Placing Treasure

In the comments to yesterday’s post, regular commentor Jimmy asked:

“I’m bad at placing treasure. Any advice on that?”

You’re not alone, Jimmy. I’m bad at placing treasure too! I even wrote about it just a few months back:

“I also have a bad habit of being a great deal more generous with treasure than I ought to be, because I’m worried about keeping my players engaged in the adventure if they don’t feel suitably rewarded.”

It hasn’t been long since I wrote that, but if I do say so myself, I think I’ve improved a great deal. I’m sure many GMs would scoff at how wealthy I’ve allowed my players to become. But I no longer feel as though treasure “gets away from me.” A lot of different elements come together to support this, so I’ll go over them and hopefully some of what has helped me will help you.

Traditional Dungeon Crawling.

Like many young GMs, the dungeon crawl for which the game was named didn’t interest me when I began crafting adventures. Its only within the last year that I’ve reflected on my own gaming history, and realized that I’d avoided many of the fundamental experiences of D&D which are commonly considered “played out.”

My first real dungeon crawling experience was a mere 6 months ago when I began playing in Vaults of Pahvelorn. Since that experience, I’ve worked similar dungeons into my own games. Dungeons with fifty or a hundred rooms, each of which must be navigated slowly to avoid traps, and carefully examined for hints.

The traditional dungeon crawl is limiting in a good way. It reduced the game to its core elements: the players want treasure, and the environment wants to kill them. The rooms are puzzles where failure means death and success means gold. The obfuscation of heroism is torn away and the game’s foundations are laid bare.

There are many different kinds of adventures, and most of them can be fun. But having thoroughly experienced the game in its fundamental state, I now have a much better grasp for what players must do to earn their treasure.

Greater Rewards Require Greater Trials

It’s easy to get into the first room of the dungeon. Any treasure found there will be minor, if there’s any treasure to find at all. After all: it’s easy. Many adventurers have come this far before you, and would have carried off anything of value long ago. If you want to find some of the good treasure, you’ll need to make your way past deadly traps and merciless monsters which have scared off or killed the adventurers who came before you.

The really good treasure will be behind secret doors, and guarded by deadly monsters or traps.

Gold, Hidden in Non-Gold Form

When we think of hidden treasure, we think of secret alcoves, and gems buried in a pile of fireplace ash. But this is only the most obvious way of hiding treasure. A much better way is to hide treasure in plain sight, as books, fine clothing, land deeds, exotic animals, bags of spices, or any other number of possibilities.

Recognizing treasure is part of the game’s challenge. You can tell your players flat-out that they find 3 silk gowns when they open the dusty armoire. They may or may not realize they’re looking at 300 gold pieces worth of tailoring.

Encumbrance!

While I confess I still struggle with encumbrance in my games, it cannot be undervalued. The character’s income is limited by their carrying capacity. In a society where learning has largely been lost, the discovery of an ancient library deep underground could be worth more than a dragon’s hoard! But books are heavy. How many can each PC actually carry themselves?

Make the players think about whether they’d like to take multiple trips, or hire a crew to get it all out in one go. Make them wonder if the treasure will still be there if they turn their back on it for a few hours. These are interesting choices for the players to face, and go a long way towards maintaining a reasonable level of wealth for them.

Missed Treasure is Forever Lost

Let your players miss treasure, and never hint that they missed it. It may be difficult as fuck, and I’m not perfect about it, but I’ve found it to be an essential skill to practice. I take immense delight in hiding treasure as well as I can without making it downright impossible to find. (with a fair scattering of less difficult to find treasure to keep my players from getting discouraged).

Often, this means my players miss out on a really cool magical sword or badass piece of artwork that I was looking forward to them finding. But that’s okay, because you can always use that treasure again later. And when they do find some of the better hidden treasure, it’s exciting. Both for them, and you.

1d6 For Wasting Time

In keeping with oldschool rules, roll 1d6 once every 10 minutes of in-game time. If a 1 is rolled, then the players encounter a monster appropriate to the area they’re in. If that’s too much fighting for your game, bump the die up to 1d8 or 1d10. The important thing is that there is a penalty for wasting time. The players can search every 10′ square segment of wall in the entire dungeon for secret doors a dozen times over if they please. But they’re going to encounter a shit-ton of monsters while doing it.

Making time a resource which the players have to be careful about wasting, makes them more focused on their goals, and less likely to search for treasure by process of elimination. This means that more of your hidden treasure will stay hidden as noted by the point above. And while I’m never happy to see my players miss out on something cool, I would rather reward smart play than time wasting.

1d6 For Cleverness

Sometimes, while exploring a room looking for treasure, players will look in a place that the GM never even considered. And sometimes that hiding spot is so damned clever that the GM decides they’re going to remember it so they can use it in the future. When that happens, I roll 1d6. On a 6, I tell the player they find a small amount of treasure, despite the fact that I never placed any there.

The treasure they find is usually pretty minimal. A sack of 20 gold pieces or a small gemstone worth about that much.

Budget by Section

This is an idea I just thought of today, so I’ve not tried it, but it seems as though it would be helpful.

Divide your dungeon (or other adventuring area) into whatever sections seem natural. For most dungeons, a single level of the dungeon would probably be most appropriate. Determine what level you think your players ought to reach for completing that section of the dungeon. Look up how much gold the players should have at that point on the wealth-by-level table, then increase that value by 50% to account for the treasure the players probably won’t find.

The resulting gold-piece value should be the sum-total of all the treasure in that section.

Does anybody else have tips? I could still use some improvement myself!

EDIT: Generally speaking I prefer not to edit posts once they’ve gone up, but I’ve just remembered an entire section I had intended to add to this post, and completely forgot about. Apparently I didn’t add it to my notes!

Hoards are for Dragons

Sometimes its appropriate to make a big pile of treasure, or “Treasure Hoard.” A hoard will typically represent multiple types of treasure, and require a great feat of skill to obtain. Hoards should not be the default method of placing treasure. Most treasure should be found piece-by-piece. A coinpurse in this room, a valuable painting in the next. These smaller items are still exciting to find, and they provide context for the day that the players finally do discover a true hoard of treasure.

If every chest contains an assortment of gold, gems, and magic items; then such treasure is the player’s expectation, when it should be a coveted and exciting accomplishment.

OD&D-ish Stuff I've Been Doing

The scheduling here on Papers & Pencils is important to me. If I’m being honest, it’s probably unhealthy how much importance I place on my posting schedule. Anytime I miss a day it feels like the end of the world. I’ll avoid detailing my emotional pitfalls, but it can get bad. I’m also human, though, so there are times now and again when I simply don’t care about tabletop games. I mean…Dishonored is so good, and I’ve been re-reading the X-Wing series, and do I really have to write about wizards at the moment? What has often happened in the past is that I’ve solved this problem by making really shitty posts. Which actually solves nothing. I know the post is shitty, so I still feel bad about it, and the immense amount of time I spend stressing about that only prolongs my momentary disinterest in tabletop games.

I’m not announcing a hiatus or anything. Just offering an explanation. I don’t know if any of my readers pay attention to my schedule, or feel disappointed when I’ve failed to update on time. But I do know that in the past 15 days, I’ve missed 4 posts. At this point, I thought an explanation was warranted.

Moving on, I’d like to share some stuff I’ve been doing in the OD&D-ish game I’ve been running for my younger brother and one of his friends.

I call it OD&D-ish because I’m not very familiar with the OD&D rules, or with the way OD&D GMs go about things. My entire experience in that regard comes from flipping through the three “little brown books” (which I’ve found to be disorganized and nigh-incomprehensible in some sections), and from playing in Vaults of Pahvelorn. Anything I don’t understand, I’ve filled in with whatever seems to mesh with the spirit of the game, as judged by me at the time that I need to come up with it. If you thumb through my campaign pages for this game, you’ll find numerous sections where all I’ve written is “I’ll detail this when its needed.” It’s a disorganized way to run a game, but in my defense I thought the game would be a one-shot. And the kids keep coming back, so it can’t be all that terrible.

The design-as-you-go nature of the game has forced me to come up with some ideas I don’t know if I would have come up with otherwise, two of which in particular I’m happy with: Alchemy, and Trade Caravans.

Alchemy

Upon reaching second level, a magic user has achieved sufficient learning to attempt creating alchemical concoctions. This requires that the magic user have access to an alchemical laboratory, and the creation of each potion will require large investments of time and gold. Like spells, potions (and other alchemical products), have levels.

Each alchemical product requires a number of material components which must be purchased from the town herbalist, such as leaves, seeds, and nectars from plants all over the world. The cost of the components are [50gp * Potion Level] So a first level potion would cost 50gp to make, a 2nd level potion would require 100gp to make, and so forth.

Alchemical products also take time. The materials must be painstakingly prepared so as not to contaminate them, and and even once all the work is done, it can take days for the mixture to slowly, drop-by-drop produce enough of the liquid to create the desired effect even once. Each alchemical product requires 1 week per recipe level to complete.

Regarding recipes, you will need them before you can create a working potion. Like magic, alchemical knowledge is rare and difficult to come by. However, recipes are freely traded, and are normally much less expensive than spell scrolls. It’s also likely that you’ll find some recipes among treasure hordes!

It is possible to create a recipe yourself through research, but alchemical research can be an expensive and time consuming proposition! In addition to costing [250gp * Potion Level] in material components used for experimentation and failure, the process will require [1d6 + Potion Level] weeks to complete. If you have a potion to reverse-engineer, then you may reduce either the cost, or the time required by 20%. Having a magic user apprentice who is willing to assist you can reduce either the cost or time by an additional 20%. (In each case, you must pick only one of the two. If you have both a potion to reverse engineer, and an apprentice, then the two you select need not be the same).

If you do not have a potion which you are reverse engineering, Alchemical research will result in discovery of a random potion, determined by the GM.

Some alchemical products may be associated either with clerics, or magic users. For example, a healing potion will be associated with clerics. In that case, a Magic User may still create a healing potion, but the potion will be treated as though it is 1 level higher. So if a healing potion is a level 1 alchemical product, then a magic user who wishes to create one will treat it as a level 2 alchemical product, which costs 100 gp and takes 2 weeks to produce.

An example Alchemical recipe is Strength of the Bull. It’s a level 1 alchemical recipe for clerics and magic users. When consumed, it grants the person who drinks it immense strength for 1 minute. With it, the player can ignore most strength checks, lift heavy boulders, and even smash through walls. A punch from someone who has consumed a Bull’s Strength potion would be equivalent to 2d6 damage.
Bull’s Strength doesn’t make a person Superman. They couldn’t knock over a building or lift a sailing galley over their head, but their strength is superhuman none the less.

Trade Caravans

Like Vaults of Pahvelorn, all of the XP in my game comes from the players spending gold. It’s been amazing to watch just how instantaneously players internalize this fact, and become ravenous treasure hunters. It wasn’t long, though, before they’d spent all the money they wanted to spend on basic amenities, and started asking me what else they could spend their treasure on. I needed to come up with some items they could purchase which wouldn’t break my low-magic setting, but would also be interesting enough to the players that they’d feel compelled to spend piles of gold on it.

I immediately thought of Thracle’s Emporium, a shop in the town of Zorfath, which regularly sells oddities such as a miniature wyvern, Dragonbane arrows, or gems with the souls of ghosts trapped inside. The Emporium has often been the subject of discussion in the Vaults of Pahvalorn campaign, as we all scramble to find gold for whatever odd or end the shop has.

Since my game’s town, Haetrope, is a trading town on the edge of Elven territory, I decided that merchants traveling to and from the elven lands would serve the same role as Thracle’s Emporium, for my players. Every few days I come up with a bunch of random items, assign them to a caravan, and let my players know that new goods are available in town. Some of them have obvious uses, while others are simply highly valuable, and still others have uses which aren’t obvious at all. A few days after each caravan arrives in town, it leaves again. The system is pretty simple to pull off, since we manage the campaign online anyway, and everybody seems to be enjoying throwing their money at the various oddities which crop up.

As an example, here are the caravans currently stopped in town:

Marigold’s Caravan

8 finely crafted oaken chairs, engraved with symbols of nature = 100 gp / ea
1 finely crafted oaken table. Seats 8, engraved with symbols of nature = 1000 gp
3 masterwork elven padlocks = 65 gp / ea
A chest with a magical lock upon it, which no one has yet been able to open = 500 gp
A miniature bear, about the size of a cat. It is fully grown. = 750 gp

The Corvani Family Trading Caravan

The Longsword of an Ancient King. It does not appear to be magical, but was once wielded by an unknown hero. It is extremely ornate. = 1700 gp
Exhausted Wand, crafted by an elven wizard, this wand retains no magical powers. = 100 gp
A ballista = 600 gp
14 Ballista Bolts = 40gp/ea
8 potions of healing from the elven lands = 100 gp/ea
1 potion of Sight Through Walls = 200 gp
A block of the finest elven marble, large enough for a life sized statue = 1500 gp
12 pairs of silk, elven shoes = 60 gp / ea

Dade’s Caravan

A grand piano. Well crafted, though not ornate = 700 gp
12 Perisnia blosoms, potted in elvish soil = 30 gp / ea
A lightweight steel staff, topped with an owl holding a glass orb between its wings. Does not appear to be magical. = 1000 gp
3 books detailing the language of Ancient Common = 25 gp / ea
8 very fine elven dresses. Proportioned for an elvish frame = 100 gp / ea
20 yards of elvish silk = 50 gp / ea

In closing, you should totally play Dishonored. So good.

Merciless Monsters 11: Rotocula (Male)

The Rotocula is a sexually dimorphic creature which makes its home in mud flats. The adult forms of the male and female are so different that they have often been confused for completely different species. As such, they warrant separate monster entries.

The male of the species might be described as an oversized head mounted on a tripod of trunk-like legs. The average adult male stands nearly 11ft tall, with legs which can easily top 18 inches thick. The actual brain of the creature is quite small, allowing nearly all of the creatures organs to fit comfortably within its massive skull. This layer of protection makes the rotocula very difficult to harm.

The skin of the rotocula ranges from a earthy red, to brown, and is quite loose on the creature’s frame. Large folds of skin flop around on the creature’s body, making it appear as though it is perpetually melting. This “sloshing” look helps the rotocula appear to be pile of dirt, rather than a dangerous predator, while it waits for potential food to approach.

The most striking oddity of the Rotocula, and a feature shared by both genders, is their profoundly unusual feet. Rather than moving them up and down in a walking motion, or even gesticulating them to move as a snake does, the Rotocula rolls. Each leg ends in a massive, spherical mucus membrane with a core of solid bone.

Alzazi The Bloody Hand, a wizard who captured and dissected a number of the creatures, writes:

“These strange appendages–which this researcher hesitates to term ‘feet’–are not (as heretofore suspected) completely unique. Upon vivisection and further inspection, it cannot be ignored that these spheres closely resemble an organ found in our own bodies: the eye. Without the binding tassel of the optic nerve, it is allowed to roll freely, lending the creature a remarkable level of speed and silence of movement, while simultaneously denying it the ability to travel outside the flatlands of its home.” Alzazi the Bloody Hand, Archmage of the First Rank, from his seminal work, “Aberrant Anatomy”

Male Rotocula, in opposition to their female counterparts, spend most of their time at rest. They spread their legs flat on the ground, and wiggle them back and forth in the mud until they are mostly submerged. Once they are positioned, they close their eyes, and dig their snow into the earth, stick out their tongue and waiting for small vibrations to alert them to the presence of food–or females.

Male Rotocula

A flabby mass of mud is gliding towards you…very very quickly.

Rotocula; CR 10; [Aberration] [Mud Flats] [Active at 10-40 minute intervals, when food is near]

XP: 9,600
N Large Aberration
Init +4; Senses Perception +16, Tremorsense 100ft (Only when ‘burrowed.’)

DEFENSE

AC 20, touch 10, flat-footed 20 [10 + Dex(1) + Size(-1) + Natural(10)]
HP 196 (12 HD, 12d8 + 132)
DR 8/-
Fort +19 Ref +5 Will +4;

OFFENSE

Speed 100ft (10ft on non-flat ground)
Melee Slam + 15 (2d10 + 10) [+2d10 with Running Start]
Melee Bite + 6 (6d6 + 6)

STATISTICS

Str 22 Dex 12 Con 33 Int 2 Wis 11 Cha 7
BAB +12/7/2; CMB 18; CMD 29
Languages None
SQ Running Start

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Running Start(Ex) A male Rotocula’s slam attack is painful no matter what. But if the creature has enough space to reach its full speed, it can be even more devastating. If a male rotocula travels in a straight line for 50ft prior to making its slam attack, it deals an additional 2d10 damage.

ECOLOGY

Environment Mudflats. Very occasionally found in areas of plains.
Organization Solitary
Activity Cycle Active at 10-40 minute intervals, when food is near
Diet Any living creature of small size or larger; Natural Enemies Rotocula Females
Treasure None

Picture Thursday 10: Death from Below by Samwise Didier

I like warcraft. I like the RTS games, I like the MMORPG, and I like the style of art. I love the oversized shoulder pads, the ridiculous swords, and the pink haired gnomes. Because fantasy is make believe. I enjoy realistic swords and armor as much as the next grognard, but that doesn’t preclude me from enjoying the over-the-top style of Samwise as well.

What I particularly love about Samwise drawing style (and, by extension, the Blizzard art style he helped to define) is that even though his characters have grossly exaggerated muscles and preposterously bulky armor, I’m able to suspend my disbelief and become engrossed in the fictional reality of the drawing.

I particularly enjoy the energy in this piece. Running, swinging, cutting, falling. And at the center of it all a gnome with pink pigtails. Beautiful.

In Defense of Experience Points

Recently, I found myself perusing a thread on the Paizo forums. It’s not something I make a habit of, but I noticed they were sending me some traffic, so I thought I’d take a look to see why. The thread was addressing the issue of experience points, and asked the question: are they necessary for a good game? In the course of the discussion, my old Simple Experience Points piece was shared by a poster named Azaelas Fayth, which is pretty cool.

Scanning the thread, I was surprised to note that many, if not most of the responses replied in the negative. A large group of Pathfinder players seem to prefer running games without experience points. Instead, characters are granted levels either ‘every few sessions,’ or at story appropriate moments. I find this particularly interesting, because it’s what I did for such a long time, and I was never satisfied with it. In fact it was that very dissatisfaction which made me so excited when I encountered Paul’s simple experience points system, and drove me to adapt it for Pathfinder. To quote myself:

“Almost every game I’ve run as a GM has used a kind of ad hoc experience distribution system. I look up how many experience points are needed for the characters to reach the next level, and I give them whatever percentage of that number which I feel like they’ve earned. Most of the time I base that percentage on what speed of progression is optimal to keep the players in-step with events in my game world, rather than basing it off of challenges they have overcome.
At best, the method I’ve been using make experience points redundant. At worst, my method reduces player agency. It’s an arrangement I’ve never been happy with” -Me, 10/22/11

Some of the posters in this thread even went so far as to assert that experience points are an outmoded concept, kept alive by misguided tradition rather than actual usefulness. And, in fairness to that viewpoint, it’s not entirely wrong in this case. Pathfinder removed the experience point cost from all spells and rituals, and in doing so, removed the very last reason why experience point totals need to be so large. Calculating those large numbers is time consuming and frustrating, even with the improvements Pathfinder made to how experience points are calculated.

But is completely removing experience points from the game really the best solution?

To be fair once again, my impression from reading the thread is that most of those participating could be classified as “story gamers.” So my viewpoint may not be very relevant to the kind of game they’re trying to run. I’m not sure why a story gamer would choose a mechanically heavy system like Pathfinder to play with, but who am I to judge? I play oldschool, high-mortality games with Pathfinder. If anyone is the odd ball out, it’s me.

I’ve come to the understanding that in a role playing game, the means by which characters gain new levels, defines the game’s goal. The players are free to do as they choose in the game world, but they will not achieve greater status and power until they direct their attention towards whatever actions will help them level up. In most games, reaching a new level is a big step. One which takes a significant investment of time, to properly offset the significant boost in power and status the character will receive.

Once a player has set their sights on a goal, they may become frustrated if they cannot see progress towards that goal. I would consider this to be reasonable behavior, particularly in games where gaining a new level can require months of weekly game sessions to accomplish. As such, it is helpful if the player can more easily acquire a tangible ‘piece’ of a new level, and over time, watch those pieces accumulate, as they grow ever closer to the number of pieces required to reach a new level. In Pathfinder, those pieces are called experience points, and they are received primarily by slaying monsters. Thus monster slaying could be said to be the point of the game.

Interestingly, though, there’s nothing stopping a GM from redefining the goal of the game, and breaking each level into different sized pieces. To demonstrate what I mean, here are three examples of three completely different experience point systems, all of which I’ve used:

In my ToKiMo Pathfinder campaign, I reward players for overcoming challenges. Any challenge will do. Defeating monsters is one type of challenge my players enjoy. But they also enjoy the challenge of avoiding traps, or talking their way out of a tight spot. Both of those challenges also give experience points, and they do so at the same rate as combat. I also require only 30 experience points for each level in that game, and award either 1, 2, or 3 xp per challenge, depending on how difficult I determine it to be beforehand. As an added bonus, choosing a number between 1 and 3 is a lot easier than calculated thousands, or hundreds of thousands of XP. I can easily grant XP to my players immediately after the challenge is overcome, rather than waiting until after the session to do so.
In my Dungeons & Dragons & Little Brothers OD&D campaign, the point of the game is to find and recover treasure. To facilitate that, players gain 1 experience point for each 1 gold piece they spend. The effect this system has had on the game has been amazing! Players are always happy to find treasure, but I’ve never seen players so happy as they are in this game, where every silver candlestick or ancient vase brings them one step closer to their next level. Of all the experience point systems I’ve ever used, I think this is easily the most fun. Plus, it’s utterly simple, since I don’t need to do anything. All I do is tell the players how much gold they find, and they do the rest!
In my as yet unfinished Legend of Zelda Adventure System, there is no experience points, nor any other ‘piece’ of a level for players to collect. It a character wants to advance, they must seek out and destroy a great monster. If they can accomplish this feat, they immediately advance to the next level. Like the GP for XP idea, this requires no real work on the GM’s part.

As you can see, each of these three has a unique goal, and a unique ‘piece’ size. (Overcome challenges, recover gold, defeat great monsters / 30, thousands, and 1 respectively). When you and your group sit down to play a new game, it might be interesting to briefly ask: what do we want the goal of the game to be, and how can we represent that?

Pathfinder Class Analysis 2: Bard

Core Concept: It is a commonly held belief that bards are ridiculous. Even if made to be mechanically useful, it seems strange to some people that a busker would stand along side a master of arms or a powerful wizard. But in fact, the bard class has strong historical roots. Traveling minstrels existed, seeking out larger and more impressive stories to sing for lords and ladies, hoping to find a noble who would retain their services for awhile. And when work was slow, a traveling bard was apt to pick pockets or take up banditry until they could make enough coin to move on. If any class has the right to be an adventurer, it’s the bard.

Spells: The spells chosen for the bard are flavorful. I also approve of the fact that a bard must perform in order to cast their spells. I further think bards should have a touch of magic about them, so access to spells is appropriate. But only a touch of magic, mind you. More than any other class, I think bards should resemble rogues, but that’s not the case in Pathfinder. In Pathfinder, bards are basically mini-sorcerers. That doesn’t work for me.

Additionally, I find it a little distasteful that seven out of the eleven basic classes eventually gain access to a spell list they can cast from. Not only does it reduce the specialness of the casting classes, but it hints at a game which relies too heavily on magic to bring it into balance.

I think it would be best if spells were dropped entirely from the bard class. In their place, bards should gain the ability to the use of magical scrolls–arcane or divine. This allows the class to be a little bit magical, without giving them the innate access to magic which would dilute the caster classes. Most of the bard-only spells (such as Summon Instrument) could be kept as special abilities rather than spells.

Adding scrolls and special abilities doesn’t come close to making up for the loss of spells, though. The rest of that loss should be made up for in the performance ability, covered below.

Bardic Knowledge / Lore Master: My feelings are conflicted with regards to these two abilities, which is really just because by feelings are conflicted with regards to knowledge skills in general. But if the game is to have a knowledge skill, then these are interesting abilities, which make good sense. So I’ve no real qualms with them.

Performance: Performance is the bard’s most important ability, and of all of the abilities of all the classes, I think it just might be the one I like the least. Were I so inclined, I would completely rebuild the bard class from the ground up just to correct the many problems I have with performance. But right now I’m just pointing out things I don’t like, and brain storming thoughts on how they might be improved, so I’ll stick to that mission for now.

First, why is there a limit to the number of rounds per day a bard can perform? I have a difficult time wrapping my head around a minstrel who can only play for 48 seconds before becoming too exhausted to perform anymore throughout the day. I understand that this could be explained by saying that magical performances are a great deal more draining and can only be maintained for a short period of time, but I don’t really buy it. Wouldn’t it be better to design a performance ability which the bard could use for a longer amount of time? There’s no reason to make performance function identically to a barbarian’s rage or a cleric’s channeling ability.

Which brings me to an important point: standardization is not always good. There are many good things about creating standards. They help everyone communicate better, and specifically in the case of tabletop RPGs, they aide greatly in helping a GM remember and improvise the rules. Standardization is one of the great improvements I think we can ascribe to D&D 3rd edition. But it can be taken too far. Too often in D&D 3.x/Pathfinder, characters gain abilities which “function as the spell,” sometimes with minor adjustments. A number of the bardic performance abilities mimic spells in this manner, and it bugs me. A wizard wakes up each morning with nearly limitless options for which magical effects they will produce that day. Why should the wizard be just as good as the bard is when it comes to swaying a crowd? Should not the wizard’s limitless choices be countered by more specialized classes being able to do their jobs better than wizards can? A lot better?

Much like rage, Performance ought to be a much more dramatically powerful ability. In an ideal game, I think bards would need to seek out new songs and stories to enhance their performance abilities. When the character began their performance, they would not need to stop and start again to produce a different effect, but would instead be able to weave effects together into a single, moving performance. And those effects wouldn’t allow the bard to influence a person for 1 hour per level. It would make that person into a lifelong fan.

Obviously it’s very simple to make bold statements about how something ought to work, and it’s a very different thing to actually make it work that way. This is just what I think would make the class compelling.

Cantrips: Since this is the same for every class with the ability to cast spells, I’d rather hold off on discussing it until a primary caster, such as the cleric.

Versatile Performance: This ability really highlights the problems of the skill system. Lets say your character is an actor. Their profession, and indeed, many of their class abilities rely on changing their appearances, and convincing others that they believe in the fictional reality of the play. It would seem to follow that such characters would be good at disguises, and lying, would it not? But no! Not in D&D! In the game, players must wait until second level before they can apply their acting abilities towards other pursuits.

Obviously level 2 isn’t a very long wait, but the fact that this ability had to be included at all is just…sad.

Well-Versed: …meh. This is a filler ability. There’s really nothing much to say about it, save for the fact that it adds clutter-notes to the character sheet. Where in the world are you supposed to write “+4 on saving throws v. Bardic Performance effects.”

Jack-of-All-Trades: While you might not expect it given my feelings towards skills, I like this ability. It makes sense, it’s flavorful, and it’s not bad mechanics insofar as skills go. If I were to completely re-design Pathfinder’s skills system, I would likely keep this ability in a different form. Perhaps they would never have to roll in the Untrained – Difficult column?

Deadly Dungeons 4: The Wet Passage

The Wet Passage is a secret means of moving from one area of the dungeon to another. It can provide the players with much greater mobility than they would have otherwise, provided they are clever enough to discover and harness it. Depicted to the left is a wet passage room which can be accessed from four different dungeon locations.

When the players enter a room which connects to the wet passage room, it should be noted that a fountain is present. The actual construction of the fountain may vary. Some may be more ornate, or feature sculptures, while others may be quite simple, and appear to have a primarily functional use rather than a decorative one. All of the fountains will have a clear space at the bottom at least 3ft square. A fountain with a total diameter of 5ft could not have a statue mounted in the center of it, for example.

If the players choose to inspect the fountain, roll a die whose max number is equal to (or approximates) the total number of fountains which connect to the wet passage room. In the example shown here, 1d4 would be rolled. On a roll of 1, this fountain is currently the ‘active’ fountain. If the players look down into the fountain, they sill see a heavy iron grate. The grate is not fixed, and can be lifted aside by a character with average strength.

If a number higher than 1 is rolled, then the bottom of the fountain appears to be only stone with no obvious drainage. If dirt, or some other particulate substance is thrown into the water, the players will be able to see that the water is sucked into very faint seams at the bottom of the fountain. Moving the stone aside to access the aforementioned grate is not easy. The seams are much too small for a crowbar or even a sharper implement to be of use. The stone could be smashed with a heavy blow from a sledgehammer, though. You may wish to create some other mechanical means of opening the secret stone door, but none is included here.

Once the grate is exposed and moved aside, a 3′ x 3′ opening is visible in the bottom of the fountain, leading down into absolute darkness. It would be difficult to angle a lightsource to examine this area without the water dousing it. If the players are able to do that, they’ll see a passageway of hewn stone, which is very much unlike the rest of the dungeon’s construction (whatever that construction may be).

If the players attempt to swim into the secret caverns, they must be able to hold their breath the entire time. For the passages depicted, this should not be difficult for most characters. However, the other end of the passage way is only opened if the fountain’s passage was opened properly. If the players opted to smash the stone covering the grate, or force it open by some other means, then when they reach the other end of the underwater tunnel they will be confronted with a similar slab of stone. At this point, players should be required to make a constitution check to determine they can continue to hold their breath, or if they take 1hd worth of damage per round until they can reach oxygen.

Once inside, the wet passage room appears to be a natural cave with a ceiling about 10ft high, and water 3ft deep. In the center of the cave is a good sized patch of land. It’s a large piece of solid stone covered in mud, so it is no the most hospitable place to rest. Regardless, it is amply sized (at least 30′ x 30′) if the players would like to set up camp here. The islands only feature is a chest-height pedestal in the center, with a bronze bust of a regally dressed gentleman atop it. If the bust is lifted from the pedestal, the players can see that its base has a large, star-shaped protrusion which fits snugly into a mechanism on the pedestal. If the statue is placed back upon the pedestal, it can turn the mechanism. Each time the bust’s face is turned towards one of the secret doors, the pedestal clicks, and the underwater passageway opens. As soon as the bust is turned away, the passage closes again.

Picture Thursday 9: The Iron Orb of the Duergar by Scott Burdick

I had hoped to find a copy of this image without the Dungeon magazine logo, but unfortunately there were none available. In fact there were no high resolution images of this cover at all, and I had to scan in my own copy. Fortunately there’s not a lot of clutter, so I thought the image was still worthy of posting.

As I grow older, I find that I’m more drawn to painted artwork such as this piece by Scott Burdick, as opposed to more intricately detailed digital art in the style of Wayne Reynolds (who created the artistic style which Pathfinder uses in all of its books.) Which isn’t to say that Reynolds’ work isn’t remarkable, but I wonder if my mind doesn’t just interpret the abundance of detail as clutter, and ignore it. While here, there is a distinct lack of fine detail, my mind instead fills in the blanks. Take the woman’s face for example. Did you notice she doesn’t have one? I didn’t, until I spent several minutes examining the picture.

The painting has a lot going for it aside from simply style, too. I love the way so much space is given to the environment, while the characters occupy perhaps 25% of the space. The room doesn’t have a lot to look at within it, but you get a sense of the cavernous depths which these adventurers find themselves in. And, as always, I love depictions of faceless characters on an adventure. Fantasy art is filled with character portraits and remarkable creatures. It’s a little more rare to find scenes like this where the characters aren’t the focus–their adventure is.

Page by Page: Gary Gygax’s DMG Part 11

I apologize for my recent four day absence. My ladyfriend, who has been out of town for the last month, only just returned. I opted to spend some time with her without writing eating up my time. Back now, though!

This is the eleventh installment of my continuing series on the 1979 Dungeon Master’s Guide, written by Gary Gygax. This post begins with the section “Peasants, Serfs, and Slaves” on page 94, and continues through “Secret Doors” on page 97. My purpose is not to review the DMG, but to go through it as a modern gamer, learning about the roots of Dungeons and Dragons, and making note when I see something surprising or interesting, or something which could be adapted for a modern game.

You can read all posts in this series under the Gary Gygax’s DMG tag.

I’m doing some skipping around here. I’d like to address the sample dungeon and the dungeon advice here, and the example of play in part 12.

Level Key: While this is a perfectly functional key for the dungeon presented, I think Gygax misses an important opportunity here to talk about dungeon notation. Everybody knows dungeon maps are needed, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an official source discuss how to draw maps. It’s not a simple proposition! In fact it’s one that I’ve struggled with myself for many years, and have plans to write about in the future.

For example, how might one indicate that a room has multiple levels to it? Perhaps a balcony 7ft of the ground? Obviously it could be referenced in the room’s description, but I think it would be much better if it could be indicated visually. Some might suggest colored pencils, but many GMs (myself included) work on maps on-the-go, and would find the necessity of special tools inhibiting.

Even ignoring more unusual notations such as those, Gygax only provides 8 symbols here. While perusing a 1994 issue of Dungeon magazine, I found 22 symbols. Most of which where quite useful, such as barred door, locked door, archway, portcullis, window, and trap door in ceiling.

Wandering Monsters: I notice two things about this. First, the potential group sizes of these wandering monsters are huge. A first level party would have to keep on their toes to survive this sample dungeon’s many inhabitants. Second, and much more interesting, most wandering monsters (save for the vermin) list which room they are ‘from.’ I love this idea! If the goblin camp is in area 7, then why should the players continue to encounter hostile goblins after they’ve driven the rest of the camp out of area 7? A straggler or two perhaps, but their presence in the dungeon would quickly die off.

Map: In this map, Gygax has made a couple of decisions which I avoid. For one, there are numerous dead ends. I imagine the purpose of these is to trap players who are fleeing from groups of monsters. While I’m sure they’re effective, I confess I find them rather odd. It’s difficult for me to make logical sense in my mind of why a dead end might be there.

Though I suppose “collapsed passage” serves well enough.

The other oddity here, one which I’m much less fond of, is the trivial nature of most of the secret/concealed doors. When my players find a passage, I like to reward them with something new. That reward may be a room full of deadly monsters, but it won’t simply be another room they’ve explored already. Or at least not one which is nearby. On this map (particularly the passages between 4 & 5; and 36 & 37) I can imagine my players becoming frustrated. Who wants to open a secret passage, only to discover a the room you were in 10 minutes earlier?

Note that I’m not saying such secret passages are flat-out bad design. They can have strategic use, if nothing else. I do think, though, that they’re included in far too many maps, and probably should not be present multiple time in map designed to teach dungeon design to new DMs.

Monestary Cellars & Secret Crypts: Here again, I’d like to see a little more detail. The three room descriptions are nice, but they’re long and not very well organized for actually running a dungeon. Perhaps this is how Gygax noted his dungeons, in which case there’s nothing that could have been done. It’s not as though he could advise on a methodology he didn’t use. But I would have liked to see an explanation of how to make reference notes based on these longer form notes.

Movement and Searching: This information really should have been under “Time in the Dungeon” way back on page 38. It covers some important gaps in that information which I had to fill in myself when I first started to include time tracking in my games. Poor organization is a non-trivial problem for a book. Particularly one ostensibly for use as reference material.

Detection of Unusual Circumstances, Traps, And Hearing Noise: “The GM should tell players what they see, and let them do the rest” is advice I wish I had received when I was learning to GM from the D&D 3.5 books.

Doors: This strikes me as very strange, and I can only imagine I am missing something. Gygax notes that “as a rule of thumb, all doors are hard to open…” He suggests a roll with a 1/3 chance of success any time a character attempts to open a door. This seems quite silly to me, particularly since there’s nothing to stop the characters from rolling until they get a door open. Perhaps he meant that a roll should be required during combat, or other severely time-sensitive time?

Favorite Quotes from this Section

“Mocking their over-cautious behavior as near cowardice, rolling huge handfuls of dice and then telling them the results are negative, and statements to the effect that: “You detect nothing, and nothing has detected YOU so far–“, might suffice.” -Gary Gygax, DMG, Pg. 97