Category: Old Games

Dwarven Strongholds

The Complete Player’s Handbook Series

Character options in D&D 5e have always felt pretty thin on the ground to me. Official ones at least. Of course there are hundreds of subclasses, species/races, backgrounds etc. out there from third party creators but it has always seemed as though WotC have deliberately limited the number of official options they put out. I sometimes wonder if I only feel that way because 5e is not my first edition of the game. Because, in comparison 2e, the various classes and species are woefully underserved in my opinion.

In the late 80s and early 90s TSR released a set of books designed to complement the basic character options presented in the 1989 Player’s Handbook for 2nd Edition Ad&d. there was one for each of the classes. These generally focused on fleshing out the possibilities for the classes with “kits” background options, class-based campaigns, new abilities and features, class-based organisations like thieve’s guilds. There were also several supplements that dealt with AD&D races. The elves got one, the gnomes and the halflings got lumped together in their own book and they even had one called The Complete Book of Humanoids, which featured a plethora of “monstrous” races as PC options.

Back in those days, my table got a lot of use out of most of these books. The character kits from the class books became standard choices in many cases and the extra racial options were very popular for rounding out PCs.
But my favourite, by a pretty long way, was the Complete Book of Dwarves. I had been a fully paid up member of team-dwarf since I read the Hobbit as a kid. I loved their aesthetic, their toughness, their curmudgeonliness, and, of course, their beards. I had a few dwarven characters over the years across multiple games and systems but I don’t think I ever got to have one in AD&D as I was almost always the DM. So, instead, I used the Complete Book of Dwarves to make up Dwarven societies, kingdoms, mythologies, NPCs and Strongholds. The book contains chapters on the mythical origins of the dwarves, dwarven subraces, “Your Life as a Dwarf,” Character Creation, Proficiencies, Dwarf Kits, Role Playing and Personalities, Mining, Equipment and Designing Dwarf Campaigns. I remember getting fully immersed in dwarven world-building in a way that my players probably did not entirely appreciate. But, if I’m honest, that was for me anyway, not for them.

Stronghold Creation

So the Complete Book of Dwarves has a whole chapter devoted to generating your own Dwarven Strongholds and I have a distinct memory of being wrapped up, sick, in a duvet on the couch rolling up stronghold after stronghold. I must have recorded them somewhere but those records have been lost to the mists of time along with Cold War and white dog poop.

Now, I haven’t had a copy of the book in years. I’m not really sure what happened to the one I had, but there is a good chance it was borrowed by one of my good friends a mere thirty years ago and they haven’t gotten around to returning it yet. Understandable. Anyway, it was my birthday on Tuesday and my friends Tom and Isaac gifted me a copy of it! I had recently been going on about my particular love for this book and they’d actually listened to me!! True, true friends.

So I thought we could create a stronghold together now that I’ve got it. Strap in!
According to the opening section of the chapter:

Strongholds are the homes and workplaces of the dwarves. They can range from simple family residences to huge subterranean cities. The stronghold design sequence allows you to design a stronghold, either by making a series of choices, or by random die rolling. You may also combine the two methods.

Dear reader, if you have been here for any of my character creation posts, I think you will know which way we are going. Random all the way!

Here’s the Dwarf Stronghold Design Sheet:

You can see that we are going to start with the name. Now this actually requires us to turn back to Chapter 4 first and locate the Dwarf Name Generator.

  • We then roll 1d4 to determine the number of syllables in the stronghold’s name – that’s a 2.
  • That means we roll 1d20 twice on the Dwarf Name Generator Prefixes table – that’s a 7, Dal- and a 16, Nor-
  • We go ahead and combine those in the most pleasing sounding configuration, I think that would have to be “Nordal” for me
  • Then we flip back to Chapter Ten and roll 1d20 once more on the Stronghold Suffix Table – 15, -lode
  • Put em all together! Nordallode! It definitely has the sound of a place name made up for D&D but we are going with it

Next! Subraces Present. Ugh. Yep. This is the bit where it becomes a little problematic. Obviously, the whole subrace business in D&D is slightly odd. If you applied it to humans you would be talking about different ethnicities, but D&D doesn’t do that with humans, does it (I mean thank fuck, right?) (I’m deliberately skirting around the variant human unearthed arcana options because I think it’s best to do that.) Anyway, the Subraces Present section wants us to make sure we know which is the main subrace (i.e. the most numerous,) the dominant subrace, and which other subraces exist there. This section also includes a table that tells you how many of the dominant subrace are in your stronghold, while pointing out that this only refers to the number of male dwarves. The number of females is, for some reason, half this number and the number of wee dwarflings is half that again. Look, I don’t know. How they came to such decisions is beyond me and clearly did not even strike my tweenaged mind as something noteworthy at the time.

OK, so, I’m going to roll on the Subrace Table to figure out which is the Main Subrace in Nordallode. The same table determines their numbers. Once again, the table has different potential populations of subrace for each (Deep Dwarves can have 3d100+50, whereas Gully Dwarves can only have 1d100+50.) As for numbers of males to females, I see no reason to abide by the nutty, unexplained logic in this section. I’m not even going to split them up.

  • Ok, Subrace Table, roll 1 – 32 – Gully Dwarves.
  • Number – 1d100+50 = 108

Now to find out which is the dominant subrace and how many other dwarves subraces live in the stronghold. Let’s roll on the Dominant Subraces Table.

  • 61, Hill Dwarves
  • This means there are 1d4 Other Subraces in the stronghold according to this table. I rolled a 2.

I’m beginning to get confused and frustrated by this whole subrace business. The first table got me to roll to determine which was the main subrace and how many of them were in the stronghold. Now, I’m told to roll on a different table to find out which is the dominant subrace (is this not the main subrace?) and then roll to find out how many other sub races are in the stronghold? But, so far, I have rolled two different types of dwarf for main and dominant…

If I continue on to the next page, it tells me to reduce the number of the dominant subrace by a percentage depending on how many other subraces are present. But, I have not actually rolled the number of the dominant subrace yet.

Forget it. I am scrapping the Hill Dwarves. Long stand Nordallode, home of the Gully Dwarves!

I will keep everything else the same. Now, with 2 other sub races sharing their home with them, the Gully Dwarves must reduce their numbers by 25%. That brings them down to a mere 81.

I’m now going to find out how many and what type of other subraces are present.

  • I roll 1d100 on the Gully Dwarves Subraces Table and get 74 – Mountain Dwarves. I roll 2d10 to determine their numbers and get 14.
  • I roll again for the second minor subrace and get 52 – Hill Dwarves. There are 3d12 of these beardoes – 20
  • New population of Nordallode – 115

From the book:

Hill and mountain dwarves may be found at any depth and living with any other subrace. They are clannish and keep to themselves. They are likely to be the employers of other sub races. While these others will likely be in the stronghold on a fixed term contract, it is not unusual for a stronghold to have enclaves of other dwarves who have been there for generations.

Time to figure out the stronghold’s overall alignment. This does not determine the alignment of every member, just the general outlook.

  • 2d6 – Obviously this table has each of the sub races along the top as some of them are more likely to be evil than others (aaaagh.) Nordallode turns out to be Chaotic Neutral.

Let’s move swiftly on from all that nonsense.

Let’s figure out the Type of Stronghold we are building:

  • Another d100 roll and I get a 14, which means it is a Secondary Stronghold and gets to increase its population by 100%
  • New population of Nordallode – 230
  • Secondary Strongholds are second only to Major Strongholds and can be independent or allied with a Major one. I think we will call Nordallode an independent stronghold!

How old is our stronghold? Good question!

  • For Secondary Strongholds we roll 2d6 to find out how many generations of age Nordallode is – That’s 8. Pretty old… except, there is a Racial Modifier. Gully Dwarves subtract 2 from that number. So its 6 generations (no fucking idea.)

And how old can the dwarves of Nordallode live to be? No roll here:

  • Gully Dwarves – 250 years (this is the lowest possible life expectancy and its determined entirely by subrace…)

What type of government does our stronghold have?

  • It’s back to the d100 rolls – 89 – Oligarchy! Why, of course! How fitting! (Wah!) Oh wait, there are more modifiers here. Gully Dwarves add 10 (for whatever reason) and we have to add another 10 for being of Chaotic alignment! That makes it 109. It’s Anarchy baby!

Time to roll on the Attitude Table to find out what our problem is.

  • It’s a d20 roll this time. That’s a 112 – Isolationist. Lock those gates!
  • This means that 75 – 100% of the population is in the frikking militia.

What are our major resources in Nordallode? Well, the book shies away from telling you exactly what you’re rich in, instead, just giving you an idea of its monetary value.

  • It’s 1d20 on the Stronghold Resources Table and I got a natural 20! WOOHOO! Things are looking up for my poor little Gullies. That means it’s Rich!
  • There is an optional part of this table – the starting gold modifier, that applies to PCs who come from this stronghold. So, if your character did come from Nordallode, they would start with an extra 1d10x10gp. Pretty sweet. But wait! Another racial modifier means that you take away 10 from the original d20 roll because Nordallode is a Gully Dwarf stronghold… Born to lose. So, this actually means that my downtrodden dwarves start at Average Resources and so get no starting gold modifier at all. FFS. There is a +1 to the roll for being a Secondary Stronghold, but that doesn’t improve it from Average anyway.

OK, time to find out what Nordallode’s Relationship with Other PC Races is. We need to roll 1d20 four times on the table of that name. I am going to factor in the modifiers at the start this time. I get a +1 for being Chaotic Neutral and, for being Isolationist, I must treat any roll of 4 or less as a 9:

  • Elves – 12 – Threatening
  • Gnomes – 13 – Cautious
  • Halflings – Nat 20, becomes 21 – AT WAR!
  • Humans – 12 – Cautious
  • Nordallode, not friendly to outsiders.
  • Properly, this should only be rolled for the races that live nearby but since this is entirely experimental, I rolled for all of them

OK, we have figured out who we hate above ground, time to go to war or peace with someone underground too. Love the War/Peace Table:

  • Its another d20 roll – That’s a 1 which actually means Nordallode is at peace!
  • The next table allows us to see how long that unlikely situation has persisted
  • Peace Table – 1d10 – 7 – 2d6 generations! – That’s 4 generations of peace! Just not with those fucking Halflings obvs.
  • There is a War table as well but I think we have just determined that we don’t need to roll on that.

Nordallode has to defend itself from the depredations of those vicious, hairy-toed bastards. How do we do that?
With our Military Forces!

  • Gully Dwarves have an Unsteady Morale (7)
  • Apparently the first reaction of Gully Dwarves to danger or conflict is to run away, whether they are members of the militia or not…
  • Their weapons are… “any they can scavenge,” which is not great for a militia but may make sense in a stronghold where anarchy reigns
  • With 230 dwarves in the stronghold, I’ll assume that 200 are in the armed forces. That means that, of their Leaders, there are 50 Thieves (level 2-6), 40 Warriors (level 2-4), 20 Warriors (level 2-6), 4 Warriors (level 8), 2 Warriors (level 10) and 2 Priests (level 1-10)
  • Special Forces – It says 10 to 20% of the militia have some of the specialised Class Kits from the book. I’m not going to get into that right now though as it would require the sort of dive into more general AD%D rules that I’m not prepared for. But, numbers wise, that’s at least 20.
  • War Machine Table! – We get 4 rolls on this because of the size of the militia and we get a +1 to our rolls because of our cool Isolationist attitude. It’s a d10 table – that makes 11 for the first roll giving Nordallode 3 War Machines, 8 for the second roll for another 1 War Machine and finally a 6 for 1 more. That’s 5 War Machines, total. Noice.
  • You can have Animals to defend your stronghold. The specific animal depends on your subrace, unsurprisingly. Let’s a have a cadre of Giant Beetles for the Gully Dwarves of Nordallode. That’ll scare the bejeezus out of those pipe-smoking tyrants!
  • let’s figure out our Total Strength
  • That’s Number of Leaders in the Military (118) + Special Forces (20) + Number of Dwarves in the stronghold (230) = 458. I am not sure what this number means. It seems incredibly abstract.

Conclusion

Every time I revisit one of these old AD&D 2E books, the realities of the western world, the industry, our polluted minds and questionable thought-processes of the writers of game materials largely marketed to children, smack me around the face again.
When I first read this, I didn’t see anything wrong with it. In fact, I specifically remember deriding the mere idea of playing a Gully Dwarf when I was 12 years old. But I am giving that me a pass. He was a child. So, it’s harder to hand out the get-out-of-jail-free card to the creators of the books. They, perhaps unthinkingly, used their creations to perpetuate racist ideas. And I know they are fantasy races but there’s no excuse. Those subraces, as I wrote above, are the same as human ethnicities. According to the writers of this material, only some of them are fit to be the employers of the others, some of them consort with beetles and are cowardly and some are inherently evil… Need I say more?

I had a lot less fun with this process than I remembered having when I was a kid but there are still elements that spark the imagination. I like to imagine the Gully Dwarf heroes! Those few high level Thieves, Warriors and Priests, perhaps riding out on their War Beetles. It makes me wonder about the generations that came before, the founders of Nordallode, and what their lofty goals were. Would they be disappointed in their descendents or proud?

What’s your opinion on these old, race obsessed books, dear reader? Do you just shake it off or do you embrace the stereotyping and run with it?

New Character Options from Erlendheim Part 4

Back to the characters

This is the latest in a series of posts on the new character options I introduced for the PCs in my D&D campaign known as Erlendheim. It was based on a home-brew world of my own but intersected with the 2nd Edition AD&D version of the Planescape setting. This was very special for me as I had always loved that setting and the Planescape products from that time. It was very exciting for me to explore it with my players and I wanted to make it special for them too. So, I created, with their help, new features and class options for each of them. They have little or nothing to do with balance in the game, and most of them are overpowered but that didn’t bother me. It just meant I could ramp up the challenge of the situations they ended up in. You can take a look at the previous entries in this series here.

How to Resurrect a God

So, at a point during their adventures through Sigil, the PCs in my D&D campaign of a few years ago discovered that the god to whom most of them owed their devotion, Helm, was, in fact, dead. Or, at the very least, gone. In the Parted Veil bookshop, the proprietor and confirmed atheist, Kesto Brighteyes, confirmed this for them. This shook our Bariaur cleric’s beliefs to their core. As a senior priest of Helm, Menuk had been praying to his god all his life, and receiving spells and other abilities in return. So, if his god was dead? Who had been answering his prayers? The answer was Aegir, the elemental spirit and Fathomless former patron of our Warlock. They had been intercepting the prayers of the people of Erlendheim and gathering power from them for centuries, posing as Helm and controlling the populace. This revelation rocked Menuk to his core and he immediately lost access to all his priestly spells and features. But at that moment, he also started to hear a noise, as of a plate gauntlet scraping against stone. Only he could perceive it. And it got him thinking there must be a connection to Helm.

This set the PCs off on an investigation, following the trail that began with the sound in Menuk’s head. They had already heard of a portal to the Astral Plane, where they might find the body of Helm floating forever through that wispy sea. It was in the Shattered Temple, headquarters of the Faction known as the Athar, a fiercely anti-deity group. So, they infiltrated the building and jumped through that portal onto the petrified body of a god. Here, the noise in Menuk’s head became clearer, beginning to sound like the words, “Pray, pray, pray, pray, pray to me.” They fought an Astral Dreadnought, which had taken up residence in the region, while Menuk used the power of prayer to awaken Helm.

I inserted a “god-resurrection” mini-game here. This gave the otherwise de-powered Menuk a goal and a focus for the fight while the others struggled with the Dreadnought.

When his prayers finally woke the god, Helm’s great, mailed fist rose and crushed the Astral Dreadnought. He then transported the PCs back to his home plane, Mechanus, where he appeared to them, once more restored to his throne. And this was when he declared Menuk to be his new Right Hand, and imbued him with a new set of Clerical abilities along with all those he lost earlier.

This was one of the most epic and grand encounters and scenarios I have ever run and it was a joy to bring this chapter full circle.

New Cleric Features – Helm’s Right Hand

Below are the details of the new Cleric features that he got. As always, these were written specifically for this particular Life Domain Cleric of Helm so their usefulness might be limited. But, if any of them catch your eye, please feel free to customise and use as you want.

Channel Divinity: The Watcher Over the Fallen

From 2nd level the Life Domain Cleric can use this feature once between long rests. When any creature that is within the Cleric’s line of sight falls to 0 hit points, as a reaction, using Channel Divinity, they can choose to restore them to one hit point instead. This feature cannot be used to heal undead or constructs.

Tough Love

From 6th level, when the Life Domain Cleric summons a weapon using the Spiritual Weapon spell, it can be used to cast any of their healing spells.

Channel Divinity: Helm’s Shield

From 8th level, the Life Domain Cleric gains the ability to summon Helm’s protective power in the form of a shimmering bubble of light. Helm’s Shield surrounds them or any creature the Cleric chooses and can see within thirty feet.
The Shield has an AC of 10 and hit points equal to 10 + the Cleric’s level.

Helm’s Mailed Fist

From 14th level the Cleric gains the ability to transform into the physical embodiment of Helm in the world. They take on the form of a glowing, platinum warrior, adorned in full plate and standing 14 feet tall. The Cleric can take this form for a number of rounds equal to their wisdom modifier (minimum of 1.)
The form grants the following:
AC bonus: +3
Temporary Hit Points: 15 + Wis modifier
Spell Slots: 1 extra spell slot of any level available to the Cleric
Channel Divinity: 1 extra Channel Divinity
Attacks: Add +5 to hit and +5 to weapon damage (damage counts as magical damage)

D&D Planescape Resource – The Book of Doors and Keys

The Foundry Tower

One of the central mysteries of my Erlendheim campaign was the PCs’ hometown. Dor’s Hill stood out like a boil on the perfect skin of an elf. The town stood atop a tall hill in the exact middle of the island of Erlendheim, surrounded by plains and forests. There was something else about it that was odd. A legend, or false history existed, indicating that, many generations ago, a number of very different people appeared in the vicinity of the hill, supposedly sent by the islanders’ primary deity, Helm, to act as guardians of the island. The native people were humans with a Nordic type of culture. The new people that appeared also included humans, though very different to the Erlendheimers, but there were also the goat-like Bariaur, a contingent of Githzerai and several Tieflings too. The legend told that they built the town of Dor’s Hill on top of the hill and swore to live in peace with the people of the island while acting to protect it at the behest of Helm.

As usual with such stories, there were elements of truth mixed into this largely fabricated tale. It was mostly made up or confused or deliberately mis-told over the centuries. In fact, the hill never existed prior to the coming of the new people. Because they arrived in it. It was a building, formerly of the city of Sigil, at the centre of the Outer Planes. It was the old headquarters of the Faction known as the Believers of the Source, or the Godsmen. It had been plane-shifted to the island by one of the Factions’ great rivals, along with everyone in it. When the Godsmen found themselves on Erlendheim, they also found there was no way back. So, rather than despair, they set themselves up on the island, allying themselves with the locals and assimilating.

The Foundry Tower, as it was known while situated in Sigil, had been rather brimming over with portals to other places and planes of existence. It had been renowned for being the most portal-dense building in a city filled with such portals. In Sigil, any door, window, pipe-opening, sewer grate or picture frame could also be home to a portal. You just had to know the key to activate it. So, although the PCs discovered the tower under the hill and uncovered the fact that it was home to dozens of portals that still worked, they had no way to activate them without some guide to the keys required. And they had to find them because the Druid’s kids had been kidnapped and transported through one of the doors. After losing access to the only extant copy of the book describing the keys on the island, they had no choice but to travel to Sigil in the hopes of finding another copy. So that’s what they did, through an underwater backdoor portal that happened to exist off the coast, conveniently.

Now, the fun thing about the doors in the City of Doors, was that the keys needed to open them could be almost anything, from a verse of poetry to the lost sword of a dead king. As a result, I thought I would let my imagination run wild with the keys needed for the doors in the tower. It turned out I didn’t need most of theses. I think they only ended up entering two or three of them in total, but it was still a fun exercise and I think it could stand to me in the future if I ever have another Planescape adjacent campaign.

So, as a break from the Erlendheim Character Options series, I thought I would present here “The Book of Doors and Keys.” If you can get any use out of this in your own Planescape campaign, that’s great! You may even be able to use them for some other purposes, I guess.

Bear in mind that the “Door” entries are specific to a map I was using for the tower. I’m not going to present it here as I think its usefulness to others is negligible, so you can just ignore those.

Also, please note that any destination with “Scatterhome” in it is from my own home-brew world, so you can safely substitute it for some other place.

The Book of Doors and Keys

Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 3
Destination: Nidavellir, Ysgard
Key: The thought of your most beloved person

Door: Eastern Doorway in Level 1, Room 6
Destination: Abellio, Arcadia
Key: Eat a plate of ribs at the doorway

Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 10
Destination: Dothion, Bytopia
Key: Turnip

Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 11
Destination: Pandemonium
Key: Be drunk

Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 13
Destination: The Shadowfell
Key: Whisper a secret to someone else which will make them think less of you

Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 16
Destination: Para-elemental Plane of Smoke
Key: Smoke a strong joint

Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 18
Destination: Chaste, Vitrean Empire, Scatterhome
Key: A symbol of Kaigun, God of the Sea, from a dead priest

Door: Well near Level 1, Room 20
Destination: Mechanus
Key: A gear from a magical construct from Sigil

Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 22
Destination: Goldenfields, The Sword Coast, Faerûn
Key: A red ribbon tied into a knot

Door: Well near Level 1, Room 24
Destination: The Caverns of Thought, The Outlands
Key: The memory of a parent that is the most enraging

Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 26
Destination, The Elemental Plane of Fire
Key: Dragon-breath

Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 31
Destination: The Nords, The Outlands
Key: Crush a bunch of peck-berries (only obtainable from the Fae-wild) under foot before the door

Door: Doorway in Level 1, Room 33
Destination: Aquallor, Arborea
Key: Whistle the tune to the Hymn of the Mother

Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 1
Destination: Elemental Plane of Air
Key: Eat a turtle cake and burp in the doorway

Door: North Archway leading to the statue of a Githzerai in Level 2, Area 2
Destination: The Astral Plane
Key: Break a bottle of healing potion in the doorway

Door: South Archway leading to the sculpture of a great palace in Level 2, Area 2
Destination: The Factol’s Palace, The Ethereal Plane
Key: Tell someone a secret that will cause emotional harm to them

Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 4
Destination: Tír na nÓg, The Outlands
Key: Tell a joke

Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 5
Destination: Khalas, Gehenna
Key: Stab yourself in the leg and spread the blood across the door before the doorway

Door: Northern Archway in Level 2, Room 6
Destination: Strixhaven University
Key: Frustration

Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 8
Destination: Neverwinter, The Sword Coast, Faerûn
Key: Dance the Neverwinter Axe-dance

Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 9
Destination: The Infinite Beerhall, Demiplane of Celebration
Key: Put a sausage somewhere it does not belong in front of the doorway

Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 11
Destination: Elemental Plane of Water
Key: Speak the name of the person you would most like to have sex with

Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 13
Destination: Malbolge, The Nine Hells
Key: Burn a book and throw it through the doorway

Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 14
Destination: Minethys, Carceri
Key: Inscribe an arch around the doorway with the tip of a steel sword

Door: Doorway in Level 2, Room 15
Destination: The deepest dungeon of the Imperial Palace in Vitrea, Scatterhome
Key: Cut off a left hand and place it in the doorway

Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 1
Destination: Krigala, The Beastlands
Key: Throw a beast’s tooth through the doorway

Door: Double doorway, Level 3, Room 3
Destination: The Arena, The City-state of Tyr, The Tablelands, Athas
Key: The tortoise blade of a Mul Gladiator left in the doorway

Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 4
Destination: the Feywild
Key: Play the pan-pipes in front of the door

Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 8
Destination: The Positive Energy Plane
Key: Roll two sixes on a pair of dice

Door: North Doorway of Level 3, Room 10
Destination: Krangath, Gehenna
Key: Wear a crown

Door: West Doorway in Level 3, Room 13
Destination: The Opera House, Rath an Croí, Scatterhome
Key: Place a diamond in the doorway

Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 12
Negative Quasielemantal Plane of Ash
Key: A handful of Yugoloth ash poured on your head

Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 15
Destination: Amoria, Elysium
Key: Pay a compliment to the person you find it most difficult to compliment

Door: East Doorway in Level 3, Room 16
Destination: Niflheim, Hades
Key: Cry genuine tears of sorrow

Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 17a
Destination: Mercurua, Mount Celestia
Key: Tell a sad story in celestial

Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 17b
Destination: The Mortuary, the Hive, Sigil
Key: Crush a cranium rat’s brain in your hand

Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 17c
Destination: Limbo
Key: The memory of your most embarrassing moment

Door: Doorway in Level 3, Room 20
Destination: Avalas, Acheron
Key: Burn your skin and allow the heat from the burn to kill an insect

New Character Options from Erlendheim, Part 3

Erlendheim

I began a series of posts last week detailing the character options I introduced to my Planescape flavoured D&D campaign a few years ago. It was quite epic in scale and involved gods and legendary monstrosities and elemental powers as well as travelling across multiple planes of existence and saving the universe from the domination of a narcissistic sea spirit. I hadn’t planned it in advance but, at one point, the Warlock needed to switch her patron so I came up with a new one which you can read about here. After that, I was hooked. I started making new character options, features and powers for every PC in the party. You know when you max out your rep with your party members in CRPGs like Dragon Age and Mass Effect and they get access to new abilities? That’s the way I was thinking of it. As a result, these new character options were designed with our specific players, characters, shared world and story in mind. I left balance at the door. Balance was not relevant to what I wanted to achieve. In fact, I wanted the PCs to feel special, powerful and impacted in a very concrete way by the events of the campaign. I think I largely achieved that. Take a look, here, at the powers I gave the party’s Druid when he became a kind of a shitty god. I think it exemplifies my philosophy when designing these abilities.

Celebrating the Mundane

I think the next big character advancement arc to culminate was that of Xarune, our Githzerai Fighter. Xarune, despite his background as an adventurer in his younger days, had a solid view of the world. He believed in the shield in his hand, the guardsman at his side and the firmness of the ground beneath his feet. He had developed a dependable reputation in a position of some responsibility as a sergeant in the Yeomanry of the town of Dor’s Hill. Magic was anathema to him and, indeed, he went to extremes to explain away magical phenomena in entirely mundane terms. But then the ground beneath his feet turned out to be the ancient tower of an unknown faction from a city in the shape of a donut floating above the top of an infinitely tall spire at the centre of the Outer Planes. It became increasingly difficult for him to hand-wave the obvious magic in the world around him, especially once he ended up in Sigil. In fact, I instituted a special mechanic, specific to Xarune. Each time he witnessed something truly magical that he could not explain, he would roll a Wisdom Saving Throw. When he failed, he lost a point of Wisdom, making it more-and-more likely that he would fail with each successive failed save. My goal here was to get Xarune under 10 Wisdom. Once that happened, his aura of confusion and his inability to square his beliefs with the facts of reality brought him to the attention of a small, new Faction in Sigil. They were called the Mundane. When Xarune ran into their leader, another Githzerai warrior named Sarafem, who noticed his unique state of disorientation through her natural psychic abilities. We had another short mini-game at this point, after Sarafem introduced the Faction and its tenets. She presented to him her shield, with, emblazoned upon it, the emblem of a shield. She asked him to take and examine it.

Here is how I presented Xarune’s inner struggle in my notes:

Sarafem will encourage Xarune to use detect thoughts while examining the shield. In essence, this will allow Xarune to detect his own thoughts, to interrogate his own beliefs.
If he does so, he will replay some of the more recent encounters he has had with “magic.” Ask him to recount them and indicate that he is unable, in retrospect, to lie to himself and his own feelings. The truth is that the spells and magical effects did happen. In some cases he was able to shrug off the effects and in others he bore the full brunt of them. What becomes clear as he remembers these incidents is that, it is not objectively true that he or anything has to be subject to such effects. He begins to get so in touch with his feelings that he feels a new understanding blossom. He is able to apply the force of his will against this magic, a will that is every bit as strong as any wizard or demon thinks they are. For that is all it is in the end, a battle of wills.
He will want to fail his saving throw against detect thoughts. Give him three chances to fail it at various points through the process. Of course, it is a Wisdom saving throw but this time the DC will be 2 points higher than Xarune’s normal DC as it gains a bonus from the shield.
Whether he succeeds or fails, Sarafem will present to him the shield with a bow. It is a mundane +2 shield. There is nothing magical about it, but it is exceptionally well made from the hardest, lightest wood they have ever seen. (It is made of what she calls Steadfast.)
If he fails, with a barely perceptible twinkle in her eye she will ask him to join her budding faction, which she calls, “The Mundane.” She says they are still workshopping it. There are not many of them so far, but each of them has a very firm grasp of their true feelings and they know what is real. If he decides to take her up on her offer, they are usually to be found meeting in her house near the Statue of Bigby in the Lady’s Ward any evening.
Also, he will regain his lost points of Wisdom and he will gain the new abilities presented [in the section below]
If he succeeds, however, he will go on as before, he will not regain any points of Wisdom and he will continue to risk losing them. If he ever reaches 0 Wisdom, he will lose his mind completely and reject reality entirely, thus becoming an NPC.
However, he can continue to attempt the trick with the shield, trying to detect his own thoughts. He can do this whenever he has downtime using the same rules as are presented above.

Thankfully, he failed all his saves and his outlook and philosophy changed as a result. Not completely, it was still quite compatible with his no-magic stance from before, it just morphed into a more anti-magic one, bringing a few new abilities with it. And you can read about those below.

But that wasn’t all. Xarune’s player, Isaac, took the idea of the Mundane and ran with it. He quickly took the ideals of the Faction and began to codify them, even going so far as to write up a Mundane Manifesto! This did my withered old heart good to see. The campaign gave his character a concrete, mechanical advancement directly related to Xarune and the way he played him, and he gave back to the campaign and the world, adding to its story and its depth. Sigh so good.

New Fighter Features – Nullification (Anti-magic)

Erlendheim #DND

So, as I pointed out in the intro to this post, I created these features and options for, not only a specific class, but for a particular character. As a result, the features prestented below are unique to Xarune’s flavour of Fighter, a Battle Master who focused on using the Defense and Protection Fighting Styles. As always, if you think you could make use of any of this stuff, please feel free.

Fighting Style

Defense

Also add a +1 bonus to saving throws against magical effects

Protection

In addition to the regular advantage of this fighting style, if a creature you can see casts a spell that requires a saving throw against a target other than you within 5 ft of you, you can use your reaction to add your shield’s AC bonus (including magical or other bonuses if it has them) to their saving throw.

Martial Archetypes

Battle Master

Maneuvers
Deny

When another creature hits you with a spell attack or you fail a saving throw against a spell effect or magical effect, as a reaction you can expend a superiority die and reduce the amount of damage you take by the superiority die roll + Con modifier.

Reflect

When another creature hits you with a spell attack, as a reaction you can expend a superiority die to reflect the superiority die roll + Con modifier damage back at the spell caster.

Wake-up Call

When you take the attack action on your turn you can forego one of your attacks and instead use a bonus action to direct another creature who can hear you to make an immediate saving throw against a spell that they are currently affected by. You expend a superiority die and they can add the roll + your Con mod to their saving throw roll.

Indomitable

In addition to the regular benefits of this feature, starting at 9th level, if the Nullifying Fighter is subject to a magic spell or effect, they can roll any saving throw with advantage.

New Character Options from Erlendheim Part 2

Gods are superheroes too

In the last post, I wrote about how D&D 5E characters are basically superheroes by another name. I also introduced the new Warlock patron that we came up with for Yulla in our D&D 5E campaign, Erlendheim, a few years ago. She had abandoned her “Fathomless” patron and taken up with “The Source.” After Yulla got her groove back and started living up to her potential, it was our Druid’s turn.

Habjorn, played by David, had not wasted the years since their former adventuring days. He’d settled down with his wife, Lydia and started a little family which quickly ballooned into a sizeable troupe of children. There were seven in total, Habjornson, Sigrid, Gurt, Hogarth, Jankur, Flaarj and Yeet, the little one. But, as I noted last time, they, along with several of their neighbours, went and got themselves kidnapped by one of the antagonists. Lydia had already passed away a few years previous.

So, obviously, the party to go to great lengths to find them. Lengths that eventually led them to Sigil and beyond.

While the party were in the City of Doors, they got a job from Kesto Brighteyes, the gnomish owner of the Parted Veil, a bookshop where the PCs went to find the tome they were looking for. I found Kesto and everything about him in Uncaged: Faces of Sigil. This was an invaluable source-book for this campaign and provided at least three incredibly useful, well drawn and significant NPCs who were residents of the Cage with depth and interconnectedness.

Anyway, this quest led them off to the Lady’s Ward of the city, where they managed to defeat the object of their quest, a Gautierre. Upon the occasion of their victory, Habjorn the druid was approached by Lydia, his dead wife, in the form of a Petitioner. Petitioners are the souls of dead sentients, ascended to the Outer Planes who are, to all intents and purposes, reborn into new lives there with no memories of their old ones. They normally turn up on the plane where their gods lived or, at least, on a plane that matches their alignment. But, Lydia’s god, it turned out, was dead. So, she started wandering the planes looking for somewhere to belong. Until she felt a pull drawing her to her husband when he passed through a portal into Sigil.

Lacking a god or any sense of purpose, she felt a connection with Habjorn that she thought she should have had with her god, Helm, but didn’t due to his deceased state. So she started to believe in Habjorn like a god. She didn’t necessarily agree with him all the time or obey him at all, in fact, but she still had a strong enough belief in him to essentially grant him the status of a Minor Power, a godling out there on the Outer Planes.

It was actually pretty tragic. He was overjoyed/heartbroken to see her again but she didn’t recognise him and had no memory of their life together before her death. She knew nothing of their family and her motivations were totally different as a Petitioner.

But I digress. Before he knew it, Habjorn started hearing the prayers of his kids, held deep underground on the plane known as the Outlands, under the roots of one of the World Tree’s saplings. They were hoping and praying that he would come and save them and their belief began to compound the meagre abilities provided by Lydia’s own prayers.

And thus the Druidic Deity was born. So, like Thor and Hercules (kinda) before him, Habjorn became a superhero god!

Now, believe me, I understand that this stuff is totally unbalanced and potentially game-breaking. But I was throwing these characters up against some very tough situations, so I felt ok about it. I will point out, also, that, unlike the Warlock patron from the last post, this is not a subclass. Instead, its a couple of new features that work for Habjorn the Circle of the Land Druid/minor god, in particular. It is unlikely to work for anyone else in its current form but I think it was a fun addition to his set of abilities that allowed him to do some interesting stuff in particular situations and led to some truly fantastic character and story moments in our game. So, take it under advisement! But, if you want to use it or any part of it, please feel free!

New Druid Features: Druidic Deity

Grant Druidic Magic

The Druidic Deity can grant two cantrips and two first level spells from the Druid Spell List to their follower/s. The druidic deity can grant the cantrips and spells once and cannot do so again until they have completed a long rest.

The Power of Prayer

When a worshiper has prayed for spells to be granted the Druidic Deity gains a Prayer. There is no upper limit to the number of Prayers the Druidic Deity can be in possession of and if not spent before taking a long rest, they carry over. The Druidic Deity can spend a Prayer using a bonus action. This Prayer can be spent in several different ways:

  • Allow the Druidic Deity to regain an expended spell slot of any level they have access to
  • Allow the Druidic Deity to gain another use of Wild Shape
  • Allow the Druidic Deity to Wild Shape into any CR 2 Beast or Monstrosity that they have seen
  • Allow the Druidic Deity to remain in Wild Shape for double the normal length of time
  • Allow the Druidic Deity to cast spells while in Wild Shape
  • Allow the Druidic Deity to use the Natural Recovery feature to regain all used spell slots including 6th level ones and higher
  • Allow the Druidic Deity to cast one of their Circle Spells without expending a spell slot
  • Allow the Druidic Deity to empower their Land’s Stride ability , granting them the opportunity to pass into a plant of sufficient size and emerge from a similar plant of sufficient size within 200 ft
  • Allow the Druidic Deity to empower their Nature’s Ward feature, granting them immunity to one more damage type of their choice until they complete a long rest
  • Allow the Druidic Deity to empower their Nature’s Sanctuary feature so that beast and plant creatures cannot attempt to save against it.
  • Grant a worshiper another cantrip or first level spell

So, like I mentioned above, I know these features are potentially game-breaking and open to abuse. But my players took this sort of thing in good faith and David played his character as he thought he should react to becoming a slightly shitty kind of god. He was somewhat incredulous but used every ounce of his power to do the things his “worshipers” wanted of him. In other words, for Daddy to come and save them. And that’s what he did.

I would mention here as well, that balance, as a concept in D&D/TTRPGs in general is a concept that I take with extreme caution. I would rather chuck an unbeatable monster at them and have them figure out they need to run away or use their wits instead of charging headlong into the fray, then stick to Challenge Ratings most of the time. In this respect, I think the OSR has it right. But, I think this door swings both ways, if a challenge can be unbalanced due to an encounter’s difficulty, the PCs can also be a challenge due to their ability. They should get to feel like the superheoroes thery are. On the other hand, I also have the ability to keep piling on the difficulty as the party gets more and more powerful, so I see it as a win-win.

Let me know if you have any comments on these nutty druid features, dear reader.

New Character Options from Erlendheim Part 1

D&D Superheroes

There’s no doubt in my mind that the creators of the current version of D&D meant to make the PCs into superheroes. This goes for 5E 2014 as well as 2024.

You can have opinions about this. There are times when it frustrates the hell out of me as a DM just trying to introduce potentially deadly situations to our games. I usually overestimate the lethality of these situations, whether they might be traps, encounters or particularly difficult episodes of exploration. The players normally trounce these situations readily. They always have a feature or a spell or a power or a magic item or a special friend who will come to their rescue so that they emerge largely unscathed and only further emboldened. On the other hand, I do feel bad when a PC dies in one of my campaigns. I mean, of course! They spent hours designing and imagining and embodying this person… and they died… it can be devastating. It should be devastating. Not just for the player in question, but for every player in the game, including the DM. So I get it. I understand why the average D&D PC’s life expectancy has sky-rocketed in the last couple of decades. I also understand that if you want something more lethal, Troika! is right there. So, if you want more lethal play, there are plenty of options.

Anyway, when I finally realised the superheroness of the characters, we were playing one of my long-time RPG group’s more iconic campaigns. It was called Erlendheim and it was based on my home-brew world of Scatterhome. Here’s the TLDR for the campaign:

The PCs were all former adventurers living in or around their hometown of Dor’s Hill on the island of Erlendheim. The island was surrounded by a terrible and eternal storm meaning no-one could leave and no-one new ever turned up. The PCs started at level 8, but their adventuring days were behind them. Until one day, they were asked by the powers that be in Dor’s Hill to investigate some strange reports from an outlying fishing village. While they were off fighting what turned out to be Yugoloth fiends there, all six of the Druid’s kids were kidnapped by some more extraplanar beings. This, eventually and after much adventuring, roleplaying, schmoozing and drama, led them to Sigil, The City of Doors, The Cage. For the uninitiated, Sigil is the city at the centre of the Outlands, the plane at the centre of the Outer Planes in the D&D cosmology.

Now, as a die-hard AD&D 2nd Edition player of old, I was a massive fan of the original Planescape setting, the new shit it introduced to the game and the way it expanded our horizons as both DM and players when it came out in the nineties. But, I’ll be honest, I don’t think I knew how to use it as a 14 or 15 year old DM. It was just too massive. I wrote and ran adventures that were pretty much standard AD&D adventures except in a place in the Outlands instead of on the bog-standard fantasy world I had devised. So, in 2021, when I got the chance to send these PCs to Sigil!!! I grabbed that bull by both horns. It was so much better than I could have hoped. Even just the act of getting there was a major campaign milestone. And before long, both the players and the characters were knee-deep in planar weirdness. They didn’t know it, they didn’t understand most of it, but they still had goals. They were there for a reason (they had to find a book that explained the keys to all the planar doors in a mysterious tower beneath the town of Dor’s Hill back home.) So they pursued that. On the way, they all gained even more super powers than they already possessed. Why? Because, once you understand that D&D 5E is a superhero game, it’s a good idea to lean into it.

The first PC to get blessed in this manner was our warlock, Yulla (played by Tom.) Now, it just so happened that Yulla, up until this point, had a patron named Aegir, an elemental spirit that turned out to be the baddest guy of the entire campaign. So, when she went to Sigil her confidence in their patronage had taken a few knocks. When she then discovered her long lost, presumed dead parents there she was open to new possibilities. Now I was using the gorgeous, unimpeachable original version of the Planescape setting for this game. It was made for AD&D 2nd Edition but that was no impediment at all. (When I got the new 5E version I was a little shocked and affronted to find that they had done away with one of my favourite Sigil factions, the Believers of the Source. I understand that this actually happened way back in one of the nineties Planescape novels but I never read those so I had no way of knowing.) Anyway, the entirety of my Erlendheim campaign had been built around the Believers, their doctrines, their headquarters, etc. And it turned out that Yulla’s birth-parents had been members of the believers for decades since their supposed deaths. Anyway, this led Yulla to seek the Source as a patron, instead of the untrustworthy and, frankly quite evil Aegir.

And this is where the extra super powers come in. Tom and I designed a new Warlock Patron for Yulla, the Source itself. I based it around the philosophy of the Believers: you must try to reach your potential, your existence should be evolved as much as possible within your own lifetime, etc. Here is the result. If you like the look of it and you can find a way or reason to use this in your own campaign, please feel free.

New Warlock Patron – The Source V 2.1

Description

You have have made a pact with the ultimate creative and destructive power in the multiverse. The Source is that from which all things come and which all will someday rejoin. The members of Sigil’s faction, The Believers of the Source understand that all beings should be striving to evolve within their lifetimes to become one with the Source. To this patron, time and space have little meaning; sentients are beings of pure potential and a deep understanding of the planes of existence is essential.

Expanded Spell List

Spell LevelSpells
1stFind Familiar, Inflict Wounds
2ndWither and Bloom, Vortex Warp
3rdMotivational Speech, Life Transference
4thAura of Life, Vitriolic Sphere
5thDestructive Wave, Legend Lore

Features

1st Level Feature

Burst of Potential

From 1st level, as an action the warlock becomes a silhouette of themselves and emits a brief burst of soft yellow light. They draw on a fraction of the unlimited potential of the Source and grant it to those allies in a ten foot cube around them. Until the end of the Warlock’s next turn all within the aura gain advantage on a single ability check, attack roll or saving throw of their choice.
Once you use this feature you cannot use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

1st Level Feature

Fragment of the Source

From 1st level, using a bonus action, the Warlock of the Source gains the ability to summon a fragment of the Source in the shape of a softly glowing orb. It will appear at a chosen point anywhere within 60ft of the Warlock. The Fragment of the Source will remain for a number of rounds equal to the Warlock’s Charisma modifier. The Fragment can use its potential energy to allow a creature within 5 feet of it to roll with advantage or force a creature within 5 feet of it to roll with disadvantage on any attack roll, saving throw or ability check. As a bonus action on their turn, the Warlock can move the Fragment up to thirty feet. The Warlock can summon the Fragment a number of times equal to their proficiency bonus and regains all expended uses when they finish a long rest. The Fragment of the Source will act on the same initiative as the Warlock.

6th Level Feature

Aura of Potential

From 6th level, the Warlock of the Source’s Burst of Potential feature becomes an aura. The effects are the same as the Burst but apply to each ally that starts their turn in the aura. Also, the effect can be used to ensure maximum damage on an attack roll.
The Aura of Potential lasts a number of rounds equal to the Warlock’s Charisma modifier.
Once you use this feature you cannot use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

6th Level Feature

Wasted Potential

From 6th Level, as a reaction, the Warlock of the Source may fire a sparkling yellow orb at any creature taking an action, making an attack roll or rolling a saving throw within a 30ft range. The creature must make a Charisma saving throw against the Warlock’s spell save DC or apply disadvantage to their roll.

10th Level Feature

Mark of Potential

From 10th Level, the Warlock of the Source begins to gain benefits from the potential bestowed or denied by the Aura of Potential and Wasted potential features. Each time an ally succeeds on a roll which benefits from the advantage bestowed by the Aura of Potential the Warlock gains a Mark of Potential. Each time a creature fails on a roll affected by Wasted Potential, the Warlock gains a Mark of Potential. Gained Marks spark briefly into being around the Warlock’s head before fading into invisibility.
At 10th level the Warlock can hold up to a maximum of nine Marks of Potential. At 14th level the Warlock can hold up to ten Marks of Potential (See the “Evolution” feature below for how ten marks can be spent.)
The appearance of the Marks is up to the individual Warlock.
Marks of Potential may be held until spent.
Marks of Potential can be used in the following ways:

Marks SpentEffect 1Effect 2Effect 3
1Apply advantage to any attack roll, saving throw or ability checkDouble the range of Fragment of Potential
2Roll a hit die plus your Charisma modifier to regain hit points
3Maximise any damage effectInduce a critical success
4Roll two hit dice plus your Charisma modifier to regain hit points
5Double the area of Aura of PotentialDouble the number of targets affected by Wasted PotentialDouble the number of Fragments of Potential Summoned
6Roll three hit dice plus your Charisma modifier to regain hit points
7Increase the casting level of any appropriate spell by one
8Roll four hit dice plus your Charisma modifier to regain hit points
9Regain a Spell Slot

14th Level Feature

Evolution

At 14th level the Warlock of the Source gains the ability to use ten Marks of Potential to evolve into a form which brings them closer to the Source for a number of rounds equal to the Warlock’s Charisma modifier. For each level the Warlock gains above 14th, the duration of the evolution is increased by one round.
In their evolved form, the Warlock gains the following features:

  • 5 hit dice plus Charisma modifier of temporary hit points
  • Makes all attack rolls, ability checks and saving throws with advantage
  • Triples the area of Aura of Potential

The appearance of the evolved form is up to the individual Warlock.
Once you use this feature you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest.

The Feeling of Dungeon World

Hirelings to Heroes

My good friend Tom. recently kicked off a Dungeon World campaign. I’m a player in it. It’s got a very particular flavour and premise that places the players in the position of being the hirelings of the “real” adventuring party. And so it was at the start. But, before we had a chance to yell, “WATCH OUT FOR THAT FLESHY BOI MAN THING” the tables were turned and the PCs had to dig deep and find something heroic inside themselves or have the entire group die horrible deaths in the depths of the first dungeon. I would like to give a big shout-out to Tom’s awesome in media res beginning in a massive organic mouth with eyes on the inside and little flesh monsters. It rocked.

My character is Craobh Beag (pronounced something like Kreev Byug), a Kyrfolk (think minotaur whose bull half was a Highland) druid. Had a lot of fun with the shapeshifting and his generally chaotic nature. You can check out Tom’s post about how they built the world we’re playing in here.

A shaggy, red-haired straight horned cow in a field.
This is what my Dungeon World character looks like except with two legs and more vines. Highland cow by Nilfanion – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7868883

Old School?

But what I want to write about today is what the game evoked for me. As a player of a certain age, my first introduction to RPGs was the red D&D boxed set back in the late eighties. This was fairly normal at the time, as I understand it. It really was magic. I don’t remember too much of the mechanics of playing that game. My memory is reliably questionable. But I have a distinct memory of the feeling of it. The wonder of imagining my little dwarf swinging his wee hammer at monsters in some unnamed dungeon, having real adventures! I’d played choose your own adventure books like Fighting Fantasy and Zork before but this was entirely different. There was no way of save-scumming by keeping a finger on the decision entry page so you could go back if you didn’t like the outcome. The consequences felt consequential and the world was wide open. No limits!

When I think of old school games, I think these are the feelings they should elicit. Fear of threat, concern for real consequences, appreciation of truly impactful decisions, a sense of freedom in an open world and an enjoyment of the fantastic. I want to be fearful for the life of my character. I need to know that the decisions I make can have a truly terrible or wonderful impact on the world in some way. Now, there are a lot of differing opinions out there as to what constitutes an OSR principle. Some of them involve the inclusion of resource management, others disregard that as non-essential but insist that they should be ‘rules-lite.’ Anyway, let’s take this list I lifted from Wikipedia that comes originally from Matthew Finch’s A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming (2008.)

  • Rulings from the gamemaster are more important than rule books. Concoct a clever plan and let the gamemaster rule on it.
  • Player skill is more important than character abilities. Outwit the enemy, don’t simply out-fight them.
  • Emphasize the heroic, not the superheroic. Success lies in experience, not superpowers.
  • Game balance is not important. If the characters meet a more powerful opponent, either think of a clever plan or run away.

I think we can see that these four pillars of OSR games cover a lot of the feelings I want to get out of them. A sense of the fantastic is noticeably absent. But that might be something specific to me.

Dungeon World (2012) by Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel supports this type of play so well. It ticks all these OSR boxes! Now, obviously, I have only played the one session of it so far, but I have to tell you, the first of the stars I sent to Tom after that session was this:

right at the top I have to say that this is the closest I feel I’ve gotten to experiencing the feeling of playing old school dnd in a very long time. Despite the system being slightly different, it’s close enough that it feels familiar. More importantly, it’s the overall atmosphere [Tom] has created with a pretty traditional dungeon scenario with puzzles and traps in a recognizable fantasy setting. It really brought me back.

It’s an odd duck, Dungeon World. It is very much a PBTA game. You have bonds and moves and holds and degrees of success/success with consequences when you roll your 2d6. But you also have D&D’s core abilities, alignment, HP and magic spells. You even have classes like Dungeons & Dragons. The standard races are human, elf, dwarf and halfling (Tom has tweaked the list of available races or cultures in their campaign. Once again, you can read more about that in their own words here.) So, this is how it retains the flavour of D&D without the ruleset. LaTorra and Koebel could have made a dungeon exploration game that was far more Apocalypse Worldy. I mean, do you really need the D&D style stats? No. Is alignment necessary? No. But we are trained to understand that the fiction presented by those things is reminiscent of a particular type of game that we want to experience the feeling of again. Well, that goes for those of us who have had that feeling before. For others, who maybe never played anything but PBTA games and are loathe to dip their toes into OSE or DCC or even actual D&D, it offers them a chance to do that.

So we were on a storm-wreathed cliff-side, and we were being led by a ghost dog we had just befriended. The ghost dog walked through the air to the other side of the cliffs as though the rope-bridge was still standing. But the bridge had been cut in the middle. Still, we knew the undead doggie was trying to direct us to where we needed to be, so we used a combination of moves (shapeshifting into a forest bird), equipment (lots of rope, which our paladin ended up losing as a consequence of his actions) and luck (mixed success) to make it across to the other side (even though the self-same paladin decided it would be clever to tightrope walk across and nearly plummeted to a nasty death as a result.) This one scene involved most of the pillars of the OSR that I quoted above.

Old as new

Sometimes I find I just have to write about games like this, that are brand new to me, even though they have been out for over a decade. I’ve done it with OSE and Dragon Age too. This might seem a little redundant to some, but the way I look at it is that, if it’s new to me, it’s new to someone else too. I have to remind myself that somebody discovers OD&D every day. I only first tried a PBTA game about three years ago. When it comes to RPGs, there are trends and movements and there is always something new coming out. And there are quite a few people publishing articles on them. But I don’t think that any reason not to write about games like this that I am enjoying and enthusiastic about right now, no matter how old.

Dear reader, we have literally, only just begun our Dungeon World adventure and I am hoping to write more about it and the other games I’m currently involved in over the next few weeks. There are so many! I am looking forward, next, to discussing Trophy Gold, run by Isaac, and a new project/event that Tables and Tales is cooking up too. So stick around for more!

Woodpaneled

Vintage RPG

Do you listen to the Vintage RPG podcast, dear reader? Do you follow VintageRPG on Instagram? If you are reading this blog, the chances are good that you do both of those things. But, in case you have somehow never come across it, the podcast is presented by Stu Horvath and John “Hambone” McGuire. On it the lads chat about lots of RPG related subjects. As the name implies, they do talk about older games, like Fighting Fantasy and Beyond the Supernatural, which, as a gamer of a certain vintage, I very much appreciate. But many of the most interesting episodes involve newer games like Swyvers. They often have fascinating interviews with game makers. Their conversation with Swyvers creators, Luke Gearing and David Hoskins, convinced me to back the project and I’m so glad I did!

And on Instagram, Stu posts at least five days a week with details of old modules, game systems, books, accessories etc. It’s the exact kind of nostalgia I can enjoy. I am of the general opinion that most types of nostalgia are just gateway drugs to the sort of opinions that lead many people to vote for tangerine demagogues. But, Stu is under no illusions. He takes a critical look at each of the products he features and calls it out when they are problematic, poor quality or just nasty.

The point is, Vintage RPG is a wonderful source for news on the RPG scene, historical gaming facts and deep delves and has acted as an outlet for game creators and enthusiasts to push themselves, their work and their passions.

Webring

So anyway, on their recent show, ostensibly about Eat the Reich, Stu and Hambone introduced their listeners to the Woodpaneled webring. For those of you who haven’t heard of this phenomenon, this is how Wikipedia defines a webring:

A webring (or web ring) is a collection of websites linked together in a circular structure, and usually organized around a specific theme, often educational or social

Woodpaneled

The Woodpaneled Webring was founded by Stu to help those participating in it to have an internet experience that is not entirely governed by the algorithms of social media companies or the advertisement driven peccadilloes of search engines. He put the call out on the show for artists, writers and designers with websites related in some way to a broad theme. Most of the sites that are part of the ring now are to do with RPGs or at least RPG-adjacent but some are more broadly about culture and art. Here is a link to the a short piece Stu wrote to explain why he started this thing. He explains it far better than I could, especially as I am pretty sure I have a very different relationship with wood panelling than he does!

Now, I don’t have much of a presence on social media. I have an Instagram account that I am fairly active on and I just started a Bluesky account @thedicepool.bsky.social which I have yet to even post on. I gave up on Facebook many years ago for the same reasons that I view nostalgia with suspicion, and I abandoned Twitter when the fash started to take over. Basically, the idea of a smaller, slower, less shouty and more contemplative internet appealed greatly to me. I thought this sounded like a perfect home for The Dice Pool, to be honest. So I contacted Stu to ask him about joining and he was so enthusiastic and sound about it! And so helpful. I am not terribly experienced when it comes to the technical side of running this website so I needed his assistance to jury-rig a solution to allow me to embed the Woodpaneled widget that you can see at the top of my main page (I am working on getting that to appear on every page. Like I said, I’m more of a tortoise than a hare when it comes to the backend stuff, but I’ll get there in the end.)

So, dear reader, I want to encourage you to go hit those “Next” and “Previous” buttons on the widget and have a dive into other sites on the webring. There are some fascinating and creative people involved!

Ravenloft

Something’s gotta give

I thought I would play Ravenloft around Halloween this year. My friend returned all my Ravenloft books and boxed sets to me back in the spring after about 25 years, and since then I have been thinking it would be cool to run something in the Domain of Dread as a Halloween one-shot. But, in the meantime, I have played a lot of different games, mostly one-shots, mostly a lot easier to play in that format than any version of D&D. So I did consider starting a campaign or a multi-session adventure, but, to be honest, I didn’t have it in me to do all the reading and conversion that was necessary. I may be playing more RPGs than I ever have before in my life but that has an unlooked for side-effect: I have less time to prepare for games! This is a dilemma that has been exacerbated by my blog schedule and I have been thinking that I might have to make a change there too. I am switching to posting once every three days for the foreseeable future.

The Demiplane of Dread

So, I am not talking about the original Ravenloft adventure from AD&D 1st Edition or the Curse of Strahd released for 5E, but the setting released by TSR for AD&D 2nd Edition in 1990. It is by Bruce Nesmith and Andria Hayday. I think I have mentioned in another post that my friends and I played most of our AD&D in the Dark Sun setting but I would imagine Ravenloft comes a close second. I just loved having them create regular old characters in my home-brewed standard fantasy world and then dumping them, unceremoniously and with no warning through the mists into the forests of Barovia or the mountains of Forlorn and hitting them with monsters that drained levels and abilities and where there was no escape from he darkness and the terror. Although, I confess, the games were probably not very terrifying. I did my best, but I have always found horror a difficult genre to emulate around the table, especially with a system like D&D. The authors did their best to assist the Ravenloft DM with sections in the main book about the “Techniques of Terror,” where they discuss “Assaults on the Mind,” “Assaults on the Body,” “A Villain in Control,” and that sort of thing. But, the fact was, we were a gang of teenaged boys who mostly just wanted to hit things until they died so those were usually the kinds of adventures we got.

Looking at it from a more mature standpoint now, I would love to try to run it with a real sense of gothic horror. I think I am better equipped now to attempt it. Although I still think it would be a challenge and I might refrain from running it in a D&D-like system. Why? Well, the products for Ravenloft, while not all gold, are still some of the highest quality items I think TSR produced. Just look at all these handouts! Each one of them has something useful on the back of a beautifully illustrated card.

5E products are usually produced to a high standard, but they don’t have the variety and versatility that the 2nd Edition boxed sets did. They also don’t have the quality or usefulness of content. These boxes and sourcebooks are stuffed with useable materials; details on lands, villains, monsters, new spells, effects, encounter tables, maps, maps, maps. 5E setting guides of late, excepting maybe Planescape are very short on this sort of detail.

Adventures in Ravenloft

I usually wrote my own adventures back in the day. Or at least I would pick and choose liberally from the pre-written modules and combine them with my own scribblings to make them fit into an overarching campaign. Or that’s what I told myself I was doing. I have a funny feeling that, mostly, I was just trying o murder the PCs. This is another aspect of my style that has, thankfully, changed, since the good old days.

I do have a few Ravenloft adventures that might be fun to convert or even to just run in the original 2nd Edition ruleset.

Feast of Goblyns is a very flexible module that is designed to be run for characters of levels 4 to 7. It is presented in a format that allows many different paths to be taken through it, with the PCs potentially ignoring some major and minor plots depending on how they decide to play it. This one was designed to be the adventure that draws PCs into the Demiplane, which is always fun. I think I remember playing parts of this module but my memory is not good enough to recall which parts. At 96 pages, though, it would require a bit of commitment to play through the whole thing.

From the Shadows is written for rather high level characters, levels 9 to 12. It is based around the plots of Azalin the lich, lord of the domain of Darkon and his eternal conflict with Strahd Von Zarovich, famed ruler of Barovia and OG Ravenloft BBEG. A great deal of it takes place in Castle Avernus, the lich’s home, and that is pretty cool. I definitely played this but I don’t think the characters survived the whole way through.

Finally, I have the Book of Crypts, which is similar to the Book of Lairs but has 8 full adventures in it! This seems the most suitable for a shorter game or campaign and I might just take a look at running something from here before the spooky season is fully through.

Dear reader, have you ever played this version of Ravenloft? Do you yearn for the mists? Or would you rather play a game actually made for horror?

Hex-jammer

Messin’ with 5E

I’m sure those of you who have been around for a while are aware of how much I enjoy mucking around with my D&D campaign. It is a Spelljammer campaign of the 5E variety and it has been running for quite some time. About 25 sessions, I think. That makes it one of the longest running campaigns I have ever had. That’s probably what makes me want to keep messing with it. A while ago, I introduced the very FitD idea of Engagement rolls before big jobs/dungeons and that has worked pretty well. I also brought in the adversity token, which have come in handy for our heroes in a few clutch moments, let me tell you!

1E Throwback

This post is not so much introducing yet another rules hack or even anything home-brew. It’s more about utilising a style of play that went out of fashion in D&D a long time ago. Hexcrawling! A couple of the oldest D&D publications I own are from AD&D 1st Edition. One of those is UK5 Eye of the Serpent, written by Graeme Morris and released in 1984. This was designed for one DM and one PC! Specifically, it was made to be the first adventure for a druid, ranger or monk character. This is besides the point. I just thought it was unusual. Also, it reminds me of a Troika! adventure I just read, The Hand of God, mainly because it starts much the same way, with the characters being abducted by a powerful winged creature and dumped in their nest at the top of something very, very high up.

Anyway, the point is the hex map of the outdoor region, Hardway Mountain (the name of which, I think we can all agree, is a little on the nose.) Now, the use of this map was incredibly restricted in the text. If your PC was playing a druid, not only did they have to have a prescribed set of three NPCs with them, they should also be forced to take a particular selection of the marked “routings.” These would be distinct from the routings a ranger or monk character would be forced down. You can see this laid out in the unfeasibly complicated two-page spread below.

Now, I think this is really interesting in comparison to what you might deem a hexcrawl style game today. I think most OSR games that use a hex map are thinking along the lines of open-world or sandbox play where you go to a certain hex on the map to explore, with the understanding that the whole thing will be open to your PCs. There might be geographical or other obstacles they have to overcome but that’s up to them, they can either try them out or forget about them.

When it comes to encounters, places of interest, etc. a lot of the time these will be generated randomly and the GM is discovering along with the players in many cases. Even if the GM is the one who came up with the encounter table they’re rolling on, they are not to know what the roll will turn up in the moment or what the PCs will do with them! I realise I am probably teaching my grandmother to suck eggs here, but I want to point out that, although the hexcrawl is a pretty old school style, it wasn’t always necessarily as free a style as it is generally taken to be today.

One last thing. That Eye of the Serpent module has some fantastic art by Tim Sell. Just check these out.

Hexing the Rock

The Spelljammer campaign may have gotten a bit bogged down on the Rock of Bral. Why? Is it because it is the only location described at all in the Spelljammer 5E set? Maybe. Is it because all the plot threads of the campaign led there? Partly. Is it because it takes a life age of the earth to get through a round of 5E combat? That’s a distinct possibility. Anyway, the crew have spent a lot of time exploring, murdering, stealing, negotiating, shopping, drinking and dating on the topside of the Rock already. But one of them has had a literal ooze-heart pulling them to the underside since they got there and they finally made it down. Now, to get them there, I invented a little something I like to call the Shaft of Bral. Stop sniggering! It is a shaft of pure void half a mile wide through which you can reach not just the top and under sides of the Rock but everything in between too. So they took a little row-boat called a spell-rudder down to the bottom and now they are crawling through the hexes underneath. I threw a few random encounters at them on the way down as well. I invented a few encounters for the Shaft of Bral and put them in a d6 table. I got the players to roll for those and they had fun getting hit by another spell-rudder in a hit-and-run and avoiding the sickly air of a boat full of corpses on their way down.

So far, using the encounter table in Boo’s Astral Menagerie (the Spelljammer Monster Manual,) I have been unimpressed. The first time I used it they got an encounter with a ship of aggressive Vampirates. Then there was a fight that lasted three full sessions. It wasn’t all bad, it just derailed things in a less than ideal way. So, I thought I would just make my own encounter tables from now on.

Once they were finally on the Underside of the Rock, I had to think about how I was going to handle it. It is a very large area, made up largely of farmland and forest and they were there to find one wee gnome. I could have just given them directions, but I wanted it to feel like they were exploring and finding their own way, so I took the map of the Underside of Bral and popped it into Roll 20. We are playing this game online so this worked out well. Then I set the map layer to have a hex grid, instead of the standard square one. Now, as they travel, each time they pass from one hex to another, we roll for an encounter. Some of these encounters are designed to beneficial, some are quite the opposite and others are what they make of them. They have been using their own skills, abilities and traits to push on towards their goals while getting the impression of uncovering things about this place as they move through it. I’m not sure how the creators of this version of the Rock imagined people using this map. Maybe this is exactly what they thought we would do! But, I doubt it. It doesn’t feel as though any thought went into that, in fact. As it is with so many recent D&D 5E products, you are given the bare minimum and expected to figure the rest out for yourself. Even a little advice to go along with the map would have been useful. I mean, even Eye of the Serpent did that in 1984.

Anyway, the last session we had was one of these hex crawl sessions and I can’t remember a funnier time. Genuinely laughed the whole way through. Now, I am incredibly loathe to take any credit for that. It was entirely the hilarious antics of the fantastic players I am blessed with. A couple of highlights:

  • Our Giff Charisma-Fighter/Paladin climbing a tree to hide from a patrol with his trousers ‘round his ankles because he thought his hairy grey arse-cheeks would help disguise him as a bunch of coconuts (didn’t work, it was an oak tree.)
  • Encountering a bunch of Hadozee who were on the run from the nearby prison but didn’t know how to escape the Underside. The party told them all about the secret hatch in that stump over there which led to the Shaft of Bral. What’s that? Do we have a boat there? Yep! On, ok, bye then! Good luck in the shaft!
  • Herbert Gũsfacher, ornithologist, the latest identity adopted by the party’s resident illusionist, Balthazar.
  • Gary, Son of Gary. Oh, are you based in the Garrison, Mr Gary-son? No, the Citadel, actually.

Anyway, these random encounters did help along the good times and, I hope, gave the players a sense of active exploration. They haven’t found what they were looking for yet (it’s Eccta, the plasmoid Mum) So I can’t go into any detail about what is in store but I will be using a lot more of my own home made hexcrawls and random encounter tables, that’s for sure.