I don’t think it will be difficult to see where I drew inspiration from this week. It’s a story I have mixed feelings about but still, it introduced the world to one of the most enduring and influential fictional universes ever. Just remember, desire is the mind-killer.
The Heart Worm
Name: The Heart Worm Domains: Warren, Wild Tier: 2 and 3 Default Stress: d6 Haunts: The Waters of Life (Blood D8) Bernie Gallac, Terrible Warrior-Bard (Mind D6) The Prophet, AKA Moonlight-Falling-On-Glaciers (Fortune D6) The Herb, Mischung (Echo D8)
Description: Travellers in the deeper levels of the Heart, where all is flesh and warm and wet, sometimes pass from an artery into a wide open tunnel, resembling a damp cave with masses of tooth-like protrusions projecting from ceiling, walls and floor at the entrance. Many need no more excuse than that to run from the place, but many others know better. They have heard of the Heart Worm, and they know of the life-giving properties of its vital juices. Usually, these are the type of fool-hardy adventurers who have nothing to lose and who find the prospect of burrowing through the flesh of the Heart only to be deposited in another, unknown location, “exciting.” For that is what the Heart Worm does. A giant, parasitic entity that feeds off the multidimensional matter and energy of the Heart itself while digging through it and leaving cyclopean tunnels in its wake, the Worm picks up passengers and ejects them wherever it wants, seemingly randomly.
The Heart Worm has swallowed a few people and never let them go, however, perhaps due to the understanding that its passengers need support and services during their sojourn.
Bernie Gallac, a drow former soldier of the Allied Defence Forces, has been trapped for so long, he has forgotten the world outside. He spends his days composing sarcastic little ditties to comically roast the visitors who come his way. He has been surviving on the Herb, Mischung, which grows in abundance around the depths of the great worm’s mouth. It, along with his long imprisonment, has made him strange, one-dimensional, lacking anything but the desire to do what he does in the service of the Heart Worm and its passengers. His eyes and the eyes of all the inhabitants of the Heart Worm, are crimson from consuming the wine-dark Herb.
A passenger can gather and consume the Herb too. It must be cooked down until it is in the form of a red paste in order for it to be edible. It will slowly change the colour of their eyes to a deep red, but it will also make them feel more at home in the Heart as they become one with it (see Special Rules.)
The Prophet, Moonlight-Falling-On-Glaciers, is an aelfir noble scion, trapped these many years in the gullet of the Heart Worm. They desperately wish to exit and spread the news about the Worm to all the inhabitants of the Cities Above and Below. But, for whatever reason, the Worm has not allowed it. Perhaps it is not their time yet? Perhaps they do not wish to be worshipped like a god, maybe they do not want their presence truly confirmed. The Heart Worm does not confide in anyone its plans or reasons. The mask the Prophet wears resembles the face of the worm but for the two crimson eyes visible through the slits in it. They will speak to passengers in a voice to deep and resonant to be understood, to increase their fortune.
The flesh of the Heart, eaten by the Worm, travels down the peristalsis of the great gullet almost constantly. Those who exist inside, stick to the walls of the giant being. Some have tried to take parts of the Heart meat to sustain themselves. These unfortunates are invariably ejected by the Heart Worm at its first opportunity, in the most dangerous of regions. Passengers who wish to benefit from the Worm’s diet must travel further down its throat until they discover the crimson lake of the Waters of Life, the digestive juices caused by the enormous creature’s Heart-burn. If they can endure its acidic nature, a passenger who immerses themselves in the lake will have their old skin stripped away, only for it to be replaced with a new, deeply red skin. It will heal them of physical ailments. (See Special Rules.)
Eventually, the Heart Worm will find the perfect spot to deposit its passengers. When that time comes, they will be physically ejected by irresistible waves of muscular force, which leads to them being spat out at their destination. This could be anywhere in Tier 2 or 3 of the Heart.
Special Rules: Eating the Herb, Mischung has its dangers. It has the effect of bringing you closer to the Heart but this can also have the effect of making you like the Heart. When you consume the Herb, you must make an Endure/Wild or Warren roll or gain D6 Echo Stress. If this leads to fallout: Fallout: Heart’s Desire (Minor Echo.) The next time anyone voices a desire in your presence, you must do everything in your power to fulfil it for them.
Bathing in the Waters of Life can also be very dangerous. Roll Endure/Warren or Wild or take d8 Blood stress. If this leads to fallout: Fallout: Worm body (Major Blood) Your body begins to transform. Your new red skin sloughs off to reveal a ridged, wormlike one and you develop a taste for the Flesh of the Heart. If this is upgraded to critical, you fully change into a worm and disappear off into the Heart.
Resources: The Herb Mischung (D8, Echo) The Waters of Life (D8, Blood)
I have been reading Ultraviolet Grasslands recently (expect a post or three about this once I get done reading it.) I have been enjoying its format a lot. It tends to go into the big-ticket locations in the setting in some detail, maps, random encounters and occurrences, places of importance, how to get to and from the location. It’s usually built with enough randomness that your “Last Serai,” for instance, will be very different to the next party’s.
But there are a few locales described towards the end of each of these sections that branch out from the one central location, providing you with adventure spots in the surrounding area. Descriptions of these in UVG really depend on the type of area they are in. If it’s a heavily populated spot, you are likely to get a bunch of NPCs for the players to deal with, but in more remote places, it will probably mention more environmental hazards, enemies and traps. Importantly, it never goes into much detail on anything. The details, as with everything in the book, are left up to those gathered around the table. You just get a mention of a particular type of creature (and maybe a level and tag in parentheses beside it,) a monetary value for the treasure or resources you might find there, or a distance (in number of days’ travel) from the main location.
These really reminded me of something: Heart Landmarks. Not necessarily because of the format of the descriptions or the writing style or anything like that. It was mainly just due to the looseness of it. Heart Landmarks also provide you with a few sparks to light your imagination. They might tell you the type of haunts you have there and vaguely hint at a couple of NPCs, but it’s up to you to bring them to life at the table. I am aware this is not that unusual in modern RPGs but I have been reading and playing a lot of trad games recently, so the similarity really struck me here, in comparison.
Anyway, it got me thinking about something I started quite a while ago, before I even started my first Heart campaign. I have a file on my computer just called Heart Landmark Ideas. It had one entry in it, and even that was incomplete. So I thought I would make this a little series of blog posts.
DIY Heart Landmarks
What is a Landmark? In Heart, the City Beneath, the characters are delvers, idiotic adventurers who are compelled for one reason or another, to plunge into the red, wet heaven that is the Heart, the esoteric core of all weirdness. Nothing remains concrete or stationary in this underground “city” for very long, but, as long as a place has a sufficient number of sentients there to believe in it, to desire its safety, that will anchor it. These become Landmarks. Some of them are havens where delvers can rest and recuperate, some are terrifyingly dangerous lairs of nightmares and dark magic.
What does the Heart book tell us about making our own landmarks? Make sure your landmark includes one or more of the following:
SANCTUARY: Haunts are places within a landmark where PCs can relive themselves of stress or fallout and can often involve a major NPC to interact with.
MATERIALS: Resources can be procured here.
ADVANCEMENT: Not every chapter beat is achievable on a delve. Sometimes, landmarks are the perfect places to hit your beats.
EMPLOYMENT: NPCs, mysteries, required items etc. You get the idea.
DANGER: Not every landmark is restful and commercial. Sometimes you need to endure them to achieve your goals…
WONDER: Reveal something of the Heart of just dazzle the players with your imagination!
Other than that, the format of each Landmark entry is pretty much set:
NAME: ‘Nuff said
DOMAINS: These are broad areas of interest or influence: Cursed, Desolate, Haven, Occult, Religion, Technology, Warren, Wild
TIER: The Heart is split into tiers designated 0,1,2,3 and Fracture. 3 is much stranger than 0. Fracture is a movable feast of rumness.
HAUNTS: Places to rest and heal or people who will facilitate that. What kind of stress/fallout can be cured? Also, this should include the max dice size of healing.
DESCRIPTION OF LANDMARK: Part history, part current state of affairs. Maybe some hooks to bring the PCs there.
SPECIAL RULES: This could involve particular dangers or custom-fallouts.
DEFAULT STRESS: What is the normal amount of stress to inflict for action failures? Indicated by a die size.
RESOURCES: What type and die size of resources are available here.
The Blistered Basilica, a polyp on the inside of the blister. The devoted gather inside to worship (d8 Echo)
Rose’s, a restaurant with a good reputation and a worryingly good chowder (d8 Blood)
The Blister Pack, a general market that specialises in building and delving equipment (d6 Supplies)
Description: An enormous, fleshy blister on the inside of an enormous, fleshy chamber. Blister is pierced near the base by a hole that allows delvers to enter. From this hole there is a ramshackle wooden ramp that leads to a series of old platforms requiring constant repair. It has some residents, known as platformers, who are more or less permanent and mostly have no sense of smell.
At the base of the blister is a fetid lake of stinking pus. A whole ecosystem of pus creatures live in the lake. They generally leave the platformers alone.
The platformers worship the blister as though it were a god and as long as they do, they say the denizens of the pus will leave them be. But outsiders and heretics should not stay long, they say.
Special Rules: If you spend a bit of time in the Blistered Basilica in order to remove Echo fallout, make an Endure/Religion check. Consequences of failure as below: Fallout: Pus Magnet (Minor Mind) You have come to understand the Platformers’ devotion to the Blister and you feel a kinship with the pus-beings. They are there for your protection and you are there for theirs. You feel an urge to descend to the lake, befriend one of them and take them with you on your travels (Ongoing.)
Getting too close to the pus lake will require an Endure/Haven or Religion check. On failure/mixed result: Fallout: Blistering Barnacles (Major Blood) You’ve been infected by the pus. You are covered in hard, black blisters which hurt and stink. They make all social checks one difficulty rating higher (Standard becomes Risky, Risky becomes Dangerous etc.) (Ongoing.)
Resources:
Gathering Blister pus (d4 Religion) can be dangerous. See Special Rules.
Potential Plots:
Deacon Delicia of the Blistered Basilica has startling news for any PCs that visit. The Blister has revealed an existential danger to her. A stalactite-like calcium deposit has formed above Blister and a group of heretical pus-haters are preparing to climb up there and knock the spiky peril from its perch. This would spell the end for Blister, the Pus Lake and the Platformers. She is offering the church’s most prized possession as a reward to anyone who can stop the heretics. It is a wooden spike known only as the Splinter (Kill d8 Piercing, Debilitating)
It’s been quite a while since I’ve done one of these posts. I think my Dragon Age Character Creation post was the last one. And it was very useful to me in figuring out how that game worked before I started a campaign of it (which is ongoing. The PCs have all just become Grey Wardens without dying during the Joining!) Well, I’ve got a short game of Dungeon Crawl Classics coming up this weekend so I thought this would be a good opportunity to create a character using the DCC rules to help familiarise myself with them.
I’ll be running the iconic DCC #67 Sailors on the Starless Sea for a group of four or five players. To be honest, I don’t expect any of the PCs who survive this 0-level funnel (this is a module where the players play three or four 0-level peasants who delve into a dungeon. Whichever of their PCs survive get to advance to 1st level in their chosen class, normally) to go on to choose a class or progress to 1st level as its more of a one-shot deal. But, you never know! If it proves to be popular or any of them get particularly attached to one of their characters, maybe I’ll brew up a campaign for them. I certainly have enough DCC resources and modules to run campaigns for the next ten years straight! Anyway, the point is, I think I’ll still get something out of creating an actual character using these rules. So here we go!
Funnelling
For the purposes of this post, I am going to roll up four 0-level characters and then roll 1d20 for each of them. The character that rolls the highest will progress to 1st level while the rest are assumed to have died a gristly and unfortunate death in some stinking hole beneath a castle or in the gullet of some demon lord. To roll up the 0-level characters, I’m going to use the fabulously useful purple sorcerer, which will do it automatically for me. This is what I expect my players to use when generating their own PCs.
But first, a note on what’s being generated:
Ability Scores – These are Strength, Agility, Stamina, Personality, Intelligence and Luck. All DCC ability scores are generated by rolling 3d6. There are no alternate methods of generating them, no point-buy, no 4d6 and drop the lowest… it’s brutal.
0-level Occupation – there is a d100 table that covers a page and a half of the book to determine this. Your Occupation also determines your starting Trained Weapon and which Trade Goods you begin with. It will also indicate the type of skills you are trained in.
Money and Purchased Equipment – a 0-level character starts with 5d12 copper pieces. On top of the weapon they start with, they can use these to purchase other stuff
1d4 hit points, modified by Stamina
A +0 modifier to attack rolls and saving throws
A Lucky Sign – DCC characters begin with a Lucky Sign, which you roll for on a table. This can give the character a +1 to a particular type of roll forever!
One thing that’s not generated is alignment. For D&D type games, I don’t normally bother with alignment. But I think it is so integral to so many of the mechanics of DCC, that I can’t avoid it. The available alignments are Chaotic, Neutral and Lawful. I am going to roll for this on 1d3. I rolled a 2, so this character, whoever they turn out to be is going to be Neutral in alignment. So, without further ado:
I rolled up one Dwarven blacksmith, a Minstrel, a Herbalist and a Butcher. I’ll quickly go through the high points and low points of each:
Dwarven blacksmith – I’ll name them Grund. Grund has a Personality score of 13! That’s his highest. However, his Strength, which would be one of the main abilities of the Dwarf class, is just an 8. Even more alarming is that they have the approximate intelligence of a fence-post, with a score of just 3. Since their Luck modifier is 0 they don’t get any Lucky Sign bonus
Minstrel – I’ll name them Flor. Flor’s ability scores are generally very high, strength 12, stamina 14, personality 14 and Luck 15. Only Agility lets them down with a score of 7. They start with 5 HP! Also, Flor as the Lucky Sign, Raised by Wolves, which gives them a +1 to Unarmed Attacks.
Herbalist – I’ll name them Bud. Bud’s ability scores are incredibly average. Only Luck gives any kind of bonus (+1) and only Agility gives a minus (-1.) They do have the Four Leafed Clover Lucky Sign, which provides a +1 to Find secret doors. Only starting with 1 hit point, though…
Butcher – I’ll name them Cutter. Cutter is weak, (strength 7) clumsy, (agility 8) and unpleasant to be around, (personality 5) but is pretty smart, (intelligence 15) so they’re probably pretty annoying. Luck provides a 0 modifier so no Lucky Sign bonus here.
OK, I’m not going to lie, I’m holding out for Flor to survive the funnel but it’s entirely random so there’s really no telling…
“Funnel” Rolls
So, it all comes down to a single d20 roll for each PC. In case of a tie, I’ll just re-roll both.
Grund the Dwarven blacksmith – 17 (oh no)
Flor the Minstrel – 4 (wah!)
Bud the Herbalist – 18 (a reprieve!)
Cutter the butcher – 6
So, Bud, alone, bleeding and traumatised, crawls out of the crumbling remains of the ancient temple having, with the help of the heroic and now deceased Grund, Flor and Cutter, defeated the ancient evil beneath it. Grabs some treasure on the way out too!
Choosing a Class
So, since Bud is a human (all 0-level characters are assumed to be human unless it’s clearly stated in their title, i.e. Dwarven blacksmith) they can choose from any of the classes except Elf, Dwarf and Halfling, for obvious reasons. Yes, this is another one of those old school games in which “Demi-human” races are treated as classes, kind of like in Old School Essentials. You can check out my disastrous OSE character creation post here.
Anyway, that leaves the following classes to choose from:
Cleric
Thief
Warrior
Wizard
Now, Bud’s ability scores are as follows:
Str: 9 (0)
Agi: 8 (-1)
Sta: 12 (0)
Per: 11 (0)
Int: 9 (0)
Luck: 13 (+1)
Normally you would go with the class that matches your highest ability score, right? Well, I could do that, but Bud’s highest is 13 for Luck, which is useful for all classes. Next is Stamina, on 12, but, once again, no one class relies on that. You could argue for Warrior there, but with a Strength score of 9, I don’t think it makes sense. So, instead, I think I will go for Cleric, since they use Personality to cast their spells and that’s Bud’s next highest Ability score, at 11. They don’t get a bonus from it, but it’s as good a reason as any to choose a class, I think. Oh, also, the Herbalist already started with a Holy Symbol, so it seems fitting.
From the DCC book:
An adventuring cleric is a militant servant of a god, often part of a larger order the faithful, they wield the weapons of their faith: physical, spiritual, and magical. Physically, they are a skilled fighter when using their god’s chosen weapons. Spiritually, they are a vessel for the expression of their god’s ideals, able to channel holy powers that harm their god’s enemies. Magically, they are able to call upon their god to perform amazing feats.
Hit Points
Each class rolls a different die for hit points, just like in D&D and OSE. If you’re a Cleric, you roll 1d8 per level.
Bud rolls a 6 on their 1d8 and adds it to their 1 hit point from level 0 to make 9.
HP: 9
Choosing a God
If you choose to be a Cleric, you have to choose to worship a God of similar alignment to you. In Bud’s case, that Neutral. I am going to consult the Gods of Eternal Struggle table and choose one of the Neutral deities from that. I have recreated the Neutral gods section of the table below:
Alignment
Gods
Weapons
Unholy Creatures
Neutral
Amun Tor, god of mysteries and riddles. Ildavir, goddess of nature. Pelagia, goddess of the sea. Cthulhu, priest of the Old Ones
Dagger, mace, sling, staff, sword (any)
Mundane animals, un-dead, demons, devils, monsters (e.g., basilisk or medusa), lycanthropes, perversions of nature (e.g., otyughs and slimes)
With their background in herbalism, I feel as though Bud would lean towards the worship of Ildavir, goddess of nature. As you can see from the table above, they get a semi-decent selection of weapons they can use. It is also interesting to note at this point that Clerics can wear any armour and it won’t affect their spell-checks. Finally, you can see they are able to turn an array of interesting creatures, not just undead.
Magic
In DCC, when you want to cast a spell, you have to roll a spell-check. This is an obvious departure from D&D. Another difference is that they don’t get spell slots. However, there is a downside here. If you fail in your spell-check roll, you risk the ire of your deity. In the normal state of affairs, if you are trying to cast a spell and you roll a nat 1 on your spell-check, the spell auto-fails and you get to roll on the Disapproval Table. This can lead to consequences ranging from this:
The cleric must atone for their sins. They must do nothing but utter chants and intonations for the next 10 minutes, starting as soon as they are able (i.e., if they are in combat, they can wait until the danger is over).
To this
The cleric’s ability to lay on hands is restricted. The ability works only once per day per creature healed – no single character can be healed more than once per day. After 24 hours, the ability’s use reverts to normal.
Worse still, your chance of auto-failing goes up by one, meaning auto-failure and a Disapproval Table roll on a 1 or a 2. It gets worse; for every spell-check failure in the same day after this, that auto-failure range increases by another 1, with no real upper limit.
You can also piss off your deity by “sinning,” e.g. acting in a way that contradicts the god’s teachings or benefits one of their enemies.
Now, there is a way to offset these consequences: sacrifice. Yep, all you have to do is destroy or give away 50gp worth of wealth in your god’s name to reduce the failure range by 1 point. They might also accept a great quest of undertaking of faith instead.
Spells
Anyway, back to the spells! Bud starts knowing four Level 1 Cleric Spells, according to Table 1-5: Cleric. So, let’s choose them!
Blessing – this can be used to bestow all sorts of boons on the cleric themself, an ally or even an object. Since every spell in the game comes with its own table to determine the exact results, I’m not going to get into it here. Suffice it to state that you can get anything from a +1 to attack rolls for a round, right up to getting a permanent +1 for the whole party to any actions to do with a sacred endeavour they have undertaken.
Holy Sanctuary – this creates a place of safety for the Cleric and their allies. It might simply make it harder for enemies to hit them in that space, or it might allow the Cleric to create a permanent place of sanctuary, such as a temple, where powerful enemies cannot attack the faithful at all.
Second Sight – the Cleric gains divine insights into the results of their own actions. It might be a +4 bonus to a single action roll or it might be able to divine the outcomes of great events for a month and also receive a +1 bonus to all actions taken during that period!
Word of Command – Use a single word to command a creature to do something. The effects range from just that to it targeting all desired creatures they can see, who must obey it for a number of days.
All Cleric spell checks are made like this: 1d20 + Personality modifier + caster level
Turn Unholy
You saw above the range of creatures that Bud can turn with a Turn Unholy roll. This roll works the same as a spell check, so 1d20 + Personality Modifier + caster level. However, when Turning, the cleric can also add their Luck modifier. In Bud’s case, this is good because they have a +1 in that.
Failing a check can incur the Disapproval of their deity just like failing to cast a spell.
On a success, there is a fairly complicated set of potential outcomes depending on your turn check roll and the Hit Dice of the creatures you’re trying to turn.
Lay on Hands
Bud is a healer as well, of course. In fact, the Lay on Hands power is the only real way they have to heal anyone. But! They can use that to heal them of hit point damage, disease, poison, broken limbs etc. They can use it to deal with pretty much any condition.
Of course, just like with Turn Unholy, you have to make a spell check to use this power, 1d20 + Personality modifier + caster level.
The dice you use to heal someone depends on their class/type of hit dice they use. So, for a Warrior, who uses a d12 for their HD, healing is also rolled on a d12, which I think is neat. Although you can never roll more dice to heal than your target has in HD already.
Alignment is a factor in healing. If you try to heal someone of different or even opposing alignment to your character, you are going to probably do less healing than if you were healing someone of a similar alignment. As a Neutral Cleric, Bud is probably in the best position in this respect, as both Chaotic and Lawful creatures are considered adjacent to him on the alignment table, which I have reproduced below:
Spell check
Same
Adjacent
Opposed
1-11
Failure
Failure
Failure
12-13
2 dice
1 die
1 die
14-19
3 dice
2 dice
1 die
20-21
4 dice
3 dice
2 dice
22+
5 dice
4 dice
3 dice
Divine Aid
You can just ask your god for anything really. But it must be a truly extraordinary act to get them to intervene on your behalf so directly, when they are already giving you spells and other powers. So, to achieve this, you make a spell check as normal, and, even if you succeed, you are lumped with a cumulative +10 penalty to future Disapproval range… the Judge (DM) gets to decide the exact DC and effect of the request depending on what the intention was, what the god might want and how big the intervention needs to be. This seems like it could be used in some really clutch moments though.
There are a couple of notes right at the end of the Cleric class description. One relates to Luck and how their Luck modifier can be added to Turn Unholy rolls. The other indicates that their Action Dice can be used to attack or cast spells.
Equipment
The Equipment Chapter starts with a table that indicates how much gold your character stats with if you decide not to opt for the 0-level funnel method of character creation. If a Cleric starts at level 1, they get 4d20 gp. So let’s roll that:
20 (yep, out of a possible 60 gp)
At least I can add the 48cp I rolled up on their level-0 character sheet. Well, let’s make the best of it. I am going to buy a decent weapon, since Bud started with nothing but a club, and hopefully some armour.
I think I am going to go for a modest
mace (1d6 dmg)
and back it up with a
sling (1d4 dmg)
That’s a total of 7gp. I had also better get some
sling stones
for another 1gp.
Finally, the only armour poor Bud can afford is
padded armour (+1 AC) That makes Bud’s AC 10 because of the -1 Agility modifier.
That costs 5gp. So, Bud has 7gp and 48cp left.
So, let’s grab a
Backpack for 2gp
Flint and steel for 15cp
10 torches for 10cp
5 days of rations for 25cp
a waterskin for 5sp
50’ rope for 25cp
A grappling hook for 1gp
For a total cost of 3gp, 5sp and 75cp. Which leaves Bud with 3gp 2sp and 3cp.
So, that’s pretty much it for Bud the Witness (that’s their title as per the Cleric Table) I like Bud. They’re a survivor and a true devotee of Ildavir, goddess of nature, but they will never forget their humble beginnings as a herbalist, nor their old companions, Grund, Flor and Cutter.
Thanks to Soxzilla2 on reddit for the form fillable character sheet! You can find that here.
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?
I recently finished reading through the new campaign book for Heart, the City Beneath. Dagger in the Heart from Rowan Rook and Decard was written by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and illustrated by Sar Cousins and came after a very successful crowdfunding effort last year. I backed it because I back everything from RRD but also because I was curious about how they were going to go about constructing a campaign for a game like Heart. In my experience, A campaign for Heart is something best dealt with one session at a time. Looseness and improvisational ability are qualities you will benefit from when GMing this game. The character beats that drive the events and the plot and the characters forward might have one PC searching for someone to kick off a tall building while another might be looking to get into a situation that’ll garner them some major Echo Fallout. So, maintaining any sort of direction can be a challenge. This is one of the game’s great strengths, of course. It makes it feel quite organic at the table and allows your players to feel as though they are the focus of the evolving story.
So, how to you translate that style of play into a coherent campaign? Well, you get Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan to write it for you, obviously. What he has done with Dagger in the Heart is provide the GM with a trio of inspired villains that I can imagine the PCs will love to hate and built the campaign around their plots and goals. In the introduction, he also gives you a guide on how to use these villains, depending on the length of campaign you want to run and some other factors. You don’t need to use them all, and, indeed, you are encouraged not to. Importantly, the campaign will work no matter which ones you use. They mostly act as foils to the PCs plans and actions and you are given suggestions, throughout the book, on how to use them in each area and during each major event. In Dagger in the Heart, the villains have their own beats they’re working towards, which helps in keeping track of what they are doing most of the time.
After the intro, you get seven chapters, each of which focuses on the areas of the Heart (or, indeed, the City Above) that are important at different points in the campaign. A chapter features an overview section which briefly explains what is contained in it and what the PCs are expected to be doing while they interact with the places, people and events contained in it. After that, you have a Staging section, which gives you options on how to get the PCs to move the overall plot forward while they do the usual Heart stuff of delving and hitting their Beats. This might include descriptions of major NPCs or stat blocks for enemies. After this, you get your Landmark and Delve descriptions. There are so many Landmarks in this book. I am pretty sure there are more Landmarks in this than in the Heart core book. But the delvers are not required to visit all of them. Instead there are just a lot of options. Indeed, because of the very loose nature of the campaign, the Landmarks can occur in any order, within any given Tier of the Heart, at least. In fact, they can mostly move quite freely between Tiers as well. So, despite the plot focusing so heavily on the occult and defunct underground train system known as the Vermissian, Dagger in the Heart is anything but Railroady. What it does, is provide you and your players with a plethora of options for how the story of the campaign could play out at your table and, indeed, how it might end, taking into account what your delvers might do.
After reading it, I was energised and inspired. I wanted to get some players around the table and send them back into the Heart as soon as possible. It will have to wait a little while, though, while other games come to an end. In the meantime, I get to read it again and prepare something really special.
Heart GM Screen
I also got the new Heart GM Screen from the Backerkit. It’s exactly what you would expect from RRD. Very high quality and totally over the top. There are no useful tables or common rules on the screen itself. Instead it comes with a booklet that you can rip the particular pages out of or, I suppose, photocopy and attach to the screen as you like. That way you can switch out the items you most need, when you most need them. It’s a nice idea and I think it will be useful.
Heather joined our campaign a bit late. She decided to sign up about the time the rest of the party popped through their very first portal to Sigil. This worked out well because her character, Panasonic (no relation to the Japanese electronics manufacturer of the same name,) was already there. This Half-orc Bard hadn’t always been there but she had made a home in the city and even gained something of a reputation as a controversial singer/songwriter. She had written and performed a tune that was perceived as being particularly critical of the self-appointed police, the Harmonium, a Faction that was philosophically devoted to the notion of laws and the act of upholding them. Unsurprisingly, this made them less than popular with many of the city’s population. So, when Panasonic first performed her song “The Safety Dance,” (for copyright reasons, a song that is legally distinct from the 80s hit by Canadian icons, Men Without Hats) a riot erupted, followed by anti-Harmonium acts being perpetrated all over the city. So, on the night when the rest of the party emerged from the end of a pipe (other side of a portal) in the the swimming pool of the Gymnasium, Panasonic found herself taking a shortcut through that very place, with a squad of angry Hardheads (a nickname for the Harmonium) hot on her heels.
Luckily, the party came to her aid, and she, in turn, acted as a sort of guide/ally to them in the alien and bewildering city.
The thing about Panasonic was, she had a fascination for Sigil and the planes in general. She was fascinated by the doors, the portals, how they worked. She always felt there was something musical about them. Also, she had been trying to find a way home for a long time. She had been shanghaied in Sigil by her sister, Sony (once again, no relation.) Sony was jealous of Panasonic’s growing popularity and so got a wizard to send her off plane so she could take her place at the front of their band. When she ran into the party, who just-so-happened to come from the same prime material world, she latched onto them as her ride home.
So, the culmination of Panasonic’s story, unlike the rest of the party, came when she emerged through the portal to Erlendhaim with the others. It was a big moment for her! She even found her sister there and somehow made amends just before they were violently assaulted by a bunch of devils.
It was then that she gained her new bard features, having fulfilled all her major character beats.
As with all of these character options, I didn’t spend too much time considering the balance implications of these. But if you like them, and you feel like you could use them in some form or other, please feel free.
New Bard Feature – Music of the Planes
Magical Notes
From 3rd level; the Bard uses an action to strike a cord on their musical instrument and summons a tiny portal which projects, from the instrument, an ethereal glowing rune in the shape of a musical note. As the the Bard continues to play, notes emerge in a stream from a plane of pure, living music. This stream of notes can have one of several effects that the Bard must choose before using this feature.
Face-melter – Attack roll using the Bard’s spell attack bonus – Range: 60ft, Damage: 1d8 + Charisma modifier thunder damage. At 6th level this increases to 2d8, at 9th level to 3d8, at 12th level to 4d8 and at 15th level to 5d8.
Break/Dance – Affect a single creature in range (60ft) causing them to dance energetically unless they make a Charisma saving throw (using the Bard’s spell save DC.) On a failure, the creature’s AC is broken, reduced by 2 as they leave themselves open to attack. At 6th level the Bard can affect two creatures or reduce the AC of one creature by 3. At 9th level the Bard can affect three creatures or reduce the AC of one creature by 4. At 12th level the Bard can affect four creatures or reduce the AC of one creature by 5. At 15th level the Bard can affect five creatures or reduce the AC of one creature by 6.
Mosh Pit – From 12th level the Bard can affect a group of 1d8 + Charisma modifier creatures to attack the closest creature to them if they fail a Charisma saving throw (using the Bard’s spell save DC.) This effect lasts until the end of the Bard’s next turn.
Transported by the Melody
From 9th level, once between long rests, the Bard can use an action to play their instrument in harmony with the planes allowing them to cast the Contact Other Plane spell. From 13th level, once between long rests, the Bard can use an action to play their instrument in harmony with the planes allowing them to cast the teleport spell. From 15th level, once between long rests, the Bard can use an action to play their instrument in harmony with the planes allowing them to cast the Demiplane spell.
Monsters of Rock
From 7th level the Bard plays a melody that opens a portal to one of the outer or inner planes to summon an elemental, fae, celestial or fiendish creature of up to CR 2. 10th level, CR 3. 13th level CR 4. 16th level CR 5.
List of Elemental Creatures
Steam Mephit (CR 0.25)
Dust Mephit (CR 0.5)
Ice Mephit (CR 0.5)
Magma Mephit (CR 0.5)
Magmin (CR 0.5)
Azer (CR 2)
Air Elemental (CR 5)
Earth Elemental (CR 5)
Fire Elemental (CR 5)
Salamander (CR 5)
Water Elemental (CR 5)
Corn (CR 5)
List of Celestial Creatures
Couatl (CR 4)
Pegasus (CR 2)
Unicorn (CR 5)
Hollyphant (CR 5)
List of Fae Creatures
Sprite (CR 0.25)
Dryad (CR 1)
Sea hag (CR 2)
Green Hag (CR 3)
List of Fiendish Creatures
Lemure (CR 0)
Dretch (CR 0.25)
Imp (CR 1)
Quasit (CR 1)
Bearded Devil (CR 3)
Hell Hound (CR 3)
Nightmare (CR 3)
Barbed Devil (CR 5)
Night Hag (CR 5)
Conclusion
This is the last of my D&D character options from Erlendheim series, dear reader. I really enjoyed coming up with these options in collaboration with my players and it was a lot of fun introducing them to the campaign with big personal story moments for the characters. I highly recommend that as a way to make your players feel very special.
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 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
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.
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 Level
Spells
1st
Find Familiar, Inflict Wounds
2nd
Wither and Bloom, Vortex Warp
3rd
Motivational Speech, Life Transference
4th
Aura of Life, Vitriolic Sphere
5th
Destructive 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 Spent
Effect 1
Effect 2
Effect 3
1
Apply advantage to any attack roll, saving throw or ability check
Double the range of Fragment of Potential
2
Roll a hit die plus your Charisma modifier to regain hit points
3
Maximise any damage effect
Induce a critical success
4
Roll two hit dice plus your Charisma modifier to regain hit points
5
Double the area of Aura of Potential
Double the number of targets affected by Wasted Potential
Double the number of Fragments of Potential Summoned
6
Roll three hit dice plus your Charisma modifier to regain hit points
7
Increase the casting level of any appropriate spell by one
8
Roll four hit dice plus your Charisma modifier to regain hit points
9
Regain 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.
Orlen, dusty, wide-brimmed chapeau drowning her alarming eyes in shadow, holds aloft her trophy, beaming. The bag of coin, pleasingly hefty, dangling from her dextrous digits. “‘Aah ‘baht ‘at ‘en?” Her companions, ensorcelled by something above her sturdy, sinister shoulder, point. A hiss, as a punctured bladder, sounds in her ear. Speculative, her left hand shoots up, ready to throttle the looming serpent. It narrowly misses losing its ring finger as a dagger, recently released by Rasei, skewers the snake to the formerly coin-concealing statue. Orlen chances a glance. The cold blood dribbles down the stone man’s shoulder, over the sickle he holds dramatically crossing his sword over his chest. Nima cries, “More snakes!” Time to go. The treasure hunters scarper down the path of the sickle, ignoring the sword’s point and the keep slouching beyond it on the horizon, hoping for Hester’s Mill.
A dramatic retelling of the opening scene of our recent game of Trophy Gold, run by friend of the blog, Isaac. To those who were there, apologies. I’m sure I got a few details wrong, either deliberately or by mistake. Drama seems appropriate for this fascinating game, defined as it is, within Sets.
Trophy
So, as you probably know, dear reader, if you have been with me for a while, here on the dice pool dot com, I am a more-or-less avid listener of the Fear of a Black Dragon podcast from the Gauntlet. I wrote a post on my appreciation for it and the Indie RPG Podcast last Summer. Our path to playing this incursion (as Trophy scenarios are called) leads very much from that. Jason Cordova, one of the podcast’s capable hosts, rarely ventures into the OSR’s hex-defined landscapes. Rather, you can generally find him in the narrative woods and trails of story-based games. On the podcast, he often discusses his experiences in running OSR (or just old tbh) modules in other systems. Back in the olden days of Fear of a Black Dragon, this generally meant either the incredibly rules-lite World of Dungeons or Dungeon World My last post on this blog was about the feelings Dungeon World made me feel. Go and have a look!) These both have PBTA DNA. Their mechanics lend themselves more to the application of imagined narrative than cut-and-dried, D&D-esque, result-binary systems. And this is really only because of the inclusion of a third option, a mixed success, or success at a cost. Since the implied consequence cannot be defined outside the context of the situation, it is usually left up to those at the table to invent it (although Dungeon World generally provides far more pre-written options than does the baldly efficient text of World of Dungeons.) And look, if you’re a PBTA maven, my deepest apologies for what is, no doubt, a faintly condescending and largely inaccurate paring down of a game system that is probably the most influential in the indie game space of the last decade and a half. But if you were raised on a distilled diet of Borgs in your old schools, you’re welcome.
I have gotten off track. The point I was trying to get to was that, a few years ago, Jason switched to running pretty much every module in Trophy Dark or Trophy Gold instead. Mostly Trophy Gold, in fact. Obviously, this got me very interested in the game. The idea of running D&D style modules in a more narrative style highlights a whole new facet of the hobby that I always thought would be very fun to explore. And, after reading a bit about the game and learning of its mechanical descent from Blades in the Dark I wanted to try it even more. It just turns out that, much like Tom (with Dungeon World,) before him, Isaac got there before me. I’m not complaining. I love being a player in these games.
So, to put it briefly, both Trophy games were written by Jesse Ross and published by Gauntlet Publishing. Elements of the rules have been adapted from Blades in the Dark by John Harper, who is also responsible for World of Dungeons and other elements were cribbed from Graham Walmsley’s seminal Cthulhu Dark. They are games about treasure hunters going out into the dark forest to find gold and bring it home so they can continue to survive in a hostile world. In Trophy Dark, your vile little adventurer is a goner; you’re not making it past the end of the session. Sorry. That’s the point of Trophy Dark. But in Trophy Gold you make a treasure hunter who might live to the end of the incursion if you’re lucky. They might even weasel their way through to another one. Speaking of which, I wrote a blog post about making a Trophy Gold character last summer. You may find it illuminating if you’re interested. Do bear in mind, though, the game I used in that post is not quite the same as the one presented in the book published in 2022. I used the game from the Codex Gold magazine, which you can pick up for a steal over on Drivethru. I don’t think there are any really drastic rule changes but we noticed some discrepancies in a few of the tables.
The cover of Codex Gold from Gauntlet Publishing
Hester’s Mill
So, what’s all this about Sets? You didn’t think I remembered mentioning that earlier, did you, dear reader? Well, Incursions are formatted in a very particular way. Trophy Gold helpfully breaks it up and introduces the format like this:
Theme – much like any dramatic work that might be presented on the stage, a Trophy Gold incursion should be built around a theme, even if you are adapting it from another type of module. I would call the broad theme of Hester’s Mill to be “Harvest”
Sets – these are particular locations in which the treasure hunters will be presented with clear goals. I find it fascinating that the rules tell the GM to make the goal explicit to the players. I’m not giving away too much by telling you that the goal in the opening Set I wrote up in the intro is to find the way to Hester’s Mill. You complete the Set by achieving this goal and this is eminently important to the cycle of play. You may not wish to complete the goal of every Set. It might not be clever or necessary for you. Your character’s overall goal is to earn enough Gold to relieve them of their Burden, both of which are abstract scores on the character sheet. In other words, you know from the start how much you need to take home so you don’t die on the streets or get consumed by the evils of the world. I don’t think anyone would blame you for trying to convince the party to get the heck out of there once you had managed to collect enough money. But, just because you got your Benjamins, doesn’t mean everyone else did. This can lead to inter-personal conflict, unsurprisingly. But it might also lead to moments of support and kindness in these Sets. Drama, gettit? And guess what you call the things you find within the Sets… Yep, Props. It’s obvious, really. So the statue of the man with the sickle and sword in the intro? Yep, that’s a Prop. You also have Treasure and Traps as defined elements within Sets
Flowchart – What the holy business-process, Batman? Yep, it makes so much sense, when you think about it. When you are trying to play something like an OSR module, you might have a map which visually represents the location but that does not necessarily represent the decisions, actions and repercussions that might lead the PCs from one Set to the next. In many ways, the Flowchart is the more useful of the two. I’d like to give it a go in any game where I’m running a particular scenario, honestly. Not very theatrical though, disappointingly
Monsters – these are specifically mentioned because the section I am referring to in the Trophy Gold rules from Codex Gold is there to explain how you might convert an OSR module to be played using Trophy Gold instead. So, Jesse Ross has helpfully provided a lot of advice on converting Monsters, a staple of the genre, to be used in that system. One of the most fascinating aspects of the game is that the monsters do not come pre-named. That is left up to the party. This can be either cool AF or disastrous. The monsters we encountered in Hester’s Mill so far have been both bonkers and horrifying. And if it had been left up to me, they would have been called something stupid
Magic – Similar to Monsters, this includes advice on conversion. But, I will say that there is a very useful table of already converted D&D style spells presented in the rules for you to use.
Anyway, it should be clear that the Set is the main denomination of organisational structure within an Incursion. So far, I think we have interacted with three or four Sets in Hester’s Mill and achieved the Goal in two or three of them. You can use another highly abstracted currency, the Hunt Token, to complete a Set without having to actually face its dangers. You can receive (and also lose) these tokens on a Hunt Roll, one of the three types of rolls in the game. If you spend three Hunt Tokens like that, you simply draw the curtain across the stage and open again on the next Set and get to work on the new goal.
In general, rolls, of which you have Hunt, Combat and Risk, are made using a dice pool mechanic much like that used in Blades in the Dark. The D6 is the only die you need but you will need them in Dark and Light varieties. You will always roll a Dark Die in Combat and you can roll one to give you a better chance of success on a Risk Roll if you’re willing to risk mind or body… More drama.
The Combat Roll is particularly fascinating because it doesn’t work like a regular success/failure roll at all. Instead, you describe how your character exposes themselves to harm in the battle and then roll your Light Die. That number is your Weak Point. You then roll a Dark Die for each of the treasure hunters in the fight. Ostensibly, you’re rolling against the Endurance of the Monster, but, if any of them roll your Weak Point, that increases your Ruin, which is like a harm track. One you hit 6 Ruin, you are Lost… So dramaaaatic, right?
Add to this the Devil’s Bargain, nicked from Blades in the Dark and you have a recipe for some real dark character moments in Trophy games. You crowdsource the possible options for both Devil’s Bargains and unfortunate consequences of failed rolls from everyone around the table and this makes for some extremely fucked up inevitabilities on a lot of rolls.
In conclusion
We have yet to finish Hester’s Mill. I know we have at least one more Set to get to. I’m really looking forward to going back to it. We’ll be dealing with the aftermath of something pretty messed up and, hopefully, finding some more goodies. I have to say, the Incursion has been very pleasing in introducing us to a lot of lore and cool fantasy history while also giving us the opportunity to get into fights and burn down shrines so far. With any luck, there’ll be more of that as we wrap it up next time.
How about you, dear reader? Have you played Trophy Gold? Or Hester’s Mill? What did you think?
The Dice Pool 