An Abominable Fancy

Here's the deal: there is more fun and a better game if the GM doesn’t over-prep their campaign backstory, and lets the world grow out of discovery and interaction with the players. But if you leave things too open, every campaign ends up in the same Tolkein -cum- Gygax fantasy world and people starts saying things like “dwarf cleric” and “elven assassin” and you could not be more bored. Here’s a tool which will, I hope, help tread the line between special snowflake and rote boilerplate. The Campaign Precís. (Link to an Excel file) The idea is that this contains all the information you prepare ahead of time. You can put as much juice and color into your answers as you want. Your answers can imply larger narratives. But you can’t go past the précis. It’s focused on things your players will need to know in order to imagine their characters. These are the weapons they’re familiar with, the authority they need to contend with, and the monsters they’ve heard stories ab...

Death of Beowulf by JR Skelton Beyond the Wall has a "Cheat Death" rule: A dying character may spend a Fortune Point to stabilize at 0 hit points and not continue taking damage every round. The rules also say: All damage taken before reaching zero hit points represents narrow escapes, minor cuts and bruises, and painful, but not debilitating, wounds. Once a character reaches zero hit points, however, he is out of the fight, either unconscious or nearly so. It is at this point that we can call a character seriously wounded, perhaps with a grave sword wound or a nasty blow to the head. He’s not dead yet, but he is in serious trouble and desperately needs the help of his companions. And: Characters who have reached 0 hit points need help immediately. They will continue to lose hit points at the rate of 1 per round unless they receive medical attention. Should a character’s hit points reach -10 he is dead. So that works. But, after reading  +Lloyd Neill ...

My party is traveling north, from their home village of Herebury to the town of Stoat, to pick up a suit of armor and a few new PCs. I wanted the journey in between to have some color, but didn't want to drag it out with random encounters and side missions. I assigned each player a village, and asked them to describe it briefly, along with a local NPC. I asked a second player to then elaborate on either the village or the NPC. A third player then rolled a check against Charisma to see how the party faired. Here are the villages that resulted: Town: Oxley Once known as Oxcross, Oxley is known for its livestock who graze the fields east of town. It's proximity to the Thousand Acre Wood makes it home to a good number of hunters and trappers, who protect the town and its herds from wild animals. Oxley has been grooming their cattle for generations to yield the best tasting beef in the region. They also have a formidable leather working tradition. Most of the local hunter...

Two additional maps for my Beyond the Wall campaign, now that they are moving past their home village: The Olfdene Valley The Wide World

I'm reworking my Adventurer class for Delving Deeper . For one thing, I'm probably going to call it the Expert class, and use "Adventurer" for what is now rather awkwardly called "the Combat Specialist." Each type of Expert is also getting their own combat move. Subterfugue gets Backstab, Survival gets Ambush, Knowledge gets Calculated Strike. I was working on the move for the Communication Expert and decided to see if I could use the Turn Undead table. +John Stater  had mentioned the idea of testing other applications for this table, and, wouldn't you know,  +Peter Fröhlich  just happened to post an analysis of the table's math as I was in the middle of it. The resulting table is based largely on the numbers from  +Dyson Logos '  Alternate Turning Table . The move is Harangue Enemy, and the idea is that the Expert in Communication (a Bard, or Siren, or firebrand Preacher, etc.) would be able to speechify a real whammy on a group of cr...

Delving Deeper, like Oe and B/X, has lots of 1d6 skill rolls scattered throughout the rules— listen at doors, open a stuck door, detect traps. Except for the thief skills, DD's skills are pretty much the same as the early editions and other clones. Being someone who would much rather learn a guiding principle than memorize/look up specific instances, I decided to gather all the skills together and see what I could do with them: Listen at doors Halflings, Elves, Dwarves: 2 in 6 Thief: 4 in 6 Everyone else: 1 in 6 Dungeon Architecture Dwarves: 2 in 6 Find Secret Doors (takes 1 turn) Elves, Thieves: 4 in 6 Everyone else: 2 in 6 Thiefy Stuff: Open Locks; Disarm Device; Climb sheer surface; Sleight-of-hand Thief: 4 in 6 Stealthy movement/Hide Halflings: “nearly invisible” “almost silent” = automatic? (B/X: 10% in underbrush, 2 in 6 w/ cover) Thief: 4 in 6 Surprise Thief: 4 in 6 Everyone else: 2 in 6 Open Doors Weaklings (STR 3-6): 1 in 6 STR 7-18: 2 in...

Okay, so. While the Fighter can model a wide variety of character types—fencer, archer, pirate, etc.—it effectively punishes any player who doesn't follow the same arms race of more-better armor and most-magic weapon. I mean, I could turn my back on that +3 plate because I'm really set on the image of Robin Hood. And my twelth-level mage could decide to stick to cantrips. But more than likely I'd start stretching the image of the character until it looks like every other Fighter out there. Let's let the Fighter be the professional man-at-arms. Whether thug, barbarian, knight, or infantryman, the Fighter is someone who has dedicated themselves to general study of combat. They know all the weapons, all the armors, and spend a lot of time in chat rooms arguing over tactics and strategy. The Combat Specialist is anyone who focuses on fighting but without the broad martial education of a Fighter. Perhaps this is because fighting is only part of their job (say, a Pira...