Category Archives: Commentary

Silent Nightfall Available In Print

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silent_nightfall_coverSome folks still want their print product. Whether they prefer reading from real paper (and really, even though I consume a large number of PDFs, paper really is nice) or simply because they are a collector and PDFs don’t look as good on a shelf. Whichever group you fall into, you will be pleased to know Purple Duck Games has made CE5: Silent Nightfall available in print!

I just reviewed Silent Nightfall here at The Iron Tavern at the end of November. You can read the full review here:

Review: CE5 Silent Nightfall

So if you’ve been waiting for the print version of Silent Nightfall – head on over to RPGNow. The Print and PDF Bundle is currently $8.99.

 

Creating a Boring Game With Intent

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Artwork Copyright William Ausland, used with permission.

Artwork Copyright William Ausland, used with permission.

Last week I ran a boring game! I fully understood what I was doing and I ran with it. I wanted the game to be boring. I wanted the players to look at me and for me to shrug as the game was their responsibility at this point. I planned it, I ran it, and it worked very well. Today’s post is in a way about why I did this to my players, and on a larger scale, a follow on from last weeks post about violence in games where I said I would write about other styles of conflict.

Now, the game I ran last week was not so fantasy based so let me relate to you the tale in fantasy speak. The players are members of a vessel that set out exploring trade in mysterious lands. Unfortunately the player that had taken up the sextant in the role of the navigator knew very little about where he was going and somehow managed to get their vessel afloat in the sea of darkness. With me so far? Good!

The players aboard the vessel soon learnt they were not alone in the sea of darkness. They found another interesting vessel seemingly built for a different race afloat on the sea. They boarded it and found nothing but unusual magical items and a tome written in a long dead language. They returned to their own vessel and began the process of deciphering it. As they did though another ship appeared on the sea of darkness and offered our lost heroes a way to free themselves from the sea if they would just follow them. They did and found a big vessel long thought lost to the ravages of time.

Right, now we are done fantasying up the Traveller game I ran (sneaking it under Jeffrey’s nose as fantasy is a job I enjoy!) [Editor’s Note: Not so sneaky! I pre-read all posts! ~Jeffrey] let us talk about why I made the game a boring one. Players are largely used to working out things with the help of large neon signs that we as GM’s load up the game with. If we want to get you to rescue a princeling or something similar, he will likely appear in a couple of games and then be stolen in the dark of night once someone takes a liking to them. Or they will find a scrap of one of the players clothing left at the scene of the crime and you will have to rescue the blighter just to clear your name. In his room you will find a bone wand inimical of the orcish clans just north of the city. You get there and find out it was stolen but one of the orcs caught sight of a member of the thieves guild stealing it. You head back to town and hit the thieves guild finding the princeling and uncovering a larger plot… continue campaign.

Sound familiar? We GM’s can be real stuck in our ways at times. Well in my exceptionally fantasy Traveller game I actually run a very open game and I have a completely open mind when it comes to running it. I don’t necessarily want massive amounts of conflict to run the game and I take the cues from my players as to what is actually happening in the game world. In the particular game I mentioned the players have put themselves in a pickle. I have allowed them the chance to get themselves out of it but they need to drive this. So what did I do? I put the players in a room (errr.. cold dungeon cell) under guard and allowed the game to run from there.

I did this because the vessel (yes I am fantasying it up again) was controlled by two things. First thing that the players would realise is that they were being held by a spirit (best analogy for an AI I could come up with) and it’s henchmen undead (read robots) for guards. They were by no means inhospitable and all requests were met with excellent focus though they were not allowed out. So the players sat in the cell and discussed their options. They seemed to be talking with other real life people but they knew there was something shifty going on. They discussed this at length with themselves and kept coming up with plans to be let out of the room. After all, they had been promised a way out when they came here. In all honesty, the game lasted a good two and a half hours with the players trapped in this room. There was much conjecture and trialling going on by the players and eventually they cracked the “spirit” and made an interesting discovery.

They were not alone. In fact there were other humanoids also in lockdown that were being kept alive and there was also a new race on the scene, a GM special as we GM’s arrogantly like to call them. They were a race borne of humans and they were the only living thing the spirit allowed free roaming on the vessel. OK, if you want to know how our hale adventurers (read space explorers) handled themselves, nip over to my blog (the awesome Pathfinder Chronicles and look up the blog that mentions the errr… pre-eminent fantasy writer Asimov?) As for the rest of this blog I will explain why I designed the game this way and show you why it was the best boring game I have run in a long time.

This game was all about conflict, but not the kind that involves eruptions of blood from arteries in high action sequences. This was four characters in a room with no idea what was going on who had to make sense of their situation. It plays on the amnesia trope in a way where the player wakes up and has no idea what is going on. In this situation though the tension was drawing on the fact that they knew everything that their character knew up until walking into the room, but had no clue what was going on aboard the vessel! The conflicts in this game came from social conflict (as they had communication remotely to the spirit and its incarnations) between themselves at times as well as the unknown environment. The other thing that this setting brewed up was the imagination of the players. I can not tell you how many hairbrained situations that they came up with while trying to work out what was going on!

The players really enjoyed this game I think. Right at the end they got to meet with the true villains of the piece (the Panold race) and have some interaction with them. They had a great game and not a single shot was fired (although they did mention it a lot!). There are some secrets in making this style of game come off well.

  1. Know what is really happening before you play this style of game. It is really important as a GM that you go into this eyes wide open. If you wait for the players to come up with a great idea for you to run with you will overstay the excitement of the game and then they will say that you just did what they said.
  2. Play up to some of the PC’s propositions if the circumstances could seem to be exactly what they are saying
  3. Push through the silences. The players will look to you for a giant glowing neon sign. Do not give it to them. Just keep asking what they are doing or how their character is feeling. They have to become aware that the game relies on them to make the decisions.
  4. Have an exit point. You can’t leave the players in the room forever. Have them spot something in a vent (er.. small cave) that may show them another way out. Do not reward them with anything informative though. They still need to use this new information to find out what is going on (e.g. they feel a breeze coming through a crack, could there be a passage just beyond the door?) This gives them a way of getting out of the cell but they will still be surprised by the new race and the overall plot.
  5. Let them out when they are close enough to knowing something that they could succeed at a bluff with. Once they are that close, reward them. They are never going to guess that they have been captured by a race of highly intelligent mice but they might be able to get close and they should be rewarded!

So there you have it. Combat is fun as it risks a character’s mortal coil, but social or mystery encounters can offer new and varied experiences with the game that puts a focus right on the character. Consider your current game and think like Batman’s Riddler. How can you wrap the next clue to the puzzle in a box wrapped in a mystery and surrounded by an enigma that the players need to solve by role playing their characters. Once you have that in your head design it and you are guaranteed to make a memorable session for the players. Keep rolling!

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.

Death in RPGs

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Artwork Copyright William Ausland, used with permission.

Artwork Copyright William Ausland, used with permission.

Late last week I saw a thread on G+ (I have lost track of it now) where the subject of losing levels upon character death came up. A lot of OSR games expect you to roll up a new character at 1st level to replace your fallen character with – or at the very least, bring the new character in a level or two down. The conversation drifted from this being a “punishing” form of gaming by punishing the player for making a sacrifice to this being an entirely reasonable action.

The rules surrounding character death are often house ruled from table to table. One group will play one way, while another will tackle the issue completely differently. Sometimes the rule will vary depending on game system used.

I fall in the camp that I like the replacement character to come in at least a level or two lower than the original character that was lost. There are a couple of key factors that come into play on this decision – whether for or against.

Sacrifice

One popular point of debate is that forcing a character in at a lower level punishes the player for a character action in the game. I see it less as punishment and more a meaningful consequence.

For example, if my 10th level Dwarven Cleric faces the decision of covering the party’s retreat, an action that will certainly put him in a situation of overwhelming odds – the actual level loss that will result from the consequence of that action puts more on the line. Sure, I am attached to that 10th level character and I have investment in it. But having the complementing mechanical downfall to character death is an element I feel should be involved in the decision to make that sacrifice.

I think the loss of a character from the emotional investment in the character concept and mechanical aspect covers the broadest range of players to make the sacrifice just that, a sacrifice. Character death should be meaningful for both types of players.

Player Types

While there are many, many player types – I think you can break them down into two very broad categories for this topic. Players that are more emotionally invested in their characters and players that are more mechanically invested in their characters.

We have all sat at our gaming tables with a mixture of both player types. Some are there for the character concept, their experiences and background. While mechanics play a role, they are not the focus of the character.

For the other player, the build of the character mechanically over time is where they are vested. The power gain from level to level, the meticulous crafting of the character. This mechanical aspect is the valuable part of their character.

The level loss associated with character death helps cover both player types. The concept focused player feels the character loss because their concept has ended. The mechanical because they lost some power, or seen their “build” get reset. These losses for either player type provide a consequence for character death. Without consequence it makes in-game decisions meaningless.

Power Level

The other topic is the disparity of power level. This can be an issue and this is where I understand the different house rules between systems. Losing three levels in Swords & Wizardry is much different than losing three levels in Pathfinder. The power gap that develops in OSR games is less pronounced than what you might see in more modern systems.

I do think it is wise to determine just how significant the level gap will be for newly introduced characters after a character death. In Pathfinder I can see a one or two difference as appropriate. In a retroclone, I might stretch that out to more like three or four levels.

Regardless of choice though, the lower level character will typically catch-up over time as they gain levels faster than the higher leveled party due to experience point boundaries. I see the level disparity as more of short term issue than a debilitating issue.

Meaningful Consequences

Consequences give meaning to character decisions. Level loss upon character death helps give these consequences to help give meaning to decisions. I feel this element helps give RPGs depth that I can’t necessarily get from computer games or other arenas. Level loss is not meant to punish players – but to make their choices meaningful.

Violence in RPGs

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Blood SplashWhat purpose does violence in an RPG have? Why is it the section of the rule book that gets so much love in most games? In games that have multiple types of combat it is not unusual to see multiple combat chapters that factor in the different styles of combat! It must be a very important topic to warrant so much information to be written about it in all of those rule books that sit on our shelves, beside our bed or in our tablets.

First, let us consider why combat is featured in games. Combat is a staple of the role playing worlds, especially fantasy. What would Conan be if he talked everything out? Boring, that is what he would be! That statement also holds a bit of the key as to why combat is so important in the game. It adds a layer of excitement to the game. But where does that excitement stem from? Conflict and the risks that are involved in that conflict. A role playing game could quite easily be about a person who gets up every morning, goes to work, struggles with a member of HR over leave, heads home, has tea and then goes out trying to find love. Why is this game not common? Because there is very little risk involved.

For a game to be memorable to a player there has to be the risk of failure present. In the day to day life that I mentioned in the paragraph above there is little risk and the risk that is involved involves very little consequence. If they fail the argument with HR the employee is likely to be stuck with the status quo, as is the same with trying to find love as they head out for the evening. In role playing these circumstances there would likely be rolls involved (unless you are playing Lords of Gossamer and Shadow that was released yesterday!) and the tension for the player comes from the random roll, will I succeed? If there is little investment in this though what is the point and many games these days are suggesting that if there is no real consequence, just let the player succeed. This is why combat is so popular in role playing games because if you fail it is possible, sometimes even likely, that you will pay the ultimate consequence.

There are a number of situations other than combat that offer consequences that are important and significant. Imagine if the fight with HR actually had a separate context such as the HR officer was actually stealing from the company and you were trying to weed that information out of them. The consequences are larger in this circumstance and more dynamic, but it is still not as dynamic as having a dragon snake out its long scaly neck and attempt to bite you in half as you use a pillar for cover. The consequence is obviously a much more important thing here and make it a much more exciting scene.

Are role playing games far too focused on combat though? Running a game you probably have combat rules for an individual with a weapon, some have magic battles laid out separately, you may have rules for chariots and mounted combat, rules for fist fights, naval battles and so on. I watched a video blog once by Shawn Driscoll on Traveller and he boiled it down to a basic statement. Combat really boils down to a single roll, be it a skill roll in some games or an ability roll in some others, so why do we go through all the complicated rules? I agree with Shawn’s point of view but there needs to be some provisos put into that statement.

Traveller has an abstract and deadly combat system. Combat erupts and there is likely going to be a death. The system prepares players for this by even introducing the possibility of death into character generation itself! In other games though players are not as used to losing a character every second game. These combat rules are there so that the players can work things to their favour as they are invested in the characters that they build and invest themselves with. An example of this is things like cover and spells such as blur and displacement or the grappling rules.

As Shawn pointed out though, it really does boil down to a single moment of conflict resolution. Try to simplify this as much as you can as a GM. One thing that I do enjoy doing with new games is looking at the combat rules and playing the “will I use it?” game. Look through the rules and decide what is going to complicate your game and also cause you to have to go for a rule book every time that the situation comes up. Once you have your list do one of two things with the rule, either chuck it or alter it.

Chucking it is exactly as it sounds. We think that the rule is either going to be needed so rarely and is too complex to use or it is just too confusing to use so we put it on a list of rules that aren’t used and communicate this to the players. When a group sits at a table they expect to get some gaming done and very few people enjoy dead time where you are all sitting around while people investigate rules. It needs to be clearly communicated though so the rules lawyers of the groups know up front that they cannot expect to use that rule for justification in a game.

For the alter rules you need to find a happy medium that you can live with. House rule the material. By saying you want to alter the rule you are saying that the situation the rule refers to is valuable and needs consideration. The actual rules may be a little too complex or convoluted for the game though so work out how you want to approach that and create a rule that you and the players at your table can understand. These house rules should be recorded in a place that is easily accessible such as an online Campaign collator or in a book that the GM brings to the game each time. If these are the rules that you play to then they should be as accessible as the core books that you use for the games.

Once this material is all nailed down then you should abide by these rules and also remember that combat is just a skill roll or an ability roll. Honestly, you could run a combat with one roll, but most systems tend to try to branch it out into a number of rounds. In general though, the person with the better skill or ability will win a conflict. Clever play can alter these results of course.

Combat does tend to be the most intense form of conflict resolution and you will rarely find a group of players so attentive as when the beholder starts shooting off its eye rays because of the mortality of their character. The idea that their 9th level character that they had played all this time could be killed because of a bad roll or result really makes them wake to the circumstances. Close shaves stick in the memory like caramel to a wooden spoon.

Remember that there are other types of conflict and a game needs to be more than just fight after fight. Social and magical conflict is important in games as can be investigations and subtle maneuverings. Players will tire of well balanced fight one after another and want more from their game. It is a great way to get their attention but not an excellent way of keeping it. I will look at other types of conflict in my post next week to see how they can be used to make your game a complete story guaranteed to keep every type of player interested.

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.

The Thing I Hate About Pathfinder

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pathfinder_core_coverSo, hopefully we are going to start a discussion here that I have been wanting to have for some time. I think this is an important discussion to have and I most certainly want to hear your point of view on it. I want to discuss the one thing that I dislike the most about Pathfinder and it is not even Pathfinders fault, it is a legacy of third edition D&D.

I dislike complex rules systems and Pathfinder is really not all that difficult except in one aspect. Feats. I hate feats. I hate them as a GM and don’t mind them as a player which is a bit of a paradox. I GM far more than act as a player. If people ask me what I do not like about Pathfinder I will unerringly mention feats. These things have been a core of the rules since Wizards of the Coast created their first version of D&D and interestingly enough Wizards of the Coast in their D&D Next material have begun to pull away from them as well. Is it possible that the company that created this curse is as annoyed at them as I am?

Why do I hate them? It is down to one thing and that is rules bloat. Every single feat is a little gem of rule changing evil, or new rules or rules twists. And there are thousands of them depending on how many books you have. They are little packets of moderately powered rules changes. Consider that from the GM’s perspective who works to be an arbiter of the rules. The d20 based rules of Pathfinder are pretty easy to come to terms with but then when you look at feats you have to rethink everything you know because for nearly every rule they mention there is at least one feat that modifies it. Apply several of these to a character or creature and you really have a complex series of interactions occurring that you need to juggle in game which can be quite a hard job.

I understand the rationale behind feats though, which means I am torn. Feats were introduced so a character could apply some individualization. Prior to this (2nd edition D&D), if you played a fighter, a fifth level fighter had all the same abilities as any other fifth level fighter. The differences between characters largely came through experiences and favored equipment. TSR realised that with newer style games coming out focussed on character customization that they were beginning to lose players. They worked on their books that introduced more combat options and also started working on certain builds that mixed up the character creation process. I actually think it was this explosion of customizable material that led to a lot of rules bloat and confusion to 2nd edition and it also caused a lot of players to leave the system.

Feats were born in third edition so the customization was built into the core rules from the very start. When I first played 3rd edition I liked the concept and enjoyed the differences they could create in a character. Of course I did not know then, when I held that Players Handbook 3.0 that feats would bloat horribly. To customize anything the company would add more feats, the third party contributors would add more feats and in the end feats became a swamp that I found myself being sucked into. Overwhelmed I could not get out. So between feats and attacks of opportunity I left my 3rd edition D&D behind.

So, there you have it. I do think feats overcomplicate Pathfinder, but what can you do? As a player I like feats because each one gives me that little bit extra for the character but as a GM they are too much. Especially when players take feats but take no responsibility in keeping them in mind either and a round after an action they try to retrospectively change it because they forgot X feat did Y. Then every NPC has reams of feats, monsters have them too as well as their normal abilities and I find the times I have to pause in game to check a rule always tends to be to look up the rules of a feat.

What do you think? Am I making a mountain out of a bullette burrow? Is there something that you hate more? Let us talk about the things we hate the most about Pathfinder and see if we can come up with some solutions to these problems! Until next time, keep rolling.

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.

It’s a Trap!

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Grimtooth's TrapsGrimtooth’s used to invoke fears in players. I don’t know if it does anymore. A copy of Grimtooth’s Traps needed to just be seen in a pile of books the DM might be using or over on a counter with a book mark or sticking out. The very idea the DM might be using the book and the deadly contraptions inside was usually enough to keep players overly cautious and paranoid. Perhaps in the history of gaming only Tomb of Horrors can invoke such a response from the players.

Grimtooth eventually became a series of seven books. Six were generic to fit into any system. The last one they made recycles some of the classics for the d20 system. I only have the first three books and considering how little they ever got used I doubt I would buy the others if given the chance. The books are fun reads to think of the ridiculous deadly nature of the overly complex traps. Most of them though are just there to kill the PCs without giving them a fair chance to do anything about it. I understand their use and the reason they exist. Most traps are pretty lame and barely a challenge. The games made it too easy for them to detect and avoid. Even if one sets them off they rarely do anything more than a few points of damage. But Grimtooth takes it too far. They make it so the traps are near impossible to find and disable and are so complex that it is impossible to predict what setting off the trap will do. Others need to be described in a specific way to confuse the players as if they were described normally it would reveal what the trap is. Going back through the books I am surprised to see how many traps were designed by Michael Stackpole.

The biggest improvement Grimtooth’s and other trap books can use is more pictures and possibly even including some player handouts. Many of the rooms, corridors, and other devices are just described with text and do not always make the most sense. These are complex devices and sometimes having multiple moving parts. A picture really can help one understand how all the pieces fit together and work to make mincemeat of most of the player characters.

Grimtooth’s Traps might be the most famous and most deadly, but it is not the only collection of traps and tricks. Fantasy Flight Games produced Traps and Treachery 1 and 2 in the d20 era. These hardbound books are filled with traps and deadly mechanisms but has the benefit of improved writing and layout. They are much easier books to read and I like how they are organized. There is a wider variety within the books as they have some game mechanics and character options in them. The first book really concentrates on the Rogue and giving them options as well as traps. It has information on thieves’ guilds, though Canting Crew and Den of Thieves are much better books on those guilds. Traps and Treachery also have puzzles in them that are pretty well done. I find I get more use out of the puzzles as they can be more difficult to create on one’s own.

Traps and Treachery suffers from some of the same problems as Grimtooth’s does. It doesn’t have enough pictures, though the descriptions are better. Some of the rules are not well done but at least there is something to use as a baseline. The books are more usable because of their versatility in including other things besides just traps.

Book of ChallengesThe most useful book of this type for me was put out by Wizards of the Coast in 2002. The Book of Challenges is an overlooked book that does not just present traps and puzzles but it combines them into encounters. As a DM this is the great as they are rooms or places easily inserted into a dungeon or building. It has monsters as well as traps and puzzles and many times they are combined to really take advantage of something more complex. There are also almost thirty sidebars of DMing advice that is well thought out and useful. The encounters are organized by encounter level with something for each encounter level one through twenty and with one that is encounter level 22. I’m not sure the higher end ones are really as challenging as they should be but they are still good for mid to higher level groups. Of course if one is using this with Pathfinder or 3e D&D one must take into account that sheer amount of new options that were not available when this was written. The power level of say a fifth level character has risen noticeably within the game in the past ten years.

This of course does not cover all the books on traps that have been published. Goodman Games has an interesting one called Lethal Legacies: Traps of the World Before. What is great about that book is there is background information that gives reasons for the traps presented in the books and so it also has adventure hooks and mystery. So what are your favorite books on traps and puzzles? Do you find them easy to use or a waste of paper? Does Grimtooth’s Traps still hold its power to scare players?

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.

Reflections of a Non Player Character

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Lords of Gossamer & Shadow CoverOf recent times I have been spending a good deal of my blogging time creating non player character (NPC) profiles for the Lords of Gossamer and Shadow RPG over on my blog. Due to this I have had a lot of comments from people regarding the way I make these NPC’s from the rules and how I have applied them right through to the themes I have used to create them. One comment in particular caught my eye this weekend and got me to thinking a little more in depth about the process I use to create all NPC’s in all of the games I run.

The comment was made to the FATE Core community on Google Plus and mentioned as an aside that the work I had been doing on my NPC’s had highlighted the importance of gear, magic items, allies and all surrounding material as a reflection on the NPC itself. This obviously was not a new concept to me as it is true, I was making the items, creatures, domains etc. all be reflective of the NPC as a whole. This is an important concept when building an NPC. If you want the players to accurately demise the archetype of the character, you use all of the character, not just their personality to reflect this. If I am after a big bruiser barbarian in Pathfinder I am unlikely to dress him in ceremonial robes of a peace god and arm him with a rapier. It is more likely that he will appear in the hide armor of a T-Rex (that he killed) and wield a massive two handed vorpal battle axe or something similar that evokes the reaction of the big bruiser barbarian with the players.

It sounds simple enough. Some might even say it is really a no-brainer that you use this method to create flavor and evoke feelings from players. But it is not in actuality all that easy when you are working with a complex system such as Pathfinder for example. The reason this becomes a much more complex problem is based on the complexity of the system. Let me take the big bruiser barbarian from above and explore the idea a little further.

Let us suggest our players are around 7th level and the big bruiser barbarian (henceforth known as Bob) is going to be their nemesis from say their current level through to around about when they are level 12. Bob is the mid-range foe in an adventure of Cthulhu worshippers the players are trying to shut down. If we take that description and think about our mate Bob for a moment I would suggest that we put him at 13th or 14th level as a Barbarian class, or CR 12 to 13 for GM speakers. From a simple building of the class perspective we find this is going to involve 3 ability score increases (easy – Strength or Con depending on starting stats), 8 feats (8 because Bob is a human. All the best monsters are human. This is a tricky one though because feats are very complex) and 6 rage powers (also not a simple solution based on the number of powers available).

pathfinder_core_coverWe are really just dealing with the core build of the character here and we are already frowning and reaching for multiple rulebooks. Stats are an easy decision because any good Barbarian needs to be hale and healthy as well as capable of lifting a small moon should the need arise. But then we move on to feats and the complexity involved in those decisions can be a bit overwhelming. If you look at the core books alone (Core Rulebook, Advanced Players Guide, Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Campaign, Advanced Race Guide, Mythic Adventures, Inner Sea World Guide) you can easily be overwhelmed by the number and complexity of Feat choices that you need to make. Of course as a fighter class we would expect to see Improved Initiative and Toughness as well as some weapon specific things like Weapon Focus, Improved Weapon Critical etc. but really there are thousands of options here and even more combinations that could be used so it really is up to personal knowledge and choice here.

Once we are past that we are then faced with a similar customization problem with barbarian rage powers. You could take an archetype suggestion and build Bob from that perspective or do you try to customize him yourself. Certainly there are far less options than feats in this regard but getting the right balance can be a difficult thing entirely. The good news is that once we are at this point we have a naked Bob with all of his personal functions dealt with. This is Bob when he wakes up of a morning and Bob when he goes to bed at night. But we need to look at the external things to Bob and how they reflect Bob to the external world.

What I am speaking about specifically is Bob’s equipment, allies, pets, magical items etc. This is what anyone wandering down the street who runs into Bob has to look at and reflect on to decide how they view Bob. Although most of the material that we have covered is how good Bob is, this is the stuff that we can flavor Bob with for the true purpose of role playing him in our adventures. We want the players to fear Bob (rightfully so when they first encounter him) and have him a recurring threat to the players for a good portion of the campaign.

But of course we are back to the same problem here as we were with feats. There is soooo much to choose from. If we want normal equipment we have the Ultimate Equipment guide, if it is magical then we are staring again at multiple (at least 4) books for the information. But each piece that we add to the character builds him up. A GM with a photographic memory will do this very well as they will remember the precise items they need but this search can take a long time for those of us that start to read magic items one at a time to get the right match.

From the above six paragraphs I have given you a basic understanding of the complexity that can come of making a simple NPC for a game. The larger the ruleset the more likely you are to find the complexity shoots through the roof. I actually intend to do a series of Pathfinder NPC’s for my blog in the near future and I already know that I will be spending a lot more time on them because of the complexity of the system. Believe me, complexity of a system does not necessarily mean that you will end up with better NPC’s overall either. The NPC’s that I have worked up for the Lords of Gossamer and Shadow have such a small rule base to choose from but the rules are really aimed at storytelling conventions and thus each is very different from one another, even those that have a similar focus.

brigandineSo back to how we make our NPC reflective of what we want. The very first thing is have the concept. We have Bob the big barbarian bruiser and we want players to be fearful of him. Why are they afraid of him? Is it because he is deadly, or just intimidating? I want to go with an intimidation style for him so I think about how that looks. T-Rex armor mentioned before would be cool, but what is cooler and scarier looking is a suit of magical bone armor! Perhaps the bones of a T-Rex instead. His weapon needs to be large and differentiate him. When I want a weapon that stands out I normally choose a flail, and in this case I think that is what I will do. A big double headed flail with spiked heads that has some kind of magical enchantment. I would like an amulet of bone or something similar, but he already has the bone armor, so perhaps we work on a magical amulet (probably natural armor or something similar) fashioned from the shriveled T-Rex’s heart? Take the above three items and apply them to a mental image right now. He is an intimidating guy. Now, just for flavor add the crisscrossing of many scars to his exposed body and a scar that starts at his right brow and marks its way all the way down to his left cheekbone. Nice.

By considering the character first and what you want to achieve you can peel away some of the complexity. Make the weapons and armor be custom magic items and you can build them how you want. Decide what you want in a magical item (such as the amulet) and then backwards fashion it. An amulet of natural armor is normally made from bone or beast scales. I don’t care, lets make it a T-Rex heart, it is all good!

Regular equipment is normally not that flavorable. Of course you can make it a little more intense with description but this tends to delude the player into thinking things are magical (if it has a description it is magical to a player) so it is best not to be too descriptive of other material. But then consider if they ride a dragon (Bob doesn’t but wouldn’t it be cool if he did!) or have a troll hound as a pet. What about his generals that surround him? What are they like? Are they strong and confident or sniveling and scared? All of these factors build up an impression for the players.

The next thing to do is to plan how the players come across Bob. It is much better to layer an NPC onto the players. The first time they meet Bob have him making off with a magical treasure they were sent to collect. He is by himself and he fights and defeats them making off with the treasure. Then the players do some surveillance and to their surprise they find him at the heart of the enemy camp, seemingly surrounded by sniveling lieutenants, suggesting he may be of importance.

This layering of the NPC builds the tension and the sweet success the players will feel as they finally defeat him after a string of interrelated adventures. You use other NPC’s and the NPC’s gear to be reflective of the character as a whole. That way they do not necessarily need to talk to Bob to realize he is the big bruiser barbarian. Of course it is nice to work against archetype once in a while (e.g. Bob actually sympathizes with the players and becomes an ally in the long run) but these twists should be used rarely or otherwise the players will always expect the unexpected from your NPC’s and rightfully so.

Crafting an NPC is an important role and I hope the points above help you to consider a few things you may not have in the past. Simply getting the class and stats right is only one half of the job, if that. Players will judge based on how the NPC looks and how they act. They rarely know that Bob has Strength 22 but they do know he just cleaved that Hobgoblin right in two with one hit. Consider your NPC’s from every angle and make sure they accurately fit the bill that you need for your game on game night. Keep rolling!

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.

Stonehell: Base of Operations

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Late in October I asked for some megadungeon advice. I’ve dabbled in Barrowmaze and had Stonehell on order when I made that post. I have not read all the way through Stonehell just yet, but from what I have read so far I think it would work quite well for a megadungeon campaign. There is enough going on to keep things interesting and for the GM to play off of.

Now I am down to trying to decide which ruleset to use. I am a big fan of Swords & Wizardry. But if I get this off the ground – this campaign is supposed to be a short term winter time campaign and I am looking for the path of least resistance – which means maybe I should run it in Labyrinth Lord to avoid any conversion whatsoever. I want the time I spend on the campaign to be building threads of intrigue – not conversion, regardless of how easy it is to convert between OSR systems.

Comments are welcomed on the S&W versus LL decision that needs made.

As I write this the first snow of the season is about to be upon Ohio. If I am going to get this winter campaign going I need to get moving! The first thing I needed was a large town to be the base of operations. Feeling a little guilty for running a published adventure instead of writing my own, I attempt to remedy that by creating my own town for the characters to work out of.

I had a rough idea of what I wanted and drew up a map. With map in hand I did a short write-up on the town. I like to have just enough framework that I understand the town, establishment, NPC, etc that I can run with it on the fly. So the write-up briefly touches on the town’s history, what makes it thrive today, and establish a general feel of the place. By putting these thoughts down I am much better prepared to handle things on the fly during a game session.

I present you the Town of Thassel!

Thassel

Town of Thassel

Thassel, a large town, sits south of the Ironcrag mountain range along the Silver River. Thassel’s population numbers around 5,000 residents, though the number fluctuates based on the mining season.

Thassel has existed along the river for centuries. With the downfall of a great kingdom centuries past it struggled as a small mountain town for decade after decade. Ten years ago rich mineral deposits were found in the Ironcrag mountains bringing an influx of people to the town.

Damaged buildings and city walls were repaired as the town was shortly returned to a time of prosperity. The flow of mining revenues and associated services soon had the town bustling with activity as merchants sold their wares and mining companies established bases of operations for their activities in the mountains to the north.

The Mining Companies

Within two years two predominant mining companies had solid footholds for their business in Thassel. Ravenflight Mining maintains the majority of their holdings in an area of mountains northwest of the city. Rusted Hammer Mining maintains their stakes in a northeastern portion of the range.

Ravenflight Mining was one of the early companies to establish claims when richer deposits of silver and iron were discovered. They organized quickly and staked out several mining areas in the easier to reach slopes and canyons of the mountains. Using these as their basis they expanded into harder to reach portions of the mountain range. They protected their claims vigorously, and are not beyond using physical intimidation to keep other miners – both organized and independent away.

Rusted Hammer Mining formed out of a trio of independent mining groups struggling to work their claims as Ravenflight Mining grew in size. With mines northeast of town in the Ironcrags transport of the mined ores was problematic. These three banded together with the idea of combining resources and floating their excavated product doe the Silver River. Met with skepticism the newly formed Rusted Hammer Mining company did just that. Soon the river was busy with their boats working their way up and downstream. So successful were they in this means of moving the ores out of the mountains by water they quickly rose to be the other prominent mining company in town.

While Ravenflight Mining and Rusted Hammer Mining are competitors, the Ironcrag Mountains offer enough ore rich deposits to keep the rivalry between the two from escalating too violently. Both honor each others claims for the most part and save for an occasional brawl breaking out in a tavern between intoxicated workers the relations are peaceable enough.

Government

Thassel is governed by a council of five members. Ravenflight Mining and Rusted Hammer Mining each have a representative on the council. A third spot is held by a merchant guild who oversees many of the market booths. The fourth position on the council is held by one wealth, selected during an annual banquet in the government district of Thassel. The fifth and final position is held by a person selected by the popular community, also during an open meeting once a year. Many suspect the fifth position is simply a facade and pre-selected by the other four council members prior to any open meeting.

Despite a bias towards the mining industry and commerce in general, the council has served the town of Thassel well. The mining companies have kept a steady influx of residents employed and the monies earned typically flow back through town. Thassel is in better shape than just a decade ago and continues to thrive as long as the ores in the Ironcrags continues to be mined in a profitable quantity.

The council maintains a city watch, supplemented by volunteers. At least some loose sense of rule and law is maintained in the town. While tavern fights spilling into the street may go unpunished, murders and anything above petty theft is bound to be met with some form of punishment meted out. Activities that interfere with either mining operation are apt to be dealt with more heavy handedly.

Thassel and Stonehell

Thassel was once a city-state within a kingdom of authoritarian rule over a century ago. The kingdom fell, its people liberated from their ruthless and often sadistic potentate. Thassel struggled in the time that went by, finally beginning rebuilding as ores were found in the Ironcrags north of the town.

As Thassel began to flourish again, the tales of Stonehell, now a crumbling prison, began to spread amongst the townspeople. Stories of the horrors that occurred there over a century ago and the rumored atrocities that still occur at the hands of a myriad of occupants.

The stories of Stonehell spread and with them came an influx of adventurers and risk takers. Many seeking riches, some seeking fame. Some adventurers never return from the prison, some return changed, and others come back through buying drinks for any at their tavern of choice.

Stonehell resides a six hour journey from the town of Thassel, a spur of a worn path turning from the main mining camp route to the west and heading north into the narrow canyons of the Ironcrags.

Bandits are said to live in the forest at the base of the mountains, the same ones that prey on payroll caravans to the mining camps in the mountains. When the problem becomes too bad the Thassel council and mining companies out up an amount of gold and sellswords head that way to deal with the problem. Sometimes they chase the bandits from their hideouts, sometimes the bandits turn the posses back. Other times Stonehell itself claims another set of victims.

Whisper & Venom Map Arrival

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On Saturday this past weekend the postman brought my poster-sized map from the Whisper & Venom Kickstarter over the summer. Checking the Kickstarter updates it seemed my penchant for skimming such things was my downfall as it was clearly announced they were beginning fulfillment for the poster maps!

I love maps, but typically I don’t go in for large maps as they just end up rolled or folded up rarely seeing the light of day. I made an exception this time because of course, Alyssa Faden! Her maps are awesome. More like art  than maps! Second, with Whisper & Venom being more of a boutique product (and knowing Zach’s attention to detail), I thought this map would be either a great candidate for hanging at work or the den once I get that sorted out. I was not disappointed.

So whether a fan of Whisper & Vendom or Alyssa Faden, here are some pictures of the map.

World’s Largest Dungeon

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World's Largest Dungeon CoverIn 2004 AEG came out with the World’s Largest Dungeon. It is an interesting idea and with a $100 price tag really got the attention of gamers as being expensive. But  a lot of people were curious about what it was. It is not a book one could just flip through the pages as it came shrink wrapped because it came with free standing maps that needed to be attached to the book somehow.

It was met with a wide range of opinions and eventually a small selection of players started posting they made it through the behemoth dungeon. I was not originally interested in the book until I found it for about $30 at Origins. I read through it and while it had some interesting encounters it was also a huge single level dungeon with not a lot of promise. There is a backstory and different sections of the dungeon can be expanded on to make it a more cohesive story. That’s what I did and I ran it all the way through. It was fun, there was work involved to make it better, and I’m pleased to say I have no need to do that ever again. There will be some spoilers to follow so be aware of that though I don’t see as many people wanting to use this these days.

It was never my intention to run this. It wasn’t the first huge RPG book I bought with no intention of using and it most certainly was not the last. A friend saw it and expressed interest and I came up with some ground rules for running it knowing player and DM burn out for something like this would be high.

The dungeon was originally a prison. Characters that go in will find it very difficult to get out. I wanted my players to know that before we started. Teleportation and other magics do not work there and again I made sure the players knew this so there were no characters that were going to get overly screwed over by the new found rules.

Some players and DMs will not like restrictions and feel it is cheating. In my view the game breaks down so easily with high level magic that restricting them is one of the best ways to keep the game fun and manageable. The dungeon is ridiculously huge and while mapping it out and getting lost is very much part of the experience I eliminated it. I did not want to spend sessions with the PCs lost walking around trying to find something of interest. I gave them the maps. There was no in game explanation for it. I also told them the dungeon is basically sixteen different sections and we will only handle one section at a time. If they left a section that would be the end of that night’s adventure as I wanted to prep each section when they came to it. It allowed me to connect the different sections better than the module does and to include better NPCs and not make everything a combat encounter. The best rule we did though was not start at first level.

Not a lot of the backstory is explained to the PCs so as usual I came up with a way to make them more aware of what was going. As they enter there are hints of guardians and deities, so I expanded on that and made sure the backstory fit in with most of the goings on in the different sections. Section A is mostly empty and has some other beings like kobolds and goblins that have found their way into the Dungeon and cannot get out. They are warring with each other. The most awesome thing about the campaign happened when the players decided to broker a peace between the groups and unite them as allies. All of a sudden this was not just an exploration module, but a rescue mission in which the PCs stuck to and made friends and kept alive as many different people and monsters as they could that were willing to work together. The PCs had created for themselves a basecamp and support team. It allowed me to develop some more NPCs and since they were introduced so early we had NPCs that lasted the entire campaign.

The different sections of the dungeon do have different themes. One goal of the writers was to use each monster in the monster manual that was part of the Open Game License and they succeeded in that. There is one area that is a large garden so many of the plant and fey creatures are found there. One is the headquarters for the celestial guardians that stayed to operate the prison. One that is neat as they used the creatures drawn from Greek Mythology and placed them in a section together. They mostly stayed with good challenge ratings to make sure that different sections had a level recommendation for them. It worked and made the different areas easier for me as DM to polish them up and use their themes to make the adventure shine.

In the end it is a mammoth of a book that took some work and some ground rules for us to enjoy it. I don’t think we would have gotten beyond the first section if we tried to run it as they have it presented. AEG also made a book called the World’s Largest City which I found also deeply discounted and it lies in a box or on a shelf somewhere still in the shrink wrap.

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.