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.

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.

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.

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!

Brainsqualling Techniques

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Iron Tavern Guest Blogger

Photo by Leszek.Leszczynski @ Flickr

Brainstorming. The term is thrown around enough these days you’d think it would solve all your problems while cleaning your house and cooking you a gourmet five-course meal. It can be done alone or in groups and be quite effective. But it boils down to thinking, talking things out, or doodling on paper or on the computer to come up with or flesh out ideas.

That said, instead of “storm,” I prefer the word “squall.” Storms can last hours or days and may affect larger areas. Squalls pop up quickly, affect a smaller area, blow things around, shake things loose, and rattle the walls… then they’re gone just as fast. That’s more what brainstorming is to me.

So let’s call it “brain-squalling” for now, shall we? And yes, I am getting to a point.

How do you come up with ideas for your adventures or campaigns? Inspiration? A muse? Alien transmissions? And what happens when those sources dry up and you are generating material for the next session? Does the world suddenly stop? Probably not. There’s always another session to plan for!

What I want to cover here is three different techniques I use to rattle things loose in my brain pan when I get stuck… Mind maps, lists, and talking to myself. Hopefully they’ll help you generate ideas as well.

Let’s start with mind maps. In case you’ve never heard of a mind map, here’s a good description. Basically it boils down to using a bit of a graphical approach to draw on both sides of the brain, combining art (circles and lines, so don’t panic) and words (or phrases) and discovering relationships between them.

It’s really easy to get started. Get a piece of paper. Write down a word (let’s start with “dungeon” here) and draw a circle around it. Think of the first thing that comes to mind about a dungeon and write that down somewhere close to “dungeon” and draw a circle around it. Then draw a line between “dungeon” and your second term. If more words come up for “dungeon”, add them and circle them. If a word comes up for one of the secondary terms, write it down and connect the two via a line. Eventually you’ll end up with prickly beasts of words surrounded by circles and connected to other circles. Each connection denotes a relationship of some sort. And before long you might have your idea for a dungeon or a session or a whole campaign.

Here’s a sample mind map I came up with for a dungeon (using FreeMind – a free mind map tool)…

Next up… Lists. They’re everywhere. Whether it’s a list of names, items, or words; or a list of questions to get you thinking about a topic from another direction – sometimes we just need that spark to get us going. Do a quick search on the Internet for “world builder questions” and you’ll come up with a half dozen lists right away including the exhaustive Patricia C. Wrede Worldbuilder Questions or 13 Worldbuilding Questions from Veronica Sicoe (a little more recent), you should get somewhere quickly by coming up with answers for yourself. If you’d rather look at some of the awesome products from Lee’s Lists at DriveThruRPG and other folks – everything from prophecies to monsters, names, artifacts, food, and more.

And there’s always the classic list – Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How? If you’re designing a dungeon, here are a few questions you might ask yourself:

Where is it? Above-ground, below-ground, mixed?
What’s it made of? Stone? Brick? Wood?
Who built it? Miners? Slaves? Contractors? Priests?
Why was it built? Honor the dead? Hide treasure? Secret lair?
When was it built? Is it ancient? New?
How was it built? By hand? Magic? Alien technology?

Lastly, I’ve had great results just talking to myself out loud. There’s something about how the brain processes spoken language vs. how it processes written language that gets entire chunks of the brain in gear that don’t always fire when you’re just reading and writing. I don’t recommend doing it in a crowded place or you may get a few funny looks from your unintended audience, but if you have a few minutes of alone time in a place where you can talk openly it’s made a difference for me.

Use some of the different techniques together… Why not mind map the answers to some of the questions that you’ve asked yourself out loud? Looking at a single problem from multiple angles sometimes reveals interesting creative tidbits.

Hopefully you’ll find one or more of these techniques useful. And if you do use them, let us know how it went!

Encounter Environment

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Jeffrey Tadlock

How big of an impact does environment play in your games? I frequently think of it in hindsight or halfway through a battle when it seems a little late to suddenly introduce a potential hindrance. When it comes to dungeon delving the environment can be such a huge factor, yet I often forget to enforce the environmental surroundings.

The Rat Warren

In a Dungeon Crawl Classics session I ran earlier this week the environment turned a battle with giant rats into a very deadly affair. Deadly to the point that a 3rd level wizard lost his life to the rats in their warren. None of the rats encountered were anything spectacular. Averaging around 4hp and doing 1d4-ish damage and a relatively low disease save. Their AC sat around a 13.

What made the rats a challenge was the terrain. The rats were defending their warren, a network of small tunnels, only 3’ high in most places and several squeeze points that required Agility checks to squeeze through. This led to characters being able to only get people into the tunnels in single file. Sometimes they would get stuck, while the rats could squeeze right through. Once a place was stuck they could spend the next round trying to work themselves free, but it took a full round to do so. The rats would relentlessly attack.

In this case the characters tried to be smart and clear out the rat tunnels with a choking cloud. But as fate would have it, the spell failed and was lost. Figuring it was only a few rats they headed in (they needed a key the rats made off with). Soon the wizard was two squeeze points in and stuck. A rat came up behind the wizard and began attacking. Between a combination of poor rolling by him and good rolling by me, his character was dead. The party worked quickly to save him, but the healer was on the other side of the squeeze point. The groans were audible by the players while they tried to figure out whether to risk an agility check by the healer or try to get the body to the narrow opening for the healer to reach through.

The environment made this encounter with a handful of giant rats much more challenging than if it had occurred in an open cavern or tunnels of normal size. Granted it was a series of bad rolls that ultimately led to the wizard’s death, but the terrain made the encounter memorable.

Other Environmental Challenges

The above was just one example of how the environment really helped make an encounter exciting and more than just “I walk up to the rat and attack it.” I frequently neglect to take environmental conditions into account when running games. As the session earlier this week proved, I need to get better at enforcing enough of the environmental challenges to spice up encounters.

For example, light sources are huge in underground romps. In many games certain character classes lose the advantage of even having darkvision or infravision if the GM forgets to apply the disadvantages from the lack of light. Many times it comes up as an afterthought, “okay, who has the torch?”. A character answers they had the torch, even though they were just firing a bow one round ago making holding the torch difficult. Torches and lanterns might help shape what weapons are carried or even closer attention to who is where during exploration.

Terrain height or terrain difficulty can have a big impact on encounters. Maybe the cave floor is slippery or full of rocks and boulders. Movement is slowed. Perhaps the encounter here has the enemies on ledges with greater mobility as the party tries to pick their way through. If the GM forgets about terrain the group is in it becomes a completely different encounter as the PCs move effortlessly across the cavern floor – instead of picking their way across while avoiding the arrows of their enemy.

Remember the Environment

There does come a point where getting too lost in the minutia can slow things down, but forgetting it altogether changes a major component of the game. I need to work on finding the in-between to help make dungeon crawls I run a little more exciting. Playing up the environment effects can really help bring a dungeon or cave to life. It can make what are normally typical encounters into something memorable.

The next time you run an encounter, highlight some of the terrain and environment features that might give it a distinct feel. Play those up during the combat. Watch your players and listen to them. Does it build up the excitement? Does it get them thinking of how to work in those confines? If so, you will have seen how remembering the encounter environment makes for a more exciting encounter!

Tales from the Sunken City

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Jeffrey Tadlock

I have been running a Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG campaign online via Google+ Hangouts and Roll20. The game has been going since the first of August and we typically play for 2 to 2.5 hours on Tuesday nights. We have had a couple of canceled sessions due to crazy lives, but have had a pretty stable campaign overall.

I started the campaign with The Perils of the Sunken City from Purple Sorcerer Games, a 3^rd party publisher for the DCC RPG system. Several of my players were familiar with the Goodman Games modules already out which was a factor in choosing to start with the Purple Sorcerer Games products.

I liked the initial setting because it included a decent sized, but financially poor city and a large area of swamps to the South of the city. The swamps were vast portions of the city reclaimed over the centuries as the city was forcefully migrated northward by nature. The setting also includes a “sending stone” which acts like a randomly teleporting stone. Prospective adventurers place their hands on the stone and they are transported to some location. I thought this would allow me to use a myriad of modules that might not otherwise link together well.

Essentially, the modules offered a starting point with enough detail to hit the ground running, but enough white space for me to shape it into anything the players or I wanted.

The first module went quite well with some overland exploration in the swamp followed by a rather lethal dungeon for the ending of the adventure. The Perils of the Sunken City served quite well for a 0-level funnel and really helped shaped the character development of those that survived.

With the group surviving their first foray into the Sunken City they returned as heroes to the little settlement just outside the city walls proper. The group took about three months of in-game time to determine their path forward (i.e. class) and spend their hard fought gold. Two of the players also selected their patron from an entity featured at the end of the module. I ended up doing a complete patron write-up for that patron which both players have been using.

From here I wanted to run The Ooze Pits of Jonas Gralk for the group. It made use of the same sending stone for a start and further reinforced my base of the Great City and the Sunken City in the swamps to the south. I blended the storylines a bit and offered a possible option for controlling the sending stones instead of submitting to its randomness via an item that would be found at the end of The Ooze Pits of Jonas Gralk.

It took us six session (2 hours each) to play through The Ooze Pits of Jonas Gralk. I am sure other groups have played through this faster. I tend not to steer players too much, so I let their investigations go and handle things on they fly when they take actions outside what might be outlined in a module. If they want to chat with someone they encounter, I am always happy to carry on that conversation instead of brushing it aside. I think that is a good thing as long as it helps get them information they desire. But it does add time to play through the module. In fact, though we are pretty much done with the module as written, they have a few things they still want to wrap up.

Choosing to start with the Purple Sorcerer Games Sunken City line has proven to be a good start for us. I feel like we have a solid set of characters now, some backgrounds and themes starting to show through and the start of a campaign world to play in. With the use of sending stones it will also be relatively easy to work in other adventures from other publishers as well. There is a whole area of exploration behind how the sending stones came to be and are they really limited to just taking you to portions of the swamp?

For those interested I do keep an Adventure Log at the Obsidian Portal site I use for this campaign. While I don’t post detailed session reports here, I do try to keep the adventure log updated. Feel free to check it out. I caution you that you will run into spoilers for The Perils of the Sunken City and The Ooze Pits of Jonas Gralk over there as you read about our group’s adventures.

House Rules

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Jeffrey Tadlock

Early last week I posted a poll here at The Iron Tavern about reader’s usage of house rules. There were four options in the poll:

No house rules at all, rules are rules
Minimal house rules, more like table clarifications
Some house rules, change things that need changing
Lots of house rules, my house rule doc is more than 2 pages

Based on this poll, everyone house rules at least a little. No one chose the no house rules option. 31% chose the minimal house rules or the more like table clarifications. Table clarifications could be tweaks to starting gold, hit points gained during leveling and items like that. 54% went with some house rules stating that if something needs changing, then they would change it to work for their game. And the final 15% confessed to house rules breaking into multiple pages.

The poll question was sparked by my reading of the Castles and Crusades Castle Keepers Guide the weekend before. Right up front there is section that plainly states that if the rules are impeding your fun, amend it or change it, but do not let it impede your fun. This got me thinking about the amount of house rules I use and whether I bend to the rules or if I bend them to my game.

I have frequently run Pathfinder games in the recent years. Some of the games I have run are for my local group where I have lots of flexibility and other times I run Pathfinder Society games under the organized play umbrella. There really isn’t room for house rules under organized play, as one needs to provide the same experience from one GM to another. But my home game has no such restriction.

Even for my home game I fall into the minimal house rules category. The things I rule on are much more like table clarifications. Things like rolling hit points being if you don’t break half on the die roll, take half. Or possibly just a clarification of a frequently debated rule with how we interpret it for my campaigns. I really don’t dig inand house rule things very much. I could fit it on a half a page I bet.

I was the same way with D&D 3.x as well. I did not make a lot of changes to the rules. I pretty much played by the rules as written save for the minor table modifications.

After reading the Castles and Crusades rules I am feeling more of an urge to tinker, to really play with the rules and mold them for my group. That isn’t a slight towards the game, it is more like a feeling of liberation, like I’ve been given the blessing of modifying the rules.

Why is it I feel more able to modify with Castles and Crusades versus something like D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder? Even the Pathfinder Core rulebook mentions some flexibility with the rules, though more in the vein of making quick rulings when the interpretation of the rule is unclear. Castles and Crusades comes straight out and says change the rule if you don’t like it.

I think it is more than that as to why I feel more willing to modify or house rule something like Castles and Crusades. I think systems with more rules, while trying to help the GM judge decisions actually end up restricting the player’s freedoms. Everything they want to do is regulated by a feat, skill or some other mechanic instead of common sense. In the end while it can make things more black and white, I think it can be restricting.

With a more rules-light system there is a lot more room to tinker while still staying within the system. This tinkering can include adding in some house rules to keep things consistent between game sessions.

I think as I spend more time with Castles and Crusades and other rules light systems I will move from the ‘table clarifications’ response to my poll to the ‘change things that need changing’ portion of the poll.

So what do you think? Does the system you play have an affect on how much you house rule?

House Rules Poll

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Jeffrey Tadlock

I started reading some of the Castle Keepers Guide for Castles and Crusades this weekend. Right up front there is a one page section on not being bound by the rules. If the rules are impeding your fun, amend it, change it, but do not let a rule get in the way of your fun.

This got me thinking a bit and is the reason behind today’s poll. How many folks out there house rule their game? A little? A lot? Absolutely not? Does the type of system have an influence on whether you house rule your game or not?

Feel free to use the comment section to clarify your use of house rules. I am sure the poll won’t completely capture people’s use of house rules.

Here is the poll:

[polldaddy poll=6608181]

We’ll let the poll sit out there for a few days and then I will comment on the poll results and my thoughts on house rules.

Campaign Settings: Published vs. Homebrew

Posted on October 8, 2012 by Jeffrey Tadlock

Any GM getting set to start a campaign must make a choice up front whether to run a published campaign setting or a homebrew. This choice helps set the stage for the whole game.

Several factors can influence which option a GM or a group chooses. Sometimes the GM makes the choice for the group, considering time, familiarity with a published setting and interest in a published setting. Other times the group will come to a consensus, though I find this more the case of how interested the GM is in running a published campaign world and having players have some input on which one.

My Past Choices

Since I came back from my sabbatical from gaming many years ago, I have been running my games in published campaign settings. I originally came back with Forgotten Realms, dipping my toe in little used areas, like The Vast (yeah, go check your campaign maps, it really is a region). Then I moved on to regions like the Silver Marches for the region to start my games.

I had a brief stint of seriously considering converting my games to the world of Erde from Troll Lord Games. I never did end up running a game in that world, but I think the fact it was lesser used and more of an unknown to many people is what tempted me to try that campaign setting out.

After many years of Forgotten Realms games Golarion caught my eye from Paizo and I started to run games in Golarion. A large portion of that was due to adventure paths being set in the campaign world, so it was only natural not to re-write all of those bits.

Why did I choose published campaign settings when I picked up gaming again? I thought it would save me time. I wanted to run adventures, not design whole entire campaign settings. That was my prime motivating factor in choosing to run published settings.

Now I do like the settings I have chosen in the past. I am a Forgotten Realms fan and Golarion has proven equally fun to read and run as well. But essentially, I chose these settings because I thought it would save me time by laying the framework of the world as my canvas.

Reconsidering

Recently I have found myself reconsidering running games in a published setting. I am starting to question whether it actually saves me time or not. The biggest hassle of running campaigns in published settings for me is the constant nagging that a decision I make on the fly ends up contradicting something within the campaign setting. Getting a distance wrong, judging the next door kingdom’s attitude towards the one the characters are currently in, the name of a prominent Inn in a major city, and more. Frankly, it starts to feel like homework learning a new campaign setting well enough to run without constant contradictions. The prep just to learn the published setting starts to take away from the time I can prep for an actual adventure itself.

My New Choice

For my most recent campaign under the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG system, I chose to “homebrew” my campaign world. Rather than starting with a completely mapped out and detailed world, I took a module and used it to start my world. From there we will be growing out as needed, the lands become more known and the story growing from there.

If I need an organization as a plot hook, I make one up instead of researching it. I can often make one up with some rough notes faster than I can research published materials to find just the right one. If I need a Kingdom next door that is threatening to stop transportation of raw materials, I can again jot down a few notes and the Kingdom springs into existence.

Or maybe I do see a city map and description I like in a published setting’s guide. I am free to yank that for my own use and drop it into my world. I can use the building names alone, borrow NPCs, or if I need, ignore power structures that don’t blend with my world and remove them.

So far it has been a great decision. It feels much more liberating. Things I make up on the fly are jotted down in notes and the world grows outward from there. No worries of contradicting something or needing to reference a campaign guide.

For times I do need something more involved, I can borrow something from a published setting and drop it down into my world with much less concern of invalidating something that is canon in the campaign world.

Conclusion

For years I thought I was saving myself time by choosing a published campaign setting. Given what I have learned over the past couple of months I am not so sure anymore. I think the work to make things fit well into a published setting wasn’t really saving me as much time as I thought.

With that said, I still plan on reading various campaign settings and collecting the ones that interest me. There are a lot of good ideas out there and I would be foolish to ignore new settings all together.

What about you? Do you find published campaign settings a timesaver?

High Level Characters, Low Level Adventure

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Jeffrey Tadlock

My local group recently finished up Council of Thieves. I did not run the campaign, the other GM in my group has been running it. This past week we started in on Serpent’s Skull. That sounds typical of a lot of Pathfinder groups I am sure. Finish one Adventure Path and then move to the next. The difference in this case is that our GM let us bring our characters from Council of Thieves to the Serpent’s Skull campaign. 10^th level characters tackling a 1^st level adventure.

My local GM has a habit of trying unusual things with his games. Our first game with him many years ago had the 1^st level PCs finding a 150,000gp treasure hoard. Back in the 3.5 days he used to give us a feat every level. This time it is letting us carry over high level characters to a lower level adventure.

He has been planning this transition for several months, he mentioned it even towards the beginning of Council of Thieves. As the previous Adventure Path wrapped up he mentioned again that he was going to give us the option of carrying our characters over. Of the four of us, three chose to continue with their character. The three that chose to continue with their characters include a bard, rogue and inquisitor. The fourth had an urban ranger and did not feel he would fit in, so re-rolled an oracle. The fourth is entering the campaign at 1^st level.

I have a lot of faith in our GM to pull things off like this. We have a good group, we trust each other and so far our GM’s experiments have typically been successful. The other advantage he had going for him was the premise of the initial module of the AP involving a PC losing nearly all of their gear. He had a built-in way to separate us from all of our magical gear. Prior to the session he advised all of us to redo our character sheets without any of our gear except for one item of our choosing.

The GM had a hook to blend the APs together by taking an object we found amidst the Council of Thieves and needing to take it to the Mwangi Expanse to destroy it.

With the adventure underway the group found ourselves on an island minus a lot of our gear. Immediately we faced our first combat encounter with some crab-like scorpion things. The creatures obviously had their hit points boosted as it was taking several hits to kill them. They were still easy to hit, so the AC was the same. They were able to cause poison damage and that DC was left alone, though a combination of poor rolls still left 10^th level characters feeling the effects of the poison.

Afterwards the GM confirmed with me my suspicions. All he had done to the creatures to ratchet them up a little was increase their hit points. The lack of gear really reduced the power of the characters and a few bad rolls still made the creatures somewhat of a threat.

Survival on this island is another component of the initial Serpent’s Skull adventure. Even this has its moments of challenge. The survival rolls are pretty easy, but there are only two characters, one of which is an NPC, that have decent ranks in survival. There are still several logistics of survival on the island to figure out that require us to think as players regardless of level. So even with high level characters this element of the AP still retains its fun. Granted our party’s make-up has some influence on this as we lack a wizard or cleric.

We are only one session in, but so far the experiment seems a success. By stripping us of our gear and boosting the hit points of the creatures we face, the element of fun is still there. It has been an interesting blend of Adventure Paths and I look forward to seeing how the rest of it plays out.

15 Minute Work Day

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Jeffrey Tadlock

A frequent complaint one hears about D&D (and Pathfinder to a degree) is the 15 minute work day. The 15 minute work day is the potential for a party to want to rest after they use all of their big resources. This is often at the behest of the Wizard or Cleric of the party after they have used their more powerful spells.

This problem generally lines people up on two sides, both of which can be rather vocal about the issue. One side says this is a problem in nearly every D&D game they have played in and the other says they have never seen it in their games. These arguments usually fall between “it is a systemic problem it isn’t our fault” to “you are playing the game wrong, there is not a problem with the system”. This debate has been going on for a long time, occasionally resurfacing on various forums or twitter feeds.

Why bring it up today at The Iron Tavern? Conan. Conan and The People of the Black Circle actually.

Let me back up just a step though before I get into Conan and the 15 minute work day. I obviously have an opinion on the 15 minute work day, I think everyone does. I fall into the group of people that really has not seen the issue that often.

As a player our groups nearly always push onwards and our wizards tend to be conservative with their spells and manage their resources. That does not mean we adventure on until our resources are completely depleted, but we typically carry on for a good number of encounters before seeking out a place of rest. This has been the case for my local group, for the many organized play games I have participated in, a multitude of play-by-posts, and games I have played online in. Do the casters sometimes announce that they are running low on prepared spells? Yes. But the group as a whole typically pushed onwards.

From the GM perspective I have similar experiences. Players I GM for also tend to push onwards in adventures I run. Sometimes to the point where I actually think it might be best for them to rest up a bit before continuing. This experience is from many varied mediums as my play experience has been.

Given the number of different groups and situations I have a really hard time thinking this is a systemic problem as many like to state. To me a systemic problem would be widespread enough that I would have run into the problem in my playing of the game. I can see room for abuse by a 15 minute work day, but I don’t see it as being a systemic problem in the rules.

There has been one campaign where I found myself facing 15 minute work day scenarios. Kingmaker. The way the exploration portion of Kingmaker works the group will very often find themselves facing every fight at full resources. Now this is an example a systemic problem. As the Kingmaker Adventure Path is written, the PCs are only ever going to face one, two, maybe three encounters in a day during the exploration phases of the campaign.

Back to Conan. I recently started reading People of the Black Circle by Robert E. Howard. As I read that book a distinct thought tumbling around in the back of my mind was if GMs ran their games like that story, the 15 minute work day would never be an issue. The heroes (and even the enemy for that matter) have several moments during the story where they have no choice but to continue on regardless of the status of their resources or how depleted their forces were.

Conan and his companions cannot stop to wait or rest, even as they watch a good number of their forces perish. The girl must be rescued! To wait and recoup health, forces, or arrows is sure to meet with the untimely death or worse for the girl.

The defenders are heavy users of sorcery and at one point in the book are shown using various spells to defend themselves. As the battle unfolds Conan even remarks that they must have lost their capacity for magic as they further retreat. But those sorcerers cannot simply stop and rest! They have a fierce barbarian and his dwindling horde knocking at their doorstep!

Pacing as shown by example in People of the Black Circle is what GMs should strive to obtain. This puts the PCs in an exciting adventure with stakes that mean something to the characters. It paints that sense of urgency that will keep things moving forward and not a series of fight, sleep, fight, sleep and so on. The type of magic system simply will not matter, because it is irrelevant. The PCs must go on to be the heroes, to do otherwise simply ends in devastating failure.