Thieves’ World and d20

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

My old group broke up spring of 2002 and through EN World I found two more groups first one then another. The Thieves’ World books were boxed up with other games that were not getting played and I dove in the d20 craze head first. Online so many settings and games were being translated to d20 that there were endless threads about what property needed to be d20. I was one of the lone voices calling for Thieves’ World. A few people seemed to remember it but as I talked about my games and posted some personal created classes, prestige classes, and house rules I think I helped kick up the following in a minor way.

I was shocked when I heard Green Ronin had picked up the license and new books were being written. I don’t know if it was intended but the new books fit in well with the old. They offer a lot of well-done rules and setting information that is not in the box set. They have options for characters from all over the place; they must list every little city state ever mentioned in any of the short stories and novels. The time line might have been advanced but the struggle for day to day survival remained the same.

Thieves’ World Players Manual is about perfect. They make some simple changes to the d20 rules and supply plenty of classes and character options d20 players are used to seeing. It has great information on the setting and really allows people not familiar with it to have a clear understanding. They made magic more dangerous and difficult to use. I like that and it helps keep a delicate balance d20 always lacked with spell casters and non-spell casters. Almost everything has been fine tuned for the setting. The classes have their own abilities and look a bit different from the normal PHB classes. It has an emphasis on the more mundane.

Shadowspawn’s Guide to Sanctuary is much more of the setting and a great resource for GMs. It offers great descriptions and insight into many of the characters from the books both old and new. It offers a few new player options but it is mostly just a GM resource. The book does a good job of describing the city as it was in the old stories and then how was changed when they advanced the time line a few decades and brought in even more complications. One of the more useful sections is small sample adventures in the city. These are great to just get ideas of all the kinds of possibilities and potential the city of Sanctuary can hold for players.

Sadly, the only times I have gotten to play using these books is one shots run by Robert Schwalb at Origins. For a few years he always ran something at 8am Saturday morning which was not the ideal hour. Those games never did sell out but I was there with probably a bit more energy and fully awake than anyone else. Nowadays at Origins they don’t seem to have as interesting of a gaming selection. I bring that up only because Origins starts up Wednesday June 12, the day this should get posted. I’ll be there for five days running some Paranoia, but I’ll leave that for next week’s blog entry.

Thieves’ World is always going to be my favorite fantasy setting. It doesn’t have the shine of Eberron, or the scope of the Forgotten Realms, but it has dirt and grit that can never become clean. It is a setting with potential because really there are lots of buildings and NPCs left undefined or just slightly defined. It is a great sand box for a GM and players wanting the gritty and dangerous low fantasy setting.

Chris Gath. I’ve been gaming since 1980 playing all kinds of games since then. In the past year I’ve run Pathfinder, Dungeon Crawl Classic, Paranoia, and Mini d6. My current campaign is mini d6 and we are using that for a modern supernatural conspiracy investigative game. On some forums I’m known as Crothian and I’ve written a few hundred reviews though I took a sabbatical from reviewing for a few years as it burnt me out. I was also an judge for the Gen Con awards (ENnies) six times. Jeff, the owner of this blog, is one of my players and a good friend.

In the Casbah

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

Something a bit different this time around, an adventure that is rather barebones, and not really an adventure.

Your party has arrived, on their way to something important, to a bazaar town, where a market fair is underway. Your part is to come up with about a dozen tradesmen and dealers and beggars and thieves and watchmen and soldiers and aristocrats and such like. The PCs need to pick up supplies, but instead of just going through the lists in the book, you play it out. What happens? Entirely up to your and your players.

Think of what happens when you go shopping, all the people you interact with, the things you see. Near accidents on the road, and attempts at shop lifting at the grocery. Unexpected meeting and be accosted by a friendly dog. Now add in the shady type selling baby kobolds, without a license. The brownie soliciting subscriptions to the local weekly. The mountebank and his shill, and the ogre mage hiding as a roustabout in his crew.

So here now are a few potential encounters. Stats etc. are all up to you.

Young aristocrat couple and their chaperon looking at amulets and charms (most fake, But one has the effect of drenching the wearer in wine from nowhere whenever they exclaim, “By golly!” Guess who says “By Golly!” a lot?

A man with baby kobolds to sell. Yes, there are uses for baby kobolds. No, not all of them are pleasant to consider. Yes, kobolds may be bought and sold for legitimate purposes. No, his customers are not interested in legitimate purposes. Yes, he does have a supplier.

A clerk looking for spices for a particular client. Said client wants to impress a potential business partner.

A game of three card monte, only it’s the cards who decide where the right card is. And they’ve been known to change their minds on occasion.

The rest is up to you, just remember the encounters you’ve had in real life, and the encounters in stories you’ve seen, and you’ll be good to go.

There is one caveat however, keep combat to a minimum. This is supposed to be a break from the usual session. Besides, the locals want things kept peaceful at their casbah, so whoever starts a brawl is apt to end up in a lot of trouble. Starting fires is especially frowned upon.

Remember above all that you don’t have to roll the dice to play an RPG.

Alan Kellogg. I am a blogger and a gamer, and I opine on various subjects and topics. I live in San Diego CA, have been gaming since 1964 (board games) and 1975 (RPGs). Have credits in Dangerous Journeys: Mythus and have helped out with a few other projects (Charlemagne’s Paladins for TSR for instance). Currently working on a revision of Mythus for possible publication.

Getting Your Players to Share the Load

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

The hard part about being the Gamesmaster is the building of adventures and preparation every week, fortnight or however often you play. Not to mention all the things that you need to balance in the game as well! Each week you should spend more time than your players thinking about the game and making decisions of what you will do in reaction to expected players actions. All the players need to do is show up with dice and a character sheet. Every now and again they also have to level up also. But that is not how it has to be.

Players are a great resource for you to tap into as a GM. It is a mistake to think that you have to do everything in a game alone. Preparation and story is largely up to you, be that in the form of reading a module or creating the game for each session but there is homework that the players can do that will assist you in cutting down some time on this component.

How to get your players on board

Why would a player do this though if it so easy just for them to show up, play and go home, nothing further to do? It is called bribery! You are the person in control of certain aspects of the game like hero points or experience or advancement. Whatever your game uses to make your players increase in skill. To encourage this “out of game” behaviour you can sit down and say that you are willing to offer up some of what they want for what you want them to do. the reward should be a token reward but also not so little that no one takes you up on it. My players all provided me with detailed backgrounds that made for a much more immersive experience for us all just for a single hero point!

The Journal

What you are seeking in a game is to have the players visualise their characters and the scenes that they are playing in. The first trick that can increase this immersion is to have some of the players write up from their characters perspective what happened in the previous game. There are websites out there that facilitate this (like Obsidian Portal) that enable the player to put up notes and stories revolving around the game and their character’s perspective. These stories are really valuable as it helps players refresh their memory of what happened last game and puts themselves into character as they hear it from another character’s perspective, not the player.

The Chronicler

So, you may have someone that likes writing updates or reading a journal before each game, but what if someone wants to record the details of the whole session and build up a dot point chronology? Great! I do this a lot in my games that I am a player in as I tend to get bored waiting for my turn so I sit with an open notebook and attempt to record the whole of the adventure in dot point format. I could then offer this up to the GM as a source of information that could be placed on the campaign website or just loose leaves into a folder that players can look back over and reminisce on. It is a great way to record all the awesome funny quotes and the like in such chronicles as well.

Initiative Monitor

You could argue as the GM that the previous two don’t really take much off your plate (they would for me) but here is a role that can save heaps of time. Have a player take over the role of recording and announcing turns via the initiative system in your game. There is no real need for you to have to manage this portion of the game and it is a serious overhead in game. If you are a GM that likes to keep the initial initiative of your creatures secret, just have the initiative monitor add them as they occur on first round!

The Mapper

If you use a lot of encounter based maps or have the players travelling through a dungeon or the like it can be good to have a mapper. With some accurate descriptions the mapper records only the parts of the map that the players have investigated. It saves you having to draw it out or clumsily cover the areas you don’t want them to see as you show them your copy of the map. These maps can also be handed over to the chronicler at a later stage to start forming the game’s portfolio!

The Accountant!

This is one that I had not thought about recently. The accountant records all the treasure that is found on a “ledger” and then records what went to whom. That way if one of the players says “What happened to the ring of doom that hobbit found?” the Accountant can take a quick look at the “ledger” and give an accurate answer. This saves you, the GM, having to then make copious notes about this stuff or wrack your memory and stop the flow of the game to consider the issue.

What about other roles?

There is no need to stop making roles. If the GM has a need and can think how the player could fill that role then go for it. This can even be situationally based e.g. a player falls unconscious so the GM might ask them to take on one or more of the NPC/Creature rolls for the battle to keep them occupied and to give the GM a bit of a breather in a complicated battle. Really, any roles that a GM can share will get the players more involved and give the GM a little bit of relief from all of the responsibilities to keep the game running! Give some of these a try and see how they work out!

Mark Knights is 39 year old guy living in a small rural town called Elliott in Tasmania, Australia. I have been role playing since I was 11 years old playing the original versions of Dungeons and Dragons, MERP, Elric, Dragon Warriors and the like amongst other genre games. I played D&D 2nd Edition through the 90′s but I ran Earthdawn for my fantasy setting and loved it as a GM. When 3rd Edition came out for D&D I tried it but found it too heavy on rules. I ignored the 3.5 edition of DnD in favour of Earthdawn (big mistake) as I thought it was just a money spinner. When 4th Edition DnD came on my players and I gave it a red hot go but hated what it had dumbed the game down to be. On a trip to Melbourne to buy some 4E stuff from a hobby store an old mate of mine pointed me at Pathfinder and in a Fantasy setting I have never looked back.

A Thieves’ World Tale

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

It was the mid 90’s and I was taking a break from running Palladium games RPGs. We had a great Robotech campaign that had just ended with the devastation of the surface of Earth and we were looking to do something a bit different. One of the guys suggested running a Thieves’ World campaign using 2^nd edition D&D rules. Until then I didn’t even know there were RPG books for Thieves’ World. The system turned out to be pretty good for what we wanted to do.

Here we are now almost twenty years later and RPGs have advanced and been over analyzed so that all the old games have had their flaws dissected and lots of dirty laundry has been aired to the public. At the time though it was doing things that other games were not. The kit system has taken a lot of flak since then but I liked it then and still like it now. Few Kits were created equally but that didn’t matter for us. It was a great way to help mechanically distinguish a character and call him something besides Fighter or Thief. The setting only has humans and it being low magic it restricted the kinds of classes that we would play. The kit system helped make characters of the same class really seem different.

That first campaign we had four characters. I don’t recall what the specific kits were but we had a Fighter, a thief, a ranger, and my character a Bard. I took the True Bard Kit from the Complete Bard’s Handbook my favorite of the 2e class and race books. My character was a musician and singer but also had many disguises. We started off the campaign in a place called Downwind the poorest of the cities districts. It has very few permanent buildings; most are shacks and tents. The way we ran it it had a gang problem and my character did not want to be seen there so he looked differently when there. Also, he was rightfully fearful of being mugged as of the group my character made the most money with street performances and eventually joined a Bard’s guild.

When the characters were made we connected them through backstory. We needed a reason to trust each other and that was one of the few requirements the DM demanded. The other one was create in the backstory how your character ended up with almost nothing in the poorest district in town. Starting money was in copper instead of gold. The copper coins could be broken off into ten pieces called Bits so there was currency smaller than a copper. Many of the items in the PHB cost was in silver instead of gold but starting out we could afford very little.

The characters did not have a place to live so we found some people and convinced them through threat of violence to let us live were they had been living. Alignment was something we ignored. This game was about day-to-day survival more than standing up for Good verse Evil or anything like that. Those are concepts that can easily be explored in Thieves’ World game but it wasn’t something we did. Each day we had to earn money for food and with luck we would save some to eventually buy better equipment or be able to afford a real house in a safer district. Each day we had each character go out and earn. The Fighter would try to get a job as body guard or something, the thief picked pockets, the Ranger would offer services as a city guide, and my character would sing for money. All of those types of activities were usually just done with a skill roll and maybe some role play if something interesting was happening with it. The nights are where the bulk of the gaming time was spent.

The DM introduced a fighting ring that existed in the Maze, the most dangerous section in the city. It took us a few sessions to learn of it and figure out where it was. I like that it was not just handed to us. There anyone could fight and it was to knockout or one side taps out, not to the death, though death could happen. Anyone could fight in what was called the scrub fights. In these you had no idea what type of character you would be facing. The DM had a table he rolled randomly. So, a character could get lucky and face a zero level fisherman or get unlucky and face an experienced fifth level fighter. For fighting a character would get a copper and for winning you would get silver. The real money came in the gambling. At times it did seem like we were playing Bloodsport the RPG as this was a major focus of the campaign. There were a lot of NPCs we met that were combatants or spectators. Once a fighter made a name for himself he could be invited to special fights or events. The money and bets would become a lot better at those. And just like real life some nights we hit big and other nights we lost our shirts. Healing was also an issue so if you lost a fight big time it usually meant you didn’t make any money and you had to pay to get the character healed or else he was going to be really low on HP for days or weeks.

The first month or so we played was about getting money, staying alive, and eventually moving out of Downwind. We made a few friends but many more enemies. Like I mentioned we had gangs in Downwind and they were always a problem. We took one gang out completely in a big battle through the tents other basic structures in a pretty cool long drown out battle.

Each character had their own goals. Some were escaped slaves or wanted criminals so they wanted to become legally freemen. There were many guilds in the city that would interest a character and having guild status was an important achievement for the characters. We meet and interacted with many of the different NPCs from the stories and even though most of them were cooler and more powerful than us the focus was kept nicely on the characters.

When 3e D&D came out we came back to D&D from playing Star Wars d6 and once we got a good feel for the system we played in a Thieves’ World campaign. It had the same feel as the first but the system worked a lot better. The feat system allowed for a wider range of character abilities. Just the ability for anyone to take Improved Unarmed Strike helped for the fighting ring and AoO for characters that didn’t have it helped divide the skilled from the unskilled fighters. The skill system was also easier to use then the non-weapon proficiencies and because of the nature of the campaigns skills were always important.

One thing we kept was the idea of fame from the Bard’s Handbook. It had fame that lessened depending on how far different cities were and we used that idea except with districts. So, a character could be well known in the fishermen’s area but unheard of in the Temple district. Magic was very rare and dangerous. My character once got a wand and I spent weeks trying to figure out how to return it to its owner and get a reward instead of being accused of stealing it, which I had done. One of the other players said at the time the smartest thing I could do is go to the ocean and toss it in there and it turned out he was right. In another campaign the players were 8^th level when they got a hold of a working crossbow and they celebrated. I don’t think there is another D&D game anywhere that something like that could happen. We had master work items but never anything magical expect for one use items like potions and scrolls and maybe something else simple. It was a very low magic and gritty campaign. It is not the style of game many people would enjoy but it was a lot of fun for us.

The Thieves World campaign I ran used the Rules Cyclopedia. It has always been one of my favorite versions of D&D. It has a workable skill system that we liked. It has the classes needed and it is easy to still ignore the demi humans since they were not part of the setting. The mystic is an interesting class and one of the players used it. Not having to rely on weapons and armor was a good advantage.

My campaign started before the first book and took them through the conquering of the city by the Rankans. I focused on the townsfolk really not caring who was in charge as long as their lives mainly remained the same. The day -o-day grind of basic survival was still the focus but we did travel outside the city some and dealt with pirates and raiders more than in previous campaigns.

I’d like to run the setting again but it would be a tough sell for my players because it is a non-heroic campaign. I would use Pathfinder and mix in some of the new Thieves World mechanics from the Green Ronin books. I ran the Council of Thieves Adventure Path Paizo made and that worked well for a campaign all in one city. I think that will be the closest I get to Thieves World for some time.

Why Are We Here?

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

So, what do the players do in a roleplaying guide?

Simple, they play roles.

What do they do as they play their roles?

Depends, on what they feel like doing, and what the Guide Master (GM) suggests they do.

That’s the thing about plots and storylines, they’re really nothing more than suggestions. Hints when you get down to it. Give most groups a murder mystery to explore and they’ll want to know where that stash of vin ordinaire came from. In this players tend to be a distractible as a year old puppy.

What do the players do?

As they play their characters they get into all sorts of things. They interfere in muggings, track down ancient tomes and ancient grandmothers. They rescue kittens, baby dragons, and lost merchants. They guide hunting expeditions; land on unknown islands, worlds, trolley stops; converse with wisemen and fools of all sorts (and sometimes the same people), and on rare occasion they kill critters and take their stuff.

What do the players have to do?

Not a darn thing. At least nothing the GM would like them to do. For that is the secret of RPGs, freedom of choice. Any GM who refuses to accept player initiative is in the wrong hobby.

That’s rude!

Is it wrong?

You are a cruel man.

Isn’t limiting what people can do crueler still?

…In any case, the role of the players is to explore the setting they’ve been presented with, to present the GM with situations he hasn’t prepared for, and so encourage adaptability and imagination on his part. To put it simply, get him to loosen up and lighten up, and accept things won’t always go the way he planned.To help the GM understand that RPGs cannot be scripted, plotted, graphed out, or (for that matter) outline. All the GM can do is set up the basic situation, the opening incident, then watch as his players play merry hob with his scenario.

You ask, “What do the players do in an RPG?”

The answer is, “Gift the GM with consternation and confusion.” Remember, it’s part of his job to entertain you.

Who or What the Heck is That? (Describing Things With Aplomb)

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

When writing text for our games we often have to describe something in great detail. But detail is like the hole Alice falls down to Wonderland… Sometimes it turns into a black hole and we free fall forever. So today I want to focus on a technique for getting more sensory detail into your writing without falling down the rabbit hole

We all know the main senses, right? Visual (sight). Auditory (hearing). Gustatory (taste). Olfactory (smell). And tactile (touch). But we sometimes get so wrapped up in one of them (usually visual or auditory) that we tend to forget the others like we’re wearing blinders. How do we defeat that? With a random table, of course!

Here’s a simple way to offer some description without going overboard: the Sense Table. Get out your trusty d8 any time you want to stretch your skills to describe something and consult this table…

Sight
Hearing
Taste
Smell
Touch
Roll twice (re-roll on 6-8)
Roll three times (re-roll on 6-8)
Roll again (re-roll on 6-8)

For each sense you roll, come up with some descriptive text using that particular form of perception.

Here are a few examples:

I’m trying to describe a clue in the dungeon and roll a 1 – sight. “At first glance, the worn statue appears to be the open maw of a dragon…”
An encounter is coming up and I roll a 4 – smell. “The odor is the first thing that you notice as you enter the alley, with a scent somewhere between a dead fish and a dog fart…”
Or perhaps the party is tasting the local cuisine for the first time and you roll a 6 (roll twice), followed by a 2 (hearing) and a 5 (touch). “The natives believe that eating the fresh entrails of a dova beast grants the consumer strength and conviction in the coming days. But from the first time you touch the slimy viscera with your naked fingers, bring a piece to your mouth, and hear the juicy squish as you take a bite – you just know it’s not going to stay down…”

The trick of course is to be descriptive without being overly so. You want to provide enough detail to let an image start to form in the mind of your readers or listeners (whether it’s just yourself, another GM, or a group of players) and fill in the rest from their own imaginations. Sometimes it can be fun to go a bit overboard (like my last example above), but usually you want to strike a balance.

How do you do that? A couple of tricks come to mind. One is to write what you think works and put it away for as long as you have time to do so before getting it out again and reading it out loud. You might want to stop at the point where you start to get a picture in your head or when you think you’ve got enough of your point across. Or another simple way is to count the adjectives or descriptive phrases. If you have three or more, whittle it down a little until it feels about right.

It’s a fine line you’ll have to feel out on your own to see what works for you. Be sure to ask for feedback from other writer friends and see what your audience thinks about a particular section if it’s still causing you problems.

Brian “Fitz” Fitzpatrick is a Software Engineer who manages (or is that mangles) Game Knight Reviews and tinkers with writing game materials via his Moebius Adventures imprint. When he’s not writing about gaming, he’s actually gaming or at least thinking about gaming in some capacity. During the non-writing, non-gaming time he’s likely trying to keep up with his wife and two daughters or wrangling code for a living!

RPG? Or RPA?

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

Last week, in this post, we discussed whether or not RPGs are truly games, and I posed a question; if not, what do we call it?

Mark Knights at the Iron Tavern had the following to say regarding games. My answers regarding RPG are in parentheses.

Games are entered willingly: (Yes)
Games have goals: (Not really)
Games have conflict: (Not really)
Games have rules: (Not always)
Games can be won and lost: (Not really)
Games are interactive: (Yes)
Games have challenge: (Not always)
Games can create their own internal value: (Yes)
Games engage players:(Yes)
Games are closed, formal systems: (Provisionally)

You’ll note that I disagreed with Mark, which means I believe that RPGs need to be called something else.

My suggestion is, a roleplaying activity (RPA). Alternatively we could call it a roleplaying entertainment (RPE). An RPA being an activity in which the participants play a role in an imaginary world, where they have adventures, explore strange lands, and meet strange people.

An RPA is not a game in any but the loosest sense, for there are no formal goals to be achieved, no formal competition to be overcome. Any goal is chosen by the players, who could achieve that goal by any means they decide, and any pace they choose. An RPA is entered into willingly, but has no goals, and need not have conflict. (Though conflict can be used to keep participants interested). RPAs are interactive, otherwise they fail. But an RPA need not have a challenge (at least not a formal, “we need to overcome this threat” sort of challenge. Finding a decent Jewish deli at midnight on a Friday in a strange town is another matter.

Well of course RPAs create their own internal value, and they can engage players. Having closed, formal systems is another matter. As the late E. Gary Gygax once noted regarding RPGs, “They don’t need rules.” Really, the only thing an RPA really needs is a general agreement between GM and players on how things work, and that can be as informal as you want to get.

So what does an RPA need to work? Since that is going to take a while, we’ll start getting into that topic next time.

Building Your Own Campaign World – Part 2

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

Photo By Colin Smith

Welcome back to part 2 of building your own campaign world. Last week we chose a hook, probably a world map (or at least a map of the nearby area) and a village or settlement that the characters can call their own at the very start of the campaign. Today we will look at how we inject some life into our village and also set some rules around the seed we created. We will get to the point today where we will be ready to design our first adventure which we will handle in next weeks post. Also, just to give you a heads up, I have preordered Paizo’s Ultimate Campaign addition to the Pathfinder range and when I get my copy (which normally takes a few weeks living all the way around the world from America) I will give it a good review here for you all.

Revisiting the Seed

The first thing that I need to look at after last week is put in place some mechanics to help facilitate the players life after death status should they happen to shuffle off their mortal coil on their first outing. As the idea largely forms around the character taking on the form of a ghost after being killed I check the entry for the Ghost creature in the original Bestiary for Pathfinder on pp.144-45. They already have rules for creating a ghost which on the whole are pretty good although I want to take away the idea of the ghost being a malevolent one. To do this I take away the option of it having a special attack (this could still be used if creating a ghost proper in game but for purposes of a player it does not fit with the theme of the campaign). Also I remove the requirement to change the Hit Die (as it causes unnecessary bookkeeping mid game) along with the changes to skills. The player may keep their Strength and Constitution scores intact though be considered for all intensive purposes to be able to use it only on other incorporeal creatures.

So with a mechanic in place for my hook I consider what effect this might have on the wider game. In the world I want the idea of people becoming spirits after death to be a normal thing. Therefore there are some changes to the wider game that I need to make, especially in regards to the Cleric class. As written in the base rules of Pathfinder the Cleric must choose to channel negative energy if evil in alignment. However this notion that all deaths result in a spirit form coming forth could, and does, turn this concept on its head. I foresee there being temples where wounded spirits go to be healed by kind, caring clerics that have to channel negative energy to do so. Also evil clerics may now wish to eradicate the spiritual remnants of beings and channel positive energy to do so. Thus I change the requirement of channeling negative or positive energy to be a complete choice for the cleric, regardless of the alignment.

This leaves a few loose ends to clear up in regards to this new mechanic. The first is who does cross over in this spirit form? Does it happen to every living thing? The answer here would be no if I were running this. It would happen to any Neutral or Good intelligent creature. I would likely tie this to one of the Gods on my mind map from last week as a reward, perhaps Elethna, Mistress of the Harvest deciding not to reap the crop that has served her in times of need. How long has the spirit got before Elethna harvests them and delivers them to her sister Delta, Goddess of Death? I would put a year and a day time limit on this creating for some interesting roleplaying situations if the player wants to go it in spiritual form. Finally, does this mechanic alter any of the Raise Dead, Resurrection, Reincarnate etc. type spells? Only in the way that if one of these were used that the spirit ceases to be and becomes corporeal again. Also, some of those spell requirements like needing a portion of the body to be bought back could be altered so if the spirit is present and willing then that could be enough to bring them into being (just in case their remains got dissolved by a large ooze or somesuch).

Not all seeds are going to require as much of an alteration as the one I decided to lead with. In fact the seed itself may simply add flavour to the setting rather than needing to be catered for with rules. However if your seed does need changes, consider the longer term effects of those changes. Some seeds require base assumptions to come into question (like the change to Cleric) and so rules must be put in place to cover them. But you have to consider why those rules were there in the first place. Good Clerics channel positive energy and can heal people is a no brainer in most campaigns but as this one turns the idea of who Clerics may be required to serve on its head I had to change the ruling here. It has no long term effects that would break the system and is logical so it is OK and I went ahead and changed it. But you will notice that it is still a choice though, the Cleric does not get to do both types of energy so they must choose if they serve the dearly departed or the living. Remember, the rules are a guideline, if they need to be bent to suit your idea for the campaign world then bend away. Just make sure players are fully informed of any rules changes when they sit at your table to play the campaign.

Giving Dante’s Rest Some Life

The last thing that we need to do before we start to build an adventure or some encounters into our campaign world is to breathe some life into the village that the players are set to start in. Dante’s Rest, the village atop a bluff said to house the remains of the only mortal who had lain with a God… Sounds cool but without preparation it is just another dot on the map. You could draw a map of the town if you wanted to which will assist the players to identify various landmarks. I have only ever drawn a map of a town once in my Earthdawn campaign and it saw little use. I find if you prepare a few descriptions of local stores and homes that the players become more involved. I may use a nice picture to represent a few things (such as Dante’s Mausoleum) but description and feeling draw the players in.

Consider where you, if you were a player that had a level in every class, would want to go in the village;

Blacksmith
Inn
General Store
Temple
Apothecary
Village Commons
Village Hall

Now you have that list, write an evocative short paragraph that describes each location and its owner or NPC that is to be tied to the location. I will do one to give you an example. I look to my Village template from last week and start with some of the important NPC’s listed there;

You approach the Smithy whose open verandah stares out over the Village Commons and see a small plume of smoke rising from the rear. Seeing this you know the door to the store will likely be locked as Terran will be creating some new masterpiece. You try the latch on the red cedar door to find it locked and walk around back. Under a large area of canvas you smell the rich smoke of myrtle burning to coals. Terran is there carefully considering the glowing red tip of a short sword that he has been working on. The scene is almost comical as the ruddy faced portly blonde halfling manipulates the blade that is too big for his own hands. The spirit of his wife stands behind him telling him how things should look but you see that Terran has tuned her out as he admires his craftwork.

The above gives a nice description that will help the players get the feel of Terran, the Blacksmith shop and the idea of the seed with his dead wife nagging him as he works. Next time they visit you could have the store open instead and it will give the players the idea that it is a living breathing village. Past that they might come across Terran in the Inn after a hard day. Remember he is an important NPC so he will likely know the PC’s if they are local and may be a source of employment. To illustrate this we will apply an NPC template to Terran. Looking at the cast of NPC characters in the GM guide so I grab the NPC Codex and find details of an Expert Blacksmith. It is a Dwarf but with a few minor alterations we can change it into Terran the Halfling Smithy.

In essence you now simply need to go through your list of places and follow the same example as above to create some interesting places in your town. Once you have that done, consider fleshing out the town with a few more NPC’s that you would have in the town. We know that rumour is rife in the town so you may have a rumour-mongering elder who gets involved in everyones business, asking uncomfortable questions just at the wrong time. Have some local kids that are familiar with the players and have some brief descriptions for them. A guard or two from the Mausoleum as such an important place would definitely be protected and generic stats at least for the most important of these NPC’s, at the very least a detailed description.

With these portions of the town noted down you have created a vibrant, dynamic place for your players to begin their stay. You could now start building up some hooks for the locations of the town but in reality that is more a form of designing your first adventures so we will cover this next week as we build up our first adventure. The campaign will develop through these adventures and through exploration of the areas around their initial locale. As they reach further afield you simply need to repeat the process you have done here to create exciting places to adventure in and visit. Some places (e.g. larger settlements) may require a lot more work but the process is the same.

There are a bunch of different approaches you can take to making a campaign and I am attempting to present the most systematic and user friendly version here for you to work on. This version works well but if you want to explore some of the more advanced versions of campaign building have a look at my blog where I have shown a few of the variant options that people use to build campaigns over this past week. But back to our way of dealing with things.

License Plates as Name Generator

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

openclipart library

How many of you sometimes have issues coming up with names for your campaigns? If you’re anything like me, probably more than a few of you. And I’m sure you have your solutions to that problem. Techniques such as phone book surfing, online random name generators, Scrabble tiles… They all work. But I’m going to give you one more option.

Do you find yourself frequently driving or riding somewhere along a city street or highway? Maybe you take public transportation, travel by taxi, or are stuck in traffic during rush hour every day on your commute? If so, I have an idea for you.

Every standard license plate involves a combination of letters and numbers to uniquely identify the car as registered with a government somewhere. Could be a state. Could be a country. Doesn’t really matter. What matters is that combination of letters and numbers.

Glance at a license plate (safely of course, not endangering yourself or others) and see if any of the letters on it tickle your fancy. Does it hint at a word? Or a name? Acronym? Phrase? Anything? If so, write it down or remember it for later. If not, glance at another one.

Here’s a few I came up with the other day:

Out of this list of 10 different groups of letters, I quickly came up with: Saxon, Werwick, Rizza’j, Dygga, Nyx, Wibbix, Hava, Ehtu, Kirgum, and Rie. And I’m sure I could come up with more if I randomized the list a bit. But I’ll be content with simply writing down 10 more another day and figuring out how my brain wants to arrange the letters to make up names.

Any of these names could be used for NPCs, places, monsters, items, and more…

So the next time you’re on the road, take note of a few license plates. If you’re on a long trip, you can even use that time to generate tons of names for your next campaign so they’re ready to go.

A Look at Thieves’ World

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

In Sanctuary someone is always awake especially when others are sleeping.

Most people that play RPGs have a favorite setting. Mine is the city of Sanctuary from the Thieves’ World Anthologies. It is a series of twelve books with short stories by different authors all taking place in the same setting of Sanctuary. The first was published in 1979 and the last one was in 1989. There was a short revival done in 2002 but I’m going to talk about that in a later blog post.

A friend of mine gave me the first book to read about 1988. So, I was not on the cutting edge of Thieves’ World and barely being a teenager did not help. It was not until 1996 that I learned there was RPG material written for it. Since then I’ve more than made up for it. I played in two Thieves’ World campaigns and ran a third. I have copies of each of the original books plus the novels that some authors continued to write about their characters. I have the collected graphic novels and the not so great board game. I have multiple copies of many of the role playing supplements including the original Box Set. Now, as much as I love the setting and the books I will say they are not always great. Some of the stories are pretty poor, especially by today’s standards. But overall it forms a great setting and one of the best for low magic gritty fantasy role playing.

Sanctuary is the city and it is founded by runaway slaves and pirates. Depending on when during the novels one uses the setting, it may be conquered by a far off power or free. Either way the place is a dump. There are inconsistencies in the stories about the city. It is described as a place full of crooks and thieves but at the same time is an operating city. The map makes the city seem a lot smaller then I envisioned in the stories. There is a character named Cappen Verra who is called the only honest man in Sanctuary. While the saying is in jest it does help set the tone that few people in the city are trustworthy. When running a game in the setting I feel the DM and PCs need to sit down and decide just how cut throat the city will be from the start. There were times the PCs would travel around the city with their pots and pans for fear of having them stolen in my games. When I say our games were gritty and dangerous they really were.

The Thieves’ World Box Set is a great product for people familiar with the setting. The box set does not provide a lot of setting information and only covers information in the first two Anthologies. It does have a player’s guide that contains some basic essays, some written by the authors of the short stories that detail information the players should know. It has good information in it to help get the feel and some understanding of the city and its history. However, today it does seem like gamers would want more than the books provide. I would use it as a good starting point and allow the players to also read the short stories to help get a solid feel for everything. The GM’s book is filled with additional information and tables for random encounters. There are tables for the different districts but more specifically for major or minor streets and then for day, evening, and night encounters. There is a third book in the box set of the many personalities. It gives a small paragraph on the many characters from the books. The bulk of the book is devoted to the stats of the characters in many different game systems. The box set is not written for one game system. It is kept purposefully generic so almost any fantasy game can easily be used.

The maps in the box set are the main reason I have multiple copies. There is a large map of the city I had laminated. It allows for a wet erase marker to be used and then wiped out. It also allows everyone at the table to see the map in front of them and to understand where the different districts are and the different places. There are very few defined buildings in Sanctuary. There are tables so if one needs to know what a specific building is it can easily be determined randomly. We had year long campaigns were the PCs never left the city so the maps were an important feature. One area of the main map is left blank, a place called the Maze. It is the most dangerous section with no main streets just side alleys that twist and turn around buildings. No one knows the entire Maze so the area is kept on a different map so the players won’t know where they are going and can get easily lost in there. The third map and another one the players should not see is of the sewers. The sewers can be used to get around in secret if one knows the way. Knowledge of the Maze and Sewers is important and a potential opportunity for the PCs to can earn money as guides.

There are also a few modules and supplements that came out for Thieves’ World. I don’t have them all but I will talk about the ones I do have. I’ve only run one of the three modules, the one titled Traitor. The module is made to use with the pre-made characters. Each works for Jubal, a local and wicked crime lord. One of the characters has stolen something but Jubal does not know who. He wants the characters to figure out who it was and return the item or he will have them all killed. Each character has a write up of them being innocent and of them being guilty so it could be any of the characters. This is the first RPG adventure I recall seeing this type of set up and I like it. The first time I ran it though some of the players got frustrated with the mystery and decided to just kill one of the group and claim that he is the criminal. I found a perfect resolution for Sanctuary.

Other modules include Dark Assassin in which the PCs are trying to stop an assassination and Spirit Stone which focuses on the S’Danzo a human race of travelers attempting to get back a sacred artifact of their people. The main use we got from the adventures was more information, more NPCs, and maps of different places in the city.

In addition to the modules there is a Supplement called Under the Beysibs. It covers books three through six and events that I hear the most people complain about. There is a city book called Carse which I think is supposed to be the same Carse mentioned in the Thieves World books but honestly I’ve never seen anything that confirms or denies that.

This is just the first in what I plan to blog about Thieves’ World. Next up I will talk specifically about the campaigns and the how using different rule sets altered the feel and expectations of the game. We played just three campaigns but each campaign used a different rule set.

The Iron Tavern

Author Archives: Iron Tavern Guest Blogger