Musings on Gaming #5 - Mind

Photo of a GM removing agency from a player, 2019 (colourised)

As I mentioned in the last post in this series, I had a couple of realisations that changed the way I look at GMing around 2008. One of them came from the Dragon Age RPG, which had a section on character motivations and goals.

Now I always knew that players had motivations and goals: they wanted to gain experience, gold, cool magical items, and occasionally they wanted a custom-made character class, and they would come to me with these requests, and we would work something out. They may have different reasons for joining my game, but they all wanted to play and have fun, which was good.

What we didn't really pay a lot of attention to, however, was the motivation for their characters. Once in a while in a longer campaign a player would say: since my character is a noble/knight, I think he would like to go on a quest to win a tourney/slay a dragon. This was something which evolved in playing, and not something which we consciously tried to impose. The lack of motivation wasn't a problem when we were younger - we all had a lot of free time and we weren't really expecting the games to be anything other than a platform where we would live out our power fantasy, kill monsters and take their stuff, and just hang around and crack jokes. But as I got older and they way I viewed the world changed, I began to find that less satisfying.

As I mentioned in the first post in this series, I like my game worlds to be real, and people in the real world have goals and motivations, so why shouldn't the PCs?

I now ask my players to think about their characters' short- and long-term goals when they create their characters. This not only makes them think about their characters and how they will interact with the central tension of the game world, but also allows me to plan the campaign in such a way that most if not all the characters will have a chance to fulfill both their short- and long-term goals.

Goals and motivations also of course apply to NPCs, from the throw-away peasant the PCs meet the road, to the main villain of the campaign, and every monster and minion in between. And here is where the difference between motivation and goals become important: motivation is what drives us, it is, ironically, the end; goals, on the other hand, are what we think will help us achieve the end, it is, again ironically, the means.

Goals are as varied as they come: the big bad wants to get his hands on the magical artifact so he can rule the world; the evil corporation wants to steal the data from their competitor so they can make big bucks; the cultists want to summon Cthulhu because... er...

And this is where I find the motivations of many classic villains as being unrealistic. What, for example, is Sauron's motivation? Or Emperor Palpatine's? It is perhaps OK for the villain of a fantasy novel or a sci-fi movie to have no other motivation other than being evil and wanting to rule the world, but in our own world, no villain works that way. No, not even real-life evil dictators who waged wars and murdered civilians. They may claim to do so based on some ideology or world view, but it is no coincidence that these villains also happened to live in luxury, protected by elite soldiers.

If watching The Godfather trilogy has taught me anything, it is that we all want the same things, but it is in how we try to achieve those things that make us good or evil.

Related to this is the idea of "evil races".

I can't remember when I stopped using the trope, but I did not stop because I believed that evil races in D&D represented real world races - I don't; rather, it was the realisation that any sentient race cannot be all good or evil. If they cannot choose between good or evil acts, then they cannot be considered truly sentient; and any creature that displays the level of intelligence demonstrated by the "demi-humans" in D&D must possess self-awareness and sentience.

Evil must be a choice, or else it has no meaning.

Certainly certain cultures may find certain practices acceptable which our own do not, but oftentimes whether we find something evil or not has more to do with how different they are from we do, and whether it hurts our interests. Some "villains" in my campaigns are not fully sentient beings, but forces of nature or manifestation/personification of the principle of destruction, like the Grens (*not-aliens*) in our sci-fi campaign, or the Darkspawn in the Dragon Age setting. Such beings may make it easier for players and GMs because they serve as a non-sentient enemy which is unambiguously a threat to our own existence, and can therefore be destroyed without qualms; but it is worth noting that in both the Alien/s franchise and the original Dragon Age computer game, while the "monsters" of the stories cause fear, it is the willingness of people to sacrifice others to these monsters for their own gains that causes revulsion in the viewers.

Five Torches Deep in Barrowmaze - a retrospective

This is not a review of the Five Torches Deep rules, or the Barrowmaze module, but more my reflection on running a megadungeon using an OSR set of rules.

Barrowmaze was the first true megadungeon I ran. I have previously runned large dungeons that took three or four sessions to play through, but these were always completed in single in-game days. Barrowmaze, however, is such a huge dungeon, with so many locations, that it is impossible for a party to explore all of it in a single day; the version of the dungeon which I ran is already a cut-down version of the original, with many monsters and treasures removed, plus I simplified the process for searching and looting the tombs, and it still took 17 sessions for my players to explore most of it.

While the first few sessions felt novel and different to my players - I am usually a GM who cares little about encumbrance and supplies like food and lamp oil - once they had to develop a system to investigate and loot tombs, things became more routine and mechanical later on in the campaign, and especially when the PCs gained more hit points and did not need to be as cautious as they did at levels 1 or 2. While this may seem rewarding to the players, from the point of view as the GM it was less interesting, as each encounter, while existing in the larger framework of a dungeon with a theme and a history, was essentially independent and isolated from the other encounters.

Also, with Five Torches Deep's system of "Schroedinger's supplies", bringing the exact supplies that you need in the exact quantities became less, well, exacting, and once the PCs have made enough gold this part of the gameplay was mostly auto-piloted. In practice, in-game passage of time and the availability of healing magic became the only determinants of how long the PCs could stay in the dungeon.

From a tactical point of a view, a megadungeon with a theme was fun. The players had to deal with traps which they knew had to be there, but the exact mechanism of which they did not know. The same was also true of monsters: they knew the dead would rise and attack them if they opened the sarcophagus or tried to remove grave goods from the burial niches, but they had to do those things if they wanted to get paid. However, these encounters mostly did not contribute to the narrative of the campaign. This is not necessarily a bad thing, especially in an open-table system common in OSR and which we employed for my campaign, as it allows players to miss sessions and not feel like they cannot keep up with the storyline. But for me, at times it felt a little grind-y.

That is not to say that the Barrowmaze module did not encourage incorporating plotlines into the dungeon-delve. There are two major NPC factions operating in the dungeon, a few more "native" factions (which I ended up omitting), plus several NPC adventuring parties whom the PCs could have allied themselves with or competed against. In addition, several artefacts which were important either in opening certain doors or destroying the MacGuffin were littered throughout the module. The presence of these various parties, and the fact that the two main NPC parties had agendas which they were actively working towards meant that this was a megadungeon with a expiry date: eventually one of the factions will find the MacGuffin, and then things will get really bad for everyone else. This to me is a strong point for the design of the module, but it does require wisdom on the part of the GM on information management: let the players learn about the true purpose of the NPC factions too early, and they may become too focused on stopping them at the expense of exploring the dungeon; let them know too late, and things will just become a big showdown. In retrospect I should have given my players more information about the two NPC factions and perhaps having the PCs run into the NPCs more often, giving them more a sense that there is some constant scrabble for territory.

Over all I think the concept of Barrowmaze - a megadungeon with a reason for being what it is, populated by monsters with a reason for being inside, and being explored by several factions with competing interests - is a very good one. To fully exploit the potential of the set-up, however, requires a GM who knows what he wants out of the module, and how to achieve it.

The dungeon being as big as it is, PCs are expected to level up several times as they explore more and more of it, and this is something that I did not account for. In my other campaigns, I usually ask that my players keep track of things like gold and equipment earlier in the campaign, but when the PCs before richer and more experienced in adventuring, I tend to hand-wave these aspects. Usually, the scope of the adventure also shift from more low-level play like robbing tombs and fighting goblins, to higher-level missions like thwarting villains with devious plans and powerful henchmen. This becomes harder to implement in a megadungeon setting, or at least I feel I did not manage to make this transition.

So will I run another megadungeon again? Well, it was fun, but I will almost certainly not do so with this same group of players. The experience of starting as a level 1 tomb-robber and slowly working your way up to an experienced adventurer with lots of cool items is classic D&D, but I am not sure is one that players will enjoy going through again. Nevertheless, I don't rule out the possibility that I may run the module again for another group of players.

As for Five Torches Deep, there are many elements of the rules which I like and will incorporate into my standard, baseline 5E play, but I feel that the spell list is too limited and resulted magic-using PCs having the same repertoire of spells.

Overall it has been a learning experience for me as a GM, and if you are looking for a megadungeon to run, Barrowmaze is certainly worth looking at.

Chronicles of the Adventurers' Guild #17

This is the account I received from the companions of Tamira Reid, who on the 18th day of Ostar, in the year 1842, descended into the crypts beneath the Ashen Hills. I hereby record their names for posterity: Kimly of Forge, Leowe Blackclaw, also of Forge, Madian Moonridge, of the University in Greyhaven, and Moonshadow the Elf (see PC profiles here), with the orc Gamdar as their bearer.

Entering the crypts, the party came upon two dragon hybrid sentries, and by means of a beguiling spell were able to interrogate them and learn of their purpose: they had entered the crypts to seek out an undead dragon, animated by the Heart of Nodros, whom they called Ossirex, and whom they worshiped as a god. They had tricked a party of mercenaries to aid them in their quest, passing themselves off as tomb robbers, but had in fact been searching for the lair of this beast, until they were thwarted in their progress by the Cultists of Nodros. They had but recently found their way into the hall wherein Ossirex had been trapped; when the mercenaries saw the undead dragon, they realised that they had been deceived, but were forbidden to leave, and instead made to excavate a tunnel to the surface to free Ossirex, that he might appear before all the dragon hybrid and unite them.

The party then resolved to used subterfuge to lure the two other dragon hybrid in the cabal out of the lair, that they may be overcomed individually, but it seemed that the magic user among them were able to break the beguiling enchantment over their brethren, and they came silently upon our heroes and sought to ambush them. A melee ensued, during which three of the dragon hybrid were slain, and the orc Gamdar fled.

Calling upon the blessings of Kellos onto herself and her fellows, Tamira led the pursuit of the remaining villain, their leader, to the hall. There, she called out for the mercenaries to lay down their arms and leave, promising them safety and the mercy of Kellos if they did, and they did so, abandoning their former master.

Entering the hall, they did battle with the dragon hybrid and Ossirex, the great undead dragon. And although with his foul sorcery Ossirex was able to raise countless skeletal warriors to aid him, our heroes were able to overcome them with the grace of Kellos.

Tamira herself plucked the stone Heart of Nodros from the chest of Ossirex, but its evil burned her hands with a coldness. Now Kellos spoke to Tamira, and told her that the Heart must be destroyed with the mace of Druentes, which Tamira wielded, but the wielder would be killed in the act too.

Despite the beseeching of her companions, Tamira resolved to do so, ignoring their pleas, and so sacrificed herself for the good of all Terrinoth.

Her remains were faithfully gathered by Leowe Blackmane, who, stricken with grief, became a blasphemer of Kellos, blaming him for not returning Tamira to life.

So the tale was told to me by the companions of Tamira, and I did behold with mine own eyes the skull of Ossirex, which was terrible in aspect.

And it is thus that I beg our holy church to build upon this site a shrine honouring our late Sister in Kellos, that her deed and the grace of Kellos may be known to all who pass.

Brother Othar, Priest of Kellos

Prepping and Running the Game

The account above of the last session in our Barrowmaze campaign is mostly false, but what I imagine the PCs would have told Brother Othar upon their return to the guild, and how he would have recorded it.

The party did come upon the dragon hybrid sentries, and they did use Charm spells on them, and learned that they had not in fact set the guild on fire (the death cultists did, but the players did not have a way to know that), and also learn their true purpose for coming to the dungeon. And then things went south from there.

They came up with the idea of using the Charmed dragon hybrids to lure more of their fellows out so that they may be tackled individually, before the party takes on Ossirex. As they needed only one of the dragon hybrid to make the plan work, they had to decide on what to do with the other one. Some of the players wanted to kill him, which I told them was something which Tamira, being a cleric of Kellos, would not agree to. In the ensuing argument, Tamira's player did not actively try to prevent this from happening, and Moonshadow's player decided that he would simply stab the dragon hybrid while the rest of the party was arguing.

I decided that Gamdar, who had volunteered to be their bearer, was so outraged by the unnecessary killing that he dropped all of the party's gear and started to walk off... and that's when they Charmed him too, tied him up, and knocked him out.

The party sent the remaining dragon hybrid back to the lair with the command to lure the others out. I decided that their leader, a sorcerer, would see through the ruse and dispel the magic, and in turn use the Invisibility and Fury Fire spells (a fireball centred around the caster) to ambush the PCs instead. In the resulting fight the PCs took a lot of damage, but were able to kill all but the leader, who fled back to the hall.

When Tamira tried to heal the party, I told her that her spells weren't working. It wasn't long before my players realised that I had ruled that Kellos had withdrawn his spells from Tamira. Tamira's player, being an old school gamer, knew what to do: he made her set up and impromptu shrine and prayed for guidance.

Meanwhile, we got into an OOC argument about whether Kellos was justified in doing what he did. The players argued that the dragon hybrids' plan to release an undead dragon would result in many deaths, and for that they already deserved death; also, in their circumstances they could not risk having a prisoner around. I argued that the PCs could have tied up the dragon hybrid, and then gone on to destroy Ossirex, which would have neutralised the threat without them having to kill a defenceless prisoner.

Eventually I let Kellos give Tamira her powers back, on a "probational" basis given the threat they all faced, but by the the mood at the table was already soured.

With her powers restored, Tamira was able to buff the party really well, and the boss fight turned out to be less exciting than I had hoped for. There was some interaction with the surroundings, as the players tried to bring the ceiling down on the skeletons - I had made some rubble counters for this expressed purpose as I imagined Ossirex would use his tail to sweep down pillars and bring sections of the ceiling down to separate the PCs - but I had the feeling that our hearts were not really in it.

Things got worse after the fight, as the players now had to decide what to do with the Heart of Nodros. I told them that Tamira was able to intuit by holding the mace of Druentes that the mace could destroy the Heart, but the wielder would be killed in the process. Tamira's player was keen to destroy the Heart there and then, while others argued for bringing it back to Brother Othar and perhaps subsequently to the church in Vynevale. Then they came up with the idea of Charming the bound Gamdar and making him do the deed for them instead so none of the PCs would have to die.

As this discussion went on Moonshadow and Kimly's players moved their characters away from Tamira as they saw what would be coming, and when it seemed like Leowe and Madian would force the issue, Tamira's player had her destroy the Heart before they could get their hands on it. There was a blinding explosion which brought more of the ceiling down, and when the dust had settled the Heart could not be told apart from the rubble.

Leowe salvaged as much of Tamira's remains as he could, hoping that the church could resurrect her, but they were unable to. We ended the campaign with Tamira being made a saint and a shrine of her being set up at the former site of the guild, and Leowe carrying Tamira's remains in his backpack and vowing to find a way to bring her back to life again.

I am deeply disappointed with how the session went and how the campaign ended. I am not yet sure when things began to spin out of my control, and when I could have effectively steered the game away from the way it went.

Charm and Command spells are always problematic in an RPG, and I do wonder if I should ban PCs from having access to them in the future.

Obviously the players saw the situations presented to them as tactical problems to be solved, and not moral choices to be made, which points to a failure on the part of the GM to present the world in a fashion that encouraged them, or rather their characters, to view the world as a place where the killing of defenceless people was something that even hardened adventurers would not do.

There is definitely a lesson to be learned here for me, although I cannot yet tell what it is.

I hope to do a retrospective of the campaign in the future, not so much on how the campaign went, but what I learned about running an open-table megadungeon using an OSR set of rules.

Chronicles of the Adventurers' Guild #16

On the 17th day of Ostar, guild members Kelso, Kimly, Leowe, and Erik, (see PC profiles here) with the bearer Karl in employment, and accompanied by the mendicant monk Brother Tuck, returned to the southeastern section of the underground complex.

Here, they entered the south door in the chamber with coloured walls, and defeated the undead within, and recovered the grave goods, which included a fine bronze sword.

Then, returning to the eastern corridors, they explored the four side chambers, each of which they learned house a bronze skull upon a plinth, and each of which was protected by an elemental guardian. The party was able to defeat the elemental guardians in turn and retrieve the four bronze skulls, which when placed into the niches in the central bronze door, caused it to open.

The bronze door lead into a large hall, within which was a single sarcophagus and much grave goods contained in earthen urns. A ghostly form arose from the sarcophagus when the party attempted to recover the grave goods, and began to attack them with elemental magic, but the members were able to defeat it and recover the grave goods, which included a golden sceptre with four precious stones set upon its head.

Grave goods recovered were assessed to be 251 Gros in value, of which 84 Gros was disbursed to the members according to the terms of the contract. Member Kimly purchased the bronze sword at 66 Gros, and member Kelso purchased the sceptre at 66 Gros.

Addendum:

On the night of the 17th day of Ostar, the guild hall, as well as the Kellos chapel nearby were set on fire by unknown arsonists. Most guild members and staff were able to evacuate the hall, but bearer Karl died in the fire, and many others suffered from the effects of inhalation the noxious smoke.

I was able to salvage with my person these chronicles, and Harnold was able to keep safe the Guild ledger and much of the guild's treasury, but much of the sundries and supplies were consumed by the flames.

When we sent for help at Fort Rodric, we learned that the garrison had been taken ill, with tainted food being the suspected cause.

Our pressing need now is to care for those who are stricken, which we do with the aid of Brother Othar and his guests from Vynevale, but it seems several guild members wish to undertake a final expedition to the barrows, for what goal I know not.

Signed,

Jeras, Guild Chronicler

Prepping and Running the Game

This is the penultimate session of the campaign, and it happened that the four players who could attend are the same who will be in the Sorcery! sequel campaign, so we played a short session before going on to create characters for that campaign.

There were no healer PC available, so my players petitioned me for a hireling healer, and I decided to conjure up a monk to join them.

The session was filled with shenanigans, such as when Leowe inadvertently caused damage to the other party members when he used Gust of Force on a Fire Elemental, and Kelso returned the favour on his turn, and when the other members pranked Leowe by slamming the door and leaving him alone with an Air Elemental in a room instead of going in to help him as they agreed.

The delve ended with the party getting their hands on two magical items: a flaming sword, and a sceptre that grants the holder resistance to elemental damage.

In the final part of the session I set the lead-up to the finale session: visitors from Vynevale - Brothers Grimmel and Berkin (see here), accompanied by two justicars - bring grave news from the holy city; the copy of inscription sent to Vynevale by Brother Othar was recognised to be the same script as an ancient manuscript, which told the story of one Druentes, a follower of Eusodes (Yasoda), and the company he led into the crypts of Nodros cultists in a quest to destroy the Heart of Nodros, a magical artifact that gave them the power to raise undead. Druentes was betrayed and killed, but his follwoers were able to chase the cultists to the northeast sector of the crypts, and collapse the tunnel there, trapping them and the Heart of Nodros. Druentes was buried in the crypts as he requested in his dying words, that he may watch over the evil in case they should rise again.

Although they did not know the true intent of the dragonkin and his party, the players were able to put two and two together and realise that the Heart of Nodros and the fact that the Ashen Hills was once the site of a great battle during the Dragon Wars and therefore contained perhaps many remains of dragons made for a bad combination.

Brothers Othar and Grimmel then beseeched the PCs to return to the underground complex and recover the Heart of Nodros before someone else did. The players briefly considered returning straightaway, but decided to do so the next morning.

This allowed me to proceed with my plan and have the death cultists set the halls on fire in retaliation for the PCs' part in their ousting. I then told the players that one out of their two PCs is incapacitated from smoke inhalation, and they would each have to decide which character to use for the final session.

I am hoping to be able to get six players around the table for our finale, which should be one big fight, after which we will convert the surviving characters to 5E, and archive them for a future campaign. We will then hopefully be able to have a discussion and decide on what campaign to play after the Sorcery! campaign sequel.

Blood Bowl 2021 League Round #3

After a couple of weeks' break we got back to our league again.

This time round my skavens faced the Black Orc team. Adrian spent some gold recruiting a trained troll to his team, which gave me a lot of gold for inducement.

We rolled on the weather table and got rain, which was a bad thing for me. I won the coin toss and chose to receive, and scored a classic skaven two-turn touchdown, which was a shock to Adrian.

We then rolled a "Blitz" on the next kick-off, which saw me run two players into the Black Orc's half and interfered with the Black Orc's drive. Adrian was close to the touchdown line at turn 8, but a failed throw team mate roll saw him go into the second half one point down.

In the second half he formed a cage and methodically drove down the pitch, but unfortunately the dice were still not in his favour as he failed to put any skaven into the Casualty box. He scored on turn 14, leaving me two turns to try to win the game. This time round the Black Orc team was ready for my skavens, and although I managed to run three players into his half on turn 15, he managed to mark all of them, and I dropped the ball on my final hand-off that saw me one die-roll away from winning.

I was actually worried about facing the Black Orc team, but as Adrian's team was heavy on the heavies, it left him with fewer goblins to run defence.

At the end of the third game, the standing is as follows:

Kazak Killers: 6

Badland Brawlers: 4

Skavenholme Scallyways: 4

Middenheim Marauders: 0

Musings on Gaming #4 - Soul

Although I have been GMing since around 1986, I didn't really give any thought to the themes of my campaigns until perhaps ten years ago. For the first twenty-five years of my "career" as a GM, I had largely let my players make whatever character they wanted, and then ran them through a string of unrelated module, never bothering much with the theme of the campaign, or the motivations of the PCs: I presented a villain/treasure map, and it was their jobs as PCs to defeat that villain/kill whatever was guarding that treasure and take it.

Granted, most of those years were my teenage years when my players and I were just content with exploring dungeons and killing stuff and gaining cool magical items. Gaming was rare during my university and working years, until around 2008, when the re-release of Dragon Warriors led to me meeting Adrian on an RPG forum, which led to a regular Saturday gaming sessions at his place.

The first breakthrough for me came during the Lone Wolf campaign I ran for the group. The players were all playing the good guys: Sommerlending Knight, Kai Lord, Brotherhood Mage. I told the players:"think Star Wars, and you are the Jedi", and we went through a series of unrelated modules from that I stringed together. A few sessions into the game, I felt that the PCs were getting too bloodthirsty, often killing bad guys even after they had incapacitated them - we are talking about humans here, not Giak or Drakkarim. I addressed this in-game by having their masters comment on that they were getting closer to the dark side and urging them to exercise mercy and restraint to redeem themselves.

The campaign then continued with me using a Conan module, where the villain, in the guise of a priest of a good order, used the death of his predecessor, a much loved champion of the poor, to foment social division and call for violence against the rich - a mysterious monster was murdering innocent people in the city, and the priest was claiming that it was divine retribution for the sins of the rich. As the days went by, tension began to build and threatened to boil over into mass violence. The PCs went about investigating the murders, and came into frequent contact with the priest and the city leaders. The Kai Lord became sympathetic to the position of the priest, while the Mage and the Knight were suspicious of him and tended to side with the city leaders. Much of the sessions were just RPing, and I often had to toggle between the two groups as the party split to interact with the two sides.

When the final confrontation came and it was revealed that the evil priest had raised his predecessor as an undead to murder on his behalf, the Kai Lord was so enraged at this betrayal that he killed the priest, even after he was left defenceless by the others. I then ruled that because of this act, Kai had stripped him of his Kai Discipline powers.

The player was of course unhappy about the whole thing: first being conned by the GM, and then being punished. Fortunately for me, he did not quit the campaign, but soldiered on, redeemed himself, and his powers were eventually restored to him.

I look back at this campaign fondly because it was the first of my campaigns where I felt there was a theme that ran through the sessions. Even though I had not planned it that way to start with, the mere idea that this was "Star Wars, and you are the Jedi" probably guided the way I, and later my players, viewed the actions of the PCs. And the theme of Star Wars - at least the first six movies - was about power, corruption, fall, and redemption.

I have employed the idea of a campaign theme in some of my other campaigns: the theme of "deception" in my Sorcery! campaign, and that of "price of peace" in my Space Opera Season 2. I find that having a theme helps me to plan the sessions, in creating situations where the players, through their PCs, are confronted with the theme of the campaign.

Of course, not all campaigns need a theme, or will benefit from one. Some of my mini-campaigns are just play-throughs of classic TSR modules, and I think that for a funhouse dungeon like White Plume Mountain it is perhaps the lack of a theme rather than the presence of one that makes it so memorable.

The employment of a theme, while useful for a more GM-directed campaign, may work less well in a more player-directed, or sandbox type of campaign, where the theme may instead emerge from the plans and actions of the PCs.

In such a campaign, in place of a predetermined theme, it is more suitable to employ what Matt Colville calls a "central tension" for the campaign setting.

The central tension is perhaps implied in the original D&D, with the duality in alignment: Law vs Chaos. It is hard-baked into the White Wolf RPGs, where the purported aim of the various "X; The Y" games is to explore the tension in our modern society through the lens of some non-human being, whose non-humanity forces us to examine our own humanity. Or something like that. I've only ever GM'd Mage: the Ascension, and I not not sure I did it correctly.

Regardless of whether you use a central tension that comes with the setting, or whether you create one of your own, central tension is what creates drama and invites the PCs to act. Two sides are in conflict, or will soon be in open conflict, and the PCs have the choice to make on which side they wish to see win in this conflict, and how they choose will decide that.

How your players choose, however, will be decided by their characters' motivations, which will be the topic of the next post in this series.

Future Campaign/s

This post is primarily for the players in my group, although if you are a follower and have some suggestion on what campaign we should play in the near future, do leave your comments.

With the Sorcery! 2 campaign scheduled to run from April to May, we can start planning for the campaign that will follow it; and if we like more than one of them, we can always queue them for future campaigns.

I've got a few ideas for what we can play next; the first three follow the drop-in, drop-out format as with the Barrowmaze campaign, while the next three require a more regular attendance.

1. Space Opera Season 3: Deepnight Revelation

This is a Traveller kickstarter I backed a while back and, providing it delivers by May, we will use it as a basis for Season 3 of our Space Opera campaign.

The premise is: after the events in Season 2, the United Confederation found a wormhole in the Dead Zone which they believe lead to the homeworld of the Grens. Together with the Tazanian Empire, they built an exploration vessel, crewed by the best the Confederation, the Empire, and the Neutral Zone have to offer, for a mission to go through the wormhole and find the source of the Gren threat and put an end to it... and Nick, AJ, Kumra Khan, and RB have been asked to head the mission.

Rules will likely be Savage Worlds

Players from the previous Seasons will retain their characters (except for Jet, who is still considered too junior for command and will play as a crew character), and also create a new "crew" character - other players will also each create a crew character. Game will be semi-trope style, with the command team making the command decisions, and the crew PCs doing the execution. Think Star Trek (TNG or Voyager - not Discovery).

We will continue the drop-in, drop-out system, with the team for the session made up of the players who can make the session.

2a. Return to Terrinoth: The B Team aka Lakemane's Larcenous Lackeys

What can I say? I like Terrinoth, and I love some of the characters you guys have made and played.

This campaign picks up where the B Team and Barrowmaze left off.

Our campaign is set in the city of Tamalir, and consist of Therion Lakemane (now Steward to the Count of Pfalzenstein), Whisper Blackmane, Giso, and Tom, (all around level 5) as well as characters from the Barrowmaze campaign. Rules will be 5E, with the Five Torches Deep characters converted over to the corresponding class, with XPs at 1-to-1, i.e. around level 4.

The campaign will probably be more player-directed as we follow the shenanigans of Lakemane and company in their quest for... whatever it is that you guys feel up to!

2b. Return to Terrinoth: The A Team aka Venier's Valourous Vigilantes

Alternatively, we can rejoin the A Team, i.e. Entana, Strigoi, Percy, and the world famous Gio Gerbo, all around level 6.

This campaign will be set in Fulhurst, a village on the edge of the dreaded Mistlands that Entana is holding for the University of Greyhaven. The PCs will be retainers who have joined the party, drawn by the fame of our heroes. You can choose to convert your Barrowmaze characters to 5E, or create a new 5E character at level 4.

Play will be in a style similar to Deepnight Revelation above, with the players for the original party making the "domain-level" decisions, and the retainers doing the actual adventuring. There will be a more definite plot-arc for this campaign.

2c. Return to Terrinoth: The C Team - Guild-Free

In this alternative, you keep one of your characters from the Barrowmaze campaign, convert him/her to 5E, and you form a party. Play will be in the more traditional format. Where will you go? You tell me!

3. Gamma World and Shadowrun mash-up

This is something has been at the back of my mind for years now, and is a mash-up of a Shadowrun-esque campaign we played, and the Gamma World mini-campaign I ran.

The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where civilisation still exists in megacities ruled by vampires, while in the wastelands beyond the city walls scavengers and mutants eke out a living in the hostile landscape.

In the first thread of the story, George Bennett (failed mob doctor), Ice (cyborg street samurai), and Victoria (half-vampire), have fled into the wastelands with a little girl, pursued by vampires who want to use her as a bio-weapon.

In the second thread of the story, our village of mutant sentient-but-not-necessarily-anthropomorphic animals have recently explored a crashed spaceship and returned with high-tech weapons which they hope will help them defend their village against a tribe of human wasteland warriors bent of eliminating all mutants.

As their paths cross, the two parties find that despite their differences, working together may be their only hope for survival in this crazy cross-genre world.

No idea what rules to use yet - the decision will largely depend on whether we want a more gritty game, or a more gonzo, roll-for-your-new-mutation game.

4. Something, something, Jon Hodgson

OK, this one is less worked out, but the idea is to use The Hero's Journey, a set of OSR-ish rules, for some sort of a "journey" campaign.

There are several candidates for the setting, including my old favourite Anglo-Saxon England, Middle Earth, the Lone Wolf world, or the Dragon Warriors world. The key thing is that the campaign should involve some sort of long journey, and lean into the "fellowship" aspects of the rules, and that the mood should be Jon Hodgson art.

5. Something else

Those are four ideas I have, but if you have something that you think the group will enjoy playing, and if I think I can do the idea justice, then do bring it to the discussion.

It can be a short campaign, or a long-ish one, fantasy, sci-fi, pulp, or modern - I am open to running most things except Horror, which I don't think I will be competent at.

So let me know what your thoughts are!

Dwarrowdeep Kickstarter

Being a dwarf sucks. You delve too deep *one time*, and now that's what everybody remembers about your people...

From the creator of Barrowmaze comes a new kickstarter: Dwarrowdeep.

Now neither the name nor the premise of the megadungeon sound innovative, but the author hints at a plot twist... But the point of Old School, as least as far as I am concerned, is not doing something *new*, but doing something old *well*.

I enjoyed Barrowmaze, even though I did not run the dungeon 'as is' - I mean, no one can actually run this thing 'as is', right?

What I liked about Barrowmaze is how there is a logic to the whole megadungeon, from the whole reason why the dungeon was there, to why there were different 'districts' to the dungeon, and why the monsters are there, as well as NPC factions with their own motivations.

And now it looks like Greg Gillespie is promising something like that again: a megadungeon with a reason and coherence.

I am still on the fence on this one: delivery date of Aug 2022 is too far even for me to plan for, but a lost dwarven home is something that you can drop into almost any fantasy world - heck, I can drop it into Magnamund, Thedas, *and* Terrinoth, and have the campaign link back to one or more PC in each of the worlds!

Chronicles of the Adventurers Guild #15

On the 14th day of Ostar, guild members Aksinya, Erik, Folly, Francis, Grak, Kelso, Kimly, Leowe, Madian, Moonshadow, Piper, and Tamira (see PC profiles here) explored the underground complex via barrow #35. Exploring to the west, they came upon a series of chambers, guarded by undead, which they defeated, and recovered much grave goods.

Grave goods recovered were assessed to be 525 Gros in value, of which 131 Gros was disbursed to the members according to the terms of the contract.

Signed,

Jeras, Guild Chronicler

On the 16th day of Ostar, guild members Tamira, Madian, Kimly, and Leowe, with the bearer Karl in employment, explored the underground complex via barrow#16. Exploring west and then south, they came upon a chamber within which were the crushed remains of tomb robbers. The stones upon the walls of the chamber animated and took the form of men, and attacked the party when they sought to cross the chamber, but they were able to overcome the enemies.

Proceeding further south, they came upon a fork in passage. To the west they came upon a bronze door, upon which were four niches, each carved with a different symbol, which they surmised to represent the four elements. To the east the passage led to a square room, within which was a bronze statue of a four-armed demon. The four walls were painted each a different colour: blue, yellow, red, and brown. There were a sealed door on the north, east, and south walls.

The party broke down the eastern door, and found within it a single sarcophagus. When they sought to open the sarcophagus, a ghostly form appeared and attacked them, but they were able to defeat it. Within the sarcophagus the found the remains of an individual with much grave goods. The party then broke through the northern door, and found again a single sarcophagus. Once more a ghostly undead rose to attack them, and once more they defeated it, but member Tamira was grievously wounded in the fight. The party recovered the rich grave goods within the sarcophagus, and returned to the guild.

Grave goods recovered were assessed to be 186 Gros in value, of which 64 Gros was disbursed to the members according to the terms of the contract.

Signed,

Jeras, Guild Chronicler

Prepping and Running the Game

This session was a continuation from the last one, although we had to retcon a little because of player availability.

The party came upon the fight between the Dragon cultists and the Death cultists, and a confused melee ensued, made worse by the use of the darkness spell by the Death cult leader. Eventually the PCs were able to gain the upper hand and drive the Death cultists away, but they were able to flee through the room with zombies, which delayed the pursuing Dragon cultists enough for them to escape.

The two victorious parties then looted the belongings left behind - I used one of the random tables from Knock! #1 as a random loot table - and I had the Dragonkin rogue from the Dragon cult gather the grave goods and divide them into four piles, and then inviting the PCs to pick three of them as their cut of the loot. This was done to show the players that the Dragon cultists were either stand-up fellows, or else not really interested in money...

It was a massive haul, but divided among 11 PCs, it didn't come up to much per character.

One of the players was still fixated on the idea that the undead woman in the underground pool was what the cultists were after, and managed to convince the others to break the terms of the agreement with the Dragon cultists and make a night-time trip to the cavern, a sector that was technically out of bounds to the PCs, to search it more thoroughly.

I was totally unprepared for this - I have told them that the area was rumoured to be crawling with undead after sundown, and no one in their right mind would travel there after dark, and assumed they would never do so either. During the time they were discussing this I realised I could use one of the mechanics in Five Torches Deep to resolve the journey. This mechanic was intended to allow a GM to resolve a session if there wasn't enough time to play a party's journey to the base, and involved having each character make a single roll to see how many hit points he or she lost. As we were using this to roll for the forward journey, this meant some of the PCs started the delve with many hit points down, and had to cast healing spells, which had the risk of the caster losing the ability to cast spells for the actual delve. Fortunately for them, that did not happen.

The players then went through in detail how they searched the cavern, and I had to come up with something quick to not disappoint them. I decided that the undead woman was the ghost of a woman strangled and sacrificed in the pool, like a bog mummy. The party was able to recover her skeleton, which they decided to bring back to the guild. The player now wants to see if he can somehow resurrect the woman with the aid of the NPC cleric...

The following adventuring day the players decided to stick to the agreement with the Dragon cultists and explore the part of the dungeon that now "belongs" to the guild. This section of the dungeon features an elemental evil theme, so the things they discover there all featured the same theme.

The eastern branch of the passage actually leads to five other corridors, including the one with the bronze door with niches. The other four corridors each led to a room that held one of the keys to the bronze door. Strangely, instead of walking down the other four corridors, my players decided to explore the western corridor, and came upon the room with the coloured walls and statue. They at first assumed that the statue was the key to opening the bronze door, but could not figure out how that worked. Then when one player had his character touch one of the walls, I described how the pigment rubbed off onto his hand. The next thing I knew I had four PCs, each with one hand covered in pigment inside one of the niches. It was a face-palm moment, and I told the players that had this been a Gygaxian dungeon, we would be having four one-handed PCs right now.

That said, I am happy with how they got into the OSR mode and explored various ways of interacting with the environment I described to try to solve the puzzles they faced (or for that matter, created for themselves...). Most of their initiatives were not rewarded, however, as I could not reasonably 'say yes' to them and spin a whole new thread to the campaign and still keep everything on schedule for a finale in two more sessions. The other issue was that XPs in OSR was tied to challenges, and had I allowed their solutions to work, it would not have been fair (and it would not have felt fair to them) to award the PCs enough XPs for them to level up before the final session.

The chasing of the red herring (the strangled woman) was an interesting one. I wonder if this was a side-effect of using a pre-made module. Had I designed the adventure on my own from ground up, perhaps I would have been 'economical' and omitted any element that did not relate to the main plot.

Unable to figure out the bronze door, they decided to just fall back on what they knew best: break down doors, kill undead, take their stuff. They were able to clear two of the three crypts in the square room before they ran out of spells and return to the guild, which was perfect for me - hopefully they will complete this section of the dungeon the next session, which will allow me to end that session with the big reveal, and set up the final session.

Musings on Gaming #3 - Space

All of the fantasy RPG worlds that I set my campaigns in - Terrinoth/Menara, Ferelden/Thedas, Magnamund, Dragon Warriors' Legend, and Fighting Fantasy's Titan - are large worlds, presumably Earth-sized planets.

While it is fun to read about the diverse regions in the world, it is improbably that a single adventuring party will travel to all or even most of the places described in a setting book. Nevertheless, there is a way for GMs to convey the size of the world to the players without having to take the PCs to all these places.

The first is of course to have the PCs come across and interact with people and things which come from these foreign, far-flung regions. Most fantasy medieval worlds have a functioning trade system, and often trade is the chief reason the movement of people and goods across vast distances; others that I can think of are pilgrimage and conquest (which in itself usually stems from a desire to move people and goods...). People and goods from foreign lands are distinguished by the fact that they are different from the local people and goods, and these differences can be expressed both culturally and materially.

One of the most obvious difference between peoples is of course language, and here is where I dislike the concept of the Common language (as conveniently as it makes the job of the GM), unless there is an in-world reason such as the existence of a continent-spanning empire. In settings where the region the game is set in is an analogue of our own Dark Ages or Middle Ages, this becomes even more glaring. In our own world, 'national' languages in the form which we understand them now did not exist in medieval Europe, and that is something that I like to reflect in my game worlds too.  

To a lesser extent this dislike also applies to the existence of "racial" languages like Dwarven or Elvish, unless again there are in-world reasons for why certain races should have a language that changes very little over a span of hundred of years, such as the people being very long-lived, or that the language is being guarded very zealously, such as with a liturgical language, or with a very closed community.

For these reasons I dislike spells that allow PCs to understand or speak foreign languages (I save that kind of thing for my sci-fi campaigns), as it takes away the uniqueness of the cultures. In fact, I lean further into the differences in language, and sometimes describe my NPCs as having an accent that is from a different part of the same nation that the PCs are from, or using a local expression not familiar to them. Where communities of "demi-humans" live among humans, I describe them as speaking the same local language as the humans, but with words from their own languages sprinkled here and there. Where an NPC is not a fluent speaker of the language the PCs are speaking, I describe them as speaking with a heavy accent, haltingly, and/or with a different grammar.

Another way to portray the vastness of the game world, and also its age, is to have indicators of migrations of ancient people in the setting. The fact that much of Europe now speak an Indo-European language and practise a Semitic religion is the result of movements of culture and peoples across a period of millennia, and something that at once speaks of how big our world is and how old human cultures are. GMs can allude the existence of such movements of cultures and peoples by having languages that are related, and having say the head church/temple of a religion or its pilgrimage site being far away from the PCs' native place.

Chronicles of the Adventurers Guild #14

Prepping and Running the Game

This week's report takes a slightly different format for a couple of reasons: 1. the PCs are unlikely to be truthful in their report to Guild Chronicler Jeras, and 2. we ended the game mid-delve, which we have not done before.

A brief recap of the session.

The PCs decided that they would go along with the tomb-robbers' plan to launch a co-ordinated attack on the Death cultists.

To accommodate the fact that 12 PCs were in on the scheme but only four players were at the table, we had the players who were present send their characters into the dungeon, while the rest stood guard at the known exits to cut off any retreat.

However, as Kelso's player was convinced that the strange woman on the island in the underground pool was the quarry the dragonkin are after, the PCs proposed a start time of 1pm, to allow them to try to find out her true nature. Unfortunately for them, the woman was just a "monster of the room", and cost the PCs a little resources.

Moving back to the main mission, the PCs moved through the door they had barricaded the last session, and managed to find the secret door that led into a room that would have led to the cultists' lair.

The room was guarded by ten zombies and an Idolic Deity, a monster from the Tome of Beast. The flying statuette had the power of casting an aura that eroded a divine caster's faith, and the two strongest members in the party were nerfed and fell back. Here the players fell back to OSR thinking and threw a fishing net over the statuette and wrestled it down and bashed it to bits, while keeping the zombies at bay with a area-control spell.

Since they did not clear the room of the zombies, however, they failed to find the secret door that would have led to the cultists' west flank. Already late for the attack, they had to rely on their map and execute a wide march to the south and then east, before finally coming upon the passage that led to the cultists' east flank by following the sound of battle.

As one of the players had to leave early, and as I had not expected this development, we ended the session about half an hour early, just as they PCs are running towards the fight.

This gives me a week to plan the fight that we will open the session with. I am still not sure how to do this: on the one hand the Death cultists are outnumbered and they have a clear route for retreat (something which I was worried about before this development), yet on the other hand I would hate to have ended a session early in anticipation of a big fight... and then make it an anti-climatic rout.

Well, I have a week to plan for this, so let's see what happens!

Musings on Gaming #2 - Time

In this post I would like to talk about the role of time in world-building.

It is common for the typical medieval-fantasy RPG world to have a long history - a "lore" - and while I do not do any world-building of my own, I agree with that practice; in our own world, thousands of years of written history existed before the medieval period, and tens of thousands more are known through archaeology, and millions more known through other scientific fields.

When looking at fantasy worlds, I tend to view their histories through the lens of our own prehistory and history, and this for me is when the suspension of disbelief becomes difficult.

Many of the fantasy settings I have game in have histories that are both too long and too short: typically, the period of prehistory is too short, with species coming into existence and then reaching a medieval-level civilisations in the blink of an eye, and then remaining at that level for much longer than our own medieval period lasted.

One way of rationalising this is to look at the official lore or "fluff" as something which the peoples of the fantasy worlds viewed as their own history, and not necessarily as the truth. Just as in our own world people gave accounts of the origins of themselves and lists of kings which we today see as bearing some core of truth but over all inaccurate, so too can we see the fluff. Similarly, the peoples in these worlds also imagined their ancestors as having the same level of technology as they possessed, much as how our own medieval artists depicted supposedly ancient kings in contemporary armour and weapons.

Interpreting the official lore of the worlds this way makes it easier for me to accept them as real, and I try to bring this across to my players by mapping the historical periods in the game world to our own, such that when they explored ancient ruins or tombs they would come across artifacts and burial practices that mirrored those of our world: a period when material culture could be identified but there was no metal working, a period with copper alloy or bronze working, and finally an age with iron and steel artifacts. 

Setting the history of the game world against our own also allows me to determine the level of technology that is appropriate to the period. Our own "Middle Ages" spans a thousand years, and it will be wrong to imagine that the level of technology, or the prevailing system of government and law remained static during the entire span of time. So if a player asked me if a certain thing - say eyeglasses - existed in the game world, I can find out when they were invented in our own world, and decide if they would exist in the game world. On a more general scale, technologies that improved agricultural yields or trade would have enormous impact on the populations and material prosperity of the peoples and places our PCs existed among, so if the world had large cities with cosmopolitan populations and exotic goods, I would have to make sure that the technologies that allowed for such a world existed.

Going further back in time, I often think about the existence of several humanoid or "demi-human" races/species in fantasy worlds and how that might work in a "real" world.

Probably every culture in our world has their own creation myth and how they came into being. Whether these myths were viewed as literal truths by the people who told them, or whether they were understood to be an expression of the place they saw themselves in the scheme of things, I think we can safely say that they are all factually wrong.

Our own species is now believed to be an admixture of archaic humans and other hominid species. This, and the fact that there were several hominid species leads me to wonder if the various fantasy races could in fact be viewed in the same light: not as peoples created separately by their own gods and distinct from the other races, but as different branches on the evolutionary tree. Certainly it would be interesting to imagine a scenario where all the hominid species in our own world all existed in the same period and developed civilisation. None of this is likely to have an impact in gameplay, but it is again something which makes the game world more real to me.

Of course time is only one of the dimensions which give a sense of realism and depth to our game worlds - the other dimension is space, which we will discuss in the next post in the series.

Blood Bowl 2021 League Round #2

Game 2 saw my skavens face off against David's Imperial Nobility team.

My thrower suffered a stat loss in my first game and I made the decision to drop him from the team, but at the same time I did not have enough gold to employ another thrower. Without a thrower, my skavens had to play a running game, and they failed to score during my possession.

In the second half, they took advantage of David's inexperience and ran into the opposition team's half and took possession of the ball and score.

David was able to capitalise on the skaven's losses in the last part of the game and drive close to my touchline line, but an ambitious Rush saw his player fall and break his neck, which allowed my players to scoop up the ball and throw it into the other half of the pitch for safety.

I scraped a 1-0 win, and made enough money to recruit a new thrower, but one of my gutter-runners died during the match, which means I end the game with the same Current Team Value as I started the game with.

At the end of the second game, the league table looks like this:

Kazak Killers : 6

Badland Brawlers: 3

Skavenholme Scallywags: 3

Middenheim Marauders: 0

Blood Bowl 2021 League Round #1

We played the first games of our Blood Bowl league on Thursday.

My Skavens faced the dwarves in their first game. Winning the coin flip, my skavens managed to 'cas' a dwarf slayer in the first turn, and score on the second turn. From then on it was a game of attrition as the dwarves methodically took my players down one by one, with one player escaping death due to the presence of an apothecary.

FG handled the dwarves boldly, scoring two touchdowns, and by the time I was receiving again I was fielding seven players against his eleven.

My Thrower lost a point of Strength, and I decided to drop him from the team. One of the Blitzers managed to gain a total of 6 SPPs due to the MVP roll, and I gave him Mighty Blow - hopefully that advantage will result in a positive feedback mechanism that will see him gain more SPPs.

At the end of the first round of games, the league table is:

Badland Brawlers: 3

Kazak Killers: 3

Middenheim Marauders: 0

Skavenholme Scallywags: 0

Chronicles of the Adventurers Guild #13

On the 12th day of Ostar, Guild members Madian, Kimly, Tamira, Folly, and Leowe (see PC profiles here), with the bearer Karl in employment, explored the subterranean tombs. Entering via barrow #20, they came upon a long hall, wherein they found the remains of several tomb robbers. Thus forewarned, the party entered the chamber, whereupon the pillars animated and took the forms of men, and attacked them, but were overcomed.

Passing north still, they came into a square chamber and surprised two cultists within. The party sought to capture the cultists, but they refused to be taken, and a skirmish ensued. The cultists were soon joined by skeletal warriors, which entered the chamber from the corridor to the north, and also by several more cultists entering from a corridor to the east.

The party was able to hold off the skeletal warriors and repel the cultists, who retreated under the cover of a magical darkness. The party defeated the skeletal warriors, and using the remnants of the stone creatures in the the hall they had passed, blocked up the door to the east.

Proceeding further north, they came upon a passage leading to the east that had collapsed; here they found signs that the collapsed passage was being cleared.

Passing further north, they found that the passage turned to the east, and continued for several hundred feet, and terminated in a natural cavern, within which was an underground pond. At the near side of the pond was a boat. At the far end of the cavern was a small landing, beyond which a tunnel could be discerned. In the middle of the pond was a rocky outcrop.

The boat being small and unable to take the weight of all six persons, the party resolved to cross the pond in turn. In the first passing, they discerned the form of a woman with long hair seated upon the rocky outcrop. As the boat neared the outcrop, a force began to pull it towards the outcrop. The party was able to overcome this with vigourous rowing, and upon reaching the far shore they found long strands of hair on the hull. Then, steering as far from the outcrop as practicable, the party made further crossings, and the whole party was able to reach the far bank unharmed.

Entering the tunnel there, the party emerged within barrow #49, which they found to be already plundered.

No grave goods were recovered.

Signed,

Jeras, Guild Chronicler

Prepping and Running the Game

I was really excited that we managed to get five players for this session, as I had planned for this to be the big fight scene where the PCs and the dragon cultists launch a co-ordinated attack on the death cultists; unfortunately, plans never survive contact with PCs...

We began the session by playing out the negotiation between the dragon cultists - posing as plain tomb-robbers - and the PCs.

The dragon cultists were represented by their leader (a dragon-kin), the dragon-kin barbarian whom the PCs have met in an earlier session, and three of their human mercenaries. The dragon-kin proposed a co-ordinated attack on the death cultists' lair, with the PCs attacking from the west, and they attacking from the east. I made the very generous terms of leaving exploration rights to all the surface barrows to the PCs afterwards, plus all of the underground complex except for the quadrant north and east of the cultists' lair, as well as half of whatever loot they will take from the cultists, and sharing of whatever documents they recover.

The PCs were naturally suspicious of the terms, but I had decided beforehand that they would not be able to read the dragon-kin's faces. Still, this did not prevent them from asking for even better terms!

I had the barbarian speak to the leader in their own language, which ruffled the PCs' feathers, but they agreed to give the PCs three-quarters of the cultists' loot, which caused furrowed brows in the human mercenaries.

The players were very keen to learn the dragon-kin's interest in the northeast quadrant of the complex, and wanted to know what item exactly it was that they hoped to find there, but I gave the Sauron-ic reply that it is a "trifle that he fancies", which of course convinced no one. 

While they did not fully trust the dragon-kin, the PCs agreed to the temporary alliance, with no real intent to keeping to the terms.

The attack was planned for the 13th of the month, as the merchant bringing supplies from Tamalir was expected to arrive on the 12th, and the dragon cultists wanted to be well-prepared.

I expected the players to wait for the attack, but they surprised me by choosing to launch another expedition on the 12th, hoping to find out where exactly the death cultists' lair was. As they already had some idea of where the lair was, they quickly came upon the cultists' sentries, which triggered a fight. With five PCs and quite a few of them at level 4, their experience in dungeon-fighting and powers allowed them to quickly dominate the fight, forcing the cultists to retreat.

Their decision to blockade the door to the east essentially sealed the cultists' access to the northeast, a sector of the complex which is of interest to them. This really pushes them up against a wall, as even if they can easily unblock the door, the room is the main access to their lair and connects that to the sector they want to explore.

I now have a couple of tough decisions to make as the GM and the death cult leader: did the PCs' actions tip the cultists off to a possible impending attack? Will the cultists launch a surprise attack on the dragon cultists pre-emptively, with the aim of taking over their lair?

I have a few days to think this through...

Musings on Gaming #1 - Reality

This is hopefully the first of a series of posts where I pen down my thoughts about RPG and GMing.

I've been playing RPGs for something like 35 years now, being a GM almost exclusively during this whole time, but it is only really in the past ten years or so that I started thinking about GMing as a craft. I started GMing in school as a teenager with Dragon Warriors, and back then with no frame of reference, we just played the way we thought the game ought to be played. There was no session zero (beyond "we already have enough fighters but we need a healer"), no discussion of character motivation (beyond gaining XPs and leveling up), but the strange thing was, as we played on and the characters explored and interacted with more of the world around them, we started developing motivations for them, and my players started to ask for their characters to do this or that: they started to develop goals.

The reason for that, even though we did not consciously know at that time, was because we all believed that the game world was "real" in some way. That is to say, we believed that the game world operated within certain rules and moved due to certain forces, just like the real world does, and that our characters, much like our young selves, could interact with this world in a meaningful way if we understood how it worked. This was also the time when we were learning History and Geography (in particular Human Geography) in school, and the subjects reinforced the ideas that the physical world and people did not behave randomly, but were the way they were for specific reasons.

In that respect the rules that we were using - Dragon Warriors - played a big role. The world of Dragon Warriors, called Legend, is an unashamed Earth-analogue, and lovingly described in Book 6 of the book series. There was even a table showing the evolution of the languages on the world, which had a bearing on how easy it was for the speaker of one language to learn another. This was the kind of detail that the teenage mind craved and thrived on, and even though I didn't know it then, the game had a formative effect on how I look at RPG worlds even today. In a future post I hope to discuss why I think such details are important to a medieval fantasy setting.

To me, an RPG is about immersing yourself in the role of a character in a make-believe world, which you imbue with a personality, traits, and motivations. For a player to do so, the GM must provide a game world that is "real" and operate by known cause-and-effects. That is to say, we expect that the PCs need to breathe, and that the game world has an atmosphere that the PCs can breathe in; that gravity exists, and if you fall from height you will take damage; that people respond pretty much like people in our world, and if you are rude to someone he is likely to respond negatively to you; and that laws exist and breaking them will bring consequences. That is not to say that the game world has to be an exact replica of our world, or that only the mundane exist, but however the game world is different from ours, those differences must have consequences, and should be taken into consideration in the way the world works in such a way that they do not result in plot holes.

It is such a belief that makes me exclude powers like resurrection and long-distance teleport (or at least make them extremely rare), because I am not able to decide how a world where such powers exist will operate. Of course, your average low-level magic user can still become an effective burglar with spells like Mage Hand and Misty Step, but the effect of these spells have non-magical equivalents such as stealth and sleight-of-hand and lockpicking, so they are easier for our minds to accept that the world would not be significantly different from ours just because those spells existed. The further a power or an ability is from our real-world possibilities, the harder it is for our muggle minds to imagine how the world must change to account for them. This is also an argument for limiting the frequency and power of magic in a game world, or making magic dangerous to the caster, but that is probably the topic of another post.

Another effect of this belief is that I have an aversion to "narrative" RPGs where the players get to decide what happens as a result of their actions. This does not mean that I do not believe in player agency, but that I believe that player agency means they can decide their characters' actions, but not the result of those actions. In the real world we get to choose what we say or do, but we cannot control the outcome of our words or actions - so it should be in our game world.

That said, I have played in games where the players get to choose what happens (or rather 'happened') in the form of flashbacks, but that took place in the context of games where such flashbacks are an explicit and important part of gameplay; as enjoyable as those games were, I feel that the mechanic will not be sustainable in a long-term campaign.

In the instances where I played in "collaborative" games where the players get to decide what happens as a result of their die-rolls, the gameplay was typically stilted as the players pause to think about how to narrate an interesting and reasonable outcome to their actions.

Is my way of gaming the only correct way then? Certainly not; the fact that many games where flashbacks and "collaboration" are main features are very successful proves that many people enjoy that way of gaming. But for me, a campaign with longevity needs to be one that is grounded in a kind of reality that parallels that of our world.

Chronicles of the Adventurers Guild #12

On the 9th day of Ostar, guild members Francis, Kelso, Moonshadow, and Partha (see PC profiles here), with the bearer Karl in employment, returned to the underground chambers, with the purpose of recovering the grave goods from within the chamber of salted corpses.

They overcame the undead in the first chamber, and recovered the grave goods within.

Exploring the next chamber in the corridor, they found a silver statuette upon a plinth in the far end, and the bodies of three tomb-robbers upon the floor, which was covered with a thin layer of fine silt. The party surmised that the tomb-robbers had perished from some trap within the chamber, and with the means of a rope with a loop made in the end, successfully dislodged the statuette from its position, whereupon a stone door descended over the doorway, and the chamber began to be flooded by water that came from a hidden port in the wall. After a period of time has passed, there came sound from behind the door, and when it stopped the door opened, and they party found the room drained but still wet.

Exploring the next room in the corridor, they came upon a strange portal in the far wall, which appeared as a vertical surface of a dark pool of water. The party was able to gather water from the portal, but were unable to determine if it led to some other locale.

Therefore leaving the portal, they came to the next room, and found within several plinths, upon which were embalming tools. In the corner of the room was a pile of salt, which too the form of a giant man and attacked them when they entered the room. The party resolved to transport the water from the portal to the chamber, which eventually caused the salt to dissolve, and were able to recover the implements within.

Passing then to the corridor to the north, they came upon another chamber of salted undead, which they overcame, and claim the grave goods within.

Passing further north, they broke into three more chambers, which appeared similar to the one before, but the remains within which did not rise to attack them.

Finally, turning west and then south, they came upon a chamber with decorated doors. Within the chamber was a single sarcophagus, the occupant of which rose to attack them when they opened it.  Unable to overcome the undead, the party retired to the guild.

Grave good recovered were assessed to be 525 Gros (!) in value, of which 175 Gros was disbursed to the members, according to the terms of the contract.

On the 10th day of Ostar, guild members Kimly, Tamira, and Erik, with tbearer Karl in employment, explored the chambers underground. Returning to the chamber with the decorated door, they vanquished the undead within, and recovered much grave goods.

Turning then north they passed along a long corridor that eventually turned east, and entered a flooded chamber with a doorway on the south wall. When they entered the chamber with the purpose of passing through the south door, they were attacked by animated skeletons which had hid within the water, which they were able to vanquish.

Passing then through the southern door, they came upon a large flooded chamber with faded frescoes upon the walls, which suggested that the chamber was used for some religious rites which involved the immersion of the worshippers into the water. Here the water took the shape of a giant and attacked them, but it was defeated.

The party then retraced their steps, with the purpose of exploring to the east, but passing a junction guild member Erik discerned a hidden portal upon a wall. Entering the portal, they found themselves in a long corridor leading to the west. The party passed into the corridor with caution, and were able to defend themselves against skeletal warriors that issued forth from hidden niches along the walls. 

Overcoming these undead, the party came into a large chamber, the walls of which were painted with figures of men and ships. At the far end of the room sat an undead warrior upon a throne of stone. As they were already wounded and weary at this point, the party left the room, and returned to the guild.

Grave goods recovered were valued at 5 Gros, of which 18 Gros was disbursed to the party according to the terms of the contract.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session was the last one before our Chinese New Year break, which means there are a projected 6 more sessions to the end of the campaign.

The two days of exploration took place during the same session, with the first day garnering the PCs the largest haul in the history of the campaign. This happened partly because I made a mistake in my planning, putting four identical rooms stocked with the salt mummies. It seemed like a good idea when I was planning the dungeon, but when I realised that the repetition was going to be boring and tedious, I removed the undead and granted them grave goods of lower value instead. It took them some time still to break into and sift through the grave goods and pick out the valuable bits though.

The room with the water trap was initially supposed to be sealed, but I realised that as it stood it would not have been an interesting encounter for the players. I needed to 'telegraph' the existence of a trap, and I figured a good way of doing this was to show the remains of others who had fallen prey to it. This worked, and gave the players a way to bypass the trap and still claim the treasure within.

The magical portal of water actually leads to a pool in one of the barrows overground, but the players were wisely wary and did not attempt to pass through it, although they did tie a rope around the waist of one of the dead tomb-robbers and throw him inside. What I did not expect the players to do with the portal was for them to use it as a limitless reservoir, which they used to flood the subsequent chamber and neutralise the salt golem which had a high Challenge Rating (and hence more treasure). This clever weaponisation of a feature of the dungeon was partly responsible for the huge haul they made.

Their abnormally large haul meant that we now have more characters at level 4, which will be important for the next phase of the campaign.

The expedition on the second day was more typical. I revealed the existence of a hidden door to a section of the dungeon here by having one of the dwarven PCs notice that there was a part of the map that was blank, which did not make sense. Hopefully this will prompt the players to start looking at 'blank' sections of the map and searching for secret doors more carefully.

I ended the session by having Gamdar, the orc tavern-hand who is secretly in league with the dragon cultists approach the non-human, non-dwarven, and non-Kellos-worshipping members of the guild to arrange a meeting with the head of the dragon cultists.

The dragon cultists, posing as merely common tomb-robbers, offered the PCs an alliance: they knew the location of the death cultists' lair within the dungeon, and proposed a combined attack on them to eliminate them, and thereafter they and the guild members could partition the dungeon between themselves to avoid conflict.

I then gave the players the two weeks until our next session to discuss among themselves which PCs if any would take up the offer. This means that the next session may see a large and challenging battle, and the levelling up during this session would put the PCs in a better position to fight that battle.

The reason why I want the battle to be challenging is because I want the PCs to level up quicker over the next few sessions, ideally with most if not all PCs reaching level 7 as they enter the finale session so they can have their second class feature.

With the approach of the end of the campaign I face the question of what to do with the PCs who survive the final battle. Five Torches Deep is rather limited in PC progression, especially in the list of available spells, which I feel is an important part of any fantasy RPG game. Perhaps I will let all the PCs convert to their equivalent class in 5E, retaining the number of XPs that they end the campaign on.

Knock! - and am I an OSR DM?

Spoiler: I am not.

A few months ago I came upon the kickstarter for Knock!, an OSR "zine", and liked the look of it enough to back for a physical copy. It wasn't cheap, but I thought a physical copy would be better for appreciating the art and finding the articles I wanted.

I received my copy a couple weeks ago, and I was glad I made that choice.

Now I am not someone who appreciates a thing simply for its beauty; even when I get something beautiful, it is for what it represents, and what it advertises about myself (i.e. vanity).

But this thing.

This zine here is a joy to behold and to hold. The artwork within are so evocative and varied, and the layout so whimsical, one could spend hours poring over the pages.

Actual photo of me reading Knock! #1, 2021 - colourised

The text are of course good and useful too, but they are apart from the physical quality of the book: the texture of the paper, the heft, the boldness of the colours, the contrast, the use of non-parallel layout... Suffice to say that I will be backing issue 2 of the zine later this year.

The text did, however, cause me to ask myself: am I an Old School Revival DM?

That question in turn begs the questions: what is an OSR style game? What other styles of games exist besides the OSR style? Is this a binary thing, a spectrum with two ends, or a multi-dimensional measurement thing?

There are articles aplenty already written on what defines an OSR game, and having read several of these and the zine, I came to the conclusion that I am not an OSR DM.

Well, not entirely anyway.

There are aspects of the OSR style that I like and employ in my campaigns, such as a grittiness instead of high fantasy (something often said of 5E) and emphasis on player-based solutions instead of character-based solutions (again, 5E).

At the same time, there are aspects of the OSR style that I do not enjoy, such as the "gonzo" style dungeon, where the whimsical and unexplained exist seemingly just to impress, but make no sense.

Of course neither of these preferences/peeves are absolute; depending of the campaign I am playing, I may occasionally embrace the gonzo (as I did when I ran a short White Plume Mountain mini-campaign), or I may handwave away the logistical problems like money and encumbrance (as I did when running my Space Opera campaigns).

I do, however, have a preference when it comes to running my staple fantasy campaign in Terrinoth, and I hope to pen down these thoughts in the future, both as reference for myself, and any new GM who might find them useful.

In the meantime, do consider getting a copy of Knock! #1 from here.