RPGaDay 2019: 23 Surprise

Oh, what the hell.  It's Friday.

I wasn't going to do this just yet, but hey...SURPRISE! It's an archetype from my own home-grown campaign setting for you to peruse and swipe if you like. My world has a lot of complicated old gods, and this particular thief archetype is an exploitation of that very fact. Click the link below to get it.

Thief Archetype: The Divine Archaeologist

This is a spell-casting thief, with an emphasis on utility spells, such as hiding, running, and transporting heavy objects. That's why the Divine Archaeologist also gets a second fourth level spell, and a fifth first level spell at Level 20, unlike the Arcane Trickster.

There is also an "Indiana Jones" component to the Divine Archaeologist; the clever fellow who has read up on the temples of the blood god and knows that every treasure room has a pressure plate right...there...or, maybe it was there...? I wanted the skills to reflect someone who learned a lot about ancient history, but little else. The notebook seemed like a good way to reflect that, with the added incentive of it being potentially stolen the night before a major temple raid.

My intention is to talk more about my campaign and the stuff I've done to 5th edition to accommodate my brilliant ideas and grandiose vision.

And Just for Grins, here's all of the other tidbits of homebrew and campaign stuff I've shared since the beginning of this 31 day challenge, in case you missed anything.

5e Background: Bureaucrat

5e Background: Exterminator

5e Background: Pilgrim

Familiars--Homebrew

Alternate Critical Hit System for 5e

Dilettante

Disgraced Noble

Knight Errant

Noble House Random Generator

RPGaDay 2019: 22 Lost

So, this is fun: Conan and Valeria encountering a dinosaur-like creature in the classic “Red Nails:”

Through the thicket was thrust a head of nightmare and lunacy. Grinning jaws bared rows of dripping yellow tusks; above the yawning mouth wrinkled a saurian-like snout. Huge eyes, like those of a python a thousand times magnified, stared unwinkingly at the petrified humans clinging to the rock above it. Blood smeared the scaly, flabby lips and dripped from the huge mouth. The head, bigger than that of a crocodile, was further extended on a long scaled neck on which stood up rows of serrated spikes, and after it, crushing down the briars and saplings, waddled the body of a titan, a gigantic, barrel-bellied torso on absurdly short legs. The whitish belly almost raked the ground, while the serrated backbone rose higher than Conan could have reached on tiptoe. A long spiked tail, like that of a gargantuan scorpion, trailed out behind. "Back up the crag, quick!" snapped Conan, thrusting the girl behind him. "I don't think he can climb, but he can stand on his hind legs and reach us—"

So, it’s basically a dinosaur, right? And if you can’t quite see it that way, Barry Windsor-Smith sure could. Here’s a page from his critically-acclaimed comic book adaptation of “Red Nails.”

click to enlarge

I told you that to tell you this: whenever I see the world “Lost” I assume that we’re going to be talking about dinosaurs. It’s inevitable and a little strange, but Lost, to me, is one half of the term “Lost World,” which means, in literary terms, Dinosaurs!

I love dinosaurs. If you don’t have a favorite dinosaur, you need to leave. I am serious. Dinosaurs are Monster Kid 101. They are a part and parcel of fantasy and science fiction both and stories of dinosaurs (from Lost Worlds) interacting with the humans that stumble across them are part of a sub-genre that is literally over a hundred years old.

Dungeons & Dragons understood this, and dutifully included stats for the most classic dinosaurs in the AD&D Monster Manual.  Here’s a very classic-looking T-Rex from Diesel for TSR’s Monster cards from 1982 (think flash cards for AD&D monsters with only slightly better color artwork than the black and white masterpieces in the Monster Manual).

TSR also published a classic module (by Zeb Cook and Tom Moldvay, no less), called The Isle of Dread, and it’s a classic Lost World wilderness hex crawl adventure on a strange island full of dinosaurs and other exotic creatures right out of Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle by way of Ray Harryhausen.

Dinos in D&D. Boom. Done. Everything should be platinum. I should be happy, right? Right? Well I can't get happy. It's physically impossible for me to get happy.

Maybe it’s my weirdly Puritanical streak when it comes to high and low fantasy. If we’re talking knights and wizards, I think dragons, not dinosaurs. After all, the game is called Dungeons and Dragons, not Dungeons & Dinosaurs. Why, then, does it not bother me when we insert Dinosaurs into modern-day settings (Jurassic Park) or the wild west (The Valley of Gwangi) or the Pulp era (King Kong).

Two reasons come to mind. One is that those other examples above all make use of a Lost World, whether by natural accident or man-made engineering. Lost Worlds have dinos, and that’s all the explanation you need. Also, in every other instance listed above, Dinosaurs were the apex predator, the aberration, the monster in a monsterless world. This is not true in Dungeons and Dragons; it creates an ecology where you have to figure out why the dinos haven’t eaten all of the monsters or vice-versa. After all, aside from the treasure hoarding, a red dragon and a Tyrannosaurus Rex have more or less the same diet, the same habitat, the same mannerisms, and certainly the same pants-shitting size and scale to terrify players.

The T-Rex can’t fly, cast magic, or breathe fire. You know, so it’s like a dragon, only...not as cool. And dinosaurs should never be not cool. Ever. 

Tim Truman's cover art for The Isle of Dread reprint.

But…stay with me now…what if there were no dragons? If instead of dragons, your big bad was the T-Rex, that becomes your default for the “oh, shit” moment when you realize the necromancer you’re supposed to fight has a pet therapod.

I’m thinking of a heroic fantasy world, where sorcery is more uncommon, and the humanoids are out in full force. The monsters of the world have managed to tame the dinosaurs in this world to act as beasts of burden and war mounts. It’s Dinotopia, only with Goblins and Drow. Dwarves charging into battle on Triceratops. Orcs riding allosauruses. The Lizard folk use Pteranodons as winged mounts. Monster armies are bad enough, but when the monster armies have conscripted dinosaurs, they become the stuff of nightmares.

Humans have none of those advantages, but maybe they are more adept at psionic abilities, and they use massive dino-killing siege equipment, as well as clockwork automatons scavenged from the wreckage of the last great war. High magic has disappeared in the wake of the rise of chaos. One of the campaign goals may be to find the source and re-awaken it to jump-start the Age of Wonder. It would mean the death of the dinosaurs and bring magic (and dragons) back into the world.

But before that happens, you have twenty levels of characters periodically running afoul of a pissed-off Stegosaurus and running like hell to escape the spiked tail swinging in a deadly arc, smashing trees apart as it does.


I would play in that game. Hell, I may have to write it.

RPGaDay 2019: 21 Vast

Here’s another term that probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but is too nebulous to adequately lock down into something meaningful, so I’m going to borrow from Day 11 and answer the previous year’s questions for Day 21.

#RPGaDay 2018 day 21: Which Dice Mechanic Speaks to You?

I have to give it to D&D 5e for Advantage and Disadvantage. It’s so easy, and so universal, and instantly translates to any part of the game. Plus, you get to roll two of the most exciting dice in the game. D20s are the Corvettes of your dice bag. Lots of people think it's d12s, but they are wrong. D12s are the Deloreans of the dice bag. What were we talking about?

#RPGaDay 2017 day 21: Which RPG does the most with the Least Words?

Godlike. It’s such a strong concept, stripped down to its essential components. Super Powers in war. No, make that, Super Soldiers in war. Yes. Your character gets one thing. It may not be impressive in the Marvel Universe, but in a world without super powers, the guy with toughened skin is godlike.  Bonus: you get to beat the shit out of Nazis. Never bad, always good.

#RPGaDay 2016 day 21: Funniest misinterpretation of a rule in your group?

No rules misinterpretation ever caused hilarity. We just acknowledged it and moved on. I did have a player that always mispronounced concepts he used. He always called “Bardic Inspiration” Bard-of-Inspiration and no amount of correcting would fix it. He could NOT say "bardic." Not exactly hilarious, but I’m trying my best, here, you guys.

#RPGaDay 2015 day 21: Favorite RPG setting

Pulps era. It’s so versatile. You can go dark and horrific, or slide into crimefighters and pulp heroes, or take the weird stuff out and do detective and film noir, or just mash it all up and have it bang into one another. 

#RPGaDay 2014 day 21: Favorite Licensed RPG

To this day, Call of Cthulhu remains a comfortable old friend. I know a lot about the early 20th century, more than most people, and that’s useful to know in a game set in the 1920s and 1930s (see above). And Cof C was the first game I came across with specific rules to handle the unique aspects of the game (sanity and the Cthulhu mythos). I haven’t played the game in years, but if I were handed the book this very instant, I’d be able to drop back into it with no lag whatsoever.  

There. A "VAST" array of interesting answers. How much you wanna bet I'm going to have to do this little trick at least once more before this is all over?

RPGaDay 2019: 20 Noble

One of my favorite Erol Otus characters.

As much as I love the Backgrounds system in D&D 5e, a few of the options are hit and miss for me. The most egregious misfire to me is the Noble. I can see why they wanted to include it in the Player’s Handbook but I think that as it is written, it tries to do too much in the limited framework it has and as a result, it doesn’t do enough.  In a section with soldiers, local heroes, and urchins, the extra lifting and gymnastics required to make the noble work without setting one player high above the others is a little outside the scope of new DMs.

My solution to this was to split the noble background up into three distinct categories.

The Dilettante -Someone who comes from wealth but isn’t interested in being wealthy, or at least, do not want to live their life according to their family's expectations. This is for role-players who want lots of family interaction as the filial obligations of their upbringing can potentially clash with their adventuring career. I was specifically looking for a way to create a D&D version of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster and this pretty much covers it. 

The Disgraced Noble- I think this is the closest in function to what the PHB was trying to do with this background. The difference is mainly that this background really leans into it. It’s good for plotting and hooking players into the story, as there are plenty of options, secrets, and interesting bits to tease out. It should be noted that the Disgraced portion of the background can come from any  source; as simple as “you joined the bard college against the wishes of your family” to something like Athos, from The Three Musketeers. 

This background also works well for setting the kinds of political situations that were the bread and butter on Game of Thrones. Tyrian Lannister is a disgraced noble in the eyes of his father because he drinks and whores and plays the part of the imp. Jaime Lannister is a disgraced noble because he killed the king he swore to protect. 

Bill may very well kill me for using this.

The Knight Errant— for all of you paladins and cavaliers out there, here’s a background that is right up your alley, supporting action and combat, with plenty of things to do, and as silly (Lancelot in Monty Python and the Holy Grail) or as serious (Robin Hood) as you want to make it.

Breaking them up along these lines makes the player choices more nuanced and also better supports most, if not all, character classes. The Warlock Dilettante, for example, might have stumbled into his patronage during one of his fantastic benders. The Warlock Disgraced Noble clearly brought shame upon his house by invoking dark magicks, and the Warlock Knight Errant is a monster-hunting tyrant-killing man of the people. All of them come from this noble class, but they actualize it in very different ways.

Anyway, that’s my fix for the Noble. I’d love to hear any feedback you may have on these backgrounds. Share your thoughts, people.

As a bonus--call it a "thank you," if you will, for all of the great responses and shares I've gotten from all of  you, I've included my Noble House Random Generator. It will build you a family history with just a few die rolls. You can grab free PDFs of the "Expanded Noble" backgrounds below:

Dilettante

Disgraced Noble

Knight Errant

Noble House Random Generator

Try these out and let me know what you think.

RPGaDay 2019: 19 Scary

I love horror movies, horror stories, monsters, aliens and all that kind of thing. In Internet Parlance, I’m what is known as a “Monster Kid.” Make of that what you will.

It follows, then, that I would be an early and avid adopter of games like GURPS Horror, CHILL, and my first-love, go-to horror game, Call of Cthulhu.

My games were always well-attended and with good reason: I was a great Call of Cthulhu game master. I wrote many of my own C of C scenarios and they were always a hit. I tried to keep the eldritch vibe but I also wanted “traditional” scares; zombies are a great palette cleanser when you stare too long into the Abyss and the Abyss stares back.

The first scary encounter I ever used was, it turned out, my best one. I re-used it with different groups, and even ‘ported it over into other games. It never failed me. I am now going to release it into the wild for your edification and/or swipe file.

The Set Up

This needs to be under ground, either in a sewer, or a partially flooded dungeon, or both. You need some water for this. You also need some holding cells. The players are looking for someone who has disappeared and their quest has led them to here, where it’s clear that something sinister is going on.

They walk down the hallway, peering into the cells. Iron bar gate, and every cell is sunken. Water from somewhere has gotten into the cells and there is about a foot of brackish water that comes right to the top edge of the gate. It’s easy to spot, as long as someone asks. Anyone rushing in would make a Dex save to avoid tripping down the stone step and crashing into the stinky water on the floor. That would seem to be the gag and should be played that way, i.e. "Okay, now that you know there's water in the cells you can easily avoid falling in and you can even see the step leading down into the cells."

The Hook

In the first cell, there’s a skeleton, in chains, sitting in the water.

In the second cell, there’s another skeleton, half-slipped out of the chains, also in the water.

In the third cell, there’s a man in a brown tweed suit, in chains, and he’s hanging upside down, his head completely underwater, his legs and body struggling furiously, and there’s a mass of bubbles around him. He’s panicked…

It’s usually about now that someone screams “I run in and save him!”

What do you do? Do you pick the lock on the chains? Or do you want to pull his head up so he can breathe?

“That’s it! I pull his head up!”

The Reveal

The character grabs the man by the shoulders and lifts…and he’s got no head. The neck is a gaping wound, and even as you let go of the corpse, you realize what was bringing the body to life as a horde of rats swarm out from the neck, running all down your chest and your arms and your back and, well, make a sanity roll now.

Sometimes they end up with a phobia. They always pick “fear of rats.” The swarm does little to no damage. The rats hit the water and swim out of the room. The corpse is actually a few weeks old. It's not who they are looking for. But whoever took their friend also did this, so this missing person's case just got a lot more urgent. And now  you’ve set the tone for the rest of the evening.

RPGaDay 2019: 18 Plenty

I have plenty of dice. If I never bought dice again for the rest of my life, I’d never want for any more dice. In fact, I’m going to say something that I never thought I’d say: I have too many dice.

This is tantamount to heresy and is punishable by excommunication. I know this, and yet, I would have you hear me out, for this is not a situation of my own making. It’s not my fault. I am not weak.

It’s the dice maker’s fault. Aha! J’ACCUSE!

Allow me to elucidate: The industry standard for a set of dice looks something like this, right?

Seven dice. One of each polyhedral: d4, d6, d8, d10, %d10, d12, and d20.

You buy those dice and you think, “I’m set! Now I can finally play D&D, just like my favorite movie stars!”

Only, the first game you play, you quickly realize that you need 2 d20s, because, let’s face it’s easier to roll two dice and take the higher number than it is to roll one die twice. 

Two sets, then. Probably way more dice than you'll ever need. But whatever, NOW you can play the game!

What's that? Rolling up characters? With what? FOUR six-sided dice? Who do they think you are, anyway, a Rockefeller?  

Well, then, you need three—no, four d6 dice, because, you know, characters.

But the other dice? You can just borrow those. Cool. No problem.

Oh, you’re playing a wizard? With Magic Missile? 

*sigh* 

Can everyone please pass their d4s to the new guy?

 See what I mean? So a new player doesn’t need just one set. They need two sets, minimum. That’ll get you maybe halfway there, which isn’t bad, but it’s not great, either.

You really need three—no, four sets of dice in order to cover the full range of what you can expect in a campaign that goes up to level five. That will get you character builder dice, plus enough spell damage dice for whatever you’re throwing, or extra feature dice like for bardic inspiration or battle maneuvers.

Unfortunately, you will end up with some dice you don’t need. Like this.

So, in conclusion, I have a lot of dice, but it’s not my fault.

If I were a dice manufacturer, I would over a set of dice that is designed specifically for actual D&D play, and I would advertise it as such. Here’s what it would look like:

3 d4

4 d6

2 d8

2 d10 + 1 %d

1 d12
2 d20

15 dice, total.

That’s a bare minimum number to ensure that you can cast anything, use all features, make characters, and roll with Advantage or Disadvantage.

Now, any veteran player knows that the above list is a good one, but it’s not comprehensive. Here’s the real and true numbers for seasoned campaigners:

5   d4

10 d6

4   d8

3   d10 + 1%d

2   d12

2   d20

=27 dice.

I know, it’s a lot more than 7 dice in that little acrylic box. And the numbers are weird, but you have to trust me, this is not unreasonable. I know a lot of people who keep a separate set of 4d6 dice just for character building.

To be totally fair, some dice manufacturers are making overtures already by including 2 d20s or 4 d6s (or both!) in their starting set. It’s a nice idea and for an introductory set, need not be super expensive. 

This is the set of dice that come with the new D&D Essentials box set. They are simple, well-made, easy to read, and functional for a starting player right out of the box. It’s not hard to do!

In conclusion, I think you’ll agree that none of this is my…what’s that? Those Kickstarter dice I just backed? Well, those are very different, aren’t they? It’s a whole other motif, and…wait, what are you doing? DICE JAIL!? That’s not for people! Wait! Stop! I’ll be good! I Prooooooooomiiiiiiiiise…

RPGaDay 2019: 17 One

 I really wanted to keep this civil and upbeat, but I’m afraid that with the challenge halfway over, the gloves have to come off. So, here we go:

Hey, Dice Makers…please put all of your special icons on the highest number of the die. Thank you.

These are cool dice that I never use! It's criminal!

I have needs. They involve Skull Dice. And what I really like to do is make little lists that run from least terrible to most terrible, and if that most terrible result happens to coincide with my skull on the d6, then that’s an awesome thing and it makes me happy.

Player: What happens now?
DM:       (rolls a d6, shakes his head, shows the die to the player with the skull facing up).
Player: (shakes fist at sky) Damn you, Gelatinous Cube!

I know, I know, it didn’t used to be this way. Some games made you roll low. Some games made you roll high. Two of my favorite games, D&D and V&V were exactly opposite in this regard and it always took us a round of concentration to switch over. And these were just two examples.

See? The skull is a GOOD thing!

Now it’s a different situation altogether. It’s safe to say that D&D is driving the market (well, maybe “lapping the competition” is more accurate, if not particularly sensitive). This is especially true if you include all of the spin-offs and one-offs and open gaming license games that work along the same principle: roll high to hit. I think that it’s safe to assume that, for now, at least, you can go ahead and put your skull right on the highest number face (or your sword, or your shield, or whatever little icon you’re pushing as a corporate symbol or brand) and we can all sleep better at night. All of our tables, if we so choose, will start at one for the suckiest result and 20 for the most unsucky result. Or, you know, whatever. One bad, twenty good.

Sorry. I know, it’s not helpful to your starting game. I blame the weekend. Yeah, that's it. Danged old weekend. 

I’ll be better tomorrow, I promise.

Bonus Comment: My Friends over at Black Oak Workshop do the right thing with their symbols. Recently they ran a Successful Kickstarter for some d20 Skull Dice (the Black Death d20) and they are on track to start delivering soon. Check out their fine line of dice and dice bags and add a little style to your table.