Way back in September I set out to write a big ol’ series about my old Dungeon Moon setting. I got as far as writing an introduction, and a bit about settlements before the site intrusion happened and I had to shut everything down. Now that we’re back, I’d like to pick up where I left off.

Characters earning experience points for the wealth they recover is hands down one of my favorite mechanics, but it’s a poor fit for Dungeon Moon. What you and I would consider “wealth” is commonplace there. Every human wears golden jewelry, every town is replete with marble statues. Without commodities to trade, no one values coins for anything other than their base metals, or maybe the art imprinted on them.

The real treasures to be recovered are simple things: food, clothing, books, pillows, wood, anything and everything that will make life a little better. So the question becomes: how does this translate into experience gain?

The most obvious solution would be some attempt to abstract it back into the comfortable XP for GP model. Each pillow is worth 100gp, and thereby is worth 100xp. While perhaps technically functional this approach wouldn’t create the impression I want. I don’t want players to nickle-and-dime their way to higher levels by selling things to their communities. I want to challenge players to really improve those communities. I want them to think about how to get enough pillows for everyone in town.

Throughout 2017 I playtested a ruleset designed by my friend John called “Into the Depths.”  Rather than characters incrementally gaining experience points to level, John wrote up a list of 20 generalized “great deeds,” which would grant characters half a level when they were accomplished. Ten of the deeds are repeatable (slay a famous monster, recover a priceless treasure, etc.), while the other ten only work a single time during the character’s career (obtain a noble title, swear allegiance to a powerful patron, etc).

I think something very similar could work for Dungeon Moon. It will take some tinkering and testing to get it exactly right, but this could work as a first draft. Obviously it draws heavily on John’s work.

On Dungeon Moon, Characters gain 1/2 of a level each time they…

1. Bring a new resource back to their community in sufficient quantities for every family to benefit.
2. Establish a safe path between their community and a trading partner or other worthy location.
   
3. Help an endangered community migrate to a new and safer home.
4. Solve a problem which posed a significant threat to a community.
5. Unlock one of the secrets of Dungeon Moon which will make the lives of everyone who knows it easier or safer.
6. Truthfully take a new community under their protection.
7. Significantly alter a community’s existing social or political structure without destroying or constantly policing that community.
   
8. Behold an incredible sight never to be seen again. (e.g. the birth of a demigod).
   
9. Slay a famous monster (e.g. dragon or demigod)
   
10. Make something lasting (e.g. write a book, build a castle, found a new community, establish a civil service, create a magical artifact.)
    

While it lacks the simple elegance of 1 xp for 1 gp, I do think this will push the gameplay in more interesting directions.

A new beginning!

After more than two months offline, I’m ready to get back to work making cool game shit. I’m sure a lot of folks have forgotten all about me by now, so I’d appreciate anything you all can do to get the word out that Papers & Pencils is up and running again. Add me to your blog roll, share a favorite post on social media, write a blog entry about how I’m your greatest inspiration. Before we go full-bore back into game stuff, though, let’s recap the last two months.

To start at the beginning: I fell for a phishing scam. This is a humiliating thing to admit, but it’s what happened. In my defense it was more sophisticated than any other phishing email I’ve ever received. Even once I started to suspect that the emails may have been the source of the hack, it took an IT professional friend of mine a good long while to confirm that the emails weren’t legitimate. 

To my knowledge, no visitor to Papers & Pencils was exposed to anything malicious. The intruders seem mostly to have been interested in using hidden pages on my site to do some skeevy SEO for various Chinese companies. I wrote a whole thing about the experience, so you can check that out if you’re interested.

In a way, needing to take the site down was a mixed blessing. The only reason I switched to that Black/White/Green layout in the first place was because of a technical problem with the site’s original layout that I couldn’t figure out how to fix. I was never very fond of that look. Being forced to rebuild the site from the ground up gave me an opportunity to do some stuff that I’ve been wanting to do for ages. How do you like the new color scheme? It is my favorite thing. 

I also used this opportunity to add some new sections to the site. Free Downloads and Index were both something I ought to have added ages ago. I’m going to make a real effort to keep both of them updated and growing in the future. What I’m most excited about is the Community Resources page. All of this is pretty basic here to start with. I didn’t want to keep the site down for longer than necessary, but I’m eager to improve all of them over time. If anyone has any suggestions for something that ought to be there, but isn’t, I’m all ears!

Restoring the site has not been without its troubles. My primary backup software failed me (another experience I wrote about while the site was down), so I’ve been needing to restore everything by hand. The work is tedious and time consuming. It’s the biggest reason the site has been down for as long as it has. Thankfully, as I write this, everything back through 2015 should be fully restored, which covers everything worth reading. (Take a look at how ugly the posts from 2012 currently are if you want to see how bad it was before!) In the coming months I’ll keep at it, restoring a few posts at a time until the full archive is corrected.

These past few months for me have been one of those periods where everything in life seems to be conspiring to go wrong simultaneously. Not only was my site hacked, not only did I get screwed by scammy backup software, but I had to deal with this during the most exhausting season of work my day job has. And one of my most cherished and long-lasting friendships devolved into a bitter enmity that I don’t expect will ever be overcome. And I discovered I have acid reflux disease, requiring that I alter my diet to avoid debilitating nausea. And I bought a brand new shirt that I really loved which got ruined on the very first day because a pen leaked and spilled ink all over it.

I’m not complaining. Really, I’m not. All things considered, I’m happy with my life and where it’s headed. I just mean to say that the last couple months have really divided my attention more than I was able to keep up with.

Oh yeah, and FUCKIN’ GOOGLE+ IS SHUTTING DOWN! Is it wrong that this was the most personally traumatic of everything that has happened in the last two months? It’s going to be devastating for the community we’ve built there. This is another thing I wrote about while the site was down. (That’s the last thing, though. You’re all caught up.)

It’s been a heck of a few months, lemme tell ya. But we’ve got a new site, with a new look, ready to face a new world. I’m gonna get back into writing those Dungeon Moon posts I left off with in September, and then I’ve got a few ideas about what I’d like to do next!

I am a wizard. 

And I’m gonna do it.