http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/blog.php/6213-The-Dungeon-Master-s-Journal-of-the-Unquiet-Lands Pen and Paper Games hosts a very powerful, but easy to seach and join database of players and game masters in the United States and Canada. Our forums are also a great place to find the most recent news, product releases, tips, and rpg discussion. en Sun, 19 May 2013 01:25:17 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/pnpg_style/misc/rss.jpg http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/blog.php/6213-The-Dungeon-Master-s-Journal-of-the-Unquiet-Lands http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/entry.php/1742-Guyenne-World-Summary Thu, 02 Aug 2012 01:28:17 GMT Not strictly part of the Unquiet Lands, this is a world summary provided for the "classic" Traveller campaign that I run every few weeks in the Pen and Paper Games chat room. The game takes place in the Sabine subsector of the Third Imperium, circa 1102. Both the subsector map and the historical time frame have been altered from the official material in places.

System Overview (Guyenne/Sabine 0204-XXX-W-G)
Guyenne is the first planet of Cognac, a rather dim, main sequence orange dwarf. The system is noticeably empty of dust, ice, and debris. Cognac was originally part of a binary system, but was ejected, along with its closest planet, Guyenne, after a close-encounter with a third star. Its two other planets, Bazas and Angoumois, have eccentric orbits, and were captured after this event.

Cognac is cooler, smaller, and older than the Sun. Even though Guyenne orbits at half the distance of Mercury, it has a very earth-like climate. In fact, it is currently experiencing an ice age. At such a close distance, Cognac looms large in Guyenne's sky.

Bazas (H200000-0) is a barren, vacuum world. The "H" in its profile indicates a primitive spaceport on the planetary surface, but details of its purpose are unknown, and it is apparently abandoned.

Angoumois (H703166-8) is an icy, silicate planet resembling the moon Ganymede. At 12,000 kilometers in diameter, it is a very large specimen for that type of planet. Its trade classifications are ice-capped (vacuum) and low-population (non-industrial). The only population consists of a few dozen personnel operating its spaceport, Pont Angouleme, at the edge of the south polar glacier. Angoumois has two moons, Ruffec (Y400000-0) and Hiersac (Y310000-0).

The system has no Imperial bases, nor does it have any planetoid belts or gas giants. Free-standing water does exist on some planetary bodies. Except where individually noted otherwise, the system is a Green travel zone; vessels may freely enter, exit, and make contact with local governments.

World Overview (Guyenne C764853-9 Ri)
Guyenne is a good-sized, rocky planet with a diameter of 11,400 kilometers, making it only slightly smaller than Earth. Its atmosphere is nearly identical to Earth's in pressure and composition. The world is older and drier, though, with numerous tectonic plates forming a super continent that rings the equator and dominates the northern hemisphere, much of which is glaciated. There is also a shallow, small northern ocean. The equatorial portion of the continent is a chaotic jumble of different terrain, including three inland seas that are connected to each other. The southern hemisphere is mostly ocean, and is permanently in the grip of a hypercane.

Guyenne has two moons, Demerara and Limousin. Limousin (Y230406-8-A) is the size of Earth's Moon, and orbits just a few thousand kilometers further away from its planet. However, its thin atmosphere gives it a pale green hue. Library data indicates that there are over 56,000 people dwelling on the moon, but does not provide further details. Its trade classification is a poor, non-industrial, desert world. It is also an Amber travel zone, meaning that visitors should only land at their own risk and need to exercise caution at all times.

Demerara (F152916-B-R) is the more exotic of the two moons. It is half the size of Limousin, but orbits Guyenne nearly seven times closer, meaning that it is very large in the sky. Other than an equatorial ribbon of water, every part of Demerara is built over, and the moon houses eight billion inhabitants, over twenty times that of Guyenne itself. All of these inhabitants are employees of the Hortalez et Cie megacorporation, and the moon serves as that company's research and development hub for its operations in the Deneb sector. The facilities on the moon generally reflect a technology rating of "B," the minimum Imperial Standard. However, the technology of the research labs themselves is solidly at "F," the Imperial Maximum. Its trade classification is poor, but that is a moot point as it is a Red travel zone, meaning that it must be strictly avoided. Hortalez et Cie has avowed and shown that its defense force will aggressively fire upon any uninvited vessel entering lunar orbit unless that vessel clearly belongs to the Imperial Navy.

Guyenne's trade classification is "rich." Rich does not refer to mineral wealth, but is a designation for both favorable climate and politics.

Guyenne has a 40 degree axial tilt, and is tidally locked; its day and year are both 1200 hours long. The effect of this is that Cognac appears to move up and down along a fixed, straight line path in the sky over the course of fifty standard days. The "bright side" is mostly ocean, while the "dark side" is mostly land. Mistral-like winds and atmospheric rivers crisscross the planet, but numerous sheltered valleys and forests offer pleasant climes.

After the last planetary census, the population was listed at 419,230,000 humans, 5,117,000 vargr, 3100 aslan, and 38 hivers. Much of the population has settled in a pattern of urban hubs with spoke-like highways leading out to numerous agricultural and tourism-oriented hamlets.

Government is thoroughly integrated into occupation. After fourteen years of general education, planetary citizens spend eight years apprenticing in their chosen fields. Every position has some level of governing and political responsibility. The numerous inter-dependencies guarantee that outsiders have little chance of understanding the workings of the planetary administration.

Despite the labyrinthine character of local politics, restrictions on visitors are fairly lax. Banned firearm categories are limited to undetectable body pistols, laser weapons, and automatic rifles, for example. Most services are expedited and travelers encounter red tape only rarely. Immigration is an exception, however. All planetary inhabitants over the age of eighteen must be employed in a gainful profession. Immigrants who are not successful in gaining entry to their desired career are usually placed in low-ranking, risky and menial professions, which has the desired effect of curtailing large-scale migrations to the planet.

The planet enjoys a "rustic" way of life. Technology is barely at the interstellar level. The starport, Aveyron, does not have orbital facilities, or even refined fuel, virtually guaranteeing that Guyenne will remain a relative backwater, or as the inhabitants prefer to call it, "a hermitage." ]]> Umiushi http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/entry.php/1742-Guyenne-World-Summary http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/entry.php/1725-Four-companion-characters-for-the-Dispositio-Diabolum-campaign Sat, 28 Apr 2012 09:26:57 GMT The companion character is one of the most useful game mechanics introduced in the Dungeon Master's Guide 2. It allows for the quick inclusion of durable characters who can support a party without stealing the spotlight, and who are easily run by players.

I am particularly fond of the fact that companions bypass two of my pet peeves of D&D, one thematic and the other practical. The first is the need for magic items. Here are four capable high level characters and no magical items are listed for any of them! Alternatively, they could be decked out with magical equipment, all already accounted for in their statistics. It's just a question of how I want to present them. In this case, Fell's orb is certainly a magical item of some power. . . but I don't have to say what it is at all!

My other pet peeve is feats. Few things about D&D from third edition on make me more impatient than going through page after page of poorly-organized feats. Granted, organization markedly improved with the fourth edition, but it's still a headache. In the case of companion characters, it's also unneeded. One of these days, I'll probably make a personal list of useful NPC feats, but it's nice to be able to skip the step without having to compensate in terms of the characters' abilities.

These four companions are for a high heroic or low-paragon tier game. Their statistics have been adjusted to best complement a party of 11th level adventurers. (See "Making Things Level," Dungeon Master's Guide 2, pages 34-35.)

The personalized stat block I use is still evolving. This is the latest version for companion characters. Two things experienced D&Ders may notice are missing: level and alignment. Level is irrelevant; some of these characters are originally of lower or higher level, but I've already said they're geared to support 11th level adventurers. Alignment is similarly unnecessary. Whether chaotic evil or lawful good, the purpose of a companion is to support a party. If I need these character to behave in ways that don't have the best interests of the party at heart, that is when I step in to take personal control of the character. I'm not a fan of letting players do my own dirty work.

There are a few other tweaks here and there that reflect the peculiarities of the situation that these characters are to be used in, such as language choices, minimal equipment, and focus on combat statistics. Time is always at a premium when running three games, and I very much try to avoid unnecessary work whenever I can resist the temptation.


Girain Sundrynice
Medium Fey Humanoid Male (Eladrin)
Role: Leader
Languages: Elven, Goblinese
Str 13 (+6) Con 14 (+7) Dex 11 (+5) Int 16 (+8) Wis 12 (+6) Cha 18 (+9)

Equipment: chainmail, longbow, longsword, quiver w/ 30 arrows

Play Notes
Girain stands just shy of six feet, and has long gray hair and purple eyes. Formerly the leader of a mercenary band, he now serves as captain of the guards at Fell's Holdfast. Not as strong or as agile as his lieutenants, he has developed a personal fighting style that compensates for his physical shortcomings with numerous feints and flashy bluffs, and is inspiring in its audacity.

Skills (Including a -1 armor penalty where appropriate.)
Acrobatics: +4
Arcana: +15
Athletics: +5
Bluff: +9
Diplomacy: +14
Dungeoneering +6
Endurance: +6
Heal: +6
History: +10
Insight: +6
Intimidate: +9
Nature: +6
Perception: +11
Religion: +8
Stealth: +4
Streetwise: +9
Thievery: +4

Trained Skills: Arcana, Diplomacy, Perception

Traits
Trance - 4 hours of wakeful rest counts as an Extended Rest

Free Actions
Action Point (encounter trigger - own turn only) take one standard-equivalent action

Minor Actions
Inspire (twice per encounter; once per round) Close Burst 5 targeting self or allies; target may spend a healing surge

Song of Conquest (encounter) any ally within 5 squares who hits an enemy gains 5 temp hp ENT

Move Actions
Speed 5

Fey Step (encounter) Teleport 5

Basic Standard Actions
Longbow (at-will) Ranged 20/40 Basic Bow +17 vs. AC; 1d10+5 dmg (critical: 15 dmg); load free; ammo 30

Longsword (at-will) Melee Basic Heavy Blade +18 vs. AC; 1d8+6 dmg (critical: 14 dmg); versatile

Standard Actions
Guiding Strike (at-will) Melee Heavy Blade +18 vs. AC; 1d8+9 dmg (critical: 17 dmg) and target takes -2 to any one defense Girain picks ENT; versatile

Attention-gathering Strike (encounter) Melee Heavy Blade +18 vs. AC; 2d8+9 dmg (critical: 25 dmg), slide one ally who is adjacent to the target to another space adjacent to the target and grant that ally +2 to AC ENT; versatile

Second Wind (encounter) spend a healing surge to heal 19 and gain +2 to all defenses SOT

Stealth +4
Low-light vision
PP 21 PI 16
Initiative +5
AC 26 Fort 24 Ref 24 Will 25
HP: 76/38
HS/SV: 9/19
Saves at +5 vs. Charm

Giersas Dancingfroth
Medium Fey Humanoid Male (Eladrin)
Role: Striker
Languages: Elven, Supernal
Str 10 (+5) Con 18 (+9) Dex 12 (+6) Int 16 (+8) Wis 15 (+7) Cha 13 (+6)

Equipment: robes

Play Notes
Giersas is of medium height, with silver hair, large gray eyes, and a maimed left hand. He is pleasantly handsome and careful about his appearance. Giersas is Fell's chief advisor, and holds authority over all of Fell's apprentices. A scholar much of his life, he is not an experienced combatant. The fact that his spells have comparable accuracy and damage to the rest of the party's attacks is attributable to the potency of the curses he knows.

Skills
Acrobatics: +6
Arcana: +15
Athletics: +5
Bluff: +6
Diplomacy: +6
Dungeoneering +7
Endurance: +9
Heal: +7
History: +15
Insight: +7
Intimidate: +6
Nature: +7
Perception: +7
Religion: +13
Stealth: +6
Streetwise: +6
Thievery: +6

Trained Skills: Arcana, History, Religion

Traits
Advantageous Strike (once per round) add +1d6 dmg to any attack that hits with combat advantage

Trance - 4 hours of wakeful rest counts as an Extended Rest

Free Actions
Action Point (encounter trigger - own turn only) take one standard-equivalent action

Move Actions
Speed 6

Fey Step (encounter) Teleport 5

Basic Standard Actions
Eldritch Blast (at-will) Ranged 10 Basic Arcane +15 vs. Reflex; 1d10+9 dmg (critical: 19 dmg)

Unarmed Strike (at-will) Melee Basic Unarmed +15 vs. AC; 1d4+5 dmg (critical: 9 dmg)

Standard Actions
Ambassador Imp (daily) send a message and receive a reply from a target up to 100 miles away

Infernal Moon Curse (encounter) Ranged 10 Poison +15 vs. Fortitude; 2d8+9 poison (critical: 25 poison) and the target is held immobilized 1 square above the ground ENT

Second Wind (encounter) spend a healing surge to heal 20 and +2 to all defenses SOT

Stealth +6
Low-light vision
PP 17 PI 17
Initiative +6
AC 26 Fort 24 Ref 24 Will 25
HP: 80/40
HS/SV: 10/20
Saves at +5 vs. Charm

Hyadein Treasuremap
Medium Fey Humanoid Male (Eladrin)
Role: Striker
Languages: Elven, Common
Str 18 (+9) Con 15 (+7) Dex 16 (+8) Int 10 (+5) Wis 12 (+6) Cha 13 (+6)

Equipment: leather armor, longsword, short sword, longbow, 2 quivers with 30 arrows each, standard adventurer's kit

Play Notes
Hyadein is Iyaum Treasuremap's younger brother. He looks up to her and joined the King's Rangers because she did. He's mostly worked in small groups of other rangers, and has hunted more than a few fearsome monsters during his career. Hyadein has messy red hair and purple eyes, wears modest, practical garments and bears numerous magically-incurred scars, some of them from his recent fight with the fiends from the Devilswood.
He keeps to himself and could be called secretive, if he had any secrets worth keeping. He's also got an impish streak that often riles his very serious sister. Hyadein is fond of company, though he doesn't stand out in a crowd. A serious camp addict, he probably should have been born an elf, and would spend every waking moment outdoors if he could.
Hyadein is armed with longbow, longsword, and short sword, as are all of the King's Rangers. However, he has little use for his short sword, and more often chooses to wield the longer blade with both hands. He does value the short sword as a badge of the Rangers, and will not hurl it in a place where he is not certain of being able to retrieve it later, unless he is desperate.

Skills
Acrobatics: +16
Arcana: +7
Athletics: +17
Bluff: +6
Diplomacy: +6
Dungeoneering +6
Endurance: +7
Heal: +6
History: +7
Insight: +6
Intimidate: +6
Nature: +14
Perception: +6
Religion: +5
Stealth: +8
Streetwise: +6
Thievery: +8

Trained Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics, Nature

Traits
Dangerous Advantage (once per round) add +2d6 dmg to any attack that hits with combat advantage

Trance - 4 hours of wakeful rest counts as Extended Rest

Undaunted Stride Stance (when active) difficult terrain does not affect movement

Free Actions
Action Point (encounter trigger - own turn only) take one standard-equivalent action

Minor Actions
Battle Runner (daily) gain Battle Runner Stance EOE (only one stance may be in effect at any time)

Undaunted Stride (daily) gain Undaunted Stride Stance EOE (only one stance may be in effect at any time)

Move Actions
Speed 6

Battle Run (at-will while in Battle Runner Stance) Run 10 and do not grant CA

Fey Step (encounter) Teleport 5

Basic Standard Actions
Longbow (at-will) Ranged 20/40 Basic Bow +17 vs. AC; 1d10+8 dmg (critical: 18 dmg); ammo 60; load free

Longsword (at-will) Melee Basic Heavy Blade +18 vs. AC; 1d8+9 dmg (critical: 17 dmg); versatile

Short Sword (at-will) Melee Basic Light Blade +18 vs. AC; 1d6+9 dmg (critical: 15 dmg); off-hand

Thrown Short Sword (at-will) Ranged 5/10 Basic Improvised Thrown +15 vs. AC; 1d4+8 dmg (critical: 12 dmg); ammo 1

Standard Actions
Hit and Run (at-will) Melee Heavy Blade +18 vs. AC; 1d8+9 dmg (critical: 17 dmg); effect: moving after this attack does not provoke opportunity attacks when leaving the first threatened square adjacent to the target; versatile

Second Wind (encounter) heal 19 and gain +2 to all defenses SOT

Toppling Rush (encounter) Move at speed. Melee Heavy Blade +18 vs. AC; 3d8+9 dmg (critical: 33 dmg) and knocked prone; versatile

Stealth +8
Low-light Vision
PP 16 PI 16
Initiative +8
AC: 25 Fort: 23 Ref: 25 Will 22
HP: 77/38
HS/SV: 8/19
Saves at +5 vs. Charm

Fell
Medium Natural Humanoid Male (Tiefling)
Role: Controller
Languages: Elven, Primordial, Supernal
Str 11 (+5) Con 10 (+5) Dex 13 (+6) Int 21 (+10) Wis 15 (+7) Cha 18 (+9)

Equipment: modest beige robes, staff, orb (a crystal ball with milky-pale gold speckles encased within a delicate silver netting)

Play Notes: Fell was formerly the master of battle magic for the Flamehearts, an organization comprised mostly of tieflings who deal with unnatural threats to the Bright Kingdom. He retired to the northeastern portion of Gwyren Ogleth, where he commissioned a small keep to be raised. Fell had auburn hair that is now mostly white, and possesses amber eyes. Once quite dextrous, he is afflicted by tremors in his old age. He seems a little shorter than his average height due to a slight stoop. Fell is a cautious, economical fighter who is very much aware of his abilities and limitations.

Skills
Acrobatics: +6
Arcana: +18
Athletics: +5
Bluff: +11
Diplomacy: +17
Dungeoneering +7
Endurance: +5
Heal: +7
History: +18
Insight: +7
Intimidate: +9
Nature: +7
Perception: +7
Religion: +18
Stealth: +8
Streetwise: +9
Thievery: +6

Trained Skilled: Arcana, Diplomacy, History, Religion

Traits
Bloodhunt - attack bloodied enemies at +1

Free Actions
Action Point (encounter trigger - own turn only) take one standard-equivalent action

Infernal Wrath (encounter trigger - an enemy within 10 squares hits Fell) Close Burst 10 targeting triggering enemy; effect: 2d6+10 fire

Opportunity Actions
Arcane Riposte (at-will trigger - creature provokes an opportunity attack) Melee Opportunity Improvised +19 (+20 if target is bloodied) vs. Reflex; 1d8+10 cold/fire/force/lightning (critical: 18 cold/fire/force/lightning); special: choose one form of damage when making this attack

Immediate Actions
Shield (daily interrupt trigger - hit by an attack) gain +4 to AC and Reflex defenses ENT

Minor Actions
Arcane Gate (daily) Ranged 20 targeting 2 squares; treat targets as adjacent ENT

Sustain Arcane Gate

Move Actions
Speed 6

Basic Standard Actions
One-handed Staff Strike (at-will) Melee Basic Improvised +15 (+16 if target is bloodied) vs. AC; 1d4+5 dmg (critical: 9 dmg)

Standard Actions
Forceful Retort (encounter) Close Burst 1 targeting enemies; Force Orb +15 (+16 if target is bloodied) vs. Fortitude; 3d8+10 force (critical: 34 force), push 1 and knock prone

Phantom Bolt (at-will) Ranged 10 Illusion Orb +15 (+16 if target is bloodied) vs. Will; 1d8+10 psychic (critical: 18 psychic) and slide 1

Second Wind (encounter) heal 15 and gain +2 to all defenses SOT

Stealth +8
Low-light Vision
PP 17 PI 17
Initiative +6
AC: 24 Fort: 22 Ref: 24 Will 26
HP: 60/30
Resist 10 fire
HS/SV: 6/15 ]]> Umiushi http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/entry.php/1725-Four-companion-characters-for-the-Dispositio-Diabolum-campaign http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/entry.php/1700-M-A-R-Barker-creator-of-Tekumel-dead-at-age-82 Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:32:04 GMT Press Release: http://tekumelfoundation.org/PressRe...-1929-2012.pdf (http://tekumelfoundation.org/PressRelease-MARBARKER-1929-2012.pdf) Professor... Press Release: http://tekumelfoundation.org/PressRe...-1929-2012.pdf

Professor Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker created the world of Tekumel, also known as The Empire of the Petal Throne. I was saddened to find out that he died at his home on Friday.

Tekumel remains one of the most unique settings for rpgs yet devised. First published in 1974, it also is one of the earliest. Its Meso-American, Indian, and Middle Eastern influences stand in contrast to the overwhelming majority of fantasy rpgs based on western European cultures. The Empire of the Petal Throne rpg was published in five editions by Barker himself, TSR, Gamescience, Theater of the Mind, and lastly Guardians of Order, and was novelized in five books.

I was introduced to Tekumel from old Dragon Magazine articles in the late '70s, and then by reading The Man of Gold, the first Tekumel novel, shortly after it came out in 1984. Its mixture of lost technology and magic resembled Dave Arneson's Blackmoor setting, but of course with its own very distinct atmosphere. This may not be coincidental: Dave Arneson played in M.A.R. Barker's early games.

Tekumel gave me the first examples and methods for running adventures that significantly diverged from the "generic" fantasy setting. While I only came into possession of the actual rules a few years ago when I obtained TOME's Gardasiyal boxed set, published in the early '90s, I'll always consider the setting to be a major formative influence on my personal role-playing experience. I looked through the rules once again over the weekend. Once more, they gave me the impression that Professor Barker was impatient at best with game mechanics, but very attentive when it came to the details of the world, which are truly impressive even for the relatively thin booklets.

It was my understanding, though I haven't had the opportunity to confirm it today, that Professor Barker was still running Tekumel games well into his later years.

(This is a repost of my original forum entry.) ]]> Umiushi http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/entry.php/1700-M-A-R-Barker-creator-of-Tekumel-dead-at-age-82 http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/entry.php/1678-Acqua-Alta-problems-with-precognition-in-hindsight Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:46:28 GMT ". . . decide to stay in Beilston Mound, they will become involved in hostile encounters between disciples of the Great Master and members of the Matchless Gang. The party may attempt to remove themselves from the fray, play one side off against the other, or side with the disciples, but it is most likely that they will find themselves aligned with the Matchless Gang . . . Over the next day or two, they will fend off attacks from the disciples . . . culminating in a large scale raid on the Garden of Preparation . . . If the party sides with the disciples, they may experience the same encounters, but on the opposing side. . . .

"The Acqua Alta is normally a natural phenomenon that occurs every few years. This time, however, it has been exacerbated by a pact drawn up between the Magus of the Library of Saint Ioun and Eirin Tuwi, the Feywild Territory Lord of the Cloud Vale. . . . The chances of the party uncovering this are dependent on them actually entering the Library before the end of the second day, which is remote. If they do, they may be able to discover the locations of the remaining . . . Scrolls of the Amber Room and directly confront the forces of Eirin Tuwi, a scenario that will only be developed further should the need actually present itself. The situation in Tanisaor may be adapted from my notes for [an undeveloped campaign.] If resolved, it is likely that the party will already be at the second level by the final encounter of the adventure, maybe even close to the third level . . . .

"By the end of the third day, it will become apparent that the flooding is not receding . . . . The party . . . may make common cause between the Matchless Gang and the surviving Disciples . . . in order to . . . escape from the doomed city . . . "
--excerpts from the notes for Acqua Alta, written on the night of March 15, 2009

So let's see what's happened so far. The party ducked out of combat for the first encounter, which was unexpected but encouraging. I was sure I'd have them firmly siding with the Matchless Gang by evening, game-time. The next encounter could have been one of several, but it turned out to be the likeliest one, the fight in the dining room of the Little Ortalan. That went smoothly, too.

Then the party veered sharply off course when they decided to go directly to the Garden of Preparation, probably because of the unexpected number of PCs who were part of the Great Master faith and the fact that one of the PCs managed to save the life of the dragonborn initiate from the first encounter. Now I was starting to believe that the party was going to throw its lot in with the disciples, which they did, but I was already set up with the "mirror-image" encounters so that was okay.

After a halfhearted attempt to see if the party would still deal with the Matchless Gang that went nowhere, one of the PCs decided that she would visit her old friend, the bookseller. That's what she told me from her character's background. Unfortunately, there was only one bookseller in Beilston Mound, and that was the one that was part of the Library and Scriptorium complex dedicated to Saint Ioun. Now the party was heading straight into never-never land.

Fortunately, time moves slowly in the play-by-post world, so I literally had months between when I first knew there was a significant chance that the party would run headlong into the lion's den, and when they first set foot in Erszebet's library. That was more than enough time to map and stock a dungeon I only included out of an existential need to justify the scenario I had planned.

By now I figured the party was directly on course for what had originally been my least-likely scenario, so I also began work on the Cloud Vale and its denizens. With a sigh, I mentally consigned the various encounters set in the streets of Beilston and its underground woerd to the dustbin. As it turns out, I still got to run about half of them, since the party heroically decided they would rescue Lywthast and travel through the woerd to do so. Of course, in the original scenario, they were supposed to be her kidnappers.

The hunt for the Scrolls of the Amber Room got bogged down, and really brought home the timing headaches involved when a party splits up in a play-by-post game. Fortunately, they found one, and set off to the land of Tanisaor.

The Tanisaor scenario went more or less as planned. Of course, by the time I fleshed it out, in early 2010, I had over a year of experience dealing with play-by-post games and the party in particular. There were a number of different routes to get to and through Tanisaornkuld, the keep in the Cloud Vale at the center of things, but this time I got it right: the party consistently chose the expected paths, which were also the most interesting from my perspective.

When the party reached the festivities in the heart of Tanisaornkuld, they interacted with the various factions present less than I expected. Bakkish, the "MC," was probably in their faces too much. They also skipped a cue from Menash Oom during the big confrontation with Eirin Tuwi that might have made their lives easier. Still, it worked out in the sense that they got the big payoff: Beilston is no longer doomed.

Of course, that means Beilston will be sitting there through the rest of the campaign; the disciples of the Great Master and the Matchless Gang will still be at one another's throats; and for that matter, the Matchless Gang really has it in for the party, nowadays. It's a good thing I've had a couple of years to think through what all that entails.

My take-away point from this whole experience is that play-by-post adventures need to be much more focused. However, I'm also happily reminded of the fact that things can go well even when things don't go as planned, and when things go well, the interaction between a game master and a group of good players ideally makes life interesting, in the positive sense of the word, for both. ]]> Umiushi http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/entry.php/1678-Acqua-Alta-problems-with-precognition-in-hindsight http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/entry.php/1656-It-s-a-Wonderful-Life-(for-Player-Characters)-another-approach-to-adventure-design Sat, 17 Sep 2011 15:06:35 GMT "If you give up, it will be the end of everything; but you have the capacity to change fate. This unavoidable destruction, this sorrow...you can change it all. That's why you have this power." --Kyubey, from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, episode one

Born Outside of Destiny
Confronted by the common problems of adventure writing, I have developed an approach that is both efficient and makes player character activity inherently meaningful. Although I claim to have independently come up with this idea, I have since encountered other Game Masters who use the same approach, so I will not say it is unique. However, while I cannot make any pretense of having read all available discussions of game mastery, my survey of the available literature has not turned up any formal discussion of this strategy.

My approach is as follows:

• Design the events in a scenario based on the assumption that there are no player characters.
• Have the scenario lead to an undesirable conclusion.
• Include critical points where the scenario will "fail," i.e. not arrive at its natural conclusion.
• Make these points potentially accessible to player characters.
• Allow the player to meddle in these points.
• Give the players free rein to do what they would.

Beyond Railroads and Sandboxes
One of the common false dichotomies bandied about is that of choosing between the railroad and the sandbox when it comes to adventure design. There has been a lot said on these approaches, most of which I don't agree with, and in some cases the boundary between the two crosses into each other's territory. Broadly speaking though, a "sandbox" refers to a more-or-less complete milieu that the PCs can, ideally, do whatever they want in. A "railroad" is a GM-devised story that the PCs are essentially adjunct to.

In the vast majority of discussions of the subject, the sandbox is presented as the goal and the railroad epitomizes every bad quality of adventure design. This is sometimes taken to such an extreme that approaches I would label as "railroads" are referred to by their authors as "sandboxes."

There are other approaches too, that don't necessarily fall in-between the two, demonstrating multiple axes of design philosophy. One for instance, which does not have a label I can easily recall right now, is where the PCs are the center of the universe, and the world revolves around them. This would often occur in games of high fantasy, for example, and is almost de rigueur for games like Amber.

When it comes to the railroad, at its stereotypical extreme, the players are propelled from scene to scene, regardless of their intent or their actions. This is a hallmark of either very inexperienced or very bad GMs, and as such, we can dispense with any further discussion of its questionable merits. However, an interesting related case that I come up against more often than I would like is where players have the perception that an adventure is a railroad when the reality (from my perspective) is the opposite. That is a subject worth discussing, and I deal with the tactical question of player choice later on, but it also probably deserves its own entry to be fully sorted out.

Sandboxes have their own particular failings. While they are the love of many a world-building GM, from a practical viewpoint they represent a decidedly inefficient technique. At their worst, they represent the opposite flaw of a railroad: the creation of static, event-less settings reminiscent of the early "dungeons," but lacking even in the provision of basic motivations for adventurers to explore them.

To draw the analogy further, a sandbox is more appropriately what the Game Master receives, and nearly all the professional rpgs provide this. To pass that sort of sandbox naively onto the players would constitute a deficiency of work on the GM's part. To be sure, there may be a magnificently detailed setting that the GM put much effort into, but many vital trappings of what constitutes a campaign are missing.

To create instead what many writers describe as an ideal sandbox, what the GM must really do is fashion the tools: the buckets, the shovels, the molds and what-have-you, to pass onto the players so they may properly build. The character by him- or herself is almost always (in nearly all game systems) insufficient. Most player characters cannot emulate Zhu Yuanzhang, the vagrant beggar who founded the Ming Dynasty of China; but they at least have the potential to follow the example of Hideyoshi, the peasant farmer who rose to become a trusted general of Oda Nobunaga, and then succeeded him to unify and rule Japan. Even disregarding such a grandiose vision as empire-building, more modest ambitions are still difficult enough to act on without substantial provision from the GM, who is the arbiter and window for his or her world.

The above examples are bad sandboxes, but what about good sandboxes? These are thriving, dynamic, and intricate universes with a life of their own, calling out to be explored by the curious PCs. The question here becomes how long can a GM keep this up? It is already a minority of GMs who are capable of this. We all know, though I have rarely seen it discussed, that GMs are in great danger of burning out. All I have to do is point to the graveyard of pbp games in these very forums to illustrate that. Compare the number of ones where the players abandoned the game to those where the GM abandoned it. To those who might argue that this is a peculiar quality of pbp games, I have one thing to say: pbp games leave corpses, while other media don't. The sandbox represents a particular threat: how much is a GM going to have the mental stamina to keep building and building, knowing full well (or eventually waking up to the realization) that only the tiniest fraction of the whole will ever be encountered, even by the most dedicated, inquisitive party?

The Improvisationists
There is a distinct group of GMs who claim to have the gift of being able to create excellent adventures on the fly, and always being able to deal with any action the players embark upon. I regard the ability to respond in real time to players is a necessary skill for any GM. However, to be able to do this for an entire adventure creates a number of challenges. How do these adventures fit within the overall setting? How consistent can they be, from the outset to the conclusion? Will there be any foreshadowing, and will it make any sense?

For a GM who can justly lay a claim to this ability, it seems to me that there is nothing more to be learned in the area of adventure design. They've won that battle. However, not everyone can hope to achieve such stature. I, for one, am not of that sort. Nor, I should point out, were any of the best GMs I've played under. All of them relied on extensive preparation, and it showed in the compelling nature of their campaigns.

Matrix Design
An approach to writing adventures, dating at least back to the 1980s, was sometimes called Matrix Design, occasionally Keyed Design or Branching Design. This idea is not lost, but usually gets lumped into the sandbox following the ongoing trend of polarization of terms. Essentially, an adventure follows several different paths to different outcomes, based on the party's actions.

In good hands this could represent a workable compromise, but it still presents a number of major flaws. The most obvious is the inherent difficulty in predicting player actions. Once the players veer off-course, as they invariably do, the GM is left with two options: run with the ball from that point, invalidating the whole point of matrix design; or nullify the players' choices, which destroys any large-scale opportunity for the players to express creativity beyond what the GM envisioned beforehand.

Another major problem is that the amount of inefficiency can approach the level of sandbox games. Only a railroad has no inefficiency, so eliminating inefficiency is an unreasonable goal. How much inefficiency must we tolerate, though? Consider a fairly compact, modestly-designed matrix adventure of five encounters in a diamond pattern. That is to say, from the initial encounter, there are two possible second encounters, three possible third encounters, two fourth encounters, and some inevitable final encounter. The second half of the adventure is already a railroad, but look at what we have: the GM has to come up with nine encounters, and the players, at best, are only going to experience five of them. To add insult to injury, one of those extraneous encounters is on a railroad track!

So what can we do better?

The Empty World and the Tragic Setting
I have to admit that I don't care for the movie It's a Wonderful Life. However, its key plot point perfectly illustrates my approach to writing adventures. In the film, based on the short story The Greatest Gift, a suicidal man's guardian angel shows him how much darker the world would be if he had never been born.

Few GMs have the privilege of designing their campaigns with a group of player characters ready-and-waiting for them. For one thing, GMs usually have players wait until after they've designed their campaign to build characters, in order to have in place the guidelines fleshed out during world creation. This is especially true for GMs venturing into new territory, be it a new gaming group or an online game. Instead of fretting over this, use it to your advantage. Make a game world without player characters.

When it comes to setting, the job isn't any different from before. Maps, towns, dungeons, even a good number of NPCs, most GMs don't involve the PCs when they first consider these. However, the actual story of the adventure itself is where the main difference lies.

For GMs who insist on discarding any trappings of story, they are falling into the trap of the static sandbox, discussed above. A world with NPCs, assuming they aren't frozen in time, has to have a story, whether you call it a story, or a plot, a history, a narrative, or even something like "ongoing NPC interactions."

Now, here's the lynchpin of this approach: the story has an unhappy ending. On every level, from the beginning to the end, the story ends in a tragedy, or at the very least, with something unfavorable. The wars are lost, the disasters occur, people show their worst sides. Good intentions are misguided. Last ditch efforts fail. The world slowly but inexorably spirals downward, not to destruction, but to a worse state than when it began.

This is the world where the player characters were never born.

Built to Fail
Now, the point of the adventure becomes the opposite of how it traditionally is. The story has to go south. The plot has to be screwed up. Otherwise, it's going to all end in blood and tears.

Now you're turning the force of chaos that is the typical adventuring party to your advantage. Moltke the Elder, sometimes called the Father of Wargaming, said something rather long and boring that has since been shortened to "no plan survives first contact with the enemy." Your plan is not meant to.

That in itself may not be enough, and therefore should not be counted as enough. Just as you shouldn't rely on a party to carry your story, you probably shouldn't rely on them to dispose of your story, either. Now is the time for you to throw in some ways to help things along. Whatever you do, though, don't fall prey to the temptation to create a story that self-fails. Nothing is more demoralizing to a party than to realize that if they'd just stayed home, everything would have taken care of itself.

This is where you need to come up with a list of points where things might not have gone so horribly wrong. What if the archmage's assassin had been discovered in advance? What if the wrathful general had quailed at crossing the river border? What if the key ingredient in the ritual to summon the demon had not been procured? What if the agents of the evil guild found the crypt's treasures looted before they arrived, and thus were unable to finance the further expansion of their criminal organization?

It's good to have a mix of fragile and solid events, and multiple degrees of failure. For example, in most cases a dragon attacking a town is a solid event: it's probably going to happen unless the PCs proactively decide they're going to find and eliminate the dragon ahead of time. However, a prince and his companions hunting in a forest, taking a wrong turn, and getting wiped out by a gang of thieves they stumbled upon while said gang was fleeing with the holy relics they looted from the Coven of the High Druid could be avoided through any number of interventions, even accidental ones. That would be a fragile event. Similarly, multiple degrees of failure refers to the impact each change of events has on the future. Saving the life of the elderly diplomat from a poisoned drink will only delay a war by six months, at which point she succumbs to winter pneumonia. On the other hand, a delivering a clever replica of a legendary jewel to a paranoid noble keeps all the dragonborn in the land from being butchered so that their scales may be ground up and distilled into his next immortality elixir.

Some of the above examples are fancifully abstruse, especially to a party of PCs. That's fine in some cases, especially when the impact of their actions becomes clear over time. However, among these failure points should be ones that are immediately obvious in their import: the slaying of the evil wizard before she puts the finishing touches on her triple iron golem, the expulsion of a company of callous mercenaries, the rescue of kidnapping victims. These points demonstrate to the players their effect on the world. Actions with obvious and positive repercussions can often serve as a reward in and of themselves.

Now where are we at? We have a bad outcome, and a variety of events leading up to it. There's probably (hopefully) no single event that can completely forestall the outcome, except when it gets close to the end, but each of those events, were they to occur differently, will lessen or delay its negative impact. In other words, we've got a linear plot, but one that doesn't involve railroading the players.

Opposing Fate
The next step is to make these points accessible to PCs. You obviously can't count on the PCs hiding in the rafters when the conspirators are discussing their plan to buy up old silver ahead of a devaluation of the currency that they got wind of in advance. If you can, you should double-check to make sure you're not designing a railroad, after all.

There are a variety of ways to do this. One is to simply make a lot of the failure points out in the open. There's a goblin lair under that hill. The old caretaker in the graveyard's been acting funny, lately. People in town sure seem to like buying up carved tortoise shells, these days. This is an easy and straightforward approach, though at some point you're going to need to explain why other groups of NPCs who act like parties of adventurers don't get in on the action, too, unless your PCs truly are a unique phenomenon.

Another way that is frowned upon in contemporary prose fiction but still works reasonably well for adventures is to play around with coincidence. Maybe if the PCs happen to be hiding in the rafters of some inn, it just happens to be the inn where those conspirators are planning for their retirement, and they just happen to be talking about it at the time. I do not think it is inappropriate to treat adventurers like those detectives who always seem to encounter a new suspicious corpse every few weeks.

Finally, a rather satisfying approach is to keep more than one iron in the fire. Going too far with this carries the same risks as a sandbox, but since each one represents a linear scenario, it is much more manageable. This way, you increase the chances that the PCs will stumble across something that they can meddle with.

The Threat of Existential Threats
The most common dire outcome in fantasy campaigns is the destruction of the world. This includes any outcome that represents some ultimate bad end for the PCs. Summoning the Lord of Hell who will gobble them all up, having the dungeon complex collapse on their heads, falling into the bottomless pit: these are pretty much game-enders.

They should be avoided. Every now and then it's reasonable or logical to put the PCs into a do-or-die situation, but this is usually the province of single encounters: don't get consumed by the green slime in the corner of the room, deal with that pack of hungry ghouls, get out of the locked room with the walls closing in. The trouble with ultimately threatening scenarios is that they leave no room for when the PCs choose not to meddle, or don't meddle effectively. When the players have to succeed no matter what, that's the point where they're only along for the ride.

This is not to say you can't or shouldn't push it really close. Frankly, anything short of death is fair game in my book. Also, situations that look like they're going to fatal are fine as long as they're some possible option. To take an example from my current pbp game, the PCs are trapped in a town that's inexorably flooding. At face value it looks like a backs-to-wall sort of thing, but that's not necessarily the case. I've already given the example of a group of NPCs (former PCs actually, but they'll do) who have decided to risk their lives escaping down the flooded river. It's an option available to the PCs, and depending on their actions, there were points where that might have become the most favorable of their choices. There was also a teleportation circle in town that they happened upon. If they could find the sigil sequence to another city, they would be able to save themselves. It's the set of morals they assigned their characters that made their choice to do everything in their power to save the town nearly inevitable, and in some ways, that's an important aspect of heroism.

When the PCs have the opportunity to live and fight another day, it not just allows the campaign to go on, it also lets the PCs come face to face with the outcomes. The world worsens, but the world remains. The possibilities remain, and the PCs can continue to pursue their dreams.

Going My Way
So what if the PCs could care less about your scenarios and your dire outcomes? Well, if you've made them compelling enough, that won't be the case. Still, as is so often the case, it's best not to assume. I'd say the three major facets to this situation are PCs who exclusively pursue some alternate goal, passive PCs, and PCs who pursue multiple agendas.

The first case is an issue that should really be sorted out at the beginning of the campaign, or at the moment of the player's introduction to the game. In my case, I've largely short-circuited this by including specific provisions in my guidelines encouraging collaborative behavior. However, if you choose to allow it, make sure you know what these goals are as soon as possible, so that you can provide the PCs with the necessary tools, as per the sandbox, to act on them.

If you have players who really want to do something very specific, it is not unthinkable to jettison your original campaign idea, or rewrite it so that the natural course of events is that it doesn't fail. If you cannot bear to let your ideas go by the wayside, you can always save them for use with another group of players. If that's not acceptable, a compromise approach would be to lessen the success conditions. Make solid events fragile, and make the degree of failure high. That way, your PCs can "win" your campaign on the side while concentrating on their own goals. If you're going to go this far for the players, I think it is acceptable to demand a relatively unified goal from them. In other words, this is to accommodate the party as a whole, not just every player's idiosyncratic agenda.

Passive PCs are a particularly unpleasant situation. In some cases it's fine, as long as they're both quiet and happy. The trouble is when they're not. What it boils down to is that some players are most comfortable riding on a railroad, whether they know it or not. If they do know it, that's great. If the whole party is like that, just give them a railroad to follow. If some subset of the party is like that, they should hopefully be fine with following the lead of the active members.

Now it's those players who have been simultaneously indoctrinated to dislike railroads, but cannot be motivated to take a course of action on their own who are real headaches. At this point, some triage is in order. Either something about your campaign will be compelling enough to attract their interest and drive, or it's best to admit that your campaign isn't for them, and have both of you go your separate ways. Also, completely passive players, those who don't do anything and don't participate at all, are a type of problem player in my opinion. Whatever they're getting out of being in a game, it's to the detriment of others, and that should not be tolerated.

In contrast, the PCs who wish to pursue multiple agendas are in some ways the best PCs to have. They are willing to muck about in your game world's problems, but they bring their own color and depth to it, too, with their goals and backgrounds. The main difficulty is balancing the two sets, but the scenarios you've set up should speak for themselves. It is the best when the backgrounds lend themselves to incorporation in the campaign. The biggest thing to watch out for is when the motivations put the PCs at odds with the course of the party or other PCs.

The Corridor with Many Doors
A continuing problem, and one that I have not solved satisfactorily, is the one of perceiving choices. There often seems to be a disconnect between the number of choices players actually have, and ones they feel they have. In other words, players sometimes feel like they're being forced down a certain path, when they could be walking off of it whenever they want.

There are always going to be obvious bad choices, at least ones detrimental to the PCs' goals. Don't throw yourself off a cliff. Don't insult the evil duchess at her dinner table. Don't try to mug the captain of the town guard. Don't break into the royal vault on the spur of the moment. Don't intentionally get lost in the forest. If you do, the consequences are fairly obvious.

What about more subtle situations? When is it good to let things just move along, and when is it good to step in and do...what? I really dislike spelling out less-obvious options to players, because I think it's to everyone's benefit when someone comes across one unaided. The very act of presenting choices leads to the further implication, however false, that those are the only ones to be considered. On another level, it also tends to forestall players from formulating their own plans.

Yet sometimes the best choice for PCs really is to do nothing, or to do the obvious. When there's a goal, approaching it directly is the norm, and the circuitous route is only a countermeasure to hazards, enemies, and obstacles. The obvious is usually obvious for a reason, and PCs who are conditioned to always do the unanticipated eventually become strange and paranoid creatures.

Working on the concept that players need to have a view of the world in order to better interact with it, I have tried to present large amounts of activity and detail as hints to possible actions. I try to show what events will occur if the party does nothing, and illustrate events that occur as a consequence of the party's actions. Unfortunately, this can apparently create the opposite impression--as was recently made clear to me yet again--the impression of events heading to some foreordained conclusion whether the party does anything or not.

I think the biggest unresolved problem in this area is that different players have different expectations. The level of comfort for one player is outside the zone of another. Enumerated choices can be stifling, while freedom can be as limiting as a blank page.

To some extent, I try to reward proposed actions by least giving them a chance of obtaining positive outcomes. That works up to a point. I don't want players to believe they can get away with any crazy thing that pops into their heads. That means any plan would work, not just the good ones. Ideally, actions should be daring without being mad; reasonable without being dull; showy without being silly; or just flat-out clever.

Into the Gray
The above assumes that the PCs have some stake in your outcome, that basically they don't want it to happen. Following these principles can keep you cranking out viable campaigns of several different types for years, but perhaps you have in mind something different. Let's say your whole campaign is centered around a war, but it's one where both sides have sympathetic and repulsive elements; or perhaps you are interested in the political struggles of a country where any of several factions might appeal to the PCs.

In these cases, the outcomes of events encourage the success or failure of various sides. The PCs are free to go with whomever they want, and their meddling will change the balance of power. I still believe it is important that the overall untouched outcome be negative. In the examples above, unless the PCs change the course of events, the war drags on for years until both sides are too weak to oppose a new invader; or the kingdom descends to civil war under the weight of its intrigues. This way, the PCs can't just sit back and have things go their way.

Quests Are Different
What I have described above is currently my favorite approach to adventure design, but it is not necessarily universally applicable. Here is a common example where it is not necessary to design for failure: the quest.

A quest, in this case, is where the PCs have an explicit goal that they are setting out to accomplish. It is important, in the first place, for the players to have accepted this at the outset. However, once that is confirmed, you have been given a great gift: you know what the PCs are going to be striving for, and you know that they're going to be doing it all together.

In this sort of situation, you don't need to worry about having the PCs "meddle" in the foreordained course of events. Freely put obstacles in the PCs' path: challenges where the PCs have to succeed at in order to get what they want. The party is now the central agent of change, going against the inertia of the world. It's not a bad place to be.

Summary
I try to design adventures from the point of view that the situation will naturally come to an undesirable outcome if there is no intervention from the PCs. These adventures have multiple points where that preordained outcome can be derailed. The points can be easy or difficult to achieve, but most of them a reasonably accessible for players to get to. Each point has a degree to which it will offset the original outcome, with the greatest offsets occurring near the end or being made available by earlier offsets.

I try to have some failure points obvious, and some that occur opportunistically. I also have the failures points of multiple scenario interspersed to increase the odds of the players interacting with them.

The nature of the outcome is not death and destruction. Rather, it delivers the PCs to another, lower, plateau, from which they can continue their activities.

While giving the players the freedom to choose their own course, I try to strike a balance between the PCs' individual goals and the overall direction of the campaign. At a minimum, PC goals should not be at odds with each other, unless the GM specifically wishes that possibility. Some PCs prefer linear (railroad) approaches, which is acceptable, but PCs who cannot be motivated to action at all may be problem players, or at least incompatible with your campaign.

There is an ongoing conundrum concerning the balance and nature of information to present to players about what their choices are. Too little and too much information can both create the impression of a lack of choice, in different ways. This is further complicated by individual players' differing preferences.

This technique can be modified to support situations where the PCs have leeway to choose a variety of different courses. In cases where PCs already have a single goal they are striving for, much of this approach is unnecessary or can be reversed. ]]> Umiushi http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/entry.php/1656-It-s-a-Wonderful-Life-(for-Player-Characters)-another-approach-to-adventure-design http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/entry.php/1655-Second-Post-Blues-and-A-Rendezvous-on-High-Hill-Part-Two Tue, 13 Sep 2011 11:53:25 GMT There's always something to reflect upon after launching a new effort.

I like the name, but it's become obvious to me that focusing on The Unquiet Lands is too narrow for my tastes. I have a few other projects waiting in the wings that I would like to talk about in this blog. The name stays, but the scope is going to be expanded to my rpg projects in general.

Second, I had an initial conceit that I would present material in some kind of chronological order. I've decided I really don't want to do that. Also, I think posting whatever comes to mind will provide for an increase in the variety to look forward to. At some point, my intention is get to everything worthwhile.

Finally, I probably shouldn't promise what the next post will be about. My feelings concerning what I want to write about will often change from what they were when I wrote the previous post.

However, I did say I would write about the next part of A Rendezvous on High Hill for this post, so here it is:

A Rendezvous on High Hill, Part Two
Background
The party has been hired to find the local elves and inform them of the arrival of the first trading caravan since winter.

Last post, I mentioned that the payment was a "pouch of silver." That would be 50 sp. Players in most of my adventures are familiar with the fact that I use the "silver standard." In short, in the majority of my settings, a silver piece has the buying power of a standard D&D gold piece.

50 gp isn't going to let the party retire, but it's suitable for a two day journey that doesn't hold the expectation of danger. Of course, the players know full well there will be copious amounts of danger, but they were too polite to let their characters in on the secret.

Encounter Area A: The Deep Woods
A1 - Locating the outpost. (Skill Challenge)
This Skill Challenge begins fifteen minutes after the party enters the forest.

Normally, I wouldn't bother to specify "fifteen minutes," but the party has less than forty-eight hours to accomplish their quests, so keeping track of time is important.

Area Description
Shortly after entering the forest, the trees quickly begin to crowd together. Half of them are pines, and the rest are trunks with tangled, leafless canopies, except for once in a while, when you spot a tree ablaze with violet blossoms. The ground is difficult to negotiate, a combination of pine needles, underbrush, snow, and mud. The trees do provide some protection from the wind, which is causing the clouds to race past, overhead. Every now and then, you hear or catch glimpses of animals: deer, birds, dormice, and so forth. Once in a while, the howling of wolves carries on the wind.

I probably say some variation of this whenever a party enters a forest in my games, I'm afraid. The important point here is to convey that it is the beginning of spring, and to note the presence of wolves. Early spring + wolves = hungry wolves.

Goal and Context: The party enters the Deep Woods, attempting to locate the hidden paths and find the elven outpost.

Level and Complexity: Complexity Two - Six successes before three failures.

Skills Used:
Acrobatics
Athletics
Nature
Perception

Explanation
The outpost is said to be two leagues due west of High Hill, but locating it in this pathless forest is easier said than done. You will need the Nature Skill in order to find your way of course, and Perception will help you locate clues as to where it might be. Acrobatics and Athletics will be useful for physically traversing the dense and treacherous woodlands.

This was my very first skill challenge.

Procedure
A) Players decide their turn order, or agree to make Initiative Rolls and/or Charisma Checks to determine the order.

Subsequent errata has removed the idea of player initiative in skill challenges. If I were to run this adventure again, I would probably just go clockwise around the table. Nevertheless, I have found it useful to rely on initiative for some skill challenges.

B) Every player must either use a skill, use the Aid Another action (at DC 10), pass, or do some other action.

C) You can use one of the skills I listed, or you can try to justify the use of another skill.

D) One Nature check must be successfully made each turn to keep traveling in the correct direction.

E) If the party encounters a hazardous obstacle, they can make an Acrobatics or Athletics check to progress through the obstacle, or a Nature check to bypass the obstacle.

F) Perception checks can be substituted for Nature checks, but it is more difficult to do so.

G) Failing a skill check may have immediate and/or longer-term consequences.

Nature (DC 15) A successful Nature check means that the party will spend one hour traveling in the correct direction for the first three checks. The final successful check means the party discovers a path leading westwards. A failed Nature check means that the party will spend two hours lost.

After the first and third Nature checks, the party encounters an obstacle: 1- a swift stream flowing along a ravine 2- an area of mucky swamp.

Again, errata changed the DCs for skill challenges. This was intended to be a moderate challenge for 1st level adventurers. Therefore it and all subsequent DCs in this section would be reduced by 5 if I were to run the adventure again.

Negotiate the Obstacle:
Acrobatics/Athletics (DC 20) Failure indicates the players lose one healing surge each. Rope or other useful equipment gives a +5 bonus on the roll, but failure indicates the equipment is lost.

Bypass the Obstacle:
Nature (DC 15) Success indicates that the obstacle was bypassed in one hour. Failure adds 1d4 hours to travel time.

I didn't specify it in my notes, but negotiating the obstacle would mean that every character makes the check, while bypassing the obstacle only requires one check.

Some groups would prefer to come up with a specific plan for dealing with such obstacles. The above description presumes a group, like my offline players, who are accepting of that level of abstraction.

Perception (DC 20) A successful Perception check replaces any Nature check.

Six successes: the party finds a path towards the outpost.
Two failures or five successes: it begins to rain.
Three failures: the party is lost for the rest of the day (or until morning) and everyone loses another healing surge, after which, proceed with Encounter A2.

Some GMs would entertain a philosophical objection to having weather dependent upon the party's performance in the skill challenge. I am sympathetic to that viewpoint, but here is a case where I made an exception. The point of the rain is that I want it to rain before the party completes the skill challenge as a matter of atmosphere. That is why the rain occurs after five successes or two failures: in either case there is still at least one more piece of the challenge to accomplish.

Experience:
200 XP (50 per) if the skill challenge is successful.

Maybe I didn't mention it before, but this was an adventure for four PCs. The party consisted of a dragonborn warlord (I sure seem to get a lot of those), a human fighter, a human wizard, and a tiefling warlock. I just realized that even though they each made a character without knowing what anyone else was doing, the party wound up perfectly balanced.

A2. Lean Wolves
The party encounters the wolves after they discover the westward path, or in the late afternoon after becoming lost.

Description
Bounding out of the trees behind you leap a pair of gray wolves. A moment later, two more walk out into view in front of the party. Lean, nearly gaunt, they stare at you and bare their teeth.

Foreshadowed earlier, the past harsh winter means these wolves are looking for a meal, and will risk everything to take down a group they normally would steer clear of. That spells tragedy for the wolves, and experience points for the adventurers. This encounter itself serves to foreshadow events at the end of the adventure.

Hungry Wolves
Four Level 1 Skirmishers

I used the Gray Wolf from the Monster Manual and reduced the level by one according to the rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide.

Detection
Neither party achieves surprise.

Tactics
The wolves will attempt to flank if possible. If one or more wolves are slain, the rest will flee when bloodied.

Terrain
The encounter takes place in daytime, so there is plenty of lighting.
Most of the ground is difficult terrain, including small trees, which also provide cover. Large trees are blocking terrain that provide cover. Bushes are concealing terrain and difficult terrain.

I have a fair number of geomorphic dungeon tiles, now collecting dust, which I used for the various combat maps.

Conclusion
If the party was lost, proceed with encounter A3 immediately after the last wolf is killed or flees.

Experience
400 XP (100 per)

A3. Elven Patrol
If the party is lost, then immediately after the wolf encounter, the following occurs:
Two cloaked figures are standing in front of the party. One is an eladrin, with long bluish-white hair, holding a spear. Next to her is a muscular figure wearing chain mail. He's carrying a sword sheathed at his side and raises his hand in greeting.

At this point, the party has successfully completed the first of the two quests: they've met the elves.

Encounter
Eladrin Mage: Nomiri
Half-Elf Paladin: Aenje, fair-haired and strongly built
2 Elven Scouts: Abatag, Onahouh
4 Elven Archers: Rihsian, Benarsnar, Notasne, Sahethin

I would describe any individual NPC more if the players inquired. These days, I would prepare more description in advance. I seesaw back and forth on the topic. In the late '80s, I could pretty much describe the childhood, relationships, and defining life events for any NPC the party ran into, short of a horde of kobolds.

The eladrin mage was an Eladrin Twilight Incanter, along with the Elf Archers and Scouts, they were all from the Monster Manual. The half-elf paladin was a PC I made when I first bought the fourth edition rulebooks, so that I could get a hang of the character creation rules.

Attitude
If one of the party is badly injured, Aenje will use his Lay on Hands power to help them. The patrol is curious why one of their scouts, Fopina, didn't send word of the approach, even though the scout was encamped on the High Hill, but is otherwise friendly, and agrees to take them to meet Lahenn, the leader of their group.

Fopina's sad fate will be dealt with in the final part of the adventure.

Detection
The other members of the patrol are in hiding around the party. They need to make a stealth roll at +9 to beat Lilith's passive perception score of 17, or she will notice that six figures armed with longbows have quietly taken up positions around them.

Otherwise, they will encounter the patrol as they come within sight of the outpost, and the archers and scouts will be spread out in the woods in front of the party.

Lilith was the tiefling warlock. Since I wrote this adventure before I knew what the characters were going to be, I imagine this part was written in after the fact to save myself the bother of looking up the highest passive perception in the party. If I were writing the adventure these days, I would have just made the Stealth Check in advance, too. However, running things offline gave me more of a reason to throw dice in front of the players.

The NPCs had stats available, but this wasn't going to be a combat encounter. It's hard to imagine a rational group getting into a fight with these guys, and if I did have a party that wigged out and attacked them, the real problem would be getting me to run any more gaming sessions with them in the future.

A4. The Outpost
The group arrives at a gate of forest iron. Beyond the bars, in whatever light is available, tall trees, then houses and slender towers can be spied. The outpost is no encampment, but a full, walled town and fortress built of wood and stone.
The party of elves stands silently at the gate, and after a few moments, it swings open to admit them.
Inside, the streets are empty, and the buildings show no signs of habitation, but a faint smell of smoke lingers in the air, a telltale sign that there are occupants here.

It never came up, but the fact that there are only sixteen elves in this small city would be something that might make sense to the players later, had this been expanded into a campaign. In any case, I liked the idea of a small band of elves living in a largely abandoned forest town.

Inhabitants
1 Elven Warlord: Lahenn, jet black hair, unblinking, vaguely anxious expression
1 Elven Priest: Avefe
2 Elven Scouts: Orote, Eyatufo
4 Elven Archers: Oyid, Duvek, Orufya, Rubuon

I'm pretty sure I didn't even bother with stats for the warlord and priest. The scouts and archers are more of the same from before. Oh and look, there's Duvek! Not the same as Duvek the elven bookseller from Beilston Mound, of course.

The elves are amenable to trading, and present the party with a package of bright blue and green silks to present to Rassus Caw as a token of their interest. They encourage the party to dine and rest with them.
Lahenn, their leader, asks the party to look for the scout, Fopina. If they agree, she gives them two flasks containing frothy pink liquid.

For some groups, it would probably be a good idea to prepare what the elves know about their home, and other suitable conversation topics. In this case, I just improvised.

Treasure:
Two Potions of Healing, if the party agrees to search for Fopina.

Event: The Storm
The rain grows steadily worse. During their rest or shortly after the party leaves, if they decide not to rest, they are drenched with cascading sheets of sleet and icy rain. Thunder and lightning light up the sky at regular intervals.

This is right on the border of weather that would be detrimental to the health of the PCs. I believe the reason I didn't pursue that line of thinking was the knowledge that they were probably only going to be out in it for half a day.

If the party wishes, the elves will let them stay another day, during which time, a patrol will investigate High Hill and not be able to locate Fopina. In the morning of the second day, the rains will be slightly lessened, and Lahenn will encourage them to head back to the village. She suggests that the beacon can be used to send a signal to Whitethorn, now that the clouds are higher up.

Of course, the party might decide that they don't need to send a signal to Rassus at all. This is when knowing your group comes in handy. Really though, it would take a pretty strange combination of reasoning and paranoia to come to a contrary decision.

So what happens if the party decides they don't go up High Hill? Nothing. They don't go up High Hill.

I often rail against the so-called "sandbox" method of game mastering, but it is a fundamental error to become too enamored of any given storyline. If I force the PCs to High Hill, that could impact the entire game. If I shrug and let them go on their way, the worst thing that happens to me is that I don't get to use what I wrote for High Hill, and I've had many years to get used to that sort of occurrence.

In that circumstance, measure the time it takes for them to get back to Whitethorn, and use that to determine if they get their reward or if Rassus Caw has already packed up and left. I had another adventure in my pocket after this one, anyway. That said, if the party got lost in the woods, or if they dallied too long at the outpost, they would almost certainly need to use the beacon on High Hill to retain any meaningful chance of collecting their reward.

Outpost to High Hill: 5 hours in the stormy weather


No promises for the subject of the next post, this time. However, the next time I return to A Rendezvous on High Hill, it will be for the conclusion of the adventure. ]]> Umiushi http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/entry.php/1655-Second-Post-Blues-and-A-Rendezvous-on-High-Hill-Part-Two http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/entry.php/1646-A-Rendezvous-on-High-Hill-the-first-Unquiet-Lands-adventure Fri, 05 Aug 2011 12:39:38 GMT My idea, at least to start with, is to record some treasure, monster, NPC, or other detail from each of my completed adventures in The Unquiet Lands... My idea, at least to start with, is to record some treasure, monster, NPC, or other detail from each of my completed adventures in The Unquiet Lands setting. I don't want to give away anything that's still part of the action, so any NPCs will either be deceased or otherwise out of the picture, for example. I also don't want to go over anything I've previously covered in the sub-forum, so please look there for general background information.

I believe that, while some advice is more generally helpful than others, every game master has their own way of doing things, and success is usually determined by how much those individual talents mesh with any particular group of players. Therefore, instead of condensing any experience I have into advice, what I will do here is chronicle my efforts, and discuss what worked and didn't work for me personally. If someone derives inspiration from that, and their experience is made better for it, that would be very gratifying.

I've previously talked in other places about how The Unquiet Lands was originally a generic "Points of Light"-style campaign, intentionally based on the examples from the 4th edition Dungeon Master's Guide, that has since mutated into something different, so I won't go over that again. Instead, I'd like to share something from before that change reached its present state.

It is well-known, at least to my players, that the pbp game Acqua Alta is the first adventure set in The Unquiet Lands on the Pen and Paper Games forum, and that it is still ongoing. What might surprise a few people is that Acqua Alta isn't the first Unquiet Lands adventure that I wrote or ran, even though I often refer to it as my "first" around here for the sake of convenience.

The first adventure, actually set before the setting had a name, was run offline as a face-to-face game with a number of people from the gaming group I regularly associate with. It represented a number of firsts and lasts. Besides being the first Unquiet Lands adventure, it was the first time I ran 4th edition; the first time I used geomorphic map tiles; and the first time I used counters and "power cards" in any roleplaying game. It was also the last time I ran an offline rpg. I should note that this wasn't because the adventure wasn't successful: based on the feedback I received and my own personal feeling, it went quite well. It's simply that I've decided to devote my offline time to non-rpg pursuits, such as mahjong, and I've found, contrary to some, that online gaming suits me particularly well.

The adventure was set in the northern reaches of the "Realm of Erathis," which is, I'm afraid, the most generically-named country in all of The Unquiet Lands. As an accurate description of the ecclesiastical monarchy that it is, I've left it in place. It happens to be the same country that the Order of the Green Lion calls home, though their base of operations is far to the southwest, on the plains of Shenothom.

What follows is a basic summary of the beginning of the adventure, culled from my notes at the time. I removed the mechanics and statistics for now. I might publish them later, but they take up a bit of space and this post is already a little lengthy, especially after I added some commentary. I believe I'll spend the first few blog posts putting out this adventure in installments.

Introduction:
All of you are inhabitants or recently arrived in the village of Whitethorn. On the northwestern border of The Realm, this highland village remains on the map by virtue of the local whitethorn brandy it produces. The winters here are harsh and snowy. Often food and supplies run low before spring. The first trade caravan to arrive after the days begin to lengthen is a welcome sight.
That caravan was spotted late this afternoon, and trundled into the village center as the sunlight began to fade. The master of the caravan, a woman named Rassus Caw, made an exception to her usual rule, and allowed your group to purchase supplies ahead of tomorrow's crush. After conducting business, she ushers all of you into the public room of The Hound, the village's one drinking establishment, and buys cups of gluwein for everyone. After quaffing half of hers, she begins to speak.
"That mound you can easily see from this village, the one you folks call High Hill: I've heard that a band of elves makes their home in the Deep Woods, some two leagues west to it. If it's true, I'd like to trade with them, but I don't want to make the trip for naught. I'll be holding the market here for two days. If you can bring word as to whether or not it's worth my time to moot with the Deep Woods elves at High Hill, I have a full pouch of silver to share with the lot of you."

At this point, I had two minor quests assigned. The first was to find the elves of the Deep Woods. The second, dependent on success of the first, was to return to Rassus and let her know whether they were willing to trade or not. Both had time limits based on how long Rassus would be in town.

After that were a number of notes based on the time of year (early spring) accounting for sunrise, sunset, and how fast the party could move across the local terrain. I was probably thinking of that old Tolkienquest book, Night of the Nazgul, when I penned this in.

First Encounter: leaving town
Setting
Across the river that runs along the northern side of the village is an ancient stone bridge, still solid and sturdy, having been built by the dwarfs. It is 80' long and 15' wide, and bordered by a low, stone wall, about three feet high. It runs about twenty feet above the river below, which is flowing fast and cold with the melting snow.
A low, stone building rests on the near bank, next to the bridge. It is about 20' by 30' and has a single wooden door, reinforced with rusting iron. An open peephole is set in the door. On the far side of the bridge is a rude, wooden building. Smoke issues from the chimney of the stone building, and a hole in the rough of the wooden building.
An elderly man opens the door as the party approaches and steps out. He looks like he's in his fifties. His beard is scraggly and gray, as is what hair remains on his balding head. He squints at the group.
"There's a toll to set foot on this bridge. It's the lord's toll per head. Let's see," he says, scanning each member of the party in turn, "For you lot, that would be ten true silver a head."
If the party protests, the man merely asks, "Are you going to pay or are you going to go?"
If they threaten him or make to cross the bridge, he shrugs and sulks back into the room.

In any case, once the party is halfway across the bridge, the man reemerges along with a younger, female companion, both now armed with spears. A second, younger man comes out of the door, better-dressed than the others, with a sword sheathed at his side. At the far side of the bridge, four more people step out of the wooden building, similarly armed, and with one carrying a knocked bow. He rests his spear on his shoulders and leers at you.
"Now that you're on the bridge, I'll tell you there's a toll to set foot -off- of it! That toll'd be all your money and goods. Just drop 'em where you are, and then come forward one at a time."

This was my first 4e D&D combat encounter! My notes veered in and out of descriptions I wanted to give to my players and information for my own benefit. In the end, I used the dimensions to set up the geomorphic tiles, and copied the parts I wanted to tell the players onto index cards as talking points.

The players may well have took these people for greedy thugs, and that wouldn't have been off the mark, but their motivation was a little bit deeper. If Rassus Caw couldn't trade with the elves, she'd be forced to make her profit in Whitethorn, giving the local inhabitants more leverage. Maybe if they'd explained this patiently to the party...but like I said earlier, they were basically greedy thugs.

I did set up a skill challenge that would allow talkative PCs to uncover these NPCs' motivations. I'm not sure what I think of that, now. There were also some easy Streetwise Checks to recognize who these attackers were.

Depending on how the situation was resolved, I had some notes about how the village squire would deal with them. That turned out to be unnecessary.

After the Bridge
Along either side of the road stand the trees of the Deep Woods, some dark, shaggy pines, and others bare and leafless. Ahead of you, the High Hill rises up, a mottled brown and white in color.

Event: 5 miles down the road.
A howl is heard from the east, echoing in the air. A moment later, there's an answering howl to the west.

Reaching High Hill
As you approach the hill, you notice that it is bare of trees. The slopes are covered in long, matted, brown grass. Some sort of stone building or wall is visible at the very top. Once you reach the hill's base, you see that a carved path of white stone stairs, looking like they were built by the same hands that made the road, leads to the top of the hill, if you were interested in going there.

The adventure climaxes at High Hill, but that's not the party's destination at the moment. For now, all they know is that it serves as a convenient landmark for entering the Deep Woods. However, knowing that they'll get there sooner or later means I had it conveniently mapped out if they decided to explore it right at this point.

Next Post: finding the elves. ]]> Umiushi http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/entry.php/1646-A-Rendezvous-on-High-Hill-the-first-Unquiet-Lands-adventure