Nature Deities; Fertility and Destruction

Recently, one of the PCs in my ToKiMo campaign died whilst trying to remove a diamond from a statue’s eye. Save versus disintegration can be a bitch. The loss was particularly tough on this player, because she had overcome a lot of challenges with that character, and was working towards some very lofty goals. In choosing her new character, the player opted to take control of a minotaur hireling which had been working with the party for awhile. She told me she would like to be a druid once she gains enough experience to take a class level, which meant I had some work to do. As of yet, my setting did not have any nature gods. So after a lot of fiddling, I came up with this pair. They will serve as two of the most powerful gods in the ToKiMo campaign world. The statblocks below are compatible with my deity system.

Opsenula

The All-Mother, Nature The Giving, The Lady of New Life

Major Deity (Divine Rank 10)
Holy Symbol A pear with a child depicted within it. The species of the child often depends on the species of the cleric wielding the symbol.
Home Plane Arborea
Alignment True Neutral
Major Portfolio Wisdom, Nature, Fertility, Food, Growth, Life
Minor Portfolio Children, Parents, Calm Weather, Flowers, Fruit, Agriculture, Gifts, Sex, Druids, Creation
Absolute Portfolio Rain, Childbirth, Mothers
Domains Animal, Plant, Weather, Earth, Healing, Water
Worshipers Rangers Druids, Farmers, Parents, Midwives
Clerical Alignments LN, TN, CH, NG, Rarely NE
Favored Weapons Clubs, Staves

While many gods can create life, Opsenula views it as her mission. She has given birth to many species, heroes, and even to gods. She seeks out those who are worthy, and lays with them. She can remain pregnant for decades, centuries, or even millenia. When she gives birth, she releases an entirely new species into the world. Sometimes it is a plant or animal species. Other times it is a new species of intelligent creature. When she lays with other gods, occasionally she will give birth to entirely new gods. Always these new beings will represent some worthy aspect of their parent. She almost always appears as a pregnant woman with flowers and fruits growing amongst her hair.

Dogma Opsenula revels in all life, especially new life. She teaches that acts of creation are sacred, and that children are one of life’s greatest gifts. She also teaches that the cultivation of the land, and the production of food, are sacred pursuits. Civilizations where the people are separated from their sources of food sadden her, and she encourages all of her faithful to have a hand in growing and harvesting her gifts.

Clergy and Temples Opsenula’s temples are commonplace. They can be found in nearly every major free city, though among city dwellers she is not the most popular of deities. Those who live off of the land are the most likely to revere her. It is rare to find a farming community without at least a shrine to the goddess known as Nature The Giving.

Ashnos

Stormrage, Wintergaze, Nature’s Vengeance

Major Deity (Divine Rank 10)
Holy Symbol A volcanic eruption. The eruption is often stylized to resemble a tree.
Home Plane Arborea
Alignment True Neutral
Major Portfolio Strength, Nature, The Hunt, Predators, Death, Rebirth
Minor Portfolio Meat, Natural Disasters, Weeds, Venomous Creatures, Poisonous Animals, Druids, Destruction, Decay, Fertilization, Competition
Absolute Portfolio Floods, Volcanoes, Wildfires
Domains Animal, Plant, Weather, Strength, Repose, Fire
Worshipers Rangers Druids, Barbarians, Trappers, Hunters
Clerical Alignments LN, TN, CN, NE, Rarely NG
Favored Weapons Fire, Axes

Ashnos appears as a naked man who stands 9 feet tall. Twin orbs of fire serve as his eyes, and a small hurricane twirls leaves and branches around his head as though they were hair. The earth shakes around him with each step he takes. Ashnos is not an evil god, but he is often mistaken as such for mortals who fear his power, and the indiscriminate way he wields it.

Dogma Ashnos teaches that the forces of nature rule the world. He finds cities and industry offensive. Those who worship him should live in small communities, or better yet, out amongst the natural world. And while Ashnos praises the struggle to survive, he also teaches that death must be accepted. Clerics of Ashnos may refuse to perform a resurrection spell on principal.

Clergy and Temples Ashnos’ temples are rare. Those who revere him do not often build permanent structures. The few temples which do exists are often in natural caves, particularly those which are near volcanoes. Other places of worship may be outdoors, where the nearby trees and stones have been painted or carved to resemble symbols holy to Ashnos.

History

Opsenula and Ashnos are as old as any gods. They remember a time shortly after the Logos brought the gods into being, when the gods themselves were all that existed. They took part in the creation of the multiverse, and in the formation of the first worlds of the material plane. In that ancient, time, the two were wedded lovers. Opsenula’s plantlife grew over the surfaces of the worlds, and Ashnos’ floods and volcanic eruptions fertilized the soil, allowing new plantlife to grow and flourish.

Opsenula gave birth to the first of the intelligent species, and she loved them. But Ashnos saw how they destroyed the natural world around them, and shaped it to suit their own whims. This angered him, and he called down lightning from sky to burn them, and rose the waters of the sea to drown them. When Opsenula saw what her husband had done, she became enraged, and attacked her him. The two battled until Opsenula saw that some of her children had survived. She laughed at her husband, for despite his rage he could not erase the mortal races from existence. Shamed, he moved to correct his error, but Opsenula struck a mighty blow against him, and Ashnos collapsed. The vowed that should he ever attempt to destroy all of her children, she would do battle with him until one of the two was destroyed.

In the eons since, the two god have remained apart from one another, only occasionally meeting to battle with one another, or to engage in passions which have resulted in numerous minor nature deities.

Tavern Tales 1: Hot Rocks, High Rolls, Whores, and Higgins

I don’t like posting play reports on Papers & Pencils. It’s not that nothing worth sharing happens in my games, because that’s not true. My games are awesome and you would be lucky to play in one. But typically the really great stories I tell about my games cover maybe 10 minutes of play. And while I might get multiple 10-minute stories out of a single session, I don’t like retelling the other 8 hours of gameplay which surround those cool stories. Exploring rooms and successfully fighting monsters is a lot of fun when you’re doing it, not so much fun when you’re reading about it. If I wanted to dress it up and turn it into a story I could probably make it entertaining. But at that point I’m just writing fiction. And I’ve got The Girl and the Granite Throne to work on if I want to write fiction.

But I don’t see any reason why I can’t share shorter stories about the awesome stuff which happens in games. So pull up a chair, order a pint, and let me tell you about my recent adventures…

Hot Rocks

In the most recent session of my ToKiMo Pathfinder game, the players were exploring the largest dungeon they’ve encountered to date. They were prowling through the bottommost levels of the dungeon when they found a crazy guy who had been lost there since he was a child. He warned them to stay away from the “hot room” several doors to the south. He was very insistent that he didn’t like the hot room, and they would not like it either. Little did he know, he was talking to Player Characters. So the first thing they did was make a beeline for the hot room, and discovered that it was nothing more than a functioning sauna.

Curious as to why a sauna would function with no one around to care for it, the players tried to figure out how the place worked. They quickly discovered where the water was dripping into the room onto hot coals. The source of the water was unknown, but far more interesting to them was how the coals could possibly be hot. They hadn’t seen any living creatures in this area of the dungeon, aside from the crazy guy. And he clearly wasn’t responsible for maintaining the room. The players asked the sorceress, Phoenix Darkmatter, to take a look. And she discovered that the rocks were, indeed, magical.

Deciding that magically heated rocks would probably earn them some nice coin, the players asked if they could take some of them to the surface to sell. I told them the rocks were not held in place at all, but they were far too hot to hold, and would cause severe burns. Likewise, trying to put them in a backpack would be a lot like putting a lighted torch into a backpack. I was curious to see if my players could figure out a way to transport the stones, and they did not disappoint. After a few moments of discussing between themselves, Phoenix spoke up, and reminded me that since she had the Red Dragon bloodline, she had a minor resistance to fire damage. She asked if it would be safe for her to hold the rocks, and I said yes. In fact, the stones just felt pleasantly warm to her–but her clothing and equipment was still vulnerable.

This left the players to ponder some more, until Poker, the party’s rogue, suggested that Phoenix just swallow the rocks. Which she did.

The party plans to ‘retrieve’ the stones at a later date, so they can be cleaned, and sold. In the meantime, Phoenix has a pleasant warmth in her stomach, as though she’d just eaten a bowl full of hot soup after coming in from the snow. I was so impressed with their problem solving, I gave both Phoenix and Poker 1 point of experience.

Not That Kind of Corner!

A little earlier in that same ToKiMo session, I was describing a room to the players. It had been used as a library in the past, though most of the books here were burned and unreadable. Part of the room above had collapsed into this one as well. The only other notable feature in this room was a hole in the corner, which led deep down a winding shaft, into a sewer below.

While describing that last feature, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, I said “There’s a whore in the corner.”

Needless to say the next 10 minutes of play time were lost as the entire group tittered and joked about what kind of business she must get down here, and how they didn’t want to play ‘that kind of game.’

Sigh.

Badass Minotaur

Near the end of that session, the players freed a minotaur from imprisonment. It’s a bit of a long story as to why the minotaur was there, and why she didn’t rip them limb from limb the moment she saw them, but the important part is that she agreed to work along side the party until they found a way out of the dungeon. Also her name is Bessy, because I made the mistake of mentioning a joke name before giving her a real name. She stayed at the back of the formation, and didn’t really do much. She wasn’t a hireling–the players weren’t offering her any gold or any shares of treasure. All she wanted was to get out of there. Plus, I’m not too terribly fond of running NPCs along side my players. None the less when the party was under attack she would pull out her axe and help, while doing her best to stay out of danger.

In the last room that the players explored that day, they encountered a mummy. Mummies are a challenge significantly above the party’s level, and halfway through the fight things got even worse when a second mummy in an adjacent room shambled out, and immediately attacked a level 1 paladin PC, dropping her below 0 hit points. The situation was grim for the party. After a few rounds they’d gotten the mummies down to about 15 HP each, but several party members were in danger of being killed before the battle was over.

Then Bessy’s turn came up. She was trying to defend the injured paladin, and was already in position from a previous turn. Her high base attack bonus allowed her to make two attacks, so I rolled both at the same time using different colored dice. The party was in bad shape, and they were all watching this roll expectantly, hoping the NPC could pull their asses out of the fire.

A lot of gaming stories reach their climax with the line “and then I rolled a 20.” But that’s not what happened here.

I rolled two twenties.

It’s something I’d never seen before. It will only happen one out of every 400 times you roll two d20s together. It has a 0.25% chance of occurring. I was stunned. It was such a remarkable roll that Bessy not only cleaved straight through the Mummy she was fighting, but she also hurled her axe across the room and smashed the other mummy into dust as well.

Higgins

Come listen young adventurers, heed what you’re told. ‘Bout a wizard named Higgins, and his actions so bold.

Higgins was a magic user in the OD&D game “Vaults of Pahvelorn” which I’ve been playing every Monday for the past few months. Higgins was evil, but he knew he wasn’t powerful enough yet to get away with being blatant about it. He did his best to keep his evil private, while in public he cultivated an image of being both generous and heroic. He once donated an entire share of treasure to the town guard just to apologize for wasting their time when the party reported a crime that was covered up before the guard could arrive to confirm it.

I was proud of Higgins. Pahvelorn is a deadly game, and a lot of my fellow adventurers had died before me. But Higgins was smart, and he was lucky. His risks were calculated, and if he ever did something foolish, the dice were always willing to give him a second chance. Playing 3 hours a week for something like four months, Higgins slowly accumulated greater and greater power. It took me several months to gain access to any spell other than Read Magic, and I think I was among the first in the party to reach second level. I started to think that Higgins might be able the achieve the goals I had set for Margo, before he died. Perhaps Higgins could become the most powerful magic user this campaign world had ever known. Perhaps he would build a tower in the city of Zorphath, and rule over it as the lords of old had done. And he’d do it wearing stylish robes he’d sewn himself, and the 3 horned helm he’d taken from his master’s killer.

I assume you’ve guessed, from my use of past tense, that none of this will ever come to pass.

It all started when the party decided to go to a nearby haunted cathedral. We had been there once before, and survived only by fleeing with our tails between our legs. But most of us were level 2 by this point. We were also much better equipped, and better prepared for the kinds of challenges we would face. Truth be told I felt a little wary, but I was willing to go if my party would be there beside me.

We had a few tough encounters, but we were managing, until we reached a rather innocuous room with a ghost. He wasn’t hostile towards us. He barely even noticed us. He was on his hands and knees, searching for his cat. We thoroughly poked and prodded the room with our 10ft poles, and found the dry bones of his cat, along with several large rats, beneath a table. We prodded the rats in turn, but nothing seemed to happen, so we assumed the room was safe. We directed the ghost towards his cat’s location, and he moved to look. As he peered under the table, though, he reeled back and shouted something about demon rats.

It seems foolish now, but I thought we’d been as thorough as we could be in testing the room for danger. I announced that Higgins would step forward, punch and kick the rat skeletons into dust, pick up the cat skeleton, and return it to the elderly ghost. I was making a big show about being heroic, and the entire group was chuckling over it. Save for Brendan, who was flat-out laughing his ass off. For awhile I thought I was just a really funny guy, until Brendan managed to choke out:

“The rats actually animate and attack you.”

I’m sure my face turned as white as my character sheet as the dice were rolled. Three out of the four attacks hit me, and the damage dice rolled high, reducing me to -13 hit points. I was given a saving throw against death, which I failed.

And just like that, all of my plans to turn Higgins into an evil overlord who would rule for 100 years came crashing down…because he stopped to rescue an old man’s cat.

Rethinking Rations

At my game table I have a bowl filled with poker chips. At the start of every game, my players look at their inventory and pull out a number of white chips equal to their ammunition, red chips equal to their torches/lantern oil, and blue chips equal to their rations. As we play, chips go into the bowl when these consumables are used, and come out of the bowl when they’re purchased. When the game ends, the players count their chips, and update their character sheets. It’s an efficient system which allows me to be strict about consumable use, without requiring my players to perform a lot of annoying bookkeeping. I think I originally got the idea from Telecanter.

Prior to using this system I was the bad sort of GM who just hand-waved consumables out of the game because they were too much of a pain in the ass to keep track of. I find I enjoy the game much more since I’ve started using this system, though. Tracking ammunition has the largest impact on the game, since players need to be much more conscious about how frequently they use their bows. After a few hours of frequent combat, the ranger starts to get nervous, and that makes the game exciting. Tracking light sources has less of an impact, but it serves as a timer for how long your players can travel underground. Gods help them if they use more than half of their lantern oil on the way down into the dungeon.

Rations, on the other hand, have yet to play any important role in my games. My players track them because I’ve told them they need to do that. They dutifully toss a chip into the bowl at the end of each adventuring day, and when they free a prisoner or find someone in need, they share their poker chips with that person. But tracking rations has never served an actual purpose in the year or more that I’ve been doing it. It’s just a rote action of taking chips out of, and putting them back into the bowl. What is the point?

I don’t want to return to hand-waving rations because of this issue. Limited food resources has too much potential value. There’s a huge desert in the northern part of the continent my players are on. If they ever try to travel there, days away from any town, running out of food is going to be a serious concern. I’ve also begun work on a megadungon which extends dozens of levels beneath the earth. Again, in that situation, the possibility of starving is going to create excitement and urgency in the game. I won’t sacrifice that. But I also don’t want to continue tracking rations day-by-day, purchase-by-purchase for all the sessions where there’s no actual danger of food running out.

Starting with my next Pathfinder session in a couple weeks I’m going to switch things up. First off, I’ve been having players track 1 week’s worth of rations as 1 significant item using my encumbrance system. (A system which I intend to revisit and revise soon). Based on how much food actually weighs, rations in my game are far too light. Looking over military rations used by the U.S. within the last 30 years shows that a single meal can weigh as much as 2.7lb using relatively modern technology. Assuming three meals a day, a week’s rations is nearly 60lb! That’s hardly in line with other significant items, such as a greatsword, which might weight 10lb. Three days of food, at about 25lb, seems like a much more reasonable weight for a single significant item.

Having determined how a character’s carrying capacity converts into food, I’ll then have my players tell me how much of that carrying capacity they’re willing to devote to food. If they allocate 1 significant item to rations, then they have 3 days worth. If they allocate 2 SI, then they have 6 days worth, and so on. It will be assumed that any time the players visit civilization, (barring extenuating circumstances), they’ll find time to purchase food. The cost will be rolled into their standard upkeep costs. Using this method, the players can just write “6 days of food (2 SI)” on their inventory sheet. All I need to do is ask once every 3 days away from civilization if the players have enough food. If they do, we continue on without a hitch, if they don’t, then things start to get interesting.

Using this system should maintain all of the interesting aspects of tracking rations, but reduce the bookkeeping aspects to a minimum.

Vampiric Classifications 2: Types

Last week I posted regarding Vampiric Hierarchy, detailing how the hidden society of vampires interact with one another in my campaign worlds. With that out of the way, I’ll move on to specific vampire types, and a broad generalization about what those types represent. But that’s all which can be offered here: generalizations. A player would be a fool to assume two vampires of the same type will present the same challenge, because the curse of the nosferatu affects each of its victims in a unique way. As the great monster hunter Van Richten wrote, “Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a ‘typical vampire.’ Vampires are perhaps the most individualistic of undead. What is true for one is an outright–and dangerously misleading–falsehood for another.”

Types According to Hierarchical Ranking

Fledgelings are newly created vampires, and the lowest on the vampiric hierarchy. Since vampires gain in power as they progress in age, a fledgelings powers are understandably weak compared to most of their brethren. Their strength and spell-like abilities have not yet come into their full potential. Each fledgeling develops at a different rate, but it is common for the vampire’s physical abilities–great strength and speed, the ability to climb walls as a spider would, resistance to mundane weapons, etc.–to be available immediately upon the vampire’s creation. While the more mystical and subtle of a vampire’s abilities, such as domination or changing shape, often take longer to develop. Conversely, all of a vampire’s weaknesses are in full effect immediately after a fledgelings creation, and in most cases the fledgeling is significantly more vulnerable to them than a more powerful vampire would be. While a vampire Lord, for example, might survive several seconds in sunlight, a vampire fledgeling would be instantly incinerated by it.

Coven Vampire. Though stronger than fledgelings, coven vampires are considered weak because they were unable to rise to the rank of soldier or lord/lady. Most commonly, coven vampires live in groups of 5-30, though larger covens have been known to exist. A coven vampire’s abilities are developed more fully than a fledgeling’s, but coven vampires cannot create spawn. In a game like Pathfinder, coven vampires would not have PC class levels.

Soldiers are most likely the vampires which you find under “V” in your Bestiary, Monster Manual, or what have you. They are fearsome foes with full mastery of all the basic vampire abilities. They can create fledgelings if they so choose, but the creation of fledgelings is often considered a declaration that the Vampire wishes to establish themselves as a Lord or Lady in their own right. Despite the title ‘soldier,’ this rank does not necessarily imply that the vampire fills a combat role. In addition to bodyguards and warriors, soldier vampires can include advisers, diplomats, or even consorts. A fully developed vampire who is in direct service to their Lord or Lady is termed a soldier, regardless of specific occupation.

Lord and Lady vampires are undead aristocracy. They rule over impressive lairs or even castles. Occasionally they will even rule over a populace of the living, keeping their unlife a secret by shrouding themselves behind layers of bureaucracy, or using a trusted majordomo to carry out their edicts. Vampiric Lords and Ladies have grown in power beyond anything which could be called ‘typical.’ It is at this level of power which a vampire’s unique traits truly begin to emerge. Some vampires gain physical prowess in the extreme, becoming far stronger and faster even than their already strong and fast fellows. Others may gain unnatural mystical prowess, allowing them to call upon more powerful versions of their spell like abilities, or even developing new abilities altogether. Still others may actually become resistant to their vampire weaknesses, allowing them to ignore the upheld holy symbol of a cleric, or walk freely across running water. And the older a vampire grows, the more powerful they will inevitably become.

First is a rank which cannot be achieved through a vampire’s growing power. While even a commoner could rise to the level of Vampire Lord if they had enough ambition and talent, the rank of First Lord and First Lady is reserved for those who are a direct descendent of the Highlord or Queen of their bloodline. And while a Lord or Lady’s power may be immense, the power of a first dwarfs it. The purity of the curse which afflicts a vampiric first allows them to evolve at twice the speed of any vampires they or their descendents create.

Highlords and Queens are without peer. Often they are so powerful, that they are immune to typical vampire weaknesses. Even sunlights, while painful and disorienting, cannot destroy without prolonged exposure. These rulers of vampiric bloodlines frequently have unique and devastating powers. For example, The Blind Empress, a vampiric queen, was actually capable of causing a solar eclipse, allowing herself and her vampire warriors to devastate rival bloodlines easily by attacking them during the day. Highlords and Queens also develop physical changes as well. To again use The Blind Empress as an example, she had permanent wings, and skin which cut like a blade.

Anomalous Types

Feral Vampires are hungry. They have been without any blood for months, or even years, and they have lost their grip on reality. A feral vampire is a beast who pursues blood without a thought for subtlety or personal safety. Mind you, feral vampires will not foolishly destroy themselves, and they maintain enough intelligence to recognize and avoid danger. But they will brazenly attack in plain view of dozens of people, and they are not very good at keeping track of how much time they have remaining until sunrise. The only cure for a feral vampire is to consume massive amounts of blood. The equivalent of about 100-200 people in the space of a week. Any fledgelings created by a feral vampire will be feral themselves, and incurable.

When a vampire goes feral, it draws a great deal of attention to itself. For this reason, feral vampires are typically hunted down and killed by other vampires. The last thing anybody wants is for one vampire to go on a killing spree, and inspire a dozen towns to put bounties on vampire teeth.

Recovered Feral vampires are uncommon, since most are either killed by those they wish to hunt, or by their fellow vampires. However, it does occur, and when it does the effects of their feral period are not kind to the vampire’s appearance. Their face becomes much more sunken, and their teeth and fingers both become much longer, even to the point of being somewhat unwieldy. While most vampires are able to pass for human if the need arises, a feral vampire would be unable to do that without great difficulty. They appear much more like an animated corpse than their fellows, and will always lust for blood more than a typical vampire would. Recovered ferals are generally looked down upon within vampire society.

Rhonin Vampires are a rare breed. Somehow they managed to overcome the powerful magics which prevent a vampire from ever attacking their master. Every time their attention was diverted, or they lost consciousness, they powered through, until they had broken the magic’s hold over them. At this ponit they are already dangerously unbalanced, and the final act of killing their own master drives them fully into maddness. They become completely severed from their bloodline. Normally they are left to their own devices, and their maddness is used as a deterring example to other vampires.

Damphyr, or ‘half vampires’ can come about in several ways, none of them common. A pregnant woman who is turned into a fledgeling, for example, will not give birth to a full vampire, since the child was already partially formed prior to her transformation. Likewise, it is sometimes possible for congress between a vampire and a living mortal to result in pregnancy. The child who is born part vampire does not have access to the full range of vampiric abilities, but does have many of the traits of their vampiric parent, though to a lesser degree. Damphyrs are also afflicted by a vampire’s weaknesses, though again, to a lesser degree than their parent. A Damphyr can go out in daylight, for example, but will find the experience both painful and disorienting. If a damphyr refrains from consuming blood, then both their powers, and their weaknesses, will lessen over time, allowing them to live as a normal member of their species. If at any time they do consume blood, though, their powers will return in full force.

Survivor Vampire. After a vampire is nearly destroyed by one of its weaknesses, they occasionally develop an illness which incapacitates them for weeks. This illness is extremely painful and draining, requiring the vampire to feed a great deal more often than normal. When the illness ends, the vampire will find they have become resistant to the harmful agent which caused the illness. For example, a vampire who was nearly destroyed by sunlight would be able to last in sunlight for up to a minute without dying. Or a vampire who was doused in holy water would find they now had greater resistance to holy magics.

Revenant – Spectral vampires. The exact method of their creation is unknown, but it is suspected that they are destroyed vampires who have been reanimated through the most powerful and evil necromatic magics imaginable. Revenants lose the ability to create spawn, as well as any interest in participating in the political machinations of vampire society. They are indiscriminate death-dealers who spread disease and discord wherever they go. In many ways they are like feral vampires. But while ferals are driven by hunger to become beasts without intellect, revenants are driven by hate to become beasts without affection or restraint.

Vampiric Classifications 1: Hierarchy

If I had to select a single fantasy creature as my favorite, I don’t think there’s any competition for the vampire. I know it’s not a particularly original answer, but I don’t care even slightly. Vampires take everything I love about the macabre, and inject it with intellect, and grace. As monsters they tap into something so primal within the human psyche, that an equivalent to the vampire can be found in dozens of folkloric traditions. And as characters, vampires project an air of dignity, and elegance. The allure of the vampire is strong, which is why so many excellent tomes have been written about them already. The AD&D 2nd edition Ravenloft supplement “Van Richten’s Guide to Vampires” has a special place on the shelf above my desk.

I don’t think my take on vampires is even particularly original. At best you could call it an amalgam of traditions. Regardless of how original it is, though, the way I depict vampires in my games is something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about. I’m happy with it, and the Halloween season seems like as good a time as any to share what I’ve devised. In this post I’ll cover the hierarchy of vampire society, while a later post will detail specific types of vampires.

The basic structure of vampiric hierarchies is the bloodline. Each campaign world has between one and five elder bloodlines active. Typically a bloodline will include hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of vampires, scattered all throughout the world. Relationships between different bloodlines may vary, but no two will ever form anything more than a temporary alliance. It is always the ultimate goal of every vampiric bloodline to eliminate all others.

While vampires of different bloodlines may not have any distinguishing features to a casual observer, the creatures themselves are able to determine what bloodline another vampire belongs to based on appearance. This ability is not magical in any way, but instead is based on minor physical features which may not be regarded as important to a mortal. The shape and size of teeth is a common indication, as is the hue of the eyes and the palor of the skin.

Each bloodline is led by either a highlord, or a queen vampire. Every other member of a bloodline is descended directly from them. Unlike most vampires, highlords and queens were not (for the most part) created by having their blood consumed by another vampire. Instead they are rare creatures who were granted the gift of eternal unlife by a powerful demon or evil god. Rarely the Logos itself creates a vampire when a person of sufficient evil and temperament dies. It is also possible for a mortal to become a highlord or queen if they fully consume the blood of a vampire. This would both destroy the vampire, and cause the mortal to die and rise again as the first of a new bloodline. This last method is almost entirely unheard of, and only a select few know that it is even possible.

Often, young highlords and queens do not last long, unless they sequester themselves in a small area of the world and make no attempt to grow their bloodline. Even then, elder bloodlines are uncomfortable with the prospect of young bloodlines growing powerful enough to challenge them. A newly risen highlord or queen may quickly find themselves marked for assassination by the elder bloodlines if they are not careful to maintain a low profile.

The vast majority of vampires are not highlords or queens, though. Most are created when another vampire drains the blood of a mortal, killing them. The victim (whether they are willing or not), then rises as a fledgeling vampire subservient to their creator. At first, a fledgeling will be completely obedient to and reliant upon their master. As time passes and the fledgeling grows stronger, however, they will gain some measure of independence from their creator. As they grow in power, a fledgeling may become a member of a coven, or soldier for their master. Someday they may even become powerful enough to be a Lord or Lady in their own right. Though no matter how powerful a vampire becomes, they can never disobey a direct order from, nor can they plot against their creator. Nor can they disobey or plot against their creator’s creator, nor any other vampire they are descended from, all the way back to the highlord or queen of their bloodline. This restriction is not a social one, but rather it is a simple fact of a vampire’s nature. Any attempt to plot against one’s master would likely result in immediate distraction, and a concerted effort would only cause a loss of consciousness.

Which isn’t to say vampires haven’t found loopholes in the past. But it is not easy, nor is it common.

Within the first hundred years or so of their existence, fledgeling vampires are expected to become powerful enough to serve their masters as soldiers. Soldier vampires, while not independent from their creator as a lord or lady is, are none the less respected, and normally well treated by their masters. Some vampires are even content to remain soldiers, without seeking to establish themselves as a lord or lady in their own right.

When a fledgeling is not strong enough to rise to the rank of soldier, they are relegated to a coven. These groups, often composed of several dozen vampires, are the lowest rung of a vampiric bloodline. They are regarded as failures who must band together in order to survive. While they do ostensibly serve their creators directly, as soldiers do, most vampire lords and ladies have no use for their covens. Most covens are thus established far from their master’s home, and are called upon only rarely to serve. Covens are only created by common Lords and Ladies. The vampires created by Highlords, Queens, and Firsts are always powerful enough to become soldiers and lords. Though there has been some speculation that these high ranking vampires may merely kill their weak fledgelings to maintain this illusion.

Occasionally an upstart adventurer will actually succeed in killing a vampire lord or lady, creating a hole in the hierarchy of the bloodline. Any fledgelings created by that vampire are immediately destroyed or driven mad by the destruction of their master. Any soldier vampires which do not die protecting their master will likely be recruited by another vampire lord or lady in the same bloodline. If they do not wish to serve another, the soldier may attempt to become a lord or lady in their own right. Covens left behind by a destroyed vampire are either forgotten about and left entirely to their own devices, or destroyed by more powerful vampires who do not wish to leave any loose ends which may cause problems down the line. All of the vampires which were created by a deceased lord or lady become a little more free. However, they are still subservient to the remaining vampires from which they are descended.

In the rare event that a Highlord or Queen vampire is killed, every vampire in their bloodline with 6HD or less is immediately destroyed. Every other vampire in their bloodline takes 1d12 damage per hit die. So a vampire with 10HD would take 10d12 damage if the Queen of their bloodline were destroyed. A bloodline which loses its leader is often reduced to beneath half of its former strength in the space of a heartbeat. When this happens, any surviving first lords and ladies are presented with an interesting choice. They may opt to separate from their bloodline, and declare themselves and their descendants to be a new bloodline altogether. Alternatively, if a single First is able to consume the blood from, and destroy, every other First within their bloodline, then they may seize control of whatever remains.

Given the nature of vampires, the destruction of a Highlord or Queen almost always results in a bloody scramble for power among the remaining Firsts. After which the victor must move quickly to defend their severely weakened bloodline from any challenger bloodlines who would use this opportunity to destroy them.

8 Rules for Dungeon Improvisation

During my most recent pathfinder game, a number of my players were absent. Among them was the group’s sorceress, Phoenix Darkmatter. Her absence was particularly relevant because the primary quest of the party currently revolves around her. Without her there to participate, I assumed that the party would want to pursue some other goal, so prior to the game I prepared a number of quest threads in the town they had ended their last adventure in. True to form, however, they completely bypassed everything I had prepared. As I had predicted, they didn’t want to continue the arachnohomnid quest line without Phoenix, but they weren’t even slightly interested in protecting dwarven caravans either. No, this party of low level adventurers recalled hearing about a lich which lived in the southern lands, and determined that killing it would be an appropriate use of their time.

The rogue participated only under strong (and well justified) protest.

Fortunately, a random roll of the dice brought the party to their senses. After nearly being killed by a pack of wolves they randomly encountered while crossing the planes, they settled on a more reasonable goal: find out why the nearby forest was filled with half-ogre monstrosities. It’s a quest thread I had introduced in one of our first sessions. They had never seemed particularly interested in it before. I had to leave the room for a moment to find some of my older notes related to that quest–and what I had was not much. A mad wizard with ogre minions had taken up residence in the ancient elven ruins of Gorak Torar, where he was experimenting on transforming the local Gnoll population into Ogre-kin servants for himself. That’s all I had.

Oh, and the ruins were made of blue-white stone. Because this place was not at all a ripoff of Dire Maul.

The players asked intelligent questions and quickly found a trail of clues leading them to the ruins themselves. They’re starting to get too good at this game, I can’t rely on them fumbling about for too long while I find my bearings. It didn’t take them long after finding the ruins to gravitate towards the large building at the center, and make their way into the dungeon beneath it. A dungeon which I had absolutely no plans whatsoever for. So I improvised.

I’ve always prided myself on my improvisational skill, and everyone enjoyed themselves. It was easily the most fun I’ve had recently, and my players were still talking about the adventure a couple days later. Once the game was over, and I had a moment to review my performance, I went over my methodology for creating the dungeon, and retroactively codified 8 rules I had used to help me go about the task.

Steal. Do it rampantly, and do it shamelessly. Even if you were to completely rip off the layout of an environment your players were intimately familiar with, it’s not likely that they would notice. And if you change a room shape here, and add a few more doors there, a dungeon layout lifted from another game becomes completely unrecognizable.
Don’t make the dungeon fancy, just make it. Don’t waste a bunch of your time thinking about how to make things interesting, or how to create a theme, or complicated multi-room puzzles. You don’t have time. Draw corridors, draw doors, draw rooms, and figure out what’s in them. That’s all you have time for. If you want to add depth, do something simple like a locked door, or a key hanging on the wall. Then you can easily insert the matching element later.
Read -C’s PDF guide On Tricks, Empty Rooms, and Basic Trap Design. The Empty Rooms part is particularly important. Commit as much of this PDF to memory as you can, and use it.
While your players are discussing amongst themselves what they want to do in a given room, that’s your opportunity to figure out what’s behind all of the room’s doors. You don’t need to pay attention to everything they say, but you should already know what’s behind every door of the room they’re in.
You don’t need to worry about anything beyond the rooms which are adjacent to the one your players are in. There’s no need to waste time detailing a room which they might never even get near to. If you have spare time, focus your attention on adding details to the rooms you’ve already got. Something like a trap, a secret door, or some unusual monster or treasure adds depth to your dungeon.
Restroom breaks are a perfect opportunity to expand your map.
Select a small number of enemy types, maybe 2-3, and have those creatures constitute most of the dungeon’s population. Some rooms might have a special monster of some kind, but a small number monster types repeated gives the dungeon a sense of consistency. Don’t be afraid to put those monsters in a variety of situations, though.
If your players are looking for something in particular, it will not necessarily be along the path they take through the dungeon. They will likely pass a number of doors on their way through the dungeon, and it could easily be beyond one of those. If you’d like to handle this with as much agency as possible, roll a D6 each time the players descend to a new level. On a roll of 5-6 (or 4-6 for smaller dungeons) what the players are looking for is on that level of the dungeon. And each time the players enter a new room on that level, roll a D20. On a roll of 19-20, what the players are looking for is in that particular room.

These are just the rules I came up with off the top of my head during the game. I’d be curious to know if anyone else has similar methods, or tips on how I could improve my own!

Campaign Management Toolbox

One of my multitude of flaws as a GM is that I do not run a very organized campaign. Notes are often scattered, and obtuse. An NPC’s name is buried in the middle of a paragraph of the notes from two sessions ago. I don’t want to waste everyone’s time, so I just come up with something new off the top of my head and hope the players weren’t paying enough attention to notice. And that’s terrible. As GMs, we want our worlds to be consistent and life-like. No, our players probably won’t notice if we rename an NPC they’ve only seen once before, but that’s because they need to hear an NPC’s name three or four times before they’ll start to remember it. And if we can’t give them that repetition, then the setting is just a vessel that they use to play the game. It will never become a persistent world in their minds, and thus the game can never achieve its full potential.

Unfortunately, we GMs are but mortal men and women. We do not have the power to hold an entire world within our minds, with all the characters, locations, and events such a feat would entail. Perhaps gods would make better GMs, but players will have to settle for those of us who just think we’re omnipotent. And if we want to pull that off, we need tools. I’ve spent the last week reevaluating and updating the various methods I use to help me manage my campaign, and I think I’ve assembled a tool box which is relatively comprehensive, easy to use while in play, supports a dynamic world, and is simple to keep updated. That last one is particularly important because my note-taking has always been atrocious.

The campaign calendar is one of my newest tools. Based on my old post, Suppositions on Time Tracking, I created a calendar with 7 days in a week, 5 weeks in a month, and 10 months in a year. It might seem arbitrary to deviate from the gregorian calendar most of us are familiar with. However, I didn’t feel the gregorian calendar was sufficiently easy to use. Not only do the number of days in a month fluctuate throughout the year, but since the number of days in a month is not divisible by the number of days in a week, the whole thing turns into a big mess. In my system, each unit of time measurement can be fitted neatly into the next largest unit of measurement without any remainder. The only problem is that the 4 seasons cannot be distributed evenly amongst 10 months. But I just made the transitory seasons (spring and fall) two months long, and the other seasons three months long. That seemed suitable enough to me.

As an added bonus, changing from the gregorian calendar adds to the atmosphere of the game world. Even if the players never need to think about the game’s calendar themselves, the fact that I now know how the calendar works helps make NPC dialogue seem a little more authentic. If you’re interested, the seven days of the week are Famday, Moonsday, Skyday, Earthday, Seaday, Kingsday, and Godsday. The five weeks of the month are Squire’s Week, Knight’s Week, Baron’s Week, Earl’s Week, and Duke’s Week. And the ten months of the year are the “The Month Of…” Rising, Blood, Healing, Blades, Victory, Restlessness, Glory, Defeat, Wisdom, and Remembrance.

Functionally, I use the calendar to track events over time. I keep track of what in-game day it is when we play, and note down any significant events which happen during that day. I try to avoid too much detail, just making quick notes, such as meeting with an NPC I want to bring back in the future, starting or completing a quest, things like that. Going back through the calendar, it can serve as a log book of sorts. It also helps me track cooldowns. If I tell the players it’ll take a week’s worth of time to research something, then I can mark down when they begin researching it, and I won’t forget when it’s time for them to be finished. This also helps with cool downs, or establishing other time limitations. I am coming to appreciate that the passage of time is potentially one of the most interesting aspects of a D&D game–both on the adventure level, and the campaign level. The calendar should help me use that tool more efficiently.

Part of what makes the calendar relevant is a pair of tools which I’ve taken to collectively calling the Quest Log. The first of the two is a list of the PC’s stated goals. It only takes up a few lines, but it serves as an essential compass to me when I’m preparing for each new session. I know from listening to my players that they’re interested in stealing an egg from a great and terrible mountain-sized spider which lives far to the north east. So if the land between where the players currently are and where they need to go doesn’t have any towns or monsters in it, I know I need to work on that to be ready for the next session. The second part of the Quest Log are a list of ‘open hooks.’

Open hooks are ongoing events which the PCs know about. It is important to note that, while there is some overlap, not all open hooks will be among the PC’s stated goals. For example, my players expressly decided not to involve themselves in the war between the Orcs and the Elves in the Western forest. Likewise, not all of the PC’s stated goals count as open hooks. For example, one of my PC’s stated goals is to acquire the hair of a drow. Unless there’s a contagious epidemic of baldness amongst the drow, this doesn’t really count as an ‘ongoing event.’

Using the ‘Lines in the Water‘ mechanic devised by Eric of Dragon’s Flagon, I assign a die to each of the open hooks. More volatile situations use a die with fewer faces, while more stable situations use a die with more faces. Once every in-game week, each open hook’s die is rolled. If the number is a 1 or a 2, the situation gets worse, if I roll the die’s maximum number, or one less than the maximum, then the situation gets better. I heartily recommend you read the original post on this mechanic to get a fuller explanation. It’s one of the most innovative and elegant mechanics I’ve seen in awhile. By using it, I can quickly determine how my game world evolves around my characters. They’ll learn that an opportunity they choose to pass on will not always be there for them in the future, and I avoid any biases I may have about how I would like the event to develop without the player’s help.

Perhaps one of the most obvious tools in my toolbox is a keyed campaign map. My world is printed on a hex map, the value of which I’ve written about a number of times in the past. I created the map using Hexographer, which is the only digital tool I’m using right now. Everything else is done on paper, and fits neatly into a binder. Each hex on the map is keyed twice. First, each hex is part of a numbered ‘region,’ which is outlined in red on the map. Each region has some very basic information associated with it: ‘World NPCs’ which live there (I’ll get to that later), important locations which exist there, the government of the region, a very brief description of what is currently going on there, and an encounter table.

For example, region 1 on my campaign map is home to no World NPCs, and the only important locations are Honon village, and the Dwarven Trade Road. Region 1 is ruled by the human Korrathan Empire, but is on the edge of their territories. The only thing currently going on in region 1 is that the town of Honon is attempting to rebuild after it was destroyed, and there is a group of bandits which attacks small groups of travelers. Based on that information, I created a small encounter table where there were not many encounters with monsters, since the area is considered civilized territory. There is a 15% chance of encountering bandits, a 10% chance of encountering wolves or dire wolves, and the rest of the encounters are just with traveling merchants or patrolling guards.

For most hexes, the region key is all that I need. However, for added detail, each hex is also individually numbered. Most of these numbers correspond with nothing. But if a hex has something particular in it, such as a town, or a monument, or a dungeon entrance, then that information is keyed to the individual hex number rather than the regional key. Again using region 1 as an example, there is only one hex with anything specific in it. Hex 28.18 contains the lakeside town of Honon. So here I would quickly note the name of the town, and the names and purpose of any NPCs the players have interacted with before. Depending on how important the town is to the game, I may have more information as well, such as the town’s purchasing power or the services it has available. In the specific case of Honon, I once ran an adventure where I thought the players might attempt to barricade the town to defend against an attack. They didn’t, but I’ve got a map of the town none the less, which I keep next to hex 28.18’s individual key in case I ever have another use for it.

The only one of these tools I devised myself is the list of the ‘World NPCs’ I mentioned earlier. World NPCs have a larger sphere of influence than standard NPCs do. They are queens, popes, generals, mighty wizards, and dragons. The players may not have met them, but their actions can none the less affect the player’s environment. All world NPCs have a short description of what they want, and how they want to get it. For example, for Grum Okkor, king of the Trolls, my description might read “Wants to build the first Troll empire. Is banding the numerous Troll dens together. Will attack the Korrathan Capitol city on the Squire’s Week during the Month of Blades in the year 3999. Chance of success: 70%”

World NPCs are my method for making the world seem fluid around the players. Events they’ve heard of are not the only ones which affect the world. If the players are nowhere near Korrothan during the Month of Blades this year, then they may return home to find it’s not a safe place to be anymore. Or, at the very least, they’ll return home to a nation recovering from a brutal war. And if they are in Korrothan during the Month of Blades, then they’ll have the opportunity to participate in the war and save their homeland.

The final tool in my box is a simple list: enemies of the PCs. These are characters which the players have insulted, or harmed in the past, and who are angry enough to seek revenge. Each of the PC’s enemies has a plot. One of them might be waiting for the players to return to their town before they strike, while another might be actively tracking the players down. If the players unwittingly stay in one place for too long, their enemies might catch up!

And that’s everything I’m currently using to manage my campaign. I will admit, it’s a little ambitious considering how bad I normally am at maintaining notes. But I think it’s also structured enough, and minimalist enough, that I should be able to avoid many of my characteristic problems, such as including far more detail than necessary. I am hoping these tools will help me improve, but campaign management is still one of my weakest skills as a GM. If anyone has any advice they’d like to share, or ideas on how I can improve the tools listed above, I’d love to hear about it!

Playing with Unbalanced Levels in Pathfinder

In the Gygaxian Era, it was common for every PC to start at first level, regardless of the level of their fellow adventurers. While it was not unheard of for players to start at a higher level, my understanding is that it was not common. And from what I’ve read, it certainly doesn’t seem to have been something Gygax himself liked very much. If you were a new player in an ongoing campaign, you could expect to start at first level even if the rest of the group were in the mid teens or higher. And if you were unfortunate enough to lose a high level character to one of oldschool D&D’s numerous hazards, and your compatriots either could not access, or could not afford, a resurrection spell, then that was it. Back to first level for you.

This style of play has gradually fallen out of style, to the point that many players are unaware that it ever existed. And many modern gamers who are aware of it (either anecdotally or by experience) are openly scornful of the idea. The general consensus among many of my fellow modern gamers is that players who are significantly lower level than the rest of the party will be left with nothing to do. Rather than ‘pointlessly punish’ players for being new to the game, or losing a PC, the GM should let them begin at least two levels below the average party level. And in fairness, there is a logic to this argument.

For my part, I’ve always been at least interested in this kind of play. Which isn’t to say I always thought the idea was good. Quite the opposite, I often joined in on conversations deriding this type of play. I thought it might be a fun way to spend an evening sometime, but never expected I’d enjoy that kind of fundamental imbalance in my games. It might have worked in earlier iterations of the game, I thought, when even high level characters were not particularly powerful. But in the modern game, the difference between a high level character and a low level character is too large. The villains in a high level game would wipe the floor with a low level PC!

Last October, however, I learned I had been wrong. Low level players in a high level game were not useless. Nor were they boring for the people playing them. In fact, that game was an immense amount of fun. As I noted at the time, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that particular player have quite so much fun before. But that was a one-off session. The situation was unusual, and I was unsure of whether that level of fun could be maintained across an entire campaign. If level imbalance were the rule, rather than the exception, would it still be fun?

In the hopes that it would, my Current Pathfinder game is using much stricter rules for character creation. The group I’m playing with has grown slowly, from the three original members, to a fourth two sessions later, to a fifth the session after that, and even a sixth two sessions after that. By the time the most recent player joined the game, the rest were already pushing level three, but I had them start at first level none the less. And while the lower level characters are certainly less capable than the higher level ones, there is not a sense that they’re contributing any less to the group’s success. Often the low level players are able to completely change the course of a battle because they come up with innovative tactics for the party to use, or because they let the higher level characters occupy the monsters while they attempt something clever.

As the average party level gets higher, though, I’ve been more wary about starting players all the way at level 1. The last two members to join the party did so with +1 weapons at their disposal, because I was worried about alienating those players by throwing them into a game where they felt as though they were at a disadvantage.

Earlier today, however, I ran a game where one of the highest level PCs in the party met their end. The player made two extremely poor decisions in a row, and she paid for it when she was reduced to -27 hit points in the first round of combat with three ogres. While the rest of the players continued to explore the dungeon, I told her to begin rolling a new character. I figured that once she was done, I’d have the party encounter her as a prisoner who would join their party, so I told her not to bother rolling starting gold or buying equipment.

Shortly thereafter, the party encountered the ruler of the dungeon: a 6th level evocation specialist wizard with a gear-less paladin chained to the wall. I didn’t know how much the new character would be able to contribute to the battle, but I figured that in the wrost case scenario, one of the other adventurers would free her and give her a spare weapon so she could join in on the fight.I waas particularly worried when I learned that the player had forgotten to select either of the feats they were entitled to as a first level human.

But oh, was I surprised.

First, they asked if they could make a strength check to break the chains that were holding them to the wall. I allowed it, but set the DC pretty high. She not only made it, but she surpassed it by enough that I told her she had pulled chunks of brick out of the wall along with the chains. She asked if she could swing them as weapons, and I agreed. So in a fluid motion, she both broke free from the wall, and smashed the wizard’s two goblin minions in the head with chunks of stone, killing one, and reduing the other to a single hit point. Already she’d significantly affected the battle by effectively removing two nuisance fighters, but I’ll grant you, her success here was largely the luck of the dice.

But she wasn’t done yet.

On her next turn, she asked if she could tackle the wizard, who had just cast fireball on the rest of the party, reducing most of them to dangerously low HP. I told her to make a combat maneuver check, and she easily surpassed the measly combat maneuver defense of the wizard. She tackled him to the ground, and the two rolled down the stairs of his dais together. On the wizard’s next turn, he cast the only spell I thought would still work–shocking grasp. He rolled an 18 on his concentration check, and sent 6d6 volts of electric energy through the shiny new character, reducing the level 1 paladin to -6hp.

The following round, the rest of the players in the group managed to finish the wizard off, but each member of the party was on death’s doorstep. Two of them had only a single hit point remaining. If not for the round of distraction afforded to the group by the paladin, the battle would have resulted in a TPK.

Let me say that again: A level 1 paladin without any equipment, weapons, or feats, managed to single-handedly turn the tide of a battle which was designed as a challenge for 6th level characters.

If you think low level characters can’t have an impact on a high level game: you are wrong.

What I Need to Improve on as a Game Master

I work hard to be the best game master that I can, and if I do say so myself, I’m not too bad at it. My groups always seem to have a lot of fun, or at least enough fun that they’re willing to return to my table. Plus there’s the few hundred people who seem to think I’m interesting enough to warrant reading this site, so I figure I can’t be failing completely. Unless a lot of you are just google bots and image wranglers.

…damnit, that’s exactly what you are, isn’t it?

Regardless, I believe that a person should always look for ways to improve, and I need to improve as a GM in more ways than I’m comfortable admitting. I rarely come away from a game session without feeling as though there’s something I could have done much better. I am honestly embarrassed to admit to some of these flaws, and I questioned whether or not I even wanted to share this post. But I also believe that the best kind of writer is one who is brutally honest. Especially regarding themselves. So here we go;

I wet the bed into my teen years.

There. Everything after that should be easy, right?

Consistency is a big personal battle for me, and my failure to be consistent has often affected my GMing in numerous ways. The extent of my preparations, for example, varies wildly. Occasionally I’ll come to a game with ten or twenty pages worth of notes, but more often I’ve got maybe a page of sloppily assembled chicken-scratches. I have a terrible habit of letting other concerns get in the way of my game mastering responsibilities.

Fortunately, or not, my greatest strength as a GM is improvisation. I can pull a varied and interesting game out of thin air without too much effort. But I think this ability can become more of a crutch than a boon. Even the best improvisations are rarely consistent with games I’ve run in the past. Players start to notice little oddities: “If half of the villagers have disappeared, shouldn’t there be empty houses we can stay in? Why do we need to stay in the mayor’s spare room?”

Perhaps my worst inconsistency is in my scheduling of games. I often put off arranging the next game session, because I find social situations so draining. It’s strange that someone like myself, who always feels exhausted after spending an extended amount of time with people, would be so attracted to a game that is inherently social. I’m a walking contradiction, apparently.

Overland Travel has been a weakness of mine for years. The way I handle it did vastly improve when I began mapping my overworlds with hexes. But drastically improved does not mean good enough. I still truggle with basic elements of presentation. I currently have my players indicate how they’d like to travel on a hex grid, and I fill in the blanks as they do so. Not only is it a waste of time to have me filling in hexes, but I hate that my current method has players interacting with a grid, rather than using their imaginations to create the environment for themselves.

I’ve been reading a series of posts written by The Alexandrian on this subject, which address many of the issues I’ve had with running hex crawls. Hopefully after tinkering with it, and trying to run a hex map according to his guidelines, I’ll have a firmer grasp of how a game like that should function. I would like overland travel to be one of the highlights of my games, where adventure hooks lurk behind every hex, and players can spend an entire session being entertained by a lengthy journey. I’ve been able to capture some element of that in my games so far, but I want more.

Economies in my games never make much sense. Going back to the problem with consistency, there’s rarely a set buying power for a gold piece, or any real gauge on how common it is. When my players approach their wizard friend and ask for a completely reasonable magic device that they should be able to acquire (but for which there is no precedent), I come up with a price that ‘seems right.’ Only later do I realize that I’ve significantly over or underestimated the item’s value. I also have a bad habit of being a great deal more generous with treasure than I ought to be, because I’m worried about keeping my players engaged in the adventure if they don’t feel suitably rewarded.

Yes, I know that’s ridiculous.

Focus isn’t something I even realized I was failing at until recently. I started making audio recordings of my games, and realized that my group and I spend a lot of time chit-chatting during game sessions. Worse: more often than not those tangents originate with me. Time for a big surprise: I like the sound of my own voice. You could make the argument that so long as everyone is having fun, it’s not really a problem. But, having played in Brendan’s OD&D game, I’ve seen how much better the game is when everyone keeps their attention on the game. Brendan does a great job of gently guiding everyone’s focus back to the game when it strays. In that way he’s provided a model for me to learn from.

Traps are my weakness when it comes to dungeon crawls. Otherwise, I think I do a pretty decent job of making dungeons work in my games. But when it comes to traps, I’ve never been able to pull them off satisfactorily. Either they’re so non-threatening as to be boring, or they’re so deadly as to be cheap. In part, I blame the game systems I’ve GMed for this one: D&D 3.X and Pathfinder. Skill checks are not a very fun way for a player to search for traps, nor are disable device checks a fun way to get rid of them. I covered this a bit in my skills analyses of both perception and disable device. However, having now played in Brendan’s OD&D game where traps are handled properly, I feel as though I have a better understanding of what makes them fun, and why I’ve only had limited success with them in the past. I guess here, again, Brendan has provided a model to help me improve my own GMing. Thanks!

Low Magic eludes me. I dislike fantasy settings where magic serves as technology. It can be fun now and again, but the world is much more interesting when magic is rare. Yet I always seem to end up in high-magic games. I’m not quite sure how it happens. One minute there’s only one wizard in the area, and he’s a crusty old curmudgeon. The next moment I’ve offhandedly mentioned to my players that there’s a wizard’s college in the capitol city. Fuck! Butter luck next campaign.

There you have it. My biggest failings as a GM. Hopefully I can get them sorted out soon and move on to more minor issues with my style.

Colorful Characters 20: Melina Ayvon, The Apothocary

Melina Ayvon’s goal in life was to coast by as easily as she could. That’s why she applied to the wizard’s academy in the first place. She thought if she could control the fabric of the universe, everything else would be child’s play. She never anticipated quite how many long hours and sleepless nights were required to master even the most basic cantrips. To Melina’s credit, she wasn’t stupid. She managed to avoid much of the work expected of her for a time, skirting along at the bottom of her class. That couldn’t last forever, though, and before she’d finished her second year at the academy, she was expelled. She cursed the wizard’s college for spurning her, accusing the ruling council of elitism and bias against their slower-learning students.

One of the wizards of the college, an archmage named Edilon, felt sympathy for her. He’d seen her potential, and had felt for some time that the academy’s headmasters were becoming too elitist–though he could not know then that her claim was a selfish one born of humiliation, rather than a reasoned critique. Edilon took his leave of the academy, and went to the young wizard. He offered to tutor her in the mystic arts, and without any better options before her, Melina readily agreed. Over the years they spent together, Edilon showed remarkable patience, and for her part Melina put forth a greater effort than she had in the past. Though she never accepted any responsibility for her expulsion from the wizard’s college, she none the less realized that Edilon was her last chance to learn the mystic arts.

But Melina never tried to change her own nature. She was an immature girl who could not recognize her own flaws, and found no great joy in the study of magic. Though she applied herself, her resolve in this matter was finite. Over time, Edilon came to understand that his pupil’s talent would never be able to compensate for her lack of drive. Still, he pushed her, hoping he could draw a passion for study out of her. His patience only came to an end when he discovered Melina attempting to deceive him. For months the two had worked, trying to teach her a somewhat complicated spellcasting technique. She became frustrated with the time spent on the subject, and attempted to fool her teacher by hiding a wand up her sleeve so she could cast the spell more easily. Furious, and disappointed, Edilon rescinded his offer of tutelage, and cast her out of his tower. As she indignantly stormed away, Melina convinced herself that the old man had wanted her to fail, and so put a problem before her which was too difficult for her to solve.

With nowhere to go, she traveled south from the city to settle in one of the smaller villagers. There the moderate magic she possessed would be prized and feared.

Melina tried to settle in several communities, and they were always happy to have her for a short while. As she had predicted, the villagers were eager to make use of even her limited magical abilities. But it never took long before she found herself unwelcome. Her brash demeanor and privileged attitudes did not engender friendship among the townspeople, and her increasingly exorbitant demands eventually always led to the town asking her to leave. And in the next town, she’d tell stories of the how the last village she’d visited did not appreciate her, and how it was filled with rubes too frightened of a little magic to realize what a benefit she could have been.

It only took a few years for Melina to run out of towns to live in. On the furthest reaches of civilization, she was surrounded by woodspeople and hunters. Gruff folk uninterested in her petty conceits about her own importance, but willing to let her live among them so long as she didn’t bother anyone. The once proud mage set herself up as an apothecary, dispensing herbs and elixirs to the townsfolk, and adventurers who passed through the area.

More than once, Melina tried to join those adventuring parties. Each time she’d board up her shop and brag about the riches she would find, but she’d always be back soon enough. She’d say the party had tried to rob her, or that they’d been incompetent, or didn’t know how to stand away from the spell she was casting. Occasionally she wouldn’t say anything about why she’d left, which was fine, because nobody really cared anyway. She soon gave up on adventuring as well, resigning herself to a life peddling cures for rashes and bald spots. It’s not the easy life she wanted, but it’s the one she got. Sometimes she waxes poetical about how the world has wronged her and how her potential isn’t being realized, but the words are beginning to sound hollow even to her.

Melina Ayvon (CR 1)
XP: 400
Female Human Wizard 2
CN humanoid
Init +2; Senses Perception -1

Defenses

AC 13, Flat Footed 10, Touch 13 [10 + Dex(2) ]
hp 10 (2d6 +4)
Fort +2 Ref +2 Will +2

Offense

Speed 30ft
Wizard Spells Prepared (CL 2nd; Concentration + 5)(+1 Conjuration DCs)
1st– Mount, Summon Monster I, Unseen Servant
0 (at will)– Light, Touch of Fatigue, Mage Hand, Mending
Wizard Spellbook Melina’s spellbook doesn’t contain anything more than what is shown here. Learning more spells than she could prepare would be a waste of her time.
School Conjuration
Opposition Schools Enchantment, Abjuration
Conjurer Abilities
Summoner’s Charm (Su)— Whenever you cast a summoning spell, increase the duration by a number of rounds equal to half of your wizard class level.
Acid Dart(Sp):— 6/day, As a standard action you can unleash an acid dart targeting any foe within 30ft as a ranged touch attack. The dart deals 1d6 + 1 damage. Ignores Spell Resistance.
Arcane Bond: A pair of wings crafted from gold with a sapphire between them, mounted on a golden chain and worn about the neck.

Stats

Str 12 (+1) Dex 14 (+2) Con 15 (+2) Int 16 (+3) Wis 08 (-1) Cha 07 (-2)
Base Atk +1; CMB +2; CMD 14
Feats Scribe Scroll, Heighten Spell, Spell Focus(Conjuration)
Skills Bluff (+0), Craft(Alchecmy)(+8), Knowledge(Nobility)(+8), Knowledge(Nature)(+8), Spellcraft (+8)
Languages Common
Gear Fancy Red Robes, 4 ornate golden rings, 230 gold.