Secret societies are one of cornerstones of the Ravenloft Setting, but they tend to fall into background roles of either cannon fodder for the villain, or temporary resources for the heroes. Having played many games with secret societies and made three of my own (Memento Mori, Kara’s Daughters and the soon-to-be-released Ward Zero), here are some tips for getting the most out of them: 1) Information Is The Highest Form Of Currency Some “underdog” secret societies like the Shadow Insurrection, L’Ordures, and Sons of Gundar make obvious allies for anyone fighting the same foe, but things can get too cozy; these are secret societies, after all. To keep the mystique in a long running alliance, remember that equipment and even spellcasting is cheap, but secrets, once shared, are spent forever. Outsiders should have to submit to lengthy vetting and use excellent diplomacy to pry a single critical secret from groups like the Duskpeace Outcasts. Offering money tends to backfire, because it suggests the one offering does not know how valuable information is, or how dangerous. 2) Splitting The Party Even if one PC is a member, the rest of the party should not be insiders by default. Some heroic groups (i.e. the Society of Huntsmen, the Lamplighters, the Circle) don’t limit fraternization with outsiders, but a member of the Brotherhood of Broken Blades draws suspicion if their party includes arcane spellcasters. Many others are somewhere in between: a member might lead the party on one adventure on behalf of the society, share a little “need to know” info on the next, and offer nothing of value on another. Variety is the key; a member of the Green Hand or The Woodcutter's Axe need not confront the group’s enemies around every corner. 3) The More, The Merrier Any of the “underdog” groups might welcome all classes, such that an entire party could join. Likewise, any party might join the Order of the Guardians and just report on any evil artifacts they find. More options become available with restricted character creation: a Carnival-based campaign with a party of Troupers, a “special investigations” team for La Serrure et Clé composed of calibans, or an all-elf strike team for the Children of Wrath are all possibilities. In all these cases, the restriction is on race, so the party might include members of any class. Class restrictions are more difficult; if The Noble Brotherhood of Assassins needs serious muscle for a particular job, or the Knights of the Ashen Bough need a spellcaster to erase Drakov brands, they would probably contract with an outsider ally rather than recruit someone. 4) “Congratulations…” Even if a PC doesn’t seek membership, someone might feel they earned it. Groups like the Fraternity of Shadows or Kargatane make offers one can’t refuse based on their own sense of worthiness. The Échansons, Ildi'Thaan, Vilushka, or Witches of Hala might choose someone based on their bloodline. In cases like the Stalkers, Ata Bestaal, or even Keepers of the Black Feather, membership includes lycanthropy, such that a character might be “accidentally recruited” during a fight. In all these cases, the PC is not really an outsider, but their loyalty is in question. Even otherwise good groups may take drastic measures if someone with too much knowledge of their inner working turns them down. 5) Membership Has Its Privileges Members of most non-evil groups should be glad they joined most of the time. Physical tokens of membership frequently include masterwork items suitable for enchanting, if not minor magical items. Support societies like Société de Legerdemain, L’Académie des Sciences, and the Veiled Palm shouldn’t require more than dues (including discounted prices for supplies), reporting anything of interest, and keeping group secrets. If social obligations aren’t part of your game, this can also apply to “underdog” or “heroic” societies. If assigned to do more, the majority of the work should be within the PC’s comfort zone and rewarded fairly. Plots that pit group loyalty against friends, family or conscience should only come after the PC has built a strong identity as part of the society. 6) That Wasn’t In The Brochure! Many secret societies have hierarchies, and some evil ones can appear harmless or even heroic to those at the lowest levels. A PC might spend decades in La Confrérie des Rêveurs* before finally discovering who (or what) they’ve been “feeding.” Insurrectionists in Mortigny might revere the long-dead martyr Simon Audaire long before being formally introduced to him in the, er, “flesh.” Many more groups are not stated as having such a layered structure, but could easily develop one, such as the Scions of Purity, Syndicate of Enlightened Citizens, League of Nine, and The Scions of Yakov Dilisnya. Allow PC’s to benefit from such associations as much as possible before learning the Awful Truth. Such “malign paradigm shifts” are among the most devastating horror checks, and are among the penultimate thrills of playing in a horror setting. 7) Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor Finally, while truly evil cults may only fit as antagonists, you can still get more mileage from the Dark Delvers or Cult of the Straw God by emphasizing their insidious ideology. Long after the party has destroyed Mother Fury, have them discover a Howling Clan revival among the frustrated poor of some distant town. An old ally suffering nightmares of the Dead Man’s Campaign might be groomed for membership in the Lustmorde, or a treasure-seeking rival enthralled by writings about the Seven Scarabs. This could make for a truly epic struggle to destroy not just a dangerous cult, but a dangerous idea. Such challenges have been covered previously for destroying Sinkholes of Evil (RLDMG), and for fighting bogeymen (DTDL). Whether allies, mentors, rivals or enemies, the people who make up these groups have committed themselves to keep secrets from their fellowmen. It’s a grave choice that players may be faced with, to join them in bearing that burden of secrecy, or to drag the truth into the light of day to kill it. Either option can pose a challenge for PC’s of any level, and raise the kind of complex moral questions that keep players coming back to Ravenloft. *La Confrérie des Rêveurs was described in an article of the same name in Quoth the Raven issue #6, a Ravenloft netbook hosted by the Fraternity of Shadows. Matthew Barrett has been playing and writing for Ravenloft for over twenty years, starting with the Kargatane's Book of S series (as Leyshon Campbell). He married his wife on Friday the 13th after proposing to her on Halloween. By tradition, the first story read at birth to each of their three children was The Barker’s Tour, from Ravenloft’s “Carnival” supplement. He is currently working on a Ravenloft-based experiment in crowdsourced fiction using his “Inkubator” system at inkubator.miraheze.org. Pic Reference: http://www.theendofhistory.net/most_recent/history-terrorism-secret-societies/ A puppeteer captivates his audience in the town square. The heroes, returning from their latest dungeon, spot the growing crowd and approach with interest. The audience is mostly children and a few citizens taking a moment to see what the fuss is about. It’s easy to get a good view. Hanging from one of the strings is a demon, horned and wings licked in crimson. Hanging opposite of the demon is someone holding a sword. The fighter immediately recognizes the puppet. It looks exactly like him. The puppeteer speaks of a great prophecy; of a demon, locked away, approaching escape. Only our hero can stop him. This is an NPC that one of my DM’s made in a campaign I took part in. It was this puppeteer, who introduced himself as Alvar, that showed me the potential for an NPC in a Pathfinder, or really any, campaign. Beyond just an innkeeper with an eyepatch, or a noble with a stuck up attitude, Alvar was a living breathing character with a purpose. With this article I want to show you 4 ways to make a memorable NPC, all thanks to inspiration I gained from this puppeteer. 1) Connect Them To Your Player Characters Alvar was connected directly to one of our players, the aforementioned hero that was crucial to keeping the demon locked away. This connection establishes a bond and creates a reason for players to interact with an NPC more. How do they know this? What else do they know? The bond doesn’t need to be as grandiose as providing a backstory to characters or as an omenspeaker, but any sort of connection immediately makes players feel exactly that: connected. Another approach is to make the players feel responsible for this character. A young squire who finds the heroes to be inspiring hopes to learn from them so he follows them out of town to the cave they are going to explore. The party can’t exactly leave him alone in the cave, he’ll be ripped apart, so they’ll need to keep him safe while they seek out their objective. This can be especially strong if you target a Good character in town with this specific squire, idolizing them and setting up for the moment where the character feels responsible for their safety. 2) Have NPCs Praise Or Condemn Aspects Of Your Characters Characters make mistakes. There are times when players can make decisions in the moments that skirt the alignment of their character. NPCs that either push them away or pull them towards the other side can be compelling talking points to a character. Alvar would constantly tell our fighter that he believed in him and they he could do better in making this world a good place. The fighter was caught between two alignments and Alvar was there urging our fighter to make the right call, but the fighter was still lost in knowing which was which. This method can create tension. Tension is good because it inspires dialogue between characters and can make them more involved in the story. Having an NPC show up and point out the divide in players’ morals can provide intriguing role playing potential for a party. Of course, this is by no means an excuse to become vindictive and outright insult a player for their decisions. Instead if someone merely asks the character ‘why?’ it has potential to open up a whole new avenue of character exploration. 3) Find The Drive Behind A Character And Have An NPC Amplify It The fighter always imagined himself as the hero. Maybe that’s why he was so intrigued by the puppet performance and became interested in Alvar so quickly. There was this idea that he was something more: he sought out some sort of prophecy and Alvar delivered. There was heroic blood in his family’s lineage, and the fighter was the key to reopening what was locked away. Some players may find that to be a bit too convenient, but Alvar is a particularly specific example of what an NPC can do. Each player gives a purpose to their character, something that drives them to make the decisions they make. A method of taking your game to the next level is incorporating these themes into your story, feeding back into the players what they crave. You can twist it and turn it on their head, but dangling a carrot on a stick, so to speak, will push the characters forward. Most villains in a campaign will do this to the players, but there is no reason you cannot take advantage and have other NPCs do this. Especially if you can balance the idea of similar traits between your villain, your player, and their NPC. The villain and the hero both crave power, each must stop the other to get it, the NPC wants to see the hero gain this power, but which side will their methods align with? This gets to the final, most poignant point of Alvar’s story. 4) Have Your NPCs Be Wrong This may sound obvious, but what exactly does it mean to be wrong? An NPC can give wrong directions to a dungeon, but is that something they can be remembered for? A strong NPC will provide an emotional connection to the players, and with the above methods you can achieve the framework to create a memorable bond. However the most important point of an NPC is that they are not omniscient. NPCs should not know the way everything flows and they can be just as guilty as anyone of being wrong. Alvar was a victim of his own prophecy. He didn’t know the full explanation behind what he was preaching to the party’s fighter. He spoke of the fighter being the key to locking the demon away, when in reality the demon could never be free until the fighter approached the cage. Our fighter broke, realizing that he wasn’t the hero that was meant to save the world: he was the villain destined to free the beast who would end it. Alvar himself also broke from this and met the tragic end of dying knowing that he was wrong. There is nothing interesting about an NPC that the players can never outsmart. A villain who is always one step ahead is boring so why should someone helping out the players have knowledge they shouldn’t have? Treating an NPC like a mortal who is just as in the dark as the players are, with their own opinions whether they be right or wrong, allows the players to relate to them. It forms a bond or a rivalry, providing players with a push and pull that inspires digging deep into their character. Alvar’s end may have been hopeless, but our fighter did not follow the same path. He fought against his prophecy and returned to his own path. He would defeat this demon. He let the beast out, so he was going to be the one to kill it. Alvar never saw this, but Alvar was never supposed to see it. Multiple storylines are happening at a time during a campaign: the main story, the player character’s stories, and the NPC’s stories. Alvar’s story was about an old man who dreamt of a golden era of his youth, locked behind memories and prophecy. He always hoped that he would find his hero, unfortunately all he was left with was betrayal-- from no one but himself. The greatest part of all this is that Alvar wasn’t even involved in my character’s storyline from this campaign, but it’s undeniable the effect that he had on me. My side of the story was full of its own characters, twists, and revelations that I’ll be using as an inspiration for a future article. I hope this has helped plant some seeds to create an NPC that will push your players. They want it. Have you played or experienced any NPCs that were memorable for you? Who were they? Let me know in the comments or on my twitter! Justin Cauti is a writer and Twitch streamer. He plays board/roleplaying games on the internet at http://www.playingboardgames.tv. Follow him on Twitter for updates on his boring life and writing projects @LeftSideJustin. Picture Referece: https://www.bit-tech.net/reviews/gaming/pc/top-10-computer-game-npcs/1/ In the right situation, enemy spellcasters can be extremely dangerous. They have access to powerful spells and abilities that can inflict grievous damage or disruption to the player characters. Some of these are BBEGs, but many are simple "encounter bosses", typically found in the final of that evil cultist shrine, or what have you. Note that for the purposes of this article I am referring to the traditional spell casting enemies, like wizards, sorcerers, shamans, warlocks, priests, etc. An ancient green dragon, while technically a spellcaster, is not something that I would suggest beefing up due to the fact that they are very tanky and require quite a feat to overpower in combat. The problem with these fantastic specimens is that they generally have some piss-poor defensive stats. They usually have a low hit point pool, a pretty low armour class, and usually some susceptibility to saving throw failures as well. When coupled with the fact that players see these encounter leaders with the word "BOSS" tattooed on their chest, their defensive statistics don't hold up too well when the party inevitably focuses their fire and throws their resources at taking these down as soon as possible. Since this, let's call it, "natural selection" of players targeting anything that looks like it can do cool stuff (or dangerous stuff), is a thing, we may as well try to look at ways to utilise these enemies better. The best solution isn't just to stat-pad the wizard with more HP and a higher armour class. He'll start to feel just like a bugbear again and we're back to boring old square one; hence why I use the term "utilise" as opposed to "make them stronger". So let's have a think about some ways that a spellcaster can utilise their power more effectively in combat. Wizards (and most other spellcasters) are likely to have high wisdom, intelligence, or both. Yes, this is included in their spell bonuses, but remember that their thought processes would also be influenced by this too - they aren’t idiots! So we need to factor this in when thinking about ways they can utilise themselves more in combat. We need to remember that squishy spellcasters are usually very aware that they are a) squishy and b) a spellcaster. They wouldn't just charge into the fray. To start, let's look at the biggest downfalls that these spellcasters have. Let's look at some reasons why they aren't as challenging as they perhaps might otherwise be: 1) They get focused on with big spells/nukes and martial heroes’ attacks; 2) They are often the juicy target for any of those "disruptive" spells the PC casters have such as Silence, Blindness, Confusion, Charm, etc.; 3) Their armour class and hit points are usually low, for their challenge rating; and 4) They don't function as effectively when adjacent to the hostile PCs. I have a few potential solutions to this: 1) Don’t start combat with the caster in danger Don't start the caster in the room when the fight breaks out. Have him enter part-way through instead. Let's say the PCs kick down the door of the wizard's quarters. What happens? Maybe his well-trained mimic treasure chest attacks! Perhaps the two suits of armour against the wall come alive and attack. Then have the wizard enter from an adjacent room on the following round, or even a few rounds later. Alternatively, when the party attacks the wizard's guards in the great hall, the wizard hears the commotion (or an alarm spell is triggered) in the main chamber, and he enters with his golems and joins the fight mid-way while the players are already occupied. The first advantage to this is that the wizard avoids the snowball of death that is the opening round of a D&D combat; where the players use their strongest abilities and try to burst down any immediate threats as quickly as possible. If the wizard walks in on a later round, it throws a spanner in the works by creating a tactical challenge for the players! Also, if the wizard has a round or two before they enter combat, they can cast those juicy defensive spells before they even step into the danger zone. Spells like Mirror Image, Mage Armour, Armour of Agathys, Blur, etc. are great. 2) Cast Invisibility/Blink Have the wizard in the area, but have them unseen (due to Invisibility) or in another plane (with Blink). Until the wizard attacks, or is revealed, Invisibility will shield them from a lot of unwanted aggression from the PCs. Blink is a good disruptive defensive spell, as it will give the caster some rounds without any danger from the players. 3) Illusion Shenanigans I've done this a few times and it's worked out pretty well. Just try not to be too mean with it, and don't overuse it. There are a few ways to use illusion shenanigans. Firstly, to obscure the wizard from view (have a bookcase or some other Line of Sight blocker in between the party and the wizard's.) If the illusion goes, the wizard is revealed! Alternatively, disguise the wizard so that he looks like a commoner, a prisoner, or perhaps a grunt in the combat. Thirdly, you can disguise one of the other enemies to LOOK like the wizard with an illusion spell. In one of my campaigns, the illusionist wizard was in a large chamber with a bunch of his golems. The paladin of the party, who hated him, ran forward and used misty step to be right next to the wizard, and then attacked. It was then he realised that the wizard's image was only an illusion, cloaking the real enemy - the wizard's champion battle golem! The paladin was alone, right next to it! You could also use illusions as 1hp minions to try and coax out spells from the players. Use this approach in moderation, as it can backfire in nasty ways, i.e. players running amok in revenge. 4) Run two wizards You can't focus fire two things at once! Another option is to consider running two, slightly weaker wizards as opposed to just one. (Or 3 wizards, or 4, 10, 20, etc.) Sure, one might get focused down and annihilated, but the other will still be up! Or your party might panic and half-kill both of them, leaving them both free to wreak havoc on their next turn! 5) The Old Switcheroo The party kicks down the door to see an evil warlock in robes completing his ritual. He is surrounded by 4 demonic brutes, and he glares at you and gestures with his finger, pointing for his demons to attack the intruders. The players think "Oh crap, we gotta kill that warlock first so that the encounter is easier." But what they don't know, is that the warlock is just Joe Bloggs from Villagehills down the road, who turned a dark path and read the wrong page from the black tome. He has AC10, no spells, and one hit die. The real threat of this combat are the demonic brutes, but I can bet money that some useful spells might be wasted on this commoner - spells which really would have been more helpful if used on the demons. Again, don't overuse it, but dab it in your world here and there for a bit of fun. 6) Use The Battlefield To Their Advantage Design encounters that really suit wizards. Throw in a lot of inhibiting terrain that slows movement or forces the players to take a long route to get to the wizard. Having a ravine or crevasse in-between the wizard and the party is an easy way of doing this. You could also accommodate this with a trap (like swinging axes) that stands between the players and the wizard's (But you should think of offering a long way around the trap for players who don't want to tangle with it). Also, of course, remember to station the wizard's allies as a barrier between the wizard and the PCs. There are two types of DMs in the world. Those who increase difficulty by giving their spellcasters more hit points and a higher armour class, or those who use more strategic or creative measures to increase the challenge. Harder doesn’t necessarily mean more hit points. Use the above to really let those players know how crazy powerful spellcasters can be! Peter is an avid dungeon master, role-player, and story teller. When he's not running homebrew campaigns, he is creating new worlds, or he is reading and writing fantasy stories, forever immersing himself in the gaping black-hole known as the fantasy genre. Image Credit: http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/uncle-grandpa/images/2/27/Transparent_Evil_Wizard.png/revision/latest?cb=20140515001325 Greetings! Friend: I know that Lord Mayor Drakeson has invited you to Carinford-Halldon, ostensibly to congratulate you on rooting out and killing the werewolf Edmond Timothy. Have you had occasion to meet Mayor Drakeson's wife? Gwendolyn Drakeson is a perfect hostess, of course, and the two of them are quite in love. It would seem that her grandfather Nathan Timothy found a smart match for her indeed… The werewolf (here and throughout I use the term werewolf, but each of these points could refer to most all lycanthropes, and some non-lycanthrope shapeshifters as well) is one of the oldest archetypes in horror literature. In Danse Macabre, Stephen King boils all monsters down to three basic molds, one of which is the werewolf: the monster that walks among us. Throughout history, mythology, and fiction, there are several common threads that run through the best werewolf stories. Hopefully, looking at some of these a little more closely may give you some insight (or inspiration) for using werewolves in your own games. 1) The Beast Truly, from his origins as a pauper in the western core, Frankie Drakeson has overcome a great deal of personal tragedy, from being orphaned before he could walk, to the brutal violence he and his sister suffered at the hands of a Dementlieuse smuggler. Such setbacks would have destroyed a lesser man, but Mayor Drakeson shows no signs of being weighed down by his past. The werewolf isn’t just a person who turns into a wolf. Not everyone who gets bitten becomes infected. In werewolf stories, the hidden monstrosity of the werewolf represents the savagery that can lurk within anyone. This can vary from a rage-fueled impulse to mindless destruction, all the way up to a predatory need to hunt and kill one’s own kind. In Kelley Armstrong’s Otherworld series, the werewolf curse isn’t just a supernatural disease; it represents the very real, deep issues these characters struggle with, including spousal abuse, post traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, and a host of other problems. In the best werewolf stories, the monster isn’t just the random victim of circumstance: the curse echoes some darkness that already exists within them, and the wolf is just an excuse to let it out. 2) The Unnatural A word of advice if you plan to accept his invitation: Carinford-Halldon is extremely unusual for Mordentish villages in that it has no dogs. The residents seem unsure about the cause, and while some blame the wild boars and others vaguely recall a mysterious canine illness, bringing a hound remains a risky proposition. The ‘wolf’ in werewolf has very little to do with wolves beyond a passing resemblance. The best werewolves have virtually nothing to do with natural wolves. Most werewolves are shunned by natural beasts. It’s fitting that many werewolf groups operate along the alpha-beta-omega pack structure, since this hierarchy is a fiction of humankind. It appears only in wolves in captivity, so it's apropos that it is used by beings that are of both wolf and man, but wholly neither. In the few cases where monstrous werewolves exert control over real wolves, they control the animals not through a connection of kinship but through supernatural domination, much like a vampire. The werewolf who has a deep connection to nature is a figure of primal spirituality, not a monster, and loses some of its impact in a horror setting. 3) The Hidden I envy you: Mayor Drakeson is a delightful dinner companion! The servants and commonfolk in his village will no doubt seek to regale you with numerous tales of the monsters he's vanquished and the lengths he's gone to in order to protect his friends and family. There's probably no one in the entire town that doesn't feel like they personally owe their lives to him. The greatest danger of the werewolf isn’t their teeth or even their curse; it’s that they could be anyone. If the players can readily identify the werewolf suspect, then you might not be getting the most mileage out of the werewolf archetype. The werewolf is at its best when people don’t even realize that’s what they’re dealing with. In a D&D game of course, this is nearly impossible. Fortunately, once someone has been exposed to the werewolf archetype it leaves an indelible fear in the back of their mind; fear of the evil their friends and allies might be concealing. (It is this exact fear that games like Are You a Werewolf? exploit to create humor.) As the adventure continues and tension begins to mount, player suspicion will grow to become paranoia, and the damage that a party can do when it is gripped by fear can be greater than the mayhem caused by the werewolf itself. The most malevolent werewolves, the ones who know (or suspect) their true nature, are adept at exploiting this, diverting attention from themselves so adroitly that their friends and allies will even take up arms against renowned heroes rather than believe their loved one could be hiding such a dark secret. 4) The Puppet I do hope you come at the right time of year, however. During autumn, when the last desperate traders of the season are hurrying across the lands, both predator and brigand make travel to the town dangerous. Why, the mayor and his family are so busy keeping the roads safe they can scarcely be found at all! Although transforming beneath the full moon is the most common trigger, almost all werewolves are afflicted by their curse in some kind of scheduled timeframe, both in fiction and mythology. Ancient werewolf stories tell of men who transform every evening when the sun goes down, those who were cursed to walk as a wolf seven days out of the year, those who transformed beneath the new moon, and an assortment of other schedules. In all these cases, the underlying root is the same: the werewolf is affected by unseen forces that do not have such a pull over the rest of us. These forces compel the werewolf to do their evil deeds, in the same way that Dexter’s Dark Passenger compels him to his own butchery. History is rife with serial killers compelled to follow a schedule to their murders, and it is this example that informs the werewolf legend’s need for a timeframe. Altering the schedule for a werewolf antagonist can be a good way to throw the PCs for a loop while still maintaining this core aspect of the werewolf archetype. 5)The Cycle Shortly after arranging to marry Nathan Timothy's granddaughter Gwen, Frankie began a family of his own. His six children have grown into fine young men and women, and from captain of the guard to magistrate, they all serve the town as loyally as their parents do. Human storytellers have known for centuries that abuse and trauma can form a vicious feedback loop. The werewolf legend reflects that in multiple ways. On the one hand, there are the werewolves who were delivered into this curse: regular people, possibly even good people (albeit ones with repressed horrors or well controlled dark urges) who were affected by traumas larger than they could cope with. There are also the hereditary werewolves, whose curse was handed down from parent to child. These werewolves reflect the unfortunate tendency for the unwary (or uncaring) to inflict their own trauma on their children. Such families work hard to maintain a semblance of normalcy, keeping their family as hidden from their community as possible. Some werewolves who become aware of their nature can delight in spreading their disease to others (Voldemort’s flunky Fenrir Greyback is a good example of this) in the same way that some human predators take a perverse glee in bringing others around to their warped point of view. 6) The Corruption Mayor Drakeson has done a wonderful job getting rid of the boars around Carinford-Halldon: those swine cause so many problems! Why, shortly after he settled there, the native boars caused so much damage with their rooting that they wiped out entire copses of trees. To this day you can't find a cedar tree within miles of the town. Whether they entered their state willingly, as punishment for their crimes, were infected by another werewolf, or had their curse passed on by their parents, all werewolves share a foulness within them. This inner bestiality is why the werewolf is vulnerable to silver, as silver is a symbol of purity. Other possibilities exist, of course. Ravenloft werewolves are famous for their varied chemical and material ‘allergies.' However, all of these items share something in common: they’re all either symbols of purity or agents of purification. (The film Ginger Snaps explores this idea.) This is an important link for the archetype. Werewolves’ banes aren’t just random weaknesses, they’re a tangible reminder that the afflicted is a monster, and its pain stems from the fact that its wickedness is so strong as to cause a physical reaction when exposed to such purity. 7) The Victim Since Frankie quit hunting monsters and settled down with his family, he's done his best to stay busy. Notably, he's done a marvelous job sponsoring and training monster hunters. He's shown a particular interest in training those adventurers who would travel through Kartakas or Verbrek, as though he has a specific grudge against the abominations of those lands. Most werewolves were a person, once. Like Larry Talbot, they might have even been a good person. The most impactful werewolf stories are the ones where the protagonists discover that the werewolf is someone they care about. Almost as meaningful, and a little less expected, is when the werewolf turns out to be someone they don't know terribly well, but they just like. In lighter stories, the quest to find a cure can be the focus of an adventure. However, in horror adventuring, especially the Victorian horror of Ravenloft, the werewolf curse is an echo of the mental darkness it is serves as an allegory for: it cannot be cured. It can be suppressed, for a time, but there is no force that can contain it forever. Eventually, the monster within will break loose and hurt someone. The person the werewolf once was might be horrified by what they've become, but they find themselves unable to end their own existence; the monster is part of their own will to survive, and it is stronger than they are. Such unfortunate souls cannot understand why they continue to allow themselves to commit the atrocities they perform while transformed, and with every passing cycle they become increasingly unsure of whether they began as a good person with a horrific curse, or if the monster was their true self all along and their human life just a convenient disguise. Conclusion My, how I ramble on! The truth is, you've done quite a bit of good in the world, and I'm certain Mayor Drakeson's patronage is no small part of that. You deserve his recognition, to be sure. Carinford-Halldon is a lovely place: a tight knit community with an intense amount of loyalty to one another, both commoner and noble alike. Spend a day with the Mayor and his family, and you'll find their hospitality beyond compare. Spend any more time than that with them, and you're bound to have a howling good time... Knowledgeably yours, The Barnacle Jim Stearns is a deranged hermit from the swamps of Southern Illinois. In addition to writing for the Black Library, he puts pen to paper for High Level Games and Quoth the Raven. His mad scribblings can frequently be found in anthologies like Fitting In or Selfies from the End of the World, by Mad Scientist Journal. Follow him on Twitter @jcstearnswriter. Image reference: https://www.blackgate.com/2011/10/21/game-review-innistrad-from-magic-the-gathering/ For as long as there’ve been creative works, there will always be more creative works that are either inspired by or that pay homage to works before them, and the original Final Fantasy video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System is one such example of this. Many of the game mechanics and creatures used in the original Final Fantasy were borrowed from Dungeons and Dragons, such as magic users only being able to use so many spells of certain levels per day, or even some of the monsters, such as sahuagin and mind flayers. When Final Fantasy gained popularity in the 1990’s (which persists even to this day!), many people began working together to bring Final Fantasy back to its tabletop roots, with the largest of these endeavors being a long running project known as the Final Fantasy RPG project. Today, I will show you all an abridged history of fan made Final Fantasy tabletop RPGs. 1) FInal Fantasy Tactics Miniatures Game This is perhaps the oldest of the games showcased today; it’s a tabletop skirmish game based on the Final Fantasy Tactics video game for the Playstation. Though when I say “based on,” what I really mean is that it’s a direct copy of the rules of the game. As in, its creator literally just wrote down the mechanics of the video game as the rules for this tabletop game (which, admittedly is no mean feat). Unfortunately, this very fact also makes the game nearly unplayable, since many of the calculations are so redundant that it’d numb the average human mind after two rounds of combat where something actually happens. This game also had some creative license taken with the classes available. There are a few additional classes that weren’t originally included in the Final Fantasy Tactics video game. They instead came from the real time strategy game Age of Empires. It’s not by any means good, or even playable, but the Final Fantasy Tactics Miniatures Games is still noteworthy as an artifact from the Web 1.0 era. This game was made at a time when personal publishing tools were much less robust, and for all its flaws, it somehow managed to survive into this modern era of the internet. 2) Final Fantasy d20 Final Fantasy d20 originally started as a conversion of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 meant to sport character classes and races from the Final Fantasy franchise, but has recently been updated to use the Pathfinder rules. The fact that it uses Pathfinder makes it seem, at first blush, like one of the more accessible games, but it actually points out what I believe is something of a misconception about games with “d20” affixed at the end of the title: they’re not all the same, and knowing one won’t necessarily make you a master of all the others. All the races and classes from Pathfinder have been gutted to make room for Final Fantasy’s equally robust selection; so the similarities between Final Fantasy d20 and Pathfinder mostly end at the core mechanics of the game. Even still, Final Fantasy d20 does a good job bringing Final Fantasy to the d20 ruleset. It has many of the staples of Final Fantasy, such as Limit Breaks (the super powered attacks character can make after taking enough damage), along with familiar ideas from most d20 fantasy games, such as the capacity for multiclassing and prestige classes. Most importantly though, Final Fantasy d20 has an active community to this day, and is still being updated, with some of the most recent additions as of this writing being a Samurai class (as they’re depicted in Final Fantasy, of course) and the inclusion of an official character sheet! 3) Final Fantasy d6 Final Fantasy d6 is a spin-off of the Second Edition of the Final Fantasy RPG Project. It was created as a splinter project when the 3rd Edition was announced, but showed no signs of being released. So fans of the fan made game took it upon themselves to make their own version of the game that simplified the rules some. As the name implies, a bulk of the game’s mechanics are based around the humble six sided dice, but lowering the size of the dice and numbers used (the game this was based off used d100) is as far as the game goes regarding simplification. Final Fantasy d6 has quite a few detailed subsystems, such as different weapons all having their own idiosyncrasies besides just doing more damage than the others. As an example: wands and staves allow spells to activate faster; spears and whips get critical hits more often. What I think really makes this game shine is that there’s a great deal of customization available. The game offers detailed item creation rules, but still sports a wide range of gear available à la carte for players who just want to pick items from a list. It’s not a tremendously simple game as it’s initially described, but it’s otherwise exactly what it says on the tin: a Final Fantasy game that uses d6s. 4) SeeD: A Final Fantasy Inspired Tabletop RPG Continuing along the path of games based on the products of the Final Fantasy RPG Project, SeeD is a remake of the project’s 3rd edition, which was notorious for being so complex and convoluted that it was practically unplayable without some kind of machine assistance. SeeD, instead of seeing this as a problem, embraces this idea. It makes use of many double and triple digit numbers, and includes multi-step formulae as a part of actions. Additionally, SeeD is also a modular system, with many distinctly different subsystems to accomplish the same tasks, such as non-combat skills and character classes. In order to combat the cumbersome nature of having a large and varied rules set, SeeD has its rules distributed as a wiki. Hyperlinks are used to direct the reader to other relevant sections, such as to the skill list section from the various different skill system pages. Also listed on this wiki is an archive of tools designed specifically for running SeeD. This game is incredibly detailed, especially for a home-brewed variety, and is a culmination of years of effort from many different people, and even has a second edition which seeks to divorce itself from its Final Fantasy roots. According to the update logs of the wiki, they both seem to still be maintained and updated! 5) Final Fantasy RPG 4th Edition The fourth direct product of the Final Fantasy RPG project goes in a different direction from all its predecessors and their spinoffs by being an overall simplification of the game, with considerably less customization. The forward of the game is also very straightforward with what its creators intended with two particular design choices standing out: that the game should be modular, to accommodate works from others; and that the game should in fact be two games with mostly divided rules, a game about non-combat exploration and another about tactical combat. These are goals that the FFRPG 4th Edition succeeds in. How a character decides to dispatch enemies has very little bearing on what a character is able to do outside the heat of combat, and in fact, there is an optional set of rules meant to remove (or at least minimize) the role of combat in this game, leaving character class as little more than a narrative detail. What’s most impressive about the Final Fantasy RPG 4th edition is that everything it builds off from was the collective works of other fans of the Final Fantasy franchise, who built their own tabletop game from scratch as an homage to the video game series. The legacy of more than 20 years this game was built on gives it a unique set of mechanics, even if the options and selections seem sparse by comparison to it’s older editions. So there you have it, some of the most outstanding works (for good or ill) of people who sought to bring Final Fantasy back to the tabletop after it adopted its own distinct form. Even if you’re not a fan of Final Fantasy, these are still good things to look into if you’re interested in creating your own sort of tabletop game. And if you are a fan of Final Fantasy, then much like the video games themselves, you have a wide variety to choose from, each with their own unique aspects to offer. Aaron der Schaedel is a fan of both tabletop and video game RPGs that set out to research this oddly expansive yet niche topic in honor of Final Fantasy’s 30th anniversary. He also wants you to know that a Google search using the names as they’re presented here will lead you to the rulebooks of the games if you’re curious to read them yourself. Link to this article's picture page: https://www.gameskinny.com/5a8v1/personal-picks-favorite-and-top-tier-jobs-in-final-fantasy-series While everyone’s first campaign has to come to an end at some point, it’s never exactly an enjoyable experience. You’ll always miss that character (or perhaps come to regret them depending on how “cringy” your first character was.) But with time comes experience. In a more literal sense, I’d like to think I’m at least a level 15 role-player at this point in my life. Often though, things can slip into a sort of loop. Where you’re kind of playing the same five characters over and over and over again. Well, I’ve always been one to “break the chains” if you would, when it comes to making the suggestions for the next campaign at my table. Quite a few of them have been shot down. I like to blame it on the fact that the DM is a grognard, but in all honesty I’m kind of a wild card, proposing rather eccentric campaign basis (not suitable for 5e in some cases which is the edition we’re using most commonly.) Well, occasionally, I’m not shot down at the speed of light and we get some rather interesting stories. Here are a few of my most interesting ideas. (For the sake of this article making sense when I use the phrase *descriptor* campaign I’m saying it in reference to most, if not all of the characters being *descriptor* as opposed to literally everyone in the campaign world. Although I’m sure a world where everyone is Chaotic Neutral is probably the closest you’ll get to a real world simulator.) 1) All Evil Campaign I mean, haven’t we all had a ploy for world domination at some point or another? I know I’ve wanted a little mayhem and chaos in my life every now and again. Truly, I think this is one of the most versatile of the idea’s I proposed because some of my other ones can “fit” into it. For example, a lycanthrope campaign could also fall into this category. But the beauty of this is the key three different evil alignments. If you don’t want to worry about the characters backstabbing the ever-living hell out of each other constantly (which would easily be defendable as just playing the character) you could request the group be Lawful Evil and collectively follow a similar “code of honor” so they can’t backstab their allies. Or, put a curse on the fools for their evil acts so if they harm each other they burst into flames or something similar. Of course, having a campaign where everyone is at eachothers throats (playfully and for the sake of roleplaying for god's sake or someone will get stabbed in the throat with a pencil) could be just as enjoyable in the long or short- run. Then there’s the antagonists to the group to talk about. They could be old, previously played groups, who are WAY out of the evil group’s weight class. Meaning they’d have to really think in order to overcome (or perhaps slow down) their quarry. And of course, once these characters are fully developed and all powerful, they could serve as villains in later campaigns. 2) Demi-God Campaign (Overpowered Campaign) It's a damn blast to be a badass. Normally, players work hard at becoming a badass. Starting off as essentially some numpty who picked up a sword or spell book and eventually becoming one of the most revered and powerful people in the world. However, sometimes it’s nice to be born into power. Born into the right to control certain things and express a higher form of power than the rest of the common-folk like you or me. A group of them could be very powerful indeed. And such a situation would require a lot of planning on the DM’s part. But as with any special campaign, there’s a lot of room to maneuver with if you are concerned about everyones power and being equal. I think the best place to start for this campaign, would be to discuss just how powerful a demigod is. Weather or not we’ve got Percy Jackson over here, with relatively human capabilities with a few added bonuses or if we’re talking about a group full of the equivalents of Hercules punching through the heads of dragons is a very key question. Each has their own merits. If one was to make a less overpowered demi-god, (let's assume for the sake of argument Percy Jackson level demigod, in his case Percy is relatively human when not in contact with water and the likes.) The individual's character could have their special abilities in only extraordinarily specific conditions. Balancing out the game and making their powers generally more of a plot device. The son of the God of War however would most likely enter their element whenever in combat and something similar could be said the daughter of the God of Magic. Honestly though, if you’re thinking about making your players have to deal with very situational powers for their characters, why even bother making them demi-gods? If you were to go for a more powerful perspective, the son of the God of Tricksters could be able to turn invisible and teleport (short distances) on a whim, making him very formidable in combat, but almost useless against an enemy with blindsense or truesight (which as a demi-god enemies with these typically rare traits could become more common.) The daughter of the Goddess of Hell might be an ace at necromancy and fire spells, but have difficulty mastering more subtle spells such as abjurations and illusions. There’s a lot of things to consider going into this campaign, but the sheer uniqueness of the characters possible might even merit their own roleplaying system. (A couple footnotes: One: A personal thing our group did was give each character an epic boon early on. Two: Very important thing to discuss is the relationship between the character and their parent.) 3) Monster Campaign With Volo’s guide giving access to quick stats for (so-called) monstrous races such as orcs and the Yuan-Ti, this particular selection is probably very common. Of course. that’s not to say that this wasn’t possible in other situations and before Volo’s guide. Just that it makes this feel more natural. Being the begrudging heros of a group of people who shun and outcast you can be an odd situation indeed. At least for the protagonists. Making camping outside of cities more common and bandit attacks far more amusing. This opens the party up to having to solve social issues and overcome racism from town to town. (Of course when most orcs are Chaotic Evil isn’t a little justified?) While that might get tedious, it’s a surefire way to encourage non-combat based experience gaining. Also, you could phase it out as their renown in a region grows. Not to mention the fact that depending on the monstrous race chosen, they could have a plot device built in with a clan or group of allies that comes in occasionally. Even the odd group of adventurers could come in wanting to kill the monsters after a report from a particularly aggressive commoner. Of course the issue here is balance. Monsters were meant to be the antagonists to the protagonists here and what's an antagonist whose on the same power level as the hero? For example, a Yuan-Ti character, with base immunities and resistances to common ailments as well as bonus to their casting would very quickly become a potent force in the group. An orc would be a great fighter. Probably better than any of the base races could be. A similar story for Bugbears and their superior reach. Mix that with a polearm, and they’ve got a 15 foot reach. At least if you ask Volo’s Guide. You can always homebrew that jazz or make some excuse though, so by all means, get cracking. 4) All *Race* Campaign Every race has stereotypes to fit and to break. With a group filled with all elves for example, you’ve got your classic magic, arrow shooting xenophobe with a strong dislike for those oafish dwarves and just a small dislike for all the other races. Then you’ve got the drunken heavy armor plated fighter with a greatsword and a bit of a lust for money. A group of dwarves have the one guy who sneaks around with his leather armour and pair of daggers and keeps his beard short as to avoid tripping on it while he’s low to the ground. Then there's the greedy, alcohol fueled warrior with his beard decorated with beads and metal, an axe and a shield at his side, whose a blacksmith in his downtime. Another thing to consider as a group with primarily one race in it, is if some if the characters even speak common. Assuming they grew up primarily among their race isn’t unreasonable and learning a new language isn’t exactly number one on everyone's to do list. However, for all it’s worth, having just one race in a group kinda makes it lean towards a certain class typically. With a primarily gnomish group for example, it’d be extraordinarily easy to have an extra magic lenient group. In that case a fighter might not be on the crew, and anyone who’s played a few campaigns will tell you how important a tank is. Anyone who’s played ANYTHING will tell you how important a tank is (WOW players I’m looking at you to confirm.) Perhaps gnomes are a little bit of an unideal example with the size thing going for them. But my point is made nonetheless. My only big no no for this would be don’t do an all human campaign, although if they’re in foreign lands for example, it might work. 5) Exploration Campaign Do me a favour, and listen to the original Legend of Zelda theme or the opening to Dragon Quest 8 while reading this, because no matter how hard the editorial team and I try we can't get the text to forcibly transmit a song into your mind. Though we did lose a couple interns trying. By the way, if you see Brian... I mean, Graynor the Bonebreaker, running the streets naked using a dead chicken to fend off the hallucinations, contact us. We’ll send an extraction team. And to the families of our beloved interns; Sorry ‘bout that one. But, now that you're listening to some appropriately adventurous music, I’ll make a point. Exploring the unexplored, the unmapped and the unknown is just as dangerous (if not more so) than delving into ancient dwarven ruins or destroying a crypt of undead. No maps means that it’s far easier for the DM to make up on the fly. Since it’s not known what lives out there, you can break out some of the more eccentric creatures from the Monster Manual (or better yet, Volo’s guide) for our more knowledgeable players. Hell, even make the less common races more prominent in these other lands. The Tabaxi could populate a more tropical setting for example. This is by far the most adaptable one on this list, seeing as a lot of adventures are location based, this allows for a more diverse locale. Letting the campaign run free and unhindered. More difficult to plan, but way easier for heat of the moment situations where your friend is like “lets play some D&D” and everyone else agrees. This lets the player lead the story a lot more, and personally I adore that. Although this idea is not without it's flaws. For example, having a ranger is practically a necessity. So is the survival skill. Otherwise this will be a lot less “exploration” and a lot more “we’re lost in another hellish unknown land, whose idea was it for us to explore goddamnit?” And to be perfectly honest, the ranger seems like one of the most underwhelming classes this edition. If anyone is active in the community or the books, they’ll most likely have heard bad things. Don’t be surprised if you get some resistance when you mention that there has to be a ranger, but you can probably get them to do it if you give the ranger a powerful magic item to use in combat and as a plot device for you. Or you know, use a different edition. Just not fourth. Surprise, surprise, there’s a lot of possibilities in an table-top game like D&D. Lots of places to go, people to see, universes to play in, monsters to kill. The homebrew scene is just getting bigger and better as well. Unearthed arcana opens up new playstyles and worlds. This is just a small list of things I came up with (and obviously these are all soooooo original) that may or may not have had some memorability behind them. The ones that stood out in the back of my mind. And honestly, anything that is out of the ordinary there is really doing something right (or wrong depending on how you look at it) Jarod Lalonde is a young role-player and writer whose passion for both lead him here. He’s often sarcastic and has a +5 to insult. Dungeons and Dragons is his favorite platform. Although he’s not quite sure if it’s Call of Cthulhu whispering to him in the small hours of the night, or just persistent flashbacks to the Far Realm. A few eons ago I wrote an article speculating about D&D Beyond. And very recently (yesterday depending on when this article gets posted) Curse and Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) revealed their release date and pricing for everything. I mean, prices are everyone's least favourite part of anything. But I digress; with all of this happening all so suddenly, there’s a lot to talk about. Talk about those prices, talk about that microtrans-- I mean versatility of content model, talk about the community and how it will develop throughout these changing times. D&D Beyond will either go down in the history books as “nailing it” or as an abysmal failure. 1) The Site Itself God is this site ever sexy. It's got that sleek “5e” feel that I know I’ve fallen in love with along with a lot of the community. Everything from the fonts to the color to the mood just feels… right. Like it was meant to be this way. Not to mention since the last article, most of the lagging issues have been cleaned right up (it is still technically in beta after all) as a matter of fact most of all the issues have been removed. The community is quick to stomp that out and let the dev’s know. It looks great and it manages to be user friendly too. The site’s community is not only friendly but it’s useful. Any questions you have regarding intricacies, obscure rules and even ideas can be reaped with a smile. People are out creating art maps etc. and it's all out in the open. As with everything else on the site, it's quick, it's concise, and most importantly you can change font for your comments and posts. Just a personal thing about that: I absolutely love being able to change my font for posts and comments; it creates the illusion of personality. 2) Home Of Homebrew Since the community is so big (and because this was something the devs wanted in the whole time) you could expect that people are creating stuff like nobody's business. Spells, monsters, magic items, you name it. Most of them are even good. Clever, even. And unlike other things (which are limited in their use until you subscribe or pay too much for but that's for later) you can make an unlimited number of homebrew things and publish them to the site, or keep them private. You can even draft and get feedback on the ones that you publish to the site. Honestly, it’s super diverse and it’s still growing very quickly. There's something like 53 pages in the magic item area alone. It’s all super interesting stuff you can add to your loot, enemies, etc. to spice up that campaign nice and quickly. The best bit is that it’s all well balanced for the most part. There's really not more to say on this matter. 3) Character Creator Now, while they have limited classes to having just one subclass, it is important to note that they do have the races from elemental evil such as the Gensai, Aarakocra and Goliaths. For the most part this is everything you could ask for in a character creator. The first time, it walks you through very slowly with a long tutorial. As you move from subject to subject, it brings up a very verbose page explaining everything, which would be helpful to first timers and the otherwise “green,” however it’s relatively useless to someone who's played the average video game, and it becomes bothersome quickly because I’ve made three characters and the site insisted on giving me the tutorial all three times. There’s probably a way to get rid of it, but I’m just a fool in a man's body so that probably won’t be going away in my foreseeable future. The creator is comprehensible and as said before very attractive visually. It’s even got a couple of prompts on things I hadn’t thought about keeping tabs on before, such as allies, enemies, organizations and the likes. It’s even got a nice little area to write down your backstory so it’s nice and visible. Oh, and that “limited” thing I took a shot at last article turned out to be “Limited Use” abilities. So they’ve got a thing keeping tabs on that too. However like most digital goods, this product has its flaws. 1) Limited Use You’ve got six “character slots.” Have fun. Planning on keeping a character around for “myths and legends?” Wrong. You need the space. I know I typically only have three or four campaigns going at any given moment and I’m just on the high end to my understanding. However that’s not the only thing on this site that’s limited. As mentioned before every class only has one subclass attached to it at the moment, and it’s unlikely that will change considering the respective model that they’re planning on implementing. However to play a little devil's advocate in the “bad” section, the site appears to be mostly open to the beta testers in the meantime. Although one thing I have noticed is that despite the site showing D&D Beyond being present as an app on phones and tablets, there hasn’t been an app version released even as a test. We’ll have to simply wait until the full release to see how well their app version works. 2) Pricing The primary concern of most players and DMs will be whether or not the price is right for this particular toolset. Luckily, the character creator and most of the database will be available to all without the need for a subscription, so long as you don’t mind looking at ads (or have taken other “steps” to circumvent this issue). If you want full access to the toolset, including homebrew monsters and an ad-free experience, you will need to select one of two tiers. The first is touted as being for players and costs 2.99 USD per month. This tier gives you access to shared homebrew content and unlimited character creation slots. The next is advertised as a DM tier. This 5.99/month subscription, along with the benefits of the previous tier, provides the DM with the ability to share their unlocked digital content with their player groups so that not all need to go through the costly process of unlocking (read: purchasing) every splatbook. While gone are the days, it seems, of simply passing a book back and forth between friends at a table, at least there exists an option that allows for a digital book pass, so long as that pass is purchased each month. I can’t say I’m jazzed about this practice, but at least the functionality exists. Finally, the site will allow you to purchase digital versions of each book available, and at a marginal discount over the physical copies, much like one would expect at sites like DriveThruRPG. What’s truly unfortunate, in my mind, is that there does not appear to be any loyalty rewards for continued membership. At the very least, you should be able to earn points each month that you hold a subscription to help pay for books that you wouldn’t otherwise purchase. Let’s face it: our hobby can get expensive if we want to support those that keep putting good work into making it better. A few loyalty discounts here or there would not only help those who want the digital books and the subscription afford both, but in the end, incentivise those of us who wouldn’t otherwise shell out for either product. When all's said and done, this site is really something special. We criticise it only because we love our hobby and want every product to be the best it can be. Having a site that allows you to create and store monsters, spells, characters, and campaigns in a user-friendly fashion is a real boon to players in our digital age, and the fact that it is (mostly) free to use is also pretty awesome. We tried coming up with a third negative point to make about the site for symmetry’s sake, but just weren’t able to do so. It’s that cool. Whether the bells and whistles that come extra are worth it will be a choice each DM and player will make, of course. Nevertheless, D&D Beyond proves to be a bold step into the digital sphere of online roleplaying. We’ll be waiting with bated breath for the launch date (August 15th) and will report again when that time comes. ‘Til then, check out the Beta and let us know what you think: https://www.dndbeyond.com/ Jarod Lalonde is a young role-player and writer whose passion for both lead him here. He’s often sarcastic and has a +5 to insult. Dungeons and Dragons is his favorite platform. Although he’s not quite sure if it’s Call of Cthulhu whispering to him in the small hours of the night, or just persistent flashbacks to the Far Realm. David Horwitz is a gamer and freelance writer with an obsession for exploring new forms of leisure. If you’re looking for an inquisitive mind and a deft hand, or just want to chat about gaming, contact him at www.davidhorwitzwrites.com/contact . Jarod wrote the majority of this article, David stepped in to help finish it and edit it. These days when we talk about roleplaying games, most people will think immediately of Dungeons and Dragons, the godfather of them all. We all love D&D, and its enduring legacy shows that even with a few missteps (anyone remember 4th edition? I wish I didn’t), it’s still the most popular RPG – a gateway drug for most of the new wave of geeks. Among the plethora of games popping up everywhere, it’s the Marlon Brando to all these fancy new Johnny Depp types. But our favourite hobby should not be above scrutiny. As always with the old guard, we tend to overlook some elements that really need discussing. If there’s one thing to take away from the next gen of tabletop RPGs it’s that the cornerstone of roleplaying games – the actual “role playing” – has been neglected far too long. Which is why I would argue that D&D at its core, is more of a skirmish wargame than a roleplaying game. I think it’s worth looking into what that means, what the alternatives are and in what ways D&D can change. After all, it still has to live up to its historic title of daddy of all RPGs. 1) Mathematics Over Story What is a roleplaying game? It’s a game where we play roles. Pack up, people, we’re done here. Or, well, to give it more detail, it’s a game – in this case we’ll be referring to the tabletop variety as opposed to video games – where a group of people (usually referred to as the “party”) play certain characters in a fictional universe. Often, it’s to fulfil an objective (or a “quest”), or a series thereof strung together into a “campaign”. Now if those inverted commas made you feel like you’re at the world’s most pedantic TED Talk, bear with me, we’ve got to get some definitions out of the way. The basic premise of the roleplaying game has changed a lot over the years. Where once the “role” in question was simply one’s part in the overall squad dynamics (what youngsters these days call the “meta”), through the power of imagination it has taken a much greater significance and these days characters have grand backstories that fit a role in the greater fictional Universe. Party dynamics are about more than just synergy of abilities. These are people who live in our imagination, who have relationships, hopes and expectations – and a reason to exist in this world, something that drives them towards achieving their goals. Conversely, a wargame can have a pretty broad definition, but at its core it is a simulation of conflict – usually some form of combat – that pits two or more opposing forces on a battlefield, whereupon they smack the relentless crap out of each other with the power of MATHS! It’s a numbers game. Now tell me if this sounds familiar. “Ok, so Jenny is on the opposite side of the golem, so that means I’m flanking. So that’s 3d6 sneak attack damage, +1 from my dagger of Awesomeness, another 1 because constructs are my favoured enemy from multiclassing to plumber, so that’s a total of… let’s see, carry over the 1, and multiply the dice because critical, add another die for inspiration and… what do you mean it doesn’t have any discernible anatomy?!” In its basic form, D&D is a numbers game. You can take away the names, the plot, and the setting; what you’re left with is a squad-based skirmish wargame not unlike Age of the Sigmarines – which also has its (ridiculously complicated) backstory with established characters and all that. If you watch popular D&D shows on Twitch like Critical Role, you’ll notice that there are three basic types of episode: role-play episodes where people talk a lot, shopping episodes (everyone’s favourites), and fight episodes where more than half the runtime is one or more (but usually just one) scenes of prolonged kerfuffle. It takes three hours to play out less than a minute of real-time fisticuffs. And that’s 5th edition; can you imagine if this were Pathfinder? Speaking of which… 2) Over-Emphasis On Combat Let’s face it. D&D is about fighting. If you look at the Player’s Handbook, most of it is dedicated to showing you how your character can bring the pain. And sweet mercy, can you deliver. While you get all these details on all your characters abilities, and feats and spells and equipment, you get all of 4 pages dedicated to personality and background. And that ends up being just another tool to help in fighting in most cases too. And 5th edition isn’t as bad as previous versions of the formula, either. In fact, one of the things I liked the most about the latest incarnation of my favourite game was that it made your characters feel more like people, encouraging you to create actual believable persona, rather than just killing machines. I mean, they’re still XP-generating homicide homunculi, but it’s generally frowned upon these days if you only play a murder-hobo. You do possess a set of skills that function outside of the smackdown arena, but they’re over-simplified to the point where most of the time it’s just a roll of the die, add some numbers… woop, I guess diplomacy has failed us this day. And then everyone draws their weapons. While we’re on the topic, can we just talk about… 3) Alignments Crikey, remember the ones in 4th edition? I wish I didn’t. If the hallmark of a wargame is that it needs tables to quantify and explain everything (looking at you, GW), then this should cement D&D’s reputation as a wargame. We're looking at a system where even one’s morality is relegated to one of nine options on a board. Introducing Sigmund, Archmage of the Order of Freudian slips. He pays his taxes on time, so he’s Lawful Stupid. His nemesis is his former apprentice, the sorcerer Carl “Forever” Jung, who had a dream about a vision wrapped in an enigma, so he’s Chaotic Millennial and just wants to watch the world burn. What does it all mean? I have no idea, but I just know I don’t want to have to fill in a form to tell me what I’m supposed to be. While I understand that it creates a framework to help some people inform their character decisions, I’d really rather be allowed to make decisions that fit my character without worrying if my GM wants to switch my alignment because I nicked a broom from a necromancer. You might as well start every game with a Myers-Briggs test. Dibs on the INTP Warlock. How does this help defeat the dragon in the titular dungeon? It doesn’t, because… 4) It’s All About That Base (Attack Bonus) Congratulations! You’ve levelled up. You’ve shish-kebabbed enough kobolds to make a bridge over troubled waters, you’ve got so many goblin teeth stuck to your boot that Nike wants to have a word. You’ve gained some hitpoints and you feel better. And you are better... at killing things. Especially if you took one of the melee classes. Sharks gotta swim, bats gotta fly, fighters gonna fight forever till they die. The rogues get a little better at thievin’ but they mostly get better at stabbin’. Heck, even the bards get better combat spells as they progress. D&D is about the power fantasy. And the easiest way to achieve that is to physically overpower your enemies in the tried and true test of combat. And the more the story progresses, the better you get at it. But there are other ways to drive a story, other stories to be told and other ways to do it. The idea of progression in a roleplaying game is meant to drive the narrative forward. To progress with the plot. Uncover new characters, new villains, allies, new areas to explore, developments to unravel. Most games do this through interacting with the world and overcoming challenges. World of Darkness focuses on “story beats” where your character’s progression can be tied to them overcoming their own flaws, or fulfilling personal ambitions. FATE rewards story points for actively failing – if you indulge in your character’s shortcomings, or actually choose to fail an otherwise guaranteed success, your game master will reward you for making the game and story more interesting. It’s called failing forward, and it’s one tool that storytelling uses to drive the narrative. Narrative in D&D is often driven by hacking and slashing your way through opposition, because… 5) At Its Heart, It’s A Dungeon Crawler D&D has come a long way. But at its inception it was what we do today when we’re too tired of the social intrigue, the personal drama and the complicated plots. You get a crew, crawl through a dungeon, murder some monsters, kill the dragon and steal its shinies. It’s adventure capitalism at its finest. D&D came out of the wargaming scene. It had ridiculous tables and – my gods, do you people even remember ThAC0? (Yes, and we liked it, damned kids. Strength had percentages, AC dropped, and it was still called "Back-stab" and that was good enough for us! -VP Quinn) I wish I didn’t. It still has a long way to go. And it has changed a lot already, in good ways too. 5th edition is a blessing. It’s a lot of fun and it is very inviting to new players. And we need those. Our geek culture is spreading and more and more people are joining us in our favourite hobby. But pretending it’s above reproach won’t help anyone. While it’s a good tool for experienced GMs to create absolutely amazing stories in fantastic settings (see the previously mentioned Critical Role, Maze Arcana in Eberron, and many more), in its bare-bones incarnation, what you’ve got is a manual for a wargaming experience. GMs often have to improvise and think outside the confines of the book to create the actual roleplaying. There’s supplements and hundreds of blogs to help house rule your way to a complete adventure, but often times a GM might struggle to accommodate their players’ desires – and ultimately that’s what drives the immersion that helps people really get in their characters’ shoes. Even in combat – the activity deemed most important by the restrictive ruleset – often times a player will get an idea that sounds cinematic and cool and they’d love their character to be able to pull it off. But if it ain’t in the rules, it ain’t happenin’, ranger. When you have too many rules – and far too many feats (looking at you, Pathfinder) – what you get isn’t a roleplaying experience, but an invitation to a litigious session where rules lawyers fight over whose interpretation of the Magna Carta that is the handbook (and all its supplements) fits the scenario better. At this point, you’re not playing characters, you’re playing dress-up with stats. At its best, D&D can accommodate all. You want to just slay the dragon and get the loot? Can do. You want an epic fantasy campaign with Game of Thrones level of deception and backstabbing? That’s possible too. In the end, it all depends on your DM. And I learned from my Dungeon Master, who learned from his Dungeon Master, in an unbroken line all the way to the Gygax that started it all. It’s safe to say that this renaissance we’re enjoying now might not have happened without the tabletop dungeon crawler. Hopefully, by shining a light on the things it still needs to improve and the mechanics we may or may not enjoy we can learn from the experience. If the backlash to 4th edition taught us anything it’s that people want more roleplaying and not just another mathematics-driven wargame. 5th was a step in the right direction. Let’s hope we see this game move in more nuanced and open directions in the future and keep pushing the boundaries of our tabletop experience so that we may all level up our gaming. I’m off to play that INTP Warlock now. Something of a modern day caveman, Ian fell down the rabbit hole of roleplaying games ages ago and has refused to emerge ever since. In his daily life, he wears many hats. When he’s not wearing the hat of the dungeon master, he studies cultural anthropology, writes short stories and occasionally posts on his own blog. You can find more of his stuff at https://cavemanblues.wordpress.com/ Image reference: http://cardweb.info/20170616010436_tabletop-world-medieval/ Over the last six months or so I’ve been running a 5th Edition D&D game. For me, it was an excuse to run Curse of Strahd. I’d run lots of Ravenloft adventures, but I’d never had a chance to run any form of the original story. Then, I was given the chance to write our 1 page Adventure, A Cat’s Meow, now available for 5th Ed, Pathfinder, and soon to be released for Savage Worlds. That being said, it’s really reawoken a love of the classic fantasy RPG for me. I’ve run a few one-shots, and I’m writing more D&D related content. The bug has bitten me and I wanted to create a few story hooks for people to consider using. Let us know what you think! 1) The Aliens Need Our Help A small countryside village is probably the worst place for something like this to occur. Creatures have dug their way to the surface. At first, the shepherd child was ignored by everyone. He was always a little off anyway. Then someone noticed the lump on his shoulder. It was pulsating. When cornered, he admitted what it was. A refugee from deep below the earth. The creature on his shoulder was an aberration, but it wasn’t out to hurt the boy, or the people of this village. His people need help. They have been trying to escape from the clutches of an Illithid cult that’s conquered their once harmonious collective. Now, the villagers and the aberration are working together to find adventurers willing to help. Will you help? 2) Elected While spending a few nights at a local tavern, something strange occurs. The characters wake to find that one of them has been elected Mayor. Huh, well, that’s weird. Their fellow tavern goers congratulate them wholeheartedly. On the way to the Town Hall to try and figure out what is going on, all of the people they pass cheer for them. How in the heck do they know who the party is? As they enter the Square, they see a well oiled guillotine being set-up. A man is dragged down the steps of the Town Hall, he screams, “Don’t take the job, it’ll be the death of you!” What is going on in this town, do you want to know? 3) Romero and Julian The Orc King, Romero, is marrying his 3rd spouse, Julian, an Elven Prince. Julian’s family are not particularly pleased with the wedding, but they’ve agreed because it offers the chance to reduce hostilities between the two nations. Besides, Julian and Romero are clearly in love, and Romero’s current partners are quite happy to include him in their family. The problem? They need a specific ingredient for a cake they want to have made. It’s a spice only grown in a cave guarded by a Wyvern, behind the Horde of Undead in the Graveyard of Destecatur. At the back of this gave is a small pot, planted by Romero’s Grandfather with the special spice. Romero and Julian hire the characters to retrieve the spice. Their reward will be gold, and a special place at the wedding ceremony of the century. So, there you go. Three plot hooks you can use to generate some game play for your D&D campaign. My goal here was to create something (slightly) different than you might have seen anywhere else. Do you like them? Do you have your own ideas you’d like to share? With 19 years of playing rpgs, Josh started with Mind's Eye Theater LARPs and loves the World of Darkness. He recently launched,www.keepontheheathlands.com to support his gaming projects. Josh is the administrator of the Inclusive Gaming Network on Facebook. He’s a player in Underground Theatre LARPs and is running a Mage game and a D&D 5th Edition campaign. He’s a serious advocate for inclusive gaming spaces, a father, and a graduate from the International Peace and Conflict Resolution graduate program at American University in Washington, D.C. Art from Wizards of the Coast Azalin wasn’t the only one complaining about the focus on extinct noble bloodlines in the third Gazetteer. Many reviewers were dismayed about the amount of ink spilled on in-game stories with few spent on adventure hooks. What’s the point of having rich deep history if it doesn’t affect the present? What follows is a series of suggested adventure hooks around the lost noble family of de Boistribue. The entire extended family of hunters and woodsmen vanished from their massive manor one December night in 493 BC, the only surviving servant unable to give any explanation. Each can be played as an independent adventure, or they can be strung together into a campaign arc where the PC’s piece together the unspeakable fate of the doomed family. 1) The Fell Omen A PC traveling through the Forest of the Ancients glimpses a huge sprawling manor house in the distance. The sight of the manor house is a terrible omen--all who have seen it disappear within three turnings of the moon. Once word gets out, locals shun the PC as cursed, but a local soothsayer declares the curse may be lifted if the PC goes hunting in the forest overnight wearing the de Boistribue colors. If they dismiss it as overreaction of some superstitious locals, the manor inexplicably shows up again and again on the edge of their vision, even miles away from where they saw it last, bringing bad luck each time until they spend that night in the woods. 2) Winter Chill Not all the servants died in the manor itself. The winter snows were deep that December, and several of them fled the madness only to freeze to death. Their fear, pain and desperation made them into snow wraiths or possibly frost vampires that return with the snowfall. PC’s may be called on to fight the creatures when local logging companies want to extend their season a little more into the winter, only to find their lumberjacks frozen to the bone. The lairs of these creatures surround the manor’s original location; the phantasmal version that stalks through the woods is actually a kind of ghost in itself, but the original holds much bigger secrets. 3) Braving The Manor Forced to take refuge from storm or foe, the party enters the infamous manor itself to find the ghosts of dozens of servants haunting the many hunting trophies, clawed woodworks and bloodstained walls. These ghosts don’t remember much, except how the entire family turned into animals before their eyes and tore them apart. A few benign ghosts protect the PC’s from the more ferocious spirits, and ask the PC’s to remove their half-eaten remains and give them a proper burial. This may prevent the manor from dogging their steps, but PC’s seeking more answers should have no trouble finding it later. 4) The Sole Survivor While visiting Saulbridge Sanitarium, a PC is possessed by the ghost of the only earthly witness to the massacre, who lived out his final days in Saulbridge as a Lost One. He was only a teenage boy locked in an animal pen, who heard the other servants being slaughtered. Finally a monstrous bear came for him, but could not do much damage through the bars. If the party escorts the possessed PC to the manor, the ghost confesses that his incarceration may have prompted a few of the servants to do something terrible to the family, for which all these others suffered the consequences. He doesn’t know what his friends did or how they did it, but he’s terribly sorry. With that, he and several of the more vengeful spirits of the house can finally rest. 5) Return Of The Lost PC’s in the forest on the anniversary of the event discover a spring surrounded by the remaining de Boistribue family, now in the form of talking deer, boars, bears, raccoons and rabbits. Few recall much of what happened that fateful night, but they claim their treacherous servants served a cursed meal that transformed them. They recall their old lives every anniversary by drinking from this spring, but are barely more than ignorant beasts the rest of the year. Strung out over centuries this way, only about a year has passed for them since 493, but their numbers are dwindling, and they demand help. By a solemn promise and a sip from the spring, a PC can establish a bond with one of the animals that will prevent them from fully regressing until they can figure out the solution. This is one interesting way for a PC to gain an animal companion or familiar! 6) The Most Dangerous Game While hunting a werewolf of the Timothy clan, the PC’s find that the clan dates back to early Mordentshire, but they kept a relatively low profile for centuries...as if none of their victims were the kind that went on two legs and could talk. But what kind of werewolf finds sport in hunting dumb beasts? Records of a more arcane sort indicate that the Timothy werewolves are also known for incredible longevity, and that some of them attribute it to rare game in the Forest of the Ancients. If confronted about it, the Timothys claim the de Boistribues hunted their own servants down like beasts for sport, so some of the servants turned the tables and hunted them right back. Records from 489-491 include accounts of Lord de Boistribue hunting captured bandits under the full moon, but nothing about hunting his own servants. Nor is there any record of the surname Timothy among those servants. But the werewolves believe the PC’s are close to a deadly secret, and will stop at nothing to silence them forever. Of course, to string these hooks into an arc with a conclusion, there are many questions left to answer: What offense had that teenage boy committed to be penned up in an animal cage? Who were these friends who did a terrible deed, and why are they not among the ghosts? Did Lord de Boistribue continue hunting human sport after wiping out the bandits? Did he really start hunting his own servants? Whence comes the magic of the spring, and by what force did something change the whole family into immortal animals? Was the werewolf clan somehow related to the servants, or the bandits? Or did they just stumble across the accursed animals and cobble their own myth together about the irony of hunting a family of hunters? There’s room for the lord, a servant or some third party to be a truly monstrous villain, or for a terrible misunderstanding at the heart of it all. And especially you’ll have to decide if breaking the curse means setting the remaining de Boistribue family free into the afterlife, or if they can actually return to the world of mortals and rebuild their legacy. What do you think? Would your PC from this family be a ranger, paladin or barbarian? Matthew Barrett has been playing and writing for Ravenloft for over twenty years, starting with the Kargatane's Book of S series (as Leyshon Campbell). He married his wife on Friday the 13th after proposing to her on Halloween. By tradition, the first story read at birth to each of their three children was The Barker’s Tour, from Ravenloft’s “Carnival” supplement. He is currently working on a Ravenloft-based experiment in crowdsourced fiction using his “Inkubator” system at inkubator.miraheze.org. When you’ve been playing role playing games for a long time, it becomes easy to forget how daunting a game is when you first play it. Whenever a new player joins your table, odds are they’re feeling a little lost. Their character sheet is an overwhelming collection of terms, boxes and numbers, their dice are all shaped nicely but they can’t tell which from which, and you, as the GM, are asking them to do something that is essentially a foreign language. Here are six tips for helping new players integrate into your next role playing game. 1) Give Players Spell Cards In games like Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons, new players drawn to spellcasters are usually overwhelmed by their spells. They look at the lists of spells and choose a few that sound good, but then when it comes time to use them they forget what they do and don’t look them up. Taking their spells off of their character sheet and instead putting them on cue cards will be beneficial in reminding the players what the spells do. On the card, list information that is relevant to the player: the name, the spell level, the range, duration, and effect. Also listing the ‘style’ of the spell can be helpful to the players. For example; fireball would be a ‘combat’ spell and dimensional door would be a ‘utility’ spell. That of course doesn’t mean those spells are only used in those situations, but it helps remind the player what they could use when. Having a spellcaster feel lost and useless in combat is the fastest way to make them not want to play again. Spell cards grant confidence and comprehension that a character sheet cannot. 2) Give Players Resource Cubes Resource cubes can be used to denote anything that has a limited number of uses. For example; the number of spells per day, per level, that a sorcerer can cast. In the game I’m running, I have colour coded each level of spell for my sorcerer and witch characters and gave them a corresponding number of coloured cubes equal to the amount of each level they can cast each day. This way when they want to cast a spell they have a tactile feeling of handing a cube over to me, literally depleting their resources. Using resource cubes allows players to understand their skills and that they have limited uses. When they rest and earn their spells or abilities back you can give them back their spent cubes. This helps a new player get out of their character sheet. For as helpful and informative as that sheet is, it’s also a maze of confusion. Getting beginners away from it at will increase their quality of play. 3) Do the Hard Math on Your End In Pathfinder there is an immense amount of conditions, traits, and curses that a player can be afflicted by. The list is already big enough that I need to look up the majority of them when they happen. Imagine being a new player being told that you are sickened, and that means you get a -2 penalty to attack rolls, weapon damage rolls, saving throws, yadda, yadda, yadda. At about the time the “yaddas” are coming, the player immediately doesn’t know what the hell is even happening. Whenever a player is afflicted with a condition, give them the flavour but leave out the numbers. Instead of listing the specifics, tell the player that they are sickened and they don’t feel as strong as they normally do. Then, when a player rolls, keep track of the effect on your end. This gives you, the GM, a bit more work, but it takes the complex conditions out of the mind of the player and lets them get a handle on playing the game. 4) Give Players Flavour, Then Function When a giant pit opens up beneath a player you’ll tell them to make a Reflex save. Experienced players know what this means, new players will look at their character sheet and then back at you with their mouths slightly askew in confusion. Instead of asking for the save directly, give them the flavour of what is happening. “You walk into a dungeon, a feeling of dread hangs itself here. You feel something tug on the back of your mind pulling you away from yourself. You try to resist the pull and keep yourself whole. Can you make a Will save?” This allows players to not only understand what is happening, but it gives players the association between what the mind is and how Will save can help. Now, this probably seems quite obvious, but you’d be surprised the amount of games I’ve played where the GM, myself included, would just say “Will save” in the previous situation. What this also does is allow your new players to begin filling in gaps. Soon they’ll learn what means what. When a pit traps opens up they’ll begin asking you in excitement, “Can I move out of the way with a Reflex save?” And you can smile and know that they’re learning and enjoying the game. 5) Sometimes You Need to Spoil Them There are going to be times when a new player comes up with an idea in combat that is either really creative or really helpful. Usually this is accompanied by the new player experiencing a real primal excitement at the game for the first time. If the idea doesn’t make true sense to the rules of the game, that doesn’t mean you should immediately shut down their idea. Instead, spoil them, work with them to figure out how the idea could work. If they want to run up a giant’s back and stab them in the back of the neck, make it work for them within believable context of the game. Likewise, if a new player makes a move in combat that is totally plausible by the rules and could really sway the tide of combat, it’s okay to make that action successful even if their roll wasn’t the best. There’s nothing more demoralizing than having a fantastic idea as a new player and then failing because the dice were against you. As a GM, you can’t do this all the time. When the player is still playing with training wheels, it’s okay to spoil them a bit before they realize the dice hate them. These are just a few methods I’ve incorporated in my current campaign to help my new players. They’ve seen relative success and, at this point, they’ve been comfortable in taking part in both the combat and noncombat encounters. None of these ideas are directly related to teaching the player the game, but rather allow the player to understand the purpose of their character and offer them an easier time getting into that character. Roleplaying games work best when everyone at the table is contributing. No players should be left behind because they don’t feel confident enough to know what they are doing. Justin Cauti is a writer and Twitch streamer. He plays board/roleplaying games on the internet at http://www.playingboardgames.tv. Follow him on Twitter for updates on his boring life and writing projects @LeftSideJustin. Image Credit I know, I know; D&D 4e is arguably one of the least popular tabletop RPGs ever spawned. For me, it’ll always have a special place in my heart as it was my first table-top RPG. As I branched out, I learned to laugh at some of the silliness within those tomes with everyone else. Yet, I still find myself wanting to pick it up every now and again. Whether you hated the insane amounts of conditional modifiers or the lack of diversity within any given character class, there are definitely some fine things we have learned from 4e. 1) Art Somebody is bound to complain that this point is a cop-out, but let’s take a second to analyze how important it is to this game’s identity. Especially when put it next to the art from 3.5 or even 5e, the art style of 4e is pretty much a cartoon. The ultra-realism of 3.5 had taken a backseat for some reason, and though I love the 3.5 art, there was something immensely appealing about 4th editions style. One every page are vibrant colors, smooth lines, and dramatic scenes. Everyone and everything is doing something, not just standing around like we see Tordek doing. However, I’m not saying that the 4e art doesn’t have detail. It’s just different, in its own special way. What is truly amazing, though, is how it mirrors the gameplay experience. The art reminds me of something you’d see for a video game and, let’s be honest, that’s basically what 4e is: a video game translated to a tabletop. Weapons are proportioned to an unreasonable degree in some instances, the stunts being depicted are high-flying and somewhat silly. I still love thumbing through those books, simply to gaze upon the glory of the creative minds behind the art. 2) Solo Monsters Many game systems struggle when you have one big, bad guy fighting an adventuring party. The action economy doesn’t line up, sometimes dice luck botches it, or maybe your players just have abilities that debilitate the creature. This edition had rock solid rules to make your baddies last and put up a fight that’s remembered. Sure, it might take you four nights of play to kill the paragon tier boss, but at least you know the math all lines up. Solo monsters were only bolstered by the rigid combat ruleset of the game, even though it was ultimately its biggest failure. 3) Skill Challenges The first delve into making traveling interesting! Skill challenges were a mechanic used to overcome abstract or complicated obstacles that your adventurers could come across. It was tremendously effective at training your group to think outside the box and maybe even use those skills that are based off a stat with a negative modifier. It wasn’t perfect, but it did serve as a springboard for many similar mechanics that exist in RPGs today. Hell, sometimes I even use the skill challenge as it originally existed! Sometimes players just can’t solve a puzzle, and using skills to abstractly narrate how the characters figure it out is damn useful. 4) Bridging The Gap To tell it true and fair, 4e was a little ahead of its time. Nowadays, we have this big shift from video gaming to tabletop gaming. What game bridges that gap better? 4e is rigid enough to give a video gamer a level of comfort while still teaching them how to role play. Counting squares, managing skills, strategic positioning, attack cards/powers, you name it, they’re all things that video gamers can grab a hold of and process. It’s the purpose the game has served for me, and it should continue to do so. Sean is the Heavy Metal GM. He’s an aspiring freelance writer and blogger that loves the hobby more than life itself. Always up for a good discussion, his blog covers general gaming advice as well as specialized advice/homebrew rules for 13th Age RPG. You can find his website at www.heavymetalgm.com, join the conversation. Ever wanted to have more items at your fingertips to reward your players, or to kit out your bad guys? Or perhaps you and your players have already scoured the items in the core rulebooks over the last few years, and everyone knows what most of the items do. Well fear not - here are nine magic items to inject into your loot piles or to equip to your villains. When using any magic item in your game, it can be a great idea to ensure that you have a player in your party that can use it to great effect. This holds true especially for weapons - there's no point throwing awesome weapons into your game for them to be tossed to the side because the players are interested in other weapons or play styles. Also take note of little quirks, like temporary resistance to a certain type of damage, or other niche abilities. If you give players an item with a cool niche ability, but its situation never really has time to shine, it can be disappointing for players. 1) Eternal Chestplate (Cursed) Medium Armour Your armour class becomes 25. This item's effects overrule any other modifications to armour class (For example, Dexterity bonuses, Feats, Cover, etc) When you put on this armour, you feel it lock in place so efficiently that it feels like the armour's steel has melded with your bone structure. Removing this armour would inflict great damage to you, and you will be unable to wear this armour again in the future if you remove it. To attempt to remove the Eternal Chestplate, the wearer must pass a DC:15 Strength test. On a failure, they are unable to remove it, and must wait at least another hour before their next attempt. If they succeed, they take 6d6 piercing damage, and the chestplate is removed, but they can never wear the item again. (Hidden Ability) Whenever you are targeted by an attack (hit or miss), your armour class is reduced by 1. (This can potentially cause your Armour Class to plummet well below standard figures, to a minimum of AC1) DM Notes: The Eternal Chestplate is a great cursed item. It's a case of "too good to be true," and the players will be highly suspicious of the immense power of this piece. Note that it is medium armour, so Wizards, Warlocks, etc, will most likely not be able to cast spells while they wear it. Once the character puts the armour on, they become aware of the removal clause (you can tell them the damage that it will deal, and explain that they won't be able to wear it again). However keep the hidden ability secret until the next combat encounter, and then the fun begins! I'd seriously recommend giving this to players that are at least level 6, as the amount of damage this thing will do when removed is high enough to kill low-level characters. When including it in your campaign, either have an enemy boss wear it (after which they can pry the armour off of his bone structure) or even perhaps find it on a corpse of a creature. 2) Goblinbane Longsword +1 (though, this could be modified to be any Melee weapon) This weapon is a +1 magic item; the wielder has a +1 on to-hit rolls and damage rolls with this weapon. The damage this weapon deals is treated as magical damage for the purpose of overcoming resistances and immunities. In addition, any goblin creatures that are adjacent to the character that wields this weapon have an Armour Class value of 10. This overrides cover, dexterity, and any non-magical armour. It will not affect goblins who have magical armour, or a magic item that protects them from magic (e.g. a talisman). DM Notes: Goblinbane is a cool tweak to a magic item that I threw into a one-shot dungeon which had numerous goblin servants. It's not super game-breaking, as goblins have low armour to begin with, and with their minuscule amount of hit points they usually aren't expected to survive anyway. I'd recommend giving this to players that are at least level 3. Giving a magical weapon with a +1 property to a level 1 or 2 party can cause some imbalances in the challenge ratings for low-levels. I'd also include this if your campaign has a decent amount of goblins (say 1 or 2 goblin fights/dungeons every level or two of the characters). When including it in your campaign, it could perhaps be locked deep in a goblin vault so that it cannot be used, or perhaps a rival gnoll tribe (or other enemy of the PCs and the goblins) has this weapon and uses it against goblins themselves, whereby the PCs can kill the wielder and inherit their weapon. 3) Shard of the Archangel (Cursed) Trinket (A shard of Obsidian that is always warm to touch) While you wield this shard in your hands, your spell save DC is increased by 2. Furthermore, whenever you cast an evocation spell of level 1 or higher, deal 2d6 fire damage to a random creature that is within 10 feet of you. (Note that this can potentially hit allies) (Cursed Effect) The DC for your death saving throws is equal to your spell save DC. DM Notes: While it is technically a cursed item, it definitely has the potential for using the abilities as a bit of a tradeoff. Your players would have to watch their positioning to try and mitigate any friendly fire, but at the end of the day, 2d6 isnt going to kill anyone who’s at a reasonable level. The player would have to be careful if they fall unconscious though, those death saving throws are nasty! 4) Bluespark Talisman (Neck Slot) While wearing the Bluespark Talisman, whenever you deal an instance of Lightning damage, you deal an extra 1d4 Lightning damage. Once per day, you can use your reaction to gain resistance to lightning damage until the start of your next turn. DM Notes: The Bluespark Talisman is a simple magic charm that you could give to a lightning-focused Wizard or Sorcerer, or even a tempest Cleric. It gives them a little buff to a bunch of their damage spells, while also giving them a cool new way to use a reaction. 5) Dawn, Avenger Longsword (Longsword) 1d8 Radiant Damage (Versatile 1d10) Dawn is an avenger weapon, wielded by divine heroes and used to turn God's will into reality. While wielding Dawn, you may cast the light cantrip as a bonus action. Dawn also has a holy charge, which refreshes an hour after the previous holy charge was used. The wielder can use the holy charge to use their Channel Divinity ability, or can use it to cast Smite (2d6 extra radiant damage) or Cure Wounds (Heal 1d8) as level 1 spells. DM Notes: Dawn is a Longsword that deals Radiant damage instead of slashing damage. It can only be mastered by a Cleric or paladin usually, but if a "worthy" person wields it then it may also function for them. 6) Totem of Stability (Totem, hand item) Usable only by Druids, Clerics of the Nature domain, or Wizards of the Transmutation school. While the Totem of Stability is wielded in one hand, the wielder has a +10 bonus on all spell concentration checks. DM Notes: This totem is a great little utility item for spell casting-heavy Druids, or other similar spell builds. Note that Druids cannot use the totem while in wild-shape form. As an alternate build, you could make an orb of stability (for Wizards/Sorcerers) or a staff of stability (Clerics, Wizards, Warlocks) or something else, which has the same effect. This is particularly useful as an item if you have a player who is always frustrated by having his concentration spells disrupted. 7) Grimoire of the Black Mace Spell book Requires Pact of the Tome Warlock This item can replace your tome that you use with your pact ability. In addition to the usual benefits, you also have the ability to cast the following spells once per long rest:
DM Notes: This Grimoire is a powerful magic item, for use by PCs at a level of 5 or higher. It really helps out with one of the Warlock's problems, which is their inability to cast a variety of spells in combat. With only two spell slots until level 11, this Grimoire could really come in handy. Perhaps your warlock would have them have to battle an enemy Warlock who is using this tome in battle to get the item in the first place! 8) Negative Dagger of energy (Dagger, but could also be any sword weapon) When this weapon successfully hits a target, the blade gets a charge. The next time this weapon hits an opponent, it deals an extra 1d8 force damage, and the target must pass a DC 10 Con save, or suffer 1 point of exhaustion (Undead and Constructs are unaffected by this ability). The weapon can only store 1 charge at a time, and charges vanish after 1 minute. DM Notes: The Negative Dagger of Energy is a weapon for an assassin, or perhaps a martial hero like a fighter or ranger. It's probably balanced to be suitable for characters between level 4-8. 9) Shield of Iron Will (Shield) When you have this shield equipped, it cannot be removed while you are alive without your consent. You have a +2 bonus to saving throws against fear effects, and against sleep, charm, or hold spells. You also have a +2 bonus on any saves against effects that push, knock prone, or stun. DM Notes: This is a pretty niche item, but it has a few cool mechanics behind it. A lot of shield bearer PCs have a susceptibility to status effects and mind spells, due to their heavy focus into armour class. This item gives them some added protection against spells and other effects that mere armour class cannot provide. It would definitely help too if there was an enemy type that was really annoying them with sleep, charm or hold effects, or perhaps abilities that push, knock them prone or stun them, but that part is optional. In summary, you want magic items to be invaluable to your players. Make them so cool that the players will shudder at the thought of parting with them, instead of simply cashing them in and selling them at the first chance they get. Don’t be afraid of giving them strong items, but make them work for it, for example, make them pry that new sword out of the grasp of the bandit leader they just killed. And also keep in mind that you may have to adjust the difficulty of encounters as the players get more and more powerful. Finally, don't give your players an item that has a bonus in certain situations if those situations never come up - because that can make the item seem worthless. Now get out there and unleash the power of magic items! Peter is an avid dungeon master, role-player, and story teller. When he's not running homebrew campaigns, he is creating new worlds, or he is reading and writing fantasy stories, forever immersing himself in the gaping black-hole known as the fantasy genre. Greetings, Traveler! It's been awhile since our last communication. Word of your success against the vampire nest in Berkenheidt has reached us here in Carinford-Halldon. I'm glad the information I provided for you was able to prove useful. My old companion Kelly has just sent me an interesting treatise, written by his apprentice Rigi. The girl has become fascinated with the nature of familiars in the Lands of the Mists, and while her work is a trifle basic, I thought the information might be of some use to you. Spellcasters of various stripes have often found the assistance of a familiar, an animal imbued with a small fraction of the mage's soul, to be invaluable assets in their craft. While able to enhance spellcasting potential, heighten mental acuity, or impart other, more bizarre powers, these companions are also often just as useful for their natural abilities. Such boons come with a price, however: the portion of the soul that empowers a familiar is never drawn from the better aspects of one's psyche. Inevitably, the creature, while fanatically loyal to its master, continually exhorts them to greater heights of evil; constantly counseling them to give in to the darker side of their nature. What follows are a selection of the most popular familiars found within the Dread Realms, and an analysis of the abilities they impart. 1) Lamordian Opossum Few creatures are as vile as the Lamordian opossum, sometimes known as the bog opossum or the Musarde river rat. Their pale fur ends in yellowish tips, making their fur the color of tobacco stained cotton. Their long, toothy snouts are capable of opening wide to emit a malicious hiss, and their lashing, naked tails complete the odious package. A few of them are, instead, a smoky black in color. While the pelts of these 'ink opossums' are valuable, the eerie red eyes that accompany such coloration discourage most trappers from pursuing them. As familiars: The Lamordian opossum encourages the worst aspects of their master's avarice. They urge their masters to take whatever they wish, and to take more than what they need. These familiars are at their cleverest when they are planning a way for themselves or their masters to take something which does not belong to them. Benefit: Opossums are marsupials. When not actively raising kits, they stuff the pouches on their bellies with all manner of bric-a-brac they have stolen whenever they have gone unnoticed. Any spellcaster with an opossum familiar always counts as having a spell component pouch. 2) Mordentish Sentinel Hound The Mordentish passion for dog breeding seems to surpass their interest in virtually everything except ghost stories. Although these animals seem broadly similar to outsiders, the Mordentish can tell individual breeds apart at a great distance. Among these breeds, the sentinel hound is of particular interest to the spellcaster. Their distinctive short height and elongated frame, with their long, sleek black coat makes them recognizable even to non-Mordentish. However, it is their spectral silence that makes the breed truly remarkable; every true-bred example of the species is totally mute. As familiars: Sentinel hounds are used for watching herds or guarding camps throughout the night, and as such are hyper-vigilant to the point of paranoia. When bonded with a spellcaster, they are fond of pointing out suspicious behavior or nefarious possibilities, often where none exist. Unfortunately, they are disconcertingly correct many times, leading their masters to ever increasing heights of suspicion. When danger is revealed, the sentinel hound exhorts its master to attack without hesitation or mercy. Benefit: Spellcasters with a sentinel hound as a familiar may always roll for initiative, even if they are surprised, although they can still be caught flat-footed. 3) Bird-of-Fortune Found throughout Sri Raji and in some parts of Hazlan, the bird-of-fortune has gained favor as a companion pet for fashionable nobles throughout the Core. It's lustrous plumage drapes down extravagantly. Its brilliant bronze and gold coloration would be enough to make it truly impressive. However, when the bird-of-fortune raises and fans its peacock-like tail, with the white, bronze, and gold display studded with prismatic whorls of color, even the most jaded stop to admire its beauty. As familiars: Birds-of-fortune are imbued with their master's arrogance. They remind their master constantly how marvelous the two of them are, and never allow the master to be taken in by thoughts of doubt or failure. For those lacking in confidence this can be a boon, but for those susceptible to hubris, a bird-of-fortune can turn their master into the most grandiose braggart imaginable. Benefit: When calculating caster level for dispel or spell removal effects, a mage with a bird-of-fortune familiar counts his caster level as four levels higher for his spells with a range of 'self.' 4) Invidia Swine Neither swine nor actually from Invidia, this rodent is about the size of a large rat. It has a much shorter snout, no apparent tail, and such an abundance of fur that they appear to be rounded fuzzy globs with tiny feet. They form the basis of the food chain in parts of Verbrek and Valachan, where they are occasionally raised in hutches by peasants to supplement their diet, as Invidia swine breed rapidly. As familiars: Content to hide in a pouch, backpack, or pocket, Invidia swine are quick to point out danger to their masters. They also encourage their masters to new heights of amorous action, insightfully pointing out those who display even the subtlest hints of romantic desire. For the shy and reserved, this can provide a great benefit, but more than one repugnant Lothario in the Core boasts an Invidia swine as a familiar. Hazlik has sent one of these creatures to Dominic d'Honaire as a pet; the latter seems ignorant of the subtle message. Benefit: The mage bonded to an Invidia swine is adept at hiding. When receiving an AC bonus from cover, they increase the bonus by +1. 5) Strahd Slug The Strahd slug is the name given to the black leech, common wherever damp conditions can be found across the Core and beyond. The name was made common by naturalists loyal to Azalin and has since become the standard appellation everywhere but Barovia. These tiny animals latch on to their victim’s (or master's) flesh and feed on very small amounts of blood. When engorged, they can be one to two inches long, and can show vivid stripes of blue, green, or red coloration. As familiars: Strahd slugs encourage their masters to do as little as possible. They advise their mages to delegate responsibility and manipulate others to lighten their own workload. Masters with leech familiars either gain a needed calming balance on their personality, or else become lazy and wheedling. The necessities of the slug's diet often means their masters are pale of complexion. Benefit: The constant effect of a leech cleansing one's blood grants a master with such a familiar a +4 bonus on Fortitude saves against poison and disease (magical or otherwise). 6) Sickle-Beaked Goshawk A lesser hawk species that thrives in the fields of Falkovnia, the sickle-beaked goshawk is renowned for its viciousness when threatened. It is particularly noteworthy for its habit of attacking other predators to steal their kills. Even much larger animals can be driven away when faced with the long lacerations of the bird's razor sharp beak. With its red belly and tawny back and wings, the goshawk is most frequently seen as the familiar of the rare Falkovnian magic practitioner. As familiars: Fitting to the land the bird calls home, the goshawk is a proponent of conquest. They encourage their master's to conquer others, whether for power, spells, or prestige. They are always plotting how best to increase their master's standing, and mages with such a familiar are some of the most ambitious in the Demiplane of Dread. Benefit: Mages with a goshawk familiar have a +2 to their initiative rolls. 7) Harp Goat The harp goat of Kartakass takes it's name from the mane of long, fine black hair that shoots up from the animal's spine. These goats, which grow no larger than housecats, are common pets in the mountainous land of Kartakass. Loyal companions, they are renowned for their humorous qualities; in addition to being easily trained to bleat for comedic effect, they eat nearly anything and are almost always hungry. Despite this, they can go long stretches without food, and are every bit as sure footed as their larger kin. The harp goat is a natural choice as a familiar for Kartakan wizards, particularly because it arouses no suspicion. As familiars: Harp goats are gluttonous creatures, and that is a trait they attempt to pass on to their masters. What is good in moderation is better in excess, they say, and should their masters be stopped from indulging, either through external conflict or just their own moderation, the goat is always prepared to offer strategy or justification to fulfill whatever hunger needs satiation, whether that be food, drug, or a desire for power. Benefit: Harp goats grant their master a +4 to Fortitude saves to resist dehydration and starvation. Conclusion Are the benefits of keeping such a familiar worth the temptation they provide? The truth, the Lady Gwen tells me, is that the temptations the familiar brings forth were already present within the mage. The familiar merely gives them voice. Whether one has a familiar or not, the darkness within us is always like unto a beast; if it is not allowed to feed, then it will eventually turn inwards to consume us entirely. Safe travels and happy hunting, Frankie Drakeson, Lord Mayor of Carinford-Halldon. Jim Stearns is a deranged hermit from the swamps of Southern Illinois. In addition to writing for the Black Library, he puts pen to paper for High Level Games and Quoth the Raven. His mad scribblings can frequently be found in anthologies like Fitting In or Selfies from the End of the World, by Mad Scientist Journal. Follow him on Twitter @jcstearnswriter. Now, if you are like me, and I doubt you are, you play a lot of games with your co-workers during the work day. I work for an educational technology start-up, and we were encouraged when I first started to find fun ways to build team cohesion and get our minds away from our work for short stints during the day. These have led to some creative decisions from some teams, who mostly focus on Pictionary, quiz games, and trivia questions to break-up their days. My team plays quite a bit, usually 2-3 games a day, of Exploding Kittens. Over the last few months, I’ve also been exploring the possibility of playing a short form RPG with my team during the work day. I’ve come up with 3 games that I think would work perfectly for this. 1) Dread Quinn and Joel did a great review of Dread on the podcast, and I recommend checking that out if you get the chance. Dread uses a Jenga set to simulate the impending horror of what is going to occur to your characters. Character sheets are pretty simple, and game-play is not really designed for long-term RPG stories. So, with some work, it should be possible to create a short scenario that occurs within a half-hour block. That would be perfect for my team, as we generally take a 30-minute break to play games. 2) Dungeons and Dragons 5th Ed Particularly with pre-generated characters, the newest edition of the world’s greatest role-playing game would make an easy to use short form role-playing session. Wizards of the Coast has put out a great series of pre-generated characters from lvl 1 – 10 which you can print for free from their website. I recommend grabbing enough characters for your team members to have 2 choices, and jump in head first. Create a really short scene, and ask the players how they would react. Keep this as simple as possible, using dice rolls as rarely as you can get away with. Having a dice roller app is helpful here, as carting around dice at work may not be a grand idea. That being said, having one die that you pass around the table isn’t a terrible decision for this short form. Basically, you are running a very short scene, and you’ll need to be able to keep the pacing quick to make this work. 3) FATE Fate, using the FUDGE system created by Steffan O’Sullivan, is a great game to jump in feet first with a group of co-workers. Particularly if you use the FATE Accelerated rules on the FATE SRD. FATE’s simple to use system will let you jump right into a story. FATE uses a simple die mechanic, and rules light elements to get you right into the action. When running work games, focus on small scenarios that allow your co-workers to get a feel for what you’d do in an RPG. Give them either-or choices, and let them roll through and see what they come up with for solutions to the challenges you present them. Running an RPG at work probably sounds like a strange idea to some. You might not be open about your RPG habit, or you might get yelled at by your boss. If, like me, you work in a space that encourages out of the box ways to break up the monotony of the day, you might be able to pull this off. You could also do this during a lunch break or after work. These are all great, easy to learn games that will let you jump into the action quickly, which is 90% of the battle. Image Credit With 18 years of playing rpgs, Josh started with Mind's Eye Theater LARPs and loves the World of Darkness. He recently launched,www.keepontheheathlands.com to support his gaming projects. Josh is the administrator of the Inclusive Gaming Network on Facebook. He’s a player in Underground Theatre LARPs and is running a Mage game and a D&D 5th Edition campaign. He’s a serious advocate for inclusive gaming spaces, a father, and a graduate from the International Peace and Conflict Resolution graduate program at American University in Washington, D.C. As I brought up in a previous article, to play around with the mechanics is to create the rules by which the game world is governed. Role-playing games are an attempt to simulate reality, but not actually the reality we live in. (What is there to simulate? Double-stuff Oreos already exist!!) Role-playing games simulate the logic of the fictional worlds we see in books, movies, TV shows, and other media. One rule that applies in many of these fictional worlds is that when things get really tough, characters have a resource that they can tap so that they can succeed at their task. It may be called luck, fate, edge, hutzpah, moxie, karma, the goodwill of the audience, the matrix of leadership, or any variety of things; the character applies this resource at just the right time so that everyone can live happily ever after… if that’s your genre. There are a variety of ways that this is simulated in role-playing games. The great John Kim wrote an article to give a quick history of the origins of these mechanics. They are called something different in almost every game that uses them, but for simplicity’s sake I will be calling them luck resources. Luck resources vary between games, but generally they allow players somewhat greater agency by allowing them to reroll, modify dice rolls, and add or change story details. Some luck resources can only be used by the players, some by both the players and the gamemaster. They may sometimes be used before making a roll, afterward, or both. In spite of all these differences, however, I’ve identified the best luck resources as 1) simple to use, 2) providing effective agency (in quantity and quality), and 3) balanced so that they don’t break the game. Let’s start with the ugly: 1) Bad Karma: Marvel Superheroes (Ugly) I hate to beat on TSR’s Marvel Superheroes so much, because I’ve spent many a happy session playing Beast and any number of homebrewed superheroes; but the luck resource used in this game is broken. It is called Karma: characters earn Karma by doing good deeds, saving the day, and otherwise behaving heroically. Karma can then be spent on character advancement or to succeed on rolls. Spending Karma to succeed is where this becomes a luck resource. The difficulty, however is that you need to use the same resource pool for both advancement and luck. The mechanic is simple to use, but it fails to allow effective agency. I agree with John Kim in his above mentioned article; this mechanic generally leads players to either hoard their Karma to make their characters stronger, or to spend it all the time and leave their character weak. This creates a disparity between characters and bad feeling around the table about Karma spending, making for an ugly mechanic. 2) The Hand of Fate: Fate Core and Fate Accelerated Edition (Good) Can I write an article without talking about Fate? I admit my bias, this is my favourite game.That being said, this luck resource leaves just enough to be desired. It is based on Fate Points, which are integral to the game. Players begin each session with a certain number of Fate Points (usually 3), and they earn extra points when bad things inevitably happen to their character. Fate Points can be used to modify rolls before or after they are made, to re-roll, or to create story details, but with a catch; they can only be used to invoke different story elements, called aspects. Without going into great detail, what that means is that your character design will flavour the way ‘luck’ works in gameplay, which adds great storytelling value.The limitation I mentioned is in the value assigned by the mechanic. According to the basic rules (there are variations), a Fate Point is worth +2, no matter how perfectly or poorly it applies in a given situation. This makes the mechanic very simple to use, but at the cost of the quality of player agency. 3) The Bleeding Edge: Shadowrun (Hella Fun!) Say what you want about Shadowrun; in an entirely-subjective-not-measurable way, this is my favourite luck resource. Shadowrun uses a dice pool mechanic to resolve tests. Edge, a kind of luck mechanic, is treated like a character attribute - that means players can choose whether or not they want to have it during character creation. Very early on, I realized what it was and pretty much always bought it up as high as functionally possible. In a single session, you could call on Edge a number of times equal to your Edge attribute. You could call on it before or after your roll, with different effects. After the roll, you could re-roll or roll a few extra dice. If you use it before the roll, however, it would allow you to add a number of dice equal to your Edge score to your pool. Also, if invoked before the roll, sixes got re-rolled in a sweet exploding dice mechanic. All that just to say that five times a session, I was shaking a mitt-full of dice that meant the odds were most definitely in my favour! 4) Where Have All the Heroes Gone: Mutants & Masterminds (Bad) Now, to clarify, Hero Points is not actually a bad mechanic. It’s quite good. It does everything that you want a good luck resource to do. In writing this article, I just noticed that there’s only one luck resource I marked as bad, so I’m going to pick on the one flaw in this one. In Mutants and Masterminds, players get Hero Points that allow them to re-roll, modify a roll, and add or change story details, much like Fate. Players receive them for doing heroic things, like Marvel Superheroes, or for accepting complications built into your character concept, again like Fate. What’s the drawback? The problem is that even if you’ve earned points, the amount you have resets to just one at the beginning of every session. This weakens an otherwise powerful mechanic by limiting the quantity of times players can take agency. Just make a house rule to fix this one - it shouldn’t break the game. 5) A Muse of Fire: Dungeons and Dragons, Fifth Edition (Good) So simple, and so fun, the Inspiration mechanic from D&D 5E is the first luck resource for the WoC franchise that applies to all characters regardless of race or class. It is somewhat different from the others mentioned above. Instead of allowing players to reroll or modify a roll, it permits the player to invoke the ‘Advantage’ mechanic. This increases the odds of success (including critical success) by allowing the player to roll a second 20-sided die and choose the highest result. Like the Shadowrun mechanic, this improves the odds while still allowing for titanic failure when the dice gods demand it. Players may only have one point of inspiration at a time, which is somewhat limited… but borrowing the Advantage mechanic and allowing the resource to only affect dice rolls keeps the balance and just adds a layer of fun to the classic game. There are many other luck resources that I’ve heard of and read about: Savage Worlds’ ‘Bennies,’ Open d6 ‘Fate Points’ (not to be confused with Fate ‘Fate Points’ - stay with me), and many others. I’ve written about the ones that I’ve actually played; but from what I’ve read, the luck resources covered above represent most of them in functionality. All of them are intended to give a larger-than-life movie feeling to your game, and will hopefully help you to take your games to the next level!! Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (role-playing games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited. He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym. Long live the Corporation! Tags: Dungeons and Dragons, d20, Marvel Superheroes, Fate Core, Fate Accelerated Edition, Shadowrun, Game Design http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/systemdesign/heropoints.html http://www.highlevelgames.ca/blog/5-good-bad-and-ugly-dice-mechanics Since before the first Monster Manual, dragons were designed to be the ubiquitous challenge of D&D. They were in the name, after all. So it was only natural that Ravenloft, a setting where dragons were scarce and the iconic critter was the bloodsucking vampire, introduced vampire subspecies and age categories. Vampires were the new dragons: iconic foes with sufficient variety so that the DM could scale them to be a challenge for a party of any level. Subsequent editions added vampire spawn and templates for the same reason. But Ravenloft is also about foes with backstory, which doesn't always match up with traditional scaling methods. Suppose you want your 3rd level party to fight a vampire, but Joe Peasant (as a spawn) doesn't fit the bill? What if your PC pick a fight against a known vampire that would normally be too powerful for them? What if a later story demands a reasonable excuse for how they ran afoul of a centuries-old nosferatu and lived to tell the tale? When dealing with an imbalance of power, it pays to know your classics, and this concept has been written about for centuries. "The Art of War" states that when waging war against a more powerful foe, it is critical that you control the time and the place of the fight, and wait for the right moment. Sun Tsu may not have been a gamer, but when it comes to vampires, it turns out he was especially accurate: vampires have special weaknesses when it comes to timing and placement. If your PC's are below the level where they might survive a standard toe-to-toe, consider giving them one of these forms of good luck. 1) Let Sleeping Vamps Lie As Jander Sunstar said to Strahd Von Zarovich, "One peasant with a planting stick is more than a match for you during the day." It's a classic trope of vampire hunts for the PC's to explore the crypt while the sun shines, facing traps and tricks and guardians only to find the creature's resting place as the sun is setting. It's no crime against narrative to allow low-level PC's to face fewer traps and guardians and actually get there in time to stake the monster in the coffin. Or you might reverse the idea, letting them stumble into the creature's path just after midnight when it is active, and let them figure out ways to stall and hide and evade until they run out of options...and are rescued by the rising sun. 2) Burning Daylight Of course, the other think about daylight is, well, the light. Apart from nosferatu, who merely lose their supernatural powers, sunlight destroys vampires more effectively than anything, and they know it. Even a first level party stands a decent chance of surviving if the creature has been forced to take shelter in the shadow of a tall tree or tower at noonday. Forced to forgo sleep to keep moving, only a narrow band of shadow between it and oblivion as the day marches on, it could tear to pieces anyone who comes too close, but a low-level party that avoids eye contact might engage in a prolonged battle of wits that gives new meaning to "burning daylight." 3) Location, Location, Location While some vampires may tolerate the sunlight for a brief time to escape the PC's, hardly any can ignore the restriction on entering residences uninvited. According to Van Richten's Guide to vampires, only those who normally reside in a place can issue a proper invitation. To give a first level group a strategic advantage against a vampire, let them encounter it seeking entrance to a place where they are guests. Not knowing who is a resident, the creature dominates a PC or NPC guest for an invitation, but still cannot enter. The rest of the party figures out there is something unusual going on as the dominated PC tries to secure an invitation from an actual resident, with the vampire pacing on the doorstep in frustration. The party will get a good challenge out of fighting the dominated character (and perhaps some summoned animals) before the creature moves on to easier pickings. 4) Death Takes a Holiday Restricted as they are by their requirements for blood and sleep, vampires are not prone to travel. Those who undertake a long journey must bring their coffins with them, and those without loyal quislings to haul them in a wagon frequently find themselves stowed in the hold of a boat. This is not in itself a violation of the prohibition against crossing running water...but the creature cannot leave the boat except to set foot on land. This is easily compounded by the above restrictions on sleep, sunlight and invitations: passenger staterooms are not separate residences, but crew quarters are. If passengers are few, a vampire might be forced to choose between gaining a new invitation every night so it can shallow feed, or risk arousing suspicion by feeding from the same people twice. Count Dracula himself was forced to depopulate the entire crew of a ship one by one to make the journey to England. If only one of those crew had knowledge of vampires, and could explain to the others how to hold them off, that ocean voyage might have ended much differently. ++++++++++++++++++++ So that’s four ways your low-level PC’s might gain the upper hand against a vampire, but then what? If the creature escapes, it will surely have a long memory of its defeat, and it will never allow itself to be caught in such circumstances again. If the PC’s managed to destroy it for good, it may have had a mate, sire or spawn that would likewise hold a grudge. Allow the PC’s their moment to lick their wounds and pat themselves on the back, but they had better not count on luck next time. Luck is a fickle ally, and you never know when the forces that tipped the scales for you might side with the monsters instead. Matthew Barrett has been playing and writing for Ravenloft for over twenty years, starting with the Kargatane's Book of S series (as Leyshon Campbell). He married his wife on Friday the 13th after proposing to her on Halloween. By tradition, the first story read at birth to each of their three children was The Barker’s Tour, from Ravenloft’s “Carnival” supplement. He is currently working on a Ravenloft-based experiment in crowdsourced fiction using his “Inkubator” system at inkubator.miraheze.org. Image is from Ravenloft 3.5 and is titled Races of Ravenloft At this point, I’m certain most of you have heard at least something about D&D Beyond. For those of you who don’t know, Wizards of the Coast, has teamed up with Curse Inc to make an official D&D companion app. Yes yes, you no longer have to sift through dozens of bug-ridden, shoddily made, festering crap mounds that call themselves “buddies” to your adventures. (Note: I too program! I know the struggles, don’t rag on me. I couldn’t do any better) Although, there are a few diamonds in the rough; one I’d like to point out is Squire 5e on the Google Play Store. The creator, who will remain nameless because he’s not a personal friend, has done a great job on making a free and easy to use character manager. Sorry to all you Apple patrons though, because all my hunting there has lead to mostly dead ends. Back on topic; people have been using apps and such to help with gaming for a long time now. It’s taken a long time for WotC to respond to this too. Hopefully, with all this prep-time they have something to show for it. (View the article they wrote and watch the promo here) 1) A Community This is one of the things that was a little more obscure in not only the promo, but even the release. Forums and private messages are a thing, you can interact with other users. From my experience it’s really difficult to find a community for us table-top gamers. I mean there's Amino… but… Amino. If you’ve delved into Amino you know what I’m talking about and if you haven’t, don’t. Roll 20 has something going for them, but it’s not really prominent. Actually now that I think about it, the way the community works is very similar to Roll 20’s, however, Beyond kind of advertises theirs more. As per the usual, there’s all the variety you’d expect from all the gaming community in one place. You’ve got art, strategies, ideas and all other kinds of things that really punctuate the expansiveness of our beautiful band of nerds. There’s grognards and a few people who are a little green, as it were. After going through those forums, it was almost eye opening as to how expansive our community is. 2) Payments Money! It's a crime, among other things. During my exploration of this topic, I noticed the word “cost” popping up more and more. Adam Bradford, the product lead for Curse, said a few things in a Reddit post (that I can’t link because I have the mental capacity of a cat (no offense to the Tabaxi)) that I’d like to quote here: “At launch, players will be able to access SRD content and build and view a small number of characters with a free D&D Beyond account. We don’t have exact pricing nailed down, but you will also be able to buy official digital D&D content… with flexible purchase options.” So translation: Get ready to pay for digital forms of the books and stuff you probably already have. If that has deterred you, then you’re probably going to slam your head against a wall when I say that they also plan to have a monthly subscription. Whew! I heard that slam through both space and time, and boy, was it loud. I assume most the readers are in unanimous agreement that this is a bad idea. Bad is an understatement, it’s an abysmal idea. To my understanding this was the main reason the last app crashed and burned worse than my last date. *Warning rant ahead. Jarod’s nonexistent pay has yet again been reduced.* Come on, WotC, does anyone there have even a lick of sense? This is already one of the most expensive hobbies to have and now you’re just tossing on costs to have access to basic content for an app that should’ve been made years ago. They’re breaking this up into “class specific” purchases. From the same Reddit post, “If you only play fighters for example, you’ll be able to just pick up the stuff you need to track swinging that giant two-handed sword.” Then he went on to say it wasn’t a microtransaction model. Really? Certainly feels like a microtransaction model. Certainly looks like a microtransaction model. I’m sure my wallet will agree once I have to punch in my debit or credit info as I willingly watch them rob me. Willingly. Watch. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s for easy and flexible content. Bradford even said it was for flexibility. However, we’ve been burned before, and this has the potential to not just burn us but to completely incinerate us. Why not just include some sort of product code in the book that you buy? That would make things easy. One purchase for both mediums. Don’t even get me started on that absurd subscription. 3) Character Sheets To make things a little lighter, let’s talk about something they’ve made abundantly clear: Character sheets. They haven’t released phase 2 of the beta at the time of me writing this, but if I have the misfortune of having this posted on the day that’s released please A). Forgive me and B). Cast my corpse into the Abyss because that would drive me insane. Keeping track of characters is often not only a hassle but a danger. Many of my characters have died to a cool glass of coke as I am both clumsy and careless. Maybe that’s just me, but I know characters who have died to wind, cats, coffee, cigarettes and even in one case to a rather upset wife with a paper shredder. Obviously, computers, laptops, and other electronic devices aren’t fit to fit in a paper shredder. Even if they were, the cloud would come to the rescue. All I can pray for is smooth, comfortable and stylish interface. I don’t really have to justify my bare minimum expectations for some aesthetics do I? Practicality would be nice too, but seeing their pricing model pretty much shows they didn’t have practicality in mind here. *sigh* I’ll reign in the anger. From looking at the teaser a bit closer, we can see that there will be several tabs for each respective character. Abilities,Skills, Attacks, Spells and one more that only said “Limited.” Perhaps for limited use items such as potions or scrolls. Maybe there will be limited edition content you have to freaking pay for. Deep breaths, in… and out... 4) Smooth, Sexy, Sleek, And Sweet DMing If there’s one thing that Beyond nails, it’s what it was meant to nail; being an effective, quick tool for DMing. The quick access to and use of the SRD info is beautiful, swift and useful. Not to mention, it has that 5e feel that I’ve personally come to know and love. Really, everything on there is just instant, at the fingertips. Little to no paging through the books and forcing yourself to memorize page numbers. No more accidentally ripping your page in the $50 book and then wanting to join a cult to Orcus and start sacrificing the innocent to gather the necessary unholy power to make it good as new. Honestly, D&D Beyond has so much potential it’s astonishing. The open beta is simple but elegant. However, this other knowledge taints that wonderful world where I don’t need to dump more money into this *Censored* hobby. But, I’m not going to yell at WotC anymore;I’m simply going to beg them to not repeat the same mistakes over and over again for all eternity. Image Source Jarod Lalonde is a young role-player and writer whose passion for both lead him here. He’s often sarcastic and has a +5 to insult. Dungeons and Dragons is his favorite platform. Although he’s not quite sure if it’s Call of Cthulhu whispering to him in the small hours of the night, or just persistent flashbacks to the Far Realm. Role-playing games are the best thing since sliced ogre for you, your kids, and your grandma... but there is one particular happiness that can be gained from them that is not for everyone. Only the select few, those of us with refined palates, the nerds among nerds who would appreciate the emphatically overdrawn syntax of this sentence ever learn to enjoy it. It is enjoyed by such brilliant minds as the Matt from Herding Dice, John Kim, and other masters of mechanics. This is the joy of the hacking the rules themselves. To play around with the mechanics is to create the rules by which the game world is governed; it is a creative process in some ways more fundamental than playing a role. The core of all role-playing games is that they simulate a reality in which people can enjoy playing characters. Game designers have found many different ways to simulate the limitations of reality while allowing characters to have autonomy, each game striking a balance between a sense of realism with a sense of fun. Each design has a different flavour; there are so many games out there now that you can truly order them to taste. There are many mechanics that form a game. This article’s focus is on dice mechanics, what makes them good, exciting, clunky, or weird. Dice mechanics are good when they 1) create tension (there’s a variety of possible outcomes), 2) are somewhat realistic, and 3) are simple. If you have any favourite dice mechanics, please let me know in the comments! I’m always looking for interesting game systems. 1) Meat and Potatoes: d20 mechanics (Bad to Good!) Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, and the d20 Open Game License are the staple of many a role-player’s diet. d20 mechanics have their high and low points. There are an exciting twenty possible outcomes for each roll, which usually include one opportunity for wild success or critical failure. These mechanics break down in the realism department because each outcome has an equal chance of happening. The rules change the probability of success by incorporating modifiers and changing target numbers, but no matter how weak or powerful your character, there’s still a 5% chance that you’ll either critically hit that dragon or fall flat on your face jumping over a log. These eventualities often seem out of place and ridiculous. Regarding simplicity, recent incarnations have improved considerably, most of them paring it down to just a 20-sided die, avoiding the need for excessive polyhedrons. The 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons also introduced the idea of advantage and disadvantage, which improves the believability of the outcomes by giving players a pool of two 20-sided dice to choose from. 2) All Had The Graph Of Power! Marvel Superheroes (Bad to Ugly!) One dice mechanic that has always intrigued me is the one designed for TSR’s Marvel Superheroes. It features very simple resolution: every action is resolved by a percentile dice roll combined with consulting a chart. It accounts for the huge disparity of power in the Marvel Universe by having each character roll under the assigned level of their power for different effects. As interesting as it is, however, the reality it creates is a broken one where failure is frequent. This means Colossus may have difficulty pinning a starving serf to the ground, and Aunt May can knock Spider-Man out cold. There are some mechanics that work to mitigate this kind of thing, but they aren’t powerful enough to avoid frequent absurd power upsets. Wild successes and failures are defined by the chart. Oddly, if you put together the chance of a wild success or a critical failure, depending on the action you’re taking, it is frequently more likely to knock it out of the park or to fail epically than it is just to succeed. Again, this undermines the sense of realism in the game. 3) One Roll To Rule Them All: Fate Core & Fate Accelerated Edition (Best!) Featuring a robust mechanic based on the earlier FUDGE system, the Fate systems are two of my favourites. Players simply resolve all actions using a small pool of four FUDGE/Fate dice, which are 6-sided dice that supply outcomes between -4 and +4. There are fewer outcomes possible with this type of roll, but the outcomes follow a curve. The curve makes wild success and failures possible, but more rare, lending a sense of realism. There are also other mechanics that enable characters to succeed where they otherwise may not, and scale mechanics that allow this single dice roll to resolve conflicts on any scale. In combination, this creates a dice mechanic that simulates realistic outcomes, while providing the creative freedom of a truly universal system and enough tension to make victory sweet. 4) Welcome To The Desert Of The Real: Shadowrun (Good to Ugly!) There will always be a soft spot in my cold gamemaster heart for this game, though I don’t play it much anymore. In principle, the resolution mechanic is fairly simple; a combination of skills and gear provide characters a pool of 6-sided dice they use to resolve opposed, unopposed, and extended actions. The bigger the dice pool, the greater a character’s chances of success or wild success. Dice pools by nature allow somewhat more realistic outcomes, and the core mechanic is really quite simple. There are so many additional rules, however, that gameplay tends to bog down in the simulation. Almost every piece of gear, skill, and action has a specific rule that is perfectly logical and lends to a sense of realism for the game. But, frequently, the complexity takes players out of the game too much for them to enjoy the sense of immersion that so rich a game world deserves. Also, rolling upwards of twenty dice is both super fun and more than a bit ridiculous. 5) ...And Four Stunt Points! Fantasy AGE (Good!) This dice mechanic is a hybrid of early d20 mechanics and the Fate system. It uses a small pool of three 6-sided dice to resolve actions with a single type of roll. Outcomes range from 3 to 18, again making them feel realistic. An object of study for Matt from Herding Dice, it also features some super entertaining tricks. When players roll doubles, they gain a certain number of points with which to buy stunts – which are cool things their character can do. This means that wild successes are not limited to high rolls (though high rolls help). While it does not cover the same scope as Fate, it is nevertheless a very enjoyable resolution mechanic. These are only some of the highs and lows that players may encounter using different dice mechanics. Of course, this article doesn’t consider all the different mechanics that exist, and doesn’t even touch other forms of resolution. If you’re still reading, you’re probably of the ilk that will stay tuned for the forthcoming article about alternative resolution mechanics. See you there! Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (role-playing games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited. He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym. Long live the Corporation! Why am I comparing these two particular editions? Simple story: I have had limited interaction with D&D from 3rd through 4th editions. But AD&D 2nd was my jam and 5th is a new friend. Less simple story: (TL;DR) I had a hiatus from regular gaming when my daughter was first born until she reached the age of 7. As a full-time student and then worker, my hours with her were interrupted often and were few and far between, and so I decided to spend more quality time with her. During those years, I missed a few things in the cultural gaming sphere. One of the behemoths I played regularly BC (Before Child) was the much-moduled AD&D 2nd Edition. I was quite familiar with most of the classes and some of the races that I could work with. My grognard husband was slow to tune into the 3rd edition (though was happier with 3.5 when it showed up in 2003) and so I had limited experience with either. My jump back into gaming post-child was GMing a 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons starter module for a group of largely brand-new gamers. It was my first and last foray into 4th. We parted on friendly terms. But now I am back in routine with a weekly game, as last year I was won over by the changes in 5th, but none-so-much as the improvement on the Ranger class. 1) Requirements Schmirements Honestly, I still have a love of the ability requirements that made 2nd edition character classes very focused on being good at certain things. But having minimums in Strength and Dexterity (13) and Constitution and Wisdom (14) could result in different table-rules being enacted.
Not only can the requirements be tough to get, but it limits the broad range of abilities that this character could have. Maybe there is a Ranger who has always been great from afar, flinging arrows without enemies knowing what is coming. Do they also have to be strong, hardy, and wise as well? I would argue that it is not necessary. 2) More Balanced The Ranger in 2nd Edition seems to have been a favoured class of Min/Maxers from near and far. I played in more than one group where I have seen that personality coupled with that class. The Ranger’s ability at first level to double their attacks with two handed weapon style with no penalty and a +4 for attack rolls on favoured enemies made a ton of people that really just wanted to be a Fighter choose the Ranger class instead. In order for a Fighter to even have the chance to come close to matching that, they needed to look in extra books for fighting styles and choose ambidexterity as a trait so they could wield those two weapons. And favoured enemy for the fighter? Not a chance. The only thing they could do is get really mad at some orcs. Those who wanted to game the system as much as they could had it in spades with the Ranger in 2nd. In 5th, they seemed to have figured out how to make the all classes both varied and less gameable. They rightly brought in new abilities and choices near the beginning of the levels for each class that presents not only the ability to do cool shit, but the opportunity for fleshing out characters. In 5th ed. at 2nd level, the Ranger can choose their favoured fighting style (and yes, two handed is still an option) that works with their back story, their world, and their physical prowess. Looking at archery, defence, dueling, two weapon fighting, or close-quarter shooter, there is a great variety of style without being too dominant over other classes or overly detailed and cumbersome (I am looking at you Palladium Fantasy RPG.) 3) More Logical Progression Along with the choice early on for fighting style in 5th edition, there are also the beginnings of other Ranger benefits that are acquired early on. Favoured terrain provides bonuses for everything you do in that area, including helping out your group as they traverse the woods/prairies/mountains/candyland with you. For 5th, your favoured enemy is not just how angry you get at them or how well you can hit them (thanks 2nd.). Now you know much more about that enemy such as their customs, how to track them, and even an ability to speak to them in one of their own languages. This is so much more beneficial than the “Hulk rage” approach earlier in D&D. They also introduce Ranger spells immediately into the character class. Rangers innately have this ability to use magic in a way that makes sense for their environment. They also have their own compendium of Ranger Spells to choose from instead of glomming onto selected Priest spells like they do in 2nd. In the earlier incarnation of spell casting, for some reason the Ranger hits 8th level and knows some priest spells. In the Player’s Handbook, there is no explanation for this effect. (Though with the multitude of books written for AD&D 2nd, I am sure it has to be explained somewhere.) It seems disjointed and out of nowhere. And this is not the only ability that seemingly comes from left field. At 10th level, there are 2d6 followers of no particular race or species that start to show up. I won’t get into the theory behind this one, but I do think a more consistent progression makes more sense when playing a character. 4) Archetypes Archetypes may be my favourite part of 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. As each class reaches 3rd level, they are confronted with a choice in path for their character to take. With a Ranger they receive a choice between the Hunter Archetype or the Beast Master Archetype. Your Hunter knows the reality of their situation well. They are able to best defend and attack those who would threaten civilization. They are well aware of the wilderness, but they are not a wild animal. Their attacks are meant to strike blows specifically at their enemies. If you choose Beast Master, you are the bridge between the wild and the civilized. You are able to have a beast companion to help you keep your two worlds from completely colliding with disastrous effects. This animal companion will not only follow you, but will fight alongside you. Either pick at 3rd level further defines your role in the campaign, which is what I love. In the end, the 2nd edition Ranger just wasn’t built as clearly as 5th. But without the work done early on in Dungeons and Dragons, we wouldn’t have what we do today. Bravo, D&D, you have kept us coming back for more. For a general overview of how the editions rolled out see this wikipedia page. This article was written by Vanessa who is a sarcastic, 30-something wife and mother. She likes things and stuff, but not simultaneously. When she isn’t involved in things and stuff, she teaches middle school science, math, art, and other random subjects. She loves new teenagers in action. They make her laugh and shake her head and her world is much better with laughter. She thinks everyone should be roleplaying. She is also trying out this new twitter handle at @sarasma_nessa Hello friend. Thank you for your timely intervention on behalf of the people of Dowen-upon-Waite. Without your assistance, I doubt that there would have been anyone in the village remaining. None that could be called human, at any rate. I do wonder how such a cancer began. It's a shame that we weren't able to learn more. Amongst many philosophers, the subject of evil is an oft-discussed (or argued) one, but more often than not the kinds of malevolent secrets which you uncovered have their roots in something far more innocuous. Something benevolent, even useful, which carries so small a price as to be nearly negligible. These objects often set the stage for the gradual descent to a point where the once-noble aspirant finds himself waist deep in atrocities he would never have considered before embarking on his path of damnation. Having felt the malignant caress of the Dark Powers myself, I have made a careful study of the things that can lead to such darkness. Since you were inquisitive enough to contact me regarding the genesis of the most recent problem, I thought I would share a few of my own private notes with you in the hopes that you might see how these sorts of tumors begin to grow. 1) Wine of Ages My compatriots and I recovered this particular item from a tomb we cleansed of undead in the mountains of Lamordia. To the eye, it is merely a mundane bottle of green glass, with a name imprinted upon the bottom: Herzhen Yards. There is no such vineyard that we were ever able to uncover, although the tomb appeared to be of Outlander origin, and its plundered contents appeared to come from a range of different cultures. This unassuming little malignance was stolen from me by a Rajian thief, and I have not seen either since. The bottle is empty, save for an ashen grey haze that can be poured forth from the neck as though it were a true liquid. This vapor, which carries the odor of gently rotting loam, is harmless to the living. If poured into the mouth of the deceased, it grants the corpse the ability to converse with the living, albeit in a limited fashion. Please note that although this ability seems mundane, it is an abomination. It encourages a callous disregard for the dead, driving the user to treat corpses as mere investigative tools, and leads its wielder to see nothing wrong with compelling the spirit (or a semblance thereof) back to the realm of the living for mere convenience. The Wine of Ages allows its bearer to converse with a humanoid or monstrous humanoid corpse up to three times per day. Each corpse may be conversed with only once, but the condition of the body is irrelevant--it can still speak even if rot or injury would normally make it incapable. The effect lasts for up to one minute per HD of the dead body. The spirit is much less committed than they were in life (shift alignment one step towards N), but can still make a saving throw (Will DC 17, Wis DC 15) in order to lie freely. Using the Wine of Ages is cause for a 3% Dark Powers check. 2) Oubliette Dust This nasty little alchemical concoction is a creation of the Kargatane, I believe. I was unfortunate enough to discover it while attempting to apprehend several spies that had infiltrated Drifthome. One of the thieves, when confronted, threw a black powder in my face. I was immediately reminded of the last time I had smelt such a powder: when I was the 'guest' of the Kargat, tortured repeatedly for several weeks. So horrific were the memories, I was unable to prevent the thieves from fleeing. As my daughter was good enough to remind me later, after I had recovered, I have never been tortured by the Kargat. The memories induced by the dust are merely lies. Still, their effects linger, and I often find myself waking in the middle from dreams of Darkonian dungeons. Those who sell the Oubliette Dust market it as a 'stunning powder,' and indeed it does exactly that. However, the memories it 'awakens' are so horrific and they stay with the victim for weeks, even months, after the fact. Oubliette Powder can be thrown in a cloud at any victim within 5 feet. If the victim fails their save (Fort DC 17, Con DC 15) they are unable to act for 2d6 rounds. If they are attacked this effect breaks immediately. The terror on the victims' faces is self-evident; using the powder is cause for a 1% Dark Powers check. This rises to 3% if the user knows the full extent of the trauma they are inflicting on their enemy. 3) Granny Lady Bracelet Last year, a cult of witches was uncovered in the Mordentish countryside. Although a great deal of their magical prowess was merely smoke and mirrors, they did possess a number of unnatural abilities that Tasha and I were forced to contend with. Most infuriatingly, their leader seemed to be able to anticipate our arrival, and it was only through the utmost diligence that we were able to confront her. One of her magical talismans was what the Souragne practitioners refer to as a gris-gris. A small, twisted length of sinew and hair, strung with a variety of horrific trophies, including finger bones, teeth, and dried flesh, and is typically worn around the wrist. Tasha wore the talisman for several weeks, and reported that it gave her brief glimpses into the future, but after reading through the granny lady's journal, I became convinced that inheriting the device from her own mentor is what began the corruption of the witch that had plagued us, and I convinced Tasha to put the device aside for her own good. Currently, the foul thing resides in a locked trunk in my safe room. Anyone wearing the Granny Lady Bracelet may roll 2d20 at the beginning of the day. During the course of the day, they may replace any d20 roll (theirs or anyone within line of sight) with one of the Bracelet's rolls. This does not stack with the ability of a Divination specialist, instead they receive one extra d20 for their Portent ability. Using the Granny Lady Bracelet is sufficient cause for a 1% Dark Powers check every week it is owned. 4) Breathstealer Arrow I encountered this device on an assassin from Tepest.The Inquisitor I worked with to apprehend the fiend claimed this weapon was a gift to the killer, in recompense for selling his services to the fae. Although I am normally loathe to heed their dogmatic fanaticism, in this case there may be a seed of truth to it. In truth, the magical component is a stone arrowhead, which can be affixed to any mundane bolt or arrow. Once it hits its target, it breaks loose and begins twisting its way towards the target's lungs, causing the poor soul to choke and gasp as their air is magically expelled from their body. If it isn't cut out swiftly (a supremely difficult task, I can attest, since the infernal thing avoids all attempts at capture) it will eventually kill its victim, even if the original user is dead. Inquisitor Cormec took the cursed thing with him after we apprehended the murderer, although I spared the assassin the cruelty of a Tepestani imprisonment and execution. I sat in judgment over him myself, and I'm sure he found the noose far less painful than whatever Cormec had in store for him. A target hit with a Breathstealer Arrow cannot breathe. (This means they cannot speak, cast spells, or activate command words.) Beginning in the round they are hit, the victim suffers the normal effects of suffocation (treat the victim as if they had already held their breath the maximum length of time). It can be removed with a Heal check (DC 20), causing 1d4 damage for every round it was embedded. Using such an arrow is an act of torture, invoking a 4% Dark Powers check when used against a monster or evil NPC, 7% if used against a stranger or neutral NPC, and an automatic failure if used against a good NPC or friend. The arrowhead can be recovered after the target's death, and can be removed by the firer with no check. 5) Witchbane Codex When several Halan witches in and around my area were found murdered, I at first suspected the presence of a rogue Tepestani inquisitor. Although there was a man involved who used such a title, he was an Outlander. After his capture (or defiant last stand, in truth), this slim volume was discovered on his person. It appears to be written in Tepestani, although it contains far more arcane knowledge than the Inquisition would be comfortable committing to paper. Inside, there is detailed information on common practices, rites, beliefs, and identifying traits of witches and infernal cults. After reading it, I found myself revolted by the unnatural lore contained within. Although Tasha has asked to read it, I have sent the book to my friend Kelly, as he has proven more than capable of resisting the temptations of such arcana. Reading the Witchbane Codex (which takes six hours) immediately costs the reader a point of Wisdom (which can never be recovered) but imbues them with an additional point of Intelligence. While the book is in their possession, they may consult it to gain a +2 on any appropriate skill check (such as Arcana, Religion, Knowledge: Arcana, or Knowledge: Religion). Even lightly reading the book instantly causes the user to make a Sanity check, if those rules are being used, and also causes the loss of Innocence. Completing the book is cause for a 2% Dark Powers check. The user should also be assessed for a 1% Dark Powers check for every month they have the book in their possession. Willingly giving it to another person to read is cause for a 5% Dark Powers check, 10% if they are unaware of the nature of the book, and is an automatic failure if they are an Innocent. In Summation As you can see, the road to Hell can indeed be paved with the most innocuous of cobbles. The wise adventurer would do well to resist such temptations. Too often, what appears to merely offer power or expediency comes at the cost of our very soul. Should you find such a wicked item among your travels, do not hesitate to contact me if you wish assistance in confining or destroying it. Your actions have spoken volumes for your righteousness, and I consider myself Your Friend, Joram Mournesworth, Lord Mayor of Drifthome Jim Stearns is a deranged hermit from the swamps of Southern Illinois. In addition to writing for the Black Library, he puts pen to paper for High Level Games and Keep on the Heathlands. His mad scribblings can frequently be found in Quoth the Raven, as well as anthologies like Fitting In or Selfies from the End of the World, by Mad Scientist Journal. Follow him on Twitter @jcstearnswriter. Jonas undressed for bed as normal that evening when something caught his eye. He had his share of tattoos like any old sailor, but never one on his inner thigh! He wanted to chalk it up to last week's drunken blackout...but it was at least a year old! It was a single word, written in Draconic. He read it aloud without thinking, then felt an icy chill slide up his spine as he tried to remember, when had he ever learned Draconic? He had only a moment to wonder about that before a disembodied voice cut through the silence of his bedroom. "Keep it together, old man--just go look in Mina's bank." His heart hammering into his throat, he cast his eyes around, called for the speaker to show themselves, but he remained alone. Seizing the lamp, he crept into the kitchen, cursing himself a fool for fearing the darkness of his own house. When Mina was alive, she kept her own private stash of coin in a hanging planter out the back window, said she was "growing money." He pulled down the oilskin bag he had not seen in eleven years, which now contained not a handful of coins, but a small book. By the flickering light of his lamp, Jonas opened it to see his own handwriting, in more Draconic, that language he could not recall learning: "If you don’t remember writing this, your memory has been altered...." Memento Mori was one of those ideas that outgrew its original inspiration and just kept growing. It didn't take me long after inventing the basic origins of this secret society to realize that people who held the mind as inviolate would take up arms against any darklord, demon, creature or caster who could read or control thoughts. But even better than a wide variety of targets, Memento Mori were great game fodder because many were zealots who saw mind control as tantamount to murder, reading thoughts a form of rape. This pushed them to extreme risks, forced even the poorest of them to pursue clever defenses against imagined attacks out of sheer single mindedness. 1- Earworms: Filling your thoughts with an annoying song can give a mind-reader an earful, but forcefully thinking of a song makes simultaneous actions difficult (-4 to all verbal skill checks, treat as if concentrating on a spell). If you want to get anything else done, the truly desperate might deliberately allow a song to get stuck in their head, in whatever part of the brain keeps such “earworms” repeating ad nauseum. After repeated exposure to a song on and off over several days, failing a single Will save results in an earworm (because it’s already involuntary, this save can’t be deliberately failed). When someone with an earworm is subjected to mind reading, they make a second Will save using the Perform check of the original artist, to see if the song appears in the surface thoughts. The results of the two saves are independent, so that the mind reader might hear the song, the surface thoughts, both mixed together, or neither. 2- Journals: When asked for personal details to confirm their identity, a doppelganger normally reads the correct answer in surface thoughts. Instead, corner the suspect with a copy of their own journal, and read aloud to the end of a recent page. Assuming they are not too nervous about the crossbow at their throat, the original author should be able to recall what they wrote next, while a doppelganger won’t find the words in any of the surrounding minds. Once the suspect has given an answer, turn the page, read aloud, and do what must be done…. Journals are also very convenient if something has removed or altered your memories, but taking full advantage requires building the habit of writing long before your mind is wiped, and the means of reminding yourself if something removes your memory of the journal itself. It takes dedication to commit to a detailed daily journal, but anyone up against something that alters memories had better build this habit fast. 3- Herbalism: One of the tried-and-true low-tech resources is to take advantage of natural wonders, whether it’s inquisitors using wichtingourds or dreamwalkers using dreamweavers. Memento Mori found one of their best resources in herbalism, cultivating the churchsteeple plant for its root. The plant’s powers were first catalogued by Van Richten in Dragon Magazine #273, (“Wicked Garden”), where one of the suggested game effects is that the fresh root duplicates the effect of a protection from evil spell. This is only a minor bonus in combat, but it also suspends all manner of possession and mind control for the duration of the spell. In addition to using the root to protect themselves and their allies, it’s also a favorite of “string cutter” cells in Dementlieu--Memento Mori anarchists who specialize in fighting against the great puppeteers. Fresh churchsteeple root added to bouquets and boutonnieres at a formal social gathering could result in some amount of discomfiture for those suddenly thrust into freedom, and a lot of valuable information for those who note their reactions. 4- Hypnosis: Frequent mind readers remain suspicious of anyone who appears resistant to their talents--or worse, immune. That’s why members of Memento Mori disguise each other’s thoughts using a variation of the hypnosis skill. Under hypnosis, the subject is instructed to think of a particular topic in the using an extended allegory. This works especially well when Memento Mori cell meetings are disguised as book clubs, gardening guilds, private tea parties or other innocuous gatherings. The subject knows the truth and could speak freely if they choose to, but their surface thoughts would only refer to these topics in these allegorical terms. Unlike an earworm, hypnosis only provides a backup saving throw when the subject fails their main save. Success means that even though the subject’s thoughts can be read, the chosen topic is disguised. Failing by less than 5 means the disguised thoughts are inconsistent or paradoxical (i.e. “The sewing circle ladies said crocheting works on vampires”). Failing by 5 or more means the mind-reader knows the actual content of the surface thoughts. The second save also applies to interrogation under other forms of mind control, with failure meaning the subject can only speak about the topic in allegorical terms. 5- Lead Headgear...and More: If you need any further proof of the fanaticism of Memento Mori, ask yourself: what kind of person would risk losing their mind to lead poisoning, just to prevent someone else from having a peek inside it? When facing mind-reading foes in melee combat, members of Memento Mori frequently wear headgear coated with layers of lead enamel*. This is an excellent defense against mental intrusion, but every four hours wearing one provokes a save against lead poisoning, as the enamel breaks down in contact with sweat and the lead is absorbed by the skin. For a truly nuclear option, an alchemical solution of chemically neutralized “chelated” lead* turns the bloodstream into the ultimate barrier against mental intrusion, but any error in the alchemy check results in a toxic dose of lead that can do significant brain damage. ++++ While I personally based Memento Mori in Blaustein with origins in Bluebeard’s memory-altering decrees, the idea of a cult or secret society that sees the mind as inviolate can translate into any game that has such powers. If your PC's are fighting a vampire with a captivating gaze, a ghost with a penchant for possession, an alien shapeshifter who can read thoughts, or a mad supervillain who manipulates minds, they might find some interesting allies at the the crossroads of fanaticism and resourcefulness. But of course, you'll have to break out the Diplomacy and get to know them the old fashioned way, because if you try any other kind of Charm, you may wind up added to their long list of enemies.... * Rules for leaded barrel helms, helmets and potions are given in the Van Richten Society Notes on the Doppelganger, a netbook hosted by the Fraternity of Shadows. Matthew Barrett has been playing and writing for Ravenloft for over twenty years, starting with the Kargatane's Book of S series (as Leyshon Campbell). He married his wife on Friday the 13th after proposing to her on Halloween. By tradition, the first story read at birth to each of their three children was The Barker’s Tour, from Ravenloft’s “Carnival” supplement. He is currently working on a Ravenloft-based experiment in crowdsourced fiction using his “Inkubator” system at inkubator.miraheze.org. “Your sword is gone.” “WHAT?!?! What do you mean??” “It doesn’t exist anymore. You have no sword.” “But that was my +5 family heirloom sword! It cost me 50,000 GP and we spent four months in real time on a side quest to get it!!” “...and you put it in an annihilation portal trap. Tough.” “Don’t I get a saving throw?!? Or something??” WARNING! All of the mechanics I mention below are risky. This does not mean any of them are forbidden, nor even bad. Some of them are actually quite common. They are risky in the sense that they threaten to take the fun out of the game for some players. I wrote an article about some rewards that role-playing gamers want to get from their games, then another about some of the games that do a good job of providing these rewards. Now it’s time to talk about the games that will ruin your fun by taking these rewards away. Taking away or delaying game rewards means consequences for in-game actions start to affect the player as well as their character. Players often invest a lot of time and effort to get their characters to a particular stage, and these mechanics tend to negate that time and effort. To be fair, there is definitely an appropriate time to have your heirloom sword permanently removed, or for your character to die. Gamemasters and players often want to play a high-stakes game. Before you decide to apply a mechanic that could potentially undo or complicate the real-life work that players have put into the game you should talk about the risks, and decide as a group if having high-tension drama is worth suffering player-affecting consequences. I mention three joykill mechanics, but there are certainly more pit traps out there. If you think of any that I should have targeted, write them in the comments! I picked these three because they are typical of the worst reward-removing mechanics. Here is the list. 1. Bad Karma - TSR Marvel Super Heroes I’m really looking forward to playing Cyclops and being able to shoot around corners. Now, if I get karma every session and only spend half of it on having good rolls and don’t accidentally kill anyone or do anything out of character, I should be able to earn that stunt in…. oh, about two years of play time. The Marvel Super Heroes character advancement mechanic is a joykill. Which is a shame because I love the game! Character development is handled with Karma - save someone, beat the bad guy, or just do something awesome, and you receive Karma. Karma can be used to buy power stunts - cool things that your character can do with his/her powers. Brilliant! There are two problems with the Karma mechanic, though. The first is that Karma can also be used to buy successes in-game: to karate chop Magneto’s face or narrowly miss being mesmerized by Mysterio, spend Karma. This drains the resource that you would normally use for character advancement. The second problem; to successfully gain a power stunt, you need to succeed several times at different success levels; really cool, in theory. Unfortunately, in practice, it means that unless you have a prohibitive amount of Karma stored up in case you fail a roll, you could end up having wasted your Karma and starting back at square one. It’s important to separate character development resources (like Experience Points) and burnable assets in your game, because otherwise players risk burning up their hard work just so they don’t lose their character. 2. Dungeoneering Drain - Dungeons and Dragons “The vampire succeeds on a touch attack. You lose two levels.” “Noooo! I just got to level twelve! I really wanted to cast sixth-level spells!” “While you’re standing there, lamenting your fate, the vampire touches you again.” “Nooooooo!” There are more than three joykills in the grandaddy of all role-playing games (see the opening vignette about a 2nd edition AD&D scenario), though many of them have been ironed out in subsequent editions. Some of them persist. Try not to use them without warning the players. Rust Monsters: Given that new gear is one of the rewards that players who like Dungeons and Dragons crave, creating a monster whose sole purpose is to eat gear is risky. Whether gear is bought, found, or quested for, a rust monster can easily remove an irreplaceable reward from play. Experience Points for Effects: Just like with the bad Karma above, there are some mechanics in Dungeons and Dragons that require a player to spend the points they would normally use for character development to achieve certain effects (usually magical ones). This is done to maintain game balance; the effects that are bought with experience points are usually quite powerful. This is risky, though, because having a mage at 10th level when everyone else is at 12th can get tedious; character advancement is as rewarding as new gear, if not more. Level Drain: THE WORST!! Again, in a high-stakes game, level-draining creatures (often powerful undead) are specifically designed to hit the player where it hurts the most - in the experience points! Don’t pit yourselves against a vampire unless everyone is on board with the fact that they might lose a couple of levels before it’s all said and done… as if levels were the worst thing to lose. Which brings me to my next point: 3. The Ultimate Joykill - Character Death “I’m going to run across the rickety bridge that spans the chasm.” “Okay, roll for it.” “Natural one.” “Oh. Ouch. Um, make a reflex save.” “Uh… also one.” “Oh. Uh, I guess you fall screaming to your death.” “On the first day?” Something that is nearly invisible because it is assumed in most games, character death is a joykill mechanic. I may be opening myself to criticism, but I think allowing character death to be determined by the random rolling of dice is risky, and leads to a million absurdities from a storytelling perspective. What happens when your character’s goal was to deliver information vital to the success of a world-saving mission, and they get taken out by a couple of bandits who happened to roll really well? No, thank you. I applaud games like Mutants and Masterminds and Fate that deliberately remove character death from the mechanics. Characters can be ‘taken out:’ knocked out, captured, lost, or forgotten… but that just creates an interesting twist in the story. Fate takes it a step further, and allows players to decide when character death would be appropriate, thereby allowing the players and the GM, in conversation, to decide when to raise the stakes. It is essential to have conversations about when you are going to use high-stakes mechanics. High-tension drama is vital to role-playing games, and these mechanics can provide that when appropriate. Bust them out at the wrong time, though, and you will kill the fun for the players in your group. Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (role-playing games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited. He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym. Long live the Corporation! Rangers are one of the iconic fantasy archetypes, and they have been ever since we first noticed Strider sitting in the corner of the pub smoking his pipe. Though rangers get a variety of abilities, the one we always think of is favored enemy. And why wouldn't we? While the rest of the group is struggling against the undead minions of a necromancer, or the heavily armed orc warriors conducting local raids, the ranger is cutting through them like a scythe through chaff. And why not? A favored enemy bonus can often be what makes the difference between a challenging fight, and one that gets put down so hard it leaves a crater. One thing we do too often, though, is turn our rangers into vengeance-driven murder machines. Because, while it's true that killing off a character's family simplifies their back story, provides motivation, and explains why they're so good at fighting a certain type of creature, not every ranger needs to be guided by revenge. Instead you might find your favored enemy bonuses come from... #1: Experience Experience changes everything. Whenever you started doing a job, even if you were fully trained and qualified, there was a learning curve you had to deal with. Of course, if you survived, chances are you got really good at it. So, if your job has been, “fighting undead” for the last few years, it makes sense that you know how best to take them on. You know the tools to use, what signs to look for, and what sorts of strategies they use. You don't need any particular malice toward these creatures... they're just the opponents you cut your teeth on. #2: Training Not every ranger has gone toe-to-toe with his favored enemy in pitched battles for years on end. In fact, some rangers may rarely, if ever, actually see their favored enemies. They know what to do because they've researched, they've trained, and they've studied. A dragon hunter may never have fought a great wyrm, but he knows the signs to look for when that day comes. The environments they live in, the colors of their scales, and where to put an arrow or a spear to have the most devastating effect. #3: Talent Sometimes a character is just naturally good at something. Maybe he knows just the right ingredients to put together for a salad, or he can always sniff out the best location to make camp. For some rangers, fighting a favored enemy might just be in their blood. An ability to see a creature, watch it move, and to intuit the best way to counter its strengths might just come naturally to you. Time and experience will only put an edge on these abilities. #4: Insider Knowledge No one knows how to fight a certain creature type like other members of that creature type. Human rangers whose primary prey has been other humans, for example, know what they're up against. The same is true for half-orcs who've had to best their orc brethren, or elves who've had to pit themselves against other elves. There is no strangeness in a prey you know as intimately as yourself, and when the ability to surprise is taken away, it becomes a battle of skill and preparation. #5: Admiration Some rangers are experts on the best methods to fight certain types of creatures not because they hate them, but because they admire them. The power of magical beasts, the grace of a construct, or the sheer, alien beauty of aberrations can breed an obsession in someone intrigued by these things. While fear is something a ranger might experience in the moment, there's also respect, and a strange kind of intimacy between them and their favored enemies. Though these creatures might need to be fought and killed, there's a kind of nobility in the struggle for someone who has devoted their life to understanding these adversaries. For more great gaming articles, check out Neal F. Litherland's blog Improved Initiative! Do you wish you could recreate that original feeling players get when they encounter something "new" and "scary". From a PCs perspective, especially a veteran D&D player, there is not much that can beat that feeling. Well here are a handful of tweaked and modified enemies for you to throw at your experienced players to instil that raw feeling of awe when they meet new enemies that they have never seen before. I believe a fundamental reasoning behind modifying and homebrewing new monsters is to keep your sessions and campaigns “fresh” without ever feeling mundane. Even the most experienced players will start to tire of fighting basic orcs and goblins week in week out. It’s the insertion of a few unique or new monsters like the ones below that can really inject some excitement into your sessions as even your veteran players don’t fully know what to expect! 1). Blue-Orc Berserker I once was under the impression that all orcs love violence equally. I was mistaken. I've seen an Orc work up into such a frenzy his skin turns blue, and he revels with every bone he breaks, or every joint he shatters. Other orcs seem rather docile in comparison now. Blue-orcs are orc offspring that, while in the womb, are exposed to an excessive amount of hormones from their mother. When a pregnant orc is forced to defend her life with axe in hand, she goes through such an adrenaline rush that it changes the baby. The orc is born with blue-skin, and has an insatiable bloodlust and abnormally active adrenal gland. In battle, blue orcs go into a frenzy with multiple mace attacks. They don't care much about pain or fear. They only want blood. They will choose their target at the start of combat, and will relentlessly bombard them attacks, stopping at nothing to break every bone in their body. When bloodied (half hit points), a blue orc fights at its hardest, with powerful swings enough to smash stone and fell trees. 2). Swamp Troll I thought I had escaped the worst of the creature when I sidestepped it's tree-trunk club. That's when I heard a deep rumble coming from inside of it. I had no time to react to the acidic vomit spewing from its mouth. It destroyed my shield and damaged my armour. I tried to plunge my spear into his side, but the creature twisted and I impaled myself on a three-foot venomous barb sticking out from his elbow. My companions finished the creature off, and when the cleric found me where I lay, I was more dead than alive. Swamp trolls are hideous, disgusting, lumbering beasts who reek of vomit. They are covered in barbs, snot and pus. While they aren't the smartest of creatures, they have been favoured by evolution massively. They have a powerful form of regeneration, and venomous barbs located at their elbows, knees and running down their back. They are able to vomit at a whim, drenching anyone nearby in acidic bile straight from the beast's foul digestive system. They will eat pretty much any other creature they can, except for other trolls (can you blame them? Trolls taste awful!) In combat, Swamp trolls are ruthless brutes who use a mixture of hard-hitting clubs and disgusting sprays of vomit to defeat their foes. They usually fight the closest target first out of laziness, but if an enemy uses fire attacks, the troll will try and avoid that person. A group of trolls might, however, swarm a fire-wielding target in an attempt to overpower it. 3). Goblin Assassin Goblins have a short life expectancy. They mature, learn, and usually die very quickly. However, be wary of the goblin that lives for a long time. Their speed of learning does not slow down. A goblin who has learned to kill from the shadows can continue to do so, getting more and more deadly with each passing day. If a true Goblin Assassin ever has you in its sights, there is little you can do short of praying to the Gods. Goblin Assassins are extremely dangerous foes, who can kill enemies of all sizes with poisoned blades or deadly archery. They lurk in the shadows; waiting for the perfect time to go in for the kill. If a goblin assassin does not see a window of opportunity that they fancy, they will silently slink away, and kill another day. In combat, a goblin assassin will spend the first few rounds assessing the situation from a hiding point, before charging in on the weakest or most vulnerable member of the party. They will use their black daggers if they are protected by minions in a melee, but will otherwise be content to use their short bow from a distance. 4). Polarity Wraith It seems that some wraiths are not only masters of the incorporeal, but also have a domination over anything that isn't. It was quite an experience to witness the wraith using telekinesis to turn my own weapons deceiving me. Polarity wraiths are exceptionally powerful beings who can control corporeal creatures and objects with telekinesis. They can disarm opponents, push them around the battlefield, or pull them into a group of the wraith's allies. Polarity wraiths usually fight alongside other undead, but will sometimes strike a bargain with a devil or demon. In combat, a Polarity wraith stays just behind the frontline defence of their allied companions. They use their powers to manipulate the battlefield in their favour. They will either push their allies into advantageous positions, or push enemies into dangerous positions. They also enjoy possessing the weapons of a frontline fighter and using it to wreak havoc on the wraith’s enemies. 5). Necradai Skeletons In all my adventuring days as a Paladin, I have never seen an undead creature that could absorb radiant light. I was mortified when they proceeded to use that radiant power against me. Necradai skeletons are ancient beings from a culture that revere the sun as a god. They have a natural resistance to radiant power, as they absorb it into their enchanted helmets, armour, and blades. They can then use this power to enhance their own offensive capabilities. In combat, Necradai skeletons will often stand in the back of the fight, soaking up sunlight, if possible. They fight conservatively until they start absorbing radiant light. Once they have some power at their disposal, they will enchant their allies’ or own attacks to wreak some real havoc for the players. 6). Scythe Wraith There's a truly unsettling feeling that you get when death stares you in the face. You can feel its weight on your shoulders. You can feel your soul being weakened, as if it's preparing itself for when it is to be taken from you. Scythe wraiths are death seekers who prey upon the living with the intent to steal their soul. They will work for powerful undead masters, but also have been known to lurk freely in the dark places of the world. In combat, Scythe wraiths gang up on a single target, using their Mark of Death attacks to allow them to deal more and more damage to their targets. They prefer to pick targets who are isolated from their allies, and will be happy to phase through walls and other obstacles to reach this target. 7). Crypt Fiend I have never seen a ghoul so large before. It was well over ten feet tall, and it had claws like swords. I saw what they did to Grimhide; tore out his organs through his rib cage with one mighty swing of those claws. Crypt fiends are troll-sized ghouls, undead monstrosities that have dangerous claw attacks and a thirst for blood. In combat, Crypt Fiends tear their opponents apart with their huge claws. Many of them also enjoy skewering their target and bringing it to their mouth to bite into the raw flesh of their prey. Groups of crypt fiends will prefer to swarm a single target that is bleeding badly, as they tear their foe apart in a mindless rage of endless hunger. Peter is an avid dungeon master, role-player, and story teller. When he's not running homebrew campaigns, he is creating new worlds, or he is reading and writing fantasy stories, forever immersing himself in the gaping black-hole known as the fantasy genre.
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