 Something I've learned about myself is that creating backstory is my favorite part of character creation. You get to choose their life experience and place it in the world. Backstories are vital to characters in all creative writing. For example; If you look closely, movie script writers will always have a backstory written for the character even if that character isn’t in the movie. It gives the actors (or in this case our players) the ability to understand who the character is and how to play them. So, let's talk backstory, shall we?
1) Backstory Inspires Your GM As a player you are vital to the world building process. The world is literally being built for you and around you. A player should put the same amount of work into a character that the GM puts into a world. And though backstory is only a small piece of the symbiosis, it allows the GM and player to easily collaborate. We know how invested our world builders get; railroading is a growing pain of gaming. I know for me it helps me think outside of the box. One of my players placed a city in his backstory and now it’s a major place in my setting. You’ll get them thinking about your character, you’ll get them thinking about how to shape their world. 2) Creating In-Character Bonds Creating our backstories allows for the party to connect and grow as characters. It brings a depth to the table allowing players to have an ultimate understanding of why they act the way they do. A group that has a rich array of roots also encourages roleplay when players want to learn about each other’s characters. The unique dialogue that arises from this creates a strong, in-character bond. In the longest campaign I have ever been a part of, I played a character that went through a drastic morality shift. I had suffered a loss in game because of my backstory, my character was emotionally defeated, but my party did everything they could to pick him up. It was an empowering moment for this character because he became less selfish. He never saw these people as friends until this moment. They were only tools, but because of a small background detail, our relationship had changed. 3) Practice Becoming A Better Player Character backstory is an easy problem with a complicated solution. The first two points work in tandem with this concept to make you a better player. Putting time into your backstory is a big investment, but has a pay off well worthwhile. Compare your game to a spider’s web that you weave with your GM and other players. Plucking a strand in the web you created can cause an interesting vibration. Messing around with structures will only increase your understanding of how these games can work, which can lead to more fun. Isn’t fun the point of our hobby? I believe the backstory of a character is the most important part to a game. Paying attention to how you build your character’s backstory allows you to create characters that can do great things. I will leave you with a warning though: everyone in the hobby has different levels of investment. Follow the golden rule; know who you’re playing with. How important is backstory to you? Benjamin Witunsky, artist, writer and nerd savant. Cofounder of the NerdMantle Podcast available on Soundcloud, Itunes and Google Play Music. Image Source: The Hollywood Reporter  Many RPGs deal with life and death, the biggest stakes for your character. Sometimes the risk is in a private duel in a back alley, but more often we’re thinking about melee, small groups or even armies clashing in a noisy, terrifying, violent storm of chaos with lives in the balance.
Such is the like to thin the veil between the living and the dead. So many moments from passing through that veil could have some very striking effects on reality, on what the living perceive, or even what the dying see as they pass through the veil. A recent episode of Vikings, the TV series on the History channel, did the best job I’ve seen of exploring this with a culture who truly believed in the gods and in the glory of battle. Let’s examine some ways that the battlefield can get weird for the player characters. 1) My Life Flashed Before My Eyes! Death and near-death are the same thing in many ways. Those who have experience either of them and lived to tell about it talk of their life flashing before their eyes. This would be a great way to have a supernatural or weird experience for one of your characters without dooming them to die to have it happen. It could happen as the killing stroke is descending. Before the blow lands (or deflects off armor) the character has a series of visions and only afterward do you determine their fate. The visions should tell their story from the most impressionable moments in childhood, young adult years, and beyond. When did they first kill? Who was their first love? What were their greatest moments of achievement and deepest failings or tragedies? Tell their story and spin it as epic as possible to infuse this next die roll with dramatic energy. 2) The Dead Came For Me In the midst of battle with life and death all around the character might have visions of people they know but who were long dead. The appearance of their parents or ancestors might beckon them to pass through the veil into the welcoming arms of family. Even a friend newly dead elsewhere on the battlefield might urge them down a path to ‘elsewhere’ to escape harm. Perhaps these are mischievous or simply cruel spirits masquerading as those the character might trust. If their urging is heeded, the character might step into the path of a killing sword or axe, sending them to the lands of the dead when they might not have gone otherwise. If the battle is being fought on a field of past battles, the chances of such interference from the dead is much greater. Personally I would never be explicit with the players regarding the veracity of their characters’ visions; whether they are the actual spirits of people they knew, or evil spirits of manipulation. It serves to preserve some of the mystery and wonder of your setting. 3) I Am Changed! There is such power in the death happening all around that supernatural forces manifest themselves. The battlefield may begin to look haunted, with skeletons fighting each other or even the bodies of the newly slain. Odd lights, shadows, and mists may penetrate the atmosphere and great chills or heat flash over the combatants. They might meet odd people or creatures walking unconcerned through the death and bloodshed. Visions of the impossible or bizarre could occur and the player character be swept up in transformative magics. After the battle, they might discover their hair has turned white, they have aged, or suffered some other physical change. Their sense of their native tongue might change to a language they never spoke in their life. Nagging injuries or scars from disease might be washed away. A missing limb might be restored or a healthy hand lost. More serious transformations involve new abilities such as spellcasting or magical powers. Gifts such as foresight or the ability to know when others are lying might play into a greater purpose. They might have been imbued with these powers by a great spirit from beyond the veil. So chosen, they feel a great purpose as well, bent on achieving the goal of the spirit who gave the gifts. Someone might have to die in vengeance. A king or great person might need to be saved from their enemies. A monster who slew what became the great spirit might need to be hunted and slain itself. The demands of the spirit may not be reasonable (“Slay every member of the Thuava clan!”) but should certainly encourage the receiver to new lands and new adventures. 4) I Was Already Dead Not everyone makes it out alive from a melee, obviously. True, player characters are the heroes, the named roles who appear to wade through battle without consequence, their every weapon stroke a killing blow. That said, even they can be felled by an arrow from nowhere or the master stroke of their vilest nemesis. In RPGs it isn’t really fair to ‘fate’ someone to die unless this has been a big build-up for the character and the player would find it dramatically correct. So this version comes into play after circumstances kill the character. A series of visions play out as if they had survived the battle, made it home to family or friends, breathed in the sweet air of the morning dawn, and the like. The ‘reveal’ would be that they are already dead on the field. You might make this a representation of how they journey to the next life, however their religion may define their mind’s inability to accept death for a time. If done powerfully enough, this might even herald their remaining in the area as a ghost, trying to go through the steps of this continued life even though they did not survive to live it. They might be confused as to why they are still hanging around this battlefield and angered as they try to get home and fail. That sets up a quest for their companions or even strangers to find his body and take it to his home for burial, giving him peace. Great battles turn tides in war and the conflicts of nations and kingdoms. In terms of roleplaying, they can be a challenge when the heroes aren’t the focus of the action. I recommend bringing something extra and very personal to the table for each character by letting your battles get a little weird. Jim Davenport founded Dragonlaird Gaming Studios in 2005 as a channel for his original tabletop RPG work. He’s an accomplished freelance writer with Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine (as a columnist) from Kenzerco, Margaret Weis Productions (Serenity, Battlestar Galactica, Cortex), and many others. He published Savage Characters Volume 1 a couple years ago and has plans to release a series of Savage Adventures soon. You can find his website at www.dragonlairdgaming.com. Picture Reference: https://tse2.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.-vR_vMKZ-U4fg2_pIR2aXwHaE8&pid=Api  Editor’s Note: Enjoy reading articles about your favorite hobby and engaging with fellow gamers? We do too, but hosting and producing our site isn’t free. Please consider visiting our Patreon page and supporting us at any amount. We put every dollar back into the site and its production, and your help has allowed us to have certain paid article months for our contributors. Thank you for your continued readership and your support!
-David Horwitz, Blog Manager In an article of his now-defunct blog, The DM Experience, (Which I hold up to this day as one of the greatest repositories of free Game Master knowledge for fantasy games. It was written during the days of 4th Edition, but 99% of the advice is system neutral) Wizards of the Coast’s Chris Perkins said that the number one tip he gives to DMs is, “Improvise.” It’s not a new concept, in fact it’s usually one of the first pieces of advice most Game Masters who know what they’re talking about will give you. There’s a very good reason for this. Naturally, being able to improvise will make it far easier to react to your players’ choices and increase their enjoyment with your campaign, but what they usually don’t mention is how much easier it can make your life. At least 50 - 60% of everything I do behind the screen is completely improvised. Sometimes my notes for a session are just a single sentence in a notebook, and if you watch our Actual Plays over on Caffeinated Conquests, you’ve seen me do it. However, while I like to flatter myself that over the years I’ve cultivated a fairly skillful approach to the craft, the honest truth is, it really isn’t difficult at all. Anyone can do what I do, and I’ll be happy to show you how. 1) It’s Not As Hard As You Think It Is The first step is to remove the mental blocks. Trying to improvise at the game table can be scary if you’re not used to it, a bit like a tightrope walker taking his first tentative steps without a net. The truth is, you can do this. Say it out loud, repeat it to yourself in the mirror if you need to. No matter how long you’ve been GMing, the skill is absolutely within your ability. The brutal truth is, you’re going to have to do it at some point whether you want to or not. Even if you run nothing but prewritten modules for your entire Game Mastering career, eventually your players will do something the module’s writers didn’t think of, and you’ll hear the bells tolling in the distance. It’s not difficult to do. I’m not a member of an improv troupe, I didn’t even take theatre in high school. I’m just some guy that has cultivated a skill, and you can too. 2) Release Your Scenarios Into The Wild The famous quote by American writer William Faulkner goes, “In writing you must kill all your darlings,” which means, in exceedingly simple terms, to cast aside our emotional attachments so we can do what is objectively best for the project. We’ve all been there. The players one-shot your Big Bad Evil Guy in an encounter they weren’t meant to fight him in, (free bit of advice, don’t ever introduce your players to a character unless you’re prepared for them to die a horrible death) or you design an entire dungeon and somehow the players circumvent the need to ever travel there in the first place. Once in a Pathfinder campaign, after the players had acquired a ship, I spent a week designing an entire nautical adventure that would occur on the way to their next destination, complete with washing up on a strange island of undead that not only advanced the plot but planted valuable foreshadowing for the future of the campaign. I showed up at the next session only to be respectfully showed on the official map of Golarion that the party’s next destination was connected by land. Here’s the trick: When stuff like that happens, let it. I like to think of the ideas I put into my campaigns as baby birds that I’m nurturing. When the idea has matured enough for the players to encounter it, I release that bird into the wild, and whatever happens, happens. It might soar majestically into the sunset, it might get picked off by the neighborhood cat, but it’s no longer up to me. This frame of mind makes it easier for me to accept two truths: Things might not go the way I intend, and that I need to be ready to adapt if they don’t. Sure, I try to steer things so they go the way I want, but I’m not dependant on it, and I don’t panic if I can’t. The real benefit to this mindset is that I’ve become vastly more comfortable with saying yes to my players when they come up with something I hadn’t anticipated, I’m not instantly thrust into a defensive posture trying to protect my perceived outcome of a situation. I’m not shocked if my players have an idea that can trivialize an encounter or bypass a puzzle, I’ve already accepted that as a possibility long before it was ever proposed. 3) Harness Player Agency If you let them, your players can take a great deal of the heavy lifting off your shoulders, as several sessions worth of play can result just from the players cleaning up a mess they themselves created. Wind ‘em up and let ‘em go, they’ll build your adventure for you. All you really need to do is provide an objective, a reason for the players to care about the objective, and a few complications that make achieving the objective interesting. (Bonus points for providing complications that can’t be simply resolved through combat. No matter how difficult you make the combat, it’s still an “easy” problem to solve) Whenever your players do something of some level of import, ask yourself one very simple question: “So what happens now?” Take a step back and look at the big picture. In your world, what is the most logical thing to result from what just happened? Let’s take the above example. Your players just killed the BBEG way before they were supposed to. So what happens now? Exceedingly few villains operate in a vacuum. Truly ingenious masterminds always have a plan B, and a villain who believes his actions are justified may even have one in the event of his demise. Everything from goblin hordes to Cthulhu cults and demonic legions have hierarchies, and where there are hierarchies, there are underlings gunning for their boss’ job. They’re not exactly going to weep inconsolably because some adventurers happened to expedite their promotion. Conspirators have co-conspirators, who probably aren't willing to dump several months of scheming down the pot, or better yet may suddenly need to cover their tracks. Again, think outside the box of combat. A duplicitous noble who sends assassins after the PCs will buy you 20 minutes of game time while the party beats the snot out of them and interrogates one for their employer. However, a noble who uses one of the ranger’s arrows to frame the PC’s for the murder of another political rival, thus making them appear as crazed murderers while keeping herself in the shadows will buy you an entirely new adventure. Even the lone sorcerer might have demonic pacts unfulfilled or latent magics waiting to trigger, and if you think a necromancer doesn’t have a back up plan for death… Let’s say you’re playing D&D and the party is on a quest for the magic sword Aelthrys, Talon of the Ancient Kings. You’ve spent weeks designing an epic multi-level dungeon filled with clever puzzles and fiendish traps at the bottom of which lays their prize. Wouldn’t you know it, the wizard just got a scroll of Wish from a random treasure table and used it to Wish for the McGuffin. (I’ve seen this happen more times than you might think) So what happens now? Well now there’s something very valuable, powerful and rare that’s much easier to get than it was before. Gee whiz, if only the PCs lived in a violent fantasy world overflowing with unscrupulous sentience. Maybe Garm the Brigand King knows the power foretold to the bearer of Aelthrys and isn’t opposed to slitting a few throats to get it. Maybe the local orc chieftain knows well the stories his ancestors told him of Throm’gar the Orc Hewer and he wishes to capture it as a trophy to unite the other orc clans beneath his banner. Either of them could have spies in the next town the PCs visit. There’s also the question of why the sword was so heavily guarded in the first place. Maybe it was the lynchpin of the prison of some ancient evil. Maybe the sword’s creator, an angelic commander of celestial legions feels the evil stir once more and intends to hold the party accountable. Maybe you’ve suddenly got a campaign for the next few months. (You can always reuse the dungeon somewhere else) 4) Keep Some Randomizers Handy Pulling a game out of thin air can be next to impossible with nothing to go on. The human brain can do some amazing things, but sometimes it needs a jumpstart. That’s why I like to keep something handy to give my creativity a jumping off point when necessary. Pathfinder has a great set of random tables in the Game Mastery Guide. When I was running my campaign I would, on occasion, deliberately not prepare anything that week and challenge myself to come up with an adventure from the tables on the spot. It was quite a lot of fun, actually. The D&D 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide has a metric ton of random tables in it, but in my opinion too many random pieces can muddle the mixture and turn what’s supposed to be a jumping off point into an obtuse pile of disparate pieces that needs to be clumsily hammered together. My advice would be to choose about three or so. My personal favorites are Dungeon/Wilderness Goals, Adventure Villains, and Twists from Chapter 3. Employ the Random Dungeon Generator as needed. What about games that don’t have random tables? You could create your own, but there’s an easier way. There’s a competition called Iron GM that holds their World Championships at GenCon every year. No, I haven’t won yet, but they haven’t seen the last of me. The competition provides contestants with a Creature, an Object, and a Place, and gives them one hour to create an adventure that prominently features those three elements. Just pick one of each and let your imagination go from there. This works for any game. Toreador, Book of Nod fragment, Nosferatu warrens. (Vampire the Masquerade) Nexus Crawler, Klaive, high rise apartment. (Werewolf the Apocalypse) Great Race of Yith, manhole cover, police department. (Call of Cthulhu) If necessary, ask your players to provide the elements. Here’s the catch, whatever the dice or the three elements suggest, stick with it. Challenge yourself. The less the individual pieces seem to fit together on the surface, the better. It’s an opportunity to flex your creative muscle and figure out how they can fit together. You’ll find yourself running adventures you would’ve never thought of otherwise, and your skills in improvisation and Game Mastering in general will grow before your eyes. 5) Don’t Be Afraid To Borrow From Your Future Self This is less of an issue with adventures that are only meant to last a session, but if you show up to a session expecting to piggyback off the events of the last session, (as I do frequently) then the greatest danger you face is that the players may end up lacking a goal that carries them to the end of the session, either by them accomplishing their mission sooner than you anticipated, or just the path to the goal becoming muddled somehow. The best thing to do in this scenario is to borrow from your future self. You have at least some ideas of where the future of your campaign will go, right? Drop some foreshadowing for the next arc of the campaign. Pull the trigger on the machinations of a future villain. Just give them something to do until the end of the session. You have until the next session to reconcile everything and put it back in order. If your players start putzing around with nothing to do and no clear objective, no matter how good the first part of the session was, it will diminish everyone’s enjoyment of the game, including your own. 6) Building Encounters Alright, that’s all well and good, but right now my Pathfinder and D&D players are saying, “That’s great Chaz, but what about combat encounters? How am I supposed to build balanced combat encounters on the fly? I can’t reference all those charts and do all that math that quickly!” I know because I used to be you. My advice is going to sound like heresy at first, but if what I’ve had to say has made sense up to now, you owe it to yourself to hear me out. Ditch the encounter building rules. Firstly, you may not realise this if your main avenue of the roleplaying hobby is some form of D&Derivative, but encounter rules are actually a fairly rare occurrence in RPGs. Vampire isn’t going to tell you how many frenzied Sabbat are a good match for the player coterie, Numenera won’t tell you what Tier the players need to fight an Erynth Grask, etc. Secondly, D&D itself didn’t even have these rules for decades. It wasn’t until after the Wizards of the Coast acquisition and Third Edition that encounter building became a part of the Core Rules. The absolutely earliest instance of it that I know of was in the 1991 D&D Rules Cyclopedia, and there it was clearly demarcated as an Optional Rule. No matter how you slice it, that’s still a full 17 years in which DM’s were happily pitting goblins against their players without a problem. Thirdly, characters in modern roleplaying games are significantly more resilient than the rules might suggest, exponentially so as they gain levels. A “balanced” encounter in most games is designed to drain the PCs of about ⅕ of their resources in exchange for experience points. That’s not high adventure, that’s grinding. Lastly, the rules don’t (because they can’t) account for the vagaries of the dice. I recently ran the Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure Sailors on the Starless Sea for two seperate groups of completely different people. There’s an encounter with seven beastmen about halfway into the adventure. The first group completely steamrolled the beastmen without them being able to land more than one or two scratches on the player characters. The second group, having one more person than the previous, very nearly TPK’ed (as in one player left with one hit point remaining) because my dice chose to rain apocalyptic fire upon the table that night. For that matter, encounter rules also can’t account for tactics, terrain, or any other extenuating circumstances. Encounter rules aren’t the perfectly calibrated mathematical formulae they might at first appear to be. They are suggestions, guidelines for new DM’s who aren’t yet comfortable enough to evaluate a monster’s abilities on their own. There’s a much easier, faster way to handle this. Just look at the numbers. Compare a creature’s AC, Attack Bonus, Hit Point and Saves to the party’s. In a fair fight, a monster should be able to land attacks on the moderately armored members of the party about 50% of the time, (hitting with an 11+ on the d20 after adding in their attack bonus) and vice versa for the party. Same for saves. You can translate this up or down a few points to increase/decrease the difficulty. Don’t expect all of the numbers to line up perfectly, monsters are designed to excel in certain areas and lag behind in others. Now, look at HP. Assume half the attacks will hit and the damage dice will roll half its maximum, (a balanced die’s average roll is usually half, of course most will roll higher or lower but they’ll usually balance each other out) you now have a decent idea of how long it will take one side to win the fight. As long as the PC’s have a reasonable chance of doing that to their enemies before their enemies do it to them, you’re golden. Some readers may be frustrated that this method lacks precision, but as I explained earlier, not even the official methods can technically give you precision. However, my method can be done at a glance without having to spend precious time dinking with math and numbers. Did you get into this hobby to tell fantastical stories or practice accounting? (Also, let’s be honest, the encounter building rules in the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide is one of the most abysmal systems ever put to paper) Improvisation is not a skill we cultivate just for our players. It’s a huge quality of life improvement for us. When properly utilised, it can remove the laborious parts of our hobby and let us focus on the parts we really enjoy. It can help to mitigate GM burnout. It can help to make the games we run games for us as well, instead of a second job. Not to mention, your players can never derail your campaign, they can only change the plan. Chaz Lebel is a fiction author and member of Caffeinated Conquests, a YouTube channel dedicated to nerd comedy and tabletop gaming. He and his team once produced some promotional videos for High Level Games that they probably wish they could forget. Chaz can be found on Twitter @CafConIsOn Picture Reference: http://uptv.com/shows/whose-line-is-it-anyway/  The one thing you want to avoid when you’re running a game outside your own space is to be too heavy. I’ve run games where I took a camping backpack, a rucksack and a map case filled with playing mats. One day, waiting for the bus, trying to move a small South American village’s worth of gear, I thought: There has got to be a better way to do this. What follows isn’t necessarily smart, but it is something that I’ve done and I found works for me. Use it at your own peril!
1) Clipboard Do not underestimate the power of the clipboard to keep your notes/sheets away from the players and simultaneously collated in the same place. Amazon has some really cheap ones, and if you’re feeling a bit wilder, you can always get one of those that have a clipboard on top of a box, maximizing the number of papers you can have on you. The biggest one I have can easily accommodate a corebook. 2) Laptop More and more, I’m using my Mac for games. I can have my text files, Youtube and Apps (see below) ready to go at all times. My only issue with it is that, at some tables, it simply eats away too much space. So plan ahead if you’re using it. You don’t want to have to stop half way in because the corebook is under the laptop, and then you need to move the minis to put the laptop on the other side, and now where has that goblin model gone….? (You see what I mean.) 3) Plastic Boxes I LOVE plastic boxes. For props, for models, for pencils, for paper, for everything. I am very disorganised AND methodical in my chaos, so to be able to box stuff makes my life a whole lot easier. You might need to pad some with kitchen paper/foam if your transporting fragile stuff, but it’s still better than any other option I’ve come across. 3) Youtube Obviously this requires a laptop or tablet. Youtube has thousands of videos useful for providing ambiance. Some actually say ‘RPG dungeon/cave/castle/spaceship/ocean vessel’. I’ve used them in the past for my Faith game. When the players entered the abandoned space wreck, I played ‘Abandoned space station’. That changed the mood completely. Now it was ON. 4) Syrinscape This app is designed for RPG’s, and there are two variants, Sci Fi and Fantasy. Although the app itself is free, each sound stream needs to be paid for (typically a couple of dollars). That said, each stream has about 8 different components that can be adjusted to taste. Believe me, ‘Futuristic Market’ replicated the feel of Blade Runner to the nearest decimal place. You could even add/remove the sounds of rain, hovercars, footsteps, even mecha walking past! (I make no money from Syrinscape, I’ve just used it in the past and really liked it.) 5) PDF’s PDF’s are a two-edged sword. Although you can easily have a 500-page corebook on a tablet, I still find it awkward to scroll through for a minute or two to find the right page, and Cthulhu help you if you need to cross reference anything. I really like how easy it makes transport, but I really dislike the difficulties when a players asks for a particular stat or creature, and that’s pretty much your next 10 minutes. This is usually the point when the action just slowly grinds to a standstill. 6) Sticky Notes Ah the humble, small, yellow, glue-stripped piece of paper. Where would the modern GM be without them? I use them primarily to make notes in the corebook, write down names of things/NPC’s that were suggested by the players, or to pass a message to one of the players without the others seeing. I have tried to plan whole games on them, and then gluing them to a bigger sheet, but the probability that one or more will just drop off is quite high, and you KNOW that it would have something essential on it. 7) Tablet A possible compromise between the size of the laptop and its awkwardness around a busy gaming table. Possibly the ideal venue for PDF’s (see above) and having all the advantages and disadvantages of both. I like it for soundtracks (see above), but use sparingly when it comes to PDF’s. So these are some resources that have helped me in the past. What have you tried that has made you GM life easier? Rui is a Portuguese scientist that, after ten years doing strange things in labs, decided to become a teacher. Then, three years ago, like he was bit by a radioactive D20, RPG’s came into his life, and he’s now juggling teaching, playing and GMing quite happily. He lives in the UK with his partner Joana, an ungodly number of potted plants, 4 to 5 RPG’s at various stages of completion (and across as many rule systems), and maps, cursed idols, evil necklaces, and any other props he can get his hands on. He’s been writing for HLG for a few months, and is one of the resident vloggers. He can be reached at @Atomic_RPG. Picture Reference: https://makezine.com/2015/12/08/how-to-build-a-high-end-gaming-table-for-as-little-as-150/  Everybody’s been seeing the foreword about Patreon on here these days, and it’s easy to scroll by and pay it no credence. As someone who regularly produces content for this site and helps do some of the back-end stuff, I can vouch for the fact that Patreon support has a beyond huge impact on this site. We put out a good chunk of content on the weekly, and some special stuff for our Patrons too. Know that you never have to support us, that coming to the site to read and interact is definitely humbling, but also know that you’re making dreams come true through our Patreon. High Level Games is a community that helps gamers’ creativity flourish.
-Sean, the Heavy Metal GM \m/ Clothing, letters, strange objects, puzzle boxes; props at the game table have a lot to offer. Sometimes you buy ‘em, most of the time you make ‘em, but what doesn’t change is the fact that they’re really awesome! So today, for your viewing pleasure, I bring you some points about props. Points, though? What the hell does that mean? Well, it means that we’re going to look at two pros and two cons of making props for your games. 1) Immersion A good roleplay exchange can really suck a person into whatever game you’re playing. The power of words, of human interaction, stands paramount among methods of immersion. With that in mind, it still can’t even hold a match to the feeling of pure joy when you see someone’s face light up as you hand them an object. For me, the most recent iteration of this was when I handed a player the letter that’s pictured at the top of this post. Everybody at the table was instantly engrossed in the exchange that had just taken place, waiting eagerly for the player to read the message aloud. She chose to keep the contents to herself, giving the group a short summary, but it was still amazing to see everybody focus within a millisecond. Regardless of how fleeting that moment of pure focus is, your prop will do its job of drawing attention. 2) Memory So we established that using props weakens the veil between our world and the world we create. If we think about it like the Conjunction of Spheres from the universe of The Witcher, it paints a good picture of the shockwave it can send. Considering that the conjunction happened long before we hear of Geralt, I think it’s safe to call it a more than memorable event, as we see remnants of it constantly. See where I’m goin’ with this? That increased immersion makes the moment your prop comes out ridiculously memorable. Especially if it’s a cool bauble or magic item that’s important to the story; maybe something that the party is protecting. Not only is the item crucial to the team’s success at that point, but the players, being swept up in their immersion, feel that anxiety too since it’s literally sitting on the table staring them in the face. If you genuinely felt like you were being hunted by a lich because you have its squirrel skull (its phylactery), I’d say that would be a pretty memorable feeling! Creating those moments that people talk about for years is what we chase in gaming, and props are almost like a cheat code to do that. 3) Time This is less of a problem if you buy your prop. Going on Amazon to buy some little plastic brain in a jar is likely not that time consuming. When you take the time to actually create a prop, regardless of what it is, you’re investing time. As we know, it’s the most important resource we have, something to be cherished. Making something like a letter doesn’t take too much of it, but the more complex and interesting your prop is, the more time it takes to make. Sadly, there’s a direct correlation of how kooky/elaborate your item is and how interested people are in it. Of course, that generalization has exceptions, but we can assume it to be true most of the time. Especially since when it’s not true, it only benefits us. If you’re someone who’s used to playing war games, I don’t think this point will be much of an issue. For the rest of us? Well, I think I’ll be sticking to easy props like letters. 4) Money Unfortunately, whenever you talk about time, money finds its way into the conversation too. Unless you’re crafting your prop out of junk you have lying around the house, you’ll probably have to buy something. Again, a reason why I think letters are fun enough. This point is especially true if you are using something most people can’t make, like a scrap of cloth or puzzle box, as your prop. Most of the time, I would imagine a lot of us shoot low with these just to save both commodities I just mentioned. Play it smart, and this point is far less of a deal breaker than it would be otherwise. Props are great, no question. Personally, and this could be because of my age, time and money are two things that are more important to me now than they’ll probably be later. Hopefully, you’re someone in a better position that can really go all in on these things to make the best gaming experience for both you and your players. Though, I must say, if props are really your thing, maybe your group should just do LARP! Not my thing, but there’s plenty of people in the HLG community that could point you in the right direction, should the concept be new to you. Cheers and Stay Metal \m/ Sean is the Heavy Metal GM, a freelance writer and blogger that loves the roleplaying games more than life itself. As a person who’s 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. Image Source: A prop made by yours truly!  Editor’s note: There are always wheels turning here at High Level Games. I have been involved in a small handful of the many little projects we are undertaking. I have been creating new player character races for 5th edition, and have also released a small document on Time Demons. There are also one page adventures, and much much more coming to high level games. Help us grow by supporting our patreon, and get access to cool stuff! It’s a win win.
If you were to ask Matt Mercer if he was at the peak of his DM skill, he would most likely tell you that he’s always striving to improve each and every session, so that he can become, and remain, the best Dungeon Master that he can be. Now imagine yourself, whether you consider yourself a new, or experienced dungeon master. Are you at your true potential? Is there anything you could be doing to improve your game even further and expand and enhance your skill set? In earlier editions of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, there was an Appendix N, which contained other tools, works, and materials that can inspire DM’s to improve their story, writing, and other skills. In the 5th edition this is Appendix D instead, but many still refer to it as Appendix N by force of habit. Matt Colville has also talked about his own Appendix N that he uses. The context of your Appendix N doesn’t have to be a rulebook, novel, or website. It could be a video, a stream, a podcast, or something different entirely. Anything that helps you become a better dungeon master can be put in your Appendix N. Let's go through some things that I recommend all dungeon masters add to their Toolkit, in their Appendix N. 1) Matt Colville Matt Colville is by far my favourite Youtuber to watch for DM advice. His “Running The Game” series is immensely helpful, as are his campaign diaries, where he tells you about his own campaign, decisions (and mistakes, which all DM's make!). From my standpoint, he's a down-to-earth DM who, while experienced, wants to make DMs aware that it's easy and fun to DM, and that you don't have to be some kind of divine being to do it well. Here are a couple of his videos on Bad Guys, Losing, and Alignment. 2) Reddit Reddit has a large selection of Dungeon and Dragon and other RPG communities. There are over 400,000 subscribers to the r/dnd thread, and that’s just the generic Dungeons and Dragons thread. There are great subreddits for DMs at r/dmacademy and r/dndbehindthescreen on a regular basis. You can talk to the DMs there and get more tools on your belt. a platform for general DM questions, story advice, and any other questions that DMs may have. Behind the screen however, is a subreddit filled with lore, worlds, information, and other ideas for you to tweak and utilise for your own D&D games. It is a growing archive of hundreds of years of D&D experience, with contributors pouring thousands upon thousands of words from their own worlds and creations. I'd also recommend to check out r/d100 and r/behindthetables for some extra random inspiration for cool things to throw into your sessions. These can be used as generators, or just to provide yourselves with some new ideas - for example I recently constructed stats for some CR30 enemies using demon lords from the r/d100 subreddit. 3) Angry GM The Angry GM is probably my favourite DM tips blog, it's quite easy to read, and he presents things in a frank, rambling manner that can really shed some life on some things to try and adopt in your own game. Check out the below blog entries that are among my favourites of his: Building Encounters Skill Challenges Size and Scope 4) Critical Role A lot of people have heard of critical role. A fair amount of people have not. And I’m not going to come out saying that it’s the greatest D&D group ever. I’m not going to say that Matt Mercer is the best D&D in the world, though he is a good storyteller. I find watching D&D is a good resource in your downtime. Myself, I find that Critical Role makes for a great painting soundtrack. The fact that the whole group are voice actors means that you can witness some very cool interactions, and potentially be inspired by some of the events that occur during the show. Matt Mercer is an excellent storyteller, and good at putting on distinctive accents for his NPCs. Sure, they’re a little rules-light. Don’t look to this group as “the way to play D&D”. Instead, take it as a fun, enthusiastic group playing D&D and making a cool narrative. Link to season 1, episode 1 Link to season 2 character introductions 5) The Monsters Know There are more ways for a DM to play monsters harder than to simply buff their stats. The Monsters Know is a website/blog which gives advice to DMs on how to play monsters harder, better, faster, and stronger. They also include tips on making some slight modifications to them to help make them that little bit more difficult or unique. Check out some of my favourite advice blogs by them, below. Mind Flayer Tactics Lich Tactics Orc Tactics 6) Tucker’s Kobolds I follow a lot of RPG subreddits, and I follow a large D&D facebook page. Every couple of days I see a post about low-level monsters being “boring” or “not even a challenge”. And in almost every thread, I see at least one person make a reference to Tucker’s Kobolds. This infamous DM is renowned for one thing - his terrifying kobolds, which were just plain regular kobolds, who utilised equipment and tactics which made them a dangerous threat for even a 10th level party. If you have yet to read the small post on Tucker’s Kobolds, I highly recommend you to take a chance and read it now! What’s in your DM Toolbox? What’s in your appendix N? Let me know in the comments! With any luck you will find at least one of these tools useful in the improvement of your own DM skillset! 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. Picture Reference: http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/stuff-we-love-dungeons-dragons-critical-role  St. Valentine’s Day makes thoughts turn to love. In an RPG setting, love can be complicated to handle. Several attempts over the years have addressed it from the “lust” perspective, but there have been many mostly “indie” games that try to address it in a much more nuanced manner. If your genre includes romance at its core, an approach has been worked out to avoid the pitfalls and I recommend that you investigate one of those games.
I think there are ways to address it in a more typical campaign (fantasy, horror, pulp, western, sci fi) that neither stray into uncomfortable areas nor ruin the feel of the campaign. Many television shows handle this very well by arranging for the more intimate moments to occur during a commercial break (or fade to black if you’re streaming). I’m going to look at this from the view of romantic love between two people and leave the many other kinds of love off the table until another blog. Let’s examine some ways that love can provide dramatic opportunities for your characters and campaign world. 1) Love As Distraction This is the typical case that comes up. Two characters see each other from across the crowded court, run into each other at a tavern, or find one another in a moment of drama as she breaks open the cell to rescue the Prince in Distress. There is electricity in the air either by proactive choice of the PC or the seductiveness of the other person. Whether this is handled purely through roleplaying or by some social mechanics, let’s assume there is a potent connection established. This connection will have a tangible impact on the character’s decision-making. Whether you are a courtier, hero, henchman, or noble, new love can be a serious distraction. Your thoughts turn constantly to the person you love and everything else seems much less important. Your quest, your oath, or your plots and designs can be easily derailed if you aren’t giving them your attention and energy. Others tend to notice and some are surely not happy about the situation. For characters that are pledged or devoted to a god, a king, or a cause, this provides a real challenge for the commitment. Generally those commitments don’t tolerate someone failing to live up to their word. Forgetting your duty to the king can get you imprisoned or even sentenced to death. Forgetting your duty to your god could imperil your soul and have you face difficult trials to earn your place again. Fellow devotees of a cause might find your wavering to be a threat to their success or even a sign of treason. Putting the character in a situation of having to choose between their new love and a commitment is critical to make these choices real and trigger the interesting consequences. 2) Love As Devotion On a more positive note, a character might plot the course of their life by a great devotion to their love. They will make choices that keep them in a position, role, or profession to stay near their love unless that proximity would endanger them in some way. Great devotions are sometimes lived through distance in that case. A character might have chosen a profession to honor or serve their great love. This works well if the love is high born and the character is a commoner. They might become a castle guard to do what they can to protect their love. Or become a caravaneer if their love travels often, hoping to follow them around the known world. Such love can survive even death. If ones true love has died but left the character charged with accomplishing something, it would be proof of their devotion to strive for that quest the rest of their life if necessary. 3) Love As Obsession If distraction is chaotic and devotion is good, obsession is the darkest form love can take, if love it can even be called. The object of the obsession may have refused their overtures or might not even be aware the character lusts for them. In a truly twisted version, the loved person might be fully aware and manipulate the obsessed person for their own purposes. The obsession can grow over time, starting with an infatuation but quickly escalating, exposing the obsessor’s underlying madness or evil intent. They would take ever increasing risks and make ever more grand gestures to prove to the loved person their devotion. Each time they are ignored or rebuffed only makes things worse. This is most appropriate for an anti-hero or an NPC. It would make an excellent basis for a villain, willing to cross all sorts of lines in their madness. Their obsession might be taken to epic proportions if they gain a position of power. The Trojan War began over obsession with the most beautiful woman in the world. The obsessed might seek to impoverish the object of obsession in order to drive them into their arms out of desperation. These techniques can be applied with player characters but also add a layer of reality and drama to NPC-NPC relationships as well. Consider the prince who has fallen for the wrong princess, upsetting the political plans of the king as just one example. I recommended bringing some love to your campaign this St. Valentine's Day. Jim Davenport founded Dragonlaird Gaming Studios in 2005 as a channel for his original tabletop RPG work. He’s an accomplished freelance writer with Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine (as a columnist) from Kenzerco, Margaret Weis Productions (Serenity, Battlestar Galactica, Cortex), and many others. He published Savage Characters Volume 1 a couple years ago and has plans to release a series of Savage Adventures soon. You can find his website at www.dragonlairdgaming.com. Picture Reference: http://flick-chicks.blogspot.com/2016/02/valentines-day-my-favourite-tv-romances.html  A tabletop roleplaying game is a communal and oral narrative experience shared by members of society. Though we have evolved out of the group hunts and dinnertime by the campfire, we still have that urge to tell and hear stories. Part of that evolution includes the implementation of group storytelling, enriched by different viewpoints brought to the same narrative. Tabletop roleplaying games are one such example, composed of narratives that stem from various sources, from the game’s conception to players’ real-time decisions.
1) The Players First and foremost, the players’ in-game decisions affect the world on the diegetic level with an immediate effect. Once the player’s turn arrives, the action is declared, and the dice are cast, the story moves to that reality instead of any other possibility. Every action and the result of said action affect the story directly. The Japanese replays, books that detail the events of a game like a script, show their importance and relatability. The players can also affect the story out-of-game as well. The players, more often than not, would suggest to other players what to do; they will joke around the table and claim that they want to achieve something for its added narrative value. This can be to make the situation more epic, dramatic, humorous or anything else. 2) The Game Master The Game Master, the Dungeon Master, the Master of Ceremonies, the Host, whatever the name or the scope of responsibilities of the person in charge of the story, the Game Master has more responsibilities than other players. In-game, he or she takes charge of all the non-player characters on top of introducing and concluding the scenes. With the description provided and character behavior displayed, the players can decide on their actions in response to the non-player characters and the situations in hand. The Game Master can steer the situation knowing his or her players. On top of setting up the narrative, the sandbox or the railway, the Game Master clarifies rules, mediates, and delegates logistical necessities. Every table creates a unified set of house rules alongside the game’s that are malleable and adaptable. The Game Master indirectly affects the story by defining and limiting what can and cannot be. The Game Master can also outright limit and redefine things that occur. 3) Outside Influences The game designers define the basic set of rules, backstory, and how the former is expressed by the latter. This affects every narrative created in the game since they are limited to the actants, the things that can appear in the chronotope. This focus creates a singular unique game world, with themes and styles of stories that can be told on top of the various actions that can be taken. If the Game Master has decided to run a module or to draw inspiration from one, he or she can focus on running and adapting the story to the players rather than creating a story of their own. This limits his or her influence and increases the designers’, but it makes it easier to run the game. All of these things are affected by the social presuppositions to various themes and tropes. No narrative exists in a void. Tabletop games draw from tropes in literature, pop culture, gaming, and even personal jokes or throwbacks to other games. Whether it is fulfilling the expected trope or going against it, no game is truly in a bubble. The experience of a tabletop game is an inclusive one, in terms of who can tell the story. Players and Game Masters can contribute in-game or out-of-game. The game designers and module writers frame their experience, which in turn is framed by our collective consciousness and familiarity with our own intrinsic culture. Asaph Wagner is a writer, editor and game designer currently residing in Israel. He also has the largest pro-wrestling and pop-culture lapel pin collection in the universe. https://twitter.com/asaphwagner . Picture Reference: https://geekandsundry.com/five-famous-tabletop-rpg-tales-too-epic-to-believe/  High Level Games’ articles are created by gamers, for gamers. Gamers know that gaming isn’t exactly the cheapest hobby; and hosting a site isn’t either. For those who want to support HLG, an avenue one could take is supporting us, at any level, on our Patreon page. The funds raised go back into the site and helps to keep our content coming. Thanks for the support!
-Sean The Heavy Metal GM It’s daunting to run a roleplaying session for the first time. Building a unique world requires the design of compelling NPCs, interesting plot twists, and engaging encounters. Even picking up an Adventure Path requires a surprising amount of upkeep and work to make an enjoyable session for players. Even then, sometimes players just take the DM’s plans, throw caution to the wind, and leave all the carefully planned notes on the cutting room floor. Here are five tips for a first time DM to hopefully make the first few sessions a little more organized. 1) Plan Everything “Everything,” actually means, “almost everything.” It isn’t required to plan out what the random silk salesman is shouting out at the side of the road, but it does mean that everywhere the players are expected to go (and even the places they aren’t), a plan is required. The plan doesn’t need to be detailed, but having bullet points about each location, and any interactions at that location, can be very helpful. If a DM plans their encounters, they can be ready for when the players enter the area. Planning ahead allows a DM to stay focused on the gameplay as opposed to trying to remember what was supposed to happen in a given encounter. It takes away stress and reduces some of the reliance on improvisation. Of course, this doesn’t mean that adaptation on the fly is forbidden; planning “everything” merely creates a framework to follow, allowing for the possibility of organic surprises to form as the game plays. 2) Make Cheat Sheets There is a lot of information that DMs are required to remember at the drop of a hat. In Pathfinder, players can be affected by a vast array of similar sounding conditions like Frightened or Panicked. They’ll players will rightfully ask, “What does that do to my character?” and the DM will have to answer. Rather than looking everything up in the sourcebook or online in the moment, making a cheat sheet is a surefire way to keep the game focused and reduce stress on a first time DM. Conditions are a good example of the lesson: taking time before a session to familiarize oneself with rules leads to a smoother session. Writing a brief description of what each condition does to a character not only allows the DM to become familiar with them, but makes that information quickly accessible during a game. Conditions are overwhelming. Taking time before a session to familiarize oneself with rules leads to smoother gameplay. Writing a brief description of what each condition does to a character not only allows the DM to become familiar with them, but makes that information quickly accessible during a game. Doing the same for other complicated mechanics such as spells and monsters will also be beneficial for starting DMs. 3) Be Prepared To Improvise Even you think you’ve planned for it all, players will be players, and will find a way to put themselves into unimaginable situations. A DM can look at a situation and design a handful of reasonable routes to take. Yet, players can concoct a plan that goes against the very idea of reasonable and, somehow, it works. It’s the job of the DM to steer the ship back to the original plan as seamlessly as they can and make it look as if it was all meant to happen. This tip is essential because a DM may fall in love with the plans that they designed only for the players to never follow them. A good DM won’t railroad the players (force them on a specific path), but will instead adapt to what unfolds while considering their original plans. It’s a tricky balance, especially for the first few games, but it’s a skill to be practiced. Eventually, it will become quite comfortable. 4) Keep The First Few Sessions Really Simple There’s nothing wrong with a DM’s first session being a simple dungeon crawl. It’s a great place to learn how to make the game flow while also learning the play style of your players. Custom designed dungeons allow your personality find its way into a session, though they take a lot of work. In the first few games, it’s easy to forget something as essential as roleplaying. When a DM is just beginning, the rules should be the main focus and roleplaying will naturally begin to burgeon after some time. A dungeon is the perfect place to start, if you’re dead set on designing your own adventure. Focusing on building a small handful of rooms with their own unique encounters can help flex the creative muscles. The linear form most dungeons take also provides help in ensuring that the adventure follows a fixed path. Although, don’t be shocked if your players still surprise you! Dungeons can also provide their own semi-closed narrative, with the players starting in a specific room and being forced to find their way out. This allows players to have agency but there isn’t a larger, open ended plot. If a DM is looking for a premade adventure there are a variety of options online. Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons have a good variety of modules to play. High Level Games has released a great one page adventure that makes for a good starting point. It provides some encounters in a city/town, followed by a small dungeon. It can be run in a few hours and after completing it, the players can perhaps continue their characters into a new campaign, should it inspire you. Find The Cat’s Meow for 5th edition here. 5) Don’t Expect The First Time To Be Perfect Running a session is very challenging. Even an experienced DM can face situations that they don’t run well, or encounters that end up being boring. When, starting out your goal should be learning what works for you and your group. Mistakes are what help someone understand what’s effective, so welcome any missteps that are made with open arms. This is not saying that you should just try everything and see what sticks. A DM will take what they find interesting, wanting to push those ideas onto their players. That can be a good idea; but if the players seem to pull in a different direction, then for the next session, try adding a little of what they want to see. Finally, there’s nothing wrong with anyone simply saying, “Give me a second to look that up.” The players won’t lose anything if the DM needs to take a few moments to pull up a monster block, or ensure they are doing something correctly. There’s a lot of information in these games, and it’s against all reason and sense to memorize everything. My first session as a DM was in 2016. I’ve learned a lot from running a full scale campaign that was way out of my comfort zone. In retrospect, I wish that I had started smaller. I wish I knew the tips above. Instead, I learned the hard way. It has been a fun and amazing experience, one I think anyone holding interest should try at least once. Even if it scares them. 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 source: Neuronphaser’s Books to Help You Become a Better Game Master  Editor’s Note: Enjoy reading articles about your favorite hobby and engaging with fellow gamers? We do too, but hosting and producing our site isn’t free. Please consider visiting our Patreon page and supporting us at any amount. We put every dollar back into the site and its production, and your help has allowed us to have certain paid article months for our contributors (such as this month). Thank you for your continued readership and your support!
-David, Blog Manager Since time immemorial, human beings have used art as a vehicle to express philosophies and ideas of all kinds. Taking a closer look at history, you can see that things like allegories stir up conversation, time and time again, about serious issues both new and old. We all agree gaming is an art, right? This begs the question: what keeps you from using this art form as a differently shaped vehicle for things you have been wrestling with? Everybody who’s reading this just had a different reason pop into their mind, if they can conjure any reason not to at all. With that thought, we arrive at our first stage. Before we dive in, I do want to point out that I’ll be exploring this idea in depth on my website, starting with a post about reasoning. 1) Why Go Through The Hassle? The most important stage is determining that reason for your allegorical campaign’s story arc. You’d be surprised at how many people don’t ask themselves why they do things. There are just as many reasons to go ahead with it as there are not to. To make one fact very clear: I’m not claiming that all games need to be rooted in or inspired by real life events. Funnily enough, stories (especially ones we use for our games) often times find their own way to mirror the real world. Just know that a GM doesn’t have to actively choose that pursuit. It’s no secret that gaming has often been used as a tool to confront difficult problems, fictional and factual, with this post serving as a possible starting point for people who choose to go ahead with this concept. This is a post to get the ball rolling only! There’s a lot of thinking required before deciding your campaign will be an allegory; thinking I highly encourage before you begin your process. 2) Subject and Stance You have a real-life issue (political, emotional, societal, etc.) that’s all encompassing of your brainpower. It could be the age-old question of, “What are we doing here,” or something more relevant for the time. The actual subject is just as important as where you stand on the matter, both things should be considered equally. Good practice for any person who thinks is to write down the major questions about the subject. Be challenging, ruthless to yourself even. Ponder long and hard in order to define your stance on the subject. Regardless of your findings, your personal stance is not the important part of your allegorical game! Remember this, recite this to yourself in the mirror every morning while you’re brushing your teeth. The goal of an allegorical game is to pose a loaded question that the players should challenge themselves on, not to pose a question that directly challenges them. Diametrically opposing your friends’ viewpoints is generally a bad idea, even more so when using a non-sensitive medium to open lines of communication on a potentially sensitive subject. The subject and stance together serve as the starting point for you to write your content, a general idea of the problems your characters will face. Coming to your personal stance serves only as a reference point to interpret how you players take it all in later. Always take your players’ personal experiences into consideration when determining your subject. Always, always, always; I can’t stress it enough. If that subject may cause issues, even when hinted at in the most subtle of ways, don’t use it. If you don’t know whether it’ll cause a problem, you have two options: Scrap it, or make a private inquiry. In situations where the latter is not comfortable and/or possible, simply choose the former. Period. 3) Delivery With the subject and stance already determined, it’s time to decide how to deliver the issue. Long story short, your subject should never slap your players in the face. If you outright ask them your big question, or even present your dilemma in a too overtly obvious way, it could do a number of things to your game. Worst case scenario, all your players see it, get angry, and call you on your shit. Then your game night is ruined, everybody is either going to want to argue or debate the topic, and at the very worst, someone leaves the group or it just disbands all together. Pretty high stakes, if you ask me. Of course, that situation assumes that your players have strong views, disagree with you, and don’t want this in their game. This brings us back to a basic piece of advice that every GM has said millions of times: Know your table! That simple phrase sums up the delivery of your allegory nicely. Of course, there’s more though. Make your delivery digestible, focused on the game and story itself (opposed to your subject), and fun. If any of these elements are missing, your allegory will fail in one way or another. Maybe not immediately, but it will fail. In addition, your overall delivery should have small bits of your own view and opposing views available within the story itself. Not only does it add some reality to the situation, but it masks your stance while still presenting the subject. Be wary of stereotypes, as they will show that you’re hiding behind the curtain. This can be delivered through NPCs most easily. Much of the advice in the NPC field is directly applicable to this kind of game and should be considered seriously. Mannerisms, statements, demeanor, clothing; all of these things should reflect the character’s stance on your subject in a subtle but understandable way. If a detail you give your NPC is pointing too overtly to the subject, add some layers. Putting these bits under layers of seemingly unimportant detail is the best way to set up for a gentle landing of the subject you’re trying to show. Again, you want your players to arrive at the subject on their own. These rules also apply to environments, situations (comfortable or sticky), consequences of actions and all manner of other things that take place within a story. Subtlety is key. Immersion should hide your subject in plain sight, as your stance should only ever be revealed outside of both game and the table. This is a game, fun is the primary purpose. In addition to the silence of the subject, there should be a climax where your subject comes out from the background, in the most miniscule sense. Turn the volume from four to a solid five-and-a-half. In such a way where it’d be akin to you pointing at someone on their phone a quarter mile away from you, asking your friend, “What do you think they’re reading?” Some friends will say that they don’t see who you’re talking about, some people will be sour that the person is on their phone instead of living the moment, and other friends will happily entertain the infinite possibilities of what media that person is consuming. Problem is, do you know which of your players fall where? 4) Reception This is the most important part of your allegory! The subject? Sure, can’t have the allegory without it. Your stance? Well, it does define how you present the many facets of the situation, after all. How about delivery? Landed more gently than someone in their bed when they’re not in the mood for sleep. At the end of said delivery, if you’re not receptive to how the players, your friends, are affected by your game, then what was it all for? When this point comes and you’re not receptive to the impact, then all you did was stand up on a soapbox and talk about a problem. If your point was to show people a subject, and even potentially your stance, without consideration of their own resolutions, you’re just being a jerk. Instead of going through the effort of making a whole game centered around your subject, you could’ve just had a one-sided conversation. Don’t make this mistake. Listen to your friends, be open and honest, and most importantly, be considerate. Agree to disagree, if that’s what needs to be done. Stimulate thought, not fiery emotions. When having these conversations, it’s easiest to work through the subject in the context of the campaign, rather than real life itself. Particularly opinionated people may want to specifically talk about it in the context of real life, but it’s up to you to determine if that conversation will be fruitful or not. To take this back from the dire social situation that could be potentially created, let’s ask, “What happens when your players don’t even see anything at all?” Best case is that your game spurs a constructive conversation, but this situation is the middle of the road. You can’t have an opinion on something you don’t know about, can you? Well, you can, not that it’s worth much, but that’s not my point. When the subject goes over the players’ heads, you still win. If they miss the subject, they feel neither positively or negatively about the allegory itself. What makes it a win is that you still confronted an issue with real people, through staged but usually genuine dialogue, and may or may not have benefitted from this experience. Go, you! When nobody else gets it, you did this for yourself in a way whereby everyone gets something out of it. Even if it was just a fun campaign or a way to hang with some close friends. Creating an allegorical campaign is a lot of work, carries a lot of risks, and makes your game art within art. Just as everything, choosing to do it this way comes with pros and cons that could be debated until the sun decides Earth is ready for consumption. A solid piece of advice on the matter: Be very, very, very aware and conscious of exactly what, how, and when you’re doing this. No room for negligence or jest when considering this one, folks. Exercise the muscle of reason, and have fun doing it. But let us not forget what’s most important… Stay Metal! \m/ Sean is the Heavy Metal GM, a freelance writer and blogger that loves the roleplaying games more than life itself. As a person who’s 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. Picture Reference: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gaming/reviews/nier-automata-review/  Enjoy reading articles about your favorite hobby and engaging with fellow gamers? We do too, but hosting and producing our site isn’t free. Please consider visiting our Patreon page and supporting us at any amount. We put every dollar back into the site and its production, and your help has allowed us to have certain paid article months for our contributors (such as this month). Thank you for your continued readership and your support!
-David, Blog Manager My players are well aware that my preferred method of storytelling involves an open world and a similarly open narrative. I find it supremely satisfying to hand over control of the game to the players and watch them do what they will with the characters, locations, and plot threads that I’ve created. This collaborative process feels more fulfilling to me as a GM than simply guiding players through a preconceived story, allowing them a mild measure of freedom or, at worst, the illusion of freedom. The more challenging road, in the case, proves the more rewarding one for me and those GMs like me, so I’d like to provide a few tips to assist those who enjoy the sandbox style. 1) A Tale Of Two Cities I most often plan out two starting locations for my open world games. Contrary to some of the advice that will follow, these city or location plans should be extensive, including a history of the locale if possible. Several interesting people, places, and plots should be developed for exclusive use within this place to serve as hooks to get players excited and involved quickly. What’s the reason for the second city? Sometimes players want to test your open world very early on, and will want to escape their starting location quickly and with complete disregard for your creations. Show them you mean business by introducing a completely separate area for them to explore with equal depth. You could take it a step further and keep planning cities and townships until your fingers cramp up, but I would recommend only fully preparing the two, then generating a few facts about surrounding spots that players can explore. Let them decide on a destination toward the end of the session, then flesh out that location in detail. 2) Malleable Monstrosities In preparing for your open world game, you’ll want to have a few adversaries set and ready at the starting line. Your players may find themselves running afoul of cultists, underground beasties, or angry mobs as early as their first session, so I recommend preparing some easily adaptable stats that could apply to any scenario. What’s located in Old Man Miller’s basement? Well how about enemy supplement #3, complete with acid breath and physical resistance. Establish the basics of a low level encounter, but leave room for minor variations (such as the aforementioned acid breath). That way you’re not scrambling to look through monster manuals when your players stray from the expected path. The basic stats for the underground monster and an angry cultist don’t vary so much at lower levels, only their unique abilities. Keep those stat blocks around and add a dash of improvised creativity, and you’ve got a monster for any occasion. 3) Roll With The Punches Always expect the unexpected in a sandbox game. Work on your improv skills through practice and, if you have the time and interest, by listening/watching other people GM. Don’t be afraid to suffer a few setbacks in the overarching narrative; allow your players to wander down side roads and experiment with weird situations and creations. The goal of any sandbox experience is to provide players with a real sense of agency that goes beyond which attack they’ll perform on their next combat round. If that means sacrificing some narrative cohesion or dramatic tension, than I would argue that its for a good cause. With time and practice, you’ll be able to maintain momentum in your story while letting players keep the reins. To help achieve this lofty goal, I have one final piece of advice. 4) Lists! Having multiple lists at your disposal can make any game easier, but it really facilitates the operation of an open world. A list of names is a must, but you can also include a list of strange phenomena, a list of random encounters, a list of dramatic turns, and even a list of city features that you can apply to any place the player characters wander off to. I have gone so far to produce a list of side quests that were relevant to the PCs and their connections, so that they could bring their companions on a meaningful (if tangential) adventure while waiting for the main plot to catch up. If you’re feeling really bold, let your players roll on the lists. In one instance, I created a village of assassins that fired diseased darts at their enemies. The players that failed their Constitution Saves rolled three times on three tables to discover the random illness with which they were now plagued. Some combinations proved to be as entertaining as they were deadly! My final piece of advice to prospective GMs is to not fear the open world. Taking just a few preparatory steps can lead you into a world that players not only explore, but also help to create. I think that everyone at the table will find this to be rewarding and enjoyable, no matter which narrative carries them through the game. Share your advice with me and the community! Comments and questions are welcome, as always. 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 . Picture Reference: https://noplatform.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/can-the-witcher-3-become-a-good-open-world-story-based-rpg/  Editor’s note: Enjoy reading articles about your favorite hobby and engaging with fellow gamers? We do too, but hosting and producing our site isn’t free. Please consider visiting our Patreon page and supporting us at any amount. We put every dollar back into the site and its production, and your help has allowed us to have certain paid article months for our contributors (such as this month). Thank you for your continued readership and your support!
-David, Blog Manager Milgrak advised me to contact you as soon as you brought him an unusual gown your slain vampiress was wearing, apparently the work of the peerless Borcan fashion designer Bertold Iacomo. On your life, let no one know you possess the Iacomo Rose! It’s not cursed in the typical sense, but it’s hunted by many desperate and resourceful parties, servants of the one who took a thing of beauty and made it a venomous weapon. Many who have vanquished immortal creatures of the night have been unprepared to face the true ruthlessness of mortals in the daytime. I will tell you what I can…. Master poisoner Ivan Dilisnya’s creativity and cruelty have borne strange and bitter fruit that take many by surprise. PC’s with plenty of antitoxin can still fall prey to these stranger facets of Ivan’s poison politics. 1) Borrowed Time Ivan’s inner circle of guards knows that if he dies, he takes with him the formula for Mercy, the temporary antidote that delays the fatal Borrowed Time in their systems for one more day. Of course, these servants cannot travel far without additional Mercy to take with them, but there are rumors that a few have magical delivery methods for long distance travel. Having learned the hard way that some would spend their last day in suicidal revenge, Ivan considers carefully before starting the week-long process of poisoning a new recruit, and prefers condemned criminals who genuinely see the poison as a reprieve. 2) Gravitas Gravis The faux-Darkonese name is painful, but no one would dare correct Ivan’s grammar. Upon hearing of Somnos wine from Darkon, he created his own fast-acting intoxicant to loosen lips. A mind clouded by it is prone to rambling and finds everything funny, but nothing more hilarious than divulging their own secrets. Many screams heard in Degravo are actually the sounds of people recovering, realizing that they have gleefully destroyed themselves with barely any interrogation at all. 3) The Iacomo Rose This blush-colored taffeta gown was worth more than a small farm when Ivana gave it to a foreign agent provocateur to help seduce Ivan. Wise to their intrigues, Ivan used his Envenom ability to infuse the dress with strength-draining contact poison, but the woman inexplicably ignored the effects and fled to Dementlieu with the dress. Now Ivan seeks the dress in the hopes of understanding what went wrong. The lethal poison actually prevents mold and mildew, and if handled with the accompanying unvenomed gloves someone might live long enough to try it on. 4) Varcolac Similar in some ways to catalytic poison, banewort preparation is blended with another plant to make the victim allergic to that plant for several hours. Some of Ivan’s quislings are fond of blending it with wolvesbane to make “varcolac,” which makes it appear the victim is infected with lycanthropy. Victims may isolate themselves from their allies if they believe the ruse, and may draw the attention of monster hunters either way. Rumor has it that Ivan has created similar alchemical preparations that create temporary allergy to a specific metal, such as silver, gold or cold iron. 5) Lampwick A form of catalytic poison combined with ether, naptha and a sample of the victim’s hair, this oily liquid slowly evaporates to create thick vapors that cause one specific person to lose consciousness. The poison runs out faster when burned but the effect is much stronger, and dried tobacco can absorb quite a volume in lampwick and still remain flammable. Many of Ivan’s more subtle hunters are fond of lampwick pipes or cigars, surrounding themselves in clouds of smoke in situations where they might confront a target in public, and even blowing a puff of sleep-smoke as a direct weapon. 6) Night Ride This poison has two possible effects, both diabolically subtle. A single dose up to four hours before sleeping will disrupt sleep ever so slightly, causing the victim to talk or even walk in their sleep. A clever person can manipulate the sleeping victim into confessing secrets, implant a suggestion, or direct specific actions of the sleeper. A double dose will allow the victim to sleep normally to observers, but they will wake exhausted, the poison having prevented them from getting any rest. The former is popular in situations where blackmail is preferable to murder. The latter is generally part of a gaslighting campaign, or to keep a foe from restoring strength. 7) Veridian Ivan’s obsession with eternal youth led him to rumors of a Valachani sorcerer’s elixir of immortality. All attempts to reproduce the formula yielded only spectacular deaths, but Ivan saved one of the failures for when he isn’t concerned about collateral damage or cleanup. A bottle of this bright green liquid grants acid and fire immunity and fast healing, but the victim suffers increasing nausea, interspersed by vomiting monstrous oozes and slimes made from their own dissolving organs. Over the course of three days, the victim continues to live sans spleen, stomach, lungs and finally heart, growing thinner and paler with each purge until they collapse into a featureless puddle. No one knows if the original person’s mind remains intact. If so, and if they are truly immortal, this may be the worst fate Ivan has inflicted on anyone. I don’t mean to frighten you, nor would I extort your property from you. My offer is a fair price for a dress that cannot be safely worn and attracts unwanted attention, and none of the others hunting it will make such an offer. Indeed, you may be lucky if they let you keep your life. Dr. Phillippe Delapont Leyshon Campbell has been playing and writing for Ravenloft for over twenty years, from the Kargatane's Book of S series, playtesting D&D 3E in a Ravenloft campaign, to the ill-fated Masque of the Jade Horror. 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. Picture Reference: https://io9.gizmodo.com/strychnine-a-brief-history-of-the-worlds-least-subtle-1727903421  Editor’s note: Enjoy reading articles about your favorite hobby and engaging with fellow gamers? We do too, but hosting and producing our site isn’t free. Please consider visiting our Patreon page and supporting us at any amount. We put every dollar back into the site and its production, and your help has allowed us to have certain paid article months for our contributors (such as this month). Thank you for your continued readership and your support!
-David, Blog Manager In the last several years we’ve all witnessed an increasing number of natural disasters in the U.S. and around the world. From record-breaking firestorms in California to a series of violent hurricanes striking the eastern parts of the United States, Mother Nature is upset. If we think of our gaming campaigns, these sorts of things often get overlooked. It’s true that our campaigns should be about the heroes and their stories but those stories are about challenge, struggle, and defeating insurmountable odds. Confronting a master villain and her undead army is one level of challenge. Doing so during a monsoon is yet another level. And what if that disaster was not so natural? Let’s examine some causes of “natural” disasters and see how they can be used to enhance your gaming campaign. 1) The Gods Are Angry! In a campaign where magic is real and the faithful of a deity can be granted the powers to heal and more, gods are a fact of life. If they are remote entities such as in Game of Thrones, it is unlikely that their wishes or influence will touch the mortal realm. But if your gods and goddesses are more like the soap opera of the Greek or Roman mythos, there are countless ways to find yourself out of favor. If you are important enough or perhaps the country you are in offends one of the gods (not enough sacrifice, uttering sacrilege, favoring a rival deity), they might unleash true wrath. The form of this anger depends upon the god. A god of the seas would likely send a typhoon to drown the mortal insects that displease him. A goddess of health and vitality might turn a blind eye to a virulent plague to which no prayers or spells are effective. A god of the earth itself? Well, get ready to rock and roll and perhaps have half your country slide into the sea. The adventure comes in surviving the wrath and finding a way to placate the offended god or goddess. A harrowing quest, a great sacrifice, or a holy crusade against believers of a rival god may end the pitiless disasters. 2) Things Man Was Not Meant To Know If there are deep, unspeakable forces of evil hell-bent on destroying our world or reality itself, delving into their secrets can have drastic consequences. The impact might be everyone in an extended family, a whole town, or even a whole nation. If a mortal were so foolish as to attempt to draw power from such an abyss of evil, to even craft deals with forms the abyss conjures before him, an evil surge might be released of epic proportions. These sorts of disasters would feel less… natural. Storms might bring tornadoes and boiling rain. The earth would quake over and over again, disrupting any attempts to save people or fix the damage. All birds and animals might become hostile and blood thirsty. Closing the gateway to such evil would challenge the mightiest of adventurers while dealing with a world gone mad. 3) I Am All-Powerful! Perhaps great power is all around us, a magic without its own purpose, accessible only to those who sacrifice, toil, and study. If someone makes years of such sacrifice, they could wield tremendous power and bend it to their own purposes. Simply the release of such power for any purpose could incidentally cause huge natural disasters. Some might occur immediately: firestorms, tornadoes, or torrential rains. Other consequences might only appear over time: plagues, drought, and famine. Still, the cause of these disasters would not be apparent. They might even be attributed to natural events. But if our great and powerful mage wished to bend these events to their own purposes, perhaps inflicting them upon countries which would resist his rise to power, we would return once again to great destruction at the will of great evil. Consider if the mage did not expect these far-ranging disasters to come from their magic and inflicted it on their own land first by accident. To divert attention or blame, he might inflict it on his neighbors as well, confusing who is behind the disasters and what purpose they might have. This would certainly create a multi-layered villain that would challenge our heroes. A disaster is a great way to shake-up your campaign world, even reshape it in some ways. Tying it to a classic fight against great evil would make for an engaging and challenging adventure arc. Jim Davenport founded Dragonlaird Gaming Studios in 2005 as a channel for his original tabletop RPG work. He’s an accomplished freelance writer with Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine (as a columnist) from Kenzerco, Margaret Weis Productions (Serenity, Battlestar Galactica, Cortex), and many others. He published Savage Characters Volume 1 a couple years ago and has plans to release a series of Savage Adventures soon. You can find his website at www.dragonlairdgaming.com. Picture Reference: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/339177415659538518/  Ah, campaign openings. Where should I start? Providing a solid introduction to your new campaign gives you a foundation from which to build your characters and settings, while simultaneously enrapturing your players and helping them invest in your narrative. There are several ways to do this, and some are more effective than others. I’d like to explore some of the more common methods with the goal of evaluating them for common use.
1) The Tavern Perhaps the most common setting for beginning a campaign, the “tavern” can be any common place where adventurous types might meet up to undertake quests of any stripe. Typically, players are asked to introduce their characters to some degree of familiarity, depending on whether or not the group has been traveling with each other up to that point. This latter notion can present a few problems. If the player characters already know each other, they will have to mutate their individual narratives to fit the group purpose without allowing it to naturally develop during play. If the characters are just meeting each other for the first time, their personalities or desires may chafe to the point that they might not want to travel together at all. Concessions will then need to be made in order to get the story off the ground. Furthermore, this approach can lead to a relatively slow start. Players may get bogged down in the opening overtures and lose interest before their interest can be properly captured. All in all, this method does the job well enough, but it is somewhat overused and can introduce a few problems along the way to the story proper. 2) In Media Res Another popular method for introducing any story is to begin in the midst of the excitement. The player characters might be fleeing from some terrible threat, dropping through a ceiling vent to begin an infiltration, or even in the middle of combat. This approach may be viewed by players as bold, though it too can introduce problems. Without a chance to get their bearings, players may have trouble introducing their characters into the narrative, instead focusing on solving a challenge instead of playing their role. There may also arise some confusion regarding the setting or narrative. If you start too fast, especially with newer players, you could have more than your fair share of system issues come up. All that being said, this method tends to be intriguing enough to help players overlook most problems and get into the fun of gaming and shared storytelling. My advice for those looking to try this is simply to be prepared to stop occasionally and answer questions to keep players grounded in the narrative. 3) The Flashback Instead of opening with action or a static setting, GMs can introduce their game by opening briefly in the present, then flashing back to a critical point in the narrative. Perhaps we revert to the scene when the characters meet one another, or when they meet the big bad. This method can be effective when starting new arcs of a campaign as well. The major problem that might arise with this opening style is the issue of information overload. Players already have to deal with how their new characters are handling the present situation (whatever that might be), but now they have to answer the question of how their character will act in a different time setting as well. Unless they’re properly prepared, players may balk at this method. Nevertheless, this can prove an intriguing and perhaps novel method of campaign introduction, especially if used for player characters that have already survived a previous campaign together. 4) Individual Preludes This idea I’ve gleaned from White Wolf games, but it could function conceivably in any RPG or setting. It requires the most time and effort of the methods listed here, as GMs must sit with each player individually and run a solo session of some length and description that explores their character’s story prior to the campaign proper. Therefore, this functions best when used in conjunction with other methods, and for campaigns that you plan on running for a good amount of time. Too much setup can be a negative for shorter games, after all. You’ll still have to decide how you want to start your first joint session, but a lot of the individual character growth and development will be behind you, allowing you to focus on bringing these disparate player characters together in purpose. When I use this method, I often ask players to go a step further and prepare a short backstory for their character so we can really delve deep into the roleplaying aspect of the game. You can expand this even further by running multiple sessions with individual characters or groups of two, forging character traits more naturally before bringing the group together and forcing cooperation to some degree. Admittedly, this would take an extremely dedicated GM with a considerable amount of free time. The benefits of such an endeavor could outweigh the costs, but I haven’t tried it yet! Most often, I find myself using a combination of methods to create a captivating yet practical campaign introduction. My experiments don’t always work out perfectly, but they certainly mix things up for my players, which typically presents value regardless. I’d encourage you to try a few of these methods or some concoction of several, or come up with your own methods and let me know about them. As GMs, we’re always trying to find ways to combat complacency and fight for our players’ attentions, especially in the age of the cell phone. Share your secrets! 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 . Image is courtesy of JESHIELDS: https://www.patreon.com/jeshields/posts  One of the most challenging villains in fiction is the mastermind. Knowing that they’re way smarter than you out of the gate creates more of a challenge than just the high hit points or armor of a big tough guy. They always seem one step ahead and often become a long-running nemesis.
I started thinking about this again when watching an episode of the latest season of Longmire on Netflix. (Spoilers ahead!) Chance Gilbert is the leader of a “family” of violent, anti-government extremists. He cloaks his words in the rhetoric of liberty and freedom while arming to the teeth and being willing to kill to get his way. His murder of a census worker sent him down a path of conflict with Sheriff Longmire. Chance is highly intelligent, charismatic to the right audience, and well-educated. He uses grey areas, cracks in existing laws, and nebulous arguments citing the founding fathers to resist paying taxes and obeying laws. In the TV series, he kidnaps one of Longmire’s deputies and tortures her. He is captured but masterminds his own escape leading to a manhunt and final showdown with the Sheriff. Studying the Chance Gilbert example and reflecting on other examples in popular culture, I wanted to highlight the keys to a challenging mastermind villain. 1) Always Three Steps Ahead Chasing a mastermind should be very frustrating. Their plans are complex and seem to cover every contingency. Heroes can end up running as fast as they can to find themselves just short of capturing the mastermind, saving the victim, or recovering the stolen object. Each failure of our heroes along this path should be a body blow, not a knockout. They need to feel bested but not defeated. The mastermind can strike at their weak spot, their secret vulnerabilities, yet always leave them wounded but alive. For example, a threatening message or even a bombing could reveal that the mastermind knows about their ultra-secret base, revealing a vulnerability. There are several good examples of this in the Longmire-Gilbert plot line. Gilbert makes his original escape from custody using a gun wrapped in plastic hidden in a toilet tank along with civilian clothes stashed nearby. It took careful planning and the manipulation of helpers to set that up. When Gilbert is on the run from the courthouse, he dons a gas mask and tuxedo as a disguise. When the Sheriff follows him around a corner, Longmire finds dozens of people standing around in his exact outfit wearing gas masks; a perfect distraction while Gilbert gets away. The decoy people are oblivious to what is really going on. They had just answered a Craigslist ad with strange requirements that promised them a lucrative opportunity. The mastermind also gains advantage by perverting assumptions. A prison guard who is assumed to be doing his duty is actually aiding Gilbert by stashing the clothing, gas mask, and pistol. If the mastermind can get enough leverage through knowledge or lies, they can turn all manner of law-abiding citizens into witting or unwitting allies. Even our heroes can be twisted if the mastermind can put them in a paradoxical position. The hero has to perform a criminal act to benefit the mastermind in order to save a captured ally or keep a sensitive matter secret. Of course, once the hero does this, the mastermind is sure to capture evidence (video) of the hero aiding him as further leverage next time. Often the hero must face personal loss (bodily harm, loss of reputation/job/standing) by resisting this leverage and making certain they capture the mastermind. 2) The Rare Error of Detail Investigating a mastermind should be pretty frustrating as they are very detail-oriented and have planned for players’ expected reactions. Still the mastermind needs to work with others to execute their plans, and those others are prone to making little mistakes. These little errors are the sort that get an investigator hero’s radar up, teasing that something is wrong without pointing it out directly. In Longmire, Gilbert requires the aid of a prison guard to make his escape work. The guard is supposed to let him use the men’s room to change from his courtroom clothes back to his prison jumpsuit and sends him into a narrow stall. Later, Longmire asks the guard why he didn’t put him in the handicapped stall which was much roomier. This was enough to get the guard to start to crack and then give up what he knew of the plan (which mostly explained what already happened and not much of what was coming next). If the heroes can detect some seemingly minor variation of procedure, they can follow that thread to uncover what happened. Since few of us are current or former law enforcement agents, I would suggest that Gamemasters allow any officer of the law a roll to see if they think the other officers performed correctly. 3) Fatal Flaws If a mastermind has no flaws, they are essentially unbeatable which is not fun for anyone. The real way to take down a mastermind is by taking advantage of their weakness instead of struggling with their strength. If their plans are unbeatable, change the game. Tempt them with something that they obsess over, something that will get them to act without all the careful planning. A typical fatal flaw for a mastermind is their arrogance born of belief in their own massive intellect. They can be played by flattering that arrogance or potentially by challenging it, goading them into a style of conflict that favors our heroes or even just distracts them long enough for backup to arrive. In Longmire, Chance Gilbert becomes obsessed with Deputy Vic Morelli. He tortures her in an early episode but ends up getting arrested. This gives her PTSD and a lingering fear of him. He blames his failure all on her and makes elaborate plans to terrorize and kill her once he escapes. His family writes scary messages on the side of her home and lurks around the hospital as she recovers from surgery. This obsession makes his moves more predictable and forces him to act from emotion instead of logic. Masterminds can be one of the most challenging villains to create for a Gamemaster but they can also be one of the most satisfying enemies for your players to eventually defeat. There's nothing like watching the bad guy get away time and again to amp up the players' desires to get him at last. I hope these ideas help you introduce a mastermind in your next game. Jim founded Dragonlaird Gaming Studios in 2005 as a channel for his original tabletop RPG work. He’s an accomplished freelance writer with Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine (as a columnist) from Kenzerco, Margaret Weis Productions (Serenity, Battlestar Galactica, Cortex), and many others. He published Savage Characters Volume 1 a couple years ago and has plans to release a series of Savage Adventures soon. You can find his website at www.dragonlairdgaming.com. Picture Reference: https://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2014/07/longmire-season-3-episode-7-population-25-calls-for-help-craig-johnson-wyoming-edward-a-grainger  Before I go into this, I want to say that I am in no way shape or form a professional in mental health or counselor. I am just a person who battles depression. I also want to say I am okay, in case someone were to worry about my well-being. This article is very personal and took a lot of courage for me to talk about. This is for those who are afraid to to talk about it.
The numbness felt like a bottomless pit that would pull me in deeper every time I climbed a few feet. I got to the point of pure despair and the only way out seemed to be the permanent solution. Then my father and uncle introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons. After a few sessions, I realized how much this game allowed me to get breathing room. It helped me to start climbing out of the pit. Let me share a few reasons why roleplaying in general has saved my life and helped me battle my ultimate evil. 1) Friends Once a week, my friends and I get together to play 13th age. I also play another game every other week with the Heavy Metal GM. It is a guaranteed day out of the week for me not to be alone. When I am at the table with friends, they distract me from the pit. They make me smile, laugh, and allow me to feel human. Genuine emotions come out of me when I am with them. I feel alive when I am with friends. As dungeon master of my Tuesday game, nothing makes me happier than seeing them have a good time. I am really thankful for the support they give me, for the fact they that can dedicate four hours to hang out. Thanks guys, if you're reading this. For me, being alone just doesn't help. Being surrounded by people who care has made a huge difference in my life, my friends really make life worth living. 2) A Break From Reality Sometimes taking a break from the real world can be helpful. Being a character from a different world is a nice way to escape my own thoughts. Part of my depression is that I have become an expert in separating myself. What I mean by this is that I have a better understanding of my own emotions and separating myself from them is easier for me. In turn it has helped me get into character, allowing me to understand the thoughts, motives and emotions of the character. I get to be this amazing hero that mostly everyone adores. Most of the characters I play are parts of me put into a different situation than my real one. The character I currently play is Crysx Silverleaf, who has an identity problem. He is struggling to find who he is and who he’s meant to be. I often suffer from the same feeling, and playing it out in game helps me find new ways to approach different situations, process emotions and how to comfort myself within. Crysx is also terrified of the dark and what lurks within it. He’s scared of the darkness because of his own problems he had growing up; treating the darkness like a villain he had to overcome. It’s like this overwhelming thing I can't put my fingers around and beat with just my hands. The form the darkness takes is the villain. This is like an imagined version of my depression for me. It's a nice break from reality when I can be someone who can actually fight the villain. I really got to thinking about this when the villain knew I was afraid of him so he dominated my mind, making me fight my friends. Depression can do a lot of things to an individual, sometimes it can take you over before you can do anything to prevent it. It’s beyond enjoyable for me to be somewhere away from my real problems. I’m not sure if it's the artistic side of me, but I can embed myself in my character's shoes so easily. Maybe it's my subconscious telling that escaping reality for a bit is how to keep mental stability in check. 3) Looking Forward I don't tend to look forward to things. Letting myself down, which happens more than I would like to admit, really drags me down into the pit. I have these aspirations that are seemingly impossible to achieve. This hobby gives me a sense of purpose. Instead of being nagged by the wonder and worry of what I am doing with my life, I get to write these articles and produce a podcast. It’s not the only thing that helps me get through the week, but it has had a large positive impact on my life. I’ve met good people, formed stronger bonds with friends, and found a more positive outlook in life. I also want to dedicate this section to HLG, for giving me an opportunity to talk about all the cool things I like with other people. I look forward to writing these articles because of the community, excitement I feel when I get one like or a comment on my posts. It makes me happy. It has been extremely nice to finally have something to look forward to, even when I am pretty deep in the pit. I keep pushing myself because this is a hobby that makes me happy and I don't want to lose hold of it. Just to stress it: I am not a mental health expert in anyway. I want people to know, who are suffering, that it's ok to reach out and talk to someone. This community has some of the nicest and most honest people I have ever talked to. It takes a lot of courage to talk about your weaknesses; don't let it beat you. You're the hero of the story, so get out there and kick some ass. With lots of love, stay nerdy. Benjamin Witunsky, artist, writer and nerd savant. Cofounder of the NerdMantle Podcast available on Soundcloud, Itunes and Google Play Music. Picture Reference: http://www.artofmtg.com/art/healing-hands/  World tendency, put simply, is the usual outcome for a situation most often in reference to video games, board games, and books (e.g. Fire-breathing dragons exist in your fantasy world. Most likely, nearby citizens will build their homes out of something non-flammable, like stone). World tendency has a lot to do with cause and effect, and it can play a huge part in either making or breaking a game, despite not being addressed often. This goes doubly so for world builders. As a world builder and DM, you are responsible for crafting not only a convincing world for your players to romp around in but also for making your world mechanically harmonic with the paradigms of that world.
Sorry, let me give you an example. Your human ranger is caught in the smoldering maw of a tower’s highest chamber as, below, a drake continues to spit lashes of flame in an unequipped town. You vault from the tower into a swan dive, and your DM asks you to make a DC 20 acrobatics check (since most world tendencies would state that leaping gracefully from a flaming tower would be quite difficult). Now you say that you intend to brandish your scimitar mid-fall and plunge it into the beast’s neck. You are asked to make an attack roll with some significant penalties because, again, doing this in most instances would be quite a challenge. You make the rolls, slicing through the drake’s scales and deep into its vertebra. Congratulations: you are a badass. But what if that acrobatics check was a DC 5? Or you didn't take any penalties for attacking the monster mid-air? The easy payoff would not be nearly as sweet as the hard fought one, and frankly, it would seem a little contrary to how the world usually functions. All this is to say two things. First, mechanical harmonics in world tendency is just a fancy way of saying, “Make how you work with the world compliment how the world works.” Second, I have 4 tips help you get closer to mechanical harmony. 1) “... Because Magic.” Magic is an important pillar of any fantasy world, if not the most important. It’s what sets the general foundation for what can and cannot be done. A lot of roleplay engines handle the mechanics behind magic very generally, because there is so much possibility to unpack. As a world builder myself, I would determine the properties and rules of magic very early on. You can borrow Skyrim’s approach and think of magic as a latent power that most people can conjure up given the practice whether by study or natural ability. You can treat magic as something a bit more draconian, something mysteriously hidden from most of the population. Anything in between is a valid choice too, but the point is MAKE A CHOICE! Recently, I was sent some info for The Dragon's Horde concerning a campaign about a kingdom plagued by dark wizards. According to the author, magic was a “pretty sparse thing” that was seldom seen and condemned when noticed, yet in the starting village the PCs had met a fortune teller, helped a pyromancer, sold an enchanted crystal, and had an alchemist infuse a potion with frost powers because the players thought it would be cool. The world tendency is laid out pretty clearly as being low fantasy, but mechanically, we see something completely dissonant from that idea. While you shouldn't deny your players things they like to engage with, there is nothing wrong with making them work for it. If you tell them, “Hey, not much magic in this world, buckos,” and they ask you for a frost potion, you are completely within your rights to remind them that they are playing in a world where you can't just pick up that kind of thing from Walmart… but you may have heard an old rumor of a witch who stashed a trove of potions in a chest deep within the forest. Harmonic, engaging; Gygax would be proud. 2) Death And Taxes Death is something that has to be handled carefully in role playing games. Players get attached to characters, and it can be tough seeing them cross over to the other side. Some engines handle this very well; while others really fall short. Personally, I have a strong distaste for D&D’s “three strikes, you're out!” method of death saving throws. It feels so gamey, and it is completely inharmonious with world tendency. When your hero gets gored with a broadsword, in no universe would they lie there in a pile of their own intestinal tract and manage to survive by, what? Willing themselves to just not be dead three times? I hate to sound harsh, but it’s honestly a let down given how seasoned D&D is. Now of the flip side of that, let's look at Pathfinder’s death mechanics. Again, your hero has been gored on the battlefield. In Pathfinder, instead of concentrating your large intestine back, you war and roll against a slowly dwindling constitution score. Your constitution represents your hardiness, your physical ability to withstand blows, and your capacity for vitality. It has this beautifully evocative mood to it, and it is harmonic with world tendency! Hardier people (people with higher constitution scores) are going to be able to stave off the reaper for longer. As odd as it sounds, it is for a similar reason that I feel the board game Monopoly is trite. Monopoly’s world tendency is congruent with its objective, that is: ride around and buy properties to make lots of cabbage. Why then are you punished with jail time, randomly, for following world tendency? You weren't breaking any in-game law. There is zero mechanical resonance. It's a tax, and it always feels contrived and undeserved. Now oppose that with Catan’s robber mechanic! A group of settlers struggle to raise a kingdom from the ground up, and they hoard their resources. In comes a robber, and they lose up to half of their goods, all on the roll of the dice. Both the robber and going to jail are a random tax that definitely aren’t enjoyable when they pertain to you, but one of them feels so much more intuitive. In Catan, the robber is a negative stimuli that encourages you to play the game intelligently by using your resources in a timely, efficient manner. Going to jail just feels like a slap in the face by Hasbro for buying their game. Death can feel very similar, if it isn’t handled with grace. Make it mean something narratively and mechanically; don't be a Hasbro. 3) Deus Ex Another thing world builders have to contend with is determining the spiritual side of their universe. Deities play such a vital role in many fantasy worlds, and really nailing a pantheon down can be a huge boon to a DM. Determining world tendency concerning your god or gods will be your biggest aid in finding fitting mechanics. Are your gods meddlesome? Do they frequently make contact with mortals? Rolling percentile dice, to pray, fits that's world tendency very snuggly, and you, as the DM, can adjust the percent of success based on how likely you feel their deity is to say hello! Percentiles are also easy to understand mechanically by players as well. Sometimes D20s can feel arbitrary to newer players, and they may not really understand why they need to roll a 14 and to add 2 to their roll to contact Pan. However, if you say, “You're a religious guy, and Pan is definitely cool with how you have been rolling. You have a 40 percent chance that he will reply.” Less involved deities may need a ritual to contact or summon them. Maybe your paladin needs to perform a certain act to garner attention from the spiritual force of her choice. It feels more fleshed out to have a player make supplication to a deity than to have them just dial their fantasy phone. Deities are not genies in a bottle, they are powerful spiritual forces and entities that are usually quite engaged with doing… god things. 4) Pearls (and a Kukri) Before Swine Loot is great. Loot is fun. What’s more enticing than finding a glistening, golden sword stacked haphazardly on a mound of coins in a dangerous cave? Well, a lot actually, because people don’t really do that. Too often do DMs throw loot around like candy from a mentally incontinent geriatric on halloween without providing any context for it. Obviously, it would be safe to assume that it was placed there, but why? If someone was perhaps defending himself against cave dwelling baddies, why would he leave his sword behind? And if he died there, why is there no body? While questions like these may seem nit picky, little details (even explained in an implicit way) help to flesh out the world tendency. ANY TIME there is loot lying around waiting to be pinched by a player, you as the DM should know how and why it got there. I once knew a DM who had us running through a mountainous region as a sort of gauntlet, and along the way, we stopped in cave. While we rested, a few people decided to explore the small cavern, and what did they find? PEARLS AND A +2 POISON KUKRI! They promptly ran back to wake the party, and thus begins 4 real-time hours of searching for whomever discarded the opalescent orbs. Long story short, there was no person. There was no quest. There was no story. Afterwards the DM tells us how frustrated he gets when we go off on tangents every time he tries to give us the goods. What followed was a heated discussion on world tendency (someone had to have placed that perfectly good knife there) and the ecology of oysters… Mechanically, the pearls make sense in that they are a valuable item that can be sold for in-game currency. That checks out. That’s definitely a great incentive for money driven characters, but it’s shallow. If a spade was just supposed to be a spade, why not have us find something more harmonic with world tendency like a clutch of crystals or even some small semi-precious stone? On the flip side, why not build a short quest from the pearls and the small knife, even if it is just a quick “find the body” kind of mission? Since rewarding your players with loadouts is an essential part of roleplaying games, you could use them as another tool in your belt to help bolster the game mechanically and narratively by diving into your world’s tendencies. Loot should always mean something in that way. If you keep throwing piles of gold coins on your players, eventually money just becomes a gilded burden. So to answer my previous question of, “what is better than a gleaming sword on a stack of treasure?”: forethought. World tendency is probably a DM’s most valuable tool at their disposal. It allows one to create logical, universal consistencies that are easy for players to interpret. It also aids you in being able to predict their next move, which can be immensely difficult even for the most seasoned DM’s. When world tendency and game mechanics begin to harmonize, players and DM’s alike are more free to create and adventure since the understand how the world works and how to work with the world. In my (almost) ten years of experience, players stop asking for rule clarification as well, and gods know how quickly rule checking can halt the flow of the game. While this list is by no means exhaustive in ways you can synchronize game mechanics with world tendency, I hope you have found a couple ways to make your sessions a bit more harmonious! Andrew Pendragon is the co-host and editor of The Dragon’s Horde where he puts over a decade's worth of role playing experience to work in his pseudo-narrative D&D advice podcast. Image is courtesy of JESHIELDS: https://www.patreon.com/jeshields/posts  I’ve been playing D&D for a long time, including almost 3 years of 5th edition rules. In every edition, I’ve been tinkering and tailoring the rules to better suit my style as a Dungeon Master, along with the themes of the campaigns, and the types of players in my group. Included here are a handful of house rules which you may elect to use yourself.
1) Combat Attrition Rule: Whenever you fall unconscious, you also gain one point of exhaustion, in addition to the normal effects. I am currently running a dark-world campaign, and implementing this rule has really had a positive impact on my campaign. I’m not a fan of the fact that a hero can drop to 0 hp ten times a day, but after a goodberry they are up and ready for action in an instant. This rule adds an extra penalty for hitting 0 hit points. It also uses the exhaustion mechanics, which are otherwise barely touched by most dungeon masters. The only way to recover exhaustion is to eat, so rations come back into the fray too! This starts to put a heavy weight on PCs who have sustained debilitating injuries in combat, which may impact their willingness and effectiveness for future combats before resting. Characters now worry about hitting 0 hp, even with some heals to get them back into the action, and this has made combat feel more thrilling and dangerous for my players. 2) Random Character Creation Rule: Instead of choosing standard array, roll your stats IN ORDER. Then make your character based off where your good scores are. This is an interesting setup that reminds me of the old days before D&D was even referred to by an edition number. With fixed stats stats, you might find yourself playing an interesting combination - salvaging what scores you rolled to build some unique race/class combinations. Another variation of this rule with a similar result is to roll dice to determine race and class. 3) Spellslingers Rule: There is no longer a maximum number of spells that you can cast on your turn, provided that you have the required actions to cast them. I know a lot of DM’s and players who didn’t even realise that there was a limit, but in my opinion this is one of those rules that just gets in the way, so I remove it. Remember, whenever a DM changes or removes a rule that causes the PC’s to have a higher amount of potential power, you may have to increase the difficulty of encounters to match! If I had a dollar for every time I hear the phrase “I’ve house ruled my game, but my level 5 party keeps beating my CR 5 encounters easily,” I’d be able to retire. Just keep in mind what you’re changing, rules-wise, and who it benefits. Then balance the scales accordingly. 4) Reverse Armour Class Rule: Instead of the DM’s rolling to hit, the Players roll a “defence” roll, based on their armour class. They have to roll d20, and add their armour class to it. The DC is 20+ the monster’s attack bonus. So the players need to “beat” the monster’s attack threat DC in order to defend against the attack. For example, if the monster has an attack bonus of +7, it’s attack DC would be a 27. A PC with a 15 AC would need to roll a 12+ to avoid the attack, while a PC with a 19 AC would only need an 8+. If the player rolls a 1, the monster gets a critical hit. I personally don’t like this variant rule. However, I have heard that some groups enjoy it. For starters, it puts the players in a dice-rolling alertness during combat, and they really feel like they are getting attacked, even if they successfully defend against it. The physical act of rolling dice outside of the player’s turn can increase engagement in combat and decrease distractions. Finally, it also removes some of the work the Dungeon Master has to do. Honestly I don’t mind rolling attacks for my players. But I appreciate that D&D groups do whatever they like in order to create the most fun game possible for their respective group. 5) Deadly World Rule: All death saving throws are DC:15 instead of DC:10 This rule makes hitting 0 hp far less forgiving without magical/medical means at the ready. Under the standard rules, when a character falls unconscious there is roughly a 55% chance that the character can pull through. However, when you up the DC to 15 (succeeding on a 15-20 is a 30% success chance) a character has a much greater chance of bleeding out without medical or clerical assistance! 6) Modified Flanking Rules Rule: Flanking no longer provides advantage, but instead provides +1d6 to hit, AND +1d6 to damage. I mainly altered this rule so that flanking stacked with advantage - as there are at least 50 abilities or spells that confer advantage in D&D. Using this has made my combats much more fluid, and they rarely grind to a crawl now. It also makes swarms of enemies more dangerous. Goblin hordes will try and get into flanking positions, to get those juicy bonuses on to-hit rolls and damage. Being outnumbered is a very serious and realistic threat in medieval-themed combat (or any combat) and I find that this rule correctly illustrates this! Just remember, as a DM, when you alter rules in favour of the enemies, take that into account when creating and balancing encounters. 7) Less-Swingy Initiative Rule: Initiative rolls use a d10 instead of a d20. Not a rule I use, but one that I’m interested in. A d20 has a large variation of numbers, meaning that even having a +5 bonus to initiative could have you going last a few combats in a row. By dropping it down to d10, it makes any flat bonuses more consistent, allowing the faster characters to be going first more often. 8) If You Miss The Table, You Fail. Rule: If you roll your dice and it misses the table (and lands on the floor) then you count as rolling the lowest possible result. Was it an attack roll? Counts as a 1. Rolling 2d6 damage and one dice falls off the table? That dice counts as a 1. I don’t mind this rule. Sure it’s a little silly, but I mean, how hard can it be? After all, if you can’t hit a huge table with a little dice from a 3-6 inch distance, what hope does your character have!? Have you got any house rules that you use for your RPGs? Post them below in the comments. 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 is courtesy of JESHIELDS: https://www.patreon.com/jeshields/posts  If you enjoy Ravenloft Corner or any of the other fine articles on HLG, please consider donating to our Patreon to fund our work.
Of all the things that make Ravenloft unique as a campaign setting, the most standout feature would have to be Dark Powers checks. The most tangible evidence for the existence of the Dark Powers, their system of moral judgement is by turns capricious, arbitrary, and cruel, but at the end of the day boils down to this: a codified system for identifying and punishing the most wicked of the realm’s inhabitants. Unfortunately, the system has yet to be translated for 5th edition. It starts with a sin: the PC performs a wicked act which may attract the attention of the Dark Powers. The Dark Powers tables from the 3rd edition campaign supplement can give you a good idea of where they start, but the percentage chance that the Dark Powers will take notice of the transgression is usually small. Small crimes like gossip or petty theft can be safely ignored. A lie which actually causes someone harm might invoke a 1% Dark Powers check, as might threatening a bar patron with bodily violence. Actual violent crimes (excluding reasonable self-defense) might incur checks at a 2-4% depending on severity. Murder or other brutal and sadistic acts might cause a check of an even higher severity, up to 8-9%. Casting necromancy spells (or using spells which summon evil beings) should always provoke a powers check at a percentage equal to the spell level. Even owning a necromantic or evil magic item is enough to warrant a 1% check per week. If the target should roll over the check, there is no result. Should they roll equal to or less than the target, however, they begin to slide down the scale of degeneration. If the sin has a victim, the victim’s alignment or relationship may modify the check. Evil victims or bitter enemies may halve the check number. Good (or apparently good) victims, or those who are close to the offender, may double the check number. Innocent victims should always result in a higher check number. (A full spread of Dark Powers transgressions can be found in the 3e Ravenloft Campaign Setting Core Rulebook, and is still entirely functional with 5e.) As the character begins to be embraced by the Dark Powers, they develop additional abilities or powers. Unfortunately, these powers always come at a cost, invariably one that the character considers to be too high. Usually, the powers will seem to give the character exactly what they want, but inevitably the concomitant curse will actually deprive the character of the very goal they seek. Eventually, a character of sufficient depravity may be ‘rewarded’ with their own domain within the Mists. Stage One When a character first draws the attention of the Dark Powers, it may seem at first as though they’ve been rewarded. The ‘gifts’ the Dark Powers give such people often overshadow the drawbacks at first. Path of the Miser: Obsessed with wealth and its acquisition, the character gains a keen insight into the value of items. They gain advantage on all rolls to determine the value of an item. However, they must ingest 1 gp worth of treasure (non-food items) per week or begin to suffer the effects of starvation. Path of Rage: Weak and helpless, the character finally gains the ability to fight back against those that would oppress them. They can rage once per long rest (lasting up to 1 round per level, which can be ended early), gaining +2 to melee damage rolls, but all attacks against them gain advantage during this time. (If they have rage as a class feature, use whichever damage bonus is higher.) Path of Dread: The character finally gives in to their impulse to compel others through intimidation, and finds that they have a talent for it. The character gains advantage on Intimidation checks, but suffers disadvantage on Persuasion checks. Stage Two Characters at the first stage of degeneration may recoil or even repent at their evil, but those who descend to the second stage display a commitment to wickedness that will only deepen over time. The advancement of their curse reflects this. Path of the Miser: The character’s lust for wealth deepens, and their curse begins to become a permanent part of them. They must now ingest 1 gp of treasure per day or begin to suffer the effects of starvation. However, they gain the ability to safely consume anything that they can fit in their mouth. Path of Rage: The more the character vents their wrath, the more invulnerable they feel. The character gains resistance to bludgeoning, slashing, and piercing weapons in rage, but if they are injured and have rages remaining, they must make a Wisdom save (DC = damage dealt) or enter a rage involuntarily. Path of Dread: The unexpected thrill from inflicting terror on someone begins to thrill the character even more, and they discover it is even easier to unsettle those around them. As an action, the character may cause a victim who fails a Charisma save (DC = 9 + the cursed character’s Charisma modifier) to be Frightened of them for one minute. The character can no longer attempt Persuasion rolls, and suffers disadvantage on Deception rolls. Stage Three At this point the hook is set, and the pernicious cost of the character’s curses are now becoming apparent. Relationships suffer, and the character’s unholy nature is much more difficult to hide. Path of the Miser: The character now requires 1 gp per hit die per day in consumed treasure to stay alive. They learn to ferret it out with unerring accuracy however, gaining proficiency in Perception and Investigation and advantage on all rolls to ferret out hidden wealth. Path of Rage: The character’s fury intensifies even as their self control withers further. The character gains advantage on all attack rolls while in rage, but they may no longer end their rage voluntarily so long as enemies or strangers are present. Path of Dread: Fear has become the character’s stock in trade, so much so that they find they cannot always resist spooking those around them. Whenever the character succeeds at a roll that they had advantage on, all enemies or strangers within 15 ft. must make a Charisma save (DC as above) or be Frightened of the cursed character for one round. Stage Four Once a character reaches this level of depravity, there is rarely any going back for them. Few villains of this magnitude would even consider repenting, and fewer still are willing to commit to the work that cleansing their blackened souls would require. They often are forced to withdraw from any remaining close relationships, as their foul nature is almost impossible to hide from that level of scrutiny. Path of the Miser: The blackhearted character’s foul diet affects them permanently, and their bloodstream is replaced by threaded veins of gold or silver. The consumption requirements rise to 5 gp per hit die per day. The character now has immunity to poison damage, and resistance to piercing and slashing damage. The veins in their body now bulge against their skin, giving them an unnatural appearance. Path of Rage: Anger is almost all the character knows. They suffer disadvantage on all rolls they make when not in a rage, and cannot discriminate enemy from ally while enraged. They only require a short rest, rather than a long rest, to regain all their uses of rage. Path of Dread: The character has become so feared that even their name takes on special power. Anyone hearing the character’s name spoken aloud must make a Wisdom save (as above) or become Frightened for one round. The character’s presence, or even knowledge, of this ability is not required. Stage Five At this point the character is well and truly a monster. Redemption is all but impossible. At the DM’s discretion, the character may become an NPC under their control, rather than let such a despicable abomination continue in the hands of a player. Path of the Miser: The miser’s appetite is now voracious. They must consume 10gp per hit die per day to avoid starvation. In addition, any person the character touches must make a Constitution save (DC = 9 + the character’s hit dice) or be Petrified into gold, silver, or some other precious metal. Path of Rage: Having failed to master their anger, the character finds that their anger has become their master. The character always suffers disadvantage on any rolls to resolve conflicts in any way other than violence, and their appearance becomes hunched and brutish. They gain advantage on all rolls while enraged, and can rage at any time without restriction. Path of Dread: The character is now a horrific monster that inspires the utmost horror in all who see them. Anyone who sees the character’s naked visage must make a Constitution save (as above) or suffer 1d6 Necrotic damage per hit die of the dreaded character. Whenever a person becomes Frightened of them, the character regains 1d6 hit points. Conclusion In Ravenloft, rock bottom may not be the end for the most loathsome of evildoers. The Mists have a way of rewarding those at Stage Five degeneration with their own domains, making them true Darklords. Those in the broader multiverse sometimes find themselves sought out by the Mists, to be dragged to their new domain whether they wish it or not! 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, or listen to Don, Jon, & Dragons, his podcast. Picture Reference: https://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=329013  The Ravenloft setting uses “Powers Checks” to reflect the gifts and curses imposed by the mysterious Dark Powers upon those who transgress moral laws. This gives some structure for great stories of corruption and redemption, but the exact game mechanics of these checks have always been open to questions by fans. It’s even worse when the player supports their character’s decisions, and enforcement of the rules spirals into an argument about who has the correct moral compass. If you want to include temptation in your game, here are 4 optional rules to keep Powers Checks from going the route of politics and religion.
1) Whispering Shadows Assign each player the “dark side” of another PC. During gameplay, these “shadows” entice their target to commit acts that are worthy of a Powers Check, and can actually offer specific boons that will come from giving in--the DM decides the corresponding penalty. If the controlling player accepts the offer, the player that offered it gets a token they can trade in at any time to turn one die roll into a natural 20. This is a great opportunity for players to roleplay temptation, as well as get to know other characters better. 2) The Burden Of Time Ravenloft PC’s study tomes of forbidden lore, brave sinkholes of evil, steal cursed objects, and worse. Reflect that general attrition of the soul by having players roll percentile dice when they level up, 1% cumulative for every 1000 XP they earn (10K for higher level groups). When someone fails, go through their most recent actions and find an appropriate offense. If nothing works, consider foreshadowing (see below), or change the powers check result to a failed horror check. 3) Foreshadowing If a player argues that their offense wasn’t that big a deal and shouldn’t be punished, let them look for a better opportunity. The failed roll becomes foreshadowing of what the PC is about to do, rather than what they have done. Of course, while the Dark Powers are interested in little things done for good reasons, such as white lies and grave robbing, it’s best to only share the results of these rolls with the DM in case the player is eyeing that “Betrayal, Major” column in the rulebook. 4) Probation Some players look at roleplaying as a chance to behave however they want without any consequences. While powers checks can help discourage this, the system is not designed as a teaching curve. If one of your players is playing Chaotic Stupid, consider a probationary result. When they fail the roll, they don’t suffer the consequences immediately. Instead, the PC is on probation: anything additional within the next (in-game) week that warrants a check will cause them to fail. So depending on whether you need some more structure or flexibility, one of these rules may give you what you need or inspire you to create your own tweak. Just remember that whatever rules you use should be applied consistently, so that the Dark Powers feel like an omnipresent moral hazard instead of the whims of the DM. Leyshon Campbell has been playing and writing for Ravenloft for over twenty years, from the Kargatane's Book of S series, playtesting D&D 3E in a Ravenloft campaign, to the ill-fated Masque of the Jade Horror. 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. Picture Reference: http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/2016/03/dungeons-dragons-guide-to-curse-of.html  So the day is upon you. The dice are packed, the books have been dusted off, your DM screen ready to be deployed. You’ve talked to your players, told them this campaign was intended for “more RP”. More role-play and less roll-play is the way you put it. But the warmest response you got was a “yeah, sure, whatever.” And you see the bloodlust in their eyes. They just want to roll dice and kill stuff.
You’ve got a choice, then. Do you DM another game of Diablo? Guide another pack of murder-hobos through the realms? Or do you put your foot down and teach these munchkins what the meaning of role-playing is? If you’re one of those GMs who’s sick of the tyranny of the dice, or if you’d just like to create a game where people actually get into theatrics of it, live out their character’s lives and, ya know, actually bleedin’ put the “role” in role-play, here’s some tips to help you along. Whether it’s D&D, World of Darkness or GURPS, these might help you, or at least provide some useful ideas to play with. 0. The golden rule. Remember this old chestnut? Every RPG book has at least a passage dedicated to it: “have fun”. That’s what we’re here for, after all. A corollary to this is “choose your party well”. If they’re so bloodthirsty that you’re worried they might actually be vampires, and it doesn’t look like they’re interested in what your story has to offer, best cut your losses and move on. But, even if they come at it with the best intentions, some people don’t take to the acting quite as easily. Maybe they haven’t done this before. Maybe they’re shy, or if they don’t know the people at the table very well, they might not feel comfortable enough to get into it. For those people, there’s a few ways to help them along. 1. Carrot Points. A little positive reinforcement to nudge them in the right direction. Cookie credits, brownie points, whatever you want to call them. In some games, it may take the form of bonus XP, in Cypher it’s Story points, in FATE it’s Fate points, Destiny for Star Wars, and so on. Some systems have this built into them, some require a little house-ruling. 5e D&D, for example, has inspiration, and it basically tells you in the Player’s Handbook, “the DM can hand out inspiration to reward particularly good RP”. Generally speaking, these are tokens or valuable points that a character can use to influence the story in a meaningful way. A well-timed Deus ex Machina moment? Spend that Fate point. Feel like it’s the appropriate time to go full BAMF and dispense some indiscriminate justice? Use that Story point. While its uses can be strictly mechanic, it can also be used narratively. If a beloved NPC falls in battle, with a plot point spent, they can recover. Perhaps a PC would like to take over the narrative and introduce a story element that they think would be cool. By all means, give the GM a tribute in unicorn tears and they’ll make it happen. But whatever their uses, it’s the way you earn them that matters. Hand these out judiciously and reward the type of behaviour you want to see at the table. If a party member takes time to get into the shoes of their character and be true to their nature, you should encourage that. If they seek to engage with the world you’ve created in a meaningful way – even if it doesn’t move the main narrative forward, if it creates a good role-playing moment, then give that player a cookie (an actual cookie would be nice too, mind you). 2. Stick Of course, sometimes playing nice just won’t do. You glance wistfully at the poker tokens you were going to hand out as rewards in story-based currency, and not a single one has passed into the hands of this wild pack of Combat Wombats. Maybe it’s time to play a little rough. Often times, a player character’s actions are summarised, rather than acted out. “I haggle with the merchant”, or “I negotiate with the noble to let us into their exclusive soiree.” Ah, well, you don’t say, me chums. And how, pray tell, would you go about this remarkable endeavour? If they refuse to act out their character’s lines, it may be time to ask everyone’s second least-favourite question. Take a page out of the annoying child’s playbook, only instead of asking why, it’s… “How?” “I seduce the priestess” “How?” “I’ll intimidate the bouncer” “How?!” If their answer is not satisfactory. If it’s a particularly bad speech, or if they don’t even bother, just fail them automatically. No roll, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 coppers. It doesn’t matter what skills they have, or what they think their character is good at. If you can’t be bothered, it’s not going to work. You just fail and get a chance to think about what you’ve done. “I convince the dragon of the error of its ways.” “How? How in the Nine Hells do you do that? Tell me, how?!” “Uh… I dunno.” “Fine. Then, you don’t succeed.” “But -“ “You get nothing. You lose! Good day, sir. I said, good day! Burn their favourite tavern because of a botched negotiation, that’ll put the fear of Tiamat into them. 3. Make it about the role-play Let’s say the stick worked and you’ve got their attention. Or the RP-bunnies that took to the carrot are now hanging on your every word. But they’re still struggling. How to continue to push them along the path of role-playing? Or drag them kicking and screaming, if you have to. A first simple step is to get them to say “I” rather than “my character”. It may not seem like much, but that third person narration on their part creates a divide between the player and their in-game persona. Furthermore, and if you’ve gotten this far into this article, I probably don’t need to tell you this, but put some effort into it yourself. Rather than narrate all interactions, act out the scenes on the NPCs part. Lead by example. At the very least, if monkey see, monkey do. You might just trick them into role-playing, you devious little demiurge. If you can do the voices, by all means do. If you don’t think you’ve got the chops, maybe drop it. No-one likes the bad DM voice. You know the one. Try to engage their characters at a personal level. Dig deep into that backstory, find something that personally affects them. If they’re at all invested in this story they’ve made up for themselves, then they’ll respond. And remember… 4. Pay attention to the table! As a GM, you may have to play matchmaker or mediator. Remember that your role is to make sure everyone’s having fun (there’s that golden rule, again). From your position at the table, you have to keep an eagle eye on the goings-on. The story’s there to facilitate interaction between all the people at the table. If the players aren’t talking to each other (except to divvy up the loot), then there’s no hope for them. Try and ask the right leading questions to get everyone in on the discussion. Let’s say one of your players is the rogue type, and he’s up to mischief. He uses some of his tricks in full view of the party to swindle some people. Let’s call him, Loki. One of the other characters has a slightly less chaotic outlook on life. You may want to ask that second player: “Thor, what do you think about what Loki just did?” “I never like what Loki does. I’m going to punch him till he apologises.” “Odin, your son’s flown off the handle again.” “Oh, for the love of – Heimdall, hold my mead!“ And there you go, family drama in your D&D by way of some Norse mythology. 5. Encourage deeper characters from the beginning Right from the onset, goad, cajole, entice and coax your players however you see fit into expanding on their character’s stories, motivations and outlook. I’m not saying you need 5-page bios (though wouldn’t it be nice?), but expand on the usual “orphan with a thirst for adventure” baseline. Seriously, though, the orphanages in Fantasyland must be overwhelmed! Maybe their parents are alive and they’re a rebel running from home to adventure? Maybe they’re doing it to impress their family. What is their relationship to their family in general? Their village/town? Any childhood friends? Siblings? Second cousins twice removed? Their first crush, their first major disappointment? Any early life milestones or significant moments in a character’s development – these are not just useful markers for understanding their personality (which should help the player get inside the head of their character) but can also be invaluable tools in a GM’s bag-o-many-tricks to bring up at any point in the campaign. At some point, these points from their backstories should play a role in the main story. That old flame might show up and cause all kinds of trouble. Old rivals can become recurring villains. It’s important to know what your players want from the story. Push those buttons and dangle the carrot of closure in front of them. Everyone wants to wrap up a quest, and if it’s a personal one they might all the more motivated. String these kittens along with the shiny lure of personal accomplishment and you may nurture their budding theatrical sensibilities. Just have some tissues on hand for the emotional ones. While not every game has to be Critical Role, the rewards of role-playing are richer when you can get into the hearts and minds of your characters. If you actively try to think as they do, and walk a theoretical mile in their fictional shoes, you may be surprised by how that can make you feel. The high of defeating a Big Bad is stronger, the pain of loss is real, and the closure from healing that hurt is all the sweeter, if a little bitter still. As a Game Master, Storyteller, Dungeon CEO, it’s your job to create the fertile soil in which a story can blossom. It’s up to your players to pollinate and grow those stories to their full potential. If you can create an environment where role-playing is welcome and encouraged, you may find that both you and your friends have discovered new ways to have fun. And it’s all about that golden rule in the end. 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 is courtesy of JESHEILDS: https://www.patreon.com/jeshields/posts  With Halloween looming, you may be considering a holiday themed adventure for your party. If you run horror games as a long-term affair, then like all good Halloweeniacs you probably consider this time of year your Christmas and birthday all rolled into one, and may be looking to do something extra special (and extra spooky) for your group. With that in mind, let’s talk a little more about making your players afraid, and specifically about making them paranoid.
When we talked about the various types of fear a few months ago, we touched briefly on a type of fear most people don’t consider: paranoia. Paranoia may not be the purest or deepest form of fear that a GM can instill in his players, but by God, it’s the easiest. Further, putting a little bit of paranoia into your players minds helps set the mood for a horror chronicle (or just a shorter form horror adventure). This can help keep giggles and comic relief to a minimum, but using paranoia as a kind of ‘gateway fear.’ So how do we take healthy, well adjusted heroes and turn them into shifty-eyed, shadow-watching, nervous wrecks? Simple: you erode their trust in things they take for granted. You can make them distrust one another, everything around them, or even themselves. 1) Hero vs Party “Godrik the Warfiend: you don’t know me, but I know you. My adventuring party plans to assault your encampment at the Wailisch Falls in the upcoming weeks. I can make sure that you get adequate warning of our approach, if you will agree to reward me once they’re dead.” Jazzak stared at the note, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. Only by the greatest of fortune had he discovered the letter on Godrik’s steaming corpse. The only question now was which of his companions had written it? The bonds of the adventuring party are the foundation of the game. A party divided is easy to destroy. At it’s root, paranoia is about pulling the rug out from beneath that trust. Making party members distrust one another is, fortunately, an easy task to accomplish. A missing piece of loot or equipment can often be enough. (After all, the group was alone in a dungeon or on the road: who else could have taken it?) If the missing article can be found in the possession of someone who shouldn’t have it (especially if they coveted it openly) it can make the sense of betrayal deepen. The savviest of adventurers might be above suspecting their boon companions of petty theft. I’ve gamed with Phil and Karac for years, and I know that they might play a character that skives off the party loot (and would be shocked if they didn’t), but I know they’d never steal equipment that my character actually needed. In cases like this, you can introduce the very real possibility that the betrayal is beyond the control of the betrayer. Vampires, werewolves, enchanters, and a host of other baddies can control the minds of their victims. The suggestion that one of their own has been given commands to act against the best interest of the party actually works better with more veteran gamers: they’ve had more experience with this kind of thing, and more exposure to the laundry list of beasties that could make it happen. 2) Hero vs Environment “That was a narrow escape,” said Cedric. The other knights nodded. If they’d not found the lifeboat, their escape would have been for naught, and the pirates surely would have recaptured them. “Not narrow enough,” muttered the lifeboat. The knights barely had time to scream before the mimic lurched to the side, plunging them into the ocean. A minute or so to let them stop kicking, and he’d have a nice meal waiting… We’ve all seen the thief who checks every square foot of floor, the sad result of a man burned by an untrustworthy environment. If you can’t trust anything around you, then you must lean in to your party and your own abilities, as they become the only stable territory left to you (giving a sadistic GM an opening to instill even more paranoia). In it’s simplest form, an untrustworthy environmental factor simply lacks the supporting evidence that would accompany it. Imagine PCs exploring an abandoned tomb to a dark god. They venture into the dungeon complex, only to find horrific leering jack-o-lanterns waiting for them. If they injure themselves through foolishness, the faces in the next room seem to laugh and jeer them. If they lose a party member or hireling, then around the corner is a pumpkin with a carved parody of a mourner’s face, weeping mocking tears. The candles are lit, but there is no evidence of anyone placing them, or lighting them. This sort of thing builds the creep factor. If you want to ramp it up, then the environment and its contents can be actually dangerous. The animated objects entry in the Monster Manual gives you the ability to turn anything into a potentially lethal hazard. Illusion magic can mean that nothing is what it seems. There are even several monsters adept at using an innocuous disguise to lure PCs closer. The mimic is the current generation’s favorite example, although many a grognard can recall with a wince at least one PC who charged what he thought was an enemy that had failed initiative, only to run face first into the gelatinous cube he had been baited into. 3) Hero vs Self The orcs came from the fog like ghosts. If Madrias hadn’t been able to get a warning cry off before they cut him down, the entire party would have been slaughtered. When the last of them had fled, Vorl and Sheiana had attempted to give a half-hearted chase while Orin used all of her healing abilities to keep Madrias in the land of the living. Only when Vorl and Sheiana returned did they adventurers realize that the corpses of the fallen orcs had vanished. No footprints marked where they might have run or been carried to. Only their shed blood and fallen weapons proved that they had been there at all. What’s worse than not being able to trust your environment or your teammates? Not being able to trust your own senses. If players are unsure of their own base abilities, then they cannot be sure of anything at all. The soft pitch version of this is NPCs or articles that vanish. Treasure that the PC thought they had, a corpse of a fallen victim, or even a trusted friend: anything that is there one moment and gone the next leaves the PC wondering if perhaps they’ve gone mad. A more vicious reading leaves the PC unable to be certain of his own motives. A PC who wakes up not in his own campsite, but underneath a random villager’s bed while they lay sleeping, drooling in hunger and clutching a knife in his hand is a PC who is going to have severe doubts about his own sanity. The sudden (and temporary!) loss of abilities, spells, or skills may lead a player to suspect something is amiss with themselves. Discovering lost information about their own background can sometimes shake a hero to their core, as they discover that their own identity is not what they thought it was, and that by extension their entire self-image may be a lie. 4) Hero vs Society The innkeeper smiled as the heroes slammed their mugs down. “Thanks for the business,” he snickered. The heroes stared at him as his chuckles grew to full-bellied laughs, even as their vision began to swim and their legs grew weak. The burning in their stomachs rose, and the last thing they heard before everything went black was the bartender’s roaring laughter. I rarely use this type of paranoia. Filling your world with enough people who are going to lie and betray the PCs is a great way to isolate them and convince them they can only rely on one another (and if your game is that way, then by all means, this is a great tool to have). However, many older gamers tend to skew towards the ‘muderhobo’ side of the spectrum, (guilty as charged!) and for those kinds of groups, a GM usually needs to lead the PCs to engage with the game world more, not less. Isolating the PCs from other people limits the relationships they can have outside the party, which limits the emotional resonance you can create with your stories. Be careful if you try to do this, though. There are certain avenues that players expect treachery from. ‘Questgiver who betrays you’ is such a tired plot twist, it’s scarcely even a twist. If you do want to make a betrayal stick, then it should be something that really hurts: either an NPC that is very close to the party, someone they’ve grown a serious attachment to, or someone with no attachment at all, who betrays them for little to no gain. The first makes them wary of intense attachments, while the second makes them wary of even casual contact. This kind of game isn’t sustainable in the long run. You can’t run on paranoia forever: eventually that kind of constant fear turns into resentment and desperation. However, for individual stories or short term adjustment of PC behavior, paranoia is not only one of the easiest emotions to evoke, it’s one of the most effective. 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. Picture Reference: http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/Ethereal  Look, we have all been there - the moment when the well of creativity is tapped out, when we are staring at the blank page or the blinking cursor, wondering how in the living hell we got ourselves in the position of coming up with major plots for our games. It’s only normal to turn to other sources of inspiration, be it splat books, our favorite fiction, music, or, when all else fails - Netflix, Hulu, or any other outlet of good television.
I will be the first to admit that I am an unabashed Anglophile, so don’t be surprised if a lot of these have the BBC or Masterpiece Theater involved. I’m not saying you should straight rip out plot points, but there are times when you need to look at situations from someone else’s point of view, or just let your mind wander elsewhere for a few hours. 1. Sherlock, featuring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman I have been madly in love with Sherlock ever since I watched the first episode. The sheer amount of clever thought that goes into portraying a mind that works like Sherlock’s is mind-boggling, and when you get into the interplay with Moriarty and Mycroft - well, it’s unbeatable. Add in the compelling NPCs like Mrs. Hudson (and her own amazing backstory), and The Lady, and it’s just pure glorious cinematic candy. I love the puzzles and the misdirection and the sense of oh-gods-will-he-figure-it-out, and the long-running rivalry between Moriarty and Sherlock, the eternal internal struggle of Watson between the medic and the soldier, and then his wife... 2. From Time to Time, featuring Dame Maggie Smith, among others This is a movie that presents the fascinating idea that there are thin places in the world where one can see through time to where things may have been. The plot itself is a bit plain, but the idea of having characters that can find the “thin places” and see into the past, to find special things or understand certain puzzles or see ways through things that others cannot, that’s something that’s just crying out to be fit into a tabletop roleplaying game - and not in the it-stopped-being-funny-in-about-2001 “I see dead people” Sixth Sense sort of schlock. 3. Downton Abbey, PBS Masterpiece, written by Julian Fellowes The Crawleys of Downton Abbey directly inspired my most successful LARP character, as well as my husband’s most frustratingly unrealized character. It is an interesting period drama, if you call early 20th century a period drama, and the interplay between the characters is second to none. Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess and Penelope Wilson as Lady Isobel Crawley delivered some of the most savage dialogue I have ever seen in the courtliest manner possible. An excellent primer for an Upstairs Downstairs kind of game, where you might have two sets of intrigue going on at once. 4. The West Wing, written by Aaron Sorkin You absolutely cannot do better than West Wing for a primer on a political game, whether it’s royalty or dictatorship. Beautifully fleshed-out characters, believable problems, compelling writing, and just enough shine on it to wish that you actually could vote for the characters involved. I’ve found myself referencing it many times in the political sort of games I prefer. 5. Futurama, by Matt Groening, et al Look, one of the first Futurama movies, Bender’s Game, is entirely a love letter to Dungeons and Dragons, and there’s even cameo portrayals of Gary Gygax (may he rest in peace) and allusions to Al Gore being a “tenth level Vice President”. How many games have turned into glorified FedEx missions? “Go here, get this Thing, take it here, get rewarded. Repeat.” You can do a hell of a lot worse than binge-watching Futurama as idea fuel. I will be the first to admit that what works for me may not and probably will not work for you, but I urge you to find inspiration in shows you enjoy, that have good writing, good cinematography, good senses of place and time - because that kind of attention to detail will eventually inform your storytelling as well. It may be a turn of phrase, or a scene that sticks with you that you want to recreate, or a stunning landscape that you want to use in your own world. Take it, use it, build upon it. Remember that pearls begin as tiny seeds of grit. Go forth and find your grit, wherever it may be. Georgia is a writer, editor, gamer, and mad culinary priestess who masquerades as an ordinary office employee who holds vehement opinions about Oxford commas and extraneous hyphens. She lives in Tacoma, Washington, with her husband and Feline Overlords. She can be reached through Facebook at In Exquisite Detail or on Twitter at @feraldruidftw. Picture Reference: https://www.wired.com/2008/11/futuramas-anima/  Greetings, traveler!
It was kind of you to contact me. I always appreciate the chance to offer my assistance to a fellow adventurer, even one as experienced as yourself. The mysterious circumstances you describe: clergy found in their own shrines and cathedrals (which had subsequently been defaced), their throats torn open, left me quite puzzled until I noticed an additional detail in the sketches you provided. The vandalism and the destruction of holy iconography does not extend above chest height: the perpetrator is quite short in stature. I believe you are dealing with a child vampire. Able to put on the act of a starving, freezing orphan, they are usually welcomed into the place of worship by a merciful clergy member, who is in turn killed for their trouble. Child undead are a terrible tragedy, but are all too common. All manner of undead can come in a childish form, and in some cases can be even more deadly than an adult version of the same creature. Fortunately, there is a sharp divide in the psychology of undead children, and understanding where any specific creature falls in that spectrum could mean the difference between life and death for the prospective monster hunter. Type One: The Innocent Don’t mistake my hyperbole: these creatures are far from innocent. However, the first type of child undead does share a certain lack of development common to small children. They act the way children act, because as far as they know, they are still children. They respond mentally and emotionally to problems as adolescents do, and can often be confounded due to this limitation. (Although sometimes this limitation is more of a burden to an adventurer trying to parley or outwit such a creature.) Undead of this variety may believe they have the same needs as a living child, and often come into conflict with the living while seeking food, shelter, playmates, or the protection of adult authority figures. A child like this often has a protector that provides for their unholy needs and shields them from any direct challenges to their deluded worldview. Aukagaak and her child mummies are an example of such a relationship. Ghosts are far and away the type of child undead most likely to fall into this category. Any type of undead which can both largely pass as human and create spawn without conscious effort (vampires, most commonly) are also likely candidates. More than one adventurer has confronted a vampire parent-child bond hoping to destroy what they believed to be an abomination turning children into undead only to discover that it is the child who is the master and their ‘adoptive parent’ the spawn! One final word to the wise: if such children as these teach us anything, it is the true folly in believing that childhood equates to innocence. Empathy develops during childhood, sometimes later in some children than others. A child turned to undeath before this process is complete can be capable of horrifying acts of cruelty, made even more horrifying by the cherubic countenance that conceived of them. Type Two: The Grown-up Eternity is a long time. For many children cursed with undeath, their mental and emotional development is not hindered by the stunted physical maturation. Indeed, one vampire I interviewed indicated that he’d seen a child vampire whose physical condition made her even more motivated to increase her intellect and experience, to avoid being treated like a child. Undead of this stripe have the psychological maturity of their actual age, not their apparent age. They are often erudite and well-spoken, and capable of laying plans of great cunning. Such creatures may play the role of a child in specific circumstances, usually while feeding or preparing a trap, but when dealing with those who know what they are, tend to revert to speaking and acting like an adult. Merilee Markuza, the child vampiress from Lamordia, is one of the best examples of this type. Creatures that cannot ignore their undead nature, either due to horrific deformity, a feeding compulsion, or a required intent to have become undead, are the most common children in this category. Child liches are not terribly common, but not so uncommon as to never be encountered. Child mummies are frightfully common, unfortunately, and tend to function identically to their older counterparts, especially those that have been placed as sentinels over long forgotten tombs. Fortunately, undead of this stripe often suffer from insecurity. They act as adults because they desire to be adults; a privilege which has forever been stolen from them. Dealing with them amicably requires one to treat them at all times as though the child is a peer. Patronizing or ridiculing them for their physical age is a certain way to enrage them, a tactic that more than one adventurer has used to deceive creatures of this ilk. Type Three: The Changeling The most insidious type of undead child is one that has the full knowledge and experience of an adult, but still chooses to act in the manner of a child consistently. Such monsters enjoy occupying the social position of a child. People go out of their way to protect children, children have few to no obligations or expectations, children can break social morays or go ignored if they wish to: the advantages are endless. Like Innocent undead, they often have families or adopted protectors to shield them from harm. Undead that live in clusters can frequently give rise to these abominations; vampires, ghouls, and lebentods are the most common examples. The horrific nature of their existence makes the self-delusion of the Innocents difficult, but the communal nature of their kind makes it easy to slip into a child’s role. The diminutive undead receives the protection and special treatment they so desire, while the older undead assuage their own psychological trauma by going through the motions of living relationships, helping them to ‘normalize’ their own existence. It’s not uncommon for community members to be just as surprised as adventurers to discover the ‘child’ in their midst is not nearly so naïve as they had believed. Adventurers faced with this type of undead would do well to never forget that its childlike appearance is its primary defense mechanism. By keeping its façade going at all times, the creature is often able to convince heroes to treat it as though it were a child even though they most certainly know it is not. Many times this proves to be a fatal mistake. In Conclusion: Growing Up The attacks you described in your letters seem almost certainly vampiric in nature. Confronting such creatures is often even more dangerous than confronting more mature specimens. Their supernatural strength ensures that they do not suffer the weakness that a human child would, and their undead abilities are under no inhibition whatsoever. Complicating this is your own empathy: heroes are invariably compassionate and helpful at their core, and nothing compels compassion like the plight of a child. Undead youths rely on this, and you can go into your investigation assured that your empathy is their greatest weapon. 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, or listen to Don, Jon, & Dragons, his podcast. Image Reference: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/06/birgitte-hjort-sorenson-game-of-thrones-wildling-undead  If you are looking for a gimmick to get your plot rolling, I’m here to help you out. We get some random search results on our site from time to time, and one person rolled in and looked for “a gimmick for a plot.” Well, I’m the gimmick guy around here so I couldn’t really pass up this opportunity.
The key to generating gimmicks to use to help get you started is to realize that EVERYTHING around you can be turned into a plot idea. A person’s name might be the start of a story. Tripping over the street, burning yourself on your coffee because you’re a klutz. Reading a great book is a *normal* way to get plot ideas, but it’s not quite gimmicky enough, is it? 1) Hot Pies! The baker in Waterdeep has an important order for pies that need to be delivered to a shady part of town. He reaches out to the party to see if they would be willing to act as guards for his pie shipment. Worse, a rival baker has hired members of the thieves’ guild to ambush and steal the pies. It’s not just a gimmick, it’s a McGuffin at the same time! How to use this: Pie motivates me. I’m confused if it doesn’t motivate you. 2) Changelings Invade Elysium The local freehold has fallen on hard times. The Troll lord has fallen. He was killed by a dark, gloomy prodigal calling himself Prince Modius. The freehold is up in arms over this outrage! They have gathered a war-band to avenge their lord. They are sending the Sluagh skulking through the sewers seeking the court of this so called Prince. They think they’ve found it too. The beast they traded a favor to called it Elysium. The Freehold girds itself for battle. How to use this: You decide if using Modius or the Changelings is the gimmick? Honestly? This is a fun story whichever way you roll with it. 3) Savage Rifting Nightmare Before Christmas Style Rifts is presented as a serious universe. Rifts drop into serious worlds with serious troubles. That doesn’t have to be the case though. If we assume the Multiverse theory is true, then there are worlds that follow all sort of ‘Cartoon Logic.’ What’s the gimmick here? Clearly it would be awesome to have Jack Skellington piloting a mecha! Or maybe Santa Claus joins a group of dedicated misfit toys, fighting valiantly against the rifts ripping through the North Pole. How to use this: This is a great one-shot concept for any game that includes trans-dimensional travel in any form. 4) Who? Dr. Who! Running through a ship, 10 seconds remain before you run out of air. There are three buttons. One is red, one is green, one is cyan. Clearly cyan! Who makes a button cyan!? Quick thinking is the only thing that will save you. That, and the Doctor. The Cubicle 7 Dr. Who game is pretty smashing, and you should look into it. You can also use this gimmick in any game system. Start in-media-res. The players have a short amount of time to make a decision; that decision will have a massive impact on how the rest of the story goes. Provide a silly, eccentric, but helpful NPC to help them. Or, even better, give a random player the chance to play some form of the Doctor. How to use this: This is a great method to start a new campaign, or liven up a steady style of gaming. Your players might be confused at first, tell them what you are doing and have them play through things. Give them the chance to fill in the gaps before the story starts. Push them to develop some story of why and how they got where they are. 5) Gimme The Gimmick (Make It Dark) A hook, a murder, a toy, a random passerby: the gimmick is a reason to start playing. It’s the thing that gets you started. The plot that drives you forward. Think of something silly, something funny, something that gets you thinking differently. A gimmick plot can be dropped into any game of any type without too much trouble. That doesn’t mean it has to be funny or silly. The hidden story behind the bakers above might be that they are a family of cannibals that are now at war, brother to brother. Changelings might die off in a panic of banality when they attempt to attack the Vampire court. Jack Skellington might be an actual skeletal nightmare that gleefully rips up Santa and his minions. The Doctor might not be the Doctor, but might be a nefarious menace (perhaps an Illithid or other mind manipulator) who is using the Doctor trope to feed on human brains. The gimmick is a way to start, and you can go as light or as dark as you’d like while using it. How to use this: Gimmicks are a great start, but they aren’t the end of the story. Use the gimmick as a launch pad into the story you really want to tell. I hope that was gimmicky enough for you. If not, please let us know what sort of gimmicks you’d like to include as plotlines. I’m ready to hear them, and ready to make them even more of a gimmick than you asked for, anonymous search friend. Josh is the intrepid Chief Operations Officer of High Level Games. With 19 years of playing rpgs, Josh started with Mind's Eye Theater LARPs and loves the World of Darkness. He runs, www.keepontheheathlands.com to support his gaming projects. Josh is the administrator of the Inclusive Gaming Network on Facebook. He’s preparing a Changing Breeds game. 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. You can also find Josh’s other published adventures here and here. Artwork by Jeshields, whose work can be found and supported at https://www.patreon.com/jestockart . |
I am become death, destroyer of worlds. 
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