I might be missing or misunderstanding... Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 22, 2024 - 5:42 pm - Goliath Acquires Lucky Duck GamesGoliath Games, a toy and game company headquartered in Hattem, Netherlands, is increasingly living up to its name. In January 2024, Goliath acquired an exclusive license to all the games marketed under the Funko Games brand, and on April 22, 2024, Goliath has announced the acquisition of Lucky Duck Games, which was founded in 2016 by Vincent Vergonjeanne.
Here's most of the press release about this deal:Jochanan Golad, CEO of Goliath, says: "As a global games business, we see there are two major growth areas in games: (adult) party games and strategy games. Consumers and kidults particularly are playing boardgames like never before; this trend was already there, but the pandemic had greatly accelerated it."
Lucky Duck Games' library of high-quality strategy titles will complement Goliath's existing multi-category catalog.
Golad further expressed admiration for Lucky Duck Games' swift rise in the strategy space. "Vincent and his team have done an astounding job in such as a short time to become a notable player in the strategy games category. We are very impressed by the games they've brought to market."
Vincent Vergonjeanne, Founder of Lucky Duck Games, echoed the sentiment, affirming the shared entrepreneurial ethos between the two entities. "Goliath's entrepreneurial spirit perfectly aligns with ours. This partnership empowers us to continue investing in cutting-edge strategy games while leveraging Goliath's expansive global distribution network to reach an even broader audience of tabletop gamers," Vergonjeanne stated.
Vincent and his management team will continue to run Lucky Duck Games autonomously as an independent studio within the Goliath group of companies, maintaining its commitment to designing and launching innovative strategy games on a global scale.
In a Facebook post about the deal, Vergonjeanne writes:Read more »Goliath is a match made in heaven for us. A family owned toy-focused worldwide publisher, with who we found a deep complementary partnership, from our people's skills to the type of products we have learn[ed] to find and publish.
Not only is it the best possible next move for Lucky Duck Games, but on a more personal note this is a meaningful moment for me too.Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 22, 2024 - 11:45 am - Pick Up Giant Boxes of Dune, Munchkin, Star Trek: Ascendancy and MoreBuy a game now, or wait for the second edition later? Or maybe catch it on clearance? Or perhaps wait 5-10 years in order to pick up the collector's edition that will inevitably be available — and crowdfunded! probably with new material! — should the game succeed? (And if it doesn't succeed, then why would I want it in the first place, right?!)
For all those who missed — or ignored or didn't know about — a game in the first place, here's your second chance:
• New Zealand publisher Gale Force Nine has two such collections in the works, with one being Star Trek: Ascendancy – The Final Frontier, which will be crowdfunded in late 2024. This "ultimate" collection will include the 2016 Star Trek: Ascendancy base game from Aaron Dill, John Kovaleski, and Sean Sweigart, all seven expansions — Borg Assimilation, Ferengi Alliance, Cardassian Union, Andorian Empire, Vulcan High Command, The Dominion War, and The Breen Confederacy — as well as new planets, civilizations, and tech cards; new alternative ships; and "an exciting requested race".
• The other GF9 collection on the horizon is Dune: Kwisatz Haderach Edition, which will include the 2019 Dune base game from Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge, and Peter Olotka; the three expansions — Ixians & Tleilaxu, CHOAM & Richese, and Ecaz & Moritani — along with "new luxury components, a never-before-seen expansion, and a brand-new way of playing the game". This item will be crowdfunded in 2025.
• Through May 18, 2024, U.S. publisher Steve Jackson Games is crowdfunding Munchkin Big Box, which is a large — yet not nearly comprehensive — collection of Munchkin titles from designers Steve Jackson and Andrew Hackard, with the art on all 650+ cards coming from John Kovalic.
Non-final box design
Munchkin Big Box is due out in late 2024, and it will contain the Munchkin base game, Munchkin 2: Unnatural Axe, Munchkin 3: Clerical Errors, Munchkin 6: Double Dungeons, Munchkin Bosses, Munchkin Side Quests, Munchkin Side Quests 2, and fifty new Munchkin cards, not to mention a game board, a side board, dice, standees, stickers, Kill-O-Meters, and other bits.
Non-final component design
• In March 2024, Eagle-Gryphon Games crowdfunded Baseball Highlights: 2045 – Bases Loaded Edition, a collection that puts everything related to Mike Fitzgerald's Baseball Highlights: 2045 in a single box...along with a new fifteen-card All-Star expansion and a dozen new promo cards that will also be available separately for those who already own this deck-building game of futuristic baseball.
• And for a change of pace, Cryptozoic Entertainment is bringing DC Deck-Building Game: Crisis Collection 2, which contains DC Deck-Building Game: Crisis Expansion Pack 3 and DC Deck-Building Game: Crisis Expansion Pack 4, straight to retail in August 2024. You read that right — straight to retail! Who would have thought it possible?
This collection does include two new promo cards — Red X & Project Thaumaton — but they are available separately should you have already collected the Crisis titles on your own.
Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 22, 2024 - 6:00 am - Designer Diary: Chroma Mix
by Jorge Zhang
Hi there, designer of Chroma Mix here.
Today I am discussing my game and my experience designing and self-publishing it, but first, a bit about me: Over the past six years, I have designed roughly twenty board games. That sounds like more than should be possible, but many of them are compact games, some of which fit on a single card! A large part of my design journey was creating these small games primarily for BGG Design Contests, and participating in these contests is the first thing I recommend to any aspiring designers.
Chroma Mix five years ago
I bring up my experience designing small games because it caused a fundamental shift in the way I approach game design. As you can see from the image above, five years ago Chroma Mix had a lot going on: individual player boards, a player action auction system, a main board, three different types of resources, individual decks for each player, and more.
This isn't a knock on heavy games, but on how I arrived there. Game design requires a lot of problem solving, and whenever I encountered a problem, I solved it by adding more components and rules. I knew I was probably onto something, but it wasn't working the way I wanted it to — and ultimately I stopped working on it.
Chroma Mix now
Four years and many designs later, I decided to revisit Chroma Mix. The game came together at a lightning-fast pace: I started seriously working on the game in February 2023, launched on Gamefound in June, and delivered the game to backers in October of the same year.
The secret? While there were several near-disasters — including a last-minute graphic overhaul: shoutout to artist and graphic designer Nikolaj Cyon for his wonderful work — years of designing smaller games had taught me how to let go of mechanisms. Instead of adding, I ruthlessly cut. I decided to focus on mixing, a mechanism in which you give up two cards and "fuse" them together to make a single stronger card.
The fused card is determined using CMYK. In the above example, Cyan and Jungle (made up of Cyan and Yellow) creates Turquoise. The mix mechanism is fun because it presents an interesting decision space. Do you give up your two cards or save them for something else? Which two cards do you mix together and which ones do you save?
Once I knew to focus on mixing, it instantly became clear which mechanisms should be cut. For each mechanism, I could simply think about whether it enhanced or distracted from the mixing mechanism. The central board mechanism was all about preventing mixing, so that had to go. Auctions took the focus away from mixing, so that was also cut. A "mix" card that you would play to mix, then had to recover with an action in order to mix again slowed the pace of mixing so that also got cut.
As a side benefit, Chroma Mix was a card-only game after all was said and done, making it much less risky to publish.
A Solo Mode in which You Play Against Yourself as Badly as Possible
The solo mode of Chroma Mix sort of happened by accident. During the design process, I would frequently playtest Chroma Mix solo by playing against myself as if I were two different players. I found this fun because I felt that I was playing against someone with a real strategy. The downside is that it was not terribly satisfying to "win"...if you can even call it that. I'd often have a side that I would want to win, so I'd then feel incredibly weird playing as the other side and trying to prevent myself from winning. I realized that I wanted to play the other side sub-optimally. This led me to an idea: What if the solo mode was a two-player game in which you played against yourself with one side playing normally and the other side trying to lose on purpose?
The obvious issue was that when one side is trying to lose, they'd always succeed. I needed to create rules to guarantee that given enough time, the opponent would eventually win the game even when trying to lose. I needed to prevent frivolous mixing, so I settled on a simple rule: The opponent cannot mix for something they already have.
I also needed to force mixing, so I came up with a deck system in which mix cards would be shuffled with the opponent's other cards and force a mix when drawn. I didn't want the opponent's turn to be too involved, so I greatly simplified it and made it so that they didn't use any card effects. Finally, the opponent would need something to overcome this player-introduced suboptimal play, so now the opponent's average turn progresses them farther than the player's average turn.
What's Next?
A few distributors have agreed to carry Chroma Mix, so you may see it pop up at your local game store. As for me, I am still designing games, but as an actual job because I am now a game designer for Z-Man Games. Who knew that Chroma Mix could help me get a job?
I could say more about Chroma Mix, but given that I spent a good chunk of this post writing about how less is more, I'll leave it at that for now. Thank you for reading!
Jorge Zhang
Jayzee Games Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 21, 2024 - 6:00 am - Designing Fallout: Wasteland Warfare, and Wearing Dungeons & Dragons• In mid-April 2024, CNN ran an article aimed at mainstream gamers by Saira Mueller that explains some of the process of getting a board game onto retail shelves, using CATAN, Wyrmspan, and A Gentle Dream as examples along the way.
Interesting trivia from the article: CATAN: New Energies, which hits the U.S. retail market on May 24, 2024, "was in development around ten years ago before getting shelved. During the pandemic, [Klaus and Benjamin Teuber] revisited the idea and have been working on it since." Hmm, how many other CATAN prototypes might still make it into print down the road?
• In early April 2024, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks was interviewed on WBUR's "Here & Now" about what's happening with Dungeons & Dragons, why the company laid off more than a thousand people in late 2023, and whether the Magic: The Gathering market is being flooded.
• Speaking of people leaving Hasbro, on April 17 the company notified the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that on April 15, "Cynthia Williams, President of Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro Gaming, informed the Company of her resignation from the Company effective April 26, 2024. The Company is conducting a process to identify her successor, looking at both internal and external candidates."
• And speaking of D&D, on April 11, 2024 Converse launched the Dungeons & Dragons Collection, a limited edition line of shoes, hats, and shirts "that commemorates the world's greatest roleplaying game and its 50th anniversary".
• And speaking of Magic: The Gathering, Hasbro's "first billion-dollar brand in terms of annual sales", let's turn to an article on Dicebreaker from Magic creator Richard Garfield about "how to share grown-up games with younger players". An excerpt:When I first introduce a game, I am usually doing something I call semi-solitaire play. As the children learn over many games, I will shift over to handicapped play of some form. I find that it is not important to tell children many rules — after all, kids are used to navigating the world with partial information. I teach the bare minimum for them to get started, sometimes not really explaining anything beyond the flavor and general goals...
Once a child can actually play a competitive game, I like to choose a handicap that allows me to challenge myself, ideally one that allows the child to win sometimes but not all the time. Children I am around will play a lot of games, and it is important that they can handle both winning and losing. If you play enough games with reasonable handicaps, there will be plenty of both to experience.
Garfield's handicap suggestions span a great range: extra points per score in any VP game, extra time, a larger hand size, extra dice rolls, bonus cards, an extra piece, and so on. Another excerpt:The second type of handicaps are what I call "soft handicaps", which are restrictions you place on your play to give you a challenge. This might be playing a worse deck in a game like Magic: The Gathering, using no two-letter words in Scrabble, or a strange opening in chess. The rules of the game are the same, but you are intentionally playing in a restricted way. Properly chosen, this limitation will allow you to play as hard or as casually as you like with your child.
You don't need to establish your soft handicap immediately, but can just keep your eye out for unusual strategies that you wouldn't normally try and throw yourself into them. This isn't "playing down" to the level of your opponent; this is exploring less-travelled roads within your game.
Garfield has been responding to questions and comments from BGG users in this thread.
• At the 2024 Games Developers Conference, designer James Sheahan gave an hour-long talk about his efforts to convert the Fallout video game series into Fallout: Wasteland Warfare, which debuted from Modiphius Entertainment in 2018. Says Sheahan, "It covers the whole process of why I designed many of the things in Wasteland Warfare the way I did, with the last half focusing on specific game mechanics."
You can watch this presentation on the GDC website.
Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 20, 2024 - 6:00 am - Explore the Origins of Machu Picchu, Discover a Xenolanguage, and Become Part of Academia• Alison Collins' game design Wiñay Kawsay won third place in the 2021 Zenobia Awards, and it will come to market in November 2024 courtesy of U.S. publisher WizKids under the title Publish or Perish: Wiñay Kawsay.
Here's an overview of this 2-4 player game:Machu Picchu has captivated the imagination of the world and academia alike. There's been plenty of theories about what its purpose could have been. Was it a lost city? Perhaps a citadel? Or maybe something else entirely? That is for you to decide!
In Publish or Perish: Wiñay Kawsay — roughly pronounced win-nyay cow-say — you will step into the shoes of historical scholars. Uncover artifacts, reexamine evidence, publish your histories, and navigate the impact of your actions on this enigmatic wonder. In the deeply competitive world of publish-or-perish academia, will you succeed in influencing perception of what Machu Picchu really was? Or will your theories be one of many forgotten attempts at unravelling this mystery?
In slightly more detail, over the course of the game you place researchers to pick up evidence cards across the site of Machu Picchu, then commit evidence cards to support different interpretations of Machu Picchu's past to win publications and bonuses, while also trying to mitigate your disturbance of the site by returning artifacts to the land.
• A different type of research awaits in Xenolanguage, a 3-4 player game that debuted in April 2024 from designers Kathryn Hymes and Hakan Seyalioglu and publisher Thorny Games:Xenolanguage is a game about first contact with alien life, messy human relationships, and what happens when they mix together.
Play centers on the "Platform": a custom channeling board of mysterious origin. Use a planchette-like lens to channel over alien symbols as you receive and interpret messages. Players will progressively discover meanings for the alien symbols on the board, grapple with what they learn, and experience how it changes them.
The base game of Xenolanguage includes a custom channeling board with thirty alien symbols, planchette-like lens, story deck, and digital soundscapes.
• Designers Hymes and Seyalioglu run Thorny Games, which specializes in designs about linguistics and communication.
Its previous releases consist of Sign: A Game About Being Understood, which is based on the history of Nicaraguan Sign Language, which was created in the late 1970s by deaf adolescents who had essentially been left without a means to communicate with one another, and Dialect: A Game About Language And How It Dies, which was crowdfunded in 2016 and which won a silver for "best game" in the 2019 ENnies.
Here's an overview of that design:Dialect is a tabletop roleplaying game about an isolated community, their language, and what it means for that language to be lost. It's a GM-less game for 3-5 people that runs in 3-4 hours. The game's core spark comes from gradually building up elements of language among players, who gain fluency in their own dialect over the course of play. Words are built off of the fundamental traits of the community, the pivotal events that have defined their lives, and how they respond to a changing world. Players use the language and explore both their characters and the world by asking what this new language really means to them. A new word is made, the language grows, and the community is tightened.
From age to age, the Isolation changes, and we see those changes reflected in the language. In the end, you'll define how the language dies and what happens to the Isolation. Players take away both the story they've told together and this new language.
Prototype• For another take on scholarly pursuits, we can turn to Academia: A Game of Administrative Bloat, a game for 2-4 players from newcomer Ian Pytlarz that The Dietz Foundation plans to crowdfund in January 2025. Here's what awaits you in this game:Read more »Academia is an engine-building, action-management game about running a university that uses a unique action-selection mechanism.
Players are the boards of directors of their universities, choosing the big strategic initiatives from year to year. Each turn represents an academic year in which the player will choose one of four strategic focuses (actions) for their university. When selecting a focus, players choose one of the four offices at their university. Each ready staff member in that office works, triggering its effect. Each focus requires players to exhaust staff, meaning the game is about managing which staff are ready and when, and over the course of play players develop Ph.D. programs, raise endowments, use committees, hire staff, promote individuals, increase the size of the student body, and so on.
Prototype components
Every four years, students will graduate and affect their university's reputation: star athletes improve athletics reputation, high performers academic reputation, and so on. Players then admit new students, and begin again. After three cohorts of students have graduated, players score prestige from reputation, communications efforts, faculty committees, and size/popularity, then the most prestigious university wins.Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 19, 2024 - 2:00 pm - Designer Diary: España 1936Thoughts on Design
España 1936, a strategic game simulating the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939, was designed for Devir in a distant 2006, almost eighteen years ago. Trying to write a diary of its design, particularly chronologically, is a bit difficult after so much time. What I can do is reflect on the reason for its dynamics and mechanisms and explore the depth of what the game is attempting to simulate and represent.
The Spanish Civil War was a complex conflict, mainly because of how it developed. It began with a failed coup d'état by the military leadership of the country, planned by General Mola (alias "the Director") and carried out mainly with the help of high-ranking generals, most of who were Africanists with a strong spirit of protecting the homeland from the danger of "its internal enemies": a leftist government and the danger of workers' revolts like the one in Asturias or the separatist one in Catalonia in 1934.
Therefore, it begins with an attempted coup d'état that triumphs in the less populated, conservative, and rural territories of the Peninsula, thanks to a colonial army at the forefront fighting against a Republic that must rely mainly on security forces, left-wing volunteers, and anarchists to defend its legitimacy.
Scale and Granularity
Over a working lunch, Devir's Xavi Garriga had told me that he would like to have a Civil War game in the catalog that was not too complicated, so I set about working on it at a leisurely pace. Initially, the game was meant to represent the coup and the Republican defense. In fact, this was the source of the design, and a deck of cards from that original blueprint still exists. However, test results and the playing time eroded two very important elements: fun and replayability, which naturally went against both my own intentions and that of the publisher. Moreover, testing highlighted one of the first problems of the design: how to simulate the evolution and quality of the troops in a war with each column consisting of hundreds of soldiers, leading to an army corps and multiple war fronts that would have involved thousands of soldiers.
This first design was based on the usual design for any classic wargame: hexagons, CRT, counters with tactical values, movement, combat, etc. But after researching existing games up to that time, we opted to start from scratch, not taking anything for granted, thinking of a novice player looking for gameplay, history, and fun, which led to radical changes in several design concepts.
The research began with the calculation of the units and the approximate volume of soldiers in each phase of the war. The result was more than two hundred counters per side, with values ranging from 1 to 40, something that made the game and the design quite cumbersome.
At that time, we decided to abstract the values and represent not the men, but the combat capability and the infrastructure of armies that were descendants of colonial campaigns and the First World War, so we structured it around two elements: a maximum capacity of four units and a general, who was necessary for carrying out operations. This realistically represented the operational structure of the maneuver unit and the logistical capacity to attack.
Another issue was the representation of terrain. We started with hexagonal terrain before moving to zones demarcated by provinces and capitals, and eventually we came up with interconnected boxes. This allowed for two things: facilitating the micro-management of movement and concentrating on basic strategy, focusing on the concept of fronts and offensives, strategic zones, and defense. The zones began to make sense. It also solved the problem of geographical features and atmospheric conditions, the idea being that both sides had the same problems and solved them in similar ways.
Units, Evolution, and Combat
Another problem already mentioned was the volume of the units. If the actual number of men was represented (the first columns and the final units), there was a problem of excessive tokens. In addition, the characteristics of a war that was halfway between colonial wars and the First World War produced static fronts and great battles which (under a doctrine copied from the French) looked for a decisive victory by putting pressure on a singular point at the front. This understanding of battles as attacks on static lines was also subject to an important detail: We were one step away from the Second World War with all its weaponry.
Therefore, the units are an expression of the defense and attack capacity in each zone of the front and its evolution throughout the war, with counters of two sizes and different values according to steps. They were easy to handle, understand, and promote, and they were a good reflection of the fighting and its evolution. Another factor was the quality of the troops, as it was necessary to represent the idea of a war between the first and second World War. This is symbolized by the use of dice to reduce the enemy's combat capability, by eliminating or reducing steps in the units, and by modifying the positive or negative value of the dice.
To some players, the combats may seem like too much dice-rolling, but they reflect the development of a battle intended to be decisive, with attacks on units to eliminate their combat value and to take their positions in successive offensives, on some occasions with the support of other weapons. This support is manifested both in the generals, who represent more than their commander, and the units that support that attack in the form of supplies and coordination.
By limiting the number of offensives to the "generals" in play for each side, you reflect not only the difficulty of completely eliminating the enemy, but also the results of the battles, which were often not very decisive in terms of position advances, but which wore out the capacity of the men and resources on both sides. This is an important observation concerning combat: the idea of simulating a real battle, giving priority to playability, fun, and excitement, which in many games becomes a mere calculation of possibilities and the roll of a die, which limits both the interaction and the excitement of the game.
The planes and tanks are designed to play the role they had in the war, representing their combat value, which is providing support and modifying combats. They were limited in number, being a resource that was meagerly provided by foreign powers to test their weapons and tactics, especially considering what happened just a few months after the end of the Civil War. The number and value of the units is a representation, and they appear in play by the cards in their real proportion.
Cards
This is not a typical "card-driven" game with a card engine; it is rather a "card-assisted game". The cards help the game but do not condition it, emphasizing two things: the events as such, which were difficult to define and represent, and the support or random quality of their use to try to modify decisive combats.
The events are comparable and equivalent for both sides until 1938, and show a reality in terms of reinforcement units, equipment, and war events that actually happened and are modeled for the game, focusing more on the military rather than the historical or political aspects. It was tempting to include those aspects, but the idea of creating a historical simulation game would have lost its essence and become a mere level of political confrontation, something which is very limited.
Perhaps this modification of the combat seems a bit fanciful, but it is meant to represent "that extra tank unit", or "that assault battalion", or the personal courage of a unit in a combat, besides wanting to give the initiative to the player. Here they can take a decisive risk in a combat that represents the reserve units spent in battle to the detriment of not being able to use the event again, especially at another time that could be helpful. In fact, the contribution the cards make to combat is reflected in the importance of the event they represent, so here I will give you an extra tip: Save the cards for the event phase (at least three) as they can make all the difference in the war. You must know how to measure your resources. You shouldn't win a battle, but then lose the war due to a lack of strategic vision.
The Dynamics of Actions
The fact that the game dynamic becomes mechanical, as in the order of the actions, has an important meaning in the game, and it reflects the historical reality. The Nationalist units always act first, both in choosing the position of the generals, as well as executing the combat and playing the cards. This is because it was like that during the whole war: the Republican side had to be content with reacting to the movements of the Nationalist side. The Republican offensives, many of them planned with a great effort of men and resources, were carried out only in exceptional moments and by surprise, being almost unable to take advantage of advances after a victory, something that is represented in the order of movements and the concept of control of the boxes and their duality.
The cards — which should be used prudently so that they are decisive and improve the capacity for advance and offensive — represent confrontations such as the battle of Brunete or the Ebro offensive. The Republican player must always think of it as a war of attrition; they have to hold out until they have resources and hope that the international balance changes in their favor, perhaps with a "Historical Supposition" card.
The second edition of España 1936 includes a number of optional cards, which in case of consensus among the players can change the dynamics of the game. The naval expansion also reflects this dynamic, where the nationalists soon took control of the sea, their greater command and strategic capacity prevailing over their initial inferiority. The control of the maritime zones represents the effects of the war and international events in a subtle way, but it can be noticed in the development of the game.
Learning Curve and Gaming Experience
A novice player will find what they expect: Nationalists and Republicans, tanks and planes, and zones to conquer by rolling dice like in an Amerigame, where cards help to roll more dice and kill more units. In fact, they will get into the game quickly because its rules are short for a wargame, its mechanisms easy, and its dynamics simple. For a novice player it will be enough, but as soon as they have played a couple of games and understand the dynamics that produce the game mechanisms, they may begin to think that things can be done differently.
A casual player looking for a couple of games rolling dice will surely be satisfied enough, but won't find the potential and the improvement curve in the game. A simple calculation of the units received the previous turn by cards, replacements, and a simple strategic approach will allow them to plan their turn with "one intention", not just to eliminate units or defend objective cities. Players who want to improve their game will have the resources to do so and will not be able to take refuge in the excuse of losing because of "luck" in the dice or cards. The balance in units, number of dice, and value of cards is measured and balanced to avoid this.
A couple of experienced players who have already played several games will even be able to consider game starts according to the cards received in the first turn, and developments after the results of the first turn, having real strategic options that could be found in both headquarters. In fact, this was the intention of the design: to create something that could escalate like war with the game experience — although I'll be honest: I didn't expect many people to realize this so quickly. That was something that surprised me. Seasoned players found the design fun, and at the time the game was nominated for three prestigious awards in the world of wargames in its category: the Charles S. Roberts, IGA, and Origin awards.
The Second Edition
España 1936 was released in 2007 and was well-received. My publisher, Kim Dorca, thought it was so good that after six months he asked me for an English edition, with some "extras". So appeared La Armada (which I had not included in the initial game so as not to overcomplicate it) and a special short scenario, ideal for tournaments, starting in the year 1938. This expansion was later published free of charge for all those who had the game in Spanish. The game sold out in 2008. Then came the economic recession that changed the game publishing sector. From 2009 on, other games appeared, and in 2011, Twilight Struggle, the first simulation game by Ananda Gupta and Jason Matthews, was published in Spain. Some time later, I learned that Jason loved the game, and he told me that his first design idea was to make a game on the Spanish Civil War, but after playing this one he gave up.
Throughout the years, I have worked as a freelancer for game publishers, and since 2012 almost exclusively for Devir. In 2012 I started to adapt GMT wargames for them — we have more than twenty titles — always with the idea of reediting España 1936, but it was impossible due to the continuous work on different projects. In 2007, Devir Iberia had only eight employees; now it has over two hundred workers and collaborators. It is well-renowned in the Spanish and Portuguese publishing sector, with hundreds of games and more than fifty new titles a year. We have been very busy over the years.
In 2019, the idea of re-editing the game arose, but once again, our high workload wouldn't allow us to do it. In 2022, though, we finally launched the project. The idea was that it would be a completely new edition, with a different look made by new illustrators and graphic designers. It would be targeted at a younger audience, without modifying its original design, which works like clockwork. In this edition I have only played the role of author, unlike in the first edition in which I was in charge of everything. David Esbrí was the editor, Joan Guardiet took care of the art, and Meeple Foundryhandled the graphic design. It is a bilingual edition with an updated image, while keeping all of its original essence.
All wars are terrible and should remain in the past, but that does not mean that we have to forget them. It is better to understand them, precisely in order to know how to avoid them. As the great strategist Sun Tzu said in the distant 5th century B.C., "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle" and "Weapons are inauspicious instruments that should only be used when there is no other alternative". To quote the great designer and historian James Dunnigan, wargames are "paper time machines" and allow us to recreate and understand war comfortably in our living room. Let's make the most of it.
We already know how the Civil War ended, with the victory for the rebels which led to fierce repression against any progressive idea for forty years. This game offers the alternative to rewrite history in another way; this is the player’s challenge. I hope you enjoy the game as much as I enjoyed designing it. I hope to have some time in the future to design some more. Thank you.
Antonio Catalán
Barcelona, March 2024 Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 19, 2024 - 6:00 am - Visit Chicago to Raise the City, Sell Liquor, and Take to the Streets• A quadrilogy of games set in the United States' "Second City" are coming out in 2024 and 2025, all taking place in different eras of Chicago's past. The game set closest to the present day is Chicago '68, the debut design from Yoni Goldstein, which The Dietz Foundation plans to crowdfund in the middle of 2024.
Placeholder cover
Chicago '68 is labeled as a 1-4 player game, with publisher Jim Dietz saying it would typically be played as a two-player duel:Chicago '68 pits revolutionary spectacle against civil order at the Democratic National Convention riots of 1968. Players take the role of either the Establishment or the Demonstrators in this fast-paced game of street battles and political maneuvers. Each side plays from two asymmetric decks of action cards. The Establishment positions tactical forces and police platoons to co-ordinate mass arrests while working the convention floor. The Demonstrators, on the other hand, can pivot from direct clashes to radical street theater; their tactics can be reactive and unpredictable, allowing for wild cat-and-mouse chases and mischief-making across the tear-gassed avenues of groovy downtown Chicago.
Prototype components
In more detail, the game is played over five rounds, with two rounds representing a single day (daytime and nighttime). Each side takes turns playing cards from two decks of action cards. The first deck represents the leadership committees. For the Establishment, this is the Mayor's office, and for the Demonstrators, this is the Yippies. These decks are primarily focused on building/activating card splays and manipulating the board state. The Mayor faction can access the policy tableau with the mandate action, which include activating undercover agents, authorizing tear gas, redeploying the National Guard, and more.
Then both sides alternate playing action cards from their rank-and-file decks: The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE) on one side, and the Chicago Police Department on the other. These actions are largely moving and confronting units on the map and claiming strategic positions. The Demonstrators may build and activate their street theater splay, which is a set of location specific one-time "mini-objectives" with unique, combinatorial powers.
Prototype components
At the end of every round, a delegate commits a vote to either side. Demonstrators grow in number, the mayor is allocated funds, and whoever controls a majority of critical city areas is awarded exposure points.
Chicago '68 supports 1-4 players in solo, competitive, co-operative, and team play modes. Game duration is 45 minutes per player, with the typical two player duel lasting 60-90 mins.
• Chicago Dry is a 2-4 player game from designer Sérgio Halaban and publisher Buró, which has offices in Brazil, Argentina and Spain, and as you might guess from the title, the game is set during the Prohibition era of U.S. history (1920-1933):For years, Prohibition has poured Americans a tall glass of austerity and condemned the whole country to a life of secret transgressions. In Chicago Dry, players look for a way around Prohibition to bring bottled fun to Chicago's hidden pubs and speakeasies.
In this game, 2-4 players secretly distribute alcohol across city districts as they face off against rivals and fight for territory, achieving higher scores as they occupy the Chicago central area. The player with the most influence points in both phases of the game wins and becomes the most infamous gangster in town!
• Stepping back in time further we come to the 1-5 player game Rebuilding Chicago, a standalone successor to 2021's Rebuilding Seattle from designer Quinn Brander and publisher WizKids:In Rebuilding Chicago, you're responsible for managing the zoning and expansion of a major neighborhood following the "Great Chicago Fire" of 1871.
Each round, your population grows, then you can either build a new building, expand into a new suburb, activate an event, or build a landmark, after which you earn profit based on your neighborhood's commerce. You'll buy building types from a shared market — looking to find shapes that fit your grid and types that fit your strategy — and construct landmarks on the right tile combinations. Suburb tiles connect to your grid however you like, creating uniquely shaped neighborhoods. Triggering citywide events can change the tide of the game, offering points, money, and expansions for the players ready for it. You can even enact laws to give yourself the advantage!
You earn points for building types, upgrades, landmarks, events, and remaining cash, and at the end of the game, whoever's neighborhood has earned the most points wins.
Rebuilding Chicago also comes with a solo player deck so that you can compete to build the best version of Chicago even with just one player. Enjoy gameplay against a deck designed to simulate the actions of a second player to discover strategies and configurations you can use to improve Chicago.
• And before we can rebuild Chicago, we need to construct it into a form worth rebuilding, something Matt Wolfe is tackling in Raising Chicago, with players re-enacting efforts during the mid-19th century to elevate buildings so that a sewer system could be installed under the new, higher street level. I covered this upcoming Spielworxx title in January 2024, but I felt I would be remiss not to include it in this post.
Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 18, 2024 - 6:00 am
BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek
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- Deep Magic Volume 1 - The TheurgePublisher: Kobold Press
Harness the Divinity of Magic!
Summoned from the pages of Deep Magic Volume 1 comes the Theurge, a powerful new spellcasting class from Kobold Press!
Adepts of both divine and arcane magic, Theurges wield a powerful range of spells and abilities capable of bolstering their allies and defeating any enemy! This 14 page-supplement contains everything a player needs to create their own Theurge, and master the raw essence of magic, including;
- A complete guide to the new Theurge class, an Intelligence-based spellcasting class capable of casting both cleric and wizard spells!
- Three Theurge subclasses; the Dweomercrafter, sculptors and shapers of new spells, the Mystic, wielders of potent psychic energies and the Spell Siphon, who draw raw magic from other spellcasters to fuel their insatiable quest for knowledge!
Uncover the secrets of deepest magic with the Theurge!
Price: $4.99 Read more »Source: DriveThruRPG.com Newest Items | Published: April 22, 2024 - 9:39 pm - Maps [BUNDLE]Publisher: Skirmisher Publishing
This special 50% off bundle contains six beautiful sets of maps by two noted fantasy artists!
Four are sets of encounter area maps by Bob Greyvenstein, all of which are provided with and without grids, along with custom compass roses and thematically affiliated illustrations. Two are Gold-bestselling fantasy campaign maps of the Mediterranean and Aegean by Francesca Baerald.
These maps are variously suitable for any fantasy, historical, modern, urban fantasy, pulp, or horror RPGs, miniatures games, or wargames and are especially useful when running games online or on virtual tabletops.Aegean Regional Map (Swords of Kos Fantasy Campaign Setting)
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Price: $11.94 Read more »Total value: 0 Special bundle price: 0 Savings of: 0 (50%) Source: DriveThruRPG.com Newest Items | Published: April 22, 2024 - 9:14 pm - MYRA - Weltbote WB09-WB16 [BUNDLE]Publisher: Verein der Freunde Myras VFM e.V.
This special bundle product contains the following titles. MYRA - Weltbote WB09
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Format: Watermarked PDFDer Myra Weltbote Enthält Berichte und Geschehen - und Karten für den Atlas Myras fürs Rollenspiel auf Myra - von verschiedenen Gebieten Myras, von Kaiserlichen Rat auf Karcanon, Ysatinga, Yhllgord, Kiombael bis zum Verein der Freunde Myras VFM e.V.. MYRA ist eine Kampagnenwelt für Stories und Rollenspiele, die von beliebig vielen Menschen (weit über 1000) über beliebig viele Jahre (seit 1982) gemeinsam erschaffen wird. Sie ist geeignet und wird genutzt für Das älteste Rollenspiel der Welt (sowohl 5e wie Advanced 2nd) und Pathfinder und ist auch für Das Schwarze Auge (DSA) nutzbar. Der Weltbote ist eine nichtkommerzielle Publikation des gemeinnützigen Vereins der Freunde Myras. In der Online-Bibliothek auf Issuu ist er kostenlos online zu lesen. Wer ihn herunterladen möchte und das ... MYRA - Weltbote WB10
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Format: Watermarked PDFDer Myra Weltbote Enthält Berichte und Geschehen - und Karten für den Atlas Myras fürs Rollenspiel auf Myra - von verschiedenen Gebieten Myras, von Kaiserlichen Rat auf Karcanon, Ysatinga, Yhllgord, Kiombael bis zum Verein der Freunde Myras VFM e.V.. MYRA ist eine Kampagnenwelt für Stories und Rollenspiele, die von beliebig vielen Menschen (weit über 1000) über beliebig viele Jahre (seit 1982) gemeinsam erschaffen wird. Sie ist geeignet und wird genutzt für Das älteste Rollenspiel der Welt (sowohl 5e wie Advanced 2nd) und Pathfinder und ist auch für Das Schwarze Auge (DSA) nutzbar. Der Weltbote ist eine nichtkommerzielle Publikation des gemeinnützigen Vereins der Freunde Myras. In der Online-Bibliothek auf Issuu ist er kostenlos online zu lesen. Wer ihn herunterladen möchte und das ... MYRA - Weltbote WB11
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Format: Watermarked PDFDer Myra Weltbote Enthält Berichte und Geschehen - und Karten für den Atlas Myras fürs Rollenspiel auf Myra - von verschiedenen Gebieten Myras, von Kaiserlichen Rat auf Karcanon, Ysatinga, Yhllgord, Kiombael bis zum Verein der Freunde Myras VFM e.V.. MYRA ist eine Kampagnenwelt für Stories und Rollenspiele, die von beliebig vielen Menschen (weit über 1000) über beliebig viele Jahre (seit 1982) gemeinsam erschaffen wird. Sie ist geeignet und wird genutzt für Das älteste Rollenspiel der Welt (sowohl 5e wie Advanced 2nd) und Pathfinder und ist auch für Das Schwarze Auge (DSA) nutzbar. Der Weltbote ist eine nichtkommerzielle Publikation des gemeinnützigen Vereins der Freunde Myras. In der Online-Bibliothek auf Issuu ist er kostenlos online zu lesen. Wer ihn herunterladen möchte und das ... MYRA - Weltbote WB12
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Format: Watermarked PDFDer Myra Weltbote Enthält Berichte und Geschehen - und Karten für den Atlas Myras fürs Rollenspiel auf Myra - von verschiedenen Gebieten Myras, von Kaiserlichen Rat auf Karcanon, Ysatinga, Yhllgord, Kiombael bis zum Verein der Freunde Myras VFM e.V.. MYRA ist eine Kampagnenwelt für Stories und Rollenspiele, die von beliebig vielen Menschen (weit über 1000) über beliebig viele Jahre (seit 1982) gemeinsam erschaffen wird. Sie ist geeignet und wird genutzt für Das älteste Rollenspiel der Welt (sowohl 5e wie Advanced 2nd) und Pathfinder und ist auch für Das Schwarze Auge (DSA) nutzbar. Der Weltbote ist eine nichtkommerzielle Publikation des gemeinnützigen Vereins der Freunde Myras. In der Online-Bibliothek auf Issuu ist er kostenlos online zu lesen. Wer ihn herunterladen möchte und das ... MYRA - Weltbote WB13a
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Format: Watermarked PDFDer Myra Weltbote Enthält Berichte und Geschehen - und Karten für den Atlas Myras fürs Rollenspiel auf Myra - von verschiedenen Gebieten Myras, von Kaiserlichen Rat auf Karcanon, Ysatinga, Yhllgord, Kiombael bis zum Verein der Freunde Myras VFM e.V.. MYRA ist eine Kampagnenwelt für Stories und Rollenspiele, die von beliebig vielen Menschen (weit über 1000) über beliebig viele Jahre (seit 1982) gemeinsam erschaffen wird. Sie ist geeignet und wird genutzt für Das älteste Rollenspiel der Welt (sowohl 5e wie Advanced 2nd) und Pathfinder und ist auch für Das Schwarze Auge (DSA) nutzbar. Der Weltbote ist eine nichtkommerzielle Publikation des gemeinnützigen Vereins der Freunde Myras. In der Online-Bibliothek auf Issuu ist er kostenlos online zu lesen. Wer ihn herunterladen möchte und das ... MYRA - Weltbote WB13b
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Format: Watermarked PDFDer Myra Weltbote Enthält Berichte und Geschehen - und Karten für den Atlas Myras fürs Rollenspiel auf Myra - von verschiedenen Gebieten Myras, von Kaiserlichen Rat auf Karcanon, Ysatinga, Yhllgord, Kiombael bis zum Verein der Freunde Myras VFM e.V.. MYRA ist eine Kampagnenwelt für Stories und Rollenspiele, die von beliebig vielen Menschen (weit über 1000) über beliebig viele Jahre (seit 1982) gemeinsam erschaffen wird. Sie ist geeignet und wird genutzt für Das älteste Rollenspiel der Welt (sowohl 5e wie Advanced 2nd) und Pathfinder und ist auch für Das Schwarze Auge (DSA) nutzbar. Der Weltbote ist eine nichtkommerzielle Publikation des gemeinnützigen Vereins der Freunde Myras. In der Online-Bibliothek auf Issuu ist er kostenlos online zu lesen. Wer ihn herunterladen möchte und das ... MYRA - Weltbote WB14
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Format: Watermarked PDFDer Myra Weltbote Enthält Berichte und Geschehen - und Karten für den Atlas Myras fürs Rollenspiel auf Myra - von verschiedenen Gebieten Myras, von Kaiserlichen Rat auf Karcanon, Ysatinga, Yhllgord, Kiombael bis zum Verein der Freunde Myras VFM e.V.. MYRA ist eine Kampagnenwelt für Stories und Rollenspiele, die von beliebig vielen Menschen (weit über 1000) über beliebig viele Jahre (seit 1982) gemeinsam erschaffen wird. Sie ist geeignet und wird genutzt für Das älteste Rollenspiel der Welt (sowohl 5e wie Advanced 2nd) und Pathfinder und ist auch für Das Schwarze Auge (DSA) nutzbar. Der Weltbote ist eine nichtkommerzielle Publikation des gemeinnützigen Vereins der Freunde Myras. In der Online-Bibliothek auf Issuu ist er kostenlos online zu lesen. Wer ihn herunterladen möchte und das ... MYRA - Weltbote WB15
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Format: Watermarked PDFDer Myra Weltbote Enthält Berichte und Geschehen - und Karten für den Atlas Myras fürs Rollenspiel auf Myra - von verschiedenen Gebieten Myras, von Kaiserlichen Rat auf Karcanon, Ysatinga, Yhllgord, Kiombael bis zum Verein der Freunde Myras VFM e.V.. MYRA ist eine Kampagnenwelt für Stories und Rollenspiele, die von beliebig vielen Menschen (weit über 1000) über beliebig viele Jahre (seit 1982) gemeinsam erschaffen wird. Sie ist geeignet und wird genutzt für Das älteste Rollenspiel der Welt (sowohl 5e wie Advanced 2nd) und Pathfinder und ist auch für Das Schwarze Auge (DSA) nutzbar. Der Weltbote ist eine nichtkommerzielle Publikation des gemeinnützigen Vereins der Freunde Myras. In der Online-Bibliothek auf Issuu ist er kostenlos online zu lesen. Wer ihn herunterladen möchte und das ... MYRA - Weltbote WB16
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Format: Watermarked PDFDer Myra Weltbote Enthält Berichte und Geschehen - und Karten für den Atlas Myras fürs Rollenspiel auf Myra - von verschiedenen Gebieten Myras, von Kaiserlichen Rat auf Karcanon, Ysatinga, Yhllgord, Kiombael bis zum Verein der Freunde Myras VFM e.V.. MYRA ist eine Kampagnenwelt für Stories und Rollenspiele, die von beliebig vielen Menschen (weit über 1000) über beliebig viele Jahre (seit 1982) gemeinsam erschaffen wird. Sie ist geeignet und wird genutzt für Das älteste Rollenspiel der Welt (sowohl 5e wie Advanced 2nd) und Pathfinder und ist auch für Das Schwarze Auge (DSA) nutzbar. Der Weltbote ist eine nichtkommerzielle Publikation des gemeinnützigen Vereins der Freunde Myras. In der Online-Bibliothek auf Issuu ist er kostenlos online zu lesen. Wer ihn herunterladen möchte und das ...
Price: $47.98 Read more »Total value: 0 Special bundle price: 0 Savings of: 0 (54%) Source: DriveThruRPG.com Newest Items | Published: April 22, 2024 - 9:13 pm - Fascinating Characters: Fantasy Volume 4Publisher: Table 30 Press
Fascinating Characters: Fantasy Volume 4
Beastmasters
Dive into the untamed realms where the bond between beast and master redefines the balance of power. This volume of Fascinating Characters introduces a captivating collection of 10 beastmasters, each uniquely connected to the natural world. From those who champion the preservation of endangered ecosystems to those who harness the might of their animal companions to dominate their surroundings, these beastmasters share a more profound kinship with their beasts than their own kind.
Each character is meticulously detailed and presented on individual pages for effortless printing and use. Designed for both gamemasters and players, this supplement provides a rich repository of complex NPCs and lays the groundwork for players to craft their distinct heroes.
- In Highgarden’s mystical expanses, Adrin Thistlefoot has turned his unusual passion for Vorpal Hares into a formidable art. Known for their lethal agility and sharp teeth, these hares help Adrin master defense and offense, allowing him to command them to swarm over enemies or stealthily infiltrate dangerous locales.
- Annie Wilson, the Critter Whisperer of the Wild from Appalachia, balances community needs with nature using her unique ability to communicate with wildlife. She manages pest populations and promotes eco-friendly agriculture while maintaining a respectful vegetarian lifestyle, illustrating her deep commitment to coexistence.
- Kala Moonfang, a nomadic Mythical Beastmaster, forms deep bonds with legendary creatures like phoenixes and chimeras. These alliances enhance her magical abilities and allow her to protect these mystical beings. As a guardian of ancient secrets, Kala’s life is a continuous quest to maintain the balance of nature and magic.
- Growing up in nature’s wild beauty, Zringo developed a robust connection with his environment and a unique bond with his pet golden eagle, Beak. His ability to transform into observed wild animals has sharpened his survival and stealth skills, making him a versatile and formidable presence in the natural world.
Whether safeguarding the delicate web of nature or asserting their will through the primal forces of their companions, these beastmasters are ready to make their mark in your stories, blending the lines between man, beast, and the wild forces of nature.
Source: DriveThruRPG.com Newest Items | Published: April 22, 2024 - 8:22 pm - ERA for Rolemaster RMSSFRP Construct CompanionPublisher: Iron Crown Enterprises
This product is an add-on feature package for ERA (see /product/137825/ERA-for-Rolemaster).
ERA (Electronic Roleplaying Assistant) is the ultimate companion for Rolemaster campaigns. Using ERA players can create their characters using a step by step wizard, then level them up and configure all details in stats, skills and special abilities, even overriding the automatic calculations. Afterwards, they can be added to a running campaign in the adventuring module. From there, the game master can control all aspects of the game: resolve maneuvers, resistances, resting, and of course, spell casting and combat.
Players can also oversee the current status of their characters as the adventure progresses, simply by accessing the application with their mobile devices. This also allows them to check all known spells with full descriptions, current skill values and more. Inventory and game master-to-player communication also have their own systems.
Get ERA for free and try it out using the included Rolemaster Classic sample races, professions, spells, attacks and criticals.
By installing this ERA package you will have at your disposal the spells, training packages, maneuver tables and random tables in the RMFRP Construct Companion to create all sorts of artificial entities.To make sure your creators learn all the necessary skills, chose from the 9 training packages. Grow your own automata by choosing Adept, or make other creators fear you by turning into an Entity Hunter. Get a detailed result on the powers of your embedded demonic creation, or check to see which spirits inhabits your automaton. All in the 16 random tables provided. Find the spell parameters and descriptions among 15 new spell lists. Use that knowledge to graft an artificial limb, power an underwater vehicle, enchant a golem, and also help trace an abomination. To put those skills to use, make sure to roll in the 5 maneuver tables included. Assemble your Amalgam, design your Automaton, or perform surgery to graft an external body part to your subject.Tutorial videos are available (see link below). For suggestions and questions, please visit the Rolemaster Software board of the ICE forums at https://ironcrown.co.uk and the era-for-rolemaster channel at the ICE Discord https://discord.gg/7fYkMHZ
ERA is compatible with Windows, macOS and Linux. The character status module is also designed to be accessed from mobile devices.
Source: DriveThruRPG.com Newest Items | Published: April 22, 2024 - 7:55 pm - Coldfire Mountain - A Corrupt Icy Snow Mountain, Eldritch Altar, Arcane Ruins, Camp site and more! (Roll20)Publisher: Dreadmaps
Coldfire Mountain, shrouded in perpetual frost and veiled in an eerie mist, stands as a foreboding sentinel in the desolate northern reaches. Isolated from the realms of warmth and sunlight, this frigid expanse is a haven for the occult, where eldritch energy flows like an ancient river beneath the icy surface. Whispers of arcane rituals echo through the frozen peaks, and mysterious symbols adorn the caverns that riddle the mountain's core. The air itself seems to carry a palpable sense of otherworldly presence, and those who dare to tread upon its frostbitten slopes are met with an unsettling feeling that the very essence of the mountain pulses with dark power.
Includes:
- A massive 25x75 battle map depicting an icy mountain pass with overflowing arcane energy
- 4 variants + overlay: Cold Fire, Cold Fire w/ Snow, Lava, Lava w/ Snow, and a spike-trap overlay for each
- VTT Ready: 50, 70, 100, 140ppi
- File formats: Jpeg and Webp
- Layout: Grid and No Grid
PreviewsPrice: $5.99 Read more »Source: DriveThruRPG.com Newest Items | Published: April 22, 2024 - 7:55 pm - Embers of HorncrestPublisher: Free League Publishing
The Embers of Horncrest is the newest module from Armored Storyteller. It is set in the Firelands of the Bloodmarch, Free League’s newest expansion of the Forbidden Lands. The module includes a village populated with NPCs with their individual designs and conflicts and a dungeon adventure site located in a volcanic crater, where a mad dwarf sorcerer conducts horrific experiments to produce abhorrent constructs that pose a threat to the Bloodmarch and beyond.
Price: $4.99 Read more »Source: DriveThruRPG.com Newest Items | Published: April 22, 2024 - 7:55 pm - Time SinkPublisher: Sean Smith
A module for 4-6 crawlers of LV3
An ancient sink is guarded by glowing sharks. They say the penultimate thief of time is buried there.
TIME SINK is an adventure inspired by old competition modules like C1 Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. It works perfectly as a convention game or within an ongoing coastal campaign.
TIME SINK is an independent product published under the Shadowdark RPG Third-Party License and is not affiliated with The Arcane Library, LLC. Shadowdark RPG © 2023 The Arcane Library, LLC.
- Writing and dtp. by Sean F. Smith
- Dungeon cartography by Dyson Logos
- All rights reserved © 2024
Source: DriveThruRPG.com Newest Items | Published: April 22, 2024 - 6:20 pm - The Deck of Mighty Peasant DeedsPublisher: Marz Press
DECK OF MIGHTY PEASANT DEEDS
A full deck of 99 tarot sized cards printed on premium color card stock. Each of the zero-level occupations presented on Table 1-3 in the DCC RPG Core Rulebook has its own corresponding card featuring their occupation specific Mighty Peasant Deed.
SO WHAT ARE MIGHTY PEASANT DEEDS?
Quite simply, a Mighty Peasant Deed allows your zero-level characters the ability to perform exciting stunts and combat maneuvers by using a quick and streamlined version of the fantastic Mighty Deed of Arms mechanic from the DCC RPG ruleset.
Each zero-level occupation is represented with their very own Mighty Peasant Deed that utilizes their starting weapon and trade good in what can only be described as some of the most outlandish and often devastating combat results your literary Appendix N heroes could only have hoped to achieve.
Because you’re no serf…you’re a SLAYER!
You’re no hero...
You’re a peasant:
a cobbler,
a costermonger,
a ditch digger,
a radish farmer with a pet goose.
You seek gold and glory,
winning it with shovel and rake,
caked in flour, honey, cheese dip,
and night soil.
There are treasures to be won anywhere but in your village,
and you shall have them….
Source: DriveThruRPG.com Newest Items | Published: April 22, 2024 - 5:44 pm - Cyberpunk Classes for 5e: NetrunnerPublisher: RPGGamer
Cyberpunk Classes for 5e: Netrunner
Welcome to the digital frontier, where the boundaries between reality and cyberspace blur, and the Netrunner class reigns supreme. In this booklet, we embark on a journey into the heart of a cyberpunk world, where technology intertwines with every aspect of society, and information is the currency of power.
Netrunners are the architects of the digital realm, their minds wired for hacking and their fingers dancing across keyboards with unparalleled dexterity. Masters of manipulation and infiltration, they navigate the labyrinthine networks of cyberspace with ease, their presence felt but never seen as they weave through layers of code and encryption.
But being a Netrunner is more than just a skill—it's a way of life. It's about understanding the underlying currents of data that flow through the veins of the city, knowing where to find the hidden secrets and exploiting them for personal gain or the greater good. It's about staying one step ahead of the corporate giants and government agencies that seek to control the flow of information, using their own tools against them to disrupt, dismantle, or deceive.
In these pages, we will delve deep into the art of Netrunning, exploring the techniques, tools, and philosophies that define this enigmatic class. From the basics of hacking to the intricacies of digital combat, we will equip you with the knowledge and skills needed to navigate the vast expanse of cyberspace and emerge victorious in the battles that lie ahead.
So strap in, jack into the grid, and prepare to embark on an adventure like no other. The digital frontier awaits, and only the boldest and most cunning Netrunners will emerge triumphant in the cyberpunk worlds.
This is a full 5e Class, with a description, Unique Abilties and Level progression up to 20th Level, for a Cyberpunk setting.
Price: $3.00 Read more »Source: DriveThruRPG.com Newest Items | Published: April 22, 2024 - 5:35 pm
DriveThruRPG.com Newest Items
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- The Genre Mash
One of my gaming groups plays a mashed up game with three genres: Highschool, Swashbuckling, and Urban Fantasy. We call it Children of the Shroud. In the game we play high school kids in a hidden magic world. As part of our magical learning we are part of the Junior Guardians club. It’s a club for magical students at our high school in Buffalo NY. Due to reasons, we got ourselves involved in trying to stop a magic prosperity cult who are using the in-game currency of a video game called Call of Violence to try and manifest a new primal elemental of prosperity. This in game currency can be bought with real world money. Prosperity magic is outlawed by the magic cops because it can destroy the magical veil which helps hide the magical world from the normals out there. If those normals found out about the magical world they’d get really torch and pitchforky on the magic folks.
Our characters are…interesting. My character, Silas, had his girlfriend’s essence bound to his soul when the campaign started and has been trying to make her whole again. Ti is a medusa in a really nice middle class family of medusas. Gunny just figured out he was a wind elemental and his dad isn’t dead, but some big bad criminal, or spy, or both. On top of that we can all manifest magical weapons that let us cast stronger and stronger spells the longer we fight and two of us are also on the academic decathlon team at school, or the Knowledge Bowl team, as our friend Ti likes to say.
It’s a mash up. So let’s talk about how you can do something similar.
Pick Genres
First, pick three genres. Need a list? You can try TV tropes or here’s a bunch of genre’s to pick from:
Action, Adventure, Comedy, Crime, Espionage, Fairy Tale, Hard SciFi, High Fantasy, High School, Historical, Horror, Low Fantasy, Martial Arts or Wuxia (It’s Woo-Shhaaa, say it with me, Woo. Shhaaa.) Mecha, Medical, Medieval, Modern, Mystery, Politics, Post-Apocalypse, Prehistoric – Who doesn’t love a big old dinosaur, Psionics, your favorite version of the punk genre, Pulp, Science Fantasy, Soft SciFi, Space Opera, Sports – we need more sports RPGs, Suburbia, Super Heroes, Sword & Sorcery, Urban Fantasy, Western, Zombies AKA Hordes of shambling dead people where the shambling dead are the least dangerous thing.
Understand Your Genres
Second, understand what your genres are about. Let’s look at the Children of the Shroud game I mentioned. I’ll be quoting the Cortex Prime rule book for their take on the first two genres:
High School: Teenagers are complicated, and so are the adults that share their worlds, especially when the drama is dialed all the way up because of exams, proms, drugs, and bullies.
Swashbuckler: Icons of this genre are pirates, musketeers, and scoundrels, but it really extends to anything where the characters engage in flashy exploits, daring escapes, over the top swordfights, and perilous relationships.
There isn’t an Urban Fantasy genre in the Cortex book but here’s my best take on it.
Urban Fantasy often deal with a world of magic in a modern setting. Most Urban Fantasy has a mystery at the center of these stories, leaning on its roots in noir fiction, but the genre is primarily about mixing the magical with a mundane world and seeing how they interact. The PCs should also have one foot in both the magical and mundane worlds.
Fit Those Genre’s Together – Largest Step
Third, try and look at how the genre’s can fit together. This examination also lets you take a genre to a different sub genre or lets you add a sub genre. Once again, here’s how we did it with Children of the Shroud.
In our children of the shroud game we decided everyone would have a magical weapon of some sort they manifested and the weapon would generate mana as it was wielded through different forms for combat magic. That was the intersection of Swashbuckling and Urban Fantasy. It also let me push a bit of the high school magic anime’s I enjoy into the game.
We decided we wanted ritual magic that took longer to use but was more flexible than combat magic and could produce a variety of effects. This strictly fits the Urban Fantasy genre.
Our GM, and fellow gnome Phil, created something called the Veil which hid the magical world from the mundane world but it could be strained if magic was used too blatantly. This also meant there was a governing body over magic in the world who helped maintain the veil and investigated and prosecuted those who sought to expose the veil or use magic in a way that would harm the veil. This pushed us to a hidden magical world as part of our urban fantasy genre.
To help make this hidden world, urban fantasy, and high school genre even more poignant and overlapped, we placed the parents of our characters as part of this magical society in some way. On top of that Gunny’s player decided his mother doesn’t know anything about the magical world, creating some hidden world genre tension.
Next we crafted mechanics that pulled in school clicks to highlight the high school school side of play. We called them Roles. This is a feature of Cortex prime. Our Roles trait sets is Emo, Geek, Jock, Popular, Performer. They provided attributes but also our social standing in different school cliques. This is predominantly a highschool thing but the mechanics also played into the action parts of our swashbuckling since Jock and Geek were used in our dueling rules.
We also decided our high school would be mostly mundane but there would be a special club called the Junior Guardians that was a cover for the magical teens attending the school. This club would be where they got their magical education. This hits the high school and urban fantasy genres along with that hidden world sub genre.
Lastly, we have our important relationships. We started with two in the magical world and two in the mundane world to keep up the idea of being in both worlds from Urban Fantasy. Also, because one of the genre’s is Swashbuckling our GM decided to also do their best to make some of those relationships dangerous in a variety of ways.
There’s actually more to it than that I just threw a bunch of examples of what we did at you. If you break it down there’s really just three things the group needs to consider and one extra the GM should keep in mind. Time for a sub list.
Setting
Your setting should do its best to find these overlaps. As human beings we’re pretty good at finding the patterns and intersections where these different genres and their setting elements can intersect. Just ask yourself a few questions such as:
- Where are the predominant locations the game will take place?
- Who are the important NPCs and how do they fit into the setting?
- Why are people or organizations doing what they’re doing? What’s their motivation?
- Where is the tension and conflict in the setting and how can it be related to the genres being used?
That’s just off the top of my head. Add questions that work best for your group and creative style.
Situation
An addendum to the setting would be situation. What is the initial situation the characters find themselves in or what is the overall situation the game assumes the characters will be involved in. Some folks think of this as a scenario or plot but it’s a little higher level than that. It’s more of a guideline for the players so they more easily craft characters inside the campaign. It also gives starting tensions, problems, and ways for the GM to provide meaningful hooks for the PCs
In our Children of the Shroud game we were all a part of the Junior Guardians which meant we had Junior Guardian missions we had to take part in. On top of that we had personal goals the GM oked as part of the initial situation. Silas had his girlfriend Meseme’s essence bound to his soul and was dealing with the fall out from that. Gunny had just discovered he was magical and that his dead father wasn’t dead and was also magical.
Mechanics
Your mechanics need to find ways to fit the overlaps. Cortex Prime made this easier because we built a game using the Cortex Legos. It was a little more upfront work but made for a very fun experience.The relationships, the roles, our dueling rules, how magic affected the veil, and our magic ritual rules all touched on the genre’s we chose in some way.
You can look around for a game that just does what you’re looking for. If you want a pulpy weird west with a dash of horror game you can play Deadlands. But if you’re trying something where it’s not quite as obvious, or there’s not a game that fits what you’re looking for it’s time to break out some house rules, hacks, and drifts. It’s a whole discussion on it’s own but here’s a couple ideas for how to go about it:
- Utilize the core mechanisms of the game to build the things you believe you need to make the game fit the genre.
- Adapt mechanics and ideas from other games to the game you prefer
- Combine the above two ideas
What I would advise against is excluding rules for things that would be important to the genre and just leaving it up to interactions at the table. Of course, if your table is ok with GM fiat as a final arbiter for important decisions and moments in the game then you should do that. Every table is different in what they enjoy.
Characters
Your characters should be crafted with the genres in mind along with the above mentioned situation. Genres have character tropes that fit inside of them and story tropes which help drive character action. Here’s a solid way to come up with an interesting character for a genre mash game. Let’s do an original from Children of the Shroud:
- Starting with a character archetype from one of the genres or pick two and mash them together.
- Manic Pixie Girl with sleep magic (High School / Urban Fantasy) She’s very pro veil (Hidden World)
- Putting a spin on it
- She’s really pretty anxious about talking to people about things that matter unless it’s in her dream space. (High School / Urban Fantasy)
- Picking some kind of story arc you’d like your character to go on
- Will she still see the veil as the bastion of order, law, and good she believes it to be after working inside of it? (Swashbuckling / Urban Fantasy)
- Then play to the motivations of the character, the ideas of the trope, the idea of the story arc, and the spin.
The above example isn’t really an original, it’s a character named Bo who’s a much more prominent NPC in our game these days. She’s part of the Junior Guardians which is how our PCs know her and went to the Prom with Ti. This is just the story I would envision for her if I was playing her.
Together these steps will give a way to make a character that fits into the game you’ve mashed together.
Scenarios
Lastly, let’s talk about Scenarios. It’s actually the easiest part because you just look at the plots and tropes those kinds of genre stories have and build scenarios utilizing them as foundations. Then you can add some interesting bits from your characters, setting and situation, utilizing your genre tropes where appropriate, and you have yourself a genre mashed scenario.
Phil did this quite expertly in our 3rd Children of the Shroud story, Smarty Pants. We started with an academic decathlon against a rival school. (High School) Silas spied a student on the opposing team, Lowell Throton, using a magical Altoid to give himself a temporary intellect boost during their one on one trivia battle. Thing is Lowell isn’t magical. (Urban Fantasy) On top of that, before we started the story Phil asked us about how we knew our friend Morris who died at a party at Lowell’s house this past summer, drowning in Lowell’s pool. (Swashbucking – Perilous Relationship) I told Phil my character was really tight with Morris and Morris is the one who introduced Silas to Meseme, my girlfriend whose soul is cohabiting my body. (Highschool / Urban Fantasy) We come to find out that the Altoids were imbued with the essence of Morris who had his soul sucked out of him in a magical ritual. (Urban Fantasy) So now our characters are running down who sold the Altoids to Lowell which leads to who tried to kill Meseme in the same way. (Swashbuckling / Urban Fantasy) During the entire story Silas is having emotional anger issues. His friends are doing what they can to deal with it but tensions are high. (High School) There’s a running battle in the park with one of the essence dealers but she gets away. (Swashbuckling) Hard conversations are had but eventually Silas’s friends, Ti and Gunny, help Silas commune with Meseme within his soul, which helps calm him down and three are able to track down and bring some of the people involved in the taking of peoples essence to justice. (High School / Urban Fantasy) This was of course in a huge sword fight in an abandoned asylum for the mentally ill in the city of Buffalo NY. (Swashbuckling) Yes, we have one of those here. It’s real.
Now that you have the list comes the most important thing to keep in mind. These items aren’t necessarily done in order. You’ll most likely need to bounce around to each of them getting little bits of information, making choices, asking questions, and filling things out until you have a clear enough picture to proceed to whatever might be the next logical step in your genre mash up.
Session 0 or Session -1
To help this process you might want to gather your game group for this genre mash. Session 0’s are great for this or even session -1 where you’re just hashing out the above items. There’s a lot to talk about but here’s a starting list of things to think about when having this discussion.
Genre
- Which genres are we going to use?
- What do the genre’s mean to each person?
- Where do the Genre’s overlap?
Setting
- What do the genre overlaps mean for the setting?
- Is the setting original or something created whole cloth?
- Who’s building or deciding on the setting? Is it a group effort? Is the GM going to take point and get input from the rest of the group or will you use some other methodology?
- What’s the initial situation for the characters going to look like?
Mechanics
- What mechanics are you going to use?
- How do they fit your genre mash up?
- How don’t they fit your genre mashup?
- Are you planning on hacking them to make them fit better?
It can feel like a lot but I find this kind of effort to be a fun creative exercise, regardless if you’re doing most of it alone or with your group. In my experience, if you just follow the flow of answers and questions as they come up, and refer to the above questions as you find yourself getting stuck, you’ll have a pretty easy time with this.
I will provide one more bit of advice. If you’re the GM and are doing this exercise with your group, I would suggest facilitating this part just like you run the game. Ask a question, get some answers, take some notes. Always do your best to provide and get clarifications and things that are said.. Also, don’t be afraid to say no to things that don’t fit together, or ask the group how those pieces that don’t look like they fit together do fit together. You should do your best to control the pace and when things bog down, utilize the people in your group to get unstuck.
I just want to say thanks if you’ve read this far. Let me recap the steps I think about when putting together a genre mash game.
Recap
First, pick three genres.
Second, understand what your genres are about.
Third, try and look at how the genre’s can fit together and if you need to take a genre to a slightly different sub genre. When doing this you should think about these things:
- Setting. The people, places, and important history and current events of the game. These should all reinforce one or more of the genres.
- Situation. This is the initial set of circumstances the characters will find themselves in.
- Characters. Player characters that fit inside the genre and can be protagonists in the game.
- Mechanics. Mechanisms and procedures that make sense with and enhance the genre’s of the game you’re playing.
- Scenario. Build scenarios using the aforementioned elements along with the plots and story beats used in the genres you’re mashing up.
Once you’ve done that you have yourself a genre mashed up game.
Now let me ask you. What kind of Genre Mashups have you put together? How did you do it? How would you enhance what I’ve presented?
Read more »Source: Gnome Stew | Published: April 22, 2024 - 10:00 am - Adventure Design: Mood, Tone, and Theme
When starting to design an adventure for your home group, the first things I always consider are the mood, tone, and theme of the adventure. This will dictate all design decisions, descriptions, monsters included, sometimes the treasure gained, and the general aesthetics of everything I create for the adventure.
Before I jump in, you’ll note that I’m leaving genre out of this list because I’m assuming you already have an established genre for the game you’re running for your group. If you’re working with a “clean slate” (meaning no campaign in flight for this adventure), then you really should determine the genre(s) you’re going to take into account for this adventure. Picking the genre first will drive many of the tropes, assumptions, styles, and approaches for storytelling within the adventure.
Having said all of that, I’m going to delve into mood, tone, and theme, in that order. I truly feel that one leads to the next that leads to the next. I always do them in this order.
Mood
This is the emotional resonance of the adventure. This encompasses the presentation of the material and the feels you want to evoke in your players by way of their characters’ experiences. I highly encourage you to head over to David Hodder’s web site and look at the top “emotion wheel” he has posted there. You’ll start with the innermost level of the wheel and pick an emotion. Then drill toward the outer edges to find more precise emotions.
I recommend having several moods/emotions chosen for your adventure, but make sure they’ll mesh together or have one lead to another. Sometimes, an adventure can present different moods at different stages of the adventure. Perhaps the adventure starts with a village celebration (jubilation) that gets invaded by nearby ravagers (panic) until the party of adventurers restores calm (content). However, during the invasion, the beloved mayor of the village is slain (rage/hate), so the adventurers take it upon themselves to venture into the nearby wilderness to put an end to the ravagers once and for all (stimulated). When they successfully return from their mission (satisfied), the villagers heap glory and accolades upon them (relieved/passion).
Tone
The tone of the adventure is how things are presented to the GM and the players. I’m assuming the GM is you, so you’ll want to make sure your notes, ideas, writings, and concepts reflect the tone you want to present to the players. By approaching your writing of notes with a specific tone in mind, you’ll be more consistent in your presentation of that tone to the players.
Some examples of tones for adventures are:
- Optimistic
- Pessimistic
- Joyful
- Sadness
- Fearful
- Hopeful
- Humorous
- Serious
- Horrific
- Mundane
- Warmongering
- Peaceful
- Weird
- Normal
Theme
The theme of your adventure can, I would argue should, borrow from literary themes. They are well-established, well-researched, and in many places are thoughtfully presented for your education. There are numerous lists of themes on the Internet. A quick search for “story themes” will produce gobs of results. Set a timer for 20-30 minutes before doing any research like this to avoid wasting hours down “the Internet rabbit hole.”
The lists of literary themes are so numerous and lengthy, I’m not going to try and reproduce them here. Instead, I’m giving you the above homework of doing your own research. I just don’t have the space or word count here to even sum up themes that can be applied to adventure creation.
Most of the themes are going to reflect how your PCs interact with the events and situations in your adventure. If you come up with your theme and then design an encounter that doesn’t support or mirror that theme, then the encounter might feel like a waste of time to the PCs. If you can tie every setting, every encounter, most NPCs, and the story arcs to your theme, the adventure will feel more like a cohesive whole rather than random bits tied together with string.
Taking my above example of the ravagers attacking the village during a celebration followed by the PCs tracking down the ravagers in the wilderness and putting an end to them, I would propose that my theme should be something along the lines of “righteous justice.” However, if I shift things around a bit and have the ravagers motivated by their leader’s love for the mayor’s daughter, the theme can change to “unrequited love.” If the daughter loves the leader back, it changes again to “fated love.” If there is no love element in the story arc, but the ravagers are going through a famine and just needed some food the villagers wouldn’t (or couldn’t) sell to the men and women in the wilderness, then you have a “survival” theme. This can be especially true if the famine of the wilderness is creeping toward the village and its farmlands.
The key is to pick a theme to run with, so that it can properly inform and color your story as you put the pieces together.
Changes Over Arcs
I’m also going to add on here that if you have multiple “acts” or “story arcs” within your adventure, you can have a different theme (or mood or tone) for each act of the adventure. I’m mainly working off the assumption that your adventure is a single act, but if it’s longer, then you can definitely have multiple choices going on here. The longer your adventure, the more opportunity you have to explore different aspects of storytelling within your plans.
Stay Tuned!
Next month, I’m going to tackle a concept that I came up with (though it’s probably not unique) called “designing back to front.” I hope you liked this article and stick with me for the next one.
Read more »Source: Gnome Stew | Published: April 17, 2024 - 10:00 am - Dune: Fall of the Imperium Review
Licensed games usually take the approach of presenting material that can happen far away from the canon events of the setting. This works especially well in settings like Star Trek or Star Wars, where there is a literal galaxy of locations available for storytelling. Player characters may hear about canon events, and there may be a butterfly effect on some of their options, but the assumption of the game is that the player characters aren’t going to be directly confronting and potentially contradicting the fictitious history of the setting.
Despite this, there are some fans who want exactly that. If they are playing in a game about a given setting, they want to be present for the events they have read about or seen on screen. They may or may not want to step into the shoes of an existing character, either by playing that character, or by playing a character that replaces the canon character in the game table’s narrative. If you want to play through a campaign where it’s possible for Luke Skywalker to miss the shot that destroys the Death Star because a PC failed to keep a TIE Fighter off his tail, that’s largely on the game facilitator to navigate.
Modiphius has taken an interesting approach to this with their Dune: Adventures in the Imperium RPG. While it largely assumes that player characters will be engaging in house politics in other corners of the galaxy or touching upon Arrakis in moments between galaxy shaking events, it has also introduced products that directly engage the canon narrative. The primary example of this has been the Agents of Dune boxed set, which places the player characters and their house in the place of House Atreides, inheriting Dune from the Harkonnens by decree of the emperor.
The adventure we’re looking at today also places player characters directly in the path of galactic history, presenting a campaign that takes place just before, during, and in the aftermath of Paul Atreides’ takeover of the imperial throne.
Dune: Fall of the Imperium
Creative Lead Andrew Peregrine
Line Editor/Canon Editor Rachel J. Wilkinson
Writing Richard August, Simon Berman, Jason Brick, Jason Durall, Keith Garrett, Jack Norris, Andrew Peregrine, Dave Semark, Hilary Sklar, Devinder Thiara, Mari Tokuda, Rachel J. Wilkinson
Graphic Design Chris Webb, Leigh Woosey, Jen Mccleary
Art Direction Rocío Martín Pérez
Cover Artist David Benzal
Interior Artwork Artists Amir Zand, Joel Chaim Holtzman, János Tokity, Simone Rizzo, Jakub Kozlowski, Carmen Cornet, Eren Arik, Hans Park, Mikhail Palamarchuk, Mihail Spil-Haufter, Lixin Yin, Susanah Grace, Alexander Guillen Brox, Imad Awan, Louie Maryon, Justin Usher, Jonny Sun, Olivier Hennart, Pat Fix, Avishek Banerjee, Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme, Simone Rizzo
Proofreading Stuart Gorman
Project Management Daniel Lade
Brand Management Joe Lefavi for Genuine EntertainmentDisclaimer
I am not working from a review copy of this product and did not receive a review copy to work from. I have received review copies from Modiphius Entertainment in the past. I have not had the opportunity to play or run this adventure. I do have a familiarity with the 2d20 system, having run and played multiple iterations of the rules.
Layout and Design
I am working from a PDF of the adventure. The adventure is available as a PDF or a physical book. Additionally, there is a Roll20 version of the adventure for sale. The PDF is 146 pages long. The content of those pages breaks down to this:
- Covers–2 pages
- Inside Front Cover Art–1 page
- Company Title Page–1 page
- Product Title Page–1 page
- Credits Page–1 page
- Table of Contents–1 page
- Shuttle Map–1 page
- Map of Arrakeen–1 page
- Modiphius Product Ads–3 pages
There is some glorious artwork in this book, and the design of most of the outfits, vehicles, architecture, etc. match the recent movies. While this book assumes the continuity of the original novels, the licensing is all bound together, meaning they don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to producing artwork. The pages are in a light parchment color, with geometric flourishes under the text. There is artwork throughout, especially depicting notable characters. Each of the chapters starts with a two-page spread of full color art.
The layout varies depending on the purpose of the text. Most of the adventure is in a two-column layout, but background material and overviews are formatted in centered text boxes or single columns that run down the middle of the page. Sidebars are often in the lower right- or left-hand side of the page.
The Judge of the Change
This adventure is the framework for an entire campaign, if you couldn’t glean that from the introduction. The book itself is broken into the following sections:
- Introduction
- Act I: The Gathering Storm
- Act II: Muad’Dib
- Act III: Fall of the Imperium
- Act IV: War Across a Million Worlds
- Adventures in the Era of Muad’Dib
Adventures in the Era of Muad’Dib is a section that details the kind of setting assumptions that should be considered for playing the RPG during the establishment of Paul’s reign. This includes the differences between the chaos and violence of that era, contrasted against the political maneuvering and quick betrayals of the previous era.
Each act of the campaign has its own set of acts, which are the primary adventures that characters will engage with as that leg of the campaign progresses. This means that within all four acts, there are three adventures, each with their own three acts.
While I mentioned the Agents of Dune campaign boxed set above, unlike that product, these adventures assume that the events of the novels happen when and how they are detailed in the source material. There are a few notes on what might happen if the GM and the players want to deviate from the story, but most sections assume that the path of history rolls forward unabated.
Who Are You?
The PCs are playing agents of their own house, managing their interests in light of emerging events. For several parts of the campaign, this means you’ll be dealing with the cascading effects of galactic history, rather than being right next to it. However, there are several places where the adventure narrows back down to canon events so the PCs can be present as witnesses.
There is an interesting sidebar at the beginning of the adventure which I both agree with and think oversimplifies the situation, especially when it’s applied to the players and the decisions they are making. The sidebar mentions that both Paul and the Harkonnens are nobles whose people toil for the profit of their rulers, and that while the Harkonnens are vicious and violent in their tactics, Paul starts a war that kills billions of people. All on board with “Paul isn’t the Good Guy.” But it also frames this as “there are no villains,” which, no, that’s harder to take. Paul isn’t the good guy because of the repercussions of his actions, but it is hard to say that the Harkonnens aren’t villains. I think it’s pretty easy to conceive of a story where there are no heroes, only villains, rather than saying there are no heroes or villains.
Part of why this sidebar exists, however, is to reinforce the concept that making decisions for a House in the Landsraad often means choosing between multiple bad options. If the PCs ally with the Harkonnens for a time, they aren’t suddenly the villains of the story, they may just be doing something very distasteful for them in order to help their house survive. There are several places in the narrative where characters have the option of throwing in with different houses against other houses, which means being allied doesn’t always mean being long term friends or business partners.
As agents of a Landsraad House, there are a combination of missions you can undertake for the betterment of your house, which also happens to give you insight into the greater events unfolding. For example, trying to secure a hidden smuggler’s cache of spice after the Atreides take over Arrakis lets you stumble upon some Harkonnen records that may lead you to the hidden base of operations of a Sardukar agent, and so on.
While the adventure has several places where events unfold at a distance from the events of the novels, there are a few key places where the PCs are funneled back into the main narrative. These include:
- The night House Atreides falls
- The Death of Rabban
- The Death of Leto II
- The sequence of Paul’s ascension to the throne and all the events surrounding it
If you read “The Death of Leto II,” and thought, wait, I don’t want to be there for that, I completely understand. That particular aspect of the adventure kind of underscores some of the problems the adventure has whenever it funnels the PCs back to major canon events. It’s very clear you are pushed into those events to witness them. If you play the adventure as written, you are sent with the Sardukar on their raid of the sietch, and you arrive at the scene just after Leto II has been killed.
In many of the “up close to history” scenes, your characters are rolling to avoid getting in anyone’s way and hoping to pick up some things beneficial to your house on the periphery of bigger events. One exception to this is the death of Rabban. The PCs have several paths to this point, but almost all of them involve someone wanting them to kill Rabban in the lead up to the most tumultuous events preceding Paul’s ascension.
This would be a really neat, “that was your characters!” moment, except there are still some heavy handed sections where his location is a bait and switch, so you must encounter Feyd, and you can’t kill Rabban all by yourselves, Gurney Halleck will show up and either try to do it before you, or help you out.
The Wide-Open Galaxy
Act II is especially open compared to the rest of the adventure. Your characters are negotiating for spice as Harkonnen production slows. You chase spies on a ski resort planet. You skulk around backwaters looking for blackmail information and encrypted documents. In one of my favorite moments in the adventure, your characters navigate a night of betrayal that is both thematically calling back to the attack on House Atreides, but both more subtle and distinct. It’s one of those places where it really feels like the adventure delivers you a very “Dune” experience without just using canon Dune events.
Act IV is strange. While it deals with events we know happened, broadly, i.e. Paul’s crusade ravaging worlds that failed to show their loyalty, the places where these adventures take place generally don’t have a lot of canon surrounding them, meaning that the PCs actions can have greater effect. The downside is that in many cases, the reason they are in the path of these events is very thin. In several cases, Paul issues an imperial decree for the PCs to go to a place, where they may work against his agents, and the next time they see Paul, “he sees something in their future that keeps him from acting against them,” and then they can go somewhere else and either discreetly or overtly defy him.
The culmination of the entire adventure/campaign is that a House that has long been associated with the PCs’ House is accused of treason. The PCs can find out what is going on, disassociate themselves from their allies or exonerate them, and determine who to screw over and who to align themselves with to keep one of Paul’s lieutenants from declaring their House as an enemy of the throne.
Mechanical Resolution
An aspect of the adventure that I really enjoy is that it leans into the 2d20 concept of creating traits. If you aren’t familiar with traits in a 2d20 game (which have slightly different names depending on the 2d20 game in question), they function in a manner similar to Fate aspects. They are a broad description of something that is true. Depending on the narrative, traits either grant narrative permission to do something that wouldn’t be possible if the trait weren’t active, or it adds or subtracts from the difficulty of a task if it is relevant to that task.
Depending on how the PCs resolve different scenes in the adventure, they may acquire different traits, which will be available for use either by the PCs or the GM if they are still active. For example, in many cases, PCs that ally with a house will gain a trait that denotes that they are “Ally of House X,” and any time that’s relevant, it might make a check either more or less difficult. They may also gain traits that reflect their reputation; for example, if they resolve a scene by hiding, they may get a “Cowardice” trait, which might come into play whenever dealing with characters that are proud of their martial accomplishments.
There are also events that remove traits. For example, early in the adventure, it’s a lot easier for the PCs to pick up the “Ally to House Harkonnen” trait, which they may end up shedding if, later in the adventure, they advocate for the emperor to strip them of their rights to Arrakis.
Like Star Trek Adventures, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium makes provisions for a player running characters other than their primary character, usually in circumstances where the PCs wouldn’t want to personally be involved in the activities they are directing. This is separate from, but adjacent to, Architect play, where PCs can say they are using resources from a distance to manipulate events, making checks for broad actions they are taking, to influence events.
For example, if a character has troops as one of their resources, and there have been smugglers raiding their holdings, they could use Architect mode to send troops to take care of the smugglers without ever going to that location, rolling to see how well their orders are carried out versus the difficulty of the outcome they want. The downside to Architect play being that it’s hard to get specific granular results. In the example above, you might be able to get rid of the smugglers, but the GM may tell you that unless you show up yourself, you can’t expect your troops to capture a smuggler alive for interrogation.
There are a few places in the adventure where broader goals are mentioned as something the PCs might attempt with Architect mode, usually in the periphery of events that surround the political maneuvering in Act II. There are also a few brief mentions of using supporting characters during certain events, especially if the player character in question isn’t a particularly martial specimen, and they tackle a mission like killing Rabban.
Because these are excellent tools, I wish the adventure had spent more time expanding how they could be used to greater effect in various scenes. While I don’t think any scene where the PCs have most of their agency removed is going to be fun to sit through, I could see several of the “you must go this direction” encounters being easier to swallow if those scenes were expressly meant to be carried out by secondary character operatives. I suspect that this wasn’t done in part because the adventure wants your primary PCs to be present at these major events, not just a character you are playing.
Having a few lines referencing, “they could get X, likely through Architect play,” isn’t nearly as satisfying as a more detailed list of resources or events that the PCs could undertake that had a direct effect on the narrative and the position of their house in each act.
Aftermath
When I first saw there was a section on Adventures in the Era of Muad’Dib, I was thinking something along the lines of the one-page mission briefs from Star Trek Adventures. This is, more precisely, tools and mechanics available to reflect the differences in the galaxy after Paul’s ascension to the throne and the spread of his religion. It introduces the faction template for the Qizarate, as well as six new talents that are either tied to that faction or involve interaction with Paul directly.
While there aren’t “mission brief” style adventures, there are sections on what resistance to the throne looks like in this era, some of the espionage that might be going on, and a few adventure seeds surrounding interacting with Paul, the adherents of his faith, and the changing allegiances in the Imperium. These are generally short, one paragraph long descriptions.
The Mystery of Life Isn’t a Problem to Solve, But A Reality to Experience
I really appreciate the ambition of this adventure. It really shines in Act II, and a bit in Act IV, where the PCs have lots of options available to them, and the main thing that is determined by canon are the stakes they are navigating. I absolutely love the Night of Slow blades section of the adventure, because it hits that sweet spot of “this is tailored for your PCs” and “this feels like exactly what would happen in the novels.” There are also some other scenes across various acts that shine. While not everyone may take the road that leads to this, I really liked the details of negotiating with Baron Harkonnen, as well as the scenes where the PCs can debate with other agents of the Landsraad houses in court with the emperor.
An Animal Caught in A Trap Will Gnaw Off Its Own Leg to Escape. What Will You Do?
I wish that when the adventure pushes the PCs into “witness” mode, there was more for them to do than observe and make a few checks to see if they pick up a new trait or asset for themselves or their house. There are some brushes with canon events early on that feel especially frustrating. You may get into a fight with Rabban the night of the Atreides attack, but he’s got plot armor. You might see Jessica and Paul being herded onto an ornithopter in the distance, but you’re too far away to do anything about it. The absolute worse example of this is being present for Leto II’s death. I don’t expect the adventure to give you the opportunity to stop this from happening–it’s a pretty pivotal story beat. But I don’t know that my desire to witness the noteworthy events of Dune included helplessly traveling with the people that murder Paul’s infant son.
Tenuous Recommendation–The product has positive aspects, but buyers may want to make sure the positive aspects align with their tastes before moving this up their list of what to purchase next.
I don’t want to be too brutal. I think that if you are a fan of Dune (and I’m not sure why you would be buying Dune RPG material if you weren’t) you will find some use for this adventure. On the other hand, I feel like you’re either going to have some frustrating moments as written, or you’re going to be reworking some key scenes so that the PCs have actual agency in those moments. That’s a shame, because there are some wonderful moments in the adventure that tie the PCs and their house to events with a little more room to breathe, that would be great to see attached to an adventure that didn’t funnel you back into your front row seats for a show you can’t really affect.
Read more »Source: Gnome Stew | Published: April 15, 2024 - 10:00 am - mp3VideoGnomecast 186 – Mixing Genres
Ang, Chris and Josh chat about mixing up genres in our RPGs and as a result touch on what genre is, and why we can and should mash it all up together!
Links:
Read more »Source: Gnome Stew | Published: April 10, 2024 - 10:00 am - The Carousel: Why I Believe Roleplayers Should Swing
We are all familiar with the trope of a regular gaming group. You know, the one who meets on regular days in the regular gaming location. And while the particularities of the imagined group differ, the factors of time and space stay constant, but so too does the cast. Although we all know how wonderful a regular gaming group can be, I am here to suggest that there’s several benefits of regularly shifting up the cast around your gaming table as well. I will discuss the pros of this, and of course mention some of the cons while suggesting how they can be remedied or at least reduced. I might even suggest that shifting up your regular gaming group will just mean you’ll have a regular gaming circle, but that’s getting ahead of myself. I’ll discuss the benefits of not having a regular group first.
Scheduling
People’s lives change, along with their calendars, interests and priorities, and unfortunately also health and postal codes. Having a steady group is all well and good, but sometimes scheduling games will take a lot of effort. For a lot of us that’s where the real issue of burnout comes from, with a tedious and complicated scheduling matrix, and the accompanying cancellations. I find that it’s much easier to fit people to dates I’m available instead of finding people first and then looking at the calendars. I’d rather play shorter campaigns for six months or so, than risk having campaigns end in scheduling limbo, due to peoples changing lives and priorities. It’s much easier to find a date that works for all if the group is brought together on the same premise and not just out of habit. If everyone assembled for your Weird Western-game is really wanting to play weird western and have all cleared the same date in the week, you are more certain that they will attend game nights than if they’re just your friends, have other hobbies and are really just wanting you all to go back to playing a Fantasy or a Cyberpunk game again. Sure, people will still have emergencies, or just family or work commitments, but if you have a robust group bound together on a mission, you might at least get to finish the campaign together, at the very least experience a somewhat satisfactory ending, even if things keep happening. Oh, and as a bonus, you also have at least one friend who is eagerly awaiting the start of the next Fantasy or Cyberpunk campaign!
Different Experiences
While monogamy has its virtues, I find that gaming with a richer and more varied crowd brings a lot of benefits to myself, the other individuals and the group as a whole, while also benefiting a larger circle of people. We avoid the rut that a steady group will sometimes attain, and variations in cast give different players the chance to try out different roles/functions/classes that some players tend to monopolize. Like the players who will “always” play “The Face” character, but the GM knows that one of the shyer players has talked about playing one for a long time. This might also include the one who will always play the lone magical talent or the baddest of the baddest combatant as well. Also, I believe new blood opens up for new perspectives, ideas and challenges, and that the table dynamics won’t get stale. New players also mean new approaches, new words and maybe something different that people can add to their repertoire. This goes double if your gaming table carousel includes different GMs as well as players, and I’ll add that your great tricks will reach more roleplayers as well.
Polygamery
Not all players will play all types of games and genres, and my experience is that some groups tend to be quite selective in what they enjoy to play. Not only can you finally play that heart-(and other body parts-)wrenching game of Monsterhearts, but you can do it without the sighs of those who would rather rob the Megacorps of Night City or kill the inhabitants of the Caverns of Chaos and take their stuff. Changing up your groups opens up for bringing your Sun Tzus and butt-kickers to one game and your Elisabeth Bennets to another; for optimization of enjoyment. A wrong player might weaken the right game, but the synergies of players who truly “sing” together is a beautiful experience. Playing lots of different games means that you might even get your non-roleplaying friends to attend, because they’re so into the Russian Women’s Piloting World War II efforts or Dinosaur Princesses, bringing more people into our lovely hobby and maybe having even more intimate friendships?
Network
If you treat your table or living room as a carousel, I believe it will in time give you access to more players, multiple GMs for those burnout periods, and, as mentioned, a roster for different play experiences. A larger pool also means that your games will be less vulnerable to people relocating or otherwise becoming unavailable for play, and if you game online you might meet those friends at conventions and maybe even get to do some couch surfing? I recently had a friend lend me a proper bed and feline company for a faraway convention. Since we had experience gaming online together, I was also certain their games would give me some good gaming experiences. While I believe the benefits to yourself are clear, I also believe you’ll be doing other people a favor, introducing them both to other people and other games, and perhaps even other playstyles than they’re used to. Maybe you can help spawn new groups as well as new friendships?
Note: Friendships will endure even if a game is paused! Playing with someone else doesn’t mean you can’t do other stuff or even play one-shots with friends, and I also believe that you don’t need to game with all your gaming friends, especially if your playstyles and game interests don’t really match up that well.
Cons
Changing up the group all the time means regularly (re)establishing group lingo, forming-storming-and-norming-before-performing (optimally) and the flip-side of the new perspectives and shaking up the dynamics-coin. Safety? Not everyone will be comfortable meeting new people at their places or even bringing them home, and just needing to go to another neighbourhood or taking another bus route might be an issue, even if the group is safe itself. There’s also the dreaded FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), which I myself consider an old friend. I can honestly say that not only will it get better, but you’ll learn to be happy when your friends get to play, even when it’s without you. I understand that it can be difficult, especially if you’re not actively gaming yourself at the time. Sometimes it’s really easy to think that you’re being excluded, even though your friends have a full gaming table of people who are much more interested in the particular genre/game than you, but you’ll recognize that the sting of perception isn’t real. If you regularly change up the makeup of your own gaming table, it’s easier to understand that this is the case when you yourself aren’t asked first to that genre you don’t really like. In time you’ll learn to be happy when your friends get to play, even if you yourself are devoid of game time; because you know that soon your big roster of gaming buddies will invite you. Sometimes you and your best friend play parallel games that aren’t for each other, but that doesn’t mean you can’t meet up and talk about the different games and revel in your friend’s happiness of being in a game you wouldn’t have liked anyway.
Conclusion
I truly believe that treating your gaming table as a carousel that regulates its cast to the different experiences, both in number of players and temperament suited to different gaming experiences, will benefit both you and the other players. Maybe someone will even take up the GM mantle, since they can’t rely on you always bringing them along for the ride? Yes, it’s easier to enforce this idea if you’re always the GM, but it’s not like you couldn’t invite different GMs to GM different games either. I guess a lot of GMs would be happy to not have to deal with scheduling, and to be assured of enthusiastic and consenting players for that particular game. I also believe that if it is known that you regularly change up the cast around your table people will make more of an effort when they’re there, and others might even want to pursue a chair around your table, by inviting you to their game first.
Even though I advocate changing the cast around everyone’s gaming tables, I’ll gladly admit that my three current groups are all talking about doing another campaign after our current one ends. So am I hypocritical? Well, probably, but in this case I find it a natural development of having played with a lot of different people. You get the aforementioned roster, and you will naturally gravitate to players who like games you like and want to play more with them, and vice versa. Not only that, but you’ll also get to learn player skills, table habits and GM techniques from a lot of people, enabling yourself to become a really popular and crafty GM or player. Every now and then someone’s other life elements will leave them out of a campaign or two, or their interest just isn’t there for a project, and that’s when you’ll be happy for your big roster.
Read more »Source: Gnome Stew | Published: April 8, 2024 - 10:00 am - The Crusty Old Gnome: Tips for New Game Masters
Face to face, out in the heat, hanging tough, staying hungry…
— Survivor, “Eye of the Tiger”
In a proud GM Dad moment, my eldest daughter just ran her first RPG session as a Game Master! I let her be, but stayed close enough to answer the occasional question, and by all accounts and an enthusiastic reception from her players she did a great job!
While preparing for her first session, she asked me a lot of questions. I answered them as best I could and thought that incorporating that advice into a single primer might help. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to finish this before she started running, but I thought I’d finish it anyway and put it here in the hopes that someone reading this might find it useful.
In terms of background, I’m coming at this from the POV of a Call of Cthulhu Keeper (GM), as that is what my daughter was running. Thus, my headspace was focused on investigative adventures, but I’ve tried to make the advice universally applicable.
So, without further ado…
Trust your group.
This is a big one and I think should be stated first. Unless you are running a convention game, you are probably playing with your friends, friends who understand that this is your first time taking the chair. They know that it’s a big responsibility and they’ll be willing to cut you a lot of slack. They’re happy that you’re willing to run a game for them. So, relax and don’t worry about being judged!
Note that this holds true for convention games, too. Believe it or not, many attendees who join convention games are home GMs who are happy to be players for a while. In any event, most of your players are getting used to playing with each other as much as you, so don’t think that a quiet table is an unhappy table. Everyone needs a little time to feel things out.
Expect to make mistakes.
You’re going to make mistakes, probably lots of them. But that’s okay. As a new GM, you’ve got a lot to keep track of and a responsibility to guide the session. You’re going to get tripped up here and there. Your players know that, and they’ll be fine with it. Again, they’re happy that you’re trying your hand at running!
And here’s a dirty little secret (or not so secret): we veteran GMs make mistakes too! The best advice I can give is not to hide it when you mess up. Nothing eases the stress on you like admitting that you made a mistake. If it’s something that didn’t derail the adventure, then just note the mistake and keep going. If it adversely affected the players, then compensate them and move on.
Be fair in your rulings.
While your players are going to give you their trust, it is up to you to keep it. A good way to do that is to be fair in your rulings. Note that “rulings” aren’t “rules,” they are how you run the game and apply the rules. As long as your decisions feel rational and you apply your rulings fairly, you should maintain the trust of your group.
It’s okay to take advice from your players regarding rules or rulings, but don’t let things get bogged down if a quick ruling keeps things moving. Ultimately, the rules are simply there to help you make decisions. Just make a decision for now and look up the rule after the session. You can apply the rule in the future.
Only appeal to chance when it matters.
Players generally want their characters to be competent. They don’t want to create a martial arts expert that gets easily clubbed unconscious by a purse-wielding senior or a scientist that doesn’t know basic chemistry. An easy way to do this is to simply assume competence when the act ultimately doesn’t matter or when the task seems too easy to fail. On the flip side, you can also say “no” when a character tries to do something that is obviously beyond their capabilities.
This is especially important if you’re running an investigative adventure. If your characters are investigating a crime scene, then they should be able to find any obvious clues as well as clues that they would know to look for. Nothing kills an adventure dead like the players not being able to follow leads because their character missed a skill roll to find a necessary piece of evidence!
There may be times when you’ll want the players to roll but you also need them to succeed. Keep in mind that you don’t have to make the roll a pass-fail test. It may be that if they fail, then they still succeed but draw some sort of complication. For example, if a character fails a roll on an internet search, then you may rule that they found the information only after wasting all night surfing and now they’re exhausted the next day.
Roll in the open.
This one isn’t truly necessary, as there is a long tradition of GMs rolling dice behind screens, but rolling in the open does two things. First, it fosters trust between you and your players that you are keeping things fair. Second, if you know that you’ll be rolling in the open, then you’ll also make sure that you’re only calling for rolls when you can accept the result. If you can’t, then why are you leaving it to chance?
Know the basic beats of your adventure.
Hopefully, you’ve done your prep work on your adventure. If you designed it yourself, then you’ve already internalized it. If you are using an adventure that you didn’t create, then you’ll want to read it at least twice (three is better!).
After reading the adventure, make a quick flowchart that follows the basic beats of the adventure and note where player choice matters. This flowchart doesn’t have to be very detailed, just enough to remind you of where the adventure is heading and how to guide the players back if they take their characters too far afield.
If the players need to meet a key NPC, find a crucial clue, or otherwise need a McGuffin to get to the next part of the adventure, then you’ll want to note that on the flowchart as well. That way, the flowchart will remind you of the important things you need to introduce along the way.
Keep things moving…
One of the worst things that you can do as a GM, new or veteran, is to allow the players to be stumped for too long. Sometimes what is obvious to you isn’t obvious to them, or they’ve simply discarded a clue that’s important because it doesn’t fit their theories. This can lead to unnecessary frustration.
Don’t be afraid to offer guidance. Sometimes, you can simply remind them of what they’ve found or offer suggestions to follow leads. A gentle reminder that they never visited the business on the matchbook they found, or they never thought to check the hills for the goblin encampment may be enough to get them moving without feeling like you handed it to them.
Also, don’t be afraid to end an encounter early if the conclusion is obvious. If the player characters are wiping the floor with kobolds, then you can simply say that they’ve finished them off without having to waste another 15 minutes. If an NPC isn’t going to give the players the information they want, then you don’t need to wait 10 minutes while the players keep asking questions.
…But don’t railroad.
If you’ve played RPGs for any length of time, then you’ve probably heard about the dreaded “railroad.” Simply put, railroading is whenever you take agency away from the players in situations where they believe that they should have agency. If the players are going to follow the adventure, it should be because it feels logical, or at least rational, for them to do so.
A good way to counter this is to always offer an open-ended option whenever you offer suggestions. “So, do you want to go to the business on the matchbook, follow up on Mr. Tanner’s interrogation, or do something else?” reminds the players of leads they haven’t followed but also tells them that you’re willing to go with whatever they decide.
Simplify the rules and internalize them.
Note that while I think most GMs get intimidated by the rules, I’ve made rules the lowest on the list of priorities. That’s because rules are the responsibility of everyone around the table, especially given that most out-of-game arguments during play tend to be about rules.
You don’t need to commit an entire rulebook to memory, but you should internalize the basic mechanic. Don’t worry about side cases. You can always make rulings until you’re more familiar with those rules. Just remember that point above about being fair!
In Dungeons & Dragons, for example, most tests involve rolling a d20 and adding modifiers to meet or exceed a target number. That, along with granting advantage or disadvantage, is enough for you to run a session with little trouble.
You’re supposed to be having fun, too!
This is not so much a guideline but a reminder. As a GM, you aren’t supposed to sacrifice fun; you are simply trading one type of fun for another. You get to see all the behind-the-scenes plotting, enjoy having the players interact with your adventure and make creative (and sometimes bone-headed!) decisions, play a bunch of NPCs, and overall control the flow of the adventure. It can be a blast!
Your players have a responsibility to ensure that you’re having fun, too. While there will certainly be times that a player doesn’t agree with you, they should respect your ultimate decisions. If things become too aggravating or frustrating, then it’s better to take a break or even shut down a campaign until those issues are resolved.
Wrapping Up
While taking the GM Chair can seem intimidating and even overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be. Hopefully, the advice above is helpful in showing you that it’s possible to ease into GMing and, hopefully, lead to your guiding friends through many new adventures!
And as a final (and most important) reminder, GMing is not something to be tolerated, it is meant to be enjoyed!
Read more »Source: Gnome Stew | Published: April 3, 2024 - 10:00 am - Reviews Review
I’ve reviewed so many other things, and I feel like I’ve been missing a fundamental item in all of this. It’s key to understanding all of my other reviews. Today, I’m going to review the process of reviewing.
I’ve literally been reviewing things from the time I was born. I remember my siblings showing me Land of the Lost, and when I saw the Sleestak for the first time, I said nope. My very first review, and a lot more succinct than I would become once I had a better vocabulary.Disclaimer
I was not given permission to discuss the process of reviewing the review process. I have had many opinions over the years. I have not had the opportunity to see if all of my opinions are correct, although I strongly suspect they are.
CreditsCurrent Human Beings Varies
Popularized Reviews as Entertainment in and of Themselves Siskel and Ebert
The Internet Al Gore
The QWERTY Keyboard Christopher Latham Sholes
Modern Internet Culture Satan, probably
Popular Review Formats
Human beings review things all the time. One of the newest trends popularized by the internet is Extreme Vibes. In this technique, when you see something you like, especially if someone else doesn’t like it, you can classify it as the Best Thing Ever. Literally, it can’t be the Best Thing Ever if anything else is the Best Thing Ever, but this technique doesn’t really hinge on nuance.
There is an additional aspect to Extreme Vibes, and that is The Absolute Worst. The process goes like this:
- You dislike something
- Someone else likes it
- You realize they are wrong
- You rate it the The Absolute Worst
As with The Best Thing Ever, it is not literally possible to be The Absolute Worst. In addition to the reasons listed for The Best Thing Ever, i.e. if there is another Absolute Worst, there cannot be another Absolute Worst, so previous reviews are immediately invalidated, the Absolute Worst has another reason it remains an imprecise measure. Human beings are extremely talented at coming up with additional things that are worse than the last thing they did.
While this form of review started in the simple format of message board posts and social media responses, it has matured much like more traditional forms of review. In a move reminiscent of the sudden placement of television reviews on every news program in the 1980s, various forms of new media blossom with Extreme Vibes in video format, either in long form, as the most venerable YouTubers work with, or the more succinct micro Extreme Vibes videos that can be seen on Tik Tok.
Shooting Stars
This technique only works within the framework of another review process, specifically sites that allow you to rate a product by using symbols, often stars, but sometimes more esoteric symbols, like cupcakes, circles, or rhombuses. This is an extremely impressionist technique, even when compared to the Extreme Vibes method. The key isn’t that you need to express even your slightest tendencies as extreme antipathy or sympathy.
The real key to the Shooting Stars technique is that you put people in mind of what a review should look like, then you challenge them to engage with the review and it’s connection to the product in question in a process not unlike art appreciation. The product isn’t what’s making you feel something, the review is!
You may want an example of this. Some of the most masterful of these reviews include the following:
- Rating a product with one star, because you love it, but UPS destroyed the box, leaving you to contemplate if an author should have a star rating that incorporates frustration with a shopping company.
- Using absolute language while not engaging with either side of a scale that can measure extremes. Examples include a two star rating that cites a product as the worst thing the reviewer has encountered, or a four out of five star review that is “the best.” This leaves you contemplating the nature of extremes, and the connection between objective math and creativity.
- Writing a review that contains a long anecdote from the reviewer’s personal life, which only near the end tangentially touches on the actual merits of the item in question, or its lack of merits. This is a lesson in understanding that things need to be taken as a whole, rather than in discrete parts.
None of this should be confused with the Transcendent Narrative Review, which utilizes the review space to tell an epic story for which movie rights should be secured. The secret of the Transcendent Narrative Review is that it isn’t actually a review, but a separate artform that uses the review as its form.
Aggressive Aggregating
Probably the easiest genre of reviewing for anyone to get into. This involves logging in to a review aggregation site and clicking on a number. This is technically an advanced version of Extreme Vibes, and some reviewologists, instead of categorizing this as its own type of review, actually consider this Advanced Extreme Vibes.
I would still maintain this is a separate form of review, because in addition to the above, there is an added element of watching the aggregation percentage trending toward the direction you indicated. There is a certain anonymity to this form of reviewing that can really let someone free their inner monster. Because the key is to see the communal percentage go up or down, often reviewers in this genre will multitask by creating multiple logins for the same aggregate site, in order to express their opinions with creative resonance.
Positives
Honestly, reviewing is probably a necessary function of human beings. Without being able to express that we really do or don’t like something, reviewologists have posited that our heads would explode. They even point to some medieval tapestries that indicate peasants with exploding heads, watching the king’s favorite puppet show. It’s easy to extrapolate that their ability to provide reviews was impeded. So the big benefit to various review techniques is to keep our heads from exploding.
Negatives
Long term review work results in an effect similar to the effects that can be observed when living tissue is exposed to cosmic rays. Not the cool cosmic rays that grant superpowers, but the cosmic rays that start to melt flesh. Participating in Extreme Vibes for too long, for example, sometimes allows the reviewer’s head to explode anyway, because their opinion is forming faster than the reviewer can form words. There is also the problem of extreme isolation and listlessness for reviewers that operate in these environments and don’t use a more extreme medium like Extreme Vibes or Aggressive Aggregating, because all of the oxygen tends to be sucked out of the conversation as both extreme ends of the spectrum garner all attention.
Not Recommended–There isn’t much in this
productgods forsaken process that convinces me to tell others to pick it up.Never, ever start reviewing things. It slowly, or not so slowly, eats away at your mental health. I was normal before I started this job. Okay, that’s a lie. I never used to lie before I got this job. I’m lying about that. But it definitely changed me.
Every time you read through a product and see the love and care that went into it, and you recognize the craft employed in its creation, and you see someone say, “it’s junk,” you start to wonder if you were reading text that was only visible to you. Then you start to think, maybe it was only visible to me.
Every time you attempt to make a joke about some form of RPG that no one would ever attempt to create, some actual game arrives on the scene, either spectacularly daring the world to deny it’s genius or astounding you with the audacity to string together a mass of concepts, themes, and procedures in some simulationist echo of Frankenstein’s monster, threatening to hunt down and kill your family if you don’t make the perfect review mate for the game.I watched SEO glitter in the dark near the Google Search Bar. All those reviews will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to join a new social media platform.
Read more »
End of Line.
Editor’s Note: Jared, our review gnome, was asked to find a way to write a parody of an RPG without referencing any existing RPG properties or citing any similarities with them. Instead of that article, this was sent to us via a burner e-mail account. Jared has not been seen for the last two weeks, although the authorities believe they have a strong lead to his whereabouts.Source: Gnome Stew | Published: April 1, 2024 - 10:00 am - Planning By Mad Libs
Planning in RPGs has always been a problem. On one hand, it’s often necessary for a group of players to plan out something their characters are trying to accomplish. On the other, most groups are not adept at planning, and even if they were, the activity is never that exciting at the table – worse if you are the GM who is more of a spectator. All of this is worse if you are under any kind of time constraint, like running a one-shot.
That is the problem I was having. In a few weeks, my high school gaming group is having a reunion, and we wanted to play some games. One of our group’s main games was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Rather than run TMNT, I offered Mutants in the Now, which I think is a better overall game. It will be a one-shot, and likely time bound to 4-6 hours. The scenario I wanted was a raid on an island of the evil genius Dr. Feral. But planning…
Other games have done a good job of designing around planning, but Mutants in the Now does not have any direct planning rules. So I started to think, what if we didn’t plan everything but the group just made some choices? That is when I got the idea for Plan by Mad Libs. So let’s talk about it.
What are Mad Libs?
A Mad Lib is a word game where one player asks for certain words – a noun, a verb, etc – with little or no context. The words are plugged into pre-written text. After all the words have been collected, the person reads the text, which often results in a silly, but entertaining narrative. For more info see:
What is a Plan?
A plan is defined as a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something. There is an objective, and there are the steps to achieve that objective. Typically when this is done in RPGs the group knows or decides the objective, and then works to figure out the steps. This often results in iterative discussions as details that are discussed prompt a new discussion about older details. It can be time-consuming, frustrating, and boring.
Plan By Mad Libs
The idea is to use the Mad Lib format to streamline planning so that we can quickly define the plan and move on to its execution, where the characters are taking action.
The idea is to use the Mad Lib format to streamline planning so that we can quickly define the plan and move on to its execution, where the characters are taking action.To do this, I needed to take some of the agency from the players, for the sake of time. That is, I needed to come up with the pre-written text – the plan for how the characters would raid the island. I did this using a simple story framework for a typical raid kind of story. The plan would need info on infiltration, a diversion, achieving the objective, and exfiltration from the island.
The blanks could then be the WHO and in some cases the HOW. Those choices could be left to the players so that they could customize the framework and make the plan theirs.
Here is an example of how I used the WHO to define the infiltration to the island:
We first have to get onto Dr. Feral’s island. NAME will smuggle themselves aboard Kris Pierce’s yacht in Miami, and arrive on the island at the docks. At the same time, NAME and NAME will take a private flight out of Ft. Lauderdale and will parachute onto the southeast grasslands with our backup gear. NAME got a job as a bodyguard for Linda Davenport and will arrive on the island as part of her entourage, and will be at the arena.
Here is an example of how I used the HOW for the diversion:
While that is going on, WHO will go to the CHOOSE (DOCKS, AIRSTRIP, POWER STATION) to cause a diversion by BLANK (ACTION or METHOD).
Implementing the Plan By Mad Libs
The full plan is written as if one of the characters is going over the plan with the rest of the group (this was highly inspired by a scene from the A-Team movie). The players will fill out the Mad Lib plan and then one of them will read it back to the group. As soon as it’s read, we can jump right into playing.
Advantages of Planning by Mad Libs
There are a few advantages to this. The first is that it should be quick. Filling in the blanks won’t take long and we should be up and running quickly. Second, the plan is written out and on the table while we play. There is little chance people will forget the plan with it there on the table. Third, I can prep for the plan, which means that I can add some nice mechanical details that I might miss if I was ad-libbing based on a plan made at the table. Fourth, I can roughly manage the duration of the game based on the size of the plan I write.
Kind of Sounds Like A Railroad
Not really. Of course, there will be twists in the plan – some from me and others through the actions of the characters – and that I will manage while we play. The players can abandon the plan as soon as we start, or they can follow it all the way through. Both work.
The goal of the Mad Lib plan wasn’t to control the whole adventure, it was to minimize planning and get into the execution of the plan. The Mad Lib plan accomplishes that goal.
One-Shots vs. Campaigns
For sure, this idea works great for one-shots, but could it work for a campaign? I think so, if the players were to buy into the concept. Hijacking a bit of agency in a one-shot is not that big of a deal, but in a campaign it could be more of a complex topic.
I think it would work in a campaign where planning was not the norm, where the core loop of the game is something other than planning and for a specific story there needs to be a plan, and you use the Mad Libs format to streamline things so that the story goes smoothly. For instance, I would not use this for a Night’s Black Agents op, but I might use it for a one-off supers heist in the Marvel Multiverse game.
Anything But Planning
Planning is not a fun activity in most RPGs. There are a lot of ways modern designers are trying to reduce or remove planning from games, all for the better. That said, there are plenty of games out there that need a design for minimizing planning. For those games, something like a Mad Lib plan can help.
I hope that this Mad Lib plan will help my table come up with an interesting and entertaining plan that unfolds into an exciting session.
How do you manage planning at your table? Would you try a Mad Lib plan?
Read more »Source: Gnome Stew | Published: March 29, 2024 - 10:00 am - mp3Gnomecast 185 – Taking OverAng, Jared, and JT get together on the mics to talk about all the ins and outs of taking over the GMing duties in an existing group. Links: Pathfinder Mini-Dungeon Tome D&D 5e Mini-Dungeon Tome Coriolis: The Great Dark Kickstarter Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern Read more »Source: Gnome Stew | Published: March 27, 2024 - 10:00 am
- Girl by Moonlight Review
It’s become a bit of a meme for people to declare characters from different genres to be “magical girls.” Prince Adam lives his life, during the day, as an unassuming royal heir that hasn’t quite grown up enough to assume his full responsibilities, but when he holds his sword aloft and says “by the power of Grayskull,” he transforms into a big buff dude that can punch holes in tanks. He’s even got a talking cat.
But a lot of those memes assume that the concept of the magical girl is really about Sailor Moon style stories. You have young women living a normal life at school, with normal student problems, who are also superheroes that need to transform into their superhero persona and save the world. But the magical girl genre is broader than those tropes. In broader terms, the magical girl genre is about someone who has magical powers that aren’t common in the society they live in, dealing with the dual nature of being separate from the world they live in, while also living in it.
Two of the earliest magical girl creators in Japan, Mitsuteru Yokoyama and Fujio Akatsuka, have cited the American sitcom Bewitched as an inspiration. While I have watched many magical girl anime stories, I grew up watching Bewitched, so this makes a lot of things click for me. Samantha is a woman with magical powers. She comes from a culture that can’t be revealed to the contemporary American culture to which her husband belongs. She had to deal with complications in her mundane life, as well as using her powers to deal with the complications that arise from her connection to a magical other world.
Understanding that underlying concept of being an outsider who would be less conflicted if you could be what you are, all the time, and juggling the mundane complications that everyone in your position in society needs to deal with, along with additional complications that come with being who you really are, is really important to understanding the game we’re looking at today, Girl by Moonlight.
Disclaimer
I did not receive a review copy of Girl by Moonlight, and I was a backer of the crowdfunding campaign for the game. I have not had the opportunity to play the game, although I do have experience both playing and running Forged in the Dark games, the engine on which the game is built. I have played and run other magical girl RPGs, though, so I have that going for me.
Girl by Moonlight
Publisher Evil Hat
Author Andrew Gillis
Editors Daniel Wood, Jenn Martin
Proofreader Jenn Martin
Cover Artists Lorne Colt, Kelsey Phillips
Design Consultant Luke Jordan
Indexer Sadie Neat
Art Director Trivia Fox
Interior Artists Carly A-F, Lonnie Garcia, Kelsey Phillips, Zak Goggins, Simon Sweetman, Raven Warner, Jabari Weathers
Sensitivity Readers Jess Meier, Takuma Okada
Layout & Graphic Design John Harper, Fred Hicks
Playtesters Allison Arth, Andi Carrison, Ash Mcallan, Emily Mcallan, John Harper, Luke Jordan, Melody Watson, Nadja Otikor, Violet MillerGirl by Moonlight Format Power, Mark Up!
This review is based on both the physical copy of Girl by Moonlight, and the PDF version of the product. The physical copy I received is the limited edition cover, because I’m extremely weak against the powers of FOMO.
If you have any of the other Evil Hat Forged in the Dark games, the physical book matches the digest hardcover format of the other games they have released, like Blades in the Dark, Scum and Villainy, and Band of Blades. This also has the matte finish cover that those books have. The pages are sturdy, glossy, and hold the colors in a vibrant manner. The end papers display a repeating pattern of the symbols that appear in the game, in purple, blue, green, and dark pink.
The PDF and the book are 226 pages long. This includes a title page, a publication page, a two-page table of contents, a two-page index, a three-page summary of game rules, and a page of author bios. The PDF includes an image of the limited edition cover in addition to the standard cover.
The book itself has bold headers, many bullet points, it’s “side bars” are actually color bands that introduce their topics in the center of the page, and the layout is in single column format. I love lots of different book formats and flourishes, but I don’t think Evil Hat gets enough credit for maintaining very clear, uncluttered formatting that still looks very inviting and attractive. They make books that bridge the gap between bold, clear formatting, and stylish presentation, better than about anyone else. Girl by Moonlight is no exception.
The Magical Girl Power Source: Forged in the Dark
When Blades in the Dark introduced the Forged in the Dark engine to RPG games, it was built to portray heist-based action, where the story follows a predictable pattern that moves from gathering information, performing missions, dealing with consequences, and working on long term projects. While this makes sense for games about mercenaries trying to survive the winter, striving against an enemy force, or space pirates trying to get rich while dodging the authorities and avoiding political entanglements, it may not seem to be the most natural engine for magical girls.
Remember up in the introduction when I mentioned the expanded concept of magical girls that goes beyond the superhero style magical girl stories? This game uses the more structured, procedural format of the Forged in the Dark engine to make sure that characters think about each aspect of what the stories they are telling are touching upon. Right away in Girl by Moonlight, the book introduces the thesis of this game. Magical Girls, in this instance, are symbolic of people that belong to a marginalized community, drawing the most direct inspiration from the marginalization LBGTQIA+ people experience. If the only version of magical girls you have been exposed to has been the 90s version of Sailor Moon introduced in the United States, you may not realize exactly how apt it is to use the Magical Girl genre in this way.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about and want a quick course, go google Sailor Neptune, Sailor Uranus, or the Amazon Trio, especially if you’ve only encountered 90s Sailor Moon. Then come back. Is it clearer now? Okay, let’s get back to it.
It’s also probably important to point out that “magical girls” in this game aren’t limited to people whose gender identity is female. The genre leans towards portraying women protagonists, but includes characters that have a male gender identity, or do not conform to a gender binary. The term “magical girl,” however, does help to remind us that the default protagonist in these stories isn’t a straight cis male.
The structured nature of the Forged in the Dark engine makes it very clear how each aspect of gameplay contributes to the narrative of marginalized people living in a world that doesn’t accept them, while not being able to ignore the aspects of themselves that aren’t accepted. The phases of play in this game are:
- Obligation
- Downtime
- Mission
- Fallout
Each of these phases will look different depending on the series framework that the group agrees to use, but in general, this means that the characters will need to deal with what the mundane world expects them to do, choose what projects they want to focus on, attempt to fight back against the manifested destructed elements of the story in the mission, and deal with how the resolution of the mission affects the character’s long term goals and their daily lives.
While there has been a trend in a few more well known iterations of games based on the Forged in the Dark engine to move away from some of the more granular aspects of Forged in the Dark resolution, most of those standards as still present in this game. The baseline of the game is taking an action to resolve a situation, rolling a number of dice based on the ratings of the action being used, modified by help provided by others and additional dice provided by taking a dangerous compromise, and taking the highest result of the dice. If your highest die is 1-3, you don’t get what you want, if it’s a 4-5, you get it with a complication, and on a 6, you do exactly what you wanted to do the way you wanted to do it.
Downtime allows you to do things like recover from stress or start and advance long term projects. Mission objectives that can’t be resolved with a single action are tracked with clocks. Fallout can force the PCs to deal with enemy attacks when they aren’t ready, or see their opposition increase in tier, meaning that the PCs will have a harder time advancing mission clocks against the threats they face (usually because it takes more successes to fill in a clock to completion).
Depending on the series playset, there are aspects similar to claiming territory in Blades in the Dark. You might expand your superhero hideout’s resources, the carrier ship facilities of your bastion, or shut down aspects of an ongoing conspiracy.
Transforming the Forged in the Dark Engine
One of the ways that Girl by Moonlight addresses the genre is by introducing Transcendence. When characters meet the conditions by which they transform, they gain access to the Transcendent special abilities on their playbook, gain the use of armor, pick up more dots in some of their action ratings, and gain increased effect. Remember when we said that the opposition tier might go up, making it harder to fill your mission clocks . . . this is one of the ways you can counter that. Of course, there are also some powerful forces that you really can’t act against unless you are transcended.
There are a limited number of actions you can take while you are transcended. Because actions, especially in missions, represent more than just punching someone once or lifting a heavy object, this doesn’t mean that you only stay transformed for a minute or two, but it does mean that you only have so many mechanically significant, player driven moments with your transcended powers.
In many Forged in the Dark games, when your stress track is full, you leave the scene and take some kind of long term mark or injury before your character returns to play. Instead of leaving the scene, a stressed-out character falls into Eclipse. Eclipse is like the concept of the Darkest Self from Monsterhearts. You don’t become an enemy fighting against your friends, but the actions you are taking are harmful to your psyche and push yourself beyond your personal boundaries. You leave eclipse when one of your allies performs the action that is listed on your playbook as your escape.
All of this is meant to show that you have to fight to act as your true self and make it count, and that because you can’t always be the self you want to be, you have these shadows that fall over you, telling you that you aren’t the person that you want to be.
The specific actions in Girl by Moonlight include:
- Defy
- Empathize
- Express
- Confess
- Forgive
- Perceive
- Analyze
- Conceal
- Flow
The playbooks that the game uses include the following:
- Enigma (the mysterious character that helps the others while hiding who they are even from their allies)
- Stranger (the character that doesn’t connect with others as well as they do with things)
- Time Traveller (someone that knows what happens in one version of the future, and is trying to change things)
- Harmony (two characters in such a harmonious relationship that they act together to accomplish things)
- Guardian (the honor bound hero)
- Outsider (the character with a shady past and a rivalry with one of their allies)
- Unlikely Hero (the normal person who helps the other protagonists, and may not see what’s special about themselves)
Before we move on from the playbooks, I would just like to quote how your character views the world if they fall into Eclipse as the Unlikely Hero: “you are not who they need you to be. You’re weak, useless, unworthy of their friendship. They have given so much to you, and in return you give them nothing.”
Girl by Moonlight. I don’t know why you need to attack me personally, but I’m telling my therapist about this.
Another unique aspect of Girl by Moonlight are links. You gain links with different characters, and you can spend them in a number of ways to help one another, like recovering stress, ignoring harm, boosting an ally’s action, or preventing them from falling into eclipse. This is to reinforce the fact that the protagonists aren’t just individuals working towards a common goal, but that working together is one of the protagonists’ goals.
The Series
A game of Girl by Moonlight is a combination of picking your playbook, and picking the series that you are going to play. Series may have special rules that affect the general rules of the game, like the shrines that grant special abilities in At the Brink of the Abyss, the modified means by which the characters must recover stress and transcendence in Beneath a Rotting Sky, the rules for bonding with your giant robot friends in On the Sea of Stars, or the intimate moment rules for In a Maze of Dreams. They also have specific series abilities that can be taken in addition to playbook abilities, as well as customized transcendent abilities.
While there is a general theme for each of the series, the group still customizes and details the elements when they discuss what series they want to play. For example, they will often define the form the series opposition takes, where the characters derive their powers, what the mundane obligations of the characters are, and what end they are working towards, or fighting against.
The series included in the book are the following:
- At the Brink of the Abyss (magical girls as superheroes fighting for a better future)
- Beneath a Rotting Sky (magical girls as supernatural hunters fighting against a corruption that will ultimately break them)
- On a Sea of Stars (magical girls as mech pilots defending the last vestiges of human society against a destructive alien entity and its minions)
- In a Maze of Dreams (magical girls as manifestations of the characters’ subconscious selves, investigating the dreams of others to uncover an ongoing conspiracy)
Each of these series not only presents a different collection of tropes to utilize in storytelling, but also uses these different settings to explore different aspects of characters dealing with their marginalization in the face of the challenges they encounter. Not every setting is about our protagonists fighting hard and prevailing in the end.
At the Brink of the Abyss is what many people will think of when they think of the magical girls genre. Characters have a mundane, day-to-day life, with responsibilities they must perform. There is a unifying villainous force that both infects day to day life, making it harder for our protagonists to be themselves, and manifested villainous monsters, which can be challenged with superheroic action. Monsters in the setting are usually regular people corrupted by the unifying evil force that heroes are working against and can often be “saved” by reaching the human within the monster and appealing to their better nature. While the PCs still need to deal with the evil force corrupting society, they can defeat evil and make the world better. Some of the people that are adversaries are just people that don’t understand how they have been manipulated. It’s an overall more positive and optimistic setting, emphasizing perseverance and communication to overcome bigotry.
Beneath a Rotting Sky is perhaps the polar opposite of At the Brink of the Abyss. A very horror-inflected series, the evil that is corrupting society is so entrenched in the world that it’s not likely that it can ever be cleansed. If characters want to remove stress and recharge their powers, they need to consume the hearts of the monsters they hunt. They must deal with an opposing group of hunters who act as their rivals. They are portrayed as survivors, doing the best they can for as long as they can, until they can’t anymore. They try to do what they do because they don’t want to give up, not because they can win. In some ways, they are never fully free of the taint that has affected society, even when acting against the monsters of the setting, and may even come into conflict with others who are just trying to do the same things that the protagonists are doing. This series really explores the stress of existing in a world that actively resists change, and rather than moving forward, sometimes actively moves backward.
On a Sea of Stars splits the difference between the two previously detailed series. The humans’ last bastion isn’t as open and welcoming as it should be, meaning that the PCs may need to fight to make the surviving human society better in addition to fighting against the external forces trying to destroy humanity. It’s not assumed that the PCs will succeed, like At the Brink of the Abyss, but they aren’t doomed to eventually fall, as in Beneath a Rotting Sky. On a Sea of Stars puts an emphasis on building defenses and improving the human bastions, so that they can survive while the PCs are out taking the fight to the alien leviathans, which introduces the idea that big, grand gestures aren’t the only thing necessary to be successful, but also long term planning and change.
In a Maze of Dreams is the most conceptual of the settings. In superhero settings like the one detailed in At the Brink of the Abyss, the character’s heroic identity is often referred to as their “alter-ego,’ their self in a different reality. In a Maze of Dreams presents the concept that your transformed identity is really your “alter-Id,” your drives and desires given active reign over your supercharged form. The emphasis in this series is that there isn’t a big, obvious villain to fight, rather there are nefarious people that are subtly linked, causing harm as part of an established superstructure. Characters go into the dreams of people to determine how and if they are parts of the conspiracy, while also exploring desires and aspirations that the protagonist doesn’t fully understand. In a way, it’s trying to do what’s right, without knowing what’s right, while also learning why you really do the things you do.
Viewing the game through the lens of the series playbooks brings into focus what the game is trying to accomplish, using both the magical girl genre and the Forged in the Dark engine as tools to that end. Each of these series explores an aspect of surviving and interacting with society as a queer individual, each one asking, “but how would it change if you had to face this?” In some ways, it feels like the ultimate experience of this game would be to play through all these series and examine what they all say, and where those narratives overlap. That said, I can also see where some of these settings would be harder to engage with. For example, I could see running or playing in At the Brink of the Abyss or On a Sea of Stars, because when I’m gaming, I like at least the possibility of a happy ending. I may be able to engage with In a Maze of Dreams if I was in the right, introspective mindset, but I suspect that Under a Rotting Sky would be emotionally taxing for me in a way I wouldn’t enjoy.
That’s not a proclamation on what series are “good” or “bad.” I think, as a product, that Under a Rotting Sky and In a Maze of Dreams make the product feel more complete for the perspectives that those series offer. Other people are going to have different dials and perspectives they enjoy when they address these topics in a game.
Cosmic Heart Compact
This is one of those games that I feel is just as strong as a commentary as it is as an actual game, but it balances that commentary and gamification well enough to be both. The specific phases of play support the exploration of the game’s themes by pacing the game in step with the topics introduced in the other phases. The four series do a wonderful job at touching on the same topics, while also turning the dials on the details up or down to explore the same philosophical questions with different priorities.
Losing the Crystal Star
I think anyone looking at this game closely will understand that it’s “magical girls used to produce a specific experience,” but it’s probably still worth noting that if you want a game that leans harder on blow by blow action against a villain of the week, the pace of this game is probably going to be more deliberate and more introspective than you want to scratch that itch. It’s not really a failing of the game, so much as an easily foreseen misalignment of expectations.
Recommended–If the product fits in your broad area of gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.
This game is going to be a great tool for using fantasy elements to explore important issues facing queer people in modern society, as well as exploring how marginalized people survive and work to change society in a narrative form. In addition to its use as an active tool at the gaming table, both for having fun and exploring perspectives, I think that anyone that is concerned about queer marginalization, and who enjoys engaging with tabletop gaming rules will benefit from reading through this book, even if they never get the game into active use.
If you just want to punch evil in the face after your magical girl transformation, you may still get something out of this game, just know that the focus of the game isn’t squarely fixed on that aspect of the story as the primary narrative. Even at that, there are still some series and playbooks that lean more closely to what you may want out of the game.
Maybe someday, when enough people have played games like this, and internalized what they learn at the gaming table, they’ll realize that Samantha should have been able to be accepted as a witch even though she married a man. Her current partner didn’t make her any less of a witch, even when she wasn’t actively using her powers.
Read more »Source: Gnome Stew | Published: March 25, 2024 - 12:00 pm
Gnome Stew
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- Ultima IV - Retrospective ReviewMajuular looks back at Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar: Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar Retrospective | Reimagining the RPG Read more »Source: RPGWatch Newsfeed | Published: April 22, 2024 - 7:21 pm
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RPGWatch Newsfeed
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- VideoRunning Adventures – Mashups and the Undefined
Over the past couple of months I've written articles defining adventure types – how we prep them, how we run them, what pitfalls we might run into, and how to mitigate those pitfalls. These articles include:
- Dungeon Crawls
- Infiltrations and Heists
- Investigations and Mysteries
- Overland Exploration and Travel
- Missions and Quest Chains
- Defense
- Roleplay and Intrigue
- Combat
- Mashups or the Undefined
Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.
Know the Rules then Break the Rules
Now that we've defined adventure types, it's time to throw them away.
You see, these adventure types often don't line up with the actual adventures we run at our table. Our adventures might span across multiple types, or they might not be defined by any adventure type at all.
Our romp through Ironfang Keep might feel like a dungeon crawl, a heist, or an investigation. Our traversal across the ghoul city of Vandekhul might feel like travel or intrigue. Our battle against Camazotz might start as a major combat session but turn into roleplaying.
Adventures just don't fit cleanly into any given adventure type.
So why did you bother to read all those articles? Why did I bother to write them?
Because understanding adventure types can still help us run awesome games.
Actual adventures and sessions might not fit perfectly into one specific adventure type, but when we break down the elements of these adventure types, they give us a possible framework to build off of. They help us identify pitfalls and mitigation strategies for the elements of our game that do fit.
Which Adventure Type Best Fits?
When preparing or running our game, try to identify which adventure type or types best fit our game and use the preparation, execution framework, and tips for pitfall mitigations that make sense for the adventure you're running. Dungeon crawls, heists, defense, roleplaying, and combat situations can all come up during our campaigns or even in the middle of a session. The type tell us how we might switch modes and run that style of game.
If we're not sure what we need when prepping our game, we can ask ourselves which adventure type best fits what we're looking at and aim our prep around that type. Sometimes finding a suitable adventure type means taking a fuzzy concept and defining it within the bounds of the adventure type. "This situation at the castle feels like both defense and intrigue – let me look at those adventure types."
Absorb Adventure Types, Then Let Them Go
The more proficient we are running adventures, the more we can absorb the concepts for these adventure types and then set them aside when we're running adventures outside the bounds of any one adventure type.
Adventure types help identify different modes of play in our fantasy tabletop roleplaying games. Like many generalities, they often break down when you apply them to the actual games we run at our table.
Yet we don't have to throw away the underlying adventure type concepts in how we prep, how we run, the pitfalls we might face, and how to mitigate those pitfalls. Those concepts hold up even if the defined shapes of an adventure type doesn't perfectly fit the adventure we run.
Build Your Own Frameworks
These articles offer one perspective on adventure types. Through your own experiences you might find other adventure types or choose to redefine them yourself. Your own steps for preparing, running, identifying pitfalls, and mitigating pitfalls might be far more useful to you than the advice in this series of articles. That's fine. That's awesome. Define your own adventure types. Ask yourself what you need to prep, what you need to run them, what pitfalls you often run into, and how you can mitigate those pitfalls.
Find the adventure types that best fit your actual adventures and use the tools within to run awesome games.
More Sly Flourish Stuff
Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Using the 8 Lazy DM Steps at the Table and Swamp King Fronk – Lazy RPG Prep.
Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics
Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:
- Robert Schwalb on La Taberna de Rol
- DM David Compares MCDM, Daggerheart, and 5e
- Wandering Tavern by Homie and the Dude
- Infestation at Devil's Glade by Jeff Stevens
- Restless Encounters by Inkwell Ideas
- 13th Age Megabundle on Bundle of Holding
- Dyson Logos Commercial Map Packs
- Cairn 2 Character Builder Open Sourced
- Readings and Reflections with Sly Flourish Podcast
- JP Coovert's video on Indie RPGs
- Split Up Your Prep
Patreon Questions and Answers
Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:
- How Often to Level Characters?
- What to Prep When You Have a Long Time
- Accounting for High Power Characters with the Lazy Encounter Benchmark
RPG Tips
Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:
- Give characters and players a warning when they’re facing a foe beyond their capabilities.
- Use rolls for distance and motivation to change up random encounters.
- Improvise connections between random encounters and the larger story through secrets and clues.
- Build your own 5e from the sources that bring you the coolest options for your game.
- Clarify options and choices.
- Print maps and write down one- or two-word descriptions right on the map.
- Build encounters, secrets, NPCs, monsters, and treasure from the characters outward.
Related Articles
Get More from Sly Flourish
Buy Sly Flourish's Books
- Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Lazy DM's Companion
- Lazy DM's Workbook
- Forge of Foes
- Fantastic Lairs
- Ruins of the Grendleroot
- Fantastic Adventures
- Fantastic Locations
Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.
Read more »Source: Sly Flourish | Published: April 22, 2024 - 6:00 am - VideoRunning Combat-Focused Adventures
This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine
- how we prepare them.
- how we run them.
- what pitfalls we might run into.
- how we avoid these pitfalls.
These articles include:
- Dungeon Crawls
- Infiltrations and Heists
- Investigations and Mysteries
- Overland Exploration and Travel
- Missions and Quest Chains
- Defense
- Roleplay and Intrigue
- Combat
- Mashups or the Undefined
Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.
Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.
For a far more in-depth look at running monsters in combat encounters, please check out Forge of Foes, our book on building and running fantastic monsters for your 5e games.
Understanding Combat Adventures
Good fantasy RPG sessions most often include mixtures of exploration, roleplay, and combat. Adventures or sessions focusing on only one pillar of play may bypass players' preferences for the other elements.
But, on occasion, we find ourselves with a session focused almost exclusively on combat.
Completely combat-focused sessions may occur when characters face a big battle at the beginning of the session and we know this battle is going to take up most of the session. Other combat-focused sessions might happen when the characters face a gauntlet of battles, one right after the other, whether they're exploring a dangerous dungeon, defending a location, or otherwise find themselves with a series of battles staged in sequence.
Combat-focused sessions should be rare. The best sessions include scenes and situations with opportunities for roleplaying, exploration, and combat. We want situations where the characters make meaningful decisions to move the story forward.
But combat-focused sessions do happen and thus are worth examining.
Preparing Combat Sessions
During prep, GMs can prepare combat sessions by
- understanding how these combat encounters begin and where they occur.
- deciding on a style for combat. Are you going to run it in the theater of the mind, on a combat battle mat, or run abstract combat?
- choosing a goal for the combat encounter. Sometimes the battle isn't all about killing the monsters but achieving another outcome.
- selecting monsters for each combat encounter. Rich combat encounters often include two or more different monster types with some synergies between them – big brutes up front and nasty ranged attackers in the back for example.
- choosing the environment surrounding the encounter. What larger environmental effects might be in play in the combat arena?
- selecting interesting terrain features the characters and monsters might use (see Anatomy of an Environmental Effect – Chernobog's Well)
- planning potential shifts in the encounter. What events might change the course of the battle?
- outlining the transitions between each combat encounter. What takes the characters from battle A to battle B to battle C?
- building out, drawing, or preparing your battle map – either digital or physical.
- gathering miniatures, tokens, or digital assets if you're playing online.
Running Combat Sessions
For 5e games and other fantasy d20 games, combat tends to be the most well-articulated and refined style of gameplay. For combat-focused sessions, GMs need only start the session and get into the first battle. Between combat encounters ensure the sinew is there to connect one battle to the next. The rest falls on the rules of combat for our chosen system.
Depending on the complexity of the encounters, the number of characters, and their level, combat encounters may be easy or difficult to run. The higher level the characters – the more power and capability they bring to the battlefield – the trickier it can be to maintain a consistent challenge. The dials of monster difficulty can help balance such a challenge.
When running combat, continue to draw the players into the fiction of the world. Describe the situation from the point of view of the characters. Describe what attacks and hits look like. Ask players to do the same. Reveal secrets and clues when appropriate. Include opportunities for roleplaying with NPCs and enemies before, during, and after the battle. Avoid getting lost in the mechanics of combat and remember the story going on in the world.
Pitfalls of Combat Sessions
Here are several potential pitfalls when running combat-focused adventures and sessions:
- Too many hard combat encounters becomes repetitive and tiresome.
- Combat goals aren't clear. Players don't know why they're fighting.
- Combat focuses exclusively on the mechanics with little focus on the story or fiction.
- Combat encounters are tactically boring.
- Players resent encounters built to contradict their characters' capabilities.
- Battles take too long. Players who enjoy roleplaying and exploration miss out.
- It's easy to forget important monster mechanical details when running lots of monsters, more complicated monsters, or both.
Mitigating Pitfalls
GMs can help mitigate these pitfalls by
- mixing up easy and hard encounters or waves within a single encounter. Let the characters shine while fighting weaker foes as stronger ones come on later.
- clarifying encounter goals. Tell players how things work in the encounter so they know what they need to do.
- continually describe what's happening in the fiction of the game. Ask players to describe their actions including attacks and killing blows.
- include different monster types and terrain features to keep encounter tactics interesting.
- include lightning rods – monsters intended to show off the powerful capabilities of the characters.
- include elements of roleplaying and exploration during combat. What do the villains say? What do the characters discover about the world and situation as they fight for their lives?
- read over monster stat blocks before play and run simpler monsters for those who don't really matter, saving mechanically crunchy monsters for bosses and lieutenants.
An Uncommon Adventure Type
Combat-focused sessions are best held for big battles against boss monsters. Other session types in this series of articles offer a better balance of exploration, roleplaying, and combat. Combat-focused sessions are prevalent enough, however, for us to internalize what makes them fun and what we can do to avoid common pitfalls.
Build fantastic and intricate combat encounters and let the characters shine.
More Sly Flourish Stuff
Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos including Build Your Own 5e and Add Black Flag's Luck to your 5e Games.
RPG Tips
Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:
- Offer opportunities for roleplaying even in the depths of the darkest dungeons.
- Mix up battles with several smaller foes and fewer large foes.
- Build encounters first from the fiction. What makes sense?
- Add motivation and distance rolls to random encounters for unique experiences.
- Include interactive monuments in bigger battles.
- Write down connections between the characters and the next session you’re running.
- Single monsters are at a significant disadvantage against a group of characters. This disadvantage gets worse the higher level the characters are.
Related Articles
Get More from Sly Flourish
Buy Sly Flourish's Books
- Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Lazy DM's Companion
- Lazy DM's Workbook
- Forge of Foes
- Fantastic Lairs
- Ruins of the Grendleroot
- Fantastic Adventures
- Fantastic Locations
Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.
Read more »Source: Sly Flourish | Published: April 15, 2024 - 6:00 am - VideoRunning Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures
This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine
- how we prepare them.
- how we run them.
- what pitfalls we might run into.
- how we avoid these pitfalls.
These articles include:
- Dungeon Crawls
- Infiltrations and Heists
- Investigations and Mysteries
- Overland Exploration and Travel
- Missions and Quest Chains
- Defense
- Roleplay and Intrigue
- Combat
- Mashups or the Undefined
Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.
Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.
Understanding Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures
In adventures focused on roleplaying and intrigue, the characters primarily talk to NPCs to accomplish goals or learn information. Intrigue adventures often overlap with Investigations and Mysteries with less of a focus on location-based clues and expanding the goals beyond uncovering mysteries.
Example goals in roleplay and intrigue adventures might include
- convincing royalty to commit military forces in a war.
- exposing treachery in a royal court.
- saving the life of a condemned prisoner.
- pitting two enemies against one another.
- learning the location of a secret treasure vault.
- getting permission to enter a closed city.
- asking priests to hand over a powerful artifact.
Roleplay and intrigue adventures are often built around a set of linear or networked scenes. In these scenes, the characters talk to one or more NPCs learning something or attaining a goal that leads them to the next scene.
Preparing Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures
During preparation for roleplay and intrigue adventures, GMs can focus on
- clarifying the goal of the adventure.
- fleshing out the backgrounds of notable NPCs.
- finding artwork they can show to players for each notable NPC.
- writing down what NPCs know and what they want.
- defining secrets and clues the characters might uncover when talking to NPCs.
- adding other adventure elements as needed from the eight steps.
Running Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures
Roleplay and intrigue adventures can begin with a strong start to bring the players into the game, clarify the goals of the adventure, set the stage, and let the players begin interacting with NPCs.
During play, the GM thinks as the NPCs would think given their backgrounds and goals as they interact with the players. As the conversation goes on, the GM may decide how NPCs react based on what the players say or they may have players roll ability checks if there's a meaningful chance for failure that doesn't end the adventure in a brick wall.
GMs can use ability checks to determine how easily or how difficult it is to acquire information from an NPC or shift the NPCs attitude without shutting off entire paths if the adventure on a single bad check.
Other elements from typical adventures may come up in these sessions including exploring locations or getting into a fight, even if the overall focus is on talking to NPCs.
Pitfalls of Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures
Roleplay and intrigue adventures might suffer from the following pitfalls:
- Players don't understand what they're doing or why.
- Too many roleplay scenes in a row can bore action-focused players.
- The characters blow important rolls or engage in the wrong approach and shut off critical paths for the story.
- Players don't understand how best to engage the NPCs.
- Characters have better social skills than their players have or vice versa.
Avoiding Pitfalls
GMs can avoid or mitigate these pitfalls by
- Clarifying the characters' goals regularly.
- Including other action-focused scenes in the adventure such as combat encounters or location exploration.
- Ensuring the whole story doesn't get shut down on bad rolls or poor approaches and instead leads the story down a different, potentially harder, but still interesting path.
- Use the result of a roll as a scale of how well or poorly something went instead of a hard success or failure. See 1d20 Shades of Gray.
- Offer suggestions to players who have a hard time understanding how to engage with characters. Don't let them make foolish mistakes their characters would know better than to make. Show them opportunities their characters would recognize.
- Use a high-charisma character's charisma as a baseline, recognizing that their character might be better at negotiating than the player is.
- Use a charismatic player's approach as a baseline even if their character has a lousy charisma. Don't always call for a roll.
A Common Sub-Adventure Type
Roleplay and intrigue adventures might often slide into or be shuffled into other larger adventures. As one of the core pillars of roleplaying games, roleplay and intrigue scenes appear often throughout campaigns and can drive the story forward as much, or more so, than other adventure types.
Clarifying the goal, building rich reactive NPCs, creating interesting paths forward regardless of the outcome, and delivering the other elements of gameplay can make roleplay and intrigue adventures as exciting as the most explosive combat encounters.
More Sly Flourish Stuff
Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Running Evil Cities and 175 Free Tokens for Owlbear Rodeo.
Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics
Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:
- Dungeoncraft on Getting Cheap Miniatures
- Monsters of Drakkenheim
- Cairn 2e Boxed Set
- Tales of the Valiant Wight
- Why CR3 is the best CR
- New Search Engine for Sly Flourish!
- The Two Different Games at the Table
Patreon Questions and Answers
Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:
- Lazy DM Steps in an Online VTT World
- Handling Failure at the End of Campaigns
- Handling Flying Characters
- Feeling Bad After a Big Battle
- When to Give Out Magic Items
RPG Tips
Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:
- Challenge high level characters by attacking several points — AC, saves, death saves, exhaustion, hit points, cumulative -1 penalties, and so on.
- Build big arenas for big boss battles with interesting terrain and layers of monsters.
- Offer weapon enchantment gemstones any character can affix to a weapon or armor to make it magical.
- Let the characters glimpse their final villains. Make villains and boss monsters ever present.
- With six regular players and two on-call players, five people have to cancel before you can’t get four to the table for a game.
- Print maps, pen in one- or two-word room descriptions, and make a list of potential inhabitants.
- Roll up treasure horde parcels and jot them down in your notes. Distribute them when it makes sense.
Related Articles
- Running Dungeon Crawls
- Running Defense Adventures
- Running Overland Exploration and Travel Adventures
Get More from Sly Flourish
Buy Sly Flourish's Books
- Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Lazy DM's Companion
- Lazy DM's Workbook
- Forge of Foes
- Fantastic Lairs
- Ruins of the Grendleroot
- Fantastic Adventures
- Fantastic Locations
Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.
Read more »Source: Sly Flourish | Published: April 8, 2024 - 6:00 am - VideoRunning Defense Adventures
This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine
- how we prepare them.
- how we run them.
- what pitfalls we might run into.
- how we avoid these pitfalls.
These articles include:
- Dungeon Crawls
- Infiltrations and Heists
- Investigations and Mysteries
- Overland Exploration and Travel
- Missions and Quest Chains
- Defense
- Roleplay and Intrigue
- Combat
- Mashups or the Undefined
Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.
Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.
Understanding Defense Adventures
In defense adventures, the characters defend a location and its inhabitants from invaders, bandits, or monsters. This adventure type is structured similar to infiltrations and heists in that players spend significant time planning for the attack before the attack itself. I often refer to defense adventures as Seven Samurai adventures because of how well the model of Akira Kurosawa's classic samurai movie fits as a fantasy RPG adventure.
The typical scenario for a defense adventure includes:
- The characters are recruited by townsfolk (or someone similar) to defend a location.
- The characters plan and prepare the location and inhabitants for the coming attack.
- The attack begins with the invasion of a large enemy force.
- The characters focus on their part of the attack while NPCs defend their locations off-camera. Things might change, forcing the characters to move around.
- There's an aftermath.
Defense adventures don't have to follow this model perfectly but this scenario is a common approach.
Preparing a Defense Adventure
GMs can prepare for a defense-style adventure by
- defining the theme. Who are the attackers? Who are the defenders? What's the location like? What themes or flavor can we wrap around the adventure?
- finding or creating a suitable location for the defense and ensuring it has the right characteristics for a good defensible position.
- further defining the "villagers". Who asks the characters to defend them? What's their secret?
- preparing a menu of options the characters can choose to prepare the defense including training NPCs, fortifying defenses, spying on the attackers, preparing weapons or spells, or engaging in other activities to aid in the defense.
- outlining the villains. Who are they? Who leads them? Where do they come from? Where are they located before the attack? How many are there? How will they attack?
- preparing the remaining eight steps as needed.
Running a Defense Adventure
Like a heist adventure, the players plan their defense during the first half of the adventure. Give players time to plan their defense, talk to NPCs, scout the villains, and engage in other activities to prepare for the attack. Improvise ability checks to see how well their defenses hold up.
When the attack begins, focus the spotlight on the characters and their part of the battle. Describe the results of the larger battle based on the defenses the characters put up and how well they did on their checks but keep the spotlight focused on the characters.
Pitfalls of Defense Adventures
Defense adventures might suffer one or more of the following pitfalls.
- The characters' defenses don't come into play – they wasted their time.
- The characters' defenses are so good there's no threat from the villains.
- The players don't know how to prepare the location. They don't understand how they should defend the location.
- The location is too hard to defend. It's too wide open with no good choke points or defensible positions.
- The characters split up instead of staying together making it harder to run the whole adventure.
Avoiding Pitfalls
GMs can avoid or mitigate these pitfalls by
- ensuring the characters' defenses come into play by improvising the descriptions of the villains' attacks.
- ensure there's enough variance to the attack of the villains to still make it a threat even with a very solid defense.
- ensuring there's a clear list of options the characters can choose from to build up the location's defenses.
- during prep, ensuring the location has clear defensible positions and choke points like ravines, rivers, swamplands, walls, towers, and other defensible positions.
- Push players to keep their characters together during the fight so you don't have to run split battles all over the location.
A Fantastic Situation for Heroic Tales
Defense-based adventures stand as an excellent adventure style to give the players agency to shape their own story. It's a perfect example of situation-based adventures in which the GM sets up the situation and the characters navigate it. GMs and players play the situation out together, building a story at the table neither side could have guessed before it began.
More Sly Flourish Stuff
Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos including a Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands Deep Dive and 5e Travel Systems.
Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics
Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:
- Jim Ward Passes Away
- Bob World Builder's Survey of D&D and WOTC Popularity
- Legos and Sneakers and Hawaiian Shirts
- Tome of Beasts 2023 on D&D Beyond
- The SF Patreon Q&A Database
- Larian says No BG3 Expansions or BG4
- Reach and Run Awesome Campaign Endings
Patreon Questions and Answers
Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:
- Too Much Comedy and Joking at our Serious D&D Game
- How Much is Gold Worth? Function Economies in our D&D Games
- Lazy Encounter Benchmark for Multiple Battles in a Day
RPG Tips
Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:
- Give players the option to avoid monsters if desired.
- Test future boss fights with similar but reskinned interim battles.
- Think about the hooks between each character and elements from the next session.
- Give big monsters a way to threaten back-line characters.
- Give characters a painful option to break out of effects that take away their actions.
- Mix and match 5e elements from several published sourcebooks.
- Bathe your dungeon crawl in interesting lore.
Related Articles
- Running Dungeon Crawls
- Running Infiltration and Heist Adventures
- Running Roleplay and Intrigue Adventures
Get More from Sly Flourish
Buy Sly Flourish's Books
- Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Lazy DM's Companion
- Lazy DM's Workbook
- Forge of Foes
- Fantastic Lairs
- Ruins of the Grendleroot
- Fantastic Adventures
- Fantastic Locations
Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.
Read more »Source: Sly Flourish | Published: April 1, 2024 - 6:00 am - VideoRunning Missions and Quest Chains
This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine
- how we prepare them.
- how we run them.
- what pitfalls we might run into.
- how we avoid these pitfalls.
These articles include:
- Dungeon Crawls
- Infiltrations and Heists
- Investigations and Mysteries
- Overland Exploration and Travel
- Missions and Quest Chains
- Defense
- Roleplay and Intrigue
- Combat
- Mashups or the Undefined
Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.
Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.
Understanding Missions and Quest Chains
In mission-based adventures the characters accomplish several goals across a series of scenes. The scenes may be linear or run in a network where players choose different paths leading to different future missions.
Often mission-based adventures take several sessions, perhaps an entire campaign, to complete. Each leg of the mission might be its own adventure.
Each mission or quest of the quest chain might be small – like killing a fire giant boss at a burned out watchtower, acquiring one of several needed items, or getting information from the shady vendor in the Lower Reaches. In a series of wartime missions, the characters accomplish specific missions while war rages around them.
Missions might also be built so the characters attempt to accomplish tasks before the bad guys, or the characters face a rival group attempting to complete the same or parallel quests. This competition results in an ever-changing situation as both groups follow their chains of quests.
Some example missions include:
- Collecting three keys (out of 5) to open the vault of Ibraxus.
- Destroying the four sub-lieutenants of King Lucan the vampire lord.
- Disabling the four obelisks to prevent the opening of the doorway of the Black Cathedral.
- Conducting four missions to thwart the hobgoblin armies of Lord Krash.
- Recovering four powerful artifacts required to defeat Orcus, Lord of Undeath.
Preparing Mission-based Adventures
GMs may prepare for mission-based adventures by
- determining the overall goal of the mission or quest chain.
- building an outline or tree for the quests in the chain.
- filling out the adventure details of the next quest or mission in the chain with the eight steps such as locations, NPCs, monsters, and treasure.
- outlining which quests might follow the next one.
- determine the path and progress of rival groups following these same quests if any.
Running Missions
When running mission-based adventures or campaigns, the GM should
- clarify the goals of the overall quest chain.
- clarify the paths the characters can take and choices they can make when conducting their missions.
- run the current mission or quest as its own typical RPG scene or adventure.
- offer the choices for the next possible quests in the chain.
Mission or Quest Chain Pitfalls
When running mission-based or quest-chain adventures, GMs might encounter the following pitfalls:
- The choices aren't clear. Players don't know which mission to follow next.
- Players forget why they're following these quests.
- The mission paths don't offer meaningful choices. Characters just follow the steps in a predetermined order.
- Large chains of missions can be thwarted when only one mission is accomplished (see all or nothing collection quests).
Avoiding Pitfalls
GMs can avoid these pitfalls by
- regularly clarifying the goal of the mission or quest chain.
- clarifying the options the characters can take and ensuring each option is meaningful.
- not running too many missions.
- ensuring each leg of the quest chain shows clear progress towards the goal.
- ensuring the success of a single mission doesn't thwart the large plans of the villains or characters by using the three of five keys quest model.
A Common Adventure Style
Mission-based adventures are one of the most common styles of adventures. Hopefully these guidelines help you keep your mission-based adventures on track with meaningful choices, clear options, and dynamic situations.
More Sly Flourish Stuff
Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Roll Twice and the Elven Orb – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 24 Lazy GM Prep.
Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics
Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:
- Dungeon Crawl Classics Humble Bundle
- Worlds Without Number SRD in CC0
- WOTC's "Do You Like Me" Survey
- Hasbro's Chris Cocks on D&D and AI
- WOTC Partners with StartPlaying.Games
- Daggerheart Open Beta Available
- Lazy DM's Companion On Sale!
- Dungeon Chambers
- Challenging High-Level Characters
Patreon Questions and Answers
Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:
RPG Tips
Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:
- Show players the results in the world of the choices they made.
- Show players how powerful their characters have become.
- Throw in lots of low CR monsters to fireball or turn or otherwise blow away.
- Always lean towards putting meaningful choices in front of the players.
- Clarify goals selected by the characters often -- at least once per session.
- Bring old NPCs back and show how they’ve changed.
- Mix your adventure types. Dungeon crawls, heists, and intrigue all work together into a unique mashup of an adventure.
Related Articles
Get More from Sly Flourish
Buy Sly Flourish's Books
- Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Lazy DM's Companion
- Lazy DM's Workbook
- Forge of Foes
- Fantastic Lairs
- Ruins of the Grendleroot
- Fantastic Adventures
- Fantastic Locations
Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.
Read more »Source: Sly Flourish | Published: March 25, 2024 - 6:00 am - VideoRunning Overland Exploration and Travel Adventures
This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine
- how we prepare them.
- how we run them.
- what pitfalls we might run into.
- how we avoid these pitfalls.
These articles include:
- Dungeon Crawls
- Infiltrations and Heists
- Investigations and Mysteries
- Overland Exploration and Travel
- Missions and Quest Chains
- Defense
- Roleplay and Intrigue
- Combat
- Mashups or the Undefined
Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.
Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.
Understanding Travel Adventures
For the sake of this article, overland exploration and travel adventures follow the characters as they travel from one place to another, usually over significant distances across the surface of the world.
Sometimes the characters know clearly where they're headed. Other times they might only be following vague rumors. The paths they follow might be well known or something they discover as they go.
Travel adventures might be run as hex crawls, pointcrawls, or linear paths of connected locations. They could be a quick journey during a single game or run over several sessions.
Resources for Travel
Your chosen RPG might include material for running travel scenes. Two books offer excellent guidance and systems for running travel adventures for 5e games: Uncharted Journeys by Cubicle 7 and Trials and Treasure for Level Up Advanced 5e by EN World publishing. Uncharted Journeys offers a solid system for travel and a huge range of potential encounters. Trials and Treasure includes excellent random encounter tables, character roles, weather options for various climates, and more. If you choose only one book, start with Trials and Treasure.
Preparing Travel Adventures
Preparing for an overland exploration or travel adventure might include
- defining the starting point, the destination, the distance, and the path.
- understanding how you plan on running the journey – point crawls, hex crawls, a linear series of encounters, or a single encounter during the journey.
- defining potential paths.
- preparing a list of roles and activities the characters engage in during travel.
- preparing a random weather table.
- writing down potential encounter locations along the journey for each node in the pointcrawl or within one or more of the hexes along the journey.
- preparing a list of encounters – random, fixed, or a mix of both.
- writing down secrets and clues, NPCs, or treasure the characters might discover along the journey.
Running Travel Adventures
Like dungeon crawls, travel adventures can follow a particular model of gameplay. This procedure includes
- clarifying the starting point and destination for the journey.
- asking each player to select a role for the journey – scout, pathfinder, quartermaster, etc. Characters might instead choose to aid someone else.
- roll on a weather table each day to determine what weather the characters deal with that day.
- expend daily resources such as food and water.
- have the characters roll ability checks based on their role. A scout may notice creatures before the creatures notice the characters. A pathfinder may stay on course or get lost. A quartermaster may give the characters temporary hit points or lose resources.
- roll for monuments or other notable features as they travel or use one of your predetermined locations.
- roll for random encounters. Even if they don't encounter something, you might roll to see what came by recently or what might be coming. You might roll twice and mix two encounters together.
- move on to the next day.
Pitfalls for Travel Adventures
Here are some common pitfalls for travel adventures:
- Too much time is spent on travel when the real story is happening at the destination.
- Too many downward beats or hard encounters – it feels like a slog.
- Travel feels like a needless chore or time-wasting filler.
- Travel doesn't offer meaningful choices or actions.
Avoiding Travel Pitfalls
Here are some ways to keep travel on track.
- Drop in relevant secrets and clues the characters discover during their journey to tell them about the world, its inhabitants, and elements of the larger story.
- Include interesting monuments to solidify specific locations and encounters and act as catalysts for secrets and clues.
- Include roleplay and exploration scenes, not just combat encounters.
- Run some easy encounters the characters can resolve many different ways.
- Let characters get the drop on monsters and give them the choice to fight them or not.
- If travel isn't interesting or challenging, shorten it or skip it completely and get to the more important scenes the players care about.
A Bridge Between Other Adventures
Travel adventures are often a bridge between one part of the story and the next part. With careful planning and execution, travel can offer stories just as interesting as other types of adventures.
More Sly Flourish Stuff
Last week I posted YouTube videos with Thoughts on Obsidian for TTRPG Prep and the Lazy DM's Companion Sale.
Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics
Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:
- Last Week's Sly Flourish RPG Newsletter
- Planestrider
- Surviving Strangehollow
- Lazy DM's Companion On Sale
- NASA Releases a 5e Adventure
- Chaosium RPG Design Contest
- Taking Notes During and After the Game
Patreon Questions and Answers
Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:
- Running City of Arches as an Open Table Game
- Villainous Plans and the Three of Five Keys Model
- Introducing New Players to RPGs
- Secrets and Lore as Character Knowledge
- Secrets and Clues in Dark Sun
RPG Tips
Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:
- Challenge high-level characters by attacking several vectors: AC, various saves, area attacks, advantageous terrain, flippable environmental effects, and so on.
- Benchmark encounters with the Lazy Encounter Benchmark: A battle may be deadly if the sum total of monster CRs is 1/4 the total of character levels; or half of character levels if they're 5th level or above.
- Tweak the Lazy Encounter Benchmark based on what you know of the characters. Really powerful? Pretend there is one additional character of the party's level.
- Warn players when they're going to enter a long fight. Change the fight midway and keep up the story to make long battles interesting.
- Include switchable terrain that works against the characters at first and for them later on. For example, an unholy effigy gives evil creatures advantage but gives characters advantage when turned into a holy effigy.
- Level characters after significant accomplishments in the story.
- Damage is the biggest threat a monster offers that doesn't take agency away from the characters. Want a bigger threat? Do more damage.
Related Articles
Get More from Sly Flourish
Buy Sly Flourish's Books
- Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Lazy DM's Companion
- Lazy DM's Workbook
- Forge of Foes
- Fantastic Lairs
- Ruins of the Grendleroot
- Fantastic Adventures
- Fantastic Locations
Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.
Read more »Source: Sly Flourish | Published: March 18, 2024 - 6:00 am - VideoRunning Investigations and Mysteries
This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine
- how we prepare them.
- how we run them.
- what pitfalls we might run into.
- how we avoid these pitfalls.
These articles include:
- Dungeon Crawls
- Infiltrations and Heists
- Investigations and Mysteries
- Overland Exploration and Travel
- Missions and Quest Chains
- Defense
- Roleplay and Intrigue
- Combat
- Mashups or the Undefined
Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.
Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.
Understanding Investigations and Mysteries
In investigation and mysteries, one or more previous events have occurred which have led to the current situation. The characters spend their time in the adventure learning what happened and potentially changing the course of future events based on what they find. During investigations, the characters talk to people, explore locations, uncover clues, and face those foes who seek to thwart them.
Mysteries are difficult to run because, unlike narrative fiction, we don't know where the characters are going to go, what they're going to investigate, or what clues they might pick up. They could identify the key villain in the first scene or pursue tangents away from the clues you expect them to follow. Both of these situations need to be accounted for in your prep and play.
Preparing Investigations and Mysteries
These steps can help you prepare to run an investigation or mystery:
- Develop the starting situation. What happened? Who did what? What is the timeline of previous events?
- Develop your strong start. How and when do the characters get involved in the situation? What hooks them into the mystery?
- Develop a list of NPCs the characters can talk to. Who are they? What was their involvement in the situation? What do they want? What are their goals? Avoid introducing the main villain too early if you're trying to keep them a secret.
- Develop locations the characters can investigate. Where can they go? How can they uncover the clues they eventually need? What happened at these locations?
- Develop a list of secrets and clues. Keep them abstract from their place of discovery so you can drop in these clues when it makes sense based on the investigation undertaken by the characters. In investigations and mysteries, you may need more than ten.
- Write down monsters and treasure for the more traditional adventure elements.
Running an Investigation or Mystery
The following list provides a structure around running investigations and mysteries:
- Use your strong start and sink in the hook so the characters, and their players, want to dig in and figure out what's going on.
- Introduce NPCs helpful to the characters who can give them a push in the right direction.
- As the characters investigate, drop in clues that lead the characters to other locations, meeting other NPCs, and discovering more clues and so on.
- Throughout the adventure, expose clues until the players can piece together the whole scenario.
- Add henchmen or other hostiles to add some combat as desired.
- When the time is right, drop in your villain and have a big confrontation.
Common Pitfalls for Investigations and Mysteries
Investigation and mysteries may sometimes include the following pitfalls. During prep and play, keep these pitfalls in mind so you can avoid them and run a fun evolving game.
- There's only one way to find the right clues and the characters don't follow it.
- The characters discover the villain or source of the mystery too early.
- The characters never discover the villain or figure out the mystery.
- The GM leads the players on too much – making it clear the players didn't figure it out but had the results spoon-fed to them.
- The pacing gets tiresome. Players who want to crack some skulls end up bored.
- The mystery is too complex. Players can't figure out all the important details.
Avoiding Pitfalls
Consider the following ways to avoid the pitfalls listed above.
- Keep the clues needed to uncover the mystery abstract from their location of discovery. Drop in clues along the path the characters take during the investigation.
- Don't introduce the villain too early. Keep them a blank spot in the story until it's time for their revelation.
- Provide the right amount of information for the players to be able to piece together the puzzle themselves. Don't spell it out for them.
- Clarify that the characters are the ones discovering information and piecing it together – not you the GM.
- Have multiple ways to uncover the truth. Don't let discovery of the mystery hinge on a single element the characters might miss.
- Include combat and skirmishes to keep combat-focused players interested.
- Keep in mind that players only grasp about half of what you reveal. Keep mysteries simple enough that players can actually piece them together.
Build Situations, Not Mystery Novels
A key to running a good investigation and mystery is not to assume you know how the players will discover the truth. Build and set up the situation during prep and let the characters follow their own path to their ultimate discovery.
More Sly Flourish Stuff
The Lazy DM's Companion is currently on sale for 50% off the PDF and 20% off the PDF and softcover version! If you don't have this book, now is a fantastic time to pick it up! The Lazy DM's Companion includes tools, tables, and tips for running awesome fantasy D20 games. Grab it today!
Last Week's Lazy RPG Newsletter
I had a cold last week and didn't record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast). Instead, I wrote a text-version of the talk show in the Lazy RPG Newsletter for 3 March 2024 with news, tips, and Patreon questions and answers.
I did post a YouTube video on Using Paper Character Sheets.
RPG Tips
Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:
- Name villains and sentient opponents. Make each one unique.
- Have players identify monsters with interesting physical characteristics.
- Add an interesting usable environmental object or effect into significant combat encounters.
- Tie clues, treasure, and MacGuffins to the backgrounds, knowledge, and history of the characters.
- Reveal the world through the eyes of the characters.
- Ask each character what they think about from their past and their current larger goals during short or long rests.
- Show the characters the results of their actions in the world.
Related Articles
Get More from Sly Flourish
Buy Sly Flourish's Books
- Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Lazy DM's Companion
- Lazy DM's Workbook
- Forge of Foes
- Fantastic Lairs
- Ruins of the Grendleroot
- Fantastic Adventures
- Fantastic Locations
Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.
Read more »Source: Sly Flourish | Published: March 11, 2024 - 6:00 am - VideoRunning Infiltration and Heist Adventures
This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine
- how we prepare them.
- how we run them.
- what pitfalls we might run into.
- how we avoid these pitfalls.
These articles include:
- Dungeon Crawls
- Infiltrations and Heists
- Investigations and Mysteries
- Overland Exploration and Travel
- Missions and Quest Chains
- Defense
- Roleplay and Intrigue
- Combat
- Mashups or the Undefined
Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.
Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.
Understanding Infiltration Adventures
In infiltration adventures, the characters often have significant information about their goal, the location in which they must accomplish the goal, and knowledge of the inhabitants of the location. Heists are a common form of infiltration adventure but many infiltrations involve doing something other than stealing something.
Infiltration adventures differ from dungeon crawls because the characters often know more about the location they're infiltrating and spend more time planning their approach. Goals for infiltration adventures can vary, even if how we prepare and run them remains mostly the same. These goals include:
- Stealing something
- Kidnapping someone
- Rescuing someone
- Hunting down a bad guy
- Performing a magic ritual
- Disrupting a magic ritual
- Uncovering war plans
- Recovering blackmail evidence
- Uncovering evidence of a plot
- Planting evidence
Preparing Infiltration Adventures
Preparing infiltration adventures focuses on the following activities:
- Clarifying the goal and ensuring it's something important enough that the characters are willing to risk their lives for it.
- Choosing a map. Unlike dungeon crawls, there's a good chance we'll give a copy of this map to the players.
- Filling in the location with details. I like printing out a Dyson map and writing a couple of words per room or area right on the page.
- Listing out inhabitants and understanding their behaviors. What are they doing when the characters aren't there? Unlike dungeon crawls, inhabitants of a location in an infiltration adventure are often more mobile.
- Listing potential complications. What unknown events might shake things up? Make a list of a handful to either choose from or roll on during the infiltration.
- Ensuring there are multiple paths to achieve the goal. Do they sneak in an upper window? Pretend to be servants? Delve in through the sewers below?
With that material in hand, we're ready to run our infiltration adventure.
Running Infiltration Adventures
Infiltration adventures often break down into the following phases:
- Planning. Unlike other adventures, players spend a lot of time planning their infiltration.
- Choosing roles. What jobs are each of the characters taking on the infiltration? Is someone acting as the "face" character? Is someone the muscle? Is someone sneaking around and spying on things from a higher floor?
- Execution. This is where the real adventure begins. The characters start doing the things they planned.
- Flashbacks. A concept taken from Blades in the Dark gives players an opportunity to flash back earlier in the story to set something up or acquire something they need. Inspiration or luck may be a good mechanic to allow for adjustments or additions to the party's plan.
- Complications. Things never go according to plan. What changes? What complications do you throw in from your list of potential complications? Or do you roll it? Complications don't always have to go against the characters.
- The climax. What happens when the characters achieve their goal? What happens if they fail or partially succeed?
- The escape. How do the characters get out afterwards?
Infiltration Adventure Pitfalls
Infiltration adventures might go wrong for the following reasons:
- Players spend too long planning.
- The plans go out the window too early.
- The characters aggro the entire location, making the job impossible to complete.
- A single bad check affects too much of the outcome.
- Too many complications disrupt the whole plan.
- The changing situation makes it too hard to adjudicate.
Pitfall Mitigation
What can we do to help ensure these pitfalls don't crud up our fun session?
- Arbitrate conversations and get the players to a consensus so the game can move forward. Ensure the players you're not pushing them down one path or leading them to utter destruction.
- Keep a balance on consistency and chaos. Some things should go to plan, some things should go haywire. Don't disrupt or destroy the whole plan too early.
- Use Blades-style "clocks" to escalate tension based on failed checks rather than everything going bad all at once.
- Give leeway in choosing when adversaries become aware of the characters. It should take multiple failed attempts before the characters are discovered and it shouldn't chain out to every adversary in the whole location.
A Framework for Countless Adventures
The infiltration style adventure is a popular and flexible model we can use for many different adventures. Change the goal, the location, and the situation and you have something fresh every time yet still have a consistent framework around which to build your adventure.
More Sly Flourish Stuff
Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on High Value Prep and The Marrow Fiend – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 23 Lazy GM Prep.
Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics
Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:
- Rascal.News for TTRPG News
- Ginny Di on D&D with ADHD
- Shadow of the Weird Wizard Released
- The Benefits of Character Factions
- The Many Right Answers of TTRPGs
Patreon Questions and Answers
Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:
- WOTC and Table-Usable Maps
- Selling Magic Items -- Info and Inventories
- Tying Backgrounds to Curse of Strahd
- How do I Feel about AI in TTRPGs?
RPG Tips
Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:
- Write your own map key on a printed map.
- For dungeons, focus on one or two word descriptions for each chamber. Save longer descriptions for complicated set-piece chambers.
- Build your own binder with your favorite reference pages in it.
- Stuck for an idea? Write down ten and pick the best one.
- Need inspiration? Take a walk and let your mind wander.
- Find a suite of tools for your prep that you love and you'll be drawn to use it.
- Put dialog-friendly NPCs in the deepest dungeons – talking statues, paintings, magic items, or ghosts. Everyone wants a friend!
Related Articles
Get More from Sly Flourish
Buy Sly Flourish's Books
- Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Lazy DM's Companion
- Lazy DM's Workbook
- Forge of Foes
- Fantastic Lairs
- Ruins of the Grendleroot
- Fantastic Adventures
- Fantastic Locations
Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.
Read more »Source: Sly Flourish | Published: March 4, 2024 - 6:00 am - VideoLazy RPG Newsletter – 3 March 2024
A nasty cold knocked me on my ass so instead of a YouTube and Podcast recording of the Lazy RPG Talk Show, I'm going to deliver the same info to you in beloved HTML!
New Maps Features on D&D Beyond
Wizards of the Coast released a video of new D&D Beyond Maps features. They've updated a lot since the last time I played around with it – token naming and re-naming, a spectator view, a drawing tool, and a pointer. I spent some time on Twitch mucking around with the new features and I like it a lot. WOTC is definitely taking a lighter-weight Owlbear Rodeo approach which I appreciate. I'd love to see them let people upload custom tokens and add text-based notes to the map. It's far more functional now than it was a couple of months ago.
For those running WOTC adventures with WOTC character options, it's a great tool.
It's interesting that WOTC / Hasbro chose to hedge their bets by investing in both a lightweight 2d map-based VTT and a heavy-weight expensive 3d VTT. I'll bet the former is more popular than the latter.
Marilith Preview for the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault
Kobold Press released a preview of the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault Marilith and I think it looks awesome. It hits hard, has a simple stat block, and still has interesting crunchy features befitting this high-power demon. I'm eager to see the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault. It's going to be wild to have four different core monster books by this time next year: the 2014 D&D Monster Manual, the 2024 D&D Monster Manual, the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault, and the Level Up Advanced 5e Monstrous Menagerie. We have lots of core monsters to choose from and no limitation on which monsters we decide to use at our tables.
Bob World Builder on GM Regrets
Bob World Builder has an awesome YouTube Video on GM Regrets. I don't think it's useful to fixate on our regrets but we can learn a lot by listening to the regrets of others. I don't have many GM regrets. I'm happy with how things turned out in my TTRPG life. I do regret not playing OD&D in the early 80s with my oldest friend Scott – a friend I've had for almost half a century. I talked to him yesterday about it and we both had a laugh. We both barely remember the time anyways.
Dread Laironomicon
Raging Swan released the Dread Laironomicon, a tome standing side-by-side with the Dread Thingonomicon to fill in the details of one hundred lairs from the Cultists' Hidden Fane to a Roper's Cave. Each lair includes seven lists of ten details to fill in such lairs. This book is an excellent source of inspiration for filling in the details of a location during prep – making such places come alive. If you're a fan of the excellent works of Raging Swan Press, you will not be disappointed. My only complaint is a lack of higher-focus lists of chambers in such lairs but the major and minor features lists largely fill in that need. I received a review copy of the Dread Laironomicon for this spotlight.
Dune on Humble Bundle
Humble Bundle currently offers a 17 book digital package for Modiphius's Dune RPG for $18. Such bundles are a great way to dive into an RPG for a low cost. I don't intend to run it but after awaiting Dune part 2 and re-reading the original Dune books, it's great fun to delve into the artwork and read the lore behind the RPG. If you love Dune and want a taste of the RPG, this is a great deal.
Being Good Stewards of the Hobby
Based on an excellent conversation with Graham Ward on Mastering Dungeons, I was inspired to consider what we can do to be good stewards of the TTRPG hobby. I asked folks across several platforms and got many excellent responses which I'll put together into a longer article. For a quick preview, here are some things I think we can all do to be great stewards of the TTRPG hobby:
- Embrace the diversity of our hobby, both in the games we play and the people playing them.
- Learn from everyone, whether they are new to the hobby or a grizzled veteran.
- Welcome new players. Teach them how to play and learn from their experiences.
- Focus on the fun we can have at the table with our friends.
- Support peoples' love for their chosen systems, even if those systems aren't for you.
- Avoid gatekeeping with jargon, how one came to the hobby, the games one chooses to play, or how long one has played games.
- Share our love of the hobby openly.
Simple Online Combat Tracking with a Text Editor
I've been playing a mix of online and in-person games recently and return to the simple text editor as a great way to track combat when playing online. Using Notepad or whatever text editor you prefer you can track initiative, positioning in theater of the mind combat, damage done to creatures, and more.
Here's a quick example of the text I had for a battle I ran last night:
23 Chartreuse 12 Crimson Lotus 71 > Chartreuse 12 Blackguard Wight 10 > Voxi 12 Blackguard Wight 49 > Helm 7 Voxi 7 Zaffre In the Back 6 Helm 5 Radon 3 Eldrox
The above has the characters and creatures in initiative order. The left-hand numbers are their initiative roll. The right-hand numbers are the damage done to the creature. The angle brackets indicate that a monster is adjacent to a particular character. You can type status effects, multiple adjacent characters, or any other notes next to a creature's name to keep track.
Using text editors for combat tracking is fast, easy, cheap, and independent of RPG system or digital tools. I love it.
Page 12 of the Lazy DM's Companion has more tricks for tracking theater of the mind combat in a text editor that differs from the above but both can give you ideas how to easily track combat in a text editor.
Patreon Questions
Every month, Patrons of Sly Flourish can ask any question in a special monthly Q&A. I answer every RPG-related question each Friday morning. Here are some highlights for this week. Please note these questions have been edited for length.
Announcing a Villain's Plans and Progress
From Jason. I was curious how you balance multiple story arcs throughout a campaign. The villain in our campaign, who is progressing his own plans, is coming to a point where some of those plans will come to fruition. I'm struggling with "announcing" those plans when the PC's are in the middle of another story arc. I'm worried that may seem railroad-like if I throw a hook out there that they will feel inclined to investigate and move off of what they are currently on. My goal with the villain's plans was to keep him going in the background, and thus in the PC's consciousness, instead of having everything happen at the very end.
Sometimes we get stuck between revealing interesting information and such information ending up as an adventure hook. It's important to clarify to the players that not all information is actionable. Such information isn't something they can or should feel pressure to do something about right now.
Secrets and clues can help characters learn about the escalation of villainous quests without immediately changing their current direction to chase them down. If characters choose to chase down such a situation, and have the opportunity to do so, perhaps that's the way the story should go. Otherwise, make it clear to players when they receive information about an escalating villainous quest that they can't necessarily do anything about it right now. Tell, don't show.
Published Adventures Don't Require Less Work
From William J. What do you think of the amount of work published adventures expect the DM to do? I'm normally a homebrew campaign kind of guy, but recently picked up a Wotc published adventure (shattered obelisk). The idea being that I was paying a professional writer to do most of the "prep" for me so with very little notice, I could almost just pick the book up and play. However I have been left rather disappointed. Am I being unrealistic with my "pay to prep less" expectation?
It's a misconception that published adventures require less work. That's certainly not the case and, sometimes, they take more work than a homebrewed adventure because you have to internalize a published adventure in a way a homebrew adventure is already internalized. Almost always, they require different kind of work – more of a focus on reading, absorption, and modification instead of thinking things up from scratch.
We shouldn't buy published adventures expecting them to be easier to run. Instead, we should buy them for the depth and quality of material we can't create ourselves. Stories, backgrounds, artwork, maps – these are components of good adventures we simply can't create at the same quality of a published adventure.
I think it actually works better to build homebrew adventures in published settings for the best of both worlds. A published setting gives you a great depth of lore and quality of materials along with the flexibility of building the adventure you want in that world.
Letting Non-Magic Users Use Relics
From Robert. Any house rules for letting non magic users use magic items/relics? If one of my non spell casting PCs picks up a relic, I’d like them to have a solid chance of it actually working (at least the same chance a magic user would have) and the existing rules for say, scrolls, don’t really cut it.
I don't expect a single-use magical relic to be limited to magic users. Relics should be identifiable and usable by anyone who picks them up. That's what makes them fun. Let players know what a relic does and let any character use them.
Adding CR to Published Adventures
From Ryan. I find for me one of the minor speed bumps that prevent me from improvising a monster is if I’m adapting a published module. If it says “4 skeletons”, I have to look up the skeleton stat block to see what the CR is to figure out what I’d replace it with or what the FoF baseline is that I’d swap in for an easier time stat line to run with just some flavour or a single monster power. I think for me the missing piece would be if an adventure said “4 skeletons (CR 1/4)”. Thoughts? Maybe when I first read an adventure I should just mark up all the CRs.
That's a great idea and something I'll consider for future adventures of my own. You can use the "monster stats by CR table" in Forge of Foes to benchmark any monster in any adventure against the "example 5e monsters". The intention of that column is to help you identify a monster's CR by comparing it to those examples. Is it less or more powerful than an elemental? What about a frost giant? Understanding what sorts of monsters have which CRs is a great way to use that table to build monsters you need as you use them.
Introducing Cursed Magic Items Without Removing Player Agency
From Garry. One of the players has just picked up a magic item which while useful, is cursed. If he attunes to it, it will slowly turn him evil and lure him towards the BBEG and his cult of monstrous followers. While this is good, the original text explicitly explains that the previous user (high level cleric) went mad and killed all his followers with everyone turning to wraiths. That player tends to dominate the direction play by force of personality from time to time, but he is usually very fair minded. I'm reluctant to have the whole curse thing in case he runs wild with it to the detriment of the game. Should I just change the properties of the item? Any advice?
Yeah, change the properties. My absolute favorite "cursed" magic items are intelligent items that continually make offers to the characters in exchange for information or power. The best cursed items are those the players know are cursed and still use them anyway.
You're right to be concerned about taking agency away from the player. Don't do it. Instead, let them know the sword is cursed and have it steer them with continual offers, dancing that dangerous line. It's great fun. A smart magic weapon knows how to manipulate its user and the whole thing is much more fun when everyone is in on it. Of course, "pause for a minute" to make sure everyone's still having a good time.
Introducing Rivals Who Aren't Instantly Killed
From R. Scott W. I want to introduce a rival team into the mix since my PCs are so competitive. How do I keep the party from killing off the rivals so that they can have a long term impact on the game?
Let the characters, and the players, know about these rivals without having them get within sword-swinging distance. If you put the rivals and the characters in the same room together, swords and spells may fly. Instead, what if the characters hear about and see the results of these rivals without getting close to them. Maybe they meet them in a bar sometime if you think it isn't going to end up in bloodshed. Eventually things might come to blows but even more fun is when those rivals end up becoming allies instead.
Another Great Week for TTRPGs!
Thank you for digging into this week's tabletop RPG news! Sorry I couldn't do it on a video but hopefully this newsletter gave you the taste you desire. See you next week and keep on rolling those 20s!
Related Articles
- The Case For Published Adventures
- 2016 D&D 5th Edition Dungeon Master Questionnaire
- Run Homebrew Adventures in a Published Setting
Get More from Sly Flourish
Buy Sly Flourish's Books
- Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Lazy DM's Companion
- Lazy DM's Workbook
- Forge of Foes
- Fantastic Lairs
- Ruins of the Grendleroot
- Fantastic Adventures
- Fantastic Locations
Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.
Read more »Source: Sly Flourish | Published: March 3, 2024 - 6:00 am - VideoRunning Dungeon Crawls
This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine
- how we prepare them.
- how we run them.
- what pitfalls we might run into.
- how we avoid these pitfalls.
These articles include:
- Dungeon Crawls
- Infiltrations and Heists
- Investigations and Mysteries
- Overland Exploration and Travel
- Missions and Quest Chains
- Defense
- Roleplay and Intrigue
- Combat
- Mashups or the Undefined
Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.
Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.
Understanding Dungeon Crawls
In dungeon crawls, characters travel room-by-room through a relatively unknown maze-like location to accomplish one or more goals. Such dungeons can include crypts, caves, caverns, castle ruins, derelict ships, ruined towers, planar nodes, old temples, and other room-and-hall-based locations.
Preparing Dungeon Crawls
Consider the following steps when preparing a dungeon crawl:
- Choose a map (I love dysonlogos maps.)
- Fill in location details – just a word or two per room. You can handwrite these notes right on a printed copy of the map.
- Write down potential traps and hazards.
- If using a published adventure, read over the rooms in the dungeon from the adventure.
- Write a clear goal to reinforce with your players. The goal should be important enough to offset the danger of going into the dungeon.
- Write out ten secrets and clues the characters might find in the dungeon. You don't have to set these clues in specific locations. Drop them in when it makes sense for the characters to learn them.
- List out potential monsters. Some monsters may be location specific but many might be wandering around.
- List out potential NPCs. They might reside in one room or wander around.
- List out treasure the characters might find. Feel free to place this treasure wherever it makes sense.
Running Dungeon Crawls
At the beginning, perhaps as part of a strong start, make sure to state or reinforce the goal. Why are the characters going into the dungeon? Why is it worth risking their lives?
When the characters are in the dungeon, set up how the dungeon crawl works by asking the following questions:
- Who's up front and who's in the back?
- What sort of lighting do the characters have?
- Who's keeping an eye out for monsters?
- Who's checking for traps, hazards, and secret doors? How are they checking?
- What paths do the characters want to take when they come to forks in the dungeon?
As the characters explore, dungeon inhabitants might move and react to the characters activities or the GM might roll for random encounters to shake things up.
Dungeon Crawl Pitfalls
The following common pitfalls can suck the fun out of a dungeon crawl. Be aware of them and account for them in your prep and play.
- Too many downward beats.
- A boring or overly complicated dungeon design.
- Too many hard battles.
- No clear goal or reason to go into the dungeon.
- No place to rest after expending all the characters' resources.
- Few opportunities to roleplay.
- No real choice or useful information when picking a path.
- The monsters always surprise the characters.
Offsetting Dungeon Crawl Pitfalls
Try the following ideas to offset potential pitfalls.
- Fill out exploration of a dungeon with secrets and clues.
- Include upward beats like finding secret passages or getting the drop on unsuspecting foes.
- Include safe places for a short or long rest.
- Select maps with engaging dungeon designs including loopbacks, secret passages, multiple paths, and asymmetric designs.
- Ensure there's useful information to inform the characters' choices.
- Include non-hostile NPCs with whom the characters can roleplay.
- Mix easy and challenging battles that make sense for the situation, not just those tuned for the characters' level.
The Most Common Adventure Type
Dungeon crawls are one of the most common adventure types, going back to the origins of D&D 50 years ago. With the tools above, we can use a common structure for preparation, gameplay, and avoiding pitfalls to run an awesome game for our friends.
More Sly Flourish Stuff
Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Awarding Treasure in 5e and Roots of the Marrow Tree – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 22 Lazy GM Prep.
Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics
Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:
- D&D 2024 Core Book Release Dates
- Call the New Books "D&D 2024"
- D&D 2024 on Roll20
- Humblewood on D&D Beyond
- How D&D Began Video
- Best of Sly Flourish 2013-2023
- Different Steps for Different Circumstances
Patreon Questions and Answers
Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:
- Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands Campaign
- A Player's Version of Forge of Foes. Forge of Heroes?
- Favorite Three RPG Mechanics
RPG Tips
Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:
- Give each monster type one cool unique defining ability.
- Draw quick maps to orient players during a dungeon crawl.
- Ask one player to act as the cartographer.
- Ask one player to manage initiative.
- Ask one or more players to be the official note taker. Ask them to share their notes with the group.
- Include a friendly NPC the characters can talk to.
- Run a mix of easy and challenging encounters.
Related Articles
- Dungeon Crawls Versus Situations
- Running Overland Exploration and Travel Adventures
- Running a Dungeon Crawl
Get More from Sly Flourish
Buy Sly Flourish's Books
- Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master
- Lazy DM's Companion
- Lazy DM's Workbook
- Forge of Foes
- Fantastic Lairs
- Ruins of the Grendleroot
- Fantastic Adventures
- Fantastic Locations
Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.
Read more »Source: Sly Flourish | Published: February 26, 2024 - 6:00 am