Tag: adventure

BoT Post 16: The Misunderstood World of 5E Game Balance, Part 2

Posted on by Anthony Pacheco

Burials of Teganshire Post 16 of 30

Yesterday we provided context for this post in picking apart D&D 5E’s balance problems—there are problems, and some of those problems are systemic. The fundamental issue on the table (literally haha) is that D&D is a game, and games require challenges. However, Fifth Edition of D&D contains mechanics that beneath the surface cause the game to stagnate, and also lacks practical guidance outside of combat concerning player dynamics.

We won’t be the first person to write about this and offer solutions, and we won’t be the last—but here is our take. This essay provides two solutions: game table changes, and encounter and monster changes.

Practical Solutions: Game Table Changes

Since the dawn of the game table, player dynamics, the interaction between players (and the DM), is the primary attribute in making the game challenging, or not.

That’s what makes the game so fun! It’s a social game. So let’s make some social solutions before we dive into mechanics.

Increase Player Agency

Increasing player agency, and thereby “Table Agency” removes the work burden from the DM of making sure each and every interaction with the game world has a homogenized difficulty. In the campaign, via the game world, there needs to be encounters and situations the players can “break into jail” and fail at.

We could go on-and-on about this topic (see: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=D%26D+player+agency) but suffice it to say “Dungeon Master as a Referee” (vs. “DM as a Story-Teller”) is going to go a long way in having players decreasing DM workload as they are the ones driving the story.

We’re not here to beat the Player Agency Dead Horse™. Just realize it’s the real game balance mechanic of D&D, the players’ ability to:

  • Have their PCs fail (deadly encounters the DM places)
  • Wander into a wrong place (static places in the world above their ability to emerge victoriously)
  • Fall to the whims of the dice not working in their favor (random encounter at the wrong place/wrong time)

If the players can’t fail, they don’t have agency.

Set Expectations Ahead of Time

Session 0 (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=D%26D+Session+0) is the opportune place to declare:

  • The game world has deadly static, random and status quo encounters
  • The players have the latitude to make choices that can get their PCs killed
  • Players are expected to use combined arms to overcome challenges
  • The campaign about to begin is more challenging than the last one
  • What PC classes will not be of much use in the campaign, so players will know which PC choices will be only role-playing centric
  • The campaign has mechanics to deal with PC death (see below)

Alleviate PC Death by Planning on It

  • Start using hirelings and henchmen—if a PC dies, the player can switch to playing one of those characters for the evening
  • Have backup character sheets ready to go, both premade by the DM and premade by the players. One possibility is the players make the hirelings and henchmen character sheets
  • Don’t sacrifice gameplay for the story, even if the PCs are driving the story. That is, if the current situation would make a new PC come into play seem silly, then it’s best to be silly rather than excluding a player. Then after a session, the player and DM can work on bringing a new PC online
  • Have a plan for what happens if everyone dies—the TPK. The idea is to have, as the DM, some predetermined direction, even if it turns out to be wrong, rather than be caught going—uh, what now for the game?
    This includes what happens in the campaign world and what happens at the table. Shoot for that player commandery that D&D builds so well—the game table heading to the pub to salute the fallen PCs and toast a game well played, even in defeat
  • Recognize that some players don’t care about their PCs living and dying; they care about playing well with what they have. Other players care about playing a specific PC, rather than about playing the game with expertise.
    Work with the players that invest time into their PC to also spend time in that PC’s legacy. In other words, have character-story driven players also contribute to their immediate world (friends, relatives, in-game spouses, etc.) beyond their PC, with the expectation that if the PC dies, the new PC comes from this work

Periodically Use Grim Story Mechanics

There’s nothing like showing, rather than telling game difficulty:

  • Secretly work with a player before the campaign starts to have that player die a messy death in Session One (ala MCDM’s The Chain)
  • Privately work with a player who decides they don’t like their PC to die a messy death in the game in a believable way
  • Use a “life is unfair card” (sparingly) that when the players send their henchmen to go do something (let’s run a henchmen adventure!), all the henchmen die in an encounter so dark and grim, your players vow revenge (really, only do this once) on the spot

Embrace Failure Conditions

Often people play D&D where failure in the module equates to a game that halts because there is no other condition than victory. When a DM designs a static encounter or even uses a commercial product, not having failure conditions predisposes against challenges. This is another instance of “Balance the Game Outside Combat.” Find more about that, and practical advice with failure conditions, here: BoT Post 10: When the PCs Lose the Players Will Win—the Hero’s Journey.

Practical Solutions: Encounter and Monster Changes

The previous blog post described the various issues around D&D 5E’s Challenge Rating system. Let’s put what we know to good use. D&D 5E supports a lot of flexibility, even when using online tools such as D&D Beyond, or various encounter generators.

Avoid Attrition Encounters

D20 is famous for its formulaic adventure design in Living worlds. Which is fine, because players know what is in store for them (far from me to declare Wrong Fun). They went something like this: 2 small encounters, a skill challenge, a short rest, BBEG showdown.

All possible encounters should have some semblance of verisimilitude—they are in the game because the game world, not adventure design, arranges their placement. Example:

Wanted Ward and June, two serial killers working as a team, are hiding at the bottom of an abandoned castle dungeon as they know the PCs are on their tail. More sinister murderers than kobold trap experts, they manipulate beasts and an aberration to populate the complex and set some traps to the best of their ability, trying to buy some time.

Are those beasts and traps attrition? They could be. But then again, the PCs could by-pass them. Or they could use the monsters to their advantage and send them against the evil duo. Or they could get creative and draw the pair out into the open.

Either way, the totality of the two villains here should stand on their own. Everything else is window dressing for the campaign world. In other words, the two villains give it their all in the final encounter. The PCs arriving there fresh is part of the game. If they stumble into every trap, do battle with every monster, make mistakes, that’s their issue to deal with.

Not the DM’s.

Use Non-Lethal Encounters to Enrich the Game, not just the (PCs) Story

Sometimes, dealing damage isn’t about anything other than:

  • Humor
  • Adding detail to the campaign setting
  • Letting players blow off steam
  • Experimentation

In one campaign, I have “island foxes,” a trio of foxes with unique capabilities. They can talk, but they’re foxes. They are brats. They can teleport from one island to the next. They will steal the PCs’ food. Laugh at them for no reason. They can do damage by shooting a firebolt out of their eyes.

Fox: “Hey, hey, PC. Want to see something funny?

PC: “Sure?”

Fox: (shots the PC with a firebolt)

Fox: Yeeeeeeahhh BOOOOOiiiiii!

PC: (rolls initiative)

Foxes: “Hahahahahaha!”

Foxes: (teleports away)

They are there only for comedic value and to reinforce that the world of the fey can be dangerous. The island foxes don’t have a challenge rating at all.

Man, I love those foxes. But I digress.

Avoid Artificial Restrictions on the Number of Deadly Encounters Per Short/Long Rest

Sometimes:

  • The dice go bad
  • The PCs make a mistake
  • A singular PC makes a mistake
  • The party doesn’t make any mistakes, but the circumstances conspire against them
  • A player complained the last encounter was too easy

Et cetera. At some point, the DM needs to cross a Rubicon: is this a story-telling narrative with rails laid by the DM? Or are the players reacting organically and making choices, good or bad, and it’s their world?

If the players have agency, balance by encounter restriction in such a flexible system such as 5E is not possible. Embrace the difficulty.

Make Meaningful Encounters Deadly: The Math

Some attributes need tweaking to making a tailored encountered deadly in a balanced way—we’re not talking about populating the game world, but putting together an encounter for an adventure.

APL + 3 to +5

Take the average party level and add 4, and then add monsters until the CR becomes Deadly, plus or minus one CR.

This is your baseline. Either one monster with Legendary or Villain actions (see below) or several monsters in the CR equals APL +3 to +5.

Adjusting for More than Four PCs

For every PC or henchmen or player run combatant in the party, add an additional monster at the parties APL, plus or minus one CR.

 So if you have six players at APL 6, adding two monsters, both at CR 5 (not combined!) to the mix.

Why? The CR system breaks down with the action economy. Within the scope of a Hard to Deadly encounter (using the math in the Monster Manual), players have a distinctive advantage over monsters of the same level. The game doesn’t account for this (it tries and fails), and that’s okay because most tables do not have more than four players.

But if they do, well, playtesting reveals that as long as the monsters you add are above the party’s average level (APL), adding a monster on par with their APL compensates for the dramatic change in the action economy. More on the action economy below.

Final Adjustment

When all is said and done, here’s the time to make sure that 1) the encounter is at APL +4 or more and 2) adding monster numbers because the monster design itself is weak, especially if the DM does not want to change the monsters’ design.

Make Meaningful Encounters Deadly: The Design

Putting together an encounter balanced for that right amount of difficulty also relies on design.

Adjust the Encounter for Crowd Control

Some parties’ class combinations have crowd control built-in, such as a warlock, wizard, or stun-moving monk. Some parties do not.

However, any party class combination can do crowd control, it’s just that some will be better at it than others.

Assume the party is doing crowd control, the hard way or the easy way: either place monsters at different ends of the map or add lower-level monsters to harass the party, regardless of what it does to the Challenge Rating.

The party doesn’t do crowd control? Well, that’s their problem, not yours. Surviving to run away and having a learning opportunity is an excellent motivator for combined arms paly.

Adjust the Encounter for Ranged Attack Opportunities

If the encounter has a mixed set of monsters, then some of those monsters need ranged options, especially if they are intelligent. If they are just a bunch of dumb animals, it makes sense to compensate for their lack of ranginess by having them move faster than usual (“These two tigers are ravenous!”) or some other adjustment such as invisibility, flying, incorporeal, or other nasty conditions.

Adjust the Encounter Terrain and Setting

If it’s difficult terrain, not a terrain built into the monsters’ CR already, then either leave the encounter difficulty as is or adjust one CR downward. But only one.

Traps make an excellent terrain adjuster, especially if a PC manages to push a bad guy into one.

Players should be able to compensate for difficult terrain outside of battle–that’s the instance where you want to leave the CR as it. “Surprise difficult terrain!” is when the CR adjusts downward.

Adjust the Encounter for Party Magic Items or Other Effects

This happens more frequently in other versions of D&D as 5E does an excellent job of providing magical items that are cool but still within the bounded accuracy design.

However, there could be instances where the party obtains an overpowering item, effect, or the game world or adventure has arranged for things to go the PCs way.

Here’s where the DM needs to do more design than math. Adding a monster to the encounter with the ability to negate that effect or item is cheezy. However, adding some dangerous monsters, beyond the CR, for the player with the magic item in question to use? That is cool. And the player will love it.

Players can forget to use an item (just tell them), the PC with the thing can be incapacitated or drop from an unlucky roll, etc. That be the breaks. And before anybody throws a yellow flag on this play, the same thing happens to bad guys—all the time.

Adjust the Encounter for Player Expertise

Some players are just good at what they do. If that’s the case, the DM should:

  • Consider giving the monsters a temporary effect that makes sense in the context of the game world-such as the cults sipping on what is effectively a potion of haste, giving them all haste during the battle. After six rounds of this monkey business, they all die
  • Add a Hard encounter right after the Deadly one concludes
  • Add a CC expert to the monster roll
  • Add an evil object to the encounter that radiates a curse for the PCs, or a bless to the monsters
  • Or both (warning: that’s difficult!)

Make Meaningful Encounters: Balance the Action Economy

And here we come to the balance issue of all balance issues, the action economy.

The Action Economy is a game term to describe how characters are allocated a certain mummer of actions per turn (used by the game’s overall mechanics). This is where things are indeed mathematically tricky for the players or the monsters. If monsters act 40 times a round and the PCs 15 (including bonus and reactions), well, that’s gonna be a problem. The reverse is also accurate, and if anything makes a DM wonder why things were so easy for the players despite the CR, there you go.

The D&D action economy is a popular topic: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=D%26D+Action+Economy

Heat up the Action Economy with Design

Give your bad guys reactions and bonus actions. To compensate for the added complexity of the monster, make sure what they can do as an action is limited to four or fewer things, and that includes casting a singular spell. Make the 5E “cut to the chase” design work for you.

This is not to say having a monster with a lot of actions to choose from is wrong. But it’s challenging to do that all the time. The more actions a monster has, the more experience and prep time a DM needs to run that monster.

Heat Up the Action Economy by Favoring Mixed Monsters

I wanted to make an encounter that was “semi-deadly” in that I wanted it to go south if the PCs made mistakes, but I also wanted the PCs to win the battle without running away (this was a journey of discovery to advance one of the player’s PC plots). They were five Level 6 PCs. I added:

  • A CR 8 Monster: a custom aberration
  • Two CR 5 red slaads

This is a deadly encounter. However, if I wanted it to be an iffy encounter, I would have added three CR 5 red slaads, as the paladin did precisely what she was supposed to do—she burst damaged the aberration. Again, the goal here was to not have the PCs get into a position where they run away. I wanted the encounter to be severe but survivable, but notice I didn’t do that by making it a Hard encounter. I just made it less Deadly with the maths. They still could have suffered a PC death—and almost did.

Why was I assured of victory for the party? Because they were way ahead of the Deadly encounter’s action economy. Adjusting the action economy one way or the other is a way to achieve balance or other goals.

Heat up the Action Economy with Villain Actions

What’s a villain action, you might ask? Watch this video, and it explains all. I’ve seen Matt use it and I’ve also used it, and it rules. Literally!

Ahem, sorry. Rule of thumb: pretend the monster is only going to last three rounds. Design accordingly.

Heat up the Action Economy with Legendary and Lair Actions

If your monster seems legendary, make it one. That’s 5Es approach to heating up the action economy and making legendary monsters a rip-roaring epic battle.

Overused, however, it deadens the impact.

And for that truly epic encounter, give your Legendary monsters Villain actions. In their lair. So the PCs have to contend with:

  • Action-Reaction-Bonus Action
  • Villain Action
  • Legendary Action
  • Lair Actions
  • Bonus: added minion actions

A Balanced Conclusion

This essay proposed two approaches to making your game balanced: changes to the game table and a host of functional changes to apply CR math, monster/encounter design, and the action economy.

If the players feel the game is teetering on a knife’s edge, and only a combination of skill and teamwork can save them from the villains’ villainy and the capricious whims of the dice—the game has achieved balance.

I leave you with the cover of our next module, which you should back on Indiegogo if you have not already. Crossbow Man and his companions hiding behind him are going to face a challenge. In playtesting, the monster usually brought down half the party before succumbing. In one instance, it brought down all the PCs except one, and that PC was the benefit of an NPC heal built into the encounter. The players were surprised, and when they won, they felt like they had achieved something meaningful and good.

One group high-fived. At that moment, the game was theirs, not ours.

Crossbow Man at the Bridge

Crossbow Man, I salute you. You are braver than I.

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BoT Post 15: The Misunderstood World of 5E Game Balance, Part 1

Posted on by Anthony Pacheco

Burials of Teganshire Post 15 of 30. Halfway there!

This is a two-part blog post. Today we’ll talk about the illusion of game balance, and tomorrow we go over what to do about it.

Here at Griffon Lore Games, we have a specific design philosophy built around game attributes:

  • People play games to have fun
  • Challenges provide more entertainment than “non-challenges”
  • D&D is a game
  • D&D is a freeform game
  • And 5E is a flexible freeform game

It’s that last bullet point where things go south, and when I was learning 5E, it’s the area that had the most struggle. I would make a “deadly encounter,” and the PCs would waffle-stomp the BBEG even though he had Legendary Actions. Why was that?

It’s because no book, formula or design can compensate for player makeup, player skill, amount and type of magical items, what spells the casters prepared that day, the synergic effects of class-combinations shared between your players’ PCs, and various other things up to and including caffeine level and if any player ordered a 12-pack of chili-cheese burritos from the Taco Bell secret menu.

Let’s do a deconstruction of the CR system (everyone else has done it, so let’s do it too!), and then talk about real game challenges for your table.

The CR: Recognize what the CR system is

The Challenge Rating system in 5E is:

“A monster’s challenge rating tells you how great a threat the monster is. An appropriately equipped and well-rested party of four adventurers should be able to defeat a monster that has a challenge rating equal to its level without suffering any deaths. For example, a party of four 3rd-level characters should find a monster with a challenge rating of 3 to be a worthy challenge, but not a deadly one.”

This is a minimum standard

This is a minimum standard that does not account for all the variables at your table. We can talk about the maths, but let’s talk about design flaws:

A system built around no deaths is inherently easy. In D&D, a worthy challenge by its definition is a deadly one.

This system is combat-centric, ignoring for the most part, and even discouraging, PC damage outside of combat. “Well-rested” becomes an artificial box. Not a nice box, either, but that box at the beginning of Jurassic Park with a velociraptor in it.

The DM is an arbiter of the rule system used in the campaign world, but the system doesn’t quickly identify which areas to modify, other than increasing the CR. All it puts forth is a minimum standard. Which isn’t a bad way to go about it, as long as everyone knows what they are getting. It’s not a box of chocolates. It’s the velociraptor.

Any classification system is simply a means to an end

Personally, I like the CR system because it’s a taxonomy based on mathematical methods. Now, I would have done it differently, but a CR system, flaws and all, is better than no system! The intent of this essay is to not replace the system but instead to use it for our own ends.

I really super mega wish Wizards would have called it the Monster Challenge System. Because although there are skill encounters and trap encounters and environmental encounters, the CR system is all about monsters.

And monsters are only part of the difficulty. An important role, but there is more to the game that gets left behind for both page count and DM interest. Monsters are super-interesting, but it’s a chicken and egg thing here. We can make the other portions super exciting, too.

Game Difficulty is Philosophical Not CR Based

Understanding the mechanics behind the CR system isn’t necessary to make the game challenging and fun. The understanding of your players and where they fit in this role-playing game can give DM insights in using a CR system to their advantage. Here’s what you need to determine:

Single Player vs. Combined Arms

It is unfortunate but a cause of MMO popularity that some D&D players play the game in which they are a single player, and the other players, and the DM, are NPCs in their game.

That’s a poor way of playing D&D—the game is supposed to be a combined arms effect where each player contributes, via their PC, something the other players do not. This team play, when combined, overcomes difficulties and challenges.

You can’t make team challenges for a table full of single-players. Well, you can, but that’s going to be a short campaign when everyone TPKs.

D&D is a social game.

Game vs. Narrative

It is also unfortunate that some players in D&D love role-playing and could care less about “winning” the encounter, while others view D&D a game that you “win” by overcoming battles and care less about the role-playing.

A challenging game has both! And it relates to difficulty because some players will see the challenging combats as superfluous, and the other players will see challenging non-combat encounters as boring.

Now that, my friends, is Game Difficulty. For the DM. For decades now. Give me a CR system that fixes THAT, and now we’re talking!

Little is said that role-playing should be interconnected to the CR system.

But it should be.

The DM’s Mantra: “It is what it is.”

There’s an old publishing refrain (that comes from other places, too) that says, “It is what it is,” whereby there is a system so complex (the book industry) that when problems come up with a book, well, yeah, a problem was always going to come up.

And a game world is a complex system. It is what it is. There are too many pieces, too many player variables, too many situations where a DM doesn’t have enough time to figure something out. Or the opposite: has too much time and is now staring at a blank cursor in OneNote wondering where to start organizing what needs organizing.

It is what it is. Balance is an illusion because the game difficulty is a sliding ramp of DM arbitration used to make the game fun. As soon as the PCs master one portion of it, the DM needs to change it to become more challenging.

D&D 5E is freeform and flexible—so let’s use it to create an unbalanced system where the players are high-fiving each other after a difficult encounter. Nobody is going to high-five a balanced encounter. They’ll high-five after crawling out of a spike-filled pit with a bunch of poisonous snakes. And they have to crawl through a gelatinous cube. And the trap door over the pit is a mimic. And the snakes are on fire. Poisonous fire snakes. That can go ethereal.

Does that sound fair to you? Or balanced? Nah, bro, that’s about as unbalanced as it gets. But it sure does sound fun.

Tune in tomorrow, where we use the tools of the trade to game the system. No need to replace it—5E has everything you need.

Back Burials of Teganshire on Indiegogo today to get in on some challenging challenges!
Burials of Teganshire

Crossbow Man has issued a challenge: a BOLT TO THE FACE!

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BoT Post 12: Burials of Teganshire Fully Funded on Indiegogo! Come Get Your Copy!

Posted on by Anthony Pacheco

 

Burials of Teganshire Post 12 of 30

We passed the 100% funding mark last night–thanks a ton for those who backed!

Let’s keep this train of awesomeness going! Head on over to Indiegogo and back if you haven’t already. The Indiegogo price is a significant discount off our retail offers, and funds collected now help us by paying for the production costs of the next project.

Friends, the printed book will be spectacular in quality. It’s thick, premium paper with a color interior coming off a digital offset press with one of the best covers in the industry. Back today, if you haven’t already, and if you already have, our heartfelt thanks!

This is the start of a product line of first-class adventures for 5E and Pathfinder 1E. How exciting!

Best Regards,

Anthony, Christophe, Anna, and Etta

 

Burials of TeganshireCrossbow Man appreciates your patronage

 

Gruesome deaths, arcane wards, ancient rituals, and an old bridge: a 5E & Pathfinder 1E adventure.

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BoT Post 10: When the PCs Lose the Players Will Win—the Hero’s Journey

Posted on by Anthony Pacheco

Burials of Teganshire Post 10 of 30

Here at Griffon Lore Games, we’re big fans of grim, gritty hard fantasy.

That isn’t navel-gazing, nihilistic, and “subverting expectations.” In other words, heroic fantasy. A DM can attach heroic fantasy to any game world, and most line of products, and I encourage you to do so. Genuinely heroic fantasy is all about choices and the consequences of decisions. Decisions made by what players believe is the right thing to do given the circumstances and what they know.

First, let’s talk about Hollywood, the comic industry, and the book publishing industry shooting itself in the foot, first. I call it—the Triad of Suck.

The Triad of Suck–a generation of crap

Hollywood’s Three Decades of Crap

Current RPG products, for the most part, have avoided the pitfalls expounded by Hollywood’s fascination with navel-gazing, nihilistic fiction since the early 90s. By its very makeup, a fantasy RPG game is composed of players running PCs, in a story of their own or the DMs making. Since milquetoast conflict doesn’t sell RPG products, players, by and large, play in an environment where the stakes are significant, conflict abounds, and heroes live and die by both their choices and the whims of the dice. Since it’s a game, players recognize dice whimsy as part and parcel of RPGs.

It’s not all bad in Hollywood, but a lot of it is. Then there are the books.

Genre Book Publishing’s Three Decades of Crap

Current RPG products, for the most part, have avoided the pitfalls expounded by traditional book publishing’s fascination with navel-gazing, nihilistic fiction since the early 90s. By its very makeup, a fantasy RPG game is composed of players running PCs, in a story of their own or the DMs making. Since milquetoast conflict doesn’t sell RPG products, players, by and large, play in an environment where the stakes are significant, conflict abounds, and heroes live and die by both their choices and the whims of the dice. Since it’s a game, players recognize dice whimsy as part and parcel of RPGs.

Is this sounding familiar? It’s not all bad in traditional publishing, and independent publishers have rushed to fill in the gap.

But a lot of it is self-serving, non-entertaining drek. Then there are comic books.

Comic Book Publishing’s Three Decades of Crap

Current RPG products, for the most part, have avoided the pitfalls expounded by comic book publishing’s fascination with navel-gazing, nihilistic fiction since the early 90s. By its very makeup, a fantasy RPG game is composed of players running PCs, in a story of their own or the DMs making. Since milquetoast conflict doesn’t sell RPG products, players, by and large, play in an environment where the stakes are significant, conflict abounds, and heroes live and die by both their choices and the whims of the dice. Since it’s a game, players recognize dice whimsy as part and parcel of RPGs.

Detect a pattern here? It is, indeed, the triangle of suck. And the commonality between the three is the departure from the hero’s journey.

The Hero’s Journey is the Foundation of Conflict

And without foundation, all the fun factors in a fantasy game have no root. In a narrative, the hero’s journey is about the conflict that drives character growth.

In a D&D game, it’s all about the opportunity to overcome the conflict as a game. Players will grow their PCs as players will. Either they progress their PC through role-playing, or they don’t. This is where “DM as a referee” is better than “DM as a story-teller.”

Now I know what you’re thinking. We’re talking D&D, and D&D is a game, so where do the foundations of mythology come into play?

When Campbell was describing the hero’s journey, he wasn’t pulling a trope out of his butt—he was explaining life writ large via an archetype, a distillation, of if you will, of legend and mythology. Ignoring it, making fun of it, wishing it would go away, is only a blip in the grand entertainment universe. It’s never going to change because it’s human nature, stamped with the approval of Human History.

But, the “Triad of Suck” did impact D&D, less for what it did, but more for removing the concept from gameplay and game design.

Hitting (multiple) Rock Bottoms is the Hallmark of the Journey

The Hero’s Journey in graphical format:

Graphic provided by wiki commons

See the Abyss? That’s the low point that makes what’s next all the more delicious. How applicable is the singular hero’s journey to D&D? If a DM uses it as a blueprint to a campaign—highly relevant.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’m talking about a STORY-TELLER CAMPAIGN when D&D is a GAME. SHAME ON ANTHONY. But that’s just it—you can use the format in an open-world, sandbox, player-driven campaign. It just needs some thought. Let’s use two examples.

Two Examples of the Hero’s Journey in Player-Driven Plots

Example One: Count Torc Mac Ceti

The PCs are the vassals of a stern, but highly-supportive, wealthy, and influential baron—their lands’ border another Barony, one Count Torc Mac Ceti. The PCs are in charge of the crossroads town Kamshire, and Torc Mac Ceti has made several inquiries that he would covet the PCs alliance—but the PCs, involved in a series of adventures for their baron, have declined him thus far.

One day the PCs receive word that one of their woods in now infested with a rather large green dragon. Indeed, the dragon sends them word he would like to meet with the PCs (gulp). The dragon seems like an amiable fellow—he cleaned the woods out of monsters and bandits (something the PCs always meant to do). In return for a safe wood, he requires, uh, a cow. A fat cow. Once a month. And a barrel of wine. To go with the cow. PCs are left with the impression this dude is old (and a bit lazy) and would rather avoid conflict.

Now, the vast majority of the players will think this dragon is an impressive addition to their PCs’ lands. And obviously, if the DM wanted to use the dragon to kill them all, then he would have done so. A dozen cows and barrel of wine a year for a dragon buddy? Heck yeah!

Aaaaaand there it is.

Several months go by, and the relationship works. Sure, the dragon has an evil streak, but then again, the PCs are no choir boys themselves. To protect their baron, they’ve gotten their hands dirty. The dragon sends word—he’s captured a wanted criminal, someone the baron has been looking for. The PCs take delivery of the rascal and give the dragon a magic item as thanks. This relationship seems good. Healthy even.

And then one month the dragon says, hey. This month I’ll need a virgin maiden instead of a cow.

the dragon

Whoops.

Now, the PCs refusing the dragon or not, it doesn’t matter. If they deliver the virgin, the dragon screams, “She’s not a virgin!” as he drops her body in the town square and destroys Kamshire. If they fail to deliver the virgin, the dragon attacks and destroys Kamshire. If they try to kill the dragon, he is way above their league, TPKs the party, and destroys Kamsire. It’s a dragon. They are mid-level PCs. If they die, the bewildered baron, their liege brings them back, using up all his influence with the church to do so. Or the PCs roll new characters—1st Level survivors of the Terrible Dragon.

This is a low point for the players but a high point in the campaign world! And the dragon isn’t the real villain here, only a weapon. He’s demanded a virgin because Count Torc Mac Ceti paid him a lot of money to do so. Mac Ceti is the party’s nemesis, and he’s just getting started.

But was that organic?

Not really, but Count Torc Mac Ceti sure is a villain. How the PCs deal with such a tyrant will be interesting, considering they still don’t know the real reason the dragon went off in the first place. Killing the monstrous beast is only the start (uh, nothing personal, guys, it was just business. You’re not still mad, are you?). Depending on the direction they go, the destruction of their town, and the death of all their friends (and possibly loved-ones) was just the beginning of a terrible, terrible time.

This kick in the gut works because the DM didn’t plot the campaign.

He just plotted the PCs’ downfall. It’s up to them to crawl out of the hole—and start their heroes’ journey.

Example Two: Organic Your Way into Jail

Let’s back up the clock. The PC’s noble sponsor (let’s call him Baron Winstead) is besieged and mired in dirty politics at every turn. He’s been having the PCs do some things he can’t have traced to himself.

The players are having fun. Each adventure is a backdrop in politics and drama, and their PCs are getting rich in the process. The rewards go beyond the coin—the baron gives them influence, marrying one of his daughters to a PC.

And then, they get arrested and thrown into the King’s Dungeon. All the DM had to do is keep track of their legitimate mistakes, and when one was made that was serious enough, well, that was it, then. The PCs are stripped of their lands and titles, their sponsor’s hand slapped. They’re tossed in a dungeon designed to hold adventurers such as themselves, with the key thrown away.

In this example, the PCs committed crimes against bad guys but got caught—a less dramatic but certainly more organic route to the heroes’ journey than the dragon melting everyone’s face off in town with acidic clouds of doom.

And the DM has many drama options here, for example—the marriage of the baron’s daughter, a PC’s wife, was annulled and she was married off to the Count next door, one Torc Mac Ceti, and the PCs know him to be one bad dude.

This is a journey of self-discovery. In this campaign, just who are the bad guys? How do they get out of jail that they so lawfully belong in, and then what? How do the PCs go from zeros to heroes?

Beyond the Plot Tick—Failure Mechanics

Even if the DM doesn’t nudge the PCs into a catastrophe, the PCs can go on a hero’s journey by acting heroically in the face of failure. A DM needs to have both, really. He both needs to push the PCs into a state where only the heroic survive, yet give those heroes a chance for setbacks so they can learn to become heroes.

Failure Mapping NPCs

The easiest way to start planning for the PCs’ downfall is to map out what happens when the PCs fail with people by tracking dispositions: what happens when these NPCs are Unfriendly, and what happens when they are Hostile?

  • Local Nobility
  • Merchants
  • Townfolk
  • Bartender
  • Guards
  • Bard
  • Landlord
  • Innkeeper
  • Hunters
  • Thieves
  • Beggars

Failure Mapping Modules

Once the NPCs are mapped to their two fail states, the next step is to map out failure conditions for every adventure, which necessitates choosing experiences where it isn’t “all or nothing.” If you possess such a module (and I have dozens), it’s easy to change the tone of the module by putting in failure conditions:

  • The PCs never get there due to a random encounter—what happens?
  • The antagonist defeats the PCs and drives them off—what happens?
  • The PCs commit a category error (they went through the adventure thinking the problem was one thing when it was another)—what happens?
  • The PCs obtain a partial victory—what happens?
  • The PCs meet all their objectives, but the bad guy gets away—what happens?

“What happens?” should be a state that adds tension:

  • The PCs stop the investment of the abandoned castle but know the escaped bad guy is going to seek revenge, probably at the worst possible time
  • The PCs clear out the castle and kill the bad guy, but on the way home, they notice flying scouts above the castle. Again. They always have the option to go back and just raze the place to the ground and fill the dungeon with lava.
  • They never made it to the dungeon, and now the ogre magi fortifies it and stocks it with armored ogre shock troops in heavy armor (ha, ha, ha)
  • The PCs capture the bad guy, turn him in for King’s Justice, only he plays a political game, and someone lets him go!
  • The PCs TPK and the bad guy get their gear and use it to terrorize the region. Hello, new PCs, you’re in for a rough ride.

Rule-of-Thumb

As a rule of thumb, adding at the minimum four conditions to a module, half successes, and half failures, to various degrees, is an excellent way to turn even the most rail-roady module into engaging campaign action. And if the PCs keep hitting all cylinders, then they should reap the rewards—and the DM should ratchet up the difficulty until a single failure becomes catastrophic.

Failure creates high stakes and tension. Successes bracketed by failures create a game table of righteous D&D. If your PCs aren’t failing their way to success—then why bother playing a game if they can never lose?

Put players on a hero’s journey. By switching a mentality to “the module is the game” to “the player’s success and failure is the heroes’ game,” organically creates a world that is a journey of their own making.

Let them fail.

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Crossbow Man takes failures personally. Without subverting expectations.

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BoT Post 9: Ghost Wagon Encounter: Introducing the Lothmar Meta Mimic for Pathfinder 1E

Posted on by Anthony Pacheco

Burials of Teganshire post 9 of 30

Let’s depart the campaign and adventure philosophy and dive into encounters. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, the Lothmar meta mimic for Pathfinder 1E. Yes, it’s a mimic of a mimic. Ha. Ha, ha, ha, AH HA HA AH MWA HAHAHAHAHA!

Ahem.

Encounter: The Old Man and the Ghost Wagon

On any road the PC party is traveling on, they find a wounded, delirious old man in the ditch. He claims that a “wagon with no horse or riders,” came across their own wagon in the opposite direction. When the animated wagon got closer, it “screeched like the damned, laughing and giggling” as it attacked the horses, and then the other occupants of the old man’s wagon.

This is the extent of his knowledge. He claims it was a “haunted ghost wagon” and doesn’t have any details of how it attacked or if the rest of his companions are alive or dead. He says the wagon took a bite of him and then yelled, “Begone, old fool, least GHOST WAGON kills you too!”

The old man is thoroughly traumatized and is suffering from post-traumatic stress. Still, PCs with a Perception check of 13 or higher will reveal that he wants to deliver a helpful description, but no longer has the mental faculties to do so. Giving him some water and tending to his wounds will go a long way into calming him down, but the old man, who says his name is “Old Jim,” is helpless if left outdoors by himself.

Medieval Wagon

The Battle Site

It doesn’t take long for the party to find the gruesome battle site: a broken wagon, two dead draft horses, and two dead men, all four mostly eaten, body parts everywhere.

A Heal DC check of 15 reveals the wounds from a large mouth with sharp teeth. A DC 20 shows sticky, goo-like substance from the meta mimic’s adhesive. A DC or 25 reveals the men also suffered from some other type of catastrophic damage, the meta mimics cosmic damage delivered by its bite. Only a Knowledge Arcana DC of 25 or more will type the damage as “cosmic damage from the void beyond.”

Wagon tracks go down the road (without horses or oxen to pull them), the ghost wagon seemingly heading back from which it came. No tracking roll needed.

Combat Encounter

The Ghost Wagon will not be hard to find. It is moving at 30 ft. per round (using its movement for both its action and movent phases). Touching it or using ranged weapons will start combat. The meta mimic, while battling the PCs will periodically go “Oooooooo!” and “Mwahahahaha GHOST WAGON WILL EAT YOU!” It also taunts any healer in the party if another PC dies, calling them a “loser” and blaming them for the PC’s death.

It fights to the death. If the PCs only use ranged weapons, it turns into its true form, flies above the archers/crossbowmen, and then turns into a wagon to fall on their heads.

The meta mimic is reasonably intelligent. If it incapacitates a PC, it will keep attacking the PC until the PC is dead.

Combat variation

A fiendish DM can dramatically bump the encounter difficulty by having two regular mimics, as chests, hitching a ride in GHOST WAGON. All three of them think this is hilarious, and as the GM, you should find it pretty funny, too.

Your players, however, as play-testing revealed, will not think it funny at all.

Pathfinder 1E Lothmar Meta Mimic

Lothmar Meta Mimic | CR 5 | XP 1,600
Lothmar meta mimic | NE Huge to tiny aberration (shapechanger)
Init +3; Senses greensight 120 ft., see in darkness; Perception +12

Defense

AC 18, touch 10, flat-footed 18 | hp 90
Fort +6, Ref +1, Will +7
Immune acid, mind-affecting effects; Resist negative energy 5
Weaknesses vulnerability to force effects, vulnerability to sonic

Offense

Speed 15 ft., fly 30 ft. (good)
Melee bite +10 (1d10+6), pseudopod slam +10 (1d10+6 plus adhesive grasp effect)
Space 0 to 15 ft.; Reach 15 ft.
Special Attacks cosmic acid constrict (1d10+6) on adhesive grasped victims

Statistics

Str 18, Dex 8, Con 18, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 10
Base Atk +6; CMB +12; CMD 21 (can’t be tripped)
Feats Improved Initiative, Step Up, Throw Anything
Skills Acrobatics -1 (-9 to jump), Climb +15, Disguise +0 (+20 when mimicking objects), Fly -1, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +12, Perception +12, Spellcraft +12, Stealth +2; Racial Modifiers +20 Disguise when mimicking objects
Languages Common, Undercommon, Aklo
SQ cosmic shapechange

Special Abilities

Adhesive Grasp (DC 18) (Ex) Automatically grapple, those grappled cannot get free while the meta mimic is alive. Victims can make a contested Strength roll to remain in place (the meta mimic has a +4). Otherwise, the meta mimic will draw the grasped victim in range of its mouth to bite. Anyone attempting to grapple the mimic is automatically grappled in return.

Cosmic Acid Constrict: When the Lothmar meta mimic grapples a creature, it uses its strength and connection to the void to do 1d10+6 void damage. If already grasping a victim, the meta mimic can generate another pseudopod to slam other opponents. It can do this an unlimited number of times (once per round), although once constricting a victim the meta mimic will not attack it with an extra pseudopod—preferring to bite it instead.

Cosmic Shapechange (Ex) The Lothmar meta mimic can use its action to polymorph into an object (huge or smaller) it can see or sense, making an exact duplicate of the object in both form and function. It can also shapechange back into its pure form, a viscous, semitransparent blob-like cloud of smoke. Its statistics are the same in each shape (although the Lothmar meta mimic can only fly in its smoke form). Any equipment it is wearing or carrying isn’t transformed. It reverts to its true form if it dies.

Immunity to Acid The Lothmar meta mimic is immune to acid damage.

Immunity to Mind-Affecting effects The Lothmar meta mimic is immune to Mind-Affecting effects.

Energy Resistance, Negative energy (5) The Lothmar meta mimic has Energy Resistance against Negative Energy attacks.

Vulnerability to Force Effects The Lothmar meta mimic is vulnerable (+50% damage) to force effects that deal damage.

Vulnerability to Sonic The Lothmar meta mimic is vulnerable (+50% damage) to Sonic damage.

Fly (30 feet, Good) The Lothmar meta mimic, when in smoke form, can fly.

See in Darkness Sees perfectly in darkness of any kind, including magical darkness.

Greensight (120 ft.) (Su) Senses through thick plant matter as if it was transparent.

Step Up When a foe makes a 5 ft step away from the meta mimic, it can move 5 ft to follow them.

Throw Anything Proficient with improvised ranged weapons.

Description

Thoroughly malevolent, witty, and annoyingly snarky, the Lothmar meta mimic is an evil aberration from “somewhere else.” Often confused with regular or giant mimics, the meta-mimic is much more dangerous due to its innate ability to copy objects it can sense, including complex objects composed of smaller pieces, such as a wagon.

Meta mimics seem to bend the laws of physics to copy objects, and they can mimic anything from a tiny teacup to horse carriage to a wine barrel. They cannot “invent” objects to copy; they must see or have seen an object to polymorph into.

Mistaken Identity

Explorers and their like often confuse a meta mimic with an animated object or construct, that is, up until the meta mimic reveals its mouth with sharp teeth. Compounding the problem is the meta mimic will “hang out” with animated objects, mimics, or giant mimics, and striking at the most convenient time for maximum comedic effect, according to the mimic.

Cruel Monsters

Meta mimics are cruel, but only insofar as amuse itself with its morbid sense of humor. For example, a meta mimic would think it’s quite funny to suddenly lunge at an adventurer in armor standing over a pit of alligators, in hopes of having them slip and fall in surprise. Then it would attack anyone coming to rescue, or, if the adventure is alone, extend a pseudopod to help, but leave the legs to the alligators as it feasted on the “top part.”

Unknown Ethereal Origins

Little is known about the meta mimic, other than it is susceptible to force damage, lending evidence to its origin being the Ethereal Plane. While it can speak (often to taunt people that it is munching on), it never reveals anything about its culture (if it has one), origins, or anything of import. Some guess that the meta mimic originally came across an actual mimic, and copied as much as its form and attributes as it could.

Survivors of the Lothmar meta mimic describe it as having some “soul-sucking, void attack from the beyond.” They also specify that it is not concerned with its safety or any natural functions, and seems only to exist to kill, maim, and taunt surprised victims.

It is also unknown why Lothmar meta mimics are bothered and damaged by loud noises. If the meta mimic knows, it isn’t telling. They even don’t seem to have a brain or at least a normal one, and they are entirely immune to psychic damage (nor do they respond to telepathy).

When a meta mimic dies, it reverts to its non-object form and dissolves into smoke until gone.

Burials of Teganshire

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 Crossbow Man Don’t Need no Wagon

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BoT Post 8: Ghost Wagon Encounter: Introducing the Lothmar Meta Mimic for 5E

Posted on by Anthony Pacheco

Burials of Teganshire post 8 of 30

Let’s depart the campaign and adventure philosophy and dive into encounters. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, the Lothmar meta mimic for 5E. Yes, it’s a mimic of a mimic. Ha. Ha, ha, ha, AH HA HA AH MWA HAHAHAHAHA!

Ahem.

Encounter: The Old Man and the Ghost Wagon

On any road the PC party is traveling on, they find a wounded, delirious old man in the ditch. He claims that a “wagon with no horse or riders,” came across their own wagon in the opposite direction. When the animated wagon got closer, it “screeched like the damned, laughing and giggling” as it attacked the horses, and then the other occupants of the old man’s wagon.

This is the extent of his knowledge. He claims it was a “haunted ghost wagon” and doesn’t have any details of how it attacked or if the rest of his companions are alive or dead. He says the wagon took a bite of him and then yelled, “Begone, old fool, least GHOST WAGON kills you too!”

The old man is thoroughly traumatized and is suffering from post-traumatic stress. Still, PCs with a Wisdom (Insight) check of 10 or higher will reveal that he wants to deliver a helpful description, but no longer has the mental faculties to do so. Giving him some water and tending to his wounds will go a long way into calming him down, but the old man, who says his name is “Old Jim,” is helpless if left outdoors by himself.

Medieval Wagon

The Battle Site

It doesn’t take long for the party to find the gruesome battle site: a broken wagon, two dead draft horses, and two dead men, all four mostly eaten, body parts everywhere.

A Wisdom (Medicine) DC check of 10 reveals the wounds from a large mouth with sharp teeth. A DC 15 shows sticky, goo-like substance from the meta mimic’s adhesive. A DC or 20 reveals the men also suffered from some other type of catastrophic damage, the meta mimics cosmic damage delivered by its bite. Only an Intelligence (Arcana) DC of 20 or more will type the damage as “cosmic damage from the void beyond.”

Wagon tracks go down the road (without horses or oxen to pull them), the ghost wagon seemingly heading back from which it came. No tracking (Survival) roll needed.

Combat Encounter

The Ghost Wagon will not be hard to find. It is moving at 30 ft. per round (using its movement for both its action and movent phases). Touching it or using ranged weapons will start combat. The meta mimic, while battling the PCs will periodically go “Oooooooo!” and “Mwahahahaha GHOST WAGON WILL EAT YOU!” It also taunts any healer in the party if another PC dies, calling them a “loser” and blaming them for the PC’s death.

It fights to the death. If the PCs only use ranged weapons, it turns into its true form, flies above the archers/crossbowmen, and then turns into a wagon to fall on their heads.

The meta mimic is reasonably intelligent. If it incapacitates a PC by bringing them to 0 hit points, it will keep attacking the PC until the PC is dead.

Combat variation

A fiendish DM can dramatically bump the encounter difficulty by having two regular mimics, as chests, hitching a ride in GHOST WAGON. All three of them think this is hilarious, and as the DM, you should find it pretty funny, too.

Your players, however, as play-testing revealed, will not think it funny at all.

Lothmar Meta Mimic for 5E

Description

Thoroughly malevolent, witty, and annoyingly snarky, the Lothmar meta mimic is an evil aberration from “somewhere else.” Often confused with regular or giant mimics, the meta-mimic is much more dangerous due to its innate ability to copy objects it can sense, including complex objects composed of smaller pieces, such as a wagon.

Meta mimics seem to bend the laws of physics to copy objects, and they can mimic anything from a tiny teacup to horse carriage to a wine barrel. They cannot “invent” objects to copy; they must see or have seen an object to polymorph into.

Mistaken Identity

Explorers and their like often confuse a meta mimic with an animated object or construct, that is, up until the meta mimic reveals its mouth with sharp teeth.

Compounding the problem is the meta mimic will “hang out” with animated objects, mimics, or giant mimics, and striking at the most convenient time for maximum comedic effect, according to the mimic.

Cruel Monsters

Meta mimics are cruel, but only insofar as amuse itself with its morbid sense of humor. For example, a meta mimic would think it’s quite funny to suddenly lunge at an adventurer in armor standing over a pit of alligators, in hopes of having them slip and fall in surprise. Then it would attack anyone coming to rescue, or, if the adventure is alone, extend a pseudopod to help, but leave the legs to the alligators as it feasted on the “top part.”

Unknown Ethereal Origins

Little is known about the meta mimic, other than it is susceptible to force damage, lending evidence to its origin being the Ethereal Plane. While it can speak (often to taunt people that it is munching on), it never reveals anything about its culture (if it has one), origins, or anything of import. Some guess that the meta mimic originally came across an actual mimic, and copied as much as its form and attributes as it could.

Survivors of the Lothmar meta mimic describe its bite as having some “soul-sucking, void damage from the beyond.” They also specify that it is not concerned with its safety or any natural functions, and seems only to exist to kill, maim, and taunt surprised victims.

It is also unknown why Lothmar meta mimics are bothered and damaged by loud noises. If the meta mimic knows, it isn’t telling. They even don’t seem to have a brain or at least a normal one, and they are entirely immune to psychic damage (nor do they respond to telepathy).

When a meta mimic dies, it reverts to its non-object form and dissolves into smoke until gone.

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 Crossbow Man Don’t Need no Wagon

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BoT Post 7: Adding Personalized Content to an Adventure in 10 Minute Slices

Posted on by Anthony Pacheco

 

Burials of Teganshire post 7 of 30

All it takes is several 10-minute slices of prep time per adventure to personalize the content in a module and have the PCs dive deeper into the game world as a result. Previously we covered the benefits of keeping the campaign world barony sized (or, 30-mile hex sized) for most of the campaign.

Designing adventures is a lot of work. A prudent DM, even one with plenty of development time to devote to his campaign, can also use commercial adventure modules to add to the campaign world—indeed, this is more likely than not.

When running a campaign to keep it personal to the PCs, it takes more than just tweaking the plot so it makes sense. A McGuffin at the bottom of a dungeon the PCs need to retrieve to get closer to their nemesis is a popular pastime with DMs. It doesn’t take a lot of prep for a DM to add more investment in any adventure. Let’s go over one method—spending 10 minutes at a time.

The Personalized 10 Minute Slice Per Player

In a campaign, player drives vary. Some are interested in role-playing, some just want to show up, others like the idea of min-maxing their PC, others want to live out the fantasy of being a feudal lord, etc., etc.

I have a spreadsheet that tracks each PC. It contains any background info, which includes a 5E or Pathfinder background and their backstory (and half of my players didn’t start with a backstory). I also track things they are interested in, or plot points they bring up or anything usable by a DM.

In Excel, notepad, or 3×5 cards—it only takes about 10 minutes per player to add to adventure content that is personal to the player.

Example

Player 2 is one of the players that provided a backstory, which contains information about his grandfather’s disappearance one stormy night. In the adventure, there is an encounter location that contains treasure in an abandoned desk.

The DM puts a clockwork timepiece (aka a pocket watch) in the desk that the PC recognizes as his grandfather’s. It holds some type of enchantment, too, but the party’s wizard can’t figure it out.

The DM plans to have the investigation of the watch reveal more details of what happened to grandpa, cumulating in an adventure to bring back his bones to rest next to grandma.

Another Example

Player 3 didn’t provide a backstory but has the Acolyte background. In a room discovered while running the module, the party finds a trio of bodies—all wearing the acolyte livery that the PC used to wear.

Here the DM is playing it loosey-goosey. He listens to the player’s banter and guesses about what these acolytes might have been doing before here and see if the player in question has anything to say about his time in the church. The DM files exciting tidbits from the discussion for use at a later time, picking the best outcome (it’s always great when the players add their own lore!). There are some personal belongings on the bodies, so between the time the PC returns the items to the church and the adventure, the DM has a chance to come up with additional details as needed to advance this personalized plot—the main goal, however, is to snarf tidbits from the player discussion.

The Personalized 10 Minute Slice: Locality

It’s not just the players that should get 10 minutes each. The DM should also spend some time on the intrinsic parts of the localized game world. Harken ye back to the campaign plotting chart:

NPCs should have some type of interaction in the adventure based on their motives and dispositions to the party/PCs:

  • The mayor asks PCs, on their way to an adventure and passing through the next village, to deliver some letters.
  • The blacksmith hears about the PC’s trip and asks them to show any ancient weapons or metal armor that they find.
  • Nisha, the barmaid, the girlfriend of one of the PCs, is super mad the PC is going away again, and says to come back with a present, or at least flowers, or don’t come back at all!

There should also be setting interjections:

  • Winter is arriving, and the DM decides there’s just going to be a rip-roaring snowstorm. Because, why not!
  • The PCs have been hunting quite a bit with the local lord. They run into a druid that asks them politely to dial it down before the tasty fauna loses too much population to sustain itself.

Also, interjections based on prior Party Actions:

  • The party cleared out an old wizard tower, but when they ride by it, there’s a blue light in one of the windows!
  • The PCs, in their very first adventure, helped a hurt dire wolf. Now the wolf shadows them, seemingly wanting to join them at the campfire, but still skittish.
  • There is a bit of lore that says that periodically on a clear night, ghostly wind chimes are heard in an abandoned orchard outside of the village. The PCs hear this while preparing to sally forth.

And finaly, 10 minuites for the Villan:

Assuming the current adventure isn’t directly about the bad guy, spending 10 minutes adding some detail for the PCs to discover or experience is time well spent. Example:

  • The PCs don’t know it, but the undiscovered vampire that bought a local farm is waiting for the PCs to leave so she can charm some of the critical villagers, starting with the loud-mouth barmaid that gossips about her.
  • The vampire arranges for the local priestess to be out of the village for a couple of months. A low-level acolyte that doesn’t know anything about anything replaces her, dramatically decreasing the threat of receiving a blast of radiant damage to the face.
  • Despite her best efforts, the vampire finds herself enamored with the PC Bard (of course). Before the party leaves, she anonymously sends the local bard a rare and old poetry book.

Recap

A localized campaign requires a small time commitment per adventure (commercial or otherwise), along the lines of:

  • 10 minutes per player
  • 10 minutes for the localized campaign plotting
  • 10 minutes for the villainous villain

Note that all this prep was mostly about things the PCs did, about the PCs, or the villain. Little of it had to do with lore, and really, your lore should simply be a backdrop to action and drama.

Finding sand-boxy adventures to put in your localized game world makes things a whole lot easier when it comes to the players generating content for you. But even a rail-roady type adventure will seem all that more personal—when the DM personalizes it with local, and PC, flair.

Back Burials of Teganshire on Indiegogo for some excellent local maps and start adding that bit of detail to keep your players coming back for more.


 

Crossbow Man recognizes one of the runes on the bridge as the same rune on his brother’s sword. Isn’t that odd?

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BoT Post 6: Wind Up Your PCs with Your Villain and Let Them Go

Posted on by Anthony Pacheco

Burials of Teganshire post 6 of 30

So, yesterday was all about the bad guys—who are they and what to do they want. We had everything from a possessed sword to a dragon lich. Some people had favorites, some didn’t like one or two, and the real question on the table is—how do I bring this villain home to the PCs?

How do you make it—personal?

And this is where an open-world (and sandbox) campaign shines. Because of the organic nature of how your PCs deal with problems in a localized campaign vs. “the BBE is gonna kill everyone!” style of adventuring, it does, indeed, make it personal.

Wind up your PCs with the villain

Ever see one of those toy plushies with wheels and a windup key? Where you wind it up and then set it down? You have a vague idea where it’s gonna go, but then it just zooms, hits a wall, and careens off into a direction you were not expecting.

Yeah, that’s that plotting you want, adjusting to the PCs’ actions. Let’s give an example with a villain from yesterday, Lord Marthous the Betrayer:

5. Lord Marthous and the Lady

Lord Marthous and his wife are on the lam, hiding from the King’s Men. Lord Marthous recently found out he was the bastard son of the king and confronted the nobleman he thought was his father and also his mother for her discretion. The confrontation escalated out of control, and while fighting his step-father, his mother interjected herself in front of a mighty sword blow and died. Marthous in a rage then slew his step-father.

Hunted, despised for patricide, Lord Mathous and his wife fled but ran into a trio of paladins hunting them, the three not realizing that the Lady was a sorcerer with powers of her own. The duo slew the young knights.

Now Marthous is done running. He plans to clear his name by usurping the throne. He will replace the King, the man in his mind, the cause of all his troubles. He makes an impassioned plea for the PCs to help him. If the PCs join him, when he is successful in his plot, he will reward them with betrayal! He will blame them for the atrocities committed to ascend the throne (guilty or not) in order to appease the nobles still on the fence.

If the PCs refuse him upfront, he becomes a bitter enemy, and the King solicits their help in the dispute.

Either way, the PCs at some point will probably ask—are we the baddies?

Example Series of Events

  1. Lord Gwain Marthous, newly installed in his manor lands after his “father” expanded his holdings, awaits the arrival of his bride in his new manor home in the obligatory arranged marriage.
  2. Still moving in, short on time, men, and knowledge of the area, he hires the PCs to deal with “a particularly aggressive brown bear.” He pays them well.
  3. Said bear turns out to be a Dire Bear. And it’s rabid. It mauls the Level 1 PCs, but they emerge victoriously.
  4. Lord Marthous is taken aback at the PCs mauling. He doubles their reward and gifts them a hunting cabin in the nearby woods, an excellently furnished vacation home the PCs now can call their own.
  5. Gwain comes calling with a small cask of brandy. Everyone gets drunk. Gwain lays out three things he needs to handle, asking the PCs if they can help him out again. PCs pick one.
  6. During the adventure, the PCs have a random encounter—the abandoned campfire.
  7. Picking up the gold from Marthous, the PCs mention the campfire. Gwain tells them his falconer is overdue.
  8. Adventure ensues to find the lost falconer.
  9. No sooner than they investigate the falconer (some unusual fey thing killed him), Gwain comes to the PC in a panic. A passing merchant found his bride’s carriage overturned, the guards missing, blood everywhere!
  10. This adventure revolves around the PCs’ particular strengths, tailored for their backgrounds, prior contacts, and knowledge of the politics of the area thus far. Bandits kidnapped the Lady (paid by the political enemies of his “father”).
  11. An epic, drawn-out slugfest occurs, and the PCs return the Lady to her Lord. The Lady, who saved her sorcerer powers for just the right time, helps the PCs in any way she can. The DM uses that to save a PC’s life at just the right moment.
  12. Marthous says he can award one PC with knighthood and titled lands befitting his or her new station. He can then make the other PCs official Lord’s Men, men-at-arms with special privileges.
  13. The DM designs a small “bachelor party” adventure, complete with shenanigans and stealing the Bishop’s prized poodle.
  14. Wedding!
  15. Here the DM interjects two or three small adventures/encounters that revolve around the PC’s backstories, drives, or outright stated plans. Homebrew or off the shelf modules work well, here.
  16. Marthous finds out about his real father, and the events outlined in the villain’s description proceed.

That’s just one example of how to tie a bad guy up with the PCs, and this particular route would make Lord Marthous’s betrayal all the more painful. And Marthous is following the despot’s script: after the revolution, to preserve the state, someone must be punished for doing what had to be done, and the ones that did it must fall lest they do it again.

And let them go

A Picture of War

For Marthous’ betrayal to hit the players in the gut, they need to be invested in both him, his friendship, and the shared hardship or they all could hang for a tragic mistake. While the above is a linear progression from “Here’s an NPC” to “and now everything goes sideways,” there are numerous spots where the path wanders between a random encounter, a “pick your own adventure,” and adventurers according to PC actions/desires before the festivities start.

But, more importantly, there is a choice. And the PCs might choose to side with the King. And if they do, they have the terrible task of bringing their friend in for justice so he can be drawn and quartered for not only patricide but treason. Indeed, picking this route makes Lord Marthous all the more ruthless. He has nothing to lose and no friends to watch his back.

This is a campaign arc where there are no winners. The campaign starts in earnest with the Bastard Son’s Rebellion and should contain the majority of the campaign’s action cumulating in the only way it can: the PCs facing their former friend in a showdown for the Kingdom. It’s messy, bloody, and personal. At the end of the campaign, the PCs should be the last men and women standing. They are either the hero or the antihero, but whichever path they choose, they were not a lead-by-the-nose zeros.

And now, my friends, at the end of this arc, would be the most excellent time to introduce an outside threat—just when the Kingdom recovered from a rebellion. At her weakest, her real enemies attack.

Tomorrow we’ll go over how to use commercial modules to make them more personal for the players.

And for some villains with motivations other than twirling a great mustache, back Burials of Teganshire on Indiegogo today!

Burials of Teganshire

Crossbow Man would stick by his friend through thick and thin,
and betrayal would fill him with a righteous burning vengeance!

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BoT Post 4: Plot Points on the Localized Campaign

Posted on by Anthony Pacheco

Burials of Teganshire Post 4 of 30

Your D&D/Pathfinder games (and others, but Griffon Lore Games is currently only on these two systems) are not Hollywood.

The Hollywood-style dramatic plot doesn’t work for the D&D game table. The players may have a fantasy movie running through their heads, and the DM made have a fantasy movie in his head, but D&D is an interactive game. The story you want to tell is a bunch of friends getting together and laughing at just how bad the player rolled his wizard’s saving throws and had his PC fall into a pit of cow dung that was lit on fire, not some grandiose Game of Thrones mega-plot. That falls apart on Season 8 (ahem).

Plot Points in a Localized Campaign

“But Anthony! You just went over Characters and Setting! Now, this is a Plot post! That’s like a novel, Dude.”

Well, my friends, that’s life. More specifically, human history. There is nothing more compelling than human history. In history, we have people, we have places, and we have things that happened.

In a localized campaign, the goal is to make a small portion of the game world come alive, and “what happens in the world” should drive the “plot” of the campaign.

  1. NPCS have their motivates
  2. Players have their game drives—such as leveling their PC, having their PC get a Staff of the Magi, etc. Some players just want to show up and drink beer and roll dice. Obviously, their contribution to the plot will be small
  3. Setting changes—the king’s wayward sister rides into town. A flood. An earthquake. Bad draught. Diseased fauna. Etc.
  4. The main antagonists have his own motives

 These four localized history drivers look like this:

Now that the DM has a history of his world, shaped by players, NPCs, setting, and a bad guy, he or she can move forward with rolling dice and killing monsters. And that’s where adventures come in—a DM can run their own, pull one off the shelf, or, most likely, do a combination thereof. In a localized campaign:

  • Modules that have robust win and fail conditions fit in better than a “win at all costs or we failed the module” adventure
  • Adventure paths can offer a “road” for the PCs to drive down while the other portions of the game world churn. That is, it’s not that the PCs took care of the bad guy, it’s that they solved a problem so they can convince the mayor to back their village expansion. Or mining expedition.
  • Conflict is more personal. An attack on the village’s bridge on the trade road is an attack on the village. If the PCs don’t care about the village, because the description of it and the people in it are flat, or that they are going to “Level and Leave” then the adventure, the roll dice and kill monsters portion of your game, descends into murderhoboism.
  • Lore is only used insofar as applying detail for the PCs to add their own lore. Lore impacts everything and shapes everything. If you find your lore driving the plot, well, that’s not a player-centric game. That’s just you as a DM. Which is fine, as long as you know what you’re getting into.

The Story Thus Far

We’ve talked about avoiding giving the PCs the excuse to disconnect from the campaign world. We’ve also spoken about crunchy NPCs with minds of their own, not some convenient plot-forwarding device. Then we went over the setting, talking about maps and random encounters attached to the map.

“What comes next,” is a combination of all of that, and that’s Griffon Lore Games’ goal: give the DM a module that he or she can run with the tools that support the players feeling like it’s their game and their world, and that they aren’t just cogs in a storytelling machine to advance a plot.

Your PCs are making history. Use that history to give them conflict. Conflict causes action. And who doesn’t like an action-packed adventure?

Next, we’ll depart from the general concept of campaign philosophy and talk about villains. Because who doesn’t like a great villain? Villains are delicious. Let’s feast!

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BoT Post 3: Maps and the Trope of Adventuring Beyond the Village

Posted on by Anthony Pacheco

Burials of Teganshire Post 3 of 30

Moving right along to our locality-based adventure settings, i.e., campaign play, we’ve talked about starting small and staying small. Especially with NPCs, staying local is not just some lazy DM technique, it’s the cornerstone to having the PCs shape the world around them while at the same time, instilling a sense of verisimilitude that said world has a life of its own. That’s a neat trick, yes?

The more often PCs move beyond a local setting, the more they leave behind NPCs with their own motivations and dispositions. They arrive at a new location and start over.

And I cannot stress this enough—it’s that start over that lets apathy set into your game table. Suddenly your PCs went from drama-inducing machines to (wait for it)—murderhobos.

Do you want murderhobos? Well, that’s how you get murderhobos.

Beyond crunchy NPCs with their own drama (character), the DM has a crucial tool in their toolbox, the local map (setting). Handdrawn maps on hex paper to the hyper-detailed Anna Meyer map, your local map only needs three things:

  1. A map scale to reinforce the local boundary
  2. Terrian that identifies the varied flora (farmland, forests, water, etc.)
  3. And most importantly, sites on the map for the PCs to wander into when they go off the beaten path

The Trope of Moving Beyond the Village

Before we go map-happy, let’s talk about a medieval trope—most villagers did not wander away from their village.

In D&D, we dial this trope to 11. Not only can you run into hostile people who don’t like you if you wander away from the village, but you can get eaten by a monster! PCs should be romanticized by the locals—like men-at-arms, traveling bards, couriers, and traders—PCs for good or bad are the people with the gumption to wander beyond the beaten path in search of fame, fortune, and honor. Villagers will think they are either unique and heroic, or unique and foolish. Either way, the PCs are starting to leave a stamp. What they do starts to impact NPC motivations.

The Local Area Map

All those things can occur in a barony-sized chunk of land. Make it a large barony, 144-square miles, and that is a fantastic amount of land, from a medieval perspective, even on horseback. Or, a DM can go old school and use a single 30-mile hex, a whopping 779-square mile chunk of land. Personally, I like the hex grid method. It’s Greyhawk-like, and I love me some Greyhawk.

Adventure Sites on your Map

How many adventure sites do you need? I suggest a different approach—how many random encounters do you have, and how much conflict do you want to articulate ahead of time? In a localized campaign, PCs are generating conflict and solving conflict. A DM needs room for expansion, so putting down twelve areas with a paragraph description, with the idea of creating twelve more as the campaign progresses, is a viable campaign (linked adventure) plan. As a DM, you need both the flexibility for the players to wander a bit, but also the ability to add a location, based on players generating encounter locations for you.

Picture this scene around the table—an innocent conversation between players.

Player 1: “That eff’n mimic was annoying. I hate those things.”

Player 2: “I wonder where it came from?”

Player 3: “Somewhere needs to receive all the fire.”

DM: (secretly writing notes)

And thus, the Great Mimic Breading Ground (heh, heh, heh) in the abandoned wizard tower basement (of course it was a wizard) was born. Player 1 secretly loved everything about the adventure. Player 2 regretted opening his big mouth. Player 3 enjoyed having her PC buy a wagon full of oil barrels. Player 4, the Druid, was sure annoyed with the resultant forest fire. Player 5 was eaten by a mimic and later picked a place on the map of where his new PC’s ranger uncle had a hunting cabin.

Random Encounters on your Map

Just as crucial of generating encounter sites (and an encounter does not always mean combat), the DM should have Random Encounter Tables ready to go, the number dependant on the landscape and people therein:

  • Village Random Encounter (rats, ruffians, drunkards, lost dog, belligerent guard, etc.)
  • Road Random Encounter
  • Woods Random Encounter
  • The Other Woods Random Encounter
  • Lake Random Encounter
  • Repeat the above, except at night

Etc. Random Encounters are an essential tool in the DM Toolbox. It’s the mechanism in which the randomness of dice gives the game world a chance to interject itself as an entity, rather than careful plots, narratives, and plans. When they are location-based, they are just as important, if not more, than the static encounter placed there.

In a game world, “stuff happens.” There is a trifecta for localized campaigning, each as important as the other:

  1. DM created encounters
  2. Player generated encounters
  3. Random encounters

Consider random encounters the Game World having a say, and your gameworld needs to make itself known in a localized campaign.

Map-Based Random Encounters — Frequency

There are several methods for encounters, here are the rules we frequently use, rolling for an encounter when:

  1. The players are moving from point A to point B
  2. Players arrive at point B
  3. Every four hours
  4. Players do something that generates attention

Encounters happen on a d12 if the dice shows an 11 or 12. On a 12, the DM makes the encounter more difficult—adding a monster, making the NPC more belligerent, adding environmental effects such as rain or fog, maximizing monster hitpoints, etc.

Map-Based Random Encounters — the Table

Spending time on the encounter table is worthwhile, and there are several different ways to do it. My favorite method is a list from 2 to 20. Roll 2d10, and run the encounter indicated on the dice.

What to put on the table? It should be specific to the day/night cycle and location. Coming up with the 2 to 20 encounters, in 2020, is easy. If you’re having trouble, take encounter tables from anywhere–the web, old modules, your notes–and mix and match while putting in your own flair.

In addition to monsters, I always have:

  • Mystery encounters (“you come across a campfire still smoldering, but no one is around”)
  • Odd encounters (“riding a large centipede is a tiny sprite, complete with reigns and a tiny saddle”)
  • Helpful encounters (“an apple tree with fruit ready for picking”)
  • Fauna encounters (“several deer are nearby, oblivious of your presence”)
  • Weather encounters (“an odd shift in the wind carries with it the hint of rain”)

The Local Map: Beyond the Village

So we’ve talked about the map, tropes, and placing encounter locations and leaving enough room for expansion, so now let’s talk about the map itself. We’re going to use an Anna Meyer map from Curse of the Lost Memories.

The Lost Barony of Wailmoor Map

Click on the Map to Embiggen

This map has some locations therein outlined in the module. Even if you didn’t want to use the module, a DM could purchase the map separately. There are some exotic locations, a castle, a temple, tors, obelisks, a bog, etc. There is plenty of room on this map for the DM to place to expand.

And this is where Griffon Lore Game location maps are a cut above. With the amount of terrain detail on the map, the map itself generates encounter ideas due to its gorgeous precision. A flying monster can rost on top of one of the tors, or a rebel wizard can have a secret lair underneath it. Just by looking at our maps, the DM has a greater understanding of what the localized campaign physically looks like and can add his or her own flair accordingly.

And we’ve stripped this map of detail from 300 DPI to 96 DPI so it can display on the web. You can get the 300 DPI version at our web store.

Switching maps, here’s a web version of the local map in Burials of Teganshire.

Burials of Teganshire Local Map

Click on the Map to Embiggen

If I was adding an encounter to this map, you know what I would do? I would place an location on these three little river islands:

  • Haunted camp-site, where the ghost of Marylou died in a flash flood waiting for her lover—who was with another woman
  • Beligenant giant freshwater pistol shrimp
  • Sunken treasure—a chest containing a magical folding boat
  • The secret place where the horse-lord of Harasdra likes to fish with his buddies

And that was just a tiny portion of the map. This is a localized campaign map for sure, and it’s spectacular. Back Burials of Teganshire on Indiegogo to add it to your collection!

Burials of Teganshire on Indiegogo

Go on, Crossbow Man. Step on the bridge.

 

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