Category: Being a Referee

Flux Space in Dungeons

Before there was On a Red World Alone, there was Dungeon Moon. I spent hundreds of hours working on on that game, and to this day I love it as much as anything I’ve ever done. For years, friends have been gently pestering me to get it written up and published, which I would like to do someday. The only problem is that Dungeon Moon was an unplayable mess.

My whole approach was based around striving towards this false ideal of a fully realized megadungeon. Even the least important bits of space beneath the flagstone surface of the moon had multi-paragraphs long descriptions. “It’s a kitchen” was never good enough for me. I had to figure out if there was something special about the pots and pans, or if maybe there was a secret passage that led to a trapped treasure vault.

Likewise, the map was as much a labyrinth for the referee as it was for the players. I spread it across a stack of graph paper a quarter in thick, with alphanumeric codes written on the corner of each page to identify which “column” and “level” it depicted. More than once, a single room had to be spread across two pages just to maintain the geometry of the thing.

All for what? Despite my extensive prep work, a group of adventurers could walk off the edge of the map within an hour if they made the right choices. And as bad as that sounds, it would probably make the game better. If the players are off the map, the referee would have to improvise, and whatever they come up with in the moment has gotta be better than pausing for 5 minutes at every door to cross-reference maps and read room descriptions.

I certainly seem to have made it work back in the day. (People don’t show up every week to play in a game that they hate). But it could have been better, and if nothing else, the excessive notes killed my own enjoyment. It was murder, trying to keep up with the pace I had set for myself. If I’m ever going to run it again, Dungeon Moon needs to go easier on the referee.

It’s not just a matter of drawing simpler maps and writing shorter room descriptions, though. The problem of scale is inherent to the setting: its a dungeon which literally fills the entire internal structure of a moon. Constantly branching pathways and infinite expandability are built into the premise. A more manageable size would ruin the setting just as surely as my bad notes did.

Yes, dungeon moon needs shorter, table-ready notes, and a map that doesn’t have to be laid out across the kitchen floor to be viewed properly. But it also needs to feel huge and interconnected.

Recently, I was puzzling over this problem, and recalled a conversation from years ago. I must have been complaining about the issue, because  Gus L. told me I should try running Dungeon Moon as a point crawl. At the time, I kinda blew the idea off, because I didn’t want to waste all the work I’d already done on my maps, but with a few years of distance, the idea is way more appealing. Sorry for blowing you off, Gus. You were right.

In a point crawl, the referee maps a wilderness environment as a series of locations, and paths between them. The players don’t just wander straight towards their objectives, instead following roads, or deer paths, or whatever else they can find. At intersections, (the titular “points,”) they come upon something interesting. They can choose to engage with what they found, or continue on past it to the next path.

Flux Space is a way of doing the same thing for dungeons. Megadungeon feel without megadungeon effort. The big difference, though, is that the paths aren’t just direct connections between points. They’re a series of corridors and rooms just like everywhere else, but they’ve been abstracted to keep the game moving and to make the referee’s job easier.

Like a point crawl, there are two basic building blocks here: Locations, and Flux Space. The locations work the same as any dungeon: there’s a map, and there are notes which describe the map’s locations.

To keep things manageable, a single location should be able to fit on a single sheet of graph paper. Locations also should not directly connect to other locations. Some exceptions can be made for areas that play with vertical space, or for secret shortcuts to other locations. But, for the most part, players should need to go through some Flux to reach a new location.

So what is Flux Space? It’s an abstracted section of the dungeon that exists to connect locations together. It’s mostly hallways and empty rooms, without any specific layout. Each section of Flux has three elements: a description, a size, and an encounter table.

The description is a vague idea of appearance, which remains consistent throughout. Something like “Worked stone,” “Oozing walls,” or “filled with garbage.” This gives each section of Flux a distinct personality, which the referee can use anytime they need to improvise some specifics for it.

The size of a section of Flux Space is just a number. In order to pass through to the next location, players will need to roll that number of encounter checks. Once they have, the referee randomly determines which of the connected locations the players emerge out into. Usually, there shouldn’t be any chance for players to wind up back at the location they started from. Optionally, though, that could happen if the players roll a “lost” result on their encounter die.

The encounter table for a Flux is like any encounter table. It has some locations on it, some wandering monsters, and probably some creatures from its connected locations. (If the Hall of the Gnomes is connected to a Flux, that flux will have some gnomes wandering around in it).

Once a group has encountered everything on the encounter table, that space is considered “mapped.” Players can move through mapped fluxes with only a single encounter roll, and may choose which of the attached locations they emerge into.

The overall dungeon is depicted as a sort of spiderwebbing flowchart, showing how all the locations and fluxes connect with each other. Hopefully you can do a better job of coming up with reference codes than I did in the example above.

As a final note, I want to make clear that when I say Flux Space is ‘mostly empty,’ I do not mean that literally. What I mean is that it’s mostly devoid of tricks, traps, monsters, or treasure. There may be bedrooms, or gymnasiums, or warehouses, but none of it is valuable, or interesting, or trying to kill the players. (Unless it’s on the encounter table, of course).

So if your players ask about where they are and what they see, don’t tell them it’s empty. It’s not empty. It’s just boring compared to moving on to other locations.

(Edit, Aug 4, 2021): I later posted an example of this system in action called “The Cozy Catacombs,” which further illustrates the concepts outlined here.

The Haven Turn

I don’t really follow D&D anymore.

I don’t see the point. “Dungeons & Dragons” is just a name. Intellectual property owned by Hasbro Incorporated. Fifth edition seems to have come out mostly fine, but why would I ever settle for ‘mostly fine’ when the OSR is putting out phenomenal work faster than I can keep up with?

As such, everything I know about D&D’s recently released downtime rules is from reading what Courtney wrote about them. And not even all of that. Some of the options are so boring that I couldn’t even read through a description of them written by an interesting writer. Why would anybody even bother writing something if it wasn’t going to be interesting to play?

In my games, players lust after their next opportunity to take downtime actions. I would even venture to say that time has become the most coveted reward in ORWA, more than money or magic items. So lets talk about the Haven Turn.

If you’re a regular reader of Papers & Pencils, the term should be familiar to you. I mention it pretty frequently, but have never actually taken the time to discuss the concept in depth. After all, it’s not really my idea. Most of my experience with it comes from being a player in Courtney Campbell’s and John Bell‘s games, and the term was originated by Brendan Strejcek. But, as with many things, after using it for years I’ve tinkered with it to the point that seems worth expressing the idea in my own terms.

Haven turns are part of the action economy. There are:

  • 6 second Rounds for combat.
  • 10 minute Turns for exploration
  • 2 hour Watches for wilderness travel
  • 1 month Haven Turns for downtime actions.

Haven turns occur anytime the players return to some secure home-base after an adventure, usually a town, or player-owned citadel. The turns don’t actually last one month, they just sorta “round out” the month to some unspecified degree. So, if the players adventure in May, then return home for a haven turn, their next game will take place in June, regardless of whether the previous adventure lasted an hour, or a week.

Sometimes, if an adventure runs long, players may be able to take more than one haven turn at a time. Particularly trying expeditions, after all, will require more than the average amount of rest to recover from. For every 2 sessions that an adventure lasts, (rounded up), the players may take 1 haven turn without adverse consequences.

So, if the party takes 1 or 2 sessions to complete an adventure, they only get 1 haven turn–and that’s the median I usually aim for. But, if it takes 3 or 4 sessions, they get 2 haven turns. If it takes 5 or 6 they get 3, and so on. This allows me to occasionally throw big, epic, 10-session adventures at my players, without making them feel frustrated about all their delayed haven-turn plans.

Generally speaking, I’d prefer if players didn’t take more than the prescribed number of Haven Turns. After all, downtime action may be fun, but it’s not really the point of the game.

That being said, my players have agency. If they want to do a thing, they can do it, and as far as I’m concerned I have no right to try and stop them. However, taking more than the prescribed number of haven turns means that person is stepping back from the world for a bit. They’re focusing on their own stuff, and letting events pass them by. The world is going to move on without them.

If players take more than the prescribed number of haven turns, then when they get back, they’re going to discover that things have changed to their detriment. The referee has free reign in this, but the situation should be more severe the longer the players have been absent.

Perhaps some of the player’s contacts have died, or moved away. Maybe the players will discover that something they wanted to do has been done by someone else. In more severe cases, the whole campaign could be upset, with the player’s ultimate goals having become more difficult, or even impossible to achieve.

So that’s when haven turns happen, but what can you do with them? What is their purpose?

Like most other units of time in the action economy, two things happen each haven turn. First, the players choose how they want to use the time. Second, an encounter die is rolled.

Haven Turn Actions

Like any combat round, exploration turn, or watch, players can choose to do anything they want with a haven turn, and I will try to resolve it to the best of my ability. My players have used their haven turns to do things like build up their relationships with NPCs, or investigate mysteries they’re curious about.

In these cases, we assume the player spends the whole haven turn pursuing that goal. While planning for the next session, I come up with some appropriate results for their effort. When we meet to play again, I’ll tell the player what happened, and perhaps ask them to make any decisions or rolls I deemed appropriate. This is a helpful time for players to pursue any deeply personal goals that the rest of the party doesn’t want to deal with.

But, also similar to the other denominations of the action economy, there are codified actions which require a haven turn to complete. The most notable of these is Training, which by itself makes the haven turn one of the more beloved parts of my game. I’ve written a whole post on the concept, but I cannot overemphasize how useful training is.

It gives the players two disassociated tracks for advancement. On the one hand they have their class; a simple niche that they lock themselves into at first level. Class advances at a slow, steady pace, and requires a minimal amount of decision making, while also providing the lion’s share of the player’s options in play.

On the other hand, there’s training, a completely optional second track. Training has to be weighed against other uses of your money and your time. When players do pursue training, they make short term commitments in exchange for a little something extra, that their class might not normally get.

You’ve got the fun of character customization, and the satisfaction of earning something. But you free the player from a single advancement track, and in the process, avoid the nightmare of the over-complicated level up procedure. Plus, the choices to train is more interesting this way, because it is incomparable. You’re not choosing which skills to put skill points into; you’re choosing between raising a skill, raising an ability score, or saving that money for the next curio shop you randomly encounter.

Other codified haven turn actions include:

  • Carousing, where players can earn extra experience points by throwing their money down the drain.
  • Magic Users can create a new spell, or discovering a new magic word, using the Magic Words system.
  • Magic Users can seek out a new magic wand.
  • Clerics can pray for a new spell using the Glory from God system.
  • Fighters can spend time drilling with their armies.
  • Characters with the Alchemy skill can make potions.
  • Characters with the Technology skill can repair broken tech.
  • Characters with the Engineering skill can construct vehicles, siege equipment, etc,
  • Players can recover from debilitating injuries such as broken legs. (I always have players return to max HP over a Haven Turn, but if they had a particularly severe injury, like a broken leg, they must spend their whole turn convalescing.)
  • Come back from the dead as a cyborg.

Basically, haven turns are where the players can do anything they should be able to do, but which I don’t want them to do mid-session.

Haven Turn Encounters

As I’ve said before, D&D is a game about limited resources, and how the players choose to use them. Time is probably the single most important resource. Players must understand that whenever they use a unit of time, it’s possible for something bad to happen. And so, they will not become frivolous with the actions they choose to take.

For each Haven Turn, roll 1d6:

  1. Complication
  2. Complication & Petitioner
  3. Petitioner
  4. Alleviation
  5. Gun Auction
  6. Gun Auction

Gun Auctions are something for my ORWA game. Rolling this indicates that someone has put up a gun for sale, and the players have a chance to buy it. If they don’t, then it’ll be purchased by someone else, and probably be lost to them forever.

I’ve got a little table of gun ideas that I roll on whenever this comes up. Then I write up stats for the new gun, and present it (along with a price) at the start of the next game session.

Alleviation: Some complications are ongoing issues, which only end when an Alleviation is rolled.

If there are multiple issues requiring Alleviation, only one can be resolved at a time. Which one is taken care of should be randomly determined.

Of course, anything which calls for an Alleviation can also be ended by direct player action, if the players choose to pursue it.

Petitioners are something I recently added, since my players have established themselves as a regional power. It makes sense that people are going to start showing up to ask for help.

For each petitioner, I roll on a weighted table that determines which faction they’re from. Then I roll on the table below to get a general idea of why they approached the players. From there, I use my referee powers to whip up an NPC with more specific needs.

  1. An individual, seeking sanctuary from a bad situation.
  2. An individual, seeking aide in overcoming a bad situation.
  3. An individual, bringing the party information in hopes of a reward.
  4. An official of some small group, seeking sanctuary.
  5. An official of some small group, seeking the aide in overcoming a bad situation.
  6. An official of some large group, looking to hire the party

The petitioner will appear at the start of the next session, and the party is free to respond however they choose. Many times the issue can be solved trivially: “sure, you can live here.” In other cases, the petitioner may spark the party’s interest, and they may become deeply involved.

Complications are shifts in the world around the players, and may include threats to the player’s holdings or interests.

The first 10 of these are all localized issues. For each, I would roll on my weighted table of factions to determine where the issue occurred.

The specifics of each complication are left intentionally vague. A natural disaster may be a minor thing, or it may be a cataclysmic event. It all depends on what the referee thinks would be interesting.

  1. A natural disaster strikes. Randomly determine, or choose a disaster as appropriate: Fire, Earthquake, Tornado, Flood, Landslide, Sinkhole, Volcano, Blizzard, Tsunami, Hurricane, Meteor.
  2. A famine or drought begins. It lasts until an alleviation is rolled.
  3. A plague breaks out, the particulars of which are left to the referee. It lasts until an alleviation is rolled.
  4. A major figure is assassinated.
  5. A whole series of murders take place. They last until an alleviation is rolled.
  6. War breaks out between a faction, and one of its neighbors. Each month until an alleviation is rolled, both sides roll a d6. Whichever side rolls higher took some of their neighbor’s territory, commensurate with the difference in the size of the rolls. (So if a 1 and a 6 are rolled, the gains would be large. If a 1 and a 2 are rolled, the gains would be small).
  7. An insurrection erupts, making a territory unstable, and threatening to overthrow the existing power structure. This lasts until an alleviation is rolled. If it is not alleviated within 1 year, the insurrection will be successful.
  8. A monster begins to terrorize the area, and cannot be stopped. This lasts until an alleviation is rolled.
  9. Two factions announce an alliance with one another.
  10. News of a major scandal breaks.
  11. Reroll, using a d10. That complication is so widespread, it affects every territory in the dome.
  12. A major religious event occurs for a randomly determined religion.
  13. A new faction emerges, and carves out a small space for itself on the map. It may be a group the players have interacted with before, something entirely new, or even something which has technically existed for awhile but which was secret up until now.
  14. A major discovery is made, and becomes widely known: perhaps a new technology is developed, perhaps a new race is encountered, or a conspiracy is uncovered.
  15. A prophecy begins making its way around around. Nobody is quite sure how to interpret it, but everyone is certain that it’s important.
  16. Reroll, using a d10. That complication occurs within the player’s own domain. (Which is too small to be included on the general list)
  17. Randomly determine one of the player’s investments. It suffers a major setback, requiring it either to be abandoned, or rescued with an influx of funds.
  18. Legal claims are brought against the player characters.
  19. The player characters are publicly slandered.
  20. An ally of player characters dies.

Was that totally the best post about D&D you’ve ever read? Probably. If so, maybe you should drop a dollar in my Patreon box! That would be an appropriate way to pay me deference for totally blowing your mind the way I just did.

Encumbrance in Online Games

Encumbrance is a pain in the ass.

Tracking it requires a referee-level attention to detail, from a player.

Which isn’t a slam against players; it’s just the reality of how I expect those two roles to be approached. When I sit down to referee, I know that I need to keep a ton of information straight in my head. But when I sit down to play, I’m looking for a more casual experience. Tracking encumbrance requires more effort than I want to invest.

Encumbrance is also necessary.

In many ways, D&D is a game about limited resources and how the players choose to spend them. Hit points are a resource that determines how much combat the players can endure. Time is a resource that requires players to be selective about their actions. And in a game about dungeon crawling, encumbrance determines both how much equipment you can take into the dungeon (which serve as a kind of arsenal of potential solutions to problems), and it determines how much treasure you can carry out of the dungeon.

While discussing this issue with the erudite Frotz Self the other day, he struck upon a solution: we should just use a Google Docs spreadsheet. It seemed like such an elegant idea that I immediately set one up for my ORWA campaign. We’ve been using it for a few weeks now, and I’m pleased to report that it’s working phenomenally.  Here’s what ours looks like:

Before moving on, I should explain what you’re seeing a bit. ORWA’s got an odd encumbrance system, which is currently undergoing some tinkering. At the core, we’re using LotFP encumbrance, where each item goes on a line, and each group of lines makes up one “encumbrance point.” We’re also using the LotFP playtest variant where each character’s Strength score determines how many lines make up one group. Furthermore, I’m experimenting with an armor system where players can wear up to 3 pieces of armor, with each one being only a single encumbering item.

Also, Lugud’s encumbrance looks weird because he recently died, and the players took all his good stuff.

Like I said, my system is a little disorganized at the moment. But, the shared spreadsheet method has helped clear things up immensely, and should work regardless of what specific rules you’re using.

Previously, the encumbrance system was a set of abstract rules that the players had to understand and apply themselves. Here, I’ve basically done all the heavy rules lifting for them, and all they have to do is plug their items into the slots provided.

You could say that a character sheet would accomplish the same thing, but in an online game, character sheets can be a real hassle. Not every player will have easy access to a printer, and even if they do, a printed sheet can only be used by them. If they have a question, they can’t show the referee what they’re looking at unless they’ve got a fairly high quality webcam. Plus, even in meatspace games, the constant need to write & erase every time an item is picked up or consumed can be frustrating in the extreme.

Allowing a character’s current inventory to be easily shared is another huge benefit of this method. It helps not only me, but every member of the party.

I hadn’t anticipated this, but since we started using this system players are much more likely to ask me questions. It makes sense though, right? When I’m a player, and I’m wondering “is each torch encumbering, or should I bundle them? How big is a bundle?” I may feel like it would be an imposition on the game for me to ask about such a trivial thing. Often, I’ll just make a judgement call as a player, and go with that.

But, if we’re all looking at the same document, there’s more pressure to be accurate and consistent. The first session we used this method, there was a good 30 minute discussion about basic encumbrance stuff that hasn’t changed since we first started playing. Obviously it wasn’t the most riveting 30 minutes of play we’ve ever had, but once we did that, everyone was on the same page, and we were able to move forward with, I think, a more meaningful campaign.

It also helps the rest of the party, because now everyone knows what equipment is ‘in play.’ If player X comes up with an idea that would require a certain tool they don’t have, they can just look at the sheet to see if player Y has the tool. My players have started coordinating their inventories because of this, which has cut down on pointless redundancies (“We don’t need 3 crowbars!”).

The spreadsheet also makes the task of separating a character’s inventory from their possessions feel like less of a nuisance. If a player has collected 30 different potions, which are all written down on a list, it may seem kinda bothersome to re-write a smaller list which contains only the potions currently being carried. Yeah it’s cheating, but it’s cheating out of boredom, rather than cheating out of an attempt to gain advantage.

Using a shared spreadsheet forces players to put in that ounce of extra effort that all of us are guilty of avoiding from time to time.

Lastly, now that encumbrance is running so smoothly, I’m excited to introduce some new complexities.

Which may sound counter-intuitive: I just succeeded in making something simple, why would I want to mess that up? Well, the issue with encumbrance before was that it was unpleasant to interact with it. I had my players track it to the best of their ability, but I knew it wasn’t really working properly, so I avoided poking at it.

But now, I can poke to my heart’s content. I could attack the players with monsters that steal a random item, or introduce a vendor who sells expensive backpacks that allow characters to carry more than they normally could. The more firmly established structure that the spreadsheet provides makes it easier, and even fun, to tinker.

Honestly, my only problem at this point is that I don’t have a method of running encumbrance this effectively around a real table.

Was this helpful to you? Then you should probably put a dollar in my Patreon before I starve to death and die and can’t write useful things for you anymore. =D

Investments, Citadels, and Domains

As players level up, the play of the game starts to shift, allowing them to engage with the world on a higher level. They start as peons at the mercy of their environment, but through the acquisition of wealth, social connections, and personal power, they become the sharpers of that environment.

I like this part of the game. What I don’t like is when players are expected to micromanage their world-shaping endeavors to the point that it completely consumes normal play. I sincerely do not care what color the rugs in the party’s castle are, or at what rate they’re taxing their peasants. I want to keep things simple and abstracted, so that the game can continue more or less unobstructed by spreadsheets.

Part of my preference for abstraction is a distaste for periodic money, no matter which way it’s flowing. I don’t like forcing my players to pay some set amount on a regular schedule to represent their lifestyle, or their investments. I’ve been a player. I find that shit boring, and difficult to keep track of. In the same vein, I don’t like my players to have a regular income, from something like taxes on their own lands. I prefer to maintain more control over the inflow of cash to my game’s economy.

With all that in mind, I’ve broken the endeavors of high level play down into 3 subsystems: Investment, Construction, and Domains.

Investments

If a player wishes to create an institution or business, they just need to describe it to the referee. Then, based on that description, the referee will determine some boons which may result from getting this venture off the ground. Each business has 3 potential boons, tied to different levels of funding.

The three levels cost 4,000, 10,000, and 25,000, using whatever the base currency is in your game. (For the purposes of this system, every venture costs the same). Those prices may seem high, but they are meant to include both the costs of initially establishing & furnishing the business, as well as the monthly operating costs for as long as it takes the project to become self-sustaining.

The boons can be anything that makes sense based on the type of business. Alex Chalk, who originated this idea, suggested that investing in an Inn might allow players to create new characters above 1st level. Putting money into a wizard’s tower might increase the efficacy of the potions she sells. Investing in a silver mine could allow characters to get their weapons silvered and re-silvered for free. And so on, and so forth.

If players wish, they may upgrade to a higher level of investment at any time by paying the difference between the level they’re at, and the one they wish to reach.

Some Haven Turn complications may require players to take action in order to maintain their businesses. Perhaps there was a fire, or other disaster which requires the business be rebuilt. Perhaps some dastardly NPC is attempting a hostile takeover of the business using some legal trickery. Most such problems can be taken care of by immediately paying 1/2 of the value of your current investment level.

Note that while the default assumption of the system is that the players propose new ventures to the referee, there’s no reason why the referee can’t make proposals of their own. If the players have a reputation for being wealthy, NPC businessmen looking to kickstart their own projects might show up to make a pitch now and then.

Note also that I allow players to use the traditional LotFP investment rules if they wish. (Page 52 & 53 of Rules & Magic). However, funds invested that way do not provide any boons, just as funds invested for boons do not accrue interest.

Here are some sample investments, taken from my ORWA campaign:

Don Harper’s Mutant Hospital

A free clinic which specializes in treating the many peculiar discomforts and maladies that afflict mutants. They cannot cure mutation, but if you’ve got stubby arms, they’ll help you with a prosthetic. And if you’ve got a swollen gland, they’ll schedule regular drainings for it.

  • Level 1: Mutants who use the hospital have a +1 reaction to the party. Mutants encountered in the wild have a 20% chance of having used it.
  • Level 2: PC and Hireling mutants get the best treatment available. They add +1 to their maximum hit points for each level.  Also, mutants encountered in the wild have a 30% chance of having used the hospital.
  • Level 3: The Hospital’s surgeons can reverse One mutation, per mutant, per lifetime. Also, mutants encountered in the wild have a 40% chance of having used the hospital.

Nrrk’s Writing and Propaganda

A writer who chronicles the party’s many adventures, always presenting them in the most flattering light possible. These leaflets are then distributed as a free periodical throughout the Dome.

  • Level 1: The party has a reputation for getting their jobs done, and doing them with style. If they mention their quasi-celebrity status while negotiating pay for a job, they can get an automatic 10% increase in the amount they would be paid.
  • Level 2: If the party does something they are worried will reflect poorly on them, they can cover it up. This only allows them to obfuscate a single action per session, but will not throw off any determined investigation. Instead, using this option will confuse the general public. Nobody will be quite sure what the facts are, and thus no united effort against the party will be able to form.
  • Level 3: The party gets a +1 to their initial reaction roll with anyone who lives on the surface, is literate, and doesn’t have some reason to hate them. For each individual, there is a 50% chance that they’re literate.

Don Harper’s Fun Zone – Front of House

A place full of pinball, arcade machines, and other fun distractions. Also has an adult section with exotic dancer and drugs.

  • Uses the RAW LotFP investment rules.
  • Investment level is RISKY
  • Current Investment amount is 20,000cc
  • Investment was started in February 2517.

Don Harper’s Fun Zone – Back of House

The fun and games of the front-of-house is all just a lure, to get people in the door. Once they’re there, the Cult of Akiovasha will attempt to recruit anyone who seems like they might be dissatisfied with life. In the words of Don Harper “Kinda like the Foot Clan hangout in the TMNT movie.”

  • Level 1: Each Haven Turn, there’s a 3-in-6 chance that the growth of the Cult of Akiovasha is improved by 1.
  • Level 2: The potential extra growth increases to 2.
  • Level 3: The potential extra growth increases to 3.

Citadels

When players are managing investments or domains, it can be assumed that part of their funds are used to finance buildings. Obviously, businesses need a space to operate out of, and a populace will need houses to live in. Buildings exist, but the specifics are neither important, nor interesting. It’s enough simply to know that there are buildings.

If the players wish to construct a personal stronghold, however, they’ll likely be much more interested in managing the details. And so, a more granular system is required.

The first thing that is needed is a place to build. How the players acquire this will depend on the sort of game the referee is running, and where they want to build. If they’re building in a city, or a civilized land, they may need to purchase a deed, or earn a grant of land from a king. If they’re building out in a wilderness, they’ll need to make some effort to claim the area by clearing out any undesirables who would get in their way. However a territory is claimed, it should be handled through play.

The base cost of construction is 50 money. On the ground floor, each 10′ cube of space costs the base amount. For each floor above or below ground level, the cost of a 10′ cube increases by the base amount.

So, a 10′ cube on the second story (or on sublevel 1) would cost 100 money. A 10′ cube on the third story (or on sublevel 2) would cost 150 money, and so on, and so forth. Players are responsible for drawing out a map of what they would like to build, and calculating its costs.

The cost of construction includes basic furnishings. So the living spaces will have tables and chairs, the kitchens will have pots and pans, the bedrooms will have beds, etc. If the players wish for their furnishings to be of impressive quiality, they may pay the cost for their space as if it were one level higher (or lower) than it is. So a well-furnished ground level would cost 100 money per 10′ cube, and so on.

It should be noted that construction costs do not include the cost of labor. Hiring craftspeople to put everything together for you should be handled by whatever method of managing hirelings the referee uses. Each laborer can perform 250 money worth of construction in a month. So if you’re constructing a 20′ by 20′ ground-level building (four 10′ cubes, costing 200 money), a single worker can have it ready for you in a month. But, if you’re constructing a 30′ by 30′ ground-level building (nine 10′ cubes, costing 450 money), you’ll need 2 laborers if you want it done within a single month.

If the players want to place anything in the structure which requires special craftsmanship, that’s a flat 1000 money fee. That includes traps, secret doors, statues, or any particularly ornate bit of decorating. Anything too large to fit within a 10′ cube may cost more, as determined by the referee.

If the structure is being built by a Magic User, they will no doubt want to make it a magical place. They are free to create any purely cosmetic effects they wish, so long as those effects flow somewhat naturally from the spells the Magic User knows. So, if a Magic User knows any fire spells, they can cause their dragon statue to puff out bits of flame periodically. So long as it’s cosmetic, there is no cost.

However, if the Magic User wishes to imbue their home with any more substantive magics, such as a Cone of Cold trap, they’ll need to make some appropriate payment. In my game, I’ve been allowing players to turn their spells into permanent traps (with 24 hour resets) by performing a ritual that costs 1d4 * 100 experience points.

Most exterior constructions can be handled the same way. Moats, walls, and bridges can all be charged according to the base cost per 10′ cube rule. Roads, however, are a bit of a special case, since by their nature they are a simple construction meant to cover a vast space.

When players want to build a road, I charge them a flat 1000 money per mile.

Domains

First level characters have been pushed to the edge of society. That’s why they’re willing to to risk their lives delving into dungeons to search for treasure. Then, once they have treasure, they decide to make their OWN societies, in turn pushing a whole new generation of people to the edge, and perpetuating the vicious cycle that has allowed Dungeons & Dragons to persist through the ages.

The initial establishment of a domain is done through play. Usually it starts with the player’s citadel: they obtain some land, build a home, and gradually they invite people to live there. At some point, it stops being a single large household, and becomes a town.

Of course, players may also establish their domains intentionally by gathering together a group of settlers, and finding a space for them to live. This functions the same as acquiring a place to build a citadel. They need a tract of land, which they can reasonably claim to own, and which isn’t full of monsters who want to kill everyone. As above, this should be handled through play.

Once established, a player domain functions much like any other territory. It’ll have notable NPCs, shops, laws, etc. The difference is that the players can directly influence the shape and character of their domain. If they wish, they can write a code of laws. They can find NPCs they like out in the world, and offer them positions of authority. They can found industries, to ensure that certain goods or services are always available.

The possibilities inherent to running a domain are too infinite to be covered in 1/3rd of a blog post. A lot of it will need to be handled just by negotiation between the players and the referee. If the players decide to establish a universal basic income, the referee should figure out the upsides and downsides of doing so. If the players decide that all attractive residents of their domain must report to the castle for harem duty, that likewise should come with some consequences.

As a matter of basic structure, players can grow their domain by investing money into it. The more money a domain has, the higher level the domain becomes. The higher level a domain is, the more resources it will have access to.

The cost of leveling a domain is very high, but it is assumed that multiple high level characters are investing.

It should also be noted that the maximum extent of any domain is 1 hex. Once a domain reaches level 10, that hex contains a sprawling megalopolis, surrounded by well cultivated farmland. It has grown to its maximum extent, and if the players wish to continue improving their domain, they must expand by establishing a “new” domain in an adjacent hex, which will start at level 1.

LevelCost to ReachResult
10Automatically achieved when a territory is cleared for settlement.
210,000Has a 1-in-6 chance to be able to provide any item or service which is mundane to the game world.
320,000Able to produce an army of 1d4 * 50
440,000Has a 2-in-6 chance to be able to provide any item or service which is mundane to the game world.
580,000Able to produce an army of 2d4 * 100
6160,000Has a 3-in-6 chance to be able to provide any item or service which is mundane to the game world.
7320,000Able to produce an army of 2d4 * 500
8640,000Has a 4-in-6 chance to be able to provide any item or service which is mundane to the game world.
91,280,000Able to produce an army of 2d4 * 2000
102,560,000Has a 5-in-6 chance to be able to provide any item or service which is mundane to the game world.

Armies will function much as Fighter’s Armies do. However, they are not career warriors as those are. Domain armies are made up of farmers who will take up weapons in the name of their homeland, but can’t really be leveled up as fighters, and can’t be expected to stay away from home too long.

A domain army can be kept in the field for a number of months equal to the domain’s level, plus 2. After that, they’ll expect to be able to go home so they can be with their families, and tend to their own affairs.

Mundane Items & Services: If the players want something, this is the chance that their domain can provide it to them. This chance doesn’t include the most basic of items and services. There are some things that every domain will need to have in order to survive. So, if the players want food, or some simple blacksmithing, then that can be assumed.

However, if the players want their domain to provide them with access to siege equipment, casks of fine wine, or a warehouse of plate armor, that is going to require a roll.

Any time a roll is made, the result should be recorded. If a roll is successful, then the domain will always be able to provide that item or service. If it is unsuccessful, then the domain will not be able to provide that item or service until something changes.

The players can move something from the “unavailable” list to the “available” list in one of two ways:

  1. Each time the domain levels up, one item can be moved from one list to the other.
  2. The players may take direct action to to add new resources to the available list. For example, if they go to another land, find a skilled armorsmith, and convince them to set up shop in their domain, then full plate armor would become available.

Acknowledgement as a Person of Importance: As rulers, the players will be able to present themselves as visiting dignitaries in any land where their domains are known and respected.

To determine how far away from their territory the players can travel before they become nobodies again, add together the levels of all the player’s domains. Multiply that number by 5. The result is the number of hexes that a player can travel, and still assert their right to be treated as a visiting dignitary.

That’s all I’ve got to say about Domains for now. I’ve only just started having my players tinker with them, so I imagine I’ll have more to say once problems start cropping up. For now, though, I think this is a pretty solid basis for running a game.

And if you liked this post, and you’d like to support me in making more, check out my Patreon.

Establishing a Religion

If you had told me a year ago that I would need rules for player-run religions, I’d have disagreed. It sounds like a weirdly specific edge case that’s unlikely to come up in play. And yet, here I am, deep into a campaign where my players have invested a ton of resources and time into spreading the word of a god they made up.

As it turns out, the growth of a new religion is a tricky thing to model. I’ve gotten this far just using fiat and my own judgement, but it feels ‘floaty.’ I’m usually very comfortable with fiat, and advocate using it more often in games. In most cases, though, fiat is only a few steps removed from structure. If a player wants to do a weird thing in combat, I know how to quickly construct a ruling, because I know how combat works. But I have no point of reference for how an idea spreads through a game population. I need to pin down some guidelines.

The way I figure it, there are four basic phases of growth to worry about.

First, there’s the initial establishment of the religion. You’ve gotta get your core true-believers going. Gotta find your 12 apostles: the folks who will sell your religion to the masses. There’s really nothing to codify here, because this bit should be handled through normal play. Maybe the PCs make some eloquent speeches, or maybe they just fake some miracles. However they get it done, it will be about planning and execution on the player’s part, which is something the referee should be able to respond to. Any rules would just get in the way.

Getting out of phase 1 requires the players to successfully get some NPCs excited about their new faith.

In phase 2, the core believers have organized themselves into a cult. They are spreading the word, and the religion is growing slowly.

This is a hard phase to break out of. Cults are small, and generally composed of social outcasts. They have to meet in secret, and most people who hear about what the cult believes will think it’s nutso. Each Haven turn, the cult’s numbers grow by 1d4 * 10%, rounded up. So if you’ve only got 12 people to start with, and you roll a 1, then the cult grows by 10%. Since 10% of 12 is 1.2, that means the cult gains 2 new members that month.

Generally I try to avoid percentage based math when I design a rule. I was homeschooled, so I have no math skills, and much prefer mechanics that keep shit simple. But, in this case I think the benefit outweighs the difficulty. It’s the simplest way for the cult’s growth to accelerate as it grows larger. Plus, since it’s all based on increments of 10%, the math is simple: just move the decimal place one space to the left, then multiply by whatever number you rolled on the d4, and add the result to your previous total.

If the players want to, they can continue to grow the cult with direct action, the same way they did in Phase 1. However, they’ll only ever be able to get a few people at a time that way. The hard work of growing a cult is the boring process of preaching, providing spiritual guidance, offering services, reaching out to the disenfranchised, etc. Not really the work of adventurers. It’s best for the party to remain a guiding hand, and let this work happen in the background.

Phase 2 ends when the cult has 1000 members.

In phase 3, the cult has evolved into a full fledged new religion. The faithful, emboldened by their numbers, begin to operate more in the open. Most people in the community will have have some idea of what the faithful believe, and most will be tolerant, even if they don’t agree. Of course, the reactionary forces of more established religions will be ramping up their rhetoric about the evils of this new faith. But, the average person doesn’t have a horse in that fight.

Once a religion reaches this stage, there’s no need to track actual member counts anymore. Instead, the faithful are counted as an abstract percentage of the total population, starting at 0%. Each haven turn, the religion’s hold over the population increases by 1d4. So, if you roll a 2 on the first haven turn, then 2% of the population has converted to the new religion. If you roll a 3 on the next haven turn, then 5% of the population has converted, and so on.

The idea is that now that your religion is both well known, and not considered crazy, all the folks who are slightly more predisposed towards your tenets than they are to the tenets of other faiths are making the switch. They aren’t the same breed of passionate true believers that the cultists were, though. The true believers are still there, but they’re in the minority now.

The new folks are mostly here because their old religion wanted them to attend services on Tuesdays, and the Wednesday services YOUR church requires are really more convenient for their schedule. Of course, if a new faith showed up with THURSDAY services, a ton of them would leave for that one.

Phase 3 ends when the new religion reaches parity with the other religions in its environment. So, if there’s only 1 other religion, phase 3 ends when the new religion is at 50%. If there are 2 other religions, phase 3 ends at 33%, and so on. If you play in a game with tons of different religions, it may be best to simply drop Phase 3, and skip straight from Phase 2, to something similar to Phase 4.

In Phase 4, growth more or less stops. If the players want, it can continue at (1d3 – 2)% each Haven Turn, but that’s not really going to result in much. At this point, the supply of willing converts has been exhausted. Anybody who joins the religion from here on out will be someone who consciously decided against joining the religion at some point in the past.

At this point, the religion has successfully established itself. For many faiths, this will be the endgame. However, players are rarely satisfied with an equal share of the pie. They want all of it. So, if the players want their religion to continue growing, they can do that. But, from here on out, each bit of growth will again require direct action. Not by preaching, but with dramatic public displays that either push people towards the player’s religion, or away from competing religions.

For example, if the leadership of religion X is exposed as corrupt, people’s faith in that religion will be shaken. Some of them, will leave, and as a result, the ranks of the player’s religion will grow. Likewise, if the player’s religion engages in a huge campaign to fight poverty, some people will be inspired by that generosity, and will convert. Those are just two out of millions of possibilities. It’s up to the players to orchestrate a public display, and up to the referee to determine whether those displays are significant enough to count.

Whatever the specifics, though, a successful public display causes the player’s religion to grow by (1d6 + 3)%.

Of course, the players could orchestrate these public displays during Phase 2 if they wanted, but given the investment of time required, it’s not really worth it to pursue until after the religion has gotten as big as it’s going to get on its own.

And there you have it, a system for modeling the spread of a religion, from inception, to complete cultural saturation. So…what is this system good for? What does founding a religion actually do?

In my case, my players started a cult because they wanted to disrupt the majority religion. The more successful their cult is, the more distracted the majority religion gets. They can’t orchestrate crusades against their neighbors if they’re focusing all of their energy fighting the spread of the player’s cult.

More than that, though, establishing a religion has allowed my players to influence the basic worldviews of the NPCs in their environment. After all, what is a religion but a set of shared beliefs and rules to live by? The same system could easily be used to model the spread of a philosophical school or political movement.

In other words, establishing a religion allows the players to set the rules by which people live. If they don’t like living in a world where slavery is normal, spreading a religion gives them an opportunity to change that.

Stealth

If there’s one skill that almost every specialist trains, it’s stealth. Stealth is almost an obligation. If the party wants the specialist to climb or to search, and they say “sorry, I don’t have any points in that,” then the group will just move on to other possible solutions. If the party wants the specialist to stealth, and they don’t have any points in that, they’re probably going to have to endure some jokes about how useless they are.

Stealth is also one of those things that every referee seems to run just a little differently. There’s no consensus on what can and can’t be done with the skill. Players end up learning one way of doing things in one game, then, they carry those assumptions into other games where the skill is run differently. Because they’ve got these false assumptions, they ignore opportunities that other referees wouldn’t have allowed to them.

For my own sake, I thought it would be a valuable exercise to articulate exactly how I run Stealth. Hopefully, someone out there will find something they like about my methods. Or, maybe somebody with better methods will share them in the comments.

And no, I totally haven’t done this before. This is the first time. Don’t look through the archives, you won’t find it.

When Should Stealth Be Checked?

If there’s nothing that might detect the player, then there’s no reason for them to roll a check. Every game has that player who announces the success or failure of their stealth check anytime the party goes anywhere or does anything. It’s boring. I want to find out what referee has taught them this behavior, and punch that neckbeardy fuck in the face.

In most cases, a stealth check can be reactive. If the characters are walking around through city streets, exploring the wilderness, or crawling through a mostly empty dungeon, it can simply be understood that the stealthy character is trying to move with some degree of subtlety.

When something does appear that a character would want to be hidden from (i.e., an encounter), then the character can make a check. If they’re alone, it means the encounter simply doesn’t see anyone. Maybe they thought they heard or smelled or saw something, but now there isn’t anyone for them to find.

If the character is with the rest of their party, then a successful stealth check probably means that the encounter is so distracted by everyone else, that they don’t notice the stealthy character blending into the shadows.

In other, rarer circumstances, the environment may be full of people the stealther doesn’t want to be detected by. This might happen if they’re infiltrating an enemy fortress, or trying to move around in an active combat zone. In these cases, the stealth check should be made up front.

When Does Stealth Need To Be Renewed?

When a check succeeds, stealth lasts until it is disrupted. Characters do not need to make a new check just because it has been awhile since the last one, or because they’ve entered a new area.

Rarely, a disruption may cause stealth to be forcibly ended. In most cases, though, a disruption only requires that a new stealth check be made. If the new check fails, then the disruption caused them to be discovered. If it succeeds, then they managed to skillfully avoid being noticed.

There are three types of disruption which require a new check to be made:

  1. The stealthed character makes a non-obvious attack. This includes stuff like a silent ranged attack made from a reasonably good hiding spot, or any attack which successfully kills the target. You can’t notice where the attack came from if you’re dead.
  2. The stealthed character ends their movement in an observed location. Quickly dashing across a guarded hallway is easy. There’s no need to check stealth for that. Moving down the length of that same hallway, however, would be significantly more difficult.
    In other words, a stealthed character can easily pass through someone’s line of sight, so long as they start and end their movement in a reasonable hiding place. If they can’t, that will require a new check.
  3. The character performs any action which requires them to disrupt their environment, or act in a conspicuous manner. This includes most actions other than simply moving around. Stuff like picking locks, searching rooms, listening at doors, or even opening doors if there are people on the other side. Some judgement calls from the referee are needed here to determine what can easily be done with subtlety, and what would be likely to draw attention.

What is a “Reasonable Hiding Place?”

Anywhere that no one is specifically looking, or which provides some kind of cover or shadows to hide in. Standing right behind an NPC is a reasonable hiding place from that NPC.

When Does Stealth End?

Aside from a failed check, there is only one way* for a character to be forced out of stealth.

If they make an obvious attack against someone, and that person isn’t killed, then the jig is up. The stealthy character has been spotted, and cannot attempt to re-enter stealth unless they escape from combat, or succeed on a Vanish check. (I’ll discuss the Vanish check more below).

An obvious attack is any melee attack, or a ranged attack made from somewhere out in the open.

It hardly seems worth mentioning, but Stealth also ends when the character takes any obviously non-stealthy actions, such as openly conversing / traveling with their non-stealthy party.

*If the game includes guns, then using a non-silenced gun is also enough to end stealth, whether the target is killed or not.

What Does a Successful Stealth Check Mean?

Stealth is not about crouch-walking, or wearing black clothing. It’s a whole suite of skills. Sometimes it does rely upon acrobatics or camouflage. Other times, though, it’s as simple as walking around with enough confidence to convince people that you’re supposed to be there. If all else fails, maybe they’re just scooting around in a cardboard box.

What Does a Failed Stealth Check Mean?

You’ve been spotted, and you’ve probably gotta either fight, or run away. If the stealthy character was making a specific movement when their check failed, roll a d% to determine how far along they were when they were spotted.

That’s how I run things. But, as you can see, I’m also pretty liberal with what stealth can do. I like to balance that with potentially harsh consequences for failure.

I’m going to divert for a moment here to mention a different way of resolving a failed check, which works well when the stealth skill is more limited.

When the check fails in my friend Brendan‘s game, it doesn’t mean the stealther has been noticed. It just means that they, as an expert in stealth, can’t see any way to do what the player wanted to do without being noticed.

So if the player says “I want to stealth across this room,” then rolls a failed check, Brendan will say “If you move across the room, you will be spotted. Do you still want to do it?” In most cases the player says ‘no,’ and the party goes back to the drawing board.

That’s some tasty retention of player agency, right there.

What is the Vanish skill?

The Vanish skills is a completely separate skill from stealth, which I use in my games. Unlike the Stealth skill, which can be trained by any character, the Vanish skill is available only to specialists.

A successful check allows the character to become stealthed, even in situations where stealth would not be allowed.

So, if a specialist is surrounded by a dozen men pointing crossbows at them–when they definitely would not be allowed to make a stealth check–they can make a vanish check. On success, everyone will have lost track of them, and they can then move around as though they are stealthed, using the same conditions listed above for when stealth ends, or needs to be renewed. (Renewals are rolled using the stealth skill. Vanish is used only for the initial disappearance).

In addition to requiring a whole separate skill, using vanish is also more costly than using stealth, in an ‘action economy’ sense. A stealth check can be made for free, as part of whatever else the character is doing. A vanish check requires a full round of action, so the character can’t do anything else until the next turn.

As an aside, I also allow my players to purchase flash pellets, an encumbering item which grants a +1 to their vanish check.

Can a Group move with Stealth?

A character with investment in the stealth skill can “carry” others who don’t have any subtlety of their own. For each person they’re carrying, they take a -1 penalty to their check. So, if a character with a 6-in-6 stealth wants to, they can take 2 unskilled characters along with them, and make their check with a functional 4-in-6 chance of success.

If the characters who are being carried have some stealth ability themselves, then every 2 of them provide a penalty of -1 to the trained character’s check, rounded down. So if you’ve got one character with a 6-in-6 stealth, and three characters with a 2-in-6 stealth, then the better trained character can make their check at -1 to carry the other three along with them.

Rules for Gobbos

My ladyfriend is not much of an RPG person. She enjoys a leisurely evening of D&D, but mostly as a social event. She’ll interject with a bit of goofy role playing now and again, but tends to just follow along with whatever the rest of the party wants to do. I’ve had a lot of people like that in my games over the years. Folks who are there because they enjoy hanging out. Maybe they’re more into the times we get together for board games, or maybe they went along with a significant other at some point, and enjoyed the atmosphere more than they enjoyed the game. Maybe you know someone similar, and maybe if you do, this’ll help you find something enjoyable for them to do.

It started a few years back when my ladyfriend accompanied me to play in a game where I was a 14th level character. She didn’t want to deal with the hassle of creating a high level character, so we got the referee to let her play all four of the Goblins from Paizo’s “We Be Goblins” module: Rita, Mogmurch, Chuffy, and Poog. It all worked out so well that we decided to use the same plan when she joined my ORWA game. But since this is an ongoing campaign, rather than a one-shot, I decided to put a little work into getting the goblins working.

First off, to remain setting consistent, the goblins aren’t goblins. They’re infant children who fell off a babycart (literally a cart where infant children are piled up for sale) and into a puddle of mutagen. This turned them green and gave them weirdly developed bodies, despite their size. They know how to talk, and call themselves Gobbos.

Gobbos can’t die the way normal characters die. They’re not invulnerable to harm, but they react to harm like a Loony Toon character. If a rock falls on them they get flattened, pop back into shape, and then scamper off to cry and lick their wounds until the next session, when they’ll have forgotten anything bad ever happened to them.

Gobbos also don’t get any share of the treasure, or any of the commensurate experience. In fact, Gobbos can’t level up at all. Players who are running the Gobbos will never need to worry about keeping their character sheet up to date, because it’s an (almost) entirely static thing. They also don’t need to worry about how to spend their money, and the other players never get annoyed at splitting their treasure haul with a quartet of characters who don’t contribute on the same level that they do.

(Though it should be noted that Gobbos are children. Sometimes they’ll see something shiny, and insist that it be purchased for them.)

Any time the other players are getting treasure, the Gobbos are free to scrounge around for something more in line with their own interests. The player they rolls on the “Gobbo Junk” table, which can be restocked by the referee as items are discovered.

The Gobbos Find a…

  1. Really really shiny, smooth rock.
  2. Plastic frisbee.
  3. Well used catcher’s mitt.
  4. Curly blonde wig.
  5. Hula hoop.
  6. Pair of boxing gloves.
  7. Basketball.
  8. Bowling ball.
  9. Potted cactus.
  10. Steel folding chair. The kind you find in a church basement, not the kind you find in your dad’s garage.
  11. Stepladder.
  12. Jar with holes poked in the lid, and 12 beetles inside of it.
  13. Metal wastebasket with a mesh pattern.
  14. Porno magazine.
  15. Bag of disposable surgical gloves.
  16. Big bag of candy necklaces.
  17. Rubber mask of Richard Nixon.
  18. Nice-ish briefcase.
  19. Fistful of indistinct sludge.
  20. Ball of twine.
  21. Doorknob.
  22. DD bra.
  23. Box of mousetraps.
  24. Roll of duct tape.
  25. Chair leg.
  26. Banjo with only 1 string on it.
  27. Conical dunce cap.
  28. Box of letters for a marquee style signboard.
  29. Bundle of plastic 6-pack rings.
  30. Paper bag of paper bags.
  31. Plastic bag of plastic bags.
  32. Rubber boot.
  33. Flip phone with plenty of charge, but no service.
  34. Box of paper clips.
  35. RC car.
  36. Barbie doll.
  37. Roll of wrapping paper.
  38. Ceramic cookie jar shaped like a pig wearing a chef’s hat.
  39. Stretch Armstrong doll.
  40. Tiger Electronics “Home Alone 2” tape recorder.
  41. Pair of Handcuffs.
  42. Ball gag.
  43. Flourescent light tube.
  44. Dozen eggs.
  45. Chicken.
  46. Housecat.
  47. Can of spraypaint. Blue.
  48. Disposable polaroid camera.
  49. Propeller beanie.
  50. Plastic toy sword.
  51. Bag of marbles.
  52. Tube of pogs.
  53. Huge bag of rice.
  54. Sleeve of printer paper.
  55. Dead bird.
  56. Dead Dog.
  57. Huge number “8” made of wood.
  58. Tacklebox full of fishing lures and hooks.
  59. Corkscrew.
  60. Pencil sharpener.
  61. Human skull
  62. Stack of newspapers.
  63. Wall clock.
  64. Padlock and key.
  65. Geode with a little pewter wizard inside of it.
  66. Binder with documentation for some kind of software.
  67. Pair of socks.
  68. Pair of nice slacks.
  69. Needle nose pliers.
  70. Standing, oscillating fan.
  71. Elementary school desk/chair combo.
  72. Bouquet of fake flowers.
  73. Bottle of hand sanitizer.
  74. Really neat spider with lots of cool colors on it.
  75. Metal shopping cart.
  76. Labelmaker.
  77. Sheets of scratch & sniff stickers. Of the “Grape Job” variety.
  78. Encyclopedia Britannica volume for the letter “O.”
  79. Catheter bag full of urine.
  80. Police file on someone named “Dave Bestfighter.”
  81. Empty jar labelled “Dreams.”
  82. Glow in the dark ceiling stars.
  83. Bag of party balloons.
  84. Bag of Frozen Peas. Still frozen, somehow.
  85. The poles to a tent.
  86. Baby rattle.
  87. Box of Mike & Ikes candy.
  88. Hand painted portrait of a randomly determined party member.
  89. The discarded highschool poetry of a randomly determined party member.
  90. Big red “Marks-A-Lot” marker.
  91. Yo-yo.
  92. Blender.
  93. Foam Jack-O-Lantern.
  94. Traffic cone.
  95. Box of matches.
  96. Car tire.
  97. Keyring full of keys.
  98. Bottle of really nice wine.
  99. Child’s devil costume for Halloween.
  100. Treasure map, drawn in crayon, to a toystore.

A D&Drinking Game

While working my day job the other day*, I came up with an idea for one of my projects. So I pulled out my trusty notebook and started writing. A friendly coworker asked me what I was grinning about, which put me in the ever-awkward position of trying to describe my niche-appeal writing projects for someone outside that niche. “I just realized I should totally put some erotic objects on my random treasure table,” might be an accurate answer, but it’s kind of an annoying thing to say if you know the other person doesn’t understand the context. It puts the onus on them either to smile and nod, or ask followup questions that they might not really be interested in the answer to.

I admit, I probably overthink social situations. I’m sure that makes me the most original person on the Internet or something.

Anyway, as it turns out, this coworker wasn’t entirely ignorant of D&D. After I was done babbling, she told me a second-hand story about a referee who wrapped little scrolls around cans of beer. Whenever a player finished the beer they could unravel the scroll and receive whatever boon was written on it.

It’s a simple rule, and has a lot of potential in a “D&D is a gathering of people, and a gathering of people is a party” way. As someone who enjoys mixing drinking with games, it sounds like a fun time. After google failed to turn up any published examples of this rule, I figured I’d put my own spin on it.

Drinking and Dragons

Any time a player fully consumes a unit of alcohol, they may draw from the “Booze Boon” deck. These can be written on index cards, or just on scraps of paper shuffled in a bowl. Referees with too much time on their hands can affix each Booze Boon to an alcohol container if they like, but that seems like a lot of work.

The referee should ensure the game continues along at a good pace while the Booze Boon deck is in play. While conversational tangents may not normally be a problem, they could cause Booze Boon effects to stack up when play resumes.

It is assumed that anyone playing a D&D drinking game is willing to play pretty fast and loose with the rules.

Cards:

  • Referee for 15 minutes! The player and the referee set an egg timer, and switch places until it goes off. Each must do their best to pursue their new role with vigor, and both are vested with the full authority of their new positions. To the temporary referee: just remember that if you can make treasure fall from the sky, your opposite number can have your character swear a vow of poverty.
  • Fireball! Regardless of class or game system, the player gains a classic AD&D Fireball spell to use at their discretion. 20′ radius, 6d6 damage, save v. Breath for half.
  • You may keep this card in your hand and play it at any time. When played, the NPC of your choosing turns out to be a long lost friend of yours! You guys go way way back, and they’ve really missed hanging out with you. Monsters are not exempt from this card.
  • From the time this card is drawn, until the player who drew it is able to draw their next Booze Boon, all attack rolls at the table are resolved via Rock, Paper, Scissors rather than rolling dice.
  • What’s your favorite X-Man? Your character gains their powers for the next in-game hour. Just remember, you still gotta deal with the consequences once your new powers go away!
  • The referee must create a beneficial magic item based on the name or bottle art of the drink the player just finished. The player finds that magic item in their sack! Apparently they mixed up their laundry with someone else’s.
  • Holy shit you find 10,000 money.
  • You find a tommygun, in pristine condition, just lying on the ground. It has 100 rounds in it. Each round does 1d4 damage. You decide how many rounds you fire, then roll to hit.
  • LEVEL UP IMMEDIATELY
  • You’re raised to full health, and then, you’re raised to 100 hp more than your full health. Your maximum hit points remain the same, and the loss of these extra hit points cannot be healed. The extra hit points last until they are taken away by damage dealt to your character.
  • You cannot fail a save for the rest of the session. It’s impossible.
  • During the rest of the session, falling damage no longer exists for you. If you land on top of anyone, they take the falling damage you would have taken if it did exist.
  • You can fly by flapping your arms. Caveat: you the player must flap your arms for as long as you want to fly. This ability is permanent.
  • Any time you use a die-rolling technique that you have not used before during this session, you get a +2 bonus to that roll. (Roll off the back of your hand! Roll with your elbow! Grasp the die in your toes and roll it! There ya go, three freebie techniques).
  • Anytime you roll an 18+ on your attack roll the fist of god comes down to smash whatever individual you’re fighting.
  • Strip cheating. For each item of clothing you remove, you may alter all the dice involved in any roll to show whatever facing you want them to. Socks and shoes count individually, but if you put on any clothing after drawing this card you permanently forfeit its benefit.
  • You gain the 1st level benefits of a randomly determined class other than your own.
  • A time traveling car pops into existence in front of you. The folks inside were killed by the process of time traveling. Turns out when you go backwards in time, you go backwards in age at the same rate! Not that it matters for you, since the time travel device also seems to have broken. BUT, the car drives just fine. It’s all yours until the gas runs out.
  • The other players must decide on an obscure skill. Something like “Basket weaving,” “juggling,” “fart music,” “whistling,” or “speed chess.” The player who drew the Booze Boone becomes the undisputed world master of this ability for all time.  You have an effective 1000% chance to succeed. Not even the most severe situational penalty will ever stop you from being the baddest motherfucker in the room with regards to this very obscure skill.
  • God has chosen you! Drawing on your real world religious knowledge, you can perform one miracle that is considered to have occurred by some religious group somewhere. Anyone other than the PCs who observe your miracle will believe you are divine, and trust in any 3 teachings you give them completely.
  • You have chosen God! One deity of your choice becomes real within the game world. This can be a real religious figure, a fictional one, or indeed, literally anything that you want to be divine. You can pick the ham sandwich you had yesterday if you like, and it will become a god. You may select two religious doctrines taught by this new god, and each of the other players at the table may pick one. The referee must record these and remember that this god is entirely real within their game’s cosmology. Even if they’re running a monotheist christian campaign, Ham Sandwich is now a rival deity to Yahweh.
  • A surge of perception allows you to see through the lines of reality. For the next 60 minutes of real-world time, you cannot be struck in combat by anything less than a natural 20. You cannot fail a save on anything more than a natural 1.
  • Drunken Master! Your character permanently becomes a martial artist of exceptional skill. You gain a 4 to your armor class when wearing no armor, and your unarmed attacks deal 1d12 damage. These abilities only work when you are inebriated in real life. (Please do not become an alcoholic.)
  • On dealing a successful attack, you may choose either to roll dice, or do jumping jacks. If you choose the latter, you deal as many points of damage as you do jumping jacks.

*Actually it was over a year ago. This post has been in the buffer for awhile now.

What I Need to Improve on as a Referee, 2017 Edition

Completely by accident, I stumbled on a post I made last January reflecting on my failings as a referee, and describing the two major ways I wanted to improve.  Considering that the timing of my stumble was so perfect, (literally on January 1st of the new year), I figured it’d be a good time to take another look. To reflect on how I did with my self improvement last year, and in what ways I can continue to improve this year.

In last year’s post, I discussed two ways in which I wanted to improve. First, I wanted to become a more responsive referee. Someone who didn’t need to dig through notes and books in order to answer questions. Second, I wanted to maintain a more consistent game world. One where characters and factions recurred, and the players started to gain a sense of place. And as weird as it is to say this…mission accomplished? I’ve managed to become really good at both of those things.

Both of these goals were kind of accomplished by the same, single change in my refereeing strategy: I stopped putting in much work before each session, and instead I put in all my work after each session.

I used to write multi-paragraph-long room descriptions for each room, which had to be done before I ran my game each week. It was an immense strain on my creative efforts, and on my time. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, here’s the first room players encounter within Dungeon Moon. Almost every room was like this:

Spiral staircase, descends 6 stories from the surface. It twists around a large golden pillar, which is covered in gouges of various sizes and textures. It looks as though gold might have been chipped away from the pillar using knives.

If the players attempt to cut gold from the pillar, the gold will turn to a small snake, and successfully bite whoever is holding it. They must make a save v. poison, or all gold they touch for the next 24 hours will rot away to nothing. The snake will immediately try to escape, and will grow to maturity in 1d4 weeks. Once mature, it will hunt the one who created it until it is destroyed.

The secret door can only be discovered by searching for secrets on the appropriate section of wall. A small press-stone opens it.

For the last year, my prep work has been crazy low. A lot of the heavy lifting is done by the many random tables I’ve written, which only need to be restocked occasionally. The rest of the work is usually doodling or downloading a few maps, and writing a handful of sentence-long room descriptions in the margins, with arrows pointing to where they’re relevant.

When I was running Dungeon Moon, I had nearly 30 pages worth of maps in front of me, which had to be cross referenced with an equal number of document files with the room descriptions in them (which might, themselves, be 8 or 9 pages long). For On a Red World Alone, I might have 3-5 maps in front of me for any given session, but that’s it. All the information is right there, which allows me to be lightning fast with my response when the players do something.

This does require a lot more improvisation, which means that I have to be deadly careful of creating Quantum Ogres. But that’s a whole other discussion.

On the back end, as you may have noticed, I do an imperial fuck ton of note keeping for each session. It’s really boring to write, and sometimes it takes almost as long as running the actual session did, because I have such a hard time focusing while I do it. But, I’m tremendously happy to have those 40 play reports. Not only does it delight my archivist sensibilities, but those play reports are my best source for finding new challenges for the PCs to deal with. Browsing those records, it never takes me long to find someone in there who probably has a grudge against the NPCs, and might be scheming against them.

Those play reports, combined with the work I’ve done to improve my factions, and my encounters, have made ORWA feel like a consistent world, and I’m  super proud of that.

I also had a third goal last year. One I didn’t mention, because it seems gauche to talk about. I wanted to revive Papers and Pencils.  This website was a lifesaver to me during a very dark period of my life, and it remains a touchstone for my well being. When the website is dead, it’s because my life is in chaos, and I probably don’t feel very good about myself. If you look at the sidebar, you’ll notice that 2014 and 2015 were pretty much dead, and you can imagine how I was feeling.

Heck, roughly a third of all the posts in 2015 happened in September of that year. I just pulled out my personal logs to see what was going on that month. On the 3rd, I finally got a job after months of unemployment and financial uncertainty which nearly destroyed my relationship with my lady friend. A few days later, I created the Magic Words system.

In this, too, I was successful. Not only did I manage to produce at least 1 post every week, but I also built up a buffer of posts to keep the blog healthy, even when I don’t have the time to maintain it. I wouldn’t mind seeing the blog get up to 2 posts a week, but I’m perfectly happy with just one. (I suppose if you count the ORWA play reports, it already IS two posts each week. I don’t count the ORWA play reports).

I’m never going to hit 2012 levels of blog activity again, but that’s just part of me maturing as a writer. In 2012, P&P was the only writing I was doing. In 2017, P&P is a single project among many. Most of what I write is too big to be a blog post. And honestly, my average post quality in 2012 was garbage compared to my average post quality in 2016. I much prefer putting out one quality post each week, compared to heaping writing onto the Internet as fast as I can manage.

So there it is. In 2016 I had 3 goals, and I succeeded with all of them. I know a lot of celebrities died, but it was honestly a pretty good year for me. Which brings me to the question: what do I want to improve on next?

None of my goals this year are as dramatic as last year’s. I’m more or less happy with where I am as a referee, and my concern is more about fine tuning my skill, rather than pursuing an entirely different philosophy. So here are some things I’ve been thinking about:

Languages: Last night I was revising the skills list for my ORWA campaign. When I got to the Language skill, I thought “huh. Nobody ever puts points in that. I wonder why.” This thought was quickly followed by an answer:”Because nothing in your campaigns ever speaks any language other than English.”

I really have never included language barriers in my games, and I need to give it a try. It will enhance the alien-ness of the creatures my players encounter. It’ll also allow me to give them information with a lock on it. Or maybe it’ll just give me an opportunity to finally use the languages rules I drafted last year, where you get a +1 to your reaction roll if you can speak in a person’s native tongue.

It’s entirely possible that I will discover I don’t like having language barriers in the game. In that case, I can drop the Language skill, and continue on running games as I always have. But before I throw the idea out completely, I’d like to make an effort.

Hirelings: You know how in the first half of Order of the Stick, Varsuvius’ raven familiar only poofs into existence when it’s useful to Varsuvius? The joke, of course, being that despite the fact that it’s “always there,” it’s never acknowledged unless it has some benefit to the party’s goals.

I need to stop allowing that with hirelings. I need to start taking an active role in making the party’s hirelings feel present at all times. Sure, they may be the PC’s employees, but they’re still NPCs, and that means it’s my job to play them.

It’s a fine line to walk. As referee, I already do the majority of the talking. The last thing my game needs is for me to start dominating half of player discussions, simply because there are nearly as many hirelings as there are players. They’re not GMPCs. They can be deferential to their employers.

But they need to be present. They need to have preferences, they need to express concerns. They need to create opportunities for players to grow to like, or dislike them. That’s all on me.

Profit: I don’t know if I ever mentioned this on Papers & Pencils, but in July of 2014 I quit my job so I could have more time to write. It was a pretty good job, where I made a lot of money, and had great job security, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life. So, at the prodding of my lady friend, I quit.

Since then, if I’m being brutally, humiliatingly honest, I have made less than $100 from writing. Less than $100 in 2.5 years. That’s legitimately difficult for me to admit out in the open. It reflects really fuckin’ poorly on me, in more ways than one. In order to get by, I’ve worked a few minimum wage jobs, and at some point along the way I just kinda accepted that as the new norm.

But this cannot be the norm. I need to find a way to start making some money off of my work, or I won’t be able to continue to justify spending as much time on it as I do. This means a lot of things. I need to actually finish some of these bigger projects and get them published. I need to find out if there’s any potential in setting up a Patreon for P&P. I need to get over myself and learn to ~hrnuk~ self promote.

So that’s how my 2017 is shaping up. How about yours?

Structuring Encounter Tables

Update (September 23, 2022): After many years of playing with this method, I’ve iterated on it many times. You may want to check out “Structuring Encounter Tables, Amended & Restated.”

A couple weeks back I shared how I handle factions in my ORWA campaign. People seemed to like it. I like it when ya’ll like things. So in an effort to experience more of your approval, I’m going to tell you how I construct encounter tables. Once again, I don’t think I’ve got anything particularly revolutionary on my hands here. It’s just a method that I’ve put together over the last few years, which works well for me.

First off, all my encounter tables are 2d6 tables. The bell curve allows me to define some encounters as more or less frequent than others. The most frequent encounters can be a little mundane, and I’ll use them to create a feeling of place for the players. (More on that below). The less frequent encounters can be the zanier stuff that I love to include, but would end up making the game feel disjointed if they were omnipresent. You could, of course, get a similar effect with a 2d4 table or a 2d8 table, but I personally find the former too restrictive, and the latter too excessive.

2 is always a dragon, because we need more dragons. The game is called “Dungeons and Dragons,” yet in my experience, the appearances of dragons end up being exceedingly rare when contrasted with how often dungeons show up. They don’t need to be these hulking colossal beasts capable of stepping on PCs as though they were ants. They don’t need to be impossible to defeat, so long as they’re scary. A 10 hit dice lizard the size of a car, with a bite, two claw attacks, and a breath weapon, is more than enough.

These dragons can be interesting social encounters where the players try to figure out how to not get eaten. Dragons can also create a situation where the players feel they have to flee from combat. Both of these first options allow the dragon to become a recurring villain for the players, which may eventually drive them to seeking the final option: fight the dragon. And sure, there’s a good chance it will kill them. But there’s also a slim chance it won’t, and then they’ll have all of the wealth and glory that slaying a dragon will bring them.

Honestly I could write about dragons all day. I’m literally writing a book about dragons and how important they are to include in D&D. I’ll leave it by reiterating my thesis here: on the encounter table, 2 is always a dragon.

Likewise, 12 is always wizards. Because we need more wizards. Not because the game is called “Dungeons & Dragons & Wizards,” but because I fucking love wizards, and you know that you do too. Much like dragons, you can justify a wizard being pretty much anywhere, so there’s rarely any reason not to have a wizard in the 12 spot.

To facilitate this for myself, I wrote a d4 table of wizards. It’s a pretty short table, which has served me for about a year of real time without needing to be expanded, or have any of its entries replaced. Like dragons, I prefer for these to be frightening encounters, but not impossible to overcome by parley, flight, or combat. This requires a little beefing up from the standard magic user, which hey, look, I wrote a table to help you do that. I also usually include a retinue of devoted servants, which I presume most wizards of prestige would have.

7 is recurring characters. This isn’t as imperative to me as “2 is a dragon” or “12 is a wizard,” since it doesn’t always make sense for recurring characters to show up no matter where the players are. But I do like to include it wherever possible, because it’s a lot of fun.

I maintain a separate table for recurring characters, which I roll on whenever this comes up. There are basically two ways for an encounter to end up on that table. The first is to be a friendly NPC that the players enjoyed interacting with. For example, in ORWA, the players once visited a market, where they bought Giga Zucchinis from a guy with a crazy Russian accent who swore they would make your penis “better.” (Not bigger. Better.) The players had a raucous good time with him, so I threw him in the recurring character table, and he has become a kind of mascot for the game. Every time he shows up the players spend a good 10-15 minutes talking with him, and new players are inculcated into the joke.

The second way to get on the recurring characters list is if I think an antagonistic NPC has “unfinished business” with the party. Maybe they want to get payback, or maybe they just want to beat the party to the punch on completing some quest or another.

Recurring characters make the game world feel more interconnected. It’s not just a linear series of events, it’s a world where you can bump into an old friend, or discover that your past actions had unintended consequences.

I should note that I never put wizards or dragons onto the recurring character table. That would wreck the whole point of sticking those two options at the extreme ends of the table in the first place. They’re supposed to be rare, and scary. They can still recur, they just do it when a 2 or a 12 is rolled, rather than a 7.

6 and 8 are there to build a sense of place, as I mentioned above. When put together, these two results have a greater chance of coming up than any single result on the table. So, if you stick encounters that are emblematic of the environment’s theme in these two slots, it will make that theme more concrete and meaningful for the players. Which brings me back to ORWA’s factions.

Each of ORWA’s factions controls a territory, and each territory has its own encounter table. So when the players are in The Fighting Mongoose territory, an encounter would be rolled on The F.M. encounter table. But once they crossed over into another territory, encounters would be rolled on that territory’s encounter table. To create a sense of place, I want a good number of the encounters on each table to remind players of what territory they’re in.

So, while in Outsider territory, 6 and 8 might both be “2d6 Outsiders.” I might vary it up a bit, by having 6 be “2d6 outsiders on foot, without any urgent business” while 8 is “2d6 outsiders on mounts, who have a serious purpose.” Either way, 6 and 8 are usually pretty mundane. It feels boring to write, but in play it’s nice to have a little contrast with the weirder stuff you might encounter.

So with 2, 12, 7, 6 & 8 all assigned, that leaves a mere 6 “free” spaces that I have to get creative with. And while all of the above are meant to be infinitely repeatable, I like to make these remaining 6 spaces specific enough that they have to be re-stocked if the players kill them. I also like to divide them roughly 50/50 between weird encounters that support the sense of place, and weird encounters that are just plain weird.

I don’t feel like I need to explain weird encounters that are just plain weird. It’s literally whatever crazy shit you can possibly come up with. But what is a weird encounter that creates a sense of place? Here are some examples.

The Rulers Beneath the Black are religious fanatics. In their territory, one encounter might be an archbishop of the faith whose fanaticism is even more wildly out of hand than most. He’s calling down the powers of his god to smite people for wearing shoes on the wrong feet, or parting their hair incorrectly. Another encounter might be a street preacher surrounded by a prostrate crowd. A third might be someone practicing a minority faith in secret because they’re afraid of retribution from the establishment. All of these encounters remind the players of where they are in the world.

Another example is the territory of the Comet Callers. They’re all Wizards, which is why it’s one of the few places in my game where 12 isn’t a wizard, because both 6 and 8 are wizards. (Comet Caller territory is dangerous as shit.) In their lands, encounters will often be things that were obviously done by a wizard who isn’t currently present, such as an “undead work site,” where skeletons have set up fleshy equipment to perform some complex task with an obscure purpose. Perhaps the players will come upon a failed homunculus with wings and insect legs sticking out at random angles. Or maybe they’ll come upon a chain gang sifting through sand looking for some ancient jib-jab that a wizard believes to be here.

If I’m out of ideas and I just need to fill space, “open X monster book to a random page” is always an option. I’ver certainly got enough monster books sitting around, and there’s no reason I can’t do an on-the-fly monster conversion from Pathfinder to LotFP. Another good option that works pretty much anywhere is “2d20 raiders from the nearest opposing faction.”

One last thing I’d like to mention is that the dangers on the table should reflect how dangerous an area is supposed to be. Regarding ORWA, as I said in my previous post: unless you’re in the very heart of a faction’s territory, you’re never more than 2 steps from chaos. But that doesn’t mean that some places aren’t more or less dangerous than others. Certainly all of the major factions try to keep their territory safe. The Redstone Lords are notably better at it than anyone else is, so their encounter table is a little less dangerous than average. Meanwhile, places like No Man’s Land, the Sewers, or the territory belonging to The Friends of Needletooth Jack have much much more deadly encounter tables.

There’s nothing wrong with encounters that are more likely to end peacefully. They can still be interesting. As mentioned, the Redstone Lords are pretty good at keeping their territory safe. So instead of encountering a rampaging mutant monster, the players might encounter a political candidate looking to secure votes. They might stumble onto unique locations, like a slave market, or an announcer reading out a new law to a crowd.

And that’s how I write my encounter tables.

The End.