My Recent campaign starts:
1. Loudwater 4e (2011) - in tavern when goblins attack the south wall on market day.
2. Southlands 4e (2011) - on the road to Stone Axe Inn, witness wagon attacked by raiders.
3. Punjar Saga 4e (2013) - summoned to a tavern by Nerof Gisgal, Master of Smoke, to deal with the Beggar King.
4. Wilderlands Labyinth Lord (2013) - arrive fresh off the boat at Selatine docks.
5. Rise of the Runelords OSRIC (2014) - at Swallowtail Festival when goblins attack.
6. Curse of the Crimson Throne PF (2014) - summoned by dead fortune teller to slay mutual enemy Gaedren Lamm.
7. Wilderlands 5e (2015) - in tavern at Selatine.
8. Runelords of the Shattered Star (2015) - novice Pathfinders summoned to Heidmarch manor.
9. Nentir Vale (2017) - in country tavern when hobgoblins attack.
My impression is that generally the more open campaign starts with less "You must do this!" tend to have the most legs. Either in media res or a quiet/open start can work, but for sandboxing an open start gets players in the right frame of mind.
Wednesday, 27 December 2017
Sunday, 17 December 2017
Campaign Creation
I definitely find history very useful and informative. I remember with my Nerathi-Alryan vs Altanian conflict being inspired by the Balkan wars of the 1990s. It warmed the cockles of my heart when a very aggressive player had a sudden epiphany as his Altanian PC Varek Tigerclaw looked down at the captive Nerathi noblewomen he'd just executed, and said "There are no good guys here". As the realm descended into genocidal civil war - spurred on by his own actions in fighting the 'bad guys', the Nerathi Black Sun.
That was around 2012. In 2017 turns out there are some good guys here, and Altanian PC Hakeem Greywolf has just united Nerathi & Altani in a new empire that commands widespread support from both sides and from other factions too, such as the Ghinarians of the Ghinarian Hills and the Amazons. Not to mention the gargantuan brass dragon & former Nerathi Archmage Dyson Logos, who sleeps beneath Dyson's Delve.
Hakeem's player is smart; after defeating the Black Sun, rather than declare himself Emperor he is ruling as Regent for his son Hassan, who when of age will marry the Nerathi-Alryan princess Eratha (daughter of Lord Bronze of Hara/Mara) and they will rule as at least nominal equals. So both sides have a strong stake in making the new empire work.
A lot of players would have taken the Varek/Black Sun approach of trying to completely annihilate the enemy. Which is satisfying, but creates more and more enemies utterly convinced THEY have to destroy YOU too. It was very satisfying seeing players take a different approach and build bridges, not charnel fields.
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?38219-Medieval-Life-in-Action&p=1014324&viewfull=1#post1014324
That was around 2012. In 2017 turns out there are some good guys here, and Altanian PC Hakeem Greywolf has just united Nerathi & Altani in a new empire that commands widespread support from both sides and from other factions too, such as the Ghinarians of the Ghinarian Hills and the Amazons. Not to mention the gargantuan brass dragon & former Nerathi Archmage Dyson Logos, who sleeps beneath Dyson's Delve.
Hakeem's player is smart; after defeating the Black Sun, rather than declare himself Emperor he is ruling as Regent for his son Hassan, who when of age will marry the Nerathi-Alryan princess Eratha (daughter of Lord Bronze of Hara/Mara) and they will rule as at least nominal equals. So both sides have a strong stake in making the new empire work.
A lot of players would have taken the Varek/Black Sun approach of trying to completely annihilate the enemy. Which is satisfying, but creates more and more enemies utterly convinced THEY have to destroy YOU too. It was very satisfying seeing players take a different approach and build bridges, not charnel fields.
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?38219-Medieval-Life-in-Action&p=1014324&viewfull=1#post1014324
Travel
For travel into unknown territory in the Wilderlands I give a bit of colour, maybe some legends of the vicinity, describe what PCs can see, encounter checks and recently-were-here checks. Encounters I use a 6 on d6, roll a few times a day, then either select from nearest NPCs/monsters or roll on a table. These days I mostly use a d20 table based off donjon prerolled encounters from http://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/random/...;enc-type=Road - most of those are non hostile encounters and IMO beat the "Manticore jumps out! Bugbears jump out!" approach encouraged by the 1e DMG & MM2 AD&D charts and other monster-heavy charts, though even there using a 2d6 Reaction check can produce something interesting.
I always roll checks in the open, players love/dread seeing that 6 come up with preternatural frequency.
I like to roll weather daily, pretty much given up on weather generators though. I use a d8 so the players know it's not an encounter check; 1 = really bad (or cold, stormy) weather, 8 = really good (or dry, sunny). Also use d8 for direction of wind, 1 = north; may modify if there is an obvious prevailing wind.
I will also use "Indiana Jones red line on the map" approach "3 days later you arrive" at times to abstract travel - almost never in Wilderlands, but in a big largely undetailed world like Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk it can be necessary. I have done it in Wilderlands when I really wanted to skip the road travel between two known locales, but have tended to regret it.
Maps - especially in known territory, but very often otherwise, I usually show players the hex map I'm using, as well a describing what they see. I generally find players are short of info & it helps to give them plenty. I also find the idea of fantasy PCs marking hex maps in-game a bit weird.
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?38195-Early-Random-Dungeon-Gen-systems-and-Outdoor-Survival&p=1013971&viewfull=1#post1013971
I always roll checks in the open, players love/dread seeing that 6 come up with preternatural frequency.
I like to roll weather daily, pretty much given up on weather generators though. I use a d8 so the players know it's not an encounter check; 1 = really bad (or cold, stormy) weather, 8 = really good (or dry, sunny). Also use d8 for direction of wind, 1 = north; may modify if there is an obvious prevailing wind.
I will also use "Indiana Jones red line on the map" approach "3 days later you arrive" at times to abstract travel - almost never in Wilderlands, but in a big largely undetailed world like Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk it can be necessary. I have done it in Wilderlands when I really wanted to skip the road travel between two known locales, but have tended to regret it.
Maps - especially in known territory, but very often otherwise, I usually show players the hex map I'm using, as well a describing what they see. I generally find players are short of info & it helps to give them plenty. I also find the idea of fantasy PCs marking hex maps in-game a bit weird.
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?38195-Early-Random-Dungeon-Gen-systems-and-Outdoor-Survival&p=1013971&viewfull=1#post1013971
Friday, 8 December 2017
Megadungeons - Why is Stonehell praised and Dwimmermount condemned?
So, I'm running Stonehell. I nearly decided to run Dwimmermount, but Stonehell is much easier to fit into my established Wilderlands campaign. Been doing lots of megadungeon reading & thinking. My Stonehell campaign is going great I think, both the tabletop and online sessions. From what I can see, Stonehell generally gets a fair bit of praise and not much criticism, although the elegant "1 page dungeon" presentation means *extremely* sparse description. It certainly has plenty of "5 rats and 2000 coppers" - yet this doesn't appear to be a problem. Yet Dwimmermount, which was heavily influenced by Stonehell, was mercilessly attacked for, well, being the same as Stonehell (the final version is more verbose, and that gets attacked too).
AFAICT, the criticisms directed at Dwimmermount in Joe the Lawyer's game could just as well be applied by my players to my Stonehell game - no 'story', empty rooms, torch sconces that (usually) don't move - yet they seem to love it, both the grognards I GM for online and the tabletop group who include complete newbies, and three players who came with me through 64 sessions of often-linear Paizo hackfest 'story' AP adventures and seem very very happy with the change of pace, with exploring vast dungeon complexes in search of gold and carting it in triumph back to town.
Is it a group thing? Did Tenkar run a bad game that night? What was the difference, I wonder. Maybe they were looking at it as a one shot, not campaign play. Maybe - I suspect this - they were thinking in Paizo AP or TSR competition module terms, of the dungeon as a place to go to achieve goal X then leave. But megadungeons are environments, not modules. They are a setting, designed for campaign play, with a mix of exploration, combat & social interaction - use of Reaction checks (2d6 or otherwise) is absolutely vital IME.
Finally, hostility to James M for the late Kickstarter delivery and/or for his personal qualities (being a traditionalist Catholic, his professorial air, his liking for minutiae) could be a factor I guess.
Anything else I'm missing?
Discussion here
AFAICT, the criticisms directed at Dwimmermount in Joe the Lawyer's game could just as well be applied by my players to my Stonehell game - no 'story', empty rooms, torch sconces that (usually) don't move - yet they seem to love it, both the grognards I GM for online and the tabletop group who include complete newbies, and three players who came with me through 64 sessions of often-linear Paizo hackfest 'story' AP adventures and seem very very happy with the change of pace, with exploring vast dungeon complexes in search of gold and carting it in triumph back to town.
Is it a group thing? Did Tenkar run a bad game that night? What was the difference, I wonder. Maybe they were looking at it as a one shot, not campaign play. Maybe - I suspect this - they were thinking in Paizo AP or TSR competition module terms, of the dungeon as a place to go to achieve goal X then leave. But megadungeons are environments, not modules. They are a setting, designed for campaign play, with a mix of exploration, combat & social interaction - use of Reaction checks (2d6 or otherwise) is absolutely vital IME.
Finally, hostility to James M for the late Kickstarter delivery and/or for his personal qualities (being a traditionalist Catholic, his professorial air, his liking for minutiae) could be a factor I guess.
Anything else I'm missing?
Discussion here
Thursday, 7 December 2017
Collapse
From http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?38135-Apocalyptic-Revolution/page3
Epidemics like the Black Death (with 50% death rate in Europe) seem to be recovered from very quickly - infrastructure remains in place, there are just fewer people using it. Ecological collapses have been significant historically, though not so much recently. I could imagine something like the recent issue with pesticides killing off all the honey bees (& other insects), or monoculture disease as with the Irish potato famine, as potentially leading to some sort of crisis. But there seems to be a lot of global excess capacity for food production currently (albeit concentrated in the USA & Canada) so I suspect this would be localised.
I remember a decade or so ago when they were converting corn to ethanol because of a supposed coming fuel shortage - it resulted in an actual global food shortage because most of the planet now apparently lives off subsidised US food exports, sometimes disguised as 'aid'. I could imagine a disease, dust bowl or other event (Yellowstone eruption?) in North America reducing food yields dramatically, resulting in global starvation - mostly outside North America, since remaining food would be eaten there first.
Declining birth rates - likely did contribute to the collapse of the western Roman empire (& decline of the eastern RE). As seen there though, only a major issue if the declining population is replaced by dominant immigrants/conquerors who are unable/unwilling to maintain the more complex society of the declining population, resulting in a step-change collapse. Sans immigration, a society like Japan with declining birth rate & population but no change in ethny will not decline radically.
Also, looking at WRE case, initially there was only a total civilisational collapse in Britain, which had not been fully culturally Romanised. Once the Legions left, the native Britons were struggling to maintain Roman civilisation even before the Anglo-Saxon conquests. This resembles the situation in some areas undergoing European de-colonisation in the 20th century after WW2; the colonising civilisation had not truly taken root. Civilisational collapse in the Mediterranean region of the former WRE was only completed 300 years later with the Arab-Muslim conquests, which caused an ecological collapse in North Africa (goats ate the olive trees) and raiders/pirates destroyed sea trade and forced abandonment of coastal territories in southern Europe. See The Fall of Rome by Ward-Perkins for lots of data on this. The north African pottery records are fascinating!
Cave Bear 
Epidemics like the Black Death (with 50% death rate in Europe) seem to be recovered from very quickly - infrastructure remains in place, there are just fewer people using it. Ecological collapses have been significant historically, though not so much recently. I could imagine something like the recent issue with pesticides killing off all the honey bees (& other insects), or monoculture disease as with the Irish potato famine, as potentially leading to some sort of crisis. But there seems to be a lot of global excess capacity for food production currently (albeit concentrated in the USA & Canada) so I suspect this would be localised.
I remember a decade or so ago when they were converting corn to ethanol because of a supposed coming fuel shortage - it resulted in an actual global food shortage because most of the planet now apparently lives off subsidised US food exports, sometimes disguised as 'aid'. I could imagine a disease, dust bowl or other event (Yellowstone eruption?) in North America reducing food yields dramatically, resulting in global starvation - mostly outside North America, since remaining food would be eaten there first.
Declining birth rates - likely did contribute to the collapse of the western Roman empire (& decline of the eastern RE). As seen there though, only a major issue if the declining population is replaced by dominant immigrants/conquerors who are unable/unwilling to maintain the more complex society of the declining population, resulting in a step-change collapse. Sans immigration, a society like Japan with declining birth rate & population but no change in ethny will not decline radically.
Also, looking at WRE case, initially there was only a total civilisational collapse in Britain, which had not been fully culturally Romanised. Once the Legions left, the native Britons were struggling to maintain Roman civilisation even before the Anglo-Saxon conquests. This resembles the situation in some areas undergoing European de-colonisation in the 20th century after WW2; the colonising civilisation had not truly taken root. Civilisational collapse in the Mediterranean region of the former WRE was only completed 300 years later with the Arab-Muslim conquests, which caused an ecological collapse in North Africa (goats ate the olive trees) and raiders/pirates destroyed sea trade and forced abandonment of coastal territories in southern Europe. See The Fall of Rome by Ward-Perkins for lots of data on this. The north African pottery records are fascinating!
Wednesday, 6 December 2017
Megadungeons - My Stonehell Review
Megadungeons I own that I can recall are:
3e Castle Blackmoor
Greyhawk Ruins
Stonehell
Dwimmermount
I also have the 4e Undermountain book and some sub-mega dungeons like 3e Caverns of Thracia & Dyson's Delves, both of which I use in my Wilderlands, and Lost City of Barakus which I ran for a campaign ca 2004-2006.
Of the full megadungeons I would say Dwimmermount & Stonehell are by far the best presented and the two that strongly call me to use them. Dwimmermount is more professionally presented and reads very well IMO (I have the advantage of not having backed the Kickstater so no frustrations) but requires a lot of buy-in, you pretty much have to use its own world/setting, myths, history etc. It doesn't give quite as much freedom to innovate as I like. Stonehell by contrast was easy to drop into my Wilderlands Barbarian Altanis setting with minimal tweaking. The presentation took a bit of grokking, especially the way each section has 2 intro pages before the map - I like maps first - but I find in play it runs beautifully well, enough so that I bought both print & pdf copies separately. For monsters it uses Labyrinth Lord as a base but with many, many new monsters (which I convert to 5e D&D, the system I'm using). The prison theme is not inherently very attractive so to attract adventurers I have a rumour the Mad Vizier's treasure is buried there, plus dreams of the extra-dimensional entity infesting the place - the Nixthisis, who sends out dreams attracting violent types to the dungeon... a bit meta. :D
Overall so far after running it for a few weeks (3 sessions tabletop, about half a dozen online) I am enjoying it a lot. Significantly, at the end of a Stonehell session I feel energised & eager for more, whereas running WotC & Paizo stuff I tend to feel drained and eager to finish up. That's about the biggest compliment I can give.
From http://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=14988&p=239051#p239051
3e Castle Blackmoor
Greyhawk Ruins
Stonehell
Dwimmermount
I also have the 4e Undermountain book and some sub-mega dungeons like 3e Caverns of Thracia & Dyson's Delves, both of which I use in my Wilderlands, and Lost City of Barakus which I ran for a campaign ca 2004-2006.
Of the full megadungeons I would say Dwimmermount & Stonehell are by far the best presented and the two that strongly call me to use them. Dwimmermount is more professionally presented and reads very well IMO (I have the advantage of not having backed the Kickstater so no frustrations) but requires a lot of buy-in, you pretty much have to use its own world/setting, myths, history etc. It doesn't give quite as much freedom to innovate as I like. Stonehell by contrast was easy to drop into my Wilderlands Barbarian Altanis setting with minimal tweaking. The presentation took a bit of grokking, especially the way each section has 2 intro pages before the map - I like maps first - but I find in play it runs beautifully well, enough so that I bought both print & pdf copies separately. For monsters it uses Labyrinth Lord as a base but with many, many new monsters (which I convert to 5e D&D, the system I'm using). The prison theme is not inherently very attractive so to attract adventurers I have a rumour the Mad Vizier's treasure is buried there, plus dreams of the extra-dimensional entity infesting the place - the Nixthisis, who sends out dreams attracting violent types to the dungeon... a bit meta. :D
Overall so far after running it for a few weeks (3 sessions tabletop, about half a dozen online) I am enjoying it a lot. Significantly, at the end of a Stonehell session I feel energised & eager for more, whereas running WotC & Paizo stuff I tend to feel drained and eager to finish up. That's about the biggest compliment I can give.
From http://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=14988&p=239051#p239051
Tuesday, 5 December 2017
Some good megadungeon links (and one bad one)
Benoist's discussion - http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?21636-Advice-on-building-a-megadungeon-and-a-campaign-around-it/page3
Hack & Slash basic megadungeon play and procedures - http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/basic-megadungeon-play-and-procedures.html
Creighton Broadhurst Megadungeon Design - http://www.creightonbroadhurst.com/dungeon-design-megadungeon-design/
These guys all grok the procedural, partially randomised, nature of good megadungeon exploratory play, where both GM and players are playing to discover what happens.
This guy doesn't grok it at all, and tries to shoehorn a linear campaign into a Megadungeon environment - http://theangrygm.com/category/megadungeon/ - as also seen in eg Wizards' 3e D&D "Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk"- good examples of what not to do at least long term. Setting a short linear adventure, like the Moria section of Lord of the Rings, in a largely unmapped megadungeon can work ok if the campaign focus is on something else. But a whole campaign of this control freak illusionism wastes the strengths of the megadungeon concept: the ability to provide limited but genuine choice/freedom.
DM David - http://dmdavid.com/tag/when-megadungeons-ruled-dungeons-dragons/
Edit: EOTB recommends http://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewforum.php?f=28
Some good discussion of this post at http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?38153-Some-good-megadungeon-links-(and-one-bad-one)
Hack & Slash basic megadungeon play and procedures - http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/basic-megadungeon-play-and-procedures.html
Creighton Broadhurst Megadungeon Design - http://www.creightonbroadhurst.com/dungeon-design-megadungeon-design/
These guys all grok the procedural, partially randomised, nature of good megadungeon exploratory play, where both GM and players are playing to discover what happens.
This guy doesn't grok it at all, and tries to shoehorn a linear campaign into a Megadungeon environment - http://theangrygm.com/category/megadungeon/ - as also seen in eg Wizards' 3e D&D "Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk"- good examples of what not to do at least long term. Setting a short linear adventure, like the Moria section of Lord of the Rings, in a largely unmapped megadungeon can work ok if the campaign focus is on something else. But a whole campaign of this control freak illusionism wastes the strengths of the megadungeon concept: the ability to provide limited but genuine choice/freedom.
DM David - http://dmdavid.com/tag/when-megadungeons-ruled-dungeons-dragons/
Edit: EOTB recommends http://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewforum.php?f=28
Some good discussion of this post at http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?38153-Some-good-megadungeon-links-(and-one-bad-one)
Monday, 4 December 2017
Falling in 5e
Re falling long distances in 5e - last night saw a third level dwarf walk away from a 100' fall. Hmm...
The damage is low compared to earlier editions, & for uninterrupted falls 50'+ I reckon I'm going to institute a house rule requiring a CON save or die, DC 1 per 10' to max 27 at terminal velocity. Bouncing off a shaft on way down (acrobatics or athletics) could negate that though - again DC 1 per 10' looks right.
The damage is low compared to earlier editions, & for uninterrupted falls 50'+ I reckon I'm going to institute a house rule requiring a CON save or die, DC 1 per 10' to max 27 at terminal velocity. Bouncing off a shaft on way down (acrobatics or athletics) could negate that though - again DC 1 per 10' looks right.
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