Posts Tagged ‘everybook’

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paladins with expense accounts

Friday, July 13th, 2012

“So should we go to Morne, to arrange for approval?” Mostin asked brightly. “Oh, no need for that, Mostin,” Eadric replied. “As an inquisitor, I am more than qualified to release the money to you. I’ll just write you a check to draw against the temple funds.” The Alienist’s mouth dropped open in an expression of disbelief. Here was such an enormous potential for financial abuse that his mind boggled. Then again, thought Mostin, that’s probably why he’s the paladin and I’m not.

Sepulchrave’s Lady Despina’s Virtue is the story of a real D&D campaign, but it’s also one of the most enjoyable fantasy stories I’ve read. It’s got a lot of stuff you can pull out and use in your own campaign. Here’s one thing you can use:

If you want to give a real moral temptation to a paladin, don’t have leering demons offer hellish pacts. Just have the paladin’s superiors give him an expense account.

PCs usually have stuff they want to buy. A lot of it can be used to fight evil, so there will be some legitimate expenses. There will also be a temptation to borrow against the expense account for less-clear-cut expenses, and pay it back out of future loot. See if you can get your paladin to start embezzling.

That’s when you bring in the inquisitors. Revel as the paladin is forced to compromise his ideals to avoid discovery. Laugh as he loses his paladinhood. Celebrate your dark victory as he returns as an anti-paladin!

Or not. But a paladin needs to face some real temptations, or he’s just a fighter with good PR.

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treasure from Venus

Friday, July 6th, 2012

“Ruins. Cyclopean, strange, and alien in contour, half-destroyed shapes of stone were blurred against a dim background.” What’s waiting for us on Venus, according to Henry Kuttner’s science fiction story “Beauty and the Beast”, is a D&D dungeon crawl setting.

No dungeon crawl is complete without treasure. In “Beauty and the Beast”, astronauts find a jewel: “Oval, large as an egg, the gem flamed gloriously in the light of the electric torch. It had no color, and yet seemed to partake of all the hues of the spectrum.” Even more valuable, though, are the flowers that surround the ruins. “The new flowers had proved tremendously popular, and florists demanded them avidly. Lovelier than orchids they were, and they did not fade for a long time after being cut.”

If PCs travel to Venus and find beautiful flowers surrounding empty ruins, they probably won’t think to sell them to florists. If they do, they might get rich. They might also (spoilers ahead) plant the seeds of the destruction of civilization.

The egg-sized jewel turns out to be an egg (a classic D&D treasure trick). It hatches a Venusian, who, too late, tries to warn humanity about the beautiful flowers: “And now, the flowers grow on Earth. In a month, the petals will fall, and from the blossoms the virus will develop. And then, all life on Earth will be destroyed, as it was on Venus, and nothing will exist on all the planet but bright flowers and the ruins of cities. I must warn them to destroy the blossoms now, before they pollinate…”

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biker gangs in the dungeon

Friday, June 29th, 2012

Peter S. Beagle’s Folk of the Air, about a Society for Creative Anachronism chapter where MAGIC IS REAL, is much less well-known than The Last Unicorn. Although it takes place in California, it still has a few details for your dungeon.

…along corridors they could not see, around certain doubtful corners that had to be caught up with before they could be turned, and through high, transparent outlines, the color of abandoned spiderwebs, cold to make the blood ache.

Of all these dungeon details, my favorite is the corner that you have to catch. I assume that it moves ahead down a seemingly-endless corridor, at your speed or at the speed of a jogging human, whichever is slower.

It might be cool to have a couple of these moving turns, set to different speeds. One is uncatchable by even the fastest runner. But in another part of the dungeon is a MOTORCYCLE.

I once played in a game which featured motorcycles in a dungeon. It’s great because they’re so fast and aggressive, but their speed is so badly suited for winding corridors. Most of a biker gang will be wiped out by dungeon walls. D&D motorcycles should obviously be ridden by skeletons.

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currency exchange between gold pieces, dirhams, francs, and dollars

Friday, June 15th, 2012

I found this amusing passage in a Kane novel:

“Have you, say, twenty-five mesitsi gold [about two hundred dollars]?” Arbas asked casually. The stranger faked a hesitant pause–no merit in giving the assassin reason to think to ask for more. “I can raise it.”
-Karl Edward Wagner – Darkness Weaves

I don’t know why, but I find the exchange-rate note charming. It also matches with my intuition that buying a 10-GP sword is approximately the same scale of professional expense as, say, buying an $80 electric drill. (Of course, 200 dollars in 1978, when the novel was written, is probably more like $600 in 2012.)

Oddly, I’ve been noticing a lot of specific expenses in books lately, which I can use to construct a tenuous web of currency equality.

This man used to work in the baths for a daily wage of five dirhams. For Dau’ al-Makan he would spend every day one dirham on sugar, rosewater, violet sherbet and willow-flower water, while for another dirham he would buy chickens.
-Tales of 1,001 Nights

According to D20SRD, “the typical daily wage for laborers, porters, cooks, maids, and other menial workers” is 3 SP, which is not too far from the bath man’s 5 dirhams. Let’s say that a dirham is equal to an SP, and the furnace man’s high pay is because Cairo happens to have a strong economy. After all, says 1001 Nights, Cairo’s “soil is gold; its river is a wonder; its women are houris; its houses are palaces; its climate is mild; and its scent surpasses that of frankincense, which it puts to shame.”

D20SRD is silent on the price of willow-flower water, but a chicken is 2 CP. That means that the bath worker and his wife eat five chickens a day! That seems high to me, but the story goes on to say that, when a guest stays with them, they feed him two chickens a day. So five chickens is plausible!

As a fun bonus, if we take the SRD, Kane, and 1001 Nights as equally valid, we can determine that 10 dirhams = 1 GP = $8 in 1978 = $24 in 2012, and we can infer the important fact that, in 1001 Nights Cairo, a chicken cost 50 cents.

All of this is, of course, nonsense, for many reasons. One of the main reasons is that the US economy is totally incompatible with any historical economy: things used to cost different amounts relative to each other.

Check out this late 19th century letter from Emile Zola to Cezanne:

I’ll reckon out for you what you should spend. A room at 20 francs a month; lunch at 18 sous and dinner at 22, which makes two francs a day, or 60 francs a month.…Then you have the studio to pay for: the Atelier Suisse, one of the least expensive, charges, I think, 10 francs. Add 10 francs for canvas, brushes, colors; that makes 100. So you’ll have 25 francs left for laundry, light, the thousand little needs that turn up.
-Emile Zola via Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw

Look at the amounts budgeted for necessities. A starving artist who eats only two meals a day spends three times more on food than on rent. Half of his money is spent on food. That’s almost exactly the reverse of a US budget, where the food budget is typically 1/3 of rent.

That’s why we can’t really convert 25 GP to $200 USD. The modern world is too different from the past. Emile Zola, writing in the 19th century, inhabited a world that was, economically, closer to D&D and 1001 Nights than we are now.

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i really WANT to look at the medusa

Friday, June 8th, 2012

The medusa is the figurehead monster for the Good Ship Argument About Save-or-Die Effects. Some people don’t want their character killed by a single failed saving throw, and others argue that if a medusa doesn’t turn onlookers into stone, it’s not a medusa.

The 5e playtest includes a medusa in its bestiary. In this version, gazing upon a medusa is a save-or-die effect, but an optional one; you can always choose to avert your eyes as you fight.

I found this quote in Greg Keyes’ The Charnel Prince: it’s about the gaze of another monster, a basilisk, but it’s worded in such a way that it’s practically game rules.

“They have two blind men with them,” he said. “They serve as its handlers. The rest walk behind. The cage is like an aenan lamp, closed on all sides but one. It makes a light, this thing, and once you have seen it, you can resist only through the greatest contest of will.”

A contest of will? Like a will save? That’s actually a kind of unique mechanic for a turn-you-to-stone monster, which usually attacks fortitude. Say on, Dungeon Master Greg Keyes: how does a basilisk’s gaze force a Will save?

And he saw a light suffusing the landing. It was beautiful, golden, the most perfect light he had ever seen. A promise of absolute peace filled him, and he knew that he could not live without seeing the source of that light.

This is a fun variation on the basilisk/medusa: you see something out of the corner of your eye that’s you know you shouldn’t look at, but you want to. It’s a good excuse to give people two saving throws: a will(/wisdom) save to let them tear away their gaze, followed by a fortitude(/petrification/constitution) save to resist petrification. Personally, I don’t like save-or-die effects, but I don’t actually mind save-or-save-or-die effects.

This effect not only makes the old-school save-or-die medusa less deadly, it could be used to make the 5e medusa more deadly. While you’re fighting that medusa with your eyes averted, you can’t help seeing little glimpses of something – a beautiful light, perhaps, or an angelic face. For some characters, maybe medusa cleavage is all it takes. Every round that you fight with your eyes averted, you need to make an easy will/wisdom save. If you fail, you gaze upon the medusa.

Greg Keyes’ quote also contains another cool idea: an army of blind men who carry a basilisk’s eye (or medusa’s head, or ark of the covenant) before them as a totem. A mercenary company of blind warriors with such a weapon would be quite powerful, although they wouldn’t work very well with allied troops.

Have I seen this idea somewhere else – maybe an Elric book or something? No matter, it’s worth stealing anyway.

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jurgen’s rituals

Friday, June 1st, 2012

After writing 99 rituals to gain power over fey creatures, I probably don’t need any more, but I can’t resist collecting them.

James Branch Cabell’s novel Jurgen is a weird combination of picaresque and high fantasy that takes the usual conceit of the picaresque, “every level of society is absurd and corrupt”, and it extends it to fairyland, heaven, hell, and other planes of existence. I think the book might have a Message, but I was too busy taking notes on the rituals needed to overcome supernatural creatures.

And the notary’s wife followed her to Amneran Heath, and across the heath, to where a cave was. This was a place of abominable repute. A lean hound came to meet them there in the twilight, lolling his tongue: but the notary’s wife struck thrice with her wand, and the silent beast left them.

Characters might learn that being struck thrice with a wand of, say, ash, causes hellhounds to flee. Three strikes requires three melee hits, so there will be an interesting tension between this and the fact that three sword hits might just kill the creature. Of course, the math is different if three strikes with the wand causes the hellhound to SERVE the striker.

The voice of Dame Lisa, now, was thin and wailing, a curiously changed voice. “There is a cross about your neck. You must throw that away.” Jurgen was wearing such a cross, through motives of sentiment, because it had once belonged to his dead mother. But now, to pleasure his wife, he removed the trinket, and hung it on a barberry bush; and with the reflection that this was likely to prove a deplorable business, he followed Dame Lisa into the cave.

In this circumstance, Jurgen is forced to give up what’s obviously a potent protection in order to enter a magical realm. This is the type of decision that monsters may well try to force on PCs. What if you can’t enter the vampire’s castle unless you leave your holy symbol at the door?

“If this Thragnar has any intelligence at all and a reasonable amount of tenacity, he will presently be at hand.”

“Even so, he can do no harm unless we accept a present from him. The difficulty is that he will come in disguise.”

“Why, then, we will accept gifts from nobody.”

“There is, moreover, a sign by which you may distinguish Thragnar. For if you deny what he says, he will promptly concede you are in the right. This was the curse put upon him by Miramon Lluagor, for a detection and a hindrance.”

Two great fairy rituals here. Accepting gifts from someone is an obvious way to put yourself into their power, so you’re probably best off if you never accept gifts or food while in fairyland.

I also like the fact that the creature will always concede to your denials. It’s a quirk that could give personality to a conversation. Even if the PCs don’t know about the weakness beforehand, it’s the kind that they might be able to figure out.

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the night land and the tragic story of the D&D world

Friday, May 25th, 2012

I previously described William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land as the Shadowfell sourcebook written in 1912, but I never got around to quoting any inspiring passages.

I stood in one of the embrasures of the Last Redoubt—that great Pyramid of grey metal which held the last millions of this world from the Powers of the Slayers.

Outside of one populated pyramid, the world is dark. (As you might expect from its name, The Night Land is a dying-sun or dead-sun novel, set on Earth, millions of years in the future.) The inhabitants of the pyramids know of no humans who live outside the pyramid. That’s one thing that The Night Land has over any plane of shadow, actually. Even if you’re trapped in a realm of shadow, you know that the multiverse is alive with light and life. Outside of the Last Redoubt, though, there’s nothing… forever.

Here’s a section where the protagonist gives a bestiary and geography of the Lands. I can’t resist quoting this giant section because it’s all so creepy:

And so back to my telling. To my right, which was to the North, there stood, very far away, the House of Silence, upon a low hill. And in that House were many lights, and no sound. And so had it been through an uncountable Eternity of Years. Always those steady lights, and no whisper of sound—not even such as our distance-microphones could have discovered. And the danger of this House was accounted the greatest danger of all those Lands.

And round by the House of Silence, wound the Road Where The Silent Ones Walk. And concerning this Road, which passed out of the Unknown Lands, nigh by the Place of the Ab-humans, where was always the green, luminous mist, nothing was known; save that it was held that, of all the works about the Mighty Pyramid, it was, alone, the one that was bred, long ages past, of healthy human toil and labour. And on this point alone, had a thousand books, and more, been writ; and all contrary, and so to no end, as is ever the way in such matters.

And as it was with the Road Where The Silent Ones Walk, so it was with all those other monstrous things … whole libraries had there been made upon this and upon that; and many a thousand million mouldered into the forgotten dust of the earlier world.

I mind me now that presently I stepped upon the central travelling-roadway which spanned the one thousandth plateau of the Great Redoubt. And this lay six miles and thirty fathoms above the Plain of the Night Land, and was somewhat of a great mile or more across. And so, in a few minutes, I was at the South-Eastern wall, and looking out through The Great Embrasure towards the Three Silver-fire Holes, that shone before the Thing That Nods, away down, far in the South-East. Southward of this, but nearer, there rose the vast bulk of the South-East Watcher-—The Watching Thing of the South-East. And to the right and to the left of the squat monster burned the Torches; maybe half-a-mile upon each side; yet sufficient light they threw to show the lumbered-forward head of the never-sleeping Brute.

To the East, as I stood there in the quietness of the Sleeping-Time on the One Thousandth Plateau, I heard a far, dreadful sound, down in the lightless East; and, presently, again—-a strange, dreadful laughter, deep as a low thunder among the mountains. And because this sound came odd whiles from the Unknown Lands beyond the Valley of The Hounds, we had named that far and never-seen Place “The Country Whence Comes The Great Laughter.” And though I had heard the sound, many and oft a time, yet did I never hear it without a most strange thrilling of my heart, and a sense of my littleness, and of the utter terror which had beset the last millions of the world.

As I mentioned, the unrelieved bleakness of a dying-earth story beats the spooky exoticism of the Shadowfell. Therefore, the details of The Night Land might be better used in your D&D game as the hopeless final destination in a time-travel game. If you go that route, you might need to provide some intermediary time-stops: if The Night Land is ten million years in the future, what do things look like five million years from now?

Hodgson has a character recall a time before the sun quite went out, and it’s also worthy of mention.

She did see, as in a far dream, yet very plain, a great metal roadway, set in two lines that went forever unto the setting Sun; and she then sudden to say that she did see in her memory the Sun, and she to have a strange and troubled amazement upon her. And there did be Cities upon the great road; and the houses did be strange-seeming, and did move forward eternally and at a constant speed; and behind them the Night did march forever; and they to have an even pace with the sun, that they live ever in the light, and so to escape the night which pursued forever, as she did tell, and a dread and terrible chill that did live in the night. And there did be cities far forward in the morning Sunshine, that did have gone before at speed, and set the husbandry of the world, and to be finished and gone forward again ere that certain of the latter cities did come to that place to the reaping; and the night to come presently to that place; but this not to be for some part of a year after that the crops were taken. But how long this might be, she not to remember.

Walking cities that lumber around the earth to avoid the dread night of a year-long day! Another good setting there. And now our future-pointing time travel game has three stops, each more depressing than the last:

  • Dark Sun
  • The Walking Cities
  • The Night Lands

    To complete the tragic downward spiral of the D&D universe, we should add three ancient-past time-travel hubs, each grander and more comforting than the last, until we get to the dawn of the world, when people lived in harmony and the gods walked the earth.

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    new category of magic item: magical map

    Monday, April 16th, 2012

    At the foot of the little rise there was a map of the world, carte du monde, mappamondo, karte der welt, with the countries marked on it in brilliant colors. I knew that if I wanted to go anywhere, from Angola to Paphlagonia, all I had to do was put my foot on the spot.

    This quote from Sign of the Labrys got me thinking about how few magical maps there are in D&D. (Between proofing my Random Dungeon poster and working on my stretch-goal board game rules, I’m in a mappy place right now anyway.)

    Maps are very important to the play of OD&D. Graph-paper maps are the primary archaeological product of an old-school D&D game, along with empty Mountain Dew bottles. Furthermore, in-game maps (treasure maps) are a big part of OD&D treasure. Nevertheless, there are virtually no magical maps. There might be one or two in splatbooks, but I don’t think any core Dungeon Master’s Guide has ever featured a magical map. (The 1e DMG, on the other hand, has four different magical periapts.)

    Contrast this with computer games. A magical map is one of the ubiquitous items in computer RPGS: so common that it’s part of the user interface. Nearly every game comes with an auto-map. I’m splitting hairs here a little: I know that, within the fiction of the game, most auto-maps represent the cartographic efforts of the main character. Still, if you’ve played old games like The Bard’s Tale where you did your own mapping on graph paper, auto-maps feel pretty darn magical.

    Here are some magical maps for D&D. They join a proud tradition of D&D’s brilliant “you now have permission to ignore the rules” magic items. They don’t really give the players new powers: they enable a free-and-easy play style that some prefer. Don’t like encumbrance? Have a Bag of Holding! Don’t like tracking light sources? Everburning torch!

    Along with each magic map are notes about what play style it might support.

    AUTOMAP PAPER

    Automap paper looks like ordinary paper until a drop of ink is applied to it. The ink will crawl of its own accord, drawing a small overhead map view of the PC’s current location. If the PCs are inside a structure, the picture will be scaled so that the entire floor of the building could be drawn on one sheet of paper. If the PCs are outside, it will be scaled so that the entire island or continent can be drawn. Detail level will be appropriate to the scale.

    Once the map has been started, it will automatically update itself whenever it’s in a new location. It can’t map while it’s inside a container: it needs to be held in a hand or otherwise out in the open.

    Players can draw annotations on the map if they like.

    Using automap paper in a game: Start a campaign for a new-school D&D group (3e or 4e) and make them map the dungeons. If they haven’t done so before, every group should map a few dungeons. However, not every campaign is dungeon-crawl focused, and so, once the players have run the gauntlet a few times, let them find a sheaf of, say, 50 sheets of automap paper. From then on, let the players peek at your DM map if they ever get lost. This strategy goes with the general progression of level-based games: start with lots of restrictions, and slowly lift them.

    This item also works well in games where the DM draws out the important locations on a battlemat.

    Because every magical item should have a leveled version, here are some improved versions of Automap Paper:

    Architect’s Map: This superior version of automap paper is blue, and requires white chalk to activate it instead of ink. It draws a whole dungeon level at once, without requiring you to visit each part, and automatically shows hidden and concealed doors, as well as any trap that was built as part of a building’s original construction.

    Using the Architect’s Map in a game: Give the PCs a copy of the DM map. It’s up to them to track their journey and to notice your notations for traps and secret doors. While automap paper can be given freely to PCs, an Architect’s Map might be a limited resource: players might find 1d4 sheets at a time. An architect’s map is especially good when you don’t mind letting the players making informed decisions about where to go.

    Living Map: This is the Harry Potter version of the automap. It uses moving dots of ink to represent all living things on the map. A cluster of 10 hobgoblins might look like one large dot, and be indistinguishable from five hobgoblins, or from a dragon.

    Using the Living Map in a game: Like the Architect’s Map, this should be an expendable resource. It’s handy in an ordinary dungeon: it’s nice to be able to check the map to see if there’s an ambush behind the door. It’s even more useful for heist, stealth, or chase adventures. It’s a nice magic item for groups that like to outthink obstacles instead of killing everyone in their way: in other words, give it to your Shadowrun group when they’re playing D&D for a change. Keep in mind that a single piece of map paper only graphs one floor. If a creature goes upstairs, it’s off the map.

    Travel Map: If a character touches a point on this automap, he or she will instantly travel to that location. Keep in mind that the automap only charts visited places, so a character cannot use it to travel somewhere new. Also, a travel map can only teleport a single player: since the map travels with the player, it can’t be used for party travel.

    This map’s special properties are only available if its owner is in the mapped area: in other words, a player can’t use a travel map of a dungeon to teleport into the dungeon. He or she may only teleport from one point in the dungeon to another.

    This map is especially useful as an outdoor map: travel between cities is usually more time-consuming and difficult than travel between different rooms in a dungeon.

    Using a travel map in a game: A single piece of travel map paper, used as a continental map, can expedite the kind of fast-travel used in most computer RPGs. The first time you go somewhere, you have to go there the hard way. Once you’ve been there, you can hand-wave any future travel to or from that location. A single travel map allows a single character to take intra-continental jaunts, allowing for lots of communication and resupply options; more useful fast travel requires enough maps for the whole party. A pack of travel-map paper is a pretty good find for a high-level party which is outgrowing wilderness adventures.

    A fun trick: Don’t let the players know that their map is of the “travel map” variety. Watch the players during the game. When someone touches a spot on the map to make a point, tell everyone that that player’s character has disappeared.

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    feyswords

    Friday, March 2nd, 2012

    Through the press he saw feyswords glittering, glimpsed auburn hair and sparks of pale viridian. Then he was pushed back, until the gate receded from view and thought.
    Greg Keyes – The Briar King

    As we know from this infographic, planes have levels. For instance, the feywild is approximately level 7 through 20.

    Since the PCs and monsters from the feywild have an average level of 13, common feywild weapons can be given an appropriate bonus for a level 13 character or monster. Just as +1 swords are the generic magic weapon of the natural world, +2 feyswords (plus or minus one) are the standard among the feywild eladrin.

    Feysword: A +2 mithral blade that glitters in the faintest light. When the eladrin armies march to battle, they do so bearing feyswords.
    Advantages: 1) A feysword can be treated as a longsword or rapier, whichever is more advantageous. 2) As a free action, a feysword’s user can cause it to glow like a torch. 3) Feyswords do +5 damage to creatures with the Shadow keyword.
    Drawbacks: 1) When a feysword is drawn, it confers a -2 penalty to Stealth checks involving hiding in the shadows. 2) If a feysword is exposed to the sunlight of the natural world for three consecutive days, it becomes Sunrusted.

    Sunrusted Feysword: A feysword that spends much time in the natural world is likely to develop a patina of gold flecks along its silver blade: sunrust. It acts like a +1 sword, but has all of the other advantages and drawbacks of a feysword.

    Lordly Feysword: Its pommel studded with jewels and its blade an interlocked pattern of mithral ivy leaves, this feysword has an enhancement bonus of +3 (or higher) and is frequently used by fey lords.
    Advantages: 1) It is immune to sunrust. 2) It does +10 damage to creatures with the Shadow keyword.

    Other planes can have their own common weapons: the typical weapon of the astral plane is a +3 angelsteel greatsword.

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    imagine if the guys in Night of the Living Dead had this

    Friday, February 24th, 2012


    As her brother was decanting the embers of the previous night’s fire from the birch bark container he carried and sustained them in, Ess’yr would find a flat stone. She set it at the new fire’s side and placed a few scraps of food on it. In an almost inaudible voice, she murmured a few words. After she was done, Varryn would bow his head over the food and whisper the same incantation. In the morning they left the food behind them as they made their way onwards. Orisian hesitated to ask Ess’yr what the act signified. His curiosity must have been poorly concealed, for on the third evening Ess’yr sat beside him at the fire. ‘The food is for restless dead. Those who walk… If one of the restless comes in the night, they will take the food. Leave us.’
    Brian Ruckley – Godless World: Winterbirth

    Sounds like a new ritual! I’d have it create a zone: unintelligent or low-intelligence undead cannot enter the zone.
    Religion check:
    1-9: Zone lasts one round
    10-19: Zone lasts 5 minutes
    20-29: Zone lasts one day
    30-39: Zone lasts a year and a day
    40+: Zone is permanent

    In a game world where undead are common in the wild, this is the type of ritual that would be well-known among the common people, even among non-spell-casters. In the same way, in a witch-heavy world, common people might know the ritual to ward off the evil eye.

    I think you should be able to cast a ritual once per day for free, but money can be spent to improve the ritual’s skill check. Thus, a reasonably skilled cleric can protect a camp overnight, or can spend gold and holy relics to permanently protect a shrine.

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